until the real thing comes along

Count on me to take a frothy little nothing of a movie and milk it for everything it is worth. Manish at Ultrabrown reviewed it better than I could. I'd meant to see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day even though:

• it's a period piece, which often makes me avoid a movie like the plague (see the as-yet unviewed Atonement for an example)
  
• the title is so long that it sounds like the title of a Fiona Apple album
  
• something about the trailers gave me the sneaking suspicion I'd want to throttle Amy Adams five minutes into the movie

Why, then, had I wanted to see it? Pretty simple really: Ciaran Hinds. Oh, and I know that is not a legitimate reason, because that dude pops up in every movie known to man. In fact, he's apparently in both this movie and Stop-Loss in theaters at the moment. He's the consummate Hey It's That Guy. So, saying you're going to see a movie for him seems flimsy. So, let me say this instead: Ciaran Hinds and Persuasion. Yes, it's back to Persuasion, I'm afraid.

For all the times he seems to pop up in movies, Hinds does not often play a romantic lead. But he did in Persuasion and he arguably does in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. And he sells it like no one else could. Once I was arguing with a friend about Persuasion- the argument went that the book is great, until the very end, when it descends into the realm of disbelief, because men do not really pine away for women. Bitter friend, yes, but even though I contend that the entire point of Persuasion is the ending, I had to concede it's a pretty tall tale to fathom.

And that bears out in that Hinds is the only guy I can think of who can plausibly play these characters. Only Hinds seems capable of complimenting a woman by calling her "old-fashioned." Hinds is perfectly cast as someone who would cast off a pretty young thing for the good sense of Miss Pettigrew, and Frances McDormand is perfectly cast as someone worthy of the putting aside of pretty young things.

The song this week is performed by the two apparent romantic leads of the movie. Shockingly, Amy Adams did not drive me crazy. I think it works kind of the way that salted caramel is all the rage. Adams alone would have been that sickeningly sweet caramel, but paired with the salt of Frances McDormand, suddenly it's transformed to fine dining. And Lee Pace, as one of a number of suitors, is all dreamy eyes and heart on his sleeve. It should make you swoon, I suppose. The song, though, when you think about it, is all about a youthful kind of love. Games played, toying with each other's emotions, heartbreaks, misunderstandings and rollercoasters, it's all the stuff of the young and beautiful.

And of course, I must conclude that it's a mark of age that what I find much more romantic in the movie is McDormand and Hinds. They are not devoid of romance, but there's a certain no-nonsense aspect of their interaction that is so much more appealing than all the he/she loves me, he/she loves me not nonsense that occupies most romantic comedies. That they think well of and understand each other is apparent straight away. And really, in the movie, the waltz that precedes this week's song is ten times more delicious, because of the corner that McDormand and Hinds turn in that moment.

But here's the thing- young love makes for better songs. The waltz itself was nothing special, it was McDormand and Hinds inhabiting it that was so sparkly and dazzling. Similarly, a song written from the point of view of these two would probably be pretty boring. It's the hazy confusion and misunderstandings and heartbreak and rollercoaster rides that result in such beautiful songs. And even though I'd rather identify with a boring ditty, I have to admit that If I Didn't Care strikes a chord just the same- even if you think how stupid, you should just know how you feel, it's hard to forget that torture from past days.

It should be noted, however, that such songs and movies are not at all conducive to studying. Join me next week when I undoubtedly bemoan flopping a test or something to that effect, shaking a fist at Hinds. I'm an ungrateful wretch that way.

I don't feel tardy

You might think I chose this week's song because I had developed some inappropriate feelings for one of my instructors. That is not the case, though it is, when it comes to me, not such a bad guess. I am a sucker for an academician, especially one that takes time out to shower me with brainpower and hit me with some knowledge. Fortunately, there are no such instructors to be found in medical school. It has more of a feeling of a seminar, a how-to. Most of the lightbulb-above-the-head moments (and really there aren't that many, because medicine is not quantum physics- it's a lot of information, but not conceptually mind-bending by any means) happen with my headphones on, just me and a book, no external assistance included.

No. Instead, I was thinking of language when I chose this song. Often, over the years, friends have remarked that we had developed a kind of speech such that a passerby would either think we were talking in a foreign tongue or babbling gibberish. I have been realizing that, as I get to know someone better, a kind of shorthand develops, an amalgam of pop culture references, funny misappropriations of terms, song lyrics, weird inside jokes to do with a quirky moment in our histories. The end result is colorful to those who understand it, but it must be pretty annoying to anyone on the outside trying to make sense of it all.

I was trying to trace back its origin, because I actually don't like talking in foreign tongues that are like to alienate or exclude. Usually, when this naturally happens, I try to explain the idiotic slang and phrases and inside jokes, though usually these explanations are met with a roll of the eyes or a patient, tight smile.

My brother was probably more responsible for starting it though. When we were younger, thrown together more than we would have liked, both bored and hyperactive, all kinds of words would get thrown together, all sorts of language mutated. Sometimes Gujarati and English would meld together, just for the sake of perfecting an insult or barb. My brother was a bigger clown than I was, and he would latch onto a bit of funny and just juice it dry.

The video of Hot for Teacher is your typical 80s Van Halen fare- completely silly schtick and aimed towards a 12-year old boy. Since my brother was younger than that when it came out, he just found the beginning of the video to be endlessly amusing. A nerdy kid with hair so greasy that it squeaks when his mother smooths it out boards the bus where, of course, DLR's the driver. DLR hits him with his most menacing (as menacing as DLR can ever get, which, anyone who remembers DLR will agree, is not very much at all) boom: "Sit down Waldo!"

Such a throwaway line but bro-seph could not let it go. He had created this whole meaning in his head. If he perceived me to be doing something geeky, I'd get "Sit down Waldo!" If one of our family friends was over and a younger one in the bunch was harassing my brother too much or in danger of damaging some carefully constructed Lego masterpiece, said family friend would be served with "Sit down Waldo!" Some people did not even know the etiology, but the context was not exactly subtle.

