October 23rd 2014 - The Gristle of Life

Speaking of exams there is no bigger one than the MCAT.  Except for maybe the LSAT and in some cases the GRE.  The MCAT exam is the number one greatest factor for consideration for entrance to Medical School.  I was terrified.  It was so dramatic my fear that my desire to become a doctor was waxing because of this damn test.

The exam consisted of eight hours of small tests ranging from math, reading, life and physical sciences, and essay.  It was broken up into groups of organic chemistry, general chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics including calculus, reading comprehension and the fated essay.  To this day I wonder who the lucky bastard is that has to read the thousands of written essays as part of this exam?  I wouldn’t doubt by now if a computer scores it.  :)

I began studying for the MCAT about six months before the exam date of August 16^th.  I even took the Kaplan prep course to effectively learn how to take the test.  You know what I learned when taking the class?  Don’t get scared and don’t get frustrated, that’s what the prep taught me (great!).  The teacher told this story about coaching soccer for young kids.  On this team he had a retarded boy that struggled especially playing with very talented kids.  The day came for a really big game - the undefeated rivals.  He coached the boy to run as fast as he could and stay as close to the rival team’s best player.  He went as far as to have him stay within three feet of this super star player.  The superstar player on the the other team was completely incapacitated with frustration.  It was a great story, one I will remember more than the solvent used in a Grignard Reaction or Newton’s Gravitational Constant.

It was the summer of 97’ and as I studied for the MCAT I was also working my internship with the BCA (Bureau of Criminal Apprehension - see previous posts).  I studied and practiced while reading case files of serial killers, going on drug raids, visiting the morgue, assisting with autopsies and sitting in with Senior Special Agent Kohout as she consulted with local sheriff and deputies regarding possible sexual predators.

Needless to say my mind wandered from the prize and my desire to be a doctor continued to wane.  As part of the Kaplan program we were given the opportunity to take practice exams to simulate the experience.  On this particular Saturday I was sitting in the test center at 7:30am.  Everyone at the BCA took turns on call for the crime scene task force.  The BCA could be called to anywhere in the State of MN depending upon the nature of the crime.

About 35 minutes into the practice test the beeper went off and on the face it gave the address of Austin MN which is basically on the border of MN and Iowa at least 2 hours away.  I stared at the beeper and it also read the nature of the crime, ‘homicide’.  I looked at the practice test and the proctor in the front of the room, again at the beeper and then back to the clock at the front ticking down for this particular part of the test.  It took a matter of 30 seconds to turn the test over, grab my stuff and walk up to the Kaplan proctor and tell him, “sorry, I got to go.”  The look on his face was priceless, it was kind of like I was walking out of detention - he didn’t know hot to respond.  I handed him the test and walked out.  I got into my Cherry Red Ford Explorer and drove for two hours to the crime scene.

My wife and I in present time talk about things we have to do, things we want to do and all of the things in between.  As parents, the lines get blurred as a person becomes entrenched in child rearing, there is a tendency to lose one’s self.  We both ask each other, “what are you excited about?”  Or, “are you excited to do what you are about to do?” And if we hesitate or don’t absolutely know, then the answer is no.  When the answer is yes, it can be just as exciting witnessing their passion and excitement about something.  I was driving to Austin MN, the Spam capital of the world, with no idea what to expect, other than a dead body; and I was invited to help solve a crime- I was the most excited I’ve ever been in my entire life.

When I arrived at the city hall in Austin they checked my ID and gave me the address to the site.  There weren’t instructions nor a how-to manual for how to be on a crime scene.  There was just me and my winging it.  When I showed up at the scene of the crime it wasn’t like any TV show or book I’ve read.  I parked along a row of cars just outside the yellow police line.  I got out and walked under the yellow tape as if I belonged.  A police officer from Austin met me in the driveway.  I pulled out my BCA id and the police officer pulled out his flashlight.  He laughed at himself as he realized it was the middle of the morning and didn’t need his flashlight to read my id.

