A Great Expanse

Prepare yourself for a somewhat serious post.  (I'm realizing that almost all of my JVC posts are, ha!)  I suppose this has simply been a year of extensive soul searching, if you will.

As I posted earlier, this weekend I was on a retreat with the JVC Northwest region in southern Washington.  Our retreat focused on Social Justice.  In the beginning of the retreat, I wasn't too sure I was going to get anything out of it.  I didn't really connect with the facilitators, I was in a weird headspace, and I honestly, just didn't want to be there.  But, I stuck it out, and it ended up being a really awesome experience.

Honestly, I had considered 'social justice' in my life to be my every day job.  I got that one covered, I thought to myself.  Hello, I am hanging out with the dregs of society, right?? I got this! Okay, maybe not so much.  This weekend really broke that open, and showed me that there are a variety of ways to live into the idea of social justice, and it isn't always at my job.  Living out social justice is a lot more complex than that.

This weekend really reminded me that social justice and ecological justice are found in the small, everyday choices we make.  For me right now, I am finding it through food.  Who would've thunk it, right? Yes Kandace, who couldn't even boil water, who only learned what a green onion is a year ago, who had no idea that lettuce could be bought at a vegetable stand before this year, is tackling food justice head on.  

So, there'll be a learning curve.  I am certainly not going to be getting everything right all at once, and I am not going to become one of those pretentious vegans who sneers down at you from my high horse if you don't buy whole-grain-organic-grass-fed whatever.  Because, puh-leaze, food politics are SO much more complex than that.  It's all tied up in classism, and money, and access, and there's a lot of other stuff going on than just people making a 'bad' decision.  But, hey, it's a step, people.  It's a journey.  

And it starts by asking the hard questions. 

What does it mean to truly transcend the boundaries of society?  What does it mean to meet someone where they are at?  And what is the role of the individual while still working for systematic change?  Does this mean I have to give up American Idol?

Alright, you caught me, I don't watch American Idol, but I know my mom does.  And no, it doesn't.  But it does mean you should probably think about things.  

At the end of the day, I am not content with the definition of social justice to be one person working with one other person. While I think that this is absolutely necessary, I don't think that that is everything.  Taking my residents out of trips and treating them with respect and dignity is very, very important, yes.  Lifechanging, even.  But I also can't just sit back and be content with the world as it is.  Does my helping the folks at the Wintonia help to end homelessness?  Does it change the structure of society?  Does it create lasting social change?  Not really.  Nope.

Now, I'm not saying that my work isn't important.  I wouldn't be here if it wasn't.  Bringing people happiness and sharing joy with someone who seldom experiences it is hardly something to sneeze at.  Yet sometimes I am discouraged because I feel like my two hands are the only ones trying to push back this cascading flood of injustice.  Like I am standing in front of a giant wall of water trying to hold it back with my fingertips.  It still floods through.

Which is why this weekend was so goddamn inspiring.  My two hands aren't the only ones holding back this avalanche.  There are 50 other pairs of hands, just in my JV region alone.  That's 50 pairs of hands working towards some kind of social justice.  Reaching out to those in need.  Asking hard questions, and searching for answers.  And that's pretty freaking cool.

I'm all over the place here, but I guess I would like to use this post to remind everyone reading it that they aren't alone.  There are a whole lot of people out here in the world trying to make something good happen.  And trust me, I know that it can seem overwhelmingly dark.  I hear so many stories of darkness from the Wintonia residents - this world can bring about some heavy despair.  But, there is a light at the end of that tunnel.  And all of those hands are hammering against the walls, cracking the plaster to let that light in.

Let's let that light in, people.  It's faint, but its there.  And I would much rather focus on that drop of sunshine than the torrential downpour of oppression any day.

Photo Bomb Friday

Walking along Lake Washington on a walking trip with residents.

Retreat and Valentines Day

Hello my lovelies!

This past weekend I went on my second JVC retreat, marking the halfway point of my year of service. Pretty ridiculous, I know!

I really got a chance to get to know people and talk about social justice, which was what the retreat was centered on. One way we did that was to have each house cook a meal for everyone... and the catch? You had to make it as sustainable as possible! So we made whole wheat cinnamon pancakes with orange slices.... yum!!

It was a beautiful location, with awesome trees and misty rain. I must say, I am pretty in love with the nature of the Pacific Northwest.

Yesterday we had an AWESOME dinner for Valentines Day. I went shopping at a local grocery store that only carries local organic food, and I had a blast! Doesn't that dinner look good??

Then we topped it all off with some fondue...yum!!! The night ended with an epic dance party.


