April

April 2, 2001

I didn't sleep well all last week and then sprang forward Saturday night and lost that hour. So, despite the fact that I went to bed early last night, it was difficult to get out of bed this morning. I began the usual pounding on myself about waking up and then I decided to accept how I was feeling. Imagine that. It's not as if I woke up that late. As I write this sentence it's 8:17. The problem is that if I don't get out of the house to do my walk before the middle school kids start arriving for school I don't go on my walk. Apparently I am still stinging from my own middle school experience because they make me nervous. I like the walk because it gets me out of the house and I live in such a beautiful city. It helps me to remember that. And I need the exercise. I feel better in my body when I do the walk. I have a Cardio Glide. It's serves as a place to hang the odd piece of clothing. I intend to use it as soon as I finish this writing. Being unemployed can be nerve wracking. I'm great at being a worker ant. I show up and do my job. Not having that structure makes me nervous. I am having to develop the way I spend my day. Once, in an imaginative exercise on how I'd like to spend my day I thought I wanted to spend the morning eating my breakfast and writing. Having the site gives me a reason to write and keeps my brain working to think about what I am going to write. It's all kooky because I feel the need to be interesting and profound and political and .... it can be paralyzing. And then there is the awareness of who is reading. I know a few friends are reading because they tell me they are. So the site becomes an e-mail to them. But it has stirred up all these thoughts about what it is to be a writer and/ or someone who is read. What do I have to put on a page that might be enjoyable or informative or worth the few minutes that it takes anyone to read. Since I am given to analyzing my experience, often times into minute and ridiculous detail, having a web page has kept me busy.

April 3, 2001

I continued to think about yesterday's entry and the curious notions of what is public and what is private. The first on line journal that I read was Willa's and I was facinated and a bit worried that she was writing about her life on the world wide web! There are times when she writes about what she bought at the drug store and times she writes about computer issues. I really did have thoughts about what people would think about her site. But I kept going back. I found it comforting to read about Willa's life. It was a tonic to what the popular media calls reality TV. A network puts a few people in an extreme living environment and then watches how they react. But the fact that they will be watched has play in how they react. No where near as many people will read Willa's journal (and fewer will read mine) but reading a tale of Willa, waiting for the cable man, reminds me of what many of us have in common. The chop wood - carry water parts of life. She will wax philosophical sometimes and that's also great. She has no cultural seal of expert. Her musings are accessible and familiar. Now as I approach this task every day I have to fend off the urge to be writerly, the fear of being boring, the dread of being disapproved. It's all quite inflated when you understand how the world wide web works. Any site is public to anyone with a computer but may never be viewed. A friend asked me how many hits I had gotten. What a concept! I can hazard the guess that I may have gotten about eight hits, all by people who hold me in some degree of affection. The fact that anyone reads this has play in what I write and how I write but the effort has to be toward something that resembles authenticity. And, perhaps, an efforted authenticity is oximoronic.

April 4, 2001

I have the terrible habit of leaving the TV on for noise. Generally, it'll be on a news station. I try not to do this too often since I don't think mainstream news is trustworthy and these days I think it may be toxic. I heard something from a news cast yesterday saying that the Miami Herald says that Bush would have won. I guess this is news relative to some recount or something, frankly, I wasn't paying that much attention. It's ridiculous that we're still hearing about this. I will never believe that Bush would have won. There were too many discrepancies and problems. And his presidency was achieved in this one state. He did not win in the popular vote. He does not have a mandate. It's all ridiculous. But what I kept thinking about was how many little things come out of the mouths of news people that have play in how so many people perceive their reality. It seems as if I and too many of my friends are having trouble right now, specifically in terms of finding jobs. Spirits are low. Life seems uncertain. Some of this is just a normal reaction to difficulty but how much of it, I wonder, is fed by a background noise of lies. I kept thinking about that little pro Bush comment yesterday was interestingly timed considering that we are in this stand off with China. Could it be that the media might think we need to accept this president select? Despite the fact that he's gone back on campaign promises. Despite the fact that he can barely make a public comment given his limited vocabulary. Despite the fact that even with Florida he did not win the majority vote. But we need to accept him if he's going to take this stand against China. Why else would news of the Florida recount be considered worthy at this late date?