“I’m so used to checking id’s since 2am I just got used to it,” he motioned to the police issue mag light in his hand.  He walked me up to the house which was a normal looking home tucked into a block of other houses.  There was a separated garage and a good size back yard with a willow tree in the middle.  He stopped me near the back door to go and fetch the lead detective.

A tall thin tanned 40-something man came out.

“So, I hear you are Doctor Ophoven’s kid.  Pretty awesome lady,” I smiled and nodded.

“Okay, listen up.  We’ll put you to work, listen and pay attention.  This is a crime scene, get some gloves and do what we tell you, okay?”

“Yes sir,” what else could I say.  I entered the back door and immediately was struck by the smell.  Even though the murder had occurred less than twelve hours previous, the smell of drying blood was overwhelming.  On the floor of the kitchen was a young man in his boxer shorts dead on the floor.  There were several bullet holes in him and blood pooled all around him and had seeped toward the back door where I stood.  Yellow evidence markers were positioned all over the kitchen; shell casings, bullet holes in the walls, drug paraphernalia on the table.  The blood was thick and drying and it gave off a sweet odor like brown sugar mixed with a hint of damp leather.  They all stared at me as I couldn’t take my eyes off of the dead man.  I looked up into their eyes and I could see a desire for something, the intimacy of looking into the eyes of a dead man for the first time, an innocence they could never get back.  After a moment they introduced themselves.

The story was that the victim was a marijuana dealer.  He hadn’t been paid by one of his lackey’s and had spread the word that if he didn’t get paid he was going to have to do something drastic.  The lackey apparently took it upon himself to get to him first.  That was it, the story as it stood, youth without youth.  What the crime scene team had to do was determine the weapon or more importantly weapons - was there two shooters?  The ballistics team was called in to track every bullet fired and pull it from the wall or the floor wherever it went.  They had recovered shell casings but couldn’t determine how many shots were fired.

The crime scene team and ballistics went to work.  They started stringing colorful twine around the kitchen to track the trajectory of each bullet and where they may have ricocheted.  I went out the back door to get out of their way and help out any other way possible - and frankly getting some fresh air seemed like a good idea.  As I walked down the back stairs I noticed a flash in the grass.  I looked closer and there was a shell casing inside a footprint.  As the sun went overhead it was easier to see that which would have gone missing at 3 o’clock in the morning.

I yelled out, “shell casing.”  The team came out and confirmed what I’d found.  One of the detectives jokingly stated, “and the intern found it,” they all shrugged their shoulders, but deep down an orchestra was playing.

We worked for several more hours; I watched as they handled the crowds and the slow work of picking up the pieces.  Eventually I was dismissed and drove home, but was asked to join the Ramsey County Medical Examiner for the autopsy the following morning.

Sometimes opportunities present themselves and they aren’t obvious.  Other times, the opportunities are powerful.  This was one of those days that not only gave me the chance to elevate what I was doing and the choices of my life I was making, but also a great opportunity for perspective outside the confines of practice tests.  I had to choose whether to finish the test or drive to the crime scene - I made a choice.  The crime scene wasn’t practice, this was the gristle of life.

October 22nd 2014 - Tests Suck

I am a terrible test taker.  Huge anxiety.  I freeze up.  I read the sentence and it’s like trying to listen to someone while a train whistle is blowing.  It just doesn’t get in.  I’ve been phobic of tests since 5^th grade.  We took placement tests to see what we knew and they would stick us in a class and that was it, my destiny of learning was established in a half hour.

Don’t even try and tell me that the teachers of advanced classes are the same as remedial ones, I’ve been in both and trust me when I say the remedial teachers should stick to coaching baseball.

In 10^th grade I took advanced placement American History.  Our teacher was an ex-college professor, I’m pretty sure he was a doctor of history.  He treated us as college kids - what a relief it was.  We had infrequent exams and basically a giant text book he taught from and we learned.  There wasn’t any worksheets, study guides, no coloring books or fill-in-the-blanks.  The exams were bluebook essays - you knew the answer or you didn’t.

