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.
Showing posts with label connection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label connection. Show all posts
Monday, April 18, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
recording
This morning, I met with my research advisor to go over a transcript of my first interview, which I conducted back in September. My project is qualitative research, speaking with hospice or near-hospice patients about their main concerns during this transitional period that we term end-of-life. My first interview was with a lovely woman from the South, with a subtly sharp sense of humor and generous spirit, who died a couple months after I met her. She's the one who I wrote about previously, who had written a story she'd wanted to publish in her nursing home newspaper. We'd worked on it together, and she died before it could get published; it will be printed in April.
With those strings in mind, I read the transcript with my advisor, who said, isn't it funny to hear her voice coming back? I agreed, and I thought how nice it was that I had the interview on tape, and also how nice it was to see it transcribed on paper. I've been so trained to close-read that when conversation becomes written, I pay attention differently. Words take on much more contextual meaning. And as fresh eyes to the interview, my advisor noticed motifs and word choices and turns of phrases that I hadn't, while speaking to the patient. She also loves telling any story that comes to her mind when something reminds her of it; they're always funny, or touching, or interesting.
Reading the transcript made me excited anew about the project, realizing that there was more than I realized in those conversations. I'd worried that without structure, and with such different people in different situations, it'd be hard to glean anything from the interviews. But even if each transcript turns out to be very different, there are plenty of individual insights into a person's thought process and expression of them, and that's worthwhile.
Much of the reading I've been doing on qualitative research and narrative analysis emphasizes what's lost when conversations are transcribed into script. You lose tone, pauses, faces, and so on; it's true that much nuance is sacrificed. And so I was surprised to see that simultaneously true is that something's gained in this translation. There's something about the act of recording, which inherently must be in a different medium than actual experience, that gives a perspective outside of the experience itself.
*
This afternoon the wife and I continued to labor over our class slideshow, to be shown at our school's annual second-year-show this weekend. Each year the graduating class puts together a slideshow of pictures. Ever since I saw the fourth year class slideshow during my first year here, I've wanted to work on ours.
We downloaded all the pictures sent from our classmates, and because I wanted to give the show a theme and not just be a conglomeration of pictures, we went through them and organized them. Then we laid them out into slides, keeping in mind order and cohesiveness and variety. Then wife and another friend/classmate of ours chose music to correspond to different parts of the slideshow, and had to learn how to splice music to put together a mix. Then we had to sync, sync, sync, and sync again the music to the pictures; there were a lot of transitions in the pictures that we wanted to line up with transitions in the music. Then we embedded a short video to conclude the show.
We probably spent the equivalent of 24 hours over different days in order to piece together this 6-minute slideshow. We had to choose which parts of songs we wanted, decide which pictures to cluster together, find pictures of everyone in our class, learn how to have certain pictures come into view, figure out how to time slides. All of this required learning details, looking up programs, pulling hair, and intermittent/continuous swearing.
It also meant watching the show over 20 times to see whether our piecemeal efforts congealed into solid form. As frustrating as the process could be, watching the product always made me nostalgic. Four years of people and experiences, compressed in two-second segments placed side by side like pages pressed in a book. Each time we would notice new nuances, the way a lyric coincided with an item on the slide or how, small moments of self-pride and love for the images--that won't be noticed by anyone else, but are known to us and after all that work, gives a lot.
It's a representation, but not only a representation--not in the sense that it's something else other than a representation, but that "representation" encompasses more than we give it credit for. It's not a replica of the experiences that give rise to the memories or even the memories themselves, but it's an experience on its own. The process of making this out of things already made, surprises in the way that in how new it is, how much there is still to learn and feel.
There's the personal satisfaction from creating something with your own hands, and also the sense that something's happening to you. This dynamic way of connecting yourself with things outside of you that are also kind of part of you, and of connecting the outside with parts of yourself that are also kind of already part of your environment, is obviously too poignant for me to describe with any sort of clarity. But for all the curses and furrowed brows, it feels damn good (so long as it goes well for the show, too).
*
I'm really grateful for small experiences like these, things no one would pinpoint as reasons to be a medical student. And of course it's more than medicine that led me to having these moments, and of course if I'd done something else I would've been led to others, but I don't think I've been exposed to quite as much compact variety at any other phase in my life. M and I talk a lot about reasons for and against a career in medicine, with the long stressful process being a drawback. But there are also a lot of opportunities to meet things you may never have felt. I'm lucky that Yale is particularly suited to exploring these things, often without much idea of concrete goal. I also feel lucky for being a part of a small community of students for four/five years; for me it's combined aspects of high school and college I liked most (with some of the bad of each thrown in there, too). I don't think I'll ever experience anything like it again, and in remembering and living it, I miss it too. So for that too I want to record.
With those strings in mind, I read the transcript with my advisor, who said, isn't it funny to hear her voice coming back? I agreed, and I thought how nice it was that I had the interview on tape, and also how nice it was to see it transcribed on paper. I've been so trained to close-read that when conversation becomes written, I pay attention differently. Words take on much more contextual meaning. And as fresh eyes to the interview, my advisor noticed motifs and word choices and turns of phrases that I hadn't, while speaking to the patient. She also loves telling any story that comes to her mind when something reminds her of it; they're always funny, or touching, or interesting.
Reading the transcript made me excited anew about the project, realizing that there was more than I realized in those conversations. I'd worried that without structure, and with such different people in different situations, it'd be hard to glean anything from the interviews. But even if each transcript turns out to be very different, there are plenty of individual insights into a person's thought process and expression of them, and that's worthwhile.
Much of the reading I've been doing on qualitative research and narrative analysis emphasizes what's lost when conversations are transcribed into script. You lose tone, pauses, faces, and so on; it's true that much nuance is sacrificed. And so I was surprised to see that simultaneously true is that something's gained in this translation. There's something about the act of recording, which inherently must be in a different medium than actual experience, that gives a perspective outside of the experience itself.
*
This afternoon the wife and I continued to labor over our class slideshow, to be shown at our school's annual second-year-show this weekend. Each year the graduating class puts together a slideshow of pictures. Ever since I saw the fourth year class slideshow during my first year here, I've wanted to work on ours.
We downloaded all the pictures sent from our classmates, and because I wanted to give the show a theme and not just be a conglomeration of pictures, we went through them and organized them. Then we laid them out into slides, keeping in mind order and cohesiveness and variety. Then wife and another friend/classmate of ours chose music to correspond to different parts of the slideshow, and had to learn how to splice music to put together a mix. Then we had to sync, sync, sync, and sync again the music to the pictures; there were a lot of transitions in the pictures that we wanted to line up with transitions in the music. Then we embedded a short video to conclude the show.
We probably spent the equivalent of 24 hours over different days in order to piece together this 6-minute slideshow. We had to choose which parts of songs we wanted, decide which pictures to cluster together, find pictures of everyone in our class, learn how to have certain pictures come into view, figure out how to time slides. All of this required learning details, looking up programs, pulling hair, and intermittent/continuous swearing.
