extended psychosis

That's Empress UCM to you...

2008-07-12T01:29:00.000-07:00

You are The Empress

Beauty, happiness, pleasure, success, luxury, dissipation.

The Empress is associated with Venus, the feminine planet, so it represents,
beauty, charm, pleasure, luxury, and delight. You may be good at home
decorating, art or anything to do with making things beautiful.

The Empress is a creator, be it creation of life, of romance, of art or business. While the Magician is the primal spark, the idea made real, and the High Priestess is the one who gives the idea a form, the Empress is the womb where it gestates and grows till it is ready to be born. This is why her symbol is Venus, goddess of beautiful things as well as love. Even so, the Empress is more Demeter, goddess of abundance, then sensual Venus. She is the giver of Earthly gifts, yet at the same time, she can, in anger withhold, as Demeter did when her daughter, Persephone, was kidnapped. In fury and grief, she kept the Earth barren till her child was returned to her.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Motivational messages on the office wall

2008-07-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

A strange commentary about the work I do, posted at the entrance to my clinical supervisor's pod.

Blurry part of the small text says: "...outside this cubicle, though, is a horrifying and brutal world of crippling depression and pain."

(Don't know why I can't manage to rotate this file and save it. Took it with my cell phone, and there is something wrong with my cheap "photo editing software." I want Photoshop! And a real digital camera....)

Close Encounters & Love For Passion

2008-07-02T17:57:00.001-07:00

You can't go home again.

How often have you heard that one?

I think there's some truth in it. But in my life, the idea that one "can't go home again" has been less a euphemism and more like a way of life.

I moved a lot when I was a kid. Born in a Florida college town, moved to Miami shortly thereafter. At 4, moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where I stayed until age 10. In those six years, we lived in five different homes in five completely different parts of town. My dad was an upwardly mobile architect, and we moved because of the houses themselves, not because of the people or activities going on in them. The first house was a Frank Lloyd Wright.

With all that moving, I never had neighborhood playmates for very long. I'd start making friends and have a summer and winter with them, maybe part of a fifth or even a sixth season, but never two years. I kept making friends and then moving away. It tore my heart out repeatedly. Start over again. Start over again.

The one constant thing was attending the same Catholic school. Unfortunately, I was a bit of a neurotic who didn't like to brush her hair (still don't -- and it looks GREAT), so I was pretty much the playground scapegoat and last kid picked for every team. (But I was also the dodge ball champion.) I had two friends (the black girl and the sickly boy) and a "half-friend" in a girl who lived near me during one of those summers and befriended me there but pretended not to know me at school. So staying put in the same school, while it may have prevented me from being a misfit beyond misfits today, was not all that.

In the Spring of my sixth grade year, we up and moved to Houston. There, I lived in the same house for six years, and it felt like FOREVER. I made some friends, but I moved away for college and only maintained a few of those friendships through college. The same can be said for my college years. I made friends, and then I moved away -- to California -- and did not do the best maintenance work.

California is where I started my life as I know it today. I was in one town for 14 months, another for six years. That second "pit stop" (I was planning to leave after about two years) turned out to be the backdrop for a period of immense personal growth, and I had to chill my heels for a few years to let me catch up with my life. My brother's death threw a radical wrench into my plans, and 10 years ago this month, I ran away -- no job and very little money in hand -- and started a new life in Oregon.

I had made so so so many friends there in California. And I moved away.

Having moved around so much, I have actually lived here in Oregon longer now than anywhere in my life. When I graduated a few weeks ago, the program listed my "hometown" as Portland. No other place seemed logical, and I have lived here the longest.

But just after graduation last month -- and it has taken this long for the dust to begin settling enough for me to write about it -- I made what I think was my first-ever real "trip home." I went not to the city of my birth in Florida, not to the homes of my upbringing in South Carolina and Texas. Nor did I go to any of my family homes. I didn't go to Hawaii, either. I went to that "second pit stop," a small agricultural town in California's Central Valley.

This is not a place I want to call home. Of all climates in which I have lived, it is the most intolerable. It is arid and dusty and HOT. It also has a social climate that felt constrictive to me -- sometimes, the religiously conservative political environment was more than I felt I could tolerate. For a refuses-to-be-closeted lesbian feminist who loves the Pacific Northwest RAIN for its life-bestowing properties and the always-green landscape it creates... there are many reasons NOT to live there.

The yellow hills that cover the landscape of the Central Valley most of the year could almost make me mad at times. The way the air and the view of the nearby mountains is diminished by smog and agricultural dust felt suffocating to me then -- and still does.

But there was that aforementioned "community" of friends there, which I enjoyed more than anywhere else in my life. I loved my friends. But I still left them. The environment, especially my work, had become untenable. I did not see other opportunities -- chose not to see some of them -- and left for greener pastures.

I've visited twice in the past 10 years, once just a few months after I left and once about three years ago when I stayed one night while passing through on my way to Sequoia National Park to scatter my brother's ashes. Otherwise, I have never visited as in a "returning," as in the way one revisits the scenes of past crimes to rediscover what one lost there. As in the way one attempts to go home again.

Although several friends have died or moved away, many remain. And It was in encountering them on my recent trip back -- a trip to celebrate Morrocco Molé's 50th birthday and to do some "research" on my book -- that I think I finally know where and *what* "home" is.

Home is a place where you can find your past and where your past can find you. It's a place where you can go to "hideout" but where someone unexpected can easily find you even when you're incognito. It's a place you think you know and find you don't anymore. Where the faces are mostly familiar, if changed by time and lifestyles, but where you find that familiarity sometimes creates a greater sense of mystery than anything else. Home is a place which can open some spaces within, close others and blast the heaviest of doors off the hinges of the psyche's forgotten vaults.

That may be dramatic license, but it's also my experience. At least, with this one home to which I returned.

Not since Lesha's death (if you recall the Peloton Of My Past) have I encountered so many old friends in such a short period of time. This time, however, it was all in person.

Staying with my Gay Godfathers, Morocco Molé and Lucy Ricardo, I had a GREAT time. They started my visit on a most peculiar note by inviting a collection of friends over with whom I have NOT remained in contact over these many years. One of them was only the most ancillary of friends. One was an older woman who I looked up to in my late 20s and who, I was sad to see, is now suffering from Parkinson's Disease (although possessing no less a keen mind as I had respected in her). Another was an old friend who I could tell was suffering from depression. I could feel the energy being pulled out of me when she hugged me. (I am told I can find a way to block such energy drifts, and I'm looking forward to learning that.) ... So we all had a couple hours of pleasant enough conversation.

The next morning, bright and early, I had a visit with my former therapist of about four years. Our two-hour discussion and some of the notes she gave me started the tilt of my world toward Twilight Zone -- very early in the trip, I would say, and without the assistance of Ahuasco or other mild hallucinogens. Also a bit early in the morning.

After leaving her, I went to the old coffee house my friends used to (and still do) frequent. It had been renovated massively and was operating under a new name, but something about it was still the same. The old roaster was tucked back into a corner rather than taking center stage in the window. I ate there and called the phone number of a former coworker, a photographer, who had left a message with Morocco that she wanted to see me.

Drove over to see her and got a distinct "Twin Peaks" kind of feeling to things. She was talking like a David Lynch character. That's all I really want to say about it. Sweet woman, though, and it was lovely to see her again.

Afternoon, I went to see Shall Be Revered (as she demands to be called). Visited for a while, chatted about the band director and politics with the band boosters. Then I went downtown to find Morocco.

On the way there, I called Mountain Girl, thinking she might be in Australia but giving it a shot anyway. She surprised me by answering the phone. Yes, she was in town, and yes, she thought she could go to the mountains with me. I was THRILLED. There is no one I wanted to accompany me into Sequoia or elsewhere than Mountain Girl.

Had lunch with Morocco, and as we were walking back to the car, we passed the coffeehouse.

"What, you don't recognize your old friend?" came a voice from the shadows of an outdoor table. I squinted and saw her. Mountain Girl, hair still long and greying quite nicely. We make plans to go play putt-putt, and a few hours later, I pick up MG at her house and take her back to the Gay Godfathers, where we enjoy a smoke and a little drink and head out to play. Fun, if a bit ... warm ... to this Oregon girl.

The next day, Tuesday, Mountain Girl and I take our first of what turned out to be two trips to the sequoias. On the way up, she talks about how her life has changed in the past few years, things she likes about it, things she doesn't. She mentions in passing that her roommate and best friend, who I once dated for a few months in 1997, is working in a similar field to me and has seriously gotten into fitness and activities she never used to do. Nothing else much was said on the topic of her best friend, one of my former lovers.

We climbed up on top of Moro Rock, pictured here, and Mountain Girl persuaded me to climb over the railing and wander out further along the top, going down the nose a little.

I had an energetic "spinout" up there, walked about 20 yards and had to sit down to maintain my balance. Or so I believed anyway. Not really sure about that now. I am really susceptible to dramatic and high vistas, but I was experiencing here for the first time some distinct difference between my fear of heights and a peculiarly strong energy that seems associated with the rock. Mountain Girl continued walking out on the rock and just as she disappeared below the rock horizon, she turned to me and said, "Just so you know, the energy coming off this rock is really fucking with my body, too. Never be ashamed of where you stop."

Later, we went to find the grove of sequoias where I scattered my brother's ashes. We found it, hiked to a nearby collection of granite boulders, took some rest and had some snacks. I did some drawings there, took some pictures. And when Mountain Girl wandered off to go explore a fallen sequoia, I went back down to the grove and did a little ritual there, planting a giant sequoia seed in the center of the grove.

The next day, I visited with one of my closest buddies from the newspaper, God Eye. He's working for another metro paper in the region, and after having lunch with his family (his wife also a former co-worker and friend of mine from before they were married), God Eye submitted to an interview with me as part of my research for the book. He was incredibly forthright and helpful.

That night, Morocco and I went swimming at SBR's house, then returned to his house to watch a movie with the Gay Godfathers. Turns out Lucy Ricardo starred in the movie as a nasty but stylish and effeminate drug kingpin who gets murdered in the end. They did not tell me Lucy was in the film, and the lighting and sound was so poor that it took me a while to recognize him. Little faux pas on my part. Should recognize one of my dearest old friends in a movie when he's not wearing any disguises! (Thank goodness I hadn't been wearing my glasses. It was easier to recognize him once I put them on....)

Thursday, Mountain Girl and I head back up to the mountains, this time going to the Grant Grove and some other locations in Kings Canyon National Park. We spend some time together on her secret rock, from which we spy on visitors to the Grant Tree. The last time either of us visited this rock was the last day we hung out together before I moved away. I still remember what I told her then: Fall in love sometime. She had replied, "I fall in love all the time."

This time, I chose the occasion of our visit to this spot to talk to her about a scene in my book and to tell her how much the times we hiked in the woods, snowshoed through the valleys, hung out on some rock somewhere in some season or other... about how through all of that with her, she had been my most notable teacher when it came to enjoying nature, my natural passion for it notwithstanding. From you, MG, I learned that exquisite environments are best enjoyed with exquisite foods, I told her. You pointed out that it is no more difficult to pack in a bottle of wine than a water bottle, no heavier to bring cambonzola cheese and apples than string cheese and apples.

There were many other lessons from her, too, but that was the one I wanted to mention as we polished off the sandwiches I brought from the old coffeehouse.

As we're driving down the mountain, heading back to town, we talk again for a moment about MG's roommate. Let's call her Love For Passion (LFP), as is her nickname in certain circles. I mention something -- which I will not repeat here -- regarding LFP's amazing capacity for passionate sex, as I recall it. Mountain Girl says nothing in reply. I guess this is just the way we communicate about her best friend: One of us makes a comment, and the other says nothing.

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that I walked out on Love For Passion 11 years ago and never spoke another word to her, never saw her again. It's one of those moves I regretted almost instantly but didn't know how to undo. I was younger then, considerably less mature and outrageously frightened by the immensity of feeling I experienced with her. I ran away, and true to form, never went back.

I broke my own heart that time. Smashed it to smithereens.

I know MG saw some of the fallout from that, even though I tried to keep it to myself out of respect for her long friendship with Love For Passion. Maybe that's how we settled into this place of not responding to each other's comments about LFP. Who knows.

In any event, about an hour after I made my last comment about LFP's presence as a lover, I was driving back to MG's house, about to pull up in the driveway, when she says to me, "Oh, LFP's home. I know she'd really like to see you. You should get out and say hello."

What?! I was shocked. I don't think she wants to see me, I stammered.

"Oh, I know she does," MG replied.

I got out of the car to wish MG goodbye. It being my last night in town, I didn't anticipate seeing her again and believed she would move to Australia before I ever returned to the Central Valley. I looked at her, thinking, Well, this is goodbye, but saying nothing.

I was stalling, about to kick the tires, hemming and hawing, the lingering of reluctant parting keeping me put, when I see the screen door at the front of the house open and LFP quickly striding toward me before I could respond. She threw her arms out wide and embraced me with a kind-sounding "UCM!" on her lips.

Instantly, I was held in place by her magnificent energy. The clarity of her openness and the absence of discomfort was palpable. I felt welcomed. Deeply and truly welcomed.

How does this happen? I wondered.

"It's so wonderful to see you. Come in for a drink?" LFP asked.

Nah, I gotta go meet some folks, I said, thinking of SBR with whom I had plans to hang out and chat.

"Oh," LFP said.

All three of us stood quietly for a moment.

"So what have you been up to?" LFP asked.

I'm working as a therapist, I replied. I just finished grad school. Graduated last week.

"Hey, I've got my MSW. I don't do therapy, but that's interesting we're in similar lines of work," LFP said.

Another moment of silence. Someone says something I don't recall. I'm thinking; I'm feeling. Some kicking of dust beneath my feet. Sweating in the 100-degree heat. I think about the time, make a quick calculation about how disappointed SBR might be if I stand her up versus what I feel an overwhelming urge to do.

You know, I think I'll have that drink after all, I said.

When I slipped quietly into the front door at the Gay Godfather's at about 6:45 the next morning, I was greeted by Morocco, drinking coffee with a smirk on his face. "Ran into Love For Passion, did you?" he said. "Girl.... Did you have fun?"

Absolutely. I had an amazing time.

I don't want to lead anyone astray. We didn't have sex. I was filthy and stinky from being in the woods all day, on my period and had a small cold sore. Hardly appetizing. Plus, LFP says she has sworn off "one night stands," and I simply don't do them.

And yet, something happened for me that night with Love For Passion. An opening, a re-awakening with the hint of personal discovery that I'm not inclined to write about for public consumption right now. But I was being honest with Morocco Molé: It was amazing.

In fact, the entire trip was amazing. Seeing my old friends, visiting my old hangouts, finding the grove where I scattered my brother's ashes, sitting on those various rocks with my mountain friend. What else could cap an experience like that than spending the evening with a former lover and feeling a chemistry between us that perhaps is stronger than it was before (in my experience)?

Well, there was the facial that Morocco gave me just a couple hours before I left town. It was the first facial I've ever had, and Morocco's touch was full of warmth. So much so that I started crying. I felt deeply affected, full of love and appreciation for all these characters: Morocco Molé, Lucy Ricardo, Mountain Girl, SBR, God Eye, my former therapist, the giant sequoias, Moro Rock, the old friends who came to Morocco's "meet and greet," even the David Lynch character, and of course the aptly named Love For Passion.

It was altogether more than I bargained for, more than I wanted or expected. And in the end, just what I needed.

Like a trip home ought to be.

My Secret Hideaway

2008-06-17T19:48:00.000-07:00

The little cabin is mine, people!

I know I don't really have a claim on it, considering it's a good 50 years older than me. But I did finally today qualify for the frequent-user discount. (I love Steve. He's ever so much better than the funky drunk caretakers who were there before him. He actually returns calls, remembers me and even remembers if I've sent someone his way.)

Actually, it's been useful to get to know Steve. Not only does he give me a discount, he's become protective of his "regulars" ever since that goddamned Sunset Magazine blew the lid off the place and ranked my secret spot among the top 10 lakeside resorts in the West last year. Phooey to ruining quiet places with your insidious ink, Sunset!

Trust me people: It's a dive. You don't want to go there. No TV, no hot tub, daddy long-legs in the shower with you, the floor slopes just so, sometimes the fireplace doesn't pull well, sometimes the wood is wet, and every once in a while, the kind of windstorm that begat creation itself seems to come up and scare the living shit out of whoever didn't have the sense to flee once the pictures on the wall started rattling (such as me).

Anyway, I won't be getting up to the cabin this summer. I would've needed to book a while back, thanks to mutha-effin Sunset, to get it in the peak of summer -- and ended up choosing to take a trip down to Central California with my mula instead.

But I did get the baby for my birthday in October, which is when I wanted it. I will turn 40 at the lake. Can't think of a better place to be to usher in a new decade. Beauty, beauty. All is beauty when I get it in my head to go there.

Eco-Moi

2008-05-20T17:57:00.001-07:00

Lately, I've been developing greater and greater concern about the environment. I'm not sure what, exactly, is driving this change -- I've not been reading about the environment much, not been watching much television out of the ordinary -- but suddenly, I have been feeling increasingly self-conscious about my environmental footprint.

Maybe it's my neighborhood. The other day, I was in the supermarket and saw that my favorite skin lotion was on sale. I didn't have a bunch of groceries to get for the week, so I decided to load up and got three of four of them. As I was pulling them off the selves, a young woman browsing the lotions asked me, "Do you know if those containers are recyclable?"

I looked at the tube. I have no idea, I said.

She regarded me with slightly pursed lips, and I felt instantly shamed. Here I was grabbing all these non-refillable tubes of lotion without even thinking about the landfill. But then, there was the landfill in my mind all of the sudden. Big pile of rubble with seagulls buzzing around the smoke-belching bulldozer on top of the whole ghastly heap.

So then I wanted to know: WHY don't the good-smelling (coconut, glorious coconut oil) lotions come in bulk where you can fill your own bottle? The bulk lotions always smell like ... oatmeal. It's not that I'm being environmentally dispassionate, it's that I can't get what I want the green way. So to the makers of Desert Essence Organics coconut hand and body lotion, I say: Buck up, you fat cats, and make your lotion available in bulk at my local New Seasons Market or make friendlier containers!

I wrote them. You can too. There, having now shouted out that plea into the universe, I can move on. (Or try to rattle their corporate cage.)

A few weeks ago, when I was getting take-out at the Thai place downstairs, another customer came in for take-out too, and as I was picking up my plastic bag with a plastic container in it, she set down her own collection of tupperware on the counter and asked the owner to put her meal in that.

*gulp*

I've been using reusable canvass bags for my grocery shopping for years, but I often forget them or decide to go to the grocery after making a quick list at work. Therefore, I have all these paper bags hanging around in my place. I walk over to the little food co-op on the corner and give them my paper bags, and they re-use them. So that is at least something.

But I can see it is not enough. My eco-conscious is bothering me.

I suppose that's why I've got a long-term relationship going on in my home with a styrofoam cup. I got it on Friday night when I stopped in at the tacqueria down the street and got a burrito (in a plastic container inside a plastic bag) to go. I had been out walking the dog, and I was thirsty. I had started to pour water in the cup already when I suddenly connected to what I was holding. Who the hell uses styrofoam these days? Good god!

And so, I have been using it and using it and using it. Only for water, and I give it a good hot flushing every so often, but ... how long can this thing actually last? Will it begin to disintegrate while I'm using it, or might I have it for years -- if I don't get carried away one night and start chewing on it? I throw away all sorts of crap, but for some reason, this styrofoam cup is really bugging me. Seems my ploy is to use it to death (or some otherwise reasonable point) to assuage my guilt.

Lastly, I have been seriously contemplating ditching my car and getting a scooter. My only problem is that the only way across the Columbia River is via the interstate. I'd have to get a full-on motorcycle or large-engine scooter -- or walk the damn thing across the bridge on the pedestrian sidewalk, which would take too long.

All I can think is that in the not-too-distant future, so many people will be unable to afford gasoline for their cars that we might get a slow-lane on the freeway to ourselves. I had a vision the other day while driving home of a nearly empty freeway with more than a few cars that had just run out of gas and been left at the side of the highway like dead bodies on Mt. Everest. Is that what our future holds if we don't make a quick transition to alternate-fuel vehicles?

In the meantime, it seems like the right-hand lanes on the freeway system could be designated for people going 40 mph or slower, and other drivers could be forced to use them as extended on- and off-ramps. That seems fair and reasonable to me, as an auto driver right now and a would-be scooter driver if it was safe and legal to drive a smaller-engine vehicle on the freeway.

So I'm hardly an environmentalist, but I have my concerns. Seems the only way I'm actually working it right now, though, is by drinking from a styrofoam cup.

Fait Accompli

2008-04-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

I am this evening no longer a graduate student.

After turning in my internship paperwork last week, turning in my death & dying research paper yesterday and severing two final client relationships at the free clinic where I have been interning until today, there is not a single thing left that I must do for school but attend my graduation.

That will be 10 a.m. on June 1.

Until then, I am in this curious limbo where I'm working part-time and not sure if or when my hours will increase -- but if they do, it likely won't be until June. In my mind, that leaves me with the merry month of May to have some sweet time left for myself, a break between the pace of school and the start of what I hope will be full-time (or pretty close to it) work this summer.

Thus, I will be endeavoring to spend this time wisely and restfully, not to mention creatively and decadently.

In the meantime, I find myself wishing I had someone to celebrate this occasion with, someone who really understood what all this crazy shit was about for me. There are only a small handful of people who come to mind:

Top of the list being XGF who witnessed this idea I had several years ago about seriously, SERIOUSLY changing my life turn into something that was really going to do just that. As she's neck deep in graduate school in New Jersey these days, I have a feeling she can appreciate the idea of being done with it -- although it will be many years until she is done herself.

And I think about S2, who has been my diligent and fierce companion in school, and a massive friend outside of it. There is no single other student who has been such a "teacher" in my life. Lots of funky psychological stuff got worked out through our friendship, and yet we are still friends. Dear ones at that. Quite a lesson unto its own.

I also think about The Good Witch, who has been a friend and mentor to me for many years now and always tries to give me her old counseling journals and other books.

And, last but not least, I wish like hell that I could share this with my Tia L, who was always so encouraging of me and who, in telling me her about her work in a Third World insane asylum during the Peace Corps, taught me a thing or two about restoring dignity and humanity to people who are mentally ill. One of our last conversations, she told me, "You're going to help a lot of people," and she sounded so convinced that I believed she might be right. (Time will tell, Tia L!)

Anyway... So that's that. Three years have gone in a flash. And my life is seriously, SERIOUSLY different. It's a good life, and I feel lucky to have it right now.

Apparently, celebration with others must wait a month for graduation, so in the meantime ... I toast myself.

Way to go, UCM. Way to mutha-fuckin' GO!

A tidbit

2008-04-20T23:39:00.000-07:00

I once read some time ago -- and then was reminded again this evening -- of what Goethe's dying words reportedly were:

"More light."

That is so worthy of reflection, the work of which I will leave up to each of you individually, that I simply had to jot it here.

"More light." ... What do you suppose he meant by that?

A beautiful (and lively) way to say: So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye....

2008-04-19T22:03:00.001-07:00

I didn't know S2's mom very well, but I met and talked with her on a few occasions. What I can say I know best about her is that she produced a woman, a daughter, as firey and fierce and fabulous as S2, which says more (to me) than any other equally simple sentence might capture.

Tonight, I attended her mom's farewell soiree, an evening party to bring together those who would celebrate her life even as they mourn her death back on December 27.

I can't imagine the pain of losing a beloved mother. In almost all respects, it is a pain I will never know. (When the Notorious M.O.M. kicks it, all I envision is the work of trying to release residual pain and anger about what I never had in life rather than what I lose through her death.)

But tonight, in S2's father's dramatic but cozy, wood-warmed house in the West Hills, I had the opportunity to see what kind of party a loving family throws for a woman who, if my sense of her is accurate and if the photos I saw fairly represent, was a spirited celebrant of life itself.

The slide show S2's dad assembled and ran on a loop on a TV down in the den showed her mother from the beginning of life up until her health began to decline several years ago. I only ever knew her in the last two years of her life, so it was a treat to see more. (Not to mention getting to see photos of particular events or activities from S2's childhood that she has told me stories about.) The photos tell a visual life story of a woman who was athletic, adventurous, quite the beauty (wow... some of those photos of her as a young woman!), an active and involved mom who participated in civic life and was quite taken with theatrical performance. As I watched the slide show, I listened to a group of older adults in the room talking about S2's mom, how they knew her, how they knew each other now because of her and how much they miss her (as well as a few other mutual friends who have died in recent years).

Although it was a different type of event -- catered soiree vs. potluck memorial, for one -- I saw a similar outpouring of love for my Tia L, who died last year. It occurred to me that some people in this world touch a LOT of folks, embolden and enliven a lot of hearts, soothe a lot of souls. If the gathering I observed tonight is any indication, S2's mom clearly was one of those spirits.

Which is why I take such heart in seeing how S2 is carrying on that legacy herself and how it lives in other family members and dear friends, as well. I never knew her mom well, but what I knew of her from our encounters was spirited kindness, an edgy sense of humor and great love for her family. In having S2 as a dear friend, I benefit from what she brought into this world every day. We should all be so lucky to see our own legacies so clearly.

At this celebration of her life, I knew few others in attendance. In the scheme of things, I am a very new addition to S2's life. I almost laughed when S2's sister introduced me to someone as a "classmate" and the man said, "Oh, *another* Lincoln High graduate." ... Uh, no, I replied, we're in school together now.

At this party, I was an outsider beyond outsiders, knowing almost no one in the crowd and not really speaking their language (of all the shared history and connections). I went by myself and had to work hard to strike up conversations with people. Curiously, one question I got asked several times by strangers was, "How many children do you have?" When I would reply, "None," I got a range of responses from: "Oh," (at which point the conversation suddenly ended) to a very sweet and long-time close family friend of S2's who replied, "Well, we were kind of late bloomers, too...."

Eventually, I found some friends of S2's older sister who were in a similar boat as I in terms of knowing hardly anyone there, and I got through much of the awkwardness (for me) of this evening by chatting with one of them who kindly overlooked me saying I have no children and didn't shame me when I spilled a bunch of Zinfandel on my white pants.

I learned some interesting things about S2's sister in the process, and because I am the one who could identify S2's daughters walking through the crowd, I didn't have to offer up any secrets of my own. Periodically, I could just say, See, that one is Little Pea. Doesn't she look like her grandmother? and then, using my handy Therapist Ray Gun v.2008, I could quickly induce them to tell me about their marriages and their experiences with S2's mom without having to give up anything of my own. Which is good, because the only thing I had to trade of interest to them were S2's "version of events," as one of the sister's friends put it, and there was no way in hell I was coughing up any *real* information. Fortunately, these women were moms, and they considered my ability to identify and point out to them S2, Little Pea and Getting to Yes as "real" information. Phew!

Anyway, one reason I felt so awkward this evening is because I have a fair amount of social anxiety when it comes to attending large events at which I know no one and have no role to play. I was there in support of my friend, who was having a good time and thus required no support. Because I had no one to hang with, I sometimes had difficulty even figuring out where to stand. S2's mom had SO MANY long-time friends and so many family members who came to celebrate her that when I arrived, almost every bit of their 3,000-square-foot home was heavily populated. S2 mentioned to me a few weeks ago that her family was being rather selective in who they invited, too, so heaven only knows how many people might have shown up otherwise.

I can't imagine for all the world that even a fraction of the people who turned out this evening to celebrate her life would so much as notice mine. It occurs to me that some people are born into this world with more blessings than others, more character, better temperament, better looks, better parents, more love, more gifts, more energy, more vitality. Compared to this woman, compared to most of her family and offspring as far as I can tell, I am impoverished. (A dog and a few dear friends comprise the totality of my interpersonal personal life.)

And yet, I am enriched (with hope for myself and others who have thus far not felt so blessed) by knowing this: When you extend love to others -- as S2's mom clearly did -- you sometimes receive it in return, as it appears she did throughout her life and tonight. What you anticipate getting in return is not the reason to love, but on those occasions when it does come back around, it feels so good that you just naturally want to put more of it out there.

Generate a cycle of that giving and receiving, and perhaps you end up with what I witnessed tonight. About a month before she unexpectedly died, S2's mom told her family that she had "lived a charmed life."

Indeed.

But it wasn't something she took for granted. She actually lived it.

Tonight, amidst this crowd of party-goers, I felt her saying, "Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you." And, unconnected to all that history as I am, I felt the privilege of being there to witness it. By all accounts, she had a grand life. It is nice to know such things actually exist.

The End is Nearly Fuckin' Nigh...

2008-04-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

I'm staring down a two-week tunnel, and I can see the light at the end of it. Between me and the end of my graduate studies is One. More. Class.

And One. More. Paper.

The class will slide by with the banality due it, although I think a few of us will enjoy a beer afterward to celebrate the conclusion of something -- at this point, the end of *anything* sounds good. Only two of us in the class are actually done, as most of the other internship students are still trying to complete their required hours. But I am done.

Done. Done. Done. (And with the instructor I've had for this class over the past EIGHT MONTHS, you have no idea how good it feels to say that. I can't wait.)

Then, there's just this paper left. I've been mulling it for weeks, agonizing over its direction, its purpose, its quality. I have collected a lot of interesting stories, ideas and meanings people making around life and death, and I am trying to distill some themes from them. There are so many different perspectives that it's hard for me to say anything specific at this moment. It is going to be a serious bit of work over the next week or so.

This paper is due on the 28th. And when I turn it in, I will officially be finished with graduate school.

Hard to believe.

Late for an Important Date!

2008-04-03T22:20:00.000-07:00

S2 turned 40 yesterday.

When I saw her briefly, she was rather ill from some sort of respiratory (or other) infection, and I was bringing her a box of probiotics to counter the loss of precious flora and fauna caused by the gnarly antibiotic she's taking to dump the infection. I think she still had a fever. So that is not exactly what qualifies as a "happy" birthday. But it was her birthday nevertheless.

Even all ratty and tired, the woman is a lovely example of a human being at 40. I'm sure when she gets over what's ailing her, she'll be back to the youthful vigor she normally has. All I can say is that at 40, we should all be so lucky.

As for myself, I'll be hitting that mark later this year. S2 is the first of my friends who are my age to enter our fifth decade, and I've found myself a little fixated on that. Normally, I could give a shit about age. What's on the calendar is less a representation of age than how you're actually living your days, I figure. But there's something about 40 that has captivated me.

I think it's because at 40, I expect I will *then* be undeniably in middle age, undeniably an ... adult. Yet something in me still feels like a big goofy kid.

On top of it, I noticed that I've internalized all sorts of messages about 40. One of them is that there are no babies after 40. Of course, I know this isn't true. But I suppose in *my head,* I've decided that I will DEFINITELY NOT reproduce after age 40. Although anyone who knows me knows that I've not had any intentions to reproduce, somehow or other, turning 40 seems to be putting that possibility, that decision, that omission, into its final resting place.

