The Priest

I love this song by Joni Mitchell. It's one of those songs that's so raw it pierces right through me...longing for the sacred, a priest whose faith moves her, her internal struggles...and at the end her questions and her hope are side-by-side.


The priest sat in the airport bar
He was wearing his father's tie.
And his eyes looked into my eyes so far
Whenever the words ran dry.
Behind the lash and the circles blue
He looked as only a priest can, through--
And his eyes said, "Me," and his eyes said, "You."
And my eyes said, "Let us try."

He said, "You wouldn't like it here,
No it's no place you should share.
The roof is ripped with hurricanes
And the room is always bare.
I need the wind and I seek the cold."
He reached past the wine for my hand to hold.
And he saw me young, and he saw me old,
And he saw me sitting there.

Then he took his contradictions out
And he splashed them on my brow.
So which words was I then to doubt
When choosing what to vow?
Should I choose them all--should I make them mine,
The sermons, the hymns and the valentines?
And he asked for truth and he asked for time,
And he asked for only now.

Now the trials are trumpet scored.
Oh will we pass the test?
Or just as one loves more and more,
Will one love less and less?
Oh come let's run from this ring we're in,
Where the Christians clap and the Germans grin--
Saying, "Let them lose," crying, "Let them win,"
Oh make them both confess.

Shameless family pictures

Top Ten Pieces of Gym Trivia

Let's face it: I spend a lot of time at the gym. That doesn't mean that I'm in better shape, just that I'm slow. Since the most crowded gym month is fast approaching, I thought I'd share a few things I've picked up over the years.

10. Every gym has its Naked Woman In The Locker Room. She is usually over 40, unusually tall, and loves eye contact.

9. Every gym also has its Smelly Man On The Elliptical. Or sometimes the stairmaster. If he's smelly once, he will be smelly again. Nobody wants to make him feel bad, but be aware some odors can carry the distance of five or six ellipticals.

8. Don't be fooled by guest passes. You will be asked for your firstborn child and your car keys, and will only enter after gathering a barrel of honey from your neighborhood beehive.

7. If you notice yourself becoming angry, you are probably watching too much Fox News and CNN.

6. Farting during yoga class: you laugh, you get kicked out. Or so I've heard.

5. Personal trainers are model flirters. My favorite overheard quote: "Pain is temporary. Wedding pictures are forever."

4. Don't worry, everybody has dropped their ipods. Those things are sturdy.

3. Note the men who have perfected the weightlifting swagger. They travel in groups. Don't steal their machines. Also, if the freeweights are scattered all over the room, it's usually their fault.

2. Even at the gym, everybody fights over the closest parking spaces.

1. The best day to go: Super Bowl Sunday. It's way better than even Thanksgiving or Christmas. God Bless America!

She's already famous!

My sister and Coenn are in the Orange County Register today:

http://www.ocregister.com/photos/baby-chairs-nursing-2257355-room-center

I love this article.

"When Emilie was a baby, not yet talking, I was convinced that her deep, dark eyes could read right into my soul. She would stare at me with those eyes, and in my mind I would hear a low, gravelly voice say, 'Mommy, I am very disappointed in you.'

"I was surprised then, when she started to speak, and followed those particularly intense looks with words like 'cookie!'

"But that could just have been a lack of adequate vocabulary."

Client quote of the day:

"Life is gay." --14 year-old girl

I think we should structure mental health like we do medicine: a heirarchy of different levels of education and experience. Those with less education have to be supervised by someone with more. A national board keeps tabs on everyone, and requires us to be meticulous and to stay up-to-date on current research.

Social workers would be like Physician Assistants. We know a lot, but there are, shall we say, gaps in our eduction. Case in point: I'm reading an article on working with Hispanic immigrants in schools, looking for ideas. The article repeats three times: "The school system is presented as a natural support agent that is psychologically, culturally and geographically accessible for the delivery of cuturally competent mental health services."

Social work textbooks LOVE sentences like that. We love lists of broad discriptive words that say almost nothing. We call our assessments "biopsychosocials." Ha! This is as specific as the article gets: "In particular, school-based clinicians must incorporate into their treatment of Hispanic immigrant children an understanding of how multiple socio-environmental factors interact with individual and family dynamics within a specific ethnic-cultural context."

COME ON!

"If I could meet those Buenos Aires taxi drivers again, those Mexican farmers, I would say: 'The United States is a lot like your country. We're going through a rough time. We speak a lot of Spanish. And we're wondering how safe it is to keep our money in the bank.'

"How much deeper will the recession sink us? Can the new regime in Washington rescue us? No one can say.

"Residents of Latin America, generally speaking, have more experience living with that kind of uncertainty.

"There is a Spanish proverb that is resonating in my brain these days. It's a favorite of my mother, who lives in Guatemala, where the people know a thing or two about hard times.

"No hay mal que dure 100 anos, ni enfermo que lo aguante.

"Translation: There is no illness that lasts 100 years, and no sick person who could survive it anyway."

--Hector Tobar, "Coming Home to a New America," LA Times 12/5/08.

Sex, Drugs and...well no, just drugs.

[I love colors!]

I've got another book recommendation! My life is consumed with mental health right now and I'm loving it.

I finished reading a book called Listening to Prozac, written by a psychiatrist in the early '90s, who talks about how Prozac transformed psychiatry. There is so much to think about mood-altering drugs. It's a subject that comes up with most clients; it's something I've considered periodically for several years. Many people I know feel medication is one of the best things that ever happened to them. Many others see it as a last resort. I think there's still a lot of worry and stigma attached to it.

This book brings up many of the worries and existential questions I've had around mood-altering drugs, and systematically makes them seem, well, dated.

Many people think antidepressants are only for people who can't function well. This book is about high functioning patients who saw their lives transformed by Prozac. In many ways, what they experienced was a personality change: people who were timid, rigid, sensitive, socially anxious, or overly caretaking became relaxed, confident, assertive, and flexible.

The author found himself conflicted about these patients and spends a lot of time trying to understand why. What does it mean if a drug can alter personality, not just mood?

• Does Prozac, he wondered, make people conform more easily to social norms? Our society tends to reward "hyperthymic" personalities: people who are highly energetic, productive, cheerful, and social. It does not tend to reward more introspective, brooding, serious personality types. Maybe Prozac changes people into more socially acceptable beings, to the detriment of what can be gained by other types of character.
• In monkeys, high serotonin levels are associated with alphas. Maybe it's evolutionarily necessary for serotonin levels to vary. We can't all be alphas, after all.
• In some patients, he found himself a little disappointed by their personalities on Prozac. He found them a little less interesting, a little less textured. He admits this concern is "aesthetic rather than doctorly."
• Many people have argued that there may be something beneficial in depression. Perhaps depression forces people to slow down, rest, and face issues before they do more damage. Perhaps it is caused by psychic material ready to emerge and be processed. Maybe psychic pain is helpful, even necessary, to creativity. What if Prozac dulls us to necessary aspects of our being? What if it's a band-aid that keeps people from getting the heart of their real problems?

To counter these concerns, he uses both research and his own experience.

