our dead grass

sometimes you have to write down memories, out of fear of forgetting them one day.

cruise was awesome!

*meeting everyone during the first night!

*going to late night eats

*chilling in an empty dining hall late at night and playing never have I ever

*listening to Mark tell us about throwing cereal out his window

*finding out J liked me and trying to kiss J in the elevator

*hanging out in the hot tub

*running around on deck in the middle of the night

*telling myself this was an experience that would turn me into a different person for college

“ didn't he also pee out his window?ohohoh and he went to a gay bar nightand an old man tried to buy him a drink “ - E

I miss childhood.

to fill in the details for later

*first club night

*trying LSD / hike, and everything else at CWRU

*Halloween 2FA + alcohol

*Martin Garrix Molly

*Pot brownie at random house party

*Locos - first night and spoken word which night?, Asian Festival, second night

*party at my place 2nd year

*Eskimo party w ?

*YAYA - belt, trash

*Chilling with N, B, R over the summer

My first time seeing and touching a dead human. It is a jarring experience and I meant to write about it immediately afterwards.

It is not grotesque or gory, just jarring.

The man looks so real. Especially the detail in the face and hands. Human, almost. But he is absolutely still. Even a sleeping man breathes, exhales a little moisture, and gives off a little heat. But the room is cold, the body cold, and it certainly does not smell human. When you raise a scalpel to him, you expect him to stop you. To wake up and chide you for even daring to try.

At the same time, another part of your brain is trying to process the cadaver as an object. Laid out on the table like a tool to interact with. But it is so large! What else do people lay on a table that is over five feet long and one hundred pounds! Only machines. Yet this one is not metal, it is cold, but it is made of flesh and soft. It is definitely too big to interact with.

And lastly, after you get used to the face, to the hands, and make your first incisions, watch the formaldehyde drip out like tears from under the skin, you think of their family. That they had kids, and loved ones, and that a long long, but not so long time ago, that they were kids too. And that one I will be laying on the table, or my mom or dad, in the hands of strangers.

And this zips through your head in a second, like a reel on fastforward, and you shake it off, and get back to work.

After what feels like six months, but in reality 3 weeks, of medical school I finally think I have a non-zero amount of knowledge. Coming in, I was aware that I would be surrounded by extraordinarily mature, intelligent, and frankly, better people than myself. However, I didn’t know how I would act. Whether or not I would find myself giving up in the face of challenge or exhaustion. Instead, I have found role models and friends through my struggle. I am jealous of the brightest in our class, but in a inspirational and non self-loathing manner. Another interesting tick: I didn’t realize until now that I didn’t really trust other people. I was always quick to dismiss other people’s opinions and even my style of leadership was to lead, and not create. Here I can put my self and my ego aside, ask questions unabashed and be eager to learn from every single person around me without hesitation of their correctness.

I remember the first deck of yugioh cards I had. Standing at the end of the checkout aisle, me and the ‘I want it’ tenet of American capitalism against my mom and my dad like some sort of deranged anti-marriage.

I took that shit home and played the fuck out of it. Not really. I’m not sure when I learned to comprehend what I was reading, but the way I played and taught my brother to play was completely wrong. Of course, I split the forty cards with my brother but kept the blue eyes white dragon for myself. What a good younger brother...growing up I leaned to win but was (and am) uncomfortable with legitimate competition. Guess I taught my brother what failure meant, and to dream big in the face of adversity. But there’s always a trade-off. I learned to play the system itself, to sit down at the right tables, while my brother can try past the point of obvious and consistent failure without anxiety.

Three year deja vu. Still better than that one night stand, but they’re all bodies against the wall.

My mom was right. Keep a journal, because there is going to be one day where your memories aren’t memories anymore. Thinking about just the past four years, I get a vague sense of unease at my inability to remember certain events. Don’t I want more than to remember 2013 as ‘fun’?

goal: go to sleep before 12. get a good 7 to 8 hours of sleep.

Greed is wanting a life you can no longer have. Is it greedy to dream, er no, to think about piano? It's 4:30am, pick one: Anki citric acid cycle flash cards open in one tab and Spotify streaming Joe Hisaishi in another beckoning you to stop everything, drop everything; the university piano is a brisk walk away.

I finally understand the allure of Miyazaki films... their youth and modulated nostalgia resonates so well with the human desire to find life in a world we resigned to perceiving as inert. He finds that jewel we didn't notice slip away in the jolting transition from child to adult and seamless passage of time..and offers it momentarily back to you.

There is a power (a giddy perverse kind of power) in being able to forwardly embracing what others shy away from, whether it's studies, lifting, or some fucking rain. Walk against cars roaring by towards a singular destination, tearing up evanescent tails of mist, consuming hunched errand-runners...isn't there a beauty to knowing what they perceive as a paranoid injustice is our opportunity to become alive?

I used to hate rain, I mean fuck who doesn't? It makes sense I guess. There's nothing I could say to convince my self that I would ever enjoy loitering at a bus stop praying for the school bus to come. It's easy to love rain when we're staring out from the dry side of a window. "some people feel the rain, others just get wet". Ironically, I adored the idea but after playing under Wednesday's storm, I get it.