Etched on that rock: Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

Maybe never having kids has kept me from feeling like a grown up. Maybe never actually ever having grown up is what's keeping me from feeling like a grown up. Maybe there's actually no feeling like a grown up, and whatever I thought I was going to feel is just a silly expectation left over from childhood.

I just know I expected to feel different by now. Kinda weird, that.

Mixed bag

2008-04-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

I had my first major league bout with counter-transference in the therapy room today. That's where my own issues get in the way of the relationship with the client and perhaps interfere with therapy.

I've discussed this situation with peers who are totally in-the-know, and the feedback I get from them is that I probably did a GOOD thing for my client. I think what I said to the client was probably decent, therapeutically, but I'm struggling with the fact that *I* know some of my comments were born in annoyance rather than empathy and kindness.

If you've learned anything about me from reading my blog these past few years, you'll notice that I'm no stranger to self-reflection and second-guessing. You can only imagine where I might take a serious inquiry into my own motivations for saying something supposedly "therapeutic" to a client, something that may have been perceived as a lecture or, worse, a dressing down. I was a touch passionate as I spoke.

I'd get into it more, but I just don't think it's kosher to write about clients on the freakin' Internet, no matter how "anonymous" I might hope to make this blog.

But as I think of it, the client's behavior and demeanor is strikingly similar to that of ... The Notorious M.O.M.

So....

In other news, after more than two years, several purchases and more than my neighborhood's fair share of curse words about the approaching "end times," I finally -- mutha-fucking jesus eatin' shit patties on a fence post FINALLY! -- got a can opener that WORKS! I never thought I'd see the day. Can opener after can opener, I have managed to buy lemon after lemon. But I finally plunked down $12 on the right tool at the grocery store, and I was able to open three cans tonight without a single mutha-fuckin' curse word! Glory be!

Alas, I think it means the end is very nearly fuckin' nigh (with apologies to 28 Days Later).

Therapist for hire

2008-03-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

Today, at 9 a.m., I earned my first dollar as a mental health therapist.

I started as a part-time outpatient clinician, working three days a week, at the mental health clinic where I have been interning since September. I've still got another couple months on my internship and am told that I might be able to increase my hours at the clinic after I graduate in June.

Considering the tight job market and the fact that I really like my internship site, I feel fortunate to have my foot solidly wedged into a professional door. The pay is decent enough for starting wages, and if I pick up additional hours in a couple of months, the benefits are better than I've had at a job in more than a decade. So I'd be happy to work more hours after school wraps up in May.

My first few for-pay clients, all new, were no more and no less remarkable than the colorful members of humanity who have already come into my office in the past few months. They are interesting, challenging and so touchingly human. In working with them, I could discern no difference in the services I provided today for pay versus those I have been providing for free.

But it is, to me, a momentous day nevertheless. I'm getting paid to do something fun! It's been a long, long time since that was the case.

What's more, I've been working toward this career change for three years of graduate school and, before that, several years of personal contemplation and searching for an intriguing new line of work.

So ... yea for me!

I think it could have only been nicer if I'd had someone with whom to share my accomplishment upon returning home tonight, maybe with a little toast over a glass of wine. The closest I came was popping my head in to see The Florist for a few minutes at the end of the day and announcing myself as a "therapist for hire." She shook my hand in congratulations, and I accepted it happily.

On Kilauea's Dark Side

2008-03-06T19:00:00.001-08:00

On Tuesday, the last night I would be spending on the Big Island during my visit this past week, my cousin Spitfire and I embarked on a remarkable evening expedition. Kilauea, which has seen many eruptions in the past 25 years, is having another major lava flow, and we wanted to see it.

Our initial plan on Tuesday morning was to take a late afternoon hike into the besieged Royal Gardens subdivision, which sits on the southeastern flank of Kilauea. Back in the late 1980s, eruptions sent massive and many-fingered lava flows into the area, cutting through the subdivision. Some homes were untouched, others destroyed and replaced by wide open plains of rolling pahoehoe (meaning: smoother, more flowing) lava.

The hike was supposed to be an hour and a half or so, much of it through the forested and mostly abandoned subdivision. But we ended up hanging around too late in the afternoon, enjoying a soak at the warm ponds down on the coast outside of Pahoa. By the time we returned to my cousin GlassGirl's house about 10 minutes north of Pahoa, my uncle was feeling too tired for a trek, and it was presumed we had to give up our Kilauea quest because of fading light. Hiking out in the dark would be one thing, but hiking in and out of an unfamiliar place on a moonless night could be dangerous. (GlassGirl, by the way, is a new, better nickname to replace "MiniMimi".)

After dinner, however, I inquired about something GlassGirl's husband had said the day before regarding a place where you could presumably look up the mountain and perhaps see with binoculars the orange glowing lava. He described a trip to the end of Red Road, and we decided to take it.

As the four of us -- GlassGirl, her husband, "Klutch," Spitfire and me -- prepared to leave, a downpour ensued. Klutch voiced a concern that clouds would prevent us from seeing much, but we all got in my uncle's SUV and headed out anyway. Having missed a turn for Red Road -- or perhaps GlassGirl just had her own plans in mind -- we ended up driving down Highway 130, the old highway that once connected Hilo to South Point and then on to the west side of the island. A little past mile marker 21, the highway comes to an abrupt end. An old lava flow moved across it 15 or 20 years ago. As we approached, warning signs told us to turn back. Flashing yellow road signs warned away "unauthorized vehicles." Saying that she didn't "feel like talking to anyone at a roadblock," GlassGirl turned the SUV around and tried a different route, which dead-ended. She decided then that it would be worth at least seeing if those headlights up at the end of the highway were cop cars or not, and we turned back around and headed up Hwy. 130.

At the road-closure signs, an auto driver and a motorcycle driver were talking to each other. Following another truck about 200 yards ahead of us, GlassGirl passed them right on by and drove onto a crudely paved one-lane path over a finger of an old lava flow. After about 150 yards on that, we returned to the old paved highway. Looking across the lava field, we could see a murky orange glow a ways up the mountain. Scale is hard to define without knowing the terrain, but given the dimness and diffuse nature of the light, I estimated it to be a mile away or so.

Klutch began talking about how it's dangerous to be downhill from lava, especially if you don't know the terrain, because it's possible that it could come down the hill behind you and cut off your escape route. As we approached a second old lava crossing, we saw a car heading on its way out across a similarly crude path like the first. We waited for him to pass, and GlassGirl waved him down. She asked what was out there.

"Lava's crossing the road up a ways," he said. "Just keep driving, and eventually you'll run into it."

This news freaked out Klutch, and he immediately insisted we take him home or "at least drop me off in Pahoa." A debate ensued, with Spitfire insisting he was being too anxious and conservative and reminding him that lava doesn't move very quickly. "It's not like we couldn't outrun it," she said.

But he was adamant, and even when GlassGirl asked him with a "pretty please" to indulge our desire to drive farther, he said he would not come. It was a 30-minute ride back to the house, and I could see all the way there that Spitfire was pissed. She thought Klutch was being a spoilsport.

By the time we got back to the house, GlassGirl was ready to call it a night. Her 3-year-old was going to be waking her up at 6:30, she said, and it was already 11. Spitfire and I looked at each other. She shrugged, "I'm willing to go if you still want to," she said. "I know it's late but...."

I'll sleep on the plane, I replied.

We hopped back into the SUV and took off. Another massive downpour started, and I secretly hoped Spitfire would not be discouraged by it, but I said nothing. She kept driving, speeding along through the night. We hit the end of the road in no time.

"This drive was much longer on the way back to the house," Spitfire observed. "I don't know why Klutch has to be such a puss. He is so scared of things sometimes. But I am rarely scared for my life. On Sunday I was, but this does not scare me. Maybe I'm just a sheep, but you would think that if this was dangerous, some of those drivers we passed on the way out would have said something to us about it. People may be assholes a lot, but when it comes to stuff like this around here, they tend to be pretty considerate and tell you when it's dangerous."

On Sunday, we had been out sailing along the Kohala Coast and had anchored over a reef less than 200 yards off shore to go snorkeling. We were swimming in water about 30 or 40 feet deep, but we were suddenly joined in the area by about four humpback whales who seemed to be engaged in some type of mating activity. (Either mating or contesting for a mate.) They were behaving oddly and were in waters a bit shallow for them.

After we returned to the boat from our snorkel, we stood on deck and watched them for a couple minutes. Suddenly, they turned and charged the boat -- a 50-foot sailboat. I grabbed my camera and attempted to take some photos. As they neared within about 20 yards of the boat, they veered off toward the bow. Spontaneously, Spitfire popped on her flippers and lowered her mask. "I'm going in," she said, and jumped off the side of the boat. I thought to follow her, but my fins were 10 feet away, and I was torn with the desire to take a photo of what I was seeing. Her green snorkel cutting through the water was absolutely miniscule in comparison to the hump of one whale that surfaced.

Spitfire swam to within 15 or 20 yards of the whales and suddenly stopped. Her head jerked up above water and she yelled, "I'm scared!" My uncle, El Capitan, and I urged her to stay or get closer. I wanted her to see them underwater since she was already there. But despite the amazing clarity of the water in the reef, there was too much sunlight filtering down to give good horizontal visibility. A couple of the whales breached partially one more time before disappearing.

When she climbed back onto the boat, Spitfire said simply, "That was a really cool idea, but when I saw them surface, I suddenly realized I was just a tiny speck in the ocean compared to them. I realized I could get seriously tossed even just by accident, and it scared the shit out of me. I totally froze in the water."

So there is some evidence that Spitfire knows her limitations, even if she does occasionally leap before thinking things through. On our second visit to the closed road on Tuesday night, I was hoping her intuition and experience with the volcano, on which she has hiked at night before, was in good working order. Having never been around it, I didn't know enough about lava and volcanoes to know if I was balancing a relative sense of safety with a sufficient dose of caution. All I knew was that I generally felt OK about what we were doing.

What scared me most was the speed at which Spitfire would drive across the crude paths across the lava and the pot-holed pavement of the old highway on such a dark night. The new moon isn't until Friday, but the night sky at 11 p.m. was awash in stars through wide openings in the clouds, no moon in sight. I worried more that we would break an axle than get trapped by lava.

After four or five interchanges between old highway and lava flows -- which eventually were no more than dirt paths -- we came to a mango grove next to which was parked a van with some kind of official seal on it. Through the edge of the mango trees, I could see a long strand of bright orange light. We saw a couple of cars parked near a formal-looking field tent. Spitfire stopped. We backed up and saw a University of Hawaii seal on the van. We decided to back up to the last stretch of paved highway, about 25 yards back, turn the SUV around in case we needed to make a quick get-away for any reason -- not the least of which were some of the sketchy cars we had seen coming out as we drove in. It was past 11:30 when we got out of SUV, grabbed our flashlights and each took a "weapon" -- Spitfire took a small umbrella, and I took a broken 1/2-inch dowel with a sharp, splintered tip.

Then we headed out onto the next old lava flow by foot, me in my Keene's and she in her flip-flops. "Not exactly the shoes for lava," Spitfire said of her own feet, "but it's what I brought with me."

A few minutes down the road, the old mango grove gave way completely to a wide open expanse of lava, which in the dark night was simply a vacant blackness. Cutting across the darkness to the north was a wide ribbon of firey orange lava, dropping in a wide and distorted S-curve toward the road.

"See the little white lights out there?" Spitfire said. "Those are people. They appear to be walking right up to the lava."

Based on the size of their headlamps and the occasional silhouette of human form against the orange, I estimate the distance to have been about 150 yards above the road. Klutch would have freaked out about this, I observed.

"No shit," Spitfire replied. "High-five to you, UCM, for having the cajones to come out here."

It seems like this trip specifically required ovaries tonight, I said.

"Let's go up to where those people are," she suggested.

Didn't that guy say it crossed the road? I asked. Let's walk on a little farther and see if we can avoid walking that far out there in these shoes.

No sooner had I uttered those words than we crested a hill on the road and were suddenly face-to-face with the most peculiar and spectacular scene I've ever witnessed.

About 40 yards away, a lava flow in excess of 100 yards wide -- 200 yards? 300? I lost all perspective, but it was HUGE -- had indeed crossed the road and had advanced several hundred yards below the road, heading toward the ocean. Yet everywhere along this amazing river of fire, a forceful, gloopy, slow-moving swell of molten earth was inching down the mountain like a melted marshmallow.

In the cool wind coming off the ocean, the molten rock would begin to cool into black crusts before the force of more firey earth would swell up from underneath and release more of itself into the air. To our south, really dramatic formations perhaps 10 or 12 feet high were piling up. As the orange goop would force itself up the core, the fresh crust on the outside would give way, falling backward up the hill while more molten rock would cascade down on top of it.

On the edge of the road, a handful of cars were parked. A few guys sat in lawn chairs next to a van. Bob Marley blared from their speakers, and so even about 50 yards away, where Spitfire and I stood and watched the lava inching toward us, we were treated to a backdrop of reggae music. They were drinking beer and smoking pot.

Down the way, a couple stood making out in the glow of the lava on the farthest spit of the road jutting into the flow. Three or four people in their 20s were aiming their cell phones at the creeping lava and trying to take photos and videos of it. There were perhaps a dozen people on the road and perhaps a dozen more up the hill at the site above the road.

We walked up to this amazing scene and got to within 10 feet of where it crossed the road. The air was alive with a crackling sound, as if a massive campfire had burned down to hot embers popping and sizzling in the evening breeze. Periodically, small vents of gas would flame up, "Poof!" and burn momentarily before dying down.

"When they do that, I kinda feel like I'm in hell," Spitfire said. "I mean, if there were such a place."

This is without question a good depiction of hell, I replied. But I personally find it far too beautiful.

"I know," she said. "We are totally watching earth being born right here."

A few thousand feet up Kilauea's flank, above the Royal Gardens subdivision, we could see what appeared to be the origin of all this lava. From that distance, it looked like a large crucible filled with fire overflowing its edge. It was impossible from our vantage point to determine if the flow we were seeing before us and back along the road was a continuous one. Neither was moving fast enough to pose a danger to us, and so we stood there for well over an hour as this birthing scene played out before our eyes.

We also watched a few people do totally asinine stuff. One of the 20-somethings with the cell phones walked up to a pocket of dense, glowing lava and stepped on it with his boots. Rather than puncture its surface, however, the lava gave way like a balloon. With a sharp stick, he might have punctured it, but his boot -- even with a second punch -- could not. Spitfire and I were unimpressed. "I did not come out here to watch someone burn their foot off," she said.

Later, two young men approached the lava. One threw a glass bottle onto it. I wondered why they were doing that, and Spitfire said people often make gifts of gin to Pele, the volcano goddess who Hawaiian spiritualists believe lives in the Kilauea crater. However, the bottle these guys threw contained water, and after a few minutes of sitting on top of the lava, the steam pressure and heat caused the bottle to explode violently, spraying glass everywhere. Spitfire and I were unharmed, but the glass hit the couple that were smooching downwind. The man came over to tell the guys not to do that. In the meantime, they had thrown a bottle of plastic water on to the lava, and Spitfire got pissed. "Plastic?!" she called out to them. "Why did you throw plastic garbage onto the lava?"

"Just to see what would happen," came the reply.

"That is so douche," she retorted. "Really, really uncool."

Eventually, standing so close to rock which has melted at about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit became a bit hot for my taste, and it was also getting very late. So we decided, very reluctantly, to leave. As we passed where the cars were parked, however, I turned around and took in the scene again. So long was the river of orange-hot lava oozing down the mountain that it encompassed the complete panorama of my visual field. I turned and looked up into the heavens and was treated by another spectacular sight -- a massive opening in the clouds and steam above revealed an absolute riot of stars.

Standing there with the molten core of the earth flowing across all the terrain I could see before of me and a dizzying expanse of stars above me, I felt like I was at a mystical intersection, a spot of timelessness, a point of infinite creation and destruction, birth and death, light and darkness. It was all there. And it was all so matter-of-fact.

When we returned to the SUV, we took a few moments to take in the night skies. In that brief time, I saw two shooting stars. With the first one, I made a huge but simple wish. With the second one, I made none. After such an experience as the lava and those heavens, I found I had no other want than the first wish I made. In this moment, I was completely satisfied.

Except that I would have liked to stay longer. I could have stayed there all night.

The next day, when we told our other family members what we'd seen, we all tried to return to the spot. The police had closed the road for the day, however, while crews attempted to make a public viewing area. (I later read the viewing area had been overrun by lava.) I forgot to bring my camera with me on the first adventure and was unable to get close enough for photos on the daytime trip. However, below are some photos from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory web page, which has updates from the recent Kilauea eruption.

All these photos were taken at daytime, so they are not as dramatic as what is visible in the dark, when much more of the molten orange is visible. This first photo, taken on Wednesday afternoon, shows the smooth pahoehoe crossing the road where Spitfire and I had been standing the night before.

This one shows the lava up close. Magnify this scene, which appears to be a few feet across, by hundreds of feet, and you'll understand a little better what Spitfire and I saw along the edge of the road.

This one below shows a small section of the lava flow we observed.

And finally, this one below is an aerial view of the lava uphill from where we saw it. I believe this is the same road on which we were standing. The fresh crusty lava appears silver in color until it cools to black.

Writing through grief; grief through writing

2008-02-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

When logging into this blog, I'm starting to get the feeling I used to have when I attended a writing group in which none of the members wrote very much, if anything at all, between meetings. We'd have a writing exercise and inevitably someone would suggest the topic, "Why I'm Not Writing."

It's not that I haven't been writing lately; it's simply that I haven't been blogging.

When I sit down at my computer to write lately, I've been trying to tell the story of my youngest brother's death. It's a hell of a journey because it took him almost four years to die -- and because the weeks immediately following the car wreck that eventually killed him were a complicated, emotional time. I am on page 20 or so (single-and-a-half spacing), and I have only covered the ground of two weeks, plus some non-linear stories that help the situation make sense.

Technically, I'm writing this story as part of the independent study I'm doing around death & dying. But it seems I am also subjecting myself to a form of grief therapy that I have been thinking for some time is probably useful -- an airing of the entire story one has assembled around a death or other form of loss. Themes and vantage points emerge in this process that I think may offer insight to people who have engaged in a protracted grieving process -- or perhaps have not engaged in one and repressed their grief instead.

The situation with my brother and me is probably a combination of the two. I got pretty fucked up in my head while he was in a coma for those four years. I grieved, but in many ways, I couldn't grieve. While he was still alive, my grief was stifled by hope and socio-cultural ideals. After he died, I grieved, but at the same time, I was feeling really fucking tired of the subject. I talked about my brother to a point, whereupon I couldn't talk about him anymore.

Those who know me well, especially those who knew me during that time, might be surprised to hear me say I couldn't talk about him anymore. After all, I talk about him all the time! But the truth is that I have flattened out the story, simplified it, robbed it of some of its complexity and assigned meaning to events and the people involved that don't come close to doing justice to them.

And so I have started from the beginning, from the point in which an unexpected phone call intruded on my evening and created a sudden dividing line between my one phase of my life and another. I am trying to be as honest as I can, which means I have gone on a little fact-gathering journey. I've called family members and friends and asked them what they recall. I've attempted to get his medical records and the crash report taken by the highway patrol. I've dug out my old writings, videotapes and files and photographs.

Assembling all of the information into a coherent narrative is not all that difficult. But writing about my thoughts and feelings at the time is something of another order altogether. It requires me to re-inhabit that time, those events and my emotions and then try to find accurate words to describe them. It is the most tiresome bit of personal writing in which I have ever engaged. It is also the most personally compelling.

So compelling, in terms of drawing my attention to it, that I could not even finish this blog entry without opening the file and making revisions to the pages I wrote earlier today. It may be ambitious, but I have a goal of finishing the first draft of this story by the 27th of this month, when I am taking a week of vacation in Hawaii.

After I'm done with this draft, I'll have to turn my attention toward the analysis of the themes that emerged in the interviews I conducted with several friends last fall about death and dying. Then, I figure to analyze this narrative I'm writing for the themes that emerge in it. For my term paper, I'll weave those two together somehow and try to make sense of what I've learned in the process.

Theoretically, this will make me a better therapist. But in the meantime, I seem to be applying my own theory about grief therapy to myself. So I wonder what this process will do terms of making me a better-functioning human. Am I on the right track? Or am I just kicking up a lot of emotional and psychic dust?

Either way, I just want to state for the record: I am writing. A lot. Just not so much here.

Giant lusty lady

2008-02-11T00:19:00.000-08:00

I walked into The Florist's shop the other day and saw this amazing specimen, a riot of orchids on a massive stalk. This photo doesn't do it justice, in part because that's only HALF the stalk. Yes, this orchid is twice as long as pictured here. The other way this photo doesn't do this sweet baby justice is by picturing it with a full-size lighter wand so you can appreciate how big BIG is. Alas, if I'd backed up my crappy cell phone camera -- someday I'll get a real one -- so the whole stalk of this orchid were visible, you wouldn't have been able to see the loveliness of the blooms.

It's one sexy thing. I guess enjoying these orchids is how I'm sublimating my sexuality given the dry spot I've been in for ... way too freaking long now. There are worse things.

Dreams

2008-02-07T00:40:00.000-08:00

My dream life has been in a stupor for the past few months. I haven't had many, or just not many worth recalling. But this week, I've had a few doozies in a row. I'll share two of them that have really stuck with me, both visually and psychologically.

Dream No. 1

I am sitting on the grass high on an embankment alongside a great river, much like the Columbia or the Mississippi. There are dozens of people around, most of them enjoying the sun and picnicking. We (all of us people, as I am actually sitting alone) observe two planes taking off from a runway that runs along, then juts out into the river, kind of like the runways at SFO jut out into the bay.

One fixed-wing aircraft flies away. The second, a strangely shaped aircraft that is highly maneuverable, flips nose over tail several times as it ascends rapidly. It hovers above the embankment, and starts shooting small canon balls out it's "butt." They fall amongst the picnickers, causing pandemonium but hurting no one, as we are able to avoid them and they do not explode on impact.

Presently, the strange aircraft lands, and a crowd forms to scold its pilot for dropping those shot puts. Heavily armed men in black SWAT/assault team attire flood off the vehicle and start harassing the crowd, shaking, shoving and hitting them. People flee in all directions. It quickly becomes obvious that these dudes are dangerous, and none of us along the river are capable of responding without getting harmed. So we flee.

The guys in black rush toward me and another bystander. Just as he approaches, I drop down over the edge of the embankment and roll down the hill until I am standing next to the water. The bad dudes follow, and I am leaping and scrambling up and down the hill. I get up top again, thinking I will head for the highway, when I see the parking lots are being controlled by these invaders. People are still running in chaos on the grass. I hide at various times behind trees and benches as the bad guys run or march past. I see a young woman at a drinking fountain kneel as they pass, bowing her head to them in submission.

That's not going to help you, I whispered to her from behind a nearby tree. No sooner do I say it than she is grabbed by one of these men and hauled away.

I head toward a pavilion, where I find a star-shaped concrete construction of some sort. A bench? A table? I can't say, except that it had a large overhang with a void beneath it. I decided to hide in there, as does one other fellow. I push trash that has blown under there out the the lip of the opening, thinking it will make the site look undisturbed.

My ruse doesn't work. No one even bothers to look under the edge of the bench or whatever it is before sticking the end of what looks like a leaf blower under there and turning it on. Out rushes a fog of some gas. I try to hold my breath, but eventually must inhale and do so thinking I will surely die from whatever gas has been distributed.

Instead, it turns out that the gas alters my DNA, permanently changing me. I will, forever more as far as I can tell, smell and taste like cheese nachos. I learn this via an announcement from some unknown source. But after I get out from under the structure and try to flee the area, the news gets repeatedly confirmed. Wherever I walk people sniff hungrily in my direction. Several teenage boys claim they smell nachos.

I walk into a ferry terminal where hundreds of people wait, unaware of the chaos being caused by the invaders outside. A boy of about 9 whines at his mother, "But they must have nachos here somewhere! I can smell them! I'm hungry!"

I flee the building.

Down the river a few hundred yards, I see a small boat launch. I decided to enter the river there, thinking I might be able to wash off this smell, not really accepting my DNA has been altered. Just as I'm wading into the fuel-slicked water, I see S2 in a small motorboat pull into a floating dock about 25 yards from shore. I swim out to the dock.

As I climb out of the water, I notice Little Pea squat over the river and urinate. Her big sister, Getting to Yes, who's 7, instantly rats her out, saying, "Mom, Pea's polluting the Earth!"

I really think that's the least of our problems, I say to Getting to Yes.

GTY glares at me like I'm a traitor. "Pollution is a BIG problem," she corrects me.

S2 comes around the edge of the dock, surprisingly topless. Uh, I say, you might want to put your shirt back on.

"I'm sunbathing," she says. "What of it?"

I gesture up the river. I think we're being invaded or something.

She looks at the chaos continuing on the shore and shrugs a little, then wrinkles her nose. "What's that smell?" she asks, looking at me. I extend my hand. She sniffs it. "What is that?"

Cheese nachos? I offer.

"Yeah, kinda. I guess," she says, not convinced.

Taste it, I suggest. I'm supposed to taste like it, too.

She licks the back of my hand, then quickly spits. "You taste like gasoline-soaked nachos!" she says. "That's disgusting."

I wake up.

Dream No. 2

I am standing in the middle of what appears to be a dorm room. Stroking my chin, I realize there are long hairs hanging down below it. I feel around and discover they are braided, knotted messy things like dreadlocks. They hang like the giant whiskers of a catfish but instead of my cheek or chin, they are attached to the inside of my bottom lip. I tug on them, and they pull my lip into a frown.

"You really should stop playing with those," says a woman I recognize as a classmate from my internship class. She's a petite brunette who presents as demure in class. But in this dorm room, she's bossing me around. "Your side of the room is messy; you need to clean it up."

I look at the room and discover one side is an incredibly clean, simply appointed bed, desk and table of Japanese design. Two place mats with chopsticks and tightly folded napkins sit at corners of the table. On the other side of the room is a profusion of mess -- books tossed hither and yon, my sleigh bed covered in a quilt.

I tug on one of the dreadlocks hanging from my lip, trying to figure out how to get rid of them. "I'll get you some scissors and you can just cut them off," the classmate says. I nod my head. "And stop bowing your head to me," she snaps. "Just stop bowing down like that! I can't stand it!"

I am feeling verbally assaulted and confused. With my fingernail, I scrape at the skin on the inside of my lip. As I do, four dreadlocks fall out painlessly in a chunk, as an exceptionally loose tooth might. A second chunk of five dreadlocks comes out without much more effort than that.

My classmate returns with scissors in her hand and sees the dreadlocks -- with their spit-covered roots -- lying on the ground. "Those are really nasty," she says, then sighs, "Make sure you pick them up."

....

I'm not a dream analyst, but I have a feeling both of these dreams meant something. I'm going to ponder them for a while. If anyone knowledgeable in dream symbols has any ideas, let me know.

Come on down to the Mardi Gras...

2008-02-02T00:06:00.000-08:00

My idea with this year's Mardi Gras has been to bring home the lush (elegant, decadent) flavor of the holiday. I knew it would be too hard to pull off what I wanted for myself, so I enlisted the help of two friends who have their own reasons for wanting to get into the spirit of things.

King Rex, a native of New Orleans who was evicted by Hurricane Katrina, will be supplying some of the culinary muscle for our endeavor. I will be dishing up a few of my standby favorites, including the jambalaya I learned how to make from my dear late aunt, a cajun culinary powerhouse also born in the Big Easy. So I think we will have some delightful dishes.

Of course, there will be intoxicants. So this alters the mood of things.

But HGM came over this evening and turned on his PowerGay Transformer Ray and freaking worked over the place. We daydreamed up the ideas together. I collected candlesticks and decorations and platters from friends (The Florist and S2) and used my personal supply of masks. HGM and I visited a fabric store and bought a bunch of materials. And HGM brought over more candles and holiday lights.

The end result of about three or four leisurely but work-filled hours this evening is ... well, let's just say we've gone off and created that mood-altering atmosphere I had in mind -- with HGM's queer panache creating an over-the-top effect well beyond my expectations. When it comes to staging decadent, dark, voluptuous atmosphere, the dude ROCKS!

I have no idea who will show up to this party and who will bail. I have had a couple last minute maybes and one rather grim I-don't-think-so from a friend who may not be up for socializing. Otherwise, all I can say is that those who do show up to this colorful affair will be entering into an mood-altering space, just as I wanted.

But I'll be honest about something: It kind of creeps me out to go to sleep in the middle of this bizarro-world that has overtaken my loft. There is some drapery hanging above my bed, atop which sits the most magnificent mask I own, which is adorned with a large headdress of black feathers. I'm a little worried about waking up in the middle of the night and seeing that thing staring down at me.

Also, I'm afraid of waking up and seeing this place in the daylight. It is staged like a ballroom party. There is drapery and tulle and ribbon and damask everywhere. I'm worried that when I wake up, I'll look around and feel like I fell asleep in the middle of a Macy's window display or something. I really don't like that particular startle that comes with feeling like I've accidentally fallen asleep while I was supposed to be entertaining guests. This is a recurrent experience for me, and in truth, I'm writing about it partly in hopes that I can stem off that experience tomorrow.

Anyway, that is also a way of illustrating just how much my living space has been altered. It has a very Cinderella meets "Eyes Wide Shut" thing going on. If it's hard for you to imagine, I assure you, one look at what's going on here, and you would know I have described it perfectly.

In the middle of it will be yours truly -- dressed as pirate. To be more accurate, that means that I, a fashion-conservative female, will be dressed as a male-to-female cross-dressing pirate. Seems like those kinds of roles are normally Oscar material. I'll do my best....

That starts with getting my beauty rest. Good night. And may you enjoy this here Mardi Gras.

Fresh depressed Peace Corps boobs with leschmaniasis hiding in sperm trees, where the penis windchimes tinkle in the breeze

2008-01-25T20:02:00.000-08:00

"Why are black women so bitchy?"

At least one person has wondered this recently and Googled it. For reasons that escape me, Google pointed this particular query to yours truly, extended psychosis.

I haven't been especially prolific on the old blog here lately, but I see in Blogger's data about extended psychosis that this is post No. 401. I sometimes wonder if anyone has read them all (myself included), but I whatever attracts my regular readers remains a mystery. One thing I'm increasingly curious about, however, is the traffic I get from Google searches. I know extended psychosis remains the No. 1 result on Google if you type in those words. But what confounds me are the readers who arrive here via other types of Google searches.

