2013: Home, sweet home

Welcome to 2013 friends! We made it! The world did not end!

A week ago I moved to White Center, into this cute little red cottage (photo below).

For those of you living far away from the northwest; White Center is an unincorporated part of Seattle, just south of West Seattle. It is one of the most diverse and transitioning neighborhoords of Seattle. My house is situated on a quiet block, a few blocks from a local hardware store and several blocks from a variety of Vietnamese, Peruvian, Mexican and African resteraunts. This afternoon I had pho at one of the local establishments; hot beef and broth, rice noodles, vegetables with a side of bean sprouts, jalepeno pepers and lime. A satisfying cure for a post-moving cold.
My house is a well-insulated, beautifully designed dwelling with a loft and gigantic south facing windows. It has a modern gas fireplace and a gas stove, along with a spiral staircase to a large loft space. Most of my belongings and I have begun to unpack my art supplies. Slowly my art making space is being established again.


Friday, January 11th will be my five year anniversary of arriving in Seattle. Time is a funny thing. Five years ago I began blogging about begining my life in the northwest, and this year I am making the resolution to continue writing about my adventures, art and music. After six months of house sitting, cat sitting, and sleeping on friends' couches, I am happy to say that I am home, sweet home.

Thanksgiving 2011

Happy Thanksgiving. As many of you may know, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Spending the entire day preparing food and sharing it with friends and family is something I have always looked forward to. I am so thankful that I have such a wonderful supportive web of people in my life. Thank you. Working as a therapist this year has been one of the most challenging experiences of my life. Finding balance and order within the chaos and trauma of the toxic material I absorb every day has been an art in itself. Yes, art. Art can be a way for people to organize their internal fragmentation or it can help them come to a safe space if just for a short while. As an artist who believes that art heals, I feel so privileged and thankful to be a witness to this process. Making art is such an incredibly intimate experience. I am thanking all of the individuals who have shared their art and process with me. You are strong and able.

...the times they are a changin.

Yesterday, I completed my first year of graduate school. Whew! I didn't think it was humanly possibly to complete 7 classes during one quarter of grad school, 22 credits to be exact. I woke up today at 7:30am, wondering what paper I had to write...then realized that I have no more papers to write. I was on auto-pilot for week, citing inspirational quotes on Facebook in APA style.

As you probably have noticed, I have privatized my blog, so if you are reading this,you have been invited to. This means it is now uncensored.

If you haven't heard the story, it's ridiculous, but must be told...

At the beginning of April, I had an a meeting with a school advisor for my advancement to candidacy and placement for my practicum placement for next year. It began well; she reviewed my exam and all the challenging work I put into leading my group at the homeless shelter.

In 30 minutes they were suppose to discuss my exam with me, discuss the first two quarters of my learning, my strengths and weaknesses as a person and my placement for next school year. It does seem like alot to discuss and process within a 30 minute time frame.

Of course, my meeting went longer.

After reviewing my work thus far, the advisor hesitated and said "this is difficult for me to tell you...I don't know how to tell you this."

Shit. Sure sign of something bad coming. Brace yourself Brigid, this is going to be hard to hear. I knew there had to be something for them to rat me out on. It's grad school. They pretend to build you up, just to tear you down.

"About busking..."

"Busking?"

The faculty is strongly advising me not to "busk" in Portland. The reason being: I will seem unstable to clients who might run into me. I should not play for money on the streets of Portland, because homeless people might see me as unstable.

Not all street musicians are unstable, derelict drug addicts. In fact most street musicians are individuals who love sharing their music with others and are trying to make a living in this difficult economy. I busked twice since moving to Portland. I don't make a ton of money while busking. I do it because I love playing banjo in the sunshine. I enjoy receiving and giving smiles to people who walk me. I delight in the children who dance around to my music. When I see others playing music on the street, I smile. In my mind, they are not unstable. They are finding a creative way to survive by sharing what they love.

As my advisor told me "grad school is a bunch of hoops that you need to jump through..."

Isn't that the truth. I have been jumping through hoops ever since entering the traditional schooling system. Jumping through these hoops will hopefully allow others to call me a professional, for whatever that is worth.

Jumping through these hoops will not stifle me from sharing my creativity with others.

Appendage Accident, Bike Bedroom and Escarole

Hello friends, greetings from the town of Portland, Oregon. Last Saturday, I arrived sick and injured. The entire drive from Seattle to Portland was spent with a bucket of ice cold water between my legs on the floor in the passenger side. Every 5-1o minutes I would plunge my hand into the cold water until the pain dissipated. I bet you are wondering why I would do such a thing. In pacific northwest standards, it was a hot day, about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But nope, that was not the reason. The morning of my move, I woke up extremely snotty and dehydrated, and decided to make some tea. While pouring the boiling hot water from the kettle into the mug, the water boiled over the mug and onto the hand that was holding the mug. The human body is so intelligent when it comes to fight or flight responses to sensations. Within a matter of seconds my hand was under running cold water. This burn was like none I had ever had. The redness spread across the top of my hand, covering all knuckles and the bottom halves of the fingers.

