I need a good New Year's celebration.
As this year draws to a close, I find myself trying to make sense of the past year; it seems unavoidable. A particular and vivid image keeps coming to mind: a massive landslide of coastal headland falling into the ocean.
My life this past year has been like that. A year ago, I was in an entirely different phase of my life. I was in a relationship -- one in which I made that transition from young adult to middle age in many respects. I co-owned my first house. I was settled down, living with dogs, feeling financially secure and just rather confidently finishing my first term in graduate school.
It is all gone. All changed. All not what it was a year ago.
On New Years Eve a year ago, I attended a concert with XGF, followed by a late meal at The Montage. I think we got home shortly around midnight. The dogs were in a panic over the fireworks, so we sat with them. Eventually, I fell asleep in the Barcalounger, watching poker on television. I happen to hate poker.
There was something amiss in our relationship, and I could sense it that night. The rest of the story, most of you know.
That life was radically disrupted, as if it was the landslide crashing into the ocean. Time will eventually spread that chaos of rocks and trees and mud out to sea -- to join a coral reef, build a dune in Florence or silt up the mouth of the Columbia.
For I’ve been brought back again from the
fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie
down for long naps. And I’ve also been
pardoned miraculously for years
by the lava of chance which runs down
the world’s gullies, silting us back.
Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet
happened away.
(-- From William Meredith's "Accidents of Birth," which I have pondered for a good 20 years or so but find it speaking more loudly at this point in my life than ever before. See the link "My second favorite poem" to read the whole thing.)
Anyway, that is how I feel about my life right now. An entire phase -- one that spanned my most significant relationship, my highest paying but most soul-sucking job, the slow death of my brother and my grief over that, one that took me from transient to "stable," and saw me turn into a budding adventure traveler -- has completely given way and exposed rock which has never seen the light of day.
Altogether, it's been stressful, frightening and filled with loss, which is probably why I envision landslides rather than something fabulous, like the birth of a star. (My visions should be more galactic, less earthbound.) I have felt the distinct disengagement of the earth beneath my feet. How fitting that I trace all this massive change back to a cliff-side road in Peru.
The most destabilizing loss of all has been my vision of the future. A year ago, I had a distinct "plan" for my life. I know, and I have generally embraced the reality, that life is unpredictable. I also recall about a year ago saying that I value the not-knowing, that it keeps life interesting. And that is sooooo true.
But even so, there is some peace of mind in thinking you are writing a particular story, that you are making it along chapter by chapter, that you can envision a story arc and even, for the time being, believe in a sad ending -- people do die after all -- but that it would be you who went first and was mourned. I mean, why not have a good story to amuse and soothe yourself with along the way?
I saw a big plot of rural land with towering trees and a dock (canoe and kayak at its side) on a lake good for swimming in the summer. I saw dogs running around a yard without fences. I saw a home dominated by a beautiful study and a beautiful library -- one for each of us -- with a little building out back where I could conduct my practice. I saw artwork from Africa on the walls and a setting of antique silverwear from Argentina gracing the holiday table, which itself saw plenty of meals with friends. I saw a large kitchen, in which we'd engage in stimulating conversation while dinner was cooking. I saw the nephew coming to visit for long stretches in the summer. I saw paid help tending to the property because I hate gardening and still love a good garden. I saw fresh flowers. Lots and lots of books. Some of them very old and dusty. I saw the world as something I would consume by first-hand experience, a regular and similarly minded travel companion at my side.
I still want many aspects of that life. But following the landslide, I'm not sure which desires have survived and which have changed. And I have no clue how I'm going to get there. Fleetwood Mac comes to mind, not the least because the song is named "Landslide," but because those words -- "I've been afraid of changing because I built my life around you" -- make a lot of sense to me.
I went and changed anyway. If we are lucky, age does make us bolder.
Bold is one thing, but perhaps, if you are smarter than I, you don't change until you have an alternative in mind. I didn't. I knew there were things I didn't want to do (move back East, for example), and I knew there was something I wanted (to put down roots somewhere), but I didn't have a (serious) new story in mind.
As the end of the year approaches -- and as it gets closer to being a year since the landslide -- I am seeing the need to conceive a new story in light of losing the old one. I believe one of the main reasons I have felt so lonely is not just because of all I have lost over the past year -- a home, a relationship, a family and far too many friends to both death and attrition -- but because I haven't provided my mind with any direction. (Except with one that was entertaining, compelling and hopeless to the point of laughable all at once.)
Perhaps the next few days will give me the opportunity and space to envision a new future I might fancy, one of my own device, built on my own predilections whether someone accompanies me or not.
I'll be spending New Years in Vancouver, BC, with the two men I consider my "gay godfathers," one of whom was for several years my constant sidekick. He goes by the codename of Morroco Mole, but because he's Latino, we pronounce the Mole as "Molé." I call these guys my "gay godfathers" because they were both instrumental in normalizing a gay existence for me.
But before I head up to British Columbia, I'm retreating to one of my favorite spots, a little rustic cabin perched on a rock jutting up out of Lake Quinault on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. I love to travel; I love adventure; but I also love the solitude and do-nothingness of this little retreat. It's a place I get to wear a hundred-mile stare for as long as I please and disappear deep within myself.
With any luck, I'll re-emerge with an idea, a path, a story. A story I can believe in.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Monday, December 25, 2006
Mesmerizing
This evening I watched a little flick called, "The Station Agent."
Given its plot -- a drawf's best friend dies, so he moves to an abandoned railway station to live like a hermit -- it was, perhaps, not the movie I would have chosen for the first Christmas Eve on my own in many, many years. But I had a choice of that or a documentary about a Deaf family's debate over getting a Cochelear Implant for a young Deaf child. I liked the odds of being entertained by "The Station Agent" a little better.
It was a decent film and no doubt more amusing than a documentary about a family divided over a polarizing and culuturally potent social issue. It is full of people who don't speak to others very much -- those "silent people" out there in the world -- and one New York Cuban conversationalist. And did I mention it's about a dwarf? It depicts his experience as an outsider and social reject pretty well. Yikes!
So I got done with the film and when I turned off the DVD player, the TV swiched over to a show I had *joked* about watching on my Christmas Eve. It's Oregon Public Broadcasting's video of logs burning in a fireplace, overlayed by Christmas music. I laughed out loud when I saw it because I kinda thought maybe they didn't actually play this on TV anymore. But there it is!
Here's the interesting thing about OPB's version. If my memory serves me correctly, the fireplace depicted in this video is the one at Timberline Lodge. The gigantic, curlie-cued, sleigh runner-shaped andiorns are the same as those at the lodge.
I found myself staring at this station for a while. I couldn't tell you how long, really. A couple songs? I lost my thoughts in the roaring flames. Or rather, I remembered that a couple days hence, I will actually be staring into the stoney fireplace and feeling the roaring heat of a real fire on my legs.
I'm looking forward to my trip up to Lake Quinault next week. I so sincerely need a change of scenery. Your UCM needs to shake things up a bit.
Given its plot -- a drawf's best friend dies, so he moves to an abandoned railway station to live like a hermit -- it was, perhaps, not the movie I would have chosen for the first Christmas Eve on my own in many, many years. But I had a choice of that or a documentary about a Deaf family's debate over getting a Cochelear Implant for a young Deaf child. I liked the odds of being entertained by "The Station Agent" a little better.
It was a decent film and no doubt more amusing than a documentary about a family divided over a polarizing and culuturally potent social issue. It is full of people who don't speak to others very much -- those "silent people" out there in the world -- and one New York Cuban conversationalist. And did I mention it's about a dwarf? It depicts his experience as an outsider and social reject pretty well. Yikes!
So I got done with the film and when I turned off the DVD player, the TV swiched over to a show I had *joked* about watching on my Christmas Eve. It's Oregon Public Broadcasting's video of logs burning in a fireplace, overlayed by Christmas music. I laughed out loud when I saw it because I kinda thought maybe they didn't actually play this on TV anymore. But there it is!
Here's the interesting thing about OPB's version. If my memory serves me correctly, the fireplace depicted in this video is the one at Timberline Lodge. The gigantic, curlie-cued, sleigh runner-shaped andiorns are the same as those at the lodge.
I found myself staring at this station for a while. I couldn't tell you how long, really. A couple songs? I lost my thoughts in the roaring flames. Or rather, I remembered that a couple days hence, I will actually be staring into the stoney fireplace and feeling the roaring heat of a real fire on my legs.
I'm looking forward to my trip up to Lake Quinault next week. I so sincerely need a change of scenery. Your UCM needs to shake things up a bit.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Christmastime for the Jews
This animation piece by Robert Smigel has cracked me up for more than a year now. After seeing it again on SNL tonight, I had to find a link to it.
I love the bit where they get all Peanuts all over the nativity scene and turn it into the "Seinfeld" cast. (Kinda reminded me of someone who wanted last year to do a heist of the baby jesum in her neighborhood. You know, sister, there's always this year. I'd help....) And I love how, at 10:30, the Jews fall blissfully asleep with reruns of the Daily Show dancing in their heads.
Hie-stare-icle.
Enjoy!
I love the bit where they get all Peanuts all over the nativity scene and turn it into the "Seinfeld" cast. (Kinda reminded me of someone who wanted last year to do a heist of the baby jesum in her neighborhood. You know, sister, there's always this year. I'd help....) And I love how, at 10:30, the Jews fall blissfully asleep with reruns of the Daily Show dancing in their heads.
Hie-stare-icle.
Enjoy!
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Same shoes, different feet?
I was out walking the pup this evening, meandering and looking at the lights on the houses, it being a beautiful night again. I've really taken to the winter chill here. It's 39, not too damp and not windy, and it feels wonderful to me.
Along my route, I admired quite a few light displays. I'm partial to blue lights, it seems. One house projected quite the subdued mood with a display of blue icicle lights.
I passed another house where a party was going on. People were dancing in the living room to 70s music. They looked like they were having fun.
A block or two away from that party, suddenly and unbidden came this mental image of myself walking the same street tomorrow night, wearing the same jacket and scarf, walking my little Toto dog alone in the dark. It will happen no matter what I am doing tomorrow.
It turns out I have no plans except those I've made with myself. They are not terrible plans: I'm going to cook myself a New York strip, whip up some cheese grits and chard and pour myself a glass of a Tyrus Evans claret. I'll kick back and watch a movie, I guess.
But with the flash-forward of me walking the dog tomorrow night, there was in the little core of my social being a saddness that gripped my chest. Loneliness: I hate that feeling.
Rather than reacting to it, I took a moment to reflect on its origin.
Every bit of our mainstream culture is oozing warm and fuzzy sentiments of family and being with loved ones on these, the favorite holidays for many of us. I've had my share of bad Christmases, but I still like all the business behind it. I like the parties and the drinking, the conviviality and the exchanging of gifts. I love to give gifts to people. It's actually one of my favorite things to do.
But this has been a particularly difficult holiday season for me because I have been so unanchored. I used to have holiday parties to go to. This year, I had none. And some of the friends with whom I had become accustomed to celebrating holidays and exchanging gifts have disappeared. With the divorce, I've apparently been extracted from their lives.
I've covered all this ground before, I know. But it's a picture for myself. To explain why I might feel lonely this time of year. And why it is completely acceptable to feel that way. I have been raging against it at times, refusing to go gently into it.
On my night's walk, I looked at the lighted houses, and found myself looking deep within a living room window or two. At one, the large Christmas tree in the window caught my eye. And then, further in, my gaze was drawn to the swag of lights and garland on the arched passage between a living room and dining room.
I briefly contemplated the assumptions I had about who lived there. And, then, I told myself a radically different story: This is the home of a recent widow who is trying to keep alive a tradition she had with her spouse.
I passed another house, observing the massive wreath on the door and the tree within. There were, again, some assumptions, and I decided to throw over the table: Husband and kids alone; mom in Iraq.
The message from myself to myself was pretty clear. I have no idea what people behind these doors experience.
As if to make a point, I walked past one home and could not avoid seeing, in the big unadorned bay window, a child of about 8 years old reaching up and smacking the crap out of a woman in her 20s. The woman held her hand to her chest to block the blow, and the child swung wildly again.
Well, I said to Brogan, that sucks, too.
Some of us find the holidays considerably more merry than others do. Some of us get more into the decorations and the baking, while others of us enjoy the drinking and convivality.
But as I've noticed from talking to different friends over the past few days, many people seem to have all sorts of aching wounds that get rubbed the wrong way this time of year. Celebrations of what *is* often have the unintended consequence of reminding us also of what *isn't.*
I have heard and seen immense pain (and some really cuttingly angry humor) come out of a few people this week. In some respects, I have felt tremendously touched to hear and witness it, because my friends have reminded me that we all have our own difficulties and heartaches.
In some respects, I'm back trying to answer my own question in that "peace accord" blog from yesterday. I wondered about what compassion looks like and what it means in these circumstances. I'm still not sure, but I know part of it: Take it for what it is, and take it gently.
And, now that SNL is starting, I'll take my leave to see if they replay one of my favorite Smigel animation pieces: "Christmastime for the Jews."
Along my route, I admired quite a few light displays. I'm partial to blue lights, it seems. One house projected quite the subdued mood with a display of blue icicle lights.
I passed another house where a party was going on. People were dancing in the living room to 70s music. They looked like they were having fun.
A block or two away from that party, suddenly and unbidden came this mental image of myself walking the same street tomorrow night, wearing the same jacket and scarf, walking my little Toto dog alone in the dark. It will happen no matter what I am doing tomorrow.
It turns out I have no plans except those I've made with myself. They are not terrible plans: I'm going to cook myself a New York strip, whip up some cheese grits and chard and pour myself a glass of a Tyrus Evans claret. I'll kick back and watch a movie, I guess.
But with the flash-forward of me walking the dog tomorrow night, there was in the little core of my social being a saddness that gripped my chest. Loneliness: I hate that feeling.
Rather than reacting to it, I took a moment to reflect on its origin.
Every bit of our mainstream culture is oozing warm and fuzzy sentiments of family and being with loved ones on these, the favorite holidays for many of us. I've had my share of bad Christmases, but I still like all the business behind it. I like the parties and the drinking, the conviviality and the exchanging of gifts. I love to give gifts to people. It's actually one of my favorite things to do.
But this has been a particularly difficult holiday season for me because I have been so unanchored. I used to have holiday parties to go to. This year, I had none. And some of the friends with whom I had become accustomed to celebrating holidays and exchanging gifts have disappeared. With the divorce, I've apparently been extracted from their lives.
I've covered all this ground before, I know. But it's a picture for myself. To explain why I might feel lonely this time of year. And why it is completely acceptable to feel that way. I have been raging against it at times, refusing to go gently into it.
On my night's walk, I looked at the lighted houses, and found myself looking deep within a living room window or two. At one, the large Christmas tree in the window caught my eye. And then, further in, my gaze was drawn to the swag of lights and garland on the arched passage between a living room and dining room.
I briefly contemplated the assumptions I had about who lived there. And, then, I told myself a radically different story: This is the home of a recent widow who is trying to keep alive a tradition she had with her spouse.
I passed another house, observing the massive wreath on the door and the tree within. There were, again, some assumptions, and I decided to throw over the table: Husband and kids alone; mom in Iraq.
The message from myself to myself was pretty clear. I have no idea what people behind these doors experience.
As if to make a point, I walked past one home and could not avoid seeing, in the big unadorned bay window, a child of about 8 years old reaching up and smacking the crap out of a woman in her 20s. The woman held her hand to her chest to block the blow, and the child swung wildly again.
Well, I said to Brogan, that sucks, too.
Some of us find the holidays considerably more merry than others do. Some of us get more into the decorations and the baking, while others of us enjoy the drinking and convivality.
But as I've noticed from talking to different friends over the past few days, many people seem to have all sorts of aching wounds that get rubbed the wrong way this time of year. Celebrations of what *is* often have the unintended consequence of reminding us also of what *isn't.*
I have heard and seen immense pain (and some really cuttingly angry humor) come out of a few people this week. In some respects, I have felt tremendously touched to hear and witness it, because my friends have reminded me that we all have our own difficulties and heartaches.
In some respects, I'm back trying to answer my own question in that "peace accord" blog from yesterday. I wondered about what compassion looks like and what it means in these circumstances. I'm still not sure, but I know part of it: Take it for what it is, and take it gently.
And, now that SNL is starting, I'll take my leave to see if they replay one of my favorite Smigel animation pieces: "Christmastime for the Jews."
Thursday, December 21, 2006
longest night
It's the longest night of the year, the greatest darkness.
And for reasons too numerous and whiney and whatever the hell else to list, I am feeling every goddamned bit of the darkness.
Not quite as velvety and voluptuous as I would like the darkness to be. A bit too neurotic. But I'll live with it.
However, I do have to ask (and forgive me if he's got some kind of *disease* I haven't heard of) but what in the fuckety fucking fuck is going on with Stallone's face? I get a little taste of vomit in my mouth when I see him promoting the newest installment of "Rocky." He looks gnarly and bloated. More so than normal, that is.
I'm just sayin'.
And for reasons too numerous and whiney and whatever the hell else to list, I am feeling every goddamned bit of the darkness.
Not quite as velvety and voluptuous as I would like the darkness to be. A bit too neurotic. But I'll live with it.
However, I do have to ask (and forgive me if he's got some kind of *disease* I haven't heard of) but what in the fuckety fucking fuck is going on with Stallone's face? I get a little taste of vomit in my mouth when I see him promoting the newest installment of "Rocky." He looks gnarly and bloated. More so than normal, that is.
I'm just sayin'.
a peace accord
The biggest battles I ever wage are with myself. If I'm Freudian in my leanings at times, it's because I know quite acutely -- as I suspect many of us do -- just how powerfully internalized belief systems and biological drives can conflict.
And by that, I also mean internalized belief systems can conflict with other internalized belief systems and biological drives can conflict with one another.
Some pretty powerful stuff has been engrained in this here fleshy vessel, my friends. But most of you know that already.
