Hard not to see metaphors for daily life in the headlines. As the oil in the Gulf keeps defying attempts to suppress it, so do all the other issues that have erupted as a result of our plumbing the depths of our culture to satisfy our greed. You can't turn around without seeing the results of that and no amount of saying or teaching or otherwise reinforcing "nice" or "decent" behaviour seems to be able to keep a lid on it.
There was a time, within my lifetime, when people considered the issue of a fair exchange as the foundation for doing business. You would sell something for a sum of money or exchange your work for a fair sum and along with that basic exchange would go the assumption that both sides were getting a fair deal.
It's not like that anymore. Case in point; the sublet apartment. There was a time when a person who had to be away from home for an extended period was faced with the choice of paying their rent or mortgage to maintain an uninhabited space in their absence or storing their belongings and finding a new place to live when they returned. Some people would get a housesitter or hire a security service to look after things while they were gone. They would often pay for this service on the understanding that it is significantly more costly to store one's belongings and/or pay for an empty place than it is to have someone checking on these things and making sure they stay safe in your absence.
That's changed.
Suddenly, people who need to be away from home see their empty place only from the perspective of potential "customers" They view their home not as a responsibility but as an asset from which they can expect to turn a profit. I find this shift in thinking discouraging for a variety of reasons.
First, that kind of thinking assumes that only you have value in the world and that anywhere you go or anything you do, your value and your comfort are more important than anyone or anything else. This idea that the priveledge (I cannot spell that word I never will be able to spell that word, get used to seeing that word misspelled.) of living in your house and taking care of your belongings should command a premium. It shows me you think you are better than anyone else.
Second, that kind of thinking indicates to me that you think your very presence on the earth makes you more deserving of payment than anyone else. You want to go away, maybe you need to go away, and you need someone to take care of things while you're gone. You think your ability to have acquired a home makes you superior to people looking for a home in your community? It doesn't. When I have gone on long trips, I have sublet my apartment and I've footed the bill for some of the extras because it is a service to me to have someone take a short-term interest in my long-term home. It allows me to keep my place in the community and that is a benefit to me - I am respectful of it.
Third, it shows me that all you care about is money and that's the saddest thing of all. It used to be these situations were rare - recently I've seen ads for "home stagers" where you are expected to furnish, maintain and show a house while it is on the market and also pay for the privlege of doing so.
I cannot think of anything that shows me the complete contempt we have for each other better than that and it makes me sad every time I see it.
What's next? Going on vacation and renting out your dog?
Most of us have our priorities all wrong. I wonder what it will take for us to wise up?
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Breather
Today, it occurred to me very suddenly that it is summer.
Maybe that makes me an extraordinarily slow person, that's certainly possible but it did come as a surprise. It happened when I heard someone skateboarding outside and then saw a little girl adjusting a handbag the size of her chest, slung formally over one bent elbow as she approached the gate to her friend's house. Going to play.
It's a summer day, kids are sleeping in or going to day camp. They're swinging their legs over pools or riverbanks or piers and they're talking to their friends. They're wearing their play clothes and enjoying the sun. They're not worried.
And I realized that can be me too. I've been caught up in the idea that I don't have enough and so I need to be concerned about work all the time but all that seems to do is make the days feel like they're wasted even before they begin and truth be told, although my income is meagre, it is there and it is growing slowly.
It's summer. I can wear play clothes, I can stand on my balcony and drink iced coffee, hell, I can work on my balcony if I want to. I can go to the river and swim. I can do all of these things anytime I want. I've made enough sacrifices that my work lives with me, it's part of my life, it's in service to me, not the other way around.
So I took a breather and let myself out of the vice grips. I can do whatever I want because I will no longer do what I don't want to do. I refuse to give my life over to stuff I hate. No way. No more. But it's hard to remember that it's ok to be that way. I often slip into feeling guilty about it and then my productivity drops through the floor. It's a paradox and it's tricky to avoid.
I grew up thinking work had to feel bad or it wasn't work. At the same time I am not the kind of person who can really attend to people or things I dislike. That means I am really bad at most of the things I would consider work and really good at the things I love to do.
Most of the things I love to do are things people would consider to be work - so that's where I earn my living but the guilt gets in the way.
Well, not today. Today, I'll do whatever I want and I hope I'll do that tomorrow and every day for the rest of my life and sometimes I'll get paid for it and sometimes I won't and that's just fine by me.
Maybe that makes me an extraordinarily slow person, that's certainly possible but it did come as a surprise. It happened when I heard someone skateboarding outside and then saw a little girl adjusting a handbag the size of her chest, slung formally over one bent elbow as she approached the gate to her friend's house. Going to play.
It's a summer day, kids are sleeping in or going to day camp. They're swinging their legs over pools or riverbanks or piers and they're talking to their friends. They're wearing their play clothes and enjoying the sun. They're not worried.
And I realized that can be me too. I've been caught up in the idea that I don't have enough and so I need to be concerned about work all the time but all that seems to do is make the days feel like they're wasted even before they begin and truth be told, although my income is meagre, it is there and it is growing slowly.
