Year in Review.

In 2007

I told a lot of stories in between, too.

2008 promises to be an eventful year for me and it is with both (a lot of) excitement and (a little bit of) anxiety that I look towards the New Year.

I’ll be on the dance floor in a fetching purple dress when the clock strikes midnight tonight. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing at that time.

May 2008 bring contentment, peace, good health, and joy to you. Thanks for reading.


31 Dec 2007 | 4 comments.



Quarantine.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about working in medicine is the compaction of the

  • miraculous
  • tragic
  • ridiculous
  • stunning
  • inspiring
  • heartbreaking
  • disgusting
  • hopeful
  • devastating
  • boring
  • amusing
  • humbling
  • spiteful
  • touching

details of life into one work day.

My mind boggles at the secrets and burdens that we all carry within the isolation of our minds and bodies due to the belief that no one else will care.


30 Dec 2007 | Comments?



Flowers.

It is rumored that he had a flower garden in his backyard.

Like a stamped envelope, the backyard itself was large, but the garden occupied a very small corner. An uncommon type of flower bloomed there: a small, delicate blossom of deep indigo with fragile petals. Sometimes he wondered if the flower was actually a weed, as the plant, bitter fragrance and all, quietly persisted regardless of how much he ignored it. He preferred to attend to his expansive front lawn with its lush golf grass, brightly-colored ornaments, and wooden adirondack chairs.

She wished that he would give her a bouquet of these flowers.

Though she had occasionally received flowers like these before in the past, she had never received them from him. Sadly, she was not hopeful that he would ever deliver such a nosegay to her.

“If he ever meant to,” she said, “he would have already done so.”

Such a floral offering would not represent affection—she did not want that and knew that whatever designs he once had for her had since disappeared. For him to acknowledge the blooms in his garden, pull them from his lawn, collect them together, walk out of his house, find her, and give them to her personally did not seem unreasonable—at least to her. Though she knew that the flowers would not survive long and that, frankly, she would throw them out after a day or two, this gesture would not be lost upon her.

Others murmured that he never gave these flowers to anyone—he was simply too busy tending to his front lawn to even acknowledge that these small flowers crept from his backyard. Though dainty and beautiful, they were of little value to him and he certainly had no desire to put forth the effort to display these blooms, let alone give them away.

She had little difficulty filling the vases in her house: Friends and lovers delivered blossoms of all shapes and sizes to adorn her space and the intoxicating fragrances constantly tickled her nose. Sometimes, she encountered an empty vase and it was then that she wondered if he would ever send her those small, indigo flowers—

—though she already knew that the time for that had likely already passed.


28 Dec 2007 | 2 comments.



The Swing Set.

The swing set can seat five little people at any one time. The chains, thick and heavy, have discolored with time and feel cool against small fingers, even during the warm summer months. Black rubber slabs comprise the seats; they sluggishly slouch under the weight of a child pumping her legs up into the air to make the swing go higher, higher, higher….

He had dark hair and small teeth. Whenever she saw him smile, her eyes always drifted to those small teeth. They weren’t misshapen. They were not reminiscent of rodent dentition. They just seemed too small for his mouth.

What he lacked in tooth size he made up in finger length. His long digits wrapped easily around the dark chains of the swing. They also seemed to slither around and strangle the mechanical pencils he used. She imagined that if he had a booger buried high in his nose, his fingers would have little difficulty retrieving the glob of snot.

Though she, too, had dark hair, she had an infrequent smile. When on the swing, she watched the ground, not the sky. When on the ground, she still looked down. He didn’t want to stare at her—his mother had told him several times that it was rude to do so—but he rarely saw her face and wanted to catch a glimpse of her serious features that were often obscured behind the thick curtain of her dark hair. He often settled for her neat penmanship. His letters were like his teeth: small, thin, and occasionally cramped. Her letters were like her unsmiling face: symmetric, consistent, and understated.

During recess, he pushed her on the swing. Using the long palms from which sprung his long fingers, he pushed against the small wings of her upper back and watched her feet sail higher into the ocean of sky. Sometimes she looked over her shoulder to ask him to stop pushing—”I’m high enough”—and he would notice a smile on her face, the corners of her lips lifting her cheeks into cheery baubles. Sometimes she laughed, her little mary jane shoes clacking together at the zenith of her flight.

He liked to see her smile.

Sometimes she pushed him on the swing, too, though she didn’t push him as hard as he pushed her. Usually girls pushed girls and boys pushed boys on the swings, anyway. Contact between the sexes increased the risk of transmission of cooties and everybody wanted to play their part in minimizing infection.

