Then, from a distance, I hear someone yell: "There's no bikes allowed on the sidewalk!" I sigh, look in the direction of a rather uptight looking older woman wearing a pink pantsuit and a shitty haircut, and resolve to ignore her. There's no way to lock up your bike in the middle of the road. A bike rack is required. She's apparently having a bad morning. Maybe she just got fired, or something. I'll be compassionate. I'll hold my tongue, even if I am slightly hungover. Then I hear her yell it again. There's more peds around now, and they're starting to look at me, and to look at my bike (Red Thunder) like she's a bomb. I'm starting to get mad. Not as mad as I would get if she were yelling about Winston and Scooter, but still mad. Then, as she gets closer, she yells, "I thought there was no bikes allowed on the sidewalk! That's what I thought! Your bike is on the sidewalk!" and I yell back at her, "I'm locking the fucking thing, you bitch!"
She clams up, walks right by me and doesn't say another word.
A solid emotional wall with regards to writer-rejection makes me good at grant writing. Research. Write. Research some more. Write. Submit. Wait. Follow up. Wait. Receive letter. Send thank you. Search for more prospects.
Of course, this emotional detachment also makes me have to check myself when we actually *get* something, which happens more often than not. This week, I've pulled in $225K. The boss-lady came in to whoop it up, and I dug deep and channeled a reaction and bizang! Hurrah! Hurrah! We've got money! Yippee!
I was still in this it's-okay-to-react state when I got a "thanks, but not thanks" response from an agent. I've got a list of 8 agents I intend to submit to, and this agency was only #1 on that list. Logically, I knew I should immediately pull up that list, rearrange the letter a bit, and submit once more. Emotionally, I flinched.
This is the first time I've queried where I've actually been done with a book; every other time I was almost nervous that the agent would actually ask to see the entire manuscript. Now, I've got not one, but two books literally (tee hee) gathering dust until someone decides to take a look. This is more disappointing than I thought it would be.
So: I sighed. Quickly fired an email to the agency offering a simple, "I appreciate you getting back to me," then pulled up my del.ic.ous list, and moved on to the next contender - which happens to be an agency I was more excited about anyway.
Still, I've got a feeling this process could be very, very slow.
I'm still writing. I started a young adult novel with no concept of where it's going. This is a refreshing change from my usual manner of writing. We'll see what happens...
Who's your pick for VP.
I've heard names like Bill Richardson and Ted Strickland being tossed around. Obama and Richardson have been awfully buddy-buddy lately, but political folks might find an all-minority ticket terrifying for whitey. Ted Strickland offered his super-delegate vote to Clinton and campaigned for her when she was in Ohio. Whether or not Obama is willing to look passed this, I dunno. Ted Strickland would definitely help with both the white-guy vote AND the redneck vote, and he's got a good environmental record. I'm not sure Ohio can afford to lose him so soon after he made governor, tho. Then there's the governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano. I don't know too much about her record, or who she endorsed, but I like how her name came out of left field.
Thoughts?
Also: it will be total suicide if McCain picks anti-christ superstar Condoleeza "shopping for shoes during Katrina" Rice as his running mate.
Small issue: this bitch of an orange cat I call Marmalade. He's a real fucker. Yesterday, he and this other cat Thumbs ganged up on Winston...and Scooter wasn't much help. T thinks he may have just arrived late. Either way, Winnie was kind of shocked, and I was kinda ready to get all garden hose on those cats. I reminded Scoot he needed to back up his brother - even with the cat invasion, he's still the biggest cat in the neighborhood, and he's strong as hell. We do not play the "fight the hand" game anymore, because it would result in a 9-1-1 call. Then I forgot about it.
Tonight, Winnie got freaked out by Marmalade and went running into the house. Couldn't find Scoot. Then I heard a yowling sound. Yup: Scoot getting medieval on Marmalade's ass. I broke them up, then had to hunt down Scoot and drag him in. Like a little kid, as soon as I picked him up the bruiser he went limp...and he's already a big boy. I feel like I've been doing curls.
