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the both of us. we know
how this ends: pick your poison—I know yours is ethanol coursing down your hoarse throat, and comfort in warm arms except the ones you long for. let’s pause to regroup, then dive back in- to prickly cold water. forget about them, these red triangular sign posts. they’re for fools and we’re the exceptions (or the illiterate). the routes are simple, but we always deviate. call it youth, or not learning from youth’s mistakes. fumble through pockets, then dial the phone number. sorry, the line is busy, or dead eight years in the making. stop trying to resurrect Lazarus, he isn’t coming back.
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There's a thing that happened back when I was a young girl that I never really talk about. It was traumatic; it was dark; it was covered up for so long. And honestly, I don't remember it very well. I'm not going to dwell on it.
I was with dear friends today, and I touched on how this thing happened to me–and now, laying in bed, I'm realizing that I still have no idea how to talk about these very uncomfortable shadows. They exist. They're in the past. I'm over it, but they haunt me. Are they supposed to? Or am I just weak? For the past two weeks, we've been working at a grade school clinic. I forget how small it is to be in grade school. They are so precious and so innocent. And maybe, the older I get, the more I understand how repulsive what happened to me was. But I don't know how to talk about that. Maybe I never will. There are people who are very much in touch with their emotions. They are able to gracefully navigate their feelings and express exactly what they felt and why they felt it. I applaud you, fantastic human, how do you do it? I'm not one of you. Instead of being a normal human being who understands what feelings are, a poem: you’re breaking your heart againthe both of us. we know
how this ends: pick your poison—I know yours is ethanol coursing down your hoarse throat, and comfort in warm arms except the ones you long for. let’s pause to regroup, then dive back in to prickly cold water. forget about them, these red triangular sign posts. they’re for fools and we’re the exceptions (or the illiterate). the routes are simple, but we always deviate. call it youth, or not learning from youth’s mistakes. fumble through pockets, then dial the phone number. sorry, the line is busy, or dead eight years in the making. stop trying to resurrect Lazarus, he isn’t coming back. Or is it just because I’ve been
Breathing life into Galatea after the Sun bows out and gives me my stage—here, I am Loved the way I like: Unrealistic bliss-- I’m confident my lover likes me so I don’t worry about the way my hair must seem: Bird’s-nest soup, the memory of A child again. I promise I’m not too far Grown up yet. We just exist In negative space, Absorbing the quiet. Then, sun takes its turn and Clocks in to run His shift. We get along Except in the moments before my Eyelids pry open, and I wake To a bed without my lover: it is all Melted butter, running Down the counter but let me Watch it for a moment longer Before swiping the remnants up, Leaving no trace again. "It's close to midnight," I say, before Kitty and I burst into insatiable laughter. This goes on for another 30 minutes. We spent the last two hours comparing summer adventures and exchanging half-mad glances over all the things we have to get done within our last school year (hopefully ever).
You need these moments, and you need these people. Most importantly, you need someone who can understand why you have the urge to ugly cry when you're at the near summit of your potential career–and you need someone who will understand why you summit anyway. We say this often in medicine–to the average outsider, what we do makes absolutely no sense. To the insider, it makes even less sense. Still, we grit our teeth and trudge through. We bank on light at the end of the tunnel. In the midst of all the work, however, I've learned that the moments I treasure are 2 AM emergency phone calls coming from and going out to friends who really should've been sleeping peacefully. I remember heading back from a cafe at 4 AM, having played card games through an exam night, as if to say: it is enough that we are whole. It is enough that we haven't broken. I tell Kitty I have to finish my report, but we catch up on everything and nothing instead. It's past midnight, and past both our bedtimes. Everything and nothing has changed, and we don't say how much we'll miss tonight after the year is over. I'm tired, and I feel bad about feeling tired–it's insanely messed up to think this statement through. Still, it's how the past few months have been going for me. The idea that I have no right to complain has popped into my head too often–it's what you hear people say: you don't have it as bad as we do. When did life become a competition of whose lot is worse? Ah, well. A poem: Name Me Ghost Not quite alive, and
not quite dead—gone through both, but the afterlife is bullheaded, and won’t accept it. Not today. The memorial—the photo reel of all the Saturdays, the laughter stored in our throat. Replay loop all the stupid things I’ve said. Migratory patterns leave shadows for those left behind-- sometimes, it’s the fragrance of missing me. Maybe they do. Still, this is goodbye: it’s the natural swing of things to move along when the cold begins to bite.  I was told coming into my clinical year of medical school that I ought to find a way to keep myself human. So, I did. Over the past six months, I wrote these poems between surgeries, nap breaks, and seeing patients. I wrote about heartache, time, late mornings, fights, work. They are life poems(!) and they have become my lifeline. These poems are meant for the commute. the snack break. the morning coffee run. They are meant to read like a pick me up when don't have time.
