I have been feeling inadequately queer since returning to school this year. I don't know why. Is more of my social circle straight? I don't think so. Most of my friends haven't changed, although I have no classes in the SWG department, and so see fewer members of that community. But still, I haven't changed in any definable way, and neither has my social circle really. But there are things which feel markedly different.
The other day there was an article about short hair in the school newspaper. This interested me because it was discussed from the perspective of a hetero woman who was identifying short hair with a kind of intellectual, mature freedom, something she had rejected as a child as masculine and unattractive, but was learning to understand differently. I cut my hair this summer, but it is still markedly longer than a number of my friends, and is not in any way the stereotypical shop. It is a longer than chin length asymmetrical cut with bangs that I pair with braids and bows and clips. My clothing and style is girly and I love it. But I feel overlooked in this critical part of my identity.
There is definitely an aspect of discussion that is marked by this idea that your sexuality is not your only or most important identity, so why get so caught up in it? Because it's hard enough to claim and it sucks to be invisible. And right now I feel kind of invisible. Maybe I just am tired of being single. Maybe I'm having a new year flash of insecurity. But I don't feel queer enough, no matter what I do lately. There is no social context which seems to fit my need for that community. I'm just not sure what to make of it.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Overlooked and Under-protected, Over-legislated and Under-aided
One of the topics that makes it into the women and queer studies curriculum at my school at only a marginal level are topics like sex work. We discuss them in radical contexts, examine the ramifications of sex work in queer communities, how it has been used in organizing, how it played out in things like butch-femme relationships, etc. But for the most part, modern sex work doesn't get talked about a lot. Recently, though, I've run into a lot of articles on different sites about legislation and changes in the existing "structure" of sex work.
The first article I read was on Mother Jones (read it here). $pread, a sex worker magazine, is entirely run by people in the industry and provides a critical and honest location for tips, support, and other information. This is insider information and allows sex workers to address both the stereotypes and the truths of what they do. One of the topics that this article brought up was a recent controversy regarding Craiglist and the use of Craigslist for "adult services." The particular question asked to one of the main folks at $pread was "Could you explain why you consider Craigslist to be "one of the most equalizing forces in the sex industry in generations"?" It was answered in regard to the fact that this stopped being true when it suddenly cost money to post ads. This became a considerable economic block, and one which in turn reduced the safety of people who could no longer advertise there and had no means to otherwise screen clients, left now to the streets and sheer luck. Craigslist had provided autonomy and safety in one neat package - sex workers could post and add and screen their clients, able then to do things like voice verifications and email exchanges without having to depend on agencies which drained them financially. Now, folks in sex-work are even more cut-off in the face of a recent Craigslist decision.
I was reading Huffington Post today and found this. Craigslist has, for all intents and purposes, removed its adult services section. In it's place (and I went and looked) is just a black rectangle bearing the white text of the word "Censored." Now there isn't even the option to use Craigslist with payment. It's just gone. The accusation against Craigslist was that it was acting as an intermediary in illegal activity by not screening or blocking ads in this section. The question is, though, what is more important: preventing an intermediary from existing for an industry that exists and isn't going anywhere or allowing that intermediary to exist such that the same industry can at least exist safely? If people are still going to engage in sex work, and they will because the people who do primarily do so out of economic necessity, then why make it more dangerous? You can't legislate it away, and legislating it into the tenuous margins of society only succeeds in recentering the debate when it is revealed that the dangers are so great.
That's what Canada, where sex work is putatively legal (but essentially not legal) has found in the face of some of it's new laws for the industry after a spate of murders. Salon posted on Thursday about Canada's new laws that even more explicitly prevent a lot of the safety structures - groups, "bawdy houses", etc - that made sex work safer. The community that could protect each other by moving in a group with clients picked up in ways allowing for screening is basically eliminated by this legislation which makes the penalties for basically any identifiable form of sex work greater - longer jail terms, removal of children from custody (because these people are trying to support their children and have money to raise them). One of the scarier things to me is that police will be able to pick up people believed to be engaging in sex work without having a warrant, one of the most basic tools of protection against "law enforcement" and the often racist and classist policies that go along with arrests.
