skinnyblogcladdink

Warning: This may explain everything.

the way the City’s lit up each night, you’d think the Builders were trying to manipulate the weather. the orange night-lighting of the City produced a spectacularly red sky last night, as the grey-overcast-by-day was transformed into a beautiful, soft and uniform, well, orange, actually. every few minutes, the sky broke-out in night-purple patches, but it was soft orange from horizon to horizon most of the night. but then, it rained all day today, so, depending on the kind of sailors you’re talking about, it might not actually have been a particularly delightful result.

though i, for one, like the rain, despite all the inconvenience and general, er, wetness.

back to the drawing board for the Secret Societies and Mystics that Secretly Rule Everything, i guess, if they do, in fact exist. something i personally strongly suspect given the fashion for all that feng shui crap that befell the City i believe less than a decade ago.

incidentally, when i say "crap", i don’t necessarily mean to say i don’t believe in what i’m talking about (nor that i do, either), or think it’s particularly dumpy information. it’s just a pronoun i use for all sorts of, well, crap.

just so we’re clear.

(this post is dedicated to my friend Jaymi, who just e-messaged me to say people actually do read this blog, which means that at least one person will read this, er, crap. thanks, jayms.)

well, i’ve gone and done it. handed my resignation in this morning. there’s no turning back now.

i don’t feel any different from the me i was yesterday or the day before or the month before or the year before… if anyone was expecting a kind of catharsis for me, which, i believe, in a way i must have been, well, there wasn’t one.

there’s just the same me, only for the first time in my life, somewhere no one seems to have expected i would ever find myself: nowhere.

which may not seem a wise place to actually choose to be, but i think it’s as good a place as any to finally start doing things. and anyway, it’s where i personally thought i’d always been to begin with.

plus, i never believed the average human capable of True Wisdom… not all the time, at any rate.

an old episode (not that there are any new ones) of the much missed (for me) Muppet Show had this running gag that’s been going over and over and over in my head since yesterday. i don’t know why. if i put it here, maybe it’ll go away. or get into someone else’s head. or both. that would be nice.

Muppet#1: The night is dark, but still.

Muppet#2: Still what?

Muppet#1: Still dark!

Muppet#1 and #2: Hohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoho!

that’s about how it goes. it goes through several more variations throughout the episode.

try some of your own, see how it works out. or not.

it’s never a good sign when i break out the ol’ Downward Spiral. it’s been a while since i’ve felt myself up to the pure Evil the devastating pulse and throb of NIN at Reznor’s peak hatches like a Lovecraftian nightmare inside of me. i feel more than up to it now.

my throat is raw.

i went out on my first non-job job today. no, i haven’t put in my resignation officially yet, and by publicizing this i may be getting myself into some trouble. probably not, since no one reads this crap anyway.

still, for now, i will refrain from biting the hand that fed me today. not that i was fed very well. but that’s all you’re getting out of me.

for now.

*

you see all kinds of things, looking down at the City, during these long hours of the night, when the lull is broken only at odd intervals by the occasional 18 wheeler or public utility vehicle.

i’ve seen an SUV tailgate a cab: sparks fly. the cab’s rear fender falls off. the cabbie steps out of the car, starts walking towards the perp. the SUV takes the inside lane to pass the victim, and races away. the cabbie shakes his head, gets back in his vehicle, gets back on his way.

a monk: orange robes flying. bald scalp glistening in the fiery street light. he races by in a jury-rigged tricycle. caution to the wind.

a giant: falls on his face, to be picked-up by his friends and carried home, knocked insensible by alcohol, or the hard concrete pavement, or both.

street nomads: migrating down the street against the flow of traffic, they yell at indignant motorists. either side cries for dominance of the asphalt-paved lanes.

the City sky on fire: night after night after night…

and tonight: two pigs, gutted and spread-eagled, lying on the tail-end of a long, otherwise empty truck. their gaping body-cavities yawn at the night. their cries left far behind, never heard by the City, as It watches their undignified ride to god-knows-where.

side-by-side. empty. dead.

just the sort of thing you’d find here, for no better reason than because i, sleep’s fugitive (or, perhaps, sleep’s guile-less hunter), happened to see them. bear them witness. somehow, i feel fulfilled.

is this the role of man, then? to bear witness to all these meaningless things? to pretend purpose to this random universe?

is this all i’m here for?

kind of makes you wonder why you even bother reading this crap, dunnit?

i may be the only one who got this, but in case anyone else got the forwarded text message regarding the risks entailed by giving-in to the right-handed impulse when picking up a celphone, a quick google led me to this from Medscape, and this from the European Journal of Cancer Prevention:

A case-control study on brain tumours included 233 patients aged 20-80 years and alive at the study time. They had histopathologically verified brain tumour and lived in the Uppsala-Orebro region (1994-1996) or the Stockholm region (1995-1996). Two matched controls to each case were selected from the Swedish Population Register. Two hundred and nine cases (90%) and 425 controls (91%) answered the questionnaire. Results are presented for the whole study group, as given here, and for malignant and benign tumours separately. For workers in the chemical industry the odds ratio (OR) was 4.10, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.25-13.4 and laboratory workers OR 3.21, 95% CI 1.16-8.85. Radiotherapy of the head and neck region gave OR 3.61, 95% CI 0.65-19.9. Medical diagnostic X-ray of the same area yielded OR 1.64, 95% CI 1.04-2.58. Work as a physician gave OR 6.00, 95% CI 0.62-57.7. All three cases had worked with fluoroscopy. Ipsilateral (same side) use of a cellular telephone increased the risk of tumours in the temporal, temporoparietal and occipital areas, with OR 2.42, 95% CI 0.97-6.05 (i.e. the anatomical areas with highest exposure to microwaves from a mobile phone).

