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October 2002 The women from my therapy group and I went out to dinner and had fun. Big fun. Dinner with women feels like therapy. In the best sense of the word. I worry that the word therapy may bring up thoughts of the dentist office for some.
I heard a man refer to another man as heavy set yesterday. He wasn't being mean. I wasn't offended by the term. In fact I think there's a kind of dignity in the arcane nature of the term. But it did make me think about language.
I use fat. And if I'm with other fat positive, or size neutral people, I love it when they use the word fat. But when I'm first getting to know someone I am cautious. I listen to their language and watch their body. I would someday like to hear the word fat and feel it as the simple descriptive term that it is. Rather than the expletive that it has become.
I was telling the women last night about salad boy. They were appalled. I don't even write about all the things that are said to me on the mean streets. Only the times when I walk into traffic with blood in my eyes. And it was odd since it was one of the less mean (and that is so relative) things that have been said to me.
I write about that kind of thing, and talk about it, because nice liberal thin, or average size, people don't get it. They don't realize how hostile my public life can be.
I got home last night and got a phone call from a friend. A mutual friend of ours died. He wasn't a close friend. Honestly, he was more of a passing acquaintance for me. But it is sad. He was really young.
My mind is chaos right now. And I need to finish my piece for tonight.
Meanwhile.
I stand in solidarity with the port workers. Alienation.
Sigh. Uh.
I guess I should explain my obsequious post of yesterday.
But I can't.
It's not that I don't want to tell the truth about things. Suffice it to say it's like the Rollingstone's bit about you can't always get what you want but if you try you might get what you need.
Some days you get neither. And you still gotta wake up in the morning and face the day. It's like that for many of the people in the world. Maybe even most. Why should it be any different for me.
Except I'm trying so hard. I quit the soul killing big money job and half killed myself getting my BA and now I'm working on my MFA. And I take my antidepressant herbs and I go to therapy and I'm trying so fucking hard to want to get up in the morning.
But yesterday morning and this morning...shit.
I'll do my best to pull out of this funk and be more interesting.
Pattie and Carl show today. I could blame the president select and the climate of fear and loathing in which I live. Despite all the dissent, he seems like he's going to keep pushing.
I could blame guns. I used to live in Montgomery county. I still have family there.
I could blame the spread of America's toxic body culture. (Thanks to George for the link.)
I could blame the climate of fear and loathing in general.
But I'm just sad. Mel and I exchanged some e-mail. She kindly sent me a link to the article about the women in Niger who wanna be fat. It's a New York Times piece so you need to sign up. It's worth it. I have more than one reaction to it.
First, I love the way being fat is beautiful to folks who understand what it means to have enough to eat, what it means to have to work to raise food. Beauty is a shape shifter.
Shape shifter. Well. That made me laugh out loud.
And yet, it is troubling to see women doing steroids, vitamins that were intended for animals, gorging on millet to be fat.
Picture me, looking a bit like that kid in Home Alone, slapping my face with both hands.
One of the many ways I think it differs from anorexia and bulimia is that the women in Niger are trying to look as if they have enough. They want to have bodies that reflect their families well being. Anorexia and bulimia are about power. Because so many people apply a high moral attribute to thinness, bodies like mine are read as indolent. If you starve to be thin you must be really, really moral. You can say you wouldn't be mean to a fat person, but you think they need to summon up some self discipline, find a diet and lose the weight. Somewhere a young girl (and increasingly young boys) succumbs to the temptation to hang out with some friends after school and eat a pizza. She knows she has failed the morality test. She feels the shame. She sticks her finger down her throat in the bathroom. Another young girl (and increasingly young boys) begins to avoid times when being with her friends means eating, or being tempted to eat. She avoids the family dinner table. She really has discipline. Very moral. And very sick.
I'm not going to go into the long explanation of what I eat and my food and diet history. Maybe some day I'll get THE BOOK done. Then it'll all be in one place. And I'm not willing to argue about what is, or isn't, natural. But, I will say this...my body is natural to my life. The whole story of my life. Without the moral overlay of cultural, or individual opinion. The story of my life is written in my body.
And I am not ashamed.
Oprah did a show about Amina, on which she showed some film of women who were buried to their necks and then stoned. It's an image that will haunt me. There were many stories on the show. And this organization looks like a way to help.
There are too many people throwing stones at us. I don't think we need to throw them at each other. I listen to a combination of NPR and CSPAN on the weekend. CSPAN has BookTV and they cover demonstrations. But yesterday every time I turned it on there was someone like Ollie North or Condoleezza Rice. It's not that I won't listen to them. I did for a while. But I've been in such a funk. I can't tolerate too much. I missed the show with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Fran Leibowitz. Which sucks.
My mood is still murky.
I woke up this morning thinking about how much I value this little page project. I turned on the computer and made the tea and toast, thinking about what I was going to write. I visited some blogs. Read about the highs and lows of my web friends.
Web relationships are ... uh ... spacey. I can be mad, or hurt, about something I read, or don't read, on another blog and the other blogger doesn't ever need to know. Like all relationships they are as real as we make them.
