A brief description of me

"I also imagined that this truth-seeking might restore something vital in my core." -- Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise

Mental gymnastics

Rather than getting the restorative break that I needed up at the cabin, I returned home feeling exhausted and a wee bit ... broken.

Although I slept like the dead in that fresh air and the unusually comfortable bed, I stayed up too late each night. And during the days and evenings, I did not have the right environment to enter into the meditational space I normally access more easily when I'm up at the lake.

Some of this was related to my well-founded concerns about taking a child up there with me. As much as Rather Shy Classmate's young daughter may have taught me a thing or two, I prefer more solitude -- and considerably less effort at negotiation -- when it comes to my vacation time. So ... sorry, folks, no more kiddies at the cabin.

But the other problem is the mental gymnastics in which I seem to have become vigorously engaged in recent weeks. I've got intellectual pursuits in terms of the independent study about death and dying that I'm doing this coming fall. I've also been faced with questions of a spiritual nature in the past couple months. And it seems that some of the unresolved -- and, I think, perhaps unresolvable -- issues from my childhood and adolescence are making themselves felt lately.

The end result is that I am almost fully and completely EXHAUSTED. I feel like I need another week -- alone -- at the cabin. Or, at the very least, several serious spa treatments. A long, hot bath. Mud packed all over my body. Another long, hot bath. A two-hour massage, followed by being wrapped in hot towels. Then, a facial.

And then, sex. Yeah. Some goddamned physical intimacy! Someone to touch me lovingly and fearlessly, already full of the knowing of me. No explanations necessary.

Followed by ... food. Food that I have not cooked for myself. Food that has not come from the Thai place downstairs. Food about which I have made no decisions but with which I will have no qualms. Food that has been whipped up (or at least ordered for delivery) by someone else. Someone who knows my palate, my appetites, my delights.

In short, I just want to be taken care of for a little while instead of always taking care of myself (and sometimes others).

Is that too much to ask?

Apparently.

Because rather than getting any of that, I'm instead cleaning my home and preparing for a party. A party that someone else is technically hosting but is doing so in my home -- and for which I'll be cooking a couple things. This party is on Wednesday. It's a sad occasion, really. Marking two years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and displaced my friend King Rex. He is the one having the party here.

Let me get something straight: I support the party. In fact, it seems to have been my idea. (Kinda, sorta. I suggested he do "something" to mark that dramatic experience, which forced him to flee New Orleans and land here in Portland.) But I also did not expect to come back from the lake feeling so TIRED. So getting ready for this party is feeling a lot more difficult than I anticipated.

That happened with the last party I threw, too. I let myself get talked into having a Mardi Gras party just a few weeks after my aunt, a New Orleans native, died. And I felt outrageously sluggish while preparing for it. The closer and closer it got to Mardi Gras, the more leaden I felt.

Now that I think of it, I suspect some of the problem I'm having right about now is related to my aunt's death. A year ago this week, I was visiting her in Hawaii, and I filmed about five hours of interviews with her. I knew she was dying, so I conducted a life story interview with her. It was a rich thing to do.

The visit was also marked by several important conversations between the two of us. Boiled down to simplicity, it was the stuff of life and death, the work of finding love and connection and of not being dogged by one's parents.

At the same time, I was freaking out a little. I kept calling home -- meaning I kept calling S2 because there is no "home" for me to call when I'm out of town (me being the only resident) -- and fretting about things. I described it to her as home sickness, but the truth is that I needed some sense of an anchor elsewhere.

My aunt had always represented an anchor for me, the one person in the world I knew would love me no matter what. And seeing how frail she had become since my last visit -- 16 months prior, before she was diagnosed with lymphoma -- was too clear a message about her impending departure. So I kept reaching out to S2, just to persuade myself that I had a life somewhere else and that it was populated by at least one other person who cared about me, even though neither she nor anyone else will ever be a person who "loves me no matter what."

This observation isn't meant to dis S2 or anyone else who cares about me. It's more about losing the person in whom I actually had that kind of faith. We don't get many people like that in our lives, and I feel lucky for having had even just one.

