| March Most things about being older don't bother me. In terms of beauty I was never really in the beauty mix. I mean, you know, I had such a pretty face if only. I've never measured all that by the main stream proxy anyway.
I like the bit of gray hair I have. Achy joints are a drag but I feel like those aches and pains make me more attentive to my body. I was a party girl and a work horse. I asked a lot from my body. Now I'm taking care of it in ways that I haven't before. So that's good.
But my left thumb hurts. My left thumb is the thumb I use to push the yarn when I'm knitting. And I have been knitting for hours at a time. And now. My thumb hurts. It's not that bad and I'm just going to stop knitting for a day and it might have happened at any age but it feels like old thing. Like my body just can not deal with anything, any more.
It's funny though. When I first realized that I wasn't going to recover from too much debauchery as quickly as I once did I was bummed. Now it's about being able to work on a scarf. There is something about being older in that as well. But it just makes me laugh.
K3 went to see The Gate for Kobi's birthday. The woman with the blue coat and the stroller is Kara. Kara went to Berlin to see the Reichstag wrap.
The cultural event I want to attend for my birthday is The Ring when Atom Egoyan directs it. That won't be until 2006. So there's time.
Heh.
It's funny for me to think about 2006. It seems so far away and yet I know it will arrive. Just like the first of March arrived before I was ready for it. I guess I ought to have a vision. Huh? But I don't really. I have some wishes.
Deb saw I, Curmudgeon recently. Fran Lebowitz is in it and says something in response to a question about what Americans think. She says (quoting Deb, quoting Fran) Americans don't think, they wish. She goes onto say more but I laughed so hard when I her just this much. It's true, as a cultural generality. We wish.
Mostly I wish for the book to be published. And I guess I can do that myself. I guess.
Other wise . Well. I'm at a bit of a loss. I think I want to teach. I think I want to write more. I like where I live but I'm open to moving. I'm not really generating a vision form within.
The nice thing about having a ritual that you make up is that you can't do it wrong. I feel very funny while I'm doing it. Like I'm trying to solve a puzzle. It just is what it is. Me. Grabbing at little bits and pieces. Trying to see something clearly.
My book fairy (for whom I say thank you to the gods daily because every day I'm reading a book she gifted me) sent me the book and another. I read back and forth between the two. Interesting because one has political and economic history of knitting in which women knit to make a living and keep clothes on their families and the other has a history that talks about hand crafts done in convents. All of which is true. One is instructional and the other is a memoir.
When I was nineteen I stepped off a curb and into a truck. My foot went under the wheel and I ended up needing surgery and a long convalescence. A friend bought me a book on crochet, some yarn and a hook. I made a few afghans, one of which I worked on (or actually didn't work on) for more than ten years. I picked it up again last year during the week that my dad was dying. It was deeply comforting. And that's when I became interested in knitting.
After all that reading about knitting I wanted to do some. And my thumb was better. Is better. Although my hands do get stiff if I knit too much. It's all about balance. Everything. All the time. It seems to come back to balance.
The books are both more readable than the first two books I tried. And they are about the same size and have similar covers. Also interesting. Reading them in tandem felt like having conversations with both writers. I am at the baby step level of knitting. One stitch at a time.
The memoir about knitting as a spiritual practice ends with the woman unable to knit because of pains in her hands and wrists. It isn't clear whether she still knits a little bit. Her focus becomes the notion of spiritual path and the knitting as a metaphor is in service to that story. It is a nice read.
The chef who taught me how to make Hollandaise was very particular about how things got done. You need some kind of double boiler thing. We always had a hotel pan full of water on the stove in which we would poach eggs. I put egg yolks in a metal bowl and held it over the hot water while I whisked.
If you cook the yolks too fast you get scrambled eggs. You are trying to incorporate air faster than you cook the eggs. At a certain point the yolks are a pale yellow and then you slowly add clarified butter. You're trying to create an emulsion. Then you add lemon juice and cayenne pepper and salt and it's done. Lot of whisking. Lots. Over a steaming hot pan. And I would get cramps in my fore arm.
