tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-235599262024-02-03T10:37:32.468-05:00OKU OBIM: Heart meets mouthaka The Musings of a Nigerian woman/student physician/Writer/ChristianRosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-40508908574139548962008-07-19T19:14:00.006-04:002008-08-02T13:37:53.798-04:00Thoughts from a budding doctorThere are certain careers that are more than just careers; they are a way of life. They require a lot of devotion, being other-focused, and having a readiness to be self-sacrificial. Medicine is one such career, and one that I have chosen.<br /><br />As a physician-in-training, I’m learning a lot about self-denial and service. While the prestige of medicine has been waning over the years, I am still honored to be a part of this profession. I am humbled by the molding it takes to become a competent, compassionate, and effective physician. I find myself changing to be someone that I sometimes doubted that I could be. For example, with the start of clinical rotations, and knowing that I am not (absolutely not) a morning person, I was very worried that I would not be able to wake up on time to be at the hospital at whatever time that I’m expected to be there. Yet, something happened...the call of duty, knowing that I have patients to attend to, whatever it is...and I find myself, as if it were a congenital habit, waking up regularly at about 4 am, dressing and preparing for work, driving to the hospital, spending long hours in the hospital (with some positive and discouraging events), and finding myself awake and with my wits still with me. Even more exciting, I find myself content with how I spend my day. No, actually I do know what that "something" is--it's my God, helping me to be how I need to be. The bible reminds me that God never gives me more than I can handle. <br /><br />At the core of a physician’s lifestyle is the idea of service—-doctors serve their patients, a somewhat weird idea given that doctors probably make more than some (if not most) of their patients. I always want to remind myself that I am here to serve my patients, to help them in any way that I can. I also want to make it a habit to pray for my patients before I see them, to acknowledge their complexity by soliciting help from their maker. I hope, years from now, as I become a seasoned professional, to always remember what a privilege it is to do what I do. In what other profession can total strangers come up to me, trusting me enough to be vulnerable to me, in hopes that I can help, that I can relieve their pain or distress? When I can help, my sleep-deprived nights, my years of studying, and the self-denial all seem worth it. It is a mutual relationship, this doctor-patient relationship. I know that doctors can sometimes be portrayed as heroes or as being altruistic. But there is some level of gain in my desire to care for others. The desire to help or devote my life to caring for others relieves the psychic discomfort of not having a purpose, of not being necessary outside of my own mind. Moreover, the knowledge that I am helping others gives me its own dose of joy and contentment. My life is meaningful by just being present and making myself useful to others. There are many ways to help people. I have focused on health because good health is a ticket that people need for the flight to their dreams, goals, and wishes. To not have good health is to render a life relatively immobile.<br /><br />Right now, I feel that it is a joy to be on this path that I am on...caring for the sick and helping the healthy stay healthy. It is a fate that I have accepted, one that I know brings its own challenges and frustations. However, if I approach my work as I know God wants me to, this journey that I have started, the lives of these people that I will encounter will usher in maturity and insight into the mystery and beauty of the human soul, of the human being--this wonderful creation by the one and only wonderful God.Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-51534617001083461492008-04-05T21:12:00.023-04:002008-04-11T10:50:32.030-04:00On the issue of male pregnancyProbably since human existence, women, in the midst of labor pains and all the other relative inconveniences of pregnancy, have often wished that their husbands could help carry the load. Many women, especially during labor, have wondered about the unfairness of being the sole bearer of the pain. <em>Why can’t he be the pregnant one?</em> This thought has seeped into the minds and out of the mouths of many women. However, for better or for worse, wishing and reality can be very different things.<br /><br />My view on male pregnancy is a complex one, but in some sense made simpler by the knowledge that all cases of male pregnancy that I am aware of have had science as an ally and instigator. In order to do justice to my perspective on this topic, I’ll discuss the different roles that I carry and the thoughts that each role provokes about male pregnancy.<br /><br />1) <strong>I am an advocate of women’s rights and advancement, which to many people means that I am a feminist</strong>. I don’t object to being called a feminist; after all, I think that every self-respecting person who ever had a mother, sister, aunt, female friend, and so on, should be a feminist. From this feminist perspective, male pregnancy might seem to be a good thing. After all, some of the disadvantages that women experience in the work force, in terms of the rate at which they advance in their fields or even the diversity of the fields they can be represented in, has to do with their unique ability to conceive and give birth to a child. The relatively delicate pregnant woman, her need for maternity leave, her mothering role, and so on do not impress some bosses, who tend to consider the ability to get up and go, without much restriction or hesitation, a virtue. One could argue that one of the reasons women might be more likely to want family time with their kids is that they bore the children or took a significant part in ensuring the well-being of the children early on in life, and as such would like the reward or satisfaction of maintaining a close personal relationship with them. So, with male pregnancy, men might be expected to want more family time. If more men start becoming pregnant, maybe, just maybe, the unfairness in the relative lack of acceptance of women into the top career fields might start to decrease. It is a man’s world (men make most of the laws and decisions that affect everyone else and, hence, necessarily protect their interests). Consequently, reproductive ability (in terms of the ability to become pregnant) may cease to be a disadvantage, since men would be affected as well. However, all this is assuming that a significant number of the male population would be interested in being the pregnant parent.<br /><br />2) <strong>I am a medical student</strong>. I am aware of medicine’s fascination with trying to make human beings better. People that are born with congenital diseases, physical deformities, or other diseases, come to the doctor’s office. Medicine’s Achilles' heel is its awareness of its own limitations, which it tries to overcome by finding more ways to advance in its knowledge and capabilities. However, it is one thing to seek advancement for the sake of reducing the rate or onset of death and the degree of suffering; it is quite another to seek advancement purely to satisfy man’s desire to make himself or to see himself recreated for himself or in another. Quite frankly, a pregnant male is an at-risk male with an at-risk embryo or fetus. It is important to be cognizant of the fact that changes during pregnancy are not just restricted to the swelling of the abdomen. Rather, various organs and tissues undergo changes to accommodate the new life. What is the long-term consequence of putting a male body through an experience that it has not been designed for? It is well known that a man’s bone structure is not suited for carrying such a load as pregnancy. Such men may be at risk for post-delivery chronic back pain as the most benign side effect. For someone like Mr. Lee Mingwei, the man reported to be the first pregnant male, instead of a child in the bubble of the uterus, his child had to grow in the abdominal cavity. The lining of the abdominal cavity—the peritoneum—can become inflamed (e.g. from inflammation or infection in nearby organs such as the appendix or from injury to the cavity), a condition called peritonitis, which is a surgical emergency. Moreover, an embryo usually implants into the endometrial wall of the uterus. For males, since there is no uterus to attach to, attachment must be to other organs or structures, which leaves the pregnant male at risk for dangerous complications or organ loss.<br /><br />3) <strong>I am the author of The Looming Fog, a novel that explores the life and social rights of various individuals, including an intersexed individual or a person with “ambiguous genitalia.” </strong>In writing a book about an intersexed individual, some assume that I support the lifestyle of most transsexuals, transvestites, and homosexuals. These people who make these assumptions are mostly people who have not actually read my book and, hence, don’t really know what it is about. In exploring the social troubles of an intersexual character, along with those of other characters, my purpose was to show our intolerance for a state or condition that God, for whatever reason, has allowed. My book specifically addresses the inhumanity in debasing a human soul on the basis of his or her poverty, physical appearance, or sex, especially when these factors are not the individual’s doing. My novel tries to show the sickness of a society that condones such a behavior. While the intersexed character in my novel did put on clothes normally worn by the other sex, s/he was wearing <em>both</em> male and female clothes to reflect his/her uncertainty about being either sex or to reflect his/her likeness to each sex; a dressing style that was initially imposed by his/her father. While there was a dream scene about a seahorse giving birth (only the male species do), this is not an indication of my support of male pregnancy. Instead, this particular scene is actually a clue to an important question in the book. A seahorse and a human are different in many ways, one of them being that the male species of one was designed to give birth, while the male species of the other was not designed with that inherent capability. While my spiritual beliefs do not allow me to support the lifestyle of certain people (whether heterosexual or not), I am still expected to respect all people, like I would myself. My differing opinion about people’s way of life does not negate their rights to respectful treatment or to maltreatment-free and abuse-free lives.<br /><br />4) <strong>I am a Christian</strong>, as such, I am anxious about humans attempting to repeat man’s first sin: wanting to be like God. I am also not apt to call his creations mistakes. Granted, I can’t explain, for example, why someone was born with a congenital absence of the lower limbs. I might venture to say that maybe it was due to some toxin introduced during prenatal life and so on. No matter what the etiology of the person’s condition may be, such a person is not inferior to me nor am I superior to him or her. I might have a less difficult life, but the degree of pain and suffering that such a person experiences on account of his or her condition relates to what we define or welcome as a respectable human being. The problem is not the creation, but rather the value we ascribe to that creation. So, it is not often a God issue, but rather a problem in human beings' cultivated perception.<br /><br />5) <strong>I am a female</strong>. I take great pride in the full mind and body design of the female. I admire her complexity, functionality, and beauty. For whatever reason, the female body was the one designed to grow, nurture, and carry life, and it was not designed to be a disadvantage to women—if it seems so, it is only because our society has allowed it to be so. My body’s ability to nurture life is not one that I’d personally like to see duplicated in my male partner. For a person like Mr. Thomas Beatie, a transgendered male, now a few months pregnant because of his intact female organs, I find him to be a contradiction of sorts. On the one hand, he doesn’t accept his female body, which is incongruent with his male gender or identification, and he has gone through what must have been emotionally, socially, and medically challenging situations just to be able to show others and himself the self that he perceives himself to be. Yet, when the condition so arose, he is not opposed to taking advantage of the female organs he had been born with. Of course, one could argue that it was a very challenging decision to make, but one he made because he found some purpose for his female reproductive organs, as well as a way to bring happiness to the family he has cultivated. I can understand his need to make this decision, and I wish him and his family well. Nevertheless, I take a slight offense to his actions. As a female, I can’t help feeling the cheapening of the female body as something that is valuable mainly because it can carry a life. I think that if we are going to say that whoever made us did not match our body with our gender, we should prove the maker to be completely wrong; otherwise, we become like someone who decides to return a female toy to its maker because it had a male voice or attire, but then later decides to keep the toy’s ovaries. Nonetheless, Mr. Beatie (like anyone else) is entitled to do anything he pleases with his body (within the limits of science or the law).