...for any part of this blog to be a forum for me to work out ideas that are currently inhabiting my WAY TOO obsessive brain. But, some of what I'm writing this summer is an attempt to do just that and since my writing and this blog WERE supposed to be supporting one another, I'm posting what I'm writing and writing what I'm thinking about.
So, I don't know if you've heard of the Fat Acceptance movement or the fatosphere, basically a bunch of websites/blogs devoted to reminding people that fat people are in fact people. I read a few of them, I ignore a bunch of it, but much of it ties in with a lot of feminist ideas that i definitely believe in.
So I read this post: http://www.therotund.com/ , the one about Limbo and now I'm thinking... i can hear you "oh god, when will she go back to school and get a life" and the answer to that is, not yet, but soon. (I'm kidding, anyone reading this may roll their eyes at me out of love and but always ridiculously supportive of me, more than I can imagine that i deserve, but more on that later).
But, there are a few parts which bear consideration: (The italicized parts are direct quotes from the post.)
Fuck deserving it. Okay a good starting point. Who decides what we deserve? obviously we do. And the answer we give ourselves is based on a million factors from major (I worked for my degree I deserve to get a job i love) to minor (I look like shit today, of course the checker at the store was a jerk). But, and she goes on to discuss this but, how do we get to that part where we aren't continually judging ourselves.
Questions of what we’re worth, what we deserve…. They seem oddly religious in foundation to me. Or going back to the old reward system. You can only love yourself if you deserve it. I know the ideas of karma i was playing with earlier this summer do not take into account the idea of deserving, in fact that's almost contrary to what i was talking about earlier, but it is related to the idea of projecting an idea of yourself and what you deserve out upon the universe. How often do we overanalyze events in order to find a REASON they took place, and more often than not, we blame ourselves.
The other idea here is that it is a fundamentally religious question. Do we "deserve" love, of a god figure, of a partner, of our friends, of ourselves.....and if we do, how could we possibly believe it. Maybe I am speaking too broadly here. Too generally, but so often self love is so damn hard, the other people in our lives have so much more forgiveness than that which we offer ourselves. And it is so much easier to forgive someone else than ourselves.
She ends with advice: So, here’s my advice for the limbo period: You don’t have to have come to any conclusions, you just have to table the matter. And then treat yourself the way you would if you already loved yourself. Treat yourself well. And kindly. And treat other people the same way. And it will sink in. So, the answer, according to this beautifully written piece, patience and faith. Really? That's it....Oh good, I was hoping it would be easy.
Part of what I like about this post, and some of the equally well thought out and written comments is that it acknowledges that so many people are trying to work out the same ideas and issues. I think framing it in the idea of Fat Acceptance is slightly limiting. It's a human issue, dealing with ourselves and the ugly parts we have a difficult time forgiving. When it is letting go of those labels and living and thinking and writing and being (or whatever your particular thing may be) is the only way we are going to move forward to whatever we might hope to become. and really, the continual process of becoming sort of seems like the most i can hope for.
Showing posts with label essay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label essay. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Happy 29th!
Ond of my closest is getting music for her birthday, music that I like, music that she will like and some stuff we should both be amused by. I’m listening to some of it now. She is that certain type of friend who understands that although you may purchase- for them, brand new cds – protectively shrink-wrapped and sealed- it makes no sense whatsoever to send off the music without 1. previewing it and 2. burning it.
As I listen, I’m getting musically induced goose bumps for all sorts of reasons. Flashbacks to honkey-tonks in college. A flashback to Terri Hendrix show, happily lesbian friendly and so we packed them in and a very specific image of a friend of mine sitting on a low wide step. The bar was out off Woman Hollering Creek Road. I was so fucking lost. I couldn’t find that road or bar again in later years, although I know it’s there. The world I’d stumbled into was beautiful and confusing and I had no idea how I’d got there. I knew I was a million miles from home and that Shiner made it all okay. Another friend, S, was there, a strange sort of anchor those first few years. Equally lost. Equally displaced. A kindred soul who talked and laughed me through those years. My first roommate also, who taught me what charisma was, personified in a five foot frame. I can see each of them moving around that bar.
Some of what I now hear brings me to Ragweed concert probably two years later, At Floore’s, impossibly crowded- it had poured- a Texas sized storm all day and the show was moved indoors. The music was too big for the ceiling and we spent the whole time avoiding the cowboy hats and trying not to be stepped on. It was early still, probably 2001 or 2002 so the shows had not yet come to be dominated by obnoxious UT frat boys as later shows (and yes, I saw a few) two or three years later, would become. I remember the crowd being mixed, but that may be a mistake of memory, I don’t really know.
The show was loud and much of it sounded awful. Sound was bouncing off the widows and ceiling, much of which was covered by tin tiles, and it was humid- sticky and crowded and there didn’t even seem to be enough room on stage for the band. But, they played for hours. No mistake of memory there. At 1:00, after we’d heard them cover Ring of Fire, before the death of Johnny Cash (later, they stopped playing that particular cover), it was ruccous and intoxicated, we called it in.
