Someone once said that I was as complicated as the blood supply to the stomach. At the time I thought that was kind of cool. Layers and connections and difficulties, all that. You can click the picture to see the actual names of the arteries (I know no one actually wants to know them). Currently attempting to cram 500 pages of such concepts in my head, few days before test time. Stomach, you are unnecessarily mixed up and wordy.
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 don't remember what we were doing when this came up, but last summer one of the people working with me on my research project said something in Vietnamese, paused, and asked what the English equivalent would be (he spoke English well). We thought about it and couldn't think of anything. The phrase (xuong qua) is an expression of happiness or contentment, and is versatile. It might describe a much relished vacation or a satisfying daily routine. You might use it for a moment, like while eating ice cream on a hot day, or for a state of being, like being married with a good job and cute kids.
There's also a phrase that can be considered its opposite: ko qua. Qua is in both, because it's a modifier to mean "a lot" or "too much." The contrasting words, xuong and ko, contrast in sound too, the "x" of xuong being a soft s-sound and the "k" of ko being a hard k-sound. Ko qua, which can be loosely thought of as an expression of suffering or pain, is also used liberally. My mom has used it to describe everything from picking apart shrimp shells for a meal to my weeks of studying to losing her brother during their escape from home. A day or so before my great-aunt passed, my mom went to visit her in the morning. At this point she wasn't as cognizant of the people around her but could still communicate pretty well. She didn't say too much, but she did say, ko qua.
Trying to capture one is as hard as the other. In thinking about writing about this, and in writing this, I find that maybe there's something that can allude to both of these elusive sentiments: what life this is.
I have four or five half-done entries saved here. Despite doing nothing of importance over the past month (actually, probably because) I have a lot of stray thoughts I wanted to aggregate here. Instead of finishing them, I've been studying or rather, thinking about how I should study.
For example, I'm supposed to learn some embryology. In theory, embryology--to learn how we grow from one cell to what we are--is pretty awesome. But because we never learned it in school as a complete concept, because I'm bad at spatial visualization, because I learn slowly and need countless repetition, and because we're required to know a smattering of facts to which I thus have to allocate my limited mental space and energy, I can't describe to you this process or even really feel its core substance, the stuff that's supposed to come before the fray details.
Instead, I know which parts of the body arise from the neural crest: autonomic nervous system (ANS), dorsal root ganglion, melanocytes, chromaffin cells of adrenal medulla, enterochromaffin cells, pia and arachnoid, celiac ganglion, Schwann cells, odontoblasts, parafollicular C cells of thyroid, laryngeal cartilage, bones of the skull.
I came up with this crude (as in unadorned) story to remember: Aunts (ANS) are my roots (dorsal root/as in my ancestry), but why do I have more melanocytes (if you know me in real life you know I'm much darker than my family)? They (the color) come from chromaffin cells (which stain brown) and enterochromaffin cells. But if you peel off the layers (pia and arachnoid, layers overlying the brain), you find we're still a steely gang (celiac ganglion). We'll go on Swan boats (Schwann cells; my relatives in Vietnam took me on a Swan boat last summer), and have a blast (odontoblast), go parachuting (parafollicular cells; I like hot air balloons and parachutes seemed close enough), and scream (laryngeal cartilage) for fear of breaking our skulls (...skull bones).
I like science and I like stories. But if you multiply the above information by say, ten thousand, that might estimate what we're supposed to know. So if I come up with ten thousand semi-sensible stories for these lists, and then remember them, I might know what I need to know for the Boards. In conclusion I would just like to say...wtf.
Of course science is founded upon inherent stories that exist outside my unimaginative imagination, and we're supposed to know a lot of that too. Still, at this point in our education there are many things whose structures are too enmeshed in mere fact and jargon to see, at least for someone like me who needs a fair amount of time and struggle to understand. It's the embryological state I would really like to understand, and to see through to completion. Like my fragments of entries.
If you read this you probably already know about this or got an email from me about it, but I'm going to hope there is one person who reads this who I don't know or who is otherwise unaware. A student at my school is fighting leukemia for the second time, and needs a bone marrow donor. Please consider signing up in the marrow registry to see if you could be her match, or someone else's.
TO REGISTER AS A DONOR: http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/Join_Now/join_now.html From NOW until May 4: Use code APAMSA509 for FREE REGISTRATION For more information about Natasha and donating, visit: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=65568844747&ref=share
Also, there is always great need for minority donors.
The support of our school for Natasha reminds me of how presence matters within a group, regardless of what the concrete connections between people are. It's easy to acquire a sort of distaste for the impersonal nature of being in a group, of wanting to remove yourself from it so as to differentiate yourself. To the extreme I think this can end up being something to regret. This is not, of course, to say that we should identify ourselves solely by the outlines of a group at the sacrifice of forgetting what we want and value as individuals. But it seems to me that being your own person doesn't require denying that you are part of something. Even with everything else that goes in the world these days, it's something I often forget. I think the microcosm of school, and the need for people within any sort of community (the limited one of our university and the all-inclusive one of people in general) to remain aware of one another, reminded me of it.
