Saturday, January 10, 2004
Welts
I've been thinking "soon I'll rejoin the world," but then I thought a better way of saying it is "soon I will repatriate." I've never really left the world. Only my relationship to it has been altered. Is there a word rematriate ? I have not left my motherland. It seems a fatherland from which I have been absent.
Since the beginning, the part of my world that's given over to medicine has always seemed a patriarchy. From my dear father Raul Stanati's early and unsubtle insistence that I become a doctor, through my own later impudent characterization of my field as "stern master medicine," medicine has always seemed a province whose influence over me is classically paternal: strict, exacting, anxiety-provoking, hierarchical. Replete with rules and obligations, precisely marshalled rewards and punishments. The image of a puppet occurs to me: of limbs precisely controlled by an external agency. Not a dance erupting, flowering from within.
Practicing medicine, I have felt like Persephone in the underworld. Like Jonah in the whale. Alienated, kidnapped, imprisoned, punished, inwardly rebelling, fleeing. Controlled by, possessed by a stranger. At its worst, it entrains feelings of terrible inauthenticity and fear. Of being pecked at by a flock of hungry birds. Most of the time there's just a small fume of dysphoria to clinical dailiness and caring for patients.
And a longing for Demeter's house. And for Demeter.
The existential analysts (does anyone ever think about these folks anymore ?) delineated three lived, experiential "worlds" that they called the umwelt, the mitwelt and the eigenwelt. The umwelt is the surrounding physical world, the environment. The mitwelt is the world of relationship. The eigenwelt is one's relationship to oneself and to the world through oneself. Rollo May writes in his 1958 introduction to Existence that the eigenwelt an "unexplored fronteir of psychotherapeutic theory" and that the "self knowing self" is "closer to us than our breathing." Investigating this world -- which is both "inner" and "outer" -- is, of course, the province of meditation. The eigenwelt IS meditation.
My own personal crisis has been in the mitwelt. I understand it well enough -- a biological substrate of shyness, passivity and timidity, a psychodynamic tendency to relate to people as if they were fathers -- and I simply do not think there is a "cure" for such a fundamental way of being in the world, any more than there is a cure for "blue" or "wet."
The problem, the dissonance, arises when the world begins making demands that go against the grain of one's abilities and proclivities.
I just finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, a story with an autistic narrator. I felt immense sympathy for the narrator. His special abilities and proclivities made being in the world enormously difficult for him -- in the spheres of understanding and relating to other people, of interpreting emotional and epistemological nuance. He develops strategies for navigating the world, which, given the world's intolerance for difference, don't always work. But he sets out bravely, and pursues what he needs. His fantasy of paradise is being alone in a bathysphere at the ocean's bottom, or being the last survivor after a plague wipes out humanity.
On some level, it's the same for all of us: we find that we are strangers, outsiders; that the world is knocking uncomfortably at our skin with either too-open, too-vacant spaces or with jostling, impinging throngs.
I'm trying to imagine myself into the opposite of me: someone who is gregarious, exuberant, active, bold, in a profession that imposes quietude, reflection, obedience and isolation. Bill Clinton, say, in a Carthusian hermitage ?
Since the beginning, the part of my world that's given over to medicine has always seemed a patriarchy. From my dear father Raul Stanati's early and unsubtle insistence that I become a doctor, through my own later impudent characterization of my field as "stern master medicine," medicine has always seemed a province whose influence over me is classically paternal: strict, exacting, anxiety-provoking, hierarchical. Replete with rules and obligations, precisely marshalled rewards and punishments. The image of a puppet occurs to me: of limbs precisely controlled by an external agency. Not a dance erupting, flowering from within.
Practicing medicine, I have felt like Persephone in the underworld. Like Jonah in the whale. Alienated, kidnapped, imprisoned, punished, inwardly rebelling, fleeing. Controlled by, possessed by a stranger. At its worst, it entrains feelings of terrible inauthenticity and fear. Of being pecked at by a flock of hungry birds. Most of the time there's just a small fume of dysphoria to clinical dailiness and caring for patients.
And a longing for Demeter's house. And for Demeter.
The existential analysts (does anyone ever think about these folks anymore ?) delineated three lived, experiential "worlds" that they called the umwelt, the mitwelt and the eigenwelt. The umwelt is the surrounding physical world, the environment. The mitwelt is the world of relationship. The eigenwelt is one's relationship to oneself and to the world through oneself. Rollo May writes in his 1958 introduction to Existence that the eigenwelt an "unexplored fronteir of psychotherapeutic theory" and that the "self knowing self" is "closer to us than our breathing." Investigating this world -- which is both "inner" and "outer" -- is, of course, the province of meditation. The eigenwelt IS meditation.
