"Did your teardrops quickly dry?"

     I chose my title for this entry from The Pogues song "Thousands are Sailing."  The full verse is:

            "Did the old songs taunt or cheer you?

            And did they still make you cry?

            Did you count the months and years

            Or did your teardrops quickly dry?"    

It is apt for a review of Colm Toibin's novel Brooklyn. Saoirse Ronan started in the 2015 film version of the novel. As a longtime subscriber to the New York Review of Books, I had read essays and reviews by Toibin, but had not read any of his fiction. 

    Toibin is a gifted fiction writer and tells an engrossing and tragic story of the young Irish protagonist Eilis Lacey. One of the universal experiences of immigrants is to come to terms with the sense of loss and what is left behind when you leave all that you know for the mythic American Dream. I came to the novel after having seen the film, but I will focus on the novel as best as possible. 

    Eilis' story begins in her home as she interacts with her popular, beautiful, and athletic sister Rose and her mother. Eilis is summoned to the shop owned by Miss Kelly. Though it is expensive, it is the best shop in town. Eilis is offered a job by Miss Kelly and feels obligated to accept it. Miss Kelly as a shop owner know all that happens in the small town. Eilis is the youngest of five children, including three brothers who all live in England. I do not recall reference to brothers in the film version, but they don't figure prominently in the novel. 

    The novel suggests the plan for Eilis to move to America were underway with Rose conspiring with Father Flood. Father Flood, who has a parish in Brooklyn, comes to dinner and plants the seed of Eilis' immigration. One of the strengths of Toibin's writing is his dialogue. Not only does he have a talent for capturing different modes of speaking, but he masterfully provides needed exposition subtly. He is equally adept at characterization. Within a few pages, the reader has a clear image of not only Eilis' family, but Miss Kelly and her coworker Mary, in addition to Eilis' friends and the male suitors in the town of Enniscorthy. They retain their distinctive small town Irish orientation, but characters like Miss Kelly, the town busybody are recognizable. 

    Eilis' voyage becomes a family affair as Rose accompanies her to Dublin and when she arrives in Liverpool, Eilis is met by her older brother Jack.  Toibin provides a brief, but informative glimpse of the life of Jack and his brothers as Irishmen living in England. 

    The voyage over is hellish and Toibin offers a visceral depiction of this journey, including the struggles with seasickness, diet, and even the simple matter of using the restroom. Part One ends with her arrival to the U.S. 

    Part Two begins with Eilis as a boarder to a fellow Irishwoman, Mrs. Kehoe. I enjoyed these scenes in the boardinghouse as it was not something I had read about or knew much about during this time period. It makes sense as it was not proper for young, unmarried women to be living on their own. It illustrates the concept of chain migration, when people from one town or country come to a new place together. Brooklyn had become a new destination for Irish immigrants like Eilis. As Father Flood, the priest who arranged her immigration, found her a boarding house, and a job tells Eilis' mother "Parts of Brooklyn are just like Ireland. They're full of Irish" (24). In her job at Bartocci's, a Brooklyn department store, Eilis worked on the shop floor. Not only did she have a job, but Bartocci's offered to pay for part of the night courses they encouraged all their employees to take for self-improvement and advancement. 

    After surviving the annual Bartocci nylon sale, Eilis returns to find letters from home. The letters prompt self-reflection from Eilis. In this episode, Toibin provides insight to the immigrant experience that reflect the question posed in this post. "For the past few weeks, she realized, she had not really thought of home. . . . but her own life in Enniscorthy, the life she had lost and would never have again, she had kept out of her mind" (69). However, this prompts a strong bout of homesickness, to the point that her work supervisor noticed. Again, while within the novel, this is an immigrant experience, I have myself experienced a similar phenomenon after my divorce and my mother's death last summer. In the first instance, having to get up to go to work did prove therapeutic as my students did not know and justifiably would not care about my marital strife. When my mother passed a year ago July, it was not homesickness, but overwhelming nostalgia and mourning.  Unfortunately, I did not rebound as well in my work and her death started the worst year of my life, that eventually led to me resigning from my teaching position. In the end, loss is loss. How we deal with it, that is the key. Thankfully Eilis has a sympathetic employer and supervisor who call in Father Flood and Mrs. Kehoe to help Eilis work through this predicament. While returning home as Father Flood had done at the beginning of the novel is not impossible, it is highly unlikely given the prohibitive cost of such a journey at this time. Something had fundamentally changed as Eilis made her way across the Atlantic. And that former life had disappeared forever. 

    Unfortunately, the Irish themselves don't disappear especially those who came much earlier than Eilis for work. Father Flood offers the following description. "they are all leftover Irishmen, they built the tunnels and the bridges and the highways. Some of the I only see once a year. God knows what they live on" (88).  When Eilis asks why they don't return home, Father Flood explains that some have been here for 50 years and have no connections back home. For someone experiencing homesickness, Toibin deftly illustrates what it is to be truly without a home. After the dinner, Eilis is asked to stand next to one of the men who formerly was a prominent Irish singer. Toibin provides only one line of his song, sung in Irish, but chooses not to translate it for the readers. According to Google translate, the man serenaded Eilis, holding her hand, and telling her "If you are with me, my heart is broken." Eilis returns home to the boarding house at the end of Part Two. 

