War is hell on earth, but it’s also a powerful narcotic. In Kathryn Bigelow’s scorching new film, The Hurt Locker, we watch three American soldiers count down the remaining days on their company’s tour of duty in 2004 Iraq. Their mission is to defuse unexploded bombs. These guys are heroes, most would say; their actions certainly save American and Iraqi lives. They’re also being pushed closer and closer to mental illness by each day they spend on their tour of duty.
Staff Sergeant Will James (Jeremy Renner) is the newest recruit, and at first appears to be nothing more than a macho cowboy. On his first mission with the team, he turns off his headset, a visceral up-yours gesture to the other two guys he works with. Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) operates by the book, and is incensed by Will’s disrespect. Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) cycles between cynical and scared, like a hamster running in two wheels at once. Eldridge is attending therapy sessions with a smug colonel (Christian Camargo) who tells him things like, “War is a once-in-a-lifetime experience; you should make the most of it.”
The bomb team’s last few weeks in Iraq play out in a series of vignettes. The tension Bigelow generates is remarkable, since the stories are repetitive: the guys go out to defuse a bomb. They succeed, or don’t. People die, or don’t. Reducing it to those phrases sounds like the headlines we see each day: “15 Killed by Suicide Bomber in Tikrit.” It means everything; it means nothing. We see these young men trying to cope with the immensity of their mission, with being surrounded by hostility (or even murderous rage) literally at every moment. It becomes so tense that it’s hard to sit still; we wonder how much more we can endure. And then we remember that our soldiers (not to mention Iraqi soldiers and civilians) are living this, daily.
A drawback of war movies is that it’s often hard to tell exactly what’s going on. A bunch of guys are all in uniform, making it difficult to tell them apart; there’s fast movement and machine-gun fire and explosions. The Hurt Locker is crystalline in its clarity; editors Chris Innes and Bob Murawski slice the scenes like gem-cutters. The sound is perfect; we can always hear and understand every word that’s said — a remarkable feat.
And the actors feel like soldiers, which is so rare. Even in David O. Russell’s very solid 1999 war movie Three Kings, I never quite forgot that I was watching George Clooney, Ice Cube, and Mark Wahlberg, rather than three grunts on the ground. Bigelow has cast less famous actors here. Mackie was extraordinary as a drug dealer in Half Nelson, and I didn’t recognize him at all in this movie. Renner looks like a cross between Brendan Fraser and James McAvoy; his blunt features contain a world of hurt that is revealed, subtly, bit by bit. Geraghty’s role could have edged into Radar O’Reilly wimpiness, but he shows steel in some painful moments. One of the most affecting aspects of the movie is seeing his last remaining specks of idealism get blown away like desert sand.
The Hurt Locker is exciting, grueling, and feels nothing but pure and true. Until we can bring our men and women back from Iraq — regardless of how we feel about their being there — it’s important to acknowledge what they’re going through. The Hurt Locker gave me a better sense than any other war movie of what war actually might feel like — in itself a patriotic gesture.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Stalking the Wild Career
I got laid off from my day job about two months ago. Since then, life has both greatly sped up and greatly slowed down. A friend told me that, since her own layoff, she feels as if she is "floating in the world," and I know exactly what she means. There's a sense of disconnection without my community of coworkers to see every day. There's also a wonderful freedom in being able to allocate my own time. I'm feeling both very peaceful and deeply panicky. I don't enjoy being out of control, and I've never felt more so - though this is also one of those crises that can bring huge opportunities with it.
I'm continuing to grow my intuitive life coaching business, and my clients there are keeping me grounded (as are my amazing friends and family). It's fulfilling to know that I can help other people find their footing, even as my own feels unstable. It's not that there's no ground under my feet; it's that that ground used to be made of the smooth and creaky wooden floors of my former workplace. Now it's made of the pavement I'm pounding as I network; the grass of the park where I can sit, whenever I choose; the jello (not so tasty!) of the Global Economic Meltdown.
I love my tarot coaching work, and I would also love to be paying for my life by editing and writing. If you happen to know of editorial positions opening up, either in Boston or in New York City, I'd love to hear about them.
