Well, all, on the eve of failing for a second month to do all I tacitly promised to do here on CU, I decided my first month of meeting my post-number goals should end with a listing of all I haven't done, and more.
Over the last eight months or so, I've built up a set of expectations that have slowly congealed and eventually hardened into requirements for CU. You may have sensed the presence of these internal regulations already, but thanks to my not always following them, you might have figured they were more like guidelines than rules.
You were wrong. They're rules. I just keep breaking them.
So as to keep your scorecard more accurately riddled with my errors, and to cleanse my guilt over not posting a movie review for two months in a row, now, here's what you can expect from CU, both in the past and in the future.
Remember, though, the telos of Continue Unprotected: My posting a schedule of events is just as likely to cause me to aspire to offend you by continually flouting it as it is to keep me on task.
Posting frequency: I expect myself to post two items a day, ideally one long and one short.
Type of post, and frequency:
Once a week: At least one PSA and one Local Trivia; SYD reviews in season
Twice a month: Confessions
Once a month: Movie Review, In Defense of Poppery, Quantifiable Living, Accusations, Unsolicited Advice, New word, something involving Freud, something involving my personal life or family
Special features, to be posted as inspired: Phrases That Never Help, Mix CD lists, Carte Blanche answers
Anyone who wants to count up the percentage of this schedule I've stuck to and give me some kind of score is welcome to.
Just don't tell me about it.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
PSA: Well-red
I've switched back to my red-framed glasses today so as to seem smart and fun.
No telling how long this phase will last, though my bet is however many days I have clean(ish) red shirts to wear.
No telling how long this phase will last, though my bet is however many days I have clean(ish) red shirts to wear.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Accusations VIII
Vanilla extract, fennel seed and chili powder, for not going together with anything. (Especially the fennel.) Why can't you all just find a way to work together?
Hot dogs, for tasting good. Anything that started out as intestines shouldn't advertise itself as something delicious, let alone actually be delicious.
Fried rice, for not being plain white rice. How could you mess this up? All you have to do is not fry it.
Hot dogs, for tasting good. Anything that started out as intestines shouldn't advertise itself as something delicious, let alone actually be delicious.
Fried rice, for not being plain white rice. How could you mess this up? All you have to do is not fry it.
Permanent Scares
I am more-than-afraid of permanence. I don't understand it. I don't know how to articulate it -- I don't even mean "more than afraid as in terrified," but as in something undefinable, some other emotion like fear that moves in a different place in me, uses a different muscle.
Maybe "freaked out" is the closest I can come to describing how I feel, but that's too casual, not ritual enough.
And part of the thing about permanence, part of my sense of the grotesque when I think of having my wisdom teeth removed, or an amputation, or of anything never being the same again, is the lack of ritual -- the antisepticism of the hospital, or the trauma of an accident triage field, or the everyday-ness of the horrors that build up over time to cut us off from who we are or were or could have been.
I don't feel the same way about scars; I like them. They add, even when they distort.
It's the subtraction of parts, or people, or ideas or things that puts me in the valley of the uncanny.
It could be abandonment issues, the idea of being left, or left out. I've certainly earned my right to them.
But my most frequent abandonments have not been permanent: my mother in the hospital and out again, my faith gone and back again, my brother at boot camp and free again (I assume). Permanence hangs over them like a specter, but never descends completely.
Recently, I've felt myself rearranging from the inside out, seen my past re-sort itself into one that makes sense out of the current me -- I've made decisions I never would have conscienced before.
I haven't become larger or more liberal, not really. I've become more specifically myself -- not my ideal idea of myself, not the innocent or holy or pure, conservative self I used to think I was (or could be or could have been), but some fuller version, some meaner, more openly hostile, more openly combatative and rebellious version -- it's like I've come into focus. Or am coming, anyway.
It's good. It's a good change. I was never that single-me, never accepting or integrating or grayed; I was all blacks-and-whites before. I'm less hostile now, less pent-up, less self-self-self because I've accepted more of the selves that kept me at conflict.
There's a terror in it, though, the terror of my sixth-grade self watching as she's demolished by integration, as her concerns become Mine, or irrelevant. What she cared about, what she loved, is worth my time and attention, but only that. It's not worth my allegiance anymore.
So what's left? Everything in me looks the same. What do I do with this lack of conflict? (How, then, shall I live?)
What rituals are there for this type of late coming-of-age?
In these times?
Maybe "freaked out" is the closest I can come to describing how I feel, but that's too casual, not ritual enough.
And part of the thing about permanence, part of my sense of the grotesque when I think of having my wisdom teeth removed, or an amputation, or of anything never being the same again, is the lack of ritual -- the antisepticism of the hospital, or the trauma of an accident triage field, or the everyday-ness of the horrors that build up over time to cut us off from who we are or were or could have been.
I don't feel the same way about scars; I like them. They add, even when they distort.
It's the subtraction of parts, or people, or ideas or things that puts me in the valley of the uncanny.
It could be abandonment issues, the idea of being left, or left out. I've certainly earned my right to them.
But my most frequent abandonments have not been permanent: my mother in the hospital and out again, my faith gone and back again, my brother at boot camp and free again (I assume). Permanence hangs over them like a specter, but never descends completely.
Recently, I've felt myself rearranging from the inside out, seen my past re-sort itself into one that makes sense out of the current me -- I've made decisions I never would have conscienced before.
I haven't become larger or more liberal, not really. I've become more specifically myself -- not my ideal idea of myself, not the innocent or holy or pure, conservative self I used to think I was (or could be or could have been), but some fuller version, some meaner, more openly hostile, more openly combatative and rebellious version -- it's like I've come into focus. Or am coming, anyway.
It's good. It's a good change. I was never that single-me, never accepting or integrating or grayed; I was all blacks-and-whites before. I'm less hostile now, less pent-up, less self-self-self because I've accepted more of the selves that kept me at conflict.
There's a terror in it, though, the terror of my sixth-grade self watching as she's demolished by integration, as her concerns become Mine, or irrelevant. What she cared about, what she loved, is worth my time and attention, but only that. It's not worth my allegiance anymore.
So what's left? Everything in me looks the same. What do I do with this lack of conflict? (How, then, shall I live?)
What rituals are there for this type of late coming-of-age?
In these times?
Sunday, September 28, 2008
PSA: Follow along with me.
You'll see from "PSA: I'm stalking you, 2.0" that I'm a follower of many of your blogs now, those of you who have blogs I know about. What I didn't write at the time -- because I'm not a real cyber-stalker -- is that I'm also a follower of a relatively recent addition to the blogosphere, thanks to friend Jenny and her following-ship. ("Follower-ship?" "Followerhood?" Hmm. Help me out, editor Sara.)
"Needs a good edit" is exactly what my blog would be like if I were more consistent, less prone to online hystrionics and, well, overall less "vaudeville." And if CU didn't have such a clearly defined goal of offending all who read.
So when you get tired of continuing unprotected through the unpredictable mental peregrinations of someone who couldn't commit to more than a minima (template) -- or when you've just read everything I've got up already -- read this blog.
Savor it.
Wish there were more.
And -- most importantly -- feel bad along with me that you didn't write it first.
"Needs a good edit" is exactly what my blog would be like if I were more consistent, less prone to online hystrionics and, well, overall less "vaudeville." And if CU didn't have such a clearly defined goal of offending all who read.
So when you get tired of continuing unprotected through the unpredictable mental peregrinations of someone who couldn't commit to more than a minima (template) -- or when you've just read everything I've got up already -- read this blog.
Savor it.
Wish there were more.
And -- most importantly -- feel bad along with me that you didn't write it first.
Unsolicited Advice, VI
You should get a winter coat that looks just like mine and wear it all the time.
I just look so @%$#ing cute in it.
I just look so @%$#ing cute in it.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
"It is obvious to me who the good guys are in this one and who the bad guys are."
Sarah Palin NAME-CHECKED THE HOLOCAUST in her interview with Katie Couric on CBS Evening News.
She said that she would never second-guess Israel's decisions regarding Iran, should Israel feel the need to defend itself.
Because, "for one," we don't want "a second Holocaust."
THIS IS NOT WHAT SHE MEANS.
What she means is that the Old Testament says that believers should protect Israel.
What she means is that she interprets this text literally -- as literally as she takes the poetry in Genesis that suggests to some that we might be on a planet only 6,000 years old.
What she means is that she is willing to govern the United States of America on the basis of her interpretation of these texts -- and not "second-guess" them.
AND THE ONLY PEOPLE who can decipher the code she is speaking, AGREE WITH HER.
If these are the end-times, they are exactly how I'd pictured them: brought on by idiot Christians.
We're going to have a lot of apologizing to do from the bottom rungs of heaven.
I just don't know what more to say.
She said that she would never second-guess Israel's decisions regarding Iran, should Israel feel the need to defend itself.
Because, "for one," we don't want "a second Holocaust."
THIS IS NOT WHAT SHE MEANS.
What she means is that the Old Testament says that believers should protect Israel.
What she means is that she interprets this text literally -- as literally as she takes the poetry in Genesis that suggests to some that we might be on a planet only 6,000 years old.
What she means is that she is willing to govern the United States of America on the basis of her interpretation of these texts -- and not "second-guess" them.
AND THE ONLY PEOPLE who can decipher the code she is speaking, AGREE WITH HER.
If these are the end-times, they are exactly how I'd pictured them: brought on by idiot Christians.
We're going to have a lot of apologizing to do from the bottom rungs of heaven.
I just don't know what more to say.
PSA: New Zealanders are way tougher than us, but apparently not on their videos.
I've mentioned to many of you the amazing thing about the movie The World's Fastest Indian: that is, the promotional video for Southland included in the special features on the DVD.
The video is so bad it goes all the way back around to amazing again. I found myself thinking Wow, this place must be awesome if they can afford to make a promo video this bad about it. Seriously, this music over 80's-style footage of parasailing?? That is so rad.
I'm still in awe of my memory of the video, but I'd thought it was alone in its uber-badness...until today, when I stopped by Audiversity and noted that a post on NZ pop band Over The Atlantic's "Fly to the States" pronounced a youtube-able version "more New Order than hypnotically dubbed-out anchor" -- which, for those of you even less familiar with New Order than I am, is a pretty exciting thing to read.
I immediately went to the band's obligatory myspace page and listened to the tracks they've put up. (Not downloadable, I'm afraid.)
Then I went down to their video to "1994."
Go ahead and try it. Form your own opinion before you read mine; I'll wait.
Okay.
At first I was impressed -- here was an indie band, I told myself, in a country with more sheep than people*, that had managed some pretty decent production values for this music video.
But somehow, somewhere, things started to go awry. Was it the comical effect of the guitar player's cut-and-pastiness into the frame? Was it the maudlin storyline overwhelming the lyrics, which didn't really seem to relate? Was it, finally, the apparent death of the love interest?
I don't know what it was, exactly, but in the end, "1994" did exactly what the Southland promo video did for me -- came back around to Totally. Awesome.
I'm not saying it will do the same for you, or that it's an intentional satire. In fact, half my infatuation with this band and its video can be chalked up to my fair certitude that they aren't intending irony.
We're living in a post-post-cynical age, my friends. And I think it's great.
*One of the only facts I remember from watching the extras on LOTR. The other is that the cast got matching tattoos, and filming for the trilogy in NZ took 15 months.
The video is so bad it goes all the way back around to amazing again. I found myself thinking Wow, this place must be awesome if they can afford to make a promo video this bad about it. Seriously, this music over 80's-style footage of parasailing?? That is so rad.
I'm still in awe of my memory of the video, but I'd thought it was alone in its uber-badness...until today, when I stopped by Audiversity and noted that a post on NZ pop band Over The Atlantic's "Fly to the States" pronounced a youtube-able version "more New Order than hypnotically dubbed-out anchor" -- which, for those of you even less familiar with New Order than I am, is a pretty exciting thing to read.
I immediately went to the band's obligatory myspace page and listened to the tracks they've put up. (Not downloadable, I'm afraid.)
Then I went down to their video to "1994."
Go ahead and try it. Form your own opinion before you read mine; I'll wait.
Okay.
At first I was impressed -- here was an indie band, I told myself, in a country with more sheep than people*, that had managed some pretty decent production values for this music video.
But somehow, somewhere, things started to go awry. Was it the comical effect of the guitar player's cut-and-pastiness into the frame? Was it the maudlin storyline overwhelming the lyrics, which didn't really seem to relate? Was it, finally, the apparent death of the love interest?
I don't know what it was, exactly, but in the end, "1994" did exactly what the Southland promo video did for me -- came back around to Totally. Awesome.
I'm not saying it will do the same for you, or that it's an intentional satire. In fact, half my infatuation with this band and its video can be chalked up to my fair certitude that they aren't intending irony.
We're living in a post-post-cynical age, my friends. And I think it's great.
*One of the only facts I remember from watching the extras on LOTR. The other is that the cast got matching tattoos, and filming for the trilogy in NZ took 15 months.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Phrases That Never Help: Verbal Flair Edition
The concept of "flair," made familiar to us by Office Space, can be applied to conversations as well as to corporate waitstaff uniforms, to indicate words or phrases that imply a spirited interest in a conversation or person.
Used excessively, verbal flair can parodize the entire statement to which it is attached; it is thus also a useful tool for making a joke. Be careful, however, not to overdo the flair when attempting to be serious. Once a conversation has been over-flaired, it is extremely difficult to convince the other party that you meant whatever you said.
"Verbal flair" will not necessarily hurt a conversation like most phrases that never help; it is, however, by definition, superfluous to the conversation, and thus never truly helps.
"...I always say."
For real: Adding this phrase to the end of a statement that agrees with whatever point the other person has just made shows that you are interested in not only emphasizing your current agreement with said person, but also have always thought likewise.
As a joke: Use this phrase at the end of especially ridiculous or specific statements, as in "Good thing we have a vice president who accidentally shot his friend in the face, I always say," or "Always brush your teeth before heading off to OTB, I always say."
"...I reckon."
For real: You may use this phrase to soften the blow of an oppositional statement, if speaking with someone who may be sensitive to contradiction. The qualification of the phrase combined with its associations with "hillbillies," who are assumed to be less intelligent, will make the person you're contradicting feel superior enough to you to accept what you are saying without argument or offense.
As a joke: You may use this phrase as a joke in two distinct ways. The first, more obvious "beginner's" way, is to say it as though you were a "hick" from Appalachia -- "ah reckin" -- but take care; this joke has been overused and was never that clever to begin with.
Used excessively, verbal flair can parodize the entire statement to which it is attached; it is thus also a useful tool for making a joke. Be careful, however, not to overdo the flair when attempting to be serious. Once a conversation has been over-flaired, it is extremely difficult to convince the other party that you meant whatever you said.
"Verbal flair" will not necessarily hurt a conversation like most phrases that never help; it is, however, by definition, superfluous to the conversation, and thus never truly helps.
"...I always say."
For real: Adding this phrase to the end of a statement that agrees with whatever point the other person has just made shows that you are interested in not only emphasizing your current agreement with said person, but also have always thought likewise.
As a joke: Use this phrase at the end of especially ridiculous or specific statements, as in "Good thing we have a vice president who accidentally shot his friend in the face, I always say," or "Always brush your teeth before heading off to OTB, I always say."
"...I reckon."
For real: You may use this phrase to soften the blow of an oppositional statement, if speaking with someone who may be sensitive to contradiction. The qualification of the phrase combined with its associations with "hillbillies," who are assumed to be less intelligent, will make the person you're contradicting feel superior enough to you to accept what you are saying without argument or offense.
As a joke: You may use this phrase as a joke in two distinct ways. The first, more obvious "beginner's" way, is to say it as though you were a "hick" from Appalachia -- "ah reckin" -- but take care; this joke has been overused and was never that clever to begin with.
For more advanced humorists, the phrase can be added, crisply enunciated, to any statement that couldn't possibly require "reckoning," either because it is an obvious fact or because it cannot be figured -- i.e. "That sky there is blue, I reckon" or "I reckon fourteen planets are enough."
"...by golly."
For real: As with all verbal flair, this phrase adds to the conversation only an invitation for the other person to condescend to you -- not meaning. "By golly," however, may also serve as a reminder to someone with an unpalatable tendency to use harsher or less cultured terms -- replacing "g*ddamn," for instance -- and allowing her to calibrate her language to the appropriate register without needing to initiate a sit-down talk on the issue.
As a joke: This phrase can be used in casual circumstances to mock someone who refuses to use harsher or less cultured terms, such as "g*ddamn."
I should've asked her, "with this many freckles, am I an 'autumn'?"
Today was my appointment with the dermatologist; on the way there, Betty spun her tires trying to get traction from a slippery stop on a wet road, and I wore my scarf over my head on the way into the office.