I told T about it, and he reminded me, "You should underestimate Scoot."
Tough guy.
because all the kids are doing it.
So…buttons.
Basic breakdown: at event, women could wear buttons that either said it was okay for their boobies to be touched, or NOT okay for boobies to be touched. Or they could not wear buttons at all. From there, boobies were touched (or not touched). A blog was posted. Kudos and flames followed. Someone correct me if I’m over-simplifying.
The responses I’ve read have been a mix of “great idea!” and “that’s icky and I’m prude and I’m sorry” followed by “open yourself!” then “this isn’t about opening, tool! You made the entire environment your sex den without my permission!” then “you haven’t had sex in awhile.” One of the sources of discomfort was a feeling that it was impossible to escape the scene if you weren’t interested in participating. I wonder if what they meant to say is: we didn’t feel protected.
After all, there are usually “outs” to escape a scene like the one described. Personally, I’m a fan of leaving. Another option would have been to not wear a button at all. I’m stubborn; I could field “why aren’t you wearing a button?” questions all day and never get bored, though eventually I’d stop answering the same. I read somewhere that cops try to detect whether or not an individual will “flip” on a friend by repeatedly offering a piece of gum. If he says no, but eventually takes the gum (because he doesn’t want to hurt feelings, because he just wants the asking to stop, etc) he’ll probably flip. If he refuses, the interrogation is a waste of resources. This could be urban legend. Pestering is not.
People posting mentioned the peer-pressure of a crowd wanting to know what button you’re wearing. Lack of consideration led people to feel alienated, shamed. For
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
1madgirl this would lead to anger – not shame. I understand where the “shame” thing comes from, since that’s the desired emotional reaction unfriendlies hope to draw from their unfortunate prey. Here I am at a fictional coffee house in Sexual Utopia, and a hetero couple sits down on the couch next to imagined-me and starts banging away. I continue reading my magazine (US Weekly with the Hills girls on the cover, of course), while periodically glancing over to appreciate the couples’ open display of sexual gymnastics. Perhaps the fictional female faction of the duo then smiles at me and says: “Do you want to join us?”
“No thank you,” I smile back. “But don’t let me stop you!”
“Are you sure?” Her male counterpart asks, seeing the smile as a possible in. “It’s a lot of fun.”
Time for clarity: “I’m not interested, but if you like, I can get out of the way and make room on the couch for an active participant.”
“No, we don’t want you to do that, we just want you to join.”
“Like I said, I’m good.”
“Oh come on, join us…”
After I remove myself from this hypothetical annoying situation the couple carries on, and I happily finish my magazine and formulate my current hypothesis about Britney Spears’ mental state. The couple distracts me from such important work again when they walk out, staring at me and my table with sad “you’re repressed” eyes.
“You should really try to be more sex positive,” the woman suggests as they leave, arm and arm, home to their sexually superior flat in Portland’s Pearl District.
Gee whiz, hypothetical me should be ashamed. I *should* be more enlightened, more “open,” more “willing to experiment.” I’m just not open. That’s it. This would be good for me. I would feel better. I don’t want to be a (gasp!) prude.
Non-hypothetical me says: sex positive doesn’t mean “want to fuck (me) all the time.”
I don’t have to make out with you, or your friends, or anyone. I can be celibate, monogamous (or not), respectful, and sex positive.
Yet, the very fact that disrespectful pestering is tolerated and at times even encouraged, while “prude” is universally scorned shows the presence of a mentality not too different from that of a common college frat house. The funny part is, it’s coming from a community generally inclined to shun the frat house, and congratulate themselves for cultivating a more healthy environment.
In the words of the original poster: “Some women didn't want to. That was fine. We never demanded anything of anyone. And if you didn't want to put yours up for the Project but you wanted to touch, well, that was fine, too. It was simply for folks who felt like being open.”
Touch my boobs = open. Don’t touch my boobs = closed.
I won’t mess with him on use of language too much; it doesn’t seem quite fair. After all, “open” and “closed” is pretty black and white, but so is “yes” and “no.”