Then tonight was Matt's birthday, so we celebrated with yet another epic meal! I have gotten used to eating such delicious food, that is for sure.

Life as a JV is pretty wonderful.

Bike Adventure!

So one thing that the Pacific Northwest LOVES is a bike! So, in true Seattlite fashion, Karin and I hopped on some bikes on this beautiful sunny day to explore!

Now Karin bikes to work every day. Me... not so much. But it was a pretty easy ride, and the views were SO worth it!! Here's a glimpse, dorky helmet photos and all!!

Love you all!

February!

Just finished my calendar and board decorations for February! Yay!

Benaroya Hall

Took some residents to see a free orchestra concert and tour in Benaroya Hall today Beautiful!! I'm so glad places like this have free opportunities for everyone to experience the magic of music and the orchestra halls.

Love!

One Night Count

I suck at blogging these days but I will just update you on snippets!

I am writing from the One Night Count, the annual night where hundreds of volunteers count the number of people currently experiencing homelessness outside. Yes, it is five in the morning. Yes, I just spent the better part of this morning walking under freeway underpasses in teams counting tents. And yes, it's important!

It has been a unique and changing experience, that's for sure. I can't even imagine if that was my life. The people who live on the streets are pretty amazing for their endurance, that's for sure.

This has been quite the year.

PS - Just reread this and I'm clearly exhausted. Time for more sleep!!

merry christmas!!!

Post Office Party

I have been a terrible blogger lately! Between planning Christmas at work and holiday things at home, I haven't had much time to update. But here are some pictures of what I've been up to:

Picture 1: The Mercy House Christmas tree!

Two: A winter bonfire of a math textbook on the shores of Lake Washington.

Three: The view across the park near my house as I walk to work. Gloomy!!

Four: Pikes market. Cute!!

Five: Donations for Wintonia!! Yaaaayyy!

Six: The Cascade Mountains at Port Angeles from an impromptu road trip.

Hooray! I think the photos might upload out of order because I'm on my phone (hence the title of this post) so you can mix and match!

love!

God Winks

I've been walking to work lately.  It's about a 2 mile walk, but on a nice (translation: not rainy) day, it is a really peaceful walk.  I get to look out over the skyline as I cross the bridge into the city, and walk through the International District, where I always pass the shops setting up for the day.  I almost always time it so that I am walking right through the market as it is being set up and I can watch as I go.   Men shout instructions at each other, breaking open cardboard boxes with sharp razors, easily tossing large bags of rice or packaged fish.  Women with scarves wrapped around their heads blink at me through the cold wind as I walk, a tall anachronism in this section of the city.

I pass onto First Hill, the medical section of the city, and suddenly I am transported into a world of doctors, nurses, patients - where most everyone is on some kind of deadline as they step quickly across crosswalks.  I imagine my favorite doctors of Grey's Anatomy living inside of these buildings, and wonder which one is a brain surgeon.  My steps are slow and steady, watching the world as I go.

In the last few minutes of my walk, I turn down a residential street, the large historical houses looming over me.  I love this time of year, when the trees are slowly losing their leaves and preparing for the long, slow, cold winter.  Just a few days ago, as I was walking down the street, I looked up to see the yellow leaves floating down to meet me from a sudden gust of wind.  Just as it happened, the song that I was listening to hit the chorus, and the melody reached down to my bones.  If you don't think this world is beautiful, you're asleep! Wake up!

Listen to this song, and figure out what was beautiful in your life today.

always,
k

Exploration

Despite weather warnings for snow (!!!?! what!?!?!?!), we have had a couple of pretty, clear days.  The rain is currently beating down on the skylight above me in my office, so I have a feeling that this was the last good weekend for a while.  Luckily, I did my best to take advantage of it!  The cool thing about Seattle is that the Great Outdoors is always all around you - all of these photos were only about twenty minutes out of the city!  I felt like a solo adventure (and my housemates were busy!), so I took off to the shores of Lake Washington to walk, think, and explore.  

Bridge to Mercer Island across Lake Washington

Ducks in Seward Park

Purple converse.  I am thankful for these shoes - I can walk just about anywhere with them!

Seward Park at sunset.

Blue skies, fluffy clouds and open roads.  Symbolism?

Geese.
(Put your leg down, goose, then this would be a perfect picture!)

Obligatory photo of myself adventuring.  Mostly taken for Uncle Tom.

Seward Park shores.

This is a year of many questions and few answers, but many, many experiences of beauty!

Wishing you a Thanksgiving holiday full of family, friends and food....

Novels, Honeymoons, and Anniversaries

This statement can be taken in a myriad of ways, and I intend it to be understood in all of them: the honeymoon period of JVC is over.  

