New Tattoo!

I finally, finally got my new tattoo. I can't say enough good things about Iggy Van at Idle Hand.

There's a funny wash of cold over my chest when I think about journaling. Why do I hate the idea so much? Why is it so hard? Dammit. I'm trying.

Burning Man Dreams

Burning Man is such a part of my psyche that it's now a major dream motif.
I have them year-round. My standard Burning Man dream is really formulaic:

1- I'm at Burning Man
2- But it's somehow not Burning Man
3- Dream hijinks ensue

Mr. O'Saurus (aka Me and My Paternal Figures)

I haven't been volunteering lately at the Berkeley Free Clinic, what with working full time and taking 8 credits and having found the love of my life whom I want to attend to. But one of the BFC pillars, a passionate man who has devoted almost 40 years of his life to community health care and social justice, has recently been diagnosed with metastasized kidney cancer. On top of his hcv-induced neuralgia of the hands. On top of his untreated diabetes.

He's been a pretty significant figure in the past several years of my life. Although we haven't been close in the hanging-out-on-Fridays sort of way, we've spent many many hours and days and weeks volunteering together and having long, exhaustive and exhausting meetings. We've trained together, taught together, treated clients together... we've had shouting matches and made up again. I can't say that about many people I know.

He's been a constant, constructive force at the Berkeley Free Clinic almost its entire existence. And the Berkeley Free Clinic has changed my life. At the BFC I learned how to be a caregiver for the first time. And there I learned to suspect that I might possibly not be an entire failure as a human. It's not an exaggeration to say the BFC became the cornerstone upon which I built my life in the Bay Area.

My friend's illness has prompted me to start something selfish that I've been planning for a long time- I'm getting a tattoo based on the photo above. He may die within the next 6 months, and I want to finish the tattoo and show it to him before that happens.

It's hard to explain why I want the tattoo especially now, and why I want him to see it. Partially because... I feel like there are certain times in life that ought to leave a mark. I want to look changed because I am changed. And whether or not it means to him what it it means to me, I want to communicate to him how much the clinic he built matters to me.

I'm home with a cold and I can't go visit him in the hospital with my drippy rhinovirus. But at least I can blog about him. So, here's to you, Mr. O'Saurus! You've done 40 damn fine years of work, and I'm proud to be your friend.

Guess where I'm blogging from?

hehehe... yup. I'm posting from the machine that had the OJ bath. It'll be a short post, because the keyboard needs replacing, but I can't believe it! everything appears to be fine exxxecpt the keyboard. ok.... hehe... I'll write again when the neeew one arrrives.


okay, typing with the usb keyboard attached

Here's what happened: We (and by 'we' I mean "dan') took the entire laptop apart and cleaned it with q-tips and rags. The HD was wet, the DVD drive was wet, the battery was wet- it appeared to have been drenched through. It smelled strongly of citrus. We popped off each individual key, soaked it in water, and cleaned under the attachments.

Honestly- we were just cleaning it to try and convince the insurance people that no 'accidental damage' had occurred. I don't think either one of us believed it would start up at all. We dried it overnight after the cleaning, and... it started up. It just started up and is running fine.

The only thing that needs replacing is the keyboard- I just ordered one on ebay and I CANNOT believe I'm getting out of this with $33 in expenses. When I started firefox and got the "your last session of firefox closed unexpectedly" message I laughed out loud.

I'm more in love with my little thinkpad than ever. And Kubuntu. And my sweety. And the world

Progressive spending

A few years back my family switched to making donations in lieu of sending each other stuff over Christmas, which Dan's family also does.

For the past few years I've been donating to individual organizations, to causes, to the communities where I work and volunteer. But I've been reading a lot of political theory lately, and it's sort of affecting me. There's this quote from Michael Hallet in "Private Prisons in America" that goes: "The traditional power of the nation-state is weakening, with economic alliances transcending national borders and ignoring traditional forms of sovereignty and self-determination." In short, corporations are become more powerful than governments.

In Don't Think of an Elephant, George Lakoff argues that progressives need to get organized for political change, and invest some money in changing our government pro-actively, rather than spending our money reacting to how our government has failed. He argues that the right wing has been slowly, deliberately, and effectively investing in their (and corporate) control over the government since WWII.

