March

"The history which bears and determines us, has the form of war rather than that of a language: relations of power, not relations of meaning." Michel Foucault

March 20, 2001
Five hours of designing a web page yesterday. Five more trying to get it launched. No luck. If I was smart I'd spend some time reading. But I'm charging ahead. Ironic, since my contemplation for the week is about power. That contemplation began on Sunday morning when I read this article in the Nation. I think all the stuff about the election and Lynne Cheney is right on, but it hit a personal chord for me. I think the fact that we grow up and are trained with this western-civ notion of a narrative line that is told by the winner gives us a confused relationship to power. Last week on Oprah, Dr. Phil, who I think is an emotional fascist, led the audience in this exercise, which I thought was interesting. He had them hold hands in a kind of arm wrestling manner and each person took turns pushing the other's hand to one side and saying I'm right. It was fun to watch. We need to be right because we're writing our narrative and we think someone in the narrative has to be right. I'd like to shake that western-civ training. I'd like to try to notice the meaning in my interactions and I'd like to be secure enough in myself to not fight for position when I'm in relationship. And in other power related issues, right now, I'd like to throw my laptop out the window. But, I'm eating Pad Thai and trying again.

March 21, 2001
I could probably have learned HTML in the time it has taken me to put this together. Thanks to Willa for telling me to try cutting and pasting in smaller amounts. It gave me the will to keep trying today. Reading her journal has been some of the inspiration for this page. More thanks to tech support at DNAI. If at first you don't succeed... and all that. I do think a web site is a bit like a message in a bottle. Maybe all writing is a message in a bottle. Unless you're Emily Dickinson.

My struggle to get the site up and perfect continues. But, it is up. I now have a world wide forum, that is if any one clicks my way. Suzanne said the site was radical. That shot my ego into over drive! Suzanne has been reading web journals lately since her kids were featured in one. If we're on line at the same time we read them together. So, I was standing in line at food for more, other wise known as Whole Foods. I like to shop there because they have all that organic food, the fish, meat and poultry is very fresh and hormone free and they have a bakery and a deli. They buy locally. I just try to ignore how much it all costs and I can only indulge that ignorance in small doses. I shop at Rainbow for more of my food. I like the collective and the prices and they have great stuff but ... no meat. So, there I was buying my expensive blueberry muffins and lamb chops. There was a magazine in a rack, ASCENT . It seemed like eye candy for people who are into yoga but I thought I'd flip though it because there was an article about Arundahti Roy and her battle to save the Narmada River. I ended up adding it to the pile of things on which I should not have been spending that much money. It's a nice enough magazine. There is content in all that gloss but things like this always work my sense of irony. Even dissent and the support of dissent can be commodified. It seems important to stay mindful, even as you hand over the cash. I don't feel guilty but I am aware that I am privileged. Not privileged in the go-ahead-spend-that-disposable-income sense. I have no disposable income. (In fact, right now, I have no income.) In the sense that I can buy a magazine and still pay my rent. So far. I've read The Cost of Living and The God of Small Things, both wonderful books. The pictures in the article touched my heart and I wanted to be able to look at them. But there can be a quality of the pornographic in this act. There I was, in line in the halls of more than enough. Even the feel of the quality of the paper the magazine is printed on communicates something to me about who I am. And I'm looking at pictures of people who are standing in the rising water that has flooded their homes as a result of large dam building and river diverting in India. I want to stay informed and I know that I have choices in terms of how to stay informed. Reading glossy magazines is not enough. There are links in the article for more information. It's best to be mindful. I cooked the lamb last night with roasted red peppers, shallots, garlic, kalamata olives and balsamic vinegar. I served in a bowl with watercress and smashed potatoes. Kara came over for dinner. It was wonderful to spend time with her and the food was good.

