I had missed your last 3 or 4 poems, my friend. I liked them very much.
There are some very well-crafted lines in these last entries. I especially liked “Babylon was never Babylon/ to those that lived within her” and the first two lines of this poem here about the chicken truck.
Resensitization is hard, and frankly, scary, when it comes to the huge abyss of human suffering wrapped up in the addiction crisis. I think my hospital work, to me, feels like a place where I can resensitize in a controlled environment. But the danger is that I feel like I’ve “done my good deed for the day” once I leave, and it paradoxically reinforces the desensitization.
Thanks man. To be honest, resensitizing in the hospital context sounds very difficult! Either way, I don't think there is a fixed point of perfect sensitivity. I took a line out of the last paragraph which was about boundaries being intentional desensitization, and that was the reference to the Samaritan. He 'left the hospital' so to speak, and let others take over the caring, but he still did his bit. If he had just walked by in the first place, that would have been boundaries that were too strong, but he split the difference.
Interesting point about how the Good Samaritan left the inn after dropping the guy off. That’s part of what is helpful about the hospital: I’m not the only one witnessing the suffering and involved in caring. Also, there’s a defined goal: fix this acute problem. These things are helpful - but if not handled carefully can also ease the way towards depersonalization and “mechanization”. But there’s potential there.
Desensitization is defense, yes. Nice poems and prose.
Thank you brother
I had missed your last 3 or 4 poems, my friend. I liked them very much.
There are some very well-crafted lines in these last entries. I especially liked “Babylon was never Babylon/ to those that lived within her” and the first two lines of this poem here about the chicken truck.
Resensitization is hard, and frankly, scary, when it comes to the huge abyss of human suffering wrapped up in the addiction crisis. I think my hospital work, to me, feels like a place where I can resensitize in a controlled environment. But the danger is that I feel like I’ve “done my good deed for the day” once I leave, and it paradoxically reinforces the desensitization.
Thanks man. To be honest, resensitizing in the hospital context sounds very difficult! Either way, I don't think there is a fixed point of perfect sensitivity. I took a line out of the last paragraph which was about boundaries being intentional desensitization, and that was the reference to the Samaritan. He 'left the hospital' so to speak, and let others take over the caring, but he still did his bit. If he had just walked by in the first place, that would have been boundaries that were too strong, but he split the difference.
Interesting point about how the Good Samaritan left the inn after dropping the guy off. That’s part of what is helpful about the hospital: I’m not the only one witnessing the suffering and involved in caring. Also, there’s a defined goal: fix this acute problem. These things are helpful - but if not handled carefully can also ease the way towards depersonalization and “mechanization”. But there’s potential there.