Earthly Daughter:
Oh, heavenly father, you know how in this life, I am not a man but a woman and I deal with certain things. Well, I found a brother I wanted to know better, but he took it as an opportunity to show off how important his sex life was to him. You know, just like scads of others did in the past.
Heavenly Father:
Ah, well. That is a pity. Did you take the opportunity to recite I, Being born a Woman...?
Earthly Daughter:
Not a bad idea! I never did that before either, did I?
Heavenly Father:
Ho ho ho! Poetry for the Chicken Soup Lover's Soul.
my body will be up for going on a very nice nature hike (like it did just last week!) because it will not be all achey, and I will not be frantically injesting liquids and anti-inflammatory foods in between naps and hoping that if I have to reschedule dental work I can do so in a very short amount of time...
sad to be sick. Achey upper body & shoulders, sad cough, chest, tired of this already, it's almost like a grief experience. I want some kind of white light energy to sweep over and free me from the illness / make me better.
to go towards that soul- healing work. On the physical level: take care of throat chest cold cough and dental work (not fun to loose fillings, get better, try to recover and not miss that appointment...) When you want to sing to yourself, your body, and to others with whom you were not exactly on the same page, the most hopeful songs (and take a break from cynicism) listen. What is healthy going to look like for you? Heal your health, your heart, your body, and find balance.
Then I looked up the two women. The Google results had name & "weight loss" for one and name & "hot feminist" for the other. Sigh. Body facism exists. I wasn't happier at size 8 (could insert various stories about why not here but I have no desire to relive them.) I suppose others were happier with my size, but I don't find that liberating. There are numerous opportunities for being healthy that are not apparently registering on some people's radars.
My throat is feeling tight so I hope I don't get sick.
After going through things (originally La Luz was in the background)
Chastity Belt ~ Drone
~~~~~
Probably will have to listen to more...
"Gather your crystals, because the sophomore album by Seattle post-punk
quartet Chastity Belt fluoresces like a neon sign for a $10 palm read...lyrics veer from crass realizations like “Everything’s a joke” to repurposing a Sheila Heiti quote for the chorus of 'Drone.'"
Massage Therapist 1: "No women today." Massage Therapist 2: "All our lady therapists are home with period cramps." Massage Therapist 1: "They synchronized their cycles."
I would like to try to ease your suffering... have muscle relaxers, I have Epsom salts I can make into a pack, I can boil water for tea... (Just let me be...)
Fine, Mother Mary comes to me...
Widowed medieval utilizes her literacy to pen admiring Ode to Mentally I'll King...Centuries later, reincarnated troubadour clarifies you ain't all that unless you get pregnant...
Around all those people who don't want to hear what you have to say because they're brought up to expect praise for behaviors that you experience as prejudicial and unhealthy. Sexism as benign neglect. Disinterest in what any woman has to say about critiquing all those little actions and messages about gender roles.
It's just another day... (according to Paul.)
Cynical on the way in...stopped 2 x to go the bathroom...both times, 2 or 3 dudes talking to each other stopped and silently watched. I'm sorry, I didn't know my entrance would be so fascinating. What the hell were you talking about that made you have to shut up when my presence appeared, vaginas? Trudged and worried about the dark and made up a small negative song (to the tune of "I'm a Lumberjack") about gender dynamics in Hollywood: "I'm a chauvinist and I'm okay, I work all night and earn karma all day, society doesn't expect more so why should I change? I'm a chauvinist, I'll still get paid." Also, each time that thing happened with the guys, I had serious thoughts about turning back. But I kept going. I said, if I can just get there by 4:30, it won't be too dark to walk back. I was passing groups of girls and they were friendly. "Hi!" they said. Truth. All girls. Young. Passed a final group of girls and then...rocks and white cliff-face and waterfall. It was quiet and pristine. It was my first view of these particular falls, and I had the place all to myself. I breathed in cleansing ions for about ten minutes then headed back. Mood on the way out: very good. I stopped at a cabin and talked to a man and a woman about the area. He gave me a lot of helpful suggestions. I only passed a few people on the way back and they all looked happy. I was slow and took pictures of my surroundings. I didn't feel perfect, but I felt much better.
Don't forget the power of nature walks.
I was only looking up the first story, but the second one came up underneath...Well, why not check that one out too?
"I’m a wheelchair user: a visibly,
physically disabled woman. And my wheelchair acts as a strange sort of
forcefield. People register 'disabled' before they register 'woman' and
the former always overrides the latter, because in our ableist society, a
disabled body is necessarily a desexualized one."