Dr. Grin -- no kidding -- was nice, and brisk without being brusque. She excised the mole for biopsy.
"You understand about the scarring?" she asked. "You're comfortable with this, you want to do it today?"
"Yes," I said. (Faking conviction.)
She left to send in the tech.
"I had my wisdom teeth out," I said to Jennifer, the tech who set out the Novocaine needle and showed me the slicer the doctor would use.
"Oh, then you won't have any problem, here," Jennifer said, but when she looked at me, she said, "I'll give you a smaller needle."
I felt the needle but not the blade. I babbled about my jobs and having my wisdom teeth out.
(The truth is that with my teeth went my blind trust in doctors, dentists, well-wishers; spend too long with pliers in your mouth and you start to get leery of these things. And it's the same, anyway -- they're taking a part of you you'll never have again, sockets and scars where parts used to be.)
"Put Vaseline on it every day for, I would say, about two weeks," said Dr. Grin. "You don't want scabbing."
"Will it, when the Novocaine wears off --" I faltered.
"Hurt? Not really. It'll feel like a big scrape," she said.
"I can handle that."
I put on my scarf and left, wound through the parking lot to Betty and got in, pushed play on El-P's bracing, addictive "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" and pulled out.
Seven to ten days for biopsy results, and I'm shaking now -- some would say "like a leaf."
Dr. Grin -- no kidding -- was nice, and brisk without being brusque. She excised the mole for biopsy.
"You understand about the scarring?" she asked. "You're comfortable with this, you want to do it today?"
"Yes," I said. (Faking conviction.)
She left to send in the tech.
"I had my wisdom teeth out," I said to Jennifer, the tech who set out the Novocaine needle and showed me the slicer the doctor would use.
"Oh, then you won't have any problem, here," Jennifer said, but when she looked at me, she said, "I'll give you a smaller needle."
I felt the needle but not the blade. I babbled about my jobs and having my wisdom teeth out.
(The truth is that with my teeth went my blind trust in doctors, dentists, well-wishers; spend too long with pliers in your mouth and you start to get leery of these things. And it's the same, anyway -- they're taking a part of you you'll never have again, sockets and scars where parts used to be.)
"Put Vaseline on it every day for, I would say, about two weeks," said Dr. Grin. "You don't want scabbing."
"Will it, when the Novocaine wears off --" I faltered.
"Hurt? Not really. It'll feel like a big scrape," she said.
"I can handle that."
I put on my scarf and left, wound through the parking lot to Betty and got in, pushed play on El-P's bracing, addictive "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" and pulled out.
Seven to ten days for biopsy results, and I'm shaking now -- some would say "like a leaf."
Thursday, September 25, 2008
All-location Trivia: Vote Obama Town Hall quotes
Last night, 9 p.m. EST
K: Watching Bush speak is like watching paint dry.
A: I object, K. There may be some colors of paint for which that's true. But imagine some other, more interesting colors...like a nice pale yellow...
K: I meant a stark white paint.
A: Ah. Well, I see your point there. It's hard to tell when that's even dry.
*****
J: "That's how [neocons] work. If you are a duck and you can run enough commercials that say you're a pig, you're a pig."
*****
An: That's not what I meant...idiot.
S: You might not want to be starting with me, An.
An: I came here hoping for some intelligent conversation, but I guess that's not happening.
K: Watching Bush speak is like watching paint dry.
A: I object, K. There may be some colors of paint for which that's true. But imagine some other, more interesting colors...like a nice pale yellow...
K: I meant a stark white paint.
A: Ah. Well, I see your point there. It's hard to tell when that's even dry.
*****
J: "That's how [neocons] work. If you are a duck and you can run enough commercials that say you're a pig, you're a pig."
*****
An: That's not what I meant...idiot.
S: You might not want to be starting with me, An.
An: I came here hoping for some intelligent conversation, but I guess that's not happening.
Local Trivia: At Tunxis Community College, Obama vs. MLA
Overheard: "McCain's got nothing. Obama's going to win. McCain just picked Palin because she's a woman, and she'll pick up some of the women's votes -- but that's okay. Obama has it down.
My works cited page is fucked, though."
My works cited page is fucked, though."
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
As good an indicator as any of how I'm feeling, I suppose.
This morning, in my dream:
My family was parked in a conversion van in a parking lot outside a strip mall. We were on the edges of the lot, near a fast food restaurant, where there were a few trees on a grassy island in the middle of the asphalt wasteland.
One of our old neighbors, a boy named Nick who used to live downstairs from us (he was younger than Tyler and I, and Spencer wasn't born yet, in real life), was in the tree and climbing out to the farthest branches. The ends he climbed out to were practically twigs; he started playing and swinging from them.
I waited for the inevitable – for him to come crashing down from the second-story height he was at onto the grass or pavement – helplessly. When it happened, I turned to my mother in desperation and asked what we should do. Nick moved semi-randomly, his arms and legs flailing a bit then stopping, and I couldn’t tell if it was his nervous system or voluntary movement.
“Just leave him there,” my Mom said, surveying his movements nervously. “This is what it looks like; this is what it’s supposed to be like when they fall.”
He looked hurt, and I didn’t see how he could survive intact without any medical attention, but Mom had experience in this, somehow, so I deferred to her judgment and we left him there, fluttering his arms like a baby bird fallen too early from the nest.
*****
This is about Spencer, of course, at boot camp.
My family was parked in a conversion van in a parking lot outside a strip mall. We were on the edges of the lot, near a fast food restaurant, where there were a few trees on a grassy island in the middle of the asphalt wasteland.
One of our old neighbors, a boy named Nick who used to live downstairs from us (he was younger than Tyler and I, and Spencer wasn't born yet, in real life), was in the tree and climbing out to the farthest branches. The ends he climbed out to were practically twigs; he started playing and swinging from them.
I waited for the inevitable – for him to come crashing down from the second-story height he was at onto the grass or pavement – helplessly. When it happened, I turned to my mother in desperation and asked what we should do. Nick moved semi-randomly, his arms and legs flailing a bit then stopping, and I couldn’t tell if it was his nervous system or voluntary movement.
“Just leave him there,” my Mom said, surveying his movements nervously. “This is what it looks like; this is what it’s supposed to be like when they fall.”
He looked hurt, and I didn’t see how he could survive intact without any medical attention, but Mom had experience in this, somehow, so I deferred to her judgment and we left him there, fluttering his arms like a baby bird fallen too early from the nest.
*****
This is about Spencer, of course, at boot camp.
What's good about my job, II
In the car this morning.
Me: "You ready for some tunes?"
My girl: "Yeah, I'm ready -- let's sing our hearts off!"
Me, laughing: "Okay."
Me: "You ready for some tunes?"
My girl: "Yeah, I'm ready -- let's sing our hearts off!"
Me, laughing: "Okay."
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
PSA: Are they available in bulk?
Sarah Palin has apparently supported the idea that women be billed for their own rape kits?
"Pain and suffering" not being legal tender, the women's experience apparently does not count toward the cost.
No word on how much they sell for -- dignity costs would vary by individual, making the true expense hard to estimate, I would imagine. Also no word on whether several women, who'd, say, been serially raped, could buy several kits together to cut per-kit costs. Or whether the kits could be pre-purchased at current market rates, before inflation inevitably raises the price tag.
Here's a borderline-offensive video on the subject...(Offensive, but funny. You know, if you think these things can ever be funny.)
"Pain and suffering" not being legal tender, the women's experience apparently does not count toward the cost.
No word on how much they sell for -- dignity costs would vary by individual, making the true expense hard to estimate, I would imagine. Also no word on whether several women, who'd, say, been serially raped, could buy several kits together to cut per-kit costs. Or whether the kits could be pre-purchased at current market rates, before inflation inevitably raises the price tag.
Here's a borderline-offensive video on the subject...(Offensive, but funny. You know, if you think these things can ever be funny.)
Regional Trivia: Right, "not friendly" -- that's what I said.
Similar, I imagine, to Who's Your City? by Richard Florida (get it? His name is a state), the Wall Street Journal has come out with an article on geographically based characteristics: i.e., New Yorkers are neurotic, North Dakotans are outgoing...yeah. Outgoing.
The results may surprise or not surprise you, depending on where you live (and how surprised people living where you live are inclined to be).
But we have been freezing people, and that turns everything in winter into a duty.
The results may surprise or not surprise you, depending on where you live (and how surprised people living where you live are inclined to be).
While the findings broadly uphold regional stereotypes, there are more than a few surprises. The flinty pragmatists of New England? They're not as dutiful as they may seem, ranking at the bottom of the "conscientious" scale. High scores for openness to new ideas strongly correlates to liberal social values and Democratic voting habits.The article seems surprised at the lack of "dutiful" attitude in New England, but I'm not. Being pragmatic and being dutiful are often at odds with each other. We may never have been "dutiful" people at all.
But we have been freezing people, and that turns everything in winter into a duty.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Local Trivia: We wouldn't want her getting too big for her britches. (Not here in Plainville.)
Overheard, mother to daughter, heading into the library: "You go downstairs --" she says, and then her voice changes to clipped, emphatic tones: "But don't get those big books that are too big for you to read."
Sunday, September 21, 2008
I want to be measured in units of myself.
Not my accomplishments or what other people think of me or what I am to you.
I want my life’s main gestalt to be toward more-and-more-myself.
I want my death to be a tragic arrest of possibility – an abrupt conclusion to something just beginning – however old I am.
I want to leave room for adjectives and their opposites. I am generous and mean and thoughtful, and careless.
I wrote nine years ago in “Problems in Philosophy” that I was “a puzzle unfinished” – worried I would never be solved – and now I know I want to keep adding pieces as I go, so they never all fit. (I want to never all fit.)
I will use you to serve my ends. I will use every shred of experience, eventually, to weave my own soul.
I’ll do it by risk, and love, and you won’t be able to prevent it.
It will be knotted but beautiful.
I want my life’s main gestalt to be toward more-and-more-myself.
I want my death to be a tragic arrest of possibility – an abrupt conclusion to something just beginning – however old I am.
I want to leave room for adjectives and their opposites. I am generous and mean and thoughtful, and careless.
I wrote nine years ago in “Problems in Philosophy” that I was “a puzzle unfinished” – worried I would never be solved – and now I know I want to keep adding pieces as I go, so they never all fit. (I want to never all fit.)
I will use you to serve my ends. I will use every shred of experience, eventually, to weave my own soul.
I’ll do it by risk, and love, and you won’t be able to prevent it.
It will be knotted but beautiful.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Confessions XXI
I heart Chris Brown.
I just purchased "Exclusive: Forever Edition" because I've been listening to "Forever" on repeat for six days. I spent a good portion of last Saturday afternoon dancing around my apartment to it.
I think his videos are funny, even the one for "Wall to Wall" about how he just can't get all these women to leave him alone, and the pain of needing to choose between them when they're all hot for him and packed in like sardines just to get a chance.
I just purchased "Exclusive: Forever Edition" because I've been listening to "Forever" on repeat for six days. I spent a good portion of last Saturday afternoon dancing around my apartment to it.
I think his videos are funny, even the one for "Wall to Wall" about how he just can't get all these women to leave him alone, and the pain of needing to choose between them when they're all hot for him and packed in like sardines just to get a chance.
PSA: I'm stalking you, 2.0
I'm now "following" you all from my "dashboard" -- look how technologically advanced I am! -- and can read your blog posts at my leisure.
I've decided to follow you publicly, and on the occasion of my 400th post to celebrate your and my efforts in the "blogosphere" all at once.
(I'm even following you, Misanthropicity, despite your long absence from your blog and its borderline pornographic first post -- because I think yours is a blog worth following, even if it's not going anywhere.)
Let me know if you've got a blog and I've missed you.
I've decided to follow you publicly, and on the occasion of my 400th post to celebrate your and my efforts in the "blogosphere" all at once.
(I'm even following you, Misanthropicity, despite your long absence from your blog and its borderline pornographic first post -- because I think yours is a blog worth following, even if it's not going anywhere.)
Let me know if you've got a blog and I've missed you.
Friday, September 19, 2008
PSA: New feature debuts on Continue Unprotected!
"Quantifiable Living" will be a new feature on CU, intended to help you streamline your life, adding efficiency and the ability to quantify the previously unquantifiable.
Anyone who would like a previously unquantifiable emotion, concept or material quantified for greater success in all areas of life, please comment or send an email detailing the idea or item to be quantified.
Eventually, all aspects of life will be able to be expressed as data, making communication easier and more fun!
Anyone who would like a previously unquantifiable emotion, concept or material quantified for greater success in all areas of life, please comment or send an email detailing the idea or item to be quantified.
Eventually, all aspects of life will be able to be expressed as data, making communication easier and more fun!
Quantifiable Living: Kitten-sadness scale
Emotion: Sadness
Units of measure: Kittens
How it works: Levels of sadness can be expressed in units of kitten -- that is, the number of kittens it would take to bring one back up to *LOL* levels of happiness.
A 9-kitten day, then, would be significantly worse than a 3-kitten day, which would be a moderate level of sadness.
A typically happy day may warrant a 0-1 kitten level, with 0 being the absolute lowest the scale can sustain.
Example:
Your bike was stolen: 4 kittens
Your car was stolen: 6 kittens
Your house was stolen: 9 kittens
Your Mom was stolen: varies
Individual happy-day kitten levels may vary, as with human body temperatures; some people may find their days are typically 0 kitten days, while others may rate normal days 1 kitten. Take care to calibrate your own kitten level such that it translates to others.
Multiple kittens should be imagined playing together, thus ratcheting up cuteness and subsequent happiness levels on an almost exponential basis, i.e., the difference between six kittens and four kittens is much greater than the difference between two kittens and four kittens. (Similar to use of the Richter Magnitude Scale.)
Kittens should never be counted in fractions, as the gruesomeness of the image would defeat this scale's purpose. (Half or three quarters of a kitten would make no one *LOL* happy.)
Limits: It is impossible to rate any day a negative-kittens day. (See scales for happiness on how to express emotions beyond *LOL* happiness.)
This scale may be less useful to those who do not like kittens or do not think they are cute.
Elaborations: Events or people may be translated into units of kittens, i.e. "If I had some cotton candy right now, that would be worth 2 kittens" or "Your presence is worth more than 7 kittens to me."
The kittens allotted each positive-value factor may be subtracted from the total of kittens needed to achieve *LOL* level happiness.
Again, there can never be negative kittens, however many excess kittens are provided by positive-value factors on any given day.
Example:
8 kitten day + cotton candy + your presence =
8 kittens + (-2 kittens) + (-7 kittens) = -1 kitten = 0 kitten day
Units of measure: Kittens
How it works: Levels of sadness can be expressed in units of kitten -- that is, the number of kittens it would take to bring one back up to *LOL* levels of happiness.
A 9-kitten day, then, would be significantly worse than a 3-kitten day, which would be a moderate level of sadness.
A typically happy day may warrant a 0-1 kitten level, with 0 being the absolute lowest the scale can sustain.
Example:
Your bike was stolen: 4 kittens
Your car was stolen: 6 kittens
Your house was stolen: 9 kittens
Your Mom was stolen: varies
Individual happy-day kitten levels may vary, as with human body temperatures; some people may find their days are typically 0 kitten days, while others may rate normal days 1 kitten. Take care to calibrate your own kitten level such that it translates to others.
Multiple kittens should be imagined playing together, thus ratcheting up cuteness and subsequent happiness levels on an almost exponential basis, i.e., the difference between six kittens and four kittens is much greater than the difference between two kittens and four kittens. (Similar to use of the Richter Magnitude Scale.)
Kittens should never be counted in fractions, as the gruesomeness of the image would defeat this scale's purpose. (Half or three quarters of a kitten would make no one *LOL* happy.)
Limits: It is impossible to rate any day a negative-kittens day. (See scales for happiness on how to express emotions beyond *LOL* happiness.)
This scale may be less useful to those who do not like kittens or do not think they are cute.
Elaborations: Events or people may be translated into units of kittens, i.e. "If I had some cotton candy right now, that would be worth 2 kittens" or "Your presence is worth more than 7 kittens to me."
The kittens allotted each positive-value factor may be subtracted from the total of kittens needed to achieve *LOL* level happiness.
Again, there can never be negative kittens, however many excess kittens are provided by positive-value factors on any given day.
Example:
8 kitten day + cotton candy + your presence =
8 kittens + (-2 kittens) + (-7 kittens) = -1 kitten = 0 kitten day
Thursday, September 18, 2008
PSA: The new three-party system will screw us all.
I was in the Vote Obama application on Facebook yesterday, as I have been several days in the last week (go there, everyone. Go there) and stated that although my mom was retired military, we'd been on welfare after she was forced out (no single mothers allowed), and so she'd be voting for Obama.
