The baby’s mom came in right as the nurse was saying the baby only had enough milk for one more feed. God’s timing always being right. The mom having a ---- name with a heavy -- sound in the middle. Satisfying to hear her say it and to say it back to her after she told me. It was a perfect interaction all around as soon as i was able to look at the nurse’s badge and remind myself that her name is ------. Like ----- ----- watch this ass clap meme. I think that’s how i’ll remember her name going forward: watch this ass clap.

Anyway, yeah, i’m just thinking about david, the song about how if i had virginity i would’ve given it to you.

What came spilling out that day was the truth: if I had virginity i would’ve given it to you.

I’m here in the on-call room with H----- and the visiting ueerrrrmmmm visiting ermmmmm residentttt L-----. i just looked up at the resident list and saw O-----, whom i worked with last year, and who i think is going to be working on this team in the future. I forgot about that one thing: the residents will change like the weather. And i’ll have to get along with all of them. Honestly, i’m getting a fear response from O----- because i know she was on the team as me last year when i did that horrible peds wards weeklong rotation. That shit was so ass. But now i’m a big kid and feeling better about stuff and things in general. So yeah.... We’re all good, i think?

What am i going to do over the course of these next 42 minutes? I’m going to go see if the conference room is available. No, i’m not. I don’t need to do that. I can just continue with this little workflow here. This is a flow of writing. L----- is fine on the bed, i just am like 'damn L-----, why are you just sitting on the bed,' you know what i mean, 'why don’t you go find a nice little seat for yourself?' But i don’t feel bad because i did offer her the chair first. So yeah.....

And now i’m just kind of here, and i can do some meditation, and i can just exist, and i know that if i reach a state of transcendence it’s okay. I feel like i can’t fully close my eyes because what if H----- looks over at me and sees that i’m sitting there typing with my eyes closed? and to that i would say let her look, let her see me grinding away at the writing right now, let her really see me, this is me when i feel the most like myself, this is when my brain is really working and being myself and stuff.

H----- just sneezed and i said bless you and instead i would've liked to say “à tes souhaites.” Let me go investigate whether that is the correct thing to say. 'Holy fuck, bud. It’s not that serious.': my actual response to seeing someone in those fuckass white scrubs running somewhere. This urgency is crazy. It really freaked me out a minute ago to see all those white scrubbers in the hallway doing some kind of stupid surgery thing. Y’all are not nearly as important as you think you are, so clock that tea and get the fuck outta here with your self-important bullshit. I hate those scrubs. All the surgery people look chronically pissed off all the time. And why are all the residents women? Where are all the male surgery residents? Is that anything? I don’t know what is the actual pattern here, but my pattern recognition tells me that all the surgery residents are women—and pissed-off white women at that—and all the paitents in the nick you are non-white, and all the patients who are white have batshit parents who are way too entitled to all of their doctors’ time and energies.

Those are my field observations for the moment.

Dr. K----- hit me up just now and said he’s proud of me and to focus on being helpful to the team and stuff, and that’s really all i can do. He said at this point i know enough to be helpful to them, so, shit, that’s what i’ll do. And honesty, he’s sort of spot on, because i feel like i am being helpful lowkey. i’m being the lubricant in certain communications and i’m being an effective student, i think. I think. Like handling this message with dr. G--- about the baby’s ostomy repletions and how they’ve been close to the threshold and how her urine sodium was 104 and is that too high. I think the answer here is that there is a minimum sodium level which is 30, but there’s no maximum. And that’s the answer i’m going with. There’s no maximum sodium level, so what we need to do is keep her at her current sodium and check both her urine sodium and her serum sodium again, possibly at the end of the week. She's recommended checking both once a week, so on rounds today i will relay that recommendation and be the conduit for this medical knowledge.

All of it is so ridiculous, though. This list of the pediatric residents with all their smiling headshot faces, i’m just like oh okay. Oh okay. This is so ridiculous.

Underneath it all, we’re all just savages, hidden behind shirts, ties, and marriages. Truth is in us all, cradle to the grave, we’re just animals still learning to behave.

And then fanon saying that colonialism is people dressing up the truth in suits and ties and stuff, but they’re still the most violent creatures of all or something. Let me throw on some music.

