S Y N O P S I S   O F   A   W O R K   I N   P R O G R E S S
the words were not quite done, yet i gave them

[you will have to forgive this,
it is somewhat autobiographical
and thus not "not me", but the idea
(which I hope is not taken over by the story)
is bigger, therefore I hope the author will this time be excused.]

I don't know much of anything about anything. I only know enough to know I know nothing and that in and of itself is enough for now. What I do know is to write it down.

I don't want to do this, you see, but I'm faced with no choice when I'm grabbed by it and dragged to the keyboard, or my notepad or a scrap of paper. I'd much rather spend my days peering down a microscope or hunched over a lab bench:

[This, you will observe, comes from three years of Hopkins-type pathology, from which we derive: "Raymond comes in with this blanket-bundle in his arms and sets it down on the cart next to me. He asks, "You're not squeamish are you?" :: "No, of course not," so he opens up the bundle and pulls out a 22 wk. gestation fetus. He positions it on the x-ray and tells me to step out into the hall with him so that he can take the x-ray..." (10 Jul 99) :~: "No one filled the Eosin this morning, so Emily's slides didn't get any. But I didn't see it until I was block matching them. They looked funny under the scope, just hematoxylinized nuclei and nothing much in between. It wasn't like cells forming tissue, it was more like just cells, nothing really connected them. They looked like they were floating real close together. I don't think it was lymph node either, looked more like lung to me. Hmm. "So I filled the Eosin and stuck the slides in acetone xylene. But, there was, as I noticed an hour and a half later, no acetone in it. So I filled it with some acetone and took the coverslips off. Then I had to rehydrate the sections by hand and stick them on the linear stainer. They turned out just fine." (19 Jul 99) :~: "I'm seeing tissue when I close my eyes. When I look at trees I think, if these were tissue I'd embed them like so... or oh look at that bird poop dropping, it would fit so neatly into one of those medium square molds...thing is it's not exactly thought. I don't even have to think about it anymore. I just know and its always somewhat in my consciousness." (18 Aug 99) :~: "I embedded all of the GYN blocks this morning. Towards the end I had a POC [ed. note, Products Of Conception] case and I knew because it was a tiny little hand, two of them actually, one of which was attached to what must have been a piece of the body because you could see the spinal column and ribs. It was interesting, in a scientific-removed kind of way and it didn't seem sad at all." (01 Sept 99) ] It still gets me right in here when I think about it. The sun sets every day. It's nothing important. I write because I must.