Modest and Witty

Growth

2011-11-09T16:48:00.000-08:00

I’ve been rather jumbled lately. My writing has dissipated to an almost nothing, a hint of a whisper in the back of my mind. Actually, it’s more of a constant run-on sentence of analysis, dream, and guilt which refuses to focus into a cohesive line. So instead of writing my musings and airing my thoughts in the public forum, I have been reduced to running about the world like a typical New Yorker in the full bloom of unrealized life. I am busy, busy, busy. . . too busy to contemplate writing an essay on life or experience. (The fact that I have a very understanding partner doesn’t necessarily help the literary agenda; I often just share my thoughts verbally with him, feel understood, and leave it at that. Sorry ghost-audience.)

So what is this? Well, I got taken down by a militant sinus infection, and so I’ve been stuck at home, in bed, for two days. I’m starting to go a bit crazy after twenty-seven billion episodes of Murder She Wrote. I’ve started yelling aloud, “AHA! I knew it was her!!” even when D is working in the next room. I’ve tried contemplating the sixteen separate projects that each need individual attention, but it’s no use. I don’t want to do the busy work today (even if it’s great busy work that I love. . . like learning a Schumann or Beach cycle).

Instead I went for a tiny walk so that I could remember what it is to be alive in this city, and my head began to buzz with background chatter come full center. The never-ending theoretical debate of what it would take to heal our collective soul, why I still sometimes contemplate running in front of a passing bus, what my mother thinks about decisions that have long since been made, and a recent conversation with someone who used to be a close friend.

I had rather expected said conversation to be short, awkward, and informative. It really wasn’t any of these, but something more. . . human? I retreated to old self-patterns, quick to apologize, reticent to outwardly blame (though I’m sure the indirect blame read clearly). I fell back to a strong pattern of humanity-shame, a trait that has in many ways defined my early twenties; a trait I have been actively rejecting in my late twenties (That’s right! I’m twenty-six, thank you very much).

Humanity –shame is the product of a perverted thinking whereby I intentionally reject the parts of myself that are unpleasant, imperfect, or embarrassing. When I pretend that I haven’t just had a petty thought about another person, it is because of my humanity-shame. The same when I hide my disappointment from another to save hir feelings. Also when I take all possible blame for an incident that clearly involves two or more people. It’s the result of an effort I made to become a better person than I was in my late teens, combined with a really old tendency to avoid/mend all conflicts.

Basically, I noticed that it was no longer serving me on my current journey. Humanity-shame blocks my ability to truly connect to others on a human to human basis, because it seeks to uproot my own nature as a person. How can I truly empathize if I’m pretending to be an uber-robot? How can I give my partner my truest, my best self and love if I continually attempt to hide the unflattering parts of myself? If I’m never honest when he disappoints me? The truth is that I cannot be the person I want to be as an idyllic robot; I must be fully human to be a good person. Flaws and all.

It is my hope that this journey toward greater human-ness will define these next few years before giving way to another practical journey. I believe I once wrote, on this very blog, about wishing to be utterly perfect- greatest of patience, humble, giving. . . never needing anything. I see now the idealism of my earlier thoughts, and I love that part of myself, but I also recognize that it is folly to attempt to quash all of one’s humanity. My impatience, my greediness for all the lambie gummies in the Gummy Bag, my petty thoughts about others and their dramas, and my persistent need for attention cannot be suppressed into non-existence. These things must be experienced, accepted, and lived through in order to learn how to live beyond them.

It does not, as I may have previously believed, make me bad to have faults, to be a messy emotionalist, or to have needs. It seems to be one of the ironic truths of life that I cannot truly move past my shortcomings without first truly accepting them. It may sound cliché, but it’s all I’ve got for now.

2011-01-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

Don't you like to pretend to be someone else? I do, too. A form of escapism, perhaps? A way vitality has of surviving, trying to creep through the cracks of damage and proclaim its existence? An internal fighter trying to stake its spot in the eventuality of progress? My most recent attempt at evading personal reality involved giving the name Laura at Starbucks. Unfortunately, I happened to try the lone shop in NY with a cashier committed enough to compare my given name with the plastic name on my credit card, so that when my drink was called I was forced to claim my name and own my reality. No chance of escapism even in a simple ruse. . . I should have said Fabio.

In the deep part, the tender spot, a small question keeps sounding: am I depressed?

Can I handle the answer? I look honestly at the evidence- the crying, the unhappiness, the insatiable, unnameable need. The conflicting desire to be held always and to be alone with my shame.

No, I am not depressed. At least not clinically. I am not under the thumb of the old regime. Though in some ways this is a kind of depression, a pain born out of the separation of me with my true self, I am not in need of chemical supplements or extra therapy. Well, actually I wouldn't mind a second session per week. . .

But my real point is to claim for myself the truth that there is a cause in this current amorphous ennui. There is a point to it, there is a path out of it, and it does not lie in the direction of a comparably simple label of depression. I am not myself these days and I can not hide it, even when I desperately want to. So much energy it would take to block up the obvious space in my eyes. To force a genuine smile takes so much effort when one really would prefer to cry.

What is so wrong with crying, anyways? It's embarrassing, a whiny voice declares. It's messy, the practical voice adds. But I need it, I counter. And I do.

What space could possibly be enough for my sadness? How did so much sadness gather? Whenever I begin to let it be free I become terrified that I will spew tears and sadness into the stratosphere without end, and so I try my hardest to contain the sadness, judge how much is appropriate to release, and adhere to those arbitrary levels.

Sometimes I just let go, and though it feels good to do so, there is always a critical voice inside, fearing that such shows are too much. Inevitably I feel embarrassed at owning such sadness. Where does the embarrassment come from? Constantly that word picks away at the best parts of myself. Slowly it devours my new resolves and crushes my newer senses of possibility and hope.

I wish I had a bit more hope.

Scars

2010-11-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

When I think about scars odd things come to mind. I’m referring specifically to the literal concept of scars, as opening the topic of figurative scars would necessitate a much bigger format.

I have a lot of scars, which is weird to realize. Does my tattoo count as a scar? I wonder. The permanent marks that are on my body that weren’t there at my birth. . . I wonder if the bright red stretch marks across my recently enlarged belly will disappear someday. Will they, too, be a permanent reminder of a past indulgence?

How many scars do I have? Well, there’s the large slash mark across the back of my left hand, where I brushed up against the top of my old roommate’s toaster oven. It happened a year ago, and though it was painful, I never thought it would create a scar. Yet there it is- a slight discoloration, ovular and long, parallel to my knuckles. It could be a birthmark. Just this writing about it conjures up a tangible image of that apartment. It’s dinginess, the pungency of old cigarettes, the yellowed timbre of the light- I could be there right now. The loneliness, too, seems to hang about in that memory. There are the sounds of This American Life playing in the background, a distant online chat looming from the bedroom. This is what I get from pondering the back of my hand too long.

I am wearing a short-sleeved dress today, so the next scar I’m drawn to is a small constellation near the crook of my left elbow. Ever visible to me, rarely seen by others, these four lines are imperfectly lengthened and imperfectly paralleled. They shine from a distant time and sometimes I wonder if they persevere in existence primarily because I prize them so. Do I will these faint scars into persistence? Perhaps. These are battle scars, and they are the first of their kind on my body. I pause for a moment to do math that should be quick, but because it’s attached to emotion, to experience, to memory, it takes a bit longer. Eventually I figure a sum: 6 years plus a few months. . . 6 years plus a few eons.

Such a short time ago, really. These scars are from self-inflicted wounds. They are detritus from a time of pain. Actually they are from a time without pain, a time when I needed to feel something, when it was easier to feel a pain that I had control of than to let loose the pain within. That torrent would have been uncontrollable.

Eighteen years old and I had no clue what to do with anger. I was continually frightened that if I let the secret feelings I had out that they would destroy everything. I believed my anger didn’t exist, I forced myself to have almost no feelings beyond the utterly permissible. This resulted in my life as a sympathetic automaton, capable of generous thought but never able to truly hear or understand any depth of feeling. I think I would have stayed like that forever if I could have, terrified to look at my true feelings. But as luck, or god, or the Universe would have it, that was not an option.

Every scar seems to have an entire world within it, and I haven’t even begun to think about the small scars on my abdomen. Of course just typing that sentence makes those memories rise. Three discreet little lines, surgically created, neatly closed. A nicely punctuated belly.

I’m not sure what to say about this set of scars. What remains to be said? They are there. They are the remains of a great loss. They remind me of what it is to hope for love, to long for a relief to loneliness, and to be helpless in the midst of grief. These scars remind me that the life I lead could have been very different. As if I needed the scars to remind me.

As if much more than a day could go by without thinking about that time. There is a part of me that worries that I will forever live in the shadow of that time. Hope is the the thing with feathers, and I am perpetually singing the tunes without the words, but as yet my life is still very much affected by that particular procedure and everything that happened before and after it.

It was a particular kind of loneliness. I was alone and I was scared, and at the same time I had friends across the country willing to listen to me late into the night. Willing to assure me that things would be ok.

I don't think I have much else to say about scars. Or at least about these ones. There's still the tiny scratch from my childhood pet, and Good Goddess would that come with an entire chapter about that poor little kitten. I think that for today at least, this is enough.

Saturday Nights are Alright

2010-08-07T17:28:00.000-07:00

The completion of a heart? Impossible, maybe. What we long for, what I long for: to be understood. To be seen, to be recognized and felt with, and loved anyways. To say the unsayable and still be known. Is it a mirage? Is it an unachievable longing?

The little hurts bind together, in the pit of one’s gut. They merge and latch onto the parts that never cease. Loneliness is a sick master, dissipating at times only to surge forth again with greater resolve. I have found relief from such singularity so rarely. The loss of that relief starkly mocks the experience of compounded joy.

I suppose I’m feeling emo, which is an easy way to disregard the depth of my own feelings. It is so easy to mock oneself and then brush aside thoughts of sadness. Just a few minutes ago I was walking home past a playground where an eight year old was screaming in pain. His mother was walking away, ignoring him and leaving the park. He pleaded with her to wait, he just needed a minute, and she left anyways. His cries were desperate, sharp, painful. His cries touched me. They made the sadness in me more acute. I walked by with no way of helping him but to close my eyes in solidarity. Not to shut him out, just to feel it.

How lonesome to have such pain and watch as your god walks away, shaking her head and hoping you will grow up and learn to stifle your cries. As she learned to do so long ago.

I don’t know why I am so lonely tonight. I’ve been off all day. I could muster a few sorry reasons. I could ignore them and put on a face meant for happiness. All I feel like doing is burying. Digging a small, deep hole and throwing things into it. Throwing away my whimsies, my frustrations, my alabaster dreams. Then I’d really get down to the purging and rip out all the old hurts- they belong in a hole, too. I’d cut out my fears, my liver, my brain. So much of this comes from too much thinking.

Finally freed, I’d cover the hole in dirt and hubris and sit on it. Then I could be a simple automaton, a thing of beauty from where I’m seated now.

It hurts so much to live each day openly. To respond to pain with an open heart. To attempt in all things to give of myself instead of punishing. To attempt to live each interaction as a new thing instead of a dull repetition of past dialogues gone awry. It is exhausting.

I wish I could escape. I wish that I could imagine a day when I would know that the journey would forever be easier. I wish that when the good days came I could feel as though they might last forever, instead of the knowing that there will always be difficulties ahead. Today the difficulties are not exciting challenges. They mock my hopefulness.

Today I feel mildly hopeless. I count my gratitudes and I find them wanting, even though I know that I have more than my fair share. What is a fair share of gratitude, anyways?

How can I have so much and still feel so empty? Which is a funny question to see myself type, as I don’t feel empty at all. The problem in this moment is a lack of emptiness. I feel too much and I can’t seem to find a way of escaping it. I find nothing to draw myself out of my own self-satisfied moaning. Not that I’m satisfied, but that I seem to be enjoying my own pain. I’m not masochistic, per se, but I do seem to be wallowing in a martyr-like cloud.

I don’t want to feel like this anymore. In some ways I wish I could hide my head in the hole instead. Sleep a long, dreamless sleep while the processes of my body continue on their path toward healing without the constant commentary of my mind. It’s not that I want to give up so much as that I’m tired. I’m tired of training my soul to give more. I’m tired of counteracting the voices inside that speak defamatory screeds. I’m sick of having to actively conjure well-intentioned self-speak.

It’s very tiresome.

And I wish that I could feel less alone in this. I wish that when I spoke of this process I was met with more than a concerned eye, or the good intentions of understanding without ability.

I wish my experience was easy to relate to, and that I wasn’t the only one who saw my thoughts as such a thing of importance. I am so tired. Maybe there will be more hope tomorrow.

2010-08-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

The other night I left a concert because I needed space. I was sitting there in the audience, the first song was playing, and I felt so sad. I walked outside to get some air and I sat on the pavement next to the parking lot and I watched the sky get a little darker. I hugged my knees to my chest and I searched for what was wrong and I cried a little. I needed to leave.

I left.

I was walking across a darkened campus, shivering and feeling awful, when a thought emerged: I am so lonely. In that moment I felt so alone. Walking away from a concert filled with people, walking away carrying a hurt that seemed to defy sense but hurt nonetheless. It felt like I could never be understood, a sort of loneliness at its essence. I felt burdensome and loathsome and pariah-esque, and in that moment I considered walking to my car and smoking the rest of a pack of cigarettes I had earlier bought and fumingly smoked. I thought about getting in the car and driving away.

I felt like an embarrassment, some sort of twisted puzzle without a solution, a freakish girl who seems to refuse happiness, who subjects those she loves to the ridiculousness of her willful neuroses. I wanted to put myself in a long time out, and then I wanted to be chased after, to be reassured. I wanted to be told that my hurts were seen, that I was loved even with my hurts and my bruises and my sillinesses. I felt scared and prone to false dichotomy as images of angelic Boy and harpy Girl drifted by, carrying with them a particularly sharp suggestion that I didn't deserve the angel Boy with all my horridness. I should find a rock and disappear. If I kept quiet maybe I would slowly turn into sludge and enjoy the blissful ineptitude of thought enjoyed by slime the world over.

I hated these thoughts. They're the worst bits of myself, compounded and minced into a black chasm of grossness. I banished the worst of the thoughts, tried to put the rest of the terrible things on hold for a moment and headed to the room. Still, the thought of how lonely I felt hovered, almost luminous but for its weight. I could barely understand myself and I knew it was asking for a boon of a miracle, but I needed to be understood. I needed the me I was struggling with to be seen. I felt alone because I was hurting and I felt like I had to be convincing that the reason I was hurting was a valid reason, and if I couldn’t explain it well enough it would never be seen- I’d just be some crazy girl who makes everything harder than it has to be. Who cries over stupid little comments. Who so desperately wants to be peaceful and fun-loving and is terrified that all my little wounds will never be done wreaking havoc.

I had to be understood. I’m a skilled enough writer. . . why couldn’t I just sit down and explain it? The biggest and scariest question whittled itself down to “why is this such a big deal?” and I thought that if I could just explain it. . . If I could only show what I meant. . .

I can’t help that I hurt. I just do. I’m doing my best to take care of that hurt- to be open about it and learn more about what’s going on and not get lost in a sea of pain or hopelessness. I am already drafting contingency plans and small and large courses of action to change what about my life is making me unhappy. I’m trying to take care of my hurt, but I can’t control the fact that I hurt. I can’t control which circumstances set off this hurt, be they silly or socially valid. But I hurt.

When I got to the room I was firmly resolved to sit down and write the long sordid history of emily’s sexual orientation. I thought I’d just tell the story- how long it took to discover who I am, how many back and forths there have been, how many times I’ve been told that I was being ridiculous, how many times I’ve had to come out, how often being accepted by others has been contingent on so many things, how I subsisted for years on a sparse diet of external acceptance, how my orientation affected and affects that acceptance. . . It’s never been clear for me. It’s been a big struggle. A formative struggle.

I sat at my computer and wrote a few lame sentences. And by lame I really mean without the ability to move. I deleted them and began again, and the immensity of such a project overwhelmed me. The importance and the literal hugeness was too much in that moment.

I noticed my friend, K, online and I started chatting with her. Like me, K is a Queer lady in a straight relationship, but hers is a few years old. She’s out and a feminist and she was so empathetic. She struggles with the same thing that I’ve been bothered by, which though I haven’t been explicit yet, centers on making sense of myself as a non-straight woman in a monogamous heterosexual relationship.

One might ask why it’s such a big deal, to which I have no quick answer. Being out and Queer has been such a part of my life for the last 5 years, not to mention the prior closeted 3. Only one year ago I was fresh out of the first successful relationship I ever had, and it was with a woman. I moved across the country, leaving my beloved Bay Area for the decidedly less-Queer New York. I was sure that I had learned the biggest pieces of my orientation identity in the previous few months. I was sure (yet again) that I knew what I liked and would always like: women. I theoretically proposed that I might find some very rare male-bodied person who I would not dismiss if otherwise appealing, but I tended to say that with a strong sense of skepticism.

Then I was in Michigan, falling for a male, and the world turned around. But I was still Queer. A Dyke is allowed to fall for a man once in a while, especially if she still prefers women.

Then I was in New York, over-worked, typically under-slept, ill, detached, alone. I was too busy to find a new queer community. Too tired to do all the work involved, which is not to say that I made no effort, as I absolutely went on dates and tried to meet new people, but rather that it is terribly difficult work to nurture a new community. It takes consistency and attention and energy, which were running low after my summer and fall. Then came the winter and the whispers of spring.

Then I met the Boy.

Somehow I’ve settled into a magical arrangement: I love him, he loves me, and we laugh a lot. Simple, no?

What happens to your identity as a queer woman when you begin to contemplate a life-long heterosexual relationship? How do you define yourself? When you meet other queer people and you are standing next to your partner, how do you introduce yourself without bluntly inserting somewhere into the introduction, “Hello, I’m m and though I’m deeply in love with my boyfriend I’m not straight,”? What do you do when you suddenly discover that it’s Pride Sunday and you don’t even have a clue what kinds of festivities are going on in New York, nor do you have anyone to ask??? Or when yet again a lovely gay man assumes that you’re just another straight chick?

What happens, if you are me, is that you become filled with an overwhelming sadness. You begin to grieve for the part of you that you’ve lost, that you’ve let go missing. A part you fear may have disappeared forever. You begin to wonder what you can do to gain back those pieces, and ultimately, you realize that it’s very difficult to explain to non-Queers why it means so much to be Queer.

Being Queer is not like having been raised Catholic. It’s not like having been a Girl Scout. It’s neither a random bit of my history nor is it a part of my detached cultural background. Coming out as Queer- or rather, as Bisexual, then Lesbian, then Queer, was one of the first big ways that I gained self-acceptance. Furthermore, when I joined the Queer community, like it or not, I joined a dynamic that very much felt like Us vs. Them. You’re either family or you’re not. There are aspects of coming out as GLBTQ, of growing up, of discovering and searching, that cannot be explained the way they can be empathized. When I meet someone and I find out ze is Queer, I immediately feel a little closer to hir, even if we’re as different as can be in almost every other way. It’s a bond.

I know that I haven’t caught my thoughts about this yet. They’re still amorphous and drifting, and maybe they will never settle. Maybe that’s ok. I’m left with a directive from within to go out and forge a new community. I must discover again where I fit and how to go about in the world as a person with an irregular orientation identity.

