Someday, I hope to have a place with a bookcase like this:
However, I’d be fine if I had these cool suspended bookcases like this:
Or, much more reasonably and realistically, there’s this lovely, cozy little space:
The thing I love about books has nothing to do with nostalgia, but the fact that, when I have a book, I can’t do anything with it other than read. I have this computer here, and I can do any number of things — email, calendar, weather, Wikipedia, and on and on. And on. I should define the context switch — that’s what happens when you’re reading a book, get tripped up by a word, look it up in a dictionary, then return to your original book. The fact that you have to actually put down one book, pick up another, and look for a word focuses your attention and keeps you doing one task. For the entire duration of that physical action, the picking up and setting down, your brain is going dirigible… dirigible… d-i-r-i… have I seen that somewhere before? However, when you have a computer, you just twitch on the alt-tab keyboard shortcut, and suddenly you see your Twitter stream, rather than your thesis. While your computer is pulling up the entry for dirigible, you’re checking the weather forecast for tomorrow.
So, with this awesome, powerful machine, you can keep a bunch of balls up in the air. Your brain becomes accustomed to focusing on tiny bits for short bursts of time, rather than focusing on big chunks for long stretches of time. When I read a long article on a computer, I switch out of it more than I would like, distracting my mind with other (useless, pointless) things.
But when you pick up a book, you’ve just got the book. I find that my mind calms down, knowing there’s nothing else going on — it’s not like my friend posted the funniest picture I’ve ever seen, and I can see it by going 42 pages back from my current page. People are curious… they’ve GOT to see if someone posted that picture. What if, in the past 5 minutes, someone posted something even funnier? And you’re on the road to addiction. But, not so with your book. It’s just the book. This is incredibly calming to my brain. In fact, I remember things more when I read them in a book or magazine. By contrast, on the computer, I have to switch to another program and make notes, just so I remember what I’m supposed to remember.
It is with a sense of numb relief that I mark the completion of dental school in this space. My final check-out meeting was this morning, graduation is this Friday. I started four years ago, on a hot August day. I lived elsewhere then. Mykala and I weren’t married. I had no idea what I was in for. It’s no understatement to say I was a different person.
My emotional bank account has been enriched. My intellectual, interpersonal, experiential accounts, too. Our fiscal bank account has experienced a stunning downward trajectory below zero, a trend which will likely prove the most dramatic of our lifetimes. Neither of us question the value of the investment.
Lately, I’ve begun composing these journal entries as though they were letters to my children — this imagining shapes my topics but not my prose. I’ll make an exception to that, and address our future children now.
Kids, you never knew me before I had this degree. I didn’t know me very well, either. So, I learned it’s not true when someone says that “it wasn’t meant to be.” I could’ve taken a handful of times in school to mean that “this wasn’t meant to be.” I could’ve stopped, left, quit, given up, thrown in the towel and convinced myself that forces outside my control conspired against me to prevent me from reaching my goal. However, I learned a really REALLY important thing. That really important thing is this: sometimes, you only have control over your own effort, so you need to calibrate your self perception; at the end of the challenge, if you can honestly say to yourself “I did everything I could to make this happen,” then you’ve nothing to worry about. Don’t take that “everything” lightly — the entire statement descends into horrid platitude without that word. You’ll astound yourself at what “giving everything I can” can mean. “Wait, all I’ve got is this, and yet I can do all that?” Yes, you can. We set up blocks and boundaries and limits at what’s uncomfortable, but the true limits lie way, waaay out there.
You decide what’s meant to be in your life, and you make that happen. These things don’t happen by fighting against all that surrounds you, but recognizing the little switches you can flip, knowing when it’s exactly the right moment to throw all your weight against the door blocking you and your dream. You can’t move the ocean, but you can surf the breakers back to the shore.
Inspired by our uneaten bunch of bananas, which must be eaten quickly while ripe, I’m proud to announce my invention: Banana Days. Right now, it’s “Banana Days 2012”, which will last until May 4th. I’ve decided Banana Days will be annual, beginning on the first of May, ending the first Friday after. Some years, Banana Days will be poorly named, and will only be one day in length. Festive activities will be banana-based.
Recently, I realized that the problem with Facebook is that you can’t actually discuss the problems with Facebook on Facebook. By “can’t”, I mean the discourse has dropped to the lowest common denominator (Cf. “eternal September”). So, in a place where everyone is showing selected pieces of their lives to give an aura of grandeur, carefree frivolity, success, beauty, ease… there’s no time for subtlety, considered introspection, gentle humor. The problem, set in terms of one of my typically strained metaphors: if you’re staring at neon signs all day and then someone shows you a watercolor, it’s going to be boring.
The sun set a while ago and I’m sitting in the living room with the warm lights and furnace keeping away the unseasonably cool night. “Tied to Me (Acoustic)” by the magnificent William Fitzsimmons is quietly playing on the stereo. The couch is snugly in its new corner in the living room (we recently re-arranged furniture). Rain is gently falling outside, making tiny sounds on the windows. And, I know, this is sounding like a bad beginning to a dull book. But, literally, that’s what is happening right now. Forgive me the pedestrian topic and stunted prose: there’s poetry in everyday life, but I am still trying to capture that in writing.
