amusings

housesitting and real estate

2008-06-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks!

Dan and I are going camping over the 4th and are looking for a housesitter/catsitter. We strongly prefer someone who can stay at our apartment and give our cats some TLC in addition to food. Compensation is generous and dates are flexible - email me for details. If you have a friend who you'd recommend, please feel free to forward this to them.

Also, the apartment adjacent to ours (and nearly identical to ours) is for sale! If you're in the market for a 2-bedroom 1-bath condo in the mission, or know a cool person who is, let us know! The house has 4 units and everyone who lives there is awesome. This unit shares a back deck with ours, so we're hoping one of our friends will move in there.

New Tattoo!

2008-02-01T18:41:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-18T21:14:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-09T10:20:00.000-08:00

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)

2007-12-28T22:54:00.000-08:00

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?

2007-12-16T19:36:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-15T12:14:00.001-08:00

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.

2007-12-14T00:56:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-12T22:20:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-26T22:12:00.001-08:00

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.

Joshua reminded me

2007-11-14T22:49:00.000-08:00

Some more things I need to capture about my life in Israel

1- The Sikh gentleman who I didn't know was courting me until the point of no return (from his perspective) and the point of flight (from my perspective)

2- My terrible apartment

3- Hans, who built houses in occupied territories and was a chronic alcoholic.

4- sliding a money order for my rent under the door of a woman I never met

All of these sentences have stories, long stories. I might find them interesting, but I'll never know if those reading will. I suppose I'll have to treat this blog like a journal, if I'm to get this stuff down in print.

While I'm thinking on Israel

2007-11-14T21:53:00.000-08:00

Moments to consider future blog posts on:

1.Standing in an Israeli shopping mall, fresh off the plane from Prague, backpack on my back, and watching the towers go down and utterly failing to understand what was going on.

2.The normalization of bombings.

3.Waking up to gunfire.

4.The young woman, the soldier, I can't remember her name... she always asked me to sing Portishead's “nobody loves me” and she was ill-cast as a soldier

5.The soldier who let me hold his gun- he was raised on a kibbutz but he spoke perfect cockney English.

6.The half-Texan, half-Irish smack addict who called me his favorite "bird" and bought me a beer for refusing to go to bed with him. He later called me a bitch and bruised my ribs, but that's... well, after he started using smack again. I liked him.

7. The first and only time I ever punched a guy in the face.

8.Being so hungry I did stupid things to get food.

9. Being so desperate for oblivion that I chose beer over food, even amidst my desperate plans to get food.

10. Working day-labor jobs out of the hostel; cleaning up after house fires and saving half-burned stuffed animals.

11. The Ethiopian sector of Tel-Aviv, and how the children didn't understand why I was a woman.

12.The other women who worked the bar: Claudia, the slender blonde made of steel, who had once been kidnapped and held in a basement. Wendy, who let men walk all over her. Karen, who had huge round eyes and I wanted to put in my pocket. Diane- tough as nails, with a temper and an ability to instantly forgive.

13.The men from the Embassy who took me to Egypt, and ... his name... I forget his name... but he wanted to leave his wife for me and take me traveling. I think he wasn't used to smart girls.

14.Andre. And Eva, yes, but mostly Andre the prescient and tenacious South African.

15.How I got the job at the bar.

16. Buying 10 shekel coins for 8 shekels in the black market.

17.Waking up every morning to the cry "Eser Shekel! Eser Shekel!"

18.The cab driver who asked me out solely because I didn't let him cheat me on the fare.

19.How I acquired my cell-phone aversion.

20.The slow realization that I was working for the mafia.

21.The quicker realization that the mafioso I was working for was scary.

22.The day I served dinner to a bunch of fancy men in expensive suits and oiled hair who weren't paying for their dinner, who smelled like drug money and tipped me more than I'd earned in a month.

23. The day I got picked up by the cops without my papers, and was saved from going to jail by the sociopath policeman who kept pictures of ever arab he'd killed.

24.How I got out of sleeping with said sociopath after he'd kept me out of jail.

25. Lenny, the Scotsman, with whom I had great sex and zero understanding.

26.My first horizon-to-horizon rainbow, the day I left Israel

27.The bombings of my home, my workplace, and my daily cafe all within a few months of my departure.

More Geoffrey... I want everyone to know him

2007-11-14T21:01:00.000-08:00

I realized that I wrote yesterday about Geoffrey's violence disproportionately. He wasn't, fundamentally, a violent man.

I don't think he ever recovered from the violence of his foreign legion service. He told me once, while stationed in northern Africa, his commanding officer asked him "Soldier- how do you turn a black man white?" When Geoffrey didn't respond (what the hell could he say?) the officer shot the nearest villager in the head. A few hours later, the dead man's skin had turned an ashy gray- ghostly and almost white. The officer found this hilarious. Geoffrey had nightmares.

Geoffrey would play that song that goes "I want to be forgiven" over and over- I never did know who sang it. I think it was a popular hit- it wasn't a very good song and I don't think he cared about the music. The song simply repeated, rhythmically, wanted Geoffrey to say it but couldn't.

Sometimes I would lay my hands on his back and wish I could read his thoughts. It was a strange gesture amidst a crowded bar, but- hell- everyone was strange in that place. I wanted to tell him that he was forgiven, and I tried. But he'd never wronged me so how could I absolve him?