My own personal crisis has been in the mitwelt. I understand it well enough -- a biological substrate of shyness, passivity and timidity, a psychodynamic tendency to relate to people as if they were fathers -- and I simply do not think there is a "cure" for such a fundamental way of being in the world, any more than there is a cure for "blue" or "wet."
The problem, the dissonance, arises when the world begins making demands that go against the grain of one's abilities and proclivities.
I just finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, a story with an autistic narrator. I felt immense sympathy for the narrator. His special abilities and proclivities made being in the world enormously difficult for him -- in the spheres of understanding and relating to other people, of interpreting emotional and epistemological nuance. He develops strategies for navigating the world, which, given the world's intolerance for difference, don't always work. But he sets out bravely, and pursues what he needs. His fantasy of paradise is being alone in a bathysphere at the ocean's bottom, or being the last survivor after a plague wipes out humanity.
On some level, it's the same for all of us: we find that we are strangers, outsiders; that the world is knocking uncomfortably at our skin with either too-open, too-vacant spaces or with jostling, impinging throngs.
I'm trying to imagine myself into the opposite of me: someone who is gregarious, exuberant, active, bold, in a profession that imposes quietude, reflection, obedience and isolation. Bill Clinton, say, in a Carthusian hermitage ?
Friday, January 09, 2004
Leaving Albert
I gave him his One Last Night, the bastard.
I'd promised, and I'm a woman of my word.
I avoided him all evening. I could hear his Gollum-like wheedling from the dusty corner where I'd flung him that morning. Finally, hours later than I'd promised, I pinned up my Saddam Hussein tresses, closed my eyes and bared my neck.
Albert's grimy hands closed around it for the last time. Fuck you, Albert, I muttered, popping a Valium. I'm gonna spend our last night together in oblivion.
And at seven thirty this morning I pried his sticky fingers from my neck for the last time. His outraged cry was hoarse and rough as velcro ripped right next to the ear.
See you in Hell, Albert.
I'd promised, and I'm a woman of my word.
I avoided him all evening. I could hear his Gollum-like wheedling from the dusty corner where I'd flung him that morning. Finally, hours later than I'd promised, I pinned up my Saddam Hussein tresses, closed my eyes and bared my neck.
Albert's grimy hands closed around it for the last time. Fuck you, Albert, I muttered, popping a Valium. I'm gonna spend our last night together in oblivion.
And at seven thirty this morning I pried his sticky fingers from my neck for the last time. His outraged cry was hoarse and rough as velcro ripped right next to the ear.
See you in Hell, Albert.
Anonymous Grass Again
Abandoned Hermitage
Loathsome Neo-Phelpsian Ron Crews "Misspoke" Quoting Zogby Poll
Boston.com / News / Local / Opposition leader says he 'misspoke' on poll findings
And I would characterize "misspoke" as another instance of misspeaking.
He LIED. Then lied about lying. He distorted the poll results by dismissing 13 questions as merely "demographic," and quoting only those seven that clearly supported his loathsome agenda. Another way of saying this is that he bore false witness. Broke a commandment. ("Doctor" Crews is an evangelical pastor, a right wing Republican zealot and member of the Georgia state legislature from 1992-1998.
What poll questions did he dismiss as merely "demographic" ?
Respondants approved of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in favor of gay marriage 36% to 20% (with an alarming 40% admitting cluelessness.) Plus "Forty-eight percent of those polled agreed with the idea that "marriage is such an important institution that it should be defined in our constitution as the union of a man and a woman." Forty-nine percent disagreed."
Those, Dr Crews, are not merely demographic questions.
Let me be even clearer. The Globe quotes Crews:
"When first asked Wednesday, Crews said that the seven questions he released were the only ones with valuable polling data and that the others were demographic in nature."
Liar. Hypocrite. Bigot.
And I would characterize "misspoke" as another instance of misspeaking.
He LIED. Then lied about lying. He distorted the poll results by dismissing 13 questions as merely "demographic," and quoting only those seven that clearly supported his loathsome agenda. Another way of saying this is that he bore false witness. Broke a commandment. ("Doctor" Crews is an evangelical pastor, a right wing Republican zealot and member of the Georgia state legislature from 1992-1998.
What poll questions did he dismiss as merely "demographic" ?
Respondants approved of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in favor of gay marriage 36% to 20% (with an alarming 40% admitting cluelessness.) Plus "Forty-eight percent of those polled agreed with the idea that "marriage is such an important institution that it should be defined in our constitution as the union of a man and a woman." Forty-nine percent disagreed."
