girlfriends

Picking up my college roommates from the train station, the first thing M says is: Look at A's boots! A is sporting a pair of resilient chunky ankle-high hiking boots, prepared for our hike at Sleeping Giant. She has small hands and feet for her size, and the combination of petite and hardcore in the shoes give immediate amusement (and continual throughout the day as we talk about how to maximize the use of her boots during our hike).

I haven't seen these girls for a few months, and there's no need for hello, only laughs.

On our hike, I naturally read the map wrong, but we do manage to reach our destination. Along the way we talk and talk, and I'm reminded of how different conversations are with different people. There's a certain silliness and inappropriateness and openness specific to my interactions with these girls, these girls with whom I went through such a defining period of growth--not just the confusion of college but the daze of post-college and the feigned maturity of post-post college.

And it's with them that a weekend of girlfriends began, a weekend where I'm deeply reminded that I am a girl, and that it is amazing to be one. With M & A, we run through the gamut of past and current boys and flings, past and current fashions; the quality of kisses (and so on), the quality of our own bodies and how to be self-accepting; the irrationality of moods and ups and downs, and how we cope. We share the insecurities that come with being female and a person, freely and honestly because we know it's common among us and because in the end they will be sweetly funny and not damaging.

It is nice to share the trees with them, and a part of my life with them, and they appreciate it too. It's a long hike that tires us, but we reach the tower I keep telling them is the destination--it's a short tower that is anticlimactic as we approach, but it holds the view with the breeze as they fit into the arches of the tower's windows. We reward ourselves with ice cream (two scoops, which proves to be too much), and some napping at home before dinner.

The bed is where we gather before their departure, in the cozy style of a sleepover. Which lends itself to sharing photographs, commenting on male facial hair and body odor, talking about people from college I haven't thought about in ages, wondering whether people notice when you wear the same outfit ("I don't judge, but I notice"), comparing our stretch marks. In between these there lies what's more conventionally considered substance--jobs, future plans, philosophies and approaches to day-to-day and to things broadly. But when they leave I'm aware that there is incredible weight to everything we share, the kind that makes me paradoxically, wonderfully feel full and light.

*

It's this lightness that carries me through the night, where three of my med school girlfriends and I go out to dance. During dinner with M, A, and the wife, we tell M & A about our dance plans.

M: You're going to dance, just the two of you?
Wife & me, simultaneous: *shrug* we do it all the time!

(This night there are four of us, but we have gone out with just two many a good time). It's an eclectic crowd, the four of us girls, but we share the strong desire to dance that precludes caring about being the only ones on the dance floor. At Barcelona, this means having the entire space to ourselves, and I'm again so happy to be a girl. At Black Bear there are more people and songs that bring out the inner excitable. Being with girls who move with distinct styles and without any thought other than to have fun, and whose fun is so apparent in their faces and bodies, is a constant source of energy, and the fun grows exponentially with every second.

It feels so good to go all out, to both be aware of our physical selves and to let go of self-consciousness.

*

On the next day, with these same girls we make dumplings and watch Shakespeare's As You Like It as the Cabaret. I get sleepy during the play, in which I pay more attention to the use of space and creation of atmosphere than plot. And I think, what range of experiences I can have with the girls in my life, and what depth I reach in each one.

These ladies make me feel that at baseline we're something to be grateful to be: people who are capable. Of having all sorts of negative and positive feelings, from silly and jealous and insecure, to confident and affirming and persistent. It's not any one thing but more the spectrum, that I love.

only girl

My advisor, who I love meeting each week for the pure reason of being with the type of doctor I'd like to someday be, once said that one thing she loves about being a physician is being what people need, which changes for each person. Some people need her to be stern, others need her to be lenient. Some people need affection, others need distance. It's not just personal preference, but about what's best for personal character. At first this might seem like playing a part to cater to someone, but I think that after awhile, if you train yourself to remain open to whatever someone brings to you, you naturally adopt different parts of them and different corresponding parts of them.

This might sound like advocating against being your own person--to be malleable and different depending on who's around you. But I don't think that necessarily has to be the case. I think being open to how another person can change and shape you, can mean drawing on resources within you that you aren't used to reaching for, haven't had to assume in the circumstances you've been in, aren't part of the general personality you've developed. Doing things, saying things, feeling things outside of your usual self aren't always less you than what you do everyday. You own all of it, including what you accept from others.

