I need to make a confession. I’ve been procrastinating on the total completion of my application for Mental Health Counseling licensure- i.e. the test, a course or two and owing them a picture of myself for my license- because I’m scared of the totality of it. I’m scared that, assuming I pass my test (which should be alright considering I passed the practice exam- though it was 1.5 years ago), and once its all in place I will be wed to staying in NYC at least for another 5 years. I’m scared that I might not succeed living in NYC even though I’ve done alright for myself thus far. I’m scared that I won’t be happy here, that I will miss home too much, that I will feel unable to go pursue other dreams I’ve got of living in other places and doing other things. I’m scared of being tied to any one place. Even sending in the money for the license didn’t stir my fear quite as much as it did to receive the letter 2 weeks ago stating that I was cleared to take my exam. And then- on top of it all- what if none of this matters because I fail the exam?
I’ve never been a person who has been happy tied to one location too solidly, but if this goes through I will be tied- at least for the duration- to New York State by the fact that I will be completely cleared to do what I am trained to do and get paid for it in this state. Licensure will mean that I am more marketable, that I have the capacity to live more comfortably if I should want to (or save like crazy if I want to do that), and that I have more fluidity and latitude in my choice of jobs. It will mean good things if I get it. But I’m absurdly scared of it.
When I first had the thought to move to NYC to continue school, I was 21 feeling confused and living in Amsterdam. I didn’t know what exactly it was I wanted to do and I was so completely scared of the possibility of failing generally and failing to get into my dream school that I didn’t apply until after I got into a bunch of other schools, none of which I felt I would be happy at. Hell I didn’t even apply then, until I spent a year out of school and my sister yelled at me about how capable I was of doing it. And I did get in. But I was scared then too.
I know that being scared has never stopped me from doing what I want to do before; it’s just that I can’t seem to shake the fear until the thing is over. So if I seem a bit on edge lately, please bear with me. Because I’m taking these ridiculous steps towards something and while it may just be licensure, and in the end even that doesn’t mean all that much, it feels like stepping out in the pitch black night and being unsure where the ground ends.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Ideal
I ran into an ex-boyfriend of mine at a wedding last weekend. He was a writer for an independent paper/ filmmaker, turned financial PR man. I can remember when I met his mother, she said to me-without knowing me or anything about me- “we thought it was time he let go of his ideals and start making a living.” Did I mention the financial PR firm he worked for belonged to his parents? At the time I didn’t think much of it beyond that she was your standard overbearing mother, until days before I was to meet his father and her for a formal dinner, when he and I suddenly ended our relationship- guess I was part of the ideals he needed to let go of.
Anyway this isn’t a story about ex-boyfriends, it’s about the ideals part, and so let me move on. A little while ago I began an email conversation with a friend of mine which moved towards a discussion about the older generation of activists and the ways in which they more clearly and firmly are able to articulate their vision of a better future, and I started to wonder- is our generation somehow different in our approach to real, positive, change? What I spoke about with that friend was how the older generation, having seen change, was able to visualize it better than the newer- those of us who have grown up primarily within republican administrations or within the Clinton years (which isn’t saying much). And while this seems like it may be a definite part of it, I also wonder about the ways we utilize technology today and the ways in which our approach to dissent differs. Take for example this blog. Anyone and everyone can write what they feel on the internet and you can just bet that someone will read it, and so- good or otherwise, articulate or otherwise, your voice seemingly gets heard. Or take for example the rising in the last 5-7 years of the internet based activist networks- moveon.org, one.org, and the like. Suddenly people don’t have to leave their comfortable apartments to take part in the protest against what is inhumane, un-patriotic, or un-democratic. With the tap of a finger against a key they can sign a petition to end the war, and where that petition inevitably ends up few people probably know, but by hitting the send button they at least feel like they’ve contributed. And while in the age of technology, online petitions were the inevitable next step- followed closely by those anthropologically fascinating youtube debates-, and while they can certainly have a positive influence, it makes me wonder if part of the problem with the newer generations protest and our articulation of a better future isn’t simply that we’ve gotten lazy.
We are a generation of people with carpal tunnel syndrome and poor eyesight thanks to all this new technology and yet none of it has seemed to make its mark in quite the way that protests in, for example, the civil rights era did. No, despite the amount of times people write, and click, and make witty political commentary online it just doesn’t seem to have the same effect. Now don’t get me wrong- there are still many people out there marching themselves to the capital, holding signs on street corners, and tramping up and down a picket line in the cold of winter, but somehow these efforts seem to have lost their teeth. Like the efforts of a select few that I run across every week in Manhattan during their protest of the working conditions at the Four Points Hotel. They scream and shout and get videotaped, and yet the giant blow-up rat that stands behind them (and incidentally follows other picketers on various other protests) seems to be mocking them. The security guards stand around them, bored and yawning, occasionally refocusing their cameras and the picketers never make an effort to move outside of their picket area, so kindly designated for them by cheap metal barricades put in place by the hotel administration. (And no I don’t expect anyone to be throwing themselves on water hoses or scuffling with the police, but it does just make me all the more aware of how protest has changed over the years.)
The thing of it is this: while the civil rights era protests may not have been perfect (and they truly weren’t), activism has somehow become a whole lot more passive, and I don’t know that those two things can go together for any significant amount of time before something gives. Maybe if we made ourselves more physically involved in the things we feel passionately about, and maybe if we didn’t leave behind our idealism for what other people tell us is a better use of our time, we wouldn’t be stuck with problems like a president who effectively voted himself into office his first term.
Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents from behind my keyboard, inside my warm apartment, on this miserably cold winter night.
Anyway this isn’t a story about ex-boyfriends, it’s about the ideals part, and so let me move on. A little while ago I began an email conversation with a friend of mine which moved towards a discussion about the older generation of activists and the ways in which they more clearly and firmly are able to articulate their vision of a better future, and I started to wonder- is our generation somehow different in our approach to real, positive, change? What I spoke about with that friend was how the older generation, having seen change, was able to visualize it better than the newer- those of us who have grown up primarily within republican administrations or within the Clinton years (which isn’t saying much). And while this seems like it may be a definite part of it, I also wonder about the ways we utilize technology today and the ways in which our approach to dissent differs. Take for example this blog. Anyone and everyone can write what they feel on the internet and you can just bet that someone will read it, and so- good or otherwise, articulate or otherwise, your voice seemingly gets heard. Or take for example the rising in the last 5-7 years of the internet based activist networks- moveon.org, one.org, and the like. Suddenly people don’t have to leave their comfortable apartments to take part in the protest against what is inhumane, un-patriotic, or un-democratic. With the tap of a finger against a key they can sign a petition to end the war, and where that petition inevitably ends up few people probably know, but by hitting the send button they at least feel like they’ve contributed. And while in the age of technology, online petitions were the inevitable next step- followed closely by those anthropologically fascinating youtube debates-, and while they can certainly have a positive influence, it makes me wonder if part of the problem with the newer generations protest and our articulation of a better future isn’t simply that we’ve gotten lazy.
We are a generation of people with carpal tunnel syndrome and poor eyesight thanks to all this new technology and yet none of it has seemed to make its mark in quite the way that protests in, for example, the civil rights era did. No, despite the amount of times people write, and click, and make witty political commentary online it just doesn’t seem to have the same effect. Now don’t get me wrong- there are still many people out there marching themselves to the capital, holding signs on street corners, and tramping up and down a picket line in the cold of winter, but somehow these efforts seem to have lost their teeth. Like the efforts of a select few that I run across every week in Manhattan during their protest of the working conditions at the Four Points Hotel. They scream and shout and get videotaped, and yet the giant blow-up rat that stands behind them (and incidentally follows other picketers on various other protests) seems to be mocking them. The security guards stand around them, bored and yawning, occasionally refocusing their cameras and the picketers never make an effort to move outside of their picket area, so kindly designated for them by cheap metal barricades put in place by the hotel administration. (And no I don’t expect anyone to be throwing themselves on water hoses or scuffling with the police, but it does just make me all the more aware of how protest has changed over the years.)
The thing of it is this: while the civil rights era protests may not have been perfect (and they truly weren’t), activism has somehow become a whole lot more passive, and I don’t know that those two things can go together for any significant amount of time before something gives. Maybe if we made ourselves more physically involved in the things we feel passionately about, and maybe if we didn’t leave behind our idealism for what other people tell us is a better use of our time, we wouldn’t be stuck with problems like a president who effectively voted himself into office his first term.
Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents from behind my keyboard, inside my warm apartment, on this miserably cold winter night.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Untitled
Ok so for me I’ve always been a person who felt like they knew very little and so I’ve often been obsessed with learning anything and everything I can and lately I’m hit again with the awareness that the older I get and the more I read, the more I want to know and learn. The following is, I suppose, just a story about that:
When I began to gain interest in poverty I was somewhere around 20 years old and my brother had just been released from either rehab, the psych ward, or jail- I can no longer remember which- and my parents, refusing to take him back at that time, told the people releasing him to take him to the nearest homeless shelter. They obliged. While this was the only instance I can remember of any of my family being in a shelter, it scared me just how close people I knew and loved could be to a state of utter dependence on the system. (For those of you more concerned with my parents’ moral code at this moment, take heart in the fact that he only spent 3 days there before they took him back as usual).
Anyway, it was because of this event and because of my interest in mental health that I went on a couple trips to various countries to look into what exactly people received for help when they were down and out as my brother had been. The studies I did focused on the variety of cultures I was looking at and their individual approaches to the mental health care system for those without a place to even call their own. While my research was primarily focused on the cultural differences within this matter, when I came back to the states, rather than focus on culture I began to focus more heavily on the general concept of the underprivileged within the context of mental health. I suppose all this is simply to say that I knew culture somehow made it different, but considering the fact that I was back in the states I ignorantly assumed that the way it was practiced here was indeed the way it was practiced here and that little variance would take place in terms of people served and the cultures they came from. Good lord how I was wrong.
To be honest, the thought began to occur to me when I started working with the urban poor and noticed that the men in my shelter all came from a particular neighborhood of Boston, that the majority of them were of a particular cultural heritage that was non-white, and that my shelter- of all the shelters and services our organization offered- was the most ignored and under-funded. Being young and green however, I can imagine that I said to myself “its because they’re from an urban neighborhood” rather than “ its because they’re predominantly non-white”- and as such I moved to the largest city I could find to go ahead and work with that.
As my education progressed and my experience progressed however, I saw just how little things had to do with being from an urban neighborhood. Urban neighborhood was one thing- urban black, urban Hispanic, or urban any-non-white population, was quite another. That’s not to say I didn’t find any white urban poor, they absolutely are there, it’s just to say that through whatever racists constructs, what I was seeing was that culture still played a big part in what a given community was afforded for services. Anyway, even though I was beginning to see all of the issues at play for what they were, and even though I was beginning to take on a more aware perspective of culture as it played out in other aspects of my life, a conversation with my roommate while I was still in grad school led me to look much further into the issue of rural poverty. Again this led me slightly away from culture, race, ethnicity and their roles in the system and more towards a general concept of poverty outside the cities.
