random abstractions in cardiovascular physiology

So studying the heart in all its physiological glory, I've been thinking a lot about the raw, material heart of human anatomy, and the weighty, (yet) aesthetic heart of human emotion.

The human heart will keep beating--wholly divorced from the body.  All it takes is a bath of physiological saline solution.

Lately, I've also been thinking a lot about the nihilistic realism that seems to plague our postmodern, post-punk, post-individualistic society.  It seems kind of trendy to be angsty and depressed.  But I think more than that, it's trendy to deconstruct the illusory visions of beauty that we were once raised with.  Beneath the guise of a picturesque 50s family is institutional oppression of female individualism.  Beneath the guise of fame and glory is a string of heroin addicts and depressives.

Beneath the thick, chest wall of our human thoraic cavity is the human heart.  And we rip it right out to analyze, to expose.  To say.

This is real.  This is the human heart in all its deconstructed, deglorified reality.  It looks like an iron fist wrapped in blood.

The human heart will keep beating.  But I wonder.

Is this more real?  Is it really more real to see things laid out in gruesome, surgical excision?  Some may say, "gruesome nature."  But the heart, beating and thriving in its natural physiology doesn't look like an iron fist wrapped in blood.  It's encased in a system.  A living, breathing system--giving life and oxygen to everything it touches.

So what, then, of our society?  I wonder if the deconstruction is like putting a human heart in physiological saline solution.  I wonder if our society is becoming more and more like an aquarium, creating synthetic environments for us to swim circles in our heads.

I also wonder what it means to divorce our hearts from our bodies.  To be objectively emotionless.  To choose functional states that are less than human.

Unfinished thoughts: are some things better left unseen?  Is it more real to experience the dynamic reality of our hearts, in vivo, in life?  Maybe the unseen can be a beautiful, mysterious reality that, upon excision, changes into something gruesome, something mechanical, something synthetic...

Hrm... ok yeah.  I think cardiovascular physiology is making me go insane.  Please see above for why I am going through practice exams at a pace of approximately 40% average productivity.

So I feel like a poser because I've already read xanga posts about this.  But it all just strikes me so deeply that I feel like I have to say something.

So the NY Times published this article on Mother Teresa's "Crisis of Faith."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415-1,00.html

The general gist is that Mother Teresa (who I deeeeplyyy respect) lived a spiritual double-life.  She gave and loved and served more than anyone in her time.  She was self-sacrificial.  She was a saint.  But according to the Times article, she also corresponded with her Catholic superiors through a number of angst-ridden letters.  In them, she doubted.  She scorned.  She felt spiritual emptiness and disconnect.

I have a few things to say about this.

First of all, I think it's ridiculous that they're publishing a book of these letters against the wishes of Mother Teresa before she died.  Seriously... I think I would just die all over again if say... my JOURNALS were published after I died.  I almost wanna go burn them all RIGHT NOW.  Like... holycrap.  We all write SO MUCH STUFF that we don't mean.  And even if we mean it, it's often a hyper reality--an outpour, an expression of our sensational human emotions.

I think what gets me the most, though, is this whole cultural concept of consistency and truth.  Okay.  Sorry guys.  I know, I was actually down to earth for a while.  Ahaha... we're about to ascend back into the stars.

So this year, I spent some time reading some of the Prophets in the Old Testament.  Isaiah, Hosea, and Ezra.  Something that struck me was that they were all constantly angsty and full of negative emotion.  They were constantly wearing sackloth and sitting in ashes.  They wept a lot too.  But I think what struck me the most was their level of empathy with God's people, with humanity, with the human condition.  Prophets seem to have this level of awareness--of humanity, of God, of humanity's position before God--that allows them to see this painful reality of human disconnect with God.  A disconnect that the rest of us are too jaded to even notice.

Now... I'm not saying that Mother Teresa was necessarily a prophet.  But I do believe she was close to God, despite these letters that describe feeling otherwise.  But I know that even in my own Christian life, like the prophets, I feel this extreme spiritual despair at times.  But it's extreme despair coupled with extreme hope.  I mean... is it just me, or do we all experience both great pain and great joy?  Great disaster and great triumph?  I almost wonder if that's at the core of our present reality: desparately fallen, but eternally created in the image of God. 

I believe that every spiritual saint lives with these contradictions of faith.  Two opposing forces pulling so virulently at times that it's like the Earth is falling on its own axis.  Gravity is caving in.  But here's the hook: gravity also holds our solar system together.

GK Chesterton writes, "I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere.  Everywhere else the creed made a moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions.  Being a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is persent in its full strength or contributes its full color.  Christianity alone sought by this same strange expedient to save both of them... by keeping seemingly inconsistent things side by side... in a sort of artistic violence."

