The fractures in my personality become most pronounced when I make Xmas or birthday gift lists. I find the sprawl of my lists to be more indicative of my facets than anything. (I like to think of it as facets of my personality, and not schizophrenic splits present within my multiple personalities :)
Fortunately, gifts lists aren't requested of me all that frequently anymore now that I'm an adult. My mother stopped buying presents for the adult children, and I even managed to convince her to reduce the amount of stuff she bought the kids, winnowing the whole thing down to where she primarily buys one expensive gift, and allows Santa to fill the stockings. It's an intense relief, since I have a hard enough time with crap build-up in my house (do they have a spray cleaner for that??) without adding cheap toys that are going to break immediately but that Things 1 and 2 will insist can be fixed, are still wanted, or that they'll still play with them.
On the other hand, I'm still a girl and I like gifts. In fact, deep inside I'm really more of a 15 year old boy, and I like toys. I want an ipod, dammit. Ok, it doesn't have to be an ipod, but I want an mp3 player. I want one that holds at least 3 gig. Someone had theirs at the last Studio party, and plugged it into the stereo so we could listen to their variety of music all night. I want to do that again, but with MY music! I want to plug into friends computers and raid their music files to dump into my own. I want to take music I like and think my friends will like and deliver it over there to put onto their hard drive. Somewhere along the line, I became an audiophile. I don't know how it happened, and most of the time I deny it, but I love having a huge storehouse of music on my computer, it makes me stupid silly happy. I love seeing what other people have on their computers, and getting samples of the stuff they listen to. I think you learn a lot about someone from what kind of music they're drawn to.
On the other hand, I spent the summer around people who work with their hands. I have always valued the right tool for the job and NICE tools. My stepfather is a machinist and instilled in me a love for useful steel, quality tools that get the job done. I want a leatherman. I was gooey eyed over the leathermans when I was at Wal-Mart. They had the Leatherman Core and the Leatherman Wave. The Wave was the one that had everything but the pipe wrench on it, but it's heavy. The Core is a little lighter, but has less stuff. I don't know which I want to haul around, exactly, but I want one. *stomps feet Veruca style*
The gripping hand is that I start school again in the fall of 2006. I went to a meeting yesterday about the program, and it's starting to feel so official that I'm actually going to be doing this for the next two years. Interestingly, the music school dropped the program, and so another school COAS (college of arts and sciences) is picking it up. They don't have the details worked out, but it's no longer going to be an associates degree in costume technology, but a certificate in fashion design. (a certificate was described as more than a minor, less than an associates degree) I don't much care, since all I'm really interested in is the construction classes. In fact, the restructure of the program has made it even more tailor made (pardon the pun) f0r me. They cut out the apparal merchendising crap, the mandatory slave labor camp with the opera/ballet, and left the construction, fashion rendering and costume history. Perfect! But, what that ends up meaning is that what I really NEED for Xmas is a plus sized dressmakers dummy.
So, ipod, leatherman and dressmakers dummy are all on my Xmas list. How disparate is that?? Now I just have to decide which one is most important, since my dad is the only one who still asks for an xmas list. Although, I found out last night that my brother got a loan payment made by my mom forXmas, which bodes well for me getting number 2 on the Xmas list as well :) I even paved the way with her... "well, I don't need a loan payment, I want an ipod!"
Hehe, you can breach the 30 year wall, but the 15 year old kid at Xmas just never goes away.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Monday, November 28, 2005
Regretful Lassitude
The word of the day today is lassitude. I've always liked that word. It brings to mind stretching out on a warm rock after a cool swim to let the sunshine bake you dry. I picture my muscles dissolving into gooey pleasure after an orgasm leaves me in a limp state of blissful lassitude.
I am familier enough with the word, that I almost didn't bother opening the e-mail containing its definition today. On a whim, I did open it. I often like the quotes they use when putting the word in context.
Word of the Day for Monday November 28, 2005
lassitude \LASS-uh-tood; LASS-uh-tyood\, noun:
Lack of vitality or energy; weariness; listlessness.
The feverish excitement ... had given place to a dull,
regretful lassitude.
--George Eliot, [1]Romola
Wow, that's nowhere near baking on a hot rock in the sun after a long cool swim! I can see how I've seen that word in that context and how it works. Yet, like so many things, it cuts another direction as well. As a friend said to me recently... "that good nature cuts both ways." The bliss of relaxation can just as easily be the listlessness of apathy.
It's the perfect word for today. The sky is gray and puffy, rain ensconces the house and the general womblike atmosphere leaves me alone with my thoughts. It's a good day for such encompassing gloom. My trip to my hometown last week had me visiting my childhood haunts. I even drove by the family farm where it was finally impressed deeply into me, you can never go home. The place is unrecognizable from the days when my family owned it. I felt it was an omen to let go of that past, let go of the bitterness I still clung to about not inheriting the place as I'd expected to. Now, it doesn't matter. It's not the home I remember, it's not the place my heart resides. It's just another piece of land.
The residence of my heart is certainly in question right now. Where is my home, and where do I belong? I think being in rentals doesn't suite me. I feel without roots, without future. Perhaps being single is not suiting me either. Somehow, the slings and arrows of friendships coming and going in my life strike deeper now than ever before. When I was married, people came and left in my life, and it didn't seem as big a blow. I hate being in a house that doesn't belong to me. I feel like there's no point doing any improvements or making any changes. After all, I'm not going to benefit from them, what's the point? I was to help a friend do some painting and such in their house. Perhaps working on a place someone else has an investment in would be satisfying as well. But, I don't see it working out. Why?
Because friendships seem to be as transient as rental houses in my life. I seem to be incapable of identifying permenancy in my life anymore. I was aware of NRE in the sense of romantic relationships. New Relationship Energy, the glow of the new thing, where everything seems brighter and happier because you think your new partner hung the moon. I guess I just never thought it applied to me, or to friendships as well as romantic relationships. Have people always moved through my life so quickly?
Perhaps it's the nature of getting older that time moves so quickly. It's amazing to me that the year is coming to a close. It was so very recently in my head that my life broke with a big cracking noise at the beginning of the year. It seems like just a few weeks ago that a summer romance was in full bloom. It seems like only yesterday that I realized as the summer project came to a close, so did that blooming flower. Where does the time go?
Life moves so very quickly now. It's all passing by so fast, and I'm struggling to figure out what I've done to show it was well spent. I find myself obsessed with the elderly, thinking of my future and what kind of old person will I be? Will I be in pain? Will I be one of those amazing older people who glide into their old age only having to slow down a bit to accomodate for stiffer joints? Somehow, my guess is more the first than the second. Why do I feel like I'm running out of time to make a real difference? Where is that pressure coming from?
I'm in my early 30's, and presumably there's a lot of time left for me to accomplish a lot in my life. Yet, I see others who are pushing 40, in their 40's and my own parents now in their 50's all feeling the same feelings of regretful lassitude about making a real impression on the world they live in.
And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
I keep thinking I have time, and yet, 10 years ago, I felt like that was the time to get serious. What have I done in that time that has lasted? My kids. They are what I've made that lives on. But, have I given them the roots they need to reach into the uncertainty of their future, do they have a home? No. No, because I don't have a home, I don't have a community, and my future is just as uncertain as their own.
I am familier enough with the word, that I almost didn't bother opening the e-mail containing its definition today. On a whim, I did open it. I often like the quotes they use when putting the word in context.
Word of the Day for Monday November 28, 2005
lassitude \LASS-uh-tood; LASS-uh-tyood\, noun:
Lack of vitality or energy; weariness; listlessness.
The feverish excitement ... had given place to a dull,
regretful lassitude.
--George Eliot, [1]Romola
Wow, that's nowhere near baking on a hot rock in the sun after a long cool swim! I can see how I've seen that word in that context and how it works. Yet, like so many things, it cuts another direction as well. As a friend said to me recently... "that good nature cuts both ways." The bliss of relaxation can just as easily be the listlessness of apathy.
It's the perfect word for today. The sky is gray and puffy, rain ensconces the house and the general womblike atmosphere leaves me alone with my thoughts. It's a good day for such encompassing gloom. My trip to my hometown last week had me visiting my childhood haunts. I even drove by the family farm where it was finally impressed deeply into me, you can never go home. The place is unrecognizable from the days when my family owned it. I felt it was an omen to let go of that past, let go of the bitterness I still clung to about not inheriting the place as I'd expected to. Now, it doesn't matter. It's not the home I remember, it's not the place my heart resides. It's just another piece of land.
The residence of my heart is certainly in question right now. Where is my home, and where do I belong? I think being in rentals doesn't suite me. I feel without roots, without future. Perhaps being single is not suiting me either. Somehow, the slings and arrows of friendships coming and going in my life strike deeper now than ever before. When I was married, people came and left in my life, and it didn't seem as big a blow. I hate being in a house that doesn't belong to me. I feel like there's no point doing any improvements or making any changes. After all, I'm not going to benefit from them, what's the point? I was to help a friend do some painting and such in their house. Perhaps working on a place someone else has an investment in would be satisfying as well. But, I don't see it working out. Why?
Because friendships seem to be as transient as rental houses in my life. I seem to be incapable of identifying permenancy in my life anymore. I was aware of NRE in the sense of romantic relationships. New Relationship Energy, the glow of the new thing, where everything seems brighter and happier because you think your new partner hung the moon. I guess I just never thought it applied to me, or to friendships as well as romantic relationships. Have people always moved through my life so quickly?
Perhaps it's the nature of getting older that time moves so quickly. It's amazing to me that the year is coming to a close. It was so very recently in my head that my life broke with a big cracking noise at the beginning of the year. It seems like just a few weeks ago that a summer romance was in full bloom. It seems like only yesterday that I realized as the summer project came to a close, so did that blooming flower. Where does the time go?
Life moves so very quickly now. It's all passing by so fast, and I'm struggling to figure out what I've done to show it was well spent. I find myself obsessed with the elderly, thinking of my future and what kind of old person will I be? Will I be in pain? Will I be one of those amazing older people who glide into their old age only having to slow down a bit to accomodate for stiffer joints? Somehow, my guess is more the first than the second. Why do I feel like I'm running out of time to make a real difference? Where is that pressure coming from?
I'm in my early 30's, and presumably there's a lot of time left for me to accomplish a lot in my life. Yet, I see others who are pushing 40, in their 40's and my own parents now in their 50's all feeling the same feelings of regretful lassitude about making a real impression on the world they live in.
And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
I keep thinking I have time, and yet, 10 years ago, I felt like that was the time to get serious. What have I done in that time that has lasted? My kids. They are what I've made that lives on. But, have I given them the roots they need to reach into the uncertainty of their future, do they have a home? No. No, because I don't have a home, I don't have a community, and my future is just as uncertain as their own.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
The Employment Quandary
Employment has been spreading like a disease amoung the people I call my community. Over the summer, it was a grand experiment in zero or minimal employment, and the results were a mixed success. (otherwise known as an unacknowledged failure) One by one, as the leaves fell from the trees, the slackers fell from the unemployment party boat.
The summer was glorious. It was the summer of the watermelon sarong and spending more time cooking over a fire than in the house. It was sunshine on the stone of the quarry, nettles on the path to the cooling creek, rust dust so thick on my skin it looked like I had more of a tan than I did. And I did have a tan. I had a wonderful, healthy glowing tan this summer. A tan like childhood summers where there was no responsibility but the pursuit of fun.
As the tan has faded and the cooling green leaves turned to their autumn glory, the grand adventure came to a close. Like fall this year, it was slow to happen. Little pieces fell away a bit at a time. One of us started working from home, the other always worked from home but then got more work to do. Another goes from part-time to full, yet another abandons the smug satisfaction of the unemployment check for sore feet and a 40% retail discount. My own mother, taking a job on a whim after 3 years of maintaining her unemployment, decided to go from temporary to permanent full time work. My own mother!
The final straw comes from having my Wednesdays stripped from me with the paltry excuse of needing to not only pay for child support and rent, but to eat as well. I find that exceedingly selfish and short sighted. He could lose a few pounds, it wouldn't hurt. Hell, it may even help his sex life. Think ahead, people!
There are more examples, but the whole thing leaves me a little queasy and slightly disdainful. Who would choose to work? Not really any of them, actually. The rock star, the mountain man, the actress, the pin-up girl, the crafter, the playboy, and me, the artist. We each have other things we'd rather be doing but working. Yet, the siren song of materialistic gain and practical comfort becomes an insistant buzz in the ear as winter approaches. Is it the season for employment? Does money become something more relevant or vital when the weather is hazardous to our health?
Even I, a hard core employmentphobe, am considering going back to work. Why? It appears that guilt, of all things, is the catalyst to spur me from my entrenched stance on an issue near and dear to my heart: Staying unemployed at all costs. Apparently, not all costs. I never in million years would have believed I could be guilted back into the monetary arena, but here it is. If others can do it, so can I. Not just that, but the responsibilities of employment stimulate me in other areas of my life the way being home all the time does not. It just about kills me to say that, but it's true.
My unemployed status has cost someone else their free time, time with their children. That galls me. I don't mind being poor. I can live with the judgement of being a slacker, even a sponge, but I can't live with the idea that because of a financial commitment to me, that person is being denied time away from work, a thing I value more highly than any reward work can offer. To add to this, a community establishment may need to close. Not really because I didn't work, but could be saved if I did. That may be a slippery slope of responsibility, but it's one that added to the first becomes an employment necessity.
And let's face it. I'm a girl who likes nice things. Poverty, while acceptable in the face of the alternative, (employment) is not exactly a prized and valued state of being in my life. So, if you can't beat them... join them. (and get paid for beating them *laughs*) So, get to work, little missy, your summer is over.
The summer was glorious. It was the summer of the watermelon sarong and spending more time cooking over a fire than in the house. It was sunshine on the stone of the quarry, nettles on the path to the cooling creek, rust dust so thick on my skin it looked like I had more of a tan than I did. And I did have a tan. I had a wonderful, healthy glowing tan this summer. A tan like childhood summers where there was no responsibility but the pursuit of fun.
As the tan has faded and the cooling green leaves turned to their autumn glory, the grand adventure came to a close. Like fall this year, it was slow to happen. Little pieces fell away a bit at a time. One of us started working from home, the other always worked from home but then got more work to do. Another goes from part-time to full, yet another abandons the smug satisfaction of the unemployment check for sore feet and a 40% retail discount. My own mother, taking a job on a whim after 3 years of maintaining her unemployment, decided to go from temporary to permanent full time work. My own mother!
The final straw comes from having my Wednesdays stripped from me with the paltry excuse of needing to not only pay for child support and rent, but to eat as well. I find that exceedingly selfish and short sighted. He could lose a few pounds, it wouldn't hurt. Hell, it may even help his sex life. Think ahead, people!
There are more examples, but the whole thing leaves me a little queasy and slightly disdainful. Who would choose to work? Not really any of them, actually. The rock star, the mountain man, the actress, the pin-up girl, the crafter, the playboy, and me, the artist. We each have other things we'd rather be doing but working. Yet, the siren song of materialistic gain and practical comfort becomes an insistant buzz in the ear as winter approaches. Is it the season for employment? Does money become something more relevant or vital when the weather is hazardous to our health?