1. [I love lists!]
2. In many cases, people on Prozac say, "I feel more myself than ever." Now that is an interesting statement. What does that say about the nature of the self?
3. Many people are more able to access buried psychic material on Prozac. Many become more insightful. Many reach insights they find helpful the rest of their lives, even off medication.
4. Some research is showing that, in many people, mental health problems represent a lifelong, often degenerative disease that plays out in cycles or episodes. For example, "rapid cycling," a very hard-to-treat illness characterized by dramatic mood swings, seems to be the end stage of a lifelong illness similar to bipolar. Many people with depression and anxiety seem to experience them in episodes that get worse over a lifetime. Each episode probably does damage to the brain that then predisposes an individual to more episodes.
5. This is useful to think about when considering the potential side effects of medication. It is important to consider medication's effects, but depression also affects the brain and body in many ways we are just beginning to understand. Babies born to depressed mothers often show difficulties, as well as those born to medicated mothers.
6. The author is very swayed by experiments done on rhesus monkeys, who are (he says) our closest genetic relatives. Childhood trauma to the monkeys (like separation from caretakers, etc.) can produce many of the same personality distinctions of his patients: timidity, rigidity, rejection-sensitivity, aggression, etc. The right circumstances can buffer these traits, but traumatized monkeys respond to subsequent separation from the group with more depression, anxiety, and stress than non-traumatized monkeys. These reactions tended to get worse with each separation. They even did things like rocking, hair-pulling, and self-harm like many humans do. And they had lower serotonin levels.
7. These experiments suggest that many personality idiosyncracies may actually be the result of childhood traumas, even those passed down through generations through brain chemistry. He suggests that what Prozac might do is give people the brain chemistry of someone with a healthy childhood and resilient genes.
8. Many people become more creative on Prozac, also. He's a big believer in psychotherapy, self-awareness, and being in touch with all aspects of your being. But suggesting suffering is necessary becomes less convincing after reading this research. Not to mention that it's counter to the ethics of any doctor.

Medication is not the holy grail. And plenty of research suggests brain chemistry can also be altered by psychotherapy, exercise, all sorts of things. But sometimes people get further with medication than they get in years of therapy. This book dissolved my concerns and made me feel no qualms about supporting clients to try meds and trying them myself.

Well. Wouldn't you know.

I gave it one more try this morning: I saw a psychiatrist recommended by a friend. I walked half an hour through downtown D.C., got to his office by 8. He was nowhere to be found. He was an hour late (of all things, he's transitioning to electronic health records [ha!] and had had a scheduling meltdown) and was a mess in so many ways. After I finished laughing at God for whatever practical joke He was playing, we started talking.

In exactly four minutes, I forgave him. I only had to talk that long before he BLEW ME AWAY. Out of the freakin' water. It was beautiful. He was like, "Yep, I get it, so this is what's happening. Let me explain." I was like, "Good God, you DO get it!" He clearly knows his stuff, and to top it off, he treated me like an intelligent and competent human being.

He even "got it" when I told him about the other terrible psychiatrist I saw. She looked like she didn't know what to do with me. He was like, "That's funny--you seem pretty straightforward to me." "That's what I think!" I said. He said, "I bet it was like this: she saw depression, she saw anxiety, and neither of them was very bad. Cause you're highly educated and highly functional and successful. So she didn't know which one to treat you for, or whether to treat you." I was like, DING! And then he spouted off some amazing insights about where psychiatry has gone wrong and that the usual categories (unipolar vs. bipolar depression vs. anxiety) are off-base because mood cycles don't always work like that and I was like, "You got yourself a patient, buster!"

This is why I'm in mental health: it's such an amazing thing when it goes right.

So I've given up on getting therapy for the moment...but DOING therapy, now that's a whole other cookie.

(Cookie? I didn't want to say "ball game," cause I don't know enough about baseball to use it as a metaphor. And I like cookies.)

This weekend I indulged in a newly discovered slightly embarrassing pleasure: O Magazine. That thing is addictive. After several articles about believing in your passions and doing what's important instead of what's urgent, I emerged with wild ideas about taking cello lessons and saying things to myself like, "Yes, my career DOES make my heart sing!"

(Then glancing around to see if anyone heard me.)

Doing therapy is just plain FUN. Perhaps we are having a honeymoon period, therapy and I. Fine with me--I'll take all of those I can get. The things that can happen during an hour of supportive interaction are infinitely interesting to me. An adolescent girl can go from withdrawn to tearful. Someone telling me her history can move from rigid to relaxed. Shadows of mood come and go. A relationship builds. I get to devote myself to being with someone else, as much as I am able. Right now it's as close as I get to the sacred, I think.

Whatever that beast was that my supervisor called vicarious trauma, it has left me for now. It left a few sprains and bruises, and it is now my task to turn those into lessons and meaning. But that's my favorite thing to do. In the mean time, my commitment to social work is renewed. And I find myself in prayer that I will be as effective as I can be.

Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.

--Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

I have learned a lot from these others therapists. Since I'm about to be one, I've been paying attention, making mental notes of what to do and what not to do.

Maybe because of my work in domestic violence, maybe because of personal experience, maybe because of my specific education, I have become sensitized to things like condescension, pejorative language, attempts to re-define others' reality, all the many ways people can grasp for power. Therapists, I think, have an obligation to be hyper-aware of those dyamics so as to dominate as little as possible.

So that social worker I mentioned who talked about himself the whole time? He called me AT WORK the other day. He said he "felt bad" about how our visit went and how it ended, and he offered to take me to lunch. I e-mailed him with two main points: 1) I am shopping around for therapists because I think that's important, and I just felt like we weren't a good match. 2) I prioritize boundaries and I'm uncomfortable with him calling me at work, offering to take me to lunch, etc.

All of my interaction with him felt slightly invasive. He demanded a lot of personal information. He demanded payment even though I insisted he send me a bill. When I wanted to leave early, he didn't want to let me. I half-expected him to run out the door after me. We talked more about him than about me--I felt that he took what I said and re-interpreted it into his experience. Finding my work number (which I hadn't given him) and insisting I talk to him continued those invasive feelings.

His reply fascinates me. I am going to do a close reading. :)

Thanks, Robin for your reply and candidness.I apologize for phoning at work, and respect that.
His "Thanks" diffuses tension, extends an olive branch of sorts. He acknowledges that phoning at work was inappropriate, though he should have stopped there. He respects...what? That I am uncomfortable? That I set a boundary? Is this the first time he's been told these actions are not okay? Just like in our meeting, I feel that I have to watch him. Set rules for him.

I have worked with several MSWs and psychologists, and shopping for fit is taking care of yourself.
The logic of this sentence is hard to follow. He could be saying that he's been treated by various therapists, or that he has learned from other therapists that shopping around is a good idea. I think he's saying: 1) I'm not the first MSW he's treated. If that's what he means, this is a defensive move meant to lend him credibility. 2) He approves of "shopping for fit." He states this as if he were authority on the issue, not me.

I'm pleased to hear you're getting the support from others. I got off from your sharing your pain, anxieties, etc. and unburdening yourself, and I regret that.
Except for the whole "got off" comment (wtf??), this sentence conveys the intention of his contact. He is trying to assuage his own feelings of regret, and probably failure.

I sense working with you on two levels, as a therapist, and the second as younger-older colleagues.
NO NO NO! I did not pay you to be my colleague. I paid you to be my therapist. Dual relationships just scream ethics violations. And besides that, mentioning the "younger-older" descriptor is another move to establish his authority.

