WRITING
1. Post the revision of your piece to the comments of this posting as well as to your personal blog.
2. Write your evaluation and comments about the class and email to Marilyn Blumsack (marilyn.blumsack@tufts.edu) at the Tufts Osher Lifelong Learning Program.
3. Write one line and post it to the comments of this blog posting about your next steps--either in the writing, in sharing your essay with others, trying to publish it, etc. . .
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6 comments:
I’m a pilot. Pilots love hard numbers, and for good reason. Not hard numbers in the sense of tough or rough-and-ready but hard in the good sense, by the book, empirical and that sort of thing. Pilots try to create a black and white world or a binary one with ones and zeros. “Climb to and maintain Flight Level 350” means exactly 35,000 feet above mean sea level and not one foot more or less.
When you enter an airplane most passengers look right, down the aisle towards their seats. Those adventurous adults or children look left into the cockpit door and see buttons, lights and levers; hear beeps, horns and radio transmissions; checklists being read, hands pointing, then reaching for cups of coffee by their sides. Those who request to see the cockpit are usually inquisitive children and an occasional adult afraid of flying. They want to see all the buttons (in their minds we push buttons for a living). The buttons they see are circuit breakers, one per electrical device so hundreds in view on the overhead panel. We rarely push these buttons. With a flick of a test switch we light up the front panel with red, yellow and green lights. The children’s eyes enlarge.
My wife doesn’t have all those “buttons” to memorize but can remember all our relatives, their children’s names and ages. My wife is innovative, independent, shows initiative and change plans as often as she likes. I have a little difficulty going there.
My wife is extremely fun to watch and be with as she goes through life. She’s interesting, exciting and a self described non-numeric. We’ve been married 38 years and just completed our 25th move.
Over the years I’ve tried to explain how easy it is for me to remember numbers like our new telephone number. I dump the old telephone numbers like I try to dump the DC-10 and B-727 numbers associated with the airplanes I don’t fly anymore. Explaining to my wife how I link numbers together to make them easier to remember is like reading your insurance policy late at night in bed when disinterest and sleepiness overcomes anyone in a 15-foot radius. On the other hand my wife types faster than I can read and does difficult crossword puzzles that overwhelm me instantly.
Here’s how I tell her to remember our new telephone number. The number is 555-541-1744 (it really isn’t) and you remember the fives and 4+1 equals 5, next the 1+7 equals 8 and the 4+4 equals 8 so all you have to remember is 5 and 8. That’s easy for me. “Simple, right?” I don’t think so. It’s simple for me and inconsequential for my wife. She’ll learn her new telephone number. It’s not a test or a race. Write it down, carry it in a book and look at it when you need it. That’s just as simple.
Another precursor that you might like hard numbers was when you were in elementary school and were learning your times tables. When you came to the nines it was tough. You memorized 3 x 9 = 27, 4 x 9 = 36 etc. Well if you were gifted with a photographic memory, then that was less than a great problem. The rest of us struggled. Others like my niece Katy picked up on a mathematical relationship that goes like this. Take any single digit number times nine and the answer is simply figured out this way: subtract one from that number and that’s the first digit of the answer. Subtract the original number from ten and that’s the second digit of the answer. Hence, 3 x 9 = 27 or 8 x 9 = 72. Are you following instructions or did you already know this? Anyway if you understand this then you love hard numbers.
Here’s another easy test. It involves Centigrade to Farenheit conversions. I take the Centigrade temperature, double it and take 10 per cent off then add 32 there you have it. Soft people say “30’s hot 20’s nice ten’s cold, zero’s ice.” My wife’s asleep now that I’ve read her this article. Her crossword puzzle is strewn across her lap. Does anyone know a nine letter word for half blood wizard?