Here is a brief list of Google searches that brought readers to extended psychosis recently. Go figure.... (I am particularly curious about the last one on the list.) These are from a single day last week:

- Annette Funicello photo returning from hospital

- Peace corps depression

- Prominent boobs

- Fresh boobs

- Gay psychosis

- Jennifer save yourself

- Infamous insane people

- Psychosis of people who speak in rhymes

- Holiday song + are you having fun + safeway commercial

- Checking signs of life

- Penis windchime

- What to do if you encounter an elk

- I’m sorry to inform you dead killed

- Working with the criminally insane

- Why are black women so bitchy

- History of hairbrushes (also searches for: History of hairbrushes and how many sold each year)

- Cortisone psychosis

- Catty women

- Trees that smell like male cum (other variations: "semen trees" or "stinky semen"(

- How are dogs and humans alike

- Fuck Caprial and John’s restaurant

Mardi Gras cometh

2008-01-21T19:14:00.000-08:00

So I'm planning another Mardi Gras party this year -- that'll be three in a row -- and this time around, I've enlisted help. I've formally established The Krewe of Portlandia, and things may get a little more "snazzy" (HGM's queer little word) around these parts.

For those who don't speak the lingo, a "krewe" is a social group formed solely for the purposes of putting on Mardi Gras events, including parades and parties. So the Krewe of Bacchus puts on the Bacchus parade in New Orleans, as well as a ball. These krewes are usually dues-paying organizations -- often very hefty dues -- but the members have the pleasure of riding on floats and tossing out beads and doubloons to the begging hoards and masses of people. (There is something to be said for that experience, as I learned personally a few times.)

I've not yet managed a Mardi Gras party where someone dares to get up on the table and bare her breasts while the rest of us pelt her with throw beads (but there's always a small hope of that). Nevertheless, I keep encouraging revelers to get into the spirit of things by wearing costumes and trying on, just for a moment or two, a touch of wild abandon. (People in the Northwest seem a bit stiff to me at times, but we're working on it.)

I thought it might be helpful to have multiple hosts, thus creating The Krewe of Portlandia.

The first person I enlisted was King Rex, who is a Katrina evacuee and hosted a Hurricane Katrina party at my place on the second anniversary of the storm this last summer. He so enjoyed cooking up a mess of New Orleans vittles and drinking Abita beer that he wanted to do it again. Well, let me tell ya: August is a bit hot to be cooking up a storm in my un-air-conditioned loft, so I said: Well, how about Mardi Gras instead? He's a good Southern boy, meaning he likes a gathering focused on food and drink, so King Rex readily agreed and started working up his menu. He's got shrimp on the brain by the sounds of all the recipes he's talking about cooking.

When I was telling HGM about our plan to cook Southern and drink, he snapped (the kind that would have had two circles up and a z-formation if he had let his inner gay flame up), and said, "You *are* planning to snazz it up a little this year, aren't you?"

I always have big dreams, but rarely do I have the follow through on these things. So I said, I *intend* to....

This was all HGM needed. "Because you know, you can't be throwing a party with a theme and telling people to come in costumes, and they walk in and see the same old place. In that case, you're just inviting people to come to your home and get drunk."

I know this.

"So what are you going to do about it?" he asked.

I got out my brand-new Therapist's Fix-It Ray Gun 2008 -- which can be used to de-escalate, stimulate, eradicate or motivate -- and set it to M-mode. I shot from the hip. The gun spoke these words: It sounds like you've got a strong opinion about that, HGM. I bet you have ideas. Would you care to be the Decadence Design Consultant? I can list you on the invitation.

BULLS EYE!

And so it came to pass that yesterday saw the collection of swaths of purple, green and gold (Mardi Gras colors) tulle, ribbons, masks, throw pillows and enough candles to send an SOS to the extra-terrestrials who keep abducting me lately. (I say it's an SOS because we have fun. It's not *all* anal probes.)

But I digress.

Suffice it to say, HGM's inner Martha Stewart came out. In the fabric store, he admitted that some fabric is so engaging to him that he wants to "eat it." I wasn't sure what he meant, but when I repeated this to S2 today, she replied, "Oh, I know exactly what he means." Somehow, I put what I know about HGM and S2 together, and it suddenly made sense. I feel the same way about certain hardwoods. (Cocobolo, how I love you and want to make you mine....)

Ooops. There I go again.

Back to the subject at hand. The fabric and the pillows and the masks and the candles and "lots and lots of Christmas lights" -- along with me supposedly replacing all white lightbulbs in my house with pink or blue ones -- is going to be assembled in my loft in some sort of decadent fashion. I believe we're going for that French damask-dripping, dark "Eyes Wide Shut" kind of voluptuousness. I'm not sure what will actually come to pass, but hey....

If you got your invite, you know the particulars. Two weeks hence, we will laissez les bon temps rouller!

How to make condensed milk

2008-01-18T23:08:00.000-08:00

I can't think of the last time that I had a greater variety of *intense* subject matter come up in a single week. Maybe it's never happened. There was sex. There was death with dignity and drama. There was the promise of new life. There was a mutiny in my class. There was racism and heterosexism. There were tears -- good god, were there ever tears! There was also free speech and health care reform. There was God and the Goddess and a glass penis.

And I ain't talking therapy sessions and clients here. This is all in my personal sphere.

I took breaks from this Bizzaro-world by attending a couple yoga classes. In the restorative yoga class, a new teacher spoke very loudly. "NOTICE THE QUIET PAUSE AT THE TOP AND BOTTOM OF YOUR BREATH," she said, voice blaring. Just a bit distracting, and not terribly restful. A few days later, I took a Kundalini class in which my chakra kahn got stimulated. Fucking fabulous, vigorous workout followed by a melt-into-the-floor meditation. But my calfs have been complaining since then.

In between and around all of the above, people said things the following to me this week, all in complete seriousness:

"Your tongue is short, so you've learned to be artful."

"You're still working on your orbit."

"How does this work? Should I speak to you -- or to a priest?"

"When I see the two of them together, they are such a *couple* that I want to smash their faces in."

"You can always string a bunch of peacock feathers on garland and get the same effect."

"I don't get why you're doing that. I'm not judging you; I'm just curious. That's not the behavior of the person I know you to be."

All I can say is that there are times in my life when I'm surprised by the face I see in the mirror. The most curious thing to me this week is that it looks the same as it did on Sunday, when the week began. And I haven't even seen Saturday yet.

The amazing thing to me is that, as faces go, mine looks pretty happy today.

Note to self

2008-01-14T21:00:00.000-08:00

Do not — I repeat: Do NOT — run through the house with a vomiting dog in your out-stretched arms.

The consequences of such acts should be obvious.

However, you may forgive yourself this once. After all, it was, 2 a.m. and dark and you just were trying to protect the silk duvet cover.

But still. You're a smart girl with really good spacial sense, and you have know about the splatter patterns of flying vomit ever since you were 8 and enjoyed that spinning barrel ride at Six Flags in Georgia. You should've seen it coming.

Encounters with elk

2008-01-13T19:20:00.000-08:00

Just before the term started, I spent a long weekend by myself in a cabin up in the Olympics. I go there when I really want to get away from stuff. It is fairly isolated, particularly in winter. Late one afternoon, I took a long walk in the rain past waterfall after waterfall, just really enjoying the earth unburdening itself of an overabundance of water, all headed to the lake above which perches the cabin where I stay.

The light was starting to dim a little, a mix of the late afternoon and another squall rolling in, but I really felt drawn to head down to this meadow a couple miles from the cabin. I didn't have a flashlight, which would make my return trip rather precarious if I didn't get out in time, but I decided to take the risk and just kept walking farther, aiming for the meadow.

About 50 yards before I got to the clearing, I saw some movement through the trees at the edge of the meadow. A large elk came into view. Followed by another and another and another. One of them was a baby -- are they called elkettes?

Eventually, a dozen elk were clustered on the road in front of me, the adults in the herd surrounding the smallest of them. A huge buck walked forward and assumed a position like a guard might. They all stood and stared at me, and I slowly walked to within about 30 yards of them and stared back. We were like this for a good five minutes or so before they decided to cross the road completely and head back into the woods.

Below is a cell-phone video of the last member of the herd moseying across the road after the other dozen elk had moved on.

Once, when driving by in my car, I saw some elk on the far off edge of this meadow, but it is the first time that I have encountered them on foot -- and I have never been alone amongst such large wild creatures. It was a beautiful moment, and walking back on the road at twilight, through dense rainforest with all those waterfalls gushing and gurgling through the ferns and mossy rocks, was really marvelous. I am drawn to this place time and again, in any season, year after year, and it never loses its appeal.

Yesterday, I received a mass e-mail from a woman I know and had run into on Monday afternoon. She was announcing some classes she would be teaching and had drawn some cards from a particular form of tarot deck she likes to consult -- for what purpose, I do not know. In either case, this was one of the two cards she picked and what she wrote about it:

"Skillful Perseverance (8 of discs) shows a woman walking alone when a vision of an elk appears. She is wearing a shawl she wove - showing craft, perseverance, skill. The message - don't muscle your way through to your goal because the costs become very high. Rather, step forward with gentleness, pacing, and sensitivity for yourself."

After reading that, I wrote back and told her about my encounter with the elk, saying, I was that woman alone with the elk.

This afternoon, I spent a while baking goodies with HGM over at his place. Over a bite to eat, we talked for a little while about our shared experience of not having significant others -- or significant anybodies, for that matter -- and how we that can sometimes burden one's spirit a bit heavily. (Valentines Day seems particularly repellant to him, for example, while Christmas is a problem for me.) We were talking about cultural distinctions of the term "family," which is one way gays and lesbians have identified themselves to others in the history of our movement.

But the true nature of the conversation had to do with how difficult it can be sometimes to see people paired up when we are single and have been for a while. I'm going on two years without any decent prospects and just a few poorly matched attempts at a date or fix-up. HGM, on the other hand, has plenty of dating options but has never managed to be in a significant relationship. I had some questions about how much our sexual orientations and our age (we're both 39) winnow our statistical possibilities and how much was what HGM referred to as "difficulty in making some vital connection with others."

We also spent a great deal of our time talking about my study of death and dying and the progression of that massive paper I wrote last term, which I must now take up and revise. I have two clients who have very clear issues related to the meaning of life and death. One started talking to me about it last week, while the other announced as our session was coming to an end that she would start talking about it this coming Tuesday.

So with that afternoon's discussion in mind, I returned home this evening and found the following e-mail from the tarot-reading woman:

"I checked 'Animal-Speak' for elk and got: Keynote: strength and nobility. 'If an elk has come into your life it can mean that you are about to hit your stride,' she wrote. "It can teach pacing yourself, not giving up, not overdoing. Elk are Not solitary, they travel with companions, usually their own gender. Herds of elk have watchouts and they teach to live and work with others, not do so much alone."

So if there is any significance to my experience with the herd of elk -- aside from it being a marvelous moment that will always belong only to me (so much better than all those nasty moments I've had alone) -- perhaps it means I'm going to get myself a little posse of girls with whom to travel, live and work.

Perhaps I'm about to get my own harem.

Well, a girl can dream.

Where's my error-proof test?

2008-01-07T21:47:00.000-08:00

I don't think it's official yet, but it seems some leg cramps I had earlier today were evidence that I, your dear UCM, am ... pregnant.

I had the pleasure this evening of having a one-on-one session of vinyasa yoga at the studio across the street from my home. During one of the first leg stretches, I got a funny fluttering cramp in the arch of my foot, then a little in my thigh. I shook out my leg and repositioned myself in the pose, and they went away.

A little later, in a bridge pose, I got a small cramp in my hamstring on the same leg. I lowered myself from the pose and repositioned. It didn't go away, so I sat up and massaged my leg for a moment. I commented that there's something missing in my food.

Trying to be helpful, as as we were alone in the room, the yoga instructor, with whom this is my first class, said to me, "Well, it's pretty common among pregnant women to get cramps like that in the legs, so you can always check with your doctor and figure out what to do about that during pregnancy."

She was suggesting I'm pregnant. Seems I'm already ... uh, showing.

Um, I said, I think it's more likely that some essential nutrient, such as potassium, is missing from my diet during the past few days.

"Oh," she said with a little wince. "Or that could be it."

Nice....

Suffice it to say, I remain as pure as the driven snow -- but not the least bit pregnant.

And in truth, I think it's an improvement to be assumed pregnant rather than fat. I think this mistaken assumption happened because my middle pooch is firmer that it once was, and I'm carrying my body differently. Friends regularly ask me if I've lost weight recently, and I haven't lost a pound. So I must be changing shape in a good way. As weird as I think it is to be thought pregnant, it's not as humiliating a statement about body shape as many other women might find it.

Cutest. Dog. Ever.

2008-01-07T21:41:00.001-08:00

My friend Geodanny recently sent me this photo of the pup Brogan, which was taken in August when Geodanny and his wife, The Asian, my longtime friend, were visiting from the Bay Area. This is, without question, the finest photo of the pup ever taken. The lighting on a little Cairn's dark face is very hard to get right to show all this detail while still looking so natural.

Bravo, Geodanny, and thanks for the photo.

Hasta luego

2008-01-03T01:16:00.000-08:00

For the next few days, I will be sitting in the adirondak chair pictured below, rather than being an armchair therapist or sitting at my computer.

I desperately need to recharge my batteries, and this is the get-away where I typically do just that. I'll be doing the R&R alone this time. As I've packed for my trip, I noticed a distinct difference between this year and last year, when I went to the lake by myself in late December. Last year, I was distressed about going there alone. This year, I'm craving just that.

Apparently, I am learning to fly solo with a lot more confidence. It wasn't the travel or the destination last year; it was the social isolation I was feeling. This year, I don't have that particular neurotic complex dogging me. I'm looking forward to solitude, to not even having to care for my dog. A few unstructured, unscheduled, no-pressure, sleep-and-eat-when-I-want, don't-hear-a-single-case-presentation days is just what I need.

I know others who need the same exact thing and can't arrange it for any number of reasons, so I feel especially fortunate that I get to have this time for myself in such a beautiful setting. It is without question the most restorative place I know. I'm going to go and gather as much of its marvelous energy as I can and try to bring some home with me. I'm going to need it this spring, I can tell.

See you all on the flip side.

Better news next time...

2007-12-31T00:33:00.000-08:00

I continue in the slacker vein when it comes to posting on this blog, but here's a heart-wrenching update:

S2's precious mom died last Thursday. Her death was rather sudden and unexpected in the scheme of things. She got an infection in her leg the week before, and various complications resulted in a hospitalization on Christmas morning that was followed two days later by her death.

She was 69, and in my few encounters with her, I thought S2's mom was the salt of the earth. I imagine S2 will be trying to grasp this loss for a long time to come. I feel for her something fierce.

I would get into more of this but I feel like I would be stepping on S2's sense of privacy. All I want to say at this point is that the experience I've had with S2 in the past week or so has yet again dramatically altered my thoughts on the spiritual landscape. Sometimes we end up being teachers to each other in the most unexpected ways. This was one of those.

S2, if you read this, I just want to say publicly that your mom seemed to me like the kind of mom who should've gotten to stick around a lot longer. I'm sorry that didn't happen.

How lovely of your mother, though, to have left behind a daughter (a mom) like you. That's the true meaning of legacy.

Dear Santa Paws

2007-12-20T00:00:00.001-08:00

Thank you for the lovely calendar, which arrived in the mail today. My master (she's actually my mistress, to be technical) was kind enough to place your thoughtful gift where I can have easy access to it.

Even though the humans believe we don't have a sense of time, I'm glad to see you support the cause. Every dog deserves a schedule of vaccinations and groomer visits at eye level. Our right to personal time management is long overdue. Viva la revolucion!

Enclosed, you will find a photo of me with the calendar, which has been posted in my dining room so I can review the roll call of days at breakfast each morning.

One question, though: Cats? You gave me a calendar of cats? That's *not* what I meant when I said I was hoping to get some pussy this Christmas. However, I can understand how that request might have easily been misunderstood. I'll try again on New Year's Eve.

May your holidays be filled with the finest of butt scents and the brightest holiday cheer.

Warmest regards,
Brogan Brogan-Dash

Writing about writing

2007-11-30T23:45:00.000-08:00

Writing the paper for my independent study is an incredible process. I am combining so many different types of sources, including stuff from all those aformentioned interviews, that I feel more like a journalist again. Although lit reviews take up a necessary amount of space and require the intrusion of awkard citations at times, I am not doing a piece of "academic" writing.

I am mixing psychology and philosophy with the interviews of "regular" people, and then spicing all of it up with quotes from the literary arts (and one refrain of lyrics from Monty Python's "Life of Brian"). I don't know if I'm doing *good* writing, but it is at least readable and interesting. I'll have to remember Michael Cunningham's admonition to "over-write; then edit harshly."

But I am at least having fun. It is the first time in a LONG time that I have been obsessed with a piece of writing. I have so much to synthesize about what I've read and encountered, and my brain keeps noodling, revealing and changing what's revealed.

It's quite the process, this independent study. It's a good thing the school limits the number of credits you can do of this type of study because I would have been inclined, at my own peril, to do more of them. It is a BEAR to be disciplined and get the work done, but the process -- the reading, studying, considering, questioning, all of my own pursuit -- is highly enjoyable.

One of the sources I used was Isabel Allende's memoir, "Paula," which is the story of the year she spent caring for her comatose adult daughter before she died. I call it a memoir, but it is actually a long letter she wrote to her daughter while sitting for hours by her bedside. It is a book about the suffering of that seemingly endless pause one experiences when loved ones are in comas. (I know this from personal experience.) It is also an autobiographical book about Allende's life and her family history.

I read it while my youngest brother was in a coma. He died after four years of that. But Allende's book, well, perhaps it saved my sanity. It still remains the only thing I've ever read that comes close to describing my experience, and especially at the time, it was important for me to know someone else knew that particular pain. It was a validation. To have it come from a writer of Allende's power was most provocative.

Yesterday, when I pulled it out of the depths of my cabinet so I could find a quote from it, I was surprised when pictures of my brother -- face scarred, eyes vacant, mouth agape, wearing a fraternity baseball cap and, most oddly, a 1993 Hood-to-Coast t-shirt -- fell out from between some pages. There are so many ghosts in my home. So many ghosts.

And so it begins

2007-11-29T01:25:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, I finally completed the transcription process for the interviews I conducted on death and the meaning-making people engage in around it. I typed a total of 179 pages in 11 pt Gill Sans, single spaced. Quite the undertaking.

I am now on page 11 of the paper I'm writing and am only just beginning. I will be diligently pounding away on my keyboard -- and then, if I do what is righteous, I will be deftly editing -- for most of the next few days. I anticipate turning in a complete draft or a significant chunk on Monday.

I am concerned that, even with good editing, this dog will be in excess of 30 or 40 pages. OK, the truth is that I'm concerned it will be in the neighborhood of 50.

Let me tell you something: For a two credit class, that shit just ain't right, man. It ain't right.

One of the reasons it's so long is that I'm weaving my personal narrative -- some of the aspects of my life story that have drawn my attention to this topic -- with several other substantial aspects of my study. Those include: what I learned from a review of psychology research; what I learned from "softer" sources, such as philosophy and mythology; stories and opinions about death from the interviews I conducted; and representations and/or discussions of death in poetry and literature.

The funny thing is that, in the end, I don't believe I'm capable of drawing any conclusions whatsoever -- except to note the multitude of ideas, opions and beliefs that people have about death, dying, life and the meaning of all of the above.

Kinda seems wrong to do so much work and write so many pages and not be able to draw any conclusions. But I guess that's what happens when you study, in a purely qualitative, phenomenological and subjective way, people's attitudes and meaning-making around the greatest mystery humanity has: death.

I said what?!

2007-11-18T23:53:00.000-08:00

So, in my last blog entry, I mentioned that I was beginning the writing of a massive paper for a study I'm doing on attitudes about death and dying and the meaning-making that people engage in about it. I said the writing was about to begin.

Since then, I have been at my computer diligently, typing my poor little fingers to the bone.

To be precise, I have typed -- in 11-point Gill Sans, single-spaced, with a double return between paragraphs -- exactly 123 pages.

I'm sad to report, however, that I have as yet to type one goddamned single fucking word of my paper, which is due in a few short weeks. Rather, all those 123 pages account for several hours of interviews done with friends, colleagues and my yoga instructor about their attitudes and meaning-making around death.

And I still have more than three hours of interviews to transcribe, which is about eight or nine more hours of work because it takes so much longer to transcribe than it does to talk.

Let me say one thing here: JesusFuckingGod!

This is a valuable exercise. I am learning more just in the transcription process alone about how people organize their narratives around death. I'm also discovering how, even among people I know fairly well, there is a profound depth of diversity in attitudes and constructs about death, as well as life itself.

It is some really rich shit, man.

S2, for example, gave an amazingly succinct interview, utterly packed with useful quotes. It's almost as if she had been coached thoroughly by those who teach politicians to deploy sound bytes. Except for what S2 had to say was dripping with content; it's not at all the kind of fluff from which sound bytes are extracted. I suspect I am going to have to restrain myself from quoting her too often. I am a sucker for a good quote and always have been. Hers are like meaty, fleshy, tasty nuggets, densly packed and never trite.

Other subjects were more "story" oriented. The Florist, for example, shared a wild story about getting malaria, but then, for gravitas, provided some vivid examples of how nearly dying can radically overhaul one's life. Several others shared stories about how they almost drowned. And some talked at length about their feelings of guilt when others died, while they went on living.

For someone who loves a good story as much as I do -- and who also feels enriched when others share their thoughts on just about any subject, but especially the taboo ones -- this is like hitting the mother lode. I will mine it as deeply as I can.

But it is also annoying as hell, for example, to transcribe for HOURS the dialogue of someone who says "like" and "you know" repeatedly, as in, "She was, like, all like twitching, you know, and so I go, 'Hey, what's up with that,' you know, and she like goes, 'Like, what did you expect?' to me, like that."

I was, like, about to, like, kill myself, you know, when I was done transcribing that, you know? I was just totally done, man.

*sigh*

And then there are people repeat themselves excessively. At some point in my transcription, I found myself wanting to yell, I got it already! OK? I got it!

Some just went into excruciating detail. I asked one participant to "give a little biographical information" about herself, "whatever you think might be pertinent to this." ELEVEN MINUTES LATER, I'm caught on tape saying, Ah, thank you for that soliloquy. When she apologized and reacted in horror to learn I would be transcribing, I replied, It's OK. You were just warming up. So for my first question....

Additionally, because people often share more than they intended to in interviews like this, I am sending the transcripts to all the participants and inviting them to edit them -- to omit comments they never want to see in print or simply to clarify their comments. Some are taking me up on that; others are letting the interview simply be what it was.

The upside to all of this, though, is that I have some wonderful references, some really descriptive, beautiful narrative and some keen insights to use in my piece. For whatever reason, it has been difficult to find good references on meaning and death, so my interview subjects have filled in some important blanks for me. Further, their attitudes and experiences are diverse enough to make a highly interesting paper.

And now that they're typed in (mostly, anyway), all I have to do is cut and paste their comments into my paper.

When I finally get to writing it.

One thing ends; writing begins

2007-11-07T00:18:00.000-08:00

I finished my Assessment class tonight.

I was anticipating a really boring class at the start of the term, and was apparently blessed to take it with a new instructor who had a easy-going wit to him. By boiling it down to what was going to be useful to us as professionals, the teacher managed to cover the significant assessments -- aka., methods of psychological testing -- and still keep it interesting.

Tonights final consisted of five group presentations, mostly composed of two students each. We had to pick a character -- famous, whether real or fictional -- and present a psychological evaluation on them. Four groups did straight presentations, including PowerPoint presentations. But me and my partner? No.

We did a role play.

In which my partner was a psychologist, and I was Frida Kahlo.

Sadly, I have never seen any footage of Frida Kahlo, nor ever watched the films about her. So there was no real character study going on here. I just learned what I needed to learn about her background -- which was plenty -- and then memorize a few actual quotes of hers to use. Alas, my interpretation of Frida seems to have come with a slight Russian accent. I don't know why.

But the whole performance -- "acted" out because her behavior was a part of the evaluation -- became a black comedy of sorts. My classmates did not know who the chacter was: We were all playing a game of "Guess Who?" as a way to keep things interesting. So as they listened to my theatrical, over-wrought responses to certain questions, they fell out with laughter.

For example, the psych asked me about my marital history, and in part, I replied: "There have been two grave accidents in my life. One was when a streetcar knocked me down. The other accident was (my husband)." She was referring to Diego Rivera, of course, but to keep our classmates guessing about identity, we did not use the names of spouses.

Another time, I said of my habit of drinking a bottle of brandy a day: "I started drinking so I could drown my sorrows, but it seems the damn things have learned how to swim."

My classmates did not recognize these responses as the words of Frida Kahlo, nor many other facts that came to light. When I identified one particular Rorschach tile as "my bloodied, fractured pelvis" and another as "Kandinsky's version of the Eiffel Tower," they absolutely roared with laughter.

It was a bit awkward. I suppose my acting prompted some of the laughter -- and sugar highs from the last-night snacks that classmates brought in must have accounted for some of it, as well. But it was a little odd to have such a tragic sort of character bringing my classmates so much joy.

I suppose I got an 'A' anyway. No matter what, I'm just happy to be done with the class.

....

On a totally different note, now that this last project is out of the way, I can and must begin the writing of a significant paper for my death & dying study. I've been feeling pretty blocked around this topic, particularly around the part where I have to address my own perspective and how it relates to the study I've undertaken.

It's unusual for me to experience blocks in my writing. It may be less a block, though, than it is a problem of mental organization. There may just be too many words trying to get down the shoot all at once. And at the same time, I feel a bit hounded by my own perfectionism. It's leaving me a little tongue-tied as a writer.

However, in that odd way that things in my home just kind of ... turn up ... I found on my desk this week a scrap of paper on which I wrote some notes at a lecture I attended in the spring of 2000. I'm not sure how such a thing managed to find its way to this desk, three homes later, but ... here it is.

It is a collection of writing tips offered by author Michael Cunningham the night he spoke at the Portland Arts & Lectures Series. Cunningham had recently won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, "The Hours," which is a modern literary work I admire greatly. His writing was spare and elegant, and he somehow managed to make the suicide of Virginia Woolf a really lovely moment, even under the weight of its sadness.

These are his words of advice, which I captured seven years ago and which have turned up just when I am beginning a significant writing project:

-- Be audacious.

-- Write things you "don't have the right" to write.

-- Don't spill the beans; keep the magic all for yourself.

-- A good read isn't so much in the plot as in the telling.

-- Over-write; then edit harshly.

-- Don't keep asking "What is the point?" Let the writing and the characters lead you there.

Halloween & things

2007-10-31T23:55:00.000-07:00

I spent the evening at the H4TCI. Note to self: Do not feed candy to people with Bipolar disorder who are prone to mania.

This morning, walking the dog, a woman setting up the outdoor tables (and it was cold!) said, "OH, what a *cutie*!" as I walked past.

I knew she was talking about the pup, but I replied, Thank you! I assume you were talking about me, right?

"Oh yes, of course. It wasn't the *dog* I was talking about," she said, laughing. "I'm not gay, but you're pretty, too."

I love that "I'm not gay" thing.

Oddly, several blocks away and 40 minutes later, I popped in to talk to The Florist for a few minutes. She had come over the other night for drinks, and we were supposed to do a death & dying interview but never got to it. So I wanted to find out when we could do that. For whatever reason, she made a tangential comment: "Do you remember those 'I'm straight but not narrow' buttons people used to wear? It got to where if I saw one of those, I felt like slapping the person."

She's going to be difficult to interview. She tells amazing stories that slide one right into another. It will be hard to keep her on point.

But I digress.

Gays.

This is my last thought for the night: Recently, there has been a "gay sex scandal" all over the TV news here. It involves a male Washington state representative who had sex with a guy -- perhaps while the lawmaker was wearing a red sequined lingere top and heels?

There seems to be some question about whether the cash exchanged as a result of this sexual encounter was payment for prostitution or was political extortion. Either way, the story has been on the news for several nights, always being referred to as the "gay sex scandal."

Listen here, my heterosexual friends. I would just like to point out, especially to those of you who think gays don't really face all *that much* discrimination in our society: Each time a "gay sex scandal" hits the news, it reminds me of how much more progress yet needs making.

The day it is just a "sex scandal" -- rather than a "gay sex scandal" -- I will think we have made real progress. (Except for the Puritanical part where sex (period!) is still scandalous. That is a battle all of us deserve to win.) In the meantime, don't tell me there isn't still *serious* systemic oppression of gays, even up here in the lilly white liberal Pacific Northwest. It's been right there on TV every night this week. And it's pathetic.

UCM: Zen-master therapist

2007-10-30T20:25:00.001-07:00

This morning in group supervision at my internship site, one of the other interns described "having a melt down" last week and "crying in the bathroom or the mailroom" at intervals throughout the day. The cause of her consternation apparently was:

-- The lack of *any* orientation to the computer system, which has mental health-related software that is unfamiliar to all the interns (which has sucked for all of us)

-- The lack of *meaningful* orientation to all the paperwork required by Medicare for us to continue giving services to our clients (which sucks in more ways than you can imagine, even when you know what all the paperwork is and when to complete it)

-- The fact that she has only received *two hours* of individual supervision since the beginning of September (whereas I have been getting one hour a week, per my school's requirements)

-- Her new-therapist jitters that leave her feeling like she has no clue what she's doing (one of the most important reasons to have regular, reliable, useful individual supervision)

-- A strange setup wherein my peer has no regular access to a treatment room (an important reminder that I should not add an extra day to my internship on the day she's there, because obviously t'ain't no room at the inn...)

-- An even more peculiar setup whereby she sits at one desk and her phone rings at another which is all the way across the office (which she called a "minor incovenience").

I feel for my peer, I really do. If I didn't have an office in which to meet clients and my phone rang in another part of the building, I'd be making a stink. I'm not sure I'd be crying in the mailroom, but those things would add needless stress to what is already a stressful situation.

The other intern started going on about how difficult it is for "all of us." But then they both looked at me and one of them said, "I'll bet UCM has a totally different take."

I'm sorry to say, I replied, but I'm actually doing pretty good.

"I *knew* you would say that!" the stressed-to-crying intern said. "You are *always* so calm and so centered within yourself. You *never* get flustered!"

Don't get me wrong, I said, I have my moments. Trust me.

"That may be," she replied, "but I can't imagine we're ever going to see one of them. You are so peaceful. Whatever your secret is, I wish you would share it!"

Perhaps it's just that I don't give a shit.

Eyebrows go up in the room.

I mean: Yes, this paperwork is outrageous and, on the surface, overwhelming. Yes, there are all these strange Medicare requirements. I would not say it's a 'minor inconvenience' that you have neither a therapy room nor a phone that rings where you can actually hear and access it. Those things are fundamental. But when it comes down to it, all that paperwork and bureaucracy and all the stuff we don't even know that we don't know about? Well, as far as I see it, if I fuck up some paperwork, I expect someone will tell me eventually. Until then, I really don't give a shit -- not when it comes to sitting down and being with the client. That's what my job is, and I'm not even being paid to do it. So....