<br /><br />The risk of male pregnancy to the parent is high (well, maybe not as much for the Mr. Beatie-type of male pregnancy, since "he" is doing what his body had been originally designed to do). Even if the risk of male pregnancy weren't so high, it is not something that I would encourage. Human male pregnancy, in instances where the pregnancy is indeed carried by a biological male, is a scientific reversal of what nature has endorsed. Despite whatever advantages male pregnancy may bring into our modern way of life, I am unwaveringly in favor of the judgments of nature on human reproductive roles.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/male+pregnancy" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=male+pregnancy" />male pregnancy</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/intersexed" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=intersexed" />intersexed</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/transgendered" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=transgendered" />transgendered</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/looming+fog" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=looming+fog" />looming fog</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/esehagu" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=esehagu" />esehagu</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-29179902649155973752008-03-08T23:07:00.000-05:002008-03-08T23:07:42.691-05:00In search of a (secure) identity, hexapus welcomedI wrote the piece below (but somewhat modified) for a creative writing course that I took in college. In this piece, I explored the mind of the stereotypical insecure, teenage girl, and I used the word “hexapus,” which probably only existed in the science fiction world, to illustrate my point about the main character. Now, years later, I read that British marine experts have recently found what seems to be the world's first "hexapus." It’s interesting to see something formally restricted to the mind now become available to the senses.<br /><br />***<br />Her inflatable octopus seems excited to go swimming with her. Its skin is rubbery, and it wears a permanent, multicolored cap on its head. Its mouth is open in a half moon—-apparently laughing and unconcerned that the very place it wishes to go knows its weakness and can, at will, pull its plug or poke at it, rendering it lifeless, disfigured, and ashamed, in front of everyone.<br /><br />She should have been ready an hour ago, but she could not decide which bathing suit to wear. She couldn’t find one that would hide her a little from the microscopic eyes of her mates. Really, any regular pair of eyes will do to see her, the middle school girl who looks like someone’s aunt. Her body betrays her; it sets her friends against her and makes them think that she is a thief, although she doesn’t know what she, apparently, constantly steals. She is like one who has made a pact with the devil, since people keep staring at her, as if they know her secret. Another set of people look at her, approving her, but only because they’ve also sold something. Her body refuses to hide, it silences her, and it speaks for her, but it’s a stranger to her. This body—-her reflection to the world—-lies about the purity of her soul. It lies. Alas, how will she fix looking like a ripe fruit when she’s only a seedling, especially before the condemning eyes of her peers, or before the hungry eyes that follow her, destroying her innocence, her childhood?<br /><br />She looks at her octopus and wonders why it doesn’t feel like an impostor, since it has only six tentacles but openly claims to be an octopus. She instantly wishes that they could swap bodies, but then it would already be at the pool with a big smile on its face, while she would be working on explaining how she is a lineage behind octopuses, her name being hexapus.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/identity+crisis" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=identity+crisis" alt=" " />identity crisis</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/hexapus" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=hexapus" alt=" " />hexapus</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" alt=" " />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-37380004563632710572008-02-14T22:24:00.008-05:002008-04-05T21:22:23.378-04:00The downside of desireInspired by "Farewell my concubine," the film (director Chen Kaige, 1993).<br /><br /><br />Desire, this thing. What is it? We give it a name, desire (like it is a mere noun), but it is also a constant action within the heart and mind that stirs the soul. A desire that reaches maturity without too much delay or obstacles is the safest on the soul and mind, while a protracted desire can become a double edge sword—it cuts the world in order to reshape it and to defeat it into submission to a specific vision; however, desire does not spare its master. A protracted desire. Is it a monster or a blessing upon full bloom? While it may reach maturity, its taste becomes complex: simultaneously sweet and pungent, sometimes one or the other, and at times neither and something else altogether. (No, not at all not like aged wine.) It has lived too long and becomes a consuming fire that burns all within its proximity. The body it inhabits and works on becomes a patchwork, sometimes even a ghost, of its former self, remodeled, reshaped, but never again to be smooth or easy. It is like a hand that has had to roughen and had to develop some calluses, some internal bleeding, and some hidden wounds--all of which serve to remind it of its need to mature into reality. Desire that has come to know its own existence will develop into a rich, refined, and often volatile reality...this desire never dies even after it can no longer be called desire. It is fulfilled yet never knows satisfaction; it lives forever as a grand cage to its owner and servant.<br /><br /><br /><br />technorati: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/desire" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=desire" alt=" " />desire</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/farewell+my+concubine" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=farewell+my+concubine" alt=" " />farewell my concubine</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/esehagu" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=esehagu" alt=" " />esehagu</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" alt=" " />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-44418845669928083642007-12-01T10:19:00.001-05:002008-09-26T09:01:33.966-04:00How does time fly?It is amazing how quickly time passes by. It seems like only a few months ago that I was making new resolutions and challenging myself not to mistakenly write 2006 on documents and so on. Yet, a lot has happened during this time period. I’m about to finish a second semester, I’ve gone to Brazil and back, I’m learning a new language, I’ve made more friends, I’m a little older and a little wiser, and the list goes on. I think it is a good practice, especially mid year, at year end, or both, to take a moment to recognize and maybe even document the ways that we have changed, for the better or for the worse. What attributes have we acquired or denounced? What attributes have we improved on or are we just noticing about ourselves? What have we done and what would we like to do or accomplish? The consequence of this practice is that a decade from now, who we are will not be a surprise to us because we have been actively involved in the process of shaping who we become.<br /><br />Time is neither our friend nor our enemy, or another way of saying this is that we can choose what time becomes to us. One of the things to realize about our relationship with time is that it has an end; it has a specific life span with each person. We should then recognize that time has two flight patterns: a relatively straight or progressive course to the end (the “just living course”) OR a punctuated course with frequent altered directions. Failure to understand how time flies can lead to feeling that time is an enemy, and almost always results from following time along its straight course, with our characteristic little input or influence on its behavior. However, <strong><em>if we understand that time has different flight patterns, we can then accept the seemingly radical idea that we can stop time.</em></strong> So how do we stop time? We stop time by understanding that we have a limited association with time AND, consequently, evaluating our use of time and whether it is in an efficient and beneficial manner. What does this mean? It means that we follow the punctuated course of time. We stop time by momentarily stopping our activities, being still and allowing our mind to evaluate the effects of its past or current actions. And based on this evaluation alter where time goes, in order to serve our maximal benefit. Each time we make a change in ourselves, in what we do, and how we behave, we have consciously or subconsciously stopped time in order to put these changes into effect.<br /><br />To prevent seeing time as an enemy, we need to more actively and consciously stop time, to engage it in a discussion about where it is going. We have the power to maximize or minimize our relationship with time. We can be passive in our relationship with it and be filled with bitterness and all sorts of negativity from:<br />(a) not being or feeling in control of time<br />(b) not being cognizant about the effect of our current actions<br />(c) not staking a claim to the future—not involving the future in our present.<br />Alternatively, we can be active in our relationship, by constantly reevaluating where we and are going and whether it is desirable, and put time to work for our maximal benefit.<br /><br />I know it's easier said than done, but don’t let time fly by without stopping to chat with it!!<br /><br /><br /><br />technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/how+time+flies" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=how+time+flies" />how time flies</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/time" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=time" />time</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-58146283039700224932007-10-08T17:26:00.000-04:002007-10-08T17:41:05.486-04:00Love--the appendix way, sort ofThe body is an amazing creation, composed of little cells that act independently, yet are acutely aware of the overall goal or purpose of the body. There are very few parts of the body that seem to add no particular purpose to the body’s functioning--except, of course, to take up space. The most well known “useless” body part is the appendix. Those who have had an appendectomy (my childhood best friend included) will testify to the agony caused by such a purposeless organ.<br /><br />However, it seems that the appendix is not going to take such bad publicity for long. Duke University Medical Center investigators are hypothesizing that the appendix might actually be protecting us by storing good bacteria. To learn more about this exciting news for all of you with an intact appendix and asking it “what is thy purpose?” go <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008102334.htm">here.</a><br /><br />Love always protects...(1 cor. 13:7).<br /><br /><br />technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/function+of+an+appendix" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=function+of+an+appendix" />function of an appendix</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-35598502527416031862007-10-01T19:22:00.000-04:002007-10-01T19:31:28.066-04:00Independence Day Wishes!Happy Independence Day, Nigeria!!<br /><br />Against most hope and indications, I wish you a new uncorrupted beginning. I wish you good social and economic health, but if you must be sick, then develop an autoimmune disorder that automatically disarms long-throated, disloyal and unfit leaders and inflicts them with painful and papular rash that marks them so that they can recognize their unfaithfulness to you.<br /><br />I wish you independence from all who hold you down and restrict you to the ground, when you are destined to soar.<br /><br />I wish you perseverance in healing the wounds of old and in fighting against new ones.<br /><br />I wish you the patience and hope needed to see that day when you will be free at last, free from all that ails you.<br /><br />I wish you to be the nation you were meant to be...mighty and proud.