Overwhelmed

Difficult to pick words in this time and place. I feel that speaking about my thoughts like I did in recent posts is irrelevant in light of how other people’s lives are and will be devastated. I am not scared for myself or my future – no matter what happens, and (sadly!) not due to my actions, my life will not be hit as badly as the lives of so many people. I feel lucky, but I wish someone else received my share of luck and opportunities.

I am overwhelmed and speechless, but I don’t want to isolate myself from what is happening. I find that staying calm and positive in such times is either the product of an exceptionally stable mind, or of an aggressive (to the point of looking inhuman) filter on inputs. I struggle talking about this, as strong emotions and projections make the discussion derail, leaving me more confused than before.

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Atlantis and space

Recently I took a long and winded walk on Wikipedia and read about space shuttle orbiters.

After many years since their first launch and a decade since last mission, the surrounding (and lifting) enthusiasm about traveling in space with such machines has dissipated somehow, and the way of talking about them became more practical, less dependent on the interpretation. The details of their construction and missions, at least the ones shared publicly, appear very practical to me, and therefore interesting.

One of the pictures that struck me is one of Atlantis docked to the ISS, the international space station.

By NASA – http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-132/html/iss023e044747.html (direct link), Public Domain, Link

When I saw it the first time, the details almost brought me to tears, and every time I see it (quite often, as it’s one of my desktop backgrounds) I smile. I see the picture as a mosaic of pieces that all need to be there for the mission to be successful. And more than the metaphorical pieces, I see the actual pieces – the tiles of Atlantis’ thermal shield, with signs of wear, the black tiles protecting the most exposed sections (and I particularly cherish the black area between the cockpit windows, as it’s a feature that airplanes don’t need) – the cabling of the ISS, so non-Earth-like in its appearance, exposed and only answering to physics and necessity – and I think: this was made possible, even if mostly for political reasons; but those were the motivation, and didn’t take part to the actual creation of the whole setup. I am emotionally indifferent to the publicity around the space shuttle, but I cry when I read the details of their construction and missions – at least what is publicly available – because I can relate to the struggles and successes of a technician with a very practical problem to solve, and I feel a profound sympathy for the finished object.

Continuity

Here is the start of a series of small posts about big topics.

Today the topic is continuity, which is currently a challenge for me, as I’m still settling in a new job, a new town, a new landscape, a new social circle. There is very little I bring over from my past setup: a few important objects, some books, my online identities. I am honestly scared about all this. I am heavily influenced by my surroundings and I tend to blend in the environment where I land. The idea of choosing the environment to match my needs sounds weird and even funny to me. I’m relying on the continuity of the new environment, so that I can merge with it and feel like I have been here since the beginning.

In this specific phase, continuity for me means walking the same way to the office, at the same time of the day, optionally listening to the same playlist. It gives me the ability to predict pretty accurately what I will encounter in the next half hour: traffic lights, specific potholes of the road, the trees along the fields, the beginning of the forest, each bend in the road, sometimes the same people, dogs and cars. It feels especially nice when the songs predictably align to landmarks along the way.

This is an example of a continuity I cherish, and even need, in order to be able to arrive in the office and deal with everything less predictable than this. I’m sure that people who know me for many years would tell: “But you moved so many times! You adapted to new environments so quickly!” – which is true, and was possible because I had continuity somewhere else – mostly in my online circles, that I was able to join from wherever I was located. These last years have been so harsh that I was not that active anymore, and this pillar got much weaker, so I got much more sensitive to changes I was bravely handling before.

Currently my continuity are a couple online chats, a handful of songs that I listen on repeat, an even smaller handful of books, my logs, my dear laptop, my phone, my knitting gear – that’s it. I feel almost transparent, but I’m hopeful that I will find more continuity sources soon – especially as the new town is small and there is a lot that naturally stays the same, even just shopkeepers and people at the pub.

That’s all for today! Take care, and hope you are curious about next post 🙂

On welcoming inputs

Last night I thought about why I don’t feel entertained by novels and movies anymore, and have trouble listening to the news and sometimes even to everyday conversations. I guess there are many factors at play, and different combinations for each situation; still, there is a leitmotiv in my perception that connects them. I apologise for the somewhat vague title, but this is the best fit I could find.