One of the battles I've been waging recently is that of being able to accept that I am a person with needs. I have been so incredibly conditioned, as have many of us, to believe that I am supposed to be a rugged individualist and to categorize *all* of my yearnings as "wants" rather than "needs."
In the world where I was raised, anyone who expresses needs is a failure. It means you can't take care of everything by yourself. Of all mistakes you might make, the worst is relying on another person.
Growing up, both of my parents made it abundantly clear that it was a sign of failure to ask for help, to offer an olive branch or to admit that you ever needed *anything* in relationship to anyone else. I come from very stubborn and foolish stock.
I know this. I realized some time ago that my life would not be more fully mine as long as I kept with the credo. And I have taken pretty bold steps, in my opinion, by way of breaking the pattern. I've been learning to ask for things and to admit to some needs.
But those actions come with a price: the old beliefs go on attack. Each time I force myself to seek help, I am dogged by them. They are why it feels like I'm "forcing" myself in the first place.
It's classic inner conflict.
The first stage to dealing with it has been to become aware of it. I used to do two things: Just not ask for help or ask for help and feel really bad without knowing why.
Now I can see the conflict for what it is -- or at least, what I know of what it is, because Freud would say there's even more to it of which I am not conscious. I will be digging around in some bit of this muck for the rest of my life one way or another.
But hopefully, not to the point which it's been consuming me lately. I have been engaged in a hearty Socratic dialogue with that faulty set of beliefs for a while now. I assume I'm winning, but there is such a deeply embedded emotional response to all of this that it's like being in trench warfare.
Two sides, dug deeply in, tossing psychological grenades at one another: There! Take that, you dirty little bastard! ... No, there, I'm tossing it back at you! Your reasoning is insufficient. Your argument has no feet!
And so it continues. Obviously, it's not working all that well.
It strikes me that what ends all wars is a surrender, otherwise known in these politically correct days as a peace accord.
The part of me that has learned to admit I have needs is not willing to surrender. But perhaps, in lieu of victory by way of vanquishing of my enemies, I will find a way to make peace with myself.
This is where the compassion comes in, I think. It is the part I have struggled with most because learning compassion for myself is the complete opposite of learning to deem myself a failure.
How do I do that? What form does compassion take when directed inward rather than outward? Is it all in the message I tell myself?
Rather that being annoyed that I am struggling so, would the compassionate voice say: Of course you are struggling! Why wouldn't you be?
When I hear that message -- ask not lest ye appear weak (and thus, despicable) -- what would be the compassionate response? How sad that you remind yourself of this so often as well. It must hurt to keep doing that.
Maybe I'll eventually be able to say to those savage voices: Perhaps I'll always hear you, but I'm not listening anymore.
Wouldn't that be sweet? If it were so, I mean.
If I could simply nod my head in acknowledgement of the sound. But then also: Just. Stop. Listening.
And by that, I also mean internalized belief systems can conflict with other internalized belief systems and biological drives can conflict with one another.
Some pretty powerful stuff has been engrained in this here fleshy vessel, my friends. But most of you know that already.
One of the battles I've been waging recently is that of being able to accept that I am a person with needs. I have been so incredibly conditioned, as have many of us, to believe that I am supposed to be a rugged individualist and to categorize *all* of my yearnings as "wants" rather than "needs."
In the world where I was raised, anyone who expresses needs is a failure. It means you can't take care of everything by yourself. Of all mistakes you might make, the worst is relying on another person.
Growing up, both of my parents made it abundantly clear that it was a sign of failure to ask for help, to offer an olive branch or to admit that you ever needed *anything* in relationship to anyone else. I come from very stubborn and foolish stock.
I know this. I realized some time ago that my life would not be more fully mine as long as I kept with the credo. And I have taken pretty bold steps, in my opinion, by way of breaking the pattern. I've been learning to ask for things and to admit to some needs.
But those actions come with a price: the old beliefs go on attack. Each time I force myself to seek help, I am dogged by them. They are why it feels like I'm "forcing" myself in the first place.
It's classic inner conflict.
The first stage to dealing with it has been to become aware of it. I used to do two things: Just not ask for help or ask for help and feel really bad without knowing why.
Now I can see the conflict for what it is -- or at least, what I know of what it is, because Freud would say there's even more to it of which I am not conscious. I will be digging around in some bit of this muck for the rest of my life one way or another.
But hopefully, not to the point which it's been consuming me lately. I have been engaged in a hearty Socratic dialogue with that faulty set of beliefs for a while now. I assume I'm winning, but there is such a deeply embedded emotional response to all of this that it's like being in trench warfare.
Two sides, dug deeply in, tossing psychological grenades at one another: There! Take that, you dirty little bastard! ... No, there, I'm tossing it back at you! Your reasoning is insufficient. Your argument has no feet!
And so it continues. Obviously, it's not working all that well.
It strikes me that what ends all wars is a surrender, otherwise known in these politically correct days as a peace accord.
The part of me that has learned to admit I have needs is not willing to surrender. But perhaps, in lieu of victory by way of vanquishing of my enemies, I will find a way to make peace with myself.
This is where the compassion comes in, I think. It is the part I have struggled with most because learning compassion for myself is the complete opposite of learning to deem myself a failure.
How do I do that? What form does compassion take when directed inward rather than outward? Is it all in the message I tell myself?
Rather that being annoyed that I am struggling so, would the compassionate voice say: Of course you are struggling! Why wouldn't you be?
When I hear that message -- ask not lest ye appear weak (and thus, despicable) -- what would be the compassionate response? How sad that you remind yourself of this so often as well. It must hurt to keep doing that.
Maybe I'll eventually be able to say to those savage voices: Perhaps I'll always hear you, but I'm not listening anymore.
Wouldn't that be sweet? If it were so, I mean.
If I could simply nod my head in acknowledgement of the sound. But then also: Just. Stop. Listening.
rain today
Remember yesterday, when I said I took the time to observe the stars and enjoy the still chill of the night, knowing it would not be the same today?
In preparing to take Brogan out for his walk *this* evening, this is what I wore: a cotton tank covered by a long-sleeve midweight capilene shirt covered by a cotton sweater covered by a waterproof winter parka with a midweight fleece liner. With a wool scarf. And those fabulous new cashmere gloves.
That was just the top half of me. On the bottom, I wore winter-weight water- and windproof pants over a pair of cozy fleece thermal liner pants. I also wore some hand-knit socks and waterproof trail runners.
The pup Brogan wore a little red parka of his own.
As we walked out of my building, I thought perhaps I had overdone it. It was only 37 degrees -- warmer than last night -- but the wind was blowing, and it had been raining. I learned the hard way earlier this winter not to trust the fact that it's *not* raining when I walk outside. Soon enough, it will be.
And so it was about halfway through our walk that the wind picked up to a ceaseless force of air coming from the cold, cold East and the rain started to come down steadily.
That part which was exposed -- my head, basically -- was icing up. The damp wind was so cold that when I breathed through my mouth, my front teeth felt like I'd just plunged them into ice cream. Not a pleasant senstation but still rather invigorating.
But the rest of me was dry and, for the first time in the past week or so, not shivering. I had finally chosen enough layers to repel the cold. In these conditions, I headed toward one of my regular drop-off sites for Brogan's "remains of the day," which I dutifully collect and dispose of in public receptacles (and sometimes the occasional private bin).
As I tossed the bag into the trash, a man came out of the coffeehouse nearby. He had a plastic bag and, in the wind and rain, was going to empty the trash and put in a new bag. I had always wondered who did this on the street. I thought it was "the city," whatever that means.
The man, with the hood of his parka pulled up and snug over a hat, greeted me warmly. "How are you this evening, miss?"
I was trotting past and intitially mumbled, Fine thanks. But the tone of his voice had caught me, and several steps away, I turned my face into the bitter wind to respond more politely, How are you? Enjoying this weather?
He shook his head at me with a smile. "Actually," he said, "I just do what I can to keep moving." And in the light from the coffeehouse, I realized I was talking to a homeless person. I felt like I had put my foot into my mouth.
An interesting exchange ensued, completely lacking in the hard-luck story I'm accustomed to hearing from the spangers I run into on the street all the time. I asked him how he made it through such cold, wet nights, and he explained why he didn't seek shelter downtown. We talked there in the nasty weather for a few moments, me in all toasty, high-tech waterproof everything -- to stay comfortable on a 40-minute jaunt -- and him in a dirty old canvas parka he wears day-in, day-out. He was changing the garbage bags at the can in front of the coffeehouse in exchange for some free coffee and a warm place to sit for a few hours.
He pointed to Brogan. "Your dog's jacket is really cute," he said, without a bit of sarcasm or irony.
I felt like a walking absurdity. Even more so for only having 55 cents in my pockets, which I gave him when he asked for some spange. It's too cold a night to give someone the cold shoulder. Come summer, when the immense disparity between his position and mine is less obvious, I suppose I shall feel free to ignore him....
In preparing to take Brogan out for his walk *this* evening, this is what I wore: a cotton tank covered by a long-sleeve midweight capilene shirt covered by a cotton sweater covered by a waterproof winter parka with a midweight fleece liner. With a wool scarf. And those fabulous new cashmere gloves.
That was just the top half of me. On the bottom, I wore winter-weight water- and windproof pants over a pair of cozy fleece thermal liner pants. I also wore some hand-knit socks and waterproof trail runners.
The pup Brogan wore a little red parka of his own.
As we walked out of my building, I thought perhaps I had overdone it. It was only 37 degrees -- warmer than last night -- but the wind was blowing, and it had been raining. I learned the hard way earlier this winter not to trust the fact that it's *not* raining when I walk outside. Soon enough, it will be.
And so it was about halfway through our walk that the wind picked up to a ceaseless force of air coming from the cold, cold East and the rain started to come down steadily.
That part which was exposed -- my head, basically -- was icing up. The damp wind was so cold that when I breathed through my mouth, my front teeth felt like I'd just plunged them into ice cream. Not a pleasant senstation but still rather invigorating.
But the rest of me was dry and, for the first time in the past week or so, not shivering. I had finally chosen enough layers to repel the cold. In these conditions, I headed toward one of my regular drop-off sites for Brogan's "remains of the day," which I dutifully collect and dispose of in public receptacles (and sometimes the occasional private bin).
As I tossed the bag into the trash, a man came out of the coffeehouse nearby. He had a plastic bag and, in the wind and rain, was going to empty the trash and put in a new bag. I had always wondered who did this on the street. I thought it was "the city," whatever that means.
The man, with the hood of his parka pulled up and snug over a hat, greeted me warmly. "How are you this evening, miss?"
I was trotting past and intitially mumbled, Fine thanks. But the tone of his voice had caught me, and several steps away, I turned my face into the bitter wind to respond more politely, How are you? Enjoying this weather?
He shook his head at me with a smile. "Actually," he said, "I just do what I can to keep moving." And in the light from the coffeehouse, I realized I was talking to a homeless person. I felt like I had put my foot into my mouth.
An interesting exchange ensued, completely lacking in the hard-luck story I'm accustomed to hearing from the spangers I run into on the street all the time. I asked him how he made it through such cold, wet nights, and he explained why he didn't seek shelter downtown. We talked there in the nasty weather for a few moments, me in all toasty, high-tech waterproof everything -- to stay comfortable on a 40-minute jaunt -- and him in a dirty old canvas parka he wears day-in, day-out. He was changing the garbage bags at the can in front of the coffeehouse in exchange for some free coffee and a warm place to sit for a few hours.
He pointed to Brogan. "Your dog's jacket is really cute," he said, without a bit of sarcasm or irony.
I felt like a walking absurdity. Even more so for only having 55 cents in my pockets, which I gave him when he asked for some spange. It's too cold a night to give someone the cold shoulder. Come summer, when the immense disparity between his position and mine is less obvious, I suppose I shall feel free to ignore him....
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
winter wonderland
Tonight's walk with the pup was spectacular. The night air was a crisp 34 degrees, but unlike the past few nights, there was neither wind nor fog. Just the clear night air, so still that the clouds of my exhalation drifted lazily away as I walked.
Rather than tucking myself in and taking a posture against the cold nip of the wind, I walked upright and openly. And rather than scurring along in hopes that moving would warm me up, I was able to contemplate a different route.
I chose to wander around without the usual direction, my aim to find homes with light displays. There aren't all that many in my neighborhood, so it really is a matter of seeking them out. Between the homes with displays, however, are plenty of old Victorians, farm houses and cottages, their windows radiating a warm, amber light or framing Christmas trees covered in twinkling whites and red.
In the still air, I could hear everything with amazing clarity. The sound of a lone dog barking blocks away was answered by the short, periodic squeaking of the pink motorized wings on the back of a harp-playing angel topiary covered in white lights. And the regular jingle-jingle of the pup's dog tags as he trotted along were the perfect backdrop of sound.
The glimpse of stars in the partly cloudy sky took my memory back to the first winter I lived in Oregon. There was a tremendous cold snap with days barely hitting the teens, and it was dry as a bone. I was staying in Molalla, a good 20 miles from the night lights of Portland. One night, when I was home alone and the wind was blowing a bit, the power went out. I bundled up and walked outside to see if I could get a sense of how widespread the power outage was. The sky was like a pool of black ink, but it was absolutely filled with stars. It was one of a handful of nights where I have been nearly thrown off my balance by the clarity of stars. (The most recent such experience -- and the most spectacular of all -- was in Wiamea on the Big Island this summer, thousands of feet in elevation below the massive observatories on the nearby mountaintop.)
In any case, the stars weren't all that clear tonight, but they were peeking out between the clouds. And I took a moment -- quite a few moments, actually -- to appreciate them, knowing they will not be visible tomorrow or the night after. In fact, I savored the entire walk for its chilly but windless and rainless flavor. It was a rare beauty of a night.
I got to thinking about the Christmas lights and why we put them up, whether on the outside of the house or on a tree inside (or, in my case, strung in the upper windows). Religious beliefs aside, we wash ourselves in light to push away the darkness. On the surface, they look frivolous, but they really can lift the spirit. They certainly lifted mine tonight.
At one point, I found myself thinking of something S2 has said to me many times: What is now will not always be, but it is what it is. As I regarded one light display, I stood still and watched my breath. Rather than moving away, as it does in the wind, it stayed with me, a foggy veil in front of my face that eventually dissolved into the darkness. It became a physical representation of the present moment, of what is neither moving away, nor coming nearer. Just. Right. Now.
The present moment is a tricky thing to be in, especially this time of year. My memory is weighted with a host of unpleasant Christmases past. (*Really* unpleasant. The kind where, when the dog suddenly pukes a large ball of vomit beneath the Christmas tree, *that* is the light-hearted part of the evening to recall fondly.) And my status as a single person without much in the way of family compells me to fret a bit about Christmases present and future.
But this evening, I felt the touch of the present moment's perfection, anchored by the lingering mist of my breath in the cold air. Which is when I thought of something S2 wrote on a notecard she gave me along with some sweet gifts (not the least of which were the cashmere gloves keeping my hands warm at the moment). She expressed a hope that the season would touch me in "an unimagined way," bring me some sense of wonder, peace and love. Well, I can't address the last one on the list (see the previous blog post), but tonight certainly had all the peace one needs in life -- and in the air of the night, a bit of wonder as well.
Rather than tucking myself in and taking a posture against the cold nip of the wind, I walked upright and openly. And rather than scurring along in hopes that moving would warm me up, I was able to contemplate a different route.
I chose to wander around without the usual direction, my aim to find homes with light displays. There aren't all that many in my neighborhood, so it really is a matter of seeking them out. Between the homes with displays, however, are plenty of old Victorians, farm houses and cottages, their windows radiating a warm, amber light or framing Christmas trees covered in twinkling whites and red.
In the still air, I could hear everything with amazing clarity. The sound of a lone dog barking blocks away was answered by the short, periodic squeaking of the pink motorized wings on the back of a harp-playing angel topiary covered in white lights. And the regular jingle-jingle of the pup's dog tags as he trotted along were the perfect backdrop of sound.
The glimpse of stars in the partly cloudy sky took my memory back to the first winter I lived in Oregon. There was a tremendous cold snap with days barely hitting the teens, and it was dry as a bone. I was staying in Molalla, a good 20 miles from the night lights of Portland. One night, when I was home alone and the wind was blowing a bit, the power went out. I bundled up and walked outside to see if I could get a sense of how widespread the power outage was. The sky was like a pool of black ink, but it was absolutely filled with stars. It was one of a handful of nights where I have been nearly thrown off my balance by the clarity of stars. (The most recent such experience -- and the most spectacular of all -- was in Wiamea on the Big Island this summer, thousands of feet in elevation below the massive observatories on the nearby mountaintop.)
In any case, the stars weren't all that clear tonight, but they were peeking out between the clouds. And I took a moment -- quite a few moments, actually -- to appreciate them, knowing they will not be visible tomorrow or the night after. In fact, I savored the entire walk for its chilly but windless and rainless flavor. It was a rare beauty of a night.
I got to thinking about the Christmas lights and why we put them up, whether on the outside of the house or on a tree inside (or, in my case, strung in the upper windows). Religious beliefs aside, we wash ourselves in light to push away the darkness. On the surface, they look frivolous, but they really can lift the spirit. They certainly lifted mine tonight.
At one point, I found myself thinking of something S2 has said to me many times: What is now will not always be, but it is what it is. As I regarded one light display, I stood still and watched my breath. Rather than moving away, as it does in the wind, it stayed with me, a foggy veil in front of my face that eventually dissolved into the darkness. It became a physical representation of the present moment, of what is neither moving away, nor coming nearer. Just. Right. Now.
The present moment is a tricky thing to be in, especially this time of year. My memory is weighted with a host of unpleasant Christmases past. (*Really* unpleasant. The kind where, when the dog suddenly pukes a large ball of vomit beneath the Christmas tree, *that* is the light-hearted part of the evening to recall fondly.) And my status as a single person without much in the way of family compells me to fret a bit about Christmases present and future.
