Lumpers and Splitters (or: Tying up Loose Ends, Part II)

Whokay...It's been a doozy of a week (have you ever been abandoned by an attending doctor because there's another emergency crashing two feet away, while trying to suture up a puncture wound and put in a drain--which you have never done before--in a dog that's barely anesthetized and it turns out needs to be intubated and put on gas anesthesia and then get sewn up which you are told to do three different ways by three different people? Yup. That was my night yesterday). But I am working through these loose ends, and this brings me to the whole lumpers and splitters thing (other things I'd rather: May 4th post).

This originally comes from some anthropology class in college, and it struck me as a wonderful explanatory paradigm from which to explain how certain people think. And despite its binary nature (which I think with some justification is looked upon as questionable in these post-modern-multiple-voices-multiple-reality times) I have found that it's still a useful party trick in explaining how people learn from or misunderstand one another. It goes like this: in anthropology, specifically, you often see that the person going full ignorant blast into another culture is either so struck by the intricacies and nuances of that culture that they do their utmost to describe its uniqueness; holding up its difference ultimately as a counterpoint to our own. This is a splitter (as in of hairs). And then there are the Claude Levi-Strausses of the world, who wish to delve into the underlying likeness of humans everywhere; a starting point with many variations, but still, variations in which they point out the likeness in certain customs, similar organizing principles, etc. Lumpers. Now, it would be reductionist (I've ALWAYS wanted to use that in a sentence, ever since my liberal arts education ruined me for honest labor) to say that splitters dehumanize, or that lumpers biologize or gloss over. Like all binary organizing principles, when applied in extremes, it is ridiculous and even dangerous. And like all binaries, it tends to get flavored by that massive sticky-fingers-in-everyone's-pie dichotomy of good vs. bad (as in, if I am a _____, and you are a ----, then _____ is good, and ----- must be bad). But as a spectrum, you may find yourself consistently on one side or another. So anthropology might have meant something kind of specific by lumpers and splitters (as in how one might approach another culture), but I like to use it in the wider world.

I'm a splitter. I love finding the nuances, the little flashes of difference, of color, the stupid details. Splitters tend to talk in footnotes (sound familiar?) and pepper their explanations with little goofy examples that while relevant or illustrative, really are just happy window dressing, or ornamentation. These people can be annoying to learn from if you've never taken a subject before, or if you happen to be a lumper. Details are distractions from the big picture, they muddy the waters with parentheses until you scream GET ON WITH IT! Lumpers can of course be annoying to splitters, as they make grandiose statements that splitters just want to interrupt with "but...but..." Learning from a lumper has its ups and downs too, sometimes lacking a more textured or flexible application. Real life often doesn't read the well organized text book and all that.

That's as far as I want to go in making generalizations (because, you see, we splitters have to make them sometimes--spectrum, remember--but we're always thinking about those nagging possible exceptions who tug on our sleeves that go "but...but") about lumpers and splitters. You can make your own conclusions from here. I just forget that people have never heard of this (WARNING: ANOTHER WORD I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO USE IN A SENTENCE AND THAT MARKS THE DEGREE TO WHICH A LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION WILL SCAR YOU FOREVER IS COMING. GUARD YOURSELF) heuristic (DID YOU WINCE? I DID. BUT THEN I GRINNED WICKEDLY) device and I devoutly feel that others should know of its use. For example, in my first year of vet school one of our professors was a tried and true splitter. I loved his classes. Others found him confusing or great as their own proclivities (ATTENTION BLOGGER! THIS IS THE VOCABULARY POLICE, ARTSY FARTSY INFRACTIONS DIVISION: CONSIDER THIS A WARNING) drove them. I was discussing this prof with a classmate one day (vet school students are way too fond of this ad naseum critique of their own education) and said, "well, he's a splitter." She looked at me in puzzlement. Clearly, not enough of you have had a good anthropology class in your past. Consider yourself forcibly enlightened.

To carry this silliness a bit further, should we start a quiz? Now that you're indoctrinated into my cult, should we create our own Meyers-Brigg lumper/splitter personality test? How often do you use the words "always" or "never" in conversation? Sometimes, Occasionally, Never? You might be a splitter if: you've ever contradicted someone you basically agree with because you feel they're ignoring a facet of an argument that interests you...etc. Hey wait! Where are you going?

Promises Promises (or: Tying up Loose Ends, Part 1)

I've noticed a certain macabre bent (or at least a bit of a downer) in the last posts. And I spent the better part of the last hour trying to figure out what to write about. I mean, it's a bit like relationships, right? You start out all excited, and there's SO much to talk about, and you feel so witty and showing off a little so that your new lover can see just how clever you really are...And then comes the day when you realize that it drives you crazy when he leaves his socks on the floor, or whatever petty thing he does that has always really driven you crazy. So I was going back through my posts and realizing that I've made a few promises here and there to continue some train of thought that needed more than a really super long parantheses. And what is it to me, you ask, oh kilobytes per second reader? You probably don't even remember (or haven't ever seen) those posts.

And then I got to thinking: is it merely an anal sort of perfectionism that nags at me to finish those thoughts? (Valid point.) Or is it related to this fundamental feeling I have always had that if you are creating a thing, be it a drawing, a story or a blog, it ought to be done to the best of your ability, tedious or not? I can't leave things I make unfinished (or at least when I do I always feel slightly ashamed). (This is the feeling I couldn't articulate well when it was necessary to raise our backyard fence to prevent our dog from climbing/jumping it. We have very little spare capital to be buying nice looking fence material. So we settled for chicken wire and stakes. And part of the reason I got so irritable and frustrated was because it was so UGLY, and I guess I equate ugly somehow with unfinished, and with slacking and laziness and not caring. Which wasn't fair, since we started out knowing we didn't have time or money to make it pretty, but there is just something inside me that balks and drags its feet and stomps and says 'that's wrong! You shouldn't do it that way!' So this is my way of explaining/apologizing to my boyfriend for my grumps that time.) Hey, this IS coming from a girl who once made a sculpture back in college in February in the woods in NY with 88 balls of twine. (I have to keep reminding him sometimes.)

