Xmas in the Mohave

We're leaving tomorrow to visit Astrid's family for Christmas. She asked me the other day if I'm looking forward to it, and the answer is yes, with the caveat that on some level I'm pretty terrified, too. Astrid's parents have been really sweet to me, considering I'm a Jewish dyke and I'm sleeping with their daughter (who, naturally, is just going through a phase or is disappointed with men or is being seduced by the sinful San Franciscan lifestyle). Her dad and her brother are both men of few words, and even little miss chatty cathy me finds it hard to break on through. Her mom has been genuinely kind to me, and I have no rational reason to think that each subsequent visit won't get better and better. But it's weird, is all. At least her four year-old nephew likes to play zombies with me!

It's weird spending time with anybody else's family, really. Even my idiosyncratic Jewish liberal family in the 'burbs becomes an isolated culture in and of itself: I'm sure it's daunting to be an outsider there when we're all talking over each other in a frenetic storm of popculture/smalltalk/obsessive details of family esoteria. Sigh. Oh, and, we haven't bought any xmas gifts yet. There's that, too.

Merry whatever you celebrate, folks!
Peace and Bliss in the New Year!

xo
Bree

Wraptease

My dear readers,

I am anticipating with much excitement my 2007 Year-End Wrap, to be posted fairly soon. I have at least one or two friends who have mentioned that they, too, look forward to these epic compilations of mine at the beginning of the year, and I fantasize that there are legions of readers waiting with bated breath for the unveiling of my annual installment. Check out the last four right here:

2006
2005
2004
2003

I must say that I absolutely love creating these entries, and feel pretty proud that this will be my fifth consecutive! Recently, I was explaining the process of writing these things to one of my friends, and it reminded me of how anal I actually have to be to pull it off. So to promote the 2007 edition, I thought I'd indulge the anality and give you an idea of what goes into creating Bree's annual year-in-review. I think I will do this in a faux Q & A, as if I were being interviewed by Entertainment Weekly or something.

Entertainment Weekly Bree, who are you wearing right now?
Bree Oh, these old rags? My navy slacks are Dickies workwear, $23.00 from Siegel's in the Mission, and my vee-neck merino wool sweater is Mervyn's house brand.
EW And what about those retro suede sneakers?
B The Adidas are from Merv's, too – on sale at 40 clams.
EW You do your blog on a budget as well, right?
B I ain't made a profit yet.
EW So tell us about the production process for your Year-End Wraps.
B Well, the first step is the info-gathering phase. As soon as a new year rolls around (while still in "post-production" on the previous year's wrap) I start up a new Word document and usually put down a few general categories for significant events, films and TV, books I read, shows I go to, etc. And then every time something happens that I want to list in the wrap, I type it in there. As soon as I can after seeing a movie, for instance, I'll type at least the name of the movie and give it a rating.
EW Wait a minute. You mean you plot every movie you see onto your list throughout the whole year?
B I might forget to write down a couple, but yeah, basically I record every movie, TV show, book, concert, and most significant things that happen in my life.
EW That's pretty anal!
B Yes, it truly is.
EW Then what?
B Well, at various times throughout the year, usually when I'm dragging my feet on some other more important project (i.e. my thesis) I'll open up the Wrap draft and begin to fill in content, like reviews, preambly section headers, and flush out the list of stuff that has been happening during the year. I also start adding in the html tags to format the document, and search for images and links to make the wrap more colorful, interactive, educational, yadda yadda.
EW So this is really a year-long project.
B Yeah, I'd say it takes me about a 40-hour week to produce it, but that's spread out over thirteen, fourteen months.
EW Well, shit howdy!
B That is one of my favorite expressions of all time!
EW Yeah, somehow I just honed in on it.
B This conversation is getting kinda autochthonous.
EW Huh? OK, so, after you've got all the content in there, how do you wrap up the Wrap?
B When the content is as good as I can get it, all the entries are complete, and the images and links are there, I run a spellcheck, and then I go through the whole thing line by line and edit to make sure all the links actually work, and ensure that all the formatting and grammar is as consistent as possible, and then I'm finally ready to hit "post," ideally in January or February, sometimes later. I think I even dragged one Wrap on til April, but I'm certainly not gonna do that this year.
EW Why's that?
B I've got a thesis to avoid!
EW Thanks a bunch Bree.
B Thank you, EW!

Pot Makes You Dumb

Before DJ and I got stoned tonight, we were discussing Modernism vs. Postmodernism, shifting subjectivities, and the narrative of the detective and psychoanalytic theory.

Now we're playing the ghetto down-home country version of "jenga" and talking about 1970's French cartoon "The Barbapapas."

DJ points out that when at first we were talking about the construction of memory in a sociocultural way, now we are bringing it to the personal. Indeed, he says that the social and the personal are constituents of one another.

Three More Days

...of staring at a blank screen. Of making chocolate chip cookies, playing my guitar, playing Dr. Mario, building my library on Shelfari, of eating everything in sight. Of doing anything, everything, but writing my damned thesis.

Okay, I have done something. I've culled all the random notes I've jotted down in the books I've read, in articles, in spiral notebooks, on lil post-its. I've typed all those disparate notes into my thesis draft, there for organizing, embellishing, expanding upon. Four pages of notes in all, not bad for a pile of disparate notes. I've also got about three pages of intro, and a few usable pages of lit review, which also have to be organized, and woven into a semi-coherent structure, together with my "original" (laughs) thoughts and then I'll have a first draft on my hands. It'll be a thin, barely adequate first draft, but a first draft it shall be. To be handed in no later than Thursday.

Plus, Astrid is in Boise, on a teaching gig, and I am so relentlessly horny for her. I can't even get a good procrastinatory screw in til Tuesday evening. Bah!

Crunch

It's the end of the term. Here's what I gotta do in the next week and a half:

- Finish my readings for three classes.
- Write three reflection papers of 2-3 pages that have virtually nothing to do with developing my thesis.
- Write a 10-page case presentation for my group supervision by tomorrow.
- Find more books/articles for my lit review.
- Finish writing a reasonable first draft of my thesis.

Crap.

Productive Day

Today, I had hours and hours in front of me, with no social plans til dinner time. This was one of the rare days I'd set aside to try to knock out a respectable chunk of work on the thesis. Instead of working diligently as I'd planned to do, I ended up besting the top Dr. Mario score on the ol' Nintendo 64 (*must* click). That is right, my friends, I got to 108,600 points with a viral load filling over 75% of the pill bottle. I'm sure some of you out there have done better than that, but let me just say that me getting the top score means beating out Astrid, her siblings, and various lovers, friends, and roommates who have played that game over the last dozen years. I am the Dr. Mario Champion.

Now, back to death anxiety.

Words for B.M.

"Game Night" at E-Dawg's tonight. I just got home. It's 4:00 AM - no shitting.

Speaking of "shitting," we played the Parlour Game for hours this evening. The crowd at the party were prone to making pretty much everything about sex or bodily functions. The Parlour Game is simple, and usually I've played it with my family on our annual retreat in Monterey. It's a friendly game in which you sit in a circle of folks and take turns thinking of categories. A category is chosen, a 2-minute timer is set, and everyone brainstorms as many things as they can think of in said category. Let's say the category is "Tom Cruise movies" - we all have 2 minutes to come up with as many of 'em as possible, i.e. Top Gun, Rain Man, Risky Business, The Outsiders, Losin' It, etc. Scoring is similar to the game "Boggle"; you get a point for every unique answer, and answers you share with other players are crossed off your list. Anyway, as I was saying, I usually play this game with my family, so it tends to be a pretty much P.G. affair. This evening at E-Dawg's was a bit different. The first category someone picked was "sex toys" which ended up lasting like forty-five minutes in itself (we didn't time the first few rounds - just went around and around the circle for more answers.) Then when we started writing down answers in timed rounds, we did "Ways to say 'having sex'," "Euphemisms for masturbation," and the crowd pleaser, "Words for having a bowel movement." Favorites for that round were "laying pipe," and "voiding the colon." Um, yeah. When I next play the Parlour Game with the family, I'm gonna be so bored when categories like "Beatles songs" and "household appliances" come up.

I can't believe it's 4:30 AM.

Deadline

Between now and December 6, I have to cough up the first draft of my thesis. I have about seven sources summarized, and three or four more sources waiting to be read. I have to dig up several more articles and make time to read them. I have to begin writing, narrow my topic, complete my lit review, and somewhere in there, figure out how to contribute some sort of "new thought" to the topic. Being that the awareness of death has been an obsession of humanity since the first glimmers of consciousness, I feel rather intimidated about producing original thought on the subject.

