I haven't experienced a tornado but I remember my mom grabbing me from the bathtub when I was very young, wrapping me in a blanket, and carrying me into the basement where we stayed for what felt like a long time, waiting out a storm. Growing up in southern Ohio there were regular tornado watches and warnings but none that came close to my home so I came to recognize the strange colored sky that precedes a storm but never felt or heard the rumbling of a funnel cloud on my street.
Two weeks ago, I woke up in a hotel in Birmingham, AL to blustery winds and contradictory news reports. The local news instructed us to take shelter while the national forecast said the tornadoes would pass to the north of us. I asked the hotel what their plan was should a tornado touch down and they said we'd all be corralled in the first floor ballroom but the guys at the concierge desk didn't seem worried. Within a few hours we were driving south to Florida, watching the Weather Channel. I checked in with my mom and she told me that Cincinnati had been spared and that the tornado cut a path south of the city, moving east.
South of the city is Kentucky and one of the towns leveled on March 2 was West Liberty. I just spent an hour watching tornado videos on YouTube, at the raw shaky footage of people going, "Oh my Gawd!" and "Holy crap!" as they film the cloud cover racing in their direction, relatives in the background yelling, "Seriously Jason, get inside NOOOW!" In this situation I would definitely be the screaming relative as there's very little storm chaser in me. In fact, I would be in the bathtub with a hardback book over my head as the tub is now my go-to for emergencies. After last Spring's tornado chewed up Missouri and spit it back out, my friend Neil worked on disaster relief in the area and told me that in one residential plot after another he saw nothing left behind except for the bathtub, anchored to the ground by good plumbing. So unless your tub is next to a wall of windows, take note.
Please also take note that Ellie Herring, a friend I haven't met yet, put together a compilation entitled Sorghum of new songs available for purchase and all proceeds benefit the Mid-East Kentucky Chapter American Red Cross to aid the tornado victims of West Liberty, KY.
Showing posts with label social action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social action. Show all posts
3.13.2012
1.08.2012
Meaning
I've had something on my mind since Camp Mighty two months ago but the seeds of thought were planted much earlier, in 2008, when I wrote about my reaction to a man who smelled on the subway. That post was about my emotions and the overwhelming helplessness I feel when witnessing need in others. I wondered why I kept finding myself torn apart, just absolutely floored, by sadness because I wasn't always so wobbly-kneed. I then answered my own question by guessing (rightly so, I believe) that I'd been missing an important part of my life since I'd started working on music tours. Before touring, my work had a strong bent to social action with a few notable exceptions (Don Pablo's Mexican Kitchen! And all those pubs!) and without it I eventually I felt a void and I felt guilt. Guilt isn't my motivator nor my predominant sense, mainly because it's not useful long term and I'm finally getting inspired to brainstorm on ways to create more meaning for myself since I'm probably not going to quit my job to become an organic farmer or work in an orphanage any time soon.
One of the speakers at Camp Mighty was Kenna. I used to think about Kenna as just that guy on my iPod because Matthew had given me his music but I hadn't taken much time to listen. When I saw that he would be speaking at camp, I was intrigued and when he took the stage, I was rapt. Kenna spoke about the music industry and his place in it. He spoke of the ego involved, the publicists and stylists, and the pressure. But first we had to call his mom to sing her happy birthday. He put her on speaker but didn't tell her right away that there were a hundred people listening.
"Mom?"
"Kenna!"
"Happy birthday, mom."
"Are you taking your vitamins?"
"Mom!"
"Have you met a nice girl yet?"
"Mom, I've got a bunch of people here. They want to sing for you..."
It was very endearing. After we sang and laughed and listened to Kenna and his mom chat more and got our heartstrings all but manhandled, he hung up and continued his talk. He had reached a successful point in his music career and was living large, following the sparkly path of fame, when he had a conversation with his father. In the conversation his dad mentioned that as a child in Ethiopia he'd suffered for years with a waterborne illness and that his brother died. Kenna was struck. He didn't know that he'd had a uncle who died as a child and that his own dad had lived ten years with the physical pain that comes from drinking contaminated water: crippling diarrhea, nausea, cramps, dehydration, vomiting, fever and the looming threat of death. His dad told him that he had saved $10,000 and that he wanted to use it to help a community in Ethiopia build a well.
Kenna's parents immigrated to the United States due to persecution by the government in Ethiopia, his father a former Minister of Agriculture. After spending two years separated from his parents and living with his grandfather in Ethiopia, Kenna joined his parents in the US and grew up in Virginia. He was close to his parents and lived in a generous house that took people in and helped family still in Ethiopia. The Zemedkum family sounds like a big-hearted and open-armed clan that instilled deep values in Kenna which hurt him all the more to realize he'd been oblivious to a huge, formative fact about his father's life. To hear Kenna speak about this was powerful. It was a moment in which he questioned his choices and how he'd been living. I don't want to put words in his mouth but what this sounded like to me, when I compared it to my life was: I may not be doing anything wrong but am I doing enough right?
Kenna's response was to turn his attention to the matter of clean water worldwide and from that Summit on the Summit took shape. To draw attention to the fact that a billion people don't have clean water to drink, he got high profile people to hike to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and got other high profile to donate money if they made it. Kenna proposed his idea to Justin Timberlake on a snowboarding trip and while J. Timbo wasn't able to do the climb, he introduced the documentary that was eventually made for MTV and Jessica Biel, Lupe Fiasco, Emile Hirsch, Isabel Lucas, and Santigold climbed with a number of experts, sherpas, documentarians, and, of course, Kenna. They made it to the top of the 19,340 foot peak on January 12, 2010 and Summit on the Summit's work is ongoing.
After Kenna's talk and Q & A session with Maggie, I approached him to say thanks. I told him that I'm a tour manager and that I struggle to keep my job from taking over my life at the expense of activism that's important to me so his story resonated big time. He laughed and told me to tell Randy Jackson what's up for him. I didn't get into the fact that while Randy and I have passed in the hall a few times, I have no interaction with the TV judges since I've taken over Idol only when the TV show ends and my link to the judges are more along the lines of "Yeah, I saw Paula Abdul on her phone out by the dumpster when I was on the way to the bus." Plus, I have since then left the Idol tour and am working for one of the Idols, Lauren Alaina, on her solo career. That's also beside the point. I'm just as busy as I ever was and still need to pay close attention to what's important to me.
