Revolutionaries Wait For My Head On A Silver Plate

I've been getting A LOT of criticism lately on my various job performances whereupon I recieve my dough. Not a comfortable feeling.

Last week I ditched out on a psych meeting in NJ after securing the knowledge that the person who initiated it was fully present. But I ditched it to make another appointment in NYC at the counseling center, which I was early to and the other person was late. Not the right thing to do, but I had to do what I had to do. So my nice boss in NJ really socked it to me on that one.

Then of course there's the drama of the counseling center director continuing to give me grief about clients who cancel appointments, as if I were directly responsible, which if I am, I'd rather they stop coming than me force them to stay.

But more than a small part of me hates to admit that I'm doing something wrong. Even though lately long-term clients have been rescheduling with me, and yes, they might be getting tired of coming after we've already worked out some primary things that they first came to me for, but that's not really a reflection of anything I'm doing wrong, is it? I'd say it was a reflection of something I'm doing right. This damn director's got me feeling like I'm failing when I'm probably succeeding. All signs point to succeeding. I took a position in this man's center because I thought he was a nuturing person who'd guide me and help me be a better therapist. But I'm experiencing the exact opposite.

And then again, my own defensiveness could be getting in the way of identifying a problem in my ability to provide therapy for my clients, and I'm not learning what I should learn to help them better. Which ends up being something that again--I'm doing wrong.

Bleah.

Okay. I got that out. I'll stop being so damn vulnerable, suck it up, learn what improvements I can make, and dismiss the rest as the director's economic paranoia. I'm a good therapist. But I can be better.

I Pledge Allegiance To The Flag...

(borrowed from Manhattan's Peak)

An article detailing a lot of reaction from around the country. Yet here's what I wanted to quote here--

Surveying the scene, Mattie Bridgewater whispered from her seat, "I just can't believe it. Not in my lifetime."

Bridgewater said she went to the same elementary school as Emmett Till, the boy from Chicago whose murder in Mississippi was one of the catalysts of the civil rights movement. Both she and her 92-year-old mother voted for Obama.

"I'm sitting here in awe," she said. "This is a moment in history that I just thank my God I was allowed to live long enough to see. Now, when I tell my students they can be anything they want to be, that includes president of the United States."

Weep. Can't you just see the 92-yr old woman making her way to the voting machine? Behind her, in memory, plays the scenes of the March on Washington, the loosed dogs attacking black people in the streets, the burning churches and flaming crosses, the blocked school steps to hassle the little black girls as they entered the school in Little Rock--all events that played out in her lifetime. and she lived to cast her vote for the first black President of the United States.

A black President. THE black President.

And see as well, behind her, the spirits of all her friends who didn't make it this far, supporting her from the other side. She cast her vote for them too. Did she whisper "We made it, girls."

And fully, as Eliel asked in the comments, it's clear to me how the country itself prepared its citizens for this day through the media. Yes, through the idiot box.

The series "24" cast two black actors to be the President for how many seasons, Eliel? 3? The movie Deep Impact cast America's favorite black actor (Morgan Freeman) as the President. These images were accepted and helped people in the comfort of their homes and bedrooms that it should be possible. That nothing is wrong with the idea. That it's no aesthetic violation to have a brown-skinned President. Even Dave Chapelle made it okay to laugh at the idea that a black President could be a homeboy and funny as hell. Softened the concept for the country.

Also, Eliel has a fantastic post quoting his homeboy in media, that Coates guy. I urge a read. In essence, it's also about the white people of America who really did this. The white women marrying black men and raising black children. The white parents who supported these white daughters, such as Barack's grandmother, who passed away day before yesterday. And then there are the white casting directors. White scriptwriters, white directors, white white white white white.

This didn't happen alone. White people in power and influence were ready for this. White votes for Barack flooded the ballot boxes. White delegates and superdelegates. White news media picked the slant they wanted to give (Yes, I have to acknowledge this too. I hate that it's true, but the media is a total bitch most of the time). White Tina Fey and white Darrel Hammond sending up the Republicans in massive lampoon. White writers. White SNL producers. White viewers loving it.

I'm okay with this. I'm really, really okay with it.

Oh My Dear Sweet Lord. WOW. wow....

It happened. IT happened.


Oh my God oh my God.


I'm alive to see it.


It happened in my lifetime.


And your lifetime.


The President of the United States is a black man with an African name.


The President looks like me.


They're shooting fireworks in Inwood...

Grinning Like A Loon

My polling place was about the size and a half of my room. I don't understand that. I thought Inwood was a big neighborhood. Maybe it's because voter turnout is not the grand adventure I thought it was? Or maybe Inwood has more than one polling place. My little place had three districts in it. Maybe other places have three or more. Or less.

The voting booth has easily seen several hundred Presidential elections. Big red lever to crank once to the right, then flip about half dozen little black flippers about the size of half my finger, then ratchet the red lever back to the left. This tallies votes how exactly? What did the little black flippers do, punch a hole in a scorecard? I say scorecard because I do remember something about hanging chads a bit ago, and so I figured...

But whatever. The Good Shepherd polling place saw my attendance this morning. So did about two score voters. Hispanic, white, black, male, female. Some more talkative than others to help me find the correct table to approach and verify my registration. Volunteers manning the tables, door, and booths with no particular people skills, but the dedication to show up.

I've done this before. For every election since Reagan. Including Reagan. But for some reason, leaving out of my polling center today, my face split in a poop-eating grin.

Grinning like a loon.

Now What Have We Learned?

Ever notice how the only time anyone likes Daylight Savings' Time is when it's over? When we get the hour back that they stole from us, doesn't everything go back to normal? Even though it's horribly dark at 5:00p now?