Naturally though, this story didn’t and doesn’t end there. See, lately I’ve been speaking to a friend who grew up in a rural area and through my discussions with him I’ve been reading books about indigenous peoples and the difficulties experienced by those populations, and once again I am faced with the realization that culture, racial background, and skin color, play a part in what is afforded to whom in terms of services, rights, and privileges. Now maybe its been my ignorance and maybe its been the ease with which I get moved off track into other subjects, but the issues of race and culture, colonialism and whiteness as an oppressive tool, and the ways in which these issues seep into every other facet of life are becoming increasingly difficult to step away from- intentionally or otherwise. The more I realize just how much this occurs the more foolish I feel and yet I cannot sit here and pretend it doesn’t occur and that I haven’t taken part (even through simple complacency) in my own life.
Now don’t get me wrong, I realize that my condemning myself for my obtuseness and ignorance, and any self flagellation will not change the situations of the poor no matter where they are or who they are. But in the end my questions and my interest in these matters only get more complex and confusing to me. Because, what I want to know now is: how- on top of every other issue these communities are facing- I can help people deal with the fact that this system, in which we all live and breath and work and play, is still either intentionally maintaining the status quo to benefit the few, or is willfully ignoring the fact that inequality is still prevalent (and inequality is a generous term for it). How do I, as a clinician, help people deal with this more readily- and how to do I deal with it within the context of my own personal life more openly?
I mean, I know that in the last years since I’ve graduated I’ve been working on this with the children I work with and I’m glad that we’ve gotten to some of the matters and addressed them, but the more I read and listen and learn, the more difficult it seems to deal with these issues one at a time- there are just too many, and it is so very overwhelming to both my children and me. At the very least I think I’m beginning to see clearly just how pervasive an issue this is, and as late as I may be to the game at least I’m here now.
Anyway, I think for me it will become more and more important to deal with these issues within my work since I do want to work with the rural poor, and I know I need to be prepared for that. Alternately though I also realize that the best way for me to learn how to deal with something is to put it into practice and experience it, and so hopefully I will get to do that with the population I want to at some point in my life. And I will work toward that steadily.
Anyway I guess that’s just on my mind lately. I know I promised you guys more about death, but this felt more pressing tonight.
Sweet Dreams.
When I began to gain interest in poverty I was somewhere around 20 years old and my brother had just been released from either rehab, the psych ward, or jail- I can no longer remember which- and my parents, refusing to take him back at that time, told the people releasing him to take him to the nearest homeless shelter. They obliged. While this was the only instance I can remember of any of my family being in a shelter, it scared me just how close people I knew and loved could be to a state of utter dependence on the system. (For those of you more concerned with my parents’ moral code at this moment, take heart in the fact that he only spent 3 days there before they took him back as usual).
Anyway, it was because of this event and because of my interest in mental health that I went on a couple trips to various countries to look into what exactly people received for help when they were down and out as my brother had been. The studies I did focused on the variety of cultures I was looking at and their individual approaches to the mental health care system for those without a place to even call their own. While my research was primarily focused on the cultural differences within this matter, when I came back to the states, rather than focus on culture I began to focus more heavily on the general concept of the underprivileged within the context of mental health. I suppose all this is simply to say that I knew culture somehow made it different, but considering the fact that I was back in the states I ignorantly assumed that the way it was practiced here was indeed the way it was practiced here and that little variance would take place in terms of people served and the cultures they came from. Good lord how I was wrong.
To be honest, the thought began to occur to me when I started working with the urban poor and noticed that the men in my shelter all came from a particular neighborhood of Boston, that the majority of them were of a particular cultural heritage that was non-white, and that my shelter- of all the shelters and services our organization offered- was the most ignored and under-funded. Being young and green however, I can imagine that I said to myself “its because they’re from an urban neighborhood” rather than “ its because they’re predominantly non-white”- and as such I moved to the largest city I could find to go ahead and work with that.
As my education progressed and my experience progressed however, I saw just how little things had to do with being from an urban neighborhood. Urban neighborhood was one thing- urban black, urban Hispanic, or urban any-non-white population, was quite another. That’s not to say I didn’t find any white urban poor, they absolutely are there, it’s just to say that through whatever racists constructs, what I was seeing was that culture still played a big part in what a given community was afforded for services. Anyway, even though I was beginning to see all of the issues at play for what they were, and even though I was beginning to take on a more aware perspective of culture as it played out in other aspects of my life, a conversation with my roommate while I was still in grad school led me to look much further into the issue of rural poverty. Again this led me slightly away from culture, race, ethnicity and their roles in the system and more towards a general concept of poverty outside the cities.
Naturally though, this story didn’t and doesn’t end there. See, lately I’ve been speaking to a friend who grew up in a rural area and through my discussions with him I’ve been reading books about indigenous peoples and the difficulties experienced by those populations, and once again I am faced with the realization that culture, racial background, and skin color, play a part in what is afforded to whom in terms of services, rights, and privileges. Now maybe its been my ignorance and maybe its been the ease with which I get moved off track into other subjects, but the issues of race and culture, colonialism and whiteness as an oppressive tool, and the ways in which these issues seep into every other facet of life are becoming increasingly difficult to step away from- intentionally or otherwise. The more I realize just how much this occurs the more foolish I feel and yet I cannot sit here and pretend it doesn’t occur and that I haven’t taken part (even through simple complacency) in my own life.
