On books

Twilight and Other Bedtime Stories

The first time I read Twilight, it was un-ironically for me. The second time, I read it for Amanda, who was twelve years old and wanted me to take her home with me. She had been restrained by other staff nearly a dozen times that week for violent temper tantrums. These were because her older brother, who had been her best friend and then raped her, was just out of jail and spending Thanksgiving with her family. As for Twilight, she couldn't seem to put it down, and I couldn't seem to explain to her what was wrong with it. It wasn't just Amanda; most of the girls in the group home where I worked practically worshiped the book.

For me, the most interesting thing about books is almost never what they contain, but rather, what they mean to the people who read them. With the exception of Jane Austen, books that appeal to teenage girls receive little respect or mainstream acceptance. The disconcerting popularity of the Twilight books has made them impossible for anyone who seriously wants to understand this culture to ignore. That popularity has also crystallized some of the central questions of my intellectual life. How are stories like this so compelling to such a fragile—and recalcitrant—demographic? And what can anyone do to change that?

The first place I look for an answer to these questions is my own life; what's changed so much for me between my first and second reading? When I compare my life to Amanda's—though they have not been so different, in other ways—hers holds a glaring absence of constructive building blocks. My parents gave me scriptures as a habit and a way to think. The first answer to every problem was to study and ask God. Although my literary scope has expanded since then—and God and I are no longer on speaking terms—today I wander the library seeking answers in much the same way I once browsed the the topical guides and indexes of holy books. Systems to organize information offer a reassuring illusion of completeness; there's something soothing about the stacks. “Here's the information,” they promise. “Put together the right collection of references, read insightfully, and there's bound to be an answer.” And if there isn't, put together the puzzle pieces you can find and treasure them away till the rest of the picture is revealed. Maybe someday you will have another book to contribute to what's there.

Books have been the constant in my life. Even when I first read Twilight, my bookshelf seemed like a wall I might climb to escape the pit I was in. I volunteered at an organization that re-distributed used books for free, and with a reliable supplier I was constantly refining my collection. All those books I had not yet read represented untold possibilities, and promised me the kind of future Amanda never had any reason to dream about. This is not an exaggeration. I wanted to be the next Indiana Jones, but the best future Amanda could conceive of was to be a housewife—a respectable choice, if she had other options—and the statistics for children out of foster care retaining their sanity and becoming functioning members of society are dismal.

As time has passed and I've returned to Twilight, I've developed the theory that this is the fairy tale oppressed female children of all ages tell themselves so they can sleep at night. In Twilight, the rapist is a stranger, your disinterested and ineffectual parents are really good people, and when the guy you haven't started dating yet stalks you it's a good thing. Perhaps more importantly, in the Twilight world, there's a good reason to defer to your boyfriend, even a good reason for him to force you to do things: he's got a century of extra life experience, you're in danger, and he's invincible. In Twilight, if you are self-sacrificing, loyal, and domestic, you will be loved and vigorously protected until the end of time. Twilight is truly fantastical; it creates a world where girls can fulfill the role that's expected of them without violating their common sense.

The goal, then, is to build something better that fills that function. If we see Twilight as a catalog of conflicting needs, this anachronistic millstone turns into a to-do list. In my life, something better has emerged from a thousand other books. For Amanda and millions of others like her, most of that work remains to be done. It is hard because the storytelling most Twilight fans are immersed in is unlikely to criticize such a well constructed fantasy. Perhaps the real answer is in the building blocks. Perhaps when girls are given tools—whether books, or anything else—with which they can create for themselves a real future that gives their own interests a reasonable and honest weight, they will stop having such a need for Twilight. Unless, of course, they are deconstructing it.

er. .

Ok, so I've decided I feel silly re-posting old posts. Actually, I feel silly posting this too, but less-silly enough to let it slide. Here's the first of my entrance essays. :)

Education and wanting:

Why St. John's

I know how heavy my engine block is—I couldn't give you a number of kilos, but I remember the textures and the heft of it in my hands. I know its color when it's all cleaned up. I know how it smells fresh from the machine shop, what parts it is connected to, and how they move. I may never reference this information again, but I will not likely forget it. Until my brain deteriorates, it will color my respect for the human beings who test your car for emissions standards and change its oil. I think this example demonstrates the virtues of my formal education: experiential richness, intellectual depth, unusual persistence, and unconventional breadth.

