17 participants from MA, ME, NJ, NY, PA, Montreal and United Kingdom joined us today for our Monday session. Today, we welcomed three new participants! All together, we close-looked the painting “Before the Shot” by Norman Rockwell (you can find it at the end of this blog). Our Zoom room filled with many smiles as people made connections to their own experiences as children going to the doctor or to our present moment of waiting-for-the-vaccine.

Several participants drew attention to the color dominating the canvas, as they were struck by all the green: even the doctor’s head is green! We followed were the color green took us – whether to the green theme of The Great Gatsby or green as a code for “go!” We saw it all come together in the space conveyed by the painting. Is this a home office? A rural setting? 

We wondered who is absent in this painting – are the child’s parents in the room? “We would think so,” someone volunteered; someone else pointed how, at the time the painting was completed, there may have been “different standards, trust, and behaviors”. A coat and a hat, presumably the child’s, are not held by parent. Is the winter cap (with earmuffs) the painter’s way of signaling the season? Another person thought the hat and coat were neatly hung on the chair so it “must have been parent not 8-year-old boy”. 

We focused on the boy, with many noting that he was reading the diploma on the wall. “Can he even read”? someone asked. Collectively, we reflected on what this reading of the diploma raises for us. “He’s checking out who is this person about to give him the shot – is he worth trusting?” pointed out one participant. 

Before we revealed title and painting, several in the room recognized that the illustrator is Norman Rockwell, transported to the scenes from ordinary life he brought to the canvas in the 1950s. Immediately, we also thought of the COVID-19 vaccine being administered this week for the first time in US, and of the tale-as-old-as-time that is the complex relationship between patients and their healthcare providers. We returned to reading the body language of the boy, with some reading interest (in his reading); some seeing “trust”; several worried about his balance. What was he standing on? Was he instructed to stand on the chair? Was he told to lower his pants… does he know the drill? The “pinch” that is about to come next? “Trust and vulnerability is captured,” one participant concluded. Hinting at the diploma, we, too, wondered – is he qualified to do this? One person said the style of illustration conveys lightness and “Everything Will Be Okay.” Several participants, recalling their childhoods and different practice standards of the past: how “doctors used to deceive the kids”, and how that may come through the painting as well (the physician seems to be drawing the fluid in secret, his back to a kid who likely doesn’t have a clue). “Doctors used to sneak out on kids and did things without instructions and parental involvement,” added another participant. How have things changed today? Do we have more or less trust in the medical establishment, today compared to yesterday? “We are much more open to questions, these days,” someone volunteered. “That’s a good thing,” someone else concluded.

In a second moment, we focused more on the provider. Many recognized the familiar emotion of wanting to be transparent, and caring for patients’ health… while also protecting them from their fears. When should providers do when they don’t want a procedure or experience to be painful, or when they are concerned that one unpleasant experience will set the stage with fear of future clinical encounters? Should we turn our backs? Ask our patients to look away? Say it won’t hurt, or that “it will be over in a minute”? It was helpful to have two practitioners talk of their experiences of knowing they were inflicting pain, while wanting to minimize the pain they knew was a necessity or – at least – a greater good. Finally, we wondered – what would this picture look like two minutes from now? And whose perspective is this painting from?

Before writing to the prompt, we asked participants to drop into the chat possible titles:

Bottoms Up

Any Minute Now

Don’t Worry This Won’t Hurt a Bit

Just Trust Me

Almost Done

The Family Doctor

Full Disclosure

Three people read aloud what they wrote to the prompt: Write about trust and distrust.

One was filled with childhood belief and disbelief: wondering if her parents were aliens–complete with looking for zippers and seams! Another text was filled with questions about what allows for trust and/or mistrust “two sides of the same coin” and if it can be “flipped.” If one crosses the boundary between the two, is it possible to go back? A participant responded to the reader with her interest in the “facets” of trust and associating valuable gems, like diamonds also having facets, and how valuable trust is.

Another reader performed her “worry” but repeating “Yes, I am a worrier” as she reflected on clinical encounters with her primary care doctor and other specialists. How she knows she knows her body and, when her physician doesn’t order tests she wants, it can feel “stingy.” This led to the group discussing the economics of healthcare and, with participants from countries with universal health care, how different our concerns and perspectives can be.