And if you're in the same boat as me, floating in the giant pool of layoff, hang in there - we're in good company! Drop me a line if you'd like to compare notes. And thanks to all those who've been sending me their ideas and good wishes - it means a ton.
I'm continuing to grow my intuitive life coaching business, and my clients there are keeping me grounded (as are my amazing friends and family). It's fulfilling to know that I can help other people find their footing, even as my own feels unstable. It's not that there's no ground under my feet; it's that that ground used to be made of the smooth and creaky wooden floors of my former workplace. Now it's made of the pavement I'm pounding as I network; the grass of the park where I can sit, whenever I choose; the jello (not so tasty!) of the Global Economic Meltdown.
I love my tarot coaching work, and I would also love to be paying for my life by editing and writing. If you happen to know of editorial positions opening up, either in Boston or in New York City, I'd love to hear about them.
And if you're in the same boat as me, floating in the giant pool of layoff, hang in there - we're in good company! Drop me a line if you'd like to compare notes. And thanks to all those who've been sending me their ideas and good wishes - it means a ton.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Book Review: Drood
Dan Simmons’s gargantuan new novel, Drood, is narrated by the real-life Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins. Collins wrote The Moonstone, which was the first English detective novel, and The Woman in White, an overblown but entertaining melodrama. Most of his other books are unknown today, and his fame has been greatly overshadowed by that of his frequent collaborator, Charles Dickens.
Simmons, in crafting a 770-page novel around the friendship and rivalry of these two men, is working in the same long-winded format that Victorian writers often used (though one assumes that Simmons, unlike Dickens, was not paid by the word). I can certainly imagine Drood being serialized successfully, as Dickens’s and Collins’s novels were in their day. (Perhaps chunking out books will become trendy again, in much the same way that chunking out albums into individual MP3s has.)
The plot is tantalizing: Dickens, at the site of a terrible railway accident, meets a cloaked and creepy-looking figure (the description sounds like Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies) named Drood. Over the next five years, this phantom — whether real, or fabricated or hallucinated by Dickens — becomes a driving force in the lives of both Dickens and Collins. Is Drood real? Does he truly dwell in a stygian “Undertown” far beneath the London streets? Is Dickens crazy? Is Collins nuts? Simmons plays with our delicate sensibilities as the characters’ behavior becomes progressively crueler and crazier.
By choosing Collins as his unreliable narrator, Simmons takes a page from Vladimir Nabokov’s playbook, and indeed reading Drood has some of the same cringe-inducing effects as does reading Nabokov’s Pale Fire, another story of rivalry between authors. But one weakness of Drood is, in fact, Collins’s narrative voice. Simmons does an OK job of throwing in the conventions of Victorian literary fiction — addressing the reader as “Dear Reader,” and so on — but Collins’s voice never quite belongs to another era.
I was reminded of the first story in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, set around the same time period, in which the narrator’s voice is so impeccably British (white) Victorian that it combines with and inhabits the setting. Simmons gives it a good shot, but his Collins never completely feels like someone from the Victorian age. For instance, Collins might have said either “different from” or “different to,” but would never have said “different than,” which Simmons has him say here. (Thank the gods that Simmons knows his lie from his lay, or matters would be much worse.)
The unreliable narrator convention creates its own set of problems and inconsistencies. Even when we mostly understand Collins’s increasingly irrational behavior, his actions aren’t always well supported by the plot, and his own perceptions of the events around him seem to shift according to the needs of the story. Simmons also jumps around in time quite a bit, which is jarring. The novel drags in its weighty middle, but its ending redeems that fault by being both deft and upsetting.
A lot of what Simmons does here is well played, and he obviously bench-pressed more than his body weight in Dickens research and Collins ephemera. Perhaps as a result of this research, this is a deeply horrifying book, much more so than I was anticipating. I applaud Simmons for forgoing the gaslight-romance approach to Victorian fiction, but his descriptions of the London sewage system and corpse disposal methods are a bit more graphic than they need to be. A Victorian gentleman, even one as unconventional as Collins, probably would not have gone into such nauseating detail.
My main feeling at the end was that I really need to reread Dickens’s novel Bleak House. And if you are any kind of a mystery fan at all, don’t deny yourself the pleasures of Collins’s The Moonstone. I’ve reread it three or four times, and love it more every time I do.
