Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we watched a scene (posted below) from the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin and adapted by Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar from Alibar’s play “Juicy and Delicious.”

Our prompt was “Write about a revelation you felt was magical.”

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday January 27th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

26 people, five of whom were new to our Monday eve VGS, participated in a text discussion of “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander (text is below). On a day dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we made connections between the text and Dr. King’s words and actions, celebrating and remembering his ability to inspire others with his resolve. We began our session acknowledging that “there is lots going on” – both in the text and in our worlds. 

A participant pointed us to see the many previous “conversations” necessary to bring together a community of people to see and appreciate the contributions of ordinary people’s work, have trust in each other, and build together. Another was struck by the word “walking”, present both at the beginning and at the end of the poem, collapsing time and space into “a whole world that we share”, even amidst the separations imposed by COVID-19 and the many solo walk we’ve been forced to initiate. 

Many others were drawn tot the only question appearing in the poem: “What if the mightiest word is love?”. “It’s a question you can’t shy away from,” one participant observed, confessing an attempt to avoid formulating their own answer, only to find themselves trapped by it by the time of our second reading out loud. Others saw it as a call to action, evoking wishes to remember foundational lessons about loving others, and wishes that these words be extended to “policy and practice”. Others heard the poem as a sermon, an anthem, and an image of a patchwork quilt made of locations and (pre)occupations, with appreciation of the diversity and inclusion of multitudes. One participant saw associations to Marxist murals, morphing not as a specific ode to workers but an ode to love and deep community.

Before writing to the prompt, facilitators revealed that the poem was read at Obama’s inauguration.

Several participants read what they wrote as a “praise song to struggle.”

One reader described a rocky road strewn with obstacles but the speaker’s sights set on “the heavens with sunlight…sunset…and the Creator.” 

Another began, “Who am I to denounce” and went on to reflect on a mother’s guidance–not always welcomed or even understood until adulthood. 

In the spirit of Woody Guthrie, one reading praised quotidian actions such as writing, rising, having coffee, driving a car. This praise song goes on to include “those who work and those who don’t, those who pay taxes and those who cannot” extending respect to others.

And lastly, another reading (we hope others will be posted on the blog) called forth “cold air” as Alexander had on the January midday presidential inauguration in 2009 and depicting people donning coats, capes, and masks as they battle indifferent and unforgiving threats to health as they carried on their essential work.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday January 25th, 2021 at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Praise Song for the Day
BY ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

We had 24 participants of which 4 were first time attendees. The text was the painting “The Gate” by David Hockney, but the title was not revealed until the end of our close reading session.

All participants were asked to spend 2 minutes to slowly explore the artwork; then we asked them to describe their experience of engaging with the painting. Initial impressions focused on the colors (so much vibrancy and contrast) followed by a sense of closeness that made it difficult to breathe, like in mid-summer when everything is so humid and overgrown and in need of thinning out — an overwhelming aliveness. Others just felt the joyousness of wanting to play or being on vacation. One likened the feeling to being in a fairytale or taken to another land – transported. As the observations deepened (and the narrative thickened), the branches seemed to appear warped and contributed to a feeling of insecurity. The descent of the path led to both open and unopened options (Can you open the gate? Where does the path to the left lead?) and visually contributed to a warped state of mind. One person interpreted addiction/depression versus the greenery of nature. The bottom half of the painting, which is the foreground, felt constrained with a green fence on the right and a wall that insists on descent. The potted plant seemed to represent a restriction to growth. The top half of the painting showed nature yearning to reach up to the light with a tangle of branches seeking freedom. But the trunks of those same trees, in the bottom foreground, were “in your face”.  One person related this place to her time in Kenya where a gate was a symbol often of exclusion provoking the question about what is on the other side, and is it as lovely as what is on this side?

Asked to title the painting, our participants had many different ideas: Branches, Escape, Hope, Serene Chaos, Escape to Paradise, Tenuous Harmony, Go Where It Is Alive, Beyond the Gate and many more. Our final discussion question asked what this painting would leave you contemplating: We don’t control what’s around us, The Light, Confusion versus Structure and Freedom of Nature.

