Kidz in the Hall

Today I got to spend more time with my kids. Since the summer program ended and we hadn't spent much time doing more than paper work until now I was really excited to meet up with the kids and talk with them. This is the part of my job that I live for. I sat in the cafeteria with one girl who was cutting class and had been turned down by our program, but that clearly wanted and needed for someone to talk to. She talked to me about a fight she was going to get into, but the thing of it was that you knew she was more scared than anything. As we were talking I was sculpting with some clay we had brought down with us for art therapy purposes and in the midst of our conversation I ended up sculpting a face of sorts. When I had completed it she picked it up, picked up a piece of white clay and shaped a tear on the side of the face. And as corny as it may sound, to me it was terribly sad. It was sad because I knew that she was hurting about the impending fight, it was sad because it was apparent that she was hurting over what her boyfriend did to make her feel the need to fight, it was sad because even though she had been turned away from our program she still sought us out to talk, it was sad because she was just a goddamn kid and she was talking about getting a gun for this fight and when she talked about it the fear in her eyes was just enoromous, and while she may never go get that gun, and while it may have been all talk and probably was, the fact that she felt that was something she might have to do, the fact that she felt she had to be that tough just affected me so deeply. I kept the face we sculpted together-its beside my desk on the window sill. It makes me sad that she could not join our program, but I think that she will ultimately seek us out whenever she can, which is at least some small comfort.
Anyway I guess my point in all of that is just to say that I was glad I got to talk to her, I was glad she felt she could still come to us, and I felt good about the fact that we were giving kids like her a place to come and feel supported and cared for. She may still go through with her fight, but at least she got a space to express her fears about it, and at least she got a chance to hear someone express concern in a healthy and moderately unitrusive way. I know that lately I've been really burnt out with all the BS in my job, but moments like those are why I stick with it. Not because I can pat myself on the back after every one of them, I certainly cannot and could tell you horror stories from our summer program, but because they happen at all and even if they don't have any impact on the kids right now or any visible impact on the kids at all, at least for that brief moment they were reminded or shown that people do care and are willing to listen.

City Mouse and Country Mouse

Strange, or not so strange, as it may seem I've always been very attracted to both the city and the countryside. I walked home today by Grand Army Plaza, and it being later in the year the sun has begun setting closer and closer to the time I leave work. Anyway, today it was well on its way west by the time I was out of the building and onto the main thorough fair. As I was walking the air was cool and the sun was still reflecting a sort of orange light off the brick and glass, lighting up the fire escapes on the fronts of the buildings. The trees of the plaza were in the distance and cars and people were all around keeping the street busy. And I guess it was there that this realization of my love for the two types of places sort of struck me again. I've always been very politically and socially interested in the two places for various reasons, but I started thinking about how my reaction was more than that. I started thinking there must be some inherent aesthetic quality similar in both that draws me to these two extremes. Yet, as I sit here now, aside from the obvious-to-me pulls of each place, I think it might be more than that. Perhaps it's not the places at all, but perhaps it's the way light hits all things at sunset. Whatever it paints seems to take on this very organic quality, as if it's perfectly obvious that this thing exists and exists where it does, as if there would never be another place that this thing could exist. And if it's even possible in a place where so little is naturally occurring, the sunset has this astounding effect on brick, mortar, and steel. It makes it all feel perfect and right. It kind of reminds me of the first sunrise I saw (not a sunset I know, but bare with me). I was on a late night train running through city after city. We paused briefly in an open air station god only knows where and I remember waking up and realizing that I was witnessing the sunrise. Now while the station was open air it was still all city around it and there was broken down concrete, graffiti, trash, you name it. But the sun and whatever quality it possesses made it all seem just breathtaking and perfect. Maybe I'm overdoing it, but then again maybe I'm not. Maybe this is just one of those small things about life I learned to love and appreciate. And I'm not saying that the sunrise or sunset is going to do it for everyone; of course there are issues in the world in need of more immediate attention. I guess all I'm saying is that no matter where I go: countryside, desert, inner city, suburbs, or vacant lot, I know that I can take some comfort in the fact that at some point in the day, the external world will seem utterly natural and right, even if just for a moment, and that small moment is worth a lot to me.

Summer Heat

Its somewhere after 10pm and the temperature is still hovering in the eighties. The concrete absorbs most of it and makes it stick a while longer than normal in the city. People are out on their stoops, walking down the street in cotton skirts, tank tops and flip flops, the kind of weather that makes you want for a fabric that breathes.

