Just Like That
Current mood: efficient
I guess it’s not technically the new moon yet. Maybe the paralytic anxiety power of December’s moon finally let me go.
I know that sounds like crazy talk, but there has to be something to it. The simple effect of the immense gravity changes that are part of the moon phases we see, have to affect how we feel, much like the barometric pressure can give some people a headache, right? And I know my garden failed miserably last spring until I took a little time to synch it with the moon phases– which I should have done in the first place. I did have my first gardening experiences (and learn when to get my hair cut, and lots of other things) in creepy, magical Appalachia, afterall.
I had a wonderful day at home yesterday, just me and shaky baby. It was beautiful outside, as it is again today. We washed both cars, cleaned our back porch thoroughly, ate lunch and supper together, did some long hoarded art projects, put away most of Christmas. I figured out my kindergarten choice for her (yes we have to apply and choose and test and interview here, anxiety!). I smoked my last cigarette at midnight and I’m doing fine.
Today I got her off to school and I have been writing for the last two hours. I want so badly to finish a fiction book, so badly. I have three in me right at this moment, actually, one with a bit more point/structure than the others. I wish I could believe this is the wave that I will finally ride.
I am picking out the music for the movie soundtrack too– don’t you do that, pick the songs that will be in the movie of your life, or hear a song and suddenly find a whole story spinning out in your head? I am wallering in the delicious angst and anger of Spoon, Tori Amos, Emmylou, the Smiths, Everclear.
But it’s time to go be a housewife, I think, if only to myself, no married servitude this week, he’s on a business trip. Today goes so quickly– take the baby to school, a few brief hours to myself, take her to gymnastics, go back to work tomorrow. I can wallow in my playlist at the same time as I manage some bills, reorder some checks, clean up some…
Must get that novel written. How soon is now?
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Currently listening : Wrecking Ball By Emmylou Harris Release date: 26 September, 1995 |
coffee and xanax
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Monday, December 31, 2007
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joy to the world
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joy to the world
Isaiah 9:6 If you were raised in or chose a certain tradition, it all started with a baby. The Lord came to us in the form of a helpless, impoverished child. Yet he came with the promise of salvation for every person, here and in the hereafter. Joseph’s first impulse was to put Mary away in her shame as an unwed mother, but he was reminded by an angel that her conception was a miracle of the holy ghost, and he took her and her baby to him and took care of them as best he could. A star shone in the East and people from certain poor shepherds to the wise men brought gifts to the baby, knowing that his coming signified something very special. The traditions and images have stayed with us over these hundreds of years, even before the birth of Christ, through tellings and retellings, writings and rewritings. They’ve stayed a key part of our cultural consciousness for a reason. The story of this baby, and his and his followers’ later teachings, were a clear message to us, if we have ears to hear. What clearer sign could there be, than the arrival of hope and salvation in the form of a helpless child? Everyone who has spent any time at all with a newborn is bathed in the miracle and the apprehension of it. What a wondrous, inscrutable thing is the birth of a baby– attended in most circumstances regardless of the socioeconomic condition, relationship, and parenting intentions of the biological parents by almost unmanageable feelings of longing, desire, hope, fear, and joy. Some of us embrace, or are simply swept away by, that fearsome joy and responsibility. Others of us, for reasons of fear or personality or circumstance, turn away from that intolerable, ecstatic, truly chaotic and impossible task– putting ourselves on the line for the wellbeing of that tiny one. I believe most of us would report that we find ourselves treading the painful line in between. We’ve created a whole industry and a sort of priesthood of professionals devoted to birthing and gifting. The move of the locus of ‘what’s best for the baby’ from traditional birthing and mother’s instincts (albeit without pain relief and without interventions that may in rare cases result in saving the life of child, mother or both) to an impersonal and often violent assembly line of interventions by authoritarian OBGyn’s and arcane and dangerous practices still is a cultural message regarding the momentousness of the event. The benefit of interventive, medicalized birth, given our incredibly poor infant survival rate in the United States, is a discussion for another time. But the rise of a reverent, fearful, sense of the dangers of birth, requiring ritualized gift