New baby....

My cousin just had a baby, named Alex. Looking at the pictures he sent me just gave me a sense of something wonderful happening in the world. With all the clouds over my life right now, across the world in Poland there is a little family growing and a wonderous thing that is moving his arms and legs now.

Here is a photo he sent me.

Whose rules?

I am working on a midterm and thinking about how I always expect to follow the rules. And when I don't seem to do that, I feel uncomfortable and I don't allow myself the risk of exploring, settling, and living beyond those boundaries. In the first place, I am not quite fair feeding those rules to myself. Most of these rules come from the standards of mainstream society and expectations of others who have different morals, personalities, and ideals-- without considering my own particular needs.

I think this is partly why I feel so much guilt. Guilt around my career which seems to be going nowhere or backwards, instead of following the rules of always having a steady job and progressing in a career. Guilt around not eating healthy or not making new friends. The list goes on and on. And then I am left unhappy and feeling that my life is worthless.I need to give more self-love and appreciation. Everyone deserves this.

Four things I love.

I enjoy:

1. Listening to piano music
2. Farmer's markets
3. Prospect Park
4. Waning sunlight as evening approaches

How can life be so bad? I have been able to experience the above four loves of mine today.

Hope and believing

I just talked to my friend Betty from high school I had not talked to in awhile and explained my confusion, challenges, and malaise with my career and job search and she had very supportive advice. Listening to her made me feel much better.

I realized from talking to her that I can work on a couple things. One is believing in myself. I've learned that is the most important ingredient in a job search-- self care, love, and belief. With that, anything can happen. I put a lot of strain into what is going to happen in the future, when I don't know what is happening in the present. Therefore, I want to focus more on what is happening on the present, which the future builds upon.

And loving myself no matter how many rejections I receive is important. No one can truly reject me except for me. And we have control of that.

I've missed thinking about my whole life and situation in another light. Full of love and support--- thinking about the stories of other people. Knowing and thinking about the similar experiences and hardships of others and that they got through them to the other side. That will be one of my steps to hope I think.

Trusting in myself and that even without a set career presently, I can still define myself. I still have loves, passion, knowledge. All that is still inside me. And I can still declare my career. I still have one without being in a job or grand position. I have lived with my standards and expectations too high. I am setting myself up for sadness by always raising my expectations further than I am. It's easy to set an illusionary expectation. Now I need to work on pursuing what I love. And trusting in the process. Trusting in myself. I have read that the bulk of the career search is looking inside ourselves. My sister even suggested that on the phone today. (I don't like to admit when she is right)

I thought I knew what I loved to do during my Master of Public Health degree. I was on a track of going to Kenya and International Health. And then I left that "world" and entered an unknown and dispassionate place. But there is nothing to say that I don't have the sparks left inside me. I constantly try to dim them. It's easier not to love. Not to take risks in what we love, watching our dreams grow or get shattered. That is a tumultuous and potentially the most rewarding process.

Maybe I need to take more risks, instead of running away.

I also need to realize that I will get different advice and responses from different people, and think about why that is and understand where different people are coming from. And not get disheartened. My sister will always support a direct, agressive, no-frills route and get upset by deviations from that. She is self-righteous and it makes sense. I cannot expect anything else from her given who she is. I have friends who are loving and supportive of the time it has taken me. The ultimate judge is myself though. For I have to live with myself 24-7. And I need to work how I judge myself, God knows.

Farmer's market walk

When I walked to the farmer's market this morning, I noticed this cute house! It has a red heart painted on the side. I got apples and a ricotta portabella wheat turnover at the Prospect Park farmer's market to take home with me. A yummy lunch!

Tuesday

Jen's last day.

We tried to get as much as we could out of the time we had together this day. Her bus didn't leave until 11:15 pm so we had the whole day to linger over eachother. We watched No Reservations in the morning, one of my favorite movies, and took a walk along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade which was so beautiful. The weather was mild and sunny.

I saw these images on the ground-- the first one says "Got Torture?" and the other two are images of the Manhattan skyline from the Promenade in different time periods. The first in 1776 and the second in 2001.

Monday

Monday morning Jen and I wanted to take a ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, but after waiting in line for quite a while we realized the wait would be around an hour or more so we decided to walk uptown to Ground Zero and to the Tribute WTC 9/11 Visitor Center which was such an incredible experience.

I didn't know what to expect but thought that I knew everything about the event because of the media and stories that have been circulating for the past several years. In fact, I knew little to nothing of what happened and to the people who were directly affected.

Seeing pieces of clothing and artifacts brought a tactile dimension I could have never imagined...making the whole thing more real of course. I also never realized that all of the emergency workers (i.e. fire fighters) involved in the rescue efforts have died out of lung cancer, leukemia, and other illnesses.

What also touched me in this museum were seeing the event of 9/11 through the eyes of children. We saw a lot of children art projects in the museum containing so many thoughts of love and peace, opposite to the adult views of revenge, war, death. I thought that was interesting. Below I'll share some of these art pieces.

Then we walked to Times Square and other places around Manhattan. It was nice to be there with Jen as she experienced everything about New York City that I have taken for granted by now.

Sunday

Jen and I went to The First Presbyterian Church on West 12th Street on Sunday for Easter with my sister, her fiance, and her friend Lauren. I liked the church and their open policy-- on the website part of the church mission states, "When you come, you will find a wonderful array of God's children, rich and poor, gay and straight, people from every walk of life with a joyful blend of ethnic heritages."

Then we went to the restaurant Rosa Mexicano and Michelle's friend Wes and his boyfriend joined us there. I loved this restaurant, the interior has bright colors and I had a delicious french toast with pecans and maple syrup. It was delicious!