And in The Assault on Reason, Al Gore argues that the internet gives us a new opportunity to effect the political change we progressives are so consistently fail to do.

He argues (follow me here- this is really interesting.... ) that the rise of radio and television (uni-directional media) co-occurred with the rise of fascism in Europe for a very good reason- they were a revolution in opportunities for propaganda. During the development of media regulation law in our country, the US was in the thick of The New Deal- an era in which our nation was skeptical of such propaganda power and wisely restricted it. Now that Clear Chanel and others have subverted media regulation and gained control over the uni-directional media in the US, a concurrent right-wing shift has occurred in this country.

The internet, however, is the first wide-spread bi-directional media poorly suited to propaganda campaigns and uncontrolled by any single power or even oligarchy of powers. Thus we may once more become a functioning democracy if we keep the internet free from corporate control.

So... not that I'm any kind of expert political theorist, but this is what I've been reading about. What I'm taking from all this is that if I'm going to spend money I should 1) spend it to help pro-actively affect government change and 2) invest in internet freedom for the future of democracy.

So I'm thinking of donating to moveon.org- the first social activism organization put a bee in the bonnet of Congress in a long time. I'd love to hear what all your thoughts on such matters are.

I am brimming, but I can't say a word because I can't say it well.

I'm reminded of a Nabokov phrase (although he was speaking of something obscene) "My cup brims with tittles."

Well, my cup brims with bears- smelly bears with bad teeth riding unicycles. Badly.

So, as many of you know. I poured a glass of orange juice on my laptop. And it's dead now.

Accidents happen. I know this. But this one is sticking under my skin. The laptop was only a few months old, my sweety bought it for me and set up Kubuntu for me and troubleshot and taught me all the little tricks until it was just perfect. And I broke it. My poor dear one is starting to lose patience with my incessant apologizing, so I figure- that's what blogs are for!

Here I can rant to my heart's content about how much I feel like a walking disaster. Dan pointed out that when under stress I tend to become less attentive to my body- and he's absolutely correct. One of the effects of this finals week has been dropping papers, spilling liquids and losing my keys several times per day. Thank god I haven't hurt anyone else (though I did slam my finger in the door but good).

When I feel overwhelmed, it's like I just want to shut my body off. It's too disorganized, too complicated. There are too many variables. I want to be 100% disembodied brain, ticking off my tasks in... you know, that plain... where disembodied brains hang out.

Since taking my brain out of my body would probably not be so great, I suppose the solution is something I've known and resented for quite some time- I have to take care of my body. I have to exercise it, stretch it, alert all those proprioceptive spindles that I'm still here (I can say "proprioceptive spindles" because I'm about to take a gross anatomy final. and it makes me sound smart).

From whence this resistance to actively attending to stress? It has something to do with the whole "having needs" thing. For example: I can skip work if I feel like fucking off- no problem! But if I'm actually sick and would seriously benefit from staying home, well, you can ask Dan how many wild horses he's had to hitch to me to keep me from my job.

Pleasure, I have no problem with. I think I'm pretty comfortable with my level of hedonism. But attending to my *needs *, aye, there's the rub.

I blame all this on going back to school. It's stirring up the ol' hornets. Next semester, I'm taking it easy. 4 credits.

Personalities

I work for an organization providing services to homeless addicts. We as an agency pride ourselves on serving the "toughest to serve" population of San Francisco. The chronically homeless, shopping-cart-pushers, public inebriates, mentally ill, severely addicted, and all-around pain-in-the-ass clients.

The idea we have- that I share- is that we meet each client where they are. We send vans around the city to peel people off the sidewalk and try to convince them to consent to detox or at least go to the ER. We offer drop-ins for active users to wash their clothes and shower and even check their voice mail. We try and try and try to motivate everyone to improve their standard of living. We demand almost nothing of those who enter our circle of care- you just can't threaten the safety of the staff or the other clients. We only ask of you when you ask of yourself.