Those, Dr Crews, are not merely demographic questions.
Let me be even clearer. The Globe quotes Crews:
"When first asked Wednesday, Crews said that the seven questions he released were the only ones with valuable polling data and that the others were demographic in nature."
Liar. Hypocrite. Bigot.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
On Political Annoyance
I continue to be annoyed by Dr Dean.
I am aware that annoyance is a luxury we may not be able to afford.
But is it too late to start a draft Barney Frank movement ? He's got scads of federal experience, has been resolutely anti-war, plus he's a hell of an amusing and articulate guy. We could use a hell of an articulate and amusing guy after what we've been through with W., who is the antithesis of that.
But back to Dr Dean and annoying. I admit that I would prefer four years of annoyance over four more years of being infuriated, outraged, ashamed, horrified, disgusted and exasperated (n.b. I have left out a lot of adjectives here).
Dean's begun to talk about his faith. He's a Congregationalist. Was Episcopalian until his church opposed a bike path through its property.
Dr Dean goes to great lengths to explain the theology behind his support for civil unions in Vermont. I would not argue with him on this, although I think his stated analysis is pretty inane: "From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people." I don't particularly like his image -- a specifically male deity who "thinks" and is a hands-on type creator. One wonders whether he's tailoring his vocabulary to reach a fundamentalist sector of the electorate. Am I wrong to find his new excursion into the vocabulary of "faith" to reek of vote pandering ?
I do like his comment that "the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind" -- something that the ever-pious Mr Bush seems to have overlooked in his public displays of Christian sanctimony. I can never get my fill of highlighting Bushian religious hypocrisy.
What I would like to ask Dr Dean is this: Given your positive theological analysis of this issue, why NOT support gay "marriage" ? Just SAY the M word Dr Dean ! I notice that, in the interview upon which the Globe article was based, our ever-milquetoasting press neglected to ask him this all-too pertinent follow-up question.
I know. It's politics. In a country that's reading rightwing Christian fantasy diet books It's a press that, when it's not asleep at the wheel, is being a house organ for the icky status quo. One has to give Dean credit for the distance he does go. But still.
Perhaps my pique was fueled by a companion article in the Globe today about Massachusetts' loathsome anti-gay marriage crusader, Ron Crews, and his fundamentalist coalition, who are apparantly launching an effort to codify faith-based homophobia into the Massachusetts Constitution.
Is neo-Phelpsian a word ?
I am aware that annoyance is a luxury we may not be able to afford.
But is it too late to start a draft Barney Frank movement ? He's got scads of federal experience, has been resolutely anti-war, plus he's a hell of an amusing and articulate guy. We could use a hell of an articulate and amusing guy after what we've been through with W., who is the antithesis of that.
But back to Dr Dean and annoying. I admit that I would prefer four years of annoyance over four more years of being infuriated, outraged, ashamed, horrified, disgusted and exasperated (n.b. I have left out a lot of adjectives here).
Dean's begun to talk about his faith. He's a Congregationalist. Was Episcopalian until his church opposed a bike path through its property.
Dr Dean goes to great lengths to explain the theology behind his support for civil unions in Vermont. I would not argue with him on this, although I think his stated analysis is pretty inane: "From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people." I don't particularly like his image -- a specifically male deity who "thinks" and is a hands-on type creator. One wonders whether he's tailoring his vocabulary to reach a fundamentalist sector of the electorate. Am I wrong to find his new excursion into the vocabulary of "faith" to reek of vote pandering ?
I do like his comment that "the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind" -- something that the ever-pious Mr Bush seems to have overlooked in his public displays of Christian sanctimony. I can never get my fill of highlighting Bushian religious hypocrisy.
What I would like to ask Dr Dean is this: Given your positive theological analysis of this issue, why NOT support gay "marriage" ? Just SAY the M word Dr Dean ! I notice that, in the interview upon which the Globe article was based, our ever-milquetoasting press neglected to ask him this all-too pertinent follow-up question.
I know. It's politics. In a country that's reading rightwing Christian fantasy diet books It's a press that, when it's not asleep at the wheel, is being a house organ for the icky status quo. One has to give Dean credit for the distance he does go. But still.
Perhaps my pique was fueled by a companion article in the Globe today about Massachusetts' loathsome anti-gay marriage crusader, Ron Crews, and his fundamentalist coalition, who are apparantly launching an effort to codify faith-based homophobia into the Massachusetts Constitution.
Is neo-Phelpsian a word ?
