i never asked for this

i suppose the idea of this whole blog thing is trying to be honest. to lower my defences, break down the walls, strip away the years of mental baggage, so i can regain my innocence. well, here goes...

i think i'm in love again. i hate it, it fucks up your whole life. it makes you question everything you think you know about yourself - as if i don't do that enough already. example: i caught myself reading style tips from a men's magazine (apparently scent rises so you should apply on your chest, lower neck, behind the ears or inner wrist). those of you who know me will appreciate how ridiculous this last statement was. after slapping myself around until i stopped reading, i was forced to admit that, yes, maybe, probably, i've fallen into that mindset of what-can-i-do-to-impress-her again. *sigh* i never asked for this. (side note: i wonder if it is possible to induce asperger's?) it is true that i love listening to people's stories, but when you realise you want to know every little thing that has happened in their life or is happening in their life now - surely even my inner physician thinks that is pathological. so is love a pathological condition? what makes it all the much harder, of course, is you never know what the other person thinks about it. i stare at her with wonder every time she is in the room (trying hard not to be rude) but her glances are inscrutable. as far as i know she isn't the faintest bit attracted to me. however, we all know girls are funny things and sometimes go out with guys just to be in a caring relationship. not that i'd settle for that, of course. but it would be a good start. (haha - this is so incredibly lame.) but what should i do? should i go with my gut instinct that this outpouring of caring and affection is clearly one-sided so just bury it as deep as i can? or should i play the fool and force the situation to a decision on her part? ah, as joe/lou/mark were talking about on thursday night, the dating game is such a bitch.

well, that was pretty shit. and posting this will no doubt force me to submit to incessant probing by you all. well, i'm not going to say shit, kids, so forget it. except, no baz, it's not deb so don't be silly. and if the subject of all my attention is one of the people that asks me about it, ahh, the bittersweet irony of it all.

on to more neutral topics. we're all back from our rural placements, most of us with a smidgeon of nostalgia (even minnie). the last two weeks were pretty much a waste of time. but socially it was awesome. played tennis a few times. went for walks around the lake. enjoyed ourselves at lake view on several occasions. got so wasted we had a date with racv. mark had to scrape me off the pavement outside rattle and scum. went to the fine art gallery in ballarat. went to the anzac day parade at creswick. even the last day was awesome with everyone's presentations being top notch. these four weeks had definitely lived up to our expectations, and they were high ones to start off with, given out last stint at the rat =) it's such an anticlimax to be back in the city, the air foul, the people sullen, the weather cold and overcast. emerg starts on monday and i'm not really looking forward to it. *sigh*

i wonder what's in stawell next?

after spending a whole week with baz, i have realised that everyone has their bad days, just like me. baz's bad days are often triggered by bureaucracy and incompetence, but just as often he just wake up in a bad mood. and then, bang! in goes a random mike patton cd into the cd player in the car and the volume is turned up most of the way. but most of our second week in stawell were good days, with a lot of bowie and giving all the girls we met scores out of ten. i grew to like red wine, overcame some of my fear of animals and did a lot of yelling at stupid drivers. the ambos tried to outdo each other's crazy stories. had an awesome dinner at mickey's house in horsham. played a game of petanque at halls gap. stared at the stars a lot and sang along to my walkman. coming back to melbourne was such a let down in comparison. now i know what dunno meant when he used to tell me how depressed he felt when he drove back into the city on sunday afternoons.

a country practice

time has really sped past me again - already a quarter of the year has gone and i'm still not out of summer holiday mode. my beautiful 17th edition harrison's i carted all the way back from taiwan is sitting on the shelf gathering dust. my grandiose plans of one specialty a month is already 3 months behind. *shrug and sigh* only 9 months until i'm an intern! i refuse to think about it. perhaps the problem will go away if i just ignore it. *blink*

rural rotation last week and once again i love being away from routine and spending time with group a people. a couple of days in ballarat was terrible, especially the first afternoon when i smouldered in my seat with my thoughts of death and disgust. the second evening was a lot better - had fun running around trying to hit the tennis ball, then cooking dinner with everyone, then eating until we couldn't eat any more. lou baked a cake!