giving and turning the outcome over to intervention of skilled professionals using dangerous and mysterious practices is evidence of how important we think it is– so important that it can’t be done without great expense and great intervention compared to how babies used to be born and nurtured in a manner that fit organically with how families and life itself functioned. But it’s a message we’re somehow only half getting– baby showers, gifts for children at Christmas, the need to rush to the temple of knowledge of how to birth (hospital) so that we can do birth ’safely,’ the ‘right way’–activities that have risen to an almost superstitious level, so much so that we have all sorts of drives to make sure that children of needy families get gifts. But there’s also a significant portion of the message we are sadly missing. Weren’t humans originally crafted in the image of God? We like to think so, anyway. It’s at the heart of our tradition that the lord came to us in human form to save us all. Somehow we remain, thousands of years after Isaiah’s words, only marginally cognizant of the Christmas story’s message for us. The nature of God is in that tiny baby. It is helpless, gentle, willing, needy, constant, unlimited in its capacity to bond and love. It teaches us what true love is (or should be), in all its incredible joy and difficult sacrifice. It is full of the limitless potential, power and grace of God, imparted in each of his precious children from conception A helpless baby is a miracle from God. Every baby is conceived of the holy spirit. And I don’t want my words/thoughts twisted to be interpreted as a call to forbid abortion, either. Every baby is our wonderful counsellor, on whose shoulders the government shall rest. Yet the life of a child, and a parent, especially a mother, is cheap, and parents who are not part of the minority who have strong financial and social support are marginalized. We reap what we sow. As long as babies are born into poverty, to women who are disrespected and powerless and parents who are forced to make terrible choices between parenting in a way that is best for babies and paying the rent and getting food on the table– as long as babies are born into a world where they will not have adequate emotional nurture, nutrition, health insurance, and education– as long as sex partners simply can’t be bothered to honor each other as the parents of this miracle, regardless of their compatibility as spouses– non medically necessary abortion will continue. I must say, I am sick of the rhetoric of so – called Choice. Choice is not really a choice. Without a radical change in how we treat infants and parents, it is the ONLY option for most who face unintended pregnancies, in a world that treats babies and women like we do, from the violence and violations of hospital birth to the professional and financial losses we face once we become parents. We don’t have a living wage. We don’t have health care. We don’t have enough to eat, or we have the terrific luxury of literally eating ourselves to death, and what we do have to eat is produced inhumanely and unnaturally and full of chemicals from antibiotics to hormones to industrial and agricultural poisons. A pretty white pregnant lady from a well to do suburb disappears and she and her baby are found dead months later and it is a national tragedy. A poor or minority mother disappears or is beaten and/or murdered, along with her baby who may have had some chance of survival if it weren’t for the beating or murder and we never even hear about it. Abusive and estranged husbands and boyfriends murder the mothers of their children, often in the presence of those children. And let’s not talk about the child sex industry that goes on right under our noses. The big players, the ones who mastermind the ongoing cycle of kidnaping and lifetime abuse, are immune and free to continue making money preying on the most helpless. Even I, in my big comfortable home in the burbs in the land of cotton, find myself having to make sad and difficult choices between parenting, profession, and my own wellbeing. We live paycheck to paycheck, and we work in a system that is not geared whatsoever toward raising our precious wonderful counsellors. I received notification the other day that if I run out of leave and go into leave without pay status (due to, say, having to miss work when my husband is out of town to handle his as well as my usual child care logistics) it will be a disciplinary situation. I need my job. And I need to support my husband in his job when he must go out of town. I don’t want to lose another job. A disciplinary situation due to needing to leave work a few moments early or miss work on a Saturday because my husband is out of town? And guess what… he’s the breadwinner, so you know what I’ll have to do, and I’ll damn sure do it. These things work upon each other to the detriment of my child. The constant battle between keeping food on the table and, say, breastfeeding, safe, loving and affordable child care that meets a baby’s emotional and developmental needs– I can’t imagine how families who work for minimum wage do it, and I can’t imagine knowing my baby is ill or needs dental care and being unable to afford the office visit. I hate to tell ya, but health insurance and medicaid just isn’t there for far too many working poor families. You can check the statistics… I don’t have to, you probably already know them. Then there are the children and families in the Sudan, or Iraq, or Bosnia-Herzegovina, or… Jesus himself was all about children. ‘Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: For of such is the kingdom of Heaven.’ And, as I saw on a wonderful and heartbreaking prayer card picturing children at the Savior’s feet that was created at the beginning of the Iraq War– Jesus would never call them collateral damage. As I see parents, including myself, stressing out and overextending and conniving to ‘give their kids Christmas,’ or hear about the police or other organizations collecting toys for underprivileged kids, I know we understand it to some extent. We’re doing the best we can, and it truly is about love. But there’s so much more. When we finally understand the miracle of Christmas– when we finally GET THE F*CKING MESSAGE that our Lord came to us in the form of a helpless and impoverished child, and that children are our Wonderful Counselors, and the government shall be upon their shoulders– when we get the message that coming should have taught us, how to treat children and those who cannot fend for themselves, from the mentally ill to the aged to our companion and food animals– Society must change. We must eliminate cruelties to our most helpless and needy, and, as a matter not just of personal sacrifice and private sentiment but of public policy and assent, treat children and our most helpless citizens with the true value we only pretend to give them now. THEN the promise, hope and peace of Christmas will finally be realized. |
contemplativegrownup hot; or, more on porn
I’m a bit embarassed to have had the reaction I have, to Conversations with Other Women. But my thoughts travel nicely with others I’ve been having lately and wanting to blog about, so what the hell. I crank up Spoon’s The Ghost of You Lingers and off we go.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/conversations_with_other_women/
First of all Helena Bonham Carter is hot, hot, hot (yes I’ve been watching Eloise, sue me), whether she’s a sketchy 12 step addict in Fight Club or Lucy Honeychurch in A Room With A View. But she really was so lovely in this movie. She expressed so much longing for me. She’s 38– or, as she explains it, 15 years older than the male lead’s 23-year-old girlfriend Sarah-the-Dancer. She’s at this wedding reception smoking, alone. How I long to just smoke and be okay with the idea that it is completely socially unacceptable. She had the perfect imperfect no-longer-young-still fabulous body and the perfect messy honey brown curls the perfect black clothes and the perfect aging beauty self-deprecating frailty over a core of sinewy practical essential self. She knows driniking is a mistake, as is this conversation, and she steps in and swallows anyway.
The conversation between the two characters is quite sexy. Aaron Eckhart is a nobody, and completely not my type, but the story line and chemistry made him fabulous. It made me wish like hell for such an opportunity, to be pursued in that way, even though in real life I would run from it as fast as I could. (Wouldn’t I?)
Here’s the thing.
I’ve been thinking about the problem with porn, for a while. It’s not that it’s offensive… I am a staunch freedom of the press type, as long as it’s consenting adults (the definition of consenting is a topic for another time). It doesn’t even make me jealous. It’s a total non question.
The problem is the difference between what women, okay what I, want, and what porn is.
Porn is people we don’t know performing acts. It’s not necessarily offensive… and it may even be mildly titillating. But it has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with hot. Nothing.
I may have mentioned Ian McEwan’s Chesile Beach already?
As I was reading that book, and having this discussion about erotica and the publishing industry and librarians’ usual position (so to speak) on freedom of the press and whether or not to put pictures OF HIMSELF– and looking at said pictures!– in his new ‘how to love/sex your partner’ book with this dude I don’t even know at my workplace, I was thinking… if men could just GET IT!
What was sexy about this movie– okay lots was sexy, but what really got me in the heart and the brain was the male lead’s expression of emotion. I don’t want to spoil it. But screw it. You can’t even be quite sure of the ending, even when you see the ending, and the ending isn’t even the point.
What women, or what I, want, and what is completely lacking in porn, is that abiding soul regard for me –ME, as me, knowing who I am and still desiring me as a friend, a partner, and sexually. Seeing me, stretchmarks, PMS, grown out highlights, weird ass vegan hair and skin care routines, issues, baggage, anger, motherhood, exhaustion, menial job… and intellect, dedication, thought, ability, beauty, professionalism… wanting the entire package, as a person not as a body or an act.
