I was so overheated tonight at work
that I actually thought I might faint.
After a full day of sun beating down on it,
our building was hotter than the hinges of hell,
and every moment I spent in my coffin of an office
seemed to last for five hundred years.
Right before I left for the night, I went out back
to check the walkways and lock the rear door.
Standing in the darkness, wishing for a breeze,
I could hear somebody running in the alley.
Whoever it was stopped for a second and then
yelled out very loudly, "Hey, hey - I just gotta know -
what's a man gotta do to get some tenderness in this world?"
Friday, June 30, 2006
Summertime, and the livin' is easy
Woah.
I just flew in from the coast, and man, are my arms tired.
Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck…
But seriously folks,
after working 8 of the last 10 night shifts, I am ready for a break.
It has been in the low 90’s here the past few days, so being in my “office”
(an airless box, sulking about midsection in a steaming heap
we’ll call The Inferno Building) has been absolute misery.
Summer has arrived in the Pacific Northwest, and the people are free
after eight long months beneath heavy cloud cover.
The spray-on tanners and the light bed users are out in force,
flaunting their head start in the sea of marshmallows and dough balls
now flooding the streets and everybody seems a little crazed by the sun.
From the front window of The Inferno, two floors up, I can see much of
what happens down on Main Street.
Little brown twigs in neon floss ignore the crosswalks, darting between cars
in schools of five or six, while pillowy mothers bunch together at the light,
spilling out of their tank tops as they wait for permission to walk.
Warmer weather has brought some complications to the women here at The In.
Sobriety is a winter sport; summer means fun – and fun means partying.
Our little ‘Safe and Sober Living Environment’ shares a small city block
with five bars, three rooming houses and a tattoo parlor, and all of them are
jumping by the time I get to work.
Live music pours from the pub down the street, mixing with the nightly
screaming from the tweakers who live next door. The tattoo guys have begun
to use the alley out back as their private living room, where they charcobroil
huge slabs of meat and share endless joints while their reggae music blares.
Across the street at the motorcycle bar smokers stand out front, their drinks in hand,
calling out to anyone who happens to pass by.
In the eye of this storm, struggling to stay clean, the women I work with are edgy.
There are spats over laundry, cigarettes and missing food.
The bathroom stinks of mildew and the kitchen fan won’t work.
Superheated air makes the babies sweat and fuss, and the phone –
always a bone of contention - has brought a plague of minor infractions
for ignoring the ten-minute rule.
I love what I am doing - don’t get me wrong - but sometimes I feel consumed
by the atmosphere I’m in.
I was just sitting at my desk, typing this out and gloating over the fact that I am
actually OFF for an entire day - when my phone rang. The other caseworker at
The Inferno has had a medical emergency and I am going back in less than 4 hours.
Shit.
Stay tuned....
bs
I just flew in from the coast, and man, are my arms tired.
Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck…
But seriously folks,
after working 8 of the last 10 night shifts, I am ready for a break.
It has been in the low 90’s here the past few days, so being in my “office”
(an airless box, sulking about midsection in a steaming heap
we’ll call The Inferno Building) has been absolute misery.
Summer has arrived in the Pacific Northwest, and the people are free
after eight long months beneath heavy cloud cover.
The spray-on tanners and the light bed users are out in force,
flaunting their head start in the sea of marshmallows and dough balls
now flooding the streets and everybody seems a little crazed by the sun.
From the front window of The Inferno, two floors up, I can see much of
what happens down on Main Street.
Little brown twigs in neon floss ignore the crosswalks, darting between cars
in schools of five or six, while pillowy mothers bunch together at the light,
spilling out of their tank tops as they wait for permission to walk.
Warmer weather has brought some complications to the women here at The In.
Sobriety is a winter sport; summer means fun – and fun means partying.
Our little ‘Safe and Sober Living Environment’ shares a small city block
with five bars, three rooming houses and a tattoo parlor, and all of them are
jumping by the time I get to work.
Live music pours from the pub down the street, mixing with the nightly
screaming from the tweakers who live next door. The tattoo guys have begun
to use the alley out back as their private living room, where they charcobroil
huge slabs of meat and share endless joints while their reggae music blares.
Across the street at the motorcycle bar smokers stand out front, their drinks in hand,
calling out to anyone who happens to pass by.
