Going to Macedonia

You would think I would be ecstatic about traveling to Eastern Europe, starting tomorrow (the 16th) when you have the ticket and travel expenses paid for. But no, I am actually dreading it. This will entail more than a day of travel in each direction, and I am not going to take any personal time of my own.

In my former life I did this a couple of times a year: travel to a foreign spot with Mickey (my old boss) and sit through conferences (filled with pontificating academics who use twice as many words as necessary), taking notes on my laptop and writing up the report afterward. Occasionally I am quite interested in the proceedings, since they involve climate change and extreme events, and I am now pretty well versed in those subjects.

I am being called to do this once more, as the UN organizer (who I worked with in Hanoi) asked Mickey if I could be persuaded to help with one more conference. I agreed, mostly because I feel that Mickey and Claudio are good guys, and I know I could help with the website and the report (link takes you to the website as it exists prior to the conference).

The meeting will be held in Skopje, Macedonia. I have provided a link to the time and weather that really helped me figure out what to bring (I'm still in the packing stage, however). The city is very old (inhabited since at least 4000 BC) and has lots to explore between working hours. This old aqueduct was built in the Roman era sometime after 148 BC (nobody knows for sure but that is when this area became part of the Roman province of Macedonia). So I will be thrilled to learn more about this part of the world.

In a strange twist of fate, Skopje is also only a few miles from the place where my son Chris died in 2002. He was stationed at an Army base between Kosovo and Macedonia, and I will be in Skopje for Easter. I am very much looking forward to going to church on Sunday and hopefully lighting a candle for Chris' soul. Years ago, but not long after he died, I had a very vivid dream: Chris and another deceased friend were walking along a path towards me, smiling and laughing. They waved at me, and Chris said, "see, Mom, we're doing just fine!" The sunlight was shining down on their shoulders, and that image has stayed with me as if I had seen it in real life.

With what I have learned about the brain, I now realize that within my memories, that picture is every bit as real as those I remember which actually took place. So I will spend this time in Skopje appreciating what I can find out about this ancient part of the world, to which I have a very special link. Today Skopje is very much a modern city with a wide range of cultural monuments. I will arrive at Alexander the Great Airport. How cool is that?

I also look forward to the Skopje Bazaar. According to Wikipedia,

In the past all economic activities in the city were taking place in this bazaar. In the period between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Old Bazaar reached its urban and economic zenith, developing into one of the largest and most significant oriental old bazaars in the Balkans. It is full of bustling shops that beckon visitors. This bazaar is an interesting mixture of Eastern and Western culture.

In the past, it was my habit on these trips to buy some small trinket for friends who would not be able to visit such an exotic place, and I will do that again with my new friends here in Bellingham. In China, it was silk scarves; in Vietnam, little carved boxes. What will it be in Skopje?

Brain lock

Okay, this is the last post (at least for a while) about the brain. This one is about brain lock, or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The chapter I've just finished is called "Brain Lock Unlocked" in the book, The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge (2007).

Many of my skydiving friends will recognize the phrase "brain lock" because it is often used to explain what sometimes happens to us in freefall when we cannot remember what we are supposed to do next. It also is used to describe the brain process that doesn't allow us to move on to the next thing, such as continuous hand washing, or as Doidge says, doesn't allow us to turn our mental page. This is what happens: you make a mistake (or get exposed to germs), and you get a nagging sense that something is wrong, and then you get anxious about it and try to correct the mistake. When you have corrected the mistake, your brain moves onto the next thought or activity, and the mistaken feeling and the anxiety disappear.

But in OCD, even though you have corrected the mistake (washed the germs off your hands, for instance), the anxiety doesn't stop, so part of the brain mechanism stays in the "on" position and you get brain lock. I distinctly remember (with a good deal of embarrassment) a skydive where I was supposed to take a particular position after the initial formation, and I could not remember what it was, although we had rehearsed the skydive numerous times on the ground. Two of the people on the skydive helpfully tried to point to my position, but I was at a total loss, and we could not complete the formation. On the ground, afterwards, we discussed what had happened, but it was definitely brain lock and nothing could move my mind past that spot.