I thought of this today when Rihanna's "Only Girl" came on the radio. I'm a big fan of that song, and of Rihanna whose voice I love for its slight twang and high power. I thought of it because my friend C and I blasted this song throughout our cross country drive from Connecticut to Arizona, and back. And C is a person who makes me think of how different people bring out different things in me that I wouldn't always offer on my own. She's extremely expressive, while I find it pretty difficult to show when I'm really excited or happy about something. We've grown up in different environments, we respond to our current environments differently. I love in her all of these things that make us different, and she's open to me despite them, and I think that's the one and only thing I require in a friend, a certain openness to how I am and to how people are in general, that makes it easy to connect even if you're very different.

C and I both love this song, and other fun pop songs, and any time we heard one of our favorites, she'd go crazy in the car, and it would make me go kind of crazy too. This one song being iconic, whenever I hear it, I remember those free-for-all moments: all the windows down on a dark road in the desert of New Mexico, with flat-topped mountains fading into the black of night so that you can't see any shapes but think how beautiful it must be during the day; singing over the words over a straight road flanked by cotton fields in the middle of Arkansas which is full of deep reds and pale greens; dancing in the seats of the car through the wide therapeutic nothing of Texas with its surprising pink-tinged wheat and beauty.

And when she blasted the radio on full volume, put the car in park at a stop sign, jumped outside and danced barefoot on asphalt, in some residential southwest neighborhood already asleep. How I didn't hop out after her, but hopped out at the same time, as though I'd already absorbed the energy to fulfill a previously dormant whim. To feel something in you slip out of its cover is almost like to create something new, and there's so much in people to make you feel new.

friends

In a period of low where I felt both made to feel, and self-induced to feel, a bit mediocre, I sought love, and found it. No matter what else I accomplish or am trying to accomplish, knowing that I can be something to someone, makes me feel purpose more than anything else. When our home is a place to ring the doorbell at any hour, when our couch and kitchen is open to someone who wants company, quiet company while sleeping exhausted or raucous accompaniment to the guitar, when there is a knock at the back door just cause--I'm incredibly grateful to be a person to come to. And to be able to go to them. Though generally uncomfortable with positive reinforcement, I admit there are times when it's needed, and nice. To have a friend you respect so well tell you you're one of the best, to have a boyfriend who calls you at work when you're feeling inferior and makes you feel chosen instead, to have a group of wonderful people want to be with you, to have emails end with love that's genuine and felt across distance. To be deserving of it all, is the best goal to have, and when other things aren't going so well, this alone is reason to keep trying to be better.

recording

This morning, I met with my research advisor to go over a transcript of my first interview, which I conducted back in September. My project is qualitative research, speaking with hospice or near-hospice patients about their main concerns during this transitional period that we term end-of-life. My first interview was with a lovely woman from the South, with a subtly sharp sense of humor and generous spirit, who died a couple months after I met her. She's the one who I wrote about previously, who had written a story she'd wanted to publish in her nursing home newspaper. We'd worked on it together, and she died before it could get published; it will be printed in April.

With those strings in mind, I read the transcript with my advisor, who said, isn't it funny to hear her voice coming back? I agreed, and I thought how nice it was that I had the interview on tape, and also how nice it was to see it transcribed on paper. I've been so trained to close-read that when conversation becomes written, I pay attention differently. Words take on much more contextual meaning. And as fresh eyes to the interview, my advisor noticed motifs and word choices and turns of phrases that I hadn't, while speaking to the patient. She also loves telling any story that comes to her mind when something reminds her of it; they're always funny, or touching, or interesting.

Reading the transcript made me excited anew about the project, realizing that there was more than I realized in those conversations. I'd worried that without structure, and with such different people in different situations, it'd be hard to glean anything from the interviews. But even if each transcript turns out to be very different, there are plenty of individual insights into a person's thought process and expression of them, and that's worthwhile.

Much of the reading I've been doing on qualitative research and narrative analysis emphasizes what's lost when conversations are transcribed into script. You lose tone, pauses, faces, and so on; it's true that much nuance is sacrificed. And so I was surprised to see that simultaneously true is that something's gained in this translation. There's something about the act of recording, which inherently must be in a different medium than actual experience, that gives a perspective outside of the experience itself.

