mahiwaga

I remember white outlines on a black background, kind of like a blueprint being drawn before my eyes. I don’t know. Like a concept diagram. There was a road, or a railway. I know: as if reality were being generated as I cast my eyes upon it. More concretely, like a primitive 3D shooter (like Doom, or Counterstrike) whose graphics engine relied only on vector tracings, and which could not keep up with realtime. I suppose, if I really knew what I was doing, I would try to approximate it with a Flash animation, but such as it is.

I also remember the Black Iron Prison. I have seen its shape and outline. To know that my spirit can roam outside its walls only while I dream was heartbreaking. To know that it is my inability to trust another person that is holding me down is absolutely dispiriting.

Maybe I could also see the San Gabriel Mountains (the mountains behind Downtown L.A. that are sometimes snowcapped during the winter) Which also reminded me of the picturebook that comes with certain versions of Kid A by Radiohead.

I also thought of myself wandering around in the dark, shooting up flares every minute or so, and in that brief space of time I could see the entire outline of my life, everything was so glaringly, almost blindingly illuminated. And then it would flicker out, and I would have to shoot up another flare. And I despaired of the time when I would finally run out of flares and have to wander around in complete utter darkness.

Finally, I thought of the Man with the Unhealing Wound finally succumbing and dying in the forest, up against a stone, unmourned, and completely forsaken. In a couple of days, the squirrels started gnawing on his frozen corpse. No one cared.

There is this certainty that I am doomed, that, all-in-all, this year was an utter fantastic waste, and yes, it’s never enough, no matter all the small victories I achieved, the massive defeats are all that I will remember.

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

—from “A Long December” by Counting Crows

I really have to stop hoping for things that will never happen.

Random fact to note: I have not slept in my own bed in a good 58 hours and counting. And in that time, I have been drunk, hung-over, and now delirious from being post-call.

I have at last tasted absinthe. No, I did not have any new visions. (Instead, I had a bunch of old visions rahashed. It was good.

I have seen that it is possible to survive the madness of residency without selling your soul. I have at last found my compatriots, and perhaps the compass is now pointing in a particular direction.

Let me say this: no matter how sweet she is, and no matter how virtuous, no matter how much she might care about you, a woman can always break your heart.

I no longer dare to try.

Notice that this is not going in any particular order.

But, yeah, last night, I essentially hung around some happy, fulfilled attending physicians who are having the time of their lives, and like they said, to see them gives me great hope. In the very least, I’ll be able to find something I like doing.

But, yeah, this post is pretty worthless. There is no rhyme or reason. My course is set, my doom is wrought.