I worked in another restaurant where we made the sauce in a blender. We microwaved the butter so that it was clarified and very hot and added it very slowly. It works. But I always felt it wasn't good enough. Like I hadn't suffered enough for my craft.
And then there was the place where I pre fried orders of fried chicken. Sometimes as many as fifteen or twenty orders, three pieces to an order. I'd finish them in the oven when the order came in. All that frying is done with tongs, as are many other things in the kitchen. I sometimes called myself Tish tong hands. But, again, the chicken frying often gave me searing pains in my forearms.
And then there's chopping parsley.
After all that I go to college and spend hours at the keyboard and with the mouse and taking notes. My hand writing is illegible. My hands and arms have done some work, I'm tellin ya. And now I'm holding knitting needles. What can I be thinking?
It is about balance. And stretching. And resting. And ointment. Heh.
Funny. The body. We ask much of it.
There's been a bit of ire about this "love" letter expressed on a list serve I read. Before you follow the link I hafta say that I almost didn't write this post because I didn't want to link to the letter. It's just full of hate speech couched in what the culture likes to call self improvement. But I'm sitting here on a sunny (thank gawd) Saturday morning feeling OK, listening to KQED, as is my habit on Saturday mornings. They do these little segments called "with a perspective" and some guy is talking about global warming. You can listen to it here. (But I wouldn't recommend it) It's called: Global Heart Attack.
The guy is using the metaphor of a fat person who knows he shouldn't eat and should exercise more but he doesn't for a variety of reasons and one day he is having a heart attack and dies wishing he had. The speaker is going on and on about this fat guy. I begin to wonder if we're still talking about global warming or if we've begun to talk about the obesity epidemic. His points about American consumption habits in terms of natural resources (when he finally gets around to making them) are apt. Why he had to kill off a fat man in the process of making his points is beyond me.
I resent the way in which my individual health is aggregated with the health of every other fat person and used as a metaphor for death. Have thin and average people discovered some new thing that I don't know about? Have they all become masters of the physical universe and overcome death? Are only fat people going to die now?
Sandy Swartz has written another wonderful article (link via BFB) in which she mentions something Paul Ernsberger says. He says "the most morbidly obese woman has a longer life expectancy than "normal" weight men." I don't know how he comes to that conclusion and I am tempted to say that, assuming the writer of the love (cough) letter and the guy with a (cough) perspective are both "normal" weight guys, it may be that they cause their own death with the ill will they wish upon me and every other fat person.
But ya know. I don't really want to go there. I don't want to wish death on anyone.
If you talk about fat people in that one size fits all manner you have stopped seeing individual people with individual life stories. Is the fat person who exercises and eats healthy food going to die faster than the thin or average sized person who never exercises and eats crap? I always think about Jim Fix. He was a runner. He died of a heart attack.
Health is process. Do all the right things and what? Die a week later? OK. That's great. Unless you spend that week wishing you had eaten more cake. I mean really. Let's have some perspective.
And health can be negatively impacted by hostility. I feel negatively impacted by the love of a man who wants to tell me that I'm going to die because of all the food he imagines I eat. I feel negatively impacted by the tale of the inevitable death of one imaginary fat man. I think I'll do some yoga and take a walk to shake it off.
Of course. Ya know. I was going to that anyway.
I did wonder what Zora might think as I watched the movie last night. I thought it was a good enough film. I don't watch movies made from a book (especially a book I love) to compare. Reading a book and watching a movie are two different things. I remember when Mambo Kings came out. I loved the book. I loved the movie. I loved Oscar. The movie didn't hold the whole book. I'm not sure any movie can hold a book. But they can be good.
I didn't care that it was an Oprah production. There is a way in which Oprah now means something really good to some people and really bad to others. Neither is true. Oprah says she made the movie because it was such a great love story. I think it is a great story about love but it's also the story of a woman's life. The choices she makes. The times she compromises and the times she doesn't. It is such a good story.
