It just occurred to me in the past week that I am sexually repressed. I read a book of writing by various sex workers, and it is probably the only book in the last few years that has had a truly powerful effect on me—the kind of book which (a) you can't put down and then (b) once you finish it, you go around seeing things and FEELING things in a completely new light. It's been a while.

It feels good, but scary. Because new possibilities have popped into my mind. Possibilities for a lifestyle that until now I would have (a) vehemently opposed on political grounds and (b) vehemently opposed on the grounds that I am enormously insecure.

It occurs to me that I am not a monogamist.

It occurs to me that without the fear that has kept me from addressing this subject, which, in fact, has kept me in denial in regards to this subject, I would be a lot happier either being polyamorous or in an open relationship.

It occurs to me I don't fully love and enjoy my own body. Still.

I experienced a new sensation after reading this book and considering a few things discussed within. It felt a bit like being in control of my body. And loving it. It felt rather powerful. It made me horny. It was lovely. And it was for me, MINE, not for you, not for any man or woman or other human being. Which I think it why it was so powerful. It felt real. It's also hard to describe.

I am going to start writing again. I miss my old life.

Hello friends, I've started a new blog, and will probably abandon this one in the meantime, although I always seem to end up back here...check my info, I've had this thing since 2003!

Seemed like the right thing to do since I bought my domain and also am embarking on a new stage in my life soon.

Cheers,
Jenna

OUT OF MY MIND // INTO THE THICK OF IT

So many things that terrify me.

I’ve been studying sailing and boat safety by the books for the last month and planning, basically, to leave a permanent land-based home for good in three months: first as a sort of nomad in Colombia, then as crew on yachts. Part of me, the dominant part, is amazingly excited and jazzed and empowered and can’t wait. The other, smaller part of me…worries.

Little voices in my mind say, You’re not planning well enough. You don’t have enough money saved up. You say you’ll find a way but what if you don’t? What about all the dangers out there in the big bad world? How is a single female supposed to get around when she can’t trust anyone? Oh well, you probably won’t go through with it, anyway…

The concern most jarring to my apprehensive, undisciplined mind, however, is the fact that this new endeavor I’ve undertaken has no bearing on anyone but myself. I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone. I’m not doing it for money. It’s going to require a lot of hard work, and I’m not guaranteed to get anything out of it but the experience and plenty of life lessons.

This is a first for me. Everything else I’ve ever done has in some way been the easy way out. The path to college, this job—I’ve never gone against the grain for any sort of meaningful goal. I’ve never really worked hard for something I wanted, because it was easier to just settle for what I was given, and I'm scared I won't be able to go through with it.

A realization even more shameful than that: I’ve never really done anything significant without some ulterior motive. Sure, I enjoy discovering new ideas and hobbies and learning new ways of thinking—but it’s always been in small doses, markedly narcissistic (“Hey peers, check out what I know about!”), and with half-hearted effort. In other words, I’m great at talking the talk. Only recently, after entering the real world, have I realized how much fear has prevented me from walking the walk. I’ve done things only because I thought they would make other people see me in a certain way. Basically, I have been functioning exactly how I think plenty of kids in suburbia have learned and are learning to function: the adulation and idealization of one meaningless image after the next, whether that image is a rock star or a punk or a hipster, rules our lives.


I do not deny my participation in this non-culture. I experienced lots of ill-defined angsty rage during my anti-everything goth stage after high school. I was totally mesmerized by the hipster ideal in college (and post-college, for a while). I used to do things not because I was particularly passionate about them, but to fit in or at least make my perceived image more alluring to others. For example, in college I loved to dress 80s-neon-sexy-goth and learned to DJ with my then-boyfriend, who had founded the cornerstone discotheque of the artsy-hipster scene in Ames, Iowa. I liked that this seemed to surprise and impress people. I loudly voiced radical feminist opinions in many of my classes. I had an all post-punk college radio show. “Fuck you, society, look what I can do,” my behavior screamed. But really, I was trying to communicate that to myself. The extreme passion with which I pursued these endeavors was not just about music or activism or fashion. More than anything, I was passionate about breaking the boundaries in my own mind, about taking action to unlearn the harmful and limiting ideas I had absorbed from mass media about what it means to be female in modern America.

Since coming to terms with all this, it’s been pretty easy to identify what needs to happen. I need to learn to work hard. I need to stop caring about image and start caring about meaning. I need to establish a long-term goal and achieve it. I need to learn the difference between external validation and real self-esteem. Progress is good so far, but the step I take in July will be the most extreme—and hopefully the most transformative.

The only thing going to get me through this is strength of will. Got to stay positive!

