It's been a long time since my last post, and in my defense, I have been quite busy. We had our first round of tests, and everything aside from personal hygiene found its way to the back burner. I have so much gratitude for my roommate for doing most of the dishes. I'll try to make it up. Here I am though; it's Sunday night. This weekend has been a well-deserved break, or so I tell myself. I spent most of it doing little of anything productive. I took time out for friendship and some much needed rest. The first round of tests went well, and they're serving as a good confidence-booster going forward. I was happy to see that my study habits paid off, at least so far. The amount of material I feel I've learned already is unbelievable. It is truly like the rather cliche simile I heard: med school is just like putting your mouth up to a fire hydrant and cranking it open. I'm trying to catch as much as I can.
Other than that, I don't have to much to add. I like my classmates more by the day; each person seems to have a very interesting story as to how they came to this profession.
Oh, I suppose there is one more thing. On Tuesday, I'll be dissecting a face. I'm not sure yet how this will go; I find myself fascinated and terrified all at once. I'm sure, though, that it'll probably bring about some discussion of my own mortality.

I was telling Arlo yesterday that for the first time in my life I am really amazed at my own ignorance, and believe me, I understand how terribly arrogant that sounds. Before you pass judgment, dear reader, I hope you consider this: imagine, if you will, that for the last twenty two years you have been inhabiting a vehicle that you thought you understood only to realize, or learn, one day that you know absolutely nothing about it. Such is my realization in anatomy; at least in biochemistry I had a vague idea that there were general biochemical processes going on that allowed for the proper functioning of my body. Anatomy, my anatomy, has proven to be something that has been completely shocking.
Today, we exposed the brachial plexus, a collection of nerve cords just above the axilla (armpit). These nerves, these three small cords, are responsible for much of the sensory innervation of the arm and hand, and yet there they lay, simply under some skin and muscle, fragile, as I've discovered much of the body is.
So much to learn, and right now, each day, though difficult, gets better and better.

I was unsure of what I was going to write today until I was talking to my friends James and Jess. She recently began a nursing position at a hospital, and she told me of her first experience with medical students-scared, uncertain, confused, over-eager...
I know I'm all of those things right now and I'm not even in a clinical setting yet. However, there's nothing I would rather be doing, and even the studying seems like a light burden. I have my stethoscope sitting on my dresser, lying as a constant reminder to, in my rather elitist belief, the profession that I'm pursuing.


On a different note, so far, though it's only a week in, I must say how much I enjoy the company of my classmates. Since our class is so small, I'm excited to get to know all or nearly all of them, and I'm excited to make some deep friendships, for I firmly believe it's going to take these friendships, made in the metaphorical trenches of Lee Med and the wooden booths of Carey's, to get through these next four years.

1 week done, and 2 weeks from tomorrow the first round of testing begins.

While I promised that this blog would only have weekly updates, I found myself strangely inspired, and stranger still, with a fair amount of free time tonight. As I write this, I feel like for the first time since I'm starting medical school I am realizing that this is my life. This is no projection; there are no second chances, and this is certainly no movie. This is me, making the decisions I make, studying what I study, and, in anatomy lab, cutting what I cut. I'm learning more than I can possibly imagine, and the realization hit me during the medical sales pitch today and when I threw my stethoscope around my neck when I got home after Bob's Burgers that in four years when I graduate, I'm going to be a doctor. No longer am I merely preparing for medical school, volunteering because it looks good on my resume or studying to increase my chances of getting in.

I'm in, and now everything is about making me the best doctor I can possibly be.
Wow.

Updates are going to be coming weekly, not daily.
Sorry folks...

And so it came, with all the fear and excitement that I expected- my first day of medical school classes. It started out simply enough; a five minute bike ride took me to the gym, and twenty minutes and two and a half miles later I was back on the bike, ready at least physically for what the day had in store for me.

Biochemistry was simply review today: water reactions and basic amino acid information; however, there is much I need to re-learn, and I'm kicking myself for not keeping my flashcards from Dave's class, though I believe that I took much more.

