I've known now for many weeks now, but I want to share the news with you and the universe (if you will) through this blog. My medicine bug has developed from an itch to a full blown infection. My wife and I are packing up our life here in Chicago and heading west to the otherworldly expanses of New Mexico--Santa Fe to be exact---where I will be studying holistic medicine (Chinese) and sharing those experiences with you here on this blog and she will continue to inspire me and others with her great spirit and photographs and videos. I will be of their incoming Spring class, beginning classes Jan 11.
It's November 28, 2pm. My steady employment with the Flaxman Library where I help manage the film study collection and restore "sick" books to health is scheduled to end Dec. 18. That's 3 weeks from now! We've been working to get rid of all unnecessary items--furniture and old clothes, mostly--but writing down "3 weeks" sure opens my eyes to how much more needs to be accomplished before then. So why am I sitting here just writing about it? This needs to be done too--perhaps most of all. There's been a sort of mucus plug of emotion and the words that define these feelings that are blocking a clear flow of motivational energy. There has been a steady buildup of stagnant blood and energy because of this that reaches from the pit of my stomach to the base of my brain; and as a result, I've been experiencing a paralysis of the will (is that Kidney shen?). Writing is the best therapy for me to help my body breakdown that plug and promote a balanced communication between my gut and head. Perhaps after an hour of this therapy I will be able to concentrate and work without the distraction of the anxious knot in my belly. So here I am writing--hopefully not in circles, but perhaps a wavering attempt at a linear narrative, as natural progression as a vascular highway or the alimentary canal--thinking that somewhere along these lines the mucus damn shall fail and I might progress.
I want to talk here about my intentions for studying Chinese Medicine in New Mexico, and to do so I will share the letter of intent I wrote during the application process to SWAC that secured me membership in their graduating class of 2014. If you are familiar with the previous posts then you will recognize some of that text repeated here.
Enjoy.
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I am thirty-three years old, and as I experience more the dynamic between this mind and body, I become more aware of myself within. I am not this body, but what is my increasing human potential? For the past six years I've been working within three special collections at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago conserving and restoring the circulating books, the artist books and the 16mm print films in these respective collections. As the I study the philosophy and the practice of Oriental Medicine I cannot deny the correlation between book conservation and the clinician's first consultation with his or her patient. It involves more than fixing what's broken; it begins with a careful assessment of the whole with all senses. How old is the object? Is the wear observed accurate for its age, for its level of circulation, for its storage condition. Is its smell earthy or more like vinegar? Does it feel cold and damp or is it dry and brittle. Is the problem congenital (i.e., in the case of an artist book if the artist refuses archival materials because it is the ephemeral nature of found materials, say, or the degradation of a paper hinge that interests the concept behind the book's design) or is the problem a result of mishandling or equipment error (re: broken films) in which case policy must be amended and education the key preventative. We can not deny the inevitable "death" of any object in a collection, but we can manage their care to delay their degradation in order to help maximize the quality of their resource. Of course, films and books--no matter how rare the print or complicated the anatomy and binding--are not people, but they are material expressions, a transference of a personal experience that needs care all the same, and I am honored to facilitate that care.Outside of my work within these collections I am of a creative community of painters and performers, photographers, writers and critics and curators. I've collaborated on book projects and video-performance pieces; I've written and preformed in stage plays; I've taught short fiction to high-school students; I've run bookbinding workshops; I have artist books in one of The School's special collections and four different chapbooks available at a local artist run book store. Curiously, these small accomplishments and experiences that put myself out into the community have ultimately led me to pursue the study of medicine. I questioned earlier, What is my increasing human potential? I don't know the full answer, but I do know it is not just writing another--this time larger--play and finishing my novel (though these goals are unmistakable). My human potential is to engage further and more deeply with my local and (potentially) global communities. I want to open myself up to this medicine and to the people of New Mexico. My human potential is to know myself fully and to express that self without prejudice and with complete honesty. My studies and practice thus far have been rich in the humanities, and I can't think of a more natural progression in the study of what it is to be human than the study of a medicine rich in its revelations of mystic truth.
Like most people born and raised under the western health care umbrella, I grew up having no familiarity with the life style of natural medicine or preventive medicine, much less the holistic-health care model of Oriental Medicine--classical or otherwise. My idea of prevention comes from my childhood experiences of painful vaccinations and an ear infection every Fall until I was six. There was nothing sacred about medicine; it was a job which allowed our single mother, a Registered Nurse, to pay the rent and keep the cupboards half full. Its pattern was simple: it was the doctor's cold invasion, the white-walled office, hands that smelled rubbed with alcohol, the pallid eyes, the otoscope pushed too far into the canal of my raging ear; the ear infection confirmed, antibiotics, then feeling better in a day or two. It's difficult to differentiate your body from yourself at such an early age. How do you not misinterpret each illness as a personal attack on your character? Why should I endure these pains alone, I would think, when my sister--my twin, no less--had the privilege of sleeping through every October undisturbed. Why was there no devil's finger digging in her ear? What made my body's relationship with this evil bacterium so different from hers? By my sixth year my eustachian tubes had made their natural course downward, forward, medially and the seasonal infections were gone. Consequently, our visits with the doctor also disappeared and I stopped with my jealous introspections. For the next seven years we would not visit a doctor unless we really had to, that is if what ailed us could not be fixed at home--but what could not a mother cure? Between the chamomile teas and ibuprofen we came to understand that the body would take care of itself. Our mother never got sick. All her years helping the sick and dying in nursing homes, emergency rooms and eventually neonatal intensive care units the one thing she "contracted" and then communicated to my sister and me was that the body is a very capable machine.