Move
I am standing in the entrance of our new house, the door is ajar and Walid and his colleagues are walking in with boxes. They are working through Ramadan meaning they won't get to eat or drink until sundown. My duty is to check off all the numbered boxes and direct Walid and the rest where to deposit their loads. The parquet is covered with tape to protect it from the moving furniture and the house smells like fresh paint. White. Everything is white and stark. We hadn't really prepared for this day and we just keep telling the men to bring the boxes upstairs to avoid having to think it out clearly. The wind is blowing in the house and I am freezing. Box 2. Garage. Box 34. Upstairs. Box 120. Small bedroom. Alistair, my boyfriend, is in the next room with another Allied International man struggling to get his TV and couches to fit in the sitting room. We had already argued about where to put the furniture and I decided just to let him do his own thing. The boxes keep coming in and I am sniffling, wiping my nose on my sweatshirt, and trying to keep warm. The heat hadn't been ready so the house is freezing and empty. It is the end of September and winter decided to come a couple of months early to Switzerland. Two weeks before I had turned 38. Things with Alistair weren’t going well, his father was dying and my work was a nightmare. I had planned to live in Switzerland two years for work and it turned into five years. I accumulated 158 boxes of “stuff” in those five years, 60 months or 1,826.25 days. The 158 boxes and this house and my life were slowly suffocating me and pinning me to the ground. I felt trapped and unhappy and needed a break. My sister was about to start a new job in New York and was hankering for a vacation before she began her new role. When she asked me if I wanted to go with her to Israel I accepted immediately. I told Alistair I needed a vacation; I went on line and used my frequent flyer points to book a ticket to Tel Aviv.
When I landed in Tel Aviv the heat, the light and humidity hit me immediately. I took a cab and fumbled through some basic Hebrew words that managed to get me to the hotel where my sister was waiting for me. We were staying at the Sheraton Moriah, a big supposedly luxury skyscraper hotel right on the beach. We spent the afternoon walking along the beach, taking in the smells of the Middle East, the incredible mix of people, clothing, colors and sounds. We spent that first night in Jaffa, the old Arab town, and ate in a little restaurant serving homemade Jewish food like schnitzel, in the heart of the flea market. The sun set over the Mediterranean right when the minaret’s load speaker started chanting isha’a, the evening prayer. I felt at home. The following day we took a private tour to Caesaria, the old Roman capital, built right on the sea with amphitheaters, baths, aqueducts and a hippodrome. It was spectacular. We moved further along the coast to Haifa, where the Ba’hai religion built a temple and gardens spending almost 250 million dollars. We moved onto Akko, another Arab village, with the characteristic of having been built on an old Crusader town that had remained intact. Supposedly Al-Jazar, the sultan nicknamed “the Butcher”, after his conquest, decided to completely bury the Crusader city and build his Islamic city on top of it. The Crusader halls were later discovered and dug up and are now intact with the stem of the fleur de lis visibly carved in the stone. We ended the tour at the border with Lebanon at a place called Rosh Naquira. We took a cable down to the grottos formed by the break of the waves and checked out the border guarded by the Israelis, behind the UN zone buffer and finally the actual Lebanese border. On our last day at Tel Aviv we enjoyed the beach until a masturbator decided to use us as inspiration so we headed downtown where we shopped and visited the oldest Jewish neighborhood and ended the day eating at the best falafel joint in town. We left Tel Aviv for the Dead Sea the following day with a wonderful driver, Esteban, originally from Chile. He spoke to us in Spanish and told us he had come to Israel over 50 years ago, lived for some time in a kibbutz and eventually came to Tel Aviv. The ride to the Ein Bokek on the Dead Sea was interesting and it passed very close to the West bank. We passed farmland and then hit the desert. Bedouin camps appeared intermittently along the rode. Esteban said they were “good arabs” and paid taxes and did military service and the Israeli government finally constructed places for them to live. My guidebook said that the Bedouins were trying to retain their nomadic life but were forced into these settlements. We finally saw