February Elections make me misty eyed. Seriously. Photographs of people proudly showing the ink on their fingers brings tears to my eyes. I want to be positive about it. And then I think about the overwhelming military presence, the separate polling places for men and women, women being searched. It's all so fraught.
I feel like no matter how much I read I don't enough. But I do know it all feels so tender and precarious. Every time I hear the word freedom I hear Janis Joplin singing - freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
The pictures still bring up these complex emotions. Feelings about all the things we wish we were. Hope we are. Feelings about how power shadows the best of our intentions. And still. Every finger matters. My official goal is to send out four pieces of writing a month. That's one a week. Although I don't need to send them out every week. Just four in a month. And I'm going to keep a record. And I'm going to send out query letters to agents and publishers. It seems like I should have a number on that too but it also seems like there's a more finite quality to that. But I'm going to keep track of it all in this little book.
And, I did some writing. Which feels good. But also hard. I'm sorta shocked by how hard it is. I don't know why. It would be hard for me to do fifty sit ups right now. And that's how it feels. Like muscles that I haven't used enough. And now I'm using them. When I went to bed last night I thought I was gonna fall into deep zzzz's right away. I was really tired. But the lions were restless. So loud I thought they had walked up the street and were hanging out in the parking lot. And I couldn't get comfortable. My back hurt. My hip hurt. My knee hurt. I was just tossing around. I shoulda read. But I just wanted to be asleep. When I woke up I was determined to stay in bed until I was rested. But by nine I'd had enough.
I wrote all this early this morning and then wondered who in the world cares how I slept. It is, of course, a rhetorical thought. I read people's thoughts about how they slept. Some people write rather more poetically than I do about it. But still.
And I never published my second post yesterday. I'm having a couple of days in which the voices of self loathing are the loudest sound. My reaction to it all is to just listen. Kind of like a Freudian. I'm sort of behind myself with a note book listening to the yadda yadda sound of it all. It's not really getting me down. But it is distracting the hell outta me.
It was Jane's birthday today. And Amber's. And I figured out how to link to the exact post on which she talks about her birthday. Well. there was more than one. And Amber is having a take-two birthday tomorrow. Very wise.
The state of union is on. The television and radio are off. I dunno. It might be over by now. I want this. I want it a lot.
Every once in awhile I post about wanting something and some nice person will buy it for me. I'm not even trying for that so nobody do it please. I'm just sayin. I really want it. And I want these, and these. You gotta know I got the catalog in the mail and I'm just goin through it. Wanting things.
For years there were no cool clothes in my size. And now there are LOTS. And I want them. The truth about my life is that I wear the same t-shirt and draw string pants for three or four days in a row. I don't go out that much. No one in the neighborhood seems to notice if I'm in the same clothes when I run errands. I don't NEED any more clothes. But. I just. WANT them. It's a funny thing. There is a comment on a post at BFB that has me worked up into rant mode. The post is about an employer who fires smokers. I saw a similar thing on the news the other day. A man with a small business told his employees to quit smoking or be fired. How does he know if you smoke at home? His employees are tested. One woman who chose to quit her job rather than quit smoking was interviewed. She said she is trying to quit. But she doesn't think it should be a condition of employment. The employer sites the rising cost of health care and the cost to the business community.
In SF we now have a smoking ban in parks. I am beyond annoyed by it. Right next to North Beach there's a park in China Town where people meet to play Mah Jong and smoke. Or they used to. Now they can't.
It's hard to argue for the right to smoke. I don't smoke now but I never say that I quit. If I want to smoke I will. It's been a long time and it hurts my stomach so it's unlikely that I will smoke any time soon but I just feel bitchy about it. I've always hated the way non smokers are so self righteous about it all. I've been eating with people in a diner beside a gas station. The smell of gas fumes wafted through now and again. But the people with the cigarettes were the bad guys.
This is a topic I don't bring up because I know people have allergies and asthma and smoke bothers them. I know smoking isn't healthy and there really isn't a good reason to do it. But there are still moments when I just want the pleasure of sitting back and pulling in the blue smoke. If you get it, you get it. If you don't, you don't.
I always made every effort to not bother anyone with my smoke. I didn't throw my butts on the ground. I don't think it's cool to use the beach or the park as an ashtray. But there are already laws about that. Anyway. It's one of those things. I have my feelings about it all. Rational? Maybe not. But back to the post and the comment.
The employer that Paul posted about has also said he would love to make sure his employees did their exercise and ate right as a condition of employment. And what's the test for that?
So. The comment.
The bolding is mine. FIFTEEN YEARS!!! ELEVEN POUNDS!!! It just pisses me off. It just pisses me off SO much.
A friend of mine was just denied health insurance. She is on the thin side of average. Swims, does yoga, has had no major health problems but did have some wrist trouble. Carpal tunnel kind of thing. She was DENIED.
We need major reform in health care. We need a radical shift in how we think about health. NOBODY is healthy. Healthy is not a place you arrive at. Healthy changes all the time. For many reasons. Some of which we have no control over and some of which we do. I think taking responsibility for oneself is pretty important. And some people are gonna want to smoke and eat what they want and not move much. And some of them are gonna live long happy lives. And all of them should be able to have employment. If they can do the job. The health insurance industry should not be able to create a climate of fear and discrimination.