It occurred to me that this was the beginning of bad precedent. We had found the whole thing pretty amusing, and enough people had understood my brother that he felt confident in carrying forward. After that, we had a kind of freedom to play with language and claim phrases and quotes for our own secret purposes.

Now I see that it carried over. And now I sorely miss some of the shorthand that I had with old friends, now lost on newer friends. They all have backstory that makes no sense- I could get a laugh (for myself) chronicling some of them out here, but I doubt anyone else would find them amusing. Instead, you have to interact again, reconnect, create a new language each time you find yourself increasingly in the company of another. But then when you zoom out a bit more, the same thing happens on a macro level. Even blogging probably has a language somewhat its own, and the occasional passerby reads it and wonders why it is completely incoherent. Oh wait, maybe that's just my inability to string a sentence together.

I am so homesick for someplace I will never be

This city was all rich green and the dark, dark brown of moist, fresh earth. And then, as I remarked, as we wound our way through an epic walk around the water, such an expansive park, I do love granite cliffs. There were the requisite high-rises, all steel and glass. But oh it rained, and though it rained while I was there, the trees, however sparse in any particular neighborhoods, are so much prettier in that sort of weather. The greens are even richer and browns even darker. And the sound of gushing water like the rhythm guitar behind the raindrops playing the melody.

There were little things to love like this, things to swoon over even in a place you know you have no wish to live. There were not a million things to visit, and this time of year, it is raw and cold. I would not want to live there, I have to admit. I would not love it there for all of those perceived faults. But the things that I liked, I loved, and I suppose that was enough.

Not many others would choose it as a vacation destination, but it suited me just fine.

I came back with all kinds of intentions to write, with all kinds of intentions to do all sorts of things. Instead, in the few days I had left, I did other things, other things just as solitary. I'm really inside of my head these days, but yet, I haven't figured anything out. I have a feeling I have a confession to make, but I have no idea what it is I am on the verge of admitting.

How are you? he had asked, feeling, maybe for the first time in all the time we'd known each other, self-conscious of speaking so much about himself. But that's not why the question stunned me. The question stunned me because I had no answer beyond the false, the feigned. I can muster a fine, but what does that mean? I'm used to feeling misunderstood by other people, even my closest friends. I am not used to not knowing myself. It's not a problem of articulation these days.

I could tell what he wanted to say, that this whole thing had been a bad idea, had obviously thrown me into a tailspin. But maybe a tailspin is a normal reaction to the intensity, to the upheaval, to getting exactly what you want, and then wondering, what next?

At any rate, for now, I return. But I'll leave you with this exchange to show you it's not all dressing in black and reading Camus over here:

me: It's a guilty pleasure, I know, but I have to admit that I really love Persuasion.
SP: How is Persuasion a guilty pleasure? That's Jane Austen, it's classic literature.
me: Come on, it's kind of a guilty pleasure.
SP: Confessions of a Shopaholic, now that's a guilty pleasure.
me: No, that's just guilty.

Well, at least SP thought it was funny.

unmagnificent lives of adults

The song I have posted this week is in complete incongruity to today. It's a perfect spring day and the sun is filtering cheerfully through the blinds. You could not really be melancholy on a day like this.

This song, on the other hand, calls for rain, calls for a late-night long drive alone. It reminds me of this weekend, though it was equally sunny and cheerful in San Francisco this weekend. It was lovely and it all worked out more perfectly than I could have hoped. It was filled with a lot of smiles and laughter and hugs. We took a long walk through the Mission, and he couldn't understand what about it I loved. We covered the entirety of the Haight, and I couldn't understand what he saw in it. There were visits to old stomping grounds, visits to new treasures, and visits to the ever-calming ocean.

And, as is the case in happy times, you do not really think about what it all means until much later, when you are making the long journey home. The song is really not to do with this weekend. It's more to do with friendship in general, and the feeling that, the more you grow up, the less you are understood. Luckily, you also start to value those who get the 60-70% of you, instead of being annoyed with that missing 30-40%.

oh baby, it's alright to fail

Today something occurred to me. I had not blogged a post for over week. Now, in the past when that has happened, I usually get a bit frantic and start diagnosing the various reasons for my silence, and am prone to posting.

Instead, I am going through this phase of flat-out exhaustion. I have a list of things that need to get done, really rather important things that I still have managed to neglect, and posting did not register on that list. Sometimes, silence is telling, and in this case, I guess it still is-- I am in a period of a lot of doing without so much documenting.

One of my sweetest cousins visited this past weekend, and in carting him around the area, I wound up paying a visit to my godson. And, though I hardly can manage to even type the words for fear that it will all turn out to disintegrate, one of my oldest friends in the world is visiting this coming weekend. Lovely, yes, but also, as is the case when in school, fairly stressful.

I went back and forth in my thoughts for a while on this matter. My classmates thought it was insane that I was not planning to study this weekend. There's a test on Monday, and generally, even the biggest cowboys in my class do not blow off an entire weekend. I gave it some thought, and I just decided it's really going to be a test now. It's going to be a test of a lot of things. I worked frantically hard on my last exam to do well enough that I had a comfortably safe buffer, such that even if I completely tank my next test, it's not cause for great alarm. I have also been trying to be as disciplined as I can be during the week to cram all this information into my head.

But mostly, the real test will come on Saturday and Sunday. When my classmates suggested all these strategies to sneak in studying here and there during the weekend, I laughed a bit. They were missing the point entirely. It became clear how dearly I hold my friend-- I am not really sure there is anyone else I presently know that would lead me to even entertain this. But that's exactly why it's such an important visit: it's important to have someone in your life that will pull you out of the minutiae and the neuroses of such meaningless things as exams and scores. It's important to want to be completely disconnected and to be wholly available to someone else. I try to do that in other aspects of my life: I try not to bullsh*t in class on the web when I should be listening to lecture, I try not to think of what I had for lunch when I'm in the middle of interviewing someone, I try not to study while watching television (always a losing proposition).

