Epiphanies in Isolation

Today I got some of what should have been the best news of my short life. I have been accepted to be a member of a wonderful medical school's class for next fall. When I saw the email however I didn't feel anyone of the things I thought I would. Absent were elation, relief, and pride instead I found myself feeling wholly unmoved. My first reaction was to blame it on the rather uninspiring email that it came in. No school seal or congratulatory special fonts. Just a normal email saying that I had to pay some money to keep my seat. But it quickly became obvious that my stoicism was sourced from something much deeper within me.

My first instinct was to celebrate and share the news with all my friends. Immediately following that instinct came the blunt realization that I had by and large burned all the bridges with anyone with whom I might be able to share this. In the process of arriving at my goal I had lost ties to most of the people whom could have shared in my happiness. I wouldn't get a high five from a best friend. There would be no congratulatory bar rush. No kiss on the cheek and sparkle in the eye of a loved one. There was just me and this banal email. All of a sudden I felt the full distance of the social environment I had created. 

The next problem arose from the reaction of acquaintances and really how I had come to frame the situation myself. "Of course you got in" was a popular phrase. I know this is meant as a compliment but it undermines all my hard work that has gotten me to this point. In some ways this is a bastardization of the fundamental attribution error. People seeing in me some kind of inherent genius or ability that has predestined my success. While flattering it not only diminishes the weight of my efforts but also places unduly high expectations on everything I do. "Of course you got in" echoes in my ears as "when are you going to do something really great?" The more things that become expected of me, the less things I can do to prove myself and less fulfilling everything I do becomes. This problem is more alarming because it is reflected in how I have grown to see things myself.

I know this sounds extremely whinny so let me take a moment to thank and acknowledge the loving support I have received. I got a card and some chocolate from two angels which meant more to me than they could ever know. Despite everything I've down to isolate myself from everyone there are still lose people that dare to reach beyond my walls.

This epiphany has left me with a lot of unanswered questions about my future. I absolutely still want to be a doctor. I want it more than ever. The question now is how I'm going to frame it within all the more important and larger questions that have come to interrupt my singular focus of becoming a doctor. There will no joy in being the world's greatest doctor if I go home to an empty house and am constantly devaluing my own accomplishments because of unreasonably high expectations.

The Recitation

Where do you find angels now-a-days? I know friends and family that have been looking for them for ages and never found them. This weekend however I meet two. God knows I wasn't looking for them.

The first was on Teaneck Road by a closed dairy queen at about 12:45 am. It was raining so hard and I had been walking alone for so long that neither my clothes nor my glasses were serving their purpose. I was drenched and not quite blind. I was also dreadfully cold. The divine meeting happened quickly and without any procession. I saw the angel sitting about the peak of the dairy queen roof. He/she greeted me with a wave and leaped, his/her great wings slowing his/her decent, to the dead leaf strewn side walk in front of me. A tentacle of light emerged from the angel's navel and enraptured my head. I struggled desperately but as soon as I began struggling I realized I was no longer in Teaneck. Well that is not quite true. More correctly to say I was no longer only in Teaneck. I was in three places at once. I was in Teaneck but also in a great desert and a quite isolated Caribbean beach. The bright scorching of the day melted into the raining misery of Teaneck and the tranquil star lite night of the beach. Like three oil painting whose canvases turned to water and began to flow and mingle with one another without losing any distinction, I was seeing all and each. In the desert I saw great migrations of people with their whole lives on their backs pressing west buffeted by sun and sand. In the beach I saw a single woman bathing in the star light. The waves rolling over carelessly, unappreciative of the beauty they held. It lasted perhaps a second, likely less. Then it was over. All that remained was the dairy queen and the dirty wet sidewalk. I was exhausted. I fell over and vomited. With 40 mins of walking behind me alone in the dark and rain and another 40 mins ahead of me I concurred with my body that it was time for a break.