It also meant watching the show over 20 times to see whether our piecemeal efforts congealed into solid form. As frustrating as the process could be, watching the product always made me nostalgic. Four years of people and experiences, compressed in two-second segments placed side by side like pages pressed in a book. Each time we would notice new nuances, the way a lyric coincided with an item on the slide or how, small moments of self-pride and love for the images--that won't be noticed by anyone else, but are known to us and after all that work, gives a lot.
It's a representation, but not only a representation--not in the sense that it's something else other than a representation, but that "representation" encompasses more than we give it credit for. It's not a replica of the experiences that give rise to the memories or even the memories themselves, but it's an experience on its own. The process of making this out of things already made, surprises in the way that in how new it is, how much there is still to learn and feel.
There's the personal satisfaction from creating something with your own hands, and also the sense that something's happening to you. This dynamic way of connecting yourself with things outside of you that are also kind of part of you, and of connecting the outside with parts of yourself that are also kind of already part of your environment, is obviously too poignant for me to describe with any sort of clarity. But for all the curses and furrowed brows, it feels damn good (so long as it goes well for the show, too).
*
I'm really grateful for small experiences like these, things no one would pinpoint as reasons to be a medical student. And of course it's more than medicine that led me to having these moments, and of course if I'd done something else I would've been led to others, but I don't think I've been exposed to quite as much compact variety at any other phase in my life. M and I talk a lot about reasons for and against a career in medicine, with the long stressful process being a drawback. But there are also a lot of opportunities to meet things you may never have felt. I'm lucky that Yale is particularly suited to exploring these things, often without much idea of concrete goal. I also feel lucky for being a part of a small community of students for four/five years; for me it's combined aspects of high school and college I liked most (with some of the bad of each thrown in there, too). I don't think I'll ever experience anything like it again, and in remembering and living it, I miss it too. So for that too I want to record.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
what i'm doing
I've finished my month of subinternship and am in the midst of a month in between rotations. I'll be starting a primary care rotation in October, but in the meantime, when people ask what I'm doing, I usually say, nothing. Which is both true and not true. It's true that I'm not assigned a particular rotation, don't have a routine schedule, and don't have any concrete tasks to accomplish each day or even by the end of the month that anyone is going to check on. And it's true that I've prioritized getting enough sleep, food, exercise, and time with people above all else, which can generally qualify as what's commonly regarded as nothing, as it's not work. But it's not true that I don't have goals to work towards during this time. This block of time was blocked off for research and writing, both endeavors with less concrete goals than this past month.
The last month of being in the hospital was absolutely worth the time and work (of which there was an incredible amount), and I loved it more than I thought I would (in the beginning I was mostly terrified). The structure, mindset, and general atmosphere are very different than my current state, though. Being in the hospital is about treating acute problems, accomplishing tasks: figuring out a diagnosis, ordering the right medicine, filing out the right paperwork, presenting numbers. You work patients up for their problems, you try your best to make them better, and then you discharge them from the hospital. In the gaps and in the broader scheme there are all the other things that make a good doctor, that are more abstract and less straightforward, but the day to day is about getting stuff done.
Which isn't the case with research and writing, both of which I've been working on this past week, without much visible to show for it.
In terms of research, I developed a project that is more about knowing patients than attaining data, which is a difficult thing to 1) do and 2) measure. The general gist is that I want to speak to terminally ill patients who have transitioned from care with goals of cure, to care with goals of quality of life. In the hospital we're good at acute care and quantifiable results, but not as good with transitions that happen over time and aren't easily communicated. I think it's important to know what factors play into patients being ready for this transition, so that we know when and how to talk to them about it, so that care is focused on minimizing suffering, not so much maximizing breathing time.
The first patient I interviewed is dying from lung cancer and had been admitted to the hospice unit of the VA. He was very open to speaking with me but was breathing so heavily, with few gaps between large gasps, that he couldn't talk for longer than a few minutes. When I came back the next day, it was only worse. So nothing came about from those efforts, in terms of my project. But it reminded me of what it's like to see someone actively dying, and of what I want to learn in this process.
My second interview was an actual interview, with a lovely 88 year old woman with lymphoma. She had very developed thoughts about her life and death, and was very comfortable talking about them, so the outcome was completely different from my previous attempt. Another thing I wanted to explore was personal writing, and to have patients journal about their experiences at the end of life, because that can be so different than what someone is able to share in a conversation with a doctor. So at the end of the interview I asked the woman if she'd be interested in participating in something like that. She said that she can't really write due to arthritis, but she had been working awhile ago on a story about her childhood. She brought out several pages of yellow lined paper, and asked if I wanted to read it. We talked about typing it up and having me help her finish it.
So I took the pages home to read and transcribe. Several of them are numbered the same number, such that the order was hard to determine, and as I read through them I realized that's because she had written several different beginnings. Throughout there are some anecdotes told in slightly different ways, so that in typing up the story, I had to maneuver some passages, putting the similar ones side by side, so that she could decide which parts of the same story she wanted to keep, discard, combine. During some particularly difficult parts to decipher, where reading continuously didn't seem to give a sensible narrative, I saw that she'd written in every other line, and in the lines in between added other parts of the story. All of this required some rearranging as I read and typed, and I liked indulging in both the neurotic need to organize and the creative desire to piece things together. The story has nothing to do with my research, but it does have to do with what a lot of people seem to want, a desire to record certain memories, something that resonates a lot with me personally.
I really appreciate the flexibility of this time, that allows things to happen that don't fit a mold of efficiency or list of things to do, where I'm led not by steadfast goals but by natural happenings and my natural responses to them.
And this woman's story comes to me during a time when I've been working on a story about my childhood too. The writing part of this time off is even more vague than the research. I have a list of things I want to write about, which is a little overwhelming, and even when I focus on one, I'm not quite sure what I want to say or how to say it. All I'm sure of is that I feel compelled to write about them, but having the time to do it means being faced with why, and that has resulted in major writer's block. I could spend an entire day on something without much to show for it, and the lack of proportion can be disorienting. But I'm endeared to writing in the way that it's not science and things don't logically lead to other things, and it is amazing to wake up each day with the freedom and privilege to just try, with no expectations, to feel that that's enough, for now.
And so instead of explaining to every person who asks, I say I'm doing nothing. It gets somewhat tiresome, because we're not used to nothing being okay. I'm not traveling anywhere, so it's not like a vacation. The few times I've tried to go more deeply into it, I usually just confuse the person and I'd rather have them think I'm doing nothing of significance instead of misunderstanding something of personal significance. Besides, everyone takes nothing in their own way, and I think we could all use more of it.
