Book Review: Darkness Visible — A memoir of madness

Loss in all of its manifestations is the touchstone of depression—in the progress of the disease and, most likely, in its origin… The loss of self-esteem is a celebrated symptom, and my own sense of self had all but disappeared, along with any self-reliance. This loss can quickly degenerate into dependence, and from dependence into infantile dread. One dreads the loss of all things, all people close and dear. There is an acute fear of abandonment. Being alone in the house, even for a moment, caused me exquisite panic and trepidation (p 57 of Darkness Visible by William Styron).

Loss of any kind leads to pain. However, our body and mind react to the loss differently.  A paper cut stimulates our existing cells to proliferate and repair the damage. It’s our body’s intrinsic healing process. Our mind, unfortunately, is exempt from this amazing ability. When we lose “cells” in our heart—it could be our self-esteem, our beloved ones, etc—we turn to people around us and lean on them. Please don’t get me wrong. It is a blessing to be able to comfort someone whose heart is broken. However, this dependence comes with the expiration date. Once it is passed, the dependency occupies the space in which our own “cells” should have filled and then turn to our own agency and engulfs it. Unlike the physical wound healing process, it takes an extra effort and active pursuit to get our own mind cells reappear and reconstitute what has been lost before dependency stays put.

I guess resilience is a quantifiable quality—the rate of which our own “mind cells” (or whoever the smallest structural and functional unit of our mind is called) proliferate to heal the wound in our heart.

For those of you who are interested in related subjects, I recommend this TED talk about emotional hygiene.

More quotes from Darkness Invisible are below.

Testimony to liberal arts education

I am a beneficiary of liberal arts education and an ardent fan and advocate of it. However, it’s hard to describe the value of liberal arts education. Then, I encountered the following statements from poet Mary Oliver.

“I quickly found for myself two such blessings—the natural world, and the world of writing: literature. These were the gates through which I vanished from a difficult place.

In the first of these—the natural world—I felt at ease; nature was full of beauty and interest and mystery, also good and bad luck, but never misuse. The second world—the world of literature—offered me, besides the pleasures of form, the sustentation of empathy (the first step of what Keats called negative capability) and I ran for it. I relaxed in it. I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything—other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart” (p15. Mary Oliver’s Upstream).

Vanishing from one’s humdrum routine and connecting with or being someone else. It’s something that a billion dollar job cannot do, but a worn-out book can do. Or a piece of music could do it too.

Welcoming an ever-increasing emphasis on STEM education, I also hope that it does not expel literature and music education from curriculum. Although they appear amorphous and resist any metrics for measuring their values, literature and music education add layers and dimensions to our inner world. They enrich and expand our multi-dimensional life. No wonder why there is no space in our one-dimensional resume for the experience we got from literature and music. Because it cannot.

Here’s another statement that caught my ear resonating the same theme:

“Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said ‘Listening to great music is a shattering experience, throwing the soul into an encounter with an aspect of reality to which the mind can never relate itself adequately. Such experiences undermine conceit and complacency and may even induce a sense of contrition and a readiness for repentance. I am neither a musician nor an expert on music. But the shattering experience of music has been a challenge to my thinking on ultimate issues. I spend my life working with thoughts. And one problem that gives me no rest is: do these thoughts ever rise to the heights reached by authentic music?‘” (From https://www.onbeing.org/programs/alice-parker-singing-companionable-arts/)

Photo by Ginny / CC BY-SA 2.0

An unwelcome guest I invited

Every time I finish my lecture, there is always this lingering feeling that I didn’t do a good job. I was repetitive, I rambled a lot, my sentences didn’t make sense, I didn’t answer students’ questions right, I was too quick, I didn’t look at the audience often, etc.

It was me who went into the lecture room. In an hour, trudging out of it is someone I don’t like, a loser who is beaten by what she wants be, where she wants to be.