Three years ago, however, I learned that my capable machine was everything but capable. I had neglected my body to the inconsistent lifestyle of a young man in graduate art school. Suddenly one afternoon I began to suffer from a dry, burning that affected the middle of my back, my right arm (including the axillary) and right pectoral. A week later when this burning progressed into painful blisters, and while my wife and I were traveling to Arlington, Texas for a wedding, the diagnosed was made clear: I had shingles. I asked the tending physician how this could have happened. My hygiene was very important to me, I told her, and I didn't eat greasy foods. My ignorance was showing. It is not impossible, she told me, but it is rare for some one in their late twenties to suffer the effects of the herpes zoster virus. My immune system had been compromised and stress with no regular relief was the most likely culprit. The diagnosis came too late for the antiviral to have been effective, so it was not prescribed. My body would have to carry on as before for the next four to six weeks with no outside assistance except moderate doses of a prescribed painkiller "when needed" which only made me nauseous. I mention this occurrence in my life not because it then introduced me to the powers of Oriental Medicine or to my current OM practitioner, but because it was then that I realized I had been neglecting that trinity of mind, body and spirit and that there were consequences to this delinquency. This machine is only capable as long as we work with it as partners towards a shared wellness. Since the shingles outbreak I've been exercising regularly, trying to eat seasonally, engaging in talk therapy once a week and visiting with my OM practitioner when ever I can while working to cultivate a successful herbal medicine garden in the summers (with varying degrees of success) and reading all I can get my hands on regarding the theory, the science and practice of OM and the bio-sciences. Technology and the Western medical model can nearly guarantee a longer life, but if we do not come to understand the body's fluid relationship with the mind and spirit and the relationship we share with our environment (for better or worse), and if we do not practice and regulate these teachings, how can we expect to maintain balance thereby ensuring a richer quality of life to accompany that longevity?
New Mexico is a second home to me. In fact it was my first home for my first eight years of my life, split between Clovis and Portales until my mother, newly divorced, moved my sister and me into West Texas to begin a new phase of her life. Now my wife and I are packing up our life in Chicago and moving West to the Santa Fe area to start a new era of our life together. What interests me about studying Oriental Medicine in New Mexico is, first, the scale of the land; nature abounds; there is no denial or distraction from the relationship the body and spirit has with nature. Second, the integrative primary care of this medicine as evinced through SWAC's externship opportunities--not to mention the opportunity to intern at Harbin at the Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine. As well, I am interested in other traditional medicine modalities unique to the southwest, and I hope to extend my studies into these communities during my tenure at Southwest Acupuncture College and after to understand the culture and the practice of the native herbalists and develop relationships with the native medicine men of the surrounding reservations.
I've been reading Ted Kaptchuck's The Web that has no Weaver and Ithza Veith's translation of the Nei Jing, but I've also been reading the essays from Kenny Ausubel's (founder of the Bioneers) anthology, Ecological Medicine, which includes talk about not just personal health care and disease prevention but the health and healing of our environment in conjunction with our personal and community well being. I have a growing interest in gardening and subsistence living through unoffensive farming practices that parallels my amateur (thus far) studies of natural medicine and healing. The Permaculture Institute there in New Mexico is an ideal compliment to my studies that only the natural resource of New Mexico can provide. Integrative medicine is not limited to our professional relationships with allopathic doctors and other complimentary and alternative healthcare practitioners but it can involve the cooperation of all community leaders and services, including architects, city planners, farmers, engineers, gardeners, public school administration.
Chinese Medicine school is the first step of my journey to becoming a healer and a lifelong process of self cultivation and scholarship that I don't expect to get any easier after the first four years of study. What excites me about this education, aside from the didactic study of the philosophy and foundations of Oriental Medicine and the clinical practice, are the opportunities for self-exploration, the opportunities to learn how to grow within myself so that I can share the best of me. I don't want to go to school just to become an acupuncturist and a Chinese herbalist; through Qi Gong and Tai Chi and meditation I hope to better my resolve as a human being, to act with clearer focus without the intervention of ego, to allow myself to be vulnerable yet confident at home, in the public, with my patients and other heathcare professionals.
I don't doubt that I am an eager learner of the endless possibilities of healing but what is my intention as a healer? I want, as Jeffery Yuen puts it, to "witness the intricacies of life" and tap into my greater potentials as a human being. I get great joy sharing with my wife and friends my limited knowledge concerning the hows and whys of the nature of our body, it's relationship with our adulterated environments, of our modern heathcare system and primary care. But medicine is more than fascinating trivia about our collected viscera; it's greater than politics; it's more than managing disease. It's about people helping people. I hope to master the art of Oriental Medicine through rigorous scholarship, practice and self-exploration so that I may understand and advocate more clearly how we can secure a productive, healthy life for ourselves and our families and our communities and our environment and perhaps understand something more about the process of ourselves along the way.