That shop experience was valuable to me because I was the kid who asked too many questions, and for whom the answers were not quite good enough. I've been fortunate by way of libraries, and one way or another—by sitting in on classes, asking questions, watching documentaries, picking fights, or reading books—I've found many layers in each subject.

This has not always come easily. My family is very math intensive; my mother once threw my sister's boyfriend out of the house over a disagreement about the limit definition of a derivative. Their enthusiasm hasn't always translated into an ability to teach. It took me several fails, but I eventually learned calculus and rejoined the dinner-table conversations. I am grateful, because calculus is where math starts to get too beautiful to ignore.

The greatest strength of my education is that it has made my life today better than ever before. In auto shop, my first professor flattered me by saying I was a natural emissions tech. To be a good emissions tech, you have to know how everything works, and why—often, it is about fine-tuning. This is how I am built; emissions-style work makes me happy. When I make time to learn ballet and philosophy and auto repair, it is because I aspire to join the emissions techs of the world: I want to fine tune life.

I was under-taught, isolated, and often motivated by all the wrong things. Though I'm proud of what I've accomplished and I'd hate to look at life as having some sort of a set destination, the formal education I've had so far has not taken me everywhere I want to go.

My parents “home-schooled” me for middle school but taught little. I spend most of my time reading, alone. I remember the frustration of my one attempt to learn math in home-school; I was twelve. My mother—a wonderful person in other ways—handed me paper and, without explaining, told me to prove the additive properties of integers between 0 and 100. I was in tears almost immediately, and the lessons didn't continue. My science and math suffered, and (as transcripts show) as an adult I've struggled to recover that. I love science; it seems worth recovering.

Other activities were also limited by my parents' unusual choices. In high school they complained when I did anything “worldly” or “dark,” like participate in drama, and they drove me nowhere but church. This contributed to my already substantial isolation—we moved a lot—but in the long run, both of these experiences have only fueled my desire to experience the richness of life and people.

The greatest weakness of my formal education has been that I have often been motivationally—and thus directionally—distracted. I wasn't great at reading cues or getting attention as a kid, but I could tell that I was supposed to be curious, hardworking, and smart. I exceeded expectations, but the deep acceptance I was chasing never materialized. I tried to study physics because I thought it would please my family; I obsessed over philosophy papers because I wanted the good opinion of my professors.

I've been elated to find that on letting this expectation go, my curiosity remains whole. I want to read deeper and row harder. Now that I find myself acceptable without a report card to convince me of it, I am still driven by a hunger for shared excellence. And for the damage this has done in the past? Perhaps the fragments have failed to cohere, but dogged persistence and interdisciplinary insight have made my education greater than the sum of its parts. Whatever I have studied, I will find a use for it.

(1) I am dying to get under the hood of western thought. It seems like it would be so much fun! Plus, I think I could really do some good down there. I want to go to St. John's because I think I can get a deeper reading there than I can studying the books on my own.

(2) My idea of heaven is like your campus life advertisements, but with more travel, dance studios, and music. I want to find an intellectual community where I can be at home, and a clearer direction for my life. St. John's seems like a good place for it.

(3) I was a chubby, hunched latecomer to dance. Dancer craziness is no secret, but I think it puzzled people to see it in me because no matter how hard I worked, I was already too old, clumsy, and fat for a career. When I started I was trying hard to destroy part of myself, but hacking away at my gracelessness was constructive. You can't learn ballet just by taking away, and it is impossible to become a dancer by believing you can not dance.

Breath is the music that connects what we can choose to what we can't. It is steady, involuntary. Ballet class is also structured and repetitive, and many dancers hate it. I found that in long hours at the barre, there was eventually nothing but to take my fragile, inevitable, broken body and try to merge it into something more whole. And for moments, rarely, I succeeded; all the despair and restraint I was capable of were poured into this fondu ronde-du-jambe en l'aire, and I was only feeling—dynamic alignment of bones, carefully drilled release and contraction of muscles, inescapable rushing breath causing me to collapse and expand, and sadness so intense I would have wept were I not dancing.