Instead, she walked around the swings with him. Their searches for four-leaf clovers were unsuccessful, as were their attempts to capture butterflies. They, however, did observe the behaviors of bees flitting over the playfield speckled with clover flowers and the shapes of the puffy clouds overhead. He had a penchant for science and found her an able companion when discussing the various colors that comprised sunlight and the anatomy of insects.

She liked the way he noticed things.

The Age of Adolescence soon descended upon them all. His teeth became more proportional to his mouth and his fingers no longer resembled jointed chopsticks. She began to tuck her hair behind her ears or pin it back so that she could showcase her dazzling smile.

Swings were no longer acceptable.

He and she both grew up and out. Instead of frequenting the playground and the faithful swings, they attended school, read books, travelled the world, ate new foods… and shook the dust of the playground from their shoes.

The chains of the swings continued to discolor. The rubber seats dulled even more, losing their glossy sheen. Weeds started to grow in the sand surrounding the swing set.

She was already walking away from the playground when he arrived. She had sat in a swing—the seat could hardly hold her!—and mindlessly propelled herself along the arc of flight, though she never floated as high as she had in the past. She wondered if he was there, if he could push on her wings, perhaps she could touch the smile into the sky again?

If he was there. He hadn’t been there in years.

He didn’t call her name when he saw her—that was so long ago and she was so far away. He felt the soft spring of the clover underfoot and looked up into the afternoon sky, squinting at the brilliant orb that hadn’t shrunk in size as he had aged.

All five swings were empty, but he chose not to sit. With his slender right hand he picked up one swing, feeling rubber between his fingers. His left hand wrapped around the old chain, still cool against his touch. He released the swing and watched it trace a small arc, back and forth, back and forth… though it was now without a smile, without a pair of small mary janes. Her small wings had undoubtedly opened and she had taken flight.

The swing set can seat five little people at any one time. And though it can also hold the memories of two big people, it cannot comfortably support the presence of them both.


26 Dec 2007 | 4 comments.



Christmas Gifts.

A glorious run along Lake Washington Boulevard. During my 4.5-mile jaunt (and to think that there was a time when I was huffing and puffing after running for two consecutive minutes!), I received

  • one sunrise bursting with hues of purple, peach, and orange
  • a glimpse of the bottom two-thirds of Mt. Rainier
  • sightings of a mammal (beaver? otter?) swimming silently through the rippling water, a kingfisher stretching out the arc of its graceful neck, and numerous smaller water fowl dipping their heads into the lake in search of breakfast

I also witnessed the silent, flashing red lights of an ambulance and a fire truck parked outside of a brightly decorated house. Santa and his reindeer were taking off from the roof and headed for the moon. Later on, as the ambulance raced up the hill, lights on, siren off, I spied through the rear windows an elderly woman laying on the gurney. Her eyes were closed and nasal cannula slithered out of her nostrils.

I also continue to receive the gifts of mobility and good health.

Snow. On Christmas Day. In Seattle. Most of it was the big, slushy kind that bonks you on the head before sliding down your neck, only to be thwarted by your scarf.

Dim sum with the company of two good friends. As observed at Racialicious, one can rely upon Chinese restaurants to feed the masses on Christmas Day when the rest of the city shuts down. The Four Seas Restaurant fed us today. Their dim sum is not bad, though I still believe Jade Garden has the best dim sum in Seattle. Glutinous rice balls and egg tarts make for good Christmas desserts.

Sweeney Todd? The movie is not exactly a warm and fuzzy gift. Let me first highlight the aspects of the film that I enjoyed:

  • The cinematography is wonderful. Nice use of colors, contrasts, and settings.
  • Good singing! I was particularly impressed with Jamie Bower’s (who plays Anthony Hope) voice. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are pretty good, too.
  • Helena Bonham Carter’s fashion. It’s quirky, but she pulls it off with confidence. I particularly enjoyed her striped socks underneath her foofy, girly dresses.

However, I felt stressed out for the majority of the movie. I have this thing about neck slashing. Stabbings, injections, shootings, and other forms of direct interpersonal violence do not cause me nearly as much distress as neck slashing. As a medical student, I even had difficulty watching the head and neck surgeons perform neck procedures—though those I could watch, since those were delicate, detached operations.

Neck slashing, though, gives me the willies. Just writing about it makes me feel anxious. (I’m now rubbing my neck to ensure that it is still intact.)

I couldn’t bring myself to watch any of the neck slashing in this movie. Which means that I missed a good portion of the film. In an effort to calm myself down after leaving the theatre, I started to laugh—and even that wasn’t entirely successful. I still felt stressed out.

I cautiously recommend this film—I’m glad I saw it (or at least saw all of the parts that didn’t involve neck slashing), but I will never watch it ever again.


25 Dec 2007 | 3 comments.



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