Emo Blog Of Doom

On books

2011-06-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

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. .

2011-06-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-19T11:23:00.001-07:00

“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

2011-06-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-04T12:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

{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

2011-05-21T21:56:00.000-07:00

"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

2011-05-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-05-08T14:37:00.001-07:00

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

2011-05-05T10:41:00.000-07:00

(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

2011-04-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-31T07:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-18T11:26:00.000-07:00

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--

2011-03-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-12T21:11:00.001-08:00

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. . .

2011-03-07T09:14:00.000-08:00

"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

2011-03-06T11:56:00.000-08:00

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

2011-03-03T23:54:00.000-08:00

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

growing up

2011-03-02T17:15:00.000-08:00

Awhile back, someone I knew and liked come to look at taking a room in my house. Someone I respected, though it feels silly to admit, because she was such a fabulous writer. I was accommodating--overly accommodating, Willie-Loman desperate. . . I could see it, but couldn't stop. She called a few weeks later and said that though she could, but she just thought she was looking for, exact words, "something a little more grown-up."

I was offended, but couldn't help but try and figure out what she'd meant. At twenty four, I wasn't young for the grad student housing market. And maybe Trisha and I weren't particularly domestic, but we weren't immature; after all, I thought, what could be more grown-up than holding down a job (or two, or three) and making your way in the world?

Then it occurred to me that I'd owned, and lived in, a house with wall to wall carpets for six months, but hadn't yet purchased a vacuum cleaner. I have no idea if that's what she was talking about, but I couldn't be angry after that.

Almost from the start I knew owning a house would force me to grow a lot. One of the most important lessons is that no one else is going to buy the vacuum cleaner. It's funny sometimes how one grows into these things.

clashing frameworks

2011-02-26T15:21:00.000-08:00

I think the reason we chafe, a little, against each other, is this. She believes like a consuming fire; in God, in the book of Mormon, in revelation. She believes those who hurt me would be far better off drowned in the sea with a millstone about their necks than when God gets a hold of them. Cast out, she still believes. She's sacrificed to hang on to God who loves her. God who loves Us.

And I, despite my best efforts, believe in the abusive patriarchy of Mormonism; it is one of my strongest and most deeply held beliefs. I believe in a system which, while apparently all right for some people, rips some of us into bloody little chunks and spits us out, with God at the head. My belief is like a glacier on which I'm alone in winter with broken legs, and it subsumes any faith I might once have had about God having good intentions towards me.

Still, she was very kind. And I'm grateful she's around.

essential reading for the pre-maritally chaste

2011-02-25T20:16:00.001-08:00

I'd Rather Eat Chocolate is the story of a woman and her husband sucessfully negotiating a large difference in sex drive. It's wonkers that this hasn't been done before, because it very intelligently addresses that one big surprise people who choose not to have sex before marriage face. It's funny and concise, and manages to give usefully detailed descriptions without getting gross or exhibitionist. I'd Rather Eat Chocolate covers a lot that inexperienced engaged couples would be wise to discuss.

I hate that she attributes the gap in libido solely to biological gender. For someone so articulate about the gendered sexual pressure she's under, she's impressively immune to the possibility that patriarchy could have adversely influenced her sexuality. By making it all about gender she also re-enforces the stigmatization of women who are extremely interested in sex, and especially men who aren't. This story and others like it are needed for all the low libido individuals out there (and those who might wish to partner them), not just the women.

But I love Sewell's description of coming to terms with her sexuality in a context where female sexuality is framed in terms of male desire. It's awesome to read how healthy it was for her to resist cultural pressure and refuse to have sex she didn't want, despite the complications; that's a lesson for everyone, regardless of how often they prefer to have sex.

Fat (part 2)

2011-02-22T19:34:00.000-08:00

The problem is, I have yet to see a piece of science that suggests diets work. I'm not even slightly interested in loosing ten pounds for a year, and I think most fat people aren't; the fantasy is thin, or at least average weight, and it must last forever. . . to satisfy the fantasy, anyway.

Not that ten pounds lighter wouldn't be welcome, but I'm not willing to make dieting an obsession for the rest of my life for ten pounds. Honestly, I'm not sure I'd be willing even to be seventy-five pounds lighter, though it's definitely a more attractive possibility.

But the chances of that, not to pun, are incredibly slim. Take this analysis of success rates at weight watchers:

"38,000 people who reached goal weight per year sounds like a lot. But actually it turns out to be a really small number. I found a business article from back then that stated that Weight Watchers had 600,000 attendees in the U.S. in 1993. Divide 38,000 lifetime members per year into 600,000 and my calculator says that each year only about 6% of Weight Watchers members (give or take) reached their goal weight (presumably 94% failed).

Now before you get all impressed with Weight Watcher’s 6% success rate, let’s step back. For one thing, the successful 6% weren’t so fat in the first place. The 2001 study says that most were between a BMI of 25-30 (i.e. “overweight” but not “obese” – to use definitions I find silly). The 2007 abstract says the average starting BMI for that study was 27 – which is well below the average Weight Watchers participant. So in order to achieve goal weight the average lifetime member probably had to lose less than 10 lbs and would have to include a lot of people who had even less to lose. [...]

And what about the number we’re really looking for – how many people actually become “normal” weight long-term using Weight Watchers? It turns out only 3.9% of the golden 6% were still at or below goal weight after 5 years. By my calculations that means 3.9%*6.3% = 0.24% or about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years."

Frustrating, because there's no indication what percentage of weight watchers attendees are there to maintain, or have an initial goal that would reasonably take them more than a year to reach. Still, all the evidence I've ever seen suggests that most dieters move from one diet to the next, and if most fall within that pattern, she should at least be in the right order of magnitude.

Then there are these excerpts from the same blog:

"Even in the studies with the longest follow-up times (of four or five years postdiet), the weight regain trajectories did not typically appear to level off (e.g., Hensrud, Weinsier, Darnell, & Hunter, 1994; Kramer, Jeffery, Forster, & Snell, 1989), suggesting that if participants were followed for even longer, their weight would continue to increase. It is important for policymakers to remember that weight regain does not necessarily end when researchers stop following study participants."

"Here’s something doctors don’t tell their patients: 41% of people who go on diets weigh more a few years after the diet, then they did before they began dieting.1 Since I’m a blogger, not a scientist, I’ll go ahead and make the irresponsible comparison: Dieting is significantly more likely to cause long-term weight gain than weight loss. That’s a Surgeon General’s warning that should appear on every diet program and product on the market."

Again with the frustrating; most people naturally gain some weight as they age, and arguably, Americans just gain weight over time in general, so the follow-up weight gain of dieters is meaningless unless one is comparing it to a control group.

There's so much bad science, and so much financially motivated science, in this field--it can be hard to wade through. Pro-diet sources define "success" at dieting in a way no human being does (like ten pounds for a year), and fat acceptance writers publish things like. . . well, like what I just quoted. It's not at all solid, but it is enough to give me pause about dieting. Supposing that dieting gives me only a 10% chance of reaching my goal weight, and a 20% chance of regaining more (above the curve or normal weight gain) than I've lost within five years, it would still a stupid move on my part.

anticipation

2011-02-21T11:34:00.000-08:00

1) Farmer's Market: I can not wait for it to open for the pre-season on May 7. . . almost three months away. :(

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was good, but I question Kingsolver's approach. First, she doesn't weigh the ecological and human cost of preserving local food to last through the winter against the costs of transporting it. Second, I get a knot in my stomach when someone who gets paid to write books and owns a small farm that they don't have to use is dismissive of working parents' need for convenience.

Still, she's sold me on in-season, organic local produce. Last year I gave myself 10$ a week to spend at the farmer's market; this year, I'm going to try and do as much of my grocery shopping there as possible while the season is on. I'm excited to plan cooking around what I find, and to ask diversified local farmers my gardening questions. And I'm excited about keeping my food dollars in my community. FMH introduced me to Smitten Kitchen, and even though their style is a little Martha Stewart for me, they definitely win at inspiring my vegetable lust.

2) Orthotics: being able to walk, outside a swimming pool, without pain. What's not to love? I get mine in 11 days. And counting.

Plus--and I don't say this lightly--my physical therapist is a kindred spirit. I've hated physical therapists since I was a toddler because it was SO clear they weren't listening to me. This one listens.

3) Writing: I've decided I need a writing group, but haven't quite figured out the best way to make it happen. Best idea so far? Sit in on a summer writing class--maybe creative writing, never done that--and mine for recruits. Once more with the waiting for May.

I'm of good cheer. :)

Fat (part 1)

2011-02-20T12:47:00.001-08:00

I am fat. 5'5, and 220-225 pounds. To paraphrase Kate Harding, I'm not ugly, lazy, stupid, unmotivated, or uninformed. In fact, I'm kind of nice looking, and reasonably smart. And fat. . . so please don't tell me I'm not; I prefer to be reality based. My desire to be thin--FoBt?--falls in three categories:

1) I want to be graceful and strong, and do things I love without excessive pain. Like hiking, backpacking, jujitsu, salsa, hip hop, marksmanship, West African dance, rock climbing, and ballet. Unlike, say, Ragen's*, my skeleton seems to have trouble holding itself together under pressure. This isn't caused by fat--everyone in my family has problems of this kind, including the skinnies. In theory, the pain and incapacitation are 100% solvable with lifestyle changes, under the bountiful supervision of a physical therapist or osteopath. My PT, God bless him, hasn't once mentioned my weight, but it doesn't take rocket science to guess it's exacerbating the problem. Also, chronic pain and chronic depression mutually re-enforce like a mofo. Those two problems take up a lot of my life.

2) I want to be considered attractive. It feels silly to complain about this, because I did ok in the genetic lottery. I don't face the penalties that people who have far-below-average looks get slapped with. Still, I'm looking for a partner--or at least I plan to be this decade--and it bothers me a lot that so many guys who would otherwise be attracted (and/or attractive) to me seem to find me entirely invisible as a woman, or to equate "attractive" with "not fat." I don't think anyone should be sexually invisible unless they choose it. It just so happens that being thin would solve it, in this case, for me. Likely, being thin would dramatically improve my social desirability in this culture generally. . . not that I'd know what to do with that, but still.

3) I want to live free of discrimination based on fat. The link between wage and BMI is very, very well documented--and, incidentally, much stronger for women than for men. If that weren't plenty, things like denial of medical care, even when the patient is clearly not at fault for their condition, happen all the time. 24% of nurses said they were "repulsed" by obese people; that's not how quality care happens. Even if they had any right to know, I don't have time to explain to everyone I meet that I've carefully made choices I felt were best for my health.

It might seem the choice is obvious--I should just try to loose weight. I'm a lot more stable than I used to be, and it could be a psychologically healthy option now . . but the choice isn't clear. That's all I'm going to say about it tonight. Yeah, I know, I'm all full of cliff hangers.

*squee!

boy is gone

2011-02-18T22:15:00.000-08:00

I'm adept at setting myself up as an object of pursuit. It's never so cold blooded while one is doing it; let me bask in your adoration. Let me distract myself with you; let me love you, in my limited, incapable, traitorous way, until the whole thing rots from the core. There is a power in being the object of unrequited love, even if it's painful and ugly, even if on some level--and eventually all levels--you hate it.

My power needs to come from somewhere else. This is not because of cruelty, although that would be enough; it's also antithetical to what I want most.

Equality or loneliness. We'll see which.

a bibliography

2011-02-17T20:52:00.000-08:00

So I promised my fellow bloomsburians that I would provide a bibliography on my presentation from tonight. It went swimmingly; they were awesome. Here (in no particular order) are the resources:

Stuff was the book that, for me started this all; I couldn't put it down. Although I was disappointed that it didn't cover the emotional relationship healthy people have with stuff as much as I'd hoped. This link also includes a scale of pictures by which people can measure their own level of clutter/potential hoarding.

A Perfect Mess is a rebellion against a culture that values neatness over efficiency, and a fun read. It explores the benefits of disorganization.

Organizing From the Inside Out is the organizing book my sisters all swear by. I found it useless when I could fit everything I owned into a metro, but these days I have to agree with them.

Spent, Memoirs of a Shopping Addict was a fascinating read as much for the peak inside high-fashion life as for the discussion of shopping addiction. It didn't contribute tons to the project, but it was an interesting read. The most compelling thing for me was how shopping addiction parallels eating disorders.*

Buried in Treasures was a treatment manual for compulsive hoarding. The behavioral modification techniques were interesting enough that I'd recommend anyone who is trying to change a seriously entrenched habit, and especially anyone who isn't satisfied with the way they get and keep objects, should have a look over it.

Cheap was an exploration of price expectations over time, starting with a local US economy and moving into a global one. Her discussions on craftsmanship, the science of pricing, and global labor issues were really inspiring.

You Don't Have to be Rich, I've mentioned here before. It was exceedingly thought provoking.

Other resources I drew upon include the children of hoarders website, the excellent story of stuff website, and the cheesy-but-weirdly-awesome PBS documentary Affluenza. If you're concerned about the environmental end of things, you may also want to check out this blog entry.

*I think the terrible relationship Americans have with food and the terrible relationship Americans have with stuff have similarities worth exploring. Recently I've read some great, very biased, very persuasive books that discuss how we deal with food. They definitely have flaws, but Omnivore's Dilemma changed the way I see food and the world, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was full of rich storytelling and helpful practical advice. The Elements of Cooking also had a big impact on how I see food. It is among my top ten books, and I highly recommend it if you're interested in exploring the sensuality of food, cooking as an art and a craft, and the depth of western culinary tradition.

there comes a time to invest in your day job

2011-02-15T11:38:00.001-08:00

By most measures, I have a great job. I'm in a growth industry. There is actual substance to it. I've accumulated years of experience; were I to buckle down and get some certifications, I could move up in the ranks, go full time, and eventually work anywhere I spoke the language. Relative to the options most of my (other) useless-associates-degree-or-less educated friends have available to them, it's also remarkably respectable; my job title says "educated and not a deadbeat" in a way that "industrial, retail, or agricultural worker," sadly, doesn't.

I read once about how this idea that we should seek fulfillment and satisfaction from the same thing that pays our rent can be crippling. At the time I was skeptical, but I'm starting to see the wisdom. Because this is my main complaint: I don't love this work. There are other downsides--most of my work challenges involve surmounting other people's easily preventable disorganization and miss-communication. It's hard sometimes to invest myself, because there's a certain meaninglessness to pulling your own weight in a system where the work you do isn't necessarily useful and the status "working poor" is increasingly standard.

