i've been thinking about the culture of protest. things at the university are bad, and people are understandably scared and upset. the story that caught on mediawise is that various departments might lose their telephones. meanwhile, on the south side of edmonton, a woman walking home with her friends in the early hours of the morning was jumped by a pack of guys calling her "a dyke." police response was... lackadaisical, to say the least.
particularly in regard to the second of these issues, the response on facebook has been swift, supportive, and fierce. within 24 hours, a "community response project" garnered over 400 members even though the group's organizers had no clear plan. the facebook description reads: "A group dedicated to crafting a queer, systemic response to the recent assault against Shannon Barry (and others). We would like to organize, give us ideas! Posters? Protest? Let's think grassroots."
i didn't join, even though i love and respect the group's founders. i didn't join even when i saw friend after friend after friend after friend become a member. and i've been wondering why. it's a holdover from church, i think. call it commitment issues, but i have a hard time becoming a member of something that will demand unforeseeable things of me, and i'm particularly leery of protests.
i've done a fair number of protests in my time. i've demonstrated for abortion rights and i've defended abortion clinics. i marched against the first gulf war and the second gulf war; i protested the mid-90s provincial budget cuts more times than i can remember; and just last january i stood next to my dear friend in churchill square reading the names of the children bombed by israeli security forces. i was briefly imprisoned after the rodney king uprising. as street credit goes, i've got a little.
i have to confess that the notion of responding to the shannon barry beating with an old-fashioned protest left me feeling weary and disaffected. in fact, i found myself siding with the do-gooder white guys who urged people to take this up with the edmonton police service's LGBT liaisons. similarly, i have not written to lambaste my faculty association, or the dean, or the provost, or the president or the premier or the prime minister. instead, i keep trying to point out that when the province of alberta incents funding expensive professorships on soft dollars, institutions are left vulnerable to exactly this kind of financial crisis. we could see this coming for years. in other words, it's a complex problem that can only be solved by understanding the big picture of how universities are funded and administered today -- which in turn would require grasping a medium-sized picture of how units beyond the humanities are affected by this budget crunch -- which might produce the necessary (if not sufficient) conditions for solving this problem.
what i often suspect about protest culture is that people are not in fact interested in "solving the problem." historically, of course, taking over the streets has been hugely effective. see french revolution, see civil rights, see the troubles in northern ireland. even now, occasionally, marches can bring tears to my eyes: think of the battle in seattle, 1999, or the worldwide -- worldwide! -- protests against the US invasion of iraq in 2003. or if you like, just think of how ian mcewan uses that as a touchstone in his novel saturday.
but me, i'm all about solving the problem. this is terrific when the issue at hand is keeping a dissertating student on task, or getting a deck built, or giving advice on some interpersonal conflict, or building a better graduate program, or fixing a logical lapse in something i'm trying to write. i don't mind fighting because in some profound way it's not personal: i believe that we can think our way through both process and desiderata, so that investment in any given position is inconsequential next to arriving at a better (if not ideal) solution.
but "solving the problem" is not always what's called for. life doesn't work like the OCD challenge of keeping a clean inbox. as i've been reminded at several points in personal relationships (ahem), sometimes people just want to bitch about a bad day at work without transitioning into a brand new career, or register disappointment with their families without launching the entire unit into intensive psychotherapy. when professionals lose their telephones, they worry that their jobs will be next. unrealistic fear? probably. unreal? obviously not. on a political level, sometimes people just want to stand up and say, clearly, unequivocally, and quickly (i.e., without making this their life's work): this is unacceptable. society is wrong. you cannot do these things in my name.
sometimes the most interesting stuff takes place when you're that simple and honest. over on the shannon barry community response project, a critique of the way hate crimes legislation bolsters surveillance and incarceration is shaping up. folks are not taking to the street, they are taking to their heads and their hearts, and the results are really moving.
i'd like to become member 423 -- if they'll still have me.
Showing posts with label heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heart. Show all posts
Friday, April 23, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Slow days
it isn't all bad, of course. take yesterday morning: sun flooding the kitchen and mo gone to work, leaving me to my quinoa and david gray -- an actual CD played through speakers, not an earbud track: an unformed day brought to you by my new theme song, "life in slow-motion."
for these reasons, i don't find my days long. even when I do nothing, they are full. but it's more than that. i am on good terms with solitude. watching sunshine move across hardwood floors, reading books, thinking, blogging, walking to the neighborhood flower shop -- all of these things make me deeply happy, particularly when they unfold at a junkie's easy pace, on a smooth percocet plane.
one of the unexpected pleasures of convalescing has been music. i walk a lot -- can't drive -- and when I do, i listen to a broad range of music. normally, my tunes are running-trail functional: the scissor sisters, lady gaga, new pornographers, and a Much Music dance album from the 90s keep me working out. when I walk, I listen to fanfarlo, vintage joni mitchell, the new gorillaz album, iTunes impulse buys like chile fuerza, new yorker darling esperanza spalding, eric clapton unplugged. stars, always. the shins, of montréal, conor oberst (all his projects), the mixed tape andrea made me with the BeeGees and fine young cannibals.
i see things when i walk, too.
i have seen odd little houses in my neighborhood:
and houses with cheerful trim:
and artworks' yellow and black display.
i have seen late afternoon sun turn industrial space soft and beautiful:
and i have seen the spring come in this year. it takes place so imperceptibly you can't believe anything is happening, yet winter has dissolved, and the world is different.
