| May 2003 Marilyn and I had tickets to go see Vic Chestnut at The Bottom of the Hill. We got there and found that there had been a fire there on Monday and the show was cancelled. No one was hurt in the fire. I guess there wasn't much damage. I'm not sure why they couldn't have let us know. What ever. We went to Rock Soup and got some dinner.
The truth is that I was worried about the seating in the club so I was almost relieved when it wasn't happening. Everything I put in my stomach yesterday seemed to hit it like gasoline. I think it was nerves.
Today I just feel like shit.
It is May. Celebrate as you will. (link via Susan.) And remember. (link via Cyndy )
The rumor was true. And it turns out it was Cyndy's birthday a few days before. Happy birthday.
George has the riff to levitate CNN.
More on fat and cancer from the mighty Paul Campos. (link via BFB)
I'm going to try to feel better now. Como é que sei tudo o que vai se seguir e que ainda o desconheço, ja que nunca o vivi?
Monica! Feliz Aniversário! I LOVE this. Get up. Get on up. Yes. Yes. Yes. Makes me wanna shake my butt.
I feel better. My stomach is still grumpy but not in flames. I didn't get a thing done yesterday. Oh well.
OK. What do we think? Dennis Kucinich? Or Howard Dean? They will both be in a debate tomorrow that we can watch on CSPAN this weekend. I was all about Dennis and may still be. But, I have to say, I'm listening to Howard. And Howard has a blog.
Craig's art, which if you didn't check out the other day you should go do now, is going to be in this show.
I really do need to focus today. It needs to be The Day of Cooking Vegetables. I want to blanch asparagus and green beans, roast Japanese eggplant and a yellow bell pepper, (although, I might keep the pepper raw and slice it into a salad I want to make with a mango and some jicama) boil beets and ... that's it I think. Maybe I'll roast some little yellow tomatoes I have as well and make a stewy kind of a deal with the eggplant and some shitakes. Hmmm. Well. It's a rainy day. The window will get all steamy if I cook. I like that.
Meanwhile ... is there a reason why my text is all pushed up to the left? Whatthefuck? Why is my text all bunched to the left? I swear. I've checked everything I can think to check.
The Day of Cooking Vegetables went pretty well. When I defrosted the fridge things were out a little too long and were not holding up. I actually lost the green beans and the mango. The jicama is OK so maybe I'll get another mango and make the salad. Some of the aspargus is kinda woody but..it's OK. The roasting was the best thing. I did all the previously mentioned veggies and ate them with orzo. There's enough left over for today.
And I made some tapande. I like making it when figs are fresh. A little bit of fig adds a musky sweet thing. But I had no figs and I used quite a bit of roasted red bells. It's very red and not too salty. I guess it's more of a pepper/olive/garlic thing than a true tapanade.
My stomach seems to be OK.
I signed up for Netflicks. I get two free weeks. I figure I'll go into a movie coma when school is over. Thanks to Dorothea my text is back in place. Thank you so much. I left some of it messed up. Just cause. I guess that happened when I did a cut and paste on the Portuguese quote. The 70% must have traveled in with it. I swear I WILL LEARN MORE HTML. Of course I'm always swearing that I'll learn how to conjugate verbs in Spanish too. I can never really have a conversation in Spanish that involves yesterday or tomorrow. Although I do know how to say yesterday and tomorrow. Heh. And thanks to Paul for confirming Dorothea's diagnosis.
I can't believe I'm about to link to the Fox network. But I am.
I'm listening to To The Best of Our Knowledge. They just talked to this woman. Her site is too much fun but might be a drag on dial up. And there's a little pop-up of her book. If it wasn't so cute I'd be really annoyed.
Cyndy linked to this site about the Kent State massacre. I got the dates wrong in the piece I wrote, which is also part of THE BOOK. Must edit later. Weeeellllllll. The debate. I watched most of it twice. The first time I was screaming at the television every time Lieberman opened his mouth. The second time I just seethed. Things opened with some silliness between Kerry and Dean. I missed the very beginning three times so I don't know what the big deal was or how it started, except I guess Dean had been misquoted in the S.F. Chronicle (imagine my surprise) and he pointed out that there had been a correction. Are these guys really worried about Dean?