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.


--Walt Whitman
(Song of the Open Road)

http://swellvoyage.com

YES

i only identify with identity conflicts
life's a bitch when the damn shoe fits
i grew up almost rich
but i stick it to my niche
escaped the 'burbs to kick it on the curb
embrace my inner nerd
got back my self-worth

you can unlearn the pain
the chains youth laid on your brain
if god came today to see girls on myspace
accepting their fates as meat on a plate
she'd shake her damn head and some of the blame
because every damn day it's more of the same
only idiots claim it ain't fame
ridiculous that more aren't ashamed
when kids are dying out front of your door
you're still playing that more money game

cos it's never sufficient
this cycle is vicious
you'll always feel empty
cos you're so narcissistic

brush the teen years off like
dust from the wing of a moth
you say you wasted time being soft
when really that's a game for the lost
what's culture, but exclusion
what's this art but illusion
it gets so confusing--when in context it's bullshit
they tell you value can't come from some young bum
they tell you the gs you rake in rank over the fun
but who cares what it runs for when the artist is done for
turned sheep by corporation-sanctioned free speech

Dying to say "let's go." Dying to say Yes not knowing what could be in store for me. Hoping to finally take the risk that at the moment I am terrified to even think ahead to. I want to get lost; to learn not to care; to learn to value true wealth above all else; to see the world and not only realize my potential but to EARN it through personal struggle and life experience. I want to sell my stuff. I want to learn through others. I want to not know where I might be a month from now. I want to journal my fingers off and have excited one-way conversations with my mom and inspire people close to me to make the leap. I want to learn to sail in Colombia and GO, live, leave. I want to completely surprise everyone I've ever known. I want to think on my life as it stands now and has for the last year as one misdirection I will never take again. I want to find a place I can truly call "home" even if I'm not from there. I think that depends not so much on the place itself but on the quality and the amount of life experiences it will take to reach that level of comfort. I want to be bored with the normals. I want to live my beliefs and consider absolutely every possibility out there before even considering settling with any one combination of them. I want to be old and worn out when that happens. I want to be able to celebrate my fortieth birthday not regretting a thing. I want to play volleyball on a beach for a month straight getting tan and sleeping in a hostel hammock. I want to eat fresh vegetables and seafood every day for lunch. I don't want to eat dinner. I want to drink rum. I want adventures. I want to not need to dream. I want to ride a horse every day and climb mountains because I can.

Utterly consumed lately by an urge to take command of my life, to exert continuous proactive energy toward my future. I want to build it from the ground up, not rely on some horrific marketing company to support me in exchange for nearly all of my time.

I want to be a craft brewer, or a mushroom grower, or a translator, or a sailor, or a cross-stitcher, just something which guarantees me some level of autonomy over my professional life.

Going to Colombia in July, can't wait, will probably never want to come back to the states.

I am repulsed; turned on; dependent on him. I can't figure out if the fact that he likes me so much is making me like him more. I can't figure out if he likes me for any reason other than sex, and the fact that I tolerate his ridiculous lifestyle. I wonder if he respects my choices and my lifestyle and my past and my plans. I wonder if he understands. I find myself already exasperated as though I'm being smothered, when really, I just haven't said what I think. A person can't please me if I don't tell him how. He can't know if I don't tell him I need space.

This whole living unfettered by the usual careful consideration of others' comfort, this living on my own terms, is difficult. Time and again I find myself doing or not doing things because it's easier than asserting myself at the risk of someone else's discomfort. Denying myself the voice. When really, it feels so good to be heard, and to be heeded. It feels so good not to care. It feels so good to be active rather than passive in these situations that directly involve me.

He will respect me if I tell him what's going on. He will respect me more for my complete honesty than he will for my wide-eyed obedience. My notions, my unconscious notions, of what makes a "good woman" are interfering directly with my ability to be happy. And lovely enough that just writing that caused the gears to start grinding; in a few months or years I'll be fine, no longer suffocated by any sort of notions that don't directly contribute to my happiness. Cheers.

"Mis ojos son mi voz."

is a beautiful statement; objective and decisive and to the point. No doubt about it. None can question this woman on her conviction that yes, her eyes are her voice. Images define her reality, and she longs to share the world as she, in her unique way, sees it. This is how she communicates.

People like me, cynical calculating children born into privilege and scared of vulnerability, scoff at her. How pretentious. How contrived. "Your eyes are your voice"? That doesn't even make logical sense. You say this because you'd seem mysterious and deep to your peers. You're as shallow and overflowing with self-consciousness as any of us. You want to an article in Juxtapoz.

