Oeuvre

Tom McCall Nature Preserve, Columbia River Gorge

We were recently in Montreal for my brother's wedding and visited the art museum for an exhibition on Chagall.  In the exhibition the word "oeuvre" came up which is a word I felt I should know the meaning, but actually didn't - believing that it was related to "works" or "genre" or something like that.  It refers to the "complete works" of someone - which for Chagall was extensive, moreso that I realized. He was not only a painter, but a costume designer, sculptor, storybook illustrator, and stained glassed windows creator.  Throughout all his work, his style is obvious and identifiable as his own.  What I love is the persistence of our own essence throughout anything that we do, which we can't seem to escape.

I enjoyed this passage from The New Yorker that I read recently:

And I knew that if I told my mother how unhappy I was she would tell me to quit.  Then one day, alone in the kitchen with my father, I let drop a few whines about the job. I gave him details, examples of what was troubling me, yet although I saw him listen intently, I saw no sympathy in his eyes.  No "Oh, you poor thing." Perhaps he understood that what I wanted was a solution to the job, not an escape from it. In any case, he put down his cup of coffee and said, "Listen. You don't live there. You live here. With your people. Go to work. Get your money. And come on home."

That was what he said. This was what I heard:

1. Whatever the work is, do it well - not for the boss but for yourself.
2. You make the job; it doesn't make you.
3. Your real life is with us, your family.
4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.

I have worked for all sorts of people since then, geniuses and morons, quick-witted and dull, bighearted and narrow. I've had many kinds of jobs, but since that conversation with my father I have never considered the level of labor to be the measure of myself, and I have never placed the security of a job above the value of home.

- Toni Morrison, "The Work You Do, the Person You Are," The New Yorker

Feeling overworked these past few months, the above passage was reassuring.  Growing up and hearing that your work is supposed to be meaningful and fulfilling yet balancing that with the reality that sometimes a job is just plain work and you have to buckle down and get through it, can feel conflicting.  How much of my life do I give to this position and when and where do I put up walls?  I had been told that being a supervisor is a lifestyle and well, where is the home in that?

Enter, Glorious by Macklemore and a montage of recent photos that I like:

Columbia River Gorge

Punchbowl Falls

Summer on a little dog bed

Hiking up Black Butte

Three Fingered Jack

Mt. Jefferson

North Sister and Middle Sister

Mt. Washington

Black Butte Wildflowers

Don't know why I like this mid-jump pic...

Summer Dress

Hammock Time

Just that average sweet BBQ

Just some Summer BBQ

Cabin Fever

Play Me a Tune

It's a stare-down with the buds this week.

When. are. you. going. to. bloom.  I am watching for the initial gesture and have found it on one particular tree/bush that I walked by today: tiny pink flowers.  I saw it again on a couple other bushes: q-tip sized yellow dots.  There is always this seeming moment where suddenly everything has sprung and I am waiting to catch it.

Spring is the time of year that you sit outside despite the cold-ish temperatures.  This evening, we sat outside at El Sancho taco shop underneath the outdoor heaters and watched the thick gray swarming clouds blanket the mountains.  Half the sky had traces of baby blue while the other half was a gray watercolor disaster.

It's been a thick winter.  By thick, I mean work-heavy and living in the woods of work by which - when you finally get out of them - you cautiously utter, "I think we're out of the woods," fearing that the universe will hear you and shoot fire down on you.  I went for a massage today, after carrying the tension in every inch of my back, and departed with the massage therapist telling me that there was still so much work needing to be done.  She smiled eagerly to help me unknot every last fiber of my being - that had lived up to the metaphor of being stretched thin - by digging deep into the tenuous knottiness that are my back, shoulders, and neck.