Kenna was incredibly friendly and approachable and told me to get the contact info of one of the people he works with because collaboration is good. Regardless of what collaborations I forge or what issues I throw myself into, it was a good reminder how much is possible, at what scale, when you reach out to others and step out of your comfort zone whether that zone is calling someone you don't know or hiking at an elevation in which your eyeballs can freeze.
Something I've enjoyed while working with Lauren is the number of shows that we've done as benefit fundraisers. She's sung her heart out for cause after cause, one recurring topic being children's cancer. We've visited the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis once and are going back again soon. ST. JUDE BLOWS MY MIND as one of the most intense examples of positive energy coexisting with crushing sorrow I've ever beheld. I'm in awe of the supreme strength of the children and families at St. Jude, not to mention those who work there.
I've set a goal for myself to find an organization that I can volunteer for when I have down time in Nashville. The side note to this would be to create down time when I feel like I don't have any. On an ever deeper level, I am mercilessly drawn to the idea that I need to write about my brother and my family. My parents spent years advocating and fighting for disability rights when I was young and I appreciate this more and more all the time. I face a huge amount of resistance to actually writing our story and have finished a total of only two chapters in two years but I also have an idea of how resistance works and am pretty sure that this just means I find the weight and meaning of it all intimidating. I believe, however, that telling stories is a potent way to build and create community. On the way to the coffeeshop today, I had a text conversation with Kelly who'd written out of the blue to offer writing support. Do I need a reader? Can I send an outline of ideas? What about a summer retreat in Tennessee? Do I realize that a chapter a month is a whole book in a year? Kelly has a lot of energy, as we all do especially when we channel it in the direction we truly crave.
One of the speakers at Camp Mighty was Kenna. I used to think about Kenna as just that guy on my iPod because Matthew had given me his music but I hadn't taken much time to listen. When I saw that he would be speaking at camp, I was intrigued and when he took the stage, I was rapt. Kenna spoke about the music industry and his place in it. He spoke of the ego involved, the publicists and stylists, and the pressure. But first we had to call his mom to sing her happy birthday. He put her on speaker but didn't tell her right away that there were a hundred people listening.
"Mom?"
"Kenna!"
"Happy birthday, mom."
"Are you taking your vitamins?"
"Mom!"
"Have you met a nice girl yet?"
"Mom, I've got a bunch of people here. They want to sing for you..."
It was very endearing. After we sang and laughed and listened to Kenna and his mom chat more and got our heartstrings all but manhandled, he hung up and continued his talk. He had reached a successful point in his music career and was living large, following the sparkly path of fame, when he had a conversation with his father. In the conversation his dad mentioned that as a child in Ethiopia he'd suffered for years with a waterborne illness and that his brother died. Kenna was struck. He didn't know that he'd had a uncle who died as a child and that his own dad had lived ten years with the physical pain that comes from drinking contaminated water: crippling diarrhea, nausea, cramps, dehydration, vomiting, fever and the looming threat of death. His dad told him that he had saved $10,000 and that he wanted to use it to help a community in Ethiopia build a well.
Kenna's parents immigrated to the United States due to persecution by the government in Ethiopia, his father a former Minister of Agriculture. After spending two years separated from his parents and living with his grandfather in Ethiopia, Kenna joined his parents in the US and grew up in Virginia. He was close to his parents and lived in a generous house that took people in and helped family still in Ethiopia. The Zemedkum family sounds like a big-hearted and open-armed clan that instilled deep values in Kenna which hurt him all the more to realize he'd been oblivious to a huge, formative fact about his father's life. To hear Kenna speak about this was powerful. It was a moment in which he questioned his choices and how he'd been living. I don't want to put words in his mouth but what this sounded like to me, when I compared it to my life was: I may not be doing anything wrong but am I doing enough right?
Kenna's response was to turn his attention to the matter of clean water worldwide and from that Summit on the Summit took shape. To draw attention to the fact that a billion people don't have clean water to drink, he got high profile people to hike to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and got other high profile to donate money if they made it. Kenna proposed his idea to Justin Timberlake on a snowboarding trip and while J. Timbo wasn't able to do the climb, he introduced the documentary that was eventually made for MTV and Jessica Biel, Lupe Fiasco, Emile Hirsch, Isabel Lucas, and Santigold climbed with a number of experts, sherpas, documentarians, and, of course, Kenna. They made it to the top of the 19,340 foot peak on January 12, 2010 and Summit on the Summit's work is ongoing.
After Kenna's talk and Q & A session with Maggie, I approached him to say thanks. I told him that I'm a tour manager and that I struggle to keep my job from taking over my life at the expense of activism that's important to me so his story resonated big time. He laughed and told me to tell Randy Jackson what's up for him. I didn't get into the fact that while Randy and I have passed in the hall a few times, I have no interaction with the TV judges since I've taken over Idol only when the TV show ends and my link to the judges are more along the lines of "Yeah, I saw Paula Abdul on her phone out by the dumpster when I was on the way to the bus." Plus, I have since then left the Idol tour and am working for one of the Idols, Lauren Alaina, on her solo career. That's also beside the point. I'm just as busy as I ever was and still need to pay close attention to what's important to me.
Kenna was incredibly friendly and approachable and told me to get the contact info of one of the people he works with because collaboration is good. Regardless of what collaborations I forge or what issues I throw myself into, it was a good reminder how much is possible, at what scale, when you reach out to others and step out of your comfort zone whether that zone is calling someone you don't know or hiking at an elevation in which your eyeballs can freeze.
