Inspiration Monday: Clean Sheets

In years of housing individuals experiencing chronic homelessness, there were always two moments in particular that almost universally brought about an emotional reaction from even the toughest client.

The first: handing over the key. Even more than unlocking the door for the first time (always a seriously cool moment itself), handing someone the key meant handing them a new way of life, and the freedom to exercise it. My home. Mine. No matter what brought me here today, now I control the lock on the door, and I may come and go as I please, with dignity. I've heard those words in so many ways from so many people: in sentences, in smiles, in tears.

The second is after walking in the front door, after seeing the living room and the kitchen, the bathroom. Those are all met with due respect, as they are the rooms in which a person will bustle, entertain guests, sing with the radio/dance with the mop, store their things, and generally go about their business--the rooms where they will live. Then, usually last, they see their bedroom.

That is the moment, when they see their very own bed, with very own pillows and blankets all ready to welcome them.

There are few things that symbolize tranquility and safety more than the sight of a clean, comfortable bed. After an experience of homelessness, the impact increases exponentially. May I lay my burdens down, close my eyes, and leave all else outside behind me. So often more poignant than the rooms where a person will roam in and out in wakefulness, is the place they may finally rest.

Even for myself, there is not much better in the world for improving my sleep than the feel and smell of a fresh set of sheets. It is comforting and refreshing, and though it sounds silly, keeps me in the moment and more mindful of relaxing rather than worrying so much about tomorrow. Clean sheets, clean slate.

Each new day is an opportunity to bury the pains of yesterday and start anew. This is true in life, in writing, and muscle soreness from the gym. Of course, that's easy to say, but it is not always easy to do (especially regarding the gym). It takes mindfulness, discipline, and that which allows us to tackle our mountains and which eludes us without peace, safety, comfort (and occasionally fresh, crisp, sweet-smelling sheets): rest.

Inspiration Monday: It's Just a Habit

Every once in a while, it's time for a blank slate.

Once again, I find myself apologizing for being away from the blog. I'm starting to think this has become a habit.

I've been thinking a lot about habits lately, especially as I am currently developing some new ones and shedding some old ones.

For one, I changed jobs a few weeks ago. It wasn't a sudden change--it was well-planned, expected, and full of goodwill. I'm still working with people experiencing homelessness, a population I care deeply about. Instead of working on the housing side, I'm now directing a program centered on mental health supportive services. I'm working for a community mental health center with whose staff I have collaborated for years with numerous shared clients. Long before I took this job, I knew that lobby like it was my own bedroom: where the most comfortable waiting chairs were, the best time to arrive to keep from having to wait too long for the lab, and that The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal, always on the waiting room TV, make good conversation fodder to keep waiting clients from getting too antsy.

As comfortable as I was with the center, I didn't know how much I didn't know. Even transitioning into a job you already know how to do at a place you are already familiar comes with some new territory. There are the things all new jobs come with--new people, new rules, designated parking spaces, and new workspace. Then there are the things you don't think about before you make the switch, the million little habits you will find yourself making anew, and all the ones you end up breaking cold turkey.

My first week, I drove to work a different way every day. I bobbed and weaved my way through so many different roadways looking for the fastest, most efficient route I started to feel like I was playing a really boring edition of Grand Theft Auto: Commute or Die. I learned one thing on my attempt to carve myself a new rut in which to carry myself to work everyday: Memphis traffic is a strategy game that cannot be won. A few times, I caught myself "homing pigeoning" and getting onto the interstate at the same place I used to for my old job. It was just second nature, and depending on the amount of coffee in my system, a harder habit to break than I would have reckoned.

I eventually found what I would call "the path of least resistance," but it took a while before it was really comfortable. After a while, the landmarks weren't so weird anymore. The signs were familiar, the lane changes expected, and some fellow commuter cars recognized. I found a new pack to run with.

Of course, getting to work is only half the battle. There are a million new habits to forge once in the office. It took a while to stop reaching in the wrong drawer for my stapler, and to get used to the new squeak of my desk chair. I found myself carving out times when I could beat everyone to the microwave at lunch, and to avoid peak times at the restrooms. I noticed myself making new habit after new habit, finding comfort in the turning of new to old. Likewise, I've visited my former office a few times to staff cases with my former colleagues, and I was surprised to find that even when it felt so much water had flowed under our bridges, I sunk right back into the rhythm there.

It is human nature to develop routines and habits in our homes and in our jobs. They carve their way into our behavior,  silently at first. Sometimes they bring comfort and the certainty of safe passage. Then, when they get near the bone, they can ache a little.

