I'm both writing papers (or madly attempting to), and percolating a blog - so today just a kid story. This morning, as I am driving the babes to daycare and they are both protesting at having to go to daycare and school when I get to "stay home all day." So, I try to explain that I have writing to do, and can't do that when they are home. The following conversation ensues:
Boy-o: What do you write about, Mama?
Me: Well, I write about all kinds of things. For school, I write about the things I am studying in my classes. And I also write about the things I experience, about life and the things that I see in the world around me.
Boy-o: Oh. I see...
Long and thoughtful pause....
Boy-o: I saw a dead bird yesterday. It had no head.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Wednesday Poem - From Thirsty (Dionne Brand)
Now, I love poems as much as the next girl. Okay, I might love poems a little more than the next girl. I don't really know how the next girl feels. But this poem - this one - it made me hold my breath a little. And sigh involuntarily. Dionne Brand is magical.
From thirsty
This city is beauty
unbreakable and amorous as eyelids,
in the streets, pressed with fierce departures,
submerged landings,
I am innocent as thresholds
and smashed night birds, lovesick,
as empty elevators
let me declare doorways,
corners, pursuit, let me say
standing here in eyelashes, in
invisible breasts, in the shrinking lake
in the tiny shops of untrue recollections,
the brittle, gnawed life we live,
I am held, and held
the touch of everything blushes me,
pigeons and wrecked boys,
half-dead hours, blind musicians,
inconclusive women in bruised dresses
even the habitual grey-suited men with terrible
briefcases, how come, how come
I anticipate nothing as intimate as history
would I have had a different life
failing this embrace with broken things,
iridescent veins, ecstatic bullets, small cracks
in the brain, would I know these particular facts,
how a phrase scars a cheek, how water
dries love out, this, a thought as casual
as any second eviscerates a breath
and this, we meet in careless intervals,
in coffee bars, gas stations, in prosthetic
conversations, lotteries, untranslatable
mouths, in versions of what we may be,
a tremor of the hand in the realization
of endings, a glancing blow of tears
on skin, the keen dismissal in speed
From thirsty, by Dionne Brand
Copyright © Dionne Brand, 2002
From thirsty
This city is beauty
unbreakable and amorous as eyelids,
in the streets, pressed with fierce departures,
submerged landings,
I am innocent as thresholds
and smashed night birds, lovesick,
as empty elevators
let me declare doorways,
corners, pursuit, let me say
standing here in eyelashes, in
invisible breasts, in the shrinking lake
in the tiny shops of untrue recollections,
the brittle, gnawed life we live,
I am held, and held
the touch of everything blushes me,
pigeons and wrecked boys,
half-dead hours, blind musicians,
inconclusive women in bruised dresses
even the habitual grey-suited men with terrible
briefcases, how come, how come
I anticipate nothing as intimate as history
would I have had a different life
failing this embrace with broken things,
iridescent veins, ecstatic bullets, small cracks
in the brain, would I know these particular facts,
how a phrase scars a cheek, how water
dries love out, this, a thought as casual
as any second eviscerates a breath
and this, we meet in careless intervals,
in coffee bars, gas stations, in prosthetic
conversations, lotteries, untranslatable
mouths, in versions of what we may be,
a tremor of the hand in the realization
of endings, a glancing blow of tears
on skin, the keen dismissal in speed
From thirsty, by Dionne Brand
Copyright © Dionne Brand, 2002
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Celebrity Soundbytes Make me CRANKY (repost from 2010, that not surprisingly STILL makes me cranky)
I recently read this little article about Julia Roberts on MSNBC, who has been named People Mag's most beautiful person of the year (or whatever that bullshit accolade is properly titled). It said:
In an interview with the New York Times, the 44-year-old Pretty Woman star – who is married to cameraman Danny Moder with whom she has twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, five, and son Henry, two-and-a-half – revealed that she loves her home life.
She said: "We are happy as clams. I am fulfilled by my own life on an hourly basis.”
She added: "Every little moment is amazing if you let yourself access it. I learn that all the time from my kids; children are so filled with wonder. My youngest son woke up at 5am the other morning and said to me, 'It's a beautiful day, Mamma!' What's more precious than that?"
I know that this little fluff article is meant to make us love Julia even more. I mean, sheloves her homelife, right? But it kinda just makes me want to punch her in the face. Every moment is amazing if you let yourself access it? You are fulfilled by your own life on an hourly basis? Really? Hourly? It must be nice to have time to reflect on your own life on a hourly basis. It must be especially nice to have time to reflect on your own life on an hourly basis and then have the added bonus of pleasantly discovering that you are, in fact, as happy as a clam.
