A lot of transitions in this year as I never really settle into my role as a supervisor. I took a vacation to see my aunt and uncle in Bermuda, did a lot of artwork. The last journal involves the change into the New Year and a decision to finally give my notice. It occurred to me while reading that I really miss life and my brain before social media. It felt so much more authentic, solid, and focused. This long blog post is in three chapters.
The Job
I wrote less about the time on the streets this year. I brought on a couple of new streetworkers, some of which I had nightmares about. There was tension with the Executive Director. I wrote, " I am becoming increasingly disenchanted. I think whatever suggestions I give will be disregarded. She presents continued contradictions. Don't trust people and empower them. Don't let them take risks but make them grow. Birth control and AIDs policies. Don't feed into it. Obey everything I say but challenge me." My stressors were less about processing the gritty human reactions of the clients and more pressure about the numbers: keeping up the new engagements, bringing clients in for services, and dealing with the media who wanted to highlight the trauma for others to see. Keep trying to get right on the process of gaining trust, but slipping notches. I saw a lot of the FTW (fuck the world) tatoos as the summer evolved.
A story I remember to this day, while waiting for a train in Harvard Square. I listen to a man singing badly and playing an out of tune guitar. "Do you know the way to San Jose... Does anyone have any requests? Thousands of songs, people. I realize he only knows a couple of verses to each song, strumming along with his fingers emerging from dirty red gloves.
"Have you ever kissed the pavement?" Timmy Flynn asks me, with a large cut on his forehead, seeping blood everywhere. I see death in each drop spilled.
I wrote about watching two people vomit in one night, the imagery of the insane and the drunks. Later, I mentioned two times in two days watching people take a shit in public. Dirty, crippled, insane people with grimy wrinkles infused with street culture. I wondered what would it take to get clean.
The team I supervised had it's own issues, too. One of my reports was drunk at the Bell in Hand tavern and offered to buy a client a drink. This was after we were seen drinking there as a group, earlier in the year. I felt betrayed and angry, like someone had invalidated the honor of the legacy.
I was so unhappy. I wanted to leave so desperately and "escape with any number of excuses: going inpatient at DTU, going to a sanitorium, Tell them that I have to leave, that I can't do everything and I cannot belittle the little things I can do." Consumed with anger, regret, and grief. Crying silently behind my sunglasses, sad, tired, and alone. I was counting down the months to my departure 10 months in advance. I was so committed to leaving, yet completely scared to do it.
A trip: Bermuda
I went to experience the place again after quite a few summers when I was a child. My aunt, uncle, and cousins live there, on the family house on the hill. My grandparents moved there around the time my mother was an early teen, after living in the U.S. for a few years as British expatriates. As an English colony, Bermuda was a logical opportunity. My grandfather was an inventor who developed a pea sorting machine in England and did contract work in the U.S. When they moved to Bermuda, Rex Horsfield developed a special saw to cut coral, which saved the hand labor typically done by lower-wage black workers.
For some reason, I decided to take a trip to the island in February. It was cold then, something I hadn't realized in my planning. I joined my aunt and uncle in their house, where their sons lived close by. Before my grandparents died, my mother would bring us to the island while her mother went back to England in the summer. My grandfather, wheelchair bound and unable to speak from a stroke, had a full time caregiver. Roni was a cook, laundress, and assisted with all the chores of my grandfathers' daily life. care giver. She was black, and at the time in my childhood this was a foreign role.
I have idyllic memories of my grandparent's home. The story of the house is that my grandparents wanted to leave England around the time of the war. On our summer visits, we spent a lot of time at the beach, always using Lestoil to remove the small oil bits from our feet, a remnant of off-shore spills. We walked down the hill to see a small pony in a stone corral on one side and a small sailboat dock on the other. We swam off the dock a lot, diving down to find sea cucumbers on the bottom and using them as water guns against each other. We read incessantly, a weekly trip to the library. There was a huge rubber tree in the back yard, in which I climbed and read of ponies and gymkhana. My grandfather was often positioned below, looking up and smiling a crooked smile. There were lizards and huge frogs, the evening sound of tree peepers, and birds galore.
