#why am i not just some fyodor expert

[neonganymede]

Do we think that Fyodor’s skin would be warm or cold? Asking for science. 

[kabaitan]

be somebody.

Be Somebody: A Brief Review of Existential Concepts in MP100 dedicated to the loveliest claude, for indulging me.

Cautionary Note: I took one (1) course in existential psychotherapy in grad school and this is probably just a fever dream I’ve been dying to write since I started MP100 so take what you will from this. I am by no means a crazy expert on existentialism and this is all 1000% self-indulgent.  Moreover, I am obviously not ONE-sensei and therefore this is just acts as a personal and theoretical comparative interpretation of certain plot directions.

I.  The Human Condition of Despair One of the major tenants of existentialism, proposed by Soren Kierkegaard, is that humans are always in a state of despair.  Not all people are aware of this state; some people go their entire lives being in what Kierkegaard considers the lowest level of awareness in regards to despair while others become aware of their suffering at some level.  Often times, to escape suffering, people busy themselves with earthly things or minor issues.  In the end, these attempts to avoid suffering and despair are typically futile and are only temporary.

In his mid 20s, Reigen is working an office job, typical for people at his age.  More often than not, there is a norm or niche job posed by certain cultures or societies – in this case, the salaryman/OL.  For people in that society to escape personal suffering and despair, they fall safely into society’s cookie-cutter expectation while unknowingly renouncing their agency and freedom to choose (another major concept considered in existential theory).  Reigen does this for a while and it appears that his office peers are unaware of their states of personal suffering and continue life as is.  

In time, Reigen becomes aware of how his routine is unfulfilling.  This does not mean that Reigen (of all people) is at the highest plane of awareness – there are a few more levels, but he is a bit more self aware than others.  Becoming aware that the facade of happiness he gained by leading a mundane lifestyle is just that, Reigen makes an impulsive decision to quit his job.  

II.  The Duality of Man During Reigen’s quarterlife crisis, he finds himself in a state of confusion.  In this state, he appears to not know where to proceed after quitting his job.  He impulsively rents out a space to do something, but it is not clear what it is at the time of purchase.  Unlike every rational young adult with the world at their fingertips, Reigen chooses to make his new living out of one of the most outrageously outrageous careers possible.  

Reigen may have chosen a stupid goal like becoming a psychic as a huge finger to The Man and Society for wasting a portion of his career as a salaryman or he was just running out of options… Either way, choosing a path that opens one to obvious ridicule may be compared to the plight of many protagonists in works of literature which illustrate the duality of man.  In particular, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella Notes from Underground presents a character dubbed the Underground Man, a painfully honest, troubled, and bitter retiree in nineteenth-century Russia who is highly skeptical of "normal" people who blindly follow societal ideals without question.  As the novella progresses, the Underground Man expresses his raw human existence through angry outbursts and frantic attempts to be accepted by those around him, leading him to either be rejected or humiliated.  

In Reigen’s case, he is certainly not foolish enough to think that being a psychic would be a widely accepted career goal, and yet, he continued to proceed with it anyway.  While we see the rationale for his underlying motives (which will be touched on later), one can see his actions as a representation of freedom from societal expectation.  In Notes from Underground, the Underground Man knowingly acts horribly to people and completely out of the ordinary, but does so simply because he wants to show is free to do so.  Reigen quit his job and could have easily selected a more secure career path, but chose something he saw at the back of a magazine.  Each day as a psychic probably left Reigen open to obvious critique by family and even his own clients, but he could at least say he chose to be in that position, instead of being in a state of equilibrium that was imposed on him by society.  While playing fast and loose with your early adult career is not a wise decision, Reigen felt satisfied – at least at first – by acting like a complete fool in his new business, because he had chosen that lifestyle for himself.  

III.  Man’s Search for Himself Not only could opening Spirits and Such be considered an initial proclamation of freedom, but it may also serve as a challenge to the existential vacuum.  Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl discussed what he called the “existential vacuum,” which leads people to become bored with their lives as they are ultimately unfulfilling and empty.  Frankl described the existential vacuum as a product of modern society, stating that technically speaking, nothing and nobody tells a person what they must do or should do, leading people to either do what others do or what others want us to do.  Essentially, we are ultimately free beings to choose our path, but instead of honing that freedom, people just copy what others do because they gradually come to believe it is correct or good, or simply wait for someone to tell them what to do with their lives.  Reigen’s peers, like almost all people, took a backseat in life and let society dictate what they would become.  When Reigen becomes aware that he too gave up his freedom to choose his future, he attempts to shake himself out of his boredom and chooses to make a change.

While Reigen initially enjoyed his freedom at his new job, he eventually slips back into another existential vacuum in the form of working odd jobs at the agency.  He soon realizes that being a “psychic” while not actually being psychic isn’t as fulfilling as he might have originally anticipated, and Reigen begins to reconsider his life decisions again.  

Regarding existential frustration, Frankl theorized that in order to surpass boredom from life, one must move toward what he described as the “self-transcendence of human existence”.  In this, one must look outside the self, and it is outside the self that one will then find a meaning to their life: 

Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself – be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.  

Frankl outlined three ways that human beings can find meaning in their lives and move toward self-transcendence: 1) by creating a work or doing a deed, 2) by experiencing something or encountering someone, and 3) by the attitude we take towards unavoidable suffering.  (Making art or loving someone are general examples of points one and two.)

Just as Reigen readies himself for another life change, Mob enters his life.  Intentional or not, Reigen accepts Mob as any other client and provides him half-baked advice.  However, something about the response he receives from Mob becomes a trigger to continue the business he was close to ending out of boredom and dissatisfaction.  While on one hand, it can be interpreted that Reigen really only chose to continue his shady business because he happened upon a real-deal esper.  On the other hand, later events reference that Reigen’s actions are driven in part by a desire to help Mob mature, as he had said he would.  In many ways, Reigen was able to ascribe a meaning to his life through his meeting with Mob, and declaring himself the person who would help him grow.  