This afternoon possessed what I've been so concerned with for so long- anatomy lab, and today we began our dissection. I have never done, as I've said before, a cadaver dissection; the last dissection I performed was on a pig in Ms. Jeske's class in seventh grade. Today was completely different. While I was nervous, anticipating my first incision, I breathed deeply, inserted my scalpel, and sliced, and to my surprise, I was still standing at the end of the first cut. For the rest of the lab, nearly two hours, I was rarely without a scalpel, and I only gave it up begrudgingly. Perhaps surgery's the thing for, though it's far too early to tell.

It was fascinating. A complete unraveling, a complete removal of the veil of normalcy that shrouds the inner goings-on of the human experience, an exposure of the human, the all too human, and it was beautiful, in its own way, of course.

Today was my first day of studying, and study I did. For nearly four hours now I have been going over anatomical introductions and textual explanations of the back, focusing primarily on the vertebral column. Fascinating, and even more fascinating, these hours have flown by, excellently, if I might add, soundtracked by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Esperanza Spalding.

Tomorrow classes start; biochemistry begins at 9AM, and so far I do not believe that there is any prep work for that. Anatomy, as I've already described, presents with a present task, for on Monday we begin our cadaver dissections, starting with the back. I haven't dissected anything since a pig in the seventh grade, but I feel excited for this. When we toured the lab last week, we had our first faint, and hopefully all of will make it out this lab only slightly smelly and still on our own two feet.

On a final note, I'm feeling about this building, the Lee Medical Building, the way more religious people feel about churches, temples, or mosques. To me, this is sacred ground, from the tiled floors covered in double helices to unbelievably large ceiling window, something beautifully holy and pure is happening within these walls.

Orientation’s in two days now; every day seems a little stranger and stranger. Each morning that I wake up, today being no exception, I get this feeling that these days I’ve been spending here in Vermillion, acclimatizing myself to the more southern part of this fine state, are nothing but a delay, a postponement of that great challenge that lurks right behind those white coats presented on Friday.

I could not, however, be more excited. My textbooks have been sitting on my shelf, calling to me, beckoning me even to start on this path, to open both the books and soon the human being, in an unbelievably intimate and, if Kundera’s to be believed, blasphemous manner (late in The Unbearable Lightness of Being Tomas reflects upon his career as a surgeon, including the first time he ever performed surgery. What he saw, he claims, upon that first incision of the scalpel was greatest blasphemy- to see something that was never to be seen).

That being said, being in Vermillion has so far been quite enjoyable. It has a charm to it, the way most small towns do, that feels warm and welcoming, with bartenders who listen to the Hold Steady and have Velvet Underground/Andy Warhol tattoos to the motley bunch one can meet merely based upon a misidentification.

Transitions

This is the last time I'll sit in this house in Sioux Falls as an actual resident, and I marked the occasion by cleaning out cabinets in my dresser and my desk, finding a collection of old letters, letters that remind me of how I became who I am today, and while I kept many, there were some that clearly had to be sacrificed to new beginnings. Old love letters, surprisingly, do not keep well, nor do they get better with age. So it was with an unexpectedly large glass of whiskey that I re-read letters that had remained hidden for a great amount of time before tearing them and throwing them in the trash. It's funny, in a way, how those letters expose a completely different self than the one I feel I am now.

I'll never forget the past, and I'll certainly never forget those women, but some things need to pass on.

And... I'm back.

Surprisingly, this new Dawes album, which I highly recommend, plays at 45 rpm instead of the typical 33 1/3, but it sounds great nonetheless. So it's a Friday night, and my Friday nights are much different now than they were not even a month ago, and the change is... well, I'm not sure. Certainly I find it duller, but my body feels infinitely better on Saturday mornings.

I was thinking about the name of this blog, More News from Nowhere, which I stole completely from a song by Nick Cave, and I'm thinking that this could be in no way a more apt title; this truly seems like nowhere, suburban sprawl and pavement parks.

Anyway, the real reason I've decided to start writing again is because I thought it could be interesting to chronicle my time as medical school begins this fall, to give, in the weakest sense possible, a kind of first hand experience, a view behind the scenes, perhaps, of a doctor-in-training. Right now, though, just like the Colin Hay song, I'm waiting for my real life to begin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4tcRlHY-3Q). I read and occasionally I write, but mostly I try to fight off the boredom, the ennui to use a fun French word.