I know common sense does not always prevail. Smokers should not be able to smoke anywhere they want to smoke. If you've lost a family member to a smoking related illness, or have an allergy I imagine you might like a smoking ban and not think it's a bad idea that employers (especially small ones) have the right to try and control their health care costs by dictating "health" practices to their employees. And how can I argue? I can't. I won't. But I will ask what begins with these first sets of rules and these ways that we think about things. And I will be pissy about the empty tables in the park today. And the meaning made of eleven pounds.
Long, long ago, when I used to write more often in paper journals, I noticed that my writing was often effected by who I was reading. Maybe it's the same reflex that makes me want to have the accent of people with particularly defined accents. Or use slang. Language has rhythm and rhythm calls to the body. It always seems to me that if you can meet people rhythmically you really meet them. At the same time I like rhythms that I can't quite capture. So the idea of having a voice as a writer has always seemed problematic for me. I know my voice can be so easily nudged.
When I was getting my BA my writing voice shifted around. In creative writing classes I could riff away with no concern for form or function. In expository writing it was all form and function. In journalism it was about not being visible in the writing (just the facts) but in literary journalism it was about being there in the background. For classes that were not about writing I had to write in a way that showed what I was learning, a kind of repetition of facts but with some presence. In my MFA program I really hoped to develop some thing that I could call my own but the program had its own ideas. There was only one teacher who got me in any meaningful way. Which isn't to say that the program wasn't good for my writing in some ways. But after the program I felt like I needed to recover from it.
I heard a guy on book TV this weekend. He said he didn't keep a blog because he wasn't a good first draft writer. He did a lot of work to things that he wrote. I like rewriting. I like it a lot. That whole first thought best thought thing is pretty rare. It happens. But it's rare.
The blog is a place where I just go for it. The task is just to write. Over the years that I've been doing it I move around from personal what I made for dinner journal writing to pontification to experiments with riffing to ... oh I dunno. Just whatever I want. It get's hard when what I have for dinner isn't that interesting, I'm not feeling the urge to go off about anything, or when I feel a particular need to really write. I know that might sound like I don't take the blog writing seriously. I do take it seriously. Sometimes too seriously.
Even with talking, there are times when I'm in the middle of saying something and I know I'm lost. Something in me has changed and I haven't kept up with the change. So in mid sentence I feel wrong.
Change is good. And sometimes it requires silence. Not that I'm that good at being silent. Not for long.
Heh.
It's Fat Tuesday. I love Fat Tuesday. Mostly coz I'm a New Orleans wanna be. New Orleans is old and French and filled with music. The food is a mix of old world traditions and new world ingredients. I've always wanted to go there. I'm probably not up for the big street party any more. But I wouldn't mind watching from a balcony. I love the idea of a day to party up before you move into a time of spiritual quiet.
I think we need both. We need to go a little crazy. And we need to know how to be quiet and reserved. For about a week I've been feeling the need to go out and have some BIG fun and the need to be very quiet and alone. Funny.
I might listen to some Neville Brothers, Professor Longhair and Dr. John. I might make something fancy for dinner. Something with shrimp. And I will do some yoga. Some contemplation. I don't need to whoop it up too much coz I'm not planning on giving anything up in any big way.
Has the world entered some kind of pesky zone? I mean maybe it's always in one but it just seems hopped up today. Or maybe it's me. Well of course it's me. But. Jeez.
So I am still blog slacking. My morning ritual in which I read blogs and wrote my post has just completely crashed. I write randomly. I read randomly. I miss things. I can't catch up. I feel displaced. Out of the loop.
Alembic is (temporarily?) MIA, although Maria is (happily) still available. I'm now wondering about all the spam I get. I spend a certain amount of my day clicking on delete. It is a drag. I've even gotten a bit of comment spam. But not much. Not as much as I see on MT blogs. I read Maria's post on it and the possible impact on the "conversation" that happens in blogging. And then I sat here with knitted eyebrows. I don't really understand spam. I don't really understand how people make money with it. I'm not sure I want to understand. I'm pretty sure I don't. I'd like to join a fight against it. If I understood it better than I do now.
K has a post about "right speech" that suspect might be suggestive. Or not. It does seem like there's something going on. In a broad sense. But gee. Without idle, useless and foolish babble I'd have nothing to say.
Heh.
I've been on three sites in which I am told I no longer have permission to read. I'm not taking it personally but ... gee. What in the world?
And then there was a dust up on Mole. Since I am not a Buddhist I hesitate to enter into the fray and, also, too, it's kinda over. I wished I'd been there to rise in defense of our dear hero. I woulda loved to smack down on someone coming into the comments there with such a sanctimonious head up his ass thing to say. But I wasn't there. Then. And now it feels late.
Dale also wrote this.
I can think of someone I feel that way about except (at the risk of jamming someone's dearest wish) if I met them on the street, two thousand years from now, in different bodies, I know I would recognize them and I would press my cheek into their's.
Sigh.
Kathryn linked a thing about being grown up that makes me look pretty bad. And I'm 2 X 25 +1. Not that I would, or could defend my maturity.
I'm just feeling like things are goin on. Not good things. Or maybe I'm just reading through a glass darkly.