So many people work their entire lives to impact others, in different ways. They acquire skills, build organizations, talk to people. In your jobs, in your personal lives, there is a sense of making some sort of impact, whatever that may mean to you. And I mean impact in a general sense, because so much of what we do is to shape our own lives or those of others, from the small things of going to class or consoling a friend, to the big things of building a family and career, and that is all impact. This takes five minutes of your time, and when else will it be so easy to have the huge impact of possibly saving someone's life?
Once you sign up, you'll receive a simple kit that involves swabbing your cheeks with Q-tips and sending them back. As for the marrow donation itself, please see below for myths and facts. Please consider signing up, and PLEASE spread the word: email your friends, post it on facebook, blog about it. Post the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAvv-7L3J-k), or the facebook group link (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=65568844747&ref=share). It's not spam. She's only 26 years old, and really needs your help to find a donor and survive beyond the next six months.
* Myths and Facts about Bone Marrow Donation MYTH: The bone marrow donation procedure is painful. FACT: General or regional anesthesia is always used for this procedure. Donors feel no needle injections and no pain during marrow donation.
MYTH: All bone marrow donations involve surgery. FACT: The majority of donations do not involve surgery. The patient's doctor most commonly requests a peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donation, which is non-surgical and does not require a stay in the hospital. If marrow is requested, it is a surgical procedure, but there is still usually no stay in the hospital.
MYTH: Pieces of bone are removed from the donor. FACT: Pieces of bone are not removed from the donor in either type of donation. A PBSC donation involves taking the drug filgrastim for five days leading up to donation in order to increase the donor's needed blood-forming cells. On the fifth day, blood is taken from the donor through one arm, passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells, and returned through the donor's other arm. In marrow donation, no pieces of bone are taken; only the liquid marrow found inside the bones is needed to save the patient's life.
MYTH: Donating bone marrow is dangerous and weakens the donor. FACT: Though no medical procedure is without risk, there are rarely any long-term effects from donating. Only five percent or less of a donor's marrow is needed to save a life. After donation, the body replaces the donated marrow within four to six weeks. The NMDP screens all donors carefully to ensure they are healthy and that the procedure is safe. The NMDP also educates donors, answers questions at every step, and follows up after donation.
MYTH: Donors have to pay for the donation procedure. FACT: Donors never pay for donating. All medical costs are paid by the patient's medical insurance or by the patient, sometimes with NMDP assistance. The NMDP reimburses donors for travel costs, and may reimburse other costs on a case-by-case basis.
There is much to say about my dad who is amazing, some of which I hope to share in the future. For now, this earned an entry all to itself. What is this? I asked the same thing of my dad, the maker of this mighty contraption. It's a book-binder.
My dad builds a lot of things. Without any prior experience for any of his projects, he browses Home Depot, buys what he thinks he needs, and builds. An outdoor stove, a storage house, the stone landscape leading to our front door. But I think this one most sums up why I am so crazy about my dad. My dad reads a lot of Vietnamese books. He decided that instead of buying them, he'd make them. He finds them online, copies them into word documents, and proofreads and edits them (he also proofreads books he already owns). Because he prints four pages on a piece of paper (two on each side), so that they can be folded and read like a normal book, he must first place them in Word accordingly. This is a bit hard to describe, but what it means is that from left to right, pages 4 and 1 are printed on one side of a paper, and pages 2 and 3 are printed on the other, so that when it's folded it reads 1, 2, 3, and 4.
He built the above with some slabs of wood, and this other silver and black device seen that was designed for another purpose (I don't know what), which allows him to change the length of the contraption and keeps the pages bound in the width that he wants. He places glue across the binding, waits for it to dry, and gets to work on the covers...the end product is this: The zoom of my camera lens was too high for me to hold a book open with one hand and take an adequate photograph with the other, so I used a stapler to showcase it. My dad would've come up with a better solution but I ended up liking this aesthetic. After I asked a million questions about this meticulous process and commented on the many details this entails, he laughed and said, "When you actually do it the details keep arising!" When I told him I was impressed, he laughed and said, "If you can think up something, you can do it." These sorts of things have always sounded more right to me in foreign languages.
I have a throbbing headache, of a kind that would follow lots learned in a compact time but in my case is the result of considering the ONE thing I learned today that I'll actually remember. So we learned about a disease where the blood vessels in your head are inflamed, and when this affects the vessels to your eye, you can suffer sudden blindness. You have to treat this immediately with steroids, to save the other eye from blindness. Something I appreciated from lecture that can't be read from books was the comment on the context of the patient. The professor noted that because patients with this disease are often elderly with numerous co-morbidities, treating them with steroids is no light decision. Steroids affect just about every part of you, and it will worsen your diabetes, osteoporosis, and heart disease, all of which one elderly patient probably has. With perhaps not a very extended time left to live, the question arises of whether saving sight is worth exacerbating life-threatening conditions. Our professor posed this question and answered yes, because when blinded, the elderly often pass away within a few years. Such loss is difficult to adjust to, and depression is a co-morbidity as well, even as its path to loss of life is not as clearly defined as say, a stroke. While blindness leads to concrete things that affect health and may lead to death, like falls and fractures, it's really the general state of not seeing that is harmful.
The image of a body whose many parts have lost their respective vitalities, fighting for its sight, made me a little sad, but it also seemed right. I'm glad that when people choose to struggle, it's not for subsistence but for substance.
