Ground Control

Con-trol:
verb-
to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command.
To hold in check; curb
to test or verify
to eliminate or prevent the flourishing of or spread of
to check or regulate.

I'm building a theory. Can you guess what its about?
I hope to make this more than just a personal theory at some point in the future. This may be the next thing I take a long hard look into with any studies I may do or research I may try to become a part of- If I can. If I can't, maybe I'll write some sort of hackneyed research-based book about it and be able to get away with it because I have my masters degree and hopefully will be licensed. Anyway, hear it out and leave me your thoughts if you like.

I think that control is one of the primary motivations in every human beings life. Since we no longer have a real need to seek out means of controlling our environment, and arguably we have conquered much of it anyway, I think that human nature being what it is, we are seeking out more and more finite things to control. My belief is that this is what leads us to attempt to control things like emotions, reactions, others, others responses, our own responses...the list really goes on. I haven't determined whether this is in actuality a residue of some primal urge to control, or the inevitable evolution of people, or some type of neurotic outgrowth of the way we have evolved into living our lives, but it's there whatever the reason. Even in those who willfully and intentionally relinquish traditional control- the effort is still in relationship to control and controlling, or eliminating the need/desire/urge to.

What made me think about this? Ex-boyfriends mostly. Well, OK- more specifically and truthfully- my sessions with therapy clients, co-workers, my friends, my family, myself, the country, foreign policy, Israel, Palestine, and yes, ex-boyfriends.

In terms of foreign policy and foreign affairs I think its pretty obvious- at least to me- that wars, treaties, nuclear arms races, what have you, are related to control of resources, wealth, power and land. On a personal level though, this exact same phenomenon will play itself out in relationships with others as well as with the world around us. OCD is a wonderful example of this. Colloquially OCD is about engaging in ritualized or patterned behaviors in order to obtain relief from anxiety that the individual feels/knows they cannot manage another way. Somehow something like hand washing lends the individual a modicum of control over the anxiety they are experiencing. This is oversimplified of course- but you can see where some of this is heading. In our relationships many of us are constantly making an effort to figure out what the other person wants and needs or to figure out what we want and need and we try various ways to obtain all of it- we manage ourselves and others so as to hopefully predict the best outcome and act accordingly.

Even in an activity like gambling- which in actuality is based primarily on chance- the people who get hooked on it are the ones that believe they have a "system" or can beat the "system" put in place by the gambling establishment. They organize philosophies about the cards, the shuffling, the dealing, the dealer, the tells, and they act on them- all this to win the most money and control a game which seems initially beyond their control.

Anyway, like I said this is preliminary, so this is about as far as I think I'm willing to go here without doing more research. But thinking about it fascinates me endlessly. I wonder what the world would look like without the urge to control. If it would even be possible to remove the urge to control at all. I wonder if we would be better or worse off. I wonder if it's something that will evolve into yet a different behavior and become something totally 'other' centuries from now. I wonder if it has any benefit at all, and if so, what it is or if its anything beyond simple peace of mind. And I wonder- if it is related to peace of mind- is there another way to achieve that? Even some of the eastern religions- while they talk about being in the moment and existing in what is ( that's a hatchet job on eastern religion, so I apologize- but its more or less just serving my point right now) still function as a means of maintaining the ultimate control over ones human urges- elevating ones self above them.

For the meantime, until I research this theory some more, its interesting to think about control in my own life and how I exercise that or choose not to and the ways it leaves me feeling/ impacts my interactions with others, and while I'm not the biggest proponent of endless amounts of introspection, I think its something we could all benefit from thinking about in relationship to our own lives, at the minimum.

Free Radicals.

Radical. Its a fun word. Say it with me, "Radical". But what does it mean? I'm not speaking of radical in the 1990's surfer dude sense of the word, I'm talking about making the decision to identify ones self or another person as a radical in politics, thought, or manner of being. This weekend I hosted a pot luck for a group I'm involved in and we call ourselves "Radical ". Its in our title, and a friend of mine, being derisive though she was, asked me what made us "radical" and the answer stuck in my throat. To begin with its tricky enough to identify radical politics. Voting democrat when you're a republican may be considered a radical move, loud protesters

are often labeled as radicals regardless of what side of the fence they sit on, as well as people who try to erase their entire carbon foot print by composting their own garbage or live off scraps of food and found objects in dumpsters on purpose. And of course Anne Coulter- we all know she's a radical right wing nut job. Is radical anything outside the norm, then? And if this is the case is it the goal of people who live like this to de-radicalize their way of life and normalize it? Or is it normal to them from the jump and therefore not radical?

The idea, I suppose, is that the way you are functioning/operating/behaving is above and beyond what most people would consider a reasonable approach. What does it mean about people who are not radical or who do not consider themselves radical? And does it take down connections and widen gaps when someone self identifies as a radical to someone who does not?Would someone who goes to Starbucks, but creates art deconstructing racism be considered a radical or would someone who is studying to be a corporate lawyer but protests the health care stance of Whole Foods be considered radical? Would they both? Neither?

See its sticky. What I propose is this: as much as I appreciate the group I am involved in and think that the work we are headed towards is important, I think that the term radical can risk creating gaps and eliminating opportunities for conversation. Instead of becoming informed on the work we do, my friend shut down conversation because the word radical did something for her that I didn't quite understand or anticipate and for the rest of the evening the three that I was with jokingly ribbed me when anything I said involved words about our cause. I could no longer be heard on the good the group does because radical had caused such a divide that there was no crossing. It was almost as if it said "I'm more anti- this than you are, and in fact, I'm so anti that we aren't going to understand each other on any level". And sure its an entirely self conscious move on her part to place that word in between us when my friend knows my stances and agrees with much of the work, but there it stood and I no longer could tell her what I thought because the word had been used to create a divide.

Does this mean I'm opposed to radical politics or calling it radical politics? Am I splitting hairs to suggest that calling it by another name would be far more open and inviting? Maybe I am and maybe in the end it wouldn't matter at all, but I just couldn't help but notice what that small, and arguably really fun to say, word had done. It made me someone on the outside rather than someone working towards unity. Anyone who knows me knows I don't have a hard time being the outsider in a conversation, or the one with the dissenting voice (no matter how delicately I put it) but something in there is problematic that I can't quite place my finger on. Being willing to place ones self on the outside to make people think or get a point across or because its the right thing to do is one thing. Placing ones self or another on the outside in a box allows us to stop listening to them. I guess that's what I don't like.

Heavy Handed Metaphors in Politics

Its chilly and grey this morning. Fall has set in relatively on schedule this year as opposed to the late October set- in we’ve been experiencing in the last few years. It makes me think of patchwork quilts and wood burning stoves, though I’ve never really experienced either of those as a signifier of fall. Having grown up in the north east what typically signals this season are apple picking trips that somehow always involve hay, pumpkins, and an increase in my consumption of tea. A good cup of tea always takes the chill off.

The other thing about the fall that sets in, often like a wet blanket, is the election season. Right when the world feels its dullest the politics of our tangled little democratic republic seem to take up the cause and try their hand at breathing life into the land. Unfortunately they always seem to fail in some terrible and predictable way.

Now don’t get me wrong- the election season can seem very exciting and will get people chattering about health care, economics, the environment, big business and all the news worthy topics. They will talk from June to November about all the things they believe should matter to them and to the politicians, and for that time it will matter. But then, like the first real frost of winter, once the election begins coming to a close those things seem to no longer hold life- it begins to be about getting your candidate through the door no matter how their policies have changed through the summer. And once they are through the door? Pardon the heavy handed metaphors, but it’s as if we begin to feel that it’s acceptable to hibernate on the things that mattered to us in the first place.

I was at a panel discussion a couple weekends ago and one of the panelists began talking about how he’s noticed that if there is a candidate we like in some general way, that because of this default two party system (where our options are often seem to boil down to Mary-Kate or Ashley) we find ourselves throwing our full support behind a candidate we feel connected with in spirit, but not in policy. The panelist talked about how instead of letting our hopes and dreams die with the election season, and instead of following the concept of doing our duty to keep the other guy out of office, we should continue to throw our energy into changing the chosen candidates points of view once he/she is in office. We should keep working on and talking about the things that matter most, the things we usually remember we care about as the spring hits us, and allow to die with the leaves in the fall.

Now obviously this is not the case for all. Many people continue to think about these things and concern themselves with their importance all year long, but maybe what we need is more people to not only care, but to act on their concerns and to speak on them.

I know that in my last post I talked about change through life choices and the benefits of sometimes leaving the rafters silent, and I still maintain that for certain life choices that’s ok (I’m certainly not going to write to my congressmen about the importance of vegetarianism or buying used items) but for things that affect our health, our ability to feed ourselves, our ability to keep a roof over our head, I’m just not sure how we can let those issues go unheard for so long. They matter to all of us in small ways every day, so why would we think that talking about it once in a great while would make a difference? Perhaps if we talked about it more regularly the candidates would have to address it more regularly. I’ve never been a believer that change comes by revolution. I think it comes by evolution and I think that evolution takes time, effort, and persistent adaptation.

