to avoid television. I am telling you. I have been watching an overabundance of it lately due to having an extra eleventy gazillion hours in the day from a) not having to work and b) not having the children around, and it is freaking depressing as fuck. It is difficult not to feel inadequate as a single parent with not a whole lot of extra cash and no romantic entanglements that involve the bestowment of diamond jewelry...and I don't even LIKE diamonds OR jewelry. I feel curmudgeonly. This happens every year. The noise of Christmas never fails to interfere with my usual seasonal reflection and evaluation. My self-assessments are skewed. My self-image is distorted. My self-worth is deranged. Make it stop!
Hahaha. This weekend, the typical static of Christmas advertising was compounded by a rare Austin cold snap. So while I am being emotionally barraged with the constant reminder that I'm in this thing alone, I am also being physically reminded that, damnit, it's cold in that lonely bed, fuckers! Regardless of how mentally or emotionally ready or willing I am to embark on another relationship, regardless of the lack of available and desirable partners in my life, it's tempting to just grab the most convenient object and turn it into something that fulfills all of my practical needs. Emotional, artistic, spiritual attachment be damned!
Combine all of this with 5 full days without the distraction of children and work, and you have a recipe for utter disaster.
Thank goodness I am aware of this potential. Thank goodness I planned in advance. Thank goodness for friends both superficial and taproot to help anchor me and allow for my movement through this season and all of the turmoil it renders.
In the end, I made it through...and I did ok. I rejected the temptation to seek warmth at any cost. I spent my time, for the most part, with people who love and care about me. I allowed myself to indulge in precious solitude and bask in the presence of one who allows me to distract myself via fussing over and catering to, as well as those who are good listeners and good conversationalists. I surrounded myself with good music/art/media even though I found myself utterly incapable of expressing myself in any creative vehicle.
I am coming down now. Or perhaps I am coming up. Thanks to those to whom I have looked for oxygen. Thanks to the birds, the trees, the clouds, the reddened leaves, the fevered exchanges of passionate longing for some small breath of life amidst the dearth of emotional vitality and the overabundance of material indulgence.
The house has returned to it's state of fervor. C babbles. M emits random cynical observations with a slight stutter. The cat meows loudly, yet contentedly now that her boy is home. The dog follows me around that house in that constant state of panicked expectation. I have other, more important, things to fret about...and still the same beautiful things to appreciate. To center on.
And...I have a whole lot less time for television. And that certainly doesn't hurt. :P
I learn so much about myself through my children. It's actually kind of amazing. I guess just being able to spend so much time with people who share your nature and your nurture really reflects back those things that you don't see in yourself. Or something.
At any rate, C is an exceptionally sensitive child. At least as compared to his brother. At seven years old, he is torn between mindfulness and appropriate protection of his sensitivity and his need to be a cool, big, maybe even macho kid. I other words, he exposes himself or allows himself to be exposed to media that his sensitivities can't fully deal with. But what he does is tough it out in the moment...and then relive those moments when he is by himself and get really frightened of the fearful spectres he wouldn't allow himself to avoid in the first place. Only out-of-context now...and that is confusing.
I'm totally able to understand that right now, because I'm experiencing the same thing. I put off dealing with things in the moment they are happening...acting as if I am tough and can take it...only to have those things (and the feelings those things evoke) creep up on me out-of-context in a manner that creates more confusion and self-doubt than would have ever been generated had I allowed my honest emotional response in the first damn place.
hahaha.
So, I guess it's nice to know that I have the emotional constitution of a 7 year old! Uh. I guess I need to work on that.
Oh, and I am not sure if this has anything remotely to do with the former, but yesterday I kept finding myself thinking: "It sucks to have elegant ideals about people, and yet to consistently be forced to deal with people in inelegant, unideal contexts."
Every once in awhile, I will get a comment on an old post over on my main blog...and in reading the post, I am reminded of why I blog. This is one of those posts. I'll paste it in its entirety here in case you are too lazy to click the link, but the original post has a pretty good comment, as well.
Oh, and...I really can't even remember who this post was about! hahaha.
Not a Self-Hating Fat Person
Dear Person I have to see on a way too regular basis,
Do I LOOK like I care about your diet? I think you look fine the way you are. And, quite frankly, when I eat a carrot, I eat it because I like the way it tastes, not because some dude who will be dead someday (most likely because he is an evil fuck who makes a living perpetuating the beauty myth by selling his bullshit theories that actually result in less health and more sexism) wrote a book that told me carrots will make me Thin and Desirable.
I'm not thin, and I don't give a fuck if you or anyone else desires me.
