Last week during the full moon, I watched the sunset from a bluff near my home, then walked the dog toward the full, rising moon. That night, lying in bed, the bright face of the moon illuminated my pillow, shining on my face as I lie there. By closing one eye, I could watch the crystal pendant hanging in my window perform a full lunar eclipse, just the halo of the light shinng around the pendant. In the crystal, I could see brilliant color prisms twinkling like stars.
Lying there in that moonglow, I felt a sense of peacefulness that has stuck with me. I didn't know why I felt it, but I sensed the beginning of something new, something promising.
I have no clue what that is, but I'm personally hoping it's a new phase of life. I'm overdue.
Yesterday, visiting The Good Witch, she told me about a ritual she and the members of her coven had done during the full moon. I won't go into explicit detail -- they burned things, waved their arms around in the air, said things and cast some spells -- but I was interested to hear the significants of that particular moon.
It was a full moon in Aries during the Libra sun. In the astrology of my birth, that is my moon. And it seems that, with my birthday just around the corner, this moon wasn't just mine, it was particularly apt and timely.
As The Good Witch explained to me, the full Aries moon during Libra is a time of letting go of old and unhealthy ways and an opportunity to begin anew without dragging along so much of our old and nasty baggage. I guess they believe it's easier during this full moon to put down pain and fear and to begin enacting new intentions. Which is interesting to me, because that's a nice articulation of what I was feeling as I lie there in the light of that moon.
Over the past year, I have felt the fits and starts of things changing within me. Or perhaps I should say starts and fits. Because even as I have had my brain rather forcibly opened to new ideas at the hands of some peculiar experiences, I have been resistant. Reluctant. Skeptical. Questioning. Sometimes, to a point that it's a bit maddening.
Not just for myself, but for some of the compassionate and altogether human souls around me.
But when I look at my life -- in terms of both how it has been in the past couple of years and what's going on in the larger story arc -- it's no wonder I would be wary and resistant, while at the same time yearning for something new with an earnest openness. In some respects, I have been searching for decades. But I have been in a phase -- one lasting 10 years, almost to the day -- during which everything I thought I understood about life, about consciousness, about meaning and about ... myself ... has come into question. It's as if I were a piece of iron, half-crafted into something useful, that was thrown back into the forge to be heated again and then pounded into something completely different.
And I mean completely different.
Ten years ago, this coming Thursday, I had a birthday joint birthday party with my friend Lesha. Our birthdays were just a few days apart -- although I was several years younger -- and we had so many mutual friends that we decided to celebrate our birthdays together.
Although I have a rather tragic history when it comes to the birthdays of my childhood, I know a good party when I attend one. And this party? It was GREAT. In the town where we lived, both of us had an extensive social network, and as a result, the house was packed to the point that the party spilled out on the front lawn. The music was going and people were dancing like crazy. When Lesha's partner and two friends lit up the fire hazard that was our two birthday cakes, the chorus of "Happy Birthday" was deafening. Lesha and I both were moved to tears of joy and laughter from the whole scene.
At midnight, when my actual birthday rolled around, a smaller group of close friends toasted me again. I had never had a birthday like it. I was 29.
Three nights later, on the evening of October 7, I got a phone call that drained me of the lingering joy. Everything in my life changed.
My youngest brother, who was 21, had been hit head-on by a pickup truck that suddenly veered into his lane on a two-lane country road in the rain just as night was falling. The speed limit was 70 mph, and the driver was speeding. The engine block of my brother's car ended up in the front seat.
The extent of my brother's injuries: Numerous broken bones, including one femur shattered into more than 10 pieces; damaged liver; destroyed spleen; clot in his brain; severely damaged left eye; several severe skin wounds that will require plastic surgery. And, two weeks into his "recovery," doctors were shocked to discover he had suffered an aneurism in his heart. It's usually fatal, but JAWs 2 was somehow still alive. His sixth surgery in two weeks was to repair his heart.
What we didn't know when we permitted doctors to do that heart surgery -- one so unusual it was likely fodder for the medical journals -- is that we were consigning my brother to a slow death as a human "vegetable." Two days before he got that surgery, he had suffered severe anoxia when, during a procedure to give him a tracheostomy and to clean some of his wounds, his heart had "slowed to zero," as one of the doctors later described it. It stayed at "zero" for 15 minutes.
They managed to "bring him back," but the oxygen deprivation to his brain was so great that he never regained any significant level of consciousness. Over the next four years, the contracture of his muscles would cause him to curl up into a taut fetal position, his body would refuse nutrients and this young man of 6-foot, 2-inches would be whittled down to a mere 87 pounds.
His death in the summer of 2001 was the first experience of mercy I believe I'd ever known.
Throughout the heinous affair, my divorced parents re-enacted some rather bitter and demoralizing scenes from their marriage, and I came to understand quite clearly that my biological "family" was no family at all. My sister described our particular collection of biological entities as "a loose confederation of unaffiliated Gypsies." Because I'm the optimist in my family, it would take a while for the meaning of the situation to come fully into focus for me. And when that finally happened, it was devastating.
But in those final months of 1997 and the beginning of 1998, I was lost. All the warmth and community I had experienced at that birthday party could not abate the grief that took up residence within me the first time I wiped up the drool that was pooling in my brother's already-emaciated collarbone.
Even before this happened, I had been thinking about leaving my job. A few months after the wreck, I began looking more seriously. I got several job offers, all of which I turned down. For many reasons, I had lost my passion for journalism. I needed to do something else but wasn't sure what.
So one day the following summer, I moved to Portland.
Things settled down. I adjusted, as much as I possibly could, to my brother's earthbound Limbo. I found work as a graphic designer and later put my writing skills back to work, as well. I got involved with XGF. We got a house. We got dogs. We entertained friends, but what's better, we entertained each other. (The other day, XGF said to me, "We had so much fun together, didn't we?" We did, indeed.) We traveled.
All along, I was engaged in some soul-searching. I missed the robust human interaction I had as a newspaper reporter, but I also wanted to do something that would help make the world a better place. I also sought a career that would hold my interest, allow me to work with a great deal of autonomy and perhaps be self-employed. What's more, I hoped for something that would stoke my passion in some way.
In the end, it boiled down to my desire to do something meaningful. Meaningful for myself and for others.
That's what swum in my head every time I visited my brother in the ICU, in the "restorative care center," and later, in the nursing home. Meaning. Meaning. Meaning.
What if that were me? It was easy to look at him -- this young man who was more like me in many respects than anyone else on the planet -- and to wonder that. What have I give my life meaning? What am I putting into the world that might survive me? What seeds am I planting?
After he died, my searching process accelerated. Although I experienced his death as a form of mercy, it turned up the heat on my own quest to do something different. If we return to the metaphor of the iron being returned to the forge, I was fired up by my search.
Somewhere, all my questioning resulted in action: I decided to become a psychotherapist. I applied to graduate school. And then, most unexpectedly, my life became about transformation. I would be pounded into something new whether I wanted it or not -- not just by graduate school but by a relentless assault of losses.
Shortly after I submitted my application for graduate school, my grandfather died. He was my last grandparent -- also my favorite -- and his death caught me by surprise. I learned about it in an e-mail sent to my work address. Two months later, I was in Hawaii visiting family when it became obvious that something was amiss with the health of my aunt, who was very much like a mother to me. Two months after that, I learned she had a terminal form of lymphoma.
Added to that mix was the loss of my career. Although I had planned to leave come August, I learned in April that I would be laid off in mid-June. This was like a gift from the universe, in my book, because it came with a nice severance check and unemployment benefits. I had a very fine summer indeed. But it was still a greater loss of "identity" than I had anticipated.
In August, I had a strange experience in Peru in which I believed I was dying. Although I was making a lot of conscious changes in my life, this moment rattled me to the core. I feel certain that it played a role the end of my relationship with XGF, which came six months later.
And then, as if Death itself had picked me for a lay-away plan with quarterly payments, I felt the pain of losing four people who were dear to me in different ways.
The first to go was Lesha, with whom I had shared that lovely birthday party. She died in her sleep from congestive heart failure that had been misdiagnosed as asthma. A few months later, I received an e-mail that my friend Sharon had shot and killed herself in the little cabin she had in Alaska -- an event that, in retrospect, I felt I should have seen coming but didn't. Three months on from that, I learned via e-mail (again!) that my old friend Nick, for whom my heart had a very tender spot, had died when the cancer he battled years ago returned with a fury.
The death of my aunt at the end of January was like a repeated kick in the gut. I lost my mind and fell into profound grief.
Wounds I was still licking from the loss of my brother reopened. And graduate school -- with all of its focus on self-awareness -- was doing its own number on me. While the divorce from XGF had been gut-wrenching and sad, my aunt's death left me feeling like my life was a trapeze act conducted high up in the Big Top without a safety net. She had been the last connection I felt to having a "family," and her death in many respects rendered me an orphan.
In and out of the forge. Pounded on again and again. Reshaped. Heated. Pounded. Heated. Pounded.
That has been these 10 years. That and more.
It is a story of living with loss and death. There are people who have sustained far greater casualties in this world, of that I'm sure. But it has been profoundly painful for me nonetheless. At times, the wounds of my grief have festered and demanded attention. Other times, they have scabbed over and looked as if they would heal -- only to be reopened by another change, another death.
Along the way, the self-reflection demanded by my graduate program has ensured that the need for things I did not have in childhood -- namely love and support and even a false sense of security -- found their way to the front of the line. Where these two forms of grief -- the old and the more recent -- have collided, my personal anguish has sometimes become painfully apparent to those around me.
I have told myself repeatedly, This too shall pass. This shit storm is going to come to an end. Things will settle down. I have been desperate to believe it -- but never really have. Rather, I have in the past year or so often wondered not just when the next shoe will drop but just how many fucking feet there are. It has seemed endless both to me and to some of those around me.
It's obvious that I can't actually give myself a respite. I can't make sure no one else dies for a while. I don't get to take a vacation from graduate school. Life goes on for better or worse.
I keep facing it.
And for whatever reason, staring into the brightness of that full Aries moon, I had the feeling a new phase of my life is on the horizon. Intuition tells me it will be a better one. One thing I'm trying to do more is to trust my intuition and to develop some notion of faith, which I have never possessed.
When doing life as a trapeze act without a net, faith seems essential. It's the thing I imagine allows one to let go and fly through the air with grace.
And of all the things I want most for myself, it's living more artfully and intentionally. Death is obviously waiting one way or another. Might as well let go and fly with grace. Chances are that I'll catch ahold of the next trapeze, but flying gracefully will make it easier to do a fabulous swan dive when I inevitably fall.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
Entering extended psychosis
How did you get here?
One of the more hidden parts of my professional past is about five years of working in marketing communications, the most soul-sucking job I ever had. But one thing the work did was instill a curiosity in me about how a particular piece of communication finds its audience or how the audience finds it.
This is true for my blog, as you might imagine. I'm curious about how people find their way to this little itty bitty, insignificant corner of the Internet. So one of the things I do is monitor the types of Internet searches -- from the likes of Google and Yahoo! and whatever -- that result in surfers actually arriving at my blog. (Also, I'm pleased to note that when you Google "extended psychosis," this quaint little blog is at the top of the list. Perhaps I should sell ads for the makers of Seroquel and other anti-psychotic meds, huh?)
But I digress.
Although I can't identify individual readers, I can tell what corner of the world they're in when they link to extended psychosis, and I can see the actual words they used in their queries. The results fascinate me, even though I can't make any conclusions about their significance.