But this is a more intense form. It would be false to say I don't care about bellyflopping an exam. I care, probably way more than I should. But I care way more about keeping the few, rare people I hold dear as close to me as possible. And I suppose one of my greatest fears about medical school is its vacuum-like quality of sucking you into a sphere and sealing you from the outside world. In some ways, the visit could not be more timely, because I need someone to burst that bubble. Or maybe I need to burst through the bubble myself, emerge, and hold tight to what I do not want to lose.

And that is the test that I cannot afford to fail right now.

bouncing over a white cloud

Yesterday, while I was watching the Oscars, during a commercial, when I was supposed to be frantically studying for an exam I had today, I heard this song and thought no fracking way.

I first heard this song over 10 years ago. The words and music date back further than that, but this particular version of the song is relatively new. The first version I heard was Shawn Colvin's, and I remain partial to it. Her version is stark and spare, little more than her guitar and clear voice. Having it solo makes it a bit impossible not to listen to every word of the song. This particular version of the song is more languid, less about the lyrics than about the inherent prettiness of the entire thing.

Still, it's neat to hear Alison Krauss and Robert Plant meld their voices together to become this song. Rather unexpected really. After all these years, it's still hard for me to think of Robert Plant (you know, the guy who sang Whole Lotta Love & Rock & Roll) as understated. I don't want to spoil it any further, so just have a listen if you wish.

The Oscars themselves were meh. There were no disturbing injustices, except that I really think it's ridiculous that Diablo Cody won for best screenplay for Juno. The movie had its moments, but that was mostly from some winning performances from Ellen Page and (I can't even believe it myself) Jennifer Garner, not because of the writing which was completely over-the-top and not at all anywhere close to believable. Also, someone will still have to explain to me what that movie was trying to say. Saying it is about hope and optimism is about the same as all the candidates for President telling me they are for change.

And for the record, the funniest thing about the Oscars this year was, shockingly, not part of the Oscars telecast, but rather from SNL the night before. By the time Daniel Day Lewis' nomination reel was played, I could not watch it without thinking of SNL and giggling. Wow, that's the first time I've talked about SNL and laughing in the same breath in quite a while.

Speaking of which, is it wrong that I find these two Jimmy Kimmel and the Boston boys videos kind of hilarious? I can't really believe I find all of these people funny, since separately, they usually annoy me for some reason. And yet, I'm like a 12-year old around these videos. Sorry if I give offense. I have no real excuse. On the up side, I think this means we can put those Crapfleck-for-Congress rumors to rest.

can't stop what's coming

Last month, I spent a few weeks ill. Most likely, I had a Strep infection, but being as stubborn as I am and (ironically enough) loathing visits to the doctor's office, I never scored any antibiotics for it. Here's something most doctors won't tell you, and they can dispute what I am about to say because I'm just a peon med student who is still an infant in terms of medical knowledge. But here's what I will tell you- when you take antibiotics for a Strep infection, they're not going to get you better any faster. Believe it or not, your immune system is just as capable as the antibiotics of clearing the infection (unless you're way old or way young or have deficits in your immune system). The problem is that, in fighting off the bacteria, you could wind up mounting antibodies that are duped into attacking your own, much-needed tissues, like those in your heart. That's why you take antibiotics for Strep- so that you don't develop rheumatic fever or worse.

Anyway, my heart is okay, I suppose. But infections make me think of the inevitabilities of life. And I'm convinced that is why I was so taken by No Country for Old Men, even though I saw it before I had started taking Micro. In fact, I saw it in December after a week of finals that had tested my resolve. Needless to say, I did not know much about the film going into it, or I might not have been so amenable to seeing what will never be termed a feel-good favorite.

So, you've got your Javier Bardem, the creepy bug, perfectly played to embody evil. Like a bacteria or a virus, beautiful in its design, in its insinuating manner of wreaking havoc, and of seeming altogether out of this world and alien. And then you've got Tommy Lee Jones playing the host. He's not really been infected with Bardem. Maybe he's not the host, so much as the doctor. A doctor staring down a pandemic, trying in vain to save whoever he can, and grappling with his own fears of coming down with the bug.

Maybe it's nothing like that at all. But No Country for Old Men is about more than a serial killer going on a spree, is about more than the dumbass that is foolish enough to think he can outsmart him. It doesn't have a neat bowed tied around it like Fargo did- there is no real resolution here. Some have found that frustrating. It struck me as so authentic that it was haunting. And Jones' final words in the film, to me, said everything about the more that the movie was about, the more that you only really catch when Jones is on screen. It's shocking to find that after years of dueling with Anthony Hopkins for champion of all scenery-chewers, he calmed himself down into this weary, grave role.

I still can't write about the film properly. It's been over two months now since I have seen it and it's stayed with me. It occurs to me-- before, I'd always advised people not to miss special-effects-laden movies at the theater. But this movie, this quiet, really very indie movie ought to be seen on the big screen, uninterrupted, in the silence and dark of the theater. Maybe that is why it burrowed into me and stays there like a dormant parasite, waiting for its opportune moment to reactivate and hit me again.

some days take less, but most days take more

Well, it seems a tour of shame through my playlists continues. Instead of posting what would have been totally hipster-approved, the new DeVotchKa single Transliterator, I went into the vault and dragged out this little number, which is the equivalent of hanging up a disco ball without a touch of irony. I might post Transliterator next week- I'm not done digesting it, and it just did not fit my current mood.

I do not like everything U2 does. I am not such a huge fan of them in recent years. Yet, most people point to the album from which this song is plucked as part of the decline of U2, with All That You Can't Leave Behind being their dutiful return to form. Here's where I reveal my anti-coolness once again. I kind of loved Zooropa. Yup, kind of loved it from start to finish. Sort of listened to it the way most people did Joshua Tree and Achtung, Baby, in an endless loop on repeat. I liked those two albums, very much so. I liked pretty much everything U2 had done prior to Zooropa. It's not that the album was so much more superior to everything that had been released beforehand by U2, far from it.

