Plane, Ubahn, and Rail 07/20

One of my supervisors had mentioned a phenomenology exercise she was assigned while completing her degree: to describe coffee for a week without using the word coffee. The dark liquid on the flight from Chicago to Paris felt well captured by this quote for 1984: “It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine.” 

On the flight, the woman next to me had some sort of therapy-level psychology degree, but was on her way to see her long-distance husband in...Algeria, maybe? I can't remember, a North African country? They had met through his brother who worked as a lawyer in the U.S., she had initially tried law school but dropped it. Her husband had a large farm and so she only did a bit of consulting now as he could support her fully, but I still struggled to understand what it would mean to study to be a therapist and then not want to be a therapist. For the better though, if that's not what she wants to do, that she doesn't do it. If I remembered her name I would look her up, but a month on and her name escapes me. 

I was pleased that though Yosef arrived earlier than me, he needed to go through customs, resulting in him only waiting for me for only half an hour before we met. I had already gone through customs at my layover in Paris, then gone to brush my teeth and reapply deodorant - a travel tip from my mother (our? does mentioning my brother necessitate using our mother here?) After that, in desperation, I had eaten sushi at the counter while I waited for the second flight. Sushi that came with sweet soy sauce packets, much to my dismay and bewilderment. When I did land in Berlin, I was glad to see my brother’s face, even though he snipped at me before we had even made it to the Ubahn, likely in response to me telling him what to do. Older-sister habit I am trying to kick. Yosef pointed out the cloth-towels at the airport restrooms, a seemingly endless single roll of reusable towel.

We made our way to Zimt and Zucker, a café recommended by my friend Bianca’s sister. I asked if we could sit outside since otherwise our suitcases would be in the way, but the hostess responded there are no more spaces outdoors, and that our suitcases will be in the way regardless. She seated us at the same table as a couple who arrived shortly before us and had ordered what seemed like chocolate with milk poured over it. They stirred it and it broke up the chocolate a bit but never really transformed into chocolate milk and they left without quite finishing it. Yosef got a Berliner Weisse, a drink I had almost forgotten existed: beer with sweet, flavored syrup mixed in. I drank a cappuccino and we both got crepes. The cappuccino was the first in a series of disappointing drinking experiences. It turns out the American way of defaulting to a double shot for a larger quantity of milk is not the standard elsewhere. A few frothy milky mistakes finally caused me to reconsider my drink order.

We sat around awhile after figuring out how to get to Dresden, using the 1euro bathrooms that take place of the free public restrooms we have in the US. We had meant to use Deutsche Bahn, which includes regional rail, but we were far too tired to navigate another transfer and ended up opting for a more expensive direct train. A Muslim woman asked me how to use one of the other ticketing machines and I gestured at our suitcases to explain that I don’t know my head to tail here. A large Russian-speaking family sat on the bench next to us. Finally, we got on the train and found seats, and Yosef and I took turns sleeping on the train as the countryside pulled past us. Our Airbnb was a short walk from the train stop and thus concluded a full day of travel.

inflated

Why does the intellectual life sometimes feel at odds with the stupid risks of youth? Haven’t most great artists and thinkers lived great lives - really lived, thrived, felt, been hurt - held insight and ignorance simultaneously? Maybe, even, it’s impossible to write (authentically - a toxic word, steeping through the liver as we drink our way to inhibitions end) without first diving into some sort of simplicity (which is never truly simple, or everything is always simpler than --, or whatever it may be.) The cerebral is contained within the rest of the body, depends on and feeds off of the happily (death-driven?) pursuits of the body as we meander on the path of existence (but not just existence: life, awareness, and once again the idea of thriving). 

Hotline bling has been stuck in my head for the last few days, and it is my fault. 

