Spending the bigger chunks of my day studying means constant music. I really love music so much, and in the most recent immersion, I came to the thought that being with music is like being with a person. And not for memories associated with people, but because music is this living, organic thing to which you form real, heavy ties.
In listening to albums all the way through, and listening to multiple albums by the same musician, and seeing the same musician perform at different concerts in different venues, themes diffuse from the sounds to inside, and the layers shift and unveil. The National likes concepts surrounding lemons, geese, and years. There are a couple songs that Thao Nguyen always plays in concert, that I wasn't fond of before, but have grown to form a sort of attachment to because she's obviously attached, and because each time she plays them, they have a different feel, and I love that dynamic factor of moving art that people breathe.
It's funny, how despite all that movement, how much of the time when I listen to a song or album, I feel the same as I did when I first came to know it, no matter how much time and distance has grown since then. Listening to Plans (Death Cab) the other week, I felt the twinges of the summer when I first loved it, and not as a former remnant but as its complete whole, as if I was back in that carpeted room, stacking my CDs on the stereo playing those bittersweet songs, finding it insanely hard to move my hands because I was in such heartbreak over changes back then. I remember sitting at the office in Vietnam, when my co-worker played James Blunt, and I wanted to die, thousands of miles and two years away from when that song first made me feel and hurt. Regardless of listening to old music in new places, new periods of time, new places in life, how I knew it first always comes back.
In those ways and in other ways music is both less and more real than real life, and I like that funny, deeply strong state of feeling, even if it's more of an ache than anything else.
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
finding time
I’ve been struggling of late about my plans for the next year, or two years. Here we have the choice to graduate in four or five years. If we choose to take it, the “fifth” year happens between our third and fourth years, our clinical years. Because we are required to write a thesis on any sort of research related to medicine, many students take this year to complete the research. Others take a “flexible fifth year” wherein they do short-term research for a few months, something else for a few months, back to research for awhile, and so on. That “something else” is quite diverse; we can take electives here or abroad, or something completely unrelated to medicine altogether. You can also take the year and not do research at all. Some people get their MBA or MPH, or they take undergraduate courses on literature.
As I’ve already completed the research required for my thesis, I could graduate in the standard four years, which is what I’d always planned on doing. But somewhere during third year, I found the idea of a “free year” pretty enticing. It’s not that I want a break. I’m certainly feeling burnt out; it’s hard for me to tackle learning with the same vigor as before, but I know that it will slow down a bit after this semester and that I could take it in stride if I wanted to. I don’t want to take a year for the sake of taking time. I would like to have a purpose for that time. But as I think about what that purpose would be, a lot of it is about time: making time for things important to me that have slipped in the busy of third year. And I’ve enjoyed being a student; it has afforded me valuable time with people, time that I know I won’t have in residency when I graduate. And while I’m really eager to learn the practical and intellectual skills in residency that I’ll need to take care of patients in the future, I also want to know people more deeply before I presume to be a care provider of them. Maybe it’s because I’m slow at learning things, but I accept that and I would like to be a student of people for a little longer.
There are a few things I would like to do with a year, the biggest being to be able to write about some of the experiences we’ve had in the hospital, and how they’re related for me to my life in general. Associated with that, I’d like to have more experiences with people, and I’ve found a mentor enthusiastic about forming a project around me simply spending time talking with patients, a population of patients to whom I’m particularly drawn. I also want more clinical experience in different places; I’d like to do both a primary care and hospice elective in Uganda, an ob-gyn subinternship in New Mexico, and a hospice elective here at Connecticut Hospice (the first one established in the States). There are others, but I’m trying to limit myself in order to focus on a few things, because even as I try to hold back while writing now, I know it’s hard not to overload a blank slate of a year.
There are many things I worry about in making this decision. We say it’s just one year, and it’s very true in the long run. Yet somehow it still carries more weight. I didn’t give a second thought to taking a year before medical school; I needed it both practically and internally. But though I’m not sure what I would’ve been like without that year, I don’t particularly look back on that year as one of much growth or significance. I don’t want this to be like that, especially because as I said, for various reasons, it carries more weight now at almost twenty-six years old than it did back then at twenty-two.
Taking another year isn’t exactly taking an “extra” year; the time has to come from somewhere. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I don’t think about the same things as other girls my age in terms of relationships and the future, which though distant now won’t feel so much so when I graduate, especially if that’s in two years instead of one. The relationships (in the way I define relating to a person) I’ve had here have been worthwhile and valuable emotionally, but also tumultuous and inconducive to what I eventually want concretely. Finding quality and compatibility is hard enough, but doing that in the realm of logistics and future is even worse, and as such I’ve largely avoided the endeavor of considering anything beyond the present. During the time I stay here, I’d probably continue doing that, and can I really keep avoiding it for so long? On the other end, who’s to say that graduating, moving, and working intensely will bring me out of the place I’m in, any better than staying here? On the same lines, I miss my family a lot, and another year here is another year away from them, but graduation doesn’t bring any guarantees that I’ll be closer to them.