Deb told me to check out this show. It's just great. Of all the restaurant reality shows this is the real real. The guy is SO mean. He was a soccer star who became a chef. He swears so much that sometimes it's just one beep after another. Between the beeps and the accent it is sometimes hard to get what's happening. (Do they bleep words in England?) But it is absolutely what it's like.
These shows always make me nostalgic. Which might make you wonder about my sanity. It makes me wonder.
Again with the jeez. I dunno. I think I'm rediscovering blogging in some funny way. It's always changing anyway. I'm not sure if things are really changing. But. I'm just having all these visceral responses.
This is another one of those really late to respond responses to a post. (And I thought she was on a break. ) I didn't write a thing about the doof at Harvard who said grrrls can't do math. I wasn't outraged by it. I just had an eye roll moment and went on about my business. I do get why women were upset. It was doofy thing to say.
Having said that. Boys and girls are different. Shocking. I know.
Cyndi wanted to call out the idea of why girls don't seem to do as well in math and do some critical thinking about it. Good idea? Well, apparently not. Coz she got jumped on.
Before I go on, I want to say that I think the ideas of differences in brain development in men and women are interesting. But brains develop in cultures. And families. So it's like any other muscle. Development happens when things are stimulated. Are (for example) women in Japan bad at math? China? India? I think there are studies about how kids from other cultures out-do all kids from the USA in math and science. So what's that about?
Also. I (as usual) think two things that may seem to be in opposition. I don't really believe in boys and girls. I think we are all a blend of both. We all have estrogen and testosterone. Ask any third sex person about this debate and things will get really wound up. And they should.
AND. I myself often think in terms of what is archetypally girl and archetypally boy. Generalities are useful sometimes. Comforting in their simplicity. And often true.
My post, this post, this all over the place post, is really about what happened after Cyndi posted about her own lack of math skill and her thoughts on what might be true in terms of brain structure and development. Someone said:
What? The? Fuck? I mean. WHAT is that about?
And then Cyndi posted this. So beautiful. Let's all break the rules.
Can we just allow for possibility? I just, I read these things and my head spins. I have so many reactions all at once. Of all the people on the web, I can imagine having a really great open conversation with Cyndi. So who ever wrote the even dooffier thing to her than what the Harvard guy said can't possibly have been paying attention.
Jeez. I mean. Just jeez.
And. I suck at math. And. All my math teachers were women. Add all that up.
It was cool seeing Dooce on the news. I remember when she got fired. I don't read her regularly. No reason. It's a big neighborhood. I don't get around it as well I should. But I remember back then. Seems so long ago.
Does it seem like every day they're telling us about how we can get fired for almost anything? Are we supposed to get pissed off by it all or are we supposed to get more scared?
Meanwhile. I feel just a bit jealous of the woman who got a six figure book deal from her blog. Just a little bit. I'd be cool with five.
KPFA is having a fund drive. They have some pretty great premiums. One of which is the new film by Danny Schechter. It's about how the media used production to sell the war. Ironically, in the pitch for funds with the film as bait the film is extolled for its production quality.
Ah well. We pick the propaganda we want. And if you listen to a little bit of everything you still only have part of the truth. The left does need to get better at framing the debate. No doubt. Michael Moore has shown us that.
Last weekend I watched the old Fahrenheit 45 for the first time. I read the book a zillion years ago but I'd never seen the movie. It is pretty terrifying. But I just kept thinking you don't really need to burn books, or ban them. You just need to make reading seem like something people do because they don't have a life. I see it all the time. Jokes and snide comments about thinking and reading. I saw Michael's film not long ago as well. Sometimes he wears on me but I thought it was full of information.
OK. Here is a message for Sarah. Hope she's reading. I tried to respond to your e-mail three times and it bounced back to me. But the answer is YES!!! PLEASE!!!
Caroline had Norman Solmon on the radio show yesterday. He was comparing the values of the countries of European Union and the values in this country. Caroline framed it as the difference between living in a culture or living in an economy.
I keep wondering how a country that is supposed to have a new moral majority also has a hit show like Desperate Housewives. I haven't watched the show. I guess I should watch it before I pass judgment on it. I have seen the commercials and it just looks smarmy. I know it might seem like ad odd intersection from which to wonder. There are so many others.
I'm always thinking and talking about culture and how culture impacts us. But sometimes I think culture in this country is a misnomer. There are so many cultures packed into other cultures here. For the last few days there have been lots of fireworks in the neighborhood to celebrate the year of the Rooster. A few blocks away there are people from all over the world wandering through shops full of t-shirts and post cards. Up the hill there are coffee shops full of people in which the owners speak Italian. I can get on a bus and go to the Mission, the Castro, Japantown. I realize that this is a city and, perhaps, a particularly diverse city. But I keep thinking about the common experiences and the places in which we hold our own reality.
If you're standing in line at the grocery store you look at the covers of magazines. You see faces. Bodies. Something about who gets the cover and who doesn't tells you something. If you watch television only in your own language, shop where your language is spoken, eat only the foods you were raised on, you hold a cultural experience. But you still walk out the door and see the sign on the side of the bus.
I know people who don't own a television, who never experience main stream culture. Even the fact that most of what they get comes through their ears (radio) or from words (reading) creates their sense of the world. But they too walk out the door. Generally. So when I talk about the impact of culture, what do I really mean?