I’m waiting for my lovely wife to come home from work. I talk with her and learn from her everyday, and she is the best luck I’ve ever had at anything, ever. As I’ve been saying recently, if happenstance is never on my side again, I’ll know it is because I used up all the luck in my life when I met my wife.
Mykala’s upcoming job transition and my student loans are both taking up our thoughts. Where will I work? Where will we live? I’d like to remain here in the city, enjoying a few years of youth, culture, and the simple life of a married couple.
For the past four years, things (WOW there’s a world outside of dental school!) have been continuing around me and I haven’t had the energy or presence of mind to engage them. I’ve kept in touch with some of my friends, and I really love talking to them and planning things to do. However, I’m hesitant to contact some I’ve fallen out of touch with. Are they interested in being friends anymore? Did they consider picking up the phone and then thought… “Nah; no thanks. I’m all set.” How do you even go about figuring that out? Is this why most friendships have an expiration date?
I’m really happy to have stayed in touch with those I have, but I just don’t know how to call someone and get this point across:
“So, yeah, sorry about the last 48 months… I’ve been really busy. What’s new? Do you still live in the state? What life-changing experiences have you had that I’ve completed missed that might make us incompatible now?”
What I’d be saying is this: “I’ve been too busy… for you.” Doesn’t seem like a good start.
I recently poured up a tooth positioner of my teeth from 13 years ago. There’s tooth 6 with a sharp, new, unworn incisal edge. As I looked at the time capsule stone model, I ran my tongue over the real thing, tracing the now-rough, worn edge of that same tooth. My bite used to be better. My teeth used to be less worn. It’s hard for me to accept that things change. Teeth. Friends. Jobs. Homes.
So it turns out I’m absolutely atrociously bad at writing Facebook status updates. My writing tends to be long-form, verbose, scientific… delving deeply into topics like dental materials. Fascinating to me, boOOoring to others.
I’ll come up with this idea for a status update. For example, on the forthcoming 100th anniversary of one of the greatest maritime disasters of the 20th century: “The fourth smokestack on the Titanic wasn’t for smoke. It was for ventilation and esthetics.” I think that’s such a cool piece of trivia, because there are pictures where you can clearly see someone looking out of what is ostensibly a smokestack. So yes, that’s the type of status update I’d be writing. Not… good. Few share the same curiosity about the way things work, and even fewer will want such trivia dropped into their “stream” of updates from their friends. I guess it makes things seem like work to them.
Anyhow, the typical status update would be more like this: “Guys, the Titanic was real! #mindblown”. I could keep practicing, but I don’t know if I want to get better at that type of thing.
I bought Mykala tickets to William Fitzsimmons on her birthday in January, and we finally got to see his show the other week. It was probably the best concert to which I’ve ever been. When the opener got up and just played a song on his acoustic guitar, sans-mic or pickup, I realized the earplugs I brought might be overkill (for once). I hate the cotton-eared feeling you get when you’ve been listening to loud music for too long. I’m also not a huge fan of hiding the (still embarrassing) fact that I’m wearing earplugs in a venue whose sole purpose is, ostensibly, to facilitate listening.
So, then William Fitzsimmons takes the stage. And, I think, Mykala and I expected him to have the more delicate voice that is his singing voice. It’s sad, beautiful music and he sings it with a voice that matches. By contrast, his onstage personality was funny and his voice was deep and commanding. Our audience was, for the most part, extraordinarily well-behaved; it was like listening to great music in your living room. I think the venue where we saw the concert, The Cedar Cultural Center, is a gem of the Twin Cities. The age range of attendees was 17-60 years, and you could tell these people were really here to listen and enjoy capital-m music.
Right now, my favorite song from William Fitzsimmons is Fade and then Return, but I think the best song of that night was Everything Has Changed. Really, shockingly good.
I think I’m holding a vigil tonight. And not in the sense of “I think I plan on it,” but rather I mean “I think this is happening right now.” So, what is the subject or purpose of my vigil? I’m reminiscing about life in school at St. Thomas and the U while looking ahead at my life. This involves a lot of mindless clicking around on Facebook, which I usually try to avoid. I find myself regretting things I both did and did not do in my past, and wondering about the future. I’m listening to Sigur Rós. It’s a quarter after 1 in the morning. Mykala is asleep on the couch.
I don’t know what my life is all about.
I guess, I’d just like to start working. I know I’ve the training on the basics, and the skills to fill in the gaps, but it’s hard not knowing where I will be spending my working days. I just want to contribute some stability to this little family. I want to give Mykala the option to not work and focus on school for a while, if that’s what she chooses. I want to be the provider, someone who can be counted on.
I’m waiting for the right combination: a patient with a sense of humor and a mildly but not-too-difficult extraction, to try out this little gem: “man… this is like pulling teeth.”
Or, it’s possible that I should just keep that one to myself.
