| March 2003 I forgot Rabbit Rabbit again.
I did a bunch of laundry yesterday. While waiting for the washing part to get done, so I could get to the drying part, I walked to the store. When I came back there was the sound of a low flying plane. Really loud. Annoying. The handyman for the building was in the garden when I walked in and told me to look at the plane. The plane was pulling a banner which read ANNA MARIE WILL YOU MARRY ME. Sweet.
Dinner was great. Kara bought Kobi a bunch of oysters for his birthday (which it turns out was on Wednesday) and they brought some over. I made the smoked trout/leek/spelt crust/creme frache pizza and a big piece of beef with mushroom pan sauce, wasabi mashed potatoes and green beans. Then we had angel food cake with blackberry/ginger sorbet and some blood oranges that I had macerated in honey and rum. So the food was good. And we talked and talked. I used ever dish I own. I don't know how that happened. So I will be cleaning up today.
While I was cooking I burned my finger tip and after they left I stubbed my toe on a chair. So I was kind of wounded when I went to bed. It's the tip of my left click finger so every one in a while I hit it. Ouch. Ouch.
We had a great time and it was great to see them. But if you spend any time with people who are thinking and paying attention at all you spend some portion of the evening talking about the misery of having our president. I was looking around at the empty plates and half filled wine glasses and loving my friends and feeling lucky. Listening to their plans for the future. And wondering how we can make a future in a time of war. And knowing that we have to keep on keeping on.
I love this kid. I've heard him on the radio a few times and he was CNN once. He's clear and articulate and way more mature than I will ever be.
So sick. I got the flu. Stomach/intestinal thing. Very bad. Must lay back down. Thanks so much to everyone who stopped by and left me a get well comment.
I'm not going into detail. No one needs to hear about it. Sunday was the worst. Monday. I thought I was better in the evening. Tuesday morning...wretched. But I did get up and take a shower and checked on a few blogs and did some e-mail. Tuesday night was bad again. Wednesday I felt beaten.
I kept staring at my book shelf thinking it might be good to read one of them. And then my eyes would close and I'd be gone. Which was the best place to be.
Thankgawd for Sundance and IFC. There was a documentary on Golub and another on George Seldes and Spalding Gray. If ya gotta be sick Spalding Gray is the guy who you want to come over and tell you stories. He's fun to watch but you can just close your eyes and listen. On Sunday I watched as much as I could of Susan Sontag. But it was a bit of a blur. I avoided the news. I literally did not have the stomach for it.
I wasn't feeling Fat Tuesday. Which made me sad. I didn't get to do a big tirade on the idiot weigh in day yesterday and ISAA's weigh in response. Maybe later.
This morning I still feel terrible but it's a less shrill kind of terrible. So thank you for the good wishes. Only connect! That was the whole
of her sermon. And
human love will be seen at its height. -- E.M. Forster I spent the morning reading blogs and talking on the phone. I'm dizzy. But I am better. I'm sipping echinacea infused cranberry juice. I took a shower and put on clothes instead of pajamas. And I might maybe should ought to use my energy to do school stuff that didn't get done. But I haven't really got the will. I'm in a woozy think/feel kinda space.
Living Nappy isn't going to blog for a while because a fellow worker found her site. She's having trouble not writing. I feel that. While I was sick I dreamed I was posting. My little writing project has become a life line for me. I think blogging, or on-line journaling, is different things to different people. But it is addicting. It feels to me like we are all on our little islands and once, or twice, or seventeen times a day we write a note and put it in this blog bottle and hurl it out to sea. And then we wait on the shore for the notes to arrive from the others. Living Nappy says, "Wait for me." And we will.
What is with the world? Why do we have more than one face? Most of the people in my world know about my blog. But my parents don't. They wouldn't get it. I don't lie about who I am to them but there are plenty of things I don't talk about with them. If they found the blog we might have a tense conversation about how weird it is and how dangerous the world is and how I should be more afraid and why do I have to use bad words all the time. And then ... I would keep writing. But a job is something else. Dooce lost her job. Glovefox was called into her deans office. Stuff goes wrong.
I was reading Trish Wilson's break down of Dru's reaction to an article about blogging. The article didn't reflect the number of women bloggers. Dru got a pile of comments and Trish does a great job of breaking it all down. I missed the whole thing because ... well you know why.
Trish is new to this writing on line thing. She writes that the first blog she read was Instapundit, a blog that I must admit I never read. I think I did once or twice when he first started. But Instapundit gets press.