A Change Will Do Us Good

Ok. So here’s a quick rundown of my liberal credentials.

Just kidding. Lately I’ve gotten questioned over my liberalness- am I too liberal, not liberal enough, do I challenge enough people, do I have no legitimate reasons for my liberality, why bother if I’m just one person, and on and on to the point where it gets foolish. The thing is I’m not sure why I’m getting all this heat. It’s not like I shove my views in people’s faces- least I don’t think I do. In fact generally speaking I kind of tend to be of the belief that I should just live and let live. Ok, I know that some things should not be allowed to slide and there are some things I should speak up for, and I do, but I don’t think its necessary for everything or effective for everything. I just think that if what you’re doing is not hurting other people and not hurting yourself that that should be taken into account when challenging others about decisions they make- mind you not ignored, just taken into account.

I guess, in a way, I just don’t believe that my words are going to persuade anyone to change their mind, or that anyone will actually hear what I have to say to begin with; especially if they don’t want to (and if they do, then aren’t I just preaching to the choir?)- from what I’ve seen, people don’t change a damn thing about themselves until they are good and ready regardless of who says what to them. And It’s not that I think one person can’t make a difference either, they can- its just that well, people seem far more bothered and riled by the way I live my life when I’m living it than they do when they can argue back in some sort of debate-like fashion. I mean, you should see how much flack I get at work for being a vegetarian, regardless of the fact that people don’t know I am until they physically see me refuse meat or fail to come to work with chicken or fish in my lunch. And sometimes all I have to do is mention my weekend plans, when asked, to get inundated with bullshit about the welfare system, and/or bucking trends (depending on my activity).

So what this leads me to, then, is a question. Does it make more sense to utilize the way you exist, as much as possible, as a means of protest and putting forth into the world the lifestyle you see as most sound and sane, or do you get out on the street corners and shout about it, instigate arguments and/or debates amongst friends, block enterances to ill corporations and organizations, and call people out whenever you see them go off the path you believe is right or righteous?...In truth it seems to be a question of degrees more than a question of opposite choices, but I still think it’s a relevant distinction to make, and possibly one that might make the difference between getting people to maybe, possibly, think about they way you live your life and why, and simply getting them to hear you.

Now maybe sometimes my way of doing things could be construed as cowardly- if you never fight the system openly you never get them to see that there is something to fight against- but I don’t see the way I live my life as ‘not’ fighting the system. I just see it as quietly and slowly working toward change where I can in the system, and maintaining as much balance and sanity as I can in my own way of life. And that doesn't mean I never talk about my beliefs either or question other people- hell if you read this, you know I do. Anway, whichever way I chose to engage, my life and the way I live it is far from the perfect protest- I know, ( and I’m ok with that too) but I guess when I think of change, and the changes I want to see happen, I feel like change has to start with me in whatever small way I can do it. I guess maybe this is a primary difference between me and most activists- I think real change comes from evolution, not revolution. But then that could just be the therapist in me talking.

Anyway, let me know what you think- cause, well, I’m interested.

Choking Down Some Wedding Cake?

Ok. So here’s the thing I discovered- I’m scared. The thing of it is I was talking to a friend the other night and I ended up making him probably, I mean most likely, believe I was crazy. Not crazy in the actual sense, but crazy in the sense of stereotypical mainstream women who believe they need to get married and have babies before they hit 30. It started because he reminded me that I was closing in on 30. The thing of it is, I don’t know that I’m scared of “never finding a husband”…I’ve never been that type of person and so for me to believe that this unnatural fear that surged up in me what simply about that has been virtually impossible. I don’t even know how much I’d care about getting married or not. I mean- to be fair I’m not enormously anti-marriage (anti-wedding/ anti-tradition yes, but that’s another story for another time), its just that I couldn’t care less if I was married or just living with someone I care about - so that couldn’t be it either. Anyway, all that junk is simply to say I think I figured it out.

I think this fear thing is about change. I kid you not, 14 people I know have gotten married or engaged in the last year and while I could take or leave the whole marriage business the thing that bothers me about it is that my friends and loved ones are changing in clear and obvious ways. Things are moving on and I guess what I’ve realized is that in the last 5 years I’ve changed too, but in ways that I’ve far from anticipated. For years I moved around a lot, traveled all over the place, moved between social groups, did things that scared me, lived in totally foreign and remote places. Now I have lived in the same city for 4 years, only moved once, gotten a full time job that has no real end in sight; I even slowed down dating. And the thing that makes me nervous about that is that I’m scared I’m settling down and becoming well- complacent. I see it happening in things I let go of, things I don’t try as hard at or care as much about. Hell some of the people I’ve become familiar with think it’s risky for me to cut my hair. And the thing of it is that that life style is fine for plenty of people- its just that it’s never once in my adult life ever been me. I don’t know what to do with that. I still consistently get the urge to travel and change things up, but its just harder now with a full time job and responsibility and all that crap.

Anyway change is just around the corner and I know it. Soon I will get my license and then I will take some time and disappear into the world once again, but for now the suspense is killing me- I think I might get my hair cut. Or maybe an ironic tattoo. At the very least I plan to disappear into the woods of NH and VT for a week or so and recouperate. Along with needing change I’ve been craving green.

The Weekend Migration

The mercury hit around 96 today in the city- it is officially summer in New York. I think summer here is my favorite season by far. By my way of thinking, if you’re going to be sweltering in not just the heat but the humidity that is an NYC summer you may as well be surrounded by concrete, brick, and old men playing dominoes in their undershirts. In fact the only regrettable thing about a city summer is that there aren’t enough trees to sit under while gulping down very cold iced tea and reading a book. There are some, just-not enough.

In all seriousness though New York city suddenly becomes the free-est city in the world in the summer time and that is mostly why I love it. Free movies, pools, concerts, tours, kayaking, hiking, gardens, whatever. You name it and its probably free- there are even free cooling centers so for any of you snarky enough to suggest there may not be free AC, you’re wrong. The other thing I love about summer here: thunder storms. There’s just something satisfying about the heavily audible crack of thunder as it breaks through the heat and cools things down . I know this happens in other places, but I really enjoy it when it happens here.

As much as I love the city in the summer, though, tomorrow I plan to disappear into the trees. There’s a beautiful museum just barely upstate that I’ve been meaning to see and since the context of my work has been slowly beating me down once again, I find myself in need of an escape from the urban. I’m very excited to be in the forest again, or some proximity of it. I think I love it about as much as I love the city, if that’s possible. I suppose I just love them for very different reasons.

Anyway, It should all be very cathartic and nice and so I’m terribly excited for it. Hopefully you’ll enjoy your weekend as well and manage to stay cool wherever you are.

Fidget

I cannot seem to think straight or focus. My body aches and my mind feels rather discontent to settle on any task in particular. I feel as though I'm on pins and needles. Over the weekend my body has been screaming at me to slow down, but I find I cannot and so, get up to pace, stop the task I'm doing to pick another, or stare blankly at my to do list, not wishing to complete it.

Today I felt a desire to create, but not feeling any strong pull in any particular direction I settled on planting my pothos that had begun to root in water. Then I set about adding new music to my Ipod. This was about all the goal directed work I could manage today once I came home from running errands.

This morning I also felt the urge to travel and though I'm planning a trip with a friend in October, I feel conflicted about whether or not I should go. Mainly it's a financial question, but I think also this recent inability to alight on any one topic or idea for too long may be playing a part. After all, one of the tasks I have left is to look up train fares from Paris to Barcelona.

I think the thing that agitated me the most today was the realization that my inability to focus my creative energy was probably coming from a recent focus almost solely on my job. Now, I love my job-dont get me wrong, and likewise I have been able to take time out to spend with people and activities I enjoy, its just that lately I've let my work stress me out even when I'm nowhere near it. Ive been having the urge to quit and go elsewhere to do something different for a while, but some thing is stopping me. Whether it's a need to feel grounded, a need to feel secure in a job, or a need to continue to build connections here in NYC I can't really say. I'm not sure why I stopped listening to my inner self telling me to keep going, but I did and for a while it felt like it was because I needed to stop and deal with whatever it was I was avoiding.

I think in many ways though that need has been met and I still feel like something isn't quite right. I feel like I'm meant to do something more or something else and that I need to figure that out and move onward to doing it. I think that once I gain licensure it will be clearer and I wil lbe freer to look beyond what I do now.I've wanted for a while to work with trauma in varying places, but I"ve been held back by hesitation around the cultural relevance of westernized therapy in a non-western place. I just don't think it would work or should be done and I would very much like to be useful in other places in the world, but I seem to only have cultivated one or two things in terms of career options and I just don't know how to move forward with with them or from them.