So how do we make prostitution safer, if even in places where it is technically legal it is incredibly dangerous? Part of it has to do with listening. Just listening. The spate of sex worker killings in Canada went on as long as it did because police refused to listen to tips from other local people in the industry. We have an obligation to provide safety. The only people being hurt by sex work as it is structured now, are the workers, the people who should be protected. They are not the dangerous ones. They provide a service that in turn provides them with money to eat, clothe, and shelter themselves and their children. But sex-shaming morality triumphs here such that the moral obligation to provide safe working conditions, to protect people from basic bodily harm, is overruled. The moral law that sex is bad becomes more important than the one that says putting others in danger is bad. How does that benefit anyone?
The first article I read was on Mother Jones (read it here). $pread, a sex worker magazine, is entirely run by people in the industry and provides a critical and honest location for tips, support, and other information. This is insider information and allows sex workers to address both the stereotypes and the truths of what they do. One of the topics that this article brought up was a recent controversy regarding Craiglist and the use of Craigslist for "adult services." The particular question asked to one of the main folks at $pread was "Could you explain why you consider Craigslist to be "one of the most equalizing forces in the sex industry in generations"?" It was answered in regard to the fact that this stopped being true when it suddenly cost money to post ads. This became a considerable economic block, and one which in turn reduced the safety of people who could no longer advertise there and had no means to otherwise screen clients, left now to the streets and sheer luck. Craigslist had provided autonomy and safety in one neat package - sex workers could post and add and screen their clients, able then to do things like voice verifications and email exchanges without having to depend on agencies which drained them financially. Now, folks in sex-work are even more cut-off in the face of a recent Craigslist decision.
I was reading Huffington Post today and found this. Craigslist has, for all intents and purposes, removed its adult services section. In it's place (and I went and looked) is just a black rectangle bearing the white text of the word "Censored." Now there isn't even the option to use Craigslist with payment. It's just gone. The accusation against Craigslist was that it was acting as an intermediary in illegal activity by not screening or blocking ads in this section. The question is, though, what is more important: preventing an intermediary from existing for an industry that exists and isn't going anywhere or allowing that intermediary to exist such that the same industry can at least exist safely? If people are still going to engage in sex work, and they will because the people who do primarily do so out of economic necessity, then why make it more dangerous? You can't legislate it away, and legislating it into the tenuous margins of society only succeeds in recentering the debate when it is revealed that the dangers are so great.
That's what Canada, where sex work is putatively legal (but essentially not legal) has found in the face of some of it's new laws for the industry after a spate of murders. Salon posted on Thursday about Canada's new laws that even more explicitly prevent a lot of the safety structures - groups, "bawdy houses", etc - that made sex work safer. The community that could protect each other by moving in a group with clients picked up in ways allowing for screening is basically eliminated by this legislation which makes the penalties for basically any identifiable form of sex work greater - longer jail terms, removal of children from custody (because these people are trying to support their children and have money to raise them). One of the scarier things to me is that police will be able to pick up people believed to be engaging in sex work without having a warrant, one of the most basic tools of protection against "law enforcement" and the often racist and classist policies that go along with arrests.
So how do we make prostitution safer, if even in places where it is technically legal it is incredibly dangerous? Part of it has to do with listening. Just listening. The spate of sex worker killings in Canada went on as long as it did because police refused to listen to tips from other local people in the industry. We have an obligation to provide safety. The only people being hurt by sex work as it is structured now, are the workers, the people who should be protected. They are not the dangerous ones. They provide a service that in turn provides them with money to eat, clothe, and shelter themselves and their children. But sex-shaming morality triumphs here such that the moral obligation to provide safe working conditions, to protect people from basic bodily harm, is overruled. The moral law that sex is bad becomes more important than the one that says putting others in danger is bad. How does that benefit anyone?
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Survey data and contradictions
Read this.
Or don't. Basically it says that most teenagers are friends with their parents on Facebook. On top of this fact, it then follows that about 40% of parents required their children to friend them in order to have an account. And another group of parents made their children unfriend certain people.
I found this all very interesting as an example of the control parents exert of their children's lives. I recognize that there are different challenges to raising a child in the age of the internet. But I feel like it's been a long time since parents have known all of their children's friends. It's been quite a while since kids all played in the street together and everyone came over for fruit punch. That's not how things go.
On the same note, children in the past, as evidenced by things like the "Take Your Kids to the Park and Leave Them There" concept, had more freedom to do things on their own. They could wander and play in the park and whatever else with those communities of friends.
The same mother who I am not friends with on facebook also got called out by a neighbor for smoking in the park as a young teen.