I have realised at a way earlier point in life that I receive information from the outside world in form of a mix of events that can be explained with laws of nature (in the broadest sense) and the opinions about these events. This seeems so obvious that it’s odd to mention it at all. What I recently realised is that I used to give both of these categories the same attention, the same right to be heard; and that I was listening to any input with full focus, genuine intention to understand it well. Not surprisingly I was good at school and I was regarded as a good listener, but I regularly and increasingly got overwhelmed.

The solution that most have suggested to me is “well, focus on some specific topic, filter the inputs the you get, there will always be too many situations that would need your help anyway, think about yourself first”. I understand , but I manage only to half-heartedly agree with that. I recognise my finite resources and I’m working on acknowledging my own needs, but I have no usable logic for picking up a topic. I guess it has to do with my intention to work on a given issue that I met directly, not on what someone managed to convince me to. I would feel horribly guilty to have followed a good marketing feat and have disregarded a more urgent issue just because it was not as brilliantly presented. I think of many examples of great storytelling that made a legitimately good work in raising attention on some obscure yet important topics, but I have the uneasy thought that there is much more in the shadows that can’t sell itself as effectively, and it would be inhumane to expect it to.

Connected to that, I got the increasingly clear perception of that “listen to me, disregard the others, I’ll make you change how you think or confirm your views” in works of fiction. I started to read books in a different way. Until recently, I was reading to discover new topics and the views of the authors, and use them to build my inner world, changing them as little as possible. What happens now when I pick a novel is that my brain defiantly grabs a notepad and takes notes about what views the authors want to bring forward, tries to find out inconsistencies, reasons to stop reading. Same happens, with more success for the brain, when I watch a movie. I seem not to be able to get into suspension of disbelief, and I see the movie as if I were on the set: I can almost hear the director telling what he/she wants to see the actors doing (which brings its own pleasure, as a behind-the-scenes experience). I can only watch videos and read text where the self-irony or self-observation is so blatant that I’m not expected to approve the narrative or have empathy of any sort. The focus moves to the acting ability, the photography, the use of narrative devices for fun. I can watch the Monty Python’s Flying Circus or the IT Crowd over and over, and I am very wary in watching anything new, even when I get suggestions from friends.

I think there is a lot behind this change in my perception and I’m trying to understand it better. I would be curious if anyone has similar experiences or has hints for further exploration on the topic.

Yoga update: the practice of perception and the avoidance of strain

The yoga class I have been attending since January is becoming really interesting for me. I have been a very sport-averse person until recently, and I have been using my body with the bare minimum of awareness possible. Through this yoga lessons I have finally started to notice that: 1- my body is actually able to do more than sit and walk; 2- practicing a physical activity like yoga requires more than simple strength, flexibility and endurance, and this means: concentration, balance, awareness of posture and alignment, memory (for longer sequences, and the details of each posture), coordination, perception of effort so that it doesn’t harm any part of the body.

BKS Iyengar Sirsasana – from Svenja Karsten’s artwork on svejar.com

At first it was a new activity for me and I was trying to follow the teacher’s instructions, but was often distracted by tension in some part of the body, or had to focus on keeping balance and could not think of anything else. Now I start to notice how I can guide my attention to each part of the body and check if it’s in the right position, if there is the right amount of tension in the muscles and ligaments of that part, then go on to the next one. Sometimes it happens that I feel the overall tension of the body as a whole, that there is a good amount of strength in every part of it, nowhere too much, and I take it as the sign that I’m doing the posture correctly. And it’s so rewarding!

This kind of experience is quite far from my initial learning process with music (and a bunch of other things in life), where usually the opposite worked fine: especially with the drums, I have previously been able to make (temporary) progress by producing a lot of tension on the arm(s) or wrist(s) or finger(s) and therefore produce the sounds at the desired speed and intensity. However, it’s a dead end, because tension is both damaging to the body on the long term, and it is a sign that some technical challenge is being forced through instead of properly processed – and that means that progress actually stops there. Jared Falk mentioned something along these lines in the beginning of a longer video on Drumeo, and I’m glad that there is a convergence among the various disciplines I am practising, so I can reuse the mindset everywhere 🙂

On learning German: translation challenges

Some time ago in the underground I overheard a conversation between a girl with socks decorated with avocados and a guy with a postage-stamp tattoo. The girl mentioned her German course and he got the idea to improvise a translation quiz. It went approximately like this:

Guy (opening the girl’s notebook with the list of words she learned so far): So, how would you translate “silent”?