But I've lost that person -- and I haven't even got someone who will pretend to fill that role, as a partner might -- and that is feeling like another gigantic hole in my life. Joining the holes of no longer having XGF in my life, not having a family of my own, not having financial security of any sort, not having any sense of security whatsoever. On top of the spiritual questions and the unresolved trauma and the insecurity I'm feeling about my career change, it's all feeling like a bit too much.

I spent a while talking to S2 tonight about what's bothering me. She said it sounded like I was looking for an answer to a question I don't even know how to ask. She also said that maybe my intellect is poorly matched with my motivation. (Too smart, not enough drive to do anything with it.)

Both of those comments have the resonance of truth to me. But I can't even begin to articulate why.

I'll have to think about it. One more routine to add to my mental gymnastics performance.

But first, sleep. And maybe, if I can find a good deal at a reputable place, a little spa action.

Into the Woods...

I'm taking a few days this week to get out of the city, heading up to my favorite haunt in the Olympic Mountains.

If weather reports are accurate, I'll be getting to take a few days of sun, canoeing on a fabulously scenic lake by morning and kicking back in an Adirondak chair on the lawn, sipping kahlua and cream at sundown.

Every time I go up to this place, which I do often, I miss XGF a little bit. On our first real "vacation," -- not a weekend away to the coast -- we found some quaint lake-side cabins where time appears to have stopped back in the 1930s. It's not "retro," it's really just that way. The bathrooms have been modernized, but the rest of the cabins have just been maintained well since being built in the 1920s.

I'm not going to publish the name of the place because I don't want word getting out about it. It's already hard enough to get a reservation there in the summer and quite tricky the rest of the year, too. I had a honest-to-goodness nightmare last night that Martha Stewart was up there (staying in my cabin with me) and was so charmed by the place that she wanted to feature it on her show. I got pissed and told her she'd better not.

It's honestly not *all that* in a way that would impress Martha, but I love the place and look forward to my visit each time.

What do I tell my friends about it? That it's the most restorative place I know. The cabins are nestled, at a respectable distance from one another, in the forest of cedars, firs and hemlocks. A few of them are built a the line where the forest ends in a rocky promontory overlooking the lake, which is accessible by nearby stairs.

In the early morning, otters swim in the lake just below the cabins, looking for breakfast in the shallower water there. All day long, you can watch birds in the surrounding forest, including bald eagles. At night, when it's clear, you are treated to magnificent and open panoramas of the dark heavens, hundreds of miles away from any big cities.

I'll be going there for the first time ever with a child. This makes me a little anxious, because kids have a way of spoiling the peace and quiet just when a the weight of one's eyelids is calling for an afternoon nap. So I'll keep my fingers crossed that the 8-year-old who is joining us is subject to rational dialogue.

But just in case, I'm bringing Hershey's Kisses with peanut butter filling to BRIBE THE CHILD, if necessary. And I'm brining a few bottles of wine (and last-ditch pharmaceuticals) for me and/or her mother, Rather Shy Classmate, if my bribery goes awry and I end up creating a sugar-crazed monster.

So that's my story. I'm off for a few days. With any luck, I'll return feeling renewed and ready for whatever comes next.

What "The Muffin" told me & other memories

XGF set me straight earlier today when she commented on my previous post. Turns out The Muffin -- that whacky former neighbor of ours -- did in fact tell me what "The Answer" was.

She said only, "One."

How could I forget that?

Considering my elephantine ways with recalling conversations, it is unusual for me to need reminding about what someone told me. But it does occasionally happen.

Thankfully, there are a few people out in the world who remember some of the stuff I forget. XGF is one. My sister is another.

That brings me to my next topic, which is the matter of what we want people to remember about us. As S2 noted in a conversation last night -- and then, again this afternoon -- I've become a little "obsessed" lately with narrative. (It's not really "lately," per se. It's a long-running obsession.)