For months I withheld extensive interactions with my co-workers. I went out drinking with them once and later felt like I should have left earlier. I went out again when someone was leaving and did leave earlier. The adrenaline-rushed and boredom filled existence of the halls, the repetition of “here’s a toothbrush” mixed with “I have his right arm” is filled with people who made me want to be careful. I said “working here is like an abusive relationship: you can only be with the people here because a) the weird hours mean that you cannot hang out with anyone else and b) the people here are the only ones that will understand what you are experiencing.” Someone said “It’s so hard listening to people complain about their work after a day here: oh, you had a bad phone call at work? I feel SO sorry for you, someone spit in my mouth today”.

To the point: in spite of my avoiding it at first, I have by now found myself ingrained in this group. I got invited to a birthday dinner of a smaller circle, and after I came Launtylaunt dug at me, telling me that I’m part of the clique, retaliation because I gave them shit about being cliquey for months. The next day I attended a bbq. I find them more and more ingrained in myself. I would not be friends with them if not for this job - but then, I chose to work here, and so did they. I kept thinking careful careful, until suddenly I found myself not so careful. In May I wrote to Kelsey “We bundle strangely”, which is still true. But this tide of people drew me into the fold. I wish I had been writing more as it came along, begrudgingly, uncertainly, cynically, untrustingly, judgmentally. I want to make this whole, here's the first attempt at patching up the hole. all I can find to add: May 4th: i think maybe we are friends, but not the kind of friend, at least not at this point, that will last beyond 'this point' -- this job.  July 4th:  (two of the supervisors are, for lack of a better word, grooming me for the position. It comes with a lot of flattery I don't know what to do with). One of my coworkers pushes my head in a way that a brother would do, and I'm hoping that's all he means by it. I glare at him every time I speak too softly and he tells me to talk in a 'big girl voice'.

Launtylaunt and World are both cocky. They know this, we tell them all the time. They think they are amazing but they also tell the people they like how amazing they are. When the drink flows so do the compliments. I sit there thinking that if I’m not careful, my ego will be so inflated that I could be thrown into the Charles with weights and still stay afloat. Our mouths fill with cigar smoke and they and tell me they want me to be a supervisor - have been telling me for months, Laungtylaunt called me a selfless bitch one time when I rejected a scheme that I thought was ineffective, but would have been to my advantage. They listed off four reasons I should be a supervisor, reasons crystallized with opportunity. Let me, through them, gloat. Even if all of this is false, it is true that they said this.

1. you are the smartest person in the hospital.
   “this is not true but I will not argue with you” and they repeat themselves. Matt alters it, he says “you have the kind of mind most people envy” thinking I can swallow this better and I think how little how little how little (how can I not smile softly to myself at that? how can I not fiddle with the glass of wine in my hands? no matter what it is both nice and horrible to hear)
2. you have a heart like no other
   a similar reaction internally, but I don’t bother fumbling with the words.
3. you know what’s going on
   nobody ever does
4. you are ready, and have been ready
   nobody ever is

I never finished my dinner, World and Launtylaunt ignored me when I said I was fine where I was by the bathroom door, having vomited, picking me up and lugging me to the black couch instead, where I slept for a little bit. We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.

kaleidoscope

I keep having words but not putting them together here, like a moving kaleidoscope and I can't quite snatch up the shapes and colors before they disappear from before me.

green glass - I went to the Somerville porch fest with Adian and Margo. We shifted from venue to venue, and with the change in location came a change in population. Old married couples with grandchildren in one place, people in their late 30's at another, those in their 20's and early 30's at a third. It's kind-of perfect though, the idea of a porch fest. People come out and share their own music with the people living around them, using the cross of urban and suburban space: tightly packed houses stacked next to each other -- creating a town-wide bbq-party. Green bottles filled with beer in hand, music dances in the air.

teal strand - I dyed my hair. People keep asking way and I say "I just felt like it" except to Paras to whom I said "whenever I change my hair it's because of a boy" and didn't repeat myself when he didn't hear.


a feather, refracted - we went camping: the boy who used to live in the room I live in now, Therese, Paras, and Amy. I had never gone camping without the supervision of those a generation above me! I had never gone camping without Russians! We snuck around trying to scare each other throughout the day, like real adults. We had about 7 different types of 'dogs' to accommodated so many different dietary restrictions. We pitched a couple tents and didn't get wet when it rained. We toasted marshmallows for breakfast and swam in a lake with ducklings.