Some aspects of teaching are in fact incompatible with my nature. I don’t enjoy public speaking; I like one-on-one meetings. I like asking questions; I don’t feel comfortable with saying “I know this.” I admire people who ask thoughtful and interesting questions such as Charlie Rose , Terry Gross, Tom Ashbrook and Krista Tippett more than people who provide or seek out the answers.

Then, why did I want to be a teacher in the first place?

Because I am genuinely curious about people. I like listening to people and form relationships with them–not the kind of relationship you establish by sending out a friend request, but the one that requires face-to-face interactions and demands attention and care. As a teacher, I am encouraged and appreciated to be curious about people. I get paid to help students realize how fun learning is and how much potential they have. It is a blessing to be part of someone’s intellectual growth.  It is a privilege to be in the position where I can offer someone the opportunity or help him/her get the opportunity that could be the very starting point of his/her big dream.

Breathing in and breathing out. I’m trying to kick out this unwelcome guest I invited. A ghost of my making. Dissatisfaction with my performance has certainly helped me grow, but before it becomes too big and engulfs me, I better learn how to face a room for improvement with pride and high spirit.

I’m still learning and growing, surprisingly and thankfully.

p.s. Thomas Aquinas allegedly said, “Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.” So, here we go!

우산 만들 능력도, 비를 같이 맞는 방법도

“도운다는 것은 우산을 들어주는 것이 아니라 함께 비를 맞는 것” (p325. 감옥으로부터의 사색. 신영복 저).

참고 참다 어렵게 수화기를 들어 ‘힘들어…’ 하고 입을 뗀 친구나 후배의 전화에 난 제시해 줄 해결 방법이 없어 언제나 안절부절이었다. 뚝딱 우산을 만들어내지 못하는 나의 무능을 탓하며 그저 ‘그랬구나’ ‘괜찮아’만 반복했을 뿐.

그래서 신영복 선생님의 말에 맘이 놓였다. 아, 우산이 필요한게 아니구나. 비야 당연히 같이 맞아줄 수 있지.

그러다가 아차 했다. 내가 간과한 부분. 함께 비를 맞으면 내 옷도 젖어버린다는 사실. 톡톡 경쾌하게 내리는 봄비도 아니고, 영화 클래식에서 주인공 지혜가 선배 상민과 자켓을 우산삼아 자전거 탄 풍경의 분위기 있는 OST 를 배경으로 설레며 뛰던 빗속도 아니다. 으슥으슥한 날 감기 걸리기 딱 좋은 그런 비. 신발은 물론이요, 양말에 가방안의 노트에 속옷까지 기분나쁘게 다 젖게 만들 그런 비. 한시간 넘게 통화하며 연신 ‘괜찮아’를 반복하고 끊자마자 돌아서는 건 비맞는 시늉만 한 것일뿐. 비는 커녕 내 옷에 흙탕물도 튀지 않았구나.

“빈손으로 앉아 다만 귀를 크게 갖는다는 것이 과연 비를 함께 하는 것인지, 그리고 그것이 그에게 도대체 무슨 소용이 있는지 의심스럽지 않을 수 없습니다” (p325.감옥으로부터의 사색. 신영복 저).

난 아직 우산 만들 능력도, 비를 같이 맞는 방법도 모르겠다. 그저 가방을 우산삼아 가까운 역까지 같이 뛰고는 미역 처럼 붙어버린 머리와 물에 빠진 생쥐 마냥 쫄딱 젖은 모습을 보고 서로 깔깔대며 웃는동안 나의 벗이 이 비가 여우비인지 장대비인지 잠시 잊어버리길 바라는게 내가 해 줄 수 있는 전부가 아닐까.