It’s kinda funny how i just noticed two cases in which the song on the album that i love possibly the most, GRWM from vrigin and Weeds from froot, is the least popular one. I’m the one who gets the songs that nobody else gets. I’m happy to be the loner who is listening to these songs that no one else fully appreciates. I’m happy to gatekeep them as well. Though i’m not gatekeeping them intentionally or anything. It’s just so happening that it’s getting gatekept, because i’m still not famous enough for casual randoms to care about my taste in music. But i’ll continue making my highly curated playlists.

What’s funny is that my playlists and shit will die with me. But maybe someday i’ll find a way to turn them all into physical media. Imagine if i had my fall '16 playlist on a cd or something. It would be pretty freaking awesome. Imagine just being able to throw that thing on. But it woud take multiple discs, probably. I’m not sure how much information can get stored on a cd. But it would be cool, it would just be cool to have it all able to be played on physical media. That’s a goal i have for the more distant future. But maybe i should have it for myself in the present. Maybe i can go ahead and just do it now. It would be nice, wouldn’t it..... To not have to worry about whether spotify goes on living or not ..... And yeah. If there’s ever a y2k-like event....

But then... it reminds me of the thought process i was experiencing last night or last evening as i was considering whether to get wifi and a couch and other such acoutrements for my apartment. I realized that it’s just signing myself up for more samsara. If i get wifi i’m signing myself up to return the wifi at the end of these twelve months. And we’re already halfway through month one and have managed just fine without the damn wifi, so why should we ever need it in the future?

The only thing i can think of is like i’ll need it in the case in which it gets too cold to sit up on the roof. But shit, i feel like i’ll still be able to sit up on the roof. But then what happens when it gets to be november and the play is happening and shit. Also should i be considering having guests over? No, i don’t think so. I don’t think right now i have to do that. If people want to come over, they can come over and we can just straight up enjoy each other’s company. We don’t need a couch to sit on or a wifi to connect us to the internet. Like N---, for example, wants to come watch the matrix up here, and i just don’t think that’s happening. My apartment is not the place for that. People who may want to expect certain things of me for having my own apartment will have their expectations come crashing down when they realize that i’m living like an ascetic in a fancy apartment. Like damn i’m really paying all this fuckin money for this place. It’s a lot of money, and i’m on the hook for a whole year of it, and there’s no takes backsies on it. It’s decision i made in the course of a few days, and now it’s a decision that will follow me for the next eleven and a half months. That’s just how it is now. That’s just how it is.

I was thinking while in the [neighborhood] the past few days that it might be nice to live down there where there are possibilities of meet cutes and hot guys walking around on every street corner and it’s a gay part of the universe. I never considered it, though, did i? I never considered it. And now it’s..... The fate is sealed. But better for it. Because i’m in the woods and that’s where i’m supposed to be. If i’m supposed to find a boyfriend or some shit like that, i’ll find it, and it’ll happen in god’s timing. And i’ve set myself up for more transcendence, not more samsara. Ultimately, it was an act of self care to put myself in the particular neighborhood that i did. It was self care and it was avoiding little episodes of samsara. I’m avoiding samsara this way. I’m not allowing myself to get wrapped up in little comforts or little things that destroy my soul, like seeing hot guys.

I think someday we could unpack why it destroys me inside each time i see a hot guy. It actually makes me feel like i want to DIE or something. Or i want to... shit, i don’t even know. I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe it’s grief or something. Becuase i think about how in buddhism it’s sometimes recommended for people to get over their sexual desire by imagining the hot bperson as really old or even dead. Imagine their body devoid of life, and then you’re like 'oh my god, i was just lusting over a bunch of parts. Bones that are going to be falling out of their assholes.....' Stuff like that. It might be that. It might be somewhere deep inside me trying to remind me that because i’m gay that means i’m not supposed to reproduce and i’m not supposed to engage in any simulacra of reproduction. I’m supposed to be an incel. Or a volcel—whatever you wanna call it. I really am starting to believe that.

I’m supposed to be a loner. I’m supposed to be single forever. I’m supposed to be unattainable. I think that’s it. I’m not someone who engages in sex acts. I’m not someone who has engaged in smoking weed in the past three days. It’s tuesday now, last smoked weed on saturday, and that’s when i ran out of the weed that i had purchased upon returning back to the united states from shfc. And now it’s day three of sobriety and it feels pretty good.

where?