Running

2010-07-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

Is there anything so delicious, dear reader, as a shower after a sweaty run?

Ah- I see your querulous eyebrow, my loyal or imagined reader. I see your question. To answer, you are absolutely right. It is even more delicious to pour yourself a glass of golden, dewy, belgian triple ale to take into the shower.

Oh?

That wasn't your question??

Oh. . . I see. You're confused by the subjects of running and your erratic writer in the same trajectory?

Well, I have a confession to make. Another Absolute to withdraw. I have, yet again, found myself on the brink of hypocrisy. Thank Goddess we all change with time. I, the sometimes-hater of all things running (oh, who am I kidding? The every-before-now-times-hater) have succumbed to the sweaty grave of throwing oneself about in the july heat of central park.

How did this happen? Huh.

I have a lot of memories of running. Rather, I have a lot of memories of wheezing, and burning, and being last in class to finish a mile. I'm clumsy and awkward and large. And I like things like hiking. And walking. And occasionally lifting weights or karate. Running has only rarely come across my radar as a possibility, and honestly, it has existed mostly as a punishment.

As in, 'I'm feeling fat and ugly and that means I'm bad, so I should feel bad. I know! I'll go running through Easttown at 5AM.' *Cough* Yeah, at the time I think I actually believed I was going to stick with my flagellistic plan and run and run and lose weight and not feel so terrible. It was a poorly crafted plan.

Or there was the time before that when my mother and I were members of a gym and would use the running machines. God were those awful.

I have many times explained to people that 'I am just not a runner'. I would accept that maybe, possibly, for some people running might bring a speck of enjoyment (or at least not be complete and utter torture), but I was just not one of those crazies. From time to time a person might respond that maybe I just didn't have the right information before trying to run- maybe I hadn't warmed up enough, or stretched enough (uh- warming up? STRETCHING?!? HAH!! I uh, I mean, of course I, uh. . . well, no- it's just that I just hate running. Period.).

And then. Enter a period of time filled with bad body thoughts. It seems to me that we all have these periods from time to time, but it has been a long time since I felt this badly for this lengthy a time. So I thought about what to do.

I was feeling fat and shameful, and like my body was a useless sort of sack. The curves that I'm usually so pleased with- the softness that I mostly love, because it is me and I am it- began to be loathsome. I'm a big girl. I'm tall and I'm curvy, and rounded in some places and though most people are terribly surprised to learn it, I weigh more than 200 lbs.

Most of the time, at the very least, I like me. I like my belly and my breasts and my feet and my thighs (ok, well, my thighs are maybe something I feel neutral about more than positive, per se, but I'm imperfect, so. . . ) you get the point. My tummy is a part of me, so why would I actively engage in hating it?

Lately, though, it's been a struggle. I added a few more pounds to my frame. Happily added -eating ice cream and drinking beer with the Boy- but pounds nonetheless. And I've gotten a little squishy about the edges. Usually when I look in a mirror I can see the imperfections with a reasonable head and still appreciate what is nice, but of late all I've been able to look at is my profile, and how un-flat my stomach is. And how squiffy I'm becoming. And how if I continue this way I'm not only going to be unlovable, but I will have to smash my mirrors and eat bran for the rest of my days.

I hate bran.

I was unhappy, so I did my usual. I examined my life to see if there was something to change to create a greater sense of peace. I just wanted to be able to look in the mirror and be proud. The thing is, I don't think I'm actually eating that much bad food. Yes, I do drink beer, AND I enjoy ice cream from time to time, but this isn't really new. It's just more of the same. I haven't added much weight, so that's not really a concern either, but I felt a need to feel good in my body.

And a funny thought occurred to me: Maybe I should start running.

At this point, I have gone running the past six days in a row, which I learned today may be a bit over-doing it. It's been so fun, though, that I haven't wanted to skip. I feel strong and accomplished. There's no burning, no coughing, no essence of self-punishment at the edges. There's me, and there's my competition with myself, and there's my renewed respect for what my body can do all mixing together and busting out through the seams of a glowing smile on my face.

I feel elated. I feel strong and capable. I love the feeling of growth. And I know, I know, I should take some recouperation time to let my body adjust. I will, I will. That's tomorrow and maybe even Friday.

It's amazing to become older and watch the shades of gray mince amongst the world. I have made so many absolute statements- I will never date men again, I will never speak to ___ again, I could never be a runner, I could never date a meat-eater, or eat meat myself (ok, I'm still a veggie for now and the foreseeable future)- I love living through those times into this one, where I am given the opportunities to discover who I am in different situations, with all their complexities and chaos and wonder. It's beautiful to be able to flow with change. Which is not to say that it's easy, but when it happens I am pleased.

Who knows what obscenity I'll be up to next. . .

A Poem

2010-07-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

To love you is such a simple thing
I open my eyes, I breathe, and there it is
smiling into my eyes,
with its lovely fingers twining about mine

Some moments it is so big there is a swelling
in the space behind my navel,
and my belly feels full of warmth and knowing

and a poignant not-knowing

I look at our love
and I know I cannot know its birth

I don’t remember if it lay in the shallows, waiting,
between my toes,
while I looked for you without knowing your face

I don’t remember if it sat, curled and sleeping,
somewhere within me,
or if it tagged along one midwinter morning,
when I was too busy to notice a small shift in the wind

Sometimes I am curious,
as it stares at me and I smile at it,
and I wonder if I am allowed to ask our love
a few polite questions-

I wonder if emily post would argue,
or if our love could speak what it would say,
and how

I wonder if it would speak with the voice of divinity,
a rumbling vibration of velvet or stars

would it be lighter than wisps of candy cotton,
soaring through the space between us-

I wonder if it would say anything at all,
or if it would just take my hand in the gray morning
and hold it

gently.

Ho-Hum

2010-07-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

At this particular moment in time, I feel exhausted.

My uterus has been stuck in a perpetual ache for the last seven days. My right flip-flop, previously purchased for the rare price of $2 at a local Target, has worn through in a patch at the heel, subjecting my tender skin to the harsh realities of New York pavement- glass, rubble, refuse. My plans to attend Shakespeare in the Park tonight have been flouted by the idiosyncrasies of the virtual ticketing process. And perhaps most tiresome of all is the absence of my most favorite person.

The sky has been particularly beautiful today- a sort of creamy landscape above the building tops, accented by wispy clouds and bright sunshine. There is nothing actually wrong in the world today, and there is even quite a bit right with it, but I feel wistful despite myself. I feel like curling up and sleeping for a few days, which is so unlike me. I crave comfort- a delicious bath, a rich chocolate delicacy, a gentle touch to the center of my back.

The prospect of socializing sounds positively dreadful. So does the prospect of traveling across and up town to my bed. My bed which is covered in the various leftovers and paraphernalia from the last few months of sleeping away from home- stopping by only for deposits and withdrawals from my wardrobe or bookshelf. I am as yet unwilling to put the things away, for though they constantly irritate me with their disorder, I loathe the idea of occupying a bed solo, with only the help of two teddy bears.

Perhaps I ought to just buy a beer or two, bring 'em home, and watch a few movies. Maybe I’ll finish Doctor Who.

Resurfacing Poetry

2010-06-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

I was looking through some of my old writings today in search of something in particular, when I came upon this old piece. I wrote it sometime in the fall/winter of 2006/7. I think I like it again.

It's amazing the different opinions one can have about one's earlier work. Usually re-reading my stuff makes me cringe a bit. My writing is so often time/place-specific that re-reading a piece brings me back to where I was when I wrote it, which is often not a pleasant experience. But This poem is speaking to me in a different way today.

So here it is-

Feelings of weight and poise, simultaneously pulling and pressing the skin on my arms toward a place unknown; reaching for a glass that moves mid-blink and knowing I must reach all the same. Without cause or purpose, agenda off missing in action, sending its notes back anonymously. Following their backward prods with one eye on the door and one finger on the trigger. Maybe I could squeeze if I wanted to, but I'll never know because the sound of opportunity is always beyond the next door. Working and running through a world colored only in a heightened shade of gray, distinguishing a base immorality on the surface of every smile, never judging why. Waiting for the order to push through another window, to break another fist, always blaming the pain on that faceless voice, mind paralyzed by the thought that it might come from within. Name-dropping and show-stopping for all I'm worth, which, after the run, isn't much. The ruin and the rain and the sleet, all beating my head and my back.

But the word is yes, and I will try, and that is, in a word, all.

Reading List, 2010 Thus Far

2010-06-09T09:45:00.001-07:00

So. One of my goals this year has been to read as much as possible. A few years ago, after I dropped out of Calvin the last time, I set myself a goal of reading 10,000 pages in that year. I surpassed that goal, but then felt like it had been an arbitrary goal post, as reading middle school literature adds pages more quickly than more difficult tomes. So this year I have not been judging by counting chapters or pages or words, but I have been trying to keep a list of the titles. And I've gotten a bit lax of late.

Therefore, as the year is almost half over (sheesh!) and I'm almost 25 (Huzzah!!) I thought I'd post a list of the year in books thus far, so that when the year is finished I can more readily evaluate my progress. And I am admittedly curious, so I'm going to list page numbers here as well.

Maybe I'll rate them, too. . .

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen (331)

Naked, David Sedaris (224)

Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott (239)

The Somnambulist, Jonathon Barnes (384)

One Big Happy Family, Rebecca Walker (288)

Searching for Mary Poppins, Susan Davis and Gina Hyans (320)

The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell (248)

The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby (140)

Hamlet, Shakespeare (171) Admittedly for Humanities

Candide, Voltaire (144) Also for Humanities

Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and me, Elizabeth, by e.l. Konigsburg (117)

The Prydain Chronicles (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, The High King), Lloyd Alexander (701)

Litttle Bee, Chris Cleave (266)

Push, Sapphire (177)

The Prisoner's Wife, asha bandele (219)

Crooked Little Heart, Anne Lamott (324)

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, J.D. Salinger (92)

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, Carl Sagan (304)

Atonement, Ian McEwan (368)

Whew!! Which makes a grand total of 5,057 pages read since Jan 1st. Crazy how it's almost exactly half the 10,000 mark. . .

Recent Excerpt

2010-06-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if stars can be jealous or sympathetic. I don’t think that stars have feelings, but it’s amazing to me how much power I have given them in my life.

It’s amazing how much power they have given me.

When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter at all to me if stars are benevolent beings or personified lights or epically distant clusters of reacting chemicals- what matters is the feeling I get whenever I look at them. I really do mean whenever, as even in passing an upwards glance met by stars is ultimately an invitation for time to stop. Or maybe just to slow. But a warmth touches my heart (or some viscera at least near my lungs) and again something catches. I lose all interest in watching where I step, so long as that light is flowing directly into my retinas. So long as that feeling of profound connectedness, of ancient wisdom or guidance, or perhaps even the simple but unprecedented feeling of being nurtured is there, then I can feel like there is still beauty in life- like my life is worth living. And that is all that matters to me.

Balancing without Acts

2010-05-26T19:13:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how to walk a balance beam and trust that it’s not going to move of its own accord. It seems the most natural thing in the world to me that it should suddenly toss me off, or that a gigantic gap might appear, or an earthquake might force me off. I know what to do when the unexpected happens. When the center of my gravity is shifted without my approval, or when the only ground allowed to me is removed. Uncertainty and disloyalty I can deal with, but security? What is that? How do I take care of myself in such untenable circumstances? How can I possibly cope with a secure balance beam?

Either way, I needed something and I couldn’t grasp it in that moment. Walking on a thinly edged balance beam, arms stretched toward the ends of my vision, seeking some semblance of a straight path. For all the pressing on thin air my palms do, every second or third step comes only after an intense wobbling- an almost catastrophe. And there are no mirrors with which to watch the terror creep up in me. I walk, toe to heel, toe to heel, focused so intently upon my next step that I am utterly ambushed by the sudden cramp, the seemingly unavoidable tension that wracks my ankle, grips my leg, and threatens my body with collapse. It is all I can do to pause mid-step without flailing my arms toward some imagined pole or arm. Anything to keep from the desperation of a fall. Anything.

And the unintuitive reality is that the more I reach for help, after the fear has set, when I’m shaky and threateningly near a meltdown, the more I seek to grip, to squeeze tighter on whatever air is before me, the less secure I am.

I must put my arms out, straight as the wings of a blue jay on the soar. I must step. Only one foot at a time- That is all. Toe to Heel. And again Toe to Heel. And I must learn to breathe. Breathing with each step. Breathing between each step. Breathing to fill my arms with soul. Breathing- that simple action I can repeat without fear- to remind myself that the beam below my feet is solid and beautiful. It goes on and on and my feet are sure upon it. I can learn to let the old expectations pass.

Joy Joy Joy

2010-03-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

I realize that I've been absent from this blog for an inordinate amount of time, and I'm sorry. Life has been just about as busy as possible.

Between 4 part-time jobs and school, there hasn't been much time for deep ponderings or feminist rants to be transposed to the blogosphere. Even now, this update isn't to discuss anything thought-provoking. I'm just really, really happy.

I met someone, and it's springtime and I'm in love. I'm a little crazy about this guy. I feel as though everything is right with the world, as though I'm walking a golden path set straight ahead of me. Perhaps I'll devote another blog entry to the difficulty of identifying as queer while in a heterosexual relationship. Perhaps not. At this moment I just wanted to share my joy.

Because it's pure joy.

2010-02-02T21:08:00.000-08:00

I do not know how to make my life work.

I officially have way too much to do and not enough time to do it. No, it's not exams week or mid-terms. I don't have any out-of-the-ordinary expectations on my time.

This is just life, and I don't know how to make it work. Too much to learn- too much to see and hear and speak. Too many friendships to grow and maintain and love. I love everything that I'm doing, but feel unable to devote enough to anything. I want to be totally committed to so many things and people and projects.

Can I give up sleep for the month of February?

Recently Read: One Big Happy Family, Searching for Mary Poppins, and The Somnambulist

Pretentious

2010-01-05T23:10:00.001-08:00

I was feeling rather down for most of today. Feeling out of sorts or down usually prompts me to examine my gut and figure out what's causing the problem. Today was no different and thus I spent a good majority of my solitary driving time lost in thought. I seemed to be no closer to understanding my sadness (though a great deal sadder for all the trying) when a very clear thought cut through the noise:

I want to be

The sort of person who has an endless supply of patience-
The sort who can simply listen and validate others without needing to press her own worth-
The sort who sees the inherent and genuine good in all she meets-
The sort who knows intrinsically that she is a thing of value, and thus doesn't have to constantly seek validation or value from her surroundings. . .

In short, I want to be super-human.

I am continually frustrated by my shortcomings. I know the argument that one's shortcomings provide the lessons for one's journey. I even believe that argument, but that doesn't mean it's fun to live through the times of utter humanity. Well, at least not always.

I get so tired of growing. I find myself longing for things, for status, for roles, and for people that I somehow believe will fulfill me. I self-righteously proclaim that I know things cannot fill me or make me feel whole. I know. I've heard about the AA god-shaped hole. I'm not 'simple-minded' enough to believe that getting the job, car, house, etc. will make me happy or finally put me at the level where I can sit back and relax til check-out time.

No, not me. I know that that stuff is all empty if you don't have awareness or actualization or whatever other big word I choose for the day.

I clearly know everything, so how is it that I find myself longing for the day when my career will be launched- with the direct expectation that such a day will surely bring with it a sense of total completion in that arena of my life? I find myself thinking of an imaginary future significant other who will not complete me (that would be silly!) but will give me a sense of arrival and I won't feel lost ever again?? Because that's totally different from being completed by a partner, right?

I find myself thinking that the things and people I long for will push me into the next stratosphere, where I will no longer feel down at times and where I will not have to work so hard at hiding my humanness. And in the same thought I look down my nose at others who believe that someday a partner will make them feel whole.

I smell hypocrisy. . .

The funny thing is, I go through a lot of extra hoops trying to avoid thinking that I'm better than others. I spend a lot of time looking for how I am related to others- our commonalities, our shared trials. I abhor the idea of thinking oneself better than others. . . and yet I do it all the time.

I see someone sneer at a homeless person as ze passes by, and I stiffen my neck a bit. I watch lovers quarrel over something petty and my eyebrows shift slightly while the corners of my mouth raise the tiniest bit. A hundred times every day I make split second comparisons between myself and the people around me, and when I decide that I come out ahead, I feel pleased.

Once upon a time I based these comparisons on things like how one dressed or who one's friends were or what books one read (ok, I still do this sometimes), but basically I compared your external status frills with mine. This is not how I think so much today- which is probably why I'm so darned self-righteous. See? See Me? I don't judge whether I'm better based on socioeconomic level! Or style! Or culture!! HaHAH! I have graduated beyond such pettiness and have moved on. . . to the same pettiness re-packaged based on where you are on your personal journey.

Instead of judging your clothing or what you scored on the last test, I've moved on. How grateful are you? Really?? How much do you take your anger out on others? Are you more honest than me? Damn!

And this is better somehow? *sighs*

Why am I so obsessed with the idea of better? The concept of 'better' by definition requires a comparison, which just leads to trouble if you're trying to be at peace on your journey. I acknowledge that sometimes comparison can be a truly helpful thing -it can be a powerful motivator- but the flip-side of that coin is the possibility of obsessively looking to others to gauge whether or not one can be happy, and that is a foolish method of trying to attain any sort of meaningful or lasting joy.

I guess this is really just me trying to hold myself accountable. I'm putting it out there that I know, deep down, that I'm not actually holier than anybody. I also realize that I am my own harshest critic, despite all my countless pep talks and lectures about being gentle with the self.

I just have to continue to remind myself: It's ok that I'm not a super human. Though I wouldn't mind being able to fly. . .

Currently Reading: Bird By Bird

Loving Oneself When Things are Good and One's Brain is Bad

2010-01-03T18:38:00.001-08:00

It's shocking how difficult it is to stay positive when things are going well.

Shocking and annoying.

Life has been full of unexpected joy and brilliance lately. My first semester back at school (4th attempt at college) went incredibly well, especially considering the health setbacks. Coming back to New York after my visit to Michigan for Christmas, I was surprised by a multitude of warm feelings for this city- it felt good to be home after being gone for a week. This Thursday I start my first professional gig as a singer in this, the city at the center of the performing arts world. While working last Thursday, my boss casually asked me if I would mind taking a week off school at the end of the month to accompany her on her vacation to the Bahamas.

There's more. Friday I was living in the tiniest excuse for an apartment with a dog and her man who smokes and has loud sex, and the next day I was moving into a palace. I'm almost not exaggerating, either. My new room is more than two times the size of my old room, with a (small) walk-in closet and personal vanity nook with sink and mirror. It came with a bed (a real one, no air mattress any more!), a dresser, a desk. . . I could use another bookshelf, but only because I have too many books. The apartment also comes with a guest room, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a professional cleaner every two weeks. I'm only paying $60 more per month. Did I mention it's the same distance to school? It's a quicker commute, though, as the bus stop is barely outside my door. Health Nuts, my favorite health food store, is right across the street, too.

It's Sunday and I have been full of such excitement for the past three days. I've carted almost all my things via minivan the requisite few blocks, and I've unpacked and alphabetized my books. I am excited about today and tomorrow and the next day. I'm full of gratitude,

So Why Do I Feel So Damned Mopey???

