august 2010 was mecurial and shivery and magnificent. my needs are being met. i am a satisfied human being. there is nothing more i want. life is fucking good and i am a very happy, very appreciative lass.
the (abbreviated) photographic recap!
ants on the sidewalk...
structures on the beach at discovery park... most were large enough to crawl inside. people had left little totems within: shells, dandelions, patterns of rocks. i fucking love humans.
the shadow of the space needle, as seen from the top of the space needle...
(my vantage point made it impossible to negate the dead space at the top of the photograph... i lament this.)
from a sazerac and a hurricane: a citron ship.
obscenely tall trees near baker lake. we could not find the hot springs. apparently we were extremely close. the trees are about 200' tall. it was an overcast day and everything (everything!) was moist. it smelled fucking amazing.
so... the new job.
it's going very well.
today was fucking slow. i did a 2hr massage... the second client i've had this week with whom i had to rest my fingers twixt skin folds in order to palpate their anatomy. it's an unnerving sensation- i had my hands on her body and i felt totally lost until i looked down and physically saw where i was. i finally had the where-with-all (and spontaneous siphoned connectivity) to create my 'massage' playlist for work- a bunch of sorta-mellow crap (air, elliott smith, sigur ros, iron & wine...). but my client today wanted non-lyrical music... so i endured another shift of chants and waves lapping. some of the shit on the preloaded ipods at work is good: non-treacly classical, folk, electronica-lite. the annoying indigenous-horn bullshit i can do without. tis the lament of a fucking massage therapist.
oh, and my wrists are fucking jacked right now. especially my left. typing does not pose a problem. i've been using more lomi-lomi technique- extra lube and forearms.
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oh, hush.
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my favorite client at bbh- and i don't care if it's improper to say it, he is- vocalized that he does, in fact, have hiv. i'd been functioning in an eschelon of denial, obviously... unwittingly. i thought "i know that since the advent of cocktail drugs, aids patients live longer, and as a result bbh's funding has diminished, so they see all sorts of chronically ill folks who don't neccessarily have aids." la la la. it somehow seemed more 'tolerable' for me to think of him, in particular (young and active), as having, i don't know, some curable but temporarily inconvenient cancer. it was startling to realize this about myself...
i think i'm so jaded and tough but i'm NOT. i am relieved and grateful that i am not. but as i was working on him i looked down at my hands on his back and i felt so fucking sad. and honored, if i may be so cheesy- it's such a fucking privelege to touch anyone- to be invited into their humanity. it is a welcome and it is a gift. our personal space is so sacred- fuck. if i think about it and how humbling and awesome it is to be let into someone else's physical world- in my work, elsewhere, anywhere- jesus christ.
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and i thought about how when he was diagnosed he probably felt complete betrayal from his body. anyone with a fucking 'disease' does. they think that their home has crumbled down around them. or maybe 'they' don't. but it's how i fucking felt... and as a 'professional', as the 'therapist', i couldn't relate to his neuropathy with my ms, i couldn't commisserate as a human... and that was tough. i've already cited this weird, lonely dynamic in posts prior. why do i give such a fucking shit about ethics? what matters more at the end of the day- conscience or concientiousness? why can't it be both?
he gave me a hug at the end. "i feel like a human again" he told me. there is no finer compliment.
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so it goes.
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when i finish my shifts at the new place i always feel good. tired, but good. tonight i walked down broadway in my black clothes and my headphones blaring ice cube. and my dick runs deep, so deep. i smile automatically at people who smile back. between songs i hear the chatter around me. my clothing smells like essential oils and market spice tea... my arms smell like lavender. the sky is barely light on the horizon. tonight, and every other night, i grinned at nothing as i walked...
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if i was in a junior high writing class the next line would have to have been
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i am happy.
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it was also very fucking fantastic to practice awareness of the past and a refusal to make the same idiot mistakes. but that's another solliloquy that lives in a different, less public realm.
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LA LA LA.
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i got home tonight and played with light for a spell. "played with light" means "tried to stabilize crappy camera whilst sneering in the dimness."
the place i am at right now is playing the velvet underground. those battery-operated candles (i have a few of these at home; they're cool!) sit at every table, faux-flickering. i am so fucking happy here. with my life. with everything. with feeling like i'm doing okay in the world. let it never be thought that i am nothing less than completely fucking reverent and aware of the good fortune around me. if i believed in a god, i would be... i was going to cite some sexual thing, and i actually did type things and erase them, because i have the luxury of editesse... never mind, i forgot whatever inappropriate simile i was going to conjure. wouldn't have been too classy.
THANK YOU, WORLD. that sums it up.
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once bitten, twice...
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