January I did, in fact, go to bed with a book on New Years eve. At midnight when I heard the fireworks and the hootin and hollerin I whispered Rabbit Rabbit.
The first day of the year and I was out of sorts. Sleepy. Achy. It was raining on and off. Mostly on. I did eat the curry and it was GOOD. I still have rice and green beans and curry so I'll be eating it again. I did not drink the champagne. It's a wee spilt of Laurent-Perrier. Too good to drink when you aren't really in the mood.
I usually draw a card on the first day of the year. I tried a few times but I kept getting cards that felt problamatic. There aren't really bad cards. But there are cards that reflect difficulty and I am just not in the mood for that much more difficulty. I think I've had enough. Every time I pulled a card I just thought - NO. Which seems like a good response.
Oviously difficulty is part of life. And my life is pretty cush in many ways. I just want to ... oh ... I dunno. Be more engaged. Work more. Write more. Read more. Be more open. I've been kinda shut down.
Amber did a reading for me in which the High Priestess was central. I think I'm going to use that as my card for the year. For me it's about taking what you want from the things you've learned and coming up with your own ideas. There is a sort of magic in the card. But it's the magic of paying attention. And nature. So I think I need to use what I've learned. Some how. And that's part of the message of the card. I don't need to know how. I just need to pay attention and create. Which would be what a writer does.
Funny how hard it is to call myself a writer. I wonder what it will take.
This morning I feel better than I did yesterday. I'm having a slow Sunday. But slow is OK on Sunday. Two or three times now I've heard people say, "There's nothing we can do." when asked about the loss of life in the tsunami. Once was when a news guy stopped a women here in SF on her way into a new years eve party. She was dressed to the nines and had on quite a bit of make up, which is not something I am critical about in and of it self but something about her tone and her look lent a sort of let-them-eat-cake quality to her declaration.
I heard the exact same sentence from a very dear friend last night. Someone I hadn't heard from in awhile and who was calling to deliver a message and not have a long political conversation. But, it startled me. It seemed like a way to establish distance. Not between he and I but between us and the disaster.
The news is full of stories. One of which was a young boy, maybe eight or nine, who had been given five hundred dollars for Christmas and had donated it. One of which was a pediatrician who was on her way to help. For most of us money is all we have to offer. Some have neither money nor skill. And there is little we can do. Maybe there is nothing.
I have a tense relationship with ideas of what can be done. Too often I feel like people use action as a way to avoid feeling. Sometimes all you can do is hold the emotion. I think holding the emotion takes some of the pressure off. In the same way we feel better when we talk to a friend about a problem and they hold the emotion with us, we can hold some of the loss for all these ravaged people. Of course, it is possible to become immobilized by the emotion. I'm never sure I have the balance on all that quite right. I could do more. Generally speaking.
I've been doing a better job of having some balance the last few days. I am aware of the loss. I am trying to stay informed about it all. And I am trying to anchor myself in the things I need to do to move forward in my own life. Maybe because the question of what to do has been such a hammer in my world lately, maybe that's why the expression of helplessness hits a nerve. Adrienne sent me this perfect icon to sooth my worked up soul.
Why am I worked up? Oh. I'm not going to write about it yet. Something came up that is either really, really good or really, really bad, or maybe neither extreme but I'm in a spinning what-if place internally.
So I took one look at this face of wisdom and sweetness and the spinning slowed. For awhile. I'm still at the age where 5 minutes is a long time, and a year is not. -MonkIt seems like once a year I write about cleaning up the little back room in the back of my apartment. I should write about it more often. Because I should do it more often.
There is a desk that I made by putting a piece of thin wood on top of two file cabinets. And there are built-in shelves on both sides reaching up to the ceiling. One side is filled with cook books and cooking magazines. I used to spend more time sitting back there reading them. The other side has things like my waffle iron, ice cream maker, empty flower pots, vases, baskets. It's a room where the ephemera of my life piles up. Cleaning it up means realizing that I still have the stack of Christmas cards from last year. Not 2004. 2003. I never want to throw them away. I always think I will but not just yet. And not-just-yet becomes a year.
I still have the 2001 Earthshaking Women date book put out by the War Resisters League that Jeane gave me. Every time I try to throw it away I end up reading one of the biographical pages about Mary Church Terrell or Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and I can't throw it away. Plus it has the added benefit of making me think about Jeane. Which is always good.
And then there are the stacks of writing by classmates from my MFA program. If we went to their homes I wonder if they would still have copies of what I wrote?
In the middle of all the sorting I got quite cranky and picked up a stack of unread magazines and read for awhile. Those don't get thrown away. They just get moved to the piles on the bottom shelves of all my book shelves. But it is one less stack.
I might have gotten cranky because I was listening to CSPAN and the first day of the new congress. First topic being the ethics of changing rules. And I was listening to last episode of the board in which Matt was the pres. Not that there was anything in that to make me cranky. It was a bit of a love fest. As it should have been. It might have been cool if the mayor had stopped by.
So there is a big bag full of stuff to haul down to the trash. The piles are neater. There is one more that I want to go through but I can see the top of the desk. Or at least I can see the middle of the top. The middle which is surrounded by stacks and photos and little cards with snappy sayings and coffee mugs full of pencils and pens and rocks and little plastic toys. It is a room in which the edges are full and they are always trying to encroach on the middle. Once a year I push it all back.
It doesn't really seem like I accomplished much. I did throw away the 2003 Christmas cards but replaced it with the stack of 2004 cards. Someday, someone will come here and find me buried under piles of books and papers and little plastic toys. That someone will pick up a Christmas card and wonder why I didn't throw it away.
Sigh.
Go say Happy Birthday to Dru. The big political new in SF is that Gavin and Kimberly have called it quits. Why is it political news? I can't for the life of me imagine but the local news led with it last night and spent a good deal of time interviewing people on the street about it. This on the same night that the governor gave his odious state of the state. One might imagine there were other things to talk about.
The Newsoms were called the "new Kennedy's", which always made me wonder if people remembered that Jackie didn't really like being a first lady and John cheated on her. I was one of those kids who sat in front of a black and white television and swooned over JFK. Those were different times. I was also the only kids on my class who had divorced parents. It was quite the mark of shame.
Much of the discussion about the Newsom divorce mentioned his support of same sex marriage. What does his divorce have to do with same sex marriage? I can't for the life of me imagine.
I don't like Newsom. I didn't vote for him. I don't trust him. His mean spirited policy on the poor is as frustrating as Clinton's welfare reform. But I was grateful that he did the same sex weddings and he has put women and minorities in positions of leadership and he did support the hotel workers. In a town like SF he isn't the most progressive guy around but I do realize that he's done some stuff. And I feel sad that his marriage didn't work out.
