David is studying acupuncture and oriental medicine, as some of you may or may not know.
The upshot of this is, there’s all these diagrams around the house for identifying various characteristics or the location of acupuncture points and meridians, etc. What’s funny is they all have this look that I find particularly creepy. It’s kind of like attack of the zombie patients.
I think it’s because the drawings are meant to represent people realistically, but without ethnic characteristics or any kind of emotional color.
Which, of course, isn’t realistic at all.
So you get this curious combination of something meant to look human, that isn’t human at all.
People have been sending me notes, concerned that my blog posts show that I’m under pressure or overloaded. And I start to think about how can I edit them so as not to put that so much on display. I suppose that’s my first instinct — to try to gloss that over. Then I wonder why I feel like no one knows when I need support. Therefore, I’m making a concerted effort not to gloss and to ask for support when I need it.
After all, it’s the human thing to do.
(Today is the official last day for the label “Ruthless Revision” — it is DONE! I’m lousy at keeping secrets.)
I think those pictures are a product of professional detachment. It's how doctors actually see patients. "All of the parts and none of the whole."
A sobering thought!