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/nigeria" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=nigeria" alt=" " />Nigeria</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/independence+day" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=independence+day" alt=" " />independence day</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/wishes" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=wishes" alt=" " />wishes</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" alt=" " />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-47488053083377815112007-09-06T18:35:00.000-04:002007-11-22T22:12:44.128-05:00The Game of HeartsNot long ago, I learned that my poem, "The Game of Hearts," has been accepted for publication in <em>A Little Poetry</em>, an ezine featuring the work of contemporary poets.<br /><br />As I re-read my poem, I tried to remember what inspired it, what my frame of mind was, and the process of writing it, but I couldn't remember much, which is fine. The poem has no real "story" behind it, except its stance as a glimpse of a moment in a life (whose life? It's up to the reader to create, imagine, or be). I wrote it, yet it is wiser than I am and teaches me about the heart and its eccentricities.<br /><br />To read the poem, click <a href="http://www.alittlepoetry.com/vs07rosemaryesehagu.html">HERE.</a><br /><br />For a collection of some of my other poems, click <a href="http://www.rosemaryesehagu.com/poems.htm">this</a>.<br /><br /><br />technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/the+game+of+hearts" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=the+game+of+hearts" alt=" " />The Game of Hearts</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/poem" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=poem" alt=" " />poem</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" alt=" " />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-42329490353620049792007-08-27T19:24:00.000-04:002007-08-27T19:26:31.630-04:00The homeless couple (part 2)It is interesting that you rarely ever see homeless people or beggars in villages or rural areas, which, to city folks, are the poorer or more primitive (or both) places. Yet the cities, with all their bright lights, promises of brighter futures and lives can’t seem to fulfill the dreams of all. One of the things I dislike about cities is the ready availability of the homeless and beggars. So, you can imagine my relative peace when after more than one week in Belo Horizonte (BH), I did not see one beggar or homeless person. I knew that it was only a matter of time (and I was probably in the wrong part of the city to see such a sight), but it still pleased me that it took this long.<br /><br />And when the dreaded encounter occurred (that is, the breaking of my illusion that maybe just maybe homelessness cannot be found here), I was surprisingly overcome with smiles and wonder for the goodness of the human spirit. Why? Because for the first time in my life, on a bright morning, I saw a homeless couple—a man and woman sleeping with body parts placed on top of each other, keeping warm together. And oddly, they seemed to need nothing from me. Nothing at all. The expression on their faces could easily be that of one sleeping in a waterbed in a room with all the comfort that money can buy. I wanted to take a picture, but I know it would be very rude. I walked by, careful not to violate their space, and frequently looked back to view the beauty before me. Even more amazing, later in the day, I saw this same couple, dirty as can be, holding-hands and going about their way, like the rest of us. The next morning, I passed by the same road, and sure enough, there they were again, sleeping on the floor together. I don’t know what it was about this scene that warmed my heart. I have been analyzing myself on this issue and the best that I can come up with at the moment is that this couple was not homeless, for homelessness is a kind of forced isolation. The homeless live in a busted bubble, outside of the round, big bubble we call society--and they need a visiting pass in order to get into our consciousness. But this couple, despite their apparent homelessness had found a home in each other.<br /><br />So, homelessness, I have decided, is really abandonment, be it by society, friends, or family. A homeless couple sounds almost contradictory, and here in lies the truth behind every homeless person. The structure of life from society down to individual casts a net to hold everyone in, but somehow some individuals fall or are dropped via the holes of the net and no one goes back for them.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/homelessness" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=homelessness" alt=" " />homelessness</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/trip+to+Brazil" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=trip+to+Brazil" alt=" " />trip to Brazil</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" alt=" " />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-43010420801283877172007-07-16T14:07:00.000-04:002007-07-16T14:26:42.504-04:00The homeless couple (part 1)Note: I know that homelessness—like all ills of our society— is not a popular topic. But in my time here in Brazil, I saw something quite unusual that puts an interesting flavor on homelessness and what it means. I have broken this post into two parts; the first (this post) talks about homelessness in general, and the second will focus on the scene that motivated this post. ***<br /><br />There are homeless people everywhere, except in the poorest places of the world that amidst their poverty have learned to depend on each other to form a unit--each person working so that all may have a place to stay or food to eat. A family in such places takes on a deeper meaning than just a bunch of people united by blood.<br /><br />In an ideal world, there would be no poverty, no illness, none of the plagues of society. Our world, however, is not ideal, which does not mean that we can bury the idealists in us. In fact, idealists are needed most in an imperfect world such as ours; it is the act of striving for a perfect state, condition, you name it that makes us human—a quality given to us by God himself. We may not be able to eliminate every last bit of poverty, but we certainly can reduce its prevalence. And who knows, maybe the “we can’t; it’s impossible,” that seems written on the fabric of our society is just a hint of the limits of realism, and maybe we need to don a new garment of thinking.<br /><br />It is heartbreaking to see homeless people around; they are hard to miss, yet so easily ignored. Many are covered in layers of dirty clothes and produce a stench that makes a passerby unwilling to breathe. As I pass by them, my mind cycles through a variety of emotions, none of them positive. Even my body is uneasy—I am walking too slowly, yet not slowly enough. In downtown Washington, DC where I live, for example, poverty and wealth live right next door to each other, with only a vaguely forgotten line to separate them. It is not unusual that right next to a five-star hotel is a person sleeping on the floor, in the cold of winter. What can you do about such a sight? I can’t pretend that I didn’t register the scene before me, yet I can’t offer him or her place in my apartment for all sorts of reasons. What do you do with such a scene? Maybe you leave some money, but they’re still outside, in the cold, homeless. I can’t help the guilt I feel that I have a home but they don’t, but more importantly that I can’t do much about it. Yes, there are homeless shelters, but they seem deficient or unsafe enough to cause some homeless people to prefer to sleep on the streets than stay in a shelter.<br /><br />How does a person become homeless in America—-the land of abundance, the land of dreams and opportunities? Where is his or her family or friends? How did he or she get to this point in life? What did they do wrong? Does laziness and lack of self-motivation explain it? What happened in the lives of these individuals and how can we alter it or prevent it in others?<br /><br /><br />technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/homelessness" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=homelessness" alt=" " />homelessness</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/trip+to+Brazil" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=trip+to+Brazil" alt=" " />trip to Brazil</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" alt=" " />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-88038837248592220812007-06-27T16:58:00.000-04:002007-06-27T17:40:21.210-04:00A planned city--BrasiliaTwo Wednesdays ago, I went to Brasilia—the capital of Brazil. I explored a little bit of the city, including a visit to “The Lúcio Costa Space,” where I saw the miniature plan of Brasilia, which is shaped like an airplane, and learned more about its planner, Lúcio Costa. I visited the heaven-pointing building that is one of the emblematic buildings of Brasilia—-The Metropolitan Cathedral of Brasilia, which was designed by Oscar Niemeyer. I relished in the sight of “The four evangelists,” a complex sculpture depicting the apostles: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I took a picture with my favorite apostle of the four: Luke. I can’t fully articulate why Luke is my favorite classic apostle (Paul is my favorite of all the people that can be considered apostles)--maybe it has to do with his being a physician and his attention to detail in accounting events. I then went inside the cathedral, moved as any Christian would be, by the sculptures and paintings. As I was coming out of the cathedral, a woman was sitting by the entrance to the cathedral, asking for some financial help. Her choice of location to ask for help shows her wisdom, because I could not imagine how I would come out of a cathedral and then ignore an old woman's request for money--assuming I had money on me to begin with, which I did, as I am sure most visitors did. Her age alone was reason enough to fight most reasons one might have for denying her. Then add the location factor and her request seemed, to me, undeniable. While she received money from many people, it seemed we, as a people, could still always say no.<br /><br />During my trip to Brasilia, I also attended the wedding of the friend of a friend, hung out and watched movies with some very interesting people, ate the best brownie I have ever had in my life, made new friends, and came back to Belo Horizonte a few days later.<br /><br />That is it for now.<br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/brasilia" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=brasilia" />Brasilia</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/trip+to+Brazil" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=trip+to+Brazil" />trip to Brazil</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-46940805322166408392007-06-21T13:15:00.000-04:002007-06-21T14:57:54.101-04:00Beautiful HorizonBelo Horizonte (BH; "beautiful horizon”) is a lovely city, not only for its parks, museum, and churches, but also for its people. At first, I found it strange that passersby often engage me in little conversations that they’ve freed from the solitude of their minds. Although my Portuguese is poor, I can tell (via their facial expressions and gesticulations) that they’re talking about their observations of the location, people, or situation at that particular time. I feel privileged to be part of their audience as they talk, and I am disappointed that when I am expected to say something, all I can say is: “Eu nao falo português.”<br /><br />I love that although far from home, I am still able to enjoy “communal dining”—the kind of dining experience where it seems that you are feeding not only your stomach but also that of those around you. Eating is not an isolated event, which it can be even when people eat together. I find this aspect of the Brazilians I hang out with impressive, particularly considering that I don’t speak the language. I don’t know if this "communal dining" that I have experienced with them is because most of my Brazilian friends are Christians—-so, they feel connected with me because they are my brothers and sisters in Christ (and vice versa)—-or if it is really an intrinsic quality of Brazilian life. From my short stay and, thus, limited experience in Brazil, I do feel that Brazilians, in general, seem to be a very warm and welcoming bunch.<br /><br />It is also a pleasure that the city itself seems so alive—-the city is not often quiet or empty—there are people everywhere, rushing out from seemingly nowhere; it reminds me of New York City. I am a city girl, and I can’t live in a quiet place for too long; I get restless and bored. I love to see people walking around, going about their daily activities. I love to watch people as they speak, to watch the way they carry their bodies, to figure out their mannerisms, and so on. Since I don’t understand most of what people say, I am better able to focus on this people-watching interest of mine, and I feel that I get an intuitive sense of the personality of the speakers. I remember that at a party that I attended about two or three weeks ago, one of the two English speakers turned to me and said, “Don’t you get a headache?” Her question was in response to her observation that I would turn to each person as they spoke and watch them with curiosity. I told her that I didn't suffer from headache; rather, my mind was being infused with pleasure as I watched them. She figured out that I was not listening to them to gain understanding of their speech, which, if I were, would certainly have given me a migraine.