But this evening, I felt the touch of the present moment's perfection, anchored by the lingering mist of my breath in the cold air. Which is when I thought of something S2 wrote on a notecard she gave me along with some sweet gifts (not the least of which were the cashmere gloves keeping my hands warm at the moment). She expressed a hope that the season would touch me in "an unimagined way," bring me some sense of wonder, peace and love. Well, I can't address the last one on the list (see the previous blog post), but tonight certainly had all the peace one needs in life -- and in the air of the night, a bit of wonder as well.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
part of a dialogue (or monologue, as the case may be)
This was initially an e-mail to a friend and classmate, a compulsion to more deeply explore in writing a piece of a conversation shared over some really good polenta and spinach at Ciao Vito on Sunday night. Upon reading it, I thought: Well, there you go with one of your damn essays again!
Rather than leaving my dear friend with an e-mail that may make her wonder: "Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with *this,*" I am casting it out to a broader audience. This is a topic that, as someone approaching work as a therapist, I feel like I have not given sufficient philosophical thought. It is, I imagine, frequently discussed in therapy. Thus, I will be writing for a bit on the old blog about it, as I give the topic more thought. What better time to do it than between sessions? Love is, after all, both luxury and necessity.
This first installment, below, is a copy -- a bit edited -- of the e-mail I sent to my patient friend and one of my favorite conversationalists. Going forward, I'll post my developing thoughts about it on my blog. And I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on the matter.
So my topic: My question to you last night was about love. I was pondering on that axiom about how one must love thyself before being capable of really loving others. I proposed that idea was bullshit, mainly because I think the process of learning to "love" oneself is a lifelong process, a job that, like knowing oneself, is really never complete. (You, for the record, said you think there is something to that.) Before I get into that, I also want recall that the conversation turned to how one even defines "love," whether it's really an "emotion" or more like an "attitude, a broader concept that describes a relationship more than it *is* something in and of itself." (You said you think the social construct of romantic love creates idealized, distorted views of what relationships should be.) That is something else I'd like to explore conceptually in greater detail, as I think the answer to that -- or rather, one's philosophy about the nature of love itself -- really impacts the understanding of how one approaches therapy on this topic (and surely, it is a *huge* one). And then, lastly, I mentioned I had read somewhere that there are only, like, seven or eight identifiable emotions, and we had a brief discussion about how such things are determined, but we both kind of shrugged at it and moved on to something else.
It is with the last topic on this list that I would like to begin: identifiable emotions.
So, without any difficulty, I did a little Google search and came up with some information. I haven't spent any time whatsoever examining the sources of all this stuff, but a quick summary: Darwin was among the first westerners to diligently and systematically attempt to identify and categorize the experience of emotions. He came up with more than 30 and conceptualized them as evolutionary adaptations. The behaviorists have plenty of thoughts about how emotions are primarily a the effect of some kind of reward or punishment based in a pleasure/pain construct. You've also got the opinions of the neurobiologists and their thoughts on mirror neurons and whatnot. I could go on, but basically, there are several schools of thought that regard emotions in biological or social constructs -- or a mix.
Plenty of debate on where they come from, so you can imagine it's also vigorously debated in some circles just *what* an emotion is, or rather, how to categorize them and talk about them. What do we mean when we say we're "happy" after all? If you can't define "happiness" because it's so individual, how can you possibly assume to be talking about the same emotion?Emotional experience is sometimes visible to others (laughter, crying, happiness -- and a particular depth of all of those being expressed sometimes in tears) and sometimes audible ("hearing emotion" in the voice) -- but sometimes invisible as well (a highly practiced skill in our society). Given the latter, we can't really trust our senses. We have to rely on what others tell us they are feeling.
But, again, lacking the ability to share the experience of others, we lack a true understanding even with words. That's why there are so many amazing synonyms for emotions. Consider: joy, happiness, elation, exuberance. I could make a longer list. Our language is rich, mainly because we keep trying to find more precise terms to describe things. Emotions must certainly be among the most difficult. How can I, the writer, capture in a single word all that I felt in a moment of note, such as hearing a young girl read to me just after she has learned to do so? Would "cool" really capture it? "Captivated?" "Touched" (to witness something in a dear child at a developmental milestone)? See how a feeling has already failed to be summed up in a single expression?
Frankly, as a lover of words and a believer in the unique experiences of individuals, I am opposed to broad categorizations of emotion. And yet, I am struck by the need, at least among colleagues, to have a common language. I am also opposed to diagnosing your average human but recently found myself arguing on behalf of the DSM if for no other reason than that common language. I vacillate on this topic tremendously because I'm generally not interested in labeling the complexity of a human life with a few words -- Anxiety Disorder, for example -- but also know that an approach requires a starting point, a position from which to view a situation. We sum up people all the time in many respects, don't we? How do we talk about them, even to ourselves, without a conceptualization, without words that in some way or other ... label? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
The ability to distinguish between emotions requires not just a good understanding of English synonyms but also an conceptualization of the broad regions where the physical experience of the body (the emotion) and its associated cognitions cross paths. There's a particular list I like. It is clinical and utterly lacking in the poetry I think humans deserve, but it's useful for discussions about the experiences associated with emotions. Each item on the list is part of a circular spectrum in which the opposite side of the circle describes the opposite emotion: "pleasantness" vs."unpleasantness."
The spectrum: pleasantness, high positive affect, strong engagement, high negative affect, unpleasantness, low positive affect, disengagement and, (as it comes back around toward pleasantness again) low negative affect. There are common linguistic expressions that fall into these categories. So "high negative affect" was commonly associated with words like distressed, fearful, hostile, jittery, nervous and scornful. To my artistic heart, those sound like very different emotions, but they certainly are constitute a high negative affect.
My purpose in mentioning all of this is simply to define the jumping off point for a philosophical discussion about love -- whether it's an emotion or the description of a relationship (or both/and?) and whether it really is necessary and/or possible "to love yourself completely before you can love others."
Ideally, I'd like to spark a discussion on this, but I also want to organize my thoughts on the topic. It keeps talking to me, and I keep thinking: Well, yeah, this is something I'd better have a more constructed personal philosophy on if I'm going to be working with people.
I can tell you my personal philosophy on "meaning of life" -- and I'm developing a rather substantial one on "female sexuality" as well -- and those well-defined bits of self knowledge help me reflect on my reactions to what other people on the subject. But I cannot tell you what I think about "love" -- about the complexity of its social construct, its evolutionary or biological purposes, whether it's an emotion or a collection of attitudes, needs and wants. And yet, will it not be among the most bantered about of terms in therapy? Will our clients not speak of it endlessly? Do we not use the word ourselves with so many complex meanings? It occurs to me that I have not given it sufficient thought.
Rather than leaving my dear friend with an e-mail that may make her wonder: "Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with *this,*" I am casting it out to a broader audience. This is a topic that, as someone approaching work as a therapist, I feel like I have not given sufficient philosophical thought. It is, I imagine, frequently discussed in therapy. Thus, I will be writing for a bit on the old blog about it, as I give the topic more thought. What better time to do it than between sessions? Love is, after all, both luxury and necessity.
This first installment, below, is a copy -- a bit edited -- of the e-mail I sent to my patient friend and one of my favorite conversationalists. Going forward, I'll post my developing thoughts about it on my blog. And I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on the matter.
So my topic: My question to you last night was about love. I was pondering on that axiom about how one must love thyself before being capable of really loving others. I proposed that idea was bullshit, mainly because I think the process of learning to "love" oneself is a lifelong process, a job that, like knowing oneself, is really never complete. (You, for the record, said you think there is something to that.) Before I get into that, I also want recall that the conversation turned to how one even defines "love," whether it's really an "emotion" or more like an "attitude, a broader concept that describes a relationship more than it *is* something in and of itself." (You said you think the social construct of romantic love creates idealized, distorted views of what relationships should be.) That is something else I'd like to explore conceptually in greater detail, as I think the answer to that -- or rather, one's philosophy about the nature of love itself -- really impacts the understanding of how one approaches therapy on this topic (and surely, it is a *huge* one). And then, lastly, I mentioned I had read somewhere that there are only, like, seven or eight identifiable emotions, and we had a brief discussion about how such things are determined, but we both kind of shrugged at it and moved on to something else.
It is with the last topic on this list that I would like to begin: identifiable emotions.
So, without any difficulty, I did a little Google search and came up with some information. I haven't spent any time whatsoever examining the sources of all this stuff, but a quick summary: Darwin was among the first westerners to diligently and systematically attempt to identify and categorize the experience of emotions. He came up with more than 30 and conceptualized them as evolutionary adaptations. The behaviorists have plenty of thoughts about how emotions are primarily a the effect of some kind of reward or punishment based in a pleasure/pain construct. You've also got the opinions of the neurobiologists and their thoughts on mirror neurons and whatnot. I could go on, but basically, there are several schools of thought that regard emotions in biological or social constructs -- or a mix.
Plenty of debate on where they come from, so you can imagine it's also vigorously debated in some circles just *what* an emotion is, or rather, how to categorize them and talk about them. What do we mean when we say we're "happy" after all? If you can't define "happiness" because it's so individual, how can you possibly assume to be talking about the same emotion?Emotional experience is sometimes visible to others (laughter, crying, happiness -- and a particular depth of all of those being expressed sometimes in tears) and sometimes audible ("hearing emotion" in the voice) -- but sometimes invisible as well (a highly practiced skill in our society). Given the latter, we can't really trust our senses. We have to rely on what others tell us they are feeling.
But, again, lacking the ability to share the experience of others, we lack a true understanding even with words. That's why there are so many amazing synonyms for emotions. Consider: joy, happiness, elation, exuberance. I could make a longer list. Our language is rich, mainly because we keep trying to find more precise terms to describe things. Emotions must certainly be among the most difficult. How can I, the writer, capture in a single word all that I felt in a moment of note, such as hearing a young girl read to me just after she has learned to do so? Would "cool" really capture it? "Captivated?" "Touched" (to witness something in a dear child at a developmental milestone)? See how a feeling has already failed to be summed up in a single expression?
Frankly, as a lover of words and a believer in the unique experiences of individuals, I am opposed to broad categorizations of emotion. And yet, I am struck by the need, at least among colleagues, to have a common language. I am also opposed to diagnosing your average human but recently found myself arguing on behalf of the DSM if for no other reason than that common language. I vacillate on this topic tremendously because I'm generally not interested in labeling the complexity of a human life with a few words -- Anxiety Disorder, for example -- but also know that an approach requires a starting point, a position from which to view a situation. We sum up people all the time in many respects, don't we? How do we talk about them, even to ourselves, without a conceptualization, without words that in some way or other ... label? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
The ability to distinguish between emotions requires not just a good understanding of English synonyms but also an conceptualization of the broad regions where the physical experience of the body (the emotion) and its associated cognitions cross paths. There's a particular list I like. It is clinical and utterly lacking in the poetry I think humans deserve, but it's useful for discussions about the experiences associated with emotions. Each item on the list is part of a circular spectrum in which the opposite side of the circle describes the opposite emotion: "pleasantness" vs."unpleasantness."
The spectrum: pleasantness, high positive affect, strong engagement, high negative affect, unpleasantness, low positive affect, disengagement and, (as it comes back around toward pleasantness again) low negative affect. There are common linguistic expressions that fall into these categories. So "high negative affect" was commonly associated with words like distressed, fearful, hostile, jittery, nervous and scornful. To my artistic heart, those sound like very different emotions, but they certainly are constitute a high negative affect.
My purpose in mentioning all of this is simply to define the jumping off point for a philosophical discussion about love -- whether it's an emotion or the description of a relationship (or both/and?) and whether it really is necessary and/or possible "to love yourself completely before you can love others."
Ideally, I'd like to spark a discussion on this, but I also want to organize my thoughts on the topic. It keeps talking to me, and I keep thinking: Well, yeah, this is something I'd better have a more constructed personal philosophy on if I'm going to be working with people.
I can tell you my personal philosophy on "meaning of life" -- and I'm developing a rather substantial one on "female sexuality" as well -- and those well-defined bits of self knowledge help me reflect on my reactions to what other people on the subject. But I cannot tell you what I think about "love" -- about the complexity of its social construct, its evolutionary or biological purposes, whether it's an emotion or a collection of attitudes, needs and wants. And yet, will it not be among the most bantered about of terms in therapy? Will our clients not speak of it endlessly? Do we not use the word ourselves with so many complex meanings? It occurs to me that I have not given it sufficient thought.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Late in the evening, the music seeping through
Last night, some of my mates from school took a little pause in the midst of all the holiday activities and celebrated something completely different: the end of the term. For whatever reason, a few of us had the need to kiss off this one with something special.
To that end, I threw a little party at my place, and the drinking and dancing commenced. It was a small gathering, but it was a quirky and passionate one, which may just be the best kind.
More than one of those in attendance, myself included, had some spare energy to release in dance, and with the collective power of three iPods -- YogaGirl and Erik Erikson both have some fabulous iTune libraries -- we got our groove on for a couple hours. One of my rather shy classmates totally let herself loose with the music and was fabulous to watch; a great dancer.
That and some good beer and wine -- and, upon S2's late-night arrival in a smashing Audrey Hepburn getup, a little hard liquor -- seemed to be just what was on tap. There was nice energy among those who attended, and to my collective guests, I thank you for bringing some holiday cheer to my quiet little loft.
By the way, Dr. R had, about 10 or so, raised a question about whether the neighbors, specifically the Thai restaurant downstairs, would be disturbed by the thumping beat of the music and our feet.
This evening, I talked to Chin while picking up some dinner, and asked him if he heard us dancing. He said, "Oh, yes, but we were closed already. It sounded like you were having fun, but I went outside to listen, and I couldn't hear any music. I thought maybe you were dancing without music."
That's because the windows were closed, I said.
"Oh, I thought maybe just no music," he replied. "When I was younger, we often danced with no music. But needed to get very drunk first. Then dance with no music."
I think we were drunk, but we still wanted the music anyway.
The party wound down almost completely by 1, except for this one nightowl of a classmate, who stayed and chatted (and I think was sobering up) until nearly 5.
I haven't been up that late in quite a while, and one of the first thoughts I had upon waking at 12:30 this afternoon was whether I would, in fact, make it through awake graveyard shifts working by myself at one of the Homes for the Criminally Insane. I suppose I could always call this mate and ask her to chat to keep me awake...?
Talking briefly to YogaGirl this evening, she informed me that this particular classmate, who I find to be exceptionally pleasant and sweet, is a known nightowl. For some reason, learning that made me feel better. Not because it explained her incredible social stamina, but because as a nightowl myself, regularly going to sleep around 3, it is simply nice to know that *some* of the people I know have similar habits. This makes four of us in my little in-town circle: YogaGirl and her BF and the aforementioned classmate.
It's just good to know those people are out there, because sometimes, I feel a little weird for being such a nightowl. Sometimes, as I'm shutting down around 3, I feel oddly isolated, as if I'm the only person awake at that hour for no good reason, such as working or closing down a bar.
But I have always had difficulty falling asleep before midnight, and it has never been too helpful to fight against that tendancy. For the six years that XGF and I lived together, I tended to keep her up. Her inclination was to hit the hay around 9, but she managed most nights of the week to amend that to about 10:30 or so but frequently complained about it. We were always out of sync in that regard.
As it is, I'm dreading Monday and Tuesday of this week. Even though the term is over, these may be the two most difficult days I've faced lately. I actually have to be at my orientation and training to work in the Homes for the Criminally Insane at 8:30. In the morning. That means I have to wake up at, like, 7. In the morning.
They must be testing me....
Well, on that note, I will admit that I am a bit wrecked from staying up until 5 this morning and skating by on less six hours of sleep. If there's any chance I'll wake up at 7 on Monday, I must make up for lost time.
So it is that I will go to sleep early tonight (it's only 12:30!). It might require some Ambien to make it happen, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.
Sweet dreams, one and all, and to all a good night.
To that end, I threw a little party at my place, and the drinking and dancing commenced. It was a small gathering, but it was a quirky and passionate one, which may just be the best kind.
More than one of those in attendance, myself included, had some spare energy to release in dance, and with the collective power of three iPods -- YogaGirl and Erik Erikson both have some fabulous iTune libraries -- we got our groove on for a couple hours. One of my rather shy classmates totally let herself loose with the music and was fabulous to watch; a great dancer.
That and some good beer and wine -- and, upon S2's late-night arrival in a smashing Audrey Hepburn getup, a little hard liquor -- seemed to be just what was on tap. There was nice energy among those who attended, and to my collective guests, I thank you for bringing some holiday cheer to my quiet little loft.
By the way, Dr. R had, about 10 or so, raised a question about whether the neighbors, specifically the Thai restaurant downstairs, would be disturbed by the thumping beat of the music and our feet.
This evening, I talked to Chin while picking up some dinner, and asked him if he heard us dancing. He said, "Oh, yes, but we were closed already. It sounded like you were having fun, but I went outside to listen, and I couldn't hear any music. I thought maybe you were dancing without music."
That's because the windows were closed, I said.
"Oh, I thought maybe just no music," he replied. "When I was younger, we often danced with no music. But needed to get very drunk first. Then dance with no music."
I think we were drunk, but we still wanted the music anyway.
The party wound down almost completely by 1, except for this one nightowl of a classmate, who stayed and chatted (and I think was sobering up) until nearly 5.
I haven't been up that late in quite a while, and one of the first thoughts I had upon waking at 12:30 this afternoon was whether I would, in fact, make it through awake graveyard shifts working by myself at one of the Homes for the Criminally Insane. I suppose I could always call this mate and ask her to chat to keep me awake...?
Talking briefly to YogaGirl this evening, she informed me that this particular classmate, who I find to be exceptionally pleasant and sweet, is a known nightowl. For some reason, learning that made me feel better. Not because it explained her incredible social stamina, but because as a nightowl myself, regularly going to sleep around 3, it is simply nice to know that *some* of the people I know have similar habits. This makes four of us in my little in-town circle: YogaGirl and her BF and the aforementioned classmate.