while I was watching, you did a slow dissolve...i do seem to be moving so slowly i might dissolve. it's hard to get used to. no one has ever accused me of being a dawdler. one of my graduate students refers to me as "a woman of instant execution." i am fatally attracted to a clean inbox; i honor fordist efficiency; and i always believe there is room to accomplish one more thing before the minute/hour/day/week is up. to take 15 minutes to unload the dishwasher, because every dish is a separate, left-handed trip, is deranging. the 90 minute shower is a new and alien experience. how it can take a person over 20 minutes to dress in the morning i can't fathom, but it does, every day.
life in slow motion, somehow it don't seem real
for these reasons, i don't find my days long. even when I do nothing, they are full. but it's more than that. i am on good terms with solitude. watching sunshine move across hardwood floors, reading books, thinking, blogging, walking to the neighborhood flower shop -- all of these things make me deeply happy, particularly when they unfold at a junkie's easy pace, on a smooth percocet plane.
one of the unexpected pleasures of convalescing has been music. i walk a lot -- can't drive -- and when I do, i listen to a broad range of music. normally, my tunes are running-trail functional: the scissor sisters, lady gaga, new pornographers, and a Much Music dance album from the 90s keep me working out. when I walk, I listen to fanfarlo, vintage joni mitchell, the new gorillaz album, iTunes impulse buys like chile fuerza, new yorker darling esperanza spalding, eric clapton unplugged. stars, always. the shins, of montréal, conor oberst (all his projects), the mixed tape andrea made me with the BeeGees and fine young cannibals.
i see things when i walk, too.
i have seen odd little houses in my neighborhood:
and houses with cheerful trim:
and artworks' yellow and black display.
i have seen late afternoon sun turn industrial space soft and beautiful:
and i have seen the spring come in this year. it takes place so imperceptibly you can't believe anything is happening, yet winter has dissolved, and the world is different.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Feel better
when i was a little girl, i thought your feelings were located in your armpit. i remember overhearing someone say, in mock distress, "you're hurting my feelings!," and thinking ah, so that's what sensation there is called. feelings.
one of the most mystifying aspects of recovery has been the emotional valence of healing. some things make sense: frustration, fear, anxiety all fall within the predictable emotional range. more difficult to understand has been melancholy. i've felt melancholic a lot over the last week, and I have tried to figure out why: i know that I tend to turn fatigue into sadness, for instance, and it stands to reason that once the shoulder is feeling a little better i would have room to process all the subsidiary effects of the surgery: the trauma to the body, the dependence, the assault on my self-esteem, the self-brutalizing blame for getting myself into this position in the first place, and so on. you don't have to be deeply freudian to figure that's all got to come out sometime.
still, i do expect some connection between what happens in the moment and how i respond. so to feel sad today, after a good weekend, and on my way out of physio, which came after a spell in the hot pool and a ride on a stationary bike with a good book, was surprising. i mean, what i just described -- a little exercise, a good book, some flirtation, my time my own -- is pretty much the ideal life. i couldn't understand why i felt so blue, like everything was dissolving. i wondered if it was dismay over how quickly time is passing while i measure my day in shoulder flexion. i wondered if it was about missing the river valley, wanting to see how all my running trails smell in the spring. i wondered if it was about my job, if i was starting to fret about going back. i wondered if i was doing the right thing with my life, whether i am on the right path. or maybe it's the gray day, or something hormonal, or plain old garden-variety physical pain sublated into an emotional register. i thought about all of these things as i cried my way up the 105th st hill.
my acupuncturist took one look at my tongue and said, "gotcha." she could see weakness in the heart meridian. the heart is the emperor of the body in chinese medicine, and the emperor was not on his throne. as a result, all of the other portfolios were scrambling around, not knowing how to do their business -- like canada under mackenzie king, perhaps. surgery can mix up the meridians themselves: a coup de corps. my acupuncturist said that typically when this happens, people question everything: their jobs, their partners, where they live, how they act, what they want -- everything. you feel lackluster about your work, you wonder about your destiny. i'm not saying it's necessarily like this for you, she said (i continued to say nothing), but you don't have to worry. the cause for how you are feeling is not coming from outside, but from inside. what we need to do, she said, is call the emperor back to his throne.
i was in.
the points were completely different from anything we've done before. she needled heart one, heart three, and heart seven. heart seven, down by the wrist, connects the heart and the head. it allows you to know what you want, and to do it. heart three, inside of the upper arm, is the destiny point. she said, "pay attention to the images that you see while this needle is in." (i have more thinking to do about these images: the green, the water, the books.)
heart one, first point on the heart meridian, is like sticking a needle into the center of your heart, down through the myocardium to the endocardium, between the atria and ventricles, to wake it up. this point will recall the emperor and make you feel like yourself again -- which it did. within a half-hour the melancholy had receded and i was back to myself: curious, competent, outward-looking and vital.
the point is located in your armpit.
one of the most mystifying aspects of recovery has been the emotional valence of healing. some things make sense: frustration, fear, anxiety all fall within the predictable emotional range. more difficult to understand has been melancholy. i've felt melancholic a lot over the last week, and I have tried to figure out why: i know that I tend to turn fatigue into sadness, for instance, and it stands to reason that once the shoulder is feeling a little better i would have room to process all the subsidiary effects of the surgery: the trauma to the body, the dependence, the assault on my self-esteem, the self-brutalizing blame for getting myself into this position in the first place, and so on. you don't have to be deeply freudian to figure that's all got to come out sometime.
