DEEP LISTENING

One of the journal prompts that I recently developed for the students I teach asks four questions:

• What is awareness?
• What is attention?
• Can I be aware of something without giving it attention?
• Can I give attention to something without having awareness of it?

After writing this prompt, I was happy to learn about Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016), an American composer who coined the phrase "deep listening." This phrase isn't just about the horizontal nature of what I think about when I think about deep listening. That is, to intently lean into a person, to hold their gaze, and quietly absorb what they are expressing. In such moments I want the person to feel that I'm not distracted. That I'm neither looking up or down or sideways. That I'm meeting them eye-to-eye and that I'm completely tending to them. Their words. Their fervor. 

The reason I say that Oliveros' phrase isn't just horizontal in nature is because her phrase came about after an experience she had, of descending 14 feet vertically into a cistern in Port Townsend, Washington. A cistern is an underground tank for storing water. Kind of like a well but shorter and fatter. In that cistern, Oliveros made a music recording and found that in such a context, sounds reverberate in ways that are not imaginable unless you make that vertical trek firsthand. 

Back to my journal prompt.

What is awareness?
I think it's when I notice that a person or group is there. And that they are saying or doing something. 

What is attention?
I think it's when what I notice captures my interest or compassion or ego or love or guilt in such a way that I decide to spend extra time to interact with that person or group.

Can I be aware of something without giving it attention?
As much as I want to think that all of my expressions are worthy of captivating every person who experiences them, I know that they don't always captivate. Sometimes they infuriate. And as disappointing as that feels sometimes, I don't want to demand or strong-arm the kind of attention I want. It feels best when it's given to me with free will.

Can I give attention to something without having awareness of it?
I think awareness always precedes attention. And even though awareness alone can feel incomplete, it's not nothing. Not everybody has to dedicate their time leaning into my expressions. Especially if my one person loves me enough to tend to me and my fervor with free will. Even to the depths of an underground cistern. 

"To hear is the physical means that enables perception. To listen is to give attention to what is perceived both acoustically and psychologically." (Pauline Oliveros)

Bridge Across a Chasm

 

Who throws a party on a Tuesday? 

I guess I do, if you call what happened last Tuesday a party. It wasn't exactly that. It was more like a melding of love and life and music and art for three hours in my home with people from different pockets of my world. Some very familiar pockets and some newer ones that I'm getting to know. On a Tuesday. In the middle of summer. It felt like an art salon of vibrant vulnerability and joy.

My dear friend Dori had offered to come down from northern California and cook an Italian dinner for me and my friends as a gift. She had been unable to attend Gerardo's celebration and now, almost four months after that moment, I said hell yes to this unique bridge that she extended. 

I've been known to burrow myself into the hole of solitude like nobody else. I can hold my breath and stay there longer than anybody else. And within the last four months, I've realized that I don't want to do that. I could justify doing that by pointing out how flawed everything and everybody (especially me) is. And what would that give me? No friends. No love. No party. No art. No music. Nothing delicious. Not one thing.

We humans. We burn through life. 

I think I want to burn through it as artistically, creatively, and meaningfully as possible. Flaws and all. 

In giving, you throw a bridge across the chasm of your solitude.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Beautiful World, Where are You by Sally Rooney

 

LOOKING
Early in the book Beautiful World Where are You by Sally Rooney, the character Felix recounts when he lost his mom and remembers thinking "what's the fucking point of life, you know? It's not like there's anything at the end of it (57)." He says this to Alice, a successful novelist who, even with all of her success, also has a mound of grievances about the pointlessness of life. Alice and Felix have started something. Nothing to be certain about but perhaps something beautiful. At this start of this something, they look at each other ... "It was too dark for either of them to glean much information from the other's face, and yet they kept looking, and did not break off, as if the act of looking was more important than what they could see (58)."

AG and IG
Recently, I learned that along with theism, atheism ,and agnosticism, there is also a belief called ignosticism. There's something about the uncertainty embedded in agnosticism that I've always regarded as beautiful because it's within uncertainty that honest questions can be asked—where wonder and curiosity and imagination can be unleashed. Another reason I view agnosticism as beautiful is because the agnostic cares. We may not be certain, but we care about whether there is something after this.

Ignostics on the other hand don't know and don't care. Maybe that's why I've never been one.

OPPOSITE OF BEAUTIFUL
Eileen is an aspiring writer and Alice's best friend who is also searching for the answer to the question of whether there is beauty in the world. She points to the hopelessness of the chance that beauty is nowhere, especially given the futility of resisting the current soul-sucking attention economy that is fueled by what I think is opposite of beautiful, which is garish certainty:

"I looked at the internet for too long today and started feeling depressed. The worst thing is that I actually think people on there are generally well meaning and the impulses are right, but our political vocabulary has decayed so deeply and rapidly since the twentieth century that most attempts to make sense of our present historical moment turn out to be essentially gibberish. Everyone is at once hysterically attached to particular identity categories and completely unwilling to articulate what those categories consist of, how they came about, and what purposes they serve. The only apparent schema is that for every victim group ... there is an oppressor group ... But in this framework, relations between victim and oppressor are not historical so much as theological, in that the victims are transcendently good an the oppressors are personally evil ... and a great amount of our discourse is devoted to sorting individuals into their proper groups, which is to say, giving them their proper moral reckoning (81)." 