    Part Three begins with Eilis being rewarded by Mrs. Kehoe with the best room in the house, which includes her own entrance to the house.  I loved how Eilis becomes suspicious of Mrs. Kehoe's seeming generosity. She interprets Mrs. Kehoe's secrecy as a sign that maybe this new room is not as desirable as Mrs. Kehoe has suggested. She is pleasantly surprised to learn it might be even better than promised. Now Eilis understands the need for secrecy and takes comfort knowing that Mrs. Kehoe has the right to assign this room to anyone she chooses. Things seem to be going well for Eilis at the start of Part Three as she is enjoying her work again, is taking her night classes at Brooklyn College, and now has a much improved living situation. However, her fellow boarders learn of her new lodgings, but claim they had the chance to take it and refused. Toibin does not reveal whether they were telling the truth or saving face, but Eilis comes to terms with their response. It does however highlight, that she does not have a real confidant in the house. Perhaps being set aside is not always desirable. 

    Part Three introduces Eilis' love interest-Tony, who comes to the Irish dances, though he is, in fact, Italian. He behaves like a gentleman around Eilis and according to her supervisor is unique among Italian men. 

    "Hold on. He doesn't take you drinking with his friends and leave you with all the girls?"

    "No."

    "He doesn't talk about himself all the time when he's not telling you how great his mother is?"

    "No."

    "Then you hold on to him, honey. There aren't two of him. Maybe in Ireland, but not here."

Toibin artfully describes the challenges of relationships like that of Eilis and Tony. Despite, Miss Fortini being the daughter of an Irish mother and Italian father, this type of interethnic dating is not encouraged or common in Brooklyn at this time.  I have often wondered about this, because both the Italians and Irish were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, but tremendous prejudice existed between these two groups. This prejudice is not a relic of the past. Despite a 40 year time difference, my ex-wife and I dealt with some similar tension with her being a German Catholic and me being a Mexican Catholic. In fact,  we were married in Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, which was only blocks from a German Catholic parish. Despite the proximity, the two parishes rarely interacted. 

    Toibin illustrates the difference in cuisine and explains plausibly some of the reasons Italians, like Tony's younger brother Frank, don't like the Irish.  Another important event in this relationship is when Tony plans to take Eilis to Coney Island. Thankfully Miss Fortini explains the importance of looking good for her Italian boyfriend, another noticeable difference between Italian and Irish culture. The development of the relationship between Eilis and Tony was well-paced. Toibin does a good job of putting himself into the minds of women like Miss Fortini and Eilis, revealing the gender expectations of women in both the Old and New Worlds. The fact that Eilis confided fully to Rose about Tony, but never mentioned him to her mother provides another example of some of the problems for immigrants like Eilis. It seems more and more likely as the novel progresses that Eilis will never return to Ireland, but her mother holds out that hope though it is never discussed by either of them. 

    The news of Rose's sudden death back home comes near the end of Part Three setting the stage for the last section of the book.  An added complication is the fact that the death of Rose meant that her mother was all alone. Toibin uses a letter from Jack to explicitly state what was assumed- that Rose would be expected to return home, not Jack and her other brothers. Clearly this complicates Eilis and the life she is building with Tony. After having sex for the first time and waiting to determine if she was pregnant, changed things for Eilis. Having decided to return home for a month to see her mother, Tony begs Eilis to secretly marry her before leaving for Ireland. She agrees and they have a quick and discrete civil ceremony. 

    Part Four takes place primarily back in Ireland. The secret wedding is a secret which provides dramatic irony for the readers as no one else knows that rose is now Mrs. Fiorello.  This return trip allows Eilis a distinctive experience as most of her fellow Irish immigrants would not have the opportunity to return home, like those men she feeds on Christmas Day. Even fewer would return secretly married, only to deal with increasing pressure to stay home permanently. After completing her obligations with Rose and paying her respects, Eilis started to reacquaint with her former friends. 

    Eilis has numerous precarious situations where she has to remember to not let slip that she has a boyfriend or someone waiting for her back in America. Naturally this only complicates things as her mother and friends assume she is unattached. As Eilis began to spend more time with Jim Farrell, Eilis felt the conflict between Tony and her life in America and her enjoyment of her time back home and with Jim. "She wished now that she had not married him, not because she did not love him and intend to return to him, but because not telling her mother or her friends made every day she had spent in America a sort of fantasy, somethng she could not match wi the time she was spending at home" (226). She was struggling to balance her double life and identity as a young American bride and a faithful Irish daughter. 

    Toibin further complicates Eilis' time in Ireland by having her being offered a job at Rose's old office because of her aptitude with bookkeeping. This could potentially extend her time away from Tony and Brooklyn even longer. Despite all these factors making it harder for Eilis to leave, she does manage to tell Jim she would be leaving after the wedding of their mutual friends. Additionally, Eilis struggles with the possibility of Jim proposing to her. She runs through possible scenarios including divorcing Tony.  What makes the situation even more complicated is the fact this is all Eilis' fault. If she had only been honest with her mother and everyone else involved. At the same time, it is entirely understandable that Eilis is struggling with her future. The reality of having a career and a relationship within her own hometown would have to be attractive. However, unlike Jim and her friends, she has been not only outside of Enniscorthy, but she had created an entirely new life in Brooklyn. 

