Maintenance

It's been nearly a week with no posts! Three job interviews and a hectic week...

Next up is another story, genre undetermined.

Crying in Public: WHY

Since my east coast visit, my blogging has been more sporadic, mostly because of my frantic job search. Employers, if you’re out there, GIVE ME A JOB. Yesterday I spent the better half of the day trying to “put a face to the resume” at one of the University job’s I applied to. It didn’t go well: without an appointment, I was treated like a security risk. Live and learn!

On vacation, I began reading Dan Ariely’s book The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. An Israeli behavioral economist and professor at Duke, much of what Ariely talks about touches on the issues I studied in organizational theory as part of my Economics major. Most importantly, both behavioral economics and organizational theory dismiss the assumption of traditional economics that all people behave rationally.

Ariely is a burn victim—as a youth, an accidental magnesium flare inflicted third degree burns on over 70 percent of his body. In one of his passages, he described an experience that bore a striking resemblance to one of my own:

“During one session at a conference in Florida, three colleagues and I were going to present our recent work on adaptation, the process through which people become accustomed to new circumstances…I had carried out some studies in this area, but instead of talking about my research findings, I planned to give a fifteen-minute talk about my personal experience in adapting to my physical injuries and present some of the lessons I had learned. I practiced this talk a few times, so I knew what I was going to say. Aside from the fact that the topic was more personal than usual in an academic presentation, I did not feel that the talk was that much different form others I have given over the years. As it turned out, the plan did not match the reality in the slightest.

I started the lecture very calmly by describing my talk’s objective, but, to my horror, the moment I started describing my experience in the hospital, I teared up. Then I found myself unable to speak. Avoiding eye contact with the audience, I tried to compose myself as I walked from one side of the room to the other for a minute or so. I tried again but I could not talk. After some more pacing and another attempt to talk, I was still unable to talk without crying.

I was clear to me that the presence of the audience had amplified my emotional memory. So I decided to switch to an impersonal discussion of my research. That approach worked fine, and I finished my presentation. But it left me with a very strong impression about my own inability to predict the effects of my own emotions, when combined with stress, on my ability to perform.”

In a freewrite piece called The Night My House Burned Down (spoiler alert: it’s a downer), I wrote about the shock of getting extremely emotional after reading a story about the house fire:

“The first time that I lost control of my emotions when talking about the fire was not until two years afterwards, when I chose to read a short story I’d written aloud in class. I had woken up early to write it, behind on my schoolwork as always, and decided to write about walking through my house after the fire. I thought I was being clever: what teacher would give anyone less than an A when they’re talking about their house burning down? One of my friends told me that for the essay section of the SAT, he’d written a [made-up] story about his mom getting cancer and credited his high score to the sympathy of the readers. This was my strategy-- manipulating my teacher into giving me a grade that I didn’t feel I deserved. I felt so confident as I began to read in class, proud of the inevitable regard my classmates would hold me in after learning I’d gone through such a poignant event. Imagine my surprise as my voice began to falter half-way through the reading and my hands shook uncontrollably as I put down the paper. Never mind the absolute stupor and embarrassment at my reaction to my professor saying tentatively, “This was obviously upsetting for you...” I began to respond, “Well, it’s obviously shocking when you see your house burning down...” and absolutely collapsed, losing control and crying hysterically, almost hyperventilating before excusing myself and weeping in the bathroom for the remainder of the class. I had accidentally gone too deep, not thinking when I sleepily wrote lines like, “some of the pictures were still on the wall, water-logged and distorted by crusading hoses, but some lay shattered on the floor, choosing to go down with the ship”. I had tapped my emotional reserves which pooled unseen and undisturbed in my subconscious.”

I chalked it up to “going too deep”, but Ariely’s passage gave me a strange comfort, normalizing the experience: the audience (my classmates) had amplified my emotional memory. At the same time, the act of talking about—announcing, even—these emotionally poignant moments is like exposing them to the air—breathing life into them and forcing us to realize just how devastating these events were.

I’ll end this post with Ariely’s thoughts on blogging and the reasons behind it. In a passage called “Blogging for Treats” he writes:

“Now think about blogging. The number of blog out there is astounding, and it seems that almost everyone has a blog or is thinking about starting one. Why are blogs so popular? Not only is it because so many people have the desire to write; after all, people wrote before blogs were invented. It is also because blog have two features that distinguish them from other forms of writing. First, they provide the hope or the illusion that someone will read one’s writing. After all, the moment a blogger presses the “publish” button, the blog can be consumed by anybody in the world, and with so many people connected, somebody, or at least a few people, should stumble upon the blog. Indeed, the “number of views” statistic is a highly motivating feature in the blogosphere because it lets the blogger known exactly how many people have at least seen the posting. Blogs also provide readers with the ability to leave their reactions and comments—gratifying for both the blogger, who now has a verifiable audience, and the reader-cum-writer (editor's note: I LOVE COMMENTS). Most blogs have very low readership—perhaps only the blogger’s mother or best friend reads them—but even writing for one person, compared to writing for nobody, seems to be enough to compel millions to blog."