It's not that I think what I've done with my life is useless or meaningless, no. It's just that its something thats tricky to apply to the populations I want to work with, without greater sensitivity and caution, and without knowing exactly how to manipulate what I do to best serve those people.The last thing I want is to be useless and more of a burden than a help, and how to ensure I keep doing that and doing it righteously is a thing that keeps me up at night as of late.

Being useful to others has always been important to me and I want the work I do to maintain that usefulness. On a microcosmic scale I suppose I can keep finding new ways of being useful to the people here and now in my work, but in a way I feel like I've hit a wall. Sometimes I think my students-some of them- would be better off in life if I never asked them to think about the things that are hard for them to think about, the things that touble them the most. I know that having someone to talk to can help immensely, and a fair amount of the time it does, but what good is talk if they've got all these other real life situations on their plate that they must somehow deal with? One of my favorite things about working at the shelter I worked at was when I could go down to the basement and help dish out dinner to the men. Then, at least, I knew I was meeting a direct and tangible need., I knew what I was doing was helpful.

Anyway, my point is simply that I don't have some need for thanks or instant gratification or anything like that, but I do need to see clear and tangible benefits for the person I'm looking to assist. At least more so than I witness right now. I think I just need a fresh perspective in a way, and maybe thats why I feel such a need to move on. Or maybe I'm just tired of urban work-who knows. Hope I find out soon, though.

A Little Space to Fill

I haven’t written in a couple months and I think this time its got to do with the ways in which all the themes I usually like to address are impacting me relatively directly these days. I started this blog back in 2005 after I had moved to NYC and begun gradschool. Looking back over my writings I feel as though they’ve gotten progressively worse, as though what I’m trying to say has become harder and harder and been more frequently clouded over by other extraneous things. Or maybe I just had more of a deep need to address my views and visions back then and now am seeing less of a reason to do so. Scratch that, its not less of a reason to do so, no, there is still a need to address race, class gender, and the like, its just that perhaps lately I’ve gotten wrapped up in dealing with those things in very personal ways as opposed to political ways. Perhaps I’ve been slowly going through the process of finding it more and more difficult to keep these matters at arms length. See I think an issue becomes easily discussed when have either not gotten deeply into it personally, or have already found our ways out of it and can look back on it- discussing the issues rarely seems to go well when we find ourselves in the thick of it- at least with me.

So what is it then that I’ve been trying to get at here with this whole blog? As I see it a couple of themes I’ve tried to address throughout this blog are race, gender, class, belonging, and personal connections. As a white woman who grew up middle class in a very small city I grew up with a certain amount of privilege and it wasn’t until 2005 really that I was asked to deal with what that privilege meant- not just to other people but to myself. I became aware that as a woman I was refused certain privileges but being white I was afforded others. I became aware that my ability to attend the university I did meant I had expectations placed upon me and opportunities given to me strictly based on whether I was able to afford a certain amount of tuition. I also became aware that given each of my status’s I had choices to make. Primarily choices about how I would interact with others, how I would utilize and deny my privilege, how I would approach living conscious, and how I would support the people I cared about, as well as myself, in dealing with those choices. Not that I believed that I had the answers and could help others through with such ease, but that I could be a support to them in their own struggle with this stuff, be open, understanding and honest, and hear them when/if that was what they needed from me.

So I started this blog while I was looking at those topics, and as I progressed I began addressing them first with myself , then with my professors and classmates, my clients, my staff, my family, my friends and acquaintances, and finally the people I want to have closest to me. And the thing of it is that as it’s come around to those last few levels, which all are operating simultaneously at the moment, I’m finding I’m having the hardest time. The political has become more and more personal and for me, like I said before, it’s hardest to articulate your understanding of the issues when you’re deep within them. The thing with these themes though, is that they won’t go away, and I don’t know how or when I would ever come out on the other side with enough understanding to feel distance once again- I don’t think its possible, and to be frank, I don’t know that I want so much distance from these themes that I somehow become detached from them. So I guess there in lies the complication. How do I remain actively involved in these themes and still be able to acquire some type of understanding around them and be able to articulate that, here or anywhere else.

Most recently the themes of ethnicity and personal connections have cut very close to the quick for me. Being white, and the ways in which I operate in the world around that, have been something I’ve taken up more and more strongly in my life and while it’s a good thing and an important thing, and possibly even something I’m feeling more prepared to deal with than ever, its also been a complicated thing. Now this is by no means a complaint- I feel absurdly lucky that the complication has come so late in life when I have been able to think about and discuss the themes in mature ways with mature people prior to having to deal with it on a personal level. I am aware that as a privileged white person I’ve been afforded this luxury of not having to think about it until I’m good and ready. No, in a way the problem comes for me in that I still feel completely clumsy in addressing these issues with the people who I want closest to me, the people who matter the most- particularly when those people are persons of color. Do I, and if so how do I, articulate my stumbling blocks to someone I care about or want to care about when what I have to say, or how I’m dealing with it, or the fact that I consider it difficult at all may be received, and appropriately so, with hostility, resentment, anger, confusion, annoyance, disgust, or any combination of those things if not outright rejection? In many ways I don’t think I can and I don’t think I should. In many ways to articulate them in such a way is to ask for help and guidance from someone who may have had to deal with these matters their whole life, whether they wanted to or not, and oftentimes without any guidance whatsoever. In many ways it seems self centered and privileged to even bring the topic up with people who haven’t had a choice in the matter. And so sometimes I don’t- at least not in certain senses. This is part of the reason I joined a white anti-racist group. For me to ask persons of color to sit patiently with me while I get through my own struggle with privilege and whiteness is to continue to ask to be given that privilege and to me that would be like a man asking me to feel empathic towards him and his struggle with his male privilege- it just doesn’t make any sense.

Now don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that I feel that I ought to never address it. I think that to not address it with people of color in my life is taking the easy way out and I’m not really interested in any more free passes based on the color of my skin. No it’s vital to address it, but the importance comes in learning to address it not from a standpoint of privilege and expectation, but from a standpoint of empathy, understanding and a desire to learn, increase awareness, and move towards eradication of the problem.

So you see, this is just one of the ways these themes are hitting me full in the face these days, and while its been unexpected and its caused me to fall silent about certain things I guess it doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped thinking about them entirely, or that I believe these matters don’t impact me, and its not that I think that they have become irrelevant to discuss or irrelevant to me- its just that I’m kind of in the thick of it right now and in a way I’m more interested in trying to figure out what other people think on the matter, rather than spouting off about what I think I may know. I guess that’s all I’ve got to say for now.

The Colony

Someone asked me a while ago what my thoughts were on post colonialism. It’s a pretty big topic and so I briefly and poorly answered it with the promise to address it at a later date. I guess this is part of my attempt at formulating an answer.

In shock experiments with dogs looking at the psychological effects of continued stress, when the dogs had no ability to control the shock they were receiving, they eventually stopped making an effort to escape the shock. They could not function to preserve their own lives or well being and even when given the opportunity to preserve their own well being, would do nothing. Apply this phenomenon to human beings then, extending it slightly, and what you have is similar to the impact on a colonized people who have had their power and control taken away from them and eventually struggle to function and preserve their own livelihoods and well being when they have been trained to believe they cannot do it on their own or should not do it on their own. The impact of colonialism mirrors this but is, at the same time, much more than this.

Colonization deeply impacts the cultural identity of the colonized and takes from them- along with that belief in their own power- their vision of self and personal worth. They are told several things; first that they have no right to what is theirs; second that they cannot utilize their resources properly and must rely on the colonizer to “teach” them how to do it “right” ( usually the way of the 1st world country doing the colonizing); third that their way of being as a culture is inappropriate and backward; fourth that they are necessarily of that “backward” way and must be re-trained; and finally that they can never be anything but that backward way. The process of the colonizer is like the process of an abuser. Simultaneously telling the controlled that they are alternately terrible and wrong and yet capable of being trained and molded if only they submit to whatever it is the colonizer wants or views as right. They are told they are needed but that they are of no use unless they are changed in some way.

I think the best/ easiest way for me to respond is with a story. In 2002 I lived in Dakar, Senegal. Senegal was, up until 60 a French colony. The people colonized were primarily of the Wolof and Serer tribes. When Senegal was colonized by the French the British were simultaneously colonizing the Gambia. Now keep in mind that The Gambia is a tiny country that exists along the Gambi River and to the ocean, surrounded on three sides by Senegal. Because the lines chosen by the French and British were along water supplies, ports, and the like and not along any established tribal territories or lands, the tribe was effectively split and some ended up in the Gambia; some necessarily in Senegal. At the time I was in Senegal I lived in an apartment house with other students which was located behind an outpost of the French army. The French army base was this enormous pink stucco monstrosity fenced, as many domiciles were, by a high stucco wall creating the compound and guarded at the door by “security”. Against the wall of the compound was a small kola nut tree upon which rested, between the tree and the wall, a small dwelling made up of scraps of wood and tin with a fire pit outside the door which was a drapery. This to me is the most definitive picture of the impact of colonialism- a small home lived in by the rightful people of that land propped up on one side by their colonizer- both because of whom and (now) without whom they might not have a leg to stand on- and flanked on the other by the pitiful remnants of the country which they were afforded after the colonizer took all the other more valuable resources.

