islanded in a stream of stars

Here's what I've been up to today:

• 21:15 Everything wrong with the US's social service system can still be summed up by "Officer Krupke." I don't know what to say about that. #
• 22:31 "America," too, come to think of it, is a pretty accurate depiction of the immigrant experience. What social issues can song and dance ... #
• 23:13 Reading so many psych articles in such a short period (8 pgs. of sources) is bad for my mental health, but it's reassuring to know that ... #
• 01:34 Finally figured out what my hypotheses are. Also, 90% done with my thesis proposal! Just need to finish writing up the experiment desi ... #

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Written in response to this post by Dr. Robert Firestone on the decline of psychoanalysis and depth therapy, because I have quite a few critical issues with psychoanalysis and don't see enough debate questioning the validity of psychoanalysis.

I know that Psychology Today is pop lit and isn't exactly the most legitimate source around, but I feel that it's important to address some of the perspectives on the blogs because the truth is that there are quite a few who actually believe the crud written on the site. Not that I'm a clinical psychologist or even an expert in the filed by any means, but sometimes you need someone providing sensible comments.

( Pretentious ramblings of a mere undergrad )

The news around my f-list has been going around like wildfire: Patrick McGoohan has passed away. I am very sorry to report that Ricardo Montalban has passed away today, too.

I found out the news just before going to my first death and dying class. Irony can be rather indifferently cruel.

I don't cry over deaths, generally - it took me 5 years before I could even shed a tear for Cathy. I spent most of class this afternoon dabbing at my eyes.

Many friends and I have lost a hero today, and many others around the world are mourning his loss.

It is a true privilege to have such a dynamic role model to whom I aspire. As corny as it sounds, his creative work as an actor, writer and filmmaker have left an indelible imprint on my life and have changed me for the better by giving me a greater sense of empathy, perserverance and appreciation of life's complexity. The characters he portrayed made such an impact on me, and I honestly don't know of anyone else whose acting mattered to me so much and have actually caused me to reevaluate how I view the world. My liberalism and beliefs about justice were largely shaped by the Prisoner and Danger Man, which is every bit as thought-provoking and morally ambiguous as the former if you watch carefully.

He inspired us to think more critically about the roles that institutions play in regulating, however covertly or overtly, our thoughts and behaviors, to accept the unsettling but ultimately necessary ambiguity that hangs over so many of our decisions, to recognize the human capacity to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. If such lessons seem grandiose, it's because his work transcended the boundaries of intelligent entertainment and make for philosophical material that keep us debating and thinking to this day. He had the clout and the chutzpah to make a pop medium like television political without being explicitly so, thought-provoking and actually meaningful, even if the messages were often ambivalent. He made snarky paranoid eccentricity cool. There wasn't a role of his that I didn't enjoy tremendously that provided a bright spot in even mediocre settings (OK, maybe Brass Target. But that movie just stunk, period). His incredible integrity, personal and artistic, sets a standard worth following for all of us.

Death gives us the opportunity to come together to honor a life that has made ours so much richer. I can only hope that generations to come will discover what an incredible legacy he has left. If there is an afterlife, I can only hope that it's giving him a king's welcome.

Patrick McGoohan, you will always be a hero to me, and for that I am grateful.

I've been woefully neglectful in updating lately. My other blog has been distracting me. Catching up and reading many blogs has been distracting me further. All my friends here are what keep me anchored to this site, and for all of you I'm terribly grateful.

Unofficial resolution for 2009: start updating more here again. We'll see how that goes.

Best wishes of 2009 to you all!

Let's face it - Veteran's Day isn't the most celebratory of holidays. This day is an opportunity for us to remember what people have sacrificed to allow us to live the lives we have and to acknowledge to recognize the incredible suffering that lingers on after the war is over.



Captain Sargent Binkley is my next door neighbor, whom I've written about before. I have known him and his family my whole life. We're close, as in "I can see into your kitchen window from my kitchen window" close. After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, he and his siblings cheerfully babysat me as our parents cleared the broken glass out of our living rooms. I still remember when he stashed the two bikes he bought with his own pocket money for his younger twin siblings in our garage so that they wouldn't discover their Christmas presents early. He was the kind of guy you could always rely upon to do the right thing.