To stick to my true point, here’s what I don’t know about the buttons: did wearing a “don’t touch ‘em” button lead to women being respectfully not-touched, or did it lead to an evening filled with “why not?” questions? The poster,
theferrett claims that women who wore the red buttons were not asked. Shortly thereafter, he mentions the inability to control the presence of unsavory individuals in any situation of the sort. What he doesn’t mention is whether this experiment was truly successful, meaning: were women really and truly left alone, or were they just left alone by a small group of his core people? What was in place to make things go right? What was his core group of people willing to do to discourage this unsavory element – or were they simply occupied with their own experiences? True story: during my more decadent days, one evening I found myself dressed as a bondage faery, in a pile of touching, kissing bodies. One of the individuals who joined the group is someone I’ve always found mentally and intellectual revolting – and he knew it, and was, of course, attracted to me in that hate-fuck sort of way that rarely ends well. He was a good distance from me and occupied with the orifices of enthusiastic partners, so I didn’t worry about it. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of happy time, he started making his way towards me. “No,” I said (firm, but sweet), and lightly pushed him away. He kept coming anyway, so I repeated my assertion (without the sweetness), and he started to back off. “Aw, be nice,” one of the people in the pile said. “Yeah, don’t be mean,” someone else added. Be nice? Don’t be mean?
I decided that particular pile was clearly not for me, so I got up to enjoy a much more pleasant make-out session with Pan (who was also dressed in bondage gear) before we walked home and he threw up (for reasons unrelated to me).
What I learned was that the environment I was in was not safe for me, because the people in the group were not interested in supporting my right to choose who I make out with and when – they were interested in assisting the individual who wanted to make out with me against my will.
Why am I writing this? Consent buttons are one thing – but did people feel confident they would be backed up, if need be? While I’d like to believe that everyone is with it enough to acknowledge the power of my button, it only works if I say no, and if someone keeps coming, the response is to run the asshole out of the village. I can’t even describe to you how safe I would feel at clubs, at play parties, ANYWHERE, if I *knew* that just by clearly stating my will in some capacity, it would be respected and supported by my community.
When Marjane Satrapi was in town a long time ago, she talked about getting on a subway in France, and being groped by a passenger. She turned around and started clubbing him in the head with her bag. The other passengers responded to *her*, and asked why she was beating up on the guy. She told them that she didn’t give him permission to touch her – and the response was still that she was “out of control.” She then went on to say something along the lines of, “In Iran, everyone on the train would have helped me, we would have kicked him off at the next stop.” When there’s so much debate about permission in America – well, it’s no wonder women are afraid to be clear.
I don’t fault the original poster for not having a perfect experiment; I think this is a great opportunity for lots of people to begin talking about the dynamics of both our actual (and created) sexual societies. When women express shame in some situations, perhaps it’s because we’ve been instructed that we are *supposed* to conform to the sexual ideals of our community – and if that community is a so-called “sex positive” one, that means maximum “openness” for the sake of avoiding being typecast as “prude.” Each individual (unfortunately) has to overcome a lot of this individually - to not care whether or not someone’s “feelings are hurt” over the presence of will. The challenge for the *group,* is to understand that the societal shift that needs to take place first and foremost for an awesome sex positive environment is not embracing sex and shunning the prude, or reforming the prude and turning them to perversion. It’s what many groups have learned/are learning, which is addressing the complexities of constructing a truly safe space, where individuals are not only willing to speak up but to offer unquestioning assistance in the interest of protecting members of our chosen utopias.
In other news, while at the grocery store yesterday, I encountered a girl of about five or six. She and I were wearing more or less identical outfits, from the striped hat, right down to the purple boots. We exchanged smiles. I think this is a sign I'm making proper fashion decisions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/opini
Kudos to her for: making most respondents ignore the fact that she never took pregnancy tests to confirm her reality, and focus instead on the grotesqueness of the *possibility* of what she had done - which can loosely be described as an x-games version of abortion. The very *possibility* of this has led to loud, outraged internet posts, a collective "ew" from the upper crust of Yale (along with an insistence that her act was fiction), and a media storm that even touched down on popular entertainment-oriented blogs. If her art was, in fact, to simply make people talk about a maybe-fictional art project (which sounds a bit like art sabotage/poetic terrorism to me) she succeeded admirably.
