This is a sometimes-public blog wherein I write about my life as a barista, yoga teacher, writer & (very amateur) musician in her twenties. I guess you could say my entries span from the very self-absorbed to meditations on the fairly universal. I often publish my poetry here, as well.

I float between keeping entries friends-only and then opening some up to the public. occasionally you will see lots of public stuff, then for months you may see nothing unless you're on the friends list.

I toy around a lot with this introductory entry because it's difficult to put one's life on a page (or screen) at any rate, and even more difficult to sum it up in a few sentences or paragraphs. I've always written. I don't always know what this is here for or what it's worth, but it's here, anyway.

I wrote this in May of 2007 (found it flipping through archives of this journal):

i don't think i have that many disillusions left. i have not asked for life to be perfect, nor have I expected it to. i learned young that life isn't fair and learned a little later to count my blessings. i know that a lot of the time i don't/won't get what i want, but i really really want my brother to heal well and live the good life he deserves.

i miss the burning in my throat, words like matches i'd light and toss away to char in the grass for no good reason on summer nights, years ago chain smoking on the back porch clacking away at the typewriter. i miss the rawness of the experience, biting at the edges of absolute mania.

that is the truth. that is the thing I miss, the thing from which I am learning to let go.

I still miss that, a little. That NEED to write, write now, write constantly, write everything down, that need like fire... I'd smoke cigarettes to try to calm the physical sensation of the need.

It's quieter now, though. I write when moved. I get scared that I'm not moved enough. I know I'm too hard on myself.

Today was my first day of not having to go anywhere (not to HAVEN, not to work, not to some work-related cookout, etc) in what feels like weeks. my parents went to a family cookout. i was invited but i declined. i really really wanted to rest. it's been nice. i've read quite a bit, i washed my sheets and towels and vacuumed, i spent some time at the piano & i plan on spending a little more time there after i walk the dogs.

i feel okay. i think having rapport with a new counselor is a huge relief. I know somebody will listen to me in a few days.

the best part is that i have tomorrow off, too.

I might actually read 50 this year... who knows? This was book #18. I borrowed this from HAVEN's minuscule library. I spilled coffee on it, which I regret. It seems so wrong to spill coffee on a book you borrowed from a not-for-profit. At least we have 2 copies there, so one will remain (for the time being) stain-free.

title: The Truth About Rape
author: Teresa M. Lauer
pages: 277
date finished: 7-5-08

This book is in two parts. In the first, Lauer chronicles a number of sessions with her therapist, wherein she recounted her experience of rape and eventually found herself healed enough to move on from therapy. I appreciated the author's candor in this section. I think that any time a writer is particularly candid on a taboo subject (such as rape), it creates space and freedom for other survivors to open up and speak of their experiences. In this regard, I found the book inspiring.

The second section of the book is sub-divided into sections on emotional, spiritual, physical, and sexual recovery and is in the format of questions and answers. Each question is answered by a rape survivor, and then answered again in a clinical, professional format.

Most of the information in this book was not new to me, but I appreciated the sub-divided question and answer section. I came across a number of questions that I wouldn't have known how to answer were I to be asked them on the crisis line. It really helps to become familiarized with topics that don't apply to my specific, personal situation.

This book is a fast, easy read and very comprehensive. Much of the first section, where Lauer discusses her experience of rape, is harrowing and possibly triggering. I can see this as a useful tool both to counselors and to survivors who are fairly uneducated about sexual assault.

often it's hard to gauge my own health. if i am too excited about a new project i fear i'm going to move into mania. if i cry a bit (like i did today), i get scared i'll never stop. i can accept my eccentricity and my alone-ness. sometimes i walk around the courtyard in my pajamas and bare feet. sometimes I miss the dog we adopted together. sometimes i see a girl who looks like jen and my heart stops. sometimes i watch the most disgusting of horror movies in broad daylight, or even while I'm falling asleep. (the other night I fell asleep during The Rage, but that's okay, because I know how it ends).

I think I like to test myself. How much carnage can I stand to witness? This much. This much. This much.