Combine this with a feeling of inadequacy whenever I get my alumni magazine, which always seems to be filled with people who write, casually and breezily, things that go like this: "Well after helping build my NGO from scratch I'm moving on to the backwoods of Appalachia where I plan to teach the impoverished sustainable agriculture and how to build generators out of pine trees and rubberbands." Or: "Such-and-such has a new film showing in NYC that is making people who wear black in Manhattan applaud." Somehow "I'm sticking thermometers up animals' butts and still don't feel much like a doctor," doesn't seem very glamorous. So I'm driven to fill this inadequacy with things I can do, like keep my promises to my fractionally small readership. (This desire to keep even small promises also makes me think about the fact that I have a great deal of deeply ingrained ethics that might have me keeping company with much more conservative minded individuals, though I suspect they would never know, not being able to get past the whole nose ring, pro-gay marriage thing. Things like: if you're going to bother, you might as well do it right; hard work is good for you; saying "NO" is necessary when raising children; and a little pain and hardship in your life helps you stop being such a selfish pain in the ass. I can't understand how somehow these have been coopted as 'moral values' that only christian republicans understand, and if you're a lefty you're lefty [pun intended] with soft squishy lovey never experience anything bad or your life is scarred forever theories. Now I shall sit upon my soapbox self--we all have one--and squelch her. BACK! Back in your box!)

Now. You are, at this point, tapping your foot or looking at your watch or whatever and saying, OK, but what about those promises? (You see, I've got you all excited now.) Alright. First of all, I have made rather a lot of them, and so I think this may happen to be an installment plan thing (see how I have cleverly arranged content for my next posts so that I can draw on my original enthusiasm rather than have to come up with new topics?) The first one was made in May 3rd's Ambulatory post. I promised you a picture of an alpaca from my father's 1956 American college dictionary:





I have also included a bonus , (for a dear friend of mine who really likes them), a picture of a tarsier. I'm very impressed that this dictionary has the tarsier in it at all, much less a drawing of one. The dictionary has this to say about the tarsier:





tarsier (tar' si er), n. a small arboreal primate, genus Tarsius,
sole representative of a suborder, Tarsiodea, found in the U.S.
of Indonesia and parts of the Phillippine Islands, with enormous eyes.

I love the enormous eyes bit. So wonderfully random! And then there's the alpaca. Here's what the dictionary has to say about the alpaca:


alpaca (al pak' e) n. 1. a domesticated sheep like South American
ruminant of the genus Lama allied to the llama and the guanaco,
having long soft, silky hair or wool. 2. the hair. 3. a fabric made of it
4. a glossy, wiry, commonly black woolen fabric with a cotton warp.
5. a rayon and alpaca crepe, with a viscose and acetate rayon warp.
[t. Sp., from paco, Peruv. animal name to which the article al has
been prefixed.]

Hate to be the guy that had to write that one. Viscose and acetate? Sounds like the seventies. And they left out the vicuna! I love the vicuna, they look like they are the racing high octane version of a camelid. Here is what I know about alpacas:

1. They are the short ones. Llamas are taller, and don't have quite so fine a fleece
2. They are all camelids. Camelids are ruminants. Being ruminants (see sheep cow goat), they ruminate (eat their food several times by re-chewing the material in their first stomach compartment), have no top teeth (betcha didn't know that), and like living in herds. Technically, they are slightly different than your average cow, more closely related to the camel (hence the whole "camel"id thing), and they have only 3 stomach compartments vs. the cow's 4, unless you are a fractious anatomist and like to cause trouble ,(you'd be surprised at the amount of controversy there is surrounding anatomy: the dog's cecum causes brawls every year in freshman anatomy).
3. They make a delightful short humming noise, that gets faster and louder when they are anxious and they can really scream bloody murder when you restrain them and they don't like it.
4. They do spit, but not that often. Don't be one of those annoying people who looks at one over a fence and freaks out because it might spit. Frankly, you're not worth it unless you are actively pissing them off. Do you curse at people you've never seen before for no reason? (If you said yes, remind me not to ever meet you on the street.) Depends on how much they're handled and just how much they don't want their temperature taken. Just don't stand in front when they're really mad.
5. They're stronger than they look.
6. They are some weird new fad in this country and I can't really figure that out, despite their very large limpid brown eyes and big bangs cute thing.
7. Their venous blood is as bright as their arterial blood, they have really thick skin, and they clot a lot faster than other animals (important when taking blood).
8. They hate their feet and back touched, and really don't ever seem too impressed with people, even if handled a lot. In fact, as far as I can tell they only like having their chins scratched.
   
9. They have the longest sexual act in the domestic mammal category (up to 90 minutes). If you get reincarnated as an animal, consider the alpaca or llama.
10. When they lay down, it is called cushing. Just remember when you sit on a cushed alpaca to keep her from moving while on a wheeled cart because she won't walk down to the scale, they ARE stronger than they look.
    

There you are then. One promise fulfilled. I had fun getting here, even if it was a long time coming.

I've had a sad day, mostly. One of my patients from yesterday died this morning. And I euthanized a case that could have lived for a another year with simple, cheap medication. The owner just couldn't face watching her get gradually worse. But OH I am sad about it. I've always been a crier. I guess watching this gets easier, and I'm glad I can keep from crying in front of clients, but I've got this time lag thing now: I'm home, I look at my own dear pets, in their health and their infirmities and I grieve for the lives we didn't or couldn't save. Now, you invisible reader, I ask you to do an even harder thing. Suspend your judgement, your condemnation of this owner who couldn't watch, and think of how hard it is to watch a loved one deteriorate. Feel her own pain. And I do think she is at home tonight, grieving as I do. Try to hold all of it at once: your anger at the waste of life, your grief over its loss, and your empathy for someone who had to make a terrible choice. Contradictory? You betcha. To this there is no good answer. Which is why I'm sitting up when I should be sleeping, crying over a pet I only just met.

Talking to Grief

Denise Levertov

Ah, grief, I should not treat you

like a homeless dog

who comes to the back door

for a crust, for a meatless bone.

I should trust you.

I should coax you

into the house and give you

your own corner,

a worn mat to lie on,

your own water dish.

You think I don’t know you’ve been living

under my porch.

You long for your real place to be readied

before winter comes. You need

your name,

your collar and tag. You need

the right to ward off intruders,

to consider

my house your own

and me your person

and yourself

my own dog.

Is this Website trying to tell me something?