now, before you go on about me putting stuff on my site without permission, let me say this: seems to me someone merely misunderstood that bit about "ipsilateral" celphone use and the statistical significance of having more right-sided brain cancers in relation to having more right-handed celphone users. or, just as likely, somebody is trying to wrack-up some extra profits.

but that’s just me. what do i know, right? i’m giving-up being a doctor.

*

i meant to blog about this the other night: the two tallest skyscrapers on the City Skyline as seen directly from my balcony have the same pattern of window lights turned on at night. the lights form an almost perfectly parallel set of wiggly lines that suggest either the spirals of a double helix, or two identical Asclepian staffs standing side by side.

yes, call me paranoid but seems to me that forces continue to align against me. and bein’ paranoid don’t mean they ain’t after you.

quite. that’s it from me for now. if any of you notice anything missing from this blog, pay it no mind. all is as it should be. i hope.

i never really got the whole "3am is the devil’s hour" bit. i know why they say it is, and i know all the anecdotes and urban legends and facts about what happens to people at 3am. or at least i used to. but in my experience, 3am is the most honest hour of the day; doesn’t matter what you say at any other time, doesn’t matter what denials you dish out about what you said over that bottle of gin at 3am–what you said at 3am is Truth. with or without the gin.

so here’s my 3am confessional. sans gin.

all my life’s felt like a lonely slog through my own personal hell. maybe you’ve had the nightmare: wandering around someplace totally alien to you, with no idea who you are or what you are, who you’re meant to be or where you’re meant to go. there are people around you, and you love them, and for all you know, they really do love you back. for a while it gets comfortable. frighteningly comfortable. but somehow, you know, the comfort is all wrong. like the boy and the Ice Queen in the Faerie story; it’s just wrong. and none of them really know you either. and even though they are all around you, those people, you just know, deep down inside where it counts, you’re alone.

the scene shifts, the faces around you change; a new group of people for you to love and, hopefully, love you back. but you’re the same. still lost. still alone.

that’s what it’s like for me. and everytime i try to do something, to take my own life in my hands, i feel the burden of it just get heavier and heavier. more people come into your life, more people you learn to love; more people who have to be left behind.

because, no matter how much i say i know deep down inside what it is i’m meant to do, what i’m good at, what i like to do and what i would like to do, who i am and who i’m meant to be, the fact is, i don’t. i really don’t.

no matter where i end-up, i always feel like i’m just looking. trying to find something. something that could very well be myself.

thank you to all the people who’ve been there. who’ve tried to understand me, whether or not they succeeded, or felt they did. to all the people i’ve convinced, as i’ve tried to convince myself, that i know where i’m going. that that’s where i need to be. these are the people who make it really hard for me to go on, to keep looking. it would be so nice to be able to settle down, finally, to the version of myself that will have all these people around. but i know that isn’t something i can do.

so i keep moving. keep looking. i wish i could say the end was in sight. but it’s not.

this thing i’m doing now, following my so-called-dreams? i have no idea where it’s all going to take me. and though you all make it so hard for me to go, i’d be lying if i said i’m not glad you were there at that particular point in my life.

small comforts are all i get. the rest is loneliness.

i am Alien.

it’s really only coincidence that i’ve decided to break my self-imposed blogger silence/exile today of all days. the blog date probably won’t corroborate this, but it just turned the 13th of January where i’m writing this from, and it’s a Friday.

yes, i agree, it’s appropriate.

only i haven’t really anything to say here right now, only that i’m counting down to what, if i don’t end-up losing my nerve, will be my resignation from my current field of work.

i don’t think i’ve ever mentioned on this blog that i’m a resident physician in pathology. there, i’ve done it. and now that i have, i’m counting down to not being one anymore. chalk it up to an overdeveloped sense of irony, only it isn’t. it’s just me being too scared to make big decisions until the last minute.

yes, i know it isn’t irony in other ways, but that’s far from the point.

the point is i’m counting down to a Change, one that, i hope, though it probably won’t be the right one, will be the right one for me.

so what, exactly, do i plan on doing? in the more than appropriate words of Wynona Ryder, in that deranged chick-flick, Girl, Interrupted, i plan to write.

wish me luck. i have yet time to turn chicken. only i really hope i don’t.

a moment from my self-imposed blog-silence to bring you this important cry-for-help type message:

i find it encouraging that i feel more satisfaction spending a couple hours on a book review no one else has yet shown any interest in than i would have at the end of a 9-hour long day at the hospital with half a dozen consultants and clinicians at my heels…

…hang-on, what the hell am i saying? what the hell do i think i’m doing? i must be INSANE! i know for a fact that i am nowhere near where Cory Doctorow is right now! the audacity! who do i think i am? aw, crap, here it comes…

YYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHRRRRR!

sorry. i needed that. do i feel better? not really. not enough consonants. ah, well…