Now don’t get me wrong, I realize that my condemning myself for my obtuseness and ignorance, and any self flagellation will not change the situations of the poor no matter where they are or who they are. But in the end my questions and my interest in these matters only get more complex and confusing to me. Because, what I want to know now is: how- on top of every other issue these communities are facing- I can help people deal with the fact that this system, in which we all live and breath and work and play, is still either intentionally maintaining the status quo to benefit the few, or is willfully ignoring the fact that inequality is still prevalent (and inequality is a generous term for it). How do I, as a clinician, help people deal with this more readily- and how to do I deal with it within the context of my own personal life more openly?
I mean, I know that in the last years since I’ve graduated I’ve been working on this with the children I work with and I’m glad that we’ve gotten to some of the matters and addressed them, but the more I read and listen and learn, the more difficult it seems to deal with these issues one at a time- there are just too many, and it is so very overwhelming to both my children and me. At the very least I think I’m beginning to see clearly just how pervasive an issue this is, and as late as I may be to the game at least I’m here now.
Anyway, I think for me it will become more and more important to deal with these issues within my work since I do want to work with the rural poor, and I know I need to be prepared for that. Alternately though I also realize that the best way for me to learn how to deal with something is to put it into practice and experience it, and so hopefully I will get to do that with the population I want to at some point in my life. And I will work toward that steadily.
Anyway I guess that’s just on my mind lately. I know I promised you guys more about death, but this felt more pressing tonight.
Sweet Dreams.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Death Becomes Her
Death has been on my mind quite a bit lately. Not in the reverting-back-to-my-teenage- angst sort of way, but in that lately I’ve been faced with the painful task of looking it square in the eye; from the entirely live mouse I found on my glue trap that I had to destroy, through the dead bird whose head I hadn’t noticed until some sadistic teenager was kind enough to point out that I was in fact standing on it, and straight through to today when I found myself in a cemetery surrounded by macabre adolescents decked out in skull sweatshirts and black nail polish, photographers with no sympathy for a gravestone if its in their way, and the late, great, and notorious likes of Boss Tweed, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and a woman who was found petrified and drowned at the bottom of a lake in the 19th century. Ok well, the last one was my doing, having gone on a cemetery tour for Halloween, but nonetheless I’m starting to get a sense of a creepy little pattern.
I have a co-worker who likes to tell me about superstitions his parents passed down to him from their Jamaican ancestry and most recently when I informed him of a relative of a friend who had died, he graciously put on his most superstitious voice when he informed me that apparently death comes in threes. Great.
Its not that I necessarily fear death in some enormous way, it’s simply that since I’ve been young I’ve had this anxiety about it that has manifested itself in fear of losing my parents, and losing my father in particular. Now understand, my parents are wonderful examples of how to grow old gracefully and allow nature to take its proper course- my mother never tried to dye her hair when it went gray and my dad- though holding on the last bastions of his youth by hair-spraying his nearly non-existent locks into permanence- has always laughed at himself for it and known that ultimately he will get old and lose his hair and it will be ok. But see the thing of it is that my parents are getting older and my mother as of late has expressed a fear of how many years she and my father have left given that 3 of their 4 parents died before hitting their late seventies. So two years ago when she asked me to be the one to determine when to pull the plug if either of them should be on life support I got a little nervous. I don’t like thinking about them going and while I know that death happens inevitably to everyone I can’t imagine what it would be like to have one parent without the other or have neither of them around at all. They are too much in need of one another and have maintained our family traditions throughout so much that I just don’t know who could ever take their place when their gone- if anyone really could or should.
Anyway, I’ve always been a believer that as you move through life, things come up that hit you over the head and serve as a lesson. So then: why death? Why now? I don’t know if I have an answer and maybe there is no answer that I should be looking for, but the thing of it is that I know I’m afraid of death, and I don’t like to think about it, but it happens and inevitably I have to deal with it. And I know that- I just don’t like to. Maybe that’s why it’s coming up.
It’s certainly not as if I’ve never had to deal with death. When I was younger I attended the funerals of great aunts and uncles, cousins, family friends, and friend’s family members- it’s just that death, no matter whose, always makes me feel so completely saddened and utterly lost. Not necessarily saddened at the loss of the person who has died, but sad for their loved ones who are still alive, if that makes sense. When I see the grief on someone else’s face I want to be able to tell them its going to be ok, but I feel like that’s just not going to do anything for them and beyond that it’s just a false comfort. And I guess the thing that scares me is that one day I will know that loss on a far more personal level than I ever have before and I’m just not sure what I would do about it.
Maybe reminders of death aren’t such a bad thing then. I’m not saying we should become numb to it, because I don’t want to believe that that could ever be possible and I don’t think it could truly happen anyway. But I think that it’s a necessity because it’s something that we all get faced with sooner or later in our lives.
There’s more I have to say on death. Since it’s been invading my life for the last two months I’ve done a bit of thinking on it, like I mentioned. But perhaps the rest, which relates to death penalties, war, and far more political things, can be saved for another time. After all, a person can only take so much death for one day.
So with that I’ll end here, and simply say, apropos of the subject matter and time of year: Happy Halloween.
I have a co-worker who likes to tell me about superstitions his parents passed down to him from their Jamaican ancestry and most recently when I informed him of a relative of a friend who had died, he graciously put on his most superstitious voice when he informed me that apparently death comes in threes. Great.
