Tonight was fireworks night at Dodger Stadium, and as I watched bright colorful explosions in the sky from a distant hill, I remembered that it was around this time of year twelve years ago when I made a last-minute decision that would forever change my life in weird and sometimes quite traumatic ways.
By that time, I had gotten all my rejection letters from the med schools I had applied to. This was the second year I had applied, and I had only gotten interviews at two schools.
Right after the July 4th long weekend, I got a letter from Chicago (North Chicago, to be exact) saying I got into a one-year post-baccalaureate program that would grant me a master’s degree and the potential opportunity of getting into med school the next year if I did well. I had less than a week to accept.
After three days of agonizing about the decision, I went for it.
I took a whirlwind three-day road trip with my mom from L.A. to Chicago in a twenty year old Ford Taurus station wagon that we bought from my uncle. We drove twelve hours a day, stopping in Colorado and then in Nebraska. Somewhere between Des Moines and Chicago, I started seriously losing it and thought about turning around right then and there on the interstate and going back.
I’m not sure I could make that sort of decision again. Just thinking about it kind of freaks me out.
He found it strange how an old song that his dad always used to listen to on his cassette player had embedded itself so deeply into his brain that when he heard it again, it instantly took him to a time and place he could scarcely remember, a past that never was, memories that had faded into a story, into lore, more akin to fantastic fiction than to anything he had actually lived through.
Where was I? Where had I been? How did I get here? It wasn’t that he didn’t know the narrative of his life story. It was just that every time he rehearsed it in his mind, it sounded more and more like something that had happened to someone else, to someone perhaps who had never existed, just another character in some novel, existing only in his mind. He remembered the admonition of Jose Rizal, the martyred revolutionary who had stated that if you didn’t know where you came from, then you’d never figure out where you were going. It wasn’t that he didn’t remember, exactly. But he wondered if these were his memories, and even if they were, were they really memories, or just idealized narratives of events long passed, long ago divorced from any modicum of authenticity? And he started thinking, maybe I don’t want to know where I’m going, anyway, except that he knew, and of course, everyone knew. The end was obvious. Sooner or later, he would die. It was the getting there that was the complication, the thing that would remain mysterious and opaque so long as his memories continued to feel fake, as if they had been implanted all at once by some sinister band of conspirators.
That’s just paranoia. Everyone has that, he paraphrased a line from a book he had once read, a line that he repeated often, each time being amused by it, even though he didn’t actually remember the exact phrasing. My brain is just full of holes, that’s all, he told himself, as if somehow such a statement should be soothing. He was too young to be having these kinds of bouts of forgetfulness. But he didn’t want to look at it too closely. Because then he’d be stuck between two unpleasant possibilities. Either there really was an evil cabal deliberately falsifying and obscuring his memory, or he had actually done it to himself.
Apparently one of my neighbors is either reminiscing about the past, or feeling heartbroken, or both, because he/she was playing this song from TLC from yesteryear:
I never asked for this feeling.
I never thought I would fall.
I never knew how I felt
‘til the day you were gone.
I was lost.
I never asked for red roses.
I wasn’t looking for love.
Somehow I let my emotions take hold
and guess what, all at once
I’m in love.
Oh, I miss you so much.
I long for your love.
It scares me
‘cause my heart gets so weak
that I can’t even breathe.
How can you take things so easily?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
Why did I act like you mattered?
It was silly of me to believe
that if I just opened my heart
things would come naturally.
Joke’s on me.
I did not ask for love letters,
so why did you give them to me?
How could I let your intentions
get hold over me?
So in love,
so naive.
Oh, baby.
Oh, I miss you so much.
I long for your love.
It scares me
‘cause my heart gets so weak
that I can’t even breathe.
How can you take things so easily?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
And, oh, how I hate what you have done.
Made me fall so deep in love.
Got no cure.
You’re the only one I want.
That I love.
Oh, baby.
Oh I miss you so much.
I long for your love.
It scares me
‘cause my heart gets so weak
that I can’t even breathe.
How can you take things so easily?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
Baby, why aren’t you missing me?
—”I Miss You So Much” by TLC, on Fan Mail, 1999
What a way to wake up in the morning.
Ever since I got addicted to Twitter, I guess I haven’t been blogging as often as I used to. There are just so many ways to express myself besides the long form of a blog post: Twitter, Facebook link posts, Google Reader shares with notes, del.icio.us. I am Web 2.0-ed out.
