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.