Today I was driving her back from Walmart and saw a McCain/Palin sign on someone's lawn. I decided that even though she'd voted Democrat in all the elections I knew her vote for -- I mean, she voted for Dukakis -- I might as well make sure.
"You're not voting for McCain, are you?" I asked nonchalantly.
"Yeah, I am," she said.
To my credit, I did not crash the car on hearing this -- though it was a struggle to maintain control of the wheel while my brain imploded.
"What? Really? Why?" I asked.
"I'm voting for McCain because I don't want to vote for Obama," she said.
"But why not?"
"I don't like Obama," she said.
"Okay, but that's not really a reason," I said with less vigor than you may expect.
"McCain supports the troops," she said.
"But -- no, he doesn't," I said. "Obama supports the troops. Keeping them in Iraq is not the same as supporting them."
"But he's never been one of them," she said.
"That doesn't matter," I said, though I was thinking there's another reason to support the man. "You can support the troops without being one of them. McCain voted against the G.I. Bill; Obama voted for it. And I don't like what Bush has done with veterans during his time in office. McCain hasn't said he'll do anything differently."
"Obama doesn't have enough experience," my Mom said as I parked temporarily in the driveway.
Oh my GOD, I thought. She's been watching Fox News.
"Obama just came out with his economic plan yesterday," I said, "and it's very detailed."
"That's all he has is plans until he's in office," she said. "It's all rhetoric."
"Well, it's very practical, and Obama has much more experience than Sarah Palin," I said. She was out of the car and had gathered all her bags, so I changed tones. "Bye," I said cheerfully.
"Bye," she said. "Thanks."
Wow. I mean, Wow.
Luckily, she lives in a state where her vote won't count. Connecticut will vote Democrat. I'm just exhausted by the idea that my vote will just be cancelling hers out.
There's so little explanation for this that I can only conclude that my mother likes voting for the underdog, whoever that is -- and inexplicably perceives an elderly white man as the underdog in this case.
Which would make her not a Democrat, or even a Republican, but a member of the only third party I think has ever really made a difference in American presidential elections to date: the Contrarians.
Today I was driving her back from Walmart and saw a McCain/Palin sign on someone's lawn. I decided that even though she'd voted Democrat in all the elections I knew her vote for -- I mean, she voted for Dukakis -- I might as well make sure.
"You're not voting for McCain, are you?" I asked nonchalantly.
"Yeah, I am," she said.
To my credit, I did not crash the car on hearing this -- though it was a struggle to maintain control of the wheel while my brain imploded.
"What? Really? Why?" I asked.
"I'm voting for McCain because I don't want to vote for Obama," she said.
"But why not?"
"I don't like Obama," she said.
"Okay, but that's not really a reason," I said with less vigor than you may expect.
"McCain supports the troops," she said.
"But -- no, he doesn't," I said. "Obama supports the troops. Keeping them in Iraq is not the same as supporting them."
"But he's never been one of them," she said.
"That doesn't matter," I said, though I was thinking there's another reason to support the man. "You can support the troops without being one of them. McCain voted against the G.I. Bill; Obama voted for it. And I don't like what Bush has done with veterans during his time in office. McCain hasn't said he'll do anything differently."
"Obama doesn't have enough experience," my Mom said as I parked temporarily in the driveway.
Oh my GOD, I thought. She's been watching Fox News.
"Obama just came out with his economic plan yesterday," I said, "and it's very detailed."
"That's all he has is plans until he's in office," she said. "It's all rhetoric."
"Well, it's very practical, and Obama has much more experience than Sarah Palin," I said. She was out of the car and had gathered all her bags, so I changed tones. "Bye," I said cheerfully.
"Bye," she said. "Thanks."
Wow. I mean, Wow.
Luckily, she lives in a state where her vote won't count. Connecticut will vote Democrat. I'm just exhausted by the idea that my vote will just be cancelling hers out.
There's so little explanation for this that I can only conclude that my mother likes voting for the underdog, whoever that is -- and inexplicably perceives an elderly white man as the underdog in this case.
Which would make her not a Democrat, or even a Republican, but a member of the only third party I think has ever really made a difference in American presidential elections to date: the Contrarians.
Local Trivia: Nuts and voles economics
I-84 East between Waterbury and New Britain today had more roadkill littering its margins than I’ve ever seen. Three squirrels within three feet of each other seems excessive even on the edge of a wooded, high-speed highway – not to mention the raw bits of unidentifiable animals that peppered the lanes like some gruesome accumulating-dead feature in Frogger. And 72 West had the remains of a hawk stuck to the left lane line. (One can only assume its carcass joined smaller carrion that had been hit by some previous car.)
What is it with these fall animals? Do they suddenly all go mad with desire to get to greener grass when the weather starts to turn?
Or are they, like us, lazy or apathetic – and just coming to the realization that they haven’t saved enough for the coming winter?
(Don’t worry, squirrels. It’s just a “mental” winter.)
What is it with these fall animals? Do they suddenly all go mad with desire to get to greener grass when the weather starts to turn?
Or are they, like us, lazy or apathetic – and just coming to the realization that they haven’t saved enough for the coming winter?
(Don’t worry, squirrels. It’s just a “mental” winter.)
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Dear Dr. Freud,
You probably remember that I told you a story when I’d found out my friend died in July, about how my Mom had found me crying in my room one night and had the guidance counselor call me in the next day to try to “deal” with it, or whatever he was supposed to do – but we left, and talked, and watched the Office, and I never got to the point of that story, which was that I rarely allow(ed) myself to cry alone after that. Partly thanks to the paranoia of living with my Mom – her paranoia, really, but it ran over into everybody – and partly thanks to my own dysfunctional ways of dealing with myself, I didn’t feel safe with “privacy.”
I mean, she’d proven that I didn’t actually have any, that it was an illusion, when she came in and saw me crying and then told my guidance counselor, who didn’t know me or my situation at all. Or when she read my journal, or the letter(s) I wrote to my English teacher, or when she told other people that I didn’t have any real problems, that it was “just PMS [laugh]”.
At least in public I could see my audience.
So I only cried in front of other people, which was weird because it was also embarrassing. It’s not like that’s what I wanted; it’s just all I could manage.
It’s a weird thing for an introvert to need other people to help process in this way, I think. It makes me wonder sometimes if I’m a closet extrovert who was ruined by a strange childhood. (But I don’t worry much about it. Who really cares? I am what I am.)
I’ve never been a closet depressive, though – I mean, I’m not one of those people who hides sadness well, and I’m probably not the sort who would make a good alcoholic or addict, either. I’m not good at hiding or masking, and so I’m not good at denial. Which is why it surprised me when you pointed it out, even unwittingly, about the airport and watching Spencer go – I had to think about it. (How many times had I avoided the question? ‘How are you’ should be simple. What else might I be hiding from myself?) I would usually know these things about myself before anyone.
My eye is still red from last night, the crying and lack of sleep – the right one.
I mailed a letter to Spencer yesterday, mostly made up of Mitch Hedberg jokes. I didn’t have an envelope, so I wrote it on one side of a blank sheet of paper and folded and taped it shut and walked to the post office. (That's where I went when I left; then I went to the library to get an Advocate.)
I brought that handwriting book back to the library Monday, and the dream book along with it – so I don’t know what the book would say about my dreams last night. You were there, and we were talking for a long time. We were outside, near trees, and it was daytime. Those are good signs. I looked for the dream book when I woke up this morning, wanting to know exactly what they meant.
The dream book never told me anything I couldn’t have figured out by myself, though. And the handwriting book didn’t tell me anything at all. Small “I,” it said, indicated a poor ego and insecurity – a poor sense of self. It rushed off onto other “I”s, seriffed and sans-serif, mother and father strokes, independent-thinkers and smothered, resentful child-adults, and didn’t give me any more space for explanation. I remember the first journal where I used “i,” and in that case, they were right – I was insecure and insufficient. I was 14.
But the next year, I took Algebra 2 and learned about imaginary numbers, the italic i symbol for them, and adopted it. That’s what my I stands for: the possibility of something uncountable. i intend to be invisible and undefinable. i intended to find a place to hide. I only use small-i when I’m writing to myself.
I’ve carved out places, in other words, to be myself and sufficient and to find privacy.
But I’m glad I didn’t have to rely on them yesterday.
This is all pretty pretentious, but I guess the idea of a blog is pretentious to begin with – so what else could I do?
My intention was to say thanks.
So thanks.
Etc.
A.
P.S. – Yes, it was probably a sex dream. They’re always sex dreams.
I mean, she’d proven that I didn’t actually have any, that it was an illusion, when she came in and saw me crying and then told my guidance counselor, who didn’t know me or my situation at all. Or when she read my journal, or the letter(s) I wrote to my English teacher, or when she told other people that I didn’t have any real problems, that it was “just PMS [laugh]”.
At least in public I could see my audience.
So I only cried in front of other people, which was weird because it was also embarrassing. It’s not like that’s what I wanted; it’s just all I could manage.
It’s a weird thing for an introvert to need other people to help process in this way, I think. It makes me wonder sometimes if I’m a closet extrovert who was ruined by a strange childhood. (But I don’t worry much about it. Who really cares? I am what I am.)
I’ve never been a closet depressive, though – I mean, I’m not one of those people who hides sadness well, and I’m probably not the sort who would make a good alcoholic or addict, either. I’m not good at hiding or masking, and so I’m not good at denial. Which is why it surprised me when you pointed it out, even unwittingly, about the airport and watching Spencer go – I had to think about it. (How many times had I avoided the question? ‘How are you’ should be simple. What else might I be hiding from myself?) I would usually know these things about myself before anyone.
My eye is still red from last night, the crying and lack of sleep – the right one.
I mailed a letter to Spencer yesterday, mostly made up of Mitch Hedberg jokes. I didn’t have an envelope, so I wrote it on one side of a blank sheet of paper and folded and taped it shut and walked to the post office. (That's where I went when I left; then I went to the library to get an Advocate.)
I brought that handwriting book back to the library Monday, and the dream book along with it – so I don’t know what the book would say about my dreams last night. You were there, and we were talking for a long time. We were outside, near trees, and it was daytime. Those are good signs. I looked for the dream book when I woke up this morning, wanting to know exactly what they meant.
The dream book never told me anything I couldn’t have figured out by myself, though. And the handwriting book didn’t tell me anything at all. Small “I,” it said, indicated a poor ego and insecurity – a poor sense of self. It rushed off onto other “I”s, seriffed and sans-serif, mother and father strokes, independent-thinkers and smothered, resentful child-adults, and didn’t give me any more space for explanation. I remember the first journal where I used “i,” and in that case, they were right – I was insecure and insufficient. I was 14.
But the next year, I took Algebra 2 and learned about imaginary numbers, the italic i symbol for them, and adopted it. That’s what my I stands for: the possibility of something uncountable. i intend to be invisible and undefinable. i intended to find a place to hide. I only use small-i when I’m writing to myself.
I’ve carved out places, in other words, to be myself and sufficient and to find privacy.
But I’m glad I didn’t have to rely on them yesterday.
This is all pretty pretentious, but I guess the idea of a blog is pretentious to begin with – so what else could I do?
My intention was to say thanks.
So thanks.
Etc.
A.
P.S. – Yes, it was probably a sex dream. They’re always sex dreams.
PSA: Alicia’s feel-good schedule for the rest of her life
Monday: Cutting and pasting arts and crafts (with construction paper)
Tuesday: Watching dancing – lessons, competitions, or performances, televised or live
Wednesday: Banjo lessons (because, hey, might as well try something new, and it’s true – most banjo music is unrelentingly cheerful)
Thursday: Watching and critiquing movies with friends – either movies with merit, or with MST3000-style levels of absurdity (“Mitchell!”)
Friday: Playing with kittens
Saturday: Reading aloud (with others)
Sunday: On the town near Boston (until relocation to the Boston area, the Sunday plan includes a road trip; after relocation, the “road trip” requirement may be combined with reading aloud or, in a pinch, banjo lessons; it may also replace banjo lessons once complete hopelessness at banjo is established)
All of the above activities are intended to be done in the evening, also known as “the best time of day,” or into the night, in part to allow sleeping in (a feel-good requirement) and the accomplishment of pleasant errands such as trips to the Asian market, in part to take advantage of the joys of anticipation, and in part to allow the enjoyment of outdoor activities during the day.
Other daytime activities may include taking a nice walk; talking with friends; cooking, usually with/for others; being “in nature” (i.e., seeing/piling up/jumping in fall leaves, smelling spring air, gardening); occasional vacuuming; studying foreign languages; writing thesis papers in breezy, well-lit rooms; reading Victorian novels and/or comic book anthologies; drinking tea or hot chocolate in fashionably un-matching mugs from Goodwilled teapots, etc.
Activities that should never enter in to the feel-good schedule include dealing with finances or any type of math (except where theoretically interesting, as in the four-color problem, and then for only a limited duration); talking to people who are distasteful or rude; going to the gas station; laying about listlessly for hours at a time (except in thoughtful reverie); washing dishes or cleaning the bathroom; watching dull movies or eating dull foods; complaining; being sad.
This schedule will commence as soon as a sufficiency of dancing performances, banjo lessons and kittens is achieved.
Tuesday: Watching dancing – lessons, competitions, or performances, televised or live
Wednesday: Banjo lessons (because, hey, might as well try something new, and it’s true – most banjo music is unrelentingly cheerful)
Thursday: Watching and critiquing movies with friends – either movies with merit, or with MST3000-style levels of absurdity (“Mitchell!”)
Friday: Playing with kittens
Saturday: Reading aloud (with others)
Sunday: On the town near Boston (until relocation to the Boston area, the Sunday plan includes a road trip; after relocation, the “road trip” requirement may be combined with reading aloud or, in a pinch, banjo lessons; it may also replace banjo lessons once complete hopelessness at banjo is established)
All of the above activities are intended to be done in the evening, also known as “the best time of day,” or into the night, in part to allow sleeping in (a feel-good requirement) and the accomplishment of pleasant errands such as trips to the Asian market, in part to take advantage of the joys of anticipation, and in part to allow the enjoyment of outdoor activities during the day.
Other daytime activities may include taking a nice walk; talking with friends; cooking, usually with/for others; being “in nature” (i.e., seeing/piling up/jumping in fall leaves, smelling spring air, gardening); occasional vacuuming; studying foreign languages; writing thesis papers in breezy, well-lit rooms; reading Victorian novels and/or comic book anthologies; drinking tea or hot chocolate in fashionably un-matching mugs from Goodwilled teapots, etc.
Activities that should never enter in to the feel-good schedule include dealing with finances or any type of math (except where theoretically interesting, as in the four-color problem, and then for only a limited duration); talking to people who are distasteful or rude; going to the gas station; laying about listlessly for hours at a time (except in thoughtful reverie); washing dishes or cleaning the bathroom; watching dull movies or eating dull foods; complaining; being sad.
This schedule will commence as soon as a sufficiency of dancing performances, banjo lessons and kittens is achieved.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
How to look at a cat
I stumbled across a youtube video during a Google search this morning. This so rarely happens, and the content seemed so interesting, that I decided to watch it.
I recommend you do the same: It's a video on the mental degradation of Louis Wains, a late nineteenth-century man who drew and painted cats over the course of much of his life. He was diagnosed, perhaps posthumously, with late-onset schizophrenia, at 57, but he continued to draw and paint cats until his death. The images became increasingly abstract and geometric and, one might argue, paranoid. (I don't think I would agree, though. Some of his cats-as-people paintings freaked me out more than their fractal-ish later cousins.)
The video is alright -- a little too heavy on the narration for my tastes, but at the end it shows the progression of paintings without commentary -- but it was the comments that most struck me.
The most recent comment as of this blog posting was written by someone ("PigLover69") who claims to be on medication for schizophrenia; others reveal that they have done mind-altering drugs (like "shrooms" or acid -- one commenter writes, simply, "pot turns you into a genius!"), or that they believe Wains was an artistic genius rather than the victim of a mental illness.
One commenter agrees with a previous statement that schizophrenics have a "heightened third eye...but cannot tame it...this man however obviously did in his art." ("Shroctopus")
Some express sympathy for Wains. Some people just react to the video, or the paintings, saying they get chills from watching it, or found it funny, or beautiful.
Nobody I've read so far takes an absolutely "objective" diagnostic view of the video, the patient, or the evidence of his (proposed) mental illness; nobody suggests that, had he lived today, he would have had access to medications that would have corrected his view of reality to correlate to "actual reality." (I haven't read all 276 comments, though -- yet.)
I have worked, obviously, with people who have mental illnesses, or who have been diagnosed with them, at least, and I'm torn on these issues. They raise more questions than answers.