Girl: I think it’s “still”.

Guy: No, not in that sense – not in the sense of “mute”, either – no, maybe “quiet” would be a better word…

They took at least two underground stops to agree on which meaning of “silent” should be translated to German. I had to get out at my stop and I still don’t know if they succeeded 🙂

I am often in similar situations when I have a word in English or Italian in mind, and need to find its German equivalent. Unlike the other languages I know, there is rarely a 1:1 match, and the search for the appropriate translation becomes a quest full of surprises: how many translations are there for Blatt? See this post from Your Daily German! And how many for Anhänger? Check Wiktionary, and find out that it can mean either “trailer”, or “party member”, “fan”, and even “pendant”… And what about Gewalt? It is translated with either “power” or “violence” – I found it dangerously ambiguous at first, but then realised that “Gewalt” then automatically includes the possibility of misuse, which sounds to me a healthy warning sign.

My journey with German is then at the same time a journey of re-discovery of my known languages. I discover how German chooses words according to the functionality, and that apparently distant concepts look suddenly close, like in a perspective trick. French and Italian have less apparent connections among words, also because Latin and Greek roots are much more common and they don’t show their meaning so clearly as German does. As an example, I laughed a lot when I learned that “isosceles” is translated in German as gleichschenkelig – literally “with the same legs”. An isosceles triangle is “same-legged”! Then I checked what “isosceles” means, and it’s the Greek word for precisely “with the same legs”…

I like travelling in the meaning of words across languages. Sometimes I discover different points of view on a given topic, or the effect of a grammar rule that sometimes forces words to get a nuance they won’t get otherwise (I think mostly of grammatical gender). I think I didn’t get that 3D effect when I learned Italian and French, because they are very close, and I learned English mainly by translating 1:1. German doesn’t allow that so easily, and I am glad to be required to change my mindset and expand my views.

M. C. Escher: Magic Mirror (source: Wikiart)

 

 

Book recommendation: “Barfuß auf dem Sommerdeich” by Katja Just

I just finished reading this book. First of all, I’m quite proud of having been able to read it all without looking at the dictionary!

I picked it up in my library, attracted by the wilderness and remoteness of the Halligen, small islands in the North Sea, near the coasts of Germany and Denmark. The story of the city-dweller who leaves the busy streets for a remote, natural environment invariably fascinates every human heart.

Katja Just’s journey from Munich to Hooge is however not so close to a dream. She had hard times, not only because of the trying living conditions on the island, but, according to my impression, the deeper cause was her approach to those hardships. She does an amazing journey of introspection and acceptance, of herself, of the life on Hooge, that is unique and brave. This makes me think that just following her example and move to Hooge myself would not necessarily be a good decision: my starting point and my mindset are different. Nevertheless, the lessons I wish to learn from her experience are:

• observe, assuming that the information is out there and deserves to be noticed
• learn more about myself through the analysis of my reactions – being honest and open, rather than intolerant to my weaknesses
• be ready to stand for my ideas, firmly and politely

I hope there will be soon an English translation, so that more readers can have access to the book. I’ll update the post accordingly.

Until next time, good reads everyone!

Body awareness through movement

It sounds super silly, but today I lived an enlightening moment during my first yoga lesson: my body has a third dimension! I am prancing with sudden joy:

Prancing Thoroughbred – see related post

I wrote before about my slight sight quirk and I realised how it influences how I see my own body. There is no doubt that my body is three-dimensional, but I rarely perceive it. My eyes see it as flat, as everything else around me. At the beginning of the lesson, I felt my body was composed by flat, paper-thin parts joined together, not even symetrical: I could imagine one shoulder with more detail, bigger than the other one, same with hips, legs, hands and so on. I felt like a quick sketch with some more refined lines here and there. I could not imagine my own side view. Weird – but functional.

