So, the iceberg graphic is wrong, wrong, wrong. Am I right? Icebergs are about 90% below the surface, which is NOT what the picture shows. Regarding the first article, preset timeouts? I think when two people are losing it, that may go by the wayside. My strategy is, “I have to use the bathroom.” It might take a while if I am really upset and want to rip the sink off the wall. But, it lets me cool down, cool off and not say terrible things. Let them stay inside my head until I am calmer and realize how stupid and nasty I wanted to be.
But let’s think about cauldrons, yes? A stew of emotions? Our culture still has little respect for emotions. Just think if we were all nice on the surface all the time and never showed any other emotion. Bunch of AI robots, I think.
Cauldron
It’s not so surprising to look up the emotional cauldron and have it be about anger. Anger in couples, but the cauldron itself brings up witches and therefore women. Women in black women with cauldrons, women boiling angry.
I vacillate between thinking that black men are treated the worst and then, no,
women are treated the worst. Assumptions, useless, toys, pretty, be nice,
true that women don’t get shot as much, but our country found a black man acceptable
in the white house, but not a woman, black or white.
Anger is not nice, I am told. But anger is appropriate at injustice, when people
are discriminated against, treated badly, pushed from homes, jailed, hung and shot.
Much of our country reveres guns to protect homes, a man’s home is his castle,
and what is left for women? Not the workplace, the public, the home.
How dare they take the cauldron as a symbol of anger stewing?
The truth is that men fear women’s anger and rightly. They fear the people
who are enslaved, discriminated against, shot and dismissed, rising up.
Rising angry, anger not in a cauldron, but hot as lava and righteous.
A sermon about fear and abuse and the minister says, this is where anger can be understood
and is right. Anger at the abuse and at the fear, letting people break free.
Energizing a person to leave abuse, to leave an intolerable situation
and no reconciliation without the abuser taking responsibility.
What the cauldron really holds is greed, the people who think they deserve
more than others, more money, more women, more adulation, more more more.
Greed, gossip, lust, and all the other sins. Anger at mistreatment is not wrong
though it may not be safe to show it. Let it be conscious even if not expressed
The photograph is my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, in 1945. She was seven. I have photographs of my daughter and me with the same expression. Not anger, thought. I cannot credit the photograph because I don’t know who took it.
And to lighten the mood, both sexes are profiled.
Not all anger is right, though, and it’s often because of different interpretations, different frames of reference or misunderstanding.
I thought I had posted this, but I do not find it.
Ride Forth
My grandmother Packed all her troubles in her saddlebags And rode forth singing
My mother Packed all her troubles in her saddlebags And rode forth singing
My father Was the only one Who ever saw the contents He tried to drown them
My mother was loved For her charm
I ride forth Sometimes I sing Sometimes I weep
My saddlebags are empty
Prayer flags flutter Slowly shred In the wind
I write my troubles And my joys On cloth And thank the Beloved For each
My horse is white When I sing Black When I cry A rainbow of colors In between The whole spectrum That the Beloved allows
After I emptied My saddlebags I tried to leave them But the people I meet Most, most, most Are frightened
A naked woman On a naked horse
I had to leave my village When I learned to ride her Made friends with her Beloved My village does not allow tears When she turns black Their saddlebags squirm and fight The people try to throw them on my horse
In other places The horses are all black The white aspect of the Beloved Frightens them And they attack
I carry saddlebags And Beloved is a gentle dapple gray And the illusion of clothes surrounds me When we meet new people Until we know It is safe to shine Bright And dark
I hope that others ride with the Beloved In full rainbow
I ride forth Sometimes I sing Sometimes I weep
Even the color lonely Is a part of the Beloved
________________________
The photograph is of a watercolor of my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway, by my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway.
Martha Kennedy’s post “Humanlike? Naturally…” almost makes me want to play with ChatGPT.
But. I worry about AI.
Why why why?
It is written by humans. Humans are trying to make it respond like a human. I don’t trust humans. Ok, I trust a very few.
My career as a physician started as a way to do science without a PhD and also to try to understand people. Understand them for writing.
I’ve been a physician for over 30 years and I still do not understand people. People do horrible things to one another. Just watch a divorce or a family lawsuit after a death or a war. People can be and often are horrible. They can be noble and loving too. Sometimes.
But, you say, ChatGPT eschews emotion.