To close for a night, a poem first read to me by a friend and then recited in Hannah and Her Sisters:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near  your slightest look will easily unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose  or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing  (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

It was one aesthetic experience after another tonight. The afternoon started with an old Ingmar Birgman film, Wild Strawberries. The film tells the tale of a doctor who, on his way to receive an honorary degree, reflects on his life and his loves. Later, though, the visual appeal continued as I watched Zulu, a delightful piece of imperialistic cinema championing the British colonialism throughout South Africa. After a tough battle, eventually, and historically inaccurately, the Zulu warriors cheer on teh conquering British troops as they slowly move north throughout the continent. Finally, though, the greatest experience of the day was also the simplest. I left the upper campus apartments, and there, silhouetted by the few street lights present along the Collegeville roads were some of the most beautiful snowflakes I've ever seen. They wrapped the brick buildings of old Saint John's in a winter shadow. What a night.

Fwump. Fwump, fwump, fwump, fwump. The sound of the resilient winter runners shoes plodding on the packed snow provided a nice soundtrack for this afternoon's surprisingly lonely walk home from the gym. Just over the rhythmic steps I could hear the sounds of Colin Meloy's vocals, yearning in desperation, crooning over fiddle and steel peddle in the closing bits of The King is Dead, the new album from the Decemberists.

The days are long now, and much is being packed into them. I never realized that I had time to actually do all that I am doing now until I become conscious of how I spent my time, reducing the bad television, with the obvious exception of the O.C., and the colossal and cataclysmic productivity pestilence, Facebook. One quick look at the home page, the statuses of certain friends, and maybe the occasional link- that's enough.

But with a belly full of Gary's, a body well-worked through back extensions and bicep curls and ab rippers, that too-common, human, all-to-human tired begins to descend, lowering eye lids, slowing fingers, stopping...

Some of the stories I tell on this blog are true, but most involve some embellishment, added if only for the sake of the story. Most of the posts, though, are hardly stories at all; rather, they’re just the rants and ravings of one young, upper-middle class, white, Midwestern Liberal (cover that with mayonnaise and I’m pretty sure you’re well on your way to some sort of Minnesotan hotdish).

This one, this story, as abbreviated and anticlimactic as it is, is completely true. I’ve been thinking a lot lately as I grow my beard of contentment and supposed wisdom about my life, which of course has led me not slowly to the women who have been present, and my thoughts turn to her. She, who will remain in the third person for anonymity’s sake, was, wait, is something special, and, as much as I fear to say it, she’ll always be my big question, my what if, my “the-one-that-got-away.”

The first time we met, I was instantly enamored, reeling from a terrible breakup which exploded worse than any college sophomore could possibly imagine, but still enamored. She strutted stunningly into that Perkins like something out of a Springsteen song. Lighting and waving a cigarette, we talked music, she pushed her bangs out of her face, her glasses up higher on her head. Unfortunately, the present company included one of the most negative, overly pretentious people I’ve ever met, but alas, I wasn’t there for her. I was there for Her. So we sat, at eleven at night, sipping the endless coffee provided by the spiked-hair waiter, eagerly demanding our departure and his measly tip. We left, and that was the last I thought I’d see of her.

While I said this story is anticlimactic, it can’t be that bad. It wasn’t the last time we were to meet. In the months that followed, we met here and there throughout the coffee shops of Sioux Falls, talking Finn and Faith, literature and love. Everything. I was flattened by her, this girl who moved from her home to be with her friend, who had experienced spirituality in ways I skeptically had laughed off. We went to the worst movie I have ever seen, but on my way there I bought her Nutty Bars, which she had off-handedly disclosed as being her favorite snack when she was a young, albeit slightly cultish-another story-girl.

Then my chance came. They, She and the pretentious prioress, were going to Chicago, and at the last minute, an extra ticket, i.e. fate!, came beckoning. The cost of gas, split amongst the three of us, would easily be doable, but…

I didn’t. I punted. I chickened out. I climbed down the ladder of life’s great high dive, hiding my head in shameful late night phone calls and one, two, too many with a few friends celebrating the culmination of my summer’s worth of work.

And still, now, this very night, I play Van Morrison and think of her gypsy soul.