I've been too lost to work on my web relationships lately. It's kind off true about all my relationships. I'm kind of shut down. But not entirely because I wake up in the morning, turn on the computer, make the tea and toast, and hit the page.
So if you are reading this - thank you. If you keep an on line journal or a blog - thank you.
Today we say again -- Not in our name. After the Sunday swim Deb and I went to the palace of fine food. I was standing in front of the meat department when I got the bright idea to call K2 and ask them to dinner. I called. They said yes.
I made lamb chops with a fig infused balsamic vinegar reduction sauce, a vegetable combo of yellow patty pan squash, caramelized red onion, shitakes, fennel, yellow tomato, and Japanese eggplant, red bell pepper pasta with a little olive oil and mytzithra and watercress with marinated artichoke hearts.
Let me just say - I can cook.
I poached figs in water, honey and lavender and we ate them with almond cake. They brought a bottle of Mont Pellier Syrah.
The swimming and the dinner with such lovely friends was restorative.
Food is about many things. Certainly it's about fueling the body. But it's also about creative expression, celebration, and camaraderie.
Yesterday was Fannie Lou Hammer's birthday. We had a party. Open
letter to
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Please oppose
the war on Iraq. Do not give Bush unlimited war powers.
Congress must retain its powers, including the critical power to declare war.
I know you all have
received thousands of calls, letters, and visits opposing war against Iraq. I
know the calls are coming in hundreds to one against war. Please -- honor your
constituents. Tish Parmeley I love my Board of Supervisors. They passed a resolution to urge the U.S. Congress to oppose military action in Iraq. I shouldn't say I love the whole board. But living in a country with a boy prince, pretending to be president, makes me miserable. It's comforting to live in a city where the public policy makers make an effort to be real. I don't always love them. Well, I always love some of them.
KPFA is doing a special show listening to the congress today. I can watch it on CSPAN but I like the commentary from Larry Bensky on KPFA.
Speaking of policy makers who I love.
Jason wrote a beautiful letter. If you are having trouble knowing who to write, or what to write, this is very helpful. I'm a day late for the blog burst.
I keep thinking about a comment from Dorothea on my 10/5 post. I agree.
I think on an individual level people have preferences about what they find beautiful. But I think there's a discussion to be had about how much of what person prefers is shaped by culture. It should be clear that I feel like culture makes icons out of certain body types. And villains out of others. But I don't think making a fat body an ideal is different from making a thin body an ideal. I just think you should love the body you're in. Today. Now.
I was getting ready to leave for therapy and I had Oprah on. (The board was in a closed session by then.) She was doing a show on girlfriends that I wasn't too interested in. But there was a group of women who were mothers of multiples. And they didn't have time for beauty. Oprah set her teem of beauty makers on them and did the before and after thing. The looked great. They looked like they felt great.
Make over shows like that confuse me.
I almost never wear makeup. I like my cloths but I'm pretty sure my style (for lack of a better word) is kooky. Cute. But kooky. I don't feel the urge to comply with any rules when it comes to how I feel about my own sense of beauty.
But when a woman who doesn't have the time, money or energy to manufacture beauty gets worked on by Oprah's team I can see that she feels different in her skin. And I don't think that's entirely bad. I just hope she can still feel cute when the make up wears off and the baby pukes on her new dress.
I try to tell my friends that I think they look good. I comment about their cloths or their hair. I'm not lying. I really think my friends are beautiful. They fill up my eyes. I love to see them.
It is OK to choose away from the beauty conversation. For, some people it just doesn't matter. It's not something that they think about. I spend time trying to subvert the notion of what is beautiful. So, I think about it. If you're a person given to chronic debilitating bouts of existential despair (uhem) it's probably not a good idea to listen to the congress debate whether or not to go to war. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (Republican from New York) just said that Bush was a prudent international leader. My head is starting to hurt.
In this months Harper's there is a great piece by Lewis Lapham, in which he says, "A government that must hold hearings to find a reason to go to war is a government that doesn't know the meaning of war."
Pattie got to hear Scott Ridder speak. And she got an interview.
At therapy I was talking about my struggle to not fall into the dark. I try not to talk about politics there because I don't want to assume that my views will be shared. But Beth brought it up, so I got a good vent out about this war. The folks in group agree with me but they don't think about it all as much.
Maybe I should not be listening to these guys. I just can't stop. OK. So I finally turned off the radio and CSPAN. I made a salad with mixed greens and yellow beets. Happy food. Got ready for school. I was determined to just hope for the best.
Time for Oprah. I had turned the channel to her show while I was getting ready for school. Did I mention that I was determined to hope?
Oprah did a show on the war. It was so fucked up. She had a guy who had written a book on why we must go to war with Iraq, a former Iraqi citizen who had been tortured. It was emotionally manipulative, limited in scope and perspective, and full of bias. Within the first fifteen minutes there were women in the audience who said they had been against and now they were for. The first fifteen minutes.
Sigh. If the congress doesn't get you Oprah will. Happily I had to leave half way through the show. They kept using the phrase moral clarity. Make-overs one day. Public policy the next. This is how we do it in America.
