[Above photo: I love cemeteries, preserving as they do peaceful open space in metropolitan areas. They are funny, too, implying that the deceased care about the size of their stone/mausoleum or their surroundings.]
12 December 2021
This has been an eventful week. We had our first two days of snow dusting. I prepared a dinner party for friends but did it 7 days early, so I am cooked for the week. It wasn’t all bad, since I was forced to clean and organize the house and I like it this way.
I heard a great local jazz group last night at the Portland Conservatory of Music. I got there early by error and was able to chat with the guitarist. I mentioned that I used to nurse a beer all evening at the 5 Spot in NYC, listening to Thelonious Monk, when I was in med school in the ‘60s. He wrote his dissertation on Monk, played for Monk’s widow, and incorporates Monk’s style into his own compositions! We hit it off. The group, Time Zone, has played all over the world (sic) and does their own take on regional styles. The last three numbers were in 5/4, 7/4, and 25/16 (Bulgarian) tempos; he got lost at one point in the last song, cracked up, and regained his place. As they say, if you want to grow, do something every day that scares you a little.
At 11PM Tuesday evening, I realized that it was the 1st Tuesday of the month and I was going to get a ticket the next morning if I didn’t move my car. I bundled up against the cold rain, and drove all around god’s green (wet) acre looking for a parking spot. After almost an hour, I despairingly dropped into the school parking lot directly across the street from my apartment. Of course, they don’t patrol it and I moved it by 7:15AM to a sweet spot in front of my building.
I realize I kind of like the challenge of finding a parking spot, as perverse as that sounds. It makes it so satisfying when I get a good one, a kind of game. Otherwise, I’d just pull up the driveway and not give it another thought. It’s a bit like shopping in Yangon. When I first arrived, I would go to the slick City Mart supermarket, which is very similar to ours; it was quick and painless. Increasingly, I’d go to the street (“wet”) market and get fresher and cheaper food with a greater variety. I’d also have interactions with the vendors, which was generally fun. And I felt some accomplishment out the other side, whereas a trip to City Mart was, well, meh.
I’m deep into The Dawn Watch, a recent biography of Joseph Conrad by Maya Jasanoff, a Harvard historian. It is another lively page-turner. My god, life was nasty, brutish, and short for politically active Poles then. Russia was already the bully, sending the Polish Opposition into gulags in Siberia where they would starve, freeze, contract tuberculosis, and die. Given his traumatic and land-locked beginnings, Conrad’s accomplishments were astounding. They would be in any case, even with a much easier start.
I’m reading it before I re-read Heart of Darkness, in preparation to re-read A Bend in the River by VS Naipul for the modern novel course. We just read and discussed Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter, which many of us found a difficult read. Sticking with it, however, I came to love it and felt moved and challenged by the author.
Reading about the opposition to apartheid and the evil tyranny of the South African government has particular meaning for me right now, and not just in reference to our own American journey. In the past week the military in Myanmar, in response to an attack on a military caravan, went into a village, gathered 11 youth (14yo was the youngest), bound them, and set them on fire. In another incident a military truck accelerated into a group of protesters, killing 5 and wounding others.
One of my former students who lives in Magway is providing virtual supportive counselling, along with a group of 6 other psychiatrists in various parts of Myanmar, to border populations and those in refugee camps. She called today to see if I would do a training on brief psychotherapy for adolescents. I am thrilled to have a way to continue helping in Myanmar and will do so. The course will start the first Wednesday of January and run 2 hours per week for 4 months. It doesn’t get me into the community in Portland, one of my goals, but does allow me to keep helping in Myanmar.
I visited the dentist last week. It was quite an experience after similar trips in Myanmar and Malawi. The place was new and modern, with digital imaging and a really smart dentist. She got my number quickly; I take good care of my teeth but grind them a lot, causing bone resorption. I know that when I drink coffee I do. But I have only been drinking decaf. Apparently, there is enough caffeine in decaf to make trouble for me.
In response, I bought a Rolls Royce of a Waterpik that both brushes and squirts, I use micropore tape to keep from mouth breathing if I roll onto my back at night, I drink no coffee at all, I am assiduous in not grinding and in keeping my tongue where it should be in my mouth during the daytime, and in all ways dental I am a model patient. No half-measures for me! We’ll see how things are in a few months when I have a follow-up appointment.
I went for a long walk in the residential part of the West End today, it being sunny and temperate. The many old houses are immense and beautiful, with fancy decorative brickwork. I cannot imagine what it takes to heat them. Or dust them. I stumbled upon the historic Western Cemetery. It is a large area, with many paths, views, and stones.
The cemetery taught me some historical sociology. Many of the stones list a name, a rank, a regiment, the particular conflict, and dates of birth and death. Thus, “Nathaniel Abbott, Corp(oral), Trobridge’s Cav(alry), War of 1812, 1790-1842”. I found it interesting that many defined themselves by their military service, even when it didn’t take their life. And women were generally identified as “Wife of —” or “Mother of—” whereas men were never “Husband of—“. Women, even if they survived their husbands by many years, were uniformly listed beneath the latter on the stone. There was a stone without dates, just saying, “Hay” with two equal-sized adjacent stones noting “Mother” and “Father”. It all spoke loudly to me about societal values in the 1800’s.
I purchased a good quality photo scanner in 2015 and have never used it. As I was on the verge of buying a file cabinet to organize and store the 4 large crates of papers, I thought, why not scan them, get rid of the paper, and make them easily available to me. I have spent several productive hours scanning what I want to keep and tossing all the paper. It feels great! And, of course, I have begun to encounter artifacts, letters or my own writings, that shed light on my past in ways surprising to me. Once I have scanned the papers, I’ll scan the many negatives and old photos I have to preserve them.
I also came across a trove of aphorisms. I used to print them and put a pithy or inspiring one on the wall for staff and kids at Seneca Center: “Life isn’t about holding good cards. Rather, it’s about playing a poor hand well.” Or, “Be kind to all you meet for everyone is fighting a great battle.” The best were 4 pages of Groucho Marx: “From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday, I intend to read it.” Or, “Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.” And many more risqué ones.
I think I’ll watch “Duck Soup” tonight.
A Psychiatrist in Myanmar 