But the main thing is that I don't want the life of a systems administrator. There's other work that I do love, and that I'm good at--writing, tutoring, maybe someday teaching. Maybe someday making documentaries. Maybe, someday, making community programs. I know what I want; the challenge is thriving in a system which works only to maximize profit and production, rather than (for instance) happy, virtuous, or connected human lives. And right now, what that comes down to is getting better at the things I don't love--the things that pay for everything else. I have a job that gives me the privilege of reading a lot and writing a lot, by giving me enough of my own time to do so. It gives me the privilege of going to city council meetings, ethics forums, protests. I have time to build relationships with people I can learn from, teach, care about--and time to figure myself out.

So it's time to get better at this job I sometimes hate. Maybe it will give me a better shot at all the things I love.

coming together

2011-02-10T19:37:00.000-08:00

Tonight I went to a UVEF study group, where we're reading Going Public. It was incredibly interesting and fulfilling. I've been looking my whole life for grownups who I could both respect and integrate into my social structure, and I'm finally finding them; they're passionate, educated, deeply involved in the community, disillusioned about environmental issues. They're the kind of people I can and want to work with, trying to get things done politically. Maybe someday I'll be more radical, but for now this is good. Plus, they liked my pumpkin muffins. :) Taking leftovers home is the sincerest form of flattery?

Tomorrow, I'm meeting Janice Allred to ask her questions about her work. I'm nervous and excited about this. She seems like an interesting person, but I've also spent so much of my life alone with my books that there's something a little magical about one of them talking back. Also, her account of her excommunication resonated very deeply with me, and I'm very grateful to her for publishing it.

Next week, I'm presenting at Bloomsbury (which I'm also nervous and excited about) about my research on people's relationship/s with physical objects.

Desired social life: a lot of time spent with smallish groups of people who make and do interesting productive things. Status? Getting there. I'll take it.

because people make it happen.

2011-02-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

I don't think my mother can relax; it's physically impossible for her. The best she can do is temporarily vacate, typically escaping into a fantasy novel, often with a bowl of ice cream. She is the hardest working person I've ever met.

And I'd like if she didn't have to continue scraping and finangling and working sixty hour weeks the rest of her life to take care of her children, which is what she has done for as long as I can remember. She has due dates and interest rates and fine print memorized, filed away neatly in some corner of her extremely impressive brain. I don't know how she does it, because I suspect those numbers are taking up the same spaces that, in my life, hold the stillness of a winter morning, the hot desert under my toes. What makes my life marginally bearable, she never notices, too busy doing work and getting things done and constantly talking and moving from place to place in a flurry of productivity.

But she does notice me. So she sat me down and asked what was wrong, and when I could stop crying enough to talk I explained that life was overwhelm. And I made my specifically chosen request, (because I'm too old now to ask her to wave a magic wand and make everything better), to help pay for physical therapy.

This was my compromise: make it so it doesn't hurt to walk, and I'll find a way to deal with everything else. Make it so if I get drunk and do ballet one night in my kitchen, I will not pay for it with pain all of the following week. Make it so I can get out of the car and pass through the mountains under open sky, and I will find a way to deal with skeezy editors and invisible bosses and sleep deprivation and child abuse and radon.

She said, "yes. This is not a hard problem. Your father being still physically there, but mentally gone, is a hard problem. This--well, go until you are better. Pay for it as much as you can yourself. Find out if you can get a sliding scale or something. But go until you get better."

"How?" Because it certainly looks like a hard problem to me, and I know enough about my parents finances to know it isn't there.

But this is what my mother does. She gives up herself to make impossible things happen. She responds with perfect calm to someone else's storm.

trying not to think about the flu, and

2011-02-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

whether perhaps I am inherently un-palatable.

I showed my therapist some of my unpublished writing, and now she can't decide whether I have Aspergers; "you're right," she says, "you are bordering on it." I think she's not sure. Maybe you're not supposed to be able to access that level of honesty and still be a normal human being. I am capable of keeping my mouth shut, but anxiously. My social anxiety isn't like the usual kind, she says. She is afraid of breaking me, by fixing it.

I'm pretty sure this could not happen without my consent, but still the idea is distressing. That I am so broken, or so wrong by nature, I would loose major parts of myself in learning how to function normally. That there is beauty in this structural abnormality. That to preserve this beauty, perhaps the pain will never go away. This idea makes me want to die. So, I'm trying not to think about it.

request

2011-02-02T21:56:00.000-08:00

There are some small but important modifications that need to be made for radon and fire safety on my house. Repairs are pretty daunting for me right now, mostly because of pain issues. I'm asking for help via blog because there's less pressure this way than asking face to face, and because you never know who might be willing/able that you'd never have thought to ask.

I need these things:

-time, competence with power tools, and an able body
-the use of a jigsaw or reciprocal saw
-scrap wood or metal might also be of use, though I can probably improvise with what I have on hand.

The saw is the biggest thing. I could rent one, but I'm worried about safely using it, between health issues and being a power-tool noob.

Please let me know if you can help. It would be deeply appreciated.

Much thanks-

Day

maybe a little conflicted

2011-02-01T16:28:00.000-08:00

I saw Bold Native at the animal allies club showing, and I've been somewhat floored by my own reaction to a movie that, over all, I liked a lot. In many ways it was a great film; in some, a film I've been waiting for. It was entertaining, engaging, and funny while intelligently bringing up very relevant ethical discussions. For a self-funded propaganda piece, it was spectacular. Afterwards I asked the film-makers: why is the left so stratified into single-issue organizations and causes, and how did they feel about (participating in) this?

They were in support of all forms of social justice. In fact, they just didn't understand why so many social justice activists drew the line at the edge of their species. They thought that the rape of cows for the production of dairy products was clearly a feminist issue. I heard several voicing approval in the audience behind me, and felt disoriented. Also a little sick.

Pathologically or not, at some point I came to associate my own safety--my own right to be safe--with feminism. At it's root, this is what my passion for feminism is all about; I want to be safe. I want a right to be safe. I want it to be unquestioned and upheld by all who surround me, even when this comes at a very high cost. I'm not going to argue that this always the most ethical thing, but however selfish, it's understandable that I should want this deeply.

Lest I'm unclear, when the choice comes between a cow being raped or myself, I want it to always be the cow. Always. Unquestionably. Without a shadow of a doubt or a moment of hesitation: I want it to be the cow. The usual animal-rights activist response to this is that you don't have to choose; you can (and should) be against the rape of everybody.

The problem is--you do have to choose. In principle you can coherently oppose it all but in practice you choose. To be spending time, energy, and money one one project inherently means you aren't spending those resources on something else. More than once I've watched in person while human beings were tortured, and been powerless to stop it. This very likely could have been prevented if the movement for protecting foster children were as active and involved as PETA. When you go through the effort it takes to make a movie entirely focused around animal rights, you are choosing to save the God damned fucking cow.

None of which negates the fact that we allow the creatures we eat to be treated in profoundly evil ways, all so we can pay less for a diet that's terrible for us and the planet.

the rare niefling-friendly post.

2011-01-30T20:14:00.001-08:00

P.S. someone who does this infinitely better than me, and somewhat more for grownups: hyperbole and a half. brilliant.

in favor of organized (anti-theist) religion

2011-01-28T12:32:00.000-08:00

1) If I had a visiting teacher, I would ask for this. I'd just go get my own, but I've got a vicious flu, and the merits (and road safety) of going out are dubious. Sadly, I disposed of my most recent one some months ago by pointing out that being called as my vt didn't give her the right to call me "baby" and "hon"--not after pretending I didn't exist through two years of classes together and a year of sharing a bus stop. No exploiting the system for me. Quel domage.

2) This, in the words of William J. Doherty's The Intentional Family, is the problem with being an atheist:

"For American families across all income strata and ethnic groups, religion provides a primary source of rituals of community. The great majority of American families belong to a religious organization of some sort, and on a typical weekend 41 percent of all families with children attend a religious service. In addition, families who are members of religious institutions are also more active in nonreligious community groups and organizations than are people who do not affiliate with a religious institution. In other words, religiously active families tend to be involved in all sorts of rituals of community."

Although, take note, "tend to be" does not mean "are," as I can attest to from my own intensely religious, but community starved and ritual hungry, upbringing. Doherty goes on to describe how his young family had benefited from the experienced multi-generational church community.

"What were the odds of us having someone like Judy and the other families be part of our community if we were not involved in a religious organization? Not very great. We could have tried to create a three-generational community around ourselves, but this would have been a full time job for a struggling young couple who were new to the area. A neighborhood community would also have been a possibility, but generally there are not weekly rituals of connection in most neighborhoods during with you can interact with dozens of people at different phases of the life cycle. The reality is that the most widely available source of family rituals of community is a church, synagogue, or mosque."

we'll strip-mine the other planets later

2011-01-23T15:24:00.001-08:00

I was puttering around at sociological images and saw this:

which really got me thinking. I consider trash disposal the least of our problems--but how huge it is, even this one thing. How horrifying. So I took inventory--what can I do? And what will I do? Because now that I consider my own life of value, not just my survival, the resources these efforts take compete not only with what I should do but with what I want to do.

Regarding possible changes, I'm struck by the role of community in determining how much it will cost me to make them. I'm lucky to have the housemates I do; they're fun, interesting, and smart, and I'm safer for living with them. But we have different priorities. Like usual for adults living together at our age, we're much more a mismatched boarding house than a unified household.

Maybe if I lived with crazy hippies we could sometimes eat together, and share in cooking and gardening, which would reduce need for convenience foods. We could get rid of the air conditioner and clothes dryer, make a group commitment to buying second-hand, share our cars and bicycles. There is nothing about these economies that inherently binds them to families and older adults. It's only preference, and a lack of infrastructure to put together relatively stable households with young people of similar values.

Lack of community damages us ecologically on a lot of levels. I use unnecessary resources most when I'm sad. Considering that young adults have high suicide rates as a group, I suspect I'm not alone in using material resources to manage depression when a stronger social network would do it better. People (even people who identify as anti-social) are happiest on average around other people.

It also creates the helplessness we face when considering environmental issues. Solar panels for your house are an attempt to replace unsustainable infrastructure you've already paid for once as "clean coal" plants and the attending medical bills. Using public transport and a bicycle means paying twice for transport--first through hefty tax-funded subsidies to the gas-guzzler system, then in the time and money it actually costs to ride your bike and take the bus.

There's a certain amount that every individual can and should do for the environment. Eating as sustainably as possible, conserving water and energy, not buying more stuff than we absolutely need, and carefully choosing what we do buy and use are measures we all ought to get used to. These are cultural standards we need to create.

But ultimately--in a country where car is a better predictor of employability than a high school diploma--the decisions that break us are made at a policy level. Personal and even cultural change are necessary but not sufficient. Political action using real power is the only way to necessary systemic change.

obvious but so important

2011-01-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

for dating:

1) have a healthy social life

2) be able to look after your own emotions

3) still want to date a given person under these circumstances

You want a different kind of partner for comfort, or for a crutch, than you would if trying to build something amazing. Even if the person might be the same, the relationship would be different.

dress

2011-01-18T06:57:00.000-08:00

Years after giving it away, I found the remnants of my baptism dress. It was on the floor at my sister's house, threadbare and faded from yet another life as a hand-me-down, cracker crumbs embedded in the hem and old banana ground into one sleeve. I picked it up, and when she said it was headed to DI anyway, carried it home, where it's now been sitting unwashed on the corner of the unused desk in my living room for months.

The thought that I might want to pass this down to my own daughter someday didn't survive my high school minimalism, but seeing the dress return like a ghost has given it weird significance. Not just an object, it represents a mental place, and an event for which I was supposed to be innocent and pure and old enough to make my own decisions. I keep it now because it records the size of my body when I was eight. I wanted it to say I was small and helpless, but it doesn't; it agrees with my medical records, 90th to 98th percentile hight and weight all though elementary.

The breakthrough would be: to believe it doesn't matter that I was big and strong for an eight year old. To believe it doesn't matter that I had already learned way-too-much (but not enough) about sex, or that I had a terrible, violent temper. To believe that regardless of all this, keeping me safe and teaching me how to deal with those parts of myself was someone else's job and not just a massive problem for me to fight alone.

inventions

2011-01-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

"Did you ever spend time in other places that had a different. . . vibe? Maybe a friend's house?"

I snort. Of course there were places that were different from home; a montage of memories presents itself. First grade teacher at my school, too much eye contact, voice anxious and tense: "I saw you walking to school this morning--you seemed. . . upset. Didn't seem to know which way to go. And I saw your father and your sister in the car, following behind."

My best friend Ashley's house when I was six, where everything was magical and spotless and clean; she had a collector's edition ice-skater Barbie that she wasn't even allowed to touch, except on special occasions. I was allowed to touch it too on those rare days, until she stopped talking to me.

"Of course," I said. "but that didn't mean I belonged there."

"So you never felt like you belonged."

Reflective listening at its finest. "No. I mean, occasionally there would be something--"

"But not very often. Those were pretty few and far between."

"Yes."

"And you've never really gotten to a point where you felt like you belonged."

This is a forgone conclusion. We are covering unrecoverable ground; it's a battle I've given up long since, and it's time to stop and work on something that might imaginably change. Even strangers say it, "You're really one of a kind, aren't you!," clasping one hand around my back and applauding some half-accidental feat. At these moments all I can do is smile awkwardly and nod, hoping the gesture reeks more of sarcasm than desperation. They have no idea at all why I've done what I've done, but they can tell I'm not like anybody else.

"I want you to think about this: what if that isn't true? What if it's just a lie your parents told you?"

I want to argue. At a certain point, if it was my parents telling me that lie, then the lie has to be true. It becomes true, a triumph of developmental psychology; if you never learn how to belong, you never will belong.

"But belonging is a social construct," I say. I don't think I've been making this up, and if she makes me abandon it that means I'll have to go out among other people without my cultivated and entirely false indifference.

"Just think about it."

