mine's on the 45

don't wave no goodbye

2011-12-31T18:31:00.000-08:00

The end of the year arrived with little warning. I do not feel like celebrating, though I should. The year has been momentous, in good and bad ways both; it has been an extreme year. So I am ending the year tired, just uncertain of whether the intensity of the past year is something sustainable.

It is tempting to wallow because I am so tired, to breathe a sigh of relief, and be glad this tiresome year is over. But maybe that is what age has taught me, to be a bit more measured. I don't try to keep tally anymore, I do not try to calculate a balance sheet, whether the year was a good one or a bad one. It was another year. It was another year that makes me who I am.

Maybe residency has been the ultimate lesson in realizing that nothing is black and white. There are so many exhausting and terrible things about residency, so many problems with it, and there are maybe just a few truly amazing and magical things about it. But I'm not sorry to be a resident. Which is some tricky math.

If there was another big lesson I learned this past year, it was that you never stop learning new things about yourself, and about others. I really thought I had a lot of things figured out the year before, but I can see now that I still have so much to learn. And that part is not exhausting, not tiring. That part fills me with a sense of wonder.

Anyway, the year is nearly over, and I have been much remiss when it comes to blogging, writing. I hope, now that I've passed the halfway mark of internship, I'll have a bit more of a chance to breathe and reflect. But I know better than to make a bunch of resolutions.

In the meanwhile, here are 11 random things about 2011:

When I broke work hours (>80 hrs/week or >16 hrs in a shift by the new rules), I listened to Helena Beat by Foster the People to keep me going, and it was like rocket fuel.
My 4-year old, adorable godson came to visit and his father taught him to call me Doctor, which is both annoying and comical.
Even though there were probably better movies out there, I really loved Drive and would gladly watch it again, gore and all.
It turns out I sort of like yoga, except that I took it up at the height of allergy season and found the breathing-through-your-nose part really tricky.
Amy Poehler, Melissa McCarthy, Tina Fey, Martha Plimpton and company all bum-rushing the stage for best comedy actress was probably the best thing that has ever happened on an awards show, and definitely the only inspired awards show moment of last year.
I sort of knew things weren't going to work out with S and I when he failed to find Ron Swanson a) the most amazing and b) the most hilarious man on television.
Though it was published much earlier than 2011, I finally picked up The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga after failing miserably at trying to read those stupid Girls with the Whatevers books (I'm sorry, I tried and tried, and I am sure the plot is fascinating but I could not get past the blah prose that did not engage me though I tried time and again to read the books). I don't get to read novels too often, but that was a good place to spend my reading quota, that's for certain. His writing is new and fresh and just what I want to be reading these days.
Months and months later, the FNL series finale's closing moments remain burned in my memory- what a gift it was to have that show for so long. Justified and Terriers were so amazing last year, and sadly only one will be back (but at least that one happens to have Timothy Olyphant on it!). The Walking Dead was infuriating in wasting such initial potential, and The Killing was just infuriating.
The bro-seph officially entered permanent grown-up-ville, and went and got himself married at an over-the-top destination wedding, which was, all told, quite lovely.
Das Racist's Michael Jackson is mesmerizing- how something can seem both so profound and nonsensical at once is modern art at its purest form in my opinion.
I nearly purchased a home this past year, but then realized what I really wanted was space. Now I live in a comfortable (rented) house with a spacious kitchen. Unfortunately, that resulted in a major war with ants at one point last month, but I triumphed. Chocolate ganache, macarons and marshmallows in 2012!

A Happy and Safe New Year's to any of you reading. Since I am working in the ICU these days, a special emphasis on the safe part.

I read again between the lines upon the page

2011-11-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

The bro-seph is getting married next week, and I really should be making preparations for that. But frankly, given time off from internship, I've found that instead all I keep doing is tucking myself into a cocoon. It's one of the good and bad thing about my new abode. I love the place, which is great because I am happy when I am at home, but slightly less great because it increases the activation energy required for me to leave the house. I am on the verge of needing an intervention.

It has not helped much that it has been raining, announcing the onset of winter in this neck of the woods, encouraging me to put on warm slippers and drink a glass of red wine. Or that some drama got kicked up in my life just when I was starting to feel even-keeled about things.

Today I've been distracted by other thoughts. Like the very serious question of how it is possible to take two hilarious people, put them in a movie together, and make a wholly un-funny film. I never went to see Due Date when it came out because the trailers did not seem very promising, but it's amazing how humorless it turned out. Galifianakis, who I still enjoy watching when he visits Conan, maybe needs to take a break from all the movies. And I don't even know what to say about RDJ, who if I'm being totally honest with myself hasn't really been charming since Iron Man (not 2). Maybe the movie just revealed the problem with these two actors.

Anyway, you won't believe it, but this actually beats pondering other questions in my life.

Sometimes I wish I was wired a bit differently. I wish I were more casual about things, that I didn't take so much so seriously. I wish my feelings were a bit more transient, a bit more pliable.

But the problem, of course, is that I don't actually wish that. I think what I really wish is that this characteristic occasionally served as a blessing instead of a curse.

everything is temporary anyway

2011-10-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

I don't have any pictures to post, but maybe that's a good thing, because I seem to only be worse at taking pictures.

It's okay, because on other fronts, I am improving. At least, so I would be led to believe if the adage holds true that one can age like fine wine. Most of the time, for my birthday, I will bake myself a cake. It may sound pathetic, but I have always enjoyed it, and, well, who are we kidding? I pretty much do what I want.

I'm not so good at keeping to patterns and traditions and all of that. So I didn't bake a cake today. I made a pizza, with fresh mozzarella, and basil that I'd been growing for the past few weeks, and homemade whole wheat crust. All of it was what I wanted- the mindless rhythm of kneading dough, the fresh smell of basil leaves, the cute plump balls of mozzarella which spreads as you bake it. It wasn't a cake, but it was what I wanted and I made it.

It's been sort of an important thing for me this past year, reclaiming the certainty that I can be in charge of my own happiness, that I can stay content with life, that I can provide myself with the things I need to get by. Doesn't mean there aren't advantages and equal pleasures to sharing one's life. But it's always important to know that the basics hold true.

Anyhow, then I ventured, and had some failures. First, last week I was having a wave of nostalgia for the East Coast and EBF, and thinking about how no one ever sells maple syrup candy around here. Mind you, when I was growing up, the only time we ever got maple syrup candy was when we were visiting Vermont to show relatives the sights. But still, I loved the simplicity of maple syrup transforming into this simultaneously creamy and grainy candy that was bursting with maple flavor. I decided to give it a go on my own last week, and I forgot the first rule of maple syrup- use your biggest pot and keep your eyes trained on it. At least now I have a clean stove? Second, I was brewing iced tea today, as I do every week, but in my rush to do five things at once, I shattered an entire bottle of iced tea on the floor of the kitchen. On the up side, my kitchen floor is now clean?

Then I decided to go for the full experiment. I did not feel up to baking a cake today, but I have become increasingly interested in the aesthetic aspect of baking. I also had some leftover strawberry marshmallows. I had made them from fresh strawberries, and they were quite good. But it turns out, there are only so many things you can do with strawberry marshmallows, and I had not made them at a time of year compatible with hot chocolate. Anyway, the leftovers had gone slightly stale. But I had been reading recently about the concept of making homemade fondant from marshmallows.

I've never messed with fondant. For one thing, I don't know anyone who likes the taste of fondant, that smooth stuff that wraps up cakes, but that people invariably flick aside when they are eating the cake. Plus, most people I've known who have opted to tangle with fondant have bought the fondant from the store.

I did not want boring white fondant, nor did I want to make them from storebought marshmallows. I had my doubts that I could even get it to work. Truth be told, I'm still not sure I did. I have a little ball of fondant sitting in my fridge right now. It's smooth and elastic, and a pale pink. I suspect it has a hint of strawberry flavor.

Mostly, I was starting to imagine it. A chocolate cake, or a lemon one. Chocolate frosting, or vanilla. With little fondant flowers. Or a petite cake, the kind I actually like making most, a little 5" cake. Chocolate on the inside, a layer of strawberry jam and perhaps something chocolatey, fondant covering it. I have some ideas. Let's see if I can make any of them actually happen. But that's for my next day off.

you must leave now before the sunrise above skyscrapers

2011-10-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

Sorry, this has nothing to do with anything that I usually even mention on this blog, but I figure maybe 1-2 people are reading this thing anyway, so it's just echo-space for my silly ramblings. So ramble away I will. This afternoon, soaking up my day off, I could not resist the temptation, and went to watch Drive, because it's the sort of movie that seemed worth seeing in a theater.

It was. I won't gush about Ryan Gosling or the very strong supporting cast, or how the movie subtly enriches an otherwise unoriginal story. I am not much of a film critic, and ever since I went into medicine, I find myself drawn to increasingly mind-numbing entertainment, so one should probably not listen to my opinion anyway.

But the film is set in LA, a place of which I've never been particularly fond. I lived in Southern California for about a year. There is something the movie portrays that really struck a chord. The film is set right in LA, but the characters are quite isolated. They seem to have their little sphere, but are fairly solitary. Now granted, some of this is the constraint of storytelling and keeping things focused. But some of it also seems true.

I used to drive a lot in Southern California, it's a place very well-suited for driving despite the horrific traffic at times. There are so many people living here in California. In some ways, it wasn't even that different from my early days living in San Francisco, when I hadn't yet found my footing. Everywhere around, people, but yet, so many people were alone.

Me, I don't feel so lonely. I like being by myself most of the time, and when I don't, I'm fortunate in that I'm not in want of a friend when I'm in need. But it's an interesting juxtaposition, this concept of being surrounded, of being in densely populated places, and yet, being isolated.

Maybe I've been thinking about this even more because medicine is like that. All day long, inundated with people- fellow residents, attendings, nurses, patients and countless others. But it's a bit of a ruse, much like living in a city. During work hours, you are surrounded, but the work itself can isolate. Just something I'm pondering.

***

In other, more familiar news, big shock- I spent some of the day baking. I'm still fooling around with frosting cupcakes. I don't know why suddenly this has become a thing for me, but apparently it has. Anyway, here is my latest, weak attempt:

It probably would have helped if I had attempted this with something other than caramel frosting. I really should probably concentrate on actually getting the taste of cupcakes down before I start messing with the decorations, but as usual, I don't know how to do things in a stepwise process. Head first, dive in, make a mess, fudge it, shrug, and try, try again.

we require certain skills

2011-09-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

It did not get particularly cool, not in absolute terms. But it's September, and several days had hit the triple digits. And finally, I had a real day off. Oh certainly, I get one day off a week, it's required these days (cue the remarks from various members of the old guard chiming in with 'back in our day, we worked 3 weeks straight without a day off and we weren't allowed to sleep and there weren't any residents to consult' walking-to-school-up-hill-both-ways shenanigans). But this was the first day in a long while that I wasn't distracted wondering about what was going on with my patients, or using that precious day off luxuriating in the opportunity to catch up on laundry and bills.

No, yesterday, there was a slight breeze in the air, and it occurred to me, how fast it's all going by. It's almost the end of September. I still feel like I am at the beginning of my training, but yet some things are becoming intuitive. And I finally had a chance to breathe.

This is not meant to be a woe is me post. I chose this course, and knowing full well what it entailed. And though it's rigorous, I still make time to do what I please. I haven't broken my track record of once-weekly baking excursions (though, unlike in my previous blog-life, I rarely spare a moment to snap pictures of baked goods these days). But yesterday felt like the end of the summer. It wasn't quite the right time to start bringing out the apples and the pumpkins, even though in some parts of the country, it probably feels perfectly appropriate to do just that. I know it's technically more of a spring type of thing, but it felt suddenly like an orange kind of day.

So I bought myself some carrots.

It amazes me how many people love carrot cake. Me, I always had an aversion to it as a child, because I hate raisins baked or cooked into anything. So it was always a profound disappointment to start to bite into a slice of carrot cake and then suddenly be assaulted by soggy raisins. I wasn't too crazy about the overly sweet and thick, coat-your-tongue frosting either. In short, I was not a fan. Maybe there were just no good carrot cakes to be had in EBF.

I'm still a little suspicious of carrot cake, as it mostly to me seems like making a good spice cake. But for some reason, I was in the mood to give it a shot yesterday. There are a few important things I've learned about carrot cake over time. One is that you cannot use coarsely grated carrots. The extra time to shred them super-fine is a bit of a chore these days, but it is worth it. The second thing is that carrot cake is best when slightly spicy and sweet (the latter being an easy task given that carrots have natural sugar in them and then you add some sugar into the batter to push it over the top), but the frosting that accompanies it is best when slightly tangy and just mildly sweetened.

The stakes are a little higher nowadays. I laugh just writing that, because actually, no, they're not. But it reminds me of one of my patients, a 22-year old with sickle cell trait. I was encouraging him to take a walk around the floor today so that he doesn't get too conditioned and so that he doesn't develop clots from lying around all the time. He waved at his hospital gown from top to bottom and said, "I can't walk around like this, I got my image to think about!" It was actually a completely in-character thing for a 22-year old college student to say, but for some reason the nurses and I were in hysterics about it for the rest of the morning. It just struck us as humorous, to worry about your rep when you're in the hospital.

So no, the stakes aren't really higher; that's just as silly as what my patient said this morning. But there are certain things I make now because I know they're reliable. I save the experimental stuff for these true days off, because I know I'll have time to make some boring, standard cookies if the experiment ends in fiasco.

It's funny. When I bake, I miss some people, I really do. I'll bake something and think oh, he would have liked that or she used to ask me to bake this for her or it's too bad he's not around to taste this, it's his favorite flavor. But the lovely thing about baking, and maybe about life in general, is that new people show up. They don't fill the void, they don't replace anyone. They are just new, and somehow, room gets made for them. Just new people, who ask if I knew that carrot cake was their favorite kind of cake. And all I need do is shrug, push a cupcake towards them, and make a mental note to bake them some more at a later date.

p.s. in case it isn't obvious, it is about time for me to give up my ancient relic of a digital camera and upgrade. If anyone has a suggestion for a reasonably priced one, suggestions are welcome.

don't wish it away, don't look at it like it's forever

2011-09-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

I have no pictures to share for this post. Right before I started internship, I realized that my digital camera was purchased in 2001. I'll pause for a moment and let the few folks reading recover from hysterics.

There. Anyway, I'm horrible at the taking of photographs as it is, and even worse at remembering to take a photograph when it might come in handy. I guess, in the current age, that makes me something of a weirdo. Well, that among other things. And it is interesting, because every once in a while, I start to wonder if some of the strange absurdities of my life really happened since I didn't document it onto Facebook or commit it to film or photograph.

Luckily, I always have the words. If I didn't write the words, then it must not have been very important is my thinking.

So let me write these words. Two sentences, stated. And then maybe I'll ramble some more.

1) I made cinnamon cupcakes and frosted them with chocolate ganache and they were met with enthusiasm.

2) Internship is, indeed, a rollercoaster ride.

About the first point, there is little to say except I wish I had taken a picture of the little things. Even though the macaron class I took was probably way beyond my expertise and even though I'll likely never successfully recreate the macarons the way I was taught during that lesson, I did learn from that class to get over my illogical fear of pastry bags. Yes, I've now become quite comfortable with piping frosting. I don't think I'll ever be an expert decorator or anything, but it's nice to be able to at least frost a cupcake with a little swirl, that was described by one of the more humorous residents as "professional-like."

About the second point, there is much more to write, but nothing which would be in any way novel or interesting. I suspect every intern feels like this during the beginning of their year. Every time you think you have figured a few things out and you may actually be getting the hang of things, something happens that makes you feel incompetent and makes the learning curve seem hopeless. It's quite the contrast to 4th year of medical school, during which the powers that be act like you are a genius if you can manage to speak without drooling out of the side of your mouth. Now, there's always this feeling of "why don't you know this?" pervading every piece of feedback I've gotten daily.

And every day, I have to stop and realize that this is a universal feeling, and I don't know why everyone acts surprised every year that the interns are clueless. No one has really been prepared for the job, no matter how hard you work during medical school. And even if, by some miracle, you learned how to do your job properly at some point, too bad, because you get whisked off to another rotation before you've had a chance to really get your bearings.

Every day, I have to stop and remind myself of my goals. I have to remind myself that I'm not striving to be a meticulous note-taker, or to be so efficient that I can round on eight patients in 30 minutes in the morning. Yes, these are necessary evils which one must somewhat master during internship, but it's not where my focus is, nor where it will remain, in the long-term.

Then I have to also remind myself that I'm only 4 weeks into working inpatient medicine, which means, I am still in the preemie/newborn phase of internship. There's still a long ways to go, and I, as well as it, will get better. My real goal is to learn how to care for patients properly, and to do that while still maintaining a personality and an ability to interact with people as if they were human beings and not medical record numbers. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

am I really who I was?

2011-08-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

I'm post-call, so perhaps a bit delirious, but I don't think that's what's causing this reaction.

It's just that sometimes I want to curse at Ryan Adams.

Adams best exemplifies my inclination towards knowing as little about an artist's personal life as possible. I try to pretend that I don't know that he can sometimes throw temper tantrums during shows. It would be best if I didn't know he was married to a movie star, or that he had a substance abuse problem.

Unlike some artists, though, Ryan Adams is insidious. You can think "enough of this whiny sh*t, I'm not falling for that schtick again." And then along comes a song like Lucky Now (link in the sidebar if you're interested) and the bastard has got you in his clutches again. I know the way I'm describing it does not sound very complimentary, but sometimes I really do hate Ryan Adams' knack for writing these songs that just stab you in the heart and floor you. I was just minding my own business, experimenting with malted milk and brownies in the kitchen, trying to regain my footing from working my first serious overnight shift, fairly involved in the world of electrolytes and diabetes and sepsis, when this song comes along and destroys me.

Destroys me in a good way, mind you. This is, actually, how I express my love, which might tell you something about my issues in life. Right now, I work a lot. It's so tempting, I can't describe how much, to just dissolve into the world of work, to become singular in focus, to drown in it. It's controlled and safe, that kind of drowning. Ryan Adams' latest single perfectly encapsulates the problem with following that impulse, though. It's a melancholy song, even sad, vague about whether things work out or not, filled with doubts, but then it throws in this little line:

and the night will break your heart
only if you're lucky now

That's the thing. It is the things we can't control, the things that we make ourselves vulnerable to- those are the things that mark our good fortune. And Adams knows the part that everyone conveniently overlooks- most of the time, taking that risk, making that move, most of the time it ends badly. But that's exactly the point.

There are other things that make this song beautiful- the way he throws in small details that paint a beautiful backdrop, that smooth voice of his, the deceptively soft-rock quality of the music which tricks you into thinking you're engaged in easy-listening. But mostly, he takes you down a road, tells you about all the potholes, the bandits and the wild animals you'll encounter, but just as casually remarks:

if the lights draw you in
and the dark can take you down
then love can mend your heart
but only if you're lucky now

Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. Either way, count yourself among the lucky. Ryan Adams has no right to be that insightful.

In other news, I have a new GBF, though he doesn't know it. He is the cashier at the cafeteria. He only works nights, but I am grateful for that, because there is nothing like running down to the hospital cafeteria at 3:30 in the morning, dead-tired, grabbing a bowl of soup, and encountering this dude blasting Superfreak. This morning, he said, "what's your deal, honey, you married? You got a man?" I said I didn't and he started running through a list of hot surgeons in the hospital. I played along, and he said "next time you come by, I'll point them out to you. Don't you worry, I'll take care of everything." I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, people.

you make me better

2011-08-03T18:16:00.000-07:00

It's only been a month and a half, but I'm really starting to question whether I will get out of residency with my humanity in tact. I will have to think about that some more and expand upon it in another post. But for now, I'll just say that I am always angry- angry at the residency program and how it is set up, angry at the government and politicians and how they are creating a system that is going down the tubes, and finally, yes, it's true, angry at certain patients. And I haven't even done anything truly taxing yet in residency, so I have legitimate reason to be worried if I am already feeling that way.

Anyway, in other news, guess what I did? I made a horrible, tasteless, bland-as-cardboard, disappointing birthday cake recently. I got away with it for two reasons. 1) It looked like this:

Points for presentations, folks, apparently. You can google zebra cake if you want to find a recipe, but I warn you- this cake is so sadly tasteless. Nothing that visually remarkable should be such a letdown. I am currently contemplating how to adjust this cake such that the taste matches the aesthetic. However, there was another reason you are viewing a half-eaten cake and that is 2) homemade chocolate ganache.

I don't feel strongly about all that many things these days, but I feel strongly about chocolate ganache. For example, I think it is a crime to try to make frosting out of cocoa, butter and powdered sugar. You can try whatever ratio and method you want, but you are never going to get a very chocolaty frosting with those ingredients. Object if you like, but I contend there is only one acceptable frosting in this world, and it is chocolate ganache. Beautiful, tasty, glossy (if you add just a dab of that notorious rascal corn syrup to it), and most important- bursting with chocolate flavor. If you don't make chocolate ganache frosting, I guess my only question is- why do you hate chocolate?

Though I made a batch of chocolate ganache to disguise the disappointing zebra cake, I had a solid jarful leftover. Want to know another lovely thing about chocolate ganache? It can serve many purposes. I spiked it with a minimal amount of chocolate liquor, and stored it in the fridge, and now I have a homemade fudge sauce. I served it with some strawberry ice cream (from the last post) to the broseph and he may have lost his mind.

In other news relevant to things about which I feel strongly, I am trying to watch Mad Men again. But I think I am never going to get into that show. I doubt I'll ever find it fascinating to watch a show celebrate an era during which I would not have been permitted to inhabit even a semblance of the life I currently lead. Blerg to that.

we want to make him stay up all night

2011-07-10T15:46:00.000-07:00

A semi-surreal moment this morning well encapsulated my last 24 hours. As I was walking to the parking lot, undoubtedly wobbling and weaving, a red sports car rolled backwards up the street until it was beside me. The window rolled down and the GI attending called out my name and I stopped to chat with him, wandering into the middle of the street as if I wasn't at any risk of getting mowed over by oncoming traffic. He asked me how it was. I told him it finally felt real.

It was my second week of internship, but my first night of being worked like an intern. I probably should have been more afraid, but I was obliviously tinkering around yesterday in the kitchen. I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and then I churned this up while reading about how to place central lines:

That, by the way, is the bomb. My friend RR had advised me some years ago that strawberry ice cream is the best choice when considering homemade ice cream, as he felt the fresh ingredients shone the best. As usual, I ignored his sage words until I'd finally found myself confronted with a ridiculous amount of strawberries and a kitchen that called out to be utilized. But let me tell you, this is the way to go.

After that, I marched off to the hospital, and got my world turned upside down in the best way possible. The last two weeks, I'd been a doctor, technically, but was still treated like what I classified as a "baby intern." Last night, I was prescribing meds and admitting patients and pronouncing death. Last night was the real deal.

I won't go into too many details, because it will come across as whining, but I rather enjoyed it. Besides which, I think it's the sort of thing that's not nearly as interesting as I think it is. What's probably more worth documenting, remembering and relating was a conversation I had with one patient.

He was 80 years old, sharp as a tack despite a stroke that had left him partially paralyzed on one side, but he'd come in with a fever and chills and a likely urinary tract infection. He was accompanied by his daughter. It's interesting to me, to hear how families come together in old age. After the stroke, the patient had been moved from his home in Missouri to California, where his son was living. At the same time, his daughter moved from Massachusetts to California to also be close to her father. The patient was going to be staying at an assisted living facility, but both of his children wanted to be close by to see him as frequently as possible.

His daughter was very involved in his care; she was the sort of person you dream about having accompany a patient to the hospital- a veritable journal of his past medical history and medications. As she was rattling off one detail after another, her father, my patient, said to me, "I don't know where I'd be if it wasn't for her."

I smiled and turned to his daughter, to make sure she had heard. She smiled, unphased, and simply said, "well, I don't know where I'd be if it wasn't for you, Daddy-o, so let's call it even."

Nothing fancy, no big swelling scenes with tears and drama. Just a simple exchange. But as any of us with complicated family relationships know, it's a precious gem to have that sort of relationship.

And I thought today that, yes, there was a lot that happened last night, a lot that I could colorfully relate to my co-interns when they asked me how my first night float was. The sort of stories that are badges of honor, that earn you your stripes in your training. But what I really want to remember, what I want to keep lodged in my memory years from now, was that little moment in the chaos and cacophony of the emergency department.

there's so many different places to call home

2011-06-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

I was going to start this post by writing that I sometimes wish I didn't take baking so personally. And then I called shenanigans on myself, laughed, and realized how absurd a statement that is.

Very simple things, like flour, butter, sugar, and eggs have brought me great peace, have filled me with a contentment that I only otherwise get from my chosen profession, and have made me feel productive when I am at my most laziest. Baking has humbled me, and it has given me confidence.

I tie a lot of emotion to baking, which sounds hokey, but I do not really care. I own my weirdness about it. I bake when I get stressed, but when I get too stressed, too upset, really down in the dumps, I can't do anything in the kitchen because I am paralyzed. And that just makes it all the more satisfying when I make amends with the mixing bowl.

There is an unnecessarily dramatic story behind a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer that entered my life. I have had it for about eight months now, and only today did I finally allow it to be part of my kitchen. Even when I moved into a new place, I put the mixer straight into the garage, until today, when I realized I was holding onto something I shouldn't.

I've never been one to ease into anything. In medical school, I became fond of experiments to do with yeasted things- pizza, rolls, bread. Things that required a rise and a fall, firm kneading and patience. On one such experiment, I madly ignored everything I had read and thought I could attack the making of brioche with nothing but my own elbow grease. And oh my, how wrong I was. It was a spectacular failure. Brioche failure stings even more because it requires such a lot of butter and eggs that it feels more wasteful than other kitchen disasters. The handmade failure brioche, I could not accept it was a fiasco, so I kept at it, and even tried to bake it into individual pain au chocolat, which only resulted in wasting good chocolate in addition to all of the butter and eggs.

Well, when I finally put that stand mixer on my counter today, I knew there was only one thing to be tackled. The brioche dough is now on its second rise, and looks to be turning out exactly as planned. The only question is what to do with it- simple brioche loaf, sticky buns, little pillows of brioche with chocolate inside? So many possibilities.

Update: I opted for a few different options, but here is one of the best- cinnamon rolls made with brioche dough:
I hope it will not be my last opportunity to bake this year...

tables they turn sometimes

2011-06-16T15:10:00.000-07:00

Life has weird shifts, sometimes predictable, sometimes not. Even though I knew this good time was coming, even when I was in the dumps, it still surprised me when it arrived, the sudden nature of it and the intense contrast.

Even though it is coming on scorching season here, I sat down with a sweater I'd been working on ages ago. It was something I had started at least a year ago. I would work on it a bit, and then set it aside, then pick it up again. The yarn was very fine in weight, which meant it took forever to make any progress. But eventually, it also became clear that I kept putting it down because it wasn't really working. The variegated yarn wasn't quite meshing with the patterned stitches, and the sizing seemed off. But it seemed like something I'd been working on for so long that I'd hesitated to give it up.

Sometimes salvaging is the right call, other times ripping. A lot of the good things that happen in life are from salvaging a less-than-ideal situation; I've certainly had my share of making lemonade from lemons (or, in the case of last weekend, making chocolate dipped brownie truffles when a pesky batch of brownies stuck to the pan). I had stared at that sweater-in-progress for a while- lengthen it, shorten it, make it short-sleeved, make it a vest? I had considered lots of different angles, but nothing seemed to fit the idea I had in my head of what I wanted the sweater to be.

And finally, I ripped the whole thing back down to skeins. Yes, I had invested a lot of energy in the sweater up to that point, but I had not rushed into destruction. I had assessed. It was a losing proposition. It was time to let go.

So today, when I had a free morning, I felt a sense of validation. I had re-knitted the entire sweater in an eighth of the time it had taken me the previous time, and the moment of truth had arrived. I stitched all the pieces together and the finished product was exactly as I had wanted it to be.

Speaking of which, here is a picture of rose macarons:

Being a little (ahem) taken with baking and challenges, I had become intrigued with macarons over the years. So I was surprised that a lot of my friends had never heard of the little wonders. They sound simple, and therein lies the peril of the macaron. The cookie shells are made of ground almonds, sugar, and egg whites. Just three ingredients. How complicated could it be? Answer- very complicated. The suckers are notoriously finicky, sensitive to humidity and the batter consistency. A slight imprecision in measurement can also cause an epic fail. I had read on the interwebs so many tales of horror regarding these cookies that I had avoided giving them a go for years. But my friend SP nudged me into it recently by presenting me with a macaron making class as a graduation present. It was phenomenal. I got to make and pipe this batch of macarons myself, though truth be told, I'm still skeptical as to whether I can recreate them in my kitchen. I should probably try again soon, before the wave of good juju rolls on by.