You are not thin, either, and it makes me sad that you've bought into that bullshit, but telling you that is not my trip, either. When I eat a piece of candy or chocolate cake or greezy cheezy pizza, it's because I like the way it tastes and not because I feel bad about the fact that some narrow-minded ass won't fuck me because I'm too fat for him. Or, hell, because some ass-minded fuck won't even talk to me because I'm too fat. Fuck that shit.
I'm not a self-hating fat person, and I don't want to hear your soft hatred directed at yourself by your constant babble of size-obsessed bullshit, or your soft hatred directed outwards at the other people who also have to unfortunately see you on a way-too-regular basis. And, um, poking someone in the stomach and asking them how they got THAT if they can't even afford dinner is, wow...I mean, I've done and said some pretty crude and rude things in my lifetime, but that really fucking takes the cake. (sorry if that made you hungry.)
Believe it or not, there do exist people in this world who really don't give a fuck about how large they are and how other people perceive their size. I know quite well how I'm perceived. I enjoy experimenting with those perceptions, but in the end, it really doesn't fucking matter to me. So, again, no, I'm not interested in hearing about your diet, or about your fabulous partner who so open-mindedly supports you in your endless desire to be thin and fuckable, just like he likes you. Or, at least, not FAT and UNFUCKABLE...because he hates you that way.
Believe it or not, not everyone hates their body the way you seem to
hate yours. Even us fatty fat fatties! So, here...have a carrot. Or a
slice of yummy chocolate cake. I don't give a fuck, just as long as you
are enjoying it.
I have been reading one of the rare print issues of LiP magazine I have in my collection (sadly, the magazine folded along with a bunch of other more prominent small press magazines. I keep meaning to write about that!). This quote from an interview with Vandana Shiva, although not necessarily about anarchism, is exactly how I wish I would have always answered people who have asked me "Isn't anarchism ultimately a selfish philosophy?":
I see living society the way I see living systems. I don't see society as an aggregation of atomized, fragmented individuals. That's why I don't go down the Hobbesian path. I see society as organic, in which every level has an autonomous existence, and a self-organizing capacity, but in relationship with other self-organizing systems. Which means that your freedom, your personal freedom, is then in the context of total consciousness and awareness of other people's personal freedom. It is that awareness which I call compassion, I call solidarity. And it's through compassion and solidarity that you do not have the irresponsibility built into personal freedom the way it has in Western philosophy and political science, with the terrorizing by these guys who exaggerate certain human tendencies. Personal freedom is real. A person is a full subject. But a person is not a subject in isolation: We are in family, we are in friendships, we are in community, we are in working contexts, we are in certain towns, we are living in certain lands—all that does define levels of who we are and our identities and therefore, also, our searching for our freedoms. Because all those freedoms have to be carried together.
I have finally finished the bird mix. There are so many songs I wasn't able to fit in, I might have to make a bird mix 2. However, my next mix will be songs about or incorporating wind. If you have any suggestions, please send them my way.
Anyway, the playlist is:
Black Wax Machine - Fluttering Free
Low - In Metal
John Fahey & Cul de Sac - Gamelan Collage
Dead Can Dance - Bird
Animal Collective - Tuvin
Dirty Three - Flutter
Wilco - Hummingbird
R.E.M. - King of Birds
Jimi Hendrix - Little Wing
The Beatles - Blue Jay Way
Charlie Parker - Blue Bird
Bob Dylan - Love Minus Zero/No Limit
The Handsome Family - Flapping Your Broken Wings
Coctails - Starling
Spiritualized - Spread Your Wings
Black Wax Machine - Flamingo Sounds
It's available for download, for a limited time, here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/69000p
If you can't access it there, please feel free to email me: drublood at gmail dot com.
Enjoy!
BBC News has a feature about Iraqi bloggers that I thought provided an interesting (if disturbing) snapshot of life in Iraq today.
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Redneck Mother reports on A visit from the homeschool inspector, and illustrates why it's important to know your rights.
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I happen to have a personal affinity for oysters, so
this article was especially disturbing to me:
If present acidification trends in the world's oceans continue unabated, mussels, oysters and other shellfish could become extinct as early as 2100.
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Michael Pollan provides clarity on the farm bill issue in Weed It and Reap:
Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico.
(via Treehugger)
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And on that note, I'm going to go make some oatmeal. Have a good day!
Casey put a name to the piles of stones we found over by the creek that runs through Pease Park. She called them Cairns, but I guess hikers also call them ducks. Normally, they are used to mark important spiritual areas or to help people stay on a path. These structures, however, seem to exist just for the sake of existing.