I think I should be writing more poetry. Lately the only ink on my hands comes from the sharpie I use at work to mark cups. I improvise my way into and out of music by Tori Amos. I like my original music but then I think I'm probably just a cheap imitation of Tori. So then I turn to classical. I learn a little mozart piece in an hour and then I get bored. I turn back to the Chopin and I get frustrated. If I had one wish that could just be for me, just a selfish wish for myself, I'd want an acoustic piano. something old, maybe, but refurbished and in tune.

when I'm at work I smile and smile and smile. "How are you today?" and the customer says, "fine, how are you," and i say "I'm wonderful!" or "I'm great!" and we talk about what a lovely, mild summer we're having, and how much rain we've had, and I say that I like the rain, and I stand in the air-conditioned shop and look out at the summer sky; people file in wearing shorts and capris and ordering lattes over ice, or blended lemonades, wiping sweat off their foreheads, and i don't know if i like being stuck inside or not.

yesterday I found out that I'm getting some kind of reward because someone high-up came into the store when we were dead out of business on Sunday, and I was on my hands and knees furiously scrubbing dirty baseboards, the way I do when we aren't busy. And the high-up lady praised me to my SM and my SM is giving me an award.

and if i felt it safe to be perfectly honest at work, i'd say that i get so angry sometimes that my hands shake, and when there aren't customers to fill the time, i think i'll go crazy if i think so much, so i scrub grout and baseboards and clean sinks until my hands are red and dried out from bleachy water.

in my own room i let the laundry pile up and leave the bed unmade, though. if my hands are shaking too hard to play music, i take some klonopin and take some deep breaths, maybe take a shower and cry in the shower for a bit. i cry in the shower because my mother would worry if she heard me, and it isn't for her to worry about.

i'm just so fucking angry. i don't like myself this way, full of spite and mean spirit. i have a new counselor now and i really like him well so far; he says anger isn't a strong enough word, and i said i didn't know. i'm a walking thesaurus so i started to think of words--rage, fury, bitterness.

sometimes i swear everything in the air smells like bitter almonds.

Today I...

Spent the morning in luxurious self-enjoyment (aka good-smelling lotions & fantastic skin products). Taught a small private yoga lesson to a dear friend & she was so transformed! and i remembered how i love teaching.

also today...

debt collectors harassed me until i cried. it's complicated and it's part of the divorce.

i'm pretty drained from the crying.

so then i was lying on the grass out back, being skinny and weird, eating celery and listening to PJ Harvey.

and then some weird old man was staring at me and it was just all ruined. i hate being stared at.

g'night

Parable
Wislawa Szymborska

Some fishermen pulled a bottle from the deep. It held a piece of paper,with these words: "Somebody save me! I'm here. The ocean cast me on this desert island.I am standing on the shore waiting for help. Hurry! I'm here!"

"There's no date. I bet it's already too late anyway.It could have been floating for years," the first fisherman said.

"And he doesn't say where. It's not even clear which ocean," the second fisherman said.

"It's not too late, or too far. The island Here is everywhere," the third fisherman said. They all felt awkward. No one spoke. That's how it goes with universal truths.
~ Wislawa Szymborska ~
(Poems New and Collected 1957-1997, trans. S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh)

this is what i've been reading. i picked up some classics because they felt necessary to me, then a little fictional fluff. now i'm doing mostly reading for haven & political stuff and i have several books going on at once, but this is what i've finished...

#13

title: The Deer Park
author: Norman Mailer
pages: 375
date finished: 5-1-08

of special interest was the conflict between Eitel and Sergius: production of art versus art as market commodity. see my notes on The Gift. it'll make sense then.

#14

title: A Farewell to Arms
author: Ernest Hemingway
pages: 322
date finished: 5-7-08

Can you believe I never read this in all my years studying lit? True.
At the end I got pissed and threw the book across the room and then cried for a good while. I guess that means it was a powerful novel.