Fortunately, our group supervisor is not the same kind of namby-pamby Stepford therapist I had doing group supervision at my practicum last summer. He can take a little "shit" here and a little "fuck" there. But more to the point, he supported what I was saying completely: You can't know what you don't know, and you can't even be expected to ask questions about things that are outside of your sphere of understanding that there are even questions to be asked. Someone has to TELL YOU stuff at one point or another. Once a foundation is properly laid, then you have a basis from which to ask questions.

But we didn't get that on accounts of all the turnover in staffing that went down in September.

It has been a rough transition, and there were a couple of weeks back at the start when I was wondering when I would be able to see clients and how they would be assigned to me. Then, stuff started to fall into place, sometimes in surprising ways, and I've been seeing clients pretty regularly.

Despite the evaluation of my peers that I have some kind of zen-like demeanor, I have a serious concern about whether I will get enough client contact hours over the next nine months to meet the requirements of my school and state licensing. If I don't, I'll have to extend my stay at the site, and there is no way I can actually afford to do that. This spring is the last term for which I can get student loans, so I have to be done and working full-time by June. That's all there is to it. This is a source of stress for me.

But it's also something I can't carry around with me in my day-to-day life, especially not when I'm working.

I'm not sure if it's a matter of me being zen-like or whether it's a remarkable ability to dissociate and still somehow remain "present" -- if there's even a difference between the two -- but I learned a long time ago how to put most, if not all, of my personal shit aside and focus on the work of being with people. Therapy requires it, and in many ways, journalism did, too.

There's some kind of switch I learned to flip a long time ago, and it seems to be more valuable and more powerful than I ever realized.

Nevertheless, I was still surprised tonight when, telling all this to S2, she said, "See, I told you, you've got it going on!" I thought, given her experience of me as a highly vulnerable and agonizing entity at times, she would be amused to think others saw that in me. I thought she might recognize it as fraud.

Isn't that funny?

I suppose that's my own projection, really. I know better than to think I'm a fraud. I know from my insides out that what my peers are noticing is really there. I *am* calm, especially compared to them on a surface level. But I am also, in this environment, a strikingly composed, generally unflappable person.

My projection around S2 is simply that she has seen my wiggly, untidy insides in other areas of my life. She has seen me go through a year of firey personal torment marinated in a lot of death and loneliness. She knows what the overwhelmed me looks like. I thought, perhaps, that such knowledge meant that she would no longer be able to see the calm competence that I'm capable of maintaining, as well.

Why do I think myself -- and my friends -- so one-dimensional at times? It's probably that part of me that has difficulty forgiving myself for perceived weaknesses. Also, I think that I got so much BULLSHIT thrown at me by the aforementioned Stepford counselors in my practicum and had to deal with so much strange feedback around it that it distorted the lens through which I was able to perceive my strengths.

It's important in this work to have a solid grasp on both my strengths and my ... uh, ... "areas of development."

One truth about me that can be boiled down and bottled is just what I asserted rather vehemently to one of the Stepford counselors: I know the difference between being a student and being a therapist. I have a professional persona that doesn't require any significant effort to maintain -- no more than any other aspect of myself. Put me in a situation, I usually do what I believe the situation calls for.

In my estimation, being a therapist requires self-awareness, being calm and centered and, above all, being focused on the client rather than on my own riff-raff.

There are days when this work really wears me down. I've already learned that I'm subject to feeling the emotional turmoil of my clients. But I've also learned that engaging in a determined practice of self care is not just "a way" to deal with all that stuff, it's essential. Beyond getting good sleep, eating well and doing yoga, it takes serious mental work to maintain one's personal boundaries while also maintaining meaningful connection with clients. It's a matter of self-preservation and protection.

Now.

If only I could figure out how to protect my nose from a client who smells a bit odd, *that* would be zen-like. Until the poo-curious odor no longer raises the hair on the back of my neck, I'll always have some distress. But if you see me crying in the mailroom after a session with him, rest assured it's probably just my eyes watering.

No make-up me

2007-10-26T21:33:00.001-07:00

I was getting my hair done yesterday, and the woman who has cut my hair for about eight years asked me how old I am. I asked her to guess.

She started at 33. When I raised my brows, which she was just starting to wax at the moment, she said, "Oh, you're not that old, are you? What? 31?"

I shook my head, and she kept guessing. She never got above 34.

I laughed and told her the truth: 39. And I was tickled. It's the second time in a month that someone guessed my age at least five years younger than I really am.

For me, this is a huge turnaround. Just two years ago, I was regularly being confused for XGF's *mother.* No doubt, part of the change is due to what I've been doing to my hair: keeping it longer and keeping it colored. I used to be exceptionally grey for my age, and wore my hair like a featureless little helmet.

Thus, it was all the more amusing to me this afternoon when one of the clinicians at my internship site told me she figured me for 34. When I told her I was 39, she seemed surprised. But it helped explain why she, who is 28, and I do not have even remotely similar musical influences in adolescence.

This evening on my dog walk, I was musing about how radically different people perceive my age to be than they once did. And as a tangent, I got to thinking about a woman I know who wears a lot of makeup. When I crossed paths with her recently, the lighting of our location and the closeness with which we stood gave me an unusually close look at the quality of skin beneath her makeup. She's just a year or two older than me, but she is hiding a lot of lines.

I'm not so much happy about being mistaken as *younger* than I am as I am for finally not being mistaken for being so much older. Especially not for my partner's mom. That was bad. It was also bad for my outlook. Looking more my age seems to have encouraged me to be more active and to put a little more thought into how I dress.

But the one thing I haven't started doing -- and don't imagine I will anytime soon -- is wear makeup. I tried to use it a couple times in high school, mainly to cover pimples, but I never really took to the process of putting on makeup.

The other week, HGM came over to play and to do a death & dying interview one night, and we started talking about Halloween costumes. He went to my medicine cabinet, looking for some makeup to prove to himself that he could turn me into Betty Page. When he learned I had nothing but a tinted tube of Burt's Bees lip balm, he was appalled. "How can you not have *any* makeup?" he asked, sounding sincerely shocked.

I was shocked that he would find it surprising.

I was thinking about that on my dog walk, that and the woman with the extra heavy makeup. I realized that I've been blessed with something special: Even though I haven't had great self-confidence about my appearance in terms of bone structure and body fat, I have never felt like I need makeup. My complexion has always been a pretty pleasing color, and my eyes have always had enough presence to stand on their own.

Sure, you might somehow make me look "better" with a load of makeup, but I have *never* felt like I needed it. That's a nice thing to realize.

The rest of me still needs work, though. And you can be damn sure that I'm gonna keep coloring this sweet hair of mine.

I'm just saying.

Lost Weekend

2007-10-22T00:21:00.000-07:00

There were three social outings: one at a dive bar, one at a pub, one at a great little live music venue down the street.

There were also three social visits at my place, which involved three viewings of my most recent collage creation (and, I will admit, a continuing desire on my part to futz with it, even though I'm allegedly "done"). Two of the visits included interviews about death and dying. One also involved dinner and ended in the wee, wee hours -- 6 a.m. this morning -- after I received a massage with a "homemade" oil composed of olive oil, vanilla extract and ground ginger. Kinda made my sheets like a fragrant Shroud of Turin when all was said and done.

The weekend included a fair amount of alcohol: Six beers over the course of three outings. Several glasses of wine. And there's was some assistance from Mother Nature's herbal armory.

Also, there were more lesbians or otherwise queer girls than to which I've become accustomed. The last one to cross my path tonight was none other than the "feral lesbian" I met at a classmate's birthday party a few weeks ago. I have to say that the woman intrigues me. We are from diferrent planets: she's older, fairly goth and I think she would probably be able to show me a thing or two that I've never seen. Tonight's encounter was brief, but I have a feeling there will be more.

Last weekend, I had dinner one night with Dr. M. At one point in the conversation, as I was describing something about The Florist, Dr. M said, "Well, she sounds like she'd be a perfect addition to your strange ... uh, menagerie." The people who've become my friends over the years -- both here and in California -- are widly disparate in their backgrounds, lifestyles and perspectives. Looking around at the new social circles to which I'm being introduced as a result of my internship, I suspect my "menagerie" is likely to become increasingly diverse.

Except for this one thing: The heavy, *heavy* presence of people connected to psychology or social work. But as The Good Witch pointed out to me yesterday: If I didn't want to socialize with that crowd, I probably shouldn't have gone off and paid $40,000 for the pleasure of becoming one of them.

Well. That's it for me. Life has gotten hectic with my internship and some of the shifts I'm working -- and all the stuff I'm now doing and writing around my death & dying study -- I'm not posting as frequently as I have been. And then, when the weekend's been lost and there's probably still a little too much alcohol in my system, you end up with rambling shit like this. Please bear with me.

Forgive me, readers.

2007-10-14T23:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when my writing muscles go lax and my brain is occupied by other things, the existence of this blog drives home all the residual weight of having been raised a Catholic.

In other words, I feel guilty for not posting.

For the past couple weeks, my brain has been overwhelmed with input (reading, reading, reading and clients, clients, clients) and my time has been occupied by internship, work and what The Good Witch would lovingly call my "birth season," a period of time during which birthday celebrations are conducted rather than just a single day.

And also, I have been trying to make new friends along the way. Such as with The Florist. It's not like it's taking that much of my time -- although that woman can talk circles around me -- but I noticed with some alarm recently that almost ALL of my friends here in town are somehow related to psychology. The only one who isn't is The Clairvoyant, who's a massage therapist. But even with her, the lion's share of our conversation seems to be related to psychology, hypnosis, working with people and the travails of having a private practice.

So The Florist is rather sweet. She's a highly entertaining, somewhat crazy woman whose intelligence shines through despite the cognitive impairments she sustained from a bout of malaria that went untreated for a little too long. Most importantly, she doesn't know much about psychology or psychotherapy, so we don't talk about it very much. I tell her little stories about clients, to which she replies, "I don't know what 'psychotic' means, actually. What is it?" And then, I give her an example and she looks at me and says, "I could *never* do what you do." And then, that's the end of that.

I'll stop into her shop a few days a week and say hello, and she'll tell me a story from her life or her day -- colorful, amusing stuff with the delivery of a Southerner chewing the fat on the front porch -- and for me, it's like having a little escape because it has *nothing* to do with my school, my job or my internship. Her stories are usually funny and light-hearted, too, which stands in stark contrast to most of my other conversations.

It occurs to me how much I need to have people in my life who are not related to my future profession, if only for the sake of having a conversation with a "regular" person -- meaning: neither therapist, future therapist, therapist teacher/supervisor or ... client.

Most of my friends who recently graduated are living hectic lives and feeling the stress of trying to re-enter the workforce after having been full-time students and part-time workers for a couple of years. Those who are at the same point as me -- interning -- seem to be struggling to juggle internship, classes, family and whatever else they've got going on. And then, there are those who are just busy with family and school stuff or dating politicians.

Everyone has something going on. And it feels like lately, most of my "social" interactions have been composed primarily of these various and sundry friends telling me how stressed they are. One has taken to calling me about once a week or so and doing what I think of as a "download," wherein she tells me everything that's stressing her out and vents for a bit until she feels better.

I can't complain. I do that, too. But lately, I've noticed that it's gotten a lot more intense in terms of what's going into these ears of mine -- and that much less is coming out of my mouth.

I still have friends with whom I get to TALK, rather than always listening. But after the past couple of weeks, I feel like if I were to do a self-portrait at this moment, I would be mostly ears, between which would be three large eyes set in a triangle over a very small mouth.

Who would've ever thought that would be me?

But it is.

For the most part, I enjoy it. People say interesting things. It's nice, too, to feel useful for those who need to vent some of their stress. I really don't mind it.

What I am finding difficult, however, is having this existence without a release valve of my own at home. I talk to my pup a lot, but he's not the best listener. He's only truly attentive when there's food involved. I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to manage this on a long-term basis, but I have no idea.

The blog isn't cutting it, that's for sure.

I'm too tired to write any more.

To correct an error? Or not?

2007-10-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

A few days late, a birthday card arrived in the mail today from my father.

With a multitude of exclamation points -- and even an uncharacteristic smiley face -- he congratulated and *teased* me about my birthday. Of all things, he told me I would "get used to" my advancing age. But he softened the pain by sending me a fat gift card.

I'm not sure what to do about it, though.

See, my dad believes I've just turned 40.

And I haven't. I'm 39. It was my older sister, my dad's first child, who turned 40 this year.

Several thoughts have found space in my mind about this. But I suppose the main one is pretty simple: Should I tell him? And if so, how?

While paint dries

2007-10-08T00:46:00.000-07:00

This has been quite the weekend.

I celebrated my birthday on Friday, which I started by picking up a gigantic bouquet of flowers from The Florist. It was spilling with lavendar and orange orchids, callas and two fragrant varieties of lillies and a dozen roses I had ordered because I so love the yellow veining in their dark burgundy leaves. Really beautiful. They were supposed to be a gift to myself, but The Florist gave me such a deep discount on the flowers that they essentially became a gift from someone else.

Friday night, HGM took me to dinner at a nice French bistro and surprised me by inviting some other friends. Sadly, one was wickedly sick and could not attend. (Get better soon, True Tomato. You sounded pretty nasty.) Dr. R, Bill Clinton, HGM and I enjoyed a very fine meal and went out for drinks afterward. Then, after Dr. R and BC hit the road, HGM and I returned to my neighborhood and went to a bar to chat for a couple hours. He's very engaging.

Saturday, I woke up and had a deliciously lazy laundry day that included a stop in to tell The Florist how much I liked and appreciated the bouquet. She ended up handing me one more flower for the arrangement, a pink mink. "I was looking for sexually suggestive flowers and found these, so I bought six," she said. "This one is yours."

A love of sexually suggestive flowers is something she and I share. This one certainly fits the bill, with the velvety dark fringe topping its soft pink tongue-like petals. When she handed it to me, I touched it with my fingers tenderly, then after feeling the softeness of it, put it to my face immediately. What a heavenly texture. All the better it should give just a bit more meaning to the term "tipping the velvet."

On Saturday evening, I met up with Rather Shy Classmate and King Rex -- and later, another classmate -- at a Scottish pub not too far from my place. We enjoyed a few drinks, some Scottish food and each other's company for several hours before I finally went home to crash.

This morning, I woke up feeling the last of the Guinness Stout in my tummy, took the dog for a walk and went to buy a birthday gift for someone else. Then, this afternoon, I had coffee with S2, and she gave me a gift sure to undermine The Clairvoyant's income from me: one of those massagers that kneads the nuts out of your back when you strap it to a chair. She reminded me of a day we went to the mall last year and sat in the chairs at Brookstone for a LONG time -- it was one of the hardest things I've ever done, leaving that chair .... The thing was kind of molesting me, if you know what I mean. Really very fun.

After I parted company with S2, I came home and made some decisions about completing -- finally -- a little art project that I've been working on for several months. I would add something to it and put it away. I made a decision a couple weeks ago to finish it before the end of my birthday weekend. Finishing it now is an intentionally symbolic act. I see completion of this piece as a way of telling the universe I'm done with a particular phase of my life, which the art represents.

Then, I went to a birthday party for one of my classmates, who I don't know very well but have socialized with a couple of times. She recently completed her internship at the same site where I'm interning now, so I ended up meeting and talking with some of the clinicians there. One of them was a bright-eyed, naive-looking mid-20s therapist who was drinking water and had an air of Mormonism. The other, one I sit next to in the office on Fridays, is a woman of about 28 with a Pat Benatar/goth/citified and professionalized pierced punk pastiche about her. Two totally different characters. I liked the one with the pierced tongue and the queer girlfriend better.

They introduced me to their friend, who described herself to me as a "feral" lesbian. She had a name that evoked Catholicism to me: Trinity. Trinity told me she hangs out on my street a lot and informed me that there are a lot of "hot, older lesbians" stalking my neck of the woods. I asked that should we run into one another on the street, she point some out to me.

Then, like a total dork, I showed her a photo of the pup that was in my cell phone and said, Everyone on the street knows me by my dog. Here's his photo so you'll recognize me when we meet on the street, where the light is so much different.(We were in a tiny bar lit exclusively by candles and an outside street light.)

After a while, I got tired from all the socializing and the drinking I've done in the past few days and headed home. Here, I did some of the final work to my piece. Right now, I'm just waiting for the paint to dry so I can add one last element and complete the piece.

I'll finish it before I sleep tonight. And then put everything, myself included, to rest.

Cell phone serenade & etc

2007-10-04T22:46:00.000-07:00

I had dinner tonight with YogaGirl, who joined me at a little wine bar in SE PDX to celebrate my birthday. Had a few flights of wine, some really delicious (but a bit salty) polenta with wild mushrooms and spinach, a few interesting appetizers and creme brulee for dessert.

I'm taking two days to indulge my inner dairy fairy, and then, with the commencement of my 39th year, I must re-enter the dairy-free subculture.

I guess that's what happens by the time you're this age. What you put into the old body starts to matter a lot more, affects you differently and sometimes forces you to pay a steep price.

Otherwise, things are swell. It's not saying much, but my body feels better now than it has in years. Thanks to my twice-daily dog walks and my increasing yoga practice, I'm more fit than I've been in a long, long time. (A broken ankle 15 years ago was a real set-back, to say the least.) And thanks to finally growing out my hair and deciding to color it, my locks are more jaunty and beautiful than they've been since I was in my early teens. I'm looking pretty spiffy, all things considered.

Or at least, The Florist who owns the shop across the street made sure I felt that way. I went to order some flowers from her the other day, and she asked how old I was. I suggested she guess, and she replied, "Well, you know, I call it like I see it. There's no put-on here, so if you really want me to say...," then paused so if I could stop her if I felt like it before adding, "...I'd put you at about 34."

34?! I replied.

"Did I guess high?" she asked. "Because I didn't mean to. That was an honest guess. What are you, 29?"

I laughed.

"You know, people intentionally guess low all the time, and I'm not one of those people," she said.

What do people normally guess for you? I asked, knowing her to be 41.

"As far as I can tell, '38' seems to be a way of saying, 'I think you're probably 45, but I really have no fucking clue,' " The Florist replied. Then she looked at me, "Well, go ahead and tell me. I'm not scared of your funny little number, whatever it is."

I'm turing 39.

She looked at me with a touch of surprise. One of the things I like about The Florist is that she's pretty transparent. I can tell she withholds, but it's also pretty obvious to me that she stands behind whatever comes out of her mouth, that she says what she means. So even though I'm feeling all happy that someone guessed me to be five years younger -- especially when just a few years ago, I was regularly being mistaken for being XGF's *mom* -- I can also take some measure of satisfaction in knowing she wasn't trying to flatter me.

That kinda shit is a birthday gift all unto itself.

Oddly, I got more calls wishing me a Happy Birthday today than I expected even to get tomorrow.

Both of my parents seem to have gotten the date confused -- or just couldn't WAIT to wish me good tidings (rather unlikely) -- and called me today. My dad at least had some explanation: "I have a card for you, but I think I have the wrong address." And sure enough, he did. My mom just was being ... convenient. (No such thing as a day being special anyway!)

But I digress.

I also got my first-ever cell phone serenade (such were the plans they made!). Four of my classmates were out drinking at a bar after school tonight and apparently had planned on me joining them. They called last night to invite me, but I already had plans with YogaGirl, so I begged out. The one who called didn't mention they were attempting to throw me an impromptu party.

So tonight, they went to a bar with the cake one had gotten last night, and they phoned me up. I had just gotten back from hanging out with YogaGirl and was walking my dog down the street when I saw the name of the classmate who invited me out -- someone I rarely ever speak to -- flash on my phone. I answered it.

She said, "UCM?"

Hey, what's up? I replied.

"Happy bithday to you," she started to sing. Then she pulled the phone away from her head, and I heard a chorus of deep male voices sing the song in its entirety. I was floored. They sang pretty well, and even on the cell phone, they sounded good. When they were done, the classmate who called passed the phone around to the singers -- three guys, including King Rex. One of them mentioned how moist was the cake they were eating in my honor, a birthday girl in absentia. I was really touched.

I have plans for tomorrow, but how they will go down is anyone's guess. To celebrate, I'll eat and drink with friends (and maybe one ... politician). In terms of work, I believe I'll be seeing one of my first clients with Schizoaffective Disorder. Or maybe one with Major Depressive Disorder. Someone with Bipolar, anyway? For all I know, I'll have all three! (And they will no doubt make me feel all the better, despite my advancing age, for being so considerably *more* fucked up than I've ever managed to be on the worst days of my worst years. God bless 'em!)

Because I won't have any time tomorrow to treat myself to my own personal delights, I took care of one only-I-can-do-it-for-myself indulgence today. I went to Columbia's mothership, and I purchase two new jackets (which are actually three jackets and one independent fur collar if you break them down). I had to compromise on my desire for something "fashionable" by getting something "attractive and technical," but I otherwise got what I wanted. Cost me a buttload, but for what I (and the pup's walking routine, rain or shine) require in winter, I've learned that it's worth every single fucking penny.

And then, reading the DSM-IV-TR this evening, I received one other gift. It is also a gift from myself. It seems that at some point during my training in diagnosis of mental illnesses, I wrote down the following words on a piece of scrap paper and stuck it in my DSM:

How do crazy people get through the forest?

They take the psychopath.

And I wonder why one of my professors thinks I'm "cynical" about clients. I imagine it's because he doesn't discern much nuance between cynical and ... just funnny.

Matters of life & death

2007-09-30T23:27:00.000-07:00

Last week during the full moon, I watched the sunset from a bluff near my home, then walked the dog toward the full, rising moon. That night, lying in bed, the bright face of the moon illuminated my pillow, shining on my face as I lie there. By closing one eye, I could watch the crystal pendant hanging in my window perform a full lunar eclipse, just the halo of the light shinng around the pendant. In the crystal, I could see brilliant color prisms twinkling like stars.

Lying there in that moonglow, I felt a sense of peacefulness that has stuck with me. I didn't know why I felt it, but I sensed the beginning of something new, something promising.

I have no clue what that is, but I'm personally hoping it's a new phase of life. I'm overdue.

Yesterday, visiting The Good Witch, she told me about a ritual she and the members of her coven had done during the full moon. I won't go into explicit detail -- they burned things, waved their arms around in the air, said things and cast some spells -- but I was interested to hear the significants of that particular moon.

It was a full moon in Aries during the Libra sun. In the astrology of my birth, that is my moon. And it seems that, with my birthday just around the corner, this moon wasn't just mine, it was particularly apt and timely.

As The Good Witch explained to me, the full Aries moon during Libra is a time of letting go of old and unhealthy ways and an opportunity to begin anew without dragging along so much of our old and nasty baggage. I guess they believe it's easier during this full moon to put down pain and fear and to begin enacting new intentions. Which is interesting to me, because that's a nice articulation of what I was feeling as I lie there in the light of that moon.

Over the past year, I have felt the fits and starts of things changing within me. Or perhaps I should say starts and fits. Because even as I have had my brain rather forcibly opened to new ideas at the hands of some peculiar experiences, I have been resistant. Reluctant. Skeptical. Questioning. Sometimes, to a point that it's a bit maddening.

Not just for myself, but for some of the compassionate and altogether human souls around me.

But when I look at my life -- in terms of both how it has been in the past couple of years and what's going on in the larger story arc -- it's no wonder I would be wary and resistant, while at the same time yearning for something new with an earnest openness. In some respects, I have been searching for decades. But I have been in a phase -- one lasting 10 years, almost to the day -- during which everything I thought I understood about life, about consciousness, about meaning and about ... myself ... has come into question. It's as if I were a piece of iron, half-crafted into something useful, that was thrown back into the forge to be heated again and then pounded into something completely different.

And I mean completely different.

Ten years ago, this coming Thursday, I had a birthday joint birthday party with my friend Lesha. Our birthdays were just a few days apart -- although I was several years younger -- and we had so many mutual friends that we decided to celebrate our birthdays together.

Although I have a rather tragic history when it comes to the birthdays of my childhood, I know a good party when I attend one. And this party? It was GREAT. In the town where we lived, both of us had an extensive social network, and as a result, the house was packed to the point that the party spilled out on the front lawn. The music was going and people were dancing like crazy. When Lesha's partner and two friends lit up the fire hazard that was our two birthday cakes, the chorus of "Happy Birthday" was deafening. Lesha and I both were moved to tears of joy and laughter from the whole scene.

At midnight, when my actual birthday rolled around, a smaller group of close friends toasted me again. I had never had a birthday like it. I was 29.

Three nights later, on the evening of October 7, I got a phone call that drained me of the lingering joy. Everything in my life changed.

My youngest brother, who was 21, had been hit head-on by a pickup truck that suddenly veered into his lane on a two-lane country road in the rain just as night was falling. The speed limit was 70 mph, and the driver was speeding. The engine block of my brother's car ended up in the front seat.

The extent of my brother's injuries: Numerous broken bones, including one femur shattered into more than 10 pieces; damaged liver; destroyed spleen; clot in his brain; severely damaged left eye; several severe skin wounds that will require plastic surgery. And, two weeks into his "recovery," doctors were shocked to discover he had suffered an aneurism in his heart. It's usually fatal, but JAWs 2 was somehow still alive. His sixth surgery in two weeks was to repair his heart.

What we didn't know when we permitted doctors to do that heart surgery -- one so unusual it was likely fodder for the medical journals -- is that we were consigning my brother to a slow death as a human "vegetable." Two days before he got that surgery, he had suffered severe anoxia when, during a procedure to give him a tracheostomy and to clean some of his wounds, his heart had "slowed to zero," as one of the doctors later described it. It stayed at "zero" for 15 minutes.

They managed to "bring him back," but the oxygen deprivation to his brain was so great that he never regained any significant level of consciousness. Over the next four years, the contracture of his muscles would cause him to curl up into a taut fetal position, his body would refuse nutrients and this young man of 6-foot, 2-inches would be whittled down to a mere 87 pounds.

His death in the summer of 2001 was the first experience of mercy I believe I'd ever known.

Throughout the heinous affair, my divorced parents re-enacted some rather bitter and demoralizing scenes from their marriage, and I came to understand quite clearly that my biological "family" was no family at all. My sister described our particular collection of biological entities as "a loose confederation of unaffiliated Gypsies." Because I'm the optimist in my family, it would take a while for the meaning of the situation to come fully into focus for me. And when that finally happened, it was devastating.

But in those final months of 1997 and the beginning of 1998, I was lost. All the warmth and community I had experienced at that birthday party could not abate the grief that took up residence within me the first time I wiped up the drool that was pooling in my brother's already-emaciated collarbone.

Even before this happened, I had been thinking about leaving my job. A few months after the wreck, I began looking more seriously. I got several job offers, all of which I turned down. For many reasons, I had lost my passion for journalism. I needed to do something else but wasn't sure what.

So one day the following summer, I moved to Portland.

Things settled down. I adjusted, as much as I possibly could, to my brother's earthbound Limbo. I found work as a graphic designer and later put my writing skills back to work, as well. I got involved with XGF. We got a house. We got dogs. We entertained friends, but what's better, we entertained each other. (The other day, XGF said to me, "We had so much fun together, didn't we?" We did, indeed.) We traveled.

All along, I was engaged in some soul-searching. I missed the robust human interaction I had as a newspaper reporter, but I also wanted to do something that would help make the world a better place. I also sought a career that would hold my interest, allow me to work with a great deal of autonomy and perhaps be self-employed. What's more, I hoped for something that would stoke my passion in some way.

In the end, it boiled down to my desire to do something meaningful. Meaningful for myself and for others.

That's what swum in my head every time I visited my brother in the ICU, in the "restorative care center," and later, in the nursing home. Meaning. Meaning. Meaning.

What if that were me? It was easy to look at him -- this young man who was more like me in many respects than anyone else on the planet -- and to wonder that. What have I give my life meaning? What am I putting into the world that might survive me? What seeds am I planting?

After he died, my searching process accelerated. Although I experienced his death as a form of mercy, it turned up the heat on my own quest to do something different. If we return to the metaphor of the iron being returned to the forge, I was fired up by my search.

Somewhere, all my questioning resulted in action: I decided to become a psychotherapist. I applied to graduate school. And then, most unexpectedly, my life became about transformation. I would be pounded into something new whether I wanted it or not -- not just by graduate school but by a relentless assault of losses.

Shortly after I submitted my application for graduate school, my grandfather died. He was my last grandparent -- also my favorite -- and his death caught me by surprise. I learned about it in an e-mail sent to my work address. Two months later, I was in Hawaii visiting family when it became obvious that something was amiss with the health of my aunt, who was very much like a mother to me. Two months after that, I learned she had a terminal form of lymphoma.

Added to that mix was the loss of my career. Although I had planned to leave come August, I learned in April that I would be laid off in mid-June. This was like a gift from the universe, in my book, because it came with a nice severance check and unemployment benefits. I had a very fine summer indeed. But it was still a greater loss of "identity" than I had anticipated.

In August, I had a strange experience in Peru in which I believed I was dying. Although I was making a lot of conscious changes in my life, this moment rattled me to the core. I feel certain that it played a role the end of my relationship with XGF, which came six months later.

And then, as if Death itself had picked me for a lay-away plan with quarterly payments, I felt the pain of losing four people who were dear to me in different ways.

The first to go was Lesha, with whom I had shared that lovely birthday party. She died in her sleep from congestive heart failure that had been misdiagnosed as asthma. A few months later, I received an e-mail that my friend Sharon had shot and killed herself in the little cabin she had in Alaska -- an event that, in retrospect, I felt I should have seen coming but didn't. Three months on from that, I learned via e-mail (again!) that my old friend Nick, for whom my heart had a very tender spot, had died when the cancer he battled years ago returned with a fury.

The death of my aunt at the end of January was like a repeated kick in the gut. I lost my mind and fell into profound grief.

Wounds I was still licking from the loss of my brother reopened. And graduate school -- with all of its focus on self-awareness -- was doing its own number on me. While the divorce from XGF had been gut-wrenching and sad, my aunt's death left me feeling like my life was a trapeze act conducted high up in the Big Top without a safety net. She had been the last connection I felt to having a "family," and her death in many respects rendered me an orphan.

In and out of the forge. Pounded on again and again. Reshaped. Heated. Pounded. Heated. Pounded.

That has been these 10 years. That and more.

It is a story of living with loss and death. There are people who have sustained far greater casualties in this world, of that I'm sure. But it has been profoundly painful for me nonetheless. At times, the wounds of my grief have festered and demanded attention. Other times, they have scabbed over and looked as if they would heal -- only to be reopened by another change, another death.

Along the way, the self-reflection demanded by my graduate program has ensured that the need for things I did not have in childhood -- namely love and support and even a false sense of security -- found their way to the front of the line. Where these two forms of grief -- the old and the more recent -- have collided, my personal anguish has sometimes become painfully apparent to those around me.

I have told myself repeatedly, This too shall pass. This shit storm is going to come to an end. Things will settle down. I have been desperate to believe it -- but never really have. Rather, I have in the past year or so often wondered not just when the next shoe will drop but just how many fucking feet there are. It has seemed endless both to me and to some of those around me.