I would read and reread, highlight and take notes on my notes of any highlighted notes.  Before the exam we would cram and I had a photographic memory of the page number, the captions, the photos, the American history was in my head.  Then came test day, I would read the question and then reread it, and my anxiety was like a diffuser filtering away a whole hemisphere of my brain.  I went to the teacher and asked him for advice and he told me that maybe my brain wasn’t developed enough yet.  Now, I really liked this guy and respected him, but maybe a little sugar coating might have been prudent.

This was my curse, my lot in life.  Not good at tests.  My ACT tests scores were atrocious, my SAT scores were nominal.  I took one of those SAT ‘make your score better’ courses and my SAT scores actually dropped by 20 points.  When it came to college I knew I was going to be handicapped.  Maybe I am dyslexic or something?  This was the thought that went through my mind.  I studied and studied hard but also felt that even if I studied hard it may not matter.  I resigned that the scores and the grades became second for me.  I just delved into what I was learning and took the focus away from trying to ace the tests, but rather to just learn cool shit that I could somehow apply to the world.

Things changed for me in my sophomore year of college at the University of Minnesota.  I was enrolled in physics, which based upon my experience with physics in high school was going to be a challenge.  My favorite thing about the class was the text, the history and how the scientist’s invented the theories.  Of course, the exam never really asked the political strife Isaac Newton underwent and his conflicts with the Queen of England; nor how he was obsessed with being the first to create the philosophers stone, and how he was using science in the name of God and how this alienated himself from the rest of his community.

Nope, they didn’t ask us anything about that.  And to this day most of us know that Force = Mass times Acceleration, but I doubt that many people know that Newton inadvertently invented calculus while experimenting with optics and light.

But, I had to get grades.  So, I worked up a different strategy.  It wasn’t really cheating but it wasn’t exactly blindly reading the textbook and hope my brain doesn’t decide to freeze up like my Bronco II on the ice and snow on a thin road in Newport MN, I needed a work around.

I began to study the professor.  What kind of guy is he?  Does he like sports?  Is he passionate about the material or teaching?  Where did he come from?  The idea was to read and study the material but through the eyes of him?  I needed to get to know the professor enough to predict the questions he was going to ask on the exam.  Was he going to be sneaky?  Was he going to test us on the text, or on the lecture, or a mix?  I learned this from watching Captain Kirk and how he mastered the Kobayashi Maru.

The physics class had five tests per quarter 10 questions each exam.  Our grade was curved on a total of 50 points.  After the second test I deduced the professor was better at physics than people, he loved science it was his thing.  He was a good teacher, not into it as he could have been.  He liked testing on lecture material, even more weight on class and blackboard notes than the text.  It became clear to me that if I analyzed the total number of people in the auditorium and counted all who participated by showing up I could accurately predict how good or bad the curve would be.  This caught on to the people who sat around me, Peter and Eric, and Bridget and Sally, all wanted to know what the numbers were the day before the test.  There were 287 enrolled students in the class and between tests about 210-260 that would attend class daily.  That is a big discrepancy and the less that would show up on average to class the better the curve.  The numbers spoke for themselves.

As the weeks passed the test scores would come in and sure enough they didn’t lie.  Certain segments of physics were more difficult - I also began to see the professor wanting higher scores.  It got to the point that I picked up the professor’s tells; These were obvious statements, examples, clean clear chalk entries and he would box some of them in.

During the latter part of the second quarter the tests got earlier.  Something changed and this effected my curve analysis.  I discussed it with my group and informed them that he was shifting; maybe, it was pressure from outside influences, or the fact that most of the students were pre-med and they complained about how a poor grade would effect their chance at getting into medical school.  Whatever the case, the numbers still were accurate, if you went to class you were going to do better.

Everything changed in the third quarter.  We were assigned a new professor, all the tells were off, my social engineering had to go back to the drawing board.  I continued with the experiment and the curve actually started to favor the text slightly more than the lecture.  If you read the text, and mastered the book you would do better than if you favored the lecture.  That was a bummer, because I’d gotten good at learning from the man and not the book.

The take-away for me was huge though.  My test anxiety still existed but I learned that learning, education, teaching, studying, it’s all a dynamic process.  Don’t throw in the towel if you are like me - hard work pays off regardless of grades, certifications, or the process of learning is difficult, it can be hard no matter when or how the actual knowledge will apply some day, cause it will if you believe it will.