I'll just share what I know. Aside from "extended psychosis," the following are the most common Internet searches that get you to UCM's little la-la land:
Fresh boobs: I get more hits off of people Googling this phrase than just about any other. There are some variants: "fried boobs," "fresh bathing boobs" and "sunscreen boobs" will eventually get you here, as well. Curiously, most of these hits come from Islamic countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Every once in a while, someone from the States or, say, Ireland, will land here via that road. But what I wonder is: No matter who you are or what you believe, what in the hell are "fresh boobs"?
If you're one of those visitor, please post a comment below and explain yourself. I'm just ... curious.
Rejected by Peace Corps: That's kind of a sad thing, isn't it? So many people out in the world are Googling "rejected by Peace Corps" that I feel bad for them. Of course, I get a lot of hits off regular old "Peace Corps," too, but feelings of rejection seem to dominate what gets you here. Saddest of all was the one visitor who arrived at my blog by Googling "Peace Corps depression." Not surprisingly, most of those folks come from the United States.
Insane sex toys: Yes, this would be the third most common string of words that bring you to extended psychosis. Some searches land readers at my home page, but others take them to specific entries. The entry that gets hit by "insane sex toys" also gets lots of hits for searches that include "infamous couples" and "insane sex."
Leschmaniasis: So far, there's nothing especially pleasing about any of the search strings that will turn up my blog. But the one that I feel worst about is all those readers -- there are enough to surprise me -- who end up linking to my blog when they're looking for something about leschmaniasis. Of course, they *do* find something about leschmaniasis, but I can't imagine it's what they wanted.
For the record, leschmaniasis is a really nasty infection of some sort, a parasite or something carried in ticks that hang out on sloths. Or something like that. All I know is that you can get it from handling sloths and that it can lay dormant in your body for months before you start having these wounds just opening up hither and yon on your skin, festering and oozing with puss. Very nasty. And that you have to take really hideous antibiotics for a terribly long time to get rid of it. So you know what that means, right? DO. NOT. TOUCH. THE. SLOTHS. (Easier said than done, I should note, if you happen to visit certain "artisan" markets in Iquitos, Peru, or if you happen to get hijacked on the way to a butterfly farm in the Amazon and taken to the Casa del Serpiente. Been there, done that. On both accounts. And I can report this: Sloths have sharp nails and can squeeze the shit outta your hand. Even the babies.)
This concludes a really informal, potentially terribly incorrect public service announcement about leschmaniasis. Just in case you've Googled it and ended up here. I didn't want you to feel ripped off.
And, just for the sake of illustrating how capricious Internet search engines can be, here are some terms, aside from the ones already listed, that resulted in readers visiting extended psychosis today:
staying alone in a cabin by the lake
psychosis and the want to be left alone
sexy+hip check
inverted heirarchies
leave journalism
I've considered writing a little tidbit about these searches for some time, but I would like to share with you the search today that finally prompted me to do so. In terms of searches, this one kind of trips me out a little, but I'm not sure why:
graduate school+breast size+cancer+correlation
I got more than than 44,000 hits when I typed in that search just to see what turns up. I went through a few pages and did not find extended psychosis anywhere near the top -- thankfully -- but I also quickly lose interest in most Internet searches. Someone had to wade through a bunch of stuff before they found me. And yet they did.
Well.
For whatever reason, so did you.
If you're one of my regulars, thanks for reading. But if you're one of those random searchers, all I can say is: I'm sorry, man. I hope the psychosis doesn't last too long. But I can assure you: Reading this is *not* the cure.
One of the more hidden parts of my professional past is about five years of working in marketing communications, the most soul-sucking job I ever had. But one thing the work did was instill a curiosity in me about how a particular piece of communication finds its audience or how the audience finds it.
This is true for my blog, as you might imagine. I'm curious about how people find their way to this little itty bitty, insignificant corner of the Internet. So one of the things I do is monitor the types of Internet searches -- from the likes of Google and Yahoo! and whatever -- that result in surfers actually arriving at my blog. (Also, I'm pleased to note that when you Google "extended psychosis," this quaint little blog is at the top of the list. Perhaps I should sell ads for the makers of Seroquel and other anti-psychotic meds, huh?)
But I digress.
Although I can't identify individual readers, I can tell what corner of the world they're in when they link to extended psychosis, and I can see the actual words they used in their queries. The results fascinate me, even though I can't make any conclusions about their significance.
I'll just share what I know. Aside from "extended psychosis," the following are the most common Internet searches that get you to UCM's little la-la land:
Fresh boobs: I get more hits off of people Googling this phrase than just about any other. There are some variants: "fried boobs," "fresh bathing boobs" and "sunscreen boobs" will eventually get you here, as well. Curiously, most of these hits come from Islamic countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Every once in a while, someone from the States or, say, Ireland, will land here via that road. But what I wonder is: No matter who you are or what you believe, what in the hell are "fresh boobs"?
If you're one of those visitor, please post a comment below and explain yourself. I'm just ... curious.
Rejected by Peace Corps: That's kind of a sad thing, isn't it? So many people out in the world are Googling "rejected by Peace Corps" that I feel bad for them. Of course, I get a lot of hits off regular old "Peace Corps," too, but feelings of rejection seem to dominate what gets you here. Saddest of all was the one visitor who arrived at my blog by Googling "Peace Corps depression." Not surprisingly, most of those folks come from the United States.
Insane sex toys: Yes, this would be the third most common string of words that bring you to extended psychosis. Some searches land readers at my home page, but others take them to specific entries. The entry that gets hit by "insane sex toys" also gets lots of hits for searches that include "infamous couples" and "insane sex."
Leschmaniasis: So far, there's nothing especially pleasing about any of the search strings that will turn up my blog. But the one that I feel worst about is all those readers -- there are enough to surprise me -- who end up linking to my blog when they're looking for something about leschmaniasis. Of course, they *do* find something about leschmaniasis, but I can't imagine it's what they wanted.
For the record, leschmaniasis is a really nasty infection of some sort, a parasite or something carried in ticks that hang out on sloths. Or something like that. All I know is that you can get it from handling sloths and that it can lay dormant in your body for months before you start having these wounds just opening up hither and yon on your skin, festering and oozing with puss. Very nasty. And that you have to take really hideous antibiotics for a terribly long time to get rid of it. So you know what that means, right? DO. NOT. TOUCH. THE. SLOTHS. (Easier said than done, I should note, if you happen to visit certain "artisan" markets in Iquitos, Peru, or if you happen to get hijacked on the way to a butterfly farm in the Amazon and taken to the Casa del Serpiente. Been there, done that. On both accounts. And I can report this: Sloths have sharp nails and can squeeze the shit outta your hand. Even the babies.)
This concludes a really informal, potentially terribly incorrect public service announcement about leschmaniasis. Just in case you've Googled it and ended up here. I didn't want you to feel ripped off.
And, just for the sake of illustrating how capricious Internet search engines can be, here are some terms, aside from the ones already listed, that resulted in readers visiting extended psychosis today:
staying alone in a cabin by the lake
psychosis and the want to be left alone
sexy+hip check
inverted heirarchies
leave journalism
I've considered writing a little tidbit about these searches for some time, but I would like to share with you the search today that finally prompted me to do so. In terms of searches, this one kind of trips me out a little, but I'm not sure why:
graduate school+breast size+cancer+correlation
I got more than than 44,000 hits when I typed in that search just to see what turns up. I went through a few pages and did not find extended psychosis anywhere near the top -- thankfully -- but I also quickly lose interest in most Internet searches. Someone had to wade through a bunch of stuff before they found me. And yet they did.
Well.
For whatever reason, so did you.
If you're one of my regulars, thanks for reading. But if you're one of those random searchers, all I can say is: I'm sorry, man. I hope the psychosis doesn't last too long. But I can assure you: Reading this is *not* the cure.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Yoga
I took my first yoga class EVER today.
I've been exposed to yoga through some DVDs that I've used for the past few years, but I've never taken a class. This despite the fact that there are a few yoga studios within five blocks of my place and one right across the street.
I have felt reluctant to go because so many friends have told me that the yoga studios here in town can be strangely "competitive" or just snobby. One that was about two blocks down the street until a few months ago always struck me as snobby, but inertia and the cost of regular attendance both combined to keep me from checking out the "friendlier" ones. I was also worried about my tailbone hurting in the sitting poses.
So after many months of contemplating -- this is just how I can be sometimes -- I went to the little studio across the street. There were two other students in the class, one of whom was new to it like me. The floor was padded and squishy, which was really nice for my tailbone.
The style of class I chose was a "restoration" yoga. This seems to be what I need most. I already get good exercise from my twice-daily dog walks and riding my bike around, but a lot of powerful stretching with some serious ab- and arm-strenghtening work mixed in with serious relaxation is hitting my shortcomings in terms of body movement.
When I was done, my legs were pleasantly tired and twitchy -- how they get when I know they've been worked well -- and my stomach was nice and firm, while my shoulders were all relaxed. I had a nice little head buzz going on, too. Kinda like being in a bubble.
Just fabulous. Much, *much* better to do it in person than with a video, too.
I automatically bought a multi-class pass to go to more of them. Not exactly good for my budget, but the physical workout, the profound relaxation and the clarity of mind I experienced seems worth it.
I've been exposed to yoga through some DVDs that I've used for the past few years, but I've never taken a class. This despite the fact that there are a few yoga studios within five blocks of my place and one right across the street.
I have felt reluctant to go because so many friends have told me that the yoga studios here in town can be strangely "competitive" or just snobby. One that was about two blocks down the street until a few months ago always struck me as snobby, but inertia and the cost of regular attendance both combined to keep me from checking out the "friendlier" ones. I was also worried about my tailbone hurting in the sitting poses.
So after many months of contemplating -- this is just how I can be sometimes -- I went to the little studio across the street. There were two other students in the class, one of whom was new to it like me. The floor was padded and squishy, which was really nice for my tailbone.
The style of class I chose was a "restoration" yoga. This seems to be what I need most. I already get good exercise from my twice-daily dog walks and riding my bike around, but a lot of powerful stretching with some serious ab- and arm-strenghtening work mixed in with serious relaxation is hitting my shortcomings in terms of body movement.
When I was done, my legs were pleasantly tired and twitchy -- how they get when I know they've been worked well -- and my stomach was nice and firm, while my shoulders were all relaxed. I had a nice little head buzz going on, too. Kinda like being in a bubble.
Just fabulous. Much, *much* better to do it in person than with a video, too.
I automatically bought a multi-class pass to go to more of them. Not exactly good for my budget, but the physical workout, the profound relaxation and the clarity of mind I experienced seems worth it.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Wake up & wonder: What the FUCK happened...?
I had one of those nights on Saturday.
I've run it through my head several times -- mainly an attempt to rectify the number of glasses of wine I had with the outcome I experienced -- and I can't quite get things to jibe.
What I recall, explicitly, was that an hour before HGM was to come over, I returned from spending a couple hours watching videos in the library at school. When I parked my car, I felt very peculiar in my body, and I remember thinking: I should call and tell him I'm not going. I should stay home.
But I had been being rather funky in my head, and I thought that getting out for something fun -- especially a "gay party," as HGM described it -- would be good for me.
HGM came over around 7:30. We walked my dog in the neighborhood for a while and returned to my place, where we each enjoyed a glass of wine and chatted for a while. At about 8:30, we left and went to a house-warming party not too far from my place.
This house was fabulous. Although I'm not a huge fan of building homes that don't keep with the character of the neighborhood in the slightest, I make exceptions. This home is owned by two gay men -- one of whom once was a model and the other of whom is an architect. They have exceptional taste, which is actually NOT a genetic trait of gay men, no matter what popular culture would have you believe.
But I digress.
The design of the place was a modern variation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Having lived in a Wright home when I was a child, I was instantly enamored with what the architect had done. This despite construction using all modern materials and the fact that there were no geographical features on this standard city lot to use the way Wright often did.