Wonder why?
Dru was writing about sexism. And Trish goes on to talk about sexism in the world of blogging. And I was reading it all and remembering conversations that have happened here. And I'm in my woozy, dizzy, not quite cogent zone. And somehow all this stuff starts to form in me.
There is some amazing open hearted wrenching writing going on. Melanie writes about pain. Monica writes about suffering. Notes in a bottle.
I don't mean to gender this kind of writing. I read men with lots of heart. But it is the kind of writing that pulls at my heart. And I marvel at it. I marvel at the raw openness of it. The courage and the beauty and the hope of it. It isn't quippy commentary. It's a kind of reaching. And more.
And every time I read a dis of cat bloggers I want to pretend I have a cat. I want to write long posts about my cat. I love the cat stories. I love the kid stories. I love stories of our ordinary lives. The chop wood carry water stories.
I guess I do gender the valuing of a certain kind of writing. And that may be sexist. But I guess I do think that there is a way in which the journalistic aspirations of a few bloggers and the A-list bullshit are a more patriarchal way of describing value. Or maybe assigning value. So the whole division of blog/journal becomes gendered. Blogging is serious. Journaling is for people with time to be personal.
What ever.
I'm pissed off at the world that sets up the conditions in which we have more than one face. And we can't tell the truth. And we are silenced. And I'm not saying that men made the bad world. We made it together. We make it every time we value thinking at the cost of feeling. We make it when cat stories are less important than political analyses.
But. Look. The thing about the blog world is that it subverts those values. Every one gets to write what they will and choose their own blog roll. No one needs to read a cat story if they don't want too. There is something much larger than journalism going on in these pages. There is a popping, sparkling, me too ness going on.
I read a lot of political blogs. Coz. I like them. I read political blogs by women. I read political blogs by men. I read blogs where not much of the person's personal life is revealed and yet I have a sense of who they might be. Dru has one of the best political minds I've ever read. And she still has time to marvel over her children. And I've read men marveling about their children.
The personal is political. One of the blogs that reflects one of my strongest political needs is run by a man.
What am I talking about? Oh. I'm all over the place. Content is a trope.
Only connect. I was worried that sleeping for three days, which was about all I did, might eventually make it hard for me to sleep at night. I didn't sleep in the day on Thursday. At 2:00 A. M. I was awake, listening to my clock tick. Not a big deal. I read for awhile. I am better. I think I've moved from so-sick to out-of-sorts. I may color code my wellness. Isn't that what we do now?
Maybe it was listening to the recalcitrant boy prince continue to affirm his intention to escalate the war he's already waging. Really. We've been at war with this country for eleven years. When are we going to tell the truth? I'm listening to the UN on KPFA as I type. I guess that's a sign that I'm better enough to deal with it.
I noticed an ad for Washington apples in a magazine. If you go here and scroll down you will see three posters on the side that are pop ups. In the new ad campaign Washington Apples are linking with Gold's gym and are now the self proclaimed diet pill of Gold's.
Uh huh.
So now a really good and healthy thing is equated with a synthetic and potentially deadly thing.
On the ads are pictures of apples with a torso carved into them. The first is a woman, shown from behind with the caption - A few apples a day keep the lipo doctor away. The second is a male torso with the caption - If you blow this diet all you'll be out is 85 cents. The third, and really most disturbing, is a female torso shown from the front with the caption - Time to go beat up a pudgy little fat cell.
Time to go BEAT UP a pudgy little fat cell.
I could just go on and on about why I hate these ads. there's the sexism implied in men not needing to worry about blowing the diet and women being threatened with surgery and beating. There's even a homophobic weirdness to the whole 85 cent blowing bit.
Happily, for me, I live in California. We grow our own. Ohmygawd I'm Eugene Debs.
I can't tell you how happy that makes me. Brother Debs spent time in prison for his anti war sentiments. Will I be able to blog from my cell?
I found this quiz on Susannah's journal. She got Nader. Why didn't I get Nader?
Way back last Sunday, before the bad bug bit me, or I ate the unwashed grape, or whatever happened, I was writing a post in my head in response to something Susan said about me writing a food column. I had intended to do more food writing. I bought a bunch of food books for inspiration. I thought it might be good for parts of THE BOOK. I used to read food writing a lot when I was working as a cook.
I was thinking about a post of Angela's in which she contemplated Leroy's eating. He likes ham.