I actually like the natural woods and am excited to return to them, once the weather tips the scale in favor of more Summer-ish temperatures.  I found this lovely poem here:

“Jailbreak”
by Maya Spector

It’s time to break out —
Jailbreak time.
Time to punch our way out of
the dark winter prison.
Lilacs are doing it
in sudden explosions of soft purple,
And the jasmine vines, and ranunculus, too.
There is no jailer powerful enough
to hold Spring contained.
Let that be a lesson.
Stop holding back the blossoming!
Quit shutting eyes and gritting teeth,
curling fingers into fists, hunching shoulders.
Lose your determination to remain unchanged.
All the forces of nature
want you to open,
Their gentle nudge carries behind it
the force of a flash flood.
Why make a cell your home
when the door is unlocked
and the garden is waiting for you?

Thank goodness for gardens, but it takes so much work to create them.  May it be time for the arts to flourish, the fighters, the females, the everything and everyone that makes this world different and beautiful.  

Jailbreak time. 

(closing video and thoughts from Sufjan Stevens)

Mug Time.

Ander and Buckley

Beverages

Foods

Birthday Girl

Raise the River!

Chillax

Birthday Gifts

Balloon Time

Balloon Time Part 2

Telephone Pictionary + Dog

Telephone Pictionary Part 2

Dogs + People

February Desert

January was the month of Cascadian snowshoeing.  February is the month of Southeastern desert.  We intentionally fled two hours out of town for short spurts when I had the rare of occasion of a day off.  The desert is full of s p a c e.  The sky and the land meet at one clean horizon line.  We sat in the warmth of the springs from the earth and felt the sun with those Scottish/Oregonian hills and mountains in the distance.  I tried to capture the gradient of the sky, pulling off on the side of the road after we passed dozens and dozens of jack rabbits scampering by the road.  

Someone recently told me that I have 

the 

right 

to 

take 

up 

space.  

May I take up that space and use it well, and you, too. 

Often we think of the wilderness as "out there," yet we all live in the wilderness - some areas of just more populated and built on than others.  It may be more the world of humans that distracts us from that nature - the chatter of who the next bachelorette is (what?!), work stress, family drama, politics.  There is that quote though, something about needing to spend time in the mountains in order cope with the world of people - escaping the chatter to reset and re-center.  There is something about staring into the mountains that gives my mind permission to rest.   

Jens Lekman has a new album, Life Will See You Now.  I'm just listening to it on repeat until I memorize the words:

To have a dream
A GPS in your heart
A path to follow
Through the dark
Well, Jens says, "I write songs sometimes
But they're kinda bad
So if that doesn't work out
I want to be a social worker just like my dad
I just want to listen to people's stories
Hear what they have to say"
My friends say, "Just be a shrink then"
But I don't know, I don't think I'll have the grades
But in a world of mouths
I want to be an ear
If there's a purpose to all this
Then that's why God put me here

(To Know Your Mission)

Another favorite, Hotwire the Ferris Wheel.  

We went out for breakfast yesterday morning, and sat by the fire pit while waiting for a table, me sipping on my coffee and Baileys.  The logs were smoldering and the fresh juniper scent was steaming up through the top.  Though we may live in the wilderness, we don't always get to see it.  There is something about the smell of smoke in my hair that reminds me what life is all about.

Snapshots of a Mental Health Crisis Worker

(1) Melanie*

She was trying to escape – as she lined the pills up on the counter top and stared at them. She forgot the trees, the wind, the flowers, the earth waiting outside her door – the breeze, the stars, the rain, and grass – only tears existed in this moment, only anger and sadness overwhelming her body, which was the world. A text came from Mom asking how her day was going and apologizing for needing to go to work. Her heart broke and the cracks pushed tears out her eyes, non-stop. She had searched for pills in the house - organizing them in a row on the counter. The phone rings, her boyfriend breaking the barrier of anger in her body; a human voice asking if she was okay. “No, I’m not fine,” she said, picking up five pills and swallowing them, “I just took pills.” His voice turns to nerves pushing words out into her ear that she must drive herself to the hospital. She drives to the hospital, the sun beating down on her 1988 Corvette. She is confused at how she could feel this way.