But I feel like there are all sorts of thoughts that I’ve just been letting go. Thoughts that don’t fit very well in that 140 character limit. And I think I’m starting to feel the effect of neglecting them.
To start: the worry and the dread are coming back again, despite maximal medication.
I am clearly doing something horrifically wrong with my life, and it’s probably going to kill me if I don’t fix it soon.
So what started out as a reasonably good weekend turned into a total nightmarish disaster, all on the account of such a small thing as a stupid car key, the story of which I’ll get to. Eventually.
On Saturday, I tried to run a bunch of errands. I ended up waking up several hours later than I had hoped to, but nonetheless managed to get a hair cut, get my car smog checked, and then grab breakfast. I’ve been hanging out a lot a Cafe Milano lately. Maybe camping would be a more accurate term. I haven’t decided yet whether it’s actually therapeutic, or whether I’m merely enabling my OCD potential. I have a feeling we’ll find out soon enough.
So S. crochets hats, which she says helps her relax and stop worrying. The repetition and the simplicity (I’ll take her word for it) are quite soothing. The end-products are quite useful, and she gives them out as gifts.
I have since discovered that mapmaking happens to be my simple, repetitive exercise that makes me stop worrying about the world. I realize I’ve been doing this since I was a little kid. (Have I been anxious since then?) But it hasn’t been until the last few months that I’ve been spending hours at a time drawing maps of imaginary places. Not quite as useful as a hat. Actually, most people who have seen them immediately think of that Russell Crowe movie “A Beautiful Mind”, which is not at all reassuring. When they finally lock me up in the psych ward neurobehavioral unit, I’m sure this is what I’ll be doing all day and all night. Although they probably won’t let me have sharp objects, so I’m not sure what I’ll do, but I digress.
We’re not even talking about maps about fantasy worlds (although I have made those as well.) What I’ve been drawing are road maps.
There is a soothing ritual to them. First I draw the coastline, then the rivers, then I approximate the hills and mountains. After that, I find a spot for a crossroads, draw the major highways, and then fill in from there. Some are more convincing than others. (I’ll have to upload them when I get more time.) None of them are probably places anyone would ever live.
So that’s what I’ve been doing at the cafes lately. Trying to get my mind off of issues that are increasingly more and more pressing.
After I finish yet another map, I decide that it’s time to get on with my errands. The next thing on my list was to get rid of the stupid PDA that my residency program lent to me, which I never used, because it was simply impractical. So I drove over to work, snuck into the chiefs’ office, and left it there.
To my horror and infinite regret, I discover that I no longer had my car key.
Now, I had been ignoring this issue for quite a while now. The corner of the key had cracked, meaning that the key would easily slip off the key chain. This had, in fact, happened several times over the past few weeks, and I kept swearing that I would find some Crazy Glue. It even happened that Saturday morning, when I gave the key to the mechanic who performed the smog check.
I retraced my steps carefully. No dice. I peered into my car from all humanly achievable angles, to no avail. I wasn’t about to call AAA to open up my car, only to discover that the key wasn’t even in there.
And the nearest copy of the key was 150 miles away, in L.A., at my parents’ house.
Meanwhile, I had to figure out a way to get out of Kearney Mesa.
One of the more infuriating things about San Diego is that there are several parts of town where the only traversable route is a freeway. Many sections of the city don’t have surface street alternates. It is literally the highway, or no way. When you’re in a car, this is merely irritating. When you’re on foot, this can mean walking several miles out of your way.
I managed to navigate my way to Fashion Valley. Turns out that this is only 3.9 miles, which according to Google Maps, should only take 12 minutes. Provided you have a conveyance powered by an internal combustion engine. With my out-of-shape sorry ass, it took nearly two hours.
I did contemplate trying to walk upriver towards Texas Street, but the 805 bridge loomed very, very, very far away, and I decided that the better part of valor would be to just take the trolley.
After clambering out of Rio Vista and onto Qualcomm Way, I started walking south. By the time I crossed the 8 and got to the bottom of that godforsaken hill, I realized that I was overmatched. I waited for the bus, which took me up that hellish incline, and deposited me within steps of my apartment.