Something I've enjoyed while working with Lauren is the number of shows that we've done as benefit fundraisers. She's sung her heart out for cause after cause, one recurring topic being children's cancer. We've visited the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis once and are going back again soon. ST. JUDE BLOWS MY MIND as one of the most intense examples of positive energy coexisting with crushing sorrow I've ever beheld. I'm in awe of the supreme strength of the children and families at St. Jude, not to mention those who work there.
I've set a goal for myself to find an organization that I can volunteer for when I have down time in Nashville. The side note to this would be to create down time when I feel like I don't have any. On an ever deeper level, I am mercilessly drawn to the idea that I need to write about my brother and my family. My parents spent years advocating and fighting for disability rights when I was young and I appreciate this more and more all the time. I face a huge amount of resistance to actually writing our story and have finished a total of only two chapters in two years but I also have an idea of how resistance works and am pretty sure that this just means I find the weight and meaning of it all intimidating. I believe, however, that telling stories is a potent way to build and create community. On the way to the coffeeshop today, I had a text conversation with Kelly who'd written out of the blue to offer writing support. Do I need a reader? Can I send an outline of ideas? What about a summer retreat in Tennessee? Do I realize that a chapter a month is a whole book in a year? Kelly has a lot of energy, as we all do especially when we channel it in the direction we truly crave.
11.02.2011
charity: water
One of the things I'm doing to prepare for Camp Mighty is represent for my team, Team Two (woop!), in fundraising for charity: water. Each group's goal is $200 per person or $5,000 total. There are four groups so we are aiming to raise $20,000 before Camp Mighty even starts. Nifty, huh?
Please read below, watch the video and consider donating here. If you donate, please mention my name in the comment section. If you're in Oceanside, CA this weekend maybe I'll see you on the bike path as I will be channeling my inner 8-year-old and will be selling water and snacks and generally chatting it up on behalf of charity: water.
100% of your donation will directly fund freshwater projects in developing nations and every dollar raised is tracked to a water project.
charity: water focuses on life’s most basic need -- water. Water affects everything: education, health, poverty, and especially women and children.
One billion people live without clean drinking water all over world. Diseases from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.
Women and children usually bear the burden of water collection, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unprotected and likely to make them sick. Clean water nearby means more than safe drinking water; it means time, freedom and incentive to change communities.
When a water project is built in a community, members can often use the new water source to grow small gardens near their homes and secure their own food supply. Self-sufficient households are less affected by external conflict, famine or inadequate government services.
charity: water served its first one million people at the end of 2009. By 2050, the world's population is estimated to grow by three billion and 90% of this growth will be in the developing world. Unless sustainable water solutions are scaled fast, regions already stressed for safe water sources will be over capacity. We’re expanding our reach to meet these demands and will not stop until every person has safe water to drink.
And thank you...x
Please read below, watch the video and consider donating here. If you donate, please mention my name in the comment section. If you're in Oceanside, CA this weekend maybe I'll see you on the bike path as I will be channeling my inner 8-year-old and will be selling water and snacks and generally chatting it up on behalf of charity: water.
100% of your donation will directly fund freshwater projects in developing nations and every dollar raised is tracked to a water project.
charity: water focuses on life’s most basic need -- water. Water affects everything: education, health, poverty, and especially women and children.
One billion people live without clean drinking water all over world. Diseases from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.
Women and children usually bear the burden of water collection, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unprotected and likely to make them sick. Clean water nearby means more than safe drinking water; it means time, freedom and incentive to change communities.
When a water project is built in a community, members can often use the new water source to grow small gardens near their homes and secure their own food supply. Self-sufficient households are less affected by external conflict, famine or inadequate government services.
charity: water served its first one million people at the end of 2009. By 2050, the world's population is estimated to grow by three billion and 90% of this growth will be in the developing world. Unless sustainable water solutions are scaled fast, regions already stressed for safe water sources will be over capacity. We’re expanding our reach to meet these demands and will not stop until every person has safe water to drink.
Water Changes Everything. from charity: water on Vimeo.
And thank you...x
9.05.2011
Natural Ass vs. Natural Gas
I watched the documentary Gasland this Spring and it scared the spit out of me. I didn't know anything about natural gas drilling and the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and was struck by how easily I would have assumed it was a good source of energy just because it wasn't oil. Maybe it's the word "natural". It makes it sound so peaceful. It's not. It's f'ing frightening. Go get a glass of water in the middle of the night and your tap bursts into flames, live with constant headaches and nausea, the health of your body and your land and your water and your pets in decline, slowly poisoned, FRIGHTENING. It's happening all over the U.S.
I recently met a woman named Jaime who works at the arena we played in Long Island. She came up to me to ask me if I'm Jess and then introduced herself. She's dating Ronnie, who gave me my first touring job, and she knows his friend Ariel, who was also my friend in New York. I emailed Ronnie and Ariel, giddy with excitement as it's been two years that I've been in contact with either and haven't seen Ariel in six.
Ariel and Jaime gave me the website of a project he founded this year, Pedal Power NYC, and it is hilariously creative and inspired. Pedal Power NYC put on a concert in Union Square powered by humans riding bicycles. Natural Ass, not Natural Gas. Brilliant. I cannot wait to get my ass on one of those bike generators and help put on a show.
“Pedal Power is an action that demonstrates the creative energy within our community. It demonstrates our ability to make our own energy choices, and it demonstrates the will of a city that is infinitely more powerful than the kilowatt hours it consumes. We will not solve our energy and water challenges on bikes alone, but through purposeful actions in this spirit, we will be the generators of our clean water future. Pedal On!”
The Natural Ass Sessions - NYC from Pedal Power NYC on Vimeo.
6.13.2009
Proposition 8
I was on my way to Trader Joe's when two girls with arms slung around each others' shoulders said, "Happy Pride baby," as they passed. I responded with a big ole, "You TOO!"
I bought my groceries, walked back out onto Santa Monica Blvd and into the oncoming traffic of Dykemarch. Standing on the sidewalk with my bag of microwaveable Indian food, tofu cream cheese and wine, I smiled like an idiot to the girls and boys in the street while a guy on my left shouted "POWER TO THE V! POWER TO THE V!" V being vagina. I thought of the world's best impromptu road trip to San Francisco Pride with Halle in 1997 and a notable runner-up, driving from San Francisco to LA with Sara in 2001.
