SAYA
When we first met with the boys at SAYA I was more excited than I was nervous, like when I met Paul. I knew that I knew how to talk to teenagers and relate with them. I wasn’t really scared or nervous about them being prisoners, because I figured they were just kids who were in the wrong situation at the wrong time. I was really excited about our first meeting, and surprised at how excited they were about us being there. That first day, we met with all of the boys after they had had lunch. They were talkative and interested in what we were doing. They were charming and polite, which made me laugh, because they were obviously on their best behavior for the 13 girls that just walked in the room.
I remember meeting Oshea for the first time. He told us he was in jail for possession of marijuana. For some reason this really shocked me. Saint Augustine is FULL of drug culture. Weed is everywhere and even though it’s still a big deal to the legal system here, there is so much of it, it doesn’t really seem like you can get in trouble for it. Being a college student here, it’s hard not to be surrounded by marijuana at some point. So here was this 17 year old kid whose life and future is now on pause because he has to do time for what is a normal weekend for a lot of my friends.
I was excited about the chance to work with the boys when we left. I don’t think I was nervous about anything. I thought that the ideas that we developed were good and a strong fit for what we wanted to accomplish with them.
.I would say that I don’t think we had enough time to really invest in our ideas, but that wasn’t our fault. It was just how the time schedule was. I think that they were frustrated by this as well. I think we enjoyed learning from eachother the most. I really liked making connections with them. I looked forward to seeing them, and talking about my life and their lives. I would have never gotten to meet them if it weren’t for this class.
Paul
3/21/2012
I know that I stopped keeping on track with my journals about Paul for some time, so I’m just going to start writing about the experience and stop when I have nothing left to talk about.
In my last journal entry I talked about how Paul sometimes gets frustrated when he can’t leave the sunshine center. He is the kind of person that when he’s ready to go, he’s READY TO GO. It’s hard convincing him other wise. But he’s always pretty cooperative, even though he doesn’t like it.
After our second meeting, I didn’t see Paul for a whole month. I still don’t know where he was exactly. He said he was helping his sister with her restaurant, but it seems as though every place in Paul’s life is a restaurant. He thinks the COA is a restaurant, and talks about the nurses being waiters and how the boss of the place is mean to him. He thinks I work at the COA, even though I have told him that am I a student and work downtown. He can get a little turned around every now and then. When I saw Paul again I was really excited. I had missed him and he apologized again and again for not being there. He talked about how he was, and he even asked me how I was doing, which has never happened before. I was glad that he was starting to show real interest in my visits and me.
There is some frustration and anxiety in the project. I get anxious really easily, and situations that might put me into a difficult experience tend to make me a bit scared. Like the first time I met Paul he started crying. I was really scared that he would cry every single time I went to see him. Which I didn’t think I would be able to handle. I still get a little nervous before every meeting, but it’s usually just fine. The frustration comes from the staff at the COA. One of the staff members (it’s the same one that Paul thinks is rude) always puts me to work when I visit Paul. She’ll give me minor tasks that make me a little bit uncomfortable. The other day, everyone was outside playing a game and she asked me if I could stay outside with everyone while she went in and counted (something). She handed me the ball she was throwing to everyone and left. There was another nurse there, but I didn’t like having the responsibility to do her job, even if only for a few minutes. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Paul that day because I was busy playing catch with everyone.
It’s hard sometimes too, because I see Paul as a person, and I don’t think the staff does all the time. I know they work hard, and that it isn’t an easy job, and I’m sure it’s horrible on your stress level, but it’s hard to see that Paul is having a horrible day, and is stuck doing coloring pages and watching old movies instead of going outside and taking a walk. He really is unhappy at the center, and it makes me wonder why he’s there all the time. I know he’s a bit spacey, and he doesn’t always put two and two together, but he seems pretty high functioning besides that. He’s a good person, and has a gung-ho attitude about life, which makes it hard to realize that he may be stuck in a facility like the COA for the rest of his life.
I’m really enjoying the time I’m being able to spend with Paul. It has taught me how to be a really really good listener, and to find ways to connect with someone who doesn’t really have much in common with you. It’s taught me that people don’t really care about relational art unless they fully understand what it is… which is a really sad reality. But it has also given me a love for Relational Art that will probably continue to inspire me for a long time.
Paul wasn’t there today. The boys at the prison are great.