I think I'm in love but it makes me kind of nervous to say so

2011-06-10T22:45:00.000-07:00

It is the end of what may seem to some an uneventful day. In the morning, I transferred frozen tilapia to the refrigerator to thaw. Since everyone has been moving away, I have been inheriting all sorts of things I would never usually use- thus, tilapia. Then I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies under the guise of needing to test out my new oven. I did a load of new laundry in my new washer. I went to my old apartment and packed some final boxes, then returned to the new place and unpacked them.

Having cried uncle by the late afternoon, I asked AP to come help me position some of the more awkward items (ladder, a large framed Modigliani print, the usual stuff) into my car. She came over in the late evening, and we both had a hearty laugh at how ridiculously sweltering it was in my old apartment.

Sometimes you do not realize how bad things were, or how your circumstances were affecting your happiness until you've moved on. That has been a big theme of late for me. I could not explain why I felt so much happier the past few days, or why I was sleeping like a rock. It did not occur to me until AP and I were sitting at the dining table sipping iced tea (if ever you should be looking for a good choice for making Iced Tea, wow, Good Earth is fantastic for this purpose), she nibbling on the cookies I had baked, me playing with the table mat while urging her to watch Justified. Only then did I realize how much happier I am now than I have been, perhaps for the past few years.

It's so inexplicable, how we go from a place of deep sadness, to numbness, to contentment, to sudden, sincere happiness. The progression is a mystery. Medical students used to joke fake it til you make it, and I wonder if there is not some component of that to life in general.

AP begged off, and it was late, but the tilapia were waiting, thawed. I roasted them in the oven while making mashed potatoes. When the filets emerged from the oven, I placed one hot on a bed of baby spinach. I stood at the kitchen counter for a moment, staring at the plate. And then I sat down and had dinner, and felt a wave of all sorts of emotions. I can't really explain it in any other way except to say: I'm back.

if somehow you moved from point A to point B

2011-05-19T17:20:00.000-07:00

As everyone around me starts to rocket launch out of the orbit of school, to their respective next steps, it's strange to stay here in the center, to move on without moving. It was my choice, which is a fortunate thing, but it leaves me (surprise) contemplative.

The strange thing is that, four years later, a lot has changed and not much has changed at all. The bloom is off the rose, I suppose; I don't have romantic visions of what medicine is or will be for me. But then again, I'm not convinced I had such idealized notions at the start. I just knew it was what I wanted to do, and, four years later, nothing has altered that. Whatever else has happened, keeping that part, that certainty, that has been more than enough- that's been everything.

But just as with any large stretch of time passing, I remain mystified at how little I know, how much more there is still to learn. About medicine, about life, and even more oddly, about myself. I do not mean to frighten anyone heading into the hospital, but I feel like it will be quite some time before I feel confident that I know what I am doing as a physician. Some people dread it, but I welcome internship as that slap of reality that will hopefully, finally shape me into a real physician.

Then, strip aside the knowledge aspect, and still there remain other things to learn. I had plenty of difficult conversations prior to starting medical school, I had plenty of experience chatting with people in a professional setting. But I have noticed I still have a ways to go when it comes to the physician-patient relationship. Sometimes I talk too much, occasionally I interrupt too much, sometimes it takes me a bit too long to understand what the patient's objectives truly are, and I can still feel the hesitation when the conversation is turning towards something the patient does not want to hear. All of those things, though, worry me far less. The whole point there is to pay attention to your deficiencies.

In that way, it's not that different from any other relationship. It can be easy to say, especially the older we get, this is just how I am. That, however, is some weak sauce. A remark like that is a cop-out. You have to own your decisions in life, but you have to own your behavior too. It's easy to conclude I'm not good at having conversations about dying, but that's also an easy way to close yourself off from being a good doctor. No one is born able to have a mature, informed, sensitive discussion with a patient's family about their loved ones' health. It comes with time, and, unfortunately for patients, it comes with experience. Some people have more of a natural inclination towards it than others, but it really does a disservice to medicine to not push yourself to be better, to be competent.

I feel that way about my other little quirks. Some of them, I own. I don't find it strange to go off the grid occasionally, to take some time to myself, to spend a morning experimenting in the kitchen. But there are other things I have learned to change. I forgive people and friends now in a way that I did not before. I've become better at giving people extra chances without letting them off the hook. And I still have other things I need to change, like the way that sometimes I still have trouble accepting help, sometimes I still have trouble recognizing that I am being disrespected. I am no longer content saying that's just how I am. If anything, I guess in the past year, I have learned to want more, to be comfortable with wanting more. Shouldn't we all want that?

alright already, the show goes on

2011-05-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

Some other things, though. B's comment on my last post reminded me of another epiphany that I had over the past month. I congratulated myself, but I did not acknowledge the full strength of vulnerability. This may seem cheesy, but the amazing thing about drawing up the willingness to ask for help is how quickly people come to your aid. Even someone who has spent the better chunk of her life creating a persona of self-reliance, even I had people around me who rescued me.

Some of them weren't even around. A few weeks ago, AL called me, and we did not even talk about the less fortunate aspects of my life. He did not know the beginning, the middle, and so there was no point in telling him of the end. He had just called to say hello and we just had a good chat. But beyond that even, friends like B and countless others, I felt them. They are the good thoughts around you that tell you that you will weather any storm, that you are worth knowing. They give you the confidence to move forward, the encouragement to forge new relationships. They remind you to be grateful.

I went back to San Francisco last week. For the past year, when I went, it had not felt like my city anymore, like I was no longer connected to it the way that I once was. But when I returned this past week, it felt like I had truly returned. I walked from Potrero Hill to the Mission, the sun and the wind my companions, alone on the path once again. It felt right. It always feel right, like I am coming back to a center, as I saw the fog start to settle on Twin Peaks. It did not matter that the neighborhood was teeming with bachelorette parties, that things had gotten more expensive, that some bars had disappeared and others had risen up in their wake. The city keeps on moving, keeps on changing, forces you to acknowledge that life is by its nature dynamic.

And just as the city forces you to acknowledge that time stands still for no one, so do children. Years can pass by between friends, and you may feel that no time has passed. But when years pass by with a child, the kid has transformed when next you meet. RR and I coordinated our schedules to meet, and as a result, I got to see my godson. It had been at least two years since the last time I saw him; at that time, he was shy and very attached to his parents, not very interested in interacting with anyone new. Now he is nearly 5 years old, and while still charmingly shy, he warms up quickly. His mind is fascinating and inquisitive, brimming with questions, including the whopper "why does the ocean make waves?" (I gleefully wished my friend RR good luck breaking that one down.) We spent a few hours at the beach, building sandcastles which his little sister took absolute joy in smashing, filling buckets with water, and marveling at the little creatures that came in with the tide. My godson tired of the futility of sandcastles, and started to draw train tracks in the sand, occupying himself. RR and I started talking about heavy subjects, and the contrast struck me- happiness gets increasingly complicated as we get older.

But then again, as we got off the beach and all piled back into the car, the kids were getting buckled into their carseats, and my godson turned to his father and asked if I could sit in the back with them. He has only ever asked if his grandmother can sit back there. Funny how at that moment, happiness was just that simple, just as simple as a little boy asking you to sit next to him for the car ride home.

all that was there will be there still

2011-05-03T18:18:00.000-07:00

I keep wanting to write ridiculously trite statements about how my professional life is going very well, but my personal life less so. It never seems honest, because the fact is I take my profession very personally.

In my last post, I wrote a statement of some premonition about my life looking very different in a short time. I had no idea how true that would be, or in what ways it would look like such a changed world. It is a strange thing, indeed, when the rug is pulled out from underneath you, when the ground crumbles beneath your feet, but you remain in the very same place, and it was where you wanted to be.

Taking stock of everything now, I find that I am getting by. There were many fits and starts over the past month. I am so excited about starting residency; as frightful as the concept of taking on responsibility for the care of a patient, what a privilege and fortune it is. I do not take that for granted, and for that I am immensely grateful. Getting out of medical school with one's perspective somewhat in tact is, as it turns out, a challenge.

I do not take myself for granted either. It sounds a bit pompous, but I had no idea how strong I really was until the last month. Strength for me has become about more than maintaining a stiff upper lip or seeming unmoved. Those were old coping mechanisms, I had outgrown them. That was no way to live. So, instead, I found strength in getting thoroughly crushed, getting heartbroken but good. There's something strong in it, accepting that kind of overwhelming emotion and pain as part of the spectrum of what is possible, then moving on anyway. It sounds crazy, but I have no regrets.

Also, I have completed medical school feeling very confident about my ability to bake a foolproof chocolate chip cookie. I use more than one variation of a recipe, because it depends on how much effort I want to put into it, but sometimes it is nice to know that, whatever else may come to pass, you can count on butter, brown sugar and flour to do its job.

let's not try to figure out everything at once

2011-03-05T18:23:00.000-08:00

Everyone kept telling me that fourth year of medical school is the time when you unwind and do all the things you've been putting off for the rest of your medical training. Thing is, I wound up keeping myself far more occupied than usual this year. Between clinical rotations that helped clarify my future, applying for and interviewing at residency programs, embarking on and maintaining a (gulp, ick) relationship, q5 baking, and keeping up with the rantings of Charlie Sheen, I feel like I have been so busy this year that this weekend was one of the first times I actually have had a moment to contemplate what soon lies ahead.

One more week, and that's it. No more clinical rotations. Officially, I'm done.

In two weeks, I find out where I'll be spending the next three years.

And until this past week, I have been industriously avoiding all of my natural tendencies towards churning about all of this. I can see how actually it is quite momentous, but it is as if my brain just knows it is better to watch the chips fall rather than plan out various scenarios and contingency plans.

I could be living an entirely different life in just a month.

But I guess, when I think about it, when I have the time and give myself the allowance as I do tonight, medical school did not change the things about me that I did not want to sacrifice. Even though I was not as wide-eyed and pliable as my classmates, still, these years have been formative. Yet I still feel very much me, if that makes any sense, and that seems to be of comfort when I think of what the future might hold.

And while I could tell you some stories about my rotation in the ED that took a few bites out of my idealism, I still enjoy patient care, in ways that I will not cheapen by nattering on about. I am not a physician yet, not even close. And even though I will have a medical degree in a few months, it will still be a while before I become anywhere near a competent physician. But I am starting to get an idea of the sort of physician I want to be. So I have not really been thinking about any further details, and maybe, for once, that is just fine by me.

you can't carry it with you if you want to survive

2010-12-26T15:07:00.000-08:00

Oh, remember how I used to be a fan of music? Well, I have admittedly been a bit disconnected from music the past six months due to, ugh, life, I guess, and maybe some lame influences in my life. I developed an addiction to The Black Keys’ Tighten Up a couple of months ago, as it was mindless, good, gritty fun. But with a little time on my hands, and various year-end lists recapping music, I have been starting to reconnect to my need for some good lyrics and a haunting melody.

I must confess that I first heard this song on an episode of Glee. Even though I do not like the show, I have this uncontrollable impulse to watch. To draw a parallel appropriate to the season, it’s similar to my need to listen to all covers of Last Christmas, even though there is no way anyone can touch Wham’s 80s-filled cheese- that includes you, Glee, incidentally!

Anyway, not only was the cover of this song typically horrible, but also it seemed to me completely boring and pop-tarty. When I finally heard Florence and The Machine sing it, I could not even recognize it as having any connection to the version done by The Glee crew. The vocals are completely different, and as such, they draw a lot more attention to the lyrics.

And the lyrics… oh man. This is another one of those sneaky songs. You hear it without really listening and it sounds celebratory and yippee, hooray!, but squint your eyes and look closer. I took another listen to it yesterday and I was struck by how it mixes this idea of celebration with warning, and perhaps even celebrating the act of escaping a supposedly happy situation, depending on how you interpret it.

I know some thing about that these days. It’s tricky, this business of figuring out what you want, and realizing that sometimes immediate elation accompanies uncomfortable emotions. Sometimes, it’s healthy to discard the discomfort and behave like the pack. Other times, it’s time to lean on this song, listen for the horses, and run.

everyone is leaving, I'm still with you

2010-12-21T11:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I ask myself why I put up with S. I like being by myself. And (I know, here comes a Captain Obvious remark) relationships are a lot of double, double, toil and trouble. And we are heading in different directions really soon, so this situation has a definite expiration date on it. Perhaps that's one of the reasons I haven't cut loose.

But it probably also has to do with the fact that, after listening to Peter Bjorn & John's Young Folks yesterday, he proceeded to sing incessantly and with glee, "We don't care about the aardvarks."

The thing I find really interesting (and I know I sound like an alien visitor from another planet but sometimes that's how I feel when it comes to being in a non-solitary state) is how it's little things that stick with me, or rather draw me into attachment. S pretends to be annoyed at the smirk I develop when he puts on a hoodie. I know these little things about him now, like how five minutes later, he will be complaining about how he is sweltering and has to take that sweatshirt off before it causes him to overheat. Or how sometimes, when he is restless, it will actually seem like there is a pine cone on the couch, because he will spring up every time he sits down, with one more task to accomplish.

But I wonder sometimes, if there is this great divide. Some of us find those little traits endearing, grow more attached as we get to know those slight but specific details that make a person who they are. And some of us are initially smitten with our idea of someone, and then grow disenchanted as we discover the truth.

So I am thankful, for now at least, that S grins, bemused, when I start swearing at Tom Brady (or, as a friend CW recently nicknamed him, Bieber Senior) or ranting about Brett Favre's "I'm retiring/starting!" antics.

just trying to get myself some gravity

2010-12-12T19:54:00.000-08:00

That now old film The English Patient, I thought of it today. I find myself, for reasons far beyond my own grasp even, in Southern California this week, and it was here that I first saw the movie, on opening weekend, in some old, grand theater like they have down here. There were lots of things I loathed about living on this side of the state, but I must admit that watching movies was always a better experience- you could find any film playing and even The English Patient was running in a theater with stadium seating and gigantic screens, despite it also featuring old vaulted ceilings that made it look like a refurbished opera house.

I also thought of that movie because of a specific scene. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a huge fan of this particular movie, and it doesn’t hold up all that well with time. And as I’ve grown older, I find the love story to be almost insufferable. But maybe that’s also why I thought of it today. There’s this scene in the movie- a woman is breaking it off with her lover, and the lover, spurned, says, embittered, that he wants her to know that he isn’t missing her yet. She says, very calmly and all properly English-like, “you will.” And then she turns and bangs her head against a railing. It’s jarring. She loses her composure and puts her hand up to her head, and it’s clear that the dumped lover wants to check to see if she is okay, but finds that he cannot.

Despite appearances, I am not putting a full-blown period on this run-on sentence of a blog. There was a brief comma, but I still have more to say. And I would love to say that there’s been such big things afoot, or that I’ve just been having so much fun. But really, what it came right down to in the end is, the words just were not there. You have to have the words, or what much can you make of a blog?

I still do not have a lot of words. Things are changing, but that, it now strikes me more than ever, is a stupid thing to write. If there is one thing my generation can vouch for with certainty, it is change. There were no such things as cell phones, or blogs when our lifetime began, after all. But still, despite the obvious dynamic nature of the macroscopic world, it bears repeating, I guess, that my little microcosm is changing. Medical school is almost over, and I am making big decisions on where I will be and who I will be, and those are odd things indeed. I find myself considering completely different variables as compared to what I did four years ago, and that is interesting too.

When I left San Francisco, I was one person, who was not the same person as the one who arrived there from the east coast. And now I am another. And this will keep happening, but also it starts to become clear that they are all parts of a whole. It’s easy to sometimes believe I am just fickle and ever-changing, but I can still appreciate everything I loved about San Francisco today. But I do not belong there right now; I can appreciate that too.

S and I were having pho on a particularly cold evening this past week with some friends. This was the evening after he had called me from the airport in a panic after his flight had been canceled due to inclement weather, and I had collected him after we agreed there was no point in trying to reschedule. This was the week after he had made me a care package of chocolates, chewing gum, and ibuprofen to send me off on another round of interviews. We returned with our stomachs warm and full, and I collapsed on the couch, never to murmur another coherent word that evening. I did not have the words, and I did not want them, really. This thing between us is parenthetical in comparison to the big questions, the major paragraphs that lie before me. Sleep came and rescued me from the conversation that we’ll have someday, the conversation that has always been inevitable. For that night, I left it to the movies.

time after time

2010-09-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

It seems appropriate to mention that this morning, I woke up an hour earlier than needed so that I could cut, peel, core, and slice up some grannysmith's. Oh yes, people, it is the end of the summer.

That seems to make some people sad and wistful. Not so for me, and I can honestly say it's been that way for some time, even before I lived in San Francisco, where the seasons are all mixed up anyhow. I just like time passing. For a long time now, I have enjoyed the dynamic nature of the world, the way nothing gold can stay. Perhaps it is because I grew up in the Northeast, where the end of the summer gives rise to glorious fireworks of colors bursting on trees. Or maybe it is because I am a malcontent, such that by the time the summer is coming to a close, I cannot wait for the heat to subside, and the oven to be used on a regular basis.

S and I had a silly talk the other day, in which I declared that we had to stop eating out so often, and in which, typical of our complete failure to communicate properly, he thought I meant that I disliked going out to eat. There seems to be no way to make people understand that sometimes I need to be in the kitchen. Do not mistake me- if it was my lot in life to be there every day, forced to make three squares for a family of five, I would probably lose all interest in it and advocate for eating out and frozen dinners. But I find eating in to be just as much of a luxury as eating out these days.

And also, food has become, for me, part of the marking of time passing. In the summer, it is too hot to bake regularly, so I search for other options. The strawberries are fresh, ripe and bursting at the farmer's market, so I learn to make sorbet. Friends' gardens grow tomatoes and I learn to make sauce. I throw brunch and I cook fresh blueberries with sugar until they make french toast taste better, and buy 5 pounds of oranges to get a pitcher of fresh-squeezed juice.

Then on Sunday, it was a little windier in the morning. It was in the air, the whispers of autumn. And at the market, there were apples. And the mushrooms were calling out. And when I sat in the kitchen this morning, slicing apples up, I grew intoxicated by thoughts of the months to come, the scents of cinnamon and ginger, the tastes of apples, pumpkins, potatoes. Mushroom sauce, and stews. I felt a little giddy.

Time moves too fast sometimes, and these days especially. So much is happening, and so many uncertainties present themselves. Once again, I am in this strange position of having no idea where I will be 1 year from now. And sometimes, as in the past, that feels unsettling, and I feel like the ground beneath me is crumbling. But other times, all it takes is a bowl full of cinnamon, sugar, and apples to calm me down. It's as easy as apple pie. Some things change, and yet enough always remains.

you're so vain

2010-09-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

I submit to you Exhibit A in the Reasons why Med Students are sometimes Insufferable series:

JDL: How was the visit back east?
me: Really great. I like hanging out with people outside of medical school; it can have a grounding effect.
JDL: What do you mean?
me: You know, it's nice to be around people who don't care if you're a butcher, baker or candlestick maker. They just want to know if you like this year's Sam Adams' Oktoberfest and if you are one of those creeps who roots for the Yankees.
JDL: (laughs) Yeah, it can be a nice break.
me: Well, I also think when we're isolated in our little medical school world, it's easy to indulge ourselves in thinking that we have it really tough. We cut ourselves a little too much slack, convinced we work so much harder than everyone and that we're so busy, such that everyone should have to make allowances for us. But then you hang out with other people and realize that everyone has their own lives and things that they are juggling. I like that I'm not just let off the hook, or given special dispensation.
JDL: Yeah, although sometimes I wish they would show a little deference.
me: (CHOKING AND GAGGING) What?
JDL: I don't know, I'm just saying that if your average person rescued someone with CPR, they would remember those chest compressions their entire life. Meanwhile, I've done so many, I forget the faces of the patients.
me: Okay... well... if you built a house from scratch, that would probably make a big impression in your life, and I am certain that most construction workers lose count of how many homes they've been responsible for building.
JDL: (big deep sigh, acts like I am being ridiculous and argumentative) Yes, but I would argue that a bad day for a construction worker is not the same as a bad day for an ICU doctor.
me: (grinning incredulously) Oh I would absolutely agree with you, JDL! Because a bad day for a construction worker could end with he or she dead or paralyzed, losing their ability to earn their living.
JDL: (exasperated) I think you're missing my point.
me: Oh yeah, I'm the one missing the point.

In short, judging from this little pipsqueak, I do not believe that children are the future, folks.

I've got nothing to do today but smile

2010-09-02T22:53:00.000-07:00

In case the two people still reading this blog were worried, here's some assurance that I am just fine:

Or maybe that causes more concern? I suppose the correlate to the kitchen keeping me calm is that the activity ramps up there considerably when I am stressed.

But you guys, I was so happy tonight by the time I completed the above pictured. I've written before about my fixation on making pasta sauce properly from scratch. And while I often continue to miss San Francisco like a phantom limb, one wonderful thing about my current place of residence is the abundance of produce. Not only can I easily secure all manner of very reasonably priced and locally grown produce at the farmer's market, but also various friends of mine will occasionally surprise me with some crop from their garden.

Yesterday, KS reminded me that she has been trying to unload tomatoes on me for the past three days. People, I am supposed to be doing all sorts of other things right now. I could give you a nice list of at least 5 high-priority-super-important-your-future-depends-on-it tasks on which I should be focusing. And I don't even eat tomatoes. I know, I am a weirdo, but I have never been fond of the texture of raw tomatoes. As I have (slightly, somewhat, very barely) matured, I have been able to force myself to be civil and gulp down chopped tomatoes in a salad or sandwich if pressed. But I really do not care for it.

But you guys, when someone gives you free goods from their garden, you just don't refuse. So it was I came into the possession of a bag of tomatoes slightly past their prime. Only one thing to do really. By good fortune, one of my favorite go-to food bloggers just happened to have whipped up a batch of sauce recently, and I used her recipe for a good basic idea. I remain horrible at following recipes to the dot- some things will never change.

By the time I was finished making the sauce, it was way past dinner. But whatever, I have sauce, and it tastes good, the way fresh sauce should. Tomorrow I am making focaccia, and there is a fragrant little bowl of olive oil steeping rosemary and garlic to give it a little extra punch. And it occurs to me that I am back to what feels right to me again. I know there are other things I ought to be doing, but honestly, occasionally, I need a little break from the full-on medical immersion that choosing this path has entailed. Maybe I do not belong in the most high-powered residency programs in the country, and maybe that is just fine. I belong somewhere that does not try to quell or discourage my desire to occasionally spend an evening squeezing all the seeds out of tomatoes.

now our lives are changing fast

2010-08-31T21:31:00.000-07:00

Hm. It occurs to me that perhaps it is a bit misleading to go over a month without a post, and then to let out a little unhappy post. It is certainly not the whole story.

LS pointed out in the comments that she thought I was silent because I was happy. Well, yes and no. Truth be told, I was just picking myself up off the floor every night for the past month. Work-wise, the hours were long and I was mostly fighting off exhaustion for the better part of the month. And there was another truth I had to face- San Francisco is not where I live anymore.

I stayed there, for a month, to do a rotation. That much is true. And it is also true that on certain grey mornings, when I was feeling a little unsettled, I would take a turn around the broseph's neighborhood, and a familiar sense of calm would come over me. No other city has this hold on me, that is a fact. But it's not home anymore. It's not mine.

Which is okay. I went to San Francisco for a month to find answers, and instead, I discovered a multitude of questions. You figure out what you want, and then you get it, but then there is always the next thing, the next decision, the next point, and the whole process begins again, of trying to sort it all out. And application season is upon me now, a time that is fraught with uncertainty anyhow.

Throw on top of that a previously amazingly drama-free XY that suddenly became the dude who did not eat my coffee cake (!?!). I hesitate to write that it was all a hiccup, a big misunderstanding that resolved itself. For while that is, in one sense, true, that's the surface. There are aftershocks. I am on unsteady footing.

But I know with great certainty where the solid ground is. I know how to get there. I know how to be alone. It's my area of expertise. The interesting thing is that I am choosing to be a little wobbly. I am choosing to see this through, even if the easier option is to eliminate the complication. I am walking a tightrope; my self-possession has flared and I am taking care of myself, but I am not giving into it so entirely that I am sequestering myself from the dude who did not eat my coffee cake (this title really may stick).

It's a challenge, to say the least. This is not my natural state. I'm at my most thermodynamically stable when it's just me, a ball of yarn, a bag of flour. No complications. No alarms, no surprises. But I'm forcing myself out of my comfort zone a little. For a little while.

could have done better, but I don't mind

2010-08-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

I was chopping up a bell pepper and he moved a chair into the kitchen, because the conversation couldn’t wait. I had seen it coming, but strangely, couldn’t simply sit and talk to him. Instead, I swirled some eggs and milk together, added salt and pepper, and put a skillet on the stove. As I dabbed a little butter on it, I said, “Do you mind if I cook while we talk?”

It wasn’t so strange, in retrospect. No one can hurt me in the kitchen. It’s my domain. When I am there, I am indestructible, and I knew this, as the butter melted on the pan. I’ve never scrambled eggs properly before, but today, as we delved through miscommunications and misunderstandings, the eggs turned out perfectly. I threw some mozzarella and the chopped peppers into the skillet as he sat there, flustered.

He noted that I didn’t seem as upset as he did, as I popped a hulled strawberry into my mouth. I was upset, as a matter of fact, but being upset is different from being hurt. It’s hard to explain, hard to believe that something as simple as a warm coffee cake cooling on the wire rack is enough to give one the sense of invincibility. I don’t pretend to understand it.

But no wonder he didn’t eat a bite. And yet, if the kitchen is my turf, if I am omnipotent there, then something else is also true- if you don’t eat my coffee cake, oh, well then we are most certainly through.

the stillness is the move

2010-07-28T14:40:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you have to write, you are compelled to let the words out, and other times you have to not write, keep everything inside, gestate, let things settle and become sensible. Or in this case, you have to keep silent because otherwise all that will come out is an incoherent meeepzs! In other words, too much has been going on and it has been too overwhelming.

And my coping mechanism has been to go back to what I know best. Which might be words, but is mostly playing it close to the vest. Don't ask me. I can't tell you. Or more accurately- don't ask me. I won't tell you. These things, these confusions, these mazes and labyrinths, they are of my own design, and they are altogether mine. About such bewilderment, I am a bit selfish.

Only because I don't know how to put them into the right words. The words are there, but they are like clouds above my head, and if I reach to pull them down into print, they will dissolve to fog or sprinkle down rain. I have to leave them floating for now, I have to let them stretch out against the bright blue sky.

Too much, and not enough to tell, it seems. I am going to San Francisco next week. For a month, I will pretend I live there again. Except I will be doing a poor performance. My luck, well, who am I to complain about bad luck, because really, in the scheme of things, my luck has been nothing to bemoan. But there is a certain poetry in this, returning to the city in which I felt most me at one time, only to find myself in negotiations as to how many weekends I can leave San Francisco. Seriously? Seriously. Who is this person, having these negotiations, navigating these waters? Surely not me. Every time there is such a discussion, every time the chess match resumes, I am split wide open. One half of me finds this hilarious, wholly amusing, and rather revels in the absurdity of it all. The other half balks, is horrified, and wonders how it is possible that so much energy could be expended on something not entirely of my own making. It occurs to me- everything has been about me first for so long that I haven't a good handle on the concept of compromise.

And this, in turn, sparks a whole new line of thought. Pied Piper and I were chatting about this noise, and I had made a passing remark about how this relationship foolishness stopped stressing me out once I realized that no one can really dismantle me anymore. No one has that sort of power over me anymore, except perhaps for me. He thought it was a rather obvious thing, apparently. But to me, it was a revelation. And it took all this time to see that I'm not her anymore. No one even knows her anymore, so no one else would bother to notice. They don't know that she used to bend over backwards to make things work, took everything on her own shoulders, and then would, wounded and saddened, sit waiting for a call that never came. To write it down now, to put the words down now, well, of course, she is long gone. I wouldn't recognize her either. I used to think I would be sorry, the day that I saw her disappear. I used to think that, despite her stupidity, there was a kind of romance to it, the way she was unswerving in her devotion. And then comes one more revelation- she is not really gone. She just got a little more selective, and she became me.