The separation arc provides necessary conflict in order to draw attention to these intentions.  Reigen allowed selfish desire for personal gain to push Mob away, even if Mob is one of few reasons he became successful at all.  At the start of their separation, Reigen appeared to be moving on well without Mob; his business thriving just as long as he could bullshit his way out in the way he always did.  Despite the fact that his business is thriving, Reigen continues to work yet remains unsatisfied.  It becomes obvious before, during, and definitely after Reigen’s fall from grace and during the press conference that he fucked up.  While at one point Reigen felt he had actually become somebody important, that was the same point that he realized that he had become somebody he did not want to be.  Reigen flew too closely to the sun and forgot why he still did what he does.  In mentoring Mob – as dysfunctional as that relationship was/is – was where Reigen found meaning to trudge on with his existence.  It is once he turned his focus away from Mob and back unto himself that he essentially lost what gave meaning to his life.  It doesn’t seem like a long shot to consider that Reigen himself becomes aware that he lost sight of what was important as he sends a cryptic message to Mob at the end of the conference.  As the two come together to reconcile and let out the elephant in the room, Reigen refocuses his attention and subsequently regains his sense of meaning.

Referenced Readings + Extended Material:

Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (1849)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864)

Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea (1938)

Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927)

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)

Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself (1953)

[dazai-fyodorscenarios-blog]

Hey there! Could I please request a scenario of either of them comforting their daughter (6 or 7) who had a bad day at school or something? Thank you so much and I love this blog, it's my favorite! ❤️

((asdfghjklthankyousomuchIneverthoughtmyblogwouldbesomebody’sfavorite anyways I went with Fyodor as I’ve seen some headcanons/scenarios similar to these with Dazai going around already. Not that I wouldn’t love to have my own take on it, but since I’m only doing one here I went with Fyodor. If you want one with Dazai as well go ahead and pop in my ask box again, it’d be delightful to write.

also, (D/N) is for daughter’s name.))

Fyodor didn’t even need his expert skills at reading people to tell that something was wrong as he watched his daughter walking out of school and in his direction. He guessed that was the thing about children, they rarely hid their emotions and when they tried to they did so very poorly. And usually, that was when they had done something wrong.

How foolish. 

But she was his daughter nonetheless, and of course he loved her and cared about how she felt. He didn’t intend on straight on asking her what happened, instead he’d just ask her about her day as he usually did. Children were usually very open about things anyways. She’d probably tell him right away. 

Probably? No, she would.

“Dad?”

“Hello,” he said, taking her small hand into his. “Weren’t expecting me to pick you up today?”

“No, you’re usually always at work,” (D/N) said, scurrying to keep up with her father’s longer strides. Of course he noticed her struggle and walked a bit slower.

“Well, I got out a bit earlier today. Would you rather your mother have picked you up? I can make a note of that so she comes instead next time.” He wasn’t rude, he was perfectly capable of understanding if she rather have her mother go than him.

“No, no!” she said quickly. “I like it when you come pick me up from school!”

“Nice to know, then,” he said, ruffling her hair which matched the color of her mother’s. She highly resembled him though, her eyes matching the same exact shade of violet as his own. “So how was your day?”

“Well...it wasn’t very good...” she began before altering her attention. “Wait, are we walking home?”

“Yes, it’s a nice day out, don’t you think?” he replied smoothly. “It’d do you some good to get some exercise. But do go on about your day.”

“Well, I already knew what we were learning so I kept going ahead, but the teacher kept yelling at me for it! She said I’d do it all wrong, but I showed her my work and it was all correct! And she still got mad!” (D/N) said, exasperated. “And then the other kids, the mean kids, all started calling me a nerd and a know-it-all too. They keep making fun of me...”

Fyodor couldn’t help but laugh. Kids, really. To think they would make fun of another for being smart, and to think they’d also get offended by such futile things.

“It’s not funny!”

“But it is though,” he answered, ignoring the upset look on her face. “It is, and I’ll tell you why. Those kids are only making fun of you because you’re smarter than them, but they don’t know how in the future, that intelligence is going to put you ahead of all them. They’re making fun of you because they’re stupid. And you? I already said you’re much smarter than them, so act like it. Don’t get hurt by what they said, or at least act like it doesn’t hurt you. It’s not entertaining to make fun of someone who doesn’t care, they’ll just back off after a bit. Or, you can think of a very funny and sarcastic response to give them, just make sure you’re polite. Show them that you’re smarter and better than them, and that you know it.”

“You really think I am?”

“I know you are, you’re my daughter, aren’t you?” He smiled, looking down at her. 

In response she smiled back, puffing her chest out and lifting her chin. “Yes I am! But...what about the teacher?”

“Well, if she tells you not to go on, you should be respectful and listen,” he explained. “Don’t argue with her, smart people don’t argue like that. Understood?”

“Yes!”

He smiled, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “How about we stop and get some ice cream?”

He didn’t even have to wait to hear her response, since the extra bounce to her step and the light beaming from her face answered for itself.

[haiku8779-blog]

A powerful new method to have interaction

Valentine's is only a few days away and we have got an entire line up of wonderful tales to inspire love and compassion. Interestingly sufficient, I've started a swipe file of various stories I find on-line, in newspapers, and many others. Signal up to keep up to date with restricted affords, gross sales, and different nice sparkle stories information. If you don't know who the customers and clients are and why they might wish to use the product, then you should not write any consumer stories. You already know you've got a world of information to go on - however you have no idea easy methods to wrap it into an exciting bundle your readers will love.

Now, I teach yoga and eventually just began blogging again, but because I am running a blog to finally grow my enterprise on an expert level, all of my weblog concepts have been missing the raw emotion that drove me to teach yoga. I wrote fiction earlier than I wrote blog posts, but this has been an actual eye opener. Incorporating good tales in your posts similar to you probably did right here can actually wow your readers and leave them crying for more.

Use the boring small speak on the next garden party to extract attention-grabbing stories from strangers - additionally, you will have a greater time than asking how their kids are doing for the third time. The reason we tell bedtime stories to our children and the explanation you may't assist however examine your fb web page for updates from friends. If you have a services or products to promote, write testimonials as success tales. Break your epics into smaller, detailed stories until they are prepared : clear, possible, and testable.