I felt numb.
When I got home from school I read this poem and I just smiled. Smiled big.
More smiles thins morning. Random Walks is using haiku, er, dayku to talk about the war.
Today, October 10, is the 10th anniversary for Pattie and Carl. And they are doing a show about weddings. Say happy anniversary, if ya wanna. Is the goal propaganda ("seizing the high moral ground")? Or reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? If the former, we can dismiss the matter. If the latter, some obvious questions arise. Weapons inspection appears to have been highly effective, even if imperfect. Scott Ritter's testimony on the topic is compelling, and I know of no serious refutation of it. Those who want to reduce the threat of WMD will, therefore, try to create the conditions for meaningful inspection, as required by resolution 687 and earlier ones, and supported by the actual international community. For some years, the US has sought in every way to block such eventualities. The inspections were used as a cover for spying on Iraq, with the open intent of overthrowing the regime and probably assassinating the leadership. - Chomsky Thursday has become like Saturday for me. When I was growing up Mom & I did chores on Saturday. Laundry, cleaning. My life is kind of unstructured these days but Sunday though Wednesday have the most structure. And then Thursday I clean up.
I was roasting garlic last night. While I was in the apartment I didn't smell it but I went down stairs to get the last two loads of laundry and when I came back in WOW. Roasty, toasty garlic. Mmmm. It was a little chilly and rainy so it felt good to walk into the smell of cooking. I was roasting it for today. Yesterday I ate pile-all-the-left-overs-into-a-bowl. Heh.
So the congress. 133 no votes. See how positive I am? I love Barbara Lee. Dennis Kucinich. And then it was on to the Senate. 23 no votes. Senator Byrd did his best in the Senate. There was a fight. Now, we need Feinstein to cut the funding.
It isn't hard to imagine that a man who can pretend he is the president can pretend he has support for his war. But I'm just going to keep saying no.
It's fleet week in SF. The sound of the military working my nerves. I took down the open letter since the blog burst is over. I was the coda.
As I write this protesters have blocked entrances to the federal building in SF. We got work to do. But there may be time for a movie. This is a test. I'll explain it tomorrow. Phew. Yesterday was hard. Partly coz of me and partly because of ...well...lemme tell ya the whole story.
I like to rearrange my furniture. I'm just crazy like that. I think it helps me to feel like there's something I can do in times when I feel helpless. I can't change the world but I can change the furniture. But a few years ago I bought this big desk. Now my options are limited. I've been wanting to do it anyway since it's a great way to dust. Somehow I came up with a crazy new idea for where everything could be. Yesterday I started moving stuff.
I am not the grrrl I used to be.
I used to be able to move every piece of furniture in my apartment in one day. Not anymore. I am now aware of muscles that I forgot I had. I feel them all today and they all hurt. Part of the reason I did it was I had to move the desk anyway. I had to install the track ball mouse replacement and (here's where it gets weird) I ordered DSL. Half way through the day the DSL stuff came. I was still moving books and bookshelves. By four I was beat. But I began to install the DSL. It was more work than I was up for.
When the guy called to sell me my DSL he assured me that I had web space. After I got the DSL installed I started looking for where that might be. Six phone calls later no one seemed to know. I may have hosting problems. I still have my laptop hooked up to my ISP, which fortunately I haven't canceled yet. So, I'm writing this on the laptop.
My apartment looks like a tornado went through it. Well, half of it looks that way. As soon as I finish this I'll need to start moving books off the last book shelf. Who bought all these books?
I'm not sure if the new arrangement works. The last one didn't totally work. The DSL is fast. I guess. I'm too cranky about the whole thing to feel good about it yet.
The Blue Angels were buzzing me the whole time. My nerves are shot and my body feels like I got beat up. I may have web hosting problems.
But. It is a little bit cleaner around here. I guess. I had this dream. I was at a rave/demo. I was in a group of people who were taken to a 7Eleven where it became clear that we were going to be taken to jail. I was with a young woman who didn't speak English very well and had some kind of canister, or bong like thing. She was telling these two reporters about it and the people who gave it to her. I walked into a room and realized that the "reporters" were really cops and she was going to be sent to jail, but they were willing to let me go. But, wait, there was another funny part. One of the reporters was calling someone about Southwest. So, like I could go free, but then Southwest would keep charging fat people for two seats. And they were asking me how I felt about that. I was mad. My first thought when I woke up was - why didn't I tell that girl she had a right to remain silent?
Call my therapist.
Sometime in the afternoon I got everything put back together. The new arrangement looks OK. I like the way it feels when things are different. colors seem brighter. I guess it's my own version of Feng Shui.
I sat down with stuff to read for school, but couldn't concentrate so I watched a movie on IFC which was pretty great. I'm still a bit achy.
