As salaam alaikum,
I hate to admit it, but...
I'm still slightly freaked out by E.T. I saw the updated poster for the movie...his arm looked too skinny. I didn't like it. I had to navigate away from the page for fear of having a movie nightmare.
What is a movie nightmare?
A nightmare where you are watching a movie you've seen several times and you slowly realize that it's not going as you remembered it, just to come to a head near the end of your dream when things are terrifyingly different and someone tries to force you to continue looking at the screen as scary music starts to play in the background.
Insha'Allah, I will not have such a dream tonight! I'm praying on it!
Since childhood, I've had odd dreams and odd things I've found scary. Monsters? I never had a schema for those. When I was a 4 year old, I was afraid of microwaves and VCRs. VCRs in the 1980s had horrible tracking, sometimes manual tracking, and sometimes VHS tapes did not withstand the test of time or children under 5. So sometimes the video would be messed up or (worse) the sound would be warped. And I hated that...I used to have nightmares about that.
And microwaves...something must have happened as a kid, but I still have a specific phobia surrounding things I can't even discuss for fear of my throat beginning to close up.
The movie nightmare is a dream sequence that has stood the test of time in my scariest nightmares. I've had dreams that I've been pursued by murderers, that loved ones are dying, that I'm in a car accident, but nothing is so scary to me as the movie nightmares and the likes of them.
Anything that warps and bends reality in a way that is nonsensical. I mean, I could get into a car accident, or a family member could die.
But E.T.'s body being too skinny or the wrong color or his voice sounding completely different in a dream of the movie that I'm watching...I hate those! It takes me so long to get back to sleep!
That's why it amuses me so much that other people were afraid of such logos as this when they were kiddos, and how many of them post these on YouTube.
I'm not the only weirdo scared by odd things! Sweet!
...insha'Allah I'll sleep like a log and not be scared in my sleep...
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Friday, October 19, 2012
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Out in the Rural
As salaam alaikum,
My most recent career aspirations, specifically working in a community health center for some part of my career, were inspired by this film, entitled "Out in the Rural" (1970), about one of the first community health centers in the country.
Out in the Rural from Luis Manriquez on Vimeo.
For more information about the CHC movement in the United States, visit the NIH's "Against All Odds" exhibition, specifically the section of community health, subsection "On Common Ground."
I'll include below the email that I sent to family about it, which gives a little bit of background about Dr. Jack Geiger, who also is one of the founding members and former president of Physicians for Human Rights, and how he became involved in this movement. Seriously, masha'Allah!
My most recent career aspirations, specifically working in a community health center for some part of my career, were inspired by this film, entitled "Out in the Rural" (1970), about one of the first community health centers in the country.
For more information about the CHC movement in the United States, visit the NIH's "Against All Odds" exhibition, specifically the section of community health, subsection "On Common Ground."
I'll include below the email that I sent to family about it, which gives a little bit of background about Dr. Jack Geiger, who also is one of the founding members and former president of Physicians for Human Rights, and how he became involved in this movement. Seriously, masha'Allah!
A little background...I also showed this documentary to B, and he was inspired by Dr. Geiger, especially in his thoughts for what he wanted to do with his career. I was, too, very much so, in a similar way. He's going to be at Tufts for the Physicians in Human Rights student conference in February. For several reasons but mainly because of time constraints on commitments, I haven't really done anything with PHR, but considering Dr. Geiger is aging and has cancer and this may be one of the few times I can hear him speak in person, I may put down $40 and haul myself over to Tufts and hear him and the other speakers. I don't know.
Dr. Jack Geiger, as a medical student, traveled to South Africa and was part of a rotation in a small clinic in a rural, Zulu tribal reserve called Pheola in Natal, based in the only medical school in the country at the time that would train blacks. Headed by two South African physicians and founded in the 1940s, years before the Apartheid government would shut it down, it employed what its founders called community-oriented primary care (COPC). These centers were set up to be care for the people, by the people, run by the people...taking communities and focusing not only on their needs and their assets, empowering them to be able to run their own health center, thus encouraging education and entrance of the youth into the very lucrative health field. It also addressed many of the social determinants of health, including poverty and racial discrimination, through programs within the center.
