the motions

there are moments that I forget myself
and I breathe
then I remember
and stop

The Mall

I see it, I want it
I buy it,
The instant gratification
irresistable

No one gets everything they want in life
but at the mall I sign my name, surrender my time
For things to hold the place of what is most desired

I take it home, set it down
with the rest of my
dust collecting collection

And feel empty

Dizzy Ditty in the key of D

days drifting down delay
they devolve enough today

today, today
for me to say:

Darlin', Darlin',
Darlin' its delightful
dealing with the dreamy things you do

ooh hoo,

don't you doubt
and don't despair

there's adoration for you
everywhere.

long ago and far away

the memory of you
next to me on the cliff above the Pacific
so cold and misty
looking down at the swelling, swirling wet
crashing on rocks

I thought
about the future and change
about dancing with you to the tin tune of the grinder's organ
not caring who was watching or that I did not know the steps

I thought
if I jumped I would end first, before our love
I would end embraced in this moment where
you loved me and I loved you
before everything changed.

You asked what I was thinking
I smiled.
I shook my head and took your hand
and we walked down to get soup and hot coffee

and slowly, ever so slowly
after that day
everything changed

everyone needs a hobby

I throw things to see them break
I throw things to hear the sound they make
I throw things to watch people duck
I throw things to transfer energy
I throw things to get them away from me
I throw things to get attention
I throw things to watch them splat
I throw things to have them thrown back
I throw things but I can't catch
I throw things

but you're not into that
you don't want to throw things

okay.
you don't throw
that's good to know

FS said something the other day that struck me.
She said that the thing about survivors is that they are always survivors. They never stop being survivors. They can not let go of the habits and patterns that helped them survive.
I ask myself the question that I cannot answer and I cannot ask another.
Is there a point where you stop surviving and start living?
Is there a point where you open the door to that mental prison and walk out into the rest of your life?
Is there a point at which you say "yes this happened to me and I survived and because I have survived I am now going to live."

the nature of want

I used to think (and still do) that the essential part of being alive is the wanting.
(Very non-Buddhist of me, I guess)

It seems a simple process - you want something. you go get it.
As with many things now I'm not so sure.

There's
What people tell me I want
What people want for me
What people want from me
What I used to want
What I think I want
What I want

And then there's what I want that I shouldn't have
what I won't admit to myself that I really want

Often I want things that are contradictory or mutually exclusive.

All this even before the things we do to get what we "want."

So much conflict in this world could be resolved by being clear about what you want
upfront and negotiating from there.

I used to think that the great tragedy of life is that people don't get what they want.
Now I think this is the tip of the iceberg of desire.

one compromise too many

i am not myself today
i have forgotten the words to that song

feet bound into small and curious shapes, mincing cautious steps
hands tied in the gesture of social niceties
and everything tied to the hem of my dress
dragging and pulling and weighing

three years ago i went back to touch base
it was the juxtaposition of who i am and who i was
who i thought i would continue to be.

i know how i got here but i don't want to be here

what grad school is for

He said the trick is that you have to set a really big goal and figure out how to cut it into smaller, manageable tasks.
Why did no one tell me this? I have learned nothing of the kind.
It is obvious. But I am blind.
It is clear that I understand nothing.
And I have spent these precious years of my life, my youth over-reacting to my own fears my insecurities my inadequacies my inability to understand my inability to put my finger on the very problem.
years drowning
years in pain
years lost
they brought out the big fancy themes with flash and sound
when what I needed, what I really need, what I am needing is the smallest of truths.
and a way to develop the most elementary habit

true confessions of an old feminist

Despite everything I tell myself to the contrary
perhaps the greatest harm done to me
was a simple Cinderella story

Because even now
many hearts/twenty hearts later
and dragons slain by my own hand
as I travel the pass
from princess to crone

there are moments of distress
where I peek over my shoulder
and silently wonder
if he's going to ride up
on his horse and carry me away.

for juvenilia_speak on marrying rich.

congratulations

don't pretend that nothing happened
don't say your sorry
don't give me a hug
don't tell me how you feel
don't tell me what you think
don't offer me support
don't check to see if I'm okay
don't talk to me
don't take me to coffee
don't invite me to parties

if you must do something just smile and say hi

and step away from me

far away

promises to myself that I will not keep

The day before I leave I will burn my worldly possessions
and walk into the future naked

I will admit to what my heart desires

I will allow allow myself to want what I want

and I will ask

no harm in asking

Resisting temptation as an act of personal liberation

Some days you kiss temptation on the cheek
and
politely say

no thank you.

so conflict averse

I sit here and loudly proclaim myself to be a road block on the path to consensus. I feel nauseous knowing that I do not think quickly enough. I do not argue persuasively enough. I am not strong enough. And that at the third meeting there are people who will discredit me, cut me to shreds, make me cry in public, and then make a procedural path around me. They will argue rings around me. They already are arguing rings around me, they are already perparing a procedural path around me.