Luckily, the street I live on is on a major bus route, so I wind and wend my way to Downtown. I overhear a girl having a conversation with the bus driver. Apparently she had flown out from Atlanta the day before, at the behest and accommodation of an unnamed party. Things didn’t turn out so well, and she was now trying to figure out how to get to the Greyhound depot to take a bus back to the ATL. So I guess that ought to put things into better perspective for me.
I arrive at Santa Fe Depot to discover that it is infested by high school kids all dressed up for prom. Apparently they were all taking the train up to Anaheim. (Grad night?) I find myself a seat and commence drawing yet another useless map. I finally make it to Union Station in L.A. around midnight.
My sister and her boyfriend pick me up, which is slightly awkward because me and my sister haven’t spoken to each other for nearly four months, ever since we got into a huge fight about one of the dogs. If you asked me to try to recall what exactly it was about, it would probably take me a while to remember. Like most of these violent, emnity-causing arguments, I’m sure it was for a completely stupid reason, but me and her are stubborn like that, and while I know life is too short to hold grudges, she really knows how to piss me off.
Be that as it may, I finally went to sleep around 1 am, although I woke at least twice in the middle of the night. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. It can’t be a good sign.
Turns out, my mom isn’t sure exactly which key is actually the key to my car, so I end up taking all of the likely candidates. There is other extended familial drama that I really don’t want to get into at the moment, but suffice to say, being at home does little to ease my disturbed little brain. My dad drops me off at Union Station at 5pm, 10 minutes before the Surfliner South is scheduled to leave, and I hustle to the track.
No seats. There are a bunch of us poor schmucks left standing around, gawking miserably. I find myself ensconced in the same car as a middle-aged, portly white guy and a youngish, college-student-looking Asian girl who are busy discussing Christian metaphysics, on the same order as how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. With the A/C in the train on full blast, it still feels like it’s 100 degrees in there. My only salvation is my iPod. Thank Jobs.
After Fullerton, I finally find a seat, although it’s a backward-facing one, which is not my favorite, since I’m prone to motion-sickness. Eventually, I slip into cool oblivion, and manage to stay asleep until after San Juan Capistrano, so that I’m treated to the shores of San Clemente, then watch the sun set over the sea as we pass the varied lagoons of San Diego County. It’s just past 8 pm when I get back to the Santa Fe Depot. I briefly contemplate the notion of taking public transport back to work to get my car, but wisely decide to take a cab instead.
Without further incident, I finally make it home.
You would think that I could relax, but for some reason, my brain is refusing to cooperate.
Why can’t anything be simple?
I seem to be stuck in a time warp.
Andrea Frierson as the Goddess Erzulie, singing “Human Heart” from the musical “Once on This Island”
This particular musical has arrested my imagination. It happens to be a rendition of “The Little Mermaid” complete with the original turning-into-foam ending a la Hans Christian Andersen, with some geopolitics and post-colonialism added into the mix.
There is some kind of poetic justice that this is not a happily-ever-after story.
N played the leading role her senior year in high school while I was a freshman in college, and maybe in some ways, that was the beginning of the end.
It so happened that, like many college freshmen, I found myself sucked into the vortex known as identity politics, and came away with a deeper understanding of where I fit in terms of the inexorable forces of history. It is no accident that my parents landed upon these distant shores. Their homeland has the ambiguous distinction of being one of the few actual colonies of the United States. The Filipino Diaspora was one of the initial symptoms of global capitalism, resulting in an archetypal scenario played and replayed in all the developing countries of the world.
Locked away and freeze dried into this mix is the so-called “colonial mentality”, which this musical somehow gives voice to, interspersed within the over-arching love story, coupled to the fantastic aboriginal mysticism.
The book My Love, My Love upon which “Once on This Island” is based has an entire vivid scene evoking the ritual of trance. It wasn’t until I took a Southeast Asian Studies class that I realized where our culture came from. Until then, it never occurred to me that the Philippines has never existed in a vacuum. It is no accident that Malaysians and Indonesians share many of the same morphological characteristics that my relatives and I do. It is no coincidence that the Malayan tongue and the multifarious tongues of Indonesia have significant similarity to Tagalog, Ilocano, and Cebuano. My ancestors roamed the sometimes tempestuous waves of the Indian Ocean and of the great Pacific, reaching as far west as Madagascar and as far east as Easter Island (and possibly beyond)
And trance was a key part of Southeast Asian cultures. The Islamic tribes of Mindanao in the south of the Philippines have incorporated much of the indigenous animism into their faith, just as the Christian tribes of the Visayas and of Luzon have imbued the Catholic saints with animistic powers. The ritual dance of Singkil made a lot more sense amidst this context. It wasn’t just something pretty and complicated that the Bayanihan Dance Troupe fabricated to wow the audience. There was an entire story hiding in there, telling of Prince Bantugan and Princess Gandinggan. The bamboo poles weren’t just props. They were instruments, to keep time along with the drums and the gongs and the magical kulintang, which were the keys that opened the portal to the trance state, and to the other worlds.
