Writer's Block: Animal Instinct

[Error: unknown template qotd] Having been on a vision quest to find my totem, I'm clear. You do not choose your totem spirit guide; it chooses you. My totem confused me when I first saw it, appropriate as it is the guide, not you.

In some ways, this question belittles the totem, it's importance and the spirituality behind the vision quest.

Associations; part deux

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

OR

Comment with five things you associate with me, and I'll expound on them in my journal.

furr_a_bruin associates these 5 things with me:

1) Karaoke! There was a time when I made a living with my voice. Love to sing. Get a major kick from a spot light. He who sings prays twice. However, as much as I loved to perform, I also like to eat and pay my bills. Karaoke gives me a chance to feed mi alma de cantante, get my fix and still keep my work life in order.

2) Cooking! I enjoy cooking, especially if I'm cooking for someone else, or if I'm making something off the beaten path of 'American' cooking. My mom went to work when I was 8 or 9 and as the oldest kid, if I didn't start dinner when I got home from school, we didn't eat until very late, so I was cooking for a family of five starting at that age. Further, we were an ethnic minority home, with foods that reflected it, so I starting learning to prepare ethnic foods way back then. Food is and always has been an expression of culture, and as someone who's always been fascinated by different cultures, an interest in the food and the language goes hand and hand with that. Moreover, feeding others foods they find tasty and interesting (and that I know are healthy) is very satisfying for me. ¡Buen provecho!

3) Oleoresin Capsicum! (MILK! Pass the milk!) What can I say? Some like it hot! I like bold flavors, garlic, onion, oregano, cilantro, dark chocolate, and chili is no exception. Not necessarily scorchingly hot. Not a major devotee of pain here, but then the line between pain and pleasure can be a thin one, that shifts at times, no? My taste for chili may be somewhat familial; my mother and several of my nephews have a taste for it as well. Which reminds me, I need to send my nephew the Peach Napalm I canned last year, per his request of course.

4) Doctor! Hmmm. Family affliction. My sister's a doc. My other sister's an RN. My uncle (he should rest in peace) was a doc. Two of my first cousins are docs and two more are RN's. My father (he should rest in peace) was a pharmacy tech and a pharmaceutical rep. He applied to medical school in the 50's and despite spectacular grades did not get accepted; there were quotas setting limits on Jews applying to most medical schools in that era. My father's story still angers me, to be honest. He finished at Syracuse University in June of '52 a dual major in Biochemistry and Political Science, interested both in medicine and law. He applied to both medical and law school, and was accepted to neither in this country. He was offered a place in the medical school class in Switzerland, University of Berne I think, but he and my mother wanted to get married, and there wasn't the money for him to go abroad to study. My uncle, his older brother, had trouble with the same quota system, but unlike my father, had money from the GI bill and started work on his PhD. He had his 'ABD' (all but dissertation), when a seat came open in medical school at the university where he was doing the PhD, and off he went.

What can I say? Medicine is fascinating. If you have a curious mind, and a taste for working with people, it's tremendous fun. I particularly loved studying the social sciences when I was in school which dovetails in wonderfully with medicine, particularly in primary care. I love the ongoing relationships I've had the privilege of developing over the decades I've been doing this. The invitations to weddings, baptisms, quinceañeras, and even funerals, have meant a lot to me. That was my model in medicine by the way. The doc that delivered my mother, delivered me, and I have a picture of him dancing at my parents' wedding. Moreover, with immigrant communities as I predominantly do, I get to see the ripples of my work moving through the community. It's not rare that I see someone, and ask why they've come in to see me, to which they respond, "I was talking to my cousin Ramón, who told me you said he needed to ........."

5) Beard! I have no bloody idea what I would look like without it! I haven't been clean shaven in over a quarter of a century. You can blame my grandfather in part for it. When I got accepted to medical school, he pulled me aside and said, "Boychick, you have such a baby face! You look to young to be a doctor. If you want older people to take you seriously, you need to let your beard grow." That was all the prompting I needed. I hated shaving. Hated it! First of all, I wasn't terribly good at it. I always wound up looking like I'd just lost in a knife fight, even with an electric razor. Who the hell cuts himself using an electric razor? By the time I started med school, I had a full beard. I was 21.

The only time it came off was a major mistake. Never, ever, ever trim you beard when you're not 100% fully awake. About 10 days before graduation from med school, I got up one morning, and after taking a leak, looked in the mirror while washing my hands. Deciding the hair was asymetric, to high on one cheek, I got out a razor to even it out, only to go a bit too low. So I went to the other side, to even it out. Next thing I knew, I had gone all the way down on each cheek, sort of like Abe Lincoln with a mustache. Did not care for that look, so I took it down to a goatee. One look in the mirror at that stage and I thought, "Crap! I look like the devil incarnate!". Off the rest of it came. All I left was the 'stash. Looking in the mirror, all I could think was, "OMG, what have I done!" Now my beard grows quickly, but 10 days away from both graduation and graduation pictures did not allow me enough time to get thru the 'geez-your-face-looks-grubby-are-you-growing-a-beard' stage. For 10 very long days I shaved, swearing all the time that this would never happen again. June 2nd, 1980 was the last time I shaved.

Given what I do for a living, which includes scrubbing to go into the O.R. I have to keep the beard somewhat trimmed. A 'chest warmer' just doesn't work when going into a sterile environment. As it is, I wind up, putting my hair up under a nurse's scrub bonnet, and then cut eye holes in the back of a surgical hood, which I then reverse and tie on to my head. The result leaves me looking like a Mexican wrestler, but does manage to cover all my hair when I walk into the O.R. I cannot tell you how many women awaiting c-sections have taken one look at me and burst into laughter, exclaiming "¡estas listo por lucha libre!"