I gave up on trying to understand if and where I have web space till Monday. I'm just lucky I have the laptop. At some point yesterday I looked at my site and realized that it was borked. I was too tired to do anything about it. It seemed like it was fine yesterday morning. Why was it suddenly weird? And then this morning I was looking at other sites and the font was huge. I realized that my browser font was set to the largest. I didn't do that. I don't know how it happened. When I changed the font size the site looked as I intend it to look. I hate shit like that. There are so many parts to design that I just don't get. This means that if anyone reads the site with the font set to large ...well...you get it. It's not like I have a zillion people reading me, but I always wanna hope that what you see is what I put together. But my design skills are weak. I'm looking forward to MT and Dorothea's help with jumping the site up a notch, or twelve. I always feel like I'm a slow learner.
But first...do I have a web host? If things get weird around here in the next few days, like if you look and the site seems to be gone, check back.
Last night I was thinking about the week. I guess it was a day before therapy moment. First there was the days of obsessing about congress and then I moved my furniture.
Uh....
Sigh.
Happy Indigenous people's day. The DSL saga continues. It turns out that I do not have web hosting with my new DSL. The site will still be hosted at my old ISP. I now have two bills. I could send the DSL back. But there are reasons too numerous to detail for keeping it. Meanwhile my computer is so buggy. It crashed about twenty times yesterday. Things are fighting for dominance in the world and in my PC. Tech support for the DSL is so bad. Tech support for my Dell is fantastic. They solved some of the conflicts.
Sigh.
I'm so dependent/addicted to my PC.
Great conversation over at Dru's yesterday. Based on this quote.
"Making women afraid to be fat is a form of social control. Mass starvation of
women is the modern american cultures equivalent of foot binding, lip stretching
and other forms of female mutilation."
I'm in one of my zero tolerance moods about fat stuff. You either get this quote, or you don't. But please. Do not. Talk to me about my health. Don't do it. Maybe I'll be in a better mood another day. And then we can have a nice long talk about how fat people can be healthy.
Here's a nice cartoon for ya. Well.
I was thinking about size acceptance.
Ya know, size acceptance is about many things. It's has a different meaning to each person who uses the term. So when I talk about it, I'm talking about my own version. And, honestly, I'm into something much more seditious than acceptance. I'm interested in celebrating my body. I'm deeply grateful to my body.
But I'm going to try to stay on topic.
Size acceptance, for me, is not about dictating preference. You get to like what you like. I get to like what I like. I do think that we ought to like our own bodies. I don't think it's useful to withhold acceptance.
I keep thinking about this one time in my life. I spent a few years on cocaine, smokes and booze. I ate food. But I did some cocaine, every day. I was really fat. My sense has always been that my body was spending so much time dealing with the known toxic substances with which I was pounding it, that it just didn't deal with much else.
Then I stopped getting high. I drank less. I ate more. And I got massage and acupuncture. I don't know how long it took, because I wasn't paying attention, but I lost a lot of weight. People kept asking me if I was losing and I kept saying, "Duh...I duuno." I really didn't care. I was still fat.
I moved to New York City. I still smoked but I belonged to a gym and I ran up and down subway steps every day. I got muscles. but I was still fat.
My body has changed over the years. For a variety of reasons, only some of which having to do with what I ate, or how much I moved my ass. I've been thinner, but I've always been fat.
That's the thing about bodies. They change. For a variety of reasons. All day. Every day. All bodies. Some change imperceptibly. But they all change. Especially women's bodies.
So when people think they know me (how much I eat or move my ass) based on the size of said ass...I just wanna say... step off. It would not occur to me to apply my experience, or standard, to anyone else's body. Of course diet people think they've found the path to god. And if it works for them...it's all good.
But they need to make me, and my body wrong. And that is what I get from Ms. Mayer's quote.
You don't have to join my celebration. You don't have to like my body. But I can't imagine any reason for not accepting my right to have an experience with my body that is different from yours other that a need to establish a cultural hierarchy. To the extent that you confirm the righteousness of that hierarchy, for me, you're just like the boys who say stupid shit to me on the street. It's called bigotry.
Size acceptance, for me, is about understanding that size is part of diversity. Dorothea points and responds to the We Have Brains topic. What aspects of stereotypical or archetypal feminine roles do you embrace, either in yourself or in others?
Hmmm.
I was talking about an aspect of this last night in class. There is a male to female transsexual who lives in the city. She's had a remarkable amount of surgery. The obvious sexual identity surgeries, including hair removal and replacement, carpal tunnel surgery, and distal by pass surgery. Now she's a thin, dyke.
The number of identity markers in her quest for a physicality that matched her sense of herself, and what she had to put her body through is mind boggling for me. I think she has every right to spend her money and put her body through what ever she may choose, but it seems like a kind of conformity.
Do my breasts make me a girl? Or is it my uterus? What about the associative hormones? And what about the hair on my legs, in my arm pits, on my chin? Do I get to be a girl if I'm really tall and fat? What am I willing to put my body through so that I can pass for a girl?
I was in my forties before I bought a dress. I had them when I was a kid, but right around sixteen I stopped wearing them. Somehow I felt that I couldn't fit into the girl thang. Why pretend? It was the sixties. I stopped wearing a bra. I started wearing work boots. I stopped wearing makeup. I was a womyn.
The makeup came back first. It was the seventies. I was in a rock n roll band.
