remnants

Oop, haven't been jotting down for the past couple days.

The other day, at Jojo's Coffeeshop, I recognized the yellow cup from which I'd drunk chai the day before in the hands of another man. I love chai more than any other coffeeshop drink. I don't know what he was drinking. The path from cup to mouth was obscured by an off-white beard with full, light volume. This drew attention to his strings of hair, separated into distinct threads held together by the oils and moistures of time. He drank from the cup standing, looking out the window, a window I'd moved away from because the warmth was overpowering. Then he went outside with the cup, with its patterns of different suns, printed on it two by three.

Yesterday we went to see Twelth Night, at a funny time of day, which would be four o'clock. I've seen many more plays during med school than in college, due to the proximity and affordability of the Yale Rep. This one was put on the Drama School in a venue right down our street. The most prominent thing I've noticed is that I'm not usually affected by the story/feel the same way I do with books, that what overpowers that is the stage and atmosphere. I'm always surprised by what people can create, concretely; how they use space, color, elements; by how different that all feels depending on the position of space you occupy while observing.

K, onto another day.

hurt

Found myself spending snips and chunks of today considering moments where I've felt extreme emotional pain. Don't worry (that's to you wife, who is the first and probably only person to read this), I'm not currently hurt. Only, I woke up this morning with a vague precursor of what it might feel like in the future, and it made me think of the past. If I had to narrow it down to the most excruciating, there would be six moments I'd put on my list of god-awful emotion, and mixed in with those are moments I'd pile in the same section of a fabric store, the kinds with similar threads even if they aren't the intense shades you immediately return to when perusing shelves of memory [a well meaning, pretentious person taught me that "peruse" is commonly mistaken to mean skim when it actually means to deeply delve. Since then, I debate how to use it, because if language is to communicate and that's how people interpret it, why not use it in the way people will take it? In this case, you can take it whichever way].

As a friend and a med student and other-relations-to-others, I've been privy to other people experiencing pain, just as most of us have. I could describe the expressions of those things, but when it comes down to the inside, we can only draw from ourselves. So from myself I draw the periods of time, short and long, where I was in sharp conscious unwavering pain. There was that time I ate nothing but cereal for weeks, and watched a lot of movies with sensory overload in the hopes of crushing inner workings to no avail. This was the most drawn-out, recurring pain. There was that other time I didn't eat anything for several days, didn't sleep either. I thought it'd be drawn-out and recurring too, but it wasn't, but it was damn intense in its compactness. There was that time I sobbed in a stranger's kitchen, for someone I knew and didn't really know, and then spent days in beautiful new places and felt tangibly less touched by the beauty, the pain coloring all else. This one comes suddenly into focus at moments that make sense and ones that don't, and fades. Then when I sobbed against my car in a cold snowless winter, for someone I kind of knew but didn't really know. This doesn't come back too often. Then when I felt shelter crumbling while wearing kid pajamas, when I sat holding the hand for someone older and in more pain than me. Then when I was the wielder of such pain, different than other cases because the person who bore it didn't choose it; this happened in a place away from home, and I came home and put the wrong on bare display for two people who love me and it hurt like all hell. All of these come back in the form of sadness more than pain, and in some ways you can't say that you'll never forget; there's always forgotten. Strangely it's not so bad to remember what parts of it I do.

daily

The author of Bird by Bird talks about keeping index cards with her at all times, to jot down anything she wants to remember: an image, a memory, a sentence. This seems useful for creating worlds based on substance of real thoughts/feelings, but I'm not too good at creating. I do like the idea of conscious recording, and in that vein I'm going to try to blog for half an hour every day. I used to save, but saving pushes things back and back until they're no longer retrievable. And really, it's the daily stuff I may never record in any other form. I never wanted to write a blog about what-I-did-today, but a detail stowed in the corner of what-I-did-today isn't so lackluster. Or, even if it is (because honestly my life is pretty boring) the beauty of an index card is that it's not snobby about its content.

When I was in Vietnam, I wrote an email to M describing my uncle's house, and the strong senses associated with it that I'd forgotten. One was how the bathroom smelled like bugs, and he asked how could that be, what do bugs smell like. I said that he'd have to smell it to understand, mostly because I wasn't really sure what the smell was or how I knew it was the smell of bugs, but I was sure. Yesterday the wife says to me, why do we have moths in our kitchen (well, at first I thought she said "mops")? I hadn't seen any moths, but when I got closer to the sink, I smelled my uncle's bathroom. This tiny rectangle of space, smaller than a closet, that I frequented often at night because for some reason Vietnam gives me nocturia. And also, the smell of lots of rooms in Japan I'd been in. Moths! They're moths! How come I never actually see the moths? Is it because they have such short life-spans (this I learned from Virginia Woolf's Death of a Moth), or is it because they hide? I don't know, but I know their smell now.

Well, that took all of ten minutes.

bike riding

I've been in a moody rut since coming back from Vietnam, conceptual anchors loosening into the framework of physical disorientation. Things that normally ground me feel heavy. My knee throbbed after a run yesterday, climbs that used to come easily feel frustrating. Instead of being excited by the recent experiences that compel me to write, I'm paralyzed by the stack. I get even more easily upset than usual, wallowing in trivial petty things, and staying irrationally there. M tells me to give it time; I trust him and the sentiment, so I am letting things happen. This doesn't mean I overcome the moodiness, I let that happen too, but I trust that the stifling character will break, leaving a baseline moodiness which I can handle, and appreciate.