I find that I am settled in to my new life, and feel at home in Mercy House and the Wintonia.  My trip to California was mind-boggling in that sense: I was overjoyed to be back home in California, surrounded by my loving family and friends, and yet I was also quite happy to be back "home" when I stepped off the plane in Seattle - or at the very least, back with all of my things, my housemates, and of the day-to-day I have created here.  It is a weird thing.

In the other sense, the honeymoon period is over in that the fresh newness of everything is beginning to wear off. Like any person in a long-term relationship knows, this is the part where the rubber meets the road, and where you discover if you are truly in love, or simply caught up in infatuation.  Every day is a reevaluation and a refocusing - why am I here? what do I want out of this experience? how am I being intentional about ensuring that happens? how am I allowing for space to be surprised? how am I challenging myself? what is life-giving and what is life-draining?  All of these questions continue to simmer through my consciousness.  My retreat last weekend was focused on "Right Relationship", and helped me to answer some of these questions and, like those types of things always do, created new ones.  

All in all, I feel like I'm on a good track.  The thing about picking up everything you know and transplanting yourself to an entirely new state, with a new job, new friends, and new home is that you're forced to examine what really matters.  What makes me happy and brings me joy? What do I need in order to unwind?  How well do I function when I don't actually have any friends around?  How much do I truly care about dirty dishes in the sink? (Answers: Creative communities, my guitar, not so well, and, yeahhhh not much.)  It's this very strange sensation of being placed with all of these new experiences all at once.  Some days I feel like I'm on top of it all, and others I feel like I'm being swallowed by the Seattle rain.  You never know.

In other news, I am again working on a novel for National Novel Writing Month.  I hit 20,000 words last night, which is extremely exciting.  I think this is my best work yet, and I'm pretty excited about it - but if I'm not blogging much, that's why. Most of my energy is spent churning out words so that I'll reach 50,000 by the 30th at midnight - eek! I'm pretty proud of myself though.  This one might have something to it.

Finally, I wanted to share photos from the Wintonia Anniversary Dinner from last Thursday.  It was her 102th birthday since being built - woohoo! The Wintonia building has quite a history, and has spent time as a hotel, a monastery, and now, low-income housing.  There is a traditionally a dinner party thrown by the JV to celebrate - so I had a blast getting everything together! The theme was "Under The Sea".

All aboard! The living room / lobby of the Wintonia.  This is where we handed out resident awards and have appetizers.  The residents helped us by preparing their favorite dish to share with the building.
 I hung up blue and white streamers with green ones for seaweed, and (unseen) printed out a bunch of pictures of excursions and made a photo collage for everyone to look at.
The entrance to the dining room hallway is behind me!

The hallway to the  dining room!
I also painted the boat of the S.S. Wintonia and attached it to a piece of cardboard so that people could take pictures of themselves riding in the boat.  The sail is attached to a broomstick.
People had a great time taking photos of themselves!

The hallway leading into the dining room.  I painted a yellow submarine.  Everyone loves a good Beatles reference :)

A little blurry - the other side of the hallway! The other staff helped me put up fish and cut out bubbles.

The dining room - doesn't it look nice with the green paint?
More streamers, and I found blue posterboard that had been cut into waves for the walls.

The residents sat down at the tables, and the staff served them the food.  It's a nice experience for them to feel like they're in a restaurant!
I made the centerpieces out of mason jars I found in the basement.  I wrapped them in blue tissue paper and ribbon, and put candles in them.  They glowed a really pretty blue!
We also cut out underwater creatures and hung them from the ceilings for an 'underewater' effect.

The dining room looks down on Pike Street - the trees outside are turning colors and look great!
We also got seashells to place along the middle of the tables.  Some residents took some home as souvenirs.

 

All in all - a very fun experience! My years as a hall-decorating Pres girl and a Kappa Kappa Gamma helped me here.  

Love,

K

A Day In The Life: Pumpkin Edition

As everyone knows, I love my job.  It has its ups and downs for sure, but I always know that everyday I walk into work I am going to be greeted by some zany, loveable people who truly enjoy having me there.  I just don't stop smiling!  They've taken to calling me the Colgate Girl.

Today I got into work around 9:15, which was actually pretty early for me.  Most people are still asleep, so this place doesn't really pick up until about 3 in the afternoon! It gives me the chance to work in my office without feeling like I'm missing out on talking to people, though, so I like coming in that early sometimes.  Besides, sometimes a girl has got to get her paperwork done!

