Social services

You're so good at what you do.
You even work beyond the hours that are required of you. Time. Efficiency.
You have all of this quantifiable data about how you help people. And you feel great.
But hold on, someone comes along, saying that this job is actually not about you. It's about the clients. Someone comes along and says, 'Oh yea, food stamps are important. But there's something else there that makes them need the food stamps in the first place." You help. But you let them know you are their helper. Without you they could do nothing. These people are disgusting to you. Oh yes they are. These persons with God-given talents and dignity are the ungrateful scum of the earth to you. Why they don't respond to your many calls? You hypothesize: It's because they're lazy. It's because they are ungrateful.

These people are survivors.
Their supposedly disgusting bathrooms are part your imagination and part a reflection of the sexual abuse that happened from the ages of 5-7. Their inability to get up in the morning is not laziness and cannot be explained away with "they just don't want to." It's a reflection of the fact that their mother never got up to take care of them, never made them the breakfasts that you got to enjoy. When you were thinking about Barbie Dolls and your greatest worry was whether you were going to get the toy you wanted at Christmas, they were in bed worrying about whether daddy was going to come wake them from their slumber by slapping them across the face when he came home drunk. You think you are such an expert on their lives? You've been working with "people like them" for a period of a year maybe, maybe two, for the last 5 years or so. They--they have been living their difficult lives for 20 + years. They are experts on themselves. Have you ever thought to ask them, Why? Why are you in shelter? Why are you here instead of in college? Why are you with that abusive boyfriend instead of with a man who will love you? Why are you in shelter instead of living in an apartment like mine? What is the difference between you and I?
You don't ask because you assume the answers to these questions. And they all culminate in theories of laziness and "because they don't want to."
But you're so good at what you do. You manage their lives like they could never imagine managing their own.
But that's part of the system, isn't it? Let's keep tossing them left overs of fish, while never teaching them that they have the potential to fishermen. That they have the potential to be fisherwomen.

I am hoping that someday all of my unconventionality will result in something mindblowingly creative and revolutionary.
In the meantime, lots of people get mad at me.

In theory...

I like many things in theory.
In theory, I like Turkey. And not the country. Just the pictures of the country. I've never been there and today, while looking at these gorgeous photographs of a half moon and a star, reds, vibrant yellows, coffee shops and cool outfits, I decided that I like the hypothetical country. Sure, the controversies over secularism and religiosity in Turkey are fascinating. But let me explain why I hesitate to say I like the country:
In theory, I like Croatia. I like the pictures I took when I was there. I like the Cathedrals, the iron railings, the mustard yellos and the skinny jean modelesque youngsters from Novi Zagreb. But I lived there for six weeks and I only actually liked living there 2 out of the six weeks. These moments of beauty are just that. Moments. They are not sustainable. We don't live in bubbles of beauty. We see glimmers of it.

I like reading. I like seeing the piles of books stack all over my room. I like their colors. I like that you can tell a lot about my interests by their titles, "Book of Hours," "Deep Economy," "Retrato en Sepia," "Cien Años de Soledad." But do I read them? Kind of. I read half of one book, a quarter of another, a chapter of this one, three chapters of that one.
But boy, do I want to read. And boy, do I want to travel to Turkey. But I want to do it in a Palestinian scarf with a coffee cup sipping espresso. In essence, I want the beauty.

Then there are things that I've managed to like both in theory and in practice. I like graffiti, in theory. I love it as a symbol of expression coming from the marginalized in our society; how talent oozes out through the hiss of a spray can from the fingers of those we thought were good for nothings. And I also love the way the spray can feels when I spray it against a wall or a canvas or a wooden slate. Even if I'm not good at it because I haven't had much practice. I like it, and am willing to spend hours practicing and sitting in front of random peaces of wood that I find in my house just so that one day I can proudly put my name on a free wall-beautifully.

Once I got into it, Retrato en Sepia, became my favorite book. I read it all the way from Boston to New York. I lost myself in Allende's pages and in the intricate details of Aurora's life.

In theory, I want to belong to boards, committees, get my voice heard. But, in practice, the work is not always fun. Sometimes it means pushing the envelope, having people get mad at you for doing so, and pushing through their anger anyways just because you believe in this cause. It means feeling bad about the work you do some days. It means researching and praying for connections that may or may not come-with the steadfast hope that one day they will. And even if they don't, all you have is this desire to push the system that keeps a people down; an inner desire to ruffle the feathers of those who maintain it. So even if I never get my connection, I have no other option but to push for them.

This difference between theory and practice is sticking with something through the discomfort. Beautiful pictures of Turkey don't make us uncomfortable. They inspire us. NYTimes articles about poverty, while they may elicit emotion, they mostly satisfy our thirst for knowledge. Again, they inspire us. But as tough as it may be to read the news, it's tougher to take the disappointment from a supervisor, the boredom of the every day. The theoretical helps us to stay inspired. The practice helps us get the job done.
So they're both important, huh?
Beautiful pictures give us perspective and help us see the forest. But the practice is where it's at. Let's keep practicing, people, until we reach the vision that the theoretical provides us with.

