january quick book reflections

The Wrong Enemy, by Carlotta Gall, comes out of her nearly 15 years of reporting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, much of that time as Kabul bureau chief for the New York Times. Focuses on Pakistan's longtime support for the Taliban and other destabilizing forces in Afghanistan and how Pakistan's intelligence and military establishment perpetuates the war tearing up its neighbor to ensure that there's no stable non-client state on the border opposite India. The Afghan Taliban are, as Gall paints it, basically dependent on Pakistan for their survival and have even been directed strategically by Pakistan at various points. This has had terrible implications not just for Afghans but for Pakistanis as well, as the vicious religious intolerance and misogyny of the Taliban has spread and spawned. Nothing, from a macro level, that I didn't already know, but Gall has stories to tell and she's a good writer. Three stars

Other Minds, by Peter Godfrey-Smith, is a look at how consciousness seems to (may?) have evolved in cephalopods, which split off from the evolutionary branch that produced both vertebrates and arthropods more than 600 million years ago. That utter independence of evolution -- they in the sea, with dispersed nervous systems and nearly shapeless bodies; us on land, with giant brains, two legs, and opposable thumbs -- prompts a pretty serious need to reflect on our own specialness and on the nature of consciousness. SRB got me this as a gift: good gift, that sort of thing is catnip to me. The book ended up being okay: enlightening about a topic I knew little about but somehow less revelatory or mind-blowing than I hoped. Not its fault that my expectations were so high but there you go. 3.5 stars.

A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman, is sui generis. What is there to say? I loved the first three-fifths and then by the time she got to hearing and especially sight I was kind of ready for it to be over. She has much more interesting things to say about smell, touch, and taste than about the two senses that we're most conscious of. It's a tour-de-force of voluptuous, sensuous writing by a person who is deeply in touch with her own senses. Four stars and by golly I've never read anything like it. 

books read 2018

1. The Wrong Enemy, by Carlotta Gall
2. Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey-Smith
3. A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman

emotional quotient, part 1

Talked with Mom for half an hour or so last night. It was nice to have a spontaneous conversation; usually we have to plan days in advance because of the time difference. But I've got her and Dad using WhatsApp now and she was working from home so a mid-morning (her time) call was actually doable. SRB was with me on the couch here, as well, and one of the things we talked about was grief counseling. SRB had a longtime yoga client who's a therapist -- not a common profession in this mental-healthcare-starved country -- and had previously suggested reaching out to her. And we'd talked even before Jack died about seeking therapy. It's something I've thought about kind of idly for a couple of years at least but never done anything about.

One of the things I am trying to do in the aftermath of Jack's death is take more rigorous emotional care of myself. My general tendency is to move through life without huge emotional amplitude. Usually this is a good thing: I handle stressful situations well and am happy and content most of the time. But there are times when I wonder what it costs me to be so even.

A memory: When my maternal grandfather died, in 2002, his funeral was held at the church down the road from where and my step-grandmother lived. I sat right behind my Mom's older brother, himself a pretty emotionally contained person. He sobbed loudly, rocking back and forth. Everyone, it seemed, was crying: my brothers, my parents, my relatives, my grandfather's friends. Except me. I looked around and felt that I should be crying, wished that I would cry. But my body did not want to. No tears, no sobs, no quivering chin. It felt like something was wrong with me: was I less sad than everyone else? What did that mean, if so? Did I love my grandfather less than I should have? What was I missing, and missing out on, by not sharing in the outward expressions of grief?

A more recent memory: A few weeks ago, we went into the morgue at the hospital where Jack's body ended up. The security guard who led us there and unlocked the door to the pathology wing explained that he wasn't in too bad shape, a little bruising around the face. I felt nervous, holding back tears as we walked. And I was not prepared for the sight that greeted us: Jack's mouth was open, and his eyes open and vacantly turned upward. The rest of his body was still covered up by the white body bag. I went into convulsive sobs, felt lightheaded, gasped for air, moaned. Lincoln keened in a way I had never heard before. Mom and Dad also sobbed uncontrollably. At some point I couldn't stand and so I knelt and put my head in my hands. The others came over and hugged me or put their hands on me.

We spent what felt like a long time in the wing but can't have been more than 30 or 40 minutes. I couldn't bear to be in the room that whole time so I spent a few stretches in the hallway, on a chair that the guard kindly brought.