Geiger came back to the United States and completed his training, writing a thesis about this COPC model and deciding that this should be put in place in the United States.
In this world where so much depends on opportunity, right place and time, his interest and work in community-centered care coincided with Johnson's War on Poverty, and Geiger's model for providing health care for the poor was what was used to begin the community health center movement (CHC) in the United States.
With my classmates, I visited the first CHC in the United States, which was set up at the Columbia Point projects in Boston, MA in 1965. It is now called Geiger-Gibson after its founders and after Columbia Point was torn down. Columbia Point were projects built on a landfill where low-income blacks were separated by highway from low-income whites, very much in Boston fashion. Large trucks hauling trash sped up and down Mt. Vernon Street to the nearby dump at the time, resulting in the death of a little girl who was attempting to cross the street. Just as the community banded together, mothers hand in hand to stop the trucks from running their streets, the community was able to band together and make up an essential part of their community health center, including the clerical staff and practitioner staff, many people coming back to be medical assistants, nurses and physicians in the center in their old neighborhood.
The one featured in the film followed a similar model of home-grown staffing, in addition to a variety of needed social programs.
Community Health Centers still exist. Here's a link to the National Association of Community Health Centers: http://www.nachc.org/.
Here in Boston, there are 25, and I think more than 50 statewide. These not only provide health care for the uninsured and underinsured, but it provides quality, comprehensive primary care for anyone in the catchment area. I visited 7 different centers in Boston, and each have social programs in place as well. One had an obesity program for young people. Another had a special diabetes program. Yet another had an affiliated charter school for the black youth of Boston (who make up the majority of Boston Public Schools), whose college graduation rate is 7.4%. The school had a college graduation rate of 73% and a high school graduation rate of 100%.
I'm very excited to share information about these centers with you. These things have been around now for more than 45 years and have survived various challenges, including the Reagan administration, to be a social project that has unwavering bipartisan support. At a time when my generation barely knows what activism is, these centers were born in the time of and facilitated by the Civil Rights movement that is only taught indirectly and blandly in schools. The people who started these things are still running these things and are looking for new leadership.
So, here we come...
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Love Me Nots? Like Him Nots.
As salaam alaikum,
Alas, I'm derailed a bit because Dropbox didn't sync one of the files I needed this morning. I briefly contemplated going back home and getting my computer before I decided that it won't hurt starting all over again with my notes for my paper. I didn't spend that much time reading and compiling what I already had, and since I've already read some of the papers, my work will be streamlined. Whatever. Dropbox has only just now let me down...I'm still not sure why it didn't sync the file.
I was typing up notes about the epidemiology of lupus and suddenly, I thought about B, how we went to see The Town last night (and crap-talked through the whole thing...I will take all of my roommate's movie recommendations with a grain of salt from now on!) and how he's taking me to this MIT dinner party/house warming thing on Sunday. I'll know no one, he'll know some people, so as if the Nigerian conference weren't enough for me to feel like the girlfriend being introduced to the friends (haha, though it was without a title...I was just Chinyere), this is totally going to be one of those situations.
And then I did my usual thing, and I thought. I remember something my other roommate remarked when I talked about him. She said she didn't really feel like I liked him, she couldn't hear it yet.
I told her all sorts of things, like, I've been there, done that...no more liking someone wildly, fancifully, crushing on them absently for years. No more thinking about the person every second of the day (because I don't, actually...not at all like MQ in 2004-2005), no more imagining being together, none of that. Plus, I'm very reserved in the first place when it comes to describing these things...I don't know what she expected me to say.
And I asked her, "What, do you want me to describe how it feels when he touches me?" At which point, I insulted my other roommate's sensibilities. I then started singing "He Loves Me" by Jill Scott.
"When you touch me, I just can't control it...when you touch me, I just can't hold it!"
"Inappropriate," said my other roommate. We were walking to Kendall at the time to the cinema to see...something, I don't remember.