<br /><br />It is amazing that we say (or don't say) so many things, just by varying our facial expressions. Sometimes I see people convincingly go through the dramatic motions of laughing, yet their eyes tell about a different emotion, usually irritation or sadness, but sometimes anger. FYI, a single cranial nerve (cranial nerve 7, a.k.a facial nerve) controls the main muscles of facial expression. Pondering on this a bit, one cannot help but be amazed by the efficiency and effectiveness of the brain in being able to command the expression of a myriad of very specific, emotion-laced faces with a limited number of "tools." From learning about the human body, it is not a stretch to argue that the design of the human body or its workings is (overall) probably the epitome of high productivity or functionality with a conservative amount of resources. For example, our genes--the stuff that command a significant part of who and how we are--is relatively small in number, only about 30, 000. Even a grain of rice (depending on the species) has more genes than the average human!<br /><br />Anyway, the summary of this post is that I like the city and its people. Until my next post, Tchau!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/beautiful+horizon" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=beautiful+horizon" />beautiful horizon</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/belo+horizonte" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=belo+horizonte" />belo horizonte</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/trip+to+brazil" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=trip+to+brazil" />trip to brazil</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-50143448842747796792007-06-11T11:24:00.001-04:002008-04-08T13:14:47.902-04:00Being a touristSince I arrived in Brazil in May up until this past Wednesday (when I took a trip to Brasilia), I have been in downtown Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais. Belo Horizonte (literally, “beautiful horizon”) is perfectly located to suit my purposes. Although it is not a tourist city, I can easily access the major tourist spots from here. This allows me more opportunities to explore more of Brazil, and it frees me from constant exposure to the fanfare, extravagancies, and downright egocentrism characteristic of tourist cities, which can sometimes be a sort of mental prison in the sense that one can feel that this is where one should be. <em>------------ (Insert city) –is-the- place- to-be-Why-would-you-want-to-go-anywhere-else mentality</em>.<br /><br />Ever since I read Jamaica Kincaid’s <em>A small Place</em>, with her decidedly unapologetic and powerful statement that “a tourist is an ugly human being,” I have been more conscious of my role and purpose as a tourist, especially since I have noticed that sometimes a touristy place becomes altered—-sometimes negatively, in the opinion of people with an interest in the natural order of the place—-to suit tourists. Being a tourist can be a weird and unsettling role to occupy. On the one hand, one wants to observe and admire the natural beauty of a site, but by carrying out that desire, one’s presence invariably (eventually) alters the site. <br /><br />In my next post, I will tell you a little bit more about my thoughts on my main city of residence in Brazil: Belo Horizonte. I would love to include pictures with my post, but I won’t have posting or printing access to any of my pictures until I get back to the USA.<br /><br /><br />Until my next post, Tchau!<br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/being+a+tourist" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=being+a+tourist" />being a tourist</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/brazil" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=brazil" />Brazil</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-31786891737718388662007-05-28T10:23:00.000-04:002007-05-28T10:29:16.659-04:00My mouth is open again...It has been a while. The past couple of months have been very hectic, and I missed posting to my blog. I personally don’t take posting articles lightly: I’d rather not post than post something without 100% of my concentration. But I am glad things have eased up a bit. Exams are over, my projects are set, and my plans are falling in place. I can relax a bit, read and respond to my emails, etc.<br /><br />For the next set of posts, I’ll be posting from Brazil. I’ll be in Brazil for some weeks, where I hope I’ll have the concentration and inspiration to finish the work I need to do on my second novel. It was so great to print out all 130 pages of the draft that I have. It is much better to work with a printed copy than to stare at a computer screen all day long.<br /><br />I’ll let the beautiful country of Brazil inspire my next set of posts. I’ve never been to Brazil before, and I don’t speak Portuguese, so it should be an interesting adventure. I already have my copy of “Portuguese phrases for dummies.” I’m learning my alphabets, numbers, and what not. Even with Portuguese, it seems that I am better with written word than spoken word.<br /><br />Until my next post…<br /><br /><br />technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/trip+to+brazil" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=trip+to+brazil" alt=" " />trip to brazil</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" alt=" " />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-46195624015433999762007-04-23T19:14:00.000-04:002007-04-24T01:04:23.593-04:00The Fight Between Man and DiseaseIn the minds of medical researchers, physicians, and physician trainees (that is, medical students), this fight or race between man and disease is at the forefront. In the clinical setting, it is no surprise then that there are many battle or war metaphors. The fight against ________ [insert disease]. If you watch movies about immunology, you can see that it is literally a battle between our cells and the cells or molecules of disease-causing agents.<br /><br />The inspiration for this post came, unsurprisingly, from reading texts on the immune cells—the body’s bodyguards and soldiers against micro-invaders. A seemingly simple question suddenly occurred to me, which was: who is winning this battle? Then another question followed that, saying, “Can the battle be won?” As I mulled it over, my conclusion is that this battle, on average, is always going to be a tied battle. In other words, disease will win some, then we grow smarter and win some. When we average this out, I am speculating that we’ll get a tied game. To be blunter, man and disease will always co-exist. The diseases may change, but present they will be. For many of us, this is an extremely troubling idea, but it is a fact—unless maybe if we live in a bubble or in heaven.<br /><br />This obvious “revelation” need not be entirely discouraging. It can also be a comforting idea in that it lets us know that no matter how hard a disease seems to be banging on us, no matter how unbeatable it may seem, eventually we’ll catch up, figure out its weakness, and eradicate—or at least get it to submit to our drugs. This is the natural order of things it seems, if history is any indication.<br /><br />As Peter <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Parham</span> in his book “The immune system, second edition” mentions, in developing countries that suffer high rates of parasitic infections, there are much fewer allergic and asthma conditions compared to people in developed countries where there are relatively little parasitic infections. The remarkable thing is that the same antibody (part of the body’s army) that helps to protect a person from a third world country from parasites also helps to cause allergies and asthma in the person from a developed country. The immune soldier, a particular one called <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">IgE</span>, is serving its purpose in developing countries: to help fight parasites. In the developed world, however, where there are relatively fewer parasites to fight, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">IgE</span> becomes bored, frustrated, and irritable. So, it tags as an invader anything that looks the least bit foreign and harmful—including your precious <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">pooky</span>’s cat dander. As this <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">IgE</span> illustrates, when our life is purposeless, we start to behave in all kinds of self-destructive ways.<br /><br />Anyway, back to my point. The fight between man and disease is an on-going one. This truth is part of what keeps medical researchers in business and fulfilling their lives’ interests and purposes. The take home message is that we will not be defeated (in the long-term) by these diseases, no matter how powerful they seem now. The battle between man and disease, however, is not about who will win; rather, it is about how we become or remain one step ahead of the various diseases (new or old) that love to live next door to us or even in our homes.<br /><br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Technorati</span> tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/fight+between" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=fight+between" />fight between</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/man" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=man" />man</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/disease" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=disease" />disease</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-13361050096950324922007-03-14T14:28:00.000-04:002007-03-14T15:03:36.494-04:00My 55-word storiesWriting a 55-word story is challenging but fun. It is the perfect thing to do when one wants to write without committing one's self to a full, drawn-out literary piece. Below are four of my attempts. I hope you find them interesting.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">(P.S. each story is 55 words long, according to MSWord count)</span><br /><br /><strong>TO BE YOUNG AGAIN<br /></strong>I told John that we are turning into his parents, who sit at home, at opposite ends of the room; one watches the TV while the other knits. “You want to feel young again?” he asked me sweetly, his voice buzzing with delightful mischief. I nodded with widened eyes. “Ask Santa. I’ll be waiting, hon.”<br /><br /><strong>STRANGE ATTRACTION<br /></strong>He was angry—finally! His intense eyes, his pouted, full lips, fueled by his anger made him look rugged and incredibly gorgeous. He yelled, while I smiled as I enjoyed the pleasure of his full bloom. Shocked by my seeming lack of empathy, he stormed out. “No. Eric, wait. I have never wanted you more!”<br /><br /><strong>NIGHT AND DAY<br /></strong>Night cannot show his face in proper society, because he is dirty and stinks of filth. Daylight, however, is the local hero, a detective who unearths dirt of any kind, and he could never tolerate Night. Night, in his anguish and jealousy, yells from afar to Daylight saying, “Behind you, they all flock to me!”<br /><br /><strong>THE DANCING WOMAN<br /></strong>Today she is a woman, so she dances to celebrate herself. With heavily beaded waist, she moves with the wavelike motion of a snake. She repels the suffocating crowd with her voice: “Ssshhhh!” Her feet incessantly beat the ground, as she commands the world to recognize her dominion, to yield to her, now and forever.<br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/55-word+stories" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=55-word+stories" />55-word stories</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.4em; VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px" alt=" " src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=author+blogs" />author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-68169557563286924962007-02-17T18:12:00.000-05:002007-02-18T00:46:53.838-05:00THE VOICE OF A BROKEN SPIRIT: A poem<em>This poem is inspired by the movie that I watched yesterday, Umrao Jaan (2006). The movie was about a woman whose life was "a saga of ill-fate." I never cried so much over a character; I cried even the day after watching it! One of the painful things to accept about the story was that it showed that in life, sometimes, there is no happily ever after, no matter how hard we wish for it. For someone who watches mainly happily ever after movies, you can imagine how deeply painful this movie was. But to feel pain is to know one is alive. Even more importantly, to feel pain is to know that one values life--In this sense, Umrao Jaan, who had every reason to despise life, cherished it. I admire that she could still kiss the ring that her beloved had given her, even though he wrongly accused her and married someone else. Moreover, upon seeing the man (now a leper) who sold her to a brothel, she could still ask God to forgive HER (for her bitterness, anger?). Umrao sang poetry. No, she became poetry.