But I think the key is this: any truly compassionate person (e.g. Mother Teresa) understands too well the reality of disconnect between the human race and God, as well as the reality of God's mercy via Jesus on the cross.  Mother Teresa loved people more than 99.9% of the human population is capable of loving.  That comes from somewhere.  Mother Teresa also understood pain, dryness, and weariness more than most of us.  Some say it's a contradiction, I think it's all the same.  It all flows out of love, empathy, self-sacrifice and compassion for the world at large.  And only God has the power to hold such apparent contradictions--two dramatically opposing colors side by side in artistic harmony--within the same nexus of love and hope, despair and compassion.

Instead of studying histology today (like I really should have been), I walked around the city all day:  reflecting, journaling, reading (non-medical) books... studying faces.  There are so many people in NYC; and interspersed here and there, you see so many sad faces.  Tired feet.  Blank stares.  And I started asking myself... what would it look like to really feel compassion for all these people?  All of these thousands, maybe millions of people--going through crazy things, really hurting from all the disappointments of their daily lives?  Because honestly... I saw these faces, but they're just faces to me.  I didn't feel their pain.  I didn't even blink. 

"How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?...  For all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream."  CS Lewis

What if the dream were a reality that the rest of us just couldn't grasp?

Okay... okay... so I admit... my last entry may have been a bit melodramatic... *cougH*

It's true.  Med school is this INCREDIBLE exercise of the left brain.  And because I'm in left brain mode... I'll be writing this entry in list form.  But I guess it's also true that my right mind is still here too =) 

Adventures in Medical School: Part 1

1.  My life now: wake up, drink coffee, go to lecture, drink coffee, study, go to lab, study, sleep... dream about spinal nerves and dorsal root ganglion...

2.  I can't even begin to describe how it feels to hold a human heart in your hands.  And no, I don't mean smooth and slimy.

3.  I've written two songs since I've gotten here.  I thought I'd just be exhausted all the time--totally devoid of all creative juices and funk--but oh no!  Med school is oddly inspiring.

4.  I am the black widow.  Hair-flippage and all.  *Oh oh and all my classmates are super cool too =P

5.  New York City = Chicago ON CRACK.

6.  It really is an awesome thing to have friends from afar still encouraging and cheering you on =)  Thanks guys for listening to me... emotionally unstable and all.

7.  Mneumonics are my new boyfriend.

8.  Hey... I made up a joke: "Why is my life less angsty in med school?"  "Because I DON'T HAVE ONE!"  HAHA... hah... get it??  Get it???  Uhm... yeah...

9.  Philosophical inquiry: so we've been working on cadavers.  (Cadavers Are Dead People is also a mneumonic for the 4 branches off the thoracoacromial trunk off the axillary artery--*smile* Sap taught me that.  Dude... I owe you).  But anyway... there's a tremendous sense of awe at working with the bodies.  Seeing how things work together, fit together, lay together... but at the same time, I think most of us get in there and we're surprised at how easily we can dissociate the humanity aspect and "get the job done."  Traditionally, people have seen this as "medical dehumanization."  But I don't think that's true anymore.  I think there's reality in that these people aren't there anymore.  What's left is just a body.  What's missing is something we find much greater, much more meaningful--the soul.  And I realize... this is probably a somewhat morbid train of thought.  But I think we fear death--not because the body stops functioning and we physiologically die.  I think it's the disappearance of soul that scares us.  Our bodies persist--and maybe that's why materialism seems more real at times.  Matter doesn't just vanish like the soul does.  But none of us can deny that something HUGE, something really meaningful, something that makes everything click, something... intangible... is missing from those bodies--and so it is as it is.

*disclaimer: so I don't mean to downplay the magnimity of the human body.  I walk into anatomy lab everyday blown away by the reality that I get to work with my cadaver... something so sacred and so beautiful that I can hardly refrain from worshipping.  It really makes you get what Jesus meant when he said the body is a holy temple.

10.  "Bad fortune is really just as good for you as good fortune is, in fact, it is better, because bad fortune teaches, while good fortune deceives.  When the worldly toys in which we foolishly place our hopes for happiness are taken away from us, our foolishness is also taken away, and this brings us closer to true happiness, which is not in worldly things but in wisdom.  Bad fortune wakes us from our deceptive dream, and thus is good for us--assuming, as the courageous and honest ancient mind nearly always assumed, that we need truth mroe than comfort, we need not false happiness but true happiness... what is our end?  Modernity answers feeling good.  The ancients answer, being good."  Peter Kreeft

This is why I've decided to like med school. =)

Adventures in Losing My Mind... Again (Part 1)

It's weird, but I feel like going back to school--becoming saturated in academia, intensive education--is, in a sense, losing my mind.  Losing my mind to...

exhaustion, weariness, dullness. 

a narrow field of vision, frame of focus. 

science.

death--a lack of art, creativity, freedom, energy, and expansive imagination.

It's like... my mind is no longer individual to free thought and motion but confined to the rigors of medical information, to a bombardment of material, to... professional specialization.  And my mind is consequently just spinning clear out of my head.  Maybe I just feel like I'm losing my mind because I know myself; and I know that medicine is tremendous sacrifice.