But I've been talking to her about it a lot because I've started narrowing the focus for an independent study I'm doing at school this fall. I'm specifically interested in exploring the intersection between the narrative we tell about our lives -- the meaning we give to our experiences, the way we conceptualize what our intent has been (often retrospectively), the things we want people to believe about us -- and the process of facing death, as when one is diagnosed with a terminal illness.

I'm not going to go into my developing theory or approach on this here blog. It's not well-formed yet, and when it finally does get well-formed, I intend to bottle and sell it rather than giving it away for free on the Internet.

But, because I always try to provide my readers with a little taste of the quirk that is my approach to life, I will tell you what I did last weekend, when I was working a LOOOOOOOONG day at the H4TCI.

I wrote S2's life story. Without her permission or even her knowledge. Personally, I think that may be a little ... rude, because it does technically belong to her. And the fact that I wrote it in first person ... well, some people might consider that a violation in some way.

But your UCM is nothing if not faithfully and earnestly disrespectful. So I went ahead and did it anyway.

Now, to be fair, just because I claim to have written her "life story" doesn't mean I wrote it accurately. It is, admittedly, a flawed version of events. It starts out with the flaw of being drawn only on the base of our conversations over the past two years, conversations that were never intended to transmit her life story.

Also, S2 is essentially a private person, so she keeps a lot of personal stuff to herself.

And, finally, I do so much of the talking in our relationship that she appeared to me last night in a dream and said she had found me hiding where I was (hiding from murderous space aliens) because, "I heard you talking. You were talking to yourself. Apparently, you are *always* talking!") So with all my talking, it's possible S2 has not found an open mic within our friendship through which she could actually transmit her life stories. (Truth: S2 has never in waking life complained to me that I talk to much. That's my own issue.)

Anyway, it turns out that I've collected more data than I realized. I wrote a little more than four pages, single spaced, and S2 said I "hit all the big ones." And in talking about it, I realized again how much more I actually knew -- particularly the ways in which she once used her parent's credit card -- that I was not able to tap into while I was doing this exercise.

Exactly what the *point* of my exercise was, however, is not quite clear. Some of it stemmed from a conversation last week in which I told S2 I think she knows a lot more about me than I know about her. (Perhaps if I would stop talking sometimes....) Some it stemmed from this "obsession" I have with life narrative. Some of it was just a matter of testing my memory, particularly when it hadn't been intentionally collecting information.

It was such an interesting thing to do that I considered trying my hand at more people in my life. Just to see what I think I know about them and what they're telling me about themselves. Or, at least, what I have managed to remember.

The only problem with that idea -- truth: there are actually *many* problems with it -- is that I don't have the time to do it. I can barely keep up on my own life story. My frame of reference seems to be shifting in ways I can't quite catch up to right now.

However, at some point, I imagine this might be part of the work I do with people. If that's so -- and if death begins to malinger on your horizon (or if you are just interested in giving form to your story) -- hunt me down, and we'll do some work around it.

In the meantime, I guess I can say to S2: I gotcha covered.*

(*indicates a margin of error +/- 3 percent)

Non-linear thoughts about muffins

I tried baking something for the the first time today: homemade muffins.

However, I was talking on the phone to True Tomato (admittedly, a *strange* psuedonym -- very sorry -- but now we're stuck with it) ... so I was talking on the phone with her while mixing this batter. I forgot to add the milk. I realized this while trying to mix the wet ingredients with the dry. So then I added the milk.

It was positively sloppy batter -- when it was supposed to be on the "barely wet" side -- so I added some more flour, corn meal and baking powder.

Seemed to save the consistency of the outcome from being too terrible. But I didn't quite get the baking soda as well mixed in as I should have, and the result is the occasional unexpected bitter spot. I'll call them "UCM's Bitter Surprise Blueberry Muffins." Whatcha think?

Gotta dozen of 'em here with your name on 'em. First come, first served!

Suffice it to say, I'll be paying closer attention to the recipe the next time I try to bake something. As they say, cooking is an art, and baking is a science. You can't usually go hibbity-jibbity on the ingredients like I did at the end and expect things to turn out alright.

I'll be trying something new next time.