still, i do expect some connection between what happens in the moment and how i respond. so to feel sad today, after a good weekend, and on my way out of physio, which came after a spell in the hot pool and a ride on a stationary bike with a good book, was surprising. i mean, what i just described -- a little exercise, a good book, some flirtation, my time my own -- is pretty much the ideal life. i couldn't understand why i felt so blue, like everything was dissolving. i wondered if it was dismay over how quickly time is passing while i measure my day in shoulder flexion. i wondered if it was about missing the river valley, wanting to see how all my running trails smell in the spring. i wondered if it was about my job, if i was starting to fret about going back. i wondered if i was doing the right thing with my life, whether i am on the right path. or maybe it's the gray day, or something hormonal, or plain old garden-variety physical pain sublated into an emotional register. i thought about all of these things as i cried my way up the 105th st hill.
my acupuncturist took one look at my tongue and said, "gotcha." she could see weakness in the heart meridian. the heart is the emperor of the body in chinese medicine, and the emperor was not on his throne. as a result, all of the other portfolios were scrambling around, not knowing how to do their business -- like canada under mackenzie king, perhaps. surgery can mix up the meridians themselves: a coup de corps. my acupuncturist said that typically when this happens, people question everything: their jobs, their partners, where they live, how they act, what they want -- everything. you feel lackluster about your work, you wonder about your destiny. i'm not saying it's necessarily like this for you, she said (i continued to say nothing), but you don't have to worry. the cause for how you are feeling is not coming from outside, but from inside. what we need to do, she said, is call the emperor back to his throne.
i was in.
the points were completely different from anything we've done before. she needled heart one, heart three, and heart seven. heart seven, down by the wrist, connects the heart and the head. it allows you to know what you want, and to do it. heart three, inside of the upper arm, is the destiny point. she said, "pay attention to the images that you see while this needle is in." (i have more thinking to do about these images: the green, the water, the books.)
heart one, first point on the heart meridian, is like sticking a needle into the center of your heart, down through the myocardium to the endocardium, between the atria and ventricles, to wake it up. this point will recall the emperor and make you feel like yourself again -- which it did. within a half-hour the melancholy had receded and i was back to myself: curious, competent, outward-looking and vital.
the point is located in your armpit.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Heart healing
at first i didn't think i would like her at all. i like my clinics clinical. so when she said, "it's just you and me for now, so i thought we'd keep it casual, you know?," i almost fled. but as mo has pointed out to me, i am always better when i get acupuncture regularly, and so i stapled my butt to the chair and filled out all the forms.
it turns out, she's the most intuitive healer i've ever met. she listened to my pulse with her eyes closed for a long long time and then she said to me: "the reason you find it hard to make decisions isn't because you can't make a plan or execute it. that's the reason most people find it hard, but that isn't it for you. what's hard for you is that you don't know what you want. you don't know how to listen to your heart. or maybe you forget. it makes for very good dreams, do you dream a lot? your pulse also tells me that you are sweet and generous, and you do a lot for other people, and you worry for them. but the last thing you want is for them to see inside the garage. the allergies are there too, i can feel them, but they are insignificant. your heart is blocking the connection between what happens here [she touched my belly] and your head. the pain must be enormous. well, i can feel it. i know it is. we should work on this."
work we did, and more shocking talk, and i have been walking around in a heavy daze since.
it turns out, she's the most intuitive healer i've ever met. she listened to my pulse with her eyes closed for a long long time and then she said to me: "the reason you find it hard to make decisions isn't because you can't make a plan or execute it. that's the reason most people find it hard, but that isn't it for you. what's hard for you is that you don't know what you want. you don't know how to listen to your heart. or maybe you forget. it makes for very good dreams, do you dream a lot? your pulse also tells me that you are sweet and generous, and you do a lot for other people, and you worry for them. but the last thing you want is for them to see inside the garage. the allergies are there too, i can feel them, but they are insignificant. your heart is blocking the connection between what happens here [she touched my belly] and your head. the pain must be enormous. well, i can feel it. i know it is. we should work on this."
work we did, and more shocking talk, and i have been walking around in a heavy daze since.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
I heart my physio
it's a good day when i get to see oliver. that's not his real name, that's just what i call him. we have that kind of relationship, the kind where i give him pet names and he laughs at all my jokes. it's my shoulder that brought us together, my supraspinatus to be exact, but our relationship has gone beyond that now. oliver would do anything to heal me, and i would let him. do anything.
why do i always develop such a crush on my PTs? i do not know. i am smart enough to recognize transference when it pulls back the cubicle curtain to say hello, but i've never developed adequate transference in psychotherapy sessions. with counsellors i feel nervousness and shame. with my GP, performance anxiety. i'm neutral with my dentist. but check me into a physiotherapy session and i turn into a daddy's girl.
that's right: this does not happen with physios who are women. with them, i am a co-conspirator, a professional ally, tackling together this ruptured tendon or that torn hamstring. i do not wear my best bra or thrill to the prospect of ultrasound gel. we compare notes dispassionately on range of movement, avenues of treatment, prognoses and cautions. i want their respect. and when i earn it, sure, i think of baking them banana bread, but i don't spend long hours wondering whether their wives would mind me sending postcards from hawaii.
oliver knows everything. he speaks in latin phrases: swoon! his office is full of dangerous technical equipment -- stationary bikes, exercise balls, floor mats, you name it -- and he is the master of them all. "have we had you on the arm bike?," he asks. the arm bike! "no," i say, "but i sure would like to." he picks up a piece of surgical tubing and i feel my heart race: is that for me? he tells me to do three sets of exercises. i do four. i can tell by the furrow in his brow that my shoulder is a puzzle, but i can also tell, by the tender seriousness in his gaze, that oliver is not afraid of a rotator cuff injury. when i'm in pain, he's in pain. we share every triumph.
