MARIENTINA GOTSIS, M.F.A.

It has been a slow and steady year full of changes for me. After a series of major emotional losses, I have emerged in a slow and steady pace trying to maintain my cool during times of crisis. Work has been especially fulfilling this year, although the financial climate is not for the weak of heart. I seemed to have transitioned to becoming research faculty during the worst period for fund-raising in a long time. I see leaner budgets, cuts across programs, more projects for less salary replacement. It will probably get worse. But for once in my life, I am getting over things much faster than before. I have learned how being legitimately angry, even for short periods is extremely constructive.

Besides having a very supportive social network, I have the privilege of working with an amazing group of people from all walks of life and I have never felt more inspired to solve problems. Failure has struck me many times, but I have never been afraid of it. Boredom is what I am always most afraid of, followed closely by the fear of squandering talent, not just mine but that of others. In recent years, I have learned that a healthy amount of narcissism can lead to resilience. Even thinking that I can actually help with something is rather narcissistic. Yet, the thought of wasting a mind that can contribute to this world in small or big ways is a terrifying one. Until I had students, I didn’t know why narcissism was valuable. Removing insecurity and replacing it with confidence for others was transformational for me.

My students taught me that I had the ability to help them somehow discover what they like and want and they let me push their boundaries and experiment. In this process, I became comfortable with my own skills. For years I hated the “jack of all trades master of none” line because of my own insecurities. Now, I strive to be a master of none because I prefer working with other people. In reality, we all have mastery over several areas. Learning to raise your hand and say “I can do this” with beaming confidence is incredible. Even more incredible is the ability to find the people who can do what you can’t do and at times, convince them that they can do this, whatever it is that is necessary. There is also the “I can’t do this” moment and it is best to be working with people who also know their limits. The more people you let into your world, the more likely you can find those who can and can’t at the right time.

Resilience is a word bouncing in my head for over a year now. It has become a meditation. For me, resilience has been about numbers. The number of people who have contributed to my well changes all the time. Some transference has persistence, while other exchanges are fleeting–perhaps a spark–but not a lasting imprint. Shifting into positive opportunities for transference is hard yet possible. Recognizing positive and constructive models is not a widely taught skill. If the mirror you hold up to yourself and others is broken, it is hard to see. Coming from a mixed bag of positive and negative role models, the path is not always clear because we tend to follow what our early emotional experiences find familiar, no matter how terrible these are. Therefore, resilience lies in numbers: how many people can you meet in a lifetime who can transform your emotional and intellectual world?

February 11 marks the one-year anniversary of the passing of my first cousin, Kelly ‘Kali’ Doukas. Up to a month ago, I hadn’t even realized that she passed away in February. I was pretty sure it was in April. While trying to work on my annual activity report, I noticed that there were two months I barely remembered anything about. Our brains are rather remarkable in their ability to suppress. I remember telling myself that I had neither time nor room for mourning. Apparently, I was pretty convincing.

I am learning how to mourn again. For Kelly and for others lost the past two years. For 21 years, Kelly defended me against my premature adulthood. We had both lost a lot, but she always knew how to keep on living. She was responsible for almost every first-time experience I had to have in my life that my parents would have objected to. None of it hurt me. Most of it helped me. I always resented her for trying to make me have fun. I never thanked her for it. Our last encounter was harsh. Both of us would rather pretend it never happened. Unfortunately, it is burned in my memory like an ugly photograph.

Kelly was a gifted photographer. For someone who moved at the speed of light, I was amazed at how quickly she could capture images of profound beauty and inspiration without blurring. How could she notice anything while moving so fast? Her piercing blue eyes could stop traffic. In fact, they did so many times when we would go out for a night in the town. What was the last thing she saw when the lights went out? I wish I could have looked at those eyes one last time. She could stop time while staring at you, yet she moved so fast while the world stood still.

I wish I could stand still while moving to see what she saw. I wish I could see her see me one more time.

It has been some time since I posted. A lot of life changes the past few months. It takes time for the mind to make sense of change and as one gets older, processing happens slower and more privately than before. Deaths, separations, moves, births, rebirths, misery, sickness, happiness, vacations, losses, wins, celebrations — all part of life, sometimes all this occurs in bunches and life doesn’t allow you to stand still when you want to.

It is hard to do what I do, be who I am and maintain privacy about the hardest things. I believe in maintaining as much transparency as I can handle. Yet it is a bit of a luxury that this moment in time, I stand still before my blog, having survived this year, able to type again. It feels somewhat magical, somewhat right again. To write. In public. Again.

The past year and a half or so, my sanity has been maintained through meditating on quotes like this one:

This game was initially designed in my Spring 2009 CTIN 492 Class. The student team took it all the way to the White House! Congrats!

USC students who developed a video game that encourages children to exercise while educating them about nutrition captured the top two prizes in a national competition.

Nearly a dozen USC students and faculty members flew to Washington, D.C., to accept the award on Sept. 29 in a ceremony at the White House.

“Trainer,” a game that takes users to an enchanted island where they care for creatures who have dietary and fitness needs, took the grand prize and the GE Healthymagination Student Award for a total of $20,000.

http://uscnews.usc.edu/digital_media/selling_health_through_entertainment.html

Guest blog posts for RWJF at

http://rwjfblogs.typepad.com/pioneer/2010/05/games-for-health-conference-day-2-highlights-.html

and

http://rwjfblogs.typepad.com/pioneer/2010/05/games-for-health-conference-a-look-back-at-day-1-from-hgr-grantee-marientina-gotsis.html

I will be in in Boston for the Annual Games for Health Conference from May 23 to May 28. I have followed this conference since its first few steps and it has grown and impressed me and surprised me. This year, I am giving a talk on mobile games for health focused more on the Wellness Partners Study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation during the “Out & About: The Mobile Serious Games Conference” on the 25th and a talk during the regular tracks of the Games for Health Conference on my experience teaching design for games for health from the past two years of CTIN 492 Experimental Game Topics.