A Joni Mitchell lyric ran through my head while I listened to the news. "We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall keeping us tied and true." This from a woman who was married twice and in a number of other serious and committed relationships. Marriage. What is it? Is it about being tied and true?
My support for same sex marriage is unwavering but my support for marriage in general is not so strong. I like commitment. I like people who understand themselves to be doing the work and having the fun of a live shared. I like ritual and ceremony. But what is marriage? I'd like to see marriage be something people do in their spiritual lives and I'd like the state to stay out of all of it. But the privileged rarely concede a right.
Unless they live too far away from each other and the pressures of their jobs become overwhelming to their relationship.
Oh I don't mean to be snide. But I do feel a bit snide.
West Wing took on same sex marriage last night. There was a lot to how they did it but I was most impressed by the character of CJ who was being rumored to be gay and was trying to decide whether to make a public statement about being straight. In the scene in which she is directly asked the question by the press she gives this great comment about how being thought to be gay changed the way she was treated and the way she felt. She said "no one should be treated like this." And she refused to answer the question.
I guess it's not that big a deal that people want to know about the personal lives of people in leadership. But it is a big deal when it becomes the central focus. I think it's the kind of news that should have taken about a minute to announce and then maybe we could have talked about Barbara Boxer pushing for the country to pay attention to what may have gone wrong in Ohio. Or the Gonzalez confirmation hearing, which I am listening to right now and may be why I'm feeling so snide. The war has used up words:they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking with a loss of expression through increase of limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk. - Henry James 3/21/1915 The problem with reading "a memoir in books" is that it adds to your books to be read list. And right now I am jumping from French feminist literary theory to the story of a woman reading the classics in Tehran to mi corazon. This last reading brought on by a sudden overwhelming crush (never mind that he is now dead and was then gay) and the most overwhelming generosity of a dear friend. Of course she is increasingly reading early American literature (as is Nafisi in the book ) and I'm in a spin trying to fill in the blanks of my knowledge. I need to read James and Dreiser and Wharton. Oh my. It's a pretty great problem to have.
And then Amber tells me she's sending me her extra copy of Madam Bovary, which I did read when I was in my teens but I was looking for stuff about sex since I'd been led to believe it was a scandalous book and I don't really remember much of it. And I know I confuse it with Lady Chatterly. So I am grateful and excited and waiting for it as if reading four books at once and a stack of magazines and the Internet were just not enough. But I feel like she's sending me a memory that I need to restore. And all of it makes me feel as if I can't read enough. As if there is more to read and reread than I will ever live long enough to do. Books clamoring for my attention.
I am close to the end of memoir in books and I finished the first of the Pentagonia. But I slow down toward the end and pick up something else. As if I can't bear to finish.
In some ways I find Nafisi's writing tedious. But not so much that I am put off the book. In the beginning she writes about color. And we know I have issues with writing about color. One of Nafisi's students talks about color.
And Nafisi tells her:
She goes on to talk about the colors of a painting and the pool outside of house. Later in the book she writes a long descriptive paragraph about her first meeting with a man who became a dear friend and mentor at the end of which she says:
And I want to say, NO! No it does not matter. Not to me. Tell me what he said. But the facts are I am touched by the sentence. Because this is a world where women are draped in black and a man and women who aren't married or related but just connected by a deep love of learning, books and culture are sitting together alone in a room. And even these simple clothes with their not particularly outrageous colors would be judged seditious to the revolution. Tedious may be the wrong word. In some ways it's like listening to a friend tell a story and sometimes there are repeated details but you just ignore the repeating because you're interested in the friend's story.
All the while a voice with a French accent is whispering in my ear about women and genius and words and a voice with a Cuban accent is saying, "Oye. Tengo mas que contar." And I need to read Nabokov now.
When I was young my grandmother would tell me to get my nose out of "that book" and go outside and I would go out side but I would take the book with me.
It's raining and raining. I am inside. Flitting from one country to the next. From one time to another. In a paradise of thought and expression the color of which changes every few moments. I invite other writers to consider the fact that by accepting the prizes and approval of these vague institutions we are admitting their authority, publicly confirming them of the final stages of literary excellence, and I inquire whether any prize is worth that subservience. - Sinclair Lewis, 'Letter to the Pulitzer Prize Committee.' (From my made by Amber bookmark. ) This week the door buzzer kept buzzing. And every time it did something good happened. Mom sent cookies. Kristina sent books. Yesterday it rang twice.
The first ring was Renee. The good news was that I was going to get the whole day with her. The bad news was that she was leaving to go back to school the next day. We shopped for stuff to cook a meal. I made lamb chops and chard. She made mashed sweet and white potatoes. We ate triple cream and salami while we waited for the potatoes to cook. It was a great time together. Just too short.
While she was here the buzzer buzzed again. Amber sent a box of yarn and the copy of Madame Bovary with a book mark that she made and a very cool glass button that I will wear as a necklace. The amount of yarn is overwhelming. I keep looking at it. Touching it and arranging it in rows of color. My desire to learn to knit is rekindled in a BIG way. But I might crochet something first. Just to feel the yarn slipping through my fingers. The first thing I did this morning was stare at yarn.
I'm a very lucky grrrl. It rained like Armageddon yesterday. Banging against the window. I remember one other year in SF when it rained this much but even then it didn't seem like it rained as hard.
I watched Tiptoes, wondering how it had ended up in my Netflix Queue. I think it was because I enjoyed Peter Dinklage in The Station Agent and looked for other films in which he acted. I didn't like Tiptoes. I've been trying to figure out why. There are a few too many characters. And there is this way in which the intersection of the average sized and the little people felt contrived. It just didn't quite work and I still can't exactly say why. It may be that some of the stereotypes of little people culture were perpetuated. And, may have some truth. But I think it was trying to both challenge ideas and entertain. Somewhere between those two goals the movie drifts and neither is quite accomplished. The Station Agent is one of my favorite movies of all time.
And I worked on a hat for Jan. Read for while. Went to bed too wound up. Slept badly. Woke up tired. Ah well.
When I began to type I thought I had something to say. Now I think I was wrong. Sometimes I'm just phoning it in.
But it seems like there is something that wants to be said. I just can't quite put words to it. Yet. Or maybe ever. We'll see. In my dream Michael Moore gave me a Gourmet magazine to cheer me up. He was very sweet.
I've been having trouble sleeping for a week, or so. It could be about hormones. At my age it's likely that much is about hormones. I'm not that good at sleeping anyway. Generally I go bed around midnight and maybe wake up once and then wake up around seven. And, generally,it seems like enough. This week I've had trouble getting to sleep, woken up at least twice and had trouble getting back to sleep, woken up at six, felt un-rested, gone back to sleep till eight. Something about that makes me feel bad. Gets my day off to a fussy start. A couple days of it is one thing. A week of it has me pretty fussy. Yesterday I was so fussy that I hid in my game for most of the day. I love it when I react to feeling like I can't get things done by doing nothing. It's just so backwards. But the game makes me laugh. And laughing is good.