sometimes it's hard to be oliver's favorite. today, for instance, the girl in the next cubicle said, "okay, well, i'll call you tomorrow after that appointment." what? i retracted my scapula extra hard while i chewed on this. the thing is, though, our relationship just won't work if i get territorial. i can be generous. right? can i? i test out "generous," and it comes out magnanimous. little miss pre-op next door can't touch what oliver and i have.
when he comes in next to check on me i say, "i took the plane back from new york yesterday with a group that had just run the boston marathon." meaning: we should train for a marathon together, oliver. he says, "oh, i missed watching it this year." meaning: i missed you too, heather.
sigh.
i bet he can't wait for tuesday at 9:30.
why do i always develop such a crush on my PTs? i do not know. i am smart enough to recognize transference when it pulls back the cubicle curtain to say hello, but i've never developed adequate transference in psychotherapy sessions. with counsellors i feel nervousness and shame. with my GP, performance anxiety. i'm neutral with my dentist. but check me into a physiotherapy session and i turn into a daddy's girl.
that's right: this does not happen with physios who are women. with them, i am a co-conspirator, a professional ally, tackling together this ruptured tendon or that torn hamstring. i do not wear my best bra or thrill to the prospect of ultrasound gel. we compare notes dispassionately on range of movement, avenues of treatment, prognoses and cautions. i want their respect. and when i earn it, sure, i think of baking them banana bread, but i don't spend long hours wondering whether their wives would mind me sending postcards from hawaii.
oliver knows everything. he speaks in latin phrases: swoon! his office is full of dangerous technical equipment -- stationary bikes, exercise balls, floor mats, you name it -- and he is the master of them all. "have we had you on the arm bike?," he asks. the arm bike! "no," i say, "but i sure would like to." he picks up a piece of surgical tubing and i feel my heart race: is that for me? he tells me to do three sets of exercises. i do four. i can tell by the furrow in his brow that my shoulder is a puzzle, but i can also tell, by the tender seriousness in his gaze, that oliver is not afraid of a rotator cuff injury. when i'm in pain, he's in pain. we share every triumph.
sometimes it's hard to be oliver's favorite. today, for instance, the girl in the next cubicle said, "okay, well, i'll call you tomorrow after that appointment." what? i retracted my scapula extra hard while i chewed on this. the thing is, though, our relationship just won't work if i get territorial. i can be generous. right? can i? i test out "generous," and it comes out magnanimous. little miss pre-op next door can't touch what oliver and i have.
when he comes in next to check on me i say, "i took the plane back from new york yesterday with a group that had just run the boston marathon." meaning: we should train for a marathon together, oliver. he says, "oh, i missed watching it this year." meaning: i missed you too, heather.
sigh.
i bet he can't wait for tuesday at 9:30.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Better
working again this year has brought several moments of concern. whenever i have a bad spell, i worry that i am sliding back toward madness and despair. i scrutinize every thought, fret over every action, put the sharp knives and bourbon away.
i thought i'd return from my long time off with profound thoughts and insightful Rules for Living, but it's not like that. wasn't it gertrude stein who said, "knowledge is what you know"? knowing runs deep, like an orientation or a sensibility, and not like a list -- which means it's not always on the surface, available for a casual check-in.
still, every once in a while i get a glimpse into the before and after. today, in the middle of pulling together a presentation for tuesday, i went into my amazon.ca file. i know there are better ways to organize ideas and keep track of books, but i use the amazon shopping cart to store things that intrigue me, but not enough to shell out money for. i decided i was ready to move the following from "save for later" to "delete":
i thought i'd return from my long time off with profound thoughts and insightful Rules for Living, but it's not like that. wasn't it gertrude stein who said, "knowledge is what you know"? knowing runs deep, like an orientation or a sensibility, and not like a list -- which means it's not always on the surface, available for a casual check-in.
still, every once in a while i get a glimpse into the before and after. today, in the middle of pulling together a presentation for tuesday, i went into my amazon.ca file. i know there are better ways to organize ideas and keep track of books, but i use the amazon shopping cart to store things that intrigue me, but not enough to shell out money for. i decided i was ready to move the following from "save for later" to "delete":
- julie jensen, i don't know what i want but it's not this
- barbara winter, making a living without a job
- nicholas lore, the pathfinder: how to choose or change your career for a lifetime of satisfaction and success
- barbara sher, i could do anything ... if only i knew what it was
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Exposing my self
i've been wandering around all day in a fog. over the last hour or so it's occurred to me that it's because i'm tired. my feet hurt. my knees hurt. my hips hurt. okay, all of that can be traced to dancing in ridiculous heels last night -- but the outside of my forearms? my neck? i guess it's like this when tension leaves the body.
what i've realized during the last hour of slow consciousness (see slow food, slow growth) is that although i am tired, i am also really and truly better than i was a year ago or two. it's not just that i didn't pass out in the middle of the night and rip my forehead open, as i did at the end of exposure '07. and it's not that i find this easy: although i wrote breezily a few days back that i had lost track of my identity as dr zwicker, that kind of emotional dislocation is profound, for me. this week of supreme highs (bathhouse) and fears (will people come to the festival? will they like it? will our small board survive it?) and frustrations (which aren't worth rehearsing) and fragmentation (from 9-9:30 i'm schlepper, from 9:30-11:00 i'm teacher, from 11:00-1:00 i'm hzwicker@ualberta and zwickerhzwicker@gmail, then dr zee, then doctoral supervisor, then, starting at 4:00, professional lesbian, then sombre audience member) and neglect (does walking to the car count as exercise? how many nights a week is it ok to eat trail mix for dinner?): this kind of disaggregation is precisely what the doctor didn't order.
