Some pictures from the SMYRC “naked Santa” party fundraiser tonight. More here (naturally).

…because today I went and got a big tattoo of Texas on my back…

Maybe next to it I should have tattooed “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” but that seems like the kind of thing I would regret later (especially since yes, this tattoo was covering a previous tattoo that I’ve hated and been embarrassed by for years, so now it’s gone).

On my way home from getting that tattoo as I was driving over the Burnside Bridge, all the traffic suddenly stopped. My first thought was that the bridge was raised, but the lights and stuff weren’t flashing. Then I noticed people up in front of me were starting to get out of their cars. My stomach flipped. My next thought was that someone had been hit and was laying in the road dying, or had jumped into the river, or something like that. As I sat there, internally panicking a little bit, suddenly a tiny little black puppy, about 6 inches high, went darting out of the line of traffic next to my car, followed by a teenage boy running after it. It then occurred to me that that’s why everyone was stopped: they were all trying to catch this runaway puppy!!

Then traffic going the opposite direction stopped, and I looked in my rearview mirror and saw the dog continuing to lead the boy on a wild chase all over both lanes of traffic on the bridge, which were now stopped. Finally he caught it and swooped it up in his arms, and ran back to the safety of the sidewalk. I drove home with a little smile on my face.

“No more distractions. The elation of finally being alone was total. We walked straight west. I had everything I needed in the world resting comfortably on my shoulders, and the entire country waiting to be discovered.”
-Peter Jenkins, from A Walk Across America

When I was doing some background research on Travels With Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck, which I wrote about here, I continually saw A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins referenced as a companion piece. So I bought it and just finished reading it last night, and aside from 2 dudes exploring the United States, the two books couldn’t be more different.

For starters, Jenkins is no writer, and he’s only, like, 23 when he starts walking. It’s a compelling origin: the young, disillusioned, wealthy, liberal college grad decides to walk across the United States to see it all before he decides whether or not it’s worth saving before he moves across the pond. He’s disgusted by the racism, Vietnam, and what he feels is the populace’s general animosity and unkind behavior toward each other. In other words, he just can’t understand why people in this country can’t just be nice to each other. But in practice, the book is a glorified travel diary, filled with trite cliches and mundane observations. Yes, he has some neato adventures, and gets in some riff-raff, and almost dies a few times (from the elements and from hostile southerners who don’t take too kindly to Yankee outsiders), but in the end, Jenkins is so desperate to find the goodness in people, he ends up overlooking reality because someone was nice to him once.

For instance, he decides to walk all the way to Alabama and actually schedules a meeting with George Wallace so that he can tell him face-to-face what a rotten human being he is (and rightfully so), but once he’s in his office, he’s seduced by a smooth talker who shows a little interest in why Jenkins is walking across America. George Wallace really cares, you see, and he thinks it’s just far out that Jenkins wants to see how great this country is firsthand, and even offers to fund the rest of Jenkins’s trip (an offer he rightly refuses), so Jenkins leaves his office not only enamored by Wallace, but totally willing to forget all that nasty racism, race-baiting and segregation stuff, because, well, he’s just such a nice guy. Jenkins must have misjudged him. I kept wondering what the poor black family in North Carolina, with whom Jenkins lived for several months, and who treated him like their own son and brother, would think of this revelation of his.

Moved by his reaction to me, which was the opposite of any I had imagined, I reached out my Yankee hand, and we shook hands hard. As I walked out of his office, prouder to be an American than when I had come in, the governor rolled alongside me, confined forever to his wheelchair, and said, “God bless ya, Son!”

Barf. Compare that to Steinbeck’s reaction to traveling through the south, and, facing the harsh and vile segregation and treatment of blacks in New Orleans, decided to cut his trip short because his spirit was crushed. I think you can see where my own sensitivities would probably lie. To be fair, Steinbeck took his journey in the 60’s, and Jenkins took his journey in the mid-70’s, but the sentiment remains the same. Perhaps if Jenkins was bit more articulate, and could author a more insightful glimpse into why his opinion shifted so radically, it would make more sense, but I don’t buy it as is. But when you consider that in the next chapter he stumbles upon a Christian revival in downtown Mobile (when he was headed to a wild party to meet girls and possibly do drugs), and is inexplicably saved, and, sobbing before thousands, gives himself over to Jesus, perhaps it makes more sense. People don’t do that unless they’re terribly lost, and terribly susceptible to suggestion. It shouldn’t really surprise me then that Jenkins would instantly forgive one of the most vile politicians in American history upon meeting him for about 20 seconds.