I stumbled on a movie the other night and got sucked in by the acting and the camera work and then the story. I didn't realize it was based on short stories written by Arthur Miller's daughter. There were several moments in the film that I wondered about once I did know. I wondered how I would have read them. There is a moment when one of the women says something very cold. The actress is crying as the voice over (a male voice) says the cold thing. If I didn't see the tears I might have taken the words in a different way. I might have felt more negative judgement about the woman. Hard to say. I'll have to read the book.
Yesterday K3 came over to eat a lunch that I made for Kobi's birthday. It was great to see Jan. He's bigger. Hard to believe that it's been a year. I made a pizza with white bean and roasted garlic puree, panchetta and arugula on a spelt and cornmeal pizza crust. And pork loin rubbed with smoked paprika, spring onion and tangerine marmalade and mashed potatoes and parsnips with the tops of the spring onions. And I made chocolate short bread cookies, which we ate with coconut ice cream. All good. It was a lovely visit.
I've been weepy. And I'm not sure why. Not that there aren't a gazilion reasons. Still. I cry so easily and so often. When I was young I had a hard time crying. Not so much any more.
I gave Kobi the scarf, flawed as it is. It looks good on him. And now I'm working on something else. So. There ya have it.
It turns out I have a free preview of Showtime. So I was able to watch the first episode of Fat Actress. Of course just coz I could watch didn't mean I shoulda. I thought it might be as irritating as it is when the ad for Jenny Craig with Kirsti comes on and she entreats us to join her in pursuit of weight loss by eating fettuchini and chocolate cake. She says something like - "Hey, you're chubby too." - in a very hopped up trying too hard to be cute voice.
The show was just goofy. Too goofy to even be annoying. There is this very interesting thing going on in it though. The show is making fun of her weight and showing how fat hating Hollywood is but she is the star of the show. And she looks good. Although I do wonder why fat women are so often wearing lots of satin and lace and big flowing things like they're all off the cover of a romance novel. So the reaction shots to the size of her ass are insulting and dumb but in some ways it's the people reacting who seem dumb. It's not a show that I would rush to watch again but there is a way in which it's pointing out by exaggerating how exaggerated the whole thing is. Best possible outcome for me would be if she never really loses weight and still has the show. Better yet might be a show in which a fat actress gets dignified roles in interesting films. Ya know what I'm sayin?
I also got to see a little bit of Supersize Me about which I have mixed feelings. Eating fast food three times a day is bad for your health? Who woulda imagined that? Picture my eye roll. I'm as anti fast food as this guy is but he uses fat people to make his case. The case can be made on health and quality. There is a part of the film in which a man is getting gastric bypass surgery at which point I stopped watching. But before the surgery the man talks about how much soda he drinks. It boggles my mind.
The other day I read an interview of a woman who has written a book about kids and weight. It's really the same stuff we hear all the time. Too much fast food, soda in school, yadda yadda. And I agree with that part. Because fast food is crap. And soda is good every once in a while but not in gallon cups every day. Kids do need oppourtunities for physical activity. I agree. All kids. But.
So only fat kids and their families need a program? I'm just guessing that thin and average sized kids might need exercise too. So can we talk about it in those terms? Eating well prepared locally produced, seasonal food and getting some exercise is good for EVERYONE..
There was a kinda fun show from Penn and Teller about the false claims of the exercise and supplement industry. After all the fat bashing the irreverence made me laugh.
Other than Cameryn on The Practice fat women are only in media if they are wiling to be humiliated. It's slightly better for fat men. Slightly. There are more than a few sit coms in which a fat man has a "beautiful" wife. His weight is often a source of humor and humiliation but somehow he still has a job and someone who loves him. Fat women are alone. I know there is a show on which a young woman is supposed to be "plus sized" but I've seen her picture. She looks less than average sized to me.
Even if you aren't a TV watching person, think about how it might feel to never see anyone who looks like you in the media. People of color know how that feels. There is somewhat better representation for African Americans but Asian and Hispanic people are not seen. It just seems like we should be beyond all this. Diversity should be the default not the exception. And weight should be in that mix.
And ya know, Fat Actress is about fat woman allowing herself to be the joke. Pass the shoe polish. It's time to get the people laughing.