</em><br /><br /><em></em><br /><strong>THE VOICE OF A BROKEN SPIRIT:</strong><br />I am the voice of a broken spirit.<br />My heart has become<br />a stone<br />in its cage,<br />and it rolls around<br />left to right to pinch my lungs—<br />robbing me of my breaths—<br />and up and down to irritate my mind—<br />making me a madwoman.<br />Its vengeful movements are a last illusion<br />of its beating pulses.<br /><br />I am the voice of a broken spirit.<br />Night and day have become one—<br />there is no hope.<br />Most of the air has packed it bags and departed,<br />and I am choking<br />on the nothingness of me:<br />on the bitter memories of yesterdays<br />and on the empty memories of todays,<br />but not on tomorrows’; there are no more tomorrows.<br /><br />I am the voice of a broken spirit.<br />You do not know where<br />I am coming from,<br />but my shattered bits are everywhere<br />around you.<br />Hear me as you forget me.<br />Dance as your dregs of life<br />become my choice gifts.<br /><br />I am the voice of a broken spirit.<br />I am the pretty songbird<br />with a cut tongue.<br />My voice is but silence to you, for<br />I sing a dying song—<br />a suffocated song.<br />I am the voice of a broken spirit.<br />Mine is an everlasting voice<br />that dies every other moment.<br />Hear me as you shall hear me no more.<br /><br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/broken+spirit" rel="tag">broken spirit</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/sad+poem" rel="tag">poem</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/umrao+jaan" rel="tag">umrao jaan</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag">author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-1171354091536011542007-02-13T13:15:00.000-05:002007-02-17T11:19:35.993-05:00Update on '07 resolutionsHow are you doing in terms of carrying out your New Year resolutions? It is time to check (and it is the only time I'll prompt you to check) if you made a reasonable resolution. If you did not, do not quit the whole thing; just modify it to suit practicality. Where you stand on your resolution now can be a strong determinant of where you will be by the end of the year.<br /><br />For me, I am particularly excited that I am sticking with my "exercise more" ideal. Because of friends' concerns for my safety, as well as my need to prevent boredom, I have stopped climbing the stairs in my apartment building as my exercise. Instead, I go to the gym. I was so refreshed by my daily, hourly stair climbing exercise, so much so that I motivated myself to take the relatively long walk from my home to the gym. At the gym, I have more options. I use the stair climber, the elliptical, another exercise machine that is a hybrid of the elliptical, and, on occasion, the treadmill. I am also incorporating some strength training into my routine. I try not to stay too long at the gym, however, no matter how tempting it might be. My motto is to work harder, not longer. My heart salutes me for the daily, exercise refreshment I give it. If you are not already making exercise a regular part of your week, it is not too late to start--do it for your heart.<br /><br />Writing and reading are also going well. I am, however, running a tad behind in my reading goals (reading at least one book, biweekly), because I had to pause to prepare for the exam period we just had and because of a distraction (see news about my beads below). I, however, am catching up for that pause period—it is a good thing there is still about two weeks left of February. I know that exam time will always put a (temporary) pause on any of my other scheduled activities.<br /><br />A bit of exciting news: my beads are no longer collecting in a bottle! I found my beaded jewelry maker--the same one who made my two, strong waist-beads. Because I had so many beads, he advised me to string the beads myself and then bring them back to him to do the finishing touch. So, I spent a lot of time stringing my beads. I remember that while listening and taking notes during a couple of my lectures, I was also diligently stringing my beads. Talk about multitasking! In the end, I was able to make eight waist-beads out of my collection of beads. Now I have the perfect set of waist-beads: a set of ten.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/New+Year+resolutions" rel="tag">New Year resolutions</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/waist-beads" rel="tag">waist-beads</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag">author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-1169512637939264932007-01-22T19:21:00.000-05:002007-10-10T07:43:56.885-04:00Happiness versus Joy“Happy” or “happiness” is a word that has become so cliché; its meaning has become so very broad and vague, to the point of even usurping the seats of other words, for example “joy.” Still, whatever your definition of happiness, one thing is clear: it is a good word—a desirable word that one would like to describe one’s life.<br /><br />But lately, I find myself wondering about the words “happiness” and “joy.” The two words are nouns with practically the same definition. However, even from the way each word sounds, it seems joy is a deeper level of happiness, that where happiness is still learning, joy has already mastered. While happiness seems instantaneous and short-lived, joy seems more delayed and long-lived. While happiness seems to require little effort, joy seems to require comparably more effort. Yes, the two words are similar, and for all intents and purposes, they are identical. Still, for a while now, I have felt there is a fundamental difference between the two words, that one is more important or desirable than the other.<br /><br />Sometimes, the importance of a word is evident because of the extent to which it occurs. To get an inkling of the relative importance of these words to people, I checked the web. When I googled “happiness” today, I had approximately 70 million results in 0.06 seconds, while googling “joy” returned 11 million results in 0.26 seconds. I also googled “rejoice” (since, according to Merriam-Webster Online, joy is akin to the Greek word for “to rejoice”), and I got approximately 12 million results in 0.12 seconds. So, it seems people talk a lot more about "happiness" than they do about "joy." Then I went to biblegateway.com, to search the bible to see how many times these three words occurred. The result (in the NIV version): happiness=6 joy=242 rejoice=156. The bible's result is the opposite of Google’s, which is not at all surprising.<br /><br />As I thought about these two words, I realized that I could imagine people being addicted to happiness, because it offers brief periods of emotional high. Such people would have a strong aversion to discomfort, inconvenience, and the like, in people or in life situations. They might make horrible friends or partners because they make themselves conveniently absent during trying times. They might also be fickle, selfish, or manipulative by nature. However, when I thought of joy, the way it sounds and so on, I could not readily think of it as the object of someone's addiction. Nevertheless, in my imagination, it was clear that such a person would be of a more admirable character (compared to the happiness counterpart). Why did this seem so?<br /><br />After many thoughts about these two words, I now feel that I can finally articulate that fundamental difference that had been at the tip of my tongue all this time. My conclusion came about by considering the input from two recent sources. Under each source, I have included my train of thought.<br /><br />P.S. If you want to expand my thought or offer a different view, you are welcome to send me an email. I'd be happy to "see" your thoughts.<br /><br />My two sources:<br />(1) The movie, <em>The Pursuit of happyness</em>, starring Will Smith. In the end, the movie addresses the issue that happiness may be something we can only pursue, not possess. Somewhat along that line, I think that happiness is a transient state of being, because one minute we could be the happiest people in the world (because we received a surprise gift, got the job we applied for, conquered a habit, or won a trip to an exotic island), but the next minute we are not (because the surprise gift is horrible or we didn’t get the job, are still controlled by a habit, or didn’t win a trip to anywhere). In other words, happiness is dependent on favorable conditions; it does not reveal its head when things become ugly. It is (or can be) the “high” of life that motivates us to move forward, to chase after life. At one moment, we have it and it delights our mind and excites our soul, then it slips out from our grasp. Then we chase after it until we capture it again. Therefore, in life, we play “capture and lose” with happiness—and this is not a bad thing, since it can motivate us to dream, to set goals, to imagine a better tomorrow, and to appreciate the happy events.<br /><br />(2) The word of God, specifically the short verse that says, “Be joyful always” (1 Thess. 5:16). When I read this verse, I was troubled, because I knew that in the course of any one day, I wouldn’t say I was ALWAYS with joy. As if to make sure I understood that this was God’s expectation for me, he also says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4). Then elsewhere he also says, “Rejoice in [your] suffering” (Rom. 5:3), and this verse finally clarified things for me. It allowed me to see that when God referred to joy, I (like most people do) had equated it with mere happiness, and as I had already intuitively figured out, happiness does not stick around during suffering. In my deduction, happiness and joy, although related, have one fundamental difference between them: happiness is situation-dependent, while joy is not. Another way of saying it is that joy has the ability to capture happiness even as it tries to run away during difficult or unfavorable times—joy is happiness permanently captured. A joyful life is life that has cured happiness of its fickleness and aversion to undesirable times or events. With joy in one’s heart, one can get happiness to commit, to say, “For you only, I will stay, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”<br /><br />With joy, a man who has just lost his entire family, his home--everything--can still wake up one morning and say, “Wow, I have not seen a more beautiful sunrise.” Armed with joy, a survivor of -------- (fill in the blank) can still feel that “God is good” or that “People are good.”<br /><br />So what does this mean? Well…those who are joyful are happy (overall). But those who are happy are not necessarily joyful…only time and life will tell.<br /><br />What is the secret of being joyful? The secret that I know of and that has been working for me is making every effort to trust God, to trust his words that “In all<strong> </strong>things [He] works for the good of those who love him.”<br /><br />I hope your life is seasoned with joy!!<br /><br /><br />Technorati tag: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/thinking" rel="tag">thinking</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/happiness" rel="tag">happiness</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/joy" rel="tag">joy</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag">author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-1168552943777546952007-01-11T16:45:00.000-05:002007-01-12T11:19:57.493-05:00The New Year 2007The New Year is here!!!<br /><br />So far, I have not made the usual mistake of writing “06” somewhere. Even though this year came seemingly too quickly, I feel I have been expecting it—I don’t know why exactly, but whatever the reason, it is a new year, with its own secrets and revelations. The year 2007 has, without a doubt, the warmest January I have ever experienced since my time in the east coast. The relative warmth suited me, but it filled me with guilt, because I knew the reason for this unusual warmth (for this time of the year).<br /><br />As I told my sister, 2007 is the year of transformation (body, mind, and spirit)—or more accurately, the year of continued transformation, a transformation which, for me, started late 2004. I am looking forward to growing in my weak areas (spiritually and otherwise), to deepening my friendships, and to having some more impact on my society.<br /><br />Each New Year seems special, because it reminds us that it is a blessing to be alive and a blessing to pursue so many plans, so many interests and changes. This year is another opportunity to grow, to be better, and I want to embrace it with the best that I am.<br /><br />My guiding quotes for this year are:<br /><br />1) “<strong>Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot</strong>.” (Eccle 5:18, NIV)<br /><br />To enjoy life is a blessing. In all that my mind and hands undertake this year, I want to enjoy doing them ALL. There is no reason to be stuck doing something that does not bring any satisfaction or joy, or, to say it in another way, everything I do should serve to bring me satisfaction and joy.