The Bliss of Idleness

It only lasts for so long. When I came home during undergrad - home to bed I'd slept in since I was 16, home to an inescapable familial role - I could only stand about three weeks before I was bored out of my mind and ready to get back to my college town. Things were different when I moved back to Harlingen during my year off - I didn't hunger for the faster pace of a bigger city, rather I embraced my small town anonymity, eschewing the company of high-school friends, such that every single moment was mine and mine alone (it was perhaps the transitory nature of that stint that made it not only bearable, but so enjoyable). Now, I've been home for 4 days, and am relishing the lazy days - since Stef and Caleb are both home, I stay home too, playing Halo and watching TV with them instead of grabbing a book and fleeing to the nearest coffee shop (which I'll do next week once they're back in school). This idleness is blissful; this is the break I've been looking forward to since the beginning of med school. With those damned condensed semesters, we never got a summer vacation; it was two weeks at most. Looking back, I suppose that minimized time for forgetting, but it also shortchanged me of the academic decompression to which I'd grown accustomed. After 4th semester, that break went down to almost nothing - I had to pack up and move from the island, visit my family, move to Miami, and study for the Comp in little over two weeks (Nicole and I buckled down, studied like crazy and passed with no problems, unlike very many of our colleagues, who took the beast too lightly, and had to take it again). Then, after 5th, we took a tiny break to visit Nicole's family, and then jumped back into studying hardcore. And now...I'm enjoying the laziness of doing nothing.

Dad, Stef, Caleb and I went out to the deer blind on the lease today. We didn't see anything but a coyote, but it was restful and enjoyable. I'd forgotten how gigantic this Texas sky is.

There's paperwork to send into the administration and Christmas shopping to ponder. There are movies I want to see, stores I want to visit, a stack of books I want to read, gallons of coffee yet to drink, weights to lift, and miles to run. It'll all get done, but right now I'm enjoying ease of my down-time.

il Purgatorio

I'm fond of likening my sense of relief following a semester or school year to Dante's climb from Hell at the end of the Inferno. I suppose that metaphor is a bit more fitting now, because things weren't fine and dandy after Dante ascended the nine circles - there was still Purgatory, which is kind of where I am now. I really thought that there'd be a huge sense of relief following the Step, but there wasn't; it was almost as if I didn't (and still don't) know what to do with myself. For two years, my classes, my studying, my purchase of books and review books - my life, essentially, was aimed solely at this one test, this one chunk of 8 hours, a mere 336 questions. Now I'm sort of at a loss; I am relieved in a sense - though it was nothing short of a heinous beast, the questions themselves weren't that bad, and looking back I wouldn't have done anything differently; I felt that choices of USMLE World and Kaplan were the correct ones to make. However, this has been looming like a malevolent spectre at the periphery of my consciousness for so long, that its absence leaves me feeling a little aimless. I call it Purgatory because now, I must await my scores, and then complete paperwork, and then await my scheduling from Ross.

I am, however, already enjoying my time off. After the test, Nicole and I bummed around for a while, slowly packing and boxing and all the other unpleasantries tied to moving. I was fortunate enough to visit my grandparents before leaving Miami - once because it was scheduled and once, because Nicole didn't like the idea of the leaving the new vacuum cleaner I'd bought for the landlord, and felt that it should stay in the family. I got to begin Carlos Ruiz Zaffon's The Angle's Game, which is delicious so far, and we went to see An Education, which I hear is getting some Oscar nods. I got home two days ago, and Stefan got home yesterday - with Caleb, we've already burned through some serious Halo death matches. Today was spent doing more cooking (stirring and chopping, mostly - and being told what to do), and I might go sit in a deer blind tomorrow and stare at the landscape, waiting predatorially. This is something I've been looking forward to; I've come to realize that the waiting part of hunting, once you truly learn to enjoy it, can best be described as meditative.

I'm already starting to look at what will be required of me during my clerkships. Texas has strict accreditation requirements, and while I'm not set on coming back here to practice, I'd like to keep as many doors open as possible; and all of the properly accredited clerkships are available in NYC, so that's where I'm mentally preparing myself to go.

