So, as a student who has lived in Nepal to study Ayurvedic Medicine and is writing her thesis on the subject, it would make sense that I practice what I preach.
In order to practice what I preach, I need to balance my mind, body and soul. So, my mind is fully at work at school, and I read about 50 pages a day from a non-required school book for my soul. So… body… that means… yes… exercise… the gym
As I try to balance these three components of my being, let me explain how I feel:
‘Nuff said.
It’s always good to take a break sometimes – watch something that makes you laugh or read something that makes you dream.
So, here’s a funny nonsense to hopefully make you laugh during this Fall season.
Just like Failure, Success is usually associated with schoolwork. I could talk about numerous reports and exams, but my favorite success story happened recently, in November of 2013. It’s quite a crazy, spontaneous, whimsical story – but, then again, remember who’s typing.
After being accepted to go to Paris to study, I followed all of the instructions one of the institutions involved in the program gave to complete the process – especially the instructions to get a Visa. The first institution told us to get an appointment at the embassy right away, which I did. Then, two days later during the weekend, the second institution in Paris told us the REAL instructions. You needed to first fill out a few forms on a website and wait at least three weeks after sending all the forms in to schedule an appointment.
Whoops.
I had already scheduled an appointment in three weeks and had a ticket to Paris already! And, as per usual with government websites, the French website that we had to fill forms out on was down. I asked ten of my friends, some in different countries, to see if they could access the website. They couldn’t. I just said to myself, “Okay, just reschedule your appointment to late December.” Uhm, I CAN’T! All of the dates at the NY French embassy were booked until mid-January. Classes start mid-January! What could I do? I emailed everyone on the French website, but they all told me the same thing, “The site works,” “Change your browser,” “We make no exceptions.”
On a whim, I decided that I needed to go to Washington D.C. that night so that I could go to the French Embassy there and somewhat appeal to their human nature because their site really was not working. I decided this at 12 am and bought a ticket on the Amtrak for 3:30 am. I packed my bag, wrote emails to my professors to explain that I wouldn’t be in class that would send at a better time than 12 am, gathered all of my documents, including proof that the site was not working, and went to Penn Station.
I arrived in D.C. by 7:45 am. The embassy was not going to open until 9 am. So, I passed my time and then went straight there. I was able to have a quick meeting with someone there, thankfully, and explained to them my situation that I made a mistake by scheduling an appointment early (I showed them the form that said to do that from one institution) then learning that I needed to in fact do this website first (showed them the second form) and that I was in a panic since their website was down and the NY consulate had no more free openings until mid-January when classes start and because I already had a ticket. This incredible woman was so understanding as she knew their site was down and was shocked that I came down all the way from NY to fix my situation. We exchanged contact information, and she assured me that she would help as she took all of my required documents. Success.
I was done at about 10:15 am. I had about 4 more hours until my train ride home. I know this is a crazy story, but I showed myself that when there’s a will, there’s always a way. We’re all human. So, I spent the next four hours exploring our nation’s capital with a smile on my face knowing that I was going to be able to go to Paris when I thought I would and knowing that I can in fact do anything that I set my mind to. Sometimes being spontaneous and whimsical really pays off.
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country, Rosalind Miles
I was so tempted to write about my dear Harrius Potter, but he’s too much of a go-to for me. I mean, he was the first one to introduce to me how the medieval world, or rather some aspects of it, could interweave with the modern world. But, I’d rather share some lumos on a different book that really inspired me.
Rosalind Miles’ book, “Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country,” was the first sort of adult novel that I read. I read it for my “Advanced Reading” class in 8th grade as my own chosen project. To be honest, I just really liked the title. At this point, I had not read any sort of medieval tale since I read King Arthur’s tales. So, it was such a treat to be reintroduced into this world but from a FEMALE perspective. I was so entranced. This book chronicled the life of Guenevere, the wife of King Arthur of Camelot, from about childhood to her marriage to him to the beginning of her affair with Lancelot. The ideas behind pagan rituals and goddesses and medieval courting – it was more than I could bear at the time! The magic of Merlin, the deceitfulness of Morgana, the loss of Guenevere’s son because of war, the forbidden love between Lancelot and Guenevere – someone could have just put Fabio on the cover because the drama was just that palpable. I remember trying to explain it to my class and basically going on a tangent about magic and how you can use to seal up wombs and cause brilliant sorcerers to go mad and ask druids for help. Yeah.. I was never a “cool” kid in middle school… but their loss! I still have my book in my room with its notes on the sides and highlights. I planned on reading the other two books, but, for some unexplainable reason, medieval fiction is so hard to find sometimes. It was just the read I needed to inspire me to essentially geek out about the Middle Ages again.