Like, what's the difference between the paranoia of drawing a group of cats sitting at a card table, laughing at the apparent joke just told by one of them -- see this in the video -- and drawing a cat as fractals?
What's the difference now, and what would have been the difference at the turn from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries -- when cubism was just coming in to vogue? When psychoanalysis was? (Could Wains just have been "of the times"? Could he have actually been schizophrenic longer than people thought -- or not at all?)
Is the video implying that eastern deities, or their images, were originally likely created by schizophrenic individuals?
What effect would this have on your or my or our views of eastern, or any, religion?
What do the commenters mean by a "third eye"?
And why do I feel like I know exactly what they mean without being able to explain it directly in words?
Why do we so often attribute paranormal abilities to people we also diagnose with a mental disorder?
What does this say about the practical (diagnostic) tools we employ to understand mental illness? What do we really believe about mental disorders?
Why is it so tempting to categorize people -- as ill or healthy, as positive or negative -- and should we stop, or is it helpful?
What do cats look like?
I recommend you do the same: It's a video on the mental degradation of Louis Wains, a late nineteenth-century man who drew and painted cats over the course of much of his life. He was diagnosed, perhaps posthumously, with late-onset schizophrenia, at 57, but he continued to draw and paint cats until his death. The images became increasingly abstract and geometric and, one might argue, paranoid. (I don't think I would agree, though. Some of his cats-as-people paintings freaked me out more than their fractal-ish later cousins.)
The video is alright -- a little too heavy on the narration for my tastes, but at the end it shows the progression of paintings without commentary -- but it was the comments that most struck me.
The most recent comment as of this blog posting was written by someone ("PigLover69") who claims to be on medication for schizophrenia; others reveal that they have done mind-altering drugs (like "shrooms" or acid -- one commenter writes, simply, "pot turns you into a genius!"), or that they believe Wains was an artistic genius rather than the victim of a mental illness.
One commenter agrees with a previous statement that schizophrenics have a "heightened third eye...but cannot tame it...this man however obviously did in his art." ("Shroctopus")
Some express sympathy for Wains. Some people just react to the video, or the paintings, saying they get chills from watching it, or found it funny, or beautiful.
Nobody I've read so far takes an absolutely "objective" diagnostic view of the video, the patient, or the evidence of his (proposed) mental illness; nobody suggests that, had he lived today, he would have had access to medications that would have corrected his view of reality to correlate to "actual reality." (I haven't read all 276 comments, though -- yet.)
I have worked, obviously, with people who have mental illnesses, or who have been diagnosed with them, at least, and I'm torn on these issues. They raise more questions than answers.
Like, what's the difference between the paranoia of drawing a group of cats sitting at a card table, laughing at the apparent joke just told by one of them -- see this in the video -- and drawing a cat as fractals?
What's the difference now, and what would have been the difference at the turn from the nineteenth to twentieth centuries -- when cubism was just coming in to vogue? When psychoanalysis was? (Could Wains just have been "of the times"? Could he have actually been schizophrenic longer than people thought -- or not at all?)
Is the video implying that eastern deities, or their images, were originally likely created by schizophrenic individuals?
What effect would this have on your or my or our views of eastern, or any, religion?
What do the commenters mean by a "third eye"?
And why do I feel like I know exactly what they mean without being able to explain it directly in words?
Why do we so often attribute paranormal abilities to people we also diagnose with a mental disorder?
What does this say about the practical (diagnostic) tools we employ to understand mental illness? What do we really believe about mental disorders?
Why is it so tempting to categorize people -- as ill or healthy, as positive or negative -- and should we stop, or is it helpful?
What do cats look like?
PSA: It's not 'syphilis' anymore.
Dr. Downing, beloved English professor at my alma mater, was wrong when she said "syphilis" was the most mellifluous word in the English language -- or said that it would be, if it didn't have such a distasteful meaning.
Those of you who advocate "cellar door" as the phrase winner are also mistaken.
In today's New York Times, I saw a word I can't remember ever seeing before, one that instantly captured my heart: asylee.
But since not everyone has the same taste in sounds, here's my case for asylee as most mellifluous.
It sounds cool. Say it a few times and you'll see what I mean.
But the meaning is just as important. The article it ran in is about a Sundanese refugee student in a school in Atlanta, and it describes another teacher who fled Rwanda as a refugee as "an asylee."
Think about what that would be like, and think about the relief attendant in becoming "an asylee" instead of a casualty. There's a lot of grace in this word.
And there's redemption: Consider its roots in "asylum," that schizophrenic word that means both "sanitarium" and "sanctuary." "Asylee" takes none of the horror of the mental hospital, tending instead toward the sanctuary, but it doesn't take the grandeur of the cathedral, either -- it feels like a comfortable word to me, and just big enough to hide in. (Maybe it's all the sharp vowels.)
Now spread the word.
Those of you who advocate "cellar door" as the phrase winner are also mistaken.
In today's New York Times, I saw a word I can't remember ever seeing before, one that instantly captured my heart: asylee.
But since not everyone has the same taste in sounds, here's my case for asylee as most mellifluous.
It sounds cool. Say it a few times and you'll see what I mean.
But the meaning is just as important. The article it ran in is about a Sundanese refugee student in a school in Atlanta, and it describes another teacher who fled Rwanda as a refugee as "an asylee."
Think about what that would be like, and think about the relief attendant in becoming "an asylee" instead of a casualty. There's a lot of grace in this word.
And there's redemption: Consider its roots in "asylum," that schizophrenic word that means both "sanitarium" and "sanctuary." "Asylee" takes none of the horror of the mental hospital, tending instead toward the sanctuary, but it doesn't take the grandeur of the cathedral, either -- it feels like a comfortable word to me, and just big enough to hide in. (Maybe it's all the sharp vowels.)
Now spread the word.
Monday, September 15, 2008
How I became a McDonald's product
The other day at Pizza Hut, I told my girl that I was going to call her "Boxy McBoxerson" when she was putting together pizza boxes, and "Dishy McDisherson" when she went on to dishes.
She asked what she could call me.
"Well," I said, "I'm your job coach, so I guess I'm coaching. I guess you could call me Coachy McCoacherson."
"Okay, Coachy McCoacherson," she said happily, and we intermittently called each other by these nicknames the rest of the day.
Somewhere along the way, though, my name evolved -- to resemble McDonald's food.
"See you Monday," my girl said, and the last thing coming from her mouth as she shut the door to her house was my nickname as she remembered it: "Coachy McNugget."
She asked what she could call me.
"Well," I said, "I'm your job coach, so I guess I'm coaching. I guess you could call me Coachy McCoacherson."
"Okay, Coachy McCoacherson," she said happily, and we intermittently called each other by these nicknames the rest of the day.
Somewhere along the way, though, my name evolved -- to resemble McDonald's food.
"See you Monday," my girl said, and the last thing coming from her mouth as she shut the door to her house was my nickname as she remembered it: "Coachy McNugget."
Local Trivia: Fatalities take longer than pausing, dumb***.
An SUV behind me honked its horn three times when I stopped for a pedestrian in the crosswalk in front of the post office. (Perhaps he couldn't see over my Geo Prizm to the zebra stripes or the buoy-like sign in the middle of the crosswalk demanding that cars yield to pedestrians. [Perhaps he needed a bigger SUV.])
Then when I turned right, from a one-lane street onto a one-lane street, he passed me on the left and sped down the road.
I had been going the speed limit.
Someone should tell this man that killing someone isn't a way to save time.
Then when I turned right, from a one-lane street onto a one-lane street, he passed me on the left and sped down the road.
I had been going the speed limit.
Someone should tell this man that killing someone isn't a way to save time.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
In Defense of Poppery, IV
Pop example: Vampire genre fiction
Note: I've decided to take "Defense of Poppery" to the next level and defend an entire genre this time, instead of one particular example of it. Any future suggestions for songs, books, TV shows, etc. that could use an apologetic, may be submitted to me via email or comments.
What redeems it: Beyond Stephenie Meyer's recent success and "Trevor the vampire" Strongbad email, beyond even the many, many remakes of Dracula/Nosferatu, vampire genre fiction has been around since villagers strung the first cloves of garlic around their necks.
And I think that's okay.
Setting aside the Freudian overtones -- but actually, let's not. The Freudian overtones are, after all, the whole point of vampire literature.
Male vampires are, as a rule, dangerously and hypnotically seductive, and heterosexual. The best way to test the rule is to imagine an alternative -- like a football player (not hypnotically seductive at all, though aggressively hetero -- right?) attacking a teammate's neck on the field after the requisite congratulatory ass-slap, for instance.
Female vampires are femme fatales, and though they may branch out from heteronormative behavior, that can almost certainly be ascribed to the idea that it's "sexy" for an attractive female to be bicurious -- and the point of being a femme fatale is overwhelming sex appeal.
There are exceptions to these rules out there: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for instance, is about a teen girl who stakes vamps without breaking a sweat, reversing the typical Freudian who-stabs-who scenario. On the other hand, she does get involved with a dangerous and hypnotically seductive male vampire...twice.
But my perspective on these stereotypical gender relations -- I'd usually be against 'em -- is tempered by the fact of its genre.
Science fiction -- or in many vampire genre examples, fantasy -- has an excuse for being so archetypal. It exists completely in the world of the mind.
Of course, all fiction exists completely in the mind; otherwise, it would be nonfiction.
Science fiction, though, admits that it's not real. It doesn't try to tromp l'oeil us into thinking we're reading about real people -- it convinces us instead that we're reading about real emotions or internal experiences.
Vampires are obviously metaphorically male, though in a twist, they steal something instead of expelling -- in that way, as well as in practical terms, they also represent death.
There's no way to read a novel about death. There are only novels about other people's reactions to death. Vampires personify not only Eros, with a vampiric attack an obvious metaphor for sex, but also Thanatos, allowing readers (or viewers -- a stipulation that goes for all instances of "reader" or "novel/book/literature") to deal with fears or fascination with sex and death more directly.
And isn't that what literature is supposed to do? Why would we bother arranging scenarios and creating characters and settings exactly like the lives that we already lead?
Don't we already experience fears related to Eros or Thanatos indirectly, in terms of the circumstances of our everyday lives?
Rather than being escape literature, then, my position is that vampire genre fiction deals more directly with the archetypes and psychoanalytic issues in our lives than other literature. Yes, putting those fears into monster form is a kind of repression of emotion -- but it's the kind of repression that allows us to get perspective, to step back and deal with things on a manageable level.
And then, also, see my post about repression being sexier.
Note: I've decided to take "Defense of Poppery" to the next level and defend an entire genre this time, instead of one particular example of it. Any future suggestions for songs, books, TV shows, etc. that could use an apologetic, may be submitted to me via email or comments.
What redeems it: Beyond Stephenie Meyer's recent success and "Trevor the vampire" Strongbad email, beyond even the many, many remakes of Dracula/Nosferatu, vampire genre fiction has been around since villagers strung the first cloves of garlic around their necks.
And I think that's okay.
Setting aside the Freudian overtones -- but actually, let's not. The Freudian overtones are, after all, the whole point of vampire literature.
Male vampires are, as a rule, dangerously and hypnotically seductive, and heterosexual. The best way to test the rule is to imagine an alternative -- like a football player (not hypnotically seductive at all, though aggressively hetero -- right?) attacking a teammate's neck on the field after the requisite congratulatory ass-slap, for instance.
Female vampires are femme fatales, and though they may branch out from heteronormative behavior, that can almost certainly be ascribed to the idea that it's "sexy" for an attractive female to be bicurious -- and the point of being a femme fatale is overwhelming sex appeal.
There are exceptions to these rules out there: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for instance, is about a teen girl who stakes vamps without breaking a sweat, reversing the typical Freudian who-stabs-who scenario. On the other hand, she does get involved with a dangerous and hypnotically seductive male vampire...twice.
But my perspective on these stereotypical gender relations -- I'd usually be against 'em -- is tempered by the fact of its genre.
Science fiction -- or in many vampire genre examples, fantasy -- has an excuse for being so archetypal. It exists completely in the world of the mind.
Of course, all fiction exists completely in the mind; otherwise, it would be nonfiction.
Science fiction, though, admits that it's not real. It doesn't try to tromp l'oeil us into thinking we're reading about real people -- it convinces us instead that we're reading about real emotions or internal experiences.
Vampires are obviously metaphorically male, though in a twist, they steal something instead of expelling -- in that way, as well as in practical terms, they also represent death.
There's no way to read a novel about death. There are only novels about other people's reactions to death. Vampires personify not only Eros, with a vampiric attack an obvious metaphor for sex, but also Thanatos, allowing readers (or viewers -- a stipulation that goes for all instances of "reader" or "novel/book/literature") to deal with fears or fascination with sex and death more directly.
And isn't that what literature is supposed to do? Why would we bother arranging scenarios and creating characters and settings exactly like the lives that we already lead?
Don't we already experience fears related to Eros or Thanatos indirectly, in terms of the circumstances of our everyday lives?
Rather than being escape literature, then, my position is that vampire genre fiction deals more directly with the archetypes and psychoanalytic issues in our lives than other literature. Yes, putting those fears into monster form is a kind of repression of emotion -- but it's the kind of repression that allows us to get perspective, to step back and deal with things on a manageable level.
And then, also, see my post about repression being sexier.
Local Trivia: Port-a-Body
There was a man found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Durham, CT. on Tuesday.
He had shot himself in the head -- in the head.
That is, in a park Port-a-Potty.
No mention was made in the story of whether special techniques were used in cleaning out the john, or whether the toilet would be used again.
Reports also did not indicate whether a line of impatient mothers-with-three-year-olds had been forming outside the portable commode, or how long they would have been waiting on average when the body was discovered.
And no word on whether the fact of having to use a Port-a-Potty was the final factor driving the man over the edge -- though I think we can all assume "yes."
He had shot himself in the head -- in the head.
That is, in a park Port-a-Potty.
No mention was made in the story of whether special techniques were used in cleaning out the john, or whether the toilet would be used again.
Reports also did not indicate whether a line of impatient mothers-with-three-year-olds had been forming outside the portable commode, or how long they would have been waiting on average when the body was discovered.
And no word on whether the fact of having to use a Port-a-Potty was the final factor driving the man over the edge -- though I think we can all assume "yes."
Saturday, September 13, 2008
PSA: THE SIMPSONS
Season 11 will be released on October 7. (It is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.)
"Behind the Laughter" and "E-I-E-I-D'oh" (the Tomacco episode) are in this season.
Please do not attempt to hold your breath until the release date, as it may result in unconsciousness leading to brain damage that will not allow you to appreciate these episodes in all their glory.
Also included: "Missionary: Impossible" ("Save me, Jebus!"), "Brother's Little Helper" (with Focusyn), and many others.
"Behind the Laughter" and "E-I-E-I-D'oh" (the Tomacco episode) are in this season.
Please do not attempt to hold your breath until the release date, as it may result in unconsciousness leading to brain damage that will not allow you to appreciate these episodes in all their glory.
Also included: "Missionary: Impossible" ("Save me, Jebus!"), "Brother's Little Helper" (with Focusyn), and many others.
My theological goal is achieving a miraculous stupidity.
My favorite passages in the Bible are ones that strike me as funny: God being sarcastic in Job; Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt; the woman in the basket in Zechariah (and the horses that go throughout the earth); the disciples' constant theological pratfalls and gaffes.
My favorite disciple faux pas of all is when, after the miracle of the loaves and fishes feeding the four or five thousand (depending on the gospel), the disciples forget to bring bread on a boat trip with Jesus.
"Beware the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadduccees," Jesus tells them -- probably one among many things he tells them on the trip. I mean, they didn't have Tivo. There was nothing to do but talk, and Jesus was a pretty great storyteller, so he probably did a lot of the entertaining.
But the disciples somehow hadn't gotten the hang of this metaphor/parable thing yet, because when they heard this, they conferred with each other: "It is because we forgot the bread," they said.
You can almost hear them thinking: Uh oh. Jesus is pissed.
Of course Jesus isn't pissed -- yet -- he's talking theology.
When he finds out what they've been whispering about back there near the rudder, or wherever they were on what would have been an absurdly exposed boat (do you honestly think you're hiding, guys?), Jesus reprimands them.
"Guys, come on. I mean, didn't you see that thing I did with the fish?" Jesus says. "Remember that time there were only a few loaves of bread and I made more out of NOTHING? Remember that? Yeah, so what makes you think I'm talking about bread here? Beware the teachings of the Pharisees, is what I meant. Man, you're such doofuses." [This is my paraphrase, because it's fun to paraphrase Jesus.]
But here's the thing that struck me today as I read this post on The Painted Prayerbook: No matter how many times Jesus pointed out that the disciples were stupid, he somehow always still managed to make them feel safe enough to continue to try.