I keep looking around, wondering when I'm going to screw it up. Today I've caught myself at least 3 times inwardly berating myself for being behind on homework. Of course, as it is Break, I have no homework. I conveniently remember this only after a sufficient moment of shame has taken precedence. It seems every quiet moment today finds me listlessly searching the ceiling for proof that I have done something for which I ought to be ashamed. This is infuriating.

I will say that I am pleased that it has taken this long for me to begin to search for the other shoe and its impending drop. Usually at the first sign of the possibility of goodness I am transformed into the Magical Harbinger of Pessimistic Boding. I haven't been skeptical of any of the good things in my life of late until today.

Ah, but can I focus on this little bit of goodness? Of Course Not. I must, it seems, zero in on the gaping fact that I have yet again failed at being a perfectly positive person. I eventually succumbed to the dark side of misgivings and shame-seeking. I am a failure.

Or so says that annoying recurrent voice in my head. Ugh. It's so obnoxious. At least it's not the only voice vying for attention in my skull. There's still a pretty loud voice yelling 'Bullshit' every time that sick masochistic voice cries failure.

Perhaps to spite the truth-telling voice that sick bastard piece of me doesn't stop with the failure line. I push onward with the self-deprecatory monologue (is it a dialogue? Can you have a dialogue with yourself if the conversation is hypothetical and only semi-conscious??) and I find every instance of petty conversation I've taken part of in the last week. I'm sad to say it's a lot more often than I'd like.

I think back on every time I interacted with someone new, someone I wanted to like me, and I see a caricature-esque version of the conversation in front of me. I hear the whiny, neediness of my words. I see the desperation in my anecdotal and self-absorbed discussion pieces. And I want to crawl further into my new comfy bed and hide.

It's not a debilitating sort of situation, and I'm mostly aware of the fact that my current replay of all those conversations is a bit distorted, but -frankly- it's annoying as hell to be spending this kind of energy rooting around in the recesses of my present experience trying to find things to be upset about.

WHY CAN'T I JUST ACCEPT GOOD FORTUNE WITH GRATITUDE??

End of story.

Finis.

Right? Apparently not. At least not for tonight.

My boss often says that the good thing about music as a career is, especially for me, that I will never be bored with it. I will never tire of trying to be better at it as one can never truly perfect the art of music. It's a double-edged sword.

The same is true of life, it seems, though I haven't seemed to truly accept this yet as I still endeavor to do things perfectly to some point. "Progress Not Perfection" should be drilled into the backs of my hands on days like this, because for the life of me, I can't seem to forgive myself.

You see, logically I accept that it's perfectly normal to have a day where one feels a bit down, or a bit skeptical about one's situation. One won't feel bursting with gratitude every single day. So you have a day that's a bit mopey! So What?!? It only becomes a real problem when one loses the ability to see that very large picture and instead gets held up on the individual day. Ahem.

I can't forgive myself for being mopey instead of grateful. Not today. The best I can do today is to get comfortable, make some tea, and watch a bit of whichever program I find most appealing, because sitting on my bed, contemplating my belly button and the state of my immense failures is incredibly unproductive.

And not helpful at all.

Currently Reading: I've been behind- finished 9/10 volumes of The Sandman, Water for Elephants, and something else which is slipping my mind. Currently working on Naked and volume I of the Diary of Anaïs Nin.

Short Story, Not Particularly Uplifting

2009-12-22T13:00:00.000-08:00

His mother was in the next room, snoring away on the sofa. Every other moment a particularly potent gurgle would escape, wafting into his bedroom. He thought it sounded like a baboon lost in the throes of a powerful dream. He focused on the large bottle of beer at his feet. He had only just opened it, his third of the evening, and he was trying to decide if he should have left it in the fridge.

Another loud snarl from beyond the door to his room caused him to jump. He swore aloud with the usual, unimaginative words as he scrambled to pick up the bottle, trying to salvage as much of the remaining 20 or so ounces. He licked his fingers before grabbing an old towel. The beer wasn't tasty so much as it was chemically reactive. These days he needed every drop to make a proper escape.

He sopped up the mess as best he could, wiped his hands, and took another swig before sitting back on the edge of his bed. An unbelievably growl-like snore erupted next door, and he scowled at his door and its inability to block the sound, muffle the irritations of his mother's sleep, or protect the sanctity of his brooding. He turned his tv on in an effort to create his own soundtrack. Settling quickly on the mundane dregs of cable television, he dropped the remote and assumed the most comfortable position fo the contemplation of self-pity.

Knees wide apart, elbows propped firmly atop them, forehead cupped in both palms. . . he occasionally ran a single hand through his hair for good measure. He was absolutely serious about the bleakness of his situation. His phone sat a few feet away, near his pillow. He did not look at it.

He really had no choice in the matter. No choice other than which beer to swallow whole. What else was there? Perfectly on cue his phone lit up and buzzed. He lowered his head a bit more, as if attempting to smell his own neck. He swatted halfheartedly at a mystery fly buzzing between his head and his phone. The buzzing ended.

What choice did he have? Yes, it was true that he had agreed to call earlier. But, well, clearly that was impossible. He took a long draught off his bottle and paused. When he closed his eyes the feeling in his head was muted, a barely floating feeling. No, he would need more than beer tonight.

Come to think of it, he thought as he reached clumsily under his bed, he couldn't recall the last time beer had been enough. He pulled out a few empty bottles which he quickly discarded directly into a pile of old clothes. As his fingers grasped on of the bottles he sought, a couple of words whispered their way through his mind.

No, he unscrewed the cap of his rum, I don't have a drinking problem. He chuckled a bit. The only drinking problem I have is too many empty bottles and not enough full ones. He threw his head back and tossed down another dose of burning. It tasted slightly like old medicine.

Exactly what he needed: a little medicine for the soul. It must surely have been located near his pancreas, judging by his choice in cures. He chased with a sip of beer, which left a rather nasty taste in his mouth, almost like old vomit. The rum was quick, though, and he wouldn't be bothered by the taste in his mouth for long.

Why on earth did she want him to call? He knew they would talk about nothing. Some fanciful nothing that would degenerate into nerdy allusions, later into sexual overtones and lust in her voice. Why wouldn't he call her?

He simply couldn't. He was so tired of lying- of pretending to be good. Sooner or later she would see. He would falter, she would wake-up, but either way if he kept on, she would realize that he was. . .

Well, he knew that she was better. That she deserved better. And that she didn't want him, at least not the real him. He'd been careful to tuck that bit away. He felt full of agency, full of portent and power. He felt proud of his choice in the matter. It didn't occur to him that his powerful choice had been to do nothing, so he wasn't bothered by any silly notions of irony.

It did occur to him, however, that he hadn't heard a snore in a very long time. A dope-ish grin crept over his face, looking quite out of place amidst the general aura of brooding. He picked up his jacket and cigarettes and with the mistaken grace of a drunk he opened his door and attempted to creep outside. His mother didn't stir.

Thank God she's finally out, he thought as he filtered the air through his cigarette. He held his first drag in his lungs for a moment, felt the pressure as the smoke pushed against his chest and the nicotine smuggled itself into his blood stream. When he finally let go of the breath it was with a sense of relief- a cool release. Outside the cold air numbed his thoughts to a slow state- speed he could readily ignore. He looked at a tree instead, its branches, its few remaining leaves- lost, forlorn, but oddly right where they should be.

He smudged his cigarette out in the dirt, dropped the butt into an old coffee canister, and went back inside. His head was putting up a good fight against the swim of intoxication, and he smiled as he caught himself on the railing after missing the last step or two.

He looked at his mother, lying on the couch, mouth open. Still no more snores. He paused- no sounds at all. He picked up a blanket and went over to her, quietly as a drunken dog in a nursery. He piled the blanket atop his mother, pleased that she didn't stir after his gentle endeavor. He leaned in and kissed her forehead. She felt cold and he was glad to have been thoughtful enough to grab a blanket. With the further concern of a man on the verge of passing out, he stumbled back to his room and wedged his door shut.

The tv was still on. He lay down and rested his head. He reached behind his head to pull out his phone, which had been interrupting the smoothness of his pillow. His brow furrowed as he examined the phone with more directness than he had dared earlier. He briefly considered calling her, coming up with some excuse to explain the hour. . . ?

But he didn't want her to think him a drunk. His thoughts were becoming extremely muddled, and he opened the contacts directory on his phone. Seeking further intoxication, he scrolled to the N section, past 'Nadia', straight to an entry simply labeled 'No'. He pressed the glowing green button and listened as the phone rang in his ear.

The old voice answered, annoyance painted thickly. Even in his state, though, he could hear the underlying eagerness. She was terrible at hiding. He mumbled something indistinct, which she took for an invitation.

"I haven't heard from you in two months, and now you want me to come over?"

He mumbled something even less distinct.

"Well, give me 20 minutes."

And before he could reply she had hung up, which was just as well, as the only reply he was capable of anymore was a gentle snore.

Outlook

2009-12-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

The other day I was talking with my boss while driving around Staten Island. As is our usual habit, we were deeply entrenched in the business of solving the problems of the world and the human heart (with lots of philosophizing thrown in for good measure) when a new-to-me way of thinking about the differences between people came up.

It seems to me that people fall into one of three groups. The first group is comprised of ungrounded dreamers. You know the sort- they go through life with the belief that everything is perfectly fine the way it is. It's not that they see the best in things so much as that they don't really see the things in front of them. They live in a dreamworld. This is really a rather small group, as it's pretty impractical to live everyday lost in thought, pondering what it would be like to fly south with the geese for winter.

The second group is full of people who live in today. Sure, today is a little miserable, it's kind of cold actually, but it's today. Tomorrow's not here, and hey- it's just going to be another version of this miserable day (which thus far is indistinguishable from yesterday), so why think about it too much? And when life throws rotten fruit at you, well, that's life. You keep doing what you've been doing. It's not as though things could be different. No one's ever truly happy, and besides, you didn't want to be happy anyways.

The third group is filled by those who dream of possibility. These people live in the world today, but they do not accept that this is the way life has to be. They imagine that their hopes could become realities, and then they make them happen. They interact pragmatically, but they are always considering that the life they think about while waiting for sleep could become their reality.

It's true that no one lives their entire life solely in one of these groups- we all dabble in all of these outlooks from time to time, but I think it's fair to say that most people spend the majority of their day-to-day lives in one of these modes of reality. I'm sure I've neglected some other group(s) in the process of creating three boxes for every individual to fit into, but my point is not to create a highly tuned system for filing people away. Rather, I think it's helpful to realize this particular difference in the ways that people approach their reality.

For example, I think I spend a lot of my time in the third group. I'm happy with my life for the most part (despite the volumes of complaints this blog is collecting) but I'm not content to sit back and passively live in the world. I want to affect change, both in my personal experience and in my community. I have dreams. I have hopes for what my life will be. And I find it incredibly frustrating to spend a lot of time with those content to live their life in the second group. To interact with people filled with potential, filled with dreams of far off happiness, but lacking the agency to begin any sort of journey towards those dreams. Content to be miserable. Wallowing in mediocrity.

Ok, perhaps that last bit was a bit harsh. I may have been thinking about individuals instead of pontificating about an entire group of people. . . (because one is so much better than the other. . . hmmm) but what I'm trying to get at is that it can be difficult to explain thoughts and actions to people who don't live in the same sort of reality. People who don't see the possibility of change, let alone believing in its possibility, have difficulty understanding why someone would spend hir energy trying to change things.

I'm not sure if I think this is fascinating or horrifying. It's pretty helpful when building new relationships to determine if the people involved share the same concept of reality. In my experience it's exhausting trying to convince someone else that ze not only has the right to dream or that hir dreams are possible, but that dreaming of the future is essential. Now that I think on it, I'm inclined to be more conscious of this when making new friends.

Just Desserts

2009-12-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

Today I was going through a notebook from two months ago. I found the following:

I deserve to be more than a rebound. I deserve to be with someone who takes care of hirself. I deserve someone who wants to be sober for a good portion of hir life. I deserve someone who loves hirself. I deserve someone intelligent and optimistic. I deserve someone who generally thinks well of people. I deserve someone who wants me for me, not for my being hir not-ex. I deserve to be with someone who takes joy in the world. I deserve to be with someone who is a great dancer.

This sentiment seems particularly poignant lately. I have always settled on lovers who do not fit this description, and not just because of the dancing bit (which, by the way, refers to taking great joy in dancing and not actual skill). I have long felt as though I were starving for acceptance, such that I have attempted to sustain myself with partners who were neither compatible nor appropriate.

Trying to squeeze blood from a beet and all that.

The thing is, though, I haven't been starving for acceptance for a long time. I've had an amazing community for several years now- women and men who are there for me both when I need them and even when I don't. Almost a year ago I realized for the first time that not only do I like myself, but I think I'm pretty fantastic. Life is great, and I am terribly excited about the future.

So when I look back over this summer and fall, at choices I made and situations I encouraged, I find it difficult to understand my overtly self-destructive actions. If I like myself, if I'm not anemic from lack of love, then why would I allow such an unhealthy liaison to flourish? Why did I put myself in the midst of what I knew, even then, to be an ill-suited situation?

The reason is that I have never stopped to acknowledge that I'm not starving anymore. To continue with the food analogy: I remember once reading a dieting tip in a magazine suggesting that one eat more slowly, as it takes 20 minutes for your stomach to send the message to your brain indicating that you're full. There's a time delay and if you don't realize that you're full you'll continue to nom down on whatever's on your plate. . . maybe you'll even add more.

Which is not to say that I promote diets, but rather that there has been a serious time differential between walking about in the world with new-found self-esteem and self-respect and realizing this new state of being. I've been wandering about thinking I'm still empty when, in fact, I have all I need.

Which means I don't have to settle for shit.

. . .

I don't have to settle. I have the ability to think about what I deserve, not just what I need. I don't need a partner to make me feel special or loved or accepted. I deserve a partner who fits, and if a potential partner doesn't really fit, then I'm better off on my lonesome.

This is not marvelously easy to write, less easy to publish into the ether of the net, and far less easy to put into practice. However, I feel that it is true in the pit of my stomach, in that bit of viscera behind my belly button. I don't need a someone. I would like someone, but not just anyone will do. I deserve someone wonderful.

And I am willing to wait.

LackLuster Faith and Keeping On

2009-11-18T20:51:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a while, but geez, what a month. Sometimes it feels like this horrid month will never be over (I mean, it only just passed the two week mark), but then I realize that after next week it's December, and I think:

Well, Fuck.

This month has been such a challenge thus far, which is a nice change from all the boring months I've been having lately. Really. I mean, life is beautiful and breath-taking and brilliant and all sorts of other fantastic b-words, but it is also just plain hard. It is so unbelievably hard sometimes that it makes my breath almost hurt, and let's face it, there aren't any nerves for sensing pain in breath- it's just air after all, so life must be REALLY hard to be giving my breath pain receptors.

I mean, whose idea was it for me to take an ice-pic to my heart and split it into bits for scattering across the country? It's as though I'm a bit of saint that's been distributed to different churches for safe-keeping. This whole tri-coastal thing (if we're counting West Michigan, "the Other West Coast", and how can this royal we not?) sucks. I don't think there's a better or more eloquent way of expressing how much I dislike being separated from people and places I love by this much space. It sucks.

Then there's the murkiness. I've had a residual sort of gross, murkity-murk clinging to the insides of my pockets and hanging about my scarf lately. I can't seem to shake it. I stop and I breathe and I think about all the things I'm grateful for (which, by the way, is a whole helluva lot, like apple cider. . . I'm really grateful for apple cider) and I try to hold on to the feeling of gratitude, but the feeling never really takes hold in the first place.

I'm not depressed, I'm not downtrodden, and I'm not stuck in ennui, but sometimes I feel a little hopeless. Now I know right now you may be thinking all sorts of encouraging bits of advice. You may even already be pre-composing your comment for the bottom of this blog. Yes, that is what that giant white box at the bottom of this entry is for, so use it. It lets me know that someone reads this. Y'know, someone besides me and my teddy bear, who doesn't exactly count as I read it to hir, so it's not as though ze is a separate reader. At any rate, what I meant to say is that I'm not exactly looking for hope, or rather not from my faithful readers. I'm not completely devoid of hope, I just have been feeling a murkiness lately. This is not an attempt to trawl for pity or hallmark cards. I will ask for those more directly when they are called for (though if you'd like to send me a card feel free to do so at any time).

An example of what I'm trying to express:

I was walking home from school the other day. As I walked past one of the dingier deli/coffee shops in town I overheard a very loud exchange between two men. This particular shop always seems to have a small group of men hanging out outside, either smoking with the aura of AA break-time or chewing the fat between beers (pending on the time of day). Though this shop advertises coffee for fifty cents cheaper than my deli one block away, I have never even entertained the idea of going in to buy their coffee. So I'm walking by and this man starts yelling at this other guy. What he's saying doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. It goes something like, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why did you have to say so? I was gonna fix the wheels. I was gonna fix the God Damn Wheels. Why the fuck couldn't you wait?" Somehow it seemed like the second guy had asked about the wheels on his laundry cart.

But the particulars of the situation really are pointless, as it so often it seems they are. What matters is how the first man's voice sounded. He was So Angry. Anger tainted with deep shame. Like he was angry because something the other guy said touched deep down to some old sense of inadequacy or worthlessness. Like this guy complaining about his wheels being broken reminded the first guy of being a little kid and getting yelled at for not being enough or not finishing his chores on time. Getting yelled at and being terrified that forgetting to take the trash out meant he wasn't lovable anymore.

Maybe I'm reading too much into a passing conversation, and maybe I'm imagining things too much, but I almost started to cry as I continued down the street. Because, I thought, when will the hurt stop?

When will we have learned that we are enough? When will we believe it and teach our children that they, too, are enough? That they are lovable for being children. Sometimes I wish I could take every person in the world and hold them in my giant, grandmother lap and sing them a song and hold them so close and just love them. And they would know that they are enough. And they would quit yelling at their bus driver and their check-out clerk and their server. And they would hold their children close, too. Sometimes I fantasize about this, imagining what kind of room such things would take place in and how long a person would need to sit and be loved to actually believe it. I imagine it in depth, mostly because I want this so desperately for myself.

I want someone, some gigantic bunny-rabbit great-aunt or something (I think it's a bunny rabbit because of a childrens book I read once), to swoop in and lift me out of the murkiness, to pick me up and cuddle me until I fall asleep knowing that I'm ok. That I'm more than ok, and that it's not because of something witty I said or which music I listen to or what social beliefs I hold dear, but because I am a child of God. A child of the Universe. Another beautiful, splendid conduit of truth.

I believe about 10% of this on good days, and this pittance of belief is slowly killing me. I also absolutely think this is what's basically wrong with the world. I think the root of all war and poverty and greed and hatred and violence is some gaping wound deep within us that compels us to go forth in the world with fear and shame and an everlasting ache. In saying this I'm probably being overly simplistic and incredibly self-absorbed, but I don't care. I think it's the truth.

And this just about breaks my heart some days. This is when the hopelessness subtly creeps in and sets up shop in the interior lining of my jacket. And I feel very tired and walking home seems like an endless endeavor.

But times like these, too, are times of faith. It's funny, because even when I am crying from lonesomeness or old wounds that seem never to dissipate, even when I feel hopeless, I feel certain that things are getting better. I walk down my street at 2 am and though I can't see the stars I can feel a stillness in the sky. I trust the chill on my nose as I breathe in and I know, I just know deep down that it's going to get better. Even though I don't see how. Even though I can't feel it. Even the the murkiness is enough to just about choke a girl.