I worry I’ll be restless, as I often am while in the educational system, with the idea of not doing anything concrete to be useful. With the sense of constantly being trained for something that seems so distant. I also worry that the insane momentum of third year distorts and exaggerates my need for time, that perhaps I only wish to take it because it’s there for taking. At the same time I wonder if this is an unexpected gift, as this school has been as a whole, and whether I shouldn’t shy away from something simply because it wasn’t in my original plans. Honestly, the idea of this—the time, the commitment to writing, the uncertainty of what I can do and how it will all fit together—scares me like hell. While as a general philosophy I believe in things falling into place, and they’ve been chaotic before and always have fallen right, I’ve had the benefit of the outline of things still following an overall path. I don’t know if this year really falls into any concrete way for me to go, and I know it’s largely up to me to make it worth something.
A friend recently made fun of me for still wearing a watch, now that cell phones have replaced every daily function including checking the time. I love my watch, which was a Christmas gift from my oldest brother in 2001 who said I never knew what time it was, so I’ve had it for nearly a decade and have had to change the battery a couple times in that time period. It uses hands and it has only four dots on its face to signify every three hours, without any numbers. Since I’ve been on surgery I can’t wear it, and yesterday I realized it was the weekend and I could wear it. This morning I went to the gym and took it off as I normally do when running. Since I’d gotten used to not having to do this during the week, when it was time to go, I forgot to put it back on. After I came home and noticed it was missing, it took me some time to realize this is what was happened. It probably took me more time than usual to connect the sequence of events because we'd taken a detour on our way home, and sat on a hammock we saw outside one of the colleges. It was a usual cold winter day with sun and old snow, and we sank into the hammock with ease. I told my roommate I would go get my watch after showering and getting dressed, but she said I should go now, as the more time passed the more likely it was that something would happen to it. So as I hurried back to get it (bemoaning the minutes I was losing doing this, as I’d planned on being on my way out to the architecture library by two o’clock and it would already be two by the time I reached the gym again), I thought how funny and fitting it was to literally find time. Even if it’s gaining back something you lost, and not giving you any more than baseline; even if it’s actually taking some away from you as you do it, time feels different when it’s passing than when it’s found and taken.
As I’ve already completed the research required for my thesis, I could graduate in the standard four years, which is what I’d always planned on doing. But somewhere during third year, I found the idea of a “free year” pretty enticing. It’s not that I want a break. I’m certainly feeling burnt out; it’s hard for me to tackle learning with the same vigor as before, but I know that it will slow down a bit after this semester and that I could take it in stride if I wanted to. I don’t want to take a year for the sake of taking time. I would like to have a purpose for that time. But as I think about what that purpose would be, a lot of it is about time: making time for things important to me that have slipped in the busy of third year. And I’ve enjoyed being a student; it has afforded me valuable time with people, time that I know I won’t have in residency when I graduate. And while I’m really eager to learn the practical and intellectual skills in residency that I’ll need to take care of patients in the future, I also want to know people more deeply before I presume to be a care provider of them. Maybe it’s because I’m slow at learning things, but I accept that and I would like to be a student of people for a little longer.
There are a few things I would like to do with a year, the biggest being to be able to write about some of the experiences we’ve had in the hospital, and how they’re related for me to my life in general. Associated with that, I’d like to have more experiences with people, and I’ve found a mentor enthusiastic about forming a project around me simply spending time talking with patients, a population of patients to whom I’m particularly drawn. I also want more clinical experience in different places; I’d like to do both a primary care and hospice elective in Uganda, an ob-gyn subinternship in New Mexico, and a hospice elective here at Connecticut Hospice (the first one established in the States). There are others, but I’m trying to limit myself in order to focus on a few things, because even as I try to hold back while writing now, I know it’s hard not to overload a blank slate of a year.
There are many things I worry about in making this decision. We say it’s just one year, and it’s very true in the long run. Yet somehow it still carries more weight. I didn’t give a second thought to taking a year before medical school; I needed it both practically and internally. But though I’m not sure what I would’ve been like without that year, I don’t particularly look back on that year as one of much growth or significance. I don’t want this to be like that, especially because as I said, for various reasons, it carries more weight now at almost twenty-six years old than it did back then at twenty-two.