October 21st 2014 - The Incident With the Clock

“All things being equal or parsimonious, the simplest answer is usually the correct one.”  This is Occam’s razor - the famous 13^th century logician who I love quoting mainly because I like the word parsimonious.  It comes to mind in this anecdote regarding an event that occurred before a final exam during my fourth year of college at the University of Minnesota.  I was studying to be a doctor, the MCAT exam was less than a year away - August 16^th to be exact.  I was finishing my classes of my 4^th year with a plan to extend into a fifth but mainly because I wasn’t prepared to apply for Medical Schools and spend my summer finishing classes.  In the first couple of years of college my grades suffered and I spent the next 2 trying to bring up my GPA.  It is so much easier to erode a grade point average than to improve one.

On this particular evening I was cramming for a final exam the Introduction to Personality.  I was doing well in the course and had the material pretty well mastered but nonetheless I was reviewing my quarter of lecture notes and I’d of course made myself flash cards, because I am a flash cards type of guy.  I started to doze off in my bed studying and knew I needed to get rest for the 8am final which was early enough to sleep through.  I put my notebook down next to my bed, turned off the lights in my apartment and set my alarm for 6:30am.

After a couple of hours of sleep I awoke startled, it sounded like someone was in my apartment.  All of the hairs stood up on my neck.  My light was on in my room, which I specifically turned off before bed.  The clock read 3:30am as I stepped out of the bed, and my lecture notebook was not where I left it.  I ran into the living room ready for anything completely freaked out.  I called out, “hello,” and I went to the door which was unlocked to the outside hall.  I had locked the door, turned off the lights and gone to bed, I was sure of it.  Someone had been in my apartment.  Every light was turned on, and my cat sat on the back of his chair and my notebook was resting on the kitchen table.  That was when I had to sit down.  None of it made any sense.

After a few minutes I laid back down in my bed.  I checked the clock and the alarm.  It wasn’t set for 6:30am, it wasn’t turned on at all.  There seemed to be two likely competing explanations.  The first was that I’d fallen asleep and dreamt that I set my alarm, maybe even I created the studying inside my dream - which is pretty awesome if you think about it.  Thankfully I woke up to lock the door, set my alarm and go to sleep.  It was just so strange because it would have to have been the clearest and most vivid dream to have done all of those actions only to wake to have them undone.  I remember practicing the flash cards, turning off the lights, setting my alarm, even having an internal dialogue with myself about what time to set the alarm so that I gave myself ample time to get to the test.

The second and more likely explanation is that I was trying to send myself a message from the future.  I know this sounds odd but hear me out.  We all make choices in our lives, go left or right at the intersection, eat here or there, every choice takes us along a path to our destination.  I was studying personality, prepping for medical school entrance exams.  My final was at 8am, easily could have been missed; all of these events culminating on this one evening - maybe this one evening, or the following morning was a singular point in the space time continuum.  It is possible I came back in time to prevent some devastating maybe even catastrophic disaster from happening to our civilization.  My exam, my apartment, my cat all the simplest and mundane of nights could have had the gravest of consequences.  Granted, there is a load of hubris in that thought but still, you never know.  My future self couldn’t just show himself that would be crazy and obvious, and certainly couldn’t have tried to manipulate events such as change my exam score or something dramatic like blow up a building, my car, or steal all of my pants so I couldn’t take the test.  But what he could do was enter my apartment, turn on all the lights, change my alarm clock and move my notebook and then leave making a loud sound as the door shut on the way out.  All of these actions could be masked as a sleepy student.  The sound clearly woke me up so that my destiny changed and possibly the disaster was averted.

I know the previous example seems more probable in an Occam’s Razor sort of way, but the second explanation feels more right to me - I felt someone had been in my apartment.  The only thing I can’t explain was whether I was supposed to miss the exam or take the exam to avert the history that needs to be changed.  I guess time will tell.  I will keep you posted.