When I was kid we bought chipped ham at Islay's on Sundays after church. My grandmother would order it and the guy would put the big chunk of ham on the slicer and set it to go really fast. Then he would give me a piece to eat while we waited for the rest to chip. We took it home and ate it on mushy hamburger rolls. I remember that mushy, salty, mouthful. It kinda tickled.
Cheryl walked up to the table in the cafeteria the other day with a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. She stood there looking at it woefully. I looked at it. We looked at each other. She said something like, "Maybe I should take this back." It did look a bit unsavory. There was one slice of ham and some obscure cheese and it was on white bread. At the same time it had the look of something from childhood. Something you might have eaten in a cafeteria. And there we were again.
Once I went to a deli after work and bought a ham sandwich on a hard roll and a Peroni, took it home and ate it on my porch. The ham was good baked ham, not processed loaf ham, and the roll was crunchy. It was the perfect thing.
I don't eat ham on any kind of regular basis. But I was thinking about all this. And food writing. On Saturday night. And then on Sunday morning ...
But I think we can move my wellness to a new color coded level. If I ever figure out the colors. I'm not quite at peachy.
Heh.
Today is International Women's Day.
Uh.
It feels like I should have something to say about that. But I don't. All during Black History Month I kept thinking I should talk about it. But I'm having some kind of fussy reaction to the setting apart of time for a people. Every day should be ... ya know. At the same time I like setting aside time to ritualize and focus. So. I'm in some kind of fussy stuck place about these kinds of things.
Meanwhile George and Dru are in Austin. And other people are there too. Judy Rebick thinks the women need to take over. If only it were that simple. Hillary was given the pink slip because, as a woman in power she isn't getting it done. But Judy makes a good point.
Because as long as any of our relationships are based on domination, we will never end the most extreme form that domination can take and the one that lies beneath all the others.
The voice on NPR is talking about the rise in anti war protests. The Pope says no to war. There is so much dissent. In the world. In the country. From with in the administration. Jimmy Carter says no to war. It's every where.
It was Alexandra's birthday yesterday so we went out to dinner. I was worried that I wouldn't be well in time. But I think I am All better now. She celebrated her birthday by going to a demo. Her first demo. People who don't go to demonstrations are going to demonstrations.
I was fussing with my site design yesterday. I couldn't seem to decide what I wanted to do. I was just restless and unfocussed.
Marilyn has created a Cafe Press store. I wish Cafe Press would get some bigger sizes. I may end up with the biggest collection of canvas shopping bags ever.
I'm goin swimming.
Peace. OK. So clearly I was feeling the need to change somethin. And I was feelin this green. Lighter. Spring. Something.
It's funny to me how much the template of a blog shapes the way I feel about the blogger. The colors they choose, the pictures. I find it disorienting when I come across a blogspot blog template that I am used to reading someone on and it isn't them. I thought about doing an about page. But I actually like the slow process of getting to know someone by reading them. There is an initial impression created by colors and pictures and blog rolls and all that. And then there's the build. The day to day with someone. About pages feel perfunctory sometimes. Not always. But when I try to write one I feel kinda kooky.
The swim was great. And since I'd spent so much time not moving all week I felt all my muscles twitching afterward. I love that. I came home and played with the new design. Then I fooled around some more with my Live Journal. I set it up so that I could have a name when I posted comments at Angela's. I've been loving reading her. It's a different feel. It really feels like a journal.
But. This feels like my journal. I might play with doing a writing assignment in the Live Journal. Try to push in. Because, really, why not? It's not like I have a BOOK I'm supposed to be working on, or school work to do.
Heh.
I was thinking about the shift of thinking that happens when you stop dieting and trying to lose weight and begin to eat with awareness and move for the love of it. It feels different in your body. It feels like freedom.
When I was in New York I worked out five days a week. Sometimes six. I was running up and down the subway stairs every day. I was fit. And I was fat.
Sometimes I'd be doing reps in front of the mirror, watching to make sure I was standing straight and lifting the weight just so. And I'd see my body in the mirror. And I'd be filled with this sense that it was never going to be enough. And what was my standard of enough? Being thin. I was strong. I was healthy. And all I wanted was to be thin. Sometimes I'd put the weight down and walk out.
Yesterday. In the pool. I was just swimming and feeling my lungs work and my muscles. Feeling my body. And loving every minute of it.
It's interesting because people think size acceptance is about giving up. And. I guess it is. It's about giving up on temporary states of existence and imaginary numbers. For me it never meant giving up on health, or movement.
