Now That I'm Forty...

Monday, December 29, 2003

On Dying, Pt III
Bad things happen because God values the free will of man more than he values controlling man and forcing His Will to be done. That's the answer I'd give for "Why God?"

Given that, mankind still makes some sick and evil choices, and people get hurt by them everyday. That's why I think I could die tomorrow even though I don't want to. Heck, I could be making a sick choice by just moving into NYC alone. "He should have known better," they can say as they read the account of my grisly death, buried deep within The Daily News.

But it will be MY choice to make, and I'm happy with the idea that God is letting me make it.

Me at 12/29/2003 10:59:00 PM

You Think That's Bad, Try Being Me
Or, On Dying (Pt II)
I wonder when I'll get to the point when I'll be blogging only every few days, like the other cool folks?

Well, I'm not wasting completely away tonight. I have packed my car to the gills with books, bookshelves, boxes, and more books. I'm so ready that I wish I were going right now. If I never post another thing on this blog and it becomes a mystery as to where I went, consider it foul play and tell my sad story to some media outlet.

Yes, these are the things I think of when I'm about to do something awesomely cool. What if a plane hits my apartment tonight? What if Bin Laden's people decide tomorrow is the day to blow up the George Washington Bridge, minutes after I've paid my $6.00? What if a crackhead thinks my life is worth my raggedy coat before I even hit the first step tomorrow, and the key to my new apartment falls unused into the gutter, splashed with my blood?

Time was, I'd laugh at thoughts like that. Scoff, even. Because My Life was part of a Greater Plan, and my Life Was Secure. Then I watched the Towers fall one early morning before work. Television images so real that they made every FX house past and present look shoddy. My heart about to pop.

I had just started going to a church in nearby Princeton. A nice big church I could get lost in. I was even getting cozy in a small study group, making new friends in a new environment. Reacquainting myself with a faith obscured and wounded by the clay feet of my former Missouri leaders. Then the legend of "Let's Roll" began flying on headlines and windows and bumper stickers. Todd Beamer had been a member of the church. I never knew him, but most of those people did. Those who didn't were praying for, weeping for, and supporting his widow Lisa and their children. I couldn't go back. I just couldn't watch all that pain. I didn't want to hear the sermons that would be personalized and tackle the age-old question. "Why, God?"

I sometimes think I know "Why, God?" I have prayed and did my own digging for the events that happened to me and to my own family. I've settled for the only answer I could possibly find. I'm even happy with the answer. If I would have gone into the ministry, it's the answer I would offer any bereaved persons in my own care.

But in the answer lies no guarantee for my own life or my own safety. People will die. Babies will die. Mothers and fathers will die. Heroes will die. Criminals will die. (Your Name Goes Here) will die. (My Name Goes Here) will die.

I just hope it ain't tomorrow.

Me at 12/29/2003 10:27:00 PM

When I'm Forty...
...I'll be as old as my father was when he and my mom made me. And as much as I thought my father's life was dismal and sad, at least he had a wife and made a kid at my age.

Bwahaaa!! But what's the use of being married and having a kid when you make her so miserable she leaves you and takes the kid, then your kid grows up to be a forty-year old bachelor?

Dang, that kind of logic leaves me a little more confused than when I started this post.

Anyway, I'm not Forty yet, and I'm going to live in NYC again. So time to dry up.

Me at 12/29/2003 06:33:00 PM

Houston, We Have Confirmation
I wasn't blogging when I first tried to move into NYC. I had gotten a promise on an apartment in Washington Heights, about two blocks away from the hospital where I was born. I was EXCITED. Then they ran a credit check, and STILL they said it looked good. On the day I was ready to frok over all the rest of the money and sign the lease, they didn't return my phonecalls. Boogity-boogity I go to NYC after leaving work early, only for them to tell me "the office downstairs" vetoed my application.

So you may understand when I tell you...I've been reserved about this new place. Not that it is worse than the first. In fact, some details I will share--

This new apartment is in Harlem. Which is where my aunt lives and where my mother was raised. It's where we used to have New Year's Day dinner at my deceased aunt's apartment on Lenox Ave. They were times of connection which I haven't really enjoyed since 1) The dinner-host aunt died, and 2) my mother died.

The 3 train is a few blocks north and an avenue east of me. (My older cousin used to work at that station when I was a wee lad.) It's an express and will zip me right to Penn Station when I need the morning train to Trenton, for as long as I hold this present job. The A train is three avenues to the west.

I really like my block. I met my next door neighbors last week when I signed the lease-- a Latina middle-aged mom and school-aged daughter (or granddaughter?). A vacant lot on my block has been turned into a community picnic area and its eastern border wall is a beautiful four-story community mural. A large vacant spot on 145th street is the site of a brand new PathMark supermarket to be built. The block just west of it is "The Hamilton" for that extra gooey, neighborhood-boosting, gentrification feeling. A few paces north of me is a state of the art police station. One block north of that are the blocks who's buildings are totally renovated, the interiors and exteriors, of which I can't afford yet.