Failure. Or rather, failURe, pronounced as “fail U R” – something Master Yoda would, but I doubt ever, say.
I think most people would associate the term “failure” with a grade. It could have been the first time they received a score below 90 if they were a straight-As student or a loss at a sports match. Albeit I have experienced all of those things (I mean – come on- you can’t expect to be pre-med and not receive a 30 at sometime during your academic career or not lose a tennis match), my mother was brilliant and made me remember the Rudyard Kipling poem If by the time I was seven. It has this extraordinary line in it that goes,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.
I never understood what those lines really meant until, of course, I started receiving grades I was not used to at all. Instead of beating myself up about it, my mother taught me to learn from the mistakes I made and made me redo the incorrect questions even if the teacher never assigned them.
So, my worst experience with failure was n0t with grades but rather with an internal understanding of myself. My second year of college, I applied for a program, which will be unnamed, early on in the fall semester that, if accepted, would allow straight admission to a medical school whilst pursuing a humanities degree. Medieval studies and medicine?! I know. Thus, I put my whole heart in it. I had maybe seven drafts of my essay that I asked professor after professor to look over. Because I’m an analytical thinker, I knew the percentages. The percent of being asked for an interview was less than 8%. The percent from being accepted after the interview was 25%. I just thought to myself, “Okay, if you can get an interview – you can do this. Just get a damn interview.” I submitted all of my documents online and in person – yes, I’m that kind of person – and then played the waiting game, which I’ve played hundreds of times before. This time, however, the hurricane named after the most ridiculous female “role-model” from Grease came and destroyed my home. When I got the confirmation email that I was accepted for an interview, I took it as a divine sign that perhaps something good always happens – that this was meant to happen. But, of course, I couldn’t leave it to fate. I prepped and was ready for the interview a month later that I thought I aced. The interviewers seemed interested in my idea and who I was. What more could I ask? Well, to get in I suppose. Exactly on December 23, two days from Christmas, we got the emails stating our status. I was one of the 75%. I think I read that email a hundred times. It stated that, even though I was talented and whatnot, they just didn’t have space – the normal rejection talk universities give you so as not to hurt you “too much.” I was devastated. I thought it was this sign. I wasn’t even in my own home nor did I even have a door to hide behind. I felt as if I failed myself. What did I do? I worked so hard, went through taking three sciences with labs during one semester to make myself eligible for the program, slaved to get the perfect GPA, went through a disaster for what? A rejection? It took about two weeks and a river of tears to convince myself that I was a smart cookie – and a tough one too. I bounced back and decided to put even more unattainable goals and programs with even lower percentages in front of me. And, you know what? I got some of them. I should have just listened to Kipling from the beginning and treated my successes and failures just the same. It’s okay to fail just as it’s okay to win.
It’s not the end of the world but rather the beginning of an even better one.
For me, an effective website is a site that displays what its content well in a manner that is accessible to its audience. To somewhat explain this, I would like to use two websites. Living in New York, I feel like the New York Times is everyone’s go-to newspaper with its well-written journalism and chic and minimal design. But, for the past year, I did not have the option of picking up the Times or just going on their website. Instead, I read Al Jazeera, another rather popular and well-written news outlet that is more well-known outside of America, and watched its news channel in South Asia. I won’t go into the politics of newspapers as I find those conversations to be too long and sometimes pointless.
The Al Jazeera website starts off with important sections that one can just jump into right away, like U.S, International, Economy and so on. But, it also has a Trending section, and it’s not the names of celebrities. Currently, what is trending, is Islamic State, Scotland and Fracking. I just think that’s so, for lack of a better term, hip as most people of my generation want whatever’s trending. And, like a normal news website, it gives you to the most important or trending news of the day. I just prefer it as it gives an equal amount of US and INTERNATIONAL news to us. Also, the main news is in just one column as you scroll down and has TAGS. Oh, the beauty of tags. The NYTimes has its news in so many columns in different sized boxes – it can just be an unwanted eye sore. Then again, I could just be biased.
Hildegard. “Celandine.” Hildegard’s Healing Plants [from Her Medieval Classic
Physica]. Boston: Beacon, 2001. Print.