Sara and I stayed one night in a San Luis Obispo youth hostel. All I remember from the hostel was a French woman with a wandering eye AND coming home so drunk that Sara spent some time laughing on her hands and knees in the garden. Sara claimed later that she was praying and she might have been, but that's not how she got down there in the first place.
We had come from a dance club where Sara befriended someone we named Poet Shirt for his flowing blouse. It billowed around him on the dance floor, a happy mambo cloud. Sara was impressed by Poet Shirt's professional dance shoes and claimed afterward a sudden need for her own professional dance shoes. Sara and Poet Shirt danced and Sara and I danced and we were having fun, making each other laugh, when a woman (possibly the French woman with the wandering eye, I honestly can't remember) told us that it was so refreshing to see young women behaving the way we were, that most girls today are so LASCIVIOUS.
And believe me when I tell you that the only thing lascivious was the way that she pronounced LA-SCIV-I-OOOUS, dripping with the dictionary definition: x-rated, carnal, suggestive, wanton.
She seemed to assume that we were a romantic couple who, thankfully in her eyes, were not simulating sex on the dance floor. In fact, we weren't a couple unless you count a couple of straight girls who like dancing but more importantly WHO CARES. And that's what I thought of on the sidelines of Dykemarch through West Hollywood. Who cares??? If someone really, truly feels like they need to be married then they really, truly should be able to do so. Who cares who they do it with?
I bought my groceries, walked back out onto Santa Monica Blvd and into the oncoming traffic of Dykemarch. Standing on the sidewalk with my bag of microwaveable Indian food, tofu cream cheese and wine, I smiled like an idiot to the girls and boys in the street while a guy on my left shouted "POWER TO THE V! POWER TO THE V!" V being vagina. I thought of the world's best impromptu road trip to San Francisco Pride with Halle in 1997 and a notable runner-up, driving from San Francisco to LA with Sara in 2001.
Sara and I stayed one night in a San Luis Obispo youth hostel. All I remember from the hostel was a French woman with a wandering eye AND coming home so drunk that Sara spent some time laughing on her hands and knees in the garden. Sara claimed later that she was praying and she might have been, but that's not how she got down there in the first place.
We had come from a dance club where Sara befriended someone we named Poet Shirt for his flowing blouse. It billowed around him on the dance floor, a happy mambo cloud. Sara was impressed by Poet Shirt's professional dance shoes and claimed afterward a sudden need for her own professional dance shoes. Sara and Poet Shirt danced and Sara and I danced and we were having fun, making each other laugh, when a woman (possibly the French woman with the wandering eye, I honestly can't remember) told us that it was so refreshing to see young women behaving the way we were, that most girls today are so LASCIVIOUS.
And believe me when I tell you that the only thing lascivious was the way that she pronounced LA-SCIV-I-OOOUS, dripping with the dictionary definition: x-rated, carnal, suggestive, wanton.
She seemed to assume that we were a romantic couple who, thankfully in her eyes, were not simulating sex on the dance floor. In fact, we weren't a couple unless you count a couple of straight girls who like dancing but more importantly WHO CARES. And that's what I thought of on the sidelines of Dykemarch through West Hollywood. Who cares??? If someone really, truly feels like they need to be married then they really, truly should be able to do so. Who cares who they do it with?
5.02.2008
I heart robots
I passed a demonstration on Schönhauser Allee, a crowd of people walking north, followed by a police van. I wasn't really paying attention until I saw the first sign.
Robots, huh. The marchers were chanting something which I couldn't understand and someone was egging them on with a loudspeaker. Which, again, was not helpful to me since my German has reached what we will call a plateau.
Several people held robot signs, one of which read I WOULD DO IT FOR YOU. What, robot, what would you do for me?
This morning I finished a good book, Shadowland by Gordon Stevens, about 1948-1989 Germany and three families in East Berlin, West Berlin and the United States. It was all KGB and Stasi and CIA and exactly what I'd been looking for in those unbelievably lame crime novels I threw temper tantrums over before.
This book was believable because it was well-written and because its premise was true: West Berlin's occupation by American, French, and British forces after WWII and the amputation of East Berlin by Russia. Towards the end of the book, when Gorbachev has gone all perestroika on Russia, the communists are losing their grip, and East Germans start hemorrhaging through open borders in Hungary, the revolution takes off.
There had been defiant people all along getting their asses kicked and jailed for digging tunnels under the wall and for looking cross-eyed at Stasi agents but their numbers grew in the late 80s. People start meeting in churches in Berlin and Leipzig and marching in the thousands and I can imagine the scenes and streets perfectly because I've now pounded so much of Berlin's pavement: Karl-Marx-Allee, Friedrichstrasse, Unter den Linden.
This is what I was thinking when I walked down Schönhauser Allee and saw the robot protest. It occurred to me that I should get a clue as to what makes people march in the street these days so later I tried to translate these signs.
And I'm thinking I need to ask Simone when she gets back in town because the best the online translator could do was A DAY IN THE LIFE MAKE AS A GRASSHOPPER DO I. What grasshoppers have to do with robots, I have no idea.
Robots, huh. The marchers were chanting something which I couldn't understand and someone was egging them on with a loudspeaker. Which, again, was not helpful to me since my German has reached what we will call a plateau.
Several people held robot signs, one of which read I WOULD DO IT FOR YOU. What, robot, what would you do for me?
This morning I finished a good book, Shadowland by Gordon Stevens, about 1948-1989 Germany and three families in East Berlin, West Berlin and the United States. It was all KGB and Stasi and CIA and exactly what I'd been looking for in those unbelievably lame crime novels I threw temper tantrums over before.
This book was believable because it was well-written and because its premise was true: West Berlin's occupation by American, French, and British forces after WWII and the amputation of East Berlin by Russia. Towards the end of the book, when Gorbachev has gone all perestroika on Russia, the communists are losing their grip, and East Germans start hemorrhaging through open borders in Hungary, the revolution takes off.