God, I ask myself: what is this feeling?  Is it dread of challenge, hard work, an undertaking of effort?  Is it cynicism to protect my heart from failure and disappointment?  Or is it fear... just simple fear...?

Sometimes, I wonder if I've got it all wrong.  If I've somehow missed the point of what this life is all about.  Other days, I think: no... this... this is what it's all about.  Days when my life is not a question but a quest.  Days when the gravity of life doesn't quite crush me down to Earth.  Days when I feel as if I've discovered a diamond in great darkness--deep underground--because that's where we find diamonds after all.

You know... lately I've been thinking that maybe... maybe gravity is a good thing.  I mean... it holds the universe together, doesn't it?  And maybe... just maybe... it's strong enough.  God, You're strong enough.

To hold my mind together too.

A good friend visited me in Chicago recently and seemed to notice all the little things happening around him.  A grand piano strapped to the back of a dusty blue truck.  A porter potty sitting on a second-story boardwalk.  High bikes, water taxis, and megabuses.  Kids running, jumping, and getting drenched on the fountains in millenium park.  Statues of Jesus.  Lately, I've been noticing things too.

I was walking through Wicker Park the other night and saw a church sign vandalized with spraypaint.  The grafitti read (in crimson red): "Jesus saves the ignorant."  I thought to myself: "Praise God."

I saw a girl on the street the other day with a flippin' sweet emo haircut.  The kind where it's super layered and big on top, thin and straight on the bottom.  I told my friend I wanted one too.  He responded, "Liz... if your hair were emo... it would cut itself."  I think that joke made me smile the rest of the day.

Instead of going for an evening run tonight, I went for a slow evening stroll to soak in the night sky--let the dusk kind of... settle in my mind with the setting of a dusty day.  A little old hispanic lady turned the corner with her horse of a dog--possibly twice her body in mass and strength; followed by a large, middle-aged african american man with two fufu little pups--the kind you'd see on "Best in Show," or in Elle's purse from Legally Blonde.  At first, I was like... "...what the flip."  But then I realized: I think there's something within us that aches for man's best friend to complete parts of us which are lacking.  For who doesn't desire music when she has poetry to produce a song?  I mean... if you're frail, why wouldn't you have a brute of a dog?  And if you're strong, why wouldn't you desire pups of beauty?  And ahh... I also realized, walking into the setting sun, how much I'd miss this.  The crazy, step-stopping, eclectic, ironic, strange, diverse and beautiful neighborhood that surrounds me.

I moved to Chicago exactly 9 months ago today; and in little over 2 weeks, it'll be time to pack up and move out again.  It's like the city is really really pregnant.  I've been inside of her for 9 months; and it's about time to cut the chord.  (Haha okay I really don't know why I've been using so much pregnant metaphor lately.  I think I spend too much time talking to Dr. D about OB).

It's weird how much a year of stillness can give you.  I feel like my entire life has been on the move.  I've been reaching and striving.  Trying to grasp.  Gasping for air with each swirling wave buoying me up unto the next.  This year has been like... meditation at the bottom of an ocean.  Underwater silence, with those soft, audible waves that only hit the ears as such when life is filled with water (ahah... hah... like in an amniotic sac.  Okay shoot.  I ruined the movement of this prose.  Please regain composure.  Center.  Focus).  I feel like it's only in those deep, free, and truly expansive moments that my mind is really alive.  Awakened after years of feeling like mush, overwhelmed by highway noises drowned in open air.

Ahah okay.  Sorry, enough with the ethereal narrative.  Seriously though, this year has been brilliant.  I don't know if I've ever been more "myself," more "authentically-me" in all my life.  And I look to the sun with this huge grin on my face, knowing that the world is enormous and I--humbled and awed at this startling realization--have infinite possibilities before me.  Haha... sounds insanely hopeful, doesn't it?  (Maybe reading GK Chesterton makes me joyful.  After all, he was this insanely fat and jolly philosopher man.  Sometimes I wish I could be a fat and jolly philosopher man too.)

But man.  I also wish I could be just a little more fearless in times like these; because amdist the joy, amidst the thankfulness and humility of being blessed beyond belief, I find myself deathly afraid.  That things will fall apart.  That I'll become severe and self-focused.  That melancholy, not joy, will emerge as the permanent pulsation of my soul.  That I'll grow weary of the people around me.  That I'll lose sight of those things which really matter in life.

Sigh.  I wonder if that's the point.

GK Chesterton says, "I have always maintained that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings.  This eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress.  If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin.  You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is--the Fall." 

Honestly, the thought of constantly reinventing myself, constantly and eternally revolting from the fall within, makes me really really tired.  But then... maybe this year is living proof that it's really not tiring at all.  And maybe... it's this realization--that I will inevitably fall to the end of my life--that gives me a fighting chance from becoming all those things I fear.

And you know... constantly reinventing, constantly being born--birth.  It's really a beautiful thing. =)