On the other hand: I respond to her piece not just as an observer of art, but as a nonfiction writer who has seen one of my favorite mediums, memoir, discredited by the ramblings of so-called "unreliable narrators." These are individuals unconvinced that their current level of personal experience is sufficient for creative expression, and therefore feel compelled to exaggerate (or flat-out invent) more interesting lives. The outcome is a thinned experience for the seasoned reader with the capability to spot inaccurate testimony, and distance from an audience that could feel moved by a similar or shared experience - not one that's so desperate to be unique.
If Aliza Shvarts had done an art project in which, each month for 9 months, she simply took a pregnancy test, and then videotaped herself menstruating, I might have found her display moving. It would remind me of how lonely the monthly contemplation of the straight girl can be - the question of not only pregnancy, but whether it's *actually* anyone else's problem if a test turns out to be positive. Menstruation in and of itself is a biological act so attached to shame that each month we're programmed to do all we can to disguise it - so to see it live, and in living color, would directly confront that.
When a false component is then attached to art - in this event, induced pregnancy through artificial insemination - I don't find myself spending time thinking of the art itself, but rather analyzing what, other than shock value, could she be trying to communicate? This is not her *true* experience, but rather an induced one, a fabricated one. Some people consider a wealthy white boy choosing to live in a one room cabin, eating only 8 crackers a day to be a moving and powerful experience, a sacrifice for the sake of understanding; I'm more inclined to consider it an insult to the kid waiting for a food package to drop from the sky, who may never have a belt to tighten at all. While it's still an experience, it's an experience within a container that can't offer TRUE testimony to what it's like to starve, to honestly not know where your next meal is coming from, when deep down in your heart of hearts you know that all you have to do is make a phone call, and *poof*: you've got dinner.
The same is true with this miscarriage/abortion "art". According to Aliza Shvarts: "For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation — the part most meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the aspect that has not been discussed thus far) — is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading."
Based upon this, it's reasonable to conclude that Shvarts sees her "art" as the inability to pin down her experience as miscarriage/abortion or not. So what's the connecting point? Should all women connect with her because of the heavy bleeding she reports? Should women who have suffered miscarriages connect with her because of the intensity of the experience? Should people who just like blood and shock connect with her, because it effectively does that? There is no authentic experience providing gravity - it's her creation, and she has the emotional distance of fucked-up, fabricated experience.
If she wants to traumatize her body repeatedly by taking abortion-inducing herbs (whatever those might be, she never names them) for the sake of art, fine. I don't get it, but fine. Just be accurate in your description: Aliza, you didn't induce abortion if you didn't know you were pregnant. You made yourself bleed with herbs. You're using words like "miscarriage" and "abortion" for the "shock value" you claim to be trying to avoid. In other words, you're a big fat poser. Happy graduation!
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/v
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/v
Oath completed: two books in one year, to the best of my ability (with one year in mind). The last few days were frantic, taking my work computer on the airplane because it's got the better batteries, pounding away at my keyboard while everyone else snored and slept and complained about the seat size and the asshole in front of them insisting on reclining, even if it means breathing on another person's lap.
Did I finish, as in finish-finish?
Well, no.
I finished in the sense that each book has a beginning, middle, and an end. Now I have to go back and perfect the parts that haven't been perfected yet.
Did I keep my oath? Well, that's tricky.
My original oath was not to finish two books in one year, but to dedicate a year to writing as much as I could for the sake of (eventually) truly living a writer's life. The oath was simple and loaded, as it seems all good oaths are - I'm the one who chose to manipulate it in my mind to be oriented around two concrete goals. I thought this would work well, but instead, it had the same effect as my thesis in graduate school: I bust ass, I finish in a way that leaves me feeling harried and insecure, and then I have no idea what to do with myself...so like any sensible person, I immediately collapse into a directionless depression, that leaves me wondering who I am and why I bothered in the first place.