The conversation about health care focused on Gephart's plan. (Uh, first there's a tax break to employers who give their employees heath care? Why doesn't that seem like a particularly great idea? I mean it's not the worst idea but it sure wouldn't be my first idea.) Kucinich was almost never called on to speak. When he did get a word in he was very cool. I think I do like him best. I still like Dean but it was weird watching how contentious things got between him and Kerry.
They talked about electability. Which I really hate. I hate the idea. I hate the idea that it was talked about instead of an issue. And. The truth is, it's something that was on my mind. Which brings me to Reverend Al and Carol Mosely Brown. Both said wonderful things when they got a chance. But. Are they electable?
If I think about too much I get really depressed and miserable.
Why not Dennis and Barbara Lee? That's who I want. And I doubt they're electable. The only thing that makes me more miserable is thinking about the SF mayoral election.
So there was some spatting and some chest thumping and a few issues squeaked through. I do not like Edwards. ( He doesn't think it was about the oil. Paalllleease.) Graham is ... I dunno. Not happenin. Elayne blogged this the other day. There are no words for how strongly I want this guy out of office. But I need someone to vote for.
I seem to be following Cyndy all around the Internet lately. She blogged this poem generator and I got ...
Fatshadow function yaccs_c {document.
It's kooky. I like it.
We had lunch (yum )after the swim so I wasn't too hungry for dinner. But I had a Chinese cucumber that I cut up and dressed with yoghurt and sherry vinegar. And I was cooking some sausages to have ready for breakfasts this week. I ate one with some of the cucs and it was such a nice dinner.
Last year there was a public event in SF to celebrate No Diet Day. It was before I had perma links but if you scroll down you can see pictures.
I think Marilyn and some of the Bod Squad (the fat cheerleaders in the pictures ) are going to something but I'm off the loop. Which is fine. I feel pretty somber these days about fat stuff. I was reading some ISAA stuff and I came across this woman's story. ISSA has a tribute page for her on which they say she passed away from health complications. They are not specific. There will be people who will take one look at her picture and say she died because she was fat. But I've read her story. The number of things she put her body through from the age of seven in an attempt to lose weight, ending with gastroplasty, seem like reason enough.
Part of what makes a person fat is their diet history. And when people get on the diet roller coaster so young they put themselves at risk for so may health problems. And now, the people who want you to be afraid of being fat are telling us that toddlers are too fat. In the article they use the fear of Type 2 diabetes. Which really pisses me off since the link between fat and diabetes is under scrutiny and not accepted as a given.
I want the lives of fat people to be known. We are a diverse group. We do not all look alike. We have different eating habits and feelings about movement. We are not one size fits all.
But most of us have dieted. Once, twice, twenty times.
People tell me that they like it when I write about food. I do love food. Real food. Yesterday I got my first delivery from Planet Organics. I got a box full of beautiful fruit and vegetables grown by folks like these. I got a pineapple. I never buy pineapple. Once I did some goofy diet that involved eating a pineapple before every meal. I really got sick of pineapple. So now I'm eating yoghurt and pineapple. I am not on a diet. It's so good. When I was three months old my mom found lipstick on dad's collar. Sounds like a country western song. But it's true. We went home to (her) mother. I grew up in the same house in which my mother was raised. In the same room. There was this idea that Mom and I were lucky to be living there. I think it came more from Mom than Grandmom & Poppop. But I'm sure they had ways of making Mom feel as if she were a burden. I also know they needed her financial contribution and energy. Shortly after we moved out they moved into a senior citizens home.
So I grew up trying not to be a problem. Trying to be helpful and cute. I felt like if I were too much of a problem we might not have a place to live. And my Mom was a working mother and I couldn't be too much of a problem because she would get tired. So I tried to make her smile and feel happy. And then, of course, I was fat so I couldn't expect that people would like me unless I was really, really, really ... something. Nice. Helpful. Funny. Something.
I think there are ways in which that stuff was good. I like being helpful. I like being able to see situations with an awareness of myself as a member of a larger group. If I am patient and kind it's because I had to be. But those aren't bad things. And I'm not always patient and kind.