Let’s get after that transcendence, mama. Let’s keep finding it. It’s there for me to see every day in every little thing, i think... i think. I think. I think. We saw how it had that consequence yesterday of allowing me to see E-----. That was quite a magical consequence. That was amazing, honestly. That is a case in point of the whole phenomenon of not collapsing things and keeping a clear mind.

It might be interesting to look into some buddhist literature about.... No, it’s fine. Literature itself... literature itself is a form of samsara, is it not? And this novel, maybe it won’t ever get finished. Or maybe it gets serialized somehow. Maybe we just grind out part one and that’s the whole thing. Maybe that’s it, and then it's a cliffhanger, and if we put it out and it gets some kind of audience somehow, if we get it published in some kind of medical journal or some shit, maybe then we can get the motivation to keep going. yeahhhh.

Manchild, this song is so genius, sabrina. This whole album, really. i’m honestly surprised how easily it was able to worm its way into my top albums of the year, but would you look at that, it did.

Now i feel like going to the bathroom. I feel like there’s a shit in me waiting to be expressed, so i might as well go ahead and express it pretty soon here. But i’ll let the song play out, i think. Yeah, let’s let the song play out and then when it’s finished i can keep going.

I’m looking up at the list of residents and i see the Y--- W----- box, and he was honestly a little more chunky when this picture was taken. He’s now a little skinnier, but he might also have a less-full head of hair, so you win some and lose some. You live some and you learn some. Etc.

H----- and L----- just walked past the room, presumably to continue rounding on their infants. There you have it. This is the way the story goes.

Man, i really wish i could do this during rounds. i wish i could type during rounds or do SOMETHING else besides just mindlessly listening and half-listening to the people talk about their fuckass numbers. It’s honestly a serious tragedy that we all are stuck in these worlds. It's a huge tragedy that we all have to spend so much of our time doing retarded shit like talking about all that we talk about on rounds. Some of the best minds in the recent memory... and they're spending hours at a time scrutinizing the silliest numbers in the world. But then i get Y---’s point he made yesterday where he was like 'okay, if the babies do go on to live, then you could argue that every little thing we do matters and mattered.' So i can’t hate too much, and i guess i could attempt to lean in somehow.

What would be the way for me to lean in today, on this day that marks the exact halfway point in the rotation, the sixteenth? What can i do to lean in? Is there anything that i’m missing, perhaps? I’m not sure. I’ll think about it. We’ll think about it over the next twenty minutes. I think lovkinggngng-kinedesnsnesss could be good. Yeah, loving-kindness meditations. That is what i was sort of doing on the subway today, channeling my sid statue, trying to hold a soft smile with my eyes closed so that anyone who looked upon me could look at me and be like.... 'oh, this person is peaceful. i’m finding that all of my negative thoughts are getting sucked into him.'

I think that’s honestly a huge superpower. That’s something that the buddha knew exactly what he was doing: sitting around with his eyes closed. Because it allows people to look upon you and have all of their defenses go down. You are about as defenseless as you can be when you have your eyes closed. It’s like an invitation for other people to find peace. I wish i could have my eyes closed during rounds, but no, there is an expectation of me to be engaged.

Oh my god, dude, this other attending, the ------ woman, is so annoying to me because of her volume level. She was stomping or clacking around in her fuckass flats. And yesterday she was walking so fucking loud across the hall from us. It’s a level of entitlement that i recognize in the white moms on this unit. It’s entitlement to the soundscape of the space. i guess maybe she feels like she’s really at home in this place..... which would make sense, because at the little water dispenser area in the family room it says that this is your second home, or your home away from home or something. Is that not a little toxic? Convincing people that theeeeee, uhhhhh, that theeeeeee workplace is a home away from home? And it encourages them to settle in and make this place something like a home... i don’t like that very much.

I’m looking at my spotify friend feed and i see that -----001 is listening to kiss me more by doja cat featuring sza. That’s a fun thought for me to have. Imagining him listening to it. I wonder what he’s doing and what thoughts he is having while listening to that.

I wonder if straight men listening to hot women singers are getting sexually aroused by it, or if they’re just yassing like the rest of us gays. I wonder.

Either way, now is the time to go to the bathroom, i can tell. We’ll let this arvril lavigne song, keep holding on, continue playing until the last few seconds are expired, and we’ll end this sentence, and then we’ll go.