It took some doing to get to the spot where the rocks were on display. Both myself and my mama friend got a bit wet in the going there (thankfully all of our electronics arrived without damage!) and one of the kids totally slipped and fell in a puddle of muck. At one point, too, I looked up to find Coley on the other side of the creek, balancing precariously on a very steep rock face, with about 20 yards to go before reaching a more reasonable incline, and about 5 feet up from the shallow, rock filled water. There was nothing I could do but try to be encouraging and ready to spring if he fell. He had confidence in himself that he could do it, so I cheered him on, but once he reached a safer vantage I had to say "I am so proud of you that you were able to do that...DON'T EVER DO IT AGAIN!!!!!"
I was pleased the cairns were still there. We first saw them last Sunday, but didn't have as much time to spend with them as I would have liked. So we planned a field trip for Friday to go down and admire and create some of our own precariously balanced sculptures of rock. I was delighted by the fact that the children spent a good deal of their time working together and/or at the very least not totally picking on each other. Neither did they seem the remotest bit tempted to knock over each others' creations or the creations that were there before we arrived. For some reason, these structures, impermanent as they are, seem to demand a certain amount of respect for their mere existence. I loved the offhand life lessons they seemed to generate in the unconscious conversations of the children. One of the kids accidentally knocked a small pile over and was regretful. But I pointed out that the beauty of ephemeralist art is its fragility. A brisk wind could knock one down. They aren't created for any other purpose than the joy of creation and perhaps the thought that they might be observed and enjoyed for what they are.
I have always been fascinated by ephemeralist art. In this age when everyone strives for more storage and more permanence, it is good to be reminded that sometimes beauty can be fleeting, and that's ok. Some beautiful things aren't meant to be preserved or put on display or even shared with anyone else. I know I am experiencing that in my life on a regular basis lately. I don't know if it is my age or just a phase I am going through, but I tend to not want to share the beautiful moments in my life with more than maybe one or two people at a time. Sometimes I even keep them all to myself! Of course, as I type this, I am uploading my images to flickr and I realize I am capturing the moment here in words, after having spent my entire time there ensconced in the glow of various technological devices recording in various ways my enjoyment of it...but I am nothing if not absolutely hypocritical, and you must learn this and deal with it. :P Also, I found it perfectly ironic in a most wonderful way that as I sat there, I mourned the fact that I did not have a copy of "Scriptures of the Golden Eternity" with me, so I popped onto the internet on my phone and found a copy online that I read and forwarded to my twitter friends. Hee hee.
At any rate, the children busied themselves with building. M seemed to enjoy construction the most of all, which was absolutely delightful to me. M, who spends so much time in his freaking brain and so little time allowing himself to step outside of the safety of rules and structure. It was good to see him creating something that couldn't possible be symmetrical. It was a lesson in the balance of asymmetry, actually, and I think it was a well-spent 4 hours for him. He kept asking me when we had to go home, reminding me that he had chores and homework to do, and I kept telling him to just relax and enjoy himself for damn once! And then he would go on building and creating and observing how some rocks seemed to fit together even though it seemed impossible that they would...and how some rocks appeared perfectly matched, but provided poor balance. Marveling, as well, about how sometimes structures gain more stability when more weight is stacked on top. All of these such wise ways of looking at the world. Ah, the wisdom of rocks. Ah, the wisdom of play.
Cole spent the majority of his time making up games and building cities in the water. I'm not terribly fond of the creek, but I am sure they have exposed themselves to more horrendous things before...and they were having such fun they did not even want to leave after 4 hours.
Anyway, it was a lovely day. I spent much of my time down by the shores clicky clacking away on my new toy. Taking photos, writing things down, doing some voice recordings, talking to C - the other mama present - and trying to keep the kids from injuring one another. The weather was absolutely perfect to the point of being unremarkable. I watched damselflies and dragonflies dance and mate on the water. Very few people passed through. It was absolutely refreshing and rejuvenating. :) I think it was my favorite field trip so far. I am so glad my guys enjoy such things. It reminds me that I don't have to worry. Sure, they are a bit obsessed with video games and other things that I would prefer they not spend so much time on, but they are also able to spend an afternoon playing with sticks and rocks in the sunshine and enjoying the beauty of those delicate moments that exist for no other purpose than absolute enjoyment. It is in those moments that it becomes abundantly clear that the best lessons are the ones we learn by just living and observing. It is in those moments when I recognize that so much of life is abstract, and takes on whatever form I perceive it to have. It is in those moments when it is clear to me that I have everything I need, and all I need do is relax and enjoy it.