SPOILER ALERT: NO SORDID SEX
For a large portion of the book, the tension that was building made me think that Alice and Felix, along with Eileen and her love Simon would all end up in a sordid foursome.

But that is not the way the story ends up. (Not that I would think less of them if it had.) It actually ends up with Alice making the case that her very simple life choices of the moment ... to put the writing life on hold, to love Simon and to have a baby with him reflect that humanity at its core isn't about extraordinarily sordid heights but rather, ordinary levels of  care. To care, even in uncertainty.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

 

I FINALLY finished reading Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner today. I wasn't in H Mart when I finished reading it. I was in my bed. My new bed. And in my new bed, I cried as I read the final gut-wrenching sentence (in her memoir about the complex bond between she and her dying mom) that broke me into many pieces. A final sentence that only a person who has experienced profound loss can write. The kind of sentence that requires a wisdom that can only be acquired through the throughness of it all. Until you go through the complexity and the dread and the beauty of it all. Until you sing it, weep it, scream it, convulse it, choke on it, drown in it, and come back up for air gasping on it. 

I never knew I'd be sleeping in a new bed. Smaller than the bed Gerardo and I had together. Bigger than the hospital bed that had replaced our large bed for the last couple of years—the one he used before he passed. I never knew I'd ever own anything called Queen-sized. I never knew. Until now, as I know.

Crying in H Mart is the first book Gerardo and I selected for our book club for two: Jenny & Gerardo's Book Club. The club was organized in such a way that I would read it aloud to him on days when he needed a distraction from his pain ... pain so severe that he couldn't read anything on his own. Pain that only allowed reading to be done aloud to him, in small spurts.

There were eerie similarities between the suffering that Gerardo and Michelle's mom went through. There were eerie similarities about the love and tension and struggles of being a dying person and being a person with a dying person: "My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her (p. 169)." Sometimes I had to put the book down because Gerardo and I had to pause and weep together as we could see what was coming down the pike as we saw what was happening to Michelle's mother. 

Our book club never moved onto a second book mainly because our club wasn't able to complete Crying in H Mart as Gerardo passed before we could finish it together. 

An important and courageous facet of this book is Michelle's ability to confront some of the unfairness she bestowed onto her mom—a narrative so common that it has become an embarrassing cliche—of a child punching the lowest hanging fruit, citing imperfections of a parent as the forever reasons of the adult child's imperfections of the present. The confrontation is admirable because she is able to articulate a kind of regret that can only be summoned when faced with losing a flawed and loving parent while riding a high horse for much too long: "Sure, I had taken my upbringing for granted, I had lashed out at the ones who loved me the most, allowed myself to flounder in a depression I perhaps had no real right to (p. 176)."

The way a person goes through grief is unique to each person. And the way a person cares for oneself and becomes self-aware is unique to each person. Michelle's epiphany about therapy and self-care is something I love: "Nothing my therapist said was anything I hadn't psychoanalyzed in myself a million times already anyway. I was paying a hundred-dollar copay per session, and I began to think it would be much more fulfilling to just take myself out for a fifty-dollar lunch twice a week. I canceled the rest of my sessions and committed myself to exploring alternative forms of self-care (p. 212)."

My self-care these days includes saying yes to invitations by my trusted friends who are circling their wagons around me with their loving, watchful eyes. I have committed to never turning down an invitation from this circle so that I can remain engaged with good people and have good spaces to process what I'm going through without receiving an invoice from such interactions. My self-care also includes letting it all flow through me—where I let myself cry in H Mart if I feel like it, or Albertsons if I feel like it, or Target if I feel like it, or my Queen-sized bed if I feel like it. Or to let myself laugh with somebody or everybody or nobody at all. And mostly, to let the sensibility of Michelle guide me in not taking anything for granted and making every moment count, and letting Gerardo's sensibility guide me in finding ways to pursue new purpose and enjoy life not later, but now.

We Are One: My Eulogy for Gerardo Mouet

Celebration of Life for Gerardo Mouet

March 17, 2023 • 5PM

Santa Ana, California

We Are One: Eulogy by Jenny Doh

Thank you for being here. Thank you for loving, remembering, and celebrating Gerardo Mouet.

 

THE PERFECT FIRST BITE

One of my favorite memories of Gerardo is of a hot summer day when we were dating. We got everything packed including a watermelon that Gerardo couldn’t wait to eat. I was looking forward to eating it too, but I wasn’t as excited about it as he was. When we got to the beach, he started cutting up that watermelon and he pulled out the first wedge. I knew he wanted to gobble up that perfect first bite but then his gaze turned toward me and offered it to me instead. That was Gerardo.

 

ANYWHERE BUT HERE

Another memory is when I decided to put my career on hold to stay at home with our infant son and toddler daughter. As much as this was my choice, I was overwhelmed by it. Gerardo one day rushed home at around noon and when I asked why he was home he said that he wanted me to have some fun and that I could go anywhere I wanted to, for one hour. So, I took that hour, wearing stretchy pants, shirt with dried-up baby vomit, and unwashed hair in a ponytail, in search of a place that was anywhere but here. I ended up going through the drive thru at McDonald’s to get a soft serve ice cream cone and then parking my car at the CVS parking lot and blasting the radio as I imagined myself in alternate realities. It was the most glorious hour and I would come to enjoy that type of hour on several days when my husband came to help me have some fun as I remained tethered to my actual reality. That was Gerardo.

