The Road
The road is long, winding, exhausting, thrilling, nauseating, droning, fulfilling.
I have taken the road to many places. The road has taken me too.
For the first time, I doing it myself.
Midge and I packed up all we own and drove back to Nebraska in a rolling 10' moving van. We visited Walla Walla. The leaves gave us their most regal welcome. I drank a "Chai Charger", visited friends, and reminisced about the good folks and silly times freshman year shared with me. A model UN or major debate tournament was going on. I couldn't tell if those sleek kids, for they were clearly kids, were in high school or in college. And then I felt old.
I drove through the beautiful Blue Mountains, thinking that eastern Washington or Oregon might not be such a bad place to finally settle down, just that I'd have to pick a town not dominated by LDS or 7th day Adventists. Landing in Logan, UT at Katie and Kishor's traveler's spa, we climbed down from our longest drive yet in the truck and rested our weary eyes, filled our hungry bellies and took (just me) a very needed bath. Katie and Kishor were amazing hosts. AMAZING. Something to aspire to. They talked about how they had a hard time finding an apartment before they were married because the town is so Mormon. The buses don't run on Sundays. People don't really drink coffee. That was a shocker coming from Seattle....don't drink coffee? How do you survive?!? I remember the guy on the street asking me, "Is there a STARBUCKS around here?" Not just looking for coffee...looking for Starbucks. It was 4 blocks away...he seemed to think that was just too far.
From Logan, I just kicked it home. I meant to stop at Denver, but I couldn't. Those 5 hour energy drinks really work. My brain felt like an electrical storm was passing through it. My body my have melted around me, but my hands stayed on the wheel, my eyes on the road, and my brains a buzzing away. I snoozed with the truckers at rest stops, only after I got out of WY. I was honestly scared to by driving at night in Wyoming. My phone was dead. I had no insurance. I was damn tired. And if a pronghorn had jumped in front of me, it would have been 50 miles to anywhere. I had to get through that state before I could relax enough to sleep. I did and the sleep was uncomfortably glorious. I made it home the next morning. YES!
The wagon
I've fallen off. That's for sure. Look at the previous posts and you won't be surprised. Look at the name of this blog and you won't be either. But, somehow I am. And then I'm not. And then I wonder if it'll pass. And then I hope it does. And then I hope it doesn't. And then I worry about money for the first time in my life. MD. Medical doctor. BIOmedical doctor. Doctor of the medicine that grew out of gestures and philosophizing, to palpations and guessing, to cutting open live rats, to the so-called silver bullet, to the god complex, cutting out quacks (like midwives...), to pharma companies, to over specialization, to reducing maternal mortality and child death, to lawsuits and insurance companies and dictate who gets what and when. Is that who I want to be? 99% of me doesn't think so. I'll admit there's a tiny bit of me that wonders if I'd love making sick people better with fancy drugs and miracle cures. I'm sure I would. I do love problem solving and do have a hero complex. But LORD that's a long road and BIG philosophy that I'm just not behind. It would get behind me though and get me lots and lots of jobs and I wouldn't have to worry about paying those bills anymore....except all the loan payments, of course. Anyway. I've fallen off the wagon that was heading straight to med school.
I've realized that I have never disliked school as much as I do now. No wonder people drop out at 16. I feel like dropping out now, mid semester, 3000$ (plus) into it. Honestly, I'm not doing anything I care about here. That's scary. It's also really unsettling because I begin to think there aren't think I like doing. Or that I don't have ideas and values or something. They just get whitewashed over by the routine. If I feel so stiffled now, with 14 hours of not-so-hard science, how would I feel in med school? I recently met a girl in her 2nd year at Nebraska's medical school. She said, "It sucks, but if you really want it, you'll make it though." HA! And I don't even know if I really want it.
So, where's that leave me? GOOOOOOD QUESTION. I just ate an entire bar of chocolate pondering it. Do things. Make money. Learn. Experience. I think Seattle, Montreal, Austin, Europe. I wonder about grad school. I know I need to improve language. I want to go explore and just be. With the big sparkling picture coming crashing down around me, I'm forced to shake off the dust and see what's here now. Be a person NOW, not just in the future or in some great story line. I've just gotta do something and learn about life a bit more. Talk to people. Get some more direction. I keep thinking about healthy communities. How to make communities healthy. That sounds good. What about international stuff? Right.