I mean, you can take that whole "Peter, you'll deny me three times" scene as Jesus' rebuke to Peter, but I don't think I do. I hear Jesus saying "Peter, this is how intensely stupid you're about to be -- and I know that -- and it's okay."
I imagine Jesus telling his twelve about the yeast and the teachings, laughing -- the way I laugh with my girl when she does something that looks like an error (like knocks over a bunch of boxes or getting frustrated with herself for not speaking more clearly). I laugh because I love her, and those things are reasons to love her, not reasons to stop.
Good Lord, imagine someone telling you it's okay to be just as stupid or mistaken as you are, and that you can go on being that way without the world ending.
Imagine being able to accept that about yourself, that you would be constantly making mistakes, and in front of the people you most love and want to impress, and that you would survive your stupidity -- and not only that, but live better, and be happier, and take more risks.
It's a kind of choosing to fail.
I think I'm getting it.
My favorite disciple faux pas of all is when, after the miracle of the loaves and fishes feeding the four or five thousand (depending on the gospel), the disciples forget to bring bread on a boat trip with Jesus.
"Beware the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadduccees," Jesus tells them -- probably one among many things he tells them on the trip. I mean, they didn't have Tivo. There was nothing to do but talk, and Jesus was a pretty great storyteller, so he probably did a lot of the entertaining.
But the disciples somehow hadn't gotten the hang of this metaphor/parable thing yet, because when they heard this, they conferred with each other: "It is because we forgot the bread," they said.
You can almost hear them thinking: Uh oh. Jesus is pissed.
Of course Jesus isn't pissed -- yet -- he's talking theology.
When he finds out what they've been whispering about back there near the rudder, or wherever they were on what would have been an absurdly exposed boat (do you honestly think you're hiding, guys?), Jesus reprimands them.
"Guys, come on. I mean, didn't you see that thing I did with the fish?" Jesus says. "Remember that time there were only a few loaves of bread and I made more out of NOTHING? Remember that? Yeah, so what makes you think I'm talking about bread here? Beware the teachings of the Pharisees, is what I meant. Man, you're such doofuses." [This is my paraphrase, because it's fun to paraphrase Jesus.]
But here's the thing that struck me today as I read this post on The Painted Prayerbook: No matter how many times Jesus pointed out that the disciples were stupid, he somehow always still managed to make them feel safe enough to continue to try.
I mean, you can take that whole "Peter, you'll deny me three times" scene as Jesus' rebuke to Peter, but I don't think I do. I hear Jesus saying "Peter, this is how intensely stupid you're about to be -- and I know that -- and it's okay."
I imagine Jesus telling his twelve about the yeast and the teachings, laughing -- the way I laugh with my girl when she does something that looks like an error (like knocks over a bunch of boxes or getting frustrated with herself for not speaking more clearly). I laugh because I love her, and those things are reasons to love her, not reasons to stop.
Good Lord, imagine someone telling you it's okay to be just as stupid or mistaken as you are, and that you can go on being that way without the world ending.
Imagine being able to accept that about yourself, that you would be constantly making mistakes, and in front of the people you most love and want to impress, and that you would survive your stupidity -- and not only that, but live better, and be happier, and take more risks.
It's a kind of choosing to fail.
I think I'm getting it.
Friday, September 12, 2008
New word: Interestomercialitis
n. Inflammation of the parts of the brain that determine good taste, with demonstrated interest in informercials as its primary symptom.
PSA: You can tell you're overcaffeinated when...
It's fifteen hours past your normal bedtime, and you're still up.
Infomercials seem intensely interesting. "Show me the spray-on hair again!" *
You're so strung out you've looped back around to tired.
The jitters make everything blur.
You find yourself responding to all questions with a bizarre combination of over-enthusiasm and apathy. "Yes! I'll agree to do that because I just don't care."
Everything else is moving really, really slowly, and it's Pissing. You. Off.
You've forgotten how to tie your shoelaces -- or, alternatively, feel an absurd and inexplicable relief at having on loafers or flip-flops.
You're convinced you've invented some sort of new microchip out of the pieces of the old typewriter gathering dust in your living room -- and it will make you rich.
You start making a bullet-point list of ways to spend the money you'll get from your new invention but get distracted at number two, probably by an infomercial.
Your friends keep saying "Wow, are you overcaffeinated" or "Get down off that building, but don't jump down" or "Maybe you should try a glass of warm milk, or eat something."
You see patterns in public bathroom tile.
You keep telling yourself that you won't go down without a fight.
You know for sure that this is the year. This. One. Right. Now. And no one can convince you otherwise. Or get you to explain what you're talking about.
*This affliction, interestomercialitis -- or the sense that informercials are, in fact, interesting, despite all evidence and human feeling -- is a serious form of mental derangement. If you or a loved one suffer from interestomercialitis, please seek medical attention. It most often afflicts the elderly, the insomniac, the drugged or the lonely.
Infomercials seem intensely interesting. "Show me the spray-on hair again!" *
You're so strung out you've looped back around to tired.
The jitters make everything blur.
You find yourself responding to all questions with a bizarre combination of over-enthusiasm and apathy. "Yes! I'll agree to do that because I just don't care."
Everything else is moving really, really slowly, and it's Pissing. You. Off.
You've forgotten how to tie your shoelaces -- or, alternatively, feel an absurd and inexplicable relief at having on loafers or flip-flops.
You're convinced you've invented some sort of new microchip out of the pieces of the old typewriter gathering dust in your living room -- and it will make you rich.
You start making a bullet-point list of ways to spend the money you'll get from your new invention but get distracted at number two, probably by an infomercial.
Your friends keep saying "Wow, are you overcaffeinated" or "Get down off that building, but don't jump down" or "Maybe you should try a glass of warm milk, or eat something."
You see patterns in public bathroom tile.
You keep telling yourself that you won't go down without a fight.
You know for sure that this is the year. This. One. Right. Now. And no one can convince you otherwise. Or get you to explain what you're talking about.
*This affliction, interestomercialitis -- or the sense that informercials are, in fact, interesting, despite all evidence and human feeling -- is a serious form of mental derangement. If you or a loved one suffer from interestomercialitis, please seek medical attention. It most often afflicts the elderly, the insomniac, the drugged or the lonely.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
PSA: Palin goes nuclear.
Sarah Palin, Republican VP candidate, will not rule out war with Russia if the bear invades Georgia again.
This is scary.
"We will not repeat a Cold War," Palin said in her first television interview since becoming Republican John McCain's vice presidential running mate two weeksShe doesn't seem to realize that the alternative is nuclear war.
ago.
This is scary.
Carte blanche: Sexist Sarah
Question: Do you think asking about Sarah Palin's roles as a mother and a VP candidate is sexist?
Do you think Alaska has prepared her to potentially be president of the United States?
Do you think her perpetual up do is comprised of her real hair or does she use Jessica Simpson brand extensions?
The people must know.
Well, know this, people: Yes, I think asking about her roles as a mother and VP candidate is sexist.
But it's only sexist because no one's asked about Obama's role as a father and presidential candidate, or Bill Clinton's or George H.W. Bush's -- and there's ample evidence that we should have been asking about Bush, Sr.'s parenting skills long, long ago -- not because it's not an important point.
I think it is, in fact, important to ask how Sarah Palin would view her roles in terms of each other, were she to become vice president. It's one thing to have a TV character "make time for the family" amid national crises -- "because that's the most important thing of all" -- but that's Disney-channel stuff for a reason. Even vice presidents, the also-rans of the executive branch (but stars of the Senate, let me point out), need to be able to focus on the national stage if the #$&% starts heading toward the fan (or if Pakistan starts heading toward India, or Israel toward Palestine, or Russia toward Georgia, etc.).
We don't necessarily need to know what's going on backstage, but we do need to know that the people representing us to the world, who are supposed to have the national best interest in the front of their minds, aren't being preoccupied by arguments over who got to sit with Mom in Air Force Two (or whatever the VP plane is called) last time.
To make this less sexist, we could begin asking how the men on these tickets are dealing with being fathers and presidential/vice-presidential candidates at the same time.
But here's another tack to take: We could ask ourselves why we view Sarah Palin in particular as a possible liability when it comes to choosing between her role as a mother and her role as a VP contender.
We didn't ask what Hillary Rodham Clinton would have done with her roles.
I use HRC's full name here on purpose, because it's hyphenated (in spirit) -- marking her as a feminist. Her record during her husband's administration also speaks to her status as an independent and powerful woman. And despite widespread and somewhat irrational hatred of HRC, she's run for and been elected to the Senate. She's comported herself admirably there, doing what freshman senators need to do to gain respect. While she may have ridden Bill's coattails a bit to get where she is -- and while I think there's a lot to be said for his affairs garnering sympathy for her, which is sexist to-the-max -- she did marry him on purpose, knowing what kind of ambition she had, and he had, and she took charge of as much of her life as it would be humanly possible for any of us to do.
Mad props to HRC, in other words, for defying difficult-to-parse and impossible-to-escape sex-based stereotypes.
My grandma expressed it this way, when HRC had merely intimated she might run: "I would vote for a woman, but Hillary doesn't have any of the positive qualities of women."
My aunt, (even) less enlightened, said "I would never vote for a woman for president, and honestly, you know why? PMS."
I don't know what my aunt's premenstrual experience is like, and I didn't ask, but this is the kind of attitude that seems to lurk behind many questions of whether a woman can or should be president.
Interestingly, my grandma votes Democrat, and my aunt votes Republican; I think this shows through in their statements.
I don't think HRC could really be a Republican -- specifically, I don't think that her brand of feminist empowerment would go over well with the party. They like her economic policies in general, they like her support of the war, but this is also a family party, and her apparent coldness turns them off. (She's also pro-choice, which is a deal-breaker for many Republicans.)
Sarah Palin is a much different proposition. She's neither the withery waif-like wife who waits at home for her husband to bring home the bacon, nor the abortionist, coldhearted feminist that HRC appears to be.
Instead, she's a capable girl-next-door -- from Alaska.
The pictures of Sarah Palin gutting a moose, followed immediately by the picture of her with her husband and five kids, have got to be attractive to the southern-western Republican crowd. Here is a wife of noble character, they're thinking. The fact that her oldest son is in the service gives her the sheen of conferred heroism -- the type of heroism women are supposed to evince, that is, the waiting-it-out sort of Rosie the Riveter -- and her reformationist reputation goes along well with the sense that she could be the tough-minded, fight-your-own-battles, home-cooking mother we've all been waiting for.
She fits so well into the mold of strong domestic, that is, that we can't help but ask ourselves how that domesticity will work itself out when the country's on the line.
That isn't to say she's done it to herself -- that would be horribly sexist -- but that the machine that created her is creating a specific brand of woman-in-power, one that makes sense to the RNC. And that vision appears to be a sexist one.
I have two concerns, other than the obvious ones (I'm an Obama supporter; Palin has no experience; she wants to drill in ANWR; etc.), with putting Sarah Palin "a heartbeat away [groan] from the presidency."
First, she recently had a special-needs child. I don't necessarily believe that women should stay home and raise their kids, but working in the human services industry, I see the effect having a special-needs individual in a family can have -- it can be great, or it can be terrible. The more time she spends disconnected from her family and youngest son, the more likely it will head toward terrible.
Second, I don't think Sarah Palin will do anything to en-fly the ointment of the RNC propaganda machine. Whereas within the rhetoric of empowered-feminist-of-the-70s, HRC has managed to do things differently enough to earn her own identity, Palin has catered to the "hockey mom" ID carved out for her by the good ol' boys of her party.
It's possible she'll -- ahem -- grow a pair, but it's also possible that her willingness to go along with the propaganda will undercut her proposed identity as a reformer.
It's also possible that there is no propaganda. She may actually be exactly what we see.
Which brings us back to the original questions of whether she's really qualified to run the country, and what her stance would be if asked to choose between her kids and her country.
Except insofar as Alaska, and its part in her "hockey-mom"-ness, has helped to create her perceived identity, I don't think it's given her enough experience to govern on a national level.
Consider that she's never been in a legislature -- and would now become Senate tie-breaker vote. Consider the methods used in a town of under 7,000 (at the time -- it's now approaching 10,000) for garnering support for her candidacy and subsequent plans and policies -- and how those methods would almost certainly fail if applied on a national level.
How have the reforms that she's enacted in her home state prepared her for reform of our federal government? (I hate to bring it up, but Alaska's only been a state for about fifty years; the sock hop is older. Could this frontier state possibly have built up the kind of bureaucratic red tape our federal government is famous for in that time?)
My fear is that, like our current president, Sarah Palin would "reform now, ask question later -- or never" and end up botching things like education (No Child Left Behind is a stupid and terrible set of laws) or civil rights (butterfly ballots not counted in high-minority areas of Florida; imprisonment of suspected terrorists goes on without trial; the Patriot Act allows our library book records to be confiscated by the government) thanks to ignorance.
If she stops to figure out the system, she won't have time, even in four to sixteen years, to reform anything. If she doesn't stop to figure it out, she'll reform badly.
Now on to the most important question of all: Does she wear extensions in her hair?
Absolutely.
But she sure is nice to look at, for it.
Do you think Alaska has prepared her to potentially be president of the United States?
Do you think her perpetual up do is comprised of her real hair or does she use Jessica Simpson brand extensions?
The people must know.
Well, know this, people: Yes, I think asking about her roles as a mother and VP candidate is sexist.
But it's only sexist because no one's asked about Obama's role as a father and presidential candidate, or Bill Clinton's or George H.W. Bush's -- and there's ample evidence that we should have been asking about Bush, Sr.'s parenting skills long, long ago -- not because it's not an important point.
I think it is, in fact, important to ask how Sarah Palin would view her roles in terms of each other, were she to become vice president. It's one thing to have a TV character "make time for the family" amid national crises -- "because that's the most important thing of all" -- but that's Disney-channel stuff for a reason. Even vice presidents, the also-rans of the executive branch (but stars of the Senate, let me point out), need to be able to focus on the national stage if the #$&% starts heading toward the fan (or if Pakistan starts heading toward India, or Israel toward Palestine, or Russia toward Georgia, etc.).
We don't necessarily need to know what's going on backstage, but we do need to know that the people representing us to the world, who are supposed to have the national best interest in the front of their minds, aren't being preoccupied by arguments over who got to sit with Mom in Air Force Two (or whatever the VP plane is called) last time.
To make this less sexist, we could begin asking how the men on these tickets are dealing with being fathers and presidential/vice-presidential candidates at the same time.
But here's another tack to take: We could ask ourselves why we view Sarah Palin in particular as a possible liability when it comes to choosing between her role as a mother and her role as a VP contender.
We didn't ask what Hillary Rodham Clinton would have done with her roles.
I use HRC's full name here on purpose, because it's hyphenated (in spirit) -- marking her as a feminist. Her record during her husband's administration also speaks to her status as an independent and powerful woman. And despite widespread and somewhat irrational hatred of HRC, she's run for and been elected to the Senate. She's comported herself admirably there, doing what freshman senators need to do to gain respect. While she may have ridden Bill's coattails a bit to get where she is -- and while I think there's a lot to be said for his affairs garnering sympathy for her, which is sexist to-the-max -- she did marry him on purpose, knowing what kind of ambition she had, and he had, and she took charge of as much of her life as it would be humanly possible for any of us to do.
Mad props to HRC, in other words, for defying difficult-to-parse and impossible-to-escape sex-based stereotypes.
My grandma expressed it this way, when HRC had merely intimated she might run: "I would vote for a woman, but Hillary doesn't have any of the positive qualities of women."
My aunt, (even) less enlightened, said "I would never vote for a woman for president, and honestly, you know why? PMS."
I don't know what my aunt's premenstrual experience is like, and I didn't ask, but this is the kind of attitude that seems to lurk behind many questions of whether a woman can or should be president.
Interestingly, my grandma votes Democrat, and my aunt votes Republican; I think this shows through in their statements.
I don't think HRC could really be a Republican -- specifically, I don't think that her brand of feminist empowerment would go over well with the party. They like her economic policies in general, they like her support of the war, but this is also a family party, and her apparent coldness turns them off. (She's also pro-choice, which is a deal-breaker for many Republicans.)
Sarah Palin is a much different proposition. She's neither the withery waif-like wife who waits at home for her husband to bring home the bacon, nor the abortionist, coldhearted feminist that HRC appears to be.
Instead, she's a capable girl-next-door -- from Alaska.
The pictures of Sarah Palin gutting a moose, followed immediately by the picture of her with her husband and five kids, have got to be attractive to the southern-western Republican crowd. Here is a wife of noble character, they're thinking. The fact that her oldest son is in the service gives her the sheen of conferred heroism -- the type of heroism women are supposed to evince, that is, the waiting-it-out sort of Rosie the Riveter -- and her reformationist reputation goes along well with the sense that she could be the tough-minded, fight-your-own-battles, home-cooking mother we've all been waiting for.
