Moved!

Thanks to some much-needed help from my dad, sister, and brother-in-law, I finally got all my stuff moved and situated in the new apartment. The furniture my dad brought up for me looks great. Expect a mass e-mail from me sometime soon with my new address. My phone number hasn't changed. SBC isn't transferring my phone and DSL service until tomorrow, even though I requested on Thursday. I don't know why it should take so long just to type some stuff into a computer. I also don't know why it costs $45 in "transfer fees." It's not like they're making a service call or anything. Oh well. I'm getting about $70 prorated back to me from UAMS parking for my dorm lot permit, so the silly fee is covered.
I'd better go call my preceptor for Introduction to Clinical Medicine, as he's supposed to set up a patient at the VA hospital for me to harass, i.e., do a history and physical on, this afternoon. After that, SPRING BREAK! TTFN.

cadaver memorial, new apartment, J.M. Coetzee

We had the "Ceremony of Reflection and Gratitude" today to honor the folks who donated their bodies for our gross anatomy course. It was nice. A local preacher gave a 10-minute, rather incomprehensible sermon, some people from our class spoke about their experience, and an alumnus who's now a radiologist read a pretty good poem she wrote when she was in gross anatomy. I'd like to do a nation-wide survey and find out just how many first-year med students find closure by writing poems about gross.
After that, I went to sign my lease and move some stuff into my new apartment. It's TINY (just under 300 sq. ft. total) but pretty nice. The building's secure, there's a nice patio and pool area, and I have what looks like new carpet and a really good refrigerator and range. I think I'll like it there, if I can fit all my stuff in.
I just finished Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. It was excellent, but I'm still trying to figure out if the main character ever really got anywhere. The book certainly lives up to its name, as the lives of the major characters seem increasingly to be exercises in humility. Belonging to a faith that values humility as a virtue, that aspect of it very much appealed to me. Also appealing is the effortless way in which Coetzee weaves his motifs and symbolism with his story. Nothing seems forced or pretentious. I guess that's why it won a Booker award and the 2003 Nobel prize for literature. I think I'll finish American Gods next, so I can make Carl happy with two books in a row. Then he'll just have to read one of the dozen or so books I've lent him. :p

Time

I'm feeling kind of strange about time right now. In one sense, I want the time between now and Friday afternoon to stretch to become what I need to pack up all my stuff, clean my apartment, and study enough not to fail my neuroscience test. But I also want the time to shrink to nothing so I can get to nesting in my new apartment and enjoying spring break. And I'm having loads of trouble using my time wisely. Even when I sit down with a book and my trusty highlighters, my mind wanders away for the next 2 hours until I suddenly realize that the page hasn't turned and there's purple ink all over my hand. Why does my brain work in spurts like this? I can work hard and do stuff right for maybe a week or two, but then I can't motivate myself or think straight for a month. I don't understand.
I do the exact same thing with schoolwork, fitness, cleaning, prayer, everything. I'll be going just fine, feeling okay about everything, doing what I'm supposed to do, then suddenly the routine will go off-balance. When that happens, I'm all overcome with guilt and laziness and I can't bring myself to try to re-balance it until a long enough period of time has passed to subconsciously warrant some kind of "new beginning." I know that this isn't a healthy way to do things, but I have no idea how to change it.

webpage part 2

Okay, so my new website is up and running: www.geocities.com/brighid_karis_gamgee
I used Yahoo! PageBuilder to make it, which is a great program if you don't want to mess around with too much HTML. I was able to throw together the whole thing in about 2 hours. Look at the site, sign the guestbook, tell me what you think about it.

Old poem, new title

"For my Nephews on a July Morning"

The angel and the imp,
You danced inexplicably
In a foot and a half of water
Not nearly so blue
As your matching eyes.
You shouted nonsense phrases
In tandem
And laughed like maniacs,
Tow-headed haloes
Shining in the sun.

Agnostic,
I pretended to laugh with you,
And cried --
For the mortality of gods
And the barter-market of age
And the loss of my own divinity.

Wow, my professors can really waste time.

I had a physiology lab this afternoon on the mechanics of breathing. We got to use respirometers and stuff. Unfortunately, we had no prior knowledge of the lab, so we spent the entire two hours being confused about what exactly we were supposed to be learning. Overall, this is what I learned from the experience:
1. I have a vital lung capacity of only about 3.5 liters.
2. Dr. Soulsby's method of teaching is not suited for a lab setting.
3. Theoretically, I can now recognize the lung sounds of someone with asthma, someone with emphysema, and someone with bronchitis.
4. If I cause your lungs to collapse by puncturing your chest wall, your thorax will expand to about 75% of your vital capacity.
Yup, med school is buckets of fun.