I like muffins.

A little tangent here: XGF and I used to live next door to this whacky lady I inexplicably nicknamed "The Muffin" one day. (This was in days before I was eating muffins on a regular basis; now, I would not insult muffins in that way. I may not have much respect for humanity, but I sure respect muffins!)

Anyway, The Muffin ... why did I name her that? I think it had something to do with what she looked like when all bundled up in her winter clothes. She moved up here from California, and I think the damp chill here in winter and spring was not to her liking. She wore excessive amounts of material on her face, around her neck and atop her head until WAAAAAAY after I was out mowing the lawn in my shorts.

She was a soft-spoken woman of about 60 who struck me as a little feeble minded. Feeble minded just so that most people wouldn't recognize it. Least of all herself.

Conversations with her were always peculiar. A lot of them were about her endless searching searching searching for some kind of spiritual something-or-other that was going to liberate and exonerate her for being "the awful, terrible person I was."

It was also hard for me to imagine The Muffin used to be an awful, terrible person -- or that she "was" one, anyway, because there were days I thought she might still be one. Mainly, I just wondered what she meant by that. XGF and I used to speculate. We'd work ourselves into small convulsions of laughter, trying to imagine The Muffin as a "awful, terrible person."

The Muffin as mafia hit woman. The Muffin as a disease-spreading junkie seriel killer. The Muffin as a suburban housewife. The Muffin as ... as ... what? I mean: WHAT did that woman think was so bad?

Maybe she was just a person without religion. Maybe that's what she meant.

A person like me.

Except for the part where she's feeble minded and I'm not.

And I'm not searching searching searching -- because I don't believe there is "An Answer." But The Muffin most certainly did. Sometimes, when I was sweeping the sidewalk or pulling weeds, she'd start talking to me about all that searching and the answer she had found.

I once asked her what "the answer" was, and she wouldn't tell me.

She got all funky and pious and righteous in her posture and voice -- not too much different than normal, really -- and told me she couldn't just out and outright tell me. Seems I would have to find it for myself.

At least she had some sensibility. If there is an "answer," it makes sense we'd have to find it on our own.

Not like spirituality -- or whatever -- is as simple as a recipe, as scientific as baking.

I've had reason to think a lot lately about "spirit" and consciousness and "the unseen" world around us. But I don't know how safe it is for me to proceed in my thinking, so it's occuring in fits and starts (and getting derailed by devilish people with their own pathetic motives). All in all, I am fighting a massive undertow of resistance.

Here's my latest excuse:

I screwed up a simple recipe for blueberry muffins. There's no telling what I might do to, say, Buddhism.

What a scream...

I had the occasion today to emit a scream the likes of which I can't recall issuing forth from me.

It seems to have hit a new register for my voice or something. Whatever the cause, the scream itself caused one of my front teeth -- one I chipped a long time ago -- to vibrate. I noticed this vibration immediately. It was ticklish and uncomfortable, like biting into something really cold.

The sensation caused me to shut my mouth suddenly, bringing the scream to a screeching halt.

Very weird. All the way around.

My tooth is still tripping out on it.

The Spirit Catches Me & You Get Knocked Down

There's something I've been learning about myself over the past few years. I didn't have a name for whatever it is I seem to do to people just with the sheer force of my personhood, but I was certainly aware that there was something about me which prompts extreme and polarizing things in people.

I always felt like I wasn't doing much of anything one way or another, but thought I certainly must have *worked* at offending those people who hated me -- even if I had no recollection of doing so. It's always been a mystery to me why so many people in this world have spit-polished their guillotines while sizing up my fair neck.

By the same token, I've long been utterly and completely mystified by the people who have become my friends. There's no rhyme or reason to the assemblage, and I never understood what attracts people to me. Especially those who seemed a bit ... ardent (and there have been a few).

The past couple weeks, however, have provided an opportunity to take a closer look at my polarizing capabilities.

I took on that slanderous evaluation with one of the instructors who wrote it and made clear my displeasure with it. She kept telling me there was a "bigger picture" and that it was a shame I was not "getting it."