In this I do see the recognition of small communities, of the neighborhood ethic that kept kids out of trouble, but there is also plenty of trouble my mother got into that wasn't witnessed and how different is that trouble from what kids today might get up to on the internet. Especially the youngest kids on facebook and similar sites - they've been brought up in an age where they know the potential dangers. This isn't a new, foreign technology. We are internet natives and we speak the language, know enough of the etiquette.
When my mother was planning to get a facebook, she called me first. I'd been on the site for about 2 years at that point, and she called and said to me, "I just want you to know that I'm getting a facebook and we're not going to be friends." This was her way of expressing trust, of saying that she didn't need to know everything I was doing on the internet. Yes, I was in colege by that point, but I was only 15 or 16 when I first joined the site and she had made no move to get on. And before that I was in one of the early waves of myspace users, the sketchiest of "networking" sites.
My mother actually draws strict lines between our mutual contacts. We share about 6 mutual friends, although there are certainly far more people that we have in common. One of our other major lines of separation is her brother. I'm friends with him. She's not. She knows it's a relationship I value and she has friended his wife instead. It keeps a layer of separation between she and I in the internet world.
As for making your children unfriend people, that was particularly interesting to me. How involved are you that you know enough about someone your child is facebook friends with, who apparently isn't their real life friend (because I assume they would be approved then), that you know they should unfriend them. On a day when I was actually home recently, a rare occasion, I got a friend request under an unfamiliar name. We had one mutual friend, a writer/performer I've known for a few years. This women was also a queer performance artist. I looked over her page, considered who our mutual friend was, even who some of the other names in her friends list were that I might know. I friended her. This is social networking for a reason. I don't know this woman, but she could be a potentially useful contact for me a young queer writer. I played through this process with my mother in the kitchen, debating it. She agreed with me. Yes, friend this unknown woman. Yes. She's never even met the mutual friend we share. But my mother has only really met about two dozen of my friends. This can't be a criteria.
When these kids are older, in college and what not, will the parents loosen their grip enough to let them unfriend each other?
Or don't. Basically it says that most teenagers are friends with their parents on Facebook. On top of this fact, it then follows that about 40% of parents required their children to friend them in order to have an account. And another group of parents made their children unfriend certain people.
I found this all very interesting as an example of the control parents exert of their children's lives. I recognize that there are different challenges to raising a child in the age of the internet. But I feel like it's been a long time since parents have known all of their children's friends. It's been quite a while since kids all played in the street together and everyone came over for fruit punch. That's not how things go.
On the same note, children in the past, as evidenced by things like the "Take Your Kids to the Park and Leave Them There" concept, had more freedom to do things on their own. They could wander and play in the park and whatever else with those communities of friends.
The same mother who I am not friends with on facebook also got called out by a neighbor for smoking in the park as a young teen.
In this I do see the recognition of small communities, of the neighborhood ethic that kept kids out of trouble, but there is also plenty of trouble my mother got into that wasn't witnessed and how different is that trouble from what kids today might get up to on the internet. Especially the youngest kids on facebook and similar sites - they've been brought up in an age where they know the potential dangers. This isn't a new, foreign technology. We are internet natives and we speak the language, know enough of the etiquette.
When my mother was planning to get a facebook, she called me first. I'd been on the site for about 2 years at that point, and she called and said to me, "I just want you to know that I'm getting a facebook and we're not going to be friends." This was her way of expressing trust, of saying that she didn't need to know everything I was doing on the internet. Yes, I was in colege by that point, but I was only 15 or 16 when I first joined the site and she had made no move to get on. And before that I was in one of the early waves of myspace users, the sketchiest of "networking" sites.
My mother actually draws strict lines between our mutual contacts. We share about 6 mutual friends, although there are certainly far more people that we have in common. One of our other major lines of separation is her brother. I'm friends with him. She's not. She knows it's a relationship I value and she has friended his wife instead. It keeps a layer of separation between she and I in the internet world.