Simmons, in crafting a 770-page novel around the friendship and rivalry of these two men, is working in the same long-winded format that Victorian writers often used (though one assumes that Simmons, unlike Dickens, was not paid by the word). I can certainly imagine Drood being serialized successfully, as Dickens’s and Collins’s novels were in their day. (Perhaps chunking out books will become trendy again, in much the same way that chunking out albums into individual MP3s has.)
The plot is tantalizing: Dickens, at the site of a terrible railway accident, meets a cloaked and creepy-looking figure (the description sounds like Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies) named Drood. Over the next five years, this phantom — whether real, or fabricated or hallucinated by Dickens — becomes a driving force in the lives of both Dickens and Collins. Is Drood real? Does he truly dwell in a stygian “Undertown” far beneath the London streets? Is Dickens crazy? Is Collins nuts? Simmons plays with our delicate sensibilities as the characters’ behavior becomes progressively crueler and crazier.
By choosing Collins as his unreliable narrator, Simmons takes a page from Vladimir Nabokov’s playbook, and indeed reading Drood has some of the same cringe-inducing effects as does reading Nabokov’s Pale Fire, another story of rivalry between authors. But one weakness of Drood is, in fact, Collins’s narrative voice. Simmons does an OK job of throwing in the conventions of Victorian literary fiction — addressing the reader as “Dear Reader,” and so on — but Collins’s voice never quite belongs to another era.
I was reminded of the first story in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, set around the same time period, in which the narrator’s voice is so impeccably British (white) Victorian that it combines with and inhabits the setting. Simmons gives it a good shot, but his Collins never completely feels like someone from the Victorian age. For instance, Collins might have said either “different from” or “different to,” but would never have said “different than,” which Simmons has him say here. (Thank the gods that Simmons knows his lie from his lay, or matters would be much worse.)
The unreliable narrator convention creates its own set of problems and inconsistencies. Even when we mostly understand Collins’s increasingly irrational behavior, his actions aren’t always well supported by the plot, and his own perceptions of the events around him seem to shift according to the needs of the story. Simmons also jumps around in time quite a bit, which is jarring. The novel drags in its weighty middle, but its ending redeems that fault by being both deft and upsetting.
A lot of what Simmons does here is well played, and he obviously bench-pressed more than his body weight in Dickens research and Collins ephemera. Perhaps as a result of this research, this is a deeply horrifying book, much more so than I was anticipating. I applaud Simmons for forgoing the gaslight-romance approach to Victorian fiction, but his descriptions of the London sewage system and corpse disposal methods are a bit more graphic than they need to be. A Victorian gentleman, even one as unconventional as Collins, probably would not have gone into such nauseating detail.
My main feeling at the end was that I really need to reread Dickens’s novel Bleak House. And if you are any kind of a mystery fan at all, don’t deny yourself the pleasures of Collins’s The Moonstone. I’ve reread it three or four times, and love it more every time I do.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Boston's Best People-Watching Locations
Boston is a pedestrian-friendly city for roughly 6 or 7 months of the year, when the weather’s conducive to getting around on foot. Lately, I’ve been scoping out spots where one can plunk one’s butt down and enjoy a fabulous view of passersby. These are my current top three spots for people-watching in the Boston area.
3. Chipotle Mexican Grill, 270 Elm Street, Davis Square, Somerville. I have mixed feelings about Chipotle. On the negative side, it’s a chain, it only allows its employees to play a certain variety of music, and there’s a kind of forced friendliness among the staff that feels more required than authentic. On the positive side, the food is fresh and tasty and cheap, they (at least claim to) use humanely raised meats, and their window view of Davis Square is a feast for the eyes.
Grab a stool by the window and you can watch people jay-walking across the heart of Davis, as well as the news feed from the Somerville Journal on the brick building across the square. If positioned correctly, you can even see the historic clock outside the Diesel Café up the street.
2. City Feed and Supply, 672 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain. I was here recently during one of JP’s First Thursday events, when stores display paintings by local artists and bands perform outside, all for free. City Feed is at the exact heart of the Centre Street commercial area, and the night I was there, they had an accordionist and a guy twisting balloons into hats for kids.