Today was also our excursion to the pumpkin patch, which was just a blast! We left here around 11:00 with a full car of people - my coworker came with me, and then we had 5 residents, which was a great number. It was about an hour drive to the pumpkin patch, but it was so beautiful that nobody really seemed to mind.  The Wintonia van has all sorts of quirks, and today it decided that we weren't going to listen to the radio or have working blinkers or windshield-wipers, so I was happy it wasn't raining or dark or anything!  We had some good laughs and conversations in the car ride over, though, so it all turned out alright.

Back country Washington sure is pretty. I can never get used to the wildness of it all, and now, the leaves are changing, so the feeling of stepping into a storybook has doubled.  Charming cottages are tucked away in these back woods between the falling leaves.  It was quite a treat.  The farm we visited was beautiful as well.

Fall City Farms - the owners donated all of the pumpkins, and were just the sweetest older couple!

There were a lot of kids and families! I think it was nice for the residents to be around kids - a lot of them miss their own children, and sometimes they enjoy the youthful laughs.

The couple who owned the farm have had a history of donating pumpkins to the Wintonia, which is incredibly kind.  Since John* (name changed, of course) passed away two weeks ago, people have been pretty sad around these parts.  I've seen a lot of tears.  I think it was good for them to get out of the house and walk around in the fresh air! One of the guys on our trip even grew up on a farm, and he enjoyed hauling around the pumpkin wheelbarrows and telling us all about life on the farm growing up.  I always love when people tell stories about growing up - it is one of my favorite parts of going on trips.  A personal favorite story was his interaction with a particularly ferocious rooster!

One section of the pumpkin patch!

Feeding the cow. He loved the carrots!

We spent a long time picking out the PERFECT pumpkins.  We are going to carve them next Monday when we decorate for Halloween.  We are even going to roast all of the seeds so that we can munch on them in the week before Halloween.  This will go with all of our decorations, including a giant blow-up spider!  We got approximately 4,000 pumpkins, so we will have a lot of seeds.  (Okay, okay, exaggeration, but we got a ton of huge pumpkins! We got a little carried away in our quest for the perfect pumpkin.)

Again, I wish that I could post pictures of my residents, but for confidentiality reasons I can't! I promise this isn't the Kandace-show - one of my residents follows me around with a camera and loves to take pictures! Here's a couple so you can get the vibe.

Perfect pumpkin quest - complete!

So much autumnal joy.

Look! A house of pumpkins!

We played in the fields for a while, and ran around a whole field of sunflowers while chasing birds.  A couple of people picked out some seeds to roast or plant.  I would love to gift the Wintonia with a whole crop of sunflowers! (It is my favorite flower, you know.)  There was even a hay-bale maze.  Of course, it was made for small children to run through, but did that stop us? Oh, no! We ran all throughout the hay-bale maze, laughing at scarecrows and taking silly photos.  This all culminated in a giant hay fight, during which I was covered head-to-toe with straw, hay, mud and everything else! (I am still a bit itchy!) We were laughing so hard though, I didn't even mind being dirty.  

Covered in dirt and mud - thanks for the boots, Laura!

Dirty, tired and hungry, we headed back to the van...but nobody could stop smiling and saying thanks for letting them come.  We loaded up all of pumpkins and turned towards home!  (It is so nice for the residents to even be able to say that little phrase: "heading HOME". After so many years on the streets, they don't take it for granted.)  

The rest of the day consisted of a staff meeting, e-mail answering, sign-making, and bulletin-board updating... just all in a day's work!  Tonight we are having a dessert night at our house with our support people and some former JVs.  Busy, busy!  

Keep smiling all.  The world is a beautiful place!

Love,

K

Self-Care & Other Things

Beautiful day at Seattle Center.

So, one of the nicest things about working in social services is the complete understanding of self-care.  This word, and the idea of 'self-care practices', is entirely new to me, but I'm a pretty big fan.  It is the understanding that you cannot help anybody else if you don't take care of yourself first - so it is incredibly important to make sure that you are taking care of YOU.  After one glance at my morose demeanor yesterday afternoon, my supervisor promptly sent me home, informing me to use my favorite self-care practices, and to "just hang out" with my housemates.  (This is the same woman who, on my first day, told me to leave early and take a walk outside because I was probably pretty overwhelmed and should explore the city I moved to.  She's awesome, and quite perceptive.)

She was right - I needed a break and needed to get away from my work for a little while, even if I didn't see that right away.  So, I headed home, climbed in my bed and watched some movies, ate a delicious dinner, and took an early night.  I even slept in this morning, went for a run, took a long hot shower and grabbed a delicious salted caramel mocha frap from Starbucks (the queen bee of Seattle) before heading into work this afternoon around 1.  It was much needed, and I feel like a million bucks.  So, there's that.