Anyway, all the lights are off in my apartment because of my belief that light bulbs on hot nights make that room just that much warmer. Its probably not very true, but I feel in the warmth, darkness is the appropriate atmosphere anyway. So the lights are off but the fans are on- one in each room. And Im sitting in my window sill in as little clothing as possible drinking ice water and trying to catch as much of the slight breeze passing through as I can.

Something about warm summery evenings makes me both happy and sad simultaneously. Its a longing sadness and a strange contentment as if this is how hot nights are supposed to go. I sigh a lot on nights like this.

I think what it reminds me of is the lack of crickets and heat bugs in the city. Remembering them is what makes me content; noticing their absence is what makes me melancholy. Its funny the things you dont anticipate missing. Heat bugs, grass between your toes, people.

Thats not to say Im missing a whole slew of things or people in my life, or even to say that Im currently feeling the absence, but I think Im feeling the impending absence. I realize, as the summer goes on, that in the fall I will not be continuing school, that I will stay in this job and just exist within it. I may move on from where I live, in fact I will inevitably do so, but things are going to be different for me from here on out. For one Im losing my roommate, and secondly I feel like Im losing a friend, and I think that that change is spurring me to really look at where my life is currently at and who I currently am. In some ways Im intentionally making changes in my life so I can feel like Im going somewhere, in other ways I feel like Im dragging my feet. As if my future is pulling me, kicking and screaming towards it, and more importantly away from the past.

I think thats the thing of it though, right? You cant ever have something without its opposite: longing without contentment, heat without cold, the future without the past. I guess I just have to learn to adjust and keep moving.

Hard Looks

So I'm sitting in Union Square the other day reading a book by bell hooks and this young black girl with the Parks Dept. comes up beside me with her trash bucket and broom, she says excuse me and proceeds to make disgusted noises as she picks up the trash and because I've put down my book to blow my nose I make a face to commiserate with her. As I am blowing my nose this young black guy comes up behind her and starts telling me to throw my tissue on the ground so she'll have to pick it up and to make sure I make it nice and nasty. I sort of laughed and said that wouldn't be very nice of me as she stood there offering to let me put the tissue in her basket. I declined since I wasn't finished blowing my nose and without missing a beat the kid with her was like "what, I was only going to open it up and look at it" as he was walking away. And for a brief second I was thrown off and embarassed and felt uncomfortable because I believed I hadn't done anything to provoke that and didn't feel like I deserved being called out like that. For a split second my mind went to the book I had been reading and I told myself that if I was reading a book like that I didn't deserve that anger because I was trying to understand how to change things. But before I let my head get too filled I thought about it for a second and put the book down. I realized that regardless of what I read or who I am inside my own mind that I had no right to use the book like a shield or to even believe that I deserved a free pass from recieving anger like that, no matter what form the anger took and even if the kid was just ragging on me to impress the girl he was following around. That book should not have been something to hold up like that as some sort of absurd badge or protection. It should have been something I was learning from and so I put it away for the rest of my sit. Beyond the book though, it bothered me that I was so thrown by this kid. It bothered me that I had gotten upset at him when all he was doing was bursting the little bubble that I was sitting in that let me believe I already understood about race. Intentionally or otherwise he was putting the difference between this girl and I right in my face for me to look at and it wasn't something I should've been upset with him for. The thing is I should be made uncomfortable seeing that inequality between her and I. It isn't right that kids like her get jobs like that and that those jobs are amongst the few options that some young kids in urban areas have. It isn't right that black kids are cleaning up after white adults as nearly a standard- I mean there were no white kids on that park crew. I should see the injustice in the fact that all the kids on that crew were black and that there were just as many if not more white kids and adults sitting in that park making trash. Its ok for me to see that and be angry or upset with that. Its important for me to see and try to change. In that way it's right that that kid burst my little bubble and made me see just how unequal things can still be. Afterall no matter how equal I may believe I am in my dealings that girl is still black and I am still white and unless people do more bubble bursting and take constant action towards changing inequality I will always have some sort of advantage. I will always be anticipated to be the one sitting there making trash while some young black girl stands by to pick it up.Thats not to say I feel badly for her, because who knows what the circumstance is that brought her specifically to that job and feeling badly sets up some sort of victim ideology that deprives an individual of empowerment, its just to say that its there and until we can truly say we are at a place where race has absolutely nothing to do with position or job prospects, or whose on the other end of our broom, we cannot stop looking at it critically and realizing the implications of such a setup

Trading our hearts for handlebars

I need something to focus on other than the fact that its gloomy and cold out, yet again, and my weekend days have become relatively uneventful. My program is winding down and they're kind of taking it easy on us and as a result I find myself with my weekends actually free which is strange to me, though not bad, and the thing is if it were nice I'd go outside and if I had money I'd be in a coffee shop reading. Since I don't really have money and the money I do have I've been saving for my nighttime stuff my days are pretty tame. It's nice but scary.