The artist, then, is left speechless . . . after all, her eyes are her voice. Sans camera, she can't argue back, but wouldn't if she could. In her eyes we are parasites. In her eyes we drag one another down into hell in silence, into a world where nothing is beautiful because nothing is true, where illusions guard their throne with vicious voices and reflections, knowing all the while that the whole thing is irreverent, but it serves its function. It keeps us laboring under the delusion that we are all playing a game, that life is not about trust but greed and winning, not about connection and serenity but about revenge and anxiety. In her eyes, we are lesser but not doomed. There is time yet

Our souls look on in hopelessness, embarrassment. The world crumbles at our feet. We don't feel any better. The earth implodes beneath us. We're still unsatisfied. We don't know how to be humans (what is human, really)—we know how to conquer. We don't know how to love. We know to defend our egos. Oh, and better than anything do we know our egos. Essential for survival, just like violence. We've never known any other way, never found the time to consider. And for this, we fight, blindly if need be. "Humiliation" suddenly has seven fewer letters and we have nightmares about it. Invasion.

She weeps for us but it's inevitable to shed, the sun will come.

advertising
consumerism
currency
faux-art/music

This article is awesome.

For once. A mainstream publication turning the gender tables.

Look what she's got, instead of Look what he's got.... This is a positive step toward EQUAL portrayal of both genders, so that we radfems aren't so sensitive to the LOOK WHAT HE'S GOT articles that abound all over the mainstream media.

Trophy boyfriend.... gender bending... love. I'm drunk or I would be more articulate :)

Never again
do I abandon my truth
in favor of a foreign one
for safety’s sake

What is danger
but another challenge
something to keep under my pillow
as I am swallowed by life
Living as myself
my privacy becomes sacred

I soak in my truth
inhale its mist
tattoo it on my skin
carve it on my bedpost and
feel it wash over me
every time I come

Devoid at last of need
tension is no longer static, unclings
What was before?
Lighter, thinner, frightened
I could blow away at any moment
and of course I did—again

My would-be kindred souls
poor things, caught watching
I always feel eventually—
an incredible feat, to blindly repeat

Finally enough sadness has accumulated
to fill several lockets
mementos of juvenile idiocy

I am nearly at peace. My faults shrink into my past.

feels like falling from an airplane
riding a waterfall feet-first
slipping from glacier into sea
an empty well full of thirst

this isn't dignified
this isn't noble
this is dreaming upside-down
it's waking up on the ceiling
it's paranoia's manic sister
it's a twisted violent frown

it looks like we'll never reconcile
the terrors sent me packing
i won't look back, mile after dry mile
and i hear the mountains cracking

evidently desperate pleas end badly
i've tried to bargain with the evil side
but today well, i'll surrender gladly
to my post-mortem, where death and life collide

Two months ago I watched Warren Beatty’s 1981 film Reds. The film follows communist journalist John Reed and political writer Louise Bryant during their tumultuous relationships both with each other and with their respective careers in an uncertain, intense political and social climate. The film is about three hours long. I didn’t finish it.

I did, however, gain a very important perspective from the dialogue between the early 20th-century radical and anarchist characters. At the dénouement of their love affair, an impassioned shouting match between Louise and John leads John to tell Louise, “You don’t take yourself seriously. If you want to be taken seriously, you must take yourself seriously.”

And, boom. The endless hours I’ve spent over the last year trying to figure out why nothing I do takes off; why no creative endeavor seems to hold my interest for longer than a week; why no one I know expresses any interest in what I do creatively; why I let fear of failure keep me from even trying to make something of myself as an artist–artist, in the broadest sense of the word.

I don’t take myself seriously. In the public sphere I don’t define myself by what I love to do––because I have always failed to set and keep goals for myself that would nurture these creative endeavors. I treat them as a hobby, a way to express myself when there is no other outlet, and I enjoy sharing what feels like a basic creative need with others, but I never work hard enough or long enough on any one project to actually accomplish anything of significance. For someone who spends so much time admiring others’ work and coming up with ideas and spending money on materials which supposedly will help me break through this barrier on my creativity, I have remarkably little to show for it. For perspective, this blog is easily the most comprehensive collection of my work there is aside from my mostly-defunct deviantart page.