I have a picture, recently obtained, of me as red riding hood and the wolf. She's blond ringlets and pale red lips, a cunning and aggressive seductress of four, perhaps five or six, no more than ten. Always looking older than her age, never old enough. Supernaturally strong and fast, not immortal but still delicate. An expert at social manipulation with no conscience, sharp miniature canines, and thousands of terrifying hungers. Like the wolf, she is perfectly turned out, finest clothes, perfect manners. She's restrained by practicality and a certain civilized manner that saves her from detection till it's too late, but there's something wild and insensibly vicious beneath. At odd moments, innocence and brutality shine through the corners of her eyes. She loves to run and to hunt; she is at best temporarily contained.

When we were sixteen, she singled out a loner and seduced him away from the herd until he fell in love. Then she invited him into the woods and ran him down patiently, like a wounded deer, before ripping his heart out with her teeth.

Much of my life since I was four or five or six has been devoted to containing this. . . keeping wolf in check, or with no likelihood of success, seeking bare redemption for her sins. And at every cost, trying not to let myself become her. How much is she even real, and how much a lie told by adults for whom reality was inconvenient?

Why I moved in to a camping trailer

2011-01-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

I have to say, for a business letter it's not bad. Primarily worth reading if you're interested in the sad state of tenant's rights.

Monday, 17 September

Dear Harmon Property Management,

Thank you for your notice of 12 September.

I have engaged in the ritual burning of sage once in the apartment, on moving in, as befits a cleansing ritual to a new space. It is impossible that what you found in the sink was ash. It seems likely to me that what was found was potting soil, as I use that sink to water my plants. I appreciate the management's concern for the resident's welfare.

Smudging, in violation of neither the lease nor the house rules,* involves burning bundled, ritually blessed herbs in controlled circumstances similar to the safe burning of incense. As the risks are similar to incense burning- which is not against fire code- I had no reason to believe that engaging in this ritual posed a significant hazard to anyone. If it is against fire code, I offer sincere apologies for the risk to people and property, and shall not smudge again (as I probably would have for Samhain) outside the fireplace.

As for the smoke detector, I too have noticed its absence, and would greatly appreciate its return--as per my move in checklist.

I request that the management provide me a read and signed copy of my move in checklist, which I returned in a timely manner on the 15th of August in accordance with the instruction given me.**

I have never wanted to stop Harman Property Management from finding someone else to live in bedroom B and split the utilities with us. The "nasty note" I placed on the bedroom door is a Gandhi quote, reading, "in the past we have had the options of violence and nonviolence; now we have the options of nonviolence and nonexistence." For literate readers it refers to nuclear proliferation, having nothing to do with the rental of the room or not. Though placing it on the door of a private room not rented to me was unwise, the outward facing side of the door constituted, aesthetically, public space. As neither the contract nor the house rules make reference to decoration of public space, I naturally assumed within reason this would be left to the discretion of residents. I repeatedly checked with the other residents about my use of public space, and received no notice from the management about wall hangings before it was removed. Once more, I request it returned.

The "nasty note" on the bathroom mirror merely requested that prospective tenants make the residents aware of their visits. It has caused significant emotional stress to the residents to have management in their home so constantly without proper notice, and for the management to make such strange and frequent demands, obviously based upon visits they had made without proper notice when the residents were not there.

Because this would have been more acceptable had the management been troubling themselves to maintain the residence, the note also referenced the most inconvenient of the unsatisfactory conditions, the plumbing/ hot water situation, and was posted next to copies of the work order forms previously submitted. It was to make an honest disclosure of the true condition of the property, and to convince the management to improve the condition of the property, as there are many problems that would not be perspicuous to one who has not lived there. The exact text and location of the note has been documented and is available upon request.

The only thing I have threatened anyone with is legal action. This is not grounds for eviction.

The bookshelf and plants in the hallway were not against contract, house rules, or fire code. Upon being asked to move the bookshelf, I filed a work order within days to have it moved to a location more suitable to the management's liking. Despite that it was instead moved to a location that blocks my access to furniture in my bedroom, that I can't move it anywhere myself for fear of further injuring my back, and that none of the other residents object to the bookshelf's original position in the hallway, I have kept nothing in the hallway since the bookshelf was moved except for the remaining wall hangings, which were not mentioned in the notice.

The objects I stored in the bathroom have all been grooming related. If the management wishes to limit the resident's right to store their hygiene objects in their bathrooms, this should be stated in the house rules, and in a more specific way than "the bathrooms are not to be used for storage" unless the residents are not to be permitted to keep anything in their bathrooms at all.

While there is nothing absurd or disturbing about a resident's right to a reasonably maintained property and the quiet enjoyment of the space they've paid for, I sincerely regret that your business experience leads you to believe otherwise. Neither should the ancient rituals of my faith, practiced safely and legally in my home, provoke such epithets. If you are uncomfortable with smudging as a religious practice, you should have said so earlier and should say so now directly, rather than resorting to disparagements such as “absurd” and “disturbing”. It is illegal to discriminate in provision of an open market rental on religious grounds, but reasonable people can often accommodate each other without having to resort to legal gotchas.

If there is any other way in which the management believes I am in violation of the lease, I here request that they please notify me so that I may comply.

Here also I request that the management respond to my correspondence to them dated September 12, an additional copy of which is attached.

(me)

P. S. In all future correspondence, please use correct names. At a minimum, that should include both the proper legal name and DBA, if any, of your business unit, the name of the responsible property manager with his or her license number, and the names and addresses of the landlords of this property. The Utah Department of Commerce appears to be unaware of any such entity as Harman Property Management.

* The office staff employed by Harmon Property Management would do well to take care that they do not falsely present the nature or existence of the house rules, and that they actually present them with the contract before signing; it seems this has been a problem on a number occasions in the past, and could create great inconvenience to all involved should this carelessness continue. They may also take into consideration a policy of conducting themselves with courtesy and respect towards the residents and any others they may encounter in a business setting.

**This should be accompanied by the addendum to the move in check list which I was given permission to make (and which I obtained a copy of at that time) that was turned in on the 16th of August, when I discovered further parts of the residence in need of repair. It should also be accompanied by copies of the work orders I turned in on the 16th of August, when I received “the house rules,” and on the 1st of September.

strange

2011-01-04T22:14:00.000-08:00

A) but good:

When you say to someone, "I'm feeling kinda depressed lately."

or

"I've stopped eating"

or

"I'm worried that I have some crap coming up, and I'll need more social support than I have over the next couple of months."

They tend to say: "oh."

But if you make an emo blog posting that basically says, "I'm feeling kinda depressed lately," they call you and say, "I saw your blog, and I'm just checking in."

or

"I saw your blog. . . are you ok?"

or

"I saw your blog. Come have an extra hug."

So. . . thanks. :)

It helps.

B) or just strange:

I made a list.

things I might want to spend time/effort/energy on, in order of their importance to me:

1) Survival
2) Self-respect
3) Improving my ability to get shit done (Executive function)
4) Good relationships (healthy, enjoyable, and fulfilling? someday, perhaps. . .)
5) Being able to care for myself
6) Being thin
7) Having a life work
8) Improving physical health
9) Learning French
10) Dancing
11) Learning music theory

12) (?) material independence? (I am not sure if this belongs on the list, or where it goes.)

notes on this list:

-It is weird.
-Virtually everything I spend time on or consider important is reflected here, somehow or other
-Items 8 through 12 all have specific weird explanations
-Items 1 and 2 vie for position, but I figure as long as I'm alive, if I irredeemably destroy my self-respect I can always kill myself later.
-I wonder if item 4 is appropriately placed. I mostly think it's ok. However, item 5 is likely a prerequisite for item 4. Reassuring.
-Items 6 and 7 switch order frequently. Here is evidenced the fucked-up-ness of me. The fact that I am honest about these priorities does not mean I've entirely accepted them.

depression

2011-01-02T06:59:00.000-08:00

My sadness is changing from ultramarine to light-sucking gunmetal gray. I avoid people because of little changes--the tone of their voice sounded not quite happy with me the last time I spoke to them on the phone, and I can't muster the energy to pay attention, to make the right voices and faces and make sure it's all right. I suspect this exhaustion is from therapy. But, maybe this is me.

Depression is embarrassing because it seems you ought to have fixed it already. Not should be, but is. However, it's good to see it arrive; the better to fight.

New year's resolutions: Take life more seriously and me less seriously. If I win, one is enough.

found (paradox)

2010-12-31T07:22:00.000-08:00

"But you want things," she said. "Once someone has a full blown eating disorder--anorexia, at least--they stop wanting things. It's all self-loathing."

It's true. Thinking back to the months when I had most trouble eating, I don't remember wanting anything except perhaps to die. I went through the motions--but I was even skipping dance classes. Then, someone came along who violently insisted I had the right to want things, at least the basic things, at least to stay alive and safe, and that was enough. It helped me un-stick myself, however painfully.

I remember the first ballet class, first day. It was horrific, hyper-extending knees, twisting ankles out of shape, trying to correct the curve of my lower spine without the muscles for it, the habitual tight warping of my shoulders gone sharp and searing. But also: a tiny teenage professor who didn't understand the limitations of my body, the dress code of (pink tights not manufactured in my size, black leotard, no warm ups) designed to rat out all rebellion from strict conformity. Also huge windows where non-dance students would pass by or stop and stare at us at will. It is difficult to express how much I hated my body in that hour. I resolved three or four times to quit in the duration of that class, but. I wanted to learn how to dance.

a list

2010-12-28T08:04:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me for a list of the books that have influenced me the most. I suspect he's looking for a list of books that more or less explain my philosophical and political positions--but a different list emerged. When I think of books that most influenced me, I think of Children of the Dust, which I picked up in middle school and could barely stand to finish reading. Somehow when I started it, I believed it a history. It played exactly into my parents' end-times survivalism, it complimented the gruesome but fascinating imagery of "events leading to the second coming," and it was terrifying. It may well be the source of a lifetime of nightmares about nuclear war. . . well, you know. That book, and reality.

That's influence. And why limit it to books?

When I was twelve, I'd learned repeatedly that sex was about shame, pain, coercion, more shame, and at best insanity-producing-guilt filled pleasure. I walked through the Smithsonian, saw a bronze copy of Rodin's the kiss, and it was revelation. Angels sang. Like a switch turning on the sun outside a dark cathedral, for the first time I got it--I finally understood it wasn't a lie, sex could be about love.

I read Ciardi's poetic interpretation of Dante's seventh circle and felt not quite so alone.

I saw Requiem for a Dream at a film festival, walked out alone in the middle of the night with the clear understanding that film could overwhelm my sensitivity to violence, and that this was worth being careful of.

I walked into the national gallery in London out of the gray rain, saw Van Gogh's Sunflowers against the blue wall, and understood for the first time why one travels thousands of miles to see a painting on the original canvas.

And after a summer of crying alone days and working nights--the summer of rape crisis training--David made me a scarf to help me not wear mourning. It drapes like a thneed, the color is like a sky so intense it's burning through your eyes, dashed with robin's egg--and when you touch it, it feels like kittens. Honest to God, kittens.

(Cue ________'s disturbing kitten joke here.)

Anyways, that other list is worth writing. . . but so, this.

hmph.

2010-12-27T00:08:00.000-08:00

1) I consistently want but can't find conversation and a hug at 11:30 Friday morning and 1:00 Monday morning. It's a statistically unambitious prediction, considering I almost always want a hug and very often want conversation, but still. For the loose.

2) Buying your house didn't become The American Dream (TM) until labor threatened to make progress in the 1930's, and it seemed prudent to see that every worker possible was owned by a bank. That worries me. Few of those workers were going to own their property outright while young, which I may. Still, do I want to devote half my remaining life to accumulating capital? Is that really a good idea? A better idea than paying rent, says the voice in my head.

There's no sitting out. There's no way to be a neutral player in this game. Also ftl.

midwinter

2010-12-24T23:50:00.000-08:00

1) Saw Black Swan, found it way too close to home. Frustrating, because it's the first serious ballet movie in a forever, but ballet looks like a plot device. . maybe not. Wondering whether I should see it repeatedly until it's less painful to watch, or if that would be self-destructive.

2) Finally made soup from the grain/bean mixture Adi gave me. Messy and time consuming, but filling and delicious. Cooking is. . . helpful. Deeply. I'm glad for it.

3) I'm not autistic because my executive function is high, specifically from self-awareness, learning, and memory. Not sure how I feel about this.

4) Contemplating plausibility of starting a commune in my house. Can I trust other people this much? Myself? Should I? Are my delinquent people skills are up to it?

5) Happy Midwinter, and a happy New Year. And merry Christmas. :)

logistics

2010-12-23T06:24:00.000-08:00

Doing a summer on the AT within the next three years is probably a pipe dream. It's not that I couldn't do it, if I were sufficiently single minded. It's just. . . if I want to have a career writing and filming nonfiction, my immediate resources need to go into completing a major project. And making it Good.

I'm pretty OK with that. Maybe this means I'm getting better?

Problem; I tend to work in very short, focused bursts, about a week to a month at a time. Embarrassingly enough, it took me about three hours to write that blog entry on Etcoff, and I spent a good chunk of the day finishing the book and thinking about it. I lived on pastries that day--not a lot of pastries (4.5), and not even good pastries (day old grocery store ones). This wasn't driven by my formidable sweet tooth; pastries are convenient. You pick them up and you eat them, ideally without putting down your book.

I'm pretty good at eating--eating meals, composed of real, healthy food that I like, on a regular but not excessive basis--when I cook. But when I cook, I want to cook. I plan which recipes to try, carefully select ingredients, and for a few days or weeks, I live in the kitchen--chopping vegetables, fine tuning flavors, foisting results on my house mates or family members, and cleaning up between batches.

Likewise, exercise. I can sustain hours of movement every day, possibly for years, if there's some major goal I'm working towards. Half an hour a day isn't enough to capture my imagination.

I need to learn to maintain things while I'm off chasing other things.

quality of work

2010-12-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

You Don't Have to be Rich is a meta-analysis of which financial habits and circumstances correlate with happiness. The book has some correlation vs. causation issues, but over all contains lots of interesting information. Here, for example, is a list of the factors that predict job satisfaction:

1) Job security

2) Relative income--people like to make at least as much as their co-workers.

3) Interaction with other people, especially a "tight knit sense of community." Smaller workplaces are better.

4) A challenge that requires use of skills--not busywork

5) Clear and well-defined goals, including feedback along the way.