She fits so well into the mold of strong domestic, that is, that we can't help but ask ourselves how that domesticity will work itself out when the country's on the line.
That isn't to say she's done it to herself -- that would be horribly sexist -- but that the machine that created her is creating a specific brand of woman-in-power, one that makes sense to the RNC. And that vision appears to be a sexist one.
I have two concerns, other than the obvious ones (I'm an Obama supporter; Palin has no experience; she wants to drill in ANWR; etc.), with putting Sarah Palin "a heartbeat away [groan] from the presidency."
First, she recently had a special-needs child. I don't necessarily believe that women should stay home and raise their kids, but working in the human services industry, I see the effect having a special-needs individual in a family can have -- it can be great, or it can be terrible. The more time she spends disconnected from her family and youngest son, the more likely it will head toward terrible.
Second, I don't think Sarah Palin will do anything to en-fly the ointment of the RNC propaganda machine. Whereas within the rhetoric of empowered-feminist-of-the-70s, HRC has managed to do things differently enough to earn her own identity, Palin has catered to the "hockey mom" ID carved out for her by the good ol' boys of her party.
It's possible she'll -- ahem -- grow a pair, but it's also possible that her willingness to go along with the propaganda will undercut her proposed identity as a reformer.
It's also possible that there is no propaganda. She may actually be exactly what we see.
Which brings us back to the original questions of whether she's really qualified to run the country, and what her stance would be if asked to choose between her kids and her country.
Except insofar as Alaska, and its part in her "hockey-mom"-ness, has helped to create her perceived identity, I don't think it's given her enough experience to govern on a national level.
Consider that she's never been in a legislature -- and would now become Senate tie-breaker vote. Consider the methods used in a town of under 7,000 (at the time -- it's now approaching 10,000) for garnering support for her candidacy and subsequent plans and policies -- and how those methods would almost certainly fail if applied on a national level.
How have the reforms that she's enacted in her home state prepared her for reform of our federal government? (I hate to bring it up, but Alaska's only been a state for about fifty years; the sock hop is older. Could this frontier state possibly have built up the kind of bureaucratic red tape our federal government is famous for in that time?)
My fear is that, like our current president, Sarah Palin would "reform now, ask question later -- or never" and end up botching things like education (No Child Left Behind is a stupid and terrible set of laws) or civil rights (butterfly ballots not counted in high-minority areas of Florida; imprisonment of suspected terrorists goes on without trial; the Patriot Act allows our library book records to be confiscated by the government) thanks to ignorance.
If she stops to figure out the system, she won't have time, even in four to sixteen years, to reform anything. If she doesn't stop to figure it out, she'll reform badly.
Now on to the most important question of all: Does she wear extensions in her hair?
Absolutely.
But she sure is nice to look at, for it.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
PSA: My vote counts -- twice.
I got an automated call yesterday, during which I indicated that I would be supporting Obama for president in November, and would definitely vote.
I hope my polling responses help him to actually win.
I hope my polling responses help him to actually win.
Local Trivia: Into the much-less-wild
On Monday, my girl and I were strolling down a side-street in a smallish Connecticut town and saw, coming toward us at a trot up the middle of the street, an adolescent coyote.
It was so thin, and its face so gaunt, that I had a difficult time determining that it was a kind of dog and not any other kind of creature. It loped the way wild animals do, despite its mange and half-chewed tail. We watched in horror as it seemed oblivious to an SUV coming towards it, but it swayed out of the way as the vehicle got too close for comfort.
And it headed straight into town, turning left at the corner to the main street.
It was so thin, and its face so gaunt, that I had a difficult time determining that it was a kind of dog and not any other kind of creature. It loped the way wild animals do, despite its mange and half-chewed tail. We watched in horror as it seemed oblivious to an SUV coming towards it, but it swayed out of the way as the vehicle got too close for comfort.
And it headed straight into town, turning left at the corner to the main street.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
This morning, 1154 hours
My phone rings and I startle into sitting. “Tyler” shows up on the caller ID, but when I pick up, it’s Mom.
“Hi,” she says, cheerful. “Tyler and I are here at MEPS with Spencer.”
“Oh, good,” I say. Spencer’s recruiter had told Mom that he didn’t know if family would be allowed in to watch the swearing-in ceremony; the necessary escort staff for civilian visitors would be busy in the ceremony itself. He’d called yesterday from the house when he came to gather Spencer and Spencer’s small, limp plastic bag with toothbrush and deodorant.
“I just got my butt handed to me by a civilian,” he said when he hung up. “They said they can’t take you, they’ll be too busy. It has to be a recruiter.”
This recruiter, who I’d hated since the first day I avoided looking at him, said that his superiors wouldn’t allow him to come up for just one recruit’s family. I suspect him of lying, as I already know he’s manipulated. That’s what recruiters do.
Tyler and Mom had gotten a hotel room near the airport to try going up to the base in the morning to see Spencer sworn in. If the entrance had been sure, I would have gone; if Tyler and Mom had left from here, I would have gone. But the ambivalence of loving Spencer but not being proud of his choices, and the overenthusiasm of Mom and Ty when it came to the Navy, kept me back.
“I’ll meet you guys at the airport,” I’d said yesterday, on the phone in the grocery store. “Call me in the morning and let me know where and what time.”
“So where am I supposed to meet you?” I ask Mom.
“Here,” she says, “I’ll give you to Tyler.”
Tyler takes the phone. “What information do you need?” he asks in a clipped voice.
I remember that he wanted this to be him, to be a Navy man, and reply in moderately high spirits to assuage him.
“I just want to make sure we meet before we go through the gate,” I say.
“We’re not going through the gate,” he says, still gruff.
“Right, I mean through to the departure gate.”
“We’re not going there.”
“But Mom has a paper that says military family can go through to the gate,” I say.
“The airport rules might say whatever, but they told us here that we can’t go through to the gate. I guess two other times, it went really badly, and they don’t let family go through.”
“Oh, okay, so it’s a Navy rule,” I say – and bite my tongue hard on the revelation that the Navy can’t “let” or “not let” me do anything. “So where are we going to meet?”
“At the security checkpoint before you go in,” Tyler says, “where they check the luggage.”
“Okay, wait, do you mean the place where all the security is, or the Continental desk?” I ask.
“The security checkpoint,” Tyler repeats.
“But that’s not where they check the luggage – they check it at the desk. Does he have luggage?”
“Go to the security checkpoint,” Tyler repeats again.
“Not the Continental desk, then?”
“GO TO THE SECURITY CHECKPOINT.”
I half-laugh at his inexplicable refusal to clarify. “You do realize,” I say, thinking of all the conversations on predestination and free will I had in college, “that saying something more slowly doesn’t actually make it more clear.”
“You’re really starting to tick me off,” he says, and pronounces each of the last words deliberately, as though considering a physical assault. Tick. Me. Off. “It could not be more simple.”
“Okay, whatever,” I say, “give me back to Mom.”
Instead, Tyler hands me to Spencer.
“What do you need?” Spencer asks, slightly more tense than usual, as though he’s playing a video game while we’re talking.
“I just want to know where me and Mary should meet you,” I say. “Tyler said the security checkpoint -- that’s the place where they X-ray your bags, right, and all the security is?”
“That’s what it means,” Spencer says.
“Well, that’s what I thought too, but then he said ‘where you check your luggage,’ and that’s not the same place. That’s at the gate. So I’m meeting up at the x-ray area, right?”
“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Is that all?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“See you later,” he says.
“Yeah, see you later.”
I hang up and feel my family like a wall beside me, all three turned away and hard. I am alone in my room.
I play through the scenario in my head, where I see Tyler at the airport and explain that his imprecise language had confused me, that “check” had two meanings in an airport, that if he’d varied his statement even slightly, I would have understood. Tyler doesn’t accept it. I tell Mom.
“This is the security checkpoint, Alicia,” she says and points to X-rays and conveyer belts and wands flashing over people’s bodies, finding belt buckles and keys. “You know that, you’re not stupid.”
Except that I didn’t know, and therefore was stupid.
Or “you knew that. I don’t know why you had to give Tyler a hard time.”
Or “you know that. Why do you have to be so manipulative?”
I sigh and turn over, hoping to get back to sleep, but they are still with me, the family-wall they have become. They present a united front against me.
Why would it have to be manipulative? I wonder. Why couldn’t it be that I just didn’t know? What has it done to me that my questions growing up were answered with this – this misapprehension of my personality, my meanings, of intentions?
I sigh again, and I can feel the pain of the encounter dropping down through my heart, splitting what had been healed, finding new old wounds to make smart.
They don’t know how deep they’re going, I tell myself. They can’t realize what they’re doing.
They’re splitting me in half, cutting me off from my love for them. My heart is a Siamese twin – on one side, love for God and friends and self, all built carefully, wholly internal and intense for years, where I lived through high school; on the other side, love for family, living like a parasite off the gains of outside truths, outside interactions, outside love.
They are removing themselves from my heart, removing their half. They insist, the small and blackened bits of history lodged in them at fatal intervals, on being on their own, on being unfathomable, on being “honor” and “duty” and “defense.” I try to fathom them but get nowhere. I try to care for them and get nowhere.
I am leaving for the airport in half an hour.
“Hi,” she says, cheerful. “Tyler and I are here at MEPS with Spencer.”
“Oh, good,” I say. Spencer’s recruiter had told Mom that he didn’t know if family would be allowed in to watch the swearing-in ceremony; the necessary escort staff for civilian visitors would be busy in the ceremony itself. He’d called yesterday from the house when he came to gather Spencer and Spencer’s small, limp plastic bag with toothbrush and deodorant.
“I just got my butt handed to me by a civilian,” he said when he hung up. “They said they can’t take you, they’ll be too busy. It has to be a recruiter.”
This recruiter, who I’d hated since the first day I avoided looking at him, said that his superiors wouldn’t allow him to come up for just one recruit’s family. I suspect him of lying, as I already know he’s manipulated. That’s what recruiters do.
Tyler and Mom had gotten a hotel room near the airport to try going up to the base in the morning to see Spencer sworn in. If the entrance had been sure, I would have gone; if Tyler and Mom had left from here, I would have gone. But the ambivalence of loving Spencer but not being proud of his choices, and the overenthusiasm of Mom and Ty when it came to the Navy, kept me back.
“I’ll meet you guys at the airport,” I’d said yesterday, on the phone in the grocery store. “Call me in the morning and let me know where and what time.”
“So where am I supposed to meet you?” I ask Mom.
“Here,” she says, “I’ll give you to Tyler.”
Tyler takes the phone. “What information do you need?” he asks in a clipped voice.
I remember that he wanted this to be him, to be a Navy man, and reply in moderately high spirits to assuage him.
“I just want to make sure we meet before we go through the gate,” I say.
“We’re not going through the gate,” he says, still gruff.
“Right, I mean through to the departure gate.”
“We’re not going there.”
“But Mom has a paper that says military family can go through to the gate,” I say.
“The airport rules might say whatever, but they told us here that we can’t go through to the gate. I guess two other times, it went really badly, and they don’t let family go through.”
“Oh, okay, so it’s a Navy rule,” I say – and bite my tongue hard on the revelation that the Navy can’t “let” or “not let” me do anything. “So where are we going to meet?”
“At the security checkpoint before you go in,” Tyler says, “where they check the luggage.”
“Okay, wait, do you mean the place where all the security is, or the Continental desk?” I ask.
“The security checkpoint,” Tyler repeats.
“But that’s not where they check the luggage – they check it at the desk. Does he have luggage?”
“Go to the security checkpoint,” Tyler repeats again.
“Not the Continental desk, then?”
“GO TO THE SECURITY CHECKPOINT.”
I half-laugh at his inexplicable refusal to clarify. “You do realize,” I say, thinking of all the conversations on predestination and free will I had in college, “that saying something more slowly doesn’t actually make it more clear.”
“You’re really starting to tick me off,” he says, and pronounces each of the last words deliberately, as though considering a physical assault. Tick. Me. Off. “It could not be more simple.”
“Okay, whatever,” I say, “give me back to Mom.”
Instead, Tyler hands me to Spencer.
“What do you need?” Spencer asks, slightly more tense than usual, as though he’s playing a video game while we’re talking.
“I just want to know where me and Mary should meet you,” I say. “Tyler said the security checkpoint -- that’s the place where they X-ray your bags, right, and all the security is?”
“That’s what it means,” Spencer says.
“Well, that’s what I thought too, but then he said ‘where you check your luggage,’ and that’s not the same place. That’s at the gate. So I’m meeting up at the x-ray area, right?”
“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Is that all?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“See you later,” he says.
“Yeah, see you later.”
I hang up and feel my family like a wall beside me, all three turned away and hard. I am alone in my room.
I play through the scenario in my head, where I see Tyler at the airport and explain that his imprecise language had confused me, that “check” had two meanings in an airport, that if he’d varied his statement even slightly, I would have understood. Tyler doesn’t accept it. I tell Mom.
“This is the security checkpoint, Alicia,” she says and points to X-rays and conveyer belts and wands flashing over people’s bodies, finding belt buckles and keys. “You know that, you’re not stupid.”
Except that I didn’t know, and therefore was stupid.
Or “you knew that. I don’t know why you had to give Tyler a hard time.”
Or “you know that. Why do you have to be so manipulative?”
I sigh and turn over, hoping to get back to sleep, but they are still with me, the family-wall they have become. They present a united front against me.
Why would it have to be manipulative? I wonder. Why couldn’t it be that I just didn’t know? What has it done to me that my questions growing up were answered with this – this misapprehension of my personality, my meanings, of intentions?
I sigh again, and I can feel the pain of the encounter dropping down through my heart, splitting what had been healed, finding new old wounds to make smart.
They don’t know how deep they’re going, I tell myself. They can’t realize what they’re doing.
They’re splitting me in half, cutting me off from my love for them. My heart is a Siamese twin – on one side, love for God and friends and self, all built carefully, wholly internal and intense for years, where I lived through high school; on the other side, love for family, living like a parasite off the gains of outside truths, outside interactions, outside love.
They are removing themselves from my heart, removing their half. They insist, the small and blackened bits of history lodged in them at fatal intervals, on being on their own, on being unfathomable, on being “honor” and “duty” and “defense.” I try to fathom them but get nowhere. I try to care for them and get nowhere.
I am leaving for the airport in half an hour.
This afternoon, 1300 hours
"You have to go to the Continental shelf," Tyler says.
"The continental shelf? That is pretty far from here," Spencer says, and looks at me and Mary.
I get it, and laugh. "That was a plate tectonics joke," I say.
He grins. "Yes."
"The continental shelf? That is pretty far from here," Spencer says, and looks at me and Mary.
I get it, and laugh. "That was a plate tectonics joke," I say.
He grins. "Yes."
This afternoon, 1322
I swallow the last sip of Peach-Mango green tea and push my bottle against the trashcan lid and let it fall, just before heading toward the security line.
This afternoon, 1614
Mom stands at the jetway entrance, waving.
"Spence!" she yells into the corridor, and her face is looser than usual, but she's smiling.
She puts the digital camera up to her face and presses the button.
She takes the camera down, holding it with one hand, and with her other hand, she signs "I love you."
Her grin keeps tears at bay.
She watches until he's gone.
"Spence!" she yells into the corridor, and her face is looser than usual, but she's smiling.
She puts the digital camera up to her face and presses the button.
She takes the camera down, holding it with one hand, and with her other hand, she signs "I love you."
Her grin keeps tears at bay.
She watches until he's gone.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
PSA: How Green Is Your Valley?
China has, at some point in the past, spray-painted a mountain in Yunnan province, green.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
PSA: Hitchin' post.
YOU CAN GET MARRIED ONLINE.
Not for real. It's not legally binding, but you can "rent" a chatroom to use for clergy-officiated ceremonies and reception party, at, for instance, this website.
Chatalot Wedding Chapels also offers -- wait for it -- a full week of honeymoon suite privileges. It is, of course, another chatroom.
And what you do with that is nobody's business but you and your interwife's.
Not for real. It's not legally binding, but you can "rent" a chatroom to use for clergy-officiated ceremonies and reception party, at, for instance, this website.
Chatalot Wedding Chapels also offers -- wait for it -- a full week of honeymoon suite privileges. It is, of course, another chatroom.
And what you do with that is nobody's business but you and your interwife's.
Friday, September 5, 2008
1500, military time
The hot spray from the dishwater diffuses upward and suffocates me, mingling with the heat from the stovetop, where Mom stirs sweet potato and black beans and onion, cumin and cayenne, and the fierce, hot breeze from the bathroom window.