<br /><br />2) “<strong>Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable— if anything is excellent or praiseworthy— think about such things</strong>.” (Phil 4:8, NIV)<br /><br />No explanation needed here.<br /><br />So what are the top three physical things that I want to do <strong>more</strong> of this year?<br /><br />1) EXERCISE MORE<br />-The distance between my apartment and my school’s gym is too long to motivate me to go to the gym regularly. Well, this year, I don’t have to go to the gym. I am getting my gym-workout by running up and down a 112-step staircase for one hour per day, seven days per week. The first day I did this, I felt like I was going to pass out. When I woke up the next morning, I was unable to walk. It was my fault: you are supposed to start a workout regimen slowly, but I was just too excited to yield to this important instruction. I rested my legs for two days, then I resumed my workout: the same 112 steps, up and down for an hour. It felt so goooooood, after the one hour. Stair climbing is an intense workout, because you are lifting your body weight against gravity, and it is a fantastic and time-efficient cardiovascular exercise. In addition to stair climbing, I'm also going to try to add other exercise routines, so that I don't get bored or get injuries from doing the same exercise repeatedly.<br /><br />P.S. See your doctor before starting any exercise routine.<br /><br />2) READ MORE<br />-I am making a personal commitment to prevent my schoolwork from restricting my leisure reading activities for as much as it has. Therefore, I am making a commitment to read at least two novels a month. This month is almost out of the way: I have read “The Fifth Mountain” by Paulo Coelho, and I have started reading “Water” by Babpsi Sidhwa. Next on my reading list is “So long a letter” by Mariama Ba.<br /><br />3) WRITE MORE<br />-I want to spend more time writing poetry. Writing poems keeps my mind fresh, keeps me in touch with myself and with others, and helps me come up with ideas for my longer works. I also need to spend more time working on the draft of my second novel. Normally, after writing a first draft, the process becomes a little bit easier, although it also becomes a tad boring and repetitive. However, my first draft is going through a major transformation of ideas, so I am going back and forth, adding and deleting things, checking things over to make sure the old ideas are not conflicting with the new ideas. Moreover, the story still has some holes that I need to fill in, which means I still have some more research to do. I am still building the house. I hope that worries about painting, carpeting, and the like will follow soon.<br /><br /><br />I hope this year affords you opportunities to dream, to pursue many interests, to love, to live, and to find your unique purpose.<br /><br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/new+year+2007" rel="tag">new year 2007</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag">author blogs</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-1166103531844379392006-12-14T09:02:00.000-05:002006-12-14T09:52:34.490-05:00The female body and the woman<strong>Important note:</strong> The physical appearance of a body is not always an absolute predictor or determinant of a person’s sex. For example, there are those who have a female body but whose particular internal organs or chromosomes dictate the opposite sex, and there are those who have the physical or internal (or both) parts of both sex. I have a female body and a female identity, so my talk below stems from this fact and addresses the issues of someone like me.<br /><br />Also note that this article is progressive in structure: it proceeds in a step-like manner, so what I talk about in the beginning is somewhat different from what I end up talking about (don’t let your curiosity overwhelm you; be patient and don’t scroll to the end first!!!)<br />------<br />People seem to have an implicit and explicit idea of what constitutes a female body, and it allows them to tell with high accuracy who is a female and who is not. Several factors play into this seemingly “automatic” knowledge. Some of these factors are the length of the hair, the face and its shape, the body’s shape (including things like the extent of the hips, width of shoulders, musculature, and so on), the hairiness of the body, the way a person carries the body, the pitch of the voice, and, of course, the presence of breasts. Moreover, a person’s attire can be a very reliable clue about his or her sex, or at least what the person accepts as his or her sex.<br /><br />Today, I want to focus on the issue of breasts as an indicator of a woman. Just to be certain, everyone, man or woman has breast tissue; most men just have a (permanently) underdeveloped or inactive mammary gland. Hence, men can also (and do have) have breast cancer. The thing that interests me is how this breast has become so important to a woman’s identity. Some women who have small breasts stuff their brassieres to give the illusion of the breasts’ fullness, and some rely on the magic of a surgeon to make present what was formally absent. I remember that as a 14 to 15 year-old girl, with no breast or menses, I felt frustrated that I was still just a girl—an underdeveloped woman. This time was particularly frustrating for me because I had younger friends, distant relatives, and adopted relatives who were already expressing their femininity to the world. Since I was older, it was my due to get respect from them (this is in accordance with my Nigerian cultural values), but I felt my high status was diminished because they were physically more matured. Of course, immediately I saw my own little bumps, which I scolded for being so late yet immediately welcomed to my life, I confined them into a brassiere, and they were always accompanied by a brassiere whenever I was outside. My ability to wear a brassiere and the presence of these two bumps comforted me and made me feel like a woman, a person of authority. The absence of my menses was tolerable, because as long as my breasts were growing, no one would worry (except maybe a mother) about my monthly visitor or lack thereof. To a maturing female, her breasts are an important part of her, as any teenage girl will demonstrate to you. Moreover, a woman’s breasts add to her attractiveness to a man, and in some cultures, it can affect whether or not (or how quickly) she will get married. (Whether a woman’s breasts has become too important for her identity and maybe even unnecessarily so, is another matter, and one that I do not wish (as of yet) to tackle fully.)<br /><br />This brings me to the point that in our society, breasts are an indicator of the particular organs and parts that are underneath a woman’s clothes. A woman’s breast is such a strong indicator that it takes on the modesty that is required for those other parts. So as early as possible, girls (unlike the boys with the same level of breast development) are not allowed to bare their chest in public. Even a grown woman with “no breast” will not bare her chest in public, because her chest has added significance. This significance is due in part to the effect that female breasts seem to have on a man’s physiology and to the additional role that a woman’s breasts serve: to provide nourishment to a baby. The ability of a woman to nourish a child with her body or to bring forth a child from within her body is one of the things that make her a remarkable and special creation. It is true that from the body of women come the rest of the world. This is amazing indeed. Unfortunately, a woman’s breasts have also allowed her, especially in the past, to be easily distinguishable and an obvious target of violent, unjust, and discriminatory actions and thoughts.<br /><br />With the significance that breasts seem to have on a woman’s perception of her femaleness, what happens to a woman’s concept of herself when one or both of the breasts are gone, because of a disease like cancer? I started thinking about this question when, as a part of our readings for my Medical Humanities course, we were presented with the works of artist turned cancer-survivor turned cancer activist-artist, Matuschka. Her self-portrait, “Beauty out of Damage,” where she bared her right chest (showing her mastectomy scar) while covering her left, unaffected chest was the cover for the August 1993 issue of The New York Times Magazine (see the picture <a href="http://www.songster.net/projects/matuschka/matuschka_beauty.html">here</a>). While some of her art were not to my taste (owing to my Christian values), this particular self-portrait touched my heart, and I felt that this work lived up to its title’s proclamation. Judging by the reaction it provoked when it was published, the picture brought breast cancer to the forefront of people’s mind: breast cancer is not just something that happens to <em>some</em> women or <em>other </em>women, it is not just a myth; it is <em>real</em>, it could happen to <em>anyone</em>. I saw this self-portrait and found myself wondering how or what I would feel if I had to have a mastectomy. What happens in the minds of breast cancer survivors, who in exchange for their life had to give up one or both of their breasts? An illness, any illness, is not to be experienced alone, but I think this is exactly what happens in a significant number of women with breast cancer, solely because of the importance attached to having breasts. Because of the high value that society places on women’s breasts, it might serve to hinder women’s healthcare activities in two ways. The first is that women might be more afraid to do a self-breast exam, because of fear of what such action means. The second is that women would be more reluctant to part with their breasts, even if their lives depend on it. Some women would rather die than have a mastectomy, because their breasts have become so much of their female identity. Moreover, I imagine that when a woman has a mastectomy that there would be pressure not to talk about it, not to make others aware (and uncomfortable). I also imagine that people would look at her weirdly when they notice the uneven fullness of her chest area, and (because of internal and external cues) she would begin to feel that she is a disfigured woman! No. No. No. Breasts do not make a woman.<br /><br />To be honest though, since I have had my own breasts, I cannot imagine my life without them, since they are my constant companion and everything I do has been checked to make sure that they can comfortably participate as well. They are, frankly, a part of what makes me a woman. They are not a necessary part, but because I have them now, they seem so to my body. Therefore, when a woman has breast cancer, it is a big deal (and not just because of the issue of the mortality involved), precisely because it involves a body part that women perceive to be important. Alternatively, we can alter our mentality, starting early in the process of socialization, to reduce the importance of breasts, so that the only big deal to worry about is the issue of death that is associated with the disease. One can see how important a woman’s breast is to her and to her society (friends, family, and strangers) by observing what question, image, or worry is provoked after a diagnosis of breast cancer. Does it involve the issue of loss of breast tissue or loss of life or both? Test yourself.<br /><br />Matuschka’s work brought up the issue of the body as art. Is there a point when the body loses its aesthetic value? Is the body as art only valuable when it is young, fully complete, highly symmetric, and with no other goal other than to please the eye and keep the mind in awe of God’s creation? Can the body be political? Matuschska’s picture is provoking, certainly, but one can’t, at least I can’t, deny its artistic value. Art represents the condition of life. Sometimes life is obviously perfect and beautiful, and sometimes its beauty comes from its imperfections or perceived ugliness. Her picture is disturbing to some people, because it crystallizes aspects of their vulnerability. It exposes the impact that this thing, this cancer, can have on a woman’s body, on her perception of her womanhood and on her claim of being a woman. I think part of the thing that upsets people about her art (i.e. “Beauty out of Damage”) is that it is not just artistic; it is also political—a very potent combination. When you introduce politics into art, since it (i.e. art) renders the heart and mind so vulnerable to its influences, people become very edgy. In this particular case, I think Matuschka’s combination of art and politics does more good than harm. It educates the mind, it arouses us from our ignorance, and, if we respond properly to it, it has the potential to change, radically, our life and mindset for the better. I thought her pictures (depicting the effect of a mastectomy) were bold, insightful, and no less pleasing (compared to when she had two breasts)—and perhaps they are more functionally pleasing, because they rise beyond our expectations, beyond the ordinary, beyond just observation and mimicry of nature or the social world to an extrapolation of it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/woman/’s+body" rel="tag">woman’s body</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/femininity" rel="tag">femininity</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/breast+cancer" rel="tag">breast cancer</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Matuschka" rel="tag">Matuschka</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blog" rel="tag">author blog</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-1162947050105198642006-11-07T19:11:00.000-05:002006-11-12T18:25:06.396-05:00Melancholy days<i>With the coming of winter, as the leaves enjoy the violent liveliness characteristic of something about to be temporarily extinguished, days like these—melancholy days—pay a visit or two. On this subject, I refer you to William Cullen Bryant’s great poem <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/102/20.html">here</a>. It is but one perception of this dramatic change of seasons. I include it, because in writing this post, I thought of it. It is not jolly in its observation, but the brilliance in the acute observation and in its expression cannot be ignored. Interestingly (though not uniquely), the poet and I share the same birth month and attended the same college (not during the same period, of course). Anyway, moving on. </i><br /><i></i><br /><i>In his words, “The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year.” While I sometimes agree with this statement, especially during a miserably severe winter that restricts the mind and body from their activities and that inflicts one’s entire consciousness with unceasingly painful coldness. A melancholy day, however, need not be <i>JUST </i>sad; it can be more and maybe even useful.