The group wrote to the prompt “Write about a descent,” and five writers shared their responses: “The Impostor” described an ascent/descent of someone having a near-death experience and returning to the body; we were aware of space, motion, and a feeling of being “pressed against the ceiling.” Next we heard of “so much anger, so much dissent/I yearn for a place of solitude. The third writer recognized a gate that separates us from them: “I descend towards structure but perhaps there lies madness.” The bright colors in the Hockney painting contrasted with the fourth writer/reader’s description of seven adjacent homes that generate “numerous arguments over various shades of gray/rotten cedar siding/trimmed in white holds us together.” The group discussed the literal and metaphorical of this vivid description. Closing out the session was a haiku invitation: “Garden of Eden/Perfection’s a bit boring/Go beyond the gate.”

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday January 18th 2021 at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Welcome to our first Narrative Medicine VGS of 2021. Nine first-time participants joined this evening’s group of thirty-seven. We were so glad to return after a three week hiatus and gather around a text about new beginnings, an excerpt from the chapter “Birth” in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (you can find the text below).

After welcoming both new and seasoned participants we presented the dense, descriptive first paragraph of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. A participant read to us and then we took another minute to re-read silently. As we opened the discussion, several participants raised their virtual hands to contribute their “take” on what we were reading. We began by diving into the rich visual images and focusing in on the scene of homebirth in Laos. The act and the description of this birth brought on many associations for our participants: “a familiar place”, “a place where the character can be independent and have control of her body”, “a process of delivery that wasn’t medicalized”.  We observed the ‘tone of silence’ pervading the poem, and reflected on the depiction of a modest, self-sufficient, caregiving woman giving birth (“admirable” for some, “idealized” for others, given the “absence of any messiness”). Our reading came with a recognition that what we read was decontextualized, despite the many earthly and biological elements abounding: dirt, earth, feces, water.

We noted that the book begins with “if”, followed by a newborn’s name and proceeds to focus on mother’s actions. We paused to imagine the possibilities. What is the “if” referring to? Does the sentence beginning “If” suggests Lia was not born where her siblings were? Where was she born? Was the born? What could have been? Some participants recognized this as a classic nonfiction medical humanities text assigned to students in healthcare.

Five people read aloud what they wrote to one of the two prompts:  “Write about a space of new beginnings.” Or “Write about being at ground level.”

These texts explored: 

• associations, memories, and meaning of walls
• desires of continuity
• our notions of beginnings
• spaces of emptiness, silence, waiting 
• burdensome thoughts put on metaphorical shelf
• walking and breathing allowed new perspective
• grounded in being human
• relationships of prime importance

Here’s to new beginnings, and to growing our relationships and community in 2021.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday, January 13th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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“Birth” from “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman

If Lia Lee had been born in the highlands of northwest Laos, where her parents and twelve of her brothers and sisters were born, her mother would have squatted on the floor of the house that her father had built from ax-hewn planks thatched with bamboo and grass. The floor was dirt, but it was clean. Her mother, Foua, sprinkled it regularly with water to keep the dust down and swept it every morning and evening with a broom she had made of grass and bark. She used a bamboo dustpan, which she had also made herself, to collect the feces of the children who were too young to defecate outside, and emptied its contents in the forest. Even if Foua had been a less fastidious housekeeper, her newborn babies wouldn’t have gotten dirty, since she never let them actually touch the floor. She remains proud to this day that she delivered each of them into her own hands, reaching between her legs to ease out the head and then letting the rest of the body slip out onto her bent forearms. No birth attendant was present, though if her throat became dry during labor, her husband, Nao Kao, was permitted to bring her a cup of hot water, as long as he averted his eyes from her body. Because Foua believed that moaning or screaming would thwart the birth, she labored in silence, with the exception of an occasional prayer to her ancestors. She was so quiet that although most of her babies were born at night, her older children slept undisturbed on a communal bamboo pallet a few feet away, and woke only when they heard the cry of their new brother or sister. After each birth, Nao Kao cut the umbilical cord with heated scissors and tied it with string. The Foua washed the baby with water she had carried from the stream, usually in the early phases of labor, in a wooden and bamboo pack-barred strapped to her back.

