Food and Bike Crash

I'll say this about Korean food: my digestive system's response to it is a constant surprise.

On Sunday I was in a bike crash. I had ridden about 10 or 15 miles along the river, and I was on a pretty heavily travelled bike path. As I was riding two abreast in the eastbound lane of the bike path, another biker in the westbound lane made a left turn into me. I'm not sure exactly what happened, because I blacked out, but when I woke up there were people rolling me over onto my back. It seems I broke my fall with my face, which in turn broke my face. I have a broken schnozzer and a wicked headache, but other than that I'm fine. Everyone around was really helpful, including tiny Korean children, who smiled and waved and flashed thumbs-up at me, and my boss from work who came to the hospital and helped me avoid a tetanus booster in the ass. At the scene of the crash, someone called the police, people brought cold washcloths for my head, one guy seemed to be on dedicated keep-Brett-from-trying-to-sit-up duty, and a few minutes later an ambulance came and took me to the emergency room.

In the emergency room, I had two x-rays, a CT scan to check for bleeding into my brain, a shot of antibiotics, and a blood test. All of that, plus the ambulance trip, cost $240. A police officer came to the hospital later with the cyclist who hit me. That cyclist told the officer it was his fault, so he's paying for all my medical costs, which I feel kind of bad about, but I guess that's how it works. Anyway, no infection, no internal bleeding, just a broken nose. I might need surgery to make sure it heals properly, but I won't know until Thursday.

So far, the worst part is that I can't wear my glasses. Apparently they put too much pressure on my broken schnozzer. Teaching a bunch of colorful blobs has been interesting. "Hey you--blurry kid in the back. Wearing red. Yeah, you. Pay attention." On the plus side, I now have a good reason for being slow at learning names.

Not Natural

Hey Guys, time to blog about not being in Salem again. So, lately I've been really connecting with this idea that we as humans have very natural, primal and ancient parts of ourselves that we, and our culture, often suppress. I'm sure we're all familiar with the argument that humans have "fallen out" of nature and feel instead we can conquer it etc. Well, I'm talking more about our inner psyches not necessarily our connection to things green. We are an ancient species, and the urban/modern lifestyles we experience in this day has existed for only one tiny miniscule percent of our entire existence. This history has left something ancient in our evolution. With my immersion into business school, I have become acutely aware of this ancient woman-being inside of me. During this semester at times when I had so much school work that I did not have time to breathe, an emotional force came out from inside of me. It manifested in tears and trembling, feelings of isolation and being lost, and an overall confusion "from where do these feelings come? is it me?" It was the feeling that I am sure in history past has led people to seek exorcisms.

On the day of my last exam, when everyone was at the Aquarium and the weather was beautiful, I found a book of C.G. Jung's nature writings. On one of the intro pages I read some along the lines of: "If the natural and ancient psyche of a person is suppressed and ignored, it can revolt... at time suicidally." It all made sense to me then. Those emotions, those strong feelings that felt as thought they would burst from my chest were my ancient woman-being starved for attention. I suddenly understood why I had become so deeply invested in dance this past semester and why at times I felt a force from inside, myself but not, starved for something.

Having become more aware of this part of myself, I was able to understand my feelings when I was first boarding my plane home to New Orleans yesterday. I suddenly felt sad, separated, insecure, and unsure. I think that it is not natural for people to be subjected to switching between worlds so quickly. Getting on a plane and flying from my life in Salem to a past life in New Orleans got my ancient woman-being's panties in a twist. And it's cool now. Now that I know she's there and what her deal is I don't feel so afraid or confused when I don't understand my emotions, I just know they're from her.