I might the second angel while listening to Dvorak in a middle school concert hall. With two free tickets to the Bergen County Philharmonic and with no one to go with me I sat quietly suspended between a state of complacency and melancholy as they orchestra rounded out the fourth movement of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony. The tarantella rhythms carrying all the weight of their poisonous origins. Then a girl took the stage. Younger than I and still engaged in her education at Julliard she seated herself and her cello at center stage with a gaze of otherworldly focus. It was time for Dvorak's concerto and she was to be the soloist. The first stroke of her bow was deep and resounded in my chest awakening the depths of my soul, unbinding the chains that I'd so meticulously placed. Elation and freedom followed the vibrations of her strings and the caresses of her hands on the cello's neck. Her music was like calligraphy written in the air painting the auditorium with chords of intent and grace. I had no hallucinations or visions or what have you but I was equally as transported as I was the night before. Carried on waves of music to wonders that lasted only moments at a time. The music of the spheres was opening around us.

It was a good weekend for Angels, but I do enjoy the company of some much more than others.

The State in Which I Live

You may remember that I have taken up residence in a small home in the town of Teaneck. It is next to a middle school and a turtle conservatory of which I have grown overly found. The town is peaceful and the nights are quiet. This subdued atmosphere however does not carry into the home in which I am resident.

I now like with three other people. Without exception they are all mad. Let us begin with the most humorous of the trio.

“They call me ‘The Rat’” were his first words to me. The fat, heavily bearded, sharp toothed, Saudi Arabian man that was sitting in my living room thought not to give me his name or extend his hand in greeting; rather he offered a decidedly unflattering nickname and an unbalanced smile while he continued to scratch his balls. This could have been our only interaction I would have known enough about the man. My expression of surprise must not have been well hid for he went on to explain the origin of this title. “You see, in college, in the dorm, I would become very hungry, and at night I would awaken and scrounge about for food, collecting in my bed and eating for sometime before falling back asleep…like a rat!” The Rat looked at me expectantly, perhaps waiting for a laugh, I let my cocked eyebrows relax and said “So it is, it’s nice to meet The Rat” and turned upstairs to lock up all my food.

The first few nights living with the rat were unremarkable but then the nightly grumblings began. I would just finishing my reading and having had a long day of work and class was half between dreams and wakefulness when I would hear a long sigh erupt from The Rat’s room, or hole as he might have called it. There would follow a period of between 40 and 50 minutes of his stomping around, moving boxes and furniture, with a desperation that was reminiscent of a beast in its final moments. The door you fling open and The Rat would go vaulting down the steps, the sighing becoming more of moan. The lights crept in under my door and the shadows of his movements danced on my walls. I heard the refrigerator door thrown open and its contents assaulted. This would go one for a period of minutes and then quietly all the passion gone The Rat would stumble back up the stair and into his room. When the dawn came the only evidence of the raid that had occurred were a misplaced bag of cheetos forgotten on the stairs.

The resident in absencia is apparently named Brian. Although only having meet him twice in the 6 months we have both been living there I really have no proof of that. Brian lives in the basement and apparently designs suitcases. One might consider Brian to be in these matters a relatively normal renter; however, Brian is also subject to some rather strange circumstance. To start, Brian is married. He has a wife and she lives just down the street. She lives alone in a big house. Why does Brian not live with his wife? No one knows. Brian also takes phone calls in the middle of the night beneath my window in which he discusses rather interesting things; the “moving” of things, the “purity”, and the “price” of these things without ever naming the things. Brian also never comes upstairs or is in the kitchen despite not having any access to a fridge or a stove in his basement. In fact Brian is never anywhere but under my window smoking a “cigarette” or in the basement. In fact The Rat has never even seen Brian. It is very possible Brian may not even be real.

