I awoke from a dream this morning. I was going to medical school in Mexico City.
Although it sounds preposterous, there are elements in my background that make this dream-plot more plausible, at least as a dream, than one might expect. When I lived in Mexico City in the 1980s, one of my coworkers, Joaquín, was studying in medical school (keeping in mind the caveat that at that time, a medical degree in Mexico was a baccalaureate degree. So at that time, I was immersed in a kind of second-hand medical education. Later, finishing my own undergraduate work, I studied quite a few botany courses, from which I derived a kind of comfort with biological discourses. More recently, since my cancer, I have developed a habit of trying hard to understand as much as possible about the various medical situations and treatments I have experienced, which has evolved into a kind of "hobby" of reading online medical blogs.
Anyway, that's just background, in an effort to understand how my brain managed to put together this dream, maybe. It wasn't that detailed. I was at my workplace in Mexico City, the main difference being that I was in medical school too – not just Joaquín. Of course, I was studying things related to cancer. I was having a difficult time, however. I couldn't seem to remember any of the various things I needed to memorize. Finally I looked over at Joaquín, and he just grinned. He had one of the fat textbooks open but was wearing it like a hat on the top of his head.
"What are you doing?" I asked. There was a weird echo, and when I looked around, I wasn't in my workplace but rather inside a hospital – kind of a cross between the Cancer Center here in Korea and the hospital where I spent some time in Mexico City.
Joaquín looked like he was ready to perform surgery – except for the book on his head. He didn't answer for a while. So I asked him again, "What are you doing?"
Finally, he said laconically, "The knowldege runs down from the book into your brain."
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]