I'm breaking my back but it's all good

2010-07-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

My latest line has been that, if you catch me in September, you'll find a very relaxed and well-adjusted person. One of my more blatant lies, or delusions, depending on who it is exactly I am trying to kid. Medical school, and disturbingly enough, yes, the entire process of medical training (and possibly medicine as a career) is a series of hoop-jumping exercises. Take this test, pass this rotation, apply to this, interview for that. Boxes must be ticked, deadlines must be met. It seems interminable, and in some ways it is interminable, which can sometimes be a tough pill to swallow. But, on the other hand, I'm told that one becomes more accustomed to it over time.

Your fourth year of medical school, I am told, is supposed to be some golden, magical time though. Once you've cleared the more unwieldy points, it is supposed to be all relaxation and a time to recover from some of the rigors of third year as well as a time to hibernate before the terror of internship besets you.

STB, aka my sort-of-bf-person-I-don't-know-don't-ask-me, was telling me the other day that he dislikes this year of medical school. He likes having work to do, feeling useful, knowing that what he is doing is serving something besides himself. It is probably one of the many reasons we have gotten ourselves into this mostly pleasant mess. I know what he means. I felt far more content a month ago, when I was working in the hospital and was actually useful to the fellows and residents, than now, when I have a break to study for yet another stupid standardized test.

And I know that, for all my talk, come September, I will fill all kinds of things into my free time. Research projects, teaching projects, baking projects, knitting projects and (yes, worst of all) relationship projects. And I seem to have a knack for making even the most universally acknowledged blow-off rotations into something I take seriously. I don't have it in me to be a slacker in the hospital, which is probably why I ultimately belong there. And moreover, I think I'm just not someone who is content to coast along at one level. Despite how stressful and aggravating it can sometimes be, I think it's ingrained, this need to keep pushing.

The only thing I have managed not to push, miraculously enough, is STB. Once I realized that I had no need to be with him, suddenly everything was a lot less complicated. I am still not over the moon at the idea of becoming attached to someone at a time when everything is transient and everyone is looking to head elsewhere, but these things often have little to do with choice. Still, I feel very confident that I cannot be crushed, at least not in the way I have been in the past. That seems to provide me with a lot of calm.

Also, there is a certain simplicity to it that I can only explain by quoting a middling movie:

Willie: He makes you happy?
Andera: Yeah. I look for that in a man, you know. The ones that make me miserable don't seem to last.
Willie: Right.
Andera: You know, there are four words I need to hear before I go to sleep. Four little words. "Good night, sweet girl." That's all it takes. I'm easy, I know, but a guy who can muster up those four words is a guy I want to stay with.

Go ahead, laugh it up, I acknowledge it's fairly cheeseball. And with that, I return to the drudgery of memorizing a whole lot of minutiae.

and your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape

2010-07-08T06:38:00.000-07:00

It should be noted that I am not from Ohio. However, EBF doesn't lend itself quite as poetically to song lyrics. So I make do with The National's latest. The song is ostensibly about everything that comes along with going back to the place where you started, something near and dear to my heart. But it's also chock full of such beautiful lyrics, I can hardly stand it. Lofty imagery like I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees and the simple depth of I never thought about love when I thought about home.

Recently, people have been asking me if I am moving back to the East Coast, or more specifically, if I want to move back. It's a difficult question for me to answer. A part of me does, very much so. The very reason I left the East Coast turns out to be the reason I ponder going back. When I left, I wanted to be free, I wanted to sever the bonds that were keeping me tied to place. And I did, and it's meant everything. But I am undecided as to whether this weightless floating and this wandering is what I want forever.

It may just be the lot of those of us who could not stay in one place for whatever reason. There are more of us than there used to be, in this modern age. And I suppose that whenever I think about the question, it always comes down to home, the very concept of it. I don't really have a place I would call home. When I go back to EBF, I have a strong sense of my history and from where I came, but not of home. When I go to San Francisco, I remember fondly everything the city did for me, how it would envelope me in an embrace of fog on pensive nights. But I can't be sure I belonged there, can't be certain that going back would mean I had found my home.

That is when I come to the reality, which complicates things. Home, for me, is people. It really and truly is. When I am with certain people, I feel more at home wherever I happen to be geographically. It complicates things, of course, because those people are not all conveniently lumped together in a 10-mile radius of each other. So will I move to the East Coast? Perhaps. I have some sense of home there. And in Ohio. And in Pennsylvania. And in Houston. And in San Francisco. As usual, nothing can be decided just now, but the decision will become clear when it is before me. Or so I hope.

In the meanwhile, take a listen to this song, and grow a little wistful about home.

one life stand

2010-07-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well, this is interesting. I could write about some relationship (blech) hungama, but that is not where my head is these days. Yes, indeed. I find medicine more interesting than determining whether or not I am making a gigantic mistake getting tangled up with some clown.

You see, it is normally quite easy to distract me from matters of science and medicine, believe it or not, but there are two rather amazing things happening at the moment. First of all, despite what I just wrote, I am not involved with a clown. That, in and of itself, is rather amazing, because, seriously, how often does that happen? (I mean, but, sadly, it should be noted that this situation is not clown-free: I may be the clown this time around). Secondly, it turns out, lo and behold, I really am devoted to what I am doing.

Despite how that might seem an obvious thing from the outside, and despite how sometimes that also seems plain from the inside as well- still, there is something I have learned about certainty. You can be certain of something in the moment. You can mean something when you say it. It doesn't mean you'll always be sure; it doesn't mean what you say is cast in stone. The best decisions, it seems, are the ones you can revisit again and again. And though your reasons may be different, though your perspective may have changed, it turns out that, when you do the new math, look at it from the new angle, it was still the right choice.

Which is how I seem to feel at the moment. There is so much that is frustrating about the medical education process. Other people can probably go into that more eloquently. Yet I can say, once again, there is nothing I would rather be doing. The deeper I wade into it all, the further away from the esoteric nature of books and tests, the more I feel it enveloping me, in the best way possible.

There is a running joke, and it is not altogether funny or a joke, that one should avoid getting sick during the month of July. The hospital becomes chaos- new interns are starting, and the interns from the previous year are suddenly considered residents who have more decision-making capability. No one is very sure of themselves. Last week, I was working on a team with a new fellow, a new intern, and a visiting medical student from another country. Was it my role as a medical student to train any of these people or even to help them? No. But I cannot handle inefficiency, and I cannot handle watching people flail. There is a theme of 'throw 'em in the deep end and see if they swim' rampant in medical education that I find wholly unnecessary. What's more- aside from treating patients, there is little that is more satisfying than teaching someone something useful.

I suppose, when everything gets boiled down to its essence, that is what does it for me. That is why medicine is probably now a permanent part of my life, never to be discarded in its entirety. I know I have this need to be useful. And medicine always seems to find some use for me.

As for the non-clown situation, well, as I said, not anywhere near as interesting. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, though.

and looking for some parallel can be an endless game

2010-06-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

It seems like a lifetime ago, especially now that there are probably no such things as library stacks. We were sitting in the basement, the smell of old, yellowed pages pervading as we sifted through an ancient German synthesis paper. It was October. He said that Ipswich was beautiful that time of year; he made a throwaway remark about us taking a motorcycle ride out there to visit the orchards.

Oh, I was young then. Everything seemed so promising. And I wanted so much to believe. In my mind's eye, I could imagine it, the wind whipping through our jackets as we rode out, the leaves exploding in vibrant colors like fireworks all around us. I could hear the crunch of the leaves and the pine needles as we trudged out, the lanes of perfectly spaced apple trees. A bucket of apples at my side, the two of us resting our heads against a tree in reverie.

Except none of it ever happened.

And it was years ago, but was it really? Strange how the littlest of things mark you. Little empty promises and small hopes that were extinguished, they just sink deeper into your fabric over the years, it seems. And so, I suppose, it's no surprise, the way my voice flattens, my brain and heart go numb, and I sound completely ambivalent when asked away. All of this has happened before and will happen again. Or maybe (maybe?) not.

I don't want to doubt you, know everything about you

2010-06-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

In this world where the multi-tasker is king, let me tell you that I am one lowly serf. Sometimes I think that one of the reasons I am particularly inept at juggling multiple things at once is my willingness to let go. I accept the concept of sacrifice without a lot of resistance, I find. To some extent, anyone who goes to med school gets better and better at giving things up. It starts with sleep, then it becomes vacation time, then it becomes who knows?

So when I get overwhelmed, I get the same impulse that I do when I see a messy room. I just start throwing things in the garbage, I just want to throw everything away and have a blank slate, start again. I want to do the same thing when I feel like it is simply too much work to keep all of these parallel lives going.

But, as with anything, there are two sides to this coin. Being realistic is useful- I find this whole you can have it all! gusto with which some people approach the world a recipe for disaster or disappointment. On the other hand, there is the matter of getting so accustomed to losing things, letting everything go, that nothing anchors you, nothing keeps you, and you wonder if anyone would notice if you simply floated off into the distance.

So I waged war with some demons. I avoided falling victim to melancholy, stopped driving myself batty with overanalysis, started to put some distance as a means to survival. But I didn’t let go entirely, I didn’t light a match and drop it in a pool of gasoline. It was an unusual change of pace for me.

There are still no guarantees. I might still run, I could still float away. But I am letting time control the situation, instead of rebelling as I might have done in the past. I’m otherwise quite impatient- if I can’t figure out a situation, if it doesn’t become entirely clear to me in short order, I very quickly get fed up. And then I force a decision. Which isn’t always such a winning strategy.

Anyway- here’s a song that’s not from medieval times for a change. I am trying, for a change, to be more appreciative of my friends. But at the same time, sometimes I wonder how much of fading-friends-syndrome is my doing, and how much is a function of life and the way it progresses. And that is why this beautiful song seems appropriate.

it was mine all along, I'm going to find it

2010-06-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry to oscillate between the hospital and the personal. It all blends into one for me. Today, I am frustrated. I don't know if it is my own special talent, getting myself entangled in complex situations just as things are finally starting to become clear, muddying my own waters. Or if it is just that fate likes to have a laugh at me frequently. Either way, I am in something of a bind and I am sick of it.

I was venting to myself earlier today, because I was irrationally angry, because I do not know how to deal with the stupidity of beginnings of relationships, not anymore (as if I ever did). But it was interesting, what wound up suddenly spilling out, a sharp truth delivered like a splash of cold water.

You are not worth more than me.

Cool, cool water. It washed over me, and everything slowed down. I was suddenly calm. Because it happens to be an important thing to remember, and yet one I most often forget. In my desire to be accommodating and make things work, make pieces fit even if their edges don't match, I forget. I always forget.

And yet it's the only thing that must be remembered. It would not do, to lose sight of that. Once that is lost, everything goes with it. And I have worked too hard, come too far, to just dissolve into nothingness again. I can rebuild, I can reclaim, sure, I can survive- but why make it so dramatic as life and death? If I just keep hold of this truth, I can be steady, I can be bond. And nothing can hurt me really.

I used to live alone before I knew you

2010-06-10T05:33:00.000-07:00

One of my patients is dying. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the realm of Internal Medicine. Internists tend to manage some of the sickest folks in the hospital. In fact, this is not the first patient I have encountered who is not likely to survive his hospitalization.

Yet, this one, I must admit, is getting to me. In medicine, there is an impulse to suppress these feelings, the sadness and frustration and despair that comes with seeing a patient dying. This particular patient is 66 years old, was just recently diagnosed with a bad, untreatable variant of cancer, and was admitted to the hospital because he had an infection in his abdomen. My team was consulted because of the infection, but soon thereafter, his bowel perforated and air started to leak into his abdomen. The surgeons have told him that he is not a good surgical candidate. No one wants to intervene.

So every day, I walk into his room and watch this man slowly lose his dignity and become even less comfortable. And this is a man who is clearly not prone to complaints. A retired police officer, he rode Harleys in his spare time. Every time his family is visiting, he says that his pain is not that bad. Every time I see him in the morning, when he is alone, he tells me that the pain is excruciating and he does not know how much longer he can take it. Because the infection is the least of his worries these days, I spend most of my visits with him asking about his life, the work he did, or the bewilderment he experienced on learning he had cancer less than three months ago.

Yesterday, when I left him room, I said, “it is good seeing you this morning.” It was nothing special, a fairly typical farewell.

He said, “you don’t know how good it is to hear people say that, it really means something.”

I managed to tell him that I really meant it, and then stormed out of the room, knowing I was about to lose my composure. I know all the reasons I was about to lose it. This man is dying, but death is a natural part of life, in my opinion. The problem, for me, is how much he is suffering, and how little medicine can do for him, with all our talk of advances and compassion. And I hate watching patients lose their dignity; it really squeezed the life out of me to watch a stoic, previously strong man lying weakly in bed, not at all ready to die.

And there is something else too, something selfish. You see, you would think that you see things like this, and it changes how you view the world. You would think you see a patient dying, you see the love of his family and the way that people rally around him, and you would learn something from that. You want to learn something from that. You want to conclude that life is short and that you should focus on the important things in life. You want to be enlightened, and have that new knowledge translate into the way you live your life. But it doesn’t work that way. Some of that is due to you, and some of it is due to everyone else in the world. Regardless of the reason, you are stuck knowing that life continues to march on and you’re not applying any of the lessons you are supposed to be learning.

closer I am to fine

2010-06-07T21:54:00.000-07:00

Well. So much for having far more time on my hands to devote to writing. Of course, I have had time to write though. I’ve been writing a lot, in fact, but in the form of correspondence. Lately, I have been feeling a little overexposed, a little invaded. I’ll be the first to admit that I have quite a prickly exterior, and I do not like letting that soft underbelly show.

And it’s there, but it’s also not. I think I have been afraid, but sometimes my fears are misplaced. Sometimes it is easy to forget. Sometimes I neglect to note what time and experience has taught me.

This song is a cute little thumbing-your-nose-at-your-frustration ditty. It’s a little overstated, and it’s a little angry. But it’s also a little something to keep in mind, to always recall. It’s funny. I was corresponding recently about The Goal and about it I remarked: I decided that I didn’t want an alternative plan, you know? I didn’t want to be safe. I wanted to want it, to be crushed and disappointed if it didn’t work out. I already knew by then that I could feel that way and still survive. So at the worst, it would just be another matter of picking myself up off the curb, putting myself back together, and getting on with life. I really did feel that way about it. And to tell the truth, I am still proud of that impulse, that rhythm inside of me that was so unswerving and steady.

And yet, strangely, I can not seem to apply that kind of confidence and, yes, carelessness towards relationships. But I wonder why not. I’m even more certain I could withstand any manner of fiasco in the context of relationship- I’ve got more practice at recovering from all sorts of calamities, moreso than I’ve had in my professional life most certainly. I honestly think I had partially forgotten about my capability to emerge from attempted drownings. I know how to keep my head above water. But sometimes, I need to be reminded to come up to the surface, and this song is as good a reminder as any.

I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused

2010-05-30T06:08:00.000-07:00

"My life is very monotonous," he said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."

This little passage from The Little Prince has always meant a lot to me. The problem, of course, is that I have always fought off the idea of being tamed. For, as wonderful as it may be, it's also quite uncomfortable.

So here I find myself dancing with the whole idea, a tentative step towards, a nervous step back. I'm pulled to the idea of being tamed. I fight it because there is an expiration date on things these days. I am happy and I do not entirely see the point of disturbing that equilibrium.

And yet, I am perhaps not as cynical as I sound. Even in the back and forth, the conflict that leads to paralysis, the doubts and fears, in all of that there has to be some element of hope, or the scales would have been tipped towards my usual content state of status quo. I suppose what is left is figuring out what it is I'm hoping for.

In other news, it is finally starting to get warm here these days. Which means soon it will be time to embark on ice cream making. In preparation, I spent all of yesterday scrubbing my kitchen down (there is something silly about the idea of cleaning something up just so you can make it dirty again- I'm sure there is some meaning to this habit of mine, but I don't have the wherewithal to figure it out just now). This is much aided by an iPod tucked in your pocket. Preferably with cheeseball Bollywood songs, a healthy helping of 80s silliness like XTC and Duran Duran, and then closing it out with some Jay-Z. It sounds odd, but it is surprisingly effective.

if we part, I'm sure we'll meet again

2010-05-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

Strange days indeed.

Third year of medical school is supposed to be the most difficult one. Even though it is the opportunity to get into the clinics, see patients, figure out what you really want, it is also grueling, exhausting and makes you question yourself and your abilities. Fourth year of medical school, in contrast, is supposed to be the big exhale, the big period of calm and relaxation before the rigors of residency.

I am three weeks into my fourth year, and I haven’t been relaxed. Still, it’s by far the best three weeks of medical school thus far, and it will continue to be a good year, I suspect. Everything starts to fall into place; all the learning starts to come in handy. And most of all, you are more involved in taking care of your patients and talking to families and being an integral part of the team.

So all of that is good, and I should just be content and calm. And a part of me is. But the other part of me is developing a big, horrible ulcer. It is okay though. I have this little trick, and it really comes in handy. I remind myself that, in general, I am happy with the life I lead. When someone comes along and pushes me out of my equilibrium, the set point shifts. But I know, and nowadays it’s not a delusion but the truth, I know that I can go back.

It’s a more powerful thing than I imagined, really being aware that you’ll be okay on your own. I mean, I have known this for a long time. But I haven’t really taken it out for a test drive in a while. Until now.

Relationships (and even typing that word sparked a cringe cringe cringe response down to my bones) are a complicated business. Now I’m not saying I’m in one (because that would cause me to run to the closest bar and drown myself in Grey Goose until my liver was shot), but even entertaining the idea of one is tricky. In some ways, it’s made all the more difficult when the possibilities seem good, seem promising.

And for a tiny bit of time, I thought that I was getting ready for some troubled times. I could feel things crumbling. But then I remembered that I have been standing on my own two feet for some time now. And that no one can pull the rug out from underneath me except for me.

I like earthquakes. I like the ground beneath me crumbling a bit. But I am not going to collapse, not going to dive into an abyss. It’s still a weird feeling, because this is not my usual stable state, not a comfortable feeling. However, I have the oddest sense that everything will be fine- not because I know what is going to happen, but because I know nothing’s going to change my world, if you will.

After next week, my schedule gets pretty sweet, so I’ll be posting more regularly (inspiration willing).

no need for words now, we sit in silence

2010-04-17T18:26:00.000-07:00

K was watching a Youtube video of a man signing to The Black Eyed Peas Tonight’s gonna be a good night, and after the second viewing, S wandered out “to the porch.” This was how he referred to the stoop of two steps of concrete leading down to the walkway that night. Drinks dangling comfortably in our hands, we sat down together on the slab. An entire person could have fit in the space between us. We knew this, but we pretended not to know. We feigned comfort in our own little spheres.

It seemed like moonlight at first, but it was more the streetlight. It might have tinged the green leaves yellow, it might have made yellow leaves glow a bit iridescent. We had been drinking for too long to know for sure. But the small leaves clustered together and swayed slightly, lit by the moon and by the streetlights, together, shimmering against the night sky.

The cool night air kept us calm, but we did not shiver. The dog emerged and sat down in the front lawn. I changed the music to Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds, and returned to my place on the stoop. K came out and it was only natural that she should sit between us. We all looked up at the breeze that we could not really see, and for a time, no one said a word.

Take a snapshot, photograph the moment, and it would have seemed like nothing. Nondescript house, three friends sitting around on a stoop on a Friday night, gazing about with buzz-filled glassy eyes. But it was so beautiful, so universal, so everything that has always been and always will be. May there always be stoops and beautiful nights and friends raising their glasses. And may there always be more than meets the eye- the unspoken tension, the possibilities, the delicious torture of uncertainty. Every bit of it, so so beautiful.

life is unkind, we fall but we keep getting up

2010-04-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

I seem to be oscillating between new and old tunes, so forgive the mood swings- that’s what happens when a student is doing a psychiatry rotation, I suppose (not really, said student just likes to tie in Psych references every time she does anything bonkers). The artist formerly known as Pied Piper tried to give me an assignment- silly rabbit, Trix are for kids, of course supplying me with a song to consider never leads to any writing on my part! He wanted me to ponder one Pretenders song, but instead, just to be the royal pain in the neck that I am, I found myself drawn to a different one.

This, I think, is because I’m avoiding melancholy. There is something distressing, something which could lead to meltdowns and heartbreak, just around the corner. I know gut aches lie ahead. But I am willfully ignoring it all. I am sticking my fingers in my ears like a five year old, stomping my feet, chanting “I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you!”

And at a time like this, The Pretenders’ Message of Love is a nifty thing to have at the ready. As in my earlier post last month, I really do wonder what happened to all the bad-a$$es like Joan Jett and Chrissie Hynde. Where did they come from, and why has no one carried on the torch? I remember the first time I heard Brass in Pocket, which coincided with the first time I saw the video- my reaction is best summed up as W. T. F.. Hynde is so strong. Her voice and the way she carries herself on stage, she just has this presence, this very do not f*** with me presence. And while the lyrics to Brass in Pocket are at face value almost arrogant, they are also longing, and she looks almost vulnerable in the video. I recall that I kind of loved that. Being a tomboy who could not decide whether she wanted to kick or kiss a boy, Hynde’s combination of confidence and yearning gave me a lot of hope.

As for Message of Love, this is just one of those songs. You know, at some point, I will compile a mix of songs that are guaranteed to cheer you up, and this will most definitely make the list. But it’s ten times better because it’s The Pretenders and it’s rock. I don’t know. When rock music is optimistic, not lewd or suggestive, not angry, not sarcastic or ironic, just optimistic, it’s so refreshing that you can’t help but grin. Message of Love starts with a catchy guitar and drum rhythm, the kind that makes your ears prop up a bit and pay attention. The lyrics show up, with Hynde’s usual combination of confidence and tenderness, and it may as well be gospel. Because Hynde’s lyrics, Wilde quote notwithstanding, are not that imaginative by any stretch. Message of Love is at its core quite a simple song in all regards. But I’m hard pressed to come up with a better argument for the less is more aesthetic than this song.

And as an added bonus, it wards off the other messages of love, the ones that involve uncertainty, disappointment, and loss. “Lalalala, I can’t hear you,” I yell again and crank up The Pretenders.

you are mine, you are what you are

2010-04-05T22:34:00.000-07:00

So. I was going to write some down in the dumps post about this alarming dream I had recently, but thankfully for you and me, I remembered that I practically drove my car off the road yesterday when I heard this song. Because I am no teeniac and because I grew up in EBF and because I am fond of folk music anyway, I immediately recognized the CSNY hook. Actually, I imagine most people in my age range would recognize it, even if they did not know it was CSNY.

I used to listen to a lot of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, no joke. I still think Helplessly Hoping is one of the saddest, prettiest songs ever. And the chorus of Southern Cross is probably permanently etched into my brain. But it always bothered me, the ending of Judy Blue Eyes. At first, it bothered me because I couldn’t understand the words at the end. The song becomes playful and then Stills bursts out into a foreign language. I assumed it was Spanish at the time.

Later, I believe Stills (or CSNY fans, not sure which) put in real Spanish lyrics, but in earlier interviews, Stills made remarks about how he had purposefully sang the coda in broken Spanish, wanting it to be essentially incoherent. Even as a young punk, that did not sit well with me. It sounded like a tourist’s interpretation of what Cuban music sounds like, and later, when I really listened to Cuban music, that became even more obvious.

It’s interesting, getting older, when it comes to music. In the late 90s, I remember a lot of people getting awfully bent out of shape about Déjà vu sampling Steely Dan’s Black Cow. Of course, this had a lot to do with the fact that the rappers who sampled Black Cow didn’t bother to ask permission and thus got themselves sued. But then again, rappers had been getting away with that kind of stuff for years. Part of it was that the tidal wave that is hip hop had not quite swept all preconceived notions away. There was still an argument about whether rap was music back then. The other part was that it was perceived as laziness, using someone else’s music in that way. In the case of Déjà vu, most of the criticism was legitimate- the only thing that really sticks out about the song, in retrospect, is the Steely Dan sample, which remains awesome.

Armada Latina is an entirely different experience. First of all, there’s the generational aspect. I bet most people who have listened to Armada Latina don’t even know (or care) who CSNY are (I’m not entirely convinced most people listening to the song are even aware of who Cypress Hill are). They certainly don’t care about hip hop co-opting a part of a song. And they most definitely do not consider it laziness.

But beyond all that, there is something else still at play here. This song reminds me of warm nights in Brooklyn (I know, I never lived there, I don’t know why it comes to mind). I am reminded of a colorful bar on the corner, people spilling out of it and drinking while music pulses. I am reminded of the different sounds and people and the beautiful clash of everything. It brings to mind Junot Diaz, in a way, this idea that this is the world we live in now. In this world, you don’t listen to Stills sing in gibberish; in this world, you get the real thing and if you don’t know the translation, then look it up, cabron, because that’s your problem.

I don’t know if Cypress Hill meant it that way, if they picked this sample because of it. After all, setting all of that aside, this song is just good. It should be played all over the place this summer. And it makes me happy when groups like Cypress Hill make a reappearance, because, selfishly, it makes me feel less like a member of the AARP. But I have to admit that the reason it tickled me as much as it did on first listen is how fiercely Cypress Hill and (okay fine) ~~Skeletor~~ Marc Anthony reclaim the CSNY bit- listen to it and tell me you don’t hear a little glee in that.

I demand a rematch

2010-03-31T21:31:00.000-07:00

I blame Pied Piper 115% for this one. (You’ll note I’m not even bothering to come up with some sorry excuse for why my blogging frequency is both inconsistent and pathetic of late, because I think it would just be a bunch of empty promises at this point and you all deserve better.) This is one of the best things about music though.

R.E.M’s Green was released in 1988. I was very young at the time. I mean, not so young that I shouldn’t have been listening to the album. I was maybe just a few years younger than those who the album was targeting. And I have to say that Green was responsible for getting me some major cred points among my classmates. A few years earlier, I had distractedly scrawled ‘R.E.M’ onto my jeans and ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine’ on the margin of my notebook during study hall and CR, your average teenage boy who made a point of noting anything that did not conform perfectly to accepted norms, had called me a freak. Only ‘freaks’ listened to R.E.M and The Cure and The Smiths at that time.

Then Green came out, and everyone was dancing around to Stand, and suddenly I got a reputation for knowing about music. In case you have not guessed, this is me rolling my eyes.

Anyway, the thing is, I listened to Green a lot. I mean, a lot, because it was a pop album, at its core- it had catchy hooks and even some straightforward lyrics. But to be perfectly honest, I did not pay them much mind. Usually, with Michael Stipe lyrics, I found little gems in the gibberish and clung to them even if they meant to me something altogether different than what was intended. Even if I could not get a complete handle on what Stipe was trying to say in The Finest Worksong, I could celebrate the poetry in “what we want and what we need has been confused, been confused.” Green seemed a little bit of a departure, because the lyrics were seemingly a bit more obvious.

Maybe. But I was still too young, too new to the world to really have them mean a lot to me.

And I did not really revisit a whole lot of R.E.M. Maybe because the assault of Losing My Religion and Everybody Hurts cured me of the need to hear much of them. Also, R.E.M, while it was often played by teenagers and on college radio, was never really a band for teenagers, I realize in retrospect. They really lacked the angst of adolescence.

There is no better proof of that than World Leader Pretend which that troublemaker Pied Piper brought back into my consciousness recently. It is not like I had forgotten about that song. He mentioned it and almost reflexively, I heard the lyrics this is my mistake, let me make it good. But it did not mean anything to me. When I was listening to this song as a little punk, it was someone else singing to me. I mean that it was about someone else. It was a character, and I was listening to his story.

Surely not mine. I hadn’t made a mess of much, hadn’t built walls, hadn’t brandished weapons, hadn’t done much damage. I had little to regret. The song was not about me, not then. So imagine my surprise when I revisited the song and found it was telling my story. I am not entirely certain I am glad of that. I sometimes don’t think of myself as that different, who I was as a little teenage punk and who I am now. But this song is all about the contrast, all about how it's impossible to go back, how some changes are irreversible.

I do not mean to suggest that I am in any way special, and I suppose that is the point. You get this far in life, oh, you’ve done some damage, you’ve eaten the pavement a few times. Which gets to my original point. The song was always meant for an adult. And I was not one when I first heard this song. And ultimately this:

This is my world and I am world leader pretend
this is my life, this is my time
I have been given the freedom to do as I see fit
It’s high time I raised the walls that I’ve constructed

Well, this is rather hopeful in my opinion. This fills me with a sense of purpose. It’s an urge, an entreaty not to simply give into patterns and history with melancholy and resignation. In some ways, the peace treaty is just as big of an undertaking, just as big of a fight as the war.

pretending that you're oh so shy

2010-03-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

In EBF, we had junior high, which I guess was middle school for some people. Since our high school could only handle three grades, there were no freshmen there. Instead, junior high had grades 7-9. Big deal, right? When I think back on it, actually, yes, really big deal.