Dance is temporary. No one would study it if these moments weren't their own reward, but something spectacularly unsatisfying that happens when your professor, whose dancing you respect, is walking by in one of those moments and says “Yes! Yes, Day, That's it.” And you're so startled that you loose your balance and fall off of demi-pointe, but it's the most wonderful thing in the world because someone has understood what you were doing here, awkward and broken and ugly, every day for years. And someone has witnessed that, which has made everything worth it. The dancing lasted seconds, but the dancer escaped the boundaries of herself. It's a kind of horizontal immortality, addictive and intoxicating.

I want that. I want it all the time, more than I can say. This is why I am applying to St. John's.

like that

“touch my back,” he said again.

He was holding two large loads of garbage, swinging each from a fully extended arm. The weight was wearing, obviously, as his muscles shook though they held steady in the exertion. I was hesitant, but reached out gingerly and made soft contact with the his trembling back.

“It's like that.”- and he meant the force of holding nothing, of holding the world on one's shoulders, the force of Atlas or Jesus or Hercules.

Instead it reminded me of the little birds I used to pick up out of my yard in Alabama, fragile. Small. They always died. In hopes of saving them from the cats I would hide them in converted shoe-boxes down by the dryer, where it was warm, and feed them crushed worms, but they always died. Always.

I used to carry nothing. It does grow so tiring.

reprise and thanks

Dearest readers; it seems I've gone round the bend. Well, gone round a bend.

I'm not the sort of bear who says "I'm COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOW! Now that I've had this great insight/experience/litter of kittens!" I'm pretty sure we can't escape our past selves any more than we can hang onto them.

However--I am different. There was a series of events, which you could trace back a couple of weeks or a couple of years, as you like; stupid mistakes, nightmares, visions, arguments, a realization. And now I'm different. The simplest way I have to explain it is that a year and a half of very painful therapy has very suddenly started to catch up with me and pay itself off. I'm trying to give myself some time to adjust to this, which is difficult even though the changes are good. . . I'm also trying not to assume the change is permanent, but rather, allow it to be as it is.

So.

Although I'll surely need to wallow in some doom from time to time, I'm ready to start something new--and ready to let this place go. Just to get ceremonial about it, I shall re-post a series of old entries I found while searching old writings for college-application essay material. They form a story-arc about my life for the past few years; starting with an unpublished fragment from around the time I started this blog, and ending with my application essays.

Thank you for reading. This blog has put me in contact with some delightful and though-provoking people. I've been honored to have you.

twilight and other bedtime stories

I read once that kids have their reasons for needing bedtime stories. You know the kind--the same book over and over, every night, for weeks or months. The kind they keep asking for even after memorizing every word. The textbook told me that kids latch onto stories which deal with their unresolved conflicts. I think grown-ups are the same.

Certainly I'm the same. I read about women who beat people up--if not, I get stressed out. I repeat the story of a woman who picks up a bow or a sword or a gun and successfully protects the people she cares about, possibly because I need to remember it is (or might be) possible when I, like my mother and my grandmother before me, have failed so miserably on this score.

You can be bloody fucking certain the men won't take care of it. Patriarchy lies. The deal was, after we made ourselves less--after we curbed our ambitions and competence, after we were submissive and self sacrificing, after we defined ourselves as decorative, procreational, nurturing, emotional, and adjunct to men--they were supposed to make us safe. For most of my life I would have been happy to accept that deal. As far as I can tell, this is what every romance novel is about: they are the ritual retelling of how things might work out, if you are lucky, and if you are good enough at performing the feminine.

part 1

{insert dating horror story here.}

"So why do you put up with that?" she asked, the obvious question.

The answer is simple: I'm not very good at being a woman. Why would I expect men to treat me well? It's not like I can pull off my side of the bargain.

According to unreliable sources, this is fairly normal for survivors of sexual abuse. Not being bad at femininity per se, but being uncomfortable in one's own gender and sexuality, whatever they may be. Awhile ago I read some articles about how uncomfortable it is to be transgendered--living with the feeling that you, in your body, are simply wrong--that you belong in a body of the opposite sex, and that until this situation is remedied, you will continue to be trapped and wrong. It was uncanny, reading, because the sensation they described was so familiar. . . except that I've never felt the wrongness of me could be solved by assuming a masculine body.