Everything took on a different sheen when I actually went to the Philippines in 1995. Songs from this musical kept playing in my head as I found myself on Borocay, the ultimate tourist trap. On the road from Caticlan to the boat launch, we came across Ati who were getting ready for the upcoming Ati-Atihan, a festival involving trance and ritual, supposedly commemorating the first meeting of the Ati and of the Malay of Borneo. “We Dance” immediately makes me think of the Philippines—with the formation of the Bayanihan Dance Troupe, Filipinos are perhaps known world-wide as dancers. It seems like every Filipino child’s first ambition is to become an actor, a singer, or a dancer, or perhaps all three, and I still wonder about that to this day, and why does no one want to become a bench researcher, or a theoritician, or a social scientist?
It all culminated when my sister adapted the story *to* the Philippines, with the Pearls of the Orient replacing the French Antilles, and the Spanish (and the Americans) replacing the French, all translated into Tagalog.
Oddly, Bn. somehow found a children’s production of “Once on This Island” in San Jose that one year, and A. came with us. The feminist issues of the Little Mermaid, and the post-colonial issues raised by the adaptation to the French Antilles can generate a lot of discussion. Interestingly, the composers for “Once on This Island”—Lynn Ahearn and Stephen Flaherty—later together penned the score for the non-Disney animated film “Anastasia”. This also, in many ways, marked the beginning of the end (although how does something end when it didn’t ever actually begin?)
But like many of the blog posts over the past few weeks, this is another piece of errata that has somehow followed me all these days, randomly popping up from time to time, and now probably sitting somewhere on my iPod.
I keep imagining that things are a lot more solid than I think they are. I don’t know where this strange certainty comes from. Every now and again, I want to doubt it. But there is something unshakeable, unflappable, about this particular narrative. I hope that I’m right for once, and that this isn’t just some more of the same misleading portentousness that I’ve been feeding myself over the past 15 years from time to time.
And speaking of time, it seems that it is continuously running out. Eventually, my path will be determined by sheer attrition. (Although the 10 of cups popped up twice, promising otherwise.)
When I die all alone, I won’t have anyone to blame but myself.
Whenever I hear this song, I can still feel those cold autumn early mornings after pulling an all-nighter, writing an English paper or a History paper, fully saturated with caffeine (a total of 230 mg would usually tide me over), with no one but Sluggo on KROQ to keep me company.
“Stay (Far Away, So Close)” by U2
This week’s I-5 playlist, featuring cheesy love songs and songs to commit suicide to:
Lionel Richie “The Only One” (flashback to sometime in the 1980s, but also evocative of August 2001)
Eden’s Crush “Love This Way” (flashback to August 2001. Yes! Nicole Scherzinger!)
Elliott Smith “I Didn’t Understand” (flashback to September 2007)
Ben Folds Five “Evaporated” (flashback to January 2001)
Hiroko Kasahara “Moichido Love You” (flashback to January 1996)
Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle “A Whole New World” (flashback to December 1992, this version has Lea Salonga singing the woman’s part instead)
Toad the Wet Sprocket “Little Heaven” (flashback to August 1992)
Tiffany “All This Time” (flashback to June 1988, but more illustrative of June 1998)
Elliott Smith’s “I Didn’t Understand”, Ben Folds Five’s “Evaporated”, and Tiffany’s “All This Time” are not exactly the most uplifting set of songs, but it didn’t spin me down the usual downward spiral of depression. What it did evoke was this sense of completely misunderstanding the past 15 years of my life. In some ways, I feel like destiny passed me by, and I’m living some sort of shadow life. In other ways, I feel like I completely misunderstood my destiny, and I’ve been wishing for things that were never meant to be, and now here I am, reluctantly awake from my fantastic dreams.
Dum spiro, spero, right?