#15
title: the naked and the dead
author: Norman Mailer
pages: 721
date finished: 5-19-08

Damn. This was intense. I felt the need to read a war novel because I'm hearing a lot about PTSD in Iraq war veterans and I've never given much thought to combat, it being such a traditionally masculine experience. I wanted to broaden my horizons i guess.

#16
title: The God of Animals
author: Aryn Kyle
pages: 305
date finished: 5-26-08

Good summer novel. This is Kyle's first novel & she writes with surprising eloquence & a good deal of literary merit. A good book too for anyone who grew up around horses or grew up riding horses. (It's more than a horse book though). Good summer read; quick; not without its insights and value.

#17
title: Pillars of the Earth
author: Ken Follet
pages: 974
Date finished: 6-15-08

Total, total summer fluff fun quasi-historical very fictional book. An epic. I found myself lost in it; wanting to get lost in something fluffy what with all the classics lately & then the seriousness of work at Haven. I got lost in this one. All the typical epic plot techniques & writing not always of the highest quality. Nevertheless, the book has a fantastically horrible villain (William Hamleigh) and I stayed with the story for a while, almost solely, because I wanted to see him die a grisly death. A good story.

So that's what I've read lately.

Right now I have 3 books going at once & I'm not feeling rushed. We do what we can.

Last night, after my first time officially training on crisis line and shadowing calls, I went over to S's apartment. Her friendship is such a godsend to me these days. I felt a tremendous need to debrief and I sort of talked her ear off. I'm really feeling the lack of a decent counselor in my life right now. I feel as though I could genuinely use the comfort of having that person there who'll just listen to me for an hour every week. I'm not clicking with Dr. K. I couldn't imagine myself getting deeply honest with her about most things in my life. I'm not even sure what I'm looking for in a counselor, being at such a stable point in my life. Maybe just someone to listen to me.

At this point anyway the keyboard is my counselor. I came home from S's feeling a little tense, and not feeling like writing; feeling incapable, in fact, of aptly describing my emotional state in words. I slipped on headphones to give myself that feeling of being in an echoing concert hall and then I improvised for a long time in e-flat major. it's one of my favorite keys to just play around in. sometimes I'll be wandering over the keyboard, not yet in any particular key, and generally these days I wander my way into e-flat. all of my improvisations are following a very specific pattern and I don't know if that means I've written a song. I've never really written a song before. I don't know how to put words to music, actually. That may sound odd coming from a poet, but it's the state of things.

The thing, for me, is that music is beyond words. And I can sing fairly decently. I did choir in high school and had solos and voice lessons, but there's nothing stunning about my voice, and I have a hard time singing AS I play, unless it's something that stays right in that mid-range and doesn't require too much vocal technique. "Under the Ivy" is a great one for me.

I'm just rambling now. I feel frustrated this morning & feel like crying for no particular reason.

It looks like it may rain today. I hear lawnmowers and weed-whackers all over the place.

Starbucks scheduled me for non-coverage hours today, to come in and do some detail cleaning for the store. I'm glad I'm not going to be on the floor. I could use a day off of talking (no, listening) to customers.

I won't lie. It's fucking HARD sometimes to be that smiling face behind the espresso bar: "Hi, how are YOU today?" "Hi, how are you today?" "I love your shirt, where did you get that?" I have a goal of making every customer smile and sometimes my coaxing and wheedling of smiles is exhausting to me. Nobody cares how I'm doing today. And now, working as a crisis counselor, it becomes even more apparent.

I'm afraid I talk Susie's ear off because she is the only person who genuinely listens to me. So for her, I'm very grateful.

I was leafing through my (paper, not online) journal from this time last year.

There's a lot there, and a lot of it is really sad, and I don't mean to dwell on all that right here, right now.

But I found this little poem, that I scribbled and then forgot. I actually scribbled and forgot a lot of poems last summer, some better than others. This one isn't really that great, I suspect. I think I must have been reading Emily Dickinson that day (you'll see why):

It's too difficult, this-
this living encasement of flesh and bone,
something always tugging at my skin
whispering "escape;"

It's too beautiful, this-
this business of being matter, heart and blood and brain--
every moment is too glorious.
I love so hard, I break.


