Saturday, May 5, 2007
Possessive
So it started earlier this week with phone numbers, emails, and email addresses of people no longer in my life.Then today I followed a friend's advice and threw out 50 things from my apartment. At first it seemed a little tough to find 50 things, I got stuck a couple times. Eventually I collected the 50 things and almost immediately realized this didn't even make a dent in the things I possess. I mean, literally the difference was imperceptible. Some of the stuff was hard to throw out and some of it was really easy and I definitely could have cared less about it. But the thing that didn't happen, which I don't know if I was genuinely expecting or not, was that I didn't feel any better. I mean, yes it felt good to get rid of useless clutter and "things" I didn't really need, and sure I felt a tiny bit lighter, and a tiny bit honest about what I was using and what I wasn't, but I didn't feel like I had also started to clean out my mental space. I didn't feel anything like I had wanted to feel like. No, instead I just realized what a pack-rat I am-which I already knew-and felt guilty for having so much crap. The thing it did help me realize, though, was that it was ok to hold onto some stuff in lieu of other stuff. I didn't Have to throw away things I wasn't ready to throw away- I could start small. I guess that's the learning moment for the day for me. It's ok to feel unready to get rid of all the emotional stuff I'm hanging onto so long as I start the process and recognize that in due time it will be appropriate to get rid of the stuff I can't seem to let go of just yet, and when that time comes I may be more than ready to do just that. So I can throw out phone numbers and email addresses and I can even throw out old emails, and memorabilia, but I don't have to cut people, memories, and the like out entirely- least not right now. That, more than my newly filled garbage can, is what's making me feel lighter and making my head space feel a little less cluttered. I like the change. I think I should make it a practice to throw things out more often.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Obscura
I've discovered a few things about my talents as a photographer. 1) Im pretty decent at black and white. 2) Im even better at it when I'm outdoors taking the photographs in natural light, and 3) I have no clue how to work with fast film or in poorly lit places. I guess this means I need to tackle lighting. I'm also pretty proud of some of my candid portrait work-most of which you will never see here strictly because, well, its others peoples faces and I believe I dont have the right to display that stuff too often. Its also easiest for me when I know my subject intimately or vise versa. I find I can manage, with my subjects patience, to click off pictures that grab the looks I love to see on their faces- the looks I know them for and feel most connected with. There's this one picture of someone I used to know that I cannot take credit for, but that I love for its ability to capture this persons face so naturally and honestly. I think its by far my favorite picture of him-though to be fair I havent seen many. On his face its just this look of vulnerability, gentleness, patience and mild humor- its great and its so completely the way I remember him. It also makes me sad in a way though when I see it.Its strange though, because as sad as this picture makes me, its also why I love photography. There is so much in this world that is to me amazing and funny and sad and scary that goes on around us each day- photographs can capture that in a way that I dont see any other art form working and even if we are too busy to notice things in the day to day as they are happening, photographs can make us stop and notice and have an emotional reaction.Emotions and our ability to express them in a variety of ways is whats makes us human- I think, and so to create a piece of art that causes another to have an emotional reaction is just so intimate and human- its the only thing I can think of that comes close to affecting me in the same way a close relationship might. It draws you into the image or the feeling the other wants to invoke, shakes you up a bit and then lets you sit with it in your own way and come to your own conclusions about it- its just amazing.Anyway, enough of my prattle, just thought I'd share. I'm going to bed.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Fear and Loathing in New York
Yesterday I arrived back from visiting friends in Paris and while the flight there was hell and the flight back was just plain long I think it was the most relaxing time I've had in recent memory. I didn't think about work for a single second, I barely concerned myself with what I was going to do each day, I slept upwards of 9 hours each night and woke up at a leisurely time each morning, and I got to spend time with two good friends, who really are among my favorites no matter how much we differ on social issues.
Anyway, with all this leisurely time on my hands and with these two friends, who recently compromised on the problem of whose city to live in-Boston or New York- by moving to Paris together, I naturally began to think of my own living arrangement and where I would see myself living in the not so distant future. One of those friends, Nick, asked if I saw myself moving back to Boston and I didn't really hesitate too long before I answered not any time soon, but here's the thing of it that stuck with me- I don't see myself staying in New York either.
While there is much about this city that I love, there is also much that I do not. For instance, when I first moved here I noticed how one common thing to do was to have bars on your windows if you lived on the first floor of your building. Just starting out here I thought that was the most absurd and paranoid thing in the world. Living in Boston I spent two years on the 1st floor of a house with an open back yard, and open driveway, both abutting my three low level windows and I never once considered myself at enormous risk. For another year in Boston I lived in a split 3 story, again with first floor windows unbarred-this time with a shared basement, and the only thing that ever crossed my mind was that our apartment was really close to the street in a fratty-college district, and I hoped no beer bottles would come flying through a window.