It is painful to live in flesh that is not your home. I've had a few moments, alone in a dance studio, when what I saw in the mirror and how I saw myself from the inside started to match up. But the instant another person walks in, this ends. Suddenly, in a million ways physical and otherwise, I am inadequately feminine. And because I live in a cultural context where my irrevocable womanhood is the first and probably most important thing anyone will know about me, "not a very good woman" is "not a very good human."

interlocking

"Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about the roving packs of young dudes in B-more who dumped on other young dudes, with no real pretext. So it was where I grew up, where those cats felt less like my contemporaries and more like a capricious force of nature. (I’ve said before that the reason folks at my high school tried hard not to get detention wasn’t because they were well-behaved kids, but because detention meant walking the five North Philly blocks to the subway on your lonesome.) You learned to look over your shoulder, to take the long way to wherever you were going. And if you got caught out there — and most of us did, at some point — that was your fault. You were slipping, actin’ like it can’t happen.

I remember my mom cautioned both my twin sister and me as teenagers to be on point, but there was a different shading to the warnings she gave my sister. They were: Don’t leave your drink unattended. Make sure your girls know where you are. My sister, it was assumed, was going to have someone say some slick shit to her, to hop in her personal space, to put their hands on her as she passed. The company of a friend wasn’t going to stop it. Nothing was. She was going to bear the responsibility for these transgressions when they inevitably happened. Others would have said my sister wasn’t cautious enough, or asked her what she was wearing, or why she was where she was. The response would always be to ascertain what she did wrong, how she should have known better, how she got caught slipping.

Our experiences were subtly, profoundly different, but they were mundane, and their ordinariness belied their injustice. To grow up like this meant developing a certain resignation about the specter of violence, and often — perversely — feeling personally responsible when something ugly happened. But I didn’t have a way to think about these things until I learned about feminism. The first time I heard the term “sexual terrorism,” then, I finally had a name to something I’d always fundamentally known. The great irony was that I was having these realizations and entertaining these conversations for the first time on a suburban college campus where I actually felt completely safe."

-Black. Male. Feminist?

eating

Gentle reader: I eat like a pig. Not always, but often enough. So that you will believe me, for breakfast this morning I ate nine slices of bacon, two eggs fried in bacon grease, and half a dozen extra-dark chocolate truffles. It was delicious.

Culturally this is a confession because that sort of lipid bacchanalia has largely been outlawed and, being a woman (let alone a fat one), I am supposed to be on a diet. I refuse to accept the shame of it, first because is it really anyone's damned business? And second, because improvement of dietary habits will come after improving suicidal depression, or it will not come at all. Bacon overload may make me feel a bit sick, but today it's unquestionably better than crying at work with a surveillance camera three feet from my face.

This is not to say I don't have goals. One is that someday, I'll be able to deal with my emotions sustainably, mostly using music, art, exercise, travel, friends, and bad-ass political action. If I eat half a package of bacon for breakfast, I want it to be because I just like bacon so much that eating it is worth both the damage it does to my body and the tortured life of an intelligent creature. That would be some extraordinarily bacon, no?

In the meantime, I work at smaller things--like being present while I eat. Like trying to make conscious choices, even if they are different from the choices I hope to be making in the long run. Like being able to feel hunger and fullness, even if I sometimes choose to ignore them so I can be numb. Eating can be fraught. Like dinner the other night:

I love the way the green of the cilantro looks against the sour cream. Oh no, I have so much more sour cream on my tortilla than he has on his! How did this happen? He's going to think that I'm a pig! It's practically all fat! And even though it's low fat it's still all dairy. I don't even like sour cream that much. I have been experimenting with eating it, to see how I do like it. God, it's right on top, just staring at me. . . no way to hide that. That's right Day, staring at it isn't going to make it magically disappear. I guess I was thinking about not leaving salsa in the sour cream container when I dished up. I feel so huge. Ok, stop it, just eat your dinner. Enjoy the view. Try to taste your food. He's probably looking at me eating and thinking about how incredibly fat I am. STOP THIS! DAY, YOU ARE BEING CRAZY.

I know that this is crazy. A quarter cup of low-fat sour cream on my dinner plate isn't going to make me fat. Drowning my sorrows in cheese is a solitary activity, and obsessing over how terrible it is will more likely make the problem worse than solve it. My dining companion was my boyfriend. He's thin, but to my recollection he's only ever said two things about my body--that he thinks I'm beautiful, and that I looked sexy in that outfit with the miniskirt. If he thought I was horrifically ugly, he would not be dating me. This does not make the crazy go away.