the Dead Sea, a relieving spot of blue after kilometers of downhill desert to 472meters below sea level. We checked into one of these humongous hotels that one wonders how building permits were given and we went to float in the Dead Sea. The water was warm and slimy and you couldn’t help but float. It was hard to swim and if water got in your eye you were basically blinded and needed to be escorted out to shore. A lot of Russian tourists with big bellies, elder New York Jewish ladies and a couple of French families were floating and smearing their bodies with mud and exfoliating with salt. We were happy to get out of there. We went to visit Masada, another site of an ancient Roman fortress built on top of a mountaintop in the desert. This time we had to take a cable car up the mountain and visited the ruins on the plateau. Once again the Romans had managed to construct palaces, baths, temples and cisterns in the middle of the desert. Our last stop was Jerusalem. Alian, our driver, had the sweetest eyes and temperament. He waited for us to tour Masada and then took us all the way to our hotel in East Jerusalem and made sure we got in safely. Most people stay in the Western part but we wanted to see the more “Palestinian” side. We were offered drinks (freshly squeezed lemonade blended with mint) and had a delicious meal of hummus, tabouleh, olives and pita. The hotel offered political tours like trips to see the huge wall that Israelis are building today to divide the East part of the city from the West (like Berlin during the Cold War) or trips to the West Bank to see firsthand the plight of the Palestinian refugees. We decided not to go on these visits but rather focus on the positive aspects of the city this time around. Jerusalem is truly impressive. A city Judaism, Islam, and Christianity claim Holy and has contributed in making the Old City a labyrinth of churches, mosques, synagogues and a major pilgrimage site for ultra-religious people of all faiths. The born again Christians were singing and swaying, arms outstretched at the place of Jesus’ last supper, the Hassidic were decked our for Shabbat with their fur cats and satin jackets in 30 degree weather with wives in wigs trailing behind with numerous kids, and the Muslims called out from loud speakers from all the Mosques to pray five times a day. What an unbelievable place. We took our time discovering the city. We visited the Jewish section, the Armenian, the Christian and the Arab part of the Old City. We ate at a great Moroccan restaurant, we prayed at the Western wall, we went to an Armenian mass, saw the Ethiopian Coptic church, we bought traditional Palestinian ceramics, we prayed where Mary was laid to rest, we shopped in the Arab souk midst the smell of cardamom and saffron, and on our last night we listened to Arabic music and watched our new friends dance the night away. We bonded as sisters and felt like life is truly about discovery.
The security to leave was unbelievable. It didn’t help my passport had stamps from Marrakech, Beirut, and Sharm-el-Sheik from previous vacations. I was put under maximum-security check, which took over three hours. I missed my connecting flight in Milan and spent six hours in the Milan airport. The weather was cold and the sky was cloudy. Alistair called me. He told me his father was getting worse and probably wouldn’t live until Christmas. I agreed to go with him to England the following weekend to help his mother and enjoy the last moments with his father. Then my best-friend Marzia called. We talked about our gay friends, Jim and Simon, who after12 years were breaking up. I knew something hadn’t been right and that something had happened to Jim so I probed until Marzia admitted that he had found out he was HIV. I was stunned and numb. With 4 more hours to kill, I cried and started shopping. I bought a new suitcase so I could roll all the Armenian ceramics I had bought, I bought a scarf at Etro, sneakers and pants from Nike, an ink recharge for my Montblanc pen and also tried to buy beautiful black leather boots from Bruno Magli but luckily they wouldn’t zip over my calves. When I finally got home with all my stuff, the house was dark and cold and I was alone. I unpacked the stuff and made a list of all the things I needed to do to fix the house and my life.
Elisabetta---thank you for your story and description of Israel. I've never been there but you took me on a very visual tour with your sister. I loved international flying and the best cities were with local friends as guides. You're one of those friends. Kevin
Turning to Yoga: Tackling Type A the Right Way
Writing from Life, Assignment #8, 06 November 2007
I am frustrated.