But thinking about what my roommate said, that it doesn't sound yet like I like him...maybe I don't.
Maybe not, I can't say for sure.
But I'm obviously excited to see him, excited to hear from him. I enjoy his (at times awkward) company. We're so remarkably similar that I can't help to feel like some aspect of this was meant to be...but I do come at the whole thing, even my own emotions about the whole thing, in a very practical manner.
I don't think I like him, emotionally speaking.
There's too much background noise, I'm not able to tell. Sometimes I feel like he doesn't like me, either.
I mean, the signs are there...he keeps inviting me to things, we keep "hanging out," he keeps paying for things, there's the proximity, the gestures, the words...but a little bit, I feel like we're just going through this as a matter of course. We're remarkably similar, we're both incredibly intelligent, highly educated Nigerian Americans at two top institutions who happen to be living now within area codes of each other...I feel like maybe we both feel like, well, this is good...we should take advantage of this.
There's something missing, though, something that maybe only time will concede. I feel like, sometimes I talk a lot and he has nothing to say because maybe he's thinking, wow, why am I with this woman right now? And in those times of silence I wonder if maybe I'll end up telling the same stories, and then we'll have nothing left to say in the end.
I considered myself to be coming at this very practically, but maybe it's even too practical for me.
Why do I like him? We have a similar sense of humor...evidenced by the fact that we find each other's comments in a movie amusing. That was the first thing. Sense of humor, that he's well-read, self-educated while also getting his PhD, so institutionally educated as well. He's up on current events, he's conscientious, he's ambitious, has pretty clear aspirations for the future. He's like me in ways that I can't describe because we both have Nigerian parents (or parent for me) and grew up in this country, so we're both in it and not. We're both Igbo and black, we go between both populations seamlessly. He's underground hip hop, I'm neo-soul, which is a nice complement, at least I think.
And like I said before, a big plus for me was the fact that he knows I'm Muslim, respects that, respects me. That's something I've always wanted. I've been with Muslims that didn't respect how I was Muslim before, to the point of wanting to rename me. No, I'm Chinyere, and I'll always be. My mother changed her name but that's my mother. I am different from my mother by at least half.
These are all important things. Like I said before, the fact that we would be together makes all the sense in the world...maybe too much sense?
Ahh...I know.
He's more like me than anyone I've ever met. Just like that Africa Night where I met the woman who looked like me, I'm now in a relationship with a guy who is almost the male equivalent of me, and while we are obviously not completely the same, we're enough the same that I'm not especially intrigued, except for the fact that this is another human being that I'm relating to.
It took me a while to do this, because there is no comparison between human beings, but I'm comparing him now to MQ. MQ followed a similar pattern...I started liking that individual because he started liking me first. As soon as I saw that he was interested in me, intrigued by my intelligence, wanting to spend time around me, that piqued my interest...I wanted to see what this guy was about.
Why would he, who was so different from me, who was like no one I'd ever met, be interested in me? Is there something about me that I don't know? Who is this boy, and what world is he coming from? He's coming from a world that I don't know, and somehow, here we are, existing in the same realm, having feelings for each other, and it's the most wonderful thing I've ever felt in life...
That was MQ at it's purest. That whole experience inspired me to write A Rose Much Desired. No joke.
This...is different. Like I said, it all feels like a matter of course. It's like, well, you're you, and you're here, and we have these things in common...let's go forward.
Which is fine. This is not me backing out. This is just me realizing...we're getting to a critical turning point in which something's got to give.
Too many sitcoms joke about the friend's zone, and if you don't make a move with a female you'll find yourself in the friend's zone. I see it now, and it's really simple as to why it happens. Right now, I have to know if he likes me. If he doesn't let me know in some critical, concrete way (like saying, you know what, Chinyere, I like you), I'm going to assume that he's not that into me, and I will lose interest. I mean, after all, I like you right now because you like me and I'm intrigued by that fact and I'm trying to get to know this man who finds me attractive, right?
I'm not going to "let's just be friends" this guy, though. Why?