*
This afternoon the wife and I continued to labor over our class slideshow, to be shown at our school's annual second-year-show this weekend. Each year the graduating class puts together a slideshow of pictures. Ever since I saw the fourth year class slideshow during my first year here, I've wanted to work on ours.

We downloaded all the pictures sent from our classmates, and because I wanted to give the show a theme and not just be a conglomeration of pictures, we went through them and organized them. Then we laid them out into slides, keeping in mind order and cohesiveness and variety. Then wife and another friend/classmate of ours chose music to correspond to different parts of the slideshow, and had to learn how to splice music to put together a mix. Then we had to sync, sync, sync, and sync again the music to the pictures; there were a lot of transitions in the pictures that we wanted to line up with transitions in the music. Then we embedded a short video to conclude the show.

We probably spent the equivalent of 24 hours over different days in order to piece together this 6-minute slideshow. We had to choose which parts of songs we wanted, decide which pictures to cluster together, find pictures of everyone in our class, learn how to have certain pictures come into view, figure out how to time slides. All of this required learning details, looking up programs, pulling hair, and intermittent/continuous swearing.

It also meant watching the show over 20 times to see whether our piecemeal efforts congealed into solid form. As frustrating as the process could be, watching the product always made me nostalgic. Four years of people and experiences, compressed in two-second segments placed side by side like pages pressed in a book. Each time we would notice new nuances, the way a lyric coincided with an item on the slide or how, small moments of self-pride and love for the images--that won't be noticed by anyone else, but are known to us and after all that work, gives a lot.

It's a representation, but not only a representation--not in the sense that it's something else other than a representation, but that "representation" encompasses more than we give it credit for. It's not a replica of the experiences that give rise to the memories or even the memories themselves, but it's an experience on its own. The process of making this out of things already made, surprises in the way that in how new it is, how much there is still to learn and feel.

There's the personal satisfaction from creating something with your own hands, and also the sense that something's happening to you. This dynamic way of connecting yourself with things outside of you that are also kind of part of you, and of connecting the outside with parts of yourself that are also kind of already part of your environment, is obviously too poignant for me to describe with any sort of clarity. But for all the curses and furrowed brows, it feels damn good (so long as it goes well for the show, too).

*

I'm really grateful for small experiences like these, things no one would pinpoint as reasons to be a medical student. And of course it's more than medicine that led me to having these moments, and of course if I'd done something else I would've been led to others, but I don't think I've been exposed to quite as much compact variety at any other phase in my life. M and I talk a lot about reasons for and against a career in medicine, with the long stressful process being a drawback. But there are also a lot of opportunities to meet things you may never have felt. I'm lucky that Yale is particularly suited to exploring these things, often without much idea of concrete goal. I also feel lucky for being a part of a small community of students for four/five years; for me it's combined aspects of high school and college I liked most (with some of the bad of each thrown in there, too). I don't think I'll ever experience anything like it again, and in remembering and living it, I miss it too. So for that too I want to record.

anniversary

I like anniversaries for the thought of remembering and reflecting, all that's happened between two points in time. Which is a lot, and considering how many days go by without significance--to feel that one year with someone has given you this much to feel and consider and grow, is nice. We went through a long phase of uncertainty, intermittent phases of awkwardness, a phase of closeness through distance, a phase of travel, and are in something good at the moment. I've always thought it was valuable and important to experience different stages, as we're different in different contexts. Through these with him, we've tried to be honest and open, and more than ease or sap, this is what I've loved best.

best

"I love how I don't have to think about why I like you."

crown 14A

For the last two years, here lived three goofy guys, and here a part of me was made and kept. I know we'll continue to see each of you and all of you together, but not in this place and this space anymore. I will miss so much about this--