Now having lived in New York for 3 years and just having moved to a 1st floor without bars, though surrounded by gates and walls, I find myself a little anxious at the prospect of not having bars. This makes me angry. It makes me angry that it has almost become a necessity in my life to cage myself into my home. Not a necessity necessarily based on the safety of my neighborhood, but based on my acclimation to an environment that seems to, on some levels, teach mistrust and breed fear. Living with bars on windows perpetuates a belief that safety can be assured by drawing further and further into ourselves both physically and emotionally. If we hide ourselves away enough and place ourselves behind our own bars far enough then no one and nothing can hurt us, right?
This practice seems further encouraged by the whole sense of isolation that envelopes this city. We don't want anyone to attack us or our stuff so we place walls between us and them. However, because we cannot necessarily judge who will and who will not cause us harm, we place that wall between us and everybody/everything else. We isolate ourselves within our own neighborhoods and as a result we fail to come to any real understanding about who/what is safe and who/what is not. The cycle continues and we perpetuate this isolation and fear, living our lives as if they include no one else and as though we have no impact on others and vise versa. It's a maddening cycle and its concerning to me that I've become a part of it. I don't want to live in senseless anxiety. While a certain amount of caution with strangers and home security can be advisable in most living situations, this is too much. These bars, this isolation, the strange way we keep ourselves oblivious to even the physical presence of another human being a few feet away in a subway car, each of these things by themselves may be minimal but all of it together just seems like far too much. On a greater scale it's as though we slowly become less human, less feeling, and thus become far more mechanized and absorbed in our own worlds. Its not a way I think I can live for very long happily-so I guess I don't intend to.
Now the other issue that's been scratching at the back of my brain and causing me to wonder about how long I'll last here is the focus of media, social programming, educational legislation, you name it- on the urban poor while ignoring the rural poor. Over the last few years I've had this strain of conversation with a number of people and have been able to observe the ways in which rural populations tend to get ignored for the purpose of providing funding assistance to cities. Now this in no way means I believe cities should get funding cuts in their social welfare programming, certainly city poverty is still a great concern. But the thing of it is this: not only does funding get geared towards urban populations, but so do studies, services, research programming and the like. People simply do not think that much about what poverty looks like outside the cities and the ways to amend this in those areas. Social work programs are geared towards aiding city dwellers, psychology programs, education programs, all of it is geared towards focusing graduates on work in the cities and while this is all relevant and important work, it does not take into account the entire picture of poverty, leaving out many individuals in populations across the united states who do not have access to important assistance because they live too far outside cities to qualify or too far away from major funding sources to get noticed.
So what does this all mean for me and eventually for the populations I want to work with? New York is great for many reasons, and while I don't plan on leaving any time in the next 3 years or so, the fact of it is that it does not and possibly has never felt like home. To tell the truth I don't know if anything will ever feel like home. Perhaps I ought to simply go wherever the next plane takes me, or the next idea or question. Maybe it will be the other coast, perhaps the middle states somewhere, or maybe I will find work in the UK-who knows, but its nice to think about every now and then- it keeps me on my toes and interested in my work and my life, keeps me asking those all important questions and going out to actively find the answers, and sometimes for me I think that is the most important thing in the world.
Anyway, with all this leisurely time on my hands and with these two friends, who recently compromised on the problem of whose city to live in-Boston or New York- by moving to Paris together, I naturally began to think of my own living arrangement and where I would see myself living in the not so distant future. One of those friends, Nick, asked if I saw myself moving back to Boston and I didn't really hesitate too long before I answered not any time soon, but here's the thing of it that stuck with me- I don't see myself staying in New York either.
While there is much about this city that I love, there is also much that I do not. For instance, when I first moved here I noticed how one common thing to do was to have bars on your windows if you lived on the first floor of your building. Just starting out here I thought that was the most absurd and paranoid thing in the world. Living in Boston I spent two years on the 1st floor of a house with an open back yard, and open driveway, both abutting my three low level windows and I never once considered myself at enormous risk. For another year in Boston I lived in a split 3 story, again with first floor windows unbarred-this time with a shared basement, and the only thing that ever crossed my mind was that our apartment was really close to the street in a fratty-college district, and I hoped no beer bottles would come flying through a window.
Now having lived in New York for 3 years and just having moved to a 1st floor without bars, though surrounded by gates and walls, I find myself a little anxious at the prospect of not having bars. This makes me angry. It makes me angry that it has almost become a necessity in my life to cage myself into my home. Not a necessity necessarily based on the safety of my neighborhood, but based on my acclimation to an environment that seems to, on some levels, teach mistrust and breed fear. Living with bars on windows perpetuates a belief that safety can be assured by drawing further and further into ourselves both physically and emotionally. If we hide ourselves away enough and place ourselves behind our own bars far enough then no one and nothing can hurt us, right?
This practice seems further encouraged by the whole sense of isolation that envelopes this city. We don't want anyone to attack us or our stuff so we place walls between us and them. However, because we cannot necessarily judge who will and who will not cause us harm, we place that wall between us and everybody/everything else. We isolate ourselves within our own neighborhoods and as a result we fail to come to any real understanding about who/what is safe and who/what is not. The cycle continues and we perpetuate this isolation and fear, living our lives as if they include no one else and as though we have no impact on others and vise versa. It's a maddening cycle and its concerning to me that I've become a part of it. I don't want to live in senseless anxiety. While a certain amount of caution with strangers and home security can be advisable in most living situations, this is too much. These bars, this isolation, the strange way we keep ourselves oblivious to even the physical presence of another human being a few feet away in a subway car, each of these things by themselves may be minimal but all of it together just seems like far too much. On a greater scale it's as though we slowly become less human, less feeling, and thus become far more mechanized and absorbed in our own worlds. Its not a way I think I can live for very long happily-so I guess I don't intend to.