a mirror slate - at work, I now only have 32h schedueled per week, and only work day shift, which means I no longer feel like I'm chronically jetlagged. Unless I pick up a shift, I always work on 3South, on of the acute units, like I had asked. All of this makes me much happier, I didn't even realize how much weight had been placed on my chest until it lifted. Two days ago I had a few tears escape my eyes while at the nurses station, in front of people. One of the patients had screamed and called me a bitch, and I also found out that I was almost certainly mandated. Usually I am ashamed when people see me cry, but this time I apologized and it felt okay. "Relax" Cole told me, and gave me a one-armed hug. I didn't get mandated. She apologized to me the next day "you know you are one of my favorite staff! I was waiting for you to come in after yesterday so I could apologize!" I said, yes, thank you, but wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to apologize? Think about what you think will help you to control your temper, before it boils over. "You are right!" she said. We will see.


how many times have I turned the kaleidescope?

lilacs

One patient who has been there for a while: now not too paranoid to leave her room, hasn't showered in a month, thinks she is the fbi, keeps showing me and others her badge, making a motion by her hip as if lifting up a cover of a wallet. I tell her I don't see it, and I confirm that she has told me that she is the FBI. She doesn't like this – she now thinks I'm the Illuminati. When I denied it she said that I'm a bad liar. When I was dissuading her from going to check on someone who was getting restrained, and denied that I was killing him, she called me a selfish bitch. In the past, she has told me I look like her sister. A change of pace.

This morning, I woke at 9am, ate a banana, sat on the couch drifting off. Talked to Adrian. Went onto the balcony and continued writing a letter. Talked to a neighbor who was also trying to drink coffee outside, until he was herded back indoors by bees.

Another patient is here for a second time, having left in a state of catatonia – waxy movements, silence, not eating or drinking for days until his face looked shriveled. Now he is actively psychotic, taking his clothes off in the middle of the hallway, trying to kiss everyone and spitting at them when they do something he doesn't like. A different pace.

Having finished my lettering for the day, I smelled the lilac I had ripped off a neighbors bush in the middle of the night, and started off to a plant shop 40 minutes away. It is a hot day, but I returned, joyously, with lupin, angelface, sun parasol, clear crystal and some droopy plant, the name of which got lost in transport.

I had to restrain a man yesterday who was trying to hurt his foot. In the past he has claimed auditory hallucinations, but this time he said he was feeling not great. He demanded meds and ignored any healthy coping skills. After a very long time here, it has dawned on all of us that he is borderline – this is not something that is ever written in a chart. He did not like it when I told him that slamming his foot into a door repeatedly is not the appropriate way to express frustration, that medication is not the only part of the puzzle to feeling better, that he has to wait a little bit for the medication to kick in because it's not going to start working one minute after he has swallowed it. A shift of pace.

Max M is biking over to meet with me for something some iced drink.

This day in May has turned stiflingly hot, good for noon-day naps and lethargic conversation.

what next?

The first restraint I had to do I didn't feel bad about -- angry males that are just trying to set each other off, even if they are schizophrenic drug addicts, don't make me feel as sad because that behavior, in this case, had little to do with the diagnosis. I think I bruised my rib because about a month later it still hurts, but that night I was running on adrenaline. I joined Paras and Amy after my evening shift had ended, meeting them at Charlie's Kitchen around midnight, and then the three of us went to the The Field. It was a Friday night and for once it felt like it, still wearing work clothes, watching people watching people.

This Friday there was a large goodbye party for a co-worker who left for nursing school, and it feels like everyone who is working here now has either been here forever and is old, or is about to leave, or has already left. We have a new CEO and DON that don't understand that everything they are doing is hurting them (but us first) like trying to increase census without increasing staff first. It means people get mandated (like I did for the overnight last weekend) and are less likely to help patients and more likely to get hurt. Everyone I could learn from is leaving, and that's a problem for me.