6) Autonomy; the ability to make one's own decisions without being challenged, especially with regards to when and how objectives are to be met. If deadlines are externally imposed, coming from a customer > colleague > boss.

7) Small freedoms, such as the ability to telecommute at times, rearrange and/or decorate workspace, and having a short commute.

8) Variety in what tasks and skills are called for, as well as the location where the work is done.

9) Use of skills which are valued, and which one has invested in

10) Level of social status one's community affords to the work.

Chatzky suggests that if your job fulfills all of these things and you still don't like it, the problem is likely that you are time-poor. . . which goes back to the work/play/rest thing. She doesn't even consider that ethical concerns/contribution to a wider economic community are related to one's working life; she explicitly states these things are beyond one's control, and I'd bet they have a substantial impact on work satisfaction for some workers.

book report + half-baked feminist theory

2010-12-21T22:10:00.000-08:00

Survival of the Prettiest is an evolutionary psychology review of evidence on human physical attractiveness. The main point of the book is that people universally react to physical attractiveness, care about it, attribute virtue to it, and imitate it even at great resource cost. She portrays our hunger for physical attractiveness as an unstoppable force. Of greater concern to me, the benefits and detriments of appearance discrimination are unevenly distributed across gender, with women at major disadvantage.*

Men value physical attractiveness in a partner as much or more than women in every culture studied, and in most, by a wide margin. Attractive men benefit from their looks as much or more than attractive women, but unattractive women take a larger hit than men in all areas. Unattractive people of both genders face huge discrimination, larger than the benefits particularly attractive people reap. Happiness doesn't correlate to outlier attractiveness, especially for women. Appearance discrimination may be most obvious in mate selection, but has an enormous impact on social and economic success.

Below, I've summarized the actual findings on what's considered attractive, which Etcoff goes over in great length. However, there are two other findings mentioned in this book that I find extremely helpful.

First, we find people we know well to be more physically attractive, as well as finding their non-physical characteristics attractive. Second, there's some evidence that each person's notion of an attractive face comes from an averaging of all the faces they've been exposed to. This means that if photo-shopped supermodels and actresses make up a high percentage of our exposure to faces, we'll find them even more attractive than we would biologically. There also exists a contrast effect. After looking at pictures of extremely attractive women, men's desire to date average-looking women is lower than if they hadn't seen the pictures. This holds true in many circumstances; contrast effect can lower someone's satisfaction with an existing partner. Contrast effect impacts women's preferences as well, but less.

If we are interested in building communities and/or putting ourselves in situations where we are likely to be better, more ethical human beings, this has consequences. If Etcoff is right, it would reduce the inequality created by physical attractiveness if the human beauty we saw was mostly real people, in person. The structures currently in place (unprecedented in history, where we see thousands of images of genetic outliers in beauty doctored into further nonexistent perfection in order to sell us things) exaggerate our natural superficial preferences. Making our exposure an in-person experience would also allow people's less superficial traits a chance to be appreciated. It would give us a chance to be less superficial, a chance we don't get with pure image.

This might become an excuse for taking autonomy away from people "because they'll be happier if they don't have so many choices," and I don't know how to best to balance the values in play--particularly since I haven't even looked at research to weigh the quantity and quality of benefits. However, this is definitely an argument that anyone interested in gender equality should avoid images of human beauty unless there's substantial redeeming value involved.

*If it seems that I'm being excessively harsh on men here, know that I am aware of the two superficial-selection categories where men are judged infinitely more harshly than women--height and wealth. I am interested in seeing these problems solved as well.

Characteristics universally considered attractive across cultures are: clear skin, hight (although women can be penalized for hight in some cultures), a near-average body weight, symmetricalness, averageness of features, and thick healthy hair. The exceptions to the averageness-of-features rule vary by gender. Youth is considered attractive for everyone, but plays a much larger role in attractiveness for women.

For men, a face with features more masculine than average is preferred; this means facial hair, a larger jaw, and a lower for head. Faces in which these features are too exaggerated come off as threatening. Wide shoulders and generally large (but not too large, and in muscle, not fat) size everywhere but the waist is preferred. Men seem to care much more about muscles (on men) than women do, though both prefer some.

For women, full lips, big eyes, a higher forehead, a smaller chin, and shorter distance between mouth and chin are preferred. Many of the facial features that make women's faces particularly beautiful are also found in children's faces. Additionally, a waist-hip ratio between .6 and .8 is preferred, along with other details of body shape that are typically found among teenage girls and young women before they've born a child.

Beauty ideals that vary between cultures are somewhat predictable. Generally the characteristics of dominant or elite groups are beautiful; this can be seen most clearly . Characteristics that are unusual but native to the population, like blond or red hair among Europeans, are also considered beautiful. The strength of a culture's local beauty ideal is variable; currently, in the US, men's preference for a partner who is of average or below average weight surpasses preference for waist hip ratio.

Doom!

2010-12-20T10:37:00.000-08:00

Last night's involved a werewolf ripping out my left Achilles tendon with his teeth, but I figure it's time to move on.

I got around to reading a bunch of stuff related to the Janice Allred fiasco. I've been trying and trying to write on it, but the words come out skewed. Drowning in anger, I can't find the truth and I'm not interested in writing lies.

I'm triggered by authority, which is classic. Possibly the hardest part of rape crisis training was the half-day spent on AMACs, Adults Molested As Children. We AMACs are whiny and co-dependent; we sound like people I wouldn't want to know, let alone be. There's evidence we're more susceptible to abuse and sexual assault as adults; we don't look after ourselves. Makes us targets. AMACs have huge issues with trust, attachment, and authority that can render us very hard to deal with in a crisis situation. I don't remember what else they said, I was busy trying to breathe.

Church, authority, and family were mashed together for me when I was a kid. It should surprise no one that a constant chorous of "ETERNAL FAMILY FTW! And respect your father who is your God-given priesthood leader! And families are from God! And you should obey God!" would have that effect.

It's damned inconvenient. There are plenty of logical reasons to mistrust the people and institutions in charge, without having extra-strength visceral ones too.

again, plus gore

2010-12-19T15:07:00.000-08:00

Exhausted, laying on the couch at work to rest my back, my eyes drift closed. I need to cut my head off, and friends are standing around talking and laughing, examining various office objects that I might use to accomplish the task. Someone hands me a metal ball point pen, and I slowly begin the gruesome work by stabbing it into the side of my neck, pushing it deeper, working it around and pulling it out to stab again. Someone else hands me a pocket knife, I think how this might be easier, and the sadness hits me--I startle awake and go back to pacing when I remember I don't want to die.

not sleep

2010-12-18T02:19:00.000-08:00

I have trouble with basements, but out of practical necessity live in one. In mine. From time to time, I find myself not wanting to sleep there, and very patient room-mates eventually find me passed out on the couch.

The nightmares tend to obvious symbolic content that grows increasingly disturbing as I wake. In the last one, a doppleganger was picking off my friends and family, starting with those I loved the most; I killed her over and over, but nothing I could do would keep them safe. Every time she died, I had to smother her till there was a sharp exoskeletal crunch and her blood would burst out all over me. It was exhausting, tracking her down and crushing her time and time again. She would re-materialize from the blood on the floor, laughing, and sprint away far faster than I could follow.

Therapy

2010-12-16T06:49:00.000-08:00

They spend a day or three in rape crisis training teaching you about long term recovery. Group therapy is the norm for sexual assault survivors, because often there are certain things a rape victim won't believe from anyone except other rape victims. "It's not your fault," for instance.

CWCIC (which also provides services for men, despite the name) runs a sixteen week closed group for sexual assault survivors. The group covers a fixed curriculum; some people will go through it more than once, but there's a specific progression that takes place. One of the counselors I didn't get along with well was telling about something they do a few weeks into group, and laughing. "We do a spa day," she said with a chuckle. "Before the funding got cut, we used to take these women out to get their nails done," she said, "and they resist the idea so hard. They refuse. They start crying. It's almost impossible for them to do anything for themselves, to take care of anything beyond their basic needs. They feel like the should give it all to everyone else." The therapist found this infantile incompetence hilarious.

In retrospect I can see a certain morbid humor, but I was staring at her completely raw, serious, wounded, incredulous, and fully experiencing the thing she was making fun of--and she looked away, reproved. I felt there was a flashing neon sign above my head screaming BROKEN! and I couldn't turn it off. After all, normal people don't fight violently back when you make them a free, legitimate offer of professional pampering. Even now the, the concept strikes me as excessive, even offensive or obscene. I can't explain why, really.

The first seven months or so of therapy succeeded in convincing me that, though perhaps no one deserves to live, at least I don't deserve it particularly less than anyone else. Probably. And there's irony. When you don't believe you deserve anything for yourself except bare bones survival, you self-maintain so poorly that your ability to contribute is greatly less.

Friday night

2010-12-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

21:04

The library closed while I was in the shower. I'll be working more than 25 solitary hours in the next two days, and I've had little social interaction today; therapy was also this morning, and I feel unsteady. Yesterday, for the first time ever, I made a food plan--three days of menus, so that I'm not crushed with deciding what to eat. . and so I don't end up living on junk food I don't even like because it's in front of me and avoids the dilemma. Now I don't feel like making, or eating, the red lentil soup that's supposed to be dinner. Also, my favorite labor organizer is turning into a sociopath.

Ladies and gentlemen, I officially suck.

p.s. I eventually made the soup. It was delicious-- I'm looking forward to leftovers. For crazy folk who don't like lentils solely for textural reasons, it'll need a blender and cream. . .

and nonsense

2010-12-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking and reading a lot lately about stuff--material objects that we own, or want to own, or don't own, or love, or feel resentful about. I think it started a long time before I picked up this book, but seeing so much interesting information about the way human beings bond with objects all in one place was something of a fire starter.

Commodity fetishism and anti-consumerism have always struck me as particularly important and interesting, too. . . I think these topics are incredibly relevant to how ordinary people live their lives. The more I read, the clearer it becomes that I want to coalesce and present in an organized way. . .

Some things that drew me in:

-according to one of the videos I just linked, only 1% of what people buy is still in use six months later.

-advertising encourages us to adopt a "what we have" identity rather than a "what we do" identity. . . but the line between our experience and our possessions is hardly a sharp one.

-a willingness to spend money on non-essential possessions keeps a lot of people far more bound up in wage slavery than they might be.

-possessions often give people a deep sense of security, which is not unreasonable. With none, we would die.

I'm working my way through the literature on compulsive hoarding, after which I'll need to read at least Adorno's critical theory, and then some analysis of what an ecologically sustainable economy/consumption level would look like. . . And I want to interweave this with personal experiments. Suppose I track everything I acquire for two or three months; how many of the objects did I use? How many did I become attached to? What did I dispose of, and how? What could I have survived without? How much more did I consume than what would be ecologically sustainable? How do possessions influence my social status, place in the community, and ability to find satisfying connections with other people? How do these objects, and the other objects I own, interact with my sense of identity?

I am answer mining, from books and life.

Sci-fi? {1}

2010-12-06T00:04:00.000-08:00

Note: this was published o'er hastily after being jotted down around 1 am. A second version with basic edits is now below the original post, which is the italics. Please comment on the edits or suggest additional ones, if you feel at all inclined! Also. . . I've never tried sci-fi before. This is kind of fun. :)

Things are quiet on Pharmacon7 tonight, but there is still work left to do. Gregor has left the last section of this weekend's install to me, which shouldn't bother me, I guess, but what does that man do when he's on shift? Minding the station's data core is flawlessly boring, much of the time, and there's no record of disturbance in his log. Of course, that's why most of us will put up with this. It's like a deadbeat heaven.

The floor panels are heavy, so I curse the artificial gravity and make do with lifting two of them away from the grid to which they're attached. The blast of cold air pushes my hair back from my face and holds it there perfectly. Grabbing the sides of the grid-square I've just emptied, I lower myself into the chill. Attempting to make my way towards the nest--ten bundles of new cable to run along this strand--I find myself scooching gracelessly over cables, pipes, and power connectors the size of a fanboy's arm. The mounting brackets my instructions promised are conspicuously absent, I've been here for fourteen hours, and I can tell I'll be leaving them a tangled mess. No worry. Weave in, weave out, get them to the exit point and back above floor.

It isn't a hard job, but as I drag my heel over a taut raised wire that grounds the entire core, I'm sharply aware that the thin denim of my jeans (which are against dress code--thank God I didn't wear a skirt today. So much for the business casual we're required. . . or the space suits we wanted when we were kids?) wouldn't really insulate. . . not against that kind of voltage. While I'm not praying, I hope with the utmost sincerity that whoever wired these sockets had more training before I did when they were sent off on their own. In fact, it occurs to me to prefer that these aren't my handy-work. So to speak.

I slide the first floor panel back into place with a heavy snap, careful to keep my fingers free ("that's how you loose a finger!" Mike had said), and then kick dutifully at the second panel, nudging it back in line. When I finish, my ass is frozen solid and my hands smell like cabling grease that won't wash off for months. Welcome to the life.

Pharmacon7 is quiet, but there's still work left to do. Gregor left the last section of this weekend's install to me, which shouldn't bother me, I guess, but what does that man do when he's on shift? Minding the station's data core is flawlessly boring most of the time, and there's no record of disturbance in his log. Of course, that's why most of us will put up with this. It's like a deadbeat heaven.

The floor panels are heavy, so I curse the artificial gravity and make do with lifting two of them away from the grid to which they're attached. The blast of cold air pushes my hair back from my face and holds it there perfectly. Grabbing the sides of the grid-square I've just emptied, I lower myself into the chillspace. Attempting to make my way towards the nest--ten bundles of new cable to run along this strand--I scooch gracelessly over cables, coolant pipes, power connectors the size of a fanboy's arm. The mounting brackets my instructions promised are conspicuously absent, I've been here for fourteen hours, and I can tell I'll be leaving them a tangled mess. No matter. Weave in, weave out, just get them to the exit point and back above floor.

It isn't a hard job, but as I drag my heel over a taut raised wire that grounds the entire core, I'm sharply aware that the thin denim of my jeans (against dress code--thank God I didn't wear a skirt today. So much for business casual. . .) wouldn't insulate, not against that voltage. I hope with utmost sincerity that whoever wired these sockets got more training than I did before they were sent off on their own. In fact, it occurs to me to prefer that these aren't my handy-work, but on further consideration I'm pretty sure they are.