I was, however, really enjoying the book up to this point (especially the aforementioned months-long interlude in North Carolina with the black family), and it’s possible I’m either reading way too much into this one incident, or simply making too much of it. It really struck me, though, and I felt betrayed by Jenkins, and he instantly became an unreliable narrator for me. A dear friend once said to me that if you sat down with every single person in the world and talked to them for 10 minutes, nearly everybody is “nice.” That doesn’t mean they’re good people. Which is something I’ve pretty carried with me ever since. So, it’s fortunate at least that this occurred later on in the book after I’d already enjoyed most of it.

A Walk Across America is an interesting time-capsule, but I never really felt like I got to know Jenkins very much. At the end, he seemed like an empty vessel, simply taking in everything and everyone around him blindly and without much filtering (though he was quite turned off by the messianic vibe at the weird Christian hippy commune he stayed at briefly in Tennessee), which, again, to be fair, is kind of what your twenties are for I guess. But there’s no analysis, no insight, no real wisdom that he imparts, other than, well, as it turns out, people in the South are nice after all, and cultish hippies are creepy. He seems like a nice enough guy, I guess, and I’m sort of curious as to what he’s up to now. A Google search doesn’t turn up much, and, judging by the last few chapters of A Walk, his other books are probably just all about God and going to church. A rather disappointing climax for such a pregnant journey of ideals.

The weather on Thanksgiving was dreadful, but this morning we woke up to clear blue skies, so I was inspired to walk about the neighborhood and take pictures. Here are some. More here.

More on my Flickr page!

This song is very sentimental to me, and it’s one of my favorites. This is my official Thanksgiving post. I hope everyone has a wonderful day. I just made a chocolate cake with coffee in the batter. It’s amazing.

“I know positively…that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on Earth is free from it. And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody’s face and fasten the infection on him. What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest – health, integrity, purity (if you like) – is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-power, a never ending tension of the mind, to avoid such lapses. Yes…it’s a wearying business being plague-stricken. But it’s still more wearying to refuse to be it. That’s why everybody in the world today looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness, a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death.”

– Albert Camus, 1947

The radical queer/trans group Bash Back! that I wrote about a couple of months ago have taken responsibility for vandalizing a billboard in Memphis supporting a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. In response, there were multiple rallies held by Memphis’ gay and lesbian community to help maintain a sense of safety, of course acting on the assumption that the vandalism was an anti-gay act. A Bash Back blogger writes:

I’m here to dispute the claim that this action was an anti-gay act. First, sending gays to be military fodder is NOT pro-gay or conclusive whatsoever to gay liberation. State militarism only reinforces the dominant structures, and the racism/heterosexism they perpetuate, as well as reducing the number of gay people in the world (both those in Amerikkka and the countries Amerikkka is colonizing/conquering). Second, we accuse the MGLCC of being flat out racist/anti-queer/anti-trans; and we furiously question how that the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center can squander $3500 on military billboards, when Memphis has the highest trans-murder rate (11 trans women of color, 1 white transwoman and 1 transman of color), as well as one of the highest queer youth homeless rates in the nation, and how they can justify putting a pro-military billboard in the overwhelmingly POC neighborhood of Morris Park, when the poor Black community in Morris Park is disporportionately preyed upon by the military (through the court system’s ‘prison or military service’ rule for minor felonies as well as recruiters’ false promises of otherwise impossible economic/education opportunities)?

While there is some part of me that agrees that gay people shouldn’t go fight in wars to support a country that not only doesn’t support them but that actively discriminates against them, unfortunately, that’s not reality. For many people the military is their only way out of a desperate situation, and while in a perfect world no one would have to make that decision, this isn’t a perfect world. So that’s pretty much the only reason I support the repeal of DADT, to be honest with you. At least until the United States decides to practice what it preaches and makes every person equal (although really, does anyone still bother to espouse that nonsense, because no one really believes it do they?)? I say let the straight people go die if that’s what they wanna do.

I also don’t support Bash Back defacing overtly gay billboards in an attempt to bring shame to what they see as the community center’s racism and trans-phobia. There is already so much hostility directed towards queer people (especially in Tennessee), why contribute to that climate of fear and act as a breeze on the already smoldering embers of hatred, discrimination and violence? I agree that as a whole the gay world is still pretty racist and trans-phobic, and while I can still theoretically get behind protesting churches, this I cannot get behind. The comments on the above-linked blog are pretty funny.