My main question, as it has been refined recently, is something like this: how does the awareness of death impact and shape our intimate relating with our love objects? ("Object," in the psychoanalytic sense, meaning "other" or "person" as opposed to a physical, inanimate object.)

And here lies the underlying reason for my mental block to sitting down and writing: I'm scared shitless about the topic. I picked the topic because I'm scared shitless about it. Now I have to produce something. Anything, really, so long as I get some words down on paper. It's just a rough draft, I tell myself.

A classmate of mine had an inspiring suggestion yesterday. She's decided to try to get down all her own thinking about her topic, what interests her about it, why she chose it, what her ideas are, unclouded by "expert" opinions. Then after she's got 10 or 15 pages, she'll go back and add in sources that support and negate her own ideas. I think there's some serious wisdom in this, and it excites me to think about. I think I've been bogged down in incorporating the historical and current "thinking" about the topic and in the process have become out of touch with what the hell I think about it.

So I'm going to try to do some freewrites over the next few days, and see what comes out. And then I'm going to schedule a trip to the library at the SF Psychoanalytic Institute and gather more sources, read them, and then start putting some structure to the thing.

Now I'm all fired up, and shit. Let me at it!

Ambrosia of the Devil

The shit is dangerous, people. Dangerous! We made crêpes this weekend, and someone brought the chocolaty, nutty goodness, and I've been eating spoonfuls of it for the last three days. A brilliant way to kick off the holiday gluttony--I'll gain ten pounds by Thanksgiving.

In portliness,
Bree

Not Knowing

"Becoming a therapist is a narcissistically-wounding process." This is what my supervisor told me last week, as I was crying in her office, so afraid that I would say the wrong thing to a client and cause them harm.

It's so hard for me to say "I don't know." Intellectually, I'm all about the ambiguities, the grey areas, the blurry. Unresolved chords--bring 'em! Tangential philosophical conversations that lead to unworkable paradoxes--rock on! The feelings these in betwixt ideas inspire, however, become more complex. The vagaries of life and death that I feel capable of playing with conceptually terrify me at a raw, emotional level. What should I do? Why can't I bring myself to do any solid work on my thesis? What holds me back? What if I don't find a paid internship next year? What if she leaves me? What happens when we die?

I don't fucking know.

Good. I said it, in spades. But then there's the self-flagellation. Why don't you know? You're incompetent and naïve; you really should know. Terrible things will happen if you don't produce the answers. Clients will suffer, my self worth will plummet, fathers will drop dead unexpectedly.

It's your fault, you know.

I don't know.

Limón

The gf and I ate well above our means tonight at a wonderful Peruvian/fusion restaurant on Valencia. It's been around for a number of years now, but neither of us had managed to get there until tonight. Excellent food, they got there, but spendy. We started with a salad of mixed greens and shaved fennel (we're all about the fresh fennel of late) tossed with oranges and a citrus mustard vinaigrette which Astrid called "subtle" and I thought rather "bold." Along with the salad, we ate a ceviche of raw halibut, large prawns, calamari, octopus, and mussels dressed with lime juice and fresh salsa and served with haricot beans, roasted corn, and and a yam paté. For the main event, we shared a generous (read: hella big) pan roasted pork chop with cabbage and bacon hash and mushroom ragú (uh, YUM!) and a tuna tartare, spiced with toasted sesame oil and other Asian flavors. The tartare was served with crisp wonton tips. The fusion of Asian and Latin styles was a bit weird to take in at first, but the tartare really worked. I would tweak the pork chop dish just a wee bit if I were head chef for a day: it was just ever so slightly overcooked, and the mushroom ragú was a touch too salty, even for me, a gal with a high tolerance for the sodium chloride.

The wine list at Limón is fantastic, organized by "red" and "white," but also broken down into accessible categories like "floral spicy" and "dry crisp." Astrid enjoyed a Sanoma Cutrer chardonnay from the Russian River, and I had a lovely Spanish sauvignon blanc, the name of which I've long forgotten (if I ever even knew the name--Astrid did the ordering for us this evening). When the entrées arrived, Astrid switched to a zinfandel, but I stuck with the one glass.

Yes, we got dessert, too, god help us. It was a fucking ridiculously rich--but somehow also airy--flourless chocolate cake, piping hot, with a dark chocolate sauce, fresh figs, and a scoop of arroz con leche ice cream. Holy crap!

Price tag $150.00 w/ tip
Health index: pretty abysmal
Satisfaction: through the roof

After dinner, Astrid really wanted to go dancing. She had the bug, 'cause she'd done Argentine tango this afternoon with Nan. We were both too tired to mission out in the cold evening to find a venue for after dinner dancing, so we biked home and rumba'd* in the living room for a spell.

'Twas quite a magical evening.



*"Verbification" of the word "rumba" brought to you by my nephew, Joey, an aficionado of the liberal evolution of the English language.

Pavarotti vs. The Walrus

So Google is celebrating Pavarotti's birthday today by linking him on the homepage, a custom I've quite enjoyed over the years on various birthdays and anniversaries of important people, events, yadda yadda (e.g. The Lunar Landing, Einstein's birthday,etc.) My question is: what are the criteria (if any) that Google uses to determine who and what gets commemorated in this manner?

I became curious, because John Lennon's birthday was a few days ago, and I had wondered why Google didn't acknowledge it, and now Pavarotti is being celebrated, and I'm thinking, hmm...is opera so much more culturally relevant than rock 'n' roll, particularly when "John Lennon" registers a million and a half more Google hits than "Pavarotti?" Clearly, Google can't possibly acknowledge every outstanding public figure or historical event, so there must be some sort of formula or process that determines who gets the goods.

I emailed Ube's man, who works at "the Google" (in the words of G.W.), to see if he knows the secret. Anyone out there know?

xo
Bree

Look! Giant Penises in the sky!

I fucking hate the Blue Angels.

I'm not complaining, say, about the ear-splitting sonic whir heard overhead in San Francisco for an entire week every October. I'm not talking, either, about the thousands of tourists in their polluting cars congesting the City streets all week so they can catch site of the super-dazzling synchronized cock-fest in the air (a congestion that apparently brings $4 million in tourist revenue, it will be, and has been, argued.)

I hate the Blue Angels because they make war look sexy. I hate them because we pay for this super-fast, super-loud death-defying circle jerk with our tax money. I hate them because, in addition to paying millions of dollars annually to run this air show, we are also footing the bill for what is essentially an extraordinarily expensive and environmentally costly advertisement for rampant, unremitting militarism. I hate them because they spew thousands of pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere all year traveling from city to city for no legitimate reason.

According to the Blue Angels website, the squadron is currently made up of twelve planes, ten of which are F/A-18 A jets and two of which are F/A-18 B jets. Each of the F/A-18 A planes costs, at a minimum, $21 million a piece (other military-related websites put them at $28 million each) and that basic cost does not include any of the weapons-related systems that could easily double or triple the cost per plane. The Angels also fly a C-130T, nicknamed "Fat Albert." The cost of the C-130T is approximately $65 million, though I do not know how much the Blue Angels kicked down for it in 1970 when they originally acquired it.

The Angels burn an estimated 3.1 million gallons of jet fuel every year, which means a cost of about $3.3 million a year, and fuck knows how much carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere. Add that to the 1.7 million gallons of fuel a day that the U.S. military is burning in Iraq and it's just insult upon injury upon death upon global environmental devastation.



San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly made a third attempt this year to ban the Angels, citing mainly public safety and environmental reasons. The move was blocked and didn't make it to the full board of supes for a vote, but hopefully Daly and the other progressives on the board will continue to work on it.

One of the specific reasons cited by Daly in the effort to ban the air show this year was the death of an Angel pilot in a crash last April in South Carolina. In addition to the death of 32 year old Lt. Commander Kevin J. Davis, the crash also injured eight bystanders and wrecked several homes. Apparently a minister emceeing the air show at Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina reassured the mourners that “the spirit of the pilot is in the arms of a loving God.” Fuck you.

Quit flying war machines for fun, for fuck's sake.

TMBG

Saw They Might Be Giants at the Fillmore tonight with Astrid and DJ. It was my first time seeing them, but both of them have seen the band numerous times before, DJ claiming he's seen them "more than 15 but less than 20" times. I dunno how impressive the show was to DJ, ever the malcontent, but I thought they were pretty fantastic. Highlights were Ana Ng, Doctor Worm, and Mr. Me, complete with a bitchin' horn section. In some ways, their showmanship is rather carnivalesque, which totally fits them as a band. At one point, they did this shtick where they received "phone calls from the dead," putting a mic up against a projection screen showing a cartoon cemetery. The call they got was allegedly from television's Jerry Orbach, but as the skit progressed, the caller turned out to be a Jerry Orbach impersonator, also dead, mind you, but a charlatan nonetheless. Wacky wacky.