The last month of being in the hospital was absolutely worth the time and work (of which there was an incredible amount), and I loved it more than I thought I would (in the beginning I was mostly terrified). The structure, mindset, and general atmosphere are very different than my current state, though. Being in the hospital is about treating acute problems, accomplishing tasks: figuring out a diagnosis, ordering the right medicine, filing out the right paperwork, presenting numbers. You work patients up for their problems, you try your best to make them better, and then you discharge them from the hospital. In the gaps and in the broader scheme there are all the other things that make a good doctor, that are more abstract and less straightforward, but the day to day is about getting stuff done.
Which isn't the case with research and writing, both of which I've been working on this past week, without much visible to show for it.
In terms of research, I developed a project that is more about knowing patients than attaining data, which is a difficult thing to 1) do and 2) measure. The general gist is that I want to speak to terminally ill patients who have transitioned from care with goals of cure, to care with goals of quality of life. In the hospital we're good at acute care and quantifiable results, but not as good with transitions that happen over time and aren't easily communicated. I think it's important to know what factors play into patients being ready for this transition, so that we know when and how to talk to them about it, so that care is focused on minimizing suffering, not so much maximizing breathing time.
The first patient I interviewed is dying from lung cancer and had been admitted to the hospice unit of the VA. He was very open to speaking with me but was breathing so heavily, with few gaps between large gasps, that he couldn't talk for longer than a few minutes. When I came back the next day, it was only worse. So nothing came about from those efforts, in terms of my project. But it reminded me of what it's like to see someone actively dying, and of what I want to learn in this process.
My second interview was an actual interview, with a lovely 88 year old woman with lymphoma. She had very developed thoughts about her life and death, and was very comfortable talking about them, so the outcome was completely different from my previous attempt. Another thing I wanted to explore was personal writing, and to have patients journal about their experiences at the end of life, because that can be so different than what someone is able to share in a conversation with a doctor. So at the end of the interview I asked the woman if she'd be interested in participating in something like that. She said that she can't really write due to arthritis, but she had been working awhile ago on a story about her childhood. She brought out several pages of yellow lined paper, and asked if I wanted to read it. We talked about typing it up and having me help her finish it.
So I took the pages home to read and transcribe. Several of them are numbered the same number, such that the order was hard to determine, and as I read through them I realized that's because she had written several different beginnings. Throughout there are some anecdotes told in slightly different ways, so that in typing up the story, I had to maneuver some passages, putting the similar ones side by side, so that she could decide which parts of the same story she wanted to keep, discard, combine. During some particularly difficult parts to decipher, where reading continuously didn't seem to give a sensible narrative, I saw that she'd written in every other line, and in the lines in between added other parts of the story. All of this required some rearranging as I read and typed, and I liked indulging in both the neurotic need to organize and the creative desire to piece things together. The story has nothing to do with my research, but it does have to do with what a lot of people seem to want, a desire to record certain memories, something that resonates a lot with me personally.
I really appreciate the flexibility of this time, that allows things to happen that don't fit a mold of efficiency or list of things to do, where I'm led not by steadfast goals but by natural happenings and my natural responses to them.
And this woman's story comes to me during a time when I've been working on a story about my childhood too. The writing part of this time off is even more vague than the research. I have a list of things I want to write about, which is a little overwhelming, and even when I focus on one, I'm not quite sure what I want to say or how to say it. All I'm sure of is that I feel compelled to write about them, but having the time to do it means being faced with why, and that has resulted in major writer's block. I could spend an entire day on something without much to show for it, and the lack of proportion can be disorienting. But I'm endeared to writing in the way that it's not science and things don't logically lead to other things, and it is amazing to wake up each day with the freedom and privilege to just try, with no expectations, to feel that that's enough, for now.
And so instead of explaining to every person who asks, I say I'm doing nothing. It gets somewhat tiresome, because we're not used to nothing being okay. I'm not traveling anywhere, so it's not like a vacation. The few times I've tried to go more deeply into it, I usually just confuse the person and I'd rather have them think I'm doing nothing of significance instead of misunderstanding something of personal significance. Besides, everyone takes nothing in their own way, and I think we could all use more of it.
Friday, August 7, 2009
communication
In skimming a description of what babies look like if their moms have had alcohol during pregnancy, I came across the word "philtrum." Wikipedia tells me that the philtrum is the vertical groove between the lips and the nose. It "allows humans to express a much larger range of lip motions than would otherwise be possible, which enhances vocal and nonverbal communication." It's derived from a Greek word that means "to love, to kiss."
One thing I liked about anatomy was learning the words for things, even if it doesn't often enhance your understanding of it. It kind of made my day to learn what the philtrum is, partly for that reason and partly because I've been thinking a lot about communication lately, and had already planned to write about it today.
So much that's important to me comes down to communication. The things I've been in immersed in as of late have been crowding my mind, all for reasons relating to this. With patients, learning how to talk to people from different backgrounds and struggling to bring down to earth those loose commonalities of health, respect, empathy. With friends, feeling such love for the big and small offerings of ourselves that we swap. With myself, reminding every day to be honest. With the outside world, fighting against the perception of people as simple to know, the categories, the dismissal of depth.
There is amazing variety in the kind of interaction healthcare providers have with their patients, and from the small bite of exposure we've had thus far, I've been better able to formulate in words what makes for real communication between people. I've always been awful at verbal articulation, but it's even harder than I thought to carry on a conversation that conveys both information and feeling. This morning my preceptor spoke to a mother in Spanish, who responded to a PA in Portugese, who then translated in English. The woman's toddler howled in tears. As students we have the perspective of naive eyes, and with those I wanted to put down what not to forget when our eyes get tired--
*Really wait for the answers when asking questions. Then listen to the answers, and ask follow-up questions. We pay attention to the factual answers about symptoms, but we fill in a lot of the how-are-you's ourselves without waiting for the response. *Speak half as slowly as you think you should, and remember that even in English we need to translate. I have two years of medical education (maybe half a year if you consider how much I retained) over most patients, and I have so much trouble remembering what was said, what people really have and how they got it and how they'll get better. *Acknowledge everyone. I've been grateful for the kindness that comes with a glance my way, sincere greetings, the shifting of objects to accommodate another's path. I think feeling each other's weight makes us more aware of our own, in a way that lets my hermit self retain its shell but also keeps us grounded in something more expansive. *Write legibly. Seriously, what's the point of writing something no one can read? *Move deliberately, not hurriedly. There's some illusion of efficiency dangling before all of us time-crunched busybees, the one that whispers to us to flip pages loudly, plop folders on the counter, walk briskly out rooms without closing doors, to speed-talk, to write illegibly, because it saves seconds, precious seconds. It might, but I've seen the steady hand say more and last longer.
These things can take a lot of effort (at all stages of the game--initially, once you get going, when you near the end). It's nice to come home at the end of the day or escape to during the weekends, to something I'm used to.