"When you get down to it, Drake is like a
lot of men, in that he has a hard time seeing women as the main
characters in their own story, as opposed to being minor characters in
his."
dreamt I met an older man in a coffee shop / pharmacy type place who was interested in what I had to say and started to throw money at me...he wrote large checks and gave me a thousand dollar bill (do those exist in real life?)...then he all of a sudden grabbed me and started aggressively spraying perfume in my face...it was like a weird inverse of a girl pepper-spraying somebody...then I wrestled away from him and he started apologizing...
Then I woke up, but if had spoken back to the text I'd say the following: 1) I really don't think "respect" has much to do with it. 2) Are you one of those guys who used to be out of shape and now you can't stand the idea of going back? In my experience, those can be the worst about judging women on physical appearances. 3) Lynne Cox, the non-petite athletic swimmer 4) I'm not gonna let your attitude ruin my ability to enjoy exercise (hiking, swimming, pilates, yoga, maybe do a 5 k or walk a half marathon)...okay four things are enough...
It's cool that youtube gives you access to a variety of female musical artists (unlike when I was a kid, and MTV was dominated by male artists and their particular views of women.) Those songs are also fun sometimes, but it's just not enough for me to be exposed only to them.
"A close female equivalent to the Instagram husband would be the band wife/girlfriend. While the Instagram husband is a totally new invention, the musician’s girlfriend goes way back, and there’s tons of advice for her out there; most of it involves telling her how to not get in his way."
the waking up moment that was like, yeah, you're not a young guy, you don't have to be, you're also not a woman who wants to "fit in" with young guys (some are) and that's fine, and also you know that not all young guys are the same either, but sometimes there's something about a group of them that's more obnoxious then one-on-one...and yet we all have the ability to be a dick (guys, girls, etc.) in conclusion try a little tenderness, guys on girls, girls on each other, me...
It's less likely to make me throw up than a crazy action film.
What else is one to do about scary dreams, and why they exist...Plus, New England nostalgia...
being that guy or girl who just sees a bunch of dudes drinking and laughing and goofing off and thinking "oh, that's just a bunch of happy-go-lucky dudes drinking and laughing and goofing off! nothing whatsoever to worry about here!"
who wants to tell me how cool it was that day I kept my shit together when some female police officer in training who was my coworker told me she thought that women who wore slutty clothes and got raped were asking for it...and I even said "I don't agree with you" and she said "well I don't know if I agree with me either..." Yeah...Also, when I heard some girl talking about how her friend "gets roofied a lot; she's so dumb" and clarified that this friend just goes home and wakes up with a bad headache when this happens, I didn't beat anyone...
The man's methods...positively stepfatherly... "'Rosemary Kennedy, the third of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose's nine children, was one of the most striking of all the Kennedy daughters. Yet in Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, excerpted in this week's PEOPLE, author Kate Clifford Larson depicts a vivacious and curvy beauty with a 'perfect smile' who was always on a diet to please her strict parents.
Once, after she put on a few pounds during the winter months,
Rosemary, who was intellectually disabled, wrote to her father from
boarding school, knowing he disapproved. 'I am so fond of you,' she
wrote in her childish script. 'Sorry. to think that I am fat. you.
think.' Joe responded to the school: 'She is getting all together too
fat and I told her in no uncertain terms.'"
"I've always been used to
people—strangers—making a fuss over Tallie. Even at five months old, she
was quite engaging. But before I could smile or utter a proud 'Thank
you,' the woman continued effusively, 'Look at those fat thighs! Me, oh
my! Enjoy it now, honey. It's the only time fat is cute.' Then she
laughed, and a woman nearby nodded in agreement.
I was thinking,
of course, that the woman was an idiot. Not malicious. Just clueless. As
far as I was concerned, she may as well have said, 'Fat is bad, bad
little girl, and you'd better learn it now!'
Taken aback, I
simply responded, 'She's a really healthy baby and doing well! We're so
glad.' I wish I had said more before she smiled and continued on her
way, with absolutely no recognition that what she had said was the least
bit offensive. Fat-bashing in all its varied forms—criticism,
exclusion, shaming, fat talk, self-deprecation, jokes, gossip,
bullying—is one of the last acceptable forms of prejudice. From a very
young age, before they can walk away or defend themselves, women are
taught that they are how they look, not what they do or what they know.