There is a pretty sizable difference between a high school freshman and a 7th grader. Now granted, I was a pretty sheltered 6th grader. I didn’t have older siblings. I had an older cousin who came to stay with us during the summers, but that didn’t start until I was already in junior high, and that’s a story for another time. Most of the kids in my neighborhood were my age. The ones that were older were relatively mild-mannered types, or thankfully immature boys, who still got a kick out of playing dodgeball in the street after suppertime. But even taking all of this into account, I don’t know how things are now, but back then, the most scandalous thing you did in elementary school was learn how to curse. And possibly some boys and girls held hands or kissed.

Until I started junior high school, all the music I had been exposed to came from relatively safe sources. My father played music, but it was either old Beatles’ albums (not edgy Beatles, but She Loves You Beatles) or Kishore Kumar’s greatest hits. The radio played music, but in EBF this meant that you heard some J. Geils’ Band and whatever happened to be on American Top 40 that week. One of my masi’s was a disco fanatic, so occasionally, I got to listen to ABBA or the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. We finally got MTV in EBF when I was nearing the end of elementary school, and so I got to see Michael Jackson, Run DMC, Prince, and Duran Duran.

The thing is, I can think back and realize that a lot of the music I was listening to, even before I started elementary school, was not appropriate for a kid. Prince songs? Definitely racy. J. Geils’ Band singing about finding out a girlfriend made some change on the side by posing as a playmate? Also not appropriate (nor was the video in retrospect). Even Adam Ant bemoaning “don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do?” is far from the right message to send a pre-teen. Still, none of that music seemed at all scandalous when I was listening to it in those days. For one thing, we conveniently were too naïve to understand the innuendos and inappropriate messages. For another, the music in those days was so bubbly and playful, it was easy not to take it as anything forbidden or dangerous.

Which is why it still stands out in my head, a day early in 7th grade. Riding the bus was terrifying in those early days. The 9th graders sat in the back, and looked like they could eat you alive. I didn’t grow up in the rich part of town. These 9th graders had been around. They smoked. They wore tight jeans. They had aggressively feathered hair, and I don’t mean that in a girly way with Aquanet and curls- it looked like an animal’s mane, unkempt and scraggly, like they’d been in a fight with a lawnmower. They looked like they were just waiting for an excuse to tell you to shut up. I remember one of them would snap, “what the hell are you looking at?” the moment your eye wandered in her general direction.

Because they knew you were looking at them. It was hard not to look at them. They looked dangerous. They looked like they had crossed lines you were afraid to, and they carried themselves as if they thought you were a weakling for staying safely within the boundaries. They were decidedly un-ladylike, but unapologetic about it.

So I still remember that day on the bus. The 7th graders were sitting in the front as we always did, nodding our head along to Madonna or whatever stupidity was playing. The reception went fuzzy, and the bus driver switched the dial slightly, and suddenly, there it was. The driver was about to change it, but the girls in the back yelled, “Don’t touch it!” and “Leave it on that!” And when I think back on it, it’s kind of funny, because I am quite certain that even the bus driver was scared of those girls. Because the bus driver froze and left it on the station.

It’s not even her most aggressive song, not even her most suggestive song. She didn’t even write it herself. But wow. There was the alarming drum roll, the angry hand claps, and the, well, demanding guitar. As a kid, you just heard that some girl liked rock’n’roll and wanted the jukebox to play another song. At least, you knew that’s what you were supposed to be hearing. Just harmless fun.

But there was nothing harmless about hearing that song as someone about to become a teenager. It was a dangerous song, no getting around it. The guitar and the beat and that flattened what-the-hell-are-you-looking-at voice. Joan Jett was the patron saint of the girls on that bus. She was like nothing I had heard prior to that. And she was always alarming. My father, who would put up with us listening to Madonna and Michael Jackson and even Run DMC, would blanche at the idea of leaving Joan Jett and the Blackhearts on. Because this was a girl who did what she wanted and would not be swayed. You could say you were all for women being able to do a man’s job, but Joan Jett showed up and actually did it, and it was discomfiting. Because she wasn’t demure about it, she wasn’t batting her eyelashes and modest. She had a swagger. And this was not the kind of strong woman my father had in mind when he issued platitudes about being independent and doing anything I wanted.

It’s obviously no coincidence that I’m bringing all of this up, when a biopic about The Runaways is soon to be released. I probably won’t watch the movie, but the constant commercials reminded me of those early days, the fear and the fascination. I was too young to listen to the Runaways when they were together, but I listened to them plenty later, in junior high. I never became one of those girls at the back of the bus. I was never that strong, never that aggressive or angry. But I was rebelling, and my favorite way to do that in those early days was music. When it came to Joan Jett and The Runaways, no one had to issue the dare, no one had to actually voice the words, “this is wrong” or “girls shouldn’t do this.” It’s like it was programmed in all of us. The moment you heard the songs, the first time you heard it, you knew it was wrong, you knew it in your core. It went against everything that was ingrained in everyone at the time. It wasn’t just for the girls either. I remember how the boys both liked Joan Jett and were confused by liking Joan Jett.

Later on, Pat Benatar showed up and gave everyone something safe they could like, a watered down version. But Pat Benatar, for all her scowling and pouting and threatening pimps, never frightened me. Joan Jett scared the crap out of me. And it was awesome.

take only what you need from it

2010-03-02T18:01:00.000-08:00

There have been a lot of questions swirling around in my head, but no space or time to find any of the answers.

Two of the rotations I was dreading most in medical school were Obstetrics and Pediatrics. Really, more people should dread Obstetrics than do- fear the placenta, I say, for there is nothing particularly appealing about that part of childbirth conveniently left out of the likes of Knocked Up. I was also dreading (forgive me, XX's of the world) the idea of working in a female-dominated area. In the past, in groups of women, I've always floundered a bit. There's a hierarchy and code that I somehow missed by being too much of a tomboy when I was a kid and hanging out with way too many teenage boys when I was a bit older. And even though I got better at it as I got older, I still always felt more comfortable hanging with cowboys as compared to sororities. Pediatrics, I feared for less rational reasons- I thought of children as little alien beings who make a lot of noise at Target, and I worried about dealing with anxious parents.

In the end, both of the rotations went surprisingly better than I could have hoped. While I happily leave the delivery of babies to those more interested in that sort of thing, I liked how focused the field is. You can figure it out and become fairly competent at it, and, as a medical student, that's always an attractive quality. Moreover, I got to spend some time in the OR, resecting ovarian tumors, and that felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I'd reconciled by then that I have a fondness for surgery, but no aspirations to pursue it. But in some ways that made it more interesting, as I could just allow myself to be fascinated. The patients were so interesting, facing an uphill battle that can sometimes feel much like Sisyphus, but most of them were ready for the fight.

While I was justified in thinking of children as aliens- after all, they did infect me with their foreign pathogens and render me half alive for a solid 2.5 weeks of an 8 week rotation- Pediatrics was also one of my favorite rotations of medical school.

For one thing, it bridged a gap for me. There was a young, idealistic version of me that was once interested in medicine. But that was a long time ago. It wasn't until much later that my interest in medicine experienced a rebirth, and this later, more measured, eyes wide open version of me decided this was the right thing for me to do with my life. Amusingly (to me), the earlier version of me was keen on Pediatrics. When I was young, I had this connection to children that seemed like a secret power. At family parties, I was always handed little babies and toddlers. I liked them even. They seemed to just know whether your intentions were pure, and I loved that they couldn't be fooled.

But all of that seems like ancient history, and most people who know me these days wouldn't even believe any of what I just wrote was even true. It's annoying though, the pressure to be consistent. So it was nice not to be. I'm sure my fellow classmates concluded it was some kind of act. But it was actually nice to be around some of the children (I can still do without the monosyllabic adolescents, though, when you finally get them to talk, you feel as though you just cured Polio).

And there's something else too, which I could not have predicted at all, having never worked with children in the hospital. Kids are often extremists. They usually present as previously healthy little dudes who were minding their own business, or they come to you with a whole host of issues. The latter is both complicated and difficult to bear. But the former makes pediatric medicine much more attractive than treating a 55-year old. A 55-year old comes to the hospital with poorly controlled diabetes, hypertension, and COPD secondary to smoking, and wants you to figure out why he has a stomach ache. Your head proceeds to spin off its axis, as you can amass a list into the next day of all the possibilities. A 5-year old comes in with a stomach ache, it's a completely different game- the list still has to be generated, but it's a shorter and cleaner one. You can come up with a diagnosis, run the right tests, figure out what is going on. And kids, of course, rebound better than your average 55-year old, which makes treating them, in many ways, more satisfying.

When I write that down, I realize it could come across as though I am considering a future as a pediatrician. It's strange, because I keep getting pulled in every direction except the one that I want to be pulled in. But I think that has more to do with the external rather than the internal. I've gotten a lot closer to be being certain of what is best for me to do. I just wish I could figure out why it took being told that I should be an obstetrician and/or a pediatrician to get to this point.

especially when it's wrong

2010-02-28T17:27:00.000-08:00

Last night, I finally stopped acting like a brain dead med school zombie and went to see a good movie instead of a mindless, moronic one (cough*Avatar*cough). At some point, I will get it together and try to explain how it came to be that I became a fan of Townes Van Zandt and T. Bone Burnett and the like. For now, you’ll just have to take my word for it that, for some strange reason, I’ve had this music in my blood for a long time now.

So watching Crazy Heart was like hanging out with some old, familiar friends for two hours. And of course, the movie is filled with actors to whom I already extend plenty of good will. Jeff Bridges gets a lifetime pass for The Dude, after all. Robert Duvall is always entertaining when he’s playing an old loony. I think the only time Maggie Gyllenhaal has ever seemed out of her element was in The Dark Knight, and who could blame her for that- it sort of just makes me more fond of her. And then, of late, it’s hard to think of Colin Farrell as the greasy sleazeball who was turning up in Miami Vice and Alexander- ever since In Bruges, it’s been hard to think of him negatively.

And then you toss in throwaway movements, like using Townes Van Zandt’s If I Needed You and Sam Philips’ Reflecting Light at opportune movements, and some picturesque shots of the great wide open, and it’s hard not to want to give this film a big hug.

Amusingly, there’s absolutely nothing new about this movie. When I’ve skewered Avatar to friends, I’ve accused it of being a thoroughly derivative piece of work with nothing new except for the special effects. Well, I have to own that there is very little that is at all novel about Crazy Heart, although it thankfully dodges a completely tidy ending. Still, it’s such a genuine movie, and so is the music. In a movie like this, the music is a crucial co-star. So it's a relief that the music is solid, and reminds me of all the career musicians E and I used to go see in New Jersey at these tiny little venues, older men who had clearly spent their lives working at increasingly smaller clubs playing to dwindling crowds- but music is in their blood and music is what they do and so there they are.

While there are other songs that are nominated for Oscars and such, the one I’m posting this week is my favorite for many reasons. It’s in the film because it’s advanced as the protagonist Bad Blake’s biggest hit. When asked if he gets sick of playing it, he gets in one of the many gems of the movie, stating that he owes the song too much to get tired of it. And when you hear the song, it’s catchy enough to be believable- T. Bone Burnett’s trusty fingerprints are all over it. The song also serves to be the backdrop for a beautiful scene in which the aging musician opens for the star that owes him his big break. It’s perfectly played- the new star is not a jerk and means well. It’s a subtle thing that could easily be misinterpreted- I’ve seen bands come out to support the opening act, and it’s always meant as a gesture to get the audience to pay attention. But you can see the tension in the performance. The aging musician knows it’s well-meant, and yet you can see that it crawls under his skin. All without a word exchanged between them.

And then there’s the song itself, the lyrics, which say everything you need to know about who this character is. His name is Bad Blake, and this song just reinforces that name. And it’s everything that’s great about country music. Good country music is deceptively simple. And this song is just like that. It doesn’t seem deep- ‘I was going where I shouldn’t go, seeing who I shouldn’t see, doing what I shouldn’t do and being who I shouldn’t be.’ But there is so many things you can take from it if you want, if you want to find them.

About the song Killing The Blues, which Robert Plant and Alison Krauss later made very popular, Shawn Colvin wrote: “Just when you think there’s no new way to say anything, you hear a song like this and think, that’s as good as anything before or since.” It’s not as if the subjects or themes of music are that varied. But I think Colvin’s quote gets to the heart of why that is okay.

*

If anyone is still reading this, I really am going to try to turn over a new leaf. Now that I have survived the germ-infested abyss of Pediatrics (all kidding aside, though, I do have some positive things to say about that rotation), I am making a concerted effort to get back into writing regularly, and perhaps tweeting a little less regularly. Can't promise anything of substance though, since lately most of my spare thoughts involve trying to piece together what the heck is going on with Lost.

I wouldn't trade one stupid decision

2010-01-25T16:26:00.000-08:00

The woods were lovely, dark and deep, and we had miles to go, but I was already asleep. It’s not like I’m a newcomer to this country, and yet, every time, I am struck by the scale of things here. Trees so large, mountains so tall, and I am so small. Sometimes that is comforting and sometimes that is not. Elsewhere and anonymity and all of that, but also insignficance and the fear of dissolution, disintegration. Am I even here? Am I in one piece, or just a set of molecules barely held together by weak forces, and it won’t be long before I fall to pieces.

You could meditate on such things when enveloped in a cloud of snow, in the blanket of white that makes everything look clean, pristine, untouched once again. It’s a blank slate, a slate wiped clean. You can take it as a sign and forge a path.

Or you can just take a deep breath of the fresh mountain air and behold the beauty of the temporary. Because you have been here before. You know it won’t last. Remember that this slate is really just covered, not clean. You know what lies beneath. But that doesn’t make you jaded. It makes you more aware of how precious, how amazing. So look at the impossibly blue sky and feel the biting wind from the lake, and let your eyes burn from the blinding reflection of the white.

It’s hard work, walking through a snow drift. And once you’re in deep, once you are in the heart of the forest, it’s like so many other difficult journeys- you must finish, simply because you have no other recourse, no other options that require less of you. It’s exhausting and after a while, you feel as though you simply can’t continue. But you stop, and take it all in, embrace the moment, and then you start again. And you keep going until you reach the end. And when you reach the end, it feels such a relief, it feels as though you will never feel so happy to be on pavement.

But the next day, you do it all again.

*

The drive home took hours longer than it should have. The roads were in some places treacherous. S was worried. When he gets worried, he gets quiet and restless. He kept peeking out windows and between front seats, trying to get a better view. He watched the bad drivers making bad decisions, and I could nearly see the muscles in his shoulder tensing up. K, driving, kept her chin up. She had wanted to leave early, get home in time to face the week with some degree of contemplation. Occasionally, she cursed loudly, but it was kind of a release and then she was satisfied for another hour, back to her chipper, perky baseline. MK was the calmest, reclining, remarking on the traffic and bad weather conditions as if he was announcing a game. And this gave me, trying my level best to distract myself from an onslaught of carsickness because wouldn’t that just add to the fun, a rather obvious idea.

“Maybe the game is on the radio?” I asked hopefully, though I was actually asking for permission, not out of curiosity. Of course it was on the radio. The West and the East may be different in some ways, but if there is one thing you can count on, it’s AM radio announcing football games when you are driving home from the mountains.

MK fiddled with the channels and found a station announcing. S asked, “Who do we want to win?” S is sort of proud of his lack of inclination towards television and sports (which sometimes makes me wonder how the two of us manage to be cordial towards each other in any way).

I shrugged. I didn’t really care who won (yikes, Maitri, please spare my life!), but, as I pointed out to S, “I’d really like Brett Favre to go away.”

He replied, “So we want the Vikings to win?” MK and I laughed and shook our heads. Sometimes I think S plays up his ignorance as a badge of honor, kind of the way I am blissfully unable to tell you the title of a single Jonas Brothers song.

We listened to the entirety of the game and still were not halfway home. I suppose I could complain about that, but instead, I have to admit that I was swimming in an ice pond of nostalgia. Frozen, frozen memories, snapshots. Technology, isn’t it great and all that, but sometimes, it’s nice to go backwards. Listening to the game on the radio was wonderful. Unlike S, I wasn’t watching our snail-like progress, or the pickup truck fishtailing in front of us. Instead, the announcers were painting beautiful pictures in my imagination. And radio announcers- I don’t know if they have different training, but they are exponentially superior to television announcers in calling games. I felt as though I watched every play.

Of course, it probably helped that MK told me of his favorite running gag this year, which has been to insert Brett Favre into everything. At first, it was confined to football, and he retold plays like “Here’s the snap, Brett Favre, play action fake to hand off the ball to Brett Favre, and now, oh, it’s a long pass to connect to… Brett Favre- touchdown, Brett Favre!” And then this progressed further into absurdity, such that Brett Favre basically became his personal Chuck Norris. For example- “I was worried about the economy, but I’m sure Brett Favre will take care of it.”

*

And finally, another song. An entire argument about me unfolded over the past week, and I didn’t even have to get involved in it, which was simultaneously ridiculous and hilarious. It was all about my social inclinations. One faction claimed I was a misanthropic hermit and that an intervention was necessary. The other faction argued that I just had a low tolerance for certain personalities and thus was just selective, and that I would emerge when circumstances allowed. A small renegade faction also voiced the minority opinion that I just enjoy being by myself and that I should just be left alone. I was supposed to rule on this and provide my verdict, but, as usual, I preferred to let resonance theory triumph.

Anyway, it and this past weekend made me remember this song.

eight million stories

2010-01-18T19:29:00.000-08:00

In the past, on MLK day, I had nothing very uplifting to say. And I probably don't have anything supremely uplifting to say today either, because med school does chip away at your idealism (especially because, ironically enough, you have to hear SO much of it spewed out all around you, and it more often than not turns out to be nonsense). And also because med school sometimes exhausts you such that you can't muster the energy to be upbeat.

I keep writing about the experiences that I don't actually want to repeat. I gush about surgeons, but I don't want to be one. I can't see myself taking care of children as part of my living, but that's what I did all day today. Perhaps it's when I'm less inclined towards a part of medicine that I spend more time contemplating the colorful personalities and interesting stories that emerge, whereas, when I work in the areas that I feel may be part of my future, I fixate more on self-reflection and doubts. Hopefully, as i become more competent, the balance will shift.

So, today was MLK day. Everyone else working in an outpatient clinic had the day off today, but I began working at a private practice this week, and an overly cautious phone call I made last Friday afternoon bit me in the proverbial rear, as I discovered that the private practice was open.

The phrase private practice brings to mind horrible television shows and posh offices and drug company lunches. I have to admit that I thought that I was probably embarking on a rotation filled with well-insured, well-employed, economically viable patients. And that I was probably going to spend the time with a bunch of doctors who were living a relaxed lifestyle and cashing in the payola. I figured they were working on MLK day because it was about the bottom line.

You know what happens when you assume.

The doctor I was working with today was a wealthy man in Tehran, and, as so many Iranians that I have met, had to start from scratch when he fled to America during the revolution. He had to repeat his residency, and so eager to get started was he that he volunteered to intern for free rather than wait the extra 9 months it would have taken to file an application- he had missed the deadline when he moved here. He had built this practice from the ground up, after having been chief resident at the university hospital. And last year, he had passed it on to a younger pediatrician. He is in the process of weaning his hours down.

We saw all manner of patients today. A few moderately well-off families, but by and large, Medi-Cal patients galore. I forget how spoiled I am to live in this part of the country. In the course of just a morning, I had seen a ridiculously diverse cross-section of the population. And I was very impressed to see that the pediatrician treated them all the same. Whether they had proper insurance or not, whether they came from broken homes or supportive ones, he focused on one thing and one thing alone- their well-being.

I got a text message from a classmate, who was shocked that I had to work today. It said the following (keep in mind it was meant to be taken lightly though):

Wtf? What outpatient clinic racist keeps their office open on MLK day?

Here's the thing. The younger pediatrician who has taken over the clinic? She is- yes, you guessed it- an African-American woman. Her father is a pediatrician as well, and dropped by the clinic in the evening to see the few stragglers left in clinic. Her mother busied herself with finishing up some of the last paperwork. And she, herself, was there, making sure a 14-year old girl with glucosuria was getting a proper diabetes workup, scrubbing down countertops as if it was all part of her job description. She took pride in this work, all of it, from seeing patients to every wire and light in the office.

It struck me as very noble, and I wonder if what I was seeing was not some part of medicine that is slowly dying. Private practices are actually rather rare to come by, especially ones like these, which take Medi-Cal and stay open on holidays. I found out today this clinic stays open on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. Also, I found out that the clinic basically breaks even every year.

And here's what else I found out. I'm not sure what I would have done with my day off. I think I probably would have treated it like a vacation day. Maybe I would have studied. Probably I would have baked something. And granted, I am but a medical student, so most of my day entailed looking in baby ear canals, and listening to lungs. But it was probably better than I would have done left to my own devices. And the thing about kids is that idealism is not wasted on them. So little is set in stone for them. So much promise. I suppose it's why I probably ultimately couldn't do pediatrics- I don't think I could bear that sort of responsibility and I definitely don't think I could bear the disappointment when life sent those kids the bad curve balls that life sometimes does. But then, some of them will make it, and defy expectations, and live the dream. I think that's why MLK's dream talked about children. You can see in them so much more clearly the potential for growth, for change. I didn't really do anything noble today, or do anything fitting of the call to service. But I did get to witness both.

no one needs to know we're feeling

2010-01-03T16:33:00.000-08:00

Holy Toledo (I do not know why I always pick Ohio when I am going the Holy route, just another one of those odd quirks that never really occur to me except when I write it down for a blog entry), it's 2010 and it's more than 10 days into 2010, and still, I haven't managed to string a sentence together. For shame, for shame.

I sort of stalled out for a few reasons. One, the mean reds, a little case of funk- does not exactly inspire one to write. You know, you got what you want, but it's not what you thought when you planned it (h/t Amy Mann). And that sounds sad, and occasionally it even feels sad, but then it turns out, it's not really. Because here's the thing. Life is full of all kinds of unexpected twists and turns. And even sometimes with things that are your dreams. And even sometimes with things that are, actually, your happily ever after.

Or, maybe, more accurately, there is no happily ever after. I mean, at one point I knew that. Because otherwise, why is my favorite quote on the sidebar, and why does it state that we shall not cease from exploration? I know that, and actually, I've rather come to savor that aspect of life in the span of that decade that just passed us by. And what a decade it was. Some of it horrible, some of it awesome, and some of it just floating along at contentment.

Some people achieve contentment, and happily ever after, and enlightenment and all that. I'm just not one of those people. Holy Toledo (there, I did it again), I am the biggest malcontent since the history of malcontents. And don't worry, it's not just that I am not content with the world around me, I am supremely a malcontent when it comes to self-reflection. On Twitter, where I really must stop spending so much time, Andrea wrote (paraphrased) that she would unfollow someone if they said about her the kind of things she says about herself. To which I say, indeed and amen.

I have to remind myself every so often of the things that make me this person- you know, the one I really am, who maybe no one else really knows but who cares because I do. I spend my days (and too often my nights) immersed in a world that values conformity. Learn the same things, do it the same way, categorize, recognize patterns, standardize, standardize, standardize. It's okay, as it turns out. I think, because of the rather meandering way my brain works, it does not hurt me to have the drill sergeant that is med school hammering the basics into my head. It's not wrong- there are some things you just better know if you're going to do this for a living. But there is no reason on earth one can give me for turning out physicians with identical personalities.

The conformity in surgical specialties has only to do with one thing- knowledge base and surgical skills. You can be a raving lunatic or a nurturing sweetheart, and they really don't care. I know there are those who will say no, this is not true, and you have to be a cold-hearted, evil no-holds barred maniac to be a surgeon, but respectfully, you are wrong, fool. Surgeons, ultimately, care about whether you know everything a good surgeon should know, whether you can perform in the OR, and whether you can think on your feet. The problem is, I haven't the requisite passion for standing in the operating room for hours on end to be a surgeon.

I've been quieter on other specialties, because in a lot of those cases, they seemed more prone to wanting everyone to fit a mold. Oh, we are all meticulous obsessive compulsives, or oh we all like to hug our patients, or oh we all don't like to have interests outside of medicine. When it's not just about what you know, but who you are, it gets tricky, because it matters in the hoop-jumping process, the process by which people are welcomed into the fold, or whatnot. It feels like it matters a lot.

But it doesn't matter. I guess I finally really and truly realized that. It matters, of course, in the way that looks matter if you want to be a supermodel. You are not likely to be a pediatrician, for example, if cooing over children is not your thing. But it's a big tent, this medicine thing. There is room for everyone, and ultimately you really can do whatever you want. And more importantly, you can find the things that you are good at, or that you want to be good at, in the myriad of possibilities.

In other words, it will all be okay.

But there are other words too. Other words still, words that silenced me for a while because I have a habit of hoarding such fleeting feelings. Yes, yes, it will be okay. But sometimes it will be way, much more than okay. How to explain without not sounding like a total self-indulgent jerk? Oh wait, this is a blog, never mind. There's not a whole lot of third year left for me. That means lots of things, but one of the things it means is that I've started to know enough to do a fairly good impersonation of a physician. People tend to think I am not confident, but I'm only not confident if I'm not sure. And actually, that's something I rather like about myself (take that, doubters of my self-confidence!). But now that I actually know a little of this and that, I am much more natural when treating patients. And I am starting to see the person I may one day become doing this as a living. And I think I like her.

That, my friends, is way, much more than okay.

(Also, haloscan needs to be retired apparently, and even though I've apparently been blogging for five years, I don't know enough about technology to figure out how to change commenting systems. In fact, I don't even know if commenting is currently working on haloscan, it might be. So... bear with me, please, if anyone is still reading.)

on our one year anniversary

2009-12-29T19:41:00.000-08:00

I thought of making a list to do with this decade, but it was so overwhelming, to think of all that has happened, all the music that has kept me alive, and all the movies that have submerged me into their worlds, all the events that shaped the world as it is today, so that seemed like work best left to those who are a bit more insightful. Then I thought of making a list about this year, but honestly, I've not been fond of this year, and I've also been somewhat removed from things. Case in point: I've still not read a single piece of news about whatever is going on with Tiger Woods, have never seen an episode of Jersey Shore (my friends, I am sorry to tell you that I actually went to the Jersey Shore one weekend back when I was living in that neck of the woods and I am here to tell you that I have no desire to be exposed to any of those people in any way ever again, thank you very much), and only just figured out who Lady GaGa is in the past two months. So I couldn't really find the motivation to write anything extensive about 2009 either.

But when I did think of the past year, I was struck by one bit of pop culture, which was perhaps more evident to me all of a sudden because I was thinking of it in the sense of a decade. In the year 2000 (do you know how impossible it is to type those words down without having Conan O'Brien images stuck in my brain?), there was quite literally no appreciable South Asian presence on television. Now, consider the past year, and let's just highlight the most notables:

Mindy Kaling: Mindy Kaling has been around for a while, to be certain. To tell the truth, I don't really even watch The Office anymore. It has grown a bit tired, and the whole Jim-Pam behemoth has drowned out the more entertaining aspects of the show. However, Kaling continues to find ways to be hilarious, frequenting the late show circuit this past year, tweeting cleverly, and most notably, creating a series of webisodes that culminated in a music video entitled Subtle Sexuality. Watch it here and thank me later.
Aziz Ansari: I have to admit something. Sometimes, I don't find Aziz Ansari all that funny. He was at his prime when he was making fun of Kanye West, but now he is buddies with him. I watched the first few episodes of Season 1 of Parks & Recreations last year, and didn't really get into it. I'm told the show and Ansari took it to another level in Season 2. Regardless, Ansari has been ubiquitous this past year- he played against desi stereotype, playing a slacka$$ med student on Scrubs, created an alternate obnoxious persona for a role in Funny People, and is often said to be the funniest thing in Parks & Recreation. The only comedian who had a bigger year than him was Zach Galifianakis (sigh). His twitter has moments of brilliance when he channels P. Diddy or Soulja Boy, or when he has imagined tweet-versations with the likes of Lauren Conrad.
Danny Pudi: If I was really writing a proper list, I would have put Pudi before Kaling and Ansari. Community is, to me, the funniest show of 2009, and it became inspired when the show acknowledged that it was an ensemble and let Danny Pudi and Don Glover run wild. Pudi's character is socially awkward, quotes pop cultural institutions like The Breakfast Club and Over The Top, and does a nifty Batman impersonation.
Naveen Andrews: yeah, yeah, so he plays an Iraqi (I'm never going to get over that one, show), and the show has been on for years now, but Andrews can count himself with Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn as the only actors on the show who have been consistently watchable on Lost from the moment that they hit the screen. I acknowledge that the show is a morass of confusing plot twists and unanswered questions, and all of that can be both frustrating and entertaining. But Andrews' bada$$, miserable Sayid is my favorite thing about the show, and when Abrams and company blow it and kill the character off, I'm going to have to stop watching.
Rekha Sharma: only the nerds know about her, but for those of us who watched Battlestar Galactica, it is worth noting that one of the Final Five Cylons was a desi, dudes! Not just that, but her character, Tory, was a little troublemaker, duping the President, seducing Baltar, killing off Callie, eagerly abandoning the humans. She was a strong, complex character, and fans of the show anticipated her comeuppance, which wound up being a major plot point on the show.