So my head is throbbing a bit. At least I'm not buckled into something that I don't want to do.
Hurumph
Convergence
Just click on the images one by one. They'll show up in their own window where they'll be big enough to read. Goodluck with my handwriting.
Husker Power
I actually had a great weekend. It started with Indian food and ended with hippie food. In between I underwent a true Nebraska rite of passage: attending a Husker Football game. Husker Nation they call us. It couldn't be more true. I've always said the football coach was the second most powerful man in the state, second only to the Lord himself. My dad took me to the grand event and as I sat in what would be the thirst largest city in the state if it weren't a stadium, I wondered why I'd never done this before. It was fun. 86,000 odd people crammed onto benches watching padded young men jump, run, kick, tackle and punch (there was a bit of that). It's too bad they outlawed big cheerleader throws a few years back because the cheerleaders would have been a lot more entertaining, but the band made up for it. It was odd to think how many of my band-mates from high school had marched many a'time on that field. I didn't even know why each team punts or kicks....I learned. Despite his embarrassment at my ignorance, my dad humored my questions all the way through, probably relieved to finally be adding this bit of knowledge to my brain warehouse. God, I love my dad. He's just a great dad and friend. That's probably the best part of this whole story.
Being the indoors-pansy that I am, I had to sleep after sitting in the sun for a few hours. Yes, I wore a hat (one of 5 women in the whole stadium doing that I think. Skin cancer is certainly worth no hat hair...). Coming off of my horrible mood documented by my last blog entry, the movie my family watched that evening, Mamamia, pissed me off. It was so fairy tale and carefree...people living on an island. I had a bit of "why in the hell am I putting myself through this" break down.
The next day, things were better. I went downtown and studied, hung out with a friend, at some Chili Con Queso. Went home, my dad had made amazing food. Ate it. Sat with my wonderful parents. Went over to a friend's parents' place where they were having a shindig, complete with live James Taylor-esk music and old friends. I was home by midnight and not so angry to get up and drive to Omaha this morning. My chemistry class which usually leaves me smoking from the ears in frustration was mangable.
All this to say, I had a good weekend. The ups and downs sure are coming fast.
Once you go to Austin, you can't go baustin to Nebraska
I had reached such a good place here in Nebraska. I was
ridin' the wave of, "My three months of transition are over. It's time to start
diggin' the place where I'm
livin'". I had certainly started. I even was going out. :O Then I went on vacation. Bad idea.
An old friend of mine from middle school and I decided to take a road trip to Austin, Texas to visit a buddy I went to school with at Whitman who plays the fiddle and lives from it in Austin. The drive down was amazing. We brain vomited the whole way across Kansas, Oklahoma and then the first 2/3 of the state worthy of its own time zone, Texas. Admittedly, we saw some pretty ridiculous things like the Horny Toad Harley Store and the church offering 30-minute worship sessions for the busy pious. We got honked at by truckers and tried not to be caught by the police for rolling our tires just slightly too fast down the interstate. (It's a 13 hour drive, we deserve to speed). Leaving Nebraska, we battled fog, so much that we just held onto the hope that we weren't going to run into anything because our eyes were useless at that point. Kansas was better but still very overcast. Their scenery was more colorful as the
milo and sunflowers popped red and yellow. In Nebraska soy and corn monoculture's green reins king. Oklahoma brightened up and by the time we hit the Texas border, we knew we were on vacation. That feeling of warmth in the marrow of your bones that usually means summer in Nebraska has been all but absent here. Texas was different. It was cute too. I had not expected that.
Instead of leaving their bridges plain gray cement like the rest of us, they've decorate them with color and a lone star at the top of each supporting columns. New apartment complexes had themes and flair, something I had never even thought could happen.
And then we were there. And it was awesome. The city is small enough that it's not intimidating at all to small city people like us
Lincolnites. It's the live-music capital of the USA, though, so it's all but dead. We ate BBQ. There was music. We drank a bottle of whiskey we bought at the store in the parking lot of a bar. There was music. We went downtown. There was music. We saw a band with the
remnants of country greats, like Johnny Cash's piano player and others including the best guitar player in the city. Music was everywhere. People were dancing, couple dancing!