And so having positioned myself as a scribe I find I have not much to say. Doesn't that suck? I'm still fighting with Netscape composer. I may need to find a better WYSIWYG program or learn HTML. I kinda want to learn HTML but I'm hyper about doing the writing. It does stimulate my brain to have a box to fill. It's been fun to send out the flag to friends and get e-mail back. Steve wrote and sent a link to an article by his wife Molly. I tried to link to it but the link changed once it was published. People ask the obvious question, "what are you gonna do with your web site?" That is the question. If I try to be profound things will get really stupid, really fast. I am hoping that having a reason to write will keep me productive. But there are all the oddities of writing in a public space. And is this a public space? I mean, really, who is going to read this? And then there's the reread that I do after I publish it and see the grammar mistake that I did not intend. It's nerve racking but in a good way. And then there is the fact that I have time now since I have no job and am not in school. Will I still write here when I have less time for virtual reality? And then...and then...and then... I watched Will & Grace last night. There were two fat jokes and the whole episode was about not being able to accept physical difference (read ugly). Just when you think it's safe to go back into the cultural pool. I must admit I laugh out loud at some of the stuff, it can be very funny in very smart ways and the fat jokes are always dumb. Grace was wearing a backless top featuring her extremely bony back. I might not have noticed but I was already cranky from the first fat joke and it seemed as if they were glamorizing her extreme thinness. I always want to hope that I can watch television and relax. Nope. There use to be shows that I loved and wouldn't want to miss. Star Trek was church. Even the shows that I like these days do not inspire that kind of loyalty. I like The Practice and I'm glad there is one strong fat woman represented in a serious manner on television. But her only love interest turned out to be a murderer and a really violent crazy murderer at that. Now she has chosen to have a baby without the father's support or participation. There was no development of their relationship. It is as if the writers can't figure out how to write about her romantically. And they have completely problematized her pregnancy. She had so much trouble she had to appear on another Fox/Kelly show, Gideon's Crossing to survive. I'm happy to see Camryn Manheim on as many shows as possible but Suzanne told me that Camryn's pregnancy was problem free. Her character's pregnancy suffers its writers and their inability to imagine a strong, fat, healthy, woman. Suzanne, who is always perceptive and articulate in these matters, says, "there are strong injunctions against portraying unruly people, like fat women, enjoying all the benefits obedient people have."
I am almost done with Poisonwood Bible. I can hardly put it down. This will end the African journey I began in December. I read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild. I'm glad I read them before the Kingsolver. She references a lot of history that I didn't know prior to reading them. Of course when I told David what I was reading to go on my African journey he gave me the names of three more books. But my journey was waylaid by my SIMS addiction and took so long to complete. Now I think I need to shift my focus. As usual, for someone with not much to say I have babble on.

I had this funny little synchronicity yesterday. Adrienne was on her way to pick me up and take me to the beach. I was reading an interview with Kathleen Dean Moore, in The Sun, in which she talks about a thought experiment suggested by the philosopher John Locke; the purpose of which is to define what is essentially who we are. In Locke's experiment one is to imagine that you are your neighbor and your neighbor is you in terms of physical qualities. So, if I were thinner and shorter and had black hair would I still be me? Moore's, and perhaps Locke's, conclusion is that you would still be you. In an absolute sense I agree but I think there is a body/mind split in that reasoning. I think all of who we are makes us who we are. The little scar on my finger reminds me of a part of my story. Cutting my finger while cleaning a meat slicer at my first job might not have shaped much of who I am but it has some play. Restaurant workers will occasionally compare battle scars. And, my neighbor has the kind of thin body that is privileged in our culture and I do not. I wouldn't trade bodies with her because my fat body has taught me much of what I know. But that's not what was interesting to me. My buzzer rang and I thought it was Adrienne. I went to the bottom of the stairs and my neighbor was being helped from a cab. She had crutches and a cast. My neighbor and I are polite when we see each other but we have that kind of relationship that you often have in the city. We are friendly and distanced. Occasionally I am annoyed by noise from her apartment or someone from her apartment puts a bottle in my recycling box, requiring me to carry it down the three flights of stairs. But nothing that bothers me in any serious way. I had just spent two minutes imagining that I had her body and she had mine and there she was with a wounded body. I took the trash to the trash can and by the time I came back she was gone. She gets up the three flights of stairs on crutches faster than I do with out them. There is no epiphany here. I'm not bakin her a cake or anything. I imagine that if I told her all this she wouldn't understand and might, upon hearing that I had her body and she had mine, add a lock to her door. If she were alone I might ask if she needed anything from the store but she's not. There are ways in which the experience demonstrates a kind of connectedness. It was kinda fun. Adrienne came and we went to Muir beach and had an afternoon of great conversation. The drive there was influenced by my reading of the article. The smell of eucalyptus as we drove through Muir woods reminded me of my love for California, my longing to be part of it. We had a funny lunch of smoked Gouda and lobster bisque in a tavern like place, the name of which I can't remember. We stopped and bought fruit and roses from a roadside stand and had cake and coffee at Just Deserts in the city. I finished Poisonwood Bible before I went to sleep.