Taking another year isn’t exactly taking an “extra” year; the time has to come from somewhere. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I don’t think about the same things as other girls my age in terms of relationships and the future, which though distant now won’t feel so much so when I graduate, especially if that’s in two years instead of one. The relationships (in the way I define relating to a person) I’ve had here have been worthwhile and valuable emotionally, but also tumultuous and inconducive to what I eventually want concretely. Finding quality and compatibility is hard enough, but doing that in the realm of logistics and future is even worse, and as such I’ve largely avoided the endeavor of considering anything beyond the present. During the time I stay here, I’d probably continue doing that, and can I really keep avoiding it for so long? On the other end, who’s to say that graduating, moving, and working intensely will bring me out of the place I’m in, any better than staying here? On the same lines, I miss my family a lot, and another year here is another year away from them, but graduation doesn’t bring any guarantees that I’ll be closer to them.
I worry I’ll be restless, as I often am while in the educational system, with the idea of not doing anything concrete to be useful. With the sense of constantly being trained for something that seems so distant. I also worry that the insane momentum of third year distorts and exaggerates my need for time, that perhaps I only wish to take it because it’s there for taking. At the same time I wonder if this is an unexpected gift, as this school has been as a whole, and whether I shouldn’t shy away from something simply because it wasn’t in my original plans. Honestly, the idea of this—the time, the commitment to writing, the uncertainty of what I can do and how it will all fit together—scares me like hell. While as a general philosophy I believe in things falling into place, and they’ve been chaotic before and always have fallen right, I’ve had the benefit of the outline of things still following an overall path. I don’t know if this year really falls into any concrete way for me to go, and I know it’s largely up to me to make it worth something.
A friend recently made fun of me for still wearing a watch, now that cell phones have replaced every daily function including checking the time. I love my watch, which was a Christmas gift from my oldest brother in 2001 who said I never knew what time it was, so I’ve had it for nearly a decade and have had to change the battery a couple times in that time period. It uses hands and it has only four dots on its face to signify every three hours, without any numbers. Since I’ve been on surgery I can’t wear it, and yesterday I realized it was the weekend and I could wear it. This morning I went to the gym and took it off as I normally do when running. Since I’d gotten used to not having to do this during the week, when it was time to go, I forgot to put it back on. After I came home and noticed it was missing, it took me some time to realize this is what was happened. It probably took me more time than usual to connect the sequence of events because we'd taken a detour on our way home, and sat on a hammock we saw outside one of the colleges. It was a usual cold winter day with sun and old snow, and we sank into the hammock with ease. I told my roommate I would go get my watch after showering and getting dressed, but she said I should go now, as the more time passed the more likely it was that something would happen to it. So as I hurried back to get it (bemoaning the minutes I was losing doing this, as I’d planned on being on my way out to the architecture library by two o’clock and it would already be two by the time I reached the gym again), I thought how funny and fitting it was to literally find time. Even if it’s gaining back something you lost, and not giving you any more than baseline; even if it’s actually taking some away from you as you do it, time feels different when it’s passing than when it’s found and taken.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
scene
There are a lot of famous scenes in the Godfather trilogy; some for shock and gore, some for cinematography, some for telling one-liners, others for plot-turning points or moments of betrayal. I love all of these, but in my opinion the brilliance also lies in the fillers, and even more so, in how the world of the movie extends beyond just the scenes that you see. It may be the best movie I know of that makes itself so palpable and rich, that you find yourself creeping in the unshown corners of the characters' lives and environments. It's like when a friend tells you a story about something that happened to them as a kid, and you can imagine not only the story itself and what your friend was like before you saw and knew her; based on her story--but also what may have happened before and after, how she might feel about other things similar and different; based on the time and space you've occupied together.
I can't do justice to this feeling, to describe it exactly or how incredible it is, but it's one reason why my favorite scene in all of the Godfather trilogy is a sliver of a moment. It takes place in Part II, during the flashback of Vito Corleone as a young man, before he's become the Godfather. The appreciation for the scene partly arises from what comes before and after. He's working in a grocery store, and the rising power of the mob sprinkles around him in smatterings. Vito gets laid off from his job because the mafia made his boss take on a relative instead. His boss tries to give Vito some groceries as an offering, but he thanks his boss for all his goodness and doesn't take it. Prior to getting laid off, Vito incidentally and innocently gets in the middle of some mafia drama. This happens while he's still working as a grocer, but after he's laid off someone offers to repay Vito for a favor by stealing a fancy rug for him to bring home to his wife. And because you've seen Part I where Vito isn't a grocer but the Godfather, you can see how the Corleone empire unravels from this humble ball of yarn. My favorite scene is right after Vito comes home from getting laid off, right before he acquires the rug from the mafia.
