My room is slowly disassembling.  (Not really: being stripped of its frippery is a more accurate description.)  In three days, I will get on an airplane and a stranger will start sleeping in my bed.  Only briefly.  One month, even less.  I will only be out of the country for a little over two weeks, which is not so much time if you think about it.  But I'm leaving work for a month.  I'm putting all my odds and ends in boxes to shove into them into the utility closet.  I am preparing to say goodbye to normal life for a little while.

I have been panicking, the last couple days, because I was on the verge of getting sick, sick in a really nasty way that would have made it almost impossible to get on a plane on Saturday.  I didn't realize how much of myself I have hung on this trip until it became endangered: The pieces of me that have been living in London all this time.  The pieces of me that feel right and well only when sitting with Rawaan and Annie, as we gaze at each other in mutual adoration.  The pieces of me that hate going to work every day.  The pieces of me that love watching movies on airplanes. 

The danger seems to have passed.  I am still on a knife's edge, though I think now everything is okay.  And of course, it would be okay anyway.  Even if I had to push my flight back, I would still go.  Even if I didn't go, all of those pieces of me would survive.  They've survived the last year and a half, or longer, and they will keep surviving, waiting for their turn.  But I really do very much hope their turn comes on Saturday.

Work is ridiculous.  I want to say, it will be over soon, I will be gone, but I have a terrible feeling that even though I'll be gone it won't be over, and it will haunt me all through the month of December.  Maybe I am just overwhelmed right now though.  They won't be able to get to me when I am half a world away, unless I let them.

Oh, I finished NaNoWriMo!  Last Sunday.  I reached 50,000 words (plus 90 or so) and have not touched it since.  I have a lot of novel left to go, and I do want to write it, but I haven't had time.  Maybe on the airplane.  Maybe in Rawaan's garden, giggling and smoking shisha and scribbling away.

A few days ago, one of my roommates sent me this link.  It's a speech that a evolutionary psychologist gave recently entitled, "Is There Anything Good About Men?" (Short answer: yes.)  To give it fair due, I agreed with a lot of things in the speech.  For instance, that men and women (as a hugely generalized whole, and leaving aside the sticky questions of transgender, etc.) are different, but equal, and that many of these differences are attributable to genetic selection and the struggle to survive/reproduce over thousands of years.  The problem with the speech is that it is written in a spirit of intense rancor, and is aimed at disproving the arguments of the "feminist establishment" that have taken over the whole Western world (that women are better, and men have been getting together in little groups to try and keep them down.)  To me, this seems self-evidently ridiculous: no feminists that I know argue that patriarchy is a deliberate movement on the part of individual men, or that women are better.  Moreover, the examples backing up his argument are at many points ridiculous.  If I try to explain I will end up quoting them completely, so I won't try, but I will put a few behind the cut for anyone who is interested.



That is not the point of this entry however.  That is just the beginning to explain what is really bothering me.  So my roommate sent me this link.  I read it, trying to give it the benefit of a doubt, and quickly became appalled by the fact that this man was claiming scientific objectivity and that he wanted a fair, unbiased discussion of gender, when what he was really doing was attacking "feminists."  His examples (under the cut) also made me incredulously annoyed.  I emailed my roommate a few times with particularly choice quotes (and mentioned I wanted to punch the guy, though of course it was all in the spirit of rational criticism).  That evening, my roommate and I discussed the article, and I became incensed, as I am wont to do, and ranted about how stupid and mean it was.  My roommate laughed at my outrage, and egged me on, admitting that she sent me the link hoping that I would get angry and rant, because apparently I'm very amusing when I am outraged.  Last night we were sitting around with friends and the article came up again.  I began to explain how it was ridiculous, which quickly devolved into everyone teasing me about how worked up I got, and calling me "cute." 

They were teasing, but it stung anyway, because it a recurring moment in my life.  I can't count the number of times friends of mine have deliberately provoked me into a moral/political rant, and then sat around laughing at the strength of my reaction.  It occurred to me this morning that it goes back even further than I thought, pre-political outrage, when my brother would say something to me that would make me incredibly angry or upset (I can't even remember the kinds of things he would say - but I think they were generally personal attacks on me) and I would scream and bang things, and hit him, and he would just laugh at me.  Nothing I did ever touched him (or he never showed it if it did), but he could rile me with a sentence, anytime he wanted.  I was a game, a doll; he would wind me up and watch me go.  Now it's not personal, my friends don't attack me, but they say something or point me toward something I find really maddening or offensive, wind me up and watch me go.  I hate this.  Nothing I say in a moment like this matters, rational or irrational.  No one is listening.  The second I show a hint of emotion, I am just a little girl in over her head, boxing with shadows.  The hurtfulness of having friends sit and laugh at me is not as bad as the feeling of helplessness.

Maybe I take things too personally.  Maybe I am too sensitive.  (Both at a political level - caring what someone said in a speech - and the personal level - taking it badly when people tease me.)  But I also think I am justified at both levels.  One of the worst offenders in terms of this riling-me-up-and-laughing phenomenon was a friend of mine freshman year of college.  He would make misogynistic remarks and jokes to get a rise out of me.  I wanted to be cool, and not to make waves, to be one of the boys (and not to be teased) so most of the time I would let it pass.  I regret that now; he would push further and further looking for a reaction, until he got beyond the point of joking, and I would let him.  I wish that I had told him it wasn't okay, and let him laugh.  I wish that I had walked out.  He has since grown up  a lot, and we've had discussions about how much he regrets saying those things; maybe I could have helped him get there sooner if I hadn't kept my mouth shut.  Even if he couldn't have heard it then, I would feel better.  I don't know why I take gender issues so personally, but I do.  Yes, I get upset.  Maybe it's naive and idealistic.  Maybe there is nothing that can be done, maybe the speeches people give, and what they show on TV doesn't matter, doesn't affect anyone's real life.  But I don't believe that; I think it does affect people, women, men, in ways we might not see, and I believe shutting up about it just makes it worse.