Use the template when it is helpful, but do not feel obliged to always apply it. Experiment with other ways to jot down your tales to understand what works greatest for you and your team. User tales emerged in extreme programming (xp), and the early xp literature talks about Haiku cards rather than person stories.

I've thought about maintaining a swipe file of tales to make use of in weblog posts for a while now. It is the reason you're keen on watching films or television. The explanation you trade your latest personal adventures over a cup of coffee. I like the concept of finding stories on the web and utilizing them to make some extent. With enormous braveness and wit, she managed the unthinkable: after firing up the king's ardour evening after evening together with her thrilling tales about wonders, love, and danger, he spared her life and made her his queen. Telling stories for products and types is an analogous matter as storytelling for bloggers. As tales connect so deeply with our emotions, content that makes use of storytelling is also extra memorable than bare facts alone.

Anyway, thank you for the comprehensive record of tips on how to do use stories to your benefit in each sort of put up…this was pure gold, and I intend to share! Some 30,000 years in the past, when our ancestors carved the thrilling story of their last mammoth hunt into rock partitions, their scraggly-haired pals will need to have consumed these tales eagerly. Say you run a house and garden” weblog and need to write a publish about buying furniture, in particular methods to match colours and fabrics. Tales mean emotion, and emotion means deeply engraving the lesson into your reader's brain. It is a easy but effective way for us content material marketers to use tales in our copy with out having to be fyodor dostoevesky.

[chasingforeverandaday]

Past is Prologue - Chapter 5: Mary & Edgar

And now the chapter that I’m pretty sure everyone reading these is annoyed at me for. Prepare yourself for some angsty Edgar.  I will say, this was probably both the easiest and hardest chapter to write. The subject matter itself is something I can very easily connect with, but my bread and butter is snarky humor, not somber.

Also, hospitals suck.

AO3

Walking out of the elevator, Dr. Shelley readjusted her jacket before opening to door to this ward’s waiting room. Checking in with the receptionist, she learned Lenore Poe (26, female, previously undiagnosed aortic stenosis, scheduled for valve replacement in Operating Room 3 in two hours) had only an extremely frazzled brother sitting out here. According to Vicki, he’d been driving the staff near insane with his pacing since the sister had been admitted. Currently though, he was staring blankly at the wall, looking lost and alone while holding onto his phone for dear life.

Mary was about to go over to him when his expression shifted to one of determination, and he quickly unlocked the phone, pressed a few buttons, and held it to his ear. His face fell immediately.

“Annabel? It’s Edgar. Annabel, where are you? I’ve tried calling you and you won’t pick up. Why won’t you pick up? Annabel, I need you. Please, just get here. Please.” His voice broke on his last plea, a sob wrestling it’s way out of his throat. He let the phone drop before burying his head in his hands.

Deciding the poor man didn’t need to wait any longer for news, Mary strode over and placed her hand on his shoulder. When he startled and turned to look at her, she put on her kindest smile and asked, “I assume you’re the family of Lenore Poe?”

“Yes, I’m her brother, Edgar Allan Poe. Um, I mean, just Edgar. Just call me Edgar. Is she? I mean, Lenore? Is she…?” He trailed off, unable or unwilling to complete his question.

“Let me introduce myself, I’m Dr. Mary Shelley. I’m the one who will be operating on your sister tonight.” He reached a hand over, seemingly on autopilot. Once she touched him however, he reeled backwards, finally fully processing her words.

“Wait, tonight? You need to operate tonight? What’s going on?”

“Your sister has a condition called aortic stenosis. It occurs when the aortic valve narrows, causing the heart to work harder.” Here she pulled out her notepad, drawing a rough sketch of the concerned area. “When aortic stenosis becomes severe, it causes the heart to pump too hard, exhausting the cardiac muscles. Sometimes, the valve muscles do not manage to completely close, meaning there is a backflow of blood in that particular chamber of the heart. In Lenore’s case, it appears to be a congenital condition, not one caused by any particular lifestyle decisions. Are you following me Edgar?” Mary glanced back up at his face.

At his tense nod, she continued. “In order to fix this, we need to go in and replace her valve.”

“What? I’m sorry, you need to do what?”

She raised a hand to halt his stuttering.“I am aware it sounds drastic, and that’s because this is unfortunately a serious condition. Luckily, technology has made it so we can do this procedure as non-invasively as possible. I’ll be going in through her leg and then performing the entire procedure via camera.” Noticing his panicked expression, she added, “I promise, I am an expert at this.”

Eyes wide, his breaths grew shallow as his words ran together until she could barely make out what he meant. “She just, she just collapsed. We were just watching, God I don’t even remember what we were watching, and she just looked over at me and said she felt off. I told she she probably had a bad batch of ribs again, so she hit me and got up to go grab the thermometer, said she thought it might be a fever or something. Then she just collapsed in the hallway. She wouldn’t wake up and I called an ambulance, and I was just sitting there, talking to her, making sure she knew I was there, and, and…”

“Deep breaths, Edgar. Deep breaths.” She walked him over to a table and sat him down, crouching next to him. “I need you to hold your breath with me, okay? And 1, 2, 3. Okay, now let it out. Now again.” Mary walked him through the breathing exercises a few more times until she was sure he wasn’t going to keep hyperventilating. “Okay? You with me again?”

“She has to be okay. She’s Lenore, she has to be okay. Nothing can take down Lenore Poe.” He may have calmed his breathing, but those were definitely tears running down Edgar’s face.

“Edgar, I need you to look at me now, can you do that?” Seeing him turn his face upwards, though still covering part of it with his hands, Mary continued, “Now, I am aware that this is terrifying. But I promise, I am very, very good at what I do, and I will do everything I can to make sure that your sister will make it out of my OR, make a full recovery, and that the two of you can go back and finish watching whatever it was you were watching earlier tonight, okay?”

Muffled through his hands, she barely heard him say, “Firefly . We were re-watching Firefly . Because neither of us wanted to go out tonight, and I have the whole series on DVD.”

Mary quirked a smile and quoted, “I can kill you with my brain.”

“Personally I’d rather you save Lenore with it, but that’s good to know,” he replied dryly.

