fifty two.

work

Speaking of calling out into the darkness...
I am still toiling in the same black hole.
This is my 3rd year of working with addicts and their children,and my compassion - oxygen for the deep spaceof addiction/recovery ‘support services' - is running low.

It’s just harder and harder to remain objective, to suspend judgement

or hold out hope because the faces change (and change and change)

but the song remains the same.

Most of the new residents I get are young.
They started using earlier and seem more hardened.

They have fewer real-life skills (cooking, cleaning, self-care, work experience, education),

more past-life damage and less desire to work for some sort of recovery.

One resident told me yesterday that, "Hard work is for stupid people".
Maybe she’s right.

The collective history of the women I work with is overwhelming: long-term use of meth,

crack, cocaine, heroin, methadone, alcohol, pot and prescription drugs,

lengthy criminal histories, numerous children, repeated entry into rehab centers,

jail or prison and little to no family support.

When they were still using, they made (and wasted) more money than I will ever see.

Sober life (which includes facing and paying for their criminal pasts, getting a 'real' job

and avoiding drug dealing/prostitution/theft) dictates that they will live

below the poverty line for years before they ever begin to experience basic economic stability. Even if they are successful in their recovery efforts (current success rate - 1 in 6),
limited funding for basic mental health care ensures that they will always struggle
with the issues that brought them to their addictions in the first place.
Maybe I am stupid people to continue working

toward changes that can barelybe attained and likely won’t be sustained….

It’s been 6 months since I drew the black cloth across this mirror,
six months since my best reader took his leave,
moving on to a place where all that can ever be written has long been known.
And though it wasn’t entirely that loss which stopped my writing,
it is thoughts of him that move me to write again.
I heard an owl late last night, calling out into the darkness again and again.
Low and mournful, yet steadily.
No answer came, but the call continued until I fell asleep.
I woke up thinking about my friend; how he might hear the voice of that owl
and come up with a tale about destiny or faith, how he might connect all the tiny dots
between fact and fantasy to create a story full of meaning and enlightenment.
And I guess that's what I keep struggling to accept - that life is basically about each of us
making the daily effort to connect those dots, no matter how fragile,
reaching for enlightenment by creating our own meaning.
Calling out into the darkness whether an answer comes or not.

Autumn Day

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Farewell Fossil Guy,
I am so grateful you graced my life.

a month of sundays

Give or take - that's what it's been since last time I posted here.
Likely enough time to write a short story
or complete a piece of art - though sadly - I have done neither.
Positively enough time to clean my house, weed my garden
and get rid of that outdated government peanut butter
that's been riding around in my car with me
since I pulled it at work several weeks ago.

But I have not done any of those things either... not one.

I have, however, given 5 tubes of blood
and had CT scans of my head and my heart.
I've also had a thyroid sonogram
and an echocardiogram of my heart.
I've done (and 'passed') a treadmill test,
had my mitral valve prolapse assessed
and peed the River Nile (thanks to Lasix - my new best fiend.)

After all that testing, the only thing I know for certain
is that doctors really need to hire better decorators.

Oh – and my brain is “normal”.



bs

You Don't Know What You Got Till It's Gone

I miss the possums.

After several long work-weeks spent slogging up a seething, toxic river
of combustible human agitation, I have begun to miss the old days, and to see
the beauty of simple problems like a basement full of razor-toothed rodents.
In fact – those moonlit May nights of releasing puffy babies into the wilderness
seem downright ambrosial to me now.
Along with the heat of summer, the chaos of change has descended on the Inferno.
There have been staff changes, resident changes, interior and exterior building
changes, and several changes in the surrounding neighborhood as well.
And while the interior chaos is most upsetting and intense, the arrival of
our new next-door neighbors has been running a close second.
They arrived en masse; a rank crew of stringy-haired nut jobs who cannot
seem to communicate without screaming. Adhering to a grueling daily schedule,
they rise around noon and gather to stoke the old home fire before vaporizing
until around suppertime. As dusk approaches, they slowly resurface, slipping out
of nearby storage sheds, shuffling across the back parking lot or climbing out
the rear windows of their studio apartments to rendezvous on the back porch.
Some carry pillows, others carry booze, but all of them arrive bearing armloads of junk,
which they pool and pore over while blaring 80’s rock.
They love their music.
They may be a little light in the selection department (if I ever hear Bob Seeger again -
in this, or any lifetime - I will immediately have my ears surgically removed),
but they’ve definitely got the volume thing goin’ on.
If a quick search of public records hadn’t revealed the pesky little issue of their lengthy
criminal histories, it might be easier to shrug off their most annoying behaviors.
But watching convicted felons (theft, domestic violence, assault, rape of a child,
possession…) act the fool is less than amusing when they’re engaging in such behavior uncomfortably close to a place full of vulnerable women and children.
In an attempt to assure the safety of all involved, the proper authorities have been
alerted, but the apartments in question are considered private property and what
goes on there is the sole business of those living there.
So, until a crime is committed (witnessed, reported and responded to
in a timely enough manner to result in an arrest), we will continue to be a captive
audience for some of the best bad street theater this town has to offer.
To date, all the wildest acts have included the same stupendously blasted woman.
One day she came staggering across the back lot, her long gray hair pasted to her back
and her pants totally unzipped (but held up the big bunch of belly hanging out front).
She disappeared into one of the apartments, but reappeared a while later,
apparently charged with taking out the trash. After hauling a plastic bag halfway
up the sidewalk, she began an argument with someone back on the porch - which
culminated in this edifying exchange: “Cuz I’m motherfuckin’ drunk, muuutherfuuucker.
So if you don’t take the motherfuckin’trash to the motherfuckin’ can, I’ma motherfuckin’
fuck you up, motherfucker.”
Upon hearing this, open-pants woman began ripping at the trash bag, scattering debris
all over the walkway. When a wooden drumstick tumbled out, she snapped it up and
started pounding out a complex drum solo on the fence and the raised edge of the walkway.
This may have triggered a flashback, because she paused, raised her head toward the porch
and said, “Remember that time – hey - that time when you thought Phil Collins was your father… but he wasn’t? Heh heh heh….”
Late in the week she was booted off the porch and stormed out into the back lot,
where she shuffled around screaming “Whores and thieves! Whores and thieves!”
and howling like a wounded animal.
Five minutes of that was as much as I could stand,
but I could still hear her yelling as I went back into my office.
The struggling women I work with have mixed feelings about all this drama.
They can (and do) laugh about it – but time away from that kind of life has given
them new eyes, and they are uncomfortable seeing their old behavior from the
other side of the fence.
And so am I.
It’s true that our neighbors are prime examples of who not to be,
but that angry wretch in the filthy clothes – she tugs at my heart.
What turn of fortune put her there, shoeless and bloated, offering herself as trade
for something to drink? "I know you like me, you just don't want to admit it.
But I'm fun! And if you got the wine, I'm so fine."
And what turn of fortune put me here, one step across that imaginary line
I have to believe separates us from them?

bs