My "Big" Moment

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

What to do about Clinical Depression? Practicing an "Impossible Profession" in the Land of "Evanescence and Form"

The "public lecture" that I had been imagining for a year happened last Sunday afternoon.  I had had no idea who would come to a four hour lecture on a Sunday afternoon, and wondered if the "public lecture" part of my contract was a ceremonial formality.  I imagined lecturing to a few homeless people who had nowhere else to go, and I was emotionally ready for an empty room.  I found out for the first time once we got to the venue, that the Visiting Professor's Public Lecture is something the department puts on every year.  They send out fliers to the community, and charge $35 a seat.  They sold all 100 seats, and had to turn people away.  It think that's the way it is every year.  I'm very glad I didn't know that in advance, or I would have been a basket case.

I had learned to say the first sentence, and the last two sentences in Japanese, and of course to bow at the beginning and introduce myself.  I have no idea whether anyone understood a word of that, but my  sponsor said my Japanese sounded "just like the emperor".  We both laughed.  I had a truly wonderful translator who really cared to make the Japanese "just right", and who worked like a dog for the whole four hours.  The audience stayed the whole time, and only a few were asleep, so I count it a howling success.  I got some very interesting questions from teachers and psychologists in the audience.

Now it's over.  I had wonderful advice and editing help on it, hugely from B, but also from several others including both Val and Adam.  I'm so "high" I wish I could do it over and over again, but that's not going to happen.  More later....

Love to all,