It's summer. I can wear play clothes, I can stand on my balcony and drink iced coffee, hell, I can work on my balcony if I want to. I can go to the river and swim. I can do all of these things anytime I want. I've made enough sacrifices that my work lives with me, it's part of my life, it's in service to me, not the other way around.
So I took a breather and let myself out of the vice grips. I can do whatever I want because I will no longer do what I don't want to do. I refuse to give my life over to stuff I hate. No way. No more. But it's hard to remember that it's ok to be that way. I often slip into feeling guilty about it and then my productivity drops through the floor. It's a paradox and it's tricky to avoid.
I grew up thinking work had to feel bad or it wasn't work. At the same time I am not the kind of person who can really attend to people or things I dislike. That means I am really bad at most of the things I would consider work and really good at the things I love to do.
Most of the things I love to do are things people would consider to be work - so that's where I earn my living but the guilt gets in the way.
Well, not today. Today, I'll do whatever I want and I hope I'll do that tomorrow and every day for the rest of my life and sometimes I'll get paid for it and sometimes I won't and that's just fine by me.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Oil and Me
So many of my friends are posting videos of the Gulf oil spill on Facebook. They post the worst one they can find and then express their fear and despair over the disaster and/or their anger and frustration.
I suppose this is natural. It's a terrifying thing to see birds, whales, dolphins and turtles covered in oil and dying - terrifying and shameful because it is the result of our desire to lead lives of greater and greater comfort and variety.
But does it help?
During my time as a preschool teacher I learned a lot about what motivates people. One important thing I learned is that children cannot be governed by fear. When you threaten a child they find ways to ignore the threat or they rise to meet it in order to see just how bad something can be and to prove to themselves that they can endure it (or find out if they can't, where their own limits are) or they move on to something completely different. What they don't do, what they never do, is address the threat as you have presented it. In the rare instance when it does seem to work, it works only once and it sets you up for having to increase the fear stimulus exponentially the next time you try the same tactic. (that's why we end up with "delinquent" kids, they have almost always had caregivers who tried to parent with fear and shame.)
People are like that, even in adulthood, the main difference being, in adulthood, it is a lot easier to ignore the fear stimulus and declare the situation hopeless and therefore completely beyond any attempt at personal responsibility.
In my spiritual progress through this life (limited as it is) there have been two contributors that have prompted me to challenge myself on this way of thinking. In Judaism, we are asked to accept moral responsibility for our actions. There is no vicarious salvation and G-d will not fix whatever is wrong with your life or the earth or anything else, that's up to you. G-d, in Judaism, flows only through us, through beings.
In First Nations traditional religious belief, you can only tell the stories that are yours. There is a similar emphasis on personal responsibility and the idea of beings having a soul, a right to be here and sentience extends to everything on the planet. Yes, even rocks. We are also taught that we are responsible not only to ourselves but to our place in the community. Any decision made must take into account the interests of the seven generations that preceded me and the seven generations that will come after me.
While it would be easy to lament the fact that others have apparently not taken these ideas into account when doing things like drilling for oil or establishing economic structures that rely on filling the skies and the waterways with waste - that would be disingenuous and arrogant. I have ridden in a car, I have driven a car. I liked it. I like to fly and many of the decisions taken by people that led to this spill were taken quite honestly with my tastes and my benefit in mind (although not directly.)
It also bears remembering that the oil that is spilling into the ocean right now is oil we collectively intended to spill into the sky.
I honestly do not see how that is very much better. It's less visible, but it still causes death and destruction, more of it every year.
We are upset because Creation and our actions have combined to spill this oil into a confined and highly visible space. I know I will sound crazy when I say it but that is a gift.
We need to see the natural consequences of our actions. Natural consequences are great teachers. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between natural consequences and the kind of fear, anguish, anger and despair that comes of repeatedly watching the results of our actions on the other beings in our world, bemoaning it, blaming others and then obsessively showing it to others so that they too will feel enraged, frightened, threatened and impotent.
For the last 15 years, I have led a life with a relatively small footprint. Much of that has been deliberate. I left a place of comfort and material security in order to move into a life that had the potential to be more meaningful and more interesting. I accept a certain level of poverty as one of the results of that choice and at the same time I wrestle with how much I can assume responsibility for my place in this oil-based culture. How much more am I willing to give up?
I liked being a princess. I liked driving my car and eating whatever I chose. I liked having nice, new clothes and expensive shoes, I like nice restaurants, I like nice houses, I have expensive tastes - tastes that go beyond brand labels which frankly, I still consider to be somewhat vulgar; as far as snobbery goes, I am as bad as it gets. and I will tell the truth - I'm getting awfully tired of going without those things. Just the same, I am aware that I can only heal what my own life touches and so as much as I would like to be able to do a lot of things that damage the environment - fly more often, drive a car every day, those are not responsible choices and until I know for sure that I have the strength to decline consistently, it is probably better that I manage my negative inclinations by a kind of personal perimeter shopping. I work to meet my needs. I publish when I have to and I try to be careful in the world in every other way. Because at heart? I am an irresponsible hedonist and I will not do the things I need to do in order to have the positive impact I want to have on the world. I don't dip into places where I might be tempted to return to that lifestyle. It is too much fun. I cannot manage that addiction.