    In a subtle, but effective manner, Toibin allows someone else to make the decision for Eilis, her old boss and town busybody- Miss Kelly. Once again, Eilis is summoned to see Miss Kelly with Mary as the messenger.  It turns out that Mrs. Kehoe was a first cousin of Miss Kelly. In her gossipy way, Miss Kelly let Eilis know  of her secret marriage to Tony.  While this conversation with Miss Kelly served as the catalyst for Eilis' decision to return, perhaps she would have made the return on her own. She might as easily decided to stay and build a new life with Jim? The ambiguity, while unsatisfying, serves as an effective narrative strategy on Toibin's part.  Eilis has the opportunity to achieve closure with her life in Ireland and the return trip to Ireland to allow her teardrops to dry.  For fans of the film, I would highly encourage you to read Toibin's novel. It is worth the time. 

    

    

The Great American Political Novel

 I first encountered Robert Penn Warren through reading his co-authored textbooks An Approach to Literature and Understanding Poetry. Around the time I went off to college, I would peruse literary and cultural magazines like The Atlantic, Harpers, The New Republic, The New Yorker and others. Some of his poems appeared in the pages of these publications. I can't pretend I remember any lines from those early poems, but the craft stood out. Penn Warren wrote elegantly and lyrically as you would expect from someone who had also published textbooks on literature and poetry. 

I remember liking his poetry enough to purchase his New and Selected Poems, 1923-1985 in my senior year of high school. Though I knew him as primarily a poet, Robert Penn Warren has to be considered one of America's premier "man of letters" for the 20th century. A year after the publication of his selected poems book, he was named the first poet laureate of the United States. 

Even as I continued to read his poetry, I knew he had also written a novel titled All the King's Men published in 1946. It won the Pulitzer Prize the next year, one of three Pulitzer Prizes Penn Warren received. The other two were for his poetry. I learned too that Penn Warren was a part of the Fugitives, a group of southern poets associated with Vanderbilt University. Penn Warren later helped form The Southern Agrarians who compiled a book of essays titled I'll Take My Stand published in 1930. This volume defended a "southern way of life" against Northern critiques.  A work of its time, it defended racial segregation and emphasized the agrarian lifestyle of the South.  Penn Warren later renounced his segregationist views and conducted numerous interviews with writers and civil rights activists published as Who Speaks for the Negro? in 1965. 

Despite all these impressive achievements, All the King's Men remains his best-known work.  Though fictional, it is based on the life and career of Louisiana politician Huey P. Long who had served Louisiana as governor and senator until his assassination in 1935. Though a Democrat, Long criticized the New Deal program of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for not going far enough to help the poor suffering in the Depression. As an alternative to the New Deal, Long promoted Share Our Wealth, which would have included income distribution and a tax on the rich. A year after his Share Our Wealth program launched, which included Share Our Wealth clubs throughout the United States, Long died from a gunshot wound. The protagonist of Warren's novel Willie Stark. A 2002 edition now considered to be the "restored edition" changes the character's name to Willie Talos, a name used by Penn Warren in manuscripts.  

Stark/Talos is loosely based on Huey Long who like the protagonist of the novel served as governor. Jack Burden, a political reporter, narrates the novel. Burden becomes a trusted advisor to Stark in the course of the novel. Stylistically, this literary structure reminds me of the role of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby. 

At 650 pages, this is not a light read, but despite the length, I found it compelling. Many reviewers have dubbed this book the best novel written about American politics. Apparently, Penn Warren has said he did not intend to write a political novel, but I would agree it is a classic study of American politics set in an era where it seemed possible for a single politician to have the type of influence Stark does. At the same time, the novel is a case study in the life of man and the decisions and compromises many politicians make.  The 19th century historian and politician, Lord Acton, famously wrote "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." However, most of us do not know the rest of the quote: Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it." In other words, simply being a President or a Pope, (Acton was Catholic) does not make you a good or admirable individual. 

Penn Warren's prose has a rhythm and energy that expertly captures the frenzied circus of politics.  Stark's character is referred to as "the Boss" throughout the novel. Here is a scene where the narrator describes Tom Stark, Willie's son. 

        "If bottle and bbed didn't manage to slow down too soon something inside that one hundred and                 eighty pounds of split-second, hair-trigger, Swiss-watch beautiful mechanism which was Tom Stark,         the Boss's boy, the Sophomore Thunderbolt, Daddy's Darling, who stood that night in the middle of a         hotel room, with a piece of court plaster across his nose and a cocky grin on his fine, clean, boyish            face-for it was fine and clean and boyish- while all the hands of Papa's pals pawed at him and beat his         shoulders, while Tiny Duffy slapped him on the shoulder, and Sadie Burke, who sat a little outside            the general excitement in her own private fog of cigarette smoke and whisky fumes, a not entirely            unambiguous expression on her riddled, handsome face, said, 'Yeah, Tom, somebody was telling me         you played a football game tonight" (307). 

I could not believe this was only one sentence, but as a poet well aware of the importance and utility of punctuation, Penn Warren creates a nearly palpable energy on the page. The novel has has been adapted for film twice. I could imagine a director giving us panoramic and dizzying camera angles here as Tom takes in all the attention given to him by the Boss' followers. 

