I was sitting in lecture today listening to my professor speak on the philosophy of chiropractic medicine, and I realized out of nowhere--I am passionate about school and my career and my future for the first time in my entire life. I can't even explain it--I've been walking around feeling like I'm in love for the past two weeks. I had to go in for open cadaver lab this past Saturday--didn't care. I was there for twelve straight hours of class and study and lab today--whatever. I seriously love every single thing that I am learning about so much and can see myself at the goal so clearly. And the coolest thing is that our professors are just as excited for us and we are, and in such a modest way. They want us to learn everything and be experts in our field and fluent in the language of our trade, but overall they want us to be compassionate healers and public servants. Normally this type of speech would make my eyeballs roll back in my head and activate my gag reflex, but it's so sincere that I don't. I feel inspired in a way that I don't think I ever have in my life. Like I've found my calling. I never thought I would get to say that.

Painful Life Lesson Number 1.

I've finally started school and three days in have realized that I am probably going to be learning painful life lessons all over the place. So I'm going to share them in the hope that others won't have to suffer as I may. Or at least when they suffer they will have seen it coming.

I made a promise to myself that this time around (aka the last time around) in school I was going to really bust my balls and be generally AWESOME. Like you know that person in every class that always has the answer and is always taking charge while everyone else just hangs around thinking "I really wish that guy would just go to hell, they are exhausting me"? That person.

And I've been doing a really good job so far (even though let's face it, its not a hard pace to keep up three days in). I've been keeping up with the reading really well, volunteering answers, meeting with my profs, all the behaviors that I have observered to be affected by these mysterious "good students" over the years.

But being an awesome brown-nosing douche comes with a price, as does everything in life. And I'm hoping that I paid the entire price today because I really can't imagine owing any more after this.

We were in Gross Anatomy lab for the first time this afternoon, which is the basic intro anatomy lab where you dissect a cadaver with 5 other classmates. And I'll be hoenst, I was sort of nervous. Because I've never cut open a dead embalmed body before. But I've seen autopsies, which put me a step ahead of some of my classmates who had never seen a body outside of the context of a coffin before. So I felt ok. A little excited even.

They wheel out my cadaver, and one guy takes off the vinyl sheath, but everyone is being really timid about removing the cotton shroud, aka the final layer between US AND DEATH!! So I go for it, rolling it back and putting it in a tupperware bin full of embalming fluid. Then everyone is being timid about making first incisions. So I go for it, cutting down the midline, laterally above and below the ribcage, this is easy, there isn't even any blood!! So I'm feeling like a dissection rock star, high fiving myself for my boldness, feigning modesty when the prof compliments my skin-flaying skillz but secretly soaring on the wings of confidence and egomania.

Then it happens. God smacks me back down to earth. And God's pimp hand is strong.

In slow motion (for me), my elbow bumps the scalpel tray beside the dissection table. A pair of forceps shoots, as though spring-loaded, into the air, and splashes into the space between my cadaver's flayed skin and exposed back muscles. And a generous quantity of embalming fluid shoots into the air, gracefully arcing through empty space before landing on my shirt, neck, hair, face, and--wait for it--in my mouth. In. My fucking. Mouth.

My reaction wasn't dramatic or anything. I just sort of stood there like a stunned moose, and the three guys who saw it looked at me in horror for a second until I lightly quipped "whoopsie! haha brb fellas!" Then I went into the hallway and quietly dry heaved for a few seconds before toweling myself off and returning to my station.

The I have learned a valuable lesson--if you are a cocky asshole, even just in your own head, the universe will take you down. Sometimes, as in my case, it is immediate. Sometimes, like in Kanye West's case, it is slightly more delayed. But it always, always happens.

ah chills

I was really fixated on this song as a kid, and even now I think it's one of the best songs of all time.

This is my prayer for today.

I know I make fun of 9/11 a lot, but that's just in reaction to people being such melodramatic d-bags about it. But in reality, I can't believe it's been 9 years since all of it happened. I guess this is the first time I've noticed nearly a decade pass by with such speed. Or maybe its just the trauma of that particular time, I don't know. Either way, whenever I really think about that day, or see news footage from the event, its as if it just happened. All the emotions are still very vivid and fresh--I don't think I'll ever be able to forget that helpless terror, in those few hours before anyone really knew what was going on. Wondering if this was the beginning of the end, and then chastising yourself for being so naive and bible-y. But still wondering.
And then there was that sick sense of unity. One of my most haunting memories from that day was sitting at a stoplight on my way home from school. I looked over at the stranger in the car next to me, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly what they were feeling, exactly what they were thinking, and exactly what they were listening to on the radio. It's a unity that I am pretty confident I will never feel again, that sort of anonymous connection between countrymen born of an epic and uncommon tragedy. I hope I never have to feel it again. It was beautiful in a way, but above all it was terrible, and cost way too much.
I suppose that was my generation's tragedy though. The way Pearl Harbor was for my grandparents. Or the way JFK and John Lennon were for my parents. Its the thing that will define the moment we all grew up. And its the thing that will age with us, as future generations fail to understand because they weren't there, or begin to forget entirely. There will come a day when the average teenager won't know the exact dates of the World Trade Center tragedy, the same way that I don't know the exact dates of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, even though I should. But we as a group will carry it with us forever. And it will always feel like yesterday.

I heart Carl Sagan

I've been a sort of lapsed Christian over the past several years. Most of this is due simply to development of logical opinions and moral beliefs that seem to be excluded from the realm of Christianity, more often than not in what I believe to be extremely short-sighted and ignorant ways. Lately though, I've developed a popular-type interest in things like physics and special relativity (god that looks so nerdy spelled out, but it is beyond fascinating if you give it a chance), and this interest has led to to a lot of stuff by Carl Sagan. And, strange as it sounds, I feel like Carl Sagan is leading me back to God. In reading his books I've noticed 1. that he had an extremely high regard for women and was very sympathetic to their struggles with sexism, especially in the scientific community, which in turn gives me a lot of respect for him, and 2. he had a larger scope of imagination and vision for humanity as a whole, including religion, that I have ever read in a scientific author. The oddest thing about all this is that he himself was a self-proclaimed agnostic--he was quoted as believing most in Einstein's description of God as the sum of all physical laws in the Universe. Fair enough. But in reading his fiction, I feel as though he wrote out all of the questions and feelings that I have about religion versus science and allowed his characters to wonder open-endedly about all of it, without being so vain as to think he himself as an author could ever answer those questions. In the end he gave the reader all the evidence he could and simply allowed them to decide whether their faith is enough to take them the rest of the way. I, being a trillion times less intelligent and much less scientifically minded than he, have realized that my faith is not only enough to take me the rest of the way, it is actually strengthened when I allow myself to question it in the first place. The entire reason that I have had such qualms with religion in the past is the unwillingness of the church to allow people to use their brains (which are, in my opinion, themselves a miracle). Its as if they know that if people think too much about it, they will come to their senses and leave. And this is true for some--but in the end isn't it better for believers to be followers of their own will rather than prisoners of ignorance? It's amazing to have found that luxury in a very unlikely place.

black on black (on black)

Kelly showed me this like a year ago and I watch it about once a month. So amazing.