When I was listening to them I was thinking about how hard it is to be in a country where the political leadership is pushing an agenda that you feel so horrified by. And then there's the layer of representation. All those images in public space. And the layer of family. And friends. The books on the shelf. The music coming from the speakers. And my fingers on the keyboard. More quizzical than assured.
And then. There's the market. And those pieces of writing I still need to send out.
I really need to check and see if something changed in my cable subscription and I didn't notice. I don't think I'm paying more but I'm just enough of an air head to not notice. I have more movie channels. I didn't order them. There's something called - On Demand, which may be why. Or it may be some kind of free preview. I don't love movie channels. It's pretty rare that you want to watch a movie at just the moment when the movie begins. You can't pause. But the worst thing is that I sometimes watch movies that I wouldn't have otherwise. Every once in awhile that's good. I watched The Guru a few months ago and I kinda loved it. It made me smile.
Yesterday I watched part of The Last Samurai. I neither loved nor hated it but the part I saw included the big battle scene. It made me think about The Bhagavad Gita. I am not a pacifist in the strictest sense of the word and the gita is part of why. An absolute pacifist would rather die than be killed. I might think that I would rather die than kill but I know that my body would react. And, more than that, if someone is going to harm someone I love then my pacifism goes right out the window. And still more is the idea that there may be a time to fight and an honor in the battle.
In this battle scene there is an idea of an old way of battle (swords, arrows, wisdom and skill) pitched against a new way of doing battle (guns). The guns are mighty. But are they honorable?
There is that moment in the gita when Arjuna knows he will lose family and friends in the battle and he doesn't want to fight. And then Krishna breaks it down. In the movie there is a moment when the head samurai knows he is about to die and he is leading his men into certain death. It's a moment of destiny. Grand. Profound. (And the presence of Tom Cruise is only somewhat annoying.)
I'm never sure how I feel about this idea of destiny. Because I would like the fighting to end. All of the fighting. I would like to chose death over killing. And yet ...
So. Movie channels. I dunno. Whole big chunks of my day lost to strange reverie. Although, just now there is a fellow from the Ayn Rand institute extolling laissez fair economics on Book TV. Is that better? Not so much really. And again I am listening and trying to figure out what is wheat and what is chaff.
It might be fair to say that I lean toward ideas of rightness that are context dependent. it sounds sort of relativist. It just doesn't feel that way. In context, it all feels very absolute.
It seems like this is where the post should end but are more threads winding through my thinking. I'm still thinking about what happened to Cyndi. (Mess with someone I care about and my pacifism goes RIGHT out the window, I'm tellin ya.) (Grrr.) Because these battle scenes are about men and to some extent what it means to be a man. Except, if we think about the scene from Aliens in which Sigorney is fighting the mama alien. The mama alien is fighting to protect her eggs and Sigorney is fighting to protect the little girl. I might like to imagine that two women in that situation would negotiate and found a day care center for all the kids but it just doesn't always work out that way. And two women fighting over the safety and well being of kids? Now we're talking filed of the lord. Unless, maybe, one of them is Ayn Rand.
Heh.
And there is another thread. Something that Diana wrote the other day. She wrote about wanting to be adored and women who never out grow the need for their father's approval. That would be me.
Not so long ago someone said that my fatherlessness showed. I imagine it does. For Diana the need for dad manifests as always having a man in her life. For me the opposite is true. It could be my over developed stubbornness in which the need is overwhelmed the need to not need. But I had more than one reaction to the post. I'm not comfortable with the idea that het women with this particular psychological background often want the guy who doesn't want them. Although, in my life that would seem to be a truth.
Diana quoted Dale who confesses that he hopes knowing him is transformative. Well. It is. Of course it is. And it should be. There is only one Dale. And only one Diana. And I am saved by knowing them. AND I think it's OK to want attention. And every once in awhile I think it's OK to want ALL of the attention. I think there's a difference between self and ego. Self is sentient. Ego is plastic. Our self needs to feel seen. Really seen. It's healthy.
Wait. What was I talking about? Movie channels. Ayn Rand. Battle scenes. Pacifism. What is it to be a man? What is it to be a woman? Oh yeah.
So. I'm thinking about all of this. It all comes back to some sense of the transformative process as being something that never arrives. Never concludes. Because the minute it does it stops. And that's death. So we move from one scene to the next and pick up the script. We may argue with the writers and director and producers. We may make a few changes. But we have a part to play. A part that is ours alone. Maybe destiny is not established. Maybe it's realized.
Yeah. I'm just thinking.
In second grade we covered shoe boxes with crepe paper and construction paper and ribbons and stickers. We cut a slit into the top and on Valentines Day the boxes lined the room. We tried not to watch when kids went from box to box with wee envelopes. At the end of the day we opened our boxes and looked to see who liked us. In second grade I was fat and socially awkward. I remember the hope of the box and the two or three cards on which my name was spelled wrong.
One year a friend had just broken up with a long time partner. We went out to the best restaurant and were so pleased with ourselves for not allowing the day to make us sad. Except. We were a little sad.
It's a manufactured, market driven holiday and I'd like to ignore it. But it always nips at the ragged corners of my heart. This year isn't any different. I'm not as gloomy as I sometimes get. I'm just a little tight in the jaw.