Now the other issue that's been scratching at the back of my brain and causing me to wonder about how long I'll last here is the focus of media, social programming, educational legislation, you name it- on the urban poor while ignoring the rural poor. Over the last few years I've had this strain of conversation with a number of people and have been able to observe the ways in which rural populations tend to get ignored for the purpose of providing funding assistance to cities. Now this in no way means I believe cities should get funding cuts in their social welfare programming, certainly city poverty is still a great concern. But the thing of it is this: not only does funding get geared towards urban populations, but so do studies, services, research programming and the like. People simply do not think that much about what poverty looks like outside the cities and the ways to amend this in those areas. Social work programs are geared towards aiding city dwellers, psychology programs, education programs, all of it is geared towards focusing graduates on work in the cities and while this is all relevant and important work, it does not take into account the entire picture of poverty, leaving out many individuals in populations across the united states who do not have access to important assistance because they live too far outside cities to qualify or too far away from major funding sources to get noticed.
So what does this all mean for me and eventually for the populations I want to work with? New York is great for many reasons, and while I don't plan on leaving any time in the next 3 years or so, the fact of it is that it does not and possibly has never felt like home. To tell the truth I don't know if anything will ever feel like home. Perhaps I ought to simply go wherever the next plane takes me, or the next idea or question. Maybe it will be the other coast, perhaps the middle states somewhere, or maybe I will find work in the UK-who knows, but its nice to think about every now and then- it keeps me on my toes and interested in my work and my life, keeps me asking those all important questions and going out to actively find the answers, and sometimes for me I think that is the most important thing in the world.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
You scratch my back, I'll let you listen in on my break-up
There was one afternoon last summer when I was on the phone with my sister and I realized 1) I was beginning to run late for a job interview, and 2) I didn't have any nylons to wear to this interview. My sister suggested that I buy a pair at the drug store and put them on while I was waiting for the subway, she said she was certain that New Yorkers had seen far stranger things on the subway platforms before and that I would go unnoticed by most. While inevitably I bought the nylons and put them on in the office bathroom before the interview I began to notice the things people do both on the subway platform and on the trains themselves.
New York City has a fascinating culture to it. Partly what adds to this is the fact that there are upwards of 8 million people existing together in one relatively small city while trying desperately to pretend they are completely alone. Truthfully it seems this is the only way to make it through the day in a city so over-crowded with residents, blow ins, day trippers, and tourists. Likewise it appears to be the only way to function on a subway platform or in a train car, when your forced to sit or stand at any given hour of the day with your knees pressed into the calves of an individual whose intimate space you've necessarily been introduced into though you may not even know what their face looks like, let alone what their name is. Its easy to see why this set up might lead to a small amount of depersonalization and lead to some of the more, well, quirky and private behaviors people partake in within these most public of spaces.
I can remember one instance when I was coming home from the far reaches of Harlem to the even further reaches of Brooklyn, and I was standing grasping the subway pole, rather exhausted from a painfully long day. This woman with a stroller entered the car somewhere around 14th St. and stood hanging on to the pole that runs beside the door as there were no seats available. Anyway, at some point in our ride we stalled over the Manhattan bridge and I can vaguely recall the woman shifting to my pole. In no time at all she was standing with her back to my poll as occasionally people are wont to do when the pole is empty and no one else is using it- this however, what not the case for my pole, but nonetheless this is what she did. Now typically when people make the move to rest their backs on a pole in use, they make an effort to keep their back away from the hand of the pre-existing pole inhabitant- not this woman. As time progressed and we remained stalled the woman began to use my knuckles, which were facing outward in her direction, as a means to either scratch or massage her back, and continued to do so, rather aggressively, until we reached my final destination at which point I pulled my hand out from behind her rather concerted efforts at relief and walked out of the train. (I will leave why I didn't move my hand up to your own interpretation- it wasn't that interesting a reason anyway).
Beyond the physical contact though, individuals will often be found doing numerous other tasks or engaging in behaviors you may not, imagine typically occurring in a subway station or car. Heres a small list: changing clothes, talking/laughing/arguing to themselves- loudly, applying their make up, curling their hair, praying aloud, reading aloud from the bible/quarran/torah/ copy of Dyanetics, singing operatic compositions for no money or audience, blowing their noses into trash cans, peeing in direct view of others, engaging in heated debates and breakups on their cell phones, writing love letters, studying for immigration exams, studying for neurology exams, studying for GED exams, making out, having sex, threatening their children, practicing dance moves, falling asleep on another person (usually a stranger), shadow boxing, and rearranging the "wet paint" signs so they say "aint wet". Some of the things on this list I'm sure you could imagine more than others, and yet the extent of what people might do in those public spaces certainly doesn't end there.