My first week of living in Portland has been quite a week. It seems as though I've left Seattle months ago. Graduate school began on Monday. I am training to be an Art Therapist Counselor. In addition to the 5 courses I am taking, I have also started working at a homeless shelter for the mentally ill. I will be facilitating art groups there as part of my fieldwork. In addition to mental illness, many of the residents there also have substance abuse problems.

All of my classes are fascinating and intense. For 5 classes, I was required to purchase 15 books. There are about 20-25 chapters per week of reading. Psychopathology, Intro to Art Therapy, Theories of Counseling, Child Development, and Art Therapy Counseling Techniques are the courses. In addition to those we have a Fieldwork Seminar where we discuss our various fieldwork sites and try out different art activities to test the effectiveness of the projects and materials with the different client populations. There are about 20 students in my cohort, 95% female. Most of us are placed at different sites, with varying populations: children, adolescents, adults and elderly. I am excited to be in a program, where people are excited to be there and learn. It's quite refreshing.

My apartment here in the southeast region of Portland is spacious and wonderful. My bicycle finally has her own room! She is really happy to be in Portland, socializing with all of the other bikes in the neighborhood. If you don't know, Portland is, in my opinion, the bike-FRIENDLIEST city in this country. My street alone is often described as a bike super highway.

We have been so lucky to be able to go on plenty of rides this week, accompanied by temperatures in the 80's and sunny skies.

After leaving my band behind in Seattle, in hopes to continue a long distance band relationship, I have started busking(aka. playing on the street) for extra cash. Wednesday I played fiddle for an hour in front of Whole Foods. That experience was not so lucrative, but I did get a solid hour of practicing done in the sun. Yesterday, I went to my favorite farmers market, PSU, downtown. I spent about an hour and a half playing banjo, harmonica and singing for the people at the market. I did make some money, which I then took over to the vendors to buy greens. Because it was the closing time, I got an extra bunch of Escarole( a bitter, leafy lettuce) and some beet greens thrown in my bag, at no extra charge. Now I have so many greens, I have been having them with every meal.

My second bunch of escarole. Will eat salad! Yum!

Summer in Seattle

That's right, summer has finally graced us with her presence. It took long enough. Today Seattle hit a hot 92 degrees with full on sunshine. I spent the day in West Seattle. Biking over the West Seattle Bridge for the first time, to climb California Ave to the Hamilton Viewpoint Park at the top to practice yoga. Soft grass and cool winds comforted us as we practiced in the bright sunshine. Feeling the ground with my bare feet and balancing on the uneven ground was a lovely challenge. Megan has become such a refined yoga teacher, she is the friend who has turned me on to yoga, and I am so grateful. After practice we had a hearty breakfast at the Heartland Cafe, where they serve kielbasa, polish sausage and tater tot casserole, a Midwestern diner (only drip coffee). I headed straight to Alki beach afterwards.

After spending the afternoon lounging in the sun, painting with watercolors and taking frequent plunges into the cold Sound water for refreshment, I decided to do some rock collecting for the rock rugs I've been making. A few weeks ago, I found a gasket company that does ship flooring where I was able to buy a large quantity of thick wool blend felt for my rugs.

Up until now, I have just been making rugs for friends, but I think I'm going to try to market them to Eco friendly home stores. My favorite part about making them is going to the beach to collect rocks!

Since I've decided to go to Portland for grad school, I have realized that there are so many things I still need to do before I leave Seattle, one of them was biking to West Seattle. Another one was taking the West Seattle Water Taxi. It leaves from Alki Beach and goes to Pier 50 downtown, near Yesler and Alaskan Way. Even though it is only a 10minute ride, it costs $3.50 one way. At least your bike rides for free.

This summer has been so busy, but wonderful. Last weekend, my friend AC and I went to Pickathon, a music festival outside of Portland. We saw an array of bands including but not limited to: The Water Tower Bucket Boys, Blind Boy Paxton, Frank Fairfield, Martha Scanlan and Modal T Ford( a 90-year old blues guitar player from Mississippi). It was a camping festival with some of the BEST festival food I've ever had. They had a Sicilian Pizza oven making fresh pizza with all natural ingredients. Also, they had fresh corn on the cob with butter and Corn dogs!! They were THE BEST corn dogs I have ever had, hand dipped individually, made with grass-fed, no-hormone, organic beef. They were served with a spicy ketchup. I think I might go back to this festival just for the food. Needless to say, the music was exceptional and eclectic. Dancing and jamming also happened during the weekend. Unfortunately we did not get such a level campsite and were sliding down the hill at night, but it was an awesome weekend.

Seattle is one of the most beautiful cities. I feel very privileged to live here in the mountains, near the ocean and forests. I will miss it here, it is a really special place. I will be moving at the end of September. In two weeks I will be down in Portland looking for apartments. Graduate school starts on September 27Th. I have been speaking with my fieldwork supervisor, an art therapist from NYU. I will be placed at a mental health agency that serves homeless adults in the downtown Portland area. My job will be to facilitate art groups/workshops for them. I'm really excited about the work and experience I'll be receiving.

Highball Whistle, the string band I'm in has been playing many gigs lately, including the Pioneer Square first Thursday art walk, the Madrona Alehouse and other art walks. We will be recording again next week. Our myspace page has some of our earlier recordings: www.myspace.com/highballwhistle/ Check it out!

I hope all who read this are well and enjoying the summer months. Peace.