The dirty kitchen floors. The mismatched chairs taken from different rooms for gatherings, a chair without a back, a wheely desk chair, some with cushions. The South Asian spices, and the blender where anything goes, where juice can be bright purple (beets) or conventional. The impromptu fruit salads, multiple colors eaten with condensed milk; or an all-orange salad of oranges, mango, cantaloupe. And mm, cantaloupe juice. How they never let guests wash the dishes. The balcony, for eats and smokes. The made-up songs about fruits and family and inappropriate things, the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar and the belt-out voices. The room with the gadgets where the "practicing" of video games takes place. The rooftop with sunsets, on clear nights and foggy nights, where we sit on ledges and crouch in corners to escape drizzle. In the room with the balcony: how he was always rearranging the furniture, the posters of nature and quotes. The door open and the half-clothed tall boy walking by ("that's the apartment"). The laughs, how we grew to know and identify each one. The odd potlucks, delicious and distinct items, a glass jar of kimchee and a plastic jar of yogurt because he loves yogurt, and discussions like yogurt or cheese? The planned gatherings, the spur of the moment invites, the random passings-by. The meals that are made as he goes along and can't be replicated. The big pots of rice, corn on the cob dipped in salty water, the rows of yams in the oven. The long talks, the quiet naps. The honesty and vulnerability, the disinhibition. The addition of lemon to water, and to anything. The wind through the windows on hot days, and the sun warming couch and carpet on winter afternoons. The bareness of that room, the sparse bathroom. Taking off shoes, and the too-big sandals for guest use. That one day the room exploded with clothes, to be placed into piles and piles. The ready spaces to fill and the complete acceptance freely given. The no need for apologies and thanks, and the response of gratitude to gratitude.

Thank you. Thank YOU.

birthday

Some people think birthdays are silly, and like most socialized celebrations there is an element of that. But I really enjoy celebrating people's birthdays. I think it's a nice idea to be thankful for someone being born, for existing at a time you can know them, for continuing to be there. This year I felt particularly loved, and knowing what that feeling is like, it's natural to want to give that.

Like first year of med school, this year G. and I celebrated our birthdays together, mine on the 22nd and his on the 23rd, both of us turning 26. I wanted an excuse to eat a lot of sugar, and so we had a desserts & drinks party, in which we baked and guests brought drinks. A dozen girls (and a guy) contributed baked goods: brownies, red velvet cake, macadamia nut & white chocolate (with cookie), oatmeal raisin cookies, three kinds of pie (apple, pecan chocolate, key lime), carrot cake, lemon squares, cheesecake, and pumpkin bread. I baked for three days in a row, the first with one friend, the second with two, and the third with a gaggle. M&A came down from NYC for a morning and part afternoon to help bake, and they brought champagne and orange juice for mimosas. My best friend from high school came from CA by means of NYC and in transit to DC to New Haven, to share. She integrated seamlessly into my day to day life, helping me clean, set up, and clean again. To have people from my sequential periods of my life in my kitchen, making things and sharing cups--it was meant for a polaroid.

A small, close core of our friends came early bearing delicious chicken and chickpeas, and we ate together before the larger crowd trickled in. The party expanded past the kitchen into living room and bedroom, and my bed again became innocent nest to parties of five or six friends. We received wine made from frozen grapes, each one contributing one richly sweet drop. Lots of wine, beer, and milk, and cards and candies tossed in. In the midst, acts of thoughtfulness that spoiled us. Waking up early despite sickness and overwhelmedness to make a beautiful red velvet; introverts arriving to share; cooking for the first or rare time; searching three stores for my favorite sweet; songs sung under pressure and songs sung cause they just can't help it; a piggy back ride despite aching bones.

Then the surprise of something I've so wanted but haven't been able to get myself to give myself, from the people who have made the past three years so good. The sensation of hearing The National flow from a record player encased in a soft brown trunk is ineffable. There's no other way to say that I was incredibly touched. Not only do I get music but it will be forever connected to these people.

I'm glad also that G. ended up really enjoying the big party; we are both more used to more intimate get togethers. It's hard to talk to each person in this atmosphere, but there is something to be said about so many people you enjoy in one space. There are many classmates who I may not see all the time or talk to often but whose characters I value and whose presence make for the fullness of my life here. And to have all my closest simply spending time together is a continual source of gratitude. And in the end that's what it's been all about, a day to remember how lucky I am to have known these people who I admire, respect and love so much. It's hard to describe them without sounding corny, and that's because they are why cheesiness was made. They listen, they pay attention, they see past themselves, they make fun, they hug, they look out, they wash dishes, they take pictures, they seek outdoors, they perceive brokenness and they fix without judging. It's their world that I celebrate being born into.

another m&m

While my last M&M post was about losing life, this one is about saving it. Not so much in the bringing back a pulse kind of way, or even the complete eradication of pain, but in the way that good turns all else into sources of gratitude. This M&M is called medicine & music.