Its not that I necessarily fear death in some enormous way, it’s simply that since I’ve been young I’ve had this anxiety about it that has manifested itself in fear of losing my parents, and losing my father in particular. Now understand, my parents are wonderful examples of how to grow old gracefully and allow nature to take its proper course- my mother never tried to dye her hair when it went gray and my dad- though holding on the last bastions of his youth by hair-spraying his nearly non-existent locks into permanence- has always laughed at himself for it and known that ultimately he will get old and lose his hair and it will be ok. But see the thing of it is that my parents are getting older and my mother as of late has expressed a fear of how many years she and my father have left given that 3 of their 4 parents died before hitting their late seventies. So two years ago when she asked me to be the one to determine when to pull the plug if either of them should be on life support I got a little nervous. I don’t like thinking about them going and while I know that death happens inevitably to everyone I can’t imagine what it would be like to have one parent without the other or have neither of them around at all. They are too much in need of one another and have maintained our family traditions throughout so much that I just don’t know who could ever take their place when their gone- if anyone really could or should.
Anyway, I’ve always been a believer that as you move through life, things come up that hit you over the head and serve as a lesson. So then: why death? Why now? I don’t know if I have an answer and maybe there is no answer that I should be looking for, but the thing of it is that I know I’m afraid of death, and I don’t like to think about it, but it happens and inevitably I have to deal with it. And I know that- I just don’t like to. Maybe that’s why it’s coming up.
It’s certainly not as if I’ve never had to deal with death. When I was younger I attended the funerals of great aunts and uncles, cousins, family friends, and friend’s family members- it’s just that death, no matter whose, always makes me feel so completely saddened and utterly lost. Not necessarily saddened at the loss of the person who has died, but sad for their loved ones who are still alive, if that makes sense. When I see the grief on someone else’s face I want to be able to tell them its going to be ok, but I feel like that’s just not going to do anything for them and beyond that it’s just a false comfort. And I guess the thing that scares me is that one day I will know that loss on a far more personal level than I ever have before and I’m just not sure what I would do about it.
Maybe reminders of death aren’t such a bad thing then. I’m not saying we should become numb to it, because I don’t want to believe that that could ever be possible and I don’t think it could truly happen anyway. But I think that it’s a necessity because it’s something that we all get faced with sooner or later in our lives.
There’s more I have to say on death. Since it’s been invading my life for the last two months I’ve done a bit of thinking on it, like I mentioned. But perhaps the rest, which relates to death penalties, war, and far more political things, can be saved for another time. After all, a person can only take so much death for one day.
So with that I’ll end here, and simply say, apropos of the subject matter and time of year: Happy Halloween.
Monday, September 3, 2007
All in the Family
Whenever I think about family I always imagine pushing my hands deep into warm mud and pulling the roots up to the surface for inspection.
As a rule I never write about my family, but family does come up, primarily because it impacts us. It is so influential that it’s never a topic that can be avoided for long. In the next few weeks I go home for my niece’s christening and family, as such comes to mind once again. I went home recently for a vacation and it was the first time in a while that I spent more then 3 days with my family all in one sitting. Usually I can only take a few days at a time, and its not because they are terrible people, its not because I hate them, its because our dynamic usually only works for a few days at a time and then it becomes too much. For us I think it becomes too much because there is to much that has always remained unsaid within our family. We just aren’t emotionally expressive people and when you pair that with the things we’ve gone through it just makes us more inclined to try and ignore our feelings but less inclined to be able to do so.
Anway. I think family is tough for everyone though- I mean after all, your family members are the ones that have known you the longest and while they ultimately have perceptions of you that can be left over from times of skinned knees and self- absorbed childhood, they do see those small bits of our personalities that have been there since day one and that usually go unnoticed by others unless they look very closely. Maybe in a way that’s what keeps some of us tied to our family. Although they may never understand us intimately, they know us intimately and maybe sometimes it can be comforting to know that someone out there knows about how we developed into who we are- they were present and witnessed it for us.
This, I think, is the reason I believe your family is not just made up of those related to you. Sure, inevitably- unless your circumstances dictated otherwise- your family members bore witness to your development, but I think if anyone cares enough and pays close enough attention they can begin to know us at a different level as well. And then there are those life experiences that you share with others that push you into development together and inevitably create a situation where that other person then begins to know you intimately, even if they don’t understand you. This makes family too I think.
Creation of family throughout life for me has become important. Not the creation of a family-as in having kids or getting married- but the creation of family. Making an effort to bear witness to what others need someone to witness, accepting and understanding things as part of the eternal development we all go through, and likewise inviting people into my life that can do that same for me.
So in a few weeks, when I go back home for this christening, even though I disagree with the religion and even though I may never understand my brothers drive to christen his daughter, or my niece’s future perceptions of religion-whatever they end up being-I will have bore witness to this part of her development, this part of her creation and I can say that I know her and that she is my family. And in a way, as stilted as the interactions can sometimes get amongst family, it’s a comfort – at least to me- to continue the tradition of bearing witness and building family.
As a rule I never write about my family, but family does come up, primarily because it impacts us. It is so influential that it’s never a topic that can be avoided for long. In the next few weeks I go home for my niece’s christening and family, as such comes to mind once again. I went home recently for a vacation and it was the first time in a while that I spent more then 3 days with my family all in one sitting. Usually I can only take a few days at a time, and its not because they are terrible people, its not because I hate them, its because our dynamic usually only works for a few days at a time and then it becomes too much. For us I think it becomes too much because there is to much that has always remained unsaid within our family. We just aren’t emotionally expressive people and when you pair that with the things we’ve gone through it just makes us more inclined to try and ignore our feelings but less inclined to be able to do so.