TMBG is yet another of those bands out there that I've always loved, but never got around to following closely or owning much of their stuff. I'm only really familiar with their first three albums (the self-titled album, Lincoln, and Flood); then I stopped paying attention. But they've got a seriously large oeuvre. I'm probably not going to delve much deeper at this late date, but I'm really happy to have seen them live finally. They are some good fun.

Backslash

Congrats to Ube and her man - they've got a new baby on their hands! Kaloo, kalay! Little Backslash has been born!

Upside down you turn me

Did anyone out there hear about the incident at Montebello High School that happened last year, in which students (apparently from neighboring districts) took down the school's American flag, flipped it upside down, and hung it below the Mexican flag? If you've heard about it at all, it's likely you gleaned the information from a frothy-mouthed mass email message that's been circulating for a year or more since the incident. That's how I got the info, just today, in my inbox, from a friend of my mom's who insists on including me in all her mass mailings, which include dumb jokes, prayers for our soldiers, mainstream-conservative political diatribes, virus alerts (all hoaxes), "Amber" alerts (actual and unsubstantiated), and god knows what else.

It turns out that the Montebello High incident, the result of last year's national walk-out to protest Congressional immigration reforms, is news that I happen to be interested in, when it's not couched in the right-wing vitriol of a random mass emailing:

"If you choose to remain uninvolved (Ed. note: i.e. if we don't stop those uppity brown kids), do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be 'redistributed' to the activists while you are so peacefully staying out of the 'fray.'"

Yeah, our American Way of Life is truly in danger when high school students march in solidarity to protest U.S. immigration law and (ooh, shivers!) turn a flag upside down (the sight of which, by the way, the mass email in question called "heart-stopping!") I guess they're really sullying that old First Amendment by exercising free speech and freedom of assembly. The argument can be made that school officials must keep kids in class; in fact, the Montebello kids weren't the instigators, because they were on lock-down and unable to participate in the demonstration. But shit, if kids are skipping school once in a while to engage in activism of all things, and they didn't even destroy the flag (an act I have no moral qualm with, though I could see someone getting busted for damaging school property,) what is the bloody fucking harm?



So, despite my interest in this particular subject, I decided to attempt to cut off any further junk mailings by my mom's friend. I hit "reply" on the message, and immediately fell into a writer's block when considering how to word such a request in a polite manner. I really wanted to say, "Pardon me, but I have no interest in this racist alarmist crapola and would you kindly remove me from your list?" Hey, at least that statement was half-polite. I found this site, which might be useful to folks finding themselves in a similar dilemma:

ThanksNo.Com

It's a pretty straightforward form letter available for linking to anyone you need to school in mass mail etiquette. After getting inspiration from Thanks No, I opted for my own wording, which I hope was innocuous enough:

I'm emailing you because I'd like to request that you take me off your "group email" list. While I'm always happy to receive personal, one-on-one emails from friends, or invitations to specific events, I'd rather not receive mass-forwarded jokes, political messages, etc.

I don't mean to be ungracious or rude. I'm happy that you include me among your nearest and dearest! I just don't like receiving mass-delivered mail.

Thanks a bunch, and take care!

Viva La Raza!
--Bree

Getting in Touch

Last week, I had a session with my very first ever psychotherapy client! I'm sure there was nothing particularly healing about the session, other than the simple Hawthorne effect - here was an eager psych intern listening intently and asking detailed, very personal questions about someone's life, and maybe they did or didn't benefit or feel better as a result of just being paid attention to by me. But we had a good rapport, the client was open to sharing stuff with me, and I was a lot less anxious and more grounded than I thought I'd be. After I got back to the clinic from lunch break, I mentioned to a colleague that I thought, in the minutes before seeing my first client, that I would feel out of my body, like I was floating, and I that I actually didn't feel that at all. I was also worried about how much I'd be sweating from nervousness in the session, but that too was under a reasonable amount of control. Focusing on my breathing really helped. Keeping alert and attuned to what was being said (and not said) by the client kept me centered on the task at hand. And recording my progress notes directly after the session was a useful exercise in remembering a lot of the detail that may have escaped my mind by now.

The other really cool thing that happened was that I had a phone appointment with a local psychotherapist who has some expertise in grief work and running bereavement therapy groups. Graciously, she gave me about an hour on the phone to give me some insight and pointers about starting a grief group at the clinic. Talking to her really put me in touch with why I want to do this work: I want to help people hold and move through their suffering, particularly as it relates to loss and grief. Essentially, she was inviting me to play on the "existential playground" as she called it, to join a community of healers who help people navigate this life/death threshold. I feel very new and humble right now, not taking myself so very seriously or trying to sound self-important. Of all the playgrounds, this is certainly one of the scariest to choose for myself, like being a two year-old at the top of the spiral slide on the "big kid's" side of the park. But this is where I want to be.

Back to Skewl

Had my first day of school today, with the end of summer on my mind. This song's been in my head all day.* Had me a blast, I did. Off the top, this is what I did this summer:

- went camping a couple times
- started a nerdy alumni site for my Jewish camp friends
- started my clinical internship
- watched a lot of Buffy
- read a bit for my thesis
- started taking ballroom dance lessons with the GF!
- put all my old photos into albums
- made out with Olivia Newton-John under the dock

We had one class tonight. I think I'm gonna like our new instructor for family therapy; she's a no-bullshit kinda lady. The other thing that happened at school was that the dean of our department assured us that even though our hippy-ass college is under probation and may lose its accreditation, our degrees won't be affected. As long as we are enrolled in an accredited college, she tells us, we're covered. Future students might not fare so well. I'll keep you all posted, naturally.

*Note: link changed from original. Now, watch the stop-motion Lego version of "Summer Nights" from Grease - it's hilarious. Something sublime about little lego men saying, "You got in her drawers, right?"

Technorati

Just listed myself on Technorati. Check it out.

Technorati Profile

I've pinged them, but they're still only listing really old entries - does anyone know how this thing works? Thanks!

--Bree

Me/You

Where do "I" end and "you" begin?

Patrick Swayze thinks he knows the answer.

"This is my dance space; this is your dance space," he asserts, with confidence.

I don't buy that whole idea, though, that we exist as totally separate entities with precise boundaries (not that Patrick Swayze was making an analogy about human interaction, and not that I seek some permeable merging of self with Patrick Swayze, either, mind you) but as I live and love and experience the world, I'm coming to realize that the concept of "self" itself is a much more ambiguous notion than we tend to conceptualize here in the West.

I'm coming at this from the context of being a very green psychotherapist- in-training: what is my client's shit, and what is my shit, when I'm sitting in the room with him/her/hir? Will I be able to suss out what the client is expressing (or not expressing) from my own feeling states as they arise in our interaction? The operative technical terms here are the transference and the countertransference, which are generally used in a psychotherapy context, but can obviously be applied to any interaction we have with a particular person, or with people or institutions or objects more generally. Crudely put, transference phenomena are the projected feelings a client puts onto the therapist (or a person puts onto another significant person), in an enactment of unconscious, deeply ingrained relational dynamics. The classic example might be the client regarding the therapist as a parent figure and unconsciously acting out as if one was with a parent. On the flip side, the countertransference refers to the therapist's feelings toward the client, and is understood in a couple different ways. It can refer both to the therapist's personal unconscious processes being enacted with the client and to the therapist's conscious utilization of the feelings that are generated in the presence of the client in order to forward therapeutic ends. It's at this very early stage in my development as a therapist that I am beginning to understand how crucial these concepts will be.

This is a very simplistic representation of how I'm imagining the interaction I'm describing:



The main anxiety I'm feeling about beginning therapy with my first clients (which will be within about two weeks' time) is how to negotiate that intersection: when is that intermediate space well-boundaried and productive, and when is it a mushy-boundaried, collapsed space? Certainly, my boundaries with clients need to be kept quite intact, and just permeable enough in order to have a human, real interaction, but when might a collapsed space actually be fruitful, if not totally inappropriate, over-exposing, or detrimental to the curative work of the therapy?