(July 2nd, 2007)

~*~

Also, I wrote sonnets last summer. I completely forgot. I wrote six sonnets. I'm afraid they all suck royally, but here is one anyway. Just to say, I wrote a sonnet:

So Jessica's writing sonnets again
mad letters to a mad goddess
whose tongue lolls in a fierce mouth
in the corner of the room--
in India she found the print, the dark
goddess fierce on simple dyed cotton
she's gone superstitious over it,
she thinks her pen will
emit darkness, knit together some
bit of human evolution--
she's at her tarot again.
she's alone again, dreaming of horses.
Sometimes she wakes up and sees a white light
that points the way, in a direction she can't recognize.

~*~

Also, does anybody remember that little Tori Amos b-side, "graveyard," that got played a fair amount in the mid to late nineties?

I tried putting it together today. I played in G but I'm not sure; I think maybe she plays it in B flat.

the words:

Coming in the graveyard
with my little tune, it's June, said
I'm coming to the graveyard
she's gone
but I'm alive, I'm alive...

~*~

also I wrote this, on august fifth, 2007:

nights alone in the damp room
lying on on my electric
shiatsu pressure point massager
kneading at my sore muscles
i'm relieved
and it's almost good as actual person-hands
working at the kinks, untying the knots

tonight alone in a summer damp room
i see how i'd forgotten how to listen
to the evening, the simple sussurus
of crickets gluttonous for their own music
amassed together
(here by the bullfrog pond)
rubbing their tiny legs together
singing all in one key
their perfect symphony,
spontaneous over and over
in every moment new as rain.

(I don't know if any of these poems are even good at all. I just found them yesterday and thought I'd put a few here. Overall I wrote about 30 poems last summer, and somehow completely forgot about any of them until yesterday)

all poems copyright 2008 Jessica Morrow (italicized lyrics are by Tori Amos)

It's so disheartening to come home with my little diploma that says I've completed my 35-hour Direct Service Volunteer Training at Haven (hoping to put my feet up and do a quick email check; maybe there'd be something funny or uplifting in my inbox) only to see the following link that an activist friend had emailed me:

Sudan's Darfur crisis has exploded on many fronts -- violence, hunger, displacement and looting -- but United Nations peacekeepers say the biggest issue now affecting the region is the systematic rape of women and children.

It's everywhere. I used to try to ignore its pervasiveness and just hide in the little hole that was my personal life, my personal story. I don't think I can go back to that place now.

I'm feeling motivated by the work & the activist community I've become involved in at Haven. Like I've written before, this work truly feels like a calling for me, although I don't know if I'll move on to a career at Haven, or go get a counseling degree. I just know that this past month of training has changed me in ways I hadn't thought possible.

This week begins round two: the more specialized training for the work on the crisis line. I feel slightly daunted paging through the manual. There are charts and lists of steps and questions for handling suicide calls, rape crisis calls, domestic violence emergency calls. I'm scared of the responsibility, scared of saying the wrong thing in a life-and-death situation.

The other aspects of my life seem to have moved to a back burner. I've been feeling angry about a situation at work (involving a co-worker's disparaging comments about bipolar disorder). But that anger doesn't consume me. I come home and I put it down.

Belle warned us that this type of activism can make one feel extremely isolated. It's true, I'm finding. I can't have a conversation about HAVEN at work. Because it goes something like this:

Them: What did you do this weekend?
Me: I finished my training for working the crisis line at Haven.
Them: Oh, what's that?
Me: It's a domestic violence and rape crisis center. Don't you know? It's the only one in Oakland County. Yesterday I learned everything there is to know about rape.
Them: Oh. Okay. I'm gonna go brew some coffee now.

Nobody wants to hear about it; nobody wants to talk about it.

Maybe that's why I'm writing so much about it here.

Thanks to everyone who's been reading and commenting on my stuff lately. It really means so much to me, and I apologize for not replying to comments individually. I'm trying to get better about that.