April 5,2001

The little background news blip that I heard on Tuesday became a full blown news festival yesterday with all the coverage focusing on the Miami Herald report. The Hearld report talks about the various methods of chad counting, or not counting, which would have yielded a wildly variant numbered win for Bush. In Salon.com there is a great article by Jake Tapper titled: And The Winner Was? I tried to link to it, unsuccessfully. Trapper writes that " More favorable to Gore, however, was the Herald's reexamination of all  the undervotes statewide, including what can only be called a re-re-examination of those from Broward, Palm Beach, Volusia and Miami-Dade. In this review, which went above and beyond what the Florida Supreme Court ordered, a loose standard would have given Gore a victory of 393 votes."  Funnier yet is an article there today in which an agency reports that Buchanan would have won. When they weren't talking about this Miami Herald thing yesterday they were talking about going in and getting our boys out of China. I know it seems as if I might be waxing conspiracy theorist but it all seems orchestrated. Suzanne says that having Bush as President is like being kids in a car, Dad's driving and he's drunk. She says Colin Powell is like mom, grabbing the wheel just when things are about to swerve out of control.

April 6,2001

I had dinner at Da Flora with Caitlen last night. This morning all the blood is still in my belly happily digesting. My brain is fuzzy. The food was perfect. We shared the sweet potato gnocchi and a smoked trout appetizer. I had roasted pork and white beans. We drank a bottle of wine. Flora and Marybeth made us feel quite at home and cared for including bringing us a plum tart and some port. We had a wonderful conversation including our concerns about getting in to grad school. She is decades younger than I but we share this transitional story line. This morning I'm trying to think of something to write. It's been an hour of trying. Oh, well.

April 7,2001

All my dreams last night had an apolcolyptic quality. Lot's of tribal imagry. It was as if I hadn't been watching enough TV lately and my dreaming mind was making up for the lack of kookiness.

Since last week's debate on Jazz and race I have been thinking about my own skin color and its function in my identity. There is an image of a white child who, seeing a black person for the first time, rubs a hand on black skin and checks to see if the blackness has rubbed off and on to them. Why don’t they imagine that their whiteness will rub off? Perhaps it is because their skin, the color of their skin is never questioned relative to identity. Their skin is just skin. This may only be true in liberal circles. In racist circles the whiteness of the child’s skin is pointed out to them at a very early age. But noticing difference does nothing intrinsically and it not automatically measured vertically. It’s all the things that happen after one notes difference that establish how that difference is measured. I am most aware of this when very young children notice that I am fat. It is a moment of clear perception and acknowledgement. If I affirm their perception it becomes another adjective. Too often a parent will rush to tell the child that saying that I am fat is very wrong, despite the obvious truth.The larger social climate and historical event horizon taught me to think about race and other forms of cultural or social divisions but my own skin color was never the topic of critical thinking.  

April 9,2001

Amy Goodman was on Washington Journal yesterday. She held forth against a fellow whose name I didn't bother to remember. They covered a variety of topics. He talked about China's expansionism. Of course I want China out of Tibet and I imagine people in Taiwan are more worried about the current US/China standoff than anyone here. But hearing those ideas brought back memories of the domino theory. And this fellow kept referring to COMMUNIST China and their propaganda as opposed to our free press. That must have been particularly ironic for Amy who goes to do her award winning news show every day in a climate of fear and intimidation. But Amy used the forum to make points about the military industrial deal with the devil, Chinese economic dependence on Wallmart and other US corporations and she made a pitch for Lori Berenson. She was dignified, articulate and informed. Washington journal is a call in show and that can be a little scary. Before Amy was on there had been a caller who suggested a boycott of Chinese food. Ironic to the point of being cliche was the moment when the moderator asked Amy and "the guy" who their favorite authors were and "the guy" mentioned Evelyn Waugh and F Scott Fitzgerald. Amy spoke about her interview with Alice Walker and mentioned Elisabeth Allende.

