Bodies

notes from my visit to the Bodies exhibit, Las Vegas strip, summer of 2012 (en route to New York via the heartland of our country).

Bodies.

the value of certain bodies over others

cutting up / butchering to put on display makes it more animal / more object

         than human

American-centric (poses, activities)

baseball, football, basketball, darts, conductor, frisbee

private parts - demeaning

pieces of faces

keeping bodies intact

death rituals / thinking about the souls of deceased

donated, unclaimed bodies -- outside of Beijing

argue: doctors use bodies for medical training all the time

different intent: donated bodies, medical benefit, education

while these are educational exhibits, there's also some element of freak show shock and awe in the experience/display -- gore element that seemed disrespectful

Bodies purpose -- "become an informed participant in your own healthcare"

"the specimens in this exhibit have been treated with the dignity and respect they deserve" -- afterthought on last wall of exhibit

West Coast to East (and back again)

notes from my second (!!) move from California to New York, summer-ish 2012. left a Silicon Valley job to go to grad school out east, chasing love, running away from myself. i got this in a fortune cookie: "every man should seek to learn what he is running from, to, and why." notes found scrawled on the back of an envelope, stuffed into glovebox, to be rediscovered in 2020, as i start to think about moving back out West. everything [sic] Arizona: cool and green what is it a/b the Arizona landscape that makes the sunset so beautiful? N.Mex: coyote nights howling at the moon Vegas: oversexed drag show/talent show/circus freak Grand Canyon: layers of red, yellow, ocre, orange, gray like jell-o cake Sante Fe: trees illuminated with a thousand lights milky way fried egg and red/green chile Kansas: red moon lightning skies sleeping in the gracious shadow of a McDonald's parking lot Iowa: corn fields and crappy roads feeling tired of driving and missing home #writing

review of Parakeet

Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A delightful, strange, and punchy book that I assumed would be whimsical and cutesy but surprised me with its darkness and depth. I knew little about the book when I started (woman is a week away from her wedding when her dead grandmother visits her as a parakeet -- seemed intriguing enough!) but the whole of the story was so much more than that simple premise. It is about family, grief, belonging, trying to understand the most elusive people in one's life (usually family), and trying to seek out happiness in the difficult contexts that conspire against you.

"This is what they call trauma logic, which is indistinguishable from dream logic."

This book was dreamy -- not in a pastel, confectionary, lightness of being way, but the way REAL dreams are: mostly terrifying, illogical, scattered, haunting, uncanny. The way dreams feel like deja vu sometimes. The way dreams feel after you wake up from them -- troubling or persistent, gnawing. The first half was surreal and dreamy (I was reminded of Barry Yourgrau's "Wearing Dad's Head" -- another fantastic book featuring familial absurdity), the second half more grounded and much too short. I could have read more but loved how succinct it was (no flourishes, another trait of this book, though there were many phrases and descriptive choices that sang to me -- my version is covered in highlights of some of my favorites).

Parakeet examines a multitude of human relationships -- the social expectations of marriage, of course, but also platonic love, lust, familial relationships and duties, what it means to be connected or tethered to other human beings. It depicts love and connection in various forms and is emotive, while still somehow being distant (using the word "love" feels too contrite, the word itself losing meaning from overuse). Parakeet also depicts trauma and its effect on someone's experiences ("the mean trick of trauma is that like a play it has no past tense. It is always happening.") -- an interesting conceit that recurs and replays in poignant ways throughout the story.

A stunning book, high on my list of books that I delighted in reading, but also challenged me (Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo is another one I hold in high regard and would be on the same list).

View all my reviews

gratitude

I think learning gratitude is really just the process of growing up. Of learning that everything you enjoy now is the product of sacrifice, hard work, dedication, selflessness. The investment of time, commitment, hope in a future that is better than the past.

I was thinking today about my Mom. Thinking about a book I wrote, as a kid, that described being an adult as "getting to do whatever you want," like dragging your kid around on errands when all they want is to go home. Then I thought about the times as a kid, going with Mom all over town to help her shop for things, how that was our way of spending time together. I learned to shop and be a consumer from these trips. But I imagine for my mom, it was nice to have someone to do that with, and also, to have the means to buy what you want, that was a luxury. That was the American Dream. That was something that felt very independent and luxurious, coming from a past where her family had so little, only one of the three kids got to eat meat at dinner, the rest only got soy sauce on rice until the next time they were the lucky one.

I started to think about how every generation tries to make life better for the next. How my mom grew up with so little, and her Mom with even less. My mom's life growing up was unimaginable to her Mom, my life now so pampered compared to what my Mom had. Ever generation doing what they can so the pains and hardships they endured could be a little more faded for the next. More room for joy, for carelessness, for the freedom of unburdenness.

But this realization pains me. Thinking about all my Mom, my Grandma, have done so I could know a different life. I will never know their pain. They will never know the same joys. This hurts me, feels like distance insurmountable.

To be grateful is to see that sacrifice, born of love, and hope to perpetuate that forward, in gratitude for what was given me.