 

ARE YOU SURE?

Another memory is the day when I decided to become a working artist. This is after the many twists and turns that my career had taken me, from social worker, to El Sol charter school fundraiser, to magazine editor, to book producer, to art studio owner. With every new career interest, Gerardo was my biggest cheerleader. But when I decided that I wanted to paint, I was concerned that he might say something like “Again? You’re changing your mind again?” But he didn’t say that. He asked me only one question. He asked, “Jenny, are you sure?” And when I said that I was, he said, “Okay then, let’s get things ready so you can paint.” To which I countered by asking what we would do with all the paintings. To which he countered, “If you’re going to be a painter, the only thing you should be thinking about is painting. You should not be thinking about where to put those paintings. If we need to rent storage, we will rent storage. Your job from now on is to paint.” That was Gerardo.

 

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE

In 2013, Gerardo had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his bile duct. Every year after the surgery there were things that started to happen as other complications related to that cancer and surgery emerged. For the past five years, he started to significantly suffer. For the past two years, he had debilitating pain with scattered moments of no pain. For the past eight months, there was agonizing physical and emotional pain, and for the last two months before he passed, he had the kind of suffering that no living creature should ever endure.

 

One of the things that comforted Gerardo in the midst of his suffering was for him to put pencil to paper and write. He loved to use a wooden #2 with a good white eraser top. Even if what he wrote didn’t make any sense, the process of writing helped him. Incredibly, during one hospitalization when he called me before I came to visit him, he asked me to bring something to the hospital. I thought he would say a clean shirt or a soft blanket. Rather, he asked me for just one thing: a pencil sharpener. That was Gerardo.

 

During the past year, his favorite beverage at home was cranberry juice mixed with topo chico. And true to his Director form, he wanted each mix to be just the way he wanted as he pursued the perfect blend and would ask me “Honey, can you bring me a cranberry and topo chico and this time can you make it with 65 percent cranberry and 35 percent topo chico?” That was Gerardo.

 

On February 28^th after Gerardo had been taken from UCI to UCLA by ambulance, Gerardo told me that he had no more fight left in him and that he wanted hospice. On March 2^nd, his sister Lily flew into Orange County and Manuel Gomez picked her up and drove her to UCLA to be at Gerardo’s bedside with me. On March 4^th at UCLA, Gerardo transitioned into comfort care at which time the doctors and nurses said he was allowed to eat or drink whatever he wanted. He asked me to get him popsicles. And true to his Director form, he said to me “Cherry is ok but grape would be preferred.” So, I walked to Whole Foods in Westwood and got him popsicles which he enjoyed. During those moments, I was able to tell him that as difficult as this past decade has been, it has been my honor and privilege to care for him and take him to the finish line, no matter the outcome. And to my face streaming with tears, he said “Jennycita, I want you to be happy, starting NOW.” That was Gerardo.

 

The truth is, he had always wanted me to be happy. That had been his goal as my husband. For me to have fun and to be happy.

 

WISDOM

On tonight’s program, you will see the words by Confucius, that guided his adult life:

As the sun makes it new

day by day make it new

yet again make it new

 

You will also see the words he penned as Director of Parks & Rec to guide the agency:

Learn.

 Have fun.

 Get fit.

Be respectful.

 

You will also see the words he repeated to anyone who ever talked to him about the joys and tragedies of life:

Everything has a beginning, middle, and an end.

 

You will also see the words he penned on a final paper for a philosophy class that he took at UC San Diego where after writing about all the readings and lectures for the class, he put forth his bold concluding thesis in the final paper, positing that:

We are one.

 

Sadly, he got that paper back from the teaching assistant who used a big fat red pen to cross out his thesis and write back “No we are not!” with a failing grade.

STARTING NOW 

I think that that teaching assistant was full of bitter grievance. Grievance easy to catch and difficult to get rid of. I think Gerardo was correct. I think as we in this world try to hold onto perceived grievances, and as we point to what Kristin Dombek describes in her essay as The Selfishness of Others, we forget that we too are perpetuators of all that we disdain. We are (as masterfully illustrated by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), all muddling through EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE. And when voices try to convince me that nothing matters, I will strive to make each day new and join Gerardo’s optimistic thesis in recognizing that indeed, we are one.

 

Before we raise our popsicles to Gerardo, I want to thank my trusted friends—my girlfriends, my gym friends, my barre friends, my art friends, my UCI friends, and most of all, I want to thank Lily. In Spanish, the term for sister-in-law is cuñada. Technically, she is my cuñada. The word for sister is hermana. And that is who she has become for me. Mi hermana.

 

Lily: thank you for being there for Gerardo during his suffering and for being with me by his bedside at UCLA as he transitioned from intensive care to comfort care and then at home to hospice care. Thank you for being with me to help work through the layers of sorrow, the rage, the exhaustion, the relief, the love, the forgiveness, and the peace. Thank you for echoing Gerardo’s charge for me to be happy, starting NOW

 

And now, whether you have a cherry or grape or orange popsicle, let’s raise it together.

 

To Gerardo. May he rest in peace.