I went to the Hakusai exhibit with my family and it was great. It's a totally different type of printmaking than what I've done, and it's strange to realize that this one wave is the face of all East Asian art.

(which is to say, outside the hospital, it is spring and I am happy.)

YP in GB

patient: how old are you?
patient: you're too young to be working here.

Monday morning I disassembled a bed, drove it to Central Sq, and assembled it in a small room on the fourth floor of a building where I now live. Young Professional in Greater Boston. I don't make enough to be a yuppie. After meeting up with Sorrel, I spent the night at my parent's place.
It snowed (again; it snowed when I interviewed for the room too)

patient (with history of assault, paranoid schizophrenia; thought I was lying about my name): I'm going to smash your head against a wall!
[a few minutes later, affect back to normal, apologized. and again, three days later when we met in the cafeteria] I'm sorry about the other day.

Tuesday I could not fall asleep terrified of taking the bus the next day. I noticed that the ceiling in the room is pretty high. I remember how the street sounds at night.

patient: how tall are you? model height?
[and] you are the nicest nurse here. What do you think I should do? Should I try to get out of here as fast as I can, or should I stay here for, like, ever?
[and, five days later] are you a model?

Friday night I read at 1am, woke up at 5:40 for work, and then, fully intending on a quite night in, found myself at Middlesex (club) with Paras (roommate) and his lady friend and not-lady friends.
I hadn't been out dancing in so long, never mind at a club, certainly a first in Cambridge. Danced with someone briefly who had a boner, saw someone basically jerking off at me, and got berated for not dancing with anyone [with him] by yet another gentleman. Ended by dancing with some tall, blond, boring looking guy, not for too long. And to top it off, two guys from my high-school were there as well - a past I do not care for. But I did dance, and I thank humanity for dancing.

patient: you are a good doctor-person. From my first day here I thought that.

Saturday I met up with Yulka at Harry's Bar & Grill. We've both moved out now, both have jobs, both assume things we shouldn't sometimes - but we drink different drinks.

patient: she has a soft angel smile and a hard glint in her eye. 


Sam's boat is in North Carolina but he came here from Germany. We got to convenience-store-land which is not in a convenient location to get to by subway. It was freezing. I was glad to see him.

patient after patient after patient: what ethnicity are you? Portuguese? Brazilian? Spanish?
best response to my reply (by one who claimed to be in love with me): I knew it was something unusual.

bubble gum

I taught Sima how to blow bubbles with bubble gum. He was so gleeful with his first one, and then right away decided he wanted to blow a bigger one. Are we never satisfied?

Thanksgiving was the usual blur of people and food, different topics spiraling out of control, music in excess, bad poetry with better people. I was told to shut up, and listened as the entire American Black population of the US be called "those fuckers". Watched tiny girls made into superstars while their mothers glowed close by.

Spent a day doing nothing over coffee with Max M. and had margaritas at Sunset grill&tap with Yulka to celebrate my new job, followed by tea and Settlers of Catan, the sleepy settler loosing but I was sober for the ride home and how I wonder about those two girls who died this year at Bard in the hit-and-run. Faces of the past will meld into faces of the future, I want to find an apartment and hope I'll like my new job and arrange my life so that I read and sing and dance and paint and all those other things I consider to be living.
I make it beckon, and then I come.

chronology?

7) Sara said "мне очень нравится как ты обнимаешься. очень крепко"

1) went to the MFA with Max. Saw Jamie Wyeth and didn't like how rubbery his subjects are and structureless his painting.

4) lunch with Tom.

2) drinks and food at Whiskey's with Max. He convinced me to leave my number for the waiter. We tried to go in a straight line and ended up back were we started -- that was before the drinks.

9) read a post Hannah wrote in France. I liked this one.

8) I sent out my resume, interviewed the same day, got a job offer the day after that and declined in the evening, stating a realization that hours of 10:45pm-8:45am wed-sat nights are not optimal for my functioning.

2.5) went blazer shopping at a thrift store with Yosef for his semi-formal. Very difficult task we have yet to succeed.