In the eye of this storm, struggling to stay clean, the women I work with are edgy.
There are spats over laundry, cigarettes and missing food.
The bathroom stinks of mildew and the kitchen fan won’t work.
Superheated air makes the babies sweat and fuss, and the phone –
always a bone of contention - has brought a plague of minor infractions
for ignoring the ten-minute rule.
I love what I am doing - don’t get me wrong - but sometimes I feel consumed
by the atmosphere I’m in.
I was just sitting at my desk, typing this out and gloating over the fact that I am
actually OFF for an entire day - when my phone rang. The other caseworker at
The Inferno has had a medical emergency and I am going back in less than 4 hours.
Shit.
Stay tuned....
bs
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Father's Day
3. If I'm walking the streets of a city
covering every square inch of the continent
all its lights out
and empty of people,
even then
you are there
If I'm walking the streets
overwhelmed with this love for the living
I will still be a blizzard at sea
Since you left me at eight I have always been lonely
star-far from the person right next to me, but
closer to me than my bones you
you are there
from 'Flight" by Franz Wright
I am missing you today Papa,
as I do nearly every day.
bs
Thursday, June 15, 2006
This, that and then some
Having no great fascination of my own to blather about,
I think I'll make do today with a few secondhand stories
and the ubiquitous complaint (or two).
Stolen moment Numero Uno:
So - you think you can dance?
Late last Friday night, my sister T. was home alone.
Walking into her dark kitchen to put a cup in the sink, she saw an eerie,
glowing light skittering around outside. As she moved toward the window
to get a better look, the light moved jerkily up off the ground, seeming to
'swish' sideways a bit and then settle closer to the ground. It was an odd
greenish glowing orb, and moved continually - out around the front of
her house and then off toward the side and her back door.
"Oh my god," she said aloud, "Mother was right - there ARE aliens!"
And then ran to make sure her back door was locked.
Just as she got to the door, she heard a noise that made the hair stand up
on the back of her neck. "Whssssshhhhh. Whsssssshhhhh."
Intending to test the lock, she was reaching silently for the doorknob
when a loud voice cried out, "GOT 'IM!"
In a panic, she flipped on the outside light to find the kid from next door,
standing in her carport - holding a chicken.
Turns out that one of her neighbor's many kids is a senior in high school,
and had recieved a most unusual invitation to the prom: a chicken, with a
glow-in-the-dark bracelet around its neck bearing a note that read
'Don't be chicken, go to the prom with me'. The invitation, chicken attached,
had escaped and flapped all over - turning my sister's neighborhood into
Area 51 for a brief period of time.
Dunno if the invite was a success or not, but one has to applaud the effort.
Numero Dos - How do you say, "squeal like a pig?"
My son and some friends went camping, ending up in a remote
and sparsely occupied campground. Late their first night,
they built a fire and sat around it talking and telling tales.
After an hour or so, they began to be aware of little sounds,
off in the brush beyond the light of their fire.
The noises were intermittent, and so vague it was impossible to tell
what they might be, but bothersome enough that finally, one of the guys
turned from the fire and yelled, "Helloooo?"
Suddenly, lights blared on, illuminating 3 men sitting on ATVs.
"Oh man," my son's friend J said to me later, "It was like that movie."
"There was spookytooth boy and three-finger man and knife-wielding, torn shirt dude."
One of the men asked directions to some place in the area, and J said to him,
"Uh, that's hard to explain - you probably wouldn't be able find it in the dark."
The men mumbled and grunted, and then one replied, "You can find
all kinds of things....in the dark."
There was a long, awful silence, and then the three men slowly backed
into the blackness - and were gone.
"What did you do?" I asked my son, "You didn't stay there did you?"
"Well, we sat there for a minute, waiting for the banjo music to start,"
my son said. "And then we just hauled ass outta there."
"We're not stupid mom -we've all seen the movie"
And now - a complaint:
When, oh when can we stop hearing about celebrity babies????
Even when I'm minding my own, albeit it mundane business,
up pops this info on my hotmail site: "Woody Harrelson completes
"GoddessTrilogy with birth of 3rd daughter."
Enough.
Please.
STOP.
bs
I think I'll make do today with a few secondhand stories
and the ubiquitous complaint (or two).
Stolen moment Numero Uno:
So - you think you can dance?