Family soundbytes from celebrity moms tend to drive me mad. Why? Because they make it sound all beautiful and effortless and charming and delightful. Except of course, they neglect to mention the aid of their nannies and housekeepers and personal trainers and drivers and poolboys. When you have these things, I suppose it's a little bit easier to feel chill and reflective and fulfilled by one's own life on an hourly basis, given that most of their hours aren't actually filled with the shit-work of parenting and house-hold maintenance. I, too, would love to focus constantly on the beauty and magic and child-like wonder displayed by my children at 5 a.m. (and 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m. because there's a lotta kiddie wonder at my house in the night). But unlike Julia Roberts, I don't have anyone to hand them off to so that I can take a sweet-ass nap later (or go to a private yoga class to meditate, say perhaps on the hourly delights offered up by my life).
J-Lo, after the birth of twins Max and Emme, wanted us all to know she gets up to do her babies nighttime feedings herself. As if we are supposed to connect with this sentiment by thinking: Hey J-Lo - ME TOO! Gee, maybe you are just 'Jenny from the Block!'.
Christina Aguilera would like us all to know that motherhood has, in fact, made her sexier. I cannot even muster up the energy to respond to this wee tidbit of information.
And another article in this month's People Magazine about the lovely (and yes, I'm sure she is actually lovely) Julia has Ocean's Eleven (etc.) producer Jerry Weintrub waxing poetic about Roberts' mothering prowess: "She's not a diva. She's not afraid to get into an SUV and drive with the kids in the backseat." I have two things to say about this. First of all - anyone who has ever driven with screaming children in the backseat of their car will tell you that you should be afraid of getting into a moving vehicle with children, particularly one's own (and by this I mean one's own children, not car). Texting while driving has got nothing on driving with kids in the danger department. Second of all - do we really need to congratulate celebrities for, like, driving their own children places? Is this the standard of "good" mothering that they're being held up to? If so - I'm here to tell ya that I am a fucking amazing parent! The best. I drive my kids places and get up with them in the night myself ALL THE TIME!
These are only a tiny sampling of the crap about mothering spewed by celebs and churned out by every magazine and media outlet under the sun. I'm also sure much of these soundbytes are largely taken out of context. But they still make me hella cranky (as you may have already ascertained). And the, "golly gosh, I'm just a regular (but extremely zen-like and fulfilled) person with millions of dollars and a butler" routine just doesn't fly with me. Just once I'd like to hear one of them say... "you know - this parenting gig is great but it's bloody bleeping hard. I cry a lot. I don't know how people who have to cook their own food/do their own dishes/drive their own car/clean their own pool/etc. etc. do it." Or something along those lines. Then maybe I'd be a bit more willing to be forgiving of their soundbytes, contextual or not.
And Julia - if you're out there, still wondering what could be more precious than being awoken at 5 a.m. by a wonder-struck child, I'm here to tell ya: It would be even more precious if the little bugger waited until 6 a.m to tell you it was a beautiful day. Really. It would. And if he waited until 7 a.m., it would be sweeter still. But at 8 a.m. - it would be fucking profound.
In an interview with the New York Times, the 44-year-old Pretty Woman star – who is married to cameraman Danny Moder with whom she has twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, five, and son Henry, two-and-a-half – revealed that she loves her home life.
She said: "We are happy as clams. I am fulfilled by my own life on an hourly basis.”
She added: "Every little moment is amazing if you let yourself access it. I learn that all the time from my kids; children are so filled with wonder. My youngest son woke up at 5am the other morning and said to me, 'It's a beautiful day, Mamma!' What's more precious than that?"
I know that this little fluff article is meant to make us love Julia even more. I mean, sheloves her homelife, right? But it kinda just makes me want to punch her in the face. Every moment is amazing if you let yourself access it? You are fulfilled by your own life on an hourly basis? Really? Hourly? It must be nice to have time to reflect on your own life on a hourly basis. It must be especially nice to have time to reflect on your own life on an hourly basis and then have the added bonus of pleasantly discovering that you are, in fact, as happy as a clam.
Family soundbytes from celebrity moms tend to drive me mad. Why? Because they make it sound all beautiful and effortless and charming and delightful. Except of course, they neglect to mention the aid of their nannies and housekeepers and personal trainers and drivers and poolboys. When you have these things, I suppose it's a little bit easier to feel chill and reflective and fulfilled by one's own life on an hourly basis, given that most of their hours aren't actually filled with the shit-work of parenting and house-hold maintenance. I, too, would love to focus constantly on the beauty and magic and child-like wonder displayed by my children at 5 a.m. (and 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m. because there's a lotta kiddie wonder at my house in the night). But unlike Julia Roberts, I don't have anyone to hand them off to so that I can take a sweet-ass nap later (or go to a private yoga class to meditate, say perhaps on the hourly delights offered up by my life).
J-Lo, after the birth of twins Max and Emme, wanted us all to know she gets up to do her babies nighttime feedings herself. As if we are supposed to connect with this sentiment by thinking: Hey J-Lo - ME TOO! Gee, maybe you are just 'Jenny from the Block!'.