I'm rambling. The point: there are days that do not feel like good days, and maybe writing these poems have helped me pull through. Reading them again, I am humbled at who I was a couple of months ago. It's a reminder not to take myself too seriously. And to keep writing. another ping in the
pocket. then, a pause. unseen message, or inattentive response. when should we bother, or be bothered about becoming a bother? and when should we ivy branch reach out to magnet attractive suns? when do we get to call strangers, and not think about the way we might be buzzing up their phones unexpectedly? unpleasantly? unwantedly? these sort of things: I turn to sleep on my left side after a month on the right. maybe the uneasy chest feeling will dislodge itself if I just get through tonight. I get back to work tomorrow after a long week off (during which I went through minor surgery and major introspection). Do I dread it? A little. Do I look forward to it? Not as much as I should, but I like the work.
At the beginning of medical school, I had a thought that has stayed with me: I am learning to suffer. Not something you really want to hear coming from an age that feeds on hedonism, but I had the thought and I've been carrying it with me, trying to figure out what it means. What does it mean to endure life, for example? CS Lewis proposed in The Screwtape Letters that a long, peaceful, otherwise mundane life poses a greater threat to faith than a sudden instance of crisis. The more time I have to live, the more I understand this: at times the sheer weight of living makes me question whether God is real when I cannot see him, cannot feel him. It seems easier to believe in Him when I have a problem and need saving from it, and so difficult to see how equally I need him when life rolls ever on without obvious need for divine intervention. Thus, the necessary virtue of faith. And the necessary virtue of introspection. In the same breath, the end of my medical training seems so far away. The current reality of my situation is bleak. There is little sleeping and little contact with the outside world. The suffering wears you down because you wonder: is this all there is? And everyone tells you it gets worse. Does it? Will I make it out in one piece? There is no guarantee that anything gets better, but to endure is to take the daily burden of suffering and allow it to chip away at your character until you come out the sort of person you'd like to be. Will suffering properly mould me into the kind of person I wish I was? I certainly hope so. I think of you Here's a thought: there's an old riddle (arguably by George Berkeley) about a tree in the forest. If no one hears it fall, does it still make a sound? The short explanation: sound is, by definition, a perceived effect. If no one is around to perceive, then it doesn't matter if the tree objectively made noise. There is no sound. The argument seems ridiculous and too legalistic to take seriously, but I use it as a jumping point for my own tangential thought: we exist separately from how others see us, but we also exist to other people as certain versions of ourselves. Does that matter? Or is it, like the tree argument, something that sounds good legalistically, but doesn't do anyone any good in what we call "real life"?
I've been stuck on this poem by Jack Mueller for weeks–so, maybe it will stay with me for the rest of the year.  I resolve to update this blog a little more often. However often that may be!