but i'm ok. i'm not great. in particular, i'm still bothered by that perennial sense that i should have done more; it grieved and guilted me to leave the party last night, for instance, knowing how much work it would be to take it down, and i can't believe i forgot, literally forgot, to go to play on friday night after the amy fung event at the ARTery. i feel uneasy, unsettled, uncertain -- all those "un"s suggesting that i don't feel any identifiable thing, just the opposite of many things. my sensitivities are dialed up, so i still don't know whether i'm right to be upset about the unlimited business, and i am spending way too much time fretting about people who are, really, tangential to my life (but did KW seem out of sorts to anyone else this week?). i don't know what i'll do with all this unclaimed time on my hands, nor how i'll survive without sending and receiving a hundred exposure-related emails a day. i worry, what if my sense of self really is predicated on being indispensable to others?
as i pause and read the paragraph i just wrote -- slow consciousness, remember? -- i'm struck by the repetition of "not knowing." apparently, i find it emotionally dangerous not to know. (my name is heather, and i'm a control freak....). but it's puzzling, nonetheless. isn't the unknown one of the main things to love about art? and isn't risk built into dealing with people? i'm all about grooving on folks who are unlike me, and i love seeing a painting or a photograph or a performance or a room -- the starlite lounge last night comes to mind -- that startles or intrigues or comforts or moves me into a different mental and emotional space.
it's odd, then, homeopathically odd, that the things that scare me the most are the things i seek to do. i probably should have been a bank teller, not a teacher who falls in love with her classes right before they end. i should work on safe events like the olympics rather than start-up queer arts and culture fests. i should make friends with the old and settled, not the up-and-comers who regularly leave this city.
"expose yourself" was the slogan of this year's festival. it's only now, as i spend a day musing and loitering, that i really understand that challenge. i'm pleased to discover that i'm well enough to meet it.
what i've realized during the last hour of slow consciousness (see slow food, slow growth) is that although i am tired, i am also really and truly better than i was a year ago or two. it's not just that i didn't pass out in the middle of the night and rip my forehead open, as i did at the end of exposure '07. and it's not that i find this easy: although i wrote breezily a few days back that i had lost track of my identity as dr zwicker, that kind of emotional dislocation is profound, for me. this week of supreme highs (bathhouse) and fears (will people come to the festival? will they like it? will our small board survive it?) and frustrations (which aren't worth rehearsing) and fragmentation (from 9-9:30 i'm schlepper, from 9:30-11:00 i'm teacher, from 11:00-1:00 i'm hzwicker@ualberta and zwickerhzwicker@gmail, then dr zee, then doctoral supervisor, then, starting at 4:00, professional lesbian, then sombre audience member) and neglect (does walking to the car count as exercise? how many nights a week is it ok to eat trail mix for dinner?): this kind of disaggregation is precisely what the doctor didn't order.
but i'm ok. i'm not great. in particular, i'm still bothered by that perennial sense that i should have done more; it grieved and guilted me to leave the party last night, for instance, knowing how much work it would be to take it down, and i can't believe i forgot, literally forgot, to go to play on friday night after the amy fung event at the ARTery. i feel uneasy, unsettled, uncertain -- all those "un"s suggesting that i don't feel any identifiable thing, just the opposite of many things. my sensitivities are dialed up, so i still don't know whether i'm right to be upset about the unlimited business, and i am spending way too much time fretting about people who are, really, tangential to my life (but did KW seem out of sorts to anyone else this week?). i don't know what i'll do with all this unclaimed time on my hands, nor how i'll survive without sending and receiving a hundred exposure-related emails a day. i worry, what if my sense of self really is predicated on being indispensable to others?
as i pause and read the paragraph i just wrote -- slow consciousness, remember? -- i'm struck by the repetition of "not knowing." apparently, i find it emotionally dangerous not to know. (my name is heather, and i'm a control freak....). but it's puzzling, nonetheless. isn't the unknown one of the main things to love about art? and isn't risk built into dealing with people? i'm all about grooving on folks who are unlike me, and i love seeing a painting or a photograph or a performance or a room -- the starlite lounge last night comes to mind -- that startles or intrigues or comforts or moves me into a different mental and emotional space.
it's odd, then, homeopathically odd, that the things that scare me the most are the things i seek to do. i probably should have been a bank teller, not a teacher who falls in love with her classes right before they end. i should work on safe events like the olympics rather than start-up queer arts and culture fests. i should make friends with the old and settled, not the up-and-comers who regularly leave this city.