Hildegard von Bingen was a woman of all trades as a visionary, nun, healer and, later, saint. In her classic work on health and healing, Physica, written around 1150 to 1157 AD, Hildegard had a section on plants in which she observed and noted 230 plants and grains. Many of these plants are still grown in gardens today. In each mini-section of this plant section, Hildegard describes the uses of plants in detail and what one must do to utilize them to their fullest extent. In her section for “Celandine,” Hildegard warns that it has a poisonous juice that no healthy person should drink. She cautions that it will harm its digester inwardly making dissolving and eating food very painful. Its juice should only be used in an ointment for those who have ulcers.
Stillman, John Maxson. The Story of Alchemy and Early Chemistry: (the Story of Early
Chemistry). New York: Dover Publ., 1960. Print.
Stillman’s book documents the evolution of chemical and scientific knowledge from the beginning of time to the end of the 18th century. Starting with “Chemical Knowledge of the Middle Ages,” Stillman progresses basically century-by-century discussing the important findings and theories of each and how such theories changed. He discusses the ideas and practices of the Greeks and Arabians, and how their recipes for ink, gold and oil of eggs changes and progresses as time moves on. In the 13th century, nature was the main focus of alchemists/early chemists. Every procedure/experiment they ever did was done in order to understand the spirit of nature better. Elements, such as manganese, were named and their practical uses discovered. Starting in the 14th century, these scientists were trying to purify salts and break down numerous compounds through “calcination” to their basic elements, which were, as they believed, only metals. Again, they were still searching/creating for the one stone that could transmute all of these metals into “something greater,” gold. By the 16th century, their skills and techniques advanced so much to the point that they could extract alcohol from wine and oils from multiple animals (musks, beavers and scorpions) and understand the process to the point that they could control the yield of oil.
With his chapter “Chemical Knowledge of the Middle Ages,” Stillman basically states that medieval alchemists had chemical knowledge under the guise of chemistry stating a lot of the recipes of the 12th century monk, Theophilus, and the chemistry behind them. Funny enough, he also states how Theophilus was difficult to find in early encyclopedias to attribute chemical knowledge to, such as the refining of copper and the methods for separating gold and silver from other metals, because there was a Greek alchemist named Theophilus who worked much earlier than the medieval one. He confusingly uses the term “alchemist” and “chemist” interchangeably because he defines two classes of chemists during this period. One class was the scholars who learned the natural philosophy of the time and understood the doctrines from Greek and Roman thinkers and the other class being those who were not philosophers and were directly engaged in the practical arts of chemistry. Such a usage blurs the difference between an alchemist and a chemist even though the term and true practice of chemistry was established in the early 17th century.
Freeman, Margaret B. “Celandine.” Herbs for the Mediaeval Household: For Cooking,
Healing and Divers Uses. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971. Print.
Freeman’s book first introduces herbs and then divides various medieval herbs into four sections: herbs for cooking (some of which may have healing virtues), herbs for healing, herbs for poisoning pests and sweet smelling herbs (for laying among clothes and other uses). Chelidonium Majus, also known as Greater Celandine, is found in the herbs for healing section. Country folk were known to have used this herb “to cure warts, ringworm and corns.” It was apparently also good, according to Bancke’s Herbal, which Freeman cites, for sore eyes and for those who have venom in their system.
Bayard, Tania. Sweet Herbs and Sundry Flowers: Medieval Gardens and the Gardens of
the Cloisters. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985. Print.
Bayard’s book on medieval gardens has a specific focus on the Cloisters’ gardens. In the beginning of the book, she introduces the plan of Saint Gall in order to explain why medieval gardens are structured in such a manner. Gardens in monasteries should be designed so that the monks can be self-sufficient. Everything that they would ever need should be within the confines of the monastery. Bayard then goes into detail on the uses of these medieval plants in medicine, food and textiles. After discussing the general uses of the plants, she then describes both the Cuxa and Bonnefont cloister gardens in the museum. Some of the plants at the Cuxa garden were not from the Middle Ages and were planted mostly for aesthetics, she explains, but it was designed with the trees far apart from each other as was proscribed by Saint Gall so that spiders would not make webs from one tree to another and catch a passerby in the face. For the Bonnefont garden, it was not specifically designed to replicate a particular medieval garden but rather gives an idea of how plants might have been grown in both secular and monastic herb gardens. This garden is full of herbs, which are plants with a practical purpose whether it be for cooking, medicine and so on, that are from the Middle Ages. After both the Cuxa and Bonnefont section, Bayard includes a list of the plants, with both their Latin and common names, that were in each respective garden in the 1980s.