As for making your children unfriend people, that was particularly interesting to me. How involved are you that you know enough about someone your child is facebook friends with, who apparently isn't their real life friend (because I assume they would be approved then), that you know they should unfriend them. On a day when I was actually home recently, a rare occasion, I got a friend request under an unfamiliar name. We had one mutual friend, a writer/performer I've known for a few years. This women was also a queer performance artist. I looked over her page, considered who our mutual friend was, even who some of the other names in her friends list were that I might know. I friended her. This is social networking for a reason. I don't know this woman, but she could be a potentially useful contact for me a young queer writer. I played through this process with my mother in the kitchen, debating it. She agreed with me. Yes, friend this unknown woman. Yes. She's never even met the mutual friend we share. But my mother has only really met about two dozen of my friends. This can't be a criteria.
When these kids are older, in college and what not, will the parents loosen their grip enough to let them unfriend each other?
Reasons to Follow Your Gut
1. Instinct
2. Subconscious intelligence (probably the same thing as 1)
3. Messages from fairy
4. Your high E string will snap under your fingers if you don't.
Yesterday I gave myself a blister playing guitar. This has not been an unusual event this summer. But when I sat down to play last night, I went gee, if I want to play this at school this year, I should get the strings changed. They're looking worn out. The steel just seemed cruddy and shredded up a little and there was something about the tension in the string that didn't match the tuning I was hearing. I don't know. But I played last night, double checked the tuning, put it away, bandaged up my thumb, nursed the skin at the edges of my fingers where I hold down the chords.
Today, similar routine. Home from work, dinner, pajamas, guitar. I played through "Swimming to the Other Side" a few times, recorded and critiqued and considered what I needed to work on. I played it again, stumbled over the second verse because I couldn't see all the words and the chords based on the way that the page was positioned. I adjusted and started playing again.
And then my high E string snapped. And that was the end of that.
I am excited about being able to play things well enough for sing alongs this year. Bonnie got me in a groove with it during senior week. I look forward to that particular community created in song. This one came from Tree, but there are so many others that are part of a shared sense of who we are, so many musicians loved by my group of friends that we hold dear. And I want the chance for us to sing them together. I've spent this summer working towards that.
2. Subconscious intelligence (probably the same thing as 1)
3. Messages from fairy
4. Your high E string will snap under your fingers if you don't.
Yesterday I gave myself a blister playing guitar. This has not been an unusual event this summer. But when I sat down to play last night, I went gee, if I want to play this at school this year, I should get the strings changed. They're looking worn out. The steel just seemed cruddy and shredded up a little and there was something about the tension in the string that didn't match the tuning I was hearing. I don't know. But I played last night, double checked the tuning, put it away, bandaged up my thumb, nursed the skin at the edges of my fingers where I hold down the chords.
Today, similar routine. Home from work, dinner, pajamas, guitar. I played through "Swimming to the Other Side" a few times, recorded and critiqued and considered what I needed to work on. I played it again, stumbled over the second verse because I couldn't see all the words and the chords based on the way that the page was positioned. I adjusted and started playing again.
And then my high E string snapped. And that was the end of that.
I am excited about being able to play things well enough for sing alongs this year. Bonnie got me in a groove with it during senior week. I look forward to that particular community created in song. This one came from Tree, but there are so many others that are part of a shared sense of who we are, so many musicians loved by my group of friends that we hold dear. And I want the chance for us to sing them together. I've spent this summer working towards that.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Tracking, Leveling, and Other Systems
I complain a lot about New York City's public education system. I do this in the context of someone who spent all 13 years of their education in that system, someone from a family that has been going to some of the same schools for generations (My great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother all went to the same high school. My grandfather, mother, my sisters and I all went to the same elementary school). I know a fair deal about the changes that this system has undergone in the last few decades from various anecdotes about what my mother learned in school (she started elementary school in the early 1970s), to what I learned (starting in 1995), to what my middle sister does now (going into 4th grade in 2010). We've watched the changes in structure and expectations of learning.
One of the things that I have a tendency to yell often and loudly about is tracking. When I was in elementary school, the schools were still tracking. I went through school with almost the exact same set of kids for the first 5 years of education (well, starting in 1st grade). I then went to middle school with many of the same kids, plus kids from another school district and I continued to be tracked. This system worked for me. I was a fast learner who went to schools that didn't have gifted programs. I was almost always bored. But without tracking I knew I would be even more frustrated. I could at least be certain that my classmates would pick up the topic eventually, even if it took them another few days. And in the meantime, I would read my book. Additionally, I knew I could be assured of having a few friends in my class every year. As a kid with poor social skills and only a few friends, who was often the subject of bullying by my classmates, I couldn't afford to be unmoored from my support system of friends.