I think, collectively, if we really want to address this oil spill we will need to come to terms with the idea that we just can't have all the stuff we want to have. We have to pick a place where we live and live there (I am still guilty of avoiding that choice) We have to accept the indignity of public transport at least half of the time. We have to politely decline the delicacies that are brought in from G-d knows where at a cost that is so high it cannot possibly be reflected in the dollar amount we pay to consume them. We have to wear last year's clothes. We have to use last year's computer and we have to keep it and love it and care for it as though it had to last us a lifetime.
We have to take more pleasure in each other and less in our stuff. We have to look at those turtles in the river, those birds in the marsh, those whales in the bay and accept that they have their lives and the right to live them as fully as we do and if that means we don't get the pleasure of observing them up close, well, that's what it means.
And I am convinced that nothing can be achieved by catastrophic thinking. Stop telling your friends how bad they are and how much you regret it and start finding ways you can fix the things you do that add to the problem.
If there's an answer, that's where we'll find it.
Done ranting, go back to sleep.
I suppose this is natural. It's a terrifying thing to see birds, whales, dolphins and turtles covered in oil and dying - terrifying and shameful because it is the result of our desire to lead lives of greater and greater comfort and variety.
But does it help?
During my time as a preschool teacher I learned a lot about what motivates people. One important thing I learned is that children cannot be governed by fear. When you threaten a child they find ways to ignore the threat or they rise to meet it in order to see just how bad something can be and to prove to themselves that they can endure it (or find out if they can't, where their own limits are) or they move on to something completely different. What they don't do, what they never do, is address the threat as you have presented it. In the rare instance when it does seem to work, it works only once and it sets you up for having to increase the fear stimulus exponentially the next time you try the same tactic. (that's why we end up with "delinquent" kids, they have almost always had caregivers who tried to parent with fear and shame.)
People are like that, even in adulthood, the main difference being, in adulthood, it is a lot easier to ignore the fear stimulus and declare the situation hopeless and therefore completely beyond any attempt at personal responsibility.
In my spiritual progress through this life (limited as it is) there have been two contributors that have prompted me to challenge myself on this way of thinking. In Judaism, we are asked to accept moral responsibility for our actions. There is no vicarious salvation and G-d will not fix whatever is wrong with your life or the earth or anything else, that's up to you. G-d, in Judaism, flows only through us, through beings.
In First Nations traditional religious belief, you can only tell the stories that are yours. There is a similar emphasis on personal responsibility and the idea of beings having a soul, a right to be here and sentience extends to everything on the planet. Yes, even rocks. We are also taught that we are responsible not only to ourselves but to our place in the community. Any decision made must take into account the interests of the seven generations that preceded me and the seven generations that will come after me.
While it would be easy to lament the fact that others have apparently not taken these ideas into account when doing things like drilling for oil or establishing economic structures that rely on filling the skies and the waterways with waste - that would be disingenuous and arrogant. I have ridden in a car, I have driven a car. I liked it. I like to fly and many of the decisions taken by people that led to this spill were taken quite honestly with my tastes and my benefit in mind (although not directly.)
It also bears remembering that the oil that is spilling into the ocean right now is oil we collectively intended to spill into the sky.
I honestly do not see how that is very much better. It's less visible, but it still causes death and destruction, more of it every year.
We are upset because Creation and our actions have combined to spill this oil into a confined and highly visible space. I know I will sound crazy when I say it but that is a gift.
We need to see the natural consequences of our actions. Natural consequences are great teachers. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between natural consequences and the kind of fear, anguish, anger and despair that comes of repeatedly watching the results of our actions on the other beings in our world, bemoaning it, blaming others and then obsessively showing it to others so that they too will feel enraged, frightened, threatened and impotent.
For the last 15 years, I have led a life with a relatively small footprint. Much of that has been deliberate. I left a place of comfort and material security in order to move into a life that had the potential to be more meaningful and more interesting. I accept a certain level of poverty as one of the results of that choice and at the same time I wrestle with how much I can assume responsibility for my place in this oil-based culture. How much more am I willing to give up?
I liked being a princess. I liked driving my car and eating whatever I chose. I liked having nice, new clothes and expensive shoes, I like nice restaurants, I like nice houses, I have expensive tastes - tastes that go beyond brand labels which frankly, I still consider to be somewhat vulgar; as far as snobbery goes, I am as bad as it gets. and I will tell the truth - I'm getting awfully tired of going without those things. Just the same, I am aware that I can only heal what my own life touches and so as much as I would like to be able to do a lot of things that damage the environment - fly more often, drive a car every day, those are not responsible choices and until I know for sure that I have the strength to decline consistently, it is probably better that I manage my negative inclinations by a kind of personal perimeter shopping. I work to meet my needs. I publish when I have to and I try to be careful in the world in every other way. Because at heart? I am an irresponsible hedonist and I will not do the things I need to do in order to have the positive impact I want to have on the world. I don't dip into places where I might be tempted to return to that lifestyle. It is too much fun. I cannot manage that addiction.