I think it might’ve been Sirius, the dog star, in the southern sky that lit my way tonight, like a beacon, brighter than the ambient glow of the urban sprawl before me, but I only have a faint grasp of celestialography, so I could be wrong.
Ten days until the sun finally halts its retreat and finally stands its ground. Twenty days until the year’s end, leaving me wondering about the future, and whether it’s even worth wondering at all.
The problem with driving down to San Diego with only my iPod as my companion is that I can get lost in the random music that it plays, dragging me through my memories, many of them dark and bitter. The following is not necessarily exact, but it serves as a rough guide.
- Vienna Tang “Harbor”
hauntingly echoing my deepest desire, although perhaps something that will never come to pass in this lifetime. - Semisonic “Singing in My Sleep”
on the connector ramp from the Glendale Fwy southbound to the Golden State Fwy southbound, bringing back faint memories of nine years ago after leaving the Bay Area in defeat, and resigning myself to at least a year in limbo in L.A. - Hooverphonic “Cinderella”
past the junction of the Golden State Fwy with the Pasadena Fwy, on the way to the East L.A. Interchange. The rhythm of the song at first makes me think of “Bettie Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes. Maybe this could be inspiration for a mashup. - Amina “Hilli”
speeding through Irvine, past the El Toro Y, making me think of something that might have been composed by Nobuo Uematsu for the theme of some imaginary town in some as-of-yet undrafted installment of Final Fantasy - Aaliyah “Journey to the Past”
as I wound my way through Laguna Niguel, remembering faint memories of ten Decembers past, and my heart not didn’t so much break, as it did just dry out. And still I dream of home. - Hooverphonic “Battersea”
through San Clemente. The lyrics are faint, leaving haunting traces in my mind. - Nelly Furtado “All Good Things (Come to an End)”
through Camp Pendelton. This song has captured my mind ever since I heard it for the first time this summer, and the answer is quite simple, and quite bitter. - Frou Frou “Hear Me Out”
probably either Oceanside or Carlsbad by this time. - Feist “Secret Heart”
probably Encinitas or Solana Beach. Reminding me of how so many words have died stillborn in my heart, freeze dried by despair, evaporated by helplessness. - Sunny Day Real Estate “Song About an Angel”
going past the merge, heading south on the 805 - S Club 7 “Never Had A Dream Come True”
southbound on the 805 past La Jolla, through Clairemont Mesa, to the connector ramp to the southbound 163. This song always kills me, dragging me through the last ten years, and sticking a dagger right in my half-rotting, half-dessicated heart. - Anggun “On the Breath of an Angel”
exiting the 163 to Friar’s Road, remembering that even with the mess I could’ve turned everything into, she still saves me with her friendship.
It was pretty much ten years ago when I realized that my life would definitely not have a “happily ever after” ending. It’s not that I would necessarily live a tragic life, though. I mean, everyone has their regrets and failures that haunt them for the rest of their lives, right? At least that’s what I tell myself whenever I start feeling sorry for myself.
The more that time passes, the more it becomes apparent that the way things went down was inevitable. The moment came, I was tested, and I was found sorely wanting. I wasn’t meant to be the one, and that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
And yet, somehow, everything that has happened since seems to be an echo, a reverberation from that time long gone, and even this far out, I can’t seem to completely break free of my self-destructive patterns. It’s as if from that moment on, I was doomed. I was damned.
For a while, I’ve held out hope that things would change for me, that I would grow, that I would eventually have my chance for happiness someday. Even though I’ve wanted to give up, I’ve kept going, still keeping this ember of hope burning, still somehow hoping for some miracle.
I thought, “Oh God, my chance has come at last!”
but then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn’t ask
—The Smiths “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”
I wonder how many years must go by before I must accept that my hope has run out. How many years must go by before I can just thrown in the towel, call it quits. Some things were never meant to happen.
Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
—Alphaville “Forever Young”
I think, sometimes, of the curse of The Flying Dutchman, doomed to wander the seas until the end of time, never able to reach the shore. Or of Coleridge’s doomed Ancient Mariner, or perhaps the Wandering Jew. Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.”
But I’m still hedging my bets. I also think of Schmendrick the Magician, cursed to never age until he learns the secrets of magic, and reaches his full potential. Maybe, still, maybe, I’ll meet a unicorn, and maybe even someone like Molly Grue, and while the story won’t necessarily end happily ever after, maybe I can at least find my way home again, and at least have some sort of peaceful end.