It had stopped raining by the time we made our way back to the car. The music and sweat still filtered out, slower now, the night was showing. What I’m listening to right now belongs to a night like that. And, thinking about a night like that, I am, uncharacteristically, stabbed through the heart- missing Texas and maybe that messy 21-year-old uncertainty that made nights like it so beautiful and real.
As I listen, I’m getting musically induced goose bumps for all sorts of reasons. Flashbacks to honkey-tonks in college. A flashback to Terri Hendrix show, happily lesbian friendly and so we packed them in and a very specific image of a friend of mine sitting on a low wide step. The bar was out off Woman Hollering Creek Road. I was so fucking lost. I couldn’t find that road or bar again in later years, although I know it’s there. The world I’d stumbled into was beautiful and confusing and I had no idea how I’d got there. I knew I was a million miles from home and that Shiner made it all okay. Another friend, S, was there, a strange sort of anchor those first few years. Equally lost. Equally displaced. A kindred soul who talked and laughed me through those years. My first roommate also, who taught me what charisma was, personified in a five foot frame. I can see each of them moving around that bar.
Some of what I now hear brings me to Ragweed concert probably two years later, At Floore’s, impossibly crowded- it had poured- a Texas sized storm all day and the show was moved indoors. The music was too big for the ceiling and we spent the whole time avoiding the cowboy hats and trying not to be stepped on. It was early still, probably 2001 or 2002 so the shows had not yet come to be dominated by obnoxious UT frat boys as later shows (and yes, I saw a few) two or three years later, would become. I remember the crowd being mixed, but that may be a mistake of memory, I don’t really know.
The show was loud and much of it sounded awful. Sound was bouncing off the widows and ceiling, much of which was covered by tin tiles, and it was humid- sticky and crowded and there didn’t even seem to be enough room on stage for the band. But, they played for hours. No mistake of memory there. At 1:00, after we’d heard them cover Ring of Fire, before the death of Johnny Cash (later, they stopped playing that particular cover), it was ruccous and intoxicated, we called it in.
It had stopped raining by the time we made our way back to the car. The music and sweat still filtered out, slower now, the night was showing. What I’m listening to right now belongs to a night like that. And, thinking about a night like that, I am, uncharacteristically, stabbed through the heart- missing Texas and maybe that messy 21-year-old uncertainty that made nights like it so beautiful and real.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
July 20th Post
Alternate title: Ode to the Columbia draft 235 (draft number approximate).
(I've been writing love notes to this river for as long as I can remember.)
My favorite place on the river is not a secret. It is a patch of sandy shore north of the dock at Snyder road and south of the dead end at Ferry. It is almost impossible to see- save from the actual river traffic, which is morning has only consisted of a single jet skier. Not surprising- it’s a Monday before 10 o’clock. But, in July, it is already hot, saved from uncomfortable by a breeze blowing from the north along the surface of the water.
Weekday mornings are my favorite time to inhabit this particular place. I’ve never run into anyone, in the evenings and weekends it would probably be full- with young people looking for literally a place away from older disapproving eyes- my own eyes would be viewed in exactly the same way, self centeredly assured that they are all individuals and I could never have come looking for what they now seek. I’m sure I believed the same.
I loose focus in Richland. Not that this summer I am focused on much of anything but place and history and family often send me off kilter and I feel like I am constantly looking for a way out and for someone to love me. I’ve long since found my way away- strangely close to the far away banks of this same river. That river, though a scant ¼ mile in proximity is beyond my home range. Inaccessible. And I silently thank those army corps planners of the 1940s for designing Richland with public spaces along the river. Because my spot may be private right now, but a grill, a fire pit and inscriptions of LOVE remind me that it is home to other people’s musings and escapist tendencies. I don’t make use of it often, but I’m glad it’s here to share when I can.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
stupid crazy girl
So, I posted for almost two weeks straight. I even had a topic and every intention of posting last night (pesto sauce), but an impromptu offer of a bbq, complete with patio table fire pit, consumed my evening. It was a much more interesting plan; I didn’t get home until after one, without actually knowing how that happened.
Anyway. I have a friend who has read much more extensively in eastern types of philosophy and often has a much broader and kinder outlook on the world than I do. She and I have talked about the idea that everything we have in our lives is a result of what we are outwardly projecting to the greater universe. On consideration, this train of thought is tied directly to my insomniac post a few days ago, but I didn’t grasp the connection until I sat down to write it. I have been playing with this idea for most of the day. So, the idea, and again, I’m paraphrasing, is that if I am stepping into impossible dating/relationship scenarios then something in my action or though pattern is projecting that that is what I want.
We get in our live that which we outwardly project.
Okay, I can go with that idea. But the one that follows becomes problematic. What exactly am I projecting that is yielding such depressing results. One is forced to examine the negative thoughts, which often spin uncontrolled inside our own heads. In other places I’ve called it the crazy girl in my head. Different than my own consciousness this crazy girl’s outlook on the world is negative and really when it comes right down to it, she’s mean, and I am most often the recipient of her attacks. No, this is not a public airing some inner psychosis. There are no voices in my head, but this crazy girl is the personification of my self-doubt and all the ugly inner speech that I may have bumping around in my brain.