"Medical school" has too many syllables, but really, it's more accurate than "medicine," because that's where I am, and what saves me. School allows for things that medicine may not: a certain free flowing mode of learning, and complete freedom to observe. And the beginnings of anything carry a peculiar poignancy that makes you very aware of them in the moment. Working in the emergency department is humbling, as the best parts of medical school have been. Crammed in a small space are little clips of people and problems, and as a student you can appreciate that you are in the middle of it. At this point in our lives, the weight of things still correlates with how they heavy they feel. A man with vertigo finds it's due to a stroke--the dizzy you feel that should just go away cause it's just in your head, but it won't go away because it is in your head. A man whose nephew passed away at 21 from a heart attack waits as we track his chest pain with labs and tests, his eyes wet as he talks about living in the southeastern tip of a small island. A woman finds the hard back of a trauma board more painful than the floor she's been lying on for twelve hours after a fall that fractured her arm in two places. A man writhes with tremors from an overdose, who is so thin you can't help but feel he might be right that things are too much.

Medical school is also more apt than medicine, because with school comes the family of friends I've had here. Early into my first year, a time that coincided with personal difficulties, I realized how much better I function in a small community. And more importantly, how much this small group of people offered. In this past week, small acts of kindness respond to my need for them, without knowing the nature of why I needed them but not questioning why. Dinners out with honest conversation about silly things and things most important to me. Someone who makes me believe in trying for genuine good, regardless of stumbles. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar in hand, and a mini avocado cheesecake in my fridge. Complete, sincere, effortless, unconditional acceptance of my faults from someone too hard on himself; he takes my mess and throws back simplicity. Company at the gym and the library. Encouragement disguised as a rap, both funny and sweet, and a typed smile from someone who has never before given one. Each person offers things in their own way, and the parallel care in individual qualities is such love.

While these things often take me beyond myself, music lets me be. I've returned to sounds that I loved years ago (Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots), or to sounds from years back that I didn't listen to properly back then (Linkin Park & Jay-Z: Collision Course, and lots of Linkin Park in general). I'm as addicted as everyone to The XX, whose atmospheric beats have both flash and depth, and I don't think I've loved this hard since Bon Iver. Besides catching up to the distant past, I'm catching up on 2009 with the timeliness of The Antlers' Hospice, and the new Muse, which has different parts all that I love through & through. A splash of Beirut's strange ache (Realpeople), all of Sigur Ros & Phoenix piling up on me, and so on and so on and it's all so filling. It's why I love commutes, the walks and train rides and road trips, the time I can take for music and myself and it's hard to describe in any other way except to say that it saves me.

I was walking around New Haven a little past four in the afternoon today, while it was still light. New Haven isn't thought to be pretty, but sometimes it is. The sky was filled in with gray but the top halves of all the brown-gray buildings were made golden by a sun you would have to turn around to see, but you wouldn't because you wouldn't move your eyes from the unearthly glow. Looking up at one point one such building merged its frame with quietly sprawling branches also alight with a mysterious sun, and my breath was sharp as I drew it in.

quality

A card from college friend--
On the front, a little one plucking shiny hearts from a nebulous flurry amidst a black sky. "She sows seeds of kindness." Inside: "I'm still drinking tea & honey, but I've moved to Mission Bay. Sometimes, I miss the East Coast and the autumn chill and New England foliage. The beaches in Norcal are frigid too! What are you going to be for Halloween this year? I made a costume last year, but didn't have time to wear it. You should come visit me. We can go wine tasting or eat raw oysters. Ah, medical school gets so hectic, but someday we should spend a nice summer in a cottage."

An email exchange with med school friend--
Me: I got another pair of boots.
Him: Might I recommend you make a facebook album profiling all your boots. Can we do a double makeover. I'll do one for you and you do one for me. We can have a set budget.
Me: Sure, but how am I going to make you any better?!
Him: Your flattery doesn't fool me! There are many things that could make me better.
Me: What's the budget... I'm curious as to what you'd make me over as.
Him: A stop light. Budget of $30. On the cheap.

A self-described long and complicated email from high school friend--
Thoughts on seeing self and what's around; this natural openness to seeing being the reason for and result of never settling for the sake of ease. It's a struggle we value, and reminds me to always feel with awareness.