Christina Aguilera would like us all to know that motherhood has, in fact, made her sexier. I cannot even muster up the energy to respond to this wee tidbit of information.
And another article in this month's People Magazine about the lovely (and yes, I'm sure she is actually lovely) Julia has Ocean's Eleven (etc.) producer Jerry Weintrub waxing poetic about Roberts' mothering prowess: "She's not a diva. She's not afraid to get into an SUV and drive with the kids in the backseat." I have two things to say about this. First of all - anyone who has ever driven with screaming children in the backseat of their car will tell you that you should be afraid of getting into a moving vehicle with children, particularly one's own (and by this I mean one's own children, not car). Texting while driving has got nothing on driving with kids in the danger department. Second of all - do we really need to congratulate celebrities for, like, driving their own children places? Is this the standard of "good" mothering that they're being held up to? If so - I'm here to tell ya that I am a fucking amazing parent! The best. I drive my kids places and get up with them in the night myself ALL THE TIME!
These are only a tiny sampling of the crap about mothering spewed by celebs and churned out by every magazine and media outlet under the sun. I'm also sure much of these soundbytes are largely taken out of context. But they still make me hella cranky (as you may have already ascertained). And the, "golly gosh, I'm just a regular (but extremely zen-like and fulfilled) person with millions of dollars and a butler" routine just doesn't fly with me. Just once I'd like to hear one of them say... "you know - this parenting gig is great but it's bloody bleeping hard. I cry a lot. I don't know how people who have to cook their own food/do their own dishes/drive their own car/clean their own pool/etc. etc. do it." Or something along those lines. Then maybe I'd be a bit more willing to be forgiving of their soundbytes, contextual or not.
And Julia - if you're out there, still wondering what could be more precious than being awoken at 5 a.m. by a wonder-struck child, I'm here to tell ya: It would be even more precious if the little bugger waited until 6 a.m to tell you it was a beautiful day. Really. It would. And if he waited until 7 a.m., it would be sweeter still. But at 8 a.m. - it would be fucking profound.
Monday, April 8, 2013
random bits of beauty
Sometimes, the world is a bit argh. And blech. And just generally, meh. Sometimes it feels incredibly overwhelming. Sometimes, it seems as if you will feel this way (this way being, you know, generally crappy) forever. Sometimes you are sure that nothing will ever change. Sometimes, you are certain that those ghosts will always be the same sticky beasts hanging over your shoulder. When I get mired in these sorts of sometimes, I find that trying to access, remember, and possibly-cling-to-like-a-drowning-person, those things in your life that are incredible, wonderful and in all ways lovely, is a helpful endeavour. Thus, below, I've attempted to channel some inner and outer loveliness.
My random bits of beauty...
1. The dawning realization that I have *almost* completed my first year of school. (Holy effing f-bomb!)
2. The blue sky and puddly sidewalks that might just be announcing spring (for real this time).
3. Getting sweet, kiss-filled photo messages from my vacationing babies and seeing the joy in their faces as they get all loved up by their mommy and their grandparents.
4. Being able to look forward instead of backward.
5. Creating and recreating that tattoo I will get someday, when I find my money-tree.
6. The feeling of euphoria when my body finally learns how to do that elusive spin.
7. Time alone and the hum of silence.
8. Recognizing that getting a B+ in Scholarly Editing *might* not actually kill me. And *might* not mean I'm a (total) idiot. And *might* not ruin me for life.
9. Writing the final line of a particularly vexing paper. Or, you know, finding the energy to start that particularly vexing paper.
10. The running, flying leap-into-the-arms, accompanied by a yell of "MAMMMMAAA!" and followed by a full-bodied hug that I get from Girlio every single time I pick her up from daycare.
11. That rare moment when Boy-o slows down long enough to nestle in for a coveted snuggle.
12. Remembering that I still know how to belly-laugh. And how utterly delicious that feels.
13. Writing a blog that scares the living shit out of me, and getting the most amazingly wonderful feedback.
14. A message from a friend with just the right words at just the right time.
Loveliness. It exists everywhere. Now, to keep remembering...
My random bits of beauty...
1. The dawning realization that I have *almost* completed my first year of school. (Holy effing f-bomb!)
2. The blue sky and puddly sidewalks that might just be announcing spring (for real this time).
3. Getting sweet, kiss-filled photo messages from my vacationing babies and seeing the joy in their faces as they get all loved up by their mommy and their grandparents.
4. Being able to look forward instead of backward.
5. Creating and recreating that tattoo I will get someday, when I find my money-tree.
6. The feeling of euphoria when my body finally learns how to do that elusive spin.
7. Time alone and the hum of silence.
8. Recognizing that getting a B+ in Scholarly Editing *might* not actually kill me. And *might* not mean I'm a (total) idiot. And *might* not ruin me for life.