I mean, I try to take care of myself and look pretty and be a fun, hot person some times. But welcome to marriage, nobody’s that way all the time. Who would want to be? I’m too fucking tired.
But I have always felt this way about my boyfriends, and in a nonsexual way about my friends and some family members– everything you are is special to me, because it’s yours. The annoyance/irritation/pissed off that you express makes sense to me and is often hilarious and adorable as well as completely reasonable. Your bone structure, the shape of your hands, your terrible taste in literature or television suddenly becomes wonderful just because it’s you. In fact, what tips me off the fence into crushing on someone, whether I’ve known them ten days or ten years, is some small detail about them that is just them, nobody else. My husband’s hands aren’t going to win any modeling contracts, but sometimes they make me swoon.
The guy in the movie says he loves her and (whether he means it or not) begs her to give it all up and leave him. He knows all this sad and unattractive stuff about her and he just — loves her. And says so. I know I’ve already given it all up but it would be wonderful if someone would pretend I hadn’t and ask me to anyway.
If only men got it, they’d have more women than they could handle! [How easily women can think guys do get it, and think they are hearing it, as opposed to really getting and hearing it, is another topic for another day.] If a guy said, I want to do you, meaning not you because that dress shows off your breasts or you because you happened to walk through the bedroom naked or you in those fishnets and smeared eyeliner and bed head– YOU, that is me, as a human being, as the multifaceted spirit and body and set of experiences and circumstances and issues that makes you, YOU that is, me, me — I’d be gone.
No wonder women love gay men… they notice, and remember, for Christ’s sake, intimate details that are so precious to women, and such nonstarters for men– forgotten or flicked away almost before they come out of a woman’s mouth or cross the man’s field of vision.
Okay okay… some other elements come into it too… a slight bit of hard to get (otherwise known as integrity, people?), a little tension and adversity helps… but this is the key. If I could bottle it I’d be rich, rich, rich.
Next time– unless I think of something bullshit to say about my mundane existence first — the nature of longing including its attachment to something that isn’t even real.
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I am shaky!
I thought I’d just try it, and shure ’nuff… shakyegg was available on myspace. Dear ones, I am going to move this show over to myspace. I am not to good to do what millions of other assholes are doing all around the world– or at least all over America. I am so tickled. I need the anonymity, unless, of course, you are already my friend, or would like to be.
I don’t have much up there, right yet. But I will.
One thing that is particularly viral/icky about myspace is that you have to register to see someone’s work on myspace. And I’m sorry. It’s free, but some of my freethinking dear ones might not like it. If you don’t want to register as yourself you can do what I did and register under a pretend name. I even have a pretend hotmail account with my name nowhere on it– shakyegg@hotmail.com.
But anyway for that reason, at least for a time, I will probably try to post whatever I post on myspace, here as well.
So, here’s yesterday’s post…
If you have a chance, please check me out at www.myspace.com/shakyegg
and as always, don’t out me!
Take your chocolates and go home…
My husband is away for work this week (don’t even think about it, bad people… my dogs will tear you limb from limb… huh. echoes of the Hank Dogs… I’ll be putting them on here next). He’s sorry he’s gone for Valentine’s day, and I don’t really mind at all, I can do kids’ stuff (maybe, just once, I can be the fun parent in my stepson’s eyes?) and I don’t want those hallmark f-words telling us when to express our devotion to each other. whether we feel devotion is of course beside the point. I just don’t want to be told how and when to show it, even if there were any.
But I was reminded of the Drive By Truckers song Feb 14. I loooooove these guys sooooo much. I always make sure to note that I’ve been following them all over the Southeast since they were playing to a crowd of twenty at the Nick in Birmingham, and I’ve adored them absolutely and slavishly the whole time. I had the good fortune to see them twice lately, and… well my brother, who is a pretty spiritual, but also a pretty practical and pragmatic dude– he’s not emotionally cheap, I think, is a good way to put it– he said the Louisville show was a spiritual experience, and my wonderful hardass sister in law cried at the end too, making me feel like less of an alcoholic sissy.
