Okay. I've started 2 or 3 posts, but still haven't finished them. So I'm going to cheat a little, and start posting my old e-mails, which are pretty much like my blog entries now--random thoughts and anecdotes. Anyway, here's the first, from around October/November 2002. It was written to an architect, with whom I'm no longer in contact.

Dear ___,

OK. Language. Well, for a long time I struggled with being forced to use a language that was not my own. Sure, as a teenager desperately trying to forge an identity—and who chose her identity to be “I-will-challenge-all-of-your-expectations-of-what-I-should-do-or-say feminist”—I attempted to alter some of the more sexist aspects of the English language. E.g. I would write “wommon” rather than “woman” and use “she” as the impersonal pronoun rather than “he.” I no longer view “woman” as a sexist spelling, but continue to use “wommon” anyway (and “womyn” for the plural) because I think it’s good to use at least a couple of words differently from the established spelling or pronunciation (to remind myself, and others who can somehow understand, that strict adherence to rules without some questioning should be avoided). I was distressed to realize, however, that altering a few words didn’t disguise the fact that I was using a language, and usually following the rules, established by dead white men centuries before I was born. And language is far from objective—the words that you use are imperfect approximations of what they describe, and you’re forced to acknowledge that subjectivity every time you use those words that were created or chosen by someone else: some languages have twenty words for rice, some have only the present tense of verbs, some tend to have more abstract words, etc. As a staunch individualist (is there such a word? I think you get my meaning), I didn’t want to use a language that wasn’t completely my own…I dreamed of creating an entirely new language for myself. (My friend David dreamed with me…although he insisted that we keep the word “episode” from the normal English language, since he found it so beautiful.) But of course, if you create a completely personal and self-created language, then no one else can understand you, and you lose the ability to communicate with others. At this time I placed very little importance upon language and used it sparingly, instead focusing on art, which I felt was a kind of personal language through image. Until I realized that I could make these written and spoken words my own through the use of metaphor. No longer would the words’ meanings be solely determined by Webster’s—they could mean anything that I wanted, as long as I subverted their classical meanings by creating new meanings of my own. Like taking a square of paper and folding it, origami style, into any crane or fish or dinosaur that I wished. So the dilemma wasn’t completely solved, but I did re-embrace language as a means of artistic expression. There’s more of course, but I won’t burden you with it

I’m listening to my latest purchase, Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” which strangely seems like an appropriate aural backdrop for this long overdue letter. I’m also all aglow from checking out the Wilco documentary, “I am trying to break your heart,” about the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which I listened to over and over and over and over again this past summer. God, I had forgotten how much music can make me feel, and how much it can heal. Same goes for art…when I was fucking drowning in despair after losing a kid last Wednesday (one that I was caring for during my current Pediatrics rotation…she was only thirteen), I was able to escape from the pain and somehow exist on this alternate plane which was pure light, pure motion, no thought, no body. My existence was narrowed down to a precise point of concentrated power. This is what happens when I draw or paint.

So to begin, I’m going to comment on the e-mail that you wrote months ago describing your thoughts about architecture and what it means. I must guiltily admit that in the past I was of the group who barely paid any attention to the buildings around her, and when I thought consciously thought about architecture, I thought about the Guggenheim or other showy buildings that deviate greatly from more generic-looking ones. Ugh, how awful it is to see that I’m just like rest of the ignorant masses in this regard! I think I’m slowly gaining a greater appreciation for architecture though…I decided to work on a silkscreen project for a friend of mine, and have chosen as my subject some areas in downtown Durham. Although the buildings are aging and peeling and clothed in faded pastel hues, I’m quite enamored of the tension between the decay and the spic-and-spam prim ’50’s sensibility. I say this with very little authority, since I am totally ignorant about what exactly ’50’s architecture is…but, well, I guess the buildings in downtown Durham remind me of the desolate buildings in Edward Hopper paintings. They’re starkly simple and beautiful, especially after all the frilly excess of French buildings that my eyes tired of seeing during this past summer.