In the process, she tried to saddle me with the idea that my colleagues were not being honest with me. HGM was right when he said my instructor engaged in "psychological malfeasance" when she tried to undermine my trust in my colleagues. Really, it was a wretched experience to come face-to-face with another one of those guillotine people and have to listen to squishy feedback that amounts to little more than, "We just don't like you (and neither do your peers). Neener neener neener...!"

I gave that woman a talking to the likes of which you people have never seen me dish up to anyone. I turned on my Bigger, Bad-Ass Revolutionary Lawyer Self and let 'er rip! I didn't cuss; I didn't use invective; and I didn't pull any punches. I let her know she had offended my deepest sense of morality and that my peers disagreed with her assessment that I had made the classroom environment "unsafe."

Watching her stubborn refusal -- even at the beginning, when I was questioning her quietly and openly -- to give one inch of consideration to the idea that *she* may also not be seeing "the bigger picture," I had to ask myself what I had done to evoke such replusion in this woman.

Here is an interesting part of the story:

In the opening round of questioning, I said, It appears you have no qualms with my clinical work, but it seems you do have objections to something that was happening at the conference table. (The conference table was in the classroom, where we discussed theory and practice with one another.) She nodded in agreement, as I continued, Tell me what your concern is.

She turned to a page in the back of the evaluation and read aloud, "Your eagerness to share an idea or an opinion can have a powerful effect on your clients, so awareness of that tendancy will be helpful." Then she looked at me. "If you substitute the word 'clients' with the word 'peer,' it's the same situation, the same concern."

Hmmm.

I know I'm not supposed to rattle clients with a bunch of ideas and opinions, so I do hold back quite a lot. I try to keep my ideas to myself, and help the client to find their own ideas. (I say "try to," because I recognize that even the questions we ask can be seen by clients as "suggestions.") Communication has many, many layers, and I imagine it's a good therapist's lifelong art process to have increasing awareness of those layers and to work within them.

One of the things our instructors imparted to us in practicum class is the notion that a client will tell you the thing they really want to tell you right up at the beginning of the session. It might be hidden in a lot of subtext, but these seasoned professionals say it's usually there.

So when I look back on the conversation-turned-revolutionary-lawyerspeak of the other day, I think about that first thing the instructor told me. The first thing she mentioned is a concern that my ideas and opinions "can have a powerful effect" on my colleagues.

Let's stop and think about that for a moment.

What the hell is so wrong with that? Are my ideas bad ones? Are my opinions outrageous?

It's important to note that I do NOT criticize the personhood of my peers. I do not question their role as the stand-in expert on their client (the client being the only real expert). I talk very little about the approach they used with a client, but will discuss client conceptualization freely.

So if under the circumstances, what I'm saying is neither bad nor outrageous nor illegal nor personally disrespectful, why and how am I to be held responsible for the "powerful effects" of my ideas and opinions? And what's wrong with an idea having a "powerful effect" anyway? Since when is that a crime?

Suddenly, looking at these questions, I feel an absurd (but logical and worrisome) kinship with Gallileo and anyone else who ever questioned the Church or the establishment.

Looked through this lens, the first thing my instructor chose to tell me about my evaluation is: "Your ideas are dangerous, madam!"

If the first thing said is the most important, does that mean the thing which frightens my professors so is that my peers might be listening to me?

Can that be for real?

Here's the other part of the story:

She was right. There was a bigger picture that I wasn't getting.

The exploration I've undertaken -- via the input of school colleagues and friends -- around why these instructors find me disrespectful and think I make the class "unsafe" has brought a new image of myself into focus.

We all have blindspots, and it can take something like this to point one out to us.

(I wish my teacher could read that sentence I just wrote and sense her righteousness for a moment. Because it would please me to crush her smugness with the following:)

Some people love me for the same exact reason that others hate or fear me. S2 said this to me the other night when I implored her to give me the straightest feedback she could manage.