Of course, these anxieties are not contained just to my work as a therapist-in-training. As a person moving about the world with all my particular emotional baggage, I do this delicate dance of intimacy all the time. How much of myself is melding into my lover, and how much of her is melding into me? Are we creating enough space for each other to be wholly ourselves, or are our personal boundaries becoming ever blurrier, to the point that we will dissolve into this indiscernible mass of Bree/Astrid – Brastrid? Astbree? And even in the face of this fear of overlapping, of losing myself, I experience moments when I want nothing more than to completely merge with her, stripped, both of us, naked bellies pressed as far together as possible before we come out the other side. Ah, sweet collapse.

Cover it in Snow/Cover it in I Don't Know...

My dream last night was reminiscent of those situations that always seem to come up in TV sitcoms, in which a character (Bobby Brady, perhaps) feeds too much detergent into a washing machine and ends up filling an entire room with soap suds. The room was small and square, and the washing machine was soon buried in water and suds. I was surveying the scene from a vantage point above the room, and it was my task to start bailing out the room a bucketful at a time, only when I bailed out a certain amount of water and bubbles, a densely-packed roomful of wet sand remained, which I had to continue excavating. I woke anxious and frustrated, with the refrain from this song in my head. I don't know why I thought of this song, about covering over something, when I was actually digging something out in the dream, but that's where the unconscious mind traveled. I'd covered something up, only to be charged with the task of unearthing it again.

Dreaming is Free, but Drinking Ain't

Mag and K. and I went to Pauline's last night. Shit howdy, they have good pizza! And I didn't know til last night they grow their own vegetables at a farm in Berkeley.* They do a très California style pizza--thin crust, with organic toppings and lots of flavor. I also got a salad and a Boont Amber. I will freely promote Anderson Valley beers 'cause they're not only yummy, they're also Solar Powered. After dinner, Mag and I strolled down Valencia and had a drink and good chat at the Elbo Room. Drink number two of the evening was an exceedingly dry Manhattan with Knob Creek bourbon (even when funded solely on student loans, I manage to drink beyond my means.) I don't think the guy even put the sweet vermouth in there; it was just whiskey, bitters, and a cherry. It was pretty ick, actually. As with my martinis, I like my Manhattans on the wet side, and "dirty," as Mag pointed out, could be said of maraschino cherry as well as olive juice in their respective cocktails.

We parted ways, and I biked back home and did a little Netflixing and other various online things, expecting Astrid to be home soon from work. At about 10:00 o'clock, she called me from the sushi place down the street, right next to the Mint, and asked me if I'd like to join her. I mozied on over, and sat with my girl while she ate decent sushi and drank cheap sake. A karaoke patron's rendition of "Little Red Corvette" encroached into the sushi bar, and we toyed with the idea of putting song requests in for ourselves. While Astrid finished up her dinner, I grabbed a songbook from the bar and began with the A's (ABBA, perhaps; America...neh; Bee Gees, too falsetto...)

Astrid looked at the list upside down from across the table and saw a Bjork number she was excited about. I settled on Blondie's Dreaming, and we got ourselves seats at the bar and passed our slips to the usual KJ, a man on whom I've projected an elaborate fantasy of knowing which songs are in my range and which are not, and whom I dreaded would know that I wouldn't be able to carry off Blondie and would communicate such disapproval with a raised eyebrow or a shrug. Of course, he paid no attention to me as I stuffed the song slips into his jar with the requisite couple-buck tip. Astrid ordered a lemon drop, and I had another Manhattan (this time with well whiskey, and I specified "on the sweet side" to the bartender, who humored me.)

For a Friday night, the Mint was uncharacteristically dead, so we knew our songs would come up quickly. Astrid ordered another lemon drop meantime.

I pulled off "Dreaming" pretty well, and was surprised (the KJ knew I could do it all along, naturally,) but the real star of the night was Ms. Astrid, who totally nailed It's Oh So Quiet, with cute little dancy flourishes and crazy head-shaking and screams, just like our little cuddly/scary Bjork. It was delightful to see her so free and having so much fun on stage! When we were both done with our 3 minutes of fame a piece, I posed this question to Astrid: "Should I order another Manhattan, or should we just go home and fuck?"

We left the bar feeling horny and pleased with ourselves.


_____________________________

*Farms, in Berkeley? Mooo! (Thank you, B. I know at least you will get a chuckle out of that joke.)

I'm a total dork.

I spent my free time this weekend creating a Yahoo group for alumni of my old Jewish summer camp. Not because someone commissioned me to do so, but because I thought it'd be neat! Actually, it's pretty fucking cool. I scanned bunches of old photos from the 80's and posted them, and put out a "welcome" message and then sent invites to all the people from Camp I'm still in touch with, 'bout five or six folks. Then I went onto Myspace and found a few more people and sent them invites, and now I'm just kinda waiting and seeing if anyone will bite and what kinds of pictures and discussion threads might start happening. I think that the site will probably grow to about double the membership now (so, say to ten or so people) within a few weeks, and then it'll probably be in stasis for a long time until other people feel motivated to scan photos and start chats and whatever. Maybe it'll just be the Bree Show; I have no idea at this point.

The photo on the right is classic, 'cause it's such a period piece. I've cropped myself and some other people out of the picture, but the central figure, Jenny (of course her name is Jenny) is not only wearing a John Taylor button, but also not one, but two Swatches on her wrist. Her hair, as well, is totally to die for, n'est-ce pas? This pic was taken in 1985, when we were all about 13 years old. Yes, it is I giving Jenny the "bunny ears" from two seats over. We were on a bus going on some camp field trip, probably to Great America. Ah, mem'ries.

Don't let the name fool you.

Oh my god I'm so freaking excited. Little Darlings is playing at the Castro tonight. Suddenly, more and more of my friends are coming out of the woodwork with their obsessions, too.

It is positively the best movie in the "teenage losing your virginity flick" genre, and Ube and I have been enthralled with it since the mid-80s.

Otherwise, a very relaxing day of dusting, vacuuming, making fresh salsa, and generally enjoying my summer freedom. Seriously, today I got, as Astrid put it, tongue-somewhat-in-cheek, "zen" about my house cleaning. It just feels so good to be nearly done with my bookkeeping gigs and on my way to starting a profession I am compelled by. My internship at the queer mental health clinic starts the first week in August. Meanwhile, I've got actual free time in which to live, and, yes, clean.

Buzzkill?

Sheesh, I thought by now I'd have some responses on the Death Poll, but I guess everyone found it too creepy or something? Or maybe people aren't checking the blog 'cause of the holiday and all. What gives?

I'm off to San Jose today to visit Mom and Schmend. C. is outta town, on a cruise to Alaska, in fact. Dunno if I'll see any of the nieces or nephews on this trip, but that'd be nice. We'll see how the day shapes up. I'll have three good hours of reading time on the train back and forth--hopefully I can finally knock out The Denial of Death because, truth be told, I'm getting a bit sick of reading it, even though it's really eye-opening. Only so much conceptual death I can handle at a time, I guess, but certainly more of it than actual death, right?

Love and stuff,
--Bree

Death Poll

So I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I'm doing my masters thesis on the subject of death. More specifically, I'm going to be exploring the effects of our uniquely human capacity for the awareness of death, or our ability to anticipate death. How does this consciousness of our own demise shape our emotional lives, our psychology, our ability to live in the world, operate in relationships, and exist in our finite bodies? Does it drive us to destruction, violence, and war? Does it give the privileged in the world (white, global north/west, wealthy) a way to disavow death and project it onto people of color and the poor through war, economic oppression, environmental devastation? And on the other hand, can our terror of death motivate us to put forward lasting creative projects in the world (to write books, make babies, found religions) to ensure our own symbolic immortality?

In my reading and research, I'm coming across a lot of different theories, ideas, frameworks. Major influences right now are Ernest Becker, and post-Freudian psychoanalysis (Melanie Klein, Otto Rank, Lacan, and Frantz Fanon). I want to branch out into other disciplines as well, and I'd be interested if anyone has any suggestions for research areas I should check out. I'd particularly like to read more women writers.

Some questions I'm generating at this early stage of the game are as follows. Please consider answering any or all of these questions in the comment section. I'd love to know other people's thoughts in order to get a bigger perspective than just what's been going on in my own head and in my reflections of what I've been reading.


1. Do you think the fear of death, or the denial of death is a "universal" fear, or anything close to a "universal" fear? Can you think of ways in which the fear of death manifests itself either psychologically at the level of individuals, or socio-culturally?

2. Do you think there is such a thing as a "death drive" or an instinct that drives us toward, or compels us toward death psychologically, not just biologically toward entropy and decay?

3. What do you think happens when we die? Do you know what your parent/s think/thought about death? Do your beliefs differ significantly from theirs?