The thing is, it doesn't choke me. I am still breathing, it is another day, and it is different today than it was yesterday. Somehow, it's all moving right along. It makes so little sense to cling to the belief that it won't always hurt this much or be this bad, but I cling anyways. It is a gift. And trust me, I'm grateful.

Currently Reading: (recently finished, finally) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius now reading Operating Instructions

Lonesome Quotations

2009-11-05T21:53:00.000-08:00

I needed, need, to be loved. To be loved for me. I am so scared of this. Scared that I will never allow it. Scared that if it comes it will disappear. That I will learn it wasn’t love. Or it wasn’t for me. Or that it was only for me if I wasn’t really me. Because when I let people see me, the real me that is- when I let people see the unkempt, un-brushed, teary-eyed, scared, desiring of love and support me, they realize that I am unlovable. Not even unlovable, perhaps, but that they do not love me. That I am loved only for the false impression people have of me and if I ever dare to let a little bit of the inside out I will become as unappealing as I was first attractive.

(quoted anonymously with permission)

While reading this tonight I was struck by how personally it comes off. Sentiments like the above always seem so individual and intimate, yet I am amazed by their universal nature. It's odd to think about how prevalent these feeling are amongst large populations. By prevalent I don't mean that large groups of people feel utterly lonely and unloved for most of the time, but that in a large group of people, odds are that a vast majority of them have felt as isolated and lonely as the above narrative indicates.

In other words, when one realizes such feelings one feels alone in the world (at least this is true in my experience). One looks about and sees others in the world carrying on as though nothing has happened, which of course only amplifies those feelings of lonesomeness. In those moments one feels as though no one could ever comprehend the depth of one's isolation.

This is the amazing part: for rather than finding such isolation as incomprehensible, one discovers that the experience of longing for real love is entirely universal. We all of us desire to be loved for who we are. And so many of us have had times of great distress wherein we could not find such love or comfort. These feelings are not so rare- in truth, I think most people experience feelings such as these from time to time.

I am reminded of a passage from one of my favorite stories, The Velveteen Rabbit:

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When A child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Other than the bit about not minding being hurt once you are Real, I adore this passage. It's comforting to read. Especially tonight, a time I will admit to feeling lonesome. Loneliness is inherently an individual experience, but there is something magical about the discovery of loneliness as a common thread.

I'm not sure that there's anything more for me to say at this point, so instead of dragging this narrative out I bid thee adieu.

Another Letter to the Universe

2009-11-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

I don't even know what to do with these feelings. It's so terrifying to feel loose amid the waves. I really do believe that you've got it all taken care of- that I'll wind up floating about and landing wherever I need most to land, but. But. BUT. It's scary. It's exhilarating. This feeling of possibility. Of attraction. Of excitement.

These feelings come from everywhere. From everything that I'm doing. I feel urged toward vulnerability and movement in everything. in music. in friendship. in thought. in love. I am so excited about the possibilities but I can't let go of the fears.

The residual muck from every past encounter. The disappointment (mine) (others'). I am scared because I know that in the past what I have longed for has not been granted. I am scared that I will not be happy with what I get.

I know that I will be happier than I imagine. I know that things will be more challenging than I plan on. I believe you when you tell me, somewhere deep, to be quiet for a minute and just be here. now.

What else is there?

I need some help with the fears. coping. I don't need them to disappear- somehow a bit of fear seems appropriate and almost invigorating from where I'm sitting. I just need my fears to stand back when it's time to live. Which is all the time. I need your help, dear Universe. I can not do it on my own.

You know.

Struggling to Communicate

2009-10-28T18:29:00.000-07:00

It is absolutely urgent that people become aware of the degree to which this disrespect of children is persistently transmitted from one generation to the next, perpetuating destructive behavior. Someone who slaps or hits another adult or knowingly insults her is aware of hurting her. Even if he doesn't know why he is doing this, he has some sense of what he is doing. But how often were our parents, and we ourselves toward our own children, unconscious of how painfully, deeply, and abidingly they and we injured a child's tender, budding self?

I have mentioned Alice Miller's book 'The Drama of the Gifted Child' a few times already, but this paragraph made me pause, re-read, and nod my head vehemently. I felt compelled to photocopy this bit and thrust it into the hands of every person possible. Instead, I have typed it out for you, dear audience.

With these words Ms. Miller has succinctly clinched my great esteem. This is a book filled to the brim with the most clear of observations, the most profound insights, and the most personal of lessons. This excerpt, though, is in my opinion the supreme point of it all.

This book is all about healing the deep wounds we carry as adults. In great depth and shocking simplicity Ms. Miller explains how poignant our childhood experiences are, how they continue to shape our most intimate and seemingly removed experiences for the rest of our lives. She shows how a person living with such wounds can function without ever examining why they are so hurt. And she spends a lot of time talking about the cyclical nature of woundedness.

I've seen this truth in my own life. A person with the greatest of intentions will wound their child horribly if they do not stop to examine their own wounds before having children. Not because ze is a bad person, nor because ze is a bad parent, but because the wounds inflicted on small children are so intense and long-lasting and formative that adults who have never stopped to examine their own wounds are bound to pass their own pain right on down to their children. It is often so ingrained that it goes un-noticed.

I truly believe that so much of the pain and frustration in the world exists not because humans are basically antagonistic or selfish or evil or even flawed, but because humanity is overwhelmingly wounded. So many people wander around the world with deep abiding wounds, searching for some way to feel loved simply for being. This is a powerful need. A human need. A fundamental human need.

So many people do not realize the extent to which their own woundedness continues to shape their life. Many have learned to cope with their reality so well that they cannot even acknowledge their own wounds. Wounds left unattended fester and spread and beget more pain.

THIS is why I wish more people waited to have children.

Old and New Words

2009-10-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

Last night I found a manila folder filled with old writings. I of course paused in my attempts to organize the moving leftovers so that I could flip through my old thoughts. This excerpt in particular caught my attention:

Part of me still longs, just a little, for the sordid comfort of expected unhappiness. At least it is expected and fulfilled. Even if I am unhappy, I know that I am going to be unhappy, and there is a sick sort of satisfaction in the completion of such endeavors.

Today. Today it was that I walked up a hill and struggled for breath. Another day in which the things I did made no waves in the pond, during which the most I did was philosophize and drink coffee. There's something supremely beautiful about surrendering to my path, not that that's what I've entirely done. I still fight the journey, stupidly, kicking and screaming at times. When I can walk through the cloudiness and wander wherever it is that I find myself, those days I am beautiful. I don't stop to think about what is beautiful or ugly or what I'm going to do in an hour. I sip at my latte and read a childrens book and think about words that sound nice. Why would anyone long for an existence other than the only one they could have? Why do I?

Words elude me. When I have something profound to write, words never appear. When I have an agenda for my thoughts or writings, the words are scattered, uninspired. No matter what I do, how I orchestrate those thoughts, how I phrase the chosen descriptions, I am unable to be original. Everything I want to say has either been said before or never needs to be said. This is what I feel when I finish a new bit of prose. Poems say so little concretely, and this is perhaps my attraction to them.

Why do I want to write so badly? I could write anything if I were interested enough in any one concept, if I could sustain an interest. As it is, I continue to write because something within me cries to have a voice. I will write until it finds the words it seeks.

Something about this entry fascinates me. It was the phrase "Today. Today it was that I walked up a hill and struggled for breath" that caught my eye in the first place. Still it resonates in my mind with more fervor than it has any right to inspire. I don't think I meant these words to say what I am now reading them as.

Today. Today [again] I struggled for breath as I walked uphill. I wrote these words maybe two years ago, and I still need to express them today.

Another intriguing (if I may be so bold) excerpt:

The art of falseness predates my memory, and it has been both my salvation and crucifixion. Though I'm not so good at it anymore after the years of therapy and my new-found repugnance to all things plastic, I wield my only social defense shamelessly whenever I feel threatened by the prospect of [a former lover's] presence. Falseness and pretension are my only methods to compensate for the bile that rises [in hir presence] like so many dogs salivating for bells.

After spending so much time avoiding my shell-like tendencies, I renounced the façade and embraced the real. I- the sad, sorry, velveteen girl made really real- have cultivated my personality, my capacity to love, and the integration of the two with my outward appearances. I've done so much for myself. ME Me me mememe. I am amazing. I am a wonder. It's a wonder they haven't created an international holiday to celebrate me and my genuineness yet.

I really love this bit. I love the venom I save only for myself. And just revel in that writing! I mean, crucifixion? Really?? Insert a thinly veiled Pavlovian reference- was I serious? And did I just throw 'façade' into prose that is pretending to be unassuming? I tried *so hard* to be clever, but all it turned out to be was contrived. Uckghe. Despite the crassness of the allusions, though, I think the underlying sentiments are fairly accessible. I was (and am) so unforgiving of my own humanity.

To give a bit more context, the lover mentioned was such an odd person. I had been in the midst of such chaos and had been seeking companionship, and had found myself lightly involved with someone who made me feel sick to my stomach once I had the ability to look at hir without the blinding intoxication of chaos. I was so embarrassed to have even thought about liking hir.

And I was utterly unable to forgive myself for being human, for needing companionship, for feeling lonely. In many ways I wish I could visit that self and give her a hug- tell her that everyone has a need to be loved. I was so completely starved of attention, affection, and love during that time, and I sought fulfillment of the need for such things any way I could. I'm sad that I was ashamed of my needs.

It's amazing to read such words after such a period of time. To be confronted with tangible records of how much I have changed and what issues remain with slightly different wording is a sobering experience.

I know that I am growing, it is just sometimes a bit slower than I thought it would be. I have faith in the general arc of progress that I am on. And now I have a folder of amusing anecdotal writings with which to bolster my appreciation of the improvement in my writing. Though that has a long way to go as well. . .

Sometimes I have to re-visit old truths

2009-10-24T23:31:00.000-07:00

The main thing is this:

Transition is Tough.

I know I've said this approximately 72 million times in the last 2 months (oh who am I kidding. . . since May), but it's once again eminently apparent. This time it's after a conversation with M, a fantastic woman who fits somewhere between the category of former boss and older sister. M is in New York this week with my friend J (M's 6-year old) on vacation from sunny San Francisco.

Over a glass of wine I quickly recounted the shorthand version of the last few months- medical mishaps, romantic entanglements and their eventual (sordid) dis-entanglements, new beginnings, therapy. . . just the good stuff, really. I stayed in and played grown-up for a few hours with J (and G) so M could go out with her long time friend, L, and when they came home later M and I played catch-up a bit more.

Part of my mood for the evening has been a lonely, melancholy reflectiveness. Which is a really silly way of saying that I've been lonely. [which is incredibly understandable] My body has been unwell for some time now, and though it's on its way back to good health, there are still tons of hormones running a muck and dictating far more of my life than I'd like to admit. I also tangibly miss my dearly beloved people, who seem to be perpetually scattered across the country in a most inconvenient fashion. Not to mention I'm still nursing a bit of a bruised heart. It's completely natural to feel a bit lonely at times like this.

Especially when one's friend comes to town and one realizes that she's lost two major front teeth, grown several inches, and learned to respectfully speak her voice when someone hurts her feelings.

During my conversation with M at the end of the night I spent quite a bit of time talking about New York. We talked back and forth about how difficult it is to start over in a new place, about how the East Coast is particularly difficult for social freaks, about how amazing the cultural and artistic opportunities in New York are (especially when compared with San Francisco), and how it was still so early in my move. As I walked out of the biggest apartment I have ever seen and hailed a cab to take me across town and to my bed, I thought again that this is such a tenuous time for me.

It is understandable that I have been feeling melancholy, but it is unfortunate that I have been coloring my impression of New York as a new home with only the grays of my current emotions. I have been understanding of the fickleness of my opinions (having only just lived here two months) but I have not been particularly forgiving of New York for not being San Francisco. Or Michigan.

Tonight I (yet again) realized that transition is difficult. That I will feel completely differently about New York once I have established even a short history here. That though I love San Francisco, what I have really been longing for is the familiar.

Because transition is fucking difficult.

But the difficulty of this particular transition will wane, regardless of my acquiescence or lack thereof. San Francisco will probably always hold the same lure but New York will not always feel so emotionally bleak. The universe will bring more and more people of my sort to my life. I will be part of a beautiful community here, I know it. If I am patient (and diligent in my pursuit of diversion and challenge) I will someday in the not particularly distant future find myself fully entrenched in an active love affair with this town of apples and insomnia.

It's just tough for now.

Sympathy is under-rated

2009-10-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

you know, at times like these the urge to shave my head again is almost overwhelming. Of late, the exterior of my life has been a continuous strain of change, transformation, and ordered chaos. Such intensity begs a change- a chosen change- to mirror the extremity of the internal demolition.

It's funny how suddenly the urge to chop off my hair comes. It seems to come almost out of nowhere- a voice clear but comforting- a calm suggestion that seems to emanate from a deeper soul. Release your hair. Let go. Feel the weight move on.

I have no idea if I will give in and remove my hair. Practically speaking, I love having hair. Having long hair enhances my feelings of beauty, of elegance, of distinction. I am proud of my hair.

But the release that letting go of hair brings sounds so attractive. I feel like I need something to latch on to after so much transition. Something tangible to refer people to when they ask how I am doing. Something for people in ongoing interactions with me to see, so they know that something has changed, that I am not the same as I was yesterday. They don't need to know everything, but I need them to know that things are different.

My writing is suffering as a result of sentimentality, emotionalism, intensity of feelings- and I don't have the energy to go back through what I've written and hyper-edit, as I usually do. Maybe I will tomorrow, but for tonight it seems essential to simply document the oddness of my breadth of feelings. Document and publicize.

This has been a grueling week. I know that I have experienced some pretty hallmark weeks in the past, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this week has been the most trying week I've ever experienced. I think I will be reeling from it, reaping the rewards of its emotionally transformative potency, for quite some time.

I ask that during this time, if you are able, that you send me your love. Send me your hope. Your understanding. Your empathy. I am doing my best to make sense of a set of realities that seem to me beyond comprehension. I exist as I do now only because I have a little faith in the supreme direction of the universe. I do not understand how a person could survive such loss and desperation without any semblance of faith or trust in the ultimate good of existence.

Faithful readers. Unfaithful readers. I entreat you to share your pity with me. Share your love not just with me, but with yourself. Share it with the assholes with whom I am unable at this moment to share my love.

If I am learning anything, which I hope I am, I am perhaps learning more of the simple frailty of life. I know it is cliché to speak of the fragility of life, but I think it is idiomatic because it is true. In one minute I had so many little ducks lined up, all ready for a specific path. In the next minute there was no order, no agenda, and no hope for such. And now, in the aftermath, I find that it is not possible to simply return the little duckies to their plot and continue as planned.

I don't know what will happen, and it's ever more true that the more I experience, the less I know.

a creation of catharsis

2009-10-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

I Realize that sometimes I forget,
But this is a reminder,
I Fucking Deserve Better.

I'm not asking for perfection or absolution.
I'm not expecting permanence,
But I Fucking Deserve Better.

I know it's hard.
Fear is potent.
The unknown abounds.
But I am here. Here is my hand.

don't mistake my empathy
for low self-esteem.

I know that I am a thing of beauty.
I feel it in my belly-
in the roundness, punctuated and imperfect,
I feel it in my hands-
raised fist and open palmed plea,
I feel it in my lungs when I sing,
in my teeth when I bite,
in my pride glazed cheeks after another day.

I feel my beauty in the depth of my soul
as the fears of this world yet again rip apart old beliefs to build new hopes,
as the thoughts I once revered come yet again under scrutiny,
as I watch myself transformed time and again
by the trials of this universe.

I am a thing of Beauty.
I see it, I feel it,
I hear it in the leaves as we mingle in the park.

I am proud of who I am
of my battle scars-
(not wounds)
I know my wounds will heal.
And even as I fear their lasting presence,
I know they are not a thing of forever.

I am Proud of my words. of my thoughts. of my loves.
I am a child of this universe.
No more than you.

No less.

I deserve to love. To love freely.
And I deserve love.

I deserve better than what I have fleetingly accepted.
I have (perhaps) misled you into thinking that I am just another
cynical,
self-deprecating,
misanthropic masochist.
And that is my fault.

but i am not.

and I fucking deserve better.

_

Heroes: Jessye Norman

2009-10-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

"To live artfully is, to me, the whole purpose of life's journey. For you all know that creativity, artful living, equal[s] self knowledge. This knowledge can lead to wisdom, and wisdom to the understanding of others, and this understanding undoubtedly leads to tolerance. Tolerance and compassion for those around us, and those oceans away, who after all possess the same depth of spirit as we. And in this modern society Art may be the only source that invites this model for living. 'Movers and shakers of the world' indeed. Let's all try it. Art brings us together as a family because it is an individual expression of universal human experience. We have so much more in common than we acknowledge. Expressions through Art come from that part of us that is without fear, prejudice, malice, or any of the other things that we create in order to separate ourselves one from the other. Art makes us whole by existing, by insisting that we use all of our senses- our heads and our hearts. That we express with our voices, our hands, our bodies, as well as with our minds. We are all the better for Art being a part of our lives."

These words are an excerpt from a speech that Jessye Norman gave at the 2009 Mayor's Awards for Art and Culture this past Tuesday evening. I was lucky enough to have been in the audience, and these words in particular caught my heartstrings and plucked away.

Ms. Norman so artfully composes in this paragraph what I have felt to be absolutely true in an utterly abstract way for so long. This, so succinctly, is why I pursue the arts as a profession. Music is neither superfluous nor simple- it exists beyond the realm of ornamentation and background myewzik. Music can be transformative, there is no doubt in my mind.

Music can change the world.

Ms. Norman has long held my admiration, but I have to confess a sudden burst of ardor in my esteem after Tuesday night. In explanation, for those of you who aren't singers, musicians, or aficionados of classical vocal music, Jessye Norman is a musical goddess. Really, a Goddess. I fell in love with her first because she has recorded just about all of Brahms' lieder. As I have an ongoing love affair with Brahms' lieder, it was only a matter of time before Jessye's recordings and I became involved as well. Isn't it lovely that in the world of music polyamory is such an easy thing to maintain?

I have long understood that Ms. Norman was to be put on a pillar of musical status, but I only this week became aware of the breadth of her artistry. She is a complete artist- philosopher, philanthropist, creative mogul, innovator, sociologist- it goes on. What really gets me about her- what makes me feel starry-eyed, fuzzy hearted, and tipsy in the pit of my stomach, is that she uses her gift to do something wonderful in the world. Yes, she was the recipient of the lottery's best gifts with regards to singing: voice quality, neck structure, facial structure- in other words, the physical traits that enable her art to be technically amazing. However, she goes beyond making nice music. She is more than a diva. She is committed to education, to the proliferation and accessibility of the arts, and to the creation of a better world.

Damn.

I'm of the mind to begin writing an uncommitted series of blogs about my heroes, and this is my first. Jessye Norman- you make my heart go pitter-patter.

One personal anecdote:

I almost got to meet Ms. Norman the other night, but I was too nervous? polite? embarrassed? After the awards program there was a swinging cocktail party- complete with hors d'oeuvres and wine. Most of the other recipients eventually walked around to schmooze with guests. I kept looking about nervously between popping back fried mushroom risotto balls. Would Jessye Norman come out to interact with the plebeians? Would *I* get to meet her???

