6/27/2010

Seattle 122, or Poem-a-day #182

Oh, Pride.
You ragged gossamer
dress-up trunk,
you wandering lemonade
nostalgia, you aging, domesticated
peacock.
You were an old-timer's tale,
even before we met,
and now I visit your zoo:
ancient dolphin, have you become
so caged you've forgotten
how to leap?
Do I dare disturb
the open-faced youngsters
who swallow you
like sweet fruit?

6/22/2010

Seattle 120, or Snapshots from a Birthday

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I'm shaking halfway up the ladder, heading for my first jump in my second trapeze lesson. All the failure of last class is with me. I've been going over the moves in my head all week, visualizing the trick perfectly. But what if I grab onto the bar and fail again?

At the top, one of my instructors from last time greets me. She says, you'll get it today. My feet are worryingly slippery. The platform shakes, held in place by cables instead of bars. She hooks me into the safety line, reminds me to keep my hips forward. Today, a woman is acting as the main caller. Ready! Hup! Good! Knees up, get 'em up! Good! Hands down! Good! Grab the bar! Good! And drop your legs! Get ready to flip - kick back! - forward! - back! - leggo!

The trick goes flawlessly. I do it twice more, just to prove I can. The teacher from last week says Have you been doing crunches? You're a different person this week - so much more confident! She teaches me a new trick to work on: the "Heels Off" dismount. It looks like this:



I screw it up - mostly by looking down at the net instead of up towards the catcher when I let go. When I learned to steer a boat, Dad taught me "you drive where you look, so don't look anywhere but where you're headed for more than a second." Same is true for trapeze - if you let your head drop, you'll go down - headfirst. I scraped my nose on the net.

But when it came time to test my knee hang with the catcher, it went off without a hitch - Ready! Hup! Good! Knees up! Hands down and - good! But as soon as he caught me, the catcher howled Why are you wearing your glasses?! Whoops. I laughed as he dropped me into the net. Tomorrow will prove whether or not I really got better - we'll see how sore I am in the morning.

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I curled up in the bookstore for a few hours, read old novels and rested. The orange cat that prowls the stacks slipped me a moment of his silky head each time he walked by.

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Ate at the bookstore for dinner, decided spur-of-the-moment not to go with my original plans. Why? Because as I was getting ready to go eat dinner, a Chopin nocturne started playing. Nocturnes are my special pieces. I took it as a sign. Why not. The waiter was fabulously gay, called me darling, stumbled over the Greek word for the night's special -

Avgolemono? Avgolemono soup?!

Yes, that's it.

I ordered a cup, with a tomato salad on the side. He gave me thin slices of sourdough with a sharp, peppery olive oil. The soup was not the bright yellow broth I'm used to - much paler, with chunks of chicken and carrot, and well-cooked rice, so soft and creamy. Just enough lemon - more than enough pepper. Homesick-for-Dad soup. The salad, sweet heirloom tomatoes with sherry and parsley and grilled halloumi cheese and toasted bread - a well-executed lesson in simplicity. Ate with my eyes closed.

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Came home to find Housemates and Friend around the table. Happy Birthday! they said. Have some, uh, curry. We played card games and laughed until I couldn't keep my head off the table. Z made banana chocolate chip muffins with twice the butter she needed. They ate my imperfect bread. We made jokes and talked in funny accents.

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6/20/2010

Seattle 119, Cloud Spit and Rag Rugs

I feel like launching a protest against G-d - a universal boycott until conditions improve. My friends' lives are chipmunk cheeks of unfair and not-their-fault, of addiction, and heartbreak, and sickness. I spent today cleaning my room and reorganizing my bookshelf, taking breaks to knead bread and eat vegetarian sausages and suck on the phone like an agony milkshake. When did we inherit all this pain? When did our cracks turn into fault lines? Are ever going to be safe from the earthquakes?

It has been a cold and rainy June. The peas blossomed, then fruited, and are shriveling. I eat them on my way between houses, snatching one every so often. I don't touch the lettuce. Why did we plant so much lettuce? There's garlic in the back yard, full of scapes wanting harvest. My share from the farm box has small carrots, a fistful of chard, tiny beets with huge greens. More damn lettuce. Today, the clouds have alternated between crying and spitting and breathing condensation all over us. I miss hot summer rains that chased humidity. I want to storm-watch something fierce. It never roars here. It aches.

Late nights at the kibbutz around the kitchen table. I'm ripping Tamar's excess fabric into strips, see if I can't make one of those braided rugs that became so popular to make in college. Remember those worn-carpet days in the living room, with old tshirts and scissors and the growing piles of rags and talking over the teevee and shiny fingers from the popcorn? Remember how we tried to stitch home into an institution?