Often during Israeli divorce, fathers lose all rights to their children. Geoffrey had a son; his ex-wife bribed him to see the boy. I remember him leaning his forehead against the wall in the kitchen after his she once again made him pay more than he could afford to see his child. I watched him for a while, and I don't think he ever saw me. I wish I'd said something, but I didn't know what to say.

It's hard to explain why we didn't get sexually involved- yes, he was much older than me, but that never stopped me from fucking anyone before. Yes, he was kind to me and looked out for me, but ... that hardly seems like an argument against having sex. We were attracted to each other, we loved each other. But... he was a father without a child, and I was a child without a father- I think we each needed that kind of relationship more than we needed anything else.

I kissed Geoffrey, just once, on the lips. I knew my time in Tel-Aviv was coming to a close, an dI asked him to kiss me. It was one of the most memorable kisses of my life, because it contained so much possibility and so much sadness.

When I left the country he gave me a small metal ring to put on my key chain. He'd had it engraved "always there for you." I still have it- I will always keep it.

I've let Geoffrey down by not staying in touch, by not trying to find him again. When I got back to the States I was so crazy that I didn't speak to anyone if I could help it... especially not people who mattered to me. I think I may even have been angry with him that he was out of my life, even though I was the one who left. Like I said- I was crazy.

I don't know whether I should contact him again- whether I should try. A server failure lost all his contact information my account, but I could call the bar... perhaps he should remain part of my past. I don't know.

About two years ago I watched the movie "Lost in Translation." It reminded me so forcefully of my relationship with Geoffrey that I cried. Not movie-tears-crying, but actual holding-my-knees-crying. I've even tried and failed to watch that movie again.

Geoffrey, who was kind to me

2007-11-13T22:57:00.000-08:00

When I lived it Tel-Aviv I worked at a trashy tourist bar. The owner, Eli, was a mafioso (is that what they're called in the Israeli/Moroccan mafia?I don't know- he was a goodfella, whatever). Eli wanted a matching set of girls working his bar- a redhead, a brunette, a good handful of blondes. We wore tight T-shirts and were expected to be charming. The locals pinched our asses and enjoyed guessing which country we were fleeing.

Geoffrey was a manager at the bar- he was probably in his 40's. He was sinewy and tough, and had a delicately lined face. He was small and neat- his teeth were wrecked and he was dead sexy. He'd been in the French Foreign Logion. Supposedly we were "Eli's girls," but it was always Geoffrey who looked after us.

He both broke up and instigated many fights- he once beat the shit out of a drunk guy who threw a bread basket at me. I mean, I don't think the bread basket even hit me. But Geoffrey managed a perpendicular launch over the bar and some kind of wrestling hold on the breadbasket offender so quickly I was astonished.

One night in particular stands out in my mind- it was Friday night, the place was packed, I was carefully, carefully navigating the crowd with three beers in my hand- headed for one of my tables. The bouncers did their best to keep weapons out of the place, but with crowds that thick perfect security is impossible. That night the door was staffed by a burly 18-year-old Russian kid I used to try to tell him jokes in Russian, and he used to hit on me in that clumsy way boys have.

On the night in question someone got a knife inside and started a fight with a drunken soldier who grabbed some scissors from behind the bar and joined the fray. I didn't really process the beginning of the fight, but there was a swirl of shouting and suddenly I was about to slip on a puddle of blood. I instinctively hopped up onto the nearest table (full of soldiers- they cheered) and waited for Geoffrey and the bouncers to drag the knife fight outside. I stood on the table for a moment, just... adjusting.

The crowd didn't even stop dancing, and after a moment I primly stepped down from the table. I remember feeling inordinately proud that I hadn't spilled a drop of beer, nor had I gotten blood on my shirt. I delivered my beers, and while turning from my table I saw Geoffrey approaching with a grim grin. His knuckles were bloody, and he was holding a wallet (I don't know which guy it was taken from). He said with a "Take whatever you think that was worth." The wallet had about 300 sheckles in it- I took 200 and figured the rest would get the guy a cab to a hospital. Geoffrey nodded in approval. He returned the wallet (I think) and the bouncers left the fighters bleeding on the sidewalk. That's just what you do.

And it was a busy night- I went back to shift. Because... that's just what you do.

Whenever I think of Geoffrey, I feel so terribly sad that he took care of me and I left his life completely. Even though he was a violent and somewhat crazed individual, I know he cared a lot about me. He was a perfect gentleman at the oddest times- fetching a cab or throwing me a birthday party or making me call my mother.

About six months after I left the country that bar was bombed- Geoffrey wasn't hurt, but that sweet kid, that burly bouncer, was torn inside out and dead instantly. Danielle, one of the waitress I worked with, lost an arm. I think she may have died, too, afterwards.

I need to write some of these memories down before I forget. I've already forgotten so much of what happened while I was there- the shadings and details have been written and re-written and these stories are probably as much fiction as fact. But anyway, that's how I remember it.

I don't believe in earthquakes

2007-10-31T22:31:00.000-07:00

I actually believe that I was so drunk I made the world wobble for everyone else.

2007-10-10T20:17:00.001-07:00

Decompression, fun.

grade me, rank me, evaluate me!

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

Being back in school has brought me back in touch with my compulsive need to perform.

It's hard to elaborate on that statement, oddly. I can only quote Lisa Simpson: "Grade me, rank me evaluate me! I'm good good good and oh so smart! GRADE ME!"

I suppose that's not so very interesting as a first blog post, but that's the kind of self-consciousness that gets me in trouble.