I was alone when I was attacked in Florence early in the morning by a man who was trying to shove me into his car. I retain smell, color, texture and emotion from the experience. I was extremely angry and fought back while I screamed a primal scream. He dropped me and zipped away, only to circle the block later, but I had run and ducked behind cars where he could not see me, then stayed next to a man setting up a kiosk until the friend I was meeting joined me.
Anyone who adventures long enough will have these experiences which are the price we play for leaving safety. I wrote up this experience recently for a Spanish class and my professor interpreted it as a terrible thing that ought not to have happened, but to me it was an extremely empowering experience. I believe this is partly due to personality and partly due to the generational shift which values safety above experience. Now I am wondering what a different person would have retained as I wrote it up nearly 40 years after it happened and I could access very vivid memory. I could still feel his skin under my fingernails and the stale smell of body odor when someone has been drinking alcohol hours before. I can see the low slung red sports car. I am sure I was chosen for being tiny and foreign at the time and he did not expect to encounter fury.
Remarkable story, and your take on it, too. Thank you for sharing.
In particular, this line strikes me, your final line: "I am sure I was chosen for being tiny and foreign at the time and he did not expect to encounter fury."
This is it, right here. We can be lucky, and we can be smart (which can manifest as furious), but either alone often doesn't do the trick. And it is never enough to insist that it's not fair that we need to be lucky, or smart, to walk safely on the street. Reality isn't necessarily fair. We take control of our own situation as much as possible and yes, meet brutality with fury.
As for the fury, I was a pretty angry young person and did not come to terms with that part of me until a therapist gave me a paper on the gift of anger. She channeled hers to become a child advocate. Anger in and of itself is not a bad thing,but it needs to be channeled and in that case it saved me.
I recently read Hunter Gatherer's guide to the 21st century and found your parts on safety very relatable. People are often horrified by the solo traveling I still do. They can't believe my husband is ok with it despite the fact that we met rock climbing and he rides motorcycles, which also horrifies people. I don't ride because my balance is not great and my reflexes are slow. I have other stories of risk and there is a reason I have my CCW permit. The year we lived in Mexico we took our very large dog with us, but now that I know the culture and language I feel more able to assess risk myself and we followed the advice of locals as to where and when it was safe for us.
I raised my kids to accept risk and take responsibility, much as you advised, yet two of my three are off the rails and the middle one is full blown woke. I refused to bend the knee and was cut off. When I read your parenting chapter I had the wish for you that your children would not decide to become part of the insanity, but nothing any parent does can guarantee outcome. The youngest was well into his 20's before starting to abuse marijuana. I also have 3 people in my life whose lives were saved by medical use. These issues are complicated. I appreciate how you and Brett bring nuance into our world.
Just as with our personal safety in the world, so too with parenting: doing everything "right" is not sufficient. You also need luck, which can come in a lot of different forms. I am sorry to hear that your children are "off the rails" now, and so hope that they come back.
Yes, too, to what you say about marijuana--both its ability to destroy lives, especially in its modern far-too-THC-heavy form, and its ability to help and heal. Welcome to complex systems.
Sign of a true teacher to turn such an experience into a well-constructed 'teachable moment' for your students (and subs), not just a recounting, but a comparative analysis of sensory experience. And the way for all to 'process the trauma', made the more effective by the experience having been shared.
For me, your tale and analysis are a clear illustration of time dilation (non-relativistic :-), 'the fact of information being input across all channels...explains the sense of time slowing down', that really brought the concept home.
"if we have no model at all, new information may simply not be noticed" brings to mind the apocryphal notion that European ships were invisible to natives when first encountered, one that still seems to resurface occasionally.
'Sensory memory...is divided lyrically', though, left me puzzled. And I have to wonder why the Quito Virgin is yanking on a chain.
And one more thought--lack of a perception of shared history and of shared fate is perhaps what people are really seeking to rectify on the internet. 'That most human of things.'
Yes to this being a tale of time dilation. How many days, weeks, months I lived while "Scarface" did his knife dance before us. And yet it couldn't have been more than a minute, two at the most.