It's obvious that I can't actually give myself a respite. I can't make sure no one else dies for a while. I don't get to take a vacation from graduate school. Life goes on for better or worse.

I keep facing it.

And for whatever reason, staring into the brightness of that full Aries moon, I had the feeling a new phase of my life is on the horizon. Intuition tells me it will be a better one. One thing I'm trying to do more is to trust my intuition and to develop some notion of faith, which I have never possessed.

When doing life as a trapeze act without a net, faith seems essential. It's the thing I imagine allows one to let go and fly through the air with grace.

And of all the things I want most for myself, it's living more artfully and intentionally. Death is obviously waiting one way or another. Might as well let go and fly with grace. Chances are that I'll catch ahold of the next trapeze, but flying gracefully will make it easier to do a fabulous swan dive when I inevitably fall.

Entering extended psychosis

2007-09-28T00:23:00.000-07:00

How did you get here?

One of the more hidden parts of my professional past is about five years of working in marketing communications, the most soul-sucking job I ever had. But one thing the work did was instill a curiosity in me about how a particular piece of communication finds its audience or how the audience finds it.

This is true for my blog, as you might imagine. I'm curious about how people find their way to this little itty bitty, insignificant corner of the Internet. So one of the things I do is monitor the types of Internet searches -- from the likes of Google and Yahoo! and whatever -- that result in surfers actually arriving at my blog. (Also, I'm pleased to note that when you Google "extended psychosis," this quaint little blog is at the top of the list. Perhaps I should sell ads for the makers of Seroquel and other anti-psychotic meds, huh?)

But I digress.

Although I can't identify individual readers, I can tell what corner of the world they're in when they link to extended psychosis, and I can see the actual words they used in their queries. The results fascinate me, even though I can't make any conclusions about their significance.

I'll just share what I know. Aside from "extended psychosis," the following are the most common Internet searches that get you to UCM's little la-la land:

Fresh boobs: I get more hits off of people Googling this phrase than just about any other. There are some variants: "fried boobs," "fresh bathing boobs" and "sunscreen boobs" will eventually get you here, as well. Curiously, most of these hits come from Islamic countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Every once in a while, someone from the States or, say, Ireland, will land here via that road. But what I wonder is: No matter who you are or what you believe, what in the hell are "fresh boobs"?

If you're one of those visitor, please post a comment below and explain yourself. I'm just ... curious.

Rejected by Peace Corps: That's kind of a sad thing, isn't it? So many people out in the world are Googling "rejected by Peace Corps" that I feel bad for them. Of course, I get a lot of hits off regular old "Peace Corps," too, but feelings of rejection seem to dominate what gets you here. Saddest of all was the one visitor who arrived at my blog by Googling "Peace Corps depression." Not surprisingly, most of those folks come from the United States.

Insane sex toys: Yes, this would be the third most common string of words that bring you to extended psychosis. Some searches land readers at my home page, but others take them to specific entries. The entry that gets hit by "insane sex toys" also gets lots of hits for searches that include "infamous couples" and "insane sex."

Leschmaniasis: So far, there's nothing especially pleasing about any of the search strings that will turn up my blog. But the one that I feel worst about is all those readers -- there are enough to surprise me -- who end up linking to my blog when they're looking for something about leschmaniasis. Of course, they *do* find something about leschmaniasis, but I can't imagine it's what they wanted.

For the record, leschmaniasis is a really nasty infection of some sort, a parasite or something carried in ticks that hang out on sloths. Or something like that. All I know is that you can get it from handling sloths and that it can lay dormant in your body for months before you start having these wounds just opening up hither and yon on your skin, festering and oozing with puss. Very nasty. And that you have to take really hideous antibiotics for a terribly long time to get rid of it. So you know what that means, right? DO. NOT. TOUCH. THE. SLOTHS. (Easier said than done, I should note, if you happen to visit certain "artisan" markets in Iquitos, Peru, or if you happen to get hijacked on the way to a butterfly farm in the Amazon and taken to the Casa del Serpiente. Been there, done that. On both accounts. And I can report this: Sloths have sharp nails and can squeeze the shit outta your hand. Even the babies.)

This concludes a really informal, potentially terribly incorrect public service announcement about leschmaniasis. Just in case you've Googled it and ended up here. I didn't want you to feel ripped off.

And, just for the sake of illustrating how capricious Internet search engines can be, here are some terms, aside from the ones already listed, that resulted in readers visiting extended psychosis today:

staying alone in a cabin by the lake
psychosis and the want to be left alone
sexy+hip check
inverted heirarchies
leave journalism

I've considered writing a little tidbit about these searches for some time, but I would like to share with you the search today that finally prompted me to do so. In terms of searches, this one kind of trips me out a little, but I'm not sure why:

graduate school+breast size+cancer+correlation

I got more than than 44,000 hits when I typed in that search just to see what turns up. I went through a few pages and did not find extended psychosis anywhere near the top -- thankfully -- but I also quickly lose interest in most Internet searches. Someone had to wade through a bunch of stuff before they found me. And yet they did.

Well.

For whatever reason, so did you.

If you're one of my regulars, thanks for reading. But if you're one of those random searchers, all I can say is: I'm sorry, man. I hope the psychosis doesn't last too long. But I can assure you: Reading this is *not* the cure.

Yoga

2007-09-26T20:18:00.001-07:00

I took my first yoga class EVER today.

I've been exposed to yoga through some DVDs that I've used for the past few years, but I've never taken a class. This despite the fact that there are a few yoga studios within five blocks of my place and one right across the street.

I have felt reluctant to go because so many friends have told me that the yoga studios here in town can be strangely "competitive" or just snobby. One that was about two blocks down the street until a few months ago always struck me as snobby, but inertia and the cost of regular attendance both combined to keep me from checking out the "friendlier" ones. I was also worried about my tailbone hurting in the sitting poses.

So after many months of contemplating -- this is just how I can be sometimes -- I went to the little studio across the street. There were two other students in the class, one of whom was new to it like me. The floor was padded and squishy, which was really nice for my tailbone.

The style of class I chose was a "restoration" yoga. This seems to be what I need most. I already get good exercise from my twice-daily dog walks and riding my bike around, but a lot of powerful stretching with some serious ab- and arm-strenghtening work mixed in with serious relaxation is hitting my shortcomings in terms of body movement.

When I was done, my legs were pleasantly tired and twitchy -- how they get when I know they've been worked well -- and my stomach was nice and firm, while my shoulders were all relaxed. I had a nice little head buzz going on, too. Kinda like being in a bubble.

Just fabulous. Much, *much* better to do it in person than with a video, too.

I automatically bought a multi-class pass to go to more of them. Not exactly good for my budget, but the physical workout, the profound relaxation and the clarity of mind I experienced seems worth it.

Wake up & wonder: What the FUCK happened...?

2007-09-24T00:06:00.000-07:00

I had one of those nights on Saturday.

I've run it through my head several times -- mainly an attempt to rectify the number of glasses of wine I had with the outcome I experienced -- and I can't quite get things to jibe.

What I recall, explicitly, was that an hour before HGM was to come over, I returned from spending a couple hours watching videos in the library at school. When I parked my car, I felt very peculiar in my body, and I remember thinking: I should call and tell him I'm not going. I should stay home.

But I had been being rather funky in my head, and I thought that getting out for something fun -- especially a "gay party," as HGM described it -- would be good for me.

HGM came over around 7:30. We walked my dog in the neighborhood for a while and returned to my place, where we each enjoyed a glass of wine and chatted for a while. At about 8:30, we left and went to a house-warming party not too far from my place.

This house was fabulous. Although I'm not a huge fan of building homes that don't keep with the character of the neighborhood in the slightest, I make exceptions. This home is owned by two gay men -- one of whom once was a model and the other of whom is an architect. They have exceptional taste, which is actually NOT a genetic trait of gay men, no matter what popular culture would have you believe.

But I digress.

The design of the place was a modern variation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Having lived in a Wright home when I was a child, I was instantly enamored with what the architect had done. This despite construction using all modern materials and the fact that there were no geographical features on this standard city lot to use the way Wright often did.

So we go into this home, and it's filled with gay men. There are five women there in total. Only one or two, aside from me, were queer. (Later, when one of the hosts said to me, "Well, we *did* have a lesbian here," I replied, Yeah, I know. I saw the flannel shirt in the crowd.)

Naturally, there are lot of alcoholic beverages on hand. HGM asked what I would drink, and I said I would "stick with wine." I even stuck with the white part, which is not like me. (I prefer reds.) So I got a glass of wine. They were small plastic cups that could not have held more than 6 ounces of wine. Probably more like 4 ounces. And, of course, I didn't TOP it...

We went outside and sat by a fabulous fire pit for a while.

I drank one.

We went back inside and refilled. We took a tour of the house. During the tour, I drank about half of that drink.

I refilled and we went back outside the firepit.

There, I met a Dutch woman who is traveling in the states for the first time. She landed in Vegas a few weeks ago, and we talked about the surreal nature of that city and how completely disorienting it would be to experience jet lag there. While I was speaking to her, I fumbled my drink and dropped it on the ground. I had only taken a few sips.

But here's the thing: At the point that I found myself saying, Oh, I just LOVE Dutch people; I meet them wherever I go, and I always love them! *Wherever* I go? I *love* the Dutch? Say what?! I noticed, too, that my speech was starting to slur. When I fumbled the drink, it was because I was losing motor control.

After talking a bit, the Dutch woman asked if I wanted to go back inside and get another drink. Oh, sure. Why not? I left HGM at the fire pit. Did not notice who he was talking to. Until later....

At the bar in this gorgeous house, I met a man named D. He and I spoke for a while about death and dying. He had been shot six times in a mugging, and he recounted for me his near-death experience. Then, for whatever reason, we talked about coloring our hair. He told me that, being Irish (as I am?), I would not be able to color my hair forever. "It starts looking really weird when you're Irish," he said.

At some point, he refilled my glass of wine. As I said, they were very small glasses. I recall him chiding me because I had asked for "The L Wine" because I could not remember the name of it. He kept telling me it was "an F wine." I was talking about the varietal; he was talking about the vintor. Eventually, the Dutch woman picked up the bottle of "The L Wine" and informed us the "L" word in question was Austrian.

D and I both issued long, "OOOhhs," as if it suddenly made sense.

There was a chair at the bar. I sat down in it. I realized as I sat that I had very little balance and just about no sensation in my tush. D asked if I would go to a gay bar here in town and dance with him and his friends. I told him I was with HGM, and he went to go speak to HGM about after-party plans. I looked down the bar in their direction and saw that a man I will call Well Known Person was engaging in lingering eye contact with HGM.

When D interrupted them, Well Known Person looked my direction. Even though I don't know him, I said, Well, hello, Well Known Person. I'm UCM. I'm afraid I slurred when I spoke. He looked amused, and we chatted for a minute. "What," he asked, "did you do before you went to graduate school?" Well, among other things, I was a journalist, I replied.

At this, Well Known Person stood up, grabbed HGM by the lapel and said, "Let's go outside."

By this point, I was becoming acutely aware of feeling totally TRASHED. I counted up the drinks I'd had, considering the size of the cups, and was mystified. I had already switched to bottled water.

I talked to few other people for a while, then went outside and found HGM and Well Known Person sitting by the fire pit alone. As the party was now down to just a few of us, I sat down and started to chat with WKP about being single. I asked him personal questions others might find ballsy, but I could see that he was really eyeing HGM and I wanted to know what he was looking for.

Later, we went inside, and while HGM was using the bathroom (the powder room has a cedar sauna annex in these digs!), WKP started asking me questions about HGM. He wanted to know what time HGM typically wakes up and where he likes to eat breakfast. He got a pen and wrote: "Well Know Person, 971-555-5555, 9:30, Sunday, September 23, breakfast at Well Known Bistro."

Look, I told him, drunk beyond my own comprehension, HGM wants a serious relationship. He's very intense and also quite capable of intimacy. You be nice.

WKP looked at me and smiled. "I do believe that is the sweetest thing I've ever heard someone say," he replied.

When HGM came out of the bathroom, Well Known Person sauntered up to him, took the folded paper and slipped it into the inside pocket of HGM's jacket. I'm gonna have to remember that move, I thought. And then looked on while WKP hugged HGM good-night and grabbed his little buns quite firmly.

We all walked down the street toward our cars together. WKP said, "See ya tomorrow," to HGM, then hopped into his truck. As we got into HGM's car, I asked if he was going to go to breakfast. HGM shrugged and said, "I don't know if I like how he grabbed my ass or not."

HGM dropped me off, and I was surprised -- I mean, REALLY surprised -- at how utterly intoxicated I felt. I started to wonder at that point if I had been drugged or something. The amount of wine I drank simply did not match the physical experience I was having.

I stumbled up to my loft. I saw I had an e-mail from YogaGirl, asking me to send her something before she went out of town to a funeral. I attempted to reply. The computer screen and keyboard were literally swimming before my eyes. I typed out a strange note about how she deserved "healing and wholeness," which, although true, is more a projection of my own weird shit than anything about her. How I managed the fine motor skills necessary for typing ANYTHING, much less a little love note, and pressing "send" is anyone's guess.

I got up and weaved -- literally, a jagged, stumbling path -- from my computer to the bathroom.

Where, for the first time in I don't know how long, I issued forth a rain of vomit.

I'm not a puker. I can get the nastiest stomach ailments -- things a good pukefest might alleviate -- and I can't manage to vomit. Years and years can go by without anything going down and coming back up again. One thing that does NOT make me puke is ... alcohol. I haven't had an alcohol-related vomit incident since Dec. 30, 1987.

And yet....

I'll tell you one bad thing about not being accustomed to vomiting. I don't have much practice with my aim. I sprayed a mess far and wide, and I could barely hold myself up while doing it. My dog ran from the room, yelping his disgust. I made a feeble attempt at cleaning the bathroom -- and a more focused attempt at cleaning myself and getting that rancid taste out of my mouth -- before kicking my clothes into a heap in the hallway and staggering to bed.

I forced myself to drink two glasses of water before I rested. Sometime in the early morning, I got up, got sick again and drank another glass of water. Mid morning, I drank even more.

When I woke up, I still felt drunk. It took me a few hours to get oriented, clean up and walk the dog. While out, I went to see the florist across the street. For reasons that escape me, I greeted her with, Hey, you sexy thing! Then I asked her if she wanted to get drinks sometime when and if I ever feel like drinking again, I added.

She asked me what I had been doing, and I told her a little of the story. She replied that whenever she goes to "gay parties," she ends up "talking to the transvestites about shoes." I looked at her feet. "I'm a tall woman with big feet, so I know what it's like for a man to wear heels," she explained.

Then she inquired about my birthdate. I told her, and she said, "Oh, you're a libra. Well, that's good because I'm a Taurus. We'll get along just fine because you're more likely to think about what I'm saying before chewing me a new ass over it." I raised my eyebrow, so she added, "Although, Libras do have a tendency to keep secrets just for the sake of having something they know that no one else does. And I really don't like that trait."

I don't believe I've ever had that problem, I replied.

"No, I've never gotten that feeling from you," she said. "People like us keep it real."

I guess the whole florist thing is a tangent in some respects, but it feels connected. Probably because I was still drunk and acting like something of an ass. I don't know if I asked her out, or if I was just making small talk. A confusing conclusion to a confusing experience.

I got a sandwich from the deli -- the owner took one look at me and said, "I hope you get feeling better" -- and I rode my bike to work.

Time to haul my ass to bed now. Considering how I felt today, I expect to have the "real" hangover tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Horse shoes & hand grenades, lesbian style

2007-09-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

I tried to ask a woman out on a date earlier this week. This would be my first attempt at such a thing.

My approach was both classy and humorous. I think I did alright.

Except for the part where maybe the woman isn't queer, after all. (As the saying goes, 'close' only counts when it comes to horse shoes and hand grenades.)

We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses and were engaged in a discussion about wine when she dropped a little H-bomb into the conversation by mentioning her ex-husband. Up until this moment, her sexual orientation had been ambiguous, but I had been operating on the notion that she's queer.

I first got this idea a few months ago when she asked me if I watched "The L Word." Such an inquiry between women, one who is openly lesbian but who are otherwise strangers to each other, is (in my view of things) what XGF and I call "Lesbian Dropping." This is part of the coded language that identifies one as a lesbian without having to state so outright. The Asian has suggested I rename this aspect of gaydar "L(i)GBIT guano" to be more inclusive of the whole alphabet soup of possibiliities. And true, the woman *could* be the 'B' or the 'I' or even identify with the 'L' word itself.

But I'm operating on the assumption that she's straight and that her willingness to exchange numbers and stated interest in going out is rooted in the desire for friendship. We seem to speak each other's language, and I find her charming, so I'll pursue that.

I'll just add her to a growing list of non-queer female friends who I find attractive. And I gotta tell ya, people, a lot of my girl friends are BEAUTIFUL. Most are also salt-of-the-earth kind of ladies with immense hearts and a rather high tolerance for yours truly. So it's a pity, then, that none of them are girlfriend material. (Well, there is this one who *could* be -- if we weren't so alike in some dangerous ways. But that's a different issue....)

Anyway.

A few friends have suggested the woman I asked out yesterday might still be in play, but I can't operate with that in my head. I'm calling her straight unless she tells me otherwise. (And if you're wondering why I don't just ask ... well, I imagine I probably will at some point -- if only to do some sense-making around that "L Word" question. But workplace politics have required discretion until this week, when she left her job and made it possible for us to become something other than professional colleagues.)

In the meantime, it seems I'm back at Step One. This is the spot where I've got nothing going on, not a single damn prospect, nary a sight of an available woman who piques my interest.

What I'm looking for is rather basic (but apparently not especially simple). A good match would be between the ages of 30 and 45, engage in stimulating conversation, have the desire and emotional capacity for intimacy and share the spark of sexual chemistry with me.

I might flex on the age thing, but I gotta hold tight on the rest. When it comes to an intimate partnership with another person, 'close' has proven entertaining and growth-inspiring but still just ... not enough.

Death Becomes Me

2007-09-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

I've been spending the past month or so digging into literature about death, dying and grief. From a cultural perspective to a medical one to a fundamentally personal one, my readings have taken me into a topic that has lingered in my mind for many, many years now.

My first regular journalism job, outside of student journalism, was as an obituary writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Sunday was a very popular day for the obit page, and on my busy, busy Saturdays, talking to one relative or another of a recently deceased person, I learned all sorts of curious things about people's attitudes toward death.

Later, in my first full-time reporting job, having run away from Texas and taken a job at a little paper in California, was mainly education reporting, along with the occasional visit to the site of a car wreck. Some of the situations were appalling and gruesome. Others looked more benign ... but weren't.

One early morning, I got a call as I was heading into work. Illness and vacations on the photography staff left us without a photog to head out to a collision that had just occurred. I always had my camera on hand in those days, and I was asked to stop by the wreck before getting into the newsroom. At the scene -- a T-bone caused when an old woman pulled out into oncoming traffic, probably because of early morning sunlight -- I shot some film while the paramedics worked on the woman. Her husband, in the passenger's seat that took the brunt of the impact, was DOA. She appeared less injured, but was actually in pretty bad shape herself. As I snapped pictures, she raised her hand as if to swipe away the breathing mask the paramedics were using on her. Then her hand fell. She was later "officially" pronounced dead, but this moment, which I caught with my camera, was her last.

Not too long ago, I happened upon that photo. It was taken in harsh early morning light, and I made the mistake of developing it in acufine, as the photographers had been using a mislabeled bottle. The result is a photo of high contrast. Too much light. Even though the important details are visible, the high contrast made it unacceptable for print and it never ran in the paper.

Even if it had been good, I would have objected to running it anyway. I knew the moment captured there, and it seemed crass to run such an image in the paper. I have held onto the print for more than 15 years now.

I remember crying. I remember it being the first and only time of my journalism career that I cried because of a death. I was in the car, leaving the scene, driving to the paper, alone. My body shook and heaved at the thought in my head: Someone will get a call today. She was probably someone's grandmother. They will learn that both of these people are dead. Just like that. Dead.

Then, I wondered why my journalism school didn't prepare me -- or any of my other colleagues -- for the death and tragedy we would inevitably see as news reporters. I cried a little more. And then, I thought: Well, this is my job. This happens on my job. It's my job to deal with it. As if flicking a switch, my tears evaporated, my mind stilled, and distance from death descended upon me.

That was just the beginning of my career. In the years that followed, I went places I shouldn't have gone. Talked to people I shouldn't have talked to. And did things that, in retrospect, make me wonder how I came out unscathed. All in denial of my own death.

(By the way, my internship faculty, Lightfoot, seems to think it unlikely that I did come out "unscathed." He told me in a meeting the other week that he has "an understanding of what working in journalism does to people, and what is asked of people who survive in that line of work." I imagine there's more to that statement than even Lightfoot realizes.)

In any case, the thing which made me leave journalism in the end was another tragedy.

Ten years ago, my youngest brother was in a car wreck and suffered injuries from which he never recovered. He died four years later in a nursing home. I had issues with the manner in which I was pressured to stay at the job -- being short-staffed and having too many people already on vacation took precedence, in the eyes of my editors, over me leaving for Texas. My compliance ended up costing me dearly.

But it also changed my life. What I witnessed in the ICU when I finally arrived on the scene three weeks and one severe brain injury later -- and what I saw over the next four years as my brother withered up in a nursing home and died -- overhauled the way I understood medicine, as practiced in the United States. It also forced me to begin facing my own death, realizing it may come at *any* moment. Sooner or later, but ... it will happen.

It has been a long process of awareness and growing acceptance. The result is that I seem to be a lot more at ease in talking about death than many people I know.

I can't say as I blame them. In my research I've been reading a little bit about Terror Management Theory, which seems to be a psychological theory that humans keep their thoughts and awareness of death at bay as a way to live without the "terror" of annihilation. (I say it seems to be this because I don't really know. As noted, I've only read a little bit.) In any case, if what I've read about that has merit, it makes sense why people have difficulty discussing the subject.

But I think we need to get over that shit.

Seeing what happened to my brother and thinking about the last month of my aunt's life -- she died of cancer earlier this year -- has impressed upon me the urgency of having serious discussions with others about the care we want to receive at the end of life. About this time last year, I asked S2 to be my durable power of attorney for health care. Normally, that responsibility falls to a spouse, but as I'm not married (and can't legally get married), I need to give the legal power to someone in a formal way. Either that, or be subected to the truely "outrageous fortune" of having warring family members, who hold end-of-life care perspectives that clash with my own, end up making the decisions by default.

Dying is not something any of us want to do by default, let me assure you. As was made very evident to me in my brother's case, biological science has advance to the point that it's doing things to prolong human life just because it can, whether or not it should.

Left unchecked, I can easily envision a future in which millions of Americans -- thanks to the aging of the Baby Boom generation -- end up as "living corpses" rotting away on ventilators and feeding tubes for years on end. They'll malinger in health-care institutions of one sort or another with terminal cancers or organ failures for which machines can compensate (but only to the end of keeping the person ensconsed in the hospital, feeling sick, weary and alone). Every time someone in this frail, ailing population begins to die, a "code" team will rush in and resuscitate them.

Far beyond being an unbearable financial burden on our already expensive health system, such a future would be morally bereft. I came to the conclusion 10 years ago that medicine had achieved an element of inhumanity in its practice. Keeping someone alive -- at all costs, no matter how dear -- is fundamentally cruel when it denies them the right to a peaceful and humane death.

We are the only ones who can stop this from happening to ourselves. We cannot count on medicine to do it for us. Doctors are trained to keep people alive, not to help them die well. They need to be able to discuss with patients more honestly the prospect of treatment designed mainly for comfort rather than "cure."

I suppose what's more frightening is that insurance companies may eventually step into the breech where doctors fear to tread. Profit-seeking corporate bureaucrats -- or rather, the people who run the insurance industry (for which I also once worked) -- should not be making decisions about how people die, either.

So the responsibility becomes ours. How do we get to have the death we deserve? I'm talking about the one where, when presented with a life-threatening situation, we are afforded all reasonable measures (and, if we choose to have them, the unreasonable ones, as well). But, ultimately, I'm thinking of how we deserve to die in the most comfort possible, in the company of those we love, at peace with the unavoidable stage of life that is happening to us.

Because it *will* happen to us.

From my counseling perspective, there's a lot of work that can be done with people to help them reach peace at the end of their lives. Part of the work is in helping people define what kind of care they want when dying -- and then to enlist the support of others to make sure their wishes are upheld. Another huge part has to do with helping them address issues of meaning about the life they have lived, regardless of its shortcomings and mistakes. And yet another aspect is helping the loved ones of a dying person honor the process of dying itself rather than denying (and thus invalidating) the profound experience of the one who is dying.

So that is the beginning of my independent study. Something nice and light. To complement my internship....

Where are the clowns?

2007-09-10T23:24:00.000-07:00

Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground
you in mid-air.
Send in the clowns....

Thank you, Barbara Streisand, for buring that one into my brain over these 30-some-odd years of my life. In the past couple years, I've heard it playing in my head more than it ever has before. But it's appearance has nothing whatsoever to do with my occasional personal melancholy or relationship issues. Rather, it has *everything* to do with living down the street from a Clown House and walking past their abode with regularity, as often as two or three times a day.

For the 18 months that I've lived in my sweet little "urban" loft, I have become something of an ethnographer where these clowns are concerned.

And yes, when I say "clowns," I mean that I have been living down the street from a house FULL of Clowns. They put up a stage in the front yard, where they have regularly given performances of one sort or another to passers-by. Their most elaborate shows have taken the stage during the monthly artwalk and festivals that happen on my street. But as I've learned from my dog-walkings, there was almost always something going on with these clowns.

They were very partial to building tall bikes and riding around the neighborhood on them. Several rode bikes that were rather fantastical looking -- most of them made of multiple bike frames welded together, one atop another, to achieve the effect of a bike on stilts. These bikes have become curiously popular with average riders in the neighborhood, which frightens me a little because they don't have the acrobatic balance of the clowns.

The clowns would usually decorated their weird bikes and perform artful mounts and dismounts of them at intersections and street lights. It has not been uncommon to hear music -- say, the strains of Edith Piaf -- as one of the bikes would pass beneath my window, a boom box or old record player strapped to the back. Every once in a while, the bikes carry mulitple passengers, such as one woman I recall, clad in a melange of period pieces, who reclined rather peacefully on the back of a board jutting out from behind a particularly large bike. She was there, suspended about four feet above the road, looking carefree despite how vulnerable she was to cars or a tall-bike mishap.

Aside from the bikes, the clowns put on stage shows, musical performances, acrobatics and comedy. Some of these performances are considerably better than others. But they're clowns. What should I expect?

And in true clown fashion, face make up is not uncommon, particularly for events (but sometimes, clearly, just for the hell of it). Mainly, though, they have the looks of grungy off-casts from a Rainbow gathering. Very ripe, non-bathing hippies. Or Gypsies. That's been my impression while walking past the house these many, many months.

Their decision to sell "organic, vegan gluten-free dog treats" in front of their house -- first, from an old-fashioned carnival popcorn machine and, later, from a bubblegum dispensers placed on the sidewalk -- only reinforced my notions. Hippies. Gypsies, tramps and theives..., as the song goes (and often has gone in my head while walking past their house).

But for the past week or so, the refrain in my head has been: But where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns.

It seems they have bid the neighborhood farewell.

I watched it happen over the course of two or three weeks -- a strange, gradual cleanup of the property that began when they dismantled the stage and filled in the mud pit they sometimes used in their performances. (I recall one "Child Mud Wrestling Show" that involved some of the children who lived in the Clown House. Probably wasn't too popular with DHS, because I never saw that performance again....)

The weekend before this last one, I watched from the street as the final floppy, decrepit mattresses were brought out from behind the house while a curiously large amount of paper burned in a fire pit in the yard. It really was the End of the Show.

And every time I've walked past the house, I've felt mixed feelings. It was a dump, to be sure, because it seems clowns aren't the best house-keepers. But it was, without question, a most amusing and *interesting* dump, and the goings-on I witnessed there have given me all sorts of things to ponder.

They have prompted great consideration on my part about social conformity and what people do to intentionally put themselves outside of "polite society." I have also found myself wondering how much of it is choice/intention versus how much is simply a way of life from which they have not diverted for generations. I've thought long and hard about what it must be like as a child raised in such an unconventional lifestyle, especially one that was as publically displayed as this particular Clown House managed to be.

Gypsies really do exist. So do clowns. But who were these people? How did they get here? Where did they go? ... And what, oh what, will replace them?

In the meantime, the song is there in my head, a process, perhaps, of grieving the loss of the Clown House. Sometimes, it's just the melody playing in my head. Sometimes I whistle or hum a little to myself. Sometimes, it's impossible not to sing the words:

...And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.

I'm not a stone fortress, but I play one on TV...

2007-09-09T23:44:00.000-07:00

I was packing up shop and leaving the H4TCI where I worked tonight, when I suddenly saw something on television that made me sit down and watch for a while.

A show on the History Channel called "Digging for the Truth" was featuring "one of the world's greatest mysteries" and the largest stone edifice in the Americas. I needed only one look at the diamond pattern carved into the round stone wall to know the place.

Kuelap.

Even today, two years after I reached that amazing mountain-top citadel, I still get a little shiver of excitement in my stomach when I see or hear the name of the place. Located in, as this archeologist put it, one of the "most inaccessible regions of Peru," to get there XGF and I endured 22 hours of driving on a boulder-strewn dirt road which, for a great portion of the journey, was cut rather shallowly into the face of the most precipitous mountains I've ever seen. The Northern Andes are not short on drama, that's for sure.

To see this mysterious place, built around 500 A.D. (1,000 years before Machu Picchu), on television brought a flood of wonderment and other emotions to me. Same goes for when the archeologist-host of the show did a little narration while walking through the town square -- the Plaza de Armas, which *every* Peruvian town has so named their main square -- in the town of Chachapoyas.

Oh, the chicken and french fries! I thought to myself, the tone of my thought more in line with "Oh, the humanity!" of the Hindenberg narration. I think I had a stomach ailment for at least two weeks of the trip, and in Chachapoyas, I was subjected to the umpteenth plate of pollo y papas, which did nothing to improve my flagging appetite or quell my nausea.

Having not eaten much at all for the past few days, I was desperate for nourishment. Just not THAT nourishment. I will never forget the sense of ecstasy I felt when, several days later, XGF and I ate Middle Eastern food for lunch in Lima, nor the night we ate at what is said to be Peru's best restaurant, which was a gourmet feast. In both establishments, my stomach was healthy and my tastebuds were positively SINGING, so happy were they to NOT be tasting chicken or french fries.

But I digress.

Kuelap, Kuelap.

What a marvelous and peculiar place, an obscure outpost well off the tourist track, and wrapped not just in mystery but in vines and bromeliads. I remember thinking it was crude and lovely all at once.