Confrontation, Conflict, Speaking up, Weighing in on the issue, acting on what you believe

These things are so hard to do. Very scary. Almost impossible.

No one wants to be hated. No one wants to rock the boat. No one wants to be shunned.
The fear freezes me up. Being there in that room I freeze up.

And I think about that whole quote about not speaking up when they came for the Jews and the Gays and the Communists and how there was no one left when they came for the person who stood by.

What fights are worth fighting? Acts of genocide vs. actual genocide. Do small evil acts snowball into big ones? Or are they manageable and forgettable?

I ask myself: in Germany, if people had spoken out right at the start would they have all been crushed and killed or would they have stemmed the tide of darkness? The people who spoke up in Germany were shot or sent to camps. Everyone else became afraid to talk. And great evil happened. What if people kept talking? Until everyone knew someone who had been shot. Until everyone had lost someone they loved. Would they have gotten angry enough to speak up, to act, to pick up a weapon and stop it? Could they have turned the tide? Or was great evil inevitable?

No one knows what to do and no one knows what to say. Their hands are tied and they have better things to do. I am waiting for a miracle. I am waiting for someone to speak up. Someone stronger than me. This miracle will not happen. They have bigger fish to fry. So if I cannot have that miracle. I will ask for a different one. For strength, presence of mind, and great persuasive power. Give me the greater persuasive power and greater political accumen.

the more I attempt to explain myself
the more alien I feel
translating myself into foreign languages
not knowing if I use the idioms correctly

In my anti-social years
when I talked to no one and sang to myself
conforming to the norm was irrelevant
as was simultaneous translation

Leaving the borders of myself
in search of others
I am drawing maps, recording local customs
hoping that the locals are friendly

eye of the receiver - a tract on harassment

Harassment is a question that I and many around me have been grappling with of late. Folks seem to look at harassment in two ways.

There are people who believe that harassment is behavior. When you can identify specific behaviors that are hostile or initimidating you have identified harassment. Then all actions can be tested against the list to see what is harassment and what is not.

Other people believe that harassment is reflected in the feelings of the person that the behavior acts against. When a person feels uncomfortable, unwelcome, or intimidated in a human interaction, they are on the receiving end of harassment.
Much like beauty is in the eye of the beholder and harassment is in the eye of the receiver.

Interestingly in my very small survey men often argue that harassment is specific behavior and women argue that harassment is defined by how that behavior is received.

In one case human interaction becomes more and more restricted as the list of actions that are called harassment gets longer and longer. Or harassing acts that are not on the big list are dismissed as not harassment. In the other case people become afraid to interact because any interaction could be interpreted by the recipient as harassment (regardless of their actual intent) based on the feelings of the recipient. Additionally, the feelings of the person feeling harassed may be misattributed to the actions of another while actually have no connection with the actions of the person accused of harassment. This in a sense being an act of counter harassment. I will say as an overly sensitive person that sometimes people are overly sensitive - that sometimes people over interpret what is said to them.

Regardless a climate of fear and distrust is created.

The question of harassment is the action itself, the way that it is received, the way it was intended. Intent is the elusive factor that is really at the heart of the grey areas of harassment. It folds into not only how the action is intended but also what the recipient assumes the intent is. Intent, the crucial element, is impossible to determine to the satisfaction of all parties involved. Such that everyone points either to behavior or to reception of behavior. These are easier to dissect.

Let us acknowledge that there are actions observed that are clearly harassment. Often these are exchanges between strangers. Interactions that happen in which one person acts towards a stranger in a hostile or initimidating way on the basis of that stranger's color or gender or sexual orientation or level of poverty or some other social distinguishing feature. Racial slurs, sexist remarks, homophobic comments made to strangers are clearly acts of harassment whose only intent is to express hostility or intimidate.

Harassment is behavior, intent, and reception. When choosing a behavior there is the question of audience. Will the person you are speaking to understand your intent? When these interactions happen between people who are acquainted with one another we run into grey areas - the more intimacy exists between the individuals the greyer things get. When your behavior is not received in the way you expected, how are you then to react?