On a personal level, I'm sure it goes back to my brother, and feelings of helplessness, and a friend I had in 9th grade who would make fun of me to my face and then tell me she was just teasing.  It's insecurity, I get that.  I know my friends like me, and don't mean any harm by it, probably don't see why it would hurt me, or that it does.  I still think I'm justified feeling hurt though.  The problem is, if I tell them to stop I am just perpetuating the image of myself as a little girl, who can't take a little ribbing, who has no self control.  Maybe that's what I am.  It's amazing how successive friends, who have never met one another, are able to find this same weak spot and return to it, again and again.  Maybe I have a string coming out of my back, and a sign saying, "Pull me and see what I do!" and I just never noticed.

EDIT: To lessen all the bitching in here a little, I came home hungry and tired and ended up telling one of my roommates how upset I was, and she said (while still validating my feelings) from her perspective no one was laughing at me, I make entirely rational arguments and don't react in any crazy or over the top way, and in fact she (she said "they" but I don't want to push it) admires me for my political passion.  So that was nice, and made me feel better about this particular incident, if still frustrated about the lifetime motif.

Part One:

Several years ago, a friend told me that he thought I was a "Valentine's person" or maybe someone who "would like Valentine's Day" I can't remember exactly.  I laughed, maybe even scoffed, because I was cultivating an air of cynicism and bitterness.  But as I considered it more, I realized that I am, indeed, one of those people that likes Valentine's Day.  Even though I have never "had a Valentine."  Even though I am fairly cynical about relationships, and "romance," and can make fun of sappy poetry and bad love songs and the whole commercial enterprise.  I still made a point, as I do every year, of wearing pink and/or red (both today).  I sent a few Valentine's to dear friends far away.  I listened to love songs all day (granted, Magnetic Fields love songs, which are... not exactly your typical romantic ballads).  I just like holidays, I have concluded.  I am hopelessly childishly excited by Special Days, whatever the reason behind them.

Part Two:

One Valentine's Day I was in love with a boy.  He had a very serious girlfriend, and we were "just friends."  I made Valentine's out of construction paper that year, and despite the fact that I was 20, they looked like the work of an eight year old: you could still see the crease where I folded the paper to make a symmetrical heart, I used too much glue, and the overall aesthetic theme was pretty much red hearts inside of white hearts, or vice versa, with glitter.  But on the back of these Valentine's I wrote notes.  I wrote the sweetest notes I could write.  I thought of one thing I truly loved or admired about each of my friends, and told them.  When I came to The Boy, I did not know what to say.  The one thing I truly loved and admired about him was everything.  I think I eventually wrote about how he was going to do something Great, because he was always worried about not knowing his path.  It was the worst of all the notes - stiff, not personal, not really about him - because I was afraid of saying too much, giving myself away.  I wanted to write only: I love you, I love you, I love you.  I couldn't pick one thing out that wouldn't lead into everything else.  I loved all of him, or nothing.

Part Three:

My new roommate is polyamorous, and I have been thinking about monogamy, and about not only loving multiple people at the same time, but actually being with multiple people at the same time.  She is engaged, but also dating at least one other person.  The word "dating" threw me, a little, because in normal parlance, dating is always seen as a step, to somewhere else.  I thought, if you're engaged to one person, you're not going to go anywhere with that other person.  You won't move in with them.  Your future is limited.  And then I thought, is it?  R. Crumb and his wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb, were on Fresh Air yesterday.  Aline has what she termed "another husband."  He lives in the house with them.  The couple talked about having an open marriage; it's fine as long as no one is being hurt.  I believe that's true.  But then I wonder, would it be fine for me?  I laugh, because I have yet to be in a long term relationship with one person, so what's the point of considering adding more in?  And I like to be alone.  I don't think I could fit multiple romantic relationships into my life.  I want to spend time with my friends, and I want to spend time with myself.  You only have so much time.

Well I was tagged to post baby pictures of myself, apparently because I have an uncle who is a photographer.  Let me just point out that technically, he became my uncle when I was eight.  So... not that helpful with the baby pictures.

Also, I am not home, and have no access to baby pictures just now.  And any pictures I happen to have, I cannot scan as I have no access to a scanner just now.  So the only pictures I have are ones Eric sent me for a school project, of me as a, somewhat small, child with adult family members.  Here are the youngest of these:




In other news, my wrist hurts, a lot.  This has been coming and going for two months now, and I am definitely going to see a doctor.  After I finish the Food Stamp paper on Wednesday.

I saw a bunch of music writers read today.  Apparently, in the South, the way to get a hip hop hit is to get it played at strip clubs.  Not on the radio, not at dance clubs - strip clubs.  "Because those girls dance all day every day, they know what they like to dance to."  So, just in case you're ever trying to get your hip hop career off the ground in Atlanta, or Miami - take it to the strip club.  You heard it here.

It's snowing. Later than expected, but the street is blanketed in white already. I cleared my bed off, so I am about to snuggle in with my toasty blanket and my flannel sheets.

But first, because I'm a lemming, go here and do what it says (if the