To Wonder and Pray

John Muir once said that "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." I've learned that this is true also when it comes to our bodies. When one drug is taken to address one part of the body, it affects other parts of the body.

On February 23rd, I took Gerardo to the ER and on the 24th, he was given his very first dialysis treatment, due to renal failure. I thought they were mistaken at first. How can a person with liver failure also have kidney failure? The answer to that is at the heart of Muir's point: because one thing is attached to everything else. Medicine for the liver can negatively affect the kidneys. Or the heart. Or the lungs. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

On February 25th, he was given yet another dialysis treatment. And many blood transfusions. That evening an ambulance transported Gerardo from UCI to UCLA where the transplant medical team is assessing many things ... not only about his acute kidney failure but also the bleeding that could be related to a cause that could disqualify him from the transplant program.

That last sentence is upsetting to hear. But we heard it together today. And all I could offer Gerardo are words to help him consider that God's will is beyond our imagination as this grueling assessment process continues.

Those thoughts were formed with the support of my support system. With some in my support system I talk on the phone. With others, I cry and hug in person. With many I text or DM with lots of emojis. With a few I work out and sweat. A giant love letter to each of them would include my gratitude for their wise counsel and unconditional love, with an invitation to wonder and pray with me about the grandeur of this journey.

Curative End

WHY
I've seen Gerardo endure much. From cancer surgery in 2013 to radiation to stent replacements to complications from liver cirrhosis, to strangulated and incarcerated hernias, to internal bleeding, and to debilitating episodes of hepatic encephalopathy. I've also seen how depression and anxiety and fear have become proportional to his physical suffering and grip him tighter and tighter.

In the darkest depths of despair, I hear Gerardo screaming his single-word prayer: "Why?" 

It's a prayer that even the most faithful seem to utter. Even though I think he knows that suffering is neither personal nor permanent, and that it's not because of sin, and that it's an arbitrary part of living, he still prays it. And in my darkest moments, I pray it too.

FOMO
On his podcast, BLOCKS, Neil Brennan asks Bert Kreischer why he fears death. Bert gives the best answer I've ever heard. He says he fears it because of FOMO: the fear of missing out. Like what if after his funeral some of his friends decide to go get a drink and shoot the shit, remembering the good times with Bert? Who wouldn't want to be included in that scene? That whiskey on the rocks. That conversation. Those laughs. Those tears. That familiar seat at the bar where the time of day is packed with potential for the next wonderful feeling to arrive. 

I feel the same way. It's not that I want life to be infinite so I can live with endless pain and suffering. But damn, I don't want to miss out! Because after my funeral what if my best friends decide to gather ... perhaps at a bar but more likely an art studio where they raise a glass and then make some art, talk about the good old days and then break into poetry readings, dance, and a sing along. God, that sounds fun.    

CURATIVE END
I recently accompanied Gerardo to meet with the palliative care group at UC Irvine. The way I understand it, palliative care is about helping with pain management and quality of living so that the patient and caregiver can exist with less suffering. Hospice care is also all about that but the main difference is that hospice care is dispensed when there is no curative end. Palliative care is dispensed when a curative end may or may not exist.

By "curative end" of course they mean a cure for disease. Because there is no cure for the actual end. Everybody ends.

THE SEA IS NEVER FULL
The curative end for Gerardo's disease would be a successful liver transplant. And no matter how many times I explain it to people, I still get folks asking me: "So, where is he on the list?" And I explain that it doesn't work like that. It's not like standing in line at Disneyland waiting our turn to get on the ride. It's an evaluation of how sick his liver is, based on blood work. The sicker the liver, the greater the chance he will be prioritized for a transplant. And how sick the liver is is measured by the MELD index. And because our health care system is built around specializations, consideration isn't given to context ... like hernias or bleeding or encephalopathy or the condition of other organs like the kidneys or heart. It's not that liver specialists don't care about context. But because demand is through the roof and supply barely covers the ground, the liver transplant system has organized itself to simply focus on the liver. And they will help the sickest liver first. Period.

At church recently, the chancel choir sang a powerful song that contained these lyrics (To Love our God by M. Hayes):

Where does the wind come from? Where does it go?

Blowing north then south, how does it know?

The rain flows gently to the sea, yet the sea is never full.

How can these things be?

Yes, I wonder the same.
How? Who? What? When? Where?
And of course, "Why?"

Hear my prayer.

Gerardito

 

GERARDITO

Gerardito
Hits the spot

Ice cream & milk
All swished together.
A treat many kids have invented
But not as perfectly
As when Gerardo was a kid.

So good and so loved that
His family called it the diminutive of his name: Gerardito.

An invention of simple joy
That hits it so good even today.

After two brutal back-to-back hospitalizations
Gerardito goes down cold and creamy to faithfully hit that spot again.
Sweetly. Simply.
Gerardito.

//

Feb 4-5 hospitalization: incarcerated hernia

Feb 8-9: hospitalization: hepatic encephalopathy

//

How to make a Gerardito: Place a heaping scoop of ice cream into a cup. Pour enough milk into the cup. Don't ask how much. Just figure it out. Stir the shit out of it. Gulp it down. Enjoy the moment.

Rain and All

Stories from the Old Testament don't sit well with me. This is primarily because they involve a God that tests humans. A God that keeps score, practices quid pro quo, and then doles out punishments for the sinner and blessings for the obedient. It has never felt good to think of God in such ways. 