The wind, the rain, the sky, and the sun, are still there – moving around her car, her hair, and her eyes on the road. The flowers are there, the grass, and the mountains. The world is watching as the universe inside her mind expands and retracts, swirling in confusion, her stomach tightening. She has been feeling the world too much lately, weighing on her neurons, constricting her heart and soul. Maybe she took the pills to kill the emotions – to retaliate against the heaviness of the days. It makes sense and it doesn’t make sense.

(2) Bethany*

The curtain of crisis is drawn up and I walk onto the stage - with my laptop and smile - walking into a hospital room where a girl with turquoise/purple hair lies on the hospital bed, forearms covered in red slits. She seems calm now, in a room and a place designed to offer a safety net. It’s 3 AM and the call came into my phone at 2:30 AM. “Agh, I hate this,” I thought, as I got out of bed and changed out of my pajamas, “I hate night shifts.” I had just left the ER at 11:00 PM to come home and go to bed. It’s always like this – I have an intense love/hate relationship with my job. I can’t get over the human in me – the piece of me that wants to stay in my warm, comfortable, bed and be asleep.

I knock on the door of room 8 in the ER to find a girl resting on the bed, her friend sitting next to her and her caregiver standing by the bed. The mood feels light while the girls’ arms bear the most cuts I have ever seen. None are that deep, they look as if she had just stepped out of a cat fight. The girl has hair that resembles a perfect turquoise/purple gradient – really well done; I like it. Although getting out of bed is hard, as soon as I walk into the ER, I feel fine. There’s a feeling in the ER of purpose – of getting s*%& done – well, and also of chaos, too. I know why I’m there and I feel like a mental health superhero. Let’s hope I can save the day.

The girl is sweet – as they often are – and I feel like she is open with me. People often seem open in crisis. It’s like a big balloon has popped and everyone can now see everything that was inside. The stigma is lifted and I can normalize talking about suicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety, self-harm, or whatever the youth may be tackling. Often, parents, family, and friends, feel on board to help and do what they can to clean up the mess. This mess of emotions, feelings, and behaviors – to understand and support the mind of another that has convinced itself to cope with life a certain way. Mental health is a fragile thing. I am a mental health EMT.

The girl tells me all about her life – filled with moving around the country, abuse, bullying – there is too much to untangle and keep up with as I try to grasp the important details. She is funny and jokes with me, she’s articulate and talks about enjoying writing and art. She talks about feeling like a mother to her younger siblings as she’s helped raise them during her life. She strikes me as someone who would be an excellent writer. She is smart. I like her.

I told my supervisor that we just need a magical place for kids to go to get the support and help that they need, and, “Who's working on that?” There is so much we are still learning about the brain and mental health. I hope for the day when we can do neurological surgery and untangle the crossed wires of trauma in a person’s brain, or perform surgery that would somehow lift the fog of depression or tone down the intensity of anxiety. Sometimes I feel like a doctor working during a time before x-rays or anesthetic, prescribing environmental supports to fix what is so deeply internal. Suggesting tactics to help the mind, heart, and soul find peace or feel more alive. We are all doing the best we can.

I departed from the girl, friend, and caregiver, with them smiling and the girl referring to herself as “giddy now.” I hope that she will be okay. I hope her arms will heal. I never know the impact of my work – and this kind of experience where I feel good about the conversation we’ve had and the work we’ve done are my favorite scenarios. Not all of them are like this – sometimes I walk away feeling powerless, unhelpful, and unable to offer families the answers or solutions that they hope for so badly. There is no place for their child to go, or at least, not now. I am trying to be a superhero without super powers.

A girl in Wilderness Therapy created a song about hope – and that is what we cling to. My job causes me to face what is outside of my control – the nature of crisis and mental fragility. I drive out of the ER at 6:00 AM to the disappearing of the stars and the changing of the sky to the lightest gray/black. Dawn is coming. Thank goodness that the Sun is bright.