Why has all the text on my previous posts suddenly turned grey? I have gone back and changed a few, but still. No editorializing from the nebulous ghost in the machine, please. Anyway, for the next three weeks my days will be obliterated by my 10am to 10pm ER shift (you WISH it was filled with EMS personnel dashing in yelling stats, handsome doctors and moral quandries created by just-complex enough patients--not to say it's boring, 'cause it really isn't, or that we don't have good looking doctors, but really, when's the last time someone peeed on the floor or tried to bite the doctor on TV?). It's amazing how coming to work in daylight and leaving at night makes you feel like a time-lapse photograph on fast forward. I get tired just thinking about it. The animals that come to us can often be at death's door, so this is a poem for all my potential patients.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

In Memoriam

A Visitor
Mary Oliver

My father, for example,
who was young once
and blue-eyed,
returns
on the darkest of nights
to the porch and knocks
wildly at the door,
and if I answer
I must be prepared
for his waxy face,
for his lower lip
swollen with bitterness.
And so, for a long time,
I did not answer,
but slept fitfully
between his hours of rapping.
But finally there came the night
when I rose out of my sheets
and stumbled down the hall.
The door fell open

and I knew I was saved
and could bear him,
pathetic and hollow,
with even the least of his dreams
frozen inside him,
and the meanness gone.
And I greeted him and asked him
into the house,
and lit the lamp,
and looked into his blank eyes
in which at last
I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done
had we loved in time.

My father had hazel eyes, like me. And his only meanness perhaps the egoistic conviction we would all be better off without him. But I have wandered through this landscape enough to admit that the voices of his despair spoke louder than love, leaving him nothing but a narrow track with a dark conclusion. How much more indestructable is our own internal half-logic!

If you consider time as our fourth dimension, it may be easier for you to acknowledge the existence of an echo effect; ripples from long ago events that make themselves felt years later. I don't mean the way the past shapes the future--nothing that simplistic-- this is more a cyclic effect, often subconscious, that earlier meaningful events affect our feelings, maybe on their anniversaries, or every couple of years (surely one could allow that if such effects were ripples, they might begin to occur every month and gradually widen to every year, then every other, and so on, as the emotional wake, if you will, subsides). Now I buy this theory (because I made it up, fine, but really, there's more), because I notice that every year or so, right around now I become melancholy and introspective. It comes over me gradually and I often think, what the heck is up with me? Why this mood change? And eventually I think, oh right, it's August. The wrong time in the solar year, maybe, to think about change and uncertain futures, but the right time in my personal calendar, here around the anniversary of my father's death. And I love this poem (can't forget the poem) because of the redemption at the end, the softening, the forgiveness. I too, have gone round and round in years past, chasing my mental tail, trying to reason it through on some days and trying not to think of it or agonizing over it on others. The bitterness, the swollen lip, these things for me are post-mortem; they are caused by the refusal to see, to acknowledge the ugly parts of the past and the difficult and contradictory emotions caused by death. How needed, how essential is that ease at the end, the ability to say, I forgive you (and likewise myself, for my anger and my guilt about my anger). This moment also comes more often as the years do, and the whole thing softens into grey hues from its original hard lines. My father's ghost is my harbinger of uncertainty, of anxiety, of fear of loss. But I must greet his ghost some nights, and pare away the symbolism, and there he is my father again, and I a child, with a child's love, and I am simply allowed to miss him.

Pond Moments

So much for deep introspective thought. It's sure been a while since I've had time to sit down for any of it. The worst thing about busyness is you get this vague feeling like maybe deep thought is simply too much effort. Since I've left any footprints here (splayed or otherwise--don't get the reference? Try Billy Collins) I have been across the country and back, bought myself a new computer (the flowerbed beneath my window was in danger from the old one. Because I was going to lose my temper and heave it out, you know), learned about the beauties of opioids (not what you think, either to your relief or dismay-I'm talking about vet school stuff, again), rode on a ferry, spent over $400 in order to sign up for a 6 hour exam, and performed an autopsy on a cat (another vet school activity, which, to admit my utter geekdom/how-I-am-not-like-most-people, I kind of enjoyed). But there hasn't been much time for inner contemplation. .

I did go for a long walk with the boy and the dog tonight. The smell of the woods marches me straight into my childhood memories. I used to think everyone remembered their childhoods the way I do, but I no longer believe this. For me, I have vivid glimpses of many scenes from many different years, all coming fast and clear, and full of echoed emotion. The lake at camp, summer camping in Wilmington, hiking Stone Mountain and Blowing Rock, late nights lying on the warm asphalt feeling like any minute now, the earth would let go and I would float away. Such vertigo, imagining another living creature orbiting another star and staring back at you wondering the same thing--who and where and how?

We met a pond that was a Mary Oliver poem.

The Ponds

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them--

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided--
and that one wears an orange blight--
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away--
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled--
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing--
that the light is everything--that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

I love Mary Oliver's poems. The last lines of the poem on the next page have always haunted me, calling at wild pond moments, or on pensive evenings. "Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?" she asks. The last lines that surface often in my brain are: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

The truth is, I don't know. But the question always hits me in the solar plexus, a wild cry of grief mixed with a sort of impatience, like a child stamping her foot. Get on with it, don't you remember what's important here, she asks me. And I have to say, shamefacedly, that no, I often forget.

I am very grateful for pond moments tonight.

Maintain control of your carry-on baggage at all times

I just can’t do it. I mean, it sounds easy. Maintain implies that you are already there, in the land of control, briskly sweeping your personal chaos along with ease. But I confess, I just can’t. It’s unruly. I mean it, it plots and conspires against me, a stubborn stubby little nemesis on wheels. Is it resentful that it came from Building 19 and ¾ or ⁵/₁₈ or whatever, the local buy-it-for-less-for cheap (where I always spend more money than I intend. Hmmm. How cheap is that, really)? Great, my luggage has an inferiority complex (my luggage has baggage, tee hee). Or is it just what it was: cheap? I can’t answer these pressing questions, but I do know it bites my ankles, twists in my hands and insists on having a handle just a leetle eety bit too short for my height. Rolling is its least favorite gait.

I hope you didn’t think this was going to turn into some deep metaphorical story about personal hang-ups, psychological inhibitions and traveling on the airplane of life or relationships or whatever. Nope. This is about airports. I’ve always really liked airports. I like to think about them and muse about how they used to be and what they’re like now. I mean, I grew up before the “all non-ticketed passengers must meet their parties at the baggage claim area” stuff. Non-ticketed passengers? Need I say anything else about that phrase? I remember how exciting it was, the building frustration about that passenger ahead serenely blocking your way up the concourse, because on the other side might be your mom, or your boyfriend, and their eyes would light up, and maybe there’d be balloons or flowers, but at least a big hug. And the huge, sliding disappointment when you got out the door and they were late…Now I know we still have some version of this when you get out of security, but there was something about combining that hideous 15 minutes when you’re half-crouched under the luggage racks because it’s better than remaining in that stinking little seat one moment longer, watching the people ahead of you in the aisle and wondering when that shifting will translate itself into real movement OUT of the plane, with the first brief freedom of walking up the concourse and yet not really being out of confinement and the rising excitement of only a few more steps…

I was once waiting at the gate while the previous flight emptied (here’s another fun one: de-planing. Un-planing? If I get back on am I re-planing?) and watched as each passenger got off carrying a flower and walked over to a confused but flattered young woman. By the end, she had a large bouquet, and the last person off was her boyfriend, who asked her to marry him. I guess I don’t think of the airport as my ideal place for a marriage proposal, but I love the way that young man had it all planned out, and enlisted his fellow passengers in a brief comradeship, just by buying flowers and carrying a photo of his girlfriend.

