Become the Hum

More Carly Simon?  Yes:

The pendulum swings both ways/and I lose my equilibrium/I sway so fast inside its motion/that I become the hum/I become the hum…

I’ve been trying all day (really, since I got to Islamabad) to make sense of this experience, but when you’re in the middle of something and time hasn’t had its chance to give some perspective, it seems like all you (or I) can do is ricochet between feelings and observations and biases and attempts to ground these impressions in anything that is familiar. Today I was driven to the Diplomatic Enclave to meet with some people who oversee the grant and all I could think was, “huh.  Those buildings look like a Bullock’s Department Store.”

My mind is like a beehive today because so many impressions have piled up on each other that all I can hear is a buzzing hum.  And, again, since this is about improv, today also feels like that moment on stage when I know I need to latch onto something in order to do decent scene work, but everything feels equally important and I just want to spout gibberish.  So, consider this gibberish:

When I left the Fulbright House at 9:00 this morning it was 65 degrees and raining. It felt like winter in California. Sikandar, the driver, took me to a coffee shop that wouldn’t have been out of place in West Los Angeles.  This picture is actually from Pakistan:

I was driven to this coffee shop to meet with a young man–a refugee in this country–who took a van for three hours just to have breakfast with a friend of a friend of his mother’s. (That would be me).  I’m being purposefully cryptic because refugees have very uncertain status here in Pakistan, and I’m not sure how much attention his tenuous arrangement could bear.  How hard to have your life be an arrangement, though, to be caught up in circumstances that are mystifyingly bureaucratic and, as he said without irony or bitterness, “unfair.”  We talked about his family from which he is painfully separated. His gratitude for my friend who has shown such kindness to his mother and sister was profound. He showed me photos of his twin (I thought of you, Eddie.  And of you two, Bobby and Patty).  He scrolled through the photos on his phone and showed me pictures of his own beautiful children.  I bought his breakfast–woefully inadequate, given that he’d left his town before dawn to meet with me, a total stranger–and when I tried to pay for his way back to his town he was offended.  He said it was an honor to meet me, that he couldn’t accept any money.  In the end, all I could say was thank you. It’s humbling to be in the presence of such dignity. I’m glad I was able to shut up because if I’d kept talking I would have bawled.

It’s not enough.  Nothing is enough.  But here’s a link to the American Refugee Committee in Minneapolis: http://arcrelief.org.  And here’s much love to Gloria for arranging this meeting.  Thank you.

After lunch at the Fulbright Office I went to the American Embassy to meet with the State Department officials who oversee this grant.  The place is enormous, marbled, and fortified; I talked about how much I loved teaching improv at Theatre Wallay and how I’d like to come back and do some more work with them and with the high school counselors I’d met yesterday:

I’d been part of a three-person training workshop for Pakistani high school counselors.  It was a blast.  I followed two speakers who focused on identifying mental health issues and reducing stress.  The USEFP staff had asked me to create a scenario in which I demonstrated how an improv mindset could deepen the therapeutic relationship.  In other words, I got to play a teenage boy whose father had moved to Dubai and whose mother had found his stash of marijuana in his dresser drawer.  Two brave Pakistani participants agreed to play the role of counselor and so we began. The scene was a success on several levels. This whole blog experience is a bit horn-tootish, but if I can encourage you to gaze with me into the narcissistic pond at my aging reflection (good grief) I will say that one woman in the audience gasped and said, “he is so believable at being an adolescent boy!” Clearly her diagnostic skills were very advanced.

In the debrief session I asked the audience to identify the “gifts” in the scenario that would deepen the counselor-client relationship.  I’d made allusions in the scene to problems at home, how my mother had accused me of being just like my father, how she could smell my clothing but still be shocked when she rifled through my stuff and found the contraband.  The conversation was fascinating; we dissected the scene (and praised the volunteer counselors, who did a good job in front of their peers) and kept emphasizing that each moment can hold really illuminating information if we just slow down and listen to what’s being said, both verbally and physically.  It became clear how much pressure Pakistani high schoolers are under, what with punishing (and career-defining) exams and rigorous parental expectations.  It also became clear that abandonment and self-medication don’t recognize nationality.  I was grateful for my own parents who allowed me to amble while I figured out that my career would include being an adolescent trapped in amber in front of paying audiences. I was also an English major and an English teacher, which doesn’t entirely excuse that last sentence.

The people at the Embassy thought this was a worthwhile use of the grant’s funding, which was a relief.  And I got to witness what felt like a hundred different lifetimes in the past 24-hours.  I am so lucky to be here, deservedly or otherwise. I got to talk to my mom today on WhatsApp.  I’ve talked to Dennis almost as much as I do when I’m at home, and I’m free to visit Eddie, Patty, and Bobby whenever I want. My family is pulled apart and brought together by choice and good fortune.  That other people don’t have these ready connections because of politics and retributions and inequities is heartbreaking and, in the moment, irreconcilable.

Here’s a memoir by my friend Kim Schultz about the refugee experience and its entangling consequences:

You can order it here: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Days-Damascus-Kim-Schultz/dp/0995535108.