What I like, in considering the above, is that I don't even watch Kaling and Ansari's shows. And that there are plenty of other desi actors I have not included here- Maulik Pancholy in 30 Rock (his Jonathan has had some truly inspired exchanges with boss Jack Donaghy, but he has been sorely absent from most episodes this season), Sendhil Ramamurthy in Heroes (sorry, but I refuse to watch that show), Kunal Nayyar in Big Bang Theory. The list undoubtedly goes on. It's pretty impressive, when you consider that in 2000 even ER had not managed to have one Indian doctor on the show, which, let me tell you, after having spent over two years in medical school, is absolutely ludicrous (if you can find me a hospital in Chicago, Seattle, or Princeton with no Indian residents or attendings, I will gladly supply you half of my tuition). So I guess it's been a good decade for the desi's, and when I think about it, this decade's treated me alright too.

see how they resemble one another

2009-12-28T21:20:00.000-08:00

Oh but you know I couldn't end the year on such a note, now could I?

I started this exercise this week, partly to snap myself out of writer's block and partly because everyone keeps mentioning the end of the decade. I've been working on summing up each year of this decade. It's an illuminating experience. This was my first decade of fully formed adulthood. The significance of that is more than I expected it to be when I reflected back. And my, for such a boring person, I managed to sneak a lot of twists and turns into a decade.

Thinking of who I was in the year 2000 and who I have become, it's made me feel a little better about life. I was taking small steps at the beginning of this decade, timidly nudging my way towards what I wanted. But I really came into my own during these past years, in a way I never would have expected. If I am sometimes unsure of myself, if I sometimes wallow and brood over my future now, it's because I am fully aware that I am writing my own script. There are no expectations on my shoulders, except those I place on myself. This is my story, and it goes through many rounds of revisions and editing, it often feels ripe for a rewrite, characters sometimes clutter chapters, and other times it seems the protagonist does a lot of navel gazing.

Some writers say you should know the last sentence of your book before you start. This is not that kind of story.

*

In other news, this is maybe not the best song to close the year out, but I like it. Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago undoubtedly has made many a list of best's. This song is not off that album, but has Bon Iver's trademark intimate sound, conveying the feeling of looking at a candid snapshot from a moment that meant something to someone. It seemed apt. I have trouble summing up each year into some big sweeping epic, but even I have the photo album of times that froze still and are still frozen safely stored away in my mind.

one foot in and one foot back, it don't pay to live like that

2009-12-27T18:56:00.000-08:00

Phew, it occurred to me that it's been far too long since I've posted. I think it only matters to me, but it troubles me nonetheless. With the holidays and the end of the year approaching, I held a mirror up to what had been going on and realized that it's time to work it all through.

I'm not adept at simply writing: it has been a bad year. The world has been whittled down by whimpers rather than bangs, and the art of losing has become exceedingly easy to master, but that does not really make anything any better. It's, in some ways, seemed like a simple thing. It seems like I've handled it well, losing some of the people that I counted among my closest friends. I didn't fight to keep them. There were no massive blow outs. And once they were gone, it sort of felt as though that was how it was meant to be.

And yet, the voids are there, gaping holes. You could pour water through me these days.

Meanwhile, medical school continues to be this odd mixture of a calling and a clusterf***, quite frankly. There are so many things about medicine to love, and so many other things about medicine to make you wonder why anyone goes into it at all or why someone doesn't just dismantle the system and start over from scratch. This is universally acknowledged to be one of the worst years of one's medical education, so it could just be a temporary issue. There are still plenty of times that I am fully aware that I got exactly what I wanted and that I am quite fortunate to have it.

But at the same time, sometimes you just have to admit the ugly truth, which is that it has just been a miserable, lousy year. It's been exhausting, and it's been lonely. The people I've shoved into the gaping holes don't fit, are bargain stand-in's. A lot of physicians say that you find your people during your clinical rotations, find your tribe, and that's how you know what your specialty will be. I bought into that initially this past year. It wasn't until recently that I truly started to accept the fact that I will never magically find some secret society of like-minded people. And maybe if i did, that wouldn't satisfy me either. After all, some of the dearest friends I have had lacked much in common with me.

So really, I've been spending the close of this year fixated on the concept of healing, which might be a topic for a separate post. I remain hopeful that next year will be a better one. Much to the surprise of most people that know me in real life (whatever that is these days), I am actually irrationally optimistic about how life will turn out. Despite all the data and evidence suggesting otherwise, I prefer to believe in the endless possibilities.

people try and hide the night

2009-11-15T16:51:00.000-08:00

Sleeping is giving in, no matter what they tell us
Sleeping is giving in, so lift your heavy eyelids

You might think, from the way I post around here, that I've just been on surgery rotations for the whole of the past six months. Because it's the only time I seem to write about anything. For a while, this fact really bothered me in the sense of oh holy sh*tmonkeys, am I destined to become a surgeon, fml?!? But revisiting the OR this past week, I've become more aware of why I find myself writing about it.

First of all, there's the whole novelty of it. One of the things I've learned this past year is that the easier rotations are the ones you have no interest in doing for the rest of your career; strangeness makes sense. I treat all surgical endeavors like I am visiting the set of a movie or a distant planet or something similarly completely out of my sphere of reality.

Then, there's the fact that surgery is a magnet for ridiculous personalities. Perhaps that's why surgeries are so often the subject of fictionalizations of hospitals. All the characters are down there in their scrubs, equal parts bravado, brains, and eccentricities. You know what you're getting into with surgery. You don't expect kid gloves, you don't expect to be treated well, you don't expect forgiveness.

Then there's the simplicity of knowing what you can expect from surgery and surgeons. You expect to be worked to the bone, and you expect to be shamed, and you rise to that sort of humiliation because usually there is low-hanging, tangible fruit to grab to escape embarrassment. Surgeons may grumble about how you haven't memorized every artery or ligament, but if you can manage to tie a good knot, well, then you might be spared a complete flogging as a med student. Is it a good and useful way to educate? Not really. But it's predictable.

This song was randomly played in the OR this past week, but I was thinking of how apt it is. Surgeons are on this kind of crack; they convince themselves that rest is for the weak, a chance to cut is a chance to cure, and medical complexities are not worthy of their attention.

I mean, also this Arcade Fire song is independently an a$$ kicker. It's filled with mischief and energy, and as soon as it came on in the OR, I wanted to shout out, oh it's you, old friend! Like an old drinking buddy visiting from out of town reminding you of why you were always so fond of them. I heard it and was refueled for the rest of the very long day.

That's the difference, I guess. Internal Medicine, which is probably where my future lies, prompts me to want to pull out Billie Holiday and have a stiff drink- and that's a post for another time when I've a lot more capacity for introspection. With Surgery, I get a peppy Arcade Fire or Phoenix song, and convince myself all of this is so temporary, it will be gone before I have time to be completely exhausted by it.

but we didn't mind, we didn't know better

2009-11-01T19:10:00.000-08:00

So I had wanted to write this whole thing about a Regina Spektor song. It had all started because I saw her perform very recently. Unfortunately, every time I sit down to write about it, the only thing that seems to come out is an unintelligible mess. Oh well, try, try again.

I’ve already beaten to death a (now) rather old Spektor song, Fidelity, but when I heard it live, it pretty much evoked the exact same reaction I had when I first heard it. The strangest things can happen at a good concert. Standing in a crowded theater with the lights down low, I was transported to a sunny block in Potrero Hill, big dumb grin on my face. A good, good friend, an evaporated one, one of the ghosts, introduced me to the song so many years ago. And as I listened to Spektor play it, I thought of how perfect it was and how sometimes people just get you. Sometimes, entirely unintentionally, but then again, it turns out that doesn’t really matter.

Here’s another Spektor song. Initially, I had wanted to write about Eet- it seemed a very appropriate song for a few friends who are going through rough patches at the moment. Only problem is that I just don’t feel that way at the moment. I don’t feel that time is fading or dulling things.

Once you get infected with love, it’s like a virus, that’s how I feel. It’s a virus that lays dormant, and you think you’re cured, and oh, next time it will all be so different. Then someone comes along, infection gets reactivated, and next thing you know you’re sprawled out on the ground, sick once more. And I suppose you could be sad about that, but Spektor does not appear to be, not in The Calculation, which seems to laugh at the sleepwalking that goes on in life and delights in the fire that ignites when there is an awakening.

It’s all rather absurd from a certain angle. Right after falling for someone, the arithmetic begins. Does it all add up? What is the ratio of good to bad? What can be subtracted? Can the feeling multiply exponentially? Or is the whole thing headed for long division? But you could pull out every polynomial and apply all the integrals, and none of it would give you an answer. Maybe the only thing mathematic that applies is infinity- it feels just that large and intangible, that real and unreal.

I suppose all of this applies to writing something down about this song. I could try to describe why it is a great song. I could try to explain what about hearing Spektor open with this song sold me on it. But it likely wouldn’t make any sense, not from outside my head. Still, people keep on singing love songs and trying to write about things they can’t fully articulate, don’t they?

round here, something radiates

2009-10-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do something uncharacteristic and write about something that has nothing to do with med school. I know, I know, hold your applause, please. It's sort of appropriate, given that this blog turned 5 without me noticing it. That's how time passes for me these days. But what has been on my mind since yesterday goes back to all of the things I used to think about when I first started writing here. Love, longing, place, person, time.

Maybe that's why I've liked blogging all of these years, because here is a place that nothing needs to make sense or to fit. I can be the square peg that I have always been here and some of you actually, shockingly, don't mind. The world, the blogosphere especially, is riddled with misfits perhaps.

All of this, of course, started to turn over in my head because of a song. This song might not be your speed. It's super-subdued, as almost every song Sam Beam writes is. And I should warn you that there's a twang. It's a little bit country. Don't be scared. Or maybe do. I don't like this Iron & Wine song because I am a hipster. I am the least hipster-ish person on earth these days, trust me. This song reminds me of home.

And it's an odd thing to write because I don't really feel like I have a home. It reminds me of the home that I rarely write about, because it's so much in the past, so long gone. It doesn't even exist. Really, it's gone- the broseph and I used to race into the forest behind our house after school or every day of the summer. All the other kids from the neighborhood did the same, and we would spend our days and afternoons there, building forts, digging up salamanders, venturing deeper into the woods until our childhood internal alarms warned us we had gone too far. It was our own little world and we lived in it every day until dusk, when our neighbor Michael's mother would ring a loud cow bell, and all of us scattered back home to our very, very different lives. And that place is not just gone because I'm no longer a child, or because I no longer live in EBF, or because times have changed such that a bunch of 5 to 7-year olds wandering around the woods is no longer kosher. The forest was cut down years ago so that a new housing development could be built instead. Trees no longer hold any mystery; you can see the house behind them clearly now.

Still, this song evokes all those memories for me. Memories so idyllic that I wonder if they came from someone else's childhood. There were all the bad things you can imagine about living in the middle of nowhere and being brown, but it didn't wholly define my experience of living in EBF. There was also strawberry picking in June, shelling peas on a porch, jumping into piles of autumn leaves, building snowmen. And later there was what this song really reminds me of. Being a teenager in EBF was the oddest thing of all- on the one hand, to have MTV at your disposal on the one hand, and, on the other, to have lazy afternoons on a lake or quiet mornings sitting on a dark shore watching the waves crash against the rocks. To discover Morrissey and Public Enemy on the one hand, and to listen to an acoustic guitar at a picnic or around a campfire on the other. And to add to all that inherent strangeness, I was aware that I was one more layer of different. You grow up in a place like EBF and everything there seeks to root you down in the place; in its very nature, in every tree, leaf, and sky, it seeks to bind you. And yet, I was always also aware that I wasn't quite so captive- and I wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad about it.

I've met a lot of people now, and I know that I am not the only Indian kid who grew up in the middle of nowhere. It's not a singular experience. Still, it twists my brain, especially since I did flee so far. I gravitated towards cities desperately. I wanted to be near a pulse and a beat, and I wanted to be in a place where there was nothing I needed to explain. And I have rather loved that. Some of the times I have felt most at peace in the world, I was simply walking down the street in Manhattan or San Francisco.

Then again, it's fall. And in the fall, I always think of EBF, its country roads, and the fiery leaves lighting up all the trees.

It's not that I want to go back. That's the thing about the past, I suppose. I don't want to relive it, and I don't even really miss it. But it is there, that history, in my very bones. I'll always be that girl who has Resurrection Fern and M.I.A on her iPod, and is equally enamored of both. It feels good to get older, because you get so much more accustomed to all the eccentricities. You stop trying to avoid contradiction, or rather you become forgiving of contradictions, because you realize they only seem so from a certain angle. It no longer strikes me as strange, to dream of both the Mission and the Flume. And better yet, as you age- you stop caring if others find it strange.

Would you prefer the easy way? No, well okay then, don't cry.

2009-10-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

October arrived abruptly. The past month was a blur anyway, but October came and it went from the scorching heat of summer to the cool wind of fall overnight. Do I make it sound like a bad thing? That's not my intention. When the chill came, when I had to shut the ceiling fan off to fend off the shivers, I knew everything was going to be alright. Not just because I can turn on my oven. Not just because it means I've survived by far my worst month of medical school. No, not just all of those things.

But all the same, whatever the reason, there's a pizza in the oven. There are people, even in the horrible morass of medical school (and I can now call it a morass with complete certainty, having seen the ugliness that is prevalent among medical students up close and personal now), who have lent a hand. I thought, for a time, that I was taking advantage of them. Maybe I am a bit, but I am grateful for them, and that has to count for something, I like to think.

I suppose I was set free recently when an attending told me that I should be more of a show-off, play the game. It was strangely liberating, because, while it was a criticism, it was one of those moments that defines you in life. A line is placed in front of you. You can cross it and it may get you some short-term gain. But you have to live with what is on the other side. And I realized, I am willing to pay the consequences of staying on my side, of staying fundamentally me.

I've realized that a lot of people in school think I am young because I appear to be quite malleable. Which I am. But the thing is, that's because I know I have plenty of flaws. And I really and truly love many aspects of medicine. I want to be good at it. So I tend to take criticism seriously and adapt accordingly.

But not this kind of criticism. And it feels, oddly enough, good to know that there are some parts of me that are not amorphous. Some parts of me are set in stone. I could change them, but I could not live with the change.

I was reminded of all of this, tangentially, because I had recently purchased Amelie on DVD for sanity prophylaxis, and was watching it today. For some reason, I was thinking of seeing it in the theater. I had been living in New Jersey at the time, and we had to drive 40 minutes to get to a theater that was playing the movie. Not only was it well worth the trek, but as I sat there, soaking in this perfect, perfect film, I remember thinking that I didn't ever want to lose the part of myself that, even while living in multiplex suburbia, was compelled to seek out such little treasures.

Elsewhere, I can handle. Not fitting in, no problem. But I don't want to be a stranger to myself. And now that I know that, I somehow know everything will be fine.

I took the money, I spiked your drink

2009-09-27T20:03:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that I never really write much about graduate school. It somehow seems fitting to write about it now, all these years later, though still, I don't find it possible to say much about the experience in detail. It wasn't a good time in my life.

Like other dark times in my life, I find myself occasionally looking back on the chapters and thinking it quite something that I made it out of there in nearly one piece. But not entirely in tact. That would be giving myself too much credit. I've realized now that I have a very specific reaction to this kind of unhappiness- it's evolved in some ways, but in other ways it hasn't evolved at all.

The weird pattern I've noticed recently is that every time I fall into one of these downward spirals, some poor soul emerges as collateral damage. And every time, in some ways, it has gotten worse. In high school, it did not matter, everything was a jumble, who knew what motivated us back then, and we were too young to take anything very seriously. In college, it was easy to think of it as a shared blunder, but there remain pangs of guilt that come over me when I think of two people who put up with a whole lot of me being morose and glum in the hopes that it was the start of something much more meaningful than it was ever intended it to be.

In grad school, it felt indisputable. There were rationalizations that could be made in college- it wasn't entirely my fault, I could tell myself without feeling like I was fooling myself. I was out of excuses in grad school. I was just in a horrible place in my life, and as a result, I sought after anything that made me feel less miserable. A part of me knew I was giving the wrong impression, knew I did not reciprocate, and yet, I went along with it all because I was so numb. That's what happens when you feel that awful, I suppose- you cease to care about inflicting that sort of misery on anyone else.

But it's short-lived, and there's a reason that I don't write anything much about grad school. I'm not impressed with myself, I'm quite the opposite. No one, no one at all, not even those who were there at the time, knows just how unimpressive my behavior was, and maybe no one ever will.

This is an interesting test, the business of the present tense. I'm not nearly as low as I was in graduate school, not even close. But I'm raw and unsteady the way that I was back then. And a victim has emerged to offer himself up. I've been trying my best to avoid the temptation, because I know where this is leading, I know what this is all based upon, and it's not real, not to me. I'm older now, I understand more. I'm less interested in the idea of a temporary fix, because I know about the decades of regret that follow. It's not like they're persistent, not constant. But every once in a while, I'll be reminded, and I'll be sorry all over again. I can do without adding another something to wash up among those waves.

I'm just trying to get myself some gravity

2009-09-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

There's a whole story behind these, but it's unlikely to be interesting to anyone else, so let's just call it my pathetic form of rebellion against the system:

And allow me to say a few words about caramel: it requires your undivided attention. You cannot turn your back on it for a minute, or it will punish you by turning into a burnt bitter mess. You have to concentrate on it. And also, much like some of my favorite work when I was working in the lab, you have to orchestrate a few steps together in parallel. And just as in the lab, I get a great deal of satisfaction from the abracadabra transformation, from the I made this tangibility of it all.

I wish these would keep well enough to be mailed. I would just send them off to all you all. Instead they'll likely wind up in the hands of the very people who are currently making me miserable and causing me to have nightmares. On a tangent, I wake up infuriated when I've had dreams related to that sort of stuff. It's as though you never got a break from it all, because your subconscious decided to stew over it all through the night.

It probably did not help matters that I went out to dinner last night. The double-edged sword in med school at the moment is that the outside world is completely out of your grasp, but you desperately want to cling to something outside of the hospital. The double-edged part of that is that the only people available to you, then, are your fellow inmates. I have mixed feelings about it all. On the one hand, I suppose it's nice to commiserate. On the other, it never really gets you anywhere, and then you've really just remained in your little bubble anyway. So all you've really done is conjured up an illusion of "getting out" when really you've gone nowhere.

And then of course, there is the distinct possibility that I have no idea what I'm talking about. I've noticed lately that I'm so tired that I have stopped making sense. What a great and safe way to learn about medicine.

so lead us there

2009-09-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

It's not all rainbows and sunshine in California, it must be said. Moreso now, maybe moreso now than ever. On the surface, it's bright and people are smiling, but it's a thin veneer. Everything's on layaway, the ground beneath your feet is moving, the hills are on fire, and that smile doesn't fade despite all the other things that fade- friends, family, jobs, whatever. You want to shake those people with the painted-on smiles and yell "Feel something, already!"

All those things could be said about this place, I suppose, but there are plenty of times that I let all of that slide. I tend to scrutinize it the way you do with anything you love- you find faults in love when you are feeling rotten. And thus, this song came to mind. I suppose I don't love California as a whole but all the same- I'm wasting time being homesick for the East Coast because it's more convenient than dwelling on the fact that I am rather profoundly unhappy right now.

And then comes the trickier part, which is why I have avoided fixating on the topic or writing about it either. This cannot be fixed. It's something I simply have to withstand. I just have to tough out a bad spell that will last for a long while. It's a difficult thing to swallow, that reality. The delayed gratification thing didn't feel like delayed gratification to me before now.

But you know. California has the San Francisco fog. California has the chateaus in Sonoma. California has Yosemite Falls. California has the beautiful 1. California has the beautiful Coronado sunset. Nothing is ever as bad as it seems, and this too shall pass, and all of that jazz. It might sound trite, but it also often happens to be true.

there isn't much that I feel I need

2009-09-05T09:57:00.001-07:00

Oh, if you would please, have a look at this video of Grizzly Bear's Two Weeks. Not only is it a rather beautifully made video, but then you can hear the song that's rattled about in my head for the past, well, two weeks.

I've nothing to write about school at the moment. It's been lovely of late, and tiring, and it keeps me away from a lot I yearn to do and from people I yearn to speak with or write to, but I brought it on myself, and I don't think I'd change much if I could, so what is there to write really?

Since so much discourse has become polarized, I feel increasingly like the misfit that I undoubtedly am. Which is fine, as I've become accustomed to being an oddball, especially in the conformist world that is medicine. But that is why I rely so heavily on music at times, because somewhere in some song is a friend who gets it.

A roundabout way to say that I like this song. The original version bemoans, I only want a proper house, but then qualifies it with I don't mean to seem like I care about material things like social status. I just love that. It's not contradictory is the thing. With everything being so all or nothing, so extreme, the subtleties are lost. It's got to be true, I have to believe. You can want stability without being wholly complacent, without blindly following the current. And is it really necessary to be ambitious for ambition's sake? This, I find, is an important question to ask yourself in the academic setting again, again, oh, and then, once more with feeling.

And then came along this cover by Taken By Trees, which, to me, distills it down even more. Playful, simple, a tiny bit nonsensical, and of course, the island feeling of the music doesn't hurt either. Who needs lemonade and porch swings if you have this song, I wonder.

I'll find us a way to make light

2009-08-27T17:06:00.000-07:00

You guys, I still can't find my camera charger. This means I really still need to clean up my ~~trash heap~~ apartment. Instead, I keep getting distracted by trying to catch up with the world. For example, until yesterday, I didn't know what the frak birthers were- I'm still not sure I understand, for that matter, but really until yesterday, I didn't even know the context of the term.

I've also been distracted by music, because I knew better than to start listening to too much new music while I was on my surgical rotation. That's a dangerous bit of business. Sometimes, if I find a new song I like, I have to listen to it about 200 times, nearly crashing my computer. I've always been this way- my brother thought I was completely mental in high school as I destroyed tapes, because Mr. Khosla, I would rewind it all the time. Worse yet, it wasn't enough to just have the music playing. No, I had to sit there, nearly catatonic, absorbing the song for the 70th, 80th, eleventy-billionth time. That would not have gone over well on my surgical rotation- though there were still a few I'm-dead-tired-and-about-to-hit-a-wall moments when I set iTunes on random and said hello to a bunch of old friends.

Anyhow, now I'm kind of overdosing as a result. After swallowing whole the entirety of the new Goldspot album (which really is excellent and deserves a post all of its own) and the new Cornershop album, I have become fixated on two songs. One is not a very good song, the other is absolutely breathtaking.

The first is Pearl Jam's The Fixer which I've posted for your listening pleasure. Which is funny, because this is the song that I don't think is that good of a song. It's not a bad song, but it's not on par with Pearl Jam's gloried past. But the lyrics to this song really got me thinking this week. I've already had a few email exchanges about it. Most music, most films, most everything these days, truly, are about letting go. Even I, who used to be so in need of anchors and chemical bonds, have become comfortable with entropy and floating around without any restraints. At first, I thought this was just the nature of getting older, but lately, I've been thinking that it's more of a cultural shift, some sort of sign of the times.

And while I think that it's important to be present, to not dwell too much on the past or the future, there's something to be said for the lyrics to this song. I've thought about it specifically because I think that's what I found rather seductive about surgery. I don't think I'm ultimately cut out to do it for a living (punny!), but there's something so tempting about the simplicity of it (a surgeon somewhere is sharpening their scalpel and aiming it for my jugular right now for daring to call surgery in any way simple). There is something undeniably satisfying about it- cut out a tumor, cancer gone, thank you, come again. I know it's rarely quite that simple, but surgery lures you in with that possibility.

I suppose the lyrics to The Fixer are similarly seductive-

when something's dark, let me shed a little light on it
when something's cold, let me put a little fire on it
if something's old, I wanna put a bit of shine on it
when something's gone, I wanna fight to get it back again

I know, I know. I know the song is a mirage. I know it doesn't quite work this way. And I guess that's why I'll never be a surgeon, because I can't, at the end of it all, buy into the simplicity. I know it's not as straightforward as all that. Usually, if you're talking of letting go, if you've lost something, it was meant to leave or it's gone such that there's not much you can do to get it back again. You're just clawing at empty space, and wasting a lot of energy in the process, more often than not. It's odd. I think I've only got that fire for myself these days- I don't like the feeling that pieces of me are falling away. I will fight to get it back again, to get back those pieces of me that I did not want to lose. Like the part of me that can turn into a zombie because she happened upon some silly song.

The other song is Grizzly Bear's Two Weeks, which, I don't know what to say about it exactly. If you've listened to it a bunch of times, perhaps it's grabbed you like it did me. I mean, it has this to recommend it:

Would you always...
maybe sometimes...
make it easy,
take your time.

I love the unfinished thoughts, how much is left unsaid and unresolved. I know dysfunctional relationships are horrid and unpleasant to experience, but holy Toledo, do they ever make for beautiful songs.

there goes the fear again

2009-08-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

There's this heartbreaking line in 500 Days of Summer:

You weren't wrong, Tom. You were just wrong about me.

I have alternated between wanting and not wanting to see this movie. It's a strange little and large experience. I found myself laughing even though it should have hurt. After watching the film, AP wanted to catch up on all kinds of things that had nothing to do with the movie, and I found myself a little bitter about that. I just wanted to cling to the movie, hold onto the whole experience.

But then I concluded I didn't really need to cling to heartbreaking and heightened scenes from a movie. We all have those scenes from our own lives, and it seems that this movie just reminds us all of that. And it is funny and sad, just like the film is.

Honestly, I don't even want to write anything else about it. Let's see how it stands up with time, but right now, it feels to me nearly close to Before Sunset in terms of breathtaking familiarity.

(But do allow me to say that I knew this movie was going to sucker punch me when the protagonist karaoke'd The Pixies' Here Comes Your Man. That's as good as sending the Borg after me.)

*

Sort of related, sort of not. I have an extremely brief break but am trying to make the most of it. To that end, of course, I had to make some ice cream. When I've straightened out my apartment well enough to find the charger to my camera, I will document it, but there's a rather funny story associated with it. Well, it's funny to me. It might be disgusting to others.

I had decided to make peanut butter ice cream. I don't know exactly why, but I don't question these impulses anymore. I had put some half-and-half in a pot and started to heat it up. Scalding milk and heavy cream is the basic beginning to making the base for ice cream, at least the way I make it. The half-and-half had been in my refrigerator for 2 weeks but it was unopened and pasteurized, so I figured it was fine. Well, not so much. I started to boil it, and spontaneously, it just started to curdle. At first, I tried vigorously stirring the mixture, thinking I could get it homogeneous again (ha! What kind of Indian am I anyway?). Then I stopped and took stock. This was shaping up for FAIL of the major variety.

And then I laughed and stopped trying to make it work. I love you, Tim Gunn, but sometimes making it work involves embracing failure. So I let the mixture full-on curdle and then set it aside. I took out some fresh heavy cream and milk from the refrigerator and made the actual ice cream custard base while the curds cooled down off the stove. The peanut butter ice cream came out just as I would have liked- not too sweet, a little salty, a fair amount of peanut butter flavor.

Then I examined the curds, and decided, what the whey, and strained out the liquid. Then I dug up a recipe for chocolate ricotta cheese muffins, and made them. I ate one (okay, two) this morning to make sure this whole crackpot scheme did not involve any unwanted microorganisms causing problems. No issues. And the chocolate muffins came out moist and tender because of the curds. It wasn't what I had in mind when I had started the whole production, but that, ultimately, is part of the fun, isn't it?