The level of mayhem in the store was intense; something about the combo of accordion music and popping balloons triggered a manic response from the attending children. Many of them ran around the store screaming, whacking each other with their balloon hats. However, this being JP, there was such a peaceful, loving vibe that the effect was sweet rather than infuriating. (One kid tried to stick his balloon hat into the accordion, prompting the musician to comment, “Yeah, that thing has a life expectancy of about one minute.”)
Under normal circumstances, City Feed is much more of an oasis. You can buy a freely traded coffee, a non-glutenous brownie, or a tasty sandwich and sit by the window, with a great view of the comings and goings at the Purple Cactus across Seaverns street.
1. Public Garden, downtown Boston. This is a charming park where you can take your kids on a swan boat, check out the cute Make Way for Ducklings sculpture, or sit and watch people. I recently saw a couple in their mid-30s, both decked out in circa-1987-punk garb, wheeling their baby in a Maclaren stroller. The baby was wearing an AC/DC t-shirt that was like a dress on him. Adorable!
The Public Garden is great for tree-watching, as well. The weeping willows there are astounding in their calming beauty. There’s something other-worldly about their size and serenity, and when the sunlight hits them correctly, they literally shimmer. There’s nothing sad about them, despite their melancholy name.
Those are just three of many great people-watching locations. Boston-based readers, what are your favorites?
3. Chipotle Mexican Grill, 270 Elm Street, Davis Square, Somerville. I have mixed feelings about Chipotle. On the negative side, it’s a chain, it only allows its employees to play a certain variety of music, and there’s a kind of forced friendliness among the staff that feels more required than authentic. On the positive side, the food is fresh and tasty and cheap, they (at least claim to) use humanely raised meats, and their window view of Davis Square is a feast for the eyes.
Grab a stool by the window and you can watch people jay-walking across the heart of Davis, as well as the news feed from the Somerville Journal on the brick building across the square. If positioned correctly, you can even see the historic clock outside the Diesel Café up the street.
2. City Feed and Supply, 672 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain. I was here recently during one of JP’s First Thursday events, when stores display paintings by local artists and bands perform outside, all for free. City Feed is at the exact heart of the Centre Street commercial area, and the night I was there, they had an accordionist and a guy twisting balloons into hats for kids.
The level of mayhem in the store was intense; something about the combo of accordion music and popping balloons triggered a manic response from the attending children. Many of them ran around the store screaming, whacking each other with their balloon hats. However, this being JP, there was such a peaceful, loving vibe that the effect was sweet rather than infuriating. (One kid tried to stick his balloon hat into the accordion, prompting the musician to comment, “Yeah, that thing has a life expectancy of about one minute.”)
Under normal circumstances, City Feed is much more of an oasis. You can buy a freely traded coffee, a non-glutenous brownie, or a tasty sandwich and sit by the window, with a great view of the comings and goings at the Purple Cactus across Seaverns street.
1. Public Garden, downtown Boston. This is a charming park where you can take your kids on a swan boat, check out the cute Make Way for Ducklings sculpture, or sit and watch people. I recently saw a couple in their mid-30s, both decked out in circa-1987-punk garb, wheeling their baby in a Maclaren stroller. The baby was wearing an AC/DC t-shirt that was like a dress on him. Adorable!
The Public Garden is great for tree-watching, as well. The weeping willows there are astounding in their calming beauty. There’s something other-worldly about their size and serenity, and when the sunlight hits them correctly, they literally shimmer. There’s nothing sad about them, despite their melancholy name.
Those are just three of many great people-watching locations. Boston-based readers, what are your favorites?
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Mind-Body Medicine Workshop at MSPP
I recently went to an all-day workshop at MSPP about Mind/Body Medicine and the Relaxation Response. Two very impressive individuals ran it: Herbert Benson and Ann Webster, both of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Mass General Hospital.
Benson, a cardiologist, pioneered research in the 1960s about how stress and relaxation affect physical health. At the time, this was considered absurd, and he was almost booted out of Harvard Med School for trying to study the cardiovascular and neurological effects of meditation on humans.
Now Benson’s work has been thoroughly vindicated; there are decades’ worth of studies measuring the strong effect stress has on many parts of the body, including the heart, the reproductive system, and the brain.
