Work.

ok dear online diary, I'm back!

Compared to last year I've done quite dismally with the blogging. I'm okay with this because (1) I'm finding that it's nearly impossible to describe what I've been feeling and (2) have rediscovered the joys of writing in my notebook, which is pleasantly crinkly from when it shared the company of my leaky mug.

I think I'll do a couple of posts now!

First I will talk about work! And use lots of exclamation points!

One of the first things I had to come to terms with about work is that I am indeed living the life of an intern. This means that my main task has been re-organizing and clearing up gen5's database of contacts, and soon I'll transition into setting up their next 3-day somatics training. I'm also working a TON - eight hour days, mon-fri. my body is not used to sitting for that long, or staring that long at a computer. The office is cold and the outside is warm and colorful, so Chris and I take walks around the block. Here is what the office window looks like at sunset, when I want to be out on a mountain somewhere:



At first I was frustrated, especially when I compared what I was doing for gen5 with what I'd been doing for QEJ last year. Especially at the beginning of last week, when I hadn't yet found my place in the co-op or started hanging out with obies in town. I just felt lost, simultaneously useless and over-worked. then, I realized that the things I'm doing are actually really important to gen5's operation. If I could be helpful to this organization, which I truly believe is doing great work, and live in california while doing it, I'd be alright.

Then (and this is part of the centering stuff) I asked myself what I really wanted to get from being here. I realized that I want to learn as much as I can from the organization, learn as much as I can from the people there as well as the brilliant ones in my co-op. Appropriately timed for that realization was my Friday afternoon hike with Chris. I learned many things from that hike. The sunset made the ground red, we smelled the eucalyptus trees and heard owls hooting and hawks yelling in them, we heard people talking on their cell phones about internet bills. for future discussion: why listening fits so well into centering/not being reactionary (which is quite obvious but worth exploration), and also steps I've taken to pay attention to my body and what I'm feeling instead of intellectualizing nearly everything.

Another important thing to say about my work is that it's in East Oakland. Never in my life have I felt more white - today when I was walking around the block I noticed that I was the only visibly white person around. Princess Beverly, a woman who works for Causa Justa in the office we share, is hopefully going to give me a history of the area. But here are a few things that have shaped how I feel about it so far:

- An oberlin friend picked me up as I was locking up the office. someone walked up to us and asked, "are you doing the taxes?"

- today on the bus a woman was talking to the driver about her son. she said, "don't mind my racism but I'm trying to raise him more white than black." she said he's never gone to school in oakland and never will. she says she doesn't want him to have the life she has. I think about the community he won't have and the disconnect he might feel, the privileges he might achieve and yet how he might feel disconnected from the privileged. what's striking to me is the image of his mother pushing him up a ladder, how on that ladder he will always be looking down at her. And how hard she must be working to push him there out of love. it's so beautifully and horribly complicated.

- while I was opening up the office today, pulling apart the bars on the outside, a little girl and a man walked by. the man stopped to talk on the street with another fellow about head-start education, and the girl turned towards me. As I opened the doors that go inside, she came up to me and we said hi. I went inside and the man told her to follow him. the girl was two, maybe three, and I think about how many barricaded doors she's seen like this one and how goddamn terrible that is. my wish for her is that she can fantasize about and maybe even work towards a world without all the locks, even though she sees them everywhere.

ok, that's enough for now. soon I'll attempt to write about a myriad of topics. to come! a berkeley student co-op, a person in my co-op who studies chinese medicine and is teaching me new massage techniques, horseradish roots, centering, activism goals. I should sleep! tomorrow is a big day. Chris and I are leaving work early to go to a demonstration, then Staci is giving a talk, then hopefully a fire in the backyard with some obiefriends.

days here are long and good, overall.