Facing the Tigers, Facing Ourselves.

This weekend I had the pleasure of watching the movie Life of Pi with my husband. Though I wasn't sure I was drawn to it initially, I couldn't deny how gorgeous it seemed visually, and the fact that it peaked my curiosity as it was based on the life of a man from India.

Here's the thing. I want to see it again as soon as I can. It was stunning and uplifting and a beautiful tale which speaks to all of us and is an allegory touching on the themes of

• what are our stories and why do we craft them as we do?
• what is the mind,  body and spirit capable of in dire circumstances?
• what is the role of faith and God in our lives?
• do people want to know the truth?
• why do people believe in God?
• why do people isolate themselves when it serves to alienate and encourage the loneliness that will only consume them with unhappiness from the inside out?
• what are our responsibilities as human beings and humane beings toward other people, and animals?
• what barbaric acts are human beings capable of? are we really so evolved?
• how do we face or evade our demons and project them outward?
• what compels us to look away from what scares us and what compels us to face what's difficult?
• why do people become so paralyzingly attached to the stories that cause them pain and suffering?
• when we make a choice how to frame our story in a forgiving and healing way, we become freer and more happy.

Throughout watching the movie last night and thinking about it a lot today, I realize I couldn't help but think of the many articles I read about the young woman in New Delhi who was brutally violated on a bus and her subsequent death from the horrific injuries she sustained.

One of the articles I read on this tragedy mentioned that she and her friend had just come from a screening of the movie The Life of Pi when they were so senselessly attacked. To think that this was such an uplifting and thought-provoking film, about god and faith and resilience and loss and survival --  and also about how horrible people can be to one another -- it struck me all the more. She must have felt uplifted after seeing the film - it was so hopeful and beautiful. And then out in the world she was brutally raped and left for dead by men in a society in which they felt entitled to act out as the most selfish animals might.

It is such deeply impressing and remarkable movie. I recommend it highly - it is hypnotic, gorgeous and a work of genius.

An Update...

Alright - for all my beloved friends and family and all the other lurkers who may or may not be reading  these entries: here is the long awaited follow up to my last post, titled “Nap Blog”. It has been around 9 weeks since that quiet summer afternoon when I jotted down those words. 

In a nut shell, here are the immediate updates:

Our little one's blood tests revealed abnormalities in her liver function which -- after about 10 Hellish, perplexing, frightening, exhausting days in the hospital, numerous blood draws, tests, scans and one exploratory surgery -- was finally determined to be caused by Biliary Atresia, a very rare liver disease that strikes every 1 in 15,000 or so infants. With odds like this, our family needs to start playing the lottery more often.

In Biliary Atresia, the bile ducts in the liver are damaged or completely missing so bile has no means of exiting the organ, thereby backing up and causing progressive damage. The liver becomes cirrhotic and begins to fail. Without the option of a liver transplant, she would likely not survive past 18 months. Thirty years ago, a Japanese doctor pioneered the Kasai operation which gave BA kids a chance -- by fashioning a makeshift biliary duct out of a piece of the small intestine. Although outcomes are not overwhelmingly effective in most cases, it gives kids a bridge and buys them some time. Most will eventually need to have a liver transplant. Prior to that, parents of babies with this condition could do nothing but sit by and wait while watching as their kids slowly died of liver failure.

Exploratory surgery revealed that the damage to our baby's liver was so severe, that the stop-gap bypass procedure (a Kasai operation) was out of the question. So, we are on to the transplant fast track and hoping that she will undergo a liver transplantation operation sometime in the next two months (December ‘06).

Life has been so busy that it will take me some time to fully detail the impact this turn in the road is having on me. Writing a blog, which was my newfound and fledgling hobby until those crazy days in August, seems so completely unimportant in the scheme of things. It took me a long time to get back to this -- but I realize writing serves a multifaceted purpose: it, as always is therapeutic, but it is also now a way to keep others apprised of how things are progressing. People who I would otherwise lose touch with because there are just not enough hours in the day to talk on the phone or type out emails. In a later post, I will explain how and why I even have enough time to do this small amount of writing. ..more soon, I hope.