One of the recurring themes in Power's "Problem From Hell" is how response to genocide is often hindered by an inability to believe. This is distinct from an accusation of lying. It's not that, when confronted with the notion that people are being tortured, raped, killed, humiliated, on massive massive scales, that people say--I don't believe you because you're lying. It's that they say, I don't believe you because I can't believe you. It's so awful, people can't imagine that it would actually happen. Even the victims themselves would hold out hope, make up for themselves excuses, that what was happening wasn't really, that it wouldn't reach them eventually, that they would be different. In many ways, this is an instrument of survival, but in other ways it keeps us in a damaging narrowness.
On Park and Crown, there is a building whose brick wall has recently, for some reason, been covered by a black and white mural of Anne Frank's face. In the corner it tells us, as she did: "Believe in people." I remember reading as a young girl, her diary of a young girl, and being struck by the same sentence that made her famous--"in spite of it all, I still believe that people are really good at heart."
My own sense of disbelief arises more in response the inability to believe in bad, than in response to the bad itself. I've always thought of myself who believes in people too, but lately I find myself thinking more that it's not a belief in goodness or the opposite, but an openness to the full spectrum in between. I believe in capacity. People are capable of incredible good, and that is incredible; they're also capable of incredible bad, and that is also incredible. I don't think recognizing one negates the other. Regardless of which way you think people tend to lean, the most human thing is that they can lean any which way, depending on what is supporting or not supporting them.
I think one of the nicest things about doctoring is the opportunity to know people, not kind friendly grateful people, but all people in whatever it is that they have become. This isn't to say that there aren't things to dislike; I dislike a million things about a million different people. But if we marvel at our own humanity and wonder at how it is that we can accomplish so much, I think it's important to recognize that the root of it all is the same range of possibility that gives rise to inhumanity and how it is that we can destroy so much.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
history
Yesterday I spent an hour of my day sitting quietly and asking about things around the room--paintings on the wall, books and photographs on the coffee table. My company was a quiet woman whom I found to be really lovely on first meeting, and more so on subsequent visits. We talked about travels--she's been to Siberia, the only person I've met to take the Trans-Siberian railroad, and she was in her seventies when she went. Nowadays she finds most fit nestled in a chair, reading. She worked as a librarian for most of her life, and now spends most of her days with a book. She likes history.
I've never been half as interested in history as in literature. It's one of the main reasons I abandoned thoughts of journalism freshman year of college, after spending the latter half of high school toying with the idea. For me, fiction over fact. But one general life goal is to seek stories in real life, and not just real life in stories. To be less in my head and more engaged with the outside. And, while I associate literature with more nuance than other areas, sometimes it's not so good to be immersed in detail.
Have been reading Samantha Power's book on genocide, Problem from Hell. One thing that strikes me in her portrayal of America's inaction in regard to all major 20th century genocides, is how much we evaluate things based on what's around it and often falsely call this considering context and learning from history. She brings attention to how our experiences affect our responses: how we didn't want to intervene in Cambodia because we'd just failed in the Vietnam War, how we didn't want to stop Iraq because we were scared of Iran. And we hear it in the news all the time now: we can't help Libya because look at how badly all of our other Middle Eastern ventures have gone. And we link everything together: why not help Syria too then; we can't help everyone.
The irony in calling this taking lessons from the past is so suffocating, it's hard to first read about in history and secondly consider how perpetual it is. Of course there is always context we need to consider, but if you really want to give credence to context, consider the individual situation and present time. Cambodia isn't Vietnam, Libya isn't Syria, or Iraq. And if you want to look at patterns, why not focus on what actually is similar--that Cambodia's Khmer Rouge was as deadly as Hitler's Nazis, that Libya's Qaddafi is as brutal as Iraq's Hussein. The politics and convenience of choosing what to take from history's patterns and what to dismiss from them, and the inability to evaluate the nuances of a particular situation, makes for such mess and incompleteness. That's a little of what I get from the bigger picture.
