A little light reading

Michel Foucault, anyone?

Although I *could* be spending these weeks between terms reading something blissfully light, it seems graduate school is tranforming me into a psychology geek.

Here is my reading list, which I am cycling through at variable intervals:

The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Volume 2, by Michel Foucault. This is about how the Greek virtues have influenced our understanding of sexuality, how we conceptualize desire and what uses we assign to sexual activity. It is about the intersection of four critical aspects of self and sexual relations (as it pertains to men): the body, marriage, homoerotic relations with boys and wisdom.

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, also by Michel Foucault. This work traces the "archaeology of madness" in Western civilization from 1500 to 1800, a time when society made the transition between being at ease with "crazy" people and the decision to establish loony bins to separate the "insane" from the rest of the population.

The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz, which is a book my cousin Spitfire recommended. It's a quick little "Toltec Wisdom Book," that finds its home in the "general metaphysics" section at Powell's. The four agreements are: Be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions and always do your best.

What I like about this book is the concept of "agreements," as it's one I've been chewing on all by myself for a couple years. In short, all of "reality" is merely a collection of agreements about what we're doing and what we're witnessing. Language is an agreement that certain sounds and symbols carry certain meanings. Money is an agreement based on power and influence. We agree -- more vaguely -- on colors, tastes, volume, smells. We agree considerably less on what's funny, what something "means," etc.

So this book posits that all of our attitudes and perspectives are highly informed and influenced by agreements we accepted as we were "domesticated" during childhood, and that we took on these agreements because children are maleable, incited by fear of punishment and motivated by the desire for reward. (Freud said the same thing a century ago in "Civilization and Its Discontents," by the way.)

I also have another Focualt book I'm picking at in little bits. Abnormal is a collection of lectures he gave at the Collége de France in 1974 and 1975 about the rising power of psychiatry and the classification of people who "resemble their crimes before they commit them."

At the same time I picked up these other books (as well as volume 1 of The History of Sexuality), I picked up a copy of On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. I'm letting this one take a lazy buggy ride for now. I've got my thumbs in enough books already -- not to mention The God of Small Things, by Arhundati Roy, which I've been poking at since December. But I'll have to turn my attention to Kübler-Ross soon enough.

And, on top of all of this, I am studying -- FINALLY -- to take a psychology exam I was supposed to take more than a year ago as a final for a Intro to Psych course in my grad program. A YEAR!!! It's hard to believe that much time has passed, and I've been so adept at ignoring this thing. Thankfully, a year ago or so, S2 gave me the printouts of her study guide, and I have been diligent about keeping track of them.

I will take this exam by May 11. That is my promise to myself. Best to put it in writing somewhere, because I am gifted with amnesia about such things.

Small ironies

From the music playlist at today's H4TCI: "Bang your head! Mental health will drive you mad!"

Quotable quote: "The [parole] board is holding it against me that I said I'm going to smoke marijuana after I get back out into the world. They asked, and I was just being honest. Yes, I am going to smoke it; it does the best job at making the voices in my head go away, and that's what I told them. You'd think they'd give me credit for not lying."

Other than that, nothing to report.

New this, new that & Grindhouse

New This

I got a new bag to carry things in today. One of them there "professional" things to replace the backpack which has seen me through travels on three continents, several years of commuting to work on the bus, two years of graduate school and countless hikes and walks to the store.

Considering all that, the backpack is still in *great* shape -- and thus will not be retired from the hikes, the walks or the traveling -- but it's not what I want to be carrying in to my intership site or to whatever else my future therapist-self will be doing.

So I went and picked me up something where retro meets modern, more a briefcase than a bag, but still rather cute. It's brown with pink piping and pink lining, and it has some nifty shit inside it, too. Very handy. Wonderful for travel, too, particularly the inevitable conference somewhere. (The Third World is still a backpack place for me.)

It's new; it's cute; and I won't look like I'm slumming when I go to the office, which will be a first. (There are so many ways in which I never quite fit into the corporate world. Thankfully!)

Anyway, not much more to say about that. Just happy to have solved my bag dilemma.

New That

Your UCM is yet again in a state of reconstruction. It is part of an ongoing renovation process that seems to have started a year or so ago, but only got into full swing back in the beginning of February. Man alive, people! This one is going to take a while to jell, so I think I'll wait until it's a little more solidified before I start writing about it.

If the blog entries get banal or a bit spotty over the next couple weeks, be patient with me.

In the meantime, let me talk a little about sex and violence:

Gindhouse

You know, I love Quentin Tarrantino. He is a master of absurd, high energy, violent comedies with lots of girl flesh. (Ummmm-ma Thurman, anyone?) His contribution to Grindhouse was all about sexy ladies who KICK ASS! And the first part of the film, directed by the other guy, had that one-legged girl with the big old gun attached to her stump, too.

There were also plenty of short-shorts and long, lingering shots of lovely girl butt. Highly amusing. Especially when the girls with the lovely butts start KICKING ASS!

The series of trailers that start the film and then come on at "intermission" between the two films-within-the-film are a RIOT. One of them contained a shot that was so absurd and vulgar and gnarly (to the extent that it was funny) that I actually emitted a loud scream/gasp/gross-out/laughing noise that made people throughout the theater start laughing.

The Good Witch, who invited me to see the film with her because Cartman would not attend it, leaned over and asked, "Was that the first time for you?"

I'm not sure if she was talking about the first time I ever witnessed such a scene or the first time I screamed out loud in a theater at a point where *no one else* did. Whatever the case, the answer is yes.

What an amusing film. Totally made to be seen on the big screen, mind you. This is not for the DVD player at home. The whole business seems to require the self-referential experience of being *in* the theater and watching these absurd films play out, especially with their "missing reels," grainy and jumpy footage and previews of coming attractions. Viewed at home, I think most of that stuff will lose its impact.

So if you've been thinking about Grindhouse, go to the cinema.

That is all. I work early manana, so I bid you all a good night.

Tragic validation & vindication

The piece Bill Moyers reported about the outrageous lying and manipulation and laziness of the major league media in the run-up to the Iraq War was an absolutely marvelous piece of journalism.

Thank you, Mr. Moyers. As alumni of the same undergrad program, I would like to say that you (and Linda Ellerbee and Molly Ivans) were my journalistic role models. It's because of the ethical sensibilities I gleaned from all three of you that I left my post in the mainstream media when I did.

It has always been my pleasure NOT to have been involved in the fiasco this country mistook for "journalism" in the years following the September 11 attacks. There is a theory that people with good intentions can change the system from the inside, and I wish I had possessed the interest and the backbone to say I did just that. But instead, I left as a conscientious objector.

You, Mr. Moyers, stuck around and have exposed the disgusting "truth" at the core of this rotting, mildewing "Fourth Estate." We are all in your debt.

Now, if only it will make a difference.

Perhaps then, I could pay attention to the news again.