So it's an uphill fight.

book report: Vital Friends

If you ever read self-help books, you may have noticed that a lot of the better ones have one good idea. Vital Friends

a) describes in depth the fact that people need friends, citing all sorts of studies about how much happier people are when they have friends and (because really, what else matters?) how much more productive they are at work, and

b) discusses how to to appreciate your friends for what they are, rather than trying to make them fill roles that don't come naturally to them. Specifically, it outlines eight roles that friends tend to fill for one another. You aren't going to find someone who fills all eight roles for you.

And that's basically the one good idea.

Rath suggests that a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that a good friend--especially a best friend, or a spouse--should be able to fill all the roles they need. He offers descriptions of what you might not realize you're looking for, and some reasonably concrete suggestions about how to go out and find people to fill those friendship roles for you. He points out that most friendships are reciprocal, but not in the same ways; what you do for your friends is not likely to be the same thing they do for you. He also gives advice on how to strengthen the various types of friendships. Here are the eight in summary:

Builders--motivate you and push you to succeed. They tend to be generous with their time, help you to see your strengths and use them well, and love to see you succeed. To find them, pay attention to people who seem to care about other people's success, and be liberal about asking for advice. To strengthen builder friendships, ask for their kind of help when you need it, give them permission to push you, and make sure that when you succeed they know about it--and know how helpful they were in specific ways.

Champions--stand up for you and speak well of you, whether or not you're around. They tend to have a low tolerance for dishonesty, but they're also willing to accept you as you are and listen to whatever you have to say without judging. When you succeed, they'll be proud of you and tell people about it. To find champion friendships, watch for people who often stand up for others; to build existing champion friendships, let them know when their kind words made it back to you, and confide in them about your mistakes.

Collaborators--are the friends you share important interests with. You might see them less often than other friends, but it can be incredibly valuable to have someone in your life who shares your passion, and strong friendships are often built around this. To strengthen collaborator friendships, be aware of information and opportunities related to your interest, and be sure to pass these on. To find new ones, be open about your interests, and get involved in related events and organizations.

Companions--are the really close friends, who you can rely on in any circumstances; they know you well, and they're the first people you call when something really good or really bad happens. They take pride in the relationship, and are willing to sacrifice for you. Rath suggests strengthening companion friendships by giving gifts that show how well you know them, making a point of spending good time together, and being careful to create an emotional safe space so they can talk about important or difficult topics. To find new companions, look among your relatives and current friendships to see what can be strengthened, and remember that this particular friendship role is mutual.

Connectors--love knowing lots of people, and introducing people to one another. To strengthen a connector friendship, use it--let your connector know when you're looking for a job, a mentor, or whatever. Also make sure they know generally about your plans and goals in life, because they'll naturally keep an eye out for people who will help you achieve those things. To find connectors, keep an eye out for those weird folks who like big parties--and if you're in a new job or social situation, make a point of getting to know the people who seem to know everyone.

Energizers--these are the the ones who can always figure out how to make you laugh. The ones who can make you want to go to Lagoon, even if otherwise it's your idea of hell. They can help you relax, have fun, or break out of a rut. To strengthen your energizer friendships, let them know how their small actions on a day to day basis contribute to your over all happiness. Bring up some of their best stories and jokes and ask for a recounting when you're with a group. To find new ones, spend time with the people who lift your spirits--and make a point of being open to humor and optimism.

Mind Openers--are the friends who encourage you to expand your horizons, to embrace new ideas, opportunities, and experiences. They broaden your perspective on life, and are exactly the people to talk to when you need to challenge conventional wisdom about something. To strengthen mind opener friendships, give yourself time to soak up their perspectives, or ask them to help you out by playing devil's advocate. If you see an especially interesting book or movie, pass it on to create an opportunity for good conversation. To find new ones, go into situations outside your comfort zone, like taking a class in a very different field or going to a cultural event you normally wouldn't consider.

Navigators--are the people you turn to for help making hard decisions, people who you can talk through the pros and cons with, who will "help you see a positive future while keeping things grounded in reality." To strengthen navigator friendships, ask them for advice or stories about their life experiences, or tell them about your own dreams and plans for the future. To find new navigators, ask people you admire to mentor you, and make a point of building friendships with people whose experience and approach to life you respect.

I feel lonely and sad.

A most frustrating thing, lately, is being too emotionally overwhelmed to write.