This perspective, and many miles from my own doorstep, helps to bring the narrow of my life into better focus. I've taken on one of the harder endeavors I've devised for myself, with a little push from M whose point of view I trust and respect, who believes that persistence really does overcome even natural incapacities. Which is considering my own patterns that aren't so useful or pleasant. Instead of imposing these often illogical patterns on my life, I want to more rationally approach situations as they arise. To consider the context that matters, to discard misapplied context, to leave room for what's new and different, to learn from what's old and recurring. This is pretty damn hard when you are both the evaluator and the object of evaluation, but probably one of the worthier goals to pursue.
From the woman and her books, I admire that someone at the end of her life can seek more to be learned from the past. From Samantha Power, I admire the ability to learn about facts as distinct components and part of a larger whole. From M, I admire the drive to try at whatever you want, the belief that you never have to feel trapped by your own self. And so for me, and for every person really, lies the process of taking what you value and living it.
I've never been half as interested in history as in literature. It's one of the main reasons I abandoned thoughts of journalism freshman year of college, after spending the latter half of high school toying with the idea. For me, fiction over fact. But one general life goal is to seek stories in real life, and not just real life in stories. To be less in my head and more engaged with the outside. And, while I associate literature with more nuance than other areas, sometimes it's not so good to be immersed in detail.
Have been reading Samantha Power's book on genocide, Problem from Hell. One thing that strikes me in her portrayal of America's inaction in regard to all major 20th century genocides, is how much we evaluate things based on what's around it and often falsely call this considering context and learning from history. She brings attention to how our experiences affect our responses: how we didn't want to intervene in Cambodia because we'd just failed in the Vietnam War, how we didn't want to stop Iraq because we were scared of Iran. And we hear it in the news all the time now: we can't help Libya because look at how badly all of our other Middle Eastern ventures have gone. And we link everything together: why not help Syria too then; we can't help everyone.
The irony in calling this taking lessons from the past is so suffocating, it's hard to first read about in history and secondly consider how perpetual it is. Of course there is always context we need to consider, but if you really want to give credence to context, consider the individual situation and present time. Cambodia isn't Vietnam, Libya isn't Syria, or Iraq. And if you want to look at patterns, why not focus on what actually is similar--that Cambodia's Khmer Rouge was as deadly as Hitler's Nazis, that Libya's Qaddafi is as brutal as Iraq's Hussein. The politics and convenience of choosing what to take from history's patterns and what to dismiss from them, and the inability to evaluate the nuances of a particular situation, makes for such mess and incompleteness. That's a little of what I get from the bigger picture.
This perspective, and many miles from my own doorstep, helps to bring the narrow of my life into better focus. I've taken on one of the harder endeavors I've devised for myself, with a little push from M whose point of view I trust and respect, who believes that persistence really does overcome even natural incapacities. Which is considering my own patterns that aren't so useful or pleasant. Instead of imposing these often illogical patterns on my life, I want to more rationally approach situations as they arise. To consider the context that matters, to discard misapplied context, to leave room for what's new and different, to learn from what's old and recurring. This is pretty damn hard when you are both the evaluator and the object of evaluation, but probably one of the worthier goals to pursue.
From the woman and her books, I admire that someone at the end of her life can seek more to be learned from the past. From Samantha Power, I admire the ability to learn about facts as distinct components and part of a larger whole. From M, I admire the drive to try at whatever you want, the belief that you never have to feel trapped by your own self. And so for me, and for every person really, lies the process of taking what you value and living it.
Monday, April 18, 2011
only girl
My advisor, who I love meeting each week for the pure reason of being with the type of doctor I'd like to someday be, once said that one thing she loves about being a physician is being what people need, which changes for each person. Some people need her to be stern, others need her to be lenient. Some people need affection, others need distance. It's not just personal preference, but about what's best for personal character. At first this might seem like playing a part to cater to someone, but I think that after awhile, if you train yourself to remain open to whatever someone brings to you, you naturally adopt different parts of them and different corresponding parts of them.
This might sound like advocating against being your own person--to be malleable and different depending on who's around you. But I don't think that necessarily has to be the case. I think being open to how another person can change and shape you, can mean drawing on resources within you that you aren't used to reaching for, haven't had to assume in the circumstances you've been in, aren't part of the general personality you've developed. Doing things, saying things, feeling things outside of your usual self aren't always less you than what you do everyday. You own all of it, including what you accept from others.