My middle sister hasn't been tracked. Our elementary school has changed to a system in which instead of tracking, kids are grouped within their classes by ability, but the classes are mixed. My sister is clearly a different kid than I was and she likes this system. But she also doesn't much care for school in general and has friends in many different grades (I never knew a single kid in another grade until basically high school, with maybe 2 exceptions outside of church friends). She is social and a quick learner, but not as quick as I was/am. I don't know what it looks like to be taught in that structure, but I do have a certain understanding of how kids self group. In middle school, I was put into an ability grouping within my honors class, with three other high performing students. We did the same work, but at a different level because of our internal community and our sense that we were more able. There aren't enough kids doing the same thing for some of the kids in my sister's class for that to happen (this past year, the highest reading group was only 2 kids).
What has me thinking about this again is this article. If you're going to mix ability groupings, why not mix ages? I regret that I do not come from an educational background where I was not permitted or pushed to skip a grade or two, because, as the article highlights, kids learning at higher levels also often socialize with older kids because they have more in common with them. Particularly age groupings created through a multi-year educational programs that allow kids to finish them in the time it takes - a three year program that kids can finish in 2,3, or 4 years for example. If you're going to break kids down, why not create larger units of kids prepared for a skill across ages, rather than limit them to small ability grouping within ages?
Okay, so this is still tracking. But it allows for a different kind of social integration and is more fine tuned. When you're creating leveled classes like the structure I was educated in, there is still going to be a wide ability range. You only have so many kids to choose from, to make it happen. This seems so much more finely tuned to children's learning needs. Teach them when they're ready. Readiness is a predictor of success in so many ways. It keeps the slower learners from being discouraged the faster learners from being held back. There is only so fast my sister can move in a class of mixed ability. There was only so fast I could move in a tracked setting, even if I was allowed to be taught things faster or earlier as a class. But it seems like ability grouping would be more flexible in allowing children to move through them at their own pace, so that readiness might change the group structure, but not impede the growth of the child.
One of the things that I have a tendency to yell often and loudly about is tracking. When I was in elementary school, the schools were still tracking. I went through school with almost the exact same set of kids for the first 5 years of education (well, starting in 1st grade). I then went to middle school with many of the same kids, plus kids from another school district and I continued to be tracked. This system worked for me. I was a fast learner who went to schools that didn't have gifted programs. I was almost always bored. But without tracking I knew I would be even more frustrated. I could at least be certain that my classmates would pick up the topic eventually, even if it took them another few days. And in the meantime, I would read my book. Additionally, I knew I could be assured of having a few friends in my class every year. As a kid with poor social skills and only a few friends, who was often the subject of bullying by my classmates, I couldn't afford to be unmoored from my support system of friends.
My middle sister hasn't been tracked. Our elementary school has changed to a system in which instead of tracking, kids are grouped within their classes by ability, but the classes are mixed. My sister is clearly a different kid than I was and she likes this system. But she also doesn't much care for school in general and has friends in many different grades (I never knew a single kid in another grade until basically high school, with maybe 2 exceptions outside of church friends). She is social and a quick learner, but not as quick as I was/am. I don't know what it looks like to be taught in that structure, but I do have a certain understanding of how kids self group. In middle school, I was put into an ability grouping within my honors class, with three other high performing students. We did the same work, but at a different level because of our internal community and our sense that we were more able. There aren't enough kids doing the same thing for some of the kids in my sister's class for that to happen (this past year, the highest reading group was only 2 kids).
What has me thinking about this again is this article. If you're going to mix ability groupings, why not mix ages? I regret that I do not come from an educational background where I was not permitted or pushed to skip a grade or two, because, as the article highlights, kids learning at higher levels also often socialize with older kids because they have more in common with them. Particularly age groupings created through a multi-year educational programs that allow kids to finish them in the time it takes - a three year program that kids can finish in 2,3, or 4 years for example. If you're going to break kids down, why not create larger units of kids prepared for a skill across ages, rather than limit them to small ability grouping within ages?