October 20th 2014 - Magic Part 2

As much as I would enjoy taking the credit for proving the existence of magic - it isn’t really my concern.  I have little issue with people who do not think magic exists, refuse to play with magic, or need to discount it for their own self preservation.  I know it exists and figuring out its nuance and learning to balance it within normal society is my goal.  As mentioned in my previous post I put deja vu into the category of magic because there isn’t any external measurable quantities or factors that can help describe deja vu, but the fact that it is regularly accepted as an experience by all makes it a phenomenon.

The experience of deja vu always felt like a memory to me.  A feeling like I was remembering a dream I had experienced.  When I was younger it felt much more disorienting and less so as I’ve gotten older (more on that later).  As a youth I wanted to believe it was a dream and that I was reliving my dreamworld in reality.  It also astonished, frustrated, flabbergasted, and mystified me that something so powerful was unexplainable.  I didn’t intend to set out to define it or figure it out but I was always intrigued.  It got to the point that when it happened I would stop what I was doing and just listen to my intuition and try and decipher the secret it was trying to whisper.

It was 1994 my second year of college at the University of Minnesota.  I lived alone in Dinktyown, the small collegeville on the Northeast side of the Mississippi River.  I lived on positively 4^th Street which 30 years before was also home to Bob Dylan when it was just 4^th Street.  The positively came later when Bob became Bob.  It was a beautiful spacious apartment for just me and my cat Nike.  As larger spaces tend to acquire more thins, the apartment required the domesticated upkeep that was lower on my to-do list.  On this one particular evening I was cleaning while listening to Thelonious Monk.  As I was putting games away and stacking books my eyes caught the game MindTrap that was stashed under the coffee table.  I reached for it and the deja vu started and I just sat down and relished in the actual feeling, the buzz of it was like my skin was a harmonic chord of music.  The deja vu subsided and I went back to my cleaning.

About six months later I was sitting in the same room with my friend Nate relaxing and watching National Geographic.  The phone rang and it was this girl I had met a couple of weeks previous.  She was going to stop by with a group of her friends.  I yelled to Nate that we needed to rally and clean the whole apartment, girls were coming over!  I started shoving things into the closet when my eyes met the same MindTrap game.  The deja vu happened again and I felt like for a moment I was looking through my eyes and listening through the ears of myself but at a different time, and because of the game I had a frame of reference.

That’s when it occurred to me.  Deja vu feels like we are experiencing our dreams; but actually, what if it is us experiencing ourselves at a different time in our lives.  It makes sense, because the moments collide with our consciousness and for a second or two or longer we are experiencing the same moment in two different periods of our lives.  The idea of feeling like we have done the moment before is true, we have.  The feeling is also unusual because we are still us but we are hanging out with a younger or older set of eyes, ears, smells, feelings, sadness, excitement.  We change everyday but we don’t really notice the changes because our frame of reference changes daily as well.  But if we get the opportunity to feel the essence of our youth or aged self from the perspective of years apart it would feel weird, yet familiar at the same time - like deja vu.

There are two windows, the first window is when we experience a deja vu episode for the first time and the other side of the window is sometime in the future.  I believe now, that the longer the distance between the two windows the stronger and more intense the experience.  The youthful first windows are by far the more intense as we are experiencing the older, wiser, more experienced selves and likewise the second window is less intense (hence why we feel it less when we are older or less intensely) since we have been there before, and it’s like putting on an old worn-in catcher’s mitt.   The first window is less comfortable which is like the stiffness of fresh leather seeking the oil of experience.  Regardless, for a moment in time, two selves of the same person are sharing in a single consciousness moment with a little of both sides seeping through to the other.

I know it sounds crazy or stoney but try it on.  It’s magic, there is no way to prove it right or wrong, but if it was the true, then that is pretty darn cool.

October 19th 2014 - Magic Part 1

The first time I experienced magic was when I was about six years old.  This was back in Mendota Heights Minnesota a suburb of Saint Paul.  We lived on the corner of Decorah Lane in a one story rambler type house.  This was a few years before my parents were divorced.  I was trying to entertain myself as my parents would frequently enforce.  I decided to practice my dribbling in the driveway.  The year was around 1980, unchaperoned play in the neighborhood was encouraged rather than the current model of super vigilant supervision.  We didn’t have a basketball hoop yet, and dribbling a basketball without the glory of making hoops was like fishing in an empty stream.