One of the things I love about them so much is the way they balance disappointment, disgust, hurt, anger, grief and loss– in other words, reality?– with so much pure love– in romantic songs as well as in the general worldview they seem to express in their work. It’s amazing, and I think that, in a teacup, expresses my deepest understanding of what it means, at least for me, at this time in my life, to be human. It’s deep, man. And… their shows RAWK.
I’ll have to write some valentine bitter love poetry later.
Right now… the baby is playing starfall.com… I am listening to radioparadise.com and I *love* it. Love it. I need to get her fed and bathed, as tomorrow is another new school week.
A girlfriend brought her three over here today… we, okay I, sipped wine, it gave her a headache sadly, and smoked cigarettes (just for today, i’m quitting again tomorrow) and watched our kids run amok in my small football field of a back yard.
It was wonderful to see them all playing in the sun. It is so freaking hard to get my stepson, particularly, to just use his body!! It makes me sick, how sedentary we all are, and the joy of truly running full out, tackling your friend, rolling around on the ground just laughing… what a terrible loss, not to have that.
It was lovely. Other than that I got fword-all done. No that’s not true. I did one load of dishes. The baby quilt is nearly pieced, I bought the batting and the backing is cut to size as well. I gotta get it done by Saturday! I can do it.
And… so the dishes are stacked everywhere in the kitchen. I have plenty of time. Cause I don’t work. And it feels soooo good to be able to say that.
blog/myspace
I’m considering abandoning the straight blog for myspace. And outing myself. Just considering, now. But myspace is distracting me from blogging. I do more creative and thoughtful work about life the universe and everything here… but myspace is so easy and fun.
What do you think? Change my avatar yet again? Out myself? As a person who hopes to run/have a business, can I be as truthful as I would like on a blog or myspace page linked back to my real identity? And then there’s the whole, I’d be glad for my parents to view some blog items, but others are definitely grownup friends only… I don’t know. And then my credibiilty as a healer? Maybe a myspace page for the healing business, as well, would help with the integration of my aging hipster gen-x slacker mommy body, issues, and rebellion with my healing work soul. I haven’t been able to manage my extra blogs lately… maybe if one of them is linked to my business I will have an easier time.
I never checked my hotmail account linked with this blog… so if someone was trying to get in touch with me to give me a writing contract, I’ll never know, now. They cleared my inbox.
Christ. Who knew that one would have to have a personal marketing plan? No, not one, but two, one for the fun and flawed person one really is, and one for one’s vocation?
Here’s my myspace post for today.
Add to it that, yes Lord, once again, I am *not* pregnant. This is a good thing.
doing and not
Current mood: 
creative
what I am doing:
playing on myspace
playing with my brochure for the healing business and panicking a bit about getting it done and out to people who might use or spread the word about my services
wasting time, I am sure
listening to Gorillaz and dancing (badly, I gayrontee, cause I am WITE) in my chair
having some success with the drawn out process of rescuing the pan I scorched, involving short boils and long soaks in things like baking soda, dish soap and vinegar
forgetting many things I should be doing right now
What I am not doing:
finishing my grocery list– a very detailed process, or I make it so, due to the veganism and my extreme dislike of grocery shopping so that I try not to go very often
making it to my appointment to get another scrip for yummy, yummy ADD medicine before I give up me pills in me new (probably happier, certainly more organic) life– I’ll probably have to pay for the one I forgot as well as the rescheduled one for monday
finishing sorting/tagging/ironing the items I will put in the consignment sale tomorrow– really I’m not going to make a damn penny. It’s just about the pass to shop early. Okay. It’s also about the penny, cause if I shop early I can’t really afford anything, right? And getting the stuff out of my house. It would probably be better if I just ‘blessed the world’ with them. I’m a huge fan of flylady. Maybe that’s what I should do. How valu’ble is my time?
babyquilting
I have just over an hour till I have to go get my boy, go get photocopies made of the brochure or at least of my tags for the consignment sale, and go grocery shopping, and, since I’m eating Indian food with the girls (y’all come!) leaving my husband and kids with nasty a-holes and lips, I mean, hotdogs for supper. Yeah, that’s what they actually asked for. Cause you know I’m suddenly vegan. And likin’ it. Well the Indian place — thank goodness we have an Indian place now!– has vegetarian, I’m sure it’s not vegan, but I’ll lower my standards cause it is gooo oood.