Finally we arrive at the master of this house, Olga. One day upon returning home from week I realized that my room was absolutely frigid. I saw that the heat was turned off. I assumed I must have mistakenly left it off and fixed it and went on with my day. This would have been unremarkable except this happened everyday for the next week. Now, some nights I come home pretty late because of my class schedule and it is difficult to sleep in a glorified ice box so I thought I must get to the bottom of this. The next day that I left I placed a small rubber ball just behind my closed door so that if it were to be opened it would be struck and sent to the other side of the room. Sure enough upon returning home I saw the ball underneath my desk nowhere near where I had left it and the heat turned all the way off. It was clear from this that Olga (The Rat had not moved in yet and Brian leaves and arrives earlier and later than I do) was sneaking into my room every day after I had left and was turning off my heat. This is in and of itself is not a terrible thing. It is an invasion of my privacy and it is rather annoying but Olga was also charging me $50 extra dollars for heat during the winter. Heat that I was never getting to enjoy! What a scam she was running! Ah but I out smarted her. For the Rat’s room was still vacant. So every day before I left I would go across the hall and turn the heat all the way up and leave both doors wide open. Thereby I would suck all the out of the Rat’s future room and find myself nice a cozy despite the treachery of Olga. 

Impermanence

The impermanence of everything has been coming through pretty clearly lately. The summation of all your efforts can vanish in the blink an eye. Does that devalue what you had done? Not if you have grown through doing those things. The impact the experience has had on you cannot be taken away.

My car was totaled last week. Some maniac was driving so fast on my street (which is basically an alley that has a school crossing zone on it) that he hit my car and pushed it through a snow bank and into a tree completely crippling the frame. Consequently I have started using the bus.

Now I love watching people, so the bus has provided a perfect venue for some good ole observing. The other day I accidentally sat directly across from a homeless man that was very angrily mumbling to himself, had an incredibly swollen prostate, was wearing unidentifiable stained clothes, and smelled to high heaven. I was presented with a choice I could move but there was no way that it could be seen for any reason than avoiding him or I could run the gambit of staying there under his watch. Partly cause I didn't give a fuck and partly cause I was so tired I chose to stay.

For the next 20 mins he stared at me and mumbled threatening things. I figured that if he made a move for me I could drop him with my metal water bottle, which when full is pretty substantial. Everyone else on the bus was staring at me. I could feel their eyes urging me to relocate.

At one point another woman got on the bus and sat down next to me, thinking I offered a zone of safety. She quickly reconsidered a moved to the back.

The bus reached my stop and I got up and left. The homeless guy never moved an inch, he just keep staring at the spot I had occupied, still mumbling. I guess I just made up my mind that being attacked by a crazy homeless guy didn't really bother me. This is as much a part of life as a nice meal or a massage. Once you've stopped caring so much about your own safety you find that the world is a much safer place.

I am alone in a patronage. I am not a pastor. There are 2 cats here that are destroying everything but I find it futile to try and clean up after them. The cats live with me and share my company. There is a gigantic french window to which there are no blinds or shades and is impossible to cover. This window looks directly out on the church. All day long I see the practitioners filling in and out of the church. They all peer at me through the window, while I am eating my breakfast, reading my books, and even as I prepare to sleep.

This window to the church quite concerns me. It is as if God him/herself were watching me through it in some kind of demented aquarium exhibit.

There is a street lamp that torments me. It sits just off to the right off the church in full view of the window. It never turns off. It shins directly onto the pillow of my bed. I sometimes think of destroying the light, but I don't think that god would allow for that.

Then there is the tree. There is a Christmas tree here that has been the target of several cat assaults and is now very deformed in appearance. The tree regularly releases spores at purposefully random intervals to cause my airways to contract and to make me cease breathing. The tree has attempted to accomplish my end several times by doing this while I am asleep.

I would take the tree down and throw it outside but the a Christmas tree is a very personal thing so I am fearful of moving it. Moving someone's Christmas tree is like wearing their clothes or taking a bath in their bath. Bathing you see is entirely different than showering. There is an intimacy in both the tree and the bath.

The Renter

Now I think literature is rich with weird, secretive, and otherwise strange characters that occupy the attics of the normal main characters of stories. I believe Mrs. Rochester is probably the most notable. Totally unintentionally I have become such an attic dweller. However, having realized this, I intend on making the most of it and totally fulfilling the expectations of this literary tradition.

photo credit: wordpress.com

About 3 months ago I entered into a rental contract with a very nice old woman. I would rent a room in her attic that was very much to my liking and she would live on the main floor. This was very good. However after about a month the old woman left to take care of a relative and a family replaced her. A family complete with 2 young girls. Now the shift was rather odd but I acquainted myself with the parents and things looked to be on the verge of continuing on quite normally. That is until I noticed that a pair of small eyes were seemingly following me about my day.