Okay, so this is still tracking. But it allows for a different kind of social integration and is more fine tuned. When you're creating leveled classes like the structure I was educated in, there is still going to be a wide ability range. You only have so many kids to choose from, to make it happen. This seems so much more finely tuned to children's learning needs. Teach them when they're ready. Readiness is a predictor of success in so many ways. It keeps the slower learners from being discouraged the faster learners from being held back. There is only so fast my sister can move in a class of mixed ability. There was only so fast I could move in a tracked setting, even if I was allowed to be taught things faster or earlier as a class. But it seems like ability grouping would be more flexible in allowing children to move through them at their own pace, so that readiness might change the group structure, but not impede the growth of the child.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Return
I think I'm going to return to this blog with a new premise. I was using it as a sight of observational pleasure, but internal and external observation. But sunrise has other meanings. The shedding of light on what was hidden before. Sight and realization in other forms. I have things I want to say, ideas on a lot of different topics to explore. So here I am again. Or will be. So let's go.
I have a post on educational policy coming. Give me a little bit.
I have a post on educational policy coming. Give me a little bit.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Cold Skin
I am clinging to the cusp of new. My room is a train wreck because I don't want to clean it; I just want to move out. Things slowly shift to my grandmother's house: some photographs, a pile of books, a towel. My clothes are all still here, though hardly any are put away. It's hard to move because I've been doing it by hand, a bag or box at a time. I could do it faster, but I just want to pile some stuff in the car I don't have and can't drive and get it over there. I tried to go by bike, but my tire is flat and it's uphill and I don't have anywhere to bungee a box on. So I keep walking and carrying, snagging a lift when my mom is headed the few blocks over. But I'm going.
In between I bake and read. In between I pretend everything works. I want someone to laugh with, someone to hug. All of this is missing. When I say the words "Welcome home," that's what it means. That there is no one.
But still, the leaves outside my window are broad. The windows in this room are what I will miss most when I move to my grandmother's basement. The windows here are glorious. 6 of them, trees creeping into the attic space. Light everywhere. The basement is dim with only a few high windows, although it lets out onto the back porch and a wide backyard. I will need to get out. I will need to breathe the air.
One day I will watch a sunrise. One day I will remember that there's still a chance. Today is not that day.
In between I bake and read. In between I pretend everything works. I want someone to laugh with, someone to hug. All of this is missing. When I say the words "Welcome home," that's what it means. That there is no one.
But still, the leaves outside my window are broad. The windows in this room are what I will miss most when I move to my grandmother's basement. The windows here are glorious. 6 of them, trees creeping into the attic space. Light everywhere. The basement is dim with only a few high windows, although it lets out onto the back porch and a wide backyard. I will need to get out. I will need to breathe the air.
One day I will watch a sunrise. One day I will remember that there's still a chance. Today is not that day.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Some Smile
Spring. Spring again. This campus comes undeniably into bloom, but I am feeling less and less like flowers. I remind myself over and over that I am on the brink of change. Movement. But there is something undeniably missing. Some sense of wholeness, and I've torn open an old wound that was doing so well. Maybe?
But the light slips in and we climb trees. My arms and legs are scraped like childhood. The days sit heavy. I fall asleep in the heat of my sweater. I roll down hills. I wonder how she can make it look so easy.
I have never found it easy. But I have never let go either.
But the light slips in and we climb trees. My arms and legs are scraped like childhood. The days sit heavy. I fall asleep in the heat of my sweater. I roll down hills. I wonder how she can make it look so easy.
I have never found it easy. But I have never let go either.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Bird Feathers
We go to see Andrea Gibson perform and for an hour I panic with her brilliance, with the trauma and love of her words. She speaks every painful subject with beauty and grace and emotions that I am afraid to feel unless she will give me the words and you will hold my hands. Even though I can barely feel my hands. Even though I can barely feel them, I grip my pen and scribble the lines and words that strike me alongside their free-associations and responses. I listen and recite under my breath and afterward, when we are calmer, we approach her, speak, and hug. Peace.
I watch someone else across the room and try to read her face. You hold my hands and I hold yours at the times when we can feel the other needs it most. We know what hurts. We know what to touch and when. I know that certain words break you just like you know certain words will snap me in two. And we respond and breathe and trust. Not so hard as last year, but never easy.
A friend approaches us after. Are you both okay? Yes. Yes we are okay. We are more than okay. We are a lot of things, and now she's seen us cry. She's seen you touch my wrist when Andrea Gibson speaks of suicide, watched us grip each other in reassurance over and over again. She saw and understands just a little more and I take comfort.