Sensory memory is split into the senses, and then combined again...we have our categories, but those categories also collapse upon themselves.
As to why the Quito Virgin is yanking on a chain. I have no idea. I don't understand the statue. Quito is in a steep valley between mountains, an immensely long and thin city, and this means that a few things are visible from very many places within it. The Quito Virgin is one such thing, so I have seen it often, but I do not claim to understand it.
Finally--how can we fix this lack of perception of shared history and shared fate on the internet? Is it possible, do you think? I am not so sure.
Quite a story. If you don't have a "Jeremy" with you, perhaps we all need to construct our inner Jeremy. I was in my 40's before I began to appreciate how unreliable my own memory is. There was a time that if I remembered seeing something I was convinced that it happened exactly as I remembered it happening. No longer, although it did not take overlooking the guy in the gorilla suit on the basketball court to convince me. Heck, I've suffered from "male pattern blindness" for as long as I remember and STILL did not appreciate how unreliable my memory is. Is that what the wisdom of age is all about? One slowly learns which of his beliefs are simply not true with experience? Only the lucky ones, I fear.
I recently became aware of the 'supertaster' phenotype as a gene expression. I had not thought of something like the T2R38 taste receptor as something that could possibly enhance fitness. Went down a the rabbit hole in some medical journals and low and behold there is correlation to supertaster and immune function. Crazy! My personal journey into understanding of evolution and biology is pretty shallow at this point but it continues to blow my mind. The 'sensor' nature of our bodies , the built in feedback loops that regulate function that has evolved from millions if not billions of iterations is amazing. There is a time to fight and a time to fly and the animals do it so well. If we could only hear the knowledge embodied in our selves . Have you read Ian McGilchrist's "The Master and His Emmisary" ? It is heavy and redundant at times but the idea that the two hemispheres process information in different ways spoke to how I see my personal process in its interaction with *reality*. I wonder how Carl Jung would edit his theories with the present state of knowledge and understanding from his day?
I was alone when I was attacked in Florence early in the morning by a man who was trying to shove me into his car. I retain smell, color, texture and emotion from the experience. I was extremely angry and fought back while I screamed a primal scream. He dropped me and zipped away, only to circle the block later, but I had run and ducked behind cars where he could not see me, then stayed next to a man setting up a kiosk until the friend I was meeting joined me.
Anyone who adventures long enough will have these experiences which are the price we play for leaving safety. I wrote up this experience recently for a Spanish class and my professor interpreted it as a terrible thing that ought not to have happened, but to me it was an extremely empowering experience. I believe this is partly due to personality and partly due to the generational shift which values safety above experience. Now I am wondering what a different person would have retained as I wrote it up nearly 40 years after it happened and I could access very vivid memory. I could still feel his skin under my fingernails and the stale smell of body odor when someone has been drinking alcohol hours before. I can see the low slung red sports car. I am sure I was chosen for being tiny and foreign at the time and he did not expect to encounter fury.
Remarkable story, and your take on it, too. Thank you for sharing.
In particular, this line strikes me, your final line: "I am sure I was chosen for being tiny and foreign at the time and he did not expect to encounter fury."
This is it, right here. We can be lucky, and we can be smart (which can manifest as furious), but either alone often doesn't do the trick. And it is never enough to insist that it's not fair that we need to be lucky, or smart, to walk safely on the street. Reality isn't necessarily fair. We take control of our own situation as much as possible and yes, meet brutality with fury.
As for the fury, I was a pretty angry young person and did not come to terms with that part of me until a therapist gave me a paper on the gift of anger. She channeled hers to become a child advocate. Anger in and of itself is not a bad thing,but it needs to be channeled and in that case it saved me.
I recently read Hunter Gatherer's guide to the 21st century and found your parts on safety very relatable. People are often horrified by the solo traveling I still do. They can't believe my husband is ok with it despite the fact that we met rock climbing and he rides motorcycles, which also horrifies people. I don't ride because my balance is not great and my reflexes are slow. I have other stories of risk and there is a reason I have my CCW permit. The year we lived in Mexico we took our very large dog with us, but now that I know the culture and language I feel more able to assess risk myself and we followed the advice of locals as to where and when it was safe for us.