After a time, I began wandering in search of her under the guise of scoping out more treats or the library (the event was held in a swanky performing arts high school). Still I could not find her. Just when I thought all hope was surely lost, I thought to check back in the theater. . . et voila! C'est elle! C'est magnifique! Mais- quel domage! She was chatting with a group of friends- taking many a photo and reminiscing. She was not schmoozing- she was basking in the joy of having received an award, sharing a quiet moment with friends.

I stood by, maybe 5 feet away, for a few moments. I waited patiently, perhaps mouse-ily, for a moment when she might be available to say hello, to shake her hand, to tell her that her words had warmed a heart thickly entrenched in an abhorred ennui. I waited. And there was a moment when I could have interrupted- I could have jumped over her friends- I could have thrown myself forward and shouted "I am a singer- I love you- please, please, take a photo with me- let's pretend this is "All About Eve" but I promise we don't have to have the nasty ending-" but I let the moment pass. She was enjoying a moment with friends, and I could not bring myself to mar her joy with a used-junk-salesperson interruption. I'm sure she would have been gracious, but what would I have been?

I watched as she left. My heart did a little dive, and a thought came to me, from somewhere unknown, that perhaps this would not be the only opportunity in my life to meet such a woman.

Just read: Babette's Feast
Currently Reading: (still) The Drama of the Gifted Child and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Not a Real Post

2009-10-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

I do not have the energy to compose an actual post today. Know that I am well, if exceedingly busy. I even have a subject I'm dying to write about, but it's just not time to get it out yet. Someday soon, though.

In other news-

Going to see Jessye Norman tonight at an awards ceremony
Going to DC this Sunday for the National Equality March
Took 3 exams yesterday (so far results back on two, and yay! I'm not going to flunk out of skool!)
I have new furniture! A couch, stools, bookshelves, AND a french press are among my Ikea bounty. Ok, technically a french press is not furniture, but it's important enough to be.
I am considering a weekend trip to Boston thanks to cheap bus tickets (as in, $1)

My brain sort of feels like it's turning to mush. I need to get more sleep.

Blegh.

Suffism and Giving Up

2009-09-29T06:50:00.000-07:00

I've been having a time of it.

Walking back from school this morning, after having been locked out of my first history exam by an obtuse 5 minutes (my own damn fault), I decided to give up.

I have been attempting to give up for at least a month now, and I sincerely hope that this is NOT just another attempt, but in fairness the genuineness of this give-up is not really my responsibility. I was walking down Broadway, stuck in my own head full of self-recrimination and anger, when I suddenly realized that I can't do this. Any of it. I am not able to deal with life as such- lonely, confusing, impossible, standard-driven, ridiculous. I can not cope; the best I can do is spiral downward into a self-shaming puddle of embarrassing goo.

I walked a little farther before realizing- with an almost maniacal laugh- that I don't have to do any of it. Why do I have to make everything such a struggle? What am I so worried about?? I can just GIVE UP!!! If the universe wants stuff done, then the universe will have to do it, because I'm sick of blaming myself for not doing the impossible.

(ahem, by 'give up' I am in no way intimating an immediate withdrawal from classes or a reticence to fulfill regular duties. I am giving up on worthless struggling)

Last night I was reading a book my boss/friend recommended, The Drama of the Gifted Child, when I started to cry. I was so surprised by this. After all, I've had a lot of experiences in my life, but I've been through therapy, and I've talked through my stuff til my eyes were dry. I think I thought that I could get it over with once and be done, but life has added new layers to old hurts. And new actions have greater meanings. I realized that my neurotic episodes of late have been symptomatic not just of the transition inherent in moving cross-country alone, but of a greater underlying problem. Or problems.

Recent experiences and growth and change are allowing for a greater understanding and examination of myself. And I can't do it alone. Goddess knows I spend all my time on public transit in self-'discovery' or other such nonsense, and it always devolves into the stern voice in my head upbraiding the weakness within. Those silly human bits, you know- the ones that continuously have feelings. When I realized that an old habit, a perverse habit from my dark ages, is still hanging out in fully fledged form, I felt truly frightened.

This is when I thought that maybe I ought to think about starting therapy again. It would be so helpful to get out of my head during these times. I need to. I immediately thought about how much therapy would cost in New York, and how impossible an option that was until-

Wait-

I have health insurance! How bizarre. I am arbitrarily allowed affordable help for my mind because my dad works for an insurance company. I'll take it. I need it.

When I got back home after missing my exam, only newly resolved to give up, I sat down to read a little Rumi. I certainly needed a little enlightenment. I flipped the book open to a random page, as I usually do when looking for a little help, and I'll be damned if the following wasn't exactly what I turned to:

Cry Out in Your Weakness

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness."
Where lowland is,
that's where the water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.
And don't just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she's there.

God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.

This made me laugh and cry almost at the same time. "Give your weakness to one who helps". As though my needing help is a gift and not a burden. What a message to, ahem, ruminate on.

I must at this time go to work. I'm not sure how this will all turn out, but it's kind of nice to give oneself a break after all of the intensity.

Currently Reading: (actually just finished) Ruby Fruit Jungle

Apologies and Such

2009-09-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

I've been neglecting my blog lately. What can I say? Life has kept me quite busy. Though I've had several thoughts and quite a few rants come to mind, I couldn't quite find both the time AND energy to commit anything to the electronic page.

A couple of housekeeping notices, first:

(1). Congratulations to my brother and his wife, who were married last week in Michigan (this lady got to be in the wedding party!!)

(2). Congratulations also to A & G, whose wedding I am currently in the process of attending. A and I have been friends for more than ten years- ever since I pretended to shoot up with my mechanical pencil during choir. (this lady ALSO got to be in their wedding party!!)

Down to business, now! I need to clear the air after my last post. It was brought to my attention (by one of the ladies I referred to, hereafter known as the assigned name, Veronica) that some of my language was a bit unclear. This lack of clarity was easily misconstrued, and was thus rather hurtful. This was not at all my intention.

I sometimes forget that by posting things on this blog I display them to the possibility of the entire world indiscriminately. This is not to say that I post things I don't want people to read, but rather that I often assume much about my audience. I assume, for example, that the only people reading my blog are people who already know me quite well. This has proven itself to be absolutely untrue. As I found out this week, I cannot assume that my blog audience knows me at all, or that they understand what I mean between the lines.

So, to clarify, when I said:

These are the popular, chic, pretty students. . . At least that's how they carry themselves. I'm not in awe of them or disgusted by them- mostly I'm intrigued by them. They must spend so much time in the morning putting all that makeup on. And by *all that* I simply mean that they always look very coiffed, with makeup and outfits and shoes and hair. . . and they invited me to sit with them?

I did not mean this description in a derogatory way at all. I was trying to establish the fact that I felt out of my element. I did not mean "pretty" and therefore "stupid" or "pretty" and therefore "snobby". I meant that I have spent a lot of time with quasi-hippies over much of my adult life, and the situation I found myself in was different from the very start.

I had the excellent fortune of being able to talk about "Cattiness" with Veronica. She had seen a link to my blog on my facebook page and followed it out of curiosity. Imagine her surprise (and hurt) when she found that there was a post about her at the top of the page. To Veronica's immense credit, she responded by contacting me to talk about the entry and her feelings about it.

I am so grateful that she did so. It would have been so easy to absorb such hurt and let it play out passively over time. And I might always have carried a little reservation about her, too.

Instead, we talked.

Thankfully, due to the communication age, we processed all of this over chat. Though that might sound like a passive way to resolve conflict, I rather think it allowed both of us to be more direct and honest than a face to face conversation would have.

I will admit that it was a difficult conversation for me to have, even so. My first inclination was to make everything ok- do whatever I had to to make Veronica happy with me. Instead, sweaty palms and all, I stuck my ground. I listened to what she had to say with my listening ears. I re-read the entry, and I saw how I had been hurtful.

This was such a growing experience for me. I was able to take ownership for my words and feelings. I explained the context of my words, and apologized for hurting her feelings, all while maintaining my original point: the conversation I had been drawn into had been uncomfortable and inappropriate.

A magical thing happened: just as I had listened to Veronica, she listened to me! She explained that her comments had come out of continued frustration with a fellow student's work ethic. It hadn't occurred to Veronica that a table in the cafeteria filled with future colleagues (at least one of whom only just arrived from San Francisco) might not be the best place to vent such frustrations. Veronica apologized. I apologized. I felt such relief. In a funny way, my faith in humanity rose quite a bit.

People like to rant about how inhuman the internet makes interactions, and often enough they have a valid point. But after exchanges like this, I feel the need to extoll the possible virtues of the interweb. Sure, it allows dis-empowering porn to multiply faster than bacteria on stinky tofu, AND it allows trolls to air the most disgusting fruit of their overactive ids to the entire internet-world, but it's not ALL bad-

sometimes it can be downright revolutionary.

Cattiness

2009-09-14T08:11:00.001-07:00

Cattiness makes me feel awkward.

This morning my Phonetics class was canceled. This left me with an unexpected coffee break, which I proceeded to take without delay in the school cafeteria. I thought I'd sit and do some reading, maybe write a little bit, sip my caffeine, and then head on up to the library to do some printing of pages. However, on my way to an uninhabited, sunlit table I was stopped and invited to join a different table.

Me? Invited?? To sit with other students??? Why, of course!

So, I picked up my coffee and parked at a table with other sophomore voice students, several of whom I'd met in an assortment of classes. These are the popular, chic, pretty students (I hate to revert to high school terminology, but in many ways, that is where I am).

At least that's how they carry themselves. I'm not in awe of them or disgusted by them- mostly I'm intrigued by them. They must spend so much time in the morning putting all that makeup on. And by *all that* I simply mean that they always look very coiffed, with makeup and outfits and shoes and hair. . . and they invited me to sit with them?

At any rate, I sat down and tried to engage in conversation. The general questions that everyone asks came up-

Where did you transfer from?

. . .

Ooooh- so you're like, way older than us?

To which I smile (hopefully demurely) and try to explain in as polite a tone of voice as I can muster that yes, I AM quite a bit older. I usually hope that this does not come off as calling them infants, though sometimes I hope it does. Today my intentions straddled both hopes. Soon, though, I was fairly forgotten in lieu of more salacious topics.

Maybe I felt more aware of this behavior because I was not part of the active conversation. Or maybe it's because I don't really know the people that were talked about (well, I could point them out, but I've never had a conversation with them). Or maybe I am growing up a little bit at a time.

At any rate, I felt very weird sitting at the table while a great number of other students were picked apart for all sorts of things. It really seemed to me that their greatest offense was not being there for this conversation, and that if they had been sitting at the table then they would have been treated quite civilly and without the slightest hint of meanness.

It made me sad to see how much energy these students were wasting on lambasting others- energy they could have spent in self-direction or musical pursuits or in finding the shared humanity in these other students. Instead, they let their insecurities feed on the insecurities of others, which is just a painful (and pitiful?) sight to behold.

I wasn't exactly sure how to extricate myself from this situation. I felt suddenly as though I were in high school again, having received an invitation by the popular girls to sit with them only to find that sitting with the popular girls is both glamorous and abysmal. I kept thinking about leaving the table, but I didn't want to miss out on new friendships.

And that's when it hit me- I don't want friends like this.

I'm sure that each of the people at that table has the potential to be a lovely person, and I'm not saying that I reject them wholly because of today, but there's no reason on earth why I should put myself in the middle of such silliness just to meet new people. People I don't want to be surrounded by anyways!

As soon as I realized this I excused myself to go to the library, which is where I am at this very moment- constructing this love note to you, my generous internet audience.

Wait, are you generous??

Currently Reading: Full Frontal Feminism

An Internal Conversation

2009-09-10T08:01:00.001-07:00

*Warning* This entry is long, but I believe it is worthwhile. Read when you have more than 2 minutes (but hopefully less than 10!)

Last night I suddenly hit a wall with regards to patience. I have spent so much time in self-analysis that I think I've gotten sick on it. I'm terribly frustrated and full of self-judgment.

And why, you may ask, am I judging myself?

I am relentlessly flinging mean thoughts at myself because I keep catching myself flinging mean thoughts at others. I'm judging myself for judging the world. Well, not exactly the world, that's perhaps a bit too much hyperbole, but only just.

This tragicomedy began in earnest on Tuesday night, in my humanities class. We are currently studying Thomas More's 'Utopia', a work that has vast discussion/debate possibilities, in my debate-thirsty-opinion. Private Property, Corporate Greed, The Prison System, Communal Accountability, Shared Humanity, Class, Privilege- these are all discussion topics that could be gleaned from Book I of 'Utopia'. And with an initial gratitude (and a retrospective one as well) I watched as the professor led our circle of students into discussion, only to be horrified by the results.

I found myself deeply entrenched in a debate that flitted between the practical and the philosophical from sentence to sentence (which is in itself annoying when you are trying to make a clear argument). This was not horrifying, only tedious- navigating a discussion of humanity's potential intermingled with a discussion of humanity's present state. The horrifying part came in when we started talking about the concept of greed. I believe that More contends that Greed is one of the most destructive forces at work in 'modern' society, and I agree with him. My fellow students (not all of them I'm sure, but a vocal majority), however, could not seem to get beyond the idea that what they had in their life they had earned completely on their own merit.

Now, admittedly, this doesn't sound too horrid, but when one carries this statement to its logical reverse it sounds much worse. If a person has exactly what they deserve- the fruit of their own labors- then a person who lacks fruit does so because of their own laziness. The poor people of the world, and especially in the proximate United States culture, are poor because they aren't smart enough, haven't worked hard enough, or they just don't want it enough. This is the way the system works. You work hard, you get rewarded. You slack off, you starve. Or you just don't get the big mansion, because as everyone knows, people who own mansions have done proportionately more work in their life than people living in public housing. Definitively. This system works and is fair, damn it! After all, as one student said, he's 'not jealous of the guy who has a BMW, because [the student] didn't work for that'. Not only was there no acknowledgment of privilege or classism, there wasn't even the faintest comprehension that such things could possibly exist.

My fairly educated guess is that I'm the eldest student in the room by a solid 4 years, a span of time that can admittedly change much for a person's perspective and place in the world. Here's where the judgment demons (and their reactive judgment-of-judgment demons) entered the picture, for I immediately found myself battling internal conflict.

Can you believe those kids?

They're not kids, they're adults.

No they're not, they're 19!

Hey, when you were 19 you thought of yourself very much as an adult an-

I know, but-

-d got quite pissed off when people dismissed your voice because they thought of you as a kid.

YES, but these kids-

People-

OK, these people are ignorant and obtuse!

Well, maybe.

Maybe?

Ok, they are, but that's no excuse to get all Ageist on them.

Wait- was I being ageist???

Um, yes. Extremely. You were judging them because of their age.

But. No. Um. I mean. . .

Grrrrrrrr

Ok, so I may at some times play the hated 'age card', and I'll admit that that's wrong-

Good. That will be 50 lashes and 2 Hail Marys.

Wai- What?

You heard me. (Oh I do love a good flagellation!)

But- that's not helpful! OR productive!

Maybe not, but it sure does feel good to feel bad!

Wait- I have more to say!

*sighs* What?

It's just that, well, ageism acknowledged, these people are still being selfish!

That may be true, but you can't blame it on their age without negating your arguments from when you were 19. So let's just skip it and move back to the whipping!

But why?

Why the whipping?? Because it's so deliciously human! Don't you love loathing yourself???

Ugh, I don't know. This obsession with whipping and soul-mutilation is disgusting. At any rate, that's not what I meant. Why would blaming my classmate's ignorance on their being young negate my younger arguments?

Because if you decide to disregard their self-centered opinions just because they're younger than you, then you're doing the exact thing you used to rant about so vehemently.

Really?

Yes. And didn't you just scold an elder for this two days ago?

*ashamed panda* yes.

A-HA!!! More hypocrisy to be shamed for!!!! (it's going to be an absolute party later!!!!!) Though if you must discuss it, what can you blame their lack of awareness on? It's not as though they're 8 years old and have seen none of the world.

Well, no. That's true. But. . . but. . . they probably haven't experienced any of the world!

But they're 19! They've been on this planet for 19 years!! How is that possible???

Uh, they're conservatory musicians-?- They've probably spent at least half their life in a practice room. Alone. With a dead white man's scrawling and a lonely piano.

But that would mean they've spent almost no time actually experiencing the world-?-

Exactly.

But. . . that's preposterous. How can their musical endeavors impact a world about which they know nothing??

EXACTLY.

And why would they even CARE to impact it?

You See?? They probably don't. They might want to perform in it. Show off. Be on center stage.

Surely not ALL of them.

No, of course not ALL of them. But a damnable majority of them. Especially in class.

And you WANT to be a part of this world???????? You're CHOOSING it????????

This is the point at which my head began to go a bit fuzzy. Surprising though it may be that this fuzziness didn't take precedent sooner, it came lurking in with a heady vengeance at this point.

Why AM I going into this world? I have always refused to spend my life in a practice room. Though I've been blessed with the aptitude to not have to spend years of my life repeating scales (ugh, bo-ring), I have also always rebelled against the very concept of forfeiting my life for a technique that might someday be imbued with genius. I've just never thought of it that way.

Why DO I sing? I am a musician going into the world of opera. I am an activist with goals and philosophies that hopefully lead toward the continued evolution of some sort of justice in this world. Opera and Social Justice- judging from the culture of my class the other night this seems like a complete non sequitur.

And yet I believe strongly that it is not. Or at least that it doesn't have to be. Music at its most empowered can be such a redemptive force. It can be an art form rife with thought and change and the ability to challenge the status quo. It can enable people. Music can make a person think and feel and speak. It gives a language to grief and anger and joy in a way that words alone can not. Music can, and does, change the world.

Opera is a conduit for the exploration of feelings; the inner motivations of humanity are the very soul of the art form. It is not simply a glorious show for which one should dress up and spend exorbitant amounts of money. It is a shame that this is often how it is viewed. It is even more shameful that this viewpoint has shaped opera into the flaccid art of the aristocracy that it is in many communities, but opera is not beyond redemption. There are strong, active movements to make opera an accessible art form, and this is the creative world I hope to enter.

I want to be a part of opera for the hope that I can make a difference in the world through a craft that encourages self-exploration. Unexamined feelings at work in the world are dangerous indeed. I think that an art form that encourages emotional honesty and growth is inherently a positive force.

And with this renewed sense of self, of trajectory, I find myself less desiring of that flagellatory appointment. It's amazing to me that I can sink so quickly to shaming myself, which always turns into a complete waste of time, both in that it takes time and energy to feel bad about myself, and it takes even more time and energy to then pull myself back out of that funk. What if I could bypass the 40 lashes stage and just move onto changing what I don't like about myself? Wouldn't that be revolutionary. Ha.

At least for today, I feel redeemed. I feel a renewed sense of patience for myself, for my ever-present faults, and for the fact that it takes time to grow and learn. It's funny how that happens.

Currently Reading: Skinny Legs and All

Recently Finished: Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music by Blair Tindall

**I am unable to link to the above book from school, as the page has been blocked by the censor. . . This book is about a former student at MSM, and it is full of lascivious information about the music industry. It's autobiographical, and I am a bit disturbed that I am unable to look up any information about the author or the book from school. DAMN CENSORSHIP!!!!!**

The Brooklyn Museum of Art

2009-09-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

I had an unexpectedly intense day.

I went with my friend, B, to the Brooklyn Museum of Art this afternoon as part of our New York Museum Tour. A friend of hers had tipped her off to the fantastic and provocative exhibition of Yinka Shonibare MBE's work (an amazing exhibit, that you should make a trip to see), and so we trudged all the way (phew!) to Brooklyn, a rare venture for Manhattanites.

Upon paying our preferred donation of $1 (BMA is a suggested donation venue, Goddess love them, as we are quite poor), we attempted to get our bearings by perusing the pictorial directory. At this point B became very excited by something in a picture- 'The Dinner Party' by Judy Chicago. I looked at B with my customary blend of curiosity and ignorance. B has an excellent background in Art History and Museum Studies, so I am quite accustomed to her vast knowledge surpassing my own, especially in the art world. However, there was shock on B's face when she realized that I did not know of Ms. Chicago.

'The Dinner Party' is the single biggest piece of feminist art ever acknowledged, B informed me with a look tinged with disbelief and, perhaps, a bit of horror. We then skipped over the Shonibare exhibit, heading directly to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Let me coo for a moment- How AMAZING is it that an art museum has a permanent gallery dedicated to feminist art? I've never heard of this before, and in the wake of such an experience I'm a bit saddened by this. Ideally feminist art would have a role in art of all types and in many galleries and there would be no need for a specially designated 'feminist section', but this is not yet an ideal world. I wish I had had the opportunity to visit a Center for Feminist Art before I was 24 years old, but I am grateful for today, however hurtful it may have been.

I was utterly unprepared for this installation. How could I have expected it? The catalog itself reports it as consisting of:

39 dinner place settings of porcelain flatware (fork, knife and spoon), porcelain chalice, and decorated porcelain plate. Each setting is laid out on a separate embroidered textile runner. Thirteen place settings are on each side (48 feet long) of a triangular table draped with a white felt cloth, with a triangular millennium runner at each of three corners. Each of the settings represents one of thirty-nine historically significant women. The table sits on a floor of 2304 porcelain triangular tiles (in 129 units) inscribed with the names of 999 significant women.

Ok, so it's a big table set for dinner and there are lots of women's names. Cool. This will be interesting. Right. How can I tell you what it was like walking into that room? Rather, walking into the room was just what I expected. Each setting is quite particular, and placed in a mostly chronological order. First? 'Primordial Goddess'

Ok. That makes sense.

Next? 'Fertile Goddess'

Sure.

Of note, the plates at each setting are decorated in personalized floral/butterfly/vulva patterns. I add floral and butterfly to the description mostly because the plaque at the exhibit did so. My impression of the plates was overwhelmingly linked to feminine power, to clitoral and sexual potency, power, depth, mystery, and strength. There were cunts all over this table, each beautiful and different. Each cunt-plate brought its own sacred history to the table.

Next? 'Ishtar', 'Kali', 'Snake Goddess', 'Sophia', 'Amazon', 'Hatshepsut', 'Judith', 'Sappho', 'Boadaceia', 'Hypatia', 'Marcella', 'Saint Bridget'. . .

By this point, I had finished one third of the table, and I was starting to get worried. The women who earned a place at the table were assumedly at the top of the list, a list that involves more than a thousand names. Only 39 received special settings, and I guess I assumed that of those 39 I would know a vast majority. I was discovering how naïve that assumption had been.

'Theodora', 'Hrosvitha', 'Trotula', 'Eleanor of Aquitaine', 'Hildegarde of Bingen', 'Petronilla de Meath', 'Christine de Pisan', 'Isabella d'Este', 'Elizabeth R.', 'Artemisia Gentileschi'. . .

I recognized two of these names, and I could tell you about one of them. The names continued almost in defiance of my ignorance. A grief I had never experienced began to overwhelm me, and I felt tears begin to well up. I have never before cried because of a piece of art. Art has moved me toward thought, toward debate, toward laughter, toward anger, toward many things- but never tears. Of the more than thousand names celebrated in 'The Dinner Party", I would recognize a perhaps generous figure of 100.

Less than 10%.

'Anna van Schurman', 'Anne Hutchinson', 'Sacajawea', 'Caroline Herschel', 'Mary Wollstonecraft', 'Sojourner Truth', 'Susan B. Anthony', 'Elizabeth Blackwell', 'Emily Dickinson', 'Ethel Smyth'. . .

I realized even more so, that at least 50% of the names I recognized belonged to women about which I knew nothing. For example, I could not have told you yesterday (I am very sorry to admit) who Mary Wollstonecraft was or what contributions she had made. A horrifying thought occurred to me: should a similar celebration of man's historical contributions be constructed in such a manner, I would easily recognize at least 50% of the names. I would probably also be able to explain in depth the contributions of at least 15% of them. Of course, that's just a guess.

I don't remember at what point I began to cry, but I know it was after I had left the table settings and had moved to the Herstory Board section- a chronology/brief description of the contributions of every name on exhibit. I felt as though I'd been punched in the gut. Somewhere, deep within, something had been stolen from me. My education had failed me. My culture had failed me. I had failed myself. How could I know so little about the power of the feminine? How had I missed my own history so succinctly? Who was Margaret Sanger? Natalie Barney? Virginia Woolf and Georgia O'Keefe were names familiar to me, but they provided little comfort after the onslaught of the unfamiliar.

I cried. I cried for myself. For my culture. For the education that I and my sisters and brothers were missing. It was a quiet cry, privately witnessed by an almost unending row of names.

I sat down on a bench and tried to center myself, attempting to pull myself back from the brink of destructive self-pity, searching for the redemptive righteous anger that I knew must be on the other side of such a deep wound. While I waited a man came over to the lady sitting next to me on the bench and commented on the 'fascinating' board of names.

. . .

Fascinating.

Even now I am filled with an anger and a hurt that is beyond my ability to capture.

Fascinating.

I understand how a board filled with the history of influential women one has never heard of could be a fascinating concept. I understand and respect this man's ability to recognize a resource he had not previously encountered. I understand to a certain extent.

But it goes so much deeper than the cognitive whimsy of a 'fascinating' history display. This is personal. It is my mother, my great-grandmother, my as-yet-undreamt-of-daughter. It is me. It is the mantle I inherited by being born into this body, or rather more so by living in it. It is the lie that has been perpetuated by silence. It is the gaping holes in my history. In me. It is the lack of acknowledgment of those holes- my previous inability to even conceptualize how many holes there might be.

I knew, of course, that there was much of the history and contributions of women that I didn't know, but I had never before been confronted so tangibly by the vastness of the unknown of feminine beauty, strength, thought, and power.

I am enraged.

I am crying.

I am crying, and I am enraged by the bleeding hole where my knowledge of my grandmothers should be. I have been robbed. So have you.

We, all of us, have been robbed by patriarchal thieves bent on silencing the brilliance of half our forebears. This cannot stand, but who will stand with me?

Why do we allow such silence? What do we do about it? How can I turn this wounded-ness, this anger, into a vehicle for change?

How can we?

Start of Term

2009-09-03T14:34:00.001-07:00

It's been a little while since I last updated, but I've been busy. Too busy to get a full night's sleep, actually, so though I've thought about reporting my most recent escapades to my anonymous blog audience, I haven't had the opportunity to do so until now.

What a week it's been, too. Summary in list form: my first guest Beth has been here since last Friday, working 30 hours for Carolyn, The Frick Collection, The American Museum of Natural History, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, seeing Sarah JEssica Parker filming SatC Two, Beth's birthday with sushi, beer, and an attempted visit to the Empire State Building, a date, first day of classes, finding my first piece of furniture on the street (a table!), the arrival of boxes and boxes of things from SF, more classes, and much start-of-term geekiness.

I am so tired at the moment. I seem to be at that weird mid point between events, when one has enough time to realize just how sleepy one is even though there isn't enough time to truly relax. I have a rehearsal room with my name on it in an hour or so, and a class after that. Yay for humanities at my music conservatory. I'm sure I'm quite thrilled and exhilarated by the prospect.

*ahem*

It's not that I don't like books, but rather that the very concept of taking a course in humanities at the college level is a bit abysmal sounding. It's not a literature class, it's not a philosophy class, it's a humanities class- a 'let's see how much we can cram into a required course so that we can maintain accreditation' class. It might turn out to be ok, especially since I was able to comp out of HU0001, and am taking HU0003 this semester instead, but I am a little skeptical. That and the class runs from 8.30-9.45pm two nights per week, which is a ridiculous hour to spend in discussion of said things.

Otherwise, school is looking rather excellent. And obnoxiously intense. I'm taking the following courses:

Voice Lessons (3 Credits)
Sophomore Aural Skills (2 Credits)
Humanities III (3 Credits)
Medieval/Renaissance History (2 Credits)
Advanced Freshman Theory (3 Credits)
Freshman Theory Lecture (1 Credit)
Phonetics (2 Credits)
Symphonic Chorus (0.5 Credit)
2nd Year Performance Class (0.5 Credit)
Concert Attendance (0 Credits)
Humanities Lecture (0 Credits)

To be fair, though, I was able to sign out of my humanities no-credit lecture, as it conflicts with my theory class, so my schedule isn't as intimidating, but that only saves me 50 minutes.

I am overwhelmed by both the breadth of work I have ahead of me and the sheer joy of being here with such opportunities. My professors (thus far) are all absolutely engaging and at the top of their game. Zillions of nerdy jokes have already made me laugh again and again. I am surrounded by people who take their craft seriously, which is intimidating but extremely validating at the same time.

I'm eager to dive into academia of this sort- my theory prof. wants us to explore both the mechanics of music and the philosophical concepts of where those mechanics came from. Fascinating. My history prof. is dynamic and a bit of a drama queen, and I hope I am never late to his 9 AM lecture. My phonetics course requires that I learn a completely new and MUCH larger alphabet. The very first thing I had to do at school was perform for my as yet unmet peers in my performance class when I had *of course* neither warmed up nor brought music (thank you beloved Library for saving my ass!).

This program is going to alter me significantly. I am ready.

Feeling Fat and Shameful

2009-08-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

It's disturbing to explore how deep the rabbit hole of body image issues descends.

It was raining today, and so I wore jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. A close-fitting long sleeve shirt and close-fitting jeans. As I crossed a street, carrying my favorite umbrella and a bag of new-to-me books from the Salvation Army, I looked down at my stomach and immediately felt an all-too-familiar twinge of shame. My belly was quite conspicuous, bisected round the middle by the line of my jean waistband.

Before I had a chance to counter any thoughts I had a wealth of mean, self-hating quips ready. Admittedly I didn't exactly have the desire to counter those thoughts- I felt I deserved every one. The word disgusting came to mind. As did the thought that

Maybe you should stop eating regular food and go back to the poor, starvation diet of lentils and rice everyday.

This makes more sense if you factor in my recent loss of a few pounds. I don't even know how much I lost, only that I can tell that I have dismissed a few extra inches or pounds from my frame due to my lack of money for food, walking more often, and the intense humidity of Manhattan August. Considering that I spent a greater part of my summer sitting in a car cross country or sitting at the bar in my hometown drinking cheap beer and talking the night away, I feel it's appropriate and understandable that my body move back to its somewhat usual shape and size.

But my feelings about this recent weight loss extend beyond "understandable" or "appropriate". I have been feeling proud of the weight coming off. To further clarify, this goes far beyond the healthy aspect of things. I'm not feeling proud of taking care of my body. I'm returning to my more healthy lifestyle of decent food and regular body movement after a summer of relative debauchery, but my gratification has little to do with healthiness. It's deeper and darker, and I'm ashamed that these thoughts are still so much a part of me.

I think there has been built into the system map of my brain an automatic pat on the head and tangible pride when I lose weight, regardless of how it was lost. I remember having similar feelings when I was too depressed to eat more than a cracker or two for a month a few years ago, which I think is an excellent example of losing weight unhealthily. Not all weight loss is healthy, but all weight loss triggers warm feelings about myself in the pit of my gut. Not all weight gain is unhealthy, but it all unequivocally makes me feel ashamed.

What was so disturbing to me about the conversation within myself was how far I took things in so short a time. I identify as a Fat Acceptance Feminist, among many other things. I'm fat and happy with myself for the most part. Catch me on a day when I'm feeling fat, though, (especially after a few days where my lack of money has, in my perception, prompted a loss of fat on my body) and I almost immediately jump to the conclusion that I ought to return myself to a deprivation diet that completely lacks basic nutrition. Great solution, Emily.

I think that it's especially upsetting because I have spent a lot of time and energy fighting a culture that I have been immersed in all my life. If not fighting the entire culture, then at least fighting to uproot its tentacles from my life and my psyche. I feel accomplished most of the time, because I don't carry around a lot of body shame. I'm larger than the average woman, and I'm fine with that. I love my body, I love my belly, I love the way my body feels, and I love that my body is ME.

But I still have bad days. And when I examine my thoughts on those bad days, I feel as though I've made no progress at all or that there is no hope for redemption. I feel discouraged and I fear that I will always carry a masochistic monster deep in my flesh, a monster who is only waiting for its perfect opportunity to jump out and starve me into fitting the BMI expectations.

Why would the monster stop there? If I were to lose the sixty pounds required of me to fit the BMI standards, then why wouldn't I shoot for eighty?? or ninety??? This monster within would certainly never draw the line and be happy at some arbitrary number on a scale.

Which is why I accept my body as part of myself. I can do this on a cognitive level very easily these days. I feel good in my body most of the time. My body does what I need it to do, again most of the time. I like the way my body looks, most of the time. It makes sense to do so.

Adopting these beliefs on a deeper, more innate level is proving much harder. Some days I feel it deep down: I am beautiful. My body is me and I am my body and it is beautiful.

However, I continue to have days like today and when they come I cannot help but wonder if there will ever come a day when, even if I do not feel like a goddess, I find that heinous monster's voice, the one urging me to starve myself, missing.

Lists and Updates.

2009-08-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

List of Things I Need to Get:

Mason Jars for Food Items, such as Rice, Lentils, Quinoa, Sugar
French Press, so that I can quit making coffee with a saucepan, strainer, and paper towel
Tea Kettle, so that I can make hot water in something other than a saucepan
Nutritional Yeast
Laundry Detergent
Bookshelves
Air Mattress
Couch-like object
Laptop-Television Converter

Things I Did Today:

Sleep in
Go on a Date Walking through Central Park
Eat Sushi with Pickle Squash (mmmm)
Scrub for 2 hours in the Kitchen
Discover my Debit Card has Mysterious Charges
Not my Laundry
Look for an Affordable Air Mattress

I really feel as though I'm settling in to New York. I'm starting to get a feeling for where the good grocery stores are, how long it takes to get places, and which lines to take on the subway. Yesterday I worked for the first time since moving, which was moste excellente, especially considering how poor I am.

I was working for a lady on Staten Island. I placed an ad on Craigslist looking for nanny work, and what I found instead was work as a Personal Care Assistant. Basically, I accompanied Carolyn all day, drove her van, and ensured that her wheelchair was securely fastened when it needed to be. She also went to Manhattan School of Music (many years ago) so we had much to discuss, which made the day all the more pleasant.

I will continue to work for Carolyn on an irregular basis (including this saturday, when I will drive in Manhattan for the first time!), and it will most likely in the future also involve her children. I'm so incredibly grateful for pleasant income. Truly.

It's time to get ready for bed, as I have a meeting with the registrar in the morning to finalize my schedule!

I'm very excited.

Weekend Events

2009-08-24T08:46:00.001-07:00

I thought I'd share about my weekend, seeing as I had been feeling quite melancholy/pensive/gloomy about New York during much of my last week.

My weekend was pretty fantastic, actually. Friday night my housemate, Doug, came home from Michigan. In case I haven't already explained, Doug is from my hometown. With him came Amber, a very lovable canine who shares our apartment. There was a dramatic thunderstorm that night, which kept me from sleeping. I stayed up until around 6 am, surfing the internet and listening to rain. *yawns* Saturday I had a required piano placement exam, which completely embarrassed me and emphasized the fact that it has been 10 years since I studied instead of the fact that I studied for 10 years.

The MOST EXCITING THING that happened during the day on Saturday, though, was that I got my. . .

. . .

(wait for it)

. . .

Library Card!!

I was standing amidst the cd collection stacks in the library on Broadway at 113th, and I got so excited that I actually had a little pinch whenever I breathed. I think that this may have been the turning moment for me in New York.

I love the library so much. It's a deep, supreme sort of love. Besides that fact that I get to take things home and use them for free, which is awesome, the very concept of the library is absolutely radical. Libraries provide free knowledge to the public. Access to any available knowledge- Completely free, without regards to class, creed, orientation, gender, age, ability, etc. Libraries are funded by the state for the betterment of the people. God, I love the library. I'm so excited about the library at this moment that I can't even construct a clear description of why I love the library so much, on an ideological level. Therefore, I'll leave it at that.

At any rate, I got my library card and proceeded to borrow some cds and movies (I'm in the middle of a book already). Movies: Bollywood/Hollywood, La Chinoise, Talk to Me, and Persuasion (which happens to be one of my favorite Austens). I immediately watched 'Persuasion', which I of course loved. I then set out for Brooklyn for dinner, wine, and a movie with my friend Candace.

I brought two bottles of Recession Wine, Candace bought Vegetarian Chinese Take-Out, and we sat on the floor of her new apartment, watching 'Talk to Me' with frequent breaks for cards or talking or more wine. We ultimately stayed up until around 4 am listening to music and discussing everything from our moves (Candace is a friend from the Bay Area, who also just moved to NY) to romantic entanglements to Jay-Z.

In the morning, I trekked back to Manhattan, which I must say is quite a trek. At least to the upper west side. Getting from my apartment to Candace's was similar to the commute I was used to in SF when traveling from SF to Oakland. Saturday night my timing was awesome, and it took about 55 minutes, but Sunday morning, it took much closer to 90. I had intended to visit ABC No Rio on the Lower East Side to join in Food Not Bombs, but after showering, getting ready, and running to the Subway, I discovered that I had left my Metrocard in my jeans pocket. I was to meet friends by 3, so I decided to wait until next weekend to try FNB.

At 3 my friends Richard and Hilding came by in their trusty Volvo and picked me up for an afternoon at the beach. We drove out to Fort Tilden and Breezy Point, a drive that took maybe an hour? It was amazing, as these places are part of NYC, but they are so remote and so removed that one feels as though one is far, far away, in some beach resort town. We picnicked on the beach, H & R went swimming, I dipped my feet in (surprisingly warm!), and then we headed back to the city.

We ended up driving all the way through Brooklyn instead of taking the Highway, which was very scenic, in terms of orientating oneself to a new area. Brooklyn is so unbelievably huge. When we got back to Manhattan, R & H invited me over for dinner at their apartment.

Richard cooked a delicious Swiss pie sort of concoction- filo dough filled with Cheese, Cheese, Heavy Whipping Cream, and Egg. Mmmmmmm. . . And we had a salad and a few beers, after which we proceeded to discuss such things as whether prostitution ought to be legalized, what the purpose of its illegality is, victimization, the difference between homosexual prostitution and heterosexual prostitution in personal opinion, rape and its definition, a possible re-framing of consent as seeking active consent and its implications on the legal definition of rape (much of this within the confines of the Swedish legal system), and of course, our respective summer vacations.

I had a brilliant time, and left to go home around 11.30. At this point, I saw the M4 pass a block and a half away. I ought to have run after it, but I stupidly assumed there would be another one in due time.

After 50 minutes of waiting on Madison at 64th, I gave up, and began an alternate and tedious route. I took the following: M66 to the 6; the 6 to the M96; the M96 crosstown. I then walked 10 blocks home. Grrrrr. . . it was after 1 AM by the time I reached my apartment. *grumblegrumble*

Which brings me to one final rant. As I was walking home last night, I felt generally safe. It was late, but I knew where I was, the neighborhoods I was in were all relatively safe, and I was awake and aware of my surroundings. That being said, I was quite pissed off by a group of young men in my neighborhood. On Columbus, about 5 blocks from my apartment, I noticed three guys standing on the sidewalk, hanging out. I actually prepared myself in case they decided to have a friendly little chat with a single woman walking home at 1 in the morning. (I'm learning that every time I pass a man, especially a group of men, on the street, I must brace myself. It is incredibly irritating, and I'm sure I'll blog about this some other time)

Sure enough, I pass by and one of the guys steps out and says,

"Hey there, Big Girl-"

"Fuck you."

Now, I have never responded to someone I don't know in such a manner. However, the rules of this world definitely imply, and he ought to know, that he has no right to talk to a single female walking down the street at that time of night. I'm in self-preservation mode. I'm going to tell him to fuck off.

"I see you've got your determined walk"

"Yep"

It felt damn good to respond with a bit of fire, I have to say. Damn Empowering.

I made it home, finished some computer things, and went to sleep. This place is beginning to feel like home.

Currently Reading: Male and Female

Accomplishments

2009-08-21T23:33:00.000-07:00

During the past few days I have done the following:

-Scrubbed grime that I assume has been living on my kitchen walls since the Reagan Administration

-Listened to at least 10 episodes of This American Life (the radio show)

-Watched 4 episodes of This American Life (the tv show)

-Downloaded 8 songs by Ladytron

-Removed all traces of cigarette refuse and sludge from my room

-Eaten spaghetti with plain tomato sauce every day at least once

-Eaten rice and beans/lentils for the other meal of the day

-Eaten Eggplant Parmigiana (this was free from school)

-Begun decorating my room with Queer Propaganda

-Crafted a makeshift table in my bedroom using the following: Two empty wooden crates, Two half-used paint cans, One striped box, One plywood board, One tapestry-like piece of material

-Put my Tibetan Prayer Flags up

-Met 2 MSM students from Grand Rapids

-Met 60 Billion Grad students who are younger than me

-Met 2 Undergrad students my age

-Gone to the pub with colleagues

-Gone on a cruise around the island of Manhattan (paid for by my school)

-Lost an unknown amount of weight due to sweating

-Discovered the following on my street: French Bakery, Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi Take-out, Mexican Take-out, Chinese Take-out, Southern Restaurant, Burger Restaurant, Two Delis, Fried Chicken Take-out, Cafe, Creperie (if I ever have money, I might get to try some)

-Made Coffee at home using the following: a Saucepan, a Small Sieve, and a Piece of Paper Towel

-Discovered that I am taking 18 credits this semester, which is apparently normal at this school. This does not count a couple of no-credit requirements.

-Considered writing an email 67 times, only to write it and send it to someone else

-Applied for work-study at school library

-Bounced continuously back and forth between ecstasy and terror at my present situation

I am very, very tired.

For your viewing pleasure:

View of Bedroom from under loft

View of Loft from doorway

On the School Cruise under the Brooklyn Bridge

This American Life is Sustaining Me

2009-08-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

I just finished the third coat of paint on two of my bedroom walls. Red. As in a fiery maple leaf, or a delicious tomato, or. . . ketchup? The cheap kind, not the deep maroon of heintz or hunts, but with an almost orange hue akin to ball park condiments. You might ask what color I chose for the other two walls-

. . .

Yellow.

My room might appear to have been decorated with kitchen sauces by the time I'm done. At least it won't smell like said deliciousness. Mmm. . . vinegar. . . salt. . . smells that last.

Which leads me to the thought of the smell in my apartment building's hall. Putrid seems an accurate term. Let me preface this by explaining that New York has been rather warm since I arrived Monday. Yesterday the fire hydrants in my neighborhood had been turned on, an action I'd seen in movies but doubted happening in the course of normal life. At around 90 degrees in a large city, though, I suppose one does what one must to detract from the oven like sensation that clings to everything.

Ovens are delightful when they're put to good use. They bake delicious things, creating a waft of tantalizing scents, tempting one to hang about and steal a wayward cookie. The hallway of my apartment building is not baking cookies.

The smell is somewhat akin to a combination of ashtray and greasy potatoes. I'm not sure if you have ever noticed the difference between cigarette smoke and an ashtray, but let me assure you that the difference is vast and the ashtray wins the award for most obscene.

Climbing three flights of stairs in the midst of such delightful company is not particularly comforting. Or welcoming. I'm sure that this experience will fade as the following things happen: (1). The weather becomes less kiln-inducing, (2). The follicles in my nose die a little from having lived in a large, smelly city, (3). I become so used to living here that I associate the smell of baking garbage with homecoming, (4). I acquire an actual room to live in so that coming home is a happy and relaxing event and thus don't mind trudging through disgusting odors to visit my oasis.

With regards to (4), I must explain that I have a room, but it is in all sorts of disarray. I am not living in my room, but rather in my roommate's room. It's sort of like camping out in a closet. There's nowhere to sit and hide on the internet (I'm writing this on the floor. My butt has gone numb). There's nowhere to lie down and watch a movie.

None of these things are the end of the world, but for someone who relies on a solid sense of home, who has been without her own stable, personal space for more than 2 months, and who is in the midst of a stressful transition, this is incredibly frustrating. All I want at this moment is to have a comfortable refuge from the difficulty of finding my way in a foreign world.

I mean, I don't even know where to get a good cup of coffee. I have to go exploring, discover new lands and new comfort zones just to find a caffeine fix. Which is fantastic- adventures are exactly what I wanted. However, I have to do the same thing when I get 'home'. There's no marginal space for me to feel at ease or at peace or comfortable. My surroundings are not very supportive.

Inner Peace, babe. It's a struggle.

I know that this will all pass. I know it's part of the big experience of moving and being 24 and trying to make sense of this world. I know in my head that this will get better. But in my gut, I can't help but feel a little twinge, wondering if this risk, this GIGANTIC risk, was worth it.

I think about the story my grama told me about the time she tried to move to New York. She got off the train and looked around, which was precisely when she realized that she didn't know what she was doing. She didn't have a job, or a place to stay, or friends. Her response? Run home. She stayed the night with friends of her mother, and then took a train home.

When my grama told me this story, I gave her a patronizing look. I attempted to be considerate and understanding, but inside all I could think was how stupid and weak she must have been. Why would she try to move to New York without making plans? Why wouldn't she stay?

The truth is this: I have made a LOT of plans in preparation for this venture. And though I have a place to stay, I am still unsure if things will work out. For the first time I understand my grama's decision to return home without a fight. In fact, I almost envy her the ability to admit defeat. Not that I have been defeated yet, as it's far too early to tell that, but I don't feel particularly fierce.

People have been telling me all summer 'how brave' I must be for doing what I'm doing. I've accepted their words, and scoffed inside, just a bit. Well, maybe a lot. Brave?? I'm not brave! It's not as though I had a choice to be sheepish. What else am I to do? This is just where I'm supposed to be, what I'm supposed to do. It made sense.

But last night as I took a break from painting my room to go downstairs to the DingDong Lounge (I live above a bar. Sweet.) and have a pint, I realized just how scary this venture is. I could have stayed in San Francisco, where I know my way around, where all the great coffee is, and when free museum days are. I could have stayed in Grand Rapids, where my closest of friends live. Where my heart still beats outside my chest. Where I could probably finaggle a job out of friends and relatives. But I left.

And here I have no cushion. No financial cushion. No real social cushion. This is a big risk. I sat at the bar and drank my Brooklyn Lager and didn't talk to anyone. The act of sitting there, present with my fears, stepping outside of my door to challenge those fears, was enough for that moment.

Halfway through my beer a torrential downpour began. I watched as outside the trees were whipped about and rain fell in great glops. And though it's silly and selfish, I felt as though the rain was for me.

Somehow it made me feel safe.

Loneliness Vs. Alone

2009-08-15T05:38:00.000-07:00

I spent last night very alone.

Now before you jump to any conclusions about the emo-centric possibilities of this post, give me a minute to explain. I was not lonely, I was absolutely alone.

At any rate, walking about on one's own at 3 in the morning allows plenty of time to ponder questions of existence. I found myself examining my solitude. I felt as though I were contemplating the edge of a very large pool of despair. I didn't want to dive into bitterness or cynicism or depression. I didn't even feel lonely, but I felt this great pull towards self-pity and emotional drama.

I was tired (ok, exhausted) and I'd been drinking, and I didn't have a place to stay for the night. I was alone, the stars were shining beautifully, everything was just as it ought to be, and I had a perfectly good backseat to sleep on when I arrived at my car. When I finally quieted the voices urging me toward the extremities of human emotion, I realized that I felt rather peaceful.

Then I worried that something might be wrong with me. I mean, culture (especially pop culture) is pretty clear about what being alone is all about. And in case you missed the memo, being at peace with oneself is not the point.

Being alone is in many ways an exercise in vulnerability, which is a devastatingly difficult state to find oneself in. The act of accepting one's own powerlessness in a situation, or acknowledging one's alone-ness, requires a certain level of honesty about how little one can control the circumstances of the universe.

The act of being alone in the middle of a difficult time makes a fierce statement, and it's one I'd really prefer not make as often as I do. Turns out, though, that the experience of being alone has such merit and is so-laden with perspective and growth that I must trudge time and again to the precipice of loneliness and peer in (either that or I've been too slow to learn the first bajillion times). I must again and again find that regardless of the number of friends I acquire, alliances I make, or promises I gather, there will always be a time when I have to stand on my own and breathe deeply without the solidarity of a best friend next to me.

To be clear, I really don't feel bitter about this. I'm not looking for pity or promises about 'the next time [I] feel that way'. Though I fully advocate building close friendships and calling on the strength of those friendships when times require it of you (I could not function in this world without them), I do believe that being alone, even within community, is still a primal part of the human experience. It doesn't matter how many friends you draw close about you, there will always come a time when the presence of others is neither enough nor appropriate. When it is time for me to be truly alone in the midst of trying times, I feel a wavering: should I sink into the fear of loneliness or maintain integrity? There is a panicked desperation in the attempt to stave off loneliness and this alone could force me into a catatonic curl. Do I give in and willingly plunge head first into a self-induced pity-party?

Or do I simply accept the alone-ness as it is presented to me? Being alone is not, in point of fact, that scary. I'm still me, the stars still rotate slowly across the night sky, and my true friends will still be there in the morning even if they're not present for the night. To look loneliness in the face and respond with acceptance is a defiant act, in my opinion.

Being alone is supposed to be the worst imaginable fate, but when you strip away the expectations of it, it isn't. I think the most terrible thing about being alone is how scared and overwhelmed we are by it and how we let those fears debilitate and control us. We have built a definition of being alone during tough times that necessarily implies abjection, and I utterly disagree with this definition. I think being alone is an absolutely healthy part of life.

And just to be clear, I'm not talking about being alone when you need to study or you need a break after work. I think most people would agree that such expressions are natural and healthy. I'm speaking to the alone time that we all desperately need to cope during times of stress or growth. During these times you're supposed to be continually surrounded by your partner, friends, and family. Which is not to say that you shouldn't lean on them during those times. But it should be acceptable to be without those people for a time as well.

All I'm saying is that being alone is not always the big scary monster I was taught it is.

Currently Reading: Cunt

Internalized Misogyny

2009-08-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

I have spent far too much time removed from the company of mid-west middle-aged women in the last few years. In no way do I mean that I ought to fully immerse myself in that culture, but rather that my tolerance, my immunity to such prattle, is far below the standards required for prolonged social encounters.

I want to be clear: I am not referring to every middle-aged woman living in the mid-west. I am referring to a very specific set of creatures that I have encountered in abundance during my recent and extended experiences in the mid-west. They have all happened with women of a certain age (middle), with a certain family situation (in a heterosexual marriage with somewhat-grown children), and some sort of job (varies from part-time to full and from unskilled to highly degreed). For these reasons I have lumped together a group in my mind, though to be fair, this group is not exclusive and could include any variety of self-hating people from anywhere.

I have had lunch with a group of these women all week, and the number of times we have discussed dieting makes me want to rush out and buy all of them a copy of Kate Harding’s Lessons from the Fatosphere. If I weren’t absolutely broke (and absolutely a chicken) then I might do just that. Instead, I made a few unnoticed comments about eating what one wanted in balance and left the rest of the conversation to those who preferred its repetitive tracks.

I felt supremely uncomfortable in these conversations. Uncomfortable and quite agitated. In the most recent years of my life I have cultivated my group of friends and urban family rather specifically. I have surrounded myself (and been surrounded by) those who seek to be at peace with themselves- their bodies, their emotions, their place in the world. I have grown so accustomed to the concepts of Fat Acceptance, Self-Love, Feminism, Trans-Alliances, and general acceptance that it is jarring to sit like a sponge in their blatant self-hatred.

Is self-hatred too harsh a term? Perhaps it sounds a bit sharp on the tongue, or maybe it sounds self-righteous. It’s easy to fall into a self-righteous dynamic in these situations, and though I can’t claim complete innocence of that particular quality, I’d like to ignore it for this moment, because the issues at root here are bigger than my predilection toward pretension.

What these women do to themselves on a daily basis is a slow but potent form of self hatred. I remember what it was like when I was on a perpetual diet. The constancy of my self-dissatisfaction and self-shaming along with my utter lack of balance and nutrition were the only things constant about those behaviors. So much of my energy was sapped by my blatant inability to love myself for all of me, to accept my thighs and my stomach and the wrinkles that developed as a result of my fleshy curves. I am appalled when I think of all the things I could have accomplished with that lost energy (literally years robbed by shame) I am deeply saddened and angered. And those feelings are inexpressibly magnified when I consider the collective creative and intellectual prowess that is being spent on belly-shame. There is no question that this self-hatred, a perpetual and derisive self-hatred.

It doesn’t end with the dieting, either. After lunch one day one of the above women was talking to her husband on the phone in front of me. The end of the conversation was annoying to her. It seemed to me that her husband was expressing some insecurity, and when the call ended, she shook her head and said to me, “He’s worse than a woman.”

She made this statement with such general disgust. I was mortified. I have since been told that “worse than a woman” is a saying that plenty of women use as a description often enough, but I could not recollect its ever having been used around me. Think about the implications of a woman describing a man as “worse than a woman”. Does that mean that men are, by definition, better than women? That her annoyance was the result of her husband’s departure from the status quo? That it is unacceptable for a man to reach so low as to be worse than a woman?

Does she realize that she is a woman, and that by invoking such a misogynistic phrase she is putting herself down? Or does she see herself as an individual and not part of the group ‘women’, so that her condemnation of femininity is not as potent a form of self-hatred? I don’t know, and I doubt that she’s ever stopped to question that colloquialism.

Of course at the root of such a statement is the basis of sexism and one of the greatest disservices our culture does us. This statement further defines and separates the concepts of man and woman. Two separate entities, they are, with the ability to be ranked (man always above woman, with all the associations of the ever-cliché missionary position). I would even say there is a cultural obligation to rank them. Male and Female, so definitively different. To be male is Supremely Superior, but to be a male who traverses the definite lines of separation is abominable. No man can express the feminine and continue to be better than the feminine. We must uphold our system of superiority!!

What a corrosive concept to perpetuate. It seeps into everything in our culture until you don’t even realize what you’re saying. Until you find yourself berating your male sons for crying over a scraped knee. Or giving your teenaged daughter a talking to about how ‘nice girls’ don’t talk like that. Or you start putting your husband down by saying that he is worse than a woman.

Women are bad because they have no choice but to express their femininity(?), but a man, a Supremely Superior being, who indulges in expressing parts of his femininity is by far worse. After all, he has a choice, right? Supposedly to choose to embrace a male's femininity is just plain stupid and shameful. This is the lesson we are taught so deftly that we can not even distinguish the moment it begins.

This type of thinking is always subconscious, which is why it is so insidious. It infects so rapidly, because we spread the contagions without ever thinking about it. I don’t know how to engage this woman in an examination of internalized misogyny. I don’t even think it’s my place to do so. I can only be present, live my life as it is, take whatever lesson I’m supposed to absorb and pass it along.

And perhaps next time I will feel a little braver. Perhaps I will ask what she means when she says that her husband is worse than a woman.

Greetings

2009-08-13T10:50:00.000-07:00

I hate the immensity of starting a new blog. There is a distinct lack of parameters, and this limitlessness constricts me much more than I'd like to admit. I've been thinking about beginning this blog (yes, another one) for a while. And though I've proclaimed that the reason I haven't is that I've surpassed my need for indecent emotional exposure, the truth is that I haven't begun because I haven't thought of anything sufficiently brilliant to post about. By sufficiently brilliant I mean by the standards of my perfectionist brain, which require that a first blog post at the very least end the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

Ahem. My solution, therefore, is to create the illusion of continuity. So I'm about to re-post older blog entries from other sources. Then this page won't feel so lonely, and I'll feel less pressure to have created something already, damn it.

Cheers.

Currently Reading: Ship Sooner
(I also would like to keep somewhat of an ongoing record of what I've read, so please indulge my current reading endeavors)

10.13 AM, October 21, 2007

2007-10-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

I got another idea for a story today. I was out walking and a string of words popped into my head. I was sure it was you. I remember thinking, “you must concentrate on these words,” but they were gone two minutes later. I remember thinking that those seven words had an entire story attached to them and that if I were to be able to get them down on paper, the rest of the story would fall out, too, by some extraordinary gravitational pull of pen and ink. I had no pen on me, and now they are forever lost. I feel kind of like a magician who’s lost her incantation. I’m disappointed, but I suppose that story was simply not for me to tell. Oh well, right?
You Know.

October 17th, 2007

2007-10-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

To know something deeply, softly, in the moments of quiet after my light has been put out, this is to be at peace. To feel so surely the beauty at once. To let flow, at once, the harbored fears. My judgments and expectations of myself, of others, have been killing me. To know that such stillness can be, to find in a brilliant sky some small, chaotic cluster attesting to the gorgeousness of this life- the incompleteness of all my former pretense of life is apparent in the slight rustle of leaves on this otherwise soundless morning. I think I can call it morning, even though I haven’t slept and the sun has yet to rise. I wait for a bus that seems never to come. This morning arrived without my even thinking of it. Gone is the sleeping time. Gone, too, are the worries I cherished yesterday. I haven’t been able to cry lately. Did you know? I have felt cold. I have wished for tears to empty out the sadness, to release my well, to validate my own pity. I have longed to let loose a stream of tears each time I hugged my knees on the back porch. None would come. After great strains there was not even one tear to hold, to shake hands with, to comfort, yet this morning I cry without meaning to. Simply feeling held- neither holding myself not cradled in another’s arms, but held none the less.
You Know.

"Judy"

2007-10-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

Walking quiet streets was a pastime for Judy in the purest sense of the word- it was a way to pass the time. The ache in her abdomen refused to give way, crowding her senses and refusing her favorite form of personal abandonment. She had tried to go walking three times already, but she couldn’t catch her breath enough to conquer her stairs, let alone the hill she lived on. She settled for a puff of guilt-ridden cancer and sat on the stoop while its acrid taste seeped into her cheeks and fingertips.