There had been defiant people all along getting their asses kicked and jailed for digging tunnels under the wall and for looking cross-eyed at Stasi agents but their numbers grew in the late 80s. People start meeting in churches in Berlin and Leipzig and marching in the thousands and I can imagine the scenes and streets perfectly because I've now pounded so much of Berlin's pavement: Karl-Marx-Allee, Friedrichstrasse, Unter den Linden.
This is what I was thinking when I walked down Schönhauser Allee and saw the robot protest. It occurred to me that I should get a clue as to what makes people march in the street these days so later I tried to translate these signs.
And I'm thinking I need to ask Simone when she gets back in town because the best the online translator could do was A DAY IN THE LIFE MAKE AS A GRASSHOPPER DO I. What grasshoppers have to do with robots, I have no idea.
3.24.2008
How to get through a day without your heart breaking
I smelled it on the downtown A train at 175th street. Neither super strong nor overwhelming, this shit scent was stale. I looked more closely at the orange plastic seat beneath me but it was clean. Have I tracked some stranger's subway shit down to SoHo and trailed it around on my clothes? I have a thing about shitspecks already: I'm acutely aware of avoiding them.
I think about Cathy coming home from work, holding up her hands while walking in her apartment, "Subway hands!" and washing them immediately. Right up until the moment that last summer's colonic at The Tummy Temple felt wonderfully therapeutic, I was alternately traumatized and slaphappy: I hate shit! I'm about get real up in my own shit business! This is so funny! And revolting! Unless it's coming out of a dog or baby's butt, and even then, I'm just not good with it.
I look to the right of my subway seat and see the man. He's hunched over and his head bobs up and down. His white gym shoes are dirty and unlaced, his clothing ground in with who knows what. His eyes open briefly, we look at each other and his head falls over again. I stare into my lap. Everyone who gets in the car of our train stops and does the same shit check that I did. Most of them keep moving and sit elsewhere. A few of them look at the man with anger and I suddenly want, terribly, to cry over how everyone's avoiding him. I don't want to smell shit any more than the next train passenger but more than that, I'm awash in the sadness of the scene. It would be nice If I could get through a day without losing my composure over someone else's shit. It's not always this literal.
**
I'll be walking down the street, my mind in my music or elsewhere, when I notice people begging for money, or disabled, or so overweight that they can hardly move. I'll see old people, especially old men moving slowly, alone, and they look vulnerable to me, with sad and vacant eyes. Sometimes it's the hopeful, childlike, innocent looks that get me, the shy hello I don't expect. Tears explode in my eyes and if I don't stare into the sky and work to distract myself they'll be down my face. Sometimes I cry in public and I'm always embarrassed.
Another time on the train an old dude passed out and kept slumping into my shoulder, asleep. I was reading a book in my right hand and with my left I made a fist across my body and held up his weight. An older Latina woman across from me motioned for me to come sit by her and I smiled and said it was okay. The train was packed and I thought he'd just fall into someone else. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered with the compromise I cut with my fist and just let him sleep.
**
I can be hyper-aware of personal space but sometimes it doesn't matter at all. I also struggle with emotional space. I jump, uninvited, into others people's positions, or at least how I imagine their life based on what I see for a few seconds, and my empathy spins out of control. I want to stop and lean my head against a wall or hang it in my lap and sob, dig something hard into my palm enough to hurt so that I don't think about that other kind of pain, the kind that's harder to pinpoint. I don't know why I react so strongly, or if I should.
The thing is, I don't remember being like this when I actually worked with the homeless or mentally ill. When I was a counselor at a camp for disabled adults, I didn't wake up everyday thinking BOO HOO, EVERYONE IS RETARDED. When I was involved daily with issues of housing and poverty and addiction, I wasn't a baby about it. It just felt like if you care, you do something about it and that was just kind of, you know, life. Now I'm all weepy.
**
Family friends ask me when I visit home what I'm doing with myself.
"It's always something!" they say.
I was sitting on a pew at my grandmother's funeral when a woman I've known my whole life asked me the question above. I told her I'm an assistant tour manager on the Spice Girls tour and she cracked up in my face.
"It's just so out of character!" She laughed.
And it is out of character if you compare Ritz-Carlton rooms and first class plane seats to the halfway houses and abandoned buildings I was acquainted with before. There is, however, more than one side to my character, as there is to everyone's, but I guess we all get used to thinking of each other in certain ways. I'd like to think that I'm not a dick, or a snob, or haven't lost my social conscience now. I'd like to think I'm still being myself, just in a very different setting.
But I suspect that a part of me feels guilty, that even if I'm good to people and care about those around me, I'm not really helping anything be better anywhere. And that's what I always felt I'm supposed to do, who I am. This is what I thought on the A train this morning. Why do I want to sob? Why am I frowning at the floor, my heart breaking for the man who needs a bath? That's why. I'm a little removed from a part of myself, a little out of whack.
Is this recognition useful? Is this just some bleeding heart response to financial success? I don't feel bad about making money, I don't want to glorify poverty, and I can't stand it when people only do good out of guilt and then walk around brimming with self-satisfaction and false humility. Fuck that. Guilt is tricky. It can be a handy tool to figure yourself out. It can be weapon. You can feel it for what you've done or not done. Who you are, or aren't.
I think about Cathy coming home from work, holding up her hands while walking in her apartment, "Subway hands!" and washing them immediately. Right up until the moment that last summer's colonic at The Tummy Temple felt wonderfully therapeutic, I was alternately traumatized and slaphappy: I hate shit! I'm about get real up in my own shit business! This is so funny! And revolting! Unless it's coming out of a dog or baby's butt, and even then, I'm just not good with it.
I look to the right of my subway seat and see the man. He's hunched over and his head bobs up and down. His white gym shoes are dirty and unlaced, his clothing ground in with who knows what. His eyes open briefly, we look at each other and his head falls over again. I stare into my lap. Everyone who gets in the car of our train stops and does the same shit check that I did. Most of them keep moving and sit elsewhere. A few of them look at the man with anger and I suddenly want, terribly, to cry over how everyone's avoiding him. I don't want to smell shit any more than the next train passenger but more than that, I'm awash in the sadness of the scene. It would be nice If I could get through a day without losing my composure over someone else's shit. It's not always this literal.