The trouble is... there's this set of diagnoses called "Axis II disorders." These are characterized by unrealistic beliefs about the world. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? But trust me, it's bad. It's really, really bad. These beliefs are typically formed before age 5, and always formed before puberty. And they almost never change. Change is about as improbable as being struck by lightening.

These days we call them "personality disorders" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pers...disorder). Once upon a time we called them "assholes." They are, as a rule, people who have learned to survive in ways that make those around them suffer. Axis II disorders are typically intractable. Incurable. At least, we have not yet discovered therapeutic techniques that disrupt their unrealistic expectations and lead them to constructive relationships with other humans.

These are the clients that haunt me- I can't do a thing for them. I had a client with narcissistic personality disorder who was 73-years-old and had never in his long life come to understand why others didn't submit to his will- why he never got what he believed he deserved. I recently (until yesterday) had a client with paranoid personality disorder who believed everyone, everyone, everyone was trying to get something over on him. I couldn't refer him to the non-profit dentist without him believing I was getting a kick-back. He left our very safe facility to go to a very unsafe mats-on-the-floor-heroin-in-the-bathroom shelter because he believed our counseling staff was trying to hurt him.

My Axis II torment is twofold- a) these clients are typically impossible for me to sustainably help and b) It's really hard for me to be around them at all.

Conjure, if you will, your memory of the most annoying person you've ever met. Then imagine that the annoying aspect of that person became so inflated that they couldn't hold a job or have a single relationship in their life. Then imagine they smoke themselves into cocaine or opiate-induced oblivion to cope with the terrible loneliness of their situation, and are now trying to build a life without drugs. The idea of "recovery" doesn't apply to them because there's almost nothing to recover. We (the client and I, as partners) are faced with a much more difficult tasking- creating something new. Original.

Most times it feels impossible. At least, if I discover a way to make it possible I could publish to great acclaim in this field. No one, as far as I can tell, has much success with these clients. We give them shelter and we help them stay sober for a while. That's good. It's positive. Every day they aren't stealing your car stereo to get high is a good day. We have to be satisfied with that.

A personality disorder is like a fundamental religious belief- but even deeper. Those who suffer from Axis II symptoms believe their delusions the way they believe the sun will rise tomorrow. Beliefs such as 1) everyone is out to get me, 2) I can't exist without you, 3) others exist to serve me, 4) this isn't happening... la la la... 5) my desires govern the actions of those around me, 6) I must suffer in order to exist, 7) no one is real except for me... and maybe not even me.

Axis II sufferers represent about 25-30% of my clients, but they take about 80-90% of my time. I've been struggling for a long time with this ratio- most of my work goes to those who have the least chance of change.

Am I an idealist or not? What do you think?

Only an egg

Tonight in my counseling certification class the program arranged 2 hours of class time for stress management discussion and finals-planning techniques. I was quite skeptical when I first heard this, and more so when I learned they were planning to divide our class into gender groups.

But I should have learned by now! My pseudo-subconscious (but also kinda conscious) elitism about academics is part of my problem with school, and part of why I avoided going back for so many years. My fellow counselors-in-training continue to surprise me. I shouldn't be surprised- I am studying with a group of individuals who have rich lives and histories. Their eyes have depth. Most of them have survived on the streets with the cunning to score dope every day, and in the classroom they have the insight to read my mind, if not the experience to write about it with APA citations.

We sat in a circle, about 12 women in all, and discussed... stress. We talked about being a woman, domestic violence (those of us who have past it supported those experiencing it now), mother-daughter relationships, and why it's so hard to take our own feelings seriously. We talked about expecting perfection from ourselves, we talked about self-forgiveness. I don't know why, but hearing the women in my circle describe their feelings and finding that they were so similar to my own was... well, actually it's hard to describe. But I feel lighter now.

The timing was fortuitous- I've been feeling overwhelmed. I've been feeling like I might implode or explode or pull another disappearing act. I've been feeling like I could just... float away. How painfully wonderful to discover, to re-discover, that I'm more normal than I think I am. There's a certain martyr-esque appeal to believing my sufferings unique, but I laugh and I cry and am unburdened to find that they are universal.

When will I learn? Still and still, I am only an egg.