So we go into this home, and it's filled with gay men. There are five women there in total. Only one or two, aside from me, were queer. (Later, when one of the hosts said to me, "Well, we *did* have a lesbian here," I replied, Yeah, I know. I saw the flannel shirt in the crowd.)
Naturally, there are lot of alcoholic beverages on hand. HGM asked what I would drink, and I said I would "stick with wine." I even stuck with the white part, which is not like me. (I prefer reds.) So I got a glass of wine. They were small plastic cups that could not have held more than 6 ounces of wine. Probably more like 4 ounces. And, of course, I didn't TOP it...
We went outside and sat by a fabulous fire pit for a while.
I drank one.
We went back inside and refilled. We took a tour of the house. During the tour, I drank about half of that drink.
I refilled and we went back outside the firepit.
There, I met a Dutch woman who is traveling in the states for the first time. She landed in Vegas a few weeks ago, and we talked about the surreal nature of that city and how completely disorienting it would be to experience jet lag there. While I was speaking to her, I fumbled my drink and dropped it on the ground. I had only taken a few sips.
But here's the thing: At the point that I found myself saying, Oh, I just LOVE Dutch people; I meet them wherever I go, and I always love them! *Wherever* I go? I *love* the Dutch? Say what?! I noticed, too, that my speech was starting to slur. When I fumbled the drink, it was because I was losing motor control.
After talking a bit, the Dutch woman asked if I wanted to go back inside and get another drink. Oh, sure. Why not? I left HGM at the fire pit. Did not notice who he was talking to. Until later....
At the bar in this gorgeous house, I met a man named D. He and I spoke for a while about death and dying. He had been shot six times in a mugging, and he recounted for me his near-death experience. Then, for whatever reason, we talked about coloring our hair. He told me that, being Irish (as I am?), I would not be able to color my hair forever. "It starts looking really weird when you're Irish," he said.
At some point, he refilled my glass of wine. As I said, they were very small glasses. I recall him chiding me because I had asked for "The L Wine" because I could not remember the name of it. He kept telling me it was "an F wine." I was talking about the varietal; he was talking about the vintor. Eventually, the Dutch woman picked up the bottle of "The L Wine" and informed us the "L" word in question was Austrian.
D and I both issued long, "OOOhhs," as if it suddenly made sense.
There was a chair at the bar. I sat down in it. I realized as I sat that I had very little balance and just about no sensation in my tush. D asked if I would go to a gay bar here in town and dance with him and his friends. I told him I was with HGM, and he went to go speak to HGM about after-party plans. I looked down the bar in their direction and saw that a man I will call Well Known Person was engaging in lingering eye contact with HGM.
When D interrupted them, Well Known Person looked my direction. Even though I don't know him, I said, Well, hello, Well Known Person. I'm UCM. I'm afraid I slurred when I spoke. He looked amused, and we chatted for a minute. "What," he asked, "did you do before you went to graduate school?" Well, among other things, I was a journalist, I replied.
At this, Well Known Person stood up, grabbed HGM by the lapel and said, "Let's go outside."
By this point, I was becoming acutely aware of feeling totally TRASHED. I counted up the drinks I'd had, considering the size of the cups, and was mystified. I had already switched to bottled water.
I talked to few other people for a while, then went outside and found HGM and Well Known Person sitting by the fire pit alone. As the party was now down to just a few of us, I sat down and started to chat with WKP about being single. I asked him personal questions others might find ballsy, but I could see that he was really eyeing HGM and I wanted to know what he was looking for.
Later, we went inside, and while HGM was using the bathroom (the powder room has a cedar sauna annex in these digs!), WKP started asking me questions about HGM. He wanted to know what time HGM typically wakes up and where he likes to eat breakfast. He got a pen and wrote: "Well Know Person, 971-555-5555, 9:30, Sunday, September 23, breakfast at Well Known Bistro."
Look, I told him, drunk beyond my own comprehension, HGM wants a serious relationship. He's very intense and also quite capable of intimacy. You be nice.
WKP looked at me and smiled. "I do believe that is the sweetest thing I've ever heard someone say," he replied.
When HGM came out of the bathroom, Well Known Person sauntered up to him, took the folded paper and slipped it into the inside pocket of HGM's jacket. I'm gonna have to remember that move, I thought. And then looked on while WKP hugged HGM good-night and grabbed his little buns quite firmly.
We all walked down the street toward our cars together. WKP said, "See ya tomorrow," to HGM, then hopped into his truck. As we got into HGM's car, I asked if he was going to go to breakfast. HGM shrugged and said, "I don't know if I like how he grabbed my ass or not."
HGM dropped me off, and I was surprised -- I mean, REALLY surprised -- at how utterly intoxicated I felt. I started to wonder at that point if I had been drugged or something. The amount of wine I drank simply did not match the physical experience I was having.
I stumbled up to my loft. I saw I had an e-mail from YogaGirl, asking me to send her something before she went out of town to a funeral. I attempted to reply. The computer screen and keyboard were literally swimming before my eyes. I typed out a strange note about how she deserved "healing and wholeness," which, although true, is more a projection of my own weird shit than anything about her. How I managed the fine motor skills necessary for typing ANYTHING, much less a little love note, and pressing "send" is anyone's guess.
I got up and weaved -- literally, a jagged, stumbling path -- from my computer to the bathroom.
Where, for the first time in I don't know how long, I issued forth a rain of vomit.
I'm not a puker. I can get the nastiest stomach ailments -- things a good pukefest might alleviate -- and I can't manage to vomit. Years and years can go by without anything going down and coming back up again. One thing that does NOT make me puke is ... alcohol. I haven't had an alcohol-related vomit incident since Dec. 30, 1987.
And yet....
I'll tell you one bad thing about not being accustomed to vomiting. I don't have much practice with my aim. I sprayed a mess far and wide, and I could barely hold myself up while doing it. My dog ran from the room, yelping his disgust. I made a feeble attempt at cleaning the bathroom -- and a more focused attempt at cleaning myself and getting that rancid taste out of my mouth -- before kicking my clothes into a heap in the hallway and staggering to bed.
I forced myself to drink two glasses of water before I rested. Sometime in the early morning, I got up, got sick again and drank another glass of water. Mid morning, I drank even more.
When I woke up, I still felt drunk. It took me a few hours to get oriented, clean up and walk the dog. While out, I went to see the florist across the street. For reasons that escape me, I greeted her with, Hey, you sexy thing! Then I asked her if she wanted to get drinks sometime when and if I ever feel like drinking again, I added.
She asked me what I had been doing, and I told her a little of the story. She replied that whenever she goes to "gay parties," she ends up "talking to the transvestites about shoes." I looked at her feet. "I'm a tall woman with big feet, so I know what it's like for a man to wear heels," she explained.
Then she inquired about my birthdate. I told her, and she said, "Oh, you're a libra. Well, that's good because I'm a Taurus. We'll get along just fine because you're more likely to think about what I'm saying before chewing me a new ass over it." I raised my eyebrow, so she added, "Although, Libras do have a tendency to keep secrets just for the sake of having something they know that no one else does. And I really don't like that trait."
I don't believe I've ever had that problem, I replied.
"No, I've never gotten that feeling from you," she said. "People like us keep it real."
I guess the whole florist thing is a tangent in some respects, but it feels connected. Probably because I was still drunk and acting like something of an ass. I don't know if I asked her out, or if I was just making small talk. A confusing conclusion to a confusing experience.
I got a sandwich from the deli -- the owner took one look at me and said, "I hope you get feeling better" -- and I rode my bike to work.
Time to haul my ass to bed now. Considering how I felt today, I expect to have the "real" hangover tomorrow. Wish me luck.
I've run it through my head several times -- mainly an attempt to rectify the number of glasses of wine I had with the outcome I experienced -- and I can't quite get things to jibe.
What I recall, explicitly, was that an hour before HGM was to come over, I returned from spending a couple hours watching videos in the library at school. When I parked my car, I felt very peculiar in my body, and I remember thinking: I should call and tell him I'm not going. I should stay home.
But I had been being rather funky in my head, and I thought that getting out for something fun -- especially a "gay party," as HGM described it -- would be good for me.
HGM came over around 7:30. We walked my dog in the neighborhood for a while and returned to my place, where we each enjoyed a glass of wine and chatted for a while. At about 8:30, we left and went to a house-warming party not too far from my place.
This house was fabulous. Although I'm not a huge fan of building homes that don't keep with the character of the neighborhood in the slightest, I make exceptions. This home is owned by two gay men -- one of whom once was a model and the other of whom is an architect. They have exceptional taste, which is actually NOT a genetic trait of gay men, no matter what popular culture would have you believe.
But I digress.
The design of the place was a modern variation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Having lived in a Wright home when I was a child, I was instantly enamored with what the architect had done. This despite construction using all modern materials and the fact that there were no geographical features on this standard city lot to use the way Wright often did.
So we go into this home, and it's filled with gay men. There are five women there in total. Only one or two, aside from me, were queer. (Later, when one of the hosts said to me, "Well, we *did* have a lesbian here," I replied, Yeah, I know. I saw the flannel shirt in the crowd.)
Naturally, there are lot of alcoholic beverages on hand. HGM asked what I would drink, and I said I would "stick with wine." I even stuck with the white part, which is not like me. (I prefer reds.) So I got a glass of wine. They were small plastic cups that could not have held more than 6 ounces of wine. Probably more like 4 ounces. And, of course, I didn't TOP it...
We went outside and sat by a fabulous fire pit for a while.
I drank one.
We went back inside and refilled. We took a tour of the house. During the tour, I drank about half of that drink.
I refilled and we went back outside the firepit.
There, I met a Dutch woman who is traveling in the states for the first time. She landed in Vegas a few weeks ago, and we talked about the surreal nature of that city and how completely disorienting it would be to experience jet lag there. While I was speaking to her, I fumbled my drink and dropped it on the ground. I had only taken a few sips.
But here's the thing: At the point that I found myself saying, Oh, I just LOVE Dutch people; I meet them wherever I go, and I always love them! *Wherever* I go? I *love* the Dutch? Say what?! I noticed, too, that my speech was starting to slur. When I fumbled the drink, it was because I was losing motor control.
After talking a bit, the Dutch woman asked if I wanted to go back inside and get another drink. Oh, sure. Why not? I left HGM at the fire pit. Did not notice who he was talking to. Until later....
At the bar in this gorgeous house, I met a man named D. He and I spoke for a while about death and dying. He had been shot six times in a mugging, and he recounted for me his near-death experience. Then, for whatever reason, we talked about coloring our hair. He told me that, being Irish (as I am?), I would not be able to color my hair forever. "It starts looking really weird when you're Irish," he said.
At some point, he refilled my glass of wine. As I said, they were very small glasses. I recall him chiding me because I had asked for "The L Wine" because I could not remember the name of it. He kept telling me it was "an F wine." I was talking about the varietal; he was talking about the vintor. Eventually, the Dutch woman picked up the bottle of "The L Wine" and informed us the "L" word in question was Austrian.
D and I both issued long, "OOOhhs," as if it suddenly made sense.
There was a chair at the bar. I sat down in it. I realized as I sat that I had very little balance and just about no sensation in my tush. D asked if I would go to a gay bar here in town and dance with him and his friends. I told him I was with HGM, and he went to go speak to HGM about after-party plans. I looked down the bar in their direction and saw that a man I will call Well Known Person was engaging in lingering eye contact with HGM.
When D interrupted them, Well Known Person looked my direction. Even though I don't know him, I said, Well, hello, Well Known Person. I'm UCM. I'm afraid I slurred when I spoke. He looked amused, and we chatted for a minute. "What," he asked, "did you do before you went to graduate school?" Well, among other things, I was a journalist, I replied.