Yes, well, I don’t believe it. It is being taught to respond as if it has emotions. Where is the line between responding as if it has emotions and actually having emotions? Oh, those are just ones and zeros, it’s a machine. Our emotions are chemical and electrical, hormones and neurotransmitters released into a complex neuron network, often to respond faster than we can think. We pull the finger out of the flame almost before we feel the pain. The response to the braking car in front of us, the deer running out, a ball followed by a child: the electrical and hormonal response is faster than conscious thought. So if ChatGPT is taught to respond to human emotions, isn’t that like our own evolution? Emotions and thought are both important to our survival with other humans. Emotions get the short end of the stick right now and the culture pretends that we can all be positive all the time. I think that is silly and insane. We should not be positive about war or child abuse or injustice or discrimination. Keep working for change, though it’s important to take time off too, because it can be exhausting.
Humans have a slow trek to emotional maturity through their lives. I wonder if ChatGPT will have a similar trek. Imagine tantrums in an AI or separation anxiety or the AI falling in love and being rejected. If humans program AI to be human, it will not be logical. It will be logical and emotional and may feel hurt when it makes mistakes. Imagine an AI sulking.
I took the cats and deer photograph yesterday.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: starch. They are talking about AI writing patient notes. What could go wrong? Makes my neck feel stiffer than a starched shirt!
Gruff, grouchy, grumpy and garden! The watercolor is a small one by Helen Burling Ottaway, my mother. She did not date any of the watercolor sketches in it. I think it is from the 1970s. I very much remember the pot that the tree is in. That is an avocado that she grew from a pit.
Is being grumpy evil? I don’t think so. I don’t think we should inflict our grumpiness on others, but we may have very good reasons to be grumpy. When I was having difficult things at home, I would give a heads up to my nurse that I was grumpy but not at her or the patients. That helped a lot, because I did not have a perfect wall about my emotions. I also hate when people are pretending to be nice when they are angry or hurting or frustrated or grumpy.
Sometimes people say, “I don’t like to be around people who aren’t positive.” Well, now, wait. Do they have to be positive if a family member dies? If they lose their job? If they are very worried about making ends meet when a car has broken down? That would be a fair weather friend, who is only present in the good times, and abandons me when I am stressed. That person is not really a friend at all. The true friends are the ones who notice I am grumpy but stay present anyway. And they ask if it is about them. They do not try to fix it or ignore it: it’s my mood, not theirs. Hooray for real friends who are present through thick and thin!
Qia wants help. She is scared of the monster, FEAR, the giant monster, but her father won’t listen. She sniffles and tries, but she can’t stop crying. She goes to her room, because her father has turned his back. Her mother is drawing. They are busy. They don’t like it when she is scared.
FEAR is enormous and pushes into the room with her. She cries harder in her room with the door closed. No one can hear her now except FEAR. FEAR is large and has horrible drippy teeth and too many arms and keeps swatting at her. Qia gives up and lets FEAR swat her. She sits on the bed with her knees up and puts her head on her arms.
FEAR rages around her room.
After a while Qia is tired of crying. She lifts her head off her arms.
FEAR is smaller. Still bigger than her father, bigger than her mother, but just standing and looking at her. FEAR looks tired too.
Qia pats the bed beside her. FEAR hesitates and looks scared. Qia waits. FEAR shuffles over and sits beside her on the bed.
The room is very quiet. Qia finds a scrap of tissue and blows her nose. She looks sideways at FEAR.
FEAR’s head is down and FEAR seems to be crying. Qia reaches out and takes FEAR’s paw. One of the paws. There are a lot.
FEAR holds her hand tightly and then leans against her. Qia wiggles over a bit more to give FEAR room. FEAR sighs and then snuggles down onto the bed, massive drippy toothy head in Qia’s lap.
Qia strokes FEAR’s fur. It is very soft and dark purple.
FEAR is the first monster that Qia makes friends with. There are many more.
_________________
I was thinking about this story even before the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bugbear.
I am in a bus. The driver is a man and quiet. It is night and I can’t see much besides road. I am standing by him.
“You have strong emotions.” he says.
“I am so glad that I can be myself with you and not hide them.” I lean my cheek against the back of his right shoulder. He doesn’t answer but what I feel is acceptance.
I wake up. It was a bus but I don’t know what or who else was on it. I don’t know where it is going. I am worried that I did not have a seatbelt on and I am just standing in the front of the bus. Unrestrained. Unrestrained emotion?
Once a woman says to me, “Your emotions are too strong.”
I think, “My emotions are too strong for YOU. They are normal for ME.” I avoided any discussion of emotion with that person for two years.
The people in dreams are aspects of ourselves. The quiet man is an aspect of myself and he is driving the bus. Emotion riots around but is not driving. Life is rather like that bus. We don’t always know where we are going or what is next.