On Saturday, after a morning of moping in moodiness, we entered a a sunny crisp not-yet-spring day, and he said, let's get you on a bike for lesson #2. Lesson #1 entailed sitting on a bike for the first time and having him hold the bike and me up, running alongside as I got a feel for pedaling. It served several purposes. I learned that it's scary, and hard, to be on a bike for the first time. I fell, the scruff of my pants opening to scrape my skin; having been holding me, he fell too. We expected lesson #2 to proceed in similar increments of progress. I know he wanted me to move, to try something new, to make me feel better, and the thought was enough to slightly jar the heavy air fogging me. He said, even if you're just on it for five minutes, it'll make next time easier.

So we drove to get a bike pump, which didn't really work, but I got on the bike anyway. I pedaled in the parking lot of the mall, him again holding onto the handlebars and running alongside. The first thing he emphasized was to steer into my leans, because I'd lean to one side and would've fallen over and over if he hadn't been there to correct for me. It was too much for me to think about, to correct my leans and pedal at the same time (two things, too much). So because I couldn't, he steered for me as I pedaled. This let me focus on the motion of pedaling, and it also let me subconsciously absorb the hand motion of steering, to feel the handlebars under my fingers. Then he made me try to push off on my own, to start pedaling without him holding. I'd push off with my right foot, but wouldn't trust the bike enough to push hard enough to make it work. Each time I tried, I had to consciously breathe in and suck it up; sometimes the fake courage worked enough to push hard enough to bring the left pedal up quickly enough so that I would actually move forward. To our surprise, after some struggle with this, I could keep pedaling for a few seconds, before I leaned too much or pedaled too slow, and stopped myself.

We returned the faulty bike pump, drove to Wal-Mart to get another; he pumped the tires with success this time, and we started again in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. Realizing that I could continue after starting, he helped give me a push to start, and shouted to me from our starting point to keep going. Back and forth down the length of the parking lot, I stopped as I got scared or worried that this strange capacity to steer that I unconsciously acquired would slip. He made me keep going until I'd gone down the length of the lot, each way, without stopping, and I think we were both pretty surprised. I was surprised not just by the concrete happenings but by what it did for me.

The surprise, a childhood moment given to me as a near-27 year old, the dislodging of things in their proper place, facing loss of balance during a period of inward shakiness, the doing of something new--did me a whole lot of good. Being pushed to let go of ground, we find new holds, and that seems like good reason to keep traversing across moodiness.

bird by bird

Back from a near three weeks in Vietnam, where the first half sped by and made me feel I'd been there forever and where the second half slowed to normality and felt too short, and where both halves exhausted me with experience. I went to Vietnam to translate for a medical mission, a group of plastic surgeons repairing the lips, eyes, and ears of children and a few adults. Afterwards I was able to spend some time with family and family friends.

Coming back I've returned to a disorientation that almost feels familiar at this point, coupled to the overwhelming sense of too many things-to-write that also feels familiar and would be friendly if it weren't for the fact that many times I'd rather it be a stranger. I have a couple months before I go to California for a primary care rotation, and in those couple of months, I'd like to:

-complete patient interviews for my research project
-start sorting through the lit review & begin introduction for my project
-write on translation & pros/cons of medical missions
-work with my co-translator to write about particular aspects of our mission, namely--how much do we know about our patient population when entering this foreign place?
-work on several projects for atrium magazine
-finish loose ends on the public health research project from years ago
-compile information re: family & relation to Vietnam
-plan trip to Bar Harbor with Allison, possible end-of-May trip with M somewhere?
-plan things-to-do in my month in California

Most everything is writing-oriented, and most everything is vague and nebulous; I'm working in the realm of broad goals, not yet to the point of concrete tasks. I've been re-learning chemistry as M bravely marches through his post-bac classes, and it's strangely been a deceiving escape to a contained world of facts and answers. But I think back to when I was contained in that, and how I saw it as a gateway to where I am now.

My advisor recommended a book on writing to me this morning, called Bird by Bird. The title comes from a story about the author's brother, who had a year-long term paper to write on birds. Near the very end, he'd attained encyclopedic information on a large number of birds, and sat unable to write anything about him. His dad told him to take it bird by bird, and somehow the image of birds on a wire turned a rational -ism into something real and felt to me. It's always been hard for me to multi-task, as the significance of each thing is so present to me, but as I chug piece by piece I feel it's not about finishing but about continuing; I remember that I'll never want to run out.

recharging

In the past week, I've had to replace my phone charger, my iPod charger, and my computer adapter (though my computer just died altogether, so it may not have been the adapter that was the issue). My phone charger has been acting up in the past few months. I have to wiggle and bend and contort its attachment to the phone, to reach a precarious position where it will charge the phone. For awhile it only took a few seconds and a book for pressure, to get it working. And per usual this is an inconvenience I can willingly put up with indefinitely. But it got to the point where ten minutes of adjustment didn't do the trick, and even if it worked eventually, there was no standard way of adjusting; it'd be a different trick each time. I've been content charging my iPod via my iPod stereo or my computer, since the charger that came with the iPod broke a long time ago. This was back when Apple still gave a charger with the iPod (that's right, first generation iPod packaging). This also gives you an idea of how old everything technological I own is. Anyway, I would've been fine without a wall charger, except now my computer is dead and I can't go without charging my iPod for three weeks while abroad in Vietnam. And my computer has been having issues with its adapter, where none would charge it up anymore; I'd found a new one at home that worked for several months, then wasn't working; so I got another last week. But looks like the computer needs more than that, because it won't start up.

So as many have told me, it seems that I probably need new things, rather than continually trying to recharge old ones. But even if I replace everything, I'm left with my old sometimes worn self, and I'll always have to find ways to recharge. Thank goodness for running into people at exactly the moment I need cheer, for stubborn climbs, for him in the evenings and how he makes me value not just his presence but my own, and for new travel to old places.

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.