Monthly Archives: October 2008

It’s that time, leaves changing, air turning cold… people throwing parties where women all over college towns like mine, women that are comfortable with their bodies (because shit jack I’m not doin too bad for “in my thirties”), get to look at prancing little college girls that haven’t yet felt the havoc mother nature will hit them with as they enter “child bearing years”. (I only use that phrase because it’s the commonly acceptable description for women between 19 and 30 – not because I agree that’s a good term) We get to feel a little pang of hhmmm, ‘they’re so perky’ or ‘I had an ass like that’. Why more than any other time??? 1 word whore-o-ween… er Halloween. Ahhh yes the day of costumes and I use the term loosely, made of lingerie and little else. They walk around half dressed most of the time anyway, but this night takes it to a whole new level. A level that makes the most faithful man, completely in love with his girl, do a double take. Now don’t get me wrong… more power to them for having balls enough to give up respect in exchange for a night being groped by unknown creeps, ogled by men and women that spend the other 364 nights of the year in front of the computer screen and the possibility of going home with someone who won’t remember their name mid-way through whatever sex act she allows. You go girl! wait… I thought twice about this?? No. A little leg, a little cleavage, a short tight nurses costume to induce a little fantasy… I’m totally down. But leave something to the imagination. Plus I am cold just looking at them. Jesus!!! My rule is never sacrifice comfort for fashion. Even with alcohol I would not be warm. Oh I got it… man blanket. Yeah. I’m still thinkin no. And I’m still comfortable with myself. I get to be the person I am that night everyday. There’s no shock when mr whoever wakes up. I don’t go from little red riding ho to the big bad wolf in a matter of hours. Maybe after some imagination and a lot of appreciation of the work it took to combat mother natures evil plans (it certainly wasn’t watching The Hills and drinking Madori Sours) I could have a night of being Red Riding Ho… or something like that… maybe next year >:)

I have this old weathered treasure box that no one ever sees. It’s heavy and filled with many, many rocks; chunks of coal, pieces of concrete, river rocks, a few dirt clods and a bunch of sharp edged rocks that cut like glass. None of these are pretty or nice. They were just found along my journey and placed inside. There are however, a few brilliant, gems hiding in there. Sparkling and new or dusty from age they are beautiful. These are the most precious things I own. There are very few and so to me, they are even more valuable, to be guarded with my life. I don’t want to lose even one because it hurts in an indescribable way. I’ve lost some in the past and I can still see a little hollow spot where they used to sit when they were nestled and cozy in my treasures. On occasion I think I should throw away the sharp ones and the ugly ones but if I did how would I see the true brilliance of the gems I have left. I need to be reminded on occasion just how much they are worth.

Worth, it’s something that’s much tougher to define than the dictionary would lead you to believe. People are assigned worth every day. More often than not our worth is measured by the size of our bank account rather than the size of our heart. We get told day after day that we must make more, get more, have more, more, more in order to be worth anything. And we believe it, we accept that it’s true. I’ve been accepting these for so long that I’ve learned to believe it’s true. I beat myself to a pulpy mess when I don’t achieve some unattainable goal. I cry sometimes because I feel worthless when it’s a bunch of bull shit. I have so much. Worth is not dollars and cents, houses or cars. It’s family and friends that you care for and love. It’s being missed by a seven year old. It’s being thanked for something you did or said. It’s having friends visit from out of town and knowing they made time just for you. It’s realizing that even though he chose to walk away, you are still worthy of love. And isn’t that the ultimate prize? That feeling of fullness and warmth. My heart isn’t that pretty any more. It’s weathered and heavy and scarred from the years. Many times I have questioned its worth as others have said or done things to make me feel worth-less. But… not so. I can find my worth for myself. If I remember to look, to open the treasure box, I see that the gems inside are amazingly beautiful… even if only to me.