It's just good to know those people are out there, because sometimes, I feel a little weird for being such a nightowl. Sometimes, as I'm shutting down around 3, I feel oddly isolated, as if I'm the only person awake at that hour for no good reason, such as working or closing down a bar.
But I have always had difficulty falling asleep before midnight, and it has never been too helpful to fight against that tendancy. For the six years that XGF and I lived together, I tended to keep her up. Her inclination was to hit the hay around 9, but she managed most nights of the week to amend that to about 10:30 or so but frequently complained about it. We were always out of sync in that regard.
As it is, I'm dreading Monday and Tuesday of this week. Even though the term is over, these may be the two most difficult days I've faced lately. I actually have to be at my orientation and training to work in the Homes for the Criminally Insane at 8:30. In the morning. That means I have to wake up at, like, 7. In the morning.
They must be testing me....
Well, on that note, I will admit that I am a bit wrecked from staying up until 5 this morning and skating by on less six hours of sleep. If there's any chance I'll wake up at 7 on Monday, I must make up for lost time.
So it is that I will go to sleep early tonight (it's only 12:30!). It might require some Ambien to make it happen, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.
Sweet dreams, one and all, and to all a good night.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Pictures I like
I am tidying up my computer desktop, and finding all sorts of shit on it. Some of these images are so pleasing to me that, before I ship them off to an appropriate photo archive, I will share them with the rest of you.
Check out this picture of me. Maybe I should use it as my online identity. It gives me both anonymity *and* presence. If your memory of what I look like is a bit foggy, this should fit the bill. (And also serve as a reminder that you really should stop drinking so much!)
And then, this one of the pup Brogan next to an old horse hitching ring in the sidewalk, where someone has tethered their horse. (I love Portland!)
This monkey, a red-faced Uacari, checked me over for ticks and other edible yummies at Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm on the outskirts of Iquitos, a city in the Peruvian Amazon. And then the monkey asked me to check it. I'm sad to say this was the *last* time some new female checked me out (that I know about, anyway). ... It was one of the more amazing moments of my life. (Obviously, that parrot is *not* me.)
This is just a funny image of another monkey we all know. I had to share it.
And, lastly, I simply did not want you guys to miss out on an opportunity to attend what must be a *really fabulous* show. (So long as the billed performers do not flake out and prove themselves to be non-existant, as I suspect they will.) I've noticed there's no money-back guarantee if you're not satisfied....
Check out this picture of me. Maybe I should use it as my online identity. It gives me both anonymity *and* presence. If your memory of what I look like is a bit foggy, this should fit the bill. (And also serve as a reminder that you really should stop drinking so much!)
And then, this one of the pup Brogan next to an old horse hitching ring in the sidewalk, where someone has tethered their horse. (I love Portland!)
This monkey, a red-faced Uacari, checked me over for ticks and other edible yummies at Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm on the outskirts of Iquitos, a city in the Peruvian Amazon. And then the monkey asked me to check it. I'm sad to say this was the *last* time some new female checked me out (that I know about, anyway). ... It was one of the more amazing moments of my life. (Obviously, that parrot is *not* me.)
This is just a funny image of another monkey we all know. I had to share it.
And, lastly, I simply did not want you guys to miss out on an opportunity to attend what must be a *really fabulous* show. (So long as the billed performers do not flake out and prove themselves to be non-existant, as I suspect they will.) I've noticed there's no money-back guarantee if you're not satisfied....
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Pathetic
That's what it is.
Yesterday afternoon and all day today, I've been bothered by a pain in my right forearm and bicep near the elbow. It took me a while to figure out what caused it, and now that I have ... well, it's pathetic.
I've got sore muscles from playing darts.
Someone come shoot this old dog and put her out of her misery. Good grief....
Yesterday afternoon and all day today, I've been bothered by a pain in my right forearm and bicep near the elbow. It took me a while to figure out what caused it, and now that I have ... well, it's pathetic.
I've got sore muscles from playing darts.
Someone come shoot this old dog and put her out of her misery. Good grief....
And I'm done!
Holy mutha fuckin jezuz shit!
This has been *such* a trying term, psychologically speaking. I had one class I HATED, another I was dreading but turned out OK and a third that had a bunch of busy work while also requiring me to engage in extensive navel gazing.
And although I must still attend two more classes and give two more presentations -- one in each class -- this week, I have completed my coursework.
Tonight, I polished off a treatment plan and a best practices report (the class I hate) and created a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am PowerPoint presentation for my research methods course (the one I was dreading).
Tomorrow, I will go get my hair "taken care of" and my brows waxed. And I'll go grocery shopping for my weekly menu, as well as for a little End-of-the-term shindig I'm having on Friday. I've also got to go to the bank to straighten out something really obnoxious: missing payments to my water utility (deducted from my online banking but never received by the utility).
And then I think I'm going to do some Christmas shopping. For all you girls and boys who have behaved so well. Especially in that obscene treatment planning class.
I am SO fucking ecstatic at this moment. I wish I had someone other than my dog with whom to share it. He gets a bit upset when he hears me let loose one of my characteristically Texan Yeeeeee-haaaaaw!s. Which is the sound I made when I got done.
Because I hated that treatment planning class, man. It had, in my mind, become a Battle-Scar Galactica. I will be happy to kiss it off. Even though I'll wager $10 with the first taker that the capricious grading has brought an end to my 4.0 gpa.
This has been *such* a trying term, psychologically speaking. I had one class I HATED, another I was dreading but turned out OK and a third that had a bunch of busy work while also requiring me to engage in extensive navel gazing.
And although I must still attend two more classes and give two more presentations -- one in each class -- this week, I have completed my coursework.
Tonight, I polished off a treatment plan and a best practices report (the class I hate) and created a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am PowerPoint presentation for my research methods course (the one I was dreading).
Tomorrow, I will go get my hair "taken care of" and my brows waxed. And I'll go grocery shopping for my weekly menu, as well as for a little End-of-the-term shindig I'm having on Friday. I've also got to go to the bank to straighten out something really obnoxious: missing payments to my water utility (deducted from my online banking but never received by the utility).
And then I think I'm going to do some Christmas shopping. For all you girls and boys who have behaved so well. Especially in that obscene treatment planning class.
I am SO fucking ecstatic at this moment. I wish I had someone other than my dog with whom to share it. He gets a bit upset when he hears me let loose one of my characteristically Texan Yeeeeee-haaaaaw!s. Which is the sound I made when I got done.
Because I hated that treatment planning class, man. It had, in my mind, become a Battle-Scar Galactica. I will be happy to kiss it off. Even though I'll wager $10 with the first taker that the capricious grading has brought an end to my 4.0 gpa.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Grits.
Last night, I went out, in my fabulous shoes, for a late date with YogaGirl and her BF. Let's call him BrassBoy.
We're at the pub, and I'm enjoying a Black & Tan with Dead Man Ale as the Tan. We're playing darts. An especially drunken woman who's randomly infusing her sentences with "subjective objective" in meaningless combinations is sitting at the table, regaling YogaGirl with something about the difference between "nurturing" and "nutrients," denying my assertion that they share the same root word -- as well as insisting "sustaining" and "sustenance" have nothing in common, either.
It's in this atmosphere that BrassBoy and I are having a little discussion about mental illness, and I am finding myself in the rare position of being the DSM's defender. It's like an episode of The Twilight Zone.
Then, as YogaGirl gets up to shoot her round of darts, the conversation takes an unexpected diversion.
"You know," BrassBoy says, leaning toward me as if to speak in confidence, "you're the first person from the South that YogaGirl has ever known. Me too, actually, but I mean, it's kind of a big deal for her, an issue she's been dealing with."
I'm sorry, I say over the music and through a cloud of cigarette and incense smoke. Did you say YogaGirl has an *issue* with me being a Southerner?
"Oh, not with *you,*" he says. "Just with people from the South. You know...."
I was tempted to be snide and say, No, I do *not* know. What do you mean?
Instead, I replied tongue-in-cheek, Well, y'all have some pretty thick accents, ya know. You sound like yankees to me, and that has taken some adjusting on my part, too.
But the truth is, my friends, that even if I do not know specifically what he meant, I can easily make some assumptions. I lost my accent -- in my opinion, it's pretty well gone -- a good long while ago, so people don't necessarily peg me as a Southerner. That has resulted in two things: People tend to make all sorts of derogatory comments about Southerners in my presence that I suspect they would not make if they knew I was of that kin; and, second, my personal relationships typically have not been tainted by people's presumptions about those of us who hail from the fair land of Dixie.
Because I have some personal problems with the political climate in the South, I suspect most of my friends don't know just how proud I am to be a Southerner. They may know I have some scars -- especially related to the KKK -- from the inner turmoil I experienced in coming out as a lesbian, but they may not now how much I value the interpersonal relations, the hospitality, the caring about other people's business.
Some of you from other regions might say the latter is just a bit of beig nosey. But The Debutante, who's from Tennessee, knows what I mean. Southerners mind other people's business not just because they enjoy gossiping, it's because they GIVE A SHIT. They (we) are exceptionally community-minded, very welcoming to others.
Now, granted, that kind of inclusive attitude begets its own problem: They (we) generally prefer people who are like we are, and those who kind of stick out, who refuse to conform, are frowned upon. The assumption is made that such people don't want to belong and may actually be wanting to disturb the social order.
On that point, I couldn't disagree more. I am, in the South, just that kind of outsider. I'm queer, you know. I'm a girl who likes ... girls. And not just for shopping. I like to fuck them. This is a bit too disturbing for many of my Southern sisters and brothers. (But not all of them.) So I pretty much had to move away to feel like it was OK for me to be myself and to feel more secure in living openly as the girl-fucking girl that I am.
But it doesn't stop me from being a Southerner. Nor does 12 years on the West Coast. If I hear "Dixie" start playing, I'm apt to tear up. Heaven help me if I'm expected to sing, "Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton...."
'Cause to tell you the truth, it's one of those secret heart-breaking things that I will never move back there. I miss the crickets and the cicadas, the thunderstorms, the genteel accents, the down-home food (the barbecue, the boudin, the jambalaya, the grits in every breakfast joint). I miss the music and the mint julips and the rocking chairs on big front porches and the spanish moss.
Sometimes, I even miss the humidity (but not often). When The Deb said last week that the heat in the South envelopes you like a hug, I knew what she meant. I felt it all over again. I had a sudden vision, a viseral and real memory from when I was about 21 or 22. I'm lying in a sleigh bed at my aunt and uncle's place outside of New Orleans -- the bed that prompted me to buy the beauty I have -- and the windows are wide open, the ceiling fan is making a futile attempt at cooling the evening, the lace curtains are billowing into the room on a warm breeze, and I can hear the sound of the wind in the Live Oaks, the cars driving across the drawbridge that crosses the swampy Tchefuncte River nearby and the sound of zydeco wafting on the air from the bar a few blocks away. And in that memory, I feel the hug The Deb was talking about. I feel the South, enveloping me.
It is a culture, a place, a people -- distinct as any other -- but it's the one that formed me most profoundly, left its indelible, indignant, gonna-rise-again, rebel imprint on me.
So I was curious to hear BrassBoy talk about my Southerness as an "issue."
Later, in between a round of darts, I asked YogaGirl, Am I really the first Southerner you've known? Because, more than her "issues," -- which are probably well-deserved -- I was having a hard time believing I was the first. Was I really popping someone's Southern cherry? I couldn't believe it.
"Well, yeah," she said. "I mean, I've known of people from the South before, but I've never *known* known one. You're the first."
I know better than to think I can undo 30 years of inculturation that has taught YogaGirl, who's from Chicago or somewhere around those parts, to fear Southerners as unpredictable, violent bigots. I haven't been unable to undo those feelings for myself -- and I know considerably better than YogaGirl just what Southerners can be like.
But I would hope, just a little, that all my friends on the West Coast -- not just YogaGirl, but any of them -- will come to appreciate the complexity of the Southern character from the likes me and The Deb. Getting into your business is the least of our charms, I can assure you.
Have you tried my grits?
We're at the pub, and I'm enjoying a Black & Tan with Dead Man Ale as the Tan. We're playing darts. An especially drunken woman who's randomly infusing her sentences with "subjective objective" in meaningless combinations is sitting at the table, regaling YogaGirl with something about the difference between "nurturing" and "nutrients," denying my assertion that they share the same root word -- as well as insisting "sustaining" and "sustenance" have nothing in common, either.
It's in this atmosphere that BrassBoy and I are having a little discussion about mental illness, and I am finding myself in the rare position of being the DSM's defender. It's like an episode of The Twilight Zone.
Then, as YogaGirl gets up to shoot her round of darts, the conversation takes an unexpected diversion.
"You know," BrassBoy says, leaning toward me as if to speak in confidence, "you're the first person from the South that YogaGirl has ever known. Me too, actually, but I mean, it's kind of a big deal for her, an issue she's been dealing with."
I'm sorry, I say over the music and through a cloud of cigarette and incense smoke. Did you say YogaGirl has an *issue* with me being a Southerner?
"Oh, not with *you,*" he says. "Just with people from the South. You know...."
I was tempted to be snide and say, No, I do *not* know. What do you mean?
Instead, I replied tongue-in-cheek, Well, y'all have some pretty thick accents, ya know. You sound like yankees to me, and that has taken some adjusting on my part, too.
But the truth is, my friends, that even if I do not know specifically what he meant, I can easily make some assumptions. I lost my accent -- in my opinion, it's pretty well gone -- a good long while ago, so people don't necessarily peg me as a Southerner. That has resulted in two things: People tend to make all sorts of derogatory comments about Southerners in my presence that I suspect they would not make if they knew I was of that kin; and, second, my personal relationships typically have not been tainted by people's presumptions about those of us who hail from the fair land of Dixie.
Because I have some personal problems with the political climate in the South, I suspect most of my friends don't know just how proud I am to be a Southerner. They may know I have some scars -- especially related to the KKK -- from the inner turmoil I experienced in coming out as a lesbian, but they may not now how much I value the interpersonal relations, the hospitality, the caring about other people's business.
Some of you from other regions might say the latter is just a bit of beig nosey. But The Debutante, who's from Tennessee, knows what I mean. Southerners mind other people's business not just because they enjoy gossiping, it's because they GIVE A SHIT. They (we) are exceptionally community-minded, very welcoming to others.
Now, granted, that kind of inclusive attitude begets its own problem: They (we) generally prefer people who are like we are, and those who kind of stick out, who refuse to conform, are frowned upon. The assumption is made that such people don't want to belong and may actually be wanting to disturb the social order.
On that point, I couldn't disagree more. I am, in the South, just that kind of outsider. I'm queer, you know. I'm a girl who likes ... girls. And not just for shopping. I like to fuck them. This is a bit too disturbing for many of my Southern sisters and brothers. (But not all of them.) So I pretty much had to move away to feel like it was OK for me to be myself and to feel more secure in living openly as the girl-fucking girl that I am.
But it doesn't stop me from being a Southerner. Nor does 12 years on the West Coast. If I hear "Dixie" start playing, I'm apt to tear up. Heaven help me if I'm expected to sing, "Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton...."
'Cause to tell you the truth, it's one of those secret heart-breaking things that I will never move back there. I miss the crickets and the cicadas, the thunderstorms, the genteel accents, the down-home food (the barbecue, the boudin, the jambalaya, the grits in every breakfast joint). I miss the music and the mint julips and the rocking chairs on big front porches and the spanish moss.
Sometimes, I even miss the humidity (but not often). When The Deb said last week that the heat in the South envelopes you like a hug, I knew what she meant. I felt it all over again. I had a sudden vision, a viseral and real memory from when I was about 21 or 22. I'm lying in a sleigh bed at my aunt and uncle's place outside of New Orleans -- the bed that prompted me to buy the beauty I have -- and the windows are wide open, the ceiling fan is making a futile attempt at cooling the evening, the lace curtains are billowing into the room on a warm breeze, and I can hear the sound of the wind in the Live Oaks, the cars driving across the drawbridge that crosses the swampy Tchefuncte River nearby and the sound of zydeco wafting on the air from the bar a few blocks away. And in that memory, I feel the hug The Deb was talking about. I feel the South, enveloping me.
It is a culture, a place, a people -- distinct as any other -- but it's the one that formed me most profoundly, left its indelible, indignant, gonna-rise-again, rebel imprint on me.
So I was curious to hear BrassBoy talk about my Southerness as an "issue."
Later, in between a round of darts, I asked YogaGirl, Am I really the first Southerner you've known? Because, more than her "issues," -- which are probably well-deserved -- I was having a hard time believing I was the first. Was I really popping someone's Southern cherry? I couldn't believe it.
"Well, yeah," she said. "I mean, I've known of people from the South before, but I've never *known* known one. You're the first."
I know better than to think I can undo 30 years of inculturation that has taught YogaGirl, who's from Chicago or somewhere around those parts, to fear Southerners as unpredictable, violent bigots. I haven't been unable to undo those feelings for myself -- and I know considerably better than YogaGirl just what Southerners can be like.
But I would hope, just a little, that all my friends on the West Coast -- not just YogaGirl, but any of them -- will come to appreciate the complexity of the Southern character from the likes me and The Deb. Getting into your business is the least of our charms, I can assure you.
Have you tried my grits?
Saturday, December 09, 2006
These shoes
So I was thinking yesterday that these shoes I bought were probably the worst purchase I've ever made. I can't put my orthotics in them, and I figured I had just gone and sunk a couple hundred bucks into one more thing I will never use. Kinda like ... my guitar.
But then, I had two reasons to go out tonight, one of which I ended up flaking on. (Yes, for the record, sometimes even when really cute sorta-single, gainfully employed lesbians who can cook call and invite me to a poker part, I end up flaking. One reason is that it was poker. But the other reason -- the real reason -- was that Bubba and I had a sushi date that ended up lasting much longer than anticipated, and we were having a rather intense discussion about her breakup pattern when I realized I was supposed to be arriving at that poker party. So ... bad me! ... I flaked!)