And what about how we all have the same luggage now? What’s that all about? Did luggage technology just take off (no pun intended) and now we all have to have the wheels and the handles? And every single one is black? I do include myself here, people, don’t worry. We’ve resorted to ribbons and tape to ID our stuff now. And I seem to be traveling with a new electronic object every year, so that I’m really only the sum of my cables. Bionic woman, here I come.

Anyway, I love to watch the sheer numbers of people. Any size, shape, outfit you can imagine. In my daily life I tend to forget the amazing amount of variety that exists in the world. And I think it’s sweetly bemusing how we almost always walk how we drive—on the right. Is it different in other countries? Can you tell the Americans in foreign airports because they collide with others, trying to walk on the right? I’ve been in foreign airports, but for the life of me, I can’t remember.

So here I am, picking at what passes for an egg roll (now there’s another amazing subject, airport food. I didn’t feel this way at first, but I think we may all be better off with just the snacks they serve these days. It’s hard to mess up pre-packaged granola bars. Of course, that means they can charge even more for what seems to be a salty fried egg roll type object, and they do) and reveling in the cheap industrial carpeting (how can that guy sleep on that stuff?), and the too-loud announcements, and listening to my fellow identically luggaged, laptopped, mp3’ed passengers speak in other languages on their cell phones. My bag is quiescent for now, but watch out when my zone is called, I barely have it under control.

For the boy who does not know the answer

Well. Lets just say I've had better days and leave it at that. Actually it wasn't really the day, it was more the night part. But I'll just tell you that tonight made me feel like an incompetent and leave it at that (a hard pill for a perfectionist). I suppose this could be humbling, but I'm not humble enough to take it that way, I'm just un-humble enough to feel shamed and upset and taking it personally. Boy, this ego thing gets tiring some days. What I want is something quiet and soft, like


Prayer in my Boot
Naomi Shihab Nye

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth
how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids
and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with boarded windows
and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given
and every future rough edge
and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep


You know what part of this poem I inhabit right now? I want to be the boy who didn't know the answer. What's more, I want it to be as full of possibilities to not know the answer as the poem seems to imply it could be. I want not knowing to be OK. And I'd like to breathe easily over every future rough edge. I'm not sure I can right now, but maybe I should put this poem in my boot.

Taking stock

Boy, have I got a lot of books. I mean, I thought it would never happen, but I finally have so many that I forget and buy duplicates once in a while. Or maybe that's just the senility creeping in. I'm finally making a catalogue of my library, so I can put it in my PDA so that when I go buy books I know what I already have. This brings out the anal side of me (right now some of you may be thinking, whaddaya mean BRINGS OUT?) and I feel like a dragon gloating over my hoard. Yeessssss my preciousssss, I do I have a copy of the 3rd P.C. Hodgell book in hardcover (so pretty, so shiny, yesssss) that I ordered especially since there were only some minute number printed...(and surprisingly, so does the Portland Multnomah County Library). That illustrates my book SF Fantasy nerdiness (all the prerequisites: obscure author, hard to find book, other connosieurs give a little gasp of delight and envy and I look smug). However, I am not above cheese, and have just about every Mercedes Lackey book known to man (OK, I will argue they're not ALL cheese, but most of them are and you know it's true because you can eat them like candy). Now, lest you think I am only a one hit wonder, I also have a respectable amount of fiction and a healthy poetry collection (big surprise). Then let's not get into the comic book collection (it brings up depressing finance issues)...
Here I must interject for those of you who don't know me: I do in fact dress well, am not hideously pale, have never played Everquest, have social graces, can cook, actually exercise and really do go outside. So that's enough of that stereotype.
Anyway, the truth is, I'm up to 220 records in filemaker (OK, another geek thing, but I guess you were warned when I mentioned the whole PDA thing) and I'm not even through the first bookcase yet (there are 5). I'll admit it freely, I'm a hoarder. The only time this is a problem is of course, when I move, which is unfortunately more frequently than I 'd like. (Next May, any takers on moving help?) Still, I am astonished by people who never read. I feel like an anthrolopologist in the house, noting no shelves, and lack of reading lights by couches, not mention rooms where all the furniture subtly points at the TV. I'm not going to get all self-righteous about the evil of TV (I've been known to turn it on myself) but I will admit I get twinges of fear when it's the only thing presiding over a room. I get this all the time in school "OHMIGOD how do you fine time to read a fun book?" I often respond to people by asking if they watch TV, and they usually say yes, and I usually say, well, I don't really watch TV that often, so there you are. I don't mean this to denigrate their TV decision, but it's sort of a stupid question in my opinion, since it's simply a mattter of time management. Theres only so many hours in a day. Since I am in vet school, there are very few of those I can dedicate to what I want to do. For me, not reading would basically be like not breathing. TV is amusing, but it's no substitute for breathing. Therefore I don't watch TV, I read. There are those who claim they can't put a book down and that this disrupts their studying life (like having to eat every chocolate in the box, it's so good I guess), and while I sometimes burn the candle a little too late, again I say, for me, reading is like breathing. If having to put the book down is a prerequisite of getting to read a bit, than I'll put the book down. Kind of an oxymoron, but if being able to stop reading is required, I can do that too. But that's just me. I have a framed article on my wall from The New Yorker. In it, Art Spiegelman and Maurice Sendak are talking about books. (And I love the fact that this article is not actually an article, it's a comic strip drawn by Sendak and Spiegelman together.) Here's the part I love:

ART: You're doing a book for grownups?
MAURICE: Kid books...grown up books...that's just marketing! Books are books!
ART: I suppose. But when parents give "Maus," my book about Auschwitz to their little kids, I think it's child abuse...I wanna protect my kids! When Nadja, my 6-year-old daughter, was asked what I do for a living, she said, "Daddy draws mice!"
MAURICE: Art...you can't protect kids...they know everything!" (section omitted) People say, "Oh, Mr. Sendak. I wish I were in touch with my childhood self, like you." As if it were all quaint and succulent, like Peter Pan. Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth! I say "You are in touch with your childhood self, lady--you're mean to your kids, you treat your husband like shit, you lie, you're selfish...That is your childhood self!" In reality, childhood is deep and rich. It's vital mysterious and profound. I remember my own childhood vividly...I knew terrible things..But I knew I musn't let adults know I knew..It would scare them.