The missing component in my brain without which I doubt I’ll ever be able to respect my self-expression involves another concept that worked its way into my stream of consciousness during that same month: the value of industry. The value of working because you know you must even when you don’t want to. The value of discipline for the sake of accomplishing something greater than the self, something greater than the sum of its parts. Believing strongly enough in yourself, in a concept within yourself, to work toward it even when you can’t see where it might lead you. Recognizing the value of that journey even without the end. Having faith in creation for creation's sake. Believing in the power of the process of my own self-expression instead of trying to foresee its potential on the outside when that’s not the point! This isn’t about anyone but myself. For all the writing I do about me, nevertheless I maintain a fairly inverted personal value system: I care more about how others might see it and judge it more than I care that there is beauty contained in my being, fighting to get out. Kicking at my solar plexus. Flattening my diaphragm. Escape. I fear unabashedly, I fear consciously, I fear actively the art that exists in my soul. I fear its release.

Sometimes I wonder if the map of the mind looks anything like I imagine it to be. Is there a physical barrier between inspiration and its resulting artistic expression? What does fear look like in the brain? How does it operate . . . Does it wrap around ideas like a husk? Does it worm its way through them like an insect, taking bites along the way? Does it reproduce by budding like a coral reef animal? What fertilizes fear?

What do the neuron passageways look like, the ones carved so deeply into the recesses of my brain that although I’m conscious of their folly, they remain my default, unconscious way of considering myself and the world? Those that don’t yet exist: do they have blueprints already, or is their inception at random? What color is resolve? What color is discipline? Does each quality have its own distinct visceral texture? How are they organized? Does each trait live in its own tissue or are they all tangled together, sharing cells? And most of all, how do I tell them to back off, to demolish and rebuild, to settle into the pattern which best lends itself to my truest aspirations?

I may never know the answers to the above questions, but in the meantime industry is what will keep the fear at bay. As one wise blog commenter once said:

“Life is a series of flounders. You get used to it. The important thing is to just Start Doing Shit.”

Settling into a warm fuzzy feeling regarding this Friday, New Year's Eve. Turns out my good-natured friend Lev is going and I won't be spending the evening partying with Phil. Although the notion is sitll pretty fresh in my mind, I am already looking forward to Friday evening about four times as much as I had been previously.

Made a remarkable amount of creative progress today of all days, when I wasn't obligated to do anything at all. I fixed my electric guitar. I discovered how to record my Kaossilator on Audacity and also discovered there's a built-in microphone on my computer. I recorded my rap lyrics and wrote a beat (not to mention the progress made on the drum machine and sampler in Reason...loading .wav samples, great!) On my merry way toward a great creative boom. Once I know how to use everything and get in the hang of it. . . well then, my only obstacles will be anxiety and time. The anxiety will dissipate as I spend more time creating. I'm sure of it. This is what my identity will become once again—as it was in high school, eleventh grade, when I hadn't a care in the world but expression. Working on that little art book, writing, dressing in my mother's crazy skirts, flowers in my hair. Worshiping the Beatles day in, day out. Peace Day.

No boyfriend. No worry.

Let the world open back up for me. Let this stage of my life be a joyous one, full of hope and learning and contentment. Let the darkness recede, let it shrink back until it has nowhere to hide, until the light envelopes it and it can no longer survive. Let the wine flow freely and my conscience not object; let us remain safe and dry in our bright house which resonates with youth and freedom. Let the poetry float from our souls onto paper and into the air as music; let us not be afraid to show the world what is contained in our being. We are human; we are life. We are female; we are divine.

When the loneliness comes, let it creep but not invade. Let it remind us of company's beauty but not of the tomb's silence. Let our bodies' movements overshadow the shadow. Let our alliances, our love for one another, shoot down the threat from within, the pull toward darkness.

It is past one AM. Let this be for an abundance of creative energy and not a restless anxiety. Let us sleep soundly like the goddesses we are. Let us maintain our pride, our love and certainty. Let our learning bring not further skepticism but acceptance and understanding. Let the fear dissolve in laughter.

I’m not one who easily
Hangs her head, admits defeat
We hang on rungs six miles apart
But ladders always end up shards

Always this close to the clouds
Chords begin their spindly rounds
But as we climb we also fall
And land face down still feeling tall

Like a race that has no rules
Winning is what plagues the fool
Who thinks the truth will never count
Who dies before she’s taken down

Maybe I set it up to be disappointed. Maybe I like feeling like "the only one who gets it." Maybe if I associated with people who live it instead of just preaching it, I wouldn't feel such a need to keep those parts of me hidden; maybe I wouldn't feel a need to keep those parts of me at all.

Maybe I hold on to those parts too tightly. Maybe I identify with those parts too strongly. Maybe I'm afraid of what I would be without those parts. Maybe that fear is holding me back from the person who can truly make me happy... the people who can truly make me happy. At least, with whom I could be happy.