The question still stands. Am I, who is proud and strong, projecting these thoughts that are bringing about these impossible or just plain silly situations or has the crazy girl hijacked the mic? Have the negative thoughts, self-doubt and self-flagellation become that which the universe picks up on? And if so, the next question is how to change it. How to reassert my own voice the one that will bring about the results that I want?
Anyway. I have a friend who has read much more extensively in eastern types of philosophy and often has a much broader and kinder outlook on the world than I do. She and I have talked about the idea that everything we have in our lives is a result of what we are outwardly projecting to the greater universe. On consideration, this train of thought is tied directly to my insomniac post a few days ago, but I didn’t grasp the connection until I sat down to write it. I have been playing with this idea for most of the day. So, the idea, and again, I’m paraphrasing, is that if I am stepping into impossible dating/relationship scenarios then something in my action or though pattern is projecting that that is what I want.
We get in our live that which we outwardly project.
Okay, I can go with that idea. But the one that follows becomes problematic. What exactly am I projecting that is yielding such depressing results. One is forced to examine the negative thoughts, which often spin uncontrolled inside our own heads. In other places I’ve called it the crazy girl in my head. Different than my own consciousness this crazy girl’s outlook on the world is negative and really when it comes right down to it, she’s mean, and I am most often the recipient of her attacks. No, this is not a public airing some inner psychosis. There are no voices in my head, but this crazy girl is the personification of my self-doubt and all the ugly inner speech that I may have bumping around in my brain.
The question still stands. Am I, who is proud and strong, projecting these thoughts that are bringing about these impossible or just plain silly situations or has the crazy girl hijacked the mic? Have the negative thoughts, self-doubt and self-flagellation become that which the universe picks up on? And if so, the next question is how to change it. How to reassert my own voice the one that will bring about the results that I want?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
It's a good thing I generally sleep well
Laying awake last night from 4:30-6:30 I was toying with the idea of karma. Because, it has been suggested, that karma is in fact, fucking with me.
Karma in abstract, because this morning while I was unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep I my working definition of karma was sort of a universal tit-for-tat. You do what is right and good and moral and your world will reflect those life affirming thoughts and actions.
The internet expanded my working definition a bit and I’m now no less uncertain but can see that the pop-culture idea of karma on which mine is based is, not surprisingly, an oversimplification. Most interestingly, I read that in the Buddhist tradition that karma itself is a force, equal to natural forces and that karma is (and I got confused here and may have screwed up some details) divorced from the individual doing the act and the act itself. If I’m understanding it right, it is more the will to do the act, either good or bad.
Most importantly it is not a sense of fatalism, quite the opposite.
Now, this ties into the other idea I was playing with this morning, instead of sleeping: control. In my case the need to constantly, affect change to bring circumstances of my current life in-line with my desired existence. How does a person maintain balance between these two mostly conflicting ideas. I guess the quick answer is that they cannot be aligned. The need to control would seem to interfere with an idea that what you do will somehow be reflected in your own life, but I wonder if the problem is with the negative connotations I have just associated with the word control.
Yes, I should control my life. It’s mine. I take ownership of it and I dictate what happens. There’s nothing wrong with that. The problem therefore would be in being overly concerned with the results piece. If I am living my life (being in control) in the ways and means I believe to be correct, then I should not worry about the outcomes because they should naturally and (if one were to go along with a Buddhist thought pattern) reflect back on me in a “good” (not an especially inspired word choice) way.
To break it down: karma may be fucking with me, but I shouldn’t stress too much about it.
Karma in abstract, because this morning while I was unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep I my working definition of karma was sort of a universal tit-for-tat. You do what is right and good and moral and your world will reflect those life affirming thoughts and actions.
The internet expanded my working definition a bit and I’m now no less uncertain but can see that the pop-culture idea of karma on which mine is based is, not surprisingly, an oversimplification. Most interestingly, I read that in the Buddhist tradition that karma itself is a force, equal to natural forces and that karma is (and I got confused here and may have screwed up some details) divorced from the individual doing the act and the act itself. If I’m understanding it right, it is more the will to do the act, either good or bad.
Most importantly it is not a sense of fatalism, quite the opposite.
Now, this ties into the other idea I was playing with this morning, instead of sleeping: control. In my case the need to constantly, affect change to bring circumstances of my current life in-line with my desired existence. How does a person maintain balance between these two mostly conflicting ideas. I guess the quick answer is that they cannot be aligned. The need to control would seem to interfere with an idea that what you do will somehow be reflected in your own life, but I wonder if the problem is with the negative connotations I have just associated with the word control.
Yes, I should control my life. It’s mine. I take ownership of it and I dictate what happens. There’s nothing wrong with that. The problem therefore would be in being overly concerned with the results piece. If I am living my life (being in control) in the ways and means I believe to be correct, then I should not worry about the outcomes because they should naturally and (if one were to go along with a Buddhist thought pattern) reflect back on me in a “good” (not an especially inspired word choice) way.
To break it down: karma may be fucking with me, but I shouldn’t stress too much about it.
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