Treating Addiction

From "Alcohol, Cradle to Grave", an article in the Great Falls Tribune that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000:

At Benefis Healthcare in Montana the emphasis is on motivation.
„Without motivation, it doesn't matter what other resources you have.“ said Dirk Gibson, supervisor of the Addiction Treatment Center at Benefis. „Without motivation you have nothing.“
One way to do that is by stressing the pleasure alcoholics can find by changing their lifestyle.
Another is by stressing the pain they can avoid by quitting drinking.
A lot of people realize that on their own, said Dr. Dan Nauts, medical director of the Benefis Addiction Treatment Center.
„A majority of the people who quit abusing substances do it on their own without treatment,“ Nauts said. „Fifty percent of heroin addicts who stop using do so without treatment.“
„Motivation is really the key,“ he added.
One critical aspect is an intensive assessment in which counselors carefully listen to a patient to understand individual concerns, Gibson said.
He cited the case of a retired military officer, intelligent and well read, who kept drinking himself into the hosptîtal's detox center.
They worked to find a reason to keep the man from drinking, but couldn't. Even death wasn't a threat.
But when they told him he was likely to die in a nursing home, unable to control his movements or his bowels, that struck a nerve.
„He called me a month later and said, 'I'm ready to make a change,'“ Gibson said. „And he did.“

Sortir de là où on est

Ce n'est pas qu'il faut arriver à quelque chose, c'est qu'il faut sortir de là où on est.
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant

Leaves, a novel

When teaching English in Santa Cruz do Sul, Brazil, in 2008, one of my fellow teachers was Owen Praskievicz from the US, who was then working on what he hoped would become a novel. And it indeed did become one. A few days ago, I finished reading it, and I've found it enjoyable and thoughtful. Here are a few sentences/thoughts/ponderings/observations that I think are wonderfully reflective, insightful, and very well put.

A low branch tempted him to jump and grab it and as he passed he couldn't resist. He swung for a step and kept flowing in stride. Not since his days back home did he feel this powerful, this sure of life. Jumping into the air and soaring outright into the sky seemed a physical possibility.

A father, groomed at the nearby Academy, glorified for his exploits as a pilot, and the beaming owner of a 747, sat back in his chair, smoking a cigar assured of taste by its price tag, smiling and laughing with his teeth at the popularity of his offspring.

Coming home Calvin hoped not to find his roommate and was disheartened to hear her rambling away in the kitchen when he walked in. A modest greating and a decline in an offer for her food turned him directly into his room. Why must one always be social? He was hungry, but he was in no mood to sacrifice the costs of gratitude and guilt she would place on his shoulders for the meal. It did smell good though. With a few hours to kill, Calvin escaped to the convenient bar down the street. A few beers would settle him better anyway.

His fingers worked with muscular memory ...

Only those who fill the void with the satisfaction of just being retain the juice, but there is a sad majority who assimilated Sabrina to their philosophy; boredom masked in a pretense of unimportant manoeuvres.

As only a black woman can, one of the girls threw just the right words to pull such a man away. "You think you're sexy, don't you?" she said.

The issue died with the hours of the night.

Frühstück in Japan

"... letztes Jahr war ich im Herbstsemester in Japan, und da hab ich eine Woche bei einer Familie in einem kleinen Fischerdorf zwei Zugstunden von Tokio entfernt gewohnt, direkt am Pazifik. Und da gab's zum Frühstück nicht wie bei uns völlig anderes als am übrigen Tag. Ich meine, wir - oder jedenfalls die meisten Leute - essen zum Frühstück doch Sachen, die uns zu keiner anderen Tageszeit in den Sinn kommen würden: Saft, Müsli, aufgeschnittene Bananen, Eier, Pfannkuchen, French-Toast, English-Muffins, Schweizer Käse ... wir essen jedenfalls morgens ganz bestimmte Sachen, an die wir bis zum nächsten Morgen dann nicht mehr denken. Aber weisst du, was es in dem kleinen Dorf, in dem ich war, zu Frühstück gab? Die Reste vom Abend zuvor. Fischsuppe, aufgewärmten Reis, gebratene Klösse, falls welche übrig waren - die sind übrigens ziemlich lecker. Das heisst, an dieser einen Sache, dem Frühstück, lässt sich schon die ganze Bandbreite der Unterschiede zwischen zwei Völkern, zwei Kulturen darlegen ..."
Tom Wolfe: Ich bin Charlotte Simmons

French fields! A French tree!

I expect journalism to make me think, to tell me something I did not already know (and by this I do not mean gossip). Needless to say it mostly doesn't. One of the exceptions is a recent piece on Sebastian Faulks in the Daily Telegraph that I've found inspiring. Here's an excerpt:

Faulks suddenly had his subject. The financial fantasy world, tilting giddily on its axis, and other alarming disconnections of contemporary life. Screens that have supplanted human communication, the alternative life of chat-rooms, internet information that saps the quest for real knowledge, reality television undermining reality. “We are living in a fractured society,” he says. “Everyone is doing their own thing. I do think this atomisation, to use a vogue word, is a threat.”