Even I, a hard core employmentphobe, am considering going back to work. Why? It appears that guilt, of all things, is the catalyst to spur me from my entrenched stance on an issue near and dear to my heart: Staying unemployed at all costs. Apparently, not all costs. I never in million years would have believed I could be guilted back into the monetary arena, but here it is. If others can do it, so can I. Not just that, but the responsibilities of employment stimulate me in other areas of my life the way being home all the time does not. It just about kills me to say that, but it's true.
My unemployed status has cost someone else their free time, time with their children. That galls me. I don't mind being poor. I can live with the judgement of being a slacker, even a sponge, but I can't live with the idea that because of a financial commitment to me, that person is being denied time away from work, a thing I value more highly than any reward work can offer. To add to this, a community establishment may need to close. Not really because I didn't work, but could be saved if I did. That may be a slippery slope of responsibility, but it's one that added to the first becomes an employment necessity.
And let's face it. I'm a girl who likes nice things. Poverty, while acceptable in the face of the alternative, (employment) is not exactly a prized and valued state of being in my life. So, if you can't beat them... join them. (and get paid for beating them *laughs*) So, get to work, little missy, your summer is over.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Drama Magnet?
I've been thinking a lot about drama lately. I don't think of myself as an overly dramatic person. I think of myself as dramatic in the sense of vivid, sometimes flashy, intense... but not in the sense of Drama followed by Queen. However, I seem to mysteriously find myself embroiled in drama situations with some frequency. I find this aspect of my life stressful and unpleasant. I really do enjoy a fairly quiet existance. I am content with calm.
I know some people who manufacture drama. These people are uncomfortable with calm, uneasy in silence, and view an even keel with suspicion bordering on hostility. They have a tendency to shake the boat, just to find their comfort zone in the chaos. I'm not one of those people. I want things calm, I seek to stabilize chaotic situations so I can return to a placid existance where I'm comfortable.
Does that make me not a drama generator, but instead a drama magnet? How does it work exactly? Do I seek out drama generators in order to stimulate myself? Do drama generators seek me out because I'm calming? Is this a pattern that will repeat itself throughout my life, causing me to consistantly deal with chaos stressors of what seem to be my choosing?
I know I am drawn to people who, if not crazy, are loosely hinged. In some ways, those friendships are enjoyable to me because as drama generators, they provide stimulation in the form of entertainment that is "drama that's not mine". Drama that's not mine is fun. Drama that is mine is not fun. Am I just playing with fire when I have those people in my life?
I sat and mulled this over a bit. Who *are* the people who cause the most disturbing drama in my life? Interestingly, they are the people who I don't expect it from. When you meet a high drama person, you expect drama, you're prepared for drama, and you can manage it when it comes down the pike. They aren't doing anything you don't expect from them, so I never let it get to my center, to rock my stability. (for long, anyway)
No, it's the people who I would never expect it from, the people who I feel are more like myself, people who seek calm and seek stability. Those people have drama elements in their life that reach over and rock mine. Are they drama magnets too? Are they powerless to keep themselves from doing a swan dive into the vortex, knowing better, telling themselves they aren't even doing it, and yet going forward with the siren's song in their ears?
In conversations with these people, they are so reasonable. No, of course I won't get involved in that. Yes, I know how damaging that is. Yes, I remember when that happened before with X Drama Generator. It's ok, I will be alright. No, I won't get you involved, of *course* I can keep you out of it. And finally, the last one... No, I won't let this affect our friendship, I can keep these two relationships seperate.
It's that last one that's the kicker. When you have a drama generator in your life, you meet the other drama magnets, the other emotional gimps in their life. You may get out, but they may not. I like the drama gimps. They're my kind of people. I like being around calm, centered people. I'm entertained by drama generators, but it's not a lifestyle. (I can quit anytime, I can!) When a sitation becomes too much, when gimping becomes a lifestyle and I get tired of being the punching bag, I get out. The other gimps are left.
I hate leaving a man behind. I may not be a monument to justice, but I am loyal and I fight for the underdog as a matter of course. Maybe I even seek out drama generators simply because I'm really more interested in the people they surround themselves with than I am the DG themselves. It's easy to leave the drama behind, but the gimps have my heart.
What to do about that? I'm faced again in my life, from several sides, the cusp of the inevitable consequences of being in these situations. Do I bail, leaving the ones I care about, whose company I enjoy and whom I find value in by themselves, just to get free of the drama generators that disturb my life to the point of unacceptability? Or, do I get back involved, hoping that the people I do truly care about can find a way out of the mire to maintain the connection we have?
It brings about a final question, one I tend to shy away from but must finally face. Who are these people without the drama generator they're connected to? If not their current DG, will it be *someone*? If the gimps got together and dumped the DG's, would we live a long life of eternal boredom? If a person is wired to seek out a DG, or has been trained to do such by circumstance, can they ever truly be happy, can they ever really appreciate a relationship/friendship with someone who isn't pure drama?
In What the *Bleep* there is discussion about emotional addiction. The biology of addiction works the same no matter what chemical is effecting the cells. Since emotions are chemicals, people can easy have addictions to particular emotions, and will organize their lives in such a manner to seek out the fulfillment of that addiction. Are gimps addicts? Do they seek out the DG in order to get their fix, their emotional addiction to a certain type of stress that has normalized in their system to the point where the body/mind thinks it needs it in order to be happy? From what I've seen, I am beginning to fear the answer to that question is one that will leave me in constant frustration if I continue to seek out gimp types as close friends and particularly if I seek them out for romantic relationships.
I have this idea that given an opportunity to be around someone who is interesting, vivid, (dramatic!) and who contains a strong personality, but who is actually stable emotionally, anyone who is drawn towards powerful personalities would think that was a great deal, and make that choice. But yet, it's not worked out that way so far.
In The Matrix, there is a discussion about a utopian artificial reality that everyone kept trying to wake up from. Years of dominatrix work, and some amount of time in corporate America has shown me that people like abuse. They think it's normal. Catholic guilt? Is our system so wired to teach people that misery is rewarded with heaven, (and therefore happiness on earth is bound to be punished somehow) that seeking a life of contentment is bound to cause crippling anxiety, feelings of doing something wrong, or not quite living right?
We are all seeking the thing, the magic pill, that's going to cause happiness. Marry the right person, get the right job, have the right house, make the right amount of money, live the right life... if the right combination is found, then happiness will be the natural consequence. But, is it possible that as a culture, we can't even recognize happiness when we have it? If we are all emotional punching bags, and can only find contentment in some form of recognizable and familier pain, is happiness ever truly even a possibility? Is happiness pain?
The Ruiz's say we make our own Hell on earth by engaging in the drama of others. Buddhists take this idea further by putting a label on the consequences of staying in a rut of bad behavior. Karma has become a word integrated into American conciousness, yet there is little talk of changing it. Have we given up on the notion that we can change ourselves, make different choices, recognize the damage we've done in our lives and others by our choices and make different ones in the future?
I hope not, for myself and for the other gimps struggling to find happiness that's not at our own expense.
I know some people who manufacture drama. These people are uncomfortable with calm, uneasy in silence, and view an even keel with suspicion bordering on hostility. They have a tendency to shake the boat, just to find their comfort zone in the chaos. I'm not one of those people. I want things calm, I seek to stabilize chaotic situations so I can return to a placid existance where I'm comfortable.
Does that make me not a drama generator, but instead a drama magnet? How does it work exactly? Do I seek out drama generators in order to stimulate myself? Do drama generators seek me out because I'm calming? Is this a pattern that will repeat itself throughout my life, causing me to consistantly deal with chaos stressors of what seem to be my choosing?
I know I am drawn to people who, if not crazy, are loosely hinged. In some ways, those friendships are enjoyable to me because as drama generators, they provide stimulation in the form of entertainment that is "drama that's not mine". Drama that's not mine is fun. Drama that is mine is not fun. Am I just playing with fire when I have those people in my life?
I sat and mulled this over a bit. Who *are* the people who cause the most disturbing drama in my life? Interestingly, they are the people who I don't expect it from. When you meet a high drama person, you expect drama, you're prepared for drama, and you can manage it when it comes down the pike. They aren't doing anything you don't expect from them, so I never let it get to my center, to rock my stability. (for long, anyway)
No, it's the people who I would never expect it from, the people who I feel are more like myself, people who seek calm and seek stability. Those people have drama elements in their life that reach over and rock mine. Are they drama magnets too? Are they powerless to keep themselves from doing a swan dive into the vortex, knowing better, telling themselves they aren't even doing it, and yet going forward with the siren's song in their ears?
In conversations with these people, they are so reasonable. No, of course I won't get involved in that. Yes, I know how damaging that is. Yes, I remember when that happened before with X Drama Generator. It's ok, I will be alright. No, I won't get you involved, of *course* I can keep you out of it. And finally, the last one... No, I won't let this affect our friendship, I can keep these two relationships seperate.
It's that last one that's the kicker. When you have a drama generator in your life, you meet the other drama magnets, the other emotional gimps in their life. You may get out, but they may not. I like the drama gimps. They're my kind of people. I like being around calm, centered people. I'm entertained by drama generators, but it's not a lifestyle. (I can quit anytime, I can!) When a sitation becomes too much, when gimping becomes a lifestyle and I get tired of being the punching bag, I get out. The other gimps are left.
I hate leaving a man behind. I may not be a monument to justice, but I am loyal and I fight for the underdog as a matter of course. Maybe I even seek out drama generators simply because I'm really more interested in the people they surround themselves with than I am the DG themselves. It's easy to leave the drama behind, but the gimps have my heart.
What to do about that? I'm faced again in my life, from several sides, the cusp of the inevitable consequences of being in these situations. Do I bail, leaving the ones I care about, whose company I enjoy and whom I find value in by themselves, just to get free of the drama generators that disturb my life to the point of unacceptability? Or, do I get back involved, hoping that the people I do truly care about can find a way out of the mire to maintain the connection we have?
It brings about a final question, one I tend to shy away from but must finally face. Who are these people without the drama generator they're connected to? If not their current DG, will it be *someone*? If the gimps got together and dumped the DG's, would we live a long life of eternal boredom? If a person is wired to seek out a DG, or has been trained to do such by circumstance, can they ever truly be happy, can they ever really appreciate a relationship/friendship with someone who isn't pure drama?
In What the *Bleep* there is discussion about emotional addiction. The biology of addiction works the same no matter what chemical is effecting the cells. Since emotions are chemicals, people can easy have addictions to particular emotions, and will organize their lives in such a manner to seek out the fulfillment of that addiction. Are gimps addicts? Do they seek out the DG in order to get their fix, their emotional addiction to a certain type of stress that has normalized in their system to the point where the body/mind thinks it needs it in order to be happy? From what I've seen, I am beginning to fear the answer to that question is one that will leave me in constant frustration if I continue to seek out gimp types as close friends and particularly if I seek them out for romantic relationships.
I have this idea that given an opportunity to be around someone who is interesting, vivid, (dramatic!) and who contains a strong personality, but who is actually stable emotionally, anyone who is drawn towards powerful personalities would think that was a great deal, and make that choice. But yet, it's not worked out that way so far.
In The Matrix, there is a discussion about a utopian artificial reality that everyone kept trying to wake up from. Years of dominatrix work, and some amount of time in corporate America has shown me that people like abuse. They think it's normal. Catholic guilt? Is our system so wired to teach people that misery is rewarded with heaven, (and therefore happiness on earth is bound to be punished somehow) that seeking a life of contentment is bound to cause crippling anxiety, feelings of doing something wrong, or not quite living right?
We are all seeking the thing, the magic pill, that's going to cause happiness. Marry the right person, get the right job, have the right house, make the right amount of money, live the right life... if the right combination is found, then happiness will be the natural consequence. But, is it possible that as a culture, we can't even recognize happiness when we have it? If we are all emotional punching bags, and can only find contentment in some form of recognizable and familier pain, is happiness ever truly even a possibility? Is happiness pain?
The Ruiz's say we make our own Hell on earth by engaging in the drama of others. Buddhists take this idea further by putting a label on the consequences of staying in a rut of bad behavior. Karma has become a word integrated into American conciousness, yet there is little talk of changing it. Have we given up on the notion that we can change ourselves, make different choices, recognize the damage we've done in our lives and others by our choices and make different ones in the future?
I hope not, for myself and for the other gimps struggling to find happiness that's not at our own expense.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Happy Samhain!
I've been waiting for Samhain. It's my favorite pagan holiday, tho I rarely admit that I love this one more than Beltane. Interestingly, my two favorite holidays are the opposites of each other. The joy of this holiday is the breaking point. There are points in timelines that are where you just need to move on. Lammas is that great time when you appreciate what you've accomplished, and you forgive yourself for not being as far along by the time of summer as you expected. Samhain is like the bad ass version of that theory. November 10th isMartini in the Latvian pagan calendar. It's the time to put finish putting up for winter. Done with preserving food, chopping the wood, fall butchering, and time to prepare to hunker down, to see how you did.
Samhain is the time to step away from the things you carry with you, and move into the time when all of your preparations for the year come to fruition. I really like the idea of this as the beginning of the new year. All the time before that is gone, immaterial in the face of survival. All of your energy now is devoted to the new winter coming up. The winter struggle is not the end of the year where at the end of it is spring. Instead, it is the beginning of the year, where you start with what you've got, and at the end of the struggle is the chance to learn from your inadequate prepartion and do better at the end of the year. Start with the struggle, and take those lessons into the easy seasons.
It's good to remember that at the beginning, everything is hard. It's also good to remember to let go the things that are dragging you down before the going gets rough. What baggage am I carrying? I've been waiting for this holiday with both anticipation and dread. Like Lent, this is an important time to cull the unnecessary drama, material goods, unhealthy habits, and not only get out of those ruts, but plant the seeds for a healthier future. Winter is a good time for meditation. Samhain is a great time to identify what it's time to say goodbye to. Why is it so hard to say goodbye to the things that seem to be the most damaging? My list extensive, as I sit and contemplate.
Yet, it's shorter than last year, and certainly less drama filled. Perhaps the lessons of Samhain and the lean months leading up to the ritualistic sacrifice of Lent are taking hold. It's only been in recent years that I have put that effort back into the lessons the holidays bring. Lent was a holiday I celebrated in my childhood, but had only begun to see the serious helpful benefits of the tradition in the last few years. In fact, holidays have begun to fascinate me with their opportunities for ritualistic ways to address different universal aspects of living the human condition. The major (especially pagan) holidays reflect the thoughts people have in an almost universal way based on how nature is acting around them. Samhain reflects the death of the life, the beginning of the ice time. We naturally think about other things that are ending. With endings, thoughts turn naturally to beginnings. After all, what is an end except an opportunity for some other beginning? Beltane, the blossoming of the pregnancy of Winter, the time where all energy reserves are concentrated on cultivating the hidden life of the world. An explosion comes at the end of that slow time, showing us the miracle and joy of new life.
Isn't it wonderful how we can appreciate new life so much more intensely after being denied it's expression for a few months. Without winter's pregnant time, new life comes as no wonder and no surprised delight. We know that from the decadent late summer indulgences of plenty. In the summer, it seems things will grow forever. We never appreciate what is always there, can always be counted on... only denial can remind us to appreciate what fortune there is in happiness.
Happy Samhain, and enjoy the upcoming scarcity as it tempers your summer fat into the satisfaction of survival once again.