More than just creating a dependency on the colonizer though, post-colonial statehood has had a divisive impact on the controlled persons through a variety of venues. Firstly and perhaps most obviously was the language. In Senegal two main languages are spoken- French and Wolof. In the Gambia, although they are the same people, the languages spoken are English and Wolof. Throughout their schooling, if lucky enough to go to school, students are mandated to learn and utilize their previous colonizers languages. The children who do not go to school are relegated to only speaking Wolof (or Serer); significantly limiting their ability to go further than service jobs in homes, apprenticeships, and basic labor jobs. The dichotomy for those utilizing the language of the colonizer then is that they are made to communicate within the colonizers context if they would like to succeed but to do so they must relinquish that which binds them to their culture. This matter may also ring true to Native American’s who, through the atrocities of the boarding school system were isolated from their cultures and languages, made to take up the context of the colonizer, and alternately shunned from the colonizers community if they did reconnect to their own culture and shunned from the reservation community if they took on the whiteness too closely.

Beyond language however, the divisive impact strikes further. Going back to Senegal momentarily, while I cannot speak directly to what propelled this hostility- though one could imagine it was perpetuated by any hostility or competitiveness between the colonizers- there exists a tension between Gambian Wolof and Senegalese Wolof that ultimately pits the two sides against one another. Whether it was an effort to destabilize each others colonies, sprouted from an effort by the colonized to attain the status of “good” or “loyal”, or came from a place where being oppressed breeds oppressiveness in kind, the Senegalese maintain a feeling of distaste for the Gambians, whom they view as lower, and the Gambians speak about their feeling that the Senegalese are thieves and sanctimonious yes-men to their colonizers. People from the exact same tribe, who hold the exact same surnames- anglicized or made francophone depending on their colonial power-, are at once divided and identified by their colonizers rather than maintaining their communal history. They are made to suffer together or subsist apart.

In this example then, as in many others, the damage inflicted by the colonial system far outweighs the benefits once the colonizer has evacuated the premises. As soon as the colonizer decides they are done, have usurped all the resources they can, are willing to go, or are fought back into their place they leave the people in ruins. Not just economic ruins, but psychological ruins. Like in many abusive relationships the abused can be left feeling like they have somehow done wrong or are incapable of surviving without the abuser, they are left feeling worthless and isolated from those they once were connected to.

Anyway, I don’t know if this fully answers my feelings on post-colonialism. As a movement I think it speaks truthfully to the impact of colonialism on the once controlled people, I think that the impact of colonialism is deep and psychologically damaging, and I think that the responsibility of owning that and rebuilding the colonized at least in part lies with the colonizer.

Ties

I need to make a confession. I’ve been procrastinating on the total completion of my application for Mental Health Counseling licensure- i.e. the test, a course or two and owing them a picture of myself for my license- because I’m scared of the totality of it. I’m scared that, assuming I pass my test (which should be alright considering I passed the practice exam- though it was 1.5 years ago), and once its all in place I will be wed to staying in NYC at least for another 5 years. I’m scared that I might not succeed living in NYC even though I’ve done alright for myself thus far. I’m scared that I won’t be happy here, that I will miss home too much, that I will feel unable to go pursue other dreams I’ve got of living in other places and doing other things. I’m scared of being tied to any one place. Even sending in the money for the license didn’t stir my fear quite as much as it did to receive the letter 2 weeks ago stating that I was cleared to take my exam. And then- on top of it all- what if none of this matters because I fail the exam?

I’ve never been a person who has been happy tied to one location too solidly, but if this goes through I will be tied- at least for the duration- to New York State by the fact that I will be completely cleared to do what I am trained to do and get paid for it in this state. Licensure will mean that I am more marketable, that I have the capacity to live more comfortably if I should want to (or save like crazy if I want to do that), and that I have more fluidity and latitude in my choice of jobs. It will mean good things if I get it. But I’m absurdly scared of it.

When I first had the thought to move to NYC to continue school, I was 21 feeling confused and living in Amsterdam. I didn’t know what exactly it was I wanted to do and I was so completely scared of the possibility of failing generally and failing to get into my dream school that I didn’t apply until after I got into a bunch of other schools, none of which I felt I would be happy at. Hell I didn’t even apply then, until I spent a year out of school and my sister yelled at me about how capable I was of doing it. And I did get in. But I was scared then too.

I know that being scared has never stopped me from doing what I want to do before; it’s just that I can’t seem to shake the fear until the thing is over. So if I seem a bit on edge lately, please bear with me. Because I’m taking these ridiculous steps towards something and while it may just be licensure, and in the end even that doesn’t mean all that much, it feels like stepping out in the pitch black night and being unsure where the ground ends.

Ideal

I ran into an ex-boyfriend of mine at a wedding last weekend. He was a writer for an independent paper/ filmmaker, turned financial PR man. I can remember when I met his mother, she said to me-without knowing me or anything about me- “we thought it was time he let go of his ideals and start making a living.” Did I mention the financial PR firm he worked for belonged to his parents? At the time I didn’t think much of it beyond that she was your standard overbearing mother, until days before I was to meet his father and her for a formal dinner, when he and I suddenly ended our relationship- guess I was part of the ideals he needed to let go of.

Anyway this isn’t a story about ex-boyfriends, it’s about the ideals part, and so let me move on. A little while ago I began an email conversation with a friend of mine which moved towards a discussion about the older generation of activists and the ways in which they more clearly and firmly are able to articulate their vision of a better future, and I started to wonder- is our generation somehow different in our approach to real, positive, change? What I spoke about with that friend was how the older generation, having seen change, was able to visualize it better than the newer- those of us who have grown up primarily within republican administrations or within the Clinton years (which isn’t saying much). And while this seems like it may be a definite part of it, I also wonder about the ways we utilize technology today and the ways in which our approach to dissent differs. Take for example this blog. Anyone and everyone can write what they feel on the internet and you can just bet that someone will read it, and so- good or otherwise, articulate or otherwise, your voice seemingly gets heard. Or take for example the rising in the last 5-7 years of the internet based activist networks- moveon.org, one.org, and the like. Suddenly people don’t have to leave their comfortable apartments to take part in the protest against what is inhumane, un-patriotic, or un-democratic. With the tap of a finger against a key they can sign a petition to end the war, and where that petition inevitably ends up few people probably know, but by hitting the send button they at least feel like they’ve contributed. And while in the age of technology, online petitions were the inevitable next step- followed closely by those anthropologically fascinating youtube debates-, and while they can certainly have a positive influence, it makes me wonder if part of the problem with the newer generations protest and our articulation of a better future isn’t simply that we’ve gotten lazy.

We are a generation of people with carpal tunnel syndrome and poor eyesight thanks to all this new technology and yet none of it has seemed to make its mark in quite the way that protests in, for example, the civil rights era did. No, despite the amount of times people write, and click, and make witty political commentary online it just doesn’t seem to have the same effect. Now don’t get me wrong- there are still many people out there marching themselves to the capital, holding signs on street corners, and tramping up and down a picket line in the cold of winter, but somehow these efforts seem to have lost their teeth. Like the efforts of a select few that I run across every week in Manhattan during their protest of the working conditions at the Four Points Hotel. They scream and shout and get videotaped, and yet the giant blow-up rat that stands behind them (and incidentally follows other picketers on various other protests) seems to be mocking them. The security guards stand around them, bored and yawning, occasionally refocusing their cameras and the picketers never make an effort to move outside of their picket area, so kindly designated for them by cheap metal barricades put in place by the hotel administration. (And no I don’t expect anyone to be throwing themselves on water hoses or scuffling with the police, but it does just make me all the more aware of how protest has changed over the years.)

The thing of it is this: while the civil rights era protests may not have been perfect (and they truly weren’t), activism has somehow become a whole lot more passive, and I don’t know that those two things can go together for any significant amount of time before something gives. Maybe if we made ourselves more physically involved in the things we feel passionately about, and maybe if we didn’t leave behind our idealism for what other people tell us is a better use of our time, we wouldn’t be stuck with problems like a president who effectively voted himself into office his first term.

Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents from behind my keyboard, inside my warm apartment, on this miserably cold winter night.