I feel like I should give you all some examples of why Seattle (and my JV experience) is awesome, instead of just showing you the hard stuff.  Because, there's a lot of easy, great stuff, too.  Tons of it.  Like walking into the kitchen every evening after work to the smell of something delicious being whipped up in the kitchen.  Or, my residents shouting "hip hip HOORAY" to me as we drove home from a Mariner's game.  Or Jen, Karin and I taking a walk to the 12th street lookout and laughing at random people shouting at us from their windows.  The list goes on and on.

For example, I highly recommend to everyone the art of volunteering.  Not JVC volunteering either (although, of course, I recommend that, too.)  I mean volunteering for any local events in your city that you might be interested in attending.  One weekend, Mercy House decided to volunteer at Oktoberfest in Fremont as beer-pourers.  The upside of this was receiving free entry on a different night, complete with 7 free beer tokens (a $35 value).  Count me in!

Both beer pouring and beer drinking was a memorable experience.  Highlights include: dancing to a singer who may or may not have been the blonde musician in 10 Things I Hate About You, giving out free beers and being serenaded by drunken frat boys, winning awesome hats at the spinning wheel with Matt, an hour-long bus ride home where one of my housemates attempted to order a pizza, then ended it with "never mind, we're too poor for all that." and hung up, and learning the art of pouring a beer without any foam.

Matt and I with our awesome hats we won!

Continuing with the tradition of working minimally for free events, I volunteered to be an usher at ACT, which meant I got to enter into the theater early, hang out with the stage manager, take programs, and then sit and watch the show! It was great, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to see every ACT show for free this year by being an usher.  Why haven't I discovered this before?

Anyway all, I just wanted to let you know that I am alive and kickin', and feeling much better and very present to my job, my housemates, and the other aspects of my life. I'm off to take some residents to Wal-Mart.  Woop woop.

peace,
K

Don't Blink

So, I apologize in advance.  I wanted to write you guys a nice happy entry, with all of the fun free community outings we were going on lately and explaining all of the awesome adventures I've been having.  But then, something happened last night that changed what I'm thinking about and, well.  That's life I suppose.  A turn of the dice.

Last night, I had to go into work because we had a group of high school students from Seattle Prep volunteering for Urban Plunge. I was really, really excited about them -- I miss working with kids and teens, and I was happy to be given the opportunity to lead them.  They were serving dinner and talking to the residents - it's part of a bigger program at their high school. I didn't even mind coming into work on a Sunday night - I was going to be a part of these kids' experience with homelessness and the other half.  I felt like I could be influential.  Maybe they'd remember me, or something.

The kids themselves were adorable.  Their eyes were as a big as saucers as they walked into the Wintonia, and I could tell how nervous they were as they began serving the meal.  One of the boys had braces, and looked like a giant puppy, all arms and hands and legs.  They did well, though, and talked with people and shared their food with them.  All in all it looked like it was going to be great night.

As they were getting their food and I was supervising the dining room and food line, a man (we'll call him John, even though that's not his name) suddenly went stiff and couldn't speak.  I recognized immediately that he was having a seizure.  He's an older man, probably in his late 50s.  Everything seemed to freeze. I broke into a run, sprinting down the hallway to the front desk and shouted at the front desk staff that John was having a seizure.  He hesitated, and then sprinted away from me into the kitchen.  "Call 911!" he yelled over his shoulder.

I grabbed the phone and punched in the numbers.  (I am continually surprised at how calm I am during a crisis.  I've had a few medical and other emergencies in my time, and I am always struck with how calm and in control I am while in the moment.)  The medics are used to coming to this building, and sometimes take their time because they are called on so often.  This time, they hurried.  This man's life was on the line, and I made sure that they knew it.

I went back into the dining room, and a terrible scene was in front of me.  John was laying on the floor, white as a sheet, turned on his side.  He was no longer seizing, but had bit his tongue and so was bleeding quite profusely.  I think he might have hit his arm when he fell, too.  A crowd was around him -- though, the residents had a strange reaction.  Some of them were quite worried, and gathered around him, and yelling at him to hang on.  Others sat in the back of the room and ate their dinner quietly.  When I questioned them to see how they were doing, they shrugged.  "That's the way this life is," people seemed to feel.  With as much pain and death that they have seen in their lives, they were unfazed by the situation in front of them, and it seemed to cement their resigned feelings.  It was eye-opening, in that way.

Meanwhile, the sophomore high school students were watching the whole scene play out.  I tried my best to keep them distracted.  I paused dinner, and sent them out into the dining room to talk with residents so that they would be able to have personal contact with the people they were serving. To be honest - I didn't really know what to do.  John stopped breathing multiple times before the medics arrived, but he still had a pulse.  But, there's something about the human spirit that knows when another is leaving this world.  He was dying, and it wasn't hard to see.