We returned for a wedding when I was an adolescent, where alcohol fueled a rowdy crowd. The guests dumped the bride and groom off the dock, and a very intoxicated cousin took us back across the island in a car and crashed on the way back to the wedding.
Despite the splurging on a helicopter ride from the top floor of a hotel in Cambridge to Logan, I found myself feeling out of sorts in the family dynamics. To gain some independence, I rented a bicycle to get around. In gray skies, I watched a group of locals throw their wellies in a game, and explored by walking and riding in all sorts of weather, covered with sea mist along an ocean causeway. In the end, I was glad to be home.
The Art
We had a new housemate who had a dog and a very ephemeral spirit. We called the place the "House of Soup." My best friend and I who shared the adjacent bedrooms on the second floor. continued our daily chats and sharing of lives. I went to one my housemate's cabin in Vermont for a visit, and was astounded that her crapper was a big hole with a rope hanging from a tree. One hung on to the rope with your naked butt over the side and let loose.
I wrote a lot about dreams this year, and articulated a common theme about living another life in the subconscious, dreaming of travel in other worlds. Sometimes I come back, or dream so heavily I wonder which life I am living in. In 1987, I wrote of a dream that sticks with me still. "Last night I dreamed of a kind and gentle spirit, a man who could teach me so much with the trust in his eyes. I felt myself dripping in, where I can open my heart and be vulnerable. He was broad shouldered, dark hard, dark skinned. He opened his arms when he looked at me. I felt a strong sense of hope. When I awoke I named him Steven. My therapist named him as a spirit guide. I saw him as a manifest of an elusive faith, a reassurance of the fact that I can exist in different ways."
I articulated the comfort in being alone. That I always appreciated the chance to think, write and read. To "wrap myself in the true love I have with the sun, water, and wind, trees, earth and rocks. I need this to envelop me like a swarm of fog surrounding myself in self love and reassurance."
I wrote of strength. "Not the strength of of a major crisis or sudden death. This is the strength of day to day, of facing each morning, pushing myself to do new things."
The journal that started in June carried through the year. I wrote on January 1st about dancing the night before. I wrote, "I am tired of living this truth. I want to be imagined, seduced by love of a planet in its natural form. My life is too short to be filled with hatred and depression. I am fille with love, laughter and good ideas. Quitting the job is a loss of identity and I need time to bumble about and find out out what its all about, to find out what I am all about. Good things take time. Remember the process."
Leaving the Job
I quit the next day. Then I started the painting project. a textural piece of only red and blue painted swirls, eyes cut out from portraits of the youth, and some 3D elements. Then, the date approached. "the last historic moment of the last historic Monday. Every moment feels sacred and a big relief. The details feel incredibly overwhelming, all the things to put together, pack away, tie up, organize. Yet also I feel a sense that the world is coming apart, creating loose ends. Dreaming of the ritual- burning my datebook to make an offering to the gods above and below. I am going on a journey and I need their help., guidance, the need to find the center within. The feeling strong, confident. I will go. Nothing will stop me from the compulsion of both writing and interacting. Amazing how much energy I feel at times. This sense of shutting a book on on a chapter of my life. How wonderful this freedom will be, how terrifying. Oxymorons of sadness and relief, self belief and self torture. I think I could have lasted longer in Boston if I had not had an intimate view of the landscape of dirt and scabs.
On the last day, I connected with a client who I hadn't seen for three years. I heard a rumor that the boss was going to hang the painting in her office. And, i wrote, "I am going TO BE ALIVE. No more nasty urban air, cigarettes, smoke. No more pop tarts, whole grain forever. I can use my body- run, jump, play, smile, explore, wander, and create a metamorphosis into a healthy being with a healthy brain. I am singing inside, glowing with this swollen heart. I am heading into my prime and I hope to walk with grace and the angels. I feel liquid, emotional, vulnerable. Looking forward to resting in bed after work hangover. It will all be over tomorrow. Walking out of work for the last time. Free.
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