I first noticed my wide eyed followers peering out the window at me as I was headed to work. I quickly turned around in a fury but just like that they were gone. Obviously these children meant business. Next I noticed little sounds coming from the bottom of the steps. Like large rodents creeping about trying to eat my shoes that were kept there, but when I opened the door to confront the rodents all that remained were giggles. Giggling rodents? Not likely, they don't much like eating shoes.

It was clear I was being watched so I have taken up a new personality to increase the intrigue. Whenever I leave I do so with the collar of my coat thrown up as high on my face as possible and with a hat scarf or newspaper covering the rest of my face. So dressed I come storming down the stairs stopping only briefly to look over my shoulder before running out the door to my car. I have also started taking my trash out just at the onset of dusk, dragging the bag along the ground and being sure to check for any observers before stuffing it in the can and then again dashing inside.

The next steps to completing my persona include dropping pieces of papers with magazine letter cut out messages and stashing things in a hole in a tree across the street Boo Radley style.

photo credit: thedeathwriter.blogspot.com 

This should keep me entertained for some time and the children seem to be quite enjoying it. Even the parents seem to be getting in on the game.

AJM

Still Waiting on an Education

Just finishing up the first month of business school and planning to go on to medical school I am at an interesting intersection of education. As exciting as it all is I can't help but feel that in my 17 years of schooling that there have been some things that have just never been delivered. Perhaps working in higher ed has heightened my focus and perception of these things, but lately I can't stop thinking about them.

photo credit: http://technicalwritiertalks2.wordpress.com/

Probably the theme that has been irritating me most lately is the persistence of by-the-book teaching even in post high school, post graduate education. How far can being able to follow instructions and directions really take me and in what sense can that really be called an education? It seems that every time I try to do something out of the ordinary or not according to script my professors just insist that if I wish to do well in the class I ought to just follow the syllabus. It seems to make more sense to me that courses at this level ought to follow around the theme of "Here is how we do it now, imagine a better way". Is that not the kind of thinking that of the most social value in reality?

In the same line of thinking as my previous complaint, because let's be real for a second, this is just a rant, is the idea that failure is to be avoided at all costs. Taking a risk on a project that could result in getting a lower grade is universally advised against. Furthermore the immense amount of shame attached to failing or not achieving the expected grade or outcome is so enormous that it imprisons any student into walking the narrowest line possible. This paranoia acts as blinders, shutting out all the other wonderful and possible ways of getting from point A to point B and only showing the ones that have already been laid out. When in reality it is precisely the supposed mission of formal education to prepare students for the future, for discovering these new paths.

photo credit: www.sottt.net

An education should not amount to two decades worth of reading instruction manuals. There is nothing in a book that can equip a student to deal with the challenges of the future; the only thing that can do that is the student's own mind. Education has long been seen as the equalizer between social classes but how can it continue to hold this title when it seems perfectly designed to produce graduates whose primary skill is following the direction of others?

End rant. Comments welcome.

Fetching a Dog Toy

My loyal followers, do I have loyal followers yet? Probably not or ever. Anyway, my loyal followers tonight I did something that I suspect might qualify me for institutionalization. So if there are any pathologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, fortune tellers or other interesting viewers among you all feel free to comment.

So it being Sunday, today I had to go to the local laundromat and engage my time in the washing and drying of my garments. Usually this process continues pretty unremarkably. I put my laundry in the washer go to CVS and grab some Arizona green tea and then read my economics text book for the remaining 27 minutes of wash time before transferring everything into the dryer and resuming my reading. Today, however, as I was transferring everything from washer to dryer I discovered something that was decidedly not mine in with my clothes. Quite beside myself at having discovered such a strange thing I thought to take a photo.

Now it was not only the missing eye and general demonic presence of the thing that alerted me but the fact that it was apparently a dog toy. A dog toy on which a dog had presumably been chewing and slobbering. A dog toy which I had just washed with my clothes. So I immediately rewashed all my clothes double checking to make sure there were no other treasures to be found. An hour and eight minutes later I packed up my laundry and returned home leaving the little bugger on top of the washer in which I found him. 