Benson’s an advocate of taking fifteen minutes a day to do a calming breathing exercise, in which one sits comfortably, focusing on a repeated word or phrase along with their breath. It doesn’t matter what the phrase is; it can be a religious prayer, a syllable such as “Om” or “Peace,” or any other word or phrase that has resonance and is calming to the meditator. So the basic action is to sit, breathe, and think the word or phrase as you breathe — for example, thinking “Peace” on every exhale.
This has measurable effects on people’s health. Ann Webster’s research has shown that cancer patients who learn and regularly use this relaxation technique experience less chemo-related nausea, as well as less depression and anger. Webster teaches breathing exercises like this one in her therapy groups for people with cancer and HIV, and for trauma victims.
Benson and Webster are both adamant that medication and surgical intervention are absolutely essential components of health management, but that self-care is an equally important component that is usually downplayed by doctors. They offer their breathing exercises as an actual prescription for their patients and clients, just as they offer prescriptions for medication when those are indicated.
Amazing work, and they’re now two of my idols. One of the many impressive stories they told: Researchers at an infertility clinic started teaching relaxation exercises to the women there, hoping to reduce the stress, depression, and anger that can often go along with trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant. The exercises not only helped with the women’s state of mind, but also greatly increased their fertility rates — much more so than any of the fertility drugs on the market today.
I like Benson’s approach to learning mindfulness, which is very difficult; it’s hard to sit and breathe and think “Om” and not have your thoughts wander from “Om” and your breath to a million other places. Benson’s advice is that when a thought intrudes, when you feel your mind wander, just think: “Oh well!” and go back to your breathing. Even if this happens thousands of times during your 15 minutes of daily meditation, you will still get a huge benefit. And as you cultivate the skill, the intervals between the intruding thoughts will get longer.
It’s so great to see these findings becoming widely accepted, and replicated in study after study. As greater numbers of scientists and doctors get behind mindfulness meditation and stress reduction, and these practices continue to gain ground on a national level, this can only be good for American health.
Benson, a cardiologist, pioneered research in the 1960s about how stress and relaxation affect physical health. At the time, this was considered absurd, and he was almost booted out of Harvard Med School for trying to study the cardiovascular and neurological effects of meditation on humans.
Now Benson’s work has been thoroughly vindicated; there are decades’ worth of studies measuring the strong effect stress has on many parts of the body, including the heart, the reproductive system, and the brain.
Benson’s an advocate of taking fifteen minutes a day to do a calming breathing exercise, in which one sits comfortably, focusing on a repeated word or phrase along with their breath. It doesn’t matter what the phrase is; it can be a religious prayer, a syllable such as “Om” or “Peace,” or any other word or phrase that has resonance and is calming to the meditator. So the basic action is to sit, breathe, and think the word or phrase as you breathe — for example, thinking “Peace” on every exhale.
This has measurable effects on people’s health. Ann Webster’s research has shown that cancer patients who learn and regularly use this relaxation technique experience less chemo-related nausea, as well as less depression and anger. Webster teaches breathing exercises like this one in her therapy groups for people with cancer and HIV, and for trauma victims.
Benson and Webster are both adamant that medication and surgical intervention are absolutely essential components of health management, but that self-care is an equally important component that is usually downplayed by doctors. They offer their breathing exercises as an actual prescription for their patients and clients, just as they offer prescriptions for medication when those are indicated.
Amazing work, and they’re now two of my idols. One of the many impressive stories they told: Researchers at an infertility clinic started teaching relaxation exercises to the women there, hoping to reduce the stress, depression, and anger that can often go along with trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant. The exercises not only helped with the women’s state of mind, but also greatly increased their fertility rates — much more so than any of the fertility drugs on the market today.
I like Benson’s approach to learning mindfulness, which is very difficult; it’s hard to sit and breathe and think “Om” and not have your thoughts wander from “Om” and your breath to a million other places. Benson’s advice is that when a thought intrudes, when you feel your mind wander, just think: “Oh well!” and go back to your breathing. Even if this happens thousands of times during your 15 minutes of daily meditation, you will still get a huge benefit. And as you cultivate the skill, the intervals between the intruding thoughts will get longer.