But in my early forties I found a dress. I went back to the store and tried it on three times before I bought it. Now I have lots of them. But I don't really wear make up any more. Once in a while.
Did the dress make me feel more like a girl? In a way, I suppose. But not in a substantive way.
How far down the identity list is the adjective woman for me? It depends on the conversation. It is pretty high up on the list in terms of political identity.
But what do I mean by woman, girl, grrrl? I have no definitive answer. I have a sense of things, some of which may be stereotypical. The little boxes are useful when you're trying to understand things. But when all the boxes fall apart identity has to be anchored somewhere really deep and in every individual.
Plastic surgeons may not agree. I have my own book fairy. Her generousity is ...well. I don't have a word big enough to describe her generousity. But I do have three new books and I am a happy grrrl. Thank you.
I do need to go to a book store because Cynthia's piece, What the Heart Does, is in the new Shenandoah.
Pattie and Carl show today. They will be airing some of the Scott Ridder press conference, from when he spoke at the University of Victoria. A conversation about money for blogging has been circulating with some of the bloggers I read. It's making me laugh. Many bloggers link to their Amazon wish list. or have a Pay Pal account. It's kind of like having a tip jar on the piano. I don't have a problem with it. But I can't do it. I have wish list. I haven't really added to it very often. I've used it to keep track of the name of a book. Tom sent me a book from my list once. It was kind of thrilling.
But, ya know, I have issues with Amazon. I love them. I use them. I think they are a valuable service. But I know they have a negative impact on the small local book stores. And I LOVE the small local book stores. When I link to a book I'm reading I try to use my small local book stores. Or the site for the book. But if used Amazon or promoted them with my site I could get cash. Or discounts on books. And, again, I don't think there is anything wrong with doing this. It might be good if I asked people to buy me things. But I can't quite do it.
Would it affect my writing?
Heh.
Everything effects my writing. If too many days in a row go by with no comments I have talk myself off the ledge. Belive me. I am aware that people may, or may not, like my writing and when they do I get puffed up and when they don't I head for the ledge. But I usually keep writing.
And, I am writing THE BOOK. I do hope I finish it and I do hope I sell six or seven copies. But the blog is like a letter. I can't quite get to where I imagine it to be source of income.
But I like when bloggers reach out to one another for cash. I love that Wood_s lot was rescued and now Chris Kovacs is posting about a trust fund for a friend who was injured in the Bali Blast. I think this is a great thing to do. Leslie Harpold asked for help paying the legal costs for the Hoopla theft. If everyone sends a little amount it ads up. It's about community.
Speaking of community...April has begun to post the bios. They are so cool! Here's the one Lisa wrote about me. And here's what I wrote about her. Tada!
Mena blogged this today and it is so great. Go look now. I'm blaming Dru. She was the one who told me about it. She tells me I should blame Adam. I guess I should just quit looking to place blame and accept that I am an addict. Are there support groups? Sims players anonymous? I had to get a little picture of the Lennons and I had to put it in a house and I had to keep playing once I got it going. Sigh.
The picture looks better in the game. It looks better in Photoshop. I don't why it's so dark. Just another one of the many computer things I don't seem to be so good at.
I actually get bored with the Sims. It's too much like life. You gotta make sure every one is clean and fed and doing self improvement. Of course this might be about me not being good at playing. I had a friend challenge me to let my Sims go crazy. I can't do it. I march them through the day.
I was excited about the pets. The pets are cute. But what keeps me playing is the little story lines I get into. It makes me think I should experiment with writing fiction.
So many ways to protest the war. Alas urges us to got to Sisyphus Shrugged (a great blog name doncha think?) for some great ideas about the upcoming election on the Move on web site.
Or, like me, you can download a sign for your computer game and spend the rest of the day playing. Sign. Will I ever grow up? I wanted to sleep in this morning. I felt like I worked too hard in my dreams. I keep having these "problem solving" dreams. I wake thinking I need a therapist on speed dial. I can't even remember what I was dreaming last night but I woke up and thought ....fuck this. I rolled over to go back to sleep and then the bells from St Peter & Paul started, the Chinese family next door started a loud conversation in their back yard and a fire truck left the fire house at the top of the hill, siren and all. Yeah. Sleeping seemed unlikely.
Every once in a while I see one of the Internet tests that appeals to me. There is this one to determine if you have a personality disorder. Here are my results.
Disorder | Rating Paranoid: Moderate Schizoid: Moderate Schizotypal: High Antisocial: Low Borderline: Low Histrionic: High Narcissistic: Moderate Avoidant: High Dependent: Low Obsessive-Compulsive: Moderate
I love it. A little bit of paranoia is a sign of mental health. I hate the questions. I wish they'd give me a both choice, instead of either or. I'm not sure I like the high histrionic. Does that mean I feel things? Guilty. Oh well.
I found it jumping from place to place beginning with George. It seems important to site the trail I followed. I have a link to Dru but I know that some of you (who shall remain nameless) don't always follow the links. And when she blogs something that makes me laugh out loud I want to share it, and I feel like I should mention that I got it from her. She got from someone. Another Sunday morning blog jumping.