Two years ago, Sargent turned himself in after robbing two pharmacies at gunpoint to feed his addiction to painkillers. This wasn't a junkie committing a crime to get his next fix. Sargent had been suffering from PTSD and chronic pain resulting from a hip fracture for several years after a traumatic injury on an undercover military mission in the Honduras. I Though he was armed, he never used his gun; one of the pharmacists, Dennis Pinheiro, actually wrote to the authorities on Sargent's behalf. You can read more about the details about Sargent's background and the details of the crime here.

You can also watch this Youtube video:



Sargent faces a minimum of 12 years because he was carrying a weapon - one that he never used. The judges have the power to reduce his sentence to 3-5 years if we convince them to take into account Sargen's circumstances.

Want to help?

Sargent's trial in Santa Clara is in 5 days, and his trial in San Mateo in 33 days. Even sending the DAs an e-mail or giving them a call as a concerned citizen could give us a chance to actually have a fair sentencing; there are guidelines on the website as to what to say and/or write. Frankly I've found it discouraging talking to the DAs. They're convinced that not enough people care about taking into account how mental illness warps an individual's decision-making capabilities. Even signing this petition lets them know that you believe otherwise. Passing the word on to your friends makes our case for Sargent even stronger.

This isn't about leniency, or "letting a crook off the hook;" this is about attaining justice for a man who did what he could to seek help but was shoved off into a corner by the system to deal with things on his own until it was too late. I watched his family shuttle from VA hospital to VA hospital trying to find a center that could provide Sargent with the physical and psychological resources he needed, but there's simply too much of a demand within the veterans administration. It's bittersweet to know that he's finally able to live without the painkiller now that prison has finally provided the rehab treatment he had been seeking for so long.

I know that you're all busy, but even signing the guestbook to let Sargent and his family know that you're sympathetic to his cause gives them more hope than you could imagine.

Thank you for your time.

(And I will get back to comments soon - I swear.)

I rarely say this, but I am proud to be an American citizen today. This was my first big election, and I can only hope to see how my country becomes a better homeland for all of its citizens in the years to come.

But the battle's not over, not by a long shot. I'm glad that most Californians and I voted the same way on the propositions, except for the redistricting one (dude, WTF, way to grant permission to disenfranchise a ton of voters!) and more significantly, Proposition 8. We can't sit back and just hope for change.

A month ago I was interviewing an Obama precinct captain and some local community organizers for a story on Asian Americans and campaigning for the candidates. For them, Obama's appeal wasn't just about creating a culture of change in Washington, but reigniting a sense of civic activism in ordinary citizens that's been gone for years. I predict at the top levels of government there'll be a lot of partisan gridlock considering how many ideas are floating around about how we should address the economic crisis, healthcare reform, environmental conservation efforts, the wars abroad and so many other issues. Reaching consensus when the stakes are higher than ever is going to be a painfully drawn-out process.

We can't just wait around for our Congresspeople to legislate solutions to us. Our politicians are only as responsible to us as we are to them; effective reform is not top-down alone. That communities will come together to bring back democracy to the front porch again and attack the issues at the local level, too. Our school districts need us to mentor struggling kids at risk of falling through the cracks. We need volunteers and donors to make sure that our hospitals outreach to the sick in need of aid, for arts organizations to create productions that enrich the soul (cheesy but true), for consumer watchdog groups to monitor the safety of our products, to name a few.

We can't just sit back and expect our president to fix everything to everyone's satisfaction. We as citizens must own our responsibility to look out and care for each other. How successful Obama's presidency will be depends on our input as regular citizens and community members.

I am reminded of Eleanor of Aquitaine's monologue in the Lion in Winter - the future is in our hands as much as it was in 1183.

How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.

The funny thing about studying gerontology, especially after having an opportunity to interview the ever insightful akane42me and st_crispins, is that I'm now more obsessed with instilling healthy habits. Reading about the potentially debilitating effects of various chronic diseases and how Social Security benefits generally screw over those who take time off work to care for families (i.e. women) does that to you.

In some ways it's easier to prepare for the distant future than it is for the time on the cusp of present and future. Eat more fruits, veggies and soy (alas, being pescetarian for 4 years doesn't mean that quitting junk food is that much easier), exercise more frequently, actually get more than 6 hours of sleep a night. And while I'm at it, write half of that paper due in a week and a half right now, clean the bathroom from top to bottom and learn to say no to nonessentials to which you can't completely commit. Changes spark a cycle in moving towards more positive changes, although there's still the occasional temptation to stay up late just because I can or to indulge in laziness. Strangely enough, 8 AM classes and work have really helped in reforming my habits; I know I wouldn't be motivated enough without those morning committments to jump start the day. And it helps that X has been doing so much better lately, too.