Sensing that was the closest she was going to get to a full reponse, she stood up and asked her last question before heading to prep. “Will anyone else be joining you? Since this procedure will take quite awhile, we’re going to move you to a private waiting room upstairs near cardiology.”

Edgar looked rather sad again. “Yes, Annabel Lee. Damn it. I’ve called half a dozen times and she hasn’t picked up. I need her. She needs to be here. I can’t, I can’t- we need her here.”

“Perhaps-”

“No, no, no. My sister is in the hospital. Annabel is one of our best friends. She’s, well, she’s practically family. She’d want to be here. And I don’t know, I don’t know how to do this. I need Annabel. I need help.”

“Edgar. I need you to focus, here and now, with me. I don’t know why your friend hasn’t responded. I can’t even begin to guess. But, I do know from being a doctor here, that no one can do this alone. This waiting, this worrying? It is always better to have someone here with you. Have you considered calling anyone else? Your parents, or…?”

“HG, he’s Lenore’s… person. He’s already on his way, I mean, it’s Lenore, he’d teleport here if he had the option. Our parents are gone, have been for years. God, I don’t know who else to call.” Pulling his phone back up, he began to scroll through what Mary presumed was his contacts list. He began to mumble to himself, “Oscar. I’ll call Oscar. Mary Anne? No, she lives with Oscar, he’ll bring her anyway, there’s no need for a second call. Fyodor, Ernest, Charlotte…”

Glad that he would at least have someone with him, Mary tapped his hand, waited for him to look back to her, and said, “I will see you again once the operation is over. I’ll send Karen, one of my nurses, out in a few minutes to give you a more detailed explanation of everything that will be occurring. I’ll also make sure she comes to your room every hour or so with updates on our progress. I will take care of Lenore, I promise.” With that, she nodded at him and left, already mentally preparing herself for the long task ahead.

[tipsoctopus]

"Zero confidence", "We are an absolute shambles" - Many West Ham fans react to Steinberg tweet

West Ham have brought in just one player during this January transfer window.

Darren Randolph is that new recruit, coming in from Middlesbrough – and even he has already played for the Hammers before.

Call yourself a West Ham expert? How much did each of these January signings cost?

The Irons have been linked with a number of names, such as Seko Fofana and Ronaldo Vieira, but they do not seem to be too close to bringing in any new faces any time soon.

The Guardian journalist Jacob Steinberg has even said they are “desperately scouring the market” for new signings.

West Ham are desperately scouring the market. Bid in for Nottingham Forest’s Matty Cash (doesn’t sound like it will be enough). Moyes interested in Sampdoria midfielder Ronaldo Vieira and West Ham have also been offered CSKA Moscow forward Fyodor Chalov on loan.

— Jacob Steinberg (@JacobSteinberg) January 24, 2020

This tweet has attracted plenty of interest from the club’s supporters, and they are not happy with their club’s business.

“Desperately scouring the market” but not desperately enough to pay the required amount to purchase anybody. Encouraging signs of a change in approach from Sully 👍

— Greg Newman (@gregnewman88) January 24, 2020

Instead of this scattergun approach of always bidding insulting low figures and getting other clubs’ back up, why don’t they just …..actually why am I even bothering typing this, I have absolutely zero confidence in the owners doing anything properly. #LiesLiesLies

— C.C. Baxter (@ImAPatientMan) January 24, 2020

Bit pointless as they want to shop in Poundland and only Marks and Spencer is open

— JonnyH (@RorkesXDrift) January 24, 2020

We are an absolute shambles….we actually deserve to go down just because the club is a circus!!

— Alex (@wrighty1973) January 24, 2020

Desperation sums up the ownership. The backlash is greater then ever as we teeter on oblivion!

— Alan (@AJZhammers) January 24, 2020

With so little time left before the transfer window slams shut, this is exactly what fans should expect as new signings are being looked at.

One fan, meanwhile, believes that loan business is the best way to go.

Getting some on loan probably best way to go – big danger of throwing money away for mediocrity

— Brian Lowry (@townfieldfox) January 24, 2020

He certainly has a point. It would be important for the Irons’ hierarchy to make sure that their desperation does not lead to them parting with big fees for players who are not up to the grade.

Watch West Ham United Videos With StreamFootball.tv Below

It promises to be an interesting few days for the Hammers.

Meanwhile, West Ham look to give this man a second chance in the Premier League.

from FootballFanCast.com https://ift.tt/2tIDt3Q via IFTTT from Blogger https://ift.tt/38JDmDZ via IFTTT

[thegloober]

The gift of suffering in medicine

“There will always be suffering. It flows through life like water …”

Those famous lyrics sung by Nick Cave in his Lime-Tree Arbour ring true for many of us. They take on an entirely different layer of meaning for physicians.

Even the very journey of becoming a physician is marked by suffering. While many of our classmates frequented football games, nightclubs, and social events, most of us were studying day and night to make sure we had the competitive GPA and MCAT scores to even make it to medical school. Most of us remember the fire hydrant of information that flew through us those first couple of years of medical school, followed by sleepless nights on many rotations during our third and fourth years. The fight did not end there, however. Internship and residency brought on the grueling years of training that tested our physiology and mental stamina, built resiliency and sometimes even made us question whether we had made the right decision to choose this profession. Most of us kept going though, simply because we were following a higher calling, something beyond our immediate struggles and challenges. We had a vision for ourselves, our patients and our future.

How does suffering affect us? How does it change us? What can we learn from it? How can we make sense of it and continue to do what we do every day?

Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his book, Notes From Underground writes, “We can truly love only with suffering and through suffering!”

Perhaps it is inherently because of the way we, human beings are created. We often fail to appreciate what is ever present, ubiquitous and easily given to us. We appreciate things and people more in their absence. We appreciate health, when we are stripped of it. We appreciate our loved ones more after they are gone.

Is there value in suffering? What can we learn from it?

Suffering and pain teach us about our imperfect nature and how fragile we are. They teach us about the fleeting nature of life itself. We, physicians, come in contact with death perhaps more than any other professional. We lose patients to illness on a regular basis and go through the exercise of loss often. It doesn’t get easier to lose, but it does help us better understand the value of human life and time itself.