I had CNN on last night. I must admit I got caught up in the news about the Virginia shooting. I am usually so put off by the way they cover things. Day long conversation about this event with no discussions of everything else going on in the world pisses me off. But I did get caught up last night.
It must be so crazy to live in that area right now. I think about my aunt and my cousins. My aunt was at a church meeting on the day of the first shooting. They tried to keep everyone there in the church. But my aunt said she had places to be and marched out the door. She's so cool.
I was just about to turn it off when a show about Michael Moore came on. It was pretty good, but I can't find a link to it. I swear it makes me wonder if they burned it. There was this "political columnist" (I honestly do not remember his name) who was trying to discredit Michael. As he was talking about Michael's views being fringe and unpopular they panned the camera around the packed Barnes & Noble book store where he was speaking. It made me think of Manufacturing Consent. The voice was saying one thing but the picture communicated another. Nice when they use that power to make a point that I like. But, like I said, I can't find a link to the show today.
A little bit of paranoia is a sign of mental health. Sometimes, when there is a full moon, it seems like I can feel it torturing me. I lay in bed last night for two hours. Well, not so much lay as thrashed around. Needless to say waking up was difficult. Again.
The same show about Michael Moore was on CNN last night. There is a web page for the show. A page filled with other people. Nothing for Michael. I did notice an article on sexy at any size. Limited. But still cool.
I was talking to someone yesterday who said that they fear attendance at the demo in DC will be affected by the sniper. They're going there despite the fact that there will be a demo here. The sniper has been very random. It would seem like he/she was making a political statement if he/she shot into a crowd of antiwar demonstrators. I hope it doesn't keep people away.
I don't blame people for being afraid. But I also think about what people face when they do demonstrations in other countries. I can't be too critical because if my knee is fucked up on Saturday I won't be able to go. And it has been fucked up all week.
Thanks, again, to George. I read this interesting, although disturbing, article.
It's the use of the word cure that disturbs me. They understand that it's a genetic response to protect the body from starvation, but they want to cure it. I think what they want to do is sell drugs.
One doc says, "Instead of the one-drug-for-all approach, specific treatments might have to be tailored" to different subgroups of overweight people, depending on what genetic factors are contributing to their obesity." Which supports something that I say.
There is not one fat body.
Lately I've been thinking about how I feel about fat people who diet and exercise and lose weight. I think about them in the same way I think about athletes, or dancers. A thin or average size person can skip desert once a week and take some walks and control their weight. But someone with a genetic predisposition to fat will need to work harder. Oprah works out twice a day.
I think it's great when people take on the project of doing something extreme with their bodies. What dancers do with their bodies is not always healthy. The same can be said of extreme athletics. But their body is in service to their project. That's cool. If people adopt a life style of working out and eating all protein, or what ever diet they find works for them, it becomes a project. And that's cool.
But the hyper praise they get is disturbing to me. The valour and righteousness the become draped in. I eat good, healthy, alive food. I walk every where I go. I could, maybe should do more exercise. But even when I did I was fat.
Last night I made whole wheat pasta with some Aidells, Japanese eggplant and shitakes. It was so brown. And beautiful. And good.
Do I ramble when I'm tired?
Lately I've been musing on what anyone can do for anyone else when they're sad. Or mad. I've been in one of my dark, heavy depressions for the last two weeks but I've been trying not to talk about it. I know that people care about me and don't want me to feel so bad. There is a point where I start worrying about their worry. Then I'm dealing with my own depression and their worry. It really gets to be too much.
And I feel like it's too too narcissistic when I can't pull out of my own shit long enough to have a relationship. So I try. But mostly I just stay alone.
Therapy doesn't help. Therapy is part of the problem. Talking with friends does help. Sometimes. I have some pretty great friends.
But what can anyone do? Or say?
Ironically if I have to say what is making me so sad I start with the world, my own aging, floundering, who will I be when I grow up life. But I'm sad because I'm lonely in some deep essential way that I can't even totally articulate. Some existential way. I guess.
So what can anyone say about that?
I do keep working on it all. I keep taking the herbs and trying to take care of myself. But I keep falling into this dark place.
Yesterday I decided to try and write about it. Not here necessarily but in a piece of writing for my workshop. I'm not sure yet. I'm hoping that writing about it is a way to keep processing it. Somehow.
I don't actually think I should ever not be a little sad. And mad. There are things to be sad and mad about. But yesterday I felt like I could hardly breathe. The effort of it was too much. I had to get to school and participate in class. I had to keep pushing out of it.
Which is good.
This morning I was reading through the blog roll and saw that Chris's friend is gone. I started to cry the minute I read the words. I left a comment. I had to retype it twenty times. Words seemed so useless. Not good enough.
I don't know Chris. I don't know his friend. But I read Chris. Remember balloon hats? I learned about balloon hats from Chris. Every time I get an e-mail from the balloon hat of the week I think of him. And, somehow, I've become involved in his story. And now he has lost a friend.
Words do seem useless. And I'm trying to be a writer.
