Last Friday I attended a training ostensibly about family therapy. In fact, as in most of these trainings, we watched one therapist discuss what he thinks therapy is. Everyone has a theory; everyone has a style; everyone is someone to whom I can unfavorably compare myself. Friday was especially good because I didn't think much about myself at all, but got all stirred up about meaning-making and human interaction and human pain. I was so stirred up that instead of thinking more about all of these things I spent the car ride home listening to Kanye West's mediocre new album, pushing the volume up louder and louder, trying to dance dance dance the confusion from my brain. When there are too many thoughts in my head and too many human emotions registering on my skin I feel a very particular elation that is also really tender and sad, and I have decided to label this feeling 'holy.'

It happens a great deal in Chicago, and usually after I have spent a chunk of time thinking about human need. Human needs for nurturance are particularly affecting to me. In that way I feel a little like a superhero that was given a particularly acute sense but no corresponding super power; so I can tell when someone needs something, and sometimes I can figure out what that thing is, but it all ends there. Perhaps if I saw myself as a kind but lazy hardware store employee instead of a superhero--"What you need, buddy, is a three quarter inch band saw." That's helpful. I'm not going to get up from behind the counter and get my buddy the fucking band saw. I am on the internet. I am updating my blog.

We saw a scrappy theater company's production of Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut. It was great. They did a good job, those scrappy actors and their crew. I was briefly in love with the young actor who portrayed Kurt Vonnegut. This infatuation, as I had predicted it would, only lasted three days. Anyway. Kurt's sister Alice died with the words "No pain" and Kurt himself has drawn his tombstone with the epitaph "Everything was beautiful, nothing hurt." I want to know what he means. In the end, does it all wash out? Does the pain become some sort of not pain? CS Lewis has something to say about this, I know. Armenians have a lot to say about pain. As a culture they talk about and express pain much more than Americans, and, from what I gather, the Irish. Other groups I can't speak on.

Right now, I think that I would like to get better at being with people as they think about and express their pain. I have the sense that this is the most I am going to be able to do, although some blueprint in me wants to give everyone magic keys that they can stick in their hearts. When they turn this key their pain clicks into the story of the rest of their lives, falling into a pretty mosaic pattern with all the other words we have for the things that happen to us.

"To have faith in the recovery process and that a love ethic is a matter of practical application is down right revolutionary for American City 2005." That's Jessica Hopper saying that. This is following an email I wrote her that was self-righteous and resignedly angry. However, I apologized, influenced as I am by my professional experience, and having witnessed firsthand how important it is to--hold on now--apologize when you fuck up. If you do that, someone writes you a nice email that gives you the positive reinforcement you desperately need but hate asking for!

This job, this life, this 29th birthday. While I am attempting to settle down and make myself comfortable in this new body, new city, and new job, I am still ticking off items on my life's to do list. I am drawing a slash right through "get a tattoo" and " go on an internet date." Meaning, go on a date with someone I met via the Internet. Sadly, I did not go out on a virtual reality date, where I least I could have explored the inner reaches of my own imagination. If the date had taken place on the fourth dimension then I wouldn't have gone to the Logan Theater, where--no joke--a roach crawled up the wall and very near my face. My date was a nice guy, but very compact, both physically and personally, on all dimensions. I am more expansive and so I was mostly hanging out with myself, except there was a tiny person watching me. I don't think I'll go on anymore Internet dates.

I was on the phone with my Best Friend and saw this gorgeous car rolling down the street. There were three children and an abuela in the back, and they were all laughing. Later I saw this car in front of my house, and the grandma and kids were in hysterics getting all bounced around while the owner fiddled with the hydraulics. Let's all pretend this is my car.

As the employee of a Jewish agency (ask me about Tzedekah!), I did no real work in October. Last week, instead of erecting a tent in my backyard for meals and slumber, I celebrated the end of Succoth with the traditional gentile trip to Columbus, Ohio.

The big news for my Clan back in Ohio is that drunken and bitter Grandma, famous for such lines as "Your family IS shit!" has stopped drinking and entered therapy, and some kind of miracle has occurred. I am thinking of the show "Touched by an Angel." My Grandma is preparing to die by righting her wrongs and trying to attend to the eight children she raised with her alcoholic husband. She is an angel, although not some silly one--she still yells and she will not tolerate any bullshit. She is a tiny mirror reflecting a shard of what God is like. I maintain that God does not put up with any bullshit. It's like the most hurt part of her become the most loving, and all the other stuff that made her my Grandma stayed the same, as evidenced by the fact that we couldn't reach her until the OSU game halftime, and she made me a really strong cup of coffee with honey in it.

I just wrote Jessica Hopper an email, and am sort of nervous about it. Writing to the people I have attached a sort of specialness to makes me nervous, but I also love a painful personal challenge, so it evens out. I am also writing to men on the internet, and one or two is supposed to call me. This is also a horrible personal challenge, so while Peace Corps left me destroyed for American life and my work is a exercise in emotional pain, I can still get that Xtreme rush from the internet. Writing to people on the internet. Writing on my blog. Blogity blog.