The reason all this is so fascinating to me is that I and most of my siblings seem to have some form of OCD in our basic behavior. We all tend to be good at our jobs because we are detail oriented and scrupulous in our lives. Just take a look at the definition for the word:

scrupulous (of a person or process): diligent, thorough, and extremely attentive to details. Very concerned to avoid doing wrong.

Uh-huh. I recognize that, and I see it in every one of my siblings. I know that scrupulosity (isn't that a great word?) can become OCD if the brain becomes stuck in any part of the process. The good thing, and the reason I wanted to put all this down in the blog, is that now there is a recognized treatment for it. It's a four-step process, and works with great success if a person is motivated.

Psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, author of Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior, offers the following four steps for dealing with OCD:

1. RELABEL – Recognize that the intrusive obsessive thoughts and urges are the result of OCD.
2. REATTRIBUTE – Realize that the intensity and intrusiveness of the thought or urge is caused by OCD; it is probably related to a biochemical imbalance in the brain.
3. REFOCUS – Work around the OCD thoughts by focusing your attention on something else, at least for a few minutes: DO ANOTHER BEHAVIOR.
4. REVALUE – Do not take the OCD thought at face value. It Is not significant in itself.

Source: Westwood Institute for Anxiety Disorders

The book I'm reading now is probably the last of these self-help books about the brain that I'll be reading for a while. Although it's all incredibly fascinating, I need to integrate and process what I've learned. I know my ability to reach saturation is very high, but then so much of it doesn't stick in my memory. And if I put the book down to come back to it later, I don't do that. I just move on, and one day I'll see the book with all those bookmarks sticking out of it, and maybe I'll pick it up, wondering why I ever put it down.

Ah yes, the plastic brain. My brother says he has a silly putty brain, not a plastic one. His status update on Facebook the other day:

Buz Stewart would not be just a nothin' his head all full of stuffin' his heart all full of pain, he would dance and be merry, life would be a ding-a-derry, if he only had a brain.

And I can't even LOOK at those words without the tune coming into my head. I sure do love my siblings!

Tending my garden

Well, more about this "garden of the mind" business. Yesterday I watched "I've Loved You So Long," a French movie about a woman who spends 15 years in prison after murdering her 6-year-old son. You don't find out the details until the end of the movie, but it is very moving, especially to someone who has lost a child. She explains that she wanted to go to prison, because the loss of a child is a prison from which there is no escape.

I stopped this morning on my way out of the gym to watch the little toddlers playing in daycare, and I remembered there was a time when I could not even be in the same room with an infant without extreme emotional pain. Now I relish them, and I watched a baby around six or eight months old figure out how to put a building block into a holder. His fat little fingers and chubby arms used to cause me to experience severe pain, merely looking at him and realizing that my own little guy would never return.

There is escape from the prison of emotional pain. The passage of time and basically just continuing to live in the world helped to heal my wound. It took a decade before I realized that being around small children once more brought me joy. In Jill Taylor's book (mentioned in the previous blog, this link goes to her own website, My Stroke of Insight) gives the reader specific ways to change what you want to change by tending the garden of your mind, and gives you tips on how to do it.

Regardless of the garden I have inherited, once I consciously take over the responsibility of tending my mind, I choose to nurture those circuits that I want to grow, and consciously prune back those circuits I prefer to live without. Although it is easier for me to nip a weed when it is just a sprouting bud, with determination and perseverance, even the gnarliest of vines, when deprived of fuel, will eventually lose its strength and fall to the side.

The hard part is recognizing what is a weed and what you want to cultivate. In her book, she gives, over and over again, ideas about how to access the right hemisphere of your brain: feel how something affects your body, whether you like the way a person (or experience, or an emotion) makes you feel. When her left brain was compromised and she couldn't understand language, she knew when someone visited her who cared for her and would talk to her in a soothing tone of voice, she would relax and smile -- just the opposite would happen when someone shouted and expressed anger at her.

So, my task for the next few days is to notice these things: what makes me feel good, and what makes me feel bad. Writing in this blog definitely makes me feel good, and communicating with you, dear reader, makes me feel the bright laser beam of conscious thought between us is growing my garden in a way I enjoy. I'm digging in the fertile medium of words, playing.

