camino de paradiso

I drove to paradise, ca today to retrieve the belongings of kids. it was a three-hour drive up through sacramento up to into the woods by chico. i had to take a huge van for its cargo capacity. the biggest car i've ever driven. it did the beep beep thing every time i put it in reverse. it also did not have an FM tuner so i only got talk radio. it gave me a lot of time to think.

it's time to let things go. things that aren't working. it's ok to be friends.

the route up wasn't much to look at. but the route back through antioch was beautiful. there are forest fires around abouts and so there is a haze. but it made the water of the bay a glassy gray and the green of the trees seemed that much greener and the yellow grass a flaming orange. like a river in the jungle, or malaysia. and i crossed little and big bridges and drove on roads along levees. the calm, heavy quiet was beautiful.

paradise. hmm, maybe not so much the place itself, but the road away from it.

habituation's a bit**

sorry, i rarely swear but it seemed so fitting--albeit heavy-handed--a title. it's time to learn a new routine. its not varied between internship and school, activities and work. now its just work. 40 hours a week. and when i'm home i can only just recover from work before having to pry myself out of bed the next day to go back. so that's my new routine? i don't have homework, ok. but my brain just spins on autopilot as i do my homevisits, write my casenotes, and surf the internet in the intervening hours when i have nothing to do in my cubicle. so this is what i thrust myself into grad school for? i know, this is only a temp job i'm holding now. i'll be much more busy once i'm carrying a caseload of my own clients. more stressed too once i find myself responsible for managing people's family lives. eek. but is that enough? is stress going to give me enough? i'll earn my money, be occupied during the day, but what else? or is there anything else? lieben und arbeiten, right?

aber kann ich meine arbeit lieben? ist das genug?

but when i think of the things i could be doing, if money was the only objective, it wouldn't need to be social work. but social work, as flawed, problematic, myopic, and futile it is--or seems, whatever--makes me feel that i'm doing something worthwhile. something that acknowledges that humans matter and my own existence gives me no peace if you have no peace in your existence. i can't help but grasp my hair at my temples though sometimes. it's something, but not everything. looking in the right direction but without having figured out to climb of the fallen tree in the road. do i figure out how to get going on the road or do i start building a hut for myself in the dust. right now i'm just slapping my hands on the log and butting it with my forehead. what next?