So what is it about this city that people feel either so completely at home or completely alone that they feel safe to engage in any number of things outside that they might normally keep private? Could it be that the boundaries of individuals who live crushed among 7,999,999 other people tend to get crushed as well? Or is it more that you figure among so many others you get lost in the crowd and no one notices that you're putting on a pair of pants underneath your skirt and slipping the skirt off over those pants?
Have we depersonalized so much in this city that we treat other individuals- other human beings, as walls, mirrors, polls, pillows, and back-scratchers? And above all that, is this a bad thing or is it simply a way coping or a way of being close while distant, a way of making this city seem a little more personal and inviting- a little more like home…
I don't know for sure- but I think that strange as it is, perhaps that's one of the things that makes New York so inclusive, such a sought after place, and so intriguing to so many ---well that and its enormous buildings and the ability to get breakfast/drugs/sex delivered to your house from the local bagel shop or diner, but thats a whole other facet to the culture of New York that I'll save for another time.
New York City has a fascinating culture to it. Partly what adds to this is the fact that there are upwards of 8 million people existing together in one relatively small city while trying desperately to pretend they are completely alone. Truthfully it seems this is the only way to make it through the day in a city so over-crowded with residents, blow ins, day trippers, and tourists. Likewise it appears to be the only way to function on a subway platform or in a train car, when your forced to sit or stand at any given hour of the day with your knees pressed into the calves of an individual whose intimate space you've necessarily been introduced into though you may not even know what their face looks like, let alone what their name is. Its easy to see why this set up might lead to a small amount of depersonalization and lead to some of the more, well, quirky and private behaviors people partake in within these most public of spaces.
I can remember one instance when I was coming home from the far reaches of Harlem to the even further reaches of Brooklyn, and I was standing grasping the subway pole, rather exhausted from a painfully long day. This woman with a stroller entered the car somewhere around 14th St. and stood hanging on to the pole that runs beside the door as there were no seats available. Anyway, at some point in our ride we stalled over the Manhattan bridge and I can vaguely recall the woman shifting to my pole. In no time at all she was standing with her back to my poll as occasionally people are wont to do when the pole is empty and no one else is using it- this however, what not the case for my pole, but nonetheless this is what she did. Now typically when people make the move to rest their backs on a pole in use, they make an effort to keep their back away from the hand of the pre-existing pole inhabitant- not this woman. As time progressed and we remained stalled the woman began to use my knuckles, which were facing outward in her direction, as a means to either scratch or massage her back, and continued to do so, rather aggressively, until we reached my final destination at which point I pulled my hand out from behind her rather concerted efforts at relief and walked out of the train. (I will leave why I didn't move my hand up to your own interpretation- it wasn't that interesting a reason anyway).
Beyond the physical contact though, individuals will often be found doing numerous other tasks or engaging in behaviors you may not, imagine typically occurring in a subway station or car. Heres a small list: changing clothes, talking/laughing/arguing to themselves- loudly, applying their make up, curling their hair, praying aloud, reading aloud from the bible/quarran/torah/ copy of Dyanetics, singing operatic compositions for no money or audience, blowing their noses into trash cans, peeing in direct view of others, engaging in heated debates and breakups on their cell phones, writing love letters, studying for immigration exams, studying for neurology exams, studying for GED exams, making out, having sex, threatening their children, practicing dance moves, falling asleep on another person (usually a stranger), shadow boxing, and rearranging the "wet paint" signs so they say "aint wet". Some of the things on this list I'm sure you could imagine more than others, and yet the extent of what people might do in those public spaces certainly doesn't end there.
So what is it about this city that people feel either so completely at home or completely alone that they feel safe to engage in any number of things outside that they might normally keep private? Could it be that the boundaries of individuals who live crushed among 7,999,999 other people tend to get crushed as well? Or is it more that you figure among so many others you get lost in the crowd and no one notices that you're putting on a pair of pants underneath your skirt and slipping the skirt off over those pants?