Samhain is the time to step away from the things you carry with you, and move into the time when all of your preparations for the year come to fruition. I really like the idea of this as the beginning of the new year. All the time before that is gone, immaterial in the face of survival. All of your energy now is devoted to the new winter coming up. The winter struggle is not the end of the year where at the end of it is spring. Instead, it is the beginning of the year, where you start with what you've got, and at the end of the struggle is the chance to learn from your inadequate prepartion and do better at the end of the year. Start with the struggle, and take those lessons into the easy seasons.
It's good to remember that at the beginning, everything is hard. It's also good to remember to let go the things that are dragging you down before the going gets rough. What baggage am I carrying? I've been waiting for this holiday with both anticipation and dread. Like Lent, this is an important time to cull the unnecessary drama, material goods, unhealthy habits, and not only get out of those ruts, but plant the seeds for a healthier future. Winter is a good time for meditation. Samhain is a great time to identify what it's time to say goodbye to. Why is it so hard to say goodbye to the things that seem to be the most damaging? My list extensive, as I sit and contemplate.
Yet, it's shorter than last year, and certainly less drama filled. Perhaps the lessons of Samhain and the lean months leading up to the ritualistic sacrifice of Lent are taking hold. It's only been in recent years that I have put that effort back into the lessons the holidays bring. Lent was a holiday I celebrated in my childhood, but had only begun to see the serious helpful benefits of the tradition in the last few years. In fact, holidays have begun to fascinate me with their opportunities for ritualistic ways to address different universal aspects of living the human condition. The major (especially pagan) holidays reflect the thoughts people have in an almost universal way based on how nature is acting around them. Samhain reflects the death of the life, the beginning of the ice time. We naturally think about other things that are ending. With endings, thoughts turn naturally to beginnings. After all, what is an end except an opportunity for some other beginning? Beltane, the blossoming of the pregnancy of Winter, the time where all energy reserves are concentrated on cultivating the hidden life of the world. An explosion comes at the end of that slow time, showing us the miracle and joy of new life.
Isn't it wonderful how we can appreciate new life so much more intensely after being denied it's expression for a few months. Without winter's pregnant time, new life comes as no wonder and no surprised delight. We know that from the decadent late summer indulgences of plenty. In the summer, it seems things will grow forever. We never appreciate what is always there, can always be counted on... only denial can remind us to appreciate what fortune there is in happiness.
Happy Samhain, and enjoy the upcoming scarcity as it tempers your summer fat into the satisfaction of survival once again.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Happy Birthday, Boy
Today, Thing 2 is 5 years old. He has proudly told everyone he comes across matter of factly: I am 5 now. Five is a magic number in his head, and it has been for several years. Odd desires are somehow phrased with "well, when I'm 5 I can do that."
How does he know that 5 is a special year? Does he feel a change coming on? At 5, he is transitioning between little kid/toddler to big kid. He's just a kid now, no longer in the gray area between baby and kid. At 5, Thing 1 started being able to cross streets without holding hands. He became more trusted to play outside by himself without getting into the road or breaking any major rules of conduct. At 5, formal schooling begins. We know a child is ready to start pulling away from the hearth and begin actively interacting with the world around him on his own terms.
Thing 1 has always been decisive, (I don't know where he gets that) but now his decisions are with more of a long eye. His rationality is engaged more fully. I can talk to him about future consequences and feel more certain that he can retain enough knowledge of consequences to become more responsible for his actions.
He will no longer be automatically pardoned for his bad behavior, he has to explain his actions. I guess with the gift of not holding hands crossing the street comes the burden of personal responsibility. Welcome to the world of higher conciousness, Thing 2, may the gifts relieve the burdens.
How does he know that 5 is a special year? Does he feel a change coming on? At 5, he is transitioning between little kid/toddler to big kid. He's just a kid now, no longer in the gray area between baby and kid. At 5, Thing 1 started being able to cross streets without holding hands. He became more trusted to play outside by himself without getting into the road or breaking any major rules of conduct. At 5, formal schooling begins. We know a child is ready to start pulling away from the hearth and begin actively interacting with the world around him on his own terms.
Thing 1 has always been decisive, (I don't know where he gets that) but now his decisions are with more of a long eye. His rationality is engaged more fully. I can talk to him about future consequences and feel more certain that he can retain enough knowledge of consequences to become more responsible for his actions.
He will no longer be automatically pardoned for his bad behavior, he has to explain his actions. I guess with the gift of not holding hands crossing the street comes the burden of personal responsibility. Welcome to the world of higher conciousness, Thing 2, may the gifts relieve the burdens.
Monday, October 24, 2005
I are a Homeschooler
Well, I am now officially a member of LEARN. I feel like now I'm going to have my mettle tested as to how cooperative I can be with other homeschooling parents, and how disciplined I can be about keeping up with the joneses, so to speak. Within a day of joining, I got a private e-mail from a woman who runs a reading group. Soon after, a field trip was being organized. It was on at a run! Are we ready for this?
Thing 1 has been resistant about leaving the house. He needed a huge decompression after kindergarten and summer programs. It's only been recently that he's even been willing to leave the house for a trip to the grocery store, much less think about field trips and reading groups. On the other hand, he's been talking about his old school and seems to be starting to miss organized kid time. It's time for the social program to shift into gear. The last thing I want is one of those weirdly socialized homeschool kids who have ugly glasses, polyester pants and an intense compulsion towards competitiveness in spelling bees.
On the other side, this time off has done him a world of good. I remember that scene inParenthood in with Steve Martin where he talks about his kids "tense face", and I knew EXACTLY what face he was talking about. I haven't seen that tense face on Thing 1 in a while now, and it relaxes something tense inside of *me* that was really worried.
I don't know what I was worried about. I don't have a complete name to my restless feeling of impending doom or panic, but that feeling was there. In some ways, it's the tension of living and alternative life, parenting in a different way from the way I was parented and the way their dad was parented. We live in a period of experimental parenting, and it becomes a source of serious parental tension when you pick something and all you can do is wait and see if you made a good choice. When thing start to go wonky, it's the parental guilt I feel first. "oh no, did I cause this? Did I cross a line somewhere just like my family said I would?"
The pressure to have a normal child in the face of a society that hasn't even got normal defined very effectively can wreck havoc on the the already sensitive parental guilt buttons. Do I even want my kid to be "normal" when the kids around me are getting increasingly weird, unhealthy and neurotic as an average? Does average = normal?? As a group, we parents not only can't agree on what the best methods of child raising are, but we can't even agree on what the hoped for end goals are.
I don't want my kid to be normal, I want to raise him in a way freer of the hang-ups, short sightedness, and casual neurosis of the world we live in. I want him to be different, but I don't want him to be targeted. Skating that line is a constant challenge. I see the consequences for difference in my teen agers, and it both worries and makes me proud. Those guys are coming into their freak factor flying their freak flag high in their own ways.
Maybe I can let down the guard a little, take off my internal "tense face" and relax into the faith that living the example of an ethical life of honesty, compassion, fidelity and love is going to be the path that the young people in my life want to follow because it resonates with something deep inside them that just wants to be happy without someone else having to suffer to make that happen.
Thing 1 has been resistant about leaving the house. He needed a huge decompression after kindergarten and summer programs. It's only been recently that he's even been willing to leave the house for a trip to the grocery store, much less think about field trips and reading groups. On the other hand, he's been talking about his old school and seems to be starting to miss organized kid time. It's time for the social program to shift into gear. The last thing I want is one of those weirdly socialized homeschool kids who have ugly glasses, polyester pants and an intense compulsion towards competitiveness in spelling bees.
On the other side, this time off has done him a world of good. I remember that scene inParenthood in with Steve Martin where he talks about his kids "tense face", and I knew EXACTLY what face he was talking about. I haven't seen that tense face on Thing 1 in a while now, and it relaxes something tense inside of *me* that was really worried.
I don't know what I was worried about. I don't have a complete name to my restless feeling of impending doom or panic, but that feeling was there. In some ways, it's the tension of living and alternative life, parenting in a different way from the way I was parented and the way their dad was parented. We live in a period of experimental parenting, and it becomes a source of serious parental tension when you pick something and all you can do is wait and see if you made a good choice. When thing start to go wonky, it's the parental guilt I feel first. "oh no, did I cause this? Did I cross a line somewhere just like my family said I would?"
The pressure to have a normal child in the face of a society that hasn't even got normal defined very effectively can wreck havoc on the the already sensitive parental guilt buttons. Do I even want my kid to be "normal" when the kids around me are getting increasingly weird, unhealthy and neurotic as an average? Does average = normal?? As a group, we parents not only can't agree on what the best methods of child raising are, but we can't even agree on what the hoped for end goals are.
I don't want my kid to be normal, I want to raise him in a way freer of the hang-ups, short sightedness, and casual neurosis of the world we live in. I want him to be different, but I don't want him to be targeted. Skating that line is a constant challenge. I see the consequences for difference in my teen agers, and it both worries and makes me proud. Those guys are coming into their freak factor flying their freak flag high in their own ways.
Maybe I can let down the guard a little, take off my internal "tense face" and relax into the faith that living the example of an ethical life of honesty, compassion, fidelity and love is going to be the path that the young people in my life want to follow because it resonates with something deep inside them that just wants to be happy without someone else having to suffer to make that happen.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Marraige
My brother got married last weekend. Aside from the general goat rodeo nature of the thing, (being organized sort of last minute) it came together nicely. When the event finally happened, it was lovely. I don't mean the dress and the flowers (which I decorated for the alterpiece and the unity candle. and they looked FABULOUS)and the weird little paper runner and all that. But, the emotive content of the whole thing was lovely.
I have a weird relationship with marriage, and times like these brings that to the surface of my thoughts. I married once. I married rashly, without consideration of the emotional contract I was entering. I married without understanding within myself what marriage meant for me in ways I hadn't consented to. Meaning, I had/have deep seated beliefs about marriage that I don't recall having conciously adopted. I know a lot more about that now, and I view marriage with a wariness that borders on panic.
In some ways, I can't imagine anyone who knew what kinds of things can happen within a marriage contract would willingly choose to subject themselves to that. On the other, it's a beguiling leap of faith and trust between two people. In some ways, they come together stripped raw of their weaponry, tender and vulnerable, ready to take on a commitment not to hurt each other, to hold each other tenderly and commit to a kinder gentler way of approaching the world that, at a minimum, takes into account the well being of at least one other person, usually more since marriage usually = breeding.
That's big stuff. It's so easy to isolate from the world, to turtle up and keep yourself safe. The consequence for the safety that isolation brings is loss of connection to others, to community, to something other than the self. However, compared to how easy it is to get hurt when you extend yourself out of the shell, that consequence seems more than acceptable.
Our patio homes with no yard and huge homes to huddle in show that we are taking our isolation seriously. Why bother building community, when you can just stay inside, keep in touch with the world through cable and the internet, and keep yourself safe. But more and more, people are losing their grip. It's hard to know if you're sane or losing it when you have no context, no reflections of your behavior from other people, no connection to others.
Marriage means there will always be at least one other to consider. When you're considering one other, more others by extension become easier to consider, more of a natural process. The roots of community building as a manifestation of the skills learned through coupling?
In the end, that's the basis of my struggle. I got no beef with commitment. I think it's what makes the world go round. My problem is the marriage, and the context of the social contract I personally live in. (not that I've seen many other social contracts where the wedding contract is acceptable) My brother doesn't have these issues. He believes in what the contract states, and it invokes no particular interior rebellion on his part. His role as a husband and father, monogamy, basic christian values, all of that makes sense to him and is right and good. His faith in that contract makes it a Good Thing. He will rest easier at night knowing that he and his wife are on the same page based on the agreement they made at the alter. I sort of envy that peace of mind.
I have a weird relationship with marriage, and times like these brings that to the surface of my thoughts. I married once. I married rashly, without consideration of the emotional contract I was entering. I married without understanding within myself what marriage meant for me in ways I hadn't consented to. Meaning, I had/have deep seated beliefs about marriage that I don't recall having conciously adopted. I know a lot more about that now, and I view marriage with a wariness that borders on panic.
In some ways, I can't imagine anyone who knew what kinds of things can happen within a marriage contract would willingly choose to subject themselves to that. On the other, it's a beguiling leap of faith and trust between two people. In some ways, they come together stripped raw of their weaponry, tender and vulnerable, ready to take on a commitment not to hurt each other, to hold each other tenderly and commit to a kinder gentler way of approaching the world that, at a minimum, takes into account the well being of at least one other person, usually more since marriage usually = breeding.
That's big stuff. It's so easy to isolate from the world, to turtle up and keep yourself safe. The consequence for the safety that isolation brings is loss of connection to others, to community, to something other than the self. However, compared to how easy it is to get hurt when you extend yourself out of the shell, that consequence seems more than acceptable.
Our patio homes with no yard and huge homes to huddle in show that we are taking our isolation seriously. Why bother building community, when you can just stay inside, keep in touch with the world through cable and the internet, and keep yourself safe. But more and more, people are losing their grip. It's hard to know if you're sane or losing it when you have no context, no reflections of your behavior from other people, no connection to others.
Marriage means there will always be at least one other to consider. When you're considering one other, more others by extension become easier to consider, more of a natural process. The roots of community building as a manifestation of the skills learned through coupling?
In the end, that's the basis of my struggle. I got no beef with commitment. I think it's what makes the world go round. My problem is the marriage, and the context of the social contract I personally live in. (not that I've seen many other social contracts where the wedding contract is acceptable) My brother doesn't have these issues. He believes in what the contract states, and it invokes no particular interior rebellion on his part. His role as a husband and father, monogamy, basic christian values, all of that makes sense to him and is right and good. His faith in that contract makes it a Good Thing. He will rest easier at night knowing that he and his wife are on the same page based on the agreement they made at the alter. I sort of envy that peace of mind.
Friday, June 03, 2005
Dreamscape: Jealousy
I was standing there with a man, I'm not sure entirely what we were doing, or planning to do together. He came onto the scene, in a rage. He grabbed me (by the hair?) and threw me down on the ground, growling for me to stay in place. Somehow it was clear in my mind he meant on my hands and knees, head to the ground. My hair was long and blond, like when I was a kid/teen. That was handy, since it acted as a drape across my face to hide my smile. I was so pleased, and looking so forward to whatever he had in mind as punishment for whatever trangression he thought I'd committed. He went back over to the guy, and I'm not sure what he did, but the other person went away.
He stalked off, but then came back to check on me, it seemed to make sure I wasn't going anywhere while he dealt with the other person. He crouched down beside me and grabbed a fistful of hair. I crept upwards, nuzzled the inside of his thigh and kissed it softly, which I'm fairly certain he didn't feel through his jeans. However, he seemed satisfied that I wasn't rebellious. He grunted in sort of smug satisfaction and stood up to deal with whatever he needed to before it was my turn. I waited.
He stalked off, but then came back to check on me, it seemed to make sure I wasn't going anywhere while he dealt with the other person. He crouched down beside me and grabbed a fistful of hair. I crept upwards, nuzzled the inside of his thigh and kissed it softly, which I'm fairly certain he didn't feel through his jeans. However, he seemed satisfied that I wasn't rebellious. He grunted in sort of smug satisfaction and stood up to deal with whatever he needed to before it was my turn. I waited.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Emotional Pornography
It's the little things in life that become emotional pornography when you're single. Maybe not just when you're single, but when you're not getting it.