The medics arrived and did their best to take care of him.  Years of watching Grey's Anatomy still didn't quite prepare me for the real thing.  No cute doctors sipping coffee here.  The sickening reality is this: alcohol will kill your body, and will kill you.  Years of living on the streets, years without doctor's visits, years with the deadly combination of drugs and alcohol, lack of nutrition, etc, etc etc -- those things take years off your life.  A body can't handle it.  And so, it gives up. It moves on.

They took him to the hospital last night, and that was the last I've heard of it until this afternoon.  My first update this morning, my supervisor told me that his family opted to take him off life-support.  Around 1:30, the manager came into the office with my supervisor and I and told us that he had passed on.

As I drove home last night, I stopped at the lookout by my house.  There's a place on 12th Ave that lets you see the entire city.  It was slightly rainy, dark and damp.  The city glowed through the darkness.

I'll admit it - I was pretty upset.  I felt weighed down upon by all of the hurt in the world.  A heaviness had settled somewhere between my ribcage, and all I could do was cry it out or drown.  I cried for everyone - for John, for the high-schoolers.  For my residents, so caught in their addictions they cannot escape.  For their families, who have to deal with it.  For myself, so far away from everyone and everything I know.   I cried for everyone who has ever been broken, and cannot or will not crawl out of the brokenness.  For everyone who has ever felt alone or forgotten in the world. I cried for the invisible: the funny, charismatic, friendly people I work with every day who are stuck in a cycle of poverty and addiction.  I cried because I cannot save everyone.  I cried because, at the end of the day, we have to save ourselves.

Why do bad things happen?  We have been asking this since the beginning of time.  Job fought God on it, all those years ago, struggling with the same question we all do every single day.

I wish I could tell you that I found some dramatic realization answering this question last night, as I prayed through my tears. I wish I could tell you that everything is always going to be okay, and that everything happens for a reason.  I wish I could write something life-changing, that makes everything nonsensical make sense.

Sometimes, things just happen.

And, in the words of Albus Dumbledore:  "We must try not to sink beneath our anguish, Harry, but battle on."

This morning, I walked into work this morning from an e-mail from an acquaintance I had in middle-school.  "Thank you," she writes, "for your kindness."  She wrote that I was the only person that she recalls being nice to her, and she remembers it, all these years later.

Goodness.  Badness.  Why does any of it happen?  Will we know?

I'll leave you with the words of Sam Shepard, who wrote A Lie of the Mind, which I had the privilege to see last week.  It is the final line of the play, after three hours of pain, heartbreak, and despair.  It is the only thing I thought of last night, when my tears slowed and I looked towards the Seattle skyline, lit up against the dark, dark sky.  The mother walks into the blizzard, and looks out into the darkness.

"There's a fire in the snow," she says.  "How could that be?"

Keeping It Real - Part One

I have a feeling that this part of my blog will happen often within this next year.  I'm going to call it "Keeping It Real", because that's what a lot of the experiences in JVC are forcing me to do.  Keeping it real can always be called 'Things I Take For Granted', or 'Things I Never Knew Were Blessings, Anyway".  The majority of the time, these things are things that I stupidly say before realizing that my residents don't have this privilege, or things I do before recognizing that maybe not everyone has had this background.  So, my theme for this week's episode is this:

Teeth.

I had terrible teeth when I was growing up.  When I was a kid, a dentist once asked me, quite bewildered, "How do you CHEW?"  Not one of my teeth lined up.  Some kind folks dubbed me shark-teeth, and reminded me of it daily.  My poor mother wondered how she got such a mutant child.  Needless to say, I had many years of teeth-straightening and braces ahead of me.  I remember well those tear-filled nights where all I wanted to do was rip my teeth out of my head, thank you very much, because having those suckers moved around by rubber-bands and metal wires hurt. (And I have a feeling my mother remembers them, and my many many tears and angry yells, too.)  But when I was in 7th-grade, and I finally looked in the mirror for the first time with my shiny, bright, white, even teeth, I was ecstatic.  I couldn't stop looking at myself.  I finally had what I had always wanted - perfect teeth.  (I still had the round Harry Potter glasses, bushy curly hair and overalls, but, hey, small miracles here.  But back to seriousness.)

