May 1st

Standard day today, with little to speak of. The minutiae of everyday work is hardly interesting enough to catalog in any detail. Ironic, considering the extraordinary circumstances we’re afforded. I’m reminded of Freud’s unheimlich: The strange within the familiar, the strangely familiar, the familiar as strange. There was never any horror in the research--not for me. Curiosity at the repulsive gave way to a certain disquiet. Now there’s nothing. The strange as familiar. I don’t have a strong understanding of German, so I initially wrote that heimlich was perhaps more apt: The familiar. Somehow, the proper translation is actually more fitting. Heimlich means to do something secretly.

I heard from Perl that there was some unwanted excitement in the biological labs today. A strapped-down creature managed to wear through its anesthesia midway through dissection. The idea of sedating those things with massive amounts of animal tranquilizer evokes a certain type of comedy, but I suppose they make do. Perl tells me that it was mostly incapacitated when it came to, and only really succeeded in pushing the tube out of its mouth and spilling most of its guts on the floor. No effort was made to put the thing back under and it died attempting to eat whatever was falling out of its chest.

I keep thinking about the idea of awakening from sedation mid-dissection. Thought today: Would the average person prefer to die awake, or in their sleep? The concept disturbs me, somewhat… the idea of a vivid dream giving way to brain death. I’ll make a note to read a few psychological theories on dreaming under duress sometime this weekend.

Signed,
Dale R.