I love this perspective. Books are books. The rest is marketing. I love the bit about childhood too--I couldn't resist putting it in--I love that: "you're mean to your kids, you treat your husband like shit, you lie, you're selfish--that is your childhood self!" But that's another blog entirely. Maybe next time. Anyway. I definitely have a lot of books. It's a good thing.

Candy corn, what kind of a person doesn't like candy corn?

I've been busy with so many horses lately I haven't had much time for contemplation. I'm also staying with some very nice folks I've never met before, and haven't wanted to hog their computer. I'm out in Bend, OR, externing at the Bend Equine Medical Center, which has been great. Before I left Portland, however, I made the obligatory visit to Powell's (the best bookstore in the known universe. Ironically, when I lived in Portland I could never go there because I hate torture. Bookstores when you have no money are definitely torture). Anyhow, I bought a book of poems, and so far my favorite is called "I Said Yes But I Meant No." You should read it.

I Said Yes But I Meant No
Dean Young

People are compelled to be together good and bad.
You've agreed to shrimp with the geology couple.
If you like one 85% and the other 35%
that's not so bad.
You need to like one at least 70%
and like the other not less than 25%
otherwise it's agonizing and pointless
like being crucified without religious significance.
Averages are misleading:
I like that couple 110% could mean
each is appreciated 55% which will not kill you
but neither will sleeping in your own urine.
One should like oneself between 60 and 80%.
Under 45%, one becomes an undertaking,
prone to eating disorders, public weeping,
useless for gift wrapping and relay races.
Over 85% means you are a self-involved bore,
I don't care about your Nobel prize in positrons
or your dog sled victories.
Of course there is great variance throughout the day.
You may feel 0% upon first waking
but that is because you don't yet know you exist
which is why baby-studies have been a bust.
Then as you venture forth to boil water,
you may feel a sudden surge to 90%,
Hey, I'm GOOD at boiling water!
which can be promptly counteracted by turning on your email.
It is important not to let variance become too extreme,
a range of 40% is allowable,
beyond that it is as great storms upon drought-stricken land.
I.e. mudslides.
Sugar, retirement plans, impending jail time
all are influential factors.
Generally, most data has been gathered
regarding raising percentages,
the modern world it is argued is plentiful
with opportunities of negative effect.
The tanker splits and the shore birds turn black and lose their ability to float.
Sometimes a good scrub is all that's needed.
A fresh shirt.
Shock therapy has never been fully discounted
and people have felt significant surges
from backpacking into remote and elevated areas,
a call home.
Yet the very same may backfire.
Thwanp, thwamp, the helicopter lowers the rescue crew,
the phone is slammed down.
Each case is profoundly nuanced.
like the lock systems of Holland.
Some, frankly, are beyond help,
but if you are a tall woman, wear shoes to make you taller!
Candy corn, what kind of a person doesn't like candy corn?
Tell that 70/30% rock couple you can not come,
you forgot your fencing lesson,
your cat just had a puppy,
your tongue is green,
you are in fact dying.

I've been feeling a lot of daily variances in in my self-like quotient, which happens a lot when I'm 1) in a new place, 2) really want to not act like an idiot 3) don't really know what is expected of me. All of which is has been true the last two weeks. I've really felt like that, like "Hey, I'm GOOD at boiling water!" Or more like, "hey, I'm GOOD at making meds and taking temps!" The desire to be liked is truly a curse at these moments. And the knowledge of both the curse's existence and its effects on you still don't help you get out from under its thumb. No matter what, your primary objective is to have people like you. How do you get away from such a fundamental hope? Well, so far as I can tell, you don't. You just find some days that your confidence shoots up to 90% and then poof, evaporates. Eventually, it evens out from over a few hours to happening on a less roller-coastery every few days cycle. Maybe I should go get some candy corn (although I guess I really am beyond help if I admit I'm not really all that crazy about candy corn). But I can repeat to myself in the bad moments: "Hey, I'm GOOD at boiling water!"

G-H-O-S-T

I learned a new game the other day. One of those amuse the kids on long car trips sorts of games. (Do they still play those anymore? I believe these things last through generations, a long line of fifth graders teaching fourth graders, teaching third graders, etc., despite the keep-'em-quiet DVD method advertised in many family marketed cars these days. I mean, kids still sing some version of "On Top of Old Smokey" that involves the inappropriate demise of their teachers, right?) This one is called Ghost, and I learned it in a car, driving around CT.

Here's how to play. One person thinks of a word. They say the first letter. The next person then adds a letter, also thinking of a word. The next person continues this hypothetical word, and so on. Now, the rules are: if you finish a word (i.e., say the last letter), any word, you lose. This is not a game where you can use compound words. For example, you can claim you really meant to spell 'carburetor', but it doesn't matter because you have spelled 'car' no matter how you slice it. (This begins to suck if you play with people who know lots of obscure three letter words and are sticklers in a competition.) If you add a letter that doesn't spell any word, you can be challenged by the next person. If you are challenged, you must then tell the word that contains the impossible letter combination. If it's a real word, and you can prove it, the challenger loses. If you're bluffing, you lose. When you lose, you are given the letter 'G'. Once you lose again, you are given the letter 'H', until you spell 'GHOST'. And then the game is over. I guess. Or you play it again until your eyes bleed, ot something.

OK, it maybe sounds a little inane, but first of all, it's more challenging than you might think. Depending on the number of people playing, you have to be careful which words you end up spelling. We had four people, and because the English language has lots of five letter words, it took us a bit to realize that being the starter of the word was the surest way to lose. Secondly, you can get out of losing in ingenious suffixlike ways (I was spared from defeat when I added 'I' to C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T, to make 'celebrate' into 'celebrating'). And, as in many of these word games in the car, you actually get silly over them and find random bursts of laughter possessing you.

The thing that seized me about this game was the way the first letter presents you with a whole universe of possibilities. Someone says, 'W' and you are off. Is it 'whispering' or 'wimple'? 'Whiffle,' 'waffle' or 'widget'? Each successive person narrows down the elusive word until it become almost impossible to spell anything else. (I can't help having the slightly gruesome image in my head of a string of letters, nailed to the floor by their little downstrokes, squeaking as the next letter is captured and added. They bulge and turn various colors until the word is done, and poof, you have a turnip that gallops off into the night.)