9. Writing the final line of a particularly vexing paper. Or, you know, finding the energy to start that particularly vexing paper.
10. The running, flying leap-into-the-arms, accompanied by a yell of "MAMMMMAAA!" and followed by a full-bodied hug that I get from Girlio every single time I pick her up from daycare.
11. That rare moment when Boy-o slows down long enough to nestle in for a coveted snuggle.
12. Remembering that I still know how to belly-laugh. And how utterly delicious that feels.
13. Writing a blog that scares the living shit out of me, and getting the most amazingly wonderful feedback.
14. A message from a friend with just the right words at just the right time.
Loveliness. It exists everywhere. Now, to keep remembering...
Friday, April 5, 2013
chewing the fat/giving the skinny: a short rant on POF
So I'm on POF. You know. Plenty of Fish. It's a ridiculous place (especially since I have vowed to never ever date again, you know, like, ever, or at least until someone is convincing enough to make me change my damn mind. So like, probably never), and I could write several, several rants about it. Like, for instance, what makes you straight couples think that this particular queer girl want to be the bologna in your sandwich? I am *not* your bologna! And you really, and I do mean really in the most profound way possible, are *not* my kinda bread. (If you really wanna know, you're kinda like wonder bread, and I'm more into 12 grain. Stoneground). And though apparently I *look* like a straight girl, I'm not. You know, like it says right there on the profile. Those sentences I wrote? That did not contain a single 'U R' in them? Those ones? Is it the lipstick that's throwing you off? The dress?
Inhale. Exhale. Digress. (Sorry. I get a lot of these ones. Like, a lot a lot. It's gone way past the point of kinda flattering and headed straight into irritating).
Anyhoo - I have a brand new POF irritant.
And it's actually in the messages I get from queer girls (which is so disappointing. Queer girls, I expect better). The last few queer girls have included the following line (or a reasonable facsimile) in their messages and/or profile.
"I'm looking for a girly/femme/whathaveyou girl that 'takes care of herself.'"
Now - what does this mean exactly? (Given the fact that you're a social drinker and/or smoker and/or cite partying as a hobby, I'm gonna take a wild guess that you aren't looking to find a teetotaller). So I gotta say, this makes my fat phobia radar go off hard. And having been a fat chick for most of my life and now (probably temporarily) residing in a much skinnier version of myself, my fat phobia radar is pretty freaking finely attuned. And it sounds like you might actually mean to say is: "No fat chicks need apply." And I know you're all looking at my profile pics and thinking that maybe you can say this kind of shit to me... but ha! Haha! Ha. Fooled ya. I'm not your ally in this shit and you just made me really and profoundly pissy.
And now all I want to do is chat you up all coy-like so that I meet you for coffee, or lunch (perhaps bologna sandwiches?), flip you the bird and tell you "take care of this, girlfriend!"
POF - making girls like me think the words 'all by myself' are the sexiest, hottest freaking words on the planet.
Inhale. Exhale. Digress. (Sorry. I get a lot of these ones. Like, a lot a lot. It's gone way past the point of kinda flattering and headed straight into irritating).
Anyhoo - I have a brand new POF irritant.
And it's actually in the messages I get from queer girls (which is so disappointing. Queer girls, I expect better). The last few queer girls have included the following line (or a reasonable facsimile) in their messages and/or profile.
"I'm looking for a girly/femme/whathaveyou girl that 'takes care of herself.'"
Now - what does this mean exactly? (Given the fact that you're a social drinker and/or smoker and/or cite partying as a hobby, I'm gonna take a wild guess that you aren't looking to find a teetotaller). So I gotta say, this makes my fat phobia radar go off hard. And having been a fat chick for most of my life and now (probably temporarily) residing in a much skinnier version of myself, my fat phobia radar is pretty freaking finely attuned. And it sounds like you might actually mean to say is: "No fat chicks need apply." And I know you're all looking at my profile pics and thinking that maybe you can say this kind of shit to me... but ha! Haha! Ha. Fooled ya. I'm not your ally in this shit and you just made me really and profoundly pissy.
And now all I want to do is chat you up all coy-like so that I meet you for coffee, or lunch (perhaps bologna sandwiches?), flip you the bird and tell you "take care of this, girlfriend!"
POF - making girls like me think the words 'all by myself' are the sexiest, hottest freaking words on the planet.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
writing selves
I've been thinking a lot lately (ha! I start a lot of posts that way, don't I? But I *DO* have a busy, busy brain, so I guess it's apropos) about this business of life writing. Partially because it seems that I do it. And also because it seems to be what I study as well. So - life and writing and life writing on the brain.