But I digress. I have slightly more than an hour before I pick up my boy from school, and we drive around listening to Eragon on tape while we do our errands.
So. Let’s go finish the shopping list and see how much quilting can be done in one hour. Probly more than I think.
Add to that myspace post that I have now goofed off such that I only have less than an hour to go work on that baby quilt.
Add to that that I have quit smoking. Again.
last day off
I had the best day yesterday. It was one of those rare days when I can simply resolve to enjoy it and let everything else go. We went to the park, played World of Warcraft, ate a stunningly delicious soul food supper (as soul as a white girl can make it anyway) of black eyed peas, cabbage, corn muffins with butter and Alaga syrup, smashed potatoes, sweet potato pie and sugar glazed ham for the meat eaters.
The day was cold, but it was, uh, bracing, and made us happier to get inside. One of my close circle of friends had been out of town for what felt like weeks, so we got out and walked.
And oh, was that food delicious. I surprised even myself. I really am a frustrated B&B with optional family style suppers owner operator. Except my B and B wouldn’t be precious and persnickety, not like the ones I’ve been to, with lace doilies and priceless knicknacks (though I must admit I was darned impressed by the scottie-dog shaped silver knife rests, where on earth could I get some of those?)… mine will be full of heavy, substantial, comfortable furniture, with natural or low warm electric light and not a doily to be seen. It will be the kind of place where you can put your feet right up on the expensive, sturdy antique (or Pottery Barn) furniture in the common rooms and have a stiff whiskey highball from my well stocked bar and read the paper. Though I hope that I will have well quit smoking by then, I hope it will also be the sort of place that is reminiscent of the era when smoking was customary, and welcoming to however few smokers there are left. But heck, there are always pipes, and cigars, right?
Anyhoo.
Today was a little bit more nervous as I go back to work tomorrow, but I’ve tried to keep my eyes on the prize– doing what I want to rather than what I think I’m supposed to. I ended up writing a three page public relations manifesto in service of the good works organization that has my husband, who volunteers for them, knocking his brains against the wall at least every other month. That was satisfying work, though. I met another friend at the park, managed to walk a while, made a healthy vegetarian dinner (I figured my husband and stepson would sneak out to McDonalds afterward, but as it happened that’s what they had for lunch, so too bad) and concentrated on enjoying today rather than on my almost pathological dread of going to work tomorrow. Good attitude zen work will set you free blah blah and so on. Shudder. Tomorrow.
Tonight husband and kids are at Target getting my stepson the clothes required for school. I’m reading Freddy and Fredericka, which is a ruthless and compassionate satire. How can it be both? This author is really something. The amazing details of this work, so many layers, whew. I’m not truly hooked yet, but I’m well into it, a hundred pages or so? One of the critical blurbs said ‘the fastest 800 page novel you will ever read. Okay.
you know who’s hot?
This guy. Yes, the one with his hands over his face, exhausted, or just worn out emotionally maybe.
I am a sucker for the Ali G look but that’s not it.
Hot’s not the right word. There is something viscerally and deeply attractive about a guy acting quickly to help get little children out of a dangerous situation.
Most of the guys I know would jump immediately if not sooner to rescue small children. My husband would probably be so quick that you couldn’t even see him.
But this guy happened to be there to help. My heart goes out to him in his expression of exhaustion. How frightening that must have been, to wonder what happened to those kids, and have to just act to try to help as many as possible.
He’s probably over it. He probably walked away, took a shower, and forgot about it. I’ve never seen mention of his name anywhere else in the news. And I know there were many heroes that day who did not get recognition. It took coordinated and brave effort to do what it took. It could have been so much worse.
Anyway, this is purely about me. Something at the gut level is tripped by this picture. Because of this accident of timing and nature, he looks like a wonderful human being to me, and it has little do do with any sort of facts or reality. And I can pretty much figure that nobody, nobody, wants children and families to go through a situation like this just so they can attract chicks, much less aging hipster mommies.
I’m just sayin.’