Often the starter is proprietary. You get a small feeling of frustration when that next person says 'U' after you were thinking the word was 'calliope'. Quickly, it turns out you were spelling cucumber after all. "That's not how you spell 'calliope'!" you say, only half-teasing. It's a funny opening and closing of the universe; a minute example of how choosing closes doorways until a concrete idea or action is born; how deciding something is so may actually make it so. It reminds me of how we create the world between us, by bouncing this word back and forth until it is polished and formed, maybe not the word we originally wanted, but hey, we like cucumbers and really, there's no good place for a calliope in the house anyway.

Don't get me wrong. This is not just some benign cutesy idea, as if we always are happy with the final result, or even able to get there. Have you ever watched two people who have a falling out decide "how it is" between them, meaning the other person has been defined as a "he always" or "she never" and neatly put away to be scorned? And you can't convince them otherwise, because there is no more room for negotiating in that area: the word was chosen, it was a bad word, and we don't say those. Never mind the fact that it may have started out differently, never mind that each person picked a new letter that led inorexably downward. Dearest was really demon all along. Don't get fooled into thinking people are always happy exchanging cucumbers for calliopes.

I'm not happy about ending something with just dark omens. So I can't stop there. But lest this get precious and start to turn into a new positive upswing about isn't it great there are so many possibilities, or, it's all about attitude, isn't it? I'm going to say that isn't it funny what car games bring up in some people? You could either say they often see the world as a fractal universe: greater meaning presed into the mundane activities around us, or you could say, boy, they think too much.

Yup. You're right.

Homish

I'm prolific, when I want to be. Or I'm on a roll, but prolific sounds better. Anyway, I thought I'd mention that I'm not actually in the minor outlying islands of eastern MA right now. I'm actually back in my adopted home, Portland, OR. This is where I want to say I'm from, when people ask me that question, but honesty and a funny compulsive attention to minor details keeps me from omitting all those other years when I lived in other, less fond places. (It'll come up eventually, I think, so why bother pretending?)

I think we underestimate how much places define and shape us. I cannot tell you how foreign I felt yesterday. You see, I took up running while in vet school. This is in general a good thing, since I mostly enjoy it (this, coming from someone who failed the presidential fitness test in school every year, with pleasure), I think I need to stave off the circling vultures of my mother's metabolism, and vet school is designed to make you hideously chair-shaped. But I never once ran in the six years I lived here. My friends all looked at me funny as I pulled on my running shoes.

I find in myself some strange mix of New England definitions of daily life and comfortable old Oregon habits. I don't really like where I'm living now. No, let's be candid and say I can't wait to get the hell out of there. But I can't say I dislike all the things I've collected (image of myself, rolling through space, attached as if by velcro to new crumbs and dog hair and books labeled 'obscure facts about goats') in my new habitat. But every time I return places, it's a bit like that hole I left and now re-enter has been closing over, scarring a little, and a little the wrong shape or size. I feel this way often at parties, when people with non-medical lives talk about their day and I'm not sure they want to hear about the prolapsed uterus I helped replace that morning, and that I learned that cheap rain gear is a really good idea in this situation.

However, I'm coming to accept this new feeling as something I might just have to live with. Maybe my two selves will learn to merge. Or maybe I'll be a Clark Kent-like figure, or some kind of secret agent with a top-secret identity: a life of danger, a life of mystery! One self runs while the other eats too many sweets! One self holds forth on the cultural wonders of opera, while the other is covered in blood and uterine juices! So glamorous...Isabella Ninja (another story that's really a you had to be there kind of moment) strikes again. Who was that masked man who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men...yes, I know I do get carried away.

But I have no complaints at all about seeing all my lovely friends and my lovely city. And because I am thinking of them, and I told my friend who henceforth shall be called "Goatcheese" (believe me, his idea, NOT mine) about this blog, and he noticed my penchant for the parathetical and suggested a format which will require me to have a website which I'm not quite ready for but considering, I decided to post the charming example he put up for me here. I have another dear friend who many years ago started her own tarot deck, a project I secretly thought was doomed to atrophy into disinterest, but it turns out it didn't, and I mention this because I was blown away by how beautiful they are. See for yourself. Hooray for homey cities peopled with funny quirky friends.

today, we honor the cows

Today, I helped deliver a calf. He was a big boy, and his mom was having some trouble. So we helped. Doesn't make me want to give birth, I must say. But he made it out OK. So in the grand scheme of things, if we were all utilitarians at philosophical heart (a pure utilitarian weighs all factors that they can think of in terms of "good" or "bad" and takes the direction which leads to the most "good," much like a nice long pro/con list for any perplexing dilemma. This is, naturally, an oversimplification, since we are supposed to be in a parathetical aside, and not in some huge overblown discussion about philosophy. You might imagine utilitarians get into a bit of trouble--good for you only? Good for all but you? Unforeseen consequences? How much does lying to someone about their new haircut, for example, weigh in regards to the possible ass-whupping you might get if you tell the truth? Etc.), I have added a plus sign to the universe. Take that, universe. So, in honor of you, the cow, a poem. (Whooboy, this blog is sure taking a turn for the verse! Sorry...No, you know what? Not sorry.)

Afternoon With Irish Cows
Billy Collins

There were a few dozen who occupied the field
across the road from where we lived,
stepping all day from tuft to tuft,
their big heads down in the soft grass,
though I would sometimes pass a window
and look out to see the field suddenly empty
as if they had taken wing, flown off to another country.

Then later, I would open the blue front door,
and again the field would be full of their munching,
or they would be lying down
on the black and white maps of their sides,
facing in all directions, waiting for rain.
How mysterious, how patient and dumbfounded
they appeared in the long quiet afternoons.

But every once in a while, one of them
would let out a sound so phenomenal
that I would put down the paper
or the knife I was cutting an apple with
and walk across the road to the stone wall
to see which one of them was being torched
or pierced through the side with a long spear.

Yes, it sounded like pain until I could see
the noisy one, anchored their on all fours,
he neck outstretched, her bellowing head
laboring upward as she gave voice
to the rising, full-bodied cry
that began in the darkness of her belly
and echoed up through her bowed ribs into her gaping mouth.