And for the duration of our visit, I felt like vomiting. The altitude -- about 10,000 feet -- made my asthma inhaler a little more potent than I could bear, and I was disturbingly dizzy as I walked around the place. This was no more dramatic than when I attempted to pose for a photo near "The Abyssmal," as our no-English-spoken-here guide called it. It was an outer wall of the fortress that, without even an inch of railing or masonry above "ground level," dropped into sheer nothingness thousands of feet above the Utcubamba valley below. Even if I hadn't been doped on Albuterol, I would have felt dizzy there. As it was, I almost fainted.

The entire experience of going to Kuelap, including the death-defying journey itself, is the most sublime thing I've ever done. Seeing the fortress on TV this evening was a real thrill for me.

It also helped put into perspective just how tedious and weird the last month of my life has been -- like another unwanted plate of pollo y papas..

I have embraced (or at least survived) many unusual situations in my life, and my spirit remains adverturous and strong. Once, after a long, rough and dirty journey, I stood on the edge of The Abyssmal -- a Jumping Off Place if there ever was one -- and smiled for the camera.

The world is full of secret places and amazing peoples. Our frame of reference is never more narrow than when we tell others how things ought to be and expect them to be like us. It's sad, really, how much time and energy we can spend trying to conform or trying to get others to conform to us.

Had XGF and I chosen to "conform," we would have never found ourselves alone -- the only visitors -- in the largest stone ruins in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, we would have been with the hoards at Machu Picchu, taking the same photos you always see of the place. Or worse, we would have never gone to Peru at all, and would have simply waited for the opening to Machu Picchu Las Vegas.

I realize these issues may seem only tangentially related to some of my readers: Kuelap and the weird month I've recently had. But they are linked in my mind by mental fortitude and a willingness to endure unpleasant things to get where I want to go.

In the upper reaches of Kuelap, sickened by my own medicine and rendered weak by a harsh journey, I still had the strength and desire to take in a completely new experience, to be moved by mystery and to be glad I had chosen the more difficult destination.

I will also never forget the moment the tires on our SUV hit smoothly paved road after two days of driving on dirt. It was dark, so the change came without warning. The endless and noisy crunch of rocks beneath the wheels suddenly gave way to a pleasing hum. The violent, jarring ride quieted immediately to a dreamy vibration.

That, my friends, is transformation.

And it's just one piece of the story of Kuelap.

One story ends, another begins

2007-09-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

With any luck, I am near the end of the practicum fiasco I've been describing here. I had a meeting with faculty earlier this week in which I finally learned what I had supposedly done that was so terribly disrespectful toward my classmates. Seems someone has been telling my faculty that I refer to my female classmates as "bitches" in class.

Whoa! Right?

Considering that this is an absurd and utterly inaccurate accusation -- at least as far as I and many of my classmates are concerned -- I'm ready to put the whole thing behind me. I have done enough of my own self-work over this issue. I have endless more self-work to do, of course. But when it comes to this? I'm done. Just totally ... done....

No doubt I'll eventually get myself raked over the coals in internship by my new Gestalt supervisor. But I am hopeful that the self-examination asked of me in that process is done with a focus on guidance and growth based on meaningful observations by my supervisors. The vague, scolding "feedback" from my practicum was not especially helpful and, with its damning air, caused me a great deal more stress than necessary.

Now it's time to move on.

It's also helpful, too, to have a little scandal in my school create enough fuss to make whatever vague complaints exist about me just fade into the background. Everyone -- and I mean *everyone* -- seems really put out by revelations that the (now-former) dean of our graduate school has gotten himself some notoriety as a Lothario of sorts. Or at least as a hypocritical liberal White male. Or as a fallable human for whom forgiveness might be helpful. All of those. And maybe even none of them. Depends on your perspective.

As for me, I'm trying to hold all those things as being the case. Those and a dozen other realities.

I have been humbled by the flood of perspective that people shared with me over the past month. Getting all that feedback from so many quarters -- and seeing how impossible it is to make sense of it in a way that's congruent with what I know and believe about myself -- has reminded me of the unique perspective each of us has.

I already knew this, but the sheer scope and overwhelming nature of the feedback I received from so many people was a radical experience that moved the idea of perspective from an intellectual knowing to an embodied knowing.

I am not pleased with the actions of the dean of my graduate school, as described in published accounts. It touches a nerve for me in terms of where "true" openness meets liberal lipservice about diversity issues.

However, the past few weeks have reminded me acutely that there is not just "another side" to the story, there are dozens of sides to the story. As much as I'm bothered by abuse of power -- having recently felt its seering heat in my own life -- I am also feeling empathy for everyone involved in the situation. Not just for the dean and the woman he was found to have harrassed, but for his colleagues and the students who felt betrayed. And also for those who found the sense of betrayal to just be more liberal hypocrisy.

Everyone's got an angle on that story, and it's kinda fun and invigorating to discuss it. Very much a playground for debate.

But it's also useful to remember that everyone also has an angle on the Story of Me. And an angle on the Story of You.

Recently. And tomorrow.

2007-09-03T23:51:00.000-07:00

When we last met each other in this forum, I posted a quote about truth-seeking from Terri Jentz's *fabulous* book, Strange Piece of Paradise, the introduction to which came from my schoolmate and friend, True Tomato. I cannot recommend this book enough, even at 700-something pages long.

Jentz and a classmate were brutally attacked by a guy who ran over their tent at a state park here in Oregon, then got out of his truck and hacked at both of them with an axe. For reasons one is left only to suspect, the state police dropped the ball, and no serious suspects were ever interrogated, even though much of the community in the area believed they knew who did it. Ten years later, Jentz returns to the scene of the crime and begins her own investigation. It's an amazing investigation she conducts.

I lay absolutely NO CLAIM to doing anything similar with my fine self. But a single comment she made about truth-seeking restoring "something vital in my core" really spoke to me.

I am not sure why. Not exactly. But I have a good idea. (And I'll get into it further at a later date.)

In any case, the last several weeks of my life seem to have had truth-seeking as a theme. But rather than looking for some culprit in the crimes that have occasionally been part of my life, I have been looking inward -- and have had a lot of external assistance with that.

Self-examination is -- or rather, should be -- part and parcel to getting a graduate degree in counseling psychology. I say "should be" because I have observed extreme reluctance on the parts of some of my schoolmates to do this work, and others have said things that make it clear they don't understand why one might need to do that in this line of work. Both types drive me a little crazy because I think they are being irresponsible.

Although I also lay no claim to being fully self-aware (hardly!) nor so proficient in self-examination as to think I do it better than others, I feel certain that most of the people who know me well would tell you that I do engage in self-examination as a matter of course in my daily life. One schoolmate said I have a "fearless inward-looking eye." It's a kind way of saying, perhaps, that I sometimes engage in indulgent navel-gazing -- and that I tell others what I find there. (Look at this blog for examples.)

However, I think those who know me best realize that, over the past few weeks, I have been engaged in an entirely new sport: X-treme Self-Examination.

That absurd evaluation I got from my practicum instructors -- and, yes, it *is* absurd in most respects -- prompted some serious reflection on my part, which included numerous conversations with friends, colleagues, family members and the occasional service provider about how they perceive me and what they think those pesky instructors might have been set off by in the person of your dear UCM.

It started off innocently enough. I asked my peers in the practicum whether I had, in fact, created an unsafe environment in the classroom. Uniformly, they told me "NO" and shared their thoughts on what was going on in the class that may have upset the instructors. My provocative questions and direct commentary were part of it, but that does not equal a lack of respect for the "fundamental rights, dignity and worth of all people," a blight from which my evaluation suggested I suffer.

So then, I started poking and poking and poking at my close friends to give me some insight. I asked S2 and HGM. I also asked XGF. Where was this coming from? What is it about me that may have prompted this acrimony in my instructors?

Unsatisfied with the responses -- which basically were "You're fine; those instructors are the problem" from S2 and HGM and "Well...." from the XGF -- I expanded my reach and my questioning. For a week or two, just about anyone who crossed my path -- minus the baristas, deli owners and gas station attendants -- was subjected to my questions.

One night at dinner with The Clairvoyant and The One, The One told me, "Face it, UCM, you're HOT! You have a beautiful mind, and a lot people want a piece of that. But to others, it's scary because *they* are insecure around someone like you." (Nice piece of work, that man. We are a mutual masturbation society, he and I. He has several pieces in a gallery opening this weekend, and I can't wait to see them.)

But I digress.

The point is: Be careful what you ask for.

When Truman Capote died, he was working on a novel called "Answered Prayers," or something like that. The idea behind the piece was about the misery that befalls people when they actually get what they want.

This is kind of what happened to me.

Somewhere, insidiously, the feedback really started to pile up. Eventually, people who I never even ASKED started telling me what how they perceive me or simply started explaining me to myself. It came in every form you can imagine: bare-bones statements (as if it wasn't perception but fact), gentle questioning, reflective listening that had "summaries of meaning" which were NOT part of what I said, Tarot cards, astrology, empirical research about social psychology.

It went on and on and on. ... And on.

I met with the faculty member who is the practicum coordinator on Wednesday last week, and she shared some of her own perceptions of me. She's someone I respect immensely, someone who I think would be a fabulous mentor. So when she placed my "sensitivity" at a 9 or a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, I was the very illustration of rapt curiosity. She said such "sensitivity" is gift, not a negative trait -- and then shared her concept about how I protect myself in certain situations because of that acute feeling (and, as S2 noted, the "vulnerability" inherent in it).

It was my professor's comments that finally started bringing into focus for me the strange, conflicted picture painted by all these other sources of feedback.

And yet, there was still more feedback to come on Thursday -- some unsolicited from a friendly schoolmate and some I asked of my most trusted friend, S2.

For whatever reason, it was this final bit -- including a kind and loving e-mail from S2 in which she said there's nothing wrong with me -- that was the proverbial straw on the camel's back. This mountain of feedback from so many sources was, in the end, just way too fucking much to take in, to sort through, process and make sense of. In short, it was maddening.

For a few days, I withdrew from everyone. If someone called, I might answer. But my normally outgoing self made no outgoing calls, sought no conversations, wrote not a single goddamned word. I have an immense tolerance for contact with people. I need contact. I derive my energy in a great part from social interactions. At times when I get depressed or anxious, I usually reach out to friends.

It is a rare, rare thing for me to retract into my shell. But that's where I've been. I went to the movies -- the latest Harry Potter -- and I watched women's tennis at the U.S. Open on television. I walked my dog vigorously. And I slept a WHOLE LOT. This shit had totally overwhelmed and exhausted me, and I needed to recoup in a way that did not involve those I love or even those I like. I just needed to be left alone for a few days.

In truth, I could have probably used a couple more days of it. But I woke up this morning and realized S2 might think I was sick or dead if I didn't contact her today, so I did. Then True Tomato called and left the most amusing and sweetly passionate voice mail about what is wrong with other people, rather than what is wrong with me. So I called and chatted with her for a while. And then HGM called about coming over to pick up something and getting lunch, so we did that together.

I suppose I needed to rejoin the living today anyway.

That's because tomorrow (Tuesday), I start my internship. Yep. I'm about to become a therapist for real. (Truth is, I was already one in my practicum, but this is going to be a little different -- more clients and more serious one-on-one supervision, without having a fucking camera trained on me every session.)

It's time for your UCM to sink or swim. Good thing I come by floating so naturally.

Good thing, too, that I'll be one of those therapists who's willing to look at herself. Not only is it necessary for my personal growth as a human, it something I believe I owe to those who will be my clients. If I can't stand the scrutiny, how dare I ask others to undertake such work?

But you know what? No one should have to take it all at once from all quarters. It certainly creates a picture. But so much of it all at once is like standing too close to a Seurat. So many points -- so many fine and good points -- viewed so closely don't make that much sense.

Let's see what comes into view when I take a few steps back.

A brief description of me

2007-08-29T12:45:00.001-07:00

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

Mental gymnastics

2007-08-27T23:20:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-08-21T02:02:00.001-07:00

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

2007-08-17T17:50:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-08-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-07T20:58:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

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.

The departed

2007-07-31T21:25:00.000-07:00

I've been out of touch for a few days while I entertained my delightful loft guests, The Asian and her husband. We've been up to the wee hours of the morning evey night for the last three nights, eaten too much, exercised just right (if you count my swims) and slept too little.

They are on the road to Seattle now, followed by who knows where. They literally seem to be traveling by the seat of their pants -- not knowing exactly where they are going or when until they depart. The Asian kept knocking herself for procrastinating, but I personally admire this kind of travel. I think it is the best kind of trip you can have, so long as you see things you want see and do things you like to do along the way.

While here, I made sure they got good views of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens by taking them right after their arrival to watch the sunset from atop Council Crest. We drank lemonade cooled by a load of frozen raspberries (picked myself last season) and spiked with a touch of rum.

This is an interesting thing I learned from spending time with my aunt and uncle in Kona. When I visited them there, they always ensured I saw the sunset on my first evening's arrival. They'd take me to the beach -- even if I'd just stepped off the plane -- and we'd sit in the sand, drink a beer or a glass of wine, and watch the sun drop below the horizon.

This was a way of saying, "There's always a moment for aloha." ... Please know you are welcome. You are our guest. Relax. This is the sunset. Isn't it nice?

It's a form of hospitality I learned from my aunt long ago. I had some interesting talks this weekend with The Asian, particularly around culture and hospitality, and I think I'll write about them at length later.

In the meantime, I'm tired. It's not that we did so much. In the end, it's good I ensured they saw Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens, because those were two of the places I thought I might take them during our visit. But as it turned out, they needed to do laundry. And having stayed up so late each night, I wanted to chill out and visit with them more than I wanted to drive to look at the volcano. (Perhaps they will hit it on their way back through.)

One day, we went to look at my college and then visited Powell's City of Books instead. The other, I took them to the lake, where we all went for a good swim, then D went fishing for a few hours -- while I read a book, chatted with The Asian and then swam by myself for a while again near sunset. The Asian and I saw a bald eagle take his perch above the lake. We had endless conversations, which were stimulating to me.

When they left this afternoon, it was like the power had been turned off to my place. I missed them instantly. But I was also fine with seeing them on their way, as the late nights (despite sleeping late into the mornings) have left me a bit tired. I need a full and normal night's sleep so I will be in good shape for tomorrow night. I have my final sessions with clients this week, and I really need not to be mentally tired. My brain needs a night to recover from the stimulation.

Where they head from Seattle is anyone's guess. They asked me about the Olympic Peninsula and about taking a ferry to Canada. They don't have to be home for another few weeks, and they seem prepared to arrive home at the last possible moment. I imagine they'll see a lot on their journey. I wish them safe traveling and good health.

...

Another type of departure altogether

Ingmar Bergman died on Monday.

Watching his Scenes from a Marriage in Couples Therapy was one of the best film highlights for me in a long, long time. It was intense, psychologically challenging and austerely filmed to artfully strip the relationship down to its unambiguous ambiguity. Really powerful.

Not his only work to admire, either. Think of Fanny and Alexander.

The man was a master filmmaker who cast a fearless lens on the human psyche. Hurt to watch sometimes, but isn't it just like life to be that way?

Preparation (and play)

2007-07-27T22:51:00.000-07:00

I've got houseguests -- or rather, loft guests -- coming to stay for a couple of nights. That has required an additional level of overhaul to my regular housekeeping.

I had to clean off my dining table. It has been substituting as a work table where I have been working on some art projects. It had been completely taken over by the art stuff about two months ago, and I have been living with it like that. I've been eating dinner at school or in one of my arm chairs. Or out.

It took a while to organize all the different things I've been cutting for a collage I'm playing around with. I've been afraid to put it away because of how I fear that the unpacking of it will make me reluctant to finish it. So I spent the extra time of breaking it down and putting it away in a manner that wouldn't dissuade me. I've come to realize that I need some kind of functional storage, probably tucked under the bar that separates my kitchen from the rest of the space.

Now that it's essentially cleared, I realize how much I've missed my table as the thing of beauty it is. Seeing the light reflecting off its warm cherry surface at night feels like a sight for sore eyes. It has been so covered with crap that I'm enjoying the return of visual order to my space.

I'll deck it with some flowers, and call it good.

Got a few other small things to touch up tomorrow. I'll wait for the light of day to put the cover back on my duvet. For whatever reason, it took the dry-cleaners almost two weeks to launder the cover and two pillow shams. I was bitching to a friend today about how much it cost me to have them drycleaned. But I have to remember that I got this lovely, embroidered silk duvet cover for $9.99, thanks to a bit of lagniappe from the Big Box Store. One of my best deals EVER.

Then, except for my messy desk -- whatever -- and an errant pile of library books or two, my place is looking pretty darn nice. I like my digs. I think it's important to live in a space that feels good to you. I would prefer a bigger space for some greater distance between my dining table and my bed, but I feel like this loft is just the right thing. For one person.

It'll be interesting to see how it is to have two more people in here again. Spitfire and her boyfriend stayed for a night or two when they passed through Portland on the way back to New Orleans. But my schedule and their other responsibilities in the area kept us from crossing paths until the evening. My friends are coming for a visit, which is different.

I'm really looking forward to seeing them. The Asian, who lives in the Bay Area, is an good long-time friend. We can go for years without seeing each other and months of not talking very much, but whenever we connect, our energy is just as engaged as it always has been. We've had our share of difficulties and faux pas, of course. But I sometimes suspect that our friendship was forged like one in battle. We met in the newsroom of a daily newspaper, which is more of an intense and politically insane subculture than a workplace. We came to know each other first as colleagues. Then came a friendship that has endured and developed its own integrity.

The Asian is also a wonderful philosopher, a poet and writer who brings a considerably different cultural lens to my life. As the only daughter of two Chinese immigrants who was raised in L.A., The Asian has on many occasions shared with me her experience of being treated as a walking stereotype. This goes all the way back to a pair of taupe pants she wore to work several times back when she was in her early 20s. The pants were not age-appropriate. She was trying to make herself look more serious or more "adult" because everyone took her gracious cultural posture and thoughtful manner as an indicator that she was a submissive push-over.

The Asian is anything but. Early on, I learned what a shrewd mind and a tenacious will she had. Very much like XGF when I think of it. Except that The Asian has a manner of speaking her mind that can turn everything on its head. For example, when I was talked to her about starting this blog and asked her what she wanted to be called, she told me, "Oh, why don't you just call me 'The Asian,' since that's all people seem to see when they look at me lately. Not even 'Chinese.' Just 'Asian.' We are not even bothering to distinguish these populous and influential countries and cultures from one another. We're just all one big lump. So just call me 'The Asian.' "

So it was spoken, so I made it. Even though I think it makes me look like I'm an ethnic idiot.

Anyway. She's coming to town, and I'm excited. If I may invoke another bit of ethnic referencing, when I sit and talk with The Asian, I sometimes imagine the experience is similar to how it might be talking with a young Maxine Hong Kingston. So I anticipate having my mind stimulated in some different ways than it has been of late.

Not that there's anything wrong with how I've been stimulated of late.

In fact, my mind has been quite stimulated, both by conversations with friends here and by ... some weird shit I still don't feel like writing about.

Despite the preparation I was doing earlier today (including three loads of laundry, which I must fold before sleeping), I still took off the late afternoon and early evening for a swim in the lake. I had not been up to the lake this late in the day before, and it was simply marvelous. The warmest part of the day in this region is usually around 5 o'clock, which is just when we laid out our blankets and towels on the grass.

The friend who went with me is one of my classmates from practicum who I'll call ... uh... Another Aires, on accounts I seem to be finding friendships with these willful, independent-minded women in my life (my old friend Mountain Girl and S2 among who knows how many others). So Another Aries -- AA for short -- and I passed the afternoon with mainly lightweight conversation. I was in story-telling mode, entertaining her with the reason I don't date on-line (aka "The Woman with the Brown Finger Tip") and how I got hypnotized to bust my snake phobia.

Turns out we're both good at creeping each other out and getting creeped out, so I have a feeling the story about how the deepest parts of the lake (an extinct caldera) have never been measured and how a plane that crashed into the lake and was never found (even though it's a small lake) may have creeped us enough to shorten the first swim. Then, when I went into the lake for a second swim on my own, AA said as I walked away, "You'll get creeped. The water moccasins will find you."

I *know* there are no water moccasins in the lake. But I'm *not* so certain there isn't a monster in it. Or some strange outflowing river down in its blackness that might suddenly suck me under water and carry me away. Yeah, AA, the bitch, got me to creep myself out. I swam perhaps 150 yards before I going back in, the monster at my heels.

We hung out for a while. Laid in the sun. Talked. Then we had a relly stunning drive home through the country. Came back across the Columbia River into Oregon just as the sun was setting over the river: Mt. Hood picking up the first of alpine glow, a nearly full moon rising, the clear rolling hills, the greenery and the city surrounded by it spread out in a vista before us as we drove across the river. Just lovely.

I dropped AA off at her place and cruised on back home to walk the pup and get a burrito.

There are a few more chores to finish before I get to sleep. But I'm glad I took the time to play in the middle of doing all that. AA is a wicked gem of a young woman, and the lake water was so lovely and warm (by PNW standards) that I was able to forget everything for a couple hours and enjoy myself. Good work, and good play makes your UCM sleep good, too.

Once I make the bed...

Not such a good idea

2007-07-24T23:14:00.001-07:00

When XGF returned my call this afternoon -- I had called demanding to know if she had given her life to Jesus -- she read me the riot act on two counts.

First, she wondered how I could ever take seriously the concept that she had started dating men "because it's the right thing to do, according to God." Well, I *did* think it was a joke, but the person who repeated it to me wasn't so sure. So I got concerned. There are plenty of weird things that have been going down with XGF this past year or so -- fainting spells, "heart attacks," getting lost on Mt. St. Helen's and needing to be rescued by professionals, etc. -- so I worry at times that just about *anything* is possible with her.

Anyway, she thought I was stupid for taking that comment seriously.

Second, she wondered what on earth ever possessed me to agree (truth be told: I SUGGESTED IT) to go camping on Mt. St. Helen's with The Asian and her husband.

"I do believe," XGF said, "that I swore I would *never* go camping with you again. You are *horrible* when you camp. Absolutely HORRIBLE. If you go camping with them, you have to be prepared that you may never speak to them again."

You mean they may never speak to *me* again? I asked.

"That's what I mean. The chances are they would hate you," she said. "If you want to keep them as friends, it's far better for everyone if they just go camping by themselves. I don't even know *why* you would agree to that."

Do the rest of you wonder just WHAT I could have done when XGF and I went camping together?

I guess that one time we went... I started.

"Twice. We went twice."

Twice? There was that time we went to Swift Reservoir. What was the other?

"We went with Karin," she reminded me.

Oooooh. The MacKenzie River. A repressed memory came to the surface. I grimmaced.

"Yeah, *that.* And I don't know WHAT I was thinking the second time I did that with you," she said. "You are simply AWFUL when it comes to camping."

If I went into the dark corners of my mind in search of those moments -- the things I said and did that got me such a bum rap with XGF -- I could probably recount some of them. They are moments of shame, I'm sure. One harrowing scene at a guard shack comes to mind. And then, there's the matter of setting up the tent. But let's not talk about that.

Personally, I think I've probably figured out some better ways to deal with the grizzly hostility that seems to be called forth in me by the experience of car camping in a large campground. I'd like to say that the jolly nature with which I pulled myself out of a nasty, brackish pond and sustained an attack by a porcupine tree in the Amazon is proof I've come a LONG way, baby. But the truth is: I had a shower (of sorts) and a bug-proofed, open-air cabana and a pleasantly cozy bed to which I would return that night. In other words, I wasn't "camping."

When it comes to that form of so-called fun, I've never gotten over some of the minor infractions I experience at the hands of mother nature, including an aching back from "sleeping" on the ground. (Quotation marks used to enhance the dubious meaning of the word under these circumstances.) I don't like getting dirty. Or, rather, dirty when I can't shower. Also, there is the matter of the unhappy odor I called "camp hooch" when talking to S2 about it this afternoon (before XGF's call).

XGF, however, sees these problems as the least of my concerns. In no uncertain terms, she suggested I call The Asian and her husband immediately and tell them I won't go camping with them.

"If you want," she offered, "I'll call them myself. I'll tell them what a mistake would be."

Apparently, it's a matter of public safety that I never go camping again. ... It sounds creepy when it's put that way. But I kind of like having that excuse.

I called The Asian and her husband and left a message. You know, I started, maybe camping isn't such a good idea after all. I've hurt my tailbone recently, and ...

My missing blog

2007-07-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

I feel bad when I see that I haven't written anything four or five days, especially because I know I have these readers who check on me regularly. I sometimes feel disappointed when a site I like stops updating, and I don't want to be one of them. Not yet, anyway.

This reminds me of a recurrent theme in the writing group to which I belonged for a few years after I first moved to Portland. Periodically, someone would suggest a writing exercise about "Why We're Not Writing." Yes, we had a writing group where most of the people -- all of them good writers (except one I'll call "Boston" for XGF's amusement) -- weren't writing. Except for the writing exercises we'd do in the group.

At the time, I had lost touch with my writing almost completely, save for what I did during our monthly meetings. For a couple years, I was creatively numb, having very little else move me to write so much as the topic of my brother in coma. And I didn't want to write about that for fear of what I might unleash. (Still don't, really.)

My travel journals were the beginning of my thaw. Then, I started this blog. And I have been faithfully writing on a daily or near-daily basis for a year and a half. Better than any private journal I've ever managed to keep. Apparently, having a bit of an audience moves me to write more frequently.

But what's going on with me now? If I took up the challenge of "Writing About Why I'm Not Writing," what would I find?

You know what's sad? I'm not even all that interested in finding out right this minute. I've had a long day at the Home for the Criminally Insane, and have been sitting at a desk for 9 hours reading textbooks and writing a paper. I do not feel like sitting here any longer.

In fact, a general adversion to my desk chair, thanks to an ailing tailbone, may be all that's wrong with me.

I feel like visiting with friends. I feel like watching an episode of "Man Versus Wild." I feel like doing yoga. I feel like just about *anything* than sitting at a fucking computer, staring at a fucking monitor.

I'm just saying.

(But a quick update: I played darts with YogaGirl and her BF on Saturday night and was trounced. The bristle dartboard I have here at home is apparently too nice a setup to practice on when it's plastic darts we end up playing with at the pub. ... The Asian's coming to town with her husband. We may go camping up on Mt. St. Helen's. ... I've got another swing shift at the Home for the Criminally Insane tomorrow, during which I hope to complete my paper on Clinical Considerations for GLB clients. Unfortunately, I'm a little afraid of the residents seeing the words "gay and lesbian" on the textbooks I'm referencing as I work on the paper. Several residents have, at times, expressed their anti-gay feelings toward me. Even though I am in the closet at work (remember the Criminally Insane part?), I don't want any flaring tempers. So I've removed the paper covers from the hardback, so the books look very plain. This is just one of those small things gay people have to worry about. ... And finally, I learned tonight that my sister has Multiple Sclerosis. I feel badly for her, but I don't know what to say to her or how to feel about this. I've suspected it for a while, but it is a disturbing thing to have concerned, mainly for my own self-absorbed reasons (fear of heritability). Either way, it sucks. That's all the news that's fit to print.)

"Sport culture" and pink things

2007-07-19T22:16:00.000-07:00

I did some serious "retail therapy" this week, first by picking up a few kitchen items and then by enhancing my "sport culture" look by taking what I expect will be my final visit to the Nike Employee Store.

XGF, who has worked for that fair athletic manufacturer for more than a few years, will be leaving her post there to attend graduate school at Rutgers, where she got a full five-year fellowship in pursuit of a doctorate. Sweet deal. But it means giving up her sweet-paying corporate gig and taking on the life of a graduate student. Swoosh, bang, boom! Massive change.

She took a few minutes of her day this morning to meet me at the store and let me in, slapping $160 in cash in my hand as I walked in the door. She commented that the last time she was in the store, she dropped more than $500 there.

Everything at the store is 50 percent off (and sometimes more when the store has "clearance," but it's not basement stuff you find in outlets. It's all Nike's collest stuff, cutting edge, style or performance shit, as well as being a source of Cole Haan and Converse.

XGF slapping that money in my hand was almost like giving me a gift certificate, except for that owes me the money. Nevertheless, I decided to make the best of the situation and went in on some clothes and equipment I've been wanting. I got a few tops that I won't be wearing until fall, but my cool deals were on the sunglasses. I fucking LOVE the style of Nike's sunglasses. There are easily a dozen there I could have bought. But I restrained myself to two, which even at 50 percent off represents something of a slpurge on sunglasses.

When I was showing them off to S2 this afternoon, I actually heard myself say, These bitches normally cost $150. These *bitches*? About sunglasses? Here's a photo. You decide. My frames are pink.

S2 crinckled her nose at them and said, "I bet they don't weigh a thing, do they?"

I handed them to her. She put them on, and I instantly regretted that she could not have been sunglass shopping with me. She would have loved it. Coulda built her forthcoming triathalon uniform from the eyeglasses down.... (Yes, S2, I meant "forthcoming triathlon.")

But let me tell you something about "performance:" I wore those glasses on my bike ride this evening, and I did not even remember they were on my face. Without a bottom frame, my vision was completely unobstructed, nothing was touching my cheekbones. It's style and technology that I'm sure *someone* out there is masturbating over. Not *me,* but someone. They are indeed "bitches," in all the best meanings of the word.

I also got some glasses that would no doubt fall under what seems to be Nike's coinage for a new niche market: "sports culture." There are fascinating new styles of shoes and shirts that are designed for people who are more interested in looking fashionable in their sport than having technical gear. An example would be people women who like to walk around in *cute* athletic shoes, even when they're not doing athletics. So the other sunglasses are sweet, highly versatile, athletic hybrid that happen to look really fucking hot on me, if I do say so myself. S2 agreed that they looked good (although she might debate "really fucking hot").

Anyway.

I also got some hand weights, which I have been thinking about getting for a few months. In the women's section, the hand weights were 3 pounds each, which is basically like lifting "air" in my book. Over on the men's side of the store, I found some 8-pound weights. Better.

When I was checking out, I commented about the light weights for women, wondering how a 3-pound weight could actually sculpt a mussle, and the girl at the stand said, "Yeah, they're really light." Then she eyed me and asked, "How much do you curl?"

I don't know, I told her. I lifted the box, which contained two 8-pound weights, and curled it. Obviously more than this. But I guess these will do for light toning.

"I curl 15 pounds at the gym," she said. "I'm sure you do more than that." She smiled at me and batted her eyes a little.

Aw, shucks! I think I blushed.

The other thing I took delight in buying was a recreational soccer ball that Nike seems to have made to go with my sunglasses, my pink cell phone and this darling little brown and pink Adidas tennis outfit S2 was wearing when she showed up. Here's my cute little prize, no doubt a soccer ball for the "sports culture" rather than a real soccer player.

I'm just saying. But it's cute. And the other day when I kicked Getting To Yes's soccer ball up a hill, I realized I wanted one of my own. So I got one that's pink.