I thought of this today when Rihanna's "Only Girl" came on the radio. I'm a big fan of that song, and of Rihanna whose voice I love for its slight twang and high power. I thought of it because my friend C and I blasted this song throughout our cross country drive from Connecticut to Arizona, and back. And C is a person who makes me think of how different people bring out different things in me that I wouldn't always offer on my own. She's extremely expressive, while I find it pretty difficult to show when I'm really excited or happy about something. We've grown up in different environments, we respond to our current environments differently. I love in her all of these things that make us different, and she's open to me despite them, and I think that's the one and only thing I require in a friend, a certain openness to how I am and to how people are in general, that makes it easy to connect even if you're very different.
C and I both love this song, and other fun pop songs, and any time we heard one of our favorites, she'd go crazy in the car, and it would make me go kind of crazy too. This one song being iconic, whenever I hear it, I remember those free-for-all moments: all the windows down on a dark road in the desert of New Mexico, with flat-topped mountains fading into the black of night so that you can't see any shapes but think how beautiful it must be during the day; singing over the words over a straight road flanked by cotton fields in the middle of Arkansas which is full of deep reds and pale greens; dancing in the seats of the car through the wide therapeutic nothing of Texas with its surprising pink-tinged wheat and beauty.
And when she blasted the radio on full volume, put the car in park at a stop sign, jumped outside and danced barefoot on asphalt, in some residential southwest neighborhood already asleep. How I didn't hop out after her, but hopped out at the same time, as though I'd already absorbed the energy to fulfill a previously dormant whim. To feel something in you slip out of its cover is almost like to create something new, and there's so much in people to make you feel new.
This might sound like advocating against being your own person--to be malleable and different depending on who's around you. But I don't think that necessarily has to be the case. I think being open to how another person can change and shape you, can mean drawing on resources within you that you aren't used to reaching for, haven't had to assume in the circumstances you've been in, aren't part of the general personality you've developed. Doing things, saying things, feeling things outside of your usual self aren't always less you than what you do everyday. You own all of it, including what you accept from others.
I thought of this today when Rihanna's "Only Girl" came on the radio. I'm a big fan of that song, and of Rihanna whose voice I love for its slight twang and high power. I thought of it because my friend C and I blasted this song throughout our cross country drive from Connecticut to Arizona, and back. And C is a person who makes me think of how different people bring out different things in me that I wouldn't always offer on my own. She's extremely expressive, while I find it pretty difficult to show when I'm really excited or happy about something. We've grown up in different environments, we respond to our current environments differently. I love in her all of these things that make us different, and she's open to me despite them, and I think that's the one and only thing I require in a friend, a certain openness to how I am and to how people are in general, that makes it easy to connect even if you're very different.
C and I both love this song, and other fun pop songs, and any time we heard one of our favorites, she'd go crazy in the car, and it would make me go kind of crazy too. This one song being iconic, whenever I hear it, I remember those free-for-all moments: all the windows down on a dark road in the desert of New Mexico, with flat-topped mountains fading into the black of night so that you can't see any shapes but think how beautiful it must be during the day; singing over the words over a straight road flanked by cotton fields in the middle of Arkansas which is full of deep reds and pale greens; dancing in the seats of the car through the wide therapeutic nothing of Texas with its surprising pink-tinged wheat and beauty.