What if…

What Remains

Creation is truly the most amazing human act, whether it be the creation of an artwork, a building or a human life, something is brought forth (notice the Heidegger, my philosophical fellows) from nothing into Being. And shockingly, what's brought forth from nothingness lasts. The lamp on my desk has been present for years, and the desk for years more. The music I'm listening to, Bruce Springsteen's The Wild, The Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle, was made in the seventies, first produced by pressing small canyons into a round piece of vinyl, which can still be found, but even the music- the lyrics, the keys, the guitar parts, and the occasional sax solo by the big man- was made to last, not to simply fade away. The other day I was thinking about what's present in our lives as far as creation, and things that are brought forth, that are created, just seem to truly lack any sort of staying power, any sort of presence. We will not-dear god I hope-remember "We R Who We R" years from now (aside-don't watch the video; you will want to murder Ke$ha, and that is $till puni$hable by law, even now). We won't remember most of the movies that are made, the art we see, the buildings we enter. In part, this is of course due simply to human faculties; we are fascinated by the novel, moving immediately from one to the next the newest, but even more than that, we don't create things that last any more, aside from a few things regarded as modern instant classics, e.g. American Beauty, Rushmore, Do the Right Thing, and it has to be more than we simply desire novelty. Nothing is made to be long-lasting anymore. Creation is meant to be created, consumed, and disregarded, be it artistic or useful. One used to be able to buy an appliance and could expect it to last for years, but now, not even a car can be expected to get more than a hundred thousand miles. All this leaves me with this question: when people look at our times, the 90's, 00's, 10's etc., what's going to be remembered, what stands out as the highlights of this decade?

Some of my favorite bands glamorize and glorify, but certainly don't gloss over, the pains and joys of street life, e.g. Gaslight Anthem, the Hold Steady, Bruce Springsteen (see especially The Wild, the Innocent, & the E-Street Shuffle and Born to Run). The thing is, all of these great stories, all of these legends of street-lit and bar-lit lanes, they don't happen anymore, and we've killed them. We've killed them with parents who lived them, desperate to protect their kids from the same things the did and experienced; we've killed them with cell phones, with texting, with Twitter and Facebook. If ever there was anything that could kill the romance (not the he-likes-her-she-likes-him-happily-ever-after romance, just the love and beauty that this life has to offer) we've certainly found it, championed it, lionized it. We don't talk in person; we call. We don't call; we text. We don't use words, for why words when "ttyl" and the equally horrendous typos will do? But here's the problem- life used to be an adventure, a dangerous one yes, but a beautiful one full of possibility, and as much as we like to say that all of these forms of messaging bring us closer together, they really drive us farther apart. People text across rooms, and true meaning is lost without the context given by body language, by eye conduct, by that real wink, that real nudge. It's getting harder and harder to start stories with, "There was this girl, obscured just a bit by the dim barlight and last remnants of the cigarette smoke looking at me across the bar, and in that look, all that she could possibly say to me that night was already said. Blue eyes. Damn."

For the first time in my life I had, today, the pleasure of listening to A Prairie Home Companion, which, as a fun fact I believe to be correct, began in some sense at Saint John's. So there St. Thomas; we have Keillor. Win. Fecund facts aside, he was telling this story about these two women who were traveling, and at least one-I came into the story half-way through- was a minister, and she, well he, said something that resonated completely, just a simple, throw-away phrase that not only landed on this witless writer but also, shockingly, stuck. She said, "Too much piety and too little faith," and I think this is, for me, one of the biggest stumbling blocks I have as I continue on my spiritual journey. Everywhere around me, I see the rituals upheld, the rosaries prayed, the masses attended, the communion taken, but I don't feel the faith. I feel respect and that all-important "fear of the Lord," but faith... it seems to be lacking.

Not, of course, that I know what faith is, or that I am in the least bit capable of speaking on what faith is, so while I try to figure it out, I'm keeping two things in mind, one said by Abraham Lincoln and one by Kurt Vonnegut. First, the Emancipator, "When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion;" then, the writer, "There's only one rule I know of babies, goddamnit you have to be kind."