A stamp-sized letter from elementary school friend--
It's a real letter with a tiny envelope and a tiny stamp and a tiny wax seal. So small that it comes with a little magnifying glass to read the letters, though I could do without if I read hard, and this is how it makes me feel it's just for me. "We've been friends for 14 years, can you believe it?"

Someone recently said that I'm too trusting of people, which I think was a slight misreading of openness to how far people go beyond our impressions of them. Openness is for everyone whereas trust is reserved for quality, and it's knowing such quality people over the years that makes openness worth the risk. I'm getting my best friend from high school and my med school wife to meet up in California, which makes me happy like e.e. cummings when he says "we're wonderful one times one."

communication

In skimming a description of what babies look like if their moms have had alcohol during pregnancy, I came across the word "philtrum." Wikipedia tells me that the philtrum is the vertical groove between the lips and the nose. It "allows humans to express a much larger range of lip motions than would otherwise be possible, which enhances vocal and nonverbal communication." It's derived from a Greek word that means "to love, to kiss."

One thing I liked about anatomy was learning the words for things, even if it doesn't often enhance your understanding of it. It kind of made my day to learn what the philtrum is, partly for that reason and partly because I've been thinking a lot about communication lately, and had already planned to write about it today.

So much that's important to me comes down to communication. The things I've been in immersed in as of late have been crowding my mind, all for reasons relating to this. With patients, learning how to talk to people from different backgrounds and struggling to bring down to earth those loose commonalities of health, respect, empathy. With friends, feeling such love for the big and small offerings of ourselves that we swap. With myself, reminding every day to be honest. With the outside world, fighting against the perception of people as simple to know, the categories, the dismissal of depth.

There is amazing variety in the kind of interaction healthcare providers have with their patients, and from the small bite of exposure we've had thus far, I've been better able to formulate in words what makes for real communication between people. I've always been awful at verbal articulation, but it's even harder than I thought to carry on a conversation that conveys both information and feeling. This morning my preceptor spoke to a mother in Spanish, who responded to a PA in Portugese, who then translated in English. The woman's toddler howled in tears. As students we have the perspective of naive eyes, and with those I wanted to put down what not to forget when our eyes get tired--

*Really wait for the answers when asking questions. Then listen to the answers, and ask follow-up questions. We pay attention to the factual answers about symptoms, but we fill in a lot of the how-are-you's ourselves without waiting for the response. *Speak half as slowly as you think you should, and remember that even in English we need to translate. I have two years of medical education (maybe half a year if you consider how much I retained) over most patients, and I have so much trouble remembering what was said, what people really have and how they got it and how they'll get better. *Acknowledge everyone. I've been grateful for the kindness that comes with a glance my way, sincere greetings, the shifting of objects to accommodate another's path. I think feeling each other's weight makes us more aware of our own, in a way that lets my hermit self retain its shell but also keeps us grounded in something more expansive. *Write legibly. Seriously, what's the point of writing something no one can read? *Move deliberately, not hurriedly. There's some illusion of efficiency dangling before all of us time-crunched busybees, the one that whispers to us to flip pages loudly, plop folders on the counter, walk briskly out rooms without closing doors, to speed-talk, to write illegibly, because it saves seconds, precious seconds. It might, but I've seen the steady hand say more and last longer.

These things can take a lot of effort (at all stages of the game--initially, once you get going, when you near the end). It's nice to come home at the end of the day or escape to during the weekends, to something I'm used to.

I have an amazing wife (my roommate; I can't actually remember how and when we started calling each other wife). She once said if this is really what marriage is like, it might be nice, and I agree. I'm always happy to see her, even if after we retreat to our rooms like the lone ones we sometimes like to be. She makes comfort Chinese food, including the best hot pot I've ever had. She's never once been mean to me, even when I'm neurotic or annoying or irritable. The few times I've gotten upset, she's sensitive, not defensive. She always tells me I look nice, and after a year of living together she's still considerate about washing the dishes. She listens to me struggle through being complicated, and what I see in me as the best and worst, she values. When I break things (often), she fixes them. She glued together one of my tea cups that I shattered. When one of the drawers detached from my desk, leaving a gaping hole, and the center slowly sunk from the weight of my books, she brought home another desk that looked almost exactly the same. When I complained about morning light waking me up and I was too lazy to get a face mask, she got me one. When I tell her an embarrassing story, she tells me one back. I can't describe how it works with a list of what to do and what not to do, but I know that a whole lot flows in the space between us, and each day we're at home I'm thankful for that.