And when she blasted the radio on full volume, put the car in park at a stop sign, jumped outside and danced barefoot on asphalt, in some residential southwest neighborhood already asleep. How I didn't hop out after her, but hopped out at the same time, as though I'd already absorbed the energy to fulfill a previously dormant whim. To feel something in you slip out of its cover is almost like to create something new, and there's so much in people to make you feel new.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
moth
In our house the kitchen is in the center. It's adjacent to the living room, where my roommate dwells most of the time along with a handful of her many friends, and with our regular visitors, our neighbor across the street and our neighbor down the street. It shares a door with my bedroom, and it provides a door to the outside as well as to my other roommate's room. I get a phone call while making dinner, so I take it in the kitchen. While listening to a friend's new findings on an old romance, I get a phone call on the other line--the neighbor across the street wants to eat his rice krispies at our place. He starts a conversation in the living room about how things have been the same over and over, each day, calling out to me sporadically for input. The kitchen door to outside swings open, and it's a friend who's been watching a movie in my other roommate's room. Pulp Fiction. My roommate says, oh I need to watch the ending of that. My friend says, oh it's at the end now. My roommate says, but I've forgotten the middle. We laugh, and my friend watching the movie goes to the bathroom, and returns, and asks everyone if they've eaten. Let's go to dinner. It's late, but we haven't eaten. I've already made food, I say. I'm still on the phone, listening to how a story we thought went one way went some other way, but at least now we know and we can leave it be. My neighbor with his rice krispies shouts about how we've been separated from our mothers, and that's all that really mattered. My hungry classmate says, let's eat. The person on the line says, What's going on, and I try to think of a description. And then I see a white flutter--a moth--fluttering outside my bedroom door--the source of the mysterious bug smell in our kitchen, which I'd discovered to be moths, but I hadn't seen one in the kitchen until now. Motion with no noise, unnoticed by anyone. And I think, that's nice.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
dancing
My stomach's hurt all day, have spent most of the day in bed. As often when I have a physical ache or pain, I feel old. I'm getting older, of course. I'm almost 27, and this means a lot of things, like slowing metabolism and decrease in agility. I often feel I need to catch up on a lot that's physical (learning to bike, swim), and I also worry I won't be able to keep up at the things I feel semi-able to do. These worries will all come to fruition, of course. That's age.
A hip hop song on the radio made me consider, when will I no longer be able to dance? Not even just physically, but socially. Those older folk getting down, even as they must be having fun, aren't seen as belonging there. And maybe that shouldn't bother me, but of course part of the fun of dancing in a crowd is being a part of the crowd. Most girls love to dance, and I'm not exception to many things girly. I've loved to dance since we were taught in the sixth grade to dance the Macarena, and though we learned that dancing is just moving, some of the boys at our first dance would dance that choreographed move to every song whether it resembled the Macarena or not. I love the inherent desire to move, the work you build up, and the freedom. When will it no longer be okay, when will we no longer look like we're dancing, when will we be just, too old? It feels kind of, sadly, soon.
As M would say, good thing I still look seventeen! Or less.
A hip hop song on the radio made me consider, when will I no longer be able to dance? Not even just physically, but socially. Those older folk getting down, even as they must be having fun, aren't seen as belonging there. And maybe that shouldn't bother me, but of course part of the fun of dancing in a crowd is being a part of the crowd. Most girls love to dance, and I'm not exception to many things girly. I've loved to dance since we were taught in the sixth grade to dance the Macarena, and though we learned that dancing is just moving, some of the boys at our first dance would dance that choreographed move to every song whether it resembled the Macarena or not. I love the inherent desire to move, the work you build up, and the freedom. When will it no longer be okay, when will we no longer look like we're dancing, when will we be just, too old? It feels kind of, sadly, soon.
As M would say, good thing I still look seventeen! Or less.
remnants
Oop, haven't been jotting down for the past couple days.
The other day, at Jojo's Coffeeshop, I recognized the yellow cup from which I'd drunk chai the day before in the hands of another man. I love chai more than any other coffeeshop drink. I don't know what he was drinking. The path from cup to mouth was obscured by an off-white beard with full, light volume. This drew attention to his strings of hair, separated into distinct threads held together by the oils and moistures of time. He drank from the cup standing, looking out the window, a window I'd moved away from because the warmth was overpowering. Then he went outside with the cup, with its patterns of different suns, printed on it two by three.
Yesterday we went to see Twelth Night, at a funny time of day, which would be four o'clock. I've seen many more plays during med school than in college, due to the proximity and affordability of the Yale Rep. This one was put on the Drama School in a venue right down our street. The most prominent thing I've noticed is that I'm not usually affected by the story/feel the same way I do with books, that what overpowers that is the stage and atmosphere. I'm always surprised by what people can create, concretely; how they use space, color, elements; by how different that all feels depending on the position of space you occupy while observing.