I think we're both in the same boat. I can't know for sure, but I feel like neither of us have very much experience in this being in a relationship thing, from the way things are going. Either that, or we have different styles. I think that's the most accurate, the different styles. But anyway, I feel like we're both in this because it's a matter of course...sometimes.
Sometimes, though, from the way he looks at me, I think he really likes me.
Hahahaha, I think the answer is, dude, he needs to let me know! Or else I'm going to be on to the next one!
How do I feel right now? I like him, but at the same time, I don't like just him. I like the idea of being in a relationship. I like not worrying about maybe being incapable of relating to another human being in a way that may someday lead to my reproducing. I like not feeling like I'll be forever single. It's kind of like Ramadan removed the Satan element so you knew what was really in your heart, what were your shortcomings. Removing the element of fear of singleness has helped me tomar uma atitude about so many other things in my life...get things done, realize that apart from that, I really am burned out from medical school and I need to get my crap together.
It makes me more efficient, but less in the joyful way that my short-lived relationship with MQ did. I seriously believed I could fly after that.
Maybe because I was young and fanciful, and if this Pakistani kid liked me, a black Nigerian American girl, then anything was possible.
Frankly.
Whereas now, it's like, yeah...if someone were to like me, B would be the one. Maybe I am not, in fact, incapable of relationships. ...okay, back to studying.
That's what it's like right now. I'm not 19 anymore, though. I'm 25, and nearly done with this year. Four more good months of it, and I'm on to 26. At 27, I'm going to be someone's resident physican. All insha'Allah.
I'll never be 19 again. A lot of life has passed and made me into who I am today.
Yet, no matter how this all ends, I refuse to resign myself to a relationship for a relationship's sake, one that is a matter of course, just because we're two bodies with two spirits that should go together and we're forcing them to fit together. Because if things continue as they are, they'll start to feel forced.
There's a natural progression to things, and we're almost missing the mark.
Sunday. We'll see.
Back to work!
Alas, I'm derailed a bit because Dropbox didn't sync one of the files I needed this morning. I briefly contemplated going back home and getting my computer before I decided that it won't hurt starting all over again with my notes for my paper. I didn't spend that much time reading and compiling what I already had, and since I've already read some of the papers, my work will be streamlined. Whatever. Dropbox has only just now let me down...I'm still not sure why it didn't sync the file.
I was typing up notes about the epidemiology of lupus and suddenly, I thought about B, how we went to see The Town last night (and crap-talked through the whole thing...I will take all of my roommate's movie recommendations with a grain of salt from now on!) and how he's taking me to this MIT dinner party/house warming thing on Sunday. I'll know no one, he'll know some people, so as if the Nigerian conference weren't enough for me to feel like the girlfriend being introduced to the friends (haha, though it was without a title...I was just Chinyere), this is totally going to be one of those situations.
And then I did my usual thing, and I thought. I remember something my other roommate remarked when I talked about him. She said she didn't really feel like I liked him, she couldn't hear it yet.
I told her all sorts of things, like, I've been there, done that...no more liking someone wildly, fancifully, crushing on them absently for years. No more thinking about the person every second of the day (because I don't, actually...not at all like MQ in 2004-2005), no more imagining being together, none of that. Plus, I'm very reserved in the first place when it comes to describing these things...I don't know what she expected me to say.
And I asked her, "What, do you want me to describe how it feels when he touches me?" At which point, I insulted my other roommate's sensibilities. I then started singing "He Loves Me" by Jill Scott.
"When you touch me, I just can't control it...when you touch me, I just can't hold it!"
"Inappropriate," said my other roommate. We were walking to Kendall at the time to the cinema to see...something, I don't remember.
But thinking about what my roommate said, that it doesn't sound yet like I like him...maybe I don't.
Maybe not, I can't say for sure.
But I'm obviously excited to see him, excited to hear from him. I enjoy his (at times awkward) company. We're so remarkably similar that I can't help to feel like some aspect of this was meant to be...but I do come at the whole thing, even my own emotions about the whole thing, in a very practical manner.
I don't think I like him, emotionally speaking.