The patterns we create are part of what it is to live and interact with the world around us. Writers and artists need their favorite tools, their favorite spots, their go-to music and muses in order to create. Routine is often the friend of hard work, and creative work benefits from structured practice as much as anything else. Likewise, the creations themselves benefit from the structure of the world around it, either as context or something to riff on. If you're writing a character whose life is nothing but routine, it's probably smothering him or her to death. Break the mold, shake them up, and watch them navigate the transition. If things are already topsy-turvy in his or her world, look for the little anchors that would realistically crop up--is it that he or she uses the same bathroom stall every time, even in the midst of great angst? That he or she notices what time the coffee runs out at the office? Maybe it's just noticing that they see the same gray car at the same intersection twice a day. Even if these mundane details don't make it into the text, as always, it is these things that inform your writing backstage, and that allow your characters to come to life when the curtain is up.

Inspiration Monday: A Home by Any Other Name...

This is my neighborhood in early spring:

Taken just a few days earlier, this is a client's neighborhood in early spring:

Here's what you have to know: my client loves her neighborhood just as fiercely as I love mine. More. She loves it without lakes and ducks and communal flower beds. She loves it without a homeowner's association, without a patio set, without any strings at all attached.

If you're expecting me to tell you she loves it because she has known homelessness and she's grateful enough to love anything anywhere, you're wrong. The truth is, she begged for this apartment, this very one surrounded by the barbed wire wall and the crumbled pavement. Her unit is nice, but that isn't why she chose it over the one with the big kitchen, or the one beside the restaurant, or the freshly remodeled one with the comfortable balcony. She chose it because it was where she felt the most at home, and there's nobody walking the earth who can tell her differently. Maybe that's a clue that no one should. This is the place she feels the safest, the most accepted, and the most herself. She picked out this place because she wasn't just looking for a place to house her, she wanted a place that would be her home. Her home. Not mine, not for anyone else with their well-meaning raised eyebrows. Hers.

There are a lot of ways to define "home," and a great many of them have nothing to do with houses. A person could find a home of sorts in the people one cares about, the work we spend our time and energy devoted to, and in the little things we do that makes us who we are.

For me, wherever I am, I can feel utterly content if I can find enough peace and time to pull out one of my ever-present notebooks and a beloved pen to scratch out a few words that will either become something artful...or not. It sews my mind to my body, and keeps my feet on the ground. I love playing music, and know my instrument as intimately as my own limbs. No matter how long I let it lie fallow, playing it always feels like I have just thrown open the door to a place I've always known. I'm at home wherever Husband is, because the deepest, most neurotic parts of me settle down and purr when he's near. I love all that he is and I know as long as I can find him in the dark, I will never be lost. The point is not in where I am, but in who I get to be: freely, safely, happily myself.

What is your home like, both the one you live in and the one that lives in you?
 

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Days like today make me wonder what I'm made of.

When the going gets tough and I get tougher, I think I'm a rock. I'm strong. I'm granite. But then there are those scissors. They're sharp and when they come biting, I just don't have what it takes to crush them. I'm no rock. I'm no scissors either. I guess that means I'm paper.

I'm paper because everyone I meet who has survived the streets is a rock. The best I can ever hope to do is to cover them, not in defeat, but to share peace with them. Peace at last.

I'm paper because those scissors, when they come snipping, they get right into the meat of me and slice me up. I'm going to tell you I'm fine, but I'm not. I'm just paper, after all.

I'm paper because you can fold me seven times, but no one will get that eighth crease.

I'm paper because even ripped, torn, wet, and erased, what was written upon me became real when the ink dried, even though no one need ever read the words.

I'm paper, and that's all I would ever aspire to be.

Point in Time

There are a lot of things I love about my job working with people who have experienced homelessness.

For one, I get a front-row seat to some of the greatest personal comeback stories anyone could ask for. I've seen people rescue themselves from human trafficking, unconscionable violence, dehumanizing addictions, and textbook-defying mental and physical illness. These same people get jobs, they go back to school, they get medical and psychiatric care, they learn how to read, they make friends. They go from streets, shelters, abandoned buildings, and sheet-and-tarp tents, to sleeping in beds (really sleeping, which many haven't done for years), washing their clothes, grocery shopping, and paying bills. These are all things most of us take for granted, but for my clients these are milestones. Not everyone has the kind of success they write about in human-interest newspaper stories, but most are on the road to seeing themselves as individuals again, remembering what it is like to have the privilege of being a "person" instead of being branded: HOMELESS.

My job is never, ever, ever, ever boring, and it allows me to see up close and personal the one really true magic trick a human being can perform:

Transformation.

It's beautiful. Completely. Every single time.

Today's adventure was the nationwide Homeless Point-in-Time Count. This initiative is mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to gain a census of the sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations around the country's major cities on one given day, strategically chosen as the day after the estimated coldest night of the year. Service providers and volunteers are dispatched into the city to locate and interview unsheltered individuals.