Anway. I think family is tough for everyone though- I mean after all, your family members are the ones that have known you the longest and while they ultimately have perceptions of you that can be left over from times of skinned knees and self- absorbed childhood, they do see those small bits of our personalities that have been there since day one and that usually go unnoticed by others unless they look very closely. Maybe in a way that’s what keeps some of us tied to our family. Although they may never understand us intimately, they know us intimately and maybe sometimes it can be comforting to know that someone out there knows about how we developed into who we are- they were present and witnessed it for us.
This, I think, is the reason I believe your family is not just made up of those related to you. Sure, inevitably- unless your circumstances dictated otherwise- your family members bore witness to your development, but I think if anyone cares enough and pays close enough attention they can begin to know us at a different level as well. And then there are those life experiences that you share with others that push you into development together and inevitably create a situation where that other person then begins to know you intimately, even if they don’t understand you. This makes family too I think.
Creation of family throughout life for me has become important. Not the creation of a family-as in having kids or getting married- but the creation of family. Making an effort to bear witness to what others need someone to witness, accepting and understanding things as part of the eternal development we all go through, and likewise inviting people into my life that can do that same for me.
So in a few weeks, when I go back home for this christening, even though I disagree with the religion and even though I may never understand my brothers drive to christen his daughter, or my niece’s future perceptions of religion-whatever they end up being-I will have bore witness to this part of her development, this part of her creation and I can say that I know her and that she is my family. And in a way, as stilted as the interactions can sometimes get amongst family, it’s a comfort – at least to me- to continue the tradition of bearing witness and building family.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Its only 9AM and already sticky-hot. Every window in my apartment is slammed open but still there is no movement, no air. Its not even August yet and my movements are already labored and slow. It’s as if the atmosphere is so thick that, like in water, it takes all your energy just to move through it. As much as I am used to North East heat nothing quite compares to the mixture of car fumes and steam as it rises sizzling off the sidewalks and concrete buildings of a city, though at least the neighborhood is silent.
Unlike many of the major neighborhoods in NYC and Brooklyn, my neighborhood shuts down on the weekends in the most peculiar way- on one side of my street things are quiet Saturdays on the other its Sundays. This, I’m sure, has to do with the division between Hasidic Jews on one side and Christians on the other. And as testament to that, along with the quiet and as the sun sets each weekend day you see alternately:
men with curls and large black hats holding the hands of their wives in skirts and head scarves as their children run ahead in yarmulkes screaming at the top of their lungs at having lost the race.
deeply wrinkled elderly African American women walking in groups of two or three in bright pink, yellow, and blue skirt suits with the most ornate lace, tulle, and faux flower topped Sunday best hats you may ever see in your life.
Occasionally on a given Sunday you will also see these two groups entrenched in some sort of parade through the neighborhood. On one particular Sunday I was privy to a group of entirely male Hassid’s dancing and singing their way down the street behind a float of a giant crown that was turning and blaring music ahead of them. On another day I woke to hearing drums and horns making their way down the main street followed by elderly African American men in those straw hats seen so much around the 1940’s in political campaigns, women in that same Sunday garb moving tightly from side to side, and a casket topped with flowers being brought by four young African American men in suits. This neighborhood indeed has its own character.
The thing that saddens me about this neighborhood though is that not too long ago a major section of it was declared historic. While that works to preserve some of the buildings and the like, ultimately what it tends to be is a looming indicator of gentrification- for that matter so am I. The thing of it is that gentrification can occur in several ways from what I understand. By proclaiming a neighborhood historic what ultimately happens is it becomes increasingly difficult for the current landlords to make changes and improvements to their buildings without going through the proper community boards and historic societies. The cost of renovating a building so that it maintains its historic status and manner gets higher and higher with all the approval needed and all the mandates for type and quality of improvement increasing. Eventually landlords currently there cannot afford to maintain their buildings to historic standards and thus sell them off to wealthier and oftentimes whiter individuals and businesses.
Another way it occurs is this: since the real estate market in a given community is, in part, based on the crime demographics, statistics, and crime projections for the population of that community, and since crime demographics, statistics and crime projections are often heavily skewed to equate poverty with crime, blackness with poverty, and blackness with crime, when African Americans are in a neighborhood the property value remains low( read that again if you’d like, but it is an unfortunately true and terribly racist fact). When African Americans move to a neighborhood the property value actually lowers, and when whites move into a neighborhood it effectively goes up. When young white cheap rent hunters start to move to these neighborhoods this in turn allows the landlords to charge more for rent, effectively pushing out the lower income population which does tend to be African American - an unfortunate truth given the racism still rife in employment and education. This changes the neighborhood makeup toward a whiter population who can oftentimes afford more simply based on the fact that their pay scale is higher than that of the average African American. It begins with whites who produce high turnover for the neighborhood- namely young, single, trend seeking whites who move into and out of neighborhoods based on where the cheapest rent is. They locate the relatively lower income-but-on-the-rise neighborhoods and move on in. Being fresh out of college and on the job market they are making less than their older counterparts, but more than the majority of their African American counterparts and as such can afford to rent out more space for less people. This even has the effect of pushing out middle income families who are renting primarily because when landlords see young whites they remember the adage about the property value increase and work to actually push out many established families who may or may not be making them less money than the single white person. When they new group begins to earn more and populate the neighborhood, more shops, restaurants, and the like pop up to cater to their needs/wants over the needs and wants of the previous community. At this point the community can go one of several ways- it can either continue to grow as a den of commerce and work itself into a demographically white focused shopping/ dining area with a primarily singular population or it can blossom from a high turn over single white neighborhood into a neighborhood for young white families as they stay, procreate, and increase their level of income, or it can do a little of both.