I'm standing outside a large, open room and feeling mentally ill-equipped for the moment. I enter to find fit-looking women territorially positioned and casually dressed in either loose garb or body-clinging tights and tops. Though there’s plenty of space, the ladies congregate in the middle of the room. Each woman has a mat, some sort of rubberized blocks, and a strap. I'm wearing running shorts and T-shirt and feel pretty much clueless about what’s coming next. Why am I here? I need to do something for my health and sanity. Running has taken its toll on my lower back and right hip, and I get agitated if I can’t do meaningful exercise. Though sympathetic, my sports doctor only offered a suggestion. “You could try yoga,” he stated offhandedly but with enough enthusiasm to pique my interest. So here I am, meekly staking out my own eight by four foot hardwood real estate in the first available opening. Then, I unfurl my mat amid the group and mimic my classmates by sitting quietly. I may look peaceful, but inside, I'm churning, wondering whether this is a good idea.
The instructor introduces herself and queries us on our experience with yoga and our physical condition, specifically pregnancies and existing injuries. Then she asks us to close our eyes. As the class begins and I go through the gentle warm-up exercises and listen to the instructor, a change comes over me.
"It's all in the breath," she explains.
We begin to move and stretch deliberately to our own deep breathing.
I think, "This is great stuff. Too bad I didn’t take this up 20 years ago. It might have helped my running."
For a few moments my mind started racing and tried to capture how I breathe when running. Though I experimented with various techniques during my running days, for the most part, breathing “just happened.” The faster I ran, the more rapid the breath. But after a few yoga breathing cycles I realized that my breath was actually quite shallow and uncontrolled. In yoga breathing is almost always through the nose. Deep breathing requires use of diaphragm and expansion into the chest and shoulders. Advanced deep breathing adds abdominal muscle control following complete exhalation. It sounds easier than it actually is – at least for me.
There’s a simple explanation why breathing is a fundamental tenet of yoga. We all draw energy from our breath. And in class after class with different instructors, the theme is consistent and a simple truth emerges: We can live without food, water, and rest for extended periods, but without breath, we expire - and pretty quickly! Breath is first and foremost. This is a central doctrine of Hatha Yoga.
I've learned much in this journey to practice yoga. At first, my motives were purely physical – to restore my back, alleviate past bodily abuses, and balance my muscles. I let the pressures of work limit my exercise options and placed aerobic routines above all others. As a result, I initially favored instructors who taught “power yoga.” I just wanted to muscle my way through the routines and elevate my heart rate. But as I learned the poses and developed greater flexibility, the philosophy of the practice penetrated my thoughts. Gradually, I began to appreciate the innate insight one gains of one's self through yoga. Now, we are all different so I don’t suppose this will apply universally, but yoga has improved my self-patience, and as a result, my patience with others. I attribute this change to the concentration needed to control the body and mind during yoga routines. That effort differs greatly from swinging a bat or tennis racket. In the latter cases, one looks outward to align the body to respond to an external stimulus. With yoga, the look turns inward to align body and mind to task. To help their students, yoga instructors will often remind their classes to clear their minds of distracting thoughts to better accomplish a pose. The better the pose, the greater the benefits. What benefits? I’ll summarize all that has been written in a single phrase: Quality of Life. And I believe the ability to achieve both inward and outward control of one’s actions improves one’s quality of life. Yoga has given me added confidence to draw from within and add my mark to situations, rather than react only to what life presents me. I’m more alive!
Now in Western societies yoga still lags in popularity among the various physical fitness regimens, particularly among men. My past reveals why. I grew up in the typical public school environment where personal popularity depended on how well one played competitive team sports. The workplace is no different. You must be competitive and conventional. And yoga is neither of these, nor flashy, nor public. Yoga requires introspection, but who today promotes the inward look? Are we not manipulated and encouraged not to pursue self enlightenment to better fulfill our roles as consumers? Our distractions and addictions - drugs, sports, alcohol, television, computers, overwork, and pursuit of material and fame - help eliminate the need for self intimacy.
Yoga, however, helps extract the individual from social pressures, generates a communal spirit with fellow yogis, and eliminates any need for competitiveness or adversarial interaction. Skeptics may argue that running, tennis, golf or popular team sports stimulate mental discipline and the self-criticism required to motivate self-improvement. Further, working as team members and developing strategies of play enhance our social skills, ultimately improving our societies. While these premises have merit, they overlook several critical aspects of self-intimacy and self-awareness that yoga naturally incorporates.