I'm fairly functional in most other ways, but there are moments when I'm struck--by my current life, how much time I spend trying hard not to be present, stuck in an ugly cubicle with no practical reason to believe I can improve things soon, deeply lonely and failing to rationalize it away.

I also get overwhelmed trying to make sense of sense of the past. I really don't want to be that person, so absorbed in my own problems that I'm selfish and uncaring. . . still, some problems are actually worse than other problems. I'm sure it's not fun even in the middle of the bell curve, but statistically speaking, somebody has got to be out on the ends, no? And I've had this conversation so many times--

me: My family is pretty messed up.

interlocutor: You know, everybody's family is like that. They all fight, they all have their messed-up-ness. That's just how families are. You just have to deal with it. . . everybody does.

me: Maybe. . . I mean, I wouldn't rule that out. But it seems likely my family is unusually messed up.

interlocutor: *tells a story about extended family members who refused to talk to each other for years.*

me: *tells a story about one time, in my senior year of high school, when FHE ended with five people holding me to the floor while I desperately tried to leave.*

interlocutor: huh. Maybe your family really is kind of messed up.

Plus, I've been reading about Martha Beck, which makes me feel like writing an accurate criticism of abusive family patterns and the church's handling of child abuse. I feel both called and inadequate to the task.

adult symptom cluster for C-PTSD

(According to Wikipedia)

~Difficulties regulating emotions, including symptoms such as persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or covert anger.

~Variations in consciousness, such as forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes of dissociation (during which one feels detached from one's mental processes or body).

~Changes in self-perception, such as a sense of helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings.

~Varied changes in the perception of the perpetrator, such as attributing total power to the perpetrator or becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, including a preoccupation with revenge.

~Alterations in relations with others, including isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer.

~Loss of, or changes in, one's system of meanings, which may include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair.



Theory: women are more likely to develop PTSD than men because they are more likely to have repeated experiences of powerlessness. Maybe. hmn.

raw

He is helpless, incoherent, so dehydrated he needs an IV, a kind and harmless old man stumbling through the snow. He needs someone and has no one but me; I am trapped and a monster. This situation is turning me into a monster.

I raise my voice for a moment in the doctor's office, and hate myself for it even while the anger boils and the voice inside my head wants me to scream, Why should I bother to take care of you? When you never bothered to take care of me? I want to pummel him, kick him while he lies doubled on the floor; the desire is excruciating, the possibility visceral and tangible. He is so helpless. I was helpless. I try soften my rage, to remember times when he did take care of me, and discover that I am returning his quality of care; enough to be sure he'd stay alive. Almost. I hate myself. At this moment I don't care what happens to him. I'm sure if anything did I'd feel guilty, but it's far more important to me that I have turned into this thing so worthy of hate.

The neighbors are around, shuttling back and forth from their Wednesday night church meetings, and I consider them helplessly, but they have never been any help before and I don't see why they'd start to bother now. I try to remember that I don't have to be doing this, don't have to be here, but somehow I can't remember the place where I had a choice. I will go, as soon as this is done, as soon as there is someone else who can take care of him, and explain to one of my sisters that I can't do it ever again. I feel guilty about future refusal. Try to remember again; why exactly do I have to? He is not a child I chose to bring into the world. This is why I should never have children. This is why I shouldn't exist.


On the way to the pharmacy I contemplate new addiction. There might be enough liquor at home to give me alcohol poisoning in one night, but I don't think it would help. I am searching the shelf to see if I could find something that, properly overdosed, could cause intense vomiting for several hours, when I turn and see my aunt standing a few feet away. I've had perhaps half a real conversation with her. We lived with them, some of us kids, for a time when I was a child, for--why exactly? No one can quite remember. Because we didn't have a house. No, that was another time.

"Day!" she says.

For a moment we make small talk. She's looking for protein drinks; my uncle is ill with something I've never heard of, and apparently their mission is delayed for it. I feel vague regret and encompassing alienation. They are nice people, and this is bad for them, even though missionary work isn't something I can support or relate to.

"So. . . is there a reason you're standing there crying and staring at the Prilosec?"