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm going trapezing again. I want to make this Year of the Body. I'm not sure what that means yet; it's been kicking around in my head for weeks. Perhaps I'll have a better idea by the time Rosh Hashanah rolls around, when I devote real time to thinking about this. Maybe that rug will get finished, and find a place near a door, on a cold floor, somewhere one stop from the graveyard. Maybe the clouds will breathe and part for a smile. Maybe G-d will stick a white flag made out of kerchiefs and ballpoint pens and say "Okay, you win. You win."

6/18/2010

Seattle 118, or New Look

Whatcha think? Is it hard to read? Easier? More boring? Thoughts?

In other news: my book is likely going to be published this fall, by Six Gallery Press in Pittsburgh, PA.

Huzzah!

6/09/2010

Seattle 117, or In Which We Fail, With Style

Once, in the privacy of a living room, a friend tried to teach me to bellydance. Only one other friend was present, learning also. We did some warm-ups, then basic moves. After about ten minutes, I got stuck. My hips seemed to disconnect from my eyes and my brain. Next to me, my other friend was struggling a little, but got it fairly quickly. I called it quits, went to the bathroom and washed the tears out of my eyes.

When I came out, my friend looked at me with kindness, and a fleck of impatience. "Dude," he said, "if you're so scared of looking bad, you need to take up juggling. Two months of dropping balls will shut that up quick."

From a writer who regularly publishes half-baked work on the internet, and a kindergartener who only sort of cared about coloring in the lines, one might be surprised to bump up against my perfectionist streak. The streak sounds something like this "You are lumpy, awkward, stiff and weak. Lumpy, awkward, stiff and weak. Lumpy, awkward -" it's got great, paralyzing rhythm. Sometimes, it looks like a fear of something else.

Today, it looked like a fear of heights. I had the fantastic opportunity to take a class at Emerald City Trapeze, a giant barn of ropes and rigging just south of downtown. I went because I love to fly; because I needed an excuse to turn my body, if not my life, a little upside down. And besides, I was going to trapeze class. Even saying it sounded badass.

I expected it would be fun - I was right. I expected it to be fairly easy, since they advertise that anyone can try. I thought it might be like the first day of learning a new language, when you learn to say Hello, and Goodbye and My Name Is, and walk away feeling pretty proud of yourself for having begun.

Take a minute, giggle. You should.

Our class began with some on-the-ground instruction about safety, then some time on a low-hanging trapeze to get the idea of the trick we were going to do: a knee hang with a back flip dismount. Done fairly correctly by a beginner, it looks like this:



I clambered to the top of the ladder, hooked into my harness, and went. Boom. Did okay, but messed up the back flip, lost momentum, and had to be slowly lowered to the net, instead of flying down on my back. Second try: got the flip, but took too long to hook my knees over the bar, messed up the timing. Third: Got my knees up, but took too long to let go.

And so on, and so on. By the end of five tries, I hadn't completed the trick perfectly, or even well. My arms shook, my hands were raw, and my anxiety was sky-high. I climbed the ladder again. My teacher saw me sweating, told me to take a minute. "Don't look down," she said.
"No," I answered, "it's not the height, it's the fear of not doing it right."

She nodded, told me to take all the nervous energy and focus it. I took a bunch of deep breaths, settled in, and waited for the universal circus call of hup! that cued my jump.

The trick went well - not perfect, but well enough to feel each >pop!< Basic physics: on the outside of the swing (when you're at your highest) you're weightless. In the middle of the swing (at your lowest), you weigh up to two and a half times your body weight, making it difficult to do anything. When you execute a trick correctly, at the outset of each swing, it feels like a Rube-Goldberg machine - each piece falling exactly into place at the right time, creating a quick burst of adrenaline. My body knew.

I yelled "YES!" as I fell neatly back from the dismount, and heard the cowbell ring. The cowbell is an ECT thing - when you've done your trick correctly enough to earn a turn with the catcher, it's sounded with the bell. I rolled off the net, feeling the triumph endorphins soar through my body. I was a little bit hooked. The little-girl-who-wanted-to-be-a-gymnast came racing back through my fleshy, curvy body and said "whoa. We just flew."

I took a rest before my turn with the catcher - I was pretty tired, and wanted to be sure I had enough energy to pop it out perfectly. The trick with the catcher is the same as without, except it looks like this:




I bent my knees, waited - hup! - and took off. Immediately, I could feel something was off. I had my knees bent too much, creating drag and slowing my swing, which threw off the ever-important timing. I could hear my teacher trying to get me back on track, but it was over as soon as it started - I could feel the catcher's hands scraping mine, then let go as I went down, yelling "NO!"

They told me to come back next time. Try it again. I schlumped out of there covered in chalk dust and near tears. But I want to go back. The flying - when it happens, when I can feel the pop - is exhilarating. And I'm convinced that failing in public is good for me. Eventually, I might even take up juggling.

