i just thought of a conceptual connection between two of my struggles right now. the two are utterly unrelated, but i see some thematic tie in the concept of granularity.
the first struggle is rice. yes – quite simple: RICE. almost every meal has rice. i have nothing against rice – i habitually comsume at home not much less than im served here daily. i like rice. but by some twist of fate it turns out that a blob of sticky korean rice is almost ideally designed to confound my new, untrained tongue. upon putting the rice in my mouth the individual grains separate and go rogue. i cant chew them all. . . some escape and lodge in places my tongue cant find or reach. maybe half a dozen grains end up in my lungs with every meal.
unfortunately, it being rice, this creates a social disaster. eating everything on my tray except the rice is perceived as if im refusing to eat. im accused of having a lost appetite (obviously a bad sign), im accused of being a picky westerner, im accused of having a poor understanding of nutrition.
ive taken to calling my neighbors over and showing them the rice grains i cough up after a meal, to prove my point. i can eat things that are creamy, no problem. and larger granularities – chunks of fish or meat or fruit are fine too. "hardness" vs "softness" is not the axis of my problem, but people have so much trouble conceptualizing what im talking about. andrew bought me some apple and a woman complained i couldnt possibly eat it given my other food troubles, but i savored it easily.
the second struggle is with a lack of solitude. i have a social job and those social interactions are important to my psychological well-being, but i also not only enjoy but NEED solitude – preferably on the order of at least 8 hours per day. in the hospital, there is never solitude – nurses, fellow patients, anyone can interrupt into my space at any moment. im like a single grain of rice, where to be isolated from the collective implies a certain risk. the social granularity of cancer ward life isnt per se a bad thing, but for me its proving to be a sort of subtle poison no different from the grains of rice, sapping my strength in a way others are incapable of understanding.
the social space here isnt all bad of course – that is far from my meaning. most people show immense kindness and generosity. but i need my reparative solitude.