I made it!

I am here, in Antigua, safe and sound. I´m really sorry to all the people I wasn´t able to get in contact with before I left--I will be calling and e-mailing relentlessly soon, once I figure out how technology works. I bought a phone, too, so if by any chance anyone has the ability to call me, my number is (502) 4352.3252. I start work tomorrow! Wish me luck!

One of my all-time favorite poems

Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight

1

You scream, waking from a nightmare.

When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.

2

I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go down, I have stood by
as you told the flower, don't grow old,
don't die. Little Maud,

I would blow the flame out of your silver cup,
I would suck the rot from your fingernail,
I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light,
I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones,
I would help death escape through the little ribs of your body,
I would alchemize the ashes of your cradle back into wood,
I would let nothing of you go, ever,

until washerwomen
feel the clothes fall asleep in their hands,
and hens scratch their spell across hatchet blades,
and rats walk away from the cultures of the plague,
and iron twists weapons toward the true north,
and grease refuses to slide in the machinery of progress,
and men feel as free on earth as fleas on the bodies of men,
and lovers no longer whisper to the presence beside them in the
dark, O corpse-to-be ...

And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry,
this the nightmare you wake screaming from:
being forever
in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.

3

In a restaurant once, everyone
quietly eating, you clambered up
on my lap: to all
the mouthfuls rising toward
all the mouths, at the top of your voice
you cried
your one word, caca! caca! caca!
and each spoonful
stopped, a moment, in midair, in its withering
steam.

Yes,
you cling because
I, like you, only sooner
than you, will go down
the path of vanished alphabets,
the roadlessness
to the other side of the darkness,

your arms
like the shoes left behind,
like the adjectives in the halting speech
of old men,
which once could call up the lost nouns.

4
And you yourself,
some impossible Tuesday
in the year Two Thousand and Nine, will walk out
among the black stones
of the field, in the rain,

and the stones saying
over their one word, ci-g't, ci-g't, ci-g't,

and the raindrops
hitting you on the fontanel
over and over, and you standing there
unable to let them in.

5

If one day it happens
you find yourself with someone you love
in a cafe at one end
of the Pont Mirabeau, at the zinc bar
where white wine stands in upward opening glasses,

and if you commit then, as we did, the error
of thinking,
one day all this will only be memory,

learn,
as you stand
at this end of the bridge which arcs,
from love, you think, into enduring love,
learn to reach deeper
into the sorrows
to come – to touch
the almost imaginary bones
under the face, to hear under the laughter
the wind crying across the black stones. Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.

The still undanced cadence of vanishing.

6

In the light the moon
sends back, I can see in your eyes

the hand that waved once
in my father's eyes, a tiny kite
wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look:

and the angel
of all mortal things lets go the string.

7

Back you go, into your crib.

The last blackbird lights up his gold wings: farewell.
Your eyes close inside your head,
in sleep. Already
in your dreams the hours begin to sing.

Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight,
when I come back
we will go out together,
we will walk out together among
the ten thousand things,
each scratched too late with such knowledge, the wages
of dying is love.

from The Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell

And one of my sister and niece for good measure...

Today is...

...my last day at work. It's been almost three years...


"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." -Annie

Burn, baby, burn

My work had a lunch for me yesterday...my last day is Wednesday! Holy gaboly. I will miss this place and these wonderful people.

Many of you, dear readers, are in helping professions like I am. You are social workers, teachers, ministers, parents, volunteers. To all of you, I want to offer sympathy and warning. Two words: BURN OUT.

Maybe it won’t happen for you. I didn’t think it would for me, either. Even last October, I was fantastically happy with my work. I felt like I couldn’t create a more perfect job for myself if I tried.

My first warning: beware the promotion.

It was a whirlwind. First, I had to fire a woman I had tried to stick up for. I’m still getting over the feeling of being part of the hostility of the universe.

Then, I began to supervise 7 people and manage our program. The message I got from management was that our program was in a bad state, or work was in question, and it was up to me to fix things.

All the while, I still had my old job, managing a caseload of over 200 people, many of whom were dealing with hardships and trauma. Needless to say, I felt like I was lying face-down over a new pile of quicksand.

It wasn’t long before I desperately needed to get out. It hit me hard to feel such total loss of support, that our entire program (in which I had invested my heart and soul) was in question, that my work was no longer seen as important and valued, while witnessing so many people in need of help. Honestly, I haven’t had the same emotional or energy resources since.

Most of all, it stung me that even at my best, calling on all my dedication and energy and problem-solving skills, I couldn’t do a good enough job—even at taking care of myself well enough to keep going. I suppose most of us would like to believe we have complete control over the processes we go through. I’d like to believe that if I’m strong enough, or rational enough, or set good enough boundaries, or don’t think about myself too much, I can avoid these feelings. Well, ha! I say. Aren’t you funny!

My supervisor called it “vicarious traumatization.” It is very real. My advice: Watch out for yourselves! Make sure you’re in an environment with enough support and structure to cushion the hard work that you do. And if you do experience it, it’s not your fault! In my experience, the best thing you can do is accept it and allow it to change you. Then do what you need to do to restore your resources and your hope—we can’t afford to lose them.

Yay!

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-me-mayan2apr02,1,3915071.story

Frequently asked questions, continued...

Susan: "Where will you exercise and buy your gluten-free-taste-free bread that tastes like ass??"

I think I might have a lot on my mind these days...yesterday, I wore two different earrings all day. I recommend trying it. You'll notice that people look at you longer, and then the other person gets to have that "Should I mention it?" awkwardness. I think it says to the world, "Sure I might accessorize, but I don't think about it."