The Story Within the "Story"

When I chose my concentration, screenwriting, in 2nd year of film school, I was reminded,

"Every Story has been told."  

This wasn't big a deal because I never enjoyed "telling Stories".  I wasn't good at it.  I found the commitment of having long-term relationships with my characters incredibly exhausting.  By the end, I not only wanted to never hear from them again; I wanted to kill them. 

However, I was good (and liked) telling the little bits and pieces, or as my thesis professor commented, "The tiny slices of life that make up the big Story."

My hero: Scout

I'm excited to see Tom Shadyac's documentary "I Am" when I head back out to California next month.  Shadyac is a big-whig director who shares the same story as mine.  The same damn story Joseph Campbell coined as the "Hero's Journey".  The same story Holden Caulfield never finished but the same story Scout (To Kill a Mockingbird) triumphantly accomplished.

I find many people who pursue the health-field, more specifically, the alternative health-field (Because, you've had to really lost your damn mind to even consider something so unconventional), is they've all gone and completed their so-called "Hero's Journey". 

Girl and 3 friends find crystal-meth and become full-blown addicts.  3 friends die and Girl is the only survivor of the drug.  Girl seeks treatment which includes methadone and acupuncture.  Girl survives her addiction, lives to tell about it and applies to Oriental medical school to help others. 

That's not my story.  It's a story I heard from "Girl" when I visited Portland.  It's the same story I've heard from cancer survivors, heroin addicts, husbands of wives living with Parkinson's, wheelchair-bound ex-surfer...  Same story with uniquely different bits and pieces.

In science, many stories haven't been told yet which makes it fascinating because I can actually be an active part in creating the real bits and pieces.  The paradox of science, for me, is that I can concentrate all I want on the bits and pieces; but they don't mean a damn thing if I can't string them together and discover the real story. 



Rosalind Franklin

Case in point, the Oh Snap! story of Rosalind Franklin:

Rosalind Franklin was a total "bitch", according to the all White-male world of Science back in the 1950s.  More importantly, she was a leader in crystallography which became the exact images Watson & Crick needed to reinforce their Lego-building DNA molecule structure theory in order to publish a paper which would later grant them a big fancy award and mark their place in history. 

Enter this clown: Maurice Wilkins, who not only worked for Franklin, but hated her with a deep passion only a misogynist could appreciate.  Wilkins had an inkling the Franklin's photographs of X-ray radiation bouncing electrons might have something to do with DNA structure.  He steals her work and slyly passes to Watson & Crick.  Watson & Crick publish their renowned paper in 1953 and the 3 Amigos (Watson, Crick and Wilkins) win the Nobel Prize in 1963.  Franklin, who spent years exposing herself to radiation in the name of science, dies in 1958, making her illegible for the prestigious award.  No one hears her story for the next 20 years. 



Clowns

Aside from the total anti-feminism moral to this story, the other aspect is Franklin, who was so consumed with just the crystallography, she couldn't see the big, mutherfuckin' story -- DNA.  I should probably preface, in the 1950's, hundreds of chemists and biologists, all over the world, were working on the DNA structure.  All the facts, the bits and pieces of the structure, were collected since the late 1800s.  They just didn't know how, the story, fit together.  It took one thief, Maurice Wilkins, to make the connection. 

How did this happen?!  How did Franklin, who also despised working with Wilkins, not see this jerk creepin'?

When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like nails. 

Oriental medicine (OM) requires practitioners to find the hidden symptoms of the deep-rooted "disease" (condition).  They're constantly touching, listening, feeling for the little bits of pieces that make up the story.  This protocol is vastly different than conventional medicine in which practitioners limit their physical interaction with their patients.  Heart beats and blood pressure are now determined through the facilitation of devices; rather than a direct-to-direct interaction from the patient to the practitioner.  The diagnostic procedures of OM (aka TCM) reinforces the theory: Every individual is unique.  Sure, there are similar aspects, like we all have DNA but how these genes are expressed varies greatly depending on not only gene expression but all those freakin' environmental factors which create the imbalances from lower back pains to addiction to Autism.



Diagnostic TCM procedure

The thought of being trained to listen and describe the various types of: heart beats; blood stagnation; tongue color; etc., in thousands of individuals, overwhelms me.  But this is what I enjoy doing.  This is what I'm good at.   I live to analyze the bits and pieces.  

However, I need to strengthen my Story-telling skills.  I need to remember these bits and pieces, at the end of the day, must be strung together in order to see the cohesive story -- The single, unique health story, of one individual.