Alas, it might be a cold day in hell before I give a single shred of credibility to the major media outlets. What has been going on is a form of Treason, a disservice to the people of this good country. I cannot be bothered to pay it heed at this point. Nor should the rest of you.

It's toxic, I'm telling you. Absolutely toxic. And Bill Moyers made that point quite well tonight.

Over & out & a little about death

Well, I've officially polished off another semester on the way toward becoming a Mistress of Counseling Psychology. Or perhaps that's a Madame of Counseling Psychology. What *is* the feminine form of "master"?

I took my Ethics final tonight. No telling how I did on that. Maybe I aced it; maybe I missed the whole point. Either way, I reactivated the tendonitis in my hand with all the writing I did.

When it was over, two of my classmates and I talked to the professor about the hideous use of PowerPoint presentations during the term. Each student had been assigned a chapter and was required to give the class a PP presentation of no fewer than 20 slides on that chapter. This was the most incredibly boring part of grad school. Period. On my class evaluation earlier in the evening, I had written: The student PowerPoint presentations were an abysmal part of this class. Please MAKE ME ENGAGE WITH THE MATERIAL, rather than using it to anesthetize me.

In fact, tonight as we were waiting to take the final exam, we learned that there were still TWO MORE of these things through which to suffer. Hearing that, I leaned over to one of my classmates and said, I'm killing myself. I am *officially* suicidal. Dealing with suicidality was one of the focuses of the class, so I added: Please contact a significant person in my life and have them get me the fuck out of here.

If you've lived anything like my life, by now, you've learned how these things work. Even when I'm trying, I *never* manage to pull off sotto voce. And there is, of course, my talent for perfect timing. Which is why, in some lull after the professor announced the final two presentations and the class had stopped stirring, my deadpan tone was audible to everyone as I said, ... get me the fuck out of here.

Something similar happened earlier this year in a different class with the same professor. But then, the words falling from my tongue were, ... covered in white spooge, but I ate it anyway.

So when get me the fuck out of here was the audible reply to the prof's announcement tonight, she merely looked at me with a bit of a twinkle in her eye. A classmate across the room burst into prolonged laughter. But otherwise....

Well, despite *that* business, I talked to the prof tonight about whether she might be my faculty for an independent study. After this summer, I need five more elective credits to complete my program. I've got thoughts on how I might get two or three of those, but I've been thinking for some time that I want to create some of the depth I've been seeking in the program. I'm particularly interested in the intersection between story/writing and therapy, two things which have been parts of my life for many years.

There is an intersection of storytelling, sociology, psychology and culture (and perhaps media) that I'm interested in exploring, specifically where they all meet people facing their death (young or old). It was this that I spoke about with the professor after the three of us were done riding her ass about the endless PowerPoints. She seemed really into it, and suggested I watch some videos of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross actually *doing* her work, rather than reading about it. Sounds fascinating.

So perhaps next Fall or Spring -- or both, depending on the scale of what I choose to do -- I will dive into this subject with abandon. For now, however, I'm going to start dipping my toes a little here and a little there. I've got to do a lot of reading just to create some focus for what I want to do.

For the next few days, I have *nothing* to do. No school. No work. A vet appointment on Wednesday. Maybe a movie on Thursday night. So in the absence of any duties to perform, I think I'll visit Powell's City of Books and see if I can't find something about death and medicine and culture and philosophy into which I might put my nose for the next couple of weeks, as my classes do not resume until May 8.

"Did I disturb you?"

After coming home this evening from a nice little night on the town -- chowing down at Pix, attending a wickedly funny performance by David Sedaris and then engaging in a wildly divergent conversation with my Rather Shy Classmate -- I took the pup out for a brief evening constitutional.

It was after midnight. There is still life on my street at this hour, thanks to the bars nearby, so I'm accustomed to passing people on our walks even at this time of night. But as we loitered briefly near a large patch of lawn just a few blocks down, right on the main street where I live, I was surprised to suddenly hear a woman call out to me: "Hello!"

I looked around to find its source. Fom a basement window well of a house that has been converted to the offices of a non-profit organization, my eye caught something moving in the light. The woman was waving to me from down in that little hole, about 30 feet from where I stood on the sidewalk.

Hello, I responded and tried to size her up as quickly as I could. I get panhandled all the time down here, and I was wondering if she was one of the regulars. She wasn't.

"Did I disturb you?" she asked.

No, I said. Are you OK?

"No. I'm not OK," she replied. She had some dyskinesia -- a bit of bobbing and weaving -- and I wondered if she was drunk or high on something. "I'm not OK at all. I'm cold and hungry, and I got nowhere to sleep. A guy down the street said he'd fix me up a plate of something. I guess maybe tomorrow. But I ain't OK at all."

I jammed my hands in my pocket. Well, I wish I had something to help you out, but I don't have anything on me at all, I replied. Have you considered the shelters downtown?

"They make you wake up too early, and they ain't safe," she said. "I need me some sleep, so I'm staying here." She continued speaking, but a bus passed by just then, and I couldn't hear another word. When it was gone, she was finished saying whatever she had to say and was looking at me, her head bobbing.

Well, like I said, I wish I could help you out, but I don't have anything on me.

"That's OK," she said. "You have a good night now."

Walking back to my place, I couldn't quite get this woman out of my head. I get panhandled all the time and am also sadly accustomed to people living on the streets, but something here didn't seem right.

I returned to my place, grabbed a coat I was thinking of giving to Goodwill, took some deli meat from my fridge and walked back down the street. She was still in the hole when I returned, and I approached her there.

That's when I saw her bare legs. She tried to cover herself, but she had no pants. She had only her panties, a large t-shirt, no bra and a formless coat. As she reached up to take the items from me, I noticed a hospital bracelet on her arm. I inquired about the hospital. She told me she'd been recently discharged from the big one just a few miles away.

"Doctor says I got me some problems with my equilibrium," she told me. "And I get cramps in my legs, so he say I should eat lots of bananas. But I can't eat no bananas when I got nothing at all to eat. I ain't even got nowhere to stay."

On the steps beside her were what appeared to be her only belongings: a few cigarette lighters, a hair tie, a few other small items that looked scavenged out of garbage cans.

She introduced herself as "Ruby," asked me my name and delicately shook my hand. Then she thanked me for the jacket and the food, and we bid each other goodnight.

I walked back to my place again with a weight on my mind: Just what was my moral obligation to this woman? Human to human, how should I handle this?

She seemed lucid and oriented to space, and there is such harrasment of the homeless in town sometimes that I hesitated to call the police. She'd found herself what looked to be a safe spot for the night, and the police might only move her from the roost without helping her. But her naked thighs, the sight of her panties and the hospital bracelet on her wrist disturbed me.

I called the hospital when I got home and inquired whether they were missing a patient. After a few phone transfers, I ended up talking to someone in the ER who told me the only thing I could do was call the cops.

I called several numbers at the police station, not wanting to dial 911 for a situation like this. No one ever answered the phones I rang. And so that was that: I decided to let Ruby find her own way in the world.