And it came to me then that every plan
is a tiny prayer to Father Time,
as I stared at my shoes in the ICU
that reeked of piss and 409.
—”What Sarah Said” by Death Cab for Cutie
I’m continuing to read S. narrative of her time spent working in the ICU and I am flung back to my own time in that hellish pit of despair. I did my own ICU intern month around this time of year, and looking back at my blog entries at that time, I barely wrote anything at all. Mostly because I was living in the ICU the entire month, and the only reason I would go home would be to sleep and shower.
But the only times I managed to vent my sadness and frustration actually bracketed that month of pain.
Before I started the ICU, I cross-covered for Peds Hem-Onc {pediatric hematology-oncology}, and that pretty much set the tone for the next couple of months.
Despite the suffering and the death I was confronted with every day, I managed to stay mostly narcissistic, thinking about nothing but my own misery, although peripherally aware that, as bad as it got, at least I wasn’t sick.
(Rule #4 from “The House of God”: The patient is the one with the disease. Or, as my senior in psychiatry said back when I was a 3rd year medical student, “At least you don’t have lymphoma.”)
The madness continued, as I found myself marooned in the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, blindsided by Death almost every day, floundering and flailing like a drowning man, as I tried to actually take on cancer, and failing miserably.
For better, or for worse, I made it through somehow without needing a psychiatric hospitalization. I’ve had to face death again on more than a few occasions, but I don’t not if I just got used to it and stopped caring, or it really got easier.
Don’t get me wrong. I still have my regrets. But I can honestly say I tried my best, to not let my patients suffer needlessly, and to send them peacefully on to whatever comes next.
I learned that there is actually such a thing as a good death. To be as pain-free as possible. To tie up all the loose-ends. To say goodbye, without grudges, without too much regret.
At least I can say I tried my best.
But we do a lot of things in those cold sterile rooms that make no sense whatsoever. But you still have to do them.
Even though you knew they were going to die, that you could almost pinpoint it to the hour—even though you knew they were going to die, because you were the one who was purposefully pulling out the tube, and letting nature take its course, at the behest of the family members, or at the behest of the patient, who was able to record their final wishes before they slipped into that awful twilight unconsciousness of grave illness—even though the monitors display quite clearly that the patient is not breathing, that the heart has stopped pumping—you still have to go in there and listen for sounds that you know you won’t hear.
He’s dead, Jim
—Bones from “Star Trek”
I’ve gotten really good at stating the obvious.
Even when you know they’re dying, and there’s nothing you could possibly do to stop that downward spiral, you still have to start chest compressions on and crack the ribs of someone whom you haven’t been able to contact the loved ones of, and whose last desire before slipping into unconsciousness was for us to do “everything that could be done.” Never mind that her veins are filled more with bacteria and pus than with blood, and the bacteria are so resistant to treatment that you might as well be giving her sugar water instead of antibiotics. Never mind that when your heart stops while you’re in septic shock, that you ain’t doing anyone any favors by bringing them back, with their brain all turned to mush by the lack of oxygen, and the bacteria basically eating away at gray matter.
Never mind that, for all intents and purposes, you basically killed her when you stuck that tube down her throat and put her under, because there was no way she could breathe with her chest 75% filled with incurable tumor no matter what you did, and at the rate they were growing, her heart and lungs would be completely wrecked by cancer in 48 hours.
Never mind that the surgeons have tried for four weeks, and now you’ve tried for another four weeks, and even though she was completely awake and alert and communicative, you couldn’t pull that tube out of her throat, and all it seemed that you were doing was prolonging agony, and why do I feel evil for being relieved that we finally let her go? Am I just rationalizing?
Never mind that he had been all ready to go home when disaster struck, and a vessel burst within his gut. His brain died a little that day, and probably died a little more as we flogged him back to what you could technically call life, but after that he just sat there, writhing in delirium, and maybe there were a few moments when he could see his daughter clearly, but for the most part he was convulsing uncontrollably, untouchable by anything we tried.
I don’t know. Thinking back about all these cases—all these people—many of whom I never knew when they were just like me—laughing, talking, playing, working—was it enough?
I guess I’ve been through enough to know that no one is ever going to be able to answer that question for me.
‘Cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room.
Just nervous faces bracing for bad news.