The album had some stones though. Say what else you want about it, but you have to give it that. U2 had been doing this for some time, but no one had really given them much notice for it. It was kind of this quiet progression, followed by a tweak here and there and whoops, entirely different band and sound. It felt like a huge departure, but if you went back and listened carefully, you could see the connections. It wasn't an aging band trying to front, thinking the kids'll dig this, wasn't Mick Jagger stooping to the Harlem Shuffle.

I guess that is what I liked about Zooropa. So much of it was ridiculous. It was over-the-top. Some of the lyrics seemed more like gibberish than past U2 songs. And certainly there was posturing, because by this time, Bono's head had definitely, permanently inflated. But it did not feel false. It did not feel forced. It felt like a band toying around with an idea, like thinking aloud. And, in particular, at the time when this album came out, I was thinking aloud a lot myself.

When I was listening to Zooropa the most, my dingy apartment in Allston had been burglarized, a mere week after I had moved in. I was working a part-time job that summer to pay rent, trucking across Boston with my T-pass to take Physics at a school where I could afford tuition, and then trucking it back to my actual university to work for free in the lab. Everything had its purpose, though it seems senseless looking back on it. I had to take the class in order for my parents to feel I was justified in staying in Boston that summer. I had to work the part-time job to pay the rent. And the whole reason I was jumping through both of those hoops was so that I could stay in Boston to work in the lab. Unpaid.

Oh, and there was some nonsense with a boy going on in the midst of all that. Nonsense, because what else could it have been with everything else happening?

I would come home exhausted, flop on the couch, turn on the CD player. I had barely enough money to make rent, pay for my T pass, and eat various noodle-type of packaged products. You could hear the cockroaches scatter when you turned the light on to go into the apartment at night. There was no air-conditioning, and a huge heat wave swept through for a month, such that I would take the T or work in the lab just to cool off some times.

And yet, it was a time of such great awakening. It was a time when I really delved into myself and figured out what I wanted. And being that busy, that scattered, strangely helps you to focus. Other things become background noise and suddenly emerges what is really important, what is keeping your heart beating, keeping you waking up every morning and hurrying through your day. For me, that summer, it was research. It was working in the lab, working with that solitary purpose, that single-minded focus. It was a thing that couldn't let you down, even when things didn't work out. You could go back, figure out what went wrong, try something new. You had to give up on it, because it would not give up on you. And when you find something like that, when you find that you can throw yourself into something with that much recklessness, whether you stick with it or not, you earn a certain strength that can't be stripped away.

This song always makes me think of that time, and makes me, oddly enough, think of research. Lab research at the bench is not the kind of thing where you wake up every day, stretch out and think another wonderful day. Some days are fantastic triumphs and you will make what seems like quantum leap breakthroughs. Other days you will want to smash test tubes against a wall because you have been set back a month in the matter of minutes. It's not just working, step-wise, to a carefully crafted goal. It's a mess, and it teaches you that nothing, neither the triumphs nor the defeats, is permanent. And even though these days I am doing something entirely different with a lot more instant gratification, I would do well to remember the lessons I learned that summer.

would you rewind it all the time?*

Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in...

My posts have decreased in frequency and quality (which moves their quality from -5 to -20), but there are some reasons to keep poking my nose into the internet. For example, today, I was perusing Ultrabrown and Manish posted a blurb on Goldspot. Even though I often also lurk about on a bunch of trendster music blogs, I never bothered to check this band out (oh, they are much beloved on the blogosphere, I assure you) until today.

The lead singer's voice is so unabashedly melodic that it's quite irresistible. There's nothing more to say about the band, except that you ought to have a listen. I owe this band a lot today, because it helped me to stop listening to that cheesy-pop song I posted earlier this week. I've been listening to Goldspot while studying this evening, and while it is just as energetic, it is not at all embarrassing.

That is all for now. My brain is actually behind my actions today, so while my fingers anxiously attacked this post, my mind hasn't figured out why I was so eager to write anything. More when I am more synchronized.

*The answer, in my case, is indeed.

and there's no explaining

Well, there's been quite a bit of gloominess going on to start this year, and, while I can't say it has been vanquished in its entirety, I can embarrass the living daylights out of myself by admitting what I have been using to stave off any negativity lately.

And so we come to this week's song. I have no excuse for it. It's totally ridiculous, and is supposed to be totally ridiculous as it was recorded for that exact purpose. At least, I think so-- I've never actually seen the movie that made it necessary to craft this tune. I have no problem imagining Hugh Grant as a washed-up musician, but I do have trouble imagining Drew Barrymore as the brilliant lyricist who recharges his career- or whatever the plot is.

Thing is, I have to say that after watching the video (which, actually, I think was first pointed out to me by ads) and then listening to this song every time I need a boost, I am starting to wonder if maybe I should check out the movie some time. This song is supposed to be a spoof of 80s pop, but it's so faithful to its material that it's the equivalent of listening to Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough, Dead or Alive's Brand New Lover, or Wham!'s Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. There's such a familiar feeling of nostalgia and silliness that it's sort of mind bending to think that this song was actually recorded in the last few years.

Also, there's something even more amusing in thinking of Hugh Grant having recorded this song. Do you remember that scene in Love Actually when Grant has to dance around by himself to the Pointer Sisters? That sh*t was ten times funnier because I could not help thinking that Grant was completely aware of what a fool he was making of himself. For some reason, Grant comes off as one of those actors that is well aware of what a stupid business he is in. It's probably why he's not a wildly talented actor, but it does make him extremely entertaining.

If you don't believe me, check the video out-- due credit should also go to one Jason Street, for actually managing to hold his own around Grant.

I've found myself listening to this song when I'm studying and just want something mindlessly upbeat in my head. I think that might be the whole trick with willing yourself out of a funk- just mindless, irrational positivity. There will be time enough later to reason it out and explain why you ought to have snapped out of it a long while back. But until then, the brute force approach of this kind of absurdity will certainly do.

shed some light on me please

A full moon can make you drive off the road, especially those full, harvest moons, that glow with rich yellow light, warming up the night sky. So why is it that what I adore most is when the moon is at its tiniest, a small, faint sliver?