4. How often do you think about, have anxious or curious feelings about, or fantasize/daydream about death? (your own death and/or the death of your loved ones?)

I hope everyone feels very free to leave comments. If you'd rather email your thoughts to me personally, leave a comment with your email address, and I'll send you mine if you don't know it already.

Peace,
--Bree

Freedom!

Finally finished my finals, and I feel fantastic!

I *heart* alliteration.

Anon, here I find myself on the first day of my summer vacation. So much to do, so little time. Off to brunch with B. More later...

Two to Go

Finished my paper for child psychotherapy tonight, and still managed to watch two episodes of Angel. Astrid made an amazing salad for dinner with butter lettuce, carrots, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, sunflower sprouts, boiled eggs, and fresh mozzarella, dressed in a delectable raspberry vinaigrette with fresh tarragon and basil. I made crunchy garlic crostini with slices of baguette, freshly pounded garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I'm actually salivating while I'm typing this.

Tomorrow, I work on my thesis papers in earnest. Three more days til summer break.

Breathe

My next nine days:

Tomorrow:
Read for class
Work on papers due for end of term for Child Psychotherapy,
Critical Theory, and Thesis classes
My final Critical Theory class
My final Law & Ethics class; 50-question final exam

Friday:
Penultimate* day at my Friday bookkeeping gig
Train new bookkeeper
Tranny March at Dolores Park
Party and general mayhem

Saturday:
Work on papers in the morning
LGBTQ filmfest local short films program
Dyke March at Dolores Park
Party and much more mayhem
Pink Saturday in the Castro
Even more partying and mayhem

Sunday:
Recover from the weekend
Work on papers
Avoid the Pride Parade
Reward myself with bloody marys

Monday:
Monday bookkeeping gig
Work on papers

Tuesday:
Work on papers
Final Child Psychotherapy class
More work on papers

Wednesday:
Wednesday bookkeeping gig
Final night to work on papers

Thursday:
Last chance to finalize all three papers
Therapy appointment
Turn in papers
Graduate Psychology Symposium on campus

Friday:
Last day at Friday bookkeeping gig
Last day of training with new bookkeeper

Breathe!

*I just learned that word!

Love - One

Astrid and I had a gorgeous, healthful evening. We made the yummiest fucking turkey burgers ever with a big salad and oven-fries (though, Astrid reminded me, they weren't fries at all, since they were baked, so I think we agreed on calling them "baked 'French-cut' potatoes" and then ruminated about whether there's anything "French" about "french fries" anyway.)

The turkey burgers were fantastic. I started with a pound of Diestel ground turkey in a big stainless steel bowl. I threw in a very large dash of salt (probably somewhere around two teaspoons), milled a bunch of black pepper into it, a couple dashes of hot sauce (I like Tapatio), tossed in one egg white, finely diced red onion (I would have used shallots, but we were out. It's never a good thing to be out of shallots!), minced one clove of garlic, and chopped finely a good couple tablespoons each of fresh sage and thyme.

Don't use dried herbs, or I'll have to pound on you!

So after throwing all that in the bowl, I mixed it all with my bare hands, which is a complete and utter necessity, except that it's totally disgusting, but wash your hands good before, and even better afterward. Then I heated up a large iron skillet, oiled it lightly with olive oil (try it on medium/medium high depending on how hot your stove runs.) The meat divided up into three good sized patties, and I placed those in the hot skillet. I can't be too sure of the time, but basically, I gave them several minutes on each side (say six or seven) and then, as the French-cut potatoes were baking in the oven, I placed the burgers, still in the skillet, in there to finish off, maybe another seven to ten minutes. Toasted some buns, melted some sharp cheddar cheese on top in the last minute of cooking (Astrid thought Swiss would be better next time), grilled up some red onions, and voila (or "viola," as one of Exene's professors actually has been caught saying, not ironically) - juicy, low fat amazingly flavorful turkey burgers!

After just the right amount of dinner (I did not nibble at the extra burger, nor did I bake too many French-cut potatoes) we took a walk up to Dolores Park and played some tennis (read: hit some balls wildly around the court) which was just love-ly (ahem) as A. and I'd never played together before. I think it might become a thing.

While we walked back home (pronounce the "l" in "walk" - this is a holdover in the vernacular from when B. and Mag were still together, I think), hand in hand, we noticed many other people out walking. The day was unusually warm, and at nine-thirty, when we were done with tennis, it was perfectly gorgeous still. We walked and laughed about all the people walking on their legs, I dunno why, but it was silly and pleasing to us--that everyone was walking on their legs--and we had big smiles on our faces. Another couple passed us, and the woman said to us, "You're so cute!" I wanted to tell them that they were cute, too, but I couldn't stop grinning and laughing.

Yay, healthy food! Yay, physical activity! Yay love!

Rosebud

Hanging out at Muddy's, attempting to write a self-evaluation paper on my clinical skills in identifying and working with clients' substance abuse issues. Mag'll be here pretty soon and then we're going to the Castro to see Citizen Kane on the big screen. Exciting - he's never seen it before! I've only seen it once, so it'll be great to see it again and be able to absorb more of the details in the plot, in the filming, in the performances.

Yesterday, Astrid, Bob, DJ, and I went to a softball game organized by some friends of Astrid's. Calisto and Dave were there, too. The latent softball dyke in me came out in full color, and I found myself almost involuntarily yelling shit like, "Good eye!" and "Way to hustle!" I haven't played the game since probably 1988. I found that all my skills--hitting, catching, throwing--had atrophied, but I can still hold my own "for a girl." After about an hour and a half on the field, I began playing better, but by that time I was pretty tired. Definitely have to do it again sometime.

After the game, Astrid, DJ, Bob and I went over to Calisto and Dave's for yummy mushroom soup and a screening of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. It was definitely my favorite in the Star Trek movie saga. Humpback whales save the Earth, dude - who could not love that shit? Probably not quite the calibur of Citizen Kane, but hey, I'm an ecclectic film lover.

The Flying Meatball Incident

On Monday night, after a lovely Memorial Day party* chez Mr. & Mrs. C and baby Pez, Astrid and I biked home through the Mission and decided to get dinner at Emmy's Spaghetti Shack. Neither of us had ever been before, and it was totally worth the hype. It's not the most extraordinary food you'll ever eat, but they serve really tasty, fresh grub, inventive drinks, and the space itself is really cozy. You've gotta get there super early to get a table, though. We'd tried before, and the line was out the wazoo. Anyway, Astrid got the pea soup with mint (deelish), a lavender martini, and a salad with arugula and speck (which neither of us had ever heard of, but A. wisely surmised the German origin of the name of this lovely, smokey cured meat). I got the spaghetti and meatballs, 'cause I'd heard their meatballs rock. And it turns out they are mighty nice, indeed, packed with lots of fresh chopped onions and garlic, and the spaghetti comes topped with a rich, tangy marinara sauce and lots of freshly grated Parmesan and minced parsley.

As I'm trying to be more mindful these days of how much food I shove down the gullet, I had a decent amount of leftovers, which the hipster waitress kindly packed for me in a Chinese take-out box. We wrapped the bill and departed, making our way through the crowd and out to our bikes. Before unlocking, I realized I'd left the leftovers on the table, and went back in to fetch them. The hipster waitress said, "It happens all the time," as she wiped the box off, having retrieved it for me from the garbage. I figured that if I get E.coli, it's my own damned fault. I put the box in my bike basket and we set off for home.

Not two blocks away from the restaurant, Astrid and I made a left off of Mission, and I hit a pothole. The take-out box went flying, and as I looked behind me out the corner of my eye, I saw the leftover meatball pop out of the carton, arch through the air, and bounce onto the pavement. Guess I didn't need the extra calories or potential E.coli infection.

xo
Bree


*B and I were expecting a Memorial Day Barbeque, not just a "party" featuring tamales and seven-layer bean dip. Not that the tamales and dip and mojitos weren't excellent, but, y'know, where's the *beef*? Oh yeah, it flew off my bike.

The Saga of the Couch

Many of you who have been to my apartment know that I've had successive shitty futons in the living room for the entire five years I've been here. The last one was nicknamed "Jerry" by DJ, or maybe it was Bob, but regardless of who named it, I mean him, I mean it, I could never succumb to acknowledging the moniker.*

Now that Astrid and I are making a home together, we both immediately acknowledged our need of a proper couch. There were too many nights of Buffy watching forced apart, each of us sitting on our respective old stuffed chairs, separated by what seemed like miles (picture me in full dramatic pose, forearm on forehead, to cover my tragedy-stricken brow.) Anyhow, we needed one.