I think, collectively, if we really want to address this oil spill we will need to come to terms with the idea that we just can't have all the stuff we want to have. We have to pick a place where we live and live there (I am still guilty of avoiding that choice) We have to accept the indignity of public transport at least half of the time. We have to politely decline the delicacies that are brought in from G-d knows where at a cost that is so high it cannot possibly be reflected in the dollar amount we pay to consume them. We have to wear last year's clothes. We have to use last year's computer and we have to keep it and love it and care for it as though it had to last us a lifetime.
We have to take more pleasure in each other and less in our stuff. We have to look at those turtles in the river, those birds in the marsh, those whales in the bay and accept that they have their lives and the right to live them as fully as we do and if that means we don't get the pleasure of observing them up close, well, that's what it means.
And I am convinced that nothing can be achieved by catastrophic thinking. Stop telling your friends how bad they are and how much you regret it and start finding ways you can fix the things you do that add to the problem.
If there's an answer, that's where we'll find it.
Done ranting, go back to sleep.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Last night I went to an opening at the National Gallery.
Pop Life was a pretty banal exhibit and it turns out it was borrowed from the Tate so I guess I'm not surprised. It was probably very resonant to the British public for whom it was originally curated but its snap and smack falls flat in this context.
We all know how Andy Warhol informed north american culture, we live within it. And truth be told, most of the art was pretty boring and not terribly well executed by anyone's standards. People who objected to it were right, it's not good art. What it did at the time was bring art back into line with the personal and the political which I still feel was important. I just don't think its importance rests with preserving or displaying the individual works themselves.
Likewise, I ran into an old friend there. It was kind of him to say hello, he was in a suit, I was in a tee-shirt and jeans, trying hard to be invisible. I am savoring the position of the observer now and do not really want it to be interrupted.
We were at university together and at school he was brilliant, mobile, facing the idea of life, he was an open book and he could have done great things. Now he is flat to me, I was pleased to see he is physically well but knew before I turned to acknowledge him that we would add nothing to each other's experience of the evening. He has settled into a predictable existence and although he feigns a friendly face when he sees me, really? He's not in there.
For a change, I was able to remember myself and not engage with this on any level. I did not wonder why he follows me on Twitter and ignores me on Facebook. I did not wonder about the general lack of insight, the predictable turns of logic and idiom in the few conversations we have had since university, I didn't say what I was doing or worry about fishing out a bit of his old-school soul to show to and reassure myself that there was hope for us all. For a change I wasn't that arrogant.
There doesn't have to be hope for us all with us all. You decide what kind of hope is right for you, you decide who matters in your life. It's ok to let go.
I took out my earbud, smiled and said hello. I said I was fine and asked how he was. He said he was fine, I said "nice to see you," put my earbud back in and carried on. I was surprised and pleased not to have felt the urge to "catch up."
I like to think we are all connected and that everyone and everything matters and I think they probably do but you know, sometimes, the individual expressions aren't part of our own personal universes and that's perfectly ok too.
I open my eyes and the world is created. I close my eyes and the world dissolves. You open your eyes and a world is created, you close your eyes and that world dissolves and when we open our eyes, once again, a new world is born. That's the dance. It's always ok. It does not require our approval.
We only matter when we matter. We exist as the center of the universe for ourselves every day but we only exist for each other in those moments of contact. I guess I am at the point where I can allow some people to exist solely in the abstract. It does not mean I value their place in my past less, it means I understand the flow of time over this plane of existence enough to embrace their passage.
I am also at the point where I am consciously moving to the American stylebooks in terms of my writing and I do wish the computer, the software, the blogs, all of that, would stop trying so damned hard to prevent me from doing it.
Pop Life was a pretty banal exhibit and it turns out it was borrowed from the Tate so I guess I'm not surprised. It was probably very resonant to the British public for whom it was originally curated but its snap and smack falls flat in this context.
We all know how Andy Warhol informed north american culture, we live within it. And truth be told, most of the art was pretty boring and not terribly well executed by anyone's standards. People who objected to it were right, it's not good art. What it did at the time was bring art back into line with the personal and the political which I still feel was important. I just don't think its importance rests with preserving or displaying the individual works themselves.
Likewise, I ran into an old friend there. It was kind of him to say hello, he was in a suit, I was in a tee-shirt and jeans, trying hard to be invisible. I am savoring the position of the observer now and do not really want it to be interrupted.
We were at university together and at school he was brilliant, mobile, facing the idea of life, he was an open book and he could have done great things. Now he is flat to me, I was pleased to see he is physically well but knew before I turned to acknowledge him that we would add nothing to each other's experience of the evening. He has settled into a predictable existence and although he feigns a friendly face when he sees me, really? He's not in there.