Being in my right mind

Last night I finished reading My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. It seems that this woman who had spent her professional life as a neuroanatomist had a stroke that destroyed the functions of the left hemisphere of her brain. Besides being really lucky she was able to get help (she was transported into a state of bliss where she felt everything was perfect just as it was and she couldn't remember words or numbers like 9-1-1), she recovered and wrote a book about her experience.

Fascinating, especially after my most recent ruminations about what remembering and knowing really are. In fact, it was while getting a massage that I mentioned to my therapist about memory and how the brain works, and she told me she was reading this book, which I went right out (afterwards, that is) and bought it.

Taylor really demonstrated to me how necessary both parts of our brain are, and how our brain communicates between the hemispheres. At first, I was all "well, the right brain is where it's at" until I realized this:

One of the most prominent characteristics of our left brain is its ability to weave stories. ... It functions by taking whatever details it has to work with, then weaves them together in the form of a story. Most impressively, our left brain is brilliant in its ability to make stuff up, and fill in the blanks when there are gaps in its factual data (p. 143).

Oh, well, then: if I want to write and create, I need both hemispheres! Dang! Just when I was getting used to thinking I would spend my time cultivating my right brain centers so I could become a creative writer. She mentions, in the chapter entitled Tending the Garden, that "how we choose to be today is not predetermined by how we were yesterday." We can choose to change, grow, evolve, based on our intentions.

Okay, that's where I will focus my day today: seeing my body and my mind as malleable, changeable, and help to evolve the planet, one step at a time, into a more peaceful and loving place. I can do/be that!

Working out and wearing out

By the time I was in my early thirties, I had been a cigarette smoker on and off for more than a decade. In the sixties, you could smoke anywhere and at any time. I smoked at my desk at work, at church, and at restaurants when I had dinner out.

(One of the reasons I love to watch Mad Men is remembering how it used to be back then; everyone smoked and thought nothing of it.)

But one day, I knew I had to stop. I was 33 years old and could not walk up 25 stairs without stopping halfway up to rest. Knowing that if I didn't stop smoking, I wouldn't be very happy living in my body for much longer, I decided to quit, finally. Frankly, it was the hardest three years of my life, getting myself to the place where I didn't light up any more. Anybody who has successfully kicked this habit knows what I'm talking about. What was the secret weapon that gave me the ability to kick this habit? Exercise.

Buying myself a good pair of running shoes and lacing them up that afternoon and heading over to the high school track. A quarter of a mile around the track, and I figured I'd be well on my way. Hah! Within less than a mile, I gave up and made my way back home. The next day, even with the little bit of jogging and walking I'd done, I had shin splits. I headed over to the running store and learned that I would need orthotics, which I had to purchase to control my overpronation, and I put them in my shoes and never stopped.

I was one of those people who kept on trying, and eventually I ran several 10K races (6.2 miles) in Boulder. Last December I walked a half marathon (13.1 miles) with my family, although I can't run any more. Throughout my mid-thirties until I was in my mid-fifties I jogged several times a week. It really is addicting. And now I'm addicted to exercise, although now I work out at the gym and take classes. Being that I am currently in my mid-sixties, this is perfectly acceptable. Our bodies do indeed wear out, and if you continue to use yours like I did, it will wear out sooner.

I love to feel the endorphins kick in after a workout. Nowadays I hike 6-10 miles once a week with the Senior Trailblazers, a bunch of Senior Citizens who give me the endurance part of my workouts (more than a short burst, you need longer, lower intensity workouts occasionally to keep your heart in good shape).

This picture was taken last week at Baker Lake here in Bellingham, by one of my fellow Senior Trailblazers. That's snow, not sand, and that's Mt. Shuksan (I think) behind me. I started going out with them in order to keep up my fitness level, but I'm the one who is benefitting from their company and learning about hikes near my new home. And it all started more than three decades ago with a pair of running shoes and some old-fashioned grit.

Poets and poetry

Today at the bookstore I picked up a new Mary Oliver book of poetry (Evidence). She's been a favorite poet since a friend gave me The Leaf and the Cloud a few years ago. The new book has a CD in the back, which I assume is filled with Oliver (or a surrogate) reading the poems inside. And friends are busy writing poems on their blogs, even sending me websites (here's Milkweed's e-poems) that connect me more than ever to current poetry.