She wondered if the ache in her belly was something more than bad food. The recurring fear of a tiny parasite leeching the walls of her uterus drained her mind of its store of calm and left every signal her body sent tinged with dread. She couldn’t be pregnant. She just couldn’t be.

Why hadn’t she insisted that he be safe? What was it about her that allowed those sudden bursts of passivity in the worst possible moments? She was a pillar of strength and intention except in those terribly hopeless moments when an older man pressed himself against her or an unknown stallion pierced into her. She couldn’t understand herself and she had all but given up hope of forgiving herself for such weaknesses. They were to be born, and that was all.

Judy climbed into her bed and swaddled herself with blankets. She was always cold, her extremities tingling even in the full weight of the sunshine. She pulled the neck of her sweater up over her head to trap in every escaping molecule. She stopped moving to survey the results and found that she was trapped. The warmth would come soon, but the knocking in her head and chest would not leave. She wished for a sign, a desire, a passion, even hatred. Her apathy was paralyzing.

If her blood returned in a week would her numbness disappear? She listlessly hoped it were so and curled her hands into a twisted ball, cradled under her chin. How she longed to sob into the night, but there was nothing for which to sob. There was nothing wrong with her life even if there was nothing right. She wished for sleep.

The elusiveness of such dreamless sleep was ironic for a woman who often battled competing waves of depression and narcolepsy. At any point she could sleep for a dozen hours without stirring, that is, any point but when she desperately needed to escape. She could not banish the thousand empty thoughts running loops in her head. For a woman without conflict she carried too many fears.

And anger, though she was reluctant to admit it, was creating its own course through her body. She couldn’t believe that she had allowed her ex to seduce her. She had been weak, she had been clouded, she had been lonely, and though she knew she could have done things no differently, she was still disappointed with herself. She should have known the future, her gut pushed. She should have seen the falseness and the trap. She could never forgive her own humanity.

How she expected herself to resist That Woman’s smile and shoulders is a mystery, but Judy was still crucifying herself for it, and laughing at the reality of the conversation the day after when That Woman had spoken of being cautious and building friendships with respect. Somehow she seemed to miss the glaring inconsistency in her own philosophy, having pounced on her confused friend and former lover only the night before. Judy felt stupid for having believed any of the words that came out of That Woman’s mouth. After all, she had prior offenses and a history of laxity when it came to being genuine with her truth.

But this was past, as all her transgressions were. Lying in bed and considering all the ways that life had gone awry was Judy’s least favorite pastime and the one that recurred most painfully and insidiously. It was frustrating, but it was her only reality. What was life without these occasional forays into the pitiful and pathetic? She couldn’t be happy, not really. Perhaps she didn’t believe that such happiness or comfort was acceptable. Perhaps she was happiest in her soul when she was huddled alone and crying. That was a sobering thought. These journeys into her sad, illusionary world were becoming less frequent and, Judy thought with a hint of a smile, maybe she was growing past the sadness. Maybe she was beginning to live.

That life made these moments all the harder to bear. When she had fallen asleep every night cradled in her own arms, it had been comforting to know that her self-pity would always be there. Now its presence brought a stale, mildewy stench with it and memories of that life, many lives ago, when she had believed that she truly was alone. It was jarring to find herself lifted from the joy of life to this self-induced trauma. She hoped it would pass soon. If only she had the energy to walk right now she might walk until she flew away. Instead she tucked her head in and pressed shut her eyes, praying for sleep and a little bit of clarity.

1.47 AM, Friday, October 12, 2007

2007-10-12T01:47:00.000-07:00

Woman-
inconceivable
hands and hips
feet, thighs, breasts, lips,
Mind
-unretractable Mind-
burning into the night.
flesh without pause
Smooth, Scarred
rythmic in taste
and taut
over beating, breathing
Woman
without shame,
without blame,

moving in a spiral

of intention.
contention-
no rest but to move.

October 7th, 2007

2007-10-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

I didn’t set out to become some sort of sexual deviant, not that that’s what I’ve become. In all reality I set out to be a nun. I wanted to be pristine, close to god, and the first in line to go to heaven. When I’d given that dream up by the wise age of eight, I converted the same desires into a plan for a solid Catholic marriage. My grandmother still presses this dream into my hands every time I see her, somehow hoping that my short hair and tolerant words might be fluke signs; I might still become her saint. The advantage of my adjusted plan, a good, strong husband of god and all the children that our modest sex afforded us, was that I wouldn’t find myself stuck in a convent for the entirety of my life. Seclusion didn’t fit into my life plans- how could I be president if I were a nun? In holy Catholic matrimony I would find both religion and some semblance of actualization. That was my hope.

My dreams began to revolve around egalitarian white picket fences and average family afternoons. I believed that my life could have one real path: school, college, graduate school, marriage, kids, career. The lines were distinct and everything had its place. Almost, that is. I wasn’t prepared to interpret my thoughts about women.

I knew lesbians and gay men. They were friends, neighbors, people I respected, but they were other. They existed, but they were separate from my personal paradigm, token friends and characters in my own staged show. Sure, I thought about women when I masturbated, but didn’t everybody? So I thought about them pressing me against a wall, that was a normal teenage thought to have. Or maybe it wasn’t, but it just meant that I was open and accepting of people. It didn’t make me gay.

My first sexual experiences were with men. Later on, I would quote those experiences of horrid, passionless single nights as proof that I was simply not a heterosexual. Despite the tiniest nag that those experiences might not have been exactly a fair sampling, I wanted so badly to define myself, to fit in, to belong. I wanted an identity. So when a beautiful woman offered me her hands and her body, I slid happily into my modern box.

All the desires of a life, moving in and out of age and location, the absoluteness of every discovered want, how is it that life can feel so real at every second? To be nine, to know that life has more in store, but to have no plane of reference, no concept of what more might entail. To be twenty and to still hold fast the belief that what one wants then is what one will always want- perhaps this is the soul of naïveté. How disillusioning to find yourself, a proclaimed lesbian with a broken heart, looking at men with a twinkle in your eye? Yet it was even more confusing to go home with one and watch, almost disembodied as he pressed his advantage without ever stopping to ask what I wanted. We fucked on his huge, empty bed, and I wished that it would just be over- that I wouldn’t hate myself too much in the morning. Another one night stand, another series of unfulfilled wishes.

Why am I still attracted to men? It can hardly be explained, and other than my perverse need to explain everything, I really have no desire to pick it apart. I like whom I like. I meet whomever I meet. I follow the guideposts of feelings. Most times this is enough.

I find myself craving the solidity of my ex. The knowing that each night she would tell me she loved me. The comfort of good sex. Even after all the self-prescribed growth inversion, all the weaknesses indulged because I knew she would carry them, because it felt good to have someone who would carry them, after it all, I still miss the assumed right to cuddle, to kiss, to love.

I’m scared of this process of taking each day as it comes. It’s terrifying, at times, to rise to a moment’s unexpectedness. Finding new feelings and realizing that old ones have passed is unsettling for a woman who has tirelessly sought an anchor to believe in, to trust in, to depend upon.

There is a certain honesty in the act of sleeping alone. The reality is that each night I go to bed alone. I have slept alone every night of my life, even when I shared my bed. The loneliness felt bitterer, more hidden, whilst waking next to a cherished body, the pain more acute when my partner was an unknown quantity. Sharing the warmth of a comfortable sleep with another leaves the illusion of solidarity without the removal of reality. The truth is, thus far, that I am the only being with whom I am. I join the paths of others, I listen, I love, I journey, but I do those things in tandem at best and in solitude the rest of the time. This isn’t to say that I prefer sleeping single, as that couldn’t be further from the truth, but my reality remains.

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of becoming emotionally close to someone who I couldn’t at least imagine being with forever, yet I’ve had three one-night stands. Are these two realities unrelated? Inter-related? Here I am, a woman out of the closet twice, a seeker and a lover, involved in a Polyamorous situation. Relationship? I am not in love with multiple people, though I could be. The object of my affections is most definitely involved with others. How in the world did I find myself here? I would have thought that by now I would have decided exactly what and where I was to be. I thought I had those questions worked out.

Here I am, each day a pleasant surprise of new feelings. This good little Catholic girl, this refugee of a broken lesbian relationship, is creating something with a man who has a girlfriend. Why does confusion follow me? I feel fear tonight- the unknown pain, the possible aches and division, the mystery of my heart, all unquantifiable. No promises can be made, no absolutes. I don’t want finite answers and I don’t want promises. I know that I have nothing to be ashamed of and that there is nothing to fear but my thoughts. I have faith in the process, faith in God, but that doesn’t take away the years of habit, worrying about how things might end before they’ve even begun.

What do I want? I want to be happy. But that question begs another, more poignant question- what do I not want? I don’t want to be surrounded by chaos. I don’t want to hurt friends. It seems not to matter that I remind myself that the current problems are not something I could have prevented, I still feel responsible. Not solely responsible, but culpable nonetheless.

I acknowledge that these are not my issues, that I have control over my own actions alone. And though everything might resolve neatly, I am more inclined to believe that it won’t be simple. If I were my own friend I would probably use patronizing expressions while reading this. Shouldn’t I have known that this would be difficult? Shouldn’t I have avoided it? But who can avoid their own journey? Even avoidance of a path is an affrmation, however negative, of that path.

I need to sleep before fatigue overwhelms me. So for tonight, goodnight.

4.52 PM, Thursday, October 04, 2007

2007-10-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

I'm a woman lost in the throes of hedonism. Lost in a ninth grade pejorative, trying to make sense of a reality I don't want to deny. Maybe there are no words left. Perhaps I've greedily sucked the beauty or sense from every pen I own. Maybe I'm down to the stubby ink that has remained stuck to the end of the tube. Wanting to bring some semblance of wisdom or wittiness to a world that finds me small and lonely. If I can find a few profound words to string together in a neat little row, then surely I am not as small as I feel. I can fool myself only slightly more than I can fool fate. How is it that I could drop through this world without worry or fear? Why must I question it when out of beauty it happens? When by either gravity or fate or God or whichever law rules I float through the obscene obstacles of an unregrettable life. Whose choice is it, then, that I follow these streets and wind away uphill? If mine, then it was chosen long ago, and if I had no part in the discussion, then it was still decided long ago and there is no point in an appeal. I have given up the power I never had, and sometimes I still long for it, but mostly I rejoice in my powerlessness. Sometimes I lie and dream that others have power over me, that I have given them that power, and I fret over my powerlessness and their ability to hoard it. Then I feel the despair of a night spent alone, for I have tricked myself into believing that I am alone as I could never be, for there is always solidarity in the human experience.

October 2007

2007-10-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

Can I be honest for a minute? Just a single minute right now- everything I write is crap. I write and I write and I writeandiwrite. And still. When I read again the things that I type I am ashamed. Let’s face it- I’m completely self-absorbed. All I write about is myself. My feelings. Situations I find myself in. And everytime I reread what I’ve written, all I can think is Who Would Want To Read This Crap? If a person didn’t know me, they would stop reading after the second self-indulgent phrase. Which would most likely come at the end of the first cadence. How is it that I can accept so completely the writings of others? When I read someone else’s story I accept it as at least valid almost immediately. At least most of the time. I don’t even accept my own writing. . .how can I expect anyone else to?
I saw writing on a garage in Berkeley a while ago that I’ve thought of often. I’m thinking of it now and shaming myself for being so egotistical. Someone wrote in big, white, spray-painted letters “Write for yourself and you’ll always have an audience,” right on the front of a shabby old house. I don’t even remember exactly where it is. Why do I crave an audience so much? Must I be exhibitionist? Do I want fame? Not exactly. I want to contribute something. AND I want to be able to live as I like to live. AND I think that if I had a posh audience I’d feel like my writing was more valid than I feel like it is now.
I know. Wrong answer. I can’t do it for anybody at all. Not even for me. I just have to do it. Whatever that means. Thanks. I knew that you’d listen. You always do.
You Know.

1.01 AM, Friday, August 17th, 2007

2007-08-17T01:01:00.000-07:00

What if the what ifs in life are beyond the sane? Well, of course they are, but then what if the sun had dozed a little on the 23rd of January, if its temperature had cooled the tiniest parcel of a degree centigrade, if the weather 90 million miles away shifted in the slightest, would it have changed the course of time or the vandalism in my chest? If a single drop of dew had lingered an extra moment in the mid-morning sun, would it have been enough to alter this reality? Would my guts still urge me to rebellion, toward the pavement, toward a salty display of fireworks in honor of a witnessed kiss? Not my kiss, of course, but igniting nonetheless a sort of sour dramedy. Working at the carefully mended knot, pulling at the pieces and loosening the only nice bits, and then again what if the moons orbiting Jupiter had paused in their journey, paused to sigh or think about which skirt they might wear on a Sunday if the opportunity arose? What if the gravitational pull of the entire universe was altered, would that have changed a damn thing?

If everything happens for some reason, even the birth of a wormy caterpillar, and every tiny gasp plays its power in my universe. . . if everything that happens, happens, would a speck of past intervention or even a giant boulder colliding with a puppy dog change the happen-ness of my happiness?

It remains that the sane lack the ifs, the 'what the world might look like' outside of this world. This world is, and without my gut's personal revolt it would no longer be this world. In another world I might have challenged in the iditarod, or scaled a pyramid with my magical fingers, or made her want to stay and love me. In another world I might be a frog, too. Or a flea, which would explain the dog-racing. The ifs continue without pause when you think about it. All the ways this world might mirror another.

But then again what if I lived in this world, with these hands, and these aches? If I lived here and knew it, would it be better than the worlds I imagine when the aching just above my gut reaches its height? Would I care if it were better?

"Possibilities"

2007-01-09T01:33:00.000-08:00

He looked across the street and stared at an empty tree. In the dim light of the street lamps, the old oak looked like a dead hand, trying to claw its way out of the earth. He sucked in a long stream of acrid smoke and held it in his lungs, waiting for the nicotine to infiltrate his blood stream, waiting for the smoothness of a little tobacco high to even out his night. In his room there were two forties and a bottle of vodka waiting. A tall stack of porn and a short stack of novels waited to vie for his attention. The competition would not be intense.

He exhaled a bitter cloud and felt a little bit of heartburn irritate his stomach. He thought about not drinking tonight, taking a couple of Tums and sneaking into bed early. He thought about beginning to write the story that had been percolating in his mind for the last few weeks, or calling up the guys to come over for a couple rounds of poker. He thought about not spending the night alone in the basement of his parents’ house. He thought about calling her.

He knew that the possibilities for the evening were numerous, and that it didn’t matter how limitless they might be. He had already made his decision, and the events of the evening had been set in motion. The forces of gravity were less exacting than the forces at work within his body, so he took one last drag on his cigarette before flicking it into the street. He watched with a wistful resignation as a few red embers sparked off the pavement before dying. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, slumped his lanky shoulders, and went back inside.

His parents were in the living room as he walked through. They were arguing about something on the television and didn’t seem to see him passing. He no longer noticed their ignorance. Living with them was like living with apathetic strangers, and if living there had cost him a penny, he would have moved out long ago. As it was, he had adapted to the survivable mediocrity of his cheap surroundings.

He walked downstairs into the semi-finished basement he had been living in since he finished high school. He rounded a corner, passed the bathroom, and walked into his humble abyss.

It was a small room; the bed and bookshelf took up most of the floor space. A small TV was huddled on top of a nightstand in one corner, with a stack of case-less DVDs resting near the screen. Dirty clothing obscured the corners of everything and empty beer cans lurked underneath old papers.

He sat on the edge of his bed and opened his first can of beer. It was cheap and mostly tasteless, which was why he preferred it. He didn’t need to be classy in his alcohol choices tonight; no one was watching what he drank, and he certainly wasn’t drinking for the taste. He downed half the beer in a few quick swigs and set it on the floor.

He flipped through the stack of pornography next to the DVD player and was annoyed by the choices. They seemed stale. He’d seen them all too many times, and hadn’t been bothered to go to the store for anything new earlier in the day. He regretted that decision now and defeatedly stuck an unexciting selection into the open tray. He picked his beer back up and finished it while the title menu came onscreen.

He pressed play, opened the second beer, and picked up the bottle of vodka. He swallowed a few mouthfuls of the fiery liquid before quickly chasing with a drink of beer. A small voice in his mind told him to slow down, the whole evening was before him. There was plenty of time to drink half the bottle.

He couldn’t slow down. He took a few more shots of vodka, and half his second beer was gone. His head was beginning to reel as he pressed “mute” on the remote and yawned as two women began to undress each other onscreen. He lay back on the bed and picked up his blinking cell phone. She had sent him a text message telling him to call her. He considered the possibility for a moment, but decided to wait a few minutes before engaging her in conversation.

A cough began to build up in his chest and he sat up suddenly, the hacking shaking his whole frame. He couldn’t catch his breath, and tears were beginning to cloud his eyesight. After a few minutes of an exploding sensation in his chest, the coughing subsided. He went to wipe the tears from his eyes, but stopped when he noticed there was blood on his hands. He had coughed up blood.

What was that disease? he thought. The Poe one. The one that killed all Edgar Allen Poe’s women? Consumption? What was that? He squinted his eyes for a moment and tried to concentrate. Concentrate. TB. . . Tuberculosis?
He worried for a moment that he might be terminally ill. Coughing up a handful of blood was not a normal occurrence. He wondered if Tuberculosis was still going around and if it was a painful way to die. The worry morphed into a warm sense of relief as he concretely thought about dying in six months. He smiled.

He probably wasn’t dying. It more than likely had to do with his recent increase in smoking. He had moved from two or three cigarettes to two packs a day in the space of a week.

The realization that he wasn’t going to tragically die in six months was a grave disappointment to the evening. He found himself longing for the simplicity of a divinely mandated exit visa and felt cheated by the tease of blood in his lungs. He cleared his eyes with the back of his hand and wiped off the blood and saliva on a nearby t-shirt.

There was a blinking light next to his leg, and he stared for a moment before it registered that his phone was ringing. He answered her call and began to listen to the latest edition of bad-boyfriend weekly. She was crying into the phone and saying that she wished her boyfriend would be as sweet as he was.

He swallowed and mentioned that he would never hit her child. She said he was so sweet and went back to talking about the latest in her long string of loser boyfriends. For some reason it didn’t matter that he was blindingly drunk; he still couldn’t tell her to fuck off. He couldn’t avoid her calls, he couldn’t tell her how passionately he felt, and he couldn’t tell her to leave him alone if she didn’t want him.

He managed to make it through another five minutes of her pitiful gibberish before excusing himself and hanging up. The chicks were still going at it on the TV, and he couldn’t find his vodka. That didn’t matter too much, seeing as he didn’t have any beer left with which to chase it.

The evening was becoming too long. He looked at the clock, which was upside down from the twisted position he had posed himself in on the bed. He tried to make out what time it was, but he couldn’t stop the numbers from spinning. He closed his eyes and held onto the bed as the feeling worsened.

He stumbled into the bathroom and bent over the toilet just in time to vomit. He wiped away the tears that he couldn’t stop from coming whenever he threw up. He tried to gauge if this was going to be one of those rare single-vomit nights. Not so lucky, he thought as he puked again, and again.

When he thought he was mostly done he curled into a ball. He had one last thought before passing out on the floor of the bathroom, arms wrapped around the base of the toilet, hoping that the experience of being twenty-five would be better than the past year. Another shitty birthday.