Astrid did some fine legwork on Craigslist and found a full-sized couch that we both really liked, which lived with its gay boy owner not three blocks away from our place (although I don't name objects, I clearly have no problem anthropomorphizing them). We made an appointment to look at it, loved it, and paid the deposit. A few days later, we ensnarled DJ into our very flawed plan to transport the couch atop Astrid's automobile and move it up the very narrow, steep stairway and into the apartment. This was to be accomplished inside a window of an hour and a half or so, after which we were supposed to go see the new Simon Pegg movie, Hot Fuzz.

DJ and Astrid sweated and grunted and shoved the couch in as many angles as they possibly could, for the better part of an hour, and the bloody couch would not get through the door. Our friend MJ, who showed up to join us for the movie, tried a few Rubik's Cubish (Cubist?) maneuvers as well, and even I made a couple token attempts, but when it comes to manual labor, I'm pretty much useless (I've never done a single pull-up; glad they didn't flunk me outta school on account of those Presidential fitness tests!) We'd measured first and everything, that was the bitch of it, but the couch simply couldn't get passed the funky door angles to have a chance to be dragged up the stairs.

In a last-ditch effort, Astrid and DJ tried getting the thing into the alley on the side of the house, so's to move it up the equally physically impossible back stairs; unfortunately, the couch got caught in the narrow corridor, snagging under a slat of fence, and in the dark, there wasn't a way to figure out how to pull it passed that point and onto the patio even to be able to make an attempt at the stairs.

Sigh.

After that, we sent DJ and MJ away to meet Bob for the movie. Sitting on the couch, which was relegated to the sidewalk in front of our apartment, Astrid and I fell into despair and frustration.



I went upstairs and brought down some beers and A's computer (yes, so we could watch a Buffy episode.) We ordered a pizza to the couch. We asked passersby if they'd like to buy it. Some of them sat down and chatted with us: it was a happenin' scene.

At about 1:30 am, we decided to surrender the couch to the fates, and dragged the cushions upstairs in hopes that the bare springy frame would be less attractive and thus less "scoreworthy" for the would-be takers. I still had hopes to re-sell it on Craigslist to someone with a bigger doorway; Astrid held out for the impossible dream that we'd be able to get it upstairs if only we tried hard enough. The night passed, and the couch was still there when we woke up. There was minor forensic evidence suggesting someone had made it their bed for the night. Astrid had a study group that day, and I was around at home, peeking through the window periodically to see if anyone had claimed it. No one had. When A came home, she utilized CL yet again to procure us some movers who showed up in the evening and managed to get the couch through the alley, and up the back stairs. They strained, walked on top of the railings, lifted the couch clear over their heads to maneuver the tight corners, and did contortions to their bodies we had no right to have asked of them, but by god, they got that fucking thing into the apartment.



After we paid and handsomely tipped the movers (nearly doubling our expense for the couch), Astrid escorted them downstairs. When she came back up, we embraced. I was so in awe of Astrid's persistence, so relieved and extatic to have the couch we wanted sitting in our living room, so fucking in love, and, quite honestly, slightly terrified. The feeling welling up in me in that moment may not have been unlike Ceeb's when she suggested that the 'Flix account she shares with Dax felt like a real commitment [though I'm certain my comment was less "couched" (groan!) in sarcasm than was Ceeb's.]

Standing next to our new couch, I looked at my beautiful girlfriend, shook my head, and said, "Baby, you know this means we're married, right?"

xo
Bree

___________________________________

* Though this is totally irrelevant, it might also be acknowledged that I've never been one to name inanimate objects like cars or favorite gadgets, much less crappy futons, though I did name my menstrual cycle as a teenager, at the behest of my Jewish youth group cohorts, all of us agreeing on the ritual as a counterpoint to the guys naming their penises. Among our group's cycles were "Amethyst" and "Wawona;" mine was "Marguerite."

Master and Servant

Yesterday was a day of celebration in the Astrid-Bree household: Ms. Astrid took her oral exam and is now an M.A. in comparative literature!! She read a core book list of thirty works and had to prepare a 20-minute presentation in a specialty area. Yeah, she's smart 'n' shit. Yesterday proved big for me, too: I got a phone call from the clinic director of an M.F.T. training program where I interviewed this week letting me know they want me to come work with them! I start the internship in August! So, while Astrid is now a master, I have become an indentured servant, and will be working 20 to 25 hours a week at the clinic for free. And getting good clinical training, I remind myself.

Astrid and I celebrated by eating orgasmic tapas at Ramblas and getting drinks with Calisto, Dave, DJ, and Raquel at the Lex.

Anyway, hurrah!

Malaise

I feel a familiar setting in of the doldrums which hasn't visited me in a long time. The weather isn't helping (cold, wet, icky. It's fucking May, okay, weather?) Now that the funeral is over, there is less chaos and tension, but there is still a faint sadness permeating everything. I picked up my studying yesterday for the first time in two weeks, but in class, I felt removed, wondering why I was even there, wondering what good it does for people to be trained as psychotherapists, when we can't control the fucked up things that happen to people.

I dreamed about Andrew last night. I was with a bunch of people, and we were lost on our way home, as if we'd never been there before. I don't know which "home" it was supposed to be, but it was apparently somewhere between Los Gatos and San Jose, and off the Monterey Highway (where the cemetery is), and there was a beach. A beautiful beach, mind you, but a dirty, rocky beach, not a smooth sandy one. Mom was there, and Andrew was sitting by her. We all acknowledged that the problem was that he was misunderstood somehow, and Andrew, with relief in his voice, said, "Yeah, THAT'S the issue!"

Restless

I can't sleep. Spinning about Andrew, what the funeral will be like, logistics of death. I'm also realizing that my grandmother's death in December was not that fucking long ago--two deaths in my family in four months' time. I think I've been holding it together too tightly--I need to freak out. The decision-making about the funeral and the celebration of his life have been slow, and everyone has been feeling an unsettling state of limbo. It's not fun. I wish I could've cancelled work and school this week to spend more time with my family, but I really couldn't do it.

This sucks.

Monday night at home

Spent all weekend down in San Jo with my family. It was alternately sad, boring, devastating, and sometimes poignant and illuminating. I had a lot of time with my sisters, J. and C. We talked about morbid things, like our own eventual deaths and Mom's eventual death. If there's one thing I know about how I wanna go out, it's that everyone needs to drink good booze at the party.

Astrid's studying for her oral exam, and DJ is here, borrowing a computer to write his paper on the filmic representations of Ulysses. I should be studying too, but I'm distracted (I'd like to say because of Andrew's death, which is certainly true as well, but I'll admit that I'm distracted, per yoozsh).

It's amazing, the tonal change that comes with death. It gets one to thinking about the eventual deaths of everyone, and about the deaths that have already come, deaths that were expected, deaths that traumatized. The concentric circles of grief spiral outward and expand to cover everything. I'm normally a body preoccupied with it. I might work with bereaved folks in my practicum next year. I'm probably writing my thesis about it, and I'm currently reading an amazing book about it. I don't consider myself a morbid person; I'm pretty fucking joyful, as a matter of fact. But what can I say? I find death compelling in its terrifyingness, and I embrace the chance to learn from it.

Every time death comes for someone I love, it completely humbles me. Everything I thought I knew, killed. I search for the healing from my dad's death, over thirty years ago, for which I was completely not cognizant, being two and all. The relief comes in tiny bits, macerated in my tears and laughter over decades and decades.

My mom and I had a remarkable conversation on the phone today. Andrew's death is bringing up stuff about Dad's for her, stuff she hasn't fully processed thirty years later, either. She said to me today that she is tired of death, and doesn't want to see anyone else die. Which implied, of course, that she'd rather die than live through another death. I, myself, am bracing for the experience of watching many more of my loved ones die, because, despite the pain of loss, I very much want to live and thrive and survive for a lot longer. But I guess when you're 70 years old, and you buried your husband at age 38, and then years later buried your father, and then your mother, your nephew, your best friends, and your lover, it's really enough. She said she doesn't know what she believes, and it causes her anxiety. Will she be reunited with her loved ones in some sort of cloudy paradise, or will she simply cease to exist? Will she make bedfellows with the worms? Will she live again?