At this, Well Known Person stood up, grabbed HGM by the lapel and said, "Let's go outside."
By this point, I was becoming acutely aware of feeling totally TRASHED. I counted up the drinks I'd had, considering the size of the cups, and was mystified. I had already switched to bottled water.
I talked to few other people for a while, then went outside and found HGM and Well Known Person sitting by the fire pit alone. As the party was now down to just a few of us, I sat down and started to chat with WKP about being single. I asked him personal questions others might find ballsy, but I could see that he was really eyeing HGM and I wanted to know what he was looking for.
Later, we went inside, and while HGM was using the bathroom (the powder room has a cedar sauna annex in these digs!), WKP started asking me questions about HGM. He wanted to know what time HGM typically wakes up and where he likes to eat breakfast. He got a pen and wrote: "Well Know Person, 971-555-5555, 9:30, Sunday, September 23, breakfast at Well Known Bistro."
Look, I told him, drunk beyond my own comprehension, HGM wants a serious relationship. He's very intense and also quite capable of intimacy. You be nice.
WKP looked at me and smiled. "I do believe that is the sweetest thing I've ever heard someone say," he replied.
When HGM came out of the bathroom, Well Known Person sauntered up to him, took the folded paper and slipped it into the inside pocket of HGM's jacket. I'm gonna have to remember that move, I thought. And then looked on while WKP hugged HGM good-night and grabbed his little buns quite firmly.
We all walked down the street toward our cars together. WKP said, "See ya tomorrow," to HGM, then hopped into his truck. As we got into HGM's car, I asked if he was going to go to breakfast. HGM shrugged and said, "I don't know if I like how he grabbed my ass or not."
HGM dropped me off, and I was surprised -- I mean, REALLY surprised -- at how utterly intoxicated I felt. I started to wonder at that point if I had been drugged or something. The amount of wine I drank simply did not match the physical experience I was having.
I stumbled up to my loft. I saw I had an e-mail from YogaGirl, asking me to send her something before she went out of town to a funeral. I attempted to reply. The computer screen and keyboard were literally swimming before my eyes. I typed out a strange note about how she deserved "healing and wholeness," which, although true, is more a projection of my own weird shit than anything about her. How I managed the fine motor skills necessary for typing ANYTHING, much less a little love note, and pressing "send" is anyone's guess.
I got up and weaved -- literally, a jagged, stumbling path -- from my computer to the bathroom.
Where, for the first time in I don't know how long, I issued forth a rain of vomit.
I'm not a puker. I can get the nastiest stomach ailments -- things a good pukefest might alleviate -- and I can't manage to vomit. Years and years can go by without anything going down and coming back up again. One thing that does NOT make me puke is ... alcohol. I haven't had an alcohol-related vomit incident since Dec. 30, 1987.
And yet....
I'll tell you one bad thing about not being accustomed to vomiting. I don't have much practice with my aim. I sprayed a mess far and wide, and I could barely hold myself up while doing it. My dog ran from the room, yelping his disgust. I made a feeble attempt at cleaning the bathroom -- and a more focused attempt at cleaning myself and getting that rancid taste out of my mouth -- before kicking my clothes into a heap in the hallway and staggering to bed.
I forced myself to drink two glasses of water before I rested. Sometime in the early morning, I got up, got sick again and drank another glass of water. Mid morning, I drank even more.
When I woke up, I still felt drunk. It took me a few hours to get oriented, clean up and walk the dog. While out, I went to see the florist across the street. For reasons that escape me, I greeted her with, Hey, you sexy thing! Then I asked her if she wanted to get drinks sometime when and if I ever feel like drinking again, I added.
She asked me what I had been doing, and I told her a little of the story. She replied that whenever she goes to "gay parties," she ends up "talking to the transvestites about shoes." I looked at her feet. "I'm a tall woman with big feet, so I know what it's like for a man to wear heels," she explained.
Then she inquired about my birthdate. I told her, and she said, "Oh, you're a libra. Well, that's good because I'm a Taurus. We'll get along just fine because you're more likely to think about what I'm saying before chewing me a new ass over it." I raised my eyebrow, so she added, "Although, Libras do have a tendency to keep secrets just for the sake of having something they know that no one else does. And I really don't like that trait."
I don't believe I've ever had that problem, I replied.
"No, I've never gotten that feeling from you," she said. "People like us keep it real."
I guess the whole florist thing is a tangent in some respects, but it feels connected. Probably because I was still drunk and acting like something of an ass. I don't know if I asked her out, or if I was just making small talk. A confusing conclusion to a confusing experience.
I got a sandwich from the deli -- the owner took one look at me and said, "I hope you get feeling better" -- and I rode my bike to work.
Time to haul my ass to bed now. Considering how I felt today, I expect to have the "real" hangover tomorrow. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Horse shoes & hand grenades, lesbian style
I tried to ask a woman out on a date earlier this week. This would be my first attempt at such a thing.
My approach was both classy and humorous. I think I did alright.
Except for the part where maybe the woman isn't queer, after all. (As the saying goes, 'close' only counts when it comes to horse shoes and hand grenades.)
We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses and were engaged in a discussion about wine when she dropped a little H-bomb into the conversation by mentioning her ex-husband. Up until this moment, her sexual orientation had been ambiguous, but I had been operating on the notion that she's queer.
I first got this idea a few months ago when she asked me if I watched "The L Word." Such an inquiry between women, one who is openly lesbian but who are otherwise strangers to each other, is (in my view of things) what XGF and I call "Lesbian Dropping." This is part of the coded language that identifies one as a lesbian without having to state so outright. The Asian has suggested I rename this aspect of gaydar "L(i)GBIT guano" to be more inclusive of the whole alphabet soup of possibiliities. And true, the woman *could* be the 'B' or the 'I' or even identify with the 'L' word itself.
But I'm operating on the assumption that she's straight and that her willingness to exchange numbers and stated interest in going out is rooted in the desire for friendship. We seem to speak each other's language, and I find her charming, so I'll pursue that.
I'll just add her to a growing list of non-queer female friends who I find attractive. And I gotta tell ya, people, a lot of my girl friends are BEAUTIFUL. Most are also salt-of-the-earth kind of ladies with immense hearts and a rather high tolerance for yours truly. So it's a pity, then, that none of them are girlfriend material. (Well, there is this one who *could* be -- if we weren't so alike in some dangerous ways. But that's a different issue....)
Anyway.
A few friends have suggested the woman I asked out yesterday might still be in play, but I can't operate with that in my head. I'm calling her straight unless she tells me otherwise. (And if you're wondering why I don't just ask ... well, I imagine I probably will at some point -- if only to do some sense-making around that "L Word" question. But workplace politics have required discretion until this week, when she left her job and made it possible for us to become something other than professional colleagues.)
In the meantime, it seems I'm back at Step One. This is the spot where I've got nothing going on, not a single damn prospect, nary a sight of an available woman who piques my interest.
What I'm looking for is rather basic (but apparently not especially simple). A good match would be between the ages of 30 and 45, engage in stimulating conversation, have the desire and emotional capacity for intimacy and share the spark of sexual chemistry with me.
I might flex on the age thing, but I gotta hold tight on the rest. When it comes to an intimate partnership with another person, 'close' has proven entertaining and growth-inspiring but still just ... not enough.
My approach was both classy and humorous. I think I did alright.
Except for the part where maybe the woman isn't queer, after all. (As the saying goes, 'close' only counts when it comes to horse shoes and hand grenades.)
We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses and were engaged in a discussion about wine when she dropped a little H-bomb into the conversation by mentioning her ex-husband. Up until this moment, her sexual orientation had been ambiguous, but I had been operating on the notion that she's queer.
I first got this idea a few months ago when she asked me if I watched "The L Word." Such an inquiry between women, one who is openly lesbian but who are otherwise strangers to each other, is (in my view of things) what XGF and I call "Lesbian Dropping." This is part of the coded language that identifies one as a lesbian without having to state so outright. The Asian has suggested I rename this aspect of gaydar "L(i)GBIT guano" to be more inclusive of the whole alphabet soup of possibiliities. And true, the woman *could* be the 'B' or the 'I' or even identify with the 'L' word itself.
But I'm operating on the assumption that she's straight and that her willingness to exchange numbers and stated interest in going out is rooted in the desire for friendship. We seem to speak each other's language, and I find her charming, so I'll pursue that.
I'll just add her to a growing list of non-queer female friends who I find attractive. And I gotta tell ya, people, a lot of my girl friends are BEAUTIFUL. Most are also salt-of-the-earth kind of ladies with immense hearts and a rather high tolerance for yours truly. So it's a pity, then, that none of them are girlfriend material. (Well, there is this one who *could* be -- if we weren't so alike in some dangerous ways. But that's a different issue....)
Anyway.
A few friends have suggested the woman I asked out yesterday might still be in play, but I can't operate with that in my head. I'm calling her straight unless she tells me otherwise. (And if you're wondering why I don't just ask ... well, I imagine I probably will at some point -- if only to do some sense-making around that "L Word" question. But workplace politics have required discretion until this week, when she left her job and made it possible for us to become something other than professional colleagues.)
In the meantime, it seems I'm back at Step One. This is the spot where I've got nothing going on, not a single damn prospect, nary a sight of an available woman who piques my interest.
What I'm looking for is rather basic (but apparently not especially simple). A good match would be between the ages of 30 and 45, engage in stimulating conversation, have the desire and emotional capacity for intimacy and share the spark of sexual chemistry with me.
I might flex on the age thing, but I gotta hold tight on the rest. When it comes to an intimate partnership with another person, 'close' has proven entertaining and growth-inspiring but still just ... not enough.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Death Becomes Me
I've been spending the past month or so digging into literature about death, dying and grief. From a cultural perspective to a medical one to a fundamentally personal one, my readings have taken me into a topic that has lingered in my mind for many, many years now.
My first regular journalism job, outside of student journalism, was as an obituary writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Sunday was a very popular day for the obit page, and on my busy, busy Saturdays, talking to one relative or another of a recently deceased person, I learned all sorts of curious things about people's attitudes toward death.
Later, in my first full-time reporting job, having run away from Texas and taken a job at a little paper in California, was mainly education reporting, along with the occasional visit to the site of a car wreck. Some of the situations were appalling and gruesome. Others looked more benign ... but weren't.
One early morning, I got a call as I was heading into work. Illness and vacations on the photography staff left us without a photog to head out to a collision that had just occurred. I always had my camera on hand in those days, and I was asked to stop by the wreck before getting into the newsroom. At the scene -- a T-bone caused when an old woman pulled out into oncoming traffic, probably because of early morning sunlight -- I shot some film while the paramedics worked on the woman. Her husband, in the passenger's seat that took the brunt of the impact, was DOA. She appeared less injured, but was actually in pretty bad shape herself. As I snapped pictures, she raised her hand as if to swipe away the breathing mask the paramedics were using on her. Then her hand fell. She was later "officially" pronounced dead, but this moment, which I caught with my camera, was her last.
Not too long ago, I happened upon that photo. It was taken in harsh early morning light, and I made the mistake of developing it in acufine, as the photographers had been using a mislabeled bottle. The result is a photo of high contrast. Too much light. Even though the important details are visible, the high contrast made it unacceptable for print and it never ran in the paper.
Even if it had been good, I would have objected to running it anyway. I knew the moment captured there, and it seemed crass to run such an image in the paper. I have held onto the print for more than 15 years now.
I remember crying. I remember it being the first and only time of my journalism career that I cried because of a death. I was in the car, leaving the scene, driving to the paper, alone. My body shook and heaved at the thought in my head: Someone will get a call today. She was probably someone's grandmother. They will learn that both of these people are dead. Just like that. Dead.