I just finished reading the book of Job from the Old Testament. It's something that my girlfriend Shamanie and I decided to do together to try and better understand human suffering. She and I have kept our phone lines open to support one another during all hours of the night, as our lives have become marred in ways that we never could have imagined. And suffering feels bottomless.

The first chapters of the book of Job set up an upsetting scene. One where Satan triple-dog-dares God by saying that if he were to take away all of Job's blessings, that Job would end up showing his true colors by turning against God.

God takes the stupid dare and Job's suffering begins. 

Why, if there were a God, would he allow suffering? That is a question related to a line of study within theology called theodicy. We humans are centered on ourselves. Which is why when we suffer, we ask questions like:

•God, what have I done to deserve this? Tell me.
•Why are you making me suffer? It's unfair.
•What can I do to make you stop this pain? I'll do anything.

Our fixation on ourselves makes us believe that the only thing God cares about is us. But in the book of Job, we learn that God cares about other things like the wind, fire, rain, animals, etc. And sometimes, for reasons we don't understand, God commands the rain to go forth, and drench the earth. As a result, maybe a parched field can grow a harvest. Maybe the fish in the almost dried-up river can flourish. Maybe flowers can bloom. Also as a result maybe a baby drowns. And maybe a house get destroyed. 

And when we are privy to only the latter, we don't understand and we utter, "Why God, have you drowned my baby? Why God, have you destroyed my house?"

Because we humans are centered on ourselves we think suffering is a personal affront when it's not personal at all. Rain isn't personal. It just is. And the results of rain are part of something beyond our understanding. The results just are.

Job passes the test. And his blessings return. Neither the ending nor the beginning nor the middle impress or inspire me. Because the nature of the tricky test is oppressive and convoluted.

The story of Job and other Old Testament stories help me better understand why the New Testament has become such a force. Its message is one where we don't have to do anything to earn something. In fact, there is no way to earn something or pay for anything. Because it's already been earned and paid for us by fiat. All that is left to do is to accept it. Rain and all.

MUDDLE THROUGH & GRAPPLE WITH

ZARNA
Comedian Zarna Garg says that she has never said "I love you" to her husband of more than 23 years and asks, "What's the rush?" She goes on to explain that like many immigrants from India, she wasn't raised with that phrase. Nor was she raised with other things like hugs and candlelight dinners. I'm so happy that Zarna has become famous because she explains a lot of things that help me explain my upbringing and how that has affected my relationships. Gerardo was also raised similarly, which is one of the reasons I felt so comfortable with him more than 30 years ago when we met and fell in love.

Fast forward to today where we have evolved into people who say it more. We also hug more. Maybe because we've both met people who help us practice the hugs and sentiment. And also maybe because we realize how few days each of us have on this earth. As my favorite tweeter (@death_reminder) on Twitter tweets every day the same message: "You will die someday."

LAST & THIS
Last December, Gerardo was at the UCI hospital for days and nights where he was in an exhausting amonia-buildup loop where the words from his mouth started to say "The probability ..." and never concluded into a complete sentence as gibberish took over. Those words repeated endlessly. It was not scary. It was terrifying. This December, he was at the UCI hospital for an incarcerated hernia that thankfully stabilized without surgery. 

HOLLOW
Christmas felt best when I was a kid. Maybe up until I was about 12 it felt good. And then every year since then, it started feeling strange and weird. I think it's because I see more vividly every year, the commercialization, materialism, over-indulgence, over-spending, and wastefulness that eventually pile up into a heap of meaninglessness. Hollow.

WORTHY
When I see Gerardo finding hope through his faith, I don't see hollow. Speaking of faith, I recently attended a church service where from the pulpit came words that moved me. The words were about how when faced with an incredible gift, we humans have assorted ways of responding. We sometimes respond with initial glee followed by apathy. At other times, as we cite wrongs from the past, we respond with hostility. The pastor delivering this sophisticated message noted with humility that historically, the church has been at the epicenter of sin that has bred understandable hostility. Because the church isn't God. The church is human. And all humans are deeply flawed. Another way we respond is with worship. The pastor dissected the word to explain that it is rooted in the word "worthy" and that to be in worship is to be in a state of being worthy. And to be worthy is to strive toward the original nature of God, not human.

SOLID
I also don't see hollow when I see Gerardo having good moments with clean food that lands well ... like the homemade chicken and potato soup that I made for our lunch. I also don't see hollow when I hear his uncontrollable laughter as he watches comedians' specials. And mostly, I don't see hollow when he and I struggle to process the tremendous pain and loss that have been ours this year and accept that all we can do is muddle through somehow. I think it's ok to occasionally talk and weep about the intense feelings of hurt that life has dealt us. That's what therapy is. The processing of feelings. Except we don't get an invoice for doing it when we allow ourselves to do it on our own. Solid. 

BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES ENDS BEGINNINGS
Everything has a beginning, middle, and an end. I think that sometimes when I think something has ended, other things begin. My hope is that everyone I love and care about will experience many new and wonderful beginnings.