And then the nurse comes ‘round and everyone lift their heads,
but I’m thinking of what Sarah said:
That love is watching someone die.
—”What Sarah Said” by Death Cab for Cutie
As I shot down the I-5 listening to my iPod, this song came up, bringing up memories from my first year in college, way back in 1994-1995
To quote Mos Def, “A lot of things have changed. A lot of things have not.”
But the song is [“You Gotta Be” by Des’ree][1], and the most vivid memory is hanging out at the Berkeley Marina, and gazing at the hills to the east, and the Campanile towering in the distance.
We used to go to the marina to get away from campus, and sometimes we’d fly kites.
you gotta be bad
you gotta be bold
you gotta be wiser
you gotta be hard
you gotta be tough
you gotta be stronger
you gotta be cool
you gotta be calm
you gotta stay together
all I know all I know love will save the day
This song is by Pedro Gil, whom I ended up watching a few months ago.
As far as past Septembers have gone, this one has definitely gone better than most. Two weddings, a beer festival, visitors from afar. I managed to stave off depression as well as I could, despite being haunted by specters from the distant as well as the not-so-distant past.
If I could guarantee that life remained fixed within these parameters, if I could guarantee not having to suffer terribly again, maybe it would be enough. But there’s now way to do that.
I’ve given up hoping for anything more, though, so I’m not sure how to make sure I can continue to navigate the inevitable bumps and potholes.
I feel like a lot of loose ends are being tied up in my life lately. I don’t know whether to be relieved, or to be sad. Or whether to be wary of the future. Every time life comes to one of these pauses, one of these lacunae, it seems that everything goes to shit.
But I’m trying to be positive. Not psychotically optimistic, but realistic. The surest thing about luck is that it will change, and just because bad things have happened to me doesn’t mean that bad things will always happen to me.
We stride towards the future ever careful. But walk forward we must.
My roommate from med school got married today. (I seem to be going to a lot of weddings lately.) And I saw M again after a long time. I think the last time I saw her was two years ago, and we sort of lost touch after a rather strange and arduous several-day conversation back in February 2006 that I failed to document, and that I sometimes start pondering but then quickly stop because I already know without asking that there aren’t any answers, and what’s the point a year and a half out when the (putative) opportunity is long past?
But of course other moments creep into my mind, which I have to shake off, like that time I ended up drunk out of my mind at her sister’s apartment, and she made sure that I actually woke up in time to take call. Or when I talked her through an excruciating episode with her ex. Or when she talked me through a ridiculous journey from Chicago to L.A. that I did in four days.
We actually hung out quite a lot. Compatriots in the struggle of life. Of course, she has always seen me as a brother. Or at least an adopted cousin. That usually puts the nail in the coffin on these thoughts, but then she says things that make me do double-takes, and if I blink, the moment passes, and I’m left with this unsatisfying feeling of imagining the whole episode. It’s like jamais vu.
In any case, I’m here, she’s there with her boyfriend, and that’s that.
Life is too short as it is for regret, and I’ve been preparing myself for a lifetime of involuntary celibacy anyway. Besides, desire leads to suffering, and Buddha only knows that I’m ready to stop suffering.
What was classic is that as I pulled out of the parking garage, Lionel Richie popped up on my iPod, and ”The Only One” started playing. I really dig this song. It’s rooted deep in my psyche because my dad used to play his album over and over again until the cassette tape finally snapped, and it sort of rekindles a nostalgic feeling of “home.” Or something. If someone happens to turn on the Infinite Improbability Drive in my vicinity and somehow I end up getting married, this song is definitely going to be played somewhere. Or I’ll sing it to my bride in front of everyone. Or something sufficiently cheesy like that.
We’ve all been changed
From what we were
Our broken parts
Smashed off the floor
Someone turn me around
Can I start this again?
—The Editors “Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors”
So S (of whom I’ve written a few things here and there) got married on Saturday. Strangely, it didn’t seem like it had been all that long since she first hooked up with her now husband, but four years is a pretty long time.
I find what transpired in those few months before she left for the Bay Area somewhat strange, and still a little confusing, but it is what it is, and the likelihood of traversing that pathway has long ago dropped to zero.
There are other what-ifs in my life that are more likely to keep me awake at night anyway.
