STORY MEDICINE PRESCRIPTION: READ AND WRITE

Story medicine is good for what ails you.

Why? Because you deserve a break.

Things go bad, and you read a story about something worse? You might feel better.

But what about when things are going good, never been better.

What story is going to improve that?

After two decades of museum work I learned one thing: a museum’s reputation is based on its possessions, its artifacts.

Every piece has a story. That’s why they are in the permanent collection.

It is either unique and valuable by itself, used during an important time, or it was owned by a historical figure.

Why visit a museum with unknown objects?

“What’ that?”

“I don’t know. How about that?”

“No idea.”

What are you looking for?

Where are you if you don’t see stuff you like?

Who are you if you don’t care?

Don’t worry, you’re just low on story medicine.

Besides, you’re no museum piece, and you do care. Here’s how you can tell:

You own something more important to you than it would be to anyone else.

What is it?

Your father’s citation on a wall of honor where he’s buried that was about to fall off the wall?

Grandpa’s engraved railroad watch?

A trumpet you’ve never blown that came from your grandparent’s house after they’d passed?

A chunk of the Berlin Wall?

We’ve been led to believe that we are more than an accumulation of our possessions.

The man who dies with the most toys is still dead, but it’s a playful death?

Sure it is.

The world of objects define a museum for most people.

 

What’s The Most Famous Painting in The Louvre?

Based on the line when I saw her, it’s Mona.

We’d just finished a tour and the guide said, “The more sophisticated the patron of the arts, the better they understand the meaning of the Mona Lisa, and leave her to the tourists.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. We’d just been in the basement looking around with the guide explaining the importance of it all.

“If you must, then now is a good time if you feel a need to see the Mona Lisa.”

I left right away.

How famous is the Mona?

Where else could you add cake, pie, or pumpkin soup to a painting and make world news?

Mona and I had a brief time together.

The line was five switchbacks long before you got up close and personal.

I took a few shots from the line and left.

Afterwards I noticed I’d had the camera set to video so I ended up with blurred shaky clips of the moment.

So much for my closeup examination of chiaroscuro and sfumato.

I wasn’t bothered so much because the official front of the line was still quite a ways away from the wall.

Unless you were protesting, then you’d jump the rope.

Pumpkin soup is not story medicine, but this is.

 

Read And Write Story Medicine

From a few weeks back:

 

It’s my goal that boomerpdx is a medicine blog. 

Why would I want that? Because I’m a former U.S. Army Medic, a prolific writer, and I give a damn about things.

I care about those things people my age give a damn about, but instead of a soapbox, I have a blog.

Unlike my canceled brethren seeking a voice they understand to tell them what to do, like storm the Capitol on Jan.6, my experience is different.

 

On July 4, 1976, I was active duty Army in Philadelphia listening to President Gerald Ford give his be-centennial speech in front of Indepence Hall.

That’s me in the far back left side waving.

It was my patriotic highlight, the trifecta of duty, country, and Philly.

Two months later I left town with an official Honorable Discharge from Fort Dix.

Discharge from Dix sounds like a serious medical problem to the outside, but music to my ears.

So long suckers, I’m Oregon bound. University of Oregon.

I signed up as an English major with help. (Hey Rob)

For the next two years the schedule was go to class, read and write, lift in the student gym, and run the Prefontaine Trails.

During the second year I got sidetracked from dropping out, moving to Spain, and writing a novel.

Instead, I dropped out, moved far, far, away, and learned how not to get married.

If you move to Delaware and your intended has a meeting set with the family minister, don’t say she can go on alone and tell you all about it later.

You don’t want to do that. If you do you’ll end up moving to Brooklyn and living in your cousin’s apartment with her next door boyfriend’s cat.

No one said anything about breaking up, so when your girl spends the night you get tagged a whore-monger and need to find a new place to live.

Sound like typical New York story medicine?

If you didn’t grow up there, or get transferred there as a master of the universe, you’ll meet lots of people stuck there with no way out and no place to go.

They love their New York to pieces, and it’s a city that takes a pound of flesh when you least expect it.

Go ahead and paint that picture with you in it.

How’s it feel? About a pound light? Two?

 

More Confused Medical Advice

From Huffington:

 

There’s a movement called “Food is Medicine,” about getting clinicians and the medical world to use food as the powerful tool that it is to improve medical outcomes.

But it’s not just food: sleep is medicine, stress management is medicine, connection is medicine.

And movement is medicine, too: according to new research from BMJ, exercise could be considered as a core treatment for depression alongside psychotherapy and antidepressants.

 

I’ll go out on a medical limb and say start with story medicine.

You’ll know when it takes hold somewhere around Barstow.