In the Mouth of the Bear

I used to have some pretty weird dreams - I'm not just talking "oh no, I'm falling and I'm naked" weird, I'm talking first rate weirdness that used to make me wonder if something was wrong with me. My dreams occasionally unfolded like interactive movies - the climaxes and resolutions were frequently surprising to me; I felt as if a few of my dreams were trying to teach me some moral. In high school, because of my fascination with lucid dreaming, I began keeping a dream journal - my dreams had always been very vivid, and I had no trouble remembering them. I'd wake up, and go to do the dishes, and while I stood at the sink, the tidbits would come back to me - then I'd write them all down before school. The point of recording one's dreams is supposed to be a signal to the subconscious that they're important - making them easy to remember. This is exactly what happened in my case - I'd have vivid dreams every night, and on the weekends, there'd be three or four a night. It actually got to the place where I was losing sleep, because I'd conditioned myself to wake up and write them down right away. That all sort of fell by the wayside during college - I tried to type out a few, but there was never anywhere near the same levels of the dreamstorm I'd had before.

I had a weird one last night, that recalls the previous levels of strangeness. I was hunting for something; I was at a little hunting camp. There were a few cabins, a main gathering house, etc. It was out in the wilderness, but where exactly I couldn't say; the weather was warm, perhaps in the 70s - I was wearing a light, button-up camo shirt, camo pants, and boots. Another family was there as well - a poor white family, whose children didn't seem too terribly interested in hunting. There was a girl of about 14, and two boys of about 10. Someone had to keep yelling at them to get ready, and to make sure to be on time. For some reason, I wasn't concerned about being on time, and I even had the feeling that I wanted to make the guides a little bit late. The inside of one of the cabins looked like something between a high-school hallway and the inside of a barn.

We went outside into the warm sun, and milled around for a bit. A small stream ran through the small patch of land, and off into the dark trees about 5o yards away, at the corner of the yard. I crossed the stream to the area in front of the main house, and there was the guide with one of his assistants. I'd figured that, since we were going a long way to hunt, we'd need a car, or horses - but there before me stood the most massive bears I'd ever seen. These creatures were larger by far then elephants; their heads were longer than I was tall. I figured we'd get a ride - no such luck. The guide looked at me and said "in you go" - and his meaning hit me. He tapped the enormous bear on its side, and it slowly, mechanically lowered its head, and opened its gaping maw. I thought to myself that I'd never seen a mouth so big on anything - that great white sharks didn't have mouths this large by half - and the guide gently pulled aside one of the bear's cheek flaps. I was seriously considering backing out -this frightened me immensely - but I figured it had to be alright; folks had done this before, hadn't they?So I placed my boot on the outside of an incisor the length of a butcher knife, and climbed up into the bear's cheek, trying to stay as far to the outside as possible. I shimmied my way up, and found a little nook in which I could lodge. Strangely, there was no terrible smell, and I kept on thinking to myself of all the food I'd kept in my cheek over the years - just because it was there didn't mean I had to eat it.

Then we were off, down a small dirt trail and on to a main street. I'd thought it a little odd that we were riding this way, when, if we were going to be on the road, we should have just hopped into a car - but those thoughts soon faded as I noticed things changing. A dim blue light seemed to emanate from the back of the bear's throat, but I wasn't going to sandwich myself between the tearing teeth to see what it was. Soon, though, the inside of the bear's mouth gradually turned into the back of an SUV, with blue tinted windows.

Then, we were making our way up some river that seemed to be running through an antique store.

Here, then, is the interpretation of my dream: the environs and the guide were very similar to the hunt my father and I enjoyed in Alaska after I graduated high school. The streets of Anchorage showed up, and it had a similar feel.

However, the deeper part, I believe is as follows: when I was on the island, my favorite pathology professor would respond to individual questions by sending his reply to the whole class - identifying information removed, of course. These questions would always multiply around exam time, and during that time, he would close his emails with the phrase that medical students in Rome - where he'd studied - would share with each other:

"In Bocca Al Lupo."

It means "In the mouth of the wolf " - how the students would wish each other well on their exams.

With the USMLE step 1 just ten days away, I feel like I'm in the mouth of a much more vicious beast than ever before. I mean...I must be if my own subconscious is wishing me luck.