But still: It bugs the crap out of me. I have no idea what that woman's story was, but no matter how you look at it, the story can't be a good one. Not when you're sleeping in a basement window well, wearing a hospital bracelet but no pants.

Life can be a cruel, cruel thing. And whenever I'm confronted with something like this -- which is thankfully not often -- I am deeply troubled. What is the humane thing to do? What is the moral thing to do? How much responsibility do I have to help someone in distress? What level of distress is sufficient for me to get more involved?

And just what kind of action on my part will let me sleep soundly tonight (tucked in, as I will be, beneath an alpaca blanket, 400-thread-count sheets and an embroidered silk duvet)?

Did she "disturb" me? Oh, yes.

miscellaney

I worked today at a H4TCI not far from my home, where I've worked only once when doing a shadow shift with the house administrator. The residents there, all of them men, are the biggest bunch of teddy bears you can imagine (except for this one guy who's a little sketchy).

Most of the day was passed playing Free Cell and Spider Solitaire in the dining room while listening to '80s rock that was blasting from the digital television in the den. Periodically, I'd get into a conversation with one of the residents. One of them gave me a lengthy and detailed "introduction" to cooking with a Crockpot. Another asked me for guidance with maintaining a rose bush in the back yard.

Otherwise, nothing to report. It's officially the most mellow job I've ever had.

...
In other news, I got an e-mail from XGF, who's in Shanghai on business, and is stressing out about what appears to be the imminent death of a family member back here at home. This situation has been unfolding for months -- years, really -- but, of course, it didn't become critical until XGF was on the other side of the planet. I feel for her. This totally sucks.

...
On a totally different note, I'm going to see David Sedaris on Sunday night with Rather Shy Classmate. I've been looking forward to this show for months. Theoretically, I should be studying for my final on Monday night, but I fail to see how I can prepare to solve an ethical dilemma. Especially when I get to bring my own ethical decision making model and my professional code of ethics with me to class. So I will enjoy David Sedaris without a further thought about Monday.

Hi, my name is UCM, and I'm ... just watching

I went to my first-ever AA meeting last night. My graduate program requires all students to attend at least four of the infamous "anonymous" meetings: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Alanon and one "wild card," which can be Gamblers Anonymous, Cocain Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, etc.

So last night, King Rex, Rather Shy Classmate and I went to an AA meeting a few miles from my place. Including us, there were 29 people there, six of whom were women.

The meeting was a bit boring in my book. And according to RSC, who once upon a time was a babysitter for an AA chapter near her home, this particularly group was "exceptionally God-y." Of course, when she spoke those words, I thought she meant "gawdy," and I replied: Really? I thought they were all rather plainly dressed....

"No, not 'gawdy,' 'God-y.' G-O-D," she said. "They had a really strong focus on 'God' versus your typical 'higher power' stuff."

Totally.

In fact, I was a bit weirded out by the whole thing. Because even though I knew AA was into that 'higher power' stuff "as you understand it" (or whatever the wording is), I noticed these folks kept talking about "God." They also ended the meeting by reciting "The Lord's Prayer," which is that "Our father, who art in heaven" thing. It was a turn-off for all three of us. I contributed a dollar to the meeting coffers, but I was *not* going to utter a word of that prayer.

Anyway.

If this was all that was standing between me and death by alcoholism, I would be totally Leaving Las Vegas, my friends.

The whole idea that you have to surrender to a "higher power" to get control over your own life is a bit weird for me. But weirder still is the notion that, according to the information read at the beginning of the meeting, there are some people who are "constitutionally incapable" of recovery.

Let me understand this: You must acknowledge that you are powerless to combat alcoholism yourself and turn over the reigns to a "higher power," but that same "higher power" is limited in its ability to help you if you happen to be "constititionally incapable" of recovery, which includes being honest with oneself.

Now ... HOW THE FUCK IS THAT?

I mean: If the "higher power" has the ability to help your average alcoholic, why is it not powerful enough to help this other special class of alcoholics who are "constititionally incapable" of being honest with themselves and whatnot? How can you surrender to something that only kinda-sorta has the power to help you?

King Rex explained it to me: "By turning the situation over to a 'higher power,' they're basically relinquishing control, which allows them to relinquish guilt and self-loathing over the things they've done and any relapse they might experience. It just takes the pressure off."

I gather that if you just keep failing and failing and failing to get sober, AA has an answer there for you, too: It's OK because you are "constitutionally incapable." What can you really expect? Don't punish yourself.

And perhaps this is all true. I don't know. I've never been addicted to alcohol, so I've never had the need to quit it.

Nevertheless, I get hung up on the part where a "higher power" can fix some people but not others. I feel sad for the ones who don't meet the minimum standards set by the "higher power" and do not, as a consequence, get sober.

The other thing that really gets me to wondering is about the value of self-efficacy. I mean: If alcoholics who used AA to clean up could take the credit -- if they realized that it was THEM, not some "higher power" who got sober and stayed sober -- might they not experience more self-confidence and a greater sense of self-efficacy?

Or does the belief in the "higher power" accomplish the same thing, in that they believe there is something looking out for them and changing them and thus can be counted on again to work some mojo when needed?

What happens when they surrender and let the "higher power" attempt to do something else but it totally fails?

These are things I was left wondering about last night.

That and whether the woman who was stoned and the man who was kneading his hands in stress managed to make it 24 more hours without a drink. There's a certain soap-opera like quality to the whole thing. It makes me want to go back to find out what happened to those folks.

I wish them luck.

My next meeting will either be NA -- because I hear they have a fabulous group hug at the end instead of that prayer stuff -- or it will be one of the other two. For my "wild card," I'm thinking of gambler's anonymous. I have a friend who I'm keeping an eye on with regard to her gambling. May come in handy at some point to tell her what a meeting is like....

drama potpourri

I visited my practicum site today. Started to get in touch with the idea that I'm actually going to be *doing* this work in a few weeks.

Whoa.

Spitfire and her boyfriend headed out into the Wild West this morning, on their roadtrip to New Orleans.

When I came home from school last night, they were lounging in front of the television, eating Thai food. It is the strangest experience to come home and find someone here. Especially looking like they live here. In fact, these past two nights have been the only time in more than a year that I've walked in and found someone (human) "home."

It occurs to me how much I like the feeling.

Spitfire and I ended up having a pretty meaningful talk -- the second in two days -- during which she told me some stuff about The Notorious M.O.M. that gave me some new insight. (Unfortunately, nothing in her favor.) But the focus of the conversation had just about nothing to do with my mother. It occurs to me that, however young and (a little bit) wild Spitfire is, she has so much of her mother in her, particularly with regard to her mindset and her uncanny empathy.

In what just seems to be "family" week, my sister called me this morning. I was, when she phoned, ruminating over a sad experience from last night. But as soon as she said my name, my thoughts about others came to a screeching halt. I said, What's up? and before there was a breath to be found, she tumbled out, "You remember when I was there for you? Well, now it's your turn to be there for me. ... I'm sicker than we thought."

