Week One Quiz

What attracts me to Chinese Medicine?

Well right this moment the first thing that enters my mind when I ask myself what attracts me to Chinese Medicine is that there are no computers involved. I have discovered while struggling to even enter my blog tonight (thanks Emmendo! and thanks Lisa!) that I am a real hard-core Luddite! I think I mentioned in class that I feel both pulls (toward TCM) and pushes (away from the not TCM); computers are in the push column. I have wanted to throw this machine from the train so many times this weekend, but now I reveal another side of myself not yet seen by all my new mates, and I am suddenly way off topic. So...

Like most of the folks in class I have had amazing and wonderful experiences with both acupuncture and Chinese herbs. I have also gone directly from an acupuncture table via ambulance to Kaiser. On the other hand, western medical practices may have saved my life after my appendix burst, but they also caused a sudden outbreak of large, red boils all over my skin during an allergic reaction to a sulfa-based drug. We all have stories of the horrors that can be western medicine. Frankly, I am upset by and terrified of the vast chemical experiment that pharmacology has made of all of us. There is a story somewhere here in my newspaper clippings of a couple in Virginia, I think, who lost custody of their son because they all agreed to do "alternative" medicine instead of the recommended cutting and experimental chemistry. My lawyer friend a couple doors down tells me that the AMA is trying to push losing one's medical license should a western doctor be foolish enough to provide expert medical testimony against another western practitioner. The nutritionist who taught my nutrition class at CCSF told us that western doctors are usually not even required to take a single nutrition class while in medical school. I mentioned in our class already that my sister's handful of pills includes some to counteract the side-effects of others. These are all reasons I am attracted to Chinese medicine.


What do I honestly think of Physics, really?

Physics in high school, back in the day, was dreaded by everyone and provided me with my first note home from a teacher remarking my lack of, well, "achievement." I remember how impossible it seemed to me to determine which friggin formula applied to which friggin situation, all of it amazingly divorced from what seemed then anyway to be real life. Physics in college, circa 1969 or so, was a lesson in how I was certainly not ever going to amount to much, although I do remember playing around bending light in little precursors to CRTs which was interesting and fun. Physics in college, circa 2005 or so, was mostly watered down and disappointing because by then I'd read some interesting books and the class, frankly, came up a little short...

But if our first class is indicative, I think much is about to change. Physics is more than classes.


Now that I think about it, have I ever experiences time "slowing down?"

Even without thinking about it, I have experienced time slowing down. Actually, when I have really thought about it, I have experienced time as completely stopped. Time as a measurement that "moves forward" then (and now, when I really think about it) seems to be completely a mental construct instilled in us from the first day we are due in school. This is for job preparation and, what a funny phrase, punching the clock!