I pick up the plastic bowl, large enough for cookie dough but used for homemade salsa, the tang of tomato and cilantro rising with the steam from the faucet, and pass my hand and sponge over its white surface -- then falter.
The edges of my vision are closing in, a familiar void creeping over me.
I stop.
*****
Spencer is sitting on the edge of the couch but shifts uncomfortably backward, so his knee is pointed in my direction. I wait.
"It's something I've always been thinking of doing," he says.
"I'm worried that you won't make choices, though," I say, "that they won't teach you to think critically or make your own decisions."
He considers this carefully, but it's the sort of consideration seeking diplomatic expression -- to not offend -- rather than questioning first principles.
"I mean, we're at war," I say, helping him to reply despite myself.
"Yeah, but Dad says they don't use the Navy much. It's all the Army over there."
"But what if...I mean, how would you feel if you were responsible for killing someone?"
He shrugged, his eyes staring at a fixed point beyond me.
"I don't know. You do what you've got to do to defend yourself."
*****
"I'd like to think I'd take a bullet for my loved ones," Marc says, and I press on him with my feet. "I think most people would."
I think about Spencer and it's not even a question.
*****
I put the half-washed bowl on the wire dish rack and lean down toward the sink, lowering my face forward into the steam, but it's not helping. I can tell I only have seconds.
"I feel faint," I say before reaching my numbing hand toward the tap and pressing its silvery arm down.
The water stops. I crouch slowly until my knees touch the floor.
I drop my head forward and it makes contact with the cool, thin white metal of the sink door.
I close my eyes.
*****
"Mom! MOM!" I yell from the living room. "Tyler hit Spencer again!"
Tyler looks up, his face registering betrayal. "What? No, no I didn't! I didn't hit him!"
"He fell on the floor," I say, and point to where Spencer's body is curled up, diminutive and pathetic, and Spencer readies tears for Mom. "You pushed him."
"He fell!" Tyler protests. "I didn't even touch him!"
"He's little, Tyler!" I say. "You can't do that to him."
Mom comes in and Spencer starts to cry.
"Tyler pushed me," he says between sobs.
"Tyler! Go to your room," Mom says. "Get up," she says to Spencer.
He does. Half an hour later, we're playing with Duplos, building "a tower to the sky." Tyler's still in his room.
*****
"You don't understand, Alicia," Mom says, and I remind myself that I knew this was worthless from the beginning.
"But he's seventeen," I say. "He can't even vote, why is he allowed to sign up for the military?"
"You just don't understand what the service is like," Mom repeats, as though it makes any difference.
I'm starting to get angry and the desperation leaks out into my voice.
"And you don't understand what college is like! Did you even make him try to find schools he might be interested in? Did you even offer it as a possibility to him?"
I know the answer. Mom is self-satisfied, the way she always is when she's in control. Even the ways she sits is smug.
"Alicia, you'll never understand, so don't even talk about it anymore," she says, and I flash over into rage, but I don't open my mouth to scream at her.
I step away, turn and open the door.
"Okay. Bye," I say. "See you later." I'd been intending to go, anyway.
As I swing my foot over the edge and down to the first stair off the porch, I think, as clearly as I've ever thought anything: If something happens to him, it's over with me and her. I'll never speak to her again.
I'll never recover.
I shiver, despite the warm October sun.
I'll kill her.
*****
The metal door isn't helping.
"It's the heat," Mom says from the stove, and I have a vague sense of the wooden stirring spoon she's holding hitting the edges of the pan. My senses aren't returning, but they're not receding anymore, either.
"Get a fan. Do you have a fan?" Spencer asks, and crouches down near me somewhere.
"In the bedroom," I say, or send into saying like a train traveling through a tunnel. It reaches him and he goes.
I shift, pivot my body slowly, and let my head fall forward to the yellow floor.
*****
"Spence!" Tyler yells from inside the moving truck. "Come 'ere!"
I go around to the back of the truck, look into its emptying mouth. I walk halfway up the ramp.
Tyler's arranging two orange straps on the floor as though setting up a pagan ritual space. They cross precisely in the middle, and he tugs his ends so they're shoulder-width apart.
Spencer appears framed in the doorway of the new apartment, broader-shouldered than I ever remember him, stubble on his cheeks.
"Yo," he says.
"We gotta get the dresser," Tyler says, and from my vantage point I can see them both. Spencer comes around and climbs up into the truck, standing on the opposite end of the orange straps.
"Okay," he says, and the boys go back to the dresser, pivoting it parallel to the straps and hefting it on top of them.
"You ready?" Tyler asks, and Spencer slips his forearms into the ends of his straps.
"No, hold on," he says, then, "yeah."
They stand from bent knees, straightening their backs.
"Move," Tyler says, and I get off the ramp.
They put the dresser in Spencer's room -- Spencer's dresser. We find the drawers and shimmy them back into place, guessing where pants and shirts go in the heirarchy of clothing -- second from the bottom, or second from the top? -- and when the mattresses have gone onto the frame, I sit on it and look out the bay window his bed sits next to.
"You can sleep in here when he's away," I say as Mom walks in. "Or read. He'll only be here like one week a year. You shouldn't waste these windows."
"Yeah," she says.
*****
"The recruiter's picking him up on Monday at 3," Mom says, her voice tinny and distant on the phone, though she's only a mile away. "I don't know what they want him to do overnight, he's not getting sworn in until Tuesday. Are you going to come to the airport with us? Tyler's coming down. Do you want to see his swearing-in if they let us go?"
Regardless of my headache, dizzy with conflict, I don't hesitate.
"Yes," I say.
*****
I hear him return with the fan, which he plugs in somewhere above me, near the sink, and I understand that he's fiddling with the controls.
"There," he says, and I hear him more sharply than anything I've heard in minutes. Cool air rushes at me, a small, private storm.
I feel it acutely. My senses are returning. My forehead presses into the floor.
I breathe. My vision returns to an almost painful focus.
"Thanks," I say, and then, as if adding a talisman, "Spencer."
"No problem," he says. And he stands up and steps away.
I pick up the plastic bowl, large enough for cookie dough but used for homemade salsa, the tang of tomato and cilantro rising with the steam from the faucet, and pass my hand and sponge over its white surface -- then falter.
The edges of my vision are closing in, a familiar void creeping over me.
I stop.
*****
Spencer is sitting on the edge of the couch but shifts uncomfortably backward, so his knee is pointed in my direction. I wait.
"It's something I've always been thinking of doing," he says.
"I'm worried that you won't make choices, though," I say, "that they won't teach you to think critically or make your own decisions."
He considers this carefully, but it's the sort of consideration seeking diplomatic expression -- to not offend -- rather than questioning first principles.
"I mean, we're at war," I say, helping him to reply despite myself.
"Yeah, but Dad says they don't use the Navy much. It's all the Army over there."
"But what if...I mean, how would you feel if you were responsible for killing someone?"
He shrugged, his eyes staring at a fixed point beyond me.
"I don't know. You do what you've got to do to defend yourself."
*****
"I'd like to think I'd take a bullet for my loved ones," Marc says, and I press on him with my feet. "I think most people would."
I think about Spencer and it's not even a question.
*****
I put the half-washed bowl on the wire dish rack and lean down toward the sink, lowering my face forward into the steam, but it's not helping. I can tell I only have seconds.
"I feel faint," I say before reaching my numbing hand toward the tap and pressing its silvery arm down.
The water stops. I crouch slowly until my knees touch the floor.
I drop my head forward and it makes contact with the cool, thin white metal of the sink door.
I close my eyes.
*****
"Mom! MOM!" I yell from the living room. "Tyler hit Spencer again!"
Tyler looks up, his face registering betrayal. "What? No, no I didn't! I didn't hit him!"
"He fell on the floor," I say, and point to where Spencer's body is curled up, diminutive and pathetic, and Spencer readies tears for Mom. "You pushed him."
"He fell!" Tyler protests. "I didn't even touch him!"
"He's little, Tyler!" I say. "You can't do that to him."
Mom comes in and Spencer starts to cry.
"Tyler pushed me," he says between sobs.
"Tyler! Go to your room," Mom says. "Get up," she says to Spencer.
He does. Half an hour later, we're playing with Duplos, building "a tower to the sky." Tyler's still in his room.
*****
"You don't understand, Alicia," Mom says, and I remind myself that I knew this was worthless from the beginning.
"But he's seventeen," I say. "He can't even vote, why is he allowed to sign up for the military?"
"You just don't understand what the service is like," Mom repeats, as though it makes any difference.
I'm starting to get angry and the desperation leaks out into my voice.
"And you don't understand what college is like! Did you even make him try to find schools he might be interested in? Did you even offer it as a possibility to him?"
I know the answer. Mom is self-satisfied, the way she always is when she's in control. Even the ways she sits is smug.
"Alicia, you'll never understand, so don't even talk about it anymore," she says, and I flash over into rage, but I don't open my mouth to scream at her.
I step away, turn and open the door.
"Okay. Bye," I say. "See you later." I'd been intending to go, anyway.
As I swing my foot over the edge and down to the first stair off the porch, I think, as clearly as I've ever thought anything: If something happens to him, it's over with me and her. I'll never speak to her again.
I'll never recover.
I shiver, despite the warm October sun.
I'll kill her.
*****
The metal door isn't helping.
"It's the heat," Mom says from the stove, and I have a vague sense of the wooden stirring spoon she's holding hitting the edges of the pan. My senses aren't returning, but they're not receding anymore, either.
"Get a fan. Do you have a fan?" Spencer asks, and crouches down near me somewhere.
"In the bedroom," I say, or send into saying like a train traveling through a tunnel. It reaches him and he goes.
I shift, pivot my body slowly, and let my head fall forward to the yellow floor.
*****
"Spence!" Tyler yells from inside the moving truck. "Come 'ere!"
I go around to the back of the truck, look into its emptying mouth. I walk halfway up the ramp.
Tyler's arranging two orange straps on the floor as though setting up a pagan ritual space. They cross precisely in the middle, and he tugs his ends so they're shoulder-width apart.
Spencer appears framed in the doorway of the new apartment, broader-shouldered than I ever remember him, stubble on his cheeks.
"Yo," he says.
"We gotta get the dresser," Tyler says, and from my vantage point I can see them both. Spencer comes around and climbs up into the truck, standing on the opposite end of the orange straps.
"Okay," he says, and the boys go back to the dresser, pivoting it parallel to the straps and hefting it on top of them.
"You ready?" Tyler asks, and Spencer slips his forearms into the ends of his straps.
"No, hold on," he says, then, "yeah."
They stand from bent knees, straightening their backs.
"Move," Tyler says, and I get off the ramp.
They put the dresser in Spencer's room -- Spencer's dresser. We find the drawers and shimmy them back into place, guessing where pants and shirts go in the heirarchy of clothing -- second from the bottom, or second from the top? -- and when the mattresses have gone onto the frame, I sit on it and look out the bay window his bed sits next to.
"You can sleep in here when he's away," I say as Mom walks in. "Or read. He'll only be here like one week a year. You shouldn't waste these windows."
"Yeah," she says.
*****
"The recruiter's picking him up on Monday at 3," Mom says, her voice tinny and distant on the phone, though she's only a mile away. "I don't know what they want him to do overnight, he's not getting sworn in until Tuesday. Are you going to come to the airport with us? Tyler's coming down. Do you want to see his swearing-in if they let us go?"
Regardless of my headache, dizzy with conflict, I don't hesitate.
"Yes," I say.
*****
I hear him return with the fan, which he plugs in somewhere above me, near the sink, and I understand that he's fiddling with the controls.
"There," he says, and I hear him more sharply than anything I've heard in minutes. Cool air rushes at me, a small, private storm.
I feel it acutely. My senses are returning. My forehead presses into the floor.
I breathe. My vision returns to an almost painful focus.
"Thanks," I say, and then, as if adding a talisman, "Spencer."
"No problem," he says. And he stands up and steps away.
PSA: "Avoid this email scam"
I saw the announcement on Yahoo.com and started reading:
"Even Paris Hilton has fallen prey..."
Oh, $%^#!
Duped! Tricked, cruelly, into reading this!! How could I possibly take seriously any warning that starts with "Even Paris Hilton..."???
I feel like Lewis Black hearing that young woman say "If it hadn't been for my horse, I'd never have spent that year in college."
Shoot me now, world.
Shoot.
Me.
Now.
"Even Paris Hilton has fallen prey..."
Oh, $%^#!
Duped! Tricked, cruelly, into reading this!! How could I possibly take seriously any warning that starts with "Even Paris Hilton..."???
I feel like Lewis Black hearing that young woman say "If it hadn't been for my horse, I'd never have spent that year in college."
Shoot me now, world.
Shoot.
Me.
Now.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
"Skin is burning" / "Everyone's a building burning with no one to put the fire out"
Lately, for the last two weeks or so, my skin has been on fire.
Not my whole body -- just my skin.
But it's the entire organ, from my feet to my scalp, across my back and hands, and it's more than a minor annoyance most of the time. It's more than that.
My body has been running a low-grade fever, I think, or I have a mild cold. My throat becomes sore as I contemplate it, but nothing else changes. Nothing in my brain changes. I feel the same as always.
Have I always been burning like this? Have I always been on fire and unable to feel it? Is this some bizarre way for my skin to scream?
What is it screaming for?
*****
"Skin hunger is a documented physiological condition recognized by medical and psychiatric organizations...Early in this century, social workers at city orphanages discovered that babies who received no physical contact -- cuddling, rocking, kisses, tickling -- beyond the bare minimum of daily maintenance became withdrawn, sickly, and finally died. The conclusion seemed to be that human beings require a certain level of daily skin-to-skin contact in order to survive. "
*****
As a little, very little child, I sleep on a twin bed with all my stuffed animals, and I pray a letter every night:
Dear God, dear Jesus --
Thank you for this day. Thank you for everything we have. Thank you for [something I'm grateful for today].
God bless me, Mom, Spencer, Tyler, Grandma and Grandpa, friends and relatives. God bless [someone I want to remember today]. And God bless the whole world.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
The list of people to bless is in the order I want them blessed, with me and Mom first, then Spencer (though he is youngest), then Tyler, then everyone else.
We don't have any close relatives, but I think I ought to cover all the bases. My father would be in that category, and his family, but I never think of him -- I think instead of my Uncle John, the truck driver, and Aunt Diane and their kids, and Aunt Betty and her kids. I remember, vaguely, Uncle John "stealing my nose," or a lone pool party on Labor Day, or dark velvet-Elvis paintings hung in rooms with wooden furniture.
The circles of my prayers describe the arcs of relationships around me, the distances from me to everyone else.
After I pray, sometimes, I let my mind drift over them as I fell asleep.
Other times, I focus on Jesus only -- Jesus first and last, as in Sunday school, the closest of all.
I want to give him something to show my devotion.
I pull myself out from the covers -- though I've never been able to sleep without weight -- and take a small stuffed-animal-sized blanket with me to the bottom of the bed. I curl up there as small as I can be, and invite Jesus to sleep in my place.
He'd only had a manger to sleep in as a baby, full of straw, and wooden and hard and surrounded by animals, but here was a bed he could use instead.
I think over whether I should be on the floor, instead, to give Jesus' feet more room. I decide that Mom will yell at me if I do this, and that Jesus will understand.
It never occurred to me, then, and hadn't until this morning, all of a sudden, to wonder why I'd gotten out from under the covers at all.
Why did I assume that Jesus wanted me out of the way?
That he wouldn't want to touch me?
*****
"In sedentary subjects, skin hunger also causes muscle damage, particularly in the shoulders and back, in theory because the subjects are always tensed in order to ward off either a harmful touch or rejection of their need."
*****
After fifth grade, I went up to Lakeside Christian Camp as I had the previous two summers.
Somewhere between gimp and cat's eye yarn crafts, I start talking.
"My family's poor," I say. "We don't have any money."
I say this with the cheerfulness of a ten-year-old, hyper and entranced by neon colors and new knot techniques for friendship bracelets -- but then surprise us all by bursting into tears.
The craft counselor comes over, shock written on her face, and pulls me into the craft office.
I can't stop crying.
Eventually, they get my counselor, Wendy, who takes me back to our cabin.
"You don't have to tell me anything," she says, too attentive. "I'm here to listen if you want to say anything."
Embarrassed, struggling to think of something safe to say to this woman, who demands confidences with her posture, her tone of voice, her eye contact, I start talking about the first thing that comes to mind.
"We used to have a really bad doctor," I say. "Dr. Harwin."
He'd told my mom when we brought Tyler in with a cough once that he ought to give her a key to the office, she brought him in so much, and he sent us home without checking Tyler's lungs. Two days later, Tyler was in the hospital with double pneumonia. He was two years old.
