to all of the throngs who have come to eagerly anticipate and adore every golden word I spill onto this blog:
I've decided that this is ridiculous.
If I had the time to really say anything meaningful, share my intellectual gifts and the bounty of all my years reading and writing and studying and reflecting, well, that would be one thing. But as it is, seems the blogosphere -- for a lot of folks, surely there are exceptions -- is an elaborate exercise in navel-gazing.
So: I'm signing off for good.
I get paid to write. And that's how I want it to be.
Look for more personal communications - those e-mails I used to write when I actually had something to say to someone.
ciao
Saturday, April 21, 2007
my last post
to all of the throngs who have come to eagerly anticipate and adore every golden word I spill onto this blog:
I've decided that this is ridiculous.
If I had the time to really say anything meaningful, share my intellectual gifts and the bounty of all my years reading and writing and studying and reflecting, well, that would be one thing. But as it is, seems the blogosphere -- for a lot of folks, surely there are exceptions -- is an elaborate exercise in navel-gazing.
So: I'm signing off for good.
I get paid to write. And that's how I want it to be.
Look for more personal communications - those e-mails I used to write when I actually had something to say to someone.
ciao
I've decided that this is ridiculous.
If I had the time to really say anything meaningful, share my intellectual gifts and the bounty of all my years reading and writing and studying and reflecting, well, that would be one thing. But as it is, seems the blogosphere -- for a lot of folks, surely there are exceptions -- is an elaborate exercise in navel-gazing.
So: I'm signing off for good.
I get paid to write. And that's how I want it to be.
Look for more personal communications - those e-mails I used to write when I actually had something to say to someone.
ciao
mine own hypocrisy
As I plan my sojourn to yoga class, I wonder:
- whether I can cover the scab on my chin with enough of that spackle-dy stuff to hide it for the entire sweaty adventure
- whether on the way home I should stop at the unbelievable cosmetics store they just opened at Paseo Nuevo....
I took my daughter there one day during spring break. Schlumped in there in my sweats, hair unbrushed. It's lit up like a landing strip and filled, stem to stern, with absolutely fascinating little bottles, tubes, brushes, sponges, powders, and potions. The labeling is intelligent, the concepts brilliant. We spent an hour dabbing stuff on our faces with the proffered q-tips, sponges, etc.
Despite my desire to not buy into the whole cosmetics trip, I want to look better.
Still waiting for the magical transformation, I guess. I'm as much a dupe as anyone. Good thing I can't afford the dermabrasions, the plastic surgeries. Then I'd have to do more internal dithering: shall I get a tummy-tuck? I need about a year without mirrors.
- whether I can cover the scab on my chin with enough of that spackle-dy stuff to hide it for the entire sweaty adventure
- whether on the way home I should stop at the unbelievable cosmetics store they just opened at Paseo Nuevo....
I took my daughter there one day during spring break. Schlumped in there in my sweats, hair unbrushed. It's lit up like a landing strip and filled, stem to stern, with absolutely fascinating little bottles, tubes, brushes, sponges, powders, and potions. The labeling is intelligent, the concepts brilliant. We spent an hour dabbing stuff on our faces with the proffered q-tips, sponges, etc.
Despite my desire to not buy into the whole cosmetics trip, I want to look better.
Still waiting for the magical transformation, I guess. I'm as much a dupe as anyone. Good thing I can't afford the dermabrasions, the plastic surgeries. Then I'd have to do more internal dithering: shall I get a tummy-tuck? I need about a year without mirrors.
Friday, April 20, 2007
rain
Thank you, Jesus, it's raining. We had the third driest year in Southern California history this year, and rain this late in April is almost unheard of. We needed it badly. Especially the heap of plastic bowls, spoons, and measuring cups that I let the kids use the other day to "make a mixture" -- they used flour, corn starch, baking soda, a LOT of water, and various colors of washable tempera paint. I came out from where I had obsessive-compulsively started to put all my loose nuts, seeds, and grains into matching mason jars...
an aside: I swerve between rapid-fire sloppiness, through self-loathing and the hatred of little crumbs stuck to the bottom of my feet and seeing every little thing out of place, every stain on the carpet leaping up at my eyeballs like a soiled chipmunk with rabies, then into big thrusts of cleanup and organizing, for which I ignore my children and work for hours at a time...at which point i become mommie dearest, hollering at children and spouse when they dare to muss my arrangements...and then I throw up my hands and surrender to rapid-fire sloppiness once more.
Anyhow...when I came out and saw them, my 2 and their friend, I was stunned at the level of mess they had managed to make in only about a 20 minute period. Paint, flour, water, soupy sticky pink mess all over the sidewalk. They were skating in it. They were standing in the bowl. They were thrusting their arms in up to the elbow. Now, all their equipment is sitting out there with dried crust of pink flour gunk all over it.
Thank you, Jesus, it's raining.
And my garden is happy too.
The chickens are cowering in the coop.
The whole house is still asleep.
I'm thinking about that mess at Virginia Tech. I can't quite fathom it, truthfully. Same thing happens every day in Iraq. Thanks, o leering commander-in-chief and henchpeople. From what I can tell, that kid who shot all those people was so blatantly mentally ill that he should not have been in a state university. Where were his parents? Sure, yeah, let's blame them! No, no, no, no blame. No judgment. He was sick. He got guns. End of story.
an aside: I swerve between rapid-fire sloppiness, through self-loathing and the hatred of little crumbs stuck to the bottom of my feet and seeing every little thing out of place, every stain on the carpet leaping up at my eyeballs like a soiled chipmunk with rabies, then into big thrusts of cleanup and organizing, for which I ignore my children and work for hours at a time...at which point i become mommie dearest, hollering at children and spouse when they dare to muss my arrangements...and then I throw up my hands and surrender to rapid-fire sloppiness once more.