Sara left me a comment.
I read it last night and thought about it for much of the time I wasn't sleeping last night. Although, to be clear, these are the thoughts that fill up most of my day and night. Not new.
I do not have a job. I need a job. More to the point I need work. And I need a paycheck. The difference between work and a job, for me, is that work is something you do with a certain amount of passion and commitment. In the restaurant industry I had both jobs and work. Some times I worked for the paycheck. Sometimes I worked for the love of serving good food, the craft of cooking, the people who I worked with and for. Working is so much better when your heart is involved. Restaurant work is hard. Exhausting. But also fun.
So I always think people know this story but I left a pretty lucrative job and went to college. While I was getting my BA I ran a small coffee cart at the school. I sold that cart to the school and went on to get an MFA. For the last year I've been living on the generosity of family, friends and a really unseemly amount of debt. It Is not a pleasant or sustainable way to live. I came out of six years of school feeling less employable than ever.
And there have been a series of Perils of Pauline type events in my life. Nothing horrible. Just a series of things that made me feel tripped up. I came out of 2003 having had pleurisy and a taxing visit with M & K. I felt worn out. And then my dad died. And then in the middle of the year I gave my heart to someone who filed it under to-be-ignored leaving me with the project of building a new heart. I've had to do this often enough that you would think I'd be really good at it. But I keep trying build a heart that doesn't fly out of my chest and I seem to build a more rattlely one each time.
And then there has been the world/political stuff. Much of which hits me in that rattlely heart.
Sara's question comes from her own desire to write and her feeling that she doesn't have the time and energy to do it when she also has a job. I understand that. On the other hand, I did the most writing when I was getting my BA and working seven days a week running my little coffee cart. I did a lot of writing in the MFA program. It was a truly privileged time in which writing was the substance of my day.
Am I a writer? Is that my work? I don't think having the ability to write makes you a writer. I think writing makes you a writer. Do I write? Well. I write this blog. I have written a couple of articles. But. It would seem like I could do more. Not having a job doesn't make it easier to write. I may have time. But I lack will and inspiration. And there is a business to being a writer. Sending stuff out. Looking for an agent. I did some of that last year. Not enough.
Having an on-line journal is a funny business. This post seems like a defense of my life. At least it does to me. Sometimes I wonder if writing a personal life is inherently troubled. What is too much information? Who is it OK to write about? Are we really connecting emotionally? Intellectually? How much of each? What makes my personal narrative worth reading? Some of the blog writing I love the most is the blog writing about daily life and personal quandary. And sometimes I feel pulled into an intimacy that I may not want.
When I was processing the heart break I felt like I wanted a witness. Or maybe a mediator. I knew that I was seeing things from my perspective and I wanted to have other perspectives. At the same time I didn't want to name names. It can all be very delicate and tenuous and fraught. Now I feel like it was much ado about nothing. Me believing things that were not true. Things that were promised but not fulfilled. Things I wanted to believe. It's the stuff of romance. My blog writing became oblique. Indirect. I felt like no one wanted to hear about it any more. I didn't want to hear about it any more.
I ended the 2004 trying to walk. Slowly. Everything seems slow to me. It takes me so long to write a post sometimes. I feel slower mentally, emotionally, intellectually. And keep telling myself that slow isn't wrong. But I feel like I'm not getting things done. And more than feeling it, I can say with certainty that I am not getting things done.
It's a funny business. Someone can leave an innocent comment and all your denial, defense and self-loathing gets stirred up. How am I gonna pay the bills? And it's three o'clock in the morning and you are staring at the wee spider's home in the corner of the room and you're thinking that you need to get the vacuum out but the day comes and you don't. It gets added to the list of things you didn't get done.
But. Then you remember. Hormones. Life. Rain. Sleep loss. Illness. Death. Heartache. It's all just grist. The wheel will turn. No. I have not found the perfect way to pay the bills and find the time and energy to write. We'll see how today goes. Perhaps. Possibly. Maybe. I haven't been writing much about fat politics because of the general struggle in my life. For me that struggle has everything to do with the shift I made when I left restaurants and went to college and wrote a book. This blog spans that time period. It's a time of shifting identity. Something many of my friends of any age experience. And friends in their fifties seem to experience in a specific way. It manifests differently for different people. I like having grey hair. I don't want to look younger. Whatever that means. I do want to have the time and space for the reading and writing that I love. I want my work life to shape itself around those loves. But I'm not sure it makes me a good spokesperson for the revolution. I may not be shiny and positive and successful. And the revolution may need its leadership to be more socially acceptable. Possibly. Perhaps.
Over the holidays I had the better part of a post written about the annoying constant reminders that people were likely to gain weight if they celebrated with too much abandon. In my own life the holidays were a time to eat the fancy cheese that I love but can't always afford and don't digest quite as well as I once did. After a certain amount of indulgence I'd had enough. Did I gain weight? Maybe? Who cares? I deleted the post when I felt like I was writing in circles.
I always feel like I'm playing both sides of a very complicated chess game when I write about food and fat politics. There certainly are people in the fat community who suffer compulsive eating. I've had heart wrenching conversations with people who feel they eat too much and who eat crap food. Many of them have successful careers, strong, loving relationships and generally happy lives. But, for a variety of reasons, they eat in way that makes them feel bad about themselves. For some of them it isn't about being fat. They are. They may always be. That's not the issue. The issue is the manic and compulsive way they eat. I never want to suggest that this isn't an issue. When I say I ate fancy cheese over the holiday and that was enough there is a way in which I suggest that it should be that way for everyone. And it just isn't. The holidays found some people hiding in a corner hastily eating a plate of cookies and hoping no one would see them. And then they spiral into self loathing. And who would hand a diabetic a plate of cookies and say, "It's the holidays. Indulge." There are very real heath concerns that warrant vigilance in terms of food and weight gain.
Having said that, most of the warnings about weight gain over the holidays were really about the fear of getting fat. Fat, in and of itself, being the basket in which so many health concerns are now tossed.
And now it's January and people are making resolutions and we have new guidelines for how to eat and how much to exercise and it's all written with the same fat fearing/hating tone. Tommy Thompson thinks people look better when they are thin. He's entitled to his opinion. But I don't agree.
I don't have any argument with eating more fruit and vegetables. I don't have any argument with people getting exercise, if they WANT to. I'm not sure people are gonna go for the new 60 to 90 minutes a day recommendation. Some may. I used to work out in a gym for 60 minutes five days a week. I was still fat. Close all the fast food joints and get rid of all the soda machines. And after all of that there will still be fat people.