In a half-comatose daze, I drove myself over to Lindbergh Field before the sun was even up, and somehow got myself to the proper terminal. I contended with TSA, and plopped myself in front of my gate. I watched an Indian (South Asian) family deal with their 2 year old daughter running around all over the place. Eventually, they called my boarding group. I found myself a seat and soon passed out, waking up some 20 minutes south of San Jose.
I don’t particularly remember my rationale for showing up in the Bay Area nine hours before the wedding, and seven hours before I could check into my room. Be that as it may, I had to kill some time and found myself wandering the streets of Milpitas.
It’s rather odd. My aunt used to live in the South Bay, and we would come to her house almost every summer, as far back as when I was five years old. That house on Hillview Drive was kind of a fixture of my childhood, more so than our old house in Echo Park, even. I’ve had quite a few good memories of summers there. The best was when our cousins from the East Coast had come out to visit L.A., and we ended up on a 12 hour quest to the Bay Area via U.S. 101, stopping in Santa Barbara and Solvang before finally making it to Milpitas. Somehow, my cousins thought it would be fun to throw spitwads at cars passing by in the middle of the night. They exhausted several boxes of tissue paper which ended up on the driveway, much to my aunt’s consternation.
One of the most funny episodes was when they decided to pelt a semi-truck. The impacts caused the trailer to reverberate, and it freaked the driver out enough that he actually got out of the cab to check out what the hell was going on.
There was also my last summer there, in 1998, after graduating from college, in my vain attempt at securing employment and actually starting a life out there. I ended up leaving in August, in defeat, in more ways than one. It’s pretty bittersweet. Even now, I don’t like to think about it too hard, because there’s always the possibility of finding myself in yet another downward spiral.
But I remember the endless Starcraft sessions. And riding my bike all over Santa Clara County, from Fremont to San Jose. I mean, it wasn’t an entirely bad time at all, really. Although I doubt I would want to relive those moments again.
But my point was this: I felt like I was wandering around my old neighborhood, nine years after all that shit went down, nine years after my aunt ended up leaving the Bay Area. Even here, there are ghosts. Shadow memories that spring up like boobie traps. The lazy summers of my childhood. The four years I spent at Cal. The moments I managed to steal from my exile in the Midwest, surreptitiously coming out to visit the Bay. Even that month I spent with A+E.
Odd that nearly a decade after the fact, there is still a possibility that I might give it another shot in the Bay.
Even this far out, I have no idea where my fate will lead me.
Or self-fulfilling prophecy, depending on how you look at it, I suppose. It all depends on who exactly reads my blog, I suppose.
Enough of being cryptic.
I think—I think—I’ve snapped out of it.
This episode of insanity reminds me of Frodo Baggins’ fate after he fulfills the task of destroying the One Ring. Every year on the anniversaries of his wounding on Weathertop, and the destruction of the Ring in Mt Doom, he basically loses it. (I found an interesting article that deconstructs why Frodo needed to leave the Shire and go to Aman, analyzing things in terms of PTSD.)
Except there have got to be a few Septembers where I didn’t go nuts. OK, maybe I did my brooding last year in August, and the year before that, I had my episodes while on vacation. Hmm. The year before that I thought I was relatively OK. I mean, I was exhausted and moderately physically ill from my first ward month at the Childrens’ Hospital, but I recovered reasonably well during my vacation. Two years before that, as a third year in med school, I did OK. Sure, it was in the aftermath of another disasterous outcome, but, hey, what are you going to do?
Fine. I guess Septembers are just bad for me. I blame the fact that school starts in autumn. So there.
There’s got to be a way to be able to think about the past and not go mad.
To imagine that one could have done better may be more tolerable than to face the reality of utter helplessness.
1995: Deep wounds. Ugly scars. And then: new, unfounded hopes and unfulfillable wishes. I learn a secret that, in the end, fucks me up bad, but which I am bound by honor to keep. (And would the outcome really have changed if I had betrayed it? Except for the damnation of my soul?)
- TLC “Waterfalls” (A piece of advice that I didn’t follow when it may have helped me)
- 4xample “I’d Rather Be Alone” (The beginning is set in Union Station between Downtown L.A. and Chinatown, across the street from the site of the first settlement.)
- Terry Ellis (of En Vogue) “Where Ever You Are”
- 3T “Anything” (Here is where this blog’s protagonist goes berserk. For the next
three yearstwelve years and counting) - 4PM “Sukiyaki” (Applicable to more than one of my pathetic stories about my life)