Then I knew that she was only announcing
the large, unadulterated cowness of herself,
pouring out the ancient apologia of her kind
to all the green fields and the gray clouds,
to the limestone hills and the inlet of the blue bay,
while she regarded my head and shoulders
above the wall with one wild, shocking eye.

it's time for not me

I can't quite drag myself off to bed without dutifully putting something up here. You know, it's awfully hard to keep in touch with that inner you when she's asleep. I have a case of the humdrums, so it's time for a bit of inspiration (I had a large dose of stupid talk radio today: I think to truly enjoy call-in shows you have to be bitter enough to like listening to fragile misguided people get crushed by their icons. No wonder it's a nasty aftertaste).

Advice to a Prophet
Richard Wilbur

When you come, as soon you must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God’s name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?—
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone’s face?

Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which we beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

baby photo steps

Ahh the stapes, incus and malleus. Taken by some enterprising folks on a real 'Fantastic Voyage"

Green

First of all, I'm upset with the lack of photo-ness on my blog. I got as far as the downloading of the photo-doohicky that allows you to upload pics from your computer. But I still haven't installed my scanner software into my new frankensteinian computer. (My old computer, Edith* was euthanized and then reborn into new form. Nice trick. She is now split into neat Freudian categories: the Superego, affectionately known as "Mutt," the id, "Edith Jr." and the ego, "Jeff." This brings me to a brief but hopefully pithy aside about my own love of naming inanimate objects. I'm the embarassing type of person who searches for just the right name for a car. I mean it--it might take days to hit just the right name. Now, you can argue that it's related to some squishy feminine trait, as in, real men would never name a mere machine. I'll ignore you, but you can argue, if you like. And yes, as a matter of fact, I do like quiche, you must be right. Or we can get metaphysical about the attempt to humanize the increasingly mechanized and isolating technological world. Hard to beat that theory. I guess sometimes I'd just call it whimsy. A superstitious but {mostly}amusing whimsy. And sometimes I think it's because it's hard to curse well at something without a name. But there's something decidedly satisfying about finding just the right name. Something about the power of names, maybe, as in the old wizardry of true naming begetting power over a thing; something about the richness that comes with charactering our lives with certain personalities we ourselves create; something about the power of belief. I mean, have you ever named something by accident? That name just stuck. And it comes to mean something to you, the way Jennifer will always mean that girl you hated in elementary school, or how you always find yourself attracted to men named "Chris" {which stinks for you, since that name's awfully common}. Woe betide you if the personality you've accidently created comes to mean inconsistency, or maliganancy--that lemon of a car, or that evil computer--for in these cases you are making your own destiny. That is, if you are the type of person to name inanimate objects.)

Anyway, I was going to say that I'm green with envy over my dear friend's recent travels and housey projects. Recently I have begun longing for a more settled sort of spot, without projected life upheaveals. I can't say I'm unhappy with school. Today, for example, was a great day. And yet...and yet. I have felt so unfinished for so long. I know this desire for "finish" for the compelling illusion it is, but the definition of compelling illustrates the problem. Maybe it's only the Mass disatisfaction kicking in harder. Maybe only the ticking of that infamous bioligical clock (talk about the power of naming--what might we look like as a nation without that cultural mythos?). Maybe it's related to ice cream for lunch (yesterday) and chocolate pecan pie for dinner (today). Maybe spring fever? Are all of these on your current rule-out list? Treatment: supportive care, make-up to conceal that fresh grass cast to the skin, a bolus of see-how-much-fun-vet school can be? We'll have to wait and see how she does...

*I swear to you, the first day I started my computer, the computer icon or some welcome screen said something about my computer, Edith. No, I don't partake of the things you suggest, nor have I ever been hospitalized. For anything. Her name was just Edith. Why do you find this hard to believe?

other things I'd rather

In other words, I'm typing to that infamous muse, the reader, instead of thinking of good probing questions to ask the dairy farmer tomorrow. We have a herd project (heard of what?) for this rotation, where we look at different aspects of a dairy and try to figure out areas of improvement. And because I imagine that one of the edifying thing about reading blogs is that you get a glimpse of a truly different daily life, here's a doozy for you. You are running a dairy, milking about 300 head, mostly Holsteins (what most people picture when you say "cow"). This means you get up pretty early, milk for 4 to 5 hours, take an hour break to clean the parlour, and then start up all over again. Not to mention that you need to feed the cows, watch them for signs of heat, lameness, general badness, and scrape the barn (a true necessity, if you know cows). The coolest thing about dairymen is that they can tell you what cow it is by looking at them, often only looking from the feet and udder perspective (most parlors being sunk low in the floor). I wish I was as good at names, only I guess most people'd look at you a bit sidelong if you stared at their feet and crotch before you said hello ("Oh, HI Madge, didn't recognize you at first--sitting behind that desk and all."). But to prove a point that was long ago proven, all specialties have their lingo, and dairy farming is no exception. So I'm trying to look cool, here (can't help it, you would too---do you like to look like an idiot? I didn't think so), and come up with some real professional questions. OK, you internet dairyman/woman you, so tell me: TMR or component feeding? How's your average calving interval? What's your cull rate, and from what? LDAs/RDAs common? Ketosis/milk fever/fat cow syndrome (you heard me, fat cow syndrome)? See, you hadn't ever really thought about it, have you? Every subject only becomes infinitely more complicated when you delve into it--could you run a dairy farm? Maybe you already do. But I bet most of you couldn't. This infinite complication fractal-like theory is why I'm a splitter, not a lumper, but that's a different blog. Later.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I was stuck with talk radio again today, and I could barely stand it. (Do you think I'd fail the rotation if I accidentally pulled out a few crucial wires?) So in self-defense, and to rid my brain of that nasty talk radio aftertaste, I thought it was poem time. And this time I was kind to any poetry haters out there, 'cause I waited till the end. This is one of my favorites, but it really should be read aloud. Don't be shy, unless you're in one of those internet cafe things, in which case, go ahead and be shy. This is why I despair of modern vocabulary. We just don't get to roll our tongue about words the way we used to. I'll admit, for some this one may need an intro: it's about a lovely wet spot, somewhere wild, with a brook ripping through it. Would that today's environmentalists could be so eloquent.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.

33. Inversnaid

THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth	5
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,	10
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;	15
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

You go, Gerard.

am-bu-la-to-ry

Am' bye le tor i adj., n, pl. -ries. --adj 1. pertaining to or capable of walking. 2. adapted for walking, as in the limbs of many animals. 3. moving about; not stationary. 4. Med. not confined to bed: ambulatory patient. 5. Law. not fixed; alterable or revocable: ambulatory will. --n. 6. Archit. a place for walking: a. the side aisle suurounding the choir or chancel of a church. b. the arcaded walk around a cloister.