2 hours of dancing on top of a 5 hour car trip had me whimpering mentally by the time I was heading home tonight. Leaning over a marble bannister, unable to even make it to my car without trying to stretch out my back, I found myself having an intense fantasy moment where all I had to do was make it home, and there would be someone there waiting whose only main concern would be whether they'd rub my feet or my back first. The backrub would be especially welcome, since it would likely involve lotion and I've had this chronic itch on my right shoulder blade for the last few months that has me contorting like a cross between a mental patient and a dog with fleas to reach it on a daily basis. This itch has been with me for years, but was one of the many little things that my partner did for me that made a warm squishy place in my heart, even if he insisted upon teasing me about it. "will you scratch. . ." "your right shoulder blade" he would finish with what I always hoped was amusement and not resentment. He didn't have any hard to reach chronically itchy places, so I never got to return the favor.
I figured this would be the place on my hide that wouldn't allow me to go "Between". He thought it was from my tattoo, I think it was because he didn't care for me properly when he grew me, and that was a weak spot on my skin :)
These fantasies combined with memories happen a lot anymore. I find myself sighing at the idea of curling up on the couch by myself to watch tv, and dreading forcing myself to actually cook when I'm by myself. I miss being felt up while I'm doing the dishes, and putting my cold hands in his warm places when I come in from outside and don't have enough sense to put on gloves. Laughing and joking around with another adult who you're intimate with is something that isn't the same with close friends. A lot of things aren't the same with close friends, mostly because they have their own lives and share their own little moment of life with someone else.
My step-brother and his wife are visiting my family right now. I just came from there today. They've been married a long time. I sort of vaguely remember them getting married, but I was pretty young and not paying much attention to that kind of thing. Or maybe, they got married just before my mom and step-dad got together. In any case, they've always been together in my mind. They almost split up a few years ago. I don't know exactly what the problem was, but it sounded like it was the same basic problem most couples who've been together for a while (especially those who got together young) face. They just got bored.
Those little moments that are so important to me now, important enough that thinking about them brings on some kind of weird horniness, an emotional horniness seeking out consumation on the plane of intimacy instead of the playing field of the physical connection, are things that it's easy to forget are important. It's simple to see how green the grass is somewhere else for no other reason than the sheer novelty of the unknown being more interesting than what you already know in and out. They got bored. They felt the other one didn't hear them, didn't appreciate them, didn't even know who they were anymore.
They got past it, somehow. I'm not sure how they did that either. But now they're comfortable with each other. They like each other. Somewhere, they realized that maybe those little moments meant more than they seemed, maybe they weren't so little. They know each other really well, better than anyone else does. That counts for a lot, when you really think about it. In Shall we Dance? the Sarandan character says this about marriage, "We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness."
Not especially romantic, but it's that witness I miss the most. The participation in my life by someone else who gives a shit about it. I spent 12 hours making a roof over someone's head. I'm so fucking impressed by that. The only other human being in the world who can truly understand how impressive the amount of work I did was, isn't here anymore to care. The only person who has a complete picture of my history, of where I came from, what I fought through to get here, took his attention away and left a hole in the documentary. The *context* of my accomplishments has been removed.
I don't need a person in my life. I am content with myself most of the time. I can support myself, take care of my kids, keep myself entertained, get laid (theoretically), develop my self/art/skills/intellect, and happily sleep by myself taking up a surprising amount of the king sized bed. I find myself wondering, what exactly is a partner good for? I'm so competant in my own life, it's almost scary, what do I need in someone else?
I realized I don't *need* someone else, but I want company. I want a companion who is interested in me, who is interesting themselves, and who is simply *there*. Being present in my life, witnessing it and sharing it. While I do seem to get more *done* by myself, I miss killing time. I *want* to just hang out with someone whose company is so enjoyable, that we just talk to each other about whatever, and suddenly we're late for where we were supposed to go, or not going to get enough sleep for the next day, or didn't get the project done we swore we were going to do. People are interesting enough, but individuals are fascinating. I love and miss digging into a particular person, a unique person, and spending *years* understanding their layers and plumbing their depths. I like working on that kind of time scale. I miss forever, I long for the knowledge that there's plenty of time ahead. Emotional pornography is the decadent luxury of the forseeable future laid out in front of you, available for slow and deliberate exploration, deeper and harder, increasingly subtle and sensitive probes based on shared history and the unique language of intimacy that every close pairing develops.
2 hours of dancing on top of a 5 hour car trip had me whimpering mentally by the time I was heading home tonight. Leaning over a marble bannister, unable to even make it to my car without trying to stretch out my back, I found myself having an intense fantasy moment where all I had to do was make it home, and there would be someone there waiting whose only main concern would be whether they'd rub my feet or my back first. The backrub would be especially welcome, since it would likely involve lotion and I've had this chronic itch on my right shoulder blade for the last few months that has me contorting like a cross between a mental patient and a dog with fleas to reach it on a daily basis. This itch has been with me for years, but was one of the many little things that my partner did for me that made a warm squishy place in my heart, even if he insisted upon teasing me about it. "will you scratch. . ." "your right shoulder blade" he would finish with what I always hoped was amusement and not resentment. He didn't have any hard to reach chronically itchy places, so I never got to return the favor.
I figured this would be the place on my hide that wouldn't allow me to go "Between". He thought it was from my tattoo, I think it was because he didn't care for me properly when he grew me, and that was a weak spot on my skin :)
These fantasies combined with memories happen a lot anymore. I find myself sighing at the idea of curling up on the couch by myself to watch tv, and dreading forcing myself to actually cook when I'm by myself. I miss being felt up while I'm doing the dishes, and putting my cold hands in his warm places when I come in from outside and don't have enough sense to put on gloves. Laughing and joking around with another adult who you're intimate with is something that isn't the same with close friends. A lot of things aren't the same with close friends, mostly because they have their own lives and share their own little moment of life with someone else.
My step-brother and his wife are visiting my family right now. I just came from there today. They've been married a long time. I sort of vaguely remember them getting married, but I was pretty young and not paying much attention to that kind of thing. Or maybe, they got married just before my mom and step-dad got together. In any case, they've always been together in my mind. They almost split up a few years ago. I don't know exactly what the problem was, but it sounded like it was the same basic problem most couples who've been together for a while (especially those who got together young) face. They just got bored.
Those little moments that are so important to me now, important enough that thinking about them brings on some kind of weird horniness, an emotional horniness seeking out consumation on the plane of intimacy instead of the playing field of the physical connection, are things that it's easy to forget are important. It's simple to see how green the grass is somewhere else for no other reason than the sheer novelty of the unknown being more interesting than what you already know in and out. They got bored. They felt the other one didn't hear them, didn't appreciate them, didn't even know who they were anymore.
They got past it, somehow. I'm not sure how they did that either. But now they're comfortable with each other. They like each other. Somewhere, they realized that maybe those little moments meant more than they seemed, maybe they weren't so little. They know each other really well, better than anyone else does. That counts for a lot, when you really think about it. In Shall we Dance? the Sarandan character says this about marriage, "We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness."
Not especially romantic, but it's that witness I miss the most. The participation in my life by someone else who gives a shit about it. I spent 12 hours making a roof over someone's head. I'm so fucking impressed by that. The only other human being in the world who can truly understand how impressive the amount of work I did was, isn't here anymore to care. The only person who has a complete picture of my history, of where I came from, what I fought through to get here, took his attention away and left a hole in the documentary. The *context* of my accomplishments has been removed.
I don't need a person in my life. I am content with myself most of the time. I can support myself, take care of my kids, keep myself entertained, get laid (theoretically), develop my self/art/skills/intellect, and happily sleep by myself taking up a surprising amount of the king sized bed. I find myself wondering, what exactly is a partner good for? I'm so competant in my own life, it's almost scary, what do I need in someone else?
I realized I don't *need* someone else, but I want company. I want a companion who is interested in me, who is interesting themselves, and who is simply *there*. Being present in my life, witnessing it and sharing it. While I do seem to get more *done* by myself, I miss killing time. I *want* to just hang out with someone whose company is so enjoyable, that we just talk to each other about whatever, and suddenly we're late for where we were supposed to go, or not going to get enough sleep for the next day, or didn't get the project done we swore we were going to do. People are interesting enough, but individuals are fascinating. I love and miss digging into a particular person, a unique person, and spending *years* understanding their layers and plumbing their depths. I like working on that kind of time scale. I miss forever, I long for the knowledge that there's plenty of time ahead. Emotional pornography is the decadent luxury of the forseeable future laid out in front of you, available for slow and deliberate exploration, deeper and harder, increasingly subtle and sensitive probes based on shared history and the unique language of intimacy that every close pairing develops.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
W - The President
These stickers kick ass. I love them. They are beautiful and elegant, with just the right font, in a very cool square shape that is different from most any bumper sticker I've ever seen. There's something extremely classy about the font they used, the W is sleek and pronounced. It's white on a black background, easy to see and unmistakable. The shape of the sticker alone is distinctive, the W takes up most of the space, so you already know where you're going with the sticker before you even get to the punch line.
And let's talk about the punchline. It's simple, directly to the point. There's no convincing, there's no pleading, no humor, no negotiation. W... who is he? The President. He won, you lost, get used to it. It's a statement of victory. Of victory so complete that there is no apology, no mincing, no euphamism. Nothing can be done, and his supporters are free to be as public and unapologetic about their support as they want to be.
And the form of support they choose is classy. It's so fucking classy. It's timeless and elegant, it's not in any way cheap or faddish. I'm drawn to those stickers with the same lust I have for cars I can't afford, vacations to the south of France, and any table setting that involves more than 4 pieces of flatware. Those stickers make me feel beaten. They make me feel outclassed and vaguely embarrassed about my political leanings. I respect those stickers as an adversary more potent than anything I've seen in the political arena since my conciousness blossomed.
There has been a backlash, of course. But it's too late. The joke is funny, the effect is certainly a great try. I may even get one myself. However, it's defense, and they scored the win in this round. Maybe the F will salvage some shred of pride, provide some dent in the smug feeling of bovine contentment felt by people who have convinced themselves that they stood behind W all along and never had any question he was the right guy for the job. Maybe the pure vulgarity the F implies, put on such a classy sticker with such a sleek and refined font will rattle the cages of the people so very very pleased with themselves, but in the end, it's a token effort against a group of people so inured in their rightness that they couldn't be rattled if a bomb dropped directly on their house and they saw a big W - The President sticker on the tip of it.
And let's talk about the punchline. It's simple, directly to the point. There's no convincing, there's no pleading, no humor, no negotiation. W... who is he? The President. He won, you lost, get used to it. It's a statement of victory. Of victory so complete that there is no apology, no mincing, no euphamism. Nothing can be done, and his supporters are free to be as public and unapologetic about their support as they want to be.
And the form of support they choose is classy. It's so fucking classy. It's timeless and elegant, it's not in any way cheap or faddish. I'm drawn to those stickers with the same lust I have for cars I can't afford, vacations to the south of France, and any table setting that involves more than 4 pieces of flatware. Those stickers make me feel beaten. They make me feel outclassed and vaguely embarrassed about my political leanings. I respect those stickers as an adversary more potent than anything I've seen in the political arena since my conciousness blossomed.
There has been a backlash, of course. But it's too late. The joke is funny, the effect is certainly a great try. I may even get one myself. However, it's defense, and they scored the win in this round. Maybe the F will salvage some shred of pride, provide some dent in the smug feeling of bovine contentment felt by people who have convinced themselves that they stood behind W all along and never had any question he was the right guy for the job. Maybe the pure vulgarity the F implies, put on such a classy sticker with such a sleek and refined font will rattle the cages of the people so very very pleased with themselves, but in the end, it's a token effort against a group of people so inured in their rightness that they couldn't be rattled if a bomb dropped directly on their house and they saw a big W - The President sticker on the tip of it.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Masculinity Class Final Paper
Dating is one of those interesting areas of interpersonal dynamics that’s easy to get advice for, but hard to determine whether the advice has merit. The plethora of information available for people to utilize shows that there is need, desire, and plenty of confusion about the best way to proceed when it comes to finding another person to connect with in an intimate way. Dating advice is a place where gender assumptions and stereotypes are still rampant. I see this as a sign of confusion about current standards of gender expectations rather than a more sinister desire to keep traditional roles stable. Traditional roles represent stability and the known and in times of change and turmoil, Michael Kimmel says, “society tends to search for the timeless and eternal during moments of crisis, those points of transition when old definitions no longer work and new definitions are yet to be firmly established.” Female roles in our society, homes and workplace have changed dramatically in the last 30 years, and it makes sense the confusion about the current state of affairs would show up dramatically in one of our most elementary points of human connection, dating relationships.
In order to get a grasp on what I consider to be the basics of relationship dating advice being presented to the public, I consulted three main sources: David De Angelo author of the e-book Double your Dating, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider authors of The Rules II, and Dr. Joy Browne author of Dating for Dummies. De Angelo advises men in a primarily traditional shame based manner, calling to the man’s ego, his desire for power and his aversion to being thought of as less than a man. Fein and Schneider advise women in a primarily traditional manipulative female wiles approach that calls to a womans’ insecurity about her physical appearance, her desire to abdicate power/responsibility for action to the man, and the understanding of sexuality as power. Dr. Browne takes a more middle road stance and attempts to write a book appealing to everyone with special notes about tendencies of one gender or another. The content of the advice isn’t all that different between these three sources, the form it comes in, however, is. If you wanted to break these authors down to stereotypes, it would be: traditional masculine, traditional feminine, and progressive egalitarian. These are three socially different groups of people, yet the content remains somewhat constant: try to look good, be confident, develop your own interests and don’t put too much pressure on any individual relationship working out.
I looked for commonalities as well as differences in these references. De Angelo and Fein/Schneider are both opposite ends of the gender spectrum. They advocate fairly traditional gender roles in the interaction between men and women. They agree on a few main points: Men must pursue, women must be pursued. Men have to make the moves, women respond to advances. Neediness is not attractive in either gender. Keep your distance, don’t give away too much information too early. Develop your independence, learn to be happy with yourself. Some of these points aren’t objectionable at all. In fact, the middle road author, Dr. Browne agrees with at least the last few in the list. Dr. Browne does not, however, agree with the game playing mentality that goes with the other authors advice. Fein/Schneider advocate rules like: only call a man back once for every 4 times he calls you. De Angelo advocates rules about not answering a womans’ questions directly, to crack jokes or lie outright in a funny way.
Playing hard to get is considered attractive. Not returning phone calls, being busy, and being mysterious about what is truly going on in your head are advocated as ways to build desire, interest and sexual tension in a person you’re interested in. These games establish power in the relationship, they cultivate a belief in the person you’re trying to attract that you are better than they are, or at least an equal, thus desirable. Utilizing basic human desire to climb the social hierarchy through their associations, this advice can be devastatingly effective as long as everyone buys into the stereotypical behavior and gender codes being iconized.
The study of psychology began to be seriously developed in the late 1800’s with Freud. Psychology began the idea of defining normalcy and deviance in humans. Gender roles and the interactions of people in romantic relationships was something that was observed, noted and attempted to be explained rather than challenged. Some of those initial assumptions about the core nature of how gender is done are still with us today in the forms of gender stereotypes and statements that start with things like, “men always…” or “women should. . .”