Anyway, I had this reluctance yesterday to wear the shoes outside of my home, thinking I might return them. On accounts I thought I was unlikely to wear them. On accounts I can't fit the insert in them. And on accounts that the inserts make a huge difference in my experience of walking without pain.
However.
I put them on and walked out the door tonight, and within just two or three crunches of something underfoot -- probably nut shells -- I knew there was no returning them. It doesn't matter.
Because there is no fucking way in hell I'm returning these shoes.
And as Bubba noted when she tried one of them on, it seems a pity one should ever have to take them off.
This is not the exact shoe I purchased, but if you take off the button near the split at the top and imagine a light brown leather, you've got the idea:
Bubba called them "sexy." I don't think I can agree with that appraisal. To me, they look like everyone else's shoes, kind of clog-like. I made this observation to Bubba, and she said, "*What* are you talking about? They do not look like other shoes. They're *beautiful.*"
OK, I said, put your other shoe next to it and tell me what the difference is.
"These are sleek. They don't look like my boots at all. Very cute shoes. Very stylish. How much did these cost?"
I told her.
And so she added, "Yeah, well, the fact remains that even if these kinda sorta look like other people's shoes -- which they don't -- they sure as hell don't *feel* like other shoes. If I owned them, I don't think you'd ever see me wearing anything else."
I once said as much about my Keene's. But as I observed from walking around in these shoes this evening ... well, it's rapture. My feet feel like they have been transported to the kind of place jihadists dream of: somewhere that they're being pampered by a whole bunch of virgins who don't know any better than to lavish attention on those crude horney little bastards.
In other words, I'm committed.
But then, I had two reasons to go out tonight, one of which I ended up flaking on. (Yes, for the record, sometimes even when really cute sorta-single, gainfully employed lesbians who can cook call and invite me to a poker part, I end up flaking. One reason is that it was poker. But the other reason -- the real reason -- was that Bubba and I had a sushi date that ended up lasting much longer than anticipated, and we were having a rather intense discussion about her breakup pattern when I realized I was supposed to be arriving at that poker party. So ... bad me! ... I flaked!)
Anyway, I had this reluctance yesterday to wear the shoes outside of my home, thinking I might return them. On accounts I thought I was unlikely to wear them. On accounts I can't fit the insert in them. And on accounts that the inserts make a huge difference in my experience of walking without pain.
However.
I put them on and walked out the door tonight, and within just two or three crunches of something underfoot -- probably nut shells -- I knew there was no returning them. It doesn't matter.
Because there is no fucking way in hell I'm returning these shoes.
And as Bubba noted when she tried one of them on, it seems a pity one should ever have to take them off.
This is not the exact shoe I purchased, but if you take off the button near the split at the top and imagine a light brown leather, you've got the idea:
Bubba called them "sexy." I don't think I can agree with that appraisal. To me, they look like everyone else's shoes, kind of clog-like. I made this observation to Bubba, and she said, "*What* are you talking about? They do not look like other shoes. They're *beautiful.*"
OK, I said, put your other shoe next to it and tell me what the difference is.
"These are sleek. They don't look like my boots at all. Very cute shoes. Very stylish. How much did these cost?"
I told her.
And so she added, "Yeah, well, the fact remains that even if these kinda sorta look like other people's shoes -- which they don't -- they sure as hell don't *feel* like other shoes. If I owned them, I don't think you'd ever see me wearing anything else."
I once said as much about my Keene's. But as I observed from walking around in these shoes this evening ... well, it's rapture. My feet feel like they have been transported to the kind of place jihadists dream of: somewhere that they're being pampered by a whole bunch of virgins who don't know any better than to lavish attention on those crude horney little bastards.
In other words, I'm committed.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Shopping & the criminally insane
Every year, it's like this.
I really don't like to shop all that much. Especially not at the holidays. So I long ago decided the best way to make it through all the holiday bustle and crowds and anguished decisions about *what to buy* for the "impossible" people on my list was to put the carrot before the horse.
In other words, I buy stuff for myself. Things I want that no one else is going to give me. Not even if I ask for them.
These purchases are rarely extravagant because I am *technically* shopping for others and usually have my resources directed to that end.
But this year is different.
This year, I'm single. I don't have a GF and, more importantly, her entire family on my shopping list. Certain people I've shopped for over the past several years have decided to drop out of my life. Two friends -- a couple I've known for many years -- *scolded* me last year for giving them a gift because they don't like to give gifts to others. (Really, it was just one-half of the couple that did that. Not the nicer half, I would say.) What's more, I'm not having a relationship with my mother. My dad is not inclined to care what I get him. My sister thinks, rightfully so, that I'm a poor graduate student, and my brother never sends more than a $25 gift certificate, always to Amazon, so I don't really feel like I have to go out of my way to shop for him.
This leaves me with a surprisingly small list of people for whom I would actually shop. This lowers the stress level -- and expense -- dramatically.
But, as I was drawing up this little list, a thought crossed my mind: What about ME?
I'm not talking about that particular dynamic where, when one's gift-giving list is small, one is also likely to receive few gifts herself. Rather, I'm talking about that whole business where I get to buy stuff for *myself.* Where's the rationale for my annual self-indulgence?
*sigh*
Well, I got a job offer the other day -- doing on-call work at group homes for those who have formerlly been designated what you might call "criminally insane" -- and that seems to have provided me the excuse I was looking for when it came to this shopping business.
What I *really* need are a couple pairs of pants or jeans and some new flannel sheets. I could've gone and laid out some bucks on that. But it never seems like my desire to engage in shameless self-indulgence is satiated by buying something I need.
In fact, I take the most pleasure in shopping and buying -- especially as gifts for others -- things which are utterly frivolous. Something beautiful. Something sensual. Something decadent. Something you simply *do not need* but may take some delight in having anyway. It's hard for me to conceptualize just what that would be for some of the people on my list this year, but apparently, it wasn't hard for me to come up with something for myself.
That is how I came out of a store rather aptly named Shoe Shangri-la with a pair of handmade, fit-like-a-glove, can't-put-my-orthotics-in-them funky, tactilely pleasing brown leather WOMEN'S shoes. (So many of my shoes are men's shoes because of those damn orthotics, that it is actually a small miracle when I get to wear girl shoes.) These things cost a pretty penny, of course. But they're pretty and they're frivolous and I have absolutely no need for them. (A note to S2: I saw those boots you got there. Girl.... you are the queen of frivolously expensive shoes in my little world.)
It took me a while to decide which pair to buy. Because there were these cute little lace-up black ones with green leather hearts on the top of the foot, and I was *in love* with them. They just didn't fit quite right. Turns out I'm a 39 *and a half.*
Anyway, when I finally decided on the ones I wanted, the shopkeeper said to me, "Do you have to wear suits to work?"
OK. This question caught me off-guard for several reasons, all of them being related to some foreign concepts. Mainly: work and suit.
No, I said, chuckling. No suits.
"Oh, well what do you do?" she asked.
Actually, I'm about to start working with the criminally insane, I replied. (For some reason, I love using that term, even though it's probably about as inappropriate as "retards.")
Her eyes widened. She did not know what to say.
Perhaps, I added, I need some Doc Martens for that. But I won't be wearing *these* shoes. (But really, the only reason for that is because I can't put the orthotics in them and thus can't wear them under circumstances where I might be on my feet for extended hours.
In any case, the shopping (for myself, and thus, for others) has begun. Mercifully, it won't take long to finish.
I doubt I'll buy anything else for myself under the circumstances. Except, perhaps, Michel Foucault's book on "The History of Sexuality," which seems like a good thing to read in light of all the research I've been pouring over lately. Well, that and some jeans. And some flannels. And some....
I really don't like to shop all that much. Especially not at the holidays. So I long ago decided the best way to make it through all the holiday bustle and crowds and anguished decisions about *what to buy* for the "impossible" people on my list was to put the carrot before the horse.
In other words, I buy stuff for myself. Things I want that no one else is going to give me. Not even if I ask for them.
These purchases are rarely extravagant because I am *technically* shopping for others and usually have my resources directed to that end.
But this year is different.
This year, I'm single. I don't have a GF and, more importantly, her entire family on my shopping list. Certain people I've shopped for over the past several years have decided to drop out of my life. Two friends -- a couple I've known for many years -- *scolded* me last year for giving them a gift because they don't like to give gifts to others. (Really, it was just one-half of the couple that did that. Not the nicer half, I would say.) What's more, I'm not having a relationship with my mother. My dad is not inclined to care what I get him. My sister thinks, rightfully so, that I'm a poor graduate student, and my brother never sends more than a $25 gift certificate, always to Amazon, so I don't really feel like I have to go out of my way to shop for him.
This leaves me with a surprisingly small list of people for whom I would actually shop. This lowers the stress level -- and expense -- dramatically.
But, as I was drawing up this little list, a thought crossed my mind: What about ME?
I'm not talking about that particular dynamic where, when one's gift-giving list is small, one is also likely to receive few gifts herself. Rather, I'm talking about that whole business where I get to buy stuff for *myself.* Where's the rationale for my annual self-indulgence?
*sigh*
Well, I got a job offer the other day -- doing on-call work at group homes for those who have formerlly been designated what you might call "criminally insane" -- and that seems to have provided me the excuse I was looking for when it came to this shopping business.
What I *really* need are a couple pairs of pants or jeans and some new flannel sheets. I could've gone and laid out some bucks on that. But it never seems like my desire to engage in shameless self-indulgence is satiated by buying something I need.
In fact, I take the most pleasure in shopping and buying -- especially as gifts for others -- things which are utterly frivolous. Something beautiful. Something sensual. Something decadent. Something you simply *do not need* but may take some delight in having anyway. It's hard for me to conceptualize just what that would be for some of the people on my list this year, but apparently, it wasn't hard for me to come up with something for myself.
That is how I came out of a store rather aptly named Shoe Shangri-la with a pair of handmade, fit-like-a-glove, can't-put-my-orthotics-in-them funky, tactilely pleasing brown leather WOMEN'S shoes. (So many of my shoes are men's shoes because of those damn orthotics, that it is actually a small miracle when I get to wear girl shoes.) These things cost a pretty penny, of course. But they're pretty and they're frivolous and I have absolutely no need for them. (A note to S2: I saw those boots you got there. Girl.... you are the queen of frivolously expensive shoes in my little world.)
It took me a while to decide which pair to buy. Because there were these cute little lace-up black ones with green leather hearts on the top of the foot, and I was *in love* with them. They just didn't fit quite right. Turns out I'm a 39 *and a half.*
Anyway, when I finally decided on the ones I wanted, the shopkeeper said to me, "Do you have to wear suits to work?"
OK. This question caught me off-guard for several reasons, all of them being related to some foreign concepts. Mainly: work and suit.
No, I said, chuckling. No suits.
"Oh, well what do you do?" she asked.
Actually, I'm about to start working with the criminally insane, I replied. (For some reason, I love using that term, even though it's probably about as inappropriate as "retards.")
Her eyes widened. She did not know what to say.
Perhaps, I added, I need some Doc Martens for that. But I won't be wearing *these* shoes. (But really, the only reason for that is because I can't put the orthotics in them and thus can't wear them under circumstances where I might be on my feet for extended hours.
In any case, the shopping (for myself, and thus, for others) has begun. Mercifully, it won't take long to finish.
I doubt I'll buy anything else for myself under the circumstances. Except, perhaps, Michel Foucault's book on "The History of Sexuality," which seems like a good thing to read in light of all the research I've been pouring over lately. Well, that and some jeans. And some flannels. And some....
Collective disgust
There was some kind of Revenge of the Grad Students episode in my Thursday night class this week. That *awful* teacher we've got handed out the course evaluations -- within half an hour of having handed out yet another round of capriciously graded treatment plans.
We are supposed to be caring professionals, self-aware and empathetic and working to encourage the strengths in others rather than to shit all over them and break them down.
But you know what? I think must of us went for the major arteries.
Seriously.
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being a way of screaming "THIS SUCKS!" and 5 being what one really ought to expect for $610 a credit hour (or, $1,830 for this class in other words), I rated that teacher with a bunch of 1s and 2s. She managed one or two 3s and perhaps there was a 4 for something emprically validated, such as ease of access in e-mail or something. But for the most part, WHAM, BAM, NO THANK YOU, MA'AM! I smacked that lady up one side and down another.
And I was not alone.
Anonymous blogging classmate No. 1 said to me, "I have *never* rated a teacher so low in my entire life." (She also wrote in her "Other Comments" section, "I have never seen a teacher generate such collective seething resentment among her students.")
I'm there with ya, sis. And so was YogaGirl and The One We Don't Like and The One Guy and The Hailey's Mom and The Quiet Woman and The Puppy and ... it goes on. Really, it was just The Debutante, I suspect, who gave the teacher good marks, and that leaves me with a big old question mark (and a philosophical shrug: To each her own).
The back of the evaluation has a section for comments, and because I was so wretchedly annoyed and disappointed, I barely had any civil words. So I kept it short, making such comments as the following:
Q: How can this course be improved?
A: Start from scratch, and get a new instructor.
Q: What could improve this instructor's teaching?
A: Stop treating adult students like they're teenagers (propz to annonymous blogging classmate for reminding me to note that).
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to say?
A: I wish I had something more constructive, but I am very disappointed.
People were writing and snickering up a storm, and one of the students, upon finishing writing her peace, said as she turned it in, "I do not regret a word."
Nor do I. It is, without question, the single biggest disappointment of my very personally expensive graduate school existence. In some sick way, it's nice to know my experience of misery was widely shared, but it's also very discouraging to know that so many of us got such poor instruction.
Truth be told, we should all be taking the class again with a competent instructor and a meaningful syllabus. But we're not going to do that. Instead, we'll all just truck out into the world and have some supervisor at some mental health facility call us on our shit someday. Or we'll all just swap what we learned about treating adults with what we never learned about treating children, and make due -- until someone calls us on our shit.
That totally sucks.
But let me say this: There's only ONE MORE FUCKING CLASS. My little self-aware ass is very aware of this fact. And also looking forward to the after party. To which the teacher will not be invited. So we can bash her even more.
Considering we're all caring and empathetic and shit, right?
Just not with her. Right now, we're all about feeling the pain of one another.
We are supposed to be caring professionals, self-aware and empathetic and working to encourage the strengths in others rather than to shit all over them and break them down.
But you know what? I think must of us went for the major arteries.
Seriously.
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being a way of screaming "THIS SUCKS!" and 5 being what one really ought to expect for $610 a credit hour (or, $1,830 for this class in other words), I rated that teacher with a bunch of 1s and 2s. She managed one or two 3s and perhaps there was a 4 for something emprically validated, such as ease of access in e-mail or something. But for the most part, WHAM, BAM, NO THANK YOU, MA'AM! I smacked that lady up one side and down another.
And I was not alone.
Anonymous blogging classmate No. 1 said to me, "I have *never* rated a teacher so low in my entire life." (She also wrote in her "Other Comments" section, "I have never seen a teacher generate such collective seething resentment among her students.")
I'm there with ya, sis. And so was YogaGirl and The One We Don't Like and The One Guy and The Hailey's Mom and The Quiet Woman and The Puppy and ... it goes on. Really, it was just The Debutante, I suspect, who gave the teacher good marks, and that leaves me with a big old question mark (and a philosophical shrug: To each her own).
The back of the evaluation has a section for comments, and because I was so wretchedly annoyed and disappointed, I barely had any civil words. So I kept it short, making such comments as the following:
Q: How can this course be improved?
A: Start from scratch, and get a new instructor.
Q: What could improve this instructor's teaching?
A: Stop treating adult students like they're teenagers (propz to annonymous blogging classmate for reminding me to note that).
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to say?
A: I wish I had something more constructive, but I am very disappointed.
People were writing and snickering up a storm, and one of the students, upon finishing writing her peace, said as she turned it in, "I do not regret a word."
Nor do I. It is, without question, the single biggest disappointment of my very personally expensive graduate school existence. In some sick way, it's nice to know my experience of misery was widely shared, but it's also very discouraging to know that so many of us got such poor instruction.
Truth be told, we should all be taking the class again with a competent instructor and a meaningful syllabus. But we're not going to do that. Instead, we'll all just truck out into the world and have some supervisor at some mental health facility call us on our shit someday. Or we'll all just swap what we learned about treating adults with what we never learned about treating children, and make due -- until someone calls us on our shit.
That totally sucks.
But let me say this: There's only ONE MORE FUCKING CLASS. My little self-aware ass is very aware of this fact. And also looking forward to the after party. To which the teacher will not be invited. So we can bash her even more.
Considering we're all caring and empathetic and shit, right?
Just not with her. Right now, we're all about feeling the pain of one another.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
That's "pure queer" to you, mister
S2 and I had the pleasure of working on an assignment together this week. We critiqued a research article and co-authored a paper on how questionable we found the research.
We were looking at some research out of North Dakota -- sometimes location really is everything -- about the prevalence of non-heterosexuality in the general population. I could get into a whole bunch of details about how they collected their data, but that doesn't really matter so much as what they did with it after they got it.
Outliers -- responses that are on the extreme ends of the spectrum -- are commonly tossed out of data crunching, or are at least highlighted for further scrutiny. But in this particular research, more than 8 percent of the population sample was tossed out because the researchers couldn't get a grip on what they were finding.
Specificially, more than 200 men and 400 women, of a total sample of about 7,000 college students, were excluded from the data for the following crime: They claimed they were heterosexual, but they reported in another part of the survey that more than 90 percent of their sexual fantasies involved someone of the same sex.
That might seem logical to some of you, but let me ask you something: Ever fantasize about a threesome?
I'll bet you have.
And is the third person usually the same gender as your typical sex partner? Meaning that, if you're a straight woman, do you always fantasize about two guys putting it to you? Or does another woman tend to appear?