In yoga there is no need to critique or analyze performance. You are in control of your body and mind, not outside influences. You are who you are, and you perform a pose or routine to whatever level you're at. Try your best and benefit by focusing the mind on your body and how it is responding to what you are doing with and to it. Inhale to reach relaxation. Exhale to release tension. Also, regarding teamwork, yogis share an intimate bond through self-acceptance and inner peace that ease contact with others.
Can walking or hiking, combined with a solid stretch and flex routine, substitute for yoga? Perhaps. But I have found a deeper appreciation of these activities from my practice of yoga.
Yoga can be very challenging for some and still is to me. When I first started and got into the basic seated posture, my stiffness and lack of flexibility showed. I succumbed to pain and fatigue in only a few minutes. Not now. And my breathing is no longer shallow. I have even used yoga breathing to calm myself prior to key meetings – and I was CEO-equivalent of a 5,000 person organization. Whether standing before a large crowd of hundreds of employees, hosting VIPs, or conducting a staff meeting, the slow, methodical breathing helped to clear my mind, relax me, and subsequently focus on meeting objectives. I could be sitting at my desk prior to a meeting or standing near a podium waiting to speak, and all I had to do was clear my mind and take a few deep yoga breaths. The result: Little or no stress and improved confidence. I also no longer feel I have to live up to some idealized wannabe manufactured by society. All these benefits, and more, emerged by embracing yoga without being obsessive about it. I just stuck with it and kept an open mind.
When do you make a personal breakthrough with yoga? It‘s not when you can touch your heels to the ground when performing “downward facing dog” or when you can sit in the traditional lotus position. I may never reach such an advanced level, but I have matured my practice past the “part-timer” phase. This breakthrough consists of two interdependent practice elements. I first had to get my body and mind to work together to best execute a stance or pose at my level of expertise. “Best effort” matters, not the picture-perfect posture. But typically, the novice struggles because the mind won’t focus and listen to what the body is telling it. I was no different. Maybe the mind wants to plough ahead and move directly into the pose when the body is not ready. Or perhaps the psyche wanders aimlessly in thought about dinner, work, school, or anything but the task at hand, diverting attention from the body as it tries to maneuver itself gracefully into a pose. The second element simply involved doing yoga regularly on my own, whether it was a few minutes of breathing or a full blown routine similar to those in formal group sessions. These two elements feed off one another. The more you practice, the better your ability to concentrate and form the necessary partnership between mind and body. The better you are able to concentrate, the easier it is to practice independently. For someone like me, a former driven-to-excess, type A workaholic, the process can, and in my case did, take several years. But once I broke through, I not only felt better physically, I also thought more clearly and freely, improving my interpersonal interactions. Now, through yoga, I look forward to lifelong self-learning and well-being, helping me get the most from life. And if your spouse or partner participates, that’s an added bonus.
I encourage everyone to consider yoga as part of an exercise routine. And if you’re male, I doubly encourage you to break out of that traditional mold and experience a refreshing yet still physically challenging experience, with health benefits for mind and body. Sure, you may have to endure some classes being the only of your gender, but how bad can that be? Also, find a branch of yoga that best suits your objectives. Since yoga means a union between self and either a supreme being or an ultimate principle, it fits within any major religious doctrine, agnosticism, or atheism. Yoga, then, is both universal and highly personal. Enjoy the journey, and may you find your own internal synergy along the way.
As for me, I am no longer frustrated.
Next steps:
I will attempt to get my writing from this course published, tweaking and adapting it accordingly for the specific venue, and I'll continue to explore and develop other short pieces for potential publication - though I'm really interested in larger projects, both fiction and non-fiction. Many thanks to Grace and other classmates for their feedback. Enjoy life, and write from it!
Great, Frank. Glad to hear you are moving forward with publishing.
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