It’s so great to see these findings becoming widely accepted, and replicated in study after study. As greater numbers of scientists and doctors get behind mindfulness meditation and stress reduction, and these practices continue to gain ground on a national level, this can only be good for American health.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Mental Health and Life Coaching
Lately, I’ve been pursuing my newly activated interest in mental health careers by reading psychology books and talking with social workers, counselors, and neuropsychologists, here in Boston and across the country.
There’s a lot of overlap between what I do in my tarot coaching work and what happens in a therapy session. However, I’m not a trained therapist or a licensed counselor. I’m always very clear about that with my clients, so that we don’t blunder into ethically murky waters, and I don’t overreach my grasp in terms of the help I can offer them.
But I’ve had a lot of people, from near-strangers to close friends, tell me that I’d make a great therapist. And I am certainly fascinated by psychology, especially the cognitive-behavioral model. So I’ve been wondering lately if this might be a good subject for me to delve into more deeply, maybe even entering a Ph.D., Psy.D., or MSW program somewhere down the road.
This line of thinking is exciting but also intimidating. I’m honestly not sure if immersing myself in a graduate program is what I want and need, and what would best serve my clients and take my coaching career to the next level. In one sense, I’m already doing the work that I love: working one-on-one with creative, thoughtful people, helping them break through obstacles to find satisfaction and serenity. Do I need another set of letters after my name to do that work on a deeper level?
There’s also the quackery issue. To a lot of mental health pros, tarot = New Agey, shady, sketchy, and weak. Psychologists are scientists, and therapy, while its relationship to science has always been an odd one, is based around research-supported techniques. There are certainly therapists who employ tarot cards in their counseling work, but there hasn’t been well-supported research (yet!) into tarot’s efficacy in a therapeutic setting.
However, that does open the door for me to really go in a fresh direction if I want to build my Ph.D. research around tarot. It’s unclear whether this would be welcomed in most psychology Ph.D. programs, but it’s a path that hasn’t been over-trampled yet. Bottom line: I’d want to be absolutely sure of the results I was seeking before jumping into anything as expensive, involved, and potentially exhausting as a graduate program.
So I’ve been doing a lot of processing about these topics. My decision, for now, is to read as much as I can about psychology and to take weekend and evening classes at several local schools.
Last week I went to a workshop at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, led by Herbert Benson and Ann Webster of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Mass General Hospital. I’ll write more about that workshop later — it was pretty impressive — but one thing I noticed there was that, when I talked to other attendees, I described myself as someone who “runs a coaching business,” rather than as a tarot professional.
I’m at a point now where I must admit that what I love about tarot coaching isn’t the tarot cards themselves, although they are wonderful. What I love is working one-on-one with my clients to help them take their lives to the next level. Does this mean I’m a life coach? I hate that term. It has a dilettante flavor: someone who knows a little bit about nutrition, but isn’t a nutritionist, a little bit of psychology, but isn’t a therapist, etc. But honestly, “life coach” is a much more accurate descriptor of the work I do than “tarot reader” is.
This is all complicated further by the fact that I got laid off from my day job in early May, and am figuring out exactly what my next career steps are going to be. Another 9-5 job? At a college or a well-run nonprofit, perhaps? Part-time tarot coaching, part-time something else? Lots to figure out. I’ll keep you posted!
There’s a lot of overlap between what I do in my tarot coaching work and what happens in a therapy session. However, I’m not a trained therapist or a licensed counselor. I’m always very clear about that with my clients, so that we don’t blunder into ethically murky waters, and I don’t overreach my grasp in terms of the help I can offer them.
But I’ve had a lot of people, from near-strangers to close friends, tell me that I’d make a great therapist. And I am certainly fascinated by psychology, especially the cognitive-behavioral model. So I’ve been wondering lately if this might be a good subject for me to delve into more deeply, maybe even entering a Ph.D., Psy.D., or MSW program somewhere down the road.
This line of thinking is exciting but also intimidating. I’m honestly not sure if immersing myself in a graduate program is what I want and need, and what would best serve my clients and take my coaching career to the next level. In one sense, I’m already doing the work that I love: working one-on-one with creative, thoughtful people, helping them break through obstacles to find satisfaction and serenity. Do I need another set of letters after my name to do that work on a deeper level?