I raised my kids to accept risk and take responsibility, much as you advised, yet two of my three are off the rails and the middle one is full blown woke. I refused to bend the knee and was cut off. When I read your parenting chapter I had the wish for you that your children would not decide to become part of the insanity, but nothing any parent does can guarantee outcome. The youngest was well into his 20's before starting to abuse marijuana. I also have 3 people in my life whose lives were saved by medical use. These issues are complicated. I appreciate how you and Brett bring nuance into our world.
Just as with our personal safety in the world, so too with parenting: doing everything "right" is not sufficient. You also need luck, which can come in a lot of different forms. I am sorry to hear that your children are "off the rails" now, and so hope that they come back.
Yes, too, to what you say about marijuana--both its ability to destroy lives, especially in its modern far-too-THC-heavy form, and its ability to help and heal. Welcome to complex systems.
Sign of a true teacher to turn such an experience into a well-constructed 'teachable moment' for your students (and subs), not just a recounting, but a comparative analysis of sensory experience. And the way for all to 'process the trauma', made the more effective by the experience having been shared.
For me, your tale and analysis are a clear illustration of time dilation (non-relativistic :-), 'the fact of information being input across all channels...explains the sense of time slowing down', that really brought the concept home.
"if we have no model at all, new information may simply not be noticed" brings to mind the apocryphal notion that European ships were invisible to natives when first encountered, one that still seems to resurface occasionally.
'Sensory memory...is divided lyrically', though, left me puzzled. And I have to wonder why the Quito Virgin is yanking on a chain.
And one more thought--lack of a perception of shared history and of shared fate is perhaps what people are really seeking to rectify on the internet. 'That most human of things.'
So many things to respond to here. And thank you.
Yes to this being a tale of time dilation. How many days, weeks, months I lived while "Scarface" did his knife dance before us. And yet it couldn't have been more than a minute, two at the most.
Sensory memory is split into the senses, and then combined again...we have our categories, but those categories also collapse upon themselves.
As to why the Quito Virgin is yanking on a chain. I have no idea. I don't understand the statue. Quito is in a steep valley between mountains, an immensely long and thin city, and this means that a few things are visible from very many places within it. The Quito Virgin is one such thing, so I have seen it often, but I do not claim to understand it.
Finally--how can we fix this lack of perception of shared history and shared fate on the internet? Is it possible, do you think? I am not so sure.
Nor am I. It is either a path forward, a reminder, a nudge in the right direction, or a trap.
The chain can mean a lot of things, which is what is so fascinating about it, and I am in no hurry to pin ;-) it down.
Quite a story. If you don't have a "Jeremy" with you, perhaps we all need to construct our inner Jeremy. I was in my 40's before I began to appreciate how unreliable my own memory is. There was a time that if I remembered seeing something I was convinced that it happened exactly as I remembered it happening. No longer, although it did not take overlooking the guy in the gorilla suit on the basketball court to convince me. Heck, I've suffered from "male pattern blindness" for as long as I remember and STILL did not appreciate how unreliable my memory is. Is that what the wisdom of age is all about? One slowly learns which of his beliefs are simply not true with experience? Only the lucky ones, I fear.
I recently became aware of the 'supertaster' phenotype as a gene expression. I had not thought of something like the T2R38 taste receptor as something that could possibly enhance fitness. Went down a the rabbit hole in some medical journals and low and behold there is correlation to supertaster and immune function. Crazy! My personal journey into understanding of evolution and biology is pretty shallow at this point but it continues to blow my mind. The 'sensor' nature of our bodies , the built in feedback loops that regulate function that has evolved from millions if not billions of iterations is amazing. There is a time to fight and a time to fly and the animals do it so well. If we could only hear the knowledge embodied in our selves . Have you read Ian McGilchrist's "The Master and His Emmisary" ? It is heavy and redundant at times but the idea that the two hemispheres process information in different ways spoke to how I see my personal process in its interaction with *reality*. I wonder how Carl Jung would edit his theories with the present state of knowledge and understanding from his day?