K, onto another day.
The other day, at Jojo's Coffeeshop, I recognized the yellow cup from which I'd drunk chai the day before in the hands of another man. I love chai more than any other coffeeshop drink. I don't know what he was drinking. The path from cup to mouth was obscured by an off-white beard with full, light volume. This drew attention to his strings of hair, separated into distinct threads held together by the oils and moistures of time. He drank from the cup standing, looking out the window, a window I'd moved away from because the warmth was overpowering. Then he went outside with the cup, with its patterns of different suns, printed on it two by three.
Yesterday we went to see Twelth Night, at a funny time of day, which would be four o'clock. I've seen many more plays during med school than in college, due to the proximity and affordability of the Yale Rep. This one was put on the Drama School in a venue right down our street. The most prominent thing I've noticed is that I'm not usually affected by the story/feel the same way I do with books, that what overpowers that is the stage and atmosphere. I'm always surprised by what people can create, concretely; how they use space, color, elements; by how different that all feels depending on the position of space you occupy while observing.
K, onto another day.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
hurt
Found myself spending snips and chunks of today considering moments where I've felt extreme emotional pain. Don't worry (that's to you wife, who is the first and probably only person to read this), I'm not currently hurt. Only, I woke up this morning with a vague precursor of what it might feel like in the future, and it made me think of the past. If I had to narrow it down to the most excruciating, there would be six moments I'd put on my list of god-awful emotion, and mixed in with those are moments I'd pile in the same section of a fabric store, the kinds with similar threads even if they aren't the intense shades you immediately return to when perusing shelves of memory [a well meaning, pretentious person taught me that "peruse" is commonly mistaken to mean skim when it actually means to deeply delve. Since then, I debate how to use it, because if language is to communicate and that's how people interpret it, why not use it in the way people will take it? In this case, you can take it whichever way].
As a friend and a med student and other-relations-to-others, I've been privy to other people experiencing pain, just as most of us have. I could describe the expressions of those things, but when it comes down to the inside, we can only draw from ourselves. So from myself I draw the periods of time, short and long, where I was in sharp conscious unwavering pain. There was that time I ate nothing but cereal for weeks, and watched a lot of movies with sensory overload in the hopes of crushing inner workings to no avail. This was the most drawn-out, recurring pain. There was that other time I didn't eat anything for several days, didn't sleep either. I thought it'd be drawn-out and recurring too, but it wasn't, but it was damn intense in its compactness. There was that time I sobbed in a stranger's kitchen, for someone I knew and didn't really know, and then spent days in beautiful new places and felt tangibly less touched by the beauty, the pain coloring all else. This one comes suddenly into focus at moments that make sense and ones that don't, and fades. Then when I sobbed against my car in a cold snowless winter, for someone I kind of knew but didn't really know. This doesn't come back too often. Then when I felt shelter crumbling while wearing kid pajamas, when I sat holding the hand for someone older and in more pain than me. Then when I was the wielder of such pain, different than other cases because the person who bore it didn't choose it; this happened in a place away from home, and I came home and put the wrong on bare display for two people who love me and it hurt like all hell. All of these come back in the form of sadness more than pain, and in some ways you can't say that you'll never forget; there's always forgotten. Strangely it's not so bad to remember what parts of it I do.