Thoughts on Business...

Last summer, I met a newly graduated Celebrant. The mother of my friend B, she told me all about the Celebrant Foundation and Institute and I was struck—celebrancy seemed an ideal option for me. Celebrants are non-religious “ceremony officiants”—we study the history of rituals and their place in our lives to facilitate us in ceremony building. Doing events like weddings, funerals, divorce ceremonies, and downsizing ceremonies, the celebrant works closely with the participants in order to build a significant and personalized ceremony for the occasion.


I decided to “major” in funerals. Some might call it morbid, but I was drawn to the rituals surrounding death much more than weddings and child namings. Attending online classes from October to April, I’ve finally received my celebrant certification and am ready to start. The business sense of celebrancy is difficult—you’re essentially starting your own enterprise.


After putting a lot of thought into it, I decided to do animal funerals instead of human funerals. I came to this conclusion after realizing that I—and thus the general public—would prefer to have an older (i.e. more experienced) person officiating a loved one’s funeral, among other things. Further, I think Los Angeles is the perfect place to start a doggie funeral home.


At this point, it’s about building a website and contacting people—is it too dark to talk to doggie day care places? Dog walkers? Veterinarians? I’ll end with the poem I gave to my friend C after the death of a loved furry one—it resonates with me as a dog owner and serves to inspire my fatalistic entrepreneurial spirit.


Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together.
There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Colonial Life and Bridey Murphy Reborn

Just returned from a blissful east coast vacation full of family, friends and the humidity I miss so much out here in the desert. We ended our days in Newport, RI—one of the original colonies boasting the oldest Independence Day parade. Sitting in the library now—absorbing knowledge via osmosis?—I have two sandy shells in my purse and a copy of Hypnosis Quarterly, Vol. XXII No. 4 from 1979.

A steal at $.50, the tagline of Hypnosis Quarterly reads “The Illustrated Journal of Hypnotism in All its Phases”. This issue looks at the “Bridey Murphy farce” from the fifties, specifically “dissecting [it]…employing logic and the facts of hypnosis and psychology as the instruments of dismemberment.” This is the wikied story:

“In 1952, Colorado businessman and amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein put housewife Virginia Tighe of Pueblo, Colorado in a trance that sparked off startling revelations about Tighe's alleged past life as a 19th-century Irishwoman and her rebirth in the United States 59 years later. Bernstein used a technique called hypnotic regression, during which the subject is gradually taken back to childhood. He then attempted to take Virginia one step further, before birth, and suddenly was astonished to find he was listening to Bridey Murphy.

Her tale began in 1806 when Bridey was eight years old and living in a house in Cork. She was the daughter of Duncan Murphy, a barrister, and his wife Kathleen. At the age of 17 she married lawyer Sean Brian McCarthy and moved to Belfast. Bridey told of a fall that caused her death and of watching her own funeral, describing her tombstone and the state of being in life after death. It was, she recalled, a feeling of neither pain nor happiness. Somehow, she was reborn in America, although Bridey was not clear how this event happened. Virginia Tighe herself was born in the Midwest in 1923, had never been to Ireland, and did not speak with even the slightest hint of an Irish accent.”

This case was particularly offensive to the Hypnosis Quarterly editors, who take issue with “the basic problem involved”, which they call “the desire of people to know about death”: “The tragedy of the Bridey Murphy farce is that it gives hope based on ignorance, wishful thinking and misinformation rather than knowledge and fact”.

Other articles in Hypnosis go on to list the inaccuracies of the Bridey story. Printed on the front of magazine is the dedication to “the Advancement of Ethical Hypnosis”, and the feel of the publication is very academic—these are doctors wanting to divorce hypnosis from the unprofessional associations of reincarnation and the afterlife. While I understood their motivations, as I flipped through the magazine on the rocky beaches of Rhode Island, I couldn’t help but disapprove of their desire to shut it all down.

Perhaps it was a lingering colonial spirit, but I like the idea of a remaining corner of mystery in the world, especially in these oil-seeped recession days. My romanticized (read: disease and hunger free) version of colonial life on the island, when everything was new and the universe seemed endless, is as irresistible as the urge to believe a mid-western woman spontaneously connected with the Irish ghost of her previous life.