Last night, on the local news, there was a woman from NOW with criticism for Fat Actress. I was happy to see that. I don't always feel like the organized feminist community is as supportive as they might be of fat politics. I also wish the organization which purports to be our civil rights organization might have been out there with some press releases.
Alley is saying two things at once. She thinks people should be happy with themselves the way they are and she's not sure she will feel better when she is thinner BUT she is going to work to get thinner. That kind of double speak always raises my hackles. It's like you don't care if I'm fat but would you want me to marry into your family? Alley is quick to say that she is NOT a fat advocate.
The women who wrote the memoir that had me all wound up said exactly the same thing. I'm not a fat advocate. Having heard that out of the mouths of two fat women I am now wondering why the need to distance oneself from advocacy. What does it mean to be a fat advocate? Does it mean to advocate being fat? Alley says it isn't fair that fat men can get acting jobs. The women who wrote the book doesn't want thin people to be disgusted by her. But they don't want to advocate.
I am a fat advocate. What that means to me is that fat people shouldn't be denied jobs, housing, adequate medical care, harassment free environments, particularly harassment free work environments, representation in popular culture and, and, and.
Paul linked to one review of the show that doesn't like the show and ends with the reminder that obesity is an epidemic. (cough) And as always, I am struck by the language. Epidemic makes it seem like you can catch being fat. There is some idea of a fat germ. So maybe there is some truth to that. Some. Maybe. Being fat begins with genetics. How much a person eats and exercises has some part in how fat they are but it's not a simple thing to access. Many fat people eat far less than what is imagined. Many fat people exercise regularly. And it isn't a useful metric. It only serves the diet industry. I might agree that there are more fat people than there ever have been. Might. I just don't think it's one of the signs of the apocalypse.
I thought I'd said all I had to say about the show yesterday. I fell like I'm saying the same thing over and over. But I'm hearing the same thing over and over. The same old thing. And I wonder when it's going to turn around.
In my soap opera there are two out of six women who don't talk about feeling fat. And for all of then being fat means being ugly and uncomfortable with their bodies. It just makes me wanna scream and yell. All day. Every day.
I don't know why. I just can't stop singing it.
If you could gently replace her distorted mirror with your eyes so she could finally see herself and she from you take your false measuring tape, the world might unravel in one common embrace: death and his diminutives, the clock and the seasons now mute and powerless to count the ways of lovers lost in the beating heart of spring.
In my dreams I am problem solving. I don't want to wake up until I've finished. But I never do finish.
Yesterday I turned on CNN and there were two women in front of monitors reading from blogs. It's probably not a new thing. I just haven't been watching CNN. How mo-fessional we are.
It seems like I hear about bloggin all the time now. Warnings about bloggers losing their jobs sound like culture of fear hype. Although, it has happened.
I was happy to see Laughing Knees back with a new look. I went to post a comment and found that I needed to register. No big deal. I clicked to send and got some stuff that made it seem as if it hadn't worked. So I clicked again and got a message that I could only post a new comment every 15 seconds and to "slow down cowboy." I laughed. Out loud. But hey. I'm a cowGIRL.. My comment showed up with some weird tag in one of the sentences that I didn't put there.
George also has a register to comment thing. You have to register to comment at BFB. Thinking back on the comment spam issues Maria suffered the register system seems like a good idea. Mo-fessional, I'm tellin ya.
One of my favorite public officials is blogging. Oh my!
In ten days I will have been doing this for four years. Raggedy and maladroit. Solipsistic. Fuzzy headed. But I make no claims on mo-fessionalism. Just a need to form words out loud.
When I woke up this morning you were on my mind.
No.No. That's not what I was gonna write. That was just another lyric taking over. Let me start over.
When I woke up this morning I had a zit right on the top of my nose. What is that about? I guess I thought I'd be done with all that once puberty was over.
My body and I have not been getting along this week. Not at all. Every other night I can't sleep. Everything I eat gives me a stomach ache. My joints hurt and it isn't raining. I dunno. Could be stress. Could be hormones. Maybe I caught a bug.