Either way its clear what can happen and it is of significance that as my paragraph wore on my discussion of the lower middle class to middle class African Americans in the community faded out. The fact of the matter is that the majority get priced out and then demographically and socially weeded out. Its an unfortunate and very real cycle and as I sit here in my over heating apartment somewhere directly between the two much older and much better established communities I know for a fact- and have since the day I made the choice to move here- that I am part of this process. I am a young, single, white, woman who moved into this neighborhood because the rent was cheaper than the neighborhood I left. I moved into a spacious 1 bedroom apartment once inhabited by an African American wife and husband and their small child. Where two incomes once supported this apartment one now does and my landlord knows that where there is one young white person to fill a rent slot more can and probably will come.
So I guess the thing I grapple with when I begin this train of thought is what can I do about it? Do I move to a neighborhood I cannot afford? Do I move out of the city entirely so as to avoid the generally high prices that are rampant throughout? Do I make a concerted effort to support the businesses that are currently here so as to assist, in whatever tiny way, in the continuation of this neighborhood as is? The last is what I choose to do and yet I feel that it’s still not enough. I work and live in this community, shop as much as possible here, and try like hell not to be imposing about my needs and wants, but just as being only one person I did not create the gentrification process in this neighborhood, being only one person I cannot stop it. All I can do is live here, maintain my awareness, and work with what my community gives me- one side of the street shut down on Saturdays the other on Sundays and a whole lot of other fascinating little differences in between.
Unlike many of the major neighborhoods in NYC and Brooklyn, my neighborhood shuts down on the weekends in the most peculiar way- on one side of my street things are quiet Saturdays on the other its Sundays. This, I’m sure, has to do with the division between Hasidic Jews on one side and Christians on the other. And as testament to that, along with the quiet and as the sun sets each weekend day you see alternately:
men with curls and large black hats holding the hands of their wives in skirts and head scarves as their children run ahead in yarmulkes screaming at the top of their lungs at having lost the race.
deeply wrinkled elderly African American women walking in groups of two or three in bright pink, yellow, and blue skirt suits with the most ornate lace, tulle, and faux flower topped Sunday best hats you may ever see in your life.
Occasionally on a given Sunday you will also see these two groups entrenched in some sort of parade through the neighborhood. On one particular Sunday I was privy to a group of entirely male Hassid’s dancing and singing their way down the street behind a float of a giant crown that was turning and blaring music ahead of them. On another day I woke to hearing drums and horns making their way down the main street followed by elderly African American men in those straw hats seen so much around the 1940’s in political campaigns, women in that same Sunday garb moving tightly from side to side, and a casket topped with flowers being brought by four young African American men in suits. This neighborhood indeed has its own character.
The thing that saddens me about this neighborhood though is that not too long ago a major section of it was declared historic. While that works to preserve some of the buildings and the like, ultimately what it tends to be is a looming indicator of gentrification- for that matter so am I. The thing of it is that gentrification can occur in several ways from what I understand. By proclaiming a neighborhood historic what ultimately happens is it becomes increasingly difficult for the current landlords to make changes and improvements to their buildings without going through the proper community boards and historic societies. The cost of renovating a building so that it maintains its historic status and manner gets higher and higher with all the approval needed and all the mandates for type and quality of improvement increasing. Eventually landlords currently there cannot afford to maintain their buildings to historic standards and thus sell them off to wealthier and oftentimes whiter individuals and businesses.
Another way it occurs is this: since the real estate market in a given community is, in part, based on the crime demographics, statistics, and crime projections for the population of that community, and since crime demographics, statistics and crime projections are often heavily skewed to equate poverty with crime, blackness with poverty, and blackness with crime, when African Americans are in a neighborhood the property value remains low( read that again if you’d like, but it is an unfortunately true and terribly racist fact). When African Americans move to a neighborhood the property value actually lowers, and when whites move into a neighborhood it effectively goes up. When young white cheap rent hunters start to move to these neighborhoods this in turn allows the landlords to charge more for rent, effectively pushing out the lower income population which does tend to be African American - an unfortunate truth given the racism still rife in employment and education. This changes the neighborhood makeup toward a whiter population who can oftentimes afford more simply based on the fact that their pay scale is higher than that of the average African American. It begins with whites who produce high turnover for the neighborhood- namely young, single, trend seeking whites who move into and out of neighborhoods based on where the cheapest rent is. They locate the relatively lower income-but-on-the-rise neighborhoods and move on in. Being fresh out of college and on the job market they are making less than their older counterparts, but more than the majority of their African American counterparts and as such can afford to rent out more space for less people. This even has the effect of pushing out middle income families who are renting primarily because when landlords see young whites they remember the adage about the property value increase and work to actually push out many established families who may or may not be making them less money than the single white person. When they new group begins to earn more and populate the neighborhood, more shops, restaurants, and the like pop up to cater to their needs/wants over the needs and wants of the previous community. At this point the community can go one of several ways- it can either continue to grow as a den of commerce and work itself into a demographically white focused shopping/ dining area with a primarily singular population or it can blossom from a high turn over single white neighborhood into a neighborhood for young white families as they stay, procreate, and increase their level of income, or it can do a little of both.