I was loving doing the site but I was stuggling with the software. I kept thinking I needed to learn HTML and I am still interested in doing that but I am having too much fun with the writing and linking and blah blah blah. So, I bought some WYSIWYG software, Namo. And what a relief. Having some ways to play may bury me in page writing obsession but it's a little better than my last addiction, The SIMS. Much thanks to Deb for driving me all over San Francisco to find the software.She knows my obsessive nature

Having spent all day Saturday reading help pages for Netscape and Microsoft Word, the two programs I had built the site in, both of which were a struggle, and most of the day Sunday trying to find new software that wouldn't be so miserable I felt quite exhausted. There was a funny moment yesterday. Deb and I had gone to Office Depot, Office Max and Costco. Finally we had parked in the Mission and fifth parking lot and walked the four long blocks to Computown. I was looking for Dreamweaver or Pagemaker by Symentec because they had been recommended and/or I had read about them. Computown is filled with very young men running around or standing around. All the ones I delt with seemed to be unable to sustain interaction for more than two sentences. I think they may have all spent a little too much time at the playstation. One of them directed me to a cabinet in which there was a box with Dreamweaver software. I started tugging at the door only to realize it was locked and then I began looking for someone with a key until Deb broke through my frenzy to point out the cost, four hundred dollars. You might think I woulda figured that out by the fact that the door was locked. When I want something I can be quite obtuse. Deb was there when I bought a fourteen dollar bar of soap because I hadn't noticed how much it cost until I was in the check out line and the clerk had to do a price check. At that point I was too chagrined to not buy it. It has lasted four months so far and I contend that good soap does last longer but I would not have paid that much if I had noticed the cost earlier. Standing in front of the glass case in Computown Deb only had to say, "this is like the soap." I continued the quest, endured more hapless customer service and decided on the Namo software. While we were there I showed Deb the site on one of the computers that they have available for customers. I felt quite shy about leaving the site up as we walked away. There is this whole self consciousness about who sees the site. It's public space but the only people likely to find will be friends, or friends of friends unless I join a web ring and even then I'd be in ring of, theoretically, like minded folk. And why do I care who sees it? I spent the rest of the day yesterday fussing over the site, trying to decide if I like the frames. My sink is full of dishes. I haven't read the paper and the want ads. What a crazy chick I am?!

Yesterday morning I was listening to Democracy Now! on KPFA as is my habit. Amy Goodman's familiar voice began the opening and suddenly there was the sound of disruption. I can't say that any other way but suddenly there was this problem and then the sound of the Bessie Wash, the executive director, of the board of Pacifica talking about an incident in Houston this last weekend, where the board was meeting. The events, her version and a version I heard later aren't what stayed with me. What stayed with me was the fear that I felt when I heard the sound of Amy's show being stopped. I love the show and it is a major source of news for me but the fear was not the fear of loss. It is difficult to imagine watching a major television network and having the head of the network interrupt the program to say we know that people who support a given cause may be listening and we want to say to you ..etc. If it was a football game that was interrupted there would be a riot. There are pressures on networks that play out behind closed doors. Advertisers dictate content. But this felt like 1984. This person used her power to overrule programing. It was scary. There are ways to speak out about this through Save Pacifica and The Pacifica Campaign.