I have an amazing wife (my roommate; I can't actually remember how and when we started calling each other wife). She once said if this is really what marriage is like, it might be nice, and I agree. I'm always happy to see her, even if after we retreat to our rooms like the lone ones we sometimes like to be. She makes comfort Chinese food, including the best hot pot I've ever had. She's never once been mean to me, even when I'm neurotic or annoying or irritable. The few times I've gotten upset, she's sensitive, not defensive. She always tells me I look nice, and after a year of living together she's still considerate about washing the dishes. She listens to me struggle through being complicated, and what I see in me as the best and worst, she values. When I break things (often), she fixes them. She glued together one of my tea cups that I shattered. When one of the drawers detached from my desk, leaving a gaping hole, and the center slowly sunk from the weight of my books, she brought home another desk that looked almost exactly the same. When I complained about morning light waking me up and I was too lazy to get a face mask, she got me one. When I tell her an embarrassing story, she tells me one back. I can't describe how it works with a list of what to do and what not to do, but I know that a whole lot flows in the space between us, and each day we're at home I'm thankful for that.
Last weekend my college friend with the same name as wife came to visit New Haven, then I visited her in Cambridge. We don't see or talk to each other very frequently, but we caught up quickly at first and then slowly. She showed me the new stores in Harvard Square that replaced those familiar to me, and I had that sensation of things stretching and rearranging my skin. It didn't hurt like I thought it might. Instead it felt the way it does to see old friends. There's new growth to recognize, and old to unearth. J. has been through a lot and through it, became and remains one of the kindest and most genuine people I know. In reacquainting ourselves with each other's presence, I so admired the capacity to see and emulate good after having experienced not so good, a value I've only been able to articulate over the past few years. She's mindful of what's been given to her; yet she gives not out of obligation to give back but out of her nature. This generosity makes it easy to share, and in traipsing around our respective corners, things were exchanged through the pores and cracks--the confusion of the sliding doors at the subways where there used to be turnstiles, the way sunlight infuses the solid marble of the windowless Beinecke rare books library, the fatigue after walks in summer heat, the browsing for cheap clothes and purchase of matching bright checkered patterns, the fear of dodgy characters in the South End, the drives.
I know these are rare and to be kept close, because every so often I get mad at the tendency of the masses to paint over the cracks, the way I cover the sunken middle of a cake with extra frosting. Of the things that really bother me, among the top is people boxing other people up. I think of character as the full range of what a person can and will do and feel, and I've found that for most, this stretches quite wide. On a bigger scale, I dislike speculation about people from afar, the way classmates and colleagues are branded as such and such, concrete images built from smoke. Brushing aside mass perception--frequently misperception--can be tough in practice; I hate being misunderstood, and I hate that people settle for lesser explanations because the true one is complicated. So it's part personal, and it's part indignation at the substitution of gray for black and white. So I'm still learning to ignore all this, and rely on what I know, and in the end I'm thankful to be pushed to self-reliance.
On a smaller scale, but often a more potentially harmful one, is the boxes we create from actually really knowing someone. I do it too. I appreciate the positive qualities people attribute to me, but those closest to me have learned that nothing is defining, or I still remind them because I know it's hard to let go of what we've built up. Some who saw me as rational and together recognized a bit late how emotional and lost I can get with relationships. I don't blame them; I was stunned by it too at first, but once you step beyond borders, you need to make room. I do fight and I am mean, quite possibly meaner in those arguments than people you naturally assume are confrontational. This applies to more trivial things too, that don't directly bother me but indirectly do by nature of pigeonholing people. I do like some rap music, I've kissed boys recently met (for relativity's sake--two), I've stolen, I'm even more neurotic than you already know, I'm envious of others' talents, I actually do like some sports but have gotten myself stuck long ago in a self-conscious image of conventional girl and never developed the skills to now get over it, yes I do like to keep things but I throw certain things away. I like knowing these for myself because they've helped me give other people leeway, to know them more deeply, or to at least be more open to whatever they offer. This isn't to say that our understandings of each other are flimsy; they're obviously shaped from real things. I'd hope that some baseline qualities remain underneath it all, and I'm guilty of expecting people to know me well enough to predict or assume my actions or feelings, which might seem to go against this idea of malleability. It's more that things can be rearranged, and sometimes they can be torn down; you don't need to assume that they have, but you shouldn't assume they haven't.
I mentioned this to a high school friend, someone I've mentioned in my blog before as the one person in my life who is completely open to who I am, who is never surprised by anything I say or do because to her I'm capable of being anything. She wrote back something that I imagine she typed freely: "i can't even begin to tell you how much i feel i've been pigeonholed about issues and situations, over and over again, like ppl can't accept contradictions and opposites, and such a simple thing as change. their limitations end up limiting me, and i start being convinced of their perceptions, but i'm learning to be strong.. i understand ppl can be jaded. but i'm jaded too. i still think everyone is a mystery. fun mysteries."
The past few years have me seeing those fine rifts between nose and lip, that are attractive in the manner of the hollow that ends the neck, the slight indent that lends delicacy and nuance. I think of those babies whose moms consumed alcohol, whose philtrums are flattened as a result. Knowing what it is to be dulled, I trace these lines again from time to time.
One thing I liked about anatomy was learning the words for things, even if it doesn't often enhance your understanding of it. It kind of made my day to learn what the philtrum is, partly for that reason and partly because I've been thinking a lot about communication lately, and had already planned to write about it today.
So much that's important to me comes down to communication. The things I've been in immersed in as of late have been crowding my mind, all for reasons relating to this. With patients, learning how to talk to people from different backgrounds and struggling to bring down to earth those loose commonalities of health, respect, empathy. With friends, feeling such love for the big and small offerings of ourselves that we swap. With myself, reminding every day to be honest. With the outside world, fighting against the perception of people as simple to know, the categories, the dismissal of depth.
There is amazing variety in the kind of interaction healthcare providers have with their patients, and from the small bite of exposure we've had thus far, I've been better able to formulate in words what makes for real communication between people. I've always been awful at verbal articulation, but it's even harder than I thought to carry on a conversation that conveys both information and feeling. This morning my preceptor spoke to a mother in Spanish, who responded to a PA in Portugese, who then translated in English. The woman's toddler howled in tears. As students we have the perspective of naive eyes, and with those I wanted to put down what not to forget when our eyes get tired--
*Really wait for the answers when asking questions. Then listen to the answers, and ask follow-up questions. We pay attention to the factual answers about symptoms, but we fill in a lot of the how-are-you's ourselves without waiting for the response. *Speak half as slowly as you think you should, and remember that even in English we need to translate. I have two years of medical education (maybe half a year if you consider how much I retained) over most patients, and I have so much trouble remembering what was said, what people really have and how they got it and how they'll get better. *Acknowledge everyone. I've been grateful for the kindness that comes with a glance my way, sincere greetings, the shifting of objects to accommodate another's path. I think feeling each other's weight makes us more aware of our own, in a way that lets my hermit self retain its shell but also keeps us grounded in something more expansive. *Write legibly. Seriously, what's the point of writing something no one can read? *Move deliberately, not hurriedly. There's some illusion of efficiency dangling before all of us time-crunched busybees, the one that whispers to us to flip pages loudly, plop folders on the counter, walk briskly out rooms without closing doors, to speed-talk, to write illegibly, because it saves seconds, precious seconds. It might, but I've seen the steady hand say more and last longer.