6/03/2010

Seattle 116, or Thoughts on Work and Gaza

Ever since the news about the flotilla raid off the shores of Gaza broke, I have been going a little nuts. I pay attention to what's going on in Israel and Palestine, but it's been awhile since the international spotlight was burning so tightly on the Middle East. I've been hungry for news, from any source - Twitter, blogs, friends, slowly watching the stories ripple out to the New York Times, the Guardian, CNN. I'm not going to summarize the situation here, and the article I linked to only gives part of the story, but let me know if you want more. I can send you any number of places. I'm sure a few of my readers would be happy to send you places, also. ;)

This is a good example of one way I see the flotilla's efforts.
"The first thing you need to know about the Gaza flotilla disaster is that the intention of the activists on board the ships was to break the Israeli blockade. Delivering the embargoed goods was incidental.

In other words, the activists were like the civil rights demonstrators who sat down at segregated lunch counters throughout the South and refused to leave until they were served. Their goal was not really to get breakfast. It was to end segregation."
I could debate this one for a long time - and have. Publicly, on sites like facebook, and in emails with my family, and phone calls with friends. I'm getting tired. But I've also been trying to figure out why this particular incident hit me so hard. Here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a friend today:

"So, for the last few months at work, there's been one cottage that's consistently out of control. I haven't been on a single shift there that's gone according to plan or schedule, and in a therapeutic group home where the consistent schedule is part of the therapy, part of what helps kids feel safe, that's not okay.

At this cottage, I don't get to make many decisions. I arrive, and am told the plan: begin the shift very restrictive, very low privileges, make all the kids' decisions for them and tell them what is happening. If they can handle it, the plan is to relax a little, introduce more choice, more freedom, more privileges. We never get past the restriction. Feeling so cornered, denied space and freedom of movement, gives the kids little choice but to blow out. And then we go into riot mode.

But we've also tried wiping the slate clean, assuming full privileges, taking kids outside to play, erasing consequences for yesterday's misbehavior. That doesn't work either. Without knowing where the limits are, kids push and test until they find them. And sometimes we escape riot mode, but it's almost never fun.

The thing that works the best is separating the kids - sending one or two unstable kids over to another cottage, trading them for calmer kids. We'll take some outside to run around, and give some kids privileges like one-on-one time with staff, to affirm the good, safe choices they've made.

But we don't have enough staff to disperse like that. If even one kid blows out, the whole plan gets thrown off. You need two staff to do a restraint, so if I'm leading a group of three while playing outside, and someone inside needs to be restrained, I have to bring all my kids inside with me in order to help out. Not so good.

Having to go into riot mode means somewhere, we didn't do our jobs. We didn't manage the environment well enough, didn't keep it safe and calm.

We tell the kids: you have choices. You have control. You can do it! Your time-out starts whenever you choose to sit calmly. They look at me like I'm nuts, ask me the same thing I used to ask my parents, "What do you mean I have a choice? You're the one who tells me when to sit and when to get up! You tell me when to eat, when to sleep. I can't even go to the bathroom without your permission! You have the control here, not me!"

I don't have an answer for them. But when we restrict the kids to keep them safe, and they feel pressured to the point of hitting someone, or trying to jump out a window, it begins a chain reaction of not-choices. I have no choice but to hold them, or help them get into the de-escalation room. It's my job. They have no choice but to fight. It's instinct. I have no choice but to consequence them. It's the therapeutic program.

Even if I did a bad job managing the environment, which led to their outburst, we still hold them accountable for their actions. Because our job is to teach self-control, to curb dangerous impulsiveness, to teach them to handle their feelings of fear, frustration, grief and anger in safe ways that don't hurt themselves or others.

When I hear about Gaza, I think about this chain reaction. When people are restricted and oppressed, to the point of firing homemade rockets over a wall, and the Israeli army says "We have no choice. They chose to fire rockets, and we now have to go in and kill the ones who fired them. We have to impose blockades to keep our people safe. We have to be restrictive. If we allow for freedom of movement, freedom of trade, won't they just test the limits until they find them?"

I want to believe that the Gazans won't. But I see too clearly every day what happens between a traumatized people, and those charged with keeping things "safe." We devolve into a series of not-choices on all sides.

The question is this: who really has the power to change things? Is it me, and my coworkers? Our administrative bosses? The psychologists who design the therapeutic program? The Israelis? The kids? The Palestinians? We say: things would be so much easier, so much safer and better for everyone if they could cooperate. But they are sick kids. Sick with PTSD, sick with traumatic histories and mental illness. Sometimes they *can't* stay safe, no matter how hard they try. The environment is too overwhelming. There's not enough space for them to move. My coworker once asked me, "Have you ever stepped into one of the kids' rooms when they're not there and closed the door? The energy is terrifying. All that screaming, all that terror - it's seeped into the walls. You can feel it."

Do we leave them a choice that also allows for dignity and humanity?

I see what happens to the kids who are cooperative and compliant amidst the chaos: they slip through the cracks. We give them rewards for good behavior, smile, high-five them, and run to deal with the next crisis. They're given no more real freedom than the kids we're holding on the floor.

This is what I mean when I say I don't know what to do about Gaza."