I was uncomfortable with the way we ended on Monday, and offered that lunch to reach a closure which seems to have come from the phone call and this e-mail.
Just like in our meeting, it's not about me. It's about him. He wants closure. He is uncomfortable. Now he tells me he feels better. We've paid little attention to how I feel. I got closure the moment I walked out of his office.

My best wishes for your important work, and you. I appreciate what you are doing.
I know his intentions are good, and all of this inappropriateness is not conscious. Unconscious blindness is in some ways the most dangerous kind. He has managed to tell me a lot about himself that I'm sure he didn't intend to.

As I start my work, I am grateful to him for giving me a renewed sense of vigilance in my self-awareness.

What's up, Doc?

There are a lot of bad therapists out there. Doctors too.

I've been mildly depressed/GAD lately (love that GAD), and I've been trying to find a primary care provider, therapist, psychiatrist, anybody who might be able to help. So far I've seen at least one of each, and each experience has been abysmal.

I accept the possibility that I might be a bit of a Negative Nancy. I realize I have high standards because 1) I'm fairly educated and can smell poor quality of care from miles away and 2) I have issues. But mostly 1). Yes?

My PCP barely let me get a word in. She literally made me take some lung test I'd never seen before (after I said, "I don't really want to do that," she stuck a plastic tube full of albuterol in my mouth). She made racial generalizations, and her full assessment was, "Well, you look good!"

After I told a psychiatrist that I was a therapist, she proceeded to explain in five-year-old terms what antidepressants are. "You see, they change the chemicals in your brain just a bit to help you feel better." Then she asked me three or four times how long ago I had panic attacks.

My favorite was a social worker I saw tonight who talked about himself half the time, topping it off with a 10-minute plug for his church. By the end I just said, "Yeah, I don't think we're a good fit. I'm gonna go now."

How hard can it be to find help that fits me? By now I'll settle for the basics: someone who listens and reflects, doesn't look utterly bewildered, validates, acts like s/he knows something about best practices, doesn't ask me rhetorical questions (Like, "So, have you worked out all that dad stuff?") or say things like, "See, the thing about Latina women is..."

I can say this: it motivates me to try and be the best clinician I can be. It's not about whether people want help; it's whether they can get it.

Best Onion Article Ever

LOS ANGELES—Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant had a typically solid performance from the field last night, scoring 25 points to propel his team to a holy shit, it's hard to believe these words are even gracing this page, but on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, the American people elected a black man to the office of the President of the United States.

Words really can't describe how…or what, or…. Wow.

Bryant, who got off to a slow start early, but managed to find his touch late in the third, incredible. A black president for a nation whose entire history has been haunted by the specter of slavery and plagued by racism since before its inception. That this happened in our lifetime is remarkable; that it happened within 50 years of a time when segregation was still considered an acceptable institution is astonishing. Absolutely astonishing. This is an achievement on par with the moon landing.

Lakers forward Lamar Odom also chipped in with 16 points and eight boards in the historic 349-162 Electoral College victory over the slumping Clippers, who are clearly missing the presence of former power forward Elton Brand—a Democrat, let alone a black Democrat, winning Indiana for the first time in 44 years? Florida? Ohio? Maybe even North goddamned Carolina? Are you fucking kidding? Is it absolutely confirmed that he won Virginia? Virginia, for crying out loud. Fucking crazy is what that is.

Said Lakers forward Barack Obama to the entire world on his team's victory: "Yes, we can."

Fucking right we can. We did! We really did! I don't mind telling you I spilled out into the street along with all my joyfully screaming neighbors and danced right there to whatever songs anybody wanted to sing, including—and I can't believe we actually did this, but compared to electing a black man to the presidency, absolutely nothing is unbelievable anymore—an impromptu version of "God Bless America," which is the least danceable song in the world, but fuck it, we sang and danced to "God Bless America," and I'll bet you anything that no one there ever meant it more.

Wow.

I bounced in a moon bounce, watched a pie-eating contest, hugged strangers, cried tears of joy, and somehow I'm still wearing my neon bracelet. I was lulled to sleep by the sound of honking horns and people banging on pots and pans in the streets. Is this what a revolution feels like?

To hear what people were saying in Chicago..."For the first time, I feel like I want to hang an American flag. I feel like this is my country. That we all matter." Wow. What a beautiful moment we get to live. I love the way the President-Elect said it: we have put our hands on the arc of history and bent it toward hope.

I love my job already. It's amazing. Social workers, lemme tell you, these sorts of things do exist:

-Reasonable pay
-Reasonable working hours (9-4:30 and never on call!)
-Good benefits
-Nice people
-Support! Other clinicians to discuss cases with, case managers available, paid supervision, a boss who keeps telling you not to take on too much, binders full of help for the LCSW exam...
-A free day off whenever you want to go holiday shopping!

If this isn't heaven, I don't know what.

After a year of whirlwind and transition, in the midst my profound inner disorientation, I knew this could go one of two ways: 1) I could end up not loving it and continue to question my judgment and my place in this world or 2) I could love it and feel like the last year had served a good purpose. I'm beginning to feel like the latter may actually become my reality.

Robin in Rockville

Phew! Well this last month I traveled Guatemala, Chicago, North Carolina, Richmond, Washington D.C., then back to Richmond, then back to D.C. I teetered on the edge of LOCA but things are starting to settle down within and without. I have an address! It's a basement apartment complete with a mattress on the floor...things are looking up! And it's about three blocks away from...get this...POLLO CAMPERO!!!

My address is in Silver Spring MD, but I am working in Rockville MD. I am thrilled about my job, and plan to stay put here for a while. I really recommend that whole staying put thing.

One of my friends suggested I keep my blog and call it "Robo in Rockville." I love that! It may not have the same ring or international intrigue, but it's got alliteration on its side. I think I'll keep the same url just to make things easier. So if you've been reading, please keep reading!

Goodbye, Guate

I spent my last week in Guatemala traveling with my good friend Jenny, who came to visit me all the way from North Carolina. We went to the ruins at Tikal in the north, and Lake Atitlan in the west. I had written a bunch of comments to describe my pictures, but now I can't find them on shutterfly...sigh! I will try to add them back in sometime soon. But in the meantime...

Here are my pictures!

As long as I can remember, like most of us, I have always been fascinated by relationships. I keep thinking about that book on relationships I mentioned earlier: Getting the Love You Want: A guide for couples. It is really wonderful.

Psychoanalysts have long said that we tend to choose partners who resemble our caretakers from childhood. This is potentially good, but can also trigger past wounds. The author of the guide says yes that´s often true, and for very good reason: the psyche is trying to re-create the childhood environment so that it can heal whatever wounds are still leftover.

So, he says, whatever you find yourself asking for repeatedly from your parter--listen to that. It´s probably something you didn´t get in childhood. You can use those messages to heal yourself.

But, he also says, listen to whatever your partner asks from you. It´s probably something you haven´t fully developed in yourself, and developing it will make you a more whole person.

He thinks if partners devote themselves to satisfying each others´ needs, they will simultaneously become more whole people and heal each other deeply.

I just love that. Do you love that? It makes so much sense and is so beautiful and positive and simple.

There are many things I´ll miss about Guatemala. Like today. I must be having a good hair day. As I was walking down the street, I passed a couple men talking to each other, and one of them stops and says, "Qué mujer, ¿no?" In other words, "What a woman!" Hahaha I love it.