Late last Friday night, my sister T. was home alone.
Walking into her dark kitchen to put a cup in the sink, she saw an eerie,
glowing light skittering around outside. As she moved toward the window
to get a better look, the light moved jerkily up off the ground, seeming to
'swish' sideways a bit and then settle closer to the ground. It was an odd
greenish glowing orb, and moved continually - out around the front of
her house and then off toward the side and her back door.
"Oh my god," she said aloud, "Mother was right - there ARE aliens!"
And then ran to make sure her back door was locked.
Just as she got to the door, she heard a noise that made the hair stand up
on the back of her neck. "Whssssshhhhh. Whsssssshhhhh."
Intending to test the lock, she was reaching silently for the doorknob
when a loud voice cried out, "GOT 'IM!"
In a panic, she flipped on the outside light to find the kid from next door,
standing in her carport - holding a chicken.
Turns out that one of her neighbor's many kids is a senior in high school,
and had recieved a most unusual invitation to the prom: a chicken, with a
glow-in-the-dark bracelet around its neck bearing a note that read
'Don't be chicken, go to the prom with me'. The invitation, chicken attached,
had escaped and flapped all over - turning my sister's neighborhood into
Area 51 for a brief period of time.
Dunno if the invite was a success or not, but one has to applaud the effort.
Numero Dos - How do you say, "squeal like a pig?"
My son and some friends went camping, ending up in a remote
and sparsely occupied campground. Late their first night,
they built a fire and sat around it talking and telling tales.
After an hour or so, they began to be aware of little sounds,
off in the brush beyond the light of their fire.
The noises were intermittent, and so vague it was impossible to tell
what they might be, but bothersome enough that finally, one of the guys
turned from the fire and yelled, "Helloooo?"
Suddenly, lights blared on, illuminating 3 men sitting on ATVs.
"Oh man," my son's friend J said to me later, "It was like that movie."
"There was spookytooth boy and three-finger man and knife-wielding, torn shirt dude."
One of the men asked directions to some place in the area, and J said to him,
"Uh, that's hard to explain - you probably wouldn't be able find it in the dark."
The men mumbled and grunted, and then one replied, "You can find
all kinds of things....in the dark."
There was a long, awful silence, and then the three men slowly backed
into the blackness - and were gone.
"What did you do?" I asked my son, "You didn't stay there did you?"
"Well, we sat there for a minute, waiting for the banjo music to start,"
my son said. "And then we just hauled ass outta there."
"We're not stupid mom -we've all seen the movie"
And now - a complaint:
When, oh when can we stop hearing about celebrity babies????
Even when I'm minding my own, albeit it mundane business,
up pops this info on my hotmail site: "Woody Harrelson completes
"GoddessTrilogy with birth of 3rd daughter."
Enough.
Please.
STOP.
bs
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
pasta al dental
I went to lunch with an old friend Monday -
we ate at a cool little diner called Irises.
The food was wonderful, the ambience comfortable
and the decor entertainingly eclectic.
As we sat there, eating our smoked mozzarella pasta
and curried chicken salads, conversing quietly and
and soaking up the atmosphere, an orthodontic convention
of two was taking place a scant few feet away.
Dr. Gingerhair was holding forth, both vigorously
and loudly, on all things dental-related
"Well, in my 14 years of ortho, I don't think I've EVER seen
a tooth CRACK like that. The person must have had cracked-tooth syndrome"
"Ya know, if you scrape the GARBAGE down deep below the gum line,
there's BOUND to be BLEEDING going on... I guess you can leave the build up
or you can go ahead and REMOVE it."
His enthusiasm was admirable - I would find plaque a difficult thing to truly embrace -
but I could have done without an in-service on teeth
while I was in the middle of using my own to ENJOY FOOD.
At another table, a very handsome man and his equally lovely girlfriend
were sitting quietly, their food untouched on the plates in front of them.
Suddenly, handsome got on his cell phone and began discussing
someone's surgical procedure. "You're okay then? Okay.
Be careful driving yourself home.
"Oh, Jean's with me," handsome continued,
"She says hello and send much love."
Meanwhile, Jean was looking at herself in a small round mirror -
and if she was sending love, it wasn't to the person on the far end of the cell phone.
bs
we ate at a cool little diner called Irises.
The food was wonderful, the ambience comfortable
and the decor entertainingly eclectic.