As a culture, we developed an investment in settling the issue once and for all. If we know what men and women do, then we know what they are, and we can know what to expect. Victorian era relationship styles became the standard to which all subsequent eras struggled to maintain. The first major crack came from Rosie the Riveter and got blown open by the flower child. Women were no longer willing to accept the gender roles they’d been assigned by Freud and had been pressured to maintain by a society seeking stability in a century of huge upsets. (world wars, the industrial revolution, the depression) Feminism became an offshoot from the anti-war movement and resulted from dissatisfaction for how women were treated within that movement and an increased understanding of how effective political cooperation can be when the group is united in its goals. (faludi ch. 6)
I was fascinated to consider that women were pushed into feminism by men who had inappropriately applied traditional gender roles in situations where the common ground was philosophical and political rather than specifically sexual or domestic. Without the combination of political awareness and the desire for the men to have women as staff to do the work for the movement, feminism may never have happened. The first programs in feminist/womens studies started in 1972. I was born in 1973. The bonding together of women who stood up and said "we will not be allow ourselves to be oppressed anymore" happened as my mother was blossoming into adulthood, deciding what kind of adult she wanted to be. She is so different from her own mother, that not just grandma being foreign (Latvian) and my mom being raised basically American explains it. I had always just thought it was a cultural difference. It is, of course, but I think it's much more than country of origin. My mom was a transitional generation between Victorian era women of Freud and a new breed of woman more like Rosie the Riveter.
I married a feminist, and he broke me of the remaining notions I held of getting my door opened and getting stuff bought for me just because I was a woman pretty quickly. You want equality? You got it, babe, open your own door. It ended up being a situation where we worked out what we wanted to do based on individual interests, not on gender. I mowed the lawn, he did the dishes, and we fought over who had to clean the toilet. Some jobs are no fun no matter what.
Somewhere along the line tho, he cracked. I can only speculate on what caused it, I never even identified the situation until it was well over. Was it the pressure from his own gender? Did his imbedded ideas of what a man is really like finally leak through the seal he'd put on them until there was a crack that broke the whole thing down? Was it subtle pressure from his dad, implications that he wasn't a real man? Was it his own insecurities about being ahead of the curve, a man unlike the men around him? And he was. He was unlike the men around him, he was unlike anything I'd ever seen before, unlike anything I had known was possible for a man to be. Those men are much more common now, they're just 20 years old and not 30something. He was a man ahead of his time, and maybe being on the frontier just got to be too much. He's retreated into traditional masculinity with an aplomb I find sort of fascinating, if grisly.
Defining traditional manhood would have been something I would have struggled with 6 months ago. I just knew it when I saw it. Kimmel on the other hand, did a pretty good job. He has four rules that seem to make it all so clear.
No sissy stuff, that's the first rule. You can never do anything that even remotely hints of femininity. The second rule is to be a big wheel. You know, we measure masculinity by the size of your paycheck, wealth, power, status, things like that. The third rule is to be sturdy oak. You show that you're a man by never showing your emotions. And the fourth rule is Give 'Em Hell. Always go forward, exude an aura of daring and aggression in everything that you do.
Traditional manhood isn’t nearly as much of our past as traditional womanhood is. The effect is that men are left without the proper responses from women and society to understand how they should be acting, since what they’ve been taught doesn’t seem to be as effective a model as it was for their fathers. The current way men want to interact with women in a dating scenario reflects a desire to establish power and dominance in at least one aspect of their lives in a society where men are floundering to understand what it means to be a man. In What Makes a Man: “The Gift”, Michael Datcher talks about “disenfranchised men who in place of commitment play the field, measure their manhood by booty call average. The home run fence replaced the picket one.” While he is specifically talking about black men, I think there are signs of this in a more generalized look at men’s behavior.
Young men have come to adulthood with some of the expectations of male entitlement that were the natural birthright of the penis bearer in our society as late at their own fathers time. That entitlement simply isn't as easy to come by anymore. Women who are bonded to the men my age were raised by the first generation of feminists, the first wave of women who came to adulthood with expectations of their own entitlement: entitlement to a job with a competitive to men wage, entitlement to their own sexual pleasure, entitlement to help around the house when they too work outside it, entitlement to pursue their own interests and to expect support from their mates to accomplish it. This stuff is all radically new, and it happened since I was born. Finding a place for the 4 rules of traditional manhood becomes problematic when faced with the reality of new womanhood. Dating has become an arena for proving manhood in a society with no proving grounds and the hunt allows men a traditional method to prove their manhood in ways socially recognized by both men and women.
Unfortunately, reinforcing these standards of manhood for dating comes into conflict with the new ways men are expected to perform in society, the workplace and the home. In long term relationships, jobs, parenting, and more, men are expected to be more able to operate in our increasingly service based society. That means they have to develop skills like being more sensitive, multi-tasking, and understanding body/meta language the way women have been doing for a lot longer.
I firmly believe men are perfectly capable of developing these new skill sets, but are still struggling to do it willingly. Men do a lot to keep each other in line, the very nature of male bonding is one of sadism on an emotional and physical level. They think nothing of humiliating a friend in order to make sure the friend upholds the standards of masculinity he feels are important. Female society isn't much kinder to their own members, of course, but womens liberation has done a lot to muddle the issue even among ourselves. We can't force someone to conform when we've been told from the moment we could understand that we could do anything, that we can stay at home or work, we can have kids or not, we can be more masculine or more feminine, wear make-up or not, and it's all ok. We have been given the freedom of variety that is still considered normal and acceptable. Men haven't been given that freedom yet, and they are trying to figure out what to do now.
The study of gender as a construction, a choice or a response to pressure was birthed by feminism. As it stands now, gender study typically indicates women and is based on the inequalities women face. The gender of men is still invisible. Men are ungendered. By being without gender, men are left without an understanding of masculinity as a construction that can be chosen. Masculinity is viewed as an inherent and unchanging quality of genetics. What this ends up meaning is that if femininity is a construct that can be chosen, and masculinity is genetic and is present without choice on the part of the man, then all heterosocial interactions pressure the woman changing herself (since she has the option of change and he doesn’t) in order to get along. Lack of exploration of masculinity as a construction encourages the belief that these assumed components of masculinity are true.
If this is the case, when sociologist Erving Goffman wrote:
[I]n an important sense there is only one complete unblushing male in America: a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight, and height, and a recent record in sports . . . . Any male who fails to qualify in any of these ways is likely to view himself -- during moments at least -- as unworthy, incomplete, and inferior . . . .
We are shown how limited our scope of manhood has become, and how very few actual men fit under the umbrella represented by an ideal no longer, if ever, suited to modern life.
I went to a lecture by Michael Kimmel, and he talked about how this change we're seeing is inevitable. Men simply are going to have to take on more traditionally feminine roles in society. Those roles still need to be filled, and women aren't going to go back to working in the house only. Kimmel pointed out the definite benefits to men if they take on these roles. If they're helping around the house, the woman they're with is going to be less tired, more happy, and more likely to have the energy and desire to have sex. Men who help around the house get laid more. Sociologists Scott Coltrane and Michele Adams actually did the research. Men who help around the house have better health stats, more connection with their children, the children are better adjusted and get in less trouble academically and socially. Everyone wins here.
Earning my Tool Belt
Last weekend, I worked hard. I worked really really hard. I spent the weekend participating in the local Habitat for Humanity Womens Build. This is an annual event (this is the 4th for the local group, my second) where a house is built from bottom to top by women. This year, the family it was being built for was a married couple, so there is one man on the crew.
There's something really powerful about women building a house. This is especially true in the first parts of the build, my area of specialty. In the beginning, you are putting up walls, trusses and sheathing the roof. These are exhausting, physically intensive jobs that require teamwork and just plain grit to get done.
Saturday, wall raising day, it rained. We were wet and miserable, cold and slogging through clay heavy mud. Words like "mire" "tar pit" and "I'm Stuck!" flew around the site freely. Words were the only thing moving freely through the job site. I held on, knowing that the next day I would be "in the air," the term used euphemistically to indicate the people who would be doing the roof.
Sunday was clear. It was the most perfect day for being in the air that could be imagined. It was heavily overcast, around 60 degrees, and not all that windy. We started by getting the headers set, the big, obnoxiously heavy end pieces at the front and back of the house that hang over the edge. Getting those in the air is always impressive. Doing it with a crew of only women is just that much more incredible and satisfying. I'm not sure how much they weigh, but it's somewhere around several hundred pounds. After that, my job was to grab the trusses and pull them up while they push from below. I'm proud that I was designated as strong enough for this job, but yesterday, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. My abdomen was so sore, and I realized that it was from leaning over a wall, and pulling up one truss after another. After that, we had to center the truss. Somehow, it became my job to tap the end with a small sledgehammer to get it right. I should have pass it over to her after a while. The tendons on my right hand are still (Tuesday afternoon) objecting to motion, and the very idea of gripping something hard makes me wince.
We had the trusses set in place by noon and spent the afternoon sheathing the roof. I wasn't completely certain I could still hold a hammer, but hold one I did. I exchanged the framing hammer I'd been using to set the nails in the trusses for a lighter one for roof work. That helped. In the air, something to hold a hammer becomes critical. I didn't have the pants with the hammer loop, and I only had a nail pouch to hold the hammer, sort of. I was tired of worrying that I was going to drop my hammer on someone's head working below me. I decided I needed a tool belt. In a conversation with my partner, the woman I'd worked with last year, I talked about the decision to get a tool belt.
Getting a tool belt is an interesting decision for a woman. After all, exactly how often is a woman really going to need a tool belt?? There's something a little pretentious about a woman wearing a tool belt that's hers. Like combat boots, there's an expectation that this piece of equipment is meant to be used. If it's not, then owning it is a waste, it's an insult to the supreme utility intended by its existance. There are some things that are so rugged, so utilitarian, and so specifically made to *work* that owning it and not using it for that task is shameful.
I owned a herding dog once. I had two dogs, both were herding breeds. One, however, was a working dog. I never quite lived down my shame in owning such a finely composed tool and never using it for what it was intended. She was a working dog, and that's what she wanted to do. She tolerated being a pet, and made the best of it, but that's not what she was put on this planet to do, and we all knew it. When she died, I knew I'd failed to do what I'd always said I would. I had promised myself that I would make sure she had something to herd, that I would have moved out to the country before she passed and gave her something to move from place to place the way she intended. I didn't do that. Somehow, the time passed, the opportunity wasn't there, and she became old and feeble before I fulfilled my obligation to her utility.
Would I fulfill my obligation to the utility of a tool belt? Would it become worn and used as it should? Will I be able to find anything I'm looking for without concious thought because I've worn it enough that I know exactly where each pocket and each tool hangs on my body when it's there? Will the unfinished buckskin that tool belts are made of become slick and smooth in places where my hands have touched, where the tools have slid in and out? Or, will the belt remain clean and suede like, the leather still stiff and shaped by the factory and not by the tools it has held?
I speculated with my partner about whether a tool belt is something to be earned. There are other communities where things are earned. In the leather community, one earns their "leathers" by meeting certain standards set within the community they choose to participate in. I have a ring that I covet and want, a ring that signifies my being a part of the Latvian community, a symbol of that ethnicity, a ring that can only be given as a gift, and in my family is only given when a person learns the language. I haven't earned that ring yet, even tho I've spent years in half hearted efforts to learn.
In speaking of my concerns about getting a tool belt and whether I'd earned it, my partner turns to me, comprehending completely what I was saying and said with utter seriousness, "oh, you've *earned* your tool belt." I was so pleased by that, I wasn't sure what to say. If there's anyone who could make that judgement, in reality, it would be her. She is tough, super tough. I have never met another woman who works the way she does. She is supremely competant, and I respect that entirely. She works hard, she's straightforward, she's strong, and she's very much still a woman. Earning the respect of someone that you respect a great deal is a satisfying thing. I've had respect from people I don't respect and it's hollow.
I have earned the right to wear a tool belt. I work hard, and I do it often enough to justify having the right tool to do my job properly. I like working with Habitat, and I like building houses. I have a passion for housing, for building, I hadn't realized that until the last few years. In my mind, I had this vague notion of building my own home. At one time, that was The Plan. We were going to move to the country, build our own home, and get a flock of sheep for the dog to herd. I would spin wool, we would have a masonry stove to heat the place, backed up by passive solar. We were going to figure out how to generate our own electricity and grow our own food.
I'd been afraid I didn't have it in me. I thought building our own home was something that I couldn't do, that my body just wouldn't take it. I know that's not true now. My body is strong, it is able, and it can build. I spent 12 hours on Sunday alone working really really hard. I didn't do it alone, but I did a lot. I can build a house. While I'm not interested in building a stick built house, I know I can work hard, and I can get the job done. My tool belt won't go to waste, because I will make a home for myself and my children, in a very literal sense. Until then, I will make homes for other people, structures for other people to call home for their families, or in the case of Thunder Dome, homes for communities to come together and celebrate their unity. I build.
There's something really powerful about women building a house. This is especially true in the first parts of the build, my area of specialty. In the beginning, you are putting up walls, trusses and sheathing the roof. These are exhausting, physically intensive jobs that require teamwork and just plain grit to get done.
Saturday, wall raising day, it rained. We were wet and miserable, cold and slogging through clay heavy mud. Words like "mire" "tar pit" and "I'm Stuck!" flew around the site freely. Words were the only thing moving freely through the job site. I held on, knowing that the next day I would be "in the air," the term used euphemistically to indicate the people who would be doing the roof.
Sunday was clear. It was the most perfect day for being in the air that could be imagined. It was heavily overcast, around 60 degrees, and not all that windy. We started by getting the headers set, the big, obnoxiously heavy end pieces at the front and back of the house that hang over the edge. Getting those in the air is always impressive. Doing it with a crew of only women is just that much more incredible and satisfying. I'm not sure how much they weigh, but it's somewhere around several hundred pounds. After that, my job was to grab the trusses and pull them up while they push from below. I'm proud that I was designated as strong enough for this job, but yesterday, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. My abdomen was so sore, and I realized that it was from leaning over a wall, and pulling up one truss after another. After that, we had to center the truss. Somehow, it became my job to tap the end with a small sledgehammer to get it right. I should have pass it over to her after a while. The tendons on my right hand are still (Tuesday afternoon) objecting to motion, and the very idea of gripping something hard makes me wince.
We had the trusses set in place by noon and spent the afternoon sheathing the roof. I wasn't completely certain I could still hold a hammer, but hold one I did. I exchanged the framing hammer I'd been using to set the nails in the trusses for a lighter one for roof work. That helped. In the air, something to hold a hammer becomes critical. I didn't have the pants with the hammer loop, and I only had a nail pouch to hold the hammer, sort of. I was tired of worrying that I was going to drop my hammer on someone's head working below me. I decided I needed a tool belt. In a conversation with my partner, the woman I'd worked with last year, I talked about the decision to get a tool belt.
Getting a tool belt is an interesting decision for a woman. After all, exactly how often is a woman really going to need a tool belt?? There's something a little pretentious about a woman wearing a tool belt that's hers. Like combat boots, there's an expectation that this piece of equipment is meant to be used. If it's not, then owning it is a waste, it's an insult to the supreme utility intended by its existance. There are some things that are so rugged, so utilitarian, and so specifically made to *work* that owning it and not using it for that task is shameful.