Paul blogged about all this with a link to a fellow who thinks Big Fat Blog folks haven't taken an honest look at their "situation." By situation I'm assuming he means that everyone who reads the blog is fat. I'm not going to link directly to him because he is one of those people who seems only to be able to make his argument by suggestion that he knows a truth far superior to the truth other people hold. What ever. People like that made me feel mean. And there I am. In the mud pit with them. Gearing up to sling. Backing away from the screen seems wiser.
But. I will say. The size of my ass is NOT a "situation".
I have backed pretty far away from the screen this week. Sometimes you hafta do that. I listen to crazy stuff when I do yoga. Last week I was listening to This American Life. Episode 280 to be exact. They were talking to soldiers in Iraq. Put a whole different feel to the warrior pose. Today I was listening to Laura Nyro. When she started singing Dancing In the Streets I had to come out of tree pose and move into the swim, the hitchhiker and the frug. Remember the frug? Perhaps I should listen to my breath, or some kind of zone music. But zone music makes me cranky.
The day began with an e-mail from a friend that had me crying one minute and spitting mad the next. There are people who are going to hang with you no matter what you're going through. And there are people who aren't. I don't expect the same level of intimacy in all my relationships. Even with my dearest friends I make an effort to not belabour my difficulties. I tend to isolate when I'm feeling too many difficult things. Sometimes I write about my emotional life here and sometimes I have regretted doing so. All this new age self help obedience training we live with gives us new language. Such nice ways to say fuck you.
So I cried and I got pissed off and I felt ill perceived and I worried and I responded to the e-mail. Then I did the tree pose until Laura made me feel like shaking my butt. I'll probably do a few more cycles of all that until time moves me to a new place. Meanwhile I'm making applesauce and dusting. Oh it's a full and rewarding life.
Heh.
Ahhhhh.
Ya know. I like to be fair. I like to allow for other people's experience. I really do. I spend more time mulling over IT ALL than I should. I take great care with the way I say things. And. Right now. I've just had enough. Today is Laurie's birthday. Laurie, it would seem, is taking a blog break. Her last post, talking about how busy she was and writing about the complexity of her personal life in that great wry and open hearted way in which she always wrote, is like a marker on a road. She's gone off somewhere and I keep returning to that marker to see if she's stopped by.
Oh the blogging world. We meet each other through links and trackbacks and stats. We love each other for the words we weave, the pictures we take, the pointing to stuff that we might not have found on our own. These don't feel like disembodied relationships. I feel these relationships in my skin.
Jill wrote a great post the other day.
I think that's one of the best articulations of the blog relationship I've ever read. And, like Jill, I've broken that pact. It seems like once a month I write a post about not feeling able to blog. Read or write. Is it time for a break?
And where is Artichoke Heart? People take breaks. It's OK. People need to take breaks.
Oh.
Remember when James Brown would pretend to fall down in the middle of a song and then someone would pretend to help him off the stage and then he would toss off the cape and come back and finish the song? That's me. Fallen to my knees. I just can't go on.
Heh.
I'll probably start posting twice a day now. Kristina put me onto the revolution being televised. I watched until Robespierre decided that the death penalty might not be such a bad idea. It's really all down hill from there.
Like so many revolutions born in the inspired thinking of philosophers and carried by the rage of the starving third estate, power changes things. Why, I continue to wonder, is it like that? Maybe it's that the high ideals that provide the spark become rigid. Maybe the passion and commitment that drives the will of social change become a force in itself. A force that loses any self reflective capacity.
History TV is still TV. The images of the royal are sharp and full of color and detail. The images of the poor are fuzzy and in black and white. All the images are in a tape loop. Historians in book filled rooms talk about Marat like he was just cranky. Louis is just a hapless boy. And some of that is true.
It's just so disappointing to me that revolutions so often become ideologically rigid and then rigidity is bathed in blood. The language of the time has resonance today. The terror. Keep the people afraid and obedient for their own good.
"And the worst are full of passion without mercy."
I wonder what Robespierre would argue for in California today, as we begin the dreary countdown to state sponsored murder. It's not just the ideologues and the state who think a death will put an end to death.
Some part of me understands Charlotte Corday. Some part of me just wants to make certain people go away. But then Charlotte ends up, neck under the blade. Marat, having called for so much blood dies in a pool of his own. Robespierre, having decided that terror might be a good method of social control feels the blade himself. And it goes on and on. Blood and more blood.
I want our institutions to be smarter than we are individually. I want us to agree that our humanity can lead us to believe that an eye for an eye will do something more than cause blindness. I want us to build the collected wisdom of so much history into our definitions of justice. I want revolutions that expand. See. Twice a day. Maybe even more.
KPFA messes me up. Today they are broadcasting the Rice confirmation hearings. I get so caught up in it all. Even when the hearing takes a break Larry Bensky begins his commentary and I am really stuck. I managed to break away and get a shower. And you just haven't done the tree pose till you've done it with the sound of Barbara Boxer getting tuff. So I keep taking breaks but then I hafta check back in. It's just so ...
Ms Rice wasn't too responsive to Boxer's grilling. The response was pretty much a pouty don't make me feel bad about myself response. Oh. OK. And there was this moment when Rice said that the tsunami had been a great opportunity for America to win hearts and minds but to be fair she was responding to a question and I'm sure doesn't thing of that level of tragedy as an opportunity. I'm sure she doesn't. (cough)
I mean ya know, there is a reflex thing in the way we think. There is a way in which everything has to be about making us feel good about ourselves. If we are uncomfortable in any way then someone better fix it, or we better get away from what makes us feel that way.
Anyway. It's cold. Cold cold cold. It's bumming me out. I keep trying to make stew and ending up with soup. Good soup. But still. I want that thick gravy and all my best efforts aren't getting it done. Still. Soup. A glass of wine. A blanket and a book. Cut the bummed outness into bits.
I feel lucky. Lucky to have my apartment. Lucky to have good food. Lucky to have books to read and yarn to play with and music to listen to and lucky to have Barbara Boxer as my Senator.
This litany is just me trying to keep myself grounded. So. A few days ago I posted about a man who wrote a post about BFB and I didn't link to him because I didn't really want to engage with him at the time. But he found my post and responded to a comment left by someone else and a bit of a conversation has ensued. Since the post is about to move off the page I want to note that it is here. (And by the way my perma links are wonky this month. What can I say? I suck at code.)
I will now link to the man whose name is Kevin and who (again) has been respectful in my comment box so I want to acknowledge that. Kevin is a competitive runner and most of his site is about that. On one section of the site he writes what could be characterized as a blog and it was there that he wrote a couple of posts on BFB about which I took issue. And now Kevin has written a post in which he says he just doesn't get "these damn fat activists." Kinda made me smile. It also made me smile when he suggests that fat activists are like Christians. I don't even know why it made me smile. It has to do with the way that Kevin articulates things.