"To be honest, I don't understand this feedback you're getting, and I really don't understand what they want you to do with it," she said. "But what I can tell you is that you have powerful energy that can fill up a room -- or just as easily bring it all down if your energy is pointed that direction."

I know this, but I also know I hadn't "brought it all down" this term. I enjoyed class for the most part. It was captivating to watch my peers do their work, and I loved discussing it.

But S2 was onto something. Her comments echoed ideas I have heard time and again. One colleague said her first impression of me was that I was "a force to be reckoned with," and that I "put myself forward with force." By this, she clarified, she did not mean that I was intentionally dominating a room or being rude. Rather, it was the density of my ideas, the succinct and powerful language with which I can express them in class and then some ineffable personality traits that people often summarize with the term "character."

"You're so obviously not from Portland," True Tomato (formerly the Classmate with No Nickname) told me. "You're a woman from the South." (She initiated our friendship by telling me that it was only when she learned I was from Texas that I started to "make sense" to her.)

I think she's got a point. My friend King Rex, native of New Orleans, doesn't seem to find me the least bit peculiar.

So there's something "cultural" in my presentation that makes me look a bit more colorful in character here than I might be if I were living where I grew up.

Whatever the hell is is about me -- call it energy, force, intensity, character, charisma -- that seems to stand out from the crowd is also what, as S2 notes, drives some people to love me and others to hate me.

Interestingly, many of my friends and colleagues reported feeling provoked by me before they got to know me. "Even though you didn't seem to notice me, I thought you might be not noticing me on purpose," one said. "I had a lot of projection around you. I was actually a bit fixated on you in the beginning because the way you were affecting me was so strong that I was fascinated by it. I wanted to know why, but I still can't explain it."

When I repeated this to S2, she told me she imagined that was a common experience for people to have around me, even if they can't describe it so clearly. "I don't think it's anything you can control or change," S2 said. "I think it's just the way you are. People react to you."

She also noted that I don't usually put my "best" part forward when it comes to intellectual discussions in class. I agree with this insight, but I also know that my "best" part is, in its tenderness and openness, a little too intimate for a lot of people. It's also a little too soft and exposed for me to share it willy-nilly. However, I think those two selves are fluid and cross into each other's space regularly, so that people who are paying attention and aren't overwhelmed by their projectsions about me end up seeing a more complex picture.

But even if you divide me into private ("best) and public personas, both still retain that "character." My public persona is not rude, disrespectful or mean-spirited. But it is outspoken. As is my private self. Both still speak directly, and both still regard the world with a probing intellectualism. And I think *that* is what provokes people.

(Should I attempt to change my personality just to make sure everyone around me feels comfortable? I don't think so. Variety makes life interesting. I should not have to become, in the words of one friend, "wall-to-wall beige" just so those who fit that description themselves can approve of me.)

My exploration further revealed that the key to whether people end up liking me or hating me seems to be whether they get to know me. Even if just on the middle ground between my private and public personas.

And this is the part of the lesson that would make my teacher's head spin. What I learned is that even though I seem to provoke emotional reactions in people, those who get to know me even just a little bit tend to use some rather glowing words to describe me:

Warm. Genuine. Open-hearted. Generous. Compassionate. Intelligent. Respectful. Caring. Tender. Big-hearted. Funny. Spirited. Colorful. Kind.

Repeatedly, my friends have told me that these instructors (who defamed my character by suggesting my respect for humanity is only "emerging") have obviously and clearly misunderstood me. "It's the only logical explanation," said one.

(S2 offered a sage piece of advice: "It will have to be your lifelong goal to always ensure that anyone doing an evaluation on you, anyone who supervises you, actually gets to know you." I'll have to do that.)

But in this feedback from my friends, I also note a word commonly used to describe me: "powerful."

Same word my teachers used in stating their concern about the influence of my ideas and opinions upon my peers. First reason they gave for what they think is wrong with me. Justification for why they have "reservations" about my ability to proceed in this line of work.

What message *should* I be "getting" here? What *is* the "bigger picture"?