There's too much background noise, I'm not able to tell. Sometimes I feel like he doesn't like me, either.
I mean, the signs are there...he keeps inviting me to things, we keep "hanging out," he keeps paying for things, there's the proximity, the gestures, the words...but a little bit, I feel like we're just going through this as a matter of course. We're remarkably similar, we're both incredibly intelligent, highly educated Nigerian Americans at two top institutions who happen to be living now within area codes of each other...I feel like maybe we both feel like, well, this is good...we should take advantage of this.
There's something missing, though, something that maybe only time will concede. I feel like, sometimes I talk a lot and he has nothing to say because maybe he's thinking, wow, why am I with this woman right now? And in those times of silence I wonder if maybe I'll end up telling the same stories, and then we'll have nothing left to say in the end.
I considered myself to be coming at this very practically, but maybe it's even too practical for me.
Why do I like him? We have a similar sense of humor...evidenced by the fact that we find each other's comments in a movie amusing. That was the first thing. Sense of humor, that he's well-read, self-educated while also getting his PhD, so institutionally educated as well. He's up on current events, he's conscientious, he's ambitious, has pretty clear aspirations for the future. He's like me in ways that I can't describe because we both have Nigerian parents (or parent for me) and grew up in this country, so we're both in it and not. We're both Igbo and black, we go between both populations seamlessly. He's underground hip hop, I'm neo-soul, which is a nice complement, at least I think.
And like I said before, a big plus for me was the fact that he knows I'm Muslim, respects that, respects me. That's something I've always wanted. I've been with Muslims that didn't respect how I was Muslim before, to the point of wanting to rename me. No, I'm Chinyere, and I'll always be. My mother changed her name but that's my mother. I am different from my mother by at least half.
These are all important things. Like I said before, the fact that we would be together makes all the sense in the world...maybe too much sense?
Ahh...I know.
He's more like me than anyone I've ever met. Just like that Africa Night where I met the woman who looked like me, I'm now in a relationship with a guy who is almost the male equivalent of me, and while we are obviously not completely the same, we're enough the same that I'm not especially intrigued, except for the fact that this is another human being that I'm relating to.
It took me a while to do this, because there is no comparison between human beings, but I'm comparing him now to MQ. MQ followed a similar pattern...I started liking that individual because he started liking me first. As soon as I saw that he was interested in me, intrigued by my intelligence, wanting to spend time around me, that piqued my interest...I wanted to see what this guy was about.
Why would he, who was so different from me, who was like no one I'd ever met, be interested in me? Is there something about me that I don't know? Who is this boy, and what world is he coming from? He's coming from a world that I don't know, and somehow, here we are, existing in the same realm, having feelings for each other, and it's the most wonderful thing I've ever felt in life...
That was MQ at it's purest. That whole experience inspired me to write A Rose Much Desired. No joke.
This...is different. Like I said, it all feels like a matter of course. It's like, well, you're you, and you're here, and we have these things in common...let's go forward.
Which is fine. This is not me backing out. This is just me realizing...we're getting to a critical turning point in which something's got to give.
Too many sitcoms joke about the friend's zone, and if you don't make a move with a female you'll find yourself in the friend's zone. I see it now, and it's really simple as to why it happens. Right now, I have to know if he likes me. If he doesn't let me know in some critical, concrete way (like saying, you know what, Chinyere, I like you), I'm going to assume that he's not that into me, and I will lose interest. I mean, after all, I like you right now because you like me and I'm intrigued by that fact and I'm trying to get to know this man who finds me attractive, right?
I'm not going to "let's just be friends" this guy, though. Why?
I think we're both in the same boat. I can't know for sure, but I feel like neither of us have very much experience in this being in a relationship thing, from the way things are going. Either that, or we have different styles. I think that's the most accurate, the different styles. But anyway, I feel like we're both in this because it's a matter of course...sometimes.
Sometimes, though, from the way he looks at me, I think he really likes me.
Hahahaha, I think the answer is, dude, he needs to let me know! Or else I'm going to be on to the next one!