Yes, indeed, I am looking forward to autumn.

it's not a miracle we needed

2009-08-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

Luxuries at the moment include blogging this post, and the promise of properly washing my hair tomorrow morning- I could have indulged and washed my hair tonight, but frankly, I lack the energy such a task requires. Yes, I'm fully aware of how idiotic that statement is; doesn't make it any less the case.

I will write this because I used to, once upon a time, mention music more frequently than not, and eventually, the following will lead to the mention of music, I swear. This past week has been, well, the suck, let's call it. Probably the worst part of a med school rotation in surgery is that, as a student, you end up spending a lot of time standing, nervously trying not to break the sterile field, but unable to see or do much of anything. At such times, you are acutely aware that you could be doing other things with this time, like, I don't know- sleep, eat, study, go to the bathroom, shower. But, such is surgery.

Today, I was unfortunately scrubbed into an excruciatingly long surgery. The first week, when I was stuck scrubbed into these types of marathon boredom sessions, I used to get progressively impatient, noticing how tiring it is and starting to fixate on that Danny Glover quote "I'm getting too old for this sh*t." Probably moreso than any other specialty, it's seductively simple for me to latch onto that quote and use it as an excuse for all.

But then I have to remember that, were that the case, I wouldn't be here at all. Yes, it is a bit more physically demanding some time, but then I've never been a person who enjoyed standing around for hours on end and I've never been a person who could function on a minimal amount of sleep. I made do when I was younger, and I can make do now. It's just easier for me to fall into the trap of whining right now because it's fairly clear to me that I don't want to be a surgeon.

I don't know if this is a distinctly female thing, but I can only think to describe myself yesterday as being so tired that I was afraid I was going to burst into tears. Just from sheer exhaustion. Does that only happen to women? Better yet, does that only happen to weirdos? Regardless, I came home and decided that I couldn't have another day like that. There's no crying in baseball and all of that (no worries though, I did not cry at the hospital- on principle alone, I will not be driven to tears by surgeons). So today, I was actively thinking of ways to deal with the boredom.

The room was silent, which, as it turns out, was a blessing. Most people complain because this particular attending does not allow iPod's to be blasting music while he wields his scalpel. Usually, I would complain too, as one of the few joys for me the past few weeks has been analyzing various surgeons' playlists (I still have a soft spot in my heart for the dude who played most of the Pretty in Pink soundtrack and General Public's Tenderness). However, it means you are at the whim of someone else's tastes. Today's silence was a kind of a freedom.

I've already posted it here in the past, but I think Phoenix's 1901 has fueled me through 2009. Or, when I've worn it out a bit much, Lisztomania is just as useful. It reminds me of the year that The Killers first broke and I kept finding myself driving at unsafe speeds whenever their songs played on the radio. Phoenix is pretty much my Red Bull. There's something so hopeful and hopeless about the songs, but the music has this pulse and drive. These are songs of now, somehow. So, when I really can't take it, when I think I can't take another minute, I let the music get into my head and it just pushes me forward. No choice but to keep going, that's what the band seems to say. And at 3:30 in the morning, or when holding a suction tube for two hours, that's a message that needs to be heard.

you're gonna send me, right back to the start

2009-08-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

Allow me to apologize for the manic nature of these posts. And let me write up front that this post is mostly silly. I think some silliness is warranted right now, because the serious things can't be written about at the moment.

First, I've thought about writing about this post since the first time I saw this video some weeks back- I think I first got the link from A N N A. I'm sorry it's not embeddable, but I suspect that most people have seen this wedding entrance dance by now anyway. A couple of my classmates have since sent the link to me as well, with the requisite ZOMG! and squee!'s required of their generation.

Do I sound grouchy? I suppose I am a bit. I do think the video and the idea is super-cute. I think all weddings would probably be improved by such ceremonial flourishes. Only, I wonder- have all the viewers of this video never been to any Indian weddings? Have they never seen any Bollywood movies? Yeah, these guys danced down an aisle, sure. Indians dance all the way down the street on their way to the wedding.

I don't know, but I was just thinking that it's sort of funny that the West seems to have just discovered that dancing is not a crime, and may actually demonstrate an appropriate amount of joy at an event that is supposed to be celebratory.

I just realized I totally sound like Indian Uncle on Goodness Gracious Me who yelps out "INDIAN!" at everything.

*

Though I know it's rather unfortunate to celebrate a person's body of work after they've passed away, rather than while they were still alive, I think John Hughes is so imprinted on most children of the 80s that we very nearly take him for granted. What I think makes Hughes' movies so Hughes is not that they were so quoteable- though they often were- but that they have such personal significance. I know that probably seems stupid, given how light in substance some of the movies appear. But they meant something to me as a kid, and even now. I was having these thoughts when I heard about his passing away:

Even though the premise of Pretty in Pink is ridiculous on so many levels (and I'm not sure I'll ever understand how we're supposed to believe that Molly Ringwald ruining two perfectly decent dresses to create one of the ugliest dresses in film history is an indication of her character's talent), I've always been fond of it for a few reasons. First, the music, my goodness, the music. Second, I had a Duckie in college (he bore an uncanny resemblance as well). And even though Pretty in Pink never fully delved into it, I know how sweet and also how painful that can be.
Sometimes I think I was permanently scarred by Hughes' movies. For example, I think Some Kind of Wonderful might have destroyed me on par with Say Anything. The latter movie is destructive in that it leads people to believe that there might be a Lloyd Dobler out there (although some of my friends have met and married him, so keep hope alive!). The former is destructive because it leads people to believe that Watts' martyr-style devotion can lead to a happy ending. I don't care though. I love Watts. How many characters can get away with saying "you break his heart, I break your face"? Even if Watts hadn't strolled out into the fade to black wearing her best friend's future, she'd still be the person I'd rather be.
Probably my weirdest reaction to a Hughes movie was Ferris Bueller's Day Off. While so many of my friends were cuckoo for Ferris Bueller, when I saw the movie, my first instinct was to sympathize with his sister. I think this is because my brother was something of a Ferris Bueller. He wasn't really that popular in high school, but he was always the one getting away with all sorts of misbehavior. He could and can quite effortlessly charm people, and things just always come easier to him. So me, I could understand Jeanie's rage. And of course, I could relate to Cameron. My entire adolescence centered around worrying about getting in trouble, but then ultimately being dragged into doing something irresponsible.
Even though a part of me begrudgingly has to admit that I like Sixteen Candles, it was also the first movie that I saw and thought this is some effed up sh*t regarding racial stereotypes. I've had entire hourlong conversations with RR about Gedde Watanabe, and whether he feels a sense of self-loathing about that role or whether he just found it funny.
I came to realize that I was officially an adult/old due to a Hughes movie. While I still find the movie entertaining, The Breakfast Club now just seems like a bunch of overdramatic teenagers feeling sorry for themselves (with the exception of Bender- I now wonder why protective services never intervened on his behalf). But I'm not too old to remember that I did once think that it captured a lot of what it felt like to be in high school. I suppose it's a bit of a relief to find that high school really doesn't hold the same weight it once did. (on a side note, Don't You Forget About Me was my high school graduation song, which is sort of funny to me now because, um, I have forgotten. A lot.)

Anyway, as a tribute, I am also posting a song from Sixteen Candles that I've always liked, just to finish off the nostalgia overload.

if you want me to break down and give you the keys

2009-07-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

I want to write of the things that I knew before I was born, the things that were predetermined, the things that everyone in my family knew but never dared to speak aloud. But of course, I am just another member of my family, the same tongue-tied inability to articulate cramping my fingers, constricting my throat.

Instead, all I can write is that the closest semblance to a sister I've ever had- not an older sister to look up to or a younger sister to dote upon, but a true sister- is not well. And from 2000 some odd miles away, there is very little I can do. Even were I there, it's likely there is not much I could do. Which is immensely frustrating given what I've been doing with my life for the past three years.

What I really want to do is write about her, but I feel as I have always felt about her. Fiercely protective. I often have little shame when it comes to writing, but I would not cheapen her by telling her story, especially through my eyes.

All I can write is that I am one of three. One never made it, one fought for every breath, and one was me. I doubt anyone knows that, I doubt anyone sees the connection. I am not my parents' child. I am one of three, and I have never lived up to it. And if she goes now, I don't know how I'll ever make amends.

tired of talking, talked out, ticked off or toughed up

2009-07-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

I've been following the laws of physics lately, and thus, this blog has been getting the shaft in favor of sleeping, eating, and passing this forsaken rotation.

I haven't bothered writing about these rotations because I don't feel like boring everyone to tears with that babble, and besides which, being immersed in it as much as I am, it feels as though it is hard to write sensibly about it. I need some distance which is not really possible at the moment. I can say that it sometimes feels frustrating, sometimes feels triumphant, sometimes feels important, sometimes feels trivial, sometimes feels like medicine helps people, sometimes feels like medicine is in vain. I have worked with physicians that are admirable and some that are not so admirable. I have watched behaviors that I would like to emulate, and others I would rather avoid. I've been told that I should be a surgeon, and I've also been asked, "you're not interested in surgery, are you?"

For the record, no, I am not interested in surgery, not even vaguely. This rotation has been great, though, in that it has made me properly respect surgeons and confirm that it's work best left to others. And it's just an interesting unfolding of life or lives before your eyes. People minding their own business when they were hit by a car and are now stuck in a hospital bed for months with fractures and complications. Gunshots and stab wounds, alcohol and methamphetamine, the suicidal and the demented. There aren't that many opportunities in life to see that sort of cross-section of the world.

The only thing that's truly felt like torture is having to interact with some of my more difficult classmates, who have started to exhibit that classic medical school attribute that I like to call "I will stab you with a shiv first chance I get if I can do so while improving everyone's opinion of me." It is the innate characteristic that makes my stomach turn about students. It's not across-the-board, but all it takes is one student like that to really annoy.

But even that has been an opportunity. Such clowns will never go away in life. There is no one field populated by well-intentioned sweethearts. The key is not to let the a-holes get to you. I've been able to manage by refusing to rise to the bait, and also by recognizing that it's not worth it to me to engage in that fight.

That's the thing about being a middle-distance runner. You have to decide which race you wish to run, which mark you want to meet. I used to think, when I was younger, that you had to push yourself until you were the best, better than everyone else. But that was a long time ago, and I've seen how that kind of drive comes at a cost. I am starting to think I will be okay without losing who I am. That seems the thing most worth fighting for.

they say time may give you more than your poor bones could ever take

2009-06-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, I had one of those days that made me quite grateful to have dropped out of Corporate America. I've never been particularly ungrateful about it, but last Friday was different. Some truck had tipped over on the freeway, and I was stuck in traffic for nearly three hours (this drive usually takes me about 30 minutes). When this happens, and you are sitting in gridlocked, stand-still traffic, even the calmest person starts to develop hypertension and smoke coming out of their ears.

But when I finally got to clinic, it took about five minutes to get into the swing of things, and I promptly forgot all about the miserable morning commute. When I was working for The Man, I would have spent the better part of that three hour drive contemplating whether I ought to take the next exit and simply return home. And I would have spent the better part of my work day annoyed by my late start.

It's obvious, of course, that this is because I did not really enjoy what I was doing for a living, and therefore all of those external forces and factors could easily encroach on the tolerability of my work day. Now it's so much simpler. No matter what is going on, when I get to clinic, I feel very much there and not much distracts me.

That last Friday, when I left clinic, I was feeling chipper even, until I was sitting in a ridiculous rush hour traffic jam on the way home. Since I've always had a soft spot for Falling Down, I decided I had better decompress before things got out of hand. I took a very early exit and spent an hour strolling around the local co-op, at which I bought overpriced cardamom pods. Yes, they were overpriced, and as an Indian and as a Guju in particular, I felt a measure of shame buying them. But I had decided it was my indulgence for the weekend.

Sort of. When I got home, I fixed myself a generous tumbler of Grey Goose and Hibiscus Tonic (it seemed like a good idea when I was at the co-op). Then I set to making the cardamom ice cream. It reminded me of childhood and home to some extent- the smell of the milk and cream scalding, gently crushing the cardamom pods and letting them steep, the fragrance of it as I cooked it into a custard. But it also reminded me of being an adult and having my own sense of home. When those smells were present in my childhood home, there was usually a frenzy and panic because my mother was frantically trying to do a hundred things in preparation for some large celebration. Instead, the scents wafted into the kitchen while I sipped a cocktail and erased all the annoyance of having spent over four hours in a car in one day. I felt very calm, and the process seemed very much mine, instead of me trying to reenact some fondly recalled memory.

And I got this out of it:

The picture, due to my horrible camera and photography skills, does not do it justice, but I was particularly pleased with the result because a) the flavor is very much like kulfi while the texture is that of ice cream rather than the icy consistency that kulfi can have, b) I had a nice buzz going on while the preparations were underway and c) I pretty much made up the recipe myself. These tiny ideas of mine don't always turn out so well, but when they do, it encourages me to keep tinkering. We'll see if that winds up being a good thing in the long run.

just a mirror of a mirror of myself

2009-06-15T19:24:00.000-07:00

A conversation I had with a 6-year old who was tagging along with her mom at work today:

kid

holds up her hand

kid

holding up my hand next to hers

kid

I nod

kid

And that concludes this episode of Pediatric Identity Politics.

I could drink a case of you

2009-06-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

Saheli recently tagged me on that always time-sucking addiction Facebook. While I try to avoid such things on Facebook, as a blog post, it's a happy excuse to have something to write. The idea here is to list 15 books that will always stick with you. I wrote them all down all stream-of-conscious-like, and made certain it was all off the top of my head by drinking a hefty dose of a Grey Goose concoction before starting. And the winners are:

The Sun Also Rises- as a woman, I know that I should not technically even approve of this book, but there's something very raw and truthful to it. And since I was once the reigning heavyweight champion of dysfunctional relationships, there's a lot about this book that draws me in.
The Little Prince- I can honestly say this book changed my life and me. It was given to me at a time when I was perfectly poised to be shaped by it, and so shaped by it I was.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man- there's a whole chapter of torrid ridiculous business behind my initial attraction to this book. I have a copy of it from the Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, though I have never been anywhere in France. There are still parts of this book that elude me, but, still, it sticks with me.
Tell Me a Riddle, specifically the short story I stand here ironing- I think I stand here ironing might be my favorite piece of writing ever. It's not pretty or flowery. But it resonates like nothing else I've ever read.
The Year of Magical Thinking- this one is haunting, so much moreso than The Road. Both are about a kind of inevitability, but Joan Didion's book is somehow more piercing because she's telling her own story. Sometimes you think she is out of her mind, sometimes you think she is a genius. It perfectly recreates what happens when you suffer a major loss and are left behind to live.
Henderson the Rain King- I don't even know how to describe how much I will always love this book. There are characters in books that I've been fond of, and then, as I've gotten older, I've outgrown. Never with Henderson. If anything, I was amused by him when I was younger, and now I am convinced we are kin- messy, awkward, ambitious jacka$$es.
Beneath the Wheel- while a lot of people are found of Hesse's Siddhartha, for me, this book was a revelation. It was another case of reading it at just the right time in my life, but it stuck with me. Almost any Indian kid can appreciate this story, which is all about the crushing pressure academics sometimes places on young people.
My Antonia- I don't know. This book might stick with me for a single line in the novel. The writing is pretty, but also, I guess I am drawn to all of these stories that are about things not working out quite perfectly, quite ideally, but okay.
Bartleby the Scrivener- I aspire to dispatch people with a simple "I would prefer not to."
The Stranger- this book sticks with me because of the whole absurdist angle of it. There are times when we believe the universe is conspiring against us, but if you read Camus, you start to realize that the most important part is to be in on the joke.
Tales of A Fourth Grade Nothing- this is another book that changed my life. A auntie gave it to me when my mother complained that I kept getting in trouble for humming or whistling during class. A auntie took one severe look at me and decided I was bored and gave me this book when I was in second grade. I became an avid reader after that. Also, it was particularly perfect that the broseph bore disturbing similarities to Fudge.
Metamorphosis- another absurdist tale. I was tied between this and Gogol's The Nose, but it's Metamorphosis that has more of a permanent mark on me. Strangely enough, it reminds me of Office Space.
Persuasion- because I have enough alcohol in my system to admit that there is a romantic buried underneath all that cold black coal.
The Corrections- because every single character in the book is a mess. And Franzen makes a point of dangling each one out as possibly the one that deserves your sympathy, and then proceeds to tear them down.
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao- technically, I may have read this too recently to claim that it sticks with me, but I doubt it. The thing is, I've searched writing by Indian or Indian-American authors looking for exactly what Diaz ended up providing. Wao has this fresh and new quality, and it encapsulates life in the new world, the real world. I don't think I'll ever lose my appreciation for that, even if I can't properly articulate it with a little too much Grey Goose in my blood stream.

Hopefully that's fifteen. May I make a small request? I know I probably have hardly any readers at this point. But, if you do happen to be reading, and are so inclined, please leave in the comments at least one book that will always stick with you. Or if you care to post an entire list, even better. I'm genuinely interested.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find my battery charger, so that I can actually post pictures of the cardamom ice cream that will be churning tomorrow.

but what would you change if you could?

2009-06-10T20:46:00.000-07:00

The thing is, I'm not sorry.

Every time I think of complaining or whining lately, this is what I realize. I could write about how I cancelled some plans to go away this weekend, to go to a super posh wedding. I could talk about how training for a profession that is ostensibly all about interacting with people has paradoxically caused me to become more and more isolated. Or I could write about how I am supposed to be studying right now and instead spent an hour making toffee, then bashing it to pieces with a rolling pin so that I could add it to cookie dough (I think that might be the very definition of insanity right there). I could write about how I try to go to bed early and still barely make it to clinic on time every morning.

But the thing is, I'm not sorry.

There's something I've had to square with recently. Despite how it may seem both to others and to me at times, I do not want for motivation. The problem is that I'm not consistently motivated by the same thing. I am motivated, but not single-minded. And even though it often means I'm a horrible person, I'm not particularly concerned about my rather whimsical life. Despite how exhausting and ridiculous medical school can be, I actually rather adore it, and there is never a day that has passed that I regret telling corporate America to suck it. And despite the fact that it means I am not the super-stunner-number-one-gunner extraordinaire, I am perfectly pleased with the fact that I 'waste' all kinds of time experimenting with various materials in the kitchen or knitting some random thing or listening to a string of songs for an hour.

There's something else I want, something about which I am sorry. I can feel it. It's in there somewhere, buried underneath all this contentment. But it's there, and at some point, if I could just freeze time for a second and let myself breathe in and out, I should probably put my finger on it. And yet, it's so much easier to contemplate cardamom ice cream instead.

yeah, they'll stay with me until the end

2009-06-07T11:04:00.001-07:00

Everyone, I like to think, grows up with some form of comfort music. Van Morrison has nothing to do with the corner of EBF where I was raised. And really, when I was growing up there, the radio mostly played things like Gloria, Brown-Eyed Girl, and Wild Night. But somehow it seeps into your bones just the same, so that, when I heard the rest of Van's rather extensive collection later, it felt like coming home. Home is like that, after all. There's the home you thought you had, and then little pieces of home you glimpse when you're a long way gone.

I've been thinking of home lately and the different people I have been. Home, because I realized recently that I had a sense of home only because I had a sense of family. The different people I have been, because it's nearly laughable to think of it now, but there was a time that I was ruled by a sense of family obligation. I used to drive 6 hours just to go to a birthday party. My cousins would call and invite themselves over for dinner or for brunch, and much to my mother's chagrin, I could never say no. It was all driven by selfishness, really, the same selfish impulse that always seems to spur most of my tendencies. I wanted to be of some use, I wanted to feel needed. And my cousins were exceptionally good at that, the way they'd grab my hand to show me something or the ease with which they'd nestle up next to me to watch television or the false flattery they'd heap upon me to coerce me into baking them something.

It's hard to trace the exact moment when everything changed. Some moved away. Some of us grew apart, as they became their own, distinct people and we had less and less in common. And some was my doing as well.

I got an email from a cousin recently, chiding me for drifting out of touch. It is sort of hilarious, because my cousins have been sort of mortified by me in the past few years. They are used to getting regular phone calls from me. They are used to me spending vacation time visiting them. They have been a bit bewildered that I'm not the person I used to be. In a way, I suppose it's a good lesson for them, the one I learned from them as well, after all. We're always changing, relationships are redefined, they sputter and resume. We grow apart and then something brings us close together. We hurt each other one day and comfort each other the next. I don't know if it's too bold to say that family remains, weathers the changing winds. But so I hope.

In the meanwhile, I see them, my family, my home, in all kinds of things. When I bake a batch of cookies and my friend AB gives me a bear hug, or when my friend BB prods me to knit her a camera case, or even when a friend is being bratty about something. I catch a glimmer, just a little, but enough.

just when you think you've got enough, enough grows

2009-06-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

This was probably supposed to be an email, but instead it's turned into a blog post. The emails were about the struggle- the futility of all these beginnings, given how many of them lead to endings. What's it all about? They scream and then they shout.

It's a strange thing, because I feel I've had this conversation more than once and with more than one person. Echoes reverberate. Strange because there are these scotch-soaked discussions I've had with Seekers, people on a quest they sometimes do not quite recognize. Stranger still because it makes no sense that I'm in their company.

My ambitions are so small, to me. I'll take a quiet life, a handshake- I'm not looking for a rollercoaster, I'm okay with no alarms and no surprises. But then again, apparently I am a liar. No matter how little you long for in life, as long as the longing persists, I suppose the size of your ambitions hardly matters.

In short, I have no words of consolation. I can empathize with the frustration that comes from the fall. I understand how, even though it's most of the time exhilarating to want, all that yearning can often be exhausting. And I especially know what it means to want something and not get it. I know that disappointment.

But what would you rather? Throw down your anchor by some dreary shore and punch the clock every morning with the lunch pail in hand? There's an undeniable dignity to that, to the kind of steadfast existence that such constancy requires. But the trouble of it is that you've got to have that in your blood. You can fight it, but we're all just a bunch of molecules- eventually, we go back to our thermodynamically stable state, the place where we are most us. I guess, from time to time, it's natural to flog ourselves a bit, bemoan that we're not other people, people who don't have to dwell on such dilemmas, people who go from point A to point B to point C in a straight line without the hint of a doubt. But when that's over, it always comes back to- would you rather be someone else?

I'm perhaps sheltered and stupid, because I, for one, believe that if the answer to that question was ever yes, then I would start pondering whether it was time to become someone else. I've been a lot of people before, so I can't help believing it can always be done if necessary.

*

Sorry. Listen to the song of the week this week instead. It is much perkier than all of this noise.

too much candy gonna rot your soul

2009-05-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

More to file under pointlessness.

SP: What about Zachary Quinto?
me: I'm not sure, I don't think I liked the whole Emo Spock thing.
SP: He was totally Emo Spock! Oh- don't you think the Shat is somewhere cursing JJ Abrams' name right now?
me: Yeah, his head must have exploded when Leonard Nimoy appeared on screen. Poor Shat.
SP: Yeah, but they couldn't put him in the movie, he would have chewed up the scenery to high hell.
me: Bones was my favorite.
SP: Bones! Where do I know that guy from?
me: Oh I don't know, little indie movies like LOTR and The Bourne Supremacy. Sheesh.
SP: Who did he play in LOTR?
me: Um. I don't remember right now. I think he was related to the blonde chick.
SP: IMDB, hold please.
me: Also, I love Simon Pegg, but that was the crappiest Scottish accent on earth.
SP: He was weak sauce. Do you know he and Ricky Gervais hate each other?
me: What?
SP: Don't worry, they've made up. Oh, you know what, I might have to watch the movie again because I didn't understand all the time travel stuff. It gave me a headache.
me: Oh, that's because you haven't caught up on Lost.
SP: Why, is it the same type of travel?
me: No, it's just that then you remember that Star Trek is a JJ Abrams' movie, and you think 'oh yeah, none of his plots ever make sense.' And then you stop trying to figure it out.
SP: That reminds me, I don't know what the hell is going on with Fringe either.
me: I rest my case. Also, I think I had a seizure during the previews for the new Transformers movie.
SP: Eesh, there is no way I am going to see that crapfest. I can't wait for the next Star Trek movie, it's going to be great!
me: Don't bet on it. Abrams is really good at ruining things.
SP: We're back on that? You're such a hater.
me: Alias.
SP: Whatever, I choose to hope. Star Trek movies are all about optimism.

SP is the only person I would dream of having this ridiculous a conversation with for such a prolonged period of time, especially while completely sober. Because she's something of a genius/mega-productive member of society, I think it's healthy for her to talk about nothing once in a while. If you think about it, it's really just for her benefit.

it's a wonder that you still know how to breathe

2009-05-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking I ought to have something meaningful to write before posting, and today, I had an epiphany. Since when did anything of import, significance or meaning ever get written on my blog?

Here's something to file away in the Idiot Chronicles, which really should be a recurring column here. Previous installments would include the time that I went for ages without replacing a lightbulb in my bathroom because I didn't own a ladder high enough to reach it. Today's byline would include: things I really should be able to do by now but can't.

It's this absurd juxtaposition: I'm getting older, but I'm wholly immature in so many ways. Evidence that I'm getting older (or maybe evidence that I'm living in a hot dry ninth circle of Dante's creation): my eyes have been getting really dry by day's end, especially if I'm staring at a computer screen or reading for too long. Evidence that I'm wholly immature: I bought eye drops and just discovered that I am really not capable of using them.

I had blocked out my knowledge of this fact. I've somehow managed to hit fossilized status without wearing glasses, and therefore, without ever donning a pair of contact lenses. It occurred to me several months ago that I had missed out on some fundamental developmental ability as a result of this. My classmates and I were supposed to dilate one of our eyes so that we could look at them for an ophtho exercise. Now, most of you that have glasses or get your eyesight regularly checked already know this is a relatively painless process that just involves getting a few eyedrops to chemically dilate your pupils. The instructor said, "you can either put the eyedrop in yourself, or have your partner do it for you."

I turned to my partner and said, "I think you'd better do it." Trying to play it off as brimful is not actually a 3-year old, I quipped, "After all, it's good practice for when you have to do it to your patients." My partner proceeded to get the solution all over my face. In fairness, the fault was not his as he kept painstakingly dropping the solution into my eye, and my eyelids reflexively rebelled against the idea of anything foreign entering. After he had turned red with frustration, I finally ordered him to hold my eyelids open and take the bull by the horns. He was fairly traumatized by the whole thing, while I found it massively entertaining. I never have to worry about having no patience with my patients, because I am pretty much the worst patient on earth on all fronts.

I'd conveniently forgotten all about that incident until this evening, when I tried to put artificial tears into my eyes, and thought to myself um, how am I going to manage this then? Yes, sometimes the thoughts in my head have a British accent, I don't know why. In the end, I think I got half the solution in my eyes, and half on my cheek, and that is my definition of success. It made me muse at those scenes in films or on television, where a character whips out a bottle of eyedrops and just plops them into his or her eyes without so much as a mirror nearby. If I did that, I would look like I'd just come in from the rain.

Also, I pulled a baking fail yesterday. This was especially disheartening because I used the last of my eggs in the endeavor, meaning that I could not bake something else to perk up my spirits afterwards. Maybe that tendency should also go under the Idiot Chronicles, come to think of it.

I do not know where does it go when it goes

2009-05-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

Even though I can be outgoing at times, I am best known for my silences. It’s not sulking, sometimes I’m not even angry or sad or hurt. Just quiet. Just nothing to say. Sometimes the silence comes on because things have gotten too intense and I need to inject distance however I can. Sometimes it manifests because I am at an impasse, and somehow the only thing that will solve the problem is to close my mouth. And sometimes, the silence begins as a question- every so often, I wonder if I am speaking to someone, or if I’m just enjoying the sound of my own voice. When I close my mouth, I wait to see if anyone speaks. If they don’t, they must not have wanted to know what I had to say in the first place, I reason, and the silence thus stretches out.

But it is a stretch. The silence fills a span, and then I get so overwrought, so taut, and I know, when I’ve reached that point, that I have two choices. I can snap back into place and resume the conversation. Or the elastic snaps, the connection breaks entirely, and there’s an end.

I used to be a person that didn’t believe in endings. Nothing ended, everything was temporary, all could be mended or broken all over again, and this was both frustrating and comforting. But now I know there is such a thing as permanence.