After the brunch, Jen and I went to El Museo Del Barrio by Central Park. The museum is really great, with the most activist driven art with creative statements I have ever seen I think. I would like to go back and read through the art work descriptions, there just wasn't enough time to do that when we were there.

The weather was beautiful and we had some lovely walks in Central Park nearby the museum. There was a nice garden and lake we walked along...Spring was in the air with buds on trees and small baby tulips. This was one of my favorite moments of our trip together.

Saturday

On Saturday Jen and I walked through Prospect Park to Grand Army Plaza for the farmer's market and then went to the Brooklyn Museum to look around and especially to see the Dinner Party works by Judy Chicago, part of the feminist center. On the way there, we saw the white sculpture which I love. It looks like very skinny people with long legs dancing. The photo above that is Jen in all her cuteness.


Tiles in the Brooklyn Museum subway station.

Good evening!

St. Patrick's Day is almost here!

It was so special hearing bagpipe music floating along the street while I walked home.

Here is a unique variety of four-leaf clover! It's a black one.
Trifolium repens var. atropurpureum Dark Dancer

Ghada Amer.

Today I went to the Ghada Amer exhibit titled: Love has no end
at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in
The Brooklyn Museum.

On the pavement next to Prospect Park.

Did you know you can find hearts all over New York City on the ground?

Love.

Racism, sexism, heterosexism: why do the privileged care?

I read an interesting piece by Peggy McIntosh titled, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack". She discuses a topic that is not discussed often, but very real. The other side of racism, or maybe the main side. In our society, the victim is blamed and the non-white people are seen as the "problem" and are left to carry the burden of racism. It is okay for white people not to think about race on a day to day basis, because their survival does not depend on it. And they are not forced to carry race in a bag on their backs, crushing them.

Peggy McIntosh talks about all the ways in which her race gives her a pass to privilege. After reading this article, I thought about a discussion my class in Ethnocultural Issues in Social Work had after watching the film The Color of Fear about a focus group discussion on race and racism between men of different ethnicities (i.e. African American, Asian American, Caucasian, South American, Central American). In our class discussion, the main thing most people brought up was that one of the participants in the focus group (an African American man) got angry and they didn't know why he did. He was trying to convey the point that minorities carry the burden of racism in our society and the majority race does not notice this because their lives are not bothered by race.

Then someone in the class (Asian) brought up that minorities in our society are not on top, and do not feel in turn that they can assert themselves in this society like white men feel they can. And all the white people in the class (of soon to be social workers) had no idea that this happens or how it could happen.

I found the class disturbing not only because of the ignorance and conscious oblivion of the white people in the class, but more so that these are up and coming social workers. They are working for minorities and the disenfranchised and yet they do not understand their half of the story of racism. Without understanding their half, they do not understand racism at all, and I do not see how they can counteract it.

Does it take someone extremely self-aware and willing to let go of their possessions and privilege for a moment to realize how they got them and where they stand?

Barbara Kingsolver.

One day I started The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, although I had to return the book to the library before I could finish it.

Barbara Kingsolver grew up in Eastern Kentucky and tells the stories of the unheard marginalized in this country and world. I listened to an interview with her online. She talked about writing fiction in this interview and I learned a great deal.

To her, she starts writing with a question in mind. And she writes a book to answer that question (that she doesn't know in the beginning and writes to know) and to convey to others what she wants them to know.

For example, she quoted another writer saying "The fiction writer says the words what cannot be said in words." with reference to her thought that fiction writing is sometimes the best way to tell a true story. And sometimes an idea is so massive that without the elaboration, narrative, description, expansion of fiction writing-- it is missed.

I really appreciate Barbara Kingsolver's work and it was such a joy to hear her speak.

Here's a picture of my living room. I mainly spent the whole day working on my paper that is due on Thursday for an Ethnocultural class. Tomorrow I will work on writing it and also shop for an outfit I can wear to a job interview I have on Friday and another one I have on Monday. Let's see how they go!

Small surprises.

House on 11th street.

applewood restaurant store front.

Here are a couple photos from my neighborhood. I needed to find beauty in small things as I walked home-- I was upset and tempered and nothing I did seemed to calm me down. So passing this amazing small restaurant on 11th street with its small lights, simple natural ambiance always makes me smile. And it worked today. Some day I want to try applewood! I looked at their menu, and it's a bit pricey.

but....

I would try their:

*small plate: preserved meyer lemon-ginger risotto mascarpone cheese, herb oil
*entree: pan roasted vermont free-range veal toasted wheat berries, red chard salad, parsley butter
*wine: rossetti nero d’avola “terre del nero d’avola”, sicilia ’05
*dessert: meyer lemon-mascarpone pudding cake toasted pecans, sweet cream
*tea

Bon appetite!

Just be here.

I took my usual afternoon walk in Prospect park, which is such a release. It is a time where I can separate from all anxieties and just walk through the wind and open space. And that is usually the time when sensible ideas and lucid thoughts appear. When I do even have them.

So today, again I thought about my career and jobs and how much stress and strain I make in my life trying to find the perfect job or opportunity right now. And some strain comes from also trying to figure everything out all the time. I dig and dig for answers instead of giving myself a chance to create them. The answers will not come from another source, they will come from me, and even so there are no answers. Rather this is my life now and I need to not try to escape from it.

Instead, I have given myself permission to just be. To take my life moment to moment...it is okay that I don't know where I am going to. Whether I want to stay in the social work program, and worrying about past potentially lost opportunities, thinking about times when I gave up or looked to the other side of the fence where I thought the grass is greener. Those thoughts are not beneficial and I cannot use them to control my life now. What I can do is look at my life as it is now and make the best possible decisions for myself as I am now, and not as I was a year or two ago.

Rainy and misty.

Saturday