Perhaps the most valuable “gift” that suffering leaves in its tracks is imparting greater wisdom, empathy, and compassion to the one who suffers. It allows us to grow in resiliency, tenacity, understanding and greater insight into the world of those who suffer. Most patients would agree that while expert knowledge is critical to the quality of a physician, so is her ability to empathize and listen compassionately. This is why we are not simply scientists. We are physicians — those who are skilled in the art of healing.

In our new era of Healthcare 2.0 where we are required to use the hundreds of clicks and buttons for the electronic medical records, it is easy to forget to look the patient in the eye, to slow down, pause and be silent and present with the patient. The modern practice of medicine has put more time and documentation limitations on physicians than ever before.

However, this is where we have to put the computer aside for a moment, look the patient in the eye and truly listen to their stories. It takes practice to learn to do this. But more importantly, it takes facing our own humility and what it means to be a human being to allow ourselves to slow down and just be present with another human being. This is the sacred part of medicine that no computer, no administrator, no business organization and no insurance company can ever take away from our profession. This is the sacred part of medicine that every patient longs for when they walk into our offices, and we owe to them as people to give them the gift of listening with all our hearts, minds and spirits. We owe this to them because only then we can truly understand and empathize with their suffering and have an opportunity to start the healing process. This is the magic of medicine that is so inspiring. I had an attending once who said, “Patients give me more than I am ever able to give them.” I was only a medical student then and did not understand the depth of his statement. Now I do. I am eternally thankful and blessed to have the privilege to serve as a physician. They have inspired me, humbled me and taught me some of the most important lessons in life.

I wrote this poem in 2009 as a dedication to my numerous patients, who gave me such gifts.

Of dreams of life and rain

The light was off, no sound was heard and there he lay in his still, dark room how many cheeks had he kissed and loved how many steps had he ran, not walked

how many hands held his hands that lay wrinkled, gray and frail against the white sheets of clay

Did he want to live yet another day with no visitors only memories did he pray for life or recovery or a sound sleep with no awakening

Did he dream of times when he soared in life with the eagle’s dreams and the wind of time

Did he want to live yet another day or to fall asleep to dreams of life and rain.

Kristine Tatosyan-Jones is a family physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

Source: https://bloghyped.com/the-gift-of-suffering-in-medicine/

[topmixtrends]

“OÙ SONT les neiges d’antan?” Throughout my childhood, at odd moments, I heard my stepfather Vasily Yanovsky — a noted Russian émigré author who provides one of the bookends to this brilliant, poignant anthology — burst out with that melancholic line from François Villon. Even as a child, I could hear its wounded beauty. Now, as an ageing translator from the Portuguese, I can see it as a manifestation of saudades, the famously untranslatable Portuguese term best glossed as a yearning, a longing, both for what is now in the past and for what perhaps never existed. One might speculate that saudades and les neiges d’antan represent a universal response to our expulsion from the Garden of Eden. We are all exiles from a vague paradise that, by its nature, is forever blocked to us, creatures fallen from grace. Bryan Karetnyk, the expert editor of Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky, suggests this poignant connection to the expulsion of our mythic ancestors with the epigraph to his introduction, taken from John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667): “Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; / The world was all before them, where to choose / Their place of rest.”

Strange as it may seem, though born in New York and speaking at best an embarrassingly rudimentary Russian, I found myself quite at home in this anthology — at home in a world where loss was the starting point, death the never-forgotten conclusion, and love a desperately desired antidote or anodyne. Again I remember the expulsion, the rude thrusting of man and woman into a world of suffering and death, but also with the possibility of salvation: “They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way.”

  Memory

Along with their clear, familiar tones of joy and despair, these tales also include minor details that remind me of my Russian-American childhood in New York in the 1940s. For example, Georgy Ivanov, in his tale “Giselle,” describes a billiard player’s apartment back in St. Petersburg, where the “windows […] had not yet been sealed with extra putty against the coming cold.” And suddenly I remember, for the first time in almost 70 years, my fascination with the gray strips of putty that my grandfather, a survivor of Siberian prisons, always clean-shaven and redolent of Eau de Cologne 4711, meticulously pressed into the gaps between window and windowsill in our ordinary apartment in ordinary Rego Park, Queens, allowing me the pleasure of pushing my fingers against the softly receptive substance. This unprofessional aside leads me back to the collection, and the title of a lengthy Parisian tale by Yury Felsen, “The Recurrence of Things Past,” with its obvious Proustian echo. Like Proust’s masterpiece, this anthology is, in fact, a book of memory. And suddenly I remember that Yanovsky’s last published book was Elysian Fields: A Book of Memory (1983, translated by my mother, Isabella Levitin Yanovsky, in 1987), in which he recounts the Russian émigré experience in Paris between the wars, with firsthand sketches of many of the writers included in the present anthology. And then I notice that Bryan Karetnyk initiates this very anthology with a salient quote from Vladimir Nabokov, in response to the question: “What is your most memorable dream?” His answer is: “Russia.”

As I step back for a wider view, I see a kind of double nexus permeating this collection of stories, a nexus of the remembered, seemingly distant past in Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sebastopol) — a kind of ghost that cannot be escaped — jostling against the more recent past of eternal displacement in Berlin, Paris, Nice, or Montpellier. And this doubleness, I now realize, explains why Yanovsky gave the fictional protagonist of his best-known novel No Man’s Time (1967, translated by my mother and Roger Nyle Parris, and introduced by W. H. Auden) two names: Cornelius Yamb and Conrad Jamb. As the protagonist says of himself: “It is not at all clear who I really am. For instance, one person will say: I, and the other also says: I … Do these two feel something different or is it exactly the same?” A dilemma indeed — the dilemma of the exile.

It’s appropriate, then, to begin my survey of the themes and symbols that recur throughout this collection by looking at memory’s dream, incarnated as les neiges d’antan.