A strength of this novel is when Penn Warren uses a character's situation to tackle larger issues beyond the narrative. "Perhaps the only answer, I thought then, was that by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it is too late to break out of the box. . . . Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves." (529) Or when he writes about what he terms "the theory of moral neutrality." Penn Warren writes, "Process is neither morally good nor morally bad. We may judge results but not process. The morally bad agent may perform the deed which is good. The morally good agent may perform the deed which is bad. Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get power to do good" (593).

Passages like this support the greatness of Penn Warren's book and why so many readers consider it the quintessential book of American politics. However, the conclusion of the book is a series of scenes and meditation on love, family, and legacy. At this point of the novel, the story being told is Jack's story. Jack Burden stands in for us the readers who have our own hardships and struggles and who like Jack and his wife will have to "go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of time" (661). 

Madness Managed

 Within popular culture, depictions of madness or mental illness tend towards a romantic view of the condition. With those who fancy themselves artistic types often view madness as a necessary corollary to creativity. Figures like Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway are viewed tragically. Others like the poets Robert Lowell and John Berryman I studied in a college English seminar attempted to use their madness as material for their own creative work.  Sylvia Plath, who along with Anne Sexton, studied for a time under Robert Lowell, might be the queen bee of this type of view. I remember how many of my female students lionized The Bell Jar in high school and college. When I finally read the book myself, I found it unsettling rather than inspiring. 

Like most adolescents, there were times I found myself wondering like Hamlet if I should live or die. After learning of the death of a classmate during my senior year of high school, I sunk into an existential funk that probably would have been solved a decade later with a dosage of antidepressants. Thankfully, I worked myself out of this mostly on my own, though a few heart-to-hearts with sympathetic teachers and my high school girlfriend kept me from taking any dire measures. 

When I learned of my mother's hospitalization with postpartum psychosis after the birth of my eldest brother, I wondered if I might inherit some form of mental illness from her. I do not think I have, but my admiration and appreciation of writers like Lowell and Berryman, has made me particularly interested in bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic depression. 

Through a winding path, approximately five or six years ago, I found myself taking on the task of teaching Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology. I had virtually no academic training for this course. I took an intro Psychology course in college to fulfill a general education requirement. I had taken various Sociology courses as both an undergrad and grad student, but this is a tangential connection. I did study Philosophy and had taught an elective class on World Philosophy. I had also been a lifelong student of Religion and I knew that one of the earliest academic studies of Religion was American psychologist William James' Varieties of Religious Experience. 

Nevertheless, I dove into the material which included a daunting amount of hard science relating to the brain, nervous system, and other topics more connected to the Sciences than Humanities, my wheelhouse. Around this time I learned of the work of Kay Redfield Jamison. Jamison is one of the world's foremost experts on bipolar disorder, on both a personal and academic level. Jamison has lived with this condition and has become an expert on the topic through her education and academic work. Jamison is on the Psychiatry Faculty at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In addition to her work, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Jamison has written additional works on the topic. These include Fires in the Dark: Healing the Unquiet Mind, Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, and more recently Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character. The Lowell book is a distinctive hybrid of a book. It is a biography, but one that foregrounds his struggle with bipolar disorder. She received permission from the Lowell estate to access his medical records. I have read several biographies and literary studies of Lowell, but none of those authors had the personal or professional background of Jamison. 

Regarding An Unquiet Mind, I found the work to be lyrical, candid, and ultimately hopeful as the reader sees how Jamison has managed to have an exceptionally successful life as a psychiatrist and also maintain relationships with friends and family too. Her acknowledgements include numerous debts to professional friends, doctors who treated her, and to her own siblings and her husband. Jamison dedicates the book to her mother.  Sadly, some of the primary victims of bipolar disorder beyond the person suffering from this disorder are family members who endure the vitriol and abuse of the individual while in these episodes. 

In the preface to my edition, Jamison writes about originally publishing the book fifteen years earlier. Jamison had struggled with this condition from the age of 17 and had still managed in the decade since that diagnosis to have earned an assistant professorship at UCLA. She notes that when she decided to write this book twenty years after her first academic appointment, it was not without risks. Though she had by this time earned tenure and had a sterling reputation in the field, who could anticipate the fallout from this type of public acknowledgement. What would her colleagues think of her? Would her academic community embrace this admission?  Jamison had spent two decades keeping this secret from the world, though she admits she was heading into a manic episode right at the time she joined the UCLA faculty.  I applaud Jamison's courage, because then and now, much of society feels mental illness is not truly an illness, but as Jamison writes "Far more people than I had realized conceptualize mental illness as a spiritual flaw or shortcoming in character" (xii). Jamison, like William Styron before her, in his memoir on depression, Darkness Visible, has done a great deal to destigmatize mental illness for the general public. 