Some hours later I decided to upload the photo to instagram and to document my experience with some catchy caption. After some time a girl with whom I retain some feelings that are romantically inclined commented on the photo describing that it was her dog's toy and asking if I took it. Now naturally this caused an irreversible cascade of ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and then actions that ultimately ended in me immediately driving back to the aforementioned laundromat and retrieving the little bugger before it closed for the night.

Fetching the toy became absolutely compulsory. I left my dinner on the table and charged out the house with out a jacket. Now as I was driving back from the laundromat with the damned thing stuffed snugly in my breast pocket I realized that it was very possible that the above mentioned girls comments were in fact a joke. As I walked back to my room passing under street lights the whole began to seem quite foolish. I had gone 20 minutes out of my way to retrieve an old nasty dog toy that may or may not belong to a girl that may or may not like me. 

So now here I sit. the damned bugger mocking me. For I cannot sum up the courage to ask if the girl if she would like it returned for fear of it having been a joke yet I cannot dispose of the cursed thing for fear of her asking for it some day. So here I sit. Writing as a man that is wholly imprisoned, thought and deeds, by a dirty, old, pink, one-eyed dog toy. It's like some stupid child's re-writing of the raven. Only instead of saying nevermore it says "fetch boy."

Cracked Eyes

Photo Credit: Emily R. Feingold

Over the years I have had the pleasure, honor, disgust, confusion, and concern of meeting a whole host of people from dust ridden janitors to polished politicians. In all stages of life as well, gasping tearing desperately at fading threads to this world to testing their will against insurmountable obstacles. Now please don't take this to be me bragging. For it is more true to say that this events and people were as determined by me as was my losing my hat to the wind this morning than to say that I was in anyway involved in their development. Rather this is a means by which I hope to establish credit for what I next wish to discuss.

On the corner of Cedar Lane today I saw a man. Dressed in a dirty poorly tailored black suit with a white shit and blue tie. What was most distinctive about him however was his bruised face and the funny state in which he wore his hat. The hat was so tight about his head that at first glanced it seemed to be the very cause of the pink, flabby, swelling about his eyes and nose. Needless to say this man was terribly confused. I don't believe he was well acquainted with the sunlight, so its being 4:00 pm it was quite difficult for him. Amid a flurry of  shadowing hands, tripping feet, and an overall disconnect between the desire of the swollen man's brain and his body, I caught his eye with mine. 

This leads us presently to the point of this story. You see, in that glimpse, which by any standard measure time only lasted a fraction of an instant, I was assaulted by flashes of anger and despair. His eyes were so worn down that they had cracked. 

I suspect you have seen cracked eyes before. I certainly have. They are eyes that are no longer capable of hiding. Flashes of emotion stain their withered lenses like ink on water. The pressure of containing and pretending force them to break, leaving deep cracks through which the truth, whatever it may be, comes pouring out.

I do not know how our eyes come to be cracked, only that it is an observable phenomenon that has occurred many times over in my life. Some cracked eyes can be repaired, either washed with tears, patched up with apologies and confessions, or entirely closed off behind a waxy veil of drugs and alcohol. I suspect however that there is a point at which the cracks run too deep and can no longer be hidden or repaired. A point this man had arrived at. A point I am deeply interested in learning more about.

An Audience, You: The Potential of

Alright, well I have a blog now. Why? Good question. It has come to my attention that my best writing, thinking, eating, lying, sinning, and damn near everything else I do comes about when their is an audience involved. So it is in that spirit that I have created this. I hope that you, the audience, or perhaps better yet the potential of an audience, will compel me to continue to write and to give me cause. 

I don't have a terrible amount to write about at the moment, even less of it merits anything that I suspect you would enjoy. But a Jack Kerouac quote has been tumbling through the cervices in the space behind my eyes for some time now and it is the quote for which this blog has been named; so is rightly appropriate perhaps then to introduce it.

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" -- Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time. Let's burn.

AJM