In other radical gay news, after the Catholic Church’s appallingly stomach-churning threat against the Washington, D.C. area if gay marriage is recognized there, someone has started a web site to out gay priests who continue to support the church’s campaign of terrorism against gay people. And while I am also never in favor of outing queer people, I am in favor of outing hypocrites. Especially in the service of saving kid’s lives, both physical and spiritual.

I had a very emotional session with a 14-year-old client this morning who I go see at their school because their parents won’t bring them to counseling. Sweetest kid ever, and clearly in a lot of pain. So I’m a little fired up today.

Somehow, 4 seasons in, Friday Night Lights still has the power to reach into my soul and tear it in half. Okay, so that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I just finished watching the first episode of the new season, and I was basically tearing up through the entire thing.

I think what I love so much about that show is its fearlessness in putting its main characters through hell. Sure, this could just be seen as a cynical ploy to get you to sympathize with, and like, them, but its more real than that. It treats the ups and downs of life not with reverence or disdain either one, but with the matter-of-factness with which we all have to go through life, at least those of us not on a TV show besides FNL. And in the process, it is also not afraid to make our most beloved characters look like assholes (is there really anything worse than seeing Matt Saracen as dejected, bitter and violent?). And why does it make us cheer on Riggins as he walks out of college about 2 seconds after he starts, and then melodramatically tosses the entire contents of his bookbag out his truck window on the highway? He’s a litterbug, a quitter, and an idiot, yet somehow we see why this decision makes sense to him, and in turn perhaps sympathize a little more with the yokels in real life who consistently vote conservative against their own best interests and cast as an insufferable commie elitist anyone with any intellectual aspirations. Never mind the fact that I can’t actually imagine Riggins ever voting for anything, one way or another, and therein perhaps you have the appeal.

The new season looks promising, with enough conflict and drama to pack an entire lesser series. The McCoys, naturally, are the villains de rigeur, which is a little bit regrettable. How much more compelling would that whole set-up be if they were even moderately sympathetic, as J.D. was throughout most of last season? Now he’s just another stereotyped caricature of a pompous, quarterback date rapist. Maybe he’ll gain back a little more nuance as the season wears on, but I’m not counting on it. Joe, well, with his golf cart and his evil smirk as all hell broke loose at the school assembly, will most definitely not be in line for any nuance, sympathy, or humanity, I’m afraid. But than again, that’s never why his character existed. But he was also never completely believable, and with a show that has such finely drawn and realistic characters, that seems like an almost lazy oversight on the part of the otherwise flawless writers. But I already miss the old characters, even though I’m looking forward to meeting the new ones. Watching this episode was more than a little bittersweet for me, and as much as I just wish maybe season 3 should have been the end of the line, I have a lot of hope and optimism for season 4. I know it’s just a resistance to change, but, like life, things can’t just stay the same all the time. I’m in it for the long haul, and Coach Taylor and Tami (Tammy?) need me, so I’ll be there for them. (Shut up; yes, they’re real people to me.)

And, can I also just say, Coach Taylor doesn’t look nearly as good in red as he does in blue. But maybe I’ll come around. Poor Coach Taylor. I think he might have engaged in some emotional eating over the summer, if you know what I mean.

Overall, things are going really well at my practicum site, except for one minor hitch: MY CLIENTS NEVER SHOW UP!!! I try not to take it personally, or to get too jaded about it, but I’m starting to. Which sucks for a variety of reasons, not least because I have to get a certain amount of client contact hours to graduate from school….

But with the clients that do come regularly, I feel like I’m doing really good work with them. Which helps me to not make it personal. I’m especially bummed today because I got a new client last week that I was super excited about. Just the type of client I’ve been wanting. So I did all kinds of research throughout the week about what I think their diagnosis is, then did research on diagnostic tools and tests to use when they come in to help solidify my hypothesis, and then I researched solutions and ways we can work together to get the best results. Of course they didn’t show up today. Which is not to say they won’t show up next week, but they’re not here now, which is a serious bummer. (Of course, I’m supposed to do all those things with every client, but this is the first time I’ve really done all that stuff independently, sans my supervisor helping me.

I did, however, have a really great appointment with a 9th grader this morning at their school. Awhile back, I wrote about not feeling especially “grown up,” and what that even meant. Well, I’ll tell you, walking into a high school under the guise of being a mental health “expert,” meeting with a kid in the nurse’s office, then talking briefly with the nurse will make one feel “grown up.” (Honestly, even walking the halls of a high school wearing my Cascadia badge made me feel miles from that world, in a good way; it was kind of surreal.)

So I’ll take the good with the bad, and hope my other client shows up next week, and doesn’t become just another in a long line of clients that are notoriously unreliable. I guess that’s just community health care.