Eyes relax movies

Index
This section Index

Mnemonic index
Mnemonic and eidetic memory games

Puzzle
Logic games

Cards
Pyramid, Solitaire cards games

Math
Games for mind development

IQ test
Test your mind ability

Relax movies
Relax and meditation

Migration Tears: Poems About Transitions. - book reviews

MELUS , Spring, 1996 by Donald W. Tyree

Michael Kabotie (Lomawywesa). Los Angeles: American Indian Studies Center, UCLA, 1987. 60 pages. $10.

Michael Kabotie`s book of poems Migration Tears (1987) is introduced in an illuminating foreword by UCLA`s Kenneth Lincoln, well-known analyst of the renaissance in Native American literature. His useful remarks reflect over a decade of contacts with Kabotie, and they help prepare readers for the humor and the special balance of this Hopi poet, who is also a painter, a lithographer, and a smith in silver and gold. We learn that Mike Kabotie, or Lomawywesa, son of artist Fred Kabotie, was born in 1942 at Shungopavi, one home of the Hopi people, who number about 6,500 and live, where they have for centuries, on three mesas northeast of present day Flagstaff, Arizona.

What Professor Lincoln leaves us to see is the pattern or patterns that the book contains. One poem that strikes a unifying note is called "Thanksgiving, `79," and it ends with these three lines:

Final Score:

emergence/renewal: 7

war/destruction: 6.

A bare victory, it seems, for which perhaps one may give thanks? The date of the poem is some years ago, but one realizes that 1979 for a poet born in 1942 isn`t long ago, and, more important, it is the birthday of an insight. That insight pulls the collection together and helps make the whole book finally, a positive one--caustic at times, realistic, but ultimately positive. The victory, though bare, is ongoing.

The subtitle of the book is "Poems about Transitions." The migration tears of the main title are not a direct reference to the painful trail of some nineteenth century bands of Indians forced to march in the dead of winter to their assigned wilderness ghettos. Nevertheless, that such historical moments did occur adds a powerful connotation to the title, with which come other layers of meaning, one being that migration took place between parts of the country, by whole nations of Indians forced westward throughout the history of the continent`s conquest. Migration tears for Kabotie and the reader have to do with the transitions that have had to be made by the survivors of the grisy Indian Wars and the grim history since, present in the minds of those who know about it--including whites and others who acknowledge Native American history as part of the history of the country they occupy. The poem "Our Country No More Forever," echoing in its title Chief Joseph`s often anthologized 1877 surrender speech, is o ne reminder of this history; it does ask why it should be.

"Thanksgiving `79," however, in a simple but effective way, suggests there is a continuing contest, a struggle between destruction and renewal. The "renaissance" that Lincoln has written about is clearly more than the striking surge of publication by numerous American Indian men and women who have come of age. There is a striking rebirth of spirit. But Migration Tears reminds us that the spirit never really perished. What the very traditional, yet wry and immediate, voice in this book addresses is survival--as one travels across boundaries, in both one`s own life and the epochs one may rarely but keenly sense one is passing through in the finite life of the peculiar civilization that conquered the homeland of Native Americans.

Often remaining personal and only occasionally becoming specifically political or historical in emphasis, Kabotie`s book, in its individuality, contemporaneity, and perspectival freshness, gives us permanent moments of a very specific point of view within the larger story. There is, for instance, grandfather Kabotie, in the poem "Labajada Hill":

Into Santa Fe grandfather Kabotie

was exiled to become a white man

but grew more Hopi continuing

with the sacred corn.

Like him, the persona throughout the book is firmly located in the modern present and is nonetheless more resonantly Hopi. In "Transistor Windows" the speaker sits by his mother`s kitchen window gazing over the village of Shungopavi, "named after a / spring where reeded plants grow" and watching the "September sun" sinking into "the deep abyss of / the mighty Grand Canyon." After laughing with tears in their eyes over a burned, smoking supper, the relatives recover and relax as they "turn to watch the world / through television windows." First they view grim news of famine in Africa and conflict in the Middle East, then "lovely young American maidens sell us on the secrets of / youth, as my aging mother and aunt / chuckle and crack Hopi jokes." As "kachina cloudpriests" outside gather "over the Hopi mesas" and light the skies "with bright lightning," he says:

Caught between the two windows, I pondered the

confusions and hunger of the modern

transistor Hopi.

Two other aspects of the volume call for comment, its humor and its imagery. Much of the humor, as is familiar in Native American writing, is wry and self-deprecatory. An example is "Pecking Order," in which a painting will not happen for him: "I tear up the canvas / then get up to taunt my / wife Frances." "Red Outhouse" is more boisterous: the wind knocks the outhouse down, and the speaker yells at the winds, "today I will win / with bigger nails / heavier plyboards." In "Reaganomics" there is both funny sarcasm and typical affirmation.

Relaxed Patients Have Quicker, Less Costly Procedures - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

AORN Journal , March, 2000

Using hypnotic relaxation techniques during invasive medical procedures decreases patient anxiety and discomfort level, thereby reducing procedure time, according to a Dec 2, 1999, press release from the Radiological Society of North America.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School found procedure costs decreased, and conscious sedation was no longer needed in approximately 50% of patients when relaxation techniques were used.

The 161 patients studied underwent angiography, angioplasty, or kidney drainage. All were offered conscious sedation, a mixture of antipain and antianxiety medication commonly administered for those procedures. Fourteen of 79 patients (18%) who did not use relaxation techniques and 38 of 82 (46%) patients who underwent relaxation techniques requested no conscious sedation, according to the release.

By eliminating or supplementing anesthesia, procedure times decreased by 17 minutes (20%), and costs declined an average of $130 per patient. Cost savings mainly were due to fewer interruptions and distractions during procedures, according to the release.

Specially trained medical staff members read a script to help patients relax, telling patients to close and relax their eyes, take deep breaths, and imagine they were floating. Patients could ring a bell any time if they wanted more medication. Patients remained relaxed throughout procedures.

Relaxation Techniques Saves Pain, Time and Money (press release, Chicago: Radiological Society of North America, Dec 2, 1999) 2. Available from http://www.newswise.com/articles/1999/12/RELAX.RSN.html. Accessed 13 Dec 1999.

Eyes relaxation index