Welcome to the Time Capsule — a weekly newsletter that serves as both my public journal and personal scrapbook. I write about the things on my mind and close to my heart in hopes that those who read it find value and enjoyment in it, and perhaps some solace too.
💭 Quote(s) of the Week
I have faith in things coming right little by little.
Frédéric Chopin, in a letter to Solange Clésinger (December 1847)
✏️ The Hero with a Thousand Faces
My father wanted me to see the world,
to experience the discombobulation,
the riveting excitement,
the eerie loneliness of finding one’s self in a place far from home.
The hero’s journey,
that timeless tale of the human condition,
should not be denied.
These feelings of
uncertainty and vertigo
are not to be treated.
They are to be embraced,
chased after,
so that
when enough time and suffering have passed,
one wakes up feeling at home again.
All great tales begin with a bursting forth,
a leap of faith
into that familiar and unknown world trodden on
by Adam, Saul, and Bonaparte alike.
We are not alone in our sufferings,
nor in our ecstasies.
We are simply human,
engaging our lives in the same way
everyone before us has, and everyone one after us will.
Let God be your captain,
and hindsight your diary.
You will find home once more.
📸 Photo(s) of the Week
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
&
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
Vincent Van Gogh
📖 Book of the Week — The Right Side and the Wrong Side by Albert Camus
This collection of essays came as part of a book of Camus’ personal writings, which has been my closest companion for the last few weeks. I have never underlined so many lines in a book before — partly because I have only recently taken up the practice of marking my books, and partly because I am blown away by his prose & writing style. He writes beautifully. Here are some of my favourite lines:
Life is short, and it is sinful to waste one’s time.
Yes, everything is simple. It is men who complicate things.
And if I loved then in giving myself, I finally became myself, since only love restores us.
With energy, something I’ve a good deal of, one sometimes manages to behave morally, but never to be moral.
The people I have loved have always been better and greater than I.
Yet in the train taking me from Vienna to Venice, I was waiting for something. I was like a convalescent fed on bouillon wondering how his first crust of bread will taste. Light was about to break through. I know now what it was: I was ready to be happy.
Without cafés and newspapers, it would be difficult to travel. A paper printed in our own language, a place to rub shoulders with others in the evenings enable us to imitate the familiar gestures of the man we were at home, who, seen from a distance, seems so much a stranger. For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. One can no longer cheat—hide behind hours spent at the office or at the plant (those hours we protest so loudly, which protect us so well from the pain of being alone). I have always wanted to write novels in which my heroes would say, “What would I do without the office?” or again: “My wife has died, but fortunately I have all these orders to fill for tomorrow.” Travel robs us of such refuge. Far from our own people, our own language, stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks (one doesn’t know the fare on the streetcars, or anything else), we are completely on the surface of ourselves.
💡 Food for Thought
Take care that luxury does not turn into necessity.
🔭 Sunday Best
Usher: Tiny Desk Concert — he went off on this one
Postoperative Pain Management in Total Knee Arthroplasty — by Li et. al in the journal Orthopaedic Surgery (2019)
The aim of this review was to discuss the current postoperative pain management regimens for TKA. Our review of the literature demonstrated that multimodal analgesia is considered the optimal regimen for perioperative pain management of TKA and improves clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction, through a combination of several types of medications and delivery routes, including preemptive analgesia, neuraxial anesthesia, peripheral nerve blockade, patient‐controlled analgesia and local infiltration analgesia, and oral opioid/nonopioid medications. Multimodal analgesia provides superior pain relief, promotes recovery of the knee, and reduces opioid consumption and related adverse effects in patients undergoing TKA.
Thomas Aquinas’ 5 Proofs of the Existence of God — the 5 arguments being the Argument of the First Mover; of Efficient Cause; from Necessary Being; from Gradation; and from Design.
Take care of your soul.
AT