Then ten minutes later, some little guy says in English, "Hi! You are very pretty."

We should say things like that out loud every time we think them. Can you imagine? "Hi! Nice job. You look great."

I also enjoy having lots of free time to read scandalous things about Sarah Palin. All of the bad press on her is beginning to renew my faith in the general American public.

I have noticed about myself that my outrage has a certain trajectory. As things go from good to acceptable to bad, I get uncomfortable and then mad and then outraged. But once they get bad enough, my sense of humor kicks in and I float into a Zen-like but involuntary detachment. The rape kit thing was that kicker for me.

The way rape enters into the public domain always interests me. Talking to survivors, it seems to me that there is a huge disconnect between the extremely personal experience of rape and public discourse about it, which makes life for survivors an uphill battle in a way that cannot be underestimated. I don´t think our society as a whole understands that battle. Rape kits are just one example. The things themselves are ghastly and painful. Why would the chief of police and the governor think victims should pay for them? Where does that come from? It serves, like so many things, as a re-victimization.

What I hate even more is that fact that many who are pro-life, such as John McCain, support allowing abortion for cases of rape and incest, or when pregnancy threatens a woman´s life. I get to experience first-hand how that plays out, because those are the laws in Guatemala and most of Mexico.

As it turns out, proving rape and/or incest is so difficult, time-consuming and dangerous as to prove the law useless. Virtually no legal abortions occur after rape. This is one of those dangerous things that looks like good intention, but ends up harming those it wishes to protect. What does still occur at sobering rates are scary and grotesque incidents of women trying to get abortions anyway. They are victims of the law. If you want to protect rape victims, let them get abortions without having to defend themselves.

And how do we define pregnancy as dangerous to a woman´s life? ALL pregnancies are potentially dangerous to a woman´s life. All pregnancies increase a woman´s chances of diabetes, hypertension, anemia, calcium deficiency, birth complications, postpartum depression and psychosis, poverty and domestic violence just to name a few. If we force her to carry her baby to term, we are forcing her to walk into a quagmire of risk.

Then of course follows the trickier question. What is rape? What is incest? We instinctively think of one end of the spectrum, I think: child molestation, women in emergency rooms. Luckily these are instances in which it is still considered humane to allow abortions. But rape is a spectrum, and is constantly being re-defined in law books. We get into dangerous territory of trying to regulate sex and health.

We need a more nuanced discussion of these issues. I´ll go ahead and say it--we need Obama.

the world is on fire
it´s more than I can handle
down to the water, I try to bring my share
try to bring more
more than I can handle
bring it to the table
bring what I am able
-Sarah McLachlan

Cambia esa cara de seria
esa cara de intelectual, de enciclopedia
que te voy a inyectar con la bacteria
pa´que des vueltas como machina de feria!
--Calle 13

(Change that serious face
the face of an intellectual, of an encyclopedia
I´m going to inject you with bacteria
so you do flips like a ferris wheel!)

(okay so something is lost in translation there)

Our friend the NY Times

I realize most of you reading this are probably voting for Obama anyway, but please read this.

New blog requested

From Susan, a very funny friend:

"Listen sister, I know you're busy, but that David Foster Wallace thing is freakin' me out...can you throw up some pictures of your laundry or a poem about the joys of modern-day air travel?

Thanks!"

Yay people still read my blog!

David Foster Wallace...

David Foster Wallace died Friday night of suicide at the age of 46. How terribly, incomprehensibly sad.

I didn't know him as well as others at Pomona, but from what I can see, his will be a rich and long-lasting legacy.

"But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death." --DFW

May he rest in peace.

"Pre-rush-hour, post-rain-shower, stillness seeping upwards like steam..."

I am more emotional these days. Well, more acutely so.

This is a beautiful time for me. A grand time. Staring out into possibility, and in into silence. Each moment letting go into the next. Living in the prayer in between.

I sat on my neighbor's roof, watching the moon and the clouds surround the Agua volcano. Every day they are different. I sent out my admiration. I heard back:

"Your plans aren't what give you your next moment. I am."

I remember reading a little Heidegger in college, his painstaking analysis of the words for being in German. Being as coming-into-being. Being as becoming. Being as going-out-of-being. I remember a good friend once telling me about love, "It's not just loving who a person is. It's loving their becoming."

Nearing the end of the Pan-American road

My adorable apartment, and the Agua volcano.

The volcanoes Fuego (spouting smoke!!) and Acatenango, which I can also see from my apartment's terrace.

The view from my terrace.

Well.....

So you know that whole "Robo in Guate" thing? Yeah well it's going to end much sooner than I planned. About a year sooner, actually. I have one more month here. My last day of work is October 3rd, and I will leave Guate around the 8th.

It's kind of a long story....

Basically, I got the strong, consistent message from my spirit: "This isn't what I want."

Every time I say, "Well, okay then!" to that inner voice, everything in me thanks me. It's really amazing. Usually my heart will tell me what it wants and doesn't want, if I stop trying to argue with it. And now that I have listened to it, I feel like a whole new person. Vitality has returned to me. I can enjoy this city and each moment I have in it. I swear the world has more color. My heart feels lighter. It's like the stars aligned inside my soul.

What will become of this blog, I do not know...in the mean time, I'm just going to write whatever is going on in my head and heart.

Where will I go next? Is a great question. My heart says, "Somewhere in the general vicinity of Richmond, Virginia." :)

Who? Me.

I re-took the Myers-Briggs personality test (thanks, Facebook) yesterday (thanks, free time). Turns out my personality has changed! I am now an INFP. Googling myself, I find I am an idealist and a healer. So far so good. This site has my favorite description:

INFP: The Idealist

The INFP is a dreamy, imaginitive, idealist, capable of finding the good in anything or anyone, even something as foul as Newark, New Jersey. INFPs are sometimes dangerous to the well-being of society as a whole, as they are prone to adopting subversive and destructive ideologies like "The world should be fair," "People should treat one another well," and "You know, 'Friends' is a really, really stupid television show."

These irrational thought patterns may sometimes cause INFPs to run off and join the circus, the Resistance, or the Rebellion, where they tend to do well in any position requiring excellent hand-eye coordination or mastery of the Force.

COMPATIBILITY: INFPs and ISTJs generally exhibit a natural predator/prey relationship, which, though it might appear harsh and cruel from the outside, is all part of the natural cycle of life. In fact, were it not for the predation of the ISTJ, the population of INFPs would soon grow to unsustainable levels, overwhelming the ability of their ecological niche to support them.

Famous idealists include that girl in your sixth-grade homeroom who got the teacher fired for saying that girls aren't good at math; that guy in the cubicle next to yours who got the manager fired for saying that women don't make good employees; and Anais Nin.

Guest writer: John Mayer

No I'm not color blind;
I know the world is black and white.
Try to keep an open mind,
but...I just can't sleep on this tonight.

Stop this train.
I want to get off and go home again.
I can't take the speed it's moving in.
I know I can't,
But honestly, will someone stop this train?

Don't know how else to say it: don't want to see my parents go.
One generation's length away
From fighting life out on my own.

Stop this train.
I want to get off and go home again.
I can't take the speed it's moving in.
I know I can't, but honestly, won't someone stop this train.