Somewhere along the way, I lost that.  That recognition that these teeth are a blessing, something that not everybody has, and that I didn't have for the early years of my life.  I've always been complimented on my smile since then, and it is one of my prides.  I love that I have the teeth that I do, and I love that it seems to make others smile when I do.  My teeth aren't perfect anymore - I forgot to wear my retainer far too many nights for that - and sometimes when I look at my teeth now, I see the crookedness and unevenness there instead of the beauty.

But today, I realized that my residents look at my smile and see what they wish they could have.  Teeth are something that so many of us take for granted.  Many of my residents are missing many of their teeth, and they smile with closed mouths, if they smile at all.  They cannot chew their food properly, and they have problems drinking hot or cold water since it irritates their gums.  Those teeth that they do have they don't care for, since they see it as a wasted battle anyway.  One resident yesterday proudly told me to look at "the old him" for the last time, since it was the day he was going to get his dentures.  To be honest, I didn't notice that much of a difference when he returned, teeth in mouth, but to him, those two front teeth make him respectable, make him personable, make him able to get a job and move on with his life.  A lack of teeth is just one more hurdle that the residents of the Wintonia are facing, and one more thing that "everyone else" has that they don't.  And what a basic, basic need.  Teeth.

I find myself conscious of it, the way that you are conscious of wearing an expensive necklace or designer clothes.  As if I am flaunting my privilege all over the place, and showing off, or something.  There's nothing I can do about this feeling, of course, but it just keeps things in perspective for me.  And while telling me that there are starving children in Africa won't make me less hungry, perhaps this will gently remind me to keep perspective, and keep rolling on.

Keep it real.

-K

Addendum: Days When Things Are Hard

I am continually touched by the people who live here.  Today was one woman's wedding anniversary, but her partner had passed away.  Needless to say, its a difficult day.  Being able to hug her, remind her that she makes a difference in the world, and simply listen to her remembering a loved one reminds me of why I am here.  They call this a ministry of presence for a reason.  Perhaps I am discovering a different type of passion - one that lifts up my soul rather than lights it, one that quietly burns in a darkness instead of igniting the entire night sky.

Days When Things Are Hard

So I've spent the majority of my time on this blog talking about how wonderful everything is, and how I always seem to feel at home and as if I have a purpose.  Well, today is one of those days when I just don't.

Have you ever read Oh The Places You'll Go?

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed. You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead. Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.

Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.

You can get all hung up in a prickle-ly perch. And your gang will fly on. You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And I don't know.  I guess I feel like I should know all the answers to all of these things, as if I should know exactly what I want out of life and I'm ready to go take it.  The truth is, as much as I love social work, it isn't my life's goal to do it.  And I think that being here and doing this job has taught me that already.  I love my job, don't get me wrong.  I'm so blessed to have gotten the opportunity to experience all that I'm experiencing.  And I am working with people, and learning their stories and all about them, and making a difference, and all of that.  But I don't walk away from work with my soul singing.  Not like the way that it did that one time in Dylan's living room when we blocked Charisma, or the time I sat in a coffee shop trying to figure out how to block six people and get the perfect balance, line, and weight of the picture on stage, or the time I had to pull together a tangle of clothes to create the perfect costume mood for Lauren's senior recital, or the time I had to find exactly the right words to resonate with an actor in Can't Thread A Moving Needle, and balance all of the elements to accurately depict the nuances of frustration, pain, and anger at the occurrences of rape on a college campus.  I know, I know, I had that opportunity to continue it, and I didn't take it.  I can't regret it, and I don't.  I want to consider this year as a year of studying people, and striving to understand them, which I suppose is a writer/artist thing to say, but its true.  What is this underworld of homelessness?  How does it work? Why do you think the way that you do?  How do you get here?  I'm fascinated by the stories.

I miss Santa Clara.  It's odd, because I don't miss the place, persay, because, truthfully, I don't really at all.  I'm so happy to be out of there, and out of California.  Part of me wonders if I'll really go back.  What I miss are the people, the experiences, and that sense of being on top of the world.  Walking into the theatre building and feeling like I was born to be there.  Being able to reference dramatic tension, commedia del arte, the gender roles and expectations produced by storytelling, or the difference between side-light and front-light over dinner without feeling like a freak.  I miss the comfort.  I suppose that's to be expected with any major life change.  One gets comfortable, and works their way to the top, and then outgrows it, in a sense, and must move forward.  But moving forward is change, and change is hard, harder than anything else, I think, but even so we must press on, learning to place our roots in other soils.  In the last month, I've changed my job, my home, my lifestyle and all of my friends.  Considering it takes about three to six months to adjust to any major life change, compounding four of them on top of each other is rather radical.  And I realized last night that I haven't had "non-theatre friends" who don't necessarily speak my language since I was 16.  No wonder I feel like my head won't stop spinning.