I owned a herding dog once. I had two dogs, both were herding breeds. One, however, was a working dog. I never quite lived down my shame in owning such a finely composed tool and never using it for what it was intended. She was a working dog, and that's what she wanted to do. She tolerated being a pet, and made the best of it, but that's not what she was put on this planet to do, and we all knew it. When she died, I knew I'd failed to do what I'd always said I would. I had promised myself that I would make sure she had something to herd, that I would have moved out to the country before she passed and gave her something to move from place to place the way she intended. I didn't do that. Somehow, the time passed, the opportunity wasn't there, and she became old and feeble before I fulfilled my obligation to her utility.
Would I fulfill my obligation to the utility of a tool belt? Would it become worn and used as it should? Will I be able to find anything I'm looking for without concious thought because I've worn it enough that I know exactly where each pocket and each tool hangs on my body when it's there? Will the unfinished buckskin that tool belts are made of become slick and smooth in places where my hands have touched, where the tools have slid in and out? Or, will the belt remain clean and suede like, the leather still stiff and shaped by the factory and not by the tools it has held?
I speculated with my partner about whether a tool belt is something to be earned. There are other communities where things are earned. In the leather community, one earns their "leathers" by meeting certain standards set within the community they choose to participate in. I have a ring that I covet and want, a ring that signifies my being a part of the Latvian community, a symbol of that ethnicity, a ring that can only be given as a gift, and in my family is only given when a person learns the language. I haven't earned that ring yet, even tho I've spent years in half hearted efforts to learn.
In speaking of my concerns about getting a tool belt and whether I'd earned it, my partner turns to me, comprehending completely what I was saying and said with utter seriousness, "oh, you've *earned* your tool belt." I was so pleased by that, I wasn't sure what to say. If there's anyone who could make that judgement, in reality, it would be her. She is tough, super tough. I have never met another woman who works the way she does. She is supremely competant, and I respect that entirely. She works hard, she's straightforward, she's strong, and she's very much still a woman. Earning the respect of someone that you respect a great deal is a satisfying thing. I've had respect from people I don't respect and it's hollow.
I have earned the right to wear a tool belt. I work hard, and I do it often enough to justify having the right tool to do my job properly. I like working with Habitat, and I like building houses. I have a passion for housing, for building, I hadn't realized that until the last few years. In my mind, I had this vague notion of building my own home. At one time, that was The Plan. We were going to move to the country, build our own home, and get a flock of sheep for the dog to herd. I would spin wool, we would have a masonry stove to heat the place, backed up by passive solar. We were going to figure out how to generate our own electricity and grow our own food.
I'd been afraid I didn't have it in me. I thought building our own home was something that I couldn't do, that my body just wouldn't take it. I know that's not true now. My body is strong, it is able, and it can build. I spent 12 hours on Sunday alone working really really hard. I didn't do it alone, but I did a lot. I can build a house. While I'm not interested in building a stick built house, I know I can work hard, and I can get the job done. My tool belt won't go to waste, because I will make a home for myself and my children, in a very literal sense. Until then, I will make homes for other people, structures for other people to call home for their families, or in the case of Thunder Dome, homes for communities to come together and celebrate their unity. I build.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Hey Little Girl
I was threatened today. That's as hard to admit as it is shocking that it happened at all. People don't threaten me. That's not arrogance, it's just basic truth. What is also basic truth is that as much as I am an intelligent woman, a confident woman, a woman with obvious power and an at least unreliable *seeming* temperment to people who don't know me, I am still a woman.
This is a fact that usually doesn't have a lot of bearing in my world. Today, I was reminded that I am sometimes isolated from my gendered reality by virtue of a naturally prickly set of non-verbal cues that signal me as someone not to be trifled with.
There's been a pit bull running the neighborhood. I don't like pit bulls. Aesthetically, I find them quite handsome. They appeal to my taste for powerful and reletively dangerous predators. However, people who own pit bulls are consistantly of a temperment that take a handsome and rather gentle breed and turn it into something ugly and unsafe to be running loose. I tried for a while to bite down my learned bias for the animals when he would sometimes get loose. Recently, it's been more frequent and I found out he'd growled several times at my Goddaughter. Unacceptable. I asked around, and apparently the dog had bared his teeth, chased and otherwise showed unreliable temperment towards other people as well. The dog has to go.
For the last week, it seems the dog has been loose all the time. Early this week, I'd had it. The dog was growling at my loved ones, chasing the neighbor kid on the bike, and who knows what it could/would do to my children. I called Animal Control. I didn't get a person, so I left a message. I'm not sure if anything happened because of my message, but the dog was still around today. I was at the neighbors house when I saw him again. I urged her to call Animal Control again and she did. I believe the neighbor across the street also called them, because the dog had taken to sleeping on her back porch. The neighbor across the street from me had shot him in the ass with a pellet gun sometime last week to get it out of his yard. The whole street has had it.
When I got back from the gym today, the owner was out looking for the dog on his 4 wheeler. I figured it was him, although I'd never met/seen the guy before, since he was riding around calling out a name. I presume that's the dog. I wandered over to the neighbors house to see if the dog had been picked up, or if Animal Control had come by or what the gossip was. He rolled by, an ugly man of around 50, and looked at me hard. I was mildly surprised he recognized me at all, and a tiny bit disconcerted that he seemed to be aware that I was involved in the calling in of Authority about his dog. Then, he lowers his head, squints his eyes at me and growls, "You call on my dog again, and there's going to be big trouble."
I stopped in my tracks. Naturally possessing more guts than brains, I was a hair's breath away from telling him just what part of my ass he could kiss. Suddenly tho, my situation came crashing down on me. I was alone. I live alone and worse, I sometimes live alone with two young children. I don't even have a fucking dog to give me advance warning if someone breaks into my house, much less a man around to act as a deterrent for crazy ass pit bull owners who like to teach mouthy women a lesson about their place. In that moment between his comment and my preferred response of sarcasm and disdain, I recognized us both for what we were. He's a brute, a man who is just crazy enough to push someone around if he thought he could get away with it. And, he figures, you can get away with it when it's just a woman you're pushing around. And I am a single mom living alone.
Just a woman. All three of those words are significant in their own right. Just = less than, a = alone, and woman = weaker/vulnerable. I remember feeling vulnerable and weak once. Twice, actually, tho the second time was different in many ways. It was during pregnancy. I remember feeling slow and cumbersome and completely and utterly helpless to whatever the world may throw at me. At the time, it was a panic that was controlled by my husband. In response to my increasing frailty, he became increasingly protective and watchful for danger. I thought it was romantic and not a little bit comforting. It was always nice to have his physical presence at my back.
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire. . .
Not today. My husband is now an ex-husband. There is no physical presence at my back. In fact, the only physical presence in my house is mine, and it's my presence that's at the back of people smaller and weaker by nature than I am, my children. I'm all we have, and that reality choked me. In the end, I faced that reality and called on the resources I had, I talked to the neighbor about it, and enlisted the protection of that man, knowing that masculine protection is the only language except for brute force on my part that guy would understand. Other women I've told have suggested I call the prosecuters office pre-emptively. That way, when/if something happens and the guy does decide he wants to fuck with me, I have a report already in. Why? Because we all know a woman is only believed reluctantly and has a better chance of getting a quick response if there's already been a report made. Other than that, it's just histrionics.
Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby
Edgy and dull and cut a 6-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul
I guess I need to get a dog, or a boyfriend, or a penis.
This is a fact that usually doesn't have a lot of bearing in my world. Today, I was reminded that I am sometimes isolated from my gendered reality by virtue of a naturally prickly set of non-verbal cues that signal me as someone not to be trifled with.
There's been a pit bull running the neighborhood. I don't like pit bulls. Aesthetically, I find them quite handsome. They appeal to my taste for powerful and reletively dangerous predators. However, people who own pit bulls are consistantly of a temperment that take a handsome and rather gentle breed and turn it into something ugly and unsafe to be running loose. I tried for a while to bite down my learned bias for the animals when he would sometimes get loose. Recently, it's been more frequent and I found out he'd growled several times at my Goddaughter. Unacceptable. I asked around, and apparently the dog had bared his teeth, chased and otherwise showed unreliable temperment towards other people as well. The dog has to go.
For the last week, it seems the dog has been loose all the time. Early this week, I'd had it. The dog was growling at my loved ones, chasing the neighbor kid on the bike, and who knows what it could/would do to my children. I called Animal Control. I didn't get a person, so I left a message. I'm not sure if anything happened because of my message, but the dog was still around today. I was at the neighbors house when I saw him again. I urged her to call Animal Control again and she did. I believe the neighbor across the street also called them, because the dog had taken to sleeping on her back porch. The neighbor across the street from me had shot him in the ass with a pellet gun sometime last week to get it out of his yard. The whole street has had it.
When I got back from the gym today, the owner was out looking for the dog on his 4 wheeler. I figured it was him, although I'd never met/seen the guy before, since he was riding around calling out a name. I presume that's the dog. I wandered over to the neighbors house to see if the dog had been picked up, or if Animal Control had come by or what the gossip was. He rolled by, an ugly man of around 50, and looked at me hard. I was mildly surprised he recognized me at all, and a tiny bit disconcerted that he seemed to be aware that I was involved in the calling in of Authority about his dog. Then, he lowers his head, squints his eyes at me and growls, "You call on my dog again, and there's going to be big trouble."
I stopped in my tracks. Naturally possessing more guts than brains, I was a hair's breath away from telling him just what part of my ass he could kiss. Suddenly tho, my situation came crashing down on me. I was alone. I live alone and worse, I sometimes live alone with two young children. I don't even have a fucking dog to give me advance warning if someone breaks into my house, much less a man around to act as a deterrent for crazy ass pit bull owners who like to teach mouthy women a lesson about their place. In that moment between his comment and my preferred response of sarcasm and disdain, I recognized us both for what we were. He's a brute, a man who is just crazy enough to push someone around if he thought he could get away with it. And, he figures, you can get away with it when it's just a woman you're pushing around. And I am a single mom living alone.
Just a woman. All three of those words are significant in their own right. Just = less than, a = alone, and woman = weaker/vulnerable. I remember feeling vulnerable and weak once. Twice, actually, tho the second time was different in many ways. It was during pregnancy. I remember feeling slow and cumbersome and completely and utterly helpless to whatever the world may throw at me. At the time, it was a panic that was controlled by my husband. In response to my increasing frailty, he became increasingly protective and watchful for danger. I thought it was romantic and not a little bit comforting. It was always nice to have his physical presence at my back.
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire. . .
Not today. My husband is now an ex-husband. There is no physical presence at my back. In fact, the only physical presence in my house is mine, and it's my presence that's at the back of people smaller and weaker by nature than I am, my children. I'm all we have, and that reality choked me. In the end, I faced that reality and called on the resources I had, I talked to the neighbor about it, and enlisted the protection of that man, knowing that masculine protection is the only language except for brute force on my part that guy would understand. Other women I've told have suggested I call the prosecuters office pre-emptively. That way, when/if something happens and the guy does decide he wants to fuck with me, I have a report already in. Why? Because we all know a woman is only believed reluctantly and has a better chance of getting a quick response if there's already been a report made. Other than that, it's just histrionics.
Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby
Edgy and dull and cut a 6-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul
I guess I need to get a dog, or a boyfriend, or a penis.
Dear 15B
To the girl who took the locker I usually utilize while at the gym,
My day was a bit off kilter. No apparently good reason, although in the shower I realized I'd started my period so that could likely explain my complete inability to swim straight. Speaking of straight. . .
I would like to apologize for that brief burst of annoyance that someone had taken my usual locker, the locker I'd chosen for no particularly good reason other than it was the first that caught my eye and it was a multiple of three. I don't apologize for my irrational petulence, since it's a part of my nature. However, I do regret having any ill feelings towards you in particular.
After my swim, there you were, getting dressed. I would like you to know, officially and publically, that what you have under your clothes just ain't right. The world at large appreciates your efforts to keep yourself in shape, and the lucky person who regularly gets the view I got to see today is a source of my long lasting envy. I'm sure you're a colassal pain in the ass. I'm sure you think your ass is fat and fret compulsively over whether you have been good enough to deserve a half a brownie. I don't really care about all that, since I only got a brief glimpse of your glory and thus only have to pay a small price in assuaging your neurosis.
To that end, let it be known... if you ever thought gays and bisexuals shouldn't be allowed in locker rooms because they're looking at you, you were right. If you thought other women would be glancing at your form out of the corner of their eye with envy and covetous desire, you were indeed correct. If you were the one who spoke up and said "yes, I *do* think that in the brief time we are naked together in a locker room a person can have filthy and lewd fantasies about what they would do with my body, some rope and a deserted alley." Well, you were right about that as well.
I hope you abuse that body regularly, 15B. I hope you run hellbent for leather over any man (or woman) who dares to think they can contain you. You should be public property, you should be rode hard and put up wet, and you should be fucked, a lot.
I wish only the best for you. I hope your bush remains always so black and curly, your ass somehow makes the word "flanks" sexy, and your breasts never lose their supernatural levitation abilities without a bra. Good luck, and happy hunting.
Sincerely,
The temporary occupant of 13B
My day was a bit off kilter. No apparently good reason, although in the shower I realized I'd started my period so that could likely explain my complete inability to swim straight. Speaking of straight. . .
I would like to apologize for that brief burst of annoyance that someone had taken my usual locker, the locker I'd chosen for no particularly good reason other than it was the first that caught my eye and it was a multiple of three. I don't apologize for my irrational petulence, since it's a part of my nature. However, I do regret having any ill feelings towards you in particular.
After my swim, there you were, getting dressed. I would like you to know, officially and publically, that what you have under your clothes just ain't right. The world at large appreciates your efforts to keep yourself in shape, and the lucky person who regularly gets the view I got to see today is a source of my long lasting envy. I'm sure you're a colassal pain in the ass. I'm sure you think your ass is fat and fret compulsively over whether you have been good enough to deserve a half a brownie. I don't really care about all that, since I only got a brief glimpse of your glory and thus only have to pay a small price in assuaging your neurosis.
To that end, let it be known... if you ever thought gays and bisexuals shouldn't be allowed in locker rooms because they're looking at you, you were right. If you thought other women would be glancing at your form out of the corner of their eye with envy and covetous desire, you were indeed correct. If you were the one who spoke up and said "yes, I *do* think that in the brief time we are naked together in a locker room a person can have filthy and lewd fantasies about what they would do with my body, some rope and a deserted alley." Well, you were right about that as well.
I hope you abuse that body regularly, 15B. I hope you run hellbent for leather over any man (or woman) who dares to think they can contain you. You should be public property, you should be rode hard and put up wet, and you should be fucked, a lot.
I wish only the best for you. I hope your bush remains always so black and curly, your ass somehow makes the word "flanks" sexy, and your breasts never lose their supernatural levitation abilities without a bra. Good luck, and happy hunting.
Sincerely,
The temporary occupant of 13B
Money
Money, get away
I hate money. I hate talking about it, dealing with it, being responsible to it. I don't like to have to think about money in my life. I don't like what things feel like when I owe someone money, or they owe me money. I don't like the ugliness that enters a relationship when money becomes an issue.
Marriages end over money more than anything else. My father has a marriage ending right now, and while he didn't say it particularly, I can tell it's over money. He talks about being in debt up to their ears, over extended... this was in a conversation where he sent me a check for $300 from his tax refund, "because I thought you needed it more." And I did, I really really did need it more and I hate that.