  Snow

Ivan Shmelyov’s “Shadows of Days” is a lengthy, disjunctive nightmare of the past. But in the chaos of the narrator’s dreaming, religion and nature provide some solace: “I recall the lovely icons, my icons. They exist only in one’s childhood.” And then he encounters snow:

The night street shows blue. The snowdrifts are swept in mounds — you could drown in them. It has been snowing heavily all day. Great bales in snow-capped rows. It’s so quiet on our little street […] Atop the posts, atop the fences — little mounds of snow. Soft, powdery. Lanterns covered in snow shine drowsily; dogs dig up the snow with their snouts. Beyond the fence, among the birches, a crow croaks hoarsely, foretelling more snow.

For the American reader, this gentle, endless snow reminds us of Robert Frost’s ambiguous vision of stopping by woods on a snowy evening, where “the only other sound’s the sweep / of easy wind and downy flake” and where seduction is not easy to resist, for “the woods are lovely, dark, and deep.” In any case, as the dream flickers on, Shmelyov’s narrator is left with “joy, loss — all in a flash.” And when he awakes, it is in alien Paris, to the calls of a rag-and-bone man passing in the street.

In another nightmare vision, Nabokov’s “The Visit to the Museum,” the narrator leaves the titular building and finds himself, unexpectedly, in a snowy landscape:

The stone beneath my feet was real sidewalk, powdered with wonderfully fragrant, newly fallen snow, in which the infrequent pedestrians had already left fresh black tracks. At first the quiet and the snowy coolness of the night, somehow strikingly familiar, gave me a pleasant feeling after my feverish wanderings. Trustfully, I started to conjecture just where I had come out, and why the snow, and what were those lights exaggeratedly but indistinctly beaming here and there in the brown darkness.

Soon he realizes that the “strikingly familiar” snow-covered streets are those of Russia, which is now in Soviet hands. The story ends: “But enough. I shall not recount how I was arrested, nor tell of my subsequent ordeals. Suffice it to say that it cost me incredible patience and effort to get back abroad.”

  Love

A possible salvation from the long shadow of displacement is love. For example, in Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin’s “In Paris,” the narrator finds love in a Russian restaurant in the guise of Olga Alexandrovna, a waitress. We assume that solace has come to the uprooted protagonists in the form of a convenient alliance, and only at the end do we understand that the younger waitress had not only found support and comfort in the well-to-do older Russian gentleman, but had actually fallen in love with him. By that point the elderly gentleman is dead and the former waitress, turned rich by his death, is “convulsed by sobs, crying out, pleading with someone for mercy.” What touched me in this tale was the understated and simple drift from a casual pickup to a true love between two Russians, making their lonely way in the alien West.

Another story that turns with an unexpected rush toward love is Irina Odoevtseva’s “The Life of Madame Duclos,” in which, after a lifetime of compromises, the Russian protagonist, having bought comfort and success by marriage to an elderly Parisian, suddenly senses salvation in the offing with a younger Russian. This time, however, the heroine can only declare herself to her mirror:

“Hello,” she will say, in Russian. She can see her lips moving in the mirror, struggling to remember the long-forgotten Russian word.

“Hello.”

She leans closer to the mirror.

“Kolya …”

And, so close now that she’s touching the cool glass, she whispers:

“I love you. I love you!”

Alas, the yearned-for lover, unaware of her feelings, has slipped aboard a ship returning him to Russia: “And then there is nothing. No ship, no happiness, no life.”

Finally, Irina Guadanini’s “The Tunnel” is a sad retelling of the author’s doomed love for Vladimir Nabokov, who was then already married to Véra. The intensity of her love is sustained through the 13 sections of the tale, but in the end the unfortunate woman, grown frantic, falls from her perch high above the Italian coast — where she was seeking distance and perspective, while also trying to spy on her lover — and tumbles downhill to the railroad tracks. There she lies, perhaps dead, perhaps only dying, but clearly reminiscent of Anna Karenina, her literary progenitor. The glory and obsession of love give way to despair. The exile does not find salvation.

  Gambling

Though gambling is a universal human pursuit, Russian literature has given it a particular focus. In his notes, Karetnyk traces the literary portrayal of this obsession to Alexander Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades” (1834) and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Gambler (1867), which was based on the author’s own experience with the deadly fascination of roulette. In fact, Dostoyevsky used proceeds from the novel to pay off large debts he had accumulated in the casino. In this collection, we encounter, in Georgy Adamovich’s “Ramón Ortiz,” an Argentine version of Dostoyevsky’s obsessed youth. With no restraint, no realistic self-appraisal, the young man, fond of being considered a baron, gambles his way from early success to utter destitution and resolves his situation by committing suicide. The narrator approves of this final act, seeing it as a proper response to the universe’s indifference toward the individual’s sufferings. Adamovich himself was the chief arbiter of the Paris Note, a Russian-Parisian literary movement that sought, in Karetnyk’s words, “to combine the despair of exile with the modern age of anxiety.” Certainly Ortiz’s suicide can be seen as indicative of both the despair of exile and the age of anxiety pressing on these displaced people. And I recall that shortly before Adamovich died, Yanovsky invited him to his home in New York to meet W. H. Auden, the man who coined the very phrase “Age of Anxiety.” It was a great satisfaction to Yanovsky to bring together the two intellectuals he admired most, one from his youthful years of exile in Paris, the other from his mature exile in the United States. Within one year of that meeting, both Adamovich and Auden were dead.

One of those who gambled over the bridge table with Yanovsky and Adamovich in Paris was Vladislav Khodasevich, whose story “Atlantis” depicts a circle of obsessed Russians immersed in games of bridge in a basement below the cafe Murat. (Interestingly, the lost land of Atlantis is also the setting for Yanovsky’s unpublished short story “The Adventures of Oscar Quinn.”) And in Dovid Knut’s “The Lady from Monte Carlo,” we again encounter an obsessed gambler, who can see the truth in others, if not himself: “these indifferent people [are] eternally — tragically — lost and disassociated from one another.” He is tempted by an older woman with a secret for winning (borrowed from Pushkin’s tale a century earlier), but in this version we have a seemingly happy ending: the ancient temptress resists her own urge to pass along her secret and insists that he leave her. Still, indifference reigns: “She kissed my forehead. The evening was cold, majestic, and indifferent.”

