10/23/2021

 posting here:

...it at times pains me to admit this, but it is entirely true.

over the summer, i took on the task of teaching a therapeutic ethics/clinic safety course at the acupuncture school. it was the first time i had taught the course (and indeed, i hadn't even taken the course at my school, because it hadn't been offered). i had decided early on that i wanted to make the ethics portion of the class open-ended; although i would share the ethical codes of different governing bodies and entities, i tried to maintain that the ethical realm was fundamentally personal, and therefore, subject to interpretation...

bad idea. or, rather, good idea, but wrong context.

it quickly became apparent to me that there were (and are) many in the acupuncture community that hold an anti-vaccine stance. there are many reasons for this, some possibly legitimate (...possibly...); but in many cases, it boils down to a distrust of "the medical industry" or "big pharma." i completely understand this, even if i don't entirely agree with it (or rather, i don't generalize it to the point of distrusting it in all instances). it is the motivation that drove many to alternative medicine in the first place (practitioners AND patients)...

i guess things came to a head (somewhat) when i got to the clinic safety portion of the course. i had to share information about different infectious diseases, and the precautions we had to take in order to prevent transmission to patients. and, of course, i had to talk about THE communicable elephant in the room, so to speak: covid. as soon as i started talking about masking precautions and about vaccination, i began to hear strong objections: questioning of fauci, questioning the cdc guidances, questioning whether it was even really as bad as the "fake" media claimed it was... i was somewhat at a loss as to how to respond. it's one thing to hear these sorts of conspiratorial slants when talking to people in normal, everyday contexts (it's why you never give away anything about yourself nowadays)... but to hear these sorts of objections in what is ostensibly a medical context?

it was extremely difficult for me to proceed.

i found (find) myself the only consistently masked individual at the school... i am probably one of only a few who are vaccinated...

i love and respect my colleagues and students, and i know them to largely be caring, compassionate individuals. but in regards to these matters, i must say that an opportunity to demonstrate an ethical and professional stance with regards to covid has been missed... it's ironic, but my insistence that ethics be fundamentally personal was precisely the weapon i intended to be used against the present wave of conspiratorial, anti-institutional nonsense... instead, that weapon was taken to further entrench people in an "i decide what's right" mentality...

ok, that's my rant to some aspects of my profession...

10/15/2021

it has again been quite some time since i wrote an entry for this blog... life has been all-consuming. my work, in particular, has dominated my attentions. let us say that the entire covid issue serves only as the background for a majority of my concerns. i have several difficult cases this year, which- truth be told- should not be my responsibility, but are... my room, which is already full, is constantly changing to accommodate new "guests," students who require semi-isolated environments. i'm now debating whether to create a third such environment for a third "guest," all the while addressing about a dozen different students... very different students... at the same time, my robotics materials have migrated from my portable to be stored in a classroom near the library (requiring me to weekly set everything up in the library, no small task, and put it all back away again), to now being given a room of my own to store and do robotics in (which i have yet to see)... it has all been a kind of dream, a floating feeling... and as we are not yet to a normalized season, with true tournaments, i often have the feeling that i'm just going through the motions... it is difficult to teach students mechanisms, especially intricate mechanisms like this thing called a "choo-choo mechanism", which turns the rotational motion of a motor into the pull and release of a catapult... i think (like myself, if i'm honest) a majority of the students are "playing" at ideas, as they have hit a wall in terms of their creativity and capabilities... and while i'm trying to provide them with ideas and options, i think that, largely, this crop of students doesn't "get it." eventually, i'll have to set a deadline for the vex iq stuff, just get it done with, no matter how infeasible and inoperable a majority of the student robots are... that will allow me to move on to other sorts of challenges...

anyway. there's that. and there's concerns about finances and such. again, we're struggling to pay for, save for, willow's college. and there are also concerns about how willow is doing, not just academically, but simply how she's getting on with her chaotic roommate, and things like that. it's hard to feel powerless to solve your child's problems... i mean, there are things i can do, but ultimately, my daughter has to wrestle with and figure things out on her own.

*****

i'm getting old... we conceive of a lot of things, i conceive a lot of things, including, well, sexuality, in terms of standards that probably no longer apply... or perhaps will no longer apply. the dreams i have with regards to these matters are, frankly, ridiculous, not at all related to my reality. but then again, is that what fantasies are supposed to be? in any case, there's an overwhelming sense of "what's the point," after all this time, that repeatedly intrudes and ridicules what i'd "hope" for... ultimately... i feel at times as though i need to shift my vision of who i am or what role i am to play... a lot of my desires, etc., are frankly a nuisance. they distract me. they fill me with longing. but they are not relevant. and, so long as i am haunted by them, neither am i.

i can't conceive of how things would happen, anyway. my mind's eye is so skeptical of anything, that all such fantasies are fragmented, insipid things, dream figures... nothing convincing. i can't remember that feeling that, perhaps, i used to have, of people being doorways to entire other universes... maybe they are, but those doorways are for other people to "walk" through... for me, people might as well be walls...

i recall how vulnerable i used to be. how silence was so dangerous. words were things you threw at each other to keep yourself from falling into other people. i remember that it was impossible to look into people's eyes (maybe, in a sense, this is still true) because if i did, i would fall into them. or i would disclose something that i didn't intend to... i always needed (i always need) to look upon a surface as i speak my thoughts, to trace the patterns of the tiles on the floor for example, in order to find a - in order to believe in- something solid. it's like the formation of a crystal- how you need to have a seed crystal to formalize a pattern and create a crystalline wave...

at times, i wish i could experience other people. but i only experience people in all-consuming ways. (or maybe i long to be all-consumed, even if i would never ever risk it). in truth, i'm such a routinized, self-contained individual that it would be impossible. i'm a stodgy old man now, and anything truly self-destructive and passionate would be seen as an inconvenience, no longer proper and appropriate for someone like me, someone with stiff knees, and failing eyesight...

*****

i feel somewhat content with the writing i have produced via the writing workshop classes... maybe it's because of the (undeserved) positive praise that my fellow writers have heaped upon me... we always remain positive to each other... but in any case, i have a sense that what i've written has a solidity, a believability... and a point. it is "something." and now, i feel confident of reworking, editing, coming up with new ideas. like today, i came up with an additional scene, set in an imaginary world, called "styx and stones." more thoughts, ideas, to resonate and reinforce some of the themes of the play...

*****

oh well, nothing much more to report. i'm trying to get back into my routines, i'm hoping this fall break will allow me the opportunity to do that... but we'll see.