Calmness as Insight

Jeff Nunokawa is a Professor of English at Princeton University. He writes daily notes on facebook available to the public at https://www.facebook.com/jeff.nunokawa/notes, and is currently working on a book which puts together these notes. I can't recommend his notes enough for the insights he provides on everyday life, the struggles we all go through, the importance of connecting with others, and the way he speaks at once so personal and so general. His note (#5172!) this morning is beautiful. Just think, if we both read these each day, we're making daily connections, being a part of something greater, something shared. What a beautiful thought! Please join me? 

5172, Calmness as Insight

March 7, 2014 at 11:59amby Jeff Nunokawa

I do not think the craving for placidity is religious; I think a religious person regards placidity or peace as a gift from heaven, not as something you ought to hunt after. Look at you patients more closely as human beings in trouble and enjoy more the opportunity you have to say 'good night' to so many people (From M O'C Drury, "Conversations With Wittgenstein").


You wake up angry and you remember why you're lonely. (You can't get too close to other people. No one can see that much of you: you're too easily annoyed.) And you go and read something calming that some wise man said in another century. (See above.) You're all set to open the far sighted gift that's come your way from far away. (The calming gift that lets you know that calmness is a gift. See above.) 

But then you notice that's something's off with your vision in one eye. Maybe you always have this problem and you're just noticing it now. Then you start to look around at what else you're just noticing now. Like the rest of what the wise man had to say (see above): Look at you patients more closely as human beings in trouble. Maybe say it twice for both eyes. (If you type it out, and don't just copy and paste it in, you might be able to see it better.) Look at your patients more closely as human beings in trouble. Look at the people around you as people in trouble. (You don't need 20/20 vision to enlist for that.) Look at yourself as a kind of First Responder. (You don't need a license to practice that.)

Look at good night and good morning as two aspects of the same greeting. Look at every greeting as a gift from something glowing. Look at every glowing as a gift from somethinggoing. 
Look at every going from the corner of one eye.
Look!
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Note: As my two eyes make one in sight (Frost, "Two Tramps in Mud Time")

Arts and Humanities in Medicine

A talk presented to the Clare Dilletante Society which investigates the intersections between art and science, and likewise, humanities and medicine from my personal, narrative perspective. http://prezi.com/a2r5614ma-6f/when-art-meets-science-arts-and-humanities-in-medicine/#

On the Medical Profession (Middlemarch, George Eliot)

...he carried to his studies in London, Edinburgh, and Paris, the conviction that the medical profession as it might be was the finest in the world; presenting the most perfect interchange between science and the art; offering the most direct alliance between intellectual conquest and the social good. Lydgate's nature demanding this combination: he was an emotional creature, with a flesh-and-blood sense of fellowship which withstood all the abstractions of special study. 

He meant to be a unit who would make a certain amount of difference towards that spreading change which would one day tell appreciably upon the averages, and in the meantime have the pleasure of making an advantageous difference to the viscera of his own patients. But he did not simply aim at a more genuine kind of practice than was common. He was ambitious of a wider effect: he was fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an anatomical conception and make a link in the chain of discovery. 

'If I had not taken that turn when I was a lad,' he thought, 'I might have got into some stupid draught-horse work or other, and lived always in blinkers. I should never have been happy in any profession that did not call forth the highest intellectual strain, and yet keep me in good warm contact with my neighbours. There is nothing like the medical profession for that: one can have the exclusive scientific life that touches the distance and befriend the old fogies in the parish too...'

He was saved from hardening effects by the abundant kindness of his heart and his belief that human life might be made better.

Introducing The Musical Vesicle!

We're all well and acquainted with The Literary Vesicle, a vesicle that shares books and literary tidbits. Obviously, a Musical Vesicle has been long past due. Of course, this synapse harbors quite a bit (by quite, I mean the British "quite") of music already, so how is this vesicle different? Read on, and you'll see.

She rolled back down to the warm soft ground

Laughin', she don't know why, but she had to try, she had to try (Heart, "Dog and the Butterfly")

There she goes - still flying. She doesn't look back, no use to look down when sun shines above and [the wind] (yes, that one) lifts her up. 

"Dog and the Butterfly" (Heart)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpoP4YSFKGA

Basically, this vesicle shares music. Where does the music come from? Random transmissions. That's all. Enjoy.  Access it by clicking "The Musical Vesicle" in the labels side bar.