Jamison divides the book into four sections: The Wild Blue Yonder, A Not So Fine Madness, This Medicine, Love, and An Unquiet Mind. The first section recounts Jamison's life growing up with a father in the military and frequent moves around the country before settling in Washington state after her father's retirement from active service. Jamison notes her suicidal thoughts that she hid from family and revealed only to a few close friends. When she goes off to college at UCLA, rather than her dream school of the University of Chicago, Jamison cannot hide her disappointment, though she comes to learn this was likely the best experience for her. Jamison completed her undergraduate studies and entered the PhD program in Psychology at UCLA. The first section ends with Jamison's appointment to the UCLA faculty. "I had a glorious-as it turns out, too glorious-summer, and, within three months of becoming a professor, I was ravingly psychotic" (63).

The second part of the book begins with Jamison explaining that her condition did not appear suddenly. As she writes, "I did not wake up one day to find myself mad" (68). Instead it was a process, an acceleration of thoughts that reached a point where she found herself in a world of chaos. Like many patients, Jamison often resisted medication, because how it made her feel.  However, when she emerged from the haze of her mania, the crushingly reality of spending sprees and other destructive behaviors had to be faced. 

Through therapy Jamison learns how to work towards the gentle balance between her condition and the possible treatment. "The challenge was in learning to understand the complexity of this mutual beholdenness and in learning to distinguish the roles of lithium, will, and insight in getting well and leading a meaningful life. It was the task and gift of psychotherapy" (88). Jamison as both a patient and psychiatric practitioner understood the treatment of mental illness is not an either/or choice between medication and therapy, but ideally should involve a complimentary approach to treatment. 

In the chapter "Missing Saturn" Jamison describes the experience of getting better which often required patients to abandon those mental flights they had found exhilarating while in the midst of those states. Finding a new normal is not always easy. "When I am my present 'normal' self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow. And I miss Saturn very much." (92). 

Jamison lucidly, but honestly recounts her battles with her medication, in her case, Lithium. Once again, her academic knowledge of mental illness provides an insight beyond other patients. Unfortunately, those who take medications for mental illness often have to work with various medications and dosage levels before finding an optimum combination.  It reminds us that we must be fierce self-advocates unafraid to challenge the medical knowledge and experience of our care providers.  In this same chapter, Jamison includes a humorous but also poignant list of 13 "Rules for the Gracious Acceptance of Lithium into Your Life." Rules #1 and 13 illustrate the societal costs of acknowledging mental illness. Rule # 1 states "Clear out the medicine cabinet before guests arrive for dinner or new lovers stay the night." Rule # 13 "Restock your medicine cabinet." 

In a lighthearted way, Jamison encapsulates the powerful social forces that make one reluctant to admit you suffer from some form of mental illness. As a teacher for approximately 25 years now, I am glad to admit more students and families comfortably inform me of their own or their child's psychological conditions.  Nevertheless, there are still many obstacles and barriers to acceptance on both personal and professional levels.  A recent documentary Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests addresses many of these concerns. 

Jamison addresses her eighteen-month struggle with suicidal depression during which she bought a gun and periodically went to the eighth floor stairwell of the UCLA hospital where she pondered jumping off. She eventually took a massive dose of lithium. Jamison continues this narrative with gracious thanks to her personal therapist.  Another element of this work I appreciate is its insistence to not seek easy answers or romanticize her life. While she has been married three times, her second husband died, and had another significant romantic relationship that ended with the tragic death of her love, Jamison does not give false hope about her condition and what someone as close as your spouse can do for you. Near the end of part three, Jamison makes the following statement. "I have become fundamentally and deeply skeptical that anyone who does not have this illness can truly understand it" (174).  She goes on to argue "No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. . . . Madness, on the other hand, most certainly can, and often does, kill love through its mistrustfulness, unrelenting pessimism, discontents, erratic behavior and especially, through its savage moods" (174). Jamison's remark strikes me deep because of knowing both those who suffer from bipolar disorder and caregivers and family of those who suffer from this condition. The frustration, bitterness, and sadness of these caregivers is palpable because they want nothing more than to have their parent, partner, child, or friend to be well and "happy."  Similarly, those suffering from various psychological disorders wish for similar things, but the shame, inadequacy, or guilt they feel is no less real. 

The fourth section of the book is the shortest and it has more professional and academic topics.  The opening chapter "Speaking of Madness" is an excellent personal and professional meditation on the terminology used to refer to various psychological conditions.  Throughout this post, I have used bipolar disorder, though Redfield prefers and uses manic depression. I plan to use this chapter with my AP Psychology students to discuss the importance of accuracy in these matters. Another chapter "The Troubled Helix" explores the genetics of psychological disorders and "Clinical Privileges" recounts some of Jamison's reluctance to tell her colleagues of her condition, though thankfully her department chair proves to be completely supportive of her disclosure. The final chapter "A Life in Moods" and the "Epilogue" address what it has meant for Jamison personally and professionally to have bipolar disorder.  As she has done throughout the memoir, Jamison is honest and I found her conclusions to be well-earned. 

I have purchased a couple of other titles by Jamison and I hope to review them both in these pages. I would recommend Jamison's book for anyone curious about bipolar disorder and especially for those who have this condition and for those who know someone who has bipolar disorder.  I cannot think of a better introduction to this illness than An Unquiet Mind. 

The Sabbatical is Over

 I cannot pretend that the handful of followers of this blog have awaited another post from me, but I do regret having been away from this blog for so long. Much has happened since my last post in 2018. I have moved, I have changed jobs, I have earned another graduate degree, and we have lived through the worst of a global pandemic. 