Had a talk with my old man,
Said help me understand.
He said turn 68, you'll renegotiate.
Don't stop this train,
Don't for a minute change the place you're in.
Don't think I couldn't ever understand.
I tried my hand,
John, honestly, we'll never stop this train.

Once in a while, when it's good,
It'll feel like it should.
And they're all still around,
And they're still safe and sound,
And you don't miss a thing
'til you cry when you're driving away in the dark...

Singing, Stop this train.
I want to get off and go home again.
I can't take this speed it's moving in.
I know I can't,
Cause now I see I'll never stop this train.

A couple more

Happiness is...

Nicole and Coenn

Daddy and daughters

Look at that little face.

Here I am, in California. The evening is cool and cloudless. I spent the day with my sister and nieces, venturing to Toys-R-Us and trying to imitate Wall-E as precisely as possible. Coenn is beautiful and healthy, out of the NICU and growing fast. Ella is an expert in pirates and dinosaurs, and showers me with compliments as we do puzzles together. "You're really good at this!" She says.

Jason was with me for a week, and is now preparing to move to Virginia for his biochemistry program. He'll be essentially doing the first year of med school. I am so excited for him. His hard work is finally paying off.

I don't know what I did to deserve this life. But thank You. Thank You for the love all over my it. For my beautiful family and friends. For Jason, my oasis of sanity and peace and goodness.

It's funny how in such profound joy, I find my heart a little nervous, pleading, Please don't go away! Please let all this joy stick around!

A lesson in that old spiritual discipline of being-in-the-moment, I suppose. One psychologist I read described mental health as "the ability to relax when all is well."

"The opposite of fear is faith."

Careful What You Read

My 4´11¨ sister gave birth to a 9lb baby yesterday!!!! Hooray for Coenn Jayce Romero!

And I fly home tomorrow! Yay! Please wish me safe travels.

My musings for the day...

When I was in college, I had a few panic attacks that were, I think, partially triggered by reading too many postmodern literary theorists.

Now I´m having a bit of a spiritual crisis about what happened to the Inka.

I´m reading 1491, a book about what the Americas were like before the arrival of the Europeans, and how colonization went down. Apparently a ton of stuff has been discovered recently, and is still being discovered all the time. What we learned in school (which isn´t much) is just plain wrong.

Some anthropologists are estimating that there were as many as 110 million people in the Americas before Columbus arrived...way more than in China or India. The middle of Mexico alone had more people than all of Europe. And yet somehow, every single civilization was eventually taken over by Europe. The Inkan empire was by far the largest one on Earth at the time. It was simply massive. Hundreds of thousands of people.

It seems that what destroyed them wasn´t European technology or ingenuity. The people of the Americas were in many ways much healthier than Europeans, fantastic at cultivating resources, and had formidable technology of their own. What killed them was disease. From what I understand, in about three years smallpox cut the Inkan population in half. In half! The same thing happened in North America, by some hepatitis-type disease: in five years, the civilizations on the east coast were nearly wiped out. Many diseases spread through the Americas before Europeans even saw them. That means white people were discovering places that seemed like deserted wilderness, because everyone had already been killed off. In about a century, disease killed 1/5 of the people on Earth. Until recently, most people had thought the Americas were sparsely populated and little developed. That´s just not the case.

I´ve never been one to lose faith over the why-do-bad-things-happen-to-good-people question. To me, it seems plausible that the cosmos might not work in a way that makes any rational sense to us, in terms of cause and effect. But so much of the world´s population dying off in a few years, to be forgotten or re-interpreted? How do we make sense of that? What were they thinking as their entire world disappeared?

Lots of people seem to say that human history is made of civilizations rising, fighting for dominance, and diminishing. Some people lose, some people win. The perspectives of those who win are the ones that stick around. The Mayans believed that every so often the gods destroyed the Earth, and many of their elaborate rituals and sacrifices were asking, ¨Please let us stick around a little longer.¨ I would say my heart asks for the same thing.

Pictures of Copan!

I managed to steal pictures from Veronica's camera--check them out!

On that whole self-love thing

I remembered another of yoga guru Ti Harmony´s suggestions. He used to encourage us to say to ourselves: ¨I love you I love you I love you,¨ all throughout our poses. Especially the tough ones, which often made us snicker. Usually I thought to myself, ¨You sound too much like a yoga guru right now, Ti Tree Harmony.¨

But I tried it the other day. After yoga, as I tried to meditate, I said to myself, Self, I love you I love you I love you.

¨Ha! Listen to you,¨ my mind said, on cue. ¨Sucker for that New Age touchy-feely bull-crap.¨ (bull-crap? Honestly?)

So I answered, just to prove a point, I love you too, cynical critical ego-voice.

That made me get into it. Actually yeah, I do. You keep me real. You keep me discerning, C.C.E.V.

¨You´ve got too much time on your hands. But...thanks.¨

I was on a roll now, so I just kept going. I thought about my occasional discontent and anxiety. I love you too, discontent/anxiety. I know better now where you come from. You just want to be safe, to be liked. You worry and criticize because you are the force in me that´s constantly trying to improve.

I have to say, I recommend it. C.C.E.V. didn´t say so, but I felt it blushing. Wrapping itself up in the compliments like a warm blanket. I suddenly felt mysteriously, wholly at ease. So this must be what all that self-love mumbo jumbo is about.

(Mumbo jumbo? Seriously?)

How living in Guatemala may help your self-esteem

If you need a little confidence booster, you might try walking down one of these cobblestone streets, preferably while wearing accessories. The number of flatters will be directly proportional to how many accessories you´re wearing. Each earring doubles them. A long necklace quadruples them. A watch doesn´t count. You will soon start noticing strange hissing and kissing noises (I can only describe it as ¨Ch! Ch!¨ or ¨Ts! Ts!¨), or cars slowing and honking, their drivers staring at you with big goofy grins. My personal favorite is when a man says a long, ¨Hola,¨ then as you pass and ignore him answers with a sad, ¨¡Adios!¨

I was walking back to my apartment yesterday, carrying armfuls of groceries. As I pass them, I hear two men say to each other, ¨Ay, que hermosa...¡que hermosa! Es extranjera.¨ (Ay, how pretty, how pretty! She´s a foreigner.) I couldn´t suppress a smile. I remember my host mom in Spain saying she was sad the day she stopped getting harassed.

Hey now, little speedyhead

There's no one left to take the lead,
But I tell you and you can see
We're closer now than light years to go.
Pick up here and chase the ride
The river empties to the tide
Fall into the ocean.

I never get tired of that song.

I just got back from the Copan ruins, this enormous mass of Mayan ruins just over the Honduran border. Most of the visible ones date from 550-800 A.D. A.D.! Just having to say that sounds like just so freakishly long ago.

My camera, which dates back to two years ago, did not return with me. If someone managed to lift it, I hope they are enjoying a blossoming photography career or feeding their children with the money.

My good friend Veronica is here with me during the month of July. It makes me so happy I could kiss the Universe.

The man I supervise is leaving at the end of July. We just hired someone new, Mario, and he starts tomorrow. Two more weeks of work before I come home.

I killed the spider. I'm sorry. I apologized to it. But it was getting bigger and blacker and braver. I admit I kind of miss it.

Things I have learned so far in Guatemala:

-When it comes to hiring, it comes down to personality, for real. And whether you show up to the interview, and avoid telling the interviewers they are pretty. Never underestimate the power of a first impression.