And right now I feel like if you have someone don't ignore it. Let the market have its way with you. Buy flowers and candy and cards. Or make something. Just do something. Something saccharin and over the top.
My rule is that I can only play with my dolls on the weekend. It's just too easy to get sucked in for hours. I mean hours. I break the rule now and again but having it keeps me from playing every day for hours. Hours, I'm tellin ya. It's so compelling. It's like a book that I'm both reading and writing. And I wanna know what happens.
Most of my playing right now is about killing off the elders. Sounds morbid but it's a circle of life thing. They become ghosts so they're still around. This is part of the difference between the first game and the second game. The Sims age and die. When I first began to play I just wanted to see what Sims death looked like. And then I had this whole old folks thing going. My plan was to get all my Sims elders into the same house and let them age together. But then I realized how useful elders are. If you and your kids live with elders they help with the kids. Everybody is happy.
An individual Sim getting older has kids who are off on their own getting older too. And keeping the elder happy often means getting them grand kids. So you leave the house to go play with the kids and make babies. And elders like weddings. I like my elders to be as happy as they can be when the reaper comes coz if they're happy he comes with hula girls and a Mai Tai. Nice way to go, doncha think? I tried to get some pictures of this but they're too small. I haven't mastered the whole process.
One of my Sims was getting married and I knew his parents were gonna (cough) move on within the next two days. So I went to other house and had them come to the wedding. I actually got misty eyed watching this because I knew this was the last time he'd see them. I swear. I'm tearing up just thinking about it. There's one of my Sims who I save from death once. And now I'm just wanting her to get on outta here. She's got like two, or three days. But that can mean hours of playing.
I really, really, really don't think I play well. I take all so seriously. One of reasons it's easy for me to not play is because I am a little sad about all these elders moving on. My favorite time in Sims life is when they are adults and they're moving up in their careers and having kids. It all sounds so provincial.
Jeez. Yesterday I calling for participation in the market and today I'm writing little happy ever after stories. What is happening to me? Of course the other big thing going on in my game is alien abductions in which men come back pregnant with little green babies. So I still have some (cough) alternative life in me.
Somewhere I heard, or read Sting say that he regretted the song Every Breath You Take. He felt it was obsessive. Well. Yeah. I don't know what brought it to mind except maybe all that thinking about romantic love yesterday and thinking about my history of unrequited love. I remember when I first heard the song. I'd been doing breath work so the lyrics made a specific kind of sense to me. Looking at the lyrics now they do seem a bit over the top. To say the least.
Unrequited love is just the worst. It makes you feel like you must be quite mad. How is it possible that you have this feeling? And it's so strong and clear. And. You feel it. As it thuds to the ground. Makes my teeth hurt just to think about it. And I've had more than my fair share I would say. So either I am quite mad, or just really dumb when it comes to attraction, or I'm making it all up or ... well. The list just goes on and on.
Everything about the lyrics seems to have some shadow and some light. Like - "can't you see, you belong to me." Well. In terms of ownership, no one belongs to anyone. But belonging can also be a feeling of being at home. Being met. Feeling like something fits. How is it possible to feel that way about someone and have it not be true? Unless you are quite mad.
Mama Cass sang a song about how unrequited love is a bore but for someone you adore it's a pleasure to be sad. I know that pleasure. But. I've had enough.
Sting said he wrote If You Love Somebody Set Them Free as an antidote for Every Breath You Take. Which makes sense. But I like both songs. Sometimes love is desperate and overwhelming. It's not a sustainable way to be but sometimes it is that way. I don't think you can set someone free unless you think love is a cage. I've felt desperate. I've wanted to beg. I have begged. But I've never felt like I wanted to lock anyone up. Belonging isn't about ownership. It's about realization. And all of my realizations have ended up being confusions. Or so I was told.
Quite. Mad.
About a month ago I took the Pledge and the dust rag into the bedroom and sat them on the dresser. Then I got distracted. I have a vanity, a dresser and a nightstand all of which needed dusting. And the month went by. Yesterday Sarah was coming over so I was motivated to get the dusting done, clean the bathroom, run the vacuum, just generally make it nice.
Sarah and I are forming a partnership of sorts. We both need to send out writing. When I had the dinner with Abeer I got all wound up and even did some new writing. But I have flagged. There is a journal I know I can submit to and I even thought I'd send a piece in before Sarah got to the apartment but I didn't. I dusted instead.
I can't even begin to describe how overwhelmingly resistant I am. I just DON"T WANT TO!!!
Sigh.
Groan.
Part of the process is to identify journals and magazines and we talked about that last night. I've always thought that it would be good to respond to the Readers Write prompt in The Sun. If I did just that much I'd be writing and sending out every month. The current prompt is: Games. It needs to be in by March 1. Yikes.
I noticed that I came up with the idea to have a goal in January but didn't set the goal till February. Tricky,huh? And now February is half over and I still haven't sent anything out. But now I'll have Sarah to answer to if I don't get it done. I'm not sure either Sarah or I will be particularly strict with one another but I'm not sure we need to be. I just need to be as motivated to send the writing as I was to dust and, clearly, I even need the presence of someone else to motivate me these days.