It is hard for me to want to engage in a conversation with someone who finds me "desperately ugly". To be fair he didn't say that about me. He said it about fat people. But, ya know, I am in fact, fat. But. Again. He has been courteous in my comment box. And there is a part of me that wants to imagine that part of him might be open to some consideration of the fat activist point of view. Fool hardy though it might be to imagine.
I don't think it is a position of fat activism that no amount of exercising or eating less results in weight loss. Clearly, for many people, that eat less/ move more thing results in weight loss. But, how much more exercise? How much less food? And there are fat people with issues like Cushing Syndrome. There are ideas about a fat germ. I'm not really feeling like making a list of the many reasons why a person might be fat. For me most, if not all, fatness begins with genetics but even within that seemingly simple idea there is a spectrum of how fat and where they carry their weight. Bodies are complex systems and personal stories are more complicated than that.
I wish I had the appetite that Kevin imagines me to have. I've known other fat people like me who don't have much appetite. Because I am a cook I do have an interest in well prepared food. I do love food. But there are days when I am too preoccupied with something I am reading, or writing and I don't want to take the time to eat. And I don't. I know so many people who are overwhelmed by the amount of food they are told they should be consuming to lose weight.
Today I saw a thing on the news about how often most people eat at fast food places. I am always stunned by that kind of information. The last time I ate fast food was when I was getting my MFA. The woman who was kind enough to give me a ride home and I sometimes stopped at a drive through and got some of the worst food I've ever eaten. Believe me, every time we did it I made sure to eat earlier in the day so that I wouldn't be hungry after school. I really do not understand why people like that stuff. I do understand why people eat fast, cheap, prepared food on the run.
Could I exercise more? Sure. Could I eat less? It might not be a good idea. I could eat differently perhaps. But I eat good food. I eat fruit. I eat vegetables. I eat whole grains and protein. And I eat Newman O's. Maybe not everyday but I eat them often. I like them.
Oh, I hate when I get off on these what I eat tangents. It's really no one's business. It is something I think about because if I don't think about I might not eat at all. The other night I was reading and I felt a little hungry and I kept thinking I should eat but just kept reading. If I don't eat with some intention I do get hungry and then it is possible for me to eat drive through. So I think about what I eat.
Here's the deal. Fat activism isn't about whether or not weight loss is possible. It's about the idea that the size of my ass should not be a determining factor in if I get hired, or how much I get paid. It should not be a factor in my access to housing, transportation or public facilities. It would be nice to have some cultural representation but I'm more interested in adequate non biased health care. I'm not interested in changing Kevin's esthetic of beauty. I do feel like when he writes that he could yoke me to a group of other fat people and solve "the damn energy problem" he might imagine that I would be ... um ... oh ...pissed off. Which is why I didn't want to link to him, or read him. Kevin can also express himself in a scornful manner. It's a big Internet. Write as you choose. All of us write from our own point of view.
Big Fat Blog is a place where those of us who don't fall into the fat is ugly, unhealthy and wrong point of view meet up. Kevin says we want to create a new set of values. I think we are articulating a set of values. Ours. Not actually that new.
(Kevin? Plus size models are milky skinned? Wow. My African American plus sized model friend will be so surprised.)
Look. Kevin has a very glib qualifier on the top of the section of his site on which he writes most of this stuff in which he says all dissenting opinions are by definition wrong. Is he serious or just being playful? Only he can say. But for much of my life I've had people like Kevin telling me that I am desperately ugly and unworthy of the space I take up in the world. If "rampant denial" is my reaction then I think rampant denial might be a good thing.
I may regret this post. I may be engaging when I knew better. But the Kevin in my comment box seems to be capable of respectful interaction. I doubt we have much to say to one another. I'm not particularly interested in competitive running (though I admire anyone who has a passion of any kind) and I don't think he would find me compelling as a daily read. It's really not that big a deal.
Paul does a great service in maintaining a place where people can feel safe to talk about their experience and their frustration with the fat hating culture. Is it sometimes too commiserate? Perhaps. But EVERY where else you look you can find PLENTY of agreement for how ugly and slothful fat people are. And, ironically, Paul gets slammed for not being fat radical enough and not protecting the space.
Ah well. I'm just going to take my desperately ugly fat ass into the kitchen and make a cup of tea. Since I am listening to Cesaria Evora I may even shake it a bit as I go. The horror! My friends often tell me to listen to less news. I think the idea of taking a news break is a healthy one but I can never bring myself to do it. Today is the first day in years that I feel like taking a news break might be essential for my mental health. I really cannot bear the fact of the inauguration.
It feels wrong to say that. Even if you believe that something went wrong in Ohio and maybe even other states and that Kerry may have won (and I do) a lot of people voted for Bush. A lot. His supporters will brag about the FACT that he got more votes than any other Republican candidate before him and he DID. What they won't include is that Kerry got more votes than any other Democratic candidate. More people turned out to vote than have in years. That's a good thing. But what the right calls a mandate I call a point of tension where two extreme different points of view are pushed against one another. As he is being inaugurated he has the lowest approval rating of any other sitting president before him. I doubt he will mention that. How is it possible to be elected and a few months later have such low numbers? Did something change? I think it's about the tension.
It isn't as simple as red state/blue state. You can find that point of tension in many living rooms. You can find it in neighborhoods. In churches and schools and city governments. We are a nation in the middle of a heated debate. And the debate isn't going to stop because one party wants to celebrate a victory. It was a victory won in a very narrow margin and shadowed by doubt.
Much is being made of the cost of the event. Is it unseemly in a time of war and in the aftermath of the world greatest natural disaster? I think it's unseemly at any time. These things should be decorous and contained. I think it is unseemly in light of the tension between us all. Americans like to think in terms of winners and losers. Democracy is more complex. Democracy is about finding a way to get all the voices in the room so that the conversation can be both expansive and inclusive. Democracy acknowledges the tension and seeks to govern not through the domination of a particular ideology but through the awareness that our institutions need to serve us all. Our institutions need to hold the tension and manage the more mundane process of how we spend our collective dollar.
Bush is not a visionary. He is not someone who can reach out to those with whom he has disagreement. He doesn't even want to listen to them. He is going to continue to speak and act like his ideology has been given a blank check.
I turned on KPFA a couple of times. They are covering some of the demonstrations and the inauguration. And, although I am in agreement with their ideology today is not the day I want to hear it. Today I feel solemn. I know there are people who are happy today. And I want them to have their party. I just don't want to watch.
Some silence will be good for me. More Cesaria will be good for me. I will proabably check in from time to time with KPFA and maybe even the TV. But I am determined to hold some distance. People will still be talking about it tomorrow. And the day after that. And I will be listening. Daisy-Winifred passed this challenge on to me.
