Skepticism

When I was little kid they told me that this little island called Formosa (a big island, but still, just an island) was "China." I asked what this huge country in Asia was that had no label at all on it. "Oh," said the teacher, that is "Red China." It was an early moment of skepticism. I don't know how old I was, but I'm sure it was before Nixon's opening of China in 1972.    

Dámaso on San Juan

Nada que pudiera explicar esa constante sensación de frescura, de virginalidad y originalidad que nos produce la poesía del Santo y que es como un delicioso oreo cuando a ella pasamos desde las de otros poetas, aún de los mayores de nuestro Siglo de Oro. 

Wag the Dog

All your obsessions, complexes, fetishes, syndromes, dogmas, rituals and habits, self-definitions, specializations, investments, ranks and insignias, isms, everything you are attached to, everything you think necessary to position yourself in the world, to gain an edge, to get others to see in in a certain way: all of this is a dog wagging you. You are the tail being wagged around by this dog. It's no wonder you feel helpless and unfree most of the time. It's been a lot of work to accumulate and keep track of all this baggage, so you won't willingly part with any of it.   

This is a paraphrase of what I told myself today while meditating.  I usually try not to think when I'm meditating, but I am out of practice so I could not prevent  it, and I think it is a useful insight, for me if not for you.  

Gold Mine

I got a fund-raising letter from the University of California Study Abroad Programs:  Dear Jonathan, it has been 38 years since you studied abroad. That means that I have been a Hispanist for 38 years, in that I began a very systematic study of Spanish poetry at that point (really, before that, since I learned Spanish for this express purpose). I still remember poems from memory that I memorized at this point: "El alma tenías / tan clara y abierta / que yo nunca pude / entrarme en tu alma."  Yes, I was a babe in the woods. It was a junior year program but I was a year younger, since I started college at 17. I turned 19 in Spain, right after we had arrived in a group flight that went non-stop from LAX.

***
I am sitting atop the proverbial gold mine. I've found a vehicle, the study of translation, with an automatically generated archive: you simply have to find the translations, which isn't hard to do. There is a sophisticated body of theory that allows you to look at this material critically, and the project has a historical sweep to it, both in the original texts, and in the translations. I don't have to be an expert in every original text, either. I can rely on accidental erudition and on a store house of ideas I have been developing since before graduate school, including two papers I wrote in grad school.

***

I realize I am not necessarily like other people.
 

Dream of the Anti-Aphorism

There was a new genre discovered, in this dream. It was called scheherazade [phonetic approximation?], and I was investigating it / trying to explain it somehow.  Though short, it differed from the aphorism in that it was delicate and non-obtrusive rather than heavy-handed, axiomatic, and sententious. Most examples were much shorter than aphorisms. When I awoke I realized I myself was the main expert in this genre, because it was my dream.  I cannot quote you any examples.

Religious Differences, A Poem

Stoics and Epicureans

may not be as different as you think

We associate one group with suffering pain without too much complaint

the other with seeking pleasure

Neither group was Christian, and

Christians too have had their ideas about pain and pleasure

neither Stoical nor Epicurean

Protestants and Catholics used to be thought very different from each other too

now they live side by side in the suburbs

undisturbing each other with theological controversy

They fought horrific wars in Europe for decades or maybe centuries

I'll have to look that up

even in the 1970s there was religious war

going on

and not between factions of stoics  

Accomodation

An article in the CHE: a student comes into the professor's office with an official accommodation letter about panic attacks. The professor says that not showing up for an exam for a panic attack will not be very good for a number of reasons, and then asks the student what sh/e does normally to calm self in such a situation.  They have a conversation and the student ends up doing well in the class and never missing an exam for a panic attack.  

Then some disabilities specialists write another opinion piece in the CHE saying how this first article perpetuates "myths."  Like the myth of resilience, that a person can do things to manage their disability better. The professor who wrote op-ed 1 is arrogant, non-compliant with disability act (ADA), etc...

I have an anxiety disorder, let's say (I actually do), which is not PTSD or panic disorder, but something called General Anxiety Disorder.  (I've had only two or three panic attacks in my life, two that I remember buts let's say I don't remember everything.)  The best thing someone can tell you is to take steps to manage it, which I've done. So asking someone what they normally do is perfectly fine.  If the student did have the panic attack and the prof. did not accommodate, then she would be in violation, of course, but recommending coping mechanisms as first resort is nothing bad.

I've read up on these disorders, and what actually works is not avoidance of the stressors, but the realization that a panic attack is survivable and that anxiety, in general, is something normal rather than something wholly intolerable. Since no human being can avoid all anxiety in all situations in life, the anxiety sufferer goes to extraordinary lengths to do the impossible and ends up being slave to various anxiety avoidance techniques, which often end up being life avoidance techniques. The treatment ends up being much worse than the original problem. I am not embarrassed to say I have done this, because having anxiety in and of itself is not the disorder. Everyone feels it, along with the other normal range of human affect.

Resilience is basic axis of human personality. Some have more or less, but it is there, the same with other axes like the ability to introspect, to understand others, to enjoy one's personal triumphs, etc... There is no reason to believe that disabled people have more or less of this, but in general most people think it's better to more of it. Except these disability busy-bodies.