-It is best not to trust a mustache.

-There is one thing more annoying than mosquitoes. It's called my neighborhood housefly. These suckers win the prize by landing on my face at all hours of the night. And they never seem to learn, "Oh, hey, if I land on her, she's going to try to kill me."

-Alone time is good, loved-ones time is better.

-Now I have brain farts in both languages. I like to think that's an improvement.

-Eating large amounts of fresh fruit may just make you invincible. It is my cure-all for:
1) All illnesses
2) Fatigue
3) Depression/anxiety
4) PMS
5) That half-dead feeling you get from sitting in front of the computer too long
6) Boredom
7) Cravings for a big rich chocolate brownie which you have searched for in vain
8) The frustrated search for life's meaning

-Being too nice really is a bad idea, especially at work.

-A surprising number of adorable children across the hemisphere have learned to say, "Give me a dollar."

I have got to find the river
Bergamot and vetiver
Run through my head and fall away
Leave the road and memorize
This life that pass before my eyes
All of this is coming your way.

My take on abortion

My agency doesn´t provide abortions or abortion information...but that doesn´t mean it´s not an issue for us. Every once in a while, someone will call or show up at our door in desperation.

In Guatemala, it´s illegal to get an abortion unless a woman can prove she was raped, or unless the pregnancy threatens her life. I think the laws are similar in Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras, and Mexico. In Nicaragua and El Salvador, abortion is always illegal even if it threatens the woman´s life. Latin America´s ¨maternal death¨ rates are quite high due to women dying from pregnancy complications and botched abortions.

It fascinates me how passionate people get against abortion. It´s a huge issue when considering political candidates and Supreme Court justices. I would guess that hundreds of people march outside schools and clinics protesting each year. Do we get that passionate about, say, health care reform or environmental protection? What is it about abortion that gets into our hearts?

It´s the potential of it all. We infuse into those tiny cells all the wonder and possibility of human life. Yes, it´s a tiny life, but it´s a life. Isn´t that sacred in itself? Who knows what those cells might become? Shouldn´t we give them a chance? It´s a beautiful intention, I think. Wanting every life to have its chance. It feels less controlling...like you´re giving that little life up to God, up to the forces of the universe. If I let it be killed, I´m playing God.

But if I don´t...I´m not? I´m not so sure.

Even though it can´t ask us to be born, we imagine that someday it will have wanted to be. It´s logical. After all, most of us who have been born are glad of it. Those who aren´t are considered ill.

What if we treated every living person that way? Every child and adult...what if we still saw in them all the possibility and sanctity of their life? What if we wished for them the realization of their full potential? What if we believed preserving that life was worth punishing laws, picket signs, sacrifice, and pivotal political decisions?

After delivery, never again will that little being be imbued with such perfection and potential. Never again will so many people speak out to protect its vulnerability. An unborn child doesn´t require anything of us. A born child does. It taxes our ¨system.¨ It might be a Marxist. An immigrant. A terrorist. It might be annoying. It might ask us for money. Once it has a context, a personality; once it has made mistakes; once we disagree with it; once it asks us to share our resources, we abandon it. We tell it, ¨Your life is your responsibility.¨

If we truly believed pro-life arguments, we might...
-Work our butts off to give everyone quality, affordable medical care.
-Be more outraged at human rights abuses all over the world.
-Push for policies that support people struggling through lives of poverty.
-Give all the resources we could to those without enough food, education, money, etc.
-Care equally for the woman having an abortion as for her pregnancy.

I´m convinced we wouldn´t allow a ¨free market¨ without more accountability, and without a bigger safety net. And obviously, violence would be moot.

But we don´t...at least not wholeheartedly. All over the world, all the time, we are implicitly saying, Some people have to die for the sake of others. We call it realism, capitalism, darwinism, ¨nature,¨ scarcity, national security, politics. Every day of our lives, we are playing God. Abortion is no different.

El Padre

He always answers the phone by telling the date. "July 4th," he says.

"Sorry I didn't call you last week," I say to him. "I was out of town, and then we had a power outage one day...it was a busy week!"

I tell him an anecdote about the power outage all over the country. Within a couple hours, theories were spreading about impending earthquakes, volcano eruptions, military coups...by dark we had power again.

"You're such a charmer," he tells me. "You could sell sand to the Arabs."

We laugh. Together.

Very slowly, we have been building a kind of relationship. When I moved to North Carolina, he was able to come visit me twice. We started calling more. I began noticing that sometimes, we were having genuine conversations. And sometimes, I honestly enjoyed talking to him.

Please watch this

God bless You Tube

Monterrico

Helloooooo blog!

I missed you too!!

Last weekend we had Monday off--it was a holiday called ¨The Day of the Army.¨ That´s interesting in itself...considering Guatemala´s history. The activist group NISGUA managed to get the traditional parade canceled, and threw its own parade to commemorate people who died during the war.

I went with my friend Marialos to a beach on the Pacific coast in a town called Monterrico, about two hours away. Might as well have some fun, right? ...right?




I have more pictures!


Coming down from the highlands, the landscape changes dramatically--it turns lush and green and HOT and humid. The beaches are black sand, which is cool to see but makes it even hotter. The water is warm, with one heck of an undertow (hence no one was swimming). I expected the town to be touristy, but it´s not really. It´s still pretty poor, with dirt roads, a few comedores, and a few hotels. Most of the tourists there seemed to be from Guatemala.


I apologize that I did not take pictures of the man in a home-made thong groaning in pleasure in a communal pool. Needless to say, we left that hostel (I am suddenly aware that I´m not 21 anymore) and found a dreamy family-owned place with hammocks and our own room. My favorite part was drinking a coconut through a straw. And the sunbathing turtle.

My Apartment

I love my apartment. Love it. It makes all the difference in the world to have a place that feels like home, where I can relax.

I have a terrace with a view of all three volcanoes. Sometimes at night, I can see one of them spurting fire.

My tv has cable, and every night at 8pm E! shows, ¨Battle of the Hollywood Hotties.¨

There is a washing machine!! I don´t have to carry my clothes across town.

I also have discovered I have a medium-sized red spider living in my shower. My question for the day is: to kill it or not to kill it.

After all, it is red. And from what I can see, that´s almost never good. Plus, I´ve had this weird lump of pain (lump o´pain, for short) on my forehead for over a week now, which I think might be a spider bite.

On the other hand, it doesn´t really deserve to be killed. It´s just trying to live a normal spider life. Killing it would be very un-buddha of me.

But you know how spiders are. You think you´re coexisting amicably, and then every once in a while you eat one in your sleep.

Although, it may be killing other things with which I would not coexist amicably. Also, it seems to be appropriately afraid of me. When I get in the shower, it cowers into its little hole. This brings me pleasure.

I´m leaning toward not killing it.

Jason´s visit

Pictures of our trip to the lake!