Bed time for me, the kind replete with breathing, dreams, being draped in the arms of the most amazing girl in the world. I'll try to make it til tomorrow, I will.

xo
Bree

Rest in Peace, Beautiful Andrew

My mom called me this morning with the "you'd better sit down" kind of news. My cousin Andrew is dead. His body was found by some kids in a park in San Jose. We don't know the cause of death yet--may have been exposure (it was cold, and he was without a jacket or sleeping bag like he's been so many nights in the last few years), may have been an overdose (he'd been off heroin for months, but I'm guessing a fix at his normal dose might've done it), may have been a recurrence of the alcohol-induced pancreatitis that'd almost killed him a couple times before.

Some of you might remember the discouraging stories about my cousin that have emerged over the last couple years. He's been walking around without proper diagnosis nor treatment for several years, getting more and more paranoid, isolated, and depressed. He most likely had paranoid schizophrenia, and the delusions of conspiracy and being under attack ruled his consciousness to the point that he wouldn't eat food offered him (poison), couldn't sleep in the homes of people who loved him (he was constantly afraid of being gassed), wouldn't take showers (he was convinced that whoever put the toxins on his body wanted them to wash into his body) or accept offers of clothing or help with his mental health (of course drugs or any kind of intervention were all part of the conspiracy). The safety and solace that we offered to him were received ambivalently at the very best, but often, in his delusional perspective, seemed malicious, poisonous, murderous.

He was never violent--only turned terribly inward to his despondence and sadness and fear. He was an amazing blues guitarist, but hardly picked up an instrument in the last two years because he was so defeated. His life was (I can't believe I'm using the past tense) emblematic of how tragic the loss of someone young can be: he was boundlessly creative and talented and funny and kind, and by the end, he had no idea that he was capable of beauty and happiness. We all knew that it had the potential to end this way, but we all prayed that he would finally decide to reach out for help. The only good that will come of his death is that he's not suffering anymore. But I can't say the same for Aunt Rhoda, or anyone else who loved him. I can't imagine the horror of watching your kid deteriorate and die like this. It's just so wrong.

Good bye, Anj. I love you, man.

Ranking

Astrid and I just wasted two hours (a collective four!) ranking movies on Netflix. We finally succumbed to membership after the unfortunate incident in which we ended up shelling out $30.00 in late fees for a single Buffy disc. Ranking, listing, and otherwise documenting one's tastes and proclivities is such a sexy wormhole to fall into. We could've actually watched one of the movies we rented in that time. Gah!

kisses,
Bree

P.S. Dax is whining about not being included in my Cast list yet. I think she needs to do something noteworthy first. ;)

Anxiety or Indigestion?

I feel happy and motivated for the new term* at school. I feel cozy and homey and lusciously fulfilled in my new home with Astrid. So what is this rumbly, tense feeling in my stomach? It might be that I've applied to three sites for clinical internships, have been rejected by two and am waiting on the other still, while most of my classmates already have placements for next year. It might be that I hate bookkeeping and I can't believe I still have to show up and work tomorrow, Friday, and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next several months, and that even though I'm quitting all my paid gigs come summer in order to make time for school, internship, and thesis, I really should continue to work 'cause I'm gonna be broke-ass-broke next year.

Or maybe it's the cheeseburger, fries, and shake I had for dinner between classes tonight.


_____________________

*My graduate program refers to terms as "trimesters," because we have three per school year. It's essentially a quarter system with no summer quarter, thus, the "trimester" system. As I tend to associate that word with pregnancy, you'll understand why I usually refer to the demarcation of time at New College by "term" rather than by "trimester." Though, as many friends have joked, after the third trimester of my second year, I'll have myself a bouncing baby master's degree.

Chicken Breast Envy

What would happen if I actually bothered to write a little snippet on a daily or almost-daily basis? Would my entries all suck? Hmm...

Tonight, I got home from work, and DJ was here, having beers with Astrid. A was prepped to make her deee-licicious saffron rice pilaf, but needed onions and parsley from the store. We'd pulled out a couple o' skinless chicken breasts, and I was gonna make my yummy Michael Chiarello recipe, except healthier (usually use the whole chicken, which is fan-fucking-finger-licking-tastic). So I went to ye ol' supermarket across the way and picked up the ingredients for the rice and some salad things and some more skinless breasts.

The meal was tastey! I'm pleased to report that the healthy way is darned good (but certainly not as wonderful as the whole, crispy bird, with all that mouth-watering fresh rosemary, lemon zest, and salt encrusting and sealing the skin so the juices are bursting with every...oh god, make it stop! Yeah, the skinless breasts were...pretty good.

We three then watched the next installment in the Buffy marathon, on disc two of Season 3, Band Candy. Great episode (link has spoilers).

Should go to bed now.

'Night!

--Bree

Revolt!

My body is revolting, in both senses of that word: Astrid and I rolled back into town at 3:00 am Monday morning from an amazing spring break road trip down the coast and through the desert (more to come on that). I then had about four hours of sleep before having to work Monday, and then collapse and wake and start my third quarter at school on Tuesday. That morning, a bad sore throat came on, which I proceeded to medicate with mass quantities of ibuprofen. By yesterday, the pain not having abated, and with the additional symptoms of an annoying ringing in my right ear and head congestion that was making everyone’s voices, including my own, sound like echoing effects box noise, I decided to call in sick to work and head over to Kaiser to get screened for strep throat and ear infection.

So I went in, and the doctor was pretty convinced it wasn’t strep (no fever, and my throat was “pink” but not “red and beefy” (I loved this description) but we took a swab anyway, just to be sure. I did, however, have an ear infection, so I couldn’t escape the prescription for antibiotics (counting the days til the yeast infection hits). I also talked to the doc about some other chronic problems I’ve been having, most important of which are an on/off chronic cough, which I have been attributing to allergies or my acid reflux, and a recent wheezing with exhalation I’ve noticed in the last couple months. She ordered up a chest x-ray and some lung tests for me, and I spent the next few hours making additional co-payments and waiting around for the lab, the radiologist, and my scripts for amoxicillin and a generic for Flonase, as an experiment in seeing whether a post-nasal drip is causing my cough (“Flonase,” by the way, has got to be one of the most disgusting brand names ever! Every time I hear that word, all I can think of is mayonnaise made of snot).

I got home from the doc in the afternoon, still feeling shitty, but glad that I’d taken care of stuff. I watched The Big Lebowski, a movie I have always enjoyed, but had a hard time making sense of, and as it’s a movie that Astrid and DJ often refer to, I charged myself with becoming fluent. I can now say that I finally get how clever and funny it is, and how every seemingly random and unprovoked action leads to a necessary turn in the plot. I think I'll watch it many more times, actually. Unfortunately, throughout the day, another very annoying symptom was manifesting: I had managed to contract an eye infection. It couldn’t have showed itself when I had audience with the doctor, right? So, on top of the sore throat, ear infection and the lesser symptoms of coughing, snotty nose, etc., I also have to deal with a gunky, disgusting eye. Fun weekend.

DJ and I were supposed to see Ted Leo tonight, and I’m really bummed to be missing it. Loud rock show + ear infection = not so nice. DJ made the very tongue-in-cheek remark that the reverb effect in my head from the infection might make the show “trippier” – which we both agreed might have been compelling at Laser Floyd, but probably not an indie-politico-punk show. I probably also have to miss my dear friend Magna’s party tomorrow night in celebration of her white coat ceremony. She’s a D.O. student entering into her clinical training, and she and the gf, Dori, are having a wine party to encourage early staining of the white coat. I can’t believe I have to miss it. I may feel a bit better tomorrow, but I can’t quite picture myself socializing successfully with a pounding ear and a squinty, dripping eye. Great company I’ll make, no doubt.

Instead, extra Buffy episodes and finally writing a blog entry – woot!

xo - Bree

What I'm doing instead of writing my term paper...

It's not like the topic is bland or anything: development psychology and queerness, basically. I'm working with a classmate on a paper and class presentation due on Thursday. What have I done today, my last free day to work on it?

- dustbustered the stairway
- installed a coat rack in the hall
- ate oatmeal w/ Astrid
- played around on Myspace, Friendster, and Orkut (and deleted my account on the latter)
- took a bath
- read Rolling Stone.

It's the last week of the term. I have an interview for a clinical internship next week. It's at a hospice program, which is one of the areas in which I'm most interested in working. Scary, though--the idea of several or all of my clients dying during the course of the year I'd be working with them. Strangely enough, working with dying and grieving people seems to me some of the work that I'm most suited for. I have yet to grasp how many of my old emotional buttons this will push.

Off to waste more time before sitting down with the paper.

xo

Bree

My Gripes with the GLBT Movement (or, really, one of the most visible representatives of it)

Some of you out there know that I used to work for Human Rights Campaign. I helped open their San Francisco Action Center Store in the Castro, and, thanks to my background fundraising for Peace Action back in the day, I was able to recruit for them a nice li'l pile of members during the year I worked there.