These things can take a lot of effort (at all stages of the game--initially, once you get going, when you near the end). It's nice to come home at the end of the day or escape to during the weekends, to something I'm used to.
I have an amazing wife (my roommate; I can't actually remember how and when we started calling each other wife). She once said if this is really what marriage is like, it might be nice, and I agree. I'm always happy to see her, even if after we retreat to our rooms like the lone ones we sometimes like to be. She makes comfort Chinese food, including the best hot pot I've ever had. She's never once been mean to me, even when I'm neurotic or annoying or irritable. The few times I've gotten upset, she's sensitive, not defensive. She always tells me I look nice, and after a year of living together she's still considerate about washing the dishes. She listens to me struggle through being complicated, and what I see in me as the best and worst, she values. When I break things (often), she fixes them. She glued together one of my tea cups that I shattered. When one of the drawers detached from my desk, leaving a gaping hole, and the center slowly sunk from the weight of my books, she brought home another desk that looked almost exactly the same. When I complained about morning light waking me up and I was too lazy to get a face mask, she got me one. When I tell her an embarrassing story, she tells me one back. I can't describe how it works with a list of what to do and what not to do, but I know that a whole lot flows in the space between us, and each day we're at home I'm thankful for that.
Last weekend my college friend with the same name as wife came to visit New Haven, then I visited her in Cambridge. We don't see or talk to each other very frequently, but we caught up quickly at first and then slowly. She showed me the new stores in Harvard Square that replaced those familiar to me, and I had that sensation of things stretching and rearranging my skin. It didn't hurt like I thought it might. Instead it felt the way it does to see old friends. There's new growth to recognize, and old to unearth. J. has been through a lot and through it, became and remains one of the kindest and most genuine people I know. In reacquainting ourselves with each other's presence, I so admired the capacity to see and emulate good after having experienced not so good, a value I've only been able to articulate over the past few years. She's mindful of what's been given to her; yet she gives not out of obligation to give back but out of her nature. This generosity makes it easy to share, and in traipsing around our respective corners, things were exchanged through the pores and cracks--the confusion of the sliding doors at the subways where there used to be turnstiles, the way sunlight infuses the solid marble of the windowless Beinecke rare books library, the fatigue after walks in summer heat, the browsing for cheap clothes and purchase of matching bright checkered patterns, the fear of dodgy characters in the South End, the drives.
I know these are rare and to be kept close, because every so often I get mad at the tendency of the masses to paint over the cracks, the way I cover the sunken middle of a cake with extra frosting. Of the things that really bother me, among the top is people boxing other people up. I think of character as the full range of what a person can and will do and feel, and I've found that for most, this stretches quite wide. On a bigger scale, I dislike speculation about people from afar, the way classmates and colleagues are branded as such and such, concrete images built from smoke. Brushing aside mass perception--frequently misperception--can be tough in practice; I hate being misunderstood, and I hate that people settle for lesser explanations because the true one is complicated. So it's part personal, and it's part indignation at the substitution of gray for black and white. So I'm still learning to ignore all this, and rely on what I know, and in the end I'm thankful to be pushed to self-reliance.
On a smaller scale, but often a more potentially harmful one, is the boxes we create from actually really knowing someone. I do it too. I appreciate the positive qualities people attribute to me, but those closest to me have learned that nothing is defining, or I still remind them because I know it's hard to let go of what we've built up. Some who saw me as rational and together recognized a bit late how emotional and lost I can get with relationships. I don't blame them; I was stunned by it too at first, but once you step beyond borders, you need to make room. I do fight and I am mean, quite possibly meaner in those arguments than people you naturally assume are confrontational. This applies to more trivial things too, that don't directly bother me but indirectly do by nature of pigeonholing people. I do like some rap music, I've kissed boys recently met (for relativity's sake--two), I've stolen, I'm even more neurotic than you already know, I'm envious of others' talents, I actually do like some sports but have gotten myself stuck long ago in a self-conscious image of conventional girl and never developed the skills to now get over it, yes I do like to keep things but I throw certain things away. I like knowing these for myself because they've helped me give other people leeway, to know them more deeply, or to at least be more open to whatever they offer. This isn't to say that our understandings of each other are flimsy; they're obviously shaped from real things. I'd hope that some baseline qualities remain underneath it all, and I'm guilty of expecting people to know me well enough to predict or assume my actions or feelings, which might seem to go against this idea of malleability. It's more that things can be rearranged, and sometimes they can be torn down; you don't need to assume that they have, but you shouldn't assume they haven't.
I mentioned this to a high school friend, someone I've mentioned in my blog before as the one person in my life who is completely open to who I am, who is never surprised by anything I say or do because to her I'm capable of being anything. She wrote back something that I imagine she typed freely: "i can't even begin to tell you how much i feel i've been pigeonholed about issues and situations, over and over again, like ppl can't accept contradictions and opposites, and such a simple thing as change. their limitations end up limiting me, and i start being convinced of their perceptions, but i'm learning to be strong.. i understand ppl can be jaded. but i'm jaded too. i still think everyone is a mystery. fun mysteries."
The past few years have me seeing those fine rifts between nose and lip, that are attractive in the manner of the hollow that ends the neck, the slight indent that lends delicacy and nuance. I think of those babies whose moms consumed alcohol, whose philtrums are flattened as a result. Knowing what it is to be dulled, I trace these lines again from time to time.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
moles
By way of scrutiny from my mother and ex-boyfriend, I learned that my face contains numerous small flat black moles. I say flat to qualify moles because they aren't raised as I thought defined moles, but I can't think of what else to call them. My mom once called the two that are in proximity, in a sort of diagonal that follows their course between cheek and chin, twins. The fact of her saying this is fuzzy, but has sharpened from my thinking it.
Murakami has a thing for ears, and as I recently discovered, moles. I read a story of his the other day that made me smile hard and aloud: "There was a single mole, he noticed, on her right earlobe. His older sister had a mole about the same size, in the same spot. When he was little, he used to playfully rub his sister's mole when she was asleep, trying to rub it off."
The story, called Chance Traveler, begins by saying that he is narrating this story in his own voice. He wants to relate some strange events that have happened to him, that never get much response when he tells them in conversation. Even when written, people don't believe him because they assume that as a novelist, all his stories must be just stories. He'd like to try again, after telling us these strange events are real, and says he'll "stick to the trifling, insignificant ones."
This is the first one:
*
"From 1993 to 1995 I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was a sort of writer-in-residence at a college, and was working on a novel entitled The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. In Harvard Square there was a jazz club called the Regattabar Jazz Club where they had lots of live performances. It was a comfortable, relaxed, cozy place. Famous jazz musicians played there, and the cover charge was reasonable.
One evening the pianist Tommy Flanagan appeared with his trio. My wife had something else to do so I went by myself. Tommy Flanagan is one of my favorite jazz pianists. He usually appears as an accompanist; his performances are invariably warm and deep, and marvelously steady. His solos are fantastic. Full of anticipation, then, I sat down at a table near a stage and enjoyed a glass of California Merlot. To tell the truth, though, his performance was a bit of a letdown. Maybe he wasn't feeling well. Or else it was still too early for him to get in the swing of things. His performance wasn't bad, it was just missing that extra element that sends us flying into another world. It lacked that special magical glow, I guess you could say. Tommy Flanagan's better than this, I thought as I listened--just wait till he gets up to speed.
But time didn't improve things. As their set was drawing to a close I started to get almost panicky, hoping that it wouldn't end like this. I wanted something to remember his performance by. If things ended like this, all I'd take home would be lukewarm memories. Or maybe no memories at all. And I may never have a chance to see Tommy Flanagan play live again. (In fact I never did). Suddenly a thought struck me: what if I were given a chance to request two songs by him right now--which ones would I choose? I mulled it over for awhile before picking 'Barbados' and 'Star-Crossed Lovers.'
The first piece is by Charlie Parker, the second a Duke Ellington tune. I add this for people who aren't into jazz, but neither one is very popular, or performed much. You might occasionally hear 'Barbados,' though it's one of the less flashy numbers Charlie Parker wrote, and I bet most people have never heard 'Star-Crossed Lovers' even once. My point being, these weren't typical choices.
I had my reasons, of course, for choosing these unlikely pieces for my fantasy requests--namely that Tommy Flanagan had made memorable recordings of both. 'Barbados' appeared on the 1957 album Dial JJ 5 when he was a pianist with the J.J. Johnson Quintet, while he recorded 'Star-Crossed Lovers' on the 1968 album Encounter! with Pepper Adams and Zoot Sims. Over his long career Tommy Flanagan has played and recorded countless pieces as a sideman in various groups, but it was the crisp, smart solos, short though they were, in those two particular pieces that I've always loved. That's why I was thinking if only he would play those two numbers right now it'd be perfect. I was watching him closely, picturing him coming over to my table and asking, 'Hey, I've had my eye on you. Do you have any requests? Why don't you give me the titles of two numbers you'd like me to play?' Knowing all the time, of course, that the chances of that happening were nil.
And then, without a word, and without so much as a glance in my direction, Tommy Flanagan launched into the last two numbers of his set--the very ones I'd been thinking of. He started off with the ballad 'Star-Crossed Lovers,' then went into an up-tempo version of 'Barbados.' I sat there, wineglass in hand, speechless. Jazz fans will understand that the chance of his picking these two pieces from the millions of jazz numbers out there was astronomical. And also--and this is the main point here--his performances of both numbers were amazing."
*
I typed that all out, because I like to forgo cut and paste in favor of re-typing writings (lyrics, quotes, so on) and because in a Murakami story I read a couple months ago he wrote:
"Just below her shoulder blades were two small moles, lined up like a pair of twins."
Murakami has a thing for ears, and as I recently discovered, moles. I read a story of his the other day that made me smile hard and aloud: "There was a single mole, he noticed, on her right earlobe. His older sister had a mole about the same size, in the same spot. When he was little, he used to playfully rub his sister's mole when she was asleep, trying to rub it off."
The story, called Chance Traveler, begins by saying that he is narrating this story in his own voice. He wants to relate some strange events that have happened to him, that never get much response when he tells them in conversation. Even when written, people don't believe him because they assume that as a novelist, all his stories must be just stories. He'd like to try again, after telling us these strange events are real, and says he'll "stick to the trifling, insignificant ones."
This is the first one:
*
"From 1993 to 1995 I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was a sort of writer-in-residence at a college, and was working on a novel entitled The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. In Harvard Square there was a jazz club called the Regattabar Jazz Club where they had lots of live performances. It was a comfortable, relaxed, cozy place. Famous jazz musicians played there, and the cover charge was reasonable.
One evening the pianist Tommy Flanagan appeared with his trio. My wife had something else to do so I went by myself. Tommy Flanagan is one of my favorite jazz pianists. He usually appears as an accompanist; his performances are invariably warm and deep, and marvelously steady. His solos are fantastic. Full of anticipation, then, I sat down at a table near a stage and enjoyed a glass of California Merlot. To tell the truth, though, his performance was a bit of a letdown. Maybe he wasn't feeling well. Or else it was still too early for him to get in the swing of things. His performance wasn't bad, it was just missing that extra element that sends us flying into another world. It lacked that special magical glow, I guess you could say. Tommy Flanagan's better than this, I thought as I listened--just wait till he gets up to speed.
But time didn't improve things. As their set was drawing to a close I started to get almost panicky, hoping that it wouldn't end like this. I wanted something to remember his performance by. If things ended like this, all I'd take home would be lukewarm memories. Or maybe no memories at all. And I may never have a chance to see Tommy Flanagan play live again. (In fact I never did). Suddenly a thought struck me: what if I were given a chance to request two songs by him right now--which ones would I choose? I mulled it over for awhile before picking 'Barbados' and 'Star-Crossed Lovers.'
The first piece is by Charlie Parker, the second a Duke Ellington tune. I add this for people who aren't into jazz, but neither one is very popular, or performed much. You might occasionally hear 'Barbados,' though it's one of the less flashy numbers Charlie Parker wrote, and I bet most people have never heard 'Star-Crossed Lovers' even once. My point being, these weren't typical choices.
I had my reasons, of course, for choosing these unlikely pieces for my fantasy requests--namely that Tommy Flanagan had made memorable recordings of both. 'Barbados' appeared on the 1957 album Dial JJ 5 when he was a pianist with the J.J. Johnson Quintet, while he recorded 'Star-Crossed Lovers' on the 1968 album Encounter! with Pepper Adams and Zoot Sims. Over his long career Tommy Flanagan has played and recorded countless pieces as a sideman in various groups, but it was the crisp, smart solos, short though they were, in those two particular pieces that I've always loved. That's why I was thinking if only he would play those two numbers right now it'd be perfect. I was watching him closely, picturing him coming over to my table and asking, 'Hey, I've had my eye on you. Do you have any requests? Why don't you give me the titles of two numbers you'd like me to play?' Knowing all the time, of course, that the chances of that happening were nil.
And then, without a word, and without so much as a glance in my direction, Tommy Flanagan launched into the last two numbers of his set--the very ones I'd been thinking of. He started off with the ballad 'Star-Crossed Lovers,' then went into an up-tempo version of 'Barbados.' I sat there, wineglass in hand, speechless. Jazz fans will understand that the chance of his picking these two pieces from the millions of jazz numbers out there was astronomical. And also--and this is the main point here--his performances of both numbers were amazing."
*
I typed that all out, because I like to forgo cut and paste in favor of re-typing writings (lyrics, quotes, so on) and because in a Murakami story I read a couple months ago he wrote:
"Just below her shoulder blades were two small moles, lined up like a pair of twins."
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
maggie
This semester I pathetically finished one novel (Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler), only because I read about a third of it while traveling home for break (which, with train ride + subway ride + airtrain + plane flight, all in all takes a crazy 12 hours). Next semester it’ll be short stories, because losing the flow of a book by stealing a few pages here and there when I’m not intellectually or physically or emotionally drained (rarely) pretty much sucks the life out of it. When references were made to little things that came before, I had to neurotically search for the first mention of them because I couldn’t remember. Despite this, the character of Maggie emerged with palpable tenderness, and is now one I hold close. While the story was engaging enough and its feelings nuanced, and there were moments of the kind of writing that surprises with descriptions unusual and perfectly accurate (do you know what I mean? When something you’ve felt is encapsulated exactly right, in a way you’ve never thought before, and you wonder how it can be so far from your vocabulary and thought, and yet so right)…most of that wasn’t too special for me. For me it was Maggie.
Even though she’s a married woman in her late forties, with two grown children and a whole life to look back on and contemplate, in many ways she still lives by a philosophy cultivated before experience set in. To that quality in her I’m attached, if only because I foresee the same for myself, for better or worse. These are the things I love in Maggie, not necessarily because they are good things but because they give shape to strange things I’ve felt, whose tangibility I sometimes question. And more than a relation to myself, the value lies in knowing that they exist, on their own, elsewhere.
disheveled/clumsy: Maggie digs through her purse trying to find the same things that have inhabited it for years, because she’s never formed a system where each thing has its place. I often tell myself that I should just designate a certain coat pocket for my keys, phone, etc., so that I always know where to look, but when it comes down to the moment I reach for whatever feels convenient, which isn’t consistent. Maggie’s husband, Ira, and children sometimes perceive her as bumbling, silly in a way: “She was always making clumsy, impetuous rushes toward nowhere in particular—side trips, random detours.” I’m a little more straightlaced than that, but I can relate to having a messy demeanor, to being not-put-together. And while Ira sees it as not taking life seriously enough, I think it’s that Maggie takes so much to heart, it’s hard to find focus.
not too good at cultivating:Along the same lines, Maggie doesn’t have a knack for taking care of things, like her homegrown tomatoes that are always “bulbous” despite years of trying different kinds. She senses that people attribute the failure to Maggie herself, with her “knobby, fumbling way.” I’m awful at taking care of plants and my possessions in general (much to the chagrin of B. who helps me with each of my computer problems and N. who hates the torn insides of my peacoat), and I worry sometimes about whether this will translate to other things that require care, whether it does have to do with something internal.
she takes care of people: I think Maggie’s scared of the same thing because she tries really hard to take care of people. Instead of going to college, she continues her high school job as an aide in a nursing home, where concrete tasks make her feel capable and she knows when to laugh or nod during conversations. She tries to take care of those around her even when it’s not up to her or outside of her capacity…it’s a significant problem, leading to misunderstandings and misplaced feelings. I think it’s natural to try to impact others’ happiness in part because it affects our own, but Maggie can’t let go of the interconnections.
guilt causes overthinking, and vice versa: She feels bad about things, all the time. When placing a long distance call from another person’s home she considers leaving them some change. After playing a prank on a bad driver, she’s worried he’s been overly affected and makes her husband go back and check on him. Allison once said that she thinks guilt is a good thing, a sign of consideration for others. I think this has truth but I think, for me, guilt can be a kind of copout, a way of trying to keep your good after you’ve done something bad. Maggie, I think, is better than that; her regrets don’t stem from initial selfishness but instead from good intentions gone wrong, or from human responses. Even when she consciously sets out to right her ways, she’s horrible at not repeating her mistakes, because her characteristics are so ingrained, and man do I know something about that.
emotionally neurotic and impulsive: Maggie debates every emotional maneuver, and then in the moment her instincts take over, and they’re not always good ones. An image or thought can take hold of her so completely that she will feel that someone she doesn’t actually know is the most wonderful person she’s ever known, and it will be true because she feels it so.
easily affected: She forms incomprehensibly strong, oft impulsive connections to people removed from her, and she’s easily moved. In a hospital waiting room she encounters an elderly couple and across from them a burly man in coveralls. A nurse is asking the near deaf elderly man for a urine sample, and has to shout, “Pee in this cup!” The elderly woman is visibly embarrassed, explaining how deaf her husband has become, and Maggie doesn’t know what to say. The burly man shifts his weight and comments on how funny it is, he can pick up the nurse’s voice, but really, can’t make out her words at all. At this Maggie tears up. He asks her if she’s okay: “She couldn’t tell him it was his kindness that had undone her—such delicacy, in such an unlikely-looking person.”
acutely aware of presence and loss: On the loss of her cat: “His absence had struck her so intensely that it had amounted to a presence….But here was something even stupider: A month or so later, when cold weather set in, Maggie switched off the basement dehumidifier as she did every year and even that absence had struck her. She had mourned in the most personal way the silencing of the steady, faithful whir that used to thrum the floorboards.”
can’t give up even when it could be the right thing to do: She can’t give up on people she loves, to a fault, because she relies on what she knows they feel, and knows that they feel genuinely and kindly; rather than their actions and words, which are often not so kind. Her husband says that she believes the people she loves are better than they are. I’ve been told I do this too, but I don’t think it’s such an altruistic thing. It stems from the fact that I know my own faults but I like to think I’m still passably okay, and to believe this requires understanding others’ faults. At one point Maggie wonders whether she’s been a bad mother, too forgiving of her children because she remembers so strongly what it’s like to be a child. I really believe in understanding other people’s context, to know why flaws exist and persist, probably because I can get so complicated that I need that sort of understanding from other people. Sometimes, though, in allowing so much room for complexity, you miss the basics that are as much a part of people as the layers.
she believes in romance: Not just the pretty things in the right place romance, but the idea that through all the crap and non-ideals, people will love each other enough to make it work and be consciously happy. Even when she doubts this for herself she thinks she’s just missed out and it’s still to be had in this world. Sometimes you might get the sense that Maggie’s trying to find refuge, making it easier on herself by always trying and not accepting the hurtful truth. But who’s to say what’s reality, or that her refuge is any easier than the accepted reality (sometimes it’s damn harder)? In my own experience there’s been no shortage of crap and non-ideals but I’m grateful for the incredible amount of good that comes along in spite of and because of. My past connections, few and not straightforward but valuable and full, have played part in shaping what I can and should give, and what I seek, want, need. And it’s funny, this makes me think both how hard it will be find, and how amazing it will be to someday have.
**
I don’t know if things really work out for Maggie, and whether this is because of all the above. I get the sense that as you’re reading, you might get annoyed with Maggie’s meddling and desire to right things that aren’t meant to be controlled. You might want to tell her that sometimes beauty is past. You might want to stop her from perpetuating her poorly implemented good intentions, to dread the impending disasters that end in large disappointment for her and those she loves. But that doesn’t work, because it’s not about how fixing flaws would make life easier to accept, or to live. It’s about facing the difficult because you’re trying to preserve value, even if it’s stupid and mistaken and fails. I don’t know if it’s right, but for Maggie it’s true.
Even though she’s a married woman in her late forties, with two grown children and a whole life to look back on and contemplate, in many ways she still lives by a philosophy cultivated before experience set in. To that quality in her I’m attached, if only because I foresee the same for myself, for better or worse. These are the things I love in Maggie, not necessarily because they are good things but because they give shape to strange things I’ve felt, whose tangibility I sometimes question. And more than a relation to myself, the value lies in knowing that they exist, on their own, elsewhere.
disheveled/clumsy: Maggie digs through her purse trying to find the same things that have inhabited it for years, because she’s never formed a system where each thing has its place. I often tell myself that I should just designate a certain coat pocket for my keys, phone, etc., so that I always know where to look, but when it comes down to the moment I reach for whatever feels convenient, which isn’t consistent. Maggie’s husband, Ira, and children sometimes perceive her as bumbling, silly in a way: “She was always making clumsy, impetuous rushes toward nowhere in particular—side trips, random detours.” I’m a little more straightlaced than that, but I can relate to having a messy demeanor, to being not-put-together. And while Ira sees it as not taking life seriously enough, I think it’s that Maggie takes so much to heart, it’s hard to find focus.
not too good at cultivating:Along the same lines, Maggie doesn’t have a knack for taking care of things, like her homegrown tomatoes that are always “bulbous” despite years of trying different kinds. She senses that people attribute the failure to Maggie herself, with her “knobby, fumbling way.” I’m awful at taking care of plants and my possessions in general (much to the chagrin of B. who helps me with each of my computer problems and N. who hates the torn insides of my peacoat), and I worry sometimes about whether this will translate to other things that require care, whether it does have to do with something internal.
she takes care of people: I think Maggie’s scared of the same thing because she tries really hard to take care of people. Instead of going to college, she continues her high school job as an aide in a nursing home, where concrete tasks make her feel capable and she knows when to laugh or nod during conversations. She tries to take care of those around her even when it’s not up to her or outside of her capacity…it’s a significant problem, leading to misunderstandings and misplaced feelings. I think it’s natural to try to impact others’ happiness in part because it affects our own, but Maggie can’t let go of the interconnections.
guilt causes overthinking, and vice versa: She feels bad about things, all the time. When placing a long distance call from another person’s home she considers leaving them some change. After playing a prank on a bad driver, she’s worried he’s been overly affected and makes her husband go back and check on him. Allison once said that she thinks guilt is a good thing, a sign of consideration for others. I think this has truth but I think, for me, guilt can be a kind of copout, a way of trying to keep your good after you’ve done something bad. Maggie, I think, is better than that; her regrets don’t stem from initial selfishness but instead from good intentions gone wrong, or from human responses. Even when she consciously sets out to right her ways, she’s horrible at not repeating her mistakes, because her characteristics are so ingrained, and man do I know something about that.
emotionally neurotic and impulsive: Maggie debates every emotional maneuver, and then in the moment her instincts take over, and they’re not always good ones. An image or thought can take hold of her so completely that she will feel that someone she doesn’t actually know is the most wonderful person she’s ever known, and it will be true because she feels it so.
easily affected: She forms incomprehensibly strong, oft impulsive connections to people removed from her, and she’s easily moved. In a hospital waiting room she encounters an elderly couple and across from them a burly man in coveralls. A nurse is asking the near deaf elderly man for a urine sample, and has to shout, “Pee in this cup!” The elderly woman is visibly embarrassed, explaining how deaf her husband has become, and Maggie doesn’t know what to say. The burly man shifts his weight and comments on how funny it is, he can pick up the nurse’s voice, but really, can’t make out her words at all. At this Maggie tears up. He asks her if she’s okay: “She couldn’t tell him it was his kindness that had undone her—such delicacy, in such an unlikely-looking person.”
acutely aware of presence and loss: On the loss of her cat: “His absence had struck her so intensely that it had amounted to a presence….But here was something even stupider: A month or so later, when cold weather set in, Maggie switched off the basement dehumidifier as she did every year and even that absence had struck her. She had mourned in the most personal way the silencing of the steady, faithful whir that used to thrum the floorboards.”
can’t give up even when it could be the right thing to do: She can’t give up on people she loves, to a fault, because she relies on what she knows they feel, and knows that they feel genuinely and kindly; rather than their actions and words, which are often not so kind. Her husband says that she believes the people she loves are better than they are. I’ve been told I do this too, but I don’t think it’s such an altruistic thing. It stems from the fact that I know my own faults but I like to think I’m still passably okay, and to believe this requires understanding others’ faults. At one point Maggie wonders whether she’s been a bad mother, too forgiving of her children because she remembers so strongly what it’s like to be a child. I really believe in understanding other people’s context, to know why flaws exist and persist, probably because I can get so complicated that I need that sort of understanding from other people. Sometimes, though, in allowing so much room for complexity, you miss the basics that are as much a part of people as the layers.
she believes in romance: Not just the pretty things in the right place romance, but the idea that through all the crap and non-ideals, people will love each other enough to make it work and be consciously happy. Even when she doubts this for herself she thinks she’s just missed out and it’s still to be had in this world. Sometimes you might get the sense that Maggie’s trying to find refuge, making it easier on herself by always trying and not accepting the hurtful truth. But who’s to say what’s reality, or that her refuge is any easier than the accepted reality (sometimes it’s damn harder)? In my own experience there’s been no shortage of crap and non-ideals but I’m grateful for the incredible amount of good that comes along in spite of and because of. My past connections, few and not straightforward but valuable and full, have played part in shaping what I can and should give, and what I seek, want, need. And it’s funny, this makes me think both how hard it will be find, and how amazing it will be to someday have.
**
I don’t know if things really work out for Maggie, and whether this is because of all the above. I get the sense that as you’re reading, you might get annoyed with Maggie’s meddling and desire to right things that aren’t meant to be controlled. You might want to tell her that sometimes beauty is past. You might want to stop her from perpetuating her poorly implemented good intentions, to dread the impending disasters that end in large disappointment for her and those she loves. But that doesn’t work, because it’s not about how fixing flaws would make life easier to accept, or to live. It’s about facing the difficult because you’re trying to preserve value, even if it’s stupid and mistaken and fails. I don’t know if it’s right, but for Maggie it’s true.
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