I slide the first floor panel back into place with a heavy snap, careful to keep my hands free ("that's how you loose a finger!" Mike had said), and then kick dutifully at the second panel, nudging it back in line. When I finish, my ass is frozen solid and my hands smell of cabling grease that never washes off. Welcome to the life.

Observations

2010-12-02T07:32:00.000-08:00

When I write in my notebooks/journals, I'm most often looking to convince myself that I have a plan, and life is going to be OK. When I blog, I am looking for attention and recognition--and generally I feel like I've gotten it simply because someone is reading. I'm guessing a dozen someones, actually, which as I've said, is gratifying.

Two unresolved things: one, I'm not sure how I feel about my own desire for attention--what kind of attention (and attention seeking) is healthy, and which isn't. . . so I need to figure that out. And two, neither of these sorts of writing is what I'm most interested in. I'm not sure yet of my best medium/s, but I want to articulate people's unspoken views in a way that resonates with them deeply. I want to incite people to attempt the impossible, a lot of people, and in so doing make it possible. Indeed, my ambitions are very low. Call me Rocinante.

I had a great conversation with one of my sisters (Patent Office Babe, we call her online, or sometimes Ivy) when she was visiting, which brought me to some conclusions about what I need to do to get to my work. I need to be a better listener, more open to the likelihood that I don't have everyone else's answers. I need to take myself far less seriously, and my work somewhat more seriously. I need to be less in love with my own words. I need practice; practice writing a lot, on a deadline, with an editor; practice composing images, practice capturing compelling moments on "film". And I need the companionship and collaboration of others who are productively working on similar projects. These things seem possible. It feels good to be working on them.

If I believed in God

2010-11-29T16:12:00.000-08:00

I would thank him for plumbing.

There is something clean about it, even when you are covered with a soup of scum, mold, and whatever else was covering the particle-board floor of your kitchen-sink cabinet. Plumbing is elegant: water goes down. Seals must be tight, valves well adjusted. Every piece is for a reason. Ninety seconds, six diagrams, and I know how everything is supposed to fit. Zen, or flow, or something.

And it isn't just that; everyone needs plumbing. No one is going to use their kitchen sink to be a better racist. Like any privilege, plumbing stratifies people--and as with any privilege, those who have automatically, at some deep level, begin to assume that those who don't have are at fault for their own lack. . . but no one is making the argument that other human beings don't deserve

plumbing. Sanitation. Hygiene. Hot running water to envelop your skin and make you feel a little more whole.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T20:13:00.000-08:00

In honor of the feasting/genocide-commemoration, some of my sisters and I are launching a food blog. I've been having brilliant fun writing for it, and after this we'll be posting every Tuesday. Read us only if you have to eat. ;)

good days

2010-11-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

Because of the fact that this blog is titled "Emo Blog of Doom," and because I feel somewhat desperately that survivor (maybe 10% of the population?) experience ought not be ghettoized, I don't apologize for the dark content.

But I also want to make clear that there are good days. There are times when I don't write because I'm so depressed. There are also times that I don't write because it's boring, when everything is just ok, and I'm trying not to think too hard about the things that stress me out. And then there are actual good days. Like today. I know if I explained the events of today objectively, they would not come of as particularly happy. The vomiting*, I imagine, would particularly seem like a downer. But I am feeling happy today; I have no major deadlines hanging over me, I'm getting things done at some sort of a reasonable pace, I'm surrounded by excellent books, and there are all these things:

-My roof is done. On. All the way. FINALLY! Thank you, Dad. :) This does not, objectively, vary so much from day to day, but it is starting to feel like the house might someday come under control.

-I HAVE A PIANO!!!!! Or rather, a very serious, professional quality performance keyboard (88 weighted keys and a petal) named Sigfried. Possibly the best Christmas present I've ever gotten.** I may finally learn to play as well as I'd like; we'll see how my habit of spending time with every piano I pass by holds out now that there's one in my living room. This whole topic will probably get it's own post.

-I came up with a solution of sorts, to my body worries. I'm mostly concerned about the damage I'm likely to sustain between now and when I have a healthy relationship with food. I believe I'll get there, and I'm very dedicated. But I also know that diets don't work so well, and I don't want to be stuck with a body that makes it hard or impossible for me to do things I love. So, I've decided to up the priority of a goal that's been on my list for a decade; spend a summer on the Appalachian trail. It's a huge goal, requiring a lot of saving, a lot of planning, and a lot of training, but it is an experience I want badly and have for a long time. And it should also, incidentally, re-set my metabolism and leave me in excellent shape. I should probably pick a subsidiary training goal to start with. :)

*because I've mentioned my delightful food pathos so recently: Involuntary. I have a rule about that, no need to worry.

**it would be, unequivocally, the best Christmas present ever, if it weren't for:

-last year my best friend designed and built a bench swing for me from scratch, specifically taking into account the furniture I'm most comfortable on, and choosing details to accent the architecture of my house. It is gorgeous, and so comfortable I can fall sleep on it.

-the year before that my parents cosigned with me on a house.

Stiff competition, ja? How spoiled am I? Sigfried is amazing.

Food II

2010-11-20T20:13:00.000-08:00

Sometimes therapy is vindication.

I get exhausted of eating. I get exhausted of choosing. There are breaks sometimes, but over time it's still destroying my health. I am loosing my arches. I spend time resting to relieve back pain most days, more than once a day the past few weeks. You know when you wear a big t-shirt swimming? That is how my fatness feels to me, as thought it's billowing up around me, enormous and uncontained. On bad days I wonder if I will simply eat until I die.

There are alternatives: drugs, alcohol, cutting, my old habit of constantly putting myself in dangerous situations. I've tried them all a few times, and they're all more effective than binge eating, a cleaner escape for those moments when you're afraid you can't bear another moment in your own skin. Choosing to overeat instead is about the least of evils. This is me digging my heels in, refusing to be taken all at once.

And though sometimes I've hated myself for it, I've chosen to eat too much instead of not enough very intentionally. It is easier to control. Not eating requires a certain commitment over time; it feels better, the longer you stick with it, and it's harder to break out of. That hollow feeling inside, once you've got the hang of it, is unbearably comforting. It is satisfying; it feels clean. And as much as this culture laughs at the fat girl who chooses to become more fat so that she will not be addicted to her own emptiness, I've been there enough to know. This risk is real.

None of it is sustainable, of course. I think maybe loosing the crutch of binge exercise is what's done me in, but I don't want to keep going like this. I'm tired of eating. I'm tired of being fat. I'm afraid that as time passes, this will become more of a compulsion, less of a choice.

So I asked my therapist--one of her specialties is eating disorders. And she told me I was right, right to worry about my hunger for emptiness spiraling completely out of control. She said she was worried about that too. I asked her what I should do, and she told me it won't go away until I figure out why I'm trying to kill myself, and deal with it.

food I

2010-11-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

I am in love and hate with food.

The love is deep and satisfying. Books about gourmet cooking hold my attention as well as the most escapist fantasy novels. Feeding people I care about really well, striking that perfect comforting or enlivening chord to make their day suddenly better, is intensely pleasing. I remember great meals, the interplay of flavors and textures and aromas, in vivid detail. I believe in food as art.

Cooking for myself is a gesture of respect. It serves my long-term welfare by saving money, and by developing a skill that will make it easier and easier to feed myself inexpensively and well as time goes on. Insisting on learning to cook brilliantly for myself is also a tool for battling disordered eating.

The hate, as hatred usually is, is complicated, destructive. Sadness can take me two ways. In one direction, I start by eliminating animal foods and sticking to whole grains. Deeper in, nothing but fresh fruit and undressed salad will do. Eventually the solid fruit seems like too much trouble; eventually nothing is good enough, anything would be a defilement. This has happened to me once. It is a path I try to avoid.

The other direction starts with baked goods, muffins, cookies, pastries. As things get emotionally darker I crave meat, ground pork, sausage, cheese. I crave things I find disgusting, things I find morally wrong. For awhile, I was sick and at the same time hungry for meat in this way. Every time I closed my eyes I would see feverish images, tearing off chunks of flesh from my own arm with my teeth, feel my body moving to cannibalize itself. In the worst of this place, I will eat until I take absolutely no pleasure, continue until it causes me pain.

Shallow

2010-11-08T19:00:00.000-08:00

This week I´ve been obsessing about ¨shallow¨ things. Beauty, possessions.

Our desire for beauty, including beauty in each other, is hardwired in. We treat beautiful people better. Life is unfair. We should try to be evenhanded with each other, but we should also not expect that this will succeed in making the appearance playing field fair. . . or even close.

I´m ok with that--and I´m ok with people doing things to level the playing field. Makeup, fashion, even plastic surgery. Here are the problems I see.

1) Men desire beauty more than women do, by about 30%. This is from Survival of the Prettiest. Additionally, many beauty practices emphasize aesthetic differences between the sexes.

Accepting that artificially enhanced beauty should be the norm, we run the risk of emphasizing the non-physical differences between the sexes as well. I would be fine with that if we had the science to understand what, and how big, those differences actually are, but we don´t. What we have are hints and possibilities, and thousands of years of speculation. And when I say speculation, I mostly mean patriarchal bullshit that uses the concept of essential difference as a justification for oppression.

2) Artificially enhanced beauty takes time and money. Right now, there´s a minimum standard of beauty practices that women must engage in to send the message that they care about how they look. That minimum standard is rising. It sort of looks to me like an arms race, with a lot of horrible waste.

3) For the most part, public discourse is insipid and superficial. I think we should openly and shamelessly acknowledge that we want beauty, but put limits on what we are willing to sacrifice (or have others sacrifice) for that desire. Currently, we seem to not acknowledge it--we treat it like a dirty secret, shyly acknowledging that ¨of course I want to look my best, and be healthy¨ while de-facto we treat it as though there is nothing more important.

A culture that fails to put clear limits on what is socially acceptable to sacrifice for beauty runs the risk of that arms race going fatal--which, indeed, it has. Anorexia, with a 20% kill rate, is the most fatal mental disorder. Major plastic surgery (general anestesia always carries a risk of death) is becoming increasingly accessible and common. And of course, countless lives are wasted peace-meal--not for their own satisfaction, but merely attempting to keep up.

And now for a spinal PSA

2010-11-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

When I went to the hospital for my most recent back injury, the fact sheet they gave me said that one in four Americans will experience disabling back pain in their lifetime. It´s like a modern plague. Being active sometimes helps and sometimes hurts. It´s easy to re-injure yourself by being too active. Typically, without treatment there will be a series of progressively worse injuries over time.

Happily, I found a great physical therapist, and he gave me a list of ways to know you´re pushing it too hard. If your pain is behaving in these ways, take a day off, then gently get back to core strengthening exercises the day after.

1) Pain that spreads from your back to your buttocks, hips, or legs, or if the symptoms are are already having in these areas become more intense or move further down the leg.

2) Pain that steadily increases to an unacceptable level.

3) Increased pain for more than 1-2 hours following an activity that limits what you are able to do.

4) Delayed pain later that day or the next morning that limits what you are able to do.

5) Pain that increases a little bit every time you do something.

some most important things

2010-10-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

1) The person who sexually abused me was sadistic about it, mostly emotionally sadistic. Fear leaves less obvious marks than pain, and she used our fear in very intentional ways. This was about control. As best I remember, she preferred the unwilling. By a lot.

2) The person who sexually abused me was a child herself at the time. She is now one of my closest friends.

This was not an easy process, and obviously it isn´t always a comfortable friendship, but I think it was the most honest thing to do. I genuinely like her and enjoy her company. She is not the same person now that she was as a child. There was a long time of separation, and then I slowly came to know the person she had become as an adult.

As I write these words, that she is not the same, I wonder at them. Am I being honest? Am I hiding from myself? Am I betraying myself? Do I believe this? She´s not as different as I would sometimes like.

But she is not the same. And I believe in forgiveness; I believe in letting people become something different, if they´re desperately trying to, if they´re willing to behave differently, instead of locking them into what they were in your head. Someone who messed up before they were twelve deserves that. This, I unreservedly believe.

3) As far as I can tell, the response (or more often, lack of a response) and the cultural atmosphere in which I grew up did at least as much damage as the actual abuse. This atmosphere consisted significantly of my parents doing their best to create a gospel centered home. I alternate between being angry at God/Mormonism and wanting nothing to do with him. More later on this.

4) My parents, who I love and respect, were very negligent.

5) I am ashamed of all of the preceding items.

What makes trauma trauma is that your brain can´t quite handle it. You can´t grasp that this is actually happening to you. If it is happening to you, and it really, really isn't your fault, that means it could happen any time and it is completely out of your control.

That weigh is crushing, and frequently trauma victims will completely re-invent themselves to avoid it. I caused this, and so I must become as different as possible to stop it from happening again. It doesn´t work, of course; it can always happen again. And once you´ve accepted the adaptive premise that this is all your fault, the shame is permeating, brutal, reasonless, and nearly impossible to contain.

6) Lastly (again), in Andrea Dworkin´s words:

¨As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I've talked to over the past ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you've seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.¨

balances and hesitations

2010-10-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post, put it out Monday morning just after midnight, and then took it down when I woke at 8 am. Apparently I am uncertain about this.

I thought about deleting the whole blog after I published the first entry in this series.

The downsides are obvious. Privacy is classier. Other people´s privacy is also in question. Telling these kinds of stories with the utmost of honesty that you can possibly muster can be difficult and ungraceful, and it isn´t fullproof. Memory is deeply fallible. Once public one is open to reactions that can be unbelieveably harsh.

And here are my reasons for wanting to speak--to tell. I am tired of living in a society which puts survivor´s stories in a ghetto. I want freedom to talk about something that impacts me every single day without creating the assumption that this thing is all I am, and I want other survivors to have that freedom as well. Given how common sexual assault is, the fact that we consider it an event every time someone references sexual assault in their own history is an indicator of enforced silence.

I want people to talk about it, to argue about it, to have ideas of what should be done about it. I want the less usual aspects of my own situation, which have informed my world-view very deeply, to be taken into the argument; I want people to understand where I am coming from, and I want them to think it is valid. I want people to know that I am not an aberration, that despite their relative infrequency, there are many other people who have had experiences similar to mine. And we should do something about them.