This is what I mean. What I say is "he takes your shirt off just to check your breathing. I feel bad for the girl I know who still goes to him. She's thirteen."
Wendy bristles, and sensing danger, I backpedal hastily.
"I mean, I was five," I say. "He probably had to do that. We were little kids. And I haven't talked to that girl. He probably doesn't take her shirt off anymore."
Wendy presses. "Did he ever touch you?"
"No, NO," I say, panic creeping up in me. This isn't what I had intended. "No, he was just a doctor, and he wasn't very good, and I'm sure he didn't do anything wrong."
I leave the cabin on some excuse and find the craft counselor.
"I feel sick," I say, tears filling up my eyes again -- but she must be used to this by now. "I want to go home."
She lets me call home, but no one is there. I leave a message.
By evening, I've been convinced not to leave. But I never allow myself to be alone with Wendy again.
And I never go back to camp.
*****
"Older children and adults may have received adequate contact as babies but, for various reasons, no longer receive that same level of touch. They become isolated and defensive, suffer intense feelings of loneliness, and may develop a number of neuroses and personality disorders such as schizophrenia or multiple personality disorders."
*****
I look forward to walks with my girl, to the times I can slip my crooked elbow into hers and joke about being "attached."
"I like being attached to you," she says, and laughs. I laugh, too.
"Me, too," I say.
*****
"Skin hunger is very common in victims of physical and sexual abuse -- for obvious reasons."
*****
The pinch of Mom's grip on my chin pushes all my skin forward, doesn't let my mouth move in response to her questions.
I don't even know what she's saying. She's angry. She's holding my face, tight, right in front of hers. Her eyes flash and her voice is tight like her grip.
She lets go with a flourish that flings me to the ground. This is the only time she ever does this, the only time she knocks me over. Later I tell people, unable to remember the details, that she'd punched me and I'd fallen to the floor.
She might have. I still can't remember.
What I don't tell people is that it doesn't matter.
The skin of my cheeks and chin stings with the red of too-rough contact, and humiliation. My face -- my face hurts.
*****
"Trust is a BIG issue with skin hunger patients."
*****
When Spencer is little, I'm told, I pick him up a lot. I take him from my mom when she's frustrated, when she's likely to hurt him, when she's exhausted from his colicky crying. I rock him and calm him and put him to bed. I play with him, hide and seek and spitting "raspberries" at each other and defending him against Tyler -- even when he's exaggerating, or wrong.
The connection persists, but as he grows older, it becomes more dangerous to express it. He is Mom's, and I am Mom's, and we are not each other's.
Affection leaks out in violence -- we kick and poke each other, and I'm sure even then that he knows what I'm saying: I love you. I'm connected to you. I want the best for you.
Mom yells at us, irritated when we laugh in public or chase each other or make a game of kicking.
"That's rude," she says, but whether she means public fighting or public displays of affection is never clear.
Years later, I poke Spencer and with the well-worn reflex of conditioning, he jumps backward and sucks in his stomach.
"Aw -- brotherly-sisterly love. You know, I poke Mary," he says, of his girlfriend.
"Really?" I say, fascinated. "That's kind of weird."
"I know," he says. "I wonder what it means."
I know what it means. It means I was right.
He did know what I was trying to say.
*****
I'd like to think it's a purge, a burning as in the Bible -- a refinement. I'd like to think that when this is over, this intensity and low-fever life I've been living, I'll be free: free to touch anything I want, to press myself against, to lean on everything. I want to be in contact with it all. I want this skin between me and the world to burn off.
I am waiting to touch everything.
Not my whole body -- just my skin.
But it's the entire organ, from my feet to my scalp, across my back and hands, and it's more than a minor annoyance most of the time. It's more than that.
My body has been running a low-grade fever, I think, or I have a mild cold. My throat becomes sore as I contemplate it, but nothing else changes. Nothing in my brain changes. I feel the same as always.
Have I always been burning like this? Have I always been on fire and unable to feel it? Is this some bizarre way for my skin to scream?
What is it screaming for?
*****
"Skin hunger is a documented physiological condition recognized by medical and psychiatric organizations...Early in this century, social workers at city orphanages discovered that babies who received no physical contact -- cuddling, rocking, kisses, tickling -- beyond the bare minimum of daily maintenance became withdrawn, sickly, and finally died. The conclusion seemed to be that human beings require a certain level of daily skin-to-skin contact in order to survive. "
*****
As a little, very little child, I sleep on a twin bed with all my stuffed animals, and I pray a letter every night:
Dear God, dear Jesus --
Thank you for this day. Thank you for everything we have. Thank you for [something I'm grateful for today].
God bless me, Mom, Spencer, Tyler, Grandma and Grandpa, friends and relatives. God bless [someone I want to remember today]. And God bless the whole world.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
The list of people to bless is in the order I want them blessed, with me and Mom first, then Spencer (though he is youngest), then Tyler, then everyone else.
We don't have any close relatives, but I think I ought to cover all the bases. My father would be in that category, and his family, but I never think of him -- I think instead of my Uncle John, the truck driver, and Aunt Diane and their kids, and Aunt Betty and her kids. I remember, vaguely, Uncle John "stealing my nose," or a lone pool party on Labor Day, or dark velvet-Elvis paintings hung in rooms with wooden furniture.
The circles of my prayers describe the arcs of relationships around me, the distances from me to everyone else.
After I pray, sometimes, I let my mind drift over them as I fell asleep.
Other times, I focus on Jesus only -- Jesus first and last, as in Sunday school, the closest of all.
I want to give him something to show my devotion.
I pull myself out from the covers -- though I've never been able to sleep without weight -- and take a small stuffed-animal-sized blanket with me to the bottom of the bed. I curl up there as small as I can be, and invite Jesus to sleep in my place.
He'd only had a manger to sleep in as a baby, full of straw, and wooden and hard and surrounded by animals, but here was a bed he could use instead.
I think over whether I should be on the floor, instead, to give Jesus' feet more room. I decide that Mom will yell at me if I do this, and that Jesus will understand.
It never occurred to me, then, and hadn't until this morning, all of a sudden, to wonder why I'd gotten out from under the covers at all.
Why did I assume that Jesus wanted me out of the way?
That he wouldn't want to touch me?
*****
"In sedentary subjects, skin hunger also causes muscle damage, particularly in the shoulders and back, in theory because the subjects are always tensed in order to ward off either a harmful touch or rejection of their need."
*****
After fifth grade, I went up to Lakeside Christian Camp as I had the previous two summers.
Somewhere between gimp and cat's eye yarn crafts, I start talking.
"My family's poor," I say. "We don't have any money."
I say this with the cheerfulness of a ten-year-old, hyper and entranced by neon colors and new knot techniques for friendship bracelets -- but then surprise us all by bursting into tears.
The craft counselor comes over, shock written on her face, and pulls me into the craft office.
I can't stop crying.
Eventually, they get my counselor, Wendy, who takes me back to our cabin.
"You don't have to tell me anything," she says, too attentive. "I'm here to listen if you want to say anything."
Embarrassed, struggling to think of something safe to say to this woman, who demands confidences with her posture, her tone of voice, her eye contact, I start talking about the first thing that comes to mind.
"We used to have a really bad doctor," I say. "Dr. Harwin."
He'd told my mom when we brought Tyler in with a cough once that he ought to give her a key to the office, she brought him in so much, and he sent us home without checking Tyler's lungs. Two days later, Tyler was in the hospital with double pneumonia. He was two years old.
This is what I mean. What I say is "he takes your shirt off just to check your breathing. I feel bad for the girl I know who still goes to him. She's thirteen."
Wendy bristles, and sensing danger, I backpedal hastily.
"I mean, I was five," I say. "He probably had to do that. We were little kids. And I haven't talked to that girl. He probably doesn't take her shirt off anymore."
Wendy presses. "Did he ever touch you?"
"No, NO," I say, panic creeping up in me. This isn't what I had intended. "No, he was just a doctor, and he wasn't very good, and I'm sure he didn't do anything wrong."
I leave the cabin on some excuse and find the craft counselor.
"I feel sick," I say, tears filling up my eyes again -- but she must be used to this by now. "I want to go home."
She lets me call home, but no one is there. I leave a message.
By evening, I've been convinced not to leave. But I never allow myself to be alone with Wendy again.
And I never go back to camp.
*****
"Older children and adults may have received adequate contact as babies but, for various reasons, no longer receive that same level of touch. They become isolated and defensive, suffer intense feelings of loneliness, and may develop a number of neuroses and personality disorders such as schizophrenia or multiple personality disorders."
*****
I look forward to walks with my girl, to the times I can slip my crooked elbow into hers and joke about being "attached."
"I like being attached to you," she says, and laughs. I laugh, too.
"Me, too," I say.
*****
"Skin hunger is very common in victims of physical and sexual abuse -- for obvious reasons."
*****
The pinch of Mom's grip on my chin pushes all my skin forward, doesn't let my mouth move in response to her questions.
I don't even know what she's saying. She's angry. She's holding my face, tight, right in front of hers. Her eyes flash and her voice is tight like her grip.
She lets go with a flourish that flings me to the ground. This is the only time she ever does this, the only time she knocks me over. Later I tell people, unable to remember the details, that she'd punched me and I'd fallen to the floor.
She might have. I still can't remember.
What I don't tell people is that it doesn't matter.
The skin of my cheeks and chin stings with the red of too-rough contact, and humiliation. My face -- my face hurts.
*****
"Trust is a BIG issue with skin hunger patients."
*****
When Spencer is little, I'm told, I pick him up a lot. I take him from my mom when she's frustrated, when she's likely to hurt him, when she's exhausted from his colicky crying. I rock him and calm him and put him to bed. I play with him, hide and seek and spitting "raspberries" at each other and defending him against Tyler -- even when he's exaggerating, or wrong.
The connection persists, but as he grows older, it becomes more dangerous to express it. He is Mom's, and I am Mom's, and we are not each other's.
Affection leaks out in violence -- we kick and poke each other, and I'm sure even then that he knows what I'm saying: I love you. I'm connected to you. I want the best for you.
Mom yells at us, irritated when we laugh in public or chase each other or make a game of kicking.
"That's rude," she says, but whether she means public fighting or public displays of affection is never clear.
Years later, I poke Spencer and with the well-worn reflex of conditioning, he jumps backward and sucks in his stomach.
"Aw -- brotherly-sisterly love. You know, I poke Mary," he says, of his girlfriend.
"Really?" I say, fascinated. "That's kind of weird."
"I know," he says. "I wonder what it means."
I know what it means. It means I was right.
He did know what I was trying to say.
*****
I'd like to think it's a purge, a burning as in the Bible -- a refinement. I'd like to think that when this is over, this intensity and low-fever life I've been living, I'll be free: free to touch anything I want, to press myself against, to lean on everything. I want to be in contact with it all. I want this skin between me and the world to burn off.
I am waiting to touch everything.
PSA: Palin mother of an entire troop.
There are rumors that Sarah Palin's youngest son, born with Down's Syndrome, is actually the child of her oldest daughter, Bristol.
To combat these rumors, the Palins admitted that Bristol is five months pregnant and therefore couldn't have been pregnant with youngest son Trig. Interesting way to combat those rumors -- but it gets even more interesting. In a bizarre act of hyperbole, Palin went on to claim that she is the mother of an entire troop of soldiers:
I'm not sure, on a ticket with a man who can't tell a Sunni from a Shi'ite, which is worse.
To combat these rumors, the Palins admitted that Bristol is five months pregnant and therefore couldn't have been pregnant with youngest son Trig. Interesting way to combat those rumors -- but it gets even more interesting. In a bizarre act of hyperbole, Palin went on to claim that she is the mother of an entire troop of soldiers:
"[McCain]'s a man who wore the uniform of this country for 22 years, and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who have now brought victory within sight. And as the mother of one of those troops, that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief," she said.Either she's claiming motherhood of an entire phalanx of Army servicemen, or she's succumbed to the bad grammar of this war.
I'm not sure, on a ticket with a man who can't tell a Sunni from a Shi'ite, which is worse.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
PSA: Connecticut apology
Dear Rest of America,
We were watching, too, last night, when our Senator Lieberman got up and bad-mouthed the Democratic nominee for president, and we want you to know that we were cringing along with you, America, despite our having elected him.
In our defense, we were hoodwinked into it; we thought the slap on the wrist of nominating Ned Lamont would be enough to keep him properly in line. We thought he'd come to heel and toe the line like he should as a representative of a Democratic state.
We were wrong, obviously. He's become uncontrollable. Endorsing a Republican? On our authority? Unconscionable! He's turned into that vicious dog down the street that bites without warning or provocation, unpredictable and way too loud.
We'll put him down at the earliest possible opportunity, but all we can do at this point is offer our apologies.
We're sorry.
Now we'll go to our rooms and think about what we've done.
Shamefully,
Connecticut
We were watching, too, last night, when our Senator Lieberman got up and bad-mouthed the Democratic nominee for president, and we want you to know that we were cringing along with you, America, despite our having elected him.
In our defense, we were hoodwinked into it; we thought the slap on the wrist of nominating Ned Lamont would be enough to keep him properly in line. We thought he'd come to heel and toe the line like he should as a representative of a Democratic state.
We were wrong, obviously. He's become uncontrollable. Endorsing a Republican? On our authority? Unconscionable! He's turned into that vicious dog down the street that bites without warning or provocation, unpredictable and way too loud.
We'll put him down at the earliest possible opportunity, but all we can do at this point is offer our apologies.
We're sorry.
Now we'll go to our rooms and think about what we've done.
Shamefully,
Connecticut
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
Today, after lunch at a picnic table, I noticed that there were two ants in my purse as I put it into the car. Not having time to do anything about it, I made a half-hearted attempt to shoo them away, and then shut them in.
When I got to the group home to drop off my girl, staff there hurried me inside and shut the door firmly behind me.
"There's a giant bug on the door," the staff member offered.
I looked; it was a grasshopper. "Well, have a good day tomorrow," I said to my girl, and to her staff, "I'll get rid of the bug when I go."
I flipped my hand toward the grasshopper on my way out, and he obligingly leaped away from the house. The door opened behind me.
"You let it live?" the staff member asked, somewhere between curious and disbelieving.
"Yeah, it's just a grasshopper, and it's outside..." I trailed off, realizing that if it wasn't self-evident that bugs should be allowed to live outside, there wouldn't be any way to explain. "It's over there now."
I got back in the car and started driving back to my other job. Somewhere along the highway, I felt a tickle on my right arm and looked down to see an ant crawling up it. I flung it off as gently as I could, but a second later, there it was again -- or there was another one -- on my left arm. I resisted the urge to fling it out the window.
As I pulled off the highway, one of the ants crawled up onto my windshield from the inside, looking like a giant Japanese horror movie creature descending from space. Nothing more distracting than the image of a hoard of space-ants coming to take over the planet, when it comes to driving.
Still, I made it to the parking lot safely and was just about to shut the door again -- almost certainly trapping ants inside -- when I remembered my copy of the Hartford Advocate on the seat. I pulled open the car door and picked it up -- and out fell a cricket.
If anyone wants me, I'll be out shopping for a terrarium and a bunch of tiny little bunk beds.
I figure I might as well just give in at this point.
When I got to the group home to drop off my girl, staff there hurried me inside and shut the door firmly behind me.
"There's a giant bug on the door," the staff member offered.
I looked; it was a grasshopper. "Well, have a good day tomorrow," I said to my girl, and to her staff, "I'll get rid of the bug when I go."
I flipped my hand toward the grasshopper on my way out, and he obligingly leaped away from the house. The door opened behind me.
"You let it live?" the staff member asked, somewhere between curious and disbelieving.
"Yeah, it's just a grasshopper, and it's outside..." I trailed off, realizing that if it wasn't self-evident that bugs should be allowed to live outside, there wouldn't be any way to explain. "It's over there now."
I got back in the car and started driving back to my other job. Somewhere along the highway, I felt a tickle on my right arm and looked down to see an ant crawling up it. I flung it off as gently as I could, but a second later, there it was again -- or there was another one -- on my left arm. I resisted the urge to fling it out the window.
As I pulled off the highway, one of the ants crawled up onto my windshield from the inside, looking like a giant Japanese horror movie creature descending from space. Nothing more distracting than the image of a hoard of space-ants coming to take over the planet, when it comes to driving.
Still, I made it to the parking lot safely and was just about to shut the door again -- almost certainly trapping ants inside -- when I remembered my copy of the Hartford Advocate on the seat. I pulled open the car door and picked it up -- and out fell a cricket.
If anyone wants me, I'll be out shopping for a terrarium and a bunch of tiny little bunk beds.
I figure I might as well just give in at this point.
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