Before 12, when Christmas didn't feel weird, I had faith. Lately, I find myself seeing glimpses of that faith making cameos in my life and heart. Like that sermon. Like my ability to hug and say "I love you." Like Gerardo's laughter. Like my friend with whom I'm reading the Book of Job and sharing our thoughts about it all who wrote to me to say she thinks religion is for people who are afraid of hell while spirituality is for people who have gone through hell.

As I muddle through and grapple with, I sometimes pray. Not for the granting of wishes or a list of parlor tricks I want God to perform by preventing this or strong-arming that. Rather, I pray that I can better understand the bigger picture. That I can marvel at it. That I can even worship it.

Jab Cross Hook Cross

 

Years ago Alan, Sheny and I became friends through boxing. We go way back to LA Boxing days. Over the years the three of us with our significant others would go out to dinners and/or host dinners at our respective homes.

For the last several rounds, I’ve flown solo to these dinners, happy to still be included and grateful for the generosity that Alan and Sheny show me. (No need to @ me when I share that in these types of dinner settings I enjoy having the men figure out the tab.) 

Last night I expressed how much love and protection I feel when Sheny or Alan always pick up my tab without having me rotate in to take a turn at paying. In Gerardo's absence, they remind me that Gerardo had always been quick and generous with rotating himself in when it was his unspoken turn to do so. I wouldn't have had it any other way. (Again, no need to @ me about gender stereotypes, feminism, blah blah blah.) It’s not that I can’t pick up the tab flying solo, it’s just that these friends understand that in this season, it’s more than my tab that they are picking up. They’re picking me up. And making sure I feel all the dignity, care and love.

It's Like That

 

In a few more days Thanksgiving will be here. Then Christmas. Then a new year. With liver disease, it's hard to look too far ahead on a calendar. It's hard to look too far ahead on a clock. It's truly one moment at a time.

As I am writing this, I'm amazed that the immediate past moment was one where Gerardo and I took a mini walk right outside our house. Maybe it was a quarter of a block. Maybe it was an eighth. The sun and air felt fresh. I saw evidence of wind's existence by looking at the moving leaves. Immediately before that, he devoured the lunch I made him. 

And now, immediately after the short walk, pain and discomfort are back. Maybe Tylenol will be all he needs. Or maybe oxycodone. Or maybe the pain will become a runaway train so far gone that we end up at the hospital.  

It's like that.

Two good moments in a row, followed by a bad one.

Sometimes, when the pain becomes the monster that it can be, his cries take on a sound that no one should emit and no one should hear. 

Two things that seem to comfort Gerardo is his copious note-taking and newfound faith. These days he writes every single thing down in his kraft-colored Moleskine and #2 pencil. Everything that he observes and everything that happens to him goes into that journal. Sometimes when he's really out of it, he will look at his notes and see illegible marks he made in his altered state and laugh. But so what? It's not the precision of the notes or their efficient retrievability that comforts him. It's the PROCESS of taking them that comforts him. 

He recently thanked me for not judging his newfound faith but rather supporting it. Though I don't share his faith, I don't think it's certainty that comforts him, but rather the PROCESS of opening himself up after having been closed for so long, as he experiences a genuine shift from possibility to the thrilling probability of something greater. 

The Dark Side of Kindness

There are some who assume that the terrible nurse I battled on day 4 of Gerardo's hospitalization/recovery was terrible because perhaps she had been "unkind." That is an incorrect assumption and speaks to our society's infatuation with the notion that kindness is the salve to most of society's ills.

The nurse hadn't been unkind. She was full of gestures that are characteristic of kindness—like smiles and  polite greetings. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if her wardrobe contains a graphic tee that says "be kind." 

Coupled with such characteristics were incompetence, exaggerations, incomplete information, and a nervousness of knowing she was in over her head in terms of a specific medical intervention that she tried to fix though she was unqualified to do so, and made worse, causing unnecessary pain and suffering.

When I called her on it, she dialed up the belittling care by putting her hand on my shoulder and amping up the "kind" and "let me nursplain to you what you don't know" posture.

When I told her to take her hand off of my shoulder, she was shocked. 

And perhaps some would argue that I was being unkind.

And I would argue back that kindness has nothing to do with it. The reason I take issue with our society's blind infatuation with kindness is because it doesn't recognize the dark side of kindness, which frequently leads to turning a blind eye to what is wrong in the moment, as we or our loved ones become walked all over, in the name of nice.

Language is another tool that people use to dispense belittling care. Which is why I'm skeptical of strangers who use terms of endearment (e.g., honey, sweetie, babe, my love, etc.) too quickly. Such language (like the hand on the shoulder) has a way of creating hierarchy and distorting the specifics of reality.

//

After an exhausting week of hospital recovery, Gerardo is home and resting. This incident of having survived surgery for a strangulated hernia adds a new dimension of care at home. 

Thank you to my loving and supportive friends. 

Ready? Ready. Let's go.

2:32AM, April 14, 2022

JENNY: Hello?

DOCTOR C: Hello, is this Jenny?

JENNY: Yes. It's Jenny.

DOCTOR C: Hello, Jenny. It's Dr. C from UCI. I'm calling to tell you your husband is out of surgery. The surgery went very well. He is in the ICU and likely he will be here for 3-5 days as he recovers.

JENNY: Thank you, Doctor. I'm so relieved and grateful. 

11PM-ish, April 13, 2022

GERARDO: If I don't make it, tell everyone I love them, especially the kids. And I love you. At this moment the only thing that matters is all our good memories with the kids.