Whoaaa and I thought that died with the youth of the baby-boomers. Folks are friendly in Texas too, much more than in eastern Nebraska (I'm not going to claim to know what's going on in
cowboy land out west). I keep getting the feeling that the
midwest can't get over itself and the sin it sees in the world. People are more tied up in knots. Twisty inside: wanting to be nice but afraid God might not like it. It's all more morally difficult here and the caution with which people
approach their surroundings makes it all less enjoyable. But, I digress. The point is: Austin rocked my socks off.
And then we left, speeding back to our lives in Nebraska. The drive back was far less enjoyable than the one there. It took for seemingly forever. I will say that when we finally did cross the Nebraska border at around 7 pm, just as the sun was setting, the scene was marvellous. It filled me with warm fuzzy nostalgic tickles and I did feel home.
We arrived around 10, after 14 hours on the road. I had to write a lab report and finish my
genetics homework. The next morning I was up by 7 packing, showering, finishing my homework and preparing for the day in which I'd have to turn in a quiz and go to two labs. 2 more hours in the car that day. The next day, same thing. Drive up, go to class, study, go to class, study. The next day: quiz, lab, then finally home. I hated it all. The drive up to Omaha is really getting under my skin and I'm casting curses at all those who voted against the train. My Organic Chemistry class is driving ME up the wall. It's just ridiculous and the prof a gift from the mayor of arrogant confusion city. Genetics has yet to become interesting, the prof there too could use some major tuning up. Physics is a joke, which is nice for the stress-
ometer but not so great for the feeling inspired thing that's supposed to happen to you. And then I wonder if I'm cut out for medicine if none of these science classes are doing anything for me. Luckily on Thursday, my
genetics teacher talked about some diseases and my ears perked up. Good sign. Then it was the weekend and I was back to feeling like I had nothing I wanted to do in Lincoln. Shit and I thought I was over this. Guess not now that I've been reminded about what other cities have to offer. Oh well. My bad.
So here I am, sick of this NE life. Looks like I'm back to square one, figuring out how to change my perception so that I'm happy. Luckily, I've done it before and not so long ago. Time to forget about Austin or Montreal or wherever and focus on here and what it's got going for it. Yup, back to square one.
Half Mast
Ted Kennedy died last week. My hours in the car afford me hours of public radio listening and last week I listened to much Ted Kennedy talk. It was truly a somber moment in our nation's history. With his passing, the memories and legacies of his two famous older brothers were retold, their battles brought back to the forefront. We find ourselves in the heat of another social justice battle, one whose torch Ted Kennedy held high for years. But, health care was only one of his issues. Together, the three brothers represented some of the most important civil rights leaders in our history. Of course these men were not not infallible. Of course they made their mistakes, both personal and professional. Their faults cannot overshadow their impact, however. As I walked by the flag pole with its flags flying respectfully at half mast, the relevance of the Kennedys' work hung heavy in my heart.
UNO is truly a university of the people. It's the most diverse university I've ever been to yet it's also the most American. Last week, because it was the first week, there was free (meat only) lunch and a DJ pumping out the jams outside the student center everyday. What a trip that first day was. As I walked along along the path, I took in the scene around me. I was exactly what I had always expected out of university; it was that image every Hollywood movie portays a fancy highschool to be. Kids were sitting on the grass, on the steps, all around the student center munching on their fleshy lunches while hot dog smell stung my nose and hip hop bounced in my ears. The kids were sitting small groups. I saw the punks with mohawks. I saw the sweety pies. I saw nerds. I saw those groups in their hyperbolic forms. Not once that day did I see blacks and whites talking. That I noticed. A few days later some fraternities and sororities took over the music square with their dancing and the color difference could not have been more stark. The latina sorority was out. So was the black sorority and fraternity. And they were the only ones dancing. They formed this ring around which the white kids stood, looking on. The segregation at UNO continues to shock me and I wonder if those more accustomed to the scene even notice anymore.
So, as I looked at that flag flying low and I looked around me, I remembered that those battles the Kennedys died for are far from vanquished.