Today's post isn't well thought out, and in fact it's barely coherent; rather, it's just a string of thoughts strung by one simple string, namely, why is it that the people on television are so terrible? While having the delightful displeasure of watching Regis and Kelly, I saw that their guests were the Jersey Shore guys, and I thought, besides the situation's entirely too hilarious commercial with Bristol Palin about abstinence, what have these boys, these developmentally arrested, shockingly financially sound adolescents contributed to society? Please, the fist pump was already there. How quick we are, though, we turn objects of our disgust, of spectacle, into heroes and heroines; Snooki is becoming a best-selling author while we prepare to have a new version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published without one mention of the n-word; how's that for a white wash? An incoherent rant, I know, but my daily frustrations needed to be vented to an audience obviously waiting with bated breath.

The glass sits, half way full with something that looks like the Guinness advertised. Shockingly and sacrireligiously, what remains in the glass, shrunken foamy head and all, is the delightful New Belgium Brew 1554, and as always, each sip satisfies every single part of my palate. I hold the glass in my hand and examine this joyous substance inside, watching the bubbles of carbonation work their way up the sides of the glass before resting on the top layer of beer, glazed with an opaque foam. All this description aside, I've been reading too much Joyce, and I thought about trying a stream of consciousness bit, so...

Blue walls, painted years back over a hot summer of summer love with a young woman hours away, four hours to be exact, four hour, why don't they rhyme, why the difference in the -our sound? There's a stain of blue paint on the white carpet from rushed work, and every time I see it, I think about that week preparing for that Friday, for that Saturday, for that Sunday. One long weekend date. Mmmm.... Nina Simone. Her sweet songs make me think of cooking for some reason, of cooking for someone I care about, who I can see an outline of, though her face remains blurry. There she is, though, sitting at the table, candles lit all around, and her hair barely and brunette-ly covering the blur that remains in her face. Sorry blondes, but every man has his type, especially this everyman. And now Erykah Badu, and I'm unfortunately taken back to SATC 2, never was a more profound piece of shit made into film. The director should be ashamed. So ashamed. Shame. Guilt. Irish Catholic guilt. Plenty of that, always there. Even for doing things that are morally neutral at worst. Funny how that works. We are, I suppose, creatures of habit, but habits can be broken, just like this biting finger nails business. With that, a new habit forms, writing daily, with my newly grown long fingernails brushing keys inappropriately and mistakenly.

At the end of Manhattan, Woody Allen's self-projection Isaac gives a list of things that make life worth it, and he includes Groucho Marx, George Gershwin...and Tracy's face (Tracy being, of course and ironically enough, his underage girlfriend). As most things do, this got me thinking, thinking about what makes life worth living on the 4th of January 2011, and here's what I've got:

Friends, first and foremost.

• Coltrane's Sax solos
• Nina Simone's vocals
• Rock n' roll, real, true rock n' roll with all of its fire, all of its passion, and nothing related remotely to Nickleback.
• James Joyce
• Woody Allen Movies
• The occasional, ridiculously gory zombie flick
• Kurt Vonnegut
• And finally, and of course most importantly, an odd, deep-seated, unshakeable hope that no matter how bad things are, or how bad they are going to get under this 112th Congress, one day, one day, the wrongs will be righted, the lowly lifted up, and justice, to poorly paraphrase Martin, shall pour forth and flow over the land

Buenas Noches, all.

Today I joined the resolution reserves, those people who wait every year for that next minute to roll over on the clock demanding that this time, that this year, they will finally get in shape, and in spite of my cynicism, there I was, sacrificing sweat and the finest of fat to the almighty gods of the Sioux Valley Wellness center in their surprisingly mechanistic incarnations. The stationary bikes pedals, getting tougher by the minute to, well, pedal, seemed to be a task worthy of some tragic Greek, and with each tenth of a mile added, the stone seemed to roll down the hill once more. Sitting there, and listening to the Black Keys, for my hopes of listening to a TED.com lecture were quickly lost with absentee signals, I watched as the vanguard raced around the track, their breathing controlled to a steady, “in, out, in, out, in, out.” There was a girl next to me learning, from those most excellent of sages, how to please her man (god forbid a woman’s magazine would consider her pleasure). After I paid my two pounds of flesh, I found my way, with the other retired regiment, to the sauna, where a nice steam purified a well-tainted young man.

Aside- Ab Ripper X, with two beers in one’s stomach, is one of the worst tortures any masochist can inflict upon him/herself.