**
I'll be walking down the street, my mind in my music or elsewhere, when I notice people begging for money, or disabled, or so overweight that they can hardly move. I'll see old people, especially old men moving slowly, alone, and they look vulnerable to me, with sad and vacant eyes. Sometimes it's the hopeful, childlike, innocent looks that get me, the shy hello I don't expect. Tears explode in my eyes and if I don't stare into the sky and work to distract myself they'll be down my face. Sometimes I cry in public and I'm always embarrassed.
Another time on the train an old dude passed out and kept slumping into my shoulder, asleep. I was reading a book in my right hand and with my left I made a fist across my body and held up his weight. An older Latina woman across from me motioned for me to come sit by her and I smiled and said it was okay. The train was packed and I thought he'd just fall into someone else. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered with the compromise I cut with my fist and just let him sleep.
**
I can be hyper-aware of personal space but sometimes it doesn't matter at all. I also struggle with emotional space. I jump, uninvited, into others people's positions, or at least how I imagine their life based on what I see for a few seconds, and my empathy spins out of control. I want to stop and lean my head against a wall or hang it in my lap and sob, dig something hard into my palm enough to hurt so that I don't think about that other kind of pain, the kind that's harder to pinpoint. I don't know why I react so strongly, or if I should.
The thing is, I don't remember being like this when I actually worked with the homeless or mentally ill. When I was a counselor at a camp for disabled adults, I didn't wake up everyday thinking BOO HOO, EVERYONE IS RETARDED. When I was involved daily with issues of housing and poverty and addiction, I wasn't a baby about it. It just felt like if you care, you do something about it and that was just kind of, you know, life. Now I'm all weepy.
**
Family friends ask me when I visit home what I'm doing with myself.
"It's always something!" they say.
I was sitting on a pew at my grandmother's funeral when a woman I've known my whole life asked me the question above. I told her I'm an assistant tour manager on the Spice Girls tour and she cracked up in my face.
"It's just so out of character!" She laughed.
And it is out of character if you compare Ritz-Carlton rooms and first class plane seats to the halfway houses and abandoned buildings I was acquainted with before. There is, however, more than one side to my character, as there is to everyone's, but I guess we all get used to thinking of each other in certain ways. I'd like to think that I'm not a dick, or a snob, or haven't lost my social conscience now. I'd like to think I'm still being myself, just in a very different setting.
But I suspect that a part of me feels guilty, that even if I'm good to people and care about those around me, I'm not really helping anything be better anywhere. And that's what I always felt I'm supposed to do, who I am. This is what I thought on the A train this morning. Why do I want to sob? Why am I frowning at the floor, my heart breaking for the man who needs a bath? That's why. I'm a little removed from a part of myself, a little out of whack.
Is this recognition useful? Is this just some bleeding heart response to financial success? I don't feel bad about making money, I don't want to glorify poverty, and I can't stand it when people only do good out of guilt and then walk around brimming with self-satisfaction and false humility. Fuck that. Guilt is tricky. It can be a handy tool to figure yourself out. It can be weapon. You can feel it for what you've done or not done. Who you are, or aren't.
2.27.2006
Ten Commandments: reflections from a hair salon
I had no idea that getting my hair cut this weekend would make me think about the Ten Commandments. I showed up for my appointment, met Natalie the stylist, and showed her the multimedia presentation I had prepared on my laptop regarding the kind of hair I do and do not want sprouting off my head. This is how I approach haircuts since September, when a New York hairdresser listened to me explain what I wanted, nodded, and then did the opposite, leaving me with a bowlcut not unlike the one I had in sixth grade.
Any perspective will reveal that a bowlcut shouldn't be that big of a deal but several people could testify that my immediate reaction was a fantasy involving the Anarchist Cookbook, a hardware store, a pipe bomb, and doing something DEFINITELY prohibited by the Ten Commandments. Natalie and I quickly struck up the sort of salon intimacy that usually makes me feel phony. For some reason, though, this time I yakked away with fluidity.
While Natalie washed my hair, we talked about Columbus and how I like living here. She asked where I lived in New York and I told her: the East Village and the Bronx. She also asked about Cincinnati. The client before me had also been from Cincinnati and told Natalie that there isn't much racism there. Ahem. I'm thinking that this client has either not spent much time outside her secluded monochromatic enclave in the last ten years or she had recently been cured of deaf-blindness, realized her hair looked like ass, and that's how she ended up in Natalie's chair that morning blabbing about how progressive Cincinnati is.
For 18 years I lived in the pleasant and mostly-white suburb of Hyde Park and for a year after that I lived downtown in historic and mostly-black neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine. I told Natalie it's a pretty segregated city and that race relations can be tense. She asked what Columbus neighborhood I live in and I told her Old Towne East.
"How are your neighbors?" Natalie wondered.
"Um....I don't know. I don't know any of my neighbors."
We moved on from the subject and by the time I left the salon I felt light and bouncy and pranced down the sidewalk pretending not to secretly check out my new reflection in the storefronts. But there's one thing that will almost surely alter this sort of glib and self-absorbed mood and that is PIRG canvassers. I encountered one within a few blocks of the salon. A kid from the citizen organization Public Interest Research Group was standing down the street and I know he gripped his clipboard a little tighter when he saw me coming. No amount of eye-averting or false distraction on my part was going to keep him from posing whatever thorny question he felt obliged to ask.
The Village Voice calls these goodhearted civic-minded workers charity muggers. In New York there were charity muggers outside my work who would ask me, "Do you have a moment to help save the children of the world?" Except for the time I stopped to give one my parents' address since they actually do reserve lots of moments for saving the children of the world, I would say "No, I don't" without stopping. Which, GOOD LORD, sounds callous in writing.
I'd think, "Don't you all know you are on Fifth Avenue where stopping could result in injury?"