Taking on the Ivory Tower

I'm going in to have a discussion with one of my instructors tomorrow about an evaluation of my work as a therapist. As noted in the previous entry, the marks for my clinical work put me a bit beyond "where I'm supposed to be" right now in my training -- which is a compliment to my skill -- but the evaluation contains a few ratings and a few words that cross the very fat line between valuable feedback and character defamation.

The instructors -- there are two of them who alternated coverage for the term -- called me "challenging" to the point of being "disrespectful." They also suggested my "behavior" had been "a detriment to the atmosphere and perception of safety in our class."

Further, they have "concerns" about certain character traits of mine. The most offensive to me is that they actually seem to question whether I "respect the fundamental rights, worth and dignity of all people." This is such a profoundly held part of my world view that I feel like an earnest but privately pious person who is having her faith in god questioned. It's really inappropriate.

I'm not claiming turf that belongs to the Dali Lama or anything, but I do know what I know about myself, and that is something I know. People, animals, insects, rocks, paper, scissors -- all of us and all other things are fundamental and essential to Life As We Know It. Every person has a role in this tremendous play, this drama, this comedy, this ongoing saga called "life," and that means -- friend or foe -- that we each have fundamental worth.

But my instructors don't think I get that. Instead, they seem to see me as a little scary or dangerous or something.

Of course, they never mentioned this to me during the term. They once said my "challenging" could be seen as "judgmental and dismissive," but they never told me my colleagues were feeling unsafe.

That is probably in part because my classmates never complained about any such thing. If there was a perception that the class wasn't "safe," it seems to have been experienced mainly by the instructors.

I guess I can understand that in some ways. Because at the bottom of all of this, I sense that one of these two professors -- if not both of them -- were intimidated by the pointed manner in which I questioned theory and practice. My learning process can include vigorous questioning. If I'm trying to understand something and I've got questions, I'll ask them. I pay $645 a credit hour for the privilege of doing so. I want my money's worth.

Which is why my Research Methods class was persistantly peppered with my requests of the instructor: Please explain that again, one more time. In English.

If I'm satisfied with your response, I'll sit back and let it sink in. If I still don't understand or if I want to solicit the input of others, I'll keep asking questions. This is especially the case when there is no concrete, right-or-wrong answer to the questions at hand.

Education for counselors is full of caveats and maybes. The work is fundamentally relational, and no one ever really knows what's going on in a relationship -- not even the people involved. No matter how much we may think we know, the true experiences and thoughts of others are a mystery to us. This is why humans invented the concept known as "trust."

So in exploring how we conceptualize what's going on with clients and how we choose the interventions we'll use, we're always relegated to making a guess. We hope it's a good, educated guess, but in the end, we are profoundly limited by an abiding Not Knowing.

Given that, any conversation about clients is no more than an exchange of ideas, a collection of possibilities. Our ideas should be challenged, not just for the sake of the clients but for our own self-awareness as therapists. Where we tell medical doctors, "Physician, heal thyself," a similar caution applies to therapists: "Counselor, know thyself."

That is a mighty and worthy challenge all unto its own, as anyone who has ever undertaken serious self-examination will tell you. And this class -- this live practicum -- was a ripe opportunity to explore our theory, our projections and our issues of counter-transference in a real way. Because several other people were able to observe the sessions, more opinions -- more ideas, more insights -- were theoretically accessible.

Of course, yours truly had PLENTY to say.

But what I unrolled in this particular class was what most of my friends and many of my colleagues would recognize as "UCM Lite." I was simply attempting to engage in the experience we were offered. In terms of counselor education, it is the rarest of opportunities -- likely the only we will ever have -- to sit and watch LIVE therapy going on or to be able to review a tape of an entire session. Patient confidentiality, especially in these days of HIPPA, makes that an extremely uncommon practice. But for our first foray into the work, we were under intense supervision and, as a result, got to watch each other practice.

I was not interested in squandering this opportunity, so I paid attention to my colleagues in session, and I talked in meaningful ways about what I saw in their work. I also solicited feedback about what they saw in mine. Sometimes, I complimented my colleagues on how they handled a particularly touchy situation or question from the client. Sometimes, I engaged in light-hearted (but never disrespectful) banter with them about the nature of the work. Sometimes, I remarked on their body language. And sometimes, I asked frank questions about how their understanding of things like the ethnicity or sexual orientation of a client was influencing their approach to therapy.