Then, I wondered why my journalism school didn't prepare me -- or any of my other colleagues -- for the death and tragedy we would inevitably see as news reporters. I cried a little more. And then, I thought: Well, this is my job. This happens on my job. It's my job to deal with it. As if flicking a switch, my tears evaporated, my mind stilled, and distance from death descended upon me.
That was just the beginning of my career. In the years that followed, I went places I shouldn't have gone. Talked to people I shouldn't have talked to. And did things that, in retrospect, make me wonder how I came out unscathed. All in denial of my own death.
(By the way, my internship faculty, Lightfoot, seems to think it unlikely that I did come out "unscathed." He told me in a meeting the other week that he has "an understanding of what working in journalism does to people, and what is asked of people who survive in that line of work." I imagine there's more to that statement than even Lightfoot realizes.)
In any case, the thing which made me leave journalism in the end was another tragedy.
Ten years ago, my youngest brother was in a car wreck and suffered injuries from which he never recovered. He died four years later in a nursing home. I had issues with the manner in which I was pressured to stay at the job -- being short-staffed and having too many people already on vacation took precedence, in the eyes of my editors, over me leaving for Texas. My compliance ended up costing me dearly.
But it also changed my life. What I witnessed in the ICU when I finally arrived on the scene three weeks and one severe brain injury later -- and what I saw over the next four years as my brother withered up in a nursing home and died -- overhauled the way I understood medicine, as practiced in the United States. It also forced me to begin facing my own death, realizing it may come at *any* moment. Sooner or later, but ... it will happen.
It has been a long process of awareness and growing acceptance. The result is that I seem to be a lot more at ease in talking about death than many people I know.
I can't say as I blame them. In my research I've been reading a little bit about Terror Management Theory, which seems to be a psychological theory that humans keep their thoughts and awareness of death at bay as a way to live without the "terror" of annihilation. (I say it seems to be this because I don't really know. As noted, I've only read a little bit.) In any case, if what I've read about that has merit, it makes sense why people have difficulty discussing the subject.
But I think we need to get over that shit.
Seeing what happened to my brother and thinking about the last month of my aunt's life -- she died of cancer earlier this year -- has impressed upon me the urgency of having serious discussions with others about the care we want to receive at the end of life. About this time last year, I asked S2 to be my durable power of attorney for health care. Normally, that responsibility falls to a spouse, but as I'm not married (and can't legally get married), I need to give the legal power to someone in a formal way. Either that, or be subected to the truely "outrageous fortune" of having warring family members, who hold end-of-life care perspectives that clash with my own, end up making the decisions by default.
Dying is not something any of us want to do by default, let me assure you. As was made very evident to me in my brother's case, biological science has advance to the point that it's doing things to prolong human life just because it can, whether or not it should.
Left unchecked, I can easily envision a future in which millions of Americans -- thanks to the aging of the Baby Boom generation -- end up as "living corpses" rotting away on ventilators and feeding tubes for years on end. They'll malinger in health-care institutions of one sort or another with terminal cancers or organ failures for which machines can compensate (but only to the end of keeping the person ensconsed in the hospital, feeling sick, weary and alone). Every time someone in this frail, ailing population begins to die, a "code" team will rush in and resuscitate them.
Far beyond being an unbearable financial burden on our already expensive health system, such a future would be morally bereft. I came to the conclusion 10 years ago that medicine had achieved an element of inhumanity in its practice. Keeping someone alive -- at all costs, no matter how dear -- is fundamentally cruel when it denies them the right to a peaceful and humane death.
We are the only ones who can stop this from happening to ourselves. We cannot count on medicine to do it for us. Doctors are trained to keep people alive, not to help them die well. They need to be able to discuss with patients more honestly the prospect of treatment designed mainly for comfort rather than "cure."
I suppose what's more frightening is that insurance companies may eventually step into the breech where doctors fear to tread. Profit-seeking corporate bureaucrats -- or rather, the people who run the insurance industry (for which I also once worked) -- should not be making decisions about how people die, either.
So the responsibility becomes ours. How do we get to have the death we deserve? I'm talking about the one where, when presented with a life-threatening situation, we are afforded all reasonable measures (and, if we choose to have them, the unreasonable ones, as well). But, ultimately, I'm thinking of how we deserve to die in the most comfort possible, in the company of those we love, at peace with the unavoidable stage of life that is happening to us.
Because it *will* happen to us.
From my counseling perspective, there's a lot of work that can be done with people to help them reach peace at the end of their lives. Part of the work is in helping people define what kind of care they want when dying -- and then to enlist the support of others to make sure their wishes are upheld. Another huge part has to do with helping them address issues of meaning about the life they have lived, regardless of its shortcomings and mistakes. And yet another aspect is helping the loved ones of a dying person honor the process of dying itself rather than denying (and thus invalidating) the profound experience of the one who is dying.
So that is the beginning of my independent study. Something nice and light. To complement my internship....
My first regular journalism job, outside of student journalism, was as an obituary writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Sunday was a very popular day for the obit page, and on my busy, busy Saturdays, talking to one relative or another of a recently deceased person, I learned all sorts of curious things about people's attitudes toward death.
Later, in my first full-time reporting job, having run away from Texas and taken a job at a little paper in California, was mainly education reporting, along with the occasional visit to the site of a car wreck. Some of the situations were appalling and gruesome. Others looked more benign ... but weren't.
One early morning, I got a call as I was heading into work. Illness and vacations on the photography staff left us without a photog to head out to a collision that had just occurred. I always had my camera on hand in those days, and I was asked to stop by the wreck before getting into the newsroom. At the scene -- a T-bone caused when an old woman pulled out into oncoming traffic, probably because of early morning sunlight -- I shot some film while the paramedics worked on the woman. Her husband, in the passenger's seat that took the brunt of the impact, was DOA. She appeared less injured, but was actually in pretty bad shape herself. As I snapped pictures, she raised her hand as if to swipe away the breathing mask the paramedics were using on her. Then her hand fell. She was later "officially" pronounced dead, but this moment, which I caught with my camera, was her last.
Not too long ago, I happened upon that photo. It was taken in harsh early morning light, and I made the mistake of developing it in acufine, as the photographers had been using a mislabeled bottle. The result is a photo of high contrast. Too much light. Even though the important details are visible, the high contrast made it unacceptable for print and it never ran in the paper.
Even if it had been good, I would have objected to running it anyway. I knew the moment captured there, and it seemed crass to run such an image in the paper. I have held onto the print for more than 15 years now.
I remember crying. I remember it being the first and only time of my journalism career that I cried because of a death. I was in the car, leaving the scene, driving to the paper, alone. My body shook and heaved at the thought in my head: Someone will get a call today. She was probably someone's grandmother. They will learn that both of these people are dead. Just like that. Dead.
Then, I wondered why my journalism school didn't prepare me -- or any of my other colleagues -- for the death and tragedy we would inevitably see as news reporters. I cried a little more. And then, I thought: Well, this is my job. This happens on my job. It's my job to deal with it. As if flicking a switch, my tears evaporated, my mind stilled, and distance from death descended upon me.
That was just the beginning of my career. In the years that followed, I went places I shouldn't have gone. Talked to people I shouldn't have talked to. And did things that, in retrospect, make me wonder how I came out unscathed. All in denial of my own death.
(By the way, my internship faculty, Lightfoot, seems to think it unlikely that I did come out "unscathed." He told me in a meeting the other week that he has "an understanding of what working in journalism does to people, and what is asked of people who survive in that line of work." I imagine there's more to that statement than even Lightfoot realizes.)
In any case, the thing which made me leave journalism in the end was another tragedy.
Ten years ago, my youngest brother was in a car wreck and suffered injuries from which he never recovered. He died four years later in a nursing home. I had issues with the manner in which I was pressured to stay at the job -- being short-staffed and having too many people already on vacation took precedence, in the eyes of my editors, over me leaving for Texas. My compliance ended up costing me dearly.
But it also changed my life. What I witnessed in the ICU when I finally arrived on the scene three weeks and one severe brain injury later -- and what I saw over the next four years as my brother withered up in a nursing home and died -- overhauled the way I understood medicine, as practiced in the United States. It also forced me to begin facing my own death, realizing it may come at *any* moment. Sooner or later, but ... it will happen.
It has been a long process of awareness and growing acceptance. The result is that I seem to be a lot more at ease in talking about death than many people I know.
I can't say as I blame them. In my research I've been reading a little bit about Terror Management Theory, which seems to be a psychological theory that humans keep their thoughts and awareness of death at bay as a way to live without the "terror" of annihilation. (I say it seems to be this because I don't really know. As noted, I've only read a little bit.) In any case, if what I've read about that has merit, it makes sense why people have difficulty discussing the subject.
But I think we need to get over that shit.
Seeing what happened to my brother and thinking about the last month of my aunt's life -- she died of cancer earlier this year -- has impressed upon me the urgency of having serious discussions with others about the care we want to receive at the end of life. About this time last year, I asked S2 to be my durable power of attorney for health care. Normally, that responsibility falls to a spouse, but as I'm not married (and can't legally get married), I need to give the legal power to someone in a formal way. Either that, or be subected to the truely "outrageous fortune" of having warring family members, who hold end-of-life care perspectives that clash with my own, end up making the decisions by default.
Dying is not something any of us want to do by default, let me assure you. As was made very evident to me in my brother's case, biological science has advance to the point that it's doing things to prolong human life just because it can, whether or not it should.
Left unchecked, I can easily envision a future in which millions of Americans -- thanks to the aging of the Baby Boom generation -- end up as "living corpses" rotting away on ventilators and feeding tubes for years on end. They'll malinger in health-care institutions of one sort or another with terminal cancers or organ failures for which machines can compensate (but only to the end of keeping the person ensconsed in the hospital, feeling sick, weary and alone). Every time someone in this frail, ailing population begins to die, a "code" team will rush in and resuscitate them.
Far beyond being an unbearable financial burden on our already expensive health system, such a future would be morally bereft. I came to the conclusion 10 years ago that medicine had achieved an element of inhumanity in its practice. Keeping someone alive -- at all costs, no matter how dear -- is fundamentally cruel when it denies them the right to a peaceful and humane death.
We are the only ones who can stop this from happening to ourselves. We cannot count on medicine to do it for us. Doctors are trained to keep people alive, not to help them die well. They need to be able to discuss with patients more honestly the prospect of treatment designed mainly for comfort rather than "cure."
I suppose what's more frightening is that insurance companies may eventually step into the breech where doctors fear to tread. Profit-seeking corporate bureaucrats -- or rather, the people who run the insurance industry (for which I also once worked) -- should not be making decisions about how people die, either.
So the responsibility becomes ours. How do we get to have the death we deserve? I'm talking about the one where, when presented with a life-threatening situation, we are afforded all reasonable measures (and, if we choose to have them, the unreasonable ones, as well). But, ultimately, I'm thinking of how we deserve to die in the most comfort possible, in the company of those we love, at peace with the unavoidable stage of life that is happening to us.
Because it *will* happen to us.
From my counseling perspective, there's a lot of work that can be done with people to help them reach peace at the end of their lives. Part of the work is in helping people define what kind of care they want when dying -- and then to enlist the support of others to make sure their wishes are upheld. Another huge part has to do with helping them address issues of meaning about the life they have lived, regardless of its shortcomings and mistakes. And yet another aspect is helping the loved ones of a dying person honor the process of dying itself rather than denying (and thus invalidating) the profound experience of the one who is dying.
So that is the beginning of my independent study. Something nice and light. To complement my internship....
Monday, September 10, 2007
Where are the clowns?
Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground
you in mid-air.
Send in the clowns....
Thank you, Barbara Streisand, for buring that one into my brain over these 30-some-odd years of my life. In the past couple years, I've heard it playing in my head more than it ever has before. But it's appearance has nothing whatsoever to do with my occasional personal melancholy or relationship issues. Rather, it has *everything* to do with living down the street from a Clown House and walking past their abode with regularity, as often as two or three times a day.
For the 18 months that I've lived in my sweet little "urban" loft, I have become something of an ethnographer where these clowns are concerned.
And yes, when I say "clowns," I mean that I have been living down the street from a house FULL of Clowns. They put up a stage in the front yard, where they have regularly given performances of one sort or another to passers-by. Their most elaborate shows have taken the stage during the monthly artwalk and festivals that happen on my street. But as I've learned from my dog-walkings, there was almost always something going on with these clowns.
They were very partial to building tall bikes and riding around the neighborhood on them. Several rode bikes that were rather fantastical looking -- most of them made of multiple bike frames welded together, one atop another, to achieve the effect of a bike on stilts. These bikes have become curiously popular with average riders in the neighborhood, which frightens me a little because they don't have the acrobatic balance of the clowns.
The clowns would usually decorated their weird bikes and perform artful mounts and dismounts of them at intersections and street lights. It has not been uncommon to hear music -- say, the strains of Edith Piaf -- as one of the bikes would pass beneath my window, a boom box or old record player strapped to the back. Every once in a while, the bikes carry mulitple passengers, such as one woman I recall, clad in a melange of period pieces, who reclined rather peacefully on the back of a board jutting out from behind a particularly large bike. She was there, suspended about four feet above the road, looking carefree despite how vulnerable she was to cars or a tall-bike mishap.
Aside from the bikes, the clowns put on stage shows, musical performances, acrobatics and comedy. Some of these performances are considerably better than others. But they're clowns. What should I expect?
And in true clown fashion, face make up is not uncommon, particularly for events (but sometimes, clearly, just for the hell of it). Mainly, though, they have the looks of grungy off-casts from a Rainbow gathering. Very ripe, non-bathing hippies. Or Gypsies. That's been my impression while walking past the house these many, many months.
Their decision to sell "organic, vegan gluten-free dog treats" in front of their house -- first, from an old-fashioned carnival popcorn machine and, later, from a bubblegum dispensers placed on the sidewalk -- only reinforced my notions. Hippies. Gypsies, tramps and theives..., as the song goes (and often has gone in my head while walking past their house).
But for the past week or so, the refrain in my head has been: But where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns.
It seems they have bid the neighborhood farewell.
I watched it happen over the course of two or three weeks -- a strange, gradual cleanup of the property that began when they dismantled the stage and filled in the mud pit they sometimes used in their performances. (I recall one "Child Mud Wrestling Show" that involved some of the children who lived in the Clown House. Probably wasn't too popular with DHS, because I never saw that performance again....)
The weekend before this last one, I watched from the street as the final floppy, decrepit mattresses were brought out from behind the house while a curiously large amount of paper burned in a fire pit in the yard. It really was the End of the Show.
And every time I've walked past the house, I've felt mixed feelings. It was a dump, to be sure, because it seems clowns aren't the best house-keepers. But it was, without question, a most amusing and *interesting* dump, and the goings-on I witnessed there have given me all sorts of things to ponder.
They have prompted great consideration on my part about social conformity and what people do to intentionally put themselves outside of "polite society." I have also found myself wondering how much of it is choice/intention versus how much is simply a way of life from which they have not diverted for generations. I've thought long and hard about what it must be like as a child raised in such an unconventional lifestyle, especially one that was as publically displayed as this particular Clown House managed to be.
Gypsies really do exist. So do clowns. But who were these people? How did they get here? Where did they go? ... And what, oh what, will replace them?
In the meantime, the song is there in my head, a process, perhaps, of grieving the loss of the Clown House. Sometimes, it's just the melody playing in my head. Sometimes I whistle or hum a little to myself. Sometimes, it's impossible not to sing the words:
...And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground
you in mid-air.
Send in the clowns....
Thank you, Barbara Streisand, for buring that one into my brain over these 30-some-odd years of my life. In the past couple years, I've heard it playing in my head more than it ever has before. But it's appearance has nothing whatsoever to do with my occasional personal melancholy or relationship issues. Rather, it has *everything* to do with living down the street from a Clown House and walking past their abode with regularity, as often as two or three times a day.
For the 18 months that I've lived in my sweet little "urban" loft, I have become something of an ethnographer where these clowns are concerned.
And yes, when I say "clowns," I mean that I have been living down the street from a house FULL of Clowns. They put up a stage in the front yard, where they have regularly given performances of one sort or another to passers-by. Their most elaborate shows have taken the stage during the monthly artwalk and festivals that happen on my street. But as I've learned from my dog-walkings, there was almost always something going on with these clowns.
They were very partial to building tall bikes and riding around the neighborhood on them. Several rode bikes that were rather fantastical looking -- most of them made of multiple bike frames welded together, one atop another, to achieve the effect of a bike on stilts. These bikes have become curiously popular with average riders in the neighborhood, which frightens me a little because they don't have the acrobatic balance of the clowns.
The clowns would usually decorated their weird bikes and perform artful mounts and dismounts of them at intersections and street lights. It has not been uncommon to hear music -- say, the strains of Edith Piaf -- as one of the bikes would pass beneath my window, a boom box or old record player strapped to the back. Every once in a while, the bikes carry mulitple passengers, such as one woman I recall, clad in a melange of period pieces, who reclined rather peacefully on the back of a board jutting out from behind a particularly large bike. She was there, suspended about four feet above the road, looking carefree despite how vulnerable she was to cars or a tall-bike mishap.
Aside from the bikes, the clowns put on stage shows, musical performances, acrobatics and comedy. Some of these performances are considerably better than others. But they're clowns. What should I expect?
And in true clown fashion, face make up is not uncommon, particularly for events (but sometimes, clearly, just for the hell of it). Mainly, though, they have the looks of grungy off-casts from a Rainbow gathering. Very ripe, non-bathing hippies. Or Gypsies. That's been my impression while walking past the house these many, many months.
Their decision to sell "organic, vegan gluten-free dog treats" in front of their house -- first, from an old-fashioned carnival popcorn machine and, later, from a bubblegum dispensers placed on the sidewalk -- only reinforced my notions. Hippies. Gypsies, tramps and theives..., as the song goes (and often has gone in my head while walking past their house).
But for the past week or so, the refrain in my head has been: But where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns.
It seems they have bid the neighborhood farewell.
I watched it happen over the course of two or three weeks -- a strange, gradual cleanup of the property that began when they dismantled the stage and filled in the mud pit they sometimes used in their performances. (I recall one "Child Mud Wrestling Show" that involved some of the children who lived in the Clown House. Probably wasn't too popular with DHS, because I never saw that performance again....)
The weekend before this last one, I watched from the street as the final floppy, decrepit mattresses were brought out from behind the house while a curiously large amount of paper burned in a fire pit in the yard. It really was the End of the Show.
And every time I've walked past the house, I've felt mixed feelings. It was a dump, to be sure, because it seems clowns aren't the best house-keepers. But it was, without question, a most amusing and *interesting* dump, and the goings-on I witnessed there have given me all sorts of things to ponder.
They have prompted great consideration on my part about social conformity and what people do to intentionally put themselves outside of "polite society." I have also found myself wondering how much of it is choice/intention versus how much is simply a way of life from which they have not diverted for generations. I've thought long and hard about what it must be like as a child raised in such an unconventional lifestyle, especially one that was as publically displayed as this particular Clown House managed to be.
Gypsies really do exist. So do clowns. But who were these people? How did they get here? Where did they go? ... And what, oh what, will replace them?
In the meantime, the song is there in my head, a process, perhaps, of grieving the loss of the Clown House. Sometimes, it's just the melody playing in my head. Sometimes I whistle or hum a little to myself. Sometimes, it's impossible not to sing the words:
...And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
I'm not a stone fortress, but I play one on TV...
I was packing up shop and leaving the H4TCI where I worked tonight, when I suddenly saw something on television that made me sit down and watch for a while.
A show on the History Channel called "Digging for the Truth" was featuring "one of the world's greatest mysteries" and the largest stone edifice in the Americas. I needed only one look at the diamond pattern carved into the round stone wall to know the place.
Kuelap.
Even today, two years after I reached that amazing mountain-top citadel, I still get a little shiver of excitement in my stomach when I see or hear the name of the place. Located in, as this archeologist put it, one of the "most inaccessible regions of Peru," to get there XGF and I endured 22 hours of driving on a boulder-strewn dirt road which, for a great portion of the journey, was cut rather shallowly into the face of the most precipitous mountains I've ever seen. The Northern Andes are not short on drama, that's for sure.
To see this mysterious place, built around 500 A.D. (1,000 years before Machu Picchu), on television brought a flood of wonderment and other emotions to me. Same goes for when the archeologist-host of the show did a little narration while walking through the town square -- the Plaza de Armas, which *every* Peruvian town has so named their main square -- in the town of Chachapoyas.
Oh, the chicken and french fries! I thought to myself, the tone of my thought more in line with "Oh, the humanity!" of the Hindenberg narration. I think I had a stomach ailment for at least two weeks of the trip, and in Chachapoyas, I was subjected to the umpteenth plate of pollo y papas, which did nothing to improve my flagging appetite or quell my nausea.
Having not eaten much at all for the past few days, I was desperate for nourishment. Just not THAT nourishment. I will never forget the sense of ecstasy I felt when, several days later, XGF and I ate Middle Eastern food for lunch in Lima, nor the night we ate at what is said to be Peru's best restaurant, which was a gourmet feast. In both establishments, my stomach was healthy and my tastebuds were positively SINGING, so happy were they to NOT be tasting chicken or french fries.
But I digress.
Kuelap, Kuelap.
What a marvelous and peculiar place, an obscure outpost well off the tourist track, and wrapped not just in mystery but in vines and bromeliads. I remember thinking it was crude and lovely all at once.
And for the duration of our visit, I felt like vomiting. The altitude -- about 10,000 feet -- made my asthma inhaler a little more potent than I could bear, and I was disturbingly dizzy as I walked around the place. This was no more dramatic than when I attempted to pose for a photo near "The Abyssmal," as our no-English-spoken-here guide called it. It was an outer wall of the fortress that, without even an inch of railing or masonry above "ground level," dropped into sheer nothingness thousands of feet above the Utcubamba valley below. Even if I hadn't been doped on Albuterol, I would have felt dizzy there. As it was, I almost fainted.
The entire experience of going to Kuelap, including the death-defying journey itself, is the most sublime thing I've ever done. Seeing the fortress on TV this evening was a real thrill for me.
It also helped put into perspective just how tedious and weird the last month of my life has been -- like another unwanted plate of pollo y papas..
I have embraced (or at least survived) many unusual situations in my life, and my spirit remains adverturous and strong. Once, after a long, rough and dirty journey, I stood on the edge of The Abyssmal -- a Jumping Off Place if there ever was one -- and smiled for the camera.
The world is full of secret places and amazing peoples. Our frame of reference is never more narrow than when we tell others how things ought to be and expect them to be like us. It's sad, really, how much time and energy we can spend trying to conform or trying to get others to conform to us.
Had XGF and I chosen to "conform," we would have never found ourselves alone -- the only visitors -- in the largest stone ruins in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, we would have been with the hoards at Machu Picchu, taking the same photos you always see of the place. Or worse, we would have never gone to Peru at all, and would have simply waited for the opening to Machu Picchu Las Vegas.