And that I believe is where the callousness stemmed from. Leaving work in New York was a uniquely bad time to be asked to stop, at least for me. I was usually in a rush or my mind was busy emptying out what I'd just done for the workday and filling up with what I wanted to personally achieve in the hours I still had before sleep. Right or wrong, in those moments I was self-absorbed and not focused on world issues. I'd also imagine myself stopping to explain to them that I, too, worked for a non-profit organization and was underpaid because my publishing company struggled financially, that I simply could not spare a donation right then. I'd wrestle briefly with my conscience and continue rushing to the 6 train.
Saturday's canvasser in Columbus wore a huge button on his coat emblazoned with a graphic of the Great Lakes. I smiled as I got closer and maintained eye contact while he politely inquired, "Excuse me, can you spare a minute to help Lake Erie?" I smiled ruefully and said, "No, sorry."
"Have a nice day!" He said as I passed.
"Thank you," I said over my should and then proceeded to wonder who I had apologized to. I decided I apologized to Lake Erie as well as to the children of the world who have been saved enough to inherit the earth and the dismal shape it's in. A fog settled into me and sunk fully into place while watching the local news in the living room. The Columbus news loves crime and seriously won't shut up for five minutes about all the horrible stuff happening locally, some of which takes place in my neighborhood.
In Old Towne East, stately stained glass windowed houses share corners with decrepit lots. It is a community in transition, which I believe means that of the neighborhood's residents, there's a wide range of both money in people's pockets and melatonin in people's skin. The first month I lived here I walked home at night a lot. I sensed that maybe it wasn't the BEST idea in the world and stopped listening to my iPod so as to be more alert. Bova told me to stop but I did it few more times until someone else told me stories involving kidnapping and an attempted break in: exhibits A and B of why my mother doesn't mind my having borrowed her car for weeks on end.
In New York there are hundreds of people around at any hour, day or night. There's so much going on and so many things to look at that "Oh, a crackwhore" is instantly followed by "That woman has her dog in her handbag" and "I think I'll buy a falafel sandwich." This is not so in smaller cities. I was dogsitting this weekend and while walking the dog yesterday I remembered my conversation with Natalie about my neighbors and I thought of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments get shuffled around and mean different things depending on whether you are Christian, Jewish, or Muslim and I'm certainly not literal enough to want to love all my neighbors just yet, but I would go out of my way not to bear false witness or covet their houses, wives, manservants, maidservants, oxen, and asses.
I'd actually prefer to just be friendly with them. I exchanged several "How's it going?"s and laughed when a kid on the street asked the dog's name.
"Her name's Karma," I told him.
"I better not pet her, she'll come back to get me."
Good one, kid. You're awesome.
I don't think that a universal code of conduct that may have been given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai is necessarily going to do anything about the people who really would like to do all that coveting, much the less the graver thou shalt nots of bodily harm as seen on the Columbus nightly news, but you gotta start somewhere. And maybe that's where the canvassers do come in.
Any perspective will reveal that a bowlcut shouldn't be that big of a deal but several people could testify that my immediate reaction was a fantasy involving the Anarchist Cookbook, a hardware store, a pipe bomb, and doing something DEFINITELY prohibited by the Ten Commandments. Natalie and I quickly struck up the sort of salon intimacy that usually makes me feel phony. For some reason, though, this time I yakked away with fluidity.
While Natalie washed my hair, we talked about Columbus and how I like living here. She asked where I lived in New York and I told her: the East Village and the Bronx. She also asked about Cincinnati. The client before me had also been from Cincinnati and told Natalie that there isn't much racism there. Ahem. I'm thinking that this client has either not spent much time outside her secluded monochromatic enclave in the last ten years or she had recently been cured of deaf-blindness, realized her hair looked like ass, and that's how she ended up in Natalie's chair that morning blabbing about how progressive Cincinnati is.
For 18 years I lived in the pleasant and mostly-white suburb of Hyde Park and for a year after that I lived downtown in historic and mostly-black neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine. I told Natalie it's a pretty segregated city and that race relations can be tense. She asked what Columbus neighborhood I live in and I told her Old Towne East.
"How are your neighbors?" Natalie wondered.
"Um....I don't know. I don't know any of my neighbors."
We moved on from the subject and by the time I left the salon I felt light and bouncy and pranced down the sidewalk pretending not to secretly check out my new reflection in the storefronts. But there's one thing that will almost surely alter this sort of glib and self-absorbed mood and that is PIRG canvassers. I encountered one within a few blocks of the salon. A kid from the citizen organization Public Interest Research Group was standing down the street and I know he gripped his clipboard a little tighter when he saw me coming. No amount of eye-averting or false distraction on my part was going to keep him from posing whatever thorny question he felt obliged to ask.
The Village Voice calls these goodhearted civic-minded workers charity muggers. In New York there were charity muggers outside my work who would ask me, "Do you have a moment to help save the children of the world?" Except for the time I stopped to give one my parents' address since they actually do reserve lots of moments for saving the children of the world, I would say "No, I don't" without stopping. Which, GOOD LORD, sounds callous in writing.
I'd think, "Don't you all know you are on Fifth Avenue where stopping could result in injury?"
And that I believe is where the callousness stemmed from. Leaving work in New York was a uniquely bad time to be asked to stop, at least for me. I was usually in a rush or my mind was busy emptying out what I'd just done for the workday and filling up with what I wanted to personally achieve in the hours I still had before sleep. Right or wrong, in those moments I was self-absorbed and not focused on world issues. I'd also imagine myself stopping to explain to them that I, too, worked for a non-profit organization and was underpaid because my publishing company struggled financially, that I simply could not spare a donation right then. I'd wrestle briefly with my conscience and continue rushing to the 6 train.
Saturday's canvasser in Columbus wore a huge button on his coat emblazoned with a graphic of the Great Lakes. I smiled as I got closer and maintained eye contact while he politely inquired, "Excuse me, can you spare a minute to help Lake Erie?" I smiled ruefully and said, "No, sorry."
