Girl, Interrupted

What I accepted as normal is not normal.

It occurred to me this morning that almost 20 years ago I had the opportunity to make a difference and that I had, stupidly, not been up to the occasion--for whatever reasons.  Namely, fear.

At the home of C.C. Wang, the well-known collector of Chinese painting, graduate students in art history had gathered to view some of the hanging scrolls hanging on the walls.  While looking intently at "Along the Border of Heaven" (Dong Yuan, 10th century), out of the blue, I was violently shoved away by another student, Pan Anyi, who then started to utter some invective at me.  Too stunned to say anything, much less protest, I moved away.

And kept the secret to myself.  I told no one.  Not my professor, not any other graduate student.

What is especially galling to myself is how again, how stupidly, I kept my silence when perhaps a year later the other graduate students in Chinese art history were up in arms against that very same student, Pan Anyi, who had either virulently insulted or even physically assaulted another student, whose name I do not recall.

I understand that this action constitutes legal assault in many, if not most, states.

I could not put "1" and "1" together and get "2".    All I came up was "F" (for Fear).

At that time.

Until today, October 2, 2014.

Today, this student, the protege of Dr. Marsha Haufler, is a tenured professor at Cornell University.

   She did not want to lose, anything, so she held on tight for dear life.

Now she has nothing left to lose.

(Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose).



(Simpleton that I was at the time, I had believed that graduate school was about ideas and The Truth rather than at all costs (!) avoiding getting in someone's way and scoring points with the Powers That Be.  Arrogant I was, too, to believe that I was too good to probe what lay behind "les regles du jeu" (the official departmental "line" or to listen to my fellow students, who knew more about the game than I did).