100 leitmotifs: #24 winter
May. 14th, 2005 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirLowell House, on the Feast of St. Matthias
Studying status: laughably low. I did take a break to see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladydaera and schwimmerin (Nan, unfortunately, was too busy to come), and it was fabulous. Am blown away by Ford, who was perfect. ^_^ Also, must buy soundtrack as soon as possible.
So a few weeks back, I signed up for Dr. Tenma from Monster at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
100_leitmotifs in a temporary fit of ambition and insanity, and although the moderator hasn't gotten around to adding me to the list, I had an inconvenient spurt of inspiration today.
I intend the leitmotifs to be a collection of letters from Tenma to various characters, as he travels around the world with the Médecins sans Frontières. I don't know how much development there will be, but I think it'll be a good way for me to parse the manga.
#24: Winter
24 Dezember 2003
Dear Nina,
As you will see by the postmark, I am writing to you from Ingushetia, near the Chechen border. I've spent the past month at a refugee camp here, doing what I can to help the civilians fleeing from the conflict. It isn't much, I'm afraid. Our supplies are limited, and with the onset of winter, we've been fighting off a merciless flu epidemic, which has only added to the general fright, the panic. These people abandoned homes and families to escape the chaos, but it follows them even here, and some of them have been running for so long that I wonder if they even remember how to stop. As the winter progresses, the camp fills with more and more people who have nowhere else to go, and in the cramped conditions, the elderly and the young quickly fall ill. At times, I despair of helping them at all; we are but five doctors for several hundred people.
Yesterday, a nine-year-old child died under my care. The sixth death I've seen while in this camp. Who knows how many more died before we could reach them? He was about the same age as Dieter when I first met him, although much smaller after months of malnourishment. His arms were so thin, his eyes so tired. He seemed almost relieved to die, after the days of fever and delirium. His mother seemed relieved as well; she did not reproach me but sat there quietly, still holding his stiffening hand. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth seemed to murmur a prayer. Strange, how some can lose everything and yet keep faith. Or perhaps faith is all they have left.
Sometimes, I can glimpse the wasteland in their eyes, the unmentioned horrors from which they ran.
Too many dying. In this camp, I've come to learn just how helpless I am as a doctor. There are diseases we can't cure, patients we can't save. Most of all, the brutality that we can't stop or prevent because it is human. As you well know, Nina. The wounds that I can't heal, for all my knowledge of surgery, because they are images and sounds branded in memory--these wounds are deepest.
I think, no, I know that I am losing this war against death. Against mortality. At times. At times I wonder if /he/, despite everything, was right in that, at the very least. That we are equal only in death. That we are made equal by death.
There was a snowstorm yesterday, in time for Christmas, although few people celebrate Christmas here. The snow has momentarily covered the ugliness of the camp--its tattered tents, its fearful inhabitants, its filthiness--beneath white drifts, deceptively peaceful. This morning, there was a snowball fight in the yard next to the abandoned shacks where we've established our little "hospital". A snowball hit me by accident as I was entering the building, and the child who threw it disappeared in a flash of red scarf. Hundreds of people shivering next to stoves without wood and heaters without fuel, but there are still children to play in snow. Such is hope, if you'll permit me the indulgence. It's a difficult season, these cold, dark months, yet we try more than ever to believe in life.
Forgive me, Nina; I meant to wish you a merry Christmas, but I'm afraid I've let my pen wander on too long on morbid subjects. Give my best to Dieter and Dr. Reichwein, and tell them I shall be back sometime next month.
Until then,
Tenma
TBC
Feedback would be really appreciated, even if you haven't read the manga but especially if you have because, really, I have only a vague idea of what I want to do and none of what I'm actually doing. O_O
Yours &c.
Studying status: laughably low. I did take a break to see Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with
ladydaera and schwimmerin (Nan, unfortunately, was too busy to come), and it was fabulous. Am blown away by Ford, who was perfect. ^_^ Also, must buy soundtrack as soon as possible.So a few weeks back, I signed up for Dr. Tenma from Monster at
100_leitmotifs in a temporary fit of ambition and insanity, and although the moderator hasn't gotten around to adding me to the list, I had an inconvenient spurt of inspiration today.I intend the leitmotifs to be a collection of letters from Tenma to various characters, as he travels around the world with the Médecins sans Frontières. I don't know how much development there will be, but I think it'll be a good way for me to parse the manga.
#24: Winter
24 Dezember 2003
Dear Nina,
As you will see by the postmark, I am writing to you from Ingushetia, near the Chechen border. I've spent the past month at a refugee camp here, doing what I can to help the civilians fleeing from the conflict. It isn't much, I'm afraid. Our supplies are limited, and with the onset of winter, we've been fighting off a merciless flu epidemic, which has only added to the general fright, the panic. These people abandoned homes and families to escape the chaos, but it follows them even here, and some of them have been running for so long that I wonder if they even remember how to stop. As the winter progresses, the camp fills with more and more people who have nowhere else to go, and in the cramped conditions, the elderly and the young quickly fall ill. At times, I despair of helping them at all; we are but five doctors for several hundred people.
Yesterday, a nine-year-old child died under my care. The sixth death I've seen while in this camp. Who knows how many more died before we could reach them? He was about the same age as Dieter when I first met him, although much smaller after months of malnourishment. His arms were so thin, his eyes so tired. He seemed almost relieved to die, after the days of fever and delirium. His mother seemed relieved as well; she did not reproach me but sat there quietly, still holding his stiffening hand. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth seemed to murmur a prayer. Strange, how some can lose everything and yet keep faith. Or perhaps faith is all they have left.
Sometimes, I can glimpse the wasteland in their eyes, the unmentioned horrors from which they ran.
Too many dying. In this camp, I've come to learn just how helpless I am as a doctor. There are diseases we can't cure, patients we can't save. Most of all, the brutality that we can't stop or prevent because it is human. As you well know, Nina. The wounds that I can't heal, for all my knowledge of surgery, because they are images and sounds branded in memory--these wounds are deepest.
I think, no, I know that I am losing this war against death. Against mortality. At times. At times I wonder if /he/, despite everything, was right in that, at the very least. That we are equal only in death. That we are made equal by death.
There was a snowstorm yesterday, in time for Christmas, although few people celebrate Christmas here. The snow has momentarily covered the ugliness of the camp--its tattered tents, its fearful inhabitants, its filthiness--beneath white drifts, deceptively peaceful. This morning, there was a snowball fight in the yard next to the abandoned shacks where we've established our little "hospital". A snowball hit me by accident as I was entering the building, and the child who threw it disappeared in a flash of red scarf. Hundreds of people shivering next to stoves without wood and heaters without fuel, but there are still children to play in snow. Such is hope, if you'll permit me the indulgence. It's a difficult season, these cold, dark months, yet we try more than ever to believe in life.
Forgive me, Nina; I meant to wish you a merry Christmas, but I'm afraid I've let my pen wander on too long on morbid subjects. Give my best to Dieter and Dr. Reichwein, and tell them I shall be back sometime next month.
Until then,
Tenma
TBC
Feedback would be really appreciated, even if you haven't read the manga but especially if you have because, really, I have only a vague idea of what I want to do and none of what I'm actually doing. O_O
Yours &c.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 05:37 pm (UTC)daera = no physics accomplished = very bad :-(
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 10:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 10:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 10:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-15 10:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-22 04:08 am (UTC)