I realize these issues may seem only tangentially related to some of my readers: Kuelap and the weird month I've recently had. But they are linked in my mind by mental fortitude and a willingness to endure unpleasant things to get where I want to go.
In the upper reaches of Kuelap, sickened by my own medicine and rendered weak by a harsh journey, I still had the strength and desire to take in a completely new experience, to be moved by mystery and to be glad I had chosen the more difficult destination.
I will also never forget the moment the tires on our SUV hit smoothly paved road after two days of driving on dirt. It was dark, so the change came without warning. The endless and noisy crunch of rocks beneath the wheels suddenly gave way to a pleasing hum. The violent, jarring ride quieted immediately to a dreamy vibration.
That, my friends, is transformation.
And it's just one piece of the story of Kuelap.
A show on the History Channel called "Digging for the Truth" was featuring "one of the world's greatest mysteries" and the largest stone edifice in the Americas. I needed only one look at the diamond pattern carved into the round stone wall to know the place.
Kuelap.
Even today, two years after I reached that amazing mountain-top citadel, I still get a little shiver of excitement in my stomach when I see or hear the name of the place. Located in, as this archeologist put it, one of the "most inaccessible regions of Peru," to get there XGF and I endured 22 hours of driving on a boulder-strewn dirt road which, for a great portion of the journey, was cut rather shallowly into the face of the most precipitous mountains I've ever seen. The Northern Andes are not short on drama, that's for sure.
To see this mysterious place, built around 500 A.D. (1,000 years before Machu Picchu), on television brought a flood of wonderment and other emotions to me. Same goes for when the archeologist-host of the show did a little narration while walking through the town square -- the Plaza de Armas, which *every* Peruvian town has so named their main square -- in the town of Chachapoyas.
Oh, the chicken and french fries! I thought to myself, the tone of my thought more in line with "Oh, the humanity!" of the Hindenberg narration. I think I had a stomach ailment for at least two weeks of the trip, and in Chachapoyas, I was subjected to the umpteenth plate of pollo y papas, which did nothing to improve my flagging appetite or quell my nausea.
Having not eaten much at all for the past few days, I was desperate for nourishment. Just not THAT nourishment. I will never forget the sense of ecstasy I felt when, several days later, XGF and I ate Middle Eastern food for lunch in Lima, nor the night we ate at what is said to be Peru's best restaurant, which was a gourmet feast. In both establishments, my stomach was healthy and my tastebuds were positively SINGING, so happy were they to NOT be tasting chicken or french fries.
But I digress.
Kuelap, Kuelap.
What a marvelous and peculiar place, an obscure outpost well off the tourist track, and wrapped not just in mystery but in vines and bromeliads. I remember thinking it was crude and lovely all at once.
And for the duration of our visit, I felt like vomiting. The altitude -- about 10,000 feet -- made my asthma inhaler a little more potent than I could bear, and I was disturbingly dizzy as I walked around the place. This was no more dramatic than when I attempted to pose for a photo near "The Abyssmal," as our no-English-spoken-here guide called it. It was an outer wall of the fortress that, without even an inch of railing or masonry above "ground level," dropped into sheer nothingness thousands of feet above the Utcubamba valley below. Even if I hadn't been doped on Albuterol, I would have felt dizzy there. As it was, I almost fainted.
The entire experience of going to Kuelap, including the death-defying journey itself, is the most sublime thing I've ever done. Seeing the fortress on TV this evening was a real thrill for me.
It also helped put into perspective just how tedious and weird the last month of my life has been -- like another unwanted plate of pollo y papas..
I have embraced (or at least survived) many unusual situations in my life, and my spirit remains adverturous and strong. Once, after a long, rough and dirty journey, I stood on the edge of The Abyssmal -- a Jumping Off Place if there ever was one -- and smiled for the camera.
The world is full of secret places and amazing peoples. Our frame of reference is never more narrow than when we tell others how things ought to be and expect them to be like us. It's sad, really, how much time and energy we can spend trying to conform or trying to get others to conform to us.
Had XGF and I chosen to "conform," we would have never found ourselves alone -- the only visitors -- in the largest stone ruins in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, we would have been with the hoards at Machu Picchu, taking the same photos you always see of the place. Or worse, we would have never gone to Peru at all, and would have simply waited for the opening to Machu Picchu Las Vegas.
I realize these issues may seem only tangentially related to some of my readers: Kuelap and the weird month I've recently had. But they are linked in my mind by mental fortitude and a willingness to endure unpleasant things to get where I want to go.
In the upper reaches of Kuelap, sickened by my own medicine and rendered weak by a harsh journey, I still had the strength and desire to take in a completely new experience, to be moved by mystery and to be glad I had chosen the more difficult destination.
I will also never forget the moment the tires on our SUV hit smoothly paved road after two days of driving on dirt. It was dark, so the change came without warning. The endless and noisy crunch of rocks beneath the wheels suddenly gave way to a pleasing hum. The violent, jarring ride quieted immediately to a dreamy vibration.
That, my friends, is transformation.
And it's just one piece of the story of Kuelap.
Friday, September 07, 2007
One story ends, another begins
With any luck, I am near the end of the practicum fiasco I've been describing here. I had a meeting with faculty earlier this week in which I finally learned what I had supposedly done that was so terribly disrespectful toward my classmates. Seems someone has been telling my faculty that I refer to my female classmates as "bitches" in class.
Whoa! Right?
Considering that this is an absurd and utterly inaccurate accusation -- at least as far as I and many of my classmates are concerned -- I'm ready to put the whole thing behind me. I have done enough of my own self-work over this issue. I have endless more self-work to do, of course. But when it comes to this? I'm done. Just totally ... done....
No doubt I'll eventually get myself raked over the coals in internship by my new Gestalt supervisor. But I am hopeful that the self-examination asked of me in that process is done with a focus on guidance and growth based on meaningful observations by my supervisors. The vague, scolding "feedback" from my practicum was not especially helpful and, with its damning air, caused me a great deal more stress than necessary.
Now it's time to move on.
It's also helpful, too, to have a little scandal in my school create enough fuss to make whatever vague complaints exist about me just fade into the background. Everyone -- and I mean *everyone* -- seems really put out by revelations that the (now-former) dean of our graduate school has gotten himself some notoriety as a Lothario of sorts. Or at least as a hypocritical liberal White male. Or as a fallable human for whom forgiveness might be helpful. All of those. And maybe even none of them. Depends on your perspective.
As for me, I'm trying to hold all those things as being the case. Those and a dozen other realities.
I have been humbled by the flood of perspective that people shared with me over the past month. Getting all that feedback from so many quarters -- and seeing how impossible it is to make sense of it in a way that's congruent with what I know and believe about myself -- has reminded me of the unique perspective each of us has.
I already knew this, but the sheer scope and overwhelming nature of the feedback I received from so many people was a radical experience that moved the idea of perspective from an intellectual knowing to an embodied knowing.
I am not pleased with the actions of the dean of my graduate school, as described in published accounts. It touches a nerve for me in terms of where "true" openness meets liberal lipservice about diversity issues.
However, the past few weeks have reminded me acutely that there is not just "another side" to the story, there are dozens of sides to the story. As much as I'm bothered by abuse of power -- having recently felt its seering heat in my own life -- I am also feeling empathy for everyone involved in the situation. Not just for the dean and the woman he was found to have harrassed, but for his colleagues and the students who felt betrayed. And also for those who found the sense of betrayal to just be more liberal hypocrisy.
Everyone's got an angle on that story, and it's kinda fun and invigorating to discuss it. Very much a playground for debate.
But it's also useful to remember that everyone also has an angle on the Story of Me. And an angle on the Story of You.
Whoa! Right?
Considering that this is an absurd and utterly inaccurate accusation -- at least as far as I and many of my classmates are concerned -- I'm ready to put the whole thing behind me. I have done enough of my own self-work over this issue. I have endless more self-work to do, of course. But when it comes to this? I'm done. Just totally ... done....
No doubt I'll eventually get myself raked over the coals in internship by my new Gestalt supervisor. But I am hopeful that the self-examination asked of me in that process is done with a focus on guidance and growth based on meaningful observations by my supervisors. The vague, scolding "feedback" from my practicum was not especially helpful and, with its damning air, caused me a great deal more stress than necessary.
Now it's time to move on.
It's also helpful, too, to have a little scandal in my school create enough fuss to make whatever vague complaints exist about me just fade into the background. Everyone -- and I mean *everyone* -- seems really put out by revelations that the (now-former) dean of our graduate school has gotten himself some notoriety as a Lothario of sorts. Or at least as a hypocritical liberal White male. Or as a fallable human for whom forgiveness might be helpful. All of those. And maybe even none of them. Depends on your perspective.
As for me, I'm trying to hold all those things as being the case. Those and a dozen other realities.
I have been humbled by the flood of perspective that people shared with me over the past month. Getting all that feedback from so many quarters -- and seeing how impossible it is to make sense of it in a way that's congruent with what I know and believe about myself -- has reminded me of the unique perspective each of us has.
I already knew this, but the sheer scope and overwhelming nature of the feedback I received from so many people was a radical experience that moved the idea of perspective from an intellectual knowing to an embodied knowing.
I am not pleased with the actions of the dean of my graduate school, as described in published accounts. It touches a nerve for me in terms of where "true" openness meets liberal lipservice about diversity issues.
However, the past few weeks have reminded me acutely that there is not just "another side" to the story, there are dozens of sides to the story. As much as I'm bothered by abuse of power -- having recently felt its seering heat in my own life -- I am also feeling empathy for everyone involved in the situation. Not just for the dean and the woman he was found to have harrassed, but for his colleagues and the students who felt betrayed. And also for those who found the sense of betrayal to just be more liberal hypocrisy.
Everyone's got an angle on that story, and it's kinda fun and invigorating to discuss it. Very much a playground for debate.
But it's also useful to remember that everyone also has an angle on the Story of Me. And an angle on the Story of You.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Recently. And tomorrow.
When we last met each other in this forum, I posted a quote about truth-seeking from Terri Jentz's *fabulous* book, Strange Piece of Paradise, the introduction to which came from my schoolmate and friend, True Tomato. I cannot recommend this book enough, even at 700-something pages long.
Jentz and a classmate were brutally attacked by a guy who ran over their tent at a state park here in Oregon, then got out of his truck and hacked at both of them with an axe. For reasons one is left only to suspect, the state police dropped the ball, and no serious suspects were ever interrogated, even though much of the community in the area believed they knew who did it. Ten years later, Jentz returns to the scene of the crime and begins her own investigation. It's an amazing investigation she conducts.
I lay absolutely NO CLAIM to doing anything similar with my fine self. But a single comment she made about truth-seeking restoring "something vital in my core" really spoke to me.
I am not sure why. Not exactly. But I have a good idea. (And I'll get into it further at a later date.)
In any case, the last several weeks of my life seem to have had truth-seeking as a theme. But rather than looking for some culprit in the crimes that have occasionally been part of my life, I have been looking inward -- and have had a lot of external assistance with that.
Self-examination is -- or rather, should be -- part and parcel to getting a graduate degree in counseling psychology. I say "should be" because I have observed extreme reluctance on the parts of some of my schoolmates to do this work, and others have said things that make it clear they don't understand why one might need to do that in this line of work. Both types drive me a little crazy because I think they are being irresponsible.
Although I also lay no claim to being fully self-aware (hardly!) nor so proficient in self-examination as to think I do it better than others, I feel certain that most of the people who know me well would tell you that I do engage in self-examination as a matter of course in my daily life. One schoolmate said I have a "fearless inward-looking eye." It's a kind way of saying, perhaps, that I sometimes engage in indulgent navel-gazing -- and that I tell others what I find there. (Look at this blog for examples.)