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Idle Hands, volume 875
So I went to Amazon looking for a CD containing Ralph Vaughn Williams' "Come My Way My Truth My Life." I was listening to my Vaughn Williams Xmas CD, to his Variations on a Theme From Thomas Tallis. My Dear Father, Raul Stanati, sang "Come My Way.." when I was growing up, so it's in my musical bedrock, and it's a beautiful setting of the George Herbert poem.
Fragments of Raul's repertoire -- he had and still has a lovely baritone voice -- litter my musical consciousness. Bits of Schubert's Winterreise, of Mendelssohn's Elijah, of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and the Magic Flute, of Debussy's L'Enfant Prodigue, of the Messiah. There's a song I can't locate, maybe by Randall Thompson, that begins: I sit alone in a waystation/on a long railroad/waiting for a train to pick me up. Raul still sings at weddings. And funerals.
Suddenly, a few days ago, out of the blue, I thought of Percy Grainger. He's in my "English Folk Song Influenced Composer" brain file next to Ralph Vaughn Williams. I think we played a piece by him in high school band, a suite of country dances called "Lincolnshire Posy." I have carried around a mental image of him as a hoary, wooly-haired English gent. How could I not with that name -- Percy Grainger ? I mean, it reeks of sheep and shepherds. Tweeds. Pipe tobacco. Utterly bucolic.
Turns out he was an Aussie, who hung with Grieg and Dvorak, and is quite possibly the most beautiful man who ever lived.
Even if he falls into utter musical obscurity, he deserves to be remembered for his ravishing, pre-raphaelite looks.
Fragments of Raul's repertoire -- he had and still has a lovely baritone voice -- litter my musical consciousness. Bits of Schubert's Winterreise, of Mendelssohn's Elijah, of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and the Magic Flute, of Debussy's L'Enfant Prodigue, of the Messiah. There's a song I can't locate, maybe by Randall Thompson, that begins: I sit alone in a waystation/on a long railroad/waiting for a train to pick me up. Raul still sings at weddings. And funerals.
Suddenly, a few days ago, out of the blue, I thought of Percy Grainger. He's in my "English Folk Song Influenced Composer" brain file next to Ralph Vaughn Williams. I think we played a piece by him in high school band, a suite of country dances called "Lincolnshire Posy." I have carried around a mental image of him as a hoary, wooly-haired English gent. How could I not with that name -- Percy Grainger ? I mean, it reeks of sheep and shepherds. Tweeds. Pipe tobacco. Utterly bucolic.
Turns out he was an Aussie, who hung with Grieg and Dvorak, and is quite possibly the most beautiful man who ever lived.
Even if he falls into utter musical obscurity, he deserves to be remembered for his ravishing, pre-raphaelite looks.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Blogging About Blogging Is Like Boggling About Googling
"Blogging about blogging" opens the file in my brain where the famous quote "talking/writing about music is like dancing about architecture" is stored. Leaving aside the humiliating insight that my intellect operates via clang associations rather than profound metaphorical or logical connections, I Googled the phrase to see who said it.
Turns out no one really knows. It's variously attributed to Elvis Costello, Frank Zappa, Laurie Anderson, Steve Martin, John Cage, Clara Schumann, Thelonious Monk and others.
But Googling "blogging about blogging is like" returns no hits. Neither does the subtly different but related "blogging about blogs is like."
So does it fall to Paula's House of Toast to inject a half baked phrase into the Googlanacular ?
Looking at my stats recently, I learned that the Paula's House of Toast ranks first out of 427 on the Google search paula begone. I have seen bloggers boast about their blog being the first ranked hit of various google searches, so this is my blog brag. Blog brag. Now there's a horrid little phrase. Paula, begone !
I am sorry to have to admit that my other blog, "Anita Rust," is buried deep on page thirteen of the Google search results on physical control of nematodes by steaming.
I'm gonna steam them worms right outta my hair.
I like effecting Google. That's probably evil. Narcissistic. Increasing the noise to signal ratio for serious web searchers. I feel like a gnat on an elephant. Pesky, small, possibly carrying some spirochete-related contagion.
But, I'm sorry, call me callous, call me elitist, anyone needing "robin cook toxin character analysis" -- as if Dr Cook's medical thrillers contain "characters" nuanced enough to withstand "analysis" -- deserves to be confronted with whatever Anita Rust has to say. And that someone might be writing about Toxin as an academic assignment frankly boggles. And that they're Googling for help, boggles further.
And there we have our half-toasted phrase: Blogging About Blogging Is Like Boggling About Googling.
And I, Paula, said it first.
Turns out no one really knows. It's variously attributed to Elvis Costello, Frank Zappa, Laurie Anderson, Steve Martin, John Cage, Clara Schumann, Thelonious Monk and others.