There’s also the quackery issue. To a lot of mental health pros, tarot = New Agey, shady, sketchy, and weak. Psychologists are scientists, and therapy, while its relationship to science has always been an odd one, is based around research-supported techniques. There are certainly therapists who employ tarot cards in their counseling work, but there hasn’t been well-supported research (yet!) into tarot’s efficacy in a therapeutic setting.
However, that does open the door for me to really go in a fresh direction if I want to build my Ph.D. research around tarot. It’s unclear whether this would be welcomed in most psychology Ph.D. programs, but it’s a path that hasn’t been over-trampled yet. Bottom line: I’d want to be absolutely sure of the results I was seeking before jumping into anything as expensive, involved, and potentially exhausting as a graduate program.
So I’ve been doing a lot of processing about these topics. My decision, for now, is to read as much as I can about psychology and to take weekend and evening classes at several local schools.
Last week I went to a workshop at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, led by Herbert Benson and Ann Webster of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Mass General Hospital. I’ll write more about that workshop later — it was pretty impressive — but one thing I noticed there was that, when I talked to other attendees, I described myself as someone who “runs a coaching business,” rather than as a tarot professional.
I’m at a point now where I must admit that what I love about tarot coaching isn’t the tarot cards themselves, although they are wonderful. What I love is working one-on-one with my clients to help them take their lives to the next level. Does this mean I’m a life coach? I hate that term. It has a dilettante flavor: someone who knows a little bit about nutrition, but isn’t a nutritionist, a little bit of psychology, but isn’t a therapist, etc. But honestly, “life coach” is a much more accurate descriptor of the work I do than “tarot reader” is.
This is all complicated further by the fact that I got laid off from my day job in early May, and am figuring out exactly what my next career steps are going to be. Another 9-5 job? At a college or a well-run nonprofit, perhaps? Part-time tarot coaching, part-time something else? Lots to figure out. I’ll keep you posted!
Monday, June 8, 2009
Movie Review: Outrage
Kirby Dick is a muckraker; he revels in exposing the hypocrisy of people in power. His 2006 documentary, This Film is Not Yet Rated, called the Motion Picture Association of America to task for granting “R” ratings to graphically violent movies, while slapping the kiss-of-death “NC-17” on films involving sex, especially anything with gay themes.
Dick’s new doc, Outrage, puts another set of rule-makers on the hot seat: closeted gay politicians. The film’s thesis is as follows: there are tons of gay people on Capitol Hill; many of them (especially conservative Republicans) are in denial about their gay identity, and/or self-hating; thus, these closeted pols wind up creating and supporting legislation that hurts gay Americans, such as the Defense of Marriage Act or, tragically, the criminal lack of federal action to halt the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s.
This is fascinating material, and Outrage is highly appealing, in a Michael-Moore-ish, can-you-believe-this-is-going-on-right-under-our-noses-in-this-the-world’s-greatest-democracy kind of way. Unlike Moore, though, Dick doesn’t constantly inhabit the spotlight; in fact, we never even hear his speaking voice. This is a huge relief; it’s an unwelcome trend in recent docs (including Amy Grill’s Speaking in Code and Kate Churchill's Enlighten Up) to have the director provide a coy voice-over narration.
Dick falls into another documentary trap, though: he cares so much about his material that he verges into melodrama while covering it. “He’s never shared his story . . . until now,” a title card informs us at one point, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the foot. The movie starts with a recording of Idaho Senator Larry Craig being interviewed or interrogated by police after his arrest for allegedly soliciting sex in a men's bathroom. Craig sounds bewildered and lost; later footage paints him in a wholly different light, but that opening audio almost makes it seem as if he’s being set up, which isn't what Dick’s trying to say at all.
Even the film's title is a bit heavy-handed. Dick, like Moore, doesn't much care if he veers into melodrama, as long as he’s able to tell a story that he feels has been squelched by the main-stream media.
Despite its occasional missteps, Outrage is useful for anyone interested in the evolution of gay rights in the United States. “Don’t tell me we have rights. We have no rights,” says ACT UP co-founder Larry Kramer; one of the film’s recurring themes is how little (if any) national legislation currently exists to protect gay and trans Americans. It’s also moving to see Log Cabin Republicans speaking about their experiences as gay legislators on the Hill, and former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey’s earnest, almost evangelical description of how freeing it was to come out of the closet.