Regardless of how you answered those questions, let me assure you: It seems a rather common occurrence for people to fantasize about things they don't actually *want* to happen -- or would never dare do. Same-sex encounters. Multiple partners. Discreet sex in public. Sex in wide-open public view with an audience. Rape. Use of inanimate objects that are not your typical sex toy. Whatever.
Sexual fantasy fascinates the devil outta me. This is probably because I was raised in the Catholic church and, consequently, was taught that thinking about *any* sex whatsoever was a sin. DO NOT DO IT. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. So when I, in my younger days, first found myself thinking about it, I realized I might as well think whatever the hell I wanted. If thinking about anything sexual at all is a sin, how much worse can it be to think about something really, really naughty? Thus, my own proclivities can get pretty wild at times.
Now, I can't say how mine compare to what many other people are fantasizing about because sexual fantasies are rarely a topic of conversation. Their exact nature tend to be saved for: a) pillow talk with our lover; b) discussion with our therapist about specific ones that disturb us; c) talks with close friends while under the influence of intoxicants; and/or d) sublimation into the "arts," including poetry, novels by the likes of Tom Robbin, John Irving and Sarah Waters, Kate Winslet's experience being the butt girl in "Little Children," painting, dance, taudry romance novels and that most free speech of all: porn.
Nevertheless, I'm going to assume that same-sex encounters are not all that uncommon in the fantasy lives of heterosexuals. And that's based on one of my little theories about the origin of fantasies: They're often about the forbidden fruit, that naughty business about which we may have only the slightest actual real-life curiosity but which provides just the sort of salaciousness that whets our sexual appetites. (Pardon me again while I momentarily appreciate the sound of that unintended pun. For another one, see the previous blog entry.)
Do you disagree with me?
Sexual fantasies may have many origins, but I'll say this about them: I can't think of the last time I had a sexual fantasy that involved pretty much what happens ALL THE DAMN TIME (when I actually have a sex life that isn't exclusively autoerotic, that is). By which I mean: It hasn't been my habit to have sexual fantasies in which I am having the regular old sex in bed -- or the other regular places -- with the sex partner with whom I've been engaged at the time. Rather, there are other people who show up (in a moment of overshare, I'll tell you that I usually know them; just think: it could be you! oy...!), and the situations are not typical of my actual sex life, and ... well, that's enough to make my point. (Nuns are never involved, I want to say, although I don't know why I feel like that disclaimer is necessary. But no. No nuns.)
Anyway, back to this research. My point is this: Sexual fantasy is something which perhaps could endure considerably more study by researchers. At the very least, the three bozos who conducted the research S2 and I critiqued need to have their eyes opened a little bit.
'Cause ya know what?
They decided that the only possible explanation for these heterosexuals saying that 90 percent or more of their sexual fantasies *involved* someone of the same sex (not even exclusively, just "involved"), was that these so-called heterosexuals either were wrong -- "response error" -- or were "struggling so vigorously against thinking of themselves as homosexual" that they couldn't bear to mark anything other than heterosexual on the measure of their stated sexual orientation.
Now, being a sexual minority myself, I do sometimes like to entertain the idea that all you straight folks out there -- especially pretty women -- have just not gotten in touch with your inner queer yet. But that's mere entertainment. Something I do that's akin to my Deaf friend Mr. Shineyhead dreaming of a day in which even hearing people communicate in sign language so he's not on the outside all the time. We can all dream....
But the fact is this: These researchers were looking through a lens a bit too narrow. And it was also an incredibly biased one.
'Cause ya know what else?
While the threw out all those so-called heteros with their same-sex fantasies, they did *not* throw out the self-identified homos who reported 90 percent or more of their sexual fantasies involved members of the opposite sex. Apparently, at least according to three published researchers from North Dakota, it's freaky when straight people fantasize about the same sex but perfectly fine when queers fantasize about the opposite sex. You've got to be a pure hetero for their study, but you don't have to be a pure homo.
There's a stinking bias here. As S2 put it, "Of course it's not strange for homos to have straight fantasies. They're outside the norm, so they would naturally fantasize about being 'normal.' But it doesn't make sense to these guys that straight people would fantasize about gay sex." She was kinda pissed. (S2 excels at liberal moral outrage; it's one of her many fine qualities.)
In any case, I want to say this to those researchers: Look in the dark recesses of your own minds, guys. Are you *seriously* so stuck in your narrow little paradigm that you can't envision a broader view of sexuality, one that allows room for sexual fantasy to have *nothing* to do with sexual orientation? Would you, if you had to reconsider your choices, also throw out the queers who have straight fantasies? Or would you allow for the possibility that sometimes it gets a girl wet or a guy hard to imagine a sexual encounter that strays from their stated orientation -- and that when fantasy is going to help a situation, that's the one they tune into? Just what were you trying to prove anyway?
Men show up in my sexual fantasies all the time. But I am, my friends, unquestionably a lesbian. Don't you even think of telling me otherwise.
We were looking at some research out of North Dakota -- sometimes location really is everything -- about the prevalence of non-heterosexuality in the general population. I could get into a whole bunch of details about how they collected their data, but that doesn't really matter so much as what they did with it after they got it.
Outliers -- responses that are on the extreme ends of the spectrum -- are commonly tossed out of data crunching, or are at least highlighted for further scrutiny. But in this particular research, more than 8 percent of the population sample was tossed out because the researchers couldn't get a grip on what they were finding.
Specificially, more than 200 men and 400 women, of a total sample of about 7,000 college students, were excluded from the data for the following crime: They claimed they were heterosexual, but they reported in another part of the survey that more than 90 percent of their sexual fantasies involved someone of the same sex.
That might seem logical to some of you, but let me ask you something: Ever fantasize about a threesome?
I'll bet you have.
And is the third person usually the same gender as your typical sex partner? Meaning that, if you're a straight woman, do you always fantasize about two guys putting it to you? Or does another woman tend to appear?
Regardless of how you answered those questions, let me assure you: It seems a rather common occurrence for people to fantasize about things they don't actually *want* to happen -- or would never dare do. Same-sex encounters. Multiple partners. Discreet sex in public. Sex in wide-open public view with an audience. Rape. Use of inanimate objects that are not your typical sex toy. Whatever.
Sexual fantasy fascinates the devil outta me. This is probably because I was raised in the Catholic church and, consequently, was taught that thinking about *any* sex whatsoever was a sin. DO NOT DO IT. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. So when I, in my younger days, first found myself thinking about it, I realized I might as well think whatever the hell I wanted. If thinking about anything sexual at all is a sin, how much worse can it be to think about something really, really naughty? Thus, my own proclivities can get pretty wild at times.
Now, I can't say how mine compare to what many other people are fantasizing about because sexual fantasies are rarely a topic of conversation. Their exact nature tend to be saved for: a) pillow talk with our lover; b) discussion with our therapist about specific ones that disturb us; c) talks with close friends while under the influence of intoxicants; and/or d) sublimation into the "arts," including poetry, novels by the likes of Tom Robbin, John Irving and Sarah Waters, Kate Winslet's experience being the butt girl in "Little Children," painting, dance, taudry romance novels and that most free speech of all: porn.
Nevertheless, I'm going to assume that same-sex encounters are not all that uncommon in the fantasy lives of heterosexuals. And that's based on one of my little theories about the origin of fantasies: They're often about the forbidden fruit, that naughty business about which we may have only the slightest actual real-life curiosity but which provides just the sort of salaciousness that whets our sexual appetites. (Pardon me again while I momentarily appreciate the sound of that unintended pun. For another one, see the previous blog entry.)
Do you disagree with me?
Sexual fantasies may have many origins, but I'll say this about them: I can't think of the last time I had a sexual fantasy that involved pretty much what happens ALL THE DAMN TIME (when I actually have a sex life that isn't exclusively autoerotic, that is). By which I mean: It hasn't been my habit to have sexual fantasies in which I am having the regular old sex in bed -- or the other regular places -- with the sex partner with whom I've been engaged at the time. Rather, there are other people who show up (in a moment of overshare, I'll tell you that I usually know them; just think: it could be you! oy...!), and the situations are not typical of my actual sex life, and ... well, that's enough to make my point. (Nuns are never involved, I want to say, although I don't know why I feel like that disclaimer is necessary. But no. No nuns.)
Anyway, back to this research. My point is this: Sexual fantasy is something which perhaps could endure considerably more study by researchers. At the very least, the three bozos who conducted the research S2 and I critiqued need to have their eyes opened a little bit.
'Cause ya know what?
They decided that the only possible explanation for these heterosexuals saying that 90 percent or more of their sexual fantasies *involved* someone of the same sex (not even exclusively, just "involved"), was that these so-called heterosexuals either were wrong -- "response error" -- or were "struggling so vigorously against thinking of themselves as homosexual" that they couldn't bear to mark anything other than heterosexual on the measure of their stated sexual orientation.
Now, being a sexual minority myself, I do sometimes like to entertain the idea that all you straight folks out there -- especially pretty women -- have just not gotten in touch with your inner queer yet. But that's mere entertainment. Something I do that's akin to my Deaf friend Mr. Shineyhead dreaming of a day in which even hearing people communicate in sign language so he's not on the outside all the time. We can all dream....
But the fact is this: These researchers were looking through a lens a bit too narrow. And it was also an incredibly biased one.
'Cause ya know what else?
While the threw out all those so-called heteros with their same-sex fantasies, they did *not* throw out the self-identified homos who reported 90 percent or more of their sexual fantasies involved members of the opposite sex. Apparently, at least according to three published researchers from North Dakota, it's freaky when straight people fantasize about the same sex but perfectly fine when queers fantasize about the opposite sex. You've got to be a pure hetero for their study, but you don't have to be a pure homo.
There's a stinking bias here. As S2 put it, "Of course it's not strange for homos to have straight fantasies. They're outside the norm, so they would naturally fantasize about being 'normal.' But it doesn't make sense to these guys that straight people would fantasize about gay sex." She was kinda pissed. (S2 excels at liberal moral outrage; it's one of her many fine qualities.)
In any case, I want to say this to those researchers: Look in the dark recesses of your own minds, guys. Are you *seriously* so stuck in your narrow little paradigm that you can't envision a broader view of sexuality, one that allows room for sexual fantasy to have *nothing* to do with sexual orientation? Would you, if you had to reconsider your choices, also throw out the queers who have straight fantasies? Or would you allow for the possibility that sometimes it gets a girl wet or a guy hard to imagine a sexual encounter that strays from their stated orientation -- and that when fantasy is going to help a situation, that's the one they tune into? Just what were you trying to prove anyway?
Men show up in my sexual fantasies all the time. But I am, my friends, unquestionably a lesbian. Don't you even think of telling me otherwise.
Dreaming, continued
Dream No. 5: More sex. Fortunately -- really fortunately -- it was not the same female classmate. It was, as best I can figure, an amalgamation of several women in my life. It was delicious. But it was also ... er, in public. And someone called the cops. (It wasn't *supposed* to be public, but well ... mistakes happen.) Still, though, orgasm-centered as our society is, that little gem took no time at all to find, and I was satisfied and long gone before the cops came. (Excuse me while I bask momentarily in my bad pun.)
P.S. On this topic of an "orgasm-centered society" -- something that has come up in our research project thanks to more than one study's definition of a sexual encounter as one in which at least one partner climaxes (a limited notion, I would say) -- I was talking last night in a bar with a lesbian I know. We were having a rather unqualified discussion about heterosexual bonding through the release of a brain chemical or hormone (I think it's oxytocin) when a woman orgasms and the connection of such bonding to the length of the average relationship. She asked, "Does the hormone stop getting released at some point, or do heterosexual women eventually just stop orgasming?" ... Good question! I don't know. ... What we were able to conclude, from a survey of two (I don't claim reliability or validity here), is that orgasms are very common in lesbian sex. I'd estimate my own experience at about 98 percent of the time over the past 10 years or so -- ever since, that is, I stopped dating the woman with bad breath, which was a substantial distraction from my personal pleasure. Even though we have a lot of orgasms, our relationships still breakup, too. Hmmm.
P.S. On this topic of an "orgasm-centered society" -- something that has come up in our research project thanks to more than one study's definition of a sexual encounter as one in which at least one partner climaxes (a limited notion, I would say) -- I was talking last night in a bar with a lesbian I know. We were having a rather unqualified discussion about heterosexual bonding through the release of a brain chemical or hormone (I think it's oxytocin) when a woman orgasms and the connection of such bonding to the length of the average relationship. She asked, "Does the hormone stop getting released at some point, or do heterosexual women eventually just stop orgasming?" ... Good question! I don't know. ... What we were able to conclude, from a survey of two (I don't claim reliability or validity here), is that orgasms are very common in lesbian sex. I'd estimate my own experience at about 98 percent of the time over the past 10 years or so -- ever since, that is, I stopped dating the woman with bad breath, which was a substantial distraction from my personal pleasure. Even though we have a lot of orgasms, our relationships still breakup, too. Hmmm.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Dreaming
Dream No. 1: I am in a foreign airport and am looking for my baggage. I have been touring the country for three weeks, living out of my daypack. When I finally find, through a very convoluted process, the luggage I abandoned at the airport upon arrival, I see why I left it behind. There was too much of it, all of it bulky and unattractive and not suited to my traveling habits. I do not overlook the symbolism of me having too much baggage.
Dream No. 2: I am at a pharmacy run by Kaiser. To get my medication, I have to prove I'm who I say I am, and a driver's license and insurance card will not suffice. Since I was a child, Kaiser has been collecting information on me -- not to mention photographs, locks of hair, swimming medals and trophies (which I threw in a dumpster in California years ago), and they ask me to identify some of these items to prove I am myself. One of the items is a small and very curious toy that was lost to me as a little girl. I take it and refuse to give it back, reasoning that it was once mine and if Kaiser can steal it from me, I can steal it back. After giving me my medication -- something that looked like a few pounds of lentils in a burlap sack -- I find that my friend Nick, who died a few weeks ago, has been parked illegally, waiting for me to go through this ridiculous, time-consuming process to get the medication. His car has tickets all over it, and I apologize that he had to wait so long. He says it's no big deal, that he has another car with him -- a nice new one -- and he hops into it, bids me farewell and drives away, and I feel the pain of his going. Then, returning home, I find that the toy I have begins transforming itself, first into a slimy, gushy crab, then into a giant penguin that I lock outside. I sense something sinister afoot and try to warn others about it. No one will listen to me. I run into YogaGirl and tell her not to let anyone go outside. I go to the sliding glass door on the deck of the house, and I see a woman with a large dog on her lap, barking ferociously, and I think the toy has transformed into this big bad dog. Turns out, though, that the dog is trying to protect the woman from the latest evolution of this bad toy from my past: It has become a vicious ape-like creature, and it jumps in front of the glass door and screams at me, scaring the shit out of me so thoroughly that I awake with a start.
Dream No. 3: I have sex with a female classmate (one who never has read this blog), much to the dismay of others. Who are sharing the bed with us. Heh...
Dream No. 4: I am swimming in a very large lake, one that apparently abuts another very large lake, with only a thin isthmus separating them. I am with a boy who is floating on a boogie board. Across the lake, I see that some kind of massive disturbance in the other lake has pushed a large, roiling, foaming, tsunami-like wave into the lake in which I'm swimming. As it approaches, I grab the edge of the boogie board and grab the boy's leg and tell him to hang on tightly. The wave passes beneath us, a massive swell, and slams ashore at the base of the lake house in which we were staying. As the wave moves back out into the lake, we are dragged by the mighty current across the lake. Nearly to the other side, where something dangerous is going on, we come to a stop in the water. Children are all around us. Some of them are little thugs, and I become concerned about the welfare of the boy I'm with. I begin pushing him on his board away from the other kids, fending them off with kicks. I put some distance between us and then move into a long-distance mode of swimming, pushing and sometimes pulling the boy and his board back across the lake. When we arrive, the water becomes too shallow for me to swim, and we are still far from the shore. I begin to slog through mud and muck to get to the edge, the boy paddling his board across the shallow water behind me. When I get to the shore, I turn around, and he is gone. I have lost him. I stayed with him through the calamity and brought him as close to shore as I could, and though I thought I was leading him still, he has vanished. His mother demands to know why I ever took my eye off of him. And I feel like a failure.
Dream No. 2: I am at a pharmacy run by Kaiser. To get my medication, I have to prove I'm who I say I am, and a driver's license and insurance card will not suffice. Since I was a child, Kaiser has been collecting information on me -- not to mention photographs, locks of hair, swimming medals and trophies (which I threw in a dumpster in California years ago), and they ask me to identify some of these items to prove I am myself. One of the items is a small and very curious toy that was lost to me as a little girl. I take it and refuse to give it back, reasoning that it was once mine and if Kaiser can steal it from me, I can steal it back. After giving me my medication -- something that looked like a few pounds of lentils in a burlap sack -- I find that my friend Nick, who died a few weeks ago, has been parked illegally, waiting for me to go through this ridiculous, time-consuming process to get the medication. His car has tickets all over it, and I apologize that he had to wait so long. He says it's no big deal, that he has another car with him -- a nice new one -- and he hops into it, bids me farewell and drives away, and I feel the pain of his going. Then, returning home, I find that the toy I have begins transforming itself, first into a slimy, gushy crab, then into a giant penguin that I lock outside. I sense something sinister afoot and try to warn others about it. No one will listen to me. I run into YogaGirl and tell her not to let anyone go outside. I go to the sliding glass door on the deck of the house, and I see a woman with a large dog on her lap, barking ferociously, and I think the toy has transformed into this big bad dog. Turns out, though, that the dog is trying to protect the woman from the latest evolution of this bad toy from my past: It has become a vicious ape-like creature, and it jumps in front of the glass door and screams at me, scaring the shit out of me so thoroughly that I awake with a start.
Dream No. 3: I have sex with a female classmate (one who never has read this blog), much to the dismay of others. Who are sharing the bed with us. Heh...