Okay. So to go back to your e-mail (how quickly I get distracted!) I was struck by how your description of the divide between the phenomenologists and political architects seemed to echo what I was reading earlier today about the divide between the Romantic poets Keats and Shelley; the writer described Keats as a poet who yearned for a life of pure sensation, while Shelley wished to put poetry at the center of politics, to reshape a more just and egalitarian world. I don’t agree wholly with the writer’s supposed opposition between the two poets, but it was fun to wrap my mind around a dichotomy that echoed the one that I explored months ago when reading your words. It seems that the phenomenologists were about simply feeling and experiencing…that the person who is experiencing the architectural object is a partner in its creation. While the political architects seem to be like designers of a pipe system, or of a dairy farm: making sure that the flow of moving things is as untroubled and logical as possible, with much less allowance for the individual experience and more interest in directing large groups of people. While I do have such an affection for the Romantics, I must admit that there is much value in the logical construction of a building or city. There was many a time while lost in the crazy spiderweb of streets in Paris when I wished I was back in the easy-to-follow grid of streets in Manhattan. But then…in Manhattan you don’t come across lots of hidden secret gardens and other surprise spots in the same way that you while wandering in Paris. When walking through a city that is not so logically designed, you become so much more aware of your surroundings. Whereas in a city that is logically designed, your surroundings fade away, unnoticed, as you head toward your destination, conscious of how many right angle turns you’ll need to make before getting there. Form vs. function I suppose. Like reading a novel for the languages and images vs. for the plot.

I had not realized how the personal visions of the architects Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright led to the unfortunate byproducts of dilapidated urban ghettos and mind-numbingly conformist suburbia. It’s quite disenchanting to see how these lovely ideas meant to make our living situations more humane get completely fucked up in their execution and their unchecked overabundance.

So what do you see as the purpose of architecture? What is your own philosophy about the meaning of what you do? Or do you simply do it, without bogging yourself down with too much philosophy about the purpose of it all? (Somehow I don’t see that from you.) I imagine, from your description of how you work, that you incorporate aspects of both the phenomenologists and the political architects…what other considerations do you make about the effect the building will have on its inhabitants, and how the inhabitants will respond to the building?

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been having a rough time with the death of one of my patients, especially since I feel partially (although irrationally, as the residents have told me repeatedly) responsible. She had a genetic disorder that made her unable to metabolize protein, and would have episodes of greatly increased blood levels of ammonia, which is toxic to the body (especially the brain). She was admitted because she was suffering the effects of too much ammonia: confusion, dizziness, somnolence, and weakness. She was put on medication to bring her ammonia back down, which worked, but somehow, without warning, she suddenly shut down. Her brain scans revealed that her brain was swollen with fluid, and she was clinically brain dead. Her family is just devastated, of course, and I’m overcome with sadness for them, as well as guilt…I keep thinking that if I had been more thorough, if I had looked carefully enough, I could have seen something that perhaps could have tipped the odds in her favor. I suspect that it comes from trying to combat helplessness and lack of control…by thinking that I could have changed the outcome, I can fool myself into thinking that I had some power, some effect on this kid’s survival. I don’t know. When I spoke with her mom before the event leading to her brain death happened, she had been so hopeful that her daughter would get better. She described her daughter’s flourishing interest in reading and writing, her daughter’s constant fighting with her brother (“although he feels guilty as anything when she ends up in the hospital”…God, what he must be going through right now), her daughter’s pride in her hair which she had grown all the way down to her waist. I’m constantly haunted by images of her comatose body in the Intensive Care Unit, her forehead stained brown for a reason that is unknown to me, her family crowded around her bed, in vigil. Her parents wiping tears from their eyes, their faces immeasurably weighed by grief. Her grandmother’s mouth drawn down and her eyes empty of hope, the way she shook her head when I, in my ignorance of the full extent of what happened, asked if the girl would be OK.

Well, it’s 2:20 a.m., and I still have to write my H&P, and have to wake up to be at the hospital by 6:00 a.m….so unfortunately I’ll wait until the next e-mail to write about chaos and about the art exhibits that I saw in France (which you saw, too…at least in my mind) and my gay ecstatically dancing Jesus in a blue tank top and red clam digger pants and a seventies David Cassidy hairdo. I hope that all is well with you.

--Me

P.s. To just start the bit on my thoughts about Chaos, I was struck by how those who came up with it were able to disregard classically defined limits imposed by conventional physics and mathematics to understand this beautiful concept that had been hidden all this time as scientists disregarded “experimental error.” It reminds me of a quote from a David Mack comic book (paraphrased): “The rational conform to the rules of the world, while the irrational make the world conform to their rules. Therefore, all important breakthroughs are made by irrational people.” Now, I take some issue with his use of the words “rational” and “irrational”; I don’t think the dichotomy is really correct with those words as the opposing poles. But I think that the sense of his statement is still so important. That pioneers of any kind, whether in physics or art or medicine, must break free of the limitations imposed by previous interpretations of their fields in order for new discoveries to be made. This was certainly the case with the Cubist artists, the modernist writers, and those who created the theory of Chaos. And, well, any link that I can draw between science and art makes me happy, especially a virtue of art that I believe in so passionately: destroying perceived limits and expanding the possibilities of thought and experience and understanding, opening our eyes to previously unseen aspects of existence.