1.What is the total amount of music files on your computer?
1047. But I feel I should say that I haven't really gotten into the whole down load thing. These are all ripped from discs I own, or discs I borrowed. And, since my speakers don't work, I don't listen to them anymore.
2.The last CD you bought is
Well, I bought five. I'm a member of BMG. I found them useful when it came to replacing records that I sold over the years but they tend to be heavy on popular music. In fact I was once a member of their classical music club as well as the main club. I quit both and they lured me back with a phone call and a bunch of free CD's. I don't buy from them often because I'm not really spending money these days (except on essentials) but they had a great buy one get three free thing and I had a free one waiting. So I got an old Laura Nyro, the new Anita Baker, the new Melissa Ethridge, the Cesaria Evora and one of the new Joni discs. It's full of songs I have on other discs but it has new art and when it comes to Joni I am irrational. This is the most new music I've had in awhile and it's making pretty happy. And it cost me 34.66, which included shipping.
3.What is the song you last listened to before this message?
Voz D' Amor. The last song on the Cesaria. I've been listening to that disc again and again.
4. Write down five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.
Oh lord. This is tough.
1. Anything by Joni. In fact I could make all five Joni songs. But, lately I listen to the Sire of Sorrow a lot. Which, I suppose is about my general state of malaise.
2.Anything by Ricki Lee and, again, I could take all five from her but I'm going to pick Company. I did sing it myself. On stage. Back in the day.
3. Steve's music means a lot to me because he is a friend and listening to him brings back a whole time for me. I can't pick one but I can say that when I hear the Battle Hymn of the Republic I hear him singing it.
4. Most of Leonard Cohen. How can I pick one? OK. Joan of Arc.
5.This is really just too hard. There are so many. I tend to like songs with lyrics because I like to sing along. But I listen to a lot of jazz, classical and songs in languages I don't speak. So. I guess. A Love Supreme.
And I could do five more right now. These five seem so soft and serious. But what about all of Motown, Baila Me by the Gipsy Kings, Everything by Meat Loaf? Stevie Wonder? Professor Longhair? Howlin' Wolf? Janis Joplin? Bonnie Raitt? Bruce Cockburn? Dang.
5. Who are you gonna pass this stick to? (three persons and why)
Hmmm. That's hard too. But. Let's see. George. Because I've seen his music files. And Phew! He has some MUSIC!! Dru. Because she makes good compilations. Annnnnnnnnnnd...........ummmmmmmm...........April coz she does the compilation thing too.
And now I'm going to be digging through my discs thinking about all the songs I shoulda said.
PS (at 11:38) Daisy-Winifred also sent her challenge to Anne who sent it to Amber. Do not sit in front of your computer with a bowl of pistachio nuts, cracking and eating them without looking. Coz you might get a bad one and it might get stuck in your teeth and no amount of brushing makes the really bad taste go away. I'm just sayin.
Ya had to know I'd cave yesterday. Right before noon I turned on the TV for a few minutes. At that time the motorcade was on a section of street on which there were no crowds but a spead out row of people in military uniforms. The car was flanked by secret service. There were rows of police. The image was chilling. It seemed so police state. After a minute or so they came upon group of protesters. The car sped up. I turned on the sound. The press was just patting themselves on the back for the fact that they were showing the protesters despite the fact that everything out of their mouth discounted the protest. Whatever. I turned it off.
I had KPFA on a few times. At one point they were talking to Gore Vidal. He mentioned that the founding fathers weren't that impressed with democracy. They made a republic. A republic is still a top down structure. The top is elected and process is democratic. I'm not totally clear on the distinction but I've heard made before.
The other day I read The Trials of Phillis Wheatly because I had it and Kristina was reading a Wheatly poem for a class. In it Gates mentions his possible relationship to Jefferson. He doesn't say he is related. He just says he may be in a way of granting Jefferson some deference in relationship to Jefferson's views on slavery and people of color. Gates is kind. It struck me because recently I got e-mail from a woman doing research on ancestry. Another woman found me because I have DOR on line. And both women are in the line from my great, great, great grandfather. We can track ourselves back to my great, great, great, great grandfather who fought in the battle of Concord.
I like that these women have contacted me. We've had some lovley conversations. And the fact that my family tree can be tracked makes me aware of my privilege. Not that I am particularly interested in the DAR or whatever entitlement may be associated with it.But there is something comforting about a woman in Florida with a picture of a distant relative we share.
In the book Gates talks about the men who "tested" Wheatly to see if she could have written the poems she wrote. They were a fancy bunch of so and so's. All leaders in those early days of America. I might have been related to one of them. (Goodgawd I hope not.)
I did keep it all turned off for most of the day. Today was full of the day after recaps I knew I would hear. And as I listened I kept thinking about another poem.
and
In my dream Mother Jones, who was morphing into Mother Theresa and then back, smiled at me.
Last year I tired so hard to learn how to knit with books. I ended up with one row of stitched cast on and I hit a wall. When Amber sent me the big box of yarn I got excited about it again. So I went to Artfibers and Kira (the woman in the blue dress who now has blonde hair) (and was wearing a skirt and a sweater both of which she made) showed me how to knit. All of the images from the books came back and made sense. I know people have different ways of learning. I seem to really need a person showing me.
So now I have about five inches of a scarf done and I'm feeling pretty happy. I've been working on a hat for Jan doing crochet. My stitches are so tight. I've taken it apart and started over three times. I've moved to a bigger hook. I'm still just so tight. With the scarf you can see a slight widening, which may mean I'm loosening up. I certainly don't have the trouble getting the needle through the stitch that I'm having with the crochet. It seems like I'm always a little tight at first.
Amber sent a link to The Thread Project, which seems like such a great idea. I have a rather long tail on this scarf for when I started it. I know I need some to wind into it (coz I read that) but I think I left way much. So I'm sending a bit from the first thing I will have ever knitted. Dru picked up on the posting I did on the guy who thinks BFB is a site full of people in rampant denial and she posted a few times. In her comments Michelle linked two places as examples of how the hatred of fat people was baffling. I didn't follow the links at first because the weren't active in the comment and I don't really need to go looking for fat hatred. I live with it. I'm not even sure why I did look. What I found was some very cool photography. The hatred is in the comments.
In the first one comments range from just saying that the photo is made ugly by the presence of the fat people to some in depth (cough) analysis.
I know perspective is everything but I don't see it that way at all. They look like they are loving the sea and maybe even each other. And the two piece bright pink and blue bathing suit looks alive, skin open, feeling it all. I see the vigour in the young man with the board. And I get that some people like athletics. I, like the couple, am more given to staring into the water, soaking up the beauty. I don't think the photographer was intending to paint a portrait of lazy, ugly, fat people. His title is The Couple. It just seems sweet. I'd be sad to hear otherwise.