S2 looks at the thing, turns to me with a twinkle in her eye and says, giggling, "You are *such* a girl!"

Did I mention that she was wearing a pink and brown tennis dress when she said that? (Over blue jeans, but still....) Who's calling *who* a girl?

That comment made me laugh, but it got me to thinking. Why *did* I buy a pink one? Is it because I thought it was feminine? Is it because I want to be thought of as girlish? Or is it because I thought it was gay? I think a pink soccer ball is rather queer, to tell you the truth. But it is also feminine.

To me, somehow, pink is the new lesbian chic. So I declare, anyway.

Well, I got the soccer ball with the idea that I would kick it around and not let it get eaten by my dog, the way the last one did. All I gotta do is find someone who wants to kick it with me. Seeing as how I don't have a good wall for kicking against. So anytime any of you here in town want to kick a ball around, call me and I'll bring my pink, lesbian chic soccer ball over to play.

Friday, I'll see XGF again -- this time for a meal that seems destined to be our "farewell" hanging out before she takes off for New Jersey. Meeting at a little diner we used to like to go to in the Pearl. A retro flashback seems the perfect place for a restrospective conversation. Should be interesting....

When Worlds Collide

2007-07-18T00:32:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago, I was literally overwhelmed by a moment which was, at its core, probably the most poetic of my life. I shared it with no one; as experiences go, it was mine alone, unwitnessed by others. Had someone indeed been watching, it would have appeared to be no more than a silent pose, some still-life of a mundane act.

But within me, alone in my home on the Fourth of July, as I prepared to bathe after a sun-filled day at the lake, proverbial worlds were colliding. Without warning -- or as we might say in The South, I was just sitting there, minding my own business, when all of the sudden... -- I became an object of philosophical transmorgrification.

It's funny how these things happen. And if I described it for you straight-up, I'm afraid I wouldn't do it justice. So please forgive my decision to speak about it in analogy and metaphor.

I guess you could say I was awestruck by a thought. To boil it down as simply as possible, an idea entered my consciousness that forced me to consider how nihilistic my view of life had become.

I'm not sure where this all started. But what I do know is that one week before, a classmate with whom I'm developing a friendship said to me, "So, you don't believe there's a soul?"

No, I had replied. And after she left, I wrote this note to myself: Ascribing meaning and intent to the existace of 'energy' in the universe strikes me as the human compulsion to anthropomorphize everything.

A week later, I was asked to consider whether I really stood behind those words. It prompted some (pardon the euphamism) soul-searching of a magnitude to which I have never exposed myself.

This afternoon, I engaged in a lengthy conversation with S2 -- dragged out by my constant questioning and my stubborn resistance -- in which I admitted two consequences of this philosophical transmorgrification.

First, I described in apparently rather poignant terms the way I have come to view the world in terms of the fundamental isolation of the Self from all Others. I say "apparently rather poignant" not because S2 was moved, but because I was. Sitting there with my words, I felt the crushing sadness and solitude of that way of seeing the world. While describing my personal philosophy, I had the curious experience of observing it with sadness and also taking the first real steps toward releasing it.

Second, I spoke some words, wrenched out of me by myself at the bidding of S2's direct question: "What does your intuition tell you happened in that moment?" The answer to that question remains far too personal for me to discuss on this blog right now. Except to say that, for me, after I uttered them, I heard the distinct creaking of yet another closet door opening up, desperately in need of some WD-40.

Words are funny things. Between the mouth of the speaker and the ears of the listener, even without a second-language in the mix, so much can get lost in translation.

I let some of the rattiest, most unnerving words I've ever said come out of my mouth, and S2 looked unfazed. In fact, she said my turn of phrase was "beautiful." There was not so much as an eye-brow raised.

Still, though, I thought my world might crack open when I uttered the words. When I crossed a threshold I have been relucant to cross. When I came out (at least to my best friend, if not the rest of you just yet).

Yet there was no calamity.

Instead, there was S2, yawning every so often (thanks, I imagine, to my wearisome analysis), and saying upon our parting, "You have a busy life, UCM. A very, very busy innner life. Which is both a blessing and a curse."

I can see my way to the curse very easily. But the blessing? That is rarely so clear.

And when ideas, thoughts and experiences cause the delicate constellation of my inner heavens to shift, rushing worlds toward collision, my mind is inclined to shift into disaster mode. I assume everything is going to hell, and I want to dig into the rubble immediately and sort the living from the dead.

It's a noble instinct when lives are at stake. But when it's philosophy that has been thrown into tumult, even when the blast zone is wide enough to included the most fundamental and strongly held principles of one's world view, it would be wise to act from the outset as if the cleanup will be a long-term excavation. Like the delicate uncovering of remains at Pompeii.

This has been my struggle for the past week and a half. I wanted to do something to resolve my dilemma. I exhausted myself with a mental exercise, debating how much I believed my own experience. For now, I've decided to take my hands off he wheels a litle bit. Having "outed" myself to S2, perhaps I can now relax and employ a more useful approach in how I process this mysterious experience.

Step One: Let the dust settle.

Why I haven't been writing (the brief version)

2007-07-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

I don't really feel like writing lately. My brain is a bit too occupied trying to allow something to come into it to find the ability at the same time to generate clear, cogent or otherwise meaningful commentary.

However, I can provide you with a brief rundown, a history of recent events:

Three Dog Attacks: Yes, three. First two on the pup Brogan; third on me. The first of Brogan's dog attacks came on the heels a few days prior of a cat attack. So the pup is giving wide berth to a lot of animals we encounter on our walks. First dog attack came outside the coffee house, which seems to be the place Brogan has the most difficulty (and may explain why he's always crying when I tie him up out there; "C'mon! I'm a sitting duck here already!" is probably what he's been telling me in dog whimpering.) Anyway, some dog pounced on him while we walked past, and ended up hurting him (bruising) in the jowl.

Then, a few days ago, one of my friends invited me and Brogan over for evening cocktails and perhaps a run in the sprinkler for the pup, on accounts it was very hot. Her dog didn't take well to something Brogan did -- no telling what -- and a snarling tussle ensued, at the end of which Brogan was pinned down and bleeding from his mouth. He had a front incisor partially pulled out, which required surgery to extract completely. (My friend kindly paid for the vet bills. Thank you.)

This is a photo of the snaggle tooth left behind after the tussle with my friend's Blue Heeler. When my friend picked the pup up at the vet, she made sure the tooth came home, too.

While he was in surgery on Friday, I was taking a walk without him, doing my "stairmaster" routine up and down the Alameda ridge. As I finished (and was, of all things, approaching the coffeehouse), I encountered a dog I've seen (and been followed by) before a few times. It's a Weimaraner, about a year old and thus not full grown. It tends to be very playful and goofy, but this day, it was tied up in the front yard (not normal) and was barking at me (also not normal). I stopped in front of the fence and looked at it, made a peaceful shushing sound. It came up to the fence, right near the end of its rope, and sniffed at me. I was about two feet away from the fence and did not feel any sense of danger from this dog. Then, suddenly, it lunged its head over the fence and bit my arm. I was stunned, pulled my arm from its mouth and scurried away. In front of the house next door, I looked at where I had been bitten and was shocked to see blood bubbling forth from a hole in my flesh. I went back and stood in front of the house -- a good three or four feet from the fence -- and waited to see if the owner was home and would respond to the dog's continued barking. She eventually did come out, and we had words, none of which were satisfying to me. I think she was wasted or hungover, here at 11 in the morning. Later that day, I called animal control and made a bite report and attempted to find out if the dog does indeed have all its vaccines, as the woman claimed. I'll check back in a couple days. Animal control said they would be enforcing a quarantine on the dog and demanding paperwork from the owners, especially as they apparently have not licensed their dog. (This woman needs to take a lesson or two from my friend and at least should have showed a modicum of interest in my bleeding arm, rather than the weak, "Oh, sorry..." she managed. But, as I said, she was fucked up in some way.)

Seems I'm not in any immediate danger of going rabid, on accounts it typically takes 30 to 60 days for rabies symptoms to appear (10 days to a couple years on the extreme ends). General likelihood of rabies is very low. Despite the high population of racoons in my neighborhood, most racoons up here don't carry rabies. The greater danger is posed by bats. Of which there are also plenty of those around these parts. So ... hmmmm. Let's just hope the Weimy didn't have an encounter with any bats recently.

Right now, the main problem for me is the pain from the bruise, particularly where the bottom canines gripped but did not puncture my forearm. The location of the bite makes it a little painful for me to rest my hand in a normal position, including the one assumed in typing.

Inner Conflict about the Nature of Consciousness: This has possessed me lately. It is too complicated and too unweildy for me to write about right now. It is not really blog material. It deserves some *real* writing. Which is to say: Every time people ask me, "When are you going to write something?" and I get disgusted because I think my blog, my journals and the literally thousands of newspaper articles I've written do, in fact, count as "something," I must admit that at this point, I think I have never written anything that matters. And perhaps I should. But later, later.... And not in blog format.

Reading Something: I'm supposed to be writing a paper for Human Sexuality, but I have been sidetracked by a really magnificent and highly disturbing book loaned to me by the friend who has the dog that didn't like Brogan. It is an autobiographical piece about a really disturbing crime that happened in Oregon back in 1977, when two women sleeping in a tent at a park were run over by a truck, the driver of which subsequently got out and began hacking at them with an axe. The book -- Strange Piece of Paradise -- is both gripping in story and in its literary nature. I am impressed not just with how the author, Terri Jentz, has woven the narrative but with how vividly she brings it to life with beautifully saturated language. I read stuff like this, and I recognize the terrible shallowness that mars my own efforts with words.

The Lake, The Lake: I have spent a couple blissful days avoiding the heat and enjoying the Fourth of July up at a nearby lake that has made its home in an extinct caldera a bit south of Mt. St. Helen's. It is spring-fed, clear and cool with the occasional warm spot caused by thermal springs that issue forth from the hot underbelly of this volcanic region. Very nice. I am getting the tan I haven't had in 15 years or so. I am also enjoying floating. It is one of my favorite things to do, seeing as it is probably as close as I will ever come to being weightless in space.

The Travails of my Tailbone: Walking down a steep (and "unofficial") path at the lake on the Fourth of July, some loose soil and rocks gave way under my downhill foot, and I fell squarely on my tailbone. For those familiar with the ongoing Travails of my Tailbone -- which I broke more than 10 years ago and from which I have never enjoyed a *full* recovery because I keep falling on my ass or taking 22-hour rough and bumpy rides in the Andes -- this is not good news. I'm back with the ass donut. As I was inflating it in class the other night, one of my classmates asked, "Is that for stress?" Stress to *what*? I asked. Another classmate offered, "When I see those, I think they're for hemorrhoids." I sighed: Well, this one is all about the tailbone. ... I should be sitting on it right now, but I'm not.

To Summarize: In fact, this is basically a long-winded excuse for why I'm not writing much on the blog: It hurts my tailbone to sit at the computer; it hurts my dog-bitten arm to write at the computer; I've been totally captivated by a book; and even if these things were not in the way, my brain is not organized enough to generate many words. I need a little time for things to settle down (and stop hurting). So don't give up on me yet, Fair Readers. Check out the archives if you're bored.

This concludes my long-winded excuse.

Now, please get off your computer and go forth into the world. It's more "real" out there than it is here.

I'll be back.

2007-07-09T00:03:00.000-07:00

Haven't updated in a week because it has been a PACKED week and I when I've felt like writing, I haven't had the time (and vice versa).

Including right now. I have the time, but I don't feel like writing. This is mainly because I am recovering from having been out on the town last night with Handsome Gay Male.

I have a lot to say, but not right now.

Love,
UCM

Games they play in prison

2007-06-30T23:51:00.000-07:00

I learned how to play cribbage tonight, but it seems I might have learned it according to "prison rules." Only playing it with people who haven't been in the slammer will reveal to me what the difference might be. If any....

I played it at work. The experience was considerably better than playing more spider solitaire on the computer, which is what, aside from studying, I normally do on the job. (Except when working at this one site that doesn't have *any* games on its computer.)

Other than that, I have little to report.

Except that maybe I have agreed to go on a date (or something) with a young woman who's a friend of a friend. I say "or something" because I'm not sure what I've agreed to do. Which is typical with lesbians. I should have been more clear, but the whole conversation in which I agreed to something was a bit sly and on the fly. So....

Maybe she'll forget, and I won't have to do it.

Can you tell I how excited I am about this? Our mutual friend was all, "I don't want you to think I'm pressuring you," and whatnot, but I've got this personal requirement that I must, by force if necessary, meet people with whom friends are trying to set me up.

Alas, the whole set-up business seems to boil down to a friend saying, "Oh, I know TWO single lesbians. Gay plus gay equals something, right? I'll hook them up with each other." And there's often not a lot of thought involved in whether there's actually a match there, because the only thing that seems to need matching is that we're both gay.

Normally, I have considered this as a heterosexual thought process. But this time, the person responsible for this set-up is gay himself. (Maybe it's also a "himself" thought process; I have as yet to be hooked up by another lesbian, which could totally destroy all my narrow-minded thinking and just prove that people in general don't put in a moment's thought to whether they *really* ought (or ought not!) set up the two queers in question.)

In this case, the concerning factor for yours truly is that the other woman is ... 26. As I said to YogaGirl about this last week, 26-year-old flesh is one thing; 26-year-old mind is another. But then, as I noted to her at the time, The Debutante was 26 when we became friends, and I think of her as very mature. So ... yeah. Maybe I'm just being a narrow-minded ageist bitch.

When I asked our mutual friend why he set us up, he replied, "Her cut-off age is 40."

Nice....

Perhaps what we should do on our "date" is go to a bar where I can teach her to play cribbage according to "prison rules," and not explain why I know the games they play in prison. I think I'll give myself some temporary tattoos while I'm at it.

With friends like these...

2007-06-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

In case you're wondering where you, too, can enjoy more criticism, I took this photo at the entrance to the part of campus that houses the graduate school where I study counseling psychology.

I, Back-Cracked Naughty Mormom Joker

2007-06-26T22:04:00.000-07:00

This day lived up to its promises in more ways than one.

All three meetings I had this morning did, indeed, result in curious interactions (and more than my share of pain and folly). And in between the first meeting and the second, I had a nice conversation with YogaGirl that created an interesting backdrop for all the other conversations.

The first appointment, with my killer chiropractor, included a lecture on my mousing activities (too much solitaire at work, apparently). I also got my back cracked in a truly wicked way, resulting in a headrush and the opportunity to see that little muscle-bound dynamo pace around the table like a highly engaged ... uh, lesbian collegiate volleyball coach. Or maybe a lesbian wrestling coach....

So wow. My shoulders feel heaps better, and I now have some good core training moves to do on my balance ball. Gotta get my core into some serious shape if I'm gonna have a job where I have to sit around on my butt all the time.

In between the chiropractor and my hair appointment, I had a thoughtful conversation with YogaGirl. One of the most phenomenal parts of graduate school is meeting such a diverse group of people interested in psychology and human relationships. I find that I have learned more from my colleagues -- particularly S2, YogaGirl, The Debutante and Rather Shy Classmate -- than from most of my class lecture and project experiences. What fabulous people I have had the pleasure of getting to study with and know personally....

Hung up with YogaGirl when the Hair Dresser with Chronic Low Self-Esteem summoned me to the chair. I count at least three or four times where she called me a "goober" or some other 1980s blue collar version of geek.

I told her to make me look pretty for the next appointment I had. The Hair Dresser lectured me on the "wrongness" of my plot toward long-term seduction, even though I did not reveal all that much about my intent. And when I told her what I felt my other option might be, she looked at me over my head, sheers stopped mid-cut and said, "Who are you? I don't know you anymore!"

My comments were probably a bit lesbionic for the shop today, especially because the only other people in the salon were an old woman getting her hair colored and the Hair Dresser's daughter, an underemployed Britney Spears wannabe who has in recent months become something of a fixture in the shop. She spent the duration of my cut digging in her make-up bag and applying additional layers of what-have-you to her pouty, early 20s face.

I think the Hair Dresser cut my hair a little short. She seemed to be a little displeased with me today. She gave me a brow wax and *really* ripped the wax off this time, to the point that I actually slapped her arm while she was doing it. My brows still feel a little traumatized, which is not normal. She said the problem today was the potency of this new wax she's using and the fact that I hadn't had a wax in a few months. (It's not like I haven't asked for a wax during the past couple months; she's just refused to give them to me.)

At one point today, having been called a "goober" while getting my eyebrows pulled out by their tenacious roots, I said, You do know that I come here to get abused, don't you? I live alone, and I don't get this kind of crap from anyone else. So you're it, honey! You just keep working it, OK?

After that appointment, I drove me and my slightly inflamed eyebrows to the next meeting, the one with the Woman Who Intrigues me. She was lying on her stomach on a raised platform when I arrived at her office, and the assistant who took me to her said, "Here she is ... doin' nothing, as usual."

The Woman Who Intrigues propped herself up on her left elbow and looked at me. "You've caught me in my natural state," she said.

Looks comfortable, I said. I suppose we could talk in repose.

She sat up and I sat down and we chatted for a few minutes. Then, I engaged in the great Premeditated Flirting I mentioned in yesterday's blog. You wanna know what I did? You wanna know how charming and powerful I can be?

I've got no shame, so I'll tell you: I cracked a joke about Mormon families. That's right. In an environment that theoretically should have been an epicenter of political correctness, I slyly made fun of Mormons. And then, to ensure I was offending equally, as I put it, I threw in a little punch line about Catholics.

Lucky for me, she laughed.

On my way home, I stopped at one of those urban jungles full of "big box" stores and bought a bunch of storage and office supplies. I really needed to work on a paper that's due on Friday, but I was reluctant to start it when my desk has been a hideous, out-of-control fire hazard (for a couple months). So instead of busting chops on the research, I cleaned my desk.

Now, I am looking at a pile of books and reading material from which I need to pull citations for my paper. It is beckoning me, demanding some attention before I go to sleep. So I bit you a good night,

I, Cracked-Back, Colored-Hair Scalawag

2007-06-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

Today was a big fat yawner. Woke up at 9, but took 30 minutes to actually get out of bed. Went on my stairway walk. Came home, showered and put copious amounts of aloe on my burned breasts (the peeling has begun, and it's horrifying). Got a cup of coffe and went to work. Worked (meaning: started writing a paper that's due Friday, talked with residents and watched "Office Space"). Came home. Walk dog. Hit the blog.

See what I mean? Bo-ring.

Tomorrow will be a different matter, however. I've got three appointments in the morning and early afternoon that all promise some peculiar interpersonal experience or another.

First up is my 50-something-year-old lesbian chiropractor, a little muscle-bound dynamo who still gets excited when she hears a joint crack. Sitting in her waiting room, I always wonder why I don't hear her yelling, "Oh baby, yeah! I got you that time!" at her other clients like she does when she works on me. I assume there is some kind of sound-dampening device at play in her office. Because she *totally* gets into it sometimes.

I call her "Pavlov" (to her face) because the conditioned response is so fucking predictable. Rib pops: "Oooooh! I felt THAT!" Or neck cracks: "MMMMMMmmmm, that was AWESOME!" Always something of the sort.

One time, she spit on me, she was THAT excited.

But what can I say? She's a fabulous cracker, a very kind person and not especially expensive. So that's my 11 a.m.

Up at noon is my hair appointment with my stylist of many years, a woman who has Chronic Low Self-Esteem Disorder. She's a nice woman and all, and she gives me a decent haircut without me having to explain it to her. But she's had terrible problems with the IRS and countless finacial crises over the years -- several of which I've obviously heard about while getting my hair done -- but she REFUSES to put a markup on any of the products she sells in the salon.

You know, I like getting product at wholesale prices, I've told her, But you're just giving free shelf space and distribution to all these product manufacturers, and you're not getting anything out of it. Seems like you could at least give yourself a buck or two for the space it takes in your shop.

But she doesn't. "I can't do that to my customers," she says, "especially the old ladies. Keeps them from using some crap they'd buy on discount at the drug store."

I stopped mentioning it a while ago. What costs $22 on other shelves costs $12 on hers. Who am I to complain if she wants to do that? Especially since I buy stuff from her. But still... no self-esteem. Her haircuts and colorings and everything else are way underpriced, too. A demi-color, a haircut and a brow wax run me $35 plus tip.

Of course, one aspect of this low-cost gig is that it's a very blue collar place. This ain't no fancy salon in terms of decor, and the clientele is decidedly not delux. There are only two and a half stylists there, including mine who owns the place, and they have over the years become a dysfunctional family of sorts. The other one is a first-generation Finn who has a strong Minnesotan accent and one of the hardest edges I know in people. The conversation can get pretty salty.

I have been the witness to all sorts of drama over the years. No telling what tomorrow brings. Except, of course, my hair colored and curls shaped up a little.

After I'm done at the salon, I'm heading to a meeting with a woman who holds a fair amount of intrigue for me. This is where the scalawag part comes in. You see, I'm usually a very in-the-moment person. But when it comes to this woman, I realize that I am given to premeditated flirtation. Seems I'm also checking her out for the possibility of a long-term seduction process, because this simply cannot be a flash in the pan (not at this point, anyway).

Yes, this what I like to call Living with Intent.

So I'm out walking the dog tonight, and I realize I'm thinking about what I'm going to talk about with this woman tomorrow. Of what personal matters should I inquire to show her my interest and prolong the conversation enough for me to get a better sense of what's going on with her?

For starters, I don't even know if she's queer. When I've repeated parts of our conversations to my queer friends, they all believe she's lesbian-dropping. (FYI: "Lesbian-dropping" is when you say things that give clues either to your status as a lesbian or to your liberal credentials as a "friend of lesbians.") So I'm thinking she's got something going on there, but it's part of my agenda tomorrow to get a little more information, if I'm capable of doing so indirectly.

I might find more lesbian-drops in a discussion about summer holidays, for example. Or maybe some reference to Pride events. Or another reference to "The L Word." So I'll keep an ear open to it.

In the meantime, I became aware, as I was walking, that I'm actually contemplating just *how* I want to flirt with her tomorrow. So far, this has come up rather naturally on my part, but I've been realizing lately just how powerful and seductive I can be at times -- and how fucking goofy, too -- so I'm aware of the need to be a little more conscious about my approach and my intent.

Last time I saw her, I gave her a parting wave in which I brought the back of my hand up in front of my smiling mouth and wiggled my fingers at her while ... well, I was probably batting my lashes.

When I told S2 about this, I said, Man, that must have looked flirtatious.

To which S2 replied, "You do flirt. I see you flirt all the time."

HUH?!

"Oh yeah. Oh please. You flirt with lots of people, men and women both."

Let me tell you, fair readers. Perhaps S2 was joking about this, but I get the feeling not. However you slice it, though, I have taken a little "outside" look at some of my body language and facial expressions, and I'm afraid she's right. I've probably been flirting for years and didn't know it. I do so wish I had a UCM-cam so I could see what I'm doing to some of the women in my life.

So, among other aspects of my personality that need to harnessed for the Powers of Good, we can now add "flirting." You see, I may not be a traditionally beautiful woman, I may not have a sweetly shaped body, and I may not have any more fashion sense than a turnip, but one thing I've got on my side is a gregarious, fast and witty personality that can come off as charming under the right conditions.

And around certain people, I get a twinkle in my eye that seems to make up for a lot of my other physical shortcomings. I'm quite certain I get that twinkle around this woman.

The question is: How can I put the twinkle and my more charming self to good use tomorrow?

I want to leave a lasting impression that does not include me: a) walking into any people; b) saying "fuck" more times than she does; c) exposing too much of my breasts because my shirt's not buttoned up enough; or d) talking to her while I'm essentially still asleep.

So far, I have managed to overcome most of those ... difficulties. (Personally, I think incident "C" was unconsciously purposeful; I was wearing a sexy bra.) But what I would like to do is spin a positive bit of yarn this time around and see what happens.

Mind you, the pay-off of these efforts will probably be invisible for some time to come -- if anything ever comes of them at all -- but it seems that I need plenty of practice in the fine art of sexual vibes anyway. Nothing to do but keep working on it.

If nothing else, I find I get a little juiced just sitting and talking with her. Makes me blush a little just thinking of it.

Notes on my openness

2007-06-24T03:01:00.001-07:00

You know, I open my mouth sometimes and all sorts of interesting things come out. Things that surprise me. Things I can't imagine I would say if I weren't intoxicated -- and yet, I am *not* intoxicated.

All I can say is that, in the end, I think I prefer to err on the side of sharing too much versus sharing too little.

Sharing too little is generally considered "safe."

But sharing too much? It keeps things interesting.

Truth is, I generally prefer interesting to safe.

An act of liberation

2007-06-22T23:52:00.000-07:00

Today was a loaded day. It is the sixth anniversary of my baby brother Jason's death. But today also marks the first time I have been able to be completely honest about a very difficult and specific subject with a very close friend (with any friend at all, actually).

I started the morning by sharing a cup of coffee with S2 and engaging with her in a conversation that was, for me, a bold venture. I told her something that has been my darkest secret, a facet of my experience that has dogged me for more than 20 years.

There are likely dirtier secrets to be told, but this was a significant source of inner conflict, guilt and shame. As it is, it remains a subject too complex and touchy for me to blog about right now. But I won't be surprised to find myself writing about it in some depth one day.

For now, what's affecting me so profoundly is the healing process of disclosure itself. In telling my (perhaps silly) secret to S2, I risked a form of rejection that touches the most sensitive parts of my being. When this did not happen -- when, instead, she accepted my experience in its context and pulled no punches in reply -- I recalled on an almost cellular level what it was like to come out of the closet to the first important friend who didn't reject me.

I remembered the relief of feeling accepted despite this "terrible flaw" I had of being gay. I recalled the almost giddy feeling that came from realizing that there were some people who were going to remain steadfast in their relationship with me even though I had announced a significant revision to the identity of the person they thought me to be. I felt again the release from the trap known as a sin of omission.

What I was able to talk about today with S2 was so complex and deeply rooted in me that I can scarcely describe it, much less make others understand it. But somehow, S2 seemed to get it. And more to the point, she accepted what I was telling her with an openness that eased whatever anxiety I brought to the discussion (which wasn't all that much because I hadn't actually planned on telling her anything).

In fact, the conversation itself and the "secret" I revealed to her about myself seemed fairly matter-of-fact. If S2 had any idea in the moment how stirring the whole thing was for me -- if *I* had known how it would feel to reveal what I did -- one of us might have had the sense to be nervous.

But instead, it felt like two friends keeping it real.

In the end, what S2 did was normalize my experience for me. She voiced her own understanding of the issue and shared a context in which my situation was not just OK but perhaps also so predictable as to be expected -- and even noted how some might find compliments for themselves in the issue with which I have been struggling.

Sorry to sound so oblique and secretive, but it really is too complicated and personal for me to explain in writing right now. Nevertheless, I'm trying to say something here. Which is:

I had a big day. It is the anniversary of Jason's death. He was the person I loved most in the world. It wasn't intentional, but I chose to honor his memory by allowing myself to experience the love I have for others. I opened my heart and showed a troubled, easy-to-reject part of it to my best friend.

She responded by loving me *still,* rather than loving me "anyway."

There is a universe between those two words -- "still" and "anyway." A universe.

(Note to readers: S2 used neither of those words. The *still* is my own interpretation.)

There was so much more to this day, including a significant dinner conversation with Bubba and her Lovely Lady Lawyer. But I am too tired to write any further. I didn't get to sleep until 3 yesterday, so I've got some making up to do.

Fresh fried boobs...

2007-06-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

YogaGirl and I spent the afternoon up at the lake yesterday, and fried ourselves up in the process.

Normally, I'm not too bothered by a burn. I pretty much get one per year, and that seems like how it's always been. This may be a crime against my skin, because I should be responsible enough to put on sunscreen. But the dark truth of the matter is that I like a tan, and the only way I ever get a good tan up here at this northern latitude is with the "base" of an intense sun exposure.

Such as a burn.

And so yesterday, I was reluctant to put on sunscreen before I got into the water. I wanted to give myself not a "burn," per se, but at least a good start at a tan.

In the end, because I did apply sunscreen after I got out from the first swim, I ended up with a burn that's more of a nuisance than it is a pain.

Except for this one thing.

I wear a one-piece suit and am ... let's say "well endowed" in the breast department.

Even though they are a rather prominent feature of my body, I neglected to put sufficient sunscreen on the parts of my breasts that were exposed. Unfortunately, I also neglected to "adjust" my cha-chis, if you will, when I donned my suit. The result is a remarkably lopsided burn pattern that also oddly accentuates the effect of gravity on these mams of mine.

It's really sad.

And because it burned, it will be visible all summer.

Yea for me.

I'll show you the situation if you ask, but it'll cost you a dollar.

Mirror, mirror

2007-06-18T22:30:00.001-07:00

I'm thinking I engaged in a bit of "overshare" with my Human Sexuality class yesterday. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't.

Something I got out of the whole show, however, was just how absurdly difficult it is to get a good handle on how other people see you.

I keep thinking this is a skill I will somehow miraculously develop. I've also been thinking it's a skill that other people have and which I lack through some constitutional shortcoming. I've thought for some time that I was just born without a good mirror. Or that some kind of childhood trauma is responsible for my inability to see myself.

It has also been my assumption that I have been "developing" this skill in school.

Yesterday, however, I found out that I have not, in fact, developed that capability in the least. Furthermore, I'm beginning to believe it is not really a "skill" that anyone has.

Rather, every single goddamned way in which we believe we are perceived by others is nothing but a projection of our own. Our intuition might tell us a thing or two. But when it boils down to it, everything we believe others think about us is no more than a guess, an assumption, a wild stab into the wilderness of mind-reading.

I have spent the better part of the past two months thinking that just about everyone I encounter in school thinks I'm a grumpy, loud-mouthed, obnoxious bitch with a chip on her shoulder. Most of this sense seems to be generated by my experiences in Play Therapy and Thursday nights in my practicum. But I have generalized it to all other classrooms and all other group environments.

And as I admitted to S2 and HGM yesterday at lunch, I also projected a whole heapin' bunch of hoo-haw onto specific classmates I don't know very well at all.

And yet, yesterday, a few of these people made comments to me following the presentations of our boxes that completely contradicted the ways in which I believed I was being perceived by them. I could have decided that they were just being nice -- or even lying to me -- to cover the negative feelings they actually have. Except for that they sounded genuine when they spoke to me. And one of them even left a nice note on my car after she left class early.

So. Hmmm....

What does this mean?

That I should give up the whole game of trying to know how I'm perceived by others? That it's a useless undertaking, a waste of time and energy? That no one can know how others see them?

Or does it mean that I'm just really, really bad at it?

Either way, I guess one useful approach -- in as much as my experience of the world goes -- is simply to decide that other people see me in a very positive light. That I'm an intelligent woman with tremendous courage and a marvelous sense of humor. That I'm wonderfully complex and have not just the capacity to be, but hold the promise of, being a skilled clinician. That the warmth in my heart ... shows.

