Simple changes

Early this morning a plane I was on touched down in Detroit, ending a whirlwind 48-hour trip to Vancouver, the University of British Columbia, and a small scientific meeting entitled “Bridging the scales of disease dynamics”. An outside observer would have seen two days of 40 researchers alternately giving and listening to PowerPoint presentations, breaking occasionally for coffee and lunch -– this is how meetings go. But had this observer turned his focus on me and looked me square in the eye for a minute or two, he might have seen something else.

As I’d done before, I was experimenting on myself. Again, nothing illicit was involved: no drugs, no stealing, no maiming, no breach of written law. But as I’d done with my body at the beginning of summer (reshaping it through a new exercise program and changes in diet), and as I'd done periodically with my writing (trying to adopt the styles of different authors), I was now trying out a new attitude and outlook.

This particular experiment had been underway for a couple weeks but only in a vaguely conceived way, that is, until Tuesday, the day before I left for the meeting. I’d been reading The Lively Art of Writing by Lucile Vaughn Payne, a small book I'd picked up at a used bookstore at the end of September. Geared mainly toward high school students putting together the beginnings of style, the book gave mostly innocuous advice on how to tie paragraphs together using hooks, avoiding the passive voice, that kind of thing. But one passage I was reading on Tuesday struck me as more life coach than kindly grammarian:

"In real life we are bored and exasperated by passivity. When we come into contact with apathetic, characterless people who limply allow themselves to be pushed around, who never make a decision, never respond, never take the initiative, we feel like giving them a good shaking. Complete passivity is unnatural; it offends some basic sense of life in all of us, some insistent demand for human statement and identity."

Sounds just like Dr. Phil, right? By coincidence (or maybe design), I’d also been reading a book on alternative careers in science, Put Your Science to Work by Peter Fiske, which espoused the same philosophy. I'd been taking stock of my own strengths and weaknesses in a process known as self-assessment.

"Understanding your own particular strengths and idiosyncrasies helps you develop pride in your individuality. This is what is known as self-confidence, and it comes through loud and clear come interview time.... Self assessment brings with it a measure of understanding and control, not only for you in your job search but also for your interactions with other people."

I might have once dismissed these maxims as a load of self-congratulatory hooey, but in light of life changes I won't go into here, they now sounded like good ideas. I'd started taking charge of my destiny, and the things I identified as my strengths -- writing, presenting, the ability to engage anyone in conversation -- I now bore proudly.

By the time I boarded the plane on Wednesday, I was determined to take a few more steps, physical in nature: stand up straight, look people in the eye and not break first, address all with confidence and a smile whenever possible. For someone used to staring at the ground two feet in front of himself, the change to looking straight ahead and into the eyes of oncoming people traffic was uncomfortable at first but quickly became addictive. Late Wednesday and all of Thursday and Friday, I'd been walking through crowds -- at the airport, on the streets of Vancouver, wherever -- with these precepts in mind. Metaphors materialized: we were all players in a jungle game, and I was out for alpha. I thought of a biology lab assignment I'd had as an undergraduate: observe flamingos at the zoo and everytime two came together record the winner and loser based on head position, who turned first. I felt belligerent and headily empowered.

By Thursday 4:30 pm, poster session time, I’d pumped myself so full of, well, myself that I was ready to take on anything. I sold that poster like a used car salesman two sales away from making employee of the month. When I was not selling my work, I was looking around, checking out the competition. I thought of how scientists would probably like to believe the written word is objective, uninflected, and sufficient to communicate a point. We ought to be able to stand around at one of these meetings and speak in monotone while shoe-gazing and get our point across just the same. But I was now seeing, or at least believing I saw, that this was not the case. I'd come to play strong, with full force of personality.

Long story short, or at least shorter, the rest of what I experienced at the meeting right up until I left Friday afternoon was affirmation that this world view was correct. A new attitude, a new outlook, not entirely comfortable at first, was yielding results: my poster was a success, and I felt I'd made friends with everyone I met. The only hitch -- when does this start feeling natural?