Which may mean only that I love my father's old American College Dictionary from 1956 (beat that, you stupid definition websites, who seem to think that ambulatory only means "able to walk" --of course it's simple for your immediate needs, but who can beat the feeling of that thin, fragile paper as it slips between your fingers, and those delicious indentations as your fingers search the alphabet!), and it does indeed have fun illustrations (one of these days I'll scan in the illustration I just passed, the alpaca, which seems more relevant to my life than it used to), but if you're getting the hang of this, you'll guess there's another reason for the definition. You are so smart, my dear. But first, I must still praise the multitudes of definitions provided by my dear dictionary. Can't you imagine? The silent monks thoughtfully contemplating their way around the ambulatory? And I'm afraid I will not be able to go through tomorrow without thinking, "where there's an ambulatory will, there's a way." This is sort of a bad joke, as you will see.

Anyhoo, I've currently just started my ambulatory rotation (A-HA), meaning I drive an hour south every day to ride with many vets to go see many cows, horses, sheep, goats and alpacas (and mules and so forth). And we do some ambulating, but mostly we drive. It has been refreshing to see the back pockets of CT looking so lovely (though I have NO idea what the point of having a small model light house in your yard is, or why this is a common lawn ornament here--do you worry about driving your lawnmower into the rocks while you cut your grass in those stormy CT waters?). And really, this ambulatory thing was only a big lead in to the fact that I am in the car a lot and one of the vets listens to a little talk radio now and again (for me, an awful lot like the mysterious light house lawn ornament question, but hey, at least in this case I know the person in question has a pretty good sense of the ridiculous during these times) and I got to thinking about how the country, and maybe even the world is a lot like vet school social life.

Let me explain. You see, in vet school you are sitting in a classroom with about 80 other people. Not once in a while, but all day. Every day. And when you go home, well, most of the time you can't go run about with your non-vet school friends who might give you some refreshing sense of reality. So it gets pretty incestuously small town gossip around there. As in, the person who you aren't mad at but thought perhaps you needed to discuss something with is pretty sure you're mad five minutes before you mention to another completely different person that you need to talk to the original someone. It's not just the smallness of the fishbowl, it's the twisting of the intent. And hey, unfortunately, people have a little nasty side that loves to speculate and talk. And lately I think that TV news and talk radio are simply big, bored vet students, who are sitting next to you in class, or on your couch, and saying "hey, didja hear about so and so? I hear she/he..." I listened to one radio jock decide that, on pure speculation, that there must be another man involved in some romance scandal. And then everyone who called in was equally convinced. Quite astonishing, in a crap-I-can't believe-the-power-of suggestion-really-works way. But man, are we nosey creatures in this country. And any silence is simply something hidden that we're pretty sure we know about. And you people think your teenage girls are bad, the way they talk about boys!

Slippery words, how we twist you and claim ignorance. And that dictionary seemed so innocent about 20 minutes ago...

bring back the sing along

The dog chewed up my passport. It actually happened last week, but it was only today that that fact became relevant. What fascinates me is how there really is no physical person I can blame for my morning, and yet, three reasonable human beings (I'm making assumptions, probably even about myself) could not actually follow the dictates of common logic. Let me backtrack. First of all, I'm nearing the end of my third year of vet school. Trust me, it's relevant. These days I've finally been allowed out of the classroom and around some honest to goodness animals, clients and diagnostics. But what things like post offices don't know is that, well, all day, every weekday (and some weekends), I'm really not going to be allowed to jaunt off to the PO for a visit. So today I get the opportunity to go get my passport renewed, which is good because it expired in January, and I'm off to the Dominican Republic in November, which is also good. The fact that my passport was in a plastic sandwich baggie to keep all the pieces together was...hmmmm...not so good.

Now. It's one thing, I suppose, if the dog had made it through that laminated page with my photo and relevant stats. But those things are nice and tough, made to withstand the rigors of sweaty tourist next-to-your-skin paranoia wallets. So you can clearly tell, yes, this is a US passport, yes, that's me, yes, yes, probably a good chance it used to be legal before the mistaken dog toy identity thing. But because of the dog damage, it's no longer legal proof of my citizenship.

OK. First of all, chances are good that because I've had two passports issued to me in my lifetime, I haven't fooled anyone into thinking I might be from Swaziland. But, alright, they don't know that I haven't been over to the consulate and demanded citizenship from that country over my own, I guess I can give them that. But I'm really having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that in one form, a little blue booklet with my photo has great meaning and import, and voila, it becomes--becomes, mind you, as in your seat cushion becomes a water floatation device--something altogether other, magically devoid of meaning, somehow inactivated, but still with my photo on it. And people scoff at the notion of amulets. And you can't yell at the post office guy (well, you could, but you would be an asshole), he's just doing his job. You can even tell he thinks it's stupid. And you can't yell at the lady at the passport offfice, because for one, you can't reach the phone, and for two, she even would probably agree. And yet, no passport for me, until my mother unearths my birth certificate from some drawer many states away from here.

The truth is, I've angered some postal god(ess?) somewhere, proabably for parking in front of my mailbox and making my postal guy get out of his truck to deliver my mail, or by sending something bookrate that wasn't actually books (you've all done it), or maybe for even greater messaging infractions for which I am unaware. Because the insult to my injury (and do you have any idea when I can predict my next opportunity for the post office will be? Guess. Don't pick any date in the month of May.) is the fact that I was given the webaddress for some website who wanted me to pay 30 dollars for the birth certificate, and then 25 dollars for the Fed Ex shipping. And the drop down menu implying all the while that maybe I'll get some other shipping option. Let's see--what delusional mind headlock do they think I'm in? Last time I checked, the post office was still doing its other job OK. I get it. Time to burn expensive stamps and buy one of those stupid framed commemorative coin things, and light candles under it. Or just wait for my mother to unearth the thing--right.

Anyway, this story has nothing to do with the title of the post, because that was from the end of the day. Tonight was the every-so-often coffee house at school, where some of us prove that once we had other lives besides veterinary texts and exams. And traditionally, we end with a good old fashioned sing along, campfire style (though campus police really put the stop to the campfire idea). But tonight everyone scattered to the winds. I don't know, I guess I'm one of those isn't this egalitarian what-a-shame-people-don't-feel-free-enough-to-add- their-voice-even-if-it-sucks-because-you-know-in-a-sing-along-you'll-
be-drowned-out-nicely-but-end-up- having-fun-without-punishing-others people. Next time--NO break before the sing along, people. We're wise to your tricks.