"Have a nice day!" He said as I passed.
"Thank you," I said over my should and then proceeded to wonder who I had apologized to. I decided I apologized to Lake Erie as well as to the children of the world who have been saved enough to inherit the earth and the dismal shape it's in. A fog settled into me and sunk fully into place while watching the local news in the living room. The Columbus news loves crime and seriously won't shut up for five minutes about all the horrible stuff happening locally, some of which takes place in my neighborhood.
In Old Towne East, stately stained glass windowed houses share corners with decrepit lots. It is a community in transition, which I believe means that of the neighborhood's residents, there's a wide range of both money in people's pockets and melatonin in people's skin. The first month I lived here I walked home at night a lot. I sensed that maybe it wasn't the BEST idea in the world and stopped listening to my iPod so as to be more alert. Bova told me to stop but I did it few more times until someone else told me stories involving kidnapping and an attempted break in: exhibits A and B of why my mother doesn't mind my having borrowed her car for weeks on end.
In New York there are hundreds of people around at any hour, day or night. There's so much going on and so many things to look at that "Oh, a crackwhore" is instantly followed by "That woman has her dog in her handbag" and "I think I'll buy a falafel sandwich." This is not so in smaller cities. I was dogsitting this weekend and while walking the dog yesterday I remembered my conversation with Natalie about my neighbors and I thought of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments get shuffled around and mean different things depending on whether you are Christian, Jewish, or Muslim and I'm certainly not literal enough to want to love all my neighbors just yet, but I would go out of my way not to bear false witness or covet their houses, wives, manservants, maidservants, oxen, and asses.
I'd actually prefer to just be friendly with them. I exchanged several "How's it going?"s and laughed when a kid on the street asked the dog's name.
"Her name's Karma," I told him.
"I better not pet her, she'll come back to get me."
Good one, kid. You're awesome.
I don't think that a universal code of conduct that may have been given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai is necessarily going to do anything about the people who really would like to do all that coveting, much the less the graver thou shalt nots of bodily harm as seen on the Columbus nightly news, but you gotta start somewhere. And maybe that's where the canvassers do come in.
1.20.2006
COTA denistry clinic
On the three-hour bus trip from the airport to Tiquisate I read a book by Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination.
At one point I peeked over the shoulder to see what book the surgery resident sitting in front of me was reading. My reward for being curious was a glance into General Surgery Review and the following words jumping off the page: Abdominal Distention and Bloody Stools.
"Well, that was enough reality for that moment," I thought. "I think I'll just get back to seeing what Mr. Stevens was saying about poetry."
The first two times I came to Guatemala with Children of the Americas, I translated in the general clinic for nurse practitioners and doctors and had to re-examine how hardcore nurses are. Those ladies snapped on rubber gloves, give me a nod, and dutifully dug into the gnarliest, saddest, most gut-wrenching cases of disease and physical deterioration. I, on the other hand, faced the extreme moments fighting tears pooling in my eyes. Ultimately, I always exerted enough control to avoid insulting anyone or embarrassing myself.
This year I was assigned to work with the dentists, a group that traveled down from the University of Kentucky to extract teeth. Extract is such a vague word, however, really they were RIPPING teeth out. There were no gas masks and blissful unconscious states in this low-budget clinic; there were needles, novocaine, and pliers. And if I were a child - or let's be honest, who I am today - you would have had to club me over the head and dragged me into that room of piercing screams to get into my mouth.
The REASON for the dental visit, however, is that children in Guatemala evidently spend more time sucking on sugar cane and drinking soda than brushing so they end up with mouths full of rotting black stubs. It hurts, infection spreads, it's bad news. Enter the syringes and the shiny pliers. Six tables were set up in a auditorium separate from the hospital to try to prevent the screams from infecting the mood of the general populace. The kids came in by turn, passing the army guards with their fatigues and rifles at the door.
The kids listened to me explain that we'd stick a needle in their gums and inject them with something that tasted bad, that it would pinch, and that their mouth would go to sleep. I told them that they'd have to be very brave. Then a couple of giant strangers wrestled with the roots of their teeth while other giant strangers held them down. Traumatic, but with a good reason and positive result.
At one point I peeked over the shoulder to see what book the surgery resident sitting in front of me was reading. My reward for being curious was a glance into General Surgery Review and the following words jumping off the page: Abdominal Distention and Bloody Stools.
"Well, that was enough reality for that moment," I thought. "I think I'll just get back to seeing what Mr. Stevens was saying about poetry."
The first two times I came to Guatemala with Children of the Americas, I translated in the general clinic for nurse practitioners and doctors and had to re-examine how hardcore nurses are. Those ladies snapped on rubber gloves, give me a nod, and dutifully dug into the gnarliest, saddest, most gut-wrenching cases of disease and physical deterioration. I, on the other hand, faced the extreme moments fighting tears pooling in my eyes. Ultimately, I always exerted enough control to avoid insulting anyone or embarrassing myself.
This year I was assigned to work with the dentists, a group that traveled down from the University of Kentucky to extract teeth. Extract is such a vague word, however, really they were RIPPING teeth out. There were no gas masks and blissful unconscious states in this low-budget clinic; there were needles, novocaine, and pliers. And if I were a child - or let's be honest, who I am today - you would have had to club me over the head and dragged me into that room of piercing screams to get into my mouth.
The REASON for the dental visit, however, is that children in Guatemala evidently spend more time sucking on sugar cane and drinking soda than brushing so they end up with mouths full of rotting black stubs. It hurts, infection spreads, it's bad news. Enter the syringes and the shiny pliers. Six tables were set up in a auditorium separate from the hospital to try to prevent the screams from infecting the mood of the general populace. The kids came in by turn, passing the army guards with their fatigues and rifles at the door.
The kids listened to me explain that we'd stick a needle in their gums and inject them with something that tasted bad, that it would pinch, and that their mouth would go to sleep. I told them that they'd have to be very brave. Then a couple of giant strangers wrestled with the roots of their teeth while other giant strangers held them down. Traumatic, but with a good reason and positive result.
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