west 140th st.

unlike my last job in baltimore, where i had to meet with ghetto (and i'm not saying that in a classist, asshole way. i'm saying that in a very literal way, as in, these people are from the ghetto.) moms and kids in the clinic, i have a much more hands-off job here in new york. it's a related study, mind you, but i just don't have as much patient contact. this is both a good and a bad thing. it's good in that i get to wear jeans and a t-shirt to work every day, even though i've decided to try to look, um, a little more "professional." as soon as i can make myself get out of bed ten minutes earlier so that i can iron my shirt.

what's bad is that it means a lot more desk time than my old job. and it's also a shame because even though our demographic here is the same as it was in baltimore, the poverty in new york city is a little different than the poverty in baltimore. i've already written about this, so i won't blab on too much about it. long story short: in new york, even the people who live in projects and haven't had a job for ten years are still a little bit more put together than the people in baltimore. in baltimore it's like a scrabbling-in-the-dirt kind of poverty. it's poverty where people just walk around dirty because they can't afford to wash their clothes, or because their parents are too high on drugs to wash their extra-long white t-shirts. in new york, it seems, at least with our asthmatic moms, they might be poor but you can bet they still have their hair and nails done before we see 'em.

i write this because i'm getting ready to go back out on a home visit, one of the few bits of patient conact i have. we go into these peoples' homes, observe them, and then suck up dust samples. none of this struck me as odd until the other day, when i was riding the train with amanda to connecticut. we came up out of the tunnel at 125th street, and i looked over at some project that i'd just been inside last month. if you'd told me five years ago that i'd be going into projects at 140th street in harlem, new york city, i'd have said that you were crazy.

of course, five years ago i thought that after i got done with grad school i'd just go on to a young artist program. as it turns out, there isn't exactly a spot in a young artist program for every person that graduates with a masters degree. there's more like one spot for every two hundred people that graduate with a masters degree. and, as of yet anyway, i haven't been the one picked out of those two hundred. and so i go into the projects, armed with a special little vaccuum cleaner, and suck up dust samples from inevitably dirty bedsheets and chairs and rugs.

don't worry, though, i'm totally using my degrees: i'm singing "o sole mio" while doing it.