It was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. And yet in weeping together, touching each other, the four of us were able to support each other in our individual grief and shock. That shared experience took place over and over the next day and the days after that. So in a way I was relieved to be overwhelmed.

Now, three weeks after finding out that Jack was dead, I'm trying to gauge how closely I've returned to my normal baseline. I'm worried the answer is "too closely." I am sad, even overcome at times. But threw myself back into work immediately, have not wept since I left the States, have not confronted the things Jack left behind: His raps, the photographs of him I have in my house, his Facebook page. The journals and art at Mom and Dad's. To some degree I've slipped right back into the compartmentalization that comes so naturally to me. But I am trying to resist it, trying to let the wound heal slowly rather than slapping some super glue in there, wrapping it up in tape, and injecting the affected area with novocaine. 

i don't know what to title this post

This blog's namesake died last Friday night, released from this life -- to borrow a phrase I used earlier in the month in a different context -- by a vet after my parents (and the vet) decided he was suffering too much to go on. We all had a list of preferred nicknames for Sherlock the yorkiepoo, but mine were mostly variants on Mister Suss. The origin is unclear, I assume I (or maybe someone else in the family) said it one day in his puppyhood while speaking to him in the babytalk voice that's so natural to use even with adult pets.

The context I used the phrase in earlier was in drafting a death notice for my youngest brother. He killed himself on 6 January, by jumping off a parking deck in the town where he lived. It took the coroner a few days to find out who he was because he wasn't carrying any ID. My other brother called me at 7 AM the following Wednesday; I'd returned to Islamabad from the Christmas holidays on the 3rd, so it was his Tuesday night. I ignored the first call, but when he called back right away I knew even before picking up that Jack had died.

That day and the next I cried a lot, talked to Linc and M&D, to my best friend, and to SRB most of all, who was wonderfully patient and present through my disoriented sadness. Early-early Friday morning I flew to Boston and then drove up to NH to be with the rest of the fam (my aunt Becca, who lives outside Boston, very kindly gave me a lift; one of the odd side effects of unexpected grief is that people jump to help and you end up in some unexpected conversations -- I'm sure that was by an order of magnitude the longest unbroken time I've ever spent with her and it was great to just chat).

Being with the family was essential because the weekend in NH was horrible. Seeing J's body, dealing with his apartment, talking to the staff and other people at the place where he was living: all incomprehensibly painful. But going through the shock and early grief together helped to make it more bearable. We drove down to M&D's house on Sunday evening, via Linc's, and then spent the rest of the week together there.

And now I'm back in Islamabad, far, far away from home again. Having to have the "I'm so sorry" conversation multiple, sometimes what feels like dozens of times a day while trying to catch up on work and deal with high-profile (for us) visitors.

What strikes me most as I write this is the continued unreality of Jack's death. We spent time with his body, first in the hospital and then in the funeral home before he was cremated. We wailed and wept together many times; I cried more that Wednesday and Thursday than I had cumulatively in my adult life, and then smashed that record to smithereens on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Deep, body crying was a new experience for me, the kind where you have trouble breathing. When we got his ashes the next day they were still warm, and I rode back to Mom and Dad's house with them in a sealed box between my feet.

But Linc and I both had the experience the week after Jack died of feeling like he had just gone off the radar again. He'd done it plenty of times before, and it was always scary but rarely dominated my attention. It became routine. So his being out of touch now, at a gut level, feels like it could just be that again. I know it's not, and I get waves of awareness of his death and my sadness at my -- our -- loss. But a lot of the time in the first three-plus weeks after finding out that he'd died my brain just seemed to tell me that he'll be back.

I started writing this last night and am poking along on it at work today to give myself breaks from the excruciatingly detailed (but useful, so that's okay) feedback we got from Canada on an early childhood development proposal that we're behind on. This morning, perhaps because I said something dumb last night and then didn't follow up on it well and so SRB is angry with me and I'm frustrated with myself, and also I barely slept for reasons only partly explainable by stressing over that interaction, I'm feeling the sadness about Jack more physically and "real-ly" than average.

While lying awake in bed last night I started imagining, on a loop, his last hours in his apartment: journaling, smoking cigarettes, looking out the window, rubbing his hands over his face, thinking about the parking deck. Alone. Those images are following me around today. They're almost cinematic, like a movie montage, edited unconsciously to efficiently tell the story my brain invented to explain or empathize or describe his death. I have no way of knowing, now, how close they hew to reality. One day I'll read Jack's journals and talk to M&D about their conversations with his circle in NH and maybe they will shed some light. In the meantime, I'm stuck in that neatly edited, profoundly sad loop.