For a change, I was able to remember myself and not engage with this on any level. I did not wonder why he follows me on Twitter and ignores me on Facebook. I did not wonder about the general lack of insight, the predictable turns of logic and idiom in the few conversations we have had since university, I didn't say what I was doing or worry about fishing out a bit of his old-school soul to show to and reassure myself that there was hope for us all. For a change I wasn't that arrogant.
There doesn't have to be hope for us all with us all. You decide what kind of hope is right for you, you decide who matters in your life. It's ok to let go.
I took out my earbud, smiled and said hello. I said I was fine and asked how he was. He said he was fine, I said "nice to see you," put my earbud back in and carried on. I was surprised and pleased not to have felt the urge to "catch up."
I like to think we are all connected and that everyone and everything matters and I think they probably do but you know, sometimes, the individual expressions aren't part of our own personal universes and that's perfectly ok too.
I open my eyes and the world is created. I close my eyes and the world dissolves. You open your eyes and a world is created, you close your eyes and that world dissolves and when we open our eyes, once again, a new world is born. That's the dance. It's always ok. It does not require our approval.
We only matter when we matter. We exist as the center of the universe for ourselves every day but we only exist for each other in those moments of contact. I guess I am at the point where I can allow some people to exist solely in the abstract. It does not mean I value their place in my past less, it means I understand the flow of time over this plane of existence enough to embrace their passage.
I am also at the point where I am consciously moving to the American stylebooks in terms of my writing and I do wish the computer, the software, the blogs, all of that, would stop trying so damned hard to prevent me from doing it.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Spurious Equality
It is, consider yourself warned, a particularly touchy time of month. I am not one to suffer fools gladly but during this time, I drop the attempt at pretending I do and I don't mince words.
Truth is, I'm pretty damned tired of pretending I don't go through this stuff to anyone and I am tired of living in a culture where one half of the population is forced to pretend we have the same hormonal equilibrium and level of sensitivity (or lack of it) as the other half.
So I'm writing about it.
I was doing my nails this morning when, once again, I remembered the last time I said anything about this particular social custom and two of my male friends piped up about how well they understood because they play guitar and so have to take care of their nails too. The irritation from those fatuous, me-too comments, faux egalitarian BS still galls me when I think of it.
I am doing my nails for the same reason men shave or trim their ear hair, it's not because I want a particular tool to play a particular instrument, it's because, in this culture, it's something women do. I will scrub my floors and do my dishes and my nails will get battered and chipped and I will have to do it all over again in a few days. If I remember to wear gloves, I might be able to go a week. It also requires not only filing but buffing and massaging and polishing and waiting for polish to dry. Whole businesses are given over to this custom and no, I would not do it for myself, I am doing it for two reasons, first - there is a certain level of cultural acceptance that goes with being manicured in my professional circles and second, the man who has my attention really likes it.
See? Like shaving.
When a man complains about shaving, I do not chime in and tell him how I feel his pain because every week or so I have to take a razor into the bathroom and shave my legs. Why don't I do this? Because it's stupid, it dismisses his real and valid complaint about something he has to do all the time to conform to an idea of masculinity here and it misses the point, entirely.
My shaving the scraps of barely visible hair off my legs does not compare to shaving one's entire face and neck every single day and it would never occur to me to be such an insensitive dolt that I would suggest that it does. Nevertheless, say even one word about your nails and some pretend-liberal moron who, if he is married, does the dishes about as often as I shave my legs, I promise you, will sigh and say - "Oh I know what you mean because I play guitar." No pal, you don't know what I mean probably not by a long shot.
This is just one small example of something that happens every day. There are groups of us, male and female, who assume that equal means identical - it does not.
My irritation with these people extends beyond the fact that they say insensitive things, it penetrates into the way they see others, including me, and how they insist on the principles of justice being upheld as though every single one of us were exactly the same and as though we all make the choice, every day, to walk through the world exactly as we are - male, female, short, tall, rich, poor, physically or intellectually inclined. You get the idea.
Society, up until now, has had different expectations for each of these personal traits and it was right to do so. Where it was wrong was in making the assumption that the easiest way to be was the best way to be and therefore all others were something less and deserved to be treated as such.
It is easy to be male, young, slender, straight-identified, white and smart. That is the easy part - at least on the surface. It is easier to have a consistently even temperament, easier for everybody, on both sides. But that does not mean it is always better.
Hormonal women do not take crap from anybody and sometimes that is a very good thing for everybody. Many hormonal women are emotional, aggressive, insightful and perceptive in the extreme. There are things we are really good at that we are not so good at for the rest of the month - wanna get right to the point of a difficult personal issue? ask a hormonal woman. Need to spot a liar? Show your candidates to a hormonal woman. Need to fine tune the nuances of a piece of writing meant for the public? A hormonal woman will have a different take on it than anyone else in the room, sometimes that take seems off base but sometimes it is more insightful than you could have imagined and usually it is on-the-money for the other women in your audience even if they never tell you so.