"But all the fighting in the world will not help us if we do not also hope. What I’m trying to cultivate is not blind optimism but what the philosopher Jonathan Lear calls radical hope. “What makes this hope radical,” Lear writes, “is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is.” Radical hope is not so much something you have but something you practice; it demands flexibility, openness, and what Lear describes as “imaginative excellence.” Radical hope is our best weapon against despair, even when despair seems justifiable; it makes the survival of the end of your world possible. Only radical hope could have imagined people like us into existence. And I believe that it will help us create a better, more loving future." Junot Diaz, Radical Hope, The New Yorker

*Names, of course, have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals.

Life in Color

America is not natural. Natural is tribal. We're fighting against thousands of years of human behavior and history to create something that no one's ever [done] - that's what's exceptional about America.  This ain't easy, it's an incredible thing.  - Jon Stewart, CBS interview, 2016

What happened this November?!

The world is falling apart.  "Our birds' heads are falling off!" - Dumb and Dumber.  Everything is just unraveling.... I've gone through all the stages of grief except for acceptance.  I'm not sure about that one, so maybe it is back to denial.

We all know this isn't true.  As Obama said, "The sun still came out this morning."  Our history has always been full of turmoil that we hope stays at bay and doesn't affect our nights out, Netflix binges, and coffee dates.  There was a time when our country was fighting itself - physically waging war on each other where more Americans died than all the wars put together.  Now at least we can wage war with our words through social media or actions such as blocking up the streets of Portland, OR.  The west coast might go ahead and join Canada.  Haha... just kidding... maybe...

I cried and grieved over this election, to my own surprise.  My brain shutdown just as it would if I were to become dysregulated over anything else.  It slowly began to respond again, lighting up from my brain stem fight/flight reaction - "I can't live in this nightmare, and I feel very scared," then to the emotional brain - tears and confusion for days, followed by the eventual re-opening of my prefrontal cortex - able to think again, digest, and reflect.  I had gotten wrapped up and so hopeful that a female would be elected - imagining that celebration of a glass ceiling breaking with confetti that looked like glass.  But not only that, that America wouldn't actually vote for a blatant bully (luckily, Melania Trump has stated she'd like to pursue anti-bullying as First Lady).  Millions of people across the country couldn't sleep that night, having nightmares, and stammering, "But he --- but... but didn't you hear all the things he said?"  Particularly as a female, I kept crying when anyone would bring up the little girls watching, and Hillary Clinton's words in her concession speech, "Never let anyone question the fact that you are valuable."  Then I cried some more watching Hillary even get through her concession speech because it further showed that she is actually made of steel.

Ugh, sigh, gahhhhhhh...  OK.  Well, I guess it's time we all add a little bit of politics to our lifestyle and not wait every four years to finally exercise our right to vote or remember we have a voice.  Just as people pull together during crisis, I feel like a positive side effect of all this is that it has given average white folk, known for their apathy, such as myself, a reason to be vocal - and to feel this call to action.  Yep, time to actually read information and not rely on soundbytes, call representatives, sign petitions... I imagine all these people are being absolutely bombarded right now - or at least, I hope.

I was pleasantly surprised, after I emailed all the electors, to receive a response back - an auto-response from one of the electors which included a short video of how the electoral college works.  Wow!  There ARE real people involved in these decisions.  I'm okay if they disagree with me - it just felt good to feel apart of a dialogue.  We need more of that.  Enough of this polarized politics where people demonize each other - can we talk this one out a little bit?

Today, I’m examining my values. As a Buddhist pal said to me on Election Night, “America has spoken.” Now it falls to us to listen with gracious and open hearts. This is not giving in or giving up. The hardest thing about democracy is the boring and irritating process of listening to people you don’t agree with, which is tolerable only when each side strives not to hurt the other’s feelings. To quote my colleague George Saunders, let today be National Attempt to Have an Affectionate / Tender Thought About Someone of the Opposing Political Persuasion Day. And (please, God) every day hereafter as well. - Mary Karr, "Donald Trump, Poet," The New Yorker

Now a montage of pretty Fall photos prior to entering Winter: