Irony

The Kid said to me today:
"I hate irony....
when it's happening to me."

Supermother?

Did you read this? Someone should tell Peggy Orenstein that the way to empower a daughter is to empower oneself. The self-effacing feminist might try mythology or, say, history for a few good female heroes. Or how about manga? Baby Cart and the River Styx has a female character who not only can fight the land's most revered, ruthless and dreaded ronin, but she can also jump out of her clothes in a single bound! Eat your heart out, Peggy.

Her only weakness? Motherhood*. Go figure.

Image from Danny Choo via Boing Boing.
*not an Adrian Rich fan. Just making a point.

Sanctified

Hiking today I learned that Fairfax, California (north of the Golden Gate) is home to some slippery friends: rattlesnakes. Climbing up over Cascade Falls I came face to face with this young fella. The yellow bands indicate that he's a juvenile. Young one or not, he was huge and absolutely unmoved by me.

Snakes have a strange power; walking back I jumped at the slightest movement of every single blade of grass. It makes perfect sense why serpents hold such an important place in folklore.

The experience reminded me of this piece of footage I'd seen back in the late '90s. Snake handling at a Jolo, West Virginia Pentecostal Church. - Looking for a little faith? Try Mark 16 set to rockabilly accompanied by some downright fancy footwork.



Keep in mind this footage is relatively contemporary.

Single Point Sorrow

Having given up a lot to go to nursing school, I was full of joy in witnessing a one-time, single-point trapeze training partner preform at this year's annual showcase. According to her website, she also had a couple of gigs at Supperclub here in the city. Excellent.
*My sorrow is over having lost the circus somewhere in the midst of becoming a nurse -- and still not having yet become a nurse.
No circus + no nurse = sorrow.
Photo credit: Seth Golub

Whose Eye is on the Sparrow?

It rains, a gale rises, the big top collapses, fire breaks out, panic, people trample their neighbors to death as faced with the prospect of dying they make the decision, now, swiftly, who matters most. "I matter. I. I. I matter."

...I fly alone, apart from the flock, on long journeys through storm and clear skies to another summer. Hear me!

Towards Another Summer

Zatôichi

"Even with my eyes open wide, I can't see a thing."

Also, this movie has the best closing scene ever.

Frenz

Fleisher/Ollman Gallery's exhibit of works selected by Will Oldham.
It's called Frenz. With performance, too. Philadelphia, PA.

Lang & Cravat

Burt Lancaster is a new fave. And it's not just the face. Nor is it just the physique. Actually, this is my favorite part of his biography: Nick Cravat. This life-long friend of Lancaster was also his partner in a doubles acrobatic/trapeze routine in the mid 1930s and 1940s. He starred alongside Lancaster in nine films. In most he was mute. Cravat's daughter attributes this to his incredibly strong east-coast accent.

Cravat died in January and Lancaster in October of 1994.

A great aside is that the Circus Center has a fabulous doubles acrobatic act. Weirdly, our strong-man base bears a striking resemblance to Lancaster. Take a look for yourself.

Cardiac Infarct

So Sorry, My Sister

...but now I see
I had her before me always,
like a shield. I look at her wrinkles, her clenched
jaws, her frown-lines - I see they are
the dents on my shield, the blows that did not reach me.
She protected me, not as a mother
protects a child, with love, but as a
hostage protects the one who makes her
escape as I made my escape, with my sister's
body held in front of me.

From The Elder Sister, Sharon Olds
For you, in loving memory of
S.B.M. 09/08/1972 - 07/22/2009

Kozure Ōkami

From the manga of the same name.

Recap

Time for a recap of the past few months:

The winter ends, psych and peds rotations begin... and end, I join Facebook, The Kid graduates to the *fifth* grade, the MEPN year ends (hurrah! hurrah!), I meet new MEPNs with new neuroses, I leave Facebook, The Partner finally visits Montana, I receive my interim permit to practice nursing in the state of California, I register for the NCLEX and I come back to Circus Nurse, fresh and new. Okay. Now we're all squared away.

Per Sempre

Without impatience I'll dream.
I'll bend to the task
That can never end,
And little by little at the tips
Of reborn arms
Succoring hands will reopen,
The eyes reappeared
In their sockets will give light again
And suddenly in tact,
You'll have resurrected, your voice
Will be my guide again,
I'm seeing you again forever.

~Giuseppe Ungaretti

The Trick of Humanity

I spent the first day of pediatric clinicals in the intensive care unit. My patient was very young, under one year, born with congenital anomalies that included a heart defect, this one specifically, choledochal cysts and biliary atresia, meaning that she needed both open heart surgery and a liver transplant. She received both, preceded by a miriad of other surgies. When I cared for her, she was nine days post-op. I counted eight IV lines going into her body, exclusive of her pacer wires, NG tube, Jackson-Pratt drain, CPAP and ventilator.

I didn't mind the PICU so much as I expected. In fact, pediatrics seems like a place I would be excited to work, a great surprise to me. Maybe it's the timing. The most significant obstacle would be coming to terms with advanced technology out-sizing the patient. Following yesterday's rotation I felt like this was a huge moral dilemma, so I sought out reserach on the subject and found an interesting article that takes on the distress that PICU nurses face in the wake of modern technology that outpaces moral questions about life at any cost. The authors ask how medical and "life-saving technologies are outstripping our human abilities to comprehend and live with the consequences". Certainly a very worthy ethical question and definitley one that represents what I find the most difficult aspect of peds: what it means to be humane. To me, it looks like humanity tricking us again.

A Home in the World

"I can't consider any of that time as time away, because you don't want to spend half of your life being away or where you shouldn't be. I choose to think of all the time as being present. I'm always home."

I Have Not Seen You

...but slowly you are
forming above my head, white as
petals, white as milk, the dark
narrow stems of your
ankles and wrists,
until you are always with me,
a flowering branch suspended
over my life.
~ for E.J.T. 1973-2009 &
C.V.O. 1995-2009

from Absent One, by Sharon Olds

Movie: A New Euphemism For..?

So The Partner says, "Look at all of those trucks along the side of the road. Do you know what they're doing there?"
"No...." says The Kid.
"They're making a movie."
"What's a movie?"
"Um, a movie" I say, "have you ever seen one?"
"Oh," says The Kid, "I thought you meant something different by 'a movie'... like something truckers get together and do in the woods."

Like the End of Something Wonderful

Were you worried Billy'd crossed over to the other side? Me too. I guess we were wrong. Today's New York Times sports a long-deserved and up-front review of the new album which is weirdly flattering and, at the same time, disparaging.

"Mr. Oldham’s persona is a little bit of a lonesome romantic and a lot of a fool. He sounds generally optimistic, even when he’s singing about treachery...He never flatters himself. He’s not special. His love is effortful and can be one-sided. He’s easily satisfied. He can’t be counted on... Something is always lost in translation with him."

My favorite is the last line in reference to breadth and depth of talent in his accompanying musicians, "There’s a sense here of smart people being made to focus on a strange project."
It's refreshing to see he can still make the critics stutter.

Kandahar Treasure

"I heard a mother had lost her son due to a suicide bomber, and she got up to speak, and she said a beautiful thing. She said, “Whether it’s a Talib who’s being killed, an Afghan policeman who’s being killed, or an international army military person who is being killed, he leaves behind a mother, a sister or a daughter and/or a wife who mourns for him.”

So that saying was quite powerful in saying that women have this inclusive idea of security and owning peace. Stopping the killing for all... is reason enough for them to wage peace. You know, mothers feel the pain of human beings, and they’re calling for and they want this killing to stop." Rangina Hamidi. ~ Kandahar Treasure

The Feminist Conundrum

"So do you have men in other rooms studyin' about theirselves?"

"Not necessary. Men are already studied in every kind of study. Women have been forced to study great men ---"

"Maybe that's the problem... Ditch great people! Erase the bastards... from books and stuff. Just do folks - regular ones - the failures." Snowman (1999)