He returns home to their small apartment. It's dimly lit but warm with browns and yellows. It has this quietly lush quality about it that I love, because the lush comes from so little. The doors flanking the dining room make it so you really only see Vito and his wife standing and facing each other around a dining table, creating a slim rectangle in the middle of the screen. He unwraps a pear from some crumpled paper and sets it on the table. "What a nice pear!" she says, he kisses her, and the scene fades, leaving them in their small space with their small meal.
People generally dislike Part III; it's true that it's not as well made as the others. But completing the story makes scenes like this one in Part II all the richer. Enmeshed in grandeur and suffering and the massive drama of the rest brings you back to these moments, and you wonder, even as you know, how did we get from here to there?
I think we all wonder that too sometimes about our lives. Someone once commented on an entry, that it's funny how our lives take on logical trajectories and narratives given all the different choices we might take and random things that might happen. And while it is true that things connect each of our days to the next, I feel that when we each near twenty-five years like I am, we look at where we're sitting or standing or moving and say, this rug? What happened to my pear?
While it may seem otherwise, I'm not saying I think the pear is always better than the rug; it all depends. I never foresaw that I would be doing what I'm doing right now (at this very moment or during this larger timeframe) or that I'd be the kind of person I am now. Everything has its rough edges and rough centers, me and my life, but I'm incredibly grateful for what has become of both. And because there is so much to come, I know that despite all the changes and growth (and perpetual epiphanies of the need for more growth), growing up isn't about replacement. Working to achieve things is hard; I think achieving them while keeping what came before is harder, but possible, and better.
I can't do justice to this feeling, to describe it exactly or how incredible it is, but it's one reason why my favorite scene in all of the Godfather trilogy is a sliver of a moment. It takes place in Part II, during the flashback of Vito Corleone as a young man, before he's become the Godfather. The appreciation for the scene partly arises from what comes before and after. He's working in a grocery store, and the rising power of the mob sprinkles around him in smatterings. Vito gets laid off from his job because the mafia made his boss take on a relative instead. His boss tries to give Vito some groceries as an offering, but he thanks his boss for all his goodness and doesn't take it. Prior to getting laid off, Vito incidentally and innocently gets in the middle of some mafia drama. This happens while he's still working as a grocer, but after he's laid off someone offers to repay Vito for a favor by stealing a fancy rug for him to bring home to his wife. And because you've seen Part I where Vito isn't a grocer but the Godfather, you can see how the Corleone empire unravels from this humble ball of yarn. My favorite scene is right after Vito comes home from getting laid off, right before he acquires the rug from the mafia.
He returns home to their small apartment. It's dimly lit but warm with browns and yellows. It has this quietly lush quality about it that I love, because the lush comes from so little. The doors flanking the dining room make it so you really only see Vito and his wife standing and facing each other around a dining table, creating a slim rectangle in the middle of the screen. He unwraps a pear from some crumpled paper and sets it on the table. "What a nice pear!" she says, he kisses her, and the scene fades, leaving them in their small space with their small meal.
People generally dislike Part III; it's true that it's not as well made as the others. But completing the story makes scenes like this one in Part II all the richer. Enmeshed in grandeur and suffering and the massive drama of the rest brings you back to these moments, and you wonder, even as you know, how did we get from here to there?
I think we all wonder that too sometimes about our lives. Someone once commented on an entry, that it's funny how our lives take on logical trajectories and narratives given all the different choices we might take and random things that might happen. And while it is true that things connect each of our days to the next, I feel that when we each near twenty-five years like I am, we look at where we're sitting or standing or moving and say, this rug? What happened to my pear?
While it may seem otherwise, I'm not saying I think the pear is always better than the rug; it all depends. I never foresaw that I would be doing what I'm doing right now (at this very moment or during this larger timeframe) or that I'd be the kind of person I am now. Everything has its rough edges and rough centers, me and my life, but I'm incredibly grateful for what has become of both. And because there is so much to come, I know that despite all the changes and growth (and perpetual epiphanies of the need for more growth), growing up isn't about replacement. Working to achieve things is hard; I think achieving them while keeping what came before is harder, but possible, and better.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
nothing
I've been working really hard, nonstop outside of meals and this will continue for the week so I can finish my research and concentrate on school which I've neglected for quite some time. In the midst of it big things are happening like my talented brother winning second place at the WPT and choosing to lose one of my best friends and a 3 month countdown to the Boards. On top of it my foot has been pathetically stress sprained and I have costochondritis--"harmless chest pain" that is not a myocardial infarction or pneumonia but makes me clutch my heart when I breathe in and when I laugh. I look wryly upon the feelings of my heart's literal ache and the refusal of my feet to take me anywhere.