The Point-in-Time Count is the only opportunity some of us ever take to spend a day taking stock of our city. This is a day spent looking around corners, behind things, under things, peeking through the looking-glass to the places our cities don't want us to notice, the places where invisible things like to hide. Invisible people.

Today, my coworker and I were assigned an area of the city we don't normally frequent. It's kind of funny, really, because this area is much nearer to my home than to my work, but it still felt foreign. We peeked behind parking lots, in alleys, around overpasses, and under bridges. My coworker, (who has a future in NASCAR if this career doesn't work out for her) pulled several EXPERT U-turns on seven lane highways to get us near enough to approach people. We met some interesting people today, ones I won't forget. It's hard to believe they have been there all this time, practically in my own backyard.

I work with people who have experienced homelessness for a living, and days like today still have the power to open my eyes and remind me: homelessness is a crisis. It is a complicated, tangled-up, no-easy-answers problem, but that is no excuse to forget. It is an emergency for these individuals, day in and day out, through all points in their time whether we are counting or not. Their lives are happening in these hidden places we are trained not to see and their every activity is centered around survival, whatever shape it takes for that person. It is profoundly unjust, and when we forget this (or just refuse to look), we lose a piece of our humanity.

I'm going to endeavor to remember to peek around corners a little more often, and to remember the people who may be carving out an existence there: people who are sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, and hopefully someday--neighbors.

It Is the Way It Is

We, people, walk around every day in a world where we assume everyone around us functions the same way we do.

We, people, assume that everyone around us knows right from wrong. Not just any right from any wrong, but my right from my wrong.

We, people, assume that those around us know what is real and what is not. We also assume that something not real to me means that something isn't real to someone else--or that whatever the not-real thing is, it is not scary, annoying, frustrating, familiar, or lovely.

We, people, assume we are safe. We assume we are civilized. We assume that safety and civility are not up for interpretation. Safety and civility are like right and wrong, real and not real.

I know a person who sees the way I park my car without checking around the corner to see if anyone is lurking there. He tells me the truth. "You are not safe," he says, this man who lives outside with no doors to lock and endless corners for looking around.

I know a person who looks at the people walking up and down the streets in business suits, in designer jeans, in any old thing that is clean and pressed. My friend smiles and tips his head, he tries to meet their eyes. Nobody looks back, not the business suit, not the designer jeans, not a single clean, pressed person. "I thought we were civilized people around here," he says, shaking his head, all by himself.

We, people, are living different-shaped lives on uncharted planets. If your planet looks like mine, cheers. We can compare our sameness and sit comfortable in our rights and our wrongs, our reals and not-reals, and opine the loss of the safety and civility our planets once knew.

If your planet doesn't look like mine, I want to meet your eyes. I want you to tell me what you see so that I can learn something I don't already know, maybe question something I thought I knew.

Live and let live, because we, people, do not know what the person next to us is going through.

Live and let live, because we, people, can't know what the person next to us is going through.

Live and let live, because we.

People.

Inspiration Monday: Mutually Inclusive

Books Again, Decatur, GA. As far as I know, books are regular price but hair costs extra.

Sometimes things seem so black-and-white separate, there is no reason to consider that they could ever go together.

Maybe we should.

I'm not saying we should go and put bologna on an Oreo or anything--I like those in black and white just fine, but sometimes its a good idea to challenge all of those little fences in our brains and see if the things they're keeping apart really need to be kept apart.

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently attended an audiobook launch that the author was unofficially calling a "bookless booksigning." I thought it was clever and it caught my attention because that is a thing that seems impossibly impossible, but she made it possible anyway (and it was awesome).

Earlier that same day, I had an interesting conversation with one of my formerly homeless clients. We were on our way back from an appointment that happened to be in one of the ritzier areas of town. While we drove along, she stared out at the expensive houses, each one big enough to practically envelop her entire apartment complex and fronted by fresh-combed lawns the size of parks.

She shook her head. "A lot of these rich folks don't know how bad they got it," she said.

This woman had been homeless for the better part of a decade, slipping in and out of shelters when she could, going without regular meals or medical care, and refusing all friendships because, as she once told me, the surest thing she ever learned was that people can't hurt you if you don't let them close enough to get at you. 

"Tell me how the rich folks have it bad," I said. It wasn't a question because I wasn't asking. I already believed her.

"Those poor rich folks don't know nothing," she said. "If something bad ever came along, they couldn't survive it. They ain't ready for it. They think that everything is all okay, but they really don't know what they don't know."

"Some of them do," I said. "Some of them worked their way up just like you're doing. Some of them know."

"Well, they ain't the poor ones," she said.