Maybe if I stopped looking for tolerance and stopped tolerating others, things would be more simple. If I stopped looking for tolerance and stopped tolerating others, things would be less frustrating and more focused.

Maybe if I concentrated on acceptance and congruency instead of tolerance, this wouldn't happen. Maybe if I accepted and related to others instead of tolerating them, I wouldn't find myself in these predicaments.

Maybe this is a pattern. Maybe this isn't all there is. Maybe I'm going to escape. Maybe I'll learn to work harder for the things I believe in. Maybe I'll learn to stand up for myself instead of just talking about standing up for myself.

entire universes, worlds
of shingled wisdoms
particles of intellectual dust
exist between you and i.

most of the time
these universes act as barriers
inhibit our tendrils from touching—
sometimes even from seeking.

they shrink
fearful of what they may find,
terrified of polarity
magnets that attract or repel.

dust, which carries pieces
of myself, floating thoughts that
pleased me as they arrived

but a dark shadow, antiqued fear,
approaches. nicked, my
thoughts become infected
with nonexistent woes, ideal
for prolonging our separation.

i do not mind.

everyone
is foreign
blocks of words and a system.
i cannot bring myself to love
these people, made of white cataracts and
sad hope

your hope is fruitless, will be
validated only by those who
need it least . . . i love you

i love your aspiration
which lives oscillates between
your reality, my reality,
the ether.

i know, i see, someday
you will be whole. as of now
you obtain peace
through noise, through pavement,
through what you know

i have heard about you.
i know what you will become,
and what you may do to me.
now, it is i who oscillate.

nipples begging
skin cold
heat that abounds though i rebel
how do i let my body know
you are near, but unwilling?

your unassuming life
cracks forth
false and fresh
i hate it
i hate what it makes of me

a charming sack of rot
i loved you, i did
i wanted to believe in this
but the mold overthrew
what i knew i was,
with you.

i am horrified.

you are dry like the eastern wind
you are square like an old bulldog
you are unaware.

you are steady like a boat's rock
yet you teeter like a broken clock
unaware.

i dance around you, playing, giggling,
but you are a dusty slab of granite.
these shapes i will toward you—
these yellow, these coral, these languid swirling shapes
so easily moved from mind to space—
they cannot find you though i will them to seek.

your mind is static.
how don't you resonate?
their beauty beckons.

the shapes inside your being—
what do they resemble,
and would you send them for me?

i long to pull them from you,
in long twisted braids or boughs,
unfolding, wielding art,
but the nature of shapes—
they respond only to their gods.

Feeling a little young
All injured minds tend to
I believe in after
But before I will miss

Feeling a little stung
As receiving ends will
I believe in darkness
But the light I will miss

Feeling a little right
But I knew all along
I believe in running
But in depth there was bliss

Sinking, I sink
I follow it down
You were forever
Made of promises
Too tired to be alone

Retreat, I retreat
I learn from your wrong
I’ll take a sip of this fire
Because I knew all along

From two months ago:

It makes me sad to be even further developing the media available just for men, that can make men feel good about being men, not giving a shit about what women might think. That’s one of the more positive aspects of guy culture---to be satisfied with friends, independent, self-assured.

Of course, there are those who would take it too far (man laws).

If women could have a space which not only worked to criticize the status quo (or hell, maybe just ignored its existence altogether) but also promoted the creation of safe spaces for women, where women can have fun in ways that encourage self-esteem and independence, intelligence, creation…something beyond beauty or fashion or domesticity, a home in the digital ether for girls like me. I would feel so much better about this Spike TV work I’m doing.

As it is, I’m sitting here writing slogans like “The Glory of Men” and wondering, could the opposite situation ever exist? Could a dude be employed to write the slogan for Tank Girl TV, and actually DO it while maintaining personal dignity?

Ah, but alas, even Tank Girl was created by a man. Tina Fey TV then, whatever.

Man code here finds its error: defining it as insulting to even be associated indirectly with something made by and for females.

Female does not equal weak. So sick of seeing ladies pretending to be guys, liking porn, erotica, violence, even blatant misogyny, in order to be accepted as more than a "typical" woman.

Me, I defend myself, I am unapologetically female. No matter how much pressure society exerts on me as it defines STRENGTH, I will NOT claim to like violence, hatred of weakness (in the form of gay men and “good” women), or men macho-policing each other. I will not accept men’s seeming inability to admit wrongness. Their face-saving tactics really just prove their childishness.

Lamenting how much more over-bearing and self-policing the “guy culture” is—at least women have a lot of resources, support…our “girl culture” (yeah right) allows us to ask for help and depend on others while guys will find it much more difficult to open up. Possibly why so many are dependent on women (like my ex).