That crescent moon, though, I find spellbinding. A full moon will run you off the road with its arresting beauty. It's bold and unbridled, and yet it's also somewhat obvious. Who doesn't look at a full moon and wish upon it? But the full moon is the full moon- it will never get more full and it will not sustain. The crescent moon, on the other hand, is the tall, dark, and handsome type.

It provides just enough light, however slight, to let you know it's there. It is there and, if you look closely enough, you can see the outline of its whole, the shadows in which the rest of the moon resides. The crescent moon is modest, gives you just a glimmer of what it can be. And that, to me, is so much more mesmerizing, so much more magnetic than blinding light, than symmetric shining beauty.

I suppose you can count on both. You can count on the full moon to decline, to nightly erode away. And you can also count on the crescent moon to grow, to emerge from the shadows and reach its potential. And I suppose, in the end, there is some comfort to be derived from that convergence, that they are one and the same.

lost in what we keep

First, and really, without even bothering to read any further, you would be best served checking out this from Ben at Moistworks, all about one of my favorite songs of all time.

His post is about belonging, but it's also about knowing whether something is working or not working. The next time someone asks me why I am single, I may just send them a link to that post.

This week's song, you know, now that it's almost the end of the week and time for a new one, was a little tongue-in-cheek about the crushing Superbowl loss. But that's not why this song resides on my playlist, of course.

There's a kind of crescendo happening with this song right from the opening bars. It swells, the tambourine keeping it from ever really sinking. And the vocals are without abandon, without affectation. It's not necessarily pretty all the time. And it's almost like being over someone. You know, you're over someone, but that doesn't mean you don't still have that itch.

That itch is not really about wanting them back. It's not about regret, or disappointment, or even really sadness. It's not that stage of weeping, of hand-wringing, of wondering if it's really over. There's a kind of frenzy in this song that is familiar to anyone who has, really, had their heart broken.

Because at some point, you realize that it's not that it was meant to be any other way. You can see that it was not supposed to work out, and that it's better, the two of you apart. But there's some accounting to be done. There's a score to be settled. It's not necessarily vengeance. It's the recording of history. It is a little pathetic and embarrassing, ultimately, and yet, you want it to be known: you broke my heart. Because you're over it, sure, you're over it and you're over the other person, but that doesn't mean they should get a free pass. Something in you wants them to know, needs them to live with the notion that they hurt someone in a specific, acute, piercing manner. Something in you needs for it to be noted, because otherwise it becomes too meaningless to bear, and somehow that is worse than heartbreak itself.

But then the song shifts, as does the swell. Louder and louder, clankier and more fervent, a kind of religion creeping into it. When it gets to that peak, when the song starts to really lose all abandon, it's not even about a heart getting broken, but actually about the defiance required to thumb your nose at that heartbreak. I always have this visual, which is not particularly pleasant, of a heart ripped out and tossed in the mud, damaged, weak, dying. And you pick it up, dust it off, and hold it up defiantly, stick it back in your chest and say, go ahead, try it again. And that's what I take from this song when the tambourine and piano and vocals suddenly crash together like a deafening set of cymbals.

small my table

Some people make lemon out of lemonades. Other people make peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies out of their pain. Just kidding. After calming down yesterday, I felt like a bit of a maroon for wasting so much time and emotion on something as foolish as football. What's more, I finally felt like the world righted itself, and once again, Boston became Boston, the land of close, but no cigar.

Anyway, yesterday's post was rushed and crazed, but the recipe is legit. I have been playing with this recipe for a long time. I've tinkered with it because I think peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies are the only cookie that I really enjoy eating- I associate something about them with comfort. So, I feel pretty confident that this recipe will not fail you. The only watch-out is the whole wheat flour- it's a texture that's not for everyone, and it does tend to make your cookies more substantial (which is another reason you should mix this all by hand- overmixing will make a brick out of you). If you click on the picture, I've put up a more aesthetically conventional version of the recipe should anyone wish to try it.

I know it probably seems like I am on a quest to study Type II Diabetes by developing it myself, but here is some evidence that I don't dine on cookies and chocolate pudding:



It occurs to me that I can be completely neurotic about the strangest things. For example, I cannot make a salad with vegetables that are all the same color. For that matter, I cannot make a dish that is all of the same color. Even though I could care less about the taste of one over the other, I will often buy a yellow or red bell pepper just so that my salad is not completely green. Sometimes, I will choose not to put cucumbers in salad for the same reason.

The weirdest thing about this compulsion is that I think I picked it up in home economics class. What kind of a dork actually remembers anything from home economics, much less carries it with her throughout her life? Apparently, this kind of dork. When I think back on it, I am a bit shocked at how much I used to enjoy home economics. Even at that age, no one would have pegged me for housewife-material. Yet I always took the class so seriously, you would have thought advancing to the 8th grade depended on it.

It was self-sufficiency, I can see now. My mother and I never had this warm, nurturing relationship. She never taught me much- at most, I learned from observing her while I was confined to the duties of chief dishwasher=in-residence. I know it wasn't just that though. It was more this notion of helplessness. It still makes me wince when one of my cousins shrugs off her inability to cook anything. I would have the same reaction to any male cousins of mine, except they've all learned to cook, interestingly enough.

At any rate, it's not as though I am some master chef by any means. I really only cook well enough to feed myself, but that's all I was really going for. One of the few rules I had for myself when starting school was that I did not want to stoop to the days of pizza boxes and ramen noodles. Luckily, I've found that I not only have access to decent produce, but also find a certain relaxation in the chopping and preparing and whatnot. The above is a batch of vegetables and tofu that will shortly be topped with lettuce and portioned into containers for lunch for the rest of the week. It works out pretty well.