"expose yourself" was the slogan of this year's festival. it's only now, as i spend a day musing and loitering, that i really understand that challenge. i'm pleased to discover that i'm well enough to meet it.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Confession from the yoga mat
the worst part of every yoga class is, hands down, the breathing. i understand the theory behind it. i'm a teacher too: you always need some sort of transition from the world beyond to the task at hand. and when it comes to bodywork, and especially the spirit-infused bodywork of yoga -- well, breathing just makes sense. of course you start with the breath.
but i gotta tell you, i hate it.
it's not like i don't try. i cross my legs and straighten my back. i allow my shoulders to relax and my chest to rise. i feel my spine like a long string of pearls. i close my eyes. i visualize The Breath of Life, i ponder the miracle of the pulmonary system (not in those terms, i use appropriately mystical terminology), and i feel:
nothing.
everybody else in the class seems serene. focused. even occasionally transported. i know, because i peek. they love to breathe. they groove on it. their bellies fill and their bellies empty and sometimes they smile. they feel at one with the universe. meanwhile, over on my purple mat, things are not going well. my feet are cramping. my anklebones hurt. my neck is stiff and i'm trying not to fart. worst of all, this breathing is having exactly the opposite mental effect than it's supposed to. instead of dwelling in the present, i'm becoming panicky about the future. i can't help listing the number of important things i could be doing with this time. a reckless multi-tasker, i generally breathe while i answer emails. you know, simultaneously.
when we finally, finally start to move, it's a relief beyond words. gingerly i unpretzel myself and before i know it, i'm lost in the bodywork. is there anything more satisfying than a really challenging pose? i'm amazed that i can wring out an inner organ, recalibrate my skeleton, and hover just a few inches off the ground on a good chaturanga day. i find relief in the exertion, and knowledge. every once in a while i get a bodily glimpse of what an asana is supposed to be like -- what it's supposed to "do" -- and i comprehend from the inside out. realization doesn't come at me in the usual way, like a cosmic baseball to the head ("suddenly, it hit me!"), but spreads like a pool inside me. i can't even pinpoint an origin. i just get it; i know.
at those glorious moments, the distinction between mind and body shimmies just enough that i can imagine what it might be like to sit quietly and follow my breath.
but i gotta tell you, i hate it.
it's not like i don't try. i cross my legs and straighten my back. i allow my shoulders to relax and my chest to rise. i feel my spine like a long string of pearls. i close my eyes. i visualize The Breath of Life, i ponder the miracle of the pulmonary system (not in those terms, i use appropriately mystical terminology), and i feel:
nothing.
everybody else in the class seems serene. focused. even occasionally transported. i know, because i peek. they love to breathe. they groove on it. their bellies fill and their bellies empty and sometimes they smile. they feel at one with the universe. meanwhile, over on my purple mat, things are not going well. my feet are cramping. my anklebones hurt. my neck is stiff and i'm trying not to fart. worst of all, this breathing is having exactly the opposite mental effect than it's supposed to. instead of dwelling in the present, i'm becoming panicky about the future. i can't help listing the number of important things i could be doing with this time. a reckless multi-tasker, i generally breathe while i answer emails. you know, simultaneously.
when we finally, finally start to move, it's a relief beyond words. gingerly i unpretzel myself and before i know it, i'm lost in the bodywork. is there anything more satisfying than a really challenging pose? i'm amazed that i can wring out an inner organ, recalibrate my skeleton, and hover just a few inches off the ground on a good chaturanga day. i find relief in the exertion, and knowledge. every once in a while i get a bodily glimpse of what an asana is supposed to be like -- what it's supposed to "do" -- and i comprehend from the inside out. realization doesn't come at me in the usual way, like a cosmic baseball to the head ("suddenly, it hit me!"), but spreads like a pool inside me. i can't even pinpoint an origin. i just get it; i know.
at those glorious moments, the distinction between mind and body shimmies just enough that i can imagine what it might be like to sit quietly and follow my breath.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Paging doctor zwicker
it's always the small things that do you in. in my case, the hospital gowns. i don't get it: why not make a single, standard robe, the type of garment a person could figure out once and for all? -- the type of robe even someone like me, someone who needed help putting on her own bra yesterday, could master? i stripped down three times today for the final phase of my heart testing, and each time found myself confronted with a poser. for the ECG, the gown appeared to be kimono-style. but how can you have a kimono-style gown with just one tie at the neck? thus i found myself flashing the entire cardio ward in my search for a loo.
down in the x-ray unit, i caught the tech before she left and asked, casually, "anything i need to know about the gown?" "nope!," she said brightly, "just the usual. three arms."
three arms? three frickin' arms? what is this, some kind of joke? i pulled one down off the shelf and, sure enough, the innocuous-looking pale blue gown turned out to be built for a mutant. an ungainlier garment you have never seen. and that's before i put it on.
i'll say this for the cardiac ease clinic at the uofa hospital: they run a helluva shop. my appointments were scheduled for 9:15 (holter monitor removal), 10:00 (ECG), 10:30 (xray) and 11:30 (cardiologist), but i was moved efficiently from ward to ward and was done everything but the consult by 9:50. i wasn't particularly looking forward to an hour and a half of outdated chatelaine, but the cardio unit had other surprises in store. "let's get you set up with a pager," said the receptionist, "and you can go off and get some lunch." i stared. lunch at 10? but also: a pager?? nobody's ever paged me for a literary emergency ("doctor zwicker, doctor zwicker, we have a poetry situation in the humanities centre"), so this felt like a big moment. she passed over a round red disk with a flashing beacon. "it'll work anywhere in the hospital and even over at the tim hortons," she said. seeing my confusion -- have they mistaken me for a real doctor? -- she added, "it works just like the pagers you get at restaurants." no help. but i nodded sagely anyhow.
they didn't page, but i still enjoyed the fantasy that they might. i felt important, sitting next to my little pager. i kept picking it up, just to be sure it was working, then imagined what i'd say if they did page me. i played out the fantasy all the way back to the cardio unit and into the exam room. i was phrasing introductions with the cardiologist: "dr haraphongse? dr zwicker." "dr zwicker! i'm dr haraphongse." handshakes all around, when --
-- when the nurse practitioner interrupted my reverie by suggesting, ever so gently, "you might want to turn that gown around before the doctor comes in."
