exhale

Today, I am taking a sanity break. No studying, no worrying, no reading up on my patients. It's time for a little peace...

Inspired by today's internal medicine noon conference that included T.S. Eliot, Elvis, and King George II (yes! A Magical Mystery Tour!), I started reading out of my old poetry books. I used to love poetry - reading, not writing - and at some point in my late teens and twenties, I began to relearn some of the poems I had learned at school and memorize new ones as a way to keep myself occupied. I clearly remember taking nightly baths and reciting poetry to myself while my ex-boyfriend sat at his computer trying to figure out just how far his progressively insane girlfriend was going to progress. I memorized Jabberwocky, after being inspired by memories of a good friend from high school who would spontaneously recite stanzas with full Jabberwocky-like animiation. I memorized those famous soliloquies from Hamlet, favorite Rumi poems, and those eternal Robert Frost poems we had to memorize in school. A lot of the time, however, I just recited T.S. Eliot. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and, of course, The Hollow Men. I've always loved these two poems. They are intense yet scattered; reverent and flippant; and most importantly, they just read really well.

Tonight, I reread some of them aloud. It was an odd experience. I remebered feeling like I really "got" them when I was younger, but now, I feel like I am just really starting to understand some of them for the first time.

...anyway, yay for a medicine-free day and a little time to catch my breath.