Tomorrow, it's back to navel-gazing, and also an explanation for the song of the week.

why do you build me up

Next time your favorite team is playing like crap and giving you chest pain, and you feel the need to work off some nervous energy, here’s a little recipe you can try. It won’t help your team win any, but it will give you something to do as you realize you wasted four hours watching an absolutely shameful game. I’ll post pictures (of the cookies, not of my reaction of utter stupor over the stupidity that was tonight’s Superbowl) this week, when I am feeling a little less frantic about a test I was supposed to be studying for during this time:

Peanut-Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies for Patriots Fans with Palpitations

Preheat your oven to 350.

Place a 1/2 cup of honey, 1/2 cup of brown sugar (I don't pack it, because it turns out too sweet that way), and 1 stick of butter in a large mixing bowl. I let the butter come to room temperature and then cream these ingredients together by hand (mostly because I have a lot of nervous energy during such games).

Add in 1 teaspoon of vanilla and a 1/2 cup of peanut butter and mix this in until smooth. Then add in one egg and mix until well combined. In a separate bowl whisk together 1 cup of all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour (if you don't have whole wheat flour, you can use all-purpose flour entirely), 1 tsp of baking soda, and 1 tsp of salt. Now add the wet and dry ingredients together, just until everything is incorporated. Add in 1 cup of chocolate chips (I prefer the miniature kind).

Drop heaping teaspoons of dough onto an ungreased baking sheet about 1-2 inches apart. With a fork, press down each mound cross-wise in two directions. Bake the cookies for 10-15 minutes- the cookies will be browned on the bottom and cooked but soft on top. Remove from the oven and let sit on the pan for about 4 minutes before removing. Cool completely on wire racks.

Then cry and fight the urge to eat the entire batch of cookies when your team loses the Superbowl.

that feeling of safety you prize

Though I have been hesitant to say I am fine, especially now that my lungs feel as though a slab of iron has been strewn across them, I realized that I needed to go back. I needed to go back and remember. I want to remember.

It was a Sunday morning. The sun was filtering through the stylish wooden shades. I was idly passing my fingers along the books on E's shelf. He had a large collection of the works of Albert Schweitzer, I noted, though at the time I was completely unfamiliar with the author. E was considerably older than me, and occasionally I got the feeling that his apartment was all an attempt to project a kind of affected worldliness. The masks from Africa hanging on the wall in the den come to mind. These books I thought to be more of the same.

That was pure speculation, of course. When it came right down to it, we did not know each other very well. And I can quite safely say that neither of us lost any sleep over that. Neither of us were particularly keen to figure the other one out, to delve into each other's insides, take them apart and put them back together again. We were content to occupy the same sphere and let each other be.

Occasionally, though, we teased each other. Like when E expressed his bewilderment that I could find Morphine a good band (I still stand by that, for the record). And like that morning, when I saw the yellowed tomes in his library and asked E if they'd come with the shelves. It seemed like the sort of books you'd see in a furniture store- the kinds no one ever actually read, but certainly complimented the aesthetic.

And just as I had called him an unimaginative jazz & blues snob for his derision of Morphine, he had arched at my dismissal of Schweitzer. I did not know at the time that I had pushed a button. At the time, E seemed to me perfectly satisfied to live his days out in this well-appointed apartment, make his living, eat good meals and drink good scotch.

As I said, we did not know each other very well.

He had not read me the riot act exactly. We never fought. Ours was not that sort of thing. The misstep was just noted and then I became attentive, becasue, and this is what I always liked about E, he told a good story. When he told me about Schweitzer, in all of Schweitzer's multi-faceted glory, I was charmed. It wasn't so much that I thought E was going to do mission work in Africa, or that he was going to record music, or become a physician. But I could see, just then, for a moment, what he was trying to show me. It was the closest we ever got, that blink-and-you'll-miss-it seemingly meaningless conversation.

Funny really. I could refer you to those who know me and they would tell you E had little effect on me one way or another. Many of those people, who know me so well, might even tell you they'd never even heard of this E. And while, on some level, that reflects an absolute truth, it is equally undeniable that E had a lasting, shocking impact.

If you had asked E, never in a million years would he have predicted that I would have actually absorbed what he was trying to show me. He was not trying to influence me, after all. What's more, when he knew me, I was 22 years old, a straight arrow with a trajectory that seemed more like a tidal wave, so unstoppable and predestined did it seem. I had imagined life as a linear, step-wise process, which was probably why I could toil away in an organic synthesis lab for years without tiring of it. My whole life had been planned, in my head. I had a clear idea of what I was going to do, and where, and by when. Even taking a year off to work had seemed like a failing until I had collected enough data that indicated that it was a perfectly acceptable, conventional route to graduate school. So, if you had asked me, the 22-year old version of me, if I had been moved by what E had shown me, I would have simply shrugged and said, eh, good for him.

E, of course, lived up to his vision, that life need not remain static, that there is no such thing as stalling out. I, like a pinball, bounced- first straight, then banging around chaotically in a panic until I remembered, one jarring September day, that collection of books on E's shelf. And how it was time to start going for the possibilities rather than assuming that kind of reckless abandonment was reserved for the free-spirited sorts like E.

We did not know each other very well. But I think he might have saved my life.

a person could develop a cough

Greetings from the underworld. You know, I could put on a cheerful facade. I do it every day, but really, that's just a protective measure. When you're in the darkness and you want to stay there, the most foolish thing you can do is call up a friend and explain, "I'm sorry I haven't been in touch, but I've been sitting inside without the lights on." You know just what will happen next. They will proceed to harangue you for doing this. They will ask whether you forgot to pay the electricity bill, they will tell you to buy a new light bulb, they will tell you to turn on the switch. They will explain to you that you need the light to read, to see yourself, to find your way around. They will chide you for needing to be told all of this in the first place.

You don't tell people you're in the darkness unless you're just about ready to come out. W noted recently that darkness is a luxury. That is not unfair. But the fact that darkness is a luxury is just cause for more darkness, sometimes. Other times, that fact is a breath of relief, an exhale of thank god I didn't go down that path or I would have ruined everything.