Have we depersonalized so much in this city that we treat other individuals- other human beings, as walls, mirrors, polls, pillows, and back-scratchers? And above all that, is this a bad thing or is it simply a way coping or a way of being close while distant, a way of making this city seem a little more personal and inviting- a little more like home…
I don't know for sure- but I think that strange as it is, perhaps that's one of the things that makes New York so inclusive, such a sought after place, and so intriguing to so many ---well that and its enormous buildings and the ability to get breakfast/drugs/sex delivered to your house from the local bagel shop or diner, but thats a whole other facet to the culture of New York that I'll save for another time.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
Its 5:45 AM. I'm not up willingly. See my neighbors either have a sexually frustrated cat or a mouse problem. All I can hear directly over my head while I sleep is ripping cloth and scurrying feet. And the thing of it that's keeping me up is that it seems to go away whenever I turn my light on. And though I've checked for torn carpet in that area of the room and little mousy visitors, I've been unable to turn up any evidence that its actually me with the mouse probloem, yet still- light on, no noise; light off, ripping. I swear to god I even heard something land on my pillow at one point and whether it was hallucinations, really good hearing or really poor walls, its forced me to be awake in terror, shrieking. Here. With you. Sitting at my desk, flashlight nearby, lights on, feet up on the chair, ready for action. What actions I might take I have no idea, because really in truth if it is a critter in my apartment it sounds slightly larger than a mouse and although I may be a vegetarian and a scaredy-cat at that, my first instinct is to want it dead. Dead in whatever way little carpet ripping creatures die. Whether its a shoe to the head, or a nice bowl of poison I dont care- I just want the thing gone. I haven't slept well in over a week and I just want someone or something to take care of this little party crasher so I can sleep. Man sometimes I really hate living alone.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Late 20's and Cheap Champagne
So I'm turning 26 in two weeks. Usually when a New Year and new birthday come about, while I don't make resolutions, I do start to feel like maybe things will be different, but this year I don't feel that way. Whether or not its because of the fact that I'm getting older and I'm less unrealistic about change, or its because of the fact that things this year have been rough and its difficult to picture things being different or better, life in general appears no different to me than it did the day before New Years. I don't know if I was just absurdly childish and optimistic up until now or if I just wanted so badly to believe that I had the power to change things in my life, but whatever it was it spurred me to continue in the optimistic hope( more than belief) that things could and might be different.
When I look back over this last year I know that I still concern myself too much over what people think of me. I still get into arguments with the people I care deeply about, I still choose to deal with and care about individuals who don't really care that much for me, and I still like to put up a very tough exterior while feeling very fragile on the inside. I'm sure some of you are saying if I haven't changed that stuff by now I should grow up and change already cause its about damn time. And that might be fair in a lot of ways. I mean, honestly I've been working with all this personal stuff since I was young so I should have learned my lesson and moved on, but I guess the thing of it is that I haven't. It sounds over simplified but one of the things you learn as a therapist is that as a person you don't change until you're ready to and you consistently deal with the same problem over and over in varying forms until it's resolved- whenever that may be. And I guess maybe these things are why I feel that I've made no progress in my life this year, but at the same time I know that's not true.
In this past year I've been forced to figure out this whole loss concept and what it means to be left by someone before you can walk out on them. My M.O. in the past about that had always been to leave before getting left which made perfect sense to me because even if it was childish it meant that I was in control of the when the where and the reaction I would have to the loss- I could plot this stuff out and have the dialogue worked out in my head before the other person even knew what hit them. When I had to deal with someone close to me leaving me behind and moving on in life before me I realized how impermanent everything was and how important it was to keep letting those in your life know how the role they play impacts you. I also learned how shitty it was of me to just cut people out in the ways that I did and I began to understand that it was better for me to deal with loss by acknowledging it rather than sweeping it under the rug and busying myself with the next activity or person.
I've also, in this past year, been asked to deal with, to a small degree, my own mortality and what it means at core to be a woman. Finding a lump in my breast was the scariest thing in the world to me for many reasons, but beyond dealing with the possibility of a fight with cancer and beyond the vanity and fear that came with something so intrinsic to my womanhood being attacked by my own body it taught me several things. Mainly it taught me how strong other people are who have gone through much more than me, and secondly it taught me how wonderful and amazing and supportive friends can be. I pushed a lot of people away by not telling them a thing about what was going on, and while my boyfriend at the time took off after I told him and before my first test results were in, my friends, even the friends who were hurt by my hiding this, were such a powerful force that it still makes me teary to think about the ways they helped me not be afraid and look at the reality of the situation. They helped me face this scary thing that turned out to be something I could laugh at and joke about thanks to their support and that to me was one of the greatest feelings in the world, and made me realize how ok it is to ask for help sometimes and take help sometimes.
I also started learning what it means to quietly and gently let things go. Relationships and friendships have never been easy for me because of how important I consider the people in my life. I need the people I have in my life for various reasons- some because they make me laugh, some because they make me see how foolish I am, some because they need me as much as I need them and that feels good, and some because I know they depend on me. But what I began to understand was that everything has a beginning, an end and a purpose in the middle and while I still don't fully believe it and am not fully ready to accept it I know that once that purpose is served its ok for me to let go of things and people and concepts so long as I keep a place for them within me and acknowledge what they taught me with love and respect.
If I'm being honest with my readers right now I'm starting to feel a little too serious about all this, and since that's one of the things I haven't really learned to cope with yet I think I should start getting to my point, which is this:
I guess for me many things in life change and many stay the same and many I find I stay struggling with for a painfully long time until I finally figure out the really basic message of whatever it is. And while I can always sit here and wish and hope that each new year or each new birthday will bring me complete and total enlightenment, change, readjustment- whatever it is I'm calling it -ultimately sometimes its ok to slow down and just be alright with myself and my pace every now and then and accept the fact that change doesn't happen over night and may never happen and that what I wish for may not ever occur in my life time and all that is ok. Not to get all philosophical, especially about things I know barely anything about, but in Zen Buddhism they believe that everything is perfect as it is simply because that's how its happening and if it was meant to happen any other way it would have, and while that seems really obvious and basic it is extremely tricky to fully believe in and put into practice- at least for an individual like me who still cares deeply what others think of me and still believes that I am responsible for and can fix the moods/ mood swings of those around me- but those can be issues of change for another time.