I thought I'd post my bio that's going to go up on the Yoga for Life website. Just for kicks. Here it is:

Jessica Morrow began practicing yoga in 2000, but her heart truly opened to the practice in 2003, when she began studying Anusara yoga in Flagstaff, Arizona with Ulla Lundgren and Erin Widman. In 2004, Jess completed a 200-hour Anusara Level One teacher’s training. Jess has studied the Tantric philosophy underlying Anusara with Dr. Douglas Brooks, and has attended workshops with Anusara’s founder, John Friend. Yoga therapeutics is an area of special interest to Jess. Ulla Lundgren and Noah Maze are her strongest influences as a teacher.

Jess’s classroom style incorporates a unique blend of yogic philosophy, poetry, humor, and playfulness, in order to uplift and empower students to expand and reach their greatest potential.

Dear right wrist,

If I promise to never ever again pour milk (or any other liquid) from a gallon jug with just one hand, will you please stop aching and throbbing and such? You're messing up yoga, writing, and music, which constitute basically all of my healthy coping mechanisms. I'll leave the writing and the yoga now, if you'd just compromise and stop screaming every time I try to play right-handed seventh chords?

thank you,
Jessica

Dear machine-fixing guy,

Actually, I think you're quite becoming. Still though, do you know why everyone at our store wants us to ... what? Meet? Talk? Fuck? Sorry, I think your tattoos are fantastic, but I'm off limits, and it's nothing personal, although I don't think I could handle the ... big giant earhole earrings? What are they called? Anyway, I hope you got the bar tray draining again properly so we can utilize our store's full beverage making capacity. I heard you were coming so I left work early today. (I am so bad at crushes. Not that this is a crush).

Jess

Dear neighbors three doors down,

I totally see you watching me through the blinds every time I walk by. I know that I walk around all spaced out with headphones on & a scary-looking black dog, and sometimes I don't bother to change out of my pajamas to walk my dog one block. I'm sorry, I just don't care! Stop staring at me. Give me a break. I think I'm at least 20 years younger than everybody else here, and you condominium committee people freak me the fuck out.

Maybe I'll put a hex on you! bwahahahahaha

love,
Jess

Dear (certain regular customer),

I'm sorry about your inch of cold milk. I really am. I will never omit any cold whole milk, nor will I put any inches of wrong milks, or warm milks, into your drink ever ever again.
I get the idea that you look down upon baristas and probably waitresses, and the girl behind the counter at Blockbuster next door. That's fine, but just so you know, I also look down upon you just a little because you are hugely pregnant and you drink five shots of espresso a day.

May your child be a hyper-active little ball of hell-fury!

love and hugs,
Jessica (the girl who forgot your inch of cold milk)

Today the analyst-doctor-lady allowed me to take the discussion about why I don't trust her all the way around in a circle to the beginning of my mistrust of 99% of people. I started out on the defensive and then just meandered through seemingly random bits of history until I came to the point where I first called for help and got none.

Every time she does this, I get really angry at first and then end up going "God dammit, she's good." And sometimes I hate her for that. I don't know quite how this will go, yet.

I'm led into the thought that everything we do actually IS for a reason. I'm tired of being asked "why, why, why" by Dr. K, but I do see the logic.

My volunteering at HAVEN isn't just an altruistic act of goodness, no matter how cool that idea might make me look. It's because it puts my life into a context wherein I am an active participant, and not a victim. Without ignoring history, I find myself suddenly able to act, to make a difference. And gone are the intrusive thoughts, the pressing need to make my stories known. I never thought trauma would turn into action for me.

Yet it has. I think that the move from survivor to activist (or victim to survivor, or victim to survivor to activist) is one of the most powerfully transformative moves that a person can make.

This work seems like a calling to me. I've never been so passionate about any job as I am about this crisis line. I think about a possible career at HAVEN, and I go, yeah, that's something I could do.

You might expect to see more political writing here in the near future.

And many updates about Yoga For Life. Look, I look strangely pretty & not really like myself in my photo on the teacher bio page: here. I still have to write my bio.