Dream No. 4: I am swimming in a very large lake, one that apparently abuts another very large lake, with only a thin isthmus separating them. I am with a boy who is floating on a boogie board. Across the lake, I see that some kind of massive disturbance in the other lake has pushed a large, roiling, foaming, tsunami-like wave into the lake in which I'm swimming. As it approaches, I grab the edge of the boogie board and grab the boy's leg and tell him to hang on tightly. The wave passes beneath us, a massive swell, and slams ashore at the base of the lake house in which we were staying. As the wave moves back out into the lake, we are dragged by the mighty current across the lake. Nearly to the other side, where something dangerous is going on, we come to a stop in the water. Children are all around us. Some of them are little thugs, and I become concerned about the welfare of the boy I'm with. I begin pushing him on his board away from the other kids, fending them off with kicks. I put some distance between us and then move into a long-distance mode of swimming, pushing and sometimes pulling the boy and his board back across the lake. When we arrive, the water becomes too shallow for me to swim, and we are still far from the shore. I begin to slog through mud and muck to get to the edge, the boy paddling his board across the shallow water behind me. When I get to the shore, I turn around, and he is gone. I have lost him. I stayed with him through the calamity and brought him as close to shore as I could, and though I thought I was leading him still, he has vanished. His mother demands to know why I ever took my eye off of him. And I feel like a failure.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
After they made me, they broke the mold
I spent Thursday evening after class having a few drinks with The Debutante and Dr. M. The main focus of our discussion was gossip about our classmates. Some of it was delicious.
At one point, the topic turned to a meeting I had two weeks ago with the professor from our Thursday night class -- a teacher who has frustrated precisely 94.2 percent of the class (basically, every student but The Deb) because of her dated materials, her scattered teaching method and her capricious grading.
This teacher requested the opportunity to meet with each student, so I reluctantly went to see her for an hour. We talked about my work history and about the difference between a PhD and a PsyD for the better part of the hour, when the prof suddenly asked me if I had any comments about the class.
Did I ever. I won't bother repeating it here because anyone who cares exactly what I said to the teacher has already heard it. Let's just say I shot from the hip -- direct but still tasteful. I actually do have that skill sometimes. *SOMETIMES!*
As I repeated a few of the things I said in the meeting, Dr. M's jaw dropped, while The Deb's eyes grew wide. Dr. M congratulated me for saying things she would only dream about saying but never dare to utter. Apparently, I've still got ovaries.
But ovaries are more than just a *symbol* of a woman's power, they are the mothership itself. And the conversation suddenly turned toward that when The Deb inquired, out of left field, whether Dr. M and her eBoy were going to become parents anytime soon.
Dr. M has an interesting story to tell about why she's not pregnant at this point. But I'll let her tell that story if she wants to share.
At one point, I commented that I "regret" that I never had children. The Deb and Dr. M made a point of noting that it's not too late. But, emotion-centered as I may seem at times, I'm also highly pragmatic. Yes, it's possible. But my "regret" is really a reflection of my understanding that it's not going to happen.
There's a "thing" to all of this, of course. And The Thing is this:
Every time I hear myself talking with people about babies lately, I find myself talking about the fact that I haven't had one. And, man, that shit WEIRDS ME OUT. It's like I've been possessed by someone else. I hear statements like, "I regret I've never had a child" come out of my mouth, and I start feeling a little dissociated.
I've got a theory about this. Of course.
For the past 20 years or so, I've been adamantly opposed to having children. The strength of my opposition is based in on a long-held belief that I would make a *terrible* parent, that I would scream at my children and, when that failed to get the effect I wanted, I would beat the living shit out of them.
In other words, I have feared I would parent as I was parented.
Over the past couple of years, that belief has gone by the wayside. And, in the meantime, my biological clock has gone from quietly ticking along to suddenly sounding off with a clanging alarm. I attribute this to my age, 38, and to the intersection of my life this past year with S2's children, both of whom I adore.
They seem to be rather well-behaved compared to many other children I've known. This is partly genetics, but it's mostly the parenting they've received. They have two consistent, thoughtful, devoted parents who have been cultivating them from before birth.
I still suspect that, thanks to genetics and thanks to my own neuroticism -- which may approach legendary status by the time all is said and done -- I have good odds of producing a considerably troubled little being.
But for the first time in my life, there's an alternative story developing: one in which I might actually make a pretty decent mom. In my "ethnographic study" of S2's family, I've noticed the patterns that emerge in the communication and in the way the children are coaxed toward better behavior. And, periodically, I think: Hey, I could do that, couldn't I?
Yes, I could.
Perhaps somewhere along the line, I'll become a parent-by-proxy, hooking up in a serious relationship with a woman who already has children. But barring any unforeseen events that result in accidental pregnancy, I will not be giving birth to any children of my own.
Rather than having regrets, it seems best to recognize my life for what it is: a fortunate one. I am not a single, working mom trapped in a souless job. I have the freedom of coming and going when I please, and my only responsibility is to a dog that's small enough to take as a carry-on item.
I, your UCM, am one-of-a-kind. I will not be reproduced.
Perhaps that makes me all the more a treasure for those who find I'm to their liking.
At one point, the topic turned to a meeting I had two weeks ago with the professor from our Thursday night class -- a teacher who has frustrated precisely 94.2 percent of the class (basically, every student but The Deb) because of her dated materials, her scattered teaching method and her capricious grading.
This teacher requested the opportunity to meet with each student, so I reluctantly went to see her for an hour. We talked about my work history and about the difference between a PhD and a PsyD for the better part of the hour, when the prof suddenly asked me if I had any comments about the class.
Did I ever. I won't bother repeating it here because anyone who cares exactly what I said to the teacher has already heard it. Let's just say I shot from the hip -- direct but still tasteful. I actually do have that skill sometimes. *SOMETIMES!*
As I repeated a few of the things I said in the meeting, Dr. M's jaw dropped, while The Deb's eyes grew wide. Dr. M congratulated me for saying things she would only dream about saying but never dare to utter. Apparently, I've still got ovaries.
But ovaries are more than just a *symbol* of a woman's power, they are the mothership itself. And the conversation suddenly turned toward that when The Deb inquired, out of left field, whether Dr. M and her eBoy were going to become parents anytime soon.
Dr. M has an interesting story to tell about why she's not pregnant at this point. But I'll let her tell that story if she wants to share.
At one point, I commented that I "regret" that I never had children. The Deb and Dr. M made a point of noting that it's not too late. But, emotion-centered as I may seem at times, I'm also highly pragmatic. Yes, it's possible. But my "regret" is really a reflection of my understanding that it's not going to happen.
There's a "thing" to all of this, of course. And The Thing is this:
Every time I hear myself talking with people about babies lately, I find myself talking about the fact that I haven't had one. And, man, that shit WEIRDS ME OUT. It's like I've been possessed by someone else. I hear statements like, "I regret I've never had a child" come out of my mouth, and I start feeling a little dissociated.
I've got a theory about this. Of course.
For the past 20 years or so, I've been adamantly opposed to having children. The strength of my opposition is based in on a long-held belief that I would make a *terrible* parent, that I would scream at my children and, when that failed to get the effect I wanted, I would beat the living shit out of them.
In other words, I have feared I would parent as I was parented.
Over the past couple of years, that belief has gone by the wayside. And, in the meantime, my biological clock has gone from quietly ticking along to suddenly sounding off with a clanging alarm. I attribute this to my age, 38, and to the intersection of my life this past year with S2's children, both of whom I adore.
They seem to be rather well-behaved compared to many other children I've known. This is partly genetics, but it's mostly the parenting they've received. They have two consistent, thoughtful, devoted parents who have been cultivating them from before birth.
I still suspect that, thanks to genetics and thanks to my own neuroticism -- which may approach legendary status by the time all is said and done -- I have good odds of producing a considerably troubled little being.
But for the first time in my life, there's an alternative story developing: one in which I might actually make a pretty decent mom. In my "ethnographic study" of S2's family, I've noticed the patterns that emerge in the communication and in the way the children are coaxed toward better behavior. And, periodically, I think: Hey, I could do that, couldn't I?
Yes, I could.
Perhaps somewhere along the line, I'll become a parent-by-proxy, hooking up in a serious relationship with a woman who already has children. But barring any unforeseen events that result in accidental pregnancy, I will not be giving birth to any children of my own.
Rather than having regrets, it seems best to recognize my life for what it is: a fortunate one. I am not a single, working mom trapped in a souless job. I have the freedom of coming and going when I please, and my only responsibility is to a dog that's small enough to take as a carry-on item.
I, your UCM, am one-of-a-kind. I will not be reproduced.
Perhaps that makes me all the more a treasure for those who find I'm to their liking.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
The song stuck in my head
Goddammit!
I already have enough difficulty getting to sleep at a decent hour. But on a night when I have a job interview the next day, the last thing I need is this tune richocheting around in the hollow orb that once contained my brain:
Bananas and pineapples!
Bananas and pineapples!
Tap your head!
Crap your head!
Tap your head!
Crap your head!
In fairness to the song's creator -- which would be that sweet, curly mained Little Pea, who I adore -- the line "Crap your head!" is really supposed to be "Clap your head!" But Little Pea is just twee and a half, and a 'L' sounds like an 'R,' while 'R's sound like 'W's in her world.
Nevertheless, her performance of this song the other evening was long enough, dramatic enough -- it had her own YMCA-like moves -- and loud enough to imprint itself indelibly as, "Crap your head!"
And it is, as such, running around my little noggin like a dog chasing its tail.
Lord help me.
But you know, it's really altogether appropriate when I think about it. See, tomorrow, I have a job interview at what I (humorously but altogether inappropriately) am calling, "The Home of the Criminally Insane." It's a transitional group home for people who've spent a few years -- or more -- in the state mental hospital after being found not guilty of some crime or other by reason of insanity.
If anything, therapists are supposed to be empathetic with our clients. Some shoes -- perhaps as those worn by the criminally insane (or insanely criminal) -- can be very hard to step in and feel the empathy.
But when, as I have, you have been finishing up a treatment plan for a child with OCD after a night of the kind of love nibbles on my ear that only my Research Methods class can supply, coming on the heels of a week in which I've been retaining too much water and feeling randomly and wantonly pissed off at my sister-in-law -- and when, to top it all off, you find yourself singing "Crap your head! Crap your head!" -- perhaps it's a little easier to understand the criminally insane *and* the insanely criminal.
I'm just sayin'.
I already have enough difficulty getting to sleep at a decent hour. But on a night when I have a job interview the next day, the last thing I need is this tune richocheting around in the hollow orb that once contained my brain:
Bananas and pineapples!
Bananas and pineapples!
Tap your head!
Crap your head!
Tap your head!
Crap your head!
In fairness to the song's creator -- which would be that sweet, curly mained Little Pea, who I adore -- the line "Crap your head!" is really supposed to be "Clap your head!" But Little Pea is just twee and a half, and a 'L' sounds like an 'R,' while 'R's sound like 'W's in her world.
Nevertheless, her performance of this song the other evening was long enough, dramatic enough -- it had her own YMCA-like moves -- and loud enough to imprint itself indelibly as, "Crap your head!"
And it is, as such, running around my little noggin like a dog chasing its tail.
Lord help me.
But you know, it's really altogether appropriate when I think about it. See, tomorrow, I have a job interview at what I (humorously but altogether inappropriately) am calling, "The Home of the Criminally Insane." It's a transitional group home for people who've spent a few years -- or more -- in the state mental hospital after being found not guilty of some crime or other by reason of insanity.
If anything, therapists are supposed to be empathetic with our clients. Some shoes -- perhaps as those worn by the criminally insane (or insanely criminal) -- can be very hard to step in and feel the empathy.
But when, as I have, you have been finishing up a treatment plan for a child with OCD after a night of the kind of love nibbles on my ear that only my Research Methods class can supply, coming on the heels of a week in which I've been retaining too much water and feeling randomly and wantonly pissed off at my sister-in-law -- and when, to top it all off, you find yourself singing "Crap your head! Crap your head!" -- perhaps it's a little easier to understand the criminally insane *and* the insanely criminal.
I'm just sayin'.
Friday, November 24, 2006
The Meaning of Life
UCM interrupts before she even begins: This post was written on Thanksgiving, but never posted due to some Blogger snafu. That is why it's appearing now, for your reading pleasure. Peace out!
There is a scene in Monty Python's "Meaning of Life" that pretty much sums up my situation at this moment.
The fat man has just finished eating an outrageous meal, but the waiter insists on tempting him with "one small, thin, mint wafer." The diner refuses, but the waiter pressures him until he relents. The fat guy eats the mint wafer and then he explodes, in the most vile fashion.
I ate a phenomenally tasty and HUGE meal today -- as many of us did. I ate so much food that it may have actually been a life-saving move when I declined to participate in a sampling of ALL the desserts. Instead, I ate a small slice of what I consider a "compromise pie," a pumpkin pie topped with a layer of pecan pie filling.
Food is the focus of Thanksgiving, but the gathering of people is what I've always found most compelling.
In my biological family, that was rarely a good thing. Family fights -- by which I mean: multiple fights on sundry topics, some of them violent -- had a tendency to break out with little warning. One year, my dad waved the carving knife in my face as he gesticulated wildly while yelling at me about something. Ah, pleasant memories...
But once, when I was 16, I went to Thanksgiving at Tia L and El Capitan's home outside of New Orleans that they ran as a B&B. That year, we celebrated my maternal grandparent's anniversary -- I think it was their 45th. That was the one time in my life that I was in the presence of a complete version of my maternal extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Only my sister wasn't there.
For reasons I've never understood, my mother is nothing at all like her siblings. They are gregarious, fun-loving, gentle-souled people who are spiritual but not especially religious. The Notorious M.O.M., in contrast, is a religious stick-in-the-mud with no concept that there are multiple perspectives of reality.
So being around all these positive people, rather than just my nutty nuclear family, was really special, especially en masse. There were nine of us grandkids, the three siblings and their spouses and my grandparents all staying in the old house. Sometimes, I come across a photo taken of all of us on the front porch, and I think, Well, there was a family there once, wasn't there?
But this Thanksgiving, which I spent with S2 and a few members of her extended family, S2 turned to me while the bird was still baking and asked, "Do you miss your family on a day like today?"
I replied, rather bluntly, something to the extent of: What the fuck is wrong with you? Or maybe I said, What the hell kind of question is that?
Because I'm a gracious guest.
She clarified, asking about my brother, Jaws I, who is in town and was having dinner with The Notorious M.O.M. (Jaws II is no longer with us. Today, the 24th, would have been his 31st birthday.)
In any case, I replied to S2, I do miss having a family, if that's what you mean. But I don't miss *that* family. As for Jaws I, I just feel bad about him being with The Notorious M.O.M.
But that was his choice. And mine, too. I'm taking a break from her these days, and that includes holidays.
S2, bless her, kindly invited me to join her family for dinner today.
I have, in my many years of being a single person, found myself in peculiar places on the holidays -- Thanksgiving more so than Christmas, the latter being something to which I've only once been invited to celebrate with non-relatives (and thus have frequently spent alone or working or at the movies).
In any case, I've learned that people may celebrate with a similar notion -- gather a large group, cook the foods you grew up eating on that holiday and eat too much of the spread -- but it's rarely carried out the same way.
One year, back in the late 80s, I was invited to have Thanksgiving with a Vietnamese family. My friend Thao had literally been on one of the last helicopters that lifted off in that infamous evacuation of the U.S. embassy at the end of the war. Her father had worked for the U.S. government, and his compensation was to get his family out of the country at the bitter end.
There were quite a few family members that made it over, and they all lived in the Dallas area. I was going to college there at the time. The year before, my dad had been waving the carving knife in my face, so I was happy to have an alternative to another trip to Houston. I arrived at Thao's home with the only thing I knew how to cook at the time: a pumpkin pie.
I walked in the front door and was greeted by Thao's grandmother, who didn't speak a word of English. She looked strangely at my pie, and I said, "It's pumpkin pie." She took it from me and placed it in the middle of the enormous dining table, which was not yet set.
As more relatives filtered in, they all stopped and regarded the pie, which sat woefully alone in the middle of the massive table. I would hear long strings of Vietnamese, punctuated periodically with the words, "pumpkin pie." Stuff that sounded like, "lo hanh ny eepy wah lo sho wee pumpkin pie" (with "pie" drawn out particularly long). Sometimes, there was giggling, or the curious upnotes of a question. They pointed at it, got close to it, sniffed it, regarded the "sweat" on its top.
I felt very awkward.
Appetizers consisted of spring rolls and wontons. Dinner was duck, with sides of noodles and fried rice and things wrapped in cabbage.
Dessert rolled around and the most curious thing happened. Someone cut me a slice of the pumpkin pie. A normal-sized slice. And then, because there were more than 20 people in attendance, the rest of the pie was cut into preciously small slices and *every single person* ate some of it. I have no idea what they thought.
One of Thao's cousins, who I knew, told me, "We are all eating a piece of your stupid, freaky pie because you are a guest."
Do you like it? I asked.
She scrunched up her face and replied, "Do I look like I like it?" At which point, Thao told her to shut up and then insisted her cousin was just teasing me.
It remains a mystery.
But, then, so does what happened today.
At S2's house, there is a tradition with which I am utterly unfamiliar, and when I asked S2 if it was *really* a tradition or something silly, she said, "It's just a thing we do."
There was some singing of a "blessing," that had hand movements vaguely reminiscent of the Village People doing "YMCA." (That wasn't the silly part.)
There was also the creation of a circle around the table in which we each had a popper. I don't know what you call those things -- the round cardboard that looks like a bow, and you pull it on the end and it makes a popping sound. Inside is a fortune or a joke or a trivia question along with a little toy or ornament. (That wasn't the silly part, either.)
Rather, the "silly" part (and forgive me, S2, if you think this is *not* silly), was the fact that everyone's table setting came with a paper crown that we were expected to wear.