Across the street lived two young men who owned a basketball hoop.  As I practiced my dribbling the hoop called to me, I wanted to sneak over and just shoot a couple of hoops, what could the harm be?  Nobody was home, the driveway was empty and the hoop wasn’t doing anyone any favors left alone.

The history of these neighbors was not friendly.  They had many late night parties and were known to stay up late into the evening drinking and being loud.  My brother and I both considered using their hoop on previous occasions but agreed it wasn’t a safe place.  We had that feeling of warning one gets similar to dark alleys, crossing busy highways, or drinking from pond water.

I finally was fed up with boring dribbling and decided I would risk it.  I crossed the street and began practicing my lay ups.  Being so young it was difficult to make baskets.  My granny style was really my only hope for success.  Wishing my brother was around to enjoy it with me, I continued by practicing a solo game of ‘horse’. 

I continued throwing the ball up into the air and then it happened.  It wasn’t particularly windy on this day and when I threw the ball up it literally stopped in mid-air without hitting the rim and the ball flew back over my head down the driveway.  It was as if an invisible blocker reached their hand up and slammed the ball in the other direction.  All the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  I just stared up at the hoop trying to make sense of the nonsense.  I looked at it blankly and a knowing just came over me - it was time to leave, I wasn’t welcome anymore.  I chased after the ball rolling down the street.  After I retrieved it I walked back up my driveway and just before I got to the house the two men pulled up.  I’d already thought the experience was strange but when they got out of their pickup truck and went inside I knew that I was saved from some unknown or uncomfortable predicament.  I didn’t tell anyone about it because I was rather in disbelief that it had actually happened, but it did happen and I would never forget it.

The next time magic revealed itself to me was a few years later.  I loved playing baseball - shortstop was my position.  It was a windy summer afternoon, certainly too windy for a random solo little white butterfly to be flying through.  It was the nondescript kind of butterfly I would more likely see in a field of wildflowers.  It was the strangest thing seeing this butterfly land in the short grass. As much as I was trying to focus on the game I had a certainty, a knowing that the next hit was going to land exactly where the butterfly landed.  Sure enough, the batter hit the ball hard in my direction the ball bounced exactly where the butterfly had landed.

The idea of magic to me exists not in the vein of voodoo, or sorcery in the Merlin sense.  For me, magic is an intense trust in one’s internal intuition.  Magic is only magic because it comes from within rather than from without.  Cultures and society teach us to only trust what we can see and understand.  One’s intuition is not taught nor defined very well, and it cannot be described by any of the five senses.  Science and technology cannot explain it, nor religion which struggles with the tangible.  So, I guess magic lives in its own place, still being debated, denounced, argued and vilified.  

Magic and deja vu go together.  Both are feelings we receive from inside ourselves, subjectively described as memories, dreams, coincidence, serendipity, synchronicity, or the all too easy and one of my favorites -  the chemistry in our brains miss-firing.  All of these examples are true but none sing the song of certainty, belief, or a deep knowing that can explain these phenomena.

October 18th 2014 - Ira Part 8 - The Final Chapter

The last few days in Siberia were like Sunday on Labor Day weekend anticipating the end of summer and the return to school.  We’d become surrogate Russians and we were missing these people in a heavy way.  Unlike missing our parents, who we’d needed a break from; and likewise them us, the Russians, we were most likely never going to see again.  I’d started to close down and put on a happy face, but inside, I didn’t want to go back.  I wanted to fall in love and live happily ever after in Russia.