My own marriage may have ended in no small part over money. Who works, why, how much? What amount is needed to live on, and who is responsible for making sure that amount gets met? What happens if it doesn't? What happens if the person who should, just can't?
There aren't any other options, someone just has to.
Money, get back
I need to get a job this summer. I don't want a job, I just want to be with my kids, hang out, do art, and generally decompress. I want to be in denial about my financial situation, and simply can't anymore. The wolves are at the door, the howling masses of debt banging from the outside, demanding to be acknowledged. When I was in school, I could pretend they didn't exist. Now, they must be heard.
Money, it's a crime
Without money, nothing works right. I won't have a place to live, won't have a car to drive, won't have the freedom to do what I want to do, when I have the time left to do it after I spend the rest of my time making money.
Money sucks.
I hate money. I hate talking about it, dealing with it, being responsible to it. I don't like to have to think about money in my life. I don't like what things feel like when I owe someone money, or they owe me money. I don't like the ugliness that enters a relationship when money becomes an issue.
Marriages end over money more than anything else. My father has a marriage ending right now, and while he didn't say it particularly, I can tell it's over money. He talks about being in debt up to their ears, over extended... this was in a conversation where he sent me a check for $300 from his tax refund, "because I thought you needed it more." And I did, I really really did need it more and I hate that.
My own marriage may have ended in no small part over money. Who works, why, how much? What amount is needed to live on, and who is responsible for making sure that amount gets met? What happens if it doesn't? What happens if the person who should, just can't?
There aren't any other options, someone just has to.
Money, get back
I need to get a job this summer. I don't want a job, I just want to be with my kids, hang out, do art, and generally decompress. I want to be in denial about my financial situation, and simply can't anymore. The wolves are at the door, the howling masses of debt banging from the outside, demanding to be acknowledged. When I was in school, I could pretend they didn't exist. Now, they must be heard.
Money, it's a crime
Without money, nothing works right. I won't have a place to live, won't have a car to drive, won't have the freedom to do what I want to do, when I have the time left to do it after I spend the rest of my time making money.
Money sucks.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Take me Out
I went with Thing 2 on a field trip with his pre-school today. We were going to the Indianapolis Indians ballgame. I adore baseball. I played softball most of my teen years, and even managed to get on a team that was second place in the little league my final year. That was a complete fluke, they just needed an extra player and got stuck with me. I was a terrible softball player, just awful. I was fat, I was slow, and I threw like a girl. My structural delicacy had me longing to learn to slide but absolutely certain it would mean my doom. I did slide, once, that final year. I actually faced my dread of the solid earth meeting my delicate back and threw myself on the ground willingly. I was out anyway, I think. I didn't care, I SLID into base. You couldn't have beaten the smile off my face.
Thing 1 has expressed an interest in baseball, but not really much fortitude in learning the game. We missed the season last year, but this year I hope to actually get him involved in little league. The parks and rec team is dumb. If you're going to play ball, PLAY BALL. Thing 2 was just thrilled to be going on a field trip. When they asked me if I would be willing to come with them to help chaperone, I agreed since I knew I didn't have anything better to do with my time. See, I'd forgotten somehow that I love baseball.
It's funny how you forget things that you like. Maybe it was because I've been distracted by things like breeding, physical injury and heartbreak, but somewhere along the lines, I had forgotten the feeling of the beating sun over the field, the dust kicked up by players sprinting for base or ball, and the thrilling sound of the crack of the bat and the smack of the ball hitting glove. I'd misplaced my memory of passionately wanting to be a good catcher. Of wishing, above anything else to be a part of that intimate dance of pitch and catch, of taunting batters and being the most distinctive person on the team. The catcher is a breed of player into themselves. A catcher is a character judge, they are the most intimate point of contact with the opposing team. With the right analysis and communication with the pitcher, a batter can be completely unnerved. I loved that kind of bratty power trip.
A catcher has legs like tree trunks, powerful legs for leaping in the air and catching foul balls, for carrying extra pounds of equipment to keep their bodies reletively safe from flying foul balls, swinging bats and other hazards of being in the line of fire between the pitcher and the hitter. The cockiness of a catcher is lovely. They are the ones who are going to keep you from scoring, the only one who stands in your way between third and home. The one who will catch your foul ball and make you out before you even leave the bat on the ground. I loved that cockiness and that competance, that strength and grit. I wanted to be like that.
They warmed up a pitcher right near where we were sitting in the third row. The catcher was directly in front of us. His last name was completely unintelligible, but I wanted him. I watched him catching with a singular passion. I wonder if he noticed the girl with the straw hat in the third row watching him so intently, wanting to be him and if not to be him, then to at least be near him. Probably not.
The pitcher he was warming up, number 39, was terrible, just awful. He was certainly too bad to be put on the mound, I thought. But I was wrong. We were leaving at the bottom of the 7th (3-0, their favor) when he started pitching. I actually saw the catcher have to leap into the air to catch the PITCH. Unreal. I watched him walk two hitters.
Standing near the gate, my pretty yellow skirt with little blue flowers blowing in the breeze, my charming brown wide brimmed straw hat shading my face, looking feminine and every bit the part of a massengil commercial, I turned to the group of preschoolers and their parents and said, "That guy pitches like my ASS."
Which just goes to show that you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you just can't take the trailer park out of the girl.
Thing 1 has expressed an interest in baseball, but not really much fortitude in learning the game. We missed the season last year, but this year I hope to actually get him involved in little league. The parks and rec team is dumb. If you're going to play ball, PLAY BALL. Thing 2 was just thrilled to be going on a field trip. When they asked me if I would be willing to come with them to help chaperone, I agreed since I knew I didn't have anything better to do with my time. See, I'd forgotten somehow that I love baseball.
It's funny how you forget things that you like. Maybe it was because I've been distracted by things like breeding, physical injury and heartbreak, but somewhere along the lines, I had forgotten the feeling of the beating sun over the field, the dust kicked up by players sprinting for base or ball, and the thrilling sound of the crack of the bat and the smack of the ball hitting glove. I'd misplaced my memory of passionately wanting to be a good catcher. Of wishing, above anything else to be a part of that intimate dance of pitch and catch, of taunting batters and being the most distinctive person on the team. The catcher is a breed of player into themselves. A catcher is a character judge, they are the most intimate point of contact with the opposing team. With the right analysis and communication with the pitcher, a batter can be completely unnerved. I loved that kind of bratty power trip.
A catcher has legs like tree trunks, powerful legs for leaping in the air and catching foul balls, for carrying extra pounds of equipment to keep their bodies reletively safe from flying foul balls, swinging bats and other hazards of being in the line of fire between the pitcher and the hitter. The cockiness of a catcher is lovely. They are the ones who are going to keep you from scoring, the only one who stands in your way between third and home. The one who will catch your foul ball and make you out before you even leave the bat on the ground. I loved that cockiness and that competance, that strength and grit. I wanted to be like that.
They warmed up a pitcher right near where we were sitting in the third row. The catcher was directly in front of us. His last name was completely unintelligible, but I wanted him. I watched him catching with a singular passion. I wonder if he noticed the girl with the straw hat in the third row watching him so intently, wanting to be him and if not to be him, then to at least be near him. Probably not.
The pitcher he was warming up, number 39, was terrible, just awful. He was certainly too bad to be put on the mound, I thought. But I was wrong. We were leaving at the bottom of the 7th (3-0, their favor) when he started pitching. I actually saw the catcher have to leap into the air to catch the PITCH. Unreal. I watched him walk two hitters.
Standing near the gate, my pretty yellow skirt with little blue flowers blowing in the breeze, my charming brown wide brimmed straw hat shading my face, looking feminine and every bit the part of a massengil commercial, I turned to the group of preschoolers and their parents and said, "That guy pitches like my ASS."
Which just goes to show that you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you just can't take the trailer park out of the girl.
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
I am Mom, Hear me Roar!
Yesterday I took my boys to the doctor. The youngest had a mysterious lump in parts unmentionable, and I wanted to have it checked out. Now, the penises of my children (oops, I just went mentioning it, didn't I?) are the subject of intense discourse between the doctor and I. Their father and I decided against circumcision when they were born. I didn't have a great deal to say on the matter except for a vague discomfort with the notion of cutting off a part of the body that it comes with naturally for no apparent good reason. In truth, I mostly deferred to the judgement of the penis bearing parent, feeling he would be the one who had the most compelling argument one way or another. Fortunately, we were both in agreement that circumcision was unnecessary at best and potentially harmful in not infrequent cases.
I'm a scrapper. I will go to bat for what I believe in, and backing down in the face of hypocricy, administrata, irrationality, fear, or habit isn't in my nature. I do, however, sometimes succumb to the niggling frisson of doubt and exhaustion from the fight. At 5, the foreskin of my eldest hadn't retracted. No Circ has been a source of great comfort, strength and information for me over the years. My knowledge of this particular health issue is sketchy at best, and, it seems, that is true for the medical community at large as well. It's been an uphill battle the whole time, to greater or lesser degrees, with every health professional that's taken a look at these non-standard genital choices. The doctor was convinced that something was terribly wrong. She referred us to a urologist.
The urologist suggested circumcision as the first and most obvious solution. The solution to what? Well see, that's the question. What is the actual health concern? They start throwing around stuff like adhesion. I rebut with "well yes, it's all sort of adhered together in there until it's time for the foreskin to retract, that's how it's kept clean, isn't it?" Then they talk about painful erections as adolescents, and the skin slipping back and basically cutting off the circulation to the glans. So which is it? Is the foreskin too tight, or is there atypical adhesion?
Sometimes, retreat is the better form of valor, and that's the direction I opted for. My feeling, backed by the research done by their dad, (or was it my mom? I admit, I came home exasperated and exhausted by the experience and dumped the research request on someone else who had the strength at the time) was that this would resolve on its own with time. And that there was plenty more time before a lack of resolution actually became a problem. Rather than fight and risk defeat in the face of exhaustion and doubt, I just tried to avoid talking with the doc about the issue at all.
Yesterday, the lump brought unwanted attention onto the youngest boys similar issue. I know my doc sees a bunch of people, and we don't go in there much. I don't expect her to remember everything that happens to my kids in minutia. So, I picked up Thing 1 to go along with us to Thing 2's appointment. Sometimes, I kill myself at how clever I am. Thing 1 has a foreskin that's now retracting, even tho the skin is still tight. (I'm fairly certain that teen boys doing what teen boys do will get that skin stretched out and working properly in little time) The adhesion is starting to come away from the glans. In effect, everything that's supposed to be happening, is.
She started in with the going to the urologist for Thing 2. I rebutted with how he was ignorant of the issues surrounding uncircumcized penises and that going to see him is an exercise in futility because he doesn't know what is normal and what isn't, and I'd rather not go unless she directs me to someone who is actually experienced in such matters unless she would like the lump looked at, in which case I would be happy to go. She went and checked Thing 1's chart and discovered the doc she wanted us to see was the one we already saw. She was stymied.
At that point, I had her look at Thing 1's new and improved foreskin function. The conversation/discussion/tension ground to a halt. She said something to the effect of: oh, well, that looks fine, I don't see any reason to be concerned.
Duh.
So, I drove my point home by pointing out that both boys have similar foreskins, and it's highly likely that Thing 2 will develop along similar timelines to Thing 1. She agreed, and it looks like I'm off the medical grill for at least a couple of years.
w00t!
I'm now free of the dread I felt whenever the topic came up. I hate having to fight so strenuously, but dammit, they are not going to hack and slash at my kids just because they don't fit into the uninformed timeline they have in their heads. Grrr.
I'm a scrapper. I will go to bat for what I believe in, and backing down in the face of hypocricy, administrata, irrationality, fear, or habit isn't in my nature. I do, however, sometimes succumb to the niggling frisson of doubt and exhaustion from the fight. At 5, the foreskin of my eldest hadn't retracted. No Circ has been a source of great comfort, strength and information for me over the years. My knowledge of this particular health issue is sketchy at best, and, it seems, that is true for the medical community at large as well. It's been an uphill battle the whole time, to greater or lesser degrees, with every health professional that's taken a look at these non-standard genital choices. The doctor was convinced that something was terribly wrong. She referred us to a urologist.
The urologist suggested circumcision as the first and most obvious solution. The solution to what? Well see, that's the question. What is the actual health concern? They start throwing around stuff like adhesion. I rebut with "well yes, it's all sort of adhered together in there until it's time for the foreskin to retract, that's how it's kept clean, isn't it?" Then they talk about painful erections as adolescents, and the skin slipping back and basically cutting off the circulation to the glans. So which is it? Is the foreskin too tight, or is there atypical adhesion?
Sometimes, retreat is the better form of valor, and that's the direction I opted for. My feeling, backed by the research done by their dad, (or was it my mom? I admit, I came home exasperated and exhausted by the experience and dumped the research request on someone else who had the strength at the time) was that this would resolve on its own with time. And that there was plenty more time before a lack of resolution actually became a problem. Rather than fight and risk defeat in the face of exhaustion and doubt, I just tried to avoid talking with the doc about the issue at all.
Yesterday, the lump brought unwanted attention onto the youngest boys similar issue. I know my doc sees a bunch of people, and we don't go in there much. I don't expect her to remember everything that happens to my kids in minutia. So, I picked up Thing 1 to go along with us to Thing 2's appointment. Sometimes, I kill myself at how clever I am. Thing 1 has a foreskin that's now retracting, even tho the skin is still tight. (I'm fairly certain that teen boys doing what teen boys do will get that skin stretched out and working properly in little time) The adhesion is starting to come away from the glans. In effect, everything that's supposed to be happening, is.
She started in with the going to the urologist for Thing 2. I rebutted with how he was ignorant of the issues surrounding uncircumcized penises and that going to see him is an exercise in futility because he doesn't know what is normal and what isn't, and I'd rather not go unless she directs me to someone who is actually experienced in such matters unless she would like the lump looked at, in which case I would be happy to go. She went and checked Thing 1's chart and discovered the doc she wanted us to see was the one we already saw. She was stymied.
At that point, I had her look at Thing 1's new and improved foreskin function. The conversation/discussion/tension ground to a halt. She said something to the effect of: oh, well, that looks fine, I don't see any reason to be concerned.
Duh.
So, I drove my point home by pointing out that both boys have similar foreskins, and it's highly likely that Thing 2 will develop along similar timelines to Thing 1. She agreed, and it looks like I'm off the medical grill for at least a couple of years.
w00t!
I'm now free of the dread I felt whenever the topic came up. I hate having to fight so strenuously, but dammit, they are not going to hack and slash at my kids just because they don't fit into the uninformed timeline they have in their heads. Grrr.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Green Goddess
I only barely started feeling human again today. The elf beating seemed to be wearing off, and I managed to get some stuff accomplished. After the doctors appointment we walked outside. I stopped still, stiff as a pointer, sniffing the air. It smelled like planting!
My gardens have been neglected in the face of conflicting scholastic and parental obligations. It was on my list to work on both the gardens and the seriously neglected stated of domestic affairs in my house this week... sometime. (otherwise known as ya, don't hold your breath) But the dropping barametric pressure was a spur to the flank I couldn't ignore.