JENNY: I love you. And you're going to make it. You've made it through worse. You go in there with your Tijuana strength and you show them how resilient you are. The best doctors are here. The best ones have convened to do this for you. You will come out of it and we will get you strong and we will celebrate our 30th anniversary in June.  

9PM-ish, April 13, 2022

NURSE O: I have liquid morphine for him. That should help with the pain.

JENNY: Thank you, Nurse O. 

DOCTOR C: It's a strangulated hernia. He needs immediate surgery. It's a risky procedure and there is a 30% chance he won't make it. But if we don't operate, there is a 100% chance that he won't make it. We need to do this tonight.

5PM-ish, April 13, 2022

JENNY: I think I have everything packed. Ready?

GERARDO: Ready.

JENNY: How's the pain?

GERARDO: Extreme.

JENNY: Let's go.

Two Sides of the Same Dreadful Coin

Some of the extreme woke of my party have been shooting arrows at Ds who have expressed gratitude and admiration about Liz Cheney's ability to withstand critics from her own R party and continue participating in the special committee to investigate facts about the lawlessness that occurred on January 6th. The narrative of the arrows of the extreme woke goes something like: "How can any self-respecting D support Cheney when she doesn't support Biden's infrastructure bill? Her opposition to the bill shows that she's not TRULY a good person."

Cheney caught hell not just from the woke of my party but the extreme trumpists of her party for having given a fist bump (which is a playful variation to the handshake) to Biden in August of 2021 as he was walking toward the House dais to deliver a speech. The narrative of this criticism from all the extremists goes something like: "How can you greet and smile at our enemy?" 

Such narratives remind me of the arrows that the woke of my party relentlessly shot at Pete Buttigieg for his agreeing to appear on Fox News to explain his platform during the 2020 primaries, suggesting that Buttigieg was a bad person for allowing himself to "engage with the enemy."

These narratives also remind me of a passage from On Freedom by Maggie Nelson as follows:

"... it's naive and unfair to expect artists and writers to have special access to the most intense, extreme, or painful aspects of life, then to act surprised and appalled when they turn out to have a relationship to those things that exceeds that of abstract contemplation or simple critique. Thankfully, acting as if the world neatly divides (or that our task is to divide it) into problematic, ethically turbulent, essentially dangerous people who should stay "over there," and nonproblematic, ethically good, essentially safe people who should be allowed to stay "over here," is not our only option. After all, what I've just described is a prison (On Freedom, page 60)."

In America, is it possible for a D to vehemently stand in opposition of the policies of a Cheney and still be able to give her a fist bump? 

In America, is it possible for an R to vehemently stand in opposition of the policies of a Biden and still be able to give him a fist bump?

In America, can we hold differing approaches to betterment while agreeing about following the rules of the democratic process that govern the way we disagree?

In other words, are Americans capable of throwing policy hardballs AND being good sports?

Sadly, I feel that every day, I see my answer to all those questions moving closer to a no than a yes.

Perhaps America is devolving into a neatly divided prison-state by fueling extreme wokeism and extreme trumpism ... two sides of the same dreadful coin.

MY WORDS for 2022: I DO

 

One of the benefits of teaching undergraduates is that I have a direct connection to young thinkers who challenge me to consider evolved thought-processes. Just uttering those three words: "evolved thought-processes" feels wonderful to me. The words make me feel I can breathe easier, that I am not suffocating from dogma, calcifying from old habits, or begrudging change. That I have room to breathe and become.

Lily is one such student who has caused me to evolve by submitting an amazing paper during my class this last quarter where she explained that as much as she enjoys using the term I AM, she is now starting to embrace a slightly nuanced term from that which is, I DO.

So instead of saying I AM Jenny Doh or I AM caregiver or I AM artist or I AM teacher, Lily would suggest that I DO Jenny Doh or I DO caregiving or I DO art or I DO teaching. I DO these things the way I know how to do them or want to do them right now, but the term allows me to do all of those things differently in the future, based on new experiences, wisdom, and awareness.

It seems that our nation's polarization gets intensified when we tether ourselves to teams, dogmas, and identities that are rigidly defined. And once we bake ourselves into such identities, our "enemies" also become the vivid and unchanging "others" that we must not dare not hate, lest we lose membership into the assorted I AMs.

What my students teach me in terms of fluidity of identity (particularly related to gender and sexuality) is that like the great philosopher Heraclitus once said, "No man [sic] ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's [sic] not the same man [sic]."

In this spirit, I think it is more accurate to say that I DO heterosexual woman as opposed to saying I AM heterosexual woman.

Thank you to Lily and to all of my students for helping me arrive at I DO as my words for 2022.

Paying Attention to Someone IS Love

 

After reading my last post about Gerardo's hospitalization, one of my friends wrote this to me:

The word "gaze" will always mean so much more to me. I have a reminder posted above my desk from a quote I read a while back. "Paying attention to someone is love." I find that paying attention to my grandkids is what they want most. Their simple delight when they see we are watching feels like love back. The way you, Monica and Andrew and the staff intently paid attention was the love Gerardo needed to hang in there against very tough odds. Gerardo circled love back with his gaze and yet conserved his needed energy. I look forward to hearing what the days ahead bring. There are so many of us hoping for a transplant soon.