I guess I need to give myself a break.  As Dylan wisely reminded me last night (between his explanations of blocking and lighting of the show he's working on currently, which was so so so welcomed) -- I've only been out of college for three months.  SCU started on Monday, so its really only been a week's difference.

I don't know.  Life goes on.

A Day In The Life

Ahhh, what a nice weekend! I helped miss Laura set up her room in Bellingham - it was nice to see a friendly face!  I'm sure she'll upload some photos of her new place soon.  It was really fun just to get out of Seattle for a weekend and hang out with an old friend.  I think the highlight of my weekend was sawing the leg off of a couch so that it could fit up the stairs. (!!!) Yes, yes, those college years.... have to love it!

I've been having some adventures at work, so I thought I'd share some of what I've been up to around the Wintonia.  One of the biggest perks of my job is that I can pick out all the places in Seattle I want to explore and try to plan events around it.  My current favorite event that I plan is a weekly event called Walking Wednesdays.

A snapshot from a Walking Wednesdays trip to Volunteer Park.

Walking Wednesdays is exactly that: a chance for the residents to get out and about the city and just walk around! We typically have gone to various parks around the city, but as the year progresses I'm sure we will get more and more creative.  One of my residents suggested we go see the Fremont Troll!

Last week we went to Volunteer Park, which was really fun.  There were only four of us total, but we had a great time exploring the trails around the park.  We even found an old water tower to climb up! We also found a huge green house with all types of plants and trees inside of it.

My resident took all of these pictures with her digital camera.  She loves that thing! :)

Close up of some of the flowers.

Even just getting out and about is a gift for some of these folks.  They don't have cars, of course, nor do most of them have money for bus passes.  That means that they are restricted to hanging out in the Wintonia or going only within walking distance.  That's why a lot of people get pretty excited about being able to take a ride somewhere, even if it is just to the park.  I like being able to take people places - I feel like we can talk about things that you can't talk about otherwise.  Have you ever felt the difference in environment when talking to someone?  It's a lot easier to chat with someone about something serious when you're strolling along some flowers than sitting in my office on a folding chair.  The stories people have are amazing.

Today we went to Lake Union Park, which was also beautiful.  (Can you tell how much I love this city? All I can keep saying is how beautiful it is.)

Outside of the Center for Wooden Boats at Lake Union

It was an awesome day.  We left the Wintonia around 11am, and headed to Lake Union.  Lake Union is a really interesting place because its been really gentrified in the past few years. It looks a lot more Santa Clara than Seattle, if you know what I mean.  Seattle is wild, overgrown, untamed.  Santa Clara is perfectly manicured, fought back into submission.  I like Seattle's overflowing energy.

Lake Union is still pretty though, albeit in a different way than the rest of Seattle. The Center For Wooden Boats is right there, and we got a chance to look through all the historical boats.  (Shout-out to Molly and Arianna - no sea-chanties here!)  Again, the change in scenery really opens people up.  I was amazed at the stories that some folks shared about their childhood -- and all of that brought up just by being around a boat or near the water.

Center for Wooden Boats

Center for Wooden Boats

Still from my resident's camera.  She loves it!

After we walked around the docks, we settled onto a little beach / docking area and threw rocks into the water.  It was so relaxing just to hang out with people and skip rocks and talk about childhood. (It was much longer ago for them!) We were laughing pretty hard.  I can't believe that this is my job!  We were right at a place where the water-landing planes would take off and land, too, so we just sat on the edge of the water and watched them for a long while.  Then, guess who showed up!

Ducks!

We had asked the kitchen to give us a pack of bread, so we got to feed the ducks for a long time.  Whoever said that feeding the ducks is only an activity for grandmas and little kids is completely wrong! We had a blast!  I got a bunch of cute pictures of my residents feeding them (one guy even fed them out of his hand! I called him the Duck Drive-Thru) but I can't post any photos identifying the residents online, of course.  I'll make a scrapbook or something at the end of the year though, so if you REALLY want to see, I'll show you some other time :)

It was a pretty great day.  I'm getting busy at work, but its a good kind of busy.  An integrated kind of busy.

Community is fun, too. I'll post all about those adventures another day, but I'll just leave you with this image: last night, all of us somehow managed to gather in the living room, and sang out hearts out to the guitar.  (Favorites were: Firework by Katy Perry, and, our house song, Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show).  It was a nice spontaneous moment.  I'm really proud of myself - I've always wanted to learn the guitar exactly for this reason.  I've always wanted to play guitar and have everyone be able to sing along!  I'm pretty proud of my seven months of work.  (I've been playing guitar that long!! Woohoo!)

Love you all.
-K