$40 in bedding plants later, I was on my way to the garden. The kids helped fetch and carry, then disappeared to play for a while, reappearing to help put plants in the ground and water them. 3 hours later, I'd gotten in 13 tomato plants, 3 sweet potato plants, 8 red cabbage, 8 green cabbage, 7 hot banana peppers, 4 Jalepeno, 3 yellow bell pepper, and 2 yellow squash. The plots went from looking like the neglected step-children of the community gardens to looking downright respectable. There's still a bunch that needs to be done, but that's a chunk! The potato plants already put in (around Good Friday, of course) are looking really great, although the yukon golds are looking a little whipped on from the transition to coddeled pail existance to being out in the direct sun. They should recover tho. The russets are looking downright cheery.
And, because I apparently don't know when to quit when I'm behind, I put two pepper plants in the ground in the home garden. As long as nothing dreadful happens like The Great Garden Massacre of 2004, I anticipate having a really great harvest this year, and to do some freezing, drying, canning and saucing mormon style like the Ridge Mamma I am. I am all aflutter.
My gardens have been neglected in the face of conflicting scholastic and parental obligations. It was on my list to work on both the gardens and the seriously neglected stated of domestic affairs in my house this week... sometime. (otherwise known as ya, don't hold your breath) But the dropping barametric pressure was a spur to the flank I couldn't ignore.
$40 in bedding plants later, I was on my way to the garden. The kids helped fetch and carry, then disappeared to play for a while, reappearing to help put plants in the ground and water them. 3 hours later, I'd gotten in 13 tomato plants, 3 sweet potato plants, 8 red cabbage, 8 green cabbage, 7 hot banana peppers, 4 Jalepeno, 3 yellow bell pepper, and 2 yellow squash. The plots went from looking like the neglected step-children of the community gardens to looking downright respectable. There's still a bunch that needs to be done, but that's a chunk! The potato plants already put in (around Good Friday, of course) are looking really great, although the yukon golds are looking a little whipped on from the transition to coddeled pail existance to being out in the direct sun. They should recover tho. The russets are looking downright cheery.
And, because I apparently don't know when to quit when I'm behind, I put two pepper plants in the ground in the home garden. As long as nothing dreadful happens like The Great Garden Massacre of 2004, I anticipate having a really great harvest this year, and to do some freezing, drying, canning and saucing mormon style like the Ridge Mamma I am. I am all aflutter.
Self Abuse
Last weekend, I went down to Lothlorien to help with the structure of the new Thunder Dome. I came home after 6 hours of priming metal, (with this very cool primer stuff that bonds with the rust of the metal and turns into this permanent coating of hard black something, very cool)sanding metal poles (the hand job jokes never stopped being funny... well until about 4:30 when I was getting grumpy) spray painting to color code the different size poles, and generally just hauling big heavy hunks of metal around to be painted. I wanted to collapse into bed and lie there forever. I felt like I'd been beaten and left for dead by an elf, and my sense of humor was at non-existant levels.
Did I stay home? No, that would be completely rational. I got a call from a friend and went over to her house to hang out with her and her new man, The Man. Hehe. Anyway, Sunday, I was liquid goo in motion. My kid to shove me out of his bed when they were going to sleep, go sleep in your own bed! Actually, bless his heart, I told him I couldn't get up and I would have to sleep in his bed and asked him what he would do. He said.. I would sleep with you then. *laughs*
I think I was suffering from heat exhaustion. I felt guilty about that. I hate the sun, I loathe tan lines and I fear skin cancer. My complexion is fair and simply asking for trouble. Just Friday, I was at the dermatologist for a completely unrelated reason, and when we were finished, he took off my glasses and peered at my face. "you need to wear sunscreen." I bowed my head in submission. I know, I stammered in guilt, but it breaks out my face. "then wear a hat" Ok.
I tried to wear a hat on Saturday, I had good intentions. I stole this hat from my ex. It's blue denim and I loved it from the minute I suggested to him he buy it for himself. Somewhere in there, I guess I had the idea that I could wear it if it was in the household, and I could justify buying it if it were for someone else, someone with a gleaming bald head and fair complexion that had an actual *need* for sun protection, where I just had a covetous desire born of millinery sluttery. When he became my ex, he didn't take it with him. In fact, I'm not sure he ever wore it at all. That suited me just fine, because I wanted it for *me*. Heh, maybe he never even bought my thin assertion that it was for him in the first place. Who knows now. All I know is that he left and the hat didn't, so it's mine by virtue of the fact that I've lived in two seperate places since he left and had to pack it in a box and take it with me. If that's not justifiable ownership, I don't know what is.
I had this brilliant idea to get a cat. Not just any cat, but a ragdoll. The breed is beautiful, they don't shed much even tho they have long hair. Brilliant blue eyes (a weakness of mine, to be sure) and cheery disposition. Completely unsuited to outdoor living in any way, since they'd been breed for docility. I'd like to know what I was thinking since the last thing in the world I respect in *anything* is docility, and especially in a predator. What I wanted was for something to give a shit when I came home at night, *if* I came home at night. With the kids so frequently at their dad's, my house was lonely, boring and eerily quiet. A longing for physical affection coming from a completely unobjective living being drove me to get a pet. Lack of time to train, low willingness to commit to being home *every* day and a burning desire on the part of my eldest child led me towards a cat in particular.
This cat peed everywhere. It was amazing. I didn't know so much pee could be in a cat, and I didn't know a cat would *want* to pee in so many places. When the weather got warm, my house reeked. I waited for the inevitable comment from the father of my kids, hater of cats, and pointer outer of my faults. Fortunately, by the time the comment did come, I was well on the path to getting rid of the foul beast, and my general opinion of having a cat in the house was right up there with his by then. I like cats, but I don't like litter boxes. I like purring, but I don't like shedding. I can actually tolerate a cat that goes outside most of the time and comes inside to purr and frolic, then goes about its business of being a barely tamed predator running amok in the world. That is not the kind of cat a ragdoll is.
I put on the hat (you wondered why this was relevant, right?) and it looked great. I think this was the first time I'd actually worn the hat, the first time I'd claimed it as mine and decided that he was no longer the official owner of said hat, and that it could officially be declared as abandoned since he never asked for it in all the times he was in my house and it was in my closet behind a closed door. I bop on out to the car, the hat jauntily on my head. The car is warm. Suddenly, there is a smell I recognized from the nightmares of my choices gone bad... cat pee.
DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT!!! The fucking cat pissed on my hat. MY HAT. I stole that hat good and proper, and the damn cat dares to pee on it??? While Karma may have slapped me around like a bitch, it's well known I like that kind of treatment, and this is why we have oxyclean, so NYAH! It's in the washing machine as we speak, being de-catpeetized with the wonderful use of modern pharmaceuticals. I love denim.
Did I stay home? No, that would be completely rational. I got a call from a friend and went over to her house to hang out with her and her new man, The Man. Hehe. Anyway, Sunday, I was liquid goo in motion. My kid to shove me out of his bed when they were going to sleep, go sleep in your own bed! Actually, bless his heart, I told him I couldn't get up and I would have to sleep in his bed and asked him what he would do. He said.. I would sleep with you then. *laughs*
I think I was suffering from heat exhaustion. I felt guilty about that. I hate the sun, I loathe tan lines and I fear skin cancer. My complexion is fair and simply asking for trouble. Just Friday, I was at the dermatologist for a completely unrelated reason, and when we were finished, he took off my glasses and peered at my face. "you need to wear sunscreen." I bowed my head in submission. I know, I stammered in guilt, but it breaks out my face. "then wear a hat" Ok.
I tried to wear a hat on Saturday, I had good intentions. I stole this hat from my ex. It's blue denim and I loved it from the minute I suggested to him he buy it for himself. Somewhere in there, I guess I had the idea that I could wear it if it was in the household, and I could justify buying it if it were for someone else, someone with a gleaming bald head and fair complexion that had an actual *need* for sun protection, where I just had a covetous desire born of millinery sluttery. When he became my ex, he didn't take it with him. In fact, I'm not sure he ever wore it at all. That suited me just fine, because I wanted it for *me*. Heh, maybe he never even bought my thin assertion that it was for him in the first place. Who knows now. All I know is that he left and the hat didn't, so it's mine by virtue of the fact that I've lived in two seperate places since he left and had to pack it in a box and take it with me. If that's not justifiable ownership, I don't know what is.
I had this brilliant idea to get a cat. Not just any cat, but a ragdoll. The breed is beautiful, they don't shed much even tho they have long hair. Brilliant blue eyes (a weakness of mine, to be sure) and cheery disposition. Completely unsuited to outdoor living in any way, since they'd been breed for docility. I'd like to know what I was thinking since the last thing in the world I respect in *anything* is docility, and especially in a predator. What I wanted was for something to give a shit when I came home at night, *if* I came home at night. With the kids so frequently at their dad's, my house was lonely, boring and eerily quiet. A longing for physical affection coming from a completely unobjective living being drove me to get a pet. Lack of time to train, low willingness to commit to being home *every* day and a burning desire on the part of my eldest child led me towards a cat in particular.
This cat peed everywhere. It was amazing. I didn't know so much pee could be in a cat, and I didn't know a cat would *want* to pee in so many places. When the weather got warm, my house reeked. I waited for the inevitable comment from the father of my kids, hater of cats, and pointer outer of my faults. Fortunately, by the time the comment did come, I was well on the path to getting rid of the foul beast, and my general opinion of having a cat in the house was right up there with his by then. I like cats, but I don't like litter boxes. I like purring, but I don't like shedding. I can actually tolerate a cat that goes outside most of the time and comes inside to purr and frolic, then goes about its business of being a barely tamed predator running amok in the world. That is not the kind of cat a ragdoll is.
I put on the hat (you wondered why this was relevant, right?) and it looked great. I think this was the first time I'd actually worn the hat, the first time I'd claimed it as mine and decided that he was no longer the official owner of said hat, and that it could officially be declared as abandoned since he never asked for it in all the times he was in my house and it was in my closet behind a closed door. I bop on out to the car, the hat jauntily on my head. The car is warm. Suddenly, there is a smell I recognized from the nightmares of my choices gone bad... cat pee.
DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT!!! The fucking cat pissed on my hat. MY HAT. I stole that hat good and proper, and the damn cat dares to pee on it??? While Karma may have slapped me around like a bitch, it's well known I like that kind of treatment, and this is why we have oxyclean, so NYAH! It's in the washing machine as we speak, being de-catpeetized with the wonderful use of modern pharmaceuticals. I love denim.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Shine Like the Top of the Chrysler Building
Why is my kitchen floor so clean, did I actually mop it?? No, nothing like that. As with most things illogical, the answer has to do with art. The question? Where is the best place to felt a 4' scarf. Naturally, pouring boiling water and soap all over the floor while I knead wool and silk to reflect my will is the most appropriate thing to do. (apparently, a tub was an alternative not to be considered until *after* the project was concluded) Happily, the floor was already wet and soapy, so it seemed best to just wipe the floor clean with the towel I'd gotten all wet anyway. Who says art isn't practical?
Starting the project, I had a very odd thing happen in my brain. I was working, and in the back of my mind, maybe from the lizard brain, came a feeling of rising hysteria. This is a feeling I've had before, not uncommonly. However, it normally happens in cases of extreme exhaustion. Since I'd overslept this morning for class after having clocked 10+ hours of sleep, I'm guessing exhaustion is an unlikely catalyst in this case. I was able to keep doing what I was doing (as I normally am when this happens) but had to spend at least some mental energy riding herd on the insanity. I found myself wondering... is this what it's like to go insane?
There's a half joke about how you're not insane if you think you are. What if that's not actually how it works? What if, like dementia, you can sort of see it coming. It creeps in, and you say "hey, what's that weird thing in my brain??" You work around it, and for a while it doesn't have much affect on your life. Eventually tho, maybe it just takes over and the next thing you don't know, you are standing in a gas station talking to yourself and the clerk is contemplating calling the police to have you removed, just to get rid of the smell of your body odor in their store.
Maybe it's like being on crystal meth. Reality becomes like a frictionless surface that you can't get a grip on, but the feeling of sliding along with reckless abandon isn't so bad anyway. I watched Spun the other day, and it was interesting to see people in that lifestyle. (and exactly how hot was Mickey Rourke as The Cook?? I kept watching him and had the keen desire to go slummin') That level of escapism has never really had much of a draw for me, but I do love to be a voyeur.
In this case, reality didn't slip away, I kept working. I think my design suffered because of the effort it took to keep the irrationality contained, but I was curious about it. I had a feeling that if I stopped, did something else, had a cup of tea or took a shower or something I could probably have gotten out of that mental state. (and it did melt away once I got in my groove on the project) But I was curious about this place in my head. What is it? Can I get there of my own volition? Would that have value?
I thought it was insanity, and in a way, I think it may have been. What if, on the other hand, it was actually a momentary access to the dream plane? Usually this happens with extreme exhaustion. I always sort of figured it was because my brain simply couldn't hold itself together a moment longer. But, what if instead, what my brain couldn't hold up was the barrier between awake and asleep? Conciously entering the dream world is what shamans do, perhaps I have a place where I can do that as well. How cool would that be? Pretty damn cool, I'll answer myself since I'm talking to myself.
This warrants closer investigation. I wish I had my ganzfeld glasses still, I'll bet they would help.
Starting the project, I had a very odd thing happen in my brain. I was working, and in the back of my mind, maybe from the lizard brain, came a feeling of rising hysteria. This is a feeling I've had before, not uncommonly. However, it normally happens in cases of extreme exhaustion. Since I'd overslept this morning for class after having clocked 10+ hours of sleep, I'm guessing exhaustion is an unlikely catalyst in this case. I was able to keep doing what I was doing (as I normally am when this happens) but had to spend at least some mental energy riding herd on the insanity. I found myself wondering... is this what it's like to go insane?
There's a half joke about how you're not insane if you think you are. What if that's not actually how it works? What if, like dementia, you can sort of see it coming. It creeps in, and you say "hey, what's that weird thing in my brain??" You work around it, and for a while it doesn't have much affect on your life. Eventually tho, maybe it just takes over and the next thing you don't know, you are standing in a gas station talking to yourself and the clerk is contemplating calling the police to have you removed, just to get rid of the smell of your body odor in their store.
Maybe it's like being on crystal meth. Reality becomes like a frictionless surface that you can't get a grip on, but the feeling of sliding along with reckless abandon isn't so bad anyway. I watched Spun the other day, and it was interesting to see people in that lifestyle. (and exactly how hot was Mickey Rourke as The Cook?? I kept watching him and had the keen desire to go slummin') That level of escapism has never really had much of a draw for me, but I do love to be a voyeur.
In this case, reality didn't slip away, I kept working. I think my design suffered because of the effort it took to keep the irrationality contained, but I was curious about it. I had a feeling that if I stopped, did something else, had a cup of tea or took a shower or something I could probably have gotten out of that mental state. (and it did melt away once I got in my groove on the project) But I was curious about this place in my head. What is it? Can I get there of my own volition? Would that have value?
I thought it was insanity, and in a way, I think it may have been. What if, on the other hand, it was actually a momentary access to the dream plane? Usually this happens with extreme exhaustion. I always sort of figured it was because my brain simply couldn't hold itself together a moment longer. But, what if instead, what my brain couldn't hold up was the barrier between awake and asleep? Conciously entering the dream world is what shamans do, perhaps I have a place where I can do that as well. How cool would that be? Pretty damn cool, I'll answer myself since I'm talking to myself.
This warrants closer investigation. I wish I had my ganzfeld glasses still, I'll bet they would help.
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