When I was taking what has been, thus far, my favourite grad school course to date, on Canadian life writing - I had the good, great, awesome fortune to be introduced to a Quebec artist/cartoonist/serial memoirist Julie Doucet. We read one of her many, many comic book/graphic art memoirs, My New York Diary, which documents a short period of her life in entrancing and uncomfortable detail. It is, in a word, sublime. She has many others - like MANY - she was bloody awesomely prolific (I use the past tense here not because she is dead - she is most certainly not - but because she has since switched mediums and now produced autobiographical art). Anyhow - I mention Doucet because in the course of studying her, I came across an interview in which she said that autobiographical practice, for her, was like a disease. She wasn't capable of *not* doing it. And this struck a bit o' a chord with me. Now to be clear, I'm not not NOT saying I'm a Julie Doucet. I don't have even an iota of her complete and utter shazaam! I can't imagine anyone publishing anything that gets written down here - but I do also get that feeling about my sometimes inexorable need to write it all down.
I have to write. I don't know why. I just do. (Maybe I'm a narcissistic exhibitionist. Maybe it's just a big part of how I learn myself. Maybe I'm just an autobiographer at heart, if that is, in fact, what this business is). But I have to write something resembling a self of mine. A self of mine some of the time anyways. But it isn't all of myself or more properly, my selves. It's a version, one that changes with impulse, feeling(s), circumstance, time and place; a flick of a keyboard key or two. Sometimes I read back old posts and wonder what the fracking hell I was thinking. But I know that I was there at the time. It was me, or a reasonable facsimile of a sort of me, a version in that moment. In that way, as uncomfortable or awkward or even embarrassing as this writing business is, it's nice to have a record or a way to map back where I've been in a semi-tangible way. And I like having a roadmap, even if it is in reverse (I'm utter shite at reading regular roadmaps anyways).
A friend of mine told me today, while we were out for a long overdue sushi date, that she thought I was brave for writing the things I do. It was a lovely thing to say. But I wonder if that's what this is? Is it bravery? Is it silliness? Self-indulgence? Or maybe brave and silly self-indulgence? Or maybe, all writing and/or writers is/are slightly brave and silly and self-indulgent. She, my friend is a fiction writer. I can't write fiction. I've tried. And failed. Multiple times. The stuff of my creative juices, as it were, comes straight from the stuff of my life and try as I might, I cannot make it otherwise.
I'm reading Carol Shields for a class right now. A lot of Carol Shields. A schwack of it, in fact. And though she isn't my favourite, (I find her emotionally distant or removed from her writing somehow, though much of her prose is lovely. It's just not a way of looking at the world that I process particularly well). At any rate, one of her character descriptions (a teensy weensy part of a rather long read) in her book Unless (2002) really resonated for me: "She always claimed she had little imagination, that she wrote out of the material of her own life, but that she was forever on the lookout for what she called putty. By this she meant the arbitrary, the odd, the ordinary, the mucilage of daily life that cements our genuine moments of being" (95). And I think that might be it, in a nutshell.
I may lack imagination - but hot damn, I have a whole lot of putty - and apparently, putty is what really makes me tick...
When I was taking what has been, thus far, my favourite grad school course to date, on Canadian life writing - I had the good, great, awesome fortune to be introduced to a Quebec artist/cartoonist/serial memoirist Julie Doucet. We read one of her many, many comic book/graphic art memoirs, My New York Diary, which documents a short period of her life in entrancing and uncomfortable detail. It is, in a word, sublime. She has many others - like MANY - she was bloody awesomely prolific (I use the past tense here not because she is dead - she is most certainly not - but because she has since switched mediums and now produced autobiographical art). Anyhow - I mention Doucet because in the course of studying her, I came across an interview in which she said that autobiographical practice, for her, was like a disease. She wasn't capable of *not* doing it. And this struck a bit o' a chord with me. Now to be clear, I'm not not NOT saying I'm a Julie Doucet. I don't have even an iota of her complete and utter shazaam! I can't imagine anyone publishing anything that gets written down here - but I do also get that feeling about my sometimes inexorable need to write it all down.
I have to write. I don't know why. I just do. (Maybe I'm a narcissistic exhibitionist. Maybe it's just a big part of how I learn myself. Maybe I'm just an autobiographer at heart, if that is, in fact, what this business is). But I have to write something resembling a self of mine. A self of mine some of the time anyways. But it isn't all of myself or more properly, my selves. It's a version, one that changes with impulse, feeling(s), circumstance, time and place; a flick of a keyboard key or two. Sometimes I read back old posts and wonder what the fracking hell I was thinking. But I know that I was there at the time. It was me, or a reasonable facsimile of a sort of me, a version in that moment. In that way, as uncomfortable or awkward or even embarrassing as this writing business is, it's nice to have a record or a way to map back where I've been in a semi-tangible way. And I like having a roadmap, even if it is in reverse (I'm utter shite at reading regular roadmaps anyways).