Along the lesson, the movements and postures of yoga made me realise how body parts can or can’t move, how far my back can stretch and twist, which tendons start to hurt first, and whether one side of the body has more flexibility than the other. It felt like a careful study of myself. If this is the result after a single lesson, I’m really thrilled!

This experience made me realise how most other people are more fluent than me with movements, and how easy it is for them to use their bodies in an implicitly respectful way. I have been used to see my body as clumsy, but I still managed to move well enough not to need any particular support, so I quickly and silently gave up “studying” it. I was bad at dancing and at sport, but it didn’t matter, and I was not the only one. Now I realise what I missed, but at the same time I am happy to have understood what was going on, and to have found a great discipline and teacher to improve my body perception.

Did you have similar experiences with a new sport or hobby? You’re welcome to share it in the comment section!

Film recommendation: “Paris, Texas”

Two days ago I watched this film at the cinema. A friend told me that it is widely available online, but I preferred to go to the cinema, for its setting and rituals: comfortable seats, great audio and video, planned timing and breaks. It is a situation where I have to decide very little and I can concentrate fully on the film.

I have been enchanted by the colours, all along the film. Camera angles were a treat in practically every scene (I thought that the film could be stopped almost anytime and printed out on a large canvas, with wonderful results). But maybe I enjoyed the careful, slow unwinding of the characters’ stories even more than everything else. It seemed to me that some moments were not acted at all, they seemed so alive and real. I enjoyed the sensation of having enough time to understand what the characters thought, what they felt, instead of having to pick clues or devices put in place to signify an emotion, but in a way that saves film-time. I felt there was no plot, no planned outcome, and this made me feel relaxed – otherwise, when I know that the plot has to follow certain steps, I end up fixing my attention to it, afraid of missing a clue, but missing a whole bunch of other information.

It was great to watch the movie together with many other people. We chuckled, paid close attention, smiled, laughed and sighed together. It was precious to hear the buzz of conversations started right out of the doors, people flowing out in pairs or small groups, all starting a discussion about some particular scene or their impressions. There were people who didn’t like the film, and it didn’t bother me, even if I loved it a lot. There are many factors that need to be there to make you enjoy an artistic creation like a movie, not all under our control; maybe they were tired or worried about something and could not focus; maybe they didn’t like the story. Some films and books clicked for me only when I saw them again much later, with a different mindset.

For this movie, I liked the large space that the creators reserved to the spectator, to be filled with personal interpretations and empathy. There are very little hints of the opinion of the creators on the complex net of relationships among the characters, and their lives’ difficult turns. I felt that they offered that story to me, as it was, without trying to make sense of it themselves.

I’m curious to see more movies like this, and I am open to suggestions! Let me know in the comments.

Being tough, being sensitive – no other option, really?

Source: Flickr

I just listened to BBC Four Thought “Sensitive Souls” (and I have recently read Auf die leise Weise, i.e. the quiet way) and my mind wandered in several directions, like a wild animal walking around a part of forest and exploring it attentively, one corner after the other, following scents and interesting plants.

It seemed to me that the most common behavioural model is a line, with “tough” and “sensitive” at the extremes. That would be OK for me, in theory – but not when these words actually mean “bully” and “bullied”. I therefore tested the following translation, from:

• “Toughen up! Don’t be so sensitive! You’ll never reach any goal while being sensitive!”

into

• “Be the bully sometimes! Don’t always be the bullied one! You’ll never reach your goals if you keep letting others bully you!”

… and I realised that this translation awakened the horror I felt anytime someone urged me to toughen up. I didn’t want to swap sides. I didn’t want to be rude to others, just because these are (or appear to be) the rules of The Game. If these were the rules, I couldn’t force myself to play – even if that meant that I would automatically lose.

I don’t know what people telling me those words actually meant. What I know for myself is that I have been very close to shut down my sensitive side, because it made me hurt a lot and the only choice seemed to move along the line, away from the sensitive corner and right into toughness. I am thankful to my closest friends, that offered me (and still do!) a safe space where I could be as sensitive as I needed, and investigated with me new ways to protect myself without hurting others. They took me away from that line, showed me other paths, that we walk as a group.

I hope that readers who find themselves sensitive can count on such friendships and safe spaces, and can see a way for growth that doesn’t sacrifice any of their skills.