One grey area is in telling jokes - jokes that mock specific groups of people, blondes, gays, catholics, dead babies, what have you. People who tell them argue that jokes are just jokes. They are intended to be funny and not threatening or hostile. It's just a joke. In jokes and in other interactions it is a question of audience. And humor is a very subjective thing. The question at the start is: Do people in your audience feel included or excluded? When you tell this joke will a person who feels excluded then feel further excluded?

My father has always said that firstly you must establish an understanding of good will between you and the person with whom you speak. When good will is understood and accepted between conversants conversation is entirely free and you can say anything. The key is to be very clear in expressing your good will and in the other person communicating whether or not they feel, believe, and share these expressions. Before anything else this is the first step in good communication and a free exchange of ideas. And this is something that must be established mutually.

Be aware that you are not a mind reader nor is the other person, if you cannot establish good will amongst the parties involved it's best to err on the side of extreme caution treating the other person with the distance and consideration that you would a total stranger and be _very_ clear about when things have move into areas of discomfort.

Discomfort is not harassment but can be a step on a downward spiral to very bad conflicts.

It's takes a lot of the fun out of social situations but it keeps your ass from being sued off the planet - or worse, right?

book of matches on a gas can

on any other day
i would not
knowing that i know better

a careful eye with eyebrow raised
follows me across the room
don't bait the bear

but it looms large
the very thought makes me smile
how to curb the urge

throw me in the snow
so i don't catch flame

progressives are deeply concerned with injustice and oppression. to the question of social justice it is clear that some groups are oppressed and face injustice on an individual and a systematic way.

this is social justice.
what about justice for an individual?
an individual who is a friend, who is a member of your community?

when progressives look at specific individuals involved specific questions of conflict / harassement / injustice and their interpretation of what is happening is deeply colored by whether they identify either person as a member of an oppressed group. It is hard not to.

Would you lend credence to a white man's claim that a black man had made hostile racisist comments that made him uncomfortable? And that this is unacceptable?

Would you seriously consider a Catholic's claim that anticatholic statements or jokes made them feel harassed and were unacceptable?

Would you consider the claims of a man who told you that the woman who accused him of harrasment was lying?

if progressives do not seriously consider these kinds of claims are they unjust to an individual because of their concept of greater social justice?

---

i try to help but i am not convinced that it does any good. my instinctive response to a situation like this is
of a deer in headlights. i am trying to act in real time to anticipate to prepare to protect to encourage to advise
but by the time my brain kicks in it is too late and the damage is done. is it irreparable?

i am tormented by doubts. could i have done more? why didn't i do more? why do i only think now of the thing that should
have been done and said then?

i have always felt strongly that people have to make their own decisions. i can express an opinion but i shouldn't overwhelm them. they have to live with their decision, they have to choose. but maybe i am wrong. maybe all i have done is allow people i care about to drown.

in the movie "Mean Girls" Janice says that there are two kinds of evil people in the world - those that do evil and those that stand by and let evil be done.

i am tormented by the thought that by not doing enough, i have done the latter

what is needed right now is a champion. i am many things but that is not my strength. i am out of my depths.
so i feel like a failure.

The question of fate

I am watching "Serendipity" starring the every so lovely John Cusack and the equally lovely Kate Backinsale. This whole post is a spoiler so don't read it unless you have already seen the movie.

It is a small romantic comedy. It starts simply. A chance encounter: boy meets girl. There is a spark and then the complications set in. She has a boyfriend. He has a girlfriend. So despite the obvious attraction and the clear connection nothing can come of it. But a series of coincidences on that day keep bringing them back together. Should they give love a chance?

She believes in fate, in destiny. She believes that the universe leaves you clues that if followed will lead you to a happier life. She throw the decision to chance. She writes her number in a book that she sells to a used book store. He writes his number on a 5 dollar bill and buys something. And then they try a second time. Each takes a different elevator and randomly pushes a button. If they end up on the same floor, it was meant to be now. They push the same button. She doesn't wait long enough and he is delayed. so they part.

Years pass and they each get engaged to other people. But cannot shake the memory or the feeling that maybe they are making a mistake.

Here the film transitions into a Sleepless in Seattle thing. Where the movie is not a love story but more a story about two people who are longing for love. True love. They each decide to try to seek each other out. We are tortured by their close calls, their near misses. Every obstacle and misunderstanding that keeps them apart wrings us harder for knowing how close they really were.

This goes on and on until. Each of them decides to break their engagement. This is the key. They let go of what they have and admit that there is more that they want. They believe that they will never find each other, still they decide to settle for no less than their hearts desire. They take that chance. And with this act of courage, of leaping into the great unknown, this is when at last - chance brings them together.