Ultimately, I think the organization plays an important role in the movement for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equality--they're well-funded, well-organized, and media-savvy. Their core issues: marriage equality and LGBT family issues, workplace discrimination, health and other human rights issues related specifically to GLBT folks are all crucial issues needing organized advocacy.

But I find that too often, they fall to the right of where I am politically, and I know that I'm not the only one with this complaint. The classic examples are their focus on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, their disproportionate focus on the marriage issue which many progressive queers have no interest in, and famously, their willingness to endorse conservative candidates, sometimes in "lesser of two evils" strategies and sometimes simply to endorse incumbants so as to appear more in line with their perception of how "most GLBTs might vote" (HRC endorsed Bob Casey in PA, who I've blogged about, Joseph Lieberman, and even GOP candidate Alphonse D'Amato against Charles Schumer in the 1998 senate race in New York).

Any old way, the following is a letter I wrote to HRC this week about the hubub around Ann Coulter calling presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot." As you'll see, I don't fundamentally disagree with HRC's strategy on this issue, but I am appalled by the language they use to frame this debate. First, I present to you the letter, then HRC's response, then, navel-gazingly, my response to their response. Bonus: I also included a letter to them I sent two years ago about the gays-in-the-military issue, to which they'd never gotten around to responding. HRC's email to me this week addressed both letters. Enjoy, and of course, feel free to add your two or three cents.

xo - Bree

* * * * *

March 6, via email:

Hi there,

I'm contacting you regarding the goal of your message on Ann Coulter. I am shocked and disappointed at the wording of your take-home message:

"It's time to remove Ann Coulter from public discourse!" (emphasized by appearing in your action alert in large, bold, blue font).

There is no question that Coulter's use of the word "faggot" to demean John Edwards was wrong, and that HRC should take action on this issue. I do not disagree with the tactic of alerting HRC members and the public at large and encouraging a consumer boycott of companies who publish her and sponsor her site. But in suggesting that Coulter should be "removed from public discourse," we are playing right into the hands of those who would discredit us: this is the cry of censorship, and, taken out of context (and I promise you, that pull quote will be taken out of context) it is a dangerous sentiment to espouse. Not only will conservatives jump all over HRC as "un-American," this statement will be seen by progressive GLBT folks (myself included) as a telltale sign that HRC does not represent their/our interests. Freedom of speech is a constitutional right, even when the speaker is an inarticulate asshole.

As an HRC member and a former Action Center staffer (San Francisco store), I am invested in the goals of the Human Rights Campaign, and I want to see the organization continue to grow and become a more inclusive, diverse, and effective agent for change on GLBT rights. To that end, I feel that I have an obligation to be critical of the organization when I see it veering in the wrong direction. I also feel that I have a right to a thoughtful response on this issue, and I would appreciate just that (I contacted you on a different issue previously, and received nothing back. Below, please find a copy of that message, which I sent originally in March of 2005, even before I worked at the HRC store in the Castro.)

As always, I appreciate your hard work in the fight for GLBT equality.

Thank you for taking the time to read this message.


Bree
San Francisco, CA


Previous email from March, 2005:

To the program staff at Human Rights Campaign,

Hi. I hope this message finds you well.

I'm a member of HRC and also, myself, a pacifist and a firm opponent
of U.S. military aggression around the world. I understand the
importance of eliminating discrimination against gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgendered armed service members, and I support HRC's
policy to work on this issue. But I also feel strongly that GLBT
organizations must come out decisively against U.S. militarism, the
so-called "War on Terror," and against the inherent racism, sexism,
and homophobia embedded in the culture of militarism. We are natural
allies to cause of peace and global justice, and we need to start
treating this issue as the core value it should be in all our work to
combat homophobia.

GLBT Americans share a bond with every innocent Iraqi being targeted
by U.S. armed forces abroad, and we share a bond with every Arab and
Muslim in our own country being subjected to hate crimes, illegal
detentions, and the undue disruption of their lives on a daily basis
as a result of this brutal, endless war. We share a bond with every
human being who has been labeled "The Enemy," and I cannot, in good
conscience, actively take part in a campaign that, while right-minded,
is essentially helping to bolster the ranks of the U.S. military. I
do not want to see my gay, lesbian, bi, and transgendered brothers and
sisters turned into agents of a hateful, murderous foreign policy, not
to mention turned into cannon fodder in the process.

Please respond, and let me know what HRC is planning to do to denounce
U.S. militarism and the racist scapegoating being carried out in our
names as GLBT Americans.

Thank you so very much for your work, it does not go unappreciated.

Sincere regards,


Bree
San Francisco, CA


HRC's response

March 7, 2007

Dear Bree,

Thank you for contacting the Human Rights Campaign regarding censorship and the First Amendment.

We take freedom of speech and First Amendment issues very seriously, and we understand your concerns.

We believe that this is not a question of censorship. There are plenty of other people on the right who share Coulter’s values and views but understand the value of civility and respect.

Ann Coulter is free to spew her vile and hateful speech but as a community we are also free to exercise our collective power. And when Coulter defends herself on Fox News by saying “‘faggot’ isn’t offensive to gays,” it is our responsibility to make sure she, and those who carry her columns, understand that we know otherwise. “Faggot” is a loaded word — a word that too often is used as a weapon to demean and wound our community.

If she had made a racist or anti-Semitic remark, there would not have even been a question of whether a newspaper should continue carrying her columns. We must speak out in order to move the “F word” into that same column of universally understood hate speech.

I also want to address the email you sent us 2 years ago, I truly apologize that you never received a response as member services does attempt to answer all inquiries. As you know HRC’s mission and statement of purpose due to your work experience I’m sure you know that HRC works specifically on GLBT issues and securing equality. The war in Iraq and the atrocities occurring there are certainly sad and difficult for the entire nation to accept however commenting on the status is not within HRC’s domain. However, HRC is working to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” the U.S. policy on gays in the military that forces people to be dishonest about their personal lives or be fired. You can learn more about our campaign by visiting: http://www.hrc.org/alva/dadt.html

I hope I answered your questions and concerns.

Thank you again for contacting us and if you have any other questions please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Respectfully,

Lisette

Human Rights Campaign
1640 Rhode Island Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036-3278
Phone 202.216.1525
Fax 202.216.1505
hrc@hrc.org


And here is MY response to THEIR response: (which has, of course, not been responded to)

March 8, 2007

Hi Lisette,

Thank you so much for the quick response. As I had said in my original letter, I support HRC's action on this issue, and agree that Coulter's use of the word "faggot" in this incident should be condemned. I also made clear that I agreed with your tactic of calling for a consumer boycott, a strategy that has been effective time after time in movements for social change. I appreciate your response, and will think more about the implications of language and the responsibility that publications have in shutting down the use of hate speech.

But I still take issue with the conceptualization that informs this phrase, "to remove Coulter (or anyone) from public discourse." Sure, other conservatives are "civilized" (as civilized as, say, a right-wing preacher can be when condemning gays to hell, for example). Is that not "hate speech?" Where do we draw the line, in engaging in this "public discourse," between "hate speech" and "speech" or "beliefs?" And again, your tactics are not what I have issue with, but the way you approach the issue is what alarms me. We can still send a strong message to combat hate speech without calling for the outright elimination of speech we disagree with. I feel that your response failed to capture this subtle distinction. Remember, I'm not arguing with the tactics or goals; I'm at issue with the way the message has been crafted.

Thank you also for responding to my previous letter. I'm well aware of the limitations of the organization's mission, and of course I understand the strategic reasons that HRC won't take positions on issues it defines as beyond its purview. Again, though, I feel my main concern is being glossed over and not really acknowledged. Homophobia (along with racism and sexism) are at the core in a militaristic culture such as ours. Working for the inclusion of GLBT folks into the ranks of the military is, of course, one way to address homophobia. But it seems rather beside the point when we are not asking the question: why are we sending our people to kill and die in the first place?

When I attended the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender March on Washington in 1993, the issue of gays in the military was first entering into the national consciousness. I saw a sticker on someone's jacket there that read, "Don't join the military - dismantle it!" I loved that moment. Of course we must fight against discrimination in every sector of society, including within the military. I understand that that's your job, and I applaud you for it. But there must be some voice from inside the organization, inside the movement, calling for a reprioritizing of issues. I know I'm not the only one.

Thanks again for your time on this. If there is anyone in the national office who can speak further to these concerns, I would love to hear from them.


Take care,
Bree