Men have other men to fear. Women do not fear other women--we’re already too isolated from one another. We can fear men, but it’s easier just to ignore them.

Men need role models. New ones, not clouded by and infected with the traditional industrialist ideas of “man as machine’ and “woman as helpless out-of-control weakling”--these Victorian ideas still permeate the environment, in less extreme forms, most likely to promote their longevity.

But it really isn’t about women vs. men, is it? Conflicted gender relations will exist as long as society defines the male and female genders relative to one other. As polar opposites.

I’m forever growing as a person, and sometimes that growth occurs unevenly. For example, I am currently dating (and very happy with) someone who is what some may call a MAN’S MAN. A guy’s guy. He loves stupid humor and blood-soaked movies and pit bulls and motorcycles and heavy machinery and too much beer and country music and everything traditionally masculine. Except. Except misogyny.

Turns out my problem is the clause in the Man Manifesto that says “men are above women, unconditionally.” When being a man starts to be about positioning oneself above women. When being a man becomes less important than not being a woman. Power over others is not sexy. Rather, power over oneself is sexy. Knowledge and control of oneself is sexy.

Turns out my rage is not directed at male culture in general. It is directed toward those men who would deny women access to heavy machinery or motorcycles of their own or whiskey neats for the sole reason that they are scared that they will no longer be men if it turns out women are equally capable.

My boyfriend does not let that clause affect him. He ignores it. He is respectful. He realizes that being a man means being responsible and affectionate and generous. He knows that true happiness comes from being on the same level as one’s significant other, not from power over her. He is a good friend and son and cousin. He knows what he loves––he expresses that love in a rather gruff way, but that’s his way, and I understand it. I respect it because he respects me.

All these lists of MAN LAWS and talk about MAN MANIFESTOS are actually quite enlightening once I stop being sickened by how vigilantly these men police each other. The most interesting thing, of course, is that the existence of these lists makes more apparent than anything the NON-existence of corresponding lists for women, or if there is a list, it’s all about how women can and should submit to men, like that one housewife guide from the ‘60s Cosmo that went viral a couple years ago.

There is nothing on these lists about just being a good human being. It’s always divided by gender. Women together? Non-existent in traditional media. Women together unaffected by men: impossible.

never mind the pain, though it drips
like liquid art
through the curves and shards
of my brain. i deny
ever having known the feeling of life
try not to sigh. somehow
this is the truest
i find myself: smiling alone
five tears on my face, but
never more like myself
i am home.

i love, i love you,
but i am married
to this shy blossom: just
like blood but without conviction,
fleeting, blown out of sight
by nothing but a slight
oh, gust of life built
in a night,
shucked by chemicals
despite the way i cling
to my sad bent sigh.

someone once told me
i was ugly
i laughed at him.
a perfect example
of all the shallow people
living here in an artificial world
of concrete and ammonia,
electricity and comfort.

have you, pretty one,
ever written a word
that had any real meaning
had any deep perception?

i thought not.
so you might learn, will learn,
the difference between pretty and ugly
the hard way, the way that hurts
cuts so much deeper than any blade
through words

but how can you really understand
the sheer beauty of a well placed adjective
or a sentence that expresses perfect meaning
the emotions transferred from minds to paper
it's magic.

and planted at my
designated space i can't help
but envision
those beautiful spaces yet uninhabited
by my people
those spacious ware houses
beautifully modeled after your
vast accepting peace of mind

you don't have to prove
anything
around this girl
i feel it second
after second
in a strange foreign system
i feel most at home

your big eyes see me
hop from stone to stone
fascinated where i land
and can't stay quite put
we miss edges, unaligned, like building
inexperienced

and the others offer
less discordance
and i can't wait til the day
i have a second chance
to relate to you what i must say
silent always, i feel it's better
for us for your young damaged
soul

dirt
i learn
is healing, toxic, a subject
in your own repertoire
something to believe in
lovely soil to provide

i can't wait anymore
let's put it down now
each one feels like the first one
unsure placement but
aware of meaning away
from the city
we sit silent and thoughtful
full of emotion
full of love
full of everything we were ever taught

and what we'll love
it invades us

true


(drunk, stoned, 2am.)

There are so many levels to this country shit.