It's a romance. Romance is all about destiny, about finding the one person in the whole world. In fiction nothing is a coincidence. Everything happens for a reason. Everyone who shows up in the story has the opportunity to bend the story in one or another direction.

Reality, life is something else entirely.

So the question is: Do you believe in fate? In Destiny?

egg sitting

For some reason JS feels that this story needs telling.

My guy, SE, is a man of many pets. Among them are two endangered tortoises: a male named Lewis and a female named Sinclair. His clothes cover the floor of his loft and his closet has been converted into a tortoise home covered in grass cuttings and heated by lamps.

He has had them for about 10 years and has raised them from when they were tiny. Ever since he got them, he has been waiting to breed them. He's all about the being fruitful and multiplying.

10 years is about how long it takes for them to reach maturity.

Of late while in bed we would hear bumping and clacking - strange scuffling noises from the closet. And upon sliding back the door we would find Lewis humping a very unreceptive Sinclair. She sat in her shell and ignored him as he propped himself up on her and did his thing. I could not imagine how penetration would occur. SE had to diagram out the geometry for me. Apparently when receptive, she would move her tail and raise her legs enabling contact.
*naughty*

I got used to the idea that she just wasn't that into him.
*insert comment about the fickleness of tortoise females*
*and the need for the sweet sounds of Marvin Gaye*
*and comments about why we were in bed listening to tortoise love*

There was one night where SE was pretty sure that he had caught them in the act. It was hard to say, though considering that they were in the corner.
*and comment about voyeurism*

Still there was no reason to assume that anything would come of it. They are so young. These things can take time. Despite what your health teacher will say, it doesn't always happen on the first try.

But.

A few days ago SE looked in the closet saw an EGG! Apparently with the proper persistance and wooing Sinclair had seen fit to put out.

Off we went to get an incubator and put little Egg in a temperature controlled environment. This incubator is a big styrofoam box with a few plastic windows and a very imprecise thermal regulator. Set the temperature to 84-88 degrees and wait. Well, more like set the "temperature" and watch the readings on three thermometers fluctuate between 80 and 92 degrees. (none of them giving the same reading)

SE, elated about the new arrival, checked the incubator every few hours to see if the egg was okay. He was leaving for the holiday and started planning to take his animals with him. Including the Egg.

SE started to wonder if there was a second egg. Tortoises commonly lay clutches of them. He weighed Sinclair and found that she had not lost all of her egg weight. Perhaps there was a second egg. He took her to the vet. X-rays showed that indeed there was a second egg. The vet gave him a dose of oxytocin to give her to induce labor and we spent his last night in town spying on poor Sinclair as she paced back and forth around the closet, moving more than I had seen her do in the previous month and a half of knowing her.

Then some time into the pacing SE called me up to the loft to witness the laying. She had already started by the time I got there. I didn't want to disturb her but now I kind of wish that I had been able to see her face. What I saw was the back end emergence of a really big white egg. push-push-pause, push-push-pause, again and again until finally it was out. And she walked away. She came back to bury it but Scott had other plans for second little Egg. Into the incubator with it's sibling.

So the next morning SE was all set to take Sinclair, Lewis, two eggs in incubator and his cat on the long drive home. (I have killed my share of fish and plants when friends leave town. I am not a person to be trusted with delicate precious creatures.) I helped him load up, kissed him good bye, and thought that was that.

Until I stopped by his place to pick some things up. And there on the kitchen was the incubator and the clutch (little Egg and second little Egg looking a bit peaked). In a panic I called him. He thought that the vibration of his car might adversely affect their development, kill them even, and thought it best to leave them.

And now I am egg sitting. I come over a few times a day and visit them. I bought a fourth thermometer to put in the incubator and the general consensus is that one of them is way off and some kind of an average must be taken of the temperature readings of the rest. Despite my best efforts the temperature fluctates between 87.3 and 90.5 degrees. According to the websites I've looked at gender is determined by the temperature of incubation. Which makes me wonder what if they will come out with gender identity issues.

I hover and worry. I read and wonder what kinds of songs one sings to eggs that incubate. After the first couple of weeks the egg calcifies and they are a little less vulnerable. Maybe I will knit them each a little cozy to wear. Or maybe I should write them endangered baby tortoise incubation lullabies.

There is a chance that the eggs are not fertilized. This can only be determined a couple of weeks from now. If they are not I will chase SE down the street giggling hysterically.

As it is when I told JS about all this she started giggling hysterically.