  Chaos

Entropy is, of course, our common foe — the one to whom, in the end, we must succumb. But for the exile, the onslaught of chaos can come early and in a heightened, phantasmagoric form. Here are snippets of chaos from Shmelyov’s “Shadows of Days”:

Night. Snow. I’m in the alleyways. […] Dead houses, closed gates. I’m lost, I don’t know where mine is. […] Dark, blind buildings. They’ve all gone. Now there’s just one road — […] I run in trepidation. The Champs-Élysées, my final road. […] The Elysian Fields! […] The end!

And “It’s them, they’ve come for me … I know it. […] The trees and the wind are whispering. Footsteps below the windows. I listen — a scratching at the window sill, they’re climbing up. […] I scream, I scream.”

In the anthology’s final text, Yanovsky’s “They Called Her Russia,” we encounter a vortex of entropy in a circular vision of hell: a trainful of soldiers going round and round through jumbled fields, never engaging “the enemy,” slowly spiraling through the repetitive brutality and madness of the Russian Civil War toward utter dissolution. In fact, it is never clear who the enemy is. Their own “engine-driver offered to find a way through to the Reds; the stoker tried to persuade them to join the partisans.” Eventually, “[t]hey decide to break through up ahead: if not Whites, then Reds — whomever they meet.” In this nightmare — where the commandant’s refrain is “Dream or real?” — the enemy they engage is themselves.

  Two Horses

It seems appropriate to conclude with the most painful, touching image I found in this anthology, an image that occurred twice: a horse without a rider, striking out into the sea — one in Gallipoli, the other in the Crimea. Both horses are valiant, yet have nowhere to go, no function to fulfill; nothing awaits them but death in an alien sea. They are abandoned by history. The narrator of Ivan Lukash’s “A Scattering of Stars,” a poetic evocation of the retreat to Gallipoli, tells of his beloved horse and its shameful end:

I spot my Leda […] craning her neck towards the water, whinnying, nostrils flaring. […] I see her suddenly, with all four legs, leap into the water. She couldn’t bear the thirst. She went crashing down, placed her lips to the sea salt and began jerking her head about. She jerked her head, Leda did, but she was soon swept away by the current.

And in Galina Kuznetsova’s “Kunak,” the denouement is even more poignant: “Above the grey misty water, a horse’s head could be seen craning. It was swimming apparently without knowing where it was going, borne by the current out towards the middle of the bay.” A rowboat comes to the rescue, but in fact only offers the hopeful horse three sudden bullets in the head, and then “the current was freely, and with terrible speed, bearing it away. It disappeared again, then reappeared … until finally it vanished for ever in the quick-flowing water.” The onlookers “all gasped in horror and compassion.”

And there we stand, observers of an entire culture carried out to sea, but with nowhere to go. There is much grimness, much pain, much despair in this collection, but it is also struck through with deep emotion and a pulsing sense of life. We contemplate the struggle of the exiles with horror and compassion, for we know that, at some level, we all share their plight.

¤

Alexis Levitin, a professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, translates works from Portugal, Brazil, and Ecuador. His 40 books of translation include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugénio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both from New Directions Publishing.

The post “Où sont les neiges d’antan?”: On “Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2C2EoLW

[readbookywooks]

