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Teach Us To Sit Still: A Skeptic's Search For Health And Healing (2010)

by Tim Parks(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1846553997 (ISBN13: 9781846553998)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Harvill Press

review 1: Despite its eye-watering descriptions of urological investigations into his ongoing bladder pain (which have a special frisson for any male over a certain age, it has to be said), this is a very enjoyable book by Tim Parks (or Tim 'Pax' as most of the Italians insist on calling him). Parks is an expat writer, who has made himself into a keen chronicler of modern Italian life (his book on following his local football team in Verona is essential), but this work of non-fiction is more about the connection between mind and body in Western life and, more specifically, the paradoxical dualism inherent in being a writer of English books while living in Italy, and also teaching translation. Parks had severe and ongoing bladder pains, causing extreme nocturia (up to 6 visits per ni... moreght) and after undergoing a series of medieval medical treatments, involving much deep probing (and some of these bits almost made me faint), he was told he had no cancer, no prostatis and nothing apparently wrong - and yet, he was in constant pain. As one does, he turned to the web for solace and found a book on paradoxical relaxation techniques, which meant a form of controlled and conscious breathing, and then moved on to a mountain retreat and the mysteries of Visapanna meditation.Throughout, Parks muses on his constant need to put all life experience into words, as a writer, and the tension that this provoked in him, along with the (western) need to strive and achieve, which the meditation guru actively discourages - all life is suffering and it makes no difference in the end, so 'let go'. Parks comes from a strict Anglican background and he finds this kind of religious 'mumbo-jumbo' just as false as the teachings of Christianity, which he rejected as a teenager, but he nevertheless finds some pain relief and something approaching an ecstatic experience when in a meditative trance. In the end, though, he is a writer and must put experience into words and the endless need to reflect and 'translate' his life into prose is what he does. The book is somewhat of a series of long essays and does not go 'anywhere', but that is perhaps the point. He can write as well.
review 2: V knjigah ponavadi spoznavamo generična telesa, ki jih medicina razkosa, kolikor natančno se ji zdi potrebno. Zato se od njih zlahka odtujimo in jih opazujemo z distance. In zato je bilo sila nenavadno branje Parksove uspešnice, kjer spoznavamo zelo intimne in predvsem celovite izkušnje bolezni telesa telesa. Avtor opisuje svoje pestro popotovanje v iskanju ozdravljenja, ko se sooči s težavami s prostato in mu uradna medicina ne more pomagati.Zgodba se bere kot avtorefleksija, kar v določenih trenutkih pomeni, da se popolnoma potopimo v Parksov svet in mogoče začutimo celo nelagodno, pretirano bližino. Njegovo vabilo v intimno doživljanje lastnega telesa sem sama nekajkrat občutila kot vdor v njegovo zasebnost. To nekakšno združitev pisatelja in bralca dobro opisuje njegova izkušnja, ko ga nekdo bere. "Moje roke so na tipkovnici, tvoje na straneh."Če premagamo to nelagodje, gre za kvalitetno branje in ga priporočam vsem, ki jih zanima odnos do lastnega telesa, odnos med telesom in umom ter nenazadnje odnos med posameznikom in svetom. less

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