I woke up yesterday, went on my walk, ate my cereal and a bagel, drank my coffee and got some laundry in the washer and from the washer to the dryer. Suddenly I was exhausted. I went back to bed and had a terrible nap. I never did snap out of it. Later, I was on line looking for a job and went to get an address from the This American Life site. I decided to peruse some of their site recommendations and found a site called Open Letters. At first glance it seemed like a promising bunch of writing but it had stopped publishing in November. I followed some of their links. One was to a page by a young woman in Canada. I actually liked one of her rants, Use Your Brain. It was fun to read because it wasn't particularly good writing and it was written from her view behind a service counter. I've seen things from that view. But lots of the links led to pages on which men write about wanting sex from women and women not wanting to have sex with them. Or women writing about wanting sex. There was just way too much gender stupidity for me. Later a news woman, in a piece on an increase in deaths from cancer for women, actually said that the women's movement had made it OK for women to smoke. It all made me more tired. The boxes with which we define our selves are too small. Since I am already writing about things that made me cranky I want to mention this article in the New York Times on Sunday. The article was about problems with cloning but what bugged me was the picture that was used to demonstrate the problems It was a picture of two mice, one of which was fat. For me the message was if we clone people we may not be able to control the ways the genes express themselves. And terrible things will happen, the worst thing will be that they may get fat. I tried to link to the article but you have to have a password to get to it.

I got a good nights sleep. First one in a week. I'm hoping that means I'll be a bit more engaged today. This week has been the kind of week that might have buried me in depression. Working on the site has buoyed me in some ways. It's interesting to me, the small hope that someone may read this keeps me thinking about what I'm going to say. I think this reflects how much I need acknowledgement and response. I'm not even embarrassed by that, though I use to be. I am aware that lately I just seem to need an excessive amount of acknowledgement. It seems as if I am in this extended recovery from my college years. Keeping things in perspective I know that it hasn't been that long and I am feeling better and I am waiting to see if I get into grad school. It's seems to be difficult for me to assess how I'm doing since the measure of how I'm doing is always changing. And, despite the fact that there may only be a few people reading anything here, I feel as if it must be written well. And the measure of that is also shape shifting. AH.

Mumia has fired his attorneys. One of them published a book about the case. I actually found it kind of smarmy when OJ's lawyers published books and the case was over when they did. The lawyer/author in interviews seems oblique and feigns wounding; since he has worked so hard and sees the book as an extension of the work. He characterizes the world wide protest movement for Mumia as histrionic and says the movement is to blame for a lack of main stream media coverage of Mumia's case. He believes his book proves that Mumia did not have a fair trail and may, in fact, be innocent. I guess if you see the court room as a theater you may only want to restage the play. If you see the court room as a site for social justice you may position yourself less as a player and more as an advocate. You may, for example, think it unseemly to publish a book when you must enter the court room and be perceived as someone with no vested interest.

I saw a rerun of an Oprah show on which Carnie Wilson and others talked about their weight loss. Carnie had a frantic, deer in the headlights look. She had surgery to reduce the size of her stomach. Her description of yelling at a candy bar seemed revealing. Carnie's body is one of those bodies that was fat through out childhood. She says she began dieting when she was twelve. I can't help but wonder about the negative impact of early dieting on her health. The other people on the show had lost weight through a combination of diet and exercise. As they told their stories Carnie looked tearful. People that create a life in which they exercise vigorously and eat moderately make a choice about a way to be with their bodies. These people seemed healthy and self contained. And they weren't all that thin. In other words they have found a way to be with their bodies. It is always a story that includes running from the painful experience of being fat. To that extent I think it's a self containment that can be toppled by weight gain and is therefor not substantial. But, it was Carnie that really broke my heart. She is running from something much deeper and no doubt painful. And she resorted to a kind of mutilation to give wings to her flight.