And just last week thing were going so well. I was doing yoga and taking walks and eating well. After so much good self care it seems like things shouldn't be this out of whack. Unless it's a bug. Or hormones. I thought I'd take one of those over the counter menopause tests but they're twenty bucks. I don't need to know. I mean, it's likely that I am in some stage of menopause. So. What ever. I already take some herbs.
But a zit? Right in the middle of my nose? Good thing it's not prom night.
Heh.
How many boggers does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one but there will be six or seven others talking about how their light bulb changing system is better.
Cris started his blog and now everyone talking about how he should use Blogger or MT or what ever. Can we call what Cris is doing a blog? Or is it more like a few columns? I don't really care what we call it. If Cris is doing it everyone is gonna pick at it and few are gonna talk about what he's actually writing. It's just the way we ignore issues.
I am fussy.
I don't want to play with my dolls. The bugs in the game bug me too much. I had this whole thing about having houses in which generations of a family grow up. But the older the house the buggier it is. There's a new expansion pack in which the teens can go to college. I might get it some day. I'll play my current teens up to the time when they can go and then get the game. I guess. That will mean hours of playing and I'm not really playing at all right now.
There's been stuff in the news about how people buy houses, fix them up and sell them. I have this romantic idea about buying the house in which you live for your whole life. Not even my Sims do that. We live in a restless world. We change jobs, partners, homes, identities. I guess I can't be too critical. I've done my share of all that.
I'm all over the place. But really. One day this week I woke up, turned on the radio to hear that the Dems are supporting anti choice candidates for the upcoming election and Kristina sent me e-mail about Russell Crowe. It was too much for me so early in the morning.
And when I woke up this morning you WERE on my mind. And you were on my miiiiiiiiiinnnnnnd. I got trouble. Whoa-u-oh. I got worries.
OK. I'll stop now.
I had a tornado dream last night. I had lots of them for awhile and then they stopped. I'm always safe in the dream but it is scary. Last night dream was long and baroque. There was a huge statue made up of smaller lawn statues in the middle of Market street. I was on a bus and the bus driver didn't stop where she was supposed to. I was going to a place where I could get part time work. But I went to the wrong place and then I ended up in this house with these very nice people who I didn't know. And then the tornado came. There were more than one and we could watch them from the windows. They were right beside the window but the window didn't blow in.
I tend not to think about symbolism as much as I think about how I felt in the dream. I was afraid but not terribly. I had a feeling that I was going to be OK. Still. It's hard to wake up from dreams like that. It's like leaving in the middle of a movie.
For a while now Kathryn has a had a group of links to literacy and reading sites on her side bar. I've been working my way through them. My favorite is:
Good idea.
I was startled by how many there were. I was reminded of them again while checking out the staff profiles for the SFist, one of whom is the art director for Literacy Works. Oddly enough, I wondered if literacy was such a big problem. You would think I know it is.
I remembered a train trip I took years ago. There were two kids traveling with their mom sitting across the aisle. Mom and one kid fell asleep and the other was looking bored and nervous. He began to ask me questions. There was a Amtrak magazine with a kids page and I asked him if he wanted to read it with me. Some of the details of this story may be warped in memory. I'm not sure how old the kids was but I think he was seven or eight. And it was clear that he couldn't read. We sat there working on sounding out words. His sister woke up and joined us. I remember being shocked and sad that these kids didn't have reading. Reading with kids is so fun. Every kid I know has books. When I was young reading was comfort.
When K3 came over I had a little book to read with Jan at the ready. It was in Spanish and English. It was about a cat. Each page had something to touch: fuzzy cat fur, scratchy cat tongue. When he first came he didn't remember me. So he and his mom sat with me and looked at the book. I went into the kitchen to do something and suddenly he was there at the door with the book in his hand and a big smile. He's too young to get the reading part but not too young to love the feel of a book in your hand. Not to young to get the intimacy of spending time together with a book. And I know he sees his parents reading. So he will get the idea of reading as a part of life.
On the literacy works site there some scary numbers.
I was reminded about all this again this weekend while listening to Bernie Sanders talk about his Freedom to Read Protection Act.