My boyfriend, a native to the Bay Area, is very into americana. Country values: slow living, motorcycles, nature, honesty and simplicity, bluegrass music, straw hats and good beer. I love that about him. I love it because it makes me think twice about my previous tendency to feign vomiting upon mentioning American country culture.
And now, questioning my initial rejection of it and falling in love with someone who strives to be as country as he can? A year ago I hated people like me. How dare you defend COUNTRY and its bigoted sexist racist idiotic views? You are part of the problem.
It occurred to me that country itself isn't the problem. The way country is represented on television and the people who are chosen to represent the country culture give it a very, very bad name. And the televised country culture attracts a whole new audience, the kind of people that despite their simple values, I will never like because they are willfully ignorant.
The values (of the TV channel, which is hardly reality, but enough people probably subscribe to a television-based reality nowadays that we can safely assume a large percentage of people who consider themselves country fans identify with these values) appeal to me as well. It all looks good on paper and maybe appeals to me fairly emotionally, but pretty soon I realize that in the sales presentation there wasn't one single ethnic person, no woman with hair darker than light coffee, no woman over 35, etc. No woman playing a fucking guitar, for that matter. And I sit there and look at those words and think "Sure, these words are beautiful and acceptable to me." What isn't acceptable is the way the TV channel skews them to passively exclude everyone who isn't white or blond or male or young and pretty or conservative. There's a reason I don't like the American country music culture and its followers. Because to them "rooted" means bigoted and sexist and racist and narrow-minded, and "uncomplicated" means unwilling to think and a dedication to preserving the status quo.
My values extend beyond just optimism, spiritedness, independence, rootedness, simplicity, generosity, hospitality and authenticity. My values also lie in exploration, in new experiences and new ways of thinking, in achieving a way of life in which everyone can find happiness.
MY vision of uncomplicated, the one I see my self-professed "urban redneck" boyfriend upholding, involves doing what is right by oneself and by others. Doing what feels good because it's helping others and helping the earth out, not what feels good because it is safe and traditional.
Those are the two values whose portrayal I have a problem with. Rooted? I wish I was. I wish I could perpetuate my great-grandparents' Polishness, or my great-great grandparents' Irish culture. I wish I knew about it. But I don't believe they were "rooted" enough to teach their children anything but how to succeed in a failing capitalist industrialist nation. The only thing I feel rooted to is my passion for becoming a better person through brutally honest introspection and slow transformations.
Another part of my logic says that Mikey can enjoy country culture so much because he gets to pick and choose what he wants from it. Had he grown up surrounded by hatred and poverty the way many are in the south, he might not treasure it so much. Same here. I can take what I want and leave the rest in the South. I can live slow and simple and eschew the self-reflected misogyny and ignorance and poverty and racism. Take the good, leave the bad.

Television glorifies country and presents a false smiling face to those who don't know it personally.

How dare you? I will show you holier than thou.

You are misery and loneliness, unless you have someone to accept you unconditionally.
Fevered and wrought of self-hate, you found no one to distract you but things.
You hate your own company. You fear your humanity.
You fail to see a way out beyond a companion who will assure you, no, you are worth something. You are worth my time.
You are pathetic. You barely function, veiling your terrific anxiety behind larger-than-life characters and masks and moods that never last.
You sometimes confuse those characters with your true self, and you like it. You drink yourself stupid almost every night until that feeling comes back.
But in the aftermath it feels wrong. You are unhappy, and you don't feel accepted. People can't accept what they can't see.
You have adjusted to guarding yourself within that safe hidden place that almost no one knows. It feels normal now. Misery and alienation feel normal.
You will depend on her until she leaves you, and you will find yourself regressing once more into your darkness, the darkness you once blamed me for. The darkness that sucked me down with it, the darkness that kept me from reaching for my own light.

But all I did was shed myself of your darkness. You are dead to me. You are dead to yourself. You are not worth my time.
Once I was weak and doubted myself. Once I was young and naive and blind, and you and I found small comforts in each other. We were our mutual distractions.

I grew strong and left you and your darkness. I became tired of sinking.
I opted for more discomfort than I'd ever felt by letting go of the safety you stood for.
Despite this I released the anchor and let myself drift away from your grasping diseased fingers.
I knew on a deeper level that I was well. There was more than this to be had. Dead end at twenty-one? Not for me.
Staying safe and hidden in a dark fearful place is not life. Small, intermittent delights are not success.

I could see past my fear and so I chose to conquer it. Not suddenly and not without obstacle, but I decided to fight. I chose the hope of light over the reality of dark.
And since then I have won great victories for myself as well as suffered great failures, but I am no longer ashamed to let a person know me, nor am I fearful of failure. I know what lies on the opposite shore.

You do not know this feeling. All you have has grown, stunted and slow, pale and brittle, from the rich crust of your fear. All you have is tainted, contaminated by a thick bloodlike molasses, tar, which promises to pull you down once more. This you sense, and this is why all you appear to have grown will not bear fruit. I pity you.