And there are ways in which it sucked. Recently I've been thinking about the ways in which, now, I am the one with the problem. I am the one who doesn't like parties and needs a ride and an extra chair and who isn't satisfied with things. And it feels so yucky to be the one with the problem. It feels like I might end up homeless and friendless. I understand that it isn't true in any kind of logical way. But. Sometimes. It feels true.
So I assert my bad self. As it were. And then I isolate myself. Before they leave me.
Not fun. Here's the thing.
I feel like I'm in the slide. School is, for all practical purposes, over. No more workshop. Next week we will have a party at our teachers house. I have a little more work for the teaching writing class but nothing that will keep me up nights.
Yesterday, Kristina and I were sitting at the big round table in the cafeteria at Lone Mountain, where we've been meeting before class for the last two years, and we realized that I won't be there next Tuesday and she won't be there next Wednesday and that it was the last time we would be there together.
She said. "That's a lot to take in." I said. "I ain't takin it in."
So classes will be over. I'll have this summer working with Stephen on THE BOOK and then it'll be done. It'll be done because, honesttogawd I can not work on it any more. I have other book ideas but I can't even think about them right now.
I have to send pieces of writing out and I keep not doing it. I have to look for a job and I keep not doing it. I have to reinvent myself for the zillionth time. And I'll be fifty in month and a half.
And it's not about the age. Because I like being the age I am. It's about the roundness of the age. And it is about the fear. Because the age does mean things about time. And it is about letting go of some things.
But I am beginning a new time. And I want to be excited. But I still have one foot in the time I've been in. But I can feel it all beginning to move faster. And it feels like a slide.
I always feel like it's best to hold the shadow and light parts of myself in some kind of balance. I am feisty and full of ire and ready to play. And I'm also tired and full of old stories and wanting to stay in my own little world of books and cooking and blogging.
Last night I had a tornado dream. First one I've had in a while. I was in Colorado with Karen and the Diamonds. and I was worried about Lee Trees. And the tornado was huge and it was going to destroy everything and it took us by surprise because there aren't supposed to be tornadoes in the mountains. But we were safe.
It could just be that Cynthia showed me photos of tornadoes and there were tornadoes in the news last week.
Or it could signal a coming storm.
So.
I'm gonna stop thinking about it all. If I can. I'm going to clean my apartment and watch some Netflicks and finish my homework and play the new game from Meg.
I faced the pile of bills and then talked myself out of walking to the Golden Gate and jumping. I called the financial aid office to ask when I might be getting my check and it seems there may be confusion about my money having to do with whether summer is in the 02/03 year or the 03/04 year. I need to fill out a FAFSA , which I never thought I'd have to do again. And I may not get money till the end of June. Which will be way too late.
I just need to get a job.
I guess I was hoping I could get through the summer without one, work on THE BOOK and maybe teach in the fall. Or something like that.
I used the movie coma to try and forget about money. But the movies made me think about sex. And love.
Sigh.
There are things to happy about. I love the sound and smell of balsamic vinegar when it hits the pan in which you've been sauteing kale and pieces of flatiron steak. And my mom bought me a dress. Which I'll wear. If I ever go out my door again. Which I will have to do. I guess. Most of the day I sulked and cried. I got back in bed and finished reading Naked In The Promised Land. I saw it in the back of Marilyn's van and borrowed it. I don't usually borrow books because I'm a slow reader but this one just called to me. The book is a memoir. She and I have some similar experience. She was raised by a single mother and a doting childless aunt. I was raised by a single mother and had two doting childless aunts. There are big differences in our lives but she did this thing that I'm hoping I've done in my book. She describes how sometimes having a single mother is like being married. She describes the inner emotional struggle that happens as you grow up and the wrenching need to break away from that relationship. And when I finished the book I cried in big choking sobs.
And then.
I have a little back room. Perfect place for junk to build up. I put a desk back there. Well. Two metal file cabinets with a board on top and material covering the board. All my cookbooks are on the shelves. It's kinda junky but it's also nice. When it's clean.