The other link was to some photos from a beach in Chile. Again, the photographer doesn't seem to be making a negative comment on fat people but in the comments we see a young girl being called a lard ass and another comment in which the presence of a Burger King in a photo of a fat girl is a commentary on the "global reach of US culture." So there were no fat people in Chile before there was Burger King?
I looked like these girls when I was a kid. And I went swimming. Not at the ocean sadly. A public pool. I went every day in the summer. It was a long walk down a hill to the pool and a long walk back up the hill after we swam. And we went every day. There was no Burger King. We didn't have fast food in the neighborhood until I was in my early teens. And we didn't like it.
Generally, I hang out with really smart people. And when I tell them things that have been said to me, or things that I have been told were said about other fat people they are aghast. As they should be. It still startles me. I was thrilled yesterday when I noticed that I was one of the daily Aortal pointers on Joe Jennett's daily web thing. It took me back to the time when I was first getting that there was a blog world. Portals like Ageless, Aortal, and Soul were like a road map to a world full of coolness. And Willa's Moodswings. Getting a nod from Joe Jennett felt like some kind of arrival.
And then I realized I don't link to him. I link to Ageless. But not Cool Stop. Anyway. I added Jennett Radio to my blog roll. Not out of obligation. I just associate him with blogging and the way in which our linking to one another has built this massive community.
More people seem to be taking breaks. Cleis. Cyndy thought she might but seems to have made a few posts since then. I really know how they feel.
Maria wrote the other day about awareness of the reader. Stat checking. Referrer tracking. One link less and we think we've failed. One link more and we think we win. I do. Maybe I should say I do. But I know I'm not alone. I do make an effort to ignore it all. But the truth is I get very cranky when I feel ignored. And then I feel like I've lost perspective.
The link from Joe took me back to a more innocent time. A time when it all felt new. A time when I was meeting people through the way the arranged words and pictures on a page. It all felt marvleous and exciting and subversive.
Blogging gets talked about as much as it gets done. It is still a wide open field full of possiblity. Political bloggers get a lot of credit for keeping it real. Political bloggers invented Howard Dean right? Or was it the other way around?
I get sucked into myself. Reclusive. Too reclusive even to read or write. And this blog has been something that keeps me from sliding too far in. Better that pills! Or therapy! This blog keeps me connecting. Thinking about writing. Thinking about myself in time. Thinking about the world around me and the people who go on line every day to read me. and the people who go on line every day to write. My heart about bursts when I think of it all.
As far as I know I only got one hit from the link. So it's not about my evolution. It's about something more delicate. And warm. I didn't think I would ever watch the Bridget Jones movie. It didn't seem like I'd be missing anything and I was annoyed by all the flap about how much weight the actress gained to play the part and how much she had to lose afterward. But last night the movie was on TV and I had entered what I now call the evening yarn zone. So I watched.
It was funny to see Salman Rushdie. Other than that the movie was as I imagined. Sometimes I like simple movies with predictable plot lines. I do hate watching movies on TV because they show more and more commercials as the movies comes to an end. It seems like they know they have you hooked so they bombard you. I usually mute commercials but I was concentrating on the yarn. Maybe someday I'll have the knit one, purl one, click on mute rhythm but right now I'm still afraid to let go. I kept thinking that I'd quit watching and read as soon as I'd get to the end of the row. And then there was one more row and one more row. I guess that's a knitting thing.
Commercials are almost funny to me sometimes. It seemed to me last night that low carb or low fat was mentioned for every food. Except there was this repeated commercial for pizza strips that you dunk into sauce. Is that good? It didn't look good.
And then there are the commercials for medication that warn of possible side effects in a warm fuzzy (don't worry) tone. I really like those.
So I don't think I'll be rushing to get the sequel. There was a sequel, right? Another couple of hours of this young woman trying to define true love and have fun and be a professional something. I heard the book was good. And yet ... Potato leek soup. I'm just sayin.
I cut the leeks into half circles and saute them for a minute or two, cover them with chicken stock, add cut up potato and let it cook till the potatoes are soft. The stock will have reduced and the starch in the potato will thicken it somewhat. Salt Pepper. Some creamed frache on top when it's in the bowl. It couldn't be easier. It couldn't be better. Especially on a cold, rainy night.
If you like smooth soup you can blend it after the potatoes cook.
So that one more row thing in knitting can hold you in place for quite a while. And I don't even know about gartner stitches yet. I did end up taking the scarf apart and starting over. I needed to make it longer and I didn't have enough of the yarn. So I'm making stripes. And that turns into a one more stripe thing. I'd like to finish something. Someday.
Rana wrote a post the other day that I've been thinking about and rereading. It's about the difference between tolerance and the benefit of the doubt. And here's where I begin to paraphrase wildly so keep in mind that I may have missed her point in a desire to make my own. Tolerance can generate an atmosphere of moral relativism and deference to the point where opinion is almost thought of as pathology. Benefit of the doubt is more about taking a position not as a negation of another point of view but as an expression of a personal integrity.
I think my interest in the post comes from a few places. I've been thinking about reconciliation. What are the qualities of true reconciliation? I have a few relationships in which there is a desire for reconciliation. In some of them I'm the one with the desire. In others someone else wants to reconcile with me. In all of them there is a story line that arrives at a moment when my or the other persons behavior becomes too difficult to bear. And I, or the other person, needs to either accept what feels unacceptable and shift to a less open manner in the relationship or let the relationship go. For me, once a deep level of intimacy is established it's difficult to operate at as if the agreements that created that intimacy have not been breached. I don't need much but I do need some ackowledgement of the breach, some sense that it is understood.
All this may seem off to the side of what Rana is writing but when I was reading her post I was thinking about how tolerance works in the relationships I have (my parents) in which there have been breeches, reconciliation, or not and still the relationship goes on. Big zones of don't-go-there exist. But we go on. Tolerance in those relationships is painful and often feels like a loss of some of my personal integrity. In my friendships I am less willing to pay that price. But when are those lines too thickly drawn?
Politically and culturally I loved the distinction Rana is making. She said she has been accused of not being liberal. If someone said I wasn't liberal I'd be thrilled but I don't identify as liberal. I am, in fact, somewhat loathe to even use the word. It does seem like the warm, fuzzy, it's all good way of being that makes real discourse almost impossible. We preach to the choir. We vent to our inner circles but show a placid face to the world.
It's been interesting to me that the news continues to say that Rice will be an easy confirmation when what we see (if we watch CSPAN) is long and contentious presentations from a few Democrats and the warning to be silent from the right. Let's not undermine her credibility in the world, they say. Too late. It's already undermined and she did it all by herself. But the news keeps telling us that everything is OK. Whatever dissent may exist is small and meaningless and the larger agreement is the only thing that matters. But that isn't true. the dissent needs to have its articulation. Its place.