Remembered with her smile

In the segment of the Charlie Rose show for remembering the life of revered journalist Gwen Ifill,

Michele Norris: When you think of an image of Gwen, what comes in your mind?
Charlie Rose: A smile
Michele Norris: (talking almost at the same time with Mr. Rose) Probably a smiling face… she was tough, but she was accessible … Gwen showed that you could do it [carrying authority] in a slightly different way. You didn’t have to lower your voice. You didn’t have to always wear the dark bossy suit so that you looked like a male anchor. You could express authority … You could also smile. You could show joy in your work and it didn’t diminish you. It didn’t lessen or flatten your intellect in some ways.

What would be a more noble life than the one remembered with a bright smile by close friends?

Being a public figure and also private. Being a dominating voice in the room while being herself. At the time where we’re pressed to choose either one or the other in many cases, it is encouraging to know that someone was both. More precisely, she chose to be nothing but her authentic self.

Are you winning today?

As each arrow left for its target, the archers were caught between success (hitting the ten) and mastery (knowing it means nothing if you can’t do it again and again). If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that this tension between the two, the momentary nature of success and the unending process required for mastery, is part of what creates target panic or gold fever in the first place.

Mastery requires endurance. Mastery, a word we don’t use often, is not the equivalent of what we might consider its cognate—perfectionism—an inhuman aim motivated by a concern with how others view us. Mastery is also not the same as success—an event-based victory based on a peak point, a punctuated moment in time. Mastery is not merely a commitment to a gold, but to a curved-line, constant pursuit

(p8. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery by Sarah Lewis)

Mastery is about the excruciatingly long and eventful process between hitting the ten. During this time, you constantly face a chain of small failures. They are like paper cuts on your self-confidence and self-esteem. Despite being shallow and little bleeding, they hurt so much and pain ensues. As Ms. Lewis writes, endurance gets you through the dark period, but I believe that the turbo engine of endurance is passion and hope. Without them your teeth-clenching endurance does not last long. After a brutal day of frustration, it is passion that wakes you up in the morning and energizes you to do the task again. It is hope that acknowledges and enlarges an inch-long improvement of the day.

Shifting the aim from success to mastery is a huge change, because when mastery becomes the goal, we don’t compare ourselves to someone else; we start to compete with ourselves of yesterday.

Are you winning today?

Featured image: Photo by mickrh / CC0

“You can build by not building”

“Gibson advanced what he called an ecological approach to perception and cognition,” Iyer said. “It’s not that we just hear sounds. We hear the sources of the sound, and we’ve evolved to identify them. He also talks about time and events. There’s an article called ‘Events Are Perceivable but Time Is Not.’ We experience this tumult of events, and time is a ghost of what we actually experience. What we call time is really the feeling of eventfulness, so this kind of makes music a matter of events and our perception of this events. Music is made of us listening to each other”

…

[Iyer said] “Sometimes, you might want to make a radical choice and drop out for a while. The cliche is you have to build, everyone building in with more notes. If you listen to Monk, there’d be stabs and silences, but that silence was filled with other things. You can build by not building. What that means is you build in the imagination of the listener by actually refusing to build, which arouses an expectation.“

(From “Time is a Ghost – Vijay Iyer’s jazz vision” by Alec Wilkinson. The New Yorker)

An artistic work is a medium through which the artist communicates his/her idea with the audience. Thus, it is an empty space left for the audience that completes the work. A whole rest is not a silence. The last note still lingers in the air and the listener slips his/her imagination and emotion into the music, personalizing the experience and the moment of listening. Before long, the next note hooks the lister’s invisible work and carries it along.

On a side note, maybe teaching is a kind of art work; when it becomes conversational and leaves a room for students to contribute, learning happens.

Meritocracy challenged by the faltering economy

“The more serious threat to the Chinese political system is that economic growth will lose its status as the main source of legitimacy. Over the past several decades, government officials could be promoted based on economic performance above all else. Today, the country’s problems are much more diverse: rampant pollution, growing inequality, precarious social welfare, not to mention massive corruption.