When alternatives becomes mandatory

At 9:50 this morning, I was sitting in my car with the key in the ignition. I'd made an appointment to see a Career Center counselor two weeks ago to discuss post-graduate options, and that appointment was set to begin in ten minutes. In my mind I was counting the number of stop lights that separated me from Central Campus, some 2.5 miles away. By sheer will alone I was trying to make them all green.

I turned the key -- click! -- nothing! Panic. Something obvious, look for something obvious. Did I leave the lights on? No. How about the trick that tow-truck driver showed me once, running the shifter down and up one time? Okay, that didn't work. 9:53.

Alternatives, alternatives. Bus? I could make it if I ran -- no, I couldn't. I had two minutes to cover half a mile to the bus stop -- that's crazy talk. Bike? Maybe, but I'd have to pedal like hell. No time to get the helmet. Out, get out of the car, get moving.

By 9:55 I was on my bike, forgetting all rules of safety. I made it to the front of the complex, watching for traffic instead of traffic lights. Reds and greens didn't matter, just cars or no cars. I crossed the street and made it up and down Jones Drive, the same hill that nearly killed me earlier this summer after the rain.

By 10:00 I was at the Medical Center, about half-way to Central Campus. I pushed up Fuller hill, lungs gasping at the cold air. People passed on my right and left, some clearly annoyed. Turning the corner at Huron, I made a mad dash to State Street.

The feeling of not being somewhere when I'm supposed to be there has never sat completely well with me, though I've gotten used to the discomfort. Everytime I tried to turn a new leaf, it seemed the old one would just flap back into place. I continued pedaling like mad, down State, left onto Liberty, and now down Maynard. I was challenging traffic at the four-way stops.

By 10:07, I finally arrived. The ironic thing is I probably made it in less time than I would have taken driving.

My soundtrack for the fall

A few weeks ago I was flipping through the CD bins at the Ann Arbor library and came across one I hadn't seen before from Death Cab for Cutie, 2005's Plans. I'd received a copy of the band's previous CD, 2003's Transatlanticism, from ex-labbie PSC years ago, and while I respected the band's sound, I was never overly enthusiastic about it. My initial listen to Plans brought back many of the same impressions: nice, inoffensive, but probably not worth repeat listenings. The CD soon ended up on a stack of others.

I decided to give the CD another listen a couple of days ago, and for reasons I won't get into here, I now think this CD is destined to be my soundtrack for the fall. The lyrics are worth finding online, and for people going through changes, as I've been in my personal and professional life, those lyrics are virtual salve. For example:

"I don't recall a single care,
Just greenery and humid air,
Then Labor Day came and went
And we shed what was left of our summer skin."

and

"You may tire of me as our December sun is setting because I'm not who I used to be,
No longer easy on the eyes, but these wrinkles masterfully disguise
The youthful boy below who turned your way and saw
Something he was not looking for, both a beginning and an end,
But now he lives inside someone he does not recognize
When he catches his reflection on accident."

and

"Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes

Made sharp air sharper by their smell

These had a being, breathing frost"

Okay, I'm just kidding about that last one which is part of a Wallace Stevens poem, "A Postcard from the Volcano". But the first two are from tracks 3 and 10 on Plans, and my point is that all three use seasons as metaphors of change to good effect. I've always found comfort in the idea that as the seasons come and go, so do our days and maybe our lives too if we're lucky. Yesterday was the first day of fall -- we'll see where this one leads.

The Latin for apple is malus

Today I had the best apple, light green in color and smooth to the touch. Its unblemished surface spoke to an upbringing free of predators and disease, while a single mark -- a bright red splash the size and shape of a quarter -- dated it as on the cusp of maturity.

It fit perfectly within my hand, not too large like the genetic mutants that go by the name Red Delicious, nor too small like the runts that fall off the tree before their time and get gathered up in five-pound bags. It fit so perfectly in fact that for a moment I pondered whether fate, evolution, or something else entirely was responsible.