5) I finished reading Dovlatov's Иностранка (foreigner, or the official title in English A Foreign Woman). Like reading about a familiar zoo, and particularity good because I was just writing about racism in Russia and how it manifests once they emigrate.

3) Sanya is here from Moscow, she brought candy and I remembered that's one of the things I would get most excited about when Dedushka would visit.

6) Sara needed coffee. The girls sitting on the bench were trying to figure out where to go: map in hand, pinpointing a street to orient from. Four in a row, age 13 or so, out in the city.

10) attempted to post from my new and first proper smartphone. 

soft yellow

Снег, снег, снег

The desire to do work has not waned in me, but the ability to do it is currently simmering below a desired level. This morning I handed in 15 pages on cognitive behavioral therapy for auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia (antipsychotics decrease agitation, but often hallucinations continue: a problem since 60-70% of cases exhibit auditory hallucinations, mostly voices. I didn’t do much research on the brain this time, since it was for my clinical class, but the one study that I did look over found changes in brain activity in the group that went through cognitive behavior therapy. I always find that this is the easiest way to convince people that it is working, though the other ten articles I read were also convincing).
Currently, I am at the library, and if I had gotten more sleep perhaps I would be reviewing an article and writing five pages on infant visual synesthesia over the course of development (apparently babies detect motion based on color as well as luminance. This capacity dissipates early in development, quickly deteriorating so that light/dark detection becomes significantly more critical to the detection of movement. The main problem, of course, is that setting up a choice paradigm for babies is hard, and that looking at changes over development that cannot be explained by – well, normal developmental stuff – is its own challenge. I was also excited to see a citation of the professor I’ll continue working with this winter in the paper). The seniors in the psychology department were supposed to do power point presentations of senior projects today, but because of the

Snow, snow, snow
                                                                                                                                         it has been cancelled. But the choir rehearsal for Shubert hasn’t been, and so I’m dawdling. Debating if calling subconscious motivations behind what could be considered as reciprocal altruism, as opposed to ‘true’ altruism, is simply a cynical semantic differentiation, as opposed to a social ‘truth’. The part of me that usually inhibits these thoughts, as well as the part of me that allows me to have gross motor coordination, isn’t working quite as it usually does. The books at the library sit in beautiful rows but the florescent lights are ugly. The exhaustion the punctuates the souls and bodies of college students during finals does not correspond to any romanticized depiction shown in movies. Rather, it is tiresome. “Not sleeping is the worst thing in the world” says Kelsey: they forget fatigue in movies. They forget that once you pull an all-nighter to study for an exam or write an essay, the work is not done. There are more exams, other classes, further work to be done. They also don’t include the exuberance that comes with intellectual pursuit, the surge of adrenaline or endorphines or dopomine or cannabinoids that mitigates the fatigue-induced headache. 

Ah, choir is canceled as well, and I'm at Hannah's now. The snow on the road has built up, and I pity those driving low-rise cars in this weather, desperately coming back from work, reeving desperately against the fricktionless snow, desperate desperate desperate . There is banana bread in the oven.

“TOMORROW'S SCHEDULE:
3-5PM BACH DRESS REHEARSAL (2:45PM CALL)
5:30-7:30PM SCHUBERT DRESS REHEARSAL (5:00PM CALL)
8PM CONCERT”

brilliant.
Saturday night I was at Hannah’s and it was snowing and we painted our nails and then I painted Will’s nails and then David’s as well. We went wandering into the storm after dinner, watching the flakes sparkle with reflected light, and cars skid dangerously in the road. The street lights are yellow and the world is quietly beautiful.

midterms

Friday was a time to finally breathe: my psychology senior project midway had been handed in, my presentation and exam for cognitive psychology done, and my print series presented. Amanda & co. threw a Hygge Party: sweets, friends and wine.

The next day Julia threw a taco night for the tennis team. We shifted to a suite in the village and three of us ended up at smog. Taking swigs from a flask and cigarettes, watching the underclassman try hard to dance.

