In the Harry Potter world, there's this useful instrument, used quite a lot by Professor Dumbledore. It was first discovered by HP in The Goblet of Fire.
It is useful, but is subjected to potential abuse, which is what Harry himself did the first he saw it.
Well, you know, curiousity. It's a blessing.
Anyway, this instrument is called a Pensieve. For those of you who aren't fans of HP, a Pensieve looks like a shallow basin filled with silvery, cloud-like substance of liquid/gas consistency.
And what, one may ask, is this silvery, cloud-like substance of liquid/gas consistency? It's a bunch of memories, "floating" together after it is siphoned out by their owner. Then, anyone can access it should they find themselves in the vicinity of that Pensieve.
On the one hand, it is useful in the sense that you can siphon out the memories you don't want to forget and retrieve it anytime.
You can use it to connect the dots in your quest for the Holy Grail.
You can use it to show people what happens at a particular time and place. Which would be useful to, say, win an argument. Or even a trial in court. Huh. That would be particularly useful. We should make this Pensieve thing a thing. But then, it can be tampered with, like what Professor Slughorn did to the memory of the conversation between Tom Riddle and him. Which turns out to be an important piece of the how-to-end-Voldemort-forever puzzle.
Or you can use it to simply feel nostalgic and dwell in those memories.
On the other, well, you know. Privacy and abuse and not living life due dwelling in memories and stuff.
And how i wish i have one.
The Pensieve i mean. Not memories.
It'd be too pathetic to desire a memory. Just hoping it would come floating by. Yeah, that's about right.
Not that i have too many great memories that would lead to the end of world poverty and hunger. Or to finding the cure for cancer and AIDS and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Or to increase literacy rate. Or to the access of clean water for every part of the world. Or to reduce the effect of global warming. Or to bring peace in Middle East.
Or maybe there is. Man, i should really start working on it.
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
So I was trying to make my Twitter account more alive by throwing out whatever crossed my mind. And, well, I don't really like it. "Don't really like" is actually kinda an understatement.
The word limit feels really restricting, like how a claustrophobic would feel in a confined, dark room. Suffocating.
But it's not all bad. Still, I decided to rumble mumble jumble my thoughts here.
My thought process is currently a bit incoherent, so bear with me here.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine sort of "forced" me to read a book by John Green.
I was at that time still totally in love with dystopian books, and had just finished reading the Divergent series, and was still utterly crushing (is that even right?) on the main guy character, Four.
And she said, I can't say I quote because she didn't actually say it in English, but meh, I'll just use I quote anyway, "read this book before you start reading any other books". And that she had this huge crush on Augustus Waters, the main guy character.
The fact that these people are fictitious isn't really a barrier.
You know, it's not easy to find a book that can actually absorb you into the realm of, well, the book. At least not for me. So once I get in, I tend to either fall in love with the scene, the genre, the main character, the theme, or simply in love with...it.
And I know a lot of people do, too. Ok. Whatever.
So I read it. You know, The Fault in Our Stars.The one my friend force-recommended. (I mean, I didn't even know who John Green is). I hope I'm not giving out any spoilers here. I don't know if I should use the spoiler alert, because it won't really be a spoiler. But it will be kind of a spoiler. Or maybe not. Ok, so I'll just put in a small SPOILER ALERT here.
Anyway.
After reading it the first time, I was all "Ok. So it's a book about cancer. Sort of."
But being a science major, there are some things that I don't really understand in this book (I was trying REALLY hard not to diagnose Hazel's dyspnea, like is it a pleural effusion or a pulmonary edema. In the end I decided it's a pleural effusion because of the thoracocentesis and stuff. I mean, I would've suggested pleurodesis, but yeah, not my call).
But (again) being a person who took English Literature course back in school, I have all these questions that I needed answers to. Nothing like Hazel's, though. I mean, I agree with JG that all characters cease to exist once a novel is done. So far.
So I read it the second time. Conclusion: it's still a book about cancer.
The third time, however, I decided to have someone else read it to me. Maybe something will change this time. So I listened to an audiobook. Which is a lot faster.
Conclusion: it's not so much a book about cancer as it is about life itself. I mean, even if you don't have cancer, there are still some things you can relate to, that give you sense of things and life and all.
But I was left, with even more questions.
The theme of the book isn't really what I want to write about. Actually there's a lot of things I want to write about. But let's me just write about one of them, for now.
Somewhere in the book, JG wrote about who the real heroes are. I'm just going to paraphrase here. He said that the real heroes are the people who notice things, who observe keenly, who pay attention. Mainly because the universe wants to be observed. Not the people who do things.
I agree with him, partly. The observing part, yeah. The not doing things part, not really.
Observation really is a powerful ability granted to a person. You can learn a lot through observation.
With just observation, you can already get a part of a patient's diagnosis.
With just observation, you can tell just how much the patient is tolerating or suffering.
With just observation, you can tell how much benefit you want to give to the doubt you have about it.
I was once in the hospital, in my third year of med school, the doctor asked, even before we could do the patient interview, what the patient had.
We just started Internal Medicine, so we thought it was a really hard task. We didn't know how to observe (the patient was deaf in one ear, by the way. And he had a hearing aid. Which shouldn't be hard to recognize. But we didn't. Because we thought he was expecting us to see some more sophisticated things).
"Street diagnosis" he would call it. And he really emphasized on that.
Recently, I haven't really been living in the "now" part of time. I've been too eager to look ahead.
Sure, it's good. But losing the now part for the whatever it is to come, is it really worth it?
Sometimes we're too caught up in the future, we forget to enjoy the now. And once we're in the future, we feel bad for not cherishing the now.
I don't know. But I think observing the things around me, everything, anything, really gives me the sense of now. It sort of ties me back to the present.
One room at a time, yeah?
Wow. This is really long.
So here's a song for you.
I am currently obsessing over this song.
The first time I listened to it, the early part, I was all "come on! Why is this song so slow? Where's the energy?!"
Then came this part, where I was like "woahhh, this is what I've been waiting for. You still haven't failed to amaze me FJ. Awesome!"
So here it is; Terbang Tunduk by Fynn Jamal.
Can't find the original version. Heh. Jangan komplen banyak lah.
The marks humans leave are too often scars.
- John Green -
ps: Finals. Again?
ps2: A friend of mine just gave birth to a baby boy. And I can't can't can't CAN'T wait to see him *big grin*
Scene 1 A few months ago; surgery room. On the operating table, a patient. Post-op. Gastrostomy tube placement. Patient suffers from esophageal tumour, nasogastric tube cannot be placed. Patient has been dependent on parenteral nutrition.
Surgeon: Do you know why we have to place the gastrostomy tube? Because living off glucose and electrolytes is not a way to live. We are in the 21st century, and no man should die of starvation.
Scene 2 A few hours ago; on the ward. A very cachectic old lady (i personally have NEVER seen anyone so cachectic). First thought: probably cancer, late stage.
Doctor: The lady just now, no disease. She's been neglected.
Student: Is she dying?
Doctor: Yes, unfortunately.
Scene 3 Right now; somewhere on earth. An old man in the alleyways of a modern city; A shivering child under the rubble of a former home in Palestine; A child with kwashiorkor, somewhere in Africa; lying, waiting.
No help arrives.
*tiba-tiba lagu Bahasa Melayu. Sila abaikan video*
It is our own neglect, our own indifference that kills. Not starvation. Not lack of food supply.
Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike
