A poet, a hunger, and life goes on...

 Went to see Brian Turner, Poet Laureate of New Zealand, tonight at the OSU library.  It is so good to live in a college town.  It was interesting, and sort of sad, to observe that 3/4s of the audience was grey-headed.  Poor old poetry-- competing with the World Series, and CSI, and Friday night bars.  But what a treat for those grey haired or getting there that did show up.  Turner was described in the PR as funny and unsentimental, a helpful reassurance for poetically worried sorts.  He writes about rugby, nature and our place in it, and the Human Condition.  He's delightful: unassuming, straightforward, and of course articulate in a very Kiwi mumble-y way.  Can't think of a better way to spend a Friday night.

I'm a would-be poet.  I ran a web group of poetry games, and used to have a weird hobby of making strangers write poetry for me.  I still have notebooks full of poetry by waitresses, gamblers, shoe-shiners, Welsh firemen.  I love the written word.  I don't have a lot of truck with flowery prose, but that grab-you-by-the-gut stuff--  oh, the beauty of economy in language!  Turner is good at that.  My favorites of the night were his short pieces, in which a short story was taking place in three sentences.

dreaming of food

I haven't written much poetry in the last few years.  Not sure why, but I tell people my muse done fled. Of course, after listening to a poet, I get inspired.  Maybe that muse will peek back in.   An audience member asked Turner how he knew if any of his poetry was any good.  I liked his answer: "I don't.  But I can't help writing it" (or something to that effect).  I think creativity is like that.  We put out, and we hope it resonates with someone, but even if it doesn't, it feels good to our soul.

felted daemon, 10/11

I got a call tonight from an old friend, one of my poetry conspirators back in the day.  He asked how I was, and I said "Not so bad considering".   He didn't know exactly what was under consideration. I forgot we hadn't talked in months, since before smell fled me and then Bad Smell moved in.  I told him the long story: how everything I could smell, after four months of no smell, smelled rotten.  Like nearly everyone I've told this story to he'd never heard of anosmia or parosmia.  I've acquired a whole new vocabulary this season. Stephen knows a few things about me, and he knows I loved food and olfaction.  He expressed deep sorrow for my loss, and I appreciated it, since this particular one doesn't strike most people as particularly interesting.  But I get reminded of it often-- like, for instance, tonight.  You can't listen to much poetry without hearing something about smell, and its triggers of memory and wonder. Stephen asked if I'd noticed any compensation in my senses since smell fled.  I remarked sarcastically that I can now bend spoons with my mind.  Stephen reminded me that I probably won't become a super-hero, and wondered if any of the other four senses were brighter.  I said I had been hoping that I would at least get a heightened visual acuity, but so far, no good.  Smell was it for me, sense-wise.  I've never been much of a visual person. I get lost all the time.  Touch is good; who doesn't like it?  But smell was my number one Four-D sense.  Hearing-- well, ok, I love that.  Sometimes it is 3D, mostly with nature sounds or music.  I'm slightly synesthesiac.  When I hear voices, I often have a textural association.  But smell has always, always been at least 3D for me.  And without it, the world seems awfully flat.

I had a visit from an old friend and her family a couple of months ago.  They'd moved away four years ago, and I'd not seen them in a long, long time.  They didn't know about the anosmia.  I hadn't seen their boy, now eight, since then. The dad reintroduced me to him, saying, "Do you remember Jana?  She always used to smell your head when you were little."  I teared up right away, even while reassuring him he didn't need to worry about that now.  He'd been the youngest in our circle of friend's children, and I do, or rather did, love the smell of a baby's head.

The pear I really want to be eating

Sometimes now I go a day or two without thinking so strongly of what I miss.  I do think I have learned a few things about loss and grief and acceptance.  But I miss smell.  And tonight, writing this, I am thinking mostly about my hungry belly.  I came home from work peckish, and could find little I wanted.  I came home from the poetry reading ravenous, and could find nothing tolerable. The parosmia puts most foods off-limits. The upside:  I've lost my "kummerspeck"-- a great German word that translates as "grief bacon", and means the weight you gain after a loss.  I gained 15 pounds following a couple of significant losses a few years ago.  I now weigh less than my driver's license record of a few years ago.  On the other hand, I'd take back the pounds to be able to enjoy a delicious meal of fall's bounty.  But there you go.  We don't get to choose our cards, as they say, only how we play them.  I am trying to learn grace in the game.  It's a slow go some days.

Back when I cooked food, and liked it, and was the poetrix for the word game group, we had an assignment to write a recipe into a poem.  Click here to read my Gumbo recipe on the wonderful Very Bad Poetry website.   It's bad poetry, but good gumbo.

Off to dream of eating something satisfying...
Jana

The Incredible Heaviness of Being: Braving The Stigma of Mental Illness

Kay Redfield Jamison wears many distinguished hats.  A PhD psychologist, she is a tenured professor of Psychiatry at the prestigious John Hopkins school of medicine.  She's been honored by Time Magazine as a "Hero of Medicine", and is the author of at least two international bestsellers and over a hundred published research articles.  She's had dozens of  fellowships, lectureships, and national awards.  She's received the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship.

She also has, and she will be the first to tell you this, a serious mental illness.

Dr. Jamison first became ill with Bipolar Disorder as a senior in high school.  In her conservative Episcopalian family, mental illness was not discussed, and if anyone noticed how she was floundering, it wasn't remarked upon.  But she noticed.  She noticed the long periods of high creativity and energy followed by the much less tolerable periods of complete, abject and suicidal depression.  The story of these, and her later complete psychotic break and serious suicide attempt, are charted in vivid and heartbreaking detail in her books "The Unquiet Mind" and "Touched with Fire:  Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Sentiment". 

It's unusual for a PhD (as opposed to an MD) to be offered a professorship in psychiatry.  But that rarity pales in comparison to the level of support her employers at John Hopkins gave her for being "out" with her illness.  In an unusual display of wisdom and compassion,  her mentors allowed her to continue to pursue her work after her first major break and hospitalization.  And her direct supervisor urged her to use the experience of her illness to teach and write.  As a result, we have what has been called the classic textbook on Bipolar illness (then called Manic Depressive Disorder), countless research studies, and an example of human courage exemplified.  If she had been dismissed, marginalized-- if she had her license to practice revoked (none of these are unusual situations in our culture, when ignorance is faced with illness)-- we would have none of these great works, which have done much to encourage understanding and treatment.

But it is not only the compassion of her employer responsible.  It is her courage in saying:  "Yes, I have an illness.  It is genetic.  It is not my choice, but it is my responsibility to manage".  Her bravery has had a profound effect in showing people that "different" is not always hopeless.

Dr. Jamison would tell you, as she did the audience of several hundred at OSU tonight, that having BP  is not an easy path. In fact, (and I disagree with her, but I don't have her direct experience to effectively contradict) she says that having a mental illness is "99.5% bad".  As in my last post, I strongly believe that it was her experience of the illness and her ability to humanize and integrate it that led to some of her greatest gifts.

I don't have much to add to information about Bipolar that colleague and expert on affective disorders psychiatrist James Phelps has not already said, much more brilliantly than I could.  If you've not visited his website, I urge you to do so.  (If you or someone you love has BP, get his book as well).  I would add a bit to Dr. Jamison's speech, though.  I'd add that there are some effective management techniques other, or in addition, to medication when folks with affective disorders aren't significantly impaired or completely disabled by their affective differences.  You can read about these on Dr. Phelp's site.  I would take issue with calling those without BP "normal", because I just haven't met anyone who truly fits that description-- we ALL have our stuff.  I think her point in repeatedly saying "mental illness" was to get across that these impairments are not any more chosen, or morally suspect, than having asthma or cardiac disease.   And the outcomes of not treating this illnesses are profound:  50% of persons meeting criteria for Bipolar Disorder attempt suicide.  10% succeed.  That's a very lethal illness.

See also:  http://www.janasvoboda.org/search/label/depression

In some ways, it is easier than ever to get treatment for affective and other dis-eases of the mind.  You can google, ask your MD, look in the yellow pages.  In other ways, it is harder than ever.  There is still a lot of stigma and ignorance about illnesses and differences that affect our minds and behavior.  And even though literature reports that  lifestyle changes and therapy support are as effective or increase effectiveness over medication alone, insurance often won't pay for counseling.  Certainly not everyone has insurance.  Your local NAMI chapter can help you find resources and support.  If you are a student, contact your education counseling center to see what low-fee or free services are available.  If not, call your local mental health center (God. politicians and voters willing that you still have one).  If all else fails, call a crisis line.  There are many you can find on the web.

Here are two: 

1-800-SUICIDE 1-800-784-2433

1-800-273-TALK 1-800-273-8255

The Imprisioned Voice

Drove to Eugene late Sunday night to visit gifted photographer/friend Maria.  I don't often have time in the car, and I forget to listen to the radio at home.  NPR was on the dial, with Krista Tippet (Speaking of Faith in the old days, and now hosting the more inclusively titled On Being) interviewing a biologist and Big Cat conservationist.  I was distracted and couldn't focus on the interview the first half of the drive.

I noticed the guest had a slight stutter-- so slight I wasn't sure I heard it until the third or forth time.  In the second half, I came awake, as biologist and explorer Alan Rabinowitz revealed that his love of cats started because watching them at a zoo was a rare respite for him as a child.  Rabinowitz was afflicted with severe stuttering as he developed language-- so severe that he was effectively electively mute until adulthood.  Friendless and locked in with a voice powerful but seemingly unable to be tolerated, he related to the tigers, lions and jaguars that paced their cages, made impotent by their environment.  His parents did their best to help, and sent him to psychiatrists and speech therapists.  At the time, stuttering was seen as a behavioral rather than neurological issue.  The therapeutic emphasis was on getting him to knock it off, which only made things worse.   When he was 18, his parents found a speech clinic which taught him to be a "fluent stutterer"-- to accept what was true about him and work with it.  It worked.  He is now an international speaker, and his voice-- for the animals, for conservation, for himself-- is a powerful and effective one.  As a child, he watched these powerful cats pace in their cages and said to them, "I'm going to get us out of here."  He has devoted his life to finding and preserving places for this animals to express their powerful voice and their genetic heritage.

Krista Tippet is a wise and compassionate interviewer, and has talked with many people over the years whose wisdom, like Dr. Rabinowitz,  was similarly hard won.  "When you talk about what helped you... becoming a fluent stutterer rather than denying it...It reminds me about what I hear about hearing and wholeness... that in fact being a whole person is about taking in whatever our wounds are and our fears are, and  integrating them into our identity... it's the work of a lifetime."

The story gets even more profound. In 2002, Dr. Rabinowitz was diagnosed with CLL (Chronic Lymphocyttic Leukemia), which has no cure.  As Krista pointed out, mortality is not at all special, but most of us manage to avoid looking at it while we are still living our full lives.  Yet even though hearing that living in the field, with its exposure to dengue fever, thyphoid, malaria and other illnesses, was likely to shorten his life, he decided that his mission was so important to his identity he would soldier on.  "Have the courage to live", said Robert Cody.  "Anyone can die."

This was a powerful and moving interview, and there is much to be learned from listening to it.  I encourage you to take the time.  Find it here:   http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/voice-for-the-animals/

Many of us have voices that long to be heard.  Find your voice, and use it.  Your wounds are part of your history.  Own them.  They are part of your power.

Related links on stuttering:  http://www.stutteringhelp.org/
http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/stuttering.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj2IsxxCSS8

If you've not seen it, The King's Speech is a powerful film in which the protagonist stutterer finds and uses his voice.  

I'll close with a poem by a voice for the inarticulate:  Mary Oliver.

The Imprisioned Voice

Driving to Eugene on a Sunday night to visit gifted photographer/friend Maria.  I don't often have time in the car, and I forget to listen to the radio at home.  NPR was on the dial, with Krista Tippet (Speaking of Faith in the old days, and now the more inclusively titled On Being) interviewing a biologist and Big Cat conservationist.  I was distracted and couldn't focus on the interview the first half of the drive.

I noticed the guest had a slight stutter-- so slight I wasn't sure I heard it until the third or forth time.  In the second half, I came awake, as biologist and explorer Alan Rabinowitz revealed that his love of cats started because watching them at a zoo was a rare respite for him as a child.  Rabinowitz was afflicted with severe stuttering as he developed language-- so severe that he was effectively electively mute until adulthood.  Friendless and locked in with a voice powerful but seemingly unable to be tolerated, he related to the tigers, lions and jaguars that paced their cages, made impotent by their environment.  His parents did their best to help, and sent him to psychiatrists and speech therapists.  At the time, stuttering was seen as a behavioral rather than neurological issue.  The therapeutic emphasis was on getting him to knock it off, which only made things worse.   When he was 18, his parents found a speech clinic which taught him to be a "fluent stutterer"-- to accept what was true about him and work with it.  It worked.  He is now an international speaker, and his voice-- for the animals, for conservation, for himself-- is a powerful and effective one.  As a child, he watched these powerful cats pace in their cages and said to them, "I'm going to get us out of here."  He has devoted his life to finding and preserving places for this animals to express their powerful voice and their genetic heritage.

Krista Tippet is a wise and compassionate interviewer, and has talked with many people over the years whose wisdom, like Dr. Rabinowitz,  was similarly hard won.  "When you talk about what helped you... becoming a fluent stutterer rather than denying it...It reminds me about what I hear about hearing and wholeness... that in fact being a whole person is about taking in whatever our wounds are and our fears are, and  integrating them into our identity... it's the work of a lifetime."

The story gets even more profound. In 2002, Dr. Rabinowitz was diagnosed with CLL (Chronic Lymphocyttic Leukemia), which has no cure.  As Krista pointed out, mortality is not at all special, but most of us manage to avoid looking at it while we are still living our full lives.  Yet even though hearing that living in the field, with its exposure to dengue fever, thyphoid, malaria and other illnesses, was likely to shorten his life, he decided that his mission was so important to his identity he would soldier on.  "Have the courage to live", said Robert Cody.  "Anyone can die." 

This was a powerful and moving interview, and there is much to be learned from listening to it.  I encourage you to take the time.  Find it here:   http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2011/voice-for-the-animals/

Many of us have voices that long to be heard.  Find your voice, and use it.  Your wounds are part of your history.  Own them.  They are part of your power.

Related links on stuttering:  http://www.stutteringhelp.org/
http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/stuttering.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj2IsxxCSS8

If you've not seen it, The King's Speech is a powerful film in which the protagonist stutterer finds and uses his voice.  

I'll close with a poem by a voice for the inarticulate:  Mary Oliver.










I was profoundly moved by this interview, and I hope you will take time to listen to it.  

When The World Just Stinks...

Back in the Saddle Again

Just returned from a wonderful visit to Wales and England.  It was a true vacation---few to no responsibilities, and gone long enough to settle down and Just Be.

I love my job, but we all need time to be off duty and refresh our perspective.  This trip was a gift from my sister and her husband; my job was to show up and enjoy.  What a gift that was.

We spent our first two days in a village a couple of hours north of London, where the average house was 400 years old and the streets resembled alleys.  Weather and company were sunny and warm.

Time in Wales was rhythmic and slow in the best sense of the world.  We stayed fairly close to the family home as to be available for the gracious meals of the matriarch and the zingy one-liners of the patriarch.  Yet each day we saw amazing places-- castles and gardens and stone-age settlements.  Day one was a pilgrimage to Dylan Thomas's writing studio and boathouse on the south coast.  The walk is punctuated with poetry and inspiring vistas.  I collected beach glass that I've convinced myself are from ale and whiskey bottles Thomas pitched from his writing perch on the cliff above.

London was hustlebustle in comparison, and the smells, or rather The Smell, overwhelming at first.  My anosmia transmogrified into parosmia just a few days before my trip.  I now get one smell and it's horrific:  think offal dipped in toxic waste then burned.  It's triggered by such seemingly unrelated scents as coffee, soap, and salsa.  Also perfume, garbage, fuel and just about every ten feet of an urban environment.  I used all those skills I preach about here to cope-- acceptance, targeted refocus, mental math-- and it worked pretty well most of the time.   Eating was the hardest part, especially in restaurants where every pound paid was a gamble.  I found fish and chips tolerable and ate more this week than I've had in 10 years.  To your left is a sample of what I couldn't eat, so merely lusted after.

Tate Modern Art Musuem provided good targeted refocus and I especially enjoyed the Dadaist and Surrealist works.  They had a nice room of Rothkos for soothing contemplation.  Other highlights:  walking along the Thames in the evening before theater, watching a well-acted play, wandering in the London library, and a great meetup with a writer for lunch.

Coming from a small town to a metropolis that size means lots of people watching.  While walking in the city, I decided to experiment with eye contact.  In most urban environments that's the province of the aggressive or insane, so percentage of return was low.  Whether the person I passed was a child, elderly, rich business person or homeless looking, I looked into their eyes.  If they looked back, I usually smiled.   My thought was:  Each of you is someone's child, who was loved or deserved to have been.  It was a powerful experience.  No one shouted or glared at me; many smiled in such an open way it was almost heartbreaking.  That happened more with the poor/homeless than the business people.

In the past months I have been thinking a lot of the importance of community.   And despite it's virtual prevalence and all our connections (Facebook, emails) we are more isolated than ever.  In Llandeilo, Wales, population less than 2000, at least four pubs have shuttered their doors since my visit ten years ago.  More than a bar, pubs are the UK's town halls and churches, where business is conducted, families connect, problems identified and resolved.  Now some 50 pubs a week are closing throughout the UK.  Some have histories going back hundreds of years.

In the US, it's our libraries and independent bookstores and diners that are going away. Places where we used to while away some time, breathe a little, meet with friends.  Single-screen movie theaters are a thing of the past, but the multiplexes aren't doing that great either.  Live music events don't attract like they used to; people are content to buy (or steal) their music off of the net.  Old venues fold and with them a piece of our history and the exoskeleton of our community.

This week's homework:  Get out a little.  You don't need to cross the pond to find connection and renewal.  Take some time to support a local institution you want to see survive.  Ask a few friends to join you, and remember how nice it is to see familiar faces.

Meanwhile, if you need to relax, here's a Welsh lullaby:

GOT TOUCH?: The Oxytocin Connection

My version of an oxytocin molecule-- DaVinci days

Known as the "cuddle drug", the"superglue of relationship", and "the connection hormone", oxytocin is secreted when we love and touch.  It's the chemical catalyst for community.

Studies found that when women gather in community, oxytocin levels increase-- and so does cooperation.  When persons were given internasal doses of the hormone, they were more likely to extend trust to sales pitches-- the proverbial "want to buy some swamp land" type, which has some sinister implications for the misuse of this powerful molecular concoction.  On a more positive note, oxytocin levels jump when devoted women imagine their husbands, or nurse their child.  Increased levels of oxytocin encourage intimacy and bonding by ramping up trust and reducing fear.  Sounds like my kind of drug.

a proposal on Mary's Peak

Lack of touch can stunt growth in babies, increase anxiety in all ages, and decrease calmness, connectedness, and safety.  Remember those terrifically sad pictures of monkeys clinging to the foodless warm terrycloth mom model over the cold wire cage milk-dispensing "mama monkey?".  They'd starve for food before starving for tactile connection.  Traumatized people need touch too, but it's got to be expected and the giver sensitive to tolerance levels.  Hand pats to the shoulder are usually acceptable where a hug would feel threatening.  Some who wouldn't tolerate a hug are ok with therapeutic massage.  When even that level of human touch is too fraught, humans can raise their oxytocin levels by cuddling a non-threatening pet.  In nursing home residents, blood pressures go down and perceptions of happiness increase when therapy dogs and cats are around for pettings.  To avoid the messiness of live animals, Japan is working on fuzzy robots to fill this role.

When circumstances dictate, even self-touch works.  And I'm not even talking masturbation. We rub our own neck, wring our hands, scratch our heads to self-sooth.   Physical therapists teach clients to curry themselves with ultra soft brushes.  It's calming, seems to raise oxytocin levels and desensitizes these hyperalert/tactically defensive folks to accept safe touch.

So get your touch on.  Dancing, petting animals, holding hands with a friend, rocking a baby, yours or anothers'-- not all touch is sexual.  But it is essential.


 More resources:  http://www.reuniting.info/science/oxytocin_health_bonding?

Articulation: When Art Talks for Us

Copyright Jason deCaires Taylor

Say what you will about the evils of Facebook--info junkies like me find much to be loved there.  My last blog was prompted by friend Marilyn W's link to a 9 page NYTimes article
I wouldn't have otherwise seen.  And last night, a Serbian mail-artist posted a beautiful picture of an underwater installation that led me to the website of artist Jason deCaires Taylor.  How could I never have heard of this guy?  I spent a very long time looking at his amazing works.  I am so moved by them.  There is much going on here-- the beauty and poignancy of the models, the interactions of the living environment in the moment, and the inevitable deconstruction/remaking of the statues as nature moves in.  Take a few minutes to visit his website, or view the film below.

We are lucky to have artists who can articulate what we feel but can't explain.  Thank them by visiting galleries, museums and especially by investing in their work.  If you're from the valley, this weekend's a good time to start.  Come to Corvallis's Fall Festival, where over 160 artists will be displaying their efforts.  Stay for the Saturday night dance!

The Kids Aren't Alright: The Pressure for Excellence

I began counseling teens while I still was one.  I still do and I still love it.  But the kids I see today are battling different demons.  Perfectionism and anxiety have replaced the semi-angsty depressions and predictable adjustment issues of the past.  Every November and April my answering machine is inundated with calls from stressed out teens and parents.  The timing isn't coincidental.  That's peak pressure period for college decisions, SAT/ACT and  extracurricular events.

When I was in high school, there were maybe two or three "honors" courses.  It was assumed that not all of us would go to college, and for those that weren't inclined either temperamentally or academically, there were reasonable options for making your way in the world.  It wasn't necessarily a badge of honor to go the vo-tech (vocational/technical school) route, but it wasn't a badge of shame either.  And most of those that did made a fine enough living, getting a two to four year head start on building a life while the rest of us chalked up some student loans and debts.  At 25, most were settled into careers whether or not they had a graduate degree.

My parents didn't talk to me about college, though there was an assumption I'd go.  There were no late night marathons of form filling, or many of homework for that matter.  I went to school-- most days-- and did the work, and graduated, and went to a college 25 miles from my hometown mostly because my sister broke her neck that summer (she's fine now, BTW-- no thanks to me transporting her home from our day at the lake in the back seat of a VW bug).  I'd thought I'd be going to Iowa, but KU worked out fine, and I learned from some great profs and from immersing myself fully in what I wanted to learn.  Maybe it helped that I'd known I wanted to be a therapist since I was 12 and had some great local mentors.  But on the whole, a lot of my learning occurred outside of the classroom-- from volunteering at a crisis center, working as a psych ward aide, working with the sexual assault response team, and reading like crazy.

I was an exception.  Most kids don't know what they want to do when they grow up, and that's just fine. It's developmentally quite appropriate.  The benefit of a liberal arts education is supposed to be to expose people to all kinds of things, so they can decide-- decide what sets them on fire, and where their individual strengths are.  I think my high school served that function, and I knew I loved biology but pretty much sucked at math, and I loved social sciences and did well there.  My course was set and it was fine with me.

Now, I see kids under immense pressure to know in advance what they want to do for a living.  They seem less concerned with vocation (from voca-- get it?  Voice.  A calling, not a command) and more with how to get into the Right School and earn money.  I don't think there's anything wrong with the latter.  But there's a whole lot wrong with how we tell kids they need to go about it.  We've raised a generation of kids thinking that self-worth is based on GPAs, AP classes, extracurricular activities that "count" (read: look good on the college application) and getting into the Right School.  We've reduced intelligence to IQ scores, and success to academic achievements.  What good does it do to get to Harvard but be so emotionally wrecked you cannot sustain an intimate relationship, sleep at night, or find any peace and pleasure in the life you lead?  To graduate from the Right School with $100K plus of debt and little prospect of finding a decent job, with decent hours and pay, that also allows you to have a life?

And the big lie is now there are hardly any jobs anyway.  Most young people today are not going to have the standard of living their parents had.  They aren't going to get going on careers as young, or even earn livable pay with benefits for the most part. Apprenticeships for teens are gone. Vo-tech is gone.  Even community colleges require minimum standards in English and Math that will deny some very bright students the ability to complete a 2 year degree.  And 2 year degrees are barely acceptable for jobs that pay minimum wage.

When I worked in a community counseling center in southeast Texas, I had clients who could barely read or write but who made adequate incomes to raise families and buy a home.  They were mechanics, or worked in oil fields, or raised cattle.  They were smarter than me by far, but today most of them would be unemployed because of minimum standards for jobs. The workforce has changed. The requirements don't seem to have much to do with the actual jobs in many cases.  I see bright people stuck in low-end jobs not because they lack experience or ability but because they lack a degree.  I see very competent 40 somethings being supervised by 26 year olds who have no real idea what they are doing, but they do have an MBA.  I see 25 year olds with master degrees working as waitresses because no one wants to pay them for what they DO know.

And I see way too many 16 and 17 and 18 year olds torn up because they aren't completely sure already what their paths should be.  Doing 5 hours plus of homework a night.  Who don't know how to socialize, play or be curious.  Who have no idea what it is to simply ponder and putter.

I'm not blaming the parents-- I got sucked in too.  In the whole No Kid Left Behind testing marathon, we ditched the kids completely and went for the scores.  We were told these were the most critical  fill-in-the-blank (years/tests/elasticities/applications/choices) our kids would make; and if we let them slack, their failure would be our fault.  We would have hamstrung their future.So we pushed and nagged them into frenzied versions of midlife adults completely undone by premature decision making.

There is something very wrong here.  And it is up to us, the adults, to put it back in order.  The kids don't sure as hell don't have time.  They are too busy being tutored, cramming for tests, writing entrance essays and worrying about getting accepted to the Right School.  Grown-ups are going to have to do what grownups are meant to do, and take care of them.  Teach them kindness, curiosity and balance.  Teach them to live with failure and imperfection.  Remind them that many of their heroes took various paths to greatness.  And even remind them that the definition of greatness is considerably debatable.

There's a movement afoot.  I'm hoping to bring the movie in the trailer below to Corvallis, and to talk to parents about how we can advocate for our kids to have a childhood instead of an entrance exam.  Please take a minute to watch the video below.  It should break your heart.  Want to help?  Send me a note.

More nonscents

Went today to hear the venerable Sam Keen, author of so many fine treatises on the human condition I can barely bare to pare it down to a favorite.  I first heard of Dr. Keen in the way way back, maybe through the CoEV Quarterly.  He's a philosopher, academic, poet, Eagle Scout (youngest in Delaware history!) and Johnny-come-lately trapeze artist.  Now 80, he is brilliant-sexy, about the only kind of sexy I seem to notice.  He waxed on for several hours and I filled up a moleskine with notes.  I'll be doling out gleamings from this wisdom-packed day for weeks to come.  But tonight it is late, and I've just returned from the quarterly wine-tasting/food gathering with my sweetheart's colleagues.  I surprised myself when I approached this plethora of smell memorials with some hard-core denial.  Within minutes of seeing the plates and plates of tastes and all those carefully selected french wines I was in tears. 9 gourmet cheeses I could not smell.  Elegant plates of muskmelon and nectarines drizzled with...who knows...and blueberries and rosemary; it might as well have been a plate of Red Delicious-less appple slices covered with jujubes for all the scents I could make out of it.  Wine after wine was presented with labels going on about terroir, and as far as I could tell  they could have been subtle different off-brands of weak kool-aid.  I spun into sadness and went for a walk and tried to pully my ass up from its deep crevasse pity party.

Isn't that a bit how grief is-- we put it off to the side and go back to the daily, only to be yanked by our petards each time we re-remember our loss and how it has changed the predictable?  I am making progress, truly I am. I am working hard hard hard on getting into textures. I now love salt and sugar  and chili paste and fat, which I never did before when I could actually taste food.
But I don't like it. Tonight I just wanted to taste the 47 textures and sensual pleasures of that one late summer perfectly perfumed nectarine.  Instead I need to accept it being the pleasant, in the most banal of the word, piece of fleshly texture that it is.  It'll get tolerable.  It already is, most of the time.  But when I get a new experience of the not-smelling world, it's a tiny and sharp death I want to resist.  There's a loss of common language and experience I haven't figured out how to bridge.  A guilt over not having any idea why this wine is interesting, knowing a dear friend picked it out especially to please us. A chagrined anger that everyone is having so much more out of this experience than I can.

It'll shift.  It already is starting to shift. Like my fellow anosmiacs I am  very into texture in foods now.  But I haven't transitioned out of the disappointment that this is all I'm going to get.  I look forward to that peace.

Sam Keen talked today about vowing to sit with discomfort until it resolves. Literally sit down, and look at the feeling in curiosity and compassion until it transforms.  I remember advising an angry Muslim to do the same once, and quoting him Higher Evidence on the wisdom of this exercise straight from the Prophet's mouth as written in the Koran.  It's good advice:  stop doing/craving/fuming/crying, and just sit until you figure something out.
So I am sitting, and writing too, and waiting to come to that place of serenity about that which I cannot control or change.  Waiting for the wisdom, or the acceptance that is not approval but a compassionate acknowledgement of what is, whether I like it or not.

But for the time being, each new experience of a smell memory that is now gone is a bit of a punch in the gut. What a lesson.

I hate it when I am resisting my lessons.

The Defective Terrorist

Another September 11th is over.  Despite reports of "increased internet chatter", there were no 10th anniversary attacks, only sighs of relief and disbelief that it's been so long since "everything's different now."

We do what we can to hold onto our structures-- our belief that life will continue on a fairly reasonable, mostly predictable path.  We have to.  Otherwise, how could we ever kiss our children or sweethearts goodbye in the morning as they headed for school or work?   We'd be doing no one good to cling each time, wailing, forcing them to peel us off their legs, on the off chance it's our last meeting on this earth.  After all, the odds are high we'll be seeing them again in a few hours, nagging at them about some annoying behavior, or just carrying on with a mundane evening.  And life will go on, pretty much as it has.  

For the 2800+ people killed ten years ago by a few misguided idealists/sociopaths/terrorists, life didn't go on at all.  Had they some prescience to know it was to be their last day on earth, they might have played their cards a little differently.  Taken the kids to breakfast.  Skipped the morning report.  Hell, maybe not gone to work at all. But that sort of insight usually only comes as hindsight.  And it makes no sense to act on it in foresight:   nothing would get done if we "what if" d ourselves into terrorized paralysis each day.  

It boils down again, doesn't it, to that middle path--living each day as if we will live forever or possibly die.  We muddle through it the best we can.   We forgive ourselves our trespasses and try like hell to love our enemies, or at least to understand them so we don't go mad.  We try to simultaneously remember and forget our own mortality, so we can cherish/bear being alive.
 

I just finished John Ronson's ThePsychopath Test.  He's the author of Men Who Stare at Goats, later made into a love-it-or-hate-it movie.  In his latest book, he investigates the idea that the socially conscious-less (estimated to make up about 1% of the population but causing much of  the trouble for the rest of us) are neurally atypical.  Something's funky in their brain.  They're the polar opposite to the Troubled Trifecta folks, at least when it comes to degrees of empathy and sensitivity.  According to researcher Bob Hare, author of the checklist the title references, psychopaths just don't feel what the rest of us feel or worry about the consequences.  Human suffering-- hell, most emotions-- don't compute.  Others who are undone by emotions seem weak or crazy to the sociopath.  Ronson says a sociopath might view a gruesome murder photo as you or I would ponder a particularly difficult Sudoku-- intriguing, a puzzle to be solved, but there's no humanizing impact.  It was reassuring to hear him mention that readers who worry a lot they may meet the criteria for psychopaths are pretty much automatically safe from inclusion in the category.  

The mirror neuron research mentioned in the last post is probably involved.  Sociopaths truly aren't feeling what the average person feels; if feelings matter at all, it's only on an academic level. And lacking that emotional connection to others, it really is all about them, and what they want in the moment.  That's why they can rip off their grandmother without blinking, or repeat a behavior that caused them great personal inconvenience in the past.  They may express regret in the moment of being caught in a misdeed,  but they aren’t good social learners, having no emotional anchor for the memory.  The lesson’s lost on them.  Strong memories are stored via physical protein links, created via emotional reactions linked to physical experience. That's probably not happening with these folks.  Structural differences in the hippocampus, seat of memory and learning, have been observed in brains of sociopaths-- lesions, atrophy, other grim defects.  

Like other genetic differences, psychopathy has some evolutionary advantages.  Sociopaths tend to be superficially charming, articulate and persuasive.  Small wonder they are over-represented in populations of politicians and executives. Power and the resources it brings are aphrodisiacs for many, and ensure the spread of those genes.

 

Ronson's book doesn't seem to glamorize sociopaths, but his premises do suggest their behavior is less consciously willful than one might like to believe. What if it is true that some people are born lacking in the capacity for empathy and social learning,  and it is no more their choice than if they had been born blind, or without a limb?  These "first degree" sociopaths are no less harmful than who become remorseless through experience and trauma-- such as kids who have had the love beat out of them.  Containment (jail) may be a necessity.  Punishment, however, is unlikely to do much more than satisfy our own need for revenge.  

Sept. 11th and sociopaths seems a pretty reasonable association, but what's my point?  Maybe it's about learning to love, or at least have compassionate curiosity about our enemies.  I am curious about how anyone can do so much intentional evil.  I want to understand it.  I also know that my desire to do so is part of that human desire for more predictability and less anxiety.  And that my desire is unlikely to strongly impact my outcome, but it's the best I've got.

Check out Ronson's book if you have a chance. It's an easy read, a good combination of meat and sweet. He's a humorous writer, charming self-deprecating in a less-neurotic-version-of -Woody-Allen sort of way. 

I don't know that there are many conclusions in to be found there.   In fact, it seemed to end in a "I've got a deadline to meet" sort of way.  But it's thought-provoking and entertaining, could spark some great conversations.  I hope you'll give it a look. Then tell me some of your thoughts about it.

Movies Worth Watching: The Help

It's been an unusually hot week in the valley, and seeking air-conditioned respite we looked for the longest movie playing at local cinema.  The Help, based on Kathryn Stockett's 2009 bestselling novel, clocks in at 137 minutes, so off we went.

It was time well spent.  The story centers on three women living in Jackson, MS in the early 1960s .  Two are  African American maids; the third an idealistic white aspiring writer recently graduated from college.  Skeeter, (played by a wide eyed actress Emma Stone) comes back to her hometown to find her childhood Mammy absent and her cancer-stricken mother concerned only with her impending spinsterhood.  Witnessing the cruel injustice her high school girlfriends dole out to their hired help, and on the hunt for a story, she decides to interview the poorly paid domestic staff and find out how they feel about raising other people's children and being forced to use outside toilets. Actresses Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis play the maids who tell their story despite the real physical and financial threats it will pose to them.  (Editorial note: the director seems to have a fascination with elimination--  there are prominent scenes and references to peeing and defecation.  Freud would have a field day with that). 

The movie draws a heavy-handed but powerful portrait of the racial tensions and inequities of the times. 

Set in the days just prior to the March on Washington, there are multiple references to Jim Crow laws, including a reference to the Mississippi code declaring that no white child shall have a school text previously handled by a black child.   It's not perfect.  The Help seems to reinforce stereotypes even as it rails against them, and some of the dialogue and plot twists are pretty over the top.  It's typical Hollywood, and probably Oscar material.  You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll feel slightly manipulated.  But like a Cliff Bar or a gummy vitamin, sometimes we need these sorts of simple disguises to get the important stuff into us. This is recent history, folks.  And as much as we'd like to think racism is behind us, we have to have laws to convince people to treat each other as human beings.

I lived in SE Texas from 1985-1993.  Moving from a liberal college town, I was astounded at the degree of openly expressed racism.  When we looked for housing, the agents talked about the "exclusivity" of the neighborhoods and balked when I told them I would tell my husband Tyrone that exciting news. A few miles to the north, in the hometown of the Grand Dragon of the KKK, the government's efforts to integrate were snuffed out as one black family after another was moved in and then ran out.  The only African Americans at the country club were the minimum wage workers.  And when I asked what the preschool would be doing to celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday, I was told that the curriculum was full, because "it's community helper's month."  They were unmoved when I said I felt Dr. King was a most excellent example.

Racism persists today, although for most educated Americans it is not considered publicly acceptable. A recent study found a significant gap in grant funding for African American scientists-- unexplained by education, achievement or experience.  And if you've stomach enough to read the comments section of online news websites, you'll find stereotypes, bigotry and calls for violence against minorities that are hopefully much over-represented.  Racism is at this point mostly institutionalized and subtle.  It requires a higher level of internal investigation and vigilance to acknowledge and redress than the more blatant segregation of past years.  It takes courage to stand up for injustice, and wisdom to understand the fear and ignorance behind it.  It's important to keep the conversation fresh, and The Help does that.  Go see it.   And then go talk about it a while.  Maybe have a revelation, and make a commitment to not let slide that innocent, kind of funny joke that perpetuates the problem.  Befriend an "other."  Don't forget or ignore the cruelty  and courage of which all persons are capable.  Show up and Stand Up.  


Related blogs: 
Xenophobia
Darkeness Cannot Put Out Darkness
Sermon: The People That Scare Us

Door Number Two: Resolution #16: Use Your Voice

On the bedstand: Print Surfing

Im a died in the wool info junkie.  Print works best for me; TV is too intrusive and I like to make my own images, especially if they are going to be disturbing (ie news).  As a result of temperament or neurological quirkiness, I print-surf the way others channel surf.  I like to read and I love esoteric tidbits.  When I was a kid I spent a summer reading the Encyclopedia Britannia and the subsequent school year boring the pants off any one within earshot.  I also loved Ripley's Belive it or Not, World Almanacs, my mother's lurid Nursing textbooks (esp. infectious diseases-- elephantitis and testes do not mix well) and my father's collection of psych books (Fritz Perls's In and Out of the Garbage Pail was a favorite, maybe because like the ID textbook, it also had pictures.)

I usually have 6 to a dozen mostly-non-fiction reads in rotation next to my bed.  Here's a peek from one weeks's playlist.

The Emperor of Scent, by Chandler Burr.  Part investigative journalism, part academic muckwrecking and part fawning biography, the author delves into the world of the brilliant mind of perfumophile/scientist/madman Luca Turin and his hopes to shake up acadamia with a new theory of olfaction.  It may sound dry-- and I expect it was, for some-- but there's human drama aplenty.  And to this recent anosmiac, the immersion into the world of smells and Turin's vivid word-pictures describing them were welcome Nose Porn. Chandler's a great writer.  I can't vouch much for his scientific scrutiny pedigree but it all made sense to me, and his ability to weave an intoxicating sentence inbtween the lengthy descriptions of chemical coding and how molecules vibrate their way into olfactory experience was fascinating, even if loudly decried by the Shape Theorists.

For a nov

Saved

el introduction to Anosmia, local author Keith Scriber's new book The Oregon Experiment starts with a scent scene-- rising mint in the air on a dark night drive.  The protagnist's wife is a Professional Nose (perfumeir) recovering from anosmia.  It's a side story but an important one.

 Escaping my current obsession I read

Self-Care for Caregivers: Tips and Tools Chapter One

Every caregiver needs a toolkit to prevent or remedy compassion fatigue.  Here's several ideas for self-care to keep you in balance.  Some require time, practice, or props; some can be done in seconds during a meeting. Many of these have been covered in previous blogs and portions are reprinted or linked below.  The best of what I know is in these hyperlinks; it's a lot to read but I hope you'll dip in.

Managing the Monkey Mind 

     Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are! --Charles Dickens

 Don't suffer twice. When we worry about something in our future, (and there's nothing to be done about it) it's a lose-lose situation. If it happens, we get to suffer twice. If it doesn't, we worry for nothing.

 Mind your stories. A Swedish proverb says: Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow. We can tell ourselves pretty alarming stories that have no real basis in probability. Check for facts. How many times have planes crashed at PDX today? This week? This year? Chances are that same pilot who's already landed the plane safely 8 times this week will also do fine today. 

Take a breath. When we are fretting, we are often literally holding our breath. We don't breathe out all the used up air, and we end up in a bit of an oxygen deficit-- which does nothing to soothe our anxiety. Try "box breathing"-- take as much time to breath out as in, and make sure to pause for a reasonable time between inhalation and exhalations.  For more info on the power of breath, click here.

Get some distraction action. Since what you feed (your mind) grows, look for healthier places to invest. Listen to some music, taste a lemon, do some art.   Here's some info on how music can heal:  http://www.janasvoboda.org/2011/01/resolution-24-make-joyful-noise.html

Fire up a more logical part of your brain. Think of your brain like a power grid. If one part-- say that pesky amydala, which is all about emotion-- is all lit up, chances are the areas that access logic and reason are a bit dimmed down. Shift the resources by engaging in a few minutes of algebra, or even sudoku. Firing up those neurons will take a load off. 

Accept your emotions and remember they are transient and (in their moment) valid, so judgment isn't helpful.  (More here).   But feelings aren't facts-- or based on them-- so you don't have to react to them. Let them rise up, use them as data, and let them pass.  

Befriend your body.  Give it some rest, good food and some exercise.  Exercise is a chance to dump all those fight-or-flight chemicals that have nowhere to be of use, and it's neurogenerative too-- rebuilds those brains cells that stress kills off. 

Use Visualization:  here's two I like.  1) Imagine yourself as a mountain, fully rooted and stable, big and strong.  The yoga pose Tadasana is all about this rootedness but I find just imagining the way I feel in this pose is nearly as good as doing it-- and a lot more reasonable if I'm in the middle of a tense meeting.    2)  Imagine you have a Teflon force field and all that negative stuff just slides off away from you.  Don't pick it up!

When we are stressed, our self-talk and thinking can spiral in bad directions.  Here's an except about getting that in line.

Don't feed Ethel.

Most of us have a loud and annoying bully in our head who tells us Bad Scary Stuff.  I've decided to name it "Ethel".  Please forgive me if you are or have an Ethel in your life that you love.

Ethel says things like:  "You can't do it.  You're a loser.  Why try?  You don't deserve to (fill in the blank:  be happy, healthy, out of debt, in a good relationship)."  She tells lots of scary stories with an authority that is quite convincing.  Ethel gets bigger and stronger every time you listen to her.  

When that doubting voice shows up, don't even bother talking back.  It's OK to talk to yourself.  (Tip:  Unless you're alone, don't do it out loud.) Tell yourself: "That's just Ethel, doing her deal."  Tell yourself some facts, like "I've been scared before and done fine anyway."  Or "I don't really know how this will turn out, and I won't know anything more if I don't try."  When Ethel has no attention, she tends to wander off.

Make use of the healing power of nature.  It's restorative, restful, oxygenating, and less impinging.  Take a walk in a forest, lay on a beach, wander a meadow.

Lighten the heck up! Yes, life is full of suffering.  As Buddha says, One life: ten thousand joys, ten thousand sorrows.  Make sure you are getting the joy part in.  Read more about play and laughter-- then get some.

Don't forget the importance of community.  On the whole, Americans have never been lonelier than we are in the "connected" age.  Online isn't enough.  We need real people who can really see us and accept us for who we are, warts and all.  We need touch (more on this in a coming article), witness, and to know that if we need tangible help there is someone who will.  If you are feeling isolated, know at least that you are in good company and there are others like you wanting to connect.  Take the risk and reach out.  

Reset your happiness baseline by shaking up your routine and practicing gratitude.   Learn more about happiness research here  and in this blog on Happy Factors.

Remember that YOU COUNT TOO!
Most natural caregivers cannot help but attend to the needs of others.  They would never intentionally neglect a being in need of attention, love and kindness.  Except for themselves. 
They-- you?-- need to remember the Silver Rule:  Treat yourself as you would have others treated.  And as Thom Ruttledge says, remember "You are not an exception to the rule that nobody's perfect."  So give yourself a break, some love, a kindness.  Acknowledge and accept your human limitations and feet of clay.  "Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others."

And that's important.  Because if you burn out, there is one less person who to help.
Take care of yourself, sweetheart.
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photos for this blog taken at this year's Oregon Country Fair, now in its 42nd year of creative community.