Yesterday I rediscovered Kirin milk tea. Summer before last my brother Stephen and I were wandering thirsty in some garden in Japan and came across a vending machine with Kirin tea (there are a lot of vending machines, very few trash cans, and inexplicable cleanliness in Japan). That was the first time I had it and it was soooooo good. Thereafter we'd instinctively look for it passing by any vending machine. When she returned home from Japan, Aud brought me a pack of powdered milk tea packets that I rationed for the whole semester. That was last year and I haven't had it since then. Until yesterday when I was roaming the Asian grocery store with Allison and randomly saw it and immediately bought it. In the car she commented on how I don't seek things out but am happy with what's given to me. It made me realize that it's an interesting dichotomy, how tied I am to the past and how I adapt to the present. I also believe strongly in appreciating where you've been and where you are at the same time you're trying to go elsewhere--not with one as compensation for the other, but both equally valuable and inextricable.
One main reason I'm not as stressed about the Boards (yet) as I was with the MCAT is because even though things weren't ideal back then they've turned out well. The year of worry about where I'd go to school was useless; I didn't end up where I thought and it's been wonderful. I always seem to end up where I fit. I'm not always sure whether that's because it's really that way or because I make it that way, but that's irrelevant at the moment. Even though there are definite negatives, I'm grateful to have had such space and good people here to make me grow.
Working away in our living room yesterday, in the comfy pink Queen Anne chair Jen found on Craigslist, surrounded by snacks from the Asian store and basking in my milk tea--the image of our night driving back from New Hampshire came to me all of the sudden. That night Allison asked if we could look for stars, and we drove off to find the darkest nothing we could find. We'd point to directions where there seemed to be nothing so that we could see the night light best. We found some fair amount of darkness. The stars weren't too spectacular, but I remember crisply that night and the desire to go towards nothing.
There are a lot of things I've wanted to write about in the recent past, and always. One of my happiest patient interactions thus far being a very sad case of a person just a few years older than me with a few years to live. The photography exhibit of nursing home residents and of very ill people, reminding us that if we don't actively do art it won't happen. Being tested and videotaped doing a full history and physical exam. The second year show. My family.
I want to unravel and relish everything but I would also like nothing for a little while. While writing this, iTunes fell on Jimmy Eat World's "Goodbye Sky Harbor," wherein after a normal beginning, a continuously repeating riff sets in and constitutes much of the very long song (four times as long as most songs designed for our byte sized pleasure). A., who listened to music completely different from me but was open to my preferences and quickly fell in love with J.E.W, once talked about how much he loved this song, how you could listen to it even intently and still be immersed even though the tone doesn't change at all.
So much so that when the 16 minutes 14 seconds are over, I repeat.
Yesterday I rediscovered Kirin milk tea. Summer before last my brother Stephen and I were wandering thirsty in some garden in Japan and came across a vending machine with Kirin tea (there are a lot of vending machines, very few trash cans, and inexplicable cleanliness in Japan). That was the first time I had it and it was soooooo good. Thereafter we'd instinctively look for it passing by any vending machine. When she returned home from Japan, Aud brought me a pack of powdered milk tea packets that I rationed for the whole semester. That was last year and I haven't had it since then. Until yesterday when I was roaming the Asian grocery store with Allison and randomly saw it and immediately bought it. In the car she commented on how I don't seek things out but am happy with what's given to me. It made me realize that it's an interesting dichotomy, how tied I am to the past and how I adapt to the present. I also believe strongly in appreciating where you've been and where you are at the same time you're trying to go elsewhere--not with one as compensation for the other, but both equally valuable and inextricable.
One main reason I'm not as stressed about the Boards (yet) as I was with the MCAT is because even though things weren't ideal back then they've turned out well. The year of worry about where I'd go to school was useless; I didn't end up where I thought and it's been wonderful. I always seem to end up where I fit. I'm not always sure whether that's because it's really that way or because I make it that way, but that's irrelevant at the moment. Even though there are definite negatives, I'm grateful to have had such space and good people here to make me grow.
Working away in our living room yesterday, in the comfy pink Queen Anne chair Jen found on Craigslist, surrounded by snacks from the Asian store and basking in my milk tea--the image of our night driving back from New Hampshire came to me all of the sudden. That night Allison asked if we could look for stars, and we drove off to find the darkest nothing we could find. We'd point to directions where there seemed to be nothing so that we could see the night light best. We found some fair amount of darkness. The stars weren't too spectacular, but I remember crisply that night and the desire to go towards nothing.
There are a lot of things I've wanted to write about in the recent past, and always. One of my happiest patient interactions thus far being a very sad case of a person just a few years older than me with a few years to live. The photography exhibit of nursing home residents and of very ill people, reminding us that if we don't actively do art it won't happen. Being tested and videotaped doing a full history and physical exam. The second year show. My family.