When I look back over this last year I know that I still concern myself too much over what people think of me. I still get into arguments with the people I care deeply about, I still choose to deal with and care about individuals who don't really care that much for me, and I still like to put up a very tough exterior while feeling very fragile on the inside. I'm sure some of you are saying if I haven't changed that stuff by now I should grow up and change already cause its about damn time. And that might be fair in a lot of ways. I mean, honestly I've been working with all this personal stuff since I was young so I should have learned my lesson and moved on, but I guess the thing of it is that I haven't. It sounds over simplified but one of the things you learn as a therapist is that as a person you don't change until you're ready to and you consistently deal with the same problem over and over in varying forms until it's resolved- whenever that may be. And I guess maybe these things are why I feel that I've made no progress in my life this year, but at the same time I know that's not true.
In this past year I've been forced to figure out this whole loss concept and what it means to be left by someone before you can walk out on them. My M.O. in the past about that had always been to leave before getting left which made perfect sense to me because even if it was childish it meant that I was in control of the when the where and the reaction I would have to the loss- I could plot this stuff out and have the dialogue worked out in my head before the other person even knew what hit them. When I had to deal with someone close to me leaving me behind and moving on in life before me I realized how impermanent everything was and how important it was to keep letting those in your life know how the role they play impacts you. I also learned how shitty it was of me to just cut people out in the ways that I did and I began to understand that it was better for me to deal with loss by acknowledging it rather than sweeping it under the rug and busying myself with the next activity or person.
I've also, in this past year, been asked to deal with, to a small degree, my own mortality and what it means at core to be a woman. Finding a lump in my breast was the scariest thing in the world to me for many reasons, but beyond dealing with the possibility of a fight with cancer and beyond the vanity and fear that came with something so intrinsic to my womanhood being attacked by my own body it taught me several things. Mainly it taught me how strong other people are who have gone through much more than me, and secondly it taught me how wonderful and amazing and supportive friends can be. I pushed a lot of people away by not telling them a thing about what was going on, and while my boyfriend at the time took off after I told him and before my first test results were in, my friends, even the friends who were hurt by my hiding this, were such a powerful force that it still makes me teary to think about the ways they helped me not be afraid and look at the reality of the situation. They helped me face this scary thing that turned out to be something I could laugh at and joke about thanks to their support and that to me was one of the greatest feelings in the world, and made me realize how ok it is to ask for help sometimes and take help sometimes.
I also started learning what it means to quietly and gently let things go. Relationships and friendships have never been easy for me because of how important I consider the people in my life. I need the people I have in my life for various reasons- some because they make me laugh, some because they make me see how foolish I am, some because they need me as much as I need them and that feels good, and some because I know they depend on me. But what I began to understand was that everything has a beginning, an end and a purpose in the middle and while I still don't fully believe it and am not fully ready to accept it I know that once that purpose is served its ok for me to let go of things and people and concepts so long as I keep a place for them within me and acknowledge what they taught me with love and respect.
If I'm being honest with my readers right now I'm starting to feel a little too serious about all this, and since that's one of the things I haven't really learned to cope with yet I think I should start getting to my point, which is this:
I guess for me many things in life change and many stay the same and many I find I stay struggling with for a painfully long time until I finally figure out the really basic message of whatever it is. And while I can always sit here and wish and hope that each new year or each new birthday will bring me complete and total enlightenment, change, readjustment- whatever it is I'm calling it -ultimately sometimes its ok to slow down and just be alright with myself and my pace every now and then and accept the fact that change doesn't happen over night and may never happen and that what I wish for may not ever occur in my life time and all that is ok. Not to get all philosophical, especially about things I know barely anything about, but in Zen Buddhism they believe that everything is perfect as it is simply because that's how its happening and if it was meant to happen any other way it would have, and while that seems really obvious and basic it is extremely tricky to fully believe in and put into practice- at least for an individual like me who still cares deeply what others think of me and still believes that I am responsible for and can fix the moods/ mood swings of those around me- but those can be issues of change for another time.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Day of the Dead
Tonight was Halloween, and it was just beautiful out. I mean it was around 70 degrees, the sun was setting red and the smell dying leaves was in the air as the little kids ran from store to store wearing wigs and funny glasses. While I took candy to school this morning and chatted with my students about their plans for the evening I couldn't help but feel fearful for them. Not because of the holiday and the impending threats of Nair being thrown and eggs being tossed, but because of the stabbing that happened last evening. You see the majority of our kids are Haitian or at the very least Caribbean in origin, and yesterday there was a stabbing in front of our school of one student by another over racial tensions between Haitians and Jamaicans. The kid was one of ours, in as much as any of the kids in the suspension room that I see belong to out program. I'd met him a few times, knew him well enough to say hello to him in the halls and had the opportunity to talk with him some about his reasons for being in the holding room, anger and fighting. Anyway I'd seen him that morning inside the school with a friend of his who I also know from the suspension room, they'd both said hello and checked in briefly with me.
He wasn't more than 17 years old, and they said that before he was stabbed in the back he was chased, beaten and kicked down. When he tried to escape to the safety of an empty cargo truck the driver kicked him out of the truck and forced him out into the crowd waiting for him. The boy is in critical condition now at the hospital. There were several other stabbings but those individual's names I did not receive.
Now the thing of it is that I've seen violence before. I've been lucky enough never to be involved in it, but there were fights and stabbings at the high school I went to, so the violence wasn't too new. No, the thing that got to me was that since I knew a little about this kid I started to wonder what was going through his mind when it happened-had he ever seen so much blood before? Had he ever seen so much of his own blood before? Was he scared? Did he laugh out of nerves as he was sometimes wont to do? Had he been given time to realize the severity of the situation? And perhaps more frightening for me- was this not new to him?
I wondered about him and about his parents. I wondered if they were around, how they would take the news, how they would reac- if at all. As it turned out, when the school contacted his mother prior to the stabbing to request that she come to escort him home because he felt unsafe, she told the principal that her son was not something she was concerned with, in exactly those words.
As I looked out on the police tape outside our office window I started to think about gangs, death, violence, and the disconnect that kids seem to have between being violent, having violence done to you, and imminent death. I thought about the child who stabbed him, for it was a child, and I wondered what was going through his mind as well. Why he felt that this was the acceptable solution to the problem. If he had felt pressured to prove himself in some twisted way and who was at the root of that pressure in the long run.
It made me scared. Not for my personal safety, but for every one of those kids. And it made me terribly sad. The kind of quiet sad that happens when the damage has been done and there can be no anger, no rage because the blame is spread so thin amongst so many possible sources that to try and sort it out to establish who to be most angry at would do nothing for the child in the end. No, the only rage I could feel was at the adult driving the truck who kicked the child out, and even then who knows what kind of concerns were running through his mind about his own personal safety. I couldn't say I would have behaved differently and I couldn't condemn him for his actions, though I absolutely wanted to.
To look at it honestly and in the broadest sense, there was a large and long running system of beliefs and oppression at fault combined with misconceptions of masculinity, honor, and duty, but what good does that do us now? We have no immediate solutions but to continue to fight with everything we have against that oppression and misinformation, to continue to educate and inform and assist people to rise up and take on true strength and power to question the status quo, to give the opportunity for real hope and success to everyone whose been placed low by any system, belief or otherwise. But that's the long run, and in the short run this child is lying unconscious in a hospital, so what then?
Today I had the opportunity to speak to the stabbing victim's friend, the one I had seen him in the hall with the day before and as I talked with him about violence all he could conjure up was thoughts of revenge. He said he wanted to corner the boy that did it alone and do some real damage with his friends. When I asked him what the point of jumping a person was he said that once a person sees who you roll with they don't mess with you alone. When I suggested to him that this was precisely what he was planning to do to the kid that had jumped his friend he didn't have an answer.
This 14 year old and I talked about life, death, self worth, goals and personal safety for somewhere around an hour and while I'm sure most of what he was saying was simple bravado, I couldn't help but want to shake him and scream at him to look around him and open his eyes, to convince him to stop talking all that trash and run in the opposite direction while he still could. The thing of this kid that got to me was that he had sought me out to ask if he should talk to the dean of security about what he knew, and while we chatted about it all I could think about was his baby face, his small stature, his youthful inability to grow facial hair as of yet, and his age. All I could think about was that he was a child. A fucking kid, and whether everything he was saying was false or true, the fact was that he was beginning to speak in these ways and plan things out, and believe that getting revenge in that way was an alternative to be explored, made me almost wanted to hurt him. I was extremely close to grabbing him and, like I said, shaking him long and hard.
It was so obvious to me that he was scared and that he didn't have any designs to do himself what he was suggesting, but when I posed to him the possibility of his friends pressuring him into it, or the possibility of being there and panicking with the awareness of the task at hand, he again had no answers. He couldn't tell me he would back down, he couldn't tell me he would have an out, and that was the most despairing thing I've ever heard come out of a child's mouth next to total resignation, which was close on this boys heels anyway.
It hurt me deeply to see kids in these predicaments and to think that even if it was all talk, at some point they were forced to decide between talk and action and many of them, without support and guidance, without somebody to still have faith in them, would likely chose the negative action. So my question to any or all of you reading this is how I fix this, because I desperately want to. I very much have the urge to take all of these children, sit them down, and have some miracle conversation that will change their focus, but I don't know what words to begin with. All I can think to do is rationalize with them about their own lives and goals, talk with them about what death means and what involvement in shit like this means, and plead with them to be careful and to think before they act. All I can think to do it become supportive, but even that doesn't seem like enough, hell I know its not enough because as I sit there trying to build up a supportive place for these kids, they are busy getting stabbed and plotting revenges that involve guns and fear. And while for the long term I'm setting up structures of support and working towards larger change, for the short term there is a boy lying unconscious in the hospital who once told me the only alternative was to stand up and defend yourself with your fists, only in his unlucky case someone chose a knife.