One section of the movie involves the blogger Mike Rogers, whose mission is to out closeted pols with anti-gay voting records. I have very mixed feelings about Rogers’ work; forcibly outing people is a privacy violation and feels like a brutal act. However, Rogers makes the point that the people he outs are living quite visible secret lives that are completely at odds with their political legacies. He feels that this hypocrisy has taken away their right to privacy. I’m not sure I agree, but it’s a fascinating topic for debate.
I’d have loved to see more stats about how it changes pols’ voting records when they do come out; perhaps there just isn’t a large enough number of out pols to run the numbers on that. Another quibble is that the movie is quite guy-centric, at least in its chosen targets; aren’t there closeted lesbians wreaking havoc on Capitol Hill too? Even if not, that fact itself would bear mentioning.
Outrage is consistently engaging, and its message is important: it will injure your soul and your family if you’re a closeted civilian, but closeted politicians can do damage on a national level.
A.O. Scott's review of Outrage is here.
Dick’s new doc, Outrage, puts another set of rule-makers on the hot seat: closeted gay politicians. The film’s thesis is as follows: there are tons of gay people on Capitol Hill; many of them (especially conservative Republicans) are in denial about their gay identity, and/or self-hating; thus, these closeted pols wind up creating and supporting legislation that hurts gay Americans, such as the Defense of Marriage Act or, tragically, the criminal lack of federal action to halt the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s.
This is fascinating material, and Outrage is highly appealing, in a Michael-Moore-ish, can-you-believe-this-is-going-on-right-under-our-noses-in-this-the-world’s-greatest-democracy kind of way. Unlike Moore, though, Dick doesn’t constantly inhabit the spotlight; in fact, we never even hear his speaking voice. This is a huge relief; it’s an unwelcome trend in recent docs (including Amy Grill’s Speaking in Code and Kate Churchill's Enlighten Up) to have the director provide a coy voice-over narration.
Dick falls into another documentary trap, though: he cares so much about his material that he verges into melodrama while covering it. “He’s never shared his story . . . until now,” a title card informs us at one point, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the foot. The movie starts with a recording of Idaho Senator Larry Craig being interviewed or interrogated by police after his arrest for allegedly soliciting sex in a men's bathroom. Craig sounds bewildered and lost; later footage paints him in a wholly different light, but that opening audio almost makes it seem as if he’s being set up, which isn't what Dick’s trying to say at all.
Even the film's title is a bit heavy-handed. Dick, like Moore, doesn't much care if he veers into melodrama, as long as he’s able to tell a story that he feels has been squelched by the main-stream media.
Despite its occasional missteps, Outrage is useful for anyone interested in the evolution of gay rights in the United States. “Don’t tell me we have rights. We have no rights,” says ACT UP co-founder Larry Kramer; one of the film’s recurring themes is how little (if any) national legislation currently exists to protect gay and trans Americans. It’s also moving to see Log Cabin Republicans speaking about their experiences as gay legislators on the Hill, and former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey’s earnest, almost evangelical description of how freeing it was to come out of the closet.
One section of the movie involves the blogger Mike Rogers, whose mission is to out closeted pols with anti-gay voting records. I have very mixed feelings about Rogers’ work; forcibly outing people is a privacy violation and feels like a brutal act. However, Rogers makes the point that the people he outs are living quite visible secret lives that are completely at odds with their political legacies. He feels that this hypocrisy has taken away their right to privacy. I’m not sure I agree, but it’s a fascinating topic for debate.
I’d have loved to see more stats about how it changes pols’ voting records when they do come out; perhaps there just isn’t a large enough number of out pols to run the numbers on that. Another quibble is that the movie is quite guy-centric, at least in its chosen targets; aren’t there closeted lesbians wreaking havoc on Capitol Hill too? Even if not, that fact itself would bear mentioning.
Outrage is consistently engaging, and its message is important: it will injure your soul and your family if you’re a closeted civilian, but closeted politicians can do damage on a national level.
A.O. Scott's review of Outrage is here.
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