There have been a lot of storms lately, which I love. Today there's electricity hovering in the air, and the greens are very very lush, and the clouds are dark and threatening, but haven't rained yet.

The last several days have been unusually social. There was a potluck with all the teachers from the new studio (which WILL be open, in August!); there was time spent with S (dear old friend from back in high school); there was a cookout at our store manager's house.

I worked this morning. I'm wearing pajamas now & I am really enjoying being down in my little room, playing music and feeling hermit-ish.

I'm reading a lot. I've forgotten to keep a reading record here. Oh, well.

I like to wear capri pants and sandals, or better yet, bare feet.
I'm shy & I have walls around me, and inside the walls there's fury & poetry.
I write about myself too much, possibly because I don't talk much about myself in real life.
I find myself doing a lot of listening. In that respect, being a barista is an awful lot like being a bartender.
I find myself liking the cranky rude customers best, because mostly they just want to be listened to, and they have a reason for being cranky and rude, and sometimes I'm cranky and I'm rude too.

I enjoy:
The sound and smell of steaming milk & fresh espresso shots pulling.
Thick grass and lush greens in general.
Most piano music.
Summer storms and the overall smell of summer (heady scents of all-of-a-sudden flowers, fresh-mown grass, sunscreen, hot wind)
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron (equally, though Michigan's got sandier beaches)

When I was little I thought that Lake Huron was an ocean. Because you can't see to the opposite shore, it gives the illusion of going on forever. We used to have beach fires and toast marshmallows and my brother would tell me that the creature of the black lagoon lived in this lake, and my sister would waddle around in her diapers with popsicle-sticky hands coated in sand. In the day I'd forget to put on sunscreen and follow my brother to the dunes behind the cottage where we'd go sand-dune sledding.
In order to properly sled down dunes, one should have some kind of plastic sled or garbage-can lid.
We had none, so we liked to slide down head-first and shut our eyes against the sand.
It was so much better than going feet-first.

stockholm syndrome.
sitting in the cafe at work on my lunch break. i forgot to bring my tuppwerware of mom's lasagna so I had to eat banana-nut coffee cake from the pastry case for dinner, which was fine because I haven't been hungry all day anyway. i recognize that i'm shrinking again, going to the fourth hole in my belt instead of the third. i try my best.

i was thinking of stockholm syndrome today, and of trying to buy a used piano, and where i'd put a piano if i had it... but how could i justify the money a piano would cost? you can't get anything worth playing for under 600, and 600 is a steal. i check craigslist all the time. but today i was at the keyboard and doing a lot of listening. i feel like if you listen to the piano as you play it the playing goes so much more smoothly. like, letting it guide you intuitively to the right notes? but here i am having this weird spiritual listening experience with an electronic keyboard. it sounds really real through my headphones, but still.

i'll be teaching yoga again. so that's extra money too. i hate being poor, having to constantly think about money.

i've gone off topic. i was in the cafe, eating my sad little dinner and doing my reading for this weekend of training at Haven, where we will learn how to be sexual assault counselors. How do you learn that in seven hours?
then I finished that chapter and got to the one on domestic violence.
this work is causing me to examine my life on a new and different, more intellectual, level. I can say words that used to make me want to vomit; I can talk about things in my history and then let the words go, because words are only air.

i was thinking of stockholm syndrome, though, because i was reading about abusive relationships, and wondering who'll be on the phone when I'm sitting there at haven answering the only rape crisis line in this county and beyond.

sometimes i love just going to bed and drifting into velvety sleep. Lately I like my awake time too though. I love how when we get lots of rain the grass only takes a couple of days to go to seed again after cutting. I like the seedy grass. It makes me think of Ireland, how lush it is here. I like being able to wander outside barefoot in the morning to see how the weather's going to be. So my days go by in terms of: books read, hours spent at the piano, yoga, working out, cups and cups and cups of coffee, served and poured and drunk (drank?).