Either way its clear what can happen and it is of significance that as my paragraph wore on my discussion of the lower middle class to middle class African Americans in the community faded out. The fact of the matter is that the majority get priced out and then demographically and socially weeded out. Its an unfortunate and very real cycle and as I sit here in my over heating apartment somewhere directly between the two much older and much better established communities I know for a fact- and have since the day I made the choice to move here- that I am part of this process. I am a young, single, white, woman who moved into this neighborhood because the rent was cheaper than the neighborhood I left. I moved into a spacious 1 bedroom apartment once inhabited by an African American wife and husband and their small child. Where two incomes once supported this apartment one now does and my landlord knows that where there is one young white person to fill a rent slot more can and probably will come.
So I guess the thing I grapple with when I begin this train of thought is what can I do about it? Do I move to a neighborhood I cannot afford? Do I move out of the city entirely so as to avoid the generally high prices that are rampant throughout? Do I make a concerted effort to support the businesses that are currently here so as to assist, in whatever tiny way, in the continuation of this neighborhood as is? The last is what I choose to do and yet I feel that it’s still not enough. I work and live in this community, shop as much as possible here, and try like hell not to be imposing about my needs and wants, but just as being only one person I did not create the gentrification process in this neighborhood, being only one person I cannot stop it. All I can do is live here, maintain my awareness, and work with what my community gives me- one side of the street shut down on Saturdays the other on Sundays and a whole lot of other fascinating little differences in between.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
If you can make it Here?
Earlier this week there was a taxi cab parked in my back yard. Every Friday a siren goes off throughout the neighborhood at 8pm sharp and lasts for about a minute to 2 minutes. I looked up to see a star the other day but all I could make out was a satellite. Sometimes I get very worn out on the concept of New York .
A lot of the time I look at it like a challenge to live in NYC. I think its a fascinating place with tons of people from all over and tons of opportunity to experience whatever it is you want to experience, but more often than not I'm tired of getting cat calls in my neighborhood, I'm tired of getting jostled on busy streets and actively avoiding certain streets because they are so riddled with tourists stopping and staring upward, making it so that you can't get through. I'm exhausted by the filth that deposits itself on my windows and my lungs, I'm tired of being in steamy smelly subway stations and smelling urine on any given street corner.
So what is it that keeps me here? Maybe its a desire to prove myself, maybe its stubbornness in not wanting to move yet again, and not being sure where I'd want to go anyway, but beyond all this, sometimes I think part of me looks at it this way: If I can find peace in NYC then maybe I can find peace wherever it is I decide to go. Maybe if I can meet this challenge everything else will be a lot easier to handle and a lot less scary for me. Or maybe its something else...
I had a client this evening tell me that he was sure I grew up with rose bushes and little puppy dogs and a nice house. He said he felt like I couldn't understand him becuase while I grew up like that, he grew up in 1970's New York with broken bottles and pit bulls. Maybe in a way thats what I'm trying to understand about this place. New York has become such a mockery of itself, such a Disney Land for grown-ups that maybe I'm trying to stay here to figure out what it means to have grown up that way, to be born in a place that has seen such opposing sides of the spectrum, and to understand that pull that New York has on so many people, residents and tourists alike- myself included. New York, if nothing else, is a fascinating social experiment for the simple fact that you have the uber rich and the utterly poor all within the same city and you have so many different and oftentimes opposing cultures living in such close proximity, yet they all somehow manage to coexist. What I want to know is how and why.
I don't think anywhere else on the planet is quite like NYC and I think that That- regardless of all the sexual harassment, garbage, extravagance, and over the top capitalism- is what keeps me here. At least until I have a somewhat satisfying answer to my how and why...or grow tired of trying to figure it all out.
A lot of the time I look at it like a challenge to live in NYC. I think its a fascinating place with tons of people from all over and tons of opportunity to experience whatever it is you want to experience, but more often than not I'm tired of getting cat calls in my neighborhood, I'm tired of getting jostled on busy streets and actively avoiding certain streets because they are so riddled with tourists stopping and staring upward, making it so that you can't get through. I'm exhausted by the filth that deposits itself on my windows and my lungs, I'm tired of being in steamy smelly subway stations and smelling urine on any given street corner.
So what is it that keeps me here? Maybe its a desire to prove myself, maybe its stubbornness in not wanting to move yet again, and not being sure where I'd want to go anyway, but beyond all this, sometimes I think part of me looks at it this way: If I can find peace in NYC then maybe I can find peace wherever it is I decide to go. Maybe if I can meet this challenge everything else will be a lot easier to handle and a lot less scary for me. Or maybe its something else...
I had a client this evening tell me that he was sure I grew up with rose bushes and little puppy dogs and a nice house. He said he felt like I couldn't understand him becuase while I grew up like that, he grew up in 1970's New York with broken bottles and pit bulls. Maybe in a way thats what I'm trying to understand about this place. New York has become such a mockery of itself, such a Disney Land for grown-ups that maybe I'm trying to stay here to figure out what it means to have grown up that way, to be born in a place that has seen such opposing sides of the spectrum, and to understand that pull that New York has on so many people, residents and tourists alike- myself included. New York, if nothing else, is a fascinating social experiment for the simple fact that you have the uber rich and the utterly poor all within the same city and you have so many different and oftentimes opposing cultures living in such close proximity, yet they all somehow manage to coexist. What I want to know is how and why.
I don't think anywhere else on the planet is quite like NYC and I think that That- regardless of all the sexual harassment, garbage, extravagance, and over the top capitalism- is what keeps me here. At least until I have a somewhat satisfying answer to my how and why...or grow tired of trying to figure it all out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)