What's wrong with you? I asked, always using the most courteous wording.

She spilled "the doctor's differential diagnosis" out on the table for me. I was floored. None of the possibilities mean anything less than a life of chronic, debilitating illness; at least one of them is highly fatal within a few years.

So how can I be of assistance?

My sister told me she was struggling *not* to think about the situation, not to spend any time feeling concerned about which diagnosis -- among this devastating list -- it was. She was afraid, and she was annoyed that she couldn't stop making herself feel afraid.

Look, even though you've got a taste for the mystical, you're a cognitive, linear person. You want the world concrete. You want spreadsheets. You're trying to talk sense to yourself about statistical odds, I told her. Although our brain and our physical body and our emotional systems are completely integrated, we like to think we can separate and master each of them independently. You often use your cognitive fortitude to temper your emotional experience, but there are some emotional experiences which will almost always overwhelm our brains. One of them is the madness of being in love. Another is when your life is threatened. Do you really believe you're supposed to be dispassionate and go on with life as normal when you feel like shit and your doctor has told you it may be deadly?

Although I'm prone to worry myself -- and thus would be happy to normalize it for just about anyone -- I feel reasonably certain that it would be very hard *not* to be concerned about the outcome of these tests. Especially when the possibilities range from the "that sucks ass" to "deadly."

For whatever reason, this was very helpful to my sister.

As a complicating factor, this list of possible diagnoses has tripped out my brother-in-law so much that he and my sister can barely speak about it. It reminds me of a sad fact about illness and terminal diagnoses: So often, the people who are sick never really get to talk about their feelings.

Spitfire told me about so raw feelings my uncle has about the videotapes I made of my aunt. In part, he wanted to know why she spoke to me about things that she didn't bring up with him. In my estimation, it's because there was a silent denial about the terminal nature of my aunt's illness, and so some of those important conversations were very hard to bring up. I, on the other hand, put a video camera in my hand ... and asked.

Death is a hard thing for people to contemplate. We are all working so hard against it. It seems, irrationally, better for everyone to ignore it once it's been seen breathing down your back. There seems to be a belief among many that talking about it will somehow hasten it, perhaps by causing the person to give up hope. In my experience, this is absurd.

People may not want to talk about their life and death -- they may prefer to ignore things. But my experience and some reading I've done indicates that people often *do* want to talk but fear upsetting their loved ones by bringing up the conversation themselves. Everyone gets into a little catch-22 there.

I suspect that was happening in my aunt's home, because she was easily and directly forthcoming with me about these topics about which Spitfire referred. There's no one to be blamed; there's just the cycle of people loving each other a lot and not wanting to talk about painful things for fear of upsetting the other so much. Makes sense. But it leaves everyone feeling isolated on one of the most important topics possible. Hopefully, my brother-in-law will figure out how to be strong *and* talk about it. My sister really needs that right now.

Of course, we *all* need loving people who can be strong and honest with us. It's just that sometimes, the need is more obvious and pronounced.

Oh, and before I sign off I want to wish a safe journey to Spitfire and her boyfriend. May New Orleans be the home you once knew it to be.

crazy day

Wow, today has been intense!

My cousin Spitfire showed up at my place early this afternoon. She and her boyfriend are on their way to New Orleans from Hawaii via Seattle, where they had their van shipped to the mainland. They are staying the night but may stay an additional one because the alternator on their van went out as they were leaving to visit her boyfriend's son in Salem.

We had a pretty intense conversation about my aunt -- Spitfire's mom -- this afternoon. Rather unexpected. Then I went to school and had a much less intense but still pretty provocative conversation with a professor about ... how shall we put this? ... my evolving professional identity. My teacher called me "a wonderfully complex person." I'm assuming that was a compliment.

After leaving that meeting, I ran into S2 and a classmate who witnessed my little Theater of the Absurd performance in last week's class. The other classmate surprised me with what she said, which basically were positive comments about the "impact" of my tyrranic-like lecture. A third classmate later told me it was the "three-snap performance of the term" and said that the last line of my little speech -- "By the time that you counsel your first same-sex couple, I hope you will have given as much consideration to our issues as I have given to yours" -- saved the whole thing from just sounding like a rant. Hmmmm.

Anyway, that was some intense feedback to get. A very saturdated day.

Then I came back here and found Spitfire and her boyfriend here, crashed out on a little bed they set up in front of my television. The boyfriend, who I got to know on my last trip to Hawaii, was crashed out, and Spitfire and I spent about two hours talking over thai food and tea.

I eventually excused myself and took a long walk with the dog. First bit of "alone" time I had since shortly after waking this morning. On the walk, we had what felt very much like a creepy guy on our tail for a block or so, and I regretted, for the first time ever, going into the neighborhoods -- away from the commercial strip on which I live -- so late at night. But the pup seems to have picked up on the vibe from that dude and kept turning around and staring at him. It was an interesting display of body language on that dog's part, I tell ya. Anyway, I quickly got back on the main street and everything was cool.

So now I am feeling trashed and am needing to jot some notes to myself on a story I'm writing before I hit the hay. I bid you a goodnight.

"All homosexuals are alike -- looking for love where there can be no love...."

Handsome Gay Male and I went out last night for drinks with dinner, followed by after-dinner drinks. We had a lot to talk about, and most of it was *very* gay. Turns out that I am one of HGM's only gay friends, and he is one of a very small handful of mine -- and the only male in my local gay family.

The evening started off on a sweet note. When I let him in the building, he was bearing a single yellow rose. He handed it to me and said, "This is for the courage you displayed in your Couples class. The fact that discussion of gay and lesbian relationship issues can be summarily dismissed from a Couples Therapy class in a master's-level program at a politically liberal college in Portland shows how much work still needs to be done. It takes brave people to bring it to the attention of everyone else."

That touched me. Especially because even my most supportive straight friends still experience a big gap between their understanding and mine on this issue. Sometimes, it just helps to have an audience that knows what you're talking about without the need to explain it.

Now, here's the "fun" part of this blog entry:

HGM asked me if I would give a book to Dr. R, who's in one of my classes. It came to him by way of one of Dr. R's friends, a man who came to my Mardi Gras party as what I imagine was a "gay pirate" costume. He and HGM had dinner the other week, and the gay pirate asked him to get this book to Dr. R.

The nice thing about passing along a book is the opportunity to thumb through it. This one was old and a bit dusty looking, so I accepted it eagerly from HGM without questions.

I looked at the faint embossed title on the hardbound spine. "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex*" with that little asterisk explained lower on the spine in tiny print: "*but were afraid to ask." This pristine little gem was published in 1969.

"I read some of it," HGM said, "and found myself feeling torn up by the section on homosexuality. I could not believe it."