But.See.I don't think that I'm cool because I swim and don't eat Big Macs. I remember a time when I used to buy a Sara Lee frozen chocolate cake and eat it before it even thawed. Eat the whole cake. Frozen. Afterward I'd feel like an asshole but I'd think about it all. I'd ponder the feeling of need and the sick too much sugar too fast feeling and I'd think about what I really wanted and I'd think about hunger. And then one day ... I didn't need to do that again.
So it's a process. And people get to live their lives. And learn about themselves in any way that they can. The health thing bugs me. No one is healthy every minute of the day. Bodies are always changing. And maybe because I was so sick and I feel so much better I was feeling really happy to be in the pool. Moving. So happy to be able to eat eggs and black beans and chile verde afterwards.
I spent too many years being told that my body was wrong. It's unhealthy to believe that. Even for a second.
It is Monday. And I am behind on school work. So. Uh. Must work now. I had CSPAN on in the background the yesterday. Ari Fleischer was doing a press conference. I swear. It seemed like the journalists had no respect for him. Many of the questions had a tone of incredulity. It was like they were saying, " You can't be serious." I didn't hear the time when they actually laughed him offstage. But with a few of them there was a barely concealed contempt.
I got most of my stuff for school done. I have time today to the rest. Went to therapy last night. But I was in such a good mood it seemed funny to be there. Beth did a really nice mini talk in response to one of the people in group about the TA model and how it operates in relationships between men and woman. I was never that interested in the TA thing. It seemed too reductive. But with Radical Psychiatry that model is embedded in the awareness of how we as individuals operate in the larger cultural soup. And the language of the model becomes useful.
I always resist the lanquege in groups. I mean when I hear myself using too many catch phrases I pull back. It's too easy to use the words and stop doing the work. At the same time I love a great way to say something. And when Beth was doing the riff it made so much sense.
I really get how frustrating it is for hetero men when their partners are pissed because they aren't communicating emotionally. And they get that they're doing something that is causing hurt and anger. But they can't figure out what to DO. And they really want to DO something. And so often it isn't about doing. It's about being. Just being with someone. Something has gone wrong in the relationship. Things go wrong. And there isn't an easy fix. And all the women want is presence. And the men are trying to DO.
I actually have a few women friends like this. It's really hard for them to just listen and feel with ya. They want to fix things. Solve things. Me too. But sometimes you can't. Hurt happens. Anger happens. Life goes on. And relationships are made better or worse.
For me it's always about feeling like the other person is WITH me. Even if we're pissed at each other.
I came home and wrote a little muse in the Live Journal. I really like the way things go in the Live journal space. The friends thing. Last night it felt like coming home to a pajama party.
And, being who I am, it makes me think about writing. And how writing is. Which I need to do more of. Right now. Before I go to school. Today I have to race out the door and go to school so that I can observe a class. Then I have to write a little analysis about that class. I won't have time to get the bus back home and then back to school. Well. I guess I could but that would be like two hours of bus riding for on hour of being home. So I'm just gonna hang around campus. I'll have my laptop. I need to write.
I went to class tonight and found out that I was supposed to have writing to turn in. I should have known. I have it written down. But I was ... sick. It isn't a big problem. We have spring break next week. The teacher was amused by how embarrassed I was. I was. I was shocked. I never do stuff like that. I always have my stuff. I know I've felt disengaged with school but I didn't know it was this bad. So I have to get on paper the piece I've been writing in my head.
I was talking on the phone last night and the news was on the TV but the sound was off. They kept showing footage of the bomb test in Florida over and over. I don't even have language for how I felt. I was listening to my friends voice talking about her day. But I was watching this ... horror. Repeated.
Sigh. It was a long day. I sat in on the class. Went to the cafe and typed up the notes. And then Cheryl printed them up for me. She and I went up to Lone Mountain and talked till class started. Class was fun. But I was glad to go home when it was over.
I turned the TV on and there was 60 minutes II. I haven't watched it before. I could hardly believe my eyes. There was a doctor on a mainstream television show saying that fat people are fighting genetics when they diet.
What? For a few minutes I had hope about the content of the show. I'd missed the beginning but I was encouraged. Things went sour pretty quick. The show was basically talking about the researchers who are doing the work to come up the magic pill. Even with all the acknowledgement of different kinds of genetic and hormonal reasons for fatness the goal is still to lose weight.
What do I want instead? I want them to study ideas about health at any size.
While I was in Cheryl's office we looked at my site on her much bigger computer screen and the tables were borked. I get so depressed when I see this. I never wanted to be designer but I do like doing design. And the limits of my knowledge mean that I never really do it well. On my screen the text box that I'm writing in is next to the Forster quote. On her's it was way down.