Anyhow...when I came out and saw them, my 2 and their friend, I was stunned at the level of mess they had managed to make in only about a 20 minute period. Paint, flour, water, soupy sticky pink mess all over the sidewalk. They were skating in it. They were standing in the bowl. They were thrusting their arms in up to the elbow. Now, all their equipment is sitting out there with dried crust of pink flour gunk all over it.
Thank you, Jesus, it's raining.
And my garden is happy too.
The chickens are cowering in the coop.
The whole house is still asleep.
I'm thinking about that mess at Virginia Tech. I can't quite fathom it, truthfully. Same thing happens every day in Iraq. Thanks, o leering commander-in-chief and henchpeople. From what I can tell, that kid who shot all those people was so blatantly mentally ill that he should not have been in a state university. Where were his parents? Sure, yeah, let's blame them! No, no, no, no blame. No judgment. He was sick. He got guns. End of story.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
My first blog post...I'm doing it! I'm doing it!
Having sent e-mails out to friends and family that are the equivalent of blog posts for years now, I think it's time to go ahead and do the real thing. I don't have time for this. I'm working on several freelance projects right now. I have a three-year-old who is currently sitting semi-comatose in front of Curious George. I have a fear that this blog is going to consume me completely and I will forgo work, exercise, and mothering in favor of putting my little, squirming, delicate thoughts and ideas and rants and so forth out there into the vacuum of the world.
But...onward.
My first post henceforth shall address an article I read on the lefty Web site Alternet.org. It's an article that is an excerpt from a book about how much women hate their bodies. You know -- all the old stories about the anorectics and bulimics and girls who hate themselves because they don't fit the supermodel mold. I understand this so well. I spent countless hours in my childhood and adolescence wishing to have a different sort of face and body, and I recall being mortified when my butt started to bounce around when I walked. I never had a weight problem. Even so, I'm pissed that I lost so many hours and days to self-centered body obsession, staring and staring into mirrors, waiting for myself to turn into...what? I'd keep checking. Every time I'd walk past a mirror, a reflective wall, the window of a parked car. And now, with post-nursing boobs, rapidly burgeoning wrinkles and age spots, and a belly that is starting to jiggle like a bowl of jelly, I would like to bludgeon that stupid teenaged me into consciousness.
My daughter, nearly 7, came to me the other day with her belly sucked all the way in, navel to spine, and said, "I wish my tummy looked like THIS!" Holy fucking shit!
Comments below the Alternet article ranged from "yeah, well, most women are fat pigs and if they'd just eat right they'd BE beautiful," to "guys don't mind a little junk in the trunk -- lighten up!" to "I don't have any sympathy for those skinny white girls who obsess about being too fat when people are starving in Darfur," to "oh yeah? well I have an eating disorder and this is why you're all totally like MEAN," and more along those lines.
No one mentioned that as women have more and more spending power in this culture, it behooves the moneyed ones who wish to become more moneyed to appeal to their sense of lack, of falling short, of never having/being enough, then treating it like fun and games. Whee! Manolo Blahniks! Face creams that cost more than a week's groceries! You too can look like [fill in blank] if you fork over enough bucks! It's nauseating. Your lover doesn't give two shits about whether you look like a supermodel. But the consumer culture makes a killing off of women's longing to shape their outer selves into an unattainable model of perfection. Women: cast off your cosmetics! Wear what's comfortable! Figure out who's trying to tell you how you can make yourself More Beautiful Through The Wonders of Chemistry...and stop giving them your money.
But...onward.
My first post henceforth shall address an article I read on the lefty Web site Alternet.org. It's an article that is an excerpt from a book about how much women hate their bodies. You know -- all the old stories about the anorectics and bulimics and girls who hate themselves because they don't fit the supermodel mold. I understand this so well. I spent countless hours in my childhood and adolescence wishing to have a different sort of face and body, and I recall being mortified when my butt started to bounce around when I walked. I never had a weight problem. Even so, I'm pissed that I lost so many hours and days to self-centered body obsession, staring and staring into mirrors, waiting for myself to turn into...what? I'd keep checking. Every time I'd walk past a mirror, a reflective wall, the window of a parked car. And now, with post-nursing boobs, rapidly burgeoning wrinkles and age spots, and a belly that is starting to jiggle like a bowl of jelly, I would like to bludgeon that stupid teenaged me into consciousness.
My daughter, nearly 7, came to me the other day with her belly sucked all the way in, navel to spine, and said, "I wish my tummy looked like THIS!" Holy fucking shit!
Comments below the Alternet article ranged from "yeah, well, most women are fat pigs and if they'd just eat right they'd BE beautiful," to "guys don't mind a little junk in the trunk -- lighten up!" to "I don't have any sympathy for those skinny white girls who obsess about being too fat when people are starving in Darfur," to "oh yeah? well I have an eating disorder and this is why you're all totally like MEAN," and more along those lines.
No one mentioned that as women have more and more spending power in this culture, it behooves the moneyed ones who wish to become more moneyed to appeal to their sense of lack, of falling short, of never having/being enough, then treating it like fun and games. Whee! Manolo Blahniks! Face creams that cost more than a week's groceries! You too can look like [fill in blank] if you fork over enough bucks! It's nauseating. Your lover doesn't give two shits about whether you look like a supermodel. But the consumer culture makes a killing off of women's longing to shape their outer selves into an unattainable model of perfection. Women: cast off your cosmetics! Wear what's comfortable! Figure out who's trying to tell you how you can make yourself More Beautiful Through The Wonders of Chemistry...and stop giving them your money.
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