Nobody can expect to be everything to everyone and human variation is as rich and multifaceted as the landscape of the planet but here's the thing - someone who is experiencing something you cannot experience is not experiencing something that puts them above or below you, it just puts them outside of you. We are not all the same and pretending we are as insistently as we do negates the important differences that are, ironically, pretty general and nullifies the subtle differences that make each of us individual, makes each one of us interesting.
I am hormonal right now. I get this way every month. I've been ashamed and kind of horrified by it all my life but now I am trying to embrace it. This is when I do my best poetic work (for what it's worth) this is when I am most empathetic, most tender, most physical and most volatile. If you need to fine-tune your communicative/diplomatic skills, I am a great place to do it right now. I am easily hurt and yes, I do lash out. On behalf of my sex, I'm trying to reclaim the good parts of this and still keep my dignity as a writer and a fully functioning member of society. I'm still me - just a little more exposed than usual.
If you go through this too, I hope you will find your own way to embrace it. If you don't, I hope you have people in your life who recognize your own particular swings and times and tender areas because I do think we all have them but the thing is this; they are all different. And if you broke a nail that you use to fingerpick your guitar, here's the deal; when you have razor burn or cut yourself shaving, I won't whine about shaving my legs and you don't compare your broken pick-substitute to something I have to deal with on a daily basis.
We're different. I like it that way.
Truth is, I'm pretty damned tired of pretending I don't go through this stuff to anyone and I am tired of living in a culture where one half of the population is forced to pretend we have the same hormonal equilibrium and level of sensitivity (or lack of it) as the other half.
So I'm writing about it.
I was doing my nails this morning when, once again, I remembered the last time I said anything about this particular social custom and two of my male friends piped up about how well they understood because they play guitar and so have to take care of their nails too. The irritation from those fatuous, me-too comments, faux egalitarian BS still galls me when I think of it.
I am doing my nails for the same reason men shave or trim their ear hair, it's not because I want a particular tool to play a particular instrument, it's because, in this culture, it's something women do. I will scrub my floors and do my dishes and my nails will get battered and chipped and I will have to do it all over again in a few days. If I remember to wear gloves, I might be able to go a week. It also requires not only filing but buffing and massaging and polishing and waiting for polish to dry. Whole businesses are given over to this custom and no, I would not do it for myself, I am doing it for two reasons, first - there is a certain level of cultural acceptance that goes with being manicured in my professional circles and second, the man who has my attention really likes it.
See? Like shaving.
When a man complains about shaving, I do not chime in and tell him how I feel his pain because every week or so I have to take a razor into the bathroom and shave my legs. Why don't I do this? Because it's stupid, it dismisses his real and valid complaint about something he has to do all the time to conform to an idea of masculinity here and it misses the point, entirely.
My shaving the scraps of barely visible hair off my legs does not compare to shaving one's entire face and neck every single day and it would never occur to me to be such an insensitive dolt that I would suggest that it does. Nevertheless, say even one word about your nails and some pretend-liberal moron who, if he is married, does the dishes about as often as I shave my legs, I promise you, will sigh and say - "Oh I know what you mean because I play guitar." No pal, you don't know what I mean probably not by a long shot.
This is just one small example of something that happens every day. There are groups of us, male and female, who assume that equal means identical - it does not.
My irritation with these people extends beyond the fact that they say insensitive things, it penetrates into the way they see others, including me, and how they insist on the principles of justice being upheld as though every single one of us were exactly the same and as though we all make the choice, every day, to walk through the world exactly as we are - male, female, short, tall, rich, poor, physically or intellectually inclined. You get the idea.
Society, up until now, has had different expectations for each of these personal traits and it was right to do so. Where it was wrong was in making the assumption that the easiest way to be was the best way to be and therefore all others were something less and deserved to be treated as such.
It is easy to be male, young, slender, straight-identified, white and smart. That is the easy part - at least on the surface. It is easier to have a consistently even temperament, easier for everybody, on both sides. But that does not mean it is always better.
Hormonal women do not take crap from anybody and sometimes that is a very good thing for everybody. Many hormonal women are emotional, aggressive, insightful and perceptive in the extreme. There are things we are really good at that we are not so good at for the rest of the month - wanna get right to the point of a difficult personal issue? ask a hormonal woman. Need to spot a liar? Show your candidates to a hormonal woman. Need to fine tune the nuances of a piece of writing meant for the public? A hormonal woman will have a different take on it than anyone else in the room, sometimes that take seems off base but sometimes it is more insightful than you could have imagined and usually it is on-the-money for the other women in your audience even if they never tell you so.
Nobody can expect to be everything to everyone and human variation is as rich and multifaceted as the landscape of the planet but here's the thing - someone who is experiencing something you cannot experience is not experiencing something that puts them above or below you, it just puts them outside of you. We are not all the same and pretending we are as insistently as we do negates the important differences that are, ironically, pretty general and nullifies the subtle differences that make each of us individual, makes each one of us interesting.