He wasn't more than 17 years old, and they said that before he was stabbed in the back he was chased, beaten and kicked down. When he tried to escape to the safety of an empty cargo truck the driver kicked him out of the truck and forced him out into the crowd waiting for him. The boy is in critical condition now at the hospital. There were several other stabbings but those individual's names I did not receive.
Now the thing of it is that I've seen violence before. I've been lucky enough never to be involved in it, but there were fights and stabbings at the high school I went to, so the violence wasn't too new. No, the thing that got to me was that since I knew a little about this kid I started to wonder what was going through his mind when it happened-had he ever seen so much blood before? Had he ever seen so much of his own blood before? Was he scared? Did he laugh out of nerves as he was sometimes wont to do? Had he been given time to realize the severity of the situation? And perhaps more frightening for me- was this not new to him?
I wondered about him and about his parents. I wondered if they were around, how they would take the news, how they would reac- if at all. As it turned out, when the school contacted his mother prior to the stabbing to request that she come to escort him home because he felt unsafe, she told the principal that her son was not something she was concerned with, in exactly those words.
As I looked out on the police tape outside our office window I started to think about gangs, death, violence, and the disconnect that kids seem to have between being violent, having violence done to you, and imminent death. I thought about the child who stabbed him, for it was a child, and I wondered what was going through his mind as well. Why he felt that this was the acceptable solution to the problem. If he had felt pressured to prove himself in some twisted way and who was at the root of that pressure in the long run.
It made me scared. Not for my personal safety, but for every one of those kids. And it made me terribly sad. The kind of quiet sad that happens when the damage has been done and there can be no anger, no rage because the blame is spread so thin amongst so many possible sources that to try and sort it out to establish who to be most angry at would do nothing for the child in the end. No, the only rage I could feel was at the adult driving the truck who kicked the child out, and even then who knows what kind of concerns were running through his mind about his own personal safety. I couldn't say I would have behaved differently and I couldn't condemn him for his actions, though I absolutely wanted to.
To look at it honestly and in the broadest sense, there was a large and long running system of beliefs and oppression at fault combined with misconceptions of masculinity, honor, and duty, but what good does that do us now? We have no immediate solutions but to continue to fight with everything we have against that oppression and misinformation, to continue to educate and inform and assist people to rise up and take on true strength and power to question the status quo, to give the opportunity for real hope and success to everyone whose been placed low by any system, belief or otherwise. But that's the long run, and in the short run this child is lying unconscious in a hospital, so what then?
Today I had the opportunity to speak to the stabbing victim's friend, the one I had seen him in the hall with the day before and as I talked with him about violence all he could conjure up was thoughts of revenge. He said he wanted to corner the boy that did it alone and do some real damage with his friends. When I asked him what the point of jumping a person was he said that once a person sees who you roll with they don't mess with you alone. When I suggested to him that this was precisely what he was planning to do to the kid that had jumped his friend he didn't have an answer.
This 14 year old and I talked about life, death, self worth, goals and personal safety for somewhere around an hour and while I'm sure most of what he was saying was simple bravado, I couldn't help but want to shake him and scream at him to look around him and open his eyes, to convince him to stop talking all that trash and run in the opposite direction while he still could. The thing of this kid that got to me was that he had sought me out to ask if he should talk to the dean of security about what he knew, and while we chatted about it all I could think about was his baby face, his small stature, his youthful inability to grow facial hair as of yet, and his age. All I could think about was that he was a child. A fucking kid, and whether everything he was saying was false or true, the fact was that he was beginning to speak in these ways and plan things out, and believe that getting revenge in that way was an alternative to be explored, made me almost wanted to hurt him. I was extremely close to grabbing him and, like I said, shaking him long and hard.
It was so obvious to me that he was scared and that he didn't have any designs to do himself what he was suggesting, but when I posed to him the possibility of his friends pressuring him into it, or the possibility of being there and panicking with the awareness of the task at hand, he again had no answers. He couldn't tell me he would back down, he couldn't tell me he would have an out, and that was the most despairing thing I've ever heard come out of a child's mouth next to total resignation, which was close on this boys heels anyway.
It hurt me deeply to see kids in these predicaments and to think that even if it was all talk, at some point they were forced to decide between talk and action and many of them, without support and guidance, without somebody to still have faith in them, would likely chose the negative action. So my question to any or all of you reading this is how I fix this, because I desperately want to. I very much have the urge to take all of these children, sit them down, and have some miracle conversation that will change their focus, but I don't know what words to begin with. All I can think to do is rationalize with them about their own lives and goals, talk with them about what death means and what involvement in shit like this means, and plead with them to be careful and to think before they act. All I can think to do it become supportive, but even that doesn't seem like enough, hell I know its not enough because as I sit there trying to build up a supportive place for these kids, they are busy getting stabbed and plotting revenges that involve guns and fear. And while for the long term I'm setting up structures of support and working towards larger change, for the short term there is a boy lying unconscious in the hospital who once told me the only alternative was to stand up and defend yourself with your fists, only in his unlucky case someone chose a knife.
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