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 16th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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For today’s session, 22 participants gathered on Zoom to closely observe the painting “Woodley Interior, Summer I” by Ephraim Rubenstein, part of his series titled The Woodley Suite series “on aging houses, broken bodies, and the passage of time.”

Participants started the session by sharing in the chat the first three things that they noticed as they looked through the doorways of the painting into glimpses of the rooms beyond. Items noted included a fragment of mirror behind the open door, the rug, light fixtures in the hall, the plant, angles of light, the sofa, and bookcase with disordered books. From these observations the conversation expanded, and we began noticing the contrasts that influenced the varied perceptions of the painting, the rooms, and perhaps the house itself. Some noted that the overall effect felt artificial or staged, that the rooms were too clean and spare to feel lived in, and yet at the same time others noted the evident sag in the couch that suggested years of use and the books that seemed to have been read and put away on impulse. Others noted that because of the clear, spare nature of the rooms their initial feeling was cold, despite the suggestion of summer by the green seen through the far window, while others felt welcomed by the warmth of the paint colors and the light spilling from the brighter rooms into the hall and the room inhabited by the “viewer.” Some speculated on who the viewer was– themselves invited in or intruding or a resident of the house whose “eye” we were borrowing. Some created stories of who might live there, the last sibling from a family moved on, and others saw a moment suspended before the viewer walked into the next rooms that we only saw fragments of, invited by the escalating brightness of light. At the close, the title and painter were revealed, along with the purpose of the series, which added new perspectives to the discussion of who may have lived in, visited, or departed this space. 

After the discussion, participants were given the choice to either “Write about entering a room” or “Draw a meaningful room.” As it happened, everyone who shared had written, and the writing provided even more wonderful insights into the ideas of space and feeling embodied within it. One writer wrote “I enter my room. I enter my life” and then later “my soul,” illustrating the possible metaphors of interior space. Another wrote about the contrast of anxiety and anticipation in entering a new room, questioning if there would be “space for me” and welcome with those who already exist there. Another piece shifted our perspective to someone entering a room that “smelled as he remembered,” before running his hands over a counter, searching for a table that he could not find before sitting on the floor, prompting many to consider what senses may not be available to all, and what other ways we can focus on the experience of a space. And one piece brought us directly into a room of grief, where family warmth and shared experience came together to both say goodbye and remember a loved one departed, an experience and memory that the room then held and kept for the writer and all. 

The close attention to the work and one another, discussion of varied perspectives and experiences, and willingness and courage to share what was drafted in reflection created a moving and profound hour for all. We thank everyone who participated, and encourage those who were not able to share their writing or drawing  in the moment to post here, if they are comfortable doing so. Thank you for joining us and we hope to see you again at another session soon!

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 14th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was the poem “The Courtesy of the Blind” by Wisława Szymborska, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about being in the middle.”

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 Wednesday, December 9th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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The Courtesy of the Blind
 by Wisława Szymborska
 
 The poet reads his lines to the blind.
 He hadn’t guessed that it would be so hard.
 His voice trembles. 
 His hands shake. 
 
 He senses that every sentence 
 is put to the test of darkness. 
 He must muddle through alone, 
 without colors or lights. 
 
 A treacherous endeavor
 for his poems’ stars, 
 dawns, rainbows, clouds, their neon lights, their moon, 
 for the fish so silvery thus far beneath the water
 and the hawk so high and quiet in the sky.  

 He reads—since it’s too late to stop now—
 about the boy in a yellow jacket on a green field, 
 red roofs that can be counted in the valley, 
 the restless numbers on soccer players’ shirts, 
 and the naked stranger standing in a half-shut door. 
 
 He’d like to skip—although it can’t be done—
 all the saints on that cathedral ceiling, 
 the parting wave from a train, 
 the microscope lens, the ring casting a glow, 
 the movie screens, the mirrors, the photo albums. 
 
 But great is the courtesy of the blind, 
 great is their forbearance, their largesse. 
 They listen, smile, and applaud. 
 
 One of them even comes up 
 with a book turned upside down 
 asking for an autograph they will never see. 

“The Courtesy of the Blind” 
from MONOLOGUE OF A DOG: New Poems by Wisława Szymborska, 
translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.
English translation copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was the poem “Vespers” by Louise Glück, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about longing.”

