I hope to become a nurse. I want a job where I can get money when I need it.
A prerequisite is this Anatomy class. I've forgotten what it is like to learn. Intentionally, that is. Sitting down with books and taking notes. Jesus.
For other reaso
(more)ns it hasn't been easy. It hasn't been totally easy having knowledge change the body from an abstract concept, easy to hate and abuse, into something more tricky and vulnerable and convoluted than I supposed. It's like witnessing a ghost become corporeal.
Details are meaningful for the first time.
For instance -
The skeleton itself. It is a living entity, full of blood and tissue. It's alive as a tree and is not at all like the paper bones that hang in windows at Hallowe'en.
I'm learning about blood. I'm learning about the brain, and the senses, and the heart - a fat tireless dancer.
And the liver fascinates. So hard-working. Responsible for over two-hundred processes. Pump pump pump.
It can weigh two pounds. I imagine it long and floppy, the way fish look when fishermen hold them up for the camera. I generally picture it as one of the more tormented organs, waving with strings of algae like an aquarium filter. Already toxic, from diet soda to stay thin and plastic additives in my bread to feel full, and all the alchohol.
As I find out more I want to behave better toward this body of mine. Not out of a self-kindness, but out of a respect for something greater. The complicated machinery working away beneath the skin points to this greater something, perhaps.
I don't want to believe it though. I feel reluctantly pulled along when my thoughts send feelers down that line, having trained myself away from believing in such things.(less)