As we sat there, eating our smoked mozzarella pasta
and curried chicken salads, conversing quietly and
and soaking up the atmosphere, an orthodontic convention
of two was taking place a scant few feet away.
Dr. Gingerhair was holding forth, both vigorously
and loudly, on all things dental-related
"Well, in my 14 years of ortho, I don't think I've EVER seen
a tooth CRACK like that. The person must have had cracked-tooth syndrome"
"Ya know, if you scrape the GARBAGE down deep below the gum line,
there's BOUND to be BLEEDING going on... I guess you can leave the build up
or you can go ahead and REMOVE it."
His enthusiasm was admirable - I would find plaque a difficult thing to truly embrace -
but I could have done without an in-service on teeth
while I was in the middle of using my own to ENJOY FOOD.
At another table, a very handsome man and his equally lovely girlfriend
were sitting quietly, their food untouched on the plates in front of them.
Suddenly, handsome got on his cell phone and began discussing
someone's surgical procedure. "You're okay then? Okay.
Be careful driving yourself home.
"Oh, Jean's with me," handsome continued,
"She says hello and send much love."
Meanwhile, Jean was looking at herself in a small round mirror -
and if she was sending love, it wasn't to the person on the far end of the cell phone.
bs
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
coyote
Strange times, here at the house of shoes.
One day, I’m minding my own business
up in the silent, green woods, and the next
I’m ‘herd boss’ for a building full of children
and their struggling-to-stay drug free moms.
Of course, life being the ever-unfolding
story within a story that it insists upon being,
a new job (where I’m over my head in lives
torn to pieces by multi-generational addiction),
is simply not enough. So, for fun, throw
my sister into the mix – her and her second
trip down vodka-plus-vicodin boulevard.
Overwhelmed barely begins to describe
the state I find myself in today.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m ecstatic about my job.
To feel capable and deserving of any work outside
my own little world is something I’ve longed for,
and something I’ve worked hard to achieve.
And knowing my own experiences might help
other women takes the ugliest of my past
and makes it meaningful and worthwhile.
Yet, witnessing and documenting the dysfunction
of addiction is a bit like looking in a mirror – I
often dislike much of what I see.
My sister’s downward spiral weighs heavily
on me, and I can’t help seeing the many similarities
between my own family’s story and those of all
the women currently under my care.
It’s like we all fell into the same dark sea,
and while some of us know how to swim –
none of us truly recognize the shore.
I saw a trickster this morning, down near the cemetery,
all sinew and instinct and those calculating eyes.
He rose out of some tall grass as if to cross the road,
but - thinking better of it, melted out of sight.
Was he the coyote of incessant demands,
a reminder of recklessness and impulse and greed?
Or was he bringing light, stolen from the stars,
an illumination in the darkness I keep trying to outrun?
bs
One day, I’m minding my own business
up in the silent, green woods, and the next
I’m ‘herd boss’ for a building full of children
and their struggling-to-stay drug free moms.
Of course, life being the ever-unfolding
story within a story that it insists upon being,
a new job (where I’m over my head in lives
torn to pieces by multi-generational addiction),
is simply not enough. So, for fun, throw
my sister into the mix – her and her second
trip down vodka-plus-vicodin boulevard.
Overwhelmed barely begins to describe
the state I find myself in today.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m ecstatic about my job.
To feel capable and deserving of any work outside
my own little world is something I’ve longed for,
and something I’ve worked hard to achieve.
And knowing my own experiences might help
other women takes the ugliest of my past
and makes it meaningful and worthwhile.
Yet, witnessing and documenting the dysfunction
of addiction is a bit like looking in a mirror – I
often dislike much of what I see.
My sister’s downward spiral weighs heavily
on me, and I can’t help seeing the many similarities
between my own family’s story and those of all
the women currently under my care.
It’s like we all fell into the same dark sea,
and while some of us know how to swim –
none of us truly recognize the shore.
I saw a trickster this morning, down near the cemetery,
all sinew and instinct and those calculating eyes.
He rose out of some tall grass as if to cross the road,
but - thinking better of it, melted out of sight.
Was he the coyote of incessant demands,
a reminder of recklessness and impulse and greed?
Or was he bringing light, stolen from the stars,
an illumination in the darkness I keep trying to outrun?
bs
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