When I am eating I am acutely aware of the noise I make. Maybe this is just me, but do you not hear yourself when you eat?? Do you not realize that the chomping, smacking, sucking through your teeth, slurping sound you are making can be heard by others – namely me and is really fucking annoying?!?!?!?!? This is probably my biggest pet peeve. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a total noise nazi. If I’m in a restaurant and it’s loud or sitting around with friends watching a game/show/whatever it’s not usually a big thing. But when I’m sitting in my far-too-fucking-quiet-anyway office, where I can hear the cat outside breathing and someone is sucking the bbq coating off the gas station peanuts they got for lunch it’s a bit more than my bat ears can take. Not to mention the chomping of the chips earlier or the smacking while eating whatever the hell it was. It is just not okay!! Couple this with the fact that I’m already on edge because this place is ass-tastic and my day has been super. I am not the most brilliant mind in the county. I accept this. I am however, several bleachers above the peanut gallery and way, way beyond the capacity to which I’m operating. Today I took bulk mail to the post office. It was an amazing task because it took me away from here for a half an hour. But apparently while I am smart enough to remove staples and make copies, collate and sort I am not to the mind reading stage. I didn’t know, without being told I was supposed to copy the form I filled out in advance of taking it to the post office and return it with the blanks filled in. ?!? wtf? Lucky for me I wrote down a grand total (because of that other smart thing that happens without being able to read minds) and got to witness that foot in mouth after chastising someone unnecessarily face. Is it really only Monday? Can I skip ahead to Saturday? Maybe I should use my awesome talents for some other purpose… like stacking shoes at payless. Maybe I’ll go back to coffee and get a job at starbucks. I hate everything they stand for but they offer health insurance and free coffee. I can think of at least one friend who would love me more than he already does because I could perfect his quad shot toffee-nut latte. I’m okay with that… all the love I can get. Or school. I can get a “higher education”. Whatever that means. I’ve never been high but I hear it’s the thing to do there. I can walk the campus with a bunch of kids that are just out of mom and dads house and have no idea what life is really about. Damn I envy those punks. I can start learning about stuff and things and do whatever strikes my fancy in the off hours. If only it were that easy and there was no such thing as bills… but maybe I can forget about that stuff for long enough to just jump head first. Kids can chomp on their cheetos and I can walk away… or better yet, teach them what their parents forgot to. Or not! I can stick in the earphones and blast Tool and not give a shit about any of it. All these options. My day just got a little brighter and suddenly quieter.

Yay! I'm home. It's so nice. I love my bed that isn't even mine, yet it is. I love that I have a feeling of being home even though it's not technically mine. Amazing what perspective 2 weeks away will give you. I am tired. Maybe i'll get to rest.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I was sent an article today by a women for whom I’ve been house-sitting for quite some time. She is most definitely a feminist with a loving and supportive husband (I would also call him a feminist). This article is brutal, shocking, thought provoking and exactly the reason I’m not a feminist.

~~
Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for “The Vagina Monologues”, wrote the following about Sarah Palin.
(From www.huffingtonpost.com)

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it’s their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don’t like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of
Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story — connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately,
this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God’s plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin’s view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, “It was a task from God.”

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist’s baby or not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air. Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God’s name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, “Drill Drill Drill.” I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction.
I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
~~

Of course this article speaks to me on so many levels. No way in hell do I want this person, woman or not, ground-breaker or not, in a position of leadership. I don’t want her in office because she wants to take away rights to believe in whatever they want and have it equally represented. And didn’t we have the evolution/creation fight like a hundred years ago?? (I didn’t date check, whatever) Didn’t we found this country on the rights to believe in what/who ever the fuck we want??? Hello!?! And don’t even get me started about the abortion thing or the drilling thing or gay marriage is a sin thing or the right wing radical bull shit gun-toting-fuck-up-my-planet crap that follows her like pig-pen’s ball of dust. This would end up a dissertation. I didn’t actually start out writing about Palin and her psycho politics anyhow. I am not that political and certainly not known for my aggressive political activism. And although, I am a conscientious supporter of women’s rights, I am not a feminist, at least by the currently accepted standard. I’ve been known to go as far as to say that feminism is being killed by the women that promote it. Why would I say such a thing? (the horror!!) Okay, okay… it’s a gross generalization of course, not every feminist fits my tangent, so I’ll say most. My biggest bone of contention with today’s feminist movement is that when most feminists write, speak, reach out and look for support, by and large it’s only to “women”. What about the men that support the ideas as well? I have men in my life that are more supportive of true feminism than I could be. How? because they are the ones that have the power, the control of the rights. If men are in power, (no woman in the presidency and please not this one!) they can effect equality. The reality is today’s feminist practice is not really in line with it’s basal definition. Webster defines Feminism as: 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests. This is something I agree with on the same level as I agree with racial equality. But nowhere in this definition does it exclude men. I think that is important. No one else has to agree with me, I’m okay with that. I’m not okay with having this one represent women at the highest level, so I agree with you Eve… Palin is off her fucking rocker. But this is not just a problem for women, it’s a problem for all of us.