Dear President Obama;

Please end Daylight Savings Time.

Thank you,


Your friend
Alan

P.S.
Thank you for winning the election and shattering the glass ceiling for all black people. Now please don't screw this up. It would really suck if they looked back in history and said "See what happened when we let one of them become the President?"

Peaceful, Easy Feelin'

I went to Central Park today to Sheep's Meadow (where my geek buddy holds his Sunday get togethers) and I laid me down and went to sleep. I was alone with nowhere special to go. I had "The Time Traveller's Wife" with me and I planned on going to the gym, but the week had caught up to me and the weather was balmy. So I found a landing of stone under the canopy of a tree copse and skygazed. One of the gently falling leaves came directly to my outstretched hand and I caught it. I poised my camera to film the next one's descent, but the magic would not duplicate. However, I snapped a pic of the world from my view.


Looking up into the turning leaves put my mind back to days that I can't even say I remember well, but I remember how I felt in them. It was the elementary school I attended in NYC, in the days before my mother came and uprooted me to Spring Valley. A "P.S. one thirty-something" or possibly not triple-digited at all. I can't remember names or faces, but I remember the school's backyard and the canopy of Fall leaves over us. I remember feeling like the world was so so big, outside of the fences that held us in. I remember feeling like I was longing to go somewhere without knowing the destination. I remember the smell of the air. I remember knowing that the evening was coming in shards of orange and yellow, and tree bark patchy like a jigsaw puzzle in dark browns and tans. I remember that if a song was playing, the tempo would be slow on a saxophone and perhaps with a dusting of cymbals. I remember feeling like I wanted to cry, even if there was no reason to.

All that I felt again today, and more.

I felt like if I turned my head just so, while laying on my rock, I'd see Ned laying not too far away from me. Maybe within an arm's span. And he too would be looking up at the leaves. And we'd talk, him and I. About everything. We'd be Charlie Brown and Linus, putting the world's ills to rest. Shades would come to our rock while Humanling flew a kite nearby, and would plant a kiss on his lips. While she settled into the crook of his arm, Grizz would come from the snack hut on the other side of the fence with our hot dogs. Madly overpriced, but our combined income makes it possible to indulge ourselves every once in a while. She helps me up and dusts me off and I hold the food. Ned wants one, but Shades is lovingly scolding him for not looking in the picnic basket that she's brought with them.

But there was no Ned, no Shades, and no Grizzbabe. It was just me. So I rolled onto my side and I went to sleep. I reserved waking as a likely but not too terribly desired option. Insert randomly heartbreaking video here;

I wish I were the kitten.

A Surprise Festival

Last night after I was done with my clients, I found myself loose on the town. I was feeling good. I had done good work. I often think I do, but lately the director of the center has been scrutinizing why I've had so many cancellations over the past couple of weeks.

"More than anyone else," he said.

Mind you, they were cancellations--not terminations. Some of my clients taking the night off for one reason or another. For me, when they cancel, I get the night off too. Feels good to me. But to the director, it's lost income. And yea, I lose income too--but I have a day job. The night therapy cases are extra income.

It'd be nice if the director didn't try to make me feel as though I was doing something wrong--"losing them," as he likes to put it. Not to mention going on at length about how the clients leave my services when they get the sense that I'm not helping them, but use excuses because they can't actually tell me that they want out. (Except I did have a client who told me that exact thing. The sessions were terminated with no malice at all. I understand that I'm not the right therapist for EVERYONE. But for the ones who keep me--have kept me for months now--I'm useful. Helpful, even.)

But now that I'm removed from the emotions of our disagreeable phone conversation by some days and a bunch of co-opted Chipotle utensils later, I can see it for what it is. He wants to make money so he wants to motivate me to minimize (well, actually, the way he puts it, STOP ALTOGETHER) the cancellations. But I don't like his style of criticism. He's not the man I thought he was. I don't know what his true motives are, but I don't like his delivery. It feels wrong. He feels wrong.

Anyway, all this was going through my head, along with the successful sessions I had experienced that day. All three clients, (two of them I've been seeing for 4 months or more) reflecting the changes they've been making in their lives for the better. Changes that I've helped them with. Changes that I just knew they were capable of with enough encouragement and enough opportunity & space for thought. Changes that made me feel like a worthwhile human on planet Earth, even though I walk around alone with a rucksack full of my own unfulfilled dreams and personal life goals. I'm telling you, helping other people--it's where it's at, man. I think it's what we're all alive for.

ANYWAY anyway, I didn't want to go home because it was Hallowe'en, and I didn't want to have to kill somebody's children after having such a good day. Yes, repeated ringing of our WWII-era doorbell will make me psychotic. Don't ask. So I purposed to catch up on my promise to Ned by going to get "The Time Traveller's Wife," from B&N, and then holing up somewhere quiet and latte-driven to start reading it when I discovered something wonderful along the way;





On All Hallow's Eve, in NYC, in Greenwich Village, straight up the center of my old haunts (5th Ave, 6th Avenue, from around 14th street and southward) the freaks come out at night! In the Village, Hallowe'en Night is like Mardi Gras! I knew they had a parade, but my deviant mind thought it was like a drag queen affair. Stereotype Greenwich Village much, Alan? For shame!! It was like a big comicbook convention only with the entire neighborhood!! And throw in the bored, pleasure-seeking students from NYU on a surprising 60-degree night, and you've got PARTY. Streets blocked off in rapid succession. Real cops taking pictures with costumers.

My Hero would have loved this!!

Anywaying the anyway's anyway--welcome to my first post of November. They won't all be this long.