A while back when I moved furniture I took my futon apart. The frame is broken and it was buggin me. So, the frame has been in the back room. And it takes up most of the space. Things kinda built up around it. Boxes and papers and you know...junk. I got this surge of energy, pulled the futon frame out of the back, broke down the boxes and got them ready to haul down to recycle, cleaned it all up. Mostly. There are still issues. I had to put the futon frame back in there. Someday I have to get it hauled away.
I turned off the television while I worked. Played some music instead. Ripped a few into the computer. Turned the television back on long enough to watch Moyers. it was a little difficult to bear his conversation with Bill Gates. But it was the kind of show that puts things into perspective.
By the end of the evening I was feeling a little calmer. I mean this is just one of those times. And I have to start taking little steps and move forward. And I will.
While I was writing this I went looking to see if I'd written about moving the furniture. I think I did but I can't remember when. But I noticed that I'd never put a link to the October page on my more stuff page. I updated the book list and moved a few things over there. I moved the Attack Iraq? No! button. I mean. Clearly. We have. And I moved the Amina Lawal picture. Pattie forwarded me a letter that there is some concern that the campaign may be harmful to her case. I'm linking to Amnesty so I'm not worried about that but there's been no news. I'm not sure what to think. I don't know if anyone really jumps to the more stuff page. I guess it's the junk room for my blog. A
classmate of mine wrote a piece that was none too complimentary
toward her mother. There were folks in my class who
were offended. Oh. Maybe offended is too strong of a
word. But one of them said something about "our
Yeah. Well.
I guess I have a complicated view on the mom thing. My own relationship with my mom is complicated. I love her in a desperate, inchoate, reflexive kind of a way. I am always running towards her and pushing away from her, simultaneously. When we have been together and we part company I weep. I love my mom.
I think it's good to have a day when people demonstrate their love and respect for their moms. I like flowers and cards. I like the sentimentality of it all. But I understood what my classmate was writing about. I understood the tension and the misery and the shedrivesmecrazy feelings. Giving birth does not automatically make a mother.
And sometimes that all mixes up and there are moments when moms and their kids share this skin aching love. When you just look at each other and you know that you are as deeply connected as you will ever be to any one. Ever. And sometimes that hurts.
I'm not trying to be all shitty about the mom thing. But it's not as simple as everything they've done for us. Some do more, Some do less. Some enjoy doing it and some resent it all. Most are just trying to get through each day making sure that everyone has what they need and all the work gets done and many are making it up as they go along and hope hope hope they aren't fucking it up.
I have big admiration and respect for moms. Especially my own mom. And I sent her a plant and we talked on the phone and we gushed and cooed at one another. And I hung up and felt that gap. The distance. The ways in which she does not know me. Cannot know me. Does not want to know me. But she loves me. And I love her. And it's simple. And it's complicated.
So.
If you're a mom I hope someone is making you a lovely meal and giving you a handmade something-or-other and wetting your cheek with kisses and laughing with you about it all. But mostly I hope you can feel through the complexity. Through the apple pie failures and the words not spoken and the phone that doesn't ring and the card that doesn't come. These stories that we write are a mystery. I had the television on with the sound off the other day. I was on the phone and I was flipping through channels, not really looking. I came upon a show that was some kind of Believe It Or Not type thing. There was a very fat woman and they were showing her naked. I mean there were blurry patches over the obvious places but it was kind of shocking. At one point she was in bed and a man was washing under her arms. The image has been haunting me. I didn't have the sound on so I don't know what they were saying about her but she was so exposed.
I've felt haunted lately. Paul blogged this story about a fat man who died because the hospital he was taken to after a car crash couldn't treat him and sent him to another hospital. They couldn't treat him because the operating table couldn't support his weight. He bled to death on the way to the second hospital.
There's a Yahoo group of health at every size folks from which I get mail and a member said that Mary Douglas argues that health concerns cannot be taken only at face value, that people will select for worry those risks that help to reinforce the social solidarity of their institutions.
I feel haunted. I keep thinking about dignity. And the loss of dignity. I'm in a terrible, terrible mood.
Don't worry.
I'm working on it. So. Last night was the last class in my MFA program. I don't actually have an MFA yet. I need to finish the work with Stephen this summer. But I will.