April 10,2001

The board of supervisors in SF is  considering the city attorney's request to make changes in the current business tax system. Last year a trail court held that the current tax system might be unconstitutional. A crowd of impassioned citizens filled city hall last night to beg them to vote against what is perceived as a concession to the massive and dominate corporate culture. At one point supervisor Tony Hall said that no one ever said that justice was fair. Well, actually someone did, Daniel Webster. Hall is, perhaps, confusing justice and things that happen in our courts. But our courts are only as good as the people operating in them. It will take a certain amount of courage for our supervisors to resist what the city attorney is asking them to do.

April 11,2001

I heard Suzan Sontag in "a conversation" with Orville Schell. What was spectacular about her was her refusal to be spectacular. Schell kept asking her ridiculous questions designed to evoke a sound byte and she answered practically all of them with I can't answer that. In fact at first I thought we might be up for an evening of her saying nothing and taking quite  a long time to not say it. But after a while I realized that she was refusing to be "an expert" just because she's published and in doing that she was modeling a way in which we might talk if we weren't trying to be clever. It might have been more dynamic if Schell could have more than one approach in his line of questioning. He wanted her to talk about all the anti war things she'd been involved with in the sixties and she talked about all the civil rights thing she had not been involved with in the fifties. He wanted her to name people that were her heroes and she said the people that were her heroes were not famous. She was inadvertently talking about the way in which private opinion and public opinion may need to be separated. She may have an opinion about China and the spy plane but she would not want to use her celebrity to give it public voice since she is not an expert on China or spy planes. It was interesting to be listening to someone who was more or less saying I may not be interesting. That became what was interesting. It is a current fascination for me since I do this goofy little public pontification that is only actually read by one or two people. It's interesting because of how it changes what I say and how I say it. I'm not sure I know how it does but I know that I edit and rewrite and fuss.

April 13,2001

My back went out. I didn't do anything. It's shocking to me that I still respond to negative physical events in body with the thought that this wouldn't be happening if I wasn't fat. It an quieter voice these days but it's still in the mix. When I go to the chiropractic office there are all physical types. If being fat were the single causation that wouldn't be true. I injured my back lifting a box incorrectly once and it has been sensitive ever since. My knee, which has been going out since I was a kid, went out yesterday during my walk and that may have been when my back went out but I didn't notice until later. The bummer about this is that my friend Jane is visiting from Oregon and I'm doing the cooking for Easter brunch. And my chiropractor is on vacation. So I've made and appointment with her partner. I have my magnets on and I've been ice-ing and using the heating pad and rubbing on arnica and every other trick I have up my sleeve. Pain is the great leveler. It hurts too much to sit at the computer and write so I won't go into a long dissertation about the current police state in Ohio.

April 14,2001

My back is still sore and feels as if it could be excruciating as a result of any false move. My chiro will be back on Monday so I'll be fine. For now I'm just slathering my self with arnica. Yesterday I learned that I was accepted into the MFA program At USF. I'm oddly giddy about it all. And tomorrow is the resurrection. I like how all these pagan holiday's were morfed into Christian holidays. Caroline Casey was talking about Friday the thirteenth. I may not remember it exactly but it had to do with Friday being the day for Venus and thirteen being a day to procreate in some ancient tradition. She was saying that it was a day to make love all day. Somehow that got turned into unluckiness. Go figure. I'm figuring that I'll just decide that it is a beginning and that I am coming out of this tomb in which I've been.