Drawing attention to a woman's 'assets' is usually the stuff of tabloid
fodder, accompanied with a compulsory snicker or 'wink, wink.' Butt.
Boobs. Legs. Think Betty Grable famously insuring her legs for a cool
million, or the more current Mariah Carey upping the ante to a whopping
$1 billion. The message is clear: A girl's body, stripped down to its 'perfect' parts, slapped with price tags, carries a higher value than
anything else she possesses."
At Target the janitor was cleaning the bathroom and me and an older woman and a young woman with a skateboard were bemoaning the fact and the older woman said just use the men's and I said we could all go in together and skateboard girl said, fuck it, girl power, but then only she and I went in and the older woman hung back, and we came out and informed her the facility was unusable and then the janitor let us into the women's room.
Tried to watch You Can't Go In There but the video would not load so went back and watched Rated X but then the captions for You Can't Go In There were playing on the bottom of the Rated X video!
blah blah blah someone's a Duke, blah blah blah got a girlfriend but time to marry a teenager, blah blah blah wife made me get rid of girlfriend, tried to be nice about it and marry her off (why the fuck do I have this much power, no wonder I am almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown) blah blah blah got a new girlfriend because I could, ha ha ha! Blah blah blah oh Death & Misery! Fuck that life.
maybe sometimes an "old miserable ghost story" is actually like a baby and you just have to be nice to it and patient and let it grow up in its own way...
Living yet sick to death of the morbid old ghost story that acts like a an ailing creature digging in its agonizing claws...ugh. Never again, ever. Maybe a story that makes a person that miserable is asking to die. I would not doubt it at all. It wants to die, become food for worms, and fertilize vegetables but it's still flailing about and howling horribly. Woe is it.
Venn Diagram Idea:
Circle of things that make Person A happy and fulfill Person A's life purpose.
Circle of things that make Person B happy and fulfill Person B's life purpose.
What is in the middle.
is just extreme sport feminist revision of song lyrics!!! a.k.a. there's no some sex competitive jealousy in your violence extreme sport feminism (revised "everything zen") he's a new world man feminist (revised "new world man")HA Ha. Oh what the music does to my brain feminism.
"I think my body is almost like the average man's. Except, bigger hips/bra size, more indentation at waist. A thinner neck. BROADER shoulders, actually..."
I have a skein that has fallen apart into three chunks. The last two are more or less together (like two messy mini-skeins) but the one closest to my work is knotted and tangled. I keep trying to untangle the knots but it doesn't work and I have to just knit up to it and let it unravel.
I still find it odd that whole segments of the population are
expected to change their names when they grow up. If half the women
changed their names and half the men changed their names, that would
seem equal, but that's usually not what happens.
what if there's lots of people in the world who are highly successful at making money but they've had to cram themselves into a certain system and in order to become successful they have had to squelch their feminine side too much, which makes them kind of sick, but not obviously, but like a functioning alcoholic can still function, yet the overuse of alcohol will not be kind on the body and it might also affect certain other aspects of life...
"Until biases are made visible and we find creative ways to neutralize
them, unconscious bias will trump conscious values, resulting in
well-meaning people inadvertently perpetuating the status quo."
does she maybe have an eating disorder? or does she just really enjoy smashing her face against bread and that's okay? questions to observe as you navigate to instagram...
possible outcomes:
"finally, she had the funds, so she ran away to a lesbian feminist cult and founded a bank on the isle of yoni worship"
OR BETTER: A HOSPITAL!!!!
Yeah. You fight for what is Right and Best:
"The women made no more than $1,800 a season while the team rakes in $256 million in yearly revenue, the case states.
The Bills plan to appeal the ruling, according to a spokesperson.
now you are going to make yourself go outside and go do stuff; you're an adult... also, not tiny and hooked up to machines and dependent on others for your survival
Many a successful artist has shared this or the equivalent: "Just because you go through hard things doesn't mean you made good art..." a statement which, in and of itself, despite or maybe because it has been so oft repeated, could almost be art...
And so are these.
When it was dark, there was a dream.
Child's voice: But it's not fair.
Elder voice: Let's see what the world has to offer.
It feels like meditation is coming. The mountains are coming. There are energies from the mountains that are going to make their pathways inside of peoples' homes.
The fluid tears are here again. Yourself in your things, tiny baby in NICU, another baby's daddy in a hospital for tests, and the pretense of it's all okay falls away. Then rebuild, of course, but no doubt the tears will return. More is to come. Tears are here for reasons.