Anyway, now I am sick. Not seriously sick, like some, but sick nonetheless. Up until now, what I'd been doing to cope with the darkness was to work hard, harder, hardest, until my eyeballs hurt and my brain felt like it had been purged of all information not pertinent to my studies. But this cough, persistent and nagging, this simple little nuisance has succeeded in chipping away at this one sphere of control.

I am in chaos again but it's not wrong. I know that. What was wrong was being foolish enough to think I could turn myself into a robot. I'd been behaving like an android because it was a way to keep afloat. Only someone who can snap into this kind of trance has the luxury of such stretches of darkness. In the past, when plunging to such lows, this was always my trick. Outwardly, I always became something of a machine. Misery always did wonders for my grades, my work, my whatever else.

The chaos, the cough, though, foiled that plan. It's hard to explain, but the cough is the beginning of something else. I can feel it rattling around in my chest, uncomfortably tickling my throat. The cough is laughing at me. Fool, bugs always win.

I'm studying microbiology at the moment, so I know the cough is right. But it's right about more than that. Bugs always win. The body is not static, is not beyond insult. Life happens. Reality always wins out over these imagined wars. Reality is a different kind of daily battle, more noble, if less cinematic. And for all the times I've called reality bleak, I have to admit this-- it's much brighter than the darkness in which I've been floating.

if I could I would let it go

A special kind of torture. Somehow W can call my cell phone from abroad and leave messages, even though my phone cannot make international calls. Yesterday, I finally sat down to address that, sent an email that was better suited to be a letter. Better suited to be a letter because it was the sort of thing you ought to write on a piece of paper and then toss in the garbage. But then again, that's not our deal. When I write to W, all the things I don't want to admit to anyone, to myself even, suddenly come spilling out. And I always press send before I have a chance to regret it.

It's all by design, you see. Maybe you've gone through a dark phase. Maybe you're a person who's gone through a dark phase, maybe you're not. I went through more dramatic ones when I was younger. I came back from a vacation in India when I was 21, a senior at university, came back and decided why bother with jet lag? I started living my life in the night, a strange sort of transformation took hold. Most of the time, I haunted the streets in the dark, when no one was around. I worked on my research project in the lab during late hours when everyone else was heading home. I slept in and missed classes. I just drifted, further and further into a sphere of my own creation.

Maybe some people get pulled out of such phases. Maybe some people have interventions, carefully staged with an outpouring of such concern that it crushes them with an overwhelming wave of gratitude. But it's all by design, you see. By that time, I had conveniently created a distance from my closest friends, from the people who would have said, dude, wtf? I had carefully picked out the people I'd kept around me, and they were chosen based on their ignorance, based on their inability to see beyond the superficial.

I couldn't sleep at night, and it was just me and the darkness. It's all by design, you see. Maybe you've had a dark phase. Maybe you wanted to have this showdown. You and the darkness. There, in the darkness, you sit there and wonder what is my problem? That question turns over and over in your head. It never occurs to you to ask whether you really have a problem, because the simple fact that it's 2 in the morning and you are sitting in a corner with your head throbbing tells you that you do, even if it's one of your own invention.

And then, that greatest of mysteries. That strangest of phenomenon. I can look back now and create a history, weave together a prettier resolution. I can look back now and say and then this happened, and I snapped out of it. But it's cheap and false. It's the frustratingly neat ending to a messy tale. But the truth is even more frustrating, because who dares to believe in magic? Who would buy that it just happened, without explanation or warning or progression, just happened? And then the clock was reset, and I got reacquainted with life outside the shadows.

You see, it's all by design. If you create that dark phase, if you bring yourself into it, then only you can get yourself out of it. Retrace your footsteps. Remember the last twist, the last turn, close your eyes and turn it all upside down in your head.

For a second, you might panic. It's tempting to try to start over again, but you can't. In the middle of the darkness, there is only one thing to do, and that's to go back to what you know. It's a dark phase, sure, but it's all by design. I've been here before and recovered, and I will recover this time too. Let me have my demons, my periodic pilgrimage to the darkness, like Persephone to Hades. I will return.

problems got me pessimistic

Sometimes music can go a little too far, but sometimes that's the whole point. I thought all day today about pulling off my last post, deleting it, shuffling the sand over it, whistling and pretending it never happened. Such rambling rage in a post, from me? Never!

But then it didn't seem right. I make up these completely arbitrary rules, I realize, when it comes to blogging. I make it up as I go along, draw lines here and there and then cross them and make new rules to justify them. I realize that. And I realize that some day, I probably will vomit up some ridiculous post that I will, in fact, pull from the blog because of remorse. But for now, it didn't feel right. It wasn't a dishonest post. It reflected a true feeling, even if it was written in a state of heightened emotion, when I usually like to quiet myself down, slap duct tape on my mouth and wait until my eyes start seeing more colors than red.

Anyway. Sometimes music can go a little too far. Listening to this week's song now reminds me of this brash idealism I had when I was young. Had I not been so stupid back then, perhaps I would not have turned out so annoyed with my cynicism. I was never particularly religious, so I am not really sure why I found this song so buoying when I first heard it, when it first came out.

I always wondered what happened to Arrested Development- not the show, sillies, although the show was its own special brand of fantastic. I thought this band and Digable Planets were starting a revolution of some kind. But the thing of it is, this song is problematic. It's all about acceptance, and acceptance is no way to start a revolution.

But sometimes when music goes a little too far, it's useful. Like when you've been heartbroken for some time and you listen to some truly heartbreaking, call-in-the-Morrissey depression-central song, and you find yourself laughing. Music is great, even in instances when I don't relate to it. Music is great, maybe especially in instances when I don't relate to it. It helps define what the feeling is exactly. Or better yet, it helps you to think, well, sh*t, do I sound like that? In that case, I need to dial it down a bit.

All the same (or maybe for all of these reasons), I do like this song. And at some point, the internets will cooperate with me tonight, and it will be up for your listening pleasure.

*

Tom Brady, you better be in working order in two Sundays.

p.s. Working order does not equal three interceptions.

it's my blood

I have cakes baking in the oven. The laundry is folded. School started two weeks ago, but it feels like it starts tomorrow.