I just DON"T WANT TO!!!
My yoga practice had dwindled. Last week I managed a few feeble poses. This week I did more every day. On the first day I had neither the concentration nor the will to hold the pose for very long. By yesterday I noticed that I was naturally holding the pose. My joints hurt less and I just felt the pose.
This is the thing I love so much about yoga. The way it expands in your life. This morning I was standing in the living room listening to the radio while I waited for the tea water to boil and I shifted my stance. Straighter back. Unlocked knees. Little adjustments that came naturally after only four days of intentional practice.
There are these poses that I do on my back using a strap for resistance. When I first started again I felt all these little pops in my knee. It didn't hurt but it was kinda spooky. Every day they seem to happen less.
Just the other day I was talking about my psychology preferences. I lean toward the Jungian. Being the good hippie chick that I am. Yesterday I got a mailing for these public programs featuring some of my favorites. The title on the Marion Woodman lecture made me smile. The subtitle in particular. Separating soul from ego. Yeah. There it is. And James Hillman. Two days with James Hillman. All I need is about five hundred dollars. Why does this stuff always cost so much? Makes me wanna cry. The programs are being put on by a college with a PhD program that does interest me. But. Again. Money. It bewilders me.
I heard David Suzuki on the radio today. He described a thought experiment in which you follow a chemical (can't remember the name of it) as it leaves your body in your exhale. He talked about how what I exhale is inhaled by the people who are in the room with me. And some of what I exhale leaves the room and travels out into the world. Some of it may travel far away. Everyone on my blog roll may be inhaling some of what I exhaled. And. Some of it comes back to me. I guess it would be impossible to measure and track a specific bit of my exhale but it's certainly filled with probable truth and is useful because it tells us how we are all connected.
Awareness is useful.
It's always seemed to me that the impulse to understand the nature of self is something that could change the world. I'm really critical of the self improvement ideals seen on television. It just seems like obedience training to me. It seems oriented toward making self contained, self motivated, self managing bots for the corporate system. we seek ways to feel good and not be a bother. Fuck that.
The description of the program rings more true to me.
In some ways it reads like a bunch of abstract language. But think about that notion of hosting image. We host image all day every day. In some ways we need to learn how to not host image. But if we go back to Susuki's thought experiment we see how useful hosting and image can be. And understanding the "interdependent nature of being" could move us toward action that ... changes the world.
Why then does it seem like solipsism? Why is it that while I know I would enjoy Hillman and Woodman I also know I would be sitting next to someone with one too many scarves on who is really looking for justification in an endless pursuit to feel better about themselves? Who else has five hundred dollars to spend the weekend in this kind of conference?
The big accomplishment of my day is remembering to stand up straight. And it matters. I'm excited about it. I just long for a feeling of personal meaning that is also active in the world. I have felt it. I felt it doing something as simple as making coffee for someone. I'd like to feel it again.
Earlier I looked out of the bathroom window and there were these big fluffy popcorn clouds and a clear bright sky. It's been gray and overcast for days and is again. But just that moment, just that patch of sky, made me smile.
Nightline had two shows about a war game in which terrorists release small pox. The shows were unnerving but not because of this imagined future scenario. It is a frightening scenario but what was more of a horror was watching the way pretend world leaders pretended to deal with the crisis. The horror of the way economics moves politics and trumps humanity. We don't need an imaginary future scenario about terrorism and virus as a weapon. We can look to the real time news and see the soaring numbers of death by virus and think about how politics (or lack of political will) keeps that going.
Yesterday on the Caroline show she was talking about how to keep your head together in these times of fear and loathing. She riffs so hard and fast I can never remember what she says but I hang on to these little bits. She was talking about using the word wonder. In stead of - how is this going to work out? I WONDER how this is going to work out. The word wonder allows for possibility.
I was really working with this last night. My student loans are at the end of the third deferment. I WONDER how I'm going to pay them.
Groan.
So I had this moment of looking out of the window and seeing the clouds and feeling this deep breath moment of beauty and now ... they only block the sun, they rain and rain and rain.
And then I was reading about Willa making her own deck and I pulled out my deck to see the seven of cups so I could remember it because she was talking about making her seven and right on the bottom of my deck was ... guess. Yes. The SEVEN OF CUPS. My deck is the Aquarian, which I don't even love any more except it's so soft from use and reminds me of every reading I've ever done. It was fun that the card was right there when I went to look because it made me feel in synch with Willa but also it's a card about ...POSSIBILITY.
I jumped to Trinity Doughnuts to see what Amber had to say and laughed out loud. I don't like the idea of over eating. I think you eat as much as you need IF you pay attention. When does over occur? Well. When I go for Dim Sum I hella OVER eat. When I leave the restaurant I am so full I can't breath. And I will always eat Dim Sum that way. But I don't eat it often. And so yeah. The card is about having lots of choices. So many that you can become overwhelmed and unable to make a move. And after you eat too much Dim Sum it's hard to move.
Heh.
And then here I am trying to keep a notion of possibility in the face of dark likely hood and I see the seven and I'm thinking that it might be good to ground that wonder. You know. Having looked at it from both sides now.
Grounded wonder. Yeah. That's it.
Well. I've been in a Sims coma. Yes. And right now I'm about rip the game out of my computer. Really.