If you want to chat while I am there, drop me an email at my first name at yahoo.

It used to be fun. You could carry all your creature comforts with you on the plane. The seats were bigger. The lines were faster. The food was better. Taking a plane feels just one step more luxurious than taking a rural bus these days. There is no dignity left in traveling. Put your stuff in plastic bags. Take off your shoes. Pull out your laptop. Don’t wear an underwire bra. Take your decongestant. Throw out your water. Decide whether your bladder is big enough to choose window seating with two people sitting next to you. Squint to watch a movie you can barely hear.

Thankfully, face-to-face interaction upon reaching one’s destination is so rewarding that it makes up for this hassle and humiliation. Now if we could find a cure for jetlag, I wouldn’t be writing this post at 3am EST when my biological clock is set to PST. And where does all the lost time go? How old are we really when we travel so much? Have I traveled enough to actually be 2 years older? It sure feels like it.

7 more plane rides until mid- June. At least a week’s worth of aging suspended midair.

Dear Kelly,

It has been two months since Dad called to tell me that you were gone. He was very upset you know. He liked taking care of you whenever you were around. Do you still remember that summer he cooked for us gourmet food every day at the beach house? Or that time when we took him to a gay bar in Castro with Cat after having those delicious crepes? I hope you remember still. I wanted to let you know wherever you are that I am trying hard not to be sad. I am doing my best. But it just doesn’t seem real that you left. When I wrote our grandfather’s obituary three years ago it wasn’t easy but it was something I could do. It was ok to let him go. He lived for almost a whole century. He didn’t suffer. We lived him, through him, with him. He was always with us one way or another.

I don’t know what to do with you sweetie. Why did you get into that car? Why? How do you expect me to accept this and move on? It just isn’t possible. I could never let go of you, no matter what happened. So there will be no obituary for you from me. I just can’t do it. It isn’t acceptable. You lived a very full life but in haste, almost frantic with your travels and incredible appetite for fun. You really did have fun. But you always said you never wanted to get married, never wanted to have kids, never wanted to grow old. And we all smiled and imagined you becoming old but not really aging, sipping your drink and dancing to Billy Idol and looking no different than you did when you were twenty-five even at ninety-seven like Pappou. He would have been a hundred years old this summer. You would have liked that.

Pappou‘s time came and he aged but he never got sick. We bid him farewell. It was our fantasy for you not to age, but this was not the way to go about preserving it. So forgive me if I am angry. Forgive me if I am sad. I am trying to be happy and enjoy my life, the one I really want to have. I want to get married. I want to have kids. I am growing old. And you aren’t around. You haven’t been around for awhile. You have been busy living in haste. And dying under the most extraordinary and unusual of circumstances. It is ok when it is on television. It is not ok when I have to forever imagine over and over the last few minutes of your death. Were you scared? Were you lonely? When will you tell me? In my mind, it just wasn’t you. It couldn’t be you. It will never be you. A case of mistaken identity perhaps. So no obituary koukla. Just keep partying.

Take care and I will see you sometime not too soon, but it is ok because I know you’ll keep busy. You always have some place to go that is more exciting.

love,
M

fierce and wild
sweet and gentle
wearing grandpa’s baby blues
piercing, loving

catch you on the edge of the sun
riding your chariot of fire
red and black forever

in my heart, forever.

***

I will count to 100 now and when I turn around, it will be your turn. If you want me to keep going, just let me know. I will wait until it is my turn.

I recently found this piece below again. A little bit of truth and a little bit of fiction. The mundane nature of breakups and the process of sorting one’s life through objects is something that has always interested me. I did a photo installation project with a narrative that then turned into a clumsy voiceover nine years ago here.

The Way Out of A Man’s Heart
by Marientina Gotsis, (c) 2008

Marjane opened the door of the apartment where she used to live. She walked through the front instead of the back door. She was now a ‘guest’ with a key. It was strange to be in the apartment that used to be theirs. It was now his. She walked lightly and respectfully toward the kitchen–afraid of an unplanned encounter. The last items to be removed per Marcel’s request were the contents of the fridge that reminded him of her. “I am now alone,” he told her staring at a frozen steak.

She opened the door of the fridge and stared at every shelf. A hundred memories flashed in front of her eyes and she slammed the door of the fridge shut. Marjane turned her back away from the fridge and looked at all the half-empty shelves that used to be stocked with “their” things. The fridge would soon be ‘his’. She opened the door of the fridge again and started putting items carefully into a paper bag trying not to think. She remembered the hundreds of times she must have filled ‘their’ fridge. There it was staring at her. She thought that by now he must have certainly thrown it out. She held it in her hands and examined it carefully.

Suddenly, Marjane heard a noise at the front door. She panicked thinking that it may be him. She grabbed the paper bag, shoved the last item in her purse and ran out from the back door. Marcel walked into the house from the front door and headed into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and inspected the shelves. He frowned and closed the door. He grabbed a paper towel and opened the fridge again. He wiped the ring left on a shelf from an item that was no longer there and threw the towel into the trash.