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.
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 SpaldingGray.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 thedemos
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.