The price for this uncertain reward is making my personal life a matter of public record.

I haven´t accomplished much of that

2010-10-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

Not yet, anyway. I´ve traveled enough to know that I need it like books and air and dancing. I´ve traveled enough to know that the samosas they sell at the tube stop in London are perfect in the rain, that your breath at an airport in Singapore is heavy and wet with orchids, that Montreal in winter is beautiful grey and blue, and that Australia is just like I imagined it, except better. I´ve traveled enough to know you don´t need a map for trips in a country where you have the language and some currency--just time, an ability to enjoy it, a sense of adventure.

The boy I fell in love with was a terrible lead, but it didn´t make him less wonderful. I forgot to imagine that he wouldn´t fall in love with me, or the mess that would ensue. Hard to say if I want to let go. Wouldn´t it be worse to lose the pain, wouldn´t it be letting go of the good parts too? When I may not find them again?

I never won anything significant in ballroom, but there were moments in ballet class that I would want to live in forever if I could make them keep going. I got a rare but substantial education, mostly by reading chapters at a time and listening to interesting people talk. I won bouts with people twice my size in jujitsu. I learned enough math to see for myself that it can be beautiful, and to not be daunted by any numbers that get used regularly in the real world, even by economists. I have a house, a sort of home maybe. . . maybe. With time.

But there have been other areas of richness--and that´s what I´m after, really, richness of experience--that were not the things I dreamed about.

I think the teen years are important

2010-10-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

because that´s when you can first start to see who you are and what you might want to do with your life. People used to ask me what I wanted, and I was a little shy of words; I wanted my life to be good. I wanted it to be rich, and full, and. . . something. I didn´t know exactly what.

I think I imagined wandering the capitals of Europe with only a backpack, staying behind a few days here and there to linger with interesting strangers, stealing naps in parks in the afternoons and crashing exhausted at a hostel in the early hours of the morning. I imagined playing my harp in the parks for strangers all over France. I imagined being the middle school teacher who performed Nirvana for class with the amp turned up, found a way to harness all that innocent idealism, and discussed the geopolitical implications of shoe choices. I imagined speaking five languages and wallowing in Dostoevsky and learning to knife fight. I imagined running, climbing, crossing India and north Africa on camel back, spending an entire summer on the Appalachian trail. I thought of joining the foreign service.

I imagined winning college ballroom competitions, falling in love with somebody smart, insightful, and kind who was also a great lead, and then teaching English with him at a tiny school in China where we´d both learn Mandarin and Tai-Chi. I imagined building a three-room, off-grid house of straw bales, with a dance studio, a huge claw footed tub, and a sleeping loft that doubled as a library. I imagined forty acres with goats and a soccer pitch, a forest and a running trail paved with soft sand where I could train barefoot every day I was home. I imagined that someday there would be at least one book, natural as hair turning gray, once I had something clear to say.

Very little of that has come true, but I have succeeded in some things. I have become only moderately unhappy, an accomplishment I refuse to be ashamed of. Even though it´s not enough.

2010-10-19T20:11:00.000-07:00

I wrote another post, and now I can´t find it. It was about rape crisis team training. Rape crisis team training, two weeks of studying rape for several hours a day. Everyone needs a hobby?

Maybe I´ll post it later, but for now I will say this. Here is the nightmare part: After more than forty hours of intensive training on child abuse and nearly two years as a CASA, I didn't make it through rape crisis team training. For a month and a half I couldn't sleep more than a few hours at a stretch. I made plans to lay out sheets of plastic in the back yard to contain the blood splatter, and thought about buying a gun. I spent my mornings alone in the bright sunlight, crying uncontrollably and trying to keep the nausea from swallowing me whole.

Maybe it takes me, or someone similarly fucked up, to have drama associated with rape crisis training, but drama there was. I was fragile as hell, abrasive, moving my car each day after training got out so that no one could see me when I broke down immediately after class. They agreed I shouldn´t be on the team and I couldn´t argue with that, but I did want to talk about it, wanted to understand. They asked me not to talk or ask questions in training. They said I wasn´t right for the team at this time. Later they said I wasn´t right for it at all.

And here is the not-nightmare part: Rape crisis training woke me up. It made me realize how much my past was still effecting me, but it also made me realize something could be done. It made me realize that maybe, maybe my life could be different.

So the third time I seriously considered buying a gun, I put myself on check-ins with family, let them know what was going on.

Industrial strength emo, now with triggers! No, seriously. This is your trigger warning.

2010-10-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

It gets old sometimes, to always be about becoming. I wish so desperately sometimes that I would get there, get somewhere. If you're a "joy in the journey" type, know that some journeys are not enjoyable. It's not that my life doesn't have good times in it. I've had many good times, but on the whole it hasn't been good. I mentioned the possibility of suicide in my journal almost as soon as I could write, and yesterday I found an old assignment from high school where I was supposed to make a poster about my hopes and dreams, but I only drew a tombstone.

At the time I thought it was funny; it's not a morbid tombstone, it's light and pretty, brown on a white page with flowers and grass all around. I'm not obsessed with death, just very sad. And as much as I would like to say, "it doesn't matter, I'm over it, what happened two decades ago is staying in the past," it's not. It matters every day. It's impossible to say how you would be different if you hadn't been raped and neglected when you were very young; you can only guess.

Personally, I guess that I would not be obsessed past reason with gender, feminism, and violence. I guess that I would not be afraid of people. I guess that other people wouldn't find me to be as difficult, as standoffish, as prickly. I guess that I wouldn't be overwhelmed by emotions, past the point of coping, most days. I guess that I would at least have a shot at a healthy relationship with food. I guess I wouldn't wish I had not been born; I guess I would not find both abstinence and abortion preferable to the sick feeling I get when I think that I might put a child through something like my life.

Usually when I lie, it is because I'm afraid I would not be believed if I told the truth. This is the truth. I don't know what you would think if you saw the things I lived through when I was a kid. I don't know if you would believe that it was enough to justify how much I hurt. I am afraid you will think I'm just constitutionally disposed against being able to handle life. I am afraid you'll think I'm faking. I'm afraid I am faking. Sometimes I have to startle myself with the objective facts, remind myself that this is real.

Over the next few entries, I will be telling some of my story.

and now for something completely different

2010-10-14T22:12:00.001-07:00

A little while ago, a friend of mine was defending the importance of play and he told me that most primates spend about a third of their day sleeping, a third working, and one third playing. This hit me hard; what would the world be like if we fully expected that humans naturally should spend one third of their lives playing? Not to implicate capitalism, but we live in a production obsessed culture. Play and rest are looked down on as things we ¨don´t have time for.¨Obviously it´s no given that we should try to be like other primates, but I can´t help feeling that this time they may have something.

I asked people what they thought of this, and got a lot of interesting responses. Hyper-busy friends stared at me exhaustedly, as though this was the least realistic suggestion they´d ever heard; I got the feeling they thought I was spoiled for considering it--except for one, who thought it was one of the most brilliant ideas he´d ever heard. One friend suggested that we can say work is mostly about productivity, while play is mostly about creativity. As I continued obsessing, the following items took shape. If we´re serious about spending a third of our lives at play:

1) Then we should think about how to make play-life satisfying just like we think about how to make work-life satisfying. A lot of people are bogged down by bad play. My friend brought up the importance of making time for play a priority because he studies procrastination, and apparently when you pretend you don´t need play, you start playing when you´re supposed to be working. This comes out to be both unsatisfying and unproductive--bad play, and not work.

2) Housework and transportation have to be counted as work. If you work 40 hours a week, that leaves about 16 hours for housework and transportation. In this case, pretending to be primates has some delightful implications for feminism; treating housework as part of the work-week (which should be the same duration for both genders) is probably essential to a feminist way of life.

3) In order for childrearing to work while maintaining a full play schedule, parents and young children need to do things together that feel like play for both of them for 56 hours of the week. Plausible? Maybe, maybe not, but it´s interesting to think about.

4) Then we have to wonder--given modern technology and productive capacity, is there any reason a person who has no disabilities should have to work more than 56 hours per week?

Like an Anarchist Baker

2010-10-07T08:27:00.000-07:00

I saw this really awesome post over at Sociological Images and I thought it was totally worth a post here. This is what Third Way says our tax dollars are going to:

Here in Republican Utah, there are few real issues that provoke more enthusiastic approval than condemnation of excessive government spending. In the spirit of the locale, I offer (off the top of my head) the tax receipt I'd rather be getting. It's a little like the "if I were to win the lottery" game, except that it's the "if I were to reform capitalism" game. Clearly one is far less likely than the other.

1) Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid: We can't say much for ourselves as a people if we fail to care for our ill and our elderly. If someone has a suggestion for a system that will genuinely do a better job, I'm all for it.

2) Interest on the National Debt: Obviously should be eliminated over time via management.

3) Combat Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Military Personnel, and Veteran's Benefits: Cut it all, honoring current contracts until they run out, but using the labor to build infrastructure in the US instead of killing people.

4) National Parks: Hells yes.

5) Federal Highways: 50% should be put into Amtrak. Will the highways become overcrowded, ill-maintained, and impractical to use? Yes. Alternately, we could pay for all road maintenance out of fuel taxes. Sometimes it's better to make life worse sooner instead of later.

6) Health Care Research: Dunno enough about it.

7) Foreign Aid: Should go into sustainability R&D with open patent rights. If you weren't aware, currently it goes into propping up violent dictatorships in the name of "democracy."

8) Education for Low Income K-12: Of course. Also, radical school system reform.

9) Military Retirement: Pay out existing contracts, and then funds should be used to fund a new military system of mandatory-participation militias which engage in no conflicts off of American soil.

10) Pell Grants for Low Income College Students: See #8.

11) NASA: Yes, for aesthetic reasons.

12) IRS: You have to have some overhead and some tax collection if you're going to have a government at all. . .

13) Environmental Clean Up: Keep, and increase fines on polluters enough to a)give the EPA some teeth, and b)cover the increased operational costs of increased enforcement.

14) FBI: I'm proposing a society where everyone knows how to use an assault rifle, and there are no professional killers. Do you really think we'd still need it? Maybe keep half.

15) Head Start: After well over a decade, the gains made in head start still disappear by the end of elementary school. This money should go to adult literacy programs and educational resources for parents instead.

16) Public Housing: Don't know enough about it, but I want to drop it in favor of aggressive squatters rights.

17) Drug Enforcement Agency: No. All drugs should be legal. The taxes on said drugs should cover the cost of law enforcement, recreational substance education, healthcare, safe and clean public using houses, and all other costs to the public.

18) Amtrak: go trains!

19) The Smithsonian and Funding for the Arts: Keep, though it should be more democratically controlled.

20) Salaries and Benefits for Members of Congress: There are lots of different ways this could be done (all better than the current system), but off the top of my head here's one. We should create an aggressive definition of corruption and treat it as a criminal offense instead of a civil one. Then we should maintain a zero tolerance policy when enforcing it, and members of congress should have to live on the minimum wage bills they put through. We expect our school teachers to be volunteers, I don't see why we should treat politicians better.

Anyone else want to play?

failday

2010-10-05T12:37:00.000-07:00

Today has been a weird sort of day. Things can seem to go so well, and then I randomly fall apart. Physical therapy was good; today, almost no pain--but then.

I find myself I find myself not eating; an egg, a small potato, a cup of cocoa, this is two meals. Lapses like this are accidental. I am so tired of food, it just means that whatever there is to cook feels like so much trouble, and I want to curl up and die. For most people it wouldn't matter, but I seem to be a two year old, insufferable if I miss my snack. No one wants to talk to me, I'm mad at myself for needing, and I find myself naked between smooth sheets, comforted by cotton weave against my warm skin, crying, sleeping.

Stress: they are having trouble paying me for my writing. Paperwork, an understandable mistake. I find paperwork overwhelming, like each sheet is a ream, and if I pick it up I'll drop it, they'll all fall across the floor. The bills are multiplying, I can't quite seem to keep track. Over and over I did the math, it should add up but no one wants to fix my roof, and then there's the cost of therapy I didn't factor in. My desk literally overflows, I wonder when I was supposed to have got the skills to manage this.

And doesn't everyone of our generation have baggage? Of course. I can't explain why mine is special, please don't ask. Please. Don't tell me I'm not worth it as a friend, or if you do, do it by not calling and never writing back. You are almost perfect, your geeky awkwardness and cerebral introspection and beautiful face and flattery and kindness. You are exactly my type and I am so, so tired of hurting people. Thinking of you makes my stomach hurt. I didn't mean to let you think it was a date.

But, today, no pain; it saves me. I can stand and breathe. Two pairs of fat wool socks, soft loose warm-ups, black cotton boat-neck and white lace. I go to the computer and write; this is what it is like when my day fails. And now I will go and fix it.

last night I read Mockingjay

2010-09-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

You don't have to know me long to learn I'm obsessed with one theme in entertainment: women's competence with violence. This, and associated themes (women's safety, gender roles, competence with violence in general, whether competence in other things can ever consistently overcome violence, violence and gender identity, violence and any identity, etc.) dominate what I watch and read. This has now been true for over a decade. I watched Catwoman, Electra, Tomb Raider, and all of Dark Angel. My favorite escapism often comes from Kim Harrison and Laurell K Hamilton, and I read the entire Fearless series* as quickly as I could get my hands on it.

That said, I hope you understand what I find most interesting about Hunger Games. First, whatever I was looking for when watching Catwoman and reading Anita Blake, Hunger Games--the first book--satisfied it completely. I didn't realize that was possible. Second, it didn't occur to me that the first book was a story about violence until some time after I'd finished reading. Despite that, this is the most bitter, broken, angry story about violence and womanhood that I've ever encountered. I think it is also somewhat true.

Much is made, in these stories, of rebellion--the defiant, reluctant, catastrophic or resigned. I see rebellion embodied in Katniss Everdeen's approach to violence. To start with, Katniss is extremely good at it, and we are not made to hate her for this fact. Opposite of almost every other story about women and violence, Katniss Everdeen's violence is squarely separate from her sexuality. In fact, though gender does play a role, her world is almost hypnotically asexual. Our heroine is tough and scarred and bitter, and believably so. And though she is feminine and pure, Katniss is not innocent, nor a victim. I wonder if such complexity is too much for this culture to process, and that's why the sexuality is withheld. An asexual Katniss harkens to Artemis. This is safer, and still unbearably refreshing.