oh, and the diagnosis? "vasovagal syncope." translation: "you're a fainter." treatment: "if you're going to faint, try to avoid hitting your head."
down in the x-ray unit, i caught the tech before she left and asked, casually, "anything i need to know about the gown?" "nope!," she said brightly, "just the usual. three arms."
three arms? three frickin' arms? what is this, some kind of joke? i pulled one down off the shelf and, sure enough, the innocuous-looking pale blue gown turned out to be built for a mutant. an ungainlier garment you have never seen. and that's before i put it on.
i'll say this for the cardiac ease clinic at the uofa hospital: they run a helluva shop. my appointments were scheduled for 9:15 (holter monitor removal), 10:00 (ECG), 10:30 (xray) and 11:30 (cardiologist), but i was moved efficiently from ward to ward and was done everything but the consult by 9:50. i wasn't particularly looking forward to an hour and a half of outdated chatelaine, but the cardio unit had other surprises in store. "let's get you set up with a pager," said the receptionist, "and you can go off and get some lunch." i stared. lunch at 10? but also: a pager?? nobody's ever paged me for a literary emergency ("doctor zwicker, doctor zwicker, we have a poetry situation in the humanities centre"), so this felt like a big moment. she passed over a round red disk with a flashing beacon. "it'll work anywhere in the hospital and even over at the tim hortons," she said. seeing my confusion -- have they mistaken me for a real doctor? -- she added, "it works just like the pagers you get at restaurants." no help. but i nodded sagely anyhow.
they didn't page, but i still enjoyed the fantasy that they might. i felt important, sitting next to my little pager. i kept picking it up, just to be sure it was working, then imagined what i'd say if they did page me. i played out the fantasy all the way back to the cardio unit and into the exam room. i was phrasing introductions with the cardiologist: "dr haraphongse? dr zwicker." "dr zwicker! i'm dr haraphongse." handshakes all around, when --
-- when the nurse practitioner interrupted my reverie by suggesting, ever so gently, "you might want to turn that gown around before the doctor comes in."
oh, and the diagnosis? "vasovagal syncope." translation: "you're a fainter." treatment: "if you're going to faint, try to avoid hitting your head."
Monday, March 10, 2008
I don't heart my monitor
first, it's not called a "halter monitor," as i'd supposed, but a "Holter monitor." in my imagination, it was one of those sexy black chest straps that only the buffest boyz at the gym wear, shirtless ostensibly to provide access to their cyborganism but really to show off their abs. that's what i thought i was getting, and i even packed a gym bag, thinking i'd stop for a workout on my way home from the cardiac clinic.
a Holter monitor is a whole other thing. don't get me wrong. i'm not an ingrate. the idea of a rolling ECG is cool. but the thing itself is pinchy and awkward and clunky and really quite ugly. there are seven plastic discs stuck to my chest. each is connected to a medium-gauge wire that measures the electrical signals from my heart. the seven wires, color coded, come together in a flat, wide plug lying against my sternum. the cord coming out the back end of this plug -- and we're talking a pretty heavy cord here, like an extension cord -- goes up around my neck, down my shirt sleeve and into the monitor itself, which is a flat grey institutional box the size of an old-school handycam. this sits in a grey canvas pouch with black neoprene straps that you wear over your shoulder, mailbag style. the contraption makes a fanny pack look chic by comparison.
but wait, you're wondering, what about your bra? indeed. let's just say i puzzled over that one for a bit and eventually called my tech, anne, back behind the curtain for assistance. she had a clever way of threading it up, over and through the various wires, a technique i realized immediately i could never master. and that pretty much put paid to the plan of going to the gym.
for 24 hours, i walk around like barton fink carrying a head around in a box. only in my case, it's my heart i'm wearing on my sleeve.
and yet, even though my heart is right out there for all the world to see, it remains opaque. somewhere inside the box, a digital motherboard is tracking my heart's every modulation, but this record will only be read retrospectively, by an expert, tomorrow. for now, for me, it's the usual guessing game.
a Holter monitor is a whole other thing. don't get me wrong. i'm not an ingrate. the idea of a rolling ECG is cool. but the thing itself is pinchy and awkward and clunky and really quite ugly. there are seven plastic discs stuck to my chest. each is connected to a medium-gauge wire that measures the electrical signals from my heart. the seven wires, color coded, come together in a flat, wide plug lying against my sternum. the cord coming out the back end of this plug -- and we're talking a pretty heavy cord here, like an extension cord -- goes up around my neck, down my shirt sleeve and into the monitor itself, which is a flat grey institutional box the size of an old-school handycam. this sits in a grey canvas pouch with black neoprene straps that you wear over your shoulder, mailbag style. the contraption makes a fanny pack look chic by comparison.
but wait, you're wondering, what about your bra? indeed. let's just say i puzzled over that one for a bit and eventually called my tech, anne, back behind the curtain for assistance. she had a clever way of threading it up, over and through the various wires, a technique i realized immediately i could never master. and that pretty much put paid to the plan of going to the gym.
for 24 hours, i walk around like barton fink carrying a head around in a box. only in my case, it's my heart i'm wearing on my sleeve.
and yet, even though my heart is right out there for all the world to see, it remains opaque. somewhere inside the box, a digital motherboard is tracking my heart's every modulation, but this record will only be read retrospectively, by an expert, tomorrow. for now, for me, it's the usual guessing game.