I'm still in a pretty terrible mood. There are so many emotions knocking around in me. I can't quite decided which one to feel. I'm just trying to hold on while I ride through them. I just have to finish the writing and find a job and get on with it. It isn't the worse thing to have to go through. But it isn't the easiest.
I appreciate the support from my on line community. And my off line community. I really, really do. And I am working on getting through all this fear and weariness and stuff. This is the culmination of something I began six years ago. I got my BA and now this. I don't think anything I'm feeling is weird or unusual. I'm middle aged, unemployed and deeply in debt. With some letters after my name. Almost. It's hard to figure out how to feel good about it all.
There is no small irony in finishing this writing program and feeling like I can barely put enough language together to make a post. Powers of observation heightened beyond the normal imply extraordinary disinvolvement: or rather the double process, excessive preoccupation and identification with the lives of others, and at the same time a monstrous detachment ...The tension between standing apart and being fully involved:that is what makes a writer. -- Nadine Gordimer I think there's a thing with MT, and maybe with other blogging tools, where you get an e-mail when you get a new comment. YACCS doesn't send e-mail and sometimes I look at an old post and realize that someone has left a comment that I didn't see. Such is the case with my May 10th post. AKMA stopped by and I didn't know till last night. I've been a bleary blogger lately. Not reading everyone. Not commenting. Moving through this muck of emotion.
And so AKMA asked for my thoughts on the things I am reading and such. I had a funny reaction. You'd have to know the sound that the SIMS make when they see a wilting plant. It's a quizzical kind of hhhhheehhh sound that sounds a little bit like Skooby Do. What do I think? Hhhhheehhh?
The Lillian Faderman book was compelling to me but I think that was, in part, because of when I'm reading it. She writes about being a Jewish, poor, lesbian, sex worker who goes to college and becomes an academic and has a baby. I'm writing about being Methodist, working class, sexually frustrated and fat, going to college and becoming...well we don't know yet. I'd like to think that it would be interesting to everyone. It certainly does describe a time and place. It describes the way class and physicality enable and disable. She writes in a strong narrative voice. She has a great tale to tell. So if you like reading about people's lives and you want more than a story of an individual, if you want to read a persons life in a political and historic context, you might like it.
And I did link to a review of Joni Mitchell's latest that wasn't totally positive. Why did I do that? Hhhhheehhh? I'm not sure. I laughed when I read the part about her nicotine ravaged vocals and bitter dissatisfaction. It's true. She sounds like she's lived a life. I wasn't sure I'd like the second album of orchestrated Joni. But I did. I do. I'm unreasonable about Joni. I adore her every raspy breath. The orchestra gives the music an epic feel. I like it. It suits my epic mood.
I'm not sure I'm very good at writing about this kind of thing. All Consuming has a place for book review and I never fill it out. But it would be good for me to think about writing my thoughts about books and music and stuff. Certainly better than the dreary woe-is-I stuff I've been doing lately.
Adrienne came over. We ate goat cheese and olive spread and tangerines and a really good cake that she baked with strawberries. And macaroons. There aren't that many people I can hang with when I'm in this droning place. And it was good to not be alone.
Blogging is funny. There is a lot of great thinking in the blog world. I try to think on the page. But I also try to be with the blood flow in my blog. My blood. In other words there are days when the blood flow is about something political or cultural. And there are days when I'm writing here in the manner of the thin gray note books I used to carry. I'm writing my own narcissistic emotional spin. And there's a very specific reason why I do. I'm trying to push against the belief that I am alone. Or that I will be left if I have too much need, or tell the truth. When I write a dreary head in hands post I worry that I will be abandoned for lack of content. But I never am. There are always comments and e-mails and phone calls. And I pull myself together, look away from the reflection in the water and look toward the folks who are there and I feel better.
It's not that I think that AKMA was saying that I shouldn't write in my own way, or that I should write in a different way. I don't think any of that. But his questions did kind of jog my blog brain. Hhhhheehhh? Does it look OK?
I'm making soup and doing laundry and fooling around with this site of mine. I was strongly influenced by stonefishspine. But I tried not to copy exactly. I keep looking at it and looking at mine and I see the differences. But I see the influence. So I'm chewing my nails a bit about feeling like I'm stealing. It was the textured background that I liked so much. I got this |