April 16,2001

I occasioning find myself in the company of a few people, maybe in a class or in a social situation and someone will say that someone else, usually a famous person, has gained weight. I'm always dumbstruck. I wonder what the comment means. I wonder what that meaning is meant to imply to me since I am sitting there. It's just another example of an unconscious and internalized ism. Fatism. And usually they are "nice people". It would not occur to them that they are making uninformed or misinformed assumptions about a group of people. It would not occur to them that I am one of those people. I am a fat person. It's dangerous to remain silent when such thinking is expressed but allowing it to go unchallenged is more dangerous. From Texas, home of so many things that seem to be making me miserable these days, comes proposed legislation that would grant tax breaks to the thin. It would be possible to get some of the tax break if you were fat. For example I have fat friends who have low or "normal" blood pressure. They could get the same tax break for which a thin person would be eligible. And if they don't smoke they could get more of the tax break. But it is an example of how a kind of person can be privileged. Such is the nature of ism thinking. There is this obtuseness in the thinking. I always want to say it's a fat thing... you wouldn't understand. The person with this not too bright idea is being considered for the post of surgeon general. Imagine the power he might wield from that position.

April 17,2001

When I write here I feel the need to be clear, whatever that means. And I'm not always clear. It's really uncomfortable to doubt out loud. Today I have many thoughts about the events in Cincinnati, the ship full of children bound for slavery and our SF board of supervisors. The supes voted to accept the settlement last night and I am really sad about it. I am also angry but the sadness is speaking louder today. It all becomes overwhelming, mixes with my events in my own personal life and I become kind of pushed in. My impulse is to not write. But I thought that I would write about this dysphoria and my struggle to sort though all the things that are going on in and around me. But there aren't really words. It's as if an event travels into my psyche and bounces like a pin ball though various triggers, personal, political and spiritual. And I am left feeling a bit punch drunk. Sometimes all I can say is .......

April 18,2001

Yesterday I was able to listen to most of the Mayor's Summit on Women. I was disturbed by the general tone. There was a lot of the kind of "follow your bliss" stuff that you hear on Oprah. Which I think has value but I also think it can be just another job for a woman. Take care of the kids, clean the house, do the shopping, have a job and follow your bliss. And you can't do all that then it's your failure. And there was very little mention of real issues. There were lot's of mildly randy jokes, references to breast and penis size. All in good humor and yet in keeping with the lack of depth or substance. Bertice Berry was fantastic. She has that rare ability to speak from her body, mind and spirit all at once. And she is also funny but it is humor that is also reflective. There was an overwhelming presentation by Hafsat Abiola, a 25 year old human rights and democracy activist from Nigeria. Her father, M.K.O. Abiola, won the Presidential election held in Nigeria in 1993 but served out his term in solitary confinement, incarcerated by the military. He died in prison on the eve of his release. Her mother, Kudirat, was a democracy leader who organized major strikes, and fought unrelentingly against military rule. In 1996 she was assassinated in the streets of Lagos. Continuing in the path forged for her by her parents, Hafsat is the founder and director of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND), an organization dedicated to restoring democracy in Nigeria. Ironically, for me, was that one of the most political speakers was Marianne Williams. I've liked her in the past. I am given to metaphysical flights but I never heard her be so fierce.

April 19,2001

Yesterday I caught a few minutes of Marilyn Wann in a debate on MSNBC. I missed most of it but apparently she was debating a doctor on the value of stomach reduction surgery and general heath issues behind fatness. At one point the moderator asked her why she was so fat. It's such a stupid question. No one would ask her why are you short. When people ask me that question I feel as if I need to talk very slowly, as if they may have a learning disability. Ya see, there is this stuff called DNA and we all have it. And I got some genes that mean my body will be fat. But when I was a little girl people didn't know that much about genes. And they tried to get me to be thin. I didn't really have thin genes. But I tried diets. Lots of diets. And they never worked. And, in fact I was always a little fatter after each diet. So now I'm this fat. It's not that hard to understand. Marilyn was tough and handled all his stupid questions in her usual fierce and rebellious manner.  MSNBS was pitching a show they had on last night about people who have undergone this extreme and dangerous surgery. It was not a critical examination of the surgery. It was a commercial for it. Fat people lost weight and talked about how much better their lives are now. They all seemed sad to me. Because they never addressed the rage at a culture that tortured them, emotionally, mentally, in their jobs and families. And put them through a painful surgery that robbed them of the joy of food. I was watching one guy exercise in his after surgery zeal and I thought why didn't he just do some of that before instead of the surgery?