And now, two days later, it's hard to believe we sat in that room. Sat three feet away from her when she traded the stage briefly. Hugged her at the end of the night. When home and slept and woke up the next day and hardly anyone could tell that things were different.
I watch someone else across the room and try to read her face. You hold my hands and I hold yours at the times when we can feel the other needs it most. We know what hurts. We know what to touch and when. I know that certain words break you just like you know certain words will snap me in two. And we respond and breathe and trust. Not so hard as last year, but never easy.
A friend approaches us after. Are you both okay? Yes. Yes we are okay. We are more than okay. We are a lot of things, and now she's seen us cry. She's seen you touch my wrist when Andrea Gibson speaks of suicide, watched us grip each other in reassurance over and over again. She saw and understands just a little more and I take comfort.
And now, two days later, it's hard to believe we sat in that room. Sat three feet away from her when she traded the stage briefly. Hugged her at the end of the night. When home and slept and woke up the next day and hardly anyone could tell that things were different.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Dictionary: Touch
It's hard to capture our movement, the intimacy of the simple motions, of hands in contact with each other. Palms, fingers, backs of hands, wrists touching and shifting, arms crossing and uncrossing without losing contact. Slowly we make our way so that we turn each other around, shift around each other, rolling, spinning, curling. We do not move our hands apart.
The intimacy and artistry of this are overwhelming. Her nail polish has sparkles embedded in it and her hands are a little smaller than mine, but a comfortable fit. They move in bright flashes, shifting, and I can't tell who is leading, or what is leading. Our eyes follow our hands. I follow. Everything continues to grow in emotion and energy as the music continues. We lose awareness of the people around us for a long time.
This is dancing. This is a new definition of as close as you can get to someone.
The intimacy and artistry of this are overwhelming. Her nail polish has sparkles embedded in it and her hands are a little smaller than mine, but a comfortable fit. They move in bright flashes, shifting, and I can't tell who is leading, or what is leading. Our eyes follow our hands. I follow. Everything continues to grow in emotion and energy as the music continues. We lose awareness of the people around us for a long time.
This is dancing. This is a new definition of as close as you can get to someone.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Ride
I'm sitting, preparing to face a decision I made while hypomanic. This happens to me sometimes when I'm depressed - I'll get anxious and hit a few weeks of sleeplessness and over-energized activity. My body is shaking. It was a good decision, but one I now feel out of control towards. I feel like it wasn't really me who invited my dance teacher over for tea. I'm excited but uncertain. Which me is which? Which has control? I often feel this way in the everyday, coming to life in dreams where I can feel more present in my body than in the hours and hours of waking.
Last night my dreams swirled and rose. The roads turned into rollercoasters and I worried about falling out, about losing my glasses. Why were there loops in the bridges and highways? No straight paths anywhere and I don't know where we were going. I guess that's what a lot of things are like. I remember the sensation of my dream self pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose as I went through a curve, the sensation of pressing down on a rollercoaster car, the bar in the front, as we made a sharp loop, the look of the expanse of road in front of me, appearing to undulate in its curves.
And we continued down it anyway, with all of the risk and daring. This is where I am. I placed myself on a dangerous road and now I'm going to pull it together, head up, and follow the path. It was still a road afterall, and not really a rollercoaster, which means that there will be turn offs and choices and forks. I'm not stuck. There are still plenty of choices.
Last night my dreams swirled and rose. The roads turned into rollercoasters and I worried about falling out, about losing my glasses. Why were there loops in the bridges and highways? No straight paths anywhere and I don't know where we were going. I guess that's what a lot of things are like. I remember the sensation of my dream self pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose as I went through a curve, the sensation of pressing down on a rollercoaster car, the bar in the front, as we made a sharp loop, the look of the expanse of road in front of me, appearing to undulate in its curves.
And we continued down it anyway, with all of the risk and daring. This is where I am. I placed myself on a dangerous road and now I'm going to pull it together, head up, and follow the path. It was still a road afterall, and not really a rollercoaster, which means that there will be turn offs and choices and forks. I'm not stuck. There are still plenty of choices.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Choices
I'm up to watch the sun rise lately, sleeping short hours only into early morning, rising at 5 and watching the sky turn light. The day always surprises me.
Not because I don't expect it to come, but simply because the day arrives in a part of the sky that isn't outside my window, but off to the side and back of where I can see. My bit of sky is always darker than the day, but it doesn't mean the sun isn't there, isn't headed that way.