This morning, I put my nose in the book, randomly opening it to a chapter on masturbation. The discussion was surprisingly shame-busting, although the idea of girls masturbating by "climbing a tree" is still a jarring image. Not straddling a branch, my friends, but "climbing" the tree. Maybe it's because so many of the trees I climbed had kind of rough bark -- oaks, for example -- that I'm not seeing my little girl (or my grown woman) clitoris enjoying that very much.

Anyway, after a bit of perusing in that section and a scanning of the Table of Contents, I noticed there was an entire chapter on male homosexuality, but nothing about lesbians. This surprised me. So I turned to the index and looked up "lesbian." There were a couple references, so I turned to the pages in question.

Lesbians were, in fact, discussed -- not extensively, but nevertheless discussed.

In the CHAPTER ON PROSTITUTION!

It was so incredibly illuminating that I thought I would share with you all the entire section on lesbians, even though it might represent some kind of copyright violation:

"What do female homosexuals do with each other?

Like their male counterparts, lesbians are handicapped by having only half the pieces in the anatomical jigsaw puzzle. Just as one penis plus one penis equals nothing, one vagina plus another vagina still equals zero.

The most common lesbian sexual activity is mutual masturbation. They caress each other's clitoris and labia until sexual excitation and orgasm occurs. Many different techniques are used but the effect is basically the same. Occasionally, they use the third or index finger to massage the vagina, and rarely, lesbians lean to the Italian three-fingered method. In this variation of masturbation, the thumb is on the clitoris, the index finger is in the vagina, the middle finger works on the anus. The effect is something like a do-it-yourself three-way girl.

Some female homosexuals lean toward tribadism. This calls for one woman to lie atop the other while the pubic areas are rubbed together -- faster and faster as the sexual excitement increases. Pressure and friction on the clitoris finally brings orgasm. Some "tribads" almost accomplish an equivalent of heterosexual sexual intercourse.

How is that?

Occasionally a woman may have an unusually large clitoris which reaches as much as two or more inches in length when erect. If she happens to be a lesbian and her partner spreads her legs widely, the clitoris may just penetrate the vagina. What would be a disgrace to a man is a delight to a woman. Lesbians with this anatomical quirk are in great demand.

For homosexual women with average endowments, the dildoe may be useful. These sponge rubber or plastic penises can be held in place with an elastic harness and an unreasonable facsimile of heterosexual intercourse is possible.

(This is of course the curse of the homosexual, male or female. No matter how ingenious they are, their sexual practices must always be some sort of imitation of heterosexual intercourse.)

Some women simply take turns using the dildoe to masturbate each other. Often this tends to be too exciting for the lady who is waiting her turn to be copulated with the artificial penis and too dull for the one who has already had her turn. About 200 years ago, an anonymous Japanese genius came up with the solution. It is known in Japan as the "harigata." It is a long, flexible dildo with two heads. Each woman inserts one end into her respective vagina, and both of them get what they are looking for. The unanswered question at this point then becomes why they need each other. If they snip the harigata in the middle, both girls can go home and enjoy themselves at leisure.

What else do lesbians do?

Another common lesbian technique is mutual cunnilingus. Some girls consider themselves experts and prolong this form of intercourse for hours. Mary Anne, a twenty-seven-year-old hstler, tells about it:

"Sure I'm a lezz and I'm not ashamed of it. I've been in love with girls since I was fourteen -- I only hustle so I can take care of my lover-girl. I hate men and I don't try to hide it. Only a woman knows how to make love to another woman. I can do more for a girl with my tongue in fifteen minutes than a man can do for her in fifteen years. I should know -- I've let 50,000 men lay me since I started and I wouldn't trade of\ne of my girls for all of them!"

There are some other differences between gay guys and lesbians.

What are they?

The girls make out much more than the boys. Kissing on the lips, kissing and fondling the breasts, hugging and squeezing, are popular with the girls. This is probably a reflection for the female desire for at least the illusion of romance in sexual involvement. Most gay guys just want to hurry up and get down to the business of masturbation. Female homosexual relationships also seem to last a little longer than the male equivalent, but their course is no less stormy; the girls betray and deceive eiach other with monotonous regularity.

Anal activity is not quite so popular with lesbians -- most of their attention is focused on the vagina and clitoris. But basically all homosexuals are alike -- looking for love where there can be no love and looking for sexual satisfaction where there can be no lasting satisfaction."

UCM comments: And to think I was 1 year old when this book was published. How old do you think I was when it was finally considered hopelessly out of date? ... Well, I wish I could answer that for you, but no matter how dated you and I might think this wretched read is, there are still plenty of people out in the world today who would take this 'insight' into lesbians as gospel.

'The girls betray and deceive each other with monotonous regularity' is a line that, coupled with the notion that all my loving physical behavior for women is the 'desire for at least the illusion of romance,' I will be chewing on for a long time to come.

This book may seem absurd in the 21st Century, but it represents the world I was born into and the attitudes that permeated my youth all the way through college. This is my early history. It is not so much a matter of having taken on this yolk myself as having been given it by society. It has been a long process of learning to stand under the weight of it, and when people tell me that I'm taking things too personally or otherwise should not be quite as outraged as I get sometimes over this absurd stigma, I try to remember that we don't all come from the same place.

I am so glad I was not born 30 years earlier. Now, how will it be for a girl like me born 30 years hence? That's probably all that really matters.

"Will you gay-marry me?"

I had dinner last night with The Clairvoyant and The One at a fish & chips pub that is gluten-free (beer aside), serves sweet potato fries and uses no trans-fats in its fryers. This says more about my dining companions than it does about me, I can assure you. But the food was really good, and the menu of fish options was marvelous. Had some oysters shooters, which always brings some of my young-and-wild-New-Orleans days to mind.

The dinner conversation was typical of these two. An episode or two from "Lifestyles of the Fit and Gluten-Free," some detailed information about their attempts to conceive. And there's always sex; when we want to amuse ourselves, sex is always on the table.

But last night, I introduced a diferent topic by brining my Couples Therapy project to show to The One. He's an artist who, considering the rendering of the Hawthorne Bridge he did most recently, is poised to make a nice living as an artist when he finds the right rep. The One's ability to realistically portay industrial structures and still evoke the emotion that his pieces do will eventually win him some followers. I am a HUGE fan.

I am not all that much of artist, however. I tried some stuff and as I said earlier, I'm proud of my pieces. There's only one that, every time I look at it, my body gives me negative feedback. My eyes don't like it. My stomach doesn't like it. My jaw doesn't like it, either. My whole body kind of revolts at the sight of it, to tell you the truth. I may not be an artist, but I know what looks bad, and I've made one of those. But just one. I could've stood not to show it to The One, but I did.

In any case, my pieces did at the table what they were created to do. They provoked some serious conversation about marriage. The Clairvoyant and The One are an interesting twosome with whom to discuss this issue with, too.