Last weekend my college friend with the same name as wife came to visit New Haven, then I visited her in Cambridge. We don't see or talk to each other very frequently, but we caught up quickly at first and then slowly. She showed me the new stores in Harvard Square that replaced those familiar to me, and I had that sensation of things stretching and rearranging my skin. It didn't hurt like I thought it might. Instead it felt the way it does to see old friends. There's new growth to recognize, and old to unearth. J. has been through a lot and through it, became and remains one of the kindest and most genuine people I know. In reacquainting ourselves with each other's presence, I so admired the capacity to see and emulate good after having experienced not so good, a value I've only been able to articulate over the past few years. She's mindful of what's been given to her; yet she gives not out of obligation to give back but out of her nature. This generosity makes it easy to share, and in traipsing around our respective corners, things were exchanged through the pores and cracks--the confusion of the sliding doors at the subways where there used to be turnstiles, the way sunlight infuses the solid marble of the windowless Beinecke rare books library, the fatigue after walks in summer heat, the browsing for cheap clothes and purchase of matching bright checkered patterns, the fear of dodgy characters in the South End, the drives.

I know these are rare and to be kept close, because every so often I get mad at the tendency of the masses to paint over the cracks, the way I cover the sunken middle of a cake with extra frosting. Of the things that really bother me, among the top is people boxing other people up. I think of character as the full range of what a person can and will do and feel, and I've found that for most, this stretches quite wide. On a bigger scale, I dislike speculation about people from afar, the way classmates and colleagues are branded as such and such, concrete images built from smoke. Brushing aside mass perception--frequently misperception--can be tough in practice; I hate being misunderstood, and I hate that people settle for lesser explanations because the true one is complicated. So it's part personal, and it's part indignation at the substitution of gray for black and white. So I'm still learning to ignore all this, and rely on what I know, and in the end I'm thankful to be pushed to self-reliance.

On a smaller scale, but often a more potentially harmful one, is the boxes we create from actually really knowing someone. I do it too. I appreciate the positive qualities people attribute to me, but those closest to me have learned that nothing is defining, or I still remind them because I know it's hard to let go of what we've built up. Some who saw me as rational and together recognized a bit late how emotional and lost I can get with relationships. I don't blame them; I was stunned by it too at first, but once you step beyond borders, you need to make room. I do fight and I am mean, quite possibly meaner in those arguments than people you naturally assume are confrontational. This applies to more trivial things too, that don't directly bother me but indirectly do by nature of pigeonholing people. I do like some rap music, I've kissed boys recently met (for relativity's sake--two), I've stolen, I'm even more neurotic than you already know, I'm envious of others' talents, I actually do like some sports but have gotten myself stuck long ago in a self-conscious image of conventional girl and never developed the skills to now get over it, yes I do like to keep things but I throw certain things away. I like knowing these for myself because they've helped me give other people leeway, to know them more deeply, or to at least be more open to whatever they offer. This isn't to say that our understandings of each other are flimsy; they're obviously shaped from real things. I'd hope that some baseline qualities remain underneath it all, and I'm guilty of expecting people to know me well enough to predict or assume my actions or feelings, which might seem to go against this idea of malleability. It's more that things can be rearranged, and sometimes they can be torn down; you don't need to assume that they have, but you shouldn't assume they haven't.

I mentioned this to a high school friend, someone I've mentioned in my blog before as the one person in my life who is completely open to who I am, who is never surprised by anything I say or do because to her I'm capable of being anything. She wrote back something that I imagine she typed freely: "i can't even begin to tell you how much i feel i've been pigeonholed about issues and situations, over and over again, like ppl can't accept contradictions and opposites, and such a simple thing as change. their limitations end up limiting me, and i start being convinced of their perceptions, but i'm learning to be strong.. i understand ppl can be jaded. but i'm jaded too. i still think everyone is a mystery. fun mysteries."

The past few years have me seeing those fine rifts between nose and lip, that are attractive in the manner of the hollow that ends the neck, the slight indent that lends delicacy and nuance. I think of those babies whose moms consumed alcohol, whose philtrums are flattened as a result. Knowing what it is to be dulled, I trace these lines again from time to time.