As a friend and a med student and other-relations-to-others, I've been privy to other people experiencing pain, just as most of us have. I could describe the expressions of those things, but when it comes down to the inside, we can only draw from ourselves. So from myself I draw the periods of time, short and long, where I was in sharp conscious unwavering pain. There was that time I ate nothing but cereal for weeks, and watched a lot of movies with sensory overload in the hopes of crushing inner workings to no avail. This was the most drawn-out, recurring pain. There was that other time I didn't eat anything for several days, didn't sleep either. I thought it'd be drawn-out and recurring too, but it wasn't, but it was damn intense in its compactness. There was that time I sobbed in a stranger's kitchen, for someone I knew and didn't really know, and then spent days in beautiful new places and felt tangibly less touched by the beauty, the pain coloring all else. This one comes suddenly into focus at moments that make sense and ones that don't, and fades. Then when I sobbed against my car in a cold snowless winter, for someone I kind of knew but didn't really know. This doesn't come back too often. Then when I felt shelter crumbling while wearing kid pajamas, when I sat holding the hand for someone older and in more pain than me. Then when I was the wielder of such pain, different than other cases because the person who bore it didn't choose it; this happened in a place away from home, and I came home and put the wrong on bare display for two people who love me and it hurt like all hell. All of these come back in the form of sadness more than pain, and in some ways you can't say that you'll never forget; there's always forgotten. Strangely it's not so bad to remember what parts of it I do.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
daily
The author of Bird by Bird talks about keeping index cards with her at all times, to jot down anything she wants to remember: an image, a memory, a sentence. This seems useful for creating worlds based on substance of real thoughts/feelings, but I'm not too good at creating. I do like the idea of conscious recording, and in that vein I'm going to try to blog for half an hour every day. I used to save, but saving pushes things back and back until they're no longer retrievable. And really, it's the daily stuff I may never record in any other form. I never wanted to write a blog about what-I-did-today, but a detail stowed in the corner of what-I-did-today isn't so lackluster. Or, even if it is (because honestly my life is pretty boring) the beauty of an index card is that it's not snobby about its content.
When I was in Vietnam, I wrote an email to M describing my uncle's house, and the strong senses associated with it that I'd forgotten. One was how the bathroom smelled like bugs, and he asked how could that be, what do bugs smell like. I said that he'd have to smell it to understand, mostly because I wasn't really sure what the smell was or how I knew it was the smell of bugs, but I was sure. Yesterday the wife says to me, why do we have moths in our kitchen (well, at first I thought she said "mops")? I hadn't seen any moths, but when I got closer to the sink, I smelled my uncle's bathroom. This tiny rectangle of space, smaller than a closet, that I frequented often at night because for some reason Vietnam gives me nocturia. And also, the smell of lots of rooms in Japan I'd been in. Moths! They're moths! How come I never actually see the moths? Is it because they have such short life-spans (this I learned from Virginia Woolf's Death of a Moth), or is it because they hide? I don't know, but I know their smell now.
Well, that took all of ten minutes.
When I was in Vietnam, I wrote an email to M describing my uncle's house, and the strong senses associated with it that I'd forgotten. One was how the bathroom smelled like bugs, and he asked how could that be, what do bugs smell like. I said that he'd have to smell it to understand, mostly because I wasn't really sure what the smell was or how I knew it was the smell of bugs, but I was sure. Yesterday the wife says to me, why do we have moths in our kitchen (well, at first I thought she said "mops")? I hadn't seen any moths, but when I got closer to the sink, I smelled my uncle's bathroom. This tiny rectangle of space, smaller than a closet, that I frequented often at night because for some reason Vietnam gives me nocturia. And also, the smell of lots of rooms in Japan I'd been in. Moths! They're moths! How come I never actually see the moths? Is it because they have such short life-spans (this I learned from Virginia Woolf's Death of a Moth), or is it because they hide? I don't know, but I know their smell now.
Well, that took all of ten minutes.
Monday, April 11, 2011
bike riding
I've been in a moody rut since coming back from Vietnam, conceptual anchors loosening into the framework of physical disorientation. Things that normally ground me feel heavy. My knee throbbed after a run yesterday, climbs that used to come easily feel frustrating. Instead of being excited by the recent experiences that compel me to write, I'm paralyzed by the stack. I get even more easily upset than usual, wallowing in trivial petty things, and staying irrationally there. M tells me to give it time; I trust him and the sentiment, so I am letting things happen. This doesn't mean I overcome the moodiness, I let that happen too, but I trust that the stifling character will break, leaving a baseline moodiness which I can handle, and appreciate.