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 7th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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 Vespers by Louise Glück
  
 Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree.
 Here, in Vermont, country
 of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived,
 it would mean you existed.
  
 By this logic, you do not exist. Or you exist
 exclusively in warmer climates,
 in fervent Sicily and Mexico and California,
 where are grown the unimaginable
 apricot and fragile peach. Perhaps
 they see your face in Sicily; here we barely see
 the hem of your garment. I have to discipline myself
 to share with John and Noah the tomato crop.
  
 If there is justice in some other world, those
 like myself, whom nature forces
 into lives of abstinence, should get
 the lion's share of all things, all
 objects of hunger, greed being
 praise of you. And no one praises
 more intensely than I, with more
 painfully checked desire, or more deserves
 to sit at your right hand, if it exists, partaking
 of the perishable, the immortal fig,
 which does not travel. 

Louise Glück, “Vespers [once I believed in you]” 
from The Wild Iris. 
Copyright ©1992 by Louise Glück.

Thirty-six people, including nine first time participants, from Canada, Poland, UK, and US gathered on Zoom to read a prose excerpt of poet/zoologist Diane Ackerman’s The Moon by Whale Light and engage in reflective writing.

After listening to two voices read aloud, participants commented on: the beauty of each sentence, “the miracle of the self” and an “early embodied awareness of mind-body connections”. As a group, we responded to the author’s word choices and phrases: “hand-me-down mammals”, “blood, dream, and electric”, “the shy hooves of a goat”, “all the grander and lesser mayhems of the heart” (“what a great way to sum up what happens in this organ,” someone commented). We thought about what makes us human, and whether we have our origins in hydrogen. We wondered about “location”—where we are when we are in our minds and when “out of one’s”? We marveled at all a mind is able to do: abstract, compare, consider, imagine, project.

Many raised the what felt like the existential question at the center of Ackerman’s text: What is a mind? What is the self? Are we a space? A way of being? The brain is an “infinite, strange organ”, remarked one participant; and yet, another added, our consciousness is “a whole universe”. As with many of our sessions, the text left us with even more questions to explore and pursue beyond our hour together.

We wrote for four minutes to the prompt: Write about simmering.

Three writers read aloud their work and several people generously responded to each. “Simmering” elicited associations to soups and stews and chickpeas cooking and coagulating; to ourselves as “stews” with changes in hormones, the gains and losses due to aging; moods simmering, heating up, and coming to the boiling point; time needed to create visual and culinary art that can be shared. One reader defined simmering as “the precursor to peace”. In this spirit, we hope tonight’s simmering of words and ideas bring you all a peaceful week ahead.

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 2nd at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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After all, mind is such an odd predicament for matter to get into. I often marvel at how something like hydrogen, the simplest atom, forged in some early chaos of the universe, could lead us into the gorgeous fever of consciousness. If a mind is just a few pounds of blood, dream, and electric, how does it manage to contemplate itself, worry about its soul, do time-and-motion studies, admire the shy hooves of a goat, know that it will die, enjoy all the grander and lesser mayhems of the heart. What is mind that one can be out of one’s? How can a neuron feel compassion? What is a self? Why did automatic, hand-me-down mammals like our ancestors somehow evolve brains with the ability to consider, imagine, project, compare, abstract, think of the future? If our experience of mind is really just a simmering of an easily alterable chemical stew, then what does it mean to know something, to want something, to be?

Diane Ackerman: The Moon by Whale Light: and Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodiles, and Whales (1991)

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was “When Giving Is All We Have” by Alberto Ríos, posted below.

Our prompt was: “You gave me…”

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, November 30th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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 When Giving Is All We Have  by Alberto Ríos (1952)
                                              
                                     One river gives
                                     Its journey to the next.

 We give because someone gave to us.
 We give because nobody gave to us.
 
 We give because giving has changed us.
 We give because giving could have changed us.
 
 We have been better for it,
 We have been wounded by it—
 
 Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
 Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.
 
 Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
 But we read this book, anyway, over and again:
 
 Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
 Mine to yours, yours to mine.
 
 You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
 Together we are simple green. You gave me
 
 What you did not have, and I gave you
 What I had to give—together, we made
 
 Something greater from the difference. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

Our text for this session was an excerpt from the graphic novel “The Arrival” by Shaun Tan, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write or draw an encounter when it was difficult to ask for what you needed.”

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, November 23rd at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

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