Today I remembered why it sucks to be female.

Starting at birth, society (and its pages, the people, our families, the church, the schools, and above all the media) tells us the most important thing we can be is pretty. I tried this for a long time. By the age of 15 I was in rehab for bulimia. Since then I've struggled with relapse and most of all, the deep deep deeply seated self-loathing that comes with years of striving for unattainable ideals. I had fully internalized pop culture's misogyny.

It's been about two years since I started to study feminism in earnest as a sort of self-imposed therapy. It's helped. A lot. I think the hardest parts of the transformation, of the healing, are over.

Since moving to Oakland I have slowly but surely gone about eradicating the symptoms of socially acceptable femininity from my repertoire. From saying "fuck no" to dudes who try to hit on me at the bar, to being single for more than a year (this seemed impossible to me a year ago), to letting a two-month casual relationship go without getting hurt at all, to quitting wearing heels and skintight clothes ever, to actively seeking girlfriends and consciously knowing that no amount of male friends is ever going to satisfy me intellectually. Because dudes don't get feminism. Or  women.

In fact, every shred of evidence in my memory bank suggests that the majority of men who seek my individual company do so because more than anything they are sexually attracted to me. Intellectual connection comes second, if at all, for a guy.

I wore a knee-length pencil skirt and two-inch heels to my interview in Berkeley this morning. Pretty conservative stuff, but way more dressy than what I wear normally (nowadays). About 8:15, as I waited for the bus, a guy actually turned his car around and tried to get my phone number from his passenger window. His opening line: "You are hecka beautiful."

All morning all sorts of men gave me way more attention than I'm comfortable with, much more than I ever get wearing jeans. Apparently dressing the way any businesswoman is expected to dress is also an invitation for strange men to visually consume me. A skirt apparently screams, I WANNA GET FUCKED.

By the time I got home I was about to cry. I like looking pretty. But I don't feel safe or in control of my surroundings that way. I fucking hate the attention it warrants. The fact that it's SO OBVIOUS that my personality comes second to the male sex. When my personality is what matters. I'm expected to dress a certain way to get ahead professionally but have to put up with blatant objectification as a sort of tax. Is this what it's like to pay dues for being a female who gets to work?

One particular thought has crossed my mind fairly frequently during the last few months that makes me very, very sad. It came about because a guy friend of mine made a habit of being a very nice person—striking up a conversation with a stranger on the train, at a restaurant, someone working at an empty bar. A friendly conversation. Because being nice made him feel good. I admired him for that.

It occurred to me that I don't do that. I don't strike up conversations with strangers. And then I realized why. Because to speak to a man I don't know without him first speaking to me implies sexual interest. I can't start a nice conversation with a guy I don't know unless I want to risk having to tell him to fuck off when he starts hitting on me. I hate the immediately present tension that apparently comes about as a result of the existence of my cunt. And my youth. And all this whether or not I care to dress "feminine"—yesterday a guy asked for my phone number and I had on jeans and a t-shirt and was sweating and wearing combat boots and broken sunglasses. All I'd done was be nice to him.

Men's assumption (I know I'm generalizing a lot, this isn't true of all men, but it can be easy to feel this way) that a woman won't engage in conversation with a man unless she wants something from him stems from society's assumption that women exist solely for men's enjoyment. Some guys just can't seem to grasp that a woman can want to live her life without some dude's approval. Without dudes' attention in general.

I like talking to men. I feel there are far more interesting intelligent men who will talk to me than there are women who will talk to me (let's take a moment and lament the lack of proud feminists and the society that teaches females to immediately suspect one another of fakeness and conspiracy, to view each other as competition, of which I am still guilty, to a degree), but I can't help feeling that guys wouldn't want me around if I wasn't physically attractive.

I want the female body to be unavailable to public scrutiny. I want to exist as an entire human being, not a pair of legs on the street, regardless of what I'm wearing. I want to be able to decide who consumes me visually. I want that permission to mean something.

I want to be able to speak to anyone on the street as a fellow human being, not from one side of an invisible divide or as a sex object. I want to feel a sisterhood between me and every woman I meet, the way men have a brotherhood amongst themselves. I don't know if the fact that I don't feel this way is because of how I think, or because other women really are that suspicious, but either way, it's something that has to change. We must treat all other women as friends right from the beginning.

I have a lot to say, but I'd like to start off with this: My body may look like that of an obedient woman, but it's owned by my mind, which is about as far from obedient as one can get. Stop. Making. Assumptions. I will defeat you.