</i><br /><i><br />On occasion, like during the day just past, I am overcome by a certain level of melancholy. I don’t want to do anything but surround myself in layers of softness (provided by comforters and pillows), eat all manner of things without censure, and listen to sad music about broken hearts, disappointed hopes, and general lowness of spirits and so on. I take a long warm shower, listen to slow, unobtrusive music, stare vacuously at myself in the mirror, dance a slow dance lamenting unspecific pains, and/ or cuddle up with a book. Yesterday, the book in question was Jane Austen’s <i>Sense and Sensibility. </i>I wanted to unite myself with the troubles of heart and mind that the characters felt, especially all the darker sensibilities of Marianne. I wanted to sympathize with some of the characters' feelings and eventually (maybe) go through the emotions and feelings with them.<br /><br />I can’t explain these days. General melancholy can be so poetic sometimes, even romantic, that I am provoked to indulge in it. I indulge myself until I am full. Such days are beautiful in their own right--a day to disconnect from everyone and attend to unconscious sadness, which like little children can throw tantrums when not doted on. They are days to reflect and to indulge my mind in all manner of thoughts. Yesterday, my writing complained that I haven’t paid as much attention to it lately. I apologized and made a promise to do better. Another part of me complained that I haven’t taken myself out in a while—that Indian restaurant that I have been meaning to visit, when am I going to go? Like so, a myriad of unspecific but important thoughts get their share of my mind’s time and memory. I feel their little pains, whimpers, and grumbles, and I submit myself wholly to them. Lost friends, far away friends, or forgotten friends can resurface as lively as ever to claim their share of me. And after I fully entertain all these thoughts (though not all on a conscious level), each one, fully satisfied, prances gallantly into invisibility. Then I put away my comforter, stop my dancing, turn off the music, prepare to go to sleep, and, with renewed and energized spirit, look forward to the next day. Hguhaaaa!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/melancholy+days" rel="tag">melancholy days</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/winter" rel="tag">winter</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/william+cullen+bryant" rel="tag">william cullen bryant</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blogs" rel="tag">author blogs</a><br /><br /></i>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-1162356687327345672006-10-31T23:16:00.000-05:002006-10-31T23:57:50.630-05:00The Bluest Eye SyndromeN.B. This post is mainly a regurgitation of the comment I made on <a href="http://lotusreads.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html">Lotus Reads' </a>blog. Enjoy!<br /><br />Toni Morrison’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bluest-Eye-Toni-Morrison/dp/0375411550/sr=8-3/qid=1162356517/ref=pd_bbs_3/002-6041544-7893640?ie=UTF8&s=books">The Bluest Eye </a>is a profoundly harrowing novel. I experienced a myriad of emotions while reading it, and none of these emotions were positive. The novel is well written, with the sentences spoken with concerned detachment—almost as if to prevent the narrator from wallowing in a pool of her own tears.<br /><br />I like that the novel is broken up, so that the reader is forced to make a whole picture on his or her own, and I think that this is what makes the book so deeply affecting—that is, the reader takes part in the story’s life and meaning.<br /><br />Racism is, of course, one of the major topics in this book. In the book, a lot of the misery of the racism the blacks feel is absorbed into the fabric of “black life.” Consequently, blacks attack their fellow blacks for their blackness—almost as if, by so doing, they rid themselves of their blackness. It is like when the boys mock Pecola, saying, “black e mo black e mo Ya daddy sleeps nekked,” even though they are also black and their dads probably sleep naked as well.<br /><br />One of the take home messages from this book is summarized by the narrator’s words about Pecola and the community, which goes: “all of us—all who knew her—felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. … Even her waking dreams we used—to silence our own nightmares. …We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.” Every person that Pecola meets has an opportunity to help her, to show her how to reevaluate her concept of beauty. Instead, almost all of the people dump their filth, their ugliness, and their insecurities on her, and they make these things grow in her. In the end, the whole community is infinitely worse off, because she is still a part of them, still growing within them.<br /><br />Many of us probably have a Pecola walking around. We need to examine what roles we play in such a person’s life, and we need to attempt to help. Are we part of the solution? If the answer is no, then we are part of the problem. While it is true that people have to handle their own lives, it is also true that a person’s life is a compilation of his or her experiences with others.<br /><br />For Pecola, the sad thing is that when she does get her blue eyes (or thinks she does), the magical power that she imagines they would have over people is missing. In her dialogue with herself, the self with brown eyes, she expresses her fear that her eyes are not “blue enough.” Sometimes, we chase after certain things, thinking that having them would make us feel happy, satisfied, or loved. Then we get these things and then find out they are still inadequate. The problem is not the things we should have or the things we do not have. The problem is needing to have those things in order to prove our worth. We get certain implicit (and sometimes explicit) messages about what will make us valuable. Ultimately, we need to seek the presence of those who will allow us to be ourselves, even amidst the great pressure to be something else. We need to be part of other people’s lives and vice versa. If this does not happen, the result is populations of people with severe psychological problems that can lead to artificially short lives.Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-1160851630583971392006-10-14T14:34:00.000-04:002006-11-01T07:32:55.416-05:00Becoming Abigail by Chris Abani: The Mind in PainWarning: This post is long, since I've approached this book from an analytical perspective. Also, I do give a lot of details about what happens in the book--consider this my spoiler alert.<br /><br /><br />In <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1888451947/ref=pd_rvi_gw_1/002-6041544-7893640?ie=UTF8">Becoming Abigail </a></i>, Abigail’s mother, whose name is also Abigail, dies from childbirth. To add more agony to her father’s pain, Abigail (the daughter) looks just like her mother, to the point where the father struggles not to confuse her with his dead wife. Consequently, Abigail’s presence is a constant reminder that his wife is dead—a death brought upon by the birth of this Abigail, his daughter. All her life, Abigail is surrounded by her father’s pain, a pain that she helps to precipitate. Abigail loses her virginity to a cousin at the age of ten (one of the many sexual abuses that she would experience) and exhibits a variety of dysfunctional behavior that forces her father to send her to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist doesn’t think that Abigail is crazy enough to warrant his attention and so gives her aspirin and sends her away (I wonder where he got his medical degree). Eventually, Abigail’s father sends her off to go live with her cousin, Peter, in London, the same Peter who, unknown to the father, molested Abigail a couple of years ago. Abigail, to appease her father, goes to live with Peter, though with apprehension about his motives, especially since all the other children that he previously took with him supposedly all ran away and fell with bad crowds. Peter, true to Abigail’s fear, had planned, all along, to sexually exploit her (specifically, to make a prostitute out of her). When Abigail fights off the night visitor that he sends her way, he handcuffs her and places her outside in the garden, where he treats her like a dog and rapes her. In the end, Abigail bites off his penis and (with the help of Peter’s wife, Mary) escapes and ends up in the custody of the police. She is assigned a gentle and understanding social worker, Derek, who eventually becomes her lover. Derek’s wife finds him having sex with his fourteen-year-old charge and calls the police. As Abigail watches Derek slip away from her, she feels a traumatic loss—the loss of the only person she had a choice in inviting into her, the only person who ever saw her with all her scars and still liked her. Derek’s arrest, I imagine, seems like a death to her. One more dead person; the only person left in her life. The situation with Derek seems like the last blow, and so crushing is this blow that she is unable to cope, and so she commits herself to the river. Her self is entirely dependent on others; there is no one to prove her existence (in London, she does not even exist, since she has no papers) and she has not fully developed her self. Given her destructive tendencies, there were other ways for her to commit her final act, but I think she chose to jump into the river, because there is some sense of merging with something, of being part of something. To put it simply, Abigail’s life is tragic from the beginning to the end.<br /><br /><i>Becoming Abigail </i>is like an onion, and as one peels through the pages of the book, one uncovers more and more misery and pain. There is nothing sweet about this novella, except for the writing, which compels one to keep on reading. When reading this story, it becomes immediately obvious that this is the creation of a poet, a talented poet. The sentences, emotions, and thoughts are encapsulated in vivid imageries that at once overwhelm with the meaning behind them, while at the same time manage to encourage curiosity about what happens next. The horror of what is going on is narrated in a matter-of-fact way, so that the emotional intensity of what is going on doesn’t immediately register.<br /><br />So why would anyone want to read a book about such a terrible life? Well, the answer is that it allows us to see the other side of human; it allows us to see what cripples us. Abani adeptly takes one frequently occurring situation (death from childbirth) and shows us how that can lead to a series of unfortunate events. In this story, we see different characters each contributing to the final scenario. A change in action by one or more of the characters would have precipitated a different outcome. Sometimes, it is good to know our breaking point, in order to be able to recognize and avoid it in our personal worlds. The story also points to the power and fragility of the mind and the need for more resources to shelter the mind and ensure that it is not corrupted. An incident can predispose one to a certain destination, but the more important factor in determining one’s likely destination is people’s reaction to the incident. Abani’s story shows our need for love; our need to have our lives validated by others. We want to know that we matter in this world—if this is not firmly established in our minds, Abigail’s life can be a typical life.