I know because, when the silence stretches out, there’s always a choice. Sometimes I’m not consciously aware of it, but some alarm goes off, and I come running back in a panic. Are you still there, is it too late, can we resume? When that happens, it no longer matters who was right and who was wrong, it no longer matters why the silence first came upon us, it no longer matters whether it will come again. I just need to speak, and I need to hear that voice in response.

This blog started because of silence. And I think this blog has been silent lately because the person who I so often had in mind when I wrote became a mirage, dissolved, disintegrated, irreversibly disappeared from my life. Not a ghost, just a void. A string wore down over the years and in the end it frayed with so little fanfare. It was a whimper, not a bang. But that’s the thing about a world ending- does it really matter how much violence is involved? Does that change the fact that it’s the end of the world as we know it?

It is the end of the world as we knew it, and I feel fine. But sometimes I don’t. I don’t know how to write about it, how to explain that a conversation which lasted over 15 years finally came to a close. Because it’s not heartbreak, this feeling. It’s an odd feeling to reconcile, when you know something you cherished so much is over, and yet you know it has to be and that it makes sense that it is. You wouldn’t do anything differently, you regret nothing- and yet, there it is, the silence.

Maybe that is the end- when there are no words.

there's no other way

2009-04-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

It was very early. We were staying in a bungalow in Manuel Antonio. Since it was a tiny bit of a splurge, we took advantage of the kitchenette, and bought groceries the night before. For less than $20, we had enough for dinner that evening, breakfast and a lunch to pack for the hike we would later take.

It was very early and I surveyed the kitchen. We had forgotten one key ingredient- butter. AP was still asleep upstairs. I slipped out. The sun was already out, but the sleepy little village was deserted. A coati wandered around as the morning heat slowly started to gather, looking for scraps that might have been left out from the previous night. The big market was closed, but a more modest one was open. I surveyed the options and finally found leche de crema, which the cashier confirmed was butter through a series of typically comic exchanges in my garbled Spanish.

Back to what seemed like a cottage, back soundlessly into the kitchen, and I heated up the frying pan on the stove. It was the sizzle of the butter melting and crackling in the pan that finally woke AP from her slumber. But she did not descend for a while. I don't know why, but I was happiest then. Making a simple egg, ham & cheese sandwich for breakfast, I was happiest.

*

Today, most of my classmates are buying iPhones, purchasing study aids, getting sensible shoes, finding themselves proper hospital attire. My slow cooker is caramelizing onions. A batch of empanada dough sits in the refrigerator chilling. And I tried my hand at my first batch of homemade marshmallows, for no good reason except why not?

I tell myself it's just my way, but I don't know. Sometimes I think I just want too much. There are some things I'm not willing to give up, and the kitchen is one of them. That is the strangest thing to type. AP were talking about how different we were a decade ago, or in college. If you met me in college, you would never believe I would even step foot in a kitchen.

What does it mean, what does it mean. That's what I kept asking myself. In Iguazu, in Barcelona, in Arequipa, in Monteverde, there are plenty of things of interest, but eventually, I want to be in a kitchen. What a strange affliction.

Below is the post-baking hiatus backlash, for further evidence.

1. feeding freezy, 2. music in the streets sounds good to me now, 3. it's just overkill

Tomorrow, I'll post my post-trip kitchen madness, if I can find my camera in my bags.

When I grow up

2009-04-29T16:28:00.000-07:00

Two so-cheerful-they-seemed-drunk middle-aged nurses got onto the van. They emerged from a rather swank hotel. When we peered from the van into the lobby of the hotel, there was a beautiful vista of a volcano. The top of the volcano was obscured by clouds, so technically we were just looking at a mountain, I suppose, or a very large hill. The first woman hopped onto the van, and immediately started chatting everyone up. AP glanced over at me, looking miserable.

Later, one of the middle-aged women and I were sitting beside each other, and she told me all about the Canadian health care system, and living in Nova Scotia, and the details of their tour, some of which involved some extreme sports in which you would not expect these particular women to be engaging. Later on, AP apologized for stranding me with the lady, but I failed to understand why. All through the trip, she had been chatting away with various backpackers, but somehow the fact that these women were older seemed to make AP's stomach turn.

I've recently discovered I'm fond of old people. Maybe it's because I'm getting older. Or maybe it's because, in my family, the older people were always more interesting. It's a strange thing. So many Indian children born in the US are raised and trained to get a good education, get gainful employment, buy a good house, find a good spouse, have their two-three kids. The stories kind of blur. But all the older Indian people I talked to when I was a child had a different story. My grandparents, especially, and my grandparents' siblings could claim the most colorful stories of the family by leaps and bounds.

And really, we were on a journey that attracts the young. It's a backpackers' country, where you can get from point to point on the cheap, stay in hostels, zipline through the jungle, hike into utter darkness. So, to me, the older folks were all the more fascinating. Later, as we stood on a plank cabled to a tree, it dawned on me that we were about to go sailing through the forest with nothing but a few cables and some caribiners locking us into place. All morning, we'd been debating between options, and so I had no time to really think of my fear of heights or my lack of coordination or the various ways I could go plunging to my death. It wasn't until I got up there, a light mist blanketing the canopy of thick, magical forest. It wasn't until the guides started giving us directions about what to do if we got stuck or if we were going to fast. It wasn't until just that moment, mere minutes before I was about to be bound to a cable, that a pit formed in my stomach.

Then I looked in front of me and there were two people that were easily over 65 years old, a couple. The man was hearty, his face ruddy and jovial. The woman was frail. She looked like she could break in two, and she looked worried that she would break in two. One of the guides accompanied her because of how frightened she looked. But she did it. And by the 6th zip line, she was sturdy, holding forth on how frightened she had been at first. She was embarassed that she had burst into tears on the first zip line, not that any of us noticed, engrossed as we were in conquering our own fears. I looked over to her and said, "Don't worry, a lot of us were crying on the inside," which caused her to laugh.

AP looked at me like I was the biggest drip on the planet, but I didn't much care. The thing is, those old folks had emboldened me. When I had stood up on the platform, my heart starting to pound a little, I looked out in front of me and thought, well, if people 30+ years older than me are sucking it up, who am I to have a nervous breakdown? And after the first second, as I went soaring through the sky, I was elated. It was breathtakingly beautiful, humbling, bursting with life.

So I thought- when I grow up, I want to be an old woman.

Help, I'm alive

2009-04-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

I know this week's song is a bit down tempo, but humor me a little. It has some energy, some passion underneath the languid veneer. And I'd like to think that I am a bit like that just now.

When I finished the latest dance, monkey, dance! medical school exercise, I became a little extreme about reclaiming an aspect of my life. I went out drinking every night, made Nutella ice cream, baked myself out of house and home. I even went out and worked at a rather impressive rock concert. It was as though a part of me was starved and then felt the need to go out on a binge.

I don't like this aspect of medicine. I don't like this aspect of "work hard, play hard." In fact- I don't like "work hard, play hard." But the problem is that the universe conspires against balance. Balance, I'm convinced, is not some fixed point, is not some state of zen calm. Rather, it's war- it's a constant battle to even out two opposing forces that inherently want to pull to one end of the pole.

And now I am going away on 'vacation,' but it all feels a bit ridiculous, to tell the truth. I hope that, druing this trip, I determine whether I should really treat vacations in med school this way in the future. I'm always so brain dead that my trips have become a bit of a blur, and just when I have started to feel situated and present, it's time to pack up and return to reality. I think back on how magical my trip to Spain was and know that, were I taking such a trip today, I would have wound up in Madrid shrugging my shoulders, wanting to sleep in.

That's no way to be. Help, I'm alive, my heart is beating like a hammer. Sometimes, it's so demanding, it threatens to burst right through my rib cage. I believe, rather arrogantly, that I can lead any life I want. And so something inside of me is saying that I want some life in particular, that I have some idea of the shape of things as I want them to be- and when this happens, I won't be denied. Once I can put a name to the desire, things will get very interesting.

catapult

2009-04-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

I told a friend yesterday that if I don’t take this test on Friday, I am going to burst into tears, and that I don’t cry, which makes putting the test off unacceptable. She looked at me as if I was in serious need of therapy.

I mean, I don’t blame her, because I was lying. It’s not like I am lacking in lacrimal glands. I cry. Sometimes it’s over inappropriate things like a good football game or tennis match or one particular scene in The Incredibles (okay, so maybe I really do need therapy, because I admit that’s weird), but I have been known to shed a tear.

It’s just that I don’t like to shed tears because I am feeling sorry for myself, or, more specifically in this case, because I’ve pushed myself too hard, too far. There was a time when I liked nothing better than destroying myself, bursting into tears, and putting myself back together again.

There are still things for which I’m willing to push myself beyond the limits of good sense, but those things are not academic. They will only ever have to do with love, and I don’t have that kind of relationship with school anymore (and that allows me to put off seeing the therapist for a bit). I still love some aspects of science and medicine, but I also love some aspects of poetry and music, and that is the kind of love that can’t be taken away.

Someday, undoubtedly, oh yes I do have optimism for this- which is to say that I’m not sure I should be optimistic about it exactly- but someday again I will undoubtedly barrel right over the edge of reason and be as messy and ridiculous as this song. I’ll save my tears until then.

I go there a lot

2009-04-06T16:02:00.001-07:00

Next week, I'll be back with lots. Lots and lots (well, of culinary stuff at least). This is just another ten-minute break really, but I thought I'd post this song since it's relatively new, and I am a bit crazy for it.

It could just be my mood. I'm in that jangly, bluesy mood. I started to write a whole post about my current mood and I got so bored by it that I can only imagine what a snooze it would be to someone else subjected to read it. So I will spare you.

This song also reminds me of the heat. I believe Martin Crane hails from Austin. Their hot summers are just a tad more humid than the ones I put up with at my current zip code. But the idea is the same. One of my friends used to say that he could never imagine living in Southern California, that the sun was too much pressure- this requirement to be happy and cheerful all the time.

I can't speak for Southern California, but over here, those hot, bright summer days are sometimes still contemplative. It's a strange, submerged feeling. You think things through, you think you're onto something, but it's just too hot, and everything melts. Melts into the sidewalk, melts into the night, melts into places you can't see. You think that maybe a good night's sleep in an airconditioned room will let you sort it all out, but the next morning, the same thing happens.

Even though it's dry and clear and bright, you find yourself slowing down, weighed down. Sometimes you sit still just to stop from sweating. That kind of weather turns everything on its head- because, then, when it rains, it's a relief. And it's the clouds and the wet slicked streets that provide clarity, go figure.

shelter from the storm

2009-03-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

When this is over, I will:

wash my hair
and then get it cut- it just dawned on me yesterday that it has been nearly 6 months.
get my car fixed up- that, I’ve put off for nearly a year.
go to San Francisco for no reason whatsoever, and isn’t that the perfect reason to go to San Francisco.
bake. A lot. This is, of course, assuming that when this is all over there are still a few days before the scorching heat of summer hits these parts. Otherwise, there is going to be a whole lot of ice-cream & sorbet making instead.
go to a concert.
visit Costa Rica.
buy some clothes that are not jeans or workout gear. I’m not really looking forward to having to look presentable again but it was probably about time.
send some apologies, assuming there is anyone left who might accept them.
laugh until I cry, and then cry until I laugh.
reunite with my good friend, Mr. Goose, first name Grey. That really ought to be at the top of the list.

Or so I like to tell myself. In all actuality, I'll probably just want to curl into a ball and be comatose for a few days when this is all over. Of course, I don't really know what I'm going on about, since this will never, technically, be over.

crush

2009-03-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

I love when you rediscover a song, and it reminds you of the good in all the bad. Lost to oblivion, almost completely forgot about this song by the Smashing Pumpkins. Corgan is such a windbag these days, and all that ‘bullet with butterfly’ business pretty much soured me towards him some years back.

What I’d forgotten, but what I’m glad I had done, is that I locked away Gish and Siamese Dreams (and yes, it freaks me out that 'Today' is now used in car commercials, but it was far from the best song on the album anyway). They are in a separate little safe place, with all the other things that need to be protected from the future. Michael Jackson in his prime, Joshua Tree and War, old Soundgarden, Prince before he became punctuation/symbol, Police before Sting went off the drugs. They’re all there, all my friends, all my memories, all the precious little crystallizations of perfection.

maybe you shouldn’t care
throw away those dreams and dare

You might look at it as sad. These guys had so much promise, and now Corgan is running around advocating for Clear Channel and other such unforgivable matters. Cornell is singing horrible songs produced by Timbaland. But I don’t know. Today, I don’t think of it as sad. I just think of it as lovely. A good song is a good song. The past and the future should not touch it. It should be the encapsulation of a moment, and a moment should be independent, should stand on its own.

If I could make life fit into those same parameters, I suspect I would be a much happier person.

nobody's listening

2009-03-23T16:44:00.000-07:00

This is starting to feel futile. The song says ‘my patience still remains,’ but in fact I lack patience, always have. I was the kind of kid that got really good at the things I was already kind of good at: if it was hard, no thanks, moving on. It was easy to just conclude I should focus my efforts elsewhere because at that age there was still promise, there were still things I thought I was good at.

Then you get older and you push too hard, go too far, and realize that every part of you has it limits. You always fall short. You never measure up. It's physics, it's science, it's math, and it's poetry, it's the classics. You should know this by now.

And me, when I feel like this, I get tired of trying. A month ago, it all held such possibility. This is why I could never be a marathon-runner. I get this far along and just wonder what the point is anymore.

My legs feel like rubber, and my head hurts- it actually feels strained. I don’t want to think anymore. If I think anymore, I’ll start thinking and then everything will go to hell.

I want to say this is all meaningless. I want to say none of this defines me. I want to say none of it matters. It’s just a hoop, you jump through it, you move on. I want to be that zen. But it would be a lie, is the problem.

just can't get enough

2009-03-20T17:29:00.000-07:00

K was the most conventional girl in the universe outwardly, but we kids from EBF, you have to watch out for us. For no reason or rhyme, a lot of us have dark eye-liner pasts. D too was a cliché in so many ways, but he would probably fight you to the death if you called him that. Reluctant yuppies if you will. Their wedding was meant to be a standard affair, a standard outdoor wedding with the standard blazing orange, red and purple leaves of a New England autumn as their backdrop, picture perfect, as it had been many times before them, I’m sure.

That’s the thing about growing up in EBF. You have to look closely to find the cracks in the mask. We all have them. I was at the bar. K’s brother was remarking that a Vanilla Stoli in Coca Cola tasted like frosting (for the record, it did), while I had already finished my second drink. AL was ready for prime time; despite the presence of his mother and sister, kid was already getting ready to order shots, and we had to talk him down. Just a standard bunch of soon-to-be-drunk wedding guests leaning against the open bar getting sloshed. The whole thing could have seemed so bland and predictable and dull. Maybe that’s why we had taken to drinking immediately.

The cake came out, and we smiled patiently. K looked over at us, and there was a little knowing flash in her eyes. Just a tiny bit of subversion. Have you ever really watched a cake cutting? I felt compelled to pay attention that time because there weren’t that many people at this wedding, and the bride’s brother was nearby. If there is actually music for this part of the ceremony, it’s usually super cheeseball. It’s usually something like the cheesy first dance, something somber, something some American Idol contestant will be covering someday. But as we turned to watch them, out came the unmistakeable synthpop, bubbly, smile-inducing- when I’m with you baby, I go out of my head, I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough.

That’s life. Not that many of us can pull off being hipsters. Some of us have to pay the rent, or the mortgage. We have to wash our hair and look presentable at work. We have to keep our jobs. We have to play along. I say that as someone who doesn’t have a mortgage, hasn’t had a job for two years, hasn’t washed her hair in two days (don't judge!), and has been alternating between wearing sweatpants and scrubs for the past week. But I’ll probably go back to being a working class stiff soon enough.

Just look a little closely, though. There’s a little mischief in there. There’s a little something to appreciate. It would be so easy to think of K as boring if you wanted to, but she wasn’t really. Nobody who plays Depeche Mode while cutting their wedding cake really can be. And in some ways, that made her a lot more interesting than a hipster, come to think of it.

mistaken for strangers

2009-03-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

I don’t want to be known, and I don’t want to know you. Names are not necessary. I just want to shed a little light, maybe a glow, but leave the stage dark. You can show me whatever you want too. Just show me a piece. Leave out the parts you don’t want seen.

You don’t have to find the right words, and neither do I. We can just speak into the void. We can let the darkness swallow the things we did not mean to say whole, never to be heard again.

When we part, you won’t remember me and I won’t remember you. You won’t know for sure if I ever really existed. I didn’t. We didn’t. We are a figment. We are the fractured mirror, the sliver left in which you can see a reflection- but a distorted fragment. If you saw me, you wouldn’t recognize me, and I wouldn’t recognize you.

That’s what we want, and that’s what we got. We never mean to pry, we never mean to push it too far. And so we float, float above the world, or away from the world with this weightlessness. Eventually, you might need a little gravity. Eventually, curiosity might get the best of me. I ask a question, or you ask a question, and the pinprick deflates the balloon. Down we fall to the ground in the light of day, two strangers. It doesn’t look so good from down here.

So we part, in search of the night and shadows, places we can hide, places where others congregate in the darkness and inevitably offer you a light to start it up all over again.

use somebody

2009-03-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

(Disclaimer: another installment of five minute free-form babble.)

*

The feelings should not have been the same, but they were.

Warm September, end of the evening, he tried to plan it out just right. It was so late, all the trains had stopped running. I’ll never be that naive since then, because I’ll never be that girl again. When I think back on it- how could he have resisted anyway? I held onto every last word he spoke as if it was dripping with the secrets of the universe.

A cab was pulling up, and he was sure he had flagged it. So he made his move, and then tried to jump into the cab. Except that this was Boston. So the taxi went on its way, and he sheepishly said goodnight, a bit disappointed. He always wanted to construct movie scenes, it seemed.

But it didn’t matter- I remember listening to my heart racing that night, the breathlessness, the everything that was that moment and how it overwhelmed me.

Foggy November. Get off the BART, always in my own head. But I was always fond of the chilly walk. In the classroom that night, we had a big exam. This is the class, this was the spark. I knew what I wanted, but this class made me remember that there is what you want and then there is what wants you, what swallows you whole. There are goals and then there is the heartbeat underneath, the pulse that pounds when you have found your rhythm in something outside yourself.

It was not necessarily because of wondrous teaching skills, though his teaching skills were quite good. But it didn’t matter. It never has. It has never mattered to me in that regard- if you were there, if you bore witness, you get full credit. I’d rather believe everyone was instrumental than leave it to random, blind chance.

So when the instructor said what he said, I might as well have been a teenager all over again. An innocent little playful comment. I didn’t really even deserve it, and don’t worry, my head only swelled for a second.

But oh, the feeling was so much the same. The fluttering, the breathlessness, the excitement, the promise of things to come, all so familiar. There are all kinds of mutations of love and lust and crushes in this world. And sometimes, for all their different incarnations, what is underneath is exactly the same.

black swan

2009-03-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

(Disclaimer: remember, this is just a 10-minute stretch.)

*

Here’s the conversation, the way it played in my head:

Salvador Dali said, “Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am the hallucinogen.”

To which, Joni Mitchell replied, “I could drink a case of you, darling, and I would still be on my feet, I would still be on my feet.”

A game of chicken, a gauntlet of dares. Which one are you- the drug or the drugged? Which one do you want to be? Do you want to be the spoon or the force that bent it?

Oh these are not healthy thoughts, not at all. Who boasts about melting clocks? You want to be the cause of pinpoint pupils. You want to overtake their brain, shut it down, make them shake.

But then again, who brags about their capacity for heartbreak? You’ll be sorry in the dead of the night when you can’t sleep, when your hair stands on end, when your stomach squeezes into a globe like the world you threw away in your pursuit of the edge. You wanted to see how far you could take it, but you won’t ever be the same.

Yes, yes, that’s what we learn in the books. All those things. All those facts. But what about this fact: put a moth and a flame together, and the moth will get burned, and the fire won’t feel sorry.

Lucky

2009-03-12T08:11:00.001-07:00

Disclaimer: explanation for the choppy, 10-minute bursts of indecipherable babble here.

*

The bug got me, infiltrated me but good, put me in my place.

I feel like a Radiohead song today. Even though it’s sunny outside, I feel like the fog of those entrancing San Francisco evenings. I feel like feeling a little sorry for myself.

But I don’t have that luxury, so instead I get a Radiohead song. When I was younger, I used to sit on a stoop with S. He’d bring over a pack of cloves, and we would smoke one or two while looking up at the stars (I know it was extremely foolish, forgive me for my youthful need to behave like a beatnik). He let me stew, we never really talked. It was like being alone, but more lonely, because it was almost like an acknowledgment that there was every reason to feel miserable.

Later on, the other friends, the ones that I always get a kick of, even when I think of them to this day, the rough and tumble crew that are, weirdly enough, my people, they would remark, ‘life’s a b*tch and then you die.’ Like a mantra, except maybe it was more of a punchline. Didn’t get the A on that exam? Had a bad breakup? Have a hangover? Gained a few unwanted pounds? Can’t afford that dress? ‘Life’s a b*tch and then you die.’ We said it all the time. Peddle self-pity somewhere else, we’re not buying here.

Like the Cake song says ‘as soon as you’re born, you start dying, so you might as well have a good time.” Oh it’s all in good fun, right? It’s all funny. Yet it’s also sort of true.

So suck it up, put out the cloves, switch the tune, shake away the fog, and face the day.

dirt off your shoulder

2009-03-11T09:42:00.001-07:00

Disclaimer: see yesterday's post for an explanation.

*

Sometimes, and it’s embarrassing to admit, because pride always comes before a fall, but sometimes, I feel invincible. It’s easy when you’re self-contained and everything depends solely on you. Which is, of course, a total lie that we tell ourselves.

I can only keep my molecules together, can only keep myself completely within the margins of reason for a window of time. But during that time, oh, I won't be pushed around. No one on the corner has swagger like me.

And during that time, for that brief window of time, I can’t be swayed. I am single-minded in my purpose. I have some kind of fire that fuels me forward, and the road before me is certain.

This power is free of all insecurity. I am unapologetic, as I discard any source of noise, anyone that stands in my way. Give me a guilt trip- I will look at you with the blankest look of indifference. No one can hurt me.

How I envy those who maintain this kind of pomposity, this kind of self-assured arrogance for all of their days. Me, I can only make it for a window of time. And then I wonder who am I kidding, and all of that certainty and bravado leeches out of me. At which time, I am just like anyone else. I always was, but then I’m back to knowing it.

across the universe

2009-03-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I'm giving this a whirl, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I've been doing this exercise for the past couple of days, just to keep myself from losing my mind. I listen to a song, and I give myself about 10 minutes, and write what comes to mind. My point is that the next several posts will probably be extremely self-indulgent, possibly incoherent, and kind of free form (hmm, how is that different than usual?). I might balk at this in the next day or two; I'm bad when it comes to commitment at the moment. We'll see.

*

How could there not be something supernatural at play? A scientist, by training, wants to doubt. A scientist has to question.

I used to think it was just human nature. Be nice to someone, and they’re nice to you. Live a good life, and there will be goodness around you. Meaning (as my dad prefaces when he is trying to make a point): you have control. You decide, you determine. It’s an equation, it’s Le Chatelier’s principle, it’s science.

Except no.

Some days you lose everything. You stand over a waterfall and see your whole life crashing with such force against those rocks. You think you’re that meaningless, you think your life is that insignificant. And that is true.

But it’s not the only truth.

Explain it, that which has no explanation. Explain how, suddenly, and with no warning or reason, people can disappear out of your life. People who you thought were there forever, who were your constants, just gone. Explain it, but you absolutely can’t.

And then explain this, even more impossible to explain, even more difficult to define or describe. Explain how, just when you have concluded that such is life, and no one is reliable and nothing is forever, other people reappear, ghosts coming out of the ether and holding out their hand. They say, ‘we’re here, and we missed you.’ Explain it, how suddenly, someone’s words say ‘You mean something to me. Your life has significance to me.’ And that is true too. Even though it may not be true tomorrow.

Explain that, explain it all, but really you can’t. Be nice to someone, and they’re nice to you. Maybe. Maybe not. But be nice anyway, because there’s a chance, and the chance is worth it.

I must remember there'll be days like this

2009-03-07T09:48:00.000-08:00

Here's an explanation of why I haven't blogged, in the form of a rundown of my extremely uneventful days this past week:

wake up
put on the kettle- of all people, a white, 22-year old Southern Californian surfer dude finally got me hooked on a morning cup of chai with almond (or soy) milk in it.
over a cup of tea, while knitting a sock, I listen to a 45-minute mp3 lecture, convincing myself I am learning something this way while still easing into my morning.
suffer through two hours of test-taking, head-banging-against-a-wall, acceptance, and learning
shower, dress, try to memorize some random factoids
lunch
read
gym, while trying to dodge phone calls from classmates inquiring about strategies and schedules and wanting to generally compare everything as if this was some sort of clone war
dinner
one hour of prescribed television, though I've been so distracted that I am only half-watching
repeat performance of two hours of test-taking, head-banging-against-a-wall, resignation/learning
sleep

Lather, rinse, and repeat. On the one hand, it's working. On the other hand, it's depressing. I get a few five minute breaks in between all of these things to maybe check email or twitter it up, but other than that, my day feels disgustingly regimented. It's weird to be an extremist and yet loathe the extremity of it all. But hey, sometimes you have to suck it up and deal.

One thing that is good is that I am so inside my head right now that I think I will indeed have a bit to write when all of this is through.

then again it feels like some sort of inspiration

2009-02-28T12:32:00.001-08:00

To tell the truth, I wanted to dislike Sita Sings the Blues. Or I should say, I fully expected to dislike it. I’m not a particularly religious person, but I feel about Sita, Mirabai and Radha the way some girls must feel about Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Since we were marooned in EBF, my father was more than happy to indulge my interest in reading by getting me every book I requested that had to do with anything Indian. I read Jawarhalal Nehru’s letters to Indira Gandhi, I read a version of the Ramayana, I read cartoon depictions of the Mahabharata, tales of Mirabai, books on Prahlad. Anything I could get my hands on. Maybe that’s why, when I ran out of these books, I found it easy to read Frank L. Baum, C.S. Lewis, or Madeline L'Engle- all that other-worldliness seemed to me just part and parcel of reading.

But the story of Sita always stuck with me. I remember reading every bit of information about her as I could gather. And I remember, from a very young age, thinking it’s rough out there for a girl. But even though I had my quibbles with the story of Sita and Rama, I have always been fiercely protective about it.

So I approached the film, fully expecting to be annoyed that it was misappropriated. But I will tell you what- Sita Sings the Blues deserves all the accolades it has been getting. It is extremely clever, not just in terms of the story it presents, not just in terms of the graphics and music, but also in terms of how the story is told. There is fascinating discourse as the story proceeds, fascinating to me because it’s exactly the kind of conversation that used to transpire in my family’s living room. Aunties and uncles would be sitting late at night dissecting the stories, picking them apart for their inconsistencies, everyone having heard a slightly different version of the story.

I’d seen clips of the movie before, and from it, the movie had just struck me as something kitschy. It’s way, way more than that. I’m honestly a bit jealous of it. When I was in college, I tried to mine the whole tale of Sita to write a story for a writing class. It was okay, but it nagged at me; it never quite connected the dots. It was always the idea that I thought, if I actually knew how to write, I would go back and get right. Along comes Nina Paley and she has figured out exactly how to explain how universal Sita’s story is. And she managed to do it while injecting healthy doses of clever humor where it is needed.

The jazz vocals used in the movie have apparently created some problems in terms of getting the film distributed. That’s a shame. I hope anyone who wants to gets a chance to see this movie, because it truly is brilliant. Currently, it's possible to watch it in its entirety here, and it's currently screening in New York.

just a bad movie where there's no crying

2009-02-19T17:21:00.000-08:00

It seems that it’s worth posting something kind of silly and superficial at the moment. So here’s a little rundown on the Oscars, or more accurately, my rationale for why I watched various Oscar-baiting movies, why I did not watch others, and my unsolicited opinion of them. It turned out to be a lot longer than I expected it to be, but I haven't been posting much of late, and have some things going on that will prevent me from posting for a while yet, so here's some drivel in the meanwhile.

Oscar Bait #1: Slumdog Millionaire
Why I watched it:
Anil Kapoor. Danny Boyle. A desire to escape the doledrums of December after finals.
Unsolicited opinion:
Light as a feather, substantial as cotton candy, but as fun as a pillow fight or munching on a confection. I am kind of shocked at how likely it is that this movie could take home an Oscar or two, but then I realize that Gladiator and Titanic have won Oscars, and it becomes clear that the academy is all for slick entertainment over substance if the mood is right. When Network was released, Rocky beat it out because it’s a feel-good film. Sorry, Milk.

