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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
112 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510
October 8, 2002
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.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
were slaughtered in the Gulf War - and Saddam Hussein is still in power. I
know that thousands of Iraqis die each month due to the sanctions, and untold
thousands more human beings will die if we attack.
I believe it is dangerous to
Israeli Jews and Palestinians alike for the US to attack Iraq. I fear Sharon
may try to expel Palestinians under cover of crisis. I fear that Israeli Jews
may find themselves in a crucible of war that will overshadow even the horrors
of the last year.
It is hypocritical that the US will
not sign the ABM treaty, chemical/bio weapons treaties, etc. and yet insists we
inspect Iraq. We are nearly isolated
internationally, building enemies rather than alliances with every move against
the UN, every unilateral, arrogant statement and gesture of foreign policy.
I believe that war in Iraq has little to do with 'terrorism' - it has
to do with the price and availability of oil over the next fifty years, with
Bush' domestic problems, and with US military superiority and
empire.
In the current paranoid and racist political
environment, we are eroding the very principles of free dissent and pluralism
that we say we stand for.
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.
Thank you for your support of peace, justice and sanity in
dangerous times.
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.
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."
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
poemand
I just smiled. Smiled big.
More
smiles thins morning. Random
Walks
is using haiku, er, dayku
to talk about the war.
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.
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.
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." ~ Vivian Mayer
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.
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.
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 smalllocalbookstores.
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.