(C) 1997 Anne Fadiman All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-374-26781-2

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our last workshop of 2020 included a community of 25 new and returning participants from the
US, Canada, the UK, Bahrain, India, Indonesia, Portugal, Greece, France, and Turkey.

To help immerse themselves in today’s text (“Molly Sweeney” by Irish playwright Brian Friel)
the group was invited to listen to it read with their eyes closed. They then followed along a
second time (eyes open, text visible), comparing/contrasting the two methods and noting what
language/images resonated. Subjective reactions to “listening in blindness” included
“inspiring,” “full of images,” “sneaky,” “a little frightening” and “adding an unknown element.”

The prompt, “Bring us to a dance” generated prose and verse responses reflecting themes of
how “Norms can be constraining…symbiosis can lead to a transcendental experience” as well as
fear, risk, anxiety, and perception defining reality with different kinds of sightedness. After one
writer explored the rhythm (through rhyme) of a dance recital’s pressure of performance, the
next writer employed internal rhyme to explore the embodiment of musicality through
“twirling and twisting…nerves and hopes.” The next dance was full of multisensory colors,
textures and movement (“I am uplifted in spirit and in sight”). This solo private dance seemed
to offer hope for the future: alone but in communion with nature. Another writer welcomed us
to a Sunday kitchen where a grandmother in her “fluid, fragrant fabric” cooked using a variety
of utensils. Our last dance was a Gilbert and Sullivan ball where a young woman’s choice of
understated attire made her feel “worse than naked” as she took the floor with her partner.
The vivid description was like an invitation we all need in these sequestered times: “I so want to
get into a huge open room and waltz.”

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Join us for our next live session, following a break for the holiday season, on Monday January 11th at 6pm EST. This will be our last virtual session for 2020, and we hope that we will all be able to find time to celebrate, even if remotely, with family and friends over the next two weeks, and enter the new year in health and safety. Following Monday January 11th, we will be recommencing with our virtual group sessions on a regular schedule, with updates and times to be listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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MOLLY

As usual Rita was wonderful. She washed my hair, my bloody useless hair — I can do nothing with it — she washed it in this special shampoo she concocted herself. Then she pulled it all away back from my face and piled it up, just here, and held it in place with her mother’s silver ornamental comb. And she gave me her black shoes and her new woolen dress she’s just bought for her brother’s wedding.

  “There’s still something not right,” she said. “You still remind me of my Aunt Madge. Here — try these.” And she whipped off her earrings and put them on me. “Now we have it,” she said. “Bloody lethal. Francis Constantine, you’re a dead duck!”

FRANK

She had the time of her life. Knew she would. We danced every dance. Sang every song at the top of our voices. Ate an enormous supper. Even won a spot prize: a tin of shortbread and a bottle of Albanian wine. The samba, actually. I wasn’t bad at the samba once. Dancing. I knew. I explained the whole thing to her. She had to agree. For God’s sake she didn’t have to say a word — she just glowed.

MOLLY

It was almost at the end of the night — we were doing an old-time waltz — and suddenly he said to me, “You are such a beautiful woman, Molly.”

Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. I was afraid I might cry. And before I could say a word, he plunged on: “Of course I know that the very idea of appearance, of how things look, can’t have much meaning for you. I do understand that. And maybe at heart you’re a real philosophical skeptic because you question not only the idea of appearance but probably the existence of external reality itself. Do you, Molly?”

Honest to God . . . the second last dance at the Hikers Club . . . a leisurely, old-time waltz . . .And I knew that night that he would ask me to marry him. Because he liked me — I knew he did. And because of my blindness — oh, yes, that fascinated him. He couldn’t resist the different, the strange. I think he believed that some elusive off-beat truth resided in the quirky, the off-beat. I suppose that’s what made him such a restless man. Rita of course said it was inevitable he would propose to me. “All part of the same pattern, sweetie: bees — whales — Iranian goats — Molly Sweeney.” Maybe she was right.

 And I knew, too, after that night in the Hikers Club, that if he did ask me to marry him, for no very good reason at all I would probably say yes.

Friel, Brian. Molly Sweeney. Plume, 1994.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session, we read an excerpt from Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit, posted below.

Our prompt was: Write about light and darkness.