On Saturday, after a morning of moping in moodiness, we entered a a sunny crisp not-yet-spring day, and he said, let's get you on a bike for lesson #2. Lesson #1 entailed sitting on a bike for the first time and having him hold the bike and me up, running alongside as I got a feel for pedaling. It served several purposes. I learned that it's scary, and hard, to be on a bike for the first time. I fell, the scruff of my pants opening to scrape my skin; having been holding me, he fell too. We expected lesson #2 to proceed in similar increments of progress. I know he wanted me to move, to try something new, to make me feel better, and the thought was enough to slightly jar the heavy air fogging me. He said, even if you're just on it for five minutes, it'll make next time easier.
So we drove to get a bike pump, which didn't really work, but I got on the bike anyway. I pedaled in the parking lot of the mall, him again holding onto the handlebars and running alongside. The first thing he emphasized was to steer into my leans, because I'd lean to one side and would've fallen over and over if he hadn't been there to correct for me. It was too much for me to think about, to correct my leans and pedal at the same time (two things, too much). So because I couldn't, he steered for me as I pedaled. This let me focus on the motion of pedaling, and it also let me subconsciously absorb the hand motion of steering, to feel the handlebars under my fingers. Then he made me try to push off on my own, to start pedaling without him holding. I'd push off with my right foot, but wouldn't trust the bike enough to push hard enough to make it work. Each time I tried, I had to consciously breathe in and suck it up; sometimes the fake courage worked enough to push hard enough to bring the left pedal up quickly enough so that I would actually move forward. To our surprise, after some struggle with this, I could keep pedaling for a few seconds, before I leaned too much or pedaled too slow, and stopped myself.
We returned the faulty bike pump, drove to Wal-Mart to get another; he pumped the tires with success this time, and we started again in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. Realizing that I could continue after starting, he helped give me a push to start, and shouted to me from our starting point to keep going. Back and forth down the length of the parking lot, I stopped as I got scared or worried that this strange capacity to steer that I unconsciously acquired would slip. He made me keep going until I'd gone down the length of the lot, each way, without stopping, and I think we were both pretty surprised. I was surprised not just by the concrete happenings but by what it did for me.
The surprise, a childhood moment given to me as a near-27 year old, the dislodging of things in their proper place, facing loss of balance during a period of inward shakiness, the doing of something new--did me a whole lot of good. Being pushed to let go of ground, we find new holds, and that seems like good reason to keep traversing across moodiness.
On Saturday, after a morning of moping in moodiness, we entered a a sunny crisp not-yet-spring day, and he said, let's get you on a bike for lesson #2. Lesson #1 entailed sitting on a bike for the first time and having him hold the bike and me up, running alongside as I got a feel for pedaling. It served several purposes. I learned that it's scary, and hard, to be on a bike for the first time. I fell, the scruff of my pants opening to scrape my skin; having been holding me, he fell too. We expected lesson #2 to proceed in similar increments of progress. I know he wanted me to move, to try something new, to make me feel better, and the thought was enough to slightly jar the heavy air fogging me. He said, even if you're just on it for five minutes, it'll make next time easier.
So we drove to get a bike pump, which didn't really work, but I got on the bike anyway. I pedaled in the parking lot of the mall, him again holding onto the handlebars and running alongside. The first thing he emphasized was to steer into my leans, because I'd lean to one side and would've fallen over and over if he hadn't been there to correct for me. It was too much for me to think about, to correct my leans and pedal at the same time (two things, too much). So because I couldn't, he steered for me as I pedaled. This let me focus on the motion of pedaling, and it also let me subconsciously absorb the hand motion of steering, to feel the handlebars under my fingers. Then he made me try to push off on my own, to start pedaling without him holding. I'd push off with my right foot, but wouldn't trust the bike enough to push hard enough to make it work. Each time I tried, I had to consciously breathe in and suck it up; sometimes the fake courage worked enough to push hard enough to bring the left pedal up quickly enough so that I would actually move forward. To our surprise, after some struggle with this, I could keep pedaling for a few seconds, before I leaned too much or pedaled too slow, and stopped myself.
We returned the faulty bike pump, drove to Wal-Mart to get another; he pumped the tires with success this time, and we started again in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. Realizing that I could continue after starting, he helped give me a push to start, and shouted to me from our starting point to keep going. Back and forth down the length of the parking lot, I stopped as I got scared or worried that this strange capacity to steer that I unconsciously acquired would slip. He made me keep going until I'd gone down the length of the lot, each way, without stopping, and I think we were both pretty surprised. I was surprised not just by the concrete happenings but by what it did for me.