Here things become more complicated for a political system that prides itself on the meritocratic selection and promotion of leaders. Should government officials be assessed according to their ability to deliver economic growth, to improve social welfare, to reduce corruption, to deal with the environment, to reduce the gap between rich and poor, or to achieve some combination of these goals?”
(Troubles for the ‘China Model’ by Daniel A. Bell published in WSJ on 10/2/15)

A year ago, China took the title of the world’s largest economy and became the second biggest importer in the world. Therefore, policymakers all over the world are legitimately anxious that China’s slowdown may take the global economy down with it.

The article above directs our attention to an overlooked ramification of China’s faltering economy. The writer argues that a grim outlook for Chinese growth poses a formidable challenge to the meritocratic system rooted in Chinese history since Confucius. Maybe it is not the one-digit economic growth per se, but the resulting political turmoil in China that would rattle the world more.

A photo vs. a movie clip

A quote from & Sons written by David Gilbert,

“You know that famous photograph from Vietnam, the one of the soldier shooting the guy in the head, like the war photo of all war photos. It was taken by this guy Eddie Adams and he captured the exact moment the trigger was pulsed. Boom. These two men, one in profile, in uniform, middle-aged, the other in full view, in casual wear, young—it’s almost like a wayward son meeting his disappointed father—anyway, those two men are forever connected by that bullet. An absolutely iconic image, almost beautiful in its true expression of horror. But do you know there’s a video as well? An NBC News crew filmed the whole thing, from almost the same exact angle, but there’s nothing iconic about that fucking footage, nothing artful about that man getting shot in the head, no innate drama, no archetypal story, just a cap-gun-like snap followed by the guy falling to the ground, a brief fountain of blood spraying from his head. Whatever sense of timelessness is destroyed in four seconds flat. It’s just plain horrible” (80).

A photo carves out a moment from the flow of time, whereas a movie clip records an event as it unfolds. The former is static and the latter shows much more. However, it is the former that can be iconic, aesthetic, and dramatic.

Why?

Photos welcome viewers and offer a room for their own interpretation. What had happened? What would happen next? Any background noise at the moment and the peripheral scenes that the camera had missed are all viewers’ shares to contribute.

Also, photos wait for viewers. We can take our sweet time looking at the frame—the only frame—in front of us and complete the story behind the photo. On the other hand, a movie clip, which is a sequence of pictures flying at the rate of 1/24 second or faster, doesn’t give us enough time to think about what’s being projected to us. Our brains work at full capacity trying to take in as many pictures passing by as possible.

By giving up a dimension of time, photos can have a sense of timelessness. Not a bad deal.

 

Book Review: The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

The Woman Upstairs by Clair Messud

My rating: 4.7/5.0

The first and the last sentences of The Woman Upstairs read quite similar.

“How angry am I? You don’t want to know. Nobody wants to know about that” (2).

“I am furious at both of them—at the lie of their friendship, their false promises of the world and of art and of love—but just as mad at myself, at my stupid dreams, my misplaced trust, my worthless longing. But to be furious, murderously furious, is to be alive…. I’m angry enough to set fire to a house just by looking at it” (302).

However, there is a sea of difference between Nora before and after meeting the Shahid. She was angry because her life was devoid of desire. Now she is angry because she is full of desire.

Longing turned into desire. She wants motherhood, a profession, and love. All of them. And she knows that she is capable of having them. All.

“There’s no point writing the world’s best answer to the first question on the test, if you don’t then leave yourself enough time to write any answers at all to the other questions. You still fail the test. And I worry, in my bleaker hours, that this is what I’ve done. I answered the dutiful daughter question really well; I was aware of doing only a so-so job on the grown-up career front, but I didn’t really care, because there were two big exam questions I wanted to be sure I answered fully: the question of art, and the question of love” (63).

Life is a weird test. Not all the questions are worth the same number of points. What’s weirder is that YOU set the points, not parents, friends, or social norms. And Nora is flipping back to the beginning and putting down her answers to the big questions.