I am hormonal right now. I get this way every month. I've been ashamed and kind of horrified by it all my life but now I am trying to embrace it. This is when I do my best poetic work (for what it's worth) this is when I am most empathetic, most tender, most physical and most volatile. If you need to fine-tune your communicative/diplomatic skills, I am a great place to do it right now. I am easily hurt and yes, I do lash out. On behalf of my sex, I'm trying to reclaim the good parts of this and still keep my dignity as a writer and a fully functioning member of society. I'm still me - just a little more exposed than usual.
If you go through this too, I hope you will find your own way to embrace it. If you don't, I hope you have people in your life who recognize your own particular swings and times and tender areas because I do think we all have them but the thing is this; they are all different. And if you broke a nail that you use to fingerpick your guitar, here's the deal; when you have razor burn or cut yourself shaving, I won't whine about shaving my legs and you don't compare your broken pick-substitute to something I have to deal with on a daily basis.
We're different. I like it that way.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Grace
I can see how it would be possible in some post-apocalyptic world to describe the way my day is unfolding today to someone and have them not believe anything could ever be so easy. Or even to describe it to my grandmother.
I am on my balcony, using my laptop on a warm May day. I am working on an article at my leisure and chatting to a few friends as they come and go on their computers in three different cities.
Two men just came and replaced my toilet. They're gone now and my bathroom's clean. There are the makings of a tasty dinner thawing out in the kitchen, ice water in the fridge and I am listening to a radio station out of Austin, TX.
Sitting in my desk chair, with an ottoman, surrounded by glass panels to waist height, at the perfect height above the ground to see what's happening in my neighbourhood and in the sky but not so high as to be in the grip of the wind and not so low as to be in the midst of the street action - it's pretty easy to be me today.
Everything's clean, nobody is complaining. I'm not rushed or worried. Life is a pretty good place to be if you're me today. Even 20 years ago my lifestyle would have seemed impossibly indulgent. Yet, by most people's standards, I lead a very modest life.
I know there will be times when this won't be nearly enough. There are already people I miss and places I want to be,obstacles to be overcome, problems to be solved. Change is in the air and it's welcome but it is nice to see this moment as the people who came before or those who come after might see it; I know where I am, I know what I want and it's feeling as though I'll be able to reach it from here without having to die trying.
That's a good feeling.
I am on my balcony, using my laptop on a warm May day. I am working on an article at my leisure and chatting to a few friends as they come and go on their computers in three different cities.
Two men just came and replaced my toilet. They're gone now and my bathroom's clean. There are the makings of a tasty dinner thawing out in the kitchen, ice water in the fridge and I am listening to a radio station out of Austin, TX.
Sitting in my desk chair, with an ottoman, surrounded by glass panels to waist height, at the perfect height above the ground to see what's happening in my neighbourhood and in the sky but not so high as to be in the grip of the wind and not so low as to be in the midst of the street action - it's pretty easy to be me today.
Everything's clean, nobody is complaining. I'm not rushed or worried. Life is a pretty good place to be if you're me today. Even 20 years ago my lifestyle would have seemed impossibly indulgent. Yet, by most people's standards, I lead a very modest life.
I know there will be times when this won't be nearly enough. There are already people I miss and places I want to be,obstacles to be overcome, problems to be solved. Change is in the air and it's welcome but it is nice to see this moment as the people who came before or those who come after might see it; I know where I am, I know what I want and it's feeling as though I'll be able to reach it from here without having to die trying.
That's a good feeling.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Ok, Oil
I am no expert on oil wells or drilling or underwater engineering so I want to be clear here, this is my opinion and it is based on common sense, gut feeling and the lessons taught to me by First Nations Elders over the years.
There are certain things I accept as being true and some of my argument does rest on those things. Primarily, I am writing it out here and now to keep myself from putting it on my FB page, to kill off the urge to reply to a friend's comments on FB and also to keep it and the feelings it generates from seeping into my other work. I don't know if this happens to other writers but I often have to clear my head before I can sit down to something that pays - and clearing it in private, for some reason, does not work. How's that for a neurosis? I'm managing it by publishing here, where nobody reads it. Works for everybody, I think.
Anyhow - here are these certain things I accept as being true:
The earth functions as a unified whole. Geographic or climactic change in one part of the world will have an impact on all of the other parts even if that impact is not immediately apparent to us.
The things we do not know far outnumber the things we know.
Deposits of oil or minerals have changed the nature of the earth to an extent where their continued existence in situ contributes to how the rest of the planet functions. This means - oil deposits have a purpose and are useful to the planet and we are, in all likelihood, ignorant of that purpose and that use. (safe to say, it probably isn't to run cars.)
We are an organism on the planet and our actions contribute to the growth of the planet as a complex organism however, we are not more nor less important in our biochemical presence than any other organism - what gets us into trouble is that we think we are more important in the biological sense and we tend to use our brains to try to prove that and so we get into a lot of mischief.
I also believe (and this is the most contentious one, I think), that there is a Creator and that the way the world runs is designed to a certain extent to teach lessons through consequences. Hit your brother - he will take your cookie. Stuff like that. G-d to me is like the benevolent force that runs through all of us, through your consciousness and through the earth itself, not a Daddy but the sense of right and wrong. I believe in that and to me, that's non-negotiable. That force is the voice that and suggests to us that we do not hit our brother in the first place. Once the brother is hit, consequences are in play and there is no stopping that part. Gotta have free will - but you have to live with the outcome of it too.