I'm in a horrible mood today. But I'm not sure why yet. I spent the day trying to snap out of it. I failed. Thursday's are often a space out day. But yesterday it was really bad. I woke up late, took a nap, went to bed early. Ordered pizza instead of cooking. Spaced out. Watched bad TV.
Part of this is about not doing the piece of writing for class. I've had it in my head for a while. I just am having a hard time getting started. Writing is a funny thing. So many people are so kind and encouraging about my writing. And still I struggle.
Part of this is about wondering what the hell to do with myself when school is over.
Part of this is about reactions I've had to things lately. Things. I know it's an oblique term.
I don't know. I don't know what it's about. I just know I gotta snap out of it today and do some writing. Some writing got done. Some. I don't know why this is so hard right now.
I was distracted by an e-mail exchange with a pediatrician. She got my e-mail address from an e-mail that I had sent to some of the Supervisors asking them to take the words overweight out of their healthy kids task force resolution. I don't know why she got it but she talked about the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in kids.
This stuff pisses me off. On the one hand I think kids (and every one else) eat too much crap food. If you've read me for very long you know I'm a bitch about fast food. Don't like it. I wish all the fast food places would close down and everyone would eat real alive food. And if you have to have a burger and fries (which I do every once in a while) make sure the meat is fresh and local and the potatoes are real and local. And I wish all kids had a variety of foods to eat .
On the other hand fast food is cheap and ... fast. And people on low incomes can feed their whole family on the run. And it's punitive to make them the bad guys when they don't have the time, money or energy to make dinner.
Are kids fatter? I don't know. Maybe. What ever. I sent the supervisors a link to The Edible school yard. I think that kids should have lot's of opportunities to run around. But I think that's true for all kids. Not just the fat ones.
But this pediatrician is out to make sure that no kids are fat.
I might post our e-mail exchange here after the hearing. I feel some paranoia about this politically. I don't know why.
People began protesting the war yesterday. Today there will be more. And Sunday.
Meanwhile I'll be buying some Dixie Chicks tunes. And my crush on Eddie Vedder is now bigger than ever. And Cat Stevens. I'm gonna download Peace Train.
And I'm gonna get back to work. I was celebrating my clitoris last night.
Heh. (That ought to tease out some interesting google searches.)
I went to the First Annual Clitoris Celebration. Yes! It was SO good! It is the work of Sia Amma. The Dimensions Dance Theater performed. The Kouyate Brothers. Kora Badialy Ciassoko. It was a party.
SO OH OH good.
It was a party with a message. And it was amazing that Amma was able to bring in so much information about this horrendous practice and still keep things celebratory. And she did. She was able to hold the love of her culture and her family and the horror of what happened to her in balance. It was moving. She travels back to Africa to bring clothes, medical supplies, educational materials. At the end of the show she talked about trying to build a school and asked if we had any pencils or pens laying around the house. I thought about the two cups full of pens and pencils that I never even touch.
I'd listened to the demos all day while I eeked out another page of writing. So I was in a pretty good mood before Marilyn picked me up. We had dinner first. I feel better than I have for the last few days.
Pattie wrote a reaction to the email exchange I was talking about yesterday. I posted the exchange on a list serve of folks who operate in the health at any size paradigm with a request for support and she read them there. I am still worried about posting them here. And, again, I'm not sure why. But until the hearing happens I'm going to trust my paranoia.
For some reason I've read a few posts on a blogs lately in which women are bummed out with their bodies. This always makes me a combination of sad and mad. I understand why women go there but I want them to get how important it is to STOP. Last night there were women of all sizes. Shaking and dancing and laughing. And the men, the musicians, were smiling at them in this beautiful open way. It was euphoric.
Celebrate your clitoris and the size of your ass. Feel your body in a new way. Because women all over the world need you to embrace yourself. Don't give in to the shame. This morning I woke up with this terrible feeling that the worst had happened. I was almost afraid to turn on the radio. I had the TV on before I left for the swim yesterday and there was a press conference from the Azores. The boy prince was rude, aggressive, hostile. It was just miserable to watch. Dru linked to this article about Papa Bush talking about how his son needed to cool out. So lets see...the world, his country, his own father are all asking him to slow down. And this morning I was afraid to turn on the radio.
There's a protest going on in SF right now.
On Saturday I was listening to the demo in DC on CSPAN and I was struck by how |