But words are what formed this relationship. And words are all I have to give. And, somehow, I need to find a way to use them to find my way out of the dark.
Again and again.
Somehow. Whatever noise may have woken me up a few days ago had no effect on me today. I slept till 9:00. Felt pretty good.
Yesterday I was doing the blog thang and the door buzzer rang. I'm on the third floor so there is a buzzer for the door to the building. I buzzed them in but no one came up the stairs. There is a shelf down stairs where delivery guys put things. I didn't remember ordering anything. You would think I might go down and see what was up. You would think I'd be curious. But I was in my soooo down place. It just couldn't be anything that good.
The day went on and it was time to go to school. As I got to the bottom of the steps I saw a box from Amazon. Wha? I got that kid on Christmas morning feeling. George sent me a book. I sat on the bus with this goofy grin reading my new book.
That was a very nice thing to do. On exactly the right day. Thank you.
In class we were talking about portraits. We'd read two by Didion, one by Rodriguez and one by Frazier. I don't think it was intentional but they were all about what it is to be a man. Even Didion, writing about O'Keefe seemed to be about how O'Keefe was positioned against "the men." And the other Didion was about John Wayne.
We mostly talked about the writing. It being a writing program and all. But I wished we could have talked more about the content. Especially the men in the room. I wanted to know how they felt about all these ideas. I really wish there was a Blogbrothers.
Michael Moore was on Democracy Now. Amy was giggling the whole time. I saw the movie. It is pretty great. Devastating. In a good way. Michael has a great letter out.
I gotta go read. She said, with a big goofy grin.
Don't forget. Pattie & Carl show today. A few of the teachers in my program did a reading last night. Very cool. Kristina and I had dim sum first. Very, very cool. So I spent the day reading, or being read to,or talking to a great friend, or eating good food.
Doonsebury continues to rip on blogging.
I tried to fight my fear of crowds and the pain in my knees to go to the demonstration. I actually went to the bus. It was packed. I balked. I spent the day following things on TV, the radio and the Internet. I guess that makes me an armchair activist. They had a great turn out.
The main stream media is almost shocking in their disregard. The SF paper did report that there were demonstrations happening but ends the report by saying that attendance was not what organizers predicted in Europe. They did do a nice article about Medea. And later, when it was over, they did write it up. There were more like 50,000 people.
CSPAN did play the demo in Washington. But as I looked around for news I saw little coverage. Finally, in the middle of the day I saw a tiny thing on the CNN site.
If it weren't for alternative media there would be no substantive information. KPFA followed the demonstrations around the country. Democracy Now has daily reports from Jeremy Scahill in Iraq.
I was sad for about two minutes because I didn't feel up to getting on the bus, as it were. And then I just decided that I had to accept some of my limitations. I don't like crowds. My knees do hurt. I kept thinking about the demos of my youth.
Allison Krause went to my high school. On the day she was shot there was a near riot in front of the school because the hippies wanted to lower the flag to half mast. I wrote about it in DOR. I remember being at the University of Maryland waiting for Dr. Spock to begin speaking. The National Guard stood in a circle all around us.
Jeez. I sound like I'm eighty years old, sitting on my porch, reminiscing.
Sometimes, when I'm swimming, I fall into rhythm with another swimmer and we chat while we swim, languid side strokes and chatter. But yesterday no one talked to me and I swam in a trance, back and forth across the pool, a glazed-over stare on my face. Not thinking, just swimming. I was vaguely aware of the light on the water and the smell of chlorine and a pinch in my back and the tenderness in my knees. But mostly I was just moving through the blue shiny world of float. No gravity pulling at me.
I was tired and left the pool before Marilyn. So I sat outside and read my book. The sun was warm. My muscles were still twitching. I was reading now but, still, my brain was soaking stuff up, not generating thought, or static.
My brain is like a noise machine. I long for these quiet times. I don't seem to be able to generate them. Meditation doesn't always work. Swimming, or other, exercise doesn't always do it. When it happens I'm deeply grateful.
I like thinking. Thinking is good. But these occasional moments of just being are deeply pleasurable and restorative.
Now it's Monday and I'm already distracted by the things I need to be doing. I hear the whirr of the noise machine cranking up. Dorothea responds to a post by Anil Dash. I've read him a few times. I admire his design. In this post he talks about mental illness, depression and blogging. It's a great thing for me to read right now.
I often write about my depression here. And sometimes I worry that it's too much. Too dark and powerless. I also try to write about the things I do to work through the darkness.
Writing here is one of the things I do. Reading other people is one of the things I do. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't. Reading Dorothea and Anil helped.
I guess the first reason is that it lets me know that I'm not alone. Sometimes it helps to know that I'm not alone in the things that I feel. Dru pointed to a great post by another blogger. Another fierce fat woman who is telling the truth about her experience and feeling the anger and the grief. Reading through her comments I saw all the reactions that I deal with. People are startled that she deals with so much public hostility. People tell her she's beautiful on the inside. People send her love and share her rage. People mention the diet program that they use. People worry about her health.