I want to unravel and relish everything but I would also like nothing for a little while. While writing this, iTunes fell on Jimmy Eat World's "Goodbye Sky Harbor," wherein after a normal beginning, a continuously repeating riff sets in and constitutes much of the very long song (four times as long as most songs designed for our byte sized pleasure). A., who listened to music completely different from me but was open to my preferences and quickly fell in love with J.E.W, once talked about how much he loved this song, how you could listen to it even intently and still be immersed even though the tone doesn't change at all.
So much so that when the 16 minutes 14 seconds are over, I repeat.
Friday, March 21, 2008
time
To get to the photo lab on Willow Street to develop my film, I take the Green Shuttle from Phelps Gate to Orange and Willow streets. Having gone three times before, I have the timing down. The Green Shuttle comes every thirty minutes, on 5 and 35 of the hour. It takes exactly ten minutes to walk from York Street to Phelps Gate to pick up the shuttle. This route begins at 12:46 PM. In the morning prior to this time, the shuttle comes on 8 and 38 of the hour.
After I found the morning schedule at 11:26 AM today, I scrambled to get ready in 2 minutes so that I could start walking by 11:28 and make the 11:38 shuttle. I made it there at 11:37, and had to wait a couple minutes because the shuttles are always slightly off. I saw the Green coming my way at 11:39...then the driver waved his hand and passed me right by. Thinking that perhaps the morning schedule didn't quite work the way I thought, I waited for awhile longer. Fifteen minutes longer. So when a Blue Shuttle came by, I decided to just take it instead of waiting another 15 for the next Green. Because I can take the Blue Shuttle to Whitney and Canner, which is right near Willow Street. The walk is about twice as long as from the Green Shuttle stop, but I estimated it'd be less time than waiting for another Green.
I got on the Blue, which took me right back to the Med School because the Shuttles don't go back and forth; they travel in loops. When I get there, the driver tells me that he's taking a break and that I have to wait for the next shuttle to get there in 10 minutes. It's near noon by this time, and I figure that if I have to wait another 10 minutes, I might as well walk the 10 minutes from the med school to Phelps Gate, to catch that next Green Shuttle that I didn't want to wait for in the first place. And try to catch the 12:08 Green. Since the 11:38 was on time but just didn't stop for whatever reason; maybe it was a transitional shuttle, I thought.
So I walked back to exactly where I was 20 minutes earlier, having expounded twice as much effort to get there than the first time around. I waited a little bit and saw the Green coming; it always stalls at the red light. I thought I'd made a good choice, even for having wasted a half hour..and then it passes by me again. I swore audibly.
It was another 15 minutes before a Blue Shuttle came by. I took it, again. It brought me back to the med school, again. I waited there for 10 minutes before it took off on its route, again. This time I rode it all the way to the stop and walked the 10 minutes to the photo lab. I finally got there at 1 PM.
When I got there the woman told me that she wouldn't be done developing my photographs until 3 PM, so I sat there and read while I waited. It turned out that I could only develop 2 prints out of 2 rolls (about 24 prints) because something went awry in my camera winder and the prints overlapped, making it impossible to print them. The fact that the Puerto Rico photographs I'd been so looking forward to are now forever encased in negative was bad enough, because I get upset like that. But atop it all my entire morning and early afternoon was taken up with this fruitless commute.
As I walked back, I saw the Green Shuttle pass right by me again and walked on forward to the Blue Shuttle stop, which I did catch. Because there's only one of each colored shuttle for each shift (morning and afternoon), the same driver who dropped me off picked me up. He was a gruff man in his late fifties with scraggly hair who looked through me when he talked to me, but not unkind. In the seat behind him was a boy maybe ten years old, who rode with him. I'm guessing his grandson. His grandson was there on the shuttle I took to the lab, and the shuttle back. He didn't have a book, or a gameboy. He didn't really talk to his alleged grandpa or to anyone else. He just sat in the same seat, looked out the same window, sometimes got up and stood by the driver and sat back down. He didn't look bored or restless. He rode that same route all afternoon.
More than wasting hours on the shuttle and being disappointed with my memories and subsequently my whole day because I get so easily consumed by moments, the image of that boy riding on the shuttle made me hurt. I miss that. I can't even remember when exactly I lost that. The ability to while away, nothingness, without thought to time. Spring break was a slight hint of that, and just this morning I talked for an hour with Dr. Fenn about what I love, and that included writing and stories and traveling, all things that make me distort my sense of time, give me more than what I have concretely, make me think outside those bounds while still feeling their weight.