I
was working on
There's a whole bunch of game stuff that goes into this but, unless you play, it might not be that interesting. This whole story might not be that interesting.
So then I had her move back in with her husband and kids. So, she's had two husbands, two lovers, a pack of kids and she's reached the top of her culinary career. She's helped raise her grandchildren. It's time to go.
I tried really hard to get in close for the pictures but I still don't have the knack. It might be hard to see the reaper and the hula girl's. The guy in the black shirt is one of her sons who was visiting his sister. I had moved Brandi in there to help with the daughter's kid. The little girl is another granddaughter.
She got the mai tai and the suit case. And then she was gone. (There must be a way to get these pictures better.)
Here's where I get frustrated. I moved her in with her daughter because her daughter is on the learning track and wants to see a ghost. But so far there is no ghost. This game is SO bugged.
And then I got caught up in another story. This was another Brandi grandchild. I got caught up in redoing the house and stayed up too late. This morning I played for awhile (which was just so wrong) and there are more bug issues. Between my obsessive playing and the bugs I'm at the point where I just think it's too much trouble for too much trouble.
I dunno. I like playing on the weekend because there's lots of good radio and Book TV. I listen to NPR, Wait Wait and This American Life on Saturday and NPR and Larry on Sunday. Book TV and CSPAN in general can be very conservative or very liberal. I listen to both because I like to understand things but this weekend there was mostly conservative stuff. Maybe that's why I'm so cranky. But really. A game is supposed to be fun. And it is fun. But it is BUGGED! And now, so am I.
It was a dark and stormy night. It had been a dark and stormy morning and afternoon. I wonder whether weather gets to me. I just had to write that sentence. Whether weather.
Heh.
But I have a few friends who do feel like the weather gets to them. Once I was out to lunch with two of my very good friends. They were going on and on about the weather. Both are more physically active that I am and both like to be outside more than I do. But I did feel like something was disproportionate in the amount of conversation about weather. it felt like a topic that came up again and again. And. Maybe it's just not a thing for me.
It does seem like there's a lot going on. Earthquakes, floods, tornadoes. I used to have tornado dreams.
I do know that I feel rain in my joints now. And that makes me wonder. In any given day there are so many moving parts. How do you parse it?
Right now the sun is out and I'm going for a walk. That's good. I guess.
I'm in the worst mood. Really. Just awful. There is more than one reason but I think some of it is a hangover from job searching yesterday. Right now I'm trying to turn it around. Writing this is a part of that.
Friends tell me that my blog is something I should use to let jobs know that I have understanding of the web and a track record of writing. But I'm not sure about that. I am too often very confessional on the blog. Is that a liability? I tried to have another place where I wrote the more personal life stuff but that just didn't feel right. I am who I am. I'm dealing with what I'm dealing with. Even the fact that I have the thought that a job might not hire me if they read the blog reflects the place where I don't feel like I will be hired because of some truth of who I am. I do like who I am, for the most part but I'm not sure that who I am is valued by ... uh ... the world? Oh that's an abstraction. Job people just want to now that you can do the work. And I do know how to work. In each ad there seems to be one or to things that I don't know. Maybe that doesn't matter but it feels like it does. All of my cover letter seem apologetic. That can't be good.
I really feel like I'm wound too tight right now. I'm not sure how I'm going to lighten up.
I went to bed with the two knitting books that I bought last year. Stitch and Bitch is fun but the fun wears thin. It's like - quit trying to make me laugh and tell me how to knit. She mentions the other book I have: Knitting in Plain English. I didn't find either one of these books helpful last year but after my lesson they are making more sense to me. I read something in one of them about new knitters dropping the yarn between stitches and I think I have been doing that. So the first thing I did today was to knit a couple of rows and make sure I was holding the yarn. I want this book. I want it so much I'm going to need to stay away from book stores and Amazon for awhile. At least until GET A JOB.
I've had breakfast and listened to Democracy Now I'm about to take a shower and do some yoga. And then I need to do it again.
Growl.
Worst mood ever.
I grew up a Methodist kid in a Catholic neighborhood. As I walked down the hill to go to school kids in uniforms passed me going up the hill to go to the Catholic school. I was enamoured. They had rosaries and prayers to Mary. And saints. A rote Sunday morning doxology paled in comparison. When the next door neighbor left to join the convent I wanted to go with her.
And then one day one of the kids told me I was going to hell because I wasn't Catholic and I went home sobbing. Even now I love the art and mysticism of Catholicism but I hate the dogma and exclusion. I was thinking about it yesterday when the news of the pope began to dominate the news.
Caroline has a riff that she uses fairly often. She says, "Create ritual or live melodrama." I'm not sure what she means but I always take from it the idea that we do have a need for the beads and the candles and the repetition of words. It might manifest in obscure ways but ritual gives us a sense of something.
I'd been telling Kristina about my long ago practice, which included maintaining an alter. There was a bunch of stuff on it. A little gong, incense, a cup of water, fruit, some evergreen, candles all of which had a meaning. I've always missed the ritual of changing the water and lighting the candles and incense.