Incidentally, there was a study of nuns that found those who in their youth wrote more complex sentences were less likely to develop dementia in old age. If the paragraph before the last one is any indication, I am never going to develop dementia. Mandatory remedial camp for devotees of sub-clauses and parenthetical asides, maybe.

SRB asked me the other night whether I felt like I had enough space to grieve and the answer, frankly, is no. Too much to do. I may take a day off this week or next to be with myself a little bit. Now back to work. 

new year

It's easy, when making resolutions, to make too many. Or maybe that's the wrong way of looking at it. Maybe it's too hard to prioritize. Come to think of it, "Prioritization, that is your weakness," were words that came out of my boss's mouth during my annual review last month. So, here is a list of resolutions for 2018, some of which I will achieve and others of which are aspirational. And some of which I will not focus on and others that I will. For now, an undifferentiated list, which I will grow over the next couple of days and then sort into tiers:

• run under 20:00 for 5km
• learn to sing well enough to harmonize reliably with SRB
• learn three songs on the ukulele
• learn a three-card-trick routine well enough to perform it spontaneously
• complete the Coursera MOOC on guitar for beginners
• read 30 books, of which 15+ are by women and 10+ are by people of color
• make one domestic trip outside Islamabad per month
• rejoin the book club
• hire two people for my team at work
• travel to four new countries
• take the GRE
• be a better manager
• come up with a more useful way to say "better manager" than "better manager"
• complete the Khunjerab Pass 10K
• heal shoulder
• be more proactive about nurturing friendships old and new; more Skype calls to the States and more casual group activities in Pakistan

old year

2017 was a whirlwind. My first calendar year spent outside the US since 2006-2007. Beginning and growth of a serious relationship with a woman I love. A job that has taught me a lot and challenged me an order of magnitude more than any other I've had. Lots and lots (and lots) of new friends and acquaintances. A trip to eastern Europe with M&D, and a trip to the Himalayas with Linc. Flying to NH for an afternoon to see Jack in July. Joining a book club for the first time ever. Much more that I won't even begin to try to capture here because otherwise I'll be at my computer all night.

Books completed in 2017 (five most memorable in bold):
1. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
2. A Perfect Spy, by John Le Carre
3. LaRose, by Louise Erdrich
4. What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman
5. Blindness, by Jose Saramago
6. Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
7. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
8. Doughnut Economics, by Kate Raworth
9. The City and the City, by China Mieville
10. What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, by Leslie Arimah
11. Sister Outside, by Audre Lorde
12. Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman
13. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, by Alice Dreger
14. Prussian Blue, by Philip Kerr
15. What If?, by Randall Munroe
16. The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
17. Would Everybody Please Stop?, by Jenny Allen
18. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, by Mohsin Hamid
19. The Butcher Bird, by SD Sykes
20. A Legacy of Spies, by John Le Carre
21. The Struggle for Pakistan, by Ayesha Jalal
22. The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
23. Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams
24. The Last Mughal, by Will Dalrymple
25. La Belle Sauvage, by Philip Pullman

I read 80% of Carlotta Gall's The Wrong Enemy in December but didn't finish until the plane ride home after New Year's, so it counts for 2018.

Doughnut Economics should be required reading for high school students across the US. Capitalist obsession with growth is doom, but there need to be good, simple, appealing alternatives to the simple, appealing metaphors we use now. It's easy to despair at the triumph of right-wing and centrist narratives and much harder to posit some reasonable alternatives. Raworth does. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex is a stunning history of the science of sex, gender, and sexuality. Deeply enriched my understanding of the degree to which biological sex, and not just gender, is itself socially constructed. The Underground Railroad was the best novel I read this year. The Struggle for Pakistan is well-researched, informative, and the worst-written professionally published book I've ever read. Yes, including The Da Vinci Code. The Last Mughal, by contrast, is astoundingly well-researched and also gripping. We helped Dalrymple organize a family vacation this year to the north so he could write about it for the Financial Times, so I happened to be on a couple of email chains with him. Didn't get a chance to meet him, but if I ever do I'll be able to creep him out by memorizing his passport number (you know, if I felt like it). He is a fantastic writer.