A friend of mine told me today, while we were out for a long overdue sushi date, that she thought I was brave for writing the things I do. It was a lovely thing to say. But I wonder if that's what this is? Is it bravery? Is it silliness? Self-indulgence? Or maybe brave and silly self-indulgence? Or maybe, all writing and/or writers is/are slightly brave and silly and self-indulgent. She, my friend is a fiction writer. I can't write fiction. I've tried. And failed. Multiple times. The stuff of my creative juices, as it were, comes straight from the stuff of my life and try as I might, I cannot make it otherwise.
I'm reading Carol Shields for a class right now. A lot of Carol Shields. A schwack of it, in fact. And though she isn't my favourite, (I find her emotionally distant or removed from her writing somehow, though much of her prose is lovely. It's just not a way of looking at the world that I process particularly well). At any rate, one of her character descriptions (a teensy weensy part of a rather long read) in her book Unless (2002) really resonated for me: "She always claimed she had little imagination, that she wrote out of the material of her own life, but that she was forever on the lookout for what she called putty. By this she meant the arbitrary, the odd, the ordinary, the mucilage of daily life that cements our genuine moments of being" (95). And I think that might be it, in a nutshell.
I may lack imagination - but hot damn, I have a whole lot of putty - and apparently, putty is what really makes me tick...
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Wednesday Poem - A recitation of "Litany" by Billy Collins
Oh, child! You are most certainly the sound of rain on the roof. And you also happen to be the shooting star, the evening paper blowing down an alley and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table. You are also as c-u-t-e as all hell. And maybe a little bit divine.
Litany
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.
Billy Collins
Litany
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.
Billy Collins
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
throwing off the blankets *trigger warning here peeps*
I'm gonna tell you again before you read on that this may be triggering. I'm also going to tell you before you read on that this may tell you more than you want to know about me. You've been told. Carry on if you like. Or don't, if you don't like. I’m good either way. I'm an informed consent kinda girl.
Ok. Here goes…and deep breath...
I never wanted to tell this story. It's not the sort of story one wants to tell. It's not the only story I have of this sort to tell, either, but it is certainly the one I feel the most conflicted about, the one that is most amorphous, slippery - the one that has given me the most grief. I have been inspired lately, by blog accounts of brave, brave women telling their stories in the wake of Steubenville. I was particularly touched by this brave post by Kim Simon at HuffPost. And I think, now might be the time to add my voice into the world.
This month has the dubious distinction of being Sexual Assault Awareness Month (at least in the U.S. – thanks to President Obama), which has the dubious distinction of falling on the heels of the Steubenville case (and so many others), which many survivors have been triggered by. I know, from my time working on the Sexual Assault Crisis Line that these are the times crisis line-volumes pick up. And for good reason. No one wants to go backwards. Not even me. I've written this piece in fits and starts over an extended period of time. And thought about it a lot. And worried about it a bit. Will it change the way you look at me? I know it had a profound impact on how I saw myself for a long time. It feels risky. It feels vulnerable. It feels scary. It feels, well, it feels shameful.
So why am I sharing this? Why do I feel the need, the compulsion really, to tell this story publicly, for the first time?
Because that girl, that young woman, Jane Doe from Steubenville, she should not have to bear her shame alone. She had no choice in the sharing of her story. That choice was taken from her, along with the choice she should have had to pass out safely, and untouched. And the young woman from BC, whose gang rape was recorded onto phones, she should have had that choice too.
I think, in their honour and the honour of so, so, so many people, it behooves us to stand up and tell our stories (caveat: in an appropriate place, which does *not* mean standing up and blurting it out in one's Intro to WS class, mkay?). Hang out our shame, right alongside theirs. Maybe... just maybe.... if we all started to speak, to share, to stand up and stand out with each other; maybe if we refused to hold onto it, the shame wouldn't belong to us anymore. And because maybe if I share this story, if we all start to share our stories, something will shift, and it will be one that my daughter will never have to tell.
I was raised by a feminist. I was taught all about good/bad touch and knew I had a right to do what I wanted with my own body. I knew about party safety and walking in groups and all of the stuff we tell girls to 'keep themselves safe.' I took Wen-Do for Christ's sake! I was a feminist kid, and then a feminist teen, and in high school, I hung out with a reasonably feminist-y, pensive, Neil-Young-loving, philosophically existential crowd of boys (ok, so we had a few arguments over whether "Down by the River I Shot My Baby" was misogynist or not, *and it is, oh yes, it is* but for the most part, feminist-y boys). I was in love with one of them. Natch. I was also horribly insecure. And an uber people-pleaser. And these two things, I would surmise, made me a pretty easy target.