And again, my survivng Aunt is around the corner, she looks very much like my mother, and she's always offered me encouragement and support whenever I made my yearly phone call to say "Hi, and sorry it took so long to call you." After she chides me soundly, she helps me feel reconnected to the only side of the family I've really known.

So, before I signed the lease last week, at any time the renting process could have been interrupted or canceled. My credit isn't extremely bad--some late payments because I like my money more than I like giving it to creditors. But no housing court, never been evicted, never been bankrupt, etc. So I couldn't understand why I was rejected for the Ft. Washington pad, and I thought that if my credit was the reason, then I might as well forget going to NYC for another 7 years until the credit report is clean.

That, my friends, was a depressing, depressing thought.

But it's official. I go tomorrow to get a copy of the lease and my keys. I will sign up for cable tomorrow and check out the Health and Racquet Club for membership. I will move boxes and boxes of stuff before Saturday.

And now, I will stop blogging and go to my meeting here at work.

yay!

Me at 12/29/2003 12:46:00 PM

A Little Bit About My Job
All of a sudden, I'm laying on the couch and my eyes pop wide open at 6:20 in the morning out of a sound sleep. My assistant at work occasionally tells the same account from her perspective in her bed. It's much funnier in her voice. She makes a machine-like sound to represent her eyes opening up. I really like my assistant. I'm lucky.

For just shy of three years I have held a position in an assisted-living organization for people with persistant mental illness. These are the people in your family who are the odd ones; whom your cousins ask one another if "Uncle Lou" stopped taking his medication because he's outside weeding cigarette butts out of the neighborhood planters on Thanksgiving Day again, even though he was once a college professor.

In my county, I am one of seven case managers. We all have a seperate site and an assistant who manages the practical nuts-and-bolts of it. This includes keeping track of the plumbing problems, the paperwork to account for our paychecks, our performance with personal care (for prompting "Uncle Lou" to comb his hair for the eighth time today because we just can't have him out in the street looking like that), or other sundries like coordinating fire drills and making sure the van gets inspected this year. Some sites are group homes and some sites are dispersed throughout residential apartment complexes. (Explains a lot about some of your neighbors, right?) Mine is the apartment-complex type. I supervise the assistant and four counselors, who are more like personal care assistants than the "counselor" you might imagine them to be.

My current team has won awards and make it very easy to supervise them. Primarily because I can only supervise a good team--with all other situations, I'm useless. I'm not a disciplinarian and I despise being their judge and jury on performance evaluations. I've had individuals who take hateful with their coffee in the morning and just set the whole worksite off by noon. I've had individuals who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with common sense. Never any fun being their supervisor.

NEVER any fun.

The nature of the work itself is social work, not therapy so much. We just maintain them in their lifestyle and help the helpable move on to independent living. Our field was primarily desgined to empty out the psych hospitals. Nevertheless, come February, I'm looking for another job. I will have enough supervision to be a licensed therapist then, and that's what I'm better at. Even though I enjoy my assistant so much. She reminds me of my mother.

I'm younger than all my employees, but not by much. I still have the sense of being the job wunderkind, which is a conceit I thought I'd have to lose when I hit the big "Three-Ohhh". The consolation I'd have When I'm Forty is that they continue to age as well, and I'd still be younger than they. A fella's gotta get his kicks.

Now, its odd that I like the motherly vibes from my assistant because I didn't particularly enjoy my real mother much. The only excuse I could give my mother post-mortem is that she probably suffered from a persistant mental illness herself. Hindsight. 20. 20.

But she did have a sense of humor which was phenomenal. I think. I remember the open-mouthed laughing. I remember watching the Carol Burnett Show with her as a weekly ritual. She also instilled in me my love of science fiction. Watching Space:1999 and Star Trek reruns with her was a weekend event, although I was the one who got her into Doctor Who. I owe my weekend athleticism to her, which is to say, there ain't any.

My assistant isn't a sci-fi nut. She's much more urban than that and very rooted in the concerns of her family and church. And she knows how to laugh. And she knows how to do her job better than the other assistants. She struggles with the computer, but she continues to try. Actually, she hates the thing, but she needs her paycheck so she tries.

I don't want another mother. Same way I don't want a wife. Too many downsides. Self-analysis tells me this is wrongheaded thinking. I am not being realistic about the downsides. I'm not weighing the benefits properly. Whatever. Right now I'm peaceful.

So why have I been sleeping on the couch for two months instead of my bed? (Because it's drafty in my current bedroom?) Why did my eyes shoot open too early this morning? (Because this is the week of the move and I'm excited?) Why do I continue to get the sense that somewhere inside, I'm actually running away again?

Well, just let me GET to NYC so I can get some kind of clue of what my search has been about.

Me at 12/29/2003 06:45:00 AM