It is the dawn of a new year and the end of my holiday. On my headboard, there are three poetry books lined up that I read in no particular order. Mueller, Doty and Ashbery are currently on rotation–my favorites, and my mentor's. Two nights ago, I went out with some friends–it's an odd thing to catch up with people you've known for so long but whose current lives you know nothing about. It's meeting a stranger with a familiar face. Someone said that the older you are, the more people become shadows of other people you remember–sounds like someone else's voice, looks like someone else's ears, smells like someone else's cologne. Meeting someone after a long period of absence is something like that. You remember them as themselves, but have to piece together who you remember them as vis a vis who they presently are. It is a constant process. A tangential thought to this: it's so easy to give up investing time into meeting up with people. Medical school is like a little circle in the Venn diagram that is convinced it doesn't need to intersect with anyone else's circle. It's so easy to be absorbed into this medical training bubble, and I think for the most part of my clerkship year, I've willingly participated in locking myself in the system. Then, I think of people I love and whether we'll have anything to talk about after years of me excusing myself from gatherings and parties. I think of how much compassion is necessary from those who love me in spite of my schedule.  at 74, Mueller bites it
no thanks to cancer. at 65, Doty. Some others, without notice, no Wikipedia entry. No consensus on what became of them—some, heaven, others, still here watching over the stars as much as we still do, just less communicating (under the presumption that we are still communicating.) On that note: I sit down, and finally tune in- to your favorite television series, this pretense of connection based on a common captivation. Maybe I don’t enjoy it, and fake interest because of your interest. Would you call it hypocritical, or would it move you? would it come to mind when I bite it at the age of 62? Breaths come in pairs, except at two times in our lives—the beginning and the end. At birth, we inhale for the first time; at death, we exhale for the last.  In between
the beginning, and in between the end is a Shakespearean Act played out—all the world is a stage, every morning wake up naked and out of character, bare bones and back breaking after a lifetime so far of breaking in these feet, and every morning, dress our grins for the show, smile faking, we puff up lies at everyone we meet—I am aware, there is honesty, this Venetian masquerade is not e verybody, the way the worst boys always quip “not all men,” but we counter with: “enough men to matter,” enough piston weight pressure on slouching shoulders for enough of us to play the game anyway, count the cards in our hand and bluff all the way—jester, joker smile though your heart is breaking and you’re tempted to take your one last breath. There’s a beginning, and there’s an end; there are mornings you need a little help seeing what waits around the bend hope is an ocean inspired suitor, ebbing and flowing, sometimes here, and when you need him: disappearing. It is difficult going through rain cloud seasons with feet dangling, barely believing in prayers you whisper when things were going better. Understand: this is what faith looks like—take a deep breath in, and hold it steady. Everyone with me, exhale slowly. Notice this reflex arc handy: your lungs take deep breaths again, and again, even when you anorexia starve it of air, chest coup-de-tat fights you, doesn’t want this life to end. And, maybe now is a semi-colon, a pause in the story, see, we all need a little breather. We all get tired eventually, but hope will arrive eventually, its feet soaked through thick cotton socks after all the pain and the downpour rain, but meanwhile remember this reflex: take a deep breath in and hold it steady. Everyone with me, exhale slowly. See, then our lungs welcome the sky again, we breathe again, our sighs out are reminders: this is not the end. at ten years old, we
climbed skinny trees, and scraped knobby knees, saw the city bird’s eye, and listened to the rustling of leaves, ten years later: in place of trees, we lego brick stack concrete pancake layers: higher and higher until we need elevators, and then, maybe they fit the criteria for skyscrapers. maybe, this time, we’ll find what we’re looking for: peer through the glass shoe window on the top floor, and won’t feel the need to axe hack this cityscape down, won’t feel the need to bring the sky closer to the ground, to fill our hands with news paper that says we’ve reached the clouds. sixteen years ago, there were red winged butterflies morning greeting flowers with kisses before moving onto someone else’s plant box—the all organic liberal player, heart breaker—we learn from their pollinating patterns we are all thieves, mercilessly taking nature’s nectar—let’s army knife carve out a space for summer pavilions and canopies, uproot these wide mango trees and use them for fire, their bodies are good for keeping us warm, and this Nara: sturdy for shelter, and it is human nature, instinct to reach outward, sometimes upward—skyward, sun peeking through the clouds, and we soak it all up through bare shoulders that burn instead of tan. there are no butterflies now, because there are no trees, just an urban concrete lego-land on life support, the Pasig river a clogged up IV line and we try to scrape at the sides but don’t you remember, we sent away the guys who could do it better on their last payroll, now the land rolls down the bank of the river, where we put dams in place of trees—as if we knew any better. and maybe I’m a tree hugger, nature lover, hippie, greenie, idealist, environmentalist, just another girl who wants to teach her future daughter how to climb a tree. If I’m lucky, she’ll learn to do ir better than me. identified by drink more than by
name, and espresso caffeine isn’t the only kind of morning rush, it is saying my name like brush strokes and getting lost after swimming the wrong stream, down, and no one ever expects to end up in today’s version of here, but here you are: with a friend’s dr pepper robitussin americano, and another’s iced cappuccino, and still trying to coin flip between two kinds of beans, as if Jack really believed in all this magic. and maybe it’s time we round our backs, cat stretch forwards, slouch, cave in- wards. yesterday I was sniper centered on north pole things. today is equator different, all kinds of fireplace warm and no blister burns. and maybe Jack was magic bean right instead of asylum not right in other places, and maybe it’s Apollo really bright here, not just an Iris hallucination lie. and, dr stranger mouths, “how will you know if you never try” -out, train for decathlon-like death, it’s not caving in if you’re expected to Pokemon trainer put up a bloody good fight. |
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