A few of my favorite moments:

As we both lay in our serene room on the lake, he reading his Esquire and me my Rough Guide to Guatemala, we noticed a prehistoric-sized mosquito buzzing around us. Both of us immediately turned from lazy loungers to focused hunters. Over and over we both sprung up, got quiet, looked frantically, and clapped at it. Over and over we were unsuccessful. When it flew away, we´d go back to our reading, knowing it was bound to come back and planning our attack. Finally it came close again. We both stood up, following it as it flew higher. Jason clapped at it suddenly, showed me his hand, and inside was the little sucker. My first reaction was to yell, ¨Kiss me!¨

Our last night, we walked through the main part of town looking for a restaurant. It was after dark. We walked by a bank with three heavily armed guards hanging out outside. As we pass by, Jason greets them with, ¨Buenas noches!¨ The three guys looked so excited and all three of them answer back, ¨Buenas noches! You too! Have a great night!¨

Jason went out with me and our educator, Haroldo, into ¨the field.¨ They did interviews with guys on the street. Haroldo was totally impressed with Jason. ¨I´ve never seen a non-Latino guy be so great at creating trust. He´s got a great character.¨ Then he adds, ¨Is he like that in English?¨

Travel plans!

I have made my travel plans for August!
Wahoo!

I fly back to North Carolina July 31st. I´ll be there until August 5th, when I fly to California. I fly back to North Carolina August 26th, and will leave August 30th or 31st for Guatemala.

NC: July31st-Aug. 5th, Aug.26th-30th. CA: Aug. 5th-26th.

P.S. Jason will be in CA with me August 5th-12th.

If any of you, dear readers, will be in either of those places at any of those times, and want to hang out, PLEASE let me know! I will also begin tracking you down very soon. Six more weeks!

Longest post ever

There is so much in my head right now, I need to start writing some of it down.

And my man is coming tomorrow!! So I might not write for a little while...

***
Always, I am asking myself the same questions: how could this happen? In a place so rich with resources, beauty and history, what causes all this poverty and suffering?

I had dinner with a girl named Lorena this past weekend. She grew up in Guatemala, left to start her Ph.D. in Sweden, and has just returned. When she found out where I was from, she sighed. ¨Oh God, I´m with three Americans,¨ she said.

¨Hey!¨ One of us chimed in. ¨We´re not all bad! There are good and bad people everywhere.¨

¨Yes, but they´re not all from countries who use them to destroy other countries.¨

So naturally, my first reaction was, Now this is someone I want to get to know.

***
There´s an editorial in the New York Times today called Politics and Hunger. It lists several of the reasons for the current global food crisis, and blames the U.S. for many of them, calling on it to do more for poorer countries.

Right now there are 85 comments on the editorial. They all have different slants, but the majority of them have a common thread: deflecting responsibility.

¨I am so sick of the prevalent ´blame-America´ attitude. Why not blame the oil rich Arab nations who are responsible for the reeling Western economies?¨ After all, oil companies are charging more simply because they can. Where is their moral conscience?

¨A good part of the blame should be laid right at the door of the poor countries themselves.¨ After all, their populations are growing at an unsustainable rate. They are corrupt. They are not participating in ¨responsible self-governance.¨ Civil strife and war keep them from producing more.

Then there´s the Darwinist: ¨We're taught that it's an awful thing to say or think, but I choose quality of life for my loved ones over quantity of people whom I do not know. If I knew them, I would want to help them, of course. But I do not know them. Nature is terrible, brutal, heartless, and we need it to stay that way. Because if it's not, then it's not nature any more.¨

***
I picked Lorena´s sharp, fiery, irreverent, uber-educated brain for hours. The whole time, my own brain was short-circuiting from everything she taught me.

Lorena disdains well-intentioned academics, who think they can help anyone with their words. She rolls her eyes at anyone who ever uses the word ´empire´ except in a Star Wars movie. She railed on people who proudly theorize about power because ¨they read one chapter of Foucault.¨ ¨Discourse is not enough, ¨ she said. ¨Discourse like that keeps you from being with people and helping them.¨

On several points, I think Lorena would agree with the Times comments. Yes, she would say, nothing is simple. On that subject, we have lot to learn. Yes, she would say, everyone bears responsibility. She criticizes Guatemala as much as she does the U.S.

***
1981-1983 were the absolute worst years of the civil war in Guatemala. Lorena was born during those years. People our age here have grown up in their country´s worst times. They watched the ideology and hope of the revolution fail. They are well acquainted with injustice, with power misused.

During that time, somehow the U.S. seemed to have plenty of resources. We sent dollars, equipment, and people to aid the oppressive regime in Guatemala, without much concern for how it would be used, or whether it would be repaid, or whether it would be better used in our own country. Jerry Falwell sent members of his church--armed, trained manpower--to fight with the Guatemalan military.

When it comes to humanitarian aid (within our country and throughout the world), however, we are quick to hoard our resources. Suddenly ¨scarcity¨ is the word of choice. We´re very concerned that our charity will not be ¨sustainable.¨ We are quick to find other countries´ faults.

***
The more I learn, the deeper and more complex things seem to be. I also see more clearly, though, how interconnected the world is. It´s not possible to be autonomous. People affect each other. Countries affect each other. In the act of trying to protect our loved ones alone, we cause others´ suffering. We depend on each other for survival--I think about world trade, or the World Bank, or outsourcing, or oil, or immigrant labor, or the UN, or the WHO just to scratch the surface.

We have the opportunity to think of the world as more and more unified--one big ¨us¨ with no ¨them.¨ And, well, it looks like were gonna have to.

Good people, good times

Sometimes people surprise me with their goodness.

I dropped a Q50 note in the gym the other day, and one of the guys who works there picked it up and brought it to me. He did that even though I consistently try to give off a ¨Don´t mess with me!¨ vibe.

I was walking to work yesterday, and a construction worker looked down at me from his ladder. I brace myself for a whistle or an, ¨Hola, Princesa!¨ but instead he just nods and says, ¨Have a good day!¨

I went into the field yesterday with Haroldo, to a town called San Martin Jilotepeque about two hours from Antigua. We talked to men who had attended our reproductive health workshops. Men actually talked to me about their perspectives on contraceptives and STIs. I was really struck by one man who visibly lit up talking about his wife and his son and how he wants to be a responsible father.

When I was riding the bus back by myself, there was this older man sitting in front of me with a corduroy vest and a suit jacket. We didn´t exchange words or even glances, but when he got up to leave, he got this big, sincere, gold-toothed grin on his face, grabbed my hand like he was going to thumb-wrestle me, and wished me well.

Recommended reading:

If you want a good book about Guatemala, I am completely enthralled by Silence on the Mountain. I´m reading it a second time. It´s even better the second time. It taught me a lot about the world, including my own country.

The house I´m in has an impressive book collection. I picked one up I´d heard of in school but not read. It´s an old classic about relationships. Because I am a therapy nerd, I got sucked in and read the whole thing! It is HANDS DOWN the most helpful book I´ve ever seen about relationships (though it´s definitely biased toward opposite-sex couples), once you get past the title: Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples.

Pictures!

Pictures of Chichi and the mansion!

A poem I´m still working on.

Unpacking my suitcase from my last trip home,
only the smell is new. A week´s worth of unknown musk.
I tap my lamp and lunge for the bed, feeling full-grown
And still. Stillness becomes zippers, bags and dust,
Brushes neatly wrapped, boots bleeding odor
From half-pounds of coffee, blending like prayer shawls.
Sweaters spill over wire shelves, reach for the floor.
Almost enough light shows me nearly white walls.

My nerves settle into space so known
I have forgotten it. It greets me again.
My eye catches pictures of other places, other loves:
My love and me. My loves, far away.
My loves, this moment. Clothes become piles,
Become drawers, one after another.