Suburbia (Warning: the beginning is slightly angry and it gets happier towards the end)

Sometimes suburbia upsets me, like when people who I know to have very limited experiences try to shun others who they deem "inferior" to themselves.
When cliques of far more "superior" people are formed at the expense of those crowned with middle school titles of "uncool." Like-Oh, I'm sorry. Your skinny jeans and oversized glasses give you an excuse to be rude.
-"No, but I smoke cigarettes and only lived in the suburbs 23 of the 25 years I have lived."
Impressive......
(Sarcasm abounds).

Except no one calls anyone uncool in their twenties, they simply give looks and walk around with an air of superiority.
Little do they know that this is precisely what their fathers and mothers did before them, excluding Blacks, Latinos and others who were not deemed as "superior."
" Oh no!" Cries the hipster. "I voted for Obama."
Obama?
Your previously conservative ass voted for Obama?
Well, don't you get a golden star! Oh, wait! You went on a study abroad trip for two semesters and had a cross cultural experience too?
Wow. Good for you!

And then, there are parts of suburbia that are near to me. Like the beaches and the families and the moms who bake you cookies when you meet them. And the hobbies and the outings.

And then there are the experiences I have in this place (that happens to be in a suburb) with people who are genuine. They transcend every category I might have placed them in, just because we are friends. These people are not 'suburban.' They're not 'White' to me. They're not way too privileged for their own good. And they're not people I resent because I gave up what I had in a cosmopolitan hub to live in a place where no one would understand my experiences. These are lovely people. Compassionate people, who I know by name and as individuals-who may or may not fit into the stereotypes I may have for them. You want to make fun of my occasional accent? Go ahead, because we're cool like that. My defenses are down. Fists are lowered. And we are more similar than any theory or category might deem us to be.

Stereotypes are for people we resent. They are reserved for people we misunderstand or who misunderstand us. When someone offends us we call them "suburban" and remind them of how oppressive they were to our people so that it stings. We speak in grand large scales. We remind them of how provincial and narrow their experiences are. We remind them that they, in fact, are not superior. We unleash the ghetto and scare them with our slang. And it works. Two neck rolls and one finger raise and I get you to crawl back behind the white picket fence you grew up in-fenced from the large, diverse world that you got a peek of on your trip to Uganda your junior of college, but will always remain somewhat clueless as long as you live in the hipster world of rebelling against daddy and mommy (and of course, your Palestinian scarf does not mean that you are a hipster. You are, in fact, not a hipster).


But isn't this the root of many conflicts, small or large scale, in the world? You shun me, I let you know who's boss. You make me feel small, I make you feel small. And suddenly, we draw our guns.
And then, in a whole other realm, friendship happens, where we are given the space to breathe; to get to know the idiosyncrasies, the "weirdness" and the "coolness." Where masks are let go of. And suddenly the "suburban" person you were trying to belittle becomes your best friend. The approach here is different. We come to the table as equals, with nothing to defend. We offer our weapons as gifts and leave them at the irrelevant corner they belong in with crayons and beanie babies.

I see you. With clarity. Because all you are is my brother. All you are is my sister. You are not my attacker. You are not my oppressor. You are not the privileged kid who is trying to pretend he or she knows something about my culture and my demographic that I supposedly do not know just because you heard about it on NPR. You are blood, flesh and bones. Just like me.
I am not your judge, smashing my gavel on the pages of history to make you feel ashamed of your skinny jeans, pretension and escapism. I am your housemate who yells when she's offended, who you get to tell to shut the hell up, because I'm only bullshitting because I'm offended. You call my bluff because we are the same and different. And we revel in it all. Together.

A journey through the eyes of my itunes

I got my old Dell laptop back today. This laptop was the one I got in September of my freshman year of college with the scholarship money the City of Cambridge gave me. It was one of the first larger items of mail I had ever received, and it helped usher in a convoluted chapter of ups and downs.
On it, I downloaded tons of 90's R & B that I would sulk to in my dorm room my first semester in 2004. Monica soon welcomed Switchfoot-"I Dare You to Move" in the Spring of 2005. I remember listening to this and all of the contemporary christian music you could think of. In light of the culture I have come to know of indie-hipsters where turning against daddy's religion is key, this might sound a bit absurd. But at the time, these CCM artists (I learned the acronym recently) helped establish a cultural connection to this new culture I had discovered, of oriental scarves, going to the gym at 6am, sitting in the green grass between classes and sipping lattes at the former Claymore at 12:30 am every night.

Then came Common, John Legend and spoken word artists when I went back home to Cambridge that summer to try to make sense of the new culture I had found and it's relationship to my own context.

But then sophomore year rushed in at the end of August of 2005 and Mercedes Sosa was ready to help me deal with cultural identity. Marx was sitting on my desk-and I didn't just read him for class. My Dominican flag was my security blanket that helped me hang onto my roots as it hung from my dorm wall. Listening to the songs from Latin American revolutionaries singing through the Nueva Cancion Movement served as the soundtrack for my Latin American politics class and my participation in May Day 2006, rallying for immigration reform. The Rock en español that I had discovered in Dominican Republic that year took me through the angry moments that spring.