I'd picked this specimen up a few days ago, out of a wooden crate full of others. A sign taped to the crate's side indicated that they were from Michigan; the cost seemed fair. I'd wandered up and down the aisles of the market, and nothing had caught my eye. Until now. I bagged this one along with three others, paid, and left.

In the days since, I'd had the other ones. They were perfectly adequate and did the trick when I was hungry. But now, down to the last one -- this one -- I saw details I'd missed in the others. Perhaps because I now saw it apart from the others, perhaps because it really was different from the others -- whatever the case, before I even took a bite, it seemed to me perfect.

When I finally did take a bite, I was not disappointed.

Time be thine... enemy, that is

Today I'm busy getting ready for a meeting next week in Vancouver... but not too busy to enjoy a random diversion of some 17th c. poetry:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

That's Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to make much of Time". (Sigh) Back to work....

Avuncular

This evening I caught one of my cousins, AJC (or CAJ, strictly speaking), on Skype. She visited the US for six months, between September of last year and March of this year, during which time she lived with her husband in Dearborn, a mere half hour from Ann Arbor.

That was an odd time for me. I wasn't used to having extended family nearby. Extended family had always been something, you know, over there. And now I was having lunch on the weekends with extended family, going shopping with extended family, and calling extended family on the phone. (Extended family never really spoke English before, either.)

I have to admit, I liked having my cousins here. Their presence made Taiwan seem more real to me, gave me hope that someday all ties wouldn't be severed. When they finally left, I took the loss harder than I thought I would. I remember meeting them at Starbucks the day before they left. It was a chilly afternoon -- a photo I have shows us all bundled in big colorful jackets. We sipped coffee and spoke sparingly. I was having a hard time thinking of things to say, and when I did say something, I asked about their travel plans, how long the trip would take, what they'd do when they arrived, all the time denying my impulse to frame their visit in a larger context and tell them how much their visit had meant to me. Still, I felt the ground swell beneath my feet. I was being borne away a little farther from my familial home on waves so massive that from the troughs I couldn't see what was behind me or in front of me.

Those feelings seemed to pass last night when I talked with AJC. She's pregnant, eight weeks. Bored too, having been restricted to the upstairs of her family's apartment in downtown Kaohsiung. She asked if she could send me a picture. Of course, I replied. Here it is:


The 1.5 cm object in the middle is going to be a nephew or niece of mine. It's going to be hard to be an uncle to the little tyke from so far away.

Experimenting on myself

Abstract: The effects of intentional overexposure to Shakespearean tragedy were examined. Over the course of several days the subject watched and/or listened to various recordings of Hamlet and, at times not so occupied, made note of his thoughts and feelings. Depression was the most frequently observed mood and could not be attributed to other causes, suggesting that care should be taken to limit exposure to Shakespearean tragedy, particularly for sensitive groups such as school-age youth.

Introduction: Hamlet remains one of the most popular works of English literature taught in schools (Herz and Hinton, 1996). Given the serious nature of the work, however, with its themes of suicide, incest, and murder, concerns over whether overexposure might be harmful to school-age youth are not unfounded. In this study a male (Asian graduate student, age 30) was exposed to numerous recordings of Hamlet on successive nights (i.e. a Hamlet "marathon") and asked to document changes in mental state. In addition to a number of benign effects (e.g. inclusion of archaic language and speech patterns), an overall negative change in mood amounting to depression was noted.

Methods: Four recordings of Hamlet were borrowed from the Ann Arbor District Library: DVDs of the Derek Jacobi version (1980), the Mel Gibson version (1990), and the Ethan Hawke version (2000) and CDs of the Kenneth Branagh version (1993). DVDs were watched by the subject on successive evenings between September 10th and 13th of 2006 (designated Days 1 and 4, respectively), and the CD was played continuously in the subject's car.