There's a shelf above my desk on which I have a statue of Baba, Ganesh, a little blue Buddha, Vishnu, a mini Shinto shrine for scholars, a very cool blessed virgin Mary with lights. Mine is a every icon in the storm kind of spirituality. There is also an incense holder. On Wednesday I lit some incense and a candle and filled a cup with water. I put an orange there. Did some yoga. And ate the orange. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure what I mean by it all. I'm just trying stuff.
Then I went back to the job search misery. I spent lots of the day crying and knitting. I did it all again yesterday. Today. I'm just tired. And it's late. So. We'll see how tomorrow goes.
I had a bit of a melt down after I learned (via my comments) that there was a memoir about growing up fat coming out. A memoir written by an award winning writer who already has a book out. I reminded myself that there are a zillion memoirs of anorexia and bulimia. There are a zillion memoirs about lots of things. But it hit me in my already weakened sense of possibility. And then I did some goggle searches and found an excerpt and an explanation for why the woman wrote the book.
I would like to read this book. I like memoir. The excerpt doesn't really mention being fat although it eludes to it in the paragraph in which she talks about what she hadn't liked about being at school. Her explanation is full of things that give me pause. She opens with the idea that most fat women don't write the truth about being fat and goes on to talk about the blisters that form on your inner thighs if the flesh rubs together too much, in searing, heart wrenching, compelling language.
It's interesting. I have had that experience but it's been awhile. I wear pants and tights and it just doesn't happen then. But yeah. That is a drag.
She goes on to talk about eating a Cobb salad with such luscious detail that I began to crave one. She mentions that it is a four serving salad and it is eaten with garlic bread.
She begins to sound a little bit radical when she talks about how former fat people sometimes become anorexic and die and that is worse than being fat. But she makes no claim on fat politics. She is writing a truthful account of her experience of herself as someone who over eats, diets, over eats again and is fat. It is one story of a fat life.
I did and do try to tell the truth about the difficult aspects of life in a fat body. I think one of the problems the fat political community has is that we can't talk about the problems out loud. With so many people talking about how fat people are all going to die, are ugly, are less than engaged with life, are lacking morality and all the rest of the yadda yadda that pounds us daily, we feel like telling the truth about the things that are problematic might not be good for the cause. For me, the idea that I might get blisters on the inner parts of my thighs if I'm not wearing pants or tights doesn't mean I shouldn't be hired for a job I am able to do or be harassed in my workplace, be denied housing, have my children taken away, not have access to public facilities, not have access to transportation and so on. My sense is that this writer might agree with me. Perhaps.
In another excerpt she says she is not a fat activist but she would prefer thin people didn't find her disgusting. Well. Yeah. And I'm just wondering how that's going to happen.
What I attempted to do in my book, my unpublished book, was to tell the truth and ask a question. Why? Why is it OK that my body is seen through such an abusive lens? In the five decades of my life I've watched as people of color, women, gay and lesbian, disabled people forged revolutions in which they challenged the way they were represented and worked for social parity. In the same time period of time fat people began to question how they were seen and excluded. And things are worse than ever. I know there are great things going on but really. Things are bad.
One of the challenges in writing about being fat is to stay aware of your internalized oppression. I am not free of negative thoughts about being fat. I am not free of the confusion about food created in a life in which food was problematized. But my view of myself has always been grounded in a sense of process. It's a process. Life. Having a body. Health. It's all always moving and changing.
Here's a section from the explanation of why Ms Moore wrote her book.
I'd like to read the book. I'd like to read both her books. And it isn't my book. So I talked myself off the ledge. For the eighty eight millionth time this week. It's been a challenging week. My book isn't going to tuck in its tummy. But it will sit up spine straight and it will always say thank you for reading this.
On Saturday CSPAN was at the Tavis Smiley State of the Black Union event, as they are every year. I watched two panel discussions both of which were fun and challenging. Tavis set a proposal for a covenant within the black community that might hold the diversity of that community out for discussion.
I noticed that, given my own bias, I hear words like spiritual and moral differently when Cornell West says them than when Minister Farrakhan says them. Which is interesting. Sometimes the best you can do is be aware of your own bias.
The panels were big and some people talked for longer periods of time than others. In some ways it is just a great jam of really smart people. Talk is just talk. But it was spirit lifting. Tavis manages to ask provocative questions and still hold a broad context. There were people on the panel who didn't really agree with one another and were able to articulate their disagreement in ways that were both direct and respectful. And also feisty. Really smart people trying to solve problems is always thrilling to me.
On Sunday I walked over to Trader Joes in search of muffins, yoghurt and bacon. It felt like autumn. Cold. Thick, low hanging clouds. But it is spring. The row of cherry trees on the block next to mine is puffy and pink. The sidewalks are covered with piles of pink tear drops. It began to rain as I was walking home.
And now it's Monday.
Looking for a job, or places to submit writing, or writing is doable on the weekend. But I just couldn't push myself to do much. I did sleep well and eat well and read and knitted and watched a good movie. This morning I did my loopy little ritual and some yoga and had my breakfast and took a shower and washed my hair and made the bed.
Sigh.
A writer once told me that having a column in her college newspaper was the best thing for her writing. Having that space to fill every day really helped her to think like a writer and develop the muscle tone. Having a blog has been that way for me. Right now I feel a little bit under water. Slow. Not quite verbal. And having a space to fill feels like a life raft.
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