Webpage

I'm trying to decide whether or not to build a proper webpage. I have a geocities address, and I had a website for a couple months in college. I liked building and having one, but I wonder if having a blog kind of makes a website obsolete. Any thoughts, friends?

Gross grade

Missed a B in gross anatomy by a third of a point. Sad. But better than failing. Darn the pelvis and perineum and my completely inability to recognize their structures when they've been hemisected and severed from the rest of the torso! Well, it's time for dinner.

Who the heck comes up with this crap?

On the side of my CEREAL BOX, it says "Where love reigns the impossible may be attained." That doesn't even rhyme, much less make sense. So, if I'm hanging out with Carl I can levitate? Or conjure a billion dollars out of thin air when I'm taking care of my nephews and niece? Maybe thinking of my parents will help me to make an A in neuroscience? I'm particularly appalled that this is written on the side of my friggin' cereal box. What on earth does it have to do with antioxidants, lightly sweetened multi-grain flakes, crunchy oat clusters, and a full day's worth of iron? Maybe they think that if I love this cereal, the impossible will happen and their insipid little axim will cease to be BS.

Why driving late at night is a bad idea

It kind of requires you to drink a lot of caffeine, as in two cups of coffee and one of those big cans of SoBe's version of Red Bull. This doesn't prevent you from becoming sleepy but rather transforms that sleepiness into a zombified depression, wherein you can neither sleep nor smile. You are forced to sit at your computer and type ramblings on a blog, as though someone out there actually wanted to read them.
(Take the right fork)
I notice that blogspot's navigation page is called the dashboard. And blogs are kind of like online confessions. Does that make this my dashboard confessional? I sure hope not. That guy whines even more than I do. And like a junior high boy.
(Turn left)
On the dresser in my mother's walk-in closet in Fort Smith lies my Shell credit card and the key card necessary to get into my building after 5 pm. That was awful dumb of me.
(Exit 19 looks good)
Tom Waits really kicks ass. And my sweetheart kicks ass for introducing me to Tom Waits' music. I really wish that Howlin' Wolf were still alive. It would be the most amazing thing for him and Waits to do a duet.
(What the hell. Pull off the road and take a nap.)
Yeah, it's time to try sleep again. Read the poem I posted earlier. I swear I wrote it as sincerely as I've ever done anything, but boy howdy does it sound pretentiously crappy. I might delete these posts in the morning, but I'm gonna leave 'em tonight. (If you caught that reference, switch all your presets to NPR.)

last year's attempt at blank verse with a central metaphor

See how well it worked out. :p I publish this only to amuse my two readers. If only I had the gift of metaphysical poetry! If only metaphysical poetry didn't go out of fashion in the 17th century. Sad, sad.

"Burn-out"

The sparks drift up into the smoke-skinned air
And seem like stars before they flicker out
Just bits of wood and ash, a moment's blaze,
Their fuel is spent before they've left the flame.
Is that my fate, floating in a grey
Of lightless souls and waiting death,
To be used up in bright, impassioned faith?
If righteous heat consumes my restless flesh,
I am afraid no spirit will survive,
Fly up and greet the Lender of its light
With offerings of lasting fire, and that the blaze
Is all and end of all, the brief and failed
Attempt of wood and ash to blend with stars

A couple poems

The second one especially still needs work as it's only a second draft.

"September Walkabout"

This twilight afternoon
Purples my fingertips as water drips
From a no-color sky
To slowly soak my shoulders

This sprinkling baptism
Makes a sacrilege of my black umbrella
As I greet with upturned face
The cold-lipped kiss of autumn

"Easter"

Still
As still as this wet April sunrise
Quiet and still
As none of us had ever been
in the shiny mausoleum
The metallic clang and thud of the table being opened,
the whine and slap as she pulls on the tight latex gloves,
Echo
like a lightbulb bursting in an empty theater.
But her face is still.
She folds back the plastic,
and a few patters of condensation drip to the cement.
She takes time to contemplate their journey
into the floor drain.
The smell is bad now.
The white cotton has turned green from the mold
despite three months of fighting.
But her face is still
as she removes the sheet
and exposes the corpse of a man,
a stranger they called Henry.
Dissected --
cut and torn and sawed
into manageable pieces for better viewing,
better learning,
soon it would be dust.
And a young woman is still
Finally still
Before the split face of her teacher,
before the sacrilege and the mystery,
In this last Lenten meditation,
saying
Farewell to the flesh.

Um, okay

All I wanted to do was post a comment to Dr Dung's blog. Now, I have a blog. Great. All I needed was another thing to feel guilty about not keeping up with. Stupid blogs.