I didn't think it was possible, but I may have managed to become duller than I already am; alas, this whole system reset in priorities isn't the greatest for working in more time for a social life. We've determined that my mother went to more parties her first semester than I have in my entire college career to date. After this summer I've been making an effort to live more simply so that I actually have the time and energy to get everything that I want done. That, and a desire to lock into low health insurance rates once I have to graduate and actually find my own plan. I'm a signature away from confirming that I'll be spending another year here at USC for grad school, but I figure it can't hurt to start preparing for post-graduation life. Then again, we'll have to see what changes after the new president establishes himself in office over the next few years.

Fellow Americans: if you haven't sent in an absentee ballot yet, remember to vote by November 4!

My mother's somewhat annoyed with me because whenever I call I'm always asking her if she's taking calcium supplements or if she's had a mammogram recently. I'm trying to figure out more PC ways of checking in so that it doesn't sound like I'm implying that she's old. Though if I look as good as my mother at 50, I'll be pretty damn happy; I get mistaken for her sister or her peer at a slightly depressing frequency.

I've come to the mildly depressing conclusion that when I LJ, I'm angsty, pretentious, flippant or preachy. Most of the time I'm actually fine, but it's hard to squeeze a word in when I feel like I ought to be doing something productive or ought to have something extraordinary or meaningful to say. Hence my tendency for introspective rambles.

It's been a crazy year on campus - since classes started the last week of August, there have been 2 hit and runs, 4 rapes two blocks away from where I live and 1 guy stabbed dead also two blocks from where I live. Over 400+ other students hospitalized for a particularly nasty stomach virus within the past week alone. Admissions recruiting this year will be fun. Coupled with the plunging stock market and the onset of midterms, anxiety levels have been high. I've been trying to cut down on the extraneous noise in my life. Funnily enough, having to actually wake up early for classes/work has been, well, a wake-up call in getting my priorities straight. Admittedly I'm still figuring out how to make it all work as I missed my 8 AM class both times this week and have a midterm for it on Wednesday - oops.

Keeping up with classes, work and research while trying to get everything together for grad school makes me appreciate simpler luxuries a lot more - sleep, for one. I went through this unnecessarily complicated conundrum about whether or not I should graduate early next spring but have decided to stay a full 4 years (yay, scholarship coverage!) so that I can write an honors thesis (trust me to pick a pretentious reason). The convenient thing is that I can use data from the paid research I'm doing on older adults and the effects of emotion regulation on memory and interpretation of facial expressions. Staying a full 4 years also means that I can probably keep my current job as well as take those film and TV music elective classes taught by Jon Burlingame. It sounds rather strange to say that I feel content when I've balanced my checkbook, written two papers in advance and haven't had a group of 70 year old research participants stage a mutiny on me (sadly, I didn't make that last one up).

It also helps tremendously that X seems to be feeling happier and healthier than she has been in months, so I'm really glad for her. It's been nearly a year since she's been this talkative; I just hope that this is pointing to a positive trajectory of recovery.

For now, I'm willing to accept small things as victories where I can find them. I love the blessed peace of curling up on the denim-slip covered couch in our living room with the hazy Los Angeles sun streaming in through the crooked blinds and the distant roar of cars on the motorway outside. It's hard not to view writing as a decadent luxury, but I'm trying to get myself to work on various pieces in different stages of completion. I've bee meaning to finish this Agatha Christie tribute story featuring two certain spy guys for ages...

I've been meaning to write a real entry for ages. I swear I will, and really it won't be angsty. But in the meantime, this poem probably best sums up how things are at the moment:

I worry about you-
So long since we spoke.
Love, are you downhearted,
Dispirited, broke?

I worry about you.
I can't sleep at night.
Are you sad? Are you lonely?
Or are you all right?

They say that men suffer
As badly, as long.
I worry, I worry,
In case they are wrong.
(Wendy Cope)

This could describe how I feel about many people, as if somehow carrying around this growing mass of angst about other people will somehow counterbalance their anguish and make it all OK.

Dad's not been doing too well lately. It's been more like a sudden shift in decline rather than a full blown avalanche, but it's hard to tell how bad things are over the phone. He's lost a tooth and got stitches around his face twice within the span of a week and a half from falling down the stairs. I'm hoping that he and mom didn't have to go to the emergency room again tonight for an uncontrollable nosebleed.