Untitled

Ok so for me I’ve always been a person who felt like they knew very little and so I’ve often been obsessed with learning anything and everything I can and lately I’m hit again with the awareness that the older I get and the more I read, the more I want to know and learn. The following is, I suppose, just a story about that:

When I began to gain interest in poverty I was somewhere around 20 years old and my brother had just been released from either rehab, the psych ward, or jail- I can no longer remember which- and my parents, refusing to take him back at that time, told the people releasing him to take him to the nearest homeless shelter. They obliged. While this was the only instance I can remember of any of my family being in a shelter, it scared me just how close people I knew and loved could be to a state of utter dependence on the system. (For those of you more concerned with my parents’ moral code at this moment, take heart in the fact that he only spent 3 days there before they took him back as usual).

Anyway, it was because of this event and because of my interest in mental health that I went on a couple trips to various countries to look into what exactly people received for help when they were down and out as my brother had been. The studies I did focused on the variety of cultures I was looking at and their individual approaches to the mental health care system for those without a place to even call their own. While my research was primarily focused on the cultural differences within this matter, when I came back to the states, rather than focus on culture I began to focus more heavily on the general concept of the underprivileged within the context of mental health. I suppose all this is simply to say that I knew culture somehow made it different, but considering the fact that I was back in the states I ignorantly assumed that the way it was practiced here was indeed the way it was practiced here and that little variance would take place in terms of people served and the cultures they came from. Good lord how I was wrong.

To be honest, the thought began to occur to me when I started working with the urban poor and noticed that the men in my shelter all came from a particular neighborhood of Boston, that the majority of them were of a particular cultural heritage that was non-white, and that my shelter- of all the shelters and services our organization offered- was the most ignored and under-funded. Being young and green however, I can imagine that I said to myself “its because they’re from an urban neighborhood” rather than “ its because they’re predominantly non-white”- and as such I moved to the largest city I could find to go ahead and work with that.

As my education progressed and my experience progressed however, I saw just how little things had to do with being from an urban neighborhood. Urban neighborhood was one thing- urban black, urban Hispanic, or urban any-non-white population, was quite another. That’s not to say I didn’t find any white urban poor, they absolutely are there, it’s just to say that through whatever racists constructs, what I was seeing was that culture still played a big part in what a given community was afforded for services. Anyway, even though I was beginning to see all of the issues at play for what they were, and even though I was beginning to take on a more aware perspective of culture as it played out in other aspects of my life, a conversation with my roommate while I was still in grad school led me to look much further into the issue of rural poverty. Again this led me slightly away from culture, race, ethnicity and their roles in the system and more towards a general concept of poverty outside the cities.

Naturally though, this story didn’t and doesn’t end there. See, lately I’ve been speaking to a friend who grew up in a rural area and through my discussions with him I’ve been reading books about indigenous peoples and the difficulties experienced by those populations, and once again I am faced with the realization that culture, racial background, and skin color, play a part in what is afforded to whom in terms of services, rights, and privileges. Now maybe its been my ignorance and maybe its been the ease with which I get moved off track into other subjects, but the issues of race and culture, colonialism and whiteness as an oppressive tool, and the ways in which these issues seep into every other facet of life are becoming increasingly difficult to step away from- intentionally or otherwise. The more I realize just how much this occurs the more foolish I feel and yet I cannot sit here and pretend it doesn’t occur and that I haven’t taken part (even through simple complacency) in my own life.

Now don’t get me wrong, I realize that my condemning myself for my obtuseness and ignorance, and any self flagellation will not change the situations of the poor no matter where they are or who they are. But in the end my questions and my interest in these matters only get more complex and confusing to me. Because, what I want to know now is: how- on top of every other issue these communities are facing- I can help people deal with the fact that this system, in which we all live and breath and work and play, is still either intentionally maintaining the status quo to benefit the few, or is willfully ignoring the fact that inequality is still prevalent (and inequality is a generous term for it). How do I, as a clinician, help people deal with this more readily- and how to do I deal with it within the context of my own personal life more openly?

I mean, I know that in the last years since I’ve graduated I’ve been working on this with the children I work with and I’m glad that we’ve gotten to some of the matters and addressed them, but the more I read and listen and learn, the more difficult it seems to deal with these issues one at a time- there are just too many, and it is so very overwhelming to both my children and me. At the very least I think I’m beginning to see clearly just how pervasive an issue this is, and as late as I may be to the game at least I’m here now.

Anyway, I think for me it will become more and more important to deal with these issues within my work since I do want to work with the rural poor, and I know I need to be prepared for that. Alternately though I also realize that the best way for me to learn how to deal with something is to put it into practice and experience it, and so hopefully I will get to do that with the population I want to at some point in my life. And I will work toward that steadily.

Anyway I guess that’s just on my mind lately. I know I promised you guys more about death, but this felt more pressing tonight.

Sweet Dreams.

Death Becomes Her

Death has been on my mind quite a bit lately. Not in the reverting-back-to-my-teenage- angst sort of way, but in that lately I’ve been faced with the painful task of looking it square in the eye; from the entirely live mouse I found on my glue trap that I had to destroy, through the dead bird whose head I hadn’t noticed until some sadistic teenager was kind enough to point out that I was in fact standing on it, and straight through to today when I found myself in a cemetery surrounded by macabre adolescents decked out in skull sweatshirts and black nail polish, photographers with no sympathy for a gravestone if its in their way, and the late, great, and notorious likes of Boss Tweed, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and a woman who was found petrified and drowned at the bottom of a lake in the 19th century. Ok well, the last one was my doing, having gone on a cemetery tour for Halloween, but nonetheless I’m starting to get a sense of a creepy little pattern.

I have a co-worker who likes to tell me about superstitions his parents passed down to him from their Jamaican ancestry and most recently when I informed him of a relative of a friend who had died, he graciously put on his most superstitious voice when he informed me that apparently death comes in threes. Great.

Its not that I necessarily fear death in some enormous way, it’s simply that since I’ve been young I’ve had this anxiety about it that has manifested itself in fear of losing my parents, and losing my father in particular. Now understand, my parents are wonderful examples of how to grow old gracefully and allow nature to take its proper course- my mother never tried to dye her hair when it went gray and my dad- though holding on the last bastions of his youth by hair-spraying his nearly non-existent locks into permanence- has always laughed at himself for it and known that ultimately he will get old and lose his hair and it will be ok. But see the thing of it is that my parents are getting older and my mother as of late has expressed a fear of how many years she and my father have left given that 3 of their 4 parents died before hitting their late seventies. So two years ago when she asked me to be the one to determine when to pull the plug if either of them should be on life support I got a little nervous. I don’t like thinking about them going and while I know that death happens inevitably to everyone I can’t imagine what it would be like to have one parent without the other or have neither of them around at all. They are too much in need of one another and have maintained our family traditions throughout so much that I just don’t know who could ever take their place when their gone- if anyone really could or should.

Anyway, I’ve always been a believer that as you move through life, things come up that hit you over the head and serve as a lesson. So then: why death? Why now? I don’t know if I have an answer and maybe there is no answer that I should be looking for, but the thing of it is that I know I’m afraid of death, and I don’t like to think about it, but it happens and inevitably I have to deal with it. And I know that- I just don’t like to. Maybe that’s why it’s coming up.

It’s certainly not as if I’ve never had to deal with death. When I was younger I attended the funerals of great aunts and uncles, cousins, family friends, and friend’s family members- it’s just that death, no matter whose, always makes me feel so completely saddened and utterly lost. Not necessarily saddened at the loss of the person who has died, but sad for their loved ones who are still alive, if that makes sense. When I see the grief on someone else’s face I want to be able to tell them its going to be ok, but I feel like that’s just not going to do anything for them and beyond that it’s just a false comfort. And I guess the thing that scares me is that one day I will know that loss on a far more personal level than I ever have before and I’m just not sure what I would do about it.

Maybe reminders of death aren’t such a bad thing then. I’m not saying we should become numb to it, because I don’t want to believe that that could ever be possible and I don’t think it could truly happen anyway. But I think that it’s a necessity because it’s something that we all get faced with sooner or later in our lives.

There’s more I have to say on death. Since it’s been invading my life for the last two months I’ve done a bit of thinking on it, like I mentioned. But perhaps the rest, which relates to death penalties, war, and far more political things, can be saved for another time. After all, a person can only take so much death for one day.

So with that I’ll end here, and simply say, apropos of the subject matter and time of year: Happy Halloween.

All in the Family

Whenever I think about family I always imagine pushing my hands deep into warm mud and pulling the roots up to the surface for inspection.

As a rule I never write about my family, but family does come up, primarily because it impacts us. It is so influential that it’s never a topic that can be avoided for long. In the next few weeks I go home for my niece’s christening and family, as such comes to mind once again. I went home recently for a vacation and it was the first time in a while that I spent more then 3 days with my family all in one sitting. Usually I can only take a few days at a time, and its not because they are terrible people, its not because I hate them, its because our dynamic usually only works for a few days at a time and then it becomes too much. For us I think it becomes too much because there is to much that has always remained unsaid within our family. We just aren’t emotionally expressive people and when you pair that with the things we’ve gone through it just makes us more inclined to try and ignore our feelings but less inclined to be able to do so.

Anway. I think family is tough for everyone though- I mean after all, your family members are the ones that have known you the longest and while they ultimately have perceptions of you that can be left over from times of skinned knees and self- absorbed childhood, they do see those small bits of our personalities that have been there since day one and that usually go unnoticed by others unless they look very closely. Maybe in a way that’s what keeps some of us tied to our family. Although they may never understand us intimately, they know us intimately and maybe sometimes it can be comforting to know that someone out there knows about how we developed into who we are- they were present and witnessed it for us.

This, I think, is the reason I believe your family is not just made up of those related to you. Sure, inevitably- unless your circumstances dictated otherwise- your family members bore witness to your development, but I think if anyone cares enough and pays close enough attention they can begin to know us at a different level as well. And then there are those life experiences that you share with others that push you into development together and inevitably create a situation where that other person then begins to know you intimately, even if they don’t understand you. This makes family too I think.

Creation of family throughout life for me has become important. Not the creation of a family-as in having kids or getting married- but the creation of family. Making an effort to bear witness to what others need someone to witness, accepting and understanding things as part of the eternal development we all go through, and likewise inviting people into my life that can do that same for me.

So in a few weeks, when I go back home for this christening, even though I disagree with the religion and even though I may never understand my brothers drive to christen his daughter, or my niece’s future perceptions of religion-whatever they end up being-I will have bore witness to this part of her development, this part of her creation and I can say that I know her and that she is my family. And in a way, as stilted as the interactions can sometimes get amongst family, it’s a comfort – at least to me- to continue the tradition of bearing witness and building family.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Its only 9AM and already sticky-hot. Every window in my apartment is slammed open but still there is no movement, no air. Its not even August yet and my movements are already labored and slow. It’s as if the atmosphere is so thick that, like in water, it takes all your energy just to move through it. As much as I am used to North East heat nothing quite compares to the mixture of car fumes and steam as it rises sizzling off the sidewalks and concrete buildings of a city, though at least the neighborhood is silent.

Unlike many of the major neighborhoods in NYC and Brooklyn, my neighborhood shuts down on the weekends in the most peculiar way- on one side of my street things are quiet Saturdays on the other its Sundays. This, I’m sure, has to do with the division between Hasidic Jews on one side and Christians on the other. And as testament to that, along with the quiet and as the sun sets each weekend day you see alternately:

men with curls and large black hats holding the hands of their wives in skirts and head scarves as their children run ahead in yarmulkes screaming at the top of their lungs at having lost the race.

deeply wrinkled elderly African American women walking in groups of two or three in bright pink, yellow, and blue skirt suits with the most ornate lace, tulle, and faux flower topped Sunday best hats you may ever see in your life.

Occasionally on a given Sunday you will also see these two groups entrenched in some sort of parade through the neighborhood. On one particular Sunday I was privy to a group of entirely male Hassid’s dancing and singing their way down the street behind a float of a giant crown that was turning and blaring music ahead of them. On another day I woke to hearing drums and horns making their way down the main street followed by elderly African American men in those straw hats seen so much around the 1940’s in political campaigns, women in that same Sunday garb moving tightly from side to side, and a casket topped with flowers being brought by four young African American men in suits. This neighborhood indeed has its own character.

The thing that saddens me about this neighborhood though is that not too long ago a major section of it was declared historic. While that works to preserve some of the buildings and the like, ultimately what it tends to be is a looming indicator of gentrification- for that matter so am I. The thing of it is that gentrification can occur in several ways from what I understand. By proclaiming a neighborhood historic what ultimately happens is it becomes increasingly difficult for the current landlords to make changes and improvements to their buildings without going through the proper community boards and historic societies. The cost of renovating a building so that it maintains its historic status and manner gets higher and higher with all the approval needed and all the mandates for type and quality of improvement increasing. Eventually landlords currently there cannot afford to maintain their buildings to historic standards and thus sell them off to wealthier and oftentimes whiter individuals and businesses.

Another way it occurs is this: since the real estate market in a given community is, in part, based on the crime demographics, statistics, and crime projections for the population of that community, and since crime demographics, statistics and crime projections are often heavily skewed to equate poverty with crime, blackness with poverty, and blackness with crime, when African Americans are in a neighborhood the property value remains low( read that again if you’d like, but it is an unfortunately true and terribly racist fact). When African Americans move to a neighborhood the property value actually lowers, and when whites move into a neighborhood it effectively goes up. When young white cheap rent hunters start to move to these neighborhoods this in turn allows the landlords to charge more for rent, effectively pushing out the lower income population which does tend to be African American - an unfortunate truth given the racism still rife in employment and education. This changes the neighborhood makeup toward a whiter population who can oftentimes afford more simply based on the fact that their pay scale is higher than that of the average African American. It begins with whites who produce high turnover for the neighborhood- namely young, single, trend seeking whites who move into and out of neighborhoods based on where the cheapest rent is. They locate the relatively lower income-but-on-the-rise neighborhoods and move on in. Being fresh out of college and on the job market they are making less than their older counterparts, but more than the majority of their African American counterparts and as such can afford to rent out more space for less people. This even has the effect of pushing out middle income families who are renting primarily because when landlords see young whites they remember the adage about the property value increase and work to actually push out many established families who may or may not be making them less money than the single white person. When they new group begins to earn more and populate the neighborhood, more shops, restaurants, and the like pop up to cater to their needs/wants over the needs and wants of the previous community. At this point the community can go one of several ways- it can either continue to grow as a den of commerce and work itself into a demographically white focused shopping/ dining area with a primarily singular population or it can blossom from a high turn over single white neighborhood into a neighborhood for young white families as they stay, procreate, and increase their level of income, or it can do a little of both.

Either way its clear what can happen and it is of significance that as my paragraph wore on my discussion of the lower middle class to middle class African Americans in the community faded out. The fact of the matter is that the majority get priced out and then demographically and socially weeded out. Its an unfortunate and very real cycle and as I sit here in my over heating apartment somewhere directly between the two much older and much better established communities I know for a fact- and have since the day I made the choice to move here- that I am part of this process. I am a young, single, white, woman who moved into this neighborhood because the rent was cheaper than the neighborhood I left. I moved into a spacious 1 bedroom apartment once inhabited by an African American wife and husband and their small child. Where two incomes once supported this apartment one now does and my landlord knows that where there is one young white person to fill a rent slot more can and probably will come.

So I guess the thing I grapple with when I begin this train of thought is what can I do about it? Do I move to a neighborhood I cannot afford? Do I move out of the city entirely so as to avoid the generally high prices that are rampant throughout? Do I make a concerted effort to support the businesses that are currently here so as to assist, in whatever tiny way, in the continuation of this neighborhood as is? The last is what I choose to do and yet I feel that it’s still not enough. I work and live in this community, shop as much as possible here, and try like hell not to be imposing about my needs and wants, but just as being only one person I did not create the gentrification process in this neighborhood, being only one person I cannot stop it. All I can do is live here, maintain my awareness, and work with what my community gives me- one side of the street shut down on Saturdays the other on Sundays and a whole lot of other fascinating little differences in between.

If you can make it Here?

Earlier this week there was a taxi cab parked in my back yard. Every Friday a siren goes off throughout the neighborhood at 8pm sharp and lasts for about a minute to 2 minutes. I looked up to see a star the other day but all I could make out was a satellite. Sometimes I get very worn out on the concept of New York .

A lot of the time I look at it like a challenge to live in NYC. I think its a fascinating place with tons of people from all over and tons of opportunity to experience whatever it is you want to experience, but more often than not I'm tired of getting cat calls in my neighborhood, I'm tired of getting jostled on busy streets and actively avoiding certain streets because they are so riddled with tourists stopping and staring upward, making it so that you can't get through. I'm exhausted by the filth that deposits itself on my windows and my lungs, I'm tired of being in steamy smelly subway stations and smelling urine on any given street corner.

So what is it that keeps me here? Maybe its a desire to prove myself, maybe its stubbornness in not wanting to move yet again, and not being sure where I'd want to go anyway, but beyond all this, sometimes I think part of me looks at it this way: If I can find peace in NYC then maybe I can find peace wherever it is I decide to go. Maybe if I can meet this challenge everything else will be a lot easier to handle and a lot less scary for me. Or maybe its something else...

I had a client this evening tell me that he was sure I grew up with rose bushes and little puppy dogs and a nice house. He said he felt like I couldn't understand him becuase while I grew up like that, he grew up in 1970's New York with broken bottles and pit bulls. Maybe in a way thats what I'm trying to understand about this place. New York has become such a mockery of itself, such a Disney Land for grown-ups that maybe I'm trying to stay here to figure out what it means to have grown up that way, to be born in a place that has seen such opposing sides of the spectrum, and to understand that pull that New York has on so many people, residents and tourists alike- myself included. New York, if nothing else, is a fascinating social experiment for the simple fact that you have the uber rich and the utterly poor all within the same city and you have so many different and oftentimes opposing cultures living in such close proximity, yet they all somehow manage to coexist. What I want to know is how and why.

I don't think anywhere else on the planet is quite like NYC and I think that That- regardless of all the sexual harassment, garbage, extravagance, and over the top capitalism- is what keeps me here. At least until I have a somewhat satisfying answer to my how and why...or grow tired of trying to figure it all out.

Dakar, Senegal

Whew, this is a tough one for me. Senegal is both beautiful and horrible at the same time. Give me a chance to explain and hopefully by the end you’ll understand why. The second I set foot on the plane in Belgium which was going to Senegal, I had an inkling I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. The plane was literally full (save one French family and myself) of African men all above six feet tall, all dressed in standard Muslim attire, and all speaking a language that was not French, not English, and not anything I could figure out based on a similarity to another language I’d heard, it was mostly Wolof. When I got to the airport in Senegal, it was still their warm season, which means heat so heavy it lays on you like a damp wool blanket, and you sweat while your taking an ice cold shower, even the shaded areas were painfully hot. There were tons of people milling about speaking something between French and Wolof, and they all wanted to take my bags and help me through customs. They were so intent on helping me that they refused to let me through customs in just any old fashion, I had to give them larger and larger sums of money in order that they not turn me over to the officials, for what reason I was never sure. Once outside I had the same treatment, my ride was not there(they expected me later), and my phone card, which is apparently the common case, did not work there. I refused to change money with so many people around and such seemingly relaxed security, so I made friends with one of the porters and he helped me out with the calling and getting my ride there. Here I should mention, there are distinct personalities in Senegal, those who take you in care for you, treat you like your one of their family members, and those who see you as nothing but a tourist and imagine you have buckets full of money just waiting to be handed out. Unfortunately the problem is, no matter how little money you think you have, you do have more than them by a significant amount, so how can you really tell them otherwise? Yeah, complicated situation to be in. That’s how it is in Senegal though, lots of great people who would never ask anything of you, will help you with anything and everything you want or need, and will never complain to you about the actually quite severe problems they have going on in their lives, and then lots of people looking for you to help them because your white and you speak English or French, so they think you can automatically and continuously give and give and give with no end. It would be nice if you could, and oftentimes I felt myself trying while I was there, but the thing to remember is that no matter what you give it can never be enough, they will always be wanting, they will always be suffering, so you must do as much as you can and as much as you feel right doing, and be able to let it go after that. Not as easy as it might sound.

I lived in Suffolk’s housing there during my stay, in an apartment off campus with several other students from a variety of African countries. I had chosen Senegal, not only because it was a third world country that may not have the type of funding richer European countries would (which would mean their programming for the homeless mentally ill would either be scant, non-existent, or at least creatively implemented), but also because of the significance of the family in African societies and because it was one of the few African countries that I was sure had a mental hospital to begin with, and in my mind, it was a little safer than others at the time which were suffering from uprisings and much anti-American sentiment based on who they thought Americans were, and the view they believed American had of Muslims after September 11th. That being said then I didn’t expect to find much, but I did expect to find something, and there was something, not much, but something.

A lot about my findings and a lot about Senegal in general made me feel like someone was holding me upside down and all the blood was rushing to my head. I felt dizzy and nervous and like I had everything in life from my perceptions to the way I ate my breakfast all totally wrong. Its hard to really explain just how different Senegal is, but just to give a few external examples, when you eat fish, mostly it’s the whole fish- eyes, teeth, gills, scales, it smiles at you in fact, when you eat with a family you eat out of a communal bowl and you eat with your hands, they laugh if you use utensils. Frequently the family will push all the portions of meat to your side of the bowl so that you as the guest get the “best” parts, if you’re a vegetarian its awkward but for me personally when that happened I took it and ate it, whatever the meat was regardless of the fact that I'm strict vegetarian- I didn’t want to offend someone who was giving me the largest part of what little they have. Beyond this and more subtle perhaps, is the fact that when someone calls you brother or sister they mean it. I lived with 19 of my closest brothers and sisters while I was there, you share everything- when you have food to eat you make sure you have enough for everyone in the room or you don’t eat it, you don’t need to ask to use their things- just use them and tell the person you’re using them( I always asked and I recommend asking, but I got that treatment from them), you mock and tease each other, if you had a mother to run to with complaints about how this one pulled your hair you just might do it- that’s how close you are. Its like nothing you’ve ever felt and nothing you will ever feel again, especially because you do get so close and then you know you have to leave them and go back to your posh American life style and leave them to their baobab juice, sandaled feet and hotter than hell African sun. It was because of this I started to hate myself in a way. I cried at least once a week out of joy and sadness over this fact, I wept like a tiny baby with one of the best friends and brothers I ever made the day I left and he cried right along with me telling me I had to go, that I couldn’t save Africa on my own and I couldn’t choose to live the way they live when I have so many other opportunities open to me.

That’s the thing about Africa, or at least Senegal, its raw emotion, when you get right down to it there is no mistaking the love and hate that exists there (I also got stones thrown at me my last day there). You know how people feel, they may not say it but they don’t have to, you can see it, and they are strong, man are they strong. Even the people who are trying to just take your money because they think your only a tourist, even the people who insist upon calling you toubab (white person) when they know your name, there is a strength and a good will there that cannot be mistaken. They mean you no harm, they are just trying to get by and you might just be the way they can do that. They’ve seen more hurt and pain and hunger than anyone I’ve ever met and they still greet you with a smile. I had neighbors who lived down our dirt road inside literally four aluminum walls with a tin roof and a blanket as a door, I never saw them eating but when they did they always offered some to me with huge grins, they wanted me to come eat with them and share in their wealth. Its almost disturbing because you expect them to break down, to hate life, but they don’t, as many of the doctors I talked to said when I asked them how people get by “god is their insurance”… “if you see a man with a broken down barely working car and ask him why he has such a car, he will say god is great and that is why” because at least he has a car, not too many others can say that.

Speaking of cars another thing of note about Senegal is their transportation system. There are buses with fixed rates but they don’t come too often, there are car rapides which technically have a fixed rate for a certain distance but if you don’t know it your in trouble, and the taxis will try to charge you whatever they think they can get, typically 2/3rds as much as you should be paying,( same price hike incidentally with souvenir vendors and other vendors unless they are within the concrete walls of a shop, which you don’t see too much of, the markets are all open and out on the street).

The thing about the culture that most people at home don’t get is that its not what your geography books or history books would have you believe. Your not living off lizards and running with gazelles (in fact Senegal has no real wildlife except stray goats and horses and yes tons and tons of lizards, get used to seeing them in the shower). There are pizza joints and clothing stores and internet cafes, its just that people have sacrificed other things in order to have these amenities. You might find someone who hasn’t eaten for a week to buy their son or daughter the latest shoes. That’s just how it goes sometimes there. There are even night clubs, hell we had a party at my apartment almost every weekend just to let off steam and celebrate being able to celebrate. Most of us didn’t have enough money to celebrate but when we pooled all our funds we came up with enough to be happy over and that’s how it goes at least on Suffolk’s campus. If you go out into the country you find things very different though, people are just sitting around because there is nothing else to do, no jobs, no really good farm land, and children are barefoot, have reddened hair and dried out scalps from malnutrition, spots where their mothers cut away their hair because they got ring worm.

Don’t get me wrong though there are beautiful things and places in Senegal, the beaches are pure and wonderful, you can watch the fisherman drag in their catches from their longboats, there is a beautiful lake called Lac rose which is pink and 10 times as salty as the ocean( a little touristy in one section and in another section it’s a work place, they mine salt from the lake to sell). There is Gorree island which is where all the slaves from Africa were shipped first in order to be sorted, and its got magnificent trees and flowers and water and sand and houses and you wonder how anyone could live there now but they do, I saw it as a kind of a triumph over the terrifying past of the island. To see some of these things like Gorree and the slave houses on it, they will charge you more because, as they tell you quite honestly, it’s the price for white people. And sometimes it seems wrong and becomes angering, but at the same time they make so little anywhere else, can you really blame them, and after all it was our European ancestors fault that the island is associated with what it is. Maybe it’s just a small bit of justice, least that’s how I see it. Speaking of money matters, just to put it briefly I took $700 dollars with me, I paid my translator $100 dollars for my interviews(as no one really speaks English) and I left with $100 still in my pocket, all told that sounds like about $500 used while I was there, and I bought a lot of souvenirs for people and (permanently) lent people money while I was there. I never wanted.

