Five years ago

if anybody actually reads this, and reads my Facebook, you just saw me post these song lyrics. but personally i doubt anybody's reading either one ... but i also have run out of places to go with this, so i'm gonna open a vein here where it ain't blood, it ain't even printer's ink anymore, it's just aether.

"I sit on a piano stool, and I make up songs for these men
Who come in with dust on their faces and mud on their boots
From these places that I'll never go.
I sleep in a rented bed, with a man who gives me
What little I get of the love that we'd like to imagine
Is left of the love that we never did know.
I slip out and scribble a note that reads like a million bucks.
It's a four cent nickel from a dime store thief
But it sure reads good

And If I could make it work in life
Like it works on paper.
If the love that I describe
Could be anything but words
Then I would wipe my eyes,
I'd dry this ink,
I'd trade my pen in on a pair of wings.
And I would - I would fly
If I could only make it work in life...

And at the end of every night, I add up the tips
That account for what might not come down to a thing
That amounts to a life, and the sum of it all
I'm afraid is less than what I know
I need to slip beneath the surface of my forgeries
Where I buried my hopes with sometimes my dreams
Still stir me and steal me away.
And I can still hear Dineh Bikeyah call
Just like when we were kids.
And I could tell you all about it in a song.
But Lord, I wish that
I could make it work in life
Like it works on paper.
If the love that I describe
Could be anything but words
Then I would wipe my eyes,
I'd dry this ink,
I'd trade my pen in on a pair of wings.
And I would fly!
If I could only make it work in life."
From Canticle of The Plains by Rich Mullins, Mitch McVicker, and Beaker, 1996
*"Dineh Bikeyah": the place of the people, a holy place, what Celtic spirituality would call a "thin place"

New Orleans is my Dineh Bikeyah. She was calling for me this night five years ago, seeking me, but could not find me because I was deep down. I submerged myself somewhere far away, so much that I was living out of boxes and a suitcase, half out of my car, and the other half in that "rented bed" with a man "who [gave] me what little I get of the love that we'd like to imagine is left of the love that we never did know." I'm fighting tears of shame again, that I was not there. That my Dineh Bikeyah had to be submerged deep down in that dirty water for me to finally come back.

But even now that I'm back ... "the sum of it all, I'm afraid, is less than what I know I would need to slip beneath the surface of my forgeries, where I buried my hopes, where sometimes my dreams still stir me and steal me away." I thought being a social worker was the one thing I could DO about it all, the way to work out a certain sort of redemption. But the past eight months, it's no redemption at all. Just another goddamned forgery. What kind of jackass idiot am I to think that there is so much as one single goddamned thing I could possibly do, myself? I left the real work to people like a certain young man who is the strongest, the most brave and true, that I know ... and the work wounded him, and any gentleness and warmth I could try to embrace him with, simply...becomes aether. What have I done?!? Is there anything left?

Can I overcome this shame, grief, hopelessness? Vanquish the sin of comparison of which I am so guilty? Return to the Dineh Bikeyah to help work out the WHOLE community's redemption? And oh yeah, also quit being so goddamned stuck on where I'm at in all of it? Only the Shadow knows.

lonely days, lonely nights

i am tired. "...tired of disparagement, criticism, of nihilism in short" (Albert Camus). tired of the recalcitrance of nature, of our human failures of action or vision or attention. tired of waking up every day to a world that seems not to want me. tired of being surrounded by so much noise yet at the end of it all alone. but still here i am, after 1am, typing this lament. i know...still i have much to be thankful for, and at least some of these things i lament will not be the way they are now interminably. some day i will "wake up in the morning to find i have somewhere exciting to go" (A Chorus Line), some day someone will choose to simply be, here, with me, for that day and the day after and the day after that...but this is not that day. this is just, tonight. "this is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?" (Bruce Springsteen)

Flash Lightning and the narrative

Someone I work with ... is the superhero Flash Lightning. In this once-upon-a-time, I am CloverGirl. Guess I'm supposed to be a kind of talisman, bringing luck, life, growth ... all while driving a souped-up New VW Beetle ... I can't help but smile. Yeah, maybe I'm just playing into someone's delusion - but then again, just maybe this is that person's narrative therapy. Good time for me to think hard about transferences and countertransference I suppose. But meanwhile ... Flash wants to protect everyone - including CloverGirl - but his one tool is lightning. Powerful yes, but all too ephemeral. I'm watching the lightning in the clouds to the north tonight, the vanguard of a midnight storm bringing fresh, cool air southward. The beauty of it stops me in my tracks, but it remains in the clouds far above where neither you nor I nor anyone else can stop it. Probably none but the very fastest camera could even capture the pale ghost of an impression of it, while a long exposure would capture the glow but none of that here-and-now, of the moment zing of it.