Dad's seeing his neurologist this Friday; at the very least, it'll be interesting to see what sort of effect, if any, the stem cell therapy from two years ago has on his condition.

Frankly, I wish we could reset the clock to when I was five so that my family was happy and healthy again. It kills me not being able to do anything.

Any good hopes and prayers for my parents are very much appreciated.

I was talking to laleia the other day about what it means to be an adult and how after hitting the big two oh we're reevaluating the way we think about the future. She was telling me about how after working this summer, her vision of the future was less about what she wanted to do during her vacation time and more about envisioning what her apartment would look like after graduation. The increased leisure and freedom we associate with having total control of our adult lives is underscored by recognition of responsibility and a desire to do something productive with our time. Erikson's life stages come to mind, with the middle adulthood phase focusing on generativity vs. stagnation. Some say that we're growing up too quickly as a generation, being forced into situations that require us to think in the long term (college debt, anyone?) before we know any better.

Adolescent psychologists love talking about how adolescence has become a prolonged lifestyle stage and that in Western/"developed" societies, there are few clear markers as to when we actually become adults. In the US, you can get a driver's licence at 16, buy cigarettes and porn and vote at 18 and drink at 21. Those are just your legal rights. A lot of us work part-time jobs but aren't financially autonomous. Our parents expect us to do more around the house, but some give more decision-making authority to their children than others. If a teen becomes a parent, it's generally safe to assume that the pregnancy was unplanned. All these milestones of what it means to be adult take place at different times nonlinearly. If it seems that my generation has problems growing up and moving out of the house, in our defense it's more challenging when none of us know what's supposed to happen when.

Hence the new "young adult" period that roughly marks age 18 to the 20's, the ambiguous span from when most enter college and slowly transition to some kind of general self-supporting autonomy. We have a vague notion of self-reliance (how very Emerson!) when it comes to delineating adulthood, but with a globalized intellectual property/service-based economy so many college grads are living at home and/or relying on parents for financial assistance even if they live apart. And to be honest, most people my age don't have well-balanced functional romantic relationships. Maybe we know how to conduct a t-test or write a paper that can garner an A, but sticking to a budget, assembling a bunk bed or managing time well often seems out of our intellectual reach.

To be honest, I don't believe that the jobs that most students have make them any better at managing their own finances or learn the value of money, because the research on middle class kids shows that they espouse more cynical views of the workforce and workplace ethics, become more materialistic and be more likely to engage in some forms of "deviant" behavior like drinking. Working (10+, if I remember correctly) actually diminishes academic performance. (Though personally, if researchers actually bothered to study teens from less wealthy backgrounds, it'd probably show different and more positive outcomes.) For one thing, many high school college students use the extra income from being office gophers or filing away library books to buy personal luxuries and things they don't really need. Combined with poor financial literacy and the astonishing availability of credit, it's no wonder that we're hopelessly ignorant when it comes to fiscal responsibility.

It's so easy to become arrogant, thinking that just because we've gone through so many years of higher education and taken tests measuring our likelihood of success in the education system means that we have any idea of what it means to be a successful, well-functioning adult. Sometimes I wonder if we, the entitled and neurotically achievement-oriented Generation Y, just have a massive lapse in emotional intelligence. Or maybe I'm just too timid to tell the kids across the hall to keep it down because some of us actually have to wake up at a decent hour of the morning tomorrow.

This isn't to say, of course, that Generation Y fails at life. We're more worldly, technologically plugged in and theoretically more tolerant of people from different backgrounds than ever before, and quite a number of us are finding creative new ways to save the world or at least dedicate serious time to volunteering locally.

Call it the burden of complexity that grows heavier with each decade and century. Sometimes I think we're so busy trying to fulfill an agenda that we forget about how valuable it would be to ask someone who's been through a similar experience already to help guide the way.

I need my older friends to gently smack sense into me when I'm panicking or approaching Hamlet levels of angst. It's much easier to listen to and accept the advice and guidance of someone who has the experience of your parents, being parents themselves, who doesn't have all the history of conflict and the traits that irk you about your own mother. In friendship, you can simply relate to each other as the people you are now. I guess this is my terribly convoluted way of saying thanks for putting up with me lately and serving as examples that yes, people do manage to happily survive these emotional quagmires of the teens and 20's.