They're engaged, but they don't actually seem all that interested in getting married. TC says she wanted to be proposed to and wants to be with The One for the long haul, but she also doesn't like the financial implications of getting married. She says she's done the math, and it will cost her household $100 more a month to be married, mainly because The One has all sorts of tax breaks and financial assistance, such as low-cost health care, at his disposal on accounts he's a Poor Starving Artist.

If I understand her correctly, TC mainly wanted to get married because she thought it was standing between her and pregnancy. The One had told her he would marry her "after she got pregnant" to appease his Mormon family, and TC thought that there was some kind of psychological mumbo-jumbo at work there. So they got engaged. She's since found out, however, that one of the herbal or vitamin supplements she's been regularly taking contains something that makes pregnancy highly unlikely and increases the odds of miscarriage. In the days of back-alley abortions, it was used as a "home remedy," to borrow S2's words.

I guess I should find out what this ingredient is and tell the rest of you. But I can't remember right now.

In any case, ever since she found out that their fertility is all good and that she was accidentally thinning the lining of her uterus with her health-care regimine, TC's quit that supplment, chilled out and figures pregnancy will come along eventually.

It seems she's also cooled a bit to the idea of marriage.

In fact, last night, discussing all this marriage stuff, she said, "I've been wondering if we couldn't just have a commitment ceremony -- never get the license but tell our families we're 'married' anyway?"

The marriage now seems designed mostly to appease the pressures of The One's family, especially the grandparents who wouldn't give TC the time of day so long as she was just The One's "girlfriend."

"You would not believe how much differently they treat me now that we're engaged," she said. "Before, it was like I was totally invisible, that I was NO ONE to the family because we weren't married. Well, if we had the ceremony and never told them we weren't actually 'married,' they would NEVER know."

She liked the idea a lot. Then she asked:

"Do you think it's OK to lie like that?"

I suppose you could always go down to City Hall and sign up on the domestic partnership registry, I replied. Then you could tell them you 'went to City Hall and did the paperwork.' And your wedding invitations could just say something like, 'Join us in celebrating the loving union of two souls,' or something like that. I mean, if you didn't use the word 'marriage,' it wouldn't be a lie. It would just be a sin of omission.

"I really like that idea!" TC said. She turned to The One. "Do you think your family would fall for it? We'd have to keep it secret that we weren't actually 'married.' My family might be kind of pissed, you know, to come all the way out here for a ceremony and we're not actually getting married, but what they don't know won't hurt them. Right?"

Before The One replied, I jumped in: You know, whether there's a license there or not, it's a celebration of your love for each other and a public statement that you are committed to each other. Why should your family care, TC? That doesn't seem like them.

The One replied, "This is why I am so sick of this crap. You think gays have it bad, try being in our shoes! Everyone is pressing us to get married. Every time we get together with my family -- even when it's just the guys -- the topic can start anywhere, but eventually it comes back to 'When are you going to marry her?' The pressure is ridiculous."

(More travails of heterosexuals and the hidden stigma of marriage, which was the subject of the lecture I gave to my class. Too bad I did not include this particular male viewpoint.)

But here's where the conversation wandered into new territory, as it often does with TC, who has been described by The One as "a new-age Archie Bunker."

"You know," she said, "it's like you just want to say fuck it and not do it just to spite them. The One keeps suggesting we simply tell our families we eloped and never do anything about it. But I don't think they'll find that satisfying enough. I think we ought to try this gay-marriage thing! You know, just have the ceremony and not actually get married."

She turned to The One. "Why don't you ask me to gay-marry you instead?"

He looked at her: "Will you gay-marry me?"

"Yes, yes!" she replied. "I will soooo gay-marry you! We'll get gay-married and just tell everyone that it's a real marriage."

The One looked at me, cocked a brow and said, "I imagine it might be kind of odd, you know, if we were prevented from getting gay-married just because we're straight."

We don't discriminate, I replied.

But inside, my stomach was churning a little. And considering there were no trans-fats in my food, I know it was the conversation that was beginning to take its toll, not the rice oil or whatever.

I don't want to be outraged. I don't want to feel angry. Especially not at my friends. And, in truth, I'm not the least bit mad at The Clairvoyant and The One. I feel some empathy for their situation and found their "solution" to be humorous in many respects. The stigma of marriage is such that not only is it burdened by absurd expectations and the notion that married people deserve more respect, it also has grubby little hands that keep trying to pull unwilling people into its clutches.

However, I see an ugly cultural subtext in the discussion the three of us had: Being gay-married is "fake;" it's not a "real marriage."

My friends want to have a commitment ceremony -- the common but not exclusive province of gays and lesbians -- because they don't actally want to participate in the legal institution of marriage. But their families won't accept that as a "real" thing. So they're considering "lying" to everyone and saying they're getting married when there's no legal certificate to back up their claim.

It's not real. It would be a lie.

It would be a "gay marriage."

Oh, really?

Thoughts on destiny buried in the last paragraph

Today was an interesting day, both at the Home for the Criminally Insane (H4TCI will be its new shorthand) and within the insane home that I call my own mind.

First, work:

There was a backed up toilet that I didn't have to do anything about at all. But it was gross.

There was a "staff meeting" which was not attended by much staff: Me (an on-call person) and the guy on the graveyard shift at the house next door were the only ones who made it, aside from the administrator who called it. And the only reason I attended was because it was in my living room.

Hell, when you're trying to stay awake at 10 a.m. and there's coffee and bagels from the Starbucks across the street -- and even though everyone does it, you get the feeling it would be bad form to be seen by the administrator playing Free Cell on the computer -- you go to the staff meeting no one else wants to attend, either.

(Why, oh why, does this scenario sound EXACTLY like my old corporate job -- for which I had a more comfortable chair and got paid nearly three times as much?)

I was treated to a brief overview of gambling addiction in the State of Oregon and handed three brochures -- one showing men, one showing women and one showing persons of unspecified ethnicity -- that all contained the warning signs of gambling addiction and had a phone number for how to treat it. This is how your gambling-addiction lotto funds are spent, my friends!

The bagels and coffee, however, were strictly an H4TCI budget item.

Later, one of my residents showed up with two weeks worth of Effexor samples in her hands and no med orders for taking them or what to do about her Wellbutrin prescription. Nice. Nothing like the Bureaucracy of Mental Illness.

So to my own mental matters:

I watched video online of Linda Ellerbee's recent speech at the American Counseling Association's annual conference. It was MARVELOUS. She is, without question, one of my earliest and favorite role models for journalism and the value of being outspoken. And she's a colorful speaker, which I admire like nobody's business.

At this juncture in my life, I'm really appreciating what this iconic journalist has to say to a bunch of counselors about the nature and value of our work.

At one point she quotes Anwar Sadat, one of my other teen-year role models (seriously): "He who cannot change the very fabric of his thoughts can never expect to change anything else."

And at another point, while talking about how overwhelming and unfair change can seem -- and yet how we have to embrace it anyway -- she said, "Only the very, *very* young can afford hoplessness. They're the only ones who have time for it."