If that's "challenging," then I accept the mantle proudly. I will wear that. I will also bottle and sell it.

But I don't accept that I was disrespectful or created an unsafe environment.

In fact, four of my five classmates (the fifth never responded to my inquiry) said that they did NOT feel unsafe and, moreover, actually appreciated my participation in class. In various ways, they felt like I was "keeping it real," "making us really think," and "moving us toward growth." They said they LIKED being challenged and wished they had gotten more of it from the instructors, as well. (And one classmate told me tonight that the fifth person never expressed a single thought about me outside of class. "There was some tension between you two once or twice, but I don't think he was bothered by you," I was told.)

If we should be satisfied that four out of five dentists say flossing is good for our teeth, I think it's respectable that four out of five classmates surveyed said your UCM was actually GOOD for the class and not -- "absolutely not in any way," in the words of one colleague -- an impediment to its safety.

And yet, my evaluation says the complete opposite.

So I'm going to have to go in there and dispute that.

Unfortunately, one of the other criticisms about me is that I don't accept feedback very well (also really and truly *not true* for the most part). So the existence of that nonsense there in writing puts me in something of a pickle. Think about it: Someone tells you that you can't take feedback, and when you want to dispute *any* of the feedback, the act of doing so (no matter how gently or diplomatically) can be easily twisted into an affirmation of their suspicion.

"A-HA!," I can imagine them saying, "we said she couldn't take feedback, and she disagrees with us about it. See! She can't take feedback!"

*sigh*

But I am going to fight the good fight anyway, because that is one of the things I'm all about. I don't like injustice in any form, but it stings the most when it's personal. And even though I am learning not to take things personally, there are some things that simply ARE personal.

Like being told you don't have respect for the fundamental rights, dignity and worth of people. I can't manage to see that in any light where such a statement about me is not offensive. It is fundamentally offensive.

On that note, I'll sign off with a little repeat of a blog entry I wrote back on March 12, long before this class ever began. This rather succintly summarizes my feelings on the "fundamental worthiness of people":

I have found religion, my Fair Readers.

It is me. It is you. It is us. And all that flows between us.

It is eyes at half mast, stoned and full of pleasure. It is the cringe of fear.

It is a child speaking to the echo of two phones calling each other. It is my dog's erect ears.

The softness of my pillow. Massage. And a bad night's sleep.

The night sky over Wiamea. A dream of Balinese architecture in Hawi.

It is storytelling. And those who aren't ready to hear the story just yet.

Sweet corn tamales. Sushi. Guinness stout.

A gridlock of cars using alternative fuels. Hummers with fake biodiesel bumperstickers.

A trusted friend. A friend who trusts you. The friend who trusts no one.

It is entitlement without the expense and suffering of others.

Joy. Laughter. Love. And letting go of the rest.

It is the absence of ugliness in the light of our undeniable worth.

The weekend

I had a packed weekend, and am officially too tired now to write about it in detail.

But.

There was burger and beer with XGF on Friday (more about that later). There was wine and Italian food, followed by a visit to watch some belly-dancing, with HGM on Saturday. There were smoothies and burritos and cupcakes with Rather Shy Classmate and King Rex, followed by a sunset -- which quickly turned into a night ride -- bike excursion along the Columbia River on Sunday.

There was also a fair amount of stress and frustration over a non-sensical evaluation from my practicum. It gave high marks to my clinical skills, my empathy, my respect for clients, etc. But at the same time, it gave me low marks for my character, my personhood and my most deeply held sense of "morality." (I think one of the instructors has a bruised ego and is taking it out on me.)

I finished reading a book about an attempted murder, and I started one about cultural rituals following death.

Now, I'm going to go eat a hard-boiled egg and watch an episode of "The L Word" before heading off to bed. Gotta work in the morning.