I have a stack of books that I have meant to review in this blog for some time now. I am going to endeavor through work through this list in the coming days. I find myself on Spring Break from my current position and have just returned from a writing conference energized. I attended this conference to participate in a panel for an anthology on the subject of La Llorona. An essay of mine, "Living with La Llorona" will appear in this anthology in the fall of this year. 

I completed the requirements for an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Creative Nonfiction in the fall of 2021. My advisor recommended we establish social media preferences and I suppose this blog is the sort of thing he had in mind. Unfortunately, I did not maintain this blog during the three years I worked on that MFA, but now I feel the itch to return to some more regular schedule of writing. For 15 years from 2005 to 2020, I wrote an op-ed column for the Topeka Capital-Journal. For the first five years I wrote every week and I truly enjoyed that round-the-clock schedule which forced me to write or think about writing for most of the week. 

By the end of my time as a columnist, the column came out twice a month, the immediacy had been lost. I am feeling inspired to write again based on the reception to my Llorona essay at this conference. While the type of writing I blog for is not the same as op-ed writing, it is still writing, and writing about books and ideas. 

Once I find myself in a more regular rhythm, I will introduce this blog to my social media accounts in the hopes that more folks may follow my writing. Though I have not written for the TCJ since 2020, I have maintained a writing routine through my work on the journal, Law Wise, published by the Kansas Bar Association. No, I am not a lawyer, but my eldest son is an attorney in New York City. I serendipitously fell into Law Wise through Facebook. Law Wise is an outreach journal published by the KBA for teachers of social studies, civics, and American History and Government. I have written for Law Wise since 2017 publishing issues on a variety of topics related to constitutional and legal issues. The most recent issue found here is on the Age of Majority/Emancipation. 

Writing for Law Wise has been another form of education for me as I have learned a great deal about the various topics covered in these issues over the years.  

Well, I am back, Ides of March and all.  

Keep Reading, 

Czar

Altered States

As a latchkey kid in the 70s and 80s, I had a significant amount of time where I was left to my own devices.  Additionally, as the youngest child in a family of five, I had experiences not likely shared by my classmates.  I remember watching Midnight Express with one of my older brothers. As children of the 1970s, my brothers dabbled in recreational drugs. One of my brothers introduced me to the writings of Carlos Castaneda.  Around the same time as I learned of Carlos Castaneda and his "Yaqui Way of Knowledge", I watched the 1980 film Altered States. 
Directed by Ken Russell with a screenplay from Paddy Chayefsky, it starred William Hurt and Blair Brown. Hurt plays Eddie Jessup, a Harvard Psychology professor who uses a sensory deprivation tank and hallucinogenic drugs to attempt to reach "altered states of consciousness."  I would guess Jessup's character is loosely based on men like Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert/Ram Dass who were both once Harvard professors whose path led to an exploration of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs.
When I first watched Altered States, I struggled to understand the film and I found some of the latter stages of the movie to be rather far-fetched and comical.  Nevertheless, with some experience with Castaneda, I left the film intrigued about the possibility of their being other realms of consciousness or altered states.  It would be years later that I would do some of my own "pharmacological field work", though not to the extent of men like Ram Dass or Leary.  However, I know had empirical data of my own to attempt to make sense of. 
The first study of hallucinogens and altered states was Jeremy Narby's The Cosmic Serpent, which is the account of a Stanford-trained academic taking ayahuasca with an indigenous Amazon shaman.  Narby's focus was to argue that perhaps this indigenous knowledge and the paradigmatic concept of DNA are not as far apart as it might first appear. 
I am fairly certain that sitting on one of my bookshelves as I devoured The Cosmic Serpent was Aldous Huxley's concise The Doors of Perception.  More time intervened between me tackling Huxley's text.  I read further into the social issues surrounding drugs like LSD.  Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain's Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD, the CIA, the Sixties and Beyond does an admirable job of situating LSD into American political, cultural, and social history.  I highly recommend it. 
Finally, after reading those works I finally read Huxley's work. In fewer than 80 pages, Huxley documents his own experiments with mescaline.  If you know Huxley only through Brave New World, this is an entirely different work published more than a decade after that novel. Huxley begins with a short history of Western study of mescaline and its effects. He gleefully reports how mescaline, "To primitive religion and the Indians of Mexico and the American Southwest it was a friend of immemorially long standing." (9)
In this work, Huxley endeavors to recount his conscious experience with mescalin as he ingests a pill under the supervision of someone deemed "the investigator." The entire experience was recorded to help Huxley recall some of his "trip."  I find this to be credible as part of the problem is when under the influence, it is difficult to extricate yourself from the experience to provide analysis.  His initial response was that the experience was not easily categorized.  "'Neither agreeable or disagreeable, I answered. 'It just is.'" (17)  What asked what he saw and how he perceived spatial relationship, Huxley had the following answer: "In the mescalin experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity and existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern." (20) 
After his experiment, Huxley spends the rest of the text discussing what he experienced and the implications of this experience. In discussing then-current brain research and philosophy, Huxley argues that while we should be capable of remembering all of our experiences, the argument went that the brain protected us from this type of holistic overload. "The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by the mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge,  . . . leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful." (22-23).
Huxley claims under mescaline, we lose our will to accomplish tasks we previously found important.
Huxley writes of a state of egolessness where "there is an 'obscure knowledge' that All is in all-that All is actually each. This is as near, I take it, as a finite mind can ever come to 'perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe.'" (26) This mystical state Huxley refers to as "the Mind at Large."
Traces of the pessimism found in Brave New World pop up at points in Doors.  According to Huxley, "Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul." (62).  In the 1950s, this sort of monotonous life might have something to do with the emerging counterculture who seeks to experience life more intensely and more purposefully. 
Huxley, perhaps following the lead of Nietzsche, does devote a couple of pages to the relationship between Christianity and religious drunkenness or intoxication.  With the exception of the Native American Church, Huxley finds Christianity incompatible with this religious intoxication as he contrasts this with the Dionysian rites of the Greeks.  Though the drug of choice for this Native American Church is peyote, Huxley sees correspondence with the use of mescalin.  Though states of euphoria or enthusiasm (from the Greek mean "god within") in Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity is not connected to drug use, I think Huxley overlooks the fact that certain forms of Christianity can approach these ecstatic states without the use of drugs. 
Huxley concludes on an encouraging note as he speaks of a someone who has gone through the Door in the wall and has returned utterly transformed. "He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, or systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend." (79).
I wish I had read this work sooner, as it is full of wisdom and humility, much like the man described by Huxley in the concluding paragraph of this earnest work of science, anthropology, philosophy, and religion.  What I most admire is Huxley's desire to fully explore the mescalin experience, but without situating himself or Western learning in a place of supremacy or privilege.  Such an attitude is rare in our world and was perhaps even more so in the 1950s.  The Doors of Perception is a gem of a work and worth reading, though it does make better sense if you have ever being in an altered state of some kind.
Czar

