special stuff, anyone? anyone?

Last week, I began my new job at a mental health outpatient clinic which (rockingly) includes having my very own office, the construction of which was completed the week prior to starting. To create an environment much more conducive to therapy I started filling it with a few things to make it warmer, more comfortable and, well, therapeutic. The basic canvas has four bare, slightly off white walls, industrial grey carpeting (with an unfortunate seam down the middle) and some stock office furniture.

I added a couple of chocolate brown pillows to the officey-maroon chairs, put a few natural elements in baskets and bowls, and put a blue ceramic fish (who needs a name) on my desk to keep me company between clients. A cheap CD player from Target allows me to play some soft music in the background for calming purposes (and also to try and aid with confidentiality since the walls are thin and I have not received a white noise machine). Or it will allow me to add ambiance, once I get a better supply of relaxing, classical or instrumental music for such purposes.

Then I got to thinking and decided I would love to include some art, little items and (non-people) photos from people I know (in life and in cyberland). I am not usually one to ask for things (even when I really, really, really need something.... I can be a very stubborn Aries) but this time it feels right to ask and see what happens.

So here's my request: I would love to incorporate special little things from you all to bring some positive energy to my office, my clients and even me (Heck, I need to stay grounded in order to help clients feel the same). It would really mean a lot to me and make my shoebox of an office (see below) more of a sacred, therapeutic place. Mind you, I am not looking for things of monetary value. I wish for things like 4x6 photo prints, art work/doodles, tactile items, squishy things for clients to...well...squish, natural objects to add to the bowls, hand written words of wisdom I can frame, creative stuff and, well, if you were in a mental health therapist's office what would you like to see, hear, smell, or touch?

Please do not feel obligated, but if something in your heart makes you want to be a part of my "therapy container" and help me assist those needing counseling find their answers in order to heal, it would mean so much to me. Like I said, I do not usually ask for things, but for some reason this just feels right. If you are interested, contact me (comment, phone call, email, flickr mail, smoke signals, telepathy, etc).

Of course, positive thoughts to help me "hold the space" for my clients are equally appreciated.

Much thanks,

Melissa

Yeah, it isn't pretty....yet.

friday the 13th

And Saturday the 14th was a fun movie.
Friday the 13ths usually are positive and lucky days for me.
It's only 7:30a.m.

I'll let you know later.

Anyone have a black cat that can cross my path while I walk under a ladder?

time management skills

I lack them.

I have some things I want to write, but the adjustment to a new work schedule has made it difficult to sit in front of ye old computer. Fret not (assuming that you would fret about such silliness), I am going make sure I have my journal in my bag and pen when I can. Then I will just have to utilize my mad typing skills (thank you, Mavis Beacon).

Now, it's time to use my time wisely, and get dressed and out the door for my uber long day of therapizing. 9-9....what are they thinking with that???!! Oh, my poor late hour clients, you too fret not! I will caffeinate prior to your appointments!

AAAAAA!!!! It is 7:30 already??!!!???!

oh you know, yeah you know

ha ha ha. These songs make me feel good. Now, get up and dance! fast, then slow, then fast. rock it!!







Under Rug Swept, sucka!

there is no note on my door

The more I read comment boards on online newspapers, the more I see how many people post judgemental comments and start name calling without any facts to back things up. What? Have the mortgage brokers begun foreclosing on glass houses?

carry all

The past is never far away when you carry it with you

like the mountains of Colorado

or the smell of my grandfather's desk

or holding my best friend's daughters for the first time

or bowing while receiving my degree

or playing man hunt (three versions)

or our first kiss at 12th Avenue and Sherman Street

or realizing I can play a "boys' sports"

or being swung by my parents' hands while walking through a parking lot

or making up "It happened on Alpine Place"

or buying my first car and feeling like a "real" adult

or dancing to mad, crazy industrial beats 'till 4 a.m.

and each day is an opportunity to create more wondrous "past" to carry in my satchel

here i go.....

My first day of work, like my first day of school
filled with excitement
a little bit of anxiousness
and a whole lot of grinny-griness on my face!
Makes me want to go to Cheap John's* to get my supplies tonight (Yeah, which of you former or long-time LIers remember Cheap John's? eh?)

It is my short day, Tuesdays. Only four hours, but that is only counteracted by a 9 to 9 shift later in the week. Egads! But that was better than having to work Saturdays.

The time has come for me to go get ready and then head out. Almost wish I was waiting for the "boo-bus"..... My goodness, I am regressing today. Cheap John's?!? Boo-bus!!!? (what I called the school bus when my big brother was going to school) Quick, someone hit fast-forward before I get behind the wheel of my car. I would not want to be "pre-driver's license" on LI highways! Then again, I might actual drive better than some of the drivers out there anyway.

Wish me luck!

*for non-LIers. Cheap John's was THE place to get your school supplies. Those were the days before schools sent home the nine volume list of supplies to get before the school year begins. Everyone would go after the first day of school. You would see all your friends and classmates scooping up their Bloodhound Gang lunch box (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bloodhound_Gang_%28TV_series%29) and Hot Wheels folders. It rocked!

happy birthday allen

(Not my writing, credited below)

It's the birthday of Allen Ginsberg, (books by this author) born in Newark, New Jersey (1926). His father was a schoolteacher and occasional poet. His mother was a Russian immigrant and devoted Marxist. She was in and out of psychiatric institutions all through out his childhood and had to undergo electric shock treatments and a lobotomy. Ginsberg went to Columbia University on a small scholarship and there he began consorting with Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs. After college, he got a job in marketing research, wore a business suit everyday, and had on office on the 52nd floor of the Empire State Building. He says he started writing there, and that there he learned about careful manipulation of words.

He moved to San Francisco and became friends with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published Ginsburg's first major work, Howl.

By his 30s, he was prematurely bald with a ring of hair on the fringe of his head and thick long black beard streaked with gray. He wore black rimmed classes and his Buddha belly was one of his most distinguishing features.

Ginsburg's reading of Howl was reputed to have "turned the 1950s into the 1960s overnight." It began:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.

The death of his mother affected Ginsburg deeply and for a long time. He wrote his poem "Kaddish" for her, which began:

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk
on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night,
talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles
blues shout blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm — and your memory in my head three years after —

He once said, "There's no bar to us proclaiming our delight and that's the strength of poetry."

(The preceding is from The Writer's Almanac 6.3.08)

Thank you, Ginsberg, for your work and co-founding the Naropa Institute (Naropa University).