In a place called cyberland
WORD-HUNGRY AND MADDENED
Today I was in the library at TMC looking at a whiteboard with venereal diseases scrawled in black ink (gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, syphilis) that sound like the names of Greek goddesses, and was suddenly overcome with the urge to look for Razel's old blog. Moments, merely I think, it was called. I had a sudden acute memory of an entry she'd written perhaps five or more years ago describing an old fashioned botany book she'd found in a second hand bookstore that described flowers like racehorses, "A very vigorous grower and sound in constitution." I had an overwhelming need to find that entry, to read Razel's writing again, taste the silky folds of her brain.
Despite half an hour of persistent searching, I couldn't find her blog, or any of the other journal writers I'd thought to look for. Where have all the lost blogs gone? Where was all that festering talent, ready to erupt? We've all grown up and moved on to other things, both lesser and greater than the writing we once took so much pride in.
I am looking for other things on LJ now, the poetry blogs, the short story blogs. During this first year of Surgery residency I've been too tired to read more than two books. Two. A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman was one, and The Book of Salt by Monique Truong was the other. It had been so long since I'd read something beautifully written that I found myself literally brought to tears by the delicious acrobatics of a sentence. "Animals indulge in such lavish and luscious forms of display that it would take a whole book just to list their color-mad graces." What luxury, to play with words; what release, to bathe in the sensuality of eloquence. The joy in the exact description, the knife-thrower precise turn of phrase. "Pheremones are the pack animals of desire."
Reading of the meals in The Book of Salt is better than actually tasting them: "Most of it was taken up by a pink mound of shrimp, all with their shells and heads still attached. A red sah at the base of their heads, their coral shining through, identified them as females, prized and very dear when available in the markets of this city. There was also a plate on either side. Hericots verts sauteed with garlic and ginger were in one, and watercress wilted by a flash of heat were in he other. A compote dish towered above them all, holding white rice, steam rising at top-mast. A bottle balanced out the tray, its cork announcing that it was a decisive step up from the decanted bottles of house wine."
RUBE GOLDBERG
Randy is lying next to me, looking at Rube Goldberg machines on the internet. I may have put him onto them last night, when we were looking at old Rube Goldberg illustrations while feeding each other jalapeno Cheetos. Cheetos on Sunday is one of our burgeoning traditions. Most of the videos we find online of modern Goldberg machines are rubbish; the funniest point of the machine, I think was that it fulfilled a mundane task in a ridiculously counter-intuitive way. He says he wants a Rube Goldberg machine involving a jeepney, a gerbil, and a santo nino that will assemble a glass of halo-halo.
Writing this journal entry, the first one in over three years, when I ought to be studying for the in-service exams on Sunday, is an indulgence. It is all the more self-indulgent knowing that no one will be here to read it.
Today I was in the library at TMC looking at a whiteboard with venereal diseases scrawled in black ink (gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, syphilis) that sound like the names of Greek goddesses, and was suddenly overcome with the urge to look for Razel's old blog. Moments, merely I think, it was called. I had a sudden acute memory of an entry she'd written perhaps five or more years ago describing an old fashioned botany book she'd found in a second hand bookstore that described flowers like racehorses, "A very vigorous grower and sound in constitution." I had an overwhelming need to find that entry, to read Razel's writing again, taste the silky folds of her brain.
Despite half an hour of persistent searching, I couldn't find her blog, or any of the other journal writers I'd thought to look for. Where have all the lost blogs gone? Where was all that festering talent, ready to erupt? We've all grown up and moved on to other things, both lesser and greater than the writing we once took so much pride in.
I am looking for other things on LJ now, the poetry blogs, the short story blogs. During this first year of Surgery residency I've been too tired to read more than two books. Two. A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman was one, and The Book of Salt by Monique Truong was the other. It had been so long since I'd read something beautifully written that I found myself literally brought to tears by the delicious acrobatics of a sentence. "Animals indulge in such lavish and luscious forms of display that it would take a whole book just to list their color-mad graces." What luxury, to play with words; what release, to bathe in the sensuality of eloquence. The joy in the exact description, the knife-thrower precise turn of phrase. "Pheremones are the pack animals of desire."
Reading of the meals in The Book of Salt is better than actually tasting them: "Most of it was taken up by a pink mound of shrimp, all with their shells and heads still attached. A red sah at the base of their heads, their coral shining through, identified them as females, prized and very dear when available in the markets of this city. There was also a plate on either side. Hericots verts sauteed with garlic and ginger were in one, and watercress wilted by a flash of heat were in he other. A compote dish towered above them all, holding white rice, steam rising at top-mast. A bottle balanced out the tray, its cork announcing that it was a decisive step up from the decanted bottles of house wine."
RUBE GOLDBERG
Randy is lying next to me, looking at Rube Goldberg machines on the internet. I may have put him onto them last night, when we were looking at old Rube Goldberg illustrations while feeding each other jalapeno Cheetos. Cheetos on Sunday is one of our burgeoning traditions. Most of the videos we find online of modern Goldberg machines are rubbish; the funniest point of the machine, I think was that it fulfilled a mundane task in a ridiculously counter-intuitive way. He says he wants a Rube Goldberg machine involving a jeepney, a gerbil, and a santo nino that will assemble a glass of halo-halo.
Writing this journal entry, the first one in over three years, when I ought to be studying for the in-service exams on Sunday, is an indulgence. It is all the more self-indulgent knowing that no one will be here to read it.