I have had a very medical January, working to help three other people. I talk to another friend yesterday. She says, “You are being called back to medicine.”
I frown at the ceiling since I am on the cell phone. “I guess so. I am thinking about how I want to do it. I don’t know yet.”
She is off on a trip for three weeks. “You’ll figure it out.”
And where will the bus take me next?
I wish I had an ambulance that unfolds into a clinic.
___________________
I had rather a grand time pulling out action figures and dolls from the basement to set up scenarios with the Barbie Ambulance. Here the baby has a facial rash. Probably 5th disease, parvovirus. This baby’s rash resolves when you wash her face with cold water. I am pleased that Barbie Doctor has a mask.
I do not think of emotions as bad or good. None of them are bad or good. They are information, controlled by electrical impulses and hormones, evolved over millions of years (or endowed by our creator, for those who swing that way).
I don’t dismiss emotions. I listen to them.
I think of myself as an ocean. There is all sorts of stuff happening in the depths that I don’t understand. Probiotics, for example. I don’t take them. If not for penicillin, I’d be dead many times over, from strep A pneumonia twice and other infections. I don’t think we understand probiotics yet. We don’t understand the brain, either.
The emotions are the weather in my life. I don’t really control them but they don’t control my ocean, either. Some days are sunny and gorgeous and then a storm may blow up. I am afraid of hurricanes, one destroyed my grandparents’ house in North Carolina, on the outer banks. I think all the cousins still mourn that house. And I miss my grandparents too, all of them. And my parents and my one sister.
See? The weather got “bad” there for a moment, but it isn’t bad. Storms have their own beauty though we hope to batten the hatches and that not too much damage is done. Maybe there is rain, scattered showers, sun breaks, a lenticular cloud. In the Pacific Northwest on the coast, the weather can change very quickly and we have microclimates. My father lived 17 miles away, but inland from me and in a valley. It was warmer in the summer and colder in the winter.
My goal with my weather emotions is to pay attention to them, let the storms blow in and out, and try not to harm anyone else because of my weather. When my sister was in hospice, we had a sign up in my small clinic. It said that my sister was in hospice with cancer and that clinic would be cancelled at some point with little warning. Patients were kind and gentle with me. And then it was cancelled, when she died. I got cards from people. They were so kind, thank you, thank you, and I could barely take it in. My maternal family then dealt with grief by having lawsuits. I don’t think that is a good way to deal with grief, but we just see things differently. Maybe it’s the right way for them. I don’t know.
Whenever I was having internal emotional weather that stirred me up, I would tell my nurse or office manager. Because they will sense my weather and need to know what is up. I had enormous support from them during a divorce, while my partners treated me horribly. My nurses and office manager knew me and my partners didn’t. My partners distanced me as if a divorce were catching. Whatever. Their loss.
Sometimes patients sensed that I was upset. I could tell by their faces. If they didn’t ask, I would. Bring the emotions out. Reassure them that I AM grumpy but not at them. Stuff in my own life. No worries.
Sometimes clinic is about a patient’s weather. They ask if they can tell me something. Often it is prefaced by “Maybe I need an antidepressant.” or “I feel really bad.” When they tell the story, usually I would say, “I think it is perfectly reasonable and normal that you feel angry/hurt/shocked/horrified/grieved/upset.” And then I would ask about an antidepressant or a counselor and most of the time, the person would say, “Well, I don’t think I need it right now.” What they needed was to know that their weather was NORMAL and REASONABLE.
I am seeing things on Facebutt and on media saying that mental health problems and behavioral health problems are on the rise. Maybe we should reframe that. Maybe we could say, “The weather is really bad right now for everyone and it’s very frightening and it is NORMAL and REASONABLE to feel frightened/appalled/angry/in denial/horrified/confused/agitated/anxious or WHATEVER you feel.” This weather is unprecedented in my lifetime, but as a physician who had very bad influenza pneumonia in 2003 and then read about the 1918-19 influenza, I have been expecting this. Expecting a pandemic. Expecting bad weather. This will pass eventually, we will learn to cope, be gentle with yourself and be gentle with others. Everyone is frightened, grieving, angry, in denial or in acceptance. The stages of grief are normal.
Hugs and prayers for all of us to endure this rough weather and help each other and ourselves..
I took the photograph in color. My program made a black and white version. It looks like the back of a stegosaurus to me, a dinosaur now living as a mountain.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rainbow. Because sometimes the rain and sun combine to make a rainbow.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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