I did warn that I was going to paraphrase and diverge but language from Rana's post keeps coming back to me.
Yoga postures are so active. When you think of something like mountain pose, which I call the just stand there pose, you can wonder about the value. But when you do the pose you realize how many muscles go into the act of simply standing. You become aware of how breath works (or doesn't) with those muscles. You become aware of the habits of your body and the pull of those habits and sometimes the emotional reasons for that pulling. You become aware. And having become aware it is to painful, almost impossible to shut down that awareness. But it's interesting. I don't think the woman in the photo looks particularly well aligned. I think she needs to drop her butt. And who am I to say? I have to assume that she feels the pose in a way that is beneficial to her. Is there a right way to a pose?
In the political, cultural and even personal areas of our lives we hold postures. For me there's always complexity. Which is part of what I think Rana is saying. And I try to hold the complexity in the posture. And there are times when I feel like I may sound like a relativist. I'm really not.
Maybe push hands is way to think about how my posture and another person's posture can relate. Because in push hands flexibility does not mean changing the basic form of the pose. It's more about being able to hold your pose in relation to someone else's.
Rana's post begins with a thought about how communication works in the blog world. We deal with the sometimes flat sometimes static nature of language. After I read her post I thought about how after the elections I had some tense exchanges with a few folks in comments because I was (and am) so emotional about the outcome. And when I write about fat politics I often end up trying to engage and still hold respect. It is often easier for me to engage with someone who thinks I'm in denial and should really just eat less and exercise more until I am some magic number (something I have never been no matter what my consumption and activity levels have been) than I do engaging people who think that they are not fat hating but really don't examine their thinking about weight and health and beauty and social meaning. And in my personal life sometimes I just hafta say ... this is the best I can come up with right now.
You can see how I am all over the place with this but so much of my thinking has returned to Rana's notion of the benefit of the doubt. When I talk about holding complexity I think I'm saying something similar. There is tension in mountain pose. I mean the teachers always talk about effortlessness and energy and finding the place where you can stand forever but my experience is that standing still isn't simple. It's full of complexity and awareness of the complexity and being with the complexity.
Soup. Soup is simple. Dinner at Abeer's. She made cucumber, tomato salad, rice, dal, spinach and chick peas, okra and Mitchell's with blueberries. Everything SO good. And we talked and talked. And talked. And talked.
She tries (and I think succeeds) to send out five pieces of writing a month. She's been published in ZYZZYVA, which is very cool. She has days that she sets aside to write. She was encouraging me to SEND STUFF OUT.
I Knew a guy who knew Bukowski. Bukowski used to send a piece of writing out every day. Every day. Five a month seems like a more practical goal. I have no set goal. I send something out and then hold my breath until I get the rejection letter.
Sonya is so good about sending me links to calls for submissions. I think I did send something out a few months ago but I don't remember. This is the work of being a writer that I just don't do. I need to keep a record. I need to set goals. I need to send out query letters.
A few nights ago I had this great feeling right before I went to bed. I felt like something had changed. In me. I felt better. I felt like I'd done a lot of work on some inner stuff and something had shifted. I couldn't wait till the next day. The next day came and I woke up in a terrible but ill defined mood. I don't know why. I don't think I need to know.
This morning I woke up having a dream that I was auditioning for Judy Collins. I was in the Starting Over house and other women were auditioning for her but the life coaches didn't remember that I wanted to sing. So they weren't giving me the chance. One of the other women did remember and encouraged me. I was in a ditch. There was a wall that I was peeking over. My voice was weak and I knew it. I sang quietly and with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes the life coaches were making all these encouraging faces and it pissed me off and I couldn't sing. But Judy looked at me and said I like your voice. And then she began to make a plan for us all to do more work on our singing.
Encouragement is a funny thing. I need it. I want it. I get plenty of it. I feel that I have gotten deep and substantive encouragement from many people.
I don't really want to sing any more, which feels funny to say because it was all I wanted for so long. But I don't love what you have to do to sing. The musicians. The clubs. It was fun when it was fun. And that's just not where I want to be. But I do want to express. Or something.
Dinner with Abeer was fun and somehow cleared my head. I will get out a note book and figure out a goal and keep a record of how I'm doing. I will do that today. Dear Blog Friend,
Thank you for the beautiful flowers. That was a kind and generous thing to do.
PS: Kindness? Me? Huh? Deb was on her way over, bringing lunch. We were gonna eat and watch a movie (interesting but not that well done) while she did her laundry. So I was looking at funds for writers sites and CSPAN was on. There was a panel discussion with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Olusegun Obasanjo, Thabo Mbeki, Bill Gates and Bono. At first I thought we might be playing a game of one of these things is not like the other. Or maybe even two of these things. It was a discussion on G-8 and Africa being broadcast live from the World Economic forum and actually quite interesting.
The moderator was Christene Ockrent who was quite challenging and sometimes a bit loopy. She was asking Bono to imagine he was the "president of England" and say what he would do. He looked over at Tony Blair and said something about how the Irish have been trying to do that for years and everyone had a good laugh. I dunno. How does the person who sang Sunday, Bloody Sunday sit next to Blair and not make a more serious comment when handed such an opportunity? It was funny. I will admit. I laughed.
The summit has a blog. The post about this panel is interesting but not detailed, mostly focused on the international tax plan. There's actually a better report on the U2 web site but no mention of the Irish being offered control of England.
I didn't get to see the whole thing. I saw part of it replayed later in the evening. I heard someone on KPFA talking about the big Tsunami relief effort and lack of funding for HIV/AIDS in Africa. The person had numbers about deaths and funding that were overwhelming in contrast. Not that I have any disapproval for the vigour with which people are raising money for tsunami relief but there is a way in which we get all worked up about something and forget about everything else. Clinton said there is little political will for allotting funds for the HIV/AIDS crisis because there is no constituency. But how do you build constituency? You educate.
So I had a nice lunch and watched some Amish kids getting high and worked on my scarf and all the while I was thinking about debt relief, and the focus of private funding as the main stay instead changing budget priorities from military aggression to world health, education and housing. There was a man in the audience who has a relatively low cost plan to just make sure every one has mosquito netting over their mats. Just that much of an intervention would change the numbers on death from infectious disease.
How long? How long must we sing this song? I keep forgetting to write about seeing Lawrence on the bus. He got on one stop after I did. I was already in my seat and had my book out.
OK. This is dopey. But I will admit. I tipped the book a bit so that he could see what I was reading. I don't know if he looked. I'm sure he didn't care. What was I thinking?
Heh.
He got off at the book store and I rode off in my mobile reading room.
|