However, I think those who know me best realize that, over the past few weeks, I have been engaged in an entirely new sport: X-treme Self-Examination.
That absurd evaluation I got from my practicum instructors -- and, yes, it *is* absurd in most respects -- prompted some serious reflection on my part, which included numerous conversations with friends, colleagues, family members and the occasional service provider about how they perceive me and what they think those pesky instructors might have been set off by in the person of your dear UCM.
It started off innocently enough. I asked my peers in the practicum whether I had, in fact, created an unsafe environment in the classroom. Uniformly, they told me "NO" and shared their thoughts on what was going on in the class that may have upset the instructors. My provocative questions and direct commentary were part of it, but that does not equal a lack of respect for the "fundamental rights, dignity and worth of all people," a blight from which my evaluation suggested I suffer.
So then, I started poking and poking and poking at my close friends to give me some insight. I asked S2 and HGM. I also asked XGF. Where was this coming from? What is it about me that may have prompted this acrimony in my instructors?
Unsatisfied with the responses -- which basically were "You're fine; those instructors are the problem" from S2 and HGM and "Well...." from the XGF -- I expanded my reach and my questioning. For a week or two, just about anyone who crossed my path -- minus the baristas, deli owners and gas station attendants -- was subjected to my questions.
One night at dinner with The Clairvoyant and The One, The One told me, "Face it, UCM, you're HOT! You have a beautiful mind, and a lot people want a piece of that. But to others, it's scary because *they* are insecure around someone like you." (Nice piece of work, that man. We are a mutual masturbation society, he and I. He has several pieces in a gallery opening this weekend, and I can't wait to see them.)
But I digress.
The point is: Be careful what you ask for.
When Truman Capote died, he was working on a novel called "Answered Prayers," or something like that. The idea behind the piece was about the misery that befalls people when they actually get what they want.
This is kind of what happened to me.
Somewhere, insidiously, the feedback really started to pile up. Eventually, people who I never even ASKED started telling me what how they perceive me or simply started explaining me to myself. It came in every form you can imagine: bare-bones statements (as if it wasn't perception but fact), gentle questioning, reflective listening that had "summaries of meaning" which were NOT part of what I said, Tarot cards, astrology, empirical research about social psychology.
It went on and on and on. ... And on.
I met with the faculty member who is the practicum coordinator on Wednesday last week, and she shared some of her own perceptions of me. She's someone I respect immensely, someone who I think would be a fabulous mentor. So when she placed my "sensitivity" at a 9 or a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, I was the very illustration of rapt curiosity. She said such "sensitivity" is gift, not a negative trait -- and then shared her concept about how I protect myself in certain situations because of that acute feeling (and, as S2 noted, the "vulnerability" inherent in it).
It was my professor's comments that finally started bringing into focus for me the strange, conflicted picture painted by all these other sources of feedback.
And yet, there was still more feedback to come on Thursday -- some unsolicited from a friendly schoolmate and some I asked of my most trusted friend, S2.
For whatever reason, it was this final bit -- including a kind and loving e-mail from S2 in which she said there's nothing wrong with me -- that was the proverbial straw on the camel's back. This mountain of feedback from so many sources was, in the end, just way too fucking much to take in, to sort through, process and make sense of. In short, it was maddening.
For a few days, I withdrew from everyone. If someone called, I might answer. But my normally outgoing self made no outgoing calls, sought no conversations, wrote not a single goddamned word. I have an immense tolerance for contact with people. I need contact. I derive my energy in a great part from social interactions. At times when I get depressed or anxious, I usually reach out to friends.
It is a rare, rare thing for me to retract into my shell. But that's where I've been. I went to the movies -- the latest Harry Potter -- and I watched women's tennis at the U.S. Open on television. I walked my dog vigorously. And I slept a WHOLE LOT. This shit had totally overwhelmed and exhausted me, and I needed to recoup in a way that did not involve those I love or even those I like. I just needed to be left alone for a few days.
In truth, I could have probably used a couple more days of it. But I woke up this morning and realized S2 might think I was sick or dead if I didn't contact her today, so I did. Then True Tomato called and left the most amusing and sweetly passionate voice mail about what is wrong with other people, rather than what is wrong with me. So I called and chatted with her for a while. And then HGM called about coming over to pick up something and getting lunch, so we did that together.
I suppose I needed to rejoin the living today anyway.
That's because tomorrow (Tuesday), I start my internship. Yep. I'm about to become a therapist for real. (Truth is, I was already one in my practicum, but this is going to be a little different -- more clients and more serious one-on-one supervision, without having a fucking camera trained on me every session.)
It's time for your UCM to sink or swim. Good thing I come by floating so naturally.
Good thing, too, that I'll be one of those therapists who's willing to look at herself. Not only is it necessary for my personal growth as a human, it something I believe I owe to those who will be my clients. If I can't stand the scrutiny, how dare I ask others to undertake such work?
But you know what? No one should have to take it all at once from all quarters. It certainly creates a picture. But so much of it all at once is like standing too close to a Seurat. So many points -- so many fine and good points -- viewed so closely don't make that much sense.
Let's see what comes into view when I take a few steps back.
Jentz and a classmate were brutally attacked by a guy who ran over their tent at a state park here in Oregon, then got out of his truck and hacked at both of them with an axe. For reasons one is left only to suspect, the state police dropped the ball, and no serious suspects were ever interrogated, even though much of the community in the area believed they knew who did it. Ten years later, Jentz returns to the scene of the crime and begins her own investigation. It's an amazing investigation she conducts.
I lay absolutely NO CLAIM to doing anything similar with my fine self. But a single comment she made about truth-seeking restoring "something vital in my core" really spoke to me.
I am not sure why. Not exactly. But I have a good idea. (And I'll get into it further at a later date.)
In any case, the last several weeks of my life seem to have had truth-seeking as a theme. But rather than looking for some culprit in the crimes that have occasionally been part of my life, I have been looking inward -- and have had a lot of external assistance with that.
Self-examination is -- or rather, should be -- part and parcel to getting a graduate degree in counseling psychology. I say "should be" because I have observed extreme reluctance on the parts of some of my schoolmates to do this work, and others have said things that make it clear they don't understand why one might need to do that in this line of work. Both types drive me a little crazy because I think they are being irresponsible.
Although I also lay no claim to being fully self-aware (hardly!) nor so proficient in self-examination as to think I do it better than others, I feel certain that most of the people who know me well would tell you that I do engage in self-examination as a matter of course in my daily life. One schoolmate said I have a "fearless inward-looking eye." It's a kind way of saying, perhaps, that I sometimes engage in indulgent navel-gazing -- and that I tell others what I find there. (Look at this blog for examples.)
However, I think those who know me best realize that, over the past few weeks, I have been engaged in an entirely new sport: X-treme Self-Examination.
That absurd evaluation I got from my practicum instructors -- and, yes, it *is* absurd in most respects -- prompted some serious reflection on my part, which included numerous conversations with friends, colleagues, family members and the occasional service provider about how they perceive me and what they think those pesky instructors might have been set off by in the person of your dear UCM.
It started off innocently enough. I asked my peers in the practicum whether I had, in fact, created an unsafe environment in the classroom. Uniformly, they told me "NO" and shared their thoughts on what was going on in the class that may have upset the instructors. My provocative questions and direct commentary were part of it, but that does not equal a lack of respect for the "fundamental rights, dignity and worth of all people," a blight from which my evaluation suggested I suffer.
So then, I started poking and poking and poking at my close friends to give me some insight. I asked S2 and HGM. I also asked XGF. Where was this coming from? What is it about me that may have prompted this acrimony in my instructors?
Unsatisfied with the responses -- which basically were "You're fine; those instructors are the problem" from S2 and HGM and "Well...." from the XGF -- I expanded my reach and my questioning. For a week or two, just about anyone who crossed my path -- minus the baristas, deli owners and gas station attendants -- was subjected to my questions.
One night at dinner with The Clairvoyant and The One, The One told me, "Face it, UCM, you're HOT! You have a beautiful mind, and a lot people want a piece of that. But to others, it's scary because *they* are insecure around someone like you." (Nice piece of work, that man. We are a mutual masturbation society, he and I. He has several pieces in a gallery opening this weekend, and I can't wait to see them.)
But I digress.
The point is: Be careful what you ask for.
When Truman Capote died, he was working on a novel called "Answered Prayers," or something like that. The idea behind the piece was about the misery that befalls people when they actually get what they want.
This is kind of what happened to me.
Somewhere, insidiously, the feedback really started to pile up. Eventually, people who I never even ASKED started telling me what how they perceive me or simply started explaining me to myself. It came in every form you can imagine: bare-bones statements (as if it wasn't perception but fact), gentle questioning, reflective listening that had "summaries of meaning" which were NOT part of what I said, Tarot cards, astrology, empirical research about social psychology.
It went on and on and on. ... And on.
I met with the faculty member who is the practicum coordinator on Wednesday last week, and she shared some of her own perceptions of me. She's someone I respect immensely, someone who I think would be a fabulous mentor. So when she placed my "sensitivity" at a 9 or a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, I was the very illustration of rapt curiosity. She said such "sensitivity" is gift, not a negative trait -- and then shared her concept about how I protect myself in certain situations because of that acute feeling (and, as S2 noted, the "vulnerability" inherent in it).
It was my professor's comments that finally started bringing into focus for me the strange, conflicted picture painted by all these other sources of feedback.
And yet, there was still more feedback to come on Thursday -- some unsolicited from a friendly schoolmate and some I asked of my most trusted friend, S2.
For whatever reason, it was this final bit -- including a kind and loving e-mail from S2 in which she said there's nothing wrong with me -- that was the proverbial straw on the camel's back. This mountain of feedback from so many sources was, in the end, just way too fucking much to take in, to sort through, process and make sense of. In short, it was maddening.
For a few days, I withdrew from everyone. If someone called, I might answer. But my normally outgoing self made no outgoing calls, sought no conversations, wrote not a single goddamned word. I have an immense tolerance for contact with people. I need contact. I derive my energy in a great part from social interactions. At times when I get depressed or anxious, I usually reach out to friends.
It is a rare, rare thing for me to retract into my shell. But that's where I've been. I went to the movies -- the latest Harry Potter -- and I watched women's tennis at the U.S. Open on television. I walked my dog vigorously. And I slept a WHOLE LOT. This shit had totally overwhelmed and exhausted me, and I needed to recoup in a way that did not involve those I love or even those I like. I just needed to be left alone for a few days.
In truth, I could have probably used a couple more days of it. But I woke up this morning and realized S2 might think I was sick or dead if I didn't contact her today, so I did. Then True Tomato called and left the most amusing and sweetly passionate voice mail about what is wrong with other people, rather than what is wrong with me. So I called and chatted with her for a while. And then HGM called about coming over to pick up something and getting lunch, so we did that together.
I suppose I needed to rejoin the living today anyway.
That's because tomorrow (Tuesday), I start my internship. Yep. I'm about to become a therapist for real. (Truth is, I was already one in my practicum, but this is going to be a little different -- more clients and more serious one-on-one supervision, without having a fucking camera trained on me every session.)
It's time for your UCM to sink or swim. Good thing I come by floating so naturally.
Good thing, too, that I'll be one of those therapists who's willing to look at herself. Not only is it necessary for my personal growth as a human, it something I believe I owe to those who will be my clients. If I can't stand the scrutiny, how dare I ask others to undertake such work?
But you know what? No one should have to take it all at once from all quarters. It certainly creates a picture. But so much of it all at once is like standing too close to a Seurat. So many points -- so many fine and good points -- viewed so closely don't make that much sense.
Let's see what comes into view when I take a few steps back.
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