I'm too lazy to launch Firefox -- me being a Safari user -- so I can load the link right into this article at this moment, so here it is for your copy-and-edit pleasure. ... http://www.counseling.org/PressRoom/NewsReleases.aspx?AGuid=faa52dd9-0230-470d-86c3-a5a545d40505

Check it out.

And lastly, I found myself feeling a bit -- ok, WAY -- ahead of myself earlier today. I've spent some time working to reel myself back in, and I think I have it down.

Let's say there is destiny. Just for argument's sake. The fact is, even if destiny feels like it's calling, we still have to wait for it to arrive. No sense in rushing around. Or leaping to conclusions. Let each moment unfold and each situation bloom into its own. You'll know what's going to happen when it happens.

School stuff

First, it appears I've got myself an internship site.

Found a clinical director and potential supervisor who I seem to click with pretty good, which is something of a relief.

During the first interview, when I asked her whether the clinic appreciates a variety of theoretical approaches or prefers one, she replied, "Well, the state wants us to use 'best practices,' but they don't actually know what the best practices are. So we are a democracy here."

Today, during a second visit, it seems we sealed the deal with her internship offer by agreeing that someone should make a bumpersticker that says, "I have sex with men. But I vote lesbian."

Apparently, the clinical and senior administrative staff at this joint was primarily gay for a long time, and got a reputation for being "the gay clinic" in town. So there's another potential supervisor who does a lot of work with sexual minorities, which is a field to which I'm attracted.

And the third potential supervisor is seriously into Gestalt.

The staff psychiatrist is a Jungian, and conducts all his staff training with a psychodynamic twist, even if he's teaching CBT.

Sounds kinda like the place for me, doesn't it?

And, second, I gave my presentation in Couples Therapy last night.

While presenting my "art" to the class, I gave a slightly meandering but still pointedly (yet modestly) outraged talk about my outsider's perspective on marriage. Outsider as in a class of people denied the right to marry. Outsider as in none of my significant relationships have been with men, and so patriarchy does not come to bed with me (although it *is* insidious enough, to tell the truth, that its influence affects lesbian sex and relating anyway).

I gather some found my delivery a bit angry, but I'm sure others did not. When the professor asked if people wanted to respond to me, the one gay man in the class batted his eyes at me and said, "I enjoyed every minute of that" in a way that was delicately humorous but also sincere. Another classmate called me brave or courageous or something.

I don't know how many appreciated my humor, though. I got a couple of laughs at the right points, such as when I compared getting married to "taking the waters" (a term I appreciate because it evokes both absurdity and quaintness at the same time). But I don't know if there was a larger appreciation for the dark humor of a lesbian giving a lecture to a primarily heterosexual class about "the stigma of marriage."

The truth is, I have no clue how the thing was received. I got a round of applause when I was done -- as did we all. So that is at least better than stoney silence or people throwing cooked cabbage at me.

I was feeling very deflated this afternoon, the post-theatric frenzy letdown of having spent WEEKS on a project that I really wanted to do -- and wanted to do well -- only to drop it like a thud into the laps of my classmates in 15 or 20 minute's time. This project was the focus of my wandering mind for a couple months, and then it took a couple weeks of dedicated work to get it all done.

I've been contemplating just why I put so much effort and energy into this project. Part of it, clearly, is that I've been feeling periodically outraged in this class. Not for the whole time. There was a part in the middle of the term where I was enjoying it. I have a great deal of respect for the professor's ability as a clinician, as The Debutante often said about a particularly difficult instructor we had last term. But there was a part of me that was simply fed up.

S2 has said a few times over the past year that she thinks I am in a different developmental phase of my sexuality. I think I understand what she's saying, but I can't quite pinpoint the developmental phase in question. I'll have to revisit the whole minority identity developmental chart and see what it says. There's probably some value in that.

But other than that, why so much energy into this project?

Another big part was the challenge of doing some new graphic design work and trying new media. This was a massive departure from the work I used to do on computer, and it's also qualitatively different than the decoupage I've been inconsistently playing around with for a couple years (having in that time made all of two journals -- my own and one I made for S2 as a Christmas gift).

One barrier I have to working as an artist is a compulsion for perfection combined with a complete lack of training and knowledge. I didn't know how any of this media was going to work together, having used just about none of it previously. And I can reach points of paralysis when trying to commit to using adhesive on material for which I have no duplicates. (What if I move it just over this way a little? Should I change the color of this paper? Is that what I *really* want to do? Or this other thing here? And so on....)

So that was very time-consuming. I just don't like to do less than what I envision doing -- even though I almost always do. My visions are far more grand than my capabilities....

In the end, I'm proud of the art. There are six pieces in all -- three about 13-by-9 inches, and three less than half that size. I used paint, images from magazines, words I printed on vellum or cardstock. For a first effort in mixed media, it wasn't half bad. One of the pieces I made uniformly draws a laugh, which was the point. In fact, it really tickled me the first time S2 saw it because she laughed so heartily in a way I have rarely, if ever, heard her laugh.

But I tell ya, people, I feel like I can do better.

Maybe next year, when I'm done with school, I'll turn myself to this stuff again. For now, I'm glad I had the chance to do a project like this, to have my thoughts and the roiling undercurrents of my emotions find some unusual form of expression.

I picked up the gauntlet and turned it into "art." That counts for something. Even if the only person it means anything to is me.

so much for that...

Well, I was in the process of blog-blog-blogging away about the impending completion of my art project and how it had its first more-or-less finished collective viewing tonight (S2 had previously seen one of the six pieces) when my computer suddenly blew a gasket and turned itself off.

Thus, my entry was destroyed. And now, I am too tired to write it all anew.

So let's just put it this way:

Bubba said she liked what I made but would be "scared" to give the explanation for all of it to the class. (Part of the explanation involves me as a sexual minority feeling sad for the dominant culture.)

And in response to my neurotic use of airquotes when calling my work "art," YogaGirl said, "It's definitely art. More art than anything I've seen lately that claims to be art. You should do more of it and show it in a gallery." (Is that sweet or what? And she wasn't even trying to get into my pants. Very hard for me to believe my stuff's all that, but she sounded serious.)

Bubba's GF, the Lovely Lawyer Lady, asked some thoughtful questions about my presentation -- or rather, the spoken words that will explain my cardboard commentary -- and then encouraged me to proceed, telling me I was being bold. But not too bold. Of course, on the way out the door, she offered me legal representation and said she would write a lawyerly threat to my professor on her letterhead if, as Bubba predicts, he gives me a failing grade. (He won't.)

I still have to write and whittle down and practice the presentation -- a lecture, really -- that I'll give when I share my creative efforts with the class. It was the beginning of that lecture to which my three friends were reacting tonight. All of them said they wished they could audit the class or be a fly on the wall on Tuesday night.