She went on to tell me about her grievances with the "wealthy poor." 

"There are two kinds of poor folks," she said, happy to be educating me so that I would know what I don't know. "There's the poor folks like me that worked hard all their lives and then had it all taken away from them and spend every day trying to get back up on their feet. Then there's the wealthy poor. Those people are the ones who could do better but won't. They're the ones that take up all the help from the people who really need it. They give the rest of the poor people a bad name so that nobody gets the help they need."

From this woman who spent long years feeling that anger was her only currency and that her voice was as pointless as another hot breeze in summer, came truth as sharp as citrus tang. Having money doesn't make you rich and not having it doesn't make you poor.

She might not have an income yet, but she's not poor, not with sharp eyes like those.

She had it right. In the end, no matter what your bank balance says and no matter where you sleep, we are all just scuffed-up, soft-bellied human beings.

Now you know. 

Back in the Saddle

Last night, I blew the dust off my trumpet case for the first time since my dental adventures began and I hauled my carcass to a rehearsal. This rehearsal was filled with actual musicians with actual musical abilities and the sounds that they made were emphatically, undeniably musical.

Me, not so much.

However! I kept the horn on my face the whole time and some of the notes I played pricked my memory and waggled their little fingers at me: "Don't you remember? We used to do this all the time. We were a team, and sometimes when the moon was full, we were good. Together, we were the music."

Regardless of what actually came out of the bell, my mind swished around the old notes, the ones from before that were sweet and full and brilliant. Before long, I was drunk with it, swept right back into the way it used to be when my horn and I spent every day together, back when we were the music.


It got me thinking about some of the people who have experienced homelessness that I have had the privilege of working with over the last few years. Some of them survived on the streets like stray animals for decades, longer than the scant three I've been on the earth, and they did it without fanfare, without certificates and trophies emblazoned with "Best at Staying Alive", without so much as a blink from passersby. I'm willing to bet that every single day of that time, at least one stray thought took them back to before, when they didn't have to ask permission to do the simplest, unavoidable things, like go to the bathroom (and be turned down). No doubt they thought about the times when they were called "sir" or "ma'am" by store clerks instead of "shoplifter" or "suspicious" just for how they happened to be dressed (which, again, they don't have a whole lot of choice in). For some of them, they could look down at their hands or rumble up a hum in their throats to remember a time when they were the music, too.

I salute everyone who has ever taken a dive over the side of their horse for one reason or another, and had the guts to put their foot back in the stirrup, swing over their leg, and settle back in that saddle.

None of us would get very far without a few second chances and a little patience from the good hearts of the other musicians in the room, the ones who know that we've been where they are, and that tables (as tables are apt to do) could turn at any moment.

Inspiration Monday: First Meal

People give a lot of lip service to what they would eat if they were about to have their last meal. Since I've been MIA due to some dental adventures lately, if you would ask me this question, my answer would probably vary from, "Anything solid, please!" to "Jell-O. Why break precedent?"

Who needs rose-colored glasses when there are Strawberry Jell-O ones?

If you get tired of eating it, build a toothpick fort. It reminds me of Orgrimmar from World of Warcraft.

Today at work, I had the more unique opportunity to be inspired to think about what I would choose for my first meal. Of course I don't mean the first meal of life. Babies don't really get much of an option, and let's be honest. If they did, they'd pick Jell-O.

My morning was spent with two gentlemen who have recently become housed for the first time after decades on the streets. They've managed to survive for years eating what they can when they can and not asking a whole lot of questions about who prepared it, how many calories were in it, or how many antioxidants they were getting in their diets.

Today, we went grocery shopping. Now they both have their very own refrigerators and pantries. They have cabinets and counters, stoves and sinks. They now have a place for that random jar of olives that everyone always buys and sticks in the fridge door, but no one ever eats. (Except me, when I have teeth. Nom.) They got to wander up and down the aisles in a way I have never experienced--with an eye for what I would cook in my own home if I was about to cook a meal for myself for the first time in eighteen years.

There could be a lot of thought that goes into that process. Or maybe not very much thought at all. It would be hard to say unless you were actually there pushing the grocery cart. Maybe you really want to bake some ribs, but you don't have a baking pan. Maybe you want fried eggs, but you don't have a frying pan. Maybe you just want ice cream. ALL the ice cream.

If you are so inclined, write or art or compose or dance a little scene about someone planning this first meal. Include internal cues about what this person would be thinking. Mention what foods this person would choose and why he or she would choose them. Why is this a first meal for this person?

If you're a good cook, go out there and plan your own first meal. Think of a scenario in which you are turning over a new leaf in one way or another. Food is life, so find foods that connect to this new chapter in the book of You and cook a meal that signifies it. 

Remember: There's always room for Jell-O.