Oscar Bait #2: Frost/Nixon
Why I didn’t watch it:
I watched NPH’s Frost/Everyone skits instead (I know this is a poor excuse, but there are really only so many movies a person can watch in a few months while trying to bake various things and not fail out of school). Also, I am not a fan of Ron Howard movies.

Oscar Bait #3: Milk
Why I watched it:
San Francisco shout-outs galore. I love Harvey Milk-lore. SpyDaddy plays the mayor of SF!
Unsolicited opinion:
I am kind of shocked at how unlikely it is that this movie could take home Oscars, and that it hasn’t been an awards darling. I only saw this movie recently (a true sign that I no longer live in SF, it was impossible to find companions willing to go see this movie with me out here in EBF), and I was amazed by it. Sean Penn is obviously a fantastic actor, because he didn’t seem self-important or like the d.b he comes off as when defending Jude Law’s honor. I’m not really kidding about Harvey Milk-lore. If you read about San Francisco, specifically about the Castro, the stories about Harvey Milk are boundless, and he is always known for being a genuinely nice guy. And wonders upon wonders, Spiccoli actually comes across as genuinely good-hearted. Josh Brolin is creepily good. The shots of the Castro and Eureka Valley made my heart swell three sizes. And the film is talking about a lot that is relevant. One reason I love Milk-lore and the Castro is that it’s a demonstration of what has to happen. If you think that gay folks only live in the Castro in San Francisco, you’re sadly mistaken. Similarly, all the Indians in the Bay Area do not live in Fremont. But sometimes, you need to have a home base, a place to have enough of a presence that you have to be acknowledged, and then you can actually be accepted everywhere else as a result. And perhaps my favorite thing to think about in the movie is one of the first things Milk says to his boyfriend before he moves to San Francisco and becomes the Milk everyone knows: “Forty years old and I haven’t done a thing that I’m proud of.”

Oscar Bait #4: Doubt
Why I didn’t watch it:
I didn’t get around to it. I think I would prefer to see Amy Adams in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. And I figure if Meryl Streep wins the Oscar, her acceptance speech will be more entertaining than her film performance, only because the woman seems to be innately hilarious, moreso as she has grown older. It’s my not-so-secret fantasy that Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson and Helen Mirren should perform stand-up together. Maybe Tracy Ullman could help write it for them.

Oscar Bait #5: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Why I watched it:
I’ve asked myself every day since I’ve seen the movie. I blame David Fincher. Come on. The dude made Fight Club, and I think that might have been the last time Brad Pitt was truly entertaining in a movie.
Unsolicited opinion:
I’ve revealed myself as a sap in the past (I mean, put Before Sunrise and Before Sunset in front of me, give me some See’s, and call it a day), but I’m not this much of a sap. I think you can determine whether you will like this movie or not based on the following: did you and do you still like Forrest Gump? If so, then by all means, run out to the theater. If, like me, you thought Gump was overrated even when it came out, then this movie is probably going to drive you crazy. Blanchett looks a little befuddled to be in the movie. Swinton shows up and decides she is the new Meryl Streep- she doesn’t care if she’s in the middle of a sh*t-fest, she’s going to come in and steal every scene. The special effects are, of course, well done, but unless you’re crazy about Brad Pitt, and long for his Thelma and Louise days, they’re not enough to be captivating.

Oscar Bait #6: The Wrestler
Why I didn’t watch it:
Mickey Fricking Rourke. Sorry, but I already took a chance on one reformed sleazebag, and the gamble paid off with Colin Farrell in In Bruges. I’m not going to tempt fate. Plus everyone who has seen it has remarked on how depressing the movie is.

Oscar Bait #7: Rachel Getting Married
Why I watched it:
Small movie. I heard there were saris. The idea of Anne Hathaway playing someone edgy seemed funny to me.
Unsolicited opinion:
Surprisingly good movie. I quickly forgave the saris especially because I feel like they might have been there just so Hathaway got a chance to make a sarcastic comment about the necessity for ‘fittings.’ What was refreshing about the movie was also what was frustrating about the movie. The wedding itself, to me, was the most interesting part of the movie—how did these two people meet, how did they get together, how did the wedding turn into the ceremony it became? But everything takes a backseat to Hathaway’s troubled character- which might have been the entire point of the film. Anyway, not great, but not horrible. I’m not really sure Hathaway deserves to beat out a powerhouse such as Viola Davis, however.

Oscar Bait #8: The Reader
Why I didn’t watch it:
Already saw Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road. Nothing about The Reader compelled me to see it, except perhaps the Extras episode where Gervais basically got Winslet to make a crack about getting an Oscar for getting into a movie about the Holocaust. This allowed Gervais to give himself a shout-out at the Golden Globes, which only 50% of people understood was a reference. I thought Revolutionary Road was alright.

Oscar Bait #9: In Bruges
Why I watched it:
No explanation except good luck. The trailer kind of entertained me.
Unsolicited opinion:
What a surprise. This movie has messed me up for good about Colin Farrell. He and Brendan Gleeson were fantastic together in this movie. Gleeson’s performances are always great though. But watching Ralph Fiennes relish a villainous role was also a nice, unexpected turn. What’s more, as much as Farrell’s character endlessly makes fun of it, Bruges grows on you over the course of the movie. Now I’d like to visit.

Miscellaneous Oscar Bait Performances:

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight: so I know Ledger is going to win. And there’s no doubt that his creepy turn as the Joker was his best performance ever, and redefined the way villains are played (sorry, and see ya, Nicholson). But I have to say that I think both the performance and the movie are hyped. The Dark Knight is impressive for its genre, but a lot of its messages are murky, and I am really tired of the incapability of summer blockbusters to write anything interesting as far as women’s roles go.
Robert Downey Jr in Tropic Thunder: I think this is a ‘good job RDJ, stay off the sauce’ nomination by the academy. Unlike Ledger’s performance, I think Robert Downey Jr’s performance got overshadowed a bit by all the glee regarding Tom Cruise’s performance as a fat, foul-mouthed, gyrating studio head. But the fact is, someone else could have played that goofy studio head role. I can’t think of another actor that could have pulled off RDJ’s role, which could have been a political landmine that, in anyone else’s hands, probably would have blown up in everyone’s faces. I’m not a big Ben Stiller fan, but I have to give him credit for having the good sense to cast RDJ.
Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona: All I can say about this is that, prior to watching this movie (I had not seen Elegy yet), I put Cruz in kind of the same category as Colin Farrell. But wow, throw her opposite a powerhouse like Javier Bardem, and she steals every scene she’s in?!? I wouldn't have guessed that. The problem with Vicky Cristina Barcelona is that you very quickly don’t give a crap about Vicky or Cristina, because you’re far more interested in screen time being devoted to Cruz’ Maria Elena. Then I saw Penelope Cruz in Elegy, and now I have to begrudgingly admit that the woman can act. And her English is improving considerably.
Richard Jenkins in The Visitor: Jenkins first caught my attention in Flirting with Disaster. The he became well known for his sometimes somber, sometimes hilarious portrayal of a dead father in Six Feet Under. The Visitor seems to have been tailor-made for him. He is so quiet about his performance that he takes what could have been schlocky cheese and turns it into a believable and compelling metamorphosis. He has no chance in hell of winning any awards for it, but maybe more people will go see The Visitor as a result of the nomination.

Wow, that was probably all rather haughty. I'd be more curious to hear what others thought of various performances this year. It should be noted that I didn't see any of the animated films in contention this year. This is because medical school is filled with cartoons, so I could not bring myself to watch them on the large screen.

the history books forgot about us

2009-02-16T08:13:00.000-08:00

I'm always posting songs here that are ancient. This is not exactly the place to discover new music, but then again, that's not really my intention. The thing is, sometimes a song has to age a little to have any meaning to me. But ironically enough, not this one.

In this case, it's more a difficulty of sharing this song, or writing anything about it. This song feels to me about perspective. When I first heard about this song, it reminded me of a quote from the movie Before Sunrise:

"You know what's the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? It's when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that is how little they're thinking of you. You know, you'd like to think you're both in all this pain but they're just like 'Hey, I'm glad you're gone'."

And then it also brought a little Neruda to mind:

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

It's like a prism with all these different facets. Somewhere in there is the truth. Spektor's song is about someone who is reminding someone that she existed, that they existed. Jesse in Before Sunrise knows he's been forgotten, but knows he's done plenty of forgetting in his time. And Neruda makes it seem like simpler math, an eye for an eye. But were that true, Neruda couldn't write this kind of poetry:

love is so short, forgetting is so long

It's interesting, to me, though, that common sense says forget, move on, get over it. When all most people ever want to do is be remembered. And some of us feel compelled to do the remembering.

you laugh until you cry, you cry until you laugh

2009-02-12T21:07:00.000-08:00

You might not guess it from the ramblings here, but my biggest defense mechanism to stress is not baking: it’s humor. I can’t write with much humor, not the way one of my favorite bloggers did. But in person, I will do almost anything to make myself laugh when I get stressed out. And it doesn’t take much, because usually just the inherent absurdity of whatever stressful situation I find myself in is enough to crack me up. Today was not that sort of day, unfortunately. It took a lot longer to laugh, and it felt wrong when I giggled, but I made someone else laugh, a necessary release, a useful distraction. So I don’t mind.

It’s my brother that is the real comedian of my family. But there is also that natural phenomenon that occurs between siblings- you start speaking in some odd language that is peppered with inside jokes to do with movie quotes or obscure references or shared history. Some are things that only the two of you find funny.

My cousin SD, poor unfortunate soul (not really, in the end he wound up way more successful than either my brother or me), moved from India to the US when he was 12 years old. Could you pick a more unfortunate time, I wonder? As many people who read this blog know, in India, you learn the Queen’s English. But you must understand that my brother and I were 11 and 13 respectively when SD moved. And we had little to amuse ourselves. Certainly at school, we were likely the outcasts, the outliers. Being the little sh*ts that we were, we basically projected that onto SD. If we seemed foreign in EBF, SD seemed to fall from another planet. And we relished this, because it detracted from how weird we were.

SD would say all kinds of things upon which we would seize like hyenas. The most memorable of these, inexplicably, had to do with the simple act of spelling out one word. Once SD had spelled it once, my brother and I would needle him into spelling it again and again. Moreover, to this day, my brother and I spell the word the same way.

It started so innocently. We were introducing SD to one of the finest cuisines this great nation has to offer, and he had never had the good stuff. I can’t remember now why he spelled it out, but spell it out he did. And once we heard him say, “P-I-Zed-Zed-A,” that was it. We were done for.

To this day, my brother and I do not use the word ‘pizza’ with each other. When in each other’s presence, that word is always spelled out, and the “Zed”s are always overexaggerated and celebrated. So stupid really, but as I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t take much to get us laughing.

And today, when there was really no reason for laughing, I retold this story and by the end of the evening, a friend said, “I would like to go over to B’s for some P-I-Zed-Zed-A.” My work here is done.

*

Of course, I have also baked. And am baking for the rest of the night. I’ll try to charge my camera so that I have some photographic evidence for a change.

word is there's a new girl in town

2009-02-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

Right when muxtape collapsed, I had this idea for a mix. It turned into a CD that I sent to a few tolerant friends. The premise of the CD had to do with derivation. When Jet first released Look What You’ve Done, a whole lot of us thought they were trying to trick people into thinking they were the Beatles. When The Silversun Pickups released Lazy Eye, I had to listen carefully before discerning that it was not in fact an unreleased Smashing Pumpkins song.

Of course, in neither of those instances did I find myself offended by the new songs or bands. I compared that to my reaction of listening to Creed for the first time. I remember feeling absolute rage about that band trying to sound like Pearl Jam. In the 90s, having a deep, low crooning voice filled with angst became so ubiquitous that it turned a lot of people off the original sources.

I like to think the difference has to do with motivation. Those 90s knock-off bands seemed like they sprung up, molded by record companies who seemed to have decided the formula for success was to dress a decent looking fellow in a grunge uniform and put him on stage. It worked too- some of those bands were more accessible, more willing to market themselves and put themselves through the machine, and so they got plenty of radio time.

On the other hand, now when I hear the derivation, when I hear the hints of other songs and bands, I am less cynical about it. I remember now that I’m not a teenager. Now influences from my childhood are blooming forward in interesting ways, I like to think.

If you were going to pick a band to mimic, I doubt a record company would encourage you to try to imitate the Pixies. Critical darlings, sure, but not exactly associated with mainstream, rolling-in-the-green success. So, I don’t really have a bone to pick with Kings of Leon.

W and I used to, sometimes in college, go to these record stores that had listening stations. You threw a big pair of headphones on your head and listened to a few CDs that had just been released. We would, every once in a while, hear something that was familiar. It was familiar because it sounded like some band we had recently heard, or because the lyrics were about something that we seemed to recognize, or because the way something was phrased was just exactly how we would have wanted it put. Whatever the reason, we would glance over at each other and nod, exchanging knowing glances.

I don’t know that W was ever a big Pixies fan. He put up with my fondness for The Breeders, and would patiently listen to me explain the connection. But still, I’d like to think he’d hear these two songs back to back, and we’d be able to smile about the similarities.

Technically, there is a lot that is different between The Pixies’ Gigantic and Kings of Leon’s I Want You. But still, take a listen to the opening bass on both songs and it’s hard to not catch that there’s some connection between the two songs. Me, I’m always going to prefer Gigantic- because that was the first time I heard that moody bass and then the building crush of guitars in Kim Deal’s chorus. Also, I associate the Pixies with adolescence- there was so much subversion in their music that, for an Indian girl growing up in EBF, it always felt like an act of rebellion to listen to them. You always felt you were getting away with something, listening to songs like these.

I Want You, however, is a perfectly respectable song. It’s probably more than that, really. It makes more use of that moody bass, lets it build into a yearning instead of catharsis. It’s not punk like Gigantic. The vibe is more of straight-ahead rock, and so are the lyrics for that matter. Kings of Leon are really good at capturing what the underbelly of a city would sound like.

But I don’t really hold it against them, the similarity between this song and Gigantic, except when I do. A band like Kings of Leon, I’ll always like them. If I was in a bar and their music started playing, I would order myself another drink and settle in for the night. But I find it hard to get hyperbolic in praise about them. It feels instead like they are part of a progression of a sound. So I note them down and think, huh, this is what the Pixies have yielded, cool. I recognize this is faulty thinking- everything was derived from something. Matter is conserved. But still, I find it hard to ignore the past when a bass line in my ear insists on reminding me.

the feeling I get when you walk away

2009-02-02T22:37:00.000-08:00

This song I like for how slippery it is. It is also a lovely song, to be sure, which may be a bit surprising when you consider that John Doe is also a bass player for a hardcore punk band. But more than being lovely, it is cleverly tricky, even in its chorus.

Sounds romantic- we are the feeling you get in the Golden State. What does that mean, really? It’s up to you. I was thinking of this because I was thinking that love of people and love of places isn’t really all that different sometimes. That’s probably not the first time I’ve pointed that out in this here navel-gazing repetitive loop.

There are aspects of California for which I’m thoroughly mad. Sweeping vistas, sunshine, and natural abundance. And then there are things about California that are absolutely heartbreaking. So expensive, so transient, so isolating. And both of those feelings can coexist on any given day.

It seems that way with this song too. This song says you are the dream in my nightmare but it also cheerfully points out: you are the pain in my neck. I like to think it’s because this song knows things, things like reality is always some conflicting dichotomy of feelings. They seem contradictory and yet they always, always coexist.

along may come a bigger one

2009-02-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

As much as I have cheered for Rafael Nadal, because I am a sucker for Spaniards and upstarts, it took until this Australian Open for something to occur to me. A bit less than 4 years ago, I was marvelling at Federer's level of play and how, even on an off day, Federer was a hard fellow to beat. In the Australian semi's this year, Roddick threw the kitchen sink at Federer, then went out back and tossed the shed, a wheel barrow and a lawnmower at him, and it still did not come close to keeping the Fed from the finals. That's the thing about the Fed, that's always been the thing- some players can play flawlessly, can play at their best, highest level ever, and still lose to him.

But it took me until today to realize something. Though I've always thought of Nadal as more than a brute, more than just some little punk who keeps nagging at Federer, I really did not understand the shift that has occurred in tennis until today. He's been ranked 1 for a while, but still, Nadal had never won a Slam on hard court. What's more, Federer had nearly a full day of rest on Nadal: Rafa played a day after Federer's semi, and he had to battle through a 5-set, history-making-long match against Verdasco in order to get to the finals. He was less well-rested, he was playing on a court that Federer usually dominates. And throughout the tournament, Federer was playing the tennis that everyone always associates him with- effortless, beautiful, sorry-Roddick-see-ya tennis. Plus, he has some history of his own to make, since he is one Slam away from tying Sampras' record of championship wins.

He didn't play perfectly, mind you, in the finals, but he gave it all he had. When Federer and Nadal play, they push each other past their normal limits. They know they have to. They make more errors than they normally do, because of the way they push each other, press each other's buttons, shake each other up. In the end, there were no excuses. You could blame the rain delays or the failing light at Wimbledon, you could give the clay advantage to Rafa at the French, but at the Australian Open, there was only one conclusion that could be reached, a conclusion no one (not especially Rafael Nadal) is comfortable saying out loud- Rafael Nadal is currently the best tennis player in the world.

Also, who doesn't love bromance?

we are interlocking

2009-01-26T21:35:00.000-08:00

What do I like about the song I've posted this week? What do I not like about the song this week?

I like this about it:

well, the sidewalk's shady, I fully expect
a piano to fall on my head

And I like that the song is really two songs.

And I like this about the second half of the song:

And 'hello, how are you?'
it's simple, but it's true,
I'm curious

I like that the name of the band is Brazos, which also happens to be the name of my cousins' favorite bookstore in Houston- they used to always take me there when I visited them.

I haven't seen them for a while now, and it makes me think of the line above. I've been admittedly horrible about properly corresponding with people since starting school. It sounds pathetic, but I am often just too drained to talk, to catch up. That's what makes me think of the above line. The second half of this song has a weary affect- the song slows down and seems tired, jet-lagged really. Sometimes I wish life was as simple as songs- like I could just email someone with that line from the song, like that would be enough to mend it all, like that would be enough to elicit the desired response.

What else do I like about this song? How about the vocals? How about the music? The first half of the song drew me in immediately because there's a pleasant, fiesta-like cadence to the music. I don't know what it is about Martin Crane's vocals either. It's not like the voice is refined or pitch perfect. In fact, there's something charmingly off about it. The second half of the song slows down and it seems as though it will be a down-shifting lament, but it builds, crescendoes into a bluesy jam instead.

It's not meant to be some deeply meaningful masterpiece, probably. Yet for some reason, I find it to be. I'm too tired to articulate it at the moment. Maybe even if I had the energy, I wouldn't be able to do it though. I will say this- I've written an entire email about it, and I could write an entire post on the deceptive simplicity of this one lyric:

Sleep when you're tired and sleep when you're done

That pretty much sums it up for me. I forget it all the time, of course. I forget to let myself off the hook for being tired. I forget the difference between being tired and being done. Either way you take a rest, but it's important to know whether you have miles to go still or not. Come to think of it, it's important to remember that you always have miles to go still. Because if you didn't, well, then, you'd be done.

Anyway, enjoy, if you like. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a poundcake that very much wishes to be liberated from my oven.

now the colors convene

2009-01-19T08:47:00.000-08:00

This week’s song isn’t quite as much of a fossil as the previous ones.

This week’s song can be filed under the Isn’t it pretty to think so? category of tunes. If yesterday, I was overly concerned with reality, today I’m acknowledging that love is blindness or, more importantly, blind spots and hazy vision are necessary in the business of living.

Last night, I had a little tussle with insomnia. It was stupid really- bedtime reading is generally not thought to involve someone getting stabbed 22 times in the chest. Every time I closed my eyes, my imagination went a little crazy.

I started with honesty. I turned the light back on and started writing something, but it was filled with too much truth. It was so frightening that I had even more trouble going to sleep after that. It was time for oblivion. Time for lies. 2:30 is time for lies.

Life is better now that I’ve found you. I erased the bad parts. Edited out the ugly pasts or the hopeless futures. I found the window. When I imagined it that way, I realized I have a knack for windows. Life has a knack with windows. If you let it, life can lull you into some real highs- the only condition is that you cannot ask for it to sustain, cannot expect it to fix everything that came before.

It was easy once I was down with poetic license. It took me less than 20 minutes to fall asleep, and it only took that long because I was starting to enjoy thinking of all the perfect memories. Some were just beautiful places, some were people I loved in all sorts of different ways, and many were different laughs. The laughs are for another post, maybe tomorrow.

If, however, I had spent even an extra minute lingering on any one of those images, any one of those memories, the illusion would have surely been shattered.

Set all of that aside, though, and note that Norah Jones sounds weirdly like she has some soul in this song. Maybe not weirdly, because Q-Tip is at work here. And Q-Tip is in prime form. Even if you correct for my ridiculous bias (I have a serious thing for his voice, regardless of whether he’s spewing nonsense), Q-Tip is staying in the moment here. He’s celebrating what he can, both what came before him and what followed, without getting weighed down in the complexities. But it’s Q-Tip- it’s not like he’s unaware. He’s making a choice, he states it up front:

one step at a time, a man walked on the moon

You can’t always think about things in their entirety or you’d never get much accomplished. If you think about 2009 and everything that has gone wrong, the idea that anything will improve is nearly impossible to imagine. If, however, you think of 2009 as a window, cut it free of the bonds of the past and the future, who knows?

still haven't found what I'm looking for

2009-01-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

On the plane ride home from Argentina, I started reading What is the What, an account of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. You can have your issues with Dave Eggers, but it's interesting to me that he more or less submerges his entire writing style and voice in order to recount the tale of Valentino Achak Deng. There are none of his usual clever tricks or wisecracks. And yet, there's still something rather Eggers-ly about it.

A friend and I were talking about how unrelenting literature can be these days. But I'm in a mood of late, so I feel I'm getting assaulted from all sides. It's not just the books that are so bleak. In What is the What, the Lost Boys walk for miles and miles across Sudan, in circles at times, encountering all manner of danger, but they are propelled forward by both the instinct to survive and the promise of Ethiopia. They are told once they get to the border, there will be water, food, clothes, comfort. Maybe their families will be waiting for them. I'm probably not spoiling any story for you by telling you that it's not quite so pleasant.

The merciless BSG Season 4.5 premiere continues along the same theme. This ragtag group has been clinging to the hope that they will find Earth, and when they finally do, suddenly everyone's postures seem to relax. They think it is time now, time to lay down the burdens they have carried, and now they can begin to start anew. Of course, upon arriving on Earth, instead they find a radioactive wasteland.

I'll quote the poem, I've quoted before:

I have come far to have found nothing
or to have found that what was found
was only to be lost, lost finally
in that absence whose trace is silence.

It's a variation on a theme- all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again. Sisyphus rolls the rock up the hill every day, in vain. You come far to find nothing, or worse than nothing- what was found was only to be lost. You can only hang on to a perfect moment of contentment for a fleeting nanosecond, and then reality sets in.

It's a weird thing to write about, I know, when this is considered a time of hope for so many. But maybe that's exactly why I'm writing about it. What do you do when you recognize the pattern? When you see it's a futile cycle? Do you stop pushing against the tide and let the current take you out to sea?

People look to Barack Obama in that way, as if he will save us. He won't, and that's not a criticism of him.

But this is not necessarily a post about despair. This is not necessarily a time of despair. In Henderson the Rain King, Henderson is something of a farce. He is an exaggeration, but he wants. He can't stop wanting, and the resolution of his story is not that he is cured of his wanting. One can predict with great certainty that he will be making a mess of things sure enough. But that's not really the point. The point:

will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.

The cycle will continue. It's not what you thought when you first began it. But it's enough, enough left to live by. Drifting out to sea is giving in, and giving in is shutting your eyes. Entropy, after all, should technically always win, and yet our entire existence is defined by fighting it as best as we can.

everyone's a winner, we're making our fame

2009-01-12T13:43:00.001-08:00

First of all, one of my straight, male classmates proclaimed before class that he loves some new Taylor Swift song, and played it three times proudly before lecture started. Yes, I am sure I am doing much to strike fear into you all regarding the future of medicine.

Secondly, due to some (though not all) resurrection of my internet service, song of the week is back. Of course, for my first song of the week of the new year, I choose a song that is way past its expiration date. However, I wasted several hours of my life yesterday watching the Golden Globes, and I decided that it was only fitting to post this song in celebration of the several wins Slumdog Millionaire scored. Sure, it's a thin movie, not heavy on substance, and has its issues, but the same could be said about Juno and Little Miss Sunshine in previous years, and it's the Golden Globes- it's supposed to be light in substance.

Still, the one thing that, to me, was far beyond reproach in the movie was the soundtrack. And, as I previously mentioned, while Paper Planes was ubiquitously lifted left and right last year for various purposes, a lot of the song seemed to mesh well with the movie. If I'm not mistaken, both the original version and this DFA remix were featured in the film, and both worked, at least for me.

Now, I know the DFA remix takes an element of punk out of the original version. I figure most people already have their hands on the original version. I enjoy listening to that version too. The original is just the kind of f*** you that it seems only M.I.A can pull off these days. Perhaps other people are aware of music this lyrically incisive, and if so, please do share. But she's a tricky one, Maya, interlacing a catchy beat that lulls you into thinking you're listening to a slow jam, and then, hello, gunshots ring out. Even more subversive, a cash register rings out with it. There's nothing to write about it that hasn't already been written, to tell the truth.

The DFA remix robs the song of all of the sneaky slaps in the face. What it gets in return is a pace that's frenetic. I'll admit, one of the reasons I like this version so much is that it is the top of my playlist when I am on the treadmill. No matter how lazy I am feeling, regardless of how much the idea of moving my feet seems distasteful, this song comes on and it's autopilot time. I think that's why the remix worked in Slumdog. It's been a long time since I have visited Mumbai, but the thing that cities like Mumbai and New York and probably London (I've never been there so I'm speculating) have is this pulse, this drive. It's what I have always loved about visiting such cities. It's pure insanity sometimes, but there is such a beat, such force propelling you forward in such. You have no worries of stasis in such places. These are not the suburbs. There is a current, and it doesn't take much to get swept up into it.

So, there you have it. In other news, there is a very entertaining (to me) discussion about Slumdog, Anil Kapoor, and SRK going on at Ultrabrown. Reading my own comments on it, it's hard for me to believe that I once offered up Anil Kapoor to my mother as an example of why so many Indian women do not end up with Indian men. I said to my mom, "According to these movies, if you look like Madhuri Dixit, you're lucky if you end up with Anil Kapoor." She half-heartedly tried to argue with me for all of 15 seconds.

I'm just standing in a doorway

2009-01-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

The whir, whir of the blade rotating in its circles and the warmth of the cup of water and olive oil as it slowly drizzled into the mixture. All so simple, so elemental. Why does it matter, why does it matter, but it does. It forms a ball, the ball goes in a bowl, it is covered. Let it be; it rises. One firm push, and then let it rest. The technical word is, in fact, resting. It's a living thing, this.

It's not a good use of time, but it's the owning of time. It's the making of time. It's the claiming of time. Let it rise, let it rest.

I remarked, oh so many months ago, "I want to learn to bake bread."

He said, "It's pretty hard."

And that's when I knew we didn't know each other anymore.

Someone else said. "It's been a long time. I'd love to hear what you've been up to."

Would you really, I thought? I don't think you would. And how to explain? How to explain that I am sometimes most at peace when I have my fingers in the airy, risen dough? How to explain that I live like this now- I make some effort, and then I pause. I let it rest, see what happens. And if it seems to have worked, I proceed. And if it hasn't, there are new experiments ahead. Why does it mater, why does it matter, but it does. Life takes a form. You let it be. It rises or it fails to rise, and you adjust accordingly. Is there really any point in explaining this?

all the days are counting backwards

2009-01-05T17:54:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year and all that. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to post songs of the week, but I want to try to be better about it this year- this guy is putting me to shame, for one thing. But call it a resolution and I'll gag a bit- I'm not good with those. During my recent trip, one of my traveling companions was able to provide a nearly bullet-pointed list of resolutions, and it made me tired just listening to it. Anyway, here's a tune that helped me close out 2008. Next week, maybe I'll join 2009. Since I was in some kind of alternate universe in South America, or at least I felt I was, I'm easing into 2009 all slow-like.