When I was in school I was startled by the number of fellow students who didn't read. When I was getting a BA it was shocking but it was more than shocking in my MFA program. How do you write if you don't love to read? But. I guess. There are writers who don't love to read.
It's just so important. So central to my own sense of well being. If too many days go by with no reading I become dull. I don't mean externally but internally. I need the feel of words. Need it like I need water and air.
The nice thing about a made up ritual is that you can't do it wrong and if you don't do it you don't need to feel too bad about not having done it. My ritual reminds me of the tyranny of other rituals I've done in the past. I didn't do it once last week. I didn't feel well all week so it just fell away. Maybe I shoulda pushed but I didn't have it in me to push.
This morning I felt better. Not great. But better. It wasn't a struggle to get out of bed. Breakfast seems to be sitting well, so far. And I did my ritual.
It's unlikely that I'll ever do it first thing in the morning. I like my morning radio/blog/breakfast ritual too much. But when that's all done I take a shower, get dressed and then I'm ready. I don't know why I fill a water cup, except I always liked that when I had my alter. So I empty the old water into my plant.
Now. If you've been reading me for awhile you may remember that I have one plant. Once a year it drops leaves and one year it dropped all of them. So it was just this stick in a pot and I thought about tossing it. I didn't and it came back with more leaves than ever before. It has one spot in the apartment that it likes and if I move it, it get very fussy and starts to drop leaves. But it isn't too fussy about how often I water it. And I can be very bad about that. Now it gets this cup of water from the ritual. I like that.
Then I fill the water cup, light a candle and some incense, put on a disc, (sometimes) put a piece of fruit next to the candle and do some yoga. I drink a glass of water before and after and I eat the fruit later in the day. I added the music because it slows me down and if I don't feel like I'm going to be able to go slow I my not have anything on, or I may listen to a meeting, or my soap, or nothing. Today I had the disc on.
The other thing that disc does is to evoke reverence. I'm not sure what the ritual is about, except that I know I need to formalize my relationship to possibility and awe. It remains as it began. A bit flailing. A bit wistful. I just don't want it to be rote.
Twice a day at the shram we would gather up and sing. Baba came in and a line formed of people wanting to spend a few minutes with him. When we got right in front of him, we would pranam, which is to lay prostrate. Some would touch his feet. Last night I tried to remember if I ever touched his feet. I can't remember. I think I was too shy. Westerners often objected to the idea of acting in a submissive manner before anyone. I found it hard not to fall and touch the feet of everyone I met. Not because I felt lesser. Because I was so drunk with love.
When I got back I would sit across from people in cafes and listen while they talked about the things we all talk about. Jobs. Love interests. Hopes. Fears. But I was blissed out. I listened but nothing seemed important. In a way. The only thing that was important was the love that I felt for the person. It was a happy way to be. But it wasn't whole.
Still, that time anchored something in me. Some sense of eternality. Some sense of mystery. Some awareness of the way the details and story lines matter and the way they don't matter. I got a kind of strength. Sometimes I think people imagine that a time like that will mean that you never again feel sad, or angry, or lost, or frightened. I thought that before I went.
I'm not sure why I'm thinking about right now. I am musing a lot about my sense of eternality and mystery. What remains useful? Substantive? Even vital? I watched people get stuck in the bliss. I watched people lose the ability to interact with people, unless the people used a handful of buzz phrases. It didn't seem ... whole. Substantive. Vital.
So I fumble through my made up ritual. Sorting. Parsing. Wondering. Because I need a source of strength. And a way to focus my intention. Because I drift in ambiguity. I resist. Not even knowing what it is I am resisting. Or why. And I don't get things done.
OK. So. Hmmm.
On Sunday I jumped to something from Wood_s Lot. The person was riffing off of something Dale said. (Such an instigator that Dale.) Earlier I'd read something from Jeff. I had that feeling I often get when I read people who are smarter than I am. Well It really isn't about being smarter. But it is about having more muscle tone when it comes to thinking about things, writing about things, in a social theory (or somthin) kind of a way. I feel like I want to join in but I'm not sure what to say, or how to say it. Because I'm reading it all and adding it together in a way that ma |