Results and Discussion: The subject noted that by Day 2 of the experiment his mood had become "foul" and by Day 3 his wit had become "diseased". On Day 4 he noted on a scrap of paper, "I have of late lost all my mirth." During this time the subject continued to perform his normal activities, the bulk of which comprised eating, sleeping, going to work, going to the gym, and going to the bathroom. No other changes in routine were observed. By the end of the experiment, the subject was using non-idiomatic vocabulary and phrasing; e.g. when asked by another graduate student how long he had been at the university, he answered, "I hesitate to say. To think on't only encourages woe." The experiment was terminated early; additional recordings of Hamlet had been requested at the library and were awaiting pick-up.

The mechanism by which overexposure to Shakespearean tragedy leads to depression remains to be discovered. Intermediate steps cannot be ruled out. For instance, it is possible that usage of non-idiomatic vocabulary and phrasing alienates others, particularly strangers, and that alienation is the proximal cause of negative feelings. However, the most parsimonious explanation is that the content of tragedy itself evokes empathy in its observer and that this empathy in excess can be detrimental. These results suggest that discretion should be used in the teaching of Shakespearean tragedy, particularly to sensitive groups such as school-age youth. Further studies should address specific dosage and the lack of controls in the current study design (e.g. does overexposure to Shakespearean comedy have the same effects?).

My odd little ritual

Lately I've started doing something admittedly odd. It started a couple of weeks ago, when I unrolled the yoga mat I purchased this past summer and decided to see how many postures I could remember. With the help of the Internet, I managed to get through about a dozen of them, including one set I liked known as the sun salutation. You've probably seen this sequence, but in case you haven't: you start off by raising your arms above your head, then go down on all fours (downward dog) and bow your back (cobra) before repeating in reverse order to get out of it. At least that's how I think it goes.

I soon started wondering whether I'd gotten the essence of the sun salutation. Should I be picturing the sun in front of me? In that case, should I be facing east? Does it even matter? Why am I saluting the sun anyway? Aren't there other things worthy of saluting?

I then started wondering whether the sun salutation might feel differently if I did it facing a different direction. I repeated it facing south and thought, What's south of me? My parents in Dallas came to mind. In my head, I said hello to them. I couldn't think of my parents without thinking of my brother, so I said hello to him as well. And then I couldn't think of my immediate family without thinking of my extended family, all of whom are in Taiwan, so I said hello to them also.

After that experience it seemed only reasonable to try another direction, so I turned another 90 degrees to the right. Facing west and doing the sun salutation, I thought, Who do I know in this direction? Having just returned from California a couple of weeks ago, I thought of my friends in the Bay area: SHB, KM, and RMK, people I knew from the grad school, from teaching, and from college, respectively. Eyes closed, my mind stretched back even farther: to high school, junior high, and earlier. I said hello to all of these people. And so now, I was doing the sun salutation in two additional directions, each time thinking of different people, each time ferrying silent hellos abroad.

I felt most connected -- most effective -- during the first posture of the sequence, when I held my arms above my head in what's known as urdhva hastasana. But I felt a bit silly greeting my family and friends this way, because the focus of the posture goes upward not earth-ward. Besides, you'd never greet anyone like this. And so I changed the opening posture.

Instead of pointing my arms upward, I started spreading my arms outward, like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, a posture with its own meaning, even if it's not a yogic one. With arms spread wide, I felt as if I were now embracing family and friends as I said hello to them. I felt magnanimous and free of malice, the same way I feel at Christmas-time when it's okay to wish well on complete strangers. I felt I had not lost so much by moving away from home.

Now, having traversed three directions, I added on the fourth. Turning 90 more degrees I was faced north. What's north? I thought. North of Michigan, not much. Wilderness in the upper reaches of Canada before you finally arrive at the pole. And then it occurred to me that this wilderness could be a metaphor for Earth in general, our home in the universe. Unexplored deeps, the dirt that sustains us, the air from which we take breath, I felt grateful for it all, even if I might not see all of it in my lifetime. Finally I turned east again. I thought again of the sun, but more images came my way this time: the way the Earth spins around the sun, the way dust becomes comets, and the way we're all dust in the eyes of the Milky Way, itself just one galaxy out of billions.