There is just so much to say about Senegal, this doesn’t cover half of it. Ask me about the little girls who would always stare and smile, the ones who were happy just touching my hair, putting it behind my ear for me, shaking my hand, touching my skin (in the more rural areas the little ones don’t see whites too often). Ask me about celebrating the end of Ramadan(Senegal is primarily Muslim) with a friend of mine and her family, or my choice to wear a kerchief upon my head on the Muslim Sabbath (Fridays). Ask me how none of my male friends approved of my going out at night on my own and always wanted to escort me. So much happened that I hated and so much happened that I loved, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, ever. Its something you need to see and take in with your own two eyes. I had a lot of difficulty the first few weeks I was there because things didn’t make sense, things didn’t seem fair, things didn’t seem to jibe with the way the rest of the world operated, but in order to really see Africa you must open your heart wide, as wide as you can and just accept it all. If you try and exist there without opening your heart it will break you open and tear you apart, if you see it with your heart and not just your eyes and/or American perceptions of the way things should be, Africa will stay with you forever, it will be you brother, sister, mother and father, it will take you in, albeit occasionally begrudgingly, and it will never let you go. There are certain smells and sounds that will forever be etched in my head as Africa, certain people I met whom I couldn’t remove from my heart if I tried with all my might, and I am grateful for every millisecond, every person who handed me a kind hello or a resentful truth. It is an experience that turns your world on its head and leaves it there for a good long time.

Hello

So I moved to this site from posting on myspace, though I'm not exactly sure what inspired the move. I think it had something to do with not wanting to lose all my postings should I ever decide to get rid of my myspace account.

I guess we'll see if I like this site better to post to- no promises, though.

Tonight I was planning to write something well thought out about my recent feelings on various topics, but after deciding to create this and bringing all my old stuff over I'm a little tired and frankly a little sick of my own words.

I think maybe tonight I'll put an old write up I did on here. Once someone asked me to write on my experience of living in Africa and I did, and I think it came out alright if barely informative.

Lets see if I can't search it out on this machine and throw it on here.

I guess if I can't find it you'll know because there wont be two posts this evening. Deal?

Disgust

Can I just say that I'm completely infuriated at the decision by George Bush to commute the sentence of Mr. Libby? In his quotation in all the papers he's noted as saying he thought that the 30 month imprisonment sentence was excessive. What I would like to know is when he believed he acquired the law degree to give him the credibility to say that. Its an outrage that he would make an effort to interject in anyway in a case in which he himself has been implicated as having some questionable involvement, its an outrage that he would so blatantly place himself above the law of the land-there is a system of checks and balances for a purpose, and what I expect to be the most outrageous thing about it will be the way democrats and republicans, while they are making a stir now, will inevitably roll over for him on this issue and it will die just as every other severely agregeous act he's committed has died. Its disgusting and disgraceful and it makes me ashamed to live in this country. Most people who know me know that I don't suffer fools gladly and while I have been hesitant to denounce the entire country-government and all- because of things about it being somewhat positive, this is quite possibly the straw that has broken the camels back. How can anyone stand by and pretend that this is sane? How can anyone stand by and pretend our human rights and our rights as citizens of the united states are not being violated and being violated in plain view with flagrant digregard to any basic code of ethics? This government and this administration infuriate me to no end.How can we as citizens stand by and take this? How can we say this is acceptable? Or even, that its not acceptable but that we are going to wait until he's out of office? He should be impeached and should have been a long time ago for all the atrocities he's committed. How can we sit in our homes, continuing to live our misinformed little lives and say that that man, that disgrace to humanity, is taking care of this country in the way he ought?
I mean seriously, is this how we've always been? Have we, as a people, really been so ignorant, self serving, disgraceful and dishonest? Who in the hell are we, who have we become?
I guess its a very sad day for someone like myself who has always tried to maintain such faith in humanity and the inherent good in people to realize that this country has no backbone left if it ever had one.

Patriotism at its Ugliest

So I woke up the other day to find that a friend of mine had posted another blog. Typically she writes about her stresses and issues in a very satirical and witty way that always makes me laugh (Now that I read them more frequently-sorry!) because she's got this smart ass sense of humor which is hysterical and the thing that cemented our friendship from the beginning (well that and her efforts to initially converse with me by saying "you're a nanny? Oh! I had a nanny when I was young!"). However, when I read it this time it was far from her typical entry. Don't get me wrong it was still funny as hell in its own warped sort of way, but this time it was about politics. Now when she and I talk politics typically what happens is we do less talking and more arguing. In fact there have been a few times where I've gotten as far as completely ignoring the words that come out of her mouth and telling her I need to stop listening to her and her launching back that I just want to make her a bad person. It gets ugly. The weirdest part of these arguments though is that on occasion we reach- albeit through very oppositional paths- a point of agreement. Today her comments effectively did the same thing.
See the thing of it was that she was essentially angry about this article in the New York Times featuring this woman who, through grass roots efforts, effectively aided in blocking the immigration legislation that allowed for amnesty. She herself is applying for immigrant status inFrance right now, so the issue of this woman's actions and beliefs became upsetting to her.Now when I read the article I too reached the same, or a similar, annoyance level with this woman and her constituents-albeit for deeply different reasons. The number one thing that annoyed me just immediately before even reading the article was the plethora of images of the people who opposed this legislation standing there next to American flags or even going so far as to wear an American flag shirt for the photo op. Fuck that. Do you people need to be reminded on a daily basis that the American flag is a symbol of a nation of immigrants? Or lets go even one step further- it's a symbol of a nation of immigrants that came here and took the land, the help, the wealth, and the pride of the nations of people that were already here and effectively forced them into submission and killed them off in large quantities. Those immigrants were land hungry, ignorant, and self righteous religious fanatics and businessmen when they came to this country and they stole all those things that those people in the article are adamantly seeking to protect against other intruders. How can we, as a nation, still be so ignorant to think that somehow the plight of the early European immigrants was any more correct or moral or upright than the plight of people who are not trying to kill us off, not trying to steal our land, but merely want a chance to thrive in a wealthy country full of people who took for themselves the opportunity to thrive when they arrived. I mean-seriously, let's bring this down to the most basic kindergarten level for a second- its like stealing a ball from the small kid in class and then being angry when that small kid and others say "hey can we at least play with it along with you?"To sit there and suggest that people, who are looking for a better chance in life, or even just a better job, are a threat is just plain short sighted. Now I know that these people are not necessarily looking to block immigration entirely, least not all of them, but making an effort to block a bill which would allow for amnesty and guest worker programs leads to all sorts other methods of illegal immigration on both sides of the border and the danger in this is not, as some would believe, that illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs and we need to stop that, but that illegal immigrants get taken advantage in ways that are extremely dis-advantageous to them and oftentimes frighteningly risky and unsafe. Creating more imaginary walls will not stop shady businessmen from taking advantage of these people, it will just cause them to go even further underground with their activities and do even more atrocious things to get their workers at lower pay, for no benefits, and with no workmen's safety or job security agreements. These individuals, such as the woman in this particular article, would do well to remember that unless they are from one of the Native American Nations, their ancestors had no more right to jobs and immigrant status here than individuals south of our border have now. Now don't mistake me- the people in this article do not upset me because they are expressing their beliefs and their desires for this country. While I whole heartedly disagree with their beliefs we would be far worse off if they were not allowed freedom of expression and the ability to sway the vote. What angers me about this article is their position itself and their smugness and self righteousness in their belief that they are the torch holders of liberty, freedom, and patriotism. It's as if they believe all those things can be summed up by questionable laws on illegal immigration which amount to no more than large walls and increased numbers of guns at the border. To suggest that they "knew in their heart[s that amnesty] was wrong for this country" is ignorant, oversimplified, and quite likely nothing more than a thin veil for xenophobic attitudes. If the original landholders of this country had held any one of the early European immigrants to the same standards chances are pretty damn good many of us wouldn't be here today. Since when did it become acceptable to behave in this way; ignoring realities and facts, and acting like spoiled children?I just think its absolutely absurd that they would be able to stand behind those issues and keep a straight face, more than that I think its ridiculous that they would do so in any sort of self- righteous manner, touting a flag as their sole credentials. There are certainly significant issues surrounding this topic, but to my awareness they are not the same reason's they are opposing these bills and in fact they don't even come near the real issues around immigration so – yes- once again though we've come to it from very different angles my friend and I have reached a similar conclusion: this woman and her constituents need to just go ahead and remember how they themselves got here and how lucky they are to be here, and unclench their grip on this idea of national identity so that we may continue allowing immigrants do what they've always done: seek the place that will give them, at least partially, what they need.