Katniss is thin and beautiful, but these are not the things she considers to be important about herself. At certain moments, she's very comfortably feminine, but she has things to take care of that rank far higher on her own agenda than beauty or romance. Her appearance--with its surface level indicators of sexuality that don't always run deeper--is mostly of interest to those who wish to use her. Stylists are all-important, and cameras are omnipresent. Cameras make Katniss valuable. This relatively benign form of manipulation, widely accepted in our current society, is crucial to the story and has a dark underside. From the start, as she participates in the first spectacle of Hunger Games, it is her association with the cameras that forces Katniss into violence against other human beings. As the story progresses, it is ultimately the fallout of her un-sought pr power that escalates her violence and her exposure to the violence of others. . . an escalation that is paralleled by an increase in the importance of her appearance on camera.

Katniss is traumatized by her own violence, but not until the uncontrollable gore of the final story is she ashamed of it. Above all, and rightly, she rails instead against those who placed her in situations where she was forced to use it. She never stops hating it, never stops mourning it, and never stops being harmed by it, but she also never hesitates to do whatever it is that needs to be done. It isn't her only virtue, but the driving force in her life is an absolute willingness to do whatever it takes, including sacrificing her own life, to protect the people she loves. This, for once, doesn't bother me. Like her family, Gail and Peeta show us what Katniss can't have. At home in the story, they demonstrate what violence, trauma, and the experience of being constantly manipulated take even from the most capable and resilient survivors. Sometimes it can't be returned.

*young adult cookie-cutter novels. The protagonist is a beautiful but sloppy, depressed, and unfeminine-feeling girl. She has an inability to feel fear, coupled with nearly super-human fighting skills, and somehow has a reason to beat someone up about once every six seconds.

Objectification is really interesting.

2010-09-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

In the embarrassingly recent past, I came to the realization that, in my dating life, I was not in the habit of regarding men as people. As conditioned, I saw them as fundamentally different from me, in a way that should have made them magically able (and willing?) to fix everything, have all the answers, and have much greater control of their lives than I could have of mine. Because husbands and fathers are supposed to be in charge, and you're supposed to be able to trust them with that, right?

So that's how I objectified my romantic partners, seeing only a certain role, instead of whole human beings. It can be an amazing struggle to remember just let people be what they are (which is to say, people, with doubts and struggles and just as many imperfections as you), but ultimately I find I'm way more stable when I don't go into relationships expecting other human beings to be magical.

I'm fine with some objectification, because I see some objectification as being inherent in physical sexuality. To have physical sex, it seems like, to some degree, you have to experience bodies as objects. Even if the psychological aspects are terribly important to you, there will be some moments when you're far more immediately concerned with your partner's body than with their mind, and I don't see anything wrong with that. This places me at odds with the feminists who say objectification of female bodies is always misogynistic, and I wish someone would explain their point of view to me in a way that makes sense.

Objectification is a problem when the main story a culture tells about some group describes them primarily as objects, rather than as complex, rounded, people--when it fails to say they have complex desires and preferences which ought to be respected. As a crash course, the main story most cultures tell about women is centered around the Madonna/whore dichotomy. In one way or another, this turns women into sexual objects--not sexual human beings. Unlike Madonnas and whores, sexual human beings sometimes want to have sex and sometimes don't, a concept that's proven remarkably difficult to take mainstream. Perhaps even more importantly, sexual human beings have other facets (an intellect, relationships, creativity, career, etc.) which will sometimes be more important to them than sex.

The main story US culture tells about men is about competence, success, and power. Men have a serious cultural advantage over women because this narrative includes a lot more aspects of a human being than just sexuality and care-taking. On the other hand, this advantage is not unlimited. A lot of men who want to engage in relationships as human beings (they may or may not have decided that they also want relationships with human beings) find that they are expected, among other things, to be endlessly, inhumanly competent.*

*Edward, I'm talking 'bout YOU.

2010-09-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

Dear man in the hat,

I love you. Marry me?

Love,

Day

livelihood

2010-09-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

I found another job, one that I really, really like. In fact, it seems almost too good to be true; I work from home--nestled between the huge east and south facing windows in my living room--I research, I write articles, and I get paid enough to live on. Probably. It's difficult to emphasize the awesomeness of this enough. I love researching, and the articles I'm writing are short enough that, so far at least, I never get bored of a topic. Writing thousands of words for publication every day is exciting, because I know that even without great editing, my writing skills are going up. As an added bonus, there's a good chance that a freelancing career could grow out of this.

My only concern is that I get tired. Instead of writing anything as fast as I possibly can, I try to write things I'd want to read. I love this. It's creatively and intellectually demanding, which is fun, but at a point you need the day to be over. I haven't figured out yet exactly how to set my workload. One of the things I love the most is that I work hard at it; I love the feeling of working hard, and well, and knowing that I'm contributing something real. The particular tech sector I've been working in for the past couple of years is something of a breeding ground for complacency.

Also, I'm terrified that this is too good to be true.

As a result of the new job and a couple of other windfalls, I've had a week or two of not worrying about money--not because I was so exhausted from worrying that I just gave up, but because there was actually money in the bank to pay the bills, and more besides. Or so it appeared. I do not remember a time like this in my life. Yes, I've saved money and paid the bills on time before, but I haven't done that and also spent money on things I needed, when I needed them. Having that taste of financial security is incredibly encouraging; the level of stress it removes from your life is amazing.

going on with me

2010-09-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

This month is my twenty-sixth birthday. Twenty-six scares me a bit; your brain wiring is pretty much set by that age. I'm scared I can never teach myself to be happy, or to have a good working life. And I'm scared because I feel like I'm going to die young, a PTSD thing, I guess.

Besides fixing up the house, my struggles over the past year or so have basically amount to this: a) making enough money to live on, b) managing chronic pain, and c) fighting serious emotional/psychological problems related to repeated trauma and childhood neglect. I started working on the psychological stuff, and ran into financial barriers; I working on improving my physical health, and ran into financial barriers; lately I've been working on my finances, with the beginnings of good success.

Unfortunately, working--especially when you're laying the groundwork for better conditions in the long run--is really time consuming, and despite the relief that came from catching up with finances, physical and emotional health have started to slide. Physically, this culminated in injuring my back, which was surprisingly not bad. I talked to a doctor who was really encouraging about long term prognosis. I got time off work to rest, and drugs that will help me rest and recover faster. The day before the injury, I bought a punch card for ballet and yoga classes, so as soon as I'm ready, I'm set to start moving again in really healthy ways. I'm dealing with things better than before.

A lot of the emotional stuff comes down to time. I need to spend more time taking care of myself, particularly journaling and the like. I might be starting therapy again in the next couple of months, which will be overwhelming and time consuming, probably. I also think I need more/different friends.

I love the friends I have, and enjoy them a lot. However, I tend to put a lot of time into most of my friendships. If she's into gaming, I'll try gaming. If she's a stay at home mom, I'll hang out and talk while she gets dishes done. I read everyone's blog. That's how I'm used to doing most friendships. I'm fine with this because I get a lot out of these friendships. I give more time, but they reciprocate with different things; a steady stream of home-made food and a place to get away from my problems when I'm stressed out, or gorgeous handmade gifts that make me feel happy and loved when I look at them, or hundreds of enthusiastic niefling hugs.

I'm now busier, and lonely for certain things. I want to be listened to by someone who is really interested, and cares what's going on with me; that's part of why I'm writing this. I want more good conversation, and a certain amount of touch. I want company sometimes when I'm doing things that are fun and enrich my own life.

But that's all. Someone asked who filled this role for me in the past, and the answer is no one. I've never been this functional before. I've never needed my own time so much, or taken care of myself so well. I've never been able to say, I just need these things, but other than that, I'm good. It's always been triage. More functional than ever before may not be fancy, but it's not a bad place to stop and celebrate.

change

2010-08-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

I'm growing up--facing the needs attached to the life I want to live, and trying to take responsibility for them. Like most workers of my generation, I often have two or three jobs. I--we--try to develop a resume, while not depending too hard on one source of cash. The freedom to sell ourselves to several buyers at once is often all the autonomy we have in our working lives.

The dignity of making choices about your own life hangs on the ability to quit, and quitting means you have to have a backup. So, we either live in fear of our jobs--putting up with sexual harassment, terrible working conditions, and a profound vacuum of respect and care--or we have a backup. That's how it works. The level of shit we are forced to put up with is directly proportional to the quality of our backups, and the quality of our backups is usually not good.

For socialists, playing the patchwork-livelihood card has other complications. A first world worker in an imperialist system, I'm privileged, but am I significantly privileged among first world workers? If so, what to do about it? I managed to escape my early twenties with good credit and virtually no debt. I'm better educated than some university graduates. I have a house. I'm single and childless. Like myself, most people I know who have options can trace this back to someone else's work, usually a husband or parent. There's no obvious, effective way to share these advantages around. . . you know, other than systemic change.

R E S P E C T,

2010-08-23T11:31:00.000-07:00

I've been reading the blog of a dear friend who suggests that sometimes you need anger to re-affirm your self-respect. This idea makes me a little sad, because I think it has something to do with the sickness in our construction of masculinity. . . but I don't think he's wrong.

Thinking about it, I realized that I haven't had a lot of trouble respecting myself in my life, though I have had a lot of trouble liking myself, and often assume everybody else will too. I used to sacrifice a lot of things for my self respect. I believed adult human-beings (including myself) were basically undeserving, and I did my utmost to behave accordingly. Now that I'm some months in to my self indulgent/taking-care-of-myself phase, I've been giving some thought to what self-respect is going to look like for me, in the future.

I still believe that self-respect is basically about integrity*--about living in accordance to that which you most deeply believe, and not being ashamed of it. And I still believe that others will inevitably respond to self-respect by returning it. It can be terrifying to believe in the value of every human life. It's an enormous demand, because so many of us are treated so poorly, so much of the time. . . but an interesting challenge to contemplate.

*a word that gives me the creeps a bit, I think because I saw it misused so much for religious propaganda in young women's. Pooh.

ill-repute.

2010-08-10T16:09:00.000-07:00

For the people who have been telling me since kindergarden that I think I'm all that, and for the relatives who don't read this blog because it has too many big words, I am your loss, which I'm down with. For the people I've bullshitted to, substituting a keen sense of exactly how much I can get away with for the rewards of deeper honesty, you are my loss, I am sorry.

I've been reading this book on "launching your personal brand," which is not quite as terrible as it sounds. Close. Beneath the stink of yesterday's trends is an (accidentally) insightful commentary on reputation, which is old, stolid, inevitable. The most authentic parts of you are seldom what anyone is willing to pay you for, but authenticity speaks to us, in the marketplace where we are starved for it as much as anywhere else.

I don't know when I came to the conclusion that God would strike me down with lightning if the people around me doubted for an instant that I was Smart. But at some point--maybe being forced to live with myself for long hours in the simple dark, maybe learning just how much it is that I love sunlight--I began to let it go.

I like physics, and like philosophy--even school philosophy--but not nearly enough to devote my life to either of them. I've been driven to that in an attempt to prove myself, seeking the rubber stamp, but maybe it's no good; maybe the rubber stamp will crush you. Maybe I'm worth not being crushed.

Of course I care what people think. I want them to think I'm nice, that I'm pretty, that I'm smart; I want them to think my taste is good and I'm not too weird and my breath doesn't smell bad. Commonly, I want to be the one insightful voice that resonates so deeply and so compellingly that they can't forget or disagree with me--I want to be so smart that people love me. Sometimes it works. Sort of. Strategy wise, I can't recommend it--I've heard physical beauty works better, maybe you can give me some tips.

And, of course, it's no accident people who accomplish something have often spent some time alone. And it's no accident that in letting go of some of the expectations of others, I realize I've already accomplished a lot that I care about.

this is how it works

2010-08-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a fantastic animation which all of you should watch, even if I have already sent it to you twice. And here are some of the most interesting things it says:

For tasks which involve any sort of higher cognitive function, paying people more for them will decrease performance.

If you really want people to perform well at complex cognitive tasks, the thing to do is "pay them enough that they don't have to worry about money," and then incentivize them with autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

There's so much interesting in these few concepts that I can barely begin to unpack, but here's two things.

Escapism: From Harry Potter to Grey's Anatomy, from Pern to Stephen King to Lord of the Rings to Twilight, it seems to always offer a world where we can fantasize ourselves into lives of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Often in fantasy contexts mastery is about the main character's slow development of their unusual supernatural abilities; often in romance stories, the purpose given to the main character is simply to love and be loved.

In virtually all cases, autonomy is key; even if the characters we relate to are trapped in narrow and precarious situations, their unique abilities make their choices wider (or at least feel wider, because they are so different) than our own. If you find yourself constantly drawn to escapism (like I do), it seems like a fair bet that the characters you are reading about give you a much more satisfying sense of mastery, autonomy, and purpose than your own life.

Enoughness: I want to know what it means to pay people well enough that they don't have to worry about money. This is fantastically interesting to me, because I'm interested in human flourishing--in seeing people reach their potential--and understanding what kind of material support is needed in order for flourishing to happen seems paramount. Here's what I've come up with.

People will probably worry about money if they perceive that a lack of money is preventing them from having one or more of these things:

Food

Housing

Medical care, including pain relief and some preventative care

Physical safety

Satisfying emotional self-expression

Opportunities for personal and professional growth; choices about livelihood. This includes needs like education, variety, and adventure.

Beauty

A sense of belonging and respect in their community

Satisfying relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners and/or potential romantic partners

Opportunities for meaningful work, including the opportunity to raise children with resources they consider sufficient for the task

I have a theory that if people felt these needs were being met, necessity creep--people's rising standards of what material goods are essential to their existence--would be relatively easy to control. What do you all think?

misdirected hate

2010-08-08T07:41:00.000-07:00

This is the quote that makes me love Andrea Dworkin:

"It is true that we had to talk to each other. How else, after all, were we supposed to find out that each of us was not the only woman in the world not asking for it to whom rape or battery had ever happened? We couldn't read it in the newspapers, not then. We couldn't find a book about it. But you do know and now the question is what you are going to do; and so your shame and your guilt are very much beside the point. They don't matter to us at all, in any way. They're not good enough. They don't do anything.