At any rate... there was this party. (Isn't that always how these stories start? So... there was this party... anyways...). It was at my house. My moms were away. So 'my boys' came over for some drinking and some drugs. Yep. Drinking and drugs and my boys and Neil Young. Just another Saturday night. It was a really nice night. Hanging. I was high as a kite (party girl, me) and really, really drunk. It got late, and eventually, around 2 a.m., it was down to three of us. A good friend, the boy I loved, and me. I was really tired and starting to pass out. I sort of came in and out as they chatted, and as I struggled to stay awake and wondered when the hell they were going to leave.
Around 4 a.m. or shortly thereafter, the boy I loved got up to leave. Not so, my friend. Not two seconds after my ‘love’ (who wasn’t actually my love) left, my friend started wheedling for sex. I remember quite clearly saying no. That I was too tired. That I needed to pass out. That I had the spins. All of which was true and clearly evident whether I'd said anything or not. But there was begging and wheedling and 'c'mon-ing' and touching my hair and more wheedling. There was edging closer and closer. I could barely keep my eyes open. In fact, they weren't open when the kissing started. I'm not sure when exactly it occurred to me, but I realized at some point soon after that he wasn't going to leave until I stopped protesting and deflecting. Like, really wasn't going to leave. And I was so tired and drunk and high and spinny. And I lost the energy to stick up for myself. I didn't have it in me. I just... gave up.
A few hours later, he left. The sun had come up. As I was lying awake on that hot summer morning, shivering under a mountain of blankets, staring into the space between the cracks on my bedroom ceiling and my self-loathing, I heard the phone ring. It was, of course, the boy I loved. "You SLEPT with him, didn't you?!" he demanded, his voice full of indignation, and maybe, some disgust. Before ‘hello.’ Before ‘good morning.’ I didn't have words. Silence hung crisply suspended between us. I was a whore. And he knew it. And I knew then, in that moment of silence, that not only would he never love me, he would probably also never respect me again, either.
The story I would tell about myself, later, throughout my twenties, was that I had once slept with a boy just to get him to leave my house. Hahaha. Ha! It's funny, right? Tough girl who doesn't care... yep - that's me. (The internal voices were differently tough. What kind of person would do this? What kind of woman? What kind of feminist? What kind of slut?)
But I think I always knew, even then, and even though I couldn't admit it to myself, that this was only part of the story. The part of the story that doesn't include my protestations of being too drunk, too high, too exhausted, too barfy. The part of the story that doesn't include coming in and out of various states of consciousness. The part of the story when I woke up part way through and realized that it was taking so long because he, my friend, was trying to be 'gentlemanly', and I had not been showing enough enthusiasm. When I realized that in order to make it be done and over, I needed to show... enthusiasm. The part of the story that could not possibly happen to a Wen-Do taking, feminist daughter of a feminist mother. A Wen-Do taking feminist daughter of a feminist mother would most certainly have done a better job of asserting herself, of protecting herself. Wouldn't she?
He left somewhere around 6 a.m.
He politely thanked the girl for a nice night.
A nice night.
A gentleman.
And the girl, that girl who slept with a boy just so he would leave her house, she collapsed into her bed. Into her bed that was in her home. And pulled every blanket she could find over her body. It was so hot outside. And she couldn't get warm.
It took that feminist girl, now a feminist woman, over ten years to recognize and to call this what it was. It wasn't violent. It wasn't some stranger jumping out of the bushes and holding a knife to my throat. It was my own friend, in my own home, on what might have been a beautiful summer night.
I know I'm not alone.
I know there are millions of us. Each having been covered with our own blankets of shame. Some luckier than others, if there can be such a thing in such a circumstance.
I know that if we spread those blankets out, they would cover the hugest of geographies . . . a map of the blankets that didn’t keep us warm afterwards; it would zigzag a mishmash of paisley, stripe-y, polkadot, super-heroed, patterned, fluffy, ribbon-edged shame across our country, and across many others.
We have to keep this dialogue going. We have to keep talking about it. We have to hold on to the momentum of awareness and media of Steubenville. We have to talk about consent. More. Lots more. And keep talking. Pass it on. And then we have to explain consent and respect for boundaries. We have to raise our voices for realistic sex education in schools. We have to stop talking about the horrors of rape in South Africa and India as if they are the only places these things happen ('cause aside from being, you know, wrong - it's also racist - folks), while we continue to look the other way when it happens in our own backyards. We have to admit we see it. We have to admit it's there. And these are just starting points.