I meditated on this, on my fear of realizing my full potential, of succeeding in a way that would mean demands would be placed on me intellectually and creatively for the rest of my life. I meditated on construction of goals and objectives, on what success would actually look like for me, on the way I phrase things: constructively or destructively...and the depressive tendency to say, "well, they're not 100% finished..." instead of "yes. I fulfilled my oath. Now I'm on to phase 2, which involves getting an agent and seeing myself in print."
The difficulty of maps and mapping is that it involves a lot of time and processing, examining the things you can control and the things you can't control, what you're willing to compromise and what you're standing firm on. This also involves examining what I still have to learn - and how I can learn it. There's the big picture, and then there's the tiny details. I feel like getting expensive paper and drawing one map labeled "life" and another labeled "writer" and mapping them directly on top of each other, so there's no sloppy edges and loose seams. "Writer" can be pretty carefully mapped, but "life" is more difficult...other people having, you know, wills and stuff gets in the way of true control-freakdom. Where's a good band of zombies when you need them?
I got the tattoo on my arm because I was in Cleveland, and my sister was gonna be goddamn'd if she didn't get a tattoo on April 4th when she wanted one - she was ready to drive me and my other sister all over Ohio if that's what it took to find an open chair. After she was seated and adorned with a butterfly she loved and that I wouldn't get at gun point, he drew up a tree for me with 9 branches and 9 roots, and 9 runes. He was a good guy with a lot of curiosity and no judgment, and as the needle started to hum I felt a jolt of terror at having so obvious a spell on my body in a visible place. There would be no escaping my desires and ambitions now. Fuck. Okay, go ahead.
So now I'm trying to ignore the too-much-work, not-enough-money that is my day job so I don't waste time getting a new something I hate, I'm trying to ignore the fact that I hate my apartment because I can't afford a different one and would rather buy a house anyway. I glance over at the runes on my shoulder challenging me to maximize my potential, to embrace change, to act, to emote, to achieve financially and spiritually, to find homelife stability, to conquer my enemies. I'm also watching Issy run back and forth all over my apartment like a spazz because I'm kitty-sitting and she can't believe she can go outside AND come in and attack a brand new, dangling monster toy, AND Winston is being nice to her and offering her highly-coveted lap space. Scooter adds his paw to my shoulder so I'm thoroughly surrounded by cat love, and none of them care whether I make it as a writer or not - so long as I don't forget about the food bowl. I've got big goals, but lots of love around me, and I'm starting to figure out how to sustain myself so I can attain them.
I'm 30. My 20s were fucked. They're over.
More coming soon.
If anyone is in PDX, and is interested in wishing me well as I bid my fucked-up twenties adieu and usher in what is (hopefully) a less traumatic decade of life, I'll be having a beer drink-a-thon at the Lompoc (or perhaps Amnesia, tbd) followed by cake at Pix. Events will commence around seven.
Today I finally (finally!) got my fibroid video from my surgeon. It's about 8 minutes long, and yeah, it's gross...and fascinating. What you're looking at is my uterus. The fibroid is basically cut out of the uterine wall, yanked out, and then sucked out through a tube. My poor uterus is then stuck with this weird looking flap where my muscles were stretched out...but they should repair over time.
A couple of notes: the doc says at the end of the video that I "resumed normal activity" when I left. Um...no. I slept on my back for at least a week. I was high on pain killers for two weeks. I couldn't have sex for a month. If my normal activity were lying on my back after puking in a little bag in the car on the way home, then yes, I got right to it. Two months later (now) I have resumed all normal activity, including having sex, sleeping in whatever position I want, bleeding when I'm supposed to, biking at least ten miles a day, going to the gym, etc. I have only been full-tilt for about two weeks.
Anyway, without further ado, I present a laparoscopic myomectomy with robotic assistance.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationw
The scary part: Wal-Mart posted a $90 billion profit last quarter. They are apparently using that money to pay their legal team to go after people trying to make medical claims.
If you still shop at Walmart: what does this corporation need to do to make you stop?
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/200