The Art of Reinvention

One of my favorite activities is to browse the discount books when I go into a bookstore.  I will admit there are far fewer bookstores to choose from as behemoths like Amazon and the remaining large chain bookstores have eliminated many of the familiar hometown bookstores.  However, one of the advantages of these chain stores is the ability to place excellent, but overlooked books on sale at greatly discounted prices.  On occasion, I find books I would have paid full price for because they are so truly valuable.  Reinventing Yourself by Mario Alonso Puig is one such book. 
I cannot recall how many times friends, counselors, priests, and others reminded me that my divorce provided me with an opportunity to hit the reset button and reassess my life.  I suppose this idea was in the back of my head when I left the town I had lived for over 20 years after my divorce and sought a new life in the city where I worked.  In addition to the tremendous difference in my former 50 mile commute to a five block trip, moving to a new city did allow me a chance to heal and grow in relative anonymity. 
One of the areas where I reinvented myself was in the area of cooking.  Prior to my divorce, I could cook, but the majority of my culinary skills would qualify as bachelor cooking.  I knew I would not starve, but with the exception of Mexican foods I learned to cook from my mother, I could not go much beyond the burgers, scrambled eggs, pasta domain.  Four years later, I am a much better and more confident cook, who is often asked by my daughter to make dishes.  Nothing has given me more satisfaction than her willingness to ask me to make pretty much any dish and telling me how good a cook I am.
Dr. Mario Puig would likely approve of my culinary skills, but Puig has more ambitious plans for his readers. Puig is a physician and surgeon at Harvard Medical School and he brings his scientific knowledge to bear on this topic of reinvention. However, Puig is not a proponent of "scientism", the chauvinistic belief that science is the final arbiter of all matters in life. In fact, Puig has a welcome ecumenical nature in his approach to this topic with chapter titles like "The doors of perception" and "The dark night of the soul" that suggest there is a world beyond the scientific one.  In 19 short chapters, Puig provides compelling evidence, scientific and otherwise that we not only can, but should reinvent ourselves. 
The quote at the beginning of the "Introduction" is from Carl Jung reminding readers that there is a world buried beneath the world of reason.  Puig proceeds to argue that to change ourselves, we have to change our minds.  He writes, “If we wish to increase our capacity to solve problems  and become more competent when looking for opportunities, we need to learn how to transcend the limits that our mind has set us.”  Puig bolsters his argument by noting the first Noble Prize Winner for Medicine, Dr. Santiago Ramon y Cajal claimed all of us had the ability to sculpt our own brain.  Throughout the book, Dr. Puig combines scientific evidence with spiritual insights to demonstrate how we all have the power of reinvention. 
Puig advocates self-examination so we can uncover mental assumptions and barriers which would impede our progress.  We literally need to become more familiar with our consciousness and root out the unconscious roadblocks to our progress. Puig spends time explaining brain architecture and how such knowledge can help us to attempt to use both hemispheres of our brain and not simply rely on reason.
Puig takes this analogy further with a metaphor that explains how the conscious and subconscious part of our mind works. "Our conscious mind can be compared to the captain of a sailing boat, and our subconscious mind to the wind that fills the sails. Even if it is hard for him to admit it, the captain has to learn how the wind works (and to use it in his favour), or he won't get anywhere with his boat."
Dr. Puig firmly believes in the extraordinary power and capacity of our brains and minds, which we must understand like the captain on his boat.  He exhorts us to be vigilant in being attentive or what today we might call "mindful" and to do our best to realize the power of our words and our thoughts.
In his chapter titled "From Darkness to Light", Dr. Puig introduces a five step process to help us move beyond automatic emotional responses to certain situations.  In some ways, it reminds me of Buddhist practice, but regardless of its origins, these processes would allow us to raise our minds and consciousness to another level.  Puig also provides some activities and practices we should follow daily to establish and mental good mental and spiritual health.  He writes, "If we wish to feel more energy and vitality, we need to bear in mind all our dimensions: the cognitive, affective, corporal and spiritual as they are all inter-connected."
In the final chapter of the book, Dr. Puig speaks of twelve dimensions of being and experiencing the world.  Once again, he makes reference to Buddha explicitly, but also to Jesus of Nazareth as an exemplar of these twelve dimensions.  Here Puig is far from the hallowed scientific halls of Harvard Medical School.  I admit I am not fully convinced of the accessibility of these dimensions, but it is provocative and if one could dwell in the twelfth dimension, life would be quite good.
After reading, Dr. Mario Puig's book, I felt inspired and hopeful that true and fundamental change was indeed possible.  It encouraged me to buy a used piano and to learn the basics on this instrument. It further inspired me to make the decision to return to school to obtain my MFA in Creative Nonfiction, a program of study I will begin in the fall of 2018.  At 51 years of age, I realize that there is no time like the present to live more fully and purposefully.  I am grateful to Dr. Puig for sharing his wisdom and optimism with his readers.