Junior year brought me Radiohead through an old boyfriend. Sufjan Stevens came flying through to speak to my more culturally heterogenous soul when I worked as a barrista at the small closet they called Claymore "If you have a father or if you haven't one, I'll do anything for you." And it all went downhill from there--or uphill.
Listening to the variety of music on my old itunes takes me back to these places. The smells of my apartment senior year in the basement of Ferrin. Flashbacks to getting ready to go to parties in Beverly, where I was more an observer than anything else-not quite sure if I was a full fledged participant quite yet. The colors of the tiles in the bathroom, the smells of cleaning product during times of extreme motivation-Jarabe de Palo bring me back. Laying in bed thinking about how I was going to get through it all during times of extreme difficulty-Lifehouse was the tear jerker.
The songs from different genres going one after another like a really awkward mixed CD take me to the activism, the optimism, the cultural questioning. It gives weight to my experience and reminds me of how profound these were. Even the Spanish Christian songs take me there-to times when I was more sure, but also to times when I was in tune with changing my bad habits or detrimental character traits. "Cancion de Sanidad": "Ven, saname Senor." These take me back to times of profound prayer, of crying out, to the times of absolute desperation and to times of absolute elation.

They remind me of the incredible transformation that has taken place in the last 5 years. And to top it all off, there's a spoken word piece in there that I had written for my friend's communication class at Emerson College in 2008. It was all about my journey from Dominican chain-wearing days to the whole foods shopping and cafe going days.
Crazy. Cathartic.




It makes me think....
When I look back I feel that I have gained so much, that I am empowered in a way I had never been. I feel that I have climbed a really tall tree or something and now can see that when I was so sure that the world consisted of three roads and 1,000 trees, it might have atleast 300 roads and 10,000 trees, if not more. In fact, I'm sure that I have more trees to climb and that there are more roads and trees to see that I do not have access to now.
It makes me think of this idea that salvation lies in tapping into these universal principles that break us free and help us to transcend our previous limitations or at least to understand them more fully. Now, there a whole new set of limitations and I'm excited to keep climbing.

9 things...

There are things I haven't yet figured out how to do. And, in fact, I wonder if I'll ever figure out:

1. How to make myself eat the vegetables in the plastic bags from the super market without being turned off by them a day or two later and getting fresh vegetables during lunch instead. In other words, how to not waste money.

2. How to keep my room consistently organized for more than a week without having to do a massive clean every Sunday.

3. How to keep avoiding dairy, white flower and things that are bad for me in proportionate amounts throughout the year, so that I'm not going from a size 12 to a size 9 back to a size 11 and then on the verge of a 13, and getting queasy and nauseous in between.

4. How to follow up on those things I always say I want to do, but never get around to; like getting better at riding a bike and being able to use it as a viable means of transportation; like getting fit enough to go hiking with my athletic friends without wanting to have a heart attack 3/4's of the way there; like getting good at the guitar and fighting through my fear of theory through to see new horizons of musicality.

5. How to stop being such a people pleaser! I must admit, I am getting better at saying no and articulating my boundaries, but I still find that I build my thoughts around how happy others might be, especially in my professional life.

6. How to fight the temptation of getting over priced coffee at a coffee shop in the morning before work as part of my daily ritual.

7. How to be a better daughter.

8. How to sift through all the clutter in my head filled with thoughts, ideas, wants, to-do lists without having them all smudge together in one big mush, causing me to take drastic measures to figure it all out, by creating color coded charts and storing a zillion and two calendars, organizers and planners.

9. How to want to take out the trash when I get home from work-I can take it out of the poor over-worked trash can and tie it in a nice knot, but to take it downstairs?! C'mon! Huge task!
Ridiculous.
I know. (I'm also not the only contributor in this scenario)

"Purity of heart is to will one thing"

Is this the case for anyone else?

There's always at least one day a week where all I can get myself to do is stare blankly at my computer at work.
Ok. I'm exaggerating. I can get myself to go on facebook, check my newsfeed 8 times, read NYTimes articles, write journal entries. Oh and Ooo! Ooo! I can get myself to read budgeting articles and material for clients. But anything beyond sitting here and reading becomes incredibly difficult.
This week that day is Monday. I've been sitting here, reading the Budgeting Workbook, slowly but surely. And although I feel lethargic because of the great feast at my family's house yesterday, I have a feeling that this has to do with more than my physical health. It's probably indicative of what I'm meant to be doing.
I'm reluctant to say that I'm meant to be in a work environment where I can be writing, reflecting, reading and conceptualizing. But I'm finding that, in this environment, those activities come the most naturally.
So the question becomes, What to do? Another important question to ask might be, What is the nature of these unproductive days? It it just a case of the Mondays? Is it my job or is it me (i.e. should I be looking to change some sort of thinking pattern or habit that will cause me have a case of the Mondays every week no matter what job I find myself in)?
Perhaps, I'll leave here at the end of my assignment having written a novel about my clients, their stories and anecdotal information on best practices. I'll call it: Poverty and Social Service Agencies: From the Eyes of an Observer on the Inside.