Wamberg, Jacob. Art & Alchemy. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2006. Print.
Wamberg’s book, Art & Alchemy, follows the progression of Alchemy in art in the Western world starting from its introduction in the 12th century to the present day. Wamberg first explains what alchemy is, as a mixture of science, philosophy and religion, and what it meant to those who practiced it, starting in the Middle Ages. Alchemy was first introduced to the Western world on February 11, 1144 as Robert from Ketton, who was commissioned by the abbot of Cluny, translated an Arabic book on “The Art of Alchemy” into Latin. Wamberg thoroughly explains why the Church and its leaders had a great fascination with this field for they found many similarities between Alchemy and Jesus Christ. Alchemy’s goal was to discover “a stone which is not a stone,” and Jesus is particularly known in the Christian religion as being the “cornerstone of humanity.” The symbolism behind the field especially motivated early scientists, clergymen and artists, alike, to search for this stone both introspectively and physically as they also believed that this stone could transmute any basic metal into gold. This perspective is then applied to each subsequent chapter in Wamberg’s book starting in the Middle Ages to 20th century Prague. Wamberg observes specific paintings and works that have an emphasis on stone, especially when juxtaposed with Christian figures. He notes how paintings done by Francesco del Cosso, who came from a family of bricklayers, Ersole de Roberti in the late 15th century depicted the miracles and works of Saint John the Baptist and Saint Vincent Ferrer next to clearly defined rock formations. The anonymous painting, Stigmatization of St. Francis at Pesaro, and Schifanoia’s The Triumph of Venus, both from the late 15th-century, combine architecture and organic forms. The idea of minerals growing in the womb of Mother Earth and thus striving towards perfection is present in these two paintings. Again, this whole notion of “a stone that is not a stone” is indicated when stones and rock formations are placed in conjunction with holy figures as well as when they are seen coming from the earth. Wamberg focused on the representation of stone, which was essential to the practice of alchemy, in art, even though this phenomenon occurs more in the Renaissance all the way up to the 19th and 20th century with photographs.
Knapp, Peggy Ann. “The Work of Alchemy.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 (2000): 575-599.
http://muse.jhu.edu/imems/summary/v030/30.3.knapp.html
Knapp’s essay, which can be found on Project Muse, explains what alchemy essentially is (a science that sped up natural processes) and what its aim was (to discover the philosopher’s stone). Knapp also clarifies that “Philosopher” was a title indicating the association of alchemy with the clergy, emphasizing how Chaucer’s Yeoman’s Tale spoke truthfully of the occupation of some clergymen during that time period. The essay also promotes this idea that the Yeoman’s Tale is Chaucer’s response to alchemy after perhaps being duped by a real-life alchemist and that the experiments mentioned in this tale resonate with current, modern-day experiments.
Magnus, Albertus. “A Description of Alchemical Operations, Procedures, and Materials.” In Libellus de Alchimia Ascribed to Albertus Magnus, translated and edited by Sister Virginia Heines. A Source Book in Medieval Science, edited by Edward Grant, 586-603. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.
This chapter of Albertus Magnus’ book focuses solely on alchemical practices. Albertus begins by invoking the aid of God to show light in the darkness of this subject. He continues by starting the scientific process of asking scientific questions of how things are created and then by providing the description of how metals arise with detailed recipes (ie “when pure red sulphur comes into contact with quicksilver in the earth, gold is made.”) Furthermore, and even more importantly, Magnus describes many of the chemicals and terminology used in the Yeoman’s tale (ie the four spirits of mercury, arsenicum, sulphur and sal ammoniac) and provides the steps of the exact same processes of calcination and whitening (albificacioun).
Albert of Saxony. “How Elements Persist in a Compound.” In Book I of Questions on the Two Books of On Generation and Corruption, translated and edited by Edward Grant. A Source Book in Medieval Science, edited by Edward Grant, 605-614. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.
In this chapter of his book, Albert of Saxony directly addresses the important question of whether “elements remain formally in a compound or mixed;” in other words, whether each element retains its own individual properties or attains a new set upon combining with another element. Thus, Albert argues three points against specific people: it is necessary to assume a form distinct from the forms of the things that are mixed (against Aristotle); substantial forms of elements do not remain in a compound body in their own being (against Avicenna); substantial forms of elements do not remain in a weakened state (against possible opinion of the reader). This argument is important in understanding the fundamental aspect of Alchemy: whether or not the alchemist actually creating a new substance or are these elements just coexisting together with no change.