And so, there's my odd little daily ritual explained: arms spread, eyes closed, a silent embrace of family, friends, Earth, universe. I know it seems strange but not any more so than the rationales I've read for yoga or tai chi or other such practices. And if it gives my day a little more meaning, a little more kind-heartedness, then what's the harm?

Punk'd, geek edition (cont'd)

[Oh, Muse, forgive us procrastinators who sometimes go weeks without writing....]

I'd prepared myself to let the prank go. My original mark was five rows in front of me -- in a spot too visible for me to feel comfortable sitting next to her -- and class was starting. And without my grad student friend RMK next to me, who'd get a laugh out of my posing as a freshman anyway? But with the arrival of my new Asian "sister" who sat next to me in the second to last row in the room, the prospect of the prank had been revived. (When I was young my parents often urged me to consider other Asians of similar age as siblings, even when they were only distantly related. Through the years I'd found the habit hard to shake.)

My mind raced -- What was my opening line again? Dammit! I reached beneath my chair and fidgeted with the zippers on my backpack. I spied a pack of gum in the front pocket and got out a piece, unwrapped it, popped it into my mouth. Spontaneously, I offered one to sister too: Want some gum? She looked at me -- I saw her eyes for the first time -- and she said, No thanks.

That was it for sure, I thought. I've reached the end of innocent conversation. I couldn't say anything else and not appear aggressive or just plain creepy. God, I suck at this!

But a minute later, sister turned to me and said, with hand extended, My name's Teresa.

Pseudonyms crossed my mind -- Bob? Frank? Why do I only conjure 1950s white American names under pressure?! -- but all seemed fake. I'm Stewart, I replied and shook her hand.

What year are you? Teresa continued. Sister was relentless.

Uhhh, it's complicated, I replied. I'd hoped she didn't notice the hesitation. I wasn't expecting a frontal attack.

What does that mean? She said suspiciously.

Well, I'm a grad student.

The Frost poem about paths diverging in the wood came to mind, except in this version, I saw lies to the left and innocence to the right. At that moment, I could have gone either way. Mentally I felt the edifice buckle. Merde, I'm wretched! I felt badly for us both.

Actually, there's more to it than that.... I started to tell her. I'm not a grad student here. I was out here visiting some friends for the weekend and thought it'd be fun to sit in on a class. Floodgates, I was opening them all. I was supposed to say stuff like, This class looks really easy! I chuckled to myself, as if to seed her own.

Sister just looked at me. What was that, astonishment? Hurt? She opened her mouth, I'm just a little freshman. I thought you looked older -- Hey! I interjected -- but I probably would've believed you.

To the relief of my conscience, she didn't seem overly injured by being the target of a near-prank. Hell, she'd probably been through worse during orientation. I gave her a reassuring smile. I felt my guilt untwine into something like protectiveness toward this suddenly small-looking creature.

The rest of the fifty-minute class period passed without incident, save a nervous moment when the professor asked, How many of you are on the waitlist? in perfect, Indian-inflected English. About a dozen people raised their hands. The professor scanned the crowd and then asked, How many of you are neither on the waitlist nor registered for the class? I looked at sister, half-raised my hand, noticed no one else was raising a hand, and put mine down. Sister and I shared a laugh over that, or at least I'd like to think that we did.

In the end, I really meant her no ill will. As the class ended and people started to pack their things, I wondered what I should make my parting shot. I'd likely never see her again, and facing that thought was a bit like facing the prospect of death itself. You know, how do you want to be remembered? As people filed up the aisle next to me, I turned to sister and said, Well, Teresa, I hope you have a wonderful college journey. And I really meant it.

Sister turned to me and said, Okay, I'll see you later. Probably not, but thanks for the thought.