| Summer 2000 | Volume II, Issue II |
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Georgia On My Mind by Martin Collis, PhD |
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As an itinerate speaker there can be a tendency to tune out the town and just focus on your audience, which is so much a part of every talk. But airports and taxis and Holiday Inns are a reductive way to travel and where possible I have been wrapping some vacation time around meetings and speaking engagements. So this issue's wellness journey has some settings and people rather than the continuing inner landscape of my mind, achilles tendon and suspect joints. (Not to mention a bulging disc in my back.) The first stop was Boston en route to Canyon Ranch in Lennox, MA. Canyon Ranch is an indication that money is no object when it comes to wellness. Residents pay $1500 US per night with a minimum three–day stay, and they have an occupancy rate that is the envy of most hotels. My partner, Nancy Wardle, and I spoke with both the staff and guests on our relatively low tech and inexpensive approach to wellness. It was easy to admire the state–of–the–art facilities, the highly trained staff and gourmet low-fat cuisine, but at the same time I missed a sense of lightness, spontaneity and fun, which to me, are indispensable attributes of wellness. This viewpoint was underlined by Thomas Moore, whom we bumped into at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Moore, who has forsaken his monk's robe for a business suit, was there to launch his latest book, "Original Self" (Living with paradox and originality). In the closing chapter on dealing with the importance of humour in religion he writes, "Life is a devine comedy and until we discover how those two words go together we will be condemned to spiritual depression." Whether at church, in the gym or at work, a sense of humour is like an American Express card, "don't leave home without it."
The reason we were at the museum was to see an exhibition of photography by Edward Weston. It was beautifully curated and featured the cross–fertilization of art and photography. One of the influences on Weston was the work of Georgia O'Keefe and it was her paintings that stole the show for me. It said of O'Keefe that, "She paints the same flowers over and over until they cease to be the flowers in a vase, to become the flowers within her." Again and again on looking at the work of great artists like Georgia O'Keefe, I am brought back to the point that it is our choice how we see the world, and that our vision need not be circumscribed by the conventional. Follow your dream and your vision. |
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Next stop was New Orleans where the annual Jazz festival was literally in full swing. New Orleans has no problem with the fun aspect of wellness, although in places such as Bourbon St. the 'fun' seems somewhat contrived. This is a city of excess where the bars give 'go cups' so that you can walk around the streets with your beverages. They feature the type of cuisine that Dr. Atkins would accept, and which must put it in the running for the high fat capital of North America. We ate at the Commander's Palace, which is featured in the books of both James Lee Burke and James Sallis, whom you'll find in this issue's A Few Of My Favorite Things. Although much of the food seems destined for your coronary arteries, I just reminded myself that:
After New Orleans, it was San Francisco where there was a major Georgia O'Keefe exhibition—but this time she had to take second place to the Mother's Day Service at Glide Memorial Church. Some people talk about love, but this church lives it. Their ministry to the poor, disadvantaged, sick and disenfranchised is 'the word made flesh'. (They serve 3500 free meals a day.) Other churches I have attended concern themselves with parking, air conditioning, seating and creature comforts, but Glide just gives you a cardboard fan and a seat on a wooden pew if you're there early.
Fan from the Glide Memorial Church The most moving moment in the service was a poem by a teenage girl who had been abandoned at birth and brought up in foster homes. Her poem was called 'Other's Day' and was for all the people who took the place of biological mothers. Real goodness like this is quite a magnet and attracts not only the needy people of the Tenderloin district but also the needy people from the multi–million dollar mansions above the Bay. Robin Williams and Chelsea Clinton are regulars and at our particular service, Sharon Stone was there with her mother and urged us to think abundantly when the offertory plate circulated. Perhaps Glide influenced Sharon's decision, as reported in the papers this week, to become one of the 'Others' herself. She is adopting a baby from two Texas teenagers who cannot support it.
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Twenty–five years ago Bob Dylan released a song about the imprisonment of Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter.
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 Click here to PLAY Hurricane by Bob Dylan © 1975 CBS Inc. (requires RealPlayer)  Free Download |
Want to hear more? Get Hurricane on the album Desire, by Bob Dylan. 
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As I listened to it at that time, I couldn't imagine the justice system would be so corrupt. Surely Dylan allowed himself some poetic license? I also couldn't imagine that twenty–five years hence I would be in Kelowna BC, to share the stage with the Hurricane after he had served a Mandela–like 20 years in a New Jersey prison. Rubin is fit, articulate and has chosen not to be bitter about a system that took away the center of his life. He survived prison in much the same way that Victor Frankl survived the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. He refused to recognize the authority and relevance of a rogue system in his world. They could and did throw him into the darkness of solitary confinement, but they couldn't take away his freedom to choose what to think, whom to love and how to deal with the injustice.
Rubin Carter and Martin Collis |
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In Santa Fe, we attended the annual meeting of the Board of Fitnessgram, which is part of one of the few large–scale movements to deal with the lack of physical activity among school–aged children in North America. Santa Fe brought us back to Georgia O'Keefe. We stood in her house in Abiqui and looked at the courtyard she painted so many times. Simple things were all she needed. As Wordsworth said, "To me the meanest flower that blows, can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Through the eyes of O'Keefe, not only flowers, but shells, skulls, a simple stepladder and, of course, her beloved Pedernal Mountain were all objects of transcendent beauty.
Nancy, a painter in her own right, did some watercolors of the Pedernal, which Georgia O'Keefe felt if she painted enough times God would give to her. (Although I have no idea what she would have done with a mountain.)
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| Back home in Victoria I was speaking at the Pacific International Medical Congress. The opening keynote was Patch Adams, who, like Hurricane Carter, was the subject of a recent movie. I hadn't seen the movie or read his books and didn't quite know what to expect from a doctor who was famous for using clowning and laughter as a form of therapy. His appearance was in character, with the baggy pants, colored hair and many trappings of a traditional clown. But his performance revealed a wounded, angry and eccentric man (nothing wrong with eccentric). I think that there is a skilled way to tell the truth so that it is acceptable to an audience, but Patch chose assault weapons rather than a scalpel. He basically told the doctors that unless they were like him and practiced medicine free of charge and had no malpractice insurance, they could not really be caring medical practitioners. He blew off Merck Frosst (the drug company who sponsored his presentation) and dismissed Robin Williams, who played Patch in the movie, for working for big money and choosing not to donate any of his multi–million dollar fee to Patch's proposed 40 bed hospital. Even Joel Goodman who runs the Humor Project was written off as being a "businessman who isn't funny". In some ways it was refreshing to hear someone at a conference who was blunt and opinionated and wouldn't say nice things about you just because you sponsored his speech. But if his goal was to raise money and support for his hospital it wasn't smart, it probably wasn't fair and it certainly wasn't gracious. |
Martin Collis and Patch Adams |
Patch Adams and Guy LeMasurier |
However, having said the above I would still rather listen to the visions, the inconsistencies and paradoxes of Patch than a formulaic presentation on the bright future of medicine illustrated with multi–colored Power Point slides. Like Lenny Bruce, there was enough truth in his message to make people uncomfortable and I'm still talking about his address. As Oscar Wilde noted, "The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about." Patch left to catch a red–eye flight to do another talk. He is self–confessed love junkie who feeds off the audience whom he will seek out anywhere, any time. He's clowned for orphans in Russia, AIDs victims in Romania, he has been present at "thousands of deaths", corresponds with 1600 people in long hand and donates his fees to a board who oversee his hospital plans and his clowning ministry. Perhaps Patch, with his four hours a night sleep and constant Brownian motion about the world, is best summed up in a quote by George Bernard Shaw, part of which he used in his presentation. |
| "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." |
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As always beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and in visiting different cities I was reminded that it's not their intrinsic beauty that sets them apart, but how I perceive them through my mind's eye. As dear old William Blake said:
And so it is with people, it's not the hand they are dealt that determines their success but how they choose to play it. Kenny Rogers told us that, "Every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser." A positive, wellness oriented perspective on the world makes almost any life a joy. Hurricane chose not to bow to the forces of oppression and continued to see the possibility that he would clear his name. Georgia O'Keefe saw beauty in the Jimson weeds and the small courtyard of her house. Patch sees love and possibility in every patient. He's iconoclastic, bombastic but shows-up to life with energy and uniqueness. The 4 rules of Angeles Arien hold true for us all.
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Jimson Weed, 1932 |
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| Contact Information |
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Phone: (250) 721-6997 Fax: (250) 721-6929 Email: mcollis@speakwell.com |
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