And sometimes I'm amazed because I don't know how I became this HEALTHY person. It is possible to live with an illness (or disease, or disability; I don't like words that create polarity, but alas) and to be healthy.

So I can think about things like Stockholm Syndrome. which I am typing over and over so that I'll remember it because I have an idea for a short story. had the idea while i was taking my break in the cafe, with iced tea and coffee cake and a bit of an upset stomach.

So I have a lot of thoughts about today that I want to get down. I was thinking of putting it in the black book (my physical paper journal) but typing is faster and anyway I think a lot of this is fodder for any number of discussions. I'm feeling isolated. I don't want to sit around thinking to myself. I want to be engaged.

I started my training at the center (it's a rape crisis center/domestic violence shelter/counseling place/etc) last night and I love it. I haven't felt so energized and challenged since I left school. It feels incredible to be learning, and our training group is a fantastic group; we're ten women and one man. We were together for 7 hours today and we have three more seven-hour Saturdays to go. Rarely have I seen a group of people warm to one another so quickly and with so much honesty. A lot of this must have to do with the fact that we spent seven hours discussing power and oppression, prejudices, stereotypes, discrimination, sexism, racism, etc, and B (our trainer/supervisor) conducts the training in such a way that participants are forced to examine their own stereotypes and misgivings and prejudices, and where we fit into different systems of power and oppression.

At the same time, I am a bit drained. I know I need this evening to decompress. I meditated this morning because I wanted to stay very self-aware throughout the day, so I know now that I don't have the energy to sit up at the piano, even if it's just to play and make up chords and melodies that go nowhere. I wanted to write, and once I'm through writing I want to find a really terrible old horror movie on TV and zone out. I didn't sleep well last night, and disruptions to my sleep cycle scare me a little (triggers and signs and whatnot). But I suspect that my subconscious mind was so awhirl with everything I am approaching in my choice to work at this center.

Haven is over 30 years old; it was one of the first places of its kind. Sitting in this training room, having these discussions, and reading this material, I feel enlivened. I realize that I've grown, because I do not feel triggered and frightened and sad and alone. Yes, we are talking about awful things like rape and spousal abuse and child abuse, but I am approaching them on an intellectual level, rather than emotional. And I see in myself the strength I will need to work on this crisis hotline.

I've wanted to do this type of work for years, but I was always afraid it would be too triggering or would hit too close to home. It hits very close to home, but it doesn't hurt exactly. I'm listening to the facts about things that have happened to me, and realizing that they actually do happen to all kinds of people all the time. I've read all of this before, but something about sitting face to face with real people and discussing it makes it hit home. And suddenly my experience isn't just MY experience anymore, my burden to carry alone. Suddenly my experience is a part of something bigger, and I have the ability to create change.

I am not as excited about this one as I am about the last one I posted, but I think this could go somewhere, maybe.

Hair and Oil

Every time you breathe snow on air
you're breathing milk, too.

If you took enough pictures of me
I might never have to write a poem.
It could be so simple, my remembrance.
A coy turn
of the head. Mine,

so you’ll know this woman waited
to wash her hair until it rained.
You can never fake an egg,
this I told you all along.

This pitcher may never hold
a drop of milk but nevertheless
every time I breathe snow on air
I’m breathing milk too.

I’m breathing milk; I’m heavy as a cow,
I want to go back to sleep.

Someday
you’ll walk a hundred miles in the dust,
and at the end, I’ll wash your feet
with hair and oil.

I just spent a little while tweaking the look of this blog, because I'd been getting sick of it for a while. Look! A new icon and she looks like me, sort of.

I asked K what people at work thought of me when I was new, and she said they were scared of me because I was standoffish and didn't seem to want to be friends. Ahhh well, I'd rather be feared than ridiculed.

I feel funny. I was at the piano and then suddenly I stopped playing and was crying. I'd been trying to get into the moment (I don't know how to describe except it's a kind of meditative state where there are just hands and keys) and I couldn't. I was thinking of therapy yesterday and how little this woman knows about me--not my history, but my temperament, my needs. Such as: don't ever tell me I can't do something. That will make me stubborn and I'll do it just to prove you wrong. It may also make me shut down.