I guess the thing is I've always been the type of person who needs to keep moving around in one way or another. Sometimes I do it to avoid thinking about things I don't want to think about and more often than not it's habit thanks to a lifetime of the former reason. I've done it for so long I don't really know how to stop and when I do its like my body just becomes overwhelmed. I napped for two hours today because my sleep recently has been in fits and starts. Just getting more of it than I usually do is my personal belief, but either way I took a nap. And I'm sure all of you out there have hints and tips for what to do with my free time: read a book, write in my journal, watch television/ a movie, make art, take a walk, take pictures, do yoga. And that's all well and good and often I do those things, but when you have no energy to do anything, all the suggestions in the world wont work and don't work. I barely have energy enough to focus on this, which is maybe why I'm trying so hard.

I don't know what it is, well, ok I do that's a lie: I'm burnt out on life, on NYC, on dating, on school, on work, on being in my apartment. Sounds depressing no? Yeah, try being on my end of it. Usually it bothers me to express this much negativity, although in my dealings with others I can be somewhat of a pessimist, I don't generally consider myself negative to the point of apathy. Most of the time, while I look at things with a critical eye, I have a passion about what I'm doing or believing in. See I guess its more like I'm feeling apathetic about everything and that scares me. Apathy scares me.

When people don't give a shit about what's happening around them, when they say "yeah but I can't do anything about it so I won't" that scares me because I wonder what the limit is that they will put up with. At what point of injustice will they get angry if ever? Or not even necessarily injustice alone, but even when people just ignore the fact that a beautiful day can make everything in the world seem right and sort of have the response like " so what, its nice out…I'm still staying in and playing video games", it's kind of like I want to scream at them to get out and feel the sunshine, and crowds, and community in general because for Christ's sake the world is a pretty damn amazing place, society is fascinating and our communities are brimming with life. So when I start to feel this way myself I begin to wonder where it's coming from. I usually want to do anything I can to run away from it. I mean, seriously is this just something that happens every now and then because of mood and being busy or is it the result of some overarching and sudden awareness that one voice really doesn't matter, that even if its beautiful out that doesn't change the fact that people across the globe are dying senselessly? I don't know. I guess it could be a mix of both, but it doesn't feel that way.

And so, ok, for me I know this is just an occasional mood and still for others playing video games is enjoying life and is something they completely dive into with passion but what about those who feel apathetic all the time, don't really get passionate about anything they do in life and don't enjoy life on a simplistic level either? Are they just depressed? Do they think about these things or just go around buying into whatever, never loving or fighting for anything, and insisting that they would rather not think about the tough questions because "really, who cares?". Could it also be that some of us have the luxury of feeling passionate about things? I mean seriously, for some people it could be that they are too busy trying to make rent, pay for food and their child's needs and so its less a question of apathy and more a question of not having time to deal with all the other stuff?

Anway, I think parts of the answer to this are obvious and others are not, and maybe its really not productive to think so much about apathy when really I could be out curing my own, but I guess I was just trying to go with the feeling of the moment.