They knew; they explained. "We tried to set an example for your parents." We know, but this is not our fault. You were not our responsibility. We tried to do our best. I decide to tell her. Somehow in her surreal and perfect kindness she must have a solution--

But she doesn't, or she has no chance to dispense her miracle because I'm explaining that my father is sick when my cousin-in-law, a perfect stranger, walks up to rejoin her. After brief introductions I flee. It's helped anyway, a stuttering disclosure and three or four hugs, and I'm reduced to weeping in the pet food aisle till the prescription is filled.

goals

Become



-Someone who makes things. Things I currently want to make:

No-bake cookies
A garden
A wedding video for Les Embrees
Windchimes, out of the cool-metal-tubing-from-a-broken-bookshelf that's been sitting in my house for over a year to this end
A free-book distribution center
An alarm system for my house?

Other stuff.




-Someone who others feel comfortable talking to about the things I do wrong.

The plans for this are less specific.

Hmn.

going dark

Two reasons I've not been blogging: first, I've had big problems in several areas of my life at once. A couple have had to do with miscommunication, and these in particular make me want to hide under a rock. If people I like and respect so much can get (for instance) the message "I think you're an idiot and have no idea what you're talking about" from an expression that I made while I was feeling "I'm curious," what business do I have ever talking to anyone? It feels like my very existence is harmful to others, regardless of what I intend.

The second is time management. It's weird to accept that the most important work in my life right now is getting my health in order, but it is; get more functional, thence good things flow. Not to say I plan to stop blogging. . . just that I'll be following my usual sporadic pattern of posting when it works in my life to do so.

gorgeous

also way better than the originals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep1I4xTvHRc

Edit: I tried to embed, but blogger has no love for the new wide screen youtube aspect ratio. You should watch it anyway. :)

another disclaimer--

Lately I find that I really love swearing.


Pros:

-It's a way to express anger that doesn't actually hurt people. One might argue this point--see below.

-It's a way to express anger that doesn't train people towards physical release, the way (for instance) violence against objects does.

-It's convenient, eloquent shorthand about the fact one is involved with the dark-and-gritty side of life in some way.

-God said not to.



Cons:

-The communication aspects are usually imprecise. How seriously the audience will take it varies a lot by background and personal context. I think many people who insist on taking swearing seriously (and punishing it socially) are practicing a kind of class discrimination as well, as the words have a different meaning in working class communities where they are used constantly than they do in middle/upper class communities where they're seldom or never used.

-Some say cussing liberally in everyday life gets rid of a useful escalation phase in conflict which can offer a chance to stave off violence. This has not been my experience.

-The other argument: it does actually hurt people. If "this is the most hurtful and extreme thing I could say" is what it means, I can see that. I'd prefer that in order to say the most hurtful and extreme thing they possibly could, people should have to exercise a little intelligence and creativity. I can see that leaving this shorthand intact would be helpful to inarticulate people, in situations where they see verbal and physical violence as their only options. But--there's a victim-blamey undertone in the idea that I ought to modify my language so that someone else can feel better about not hitting me, and that pisses me off.



Thoughts, anybody? I'd really like to hear arguments on this. Not that I will, but I take a perverse masochistic pleasure in asking anyway.

return of the myface

It's such a bizarre faux-personal world. Here are some uniquely alienating things about facebook:

1) Everyone seems like they're about to be having a fascinating conversation, but they aren't. People post cool stuff they've found, and they "like" it, and then. . . maybe a pithy comment or two. And that's all. But if you're on when your friends are on, there's a steady stream of new somethings in your news stream--a constant promise that real conversation might break out. It's perpetual, promising, dissatisfaction.

2) Facebook is full of people who I find interesting, but have trouble actually connecting with at all. Facebook will keep us nominally in touch for longer and longer periods of time, but doesn't change the fact that I've no idea how to make it anything more than stupid, expectant button clicks. Imagine a parakeet throwing itself against a glass wall over and over again.

3) I get caught up in the hypnotic stream of other people's "actions," which they probably don't get any more satisfaction out of than I do. Clicking buttons--joining the right groups, "liking" the right things--feels like getting something done. Except it doesn't accomplish anything. . . so you keep observing everyone else's faux-productivity (and a little of their real productivity) and feeling worse and worse about the fact that you aren't accomplishing anything while watching them, no matter how you click.

This is why I musn't spend more than about five minutes there on any given day. If someone wants to talk to me they can send me a God-damned email. That place is distracting.

disagree with his geographic scale, but otherwise. . .