But from day to day and for the past who-knows but too many years of my life I have been too often obsessed with time. What I could've done instead, whether I was "productive," whether even fun time was spent well. One of my top ten things in the world is commuting. Being a passenger or driving alone, with no real purpose but to arrive. And even that is not quite comparable to this boy on the shuttle. People say it's not the end, it's the journey, but that's assuming there is an end. For the boy, there was no end even. Just the same route.
I'd like to have days I can ride on the same shuttle, even more than twice or three times like I did today, and not be frustrated or think that something has gone to waste or forget to be glad for time itself and not just for what I do with it. I'd like to do absolutely nothing and feel more something because of it, to remove the brackets from time and just go around for a bit.
After I found the morning schedule at 11:26 AM today, I scrambled to get ready in 2 minutes so that I could start walking by 11:28 and make the 11:38 shuttle. I made it there at 11:37, and had to wait a couple minutes because the shuttles are always slightly off. I saw the Green coming my way at 11:39...then the driver waved his hand and passed me right by. Thinking that perhaps the morning schedule didn't quite work the way I thought, I waited for awhile longer. Fifteen minutes longer. So when a Blue Shuttle came by, I decided to just take it instead of waiting another 15 for the next Green. Because I can take the Blue Shuttle to Whitney and Canner, which is right near Willow Street. The walk is about twice as long as from the Green Shuttle stop, but I estimated it'd be less time than waiting for another Green.
I got on the Blue, which took me right back to the Med School because the Shuttles don't go back and forth; they travel in loops. When I get there, the driver tells me that he's taking a break and that I have to wait for the next shuttle to get there in 10 minutes. It's near noon by this time, and I figure that if I have to wait another 10 minutes, I might as well walk the 10 minutes from the med school to Phelps Gate, to catch that next Green Shuttle that I didn't want to wait for in the first place. And try to catch the 12:08 Green. Since the 11:38 was on time but just didn't stop for whatever reason; maybe it was a transitional shuttle, I thought.
So I walked back to exactly where I was 20 minutes earlier, having expounded twice as much effort to get there than the first time around. I waited a little bit and saw the Green coming; it always stalls at the red light. I thought I'd made a good choice, even for having wasted a half hour..and then it passes by me again. I swore audibly.
It was another 15 minutes before a Blue Shuttle came by. I took it, again. It brought me back to the med school, again. I waited there for 10 minutes before it took off on its route, again. This time I rode it all the way to the stop and walked the 10 minutes to the photo lab. I finally got there at 1 PM.
When I got there the woman told me that she wouldn't be done developing my photographs until 3 PM, so I sat there and read while I waited. It turned out that I could only develop 2 prints out of 2 rolls (about 24 prints) because something went awry in my camera winder and the prints overlapped, making it impossible to print them. The fact that the Puerto Rico photographs I'd been so looking forward to are now forever encased in negative was bad enough, because I get upset like that. But atop it all my entire morning and early afternoon was taken up with this fruitless commute.
As I walked back, I saw the Green Shuttle pass right by me again and walked on forward to the Blue Shuttle stop, which I did catch. Because there's only one of each colored shuttle for each shift (morning and afternoon), the same driver who dropped me off picked me up. He was a gruff man in his late fifties with scraggly hair who looked through me when he talked to me, but not unkind. In the seat behind him was a boy maybe ten years old, who rode with him. I'm guessing his grandson. His grandson was there on the shuttle I took to the lab, and the shuttle back. He didn't have a book, or a gameboy. He didn't really talk to his alleged grandpa or to anyone else. He just sat in the same seat, looked out the same window, sometimes got up and stood by the driver and sat back down. He didn't look bored or restless. He rode that same route all afternoon.
More than wasting hours on the shuttle and being disappointed with my memories and subsequently my whole day because I get so easily consumed by moments, the image of that boy riding on the shuttle made me hurt. I miss that. I can't even remember when exactly I lost that. The ability to while away, nothingness, without thought to time. Spring break was a slight hint of that, and just this morning I talked for an hour with Dr. Fenn about what I love, and that included writing and stories and traveling, all things that make me distort my sense of time, give me more than what I have concretely, make me think outside those bounds while still feeling their weight.
But from day to day and for the past who-knows but too many years of my life I have been too often obsessed with time. What I could've done instead, whether I was "productive," whether even fun time was spent well. One of my top ten things in the world is commuting. Being a passenger or driving alone, with no real purpose but to arrive. And even that is not quite comparable to this boy on the shuttle. People say it's not the end, it's the journey, but that's assuming there is an end. For the boy, there was no end even. Just the same route.
I'd like to have days I can ride on the same shuttle, even more than twice or three times like I did today, and not be frustrated or think that something has gone to waste or forget to be glad for time itself and not just for what I do with it. I'd like to do absolutely nothing and feel more something because of it, to remove the brackets from time and just go around for a bit.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
save october
For all the useful (2%) and useless (98%) thinking that I do, feeling inevitably comes first.