How like this psychotherapy work. I know I'm reading a lot more into that "narrative" than "Flash" does - or at least more than "Flash" is aware of. But it's there in the narrative. There are those who constantly verbalize the belief that these are patients of Sisyphus, that they will never get better, that they will never gain any "real" insight, that they are too far gone to the voices in their own heads and the weird fantastical invisible visions of their minds to grasp concepts in therapy. Plenty of times, I'll admit it, those people are probably right. But for all the moments that's all true, there are these moments - lightning arcs across the horizon, one or two or a handful of the people in the group "get it" - sometimes they can even see one another humanly past the misunderstanding and paranoia and distraction, just for a split second. They can't name it, but then again it's seldom I can even name that fluttering, shimmering, ephemeral butterfly's wing that starts to unfold when this caterpillar (my self) thinks the world might be coming to an end.

what is it with me and my blog...

Good: LSU and the Saints both won. The Saints even won handily!

Bad: Apparently I just cannot get it in gear to be where I know I need to be on Sunday mornings. I think this will change eventually ... but right now I'm feeling both really guilty about not being there, and really good about the fact that I'm making use of my Sundays to get laundry done.

Indifferent: I'm not sure, but I think maybe I should try cultivating the feeling that I just don't care about work, about what gets accomplished or not, who appreciates anything I say or do ... Yep. Picked a great time to pick up this book about how "Evil is boring. Cynicism is stupid. Despair is lazy. The truth is that the universe is inherently friendly. Life is a sublime game created for our amusement and illumination, and it always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it." (Rob Brezsny, Pronoia Is The Antidote For Paranoia)

Soooo ... um, I guess I don't need affirmation or companionship or self-sufficiency right now *confused look* ...? Something will work out. I think. Kinda has to, right?

Wake me up when September ends...

So here we are again in the middle of September. Why is it that so much has happened in September? I try and fail ... remember, and forget ... forgive, yet still rage ... I am insightful but still just as much an idiot as I was last year, four years ago, ten years ago ... just please don't back away just yet. Somebody's still not finished - I think ... ?

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
wake me up when September ends

like my father's come to pass
seven years has gone so fast
wake me up when September ends

here comes the rain again
falling from the stars
drenched in my pain again
becoming who we are

as my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
wake me up when September ends
-Green Day, 2005

you know it's quite bizarre...playing midwives to an egg!

Am I pushing? Am I really "trying too hard?" Am I "driven," and is that such a bad thing? I wish I knew. This must be where the "use of self" gets really thorny ... ok. Yeah. Hi, I'm me, and I'll be the midwife of your psyche for the next 45 minutes. How can that not be intimidating? I love the maieutic aspect of being a social worker, and it scares the crap out of me. I've been hearing that I must learn to be comfortable with and accept ambiguity, equanimity, the now and the not yet ... what does that really look like when I'm standing in front of, or sitting with, a bunch of folks whose tools for living are spread out on the table or floor in front of all of us, rusting, rotting, or broken, and I have the job of believing - and just maybe, on a good day, helping them to believe - that those tools can be repaired or replaced, that they can and will rebuild lives worth living, lives in which they just maybe could again love and work. Darnit, there I go being hopeful again!

"The Jesus of my journey will never say to me ... 'You were too reckless, you confided in Me too much, you trusted beyond reasonable limits, you hoped too much of Me. You should only have played with My word, 'Have confidence in Me,' rather than foolishly acting it out."
-Brennan Manning, Lion and Lamb

returning from the far side

ok, so I'm only returning from the "far side" just long enough to type on this ... and say that I apparently ain't much better of a blogger than I am a journal-keeper ... Yep, I'm a frustrated brainiac - by the time I get done with work, if I'm lucky I still have a couple brain cells to rub together long enough to get home and remember that I wanted to check e-mail! At least I've got a job, I know ... but geez. *sigh* oh well - good night, going back to the dark side of work - they have ... um ... sugarfree fat-free cake? Where the hell are my damn cookies!?!? lol