Second Meeting with Paul
I went to see Paul last friday around one in the afternoon. When I got there he seemed very frustrated. I asked him why, and he said it was because “they wouldn’t give him a car.” I asked why he needed a car and he said that it was because he wanted to go to work. He didn’t want to stay at the community center anymore. He said that he kept asking the ladies (nurses) WHEN he could leave, but they kept saying “in a little while, we will let you know.”
This made me sad.
I’ve been thinking so much about him since I met him. I wonder what he does all day. What his home looks like. If he even considers his house here a home. If he even LIVES in a house. I don’t know much about Paul, but he has become a person who is always on my mind. He seems so frustrated sitting in that horrible room all day. The closest situation I’ve had to his frustration with the community center is when my mom would put me in day care or day camps during the summer. I hated being in the same room all day. I wanted to explore and go outside I wanted to see people and not breathe in the same miserable air all day. I feel like Paul may be feeling some of these things. It frustrates me too because I feel he has the right to be out there living his life. It’s frustrating because he’s older than me, which means, in my mind that he deserves respect to do as he pleases. He’s an elder. And I know that he is probably there because he can’t live on his own, but I wish that he could be happy.
I will go meet with him again tomorrow, but today we are going to the youth prison here to meet with the kids there. I’m slightly nervous, but feel a lot more at ease with youth and peers than with older people. I hope they are into the project, and have lots of ideas on what we should do.
I was doing some research on the Belgian Battalion in Korea and came across this information regarding the troops. Belgian: KIA 101 WIA 336 MIA 5 Total serving 3,498 Luxemburg KIA 2 WIA 13 Total serving 89
My first meeting with Paul
On my way over to the COA (the community center where we meet up with our buddies) I was extremely nervous. I was worried that my buddy would think I was weird, and looked odd, and wouldn’t understand me because I talk quiet and kinda mumble a lot. I was worried that I wouldn’t know what to talk about. I mean what could a 20 something queer kid like me have in common with an 80 year old person from Saint Augustine, Florida.
When we got there we met the lady who would be our connection to the program. She showed us into a room and we discussed the project a little more. Because of scheduling and time constraints, I was unable to meet with the original group of people that had signed up for the project. I was going to have to meet with someone in the All-Day program that the community center offered. This meant I had to leave the group…. Shit. I was already scared as it was, and I was even more nervous when I realized that i wouldn’t have any of my class there to make sure my old person wasn’t being awkward or talking to me about how I should grow my hair out. … Oh well…
I was going to be meeting my buddy in the “Sunshine” room. ( I thought of the scene in Toy Story when Woody and the gang are led unknowingly into a classroom full of the terrible twos. My heart raced) I was introduced to the nurses who ran the place, they seemed nice enough. They introduced me to a “gentlemanly, sweet, kind” man named Paul. We sat together and talked for about 40 minutes. I had a sheet of questions I was supposed to reference to get to know him, but mainly he talked about the war, and his time in the restaurant business. He was born in Luxembourg, and talked fondly of Brussels. He said it was his favorite place. He also admitted to the fact that he was very sentimental, and cried twice during our brief chat while talking about the young men he patched up while serving as a medic in Korea.
The beginning is always the hardest part.
So, I don’t really know why I have been putting off starting this blog. Perhaps because I wanted to make it something really really special. So i kept it in mind, but never really started it….which I tend to do when I want something to be really great.
I guess to begin this blog I will start out by explaining this class I am taking the semester. It’s called Relational Art. We meet twice a week, and talk about social engagement work, chickfila breakfast, the battle of seat stealing, and what NOT TO WEAR in a youth prison.
The art we are creating in this class is something special to me. In all seriousness, Relational art is something that is above all, creating relationships between people/viewers in a piece. Relational art isn’t always something that is tangible or two or three dimensional. When talking about relational work, it’s always something that I find hard to explain. This is how Nicolas Bourriaud, the creator of the idea of relational art, explains it
“the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever scale chosen by the artist.”
In this class, we have been given the opportunity to work with a local elderly community center in our first large project this semester. Each person in our class got paired up with an individual that frequents the community center. Our goal is to go see our buddy for an hour a week and talk/hang out with them. At the end of the semester, we are to create some sort or art work with our buddy, which will be put on display in our gallery space for the public to see.