Anastasia's Klezmer concert, a walk by Tivoli Bays with Kelsey,  I was at Adrienne's house when it snowed for the first time this season. Took photos at TBL and I'm going home tomorrow.

The One Train and Sloatsburg

On a Wednesday, Genya and I went to the restaurant Somovar: for me after work, for her between patients.

A week ago, on Friday, I took the subway to Kostya’s place. A person was standing, muttering. This is not unusual for New York, at least as far as I have seen it, I was almost surprised that it made people nervous. One eyebrow was plastered over (stitched up?).  She (looked like a he, but she) kept muttering, getting more and more agitated. There was an advertisement on the wall across from me that said “SCHIZOPHRENIA” recruiting people for a new antipsychotic trial. Finally, yelling angrily, she punched the lady sitting next to her.  One man called the police and started berating her, saying that “Lady, you’re going to jail, have fun”.  The doors opened and she slipped off, looking terrified, grabbing her big black trash bags. The police man was more considerate, trying not to scare her away. She stayed in the neighboring wagon and we waited for the police to come. Somehow I don’t think that’s what Woody Allan was thinking about when he wrote the introduction to Manhattan.

Eventually, after being held up in the subway for a while and listening to people gossip, I got to Kostya’s place. His friend Simon was down from Montreal, and the three of us went out; first to eat, then to drink Brooklyn lager at The Thirsty Scholar. We wandered around and went to a second place, called Anyway Café, which turned out to be Russian owned and run, and which had live music and a nice atmosphere. They lit two of the three drinks on fire; the absinth, and the Valentina Tereshkova (which also had absinth in it). Then we went to a Bulgarian club called Mehanata- the music alternated between Indian/Turkish, Russian and Latino, so it was great for actual dancing, and people to dance with.
The next day we spent walking around the island and eating in Chinatown before heading to Sasha’s birthday party. Russians, drinking, music and watching the sky as it brightened into morning.

The next morning I got driven back to Manhattan, NoizeMC was playing in the car and Katya talked about a trance rave she had gone to by a bridge as we drove by it -- where the traffic had drowned out the music to the outside world, and where they had paid the hoboes to stand guard for the police. Once we got there Vova and I walked 90 or so blocks, eating frozen yogurt.

On the subway back from hanging out with Kostya and Simon that evening, the subway was under construction and I noticed that another girl was looking for the same one train on the express track as I was. She’s from Wisconsin and lives at the same stop as I do and gave me her number in case I need anything. In a city full of people, I met a person.

they are done

Перевод внизу

“If I can do this, I can finish senior project!” Mark yelled as he clamored up a tree, scratching up his arms and looking madder than usual.

On the second of May the seniors were out on Ludlow lawn, delirious from fatigue and relief and confusion. They had just finished their senior projects. I spent that day with Bianca. We lay out in the grass and then went to Holy Cow for ice-cream and watched the first movie from Pirates of the Caribbean

Earlier that week I had my birthday party at Amanda’s house and made sangria. Britt came up and when she left the next morning at 7 I was half asleep but pleased she had come. She might be back next year, after taking two semesters of leave.

currently trying to register for next semesters classes.
though I don't think I ever said what I took this semester --
Chamber Singing
Painting II
Psychobiology of Stress & Mental Illness (300 psych)
Grounded Cognition & the Embodiment of Knowledge (300 psych)
Human Nature (philosophy).

Bianca, all done with Senior Project

Lucas, Kelsey, Amanda

«Если я это могу, то я могу закончить тезис!» и с этими словами Марк начал взбираться на дерево, расцарапав себе в процессе руки. Глаза эго горели как у сумасшедшего; более чем обычно.

Второго Мая все старшекурсники лежали на газоне, в недоумение от того что они закончили, наконец, тезис. Я провела день с Бианкой. Мы валялись на траве и пошли есть мороженое и посмотрели кино.

В воскресенье я отметила свой день рождения. Сделал сангрию и пригласила народ. Бритни пришла, уехала в 7 на следующий день. Я рада что она приехала, она возможно вернется в следующий год.