She got them all thinking. Some of them get it. Some of them don't. Which is where it becomes about more than feeling less alone. In writing about it she opened herself up to the love that she got, and the stupidity.
Anil mentions that talking about things like mental illness and depression on the www, a place where a google search can out you when you least suspect it, is risky. Anyone who reads Golby watched while he struggled with his personal writing. Dooce lost her job, alienated her family, quit blogging, recovered, is blogging again. I think there's some kind of raw courage in the act of putting your life in words and putting those words in this public space.
There are plenty of things I back away from here. I don't write about everything. I'm aware of feelings of the people I drag into public with me. Some times you just need to hold things and not talk about them. But public writing is an act of breaking silence, an act of pushing away the fear of shame and blame and trying to believe in the process of truth telling. And then you do the work of sorting through the responses you receive.
This public writing is all about generosity. I'm so grateful to the people I read. I'm so grateful for the people who read me. It cuts through the isolation. It inspires. It moves.
And at the end of the day, even if no one did the google search, even if you're never on Daypop and Blogdex, even if you end up writing to yourself, the act of doing it pushes through the darkness.
Sometimes. Yesterday Paul blogged about the new obesity cure.
Cure.
Sigh.
But before I rant out, let me take a minute to say how great Big Fat Blog is. It is so so so great! Paul is a radical thinker. On one of his other blogs he wrote a post that made me want to stand up and shout. It great to read a man write like this.
Oh, yeah. The cure.
First of all the idea that there is one fat gene, like an on/off button, is reductive. There may be one common gene, but if you look at fat bodies you see that they DO NOT ALL LOOK ALIKE. People hold their fat in different places. People gain weight at different times in their life and for different reasons. People lose weight at different paces. Fat bodies in Samoa, in Russia, or in Japan, are fat in different ways. Once you stop looking at fat bodies through the fat hatred lens you see the variety. Once you start really talking to fat people and hear their stories you find out that it's a little more complicated than too many doughnuts and too much couch time. I suspect there is more than one gene involved.
Now that they found the on/off button they can make a pill. Won't the pharmaceutical companies be happy?
If I could take a pill and be thin -- would I?
No.
I've thought about this a lot. Remember in The Matrix, when Neo gets offered two pills? Take the blue one and life is but a dream. Take the red one and see "how deep the rabbit hole goes." I don't need a pill to know how deep the rabbit hole of fat hatred goes. I've been through that looking glass. My body is the pill.
See this is what people don't get. Being fat is part of how I learned to see the world. If I was thin, physically, tomorrow I would still have that fat experience. The world that would congratulate me for finally getting it together and joining the ranks of body conformity would piss me off. More pissed off than I am now.
I've learned to see my body with different eyes. I've learned to experience my body from the inside out. Even now, with my achy knees, I appreciate what my body teaches me. I love my body. My body doesn't have to live up to an ideal of health and beauty. I get to enjoy the difference of my experience. My body will go through many changes in life. I get to feel through them and stay awake.
Do I enjoy not being uncomfortable in an airplane seat or in a movie? No. I think the public world can make some room for me.
So we take a pill and suppress an expression of diversity. And then let's not have people who are too tall, or short, or thin. Lets just have a one size fits all body. A body that fits in and doesn't cause any trouble.
I don't need a pill to wake up from the dream of life. My body did that for me a long time ago. We talked about literary journalism last night in class. I love literary journalism. We talked about Tom and John. I love them. But we did not talk about James. I really love James.
I guess I should worry that most of the men I currently feel most in love with are dead. Well. I do have some blog crushes. But I'm not naming names.
I started thinking about this kind of thing the other day when I noticed that a good many of the people I know center their "self improvement" (I hate that phrase) around finding love or keeping love. I've always based my "self improvement" (shit. I can't think of another way to say that) on some loosely defined notion of wholeness. Or enlightenment. Er sumthin.
I keep thinking I should leave love up to the gods. Er sumthin.
It's just not in me to imagine that I can organize something about myself in such a way that love will arrive. I like to think I'm open to it. But I am pretty cranky. I've sort of lost hope. But I know that I need to keep hope alive. Er sumthin.
So sometimes when I'm talking to a friend who thinks that they will never find love and I'm encouraging them I ask myself...well...do you belive that you will ever find love? And I must admit I have my doubts. And it's not that I feel terrible about that. I kinda see myself as a Sor Juana wanna be.
But. Last night I was thinking about James all through class. I was thinking about the way he saw things and the way he said things.
Pattie and Carl show today. It might be scary.
And as hard as it is to believe...it's rabbit rabbit time. I always wonder if I had MT if I would post more often. I almost never post more than once a day. If I do I'm on a rev about something.
Here's something.
Greg Palast was on Caroline's show talking about a Salon Article he's written. It's not up yet. He's talking about how African American voters will be dissed again in Florida. As I was listening I was reminded of something Alas pointed to earlier, also by Palast.
Uh huh. I'm telling ya. We can not assume democracy is alive an well in a country with a president select.
Alas also points to the Move On campain for Bill Bradbury.
Caroline has an intersting astrological picture of now. |