How do I feel right now? I like him, but at the same time, I don't like just him. I like the idea of being in a relationship. I like not worrying about maybe being incapable of relating to another human being in a way that may someday lead to my reproducing. I like not feeling like I'll be forever single. It's kind of like Ramadan removed the Satan element so you knew what was really in your heart, what were your shortcomings. Removing the element of fear of singleness has helped me tomar uma atitude about so many other things in my life...get things done, realize that apart from that, I really am burned out from medical school and I need to get my crap together.
It makes me more efficient, but less in the joyful way that my short-lived relationship with MQ did. I seriously believed I could fly after that.
Maybe because I was young and fanciful, and if this Pakistani kid liked me, a black Nigerian American girl, then anything was possible.
Frankly.
Whereas now, it's like, yeah...if someone were to like me, B would be the one. Maybe I am not, in fact, incapable of relationships. ...okay, back to studying.
That's what it's like right now. I'm not 19 anymore, though. I'm 25, and nearly done with this year. Four more good months of it, and I'm on to 26. At 27, I'm going to be someone's resident physican. All insha'Allah.
I'll never be 19 again. A lot of life has passed and made me into who I am today.
Yet, no matter how this all ends, I refuse to resign myself to a relationship for a relationship's sake, one that is a matter of course, just because we're two bodies with two spirits that should go together and we're forcing them to fit together. Because if things continue as they are, they'll start to feel forced.
There's a natural progression to things, and we're almost missing the mark.
Sunday. We'll see.
Back to work!
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Random Update
As salaam alaikum,
Yep, deleted my last post. It wasn't charitable, so I kept it to myself.
Other than that, life is good. There's nothing more really to say about that right now. I saw this film, Budrus, with B, and though we were some of the youngest people there (it reminds me of Saturdays at Kendall Cinema), it was still a good...thing.
We got Chinese food after wandering into Chinatown. We had a really random conversation, and then he walked me home...well, we took the T home, and then he walked me home.
I realize that this is really devoid of details and therefore the antithesis of exciting, but I find myself somehow distracted by hunger this morning...
Besides that, I have a little bit of work to do this weekend, a paper to start writing. I wrote the second to last chapter of RMD, hated it, and will probably rewrite it before I write the ending. I realize my problem in this project is that when I write conservative Muslims, it's somehow hard to flesh them out...in particular two characters, Noor and Jameel. Noor at this point exists in the story as an invisible character who is mentioned a lot but never appears (I eliminated her chapter). Jameel could be the same, but I kind of what to include him. The thing is, when you spend an entire story alluding to a character then they pop up at the end, it needs to be worth the wait...and right now, it's lackluster. It just means that I need to spend more time on that chapter than I will have to the others, that's fine.
Anyway, I end with the trailer for Budrus. It premiered in New York City and Boston last night, coming to an independent theatre near you!
Yep, deleted my last post. It wasn't charitable, so I kept it to myself.
Other than that, life is good. There's nothing more really to say about that right now. I saw this film, Budrus, with B, and though we were some of the youngest people there (it reminds me of Saturdays at Kendall Cinema), it was still a good...thing.
We got Chinese food after wandering into Chinatown. We had a really random conversation, and then he walked me home...well, we took the T home, and then he walked me home.
I realize that this is really devoid of details and therefore the antithesis of exciting, but I find myself somehow distracted by hunger this morning...
Besides that, I have a little bit of work to do this weekend, a paper to start writing. I wrote the second to last chapter of RMD, hated it, and will probably rewrite it before I write the ending. I realize my problem in this project is that when I write conservative Muslims, it's somehow hard to flesh them out...in particular two characters, Noor and Jameel. Noor at this point exists in the story as an invisible character who is mentioned a lot but never appears (I eliminated her chapter). Jameel could be the same, but I kind of what to include him. The thing is, when you spend an entire story alluding to a character then they pop up at the end, it needs to be worth the wait...and right now, it's lackluster. It just means that I need to spend more time on that chapter than I will have to the others, that's fine.
Anyway, I end with the trailer for Budrus. It premiered in New York City and Boston last night, coming to an independent theatre near you!
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