This is nothing but gotcha-journalism.

[jackshoegazer]

A big thank you to all the people who commented to my last post and those who didn't and just thought good things. Apparently your no-hospital, everything's-okay vibes worked because I had vascular ultrasounds and and echocardiogram and chest x-rays and they say everything is great and flowing the way it should.  My doctor says I should be patient and that my symptoms might never go fully away and that my pleural effusion probably set back my recovery time a bit.  Apparently I'm pretty much fine.  I go back in January for another check-up.

Three weeks of my semester left.  Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I need to write a paper for abnormal psychology.  It has to be a personal essay-sort of paper relating what we've learned in class to our own mental health.  I think I'm going to have some fun with this one.  I'm going to use the rubric for diagnosing schizophrenia to interpret my affinity for synchronicity, telelogical revelations, and cosmological theophanies.  There is going to be some fun, circular logic to play with since some of the major aspects of Jung's psychological model are based on case studies of schizophrenics.  I'll work in some shamanism and mystics, as well as other methods of alterring consciousness and self-transcendence, replete with psychomimetic drugs.  The real trouble will be keeping it down to only five pages.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in America.  I am of multiple minds on this holiday.  The origins we are taught of this holiday are untruthful myths and the reality of the European's arrival on this continent is nothing but much ugliness.  However, it has become a ritual for people to get together with their families and reconnect and celebrate everything they are thankful for, how blessed they are.  So, how does one rectify the two views?  How does one celebrate a day that is so inextricably linked to massive horror?  Everything that I am thankful for, right down to my life, is inextricably linked to the history of my ancestors in this land.  How can one gain that kind of sociological distance from one's origins in order to contemplate such a question? 

Everything is connected.

Comments

[kiwikat.livejournal.com]

Yay for not being trapped in the hospital on Thanksgiving!

That sounds like it's going to be a very interesting paper. I always loved it in school when I got a paper where I had to hold myself back instead of the more typical ones where I had to painfully eke out every sentence.

One reconciles such a question as one reconciles all of life's great mysteries: by quoting Kurt Vonnegut.
"Tiger got to hunt
Bird got to fly
Man got to ask himself 'why? why? why?'
Tiger got to hunt
Bird got to land
Man got to tell himself he understand"

Except maybe instead of telling ourselves we understand we simply accept that the truth has many sides and that contradiction is the natural order of things. Imperialism is bad, but it's good to spend time with the people you care about. It's imperialism for the cause of togetherness, and isn't that a great cultural myth we can all get behind?

Somewhere in that last sentence I got sarcastic. This IS kind of a sumbitch.

[dakinigrl.livejournal.com]

Hi Jack-O... very good news! I was one of the people who just thought good things. : )

One of the things I remind myself regarding the origins of this country is that there dos not exist a piece of land on this planet that was not taken by one people from another people at an earlier time. It is part of human history, and we are no exception in that. I think the best thing we can do is to learn from it and carry it forward with the intent to conduct ourselves as if we have evolved somewhat since then as a species.

I view this holiday as a celebration of the times in our history as Americans when we did manage to cohabitate with the Native Americans... the minority of Europeans who respected them... those who fought against the tide for fair treatment... and those of us who can hold the whole truth about being American in our hearts.

Also... It's entirely possible I have some native blood, so I'm sort of forced to reconcile the two, ya know?

Atvgi'a

[jesuslovesbono.livejournal.com]

"I view this holiday as a celebration of the times in our history as Americans when we did manage to cohabitate with the Native Americans... the minority of Europeans who respected them... those who fought against the tide for fair treatment... and those of us who can hold the whole truth about being American in our hearts."

i like that.

[dakinigrl.livejournal.com]

thank you!! Happy T Day!

[jesuslovesbono.livejournal.com]

same to you!

[balamuthia.livejournal.com]

"You can't hate the roots without hating the tree."

[jennywho.livejournal.com]

I really want to read your paper! I do hope you'll post it, or even email it to me.

I try not to overanalyze holidays, none of them are "real" anyway.

[la-tante.livejournal.com]

YAY! (i actually fist-pumped when i read your first paragraph).

and i understand your ambivalence about this holiday. i do. and you don't really reconcile those thoughts. i think what you do is, as you say, connect with your family and your friends, be grateful for them and the pumpkin pie, and then you fight against injustice. so there's no more genocide in our name. and you thank the whatever power it is that you can.

happy thanksgiving, jeremy. i'm glad you're well and on our side.

[hello-momma.livejournal.com]

Hey good news about your health. I built the steam-punk heart for you and it was a disaster. I used one of my dogs as a test subject (23 since she already has a pacemaker) and it turned her into a monster. She's destroyed half of downtown, killed hundreds and tore my couch. For the good of man the thing had to be destroyed. You can thank Will Smith for saving us.

As far as the holiday, I barely keep in mind the historical significance. I just see it as a necessary step in the war on birds. They must be stopped!

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/02/cyborg_flying_r.html

[dakini-grl.livejournal.com]

It all comes down to that in the end.

I'm grateful you are posting, well and that the diagnosis seems to be "impatience." Ha!

Enjoy your day.

[http://users.livejournal.com/selina_/]

Ooh, I'd love to read that paper - are you going to post it?

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

Possibly :D

[medeine.livejournal.com]

Can I read it??????

Please?! :D

(Not even going to touch the concept of Thanksgiving here, thanks, though....::smile::)

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I may post it when I'm finished. It's going to be by nature fairly personal, but then, I might lightly tiptoe around that and make it more about the collective unconscious than the personal unconscious.

[jesuslovesbono.livejournal.com]

ooh i wanna read the paper too! if that's ok.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I *may* post it when I'm finished.

[tyskkvinna.livejournal.com]

Hoorah for good heart news! That's really excellent.

My family had nothing to do with pilgrims in this country, or Native Americans, or slaves... I have no real connection at all to American history. So I've never really thought about Thanksgiving as still representing that. It's interesting to see another viewpoint on that.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

So, being from Germany, do you have any weird historical/cultural issues that come from being German? I suppose that whole crazy two-world-wars thing might be kind of odd.

[tyskkvinna.livejournal.com]

There's also the racism thing. My grandfathers were in the army, they fought against the Jews, I'm as Aryan as they make them. So when I hear somebody say something to me about minorities having to fight, it's kind of like "Well, I'm sorry......" Obviously I don't at all agree with what my people did but it's still kind of awkward.

And not just two world wars! The Saxon people (my variety of German) have never won a war in the history of the people. :D I think we finally stopped trying to start them.. ha. We make good scientists though. ;)

I will admit that when my American friends tell me their grandparents fought in the War, I do pipe up with "Mine too!" It's kind of fun to watch the gears turn in their brain when they realise our grandparents fought each other.