"Not too far from us, a few blocks away, there are kids without enough to eat and without parents who care. A little farther away, hours by plane, are people who are unable to reach their goals because they live in a community that doesn't have the infrastructure to support them. A but farther away are people being brutally persecuted by their governments. And the world is filled with people who can't go to high school, never mind college, and who certainly can't spend their time focused on whether or not they get a good parking space at work.

And so, the obligation: don't settle.

To have all these advantages, all this momentum, all these opportunities and then settle for the mediocre, and then defend the status quo, and then worry about corporate politics--what a waste. . . I don't think we have any choice. I think we have an obligation to change the rules, to raise the bar, to play a different game, and to play it better than anyone has any right to believe is possible."


Said Seth Godin, in Tribes. Which is mostly a pep talk to help people overcome risk-averseness. . . but this, I've thought for a long time.

to not buy love

I keep coming back to how unfair it is that women's appearance has such impact on their social status. The* counterpart to this is wealth, on which men are unduly judged in all kinds of circumstances.

Being feminist, dating gives me a lot to chew on. By conservative estimates, being male is still worth five percent of your paycheck. For many women dating is an interview process for motherhood, a position of serious economic vulnerability. On some level, generosity and wealth are reasonable, non-discriminatory things to be attracted to.

However, after a certain number of dates with thirty-something geek businessmen who were "proud of their ability as a provider"--and who seemed both delighted by and impervious to my passion for social(ist) analysis--it became clear that accepting the existing system** wouldn't do.


Eventually I arrived at a sort of formula for handling this in my own life. I don't care how much money they don't have, as long as they are good at:

1) Meeting their own needs
2) Making me feel loved, cared for, and appreciated, and
3) Carrying their half of responsibility for a family, should that ever become relevant.

I would date someone who doesn't have these things covered, as long as fixing that was a serious priority in their life. It goes without saying that in the eventuality that finances are combined, communication is prioritized and agreements kept.

I also developed a romantic-gift rule. I'll guiltlessly accept gifts that are just to make me happy, but not gifts of things I need when I'm unable to comfortably take care of those basic needs myself. In a very serious relationship, I would also, carefully, accept gifts related to unmet basic needs, as long as they were targeted towards making me better able to independently meet those needs in the long run.

I like these rules. Clearly they aren't perfect for all situations; in the event of zombie apocalypse, the gift rule would get unwieldy fast. And my understanding of "half the responsibility for a family" is necessarily flexible and feminist, so in practice it would take a lot of discussion. Still, I love having clear boundaries that protect independence.





*the other counterpart is hight, which is interesting because the discrimination is severe, consistent, and not just in romance--despite the fact that being short is not something people have any control over.

**For me, a (theoretically happy?) relationship wherein I would eventually come live with him and have all my financial needs covered, and he would get this niftykeen quirky wife who was all special and smart, and handy for amusing conversation in the evenings and showing off to his friends. Yeech.

the more they change

The thing you have to understand about my parents is this; at some things, they were very, very, good. And at some things, they were very bad.



At certain moments around my family everything crumbles. We are laughing and joking and I feel the frantic eruption inside; invisible, I am desperate for someone to see me. We all hoist this buoyant mood, puffing at it like a balloon we can't let near the ground; this is our shield. If it drops--we don't talk or think about that. Keep puffing.

I become crass and obnoxiously loud. Someone, someone, someone someone someone look. Believe me. Justify my existence. With strangers, you can think someday they might understand; not so here. If the charade breaks, I will not be safe; in this place I am not real, not a person. At best collateral damage.



I used to read stories of escape and survival; my side of the mountain, the girl who owned a city, every apocalypse yarn. Now I read about monsters.

What we all might do, to be seen.










When we hid out behind the risers at the high school

Working bitter calculations with a slide rule

The grim particulars of poisoning the swimming pool

The way you looked me in the eye,

ready to die.



We were becoming what we are

Collapsing stars



When we chewed up children's Tylenol like bubblegum

Till our hearts were beating deep and rich as kettle drums

We knew if we waited long enough the change would come

And then the day did come, and at last



Hold tight

Hold fast

Catch lightning in a jar

collapsing stars



Told you to load up on provisions

We wouldn't be back for a while

Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag

Turn toward the camera and smile, smile, smile

When we ditched the plan to poison all our enemies

Tucked our weapons in a clearing, and covered them with leaves

We are gonna come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaths one day

Well we are on our way



You can look

But you won't find

Another love like ours

Collapsing stars



-the mountain goats