Somehow, I feel I´m meant to be here,
Even though I don´t know where I am,
Or if I will always be missing someone,
Or if I would rather be holding my niece in a mall by the beach,
Or staring into eyes who love our history.
Everywhere I pile and pack, fold and unfold.
I track in dirt and clean it. My tea leaves circle and sink.
I wish for what I might become.

Daniel got a hold of the camera

The Monkey Mind

It´s interesting to see what happens when you´re alone with your brain for long periods of time. That´s the boat I´m in at the moment. It´s been a while since I´ve been there--usually I am adept at over-busying myself.

At the same time, I´ve been trying to learn how to meditate. It all started with that blasted Eat, Pray, Love. That´s how it starts. First the Oprah book, then the dabbling in buddhism for westerners. Next thing you know you´re buying The Bhagavad Gita and spiritual audiocassettes. Or maybe that´s just me.

In any case, all this has conspired to make me even more aware than usual of my ¨monkey mind.¨ I may or may not recommend it.

There is a certain parental amusement in observing its ups and and downs, the way it latches on to things, the way it´s constantly evaluating, planning, analyzing, interpreting. I notice that my brain pretty much constantly writes its own self-help book. There´s a commentary running through the background of my life: ¨How am I doing? How can I be doing better? There must be something I should be doing better. Oh yes, there´s one. ¨ If I´m not doing something edifying, I feel I must be thinking something edifying. The plight of the overachiever, I suppose. I would love to have more moments that were totally devoid of meaning. Where I wasn´t thinking, ¨What does this say about me? Where will this lead?¨

So far, awareness and meditation aren´t quite doing it for me. I want someone greater than myself involved...to listen to, to open myself to. When I try to do that, more happens for me.

Sometimes I feel like I get messages. I get a lot of, ¨Just wait. Just listen. Wait to hear from Me.¨
And, ¨Open yourself to the possibility that you don´t know crap.¨ In so many words.
Sometimes I get the kind of messages I´m looking for. Like, ¨Will you forgive yourself for being young and inexperienced and not knowing what you´re doing?¨
But more often it´s more like, ¨All those things you think, they´re yours. You made them up. Suspend them. I´ve got better things to tell you. And show you.¨

Updates

It has been quite a week. I am house-sitting a MANSION this week and next, while its owner (the founder of my agency) is away. Pictures to follow...

On Sunday, I traveled to a city about 2 hours away called Chichicastenango. It´s in the western highlands, near Lake Atitlan, and has a large Mayan population. A woman from my work lives there and showed us around. She took us to an enormous market, a couple churches, and a hillside where people were performing Mayan rituals. It was amazing. Pictures to follow...

On Tuesday, I traveled by myself to Guatemala City for a meeting with USAID...in Spanish. Gulp! The city is huge--about 1/4 of Guatemala´s population lives there. Everything went very smoothly, and I got to see a couple museums to boot. The highlight was a textile museum which displayed traditional woven clothing, told you which city it was from, and what language is spoken there. There are about 23 languages spoken in this country (which is the size of Tennessee)! I didn´t bring my camera to that one. Just my emergency contact numbers and my sense of adventure.

The price of petroleum is hitting the country hard. Today our educator couldn´t come to the office. He lives in Guatemala City, and said a lot of people are striking and transportation isn´t running. A bus driver was killed last night. People are trying to get the government to subsidize transportation costs. There was one day our pure water truck didn´t come by, because he couldn´t afford the gasoline. Food prices have risen sharply. It seems to me the rising cost of petroleum is the only thing that will motivate us to develop alternative sources of energy. In the meantime, though, poorer countries like this will be hit hardest.

On the bright side, I found this wonderful tuk-tuk driver I use whenever I need to get around town. His name is Dario. He´s this sweet middle-aged man, who charges me less than the going rate, and makes sure I get in the door safely. Sometimes he wears a suit and tie. One night it was pouring down rain, and he opened the little flap for me. ¨Buenas noches!¨ he said, ¨Lots of rain today, no?¨ It´s people like that, you know?

Diaspora (p.s. do even I know what that means?)

Tengo tu antídoto... Pal' que no tiene identidad
Somos idénticos... Pal' que llegó sin avisar
Tengo tu antílico... Para los que ya no están, para los que estás, y los que vienen

I have your antidote...for those without identity
We are identical...those who arrived without warning
I have your antílico*...for those who are not here,
those who are here, and those who are coming
(antílico: a mix between the words "antídoto" (antidote) and "Etílico" (ethylic))

One thing we know about the world: people are always moving and migrating. And that is especially evident in Antigua, Guatemala.

Scene: I have dinner with a group of people who live here. Three of us are Americans who moved down here. Two are native Guatemalans. One is Guatemalan but grew up the States. One is Latvian. We get to talking about Guatemalan history and food. An American girl chimes in: ¨We have lots of great tamales in the States, cause there are Mexicans everywhere.¨ The room falls silent.

Scene: I go searching for an apartment. When I find one I like, the owner tells me she would rather have a foreigner living there. ¨You can´t trust Guatemalans,¨ she says. ¨They don´t pay.¨ Then she pauses and says, ¨Course, most of them can´t pay anyway.¨ Housing prices are so high here precisely because there are enough foreigners who can afford them. People native to Antigua are being pushed out. Or, they take in students like me to help pay their rent.

Scene: A woman who is connected to my agency just lost her husband. He migrated to the States, crossed the desert on foot, and died somewhere in Arizona. She just received his papers in the mail.

Scene: Several American tourists have told me they ¨envy¨ me. One I met while eating dinner at a local restaurant. This middle-aged man strikes up a conversation with me. I tell him about the agency I work for. ¨That is so great!¨ He says. ¨Not enough people are working in family planning. I´ve been traveling for a while, and it seems to me the biggest problem here is population growth. How are we gonna get it through their heads that they have to have fewer children, and they have to send those children to school?¨ He even suggested (albeit a little guiltily) that improving health care without controlling the population might be a bad idea.

Next thing I know, I have a lot to say, too. I tell him I think pejorative language like that is what got Guatemala here in the first place. Not to mention that it´s quite possibly the root of all evil.

Through the eyes of anthropology (which I now wish I had studied!), what a place to be. All these people from all over the world, at once experiencing, consuming, and changing Guatemalan culture. And the Guatemalans trying to go on with their lives. Being pushed out by high prices. Packaging what attracts tourists, playing pre-recorded marimba music, opening up their homes to us, weaving their traditional clothing for us to buy. The municipal police putting a stop to anything that seems ¨too indigenous.¨ Women with food on their heads and babies on their backs, wearing their best woven clothing and headdresses on weekends when there are more tourists. Elderly couples speaking Mayan languages. Younger people wearing Levi´s and cat-calling in English.

-Dice... Pasaporte!

-Ha donde va por ahi, luminario, en esta noche tan fea?
-Usted no se anima?
-Mire como 'sta el camino. 'Ta negaiiiito!
-No hombre, como, el camino es lo de menos
-Lo importante es que haiga bronca

-(He) says... Passport!
-Where you goin', luminary, in this night so ugly?
-Don't you dare?
-See how the road is. It's terrible!
-No man, how (can you say that), the road is the least of it
-What matters is for there to be a fight in you
-Calle 13