The surprise, a childhood moment given to me as a near-27 year old, the dislodging of things in their proper place, facing loss of balance during a period of inward shakiness, the doing of something new--did me a whole lot of good. Being pushed to let go of ground, we find new holds, and that seems like good reason to keep traversing across moodiness.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
bird by bird
Back from a near three weeks in Vietnam, where the first half sped by and made me feel I'd been there forever and where the second half slowed to normality and felt too short, and where both halves exhausted me with experience. I went to Vietnam to translate for a medical mission, a group of plastic surgeons repairing the lips, eyes, and ears of children and a few adults. Afterwards I was able to spend some time with family and family friends.
Coming back I've returned to a disorientation that almost feels familiar at this point, coupled to the overwhelming sense of too many things-to-write that also feels familiar and would be friendly if it weren't for the fact that many times I'd rather it be a stranger. I have a couple months before I go to California for a primary care rotation, and in those couple of months, I'd like to:
-complete patient interviews for my research project
-start sorting through the lit review & begin introduction for my project
-write on translation & pros/cons of medical missions
-work with my co-translator to write about particular aspects of our mission, namely--how much do we know about our patient population when entering this foreign place?
-work on several projects for atrium magazine
-finish loose ends on the public health research project from years ago
-compile information re: family & relation to Vietnam
-plan trip to Bar Harbor with Allison, possible end-of-May trip with M somewhere?
-plan things-to-do in my month in California
Most everything is writing-oriented, and most everything is vague and nebulous; I'm working in the realm of broad goals, not yet to the point of concrete tasks. I've been re-learning chemistry as M bravely marches through his post-bac classes, and it's strangely been a deceiving escape to a contained world of facts and answers. But I think back to when I was contained in that, and how I saw it as a gateway to where I am now.
My advisor recommended a book on writing to me this morning, called Bird by Bird. The title comes from a story about the author's brother, who had a year-long term paper to write on birds. Near the very end, he'd attained encyclopedic information on a large number of birds, and sat unable to write anything about him. His dad told him to take it bird by bird, and somehow the image of birds on a wire turned a rational -ism into something real and felt to me. It's always been hard for me to multi-task, as the significance of each thing is so present to me, but as I chug piece by piece I feel it's not about finishing but about continuing; I remember that I'll never want to run out.
Coming back I've returned to a disorientation that almost feels familiar at this point, coupled to the overwhelming sense of too many things-to-write that also feels familiar and would be friendly if it weren't for the fact that many times I'd rather it be a stranger. I have a couple months before I go to California for a primary care rotation, and in those couple of months, I'd like to:
-complete patient interviews for my research project
-start sorting through the lit review & begin introduction for my project
-write on translation & pros/cons of medical missions
-work with my co-translator to write about particular aspects of our mission, namely--how much do we know about our patient population when entering this foreign place?
-work on several projects for atrium magazine
-finish loose ends on the public health research project from years ago
-compile information re: family & relation to Vietnam
-plan trip to Bar Harbor with Allison, possible end-of-May trip with M somewhere?
-plan things-to-do in my month in California
Most everything is writing-oriented, and most everything is vague and nebulous; I'm working in the realm of broad goals, not yet to the point of concrete tasks. I've been re-learning chemistry as M bravely marches through his post-bac classes, and it's strangely been a deceiving escape to a contained world of facts and answers. But I think back to when I was contained in that, and how I saw it as a gateway to where I am now.
My advisor recommended a book on writing to me this morning, called Bird by Bird. The title comes from a story about the author's brother, who had a year-long term paper to write on birds. Near the very end, he'd attained encyclopedic information on a large number of birds, and sat unable to write anything about him. His dad told him to take it bird by bird, and somehow the image of birds on a wire turned a rational -ism into something real and felt to me. It's always been hard for me to multi-task, as the significance of each thing is so present to me, but as I chug piece by piece I feel it's not about finishing but about continuing; I remember that I'll never want to run out.
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