Barrett Dorko
14-05-2006, 03:35 AM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
I wandered outside of the hotel in Winston-Salem North Carolina after I arrived there on Thursday evening and discovered that this was the same place I had conducted a workshop last year. There’s a low wall in front of the travel agency on the corner and a beautiful bed-and-breakfast across the street. I remembered sitting there with some coffee before class, admiring the local architecture and wishing I had the time and inclination to see more of this lovely town. But I didn’t have it last year and I still don’t have it.
There’s a line from a poet - William Blake, I think – that has something to do with striding forward into life with a certain confidence and in anticipation of new adventures only to find one day that you’ve returned to where you started from. Then and only then do you appreciate what you had to begin with and where you were when you started. True enough.
I’m beginning my third year as “an itinerate teacher of esoteric technique and obscure knowledge.” This is the job description that came to me while I sat on that wall for the second time. It’s a strange job that I’ve come to know quite well. More than anything, I’ve come to understand it as a solitary task. And I don’t mean the long drives and flights, evenings eating room service meals or waking at 2:30 and then waiting for the fitness center to open. I’m used to all of that, and I have myself for company.
It is when I stand before my colleagues and speak that I feel most alone. This is when I’m least like everyone else in the room. I know that there are others on the road as I am and I know some are lying awake in the hotel. But I almost never sense in my classes the thrill a short passage from a text can produce in me, and when I show them that a single idea from a source seemingly unconnected to physical therapy explains so much about clinical life and wait a moment, well, what I get from some is a combination of indifference, annoyance, confusion and even fear. That’s an interesting thing to project all at once, by the way. The absolute silence I get to nearly every question only amplifies the nonverbal message.
On this trip I overheard one therapist say to another, “I don’t want to answer any questions. I thought this course would be like a day off. I just want to sit here and relax.”
Oh. That explains it.
But despite this – and I know I write of it too often – as I complete this circle of the country and begin another year I find I’m still grateful for the opportunity to speak about a subject I love even more than it appears to other therapists. 147 times now I’ve had someone volunteer to allow me to evaluate and treat them during the last hour of class and without exception they’ve changed in a very positive way. At the very least, these therapists have learned that they can feel better and that the therapy they need resides within them. The classes know that everything I do in that last hour can be accomplished by every therapist in attendance. It’s also clear that actually understanding it will take more than I can give them in a day.
In two weeks I start another circle.
I wandered outside of the hotel in Winston-Salem North Carolina after I arrived there on Thursday evening and discovered that this was the same place I had conducted a workshop last year. There’s a low wall in front of the travel agency on the corner and a beautiful bed-and-breakfast across the street. I remembered sitting there with some coffee before class, admiring the local architecture and wishing I had the time and inclination to see more of this lovely town. But I didn’t have it last year and I still don’t have it.
There’s a line from a poet - William Blake, I think – that has something to do with striding forward into life with a certain confidence and in anticipation of new adventures only to find one day that you’ve returned to where you started from. Then and only then do you appreciate what you had to begin with and where you were when you started. True enough.
I’m beginning my third year as “an itinerate teacher of esoteric technique and obscure knowledge.” This is the job description that came to me while I sat on that wall for the second time. It’s a strange job that I’ve come to know quite well. More than anything, I’ve come to understand it as a solitary task. And I don’t mean the long drives and flights, evenings eating room service meals or waking at 2:30 and then waiting for the fitness center to open. I’m used to all of that, and I have myself for company.
It is when I stand before my colleagues and speak that I feel most alone. This is when I’m least like everyone else in the room. I know that there are others on the road as I am and I know some are lying awake in the hotel. But I almost never sense in my classes the thrill a short passage from a text can produce in me, and when I show them that a single idea from a source seemingly unconnected to physical therapy explains so much about clinical life and wait a moment, well, what I get from some is a combination of indifference, annoyance, confusion and even fear. That’s an interesting thing to project all at once, by the way. The absolute silence I get to nearly every question only amplifies the nonverbal message.
On this trip I overheard one therapist say to another, “I don’t want to answer any questions. I thought this course would be like a day off. I just want to sit here and relax.”
Oh. That explains it.
But despite this – and I know I write of it too often – as I complete this circle of the country and begin another year I find I’m still grateful for the opportunity to speak about a subject I love even more than it appears to other therapists. 147 times now I’ve had someone volunteer to allow me to evaluate and treat them during the last hour of class and without exception they’ve changed in a very positive way. At the very least, these therapists have learned that they can feel better and that the therapy they need resides within them. The classes know that everything I do in that last hour can be accomplished by every therapist in attendance. It’s also clear that actually understanding it will take more than I can give them in a day.
In two weeks I start another circle.