Then I kept crying I guess because there's been a lot of loss in the past year or so.

And my poems don't mean much to anybody, and my music means even less.

What are we left with, if not art? And what is art that exists purely for art's sake? What's the point of art if it doesn't matter to anyone?

I found myself wanting to be in Ulla's yoga studio again, sun saluting on the bumpy, creaky wood floor. The studio doesn't even belong to Ulla anymore, and soon, Ulla won't even belong to Flagstaff.

I think I could handle loss if it came to me bit by bit. But often, it's enormous, and I see how very far I have to go.

I haven't touched piano keys since Saturday, but I'm thinking I will, again, soon enough.

I cut my own hair again and it doesn't look that great, but I discovered that I really don't care. It's off the back of my neck. That feels nice.

This week I've experienced a rush of memories. Last year, yesterday, my Nana died and I felt broken open with grief. Yesterday we visited Jenks park, up in the thumb (of Michigan), where her ashes were scattered and I tried to make myself feel something besides my own irritation at the bugs (which I said were fish flies but my mother said were not). It took me all day to settle enough to where I hiked a short distance to a pier and crept around the beach surrounding until I found a private little piece of sandy beach and looked out over the water and remembered that Lake Huron is part of the landscape of my childhood. Then I settled and breathed. To be in a place where I once stood, breathing and young and totally unmarred. It's been such a long time.

I want to get to the place where I am unmarred again, where none of it will matter even though none of it can be erased. The memories of last summer could skim off of me forever if I could handle the cold of the lake and swim into it unafraid. It's all such a nightmare, still.

I was thinking yesterday of lost memories and thought again of how I had to piece together that week or so that I lost in October 2001. There was a blank there, where I didn't remember my own face in the mirror or the anonymous phone calls i made for help, or the awful haircut I gave myself that time. (I have at least improved, I think, at butchering my own hair). It seemed I just woke up one day with barely any hair on my head and realized I hadn't been to school or work in over a week. I knew what had happened to me but not how I had reacted.

I knew vaguely that I had called a crisis line that had connected me to a local shelter, and the woman who answered the phone there sounded surprised at my situation, surprised that I'd be calling there of all places, and said that this was a domestic violence shelter and unless I was in danger at home and needed shelter, they couldn't help me. She said I should just go to the hospital. By myself.

And that was all.

When I stop and try to ask myself how I feel about this I find that I'm angry. I'm mad as hell and I think that's why I'm taking the crisis line job at Haven. I'm mad enough that I want to see a difference in the world.

I try not to write about all this anymore. It's my way of thinking I am past it. I know I'm not completely past it. I don't know what working the phones is going to teach me about myself.

I do know that I am finally at a place (with my own healing) where I am not just pissed off and lashing out at the world left and right in random (but terribly frightening) anger. I find a focus and I stick to it. Like riding horses up north. Finding the place between the horse's ears and focusing there; and that's how you never fall out of the saddle, even when you've only had one riding lesson in your life.

So now I want to be the person on the other end of the line. I don't want another girl or woman (or man for that matter) to find the courage to call somewhere and ask for help, and end up hanging up the phone feeling crushed and alone.

I feel certain that the stories I will listen to might open up wells of emotion in myself, but I feel ready to face that, too.

I've been writing poems again but I still haven't had any dreams.

I tell myself all the time that I shouldn't write about the things I've survived; that I've written enough and that nobody wants to read or hear about this. But this is what I know and this is how I want to connect with the world. For the moment.

It's getting hot out, finally. It's very nice to take a shower after a workout and then lie on the bed in the shady room with the windows open and my damp hair curling around my ears. I never had curls in Arizona. It's very nice to just lie there in the middle of the afternoon and space out and listen to Kate Bush.

I'm pretty sure that the meds cause me to space out for an hour or more at a time to a single album. I don't particularly care. It's what it is. I don't think time listening to music is a waste, anyway. It's all fodder for art.

All of it.