April 20,2001

A friend recently told me that she was an atheist. I asked her if that meant she believed in nothing or if it meant she did not believe in an individually personal god. She does in fact believe in something. Loosely characterized as energy, the universe, spirit. I've never been more clear that I need my relationship to god and never more clear that I don't know what I mean by that. And so much of my day is spent in trying to feel into and think about what I mean by that. I belive that, as a young girl with no father present, I reparented myself with god. And so god had those qualities of father that I understood. Then I rejected that notion and believed in nothing for a while. and then I began to study Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufiism, and pretty much everything that came along. And then I went through a long period of time in which I knew there was something but it wasn't anything with which I could connect. Now, I just close my eyes and wonder/wander and it feels like connecting. But the word god is like the word love, when you talk about it out loud, everyone thinks they know what you mean. And usually not much of what they think comes close. Especially when you don't know what you mean. I know I want god. It seems like an important acknowledgement of an elemental mystery and an awareness that there are things of which I am part.

April 21,2001

I am preoccupied with events in Quebec. Typically, the media focus is on the few protesters that broke down a part of the fence and not the enormous amount of protestors who remained peaceful. It's just a way of trying to convince the public that the protest is not serious. It's only a few extremists. 40,000 of them.

I kept thinking about what I wrote yesterday, especially the phrase I want god. The phrase reflects an externalization and objectification of god. Those are things I'm always ranting about and yet they are present in my thinking and feeling about my relationship with god. Which, I think, reflects a spiritual immaturity. And when I wake up from this kind of thinking and remember that my more clear thought is that I am immersed in god I feel an overwhelming sense of peace. The notion of a relationship lives in dualism. And, sometimes, so do I.

Those who don't feel this Love                                          

pulling them like a river,

those who don't drink dawn

like a cup of spring water

or take in sunset like supper,

those who don't want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,

that old trickery and hypocrisy.

I you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

I've given up on my brain.

I've torn the cloth to shreds

and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,

wrap your beautiful robe of words

around you,

and sleep.               

                                                                                      Rumi

April 23,2001

I wonder what Mikhail Bakhitin would have made of events in Quebec? I think he might have loved the carnival and said - ignore the wall. Maybe even celebrate the wall, decorate it stand close and press your lips against it. I am not a Bakhitin scholar so I can't say. It is my strong desire that the message of the anti FTAA activism not get lost in the conversations about the demonstrations. I like how many different approaches to direct action were represented. I am finding it difficult to articulate how I feel about the extreme manner in which the police handled the confrontations with demonstrators. Report after report from activists say the same thing. It felt like war. It stirs up the kind of fear and rage in me that has no voice. I remember endless conversations in 1968 about whether or not peaceful protest would work. I am always hoping peace will work.  It's encouraging to see how many people went there, knowing that there were more people who were not allowed to cross the border. The movement is big.

April 24,2001

Last night, on American television, the fat chick got the guy! What a joy! Cameryn Manhiem did a made for TV movie modeled on the Cyrano De Bergerac story. She did a great take off on the moment when Cyrano, having heard someone disparage his nose chastises them for not being more creative with their attack. She used fat but stayed with the form and it was great to see that tip of the hat to the Edmond Rostand play about De Bergerac. And a man, having fallen in love with the thinking of a woman, embraces the package in which that thinking lives. And notices that his own inability to find her beautiful before falling in love with her mind was ... dumb. The character that Cameryn plays says that she can not abide unkindness. Yet when she gets her chance to perform a comedy routine in a big venue, a chance given her by an older comic, she makes jokes about the his age. I don't see the difference between fat jokes and age jokes. So, made for TV movies might not be the place to be totally radical but Cameryn did give the fat chicks a great moment of television.

When I was a kid my mom had a playbill from the Rostand play and I would read it over and over. I loved Cyrano. In the play, Cyrano does not get the girl. He allows her to believe that the thinking that she loved lived and died in a beautiful body. It does seem difficult for us to believe that love is blind. Even more difficult to believe that fat is beautiful. There is one moment in the movie where Cameryn sees her fat shadow and seems ashamed. I guess I this is a step in a cultural process.

April 25,2001

Monday morning my friend Lynn surprised me when she showed up with her acupuncture kit in tow. She gave me a bit of massage and some needles. My back, as a result, has been feeling quite good. However, I was so tired yesterday I took two naps. When it was time to go to bed I was worried but I went right to sleep and slept hard. I'm always amazed at the way needles work. I feel great. This morning I had no big polemic waiting for me to get to the computer and it's hard for me to write when that's true. Doing the site is a real window into the way in which I feel valuable only when I'm being entertaining or informative. Last night I watched Dark Angel and NYPD Blue. Great fun! I started watching NYPD Blue when Jimmy Smitz was on and I have remained addicted. They did some very interesting things about race and homophobia last night. Dark Angel is just fun. I feel good.

April 28,2001

I didn't write for the last two days. I was not buried in worried e-mail saying, "you're not writing, is everything OK?" So, this is the sound of one hand clapping. My back was bothering me and it was bothering me that my back was bothering me. So, I lay on an ice pack and read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I had been resisting the book. I mean do I really want to spend time reading the manic musings of a young white boy from privilege who has no real problems except of course for the death of his parents and raising the brother? But people that I like and whose opinion I respect kept saying it was good and in a book buying frenzy I bought it. And it's good. I am begrudgingly enjoying it. I mean he does things that really annoy me, like refer to his hair as normal, in a comparison to the hair of people of other races or be worried that the skin of the young woman he is going to sleep with might be saggy and have varicose veins. But he is relentlessly aware of the problematic nature of being who he is. He is not apologetic. He is aware and he goes on and on about his awareness. So, he wins me over and he makes me laugh or cry and besides my back hurts so all I want to do is lay on an ice pack and read. And I was in one of my dark depressions that even I find annoying so I try to not share them. I had a few calls and felt better when I was talking. Then the call would end and I'd grab the ice pack and head back to bed. Barbara adjusted me yesterday. My back is sore but it's not out. And today I'm going to hang out with Marilyn and then see Amy Goodman speak tonight.

April 30,2001

I received a rejection letter. I think it may be my first but I may have blocked the memory of others. This American Life just didn't like my SIMS piece. There is this goofy idea that a way to tell if spaghetti is done is to throw it against the wall and if it sticks then it's done. I feel like I've been throwing spaghetti against the wall for years and it's still not done. I'm still not done. It's an obscure metaphor. The same day I got the rejection letter I got an e-mail response from Aaron Peskin, my district supervisor. I had written to him during the days of debate on the business tax settlement. He didn't really speak to what I said in my e-mail, (although, it had been about two weeks and I forget what I said.) And he voted for the settlement so he didn't listen to my plea. I do think it was great that he wrote at all since he must be busy. It was a short thank you kind of a note. It may have been written by an aide or it may have been a form letter. I guess I think that since it took so long he may have written. And somehow receiving a rejection letter and an e-mail that didn't really respond to me dove tailed and I went into this no one wants to hear what I have to say thing. Any conflation of those two things is loopy and I need to knock it off.