Especially when I hit the notes of my lecture about how, in words I may have stolen from S2, The most serious threat to the institution of marriage is marriage itself. Socially, it is a wheezing gasbag on the verge of being totally irrelevant.

The good news is that my little creative works prompted some wide eyes, a few gaspts and some particularly rewarding laughter.

I will fill you in on more later. For now, it is time to sleep.

Watching paint dry

This "art" project I'm doing for Couples Therapy has become the most time-consuming venture I've engaged in for a good long while. Nearly every aspect of my life -- cooking, cleaning, reading for school, drinking water -- has taken a back seat to this painstaking process. The only reason I'm writing the blog at this moment is because I'm waiting for some paint to dry.

What's sad is that, when the end product is seen by others, there will be very little evidence of how much time was consumed. The only reason this concerns me is that we're supposed to do something equivalent to the effort of researching and writing a 16-page paper. This has taken me far longer, but I'm afraid it will look like I simply slapped some pictures and some words onto a few pieces of painted cardboard.

The process will be invisible, as it always is.

When I worked as a graphic designer, it always amused me to empty my paper recycling into the massive shredding bin down the hall. I would do so about once a month, and it usually felt like an archeological dig. I would sift through layer upon layer of my ideas, images, words, whole compositions that would never see the ink of an off-set press.

They were the civilizations of my creativity. (Some fell more quickly than others.)

But there is a huge difference between doing graphic design on a computer and making an object in the physical world.

If I was working in Photoshop, I could save a copy of the original file and create dozens of alternatives without losing the material. In Quark, InDesign and Illustrator, I could do the same. Copy, paste, apply a filter, resize the font, whip up 30 variations of red and apply each of them as a tint, print the file, see which I liked best.

Mixing paint and laying it down is alright. When I don't like what I've done, I can paint over the last layer and create an entirely new effect. Or I can flip over the cardboard and start again. I enjoy that. No problem.

But the rest of the work is a bit of a bugger. Because I'm working with an adhesive and doing things to images for which I have no duplicates, each step in the process becomes an irreversible decision. I have to press forward. If I screw it up -- or just make something I don't like -- the piece ends up on the scrap heap.

It's not time wasted, per se, because I learn something from the stuff I don't like. And I also learned a long time ago from the ex-XGF, who's an artist, that you can always incorporate the crap you don't like into something you make in the future. Waste not, want not.

Nevertheless, I have a certain amount of pride to deal with over here, and I also have to finish the project this weekend. So I'm rather anxious about the prospect of getting it done *and* ending up with something I won't be ashamed to show to the class.

On top of that self-induced pressure, I also have to prepare some sort of presentation -- basically, me talking about my intention with this art and how it relates to theories discussed in the class. In the pieces I'm creating, I've been swinging wildly at every ball marked "patriarchy," so that's pretty much what I'm going to have to discuss. Fun, fun, fun!

My little gay boyfriend came over yesterday and saw my work spread out all over the place. He laughed ruefully at a couple of the pieces -- a good sign -- but said he is concerned about my ability to explain them. "The straight people aren't going to like what you're saying," he told me. (Another good sign, if you ask me.)

Well, it will all be over soon enough.

On that note, I believe my paint is dry. Back to the mess I dare to call art.

And then it's off to bed because I have to work at 7 a.m. tomorrow. That is an hour I didn't even manage to see when I was three hours behind in Hawaii. No telling how I'm going to manage to do that. But I have a feeling it involves going to sleep before 2 a.m....

Birthdays, the irony of insanity & more on art

Rather than narrow the range of topics for this entry, I'll just -- in the words of one of my former (and now dead) bosses -- "throw some shit onto the wall and see what sticks."

So first up: Happy birthday to S2, who turns a whopping 39 today.

S2, despite what I said a few weeks ago about how you "look older than me," you are aging beautifully and have the body of someone considerably younger than 39. Have a healthy, happy year. And lead the assault on 40 for me and The Clairvoyant, as we're nipping on your heels.

Happy (belated) birthday, too, to my bro, JAWs One. I once told him he was the "worst April Fools joke anyone ever played on me," but the truth is he ain't all that bad. I actually kind of like him. ;-}

Next: A little irony from the Homes for the Criminally Insane.

Friday, I worked a swing shift (3-11 p.m.). Shortly after I arrived, I sat down in the living room with one of the residents, who was watching TV. It turned out she was engaged in a marathon of "Law & Order" reruns. We watched a few episodes together.

Here's the ironic part. One of the cases involved an insanity defense. A guy had snapped in a rage and killed his kid's hockey coach. The defense attorney claimed they were the actions of someone with a "mental defect."

I have mentioned, haven't I, that I work at the Home for the Criminally Insane? That the residents are all people who've been found guilty of a crime except for reason of insanity?

So imagine all the things I *might* have said when the woman with whom I was watching this show suddenly started talking back to the defense lawyer's claim that his client was mentally ill. Imagine what was going through my mind when she said, "What kind of lame excuse is that?!"

And further, when she added, "Oh, give me a break! Is this serious? You kill someone and you want to get off with some kind of 'mental defect' business. I'm so sure!"

You cannot imagine, my Fair Readers, how much I would love to share with you the details of the crime that landed this woman in the state mental hospital. But for ethical and legal reasons, I cannot publish any details that might reveal her identity to anyone willing to do the legwork. Suffice it to say, she could've killed a few people, but luckily did not.

In any case, if there's one place I expected to be able to watch a fictional insanity defense case on television without the other viewers scoffing at the idea, it was at the Home for the Criminally Insane.

It just goes to show: There really are no sacred cows.

Lastly, even though I wrote at length yesterday about my view of our respective lives as individual works of art, I'm making myself crazy -- my own insanity defense is forthcoming! -- with an art project I'm doing for my Couples Therapy class. I'm engaged in an activity here with which I have no experience whatsoever except for a slightly traumatizing childhood memory.

One summer when I was 5 or 6 years old, I attended an arts & crafts program of some sort. The only two memories I have of it were both very, very sticky. The one relevant to tonight's issue is having a "teacher" at the camp -- could've been a teenager or an adult -- yell at me for how I was using the paintbrush. I had pushed it down directly on the paper and was twirling it, and this woman *screamed* at me, "You're ruining the brush! What's wrong with you? Are you stupid?! If you do that one more time, you can't paint anymore."

I did it one more time. I got yelled at again and got my hand smacked.

I have never been able to pick up an artist's paintbrush without thinking of that moment. One of my exes was an artist and tried to "undo" that memory in several ways, but judging how I recall it every time I pick up a brush, it seems unlikely to change. It doesn't bother me, but I'm curious about why it's such a tenacious memory.

But I digress.

The point isn't that I have this recurring memory, it's that I'm painting things. I've got no clue what I'm doing. But at least it seems I still have an ounce or two of adventure in me and will try something new. Might have been useful to get some instruction or pointers....

I may be on the verge of making something that no one will appreciate, least of all me. But I have a feeling I'll get an 'A' for the effort anyway.