But Googling "blogging about blogging is like" returns no hits. Neither does the subtly different but related "blogging about blogs is like."
So does it fall to Paula's House of Toast to inject a half baked phrase into the Googlanacular ?
Looking at my stats recently, I learned that the Paula's House of Toast ranks first out of 427 on the Google search paula begone. I have seen bloggers boast about their blog being the first ranked hit of various google searches, so this is my blog brag. Blog brag. Now there's a horrid little phrase. Paula, begone !
I am sorry to have to admit that my other blog, "Anita Rust," is buried deep on page thirteen of the Google search results on physical control of nematodes by steaming.
I'm gonna steam them worms right outta my hair.
I like effecting Google. That's probably evil. Narcissistic. Increasing the noise to signal ratio for serious web searchers. I feel like a gnat on an elephant. Pesky, small, possibly carrying some spirochete-related contagion.
But, I'm sorry, call me callous, call me elitist, anyone needing "robin cook toxin character analysis" -- as if Dr Cook's medical thrillers contain "characters" nuanced enough to withstand "analysis" -- deserves to be confronted with whatever Anita Rust has to say. And that someone might be writing about Toxin as an academic assignment frankly boggles. And that they're Googling for help, boggles further.
And there we have our half-toasted phrase: Blogging About Blogging Is Like Boggling About Googling.
And I, Paula, said it first.
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Academic Veterinarians Maim Then Kill Dogs For Science
Tufts Students Ask School To Stop Killing Dogs
This is pretty shocking.
Tufts Veterinary School's ethics committee sanctioned an experiment that involved fracturing both hind legs of six dogs, and applying a standard external fixation device to half of the legs, and a "newly developed flexible bone brace" to the other half. The dogs were then to be euthanized and the bones examined for healing.
Students, one would hope most of them, were outraged. Some protested. Their protests have not been heeded. The experiments were done, and the dogs are being euthanized in order to dissect these legs and check for healing. Leaving aside for a moment the brutal premise of the experiment -- breaking animals' legs -- is there a reason why standard measures of healing -- xrays, bone scans, CT scans etc. and clinical function can't be the measured end points ? The school claims histopathology is the "gold standard" end point.
But what is the ethical "gold standard" in veterinary research ?
One wonders why a clinical experiment could not have been devised: with informed consent from owners, randomize 100 sequential dogs with already-broken legs to receive either the standard treatment or the new brace, and monitor clinical outcomes by xrays, bones scans, CT scans, functional assessments.
One also wonders about who is funding the experiment. None of the reports I've found addresses this. In fact the first I learned about this was from a one paragraph regional news brief buried deep in the Boston Globe today. Several articles I found via Google News state "a new product" is being researched. One must ask: do the researchers stand to profit ? Have they taken out patents ? Is there an anticipated human application with even bigger potential profits on the horizon ? Are veterinary schools in the business conducting of animal experiments with anticipated human applications ? Who is funding the study ?
I'm disappointed that the Boston Globe has had virtually no coverage of this story.
This is pretty shocking.
Tufts Veterinary School's ethics committee sanctioned an experiment that involved fracturing both hind legs of six dogs, and applying a standard external fixation device to half of the legs, and a "newly developed flexible bone brace" to the other half. The dogs were then to be euthanized and the bones examined for healing.
Students, one would hope most of them, were outraged. Some protested. Their protests have not been heeded. The experiments were done, and the dogs are being euthanized in order to dissect these legs and check for healing. Leaving aside for a moment the brutal premise of the experiment -- breaking animals' legs -- is there a reason why standard measures of healing -- xrays, bone scans, CT scans etc. and clinical function can't be the measured end points ? The school claims histopathology is the "gold standard" end point.
But what is the ethical "gold standard" in veterinary research ?
One wonders why a clinical experiment could not have been devised: with informed consent from owners, randomize 100 sequential dogs with already-broken legs to receive either the standard treatment or the new brace, and monitor clinical outcomes by xrays, bones scans, CT scans, functional assessments.
One also wonders about who is funding the experiment. None of the reports I've found addresses this. In fact the first I learned about this was from a one paragraph regional news brief buried deep in the Boston Globe today. Several articles I found via Google News state "a new product" is being researched. One must ask: do the researchers stand to profit ? Have they taken out patents ? Is there an anticipated human application with even bigger potential profits on the horizon ? Are veterinary schools in the business conducting of animal experiments with anticipated human applications ? Who is funding the study ?
I'm disappointed that the Boston Globe has had virtually no coverage of this story.