Monday, March 3, 2008
How I fell in love with my heart
i know, i know: it's a ponderous title for a blog, "sonography of the heart." but let me tell you the story of today, and maybe you can see why, ponderous or not, i like it.
i've been having some health troubles over the last couple of years. i had a wee breakdown in the late summer/early fall of 2006, after which I was on medical leave for six months. i took effexor (venlafaxine) for 18 months. by december 2007 i was having trouble staying conscious. what i mean is, i was fainting routinely. one time i cracked my head open on a sharp-edged table going down, leaving me with a rakish scar over my right eye. it was worrying. i was worried. my partner was worried. and so my doctor referred me to a cardiologist. (at the same time, i was having hot flashes, gaining weight, and experiencing other unpleasant things, so i decided to quit effexor, which i'm sure you'll hear more about in future posts.)
this morning was my first of four cardiac tests, an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart. i was nervous about it. i knew it wouldn't hurt, but what might it mean? i tried to prepare myself for anything.
but i could not have prepared myself for what i experienced, which is that an echocardiogram is beautiful. stunning, actually. i nearly wept at the beauty of it, my four-chambered heart beating away, valves doing their valvular thing, the mechanism -- no, the muscle of it -- working steadily away and asking nothing in return. the image is the type we've all grown familiar with through two decades, now, of pregnancy ultrasounds: grainy horizontal lines where nothing is particularly clear except the dizzying fact that you are looking at your own insides. the tech (a lovely woman who described some of the tattoos she's seen in over fifteen years of doing this work) took images from several different perspectives during the forty-minute procedure. there was a photoshop-like pallet on the righthand side of the screen. when she turned on the color, squirts of red light and blue light coursed through the centre of the image. occasionally a mustard yellow explosion with a white centre marked -- well, i'm not sure just what it marked, exactly, but something electrifying. the tech looked at the back of my heart through my liver ("nice liver!"). she looked at the top of my heart coming down through my esophagus. she showed me the walls of my heart ("gorgeous!") and measured my diastolic and systolic blood pressure. i felt weirdly flattered -- no one's ever complimented my liver before -- and i felt humble and awed to see everything my heart does projected onto a TV screen.
then the tech turned on the sound, and it was liking being at the aquarium. the sound was dopplerized, turning my heartbeat from the conventional lub-dub into something that, oh, a manatee might say. "don't worry about the sound," said the tech, to reassure me, "sound is good!" but i was already gone on it. i was thinking of that song by Stars, the montreal band, that starts "i am [chris/amy/torq/etc], and this is my heart." i am heather, and this is my heart -- and, i thought suddenly, i'm going to blog this. i'm going to try to capture the resonances normally beyond human hearing, echo and amplify them, cast them in language. i will listen to my heart.
and this is where my blog begins: me, lying in a darkened room, the march snow forgotten, looking at the incontrovertible evidence that i am, simply, alive.
i've been having some health troubles over the last couple of years. i had a wee breakdown in the late summer/early fall of 2006, after which I was on medical leave for six months. i took effexor (venlafaxine) for 18 months. by december 2007 i was having trouble staying conscious. what i mean is, i was fainting routinely. one time i cracked my head open on a sharp-edged table going down, leaving me with a rakish scar over my right eye. it was worrying. i was worried. my partner was worried. and so my doctor referred me to a cardiologist. (at the same time, i was having hot flashes, gaining weight, and experiencing other unpleasant things, so i decided to quit effexor, which i'm sure you'll hear more about in future posts.)
this morning was my first of four cardiac tests, an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart. i was nervous about it. i knew it wouldn't hurt, but what might it mean? i tried to prepare myself for anything.
but i could not have prepared myself for what i experienced, which is that an echocardiogram is beautiful. stunning, actually. i nearly wept at the beauty of it, my four-chambered heart beating away, valves doing their valvular thing, the mechanism -- no, the muscle of it -- working steadily away and asking nothing in return. the image is the type we've all grown familiar with through two decades, now, of pregnancy ultrasounds: grainy horizontal lines where nothing is particularly clear except the dizzying fact that you are looking at your own insides. the tech (a lovely woman who described some of the tattoos she's seen in over fifteen years of doing this work) took images from several different perspectives during the forty-minute procedure. there was a photoshop-like pallet on the righthand side of the screen. when she turned on the color, squirts of red light and blue light coursed through the centre of the image. occasionally a mustard yellow explosion with a white centre marked -- well, i'm not sure just what it marked, exactly, but something electrifying. the tech looked at the back of my heart through my liver ("nice liver!"). she looked at the top of my heart coming down through my esophagus. she showed me the walls of my heart ("gorgeous!") and measured my diastolic and systolic blood pressure. i felt weirdly flattered -- no one's ever complimented my liver before -- and i felt humble and awed to see everything my heart does projected onto a TV screen.
then the tech turned on the sound, and it was liking being at the aquarium. the sound was dopplerized, turning my heartbeat from the conventional lub-dub into something that, oh, a manatee might say. "don't worry about the sound," said the tech, to reassure me, "sound is good!" but i was already gone on it. i was thinking of that song by Stars, the montreal band, that starts "i am [chris/amy/torq/etc], and this is my heart." i am heather, and this is my heart -- and, i thought suddenly, i'm going to blog this. i'm going to try to capture the resonances normally beyond human hearing, echo and amplify them, cast them in language. i will listen to my heart.
and this is where my blog begins: me, lying in a darkened room, the march snow forgotten, looking at the incontrovertible evidence that i am, simply, alive.
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