Twenty-two participants, at least two new people, from Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States were joined this evening not only by an excerpt from Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit, but also by our shared hope to see The Great Conjunction in the night sky. Only one person (in New York City) witnessed the “and” of Jupiter and Saturn; a person (on the west coast) still waited for nightfall.

In Solnit’s paragraph about celestial light as guides for moths and other insects and the disorientation and danger caused by candles and electric light bulbs, we noticed: the initial sentences gaining intensity in “strong sentences” cautioning humans about setting impossible goals, with hopes pinned only on arrival at some heaven or utopia that can lead to activist burnout and/or alienating others. We were reminded of Icarus’s wax wings and the Bruegel painting (which we looked at together in April, blog post here), of the mural “Everything the Light Touches” (which we looked at together in August, blog post here) and of the song “Blinded by the Light.” One sentence that drew us to it stated that, for moths, “to arrive is a calamity.” We wondered why moths have not adapted to light on earth and contemplated our own intentions and expectations regarding paths and destinations. We considered differing perspectives and beliefs: some look up and see “heaven” and others see the sky made of gases. In light of this evening’s Conjunction, one person said that scientists call “Jupiter and Saturn” that which her mother called “The Christmas Star.” Many were drawn to the conclusion that “aiming high is a goal, not a destination”, and a shared commitment to cherish – and learn from – each journey. We also reflected on the power of heavenly bodies, which we saw as physical planets and philosophical ideas: “just think,” one participant observed. “the moon can move the sea”.

Before writing about light and darkness, we looked at images of artifacts, which are part of earthly rituals, and a sliver of light and visible darkness in space. In the chat, individual reactions included:

“I feel small.”
“Stretch to climb out of darkness.”
“Calming.”
“New dawn.”
“Wait without hope,” attributed to T.S. Eliot.

After writing for four minutes, we listened to four readers.

One first-person narration groped in the dark “arms outstretched” to feel the way before seeing a “golden orb” and feeling welcomed by its light. That reading prompted others to hear both uncertainty and certainty. Another listener was reminded of a climb on Mt. St. Helens–arms outstretched–and arriving at the solidness of a ladder. Another person wrote of seeing by a kitchen lamp and the light of her computer, of “big, bad corporate” technologists sitting together “without a specific goal” and ending up with Zoom, the unanticipated discovery that was allowing her to see the faces of others and feel connected to twenty-two souls. That reading reached us as “a performance piece.” A third reading contemplated truth and light, examining their meaning, admitting “This is hard” and asking “What is truth?” and wondering about the sources and direction of light shining on truth. The fourth reading made characters of light and dark, anthropomorphizing these properties as siblings–conjoined twins–taking turns, each offering the other rest when day turns to night and night turns to day.

We concluded the evening–and 2020’s Monday Evening Narrative Medicine VGS gatherings–with a PowerPoint slide wishing a wonderful, restful, healthy end to 2020 and fabulous beginning to 2021, until we Zoom again. Blessings and good will echoed in the chat. 

Thank you everyone for nine months of reading and writing together.

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Wednesday, December 23rd at 12pm EST. After that, we will be taking a brief break for the holiday season, with the hope that we will all be able to find time to celebrate, even if remotely, with family and friends, and enter the new year in health and safety. We will be recommencing with our virtual group sessions starting Monday January 11th at 6pm EST, with registration now open on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Moths and other nocturnal insects navigate by the moon and stars. Those heavenly bodies are useful for them to find their way, even though they never get far from the surface of the earth. But lightbulbs and candles send them astray; they fly into the heat or the flame and die. For these creatures, to arrive is a calamity. When activists mistake heaven for some goal at which they must arrive, rather than an idea to navigate Earth by, they burn themselves out, or they set up a totalitarian utopia in which others are burned in the flames. Don’t mistake a lightbulb for the moon, and don’t believe the moon is useless unless we land on it.

Solnit, Rebecca. Hope in the Dark (2016) “Getting the Hell Out of Paradise.” P. 79  

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session, we returned to another excerpt from the graphic novel “The Arrival” by Shaun Tan.

Our prompt was: Write about a place you’ve left behind.

More details about this session will be posted soon, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday, December 21st at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.