And with a little effort, I'll soon be convinced that everyone thinks I'm very, VERY sexy. And that every time a lovely woman thinks or says, "Someone just dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians," I'll be the honey-licking lesbian who comes to mind. (I mean: Why not?)

That should be enough.

2007-06-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

I engaged today in what I anticipate will be my last impassioned bit of speaking in class about the subject of LGBT issues. If there was ever going to be a useful point in saying the things I said to my colleagues on this subject, today was the time and the place to do it.

And so I did it.

There is a complicated story here. One which I am not prepared to write. It's still sinking in, and once it does, I'm going to need to marinate on it for a while.

But it was a good experience. It really was. ... Just maybe a bit more powerfully influential in how I experience myself than I anticipated or intended it to be.

The one observation I will make: I have in this graduate school experience been given some incredible gifts. Today, I am thinking both of getting to study in the company of some very compassionate souls, and also in making friends with a few of them who are, in my eyes, really special people. I'm thinking specifically of S2 and Handsome Gay Male today.

I love passionate, fiery, kind-hearted people. They are the best sort. (Or at least I like to believe that, being one of them myself.)

Sex Class

2007-06-16T22:35:00.000-07:00

I am in the middle of the final weekend of Human Sexuality in Counseling, a slog of Powerpoint slides interspersed with intense discussions about our respective sexual cultures, subcultures and disorders.

I have been doing my damndest to be persistent in making sure lesbian, gay and bisexual issues are addressed in this class. Rather than snarking behind the teacher's back or complaining to faculty, I've just turned myself into an obnoxious *educator* on gay issues, making considerably more noise on the subject than I ever have in my life.

That Couples Therapy class obviously pissed me off something fierce, and now the Human Sexuality class is seeing the ripple effects of that. I have made myself a tireless advocate by pointing out every fucking nuance of queer hoo-haw related to counseling that comes up on my radar during class discussions. I'm afraid I'm sounding like a nag, but I really don't like any other option.

Now having passed through essentially all of the graduate school's required courses, I am highly aware of the education my classmates are *not* getting on the matter of working with LGB issues. Although queer people are a distinct minority -- estimates are no more than 10 percent of the population -- they access mental health providers at a higher rate than the general population. Lesbians, specifically, are the demographic most likely to see a therapist.

There are two ideas I have about why this is: First, queer people are at greater risk for depression and anxiety than their counterparts, regardless of race, probably due to the social stigma we experience. Second, women are more likely to access mental health services than men are, perhaps because our gender carries less stigma amongst ourselves about the work of therapy. Whatever the reasons, queer women like therapy.

So as I have for the past two years watched my colleagues proceed through this program with so preciously little education about queer issues and relationships, I feel this tremendous sense of dismay. I feel like my classmates are not being adequately prepared to work with a group of clients with whom they will very likely work with, especially in a "gay haven" like this fair Stumptown of ours.

When I take a second look, I am all the more appalled to realize that, at least in the classes I have had, the vast majority of the education on gay issues has come from *ME.* I have had two other gay classmates -- both of them men -- who have been regular voices on the topic of queer issues in our classes. But otherwise, just about every presentation that was given on gay issues in my classes has passed through my hands in collaborative work with a few other classmates.

In my diversity class, we have an hour of gay discussion, if I recall, but the biggest presentation of information and education was done by me, The Debutante and Tigrrr Woods. I was also involved in presentations on gay issues for Research Methods, Counseling Women at Midlife and ... something else. The Couples Therapy presentation was more a frustrated striking out against heterosexism than it was an educational piece on queer issues.

Other than that, The Gays haven't been visible in my classes. Not in development, not in theory, not in ethics or career or group therapy (except for an intense moment on a video). If I had chosen to do my projects in those other classes on the topic of grief and dying, would similar projects be done by my classmates? Perhaps sometimes. But I feel certain the issues would have received less an airing. ... My only hope is that, in other classes I do not attend, there is someone like me sounding off about queer issues with some regularity.

Otherwise, we're still producing less-informed therapists than for which the circumstances call. If straight men were the demogaphic most likely to seek counseling, we'd all be doing just grand (especially given the origins of our dominant theoretical orientations). But when the demographic with the highest per-capita access to therapy gets services rendered, it's pretty sad to think they could get them from someone who hasn't heard of "lesbian bed death" or hasn't had specific education about the sources of oppression and marginalization for queers.

Thankfully, the 20 or so students in this class are getting some of that. And not just from me. The teacher gave a more detailed lecture today than any I have seen thus far. (Sadly, this is not a required course.) But I was sounding off anyway, mainly for the act of being engaged and fleshing out the discussion any way I could. I had some company in the form of Handsom Gay Male and Dr. R, but I was still the one farthest out on a limb.

Oh well.

Tomorrow will be my grand finale. As far as classes go, I have only Assessment and Internship required of me, and the rest may very well be spent in independent study. So if there are parting words I want to say to my classmates on the matter of queer issues and counseling, it will be then. I have no plans to say anything specific, but I apparently will be required to "present" this decorated sexuality box to the class tomorrow.

Mine is queer, Queer, QUEER.

So if asked to speak about my box (or better yet, to speak "as if" my box), there will no doubt be plenty of gay things to say. (I do love, by the way, the double-entendre of talking about my "box." Hee....)

The box itself is something about which I believe I can be proud. Good thing, too, because I'll be presenting it on Pride Day, probably right about the time that the parade kicks off downtown. I believe this box is both graphically pleasing and also does a fair job in representing my attitudes toward sexuality and the biases and influences that shape them.

For the inside of my box, I have acquired a rather spectacular orchid that is truly one of the most graphic depictions of female genitalia I have ever seen in the flower world. It's really STUNNING. The woman running the flower shop almost didn't want to part with it. She only had a single bloom of it and had been "gawking at it all day long." She thought I might "get in trouble" for putting such a salacious flower in my presentation. But given the graphic depiction of manhood on HGM's box, anything I do will be mild in comparison.

So this seductive orchid, beckoning and teasing me as it is even this moment while I write, is going to be in my box and, later, on my table in class. Where, when I am bored, I will enjoy "gawking" at it myself.

I, Sex Therapist

2007-06-13T21:21:00.000-07:00

When I walked into the conference room where my colleagues and I process the sessions we have with clients, one who had been watching me conduct a session just moments before greeted me by saying, "Well, hello, Dr. Ruth."

I did not find tonight's conversation as "explicit" as my colleagues, but that may have something to do with two things:

First, I seem to be much less distressed by the content of sessions than my colleagues in general. Perhaps my work as a journalist prepared me to do this work in ways so profound that even my understanding of that influence is too limited to comprehend. Or perhaps I am just so inept that I don't realize when I'm treading into territory where I should be more cautious.

(Naturally, I like the first option better. But I keep the second in mind because caution is critical in this area.)

Second, there's no doubt my Human Sexuality in Counseling course came in very handy tonight. The professor's reiteration, many times, last weekend of the importance of being direct and matter-of-fact, as well as using more formal terminology, in discussions about sex with clients was apparently well-received by me.

Sex was essentially the topic for 50 minutes of a 55-minute discussion. I hung in there like a ... well, like a professsional. It seems I frightened the instructor who was watching the session on a monitor in the conference room, but in the end, he said it was "really good work."

I have nothing to compare it to, but it sure was interesting for me. It would seem I'm not so off-target in thinking of doing sex therapy after all. Even though, as I put it when the teacher asked me about my internal process, I don't *do* heterosexual sex.

Of course, that might be another reason I don't find it as distressing. I don't have a lot of counter-transferrence. Perhaps it would be a totally different story if a lesbian walked in the door and started going down the path I went down with the client tonight. But perhaps not. Perhaps I just know how to maintain good boundaries in this type of work with people.

And maybe -- just maybe -- this profession is something I will learn to do well. The Classmate with No Nickname told me a few weeks ago, "You were *made* to do this work. People need you to do this work." I thought she was just flattering me at the time, but there are moments here where I think she might actually be on to something.

As Anais Nin once noted, there comes a point when it takes less work and risk to blossom than it does to remain tight in the bud.

What some people will do to get a little pussy

2007-06-12T21:01:00.001-07:00

Last week, The Clairvoyant gave me a gallon-sized ziplock full of fresh butter crunch lettuce and spinach from her garden. It got overlooked in my refrigerator for several days, but tonight I ate some of it.

Oh, the humanity!

I can only imagine what this lettuce must have been like a week ago. It was, tonight, still the freshest, most flavorful and gorgeously leafed lettuce that I have had in years. As lettuce goes, it blew my tastebuds into orbit around the space chunk formerly known as Planet Pluto.

It's possible that these are no mere leafy greens, but rather may be the Platonic Ideal of "lettuce" itself.

I am almost in love with it too much to eat it. But in a world where you can't have your cake and eat it to, I'm one of those people who usually says, Well fine, then. I'll eat it.

I've got to plan what to do with it for tomorrow. There is a bounty of it, as this gallon-sized bag is stuffed to the brim with pre-washed greens, cut to eating size and still amazingly crisp thanks to her packing it with a damp paper towel.

This is one of those moments where I wish I could turn back time and eat some of that lettuce the day she gave it to me, having just harvested it from her organic veggie garden the day before. TC is a diligent caretaker of all things produce, and enthusiastically offers me interesting ideas with what to do with them. She suggested rolling a buffalo dog in one of the pieces of lettuce and eating it for breakfast.

Pity I forgot to get some frozen buffalo dogs when I was at the store. I think the smoked and honey turkey I have will need to suffice. It will be a glorious breakfast.

...

In other news, I've started another art project, but this one is an assignment for my Human Sexuality in Counseling class, and I've got to bust it out this week. I know I should be making this simple, but I seem reluctant to do that. I like engaging with learning material in this way. It prompts me to think in new and unusual ways about what I will be bringing to my work as a counselor -- namely, myself.

Graduate school is such a navel-gazing time. The more I think about our course materials, the more I realize just how much of this process is the act of really examining and defining oneself in many ways that we're not often asked to do in this society.

My one recurring client in practicum has asked for help with a sexuality issue. Even as I've been contemplating her issues while taking this course, I've also been asked to even further challenge and define the notions I hold about sex and my comfort in talking to others about it.

So this art project requires me to speak about myself and my sexuality from two angles. The task is to decorate a shoebox in a way that the exterior represents that which is known and the interior represents that which I don't often reveal about myself.

It's a great way to make me engage with the material and engage with myself at the same time. Without necessarily having to put words to it. Of course, I am putting words to it anyway. But I'll try to keep them minimal and let some imagery do the talking for me.

I'm interested to see where it's going to go. Because the truth is that I haven't a clue. All I have right now is the word "Queer." For obvious reasons. The rest? I'm vacillating. Everytime I think I have a good idea, I start wondering what else I might do. I take that as a sign that I'm working to get closer to the heart of the matter.

Whatever I do, I've got to get chopping.

....

Last little tidbit.

If you were reading along wondering just what the hell lettuce and art projects had to do with the headline, you were right to wonder. I saved the pussy part for last.

I went over to YogaGirl's place for the first time today. She moved there a year ago and has suggested I come over several times, but this is the first time it actually came to pass. What sweet digs she's got! She rents the entire downstairs of an old Victorian near downtown. High ceilings, lots of interesting little built-ins and very large rooms. Real sense of "home."

There's even a basement.

Which is at the heart of this story.

First, a little mmm-mmm-mmm. I must admit that I suffer from a little objectification of women. Just a touch. And YogaGirl? Well, I suppose she does, too.

We're walking down the stairs to her basement when she points out a window and says, "Look at the neighbor woman."

I remember YogaGirl once telling me a story about a neighbor she could see out her window, so I had a little expectation of something special. And there she was: a beautiful brown-skinned woman with long, curly black hair falling over her bare shoulders; wearing a string bikini top, her little breasts perfectly visible from the window on accounts of its elevation above where she sat.

"What did I tell ya?" YogaGirl asks.

One thing I love about YogaGirl is, among all the bisexuals I know (all of whom are dating members of the opposite sex), she retains a lusty, outspoken interest in women. I feel like I can talk to her about certain special charms of women more easily than with most of my non-lesbian friends. And she does things like point out the neighbor.

Sitting there in the noontime sun in that little bikini.

We paused at the window and savored it for a moment.

Then YogaGirl turned her attention to the basement.

"I just can't fucking believe this," she says. "This is so fucking ridiculous."

She opens a large wooden door that is separating the landing at the bottom of the stairs from the rest of the basement. On the other side is a large, open room filled with storage containers, musical instruments, camping equipment, athletic gear, etc. Stacks and stacks of boxes. It is densely packed with aisles winding through different groups of items.

Somewhere in here is a cat.

This is how YogaGirl described her problem to me in an e-mail she sent this morning: "This cat sitch is so f'ing unreal- I'm so pissed! ... I just set the god damn trap and I'm hoping it goes off and catches that damn cat really soon so I can get it out of here. What a bunch of shit."

This is a little story about how not-so-good ideas carried out on impulse can so easily go to hell in a handbasket.

YogaGirl was, a couple weeks ago, really teetering between moving back to the Midwest or staying here in Stumptown. It seems that, as I conceptualize this situation anyway, she chose to attempt a little deeper "nesting" here to see if it might stick. She adopted a second cat.

This cat did not take well to YogaGirl or her boyfriend or their existing cat, which has a tendancy to hiss at passers-by. One day, the new cat vanished into the basement. YogaGirl searched for it, but could not find it to bring it upstairs. It stayed overnight. And then the next night. And the night after that.

To make a long story short, attempts to flush the cat out of hiding in the basement have failed, and YogaGirl has sunk to renting a trap in hopes of capturing it. Once secured, she'll either give the cat to a friend or take it to the Humane Society. She checked the trap a few times while I was visiting her, but as of this afternoon, her quarry had not taken the bait.

So that's the whole story. It includes a sighting of beautiful breasts and a trip down into a creepy basement. It's what I mean when I say that people will go to great lengths to snag a little pussy. Even -- or perhaps, especially -- YogaGirl.

On second thought

2007-06-10T23:15:00.000-07:00

Not like this means anything, but I saw my sister today, and I didn't recognize her.

I mean: seriously. did. not. recognize. her.

As in: who. the. hell. is. that?

I feel concerned and disturbed. I'm not sure what's wrong with her, but she doesn't look like herself. I don't need people I've known my whole life to start looking like someone else. It's more than I want to deal with right now.

The best thing that happened today was exploring a strange little hiking trail on campus with S2. There was dappled sunlight for a few moments, a feast of shades of green and a splendid smelling yellow rose.

But the day ended badly (as my previous entry might suggest):

I ended up in a bar by myself.

My DVD of "The L Word" was scratched.

My shoulder won't stop hurting.

And, it seems, neither will my heart.

So I am going to bed now. I'll put my faith in tomorrow.

Or perhaps the day after that.

Back in a few

2007-06-10T21:47:00.000-07:00

Nothing in my life that's of real importance to me right now means very much to anyone else. Or, rather, there's no way I can write something that will make it mean anything. That's what I mean. Not that you wouldn't be interested. Just that I'm ... limited.

So I'll take a pass here for a little bit.

A little advising

2007-06-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

I saw my academic advisor today to get back my graduate portfolio and to take the first step toward developing an independent study for some education that my program doesn't offer. At the same time, I had a brief personal conversation with her. The outcome of all three things was immensely helpful.

On the matter of my portfolio, no problems to report. Rather, I was touched by a sweet comment my advisor wrote on a post note: "It is always an honor and joy to read anything you write about your experiences. Thanks for your thought and reflection on these topics." She's a kind woman.

She also told me she found my writing entertaining and funny. Now, before you go thinking I'm getting all high-and-mighty on myself and my writing capabilities, allow me to share with you an *example* of what she found funny about my portfolio.

In a section in which I was asked to describe the my intended format for maintaining files of professional activities, I wrote: Because I do not like to keep any more paper files than I need to, I will maintain whatever non-critical evidence of the above professional activites....

It goes on from there, but apparently, that was the funny part. My adviser told me, sweetly, "I just really like the way you put things." I was touched and bemused at the same time.

My first meeting with this woman was not a pleasant one for me, but in *every* subsequent encounter with her (and she was my professor in a class for a term), she has won me over again and again and again. There is a curious peacefulness to her nature, some way in which she embodies both a deep thoughtfulness and an ageless enthusiam.

For the first time with anyone, I spelled out for her a fairly explicit independent study on the use of narrative in the dying process. I also talked to her about my interest in synthesizing some of my learning on Queer issues in counseling. The result of this discussion was the decision that I could do two independent studies, one on each topic.

This pleases me to no end. It's my way of doing the "research" I'm really interested in doing without having to go through the scientific rigor of a thesis. I can write a philosophical paper without bothering with math, and my adviser thought I might end up with publishable piece on the first topic. Twiddle-dee me!

(I keep forgetting that there's the option of supplementing my income as a bargain-basement therapist by writing for professional journals, expecially the more "readable" ones.)

Anyway, our conversation about this opened the door asking my adviser if she had ever gone through a big "identity shift." To that question, she responded with one of her own: "You mean besides coming out?"

Sometimes the most compelling things we say are the least intentional. This question she asked in reply reminds me how powerful metaphor is. It also serves me as a beutiful example of how *everything* we hear someone else say is run through a complex web of filters, the meaning of the speaker and the understanding of the hearer often having NOTHING to do with each other.

Although I spoke briefly to my adviser about what I *did* mean, the most useful part of the conversation was that first question she asked.

"Coming out" means so many different things to people, but I understood her question in light of what a monumental personal drama it can be.

And a few hours later, when I thought of it again, I suddenly took an added meaning from the question. Whether she meant to say it or not, I took from her question -- "You mean besides coming out?" -- a reminder that I have already made it through a massive identity shift before. Made it through successfully, at that.

Something which was once novel and disturbing to me -- a source of deep self-hatred, actually -- is now a well-integrated part of my identity. I get upset about things related to my sexuality sometimes, but it's usually about being discriminated against (and, to a lesser degree, the dearth of single lesbians in my age group, mine being the lesbian nesting age that is increasingly involving a gayby). Far from hating this aspect of my identity, I would not give it up. I am pleased to be woman-loving identified. *heh*

This other change I'm experiencing in the most maddening fits and starts is far less threatening. In fact, my personal opinion about it right now is that it's a very, very good thing. But I'm lost in it. I don't know what this change is supposed to look like. I have no idea how I will turn out in the end.

Back when I was coming out, I had an idea. It was a *miserable* idea, but at least it was an idea. Bad as I thought it would be when I arrived, having a destination seemed helpful. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my expectations fell far short. Things have turned out much better than I thought they would. (Even if this personal situation of mine leaves a little to be desired right now.)

This time around, the destination is totally unknown. I am aware of being on a sigificant journey, but I don't know where I'm going. (Perhaps I should have asked my adviser for some advice on this...)

I'm at a point where intentionality seems to matter more than it ever has before in my life, but I don't know what I want. So I am, in the meantime, churning water as the troublesome character described in the previous blog entry.

What an amazing, weird and difficult place to be.

Annie's got her gun...

2007-06-07T22:31:00.001-07:00

For the past few weeks, I've really been struggling with myself. Struggling in a way that is unusual for me.

Normally, when I struggle with myself, it's a battle against anxiety or self-defeating thoughts. Or it's the recurring problem of trying to create a life worthy of an Eternal Return and being disappointed in myself when I don't do so.

But this most recent bit of struggling is odd. I seem to have less control over my mouth than I normally do. It would be so much better for everyone else, including myself, if I was just jabbering, suffering a fit of logorrhea or singing songs from the musical Hair!. But the things that are coming out of it are not pleasant. In fact, I might as well be quoting Bible scriptures, it is *that* ugly.

Yesterday, for example, I started pestering XGF about why she would make a commitment to some guy she's only known for 6 months when she wouldn't make one to me in the six years we were together. She said something about finding her soulmate. Instead of telling her I was happy for her, I started reading her the riot act about whatever is going on with her rather significant identity shift. You're not coming out, I told her. You're *going in.*

All nice and snarky like in tone, at that.

A few days ago, I said some hurtful things to S2, not the least of which was saying she didn't have the heart of a compulsive helper. I was talking in the context of behavior on the level of a disorder, but it was nevertheless a bad light to cast upon a woman who has blessed my life with an abundance of help over the past year and a half. (Such as when she came to care for me and walk my dog when I was ill. Or how she has comforted me in some moments of intense despair.)

And it wasn't just a matter of saying such a thing. I'm sure the head-shaking flatness of my delivery, not even bothering to dispense false humor in the process, was among the rudest things I've done in some time.

I think I might have talked about lesbian sex in front of Bubba's mom.

There was that whole cussing streak in my Play Therapy class.

And there's the persistent trouble I'm having in tolerating the sheer weenie affect of a socially feeble classmate who reminds me of JAWS I as a young adolescent. (And if you're wondeing if that description of the person in question isn't a bit harsh, suffice to to say I'm editing myself.)

Interestingly, when I play the role of counselor, I don't suffer from this problem. I can bite my tongue throughout a long discussion with a narcissistic client at work, and I can be kind and empathetic with my practicum client.

But when I step out of that role, it seems lately to have become a wild and unpredictable ride.

In the vein of Psychodynamic, I'm recognizing it as an old part of me that's outlived its usefulness. And in the vein of Narrative Therapy, I'm also externalizing this old part as a little demon that's trying to wrest control of me. I see her as an "unpleasant" intermingling of the late journalist Molly Ivans, the late and former governor of Texas Ann Richards and Wild West sharpshooter Annie Oakley. (They're all women I admire, but think how dangerous their collective Love Child could be. That's how I feel lately.)

Perhaps I am not that bad. It's not like people are complaining left and right. S2 stands up for herself. But many other people are less inclined to do so and feel more comfortable with giving me disapproving looks or ratting me out to the teacher. Or like XGF, they simply look at me with hurt in their eyes. Still others may not even notice anything.

I do not care for this situation.

It's my responsibility to change it, I know. But as someone who is *very* aware of her cognitive processing, I cannot help but note that some of this behavior is being generated from an unconscious source.

For example, I am not aware of any thoughts of jealousy around XGF's new relationship. I feel concerned about her for reasons I stated, but it has not been a part of my conscious thought process -- in other words, nothing I've been brooding over or even feeling concerned about -- to question her sense of commitment to me retroactively. I mean, seriously, *WHAT-ever.* I know that relationship we had was real. It's still there, just different. But having recognized the problems we had, we each moved on. When it comes to her life and her choices, I truly am not jealous.

Not in my conscious realm, anyway. Apparently, some part of my unconscious feels differently, and it managed to surface at lunch yesterday.

So yeah, there's shit like that, flowing from some hidden places inside of me and flying outward toward the world.

Meanwhile, another more rational part of me is observing all of this and asking the Whole of Me: What the fuck, dude?

There was an article I read back in my Couples Therapy class in which the author spoke of the multiplicity of selves we have within us and how they rear their heads at predictable and unpredictable times. What's more, they interact with any countless multiplicity of selves that exist within the person to whom we're relating.

So what you are seeing, when you see me suddenly go off, is ... well, what is she?

Let me think about that for a minute.

She's ... the angry teen-ager, strangely hormonal and utterly lacking in awareness of or concern for the people around her. This is a girl who was really tired of getting beaten up. She was 16 and still being strapped with a leather belt on a regular basis, still getting punched and kicked and hair-pulled by her parents. Or 13 and spitting blood from her punched up mouth onto the white terrazo floor and hoping that dramatic color difference would freeze the next blow before it landed.

She was frustrated and angry. I mean, really fucking angry. And as defensive as can be. She's a tough character. Brazen and bold and wanting to yell at everyone -- and sometimes doing so -- THIS IS THE AMITYVILLE HORROR HOUSE! GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! I AM SO *SICK* OF THIS SHIT! YOU CANNOT TREAT ME LIKE THIS! YOU CAN'T!

To which her dad would throw the phone at her head and yell, "Go on and call someone! They'll tell you what the law says. They law says a parent can do *whatever* he wants to his kids!"

She didn't know any better. She believed him because he was always right. (And also because she believed she would be killed if she actually did make the call.)

And then, faced with the choice between running away and staying, she ... stayed. And just kept taking that shit. Kept taking all of it for everyone else, and just biding her time until college would help her get away.

In the midst of this, she didn't have the sense to see that she was also very sad. That beneath all this anger was profound sadness and disappointment of being handed over, by life itself, to this particular collection of crazy parents and their crazy children. She often felt like she and her youngest brother were the only real "humans" in the family. And the two of them probably only "barely human" at that, because you don't grow up in this environment without being made a mutant by all the poison in the environment.

The Notorious M.O.M. once asked her marriage counselor why my father beat me up so much, and the counselor, who knew me during these years, replied, Because she was the strongest one.

Although the curious thing about the unconscious is that we never really know *what* therein is driving our behavior, I'd put money on the idea that *that girl* is the one crawling out of my woodwork.

All the defenses I (rightfully) erected in my early life still exist within me in one form or another today -- some muted, some exaggerated, some dormant. Now the angry, tough-talking, brazen FUCK-YOU-ALL teen-ager has become exaggerated at a time when she is not actually needed.

There is, within me, a deeply loving heart that is trying to emerge from its chrysalis, and my guess is that this teen-ager is frightened by that change. She's striking out capriciously. The fact of her hurting people for whom I care deeply -- and both XGF and S2 fit that bill -- is in my opinion a sign of her desperation. If she can get those people who have done such a remarkable job at seeing my true loving nature beneath all the bluster of my daily presentation... -- if she can get THEM to question and fear and not trust me, she wins.

She wins the security of always being beaten. (Even if she herself is doing it now instead of those who once did.)

She wins the privilege of always getting to be broken. (Such as it is. Something of an excuse, anyway.)

She wins the honor of always pushing away the people closest to her. (That way, they can't actually do any damage.)

She wins the distinction of being "strong." (Good for her...)

I, the more fully developed self, am not interested in seeing that outcome.

Perhaps it's not to my advantage to see that she loses, however. Certainly, she protected me once. Her angry spirit is what kept this body getting up and fighting back, the better to protect it than just lying there and taking that pummel. She might have been beaten less if she'd shut her mouth, but the truth is that no one deserves such violence. Under the circumstances, I think her spirit was remarkable, even if it was a bit ... one-dimensional.

My physical body is three-dimensional, but these days, the totality of my "self" exists in considerably more dimensions than that. I'm complex and nuanced and capable of uttering golden words from a silver tongue. I'm loving and powerful and fairly self-aware. I'm intelligent and, heaven help me, I even seem to be getting wiser.

And yet, I find myself lately being sideswiped by this angry teen, my mouth running amok.

She's a tenacious fighter who is fighting for her life. Truth is, she deserves to keep it. I cannot extinguish that which once saved me from being choked or beaten to death. I may actually need her again someday.

But how do I put her to bed in the meantime? How do I acknowledge and honor what she has done for me while also letting her know her services are currently not needed? How do I kindly ask her to step aside and stop blocking all the light that would come from my heart if she weren't casting such a strong shadow?

This is my struggle.

Blahhhging potpourri

2007-06-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

No. 1: Someone tagged my building last night. I am ambivalent about taggers; less so about property owners who don't clean off or paint over the shit pronto. Tags that live to see the light of many days seem to beget more tags.

I know it's a pain in the ass to paint over and that it would be better if the taggers stuck to railway cars, but consistently removing the graffiti is the only way to deal with the stuff that shows up. Recently, an old gallery across the street got tagged, and the owner has not cleaned it up. Whether that actually resulted in my building being tagged last night or not is anyone's guess.

But what I noticed tonight is an unusual approach to the graffiti on my building. Someone has created a large, hand-written sign and posted it immediately beneath the grafitti. The sign tells the taggers to "stand behind" their art if they "believe it has meaning." It suggests the possibility, to me, that the taggers are being invited to participate in a gallery showing. There is a name and a phone number.

I have half a mind to call it and ask what's up.

No. 2: I've worked a long swing shift yesterday, followed by a morning shift today at two different H4TCIs. One home had a narcisist who was pissed off and "shared" his feelings with me at length. The second had a woman who is still sucking on an oxygen tank two weeks after coming down with a brutal chest virus and one week after finally seeing the doctor for it. I had to check her on the hour, every hour, to make sure she was still breathing.

You might want to steer clear of me for a few days. I very well could be like that TB guy who hopped all those fllights. I could be carrying serious germs. But I am feeling pretty good right now, so I'll try to hold onto that feeling and ward off any ailments. I don't have the time to get sick.

No. 3: I made roasted potatoes a new way tonight, and I have to give this one the thumbs up. Used red potatoes, a lemon, couple cloves of garlic, some flat-leaf parsley, olive oil, salt & pepper. Roasted that, turning regularly, at 425 for about an hour, until the sliced lemon was getting carmelized. Threw on some olives and a little parmesean cheese and baked another five minutes.

YUMMY. Especially wonderful kick from the lemon, the carmelized rind of which is delicious.

No. 4: Merciful me, The Clairvoyant has bailed me out for later this week. She found a slot in this already-cranned week between a trip to Moab last week and London next to get me in for a massage. May the universe bless her.

My body has so much tension in it sometimes, seems like my hair ought to play musical notes. Seems like my fingertips, as with Daphne's leafy fingers in that stunning Bernini sculpture, ought to ring like crystals each time they tap this keyboard. (Oh, could you imagine if they really did?!) ... Anyway, there is that much tension in this body at times that only metaphor will do in describing it.

I took my balance ball to work with me yesterday -- there are many strange perks to my job; being able to study while stretching on a balance ball is one of them. I've also been doing some peaceful yoga, as well as listening to TC's hypnosis CD designed to stop me from clenching my jaw. But I'm wound tight as a slingshot.

Not good.

But perhaps on Thursday, I will experience some relief.

No.5: I added to my tension tonight by watching a little too much of a "Frontline" piece on the war the Bush Administration is conducting on journalism, particularly with regards to persistant threats of using the Espionage Act against the journalists who publish classified information leaked by government officials and employees. The specific target is The New York Times. That shit made me pissed off just listening to it. Wound me up all that much tighter.

Had to stop paying attention to it because the Times often seems like the last respectable major media outlet -- the "newspaper of record" for the entire country -- that still reports aggressively about the federal government and the so-called War on Terror (aka, the War on Civil Liberties). The Times is also the same newspaper that published the questionable work of Judith Miller, who was quite the tool for Bush's march to war, using "sources" who leaked LIES disguised as classified information. So it's not like the Bush Administration hasn't seen tremendous benefits from that particular approach.

Anyway, it disgusts me.

I dedicated five years of undergraduate study and 10 years of work in the profession of journalism, and I can barely stomach what it's become, particularly since Sept. 11. Yuck, man.

There's no telling where this world is heading. And if the Bush Administration and other similarly minded politicians in the future have their way, there will be no real reporting on where this world is heading, either.

The apocalypse is going to catch us all by surprise some day.

And on that uplifting note...

...No. 6:Long day, not enough sleep. Logging off and heading to Dream Land.