I started handing out the remaining gifts I’d brought.  Food - Ramen Noodles, Kraft Mac-n-chees, cigarettes, clothes, cassette tapes, and money.  I gave it all away, they needed it I didn’t.  I made goodbyes with Ira’s secret friends; losing a couple of huge hands of poker so they didn’t have to take handouts.  There were a few final large blowout parties with the exchange program so that we could celebrate and say our goodbyes.  I took several walks around the neighborhood memorializing the school, the park, and the towering oak tree outside Ira’s apartment (in which Ira’s father scraped bark from the tree to help cure me of a really bad case of diarrhea - a story I’ve neglected to divulge in detail - you can thank me later).  Aleosha was sad when I was packing, he kept me company even though my Russian and his English were so poor, but we giggled together nonetheless.  I will never forget his curious big eyes.  Ira’s mother and father sent me with gifts, tea, and helped me pack the samovar for my Dad back home.  But when it came time for Ira - it was hard for me to say goodbye.  I learned so much about being American from the Russians, but from Ira, I learned diligence, perseverance, stubborness and balancing hard work with a sense of humor.  

We met at the bus stop where it all started more than a month before.  It was very early in the morning, still dark when we hugged our last hugs and loaded up into the bus.  The trip to Novosibirsk was silent except for the occasional sound of muted whimpering.  We flew back to Moscow for a short stay before our final flight back to the Twin Cities.  We visited the Bolshoi with black market tickets.  We watched as our teacher negotiated the price with two shady looking mobster type fellas.  The Bolshoi was beautiful and at the same time our gas tanks were empty and we all knew it.  It was hard to stay enthusiastic and enrolled, most of us were still back in the middle of Asia wondering what our families were doing.

The following day we visited Arbat Street to make final purchases of gifts before our return trip.  The street that never sleeps was very different on the return trip, our novel eyes were seasoned with Russian culture, the wondrous artifacts en route had become touristy and Americanized fodder.  I was able to walk along Arbat Street and experience how much we had changed in the four weeks - what we’d become.

The flight back was much shorter than on our way, isn’t it always?  We’d all grown up a little and a little less innocent.  I was 17 when I stepped from the airplane into the care of a surrogate family.  I was still 17  when I embraced my family back home, but the 17 I was before we left would never be the same as the eyes that walked down the terminal on return.  The threshold had been crossed, the journey was over; But, with any change, it is really about the new beginnings.

I had a difficult time acclimating to culture in the states.  My life back home in America, I continued to compare it to my short stay in Siberia.  It brought tears of joy and remembrance but also grief.  It took an American boy from Saint Paul to travel to Siberia and return to realize what it means to be American.  Maybe leaving is what it takes to appreciate what we have?  Must it?  I am so grateful to my school, my family and the Russians to give me the opportunity, the possibility to learn a little more of myself.

I was truly changed, and not just the 25 pounds I’d lost on the trip, the world had become smaller but in many ways it grew too.  It’s hard to describe the incongruity of feelings, I was aware of a vastness of space and culture and this made me feel so tiny, but I also felt part of something greater.  As I write this I realize in the past two weeks I’ve shared many stories about my trip to Russia, I’ve left out many details but the truth is I haven’t shared these, nor spoken about them in 23 years, and in truth I’d kept a lot of this inside.

I graduated high school and went on to college at the University of Minnesota.  I took a few Russian classes but never pursued the language.  To this day, I still have Russian dreams in which I am back in Siberia and in the dreams I am speaking fluent Russian and understanding everyone at the same time.

A few years after I moved to Seattle I received a call from one of the other American Student’s on the exchange.  She called to tell me the unfortunate news that Ira had been killed in an automobile accident.  I was devastated to hear the news.  I hadn’t heard from Ira or her family since a little after we returned from the trip.

Ira was a sister and a good friend.  She will always be in my heart and I am grateful for knowing her even for the brief time that we shared together.  She taught me so much about myself and encouraged me to grow into the man and father I’ve become.  She taught me so much about friendship and how to be Russian but also what it means to be human.

I miss you Ira.

Love Pete.

October 17th 2014 - The One-Third Rule

When I was fifteen my mom asked me if I wanted to see a therapist.  At first I was taken aback, “was there something wrong with me?” But after my first appointment I realized there wasn’t anything wrong with me, but rather everybody else in the world had the problems (not really - but kind of).

