when a book stalks you

 

The curious thing that got my attention this week has happened to me before. I received a book in the mail that I had randomly ordered on-line for no compelling reason...except that I was looking for something light to read after I emerged from the rabbit hole of consciousness studies, mindfulness practices, and epigenetics where I usually hang out. Instead, I ordered a new book about writing, "Write for Your Life" by Anna Quindlen...as if I don't already own a hundred books on writing. This was another case of "just the right book showing up at just the right time" that always amazes me. 

When I purchased the book, I had no idea the author would devote an entire chapter to the importance of Narrative Medicine as it was first conceptualized and taught by Rita Charon MD/PhD at Columbia University...the inspiration for this entire blog.

In it she discusses an exercise Dr. Charon teaches called "parallel charts":

"Parallel charts:

It's not simply an assignment for medical students.

It's a genius way into personal writing.

On one side the data,

on the other a human response

to those things seen in the hospital room,

felt in the hallways."

~Anna Quindlen~

As Charon puts it: 

"If your patient is dying of prostrate cancer, and he reminds you of your grandfather who died of that disease last summer, and each time you go into the patient's room you weep for your grandfather, you cannot write that in the hospital chart. It isn't allowed. Yet it has to be written somewhere. You write it in the parallel chart."

This is how you connect medicine with humanity, and how you connect the rest of humanity with your True Self.

In her new book, Quindlen talks about much more than this. She talks about the importance of personal letters in recording history, not emails that have to be recovered from cyberspace to be read, but handwritten letters, love letters, and thank you notes that are collected, tied with a ribbon, and stored for safe keeping with all the other memories we cherish. Proof we cared. Proof we tried. Proof we existed.

She writes about the difference between the tap-tap-tap of a keyboard and the freedom and beauty of script. She connects feelings with the words we choose to describe them. And how the act of writing helps us discover who we are, and how we fit in with the rest of humanity. She decries the trivialization of the art and craft of writing by hand, from the heart, to the people we respect, honor, and love. 

I love it when synchrony, or coincidence, or just plain good luck sometimes act on my behalf. I am a firm believer that if you are a passionate reader, books will stalk you. They want you. They know what you need...which is why I would recommend this book to anyone who is toying with the thought of writing but is reluctant to begin. Doctors and nurses. Therapists. Patients and caregivers. All of us.

"This is my rock

Where my thoughts fly about

Like small white ships

On a black sea of doubt."

~Anna Quindlen~

~from her first ever poem at age nine~

jan