Starting in 2005, the best-selling author of Birdsong, Human Traces and Engleby wrote 50,000 words of his novel set in present-day London and then paused to dash off Devil May Care, an authorised sequel to Ian Fleming’s James Bond books. When he returned to the present, three months later, “the world had really changed”. The banking system was about to implode.“The game was up. The writing was on the wall.” He quickly decided to anchor his book, A Week in December, in December 2007, “the last time people really believed they could go on with the boom for ever” — and to get it out as fast as possible.

Although the bloodless machinations of a hedge fund manager, John Veals, are at the cold centre of it, Faulks’s wider concerns about dehumanisation are explored through almost every other character, including a footballer and a student drawn to the ‘true message’ of Islam. “The sense of unreality in the financial world began to feed into other unrealities,” he explains. “What disturbs me is how increasingly reliant we are on this and this [he jabs at his computer screen and mobile phone]. When I went to France for the first time, aged nine, it was exciting. French fields! A French tree! But when my children go on holiday they don’t really notice the drive because they are texting or tapping. I’m not critical of them, but now everywhere is pretty much the same.”

For the full text go here

Robert Capa's Falling Soldier

On 18 August 2009, the International Herald Tribune published an article by Larry Rohter entitled „Research raises questions anew about iconic Capa photograph“. Oh no, I thought, please not yet another piece on Robert Capa's „Falling Soldier“, probably one of the most over-scrutinised, over-discussed, and over-valued photographs ever. Nevertheless, I started to read:

„After nearly three-quarters of a century, Robert Capa's „Falling Soldier“ picture from the Spanish Civil War remains one of the most famous images of combat ever. It is also one of the most debated, with a long string of critics claiming that the photo, of a soldier seemingly at the moment of death, was faked.
Now, a new book by a Spanish researcher argues that the picture could not have been made where, when or how Capa's admirers and heirs have claimed.“

The reason? The photo, according to José Manuel Superregui, wasn't taken at Cerro Muriano, just north of Córdoba, but about 55 kilometers away, near another town, and since „that location was far from the battle lines when Capa was there, Mr. Superregui says, it means that „'the Falling Soldier' photo is staged, as are all the others in the series taken on that front.“

Willis Hartshorn, the director of the International Center of Photography in New York, where Capa's archive is stored, said: „Part of what is difficult about this is that people are saying 'Well if it is not here, but there, then good God, it's fabricated' ... That's a leap that I think needs a lot more research and a lot more study.“

I'm not too sure that a lot more research and study is needed when it comes to this photograph. Besides, I had thought the question of how this pic came about solved when John Mraz some years ago wrote in Zone Zero that „Republican militiamen were pretending to be in combat for Capa’s camera, when a fascist machine gun killed this soldier just as he was posing. It is the coincidence between the fact that the photojournalist had focused on this individual at precisely the second before he was shot that makes this the most famous of war photographs.“ Moreover, „Capa’s involvement left him feeling that he had somehow been responsible for the man’s death. Hence, his reticence to discuss the photo, as well as a certain confusion in recounting the events surrounding the photograph’s taking, decisions that are seen in a very different light if we assume that he staged the image. What this case establishes is that our interpretation of a picture is based on the presumptions we bring to the act of seeing it, but that research and reason can enable us to perceive it differently.“

So if research shows that this photograph was taken at another place than previously thought, what does that then mean? That it was taken at another place than previously thought, nothing but that. Was it staged or wasn't it? Are Capa's statements in the interviews he gave true or not? Is the account of John Mraz the real story (if there is such a thing at all)? Well, who knows? But one thing is for certain: the photograph cannot show what happened, it can only show what was right in front of the camera at a given moment. In this case: a man in a soldier's uniform falling.

So why then has this photograph become such an iconic picture? Not because of the composition, or the light, or the framing but solely because we want to believe the famous story that accompanies this shot – for we want photos to be authentic, and true, and we want them to capture moments and scenes that our eyes often only register but do not see.

The story that accompanies this picture – a soldier photographed at the moment of his death – is simply too compelling to not be believed. Whatever research will unearth, whatever reason will lead us to consider, our view of this photo will probably not change for we have been brainwashed into believing that in this picture we see a man dying. It might of course well be that this is indeed the case but it is not what the photograph can show. Still most of us continue to believe that it does. How come?

Remember the story of some years ago about the Eskimo/Inuit, who were reported (in the New York Times) to have a hundred words for snow? In fact, there is no evidence that they possess more words for snow than, say, carpenters have for wood; the famous Eskimo case for snow is a myth, pure and simple, yet, as Geoffrey K. Pullum states in his The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language, „Once the public has decided to accept something as an interesting fact, it becomes almost impossible to get the acceptance rescinded. The persistent interestingness and symbolic usefulness overrides any lack of factuality.“

The same goes for the „Falling Soldier“ - we continue to see in this photo what is simply not there. What is there is a man in a soldier's uniform falling on a slope, that's it, and that is a fact. By the way: 'fact' comes from the Latin 'facere' and that means 'to make'.

On reference points

He didn't answer. He rather said: "It is possible to think this: without a reference point there is meaninglessness. But I wish you'd understand that without a reference point you're in the real."
Sharon Cameron: Beautiful Work: A Meditation On Pain