<br /><br />So who is Abigail? Abigail is a girl whose mind seems trapped in her mother’s body. The story is, in some sense, Abigail’s struggle to claim her mind as her own, independent of this body that she must share with her mother. Abigail, the daughter, is painfully aware of her physical likeness to her mother, so she grieves a mother she never knew and creates imaginations about her. Of course, this creates a dysfunction of identity because Abigail cannot always be sure that when people say Abigail, they mean her and not her mother. She sees it in her father’s eyes that she is a vessel through which the other Abigail (dead mother) transiently lives, as well as the reminder to all of the sorrow surrounding her mother’s death. So, Abigail is caught between throws of sorrow and relief and joy, all having nothing to do with her. All her odd (pathologic) behaviors, such as decapitating dolls and conducting funerals for each of them and so on, might be a way for her to show her uniqueness, apart from her mother, even as she grieves her mother’s death. By showing her father her grief over her mother’s death, she reminds her father to become aware that she is still alive and is separate from the dead Abigail. In fact, it is mainly when she is behaving oddly that her father is clearly able to establish this Abigail as Abigail the daughter. It seems that Abigail must repeatedly wonder whether her father wishes she were never born. She doesn’t get the feeling that she, by herself, is of special value to her father, and, consequently, to the world. Her soul is in pain at the ambiguity of her existence, in being herself while being another (and no one) to others. She expresses the pain she feels by substituting it with a pain that she can more easily define and explain: self-inflicted pain. She burns herself and demarcates which body part she is and which part is her mother; so, she is never truly whole or independent. The pain from the burn seems to make her forget the more persistent pain she bears for her self, which is filled with dead memories of someone long gone—someone whose presence is pervasive yet unfamiliar.<br /><br />Her father’s pain is also obvious. It is difficult for him to look at his child without seeing or hoping to see his wife. His life is punctuated by pain and relief at seeing her. He cannot help expecting her to be like his wife, and his dismay is apparent when the child shows that she is anything but. When he decides to let her live with Peter, it is partly to relieve his inner torment. The decision to let her live with someone else might also serve to ease a potential sexual tension, which is going to become more and more apparent as Abigail grows into her mother (at least physically). Still, that decision to give away his daughter kills him (literally), because it crystallizes Abigail’s death and shows his neglect and rejection of his daughter, the only progeny of his beloved wife. Unable to handle this, shortly before Abigail is to leave with Peter, Abigail’s father hangs himself.<br /><br />For Abigail, her father’s death seems to give her a sort of freedom, freedom to try to be only Abigail (the child). So, we see an Abigail emerge that is strong, resistant to the force and wishes of others upon her (such as when she fights off Peter as he is beating his wife, as well as when she fights off Peter and his client during their sexual abuse of her). However, the necessity of precipitating such a fierce and active Abigail also (and later) damages her—it probably gives her the impression that her life would always be about fighting to be free of other people's wishes upon her. She is too scarred, too damaged by her previous experiences that the path she ends up in seems inevitable.<br /><br />One remarkable thing about this story is how well the pain, the suffering, and the darkness of living are so crisply represented. Yet, the pain is oddly beautiful—beauty forced on by the style of the prose. Chris Abani has managed to create a novel that is so pungent and so pathologic that one is not fully aware of the depth, until one finishes the book—the story is like a knife that cuts and causes bleeding only when one removes it from the victimized flesh. Even more impressive is that he accomplishes this in about a hundred and twenty pages. The story is a euphemism for pain and suffering. Reading it, one is greatly moved by the originality, cleverness, and truth of the words, as well as by the clarity with which pain and emotions are elucidated, that one does not have time to fully feel them. Then one puts the book down and Wham! The story’s full breadth and complexity hit one’s mind and disrupts one’s mental and emotional peace. At the end of the story, one has to think about Abigail. Abigail, Abigail. What a life!<br /><br />One thing that doesn’t sit too well with me is that the book gives a limited viewing of Abigail’s life. A large part of why Abigail’s life ends up the way it does has to do with her environment, yet we know little about it. Abigail’s mother has such a strong presence in the story, yet we don’t know much about her. We don’t know much about the father either, which would be helpful in that it would help to explain why he saw more sorrow than joy in Abigail’s existence. Why was it so hard for him to embrace Abigail as the physical manifestation of his love for his wife? Why couldn’t he see her as his wife’s parting gift? Nevertheless, not many authors can handle such a painful life with such grace and artfulness, without diluting its torment and poignancy or presenting it purely for shock value. Abigail’s life is made interesting to readers, and in that sense, she (and people like her) does receive some acknowledgement of her presence. <i>Becoming Abigail</i> is an engaging, albeit sad, look into the delicate nature of the human psyche.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/becoming+abigail" rel="tag">becoming abigail</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/chris+abani" rel="tag">chris abani</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/mind+in+pain" rel="tag">mind in pain</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/belonging" rel="tag">belonging</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/being+unique" rel="tag">being unique</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23559926.post-1156890960626807532006-09-30T18:00:00.000-04:002006-10-07T18:49:53.010-04:00What are the signs of a good book?As I thought about the answer to this question, I had to, of course, take a trip to memory lane to visit my responses to some of the books that I considered good books. Each person, of course, has a different appreciation of what to consider a “good book” (“good” being synonymous with “great”). To some it means simply that they did not regret reading the book. A book can also be good because of how believable the book's world is, of how well an author is able to immerse the reader into the characters’ worlds. For others, it is because of the book’s content and how well the author was able to explore an unfamiliar (or familiar) topic or issue. For some people, however, it has more to do with the way a book makes them feel, how well it captures an emotion or mood, or how well it creates specific moods and emotions. To another subset of people, it is a book that challenges their hearts or minds. Moreover, a good book can be such because it personally educates readers on their lives (as experienced through others) or helps them to see things in a different light. There are many reasons to explain why a book is good. Ultimately, however, I think a book is good when it achieves a multifaceted level of beauty and purpose. A good book is rarely good for just one reason. Regardless of the definition of "good," a good book educates and it challenges (or helps one to understand) one’s ideas, knowledge, and worldview.<br /><br />Often times, even before we begin to put it into words that a book is good, we show signs that the book is fantastic. Regardless of the ruler one uses to measure a books' greatness, when you do find one, how do you know it and how do you respond to it?<br /><br />Before I get started on my list of this-is-a-good-book symptoms, it is important to note that not all good books elicit the same symptoms. In other words, rarely can someone say, "I know a book is good because I ALWAYS…." Sometimes, the kinds of symptoms I have might correlate with the level of the book’s greatness. Sometimes, however, each of the symptoms below is graded equally, which makes sense because, if you look closely, these symptoms are similar. No two books are the same (even if they have similar content), so the symptoms will vary slightly based on factors particular to the book's identity.<br /><br />Below are some of the symptoms that I present whenever I am peeping through the delicious pages of a good book. I have avoided (for the most part) putting examples of books, because I want the focus to be on the symptom and not on the particular book that I think falls into the category.<br /><br />A book is good when:<br /><br />1) It is "unputdownable."<br />-In this case, I cannot read the book fast enough. I don't want to do anything else, including sleep or answer my phone, until I have devoured every last page. The book just seems to create urgency within me, and I want to know what happens NOW.<br /><br />2) I don't want to finish it.<br />-In this case, I find myself stalling. I read the book in bits, rereading each line, savoring its beauty. I go back to previous pages and delight myself with their words again. I reluctantly move forward with the reading, joyful that I did and yet saddened that I am getting closer to the end where there’d no longer be any mystery as to the further contents of the book. For books that I have this symptom for, it is usually the author’s style of writing (particularly the use of poetic sentences) that moves me.<br /><br />3) As I am reading it, I make plans to reread it again.<br />-In this case, I start imagining the instances when I would want this book with me. I start figuring out which bag will be too small to contain it. Basically, I start planning what days or times in my life I'd want this book as a companion.<br /><br />4) I put it down out of annoyance (directed at the book), thinking "what the heck kind of book is this?" But then I am compelled to pick it up and find out what more it has to say.<br />-I know I said I wasn’t going to do this, but… When I think of this symptom, the first book that comes to my mind is <em>Love in the time of cholera</em> by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Imagine a man (Florentino Ariza) who on the first day of Fermina Daza's widowhood, goes to her and proclaim his "eternal fidelity and everlasting love." He had been waiting for over half a century for her husband to die, and he wasted no time in approaching her. Even more surprising is that prior to his declaration of eternal love, he had slept with countless women, both young and old. Anyway, this is one of the books whose characters I disliked, yet I couldn't help be moved by their humanity. At their worst, they were only displaying what makes them human. Kudos to Marquez for the way he handled this book.<br /><br />5) After reading the last page of the book, I put it down, and I cry.<br />-In this case, I might also cry while reading the book. The most significant thing, however, is putting the book down, staying still, and then noticing that I am crying. For books that I have this symptom for, it is usually the case that the author has done a great job of making the book's world and the characters’ emotions and concerns so real and so believable—the characters seem like sisters or friends or people that I care deeply for. I cry because of the life that the characters had to go through and because I am aware that there are people in the world (maybe people I know) that are going through that now.<br /><br />6) The book stays with me long after I read it.<br />- In this case, I see parts of the book in my world. As such, I can make statements like, “Oh it’s like in blah blah blah when so and so did this.”<br /><br />7) I want to have my own personal copy of the book.<br />-I don’t own every book that I read and have read. My desire to want to own a book (either during the book selection process or after reading the book) is usually an indication that I think the book is great.<br />-There have been a couple of instances or so when I buy a book and it turns out not to be as good as I expected. In these instances, I am reluctant to put the book in my bookcase and have even proceeded to sell the book or give it away. Usually, these books have more than necessary amounts of graphic content. I guard against this (that is, buying a book that I don’t want) by having a thorough book selection process or by borrowing the book first, or both.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/symptoms" rel="tag">symptoms</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/good+book" rel="tag">good book</a> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/author+blog" rel="tag">author blog</a>Rosemary Esehaguhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14925599989585458797noreply@blogger.com3