Combat boots and fishnets

Forgive the lack of spaces, it was seperated out to paragraphs, but thats what you get when you cut and paste I guess:
Women. From the beginnings of what most scholars agree is civilization, women have been put down and put upon by men and other women alike. For reasons I will only begin to explore in my lifetime women have been held down and more importantly thought to hold themselves down for reasons I can't seem to explain, even utilizing current feminist theory. Is there aggression that is innate in mankind and if so is it this aggression that has created in men the need to subjugate groups of less physical strength? Is it somehow believed to be so beneficial to society that women are kept under leading to the entirety of society striving to make that a reality? Have sexism and the beliefs inherent in it become so pervasive and normalized that the extraction of them from today's society would be nearly impossible? What would society be like were the removal of sexism and subjugation were possible? It's a frightening prospect that I cannot even picture such a system. Slowly but surely we are seeing our current situation turn backwards toward the oppression of women. We are systematically removing rights that were just coming into their own and we are doing so at a time when the nation is in the grips of enormous fear. We are beginning now to see a push towards the "good old days" and all that that encompasses, and unfortunately for women, it includes the idea that we do not have the right to our own bodies. It includes the concept that if we merely rely on God and trust in the Divine Plan things will work out well for us and all Americans will somehow end up in heaven. It also, however, includes the concept that women are property, but not enough of us will consider that a real problem until we once again find ourselves with back alley doctors manipulating coat hangers, and homes for unwed mothers run by those good servants of the Lord- the nuns. And the more frightening part is that those days are neither far behind us, nor difficult to imagine in front of us. Society has yet to succeed in genuinely changing towards more equality between the sexes. It has resisted continuously the idea that women ought to be treated with the same attention to their personal details and desires as men have been, and due to this resistance it has left our girls with emotional scarring that has become accepted and innate and therefore expected and normalized. This emotional scarring presents itself still, within today's society of adolescent girls and women and has yet to cease making its mark on the minds, behaviors, beliefs and actions of young men and women coming up the line. To suggest a way to change this would be an enormous undertaking that I alone would not be capable of, but to open the discourse in yet another place, to speak to it from my point of view and to put out some of those questions that are so much in need of answering, is at least a small step. The thing of it is that sexism and the situations it prods women into can be seen across cultural barriers and can be recognized from every day behaviors through behaviors driven by neuroses and anxiety. While it can certainly be argued that not every woman grows up with the experience of a hostile and sexist world, it can be said at the very least that those women who have not will inevitably be in contact with someone who was raised under sexism, and as such will be exposed to it. It's my belief then, that whether raised in a more feminist household or not, the everyday interactions with those raised in the sexist environment are eventually enough to cause that persons outlook to be flavored by their socialization. At the very least the interactions cause those of feminist thought to recognize the existence of the hierarchy and to learn how to operate over, under and around it. The impact of sexism then, is still terrifically far reaching. Anecdotal evidence of the various acceptable roles society has for women can be found in the school aged experiences of any young girl. Many are the young women who take up those roles, play them out to the furthest degree and perpetuate the likelihood that some day their own daughters will take up the roles and their own sons will pressure more women into fitting the mold. These roles can take the form of the stereotypical occupations society states are suited to women, or they can move into the area of the behaviors women exhibit towards one another when in competition for that coveted husband. But anecdotal evidence has never been enough for society. It becomes too easy to dismiss or explain away, or to counter with anecdotal evidence from the other end of the spectrum. Yet those that actually research these topics are also dismissed and demeaned. The name Feminist is nearly thrown in their faces as if it were the equivalent of being a Republican in Massachusetts: they exist, but nobody around them really listens to them, and many people just pretend they aren't there. So the question that continues to pop up for me still is 'why?' What is it that's unsafe about letting go of the old boy's network? Or forget the old boy's network, why is it seemingly open minded women will even balk at a discussion of feminism? I challenge anyone of you to bring it up at a polite dinner party and see what reception you receive. There are only a few that can genuinely say anywhere they bring up the topic, or with any group of friends, the following discussion will be warmly received by the host or hostess. Now maybe you think I'm being over the top, maybe you don't. Maybe you think the issues of women having fewer rights than men are a moot point and everybody knows how bad women have it. But maybe if more women spoke about it, even if it's been beaten like a dead horse, it would make a difference somewhere to someone. Maybe I just think that the questions should be asked until they become irrelevant or untruthful. Maybe I think any discussion can't be over until the problem no longer exists.

Piecing Things Together

Sometimes, like today, I walk through a street fair and its beautiful out. I mean the sky is blue, the air is just warm enough, and you can smell the roasting sweet corn, the shwarma, the incense, and the african shea soap cooking all up and down the street. There are children, and men and women, and every possible combination that could make up a household. There are singular people, couples, groups of teenagers. And one minute you are taking it all in and you can't wipe the smile off your face and the next moment you are filled with this incredible longing. A lust for life it might be called, but your right there in it, being it, so why are you lusting after it? Perhaps then lust for life is not quite the right phrase. What is it about group and community that makes us long to lose ourselves in it? That must be what it is right? I mean look at any grouping, even ones you dont want to belong to, and inevitably they emit this power, this promise of fulfillment that assures all members that they are part of a whole, that for one brief moment they make something other than themselves a tiny bit more complete. Perhaps this is why so many of us are so easily drawn into group mentality and mob thinking- we long for the wholeness we feel from being one of many, we don't feel so alone in the universe. Human beings after all have been said to be innately social creatures. They study monkeys and other mammal groupings and come to this conclusion that we need support systems, we need to belong, and I dont know if this is the truth or if this is what society tells we ought to believe, but it seems to me if society tells us this is how we are supposed to experience things and we are required to be part of society to obtain the things we desire from life, then that distinction is pretty irrelevent. And yet at the same time we are all these seemingly different individuals, whose thoughts and ideas can never fully be identical, and can never be traced back to exactly the same source. So which is it then, are we independent individuals who are not only capable of functioning solo but inevitably must always function solo due to our enormous differences, or are we merely pieces of the whole? Or is it possible that its both? How can we be both part of the group and totally different from the group at the same time?