With these issues in place as my personal foundation, I have to say, I do not think Top Kill or the Junk Shot are going to work to stop the leakage of oil from the rupture in the floor of the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico.
First of all - ask your gut. Does it seem reasonable to you that piling mud into a burst artery is going to stop that artery from bleeding out? Doesn't seem reasonable to me. How about throwing little pieces of garbage into that cut? Another crappy solution that only looks at the oil gushing out and doesn't seem capable of understanding that the oil is under pressure from a much larger system and that pressure will continue to overwhelm the bits and pieces of gunk we throw at it.
Secondly, it's time we learned new ways of coping with our messes. The old ways aren't working. This incident is giving us the chance to see that reacting in panic doesn't work. Once all the panic-stricken, childish responses have been exhausted, we will have to actually sit down and think about how this is happening and what kinds of things we actually can do that will help us to fix the mess and solve the problem on our end.
This means we need to find a way to get the oil out of there. It's not going to stay in, that much has been proven. So how do we get it out?
It will require a lot of calm, sensible, engineering skill to think this one through but it seems to me that there must be some way to bring the stream to the surface where it can be captured and piped out - probably to be used for its original dubious purpose, but anyway, away from the damage it is doing to all of the people, (fish, birds and wildlife included) that it is hurting right now.
So there are my thoughts on the subject. Junk shot - won't work. Top Kill - no way. Dome? you're kidding, right? We have to actually do the work and fix this one from the ground up. I wish us luck and a measure of common sense. And now I can go back to work - my deck is cleared.
There are certain things I accept as being true and some of my argument does rest on those things. Primarily, I am writing it out here and now to keep myself from putting it on my FB page, to kill off the urge to reply to a friend's comments on FB and also to keep it and the feelings it generates from seeping into my other work. I don't know if this happens to other writers but I often have to clear my head before I can sit down to something that pays - and clearing it in private, for some reason, does not work. How's that for a neurosis? I'm managing it by publishing here, where nobody reads it. Works for everybody, I think.
Anyhow - here are these certain things I accept as being true:
The earth functions as a unified whole. Geographic or climactic change in one part of the world will have an impact on all of the other parts even if that impact is not immediately apparent to us.
The things we do not know far outnumber the things we know.
Deposits of oil or minerals have changed the nature of the earth to an extent where their continued existence in situ contributes to how the rest of the planet functions. This means - oil deposits have a purpose and are useful to the planet and we are, in all likelihood, ignorant of that purpose and that use. (safe to say, it probably isn't to run cars.)
We are an organism on the planet and our actions contribute to the growth of the planet as a complex organism however, we are not more nor less important in our biochemical presence than any other organism - what gets us into trouble is that we think we are more important in the biological sense and we tend to use our brains to try to prove that and so we get into a lot of mischief.
I also believe (and this is the most contentious one, I think), that there is a Creator and that the way the world runs is designed to a certain extent to teach lessons through consequences. Hit your brother - he will take your cookie. Stuff like that. G-d to me is like the benevolent force that runs through all of us, through your consciousness and through the earth itself, not a Daddy but the sense of right and wrong. I believe in that and to me, that's non-negotiable. That force is the voice that and suggests to us that we do not hit our brother in the first place. Once the brother is hit, consequences are in play and there is no stopping that part. Gotta have free will - but you have to live with the outcome of it too.
With these issues in place as my personal foundation, I have to say, I do not think Top Kill or the Junk Shot are going to work to stop the leakage of oil from the rupture in the floor of the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico.
First of all - ask your gut. Does it seem reasonable to you that piling mud into a burst artery is going to stop that artery from bleeding out? Doesn't seem reasonable to me. How about throwing little pieces of garbage into that cut? Another crappy solution that only looks at the oil gushing out and doesn't seem capable of understanding that the oil is under pressure from a much larger system and that pressure will continue to overwhelm the bits and pieces of gunk we throw at it.
Secondly, it's time we learned new ways of coping with our messes. The old ways aren't working. This incident is giving us the chance to see that reacting in panic doesn't work. Once all the panic-stricken, childish responses have been exhausted, we will have to actually sit down and think about how this is happening and what kinds of things we actually can do that will help us to fix the mess and solve the problem on our end.
This means we need to find a way to get the oil out of there. It's not going to stay in, that much has been proven. So how do we get it out?
It will require a lot of calm, sensible, engineering skill to think this one through but it seems to me that there must be some way to bring the stream to the surface where it can be captured and piped out - probably to be used for its original dubious purpose, but anyway, away from the damage it is doing to all of the people, (fish, birds and wildlife included) that it is hurting right now.
So there are my thoughts on the subject. Junk shot - won't work. Top Kill - no way. Dome? you're kidding, right? We have to actually do the work and fix this one from the ground up. I wish us luck and a measure of common sense. And now I can go back to work - my deck is cleared.
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