Moving Forward

This concept is central not only to life after divorce, but for life after a change in circumstances and for some as a life mantra.  Jim Smoke, who was a Christian minister who specialized in divorce ministry wrote several books regarding divorce. Moving Forward: A Devotional Guide for Finding Hope and Peace in the Midst of Divorce is one of his best.  If you are like me, you likely read books and then try to resell them or pass them along to friends or people who might need a book like this. This one I will likely keep for awhile.  Not so much because I am in need of this 4 and 1/2 years out from my divorce, but because it just contains great information and truly is a pastoral book for those dealing with divorce.  Yes, Smoke is definitely writing from a Christian perspective, which works for me.  However, he is also providing excellent information and methods to help you get through a divorce, regardless of your religious background. 
It is a series of devotions that do follow a thematic arc leading trying to meet you where ever you find yourself in your divorce process.  In addition to his own thoughts, Smoke readily seeks advice from other sources, not all of them religious in nature.  In his introduction, he quotes Robert Veninga, author of A Gift of Hope, who uses the metaphor of seasons to discuss pain.  Veninga writes, "Human pain does not let go of its grip at one point in time. . . There is a season of sadness, a season of anger, a season of tranquility, a season of hope. But seasons do not follow one another in a lockstep manner. . . The winters and springs of one's life are all jumbled together in a puzzling array. . . but when one affirms that the spring thaw will arrive, the winter winds seem to lose some of their punch." There is much truth in this statement and right now I feel I am in a season of tranquility.  Yesterday I received official notice of the annulment of my marriage.  When asked about how I feel regarding this, I replied that this decision only affirmed what I had known for several years, even prior to my official divorce.  My marriage was not a truly sacramental marriage. Does this mean, I will not possibly experience or anger?  No, there is no guarantee, which is why I plan to hold on to Smoke's book and the wisdom it contains.
At the beginning of the book, Smoke provides a list of ten things to do when you think your marriage is beyond repair.  It is elements like this which make this book invaluable for those of you who might experience divorce. 
Smoke is well aware of the emotional, spiritual, and physical challenges of divorce and provides practical ways to deal with these issues.  Smoke provides another 8-point list to address the issue of fear.  Fear is ubiquitous in our lives, but it is even more prevalent in the midst of divorce as one has to force the changes to come.  I found Smoke's list to be accurate and it helped me address these fears.
Once you can solve or at least confront your fears, you are on the path to a new life.  Smoke acknowledges this and does address how you might seek to marry again and what would you learn from your first marriage as you ponder another marriage. 
Obviously any second marriage does not exist in a vacuum and the question about how to handle your first marriage and first spouse is often the elephant in the room. Smoke advises writing a letter to your ex-spouse that you will never send.  You can pour all of your emotions positive and negative into this letter.  As a Roman Catholic, I would compare this to going to Reconciliation/Confession and putting all of your emotions out there.  I did actually go to Confession with a few months of my divorce and it was incredibly healing for me.  I slept well for one of the first nights in several months. I have also written this letter which I will never mail and it too was a moment of cleansing that helped me on my divorce journey.
Related to making peace with the past and moving forward is what Smoke calls the "the tyranny of the shoulds." He write, "My should do's give me a complex, whereas my can do's offer me a choice. There's a fine line between the two."  In other words, we cannot beat ourselves up about the choices we did not make or try to relive things we have no power to change.  As he does throughout this devotional,  Jim Smoke keeps you looking at the path ahead.  Near the end of this book, Smoke devotes several pages to the various ways we must move forward and he concludes with a pastoral wish for peace in every aspect of our lives.
If you or someone you know is on the verge of divorce or is going through a divorce, I would highly recommend Jim Smoke's Moving Forward. 
Czar