School didn't start quite right. Even setting aside the Amish-Country living with no electricity at the start of the year, I just wasn't in the right mental space for it. I think I'm there now, but I am having all sorts of thoughts about school right now, and I debate whether or not to express them. It's not (necessarily) that I don't want to share, but rather that all the thoughts are so fleeting and so dynamic. One moment I am enraged by various things, and in the next moment, a turn of events changes the way I think about everything.

*

It's Martin Luther King Day today and it's one of the rare years that I've actually spent time contemplating the Civil Rights movement and its legacy. At school this past year, we've had a number of cultural competency conferences, which have varied in usefulness, but have been notable for the reaction they've evoked in some people. In particular, the last competency conference we had really put the white man under a sniper attack.

Technically, I am kidding. The conference involved a video which did show a group of various minorities ganging up on a white man, pointing out all of his prejudices, pointing out all the fallacies in his 'color-blind' assessment of the world. And while they did gang up on him, he kind of deserved it- the video was a bit archaic and the dude was saying things like, I'm fond of your people.

What was curious though was everyone's reaction to the video. Some students were in earnest and wanted to discuss it, all bright-eyed and idealistic, thinking they might change the world in a 2-hour discussion section. Some of us (me included) didn't want to get into it. And then there were a few white students who arched, arched in a way that was disconcerting. There was rage in the offense they took.

I'd put it fairly well out of my head. I have to admit that I'm not a big subscriber to MLK's dream these days. It's hard for me to imagine a world without prejudice, where everyone is given a fair and equal shake, where there's seamless integration across all racial divides. Maybe I'm jaded, because I get weary at such discussions- it feels like a waste of precious words to try to talk to people who feel so differently from you.

Then, at a dinner party this weekend, there was a resurgence. Two white men at dinner brought up the conference again and freaked out, got rather suspiciously defensive and started in with the I'm not going to apologize for my race, I'm not going to apologize for things I didn't do and that none of my family did, and you are not going to make me feel sorry for anyone.

One of the bright-eyed idealists tried to meekly interject, pointing out that wasn't the intent of the video. The tension just started getting heavier in the room.

In such instances, I sit with stone-faced silence. I'm not going to condone such behavior, but nor am I going to bother to engage in an argument with someone so clearly unwilling to entertain other opinions. And I guess I always feel conflicted about that, like I am letting some idealistic part of myself down by choosing my battles.

But I woke up the next morning with a case of the mean reds. I was, all of a sudden, angry about a wave of things. See, I'd also been asked by the school to fill out a survey regarding diversity on campus. And you know, as an Indian woman in medical school, I am well aware that I am not really underrepresented. And yet, things occurred to me. Why were all the perceived-to-be-brilliant students white? Why is it that the professors know the names of the white students but only know the name of two Asian students? Yes, the white students are the ones who ask all the questions and talk to the instructors, but why is that, that they are so much more comfortable with that? Why were there five women and one man who ran for the leadership roles in our class, and, even though everyone felt the man to be a disaster with no personal skills, the leaders wound up being that man and a woman (both white, incidentally)? Why are the two women who are professors the ones who are most often challenged in class, and why by male students? Why are all the professors either white professors who like to teach or foreign PhD's who are teaching because it's a requirement for them to do research?

The numbers say one thing, but the reality of what you see every day, what you feel is something else entirely. And, you know, most days you shake it off and know this is the world and go out with your scythe and cut your way through the stalks until you get where you need to go. But some days, it's frustrating. Some days, it's frustrating because you have to pretend it's all in your head when you know it's not. I guess that's the frustrating part of the civil rights movement. The opposition has gone guerrilla, underground. It's become insidious in this way that makes it impossible to prove, to articulate, to challenge.

On the other hand. On the other hand. On the other hand, I think of how I'm in medical school right now. I think of how a woman, an Indian woman, an old Indian woman- I think of how impossible even the dream of someone like me going to medical school was a mere 60 years ago. I'm aware of how far the world has come. I'm not sorry to live in the present. But I just wonder where we're headed. I wonder if we didn't stall out at some point, or if the game did not just shift in some way. And perhaps what frustrates me the most, what gives me that case of the mean reds from time to time, is that I have no idea how to turn these tides.

three years since I've been knocking at your door

Some lymphocytes (sorry, I've got a bit of Immunology on the brain of late) become anergic. See, a lymphocyte is a cell that waits. It has, on its surface, a receptor that is just waiting to be activated. And you think it's as simple as that, receptor meets antigen, perfect fit, the cell becomes what it was meant to be.

But as a matter of fact, it's just as complicated as any other meet cute story is in real life. Receptor meets antigen, it seems like such a perfect match. It is a perfect match actually. But, predictably, it's not enough. There are other things that have to fall into place, the right secondary receptors, the right signals, a perfect, delicate microenvironment that tells the lymphocyte, this is the one.

All of this is rather unremarkable. Receptors meet various ligands all the time, sometimes it doesn't work out, and they move on. But the lymphocytes, when it had that perfect fit, when it found its soul mate but it just didn't work out, the lymphocyte can't just get over it. A lymphocyte becomes anergic. It becomes inactivated such that, even if that perfect fit presents itself, even if Mr. Right shows up, the lymphocyte doesn't react.

Some lymphocytes internalize their receptor when that happens, turn themselves inwards, safe from any future heartbreaks.

And I think that's the greatest fear, when you have your heart broken, that fear that you've been scarred such that you've actually lost the ability to fall again, lost the ability to even entertain notions anymore.

*

In other, somewhat related news, I think it's a shame that it's become so commonplace to say men are stupid or men are bastards or such pejoratives. Especially amongst my classmates, who are far too young to be so jaded. I don't just find such statements to be war cries for women to unite and bond over. It's bonding over the wrong thing. Or perhaps it's fine, if you at least acknowledge that women can be just as foolish and just as capable of stomping on a man's heart. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

And now, time to wash away all these sentimental notions by watching a whole lot of football. I predict that I will cry at least once today.