We have to do more than just talk about consent and non consent. That is not nearly enough and doesn't do much to solve the underlying problems of rape culture. We have to teach our littles about sexuality and how amazing and wonderful it can be and it should be and is. We have to role-model sex positivity, that is - that sex and body lovin' are unequivocally beautiful things in all of their myriad forms and expressions. That sexual pleasure is a gift, however we choose to, or not to, express it. That shame should never be a part of sex. Because the sex-shaming culture we live in is an intrinsic part of rape culture. I'm not sure that one can exist without the other. We hear in it the dialogue about Jane Doe in Steubenville. "What kind of slut would make herself available to the football team?" And here's the thing - in a sex positive culture, it doesn't matter if I choose to fuck the whole damn football team. If, that is, I choose it because it makes my body and heart happy and full of desire. I want a world where my daughter can choose to fuck whomever she wants, without shame and without gendered moralizing, because it makes her body and her heart feel happy and full of desire. I want this for my son, too (and recognize that while this currently plays out differently for men and women in our culture, that men's sexuality, too, is held-hostage by cultural bullshit around sex). (And yes - I did write that. And I do mean that. I want my children to grow up to have freaking fantastic sex. In the manner(s) of their choosing). I want a world where desire is not problematized when shared in truly positive and consensual ways. A world where our authentic sexual expression is actually celebrated -- football team or no football team, monogamously or polyamourously, by ourselves or with one other or with multiple others, 'vanilla' or 'kinky' and so on and so forth. Maybe I'm oversimplifying, and I certainly don't mean to. There is a whole lot of patriarchy to unpack here. A whole lot. But I truly believe that our shame (which is of course a part of that unpacking), our down-deep-closely-held-shame, is what fuels rape culture. That a world without sex-shame is one in which rape-culture will cease to exist.
We aren't there yet. Not nearly. Not even close.
Right here and right now, there aren't enough blankets in the world to keep all of us warm.
But I'm still hopeful...
**with thanks and love to my pre-readers/editrixes, who assured me that I sounded somewhat literate. And that this was, in fact, something that needed writing about.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Wishin' and hopin'
Hope. It's a weird word. Hope. Hope. Hopehopehope. Yep. Still weird.
The world does not seem to be a particularly hopeful place. I'm not sure it ever has been, but lately it strikes me to be even less so. There's the shit Harper does. There's the shit Redford does. There's pandas and Stubenville and a general pervading conservatism reigning gross fucking ickiness all over us. Everywhere, the ickiness. Wrongness everywhere. Fear... yep, everywhere. And though social media can be a really wonderful thing, it is also a source of the constant sharing of the constant ickiness. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. We need to be informed. We do. But sometimes it feels like the rain is a downpour that never ends, and the downpour becomes a deluge, and our psyches are saturated and we can't find our umbrellas and even if we could their skinny little spines would just crumple under the weight of it.
All. That. Ick. It's some heavy-assed shit, friends.
So how, I've been wondering, do we find some kind of hopefulness to hold onto?
Because it seems to me that the more we feel bogged down by the ick, the less able we are (psychically speaking) to do anything about it. The bad news upon the bad news upon the bad news... it has an impact. And I'd wager that more often than not, it is this (and not apathy, though there is certainly plenty of that in the world as well) that makes us feel like we can't do anything to stop it.
I know there are places, little wondrous milli-seconds of loveliness, in my own life that can make me feel more hopeful. Kidlet snuggles, love from good people and loving good people, finding ways (here and there) to talk back, to fight back, to rally. But these are glimmers. They come and they go.
Is it possible to find a more enduring place of hopeful? I'm not sure.
But I'm open to suggestions...'cause from where I'm sitting, hope still sounds like a pretty strange and distant word.
The world does not seem to be a particularly hopeful place. I'm not sure it ever has been, but lately it strikes me to be even less so. There's the shit Harper does. There's the shit Redford does. There's pandas and Stubenville and a general pervading conservatism reigning gross fucking ickiness all over us. Everywhere, the ickiness. Wrongness everywhere. Fear... yep, everywhere. And though social media can be a really wonderful thing, it is also a source of the constant sharing of the constant ickiness. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. We need to be informed. We do. But sometimes it feels like the rain is a downpour that never ends, and the downpour becomes a deluge, and our psyches are saturated and we can't find our umbrellas and even if we could their skinny little spines would just crumple under the weight of it.
All. That. Ick. It's some heavy-assed shit, friends.
So how, I've been wondering, do we find some kind of hopefulness to hold onto?
Because it seems to me that the more we feel bogged down by the ick, the less able we are (psychically speaking) to do anything about it. The bad news upon the bad news upon the bad news... it has an impact. And I'd wager that more often than not, it is this (and not apathy, though there is certainly plenty of that in the world as well) that makes us feel like we can't do anything to stop it.
I know there are places, little wondrous milli-seconds of loveliness, in my own life that can make me feel more hopeful. Kidlet snuggles, love from good people and loving good people, finding ways (here and there) to talk back, to fight back, to rally. But these are glimmers. They come and they go.
Is it possible to find a more enduring place of hopeful? I'm not sure.
But I'm open to suggestions...'cause from where I'm sitting, hope still sounds like a pretty strange and distant word.
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