It turns out that the paper crowns come with those popper things, a fact explained to me by my English sister-in-law and then, further explained by S2 that her father's family is English by way of Canada (whereas mine is French by way of Canada). This explains, in part, why S2's non-religious family has fun on their holidays, while mine is into a freaky bit of Catholic piety and sexual repression.
But I digress.
The point is, they were all wearing silly hats. All of them. And despite the fact that, upon donning my own paper crown, S2 pronounced me "another person with a big head," I joined in this silliness. It was a sweet and funny scene.
In fact, the entire event took me to a place I've been and never been at the same time. The relaxed atmosphere, the kids running around entertaining one another while the adults enjoyed G&Ts and vodka with cranberry juice, the fabulous spread of food, the congenial conversation ... it was like being with a real family. Like what the Thanksgiving meal at my aunt & uncle's B&B would've been like that year if my parents -- who were warring behind the scenes and throwing daggers with their eyes at Jaws I, II and me across the table (warning us, all the time, not to "say anything" about their marital discord and secret separations) -- ... if they weren't there. *That* is what I think it might have been like. Which is why S2 & JB's house on Thanksgiving felt like such a great place to be: someplace I almost was once in my own family and, at the same time, someplace I've never been.
I am not a member of their family. But today, they welcomed me as Good Enough -- and they got me liquored up and then fed me until I was about to burst. And, mercifully, no one took offense that I passed on the "sampler platter" of *everyone's* desserts.
Just as mercifully, no one subsequently taunted me into eating a "small, thin, mint wafer." They just let me kick back in a comfortable chair and listen to them be a family -- an interesting, talkative, likeable ... family -- while the turkey slowly digested and moved me toward stupor.
Later, as I waddled toward the door, making my way through the crowd of kids putting on shoes and adults donning coats, I opened my mouth to say "thanks" but was cut off at each turn by one or another of them beating me to the punch, thanking *me* for coming. Such warmth follows you out the door and lingers for a long, long time. It lingers still.
There is a scene in Monty Python's "Meaning of Life" that pretty much sums up my situation at this moment.
The fat man has just finished eating an outrageous meal, but the waiter insists on tempting him with "one small, thin, mint wafer." The diner refuses, but the waiter pressures him until he relents. The fat guy eats the mint wafer and then he explodes, in the most vile fashion.
I ate a phenomenally tasty and HUGE meal today -- as many of us did. I ate so much food that it may have actually been a life-saving move when I declined to participate in a sampling of ALL the desserts. Instead, I ate a small slice of what I consider a "compromise pie," a pumpkin pie topped with a layer of pecan pie filling.
Food is the focus of Thanksgiving, but the gathering of people is what I've always found most compelling.
In my biological family, that was rarely a good thing. Family fights -- by which I mean: multiple fights on sundry topics, some of them violent -- had a tendency to break out with little warning. One year, my dad waved the carving knife in my face as he gesticulated wildly while yelling at me about something. Ah, pleasant memories...
But once, when I was 16, I went to Thanksgiving at Tia L and El Capitan's home outside of New Orleans that they ran as a B&B. That year, we celebrated my maternal grandparent's anniversary -- I think it was their 45th. That was the one time in my life that I was in the presence of a complete version of my maternal extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Only my sister wasn't there.
For reasons I've never understood, my mother is nothing at all like her siblings. They are gregarious, fun-loving, gentle-souled people who are spiritual but not especially religious. The Notorious M.O.M., in contrast, is a religious stick-in-the-mud with no concept that there are multiple perspectives of reality.
So being around all these positive people, rather than just my nutty nuclear family, was really special, especially en masse. There were nine of us grandkids, the three siblings and their spouses and my grandparents all staying in the old house. Sometimes, I come across a photo taken of all of us on the front porch, and I think, Well, there was a family there once, wasn't there?
But this Thanksgiving, which I spent with S2 and a few members of her extended family, S2 turned to me while the bird was still baking and asked, "Do you miss your family on a day like today?"
I replied, rather bluntly, something to the extent of: What the fuck is wrong with you? Or maybe I said, What the hell kind of question is that?
Because I'm a gracious guest.
She clarified, asking about my brother, Jaws I, who is in town and was having dinner with The Notorious M.O.M. (Jaws II is no longer with us. Today, the 24th, would have been his 31st birthday.)
In any case, I replied to S2, I do miss having a family, if that's what you mean. But I don't miss *that* family. As for Jaws I, I just feel bad about him being with The Notorious M.O.M.
But that was his choice. And mine, too. I'm taking a break from her these days, and that includes holidays.
S2, bless her, kindly invited me to join her family for dinner today.
I have, in my many years of being a single person, found myself in peculiar places on the holidays -- Thanksgiving more so than Christmas, the latter being something to which I've only once been invited to celebrate with non-relatives (and thus have frequently spent alone or working or at the movies).
In any case, I've learned that people may celebrate with a similar notion -- gather a large group, cook the foods you grew up eating on that holiday and eat too much of the spread -- but it's rarely carried out the same way.
One year, back in the late 80s, I was invited to have Thanksgiving with a Vietnamese family. My friend Thao had literally been on one of the last helicopters that lifted off in that infamous evacuation of the U.S. embassy at the end of the war. Her father had worked for the U.S. government, and his compensation was to get his family out of the country at the bitter end.
There were quite a few family members that made it over, and they all lived in the Dallas area. I was going to college there at the time. The year before, my dad had been waving the carving knife in my face, so I was happy to have an alternative to another trip to Houston. I arrived at Thao's home with the only thing I knew how to cook at the time: a pumpkin pie.
I walked in the front door and was greeted by Thao's grandmother, who didn't speak a word of English. She looked strangely at my pie, and I said, "It's pumpkin pie." She took it from me and placed it in the middle of the enormous dining table, which was not yet set.
As more relatives filtered in, they all stopped and regarded the pie, which sat woefully alone in the middle of the massive table. I would hear long strings of Vietnamese, punctuated periodically with the words, "pumpkin pie." Stuff that sounded like, "lo hanh ny eepy wah lo sho wee pumpkin pie" (with "pie" drawn out particularly long). Sometimes, there was giggling, or the curious upnotes of a question. They pointed at it, got close to it, sniffed it, regarded the "sweat" on its top.
I felt very awkward.
Appetizers consisted of spring rolls and wontons. Dinner was duck, with sides of noodles and fried rice and things wrapped in cabbage.
Dessert rolled around and the most curious thing happened. Someone cut me a slice of the pumpkin pie. A normal-sized slice. And then, because there were more than 20 people in attendance, the rest of the pie was cut into preciously small slices and *every single person* ate some of it. I have no idea what they thought.
One of Thao's cousins, who I knew, told me, "We are all eating a piece of your stupid, freaky pie because you are a guest."
Do you like it? I asked.
She scrunched up her face and replied, "Do I look like I like it?" At which point, Thao told her to shut up and then insisted her cousin was just teasing me.
It remains a mystery.
But, then, so does what happened today.
At S2's house, there is a tradition with which I am utterly unfamiliar, and when I asked S2 if it was *really* a tradition or something silly, she said, "It's just a thing we do."
There was some singing of a "blessing," that had hand movements vaguely reminiscent of the Village People doing "YMCA." (That wasn't the silly part.)
There was also the creation of a circle around the table in which we each had a popper. I don't know what you call those things -- the round cardboard that looks like a bow, and you pull it on the end and it makes a popping sound. Inside is a fortune or a joke or a trivia question along with a little toy or ornament. (That wasn't the silly part, either.)
Rather, the "silly" part (and forgive me, S2, if you think this is *not* silly), was the fact that everyone's table setting came with a paper crown that we were expected to wear.
It turns out that the paper crowns come with those popper things, a fact explained to me by my English sister-in-law and then, further explained by S2 that her father's family is English by way of Canada (whereas mine is French by way of Canada). This explains, in part, why S2's non-religious family has fun on their holidays, while mine is into a freaky bit of Catholic piety and sexual repression.
But I digress.
The point is, they were all wearing silly hats. All of them. And despite the fact that, upon donning my own paper crown, S2 pronounced me "another person with a big head," I joined in this silliness. It was a sweet and funny scene.
In fact, the entire event took me to a place I've been and never been at the same time. The relaxed atmosphere, the kids running around entertaining one another while the adults enjoyed G&Ts and vodka with cranberry juice, the fabulous spread of food, the congenial conversation ... it was like being with a real family. Like what the Thanksgiving meal at my aunt & uncle's B&B would've been like that year if my parents -- who were warring behind the scenes and throwing daggers with their eyes at Jaws I, II and me across the table (warning us, all the time, not to "say anything" about their marital discord and secret separations) -- ... if they weren't there. *That* is what I think it might have been like. Which is why S2 & JB's house on Thanksgiving felt like such a great place to be: someplace I almost was once in my own family and, at the same time, someplace I've never been.
I am not a member of their family. But today, they welcomed me as Good Enough -- and they got me liquored up and then fed me until I was about to burst. And, mercifully, no one took offense that I passed on the "sampler platter" of *everyone's* desserts.
Just as mercifully, no one subsequently taunted me into eating a "small, thin, mint wafer." They just let me kick back in a comfortable chair and listen to them be a family -- an interesting, talkative, likeable ... family -- while the turkey slowly digested and moved me toward stupor.
Later, as I waddled toward the door, making my way through the crowd of kids putting on shoes and adults donning coats, I opened my mouth to say "thanks" but was cut off at each turn by one or another of them beating me to the punch, thanking *me* for coming. Such warmth follows you out the door and lingers for a long, long time. It lingers still.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Reconsidering sexuality
I've been reading all day, most of it about female sexuality and sexual identity, for a research design project at school.
My work group, The Sex Files, is exploring the fluidity, plasticity or stability -- whatever you want to call it -- of female sexual identity. For several weeks, we've been pouring over and discussing other research, most of which is aimed at determining how women label their sexual orientation and whether it changes at any point.
But this morning, we got together and decided that we'd rather overturn the whole process of sexual identity labeling by questioning the social construct of sexual orientation at its core.
In other words, our project went from "Female sexuality: Fixed or fluid over the lifespan?" to "Who the fuck are you to expect me to label my sexuality with your confining words, man?"
Or as one of my classmates *not* working on this project once said of her sexuality: "I get a little antsy when someone tries to put me in a box."
My work group -- composed of a straight woman, a bisexual woman and a lesbian, as we identify ourselves -- has been wondering just where the line ends between one label and another. Just how are we supposed to quantify a woman who reports bisexual attractions without bisexual behavior? Or one who, perhaps 20 years ago, had sex with a woman but has otherwise exclusively been in the company of men yet calls herself "bisexual"? And what to make of lesbians, many of whom have had sex with men (some of whom enjoy it), but declare they have an exclusively lesbian identity?
There are numerous other possibilities, making the quantification of sexual orientation or identity just about impossible.
What's more, those women who refuse to label themselves not only throw a wrench into the works, they also tend to be excluded from research into sexual orientation precisely because they can't be pigeonholed. Yet the refusal to be pigeonholed strikes at the heart of things, in many respects.
Much of the research also stems from trying to establish societal norms, with same-sex relationships as essentially deviant and, thus, abnormal. The categorization of same-sex attraction and behavior as something "different" from the way everyone else does it is a fundamental bias in the description of sexuality itself.
This afternoon, I was reading a piece by feminist researcher Deborah Tolman in which she revisits Adrienne Rich's notion of "compulsory heterosexuality." Back in the early 1970s, Rich pulled back the veil on how lesbians are made invisible by a social presumption of heterosexuality based on beliefs and practices that keep woman apart while overtly and covertly forcing women into relationships with men.
Tolman argued that female sexuality often develops under adverse conditions: those in which adolescent girls learn to see themselves as the object of male desire, provacateurs (all of us) who must assume the responsibility of "keeping things from going too far" with guys. Rather than embracing their sexuality as a positive thing, the vast majority of girls only learn to be a counter-balance to the uncontrollable male.
What's worse, in one study cited, 75 percent of a sampling of "several hundred" girls described their first experience of heterosexual intercourse as painful, disappointing and boring. (What's sad is not just how many of you might agree with this description from your personal experience, but the assumption on the part of so many women that it's an experience to be expected.)
Tolman talked about the problem that has been unearthed by feminist researchers who have posed research questions premised on the notion that there is a positive experience of female adolescent sexuality.
"...We have found collectively that for most girls, sexuality is most often not positive and is always complicated by the negative meanings (and quite often real material and social consequences) of their sexuality," she writes. "The outcome of the desire to know the positive posits ironic limits to the question itself: it may not be there to be found."
Now, that is one sorry statement, my sisters.
What I would really love is for one of my female friends to tell me they bucked this trend, that they had an essentially sex-positive, open, healthy concept of their sexuality from a young age. And I'd love to hear what that was like.
By the way, if you are one, the research suggests you have your mother to thank. This article states that "pleasure narrators" (girls with sex-positive attitudes) have mothers who conveyed "a sense of entitlement to pleasure and safety."
I suppose if I have one thing to say about all of this, it's that, as adult females, we can be a part of rewriting the story. Let's teach girls and young women that there is immense pleasure to be found in their bodies when it comes to sex. At the same time, let's teach them how to avoid unwanted pregnancy and disease. And let's teach them to hold men accountable for controlling themselves.
Easier said than done, I'm sure. But in light of the VAST MAJORITY of women growing up feeling shame and restriction in their sexuality, it's certainly worth the effort.
And, I suppose that while I'm off preaching from my little idyllic world, I'll add that we should be pursuing a world where the labels we use to describe sexuality today are totally obsolete. To rewrite the song a little: Be with the one you love; love the one you're with.
And by all means, enjoy your whoopie.
Of course, these are the words of a woman who's not seen any action in MONTHS. So you might want to take *all* of this with a grain of salt.
My work group, The Sex Files, is exploring the fluidity, plasticity or stability -- whatever you want to call it -- of female sexual identity. For several weeks, we've been pouring over and discussing other research, most of which is aimed at determining how women label their sexual orientation and whether it changes at any point.
But this morning, we got together and decided that we'd rather overturn the whole process of sexual identity labeling by questioning the social construct of sexual orientation at its core.
In other words, our project went from "Female sexuality: Fixed or fluid over the lifespan?" to "Who the fuck are you to expect me to label my sexuality with your confining words, man?"
Or as one of my classmates *not* working on this project once said of her sexuality: "I get a little antsy when someone tries to put me in a box."
My work group -- composed of a straight woman, a bisexual woman and a lesbian, as we identify ourselves -- has been wondering just where the line ends between one label and another. Just how are we supposed to quantify a woman who reports bisexual attractions without bisexual behavior? Or one who, perhaps 20 years ago, had sex with a woman but has otherwise exclusively been in the company of men yet calls herself "bisexual"? And what to make of lesbians, many of whom have had sex with men (some of whom enjoy it), but declare they have an exclusively lesbian identity?
There are numerous other possibilities, making the quantification of sexual orientation or identity just about impossible.
What's more, those women who refuse to label themselves not only throw a wrench into the works, they also tend to be excluded from research into sexual orientation precisely because they can't be pigeonholed. Yet the refusal to be pigeonholed strikes at the heart of things, in many respects.
Much of the research also stems from trying to establish societal norms, with same-sex relationships as essentially deviant and, thus, abnormal. The categorization of same-sex attraction and behavior as something "different" from the way everyone else does it is a fundamental bias in the description of sexuality itself.
This afternoon, I was reading a piece by feminist researcher Deborah Tolman in which she revisits Adrienne Rich's notion of "compulsory heterosexuality." Back in the early 1970s, Rich pulled back the veil on how lesbians are made invisible by a social presumption of heterosexuality based on beliefs and practices that keep woman apart while overtly and covertly forcing women into relationships with men.
Tolman argued that female sexuality often develops under adverse conditions: those in which adolescent girls learn to see themselves as the object of male desire, provacateurs (all of us) who must assume the responsibility of "keeping things from going too far" with guys. Rather than embracing their sexuality as a positive thing, the vast majority of girls only learn to be a counter-balance to the uncontrollable male.
What's worse, in one study cited, 75 percent of a sampling of "several hundred" girls described their first experience of heterosexual intercourse as painful, disappointing and boring. (What's sad is not just how many of you might agree with this description from your personal experience, but the assumption on the part of so many women that it's an experience to be expected.)
Tolman talked about the problem that has been unearthed by feminist researchers who have posed research questions premised on the notion that there is a positive experience of female adolescent sexuality.
"...We have found collectively that for most girls, sexuality is most often not positive and is always complicated by the negative meanings (and quite often real material and social consequences) of their sexuality," she writes. "The outcome of the desire to know the positive posits ironic limits to the question itself: it may not be there to be found."
Now, that is one sorry statement, my sisters.
What I would really love is for one of my female friends to tell me they bucked this trend, that they had an essentially sex-positive, open, healthy concept of their sexuality from a young age. And I'd love to hear what that was like.
By the way, if you are one, the research suggests you have your mother to thank. This article states that "pleasure narrators" (girls with sex-positive attitudes) have mothers who conveyed "a sense of entitlement to pleasure and safety."
I suppose if I have one thing to say about all of this, it's that, as adult females, we can be a part of rewriting the story. Let's teach girls and young women that there is immense pleasure to be found in their bodies when it comes to sex. At the same time, let's teach them how to avoid unwanted pregnancy and disease. And let's teach them to hold men accountable for controlling themselves.
Easier said than done, I'm sure. But in light of the VAST MAJORITY of women growing up feeling shame and restriction in their sexuality, it's certainly worth the effort.
And, I suppose that while I'm off preaching from my little idyllic world, I'll add that we should be pursuing a world where the labels we use to describe sexuality today are totally obsolete. To rewrite the song a little: Be with the one you love; love the one you're with.
And by all means, enjoy your whoopie.
Of course, these are the words of a woman who's not seen any action in MONTHS. So you might want to take *all* of this with a grain of salt.
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