In the late afternoons, the sun glares into my window, bright at 3:30 or so, over the water and low before sunset. It might be leaving, but I get to be there and decide whether to go with it or turn away, close the shades.
Not because I don't expect it to come, but simply because the day arrives in a part of the sky that isn't outside my window, but off to the side and back of where I can see. My bit of sky is always darker than the day, but it doesn't mean the sun isn't there, isn't headed that way.
In the late afternoons, the sun glares into my window, bright at 3:30 or so, over the water and low before sunset. It might be leaving, but I get to be there and decide whether to go with it or turn away, close the shades.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Dawn, Dusk, and Liminal Spaces
Trying to learn to appreciate the good without crashing into depression when it is over is a challenge. Joy, so much joy even in the small things, but it pulls itself out from under me with a particular violence. I spent three hours talking and making collages with a friend, but when she left, everything fell apart quietly, without me even noticing. Suddenly I realized I was just sitting on my bed, depressed. But I had been so happy and nothing had made me sad except the process of things changing themselves over.
Change is both the good and the bad. I was somewhere before my friend came over, but I easily transitioned into spending time with her. She came in with the good, brought it with her. But she also left with it and took it away. Why do others have this power.
Sunrises bring in the good, but do sunsets take it away? They are both beautiful, both begin something. All change is a beginning, but they don't all feel like one. How do I learn to hold the light in my hands, learn to see the the beginning? How do I learn to say "what now?" with hope instead of dismay?
Change is both the good and the bad. I was somewhere before my friend came over, but I easily transitioned into spending time with her. She came in with the good, brought it with her. But she also left with it and took it away. Why do others have this power.
Sunrises bring in the good, but do sunsets take it away? They are both beautiful, both begin something. All change is a beginning, but they don't all feel like one. How do I learn to hold the light in my hands, learn to see the the beginning? How do I learn to say "what now?" with hope instead of dismay?
Friday, January 1, 2010
Opening
I couldn't see the blue moon last night, the second full moon of the month.
I knew it wouldn't be any different from other full moons, that blue moons that actually look blue are the result of particles and chemicals, not their second appearance in 30 or 31 days. But I know that this moon pulls always at my body and I'm a romantic for natural second chances. Not the kind that come by way of human forgiveness or because they are earned, but the accident of being allowed to try again.
Cycles, everywhere, cycles. The cycles right now of home are not the ones my body runs on. In a few days I return to the cycles of school which will not be the usual, but closer. I always follow the cycles of the moon, listen in to my body and the ocean swaying.
Second chances come and sometimes I miss them. Sometimes I miss myself, the way I was before. Before is a time we can't quite place, only that it is not now. There are befores that I do not miss and ones I yearn for.
Arms - mine when they arched in the curve of a small ballerina, when they wrapped around you in bed, before they were scarred.
Hands - that played the piano, the picked vegetables and shelled peas, traced all of the patterns of fences, beds.
Knees - bruised and scraped from running, banging against trees on the way up.
These are times as well as pieces of self, soft skin and a hard head that did things right with the rules in a way that was defiant in itself. Take me back to this before, before everything was frightening, when everything was bright.
Where is my second chance to try again in the now?
I knew it wouldn't be any different from other full moons, that blue moons that actually look blue are the result of particles and chemicals, not their second appearance in 30 or 31 days. But I know that this moon pulls always at my body and I'm a romantic for natural second chances. Not the kind that come by way of human forgiveness or because they are earned, but the accident of being allowed to try again.
Cycles, everywhere, cycles. The cycles right now of home are not the ones my body runs on. In a few days I return to the cycles of school which will not be the usual, but closer. I always follow the cycles of the moon, listen in to my body and the ocean swaying.
Second chances come and sometimes I miss them. Sometimes I miss myself, the way I was before. Before is a time we can't quite place, only that it is not now. There are befores that I do not miss and ones I yearn for.
Arms - mine when they arched in the curve of a small ballerina, when they wrapped around you in bed, before they were scarred.
Hands - that played the piano, the picked vegetables and shelled peas, traced all of the patterns of fences, beds.
Knees - bruised and scraped from running, banging against trees on the way up.
These are times as well as pieces of self, soft skin and a hard head that did things right with the rules in a way that was defiant in itself. Take me back to this before, before everything was frightening, when everything was bright.
Where is my second chance to try again in the now?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)