2003-09-22 - 12:32 p.m.
last week of psych. i took my oral exam on Friday. pretty hard. the doctor was a poker face psychiatrist that would ask me an open ended question and then just say "umm, lets move on to something else" so I had no idea how I was doing.
i kinda tripped up on a few things but for the most part did okay.
Friday night: studied and watched a little bit of this Japanese Cannes Film festival movie i got from the local library. man, the 96th street library is Awesome. The NY public library system is one big gift. The fact that folks could think of setting something up like that for free, for the public means there is serious hope.
I have been going on the network and ordering old sound recordings of June and hard to find poetry by suheir and kannada poetry that is in some off the beaten path crevice of a location in some far away NY library and a few days later I get an email saying that my request is now at the 96th street library... which is two blocks from my house.
Sat: got up super early and headed to NYU for a Health and Human Rights workshop to get students more active. 60 students from all these IV med schools and from virginia and all around NY. I met a couple people with some vision which is exciting. Met this doctor that runs a clinic for torture victims from over 70 countries all over the world. He was describing some of the torture and his path that led him to open the clinic.
the US has so many detention centers right near JFK that houses asylum seekers in little dark holes and the doctor has gone in there to take their stories. I talked to him after and he said I could work with him every monday at the torture clinic so I am going to put in my app. I am very excited about that.
Sat night: I went to a Howard Dean campaign event. I got on the list through a patient relative. It was the wierdest environment i have been in for a long long time. It was like this glorified frat party with only white folks and they were playing 80s music like duran duran and the cure and some oldies and everybody was drinking and fiercely into DEAN like he was the second coming of Jesus.(on a brief tangent... this friend of mine was telling me that he thinks some of the prophets might have been schizophrenics, hearing voices and communicating with "god" and most of religion might be based on fabrication by someone with a mental illness. HA Its possible i guess and a little scary). The whole event was a clown session on Bush(which i enjoyed) and a rally of sorts
Whoopie Goldberg introduced Dean and Dean came up clowned bush and went through his politics on a bunch of broad issues. Health care, prison system, the war in Iraq and after everything everybody would cheer.
I was supposed to meet mike lamb but he showed up late and it was packed so i never got to see him.
I walked right next to dean for a couple minutes after the event and everybody was trying to shake his hand and telling him how great he was. He definitely is way waaaay better than bust but he said 2 things that didnt sit well: 1) that he would have bombed afghanistan as well. he is trying to be anti war but you can see that needs to toe a line in order to appeal to pro military and anti-military.
2) that we need to cut Saudi Arabia off because they give money to Hamas that raise children to hate America. what a stupid cliche.
after the event i called reshma and talked to her about the event. she knows her stuff like nobody else i know.
met up with steph and trevor. met up with Nirali and all of headed to a house party in the east side. It was this plush banker style house that looked like a club. it was fun until steph and trevor left a couple hours later.
got home very late and woke up early to go see the dalai lama in central park. Awesome awesome. It felt like Woodstock and was beautiful but i cant help but wonder why colored folks arent out there. Where were the black folks and the Mexican folks and the puerto ricans and can we get together a collective that focuses on compassion but does it in a super specific way. The Dalai Lama was so refreshing but i feel like unless you get very upfront and specific on what we mean by altruism and affection than even bush can(and does) hijack the language of compassion.
You gotta love the dalai lama though. he is so goofy and keeps laughing and he got tens of thousands of new yorkers out on a big grass field and nobody fought and everybody was crunched together and everybody was smiling under the big blue sky.
The most bold thing the dalai lama
said was of course we had sept 11th with all the suffering going on. and that the over consumption of americans is not fair and that physical comforts can never alleviate mental suffering but mentally free folks could get past physical pain.
sunday night: bailed on Nirali's b-day party to study and hash came over and i made some indian food and we ate and studied and i slept and he crashed at my place.
and colin called before i went to sleep and it was good to talk to him after so many months and he is up-beatest that i have ever heard him post furuta.
okay, i gotta go back to work. this is my lunch break and i have no food. gotta go do some physical exams on some very psychotic patients and try not to get swung at.
well, i guess that is the run down of my weekend.