An Historical Survey

"THE medical experts have striven to convince us that the prisoner is out of his mind and, in fact, a maniac. I maintain that he is in his right mind, and that if he had not been, he would have behaved more cleverly. As for his being a maniac, that I would agree with, but only in one point, that is, his fixed idea about the three thousand. Yet I think one might find a much simpler cause than his tendency to insanity. For my part I agree thoroughly with the young doctor who maintained that the prisoner's mental faculties have always been normal, and that he has only been irritable and exasperated. The object of the prisoner's continual and violent anger was not the sum itself; there was a special motive at the bottom of it. That motive is jealousy!" Here Ippolit Kirillovitch described at length the prisoner's fatal passion for Grushenka. He began from the moment when the prisoner went to the "young person's" lodgings "to beat her" - "I use his own expression," the prosecutor explained - "but instead of beating her, he remained there, at her feet. That was the beginning of the passion. At the same time the prisoner's father was captivated by the same young person - a strange and fatal coincidence, for they both lost their hearts to her simultaneously, though both had known her before. And she inspired in both of them the most violent, characteristically Karamazov passion. We have her own confession: 'I was laughing at both of them.' Yes, the sudden desire to make a jest of them came over her, and she conquered both of them at once. The old man, who worshipped money, at once set aside three thousand roubles as a reward for one visit from her, but soon after that, he would have been happy to lay his property and his name at her feet, if only she would become his lawful wife. We have good evidence of this. As for the prisoner, the tragedy of his fate is evident; it is before us. But such was the young person's 'game.' The enchantress gave the unhappy young man no hope until the last moment, when he knelt before her, stretching out hands that were already stained with the blood of his father and rival. It was in that position that he was arrested. 'Send me to Siberia with him, I have brought him to this, I am most to blame,' the woman herself cried, in genuine remorse at the moment of his arrest. "The talented young man, to whom I have referred already, Mr. Rakitin, characterised this heroine in brief and impressive terms: 'She was disillusioned early in life, deceived and ruined by a betrothed, who seduced and abandoned her. She was left in poverty, cursed by her respectable family and taken under the protection of a wealthy old man, whom she still, however, considers as her benefactor. There was perhaps much that was good in her young heart, but it was embittered too early. She became prudent and saved money. She grew sarcastic and resentful against society.' After this sketch of her character it may well be understood that she might laugh at both of them simply from mischief, from malice. "After a month of hopeless love and moral degradation, during which he betrayed his betrothed and appropriated money entrusted to his honour, the prisoner was driven almost to frenzy, almost to madness by continual jealousy - and of whom? His father! And the worst of it was that the crazy old man was alluring and enticing the object of his affection by means of that very three thousand roubles, which the son looked upon as his own property, part of his inheritance from his mother, of which his father was cheating him. Yes, I admit it was hard to bear! It might well drive a man to madness. It was not the money, but the fact that this money was used with such revolting cynicism to ruin his happiness!" Then the prosecutor went on to describe how the idea of murdering his father had entered the prisoner's head, and illustrated his theory with facts. "At first he only talked about it in taverns - he was talking about it all that month. Ah, he likes being always surrounded with company, and he likes to tell his companions everything, even his most diabolical and dangerous ideas; he likes to share every thought with others, and expects, for some reason, that those he confides in will meet him with perfect sympathy, enter into all his troubles and anxieties, take his part and not oppose him in anything. If not, he flies into a rage and smashes up everything in the tavern. (Then followed the anecdote about Captain Snegiryov.) Those who heard the prisoner began to think at last that he might mean more than threats, and that such a frenzy might turn threats into actions." Here the prosecutor described the meeting of the family at the monastery, the conversations with Alyosha, and the horrible scene of violence when the prisoner had rushed into his father's house just after dinner. "I cannot positively assert," the prosecutor continued, "that the prisoner fully intended to murder his father before that incident. Yet the idea had several times presented itself to him, and he had deliberated on it - for that we have facts, witnesses, and his own words. I confess, gentlemen of the jury," he added, "that till to-day I have been uncertain whether to attribute to the prisoner conscious premeditation. I was firmly convinced that he had pictured the fatal moment beforehand, but had only pictured it, contemplating it as a possibility. He had not definitely considered when and how he might commit the crime. "But I was only uncertain till to-day, till that fatal document was presented to the court just now. You yourselves heard that young lady's exclamation, 'It is the plan, the programme of the murder!' That is how she defined that miserable, drunken letter of the unhappy prisoner. And, in fact, from that letter we see that the whole fact of the murder was premeditated. It was written two days before, and so we know now for a fact that, forty-eight hours before the perpetration of his terrible design, the prisoner swore that, if he could not get money next day, he would murder his father in order to take the envelope with the notes from under his pillow, as soon as Ivan had left. 'As soon as Ivan had gone away' - you hear that; so he had thought everything out, weighing every circumstance, and he carried it all out just as he had written it. The proof of premeditation is conclusive; the crime must have been committed for the sake of the money, that is stated clearly, that is written and signed. The prisoner does not deny his signature. "I shall be told he was drunk when he wrote it. But that does not diminish the value of the letter, quite the contrary; he wrote when drunk what he had planned when sober. Had he not planned it when sober, he would not have written it when drunk. I shall be asked: Then why did he talk about it in taverns? A man who premeditates such a crime is silent and keeps it to himself. Yes, but he talked about it before he had formed a plan, when he had only the desire, only the impulse to it. Afterwards he talked less about it. On the evening he wrote that letter at the Metropolis tavern, contrary to his custom he was silent, though he had been drinking. He did not play billiards, he sat in a corner, talked to no one. He did indeed turn a shopman out of his seat, but that was done almost unconsciously, because he could never enter a tavern without making a disturbance. It is true that after he had taken the final decision, he must have felt apprehensive that he had talked too much about his design beforehand, and that this might lead to his arrest and prosecution afterwards. But there was nothing for it; he could not take his words back, but his luck had served him before, it would serve him again. He believed in his star, you know! I must confess, too, that he did a great deal to avoid the fatal catastrophe. 'To-morrow I shall try and borrow the money from everyone,' as he writes in his peculiar language,' and if they won't give it to me, there will be bloodshed.'" Here Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to a detailed description of all Mitya's efforts to borrow the money. He described his visit to Samsonov, his journey to Lyagavy. "Harassed, jeered at, hungry, after selling his watch to pay for the journey (though he tells us he had fifteen hundred roubles on him - a likely story), tortured by jealousy at having left the object of his affections in the town, suspecting that she would go to Fyodor Pavlovitch in his absense, he returned at last to the town, to find, to his joy, that she had not been near his father. He accompanied her himself to her protector. (Strange to say, he doesn't seem to have been jealous of Samsonov, which is psychologically interesting.) Then he hastens back to his ambush in the back gardens, and then learns that Smerdyakov is in a fit, that the other servant is ill - the coast is clear and he knows the 'signals' - what a temptation! Still he resists it; he goes off to a lady who has for some time been residing in the town, and who is highly esteemed among us, Madame Hohlakov. That lady, who had long watched his career with compassion, gave him the most judicious advice, to give up his dissipated life, his unseemly love-affair, the waste of his youth and vigour in pot-house debauchery, and to set off to Siberia to the gold mines: 'that would be an outlet for your turbulent energies, your romantic character, your thirst for adventure.'" After describing the result of this conversation and the moment when the prisoner learnt that Grushenka had not remained at Samsonov's, the sudden frenzy of the luckless man worn out with jealousy and nervous exhaustion, at the thought that she had deceived him and was now with his father, Ippolit Kirillovitch concluded by dwelling upon the fatal influence of chance. "Had the maid told him that her mistress was at Mokroe with her former lover, nothing would have happened. But she lost her head, she could only swear and protest her ignorance, and if the prisoner did not kill her on the spot, it was only because he flew in pursuit of his false mistress. "But note, frantic as he was, he took with him a brass pestle. Why that? Why not some other weapon? But since he had been contemplating his plan and preparing himself for it for a whole month, he would snatch up anything like a weapon that caught his eye. He had realised for a month past that any object of the kind would serve as a weapon, so he instantly, without hesitation, recognised that it would serve his purpose. So it was by no means unconsciously, by no means involuntarily, that he snatched up that fatal pestle. And then we find him in his father's garden - the coast is clear, there are no witnesses, darkness and jealousy. The suspicion that she was there, with him, with his rival, in his arms, and perhaps laughing at him at that moment - took his breath away. And it was not mere suspicion, the deception was open, obvious. She must be there, in that lighted room, she must be behind the screen; and the unhappy man would have us believe that he stole up to the window, peeped respectfully in, and discreetly withdrew, for fear something terrible and immoral should happen. And he tries to persuade us of that, us, who understand his character, who know his state of mind at the moment, and that he knew the signals by which he could at once enter the house." At this point Ippolit Kirillovitch broke off to discuss exhaustively the suspected connection of Smerdyakov with the murder. He did this very circumstantially, and everyone realised that, although he professed to despise that suspicion, he thought the subject of great importance.