on to stawell (pronounced stall), a town of 7000, where we spent the whole week spending time with community health workers (didn't see a doctor once). it was boring most of the time but the people fascinated me. farmers' hands are big and rough - when you pinprick them to measure blood glucose, all the blood just disappears into the cracks in their skin. they are like the earth, smell of soil and rain and sweat, brown from the sun and work. and they are so unsophisticated, so simple in their wants - i fell in love with the people there. uni had baz and i stay 25k out of stawell at halls gap at a backpacker's called tim's place. it is a tranquil huddle of huts in the shadow of the grampions, and at night i loved reading camus, smoking and sipping bourbon under the beautiful solemn trees, amongst the watchful kangaroos that graze at the gardens, listening to the breeze and the silence (bar the occasional car that drives past and the nordic chatter in the background), and losing myself in the brilliant stars spreading all the way across the sky. it was a really awesome place (although baz woke up one night with a spider on his face).

the rest of the group had been scattered like dandelion seeds in the wind: lou and min to goroke with nick and mickey; brumbles and deb to maryborough; manny and mark to castlemaine; joe and jason to baccus marsh. i can't wait to see them all again and find out what their towns have been like. hopefully everyone's taken photos so we can see what trouble they got themselves into!

dreams are only dreams

felt lonely again tonight. brisbane was losing at aami stadium. the books i bought on brunswick street didn't hold my attention. cigarettes tasted stale and burnt my throat in the warm night. i imagined what it would be like to have a girl to stretch her legs over mine while we sat in the smoking chairs and decided it was too hot. it was hopeless. i remembered the pity i felt for the men in their thirties i saw in bars watching the unattractive girls with longing, their disgust and self-respect overcome by alcohol and too many evenings spent home alone. and so i added the loneliness to the walls fortifying my ego and put on some pink floyd. they knew my loneliness and poured it out in gilmour's incendiary guitar and waters' lyrics. but... these same walls are making it harder for me to touch the world and for the world to reach me. i am feeling more and more detached from all of it. *he's had enough and he sinks down to the bottom - the whitlams*

i copied this down awhile ago from a gunnm website:

what is life? a frenzy,
what is life? an illusion,
a shadow, a fiction.
and the greatest good
is of slight worth,
since life is but a dream,
and dreams are only dreams.

yet if hope has flown away
in a night, or in a day,
in a vision, or in none,
is it therefore the less gone?
all that we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream.

easter break

it's been a hectic couple of weeks since my suicidal friday. first of all we half-heartedly finished off the last week of RAPP leading up to good friday. highlights included jenny schwarz labelling me as a 'bastion of hope' in our pd tute when i said i wanted to be an oncologist (the irony was not lost upon my group buddies). my patient was discharged with her two prosthesis and a walking frame (i was so proud of her). then we had our joint group excursion to doncaster shopping town (a motorcade of 7 cars)! finally, we spent a sleepy and strange afternoon at the tobin brothers funeral home learning about the funeral directing and embalming businesses (creepy yet fascinating). that evening was spent merrily at pete and jim's place with galaxy, sending andariel and duriel back to hell.

my bro ang came down the next evening and i realised i still had no idea where to take him. luckily things sort of worked themselves out (it's funny, they always seem to when you simply twiddle your thumbs). day one we went to phillip island with thomo, taisia and her sister tatiana. day two was st kilda followed by the parliament, fitzroy gardens, st pat's, then dinner at shanghai dumplings (ours is a love-hate relationship). went and saw maria full of grace at the nova with mike. monday was the shrine of remembrance, ngv with minnie, eric and co, then mucking around in pancake parlour, before meeting the crew at crown casino where thomo doubled his money in half an hour (a big fat tenner - haha)! the day after we had a lovely outing to lygon street, brunswick street, and the pub. ang and tatiana went on a tour the next day to the great ocean road so gal and i spent the whole day playing lan games and drinking. thursday came quickly and we spent the morning at the vic markets where oscar (the grouchy cactus) and i found each other, and then it was time for my bro to catch the bus to the airport. all in all i think he enjoyed melbourne - parliament, the shrine, crown and vic market. he didn't enjoy the ngv or brunswick street bookshops as much - but i think that's just him.

well, a couple days of rest for my weary body and we're off the the rat for the beginning of our rural block. what fun it will be again with most of group a (bar the poor twins who have to go to swan hill) back together in the rat! i am keeping my fingers crossed that the beasteor lasts the journey. hope you've been giving it some tlc baz!