As a feminist, I carry the rape of all the women I've talked to over the past ten years personally with me. As a woman, I carry my own rape with me. Do you remember pictures that you've seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.

I speak for many feminists, not only myself, when I tell you that I am tired of what I know and sad beyond any words I have about what has already been done to women up to this point, now, up to 2:24 p.m. on this day, here in this place.

And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less--it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.

I dare you to try it. I demand that you try it. I don't mind begging you to try it. What else could you possibly be here to do? What else could this movement possibly mean? What else could matter so much?

And on that day, that day of truce, that day when not one woman is raped, we will begin the real practice of equality, because we can't begin it before that day. Before that day it means nothing because it is nothing: it is not real; it is not true. But on that day it becomes real. And then, instead of rape we will for the first time in our lives--both men and women--begin to experience freedom. If you have a conception of freedom that includes the existence of rape, you are wrong. You cannot change what you say you want to change. For myself, I want to experience just one day of real freedom before I die. I leave you here to do that for me and for the women whom you say you love."

2010-08-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

You don't want to call them bad things, because then the piling up would become overwhelming, and before long you would have to start thinking of your life as intolerable. Instead of "bad," you think of them as difficult; challenges, to be divided and conquered. You sort of hyperfocus and try not to notice all of them at once. This (you say, surveying the wreckage) is only difficult, I only worry about the problem that's in front of me, a mountain to be scaled, nothing more. And after that, it will be the next mountain, and the next, instead of some intolerable mess of suffocating badness, like being strangled in a sea of cooked spaghetti.

It works, most of the time. I think a lot of people do this.

Here's the dilemma; how do you do one mountain at a time when you're ADHD? Seriously. I've recently observed that I can jump into something and stay consistent, put time into it every day--for more or less three weeks, at which point my attention attempts mutiny. Problems don't seem to come in bite size chunks. . . God forbid I should need a bigger mouth?

2010-07-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

"if she's right, and the majority of Twihards aren't necessarily interested in Team Jacob or Team Edward but on Team Female Protagonist Who Isn't Drinking Cosmos And Bitching About Her High Powered Magazine Job Whilst Wearing Designer Shoes And Looking Like A Movie Star. . ."

2010-06-03T15:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Yoga,

thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.

nothing like breath to make you feel not-drowning.

love,

Day

2010-06-01T21:51:00.000-07:00

Tired, and so many things left to work on. Need to study for work stuff before I go to bed; want to goof off. Want to call a friend. Want a hug. Dishes, laundry, lawn needs mowing, haven't made any progress on the driveway for days, bloggy things I need to write, various portions of my house direly need cleaning, sleep--all of this feels pressing.

What I have done today: made a new friend, confronted my therapist, wrote in my journal, read two chapters of a trashy vampire story, slept when my back hurt, went on a long walk, thought about life, slow gentle yoga. And now this. Priorities, priorities.

But, I feel OK. This is what it's all for?

2010-05-31T10:14:00.000-07:00

How do you say, “I'd like to finish your class, but trying not to want to kill myself seems to be a full time job?”

I wonder if I'm not doing something right, or if I'm just irreconcilably broken. Maybe that crucial part was knocked off long ago, like the rear view mirror came off that Cadillac when your teenage son backed it in too close to the mailbox. Or the time he didn't know what the fuck he was doing when he tried to rebuild the engine.

Some days I wake in the morning and my skin feels tauntingly intact. I would give anything just to be held, but my craving for someone to take a baseball bat or a knife to my back seems like a more honest version of the same desire. So I do the dishes; try not to cry, shake it off. Keep moving. Get dressed. Do something else. Fight. Remember to want to fight. Try, at least, to remember.

It's tempting to just tell her to give me a fail, leave it with everything else in the wreckage behind me. There's legitimacy here; I am trying, really, to build something new. New things need space to grow. The idea of tapping out is liberating, but also, angry and frustrating and sad. I love this work; I don't just like it. It uses me, all the intellectual muscle built up from years of reading useless crap that was never going to be any good to me if I was a physicist or a dancer. It's about taking the things I was inexorably drawn to, almost against my will, and weaving them into something useful and beautiful and real. I don't want to loose it forever.

2010-05-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

"Young wives are the leading asset of corporate power. They want the suburbs, a house, a settled life, and respectability. They want society to see that they have exchanged themselves for something of value."

-Ralph Nader

2010-05-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

I was flipping through some old notes, and, being the lazybug that I am, thought today might be a good time for a "what did Marx actually say?" moment. Specifically, here's the ten point program he put forward in the Communist Manifesto (word for word but the emphasis is mine):

1) Abolition of property in land and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2) A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3) Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4) Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5) Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6) Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state.

7) Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8) Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9) Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.

10) Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

Interesting, no? Before you decide this (other than those parts that have been implemented already, which you like) is the most evil thing you ever heard, a few thoughts on interpreting it.

First, remember that it's highly contextual. This is what Marx thought would, generally, be a good political agenda for a communist party in "the most advanced countries" in the 1840's and 50's. It's extremely situational, instrumental. We encourage you to come up with a program suitable to your own context.

Second--I think this is the most important caveat of communism--remember that what we are looking for is a republic which exists for the sake of its people, particularly its most common people. Most of us in the United States have noticed that the government is no longer by or for us, so it's natural that we hesitate to engage. It's also natural that we don't want to give it any more of ourselves--our time, energy, funds--than we have to. To consider communism is to commit an egregiously assertive act of imagination. What would it be like, we ask, if our government were actually, fundamentally, for us? How could we make this happen?

Rather than being a distilled version of Marxist theory, the list is a thought-provoking historical artifact. Some items are contextual oddities; but the sections I've bolded, for instance, are the foundations of any meaningful equality of opportunity--let us all stand on the work of our own lives. And the sections italicized can be summarized: reclaim and protect a commons that can serve us all equally and well.

2010-05-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

My front yard has become weirdly important, ever since someone suggested it as a way to deal with fear. When fear is such a big part of you and your life, honor it; do the things you reasonably can to be more safe. Then after you've tried that, after you've given yourself that chance, choose the compromises you want, if you decide on the trade-off for more time and freedom.

As far as the outside of the house goes, the idea is "show no weakness"; don't look like a victim. Don't look like a target. It's become a very tiny, personal crusade. I find myself watching all the time--which houses seem like easy marks, like places where you could get away with it? Which ones don't? More tangibly, what are the details that make that difference? My goal is: just from looking, it will be clear that someone cares enough about the people in this house not to let things slide. Just from looking, it will be obvious that we who live here are well taken care of.

It's an enlightening study. Learning to do is hard, but so is learning to see, and suddenly there's the obvious connection that I've never made; to make things so clean and tidy and neat like that, to make a space that emanates strength, you have to be aware of your surroundings. You have to notice little details. It's a natural connection, so much more than just learning to bother--which is important enough on its own.

Somehow this is more important to me than everything else I should be working on. It's a slow building; half a step, stand back, consider--what can I do, with the tools I have? With the strength I have? How many more days will it take to finish weeding around the driveway? What other tools would be good for the job? Is there any way I might take that stump out by myself? Will it make a difference to sweep away that dirt, does that edge need to be straightened? Is there a solution to the weeds next to the house without buying pavers? My imagination is on walkabout; this will be a showplace, beautiful, clean, bountiful, precise, liveable. Just keep working every day, thousands of baby steps.

Stages and details of maintaining an everyday life are so new to me. What I'm probably best at, in fact, is keeping it nominally together after everything has gone to shit--and assuming that it's always going to be that way. I am scraping a different life from weeds and black clay, handful by handful.

2010-05-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

Humans need each other; independence isn't about pretending we don't. Independence is having some measure of control over your relationships.* I imagine there are healthier and less healthy ways to go about this. Maybe healthy independence means being able to maintain a standard of how you will interact with others--how you will deal with needing and being needed--and being able to walk away from relationships that insist on violating that standard.

Of course, by definition it also must mean building relationships, of some kind--and keeping them. Because humans, we need each other.

*Credit for this insight goes to Tyrel.

2010-05-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

Maybe morning should be my blogging time; it seems to be when I'm feeling suitably melodramatic.

Today for the first time I wonder if it might have been a mistake to buy the house. Like me, it wants for so much fixing. We are both high maintenance, leaky, cracked, jerry-rigged but still beautiful, needy if we're being honest with ourselves, and I wonder if there's really room in this life for the both of us; there don't seem to be enough resources to sustain us.

For the first time I remember, I've started craving sunshine so much I can't enjoy rain. I miss the overwhelming, careless plant growth that happens everywhere back east. I'm hungry for blues and browns and greens, for ultramarine and scarlet, for distilled malachite and skies so bright you can barely see. I'm hungry for wet heat that slams into you like a wall when you walk out of the air conditioning at the airport, wide lazy rivers that are barely cool at all, and the lush, dense forest that asserts itself when water is no object--where nothing chokes out life but other life.

This is better, probably--it's a different kind of sadness than what I'm used to. The old things are still present, but this is here also--carrot, tantalizing, painful but drawing me from my rut. I hope.

2010-05-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

1) depression. Woke this morning and imagined an enormous pallet load of red bricks falling from above as a packed mass, bones crunching, blood spatters everywhere.

2) deleting facebook and some other online accounts in hopes of focusing on real friendships.

3) Had dinner with some friends, and it was wonderful! Pale blue damask on the coffee table, crystal stemware, leg cramps, spicy chickpeas, and low-stress interesting conversation that made me wonder about gregorian chants and Wittgenstien and music school. Let me take this moment to reveal how much I sometimes love being a grown-up.

4) love--contemplating feeling unloved. . . which I do, almost all the time. Wah wah. This will be another post.

5) happy would look like light, and color, and music--and love. Thinking of how to go about it.

also safe.

2010-05-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

Confession: what I have been thinking about is fashion. Part of this taking-care-of-myself nonsense. How very women's magazine.

History? Armchair fashionista, all longing and anger and doom.

I started without a chance, no money, sacks of old hand-me-downs many times picked over, two blocks from the public library. I can tell you about the Dior dress. I can tell you about thread count, and rayon viscosity, and the de-constructed genius of Chanel. I can identify silk and cashmere from their synthetic counterparts by touch, from walking down the aisles of value village and examining every piece, from stealing into banana republic for moments at a time only to fondle and gape.

I wear enormous men's wool hiking socks under four year old sauconys, layers of plain threadbare t-shirts, black thrift-store jeans, sometimes hats.

I resent my passion, because this is what's expected of me, as a woman. I resent it because it at first was fueled so entirely by expectations of others which I would ABSOLUTELY NEVER be able to meet. But--there are things you need. Clothes to wear, for example; to sleep in and hike in, to work or work out or go grocery shopping.

I resent it also because it is most commonly followed with such vapid, brainless persistence. There's nothing say with clothes if your entire world is clothes, nothing but self-referential circles to chew off your tail in. It is social appropriateness; it could be art.

I definitely don't have this clothing and gender stuff figured out. It helps that my closest guy friend is an artist and dresses well--equality, or at least a taste--what would the world be like if everyone would dress well? Prettier, for sure. More expressive. Aesthetic preferences say something about your soul.

I've been coming together about it in pieces. Slowly.

2010-05-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

This is the day when you're tired

and wonder in fragments about old patterns, and how they can change

This is the day when you have only two-plus-a-million major things to get done.

2010-04-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

I used to have a rule about relationships: no one got to hit me. It was a bad rule.

I'm not for people hitting me--but: what has to happen for things to get that far? People, in this society, don't make that sort of choice out of the blue. Before that, there is a slow eroding of boundaries, a demolition (until he's trying to get you to stay) of all the things that made you want to be with him in the first place. By the time he thinks he might be able to get away with that--before he has a chance to get away with that--you are invested. By the time things have gotten that bad, you care about him--things are complicated--you know he can do better. And he can.

But he doesn't.

You might say that rule at least worked; no one ever did hit me, who I was dating. But, things got worse in different ways. Any time there's a sharp, clear line, people will find a way to work around it.

Now I have more and different rules. No one gets to threaten me with violence--not by saying something about it, not by throwing things or hitting things or knocking things over close to me, and expecting me to stick around. No one gets to try and change who I am--not even if they're trying to change me into something I want to be. That's my job. And, no one gets to treat me like I'm stupid.

I'm not stupid.

2010-04-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

I'm angry at the world about a roof.

My house needs a roof. I want a metal roof. It would last three times as long and be completely recyclable, and it costs two thousand dollars more. I don't have it. In order to get a metal roof, I would, basically, have to not spend money on anything for the next several months.

It's the small things, yeah? There's no reason I shouldn't have clothes that fit me and don't have holes in them, and buy fresh groceries, and own shoes that don't hurt to walk in, and have access to a swimming pool so that I can exercise on the days that hurt the most. I discover, this is a startlingly big part of taking care of myself--prioritizing my material needs. I hate that, to take care of myself now, there must be such a waste of resources--that to make it through one summer entails such a throwaway, a cheap and wasteful decision that will last fifteen years.

I'm not giving up, of course--creative and resourceful money management is in my brain and blood. Waste angers me.

2010-04-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

I came across an article this:

And then for contrast:

My thoughts:

1) The Lane Bryant model shown still represents the top 2% of the population for gorgeousness. What this comes out to is: including her in our standard of beauty doesn't necessarily make it more attainable--just different.

Still--she is the size, if not the shape, of the average American woman. So that's heartening.

2) Isn't it amazing how much sexier she is than the Victoria's Secret models? Since she has her own curves, she doesn't need all the camera effects and fanfare. Every time I see something like this I'm shocked with how much of a difference that makes; imagine, for instance, a full sized tinker-bell next to a real woman (say, Paris Hilton) wearing the same costume, and it becomes clear which is the more sexualized.

I think perhaps a skeletal standard of sexiness is a patriarchal way of integrating the virgin standard (alienated from one's body and especially one's sexuality) with the whore standard (sexually available).

3) Somebody made an edit to this and put it out on youtube. They replaced "meet Dan for lunch" on her phone with "the new Mcrib is back!" I actually like both versions. . . intentionally or not, this makes the point that a woman who is large can eat, and it's OK. Certainly she's not violating a beauty standard by doing so. Sensual enjoyment either way.