Actually, it is where I learned how to be heard.  My therapist was non-judgmental, a safe haven to be inquisitive, and simply to talk and listen with a person that had years of experience compared to my greenhorn 15 years.  I turned 40 about a month ago and now I realize that 15 is like the flirting before foreplay stage of life; or the cocktail hour of your life, or something closer to the valet parking stage of life (the hors d’oeuvres, appetizers, oysters, salad, soup, antipasti, main course, dessert, aperitif, coffee, left overs, more cocktails, and then more leftovers, and then more coffee, and then water stages can be broken down similarly - I am currently 40, married with two children - which puts me somewhere in the antipasti stage). 

I learned a lot through therapy: about divorce, relationships, addictions, family, roles, shame, guilt, feelings, communication, money, desire, ambition, anger, resentment, buddhism, marijuana, personality disorders, narcissism, music, grace, patience, listening, compassion, forgiveness, among other things.  I continued going to therapy every week for about 10 years.  I began to look forward to these sessions, never really sure what we were going to talk about.  The night before my session, I would sit and condense my emotional well being and decide the heavy burdens I was carrying with me.  By the time the session was over we’d crossed so far away from what it started and mysteriously the root of the object of my concern was a resistant cover-up to the true inquiry.  That’s what a good therapist can do, hold space for what I want to talk about and then transform and investigate the conversation usually by means of hydraulic fracturing to the true origins.

One day he introduced me to the one-third rule.  It’s pretty amazing how applicable it is to everything, and I mean everything.

The one-third rules states the following:

No matter who you are, where you come from, the color skin you have, the language you speak, or the age, weight, hairless or hairy, angry or sojourn, type-a or type-b personality, cantankerous, accepting, racist, despicable, creative, blasphemous or drunk.  All characteristics, rich or poor, there will always be one-third of the people in this world that love you for you.  Whether changing or stagnant, humble or stoic - they will love you for you.  Alternatively, one-third will not care.  Even if you give them one million dollars, pay for their kids college, steal their car, or marry their daughter, no matter they will not care, and there is nothing you can do about it- one-third will just not give a shit.  It’s a fact.  Finally, and I think you are getting the rule, will hate, hate, hate, despise, deplore, abhor, or even condemn all that you stand for, represent, create, and persuade.  One-third will just not like you.

Most of us in the world, speaking on behalf of all human beings, generalizing and categorizing us, focus our efforts on the one-third that will not give us the time of day no matter if we promised rainbows and sunshine.  We exert all of this energy to appeal and gratify a group that is uncompromisingly unconditionally uninterested.

Sometimes these people are our parents, teachers, supervisors and our elected politicians.  It is unfortunate to be in a relationship, even born into family, in which the lower tier of our one-third are breathing the same air and sharing the same space.  But there is nothing we can do about it, so get over it.

But all that being true, our lives can change and our intentions with it.  We can spend all of our energy on the top one-third.  Those truly willing and excited for our contribution; those that love and relish in what we are, no matter how we look and feel.

This is the meaning of the one-third rule.  And it applies to more than just relationships, but our creative efforts as well.  Artists can focus on the audience that seek out their work and ignore the critics and the audiences that do not care, will not care, or will denounce the effort regardless of its genius.

The one-third rule goes right along with another sentiment or mantra or whatever you want to call it, “your opinion of me is none of my fucking business.”  I like this line and repeat it especially when I get caught up in the drama of others.  I know it is silly and naive to think that what others think of us doesn’t matter.  We are human beings, living in society of people connected by a culture of fitting in.  The one-third rule applies when the stress of life becomes so burdensome with worry of others and their opinions especially to those that don’t love us and never will.  It seems fruitless and recalcitrant to focus on such efforts, when it won’t change anything.

There is a wonderful book called the Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander which is loaded with great ideas and groundbreaking and creative and original ideas for teaching and being with others.  One statement it makes is to always remember rule number six.  Rule number six states, “don’t take yourself too seriously.”

My many years of therapy taught me to focus on every little piece of me and how I am in the world.  But after so many sessions of putting my cards on the table it became easier to step back and realize how comical I am and how worked up I was over the most mundane, banal and really insignificant things.

My current version of therapy is as follows:  remember the one-third rule and don’t forget rule number six.  

Thank you Terry.