I have been guilty of spending whole days of my life sitting around reading poetry of one kind or another (usually when I'm in love), and sending poems in emails to others. But what is a good poem? Some people I know are so prejudiced against poetry that they consider them to be just fluff. I have often wondered if a good poem is sort of like a sculpture: you remove all that is not the poem, and what remains is the poem. (A sculpture in this sense being where you remove and eliminate what is not the sculpture in order to reveal the underlying form.)

My favorite poet, Emily Dickinson, said this about poets:

I reckon - when I count at all -
First - Poets - Then the Sun -
Then Summer - Then the Heaven of God -
And then - the List is done -

But, looking back - The First so seems
To Comprehend the Whole -
The Others look a needless Show -
So I write - Poets - All -

ED, 1862

But of course she was one of the greatest poets, so it might look that way to her. There are people who have spent their entire lives studying her poetry, becoming Dickinsonian scholars. To me, a good poem is one that I read over several times and feel satisfaction afterward. A great poem is one that I read several times and I'm somehow expanded and elevated by having read it. I'm more than I was before, the poem is more than it was at the first reading, and my life is enriched.

Emily Dickinson was a real enigma. Only seven of her poems were published during her lifetime (all of which were altered by well-meaning editors), and it was only because her sister Lavinia found Emily's ebony box of poems after she died that any of them were eventually published. For the last two decades of her life, Emily never went out of her home and had no physical contact with others. When she had visitors, she sat on one side of the door, they sat on the other and they conversed. Although she had a very rich inner life and a lively correspondence, she ordered that everything except that box of poems be burned when she died, and so much of who she was in the earthly sense has been lost. In the book Ancestor's Brocades, by Millicent Todd Bingham, a quote offers a tantalizing clue:

When Colonel Higginson asked Emily whether "she never felt want of employment, never going off the place, and never seeing any visitor," she replied, "I never thought of conceiving that I could ever have the slightest approach to such a want in all future time," and added, "I feel that I have not expressed myself strongly enough."

I myself believe that she was so attuned to her inner self and inner life that going out and being involved in the world would have tainted her somehow, so she lived in her father's house, in a real ivory tower. She fascinates me, because this person who lived as she did has expressed herself in poems that live on and on, long after her physical self perished, touching on the whole gamut of earthly life.

So many of us pass through this world and leave little or nothing behind for others. And does it really matter if we do? Who knows? But I thank God for Emily and for Shakespeare, and for Mozart, and...

If (When) Memory Fails

(Picture taken of me and my son in 1967)

While at the used bookstore last month, I looked for a good read that I knew I would enjoy, so I looked at books by some of my favorite authors. Pat Conroy's books, especially The Prince of Tides, are remembered as having been really good. I rummaged through the books and found a big fat one, The Lords of Discipline, and after having looked through it, figured I'd found a good read.

The book is about a military school and the way these schools break young men to become leaders. It was, indeed, a good book. But when I reached a point somewhere in the 400-plus range, I realized, for the first time, that I had read the book before! Something happened in the story that triggered a memory. But I did not remember any of the story until that moment.

This started me thinking about memory, and I went on line (of course) and found information about remember/know judgments. Our memory is not only faulty, but when we remember or know something (which is how we usually use our memory), there is no way to determine if what you remember is correct, except by external verification.

Remembering and knowing are states of awareness that accompany the retrieval of facts, faces, and experiences from our past. Although originally intended to separate episodic from semantic memory, the dominant view today is that recollection-based decisions underlie remember responses, whereas familiarity-based decisions underlie know responses.

What made me wonder about my not remembering the story until I was well into it was that I could not figure out which of these fit my forgetfulness. I have since determined that, since I read the story when I was in my twenties, I basically was not the same person who read the book in her sixties. My frames of reference are different, my life experiences are much more vast, and the young girl who read about a military school had very little to hang her mind around at the time.

I am now much more familiar with human conditioning that leads to behavior modification, and while I was a pliant, malleable person then, I was also not very reflective and seldom pondered deeper meanings of books of fiction. After thinking about writing this post, I wondered if my readers have experienced anything similar, or is it just that my brain has become so full that my memories are now spilling out my ears?