Love,

Crisynda

Attention IS love. It is also currency. It is the most valuable resource that I possess in this attention-driven economy where through the addictive tools of technology, my attention is pulled in directions that I don't even realize exist, all clamoring for my clicks, likes, and dollars. Crisynda reminds me that attention outside the economic realm has the power to make a person feel loved and seen, more than any purchased material.

This point is one that I have been making to my students for the past four years teaching at UC Irvine, with the help of Jenny Odell's book, How to Do Nothing.

I am fortunate to have a life where I don't teach more than one class at a time, and that my class size is small, usually no more than 40 students at a time. This allows me the capacity to give tailored feedback on the papers that I ask students to write on a weekly basis. It allows me to meet with students individually outside of class. It allows me to be completely present during lectures and to give each student concentrated attention. Students have said to me that they are not used to the attention. They are used to larger class sizes and instructors with good intentions spread so thinly that usually, the final grade is the only feedback that they get.

When I used to be a social worker for child protective services, my caseload was through the roof, which has been and continues to be the case for the profession famous for the burn-out factor. For most social workers, there is hardly any time to give proper attention to the children who are supposed to be shepherded because they are expected to shepherd so many.

When I used to be editor-in-chief within the magazine publishing industry, my workload was also through the roof with never enough time to give proper attention to any single magazine because there were so many to produce.

Regardless of the profession, it seems that people in charge try to invent new interventions to improve systems. Whether it's teaching, social work, publishing, or the work of being a human, I think the intervention that is most effective is when we can organize ourselves so that we are not spread so thinly. 

Because isn't the intervention that really makes sense a smaller class size? A smaller caseload? Fewer magazines? Less hustle? Less pretending?

Isn't the work of being human found not in the shallow glance of the clamor but the deep gaze of the calm? Isn't that love?

Merry Christmas 2021

 

It's been five months since Gerardo was accepted into UCLA's liver transplant program and I write this post as an update to my original post.

Gerardo and I have spent most of December at the UCI hospital. Though his MELD score doesn't seem to rise above 21 (the same score that he entered the program with in July), other troubles hover over us. During this hospitalization, he experienced a sudden and harrowing episode of acute cognitive failure related to advanced hepatic encephalopathy. Gerardo's brain was straddling this world and a world beyond this one. It was exhausting for me to watch and exhausting for Gerardo to experience. As he was mostly in another world, I sat bedside during visiting hours talking to him about the past, present and future in order to try and cajole him back to this world. When I recalled the day when Monica was born and the day when Andrew was born, Gerardo's face lit up. There were moments when he was able to hold my gaze for a few seconds and at the end of visiting hours when I tried to say goodbye, he would say "Jenny, wait!" It was the same when either Monica or Andrew visited. He held their gaze and when either of them got ready to leave, he non-verbally expressed a deep longing for them to stay. It was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.

During one of the more desperate bedside moments, I was crying uncontrollably as I asked Gerardo for a favor: "Gerardo, I am asking you to do just one favor for me. You have to hang onto any little kernel of cognition that your brain can latch onto and you have to build upon that kernel and come back. You have to come back."

Yesterday, after days of cognitive failure and assorted interventions by teams of medical experts, he was given a sleep aid, causing him to sleep for a solid four hours. As he was waking, Gerardo started to engage and converse. It was mostly in Spanish (his first language), laced with songs, peppered with English and fueled with emotion. The attending nurses and I literally jumped for joy as we witnessed Gerardo coming back to this world. The Comeback Kid. When I asked Gerardo whether he remembers any of my words or the words of Monica and Andrew during the time when his brain was leaving us, he said "I remember everything. I remember the favor you asked of me."

As of this writing, UCI Medical Center is working to facilitate a transfer of Gerardo from UCI to UCLA so that the liver transplant specialists at UCLA can potentially broaden the scope of care for Gerardo. It may take a few days before a bed opens up. The thing that could change everything with this plan is if Gerardo stabilizes enough to be discharged back home before a bed opens up at UCLA. A hospital-to hospital transfer doesn't correlate to prioritization of being matched with an organ but the idea of being in closer proximity to the team that conducts transplants feels hopeful. 

When I texted this update to Mike (my friend from junior high & high school) who lives in LA, his response was simple and immediate: "I have a bed ready for you." Reading those words of solid friendship made me shed some beautiful tears. There are other gestures of warmth and love and support and caring from my friends that make me feel gratitude, even in the context of uncertainty. 

So for the rest of December I may be visiting Gerardo at UCLA and either taking up Mike's offer to use his extra bed, or checking into a room at Luskin Center on campus. Or I may be continuing to commute with Gerardo to UCLA appointments from our home. I wonder with hope what kind of update I'll be writing in The New Year. 

For now, please accept a heartfelt Merry Christmas on behalf of Gerardo and me as we wish for you the opportunity to hold beautiful gazes, and to feel deeply, the presence of loved ones. 

Love,

Jenny

PS: The gratitude I feel for all of the doctors and nurses I've met throughout this journey is higher than the highest mountain. I am grateful that these individuals applied their God-given talent to complete medical school or nursing school, studied hard, worked hard, and that every day, they choose to dispense complicated medical interventions while maximizing patient dignity as their day-to-day work.