Outlook

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.

Struggling to Communicate

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.

Apologies and Such

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.  

An Internal Conversation

*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

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?

Loneliness Vs. Alone

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

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.

4.52 PM, Thursday, October 04, 2007

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.

1.01 AM, Friday, August 17th, 2007

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?