October doesn't feel like October. It's too warm, and the trees haven't changed color. Maybe in the next few years, what used to be October will weave its way through to November or December, the way that wine country is predicted to move north from California through Oregon to Washington. So maybe it's not lost; it will just be in a different place, and that's the kind of thinking that normally comforts me. Except this time I can't bring myself to idealize the change. Because just when October has become my favorite month, it's slipping away from me. And October in November is not the same as October in October. Even if another month stole its temperature, its sunny cold days and light brush of a breeze, the effective crunch of dry leaves and the soggy stickiness of the wet ones slicked to shoe bottoms, the warm fiery colors, the medium-long days, even the sweet nostalgia for passing heat and anticipation of cold, and if you're in Boston, the first snow of the year...even if some imposter could do all that, it can't take its place in time. October is situated in transition. It lives after the waning summer, in the throes of schooltime beginnings, nestles itself before the big holidays and end of year. So please don't pass into something else, because you are the comings and goings. You can't come and go.
Awash in moods like this, I fixate on a question someone recently asked me about whether I'm easily attached. I do form strong affection for little, stupid things quickly, like the bump on my ring and the dots on my face (not moles, not freckles?) and people's laughs and the way they sleep. And okay, while I could accept letting go of those things if I had to, I do like sustaining the bigger things, in mind if nothing else. I can still feel the linoleum of Donnolly Hall against my bare legs on skirt days, can place myself into the intimate coziness of Adams B-37, will still smile at how he'd take care to return the strap of my tank top back to my shoulder after moving it to kiss me there, can every so often let the chill of the Sunset fog pass over and through me.
I value intimacy, the things that make me want to wrap my arms around them. Like everyone else, I want connection. Why, then, am I so drawn to distance in my relationships? With A and me, distance was defining. Physically apart, lives on entirely polar paths, opposite sensibilities. My parents always wondered why I didn't date anyone from school, my friends never imagined me with someone so different from me. Proximity wasn't appealing. In recent encounters there's been emotional distance, which somehow lends itself to an emotional interaction. Distance takes effort, it's rewarding, it challenges you and can sometimes make you more true. But sometimes, more than anything it's too hard and it's so elusive that I wonder how it can have such a grasp on me.
I don't make any sense but this is how it is. I don't want October to move to November, and I want to keep distance close.
October doesn't feel like October. It's too warm, and the trees haven't changed color. Maybe in the next few years, what used to be October will weave its way through to November or December, the way that wine country is predicted to move north from California through Oregon to Washington. So maybe it's not lost; it will just be in a different place, and that's the kind of thinking that normally comforts me. Except this time I can't bring myself to idealize the change. Because just when October has become my favorite month, it's slipping away from me. And October in November is not the same as October in October. Even if another month stole its temperature, its sunny cold days and light brush of a breeze, the effective crunch of dry leaves and the soggy stickiness of the wet ones slicked to shoe bottoms, the warm fiery colors, the medium-long days, even the sweet nostalgia for passing heat and anticipation of cold, and if you're in Boston, the first snow of the year...even if some imposter could do all that, it can't take its place in time. October is situated in transition. It lives after the waning summer, in the throes of schooltime beginnings, nestles itself before the big holidays and end of year. So please don't pass into something else, because you are the comings and goings. You can't come and go.
Awash in moods like this, I fixate on a question someone recently asked me about whether I'm easily attached. I do form strong affection for little, stupid things quickly, like the bump on my ring and the dots on my face (not moles, not freckles?) and people's laughs and the way they sleep. And okay, while I could accept letting go of those things if I had to, I do like sustaining the bigger things, in mind if nothing else. I can still feel the linoleum of Donnolly Hall against my bare legs on skirt days, can place myself into the intimate coziness of Adams B-37, will still smile at how he'd take care to return the strap of my tank top back to my shoulder after moving it to kiss me there, can every so often let the chill of the Sunset fog pass over and through me.
I value intimacy, the things that make me want to wrap my arms around them. Like everyone else, I want connection. Why, then, am I so drawn to distance in my relationships? With A and me, distance was defining. Physically apart, lives on entirely polar paths, opposite sensibilities. My parents always wondered why I didn't date anyone from school, my friends never imagined me with someone so different from me. Proximity wasn't appealing. In recent encounters there's been emotional distance, which somehow lends itself to an emotional interaction. Distance takes effort, it's rewarding, it challenges you and can sometimes make you more true. But sometimes, more than anything it's too hard and it's so elusive that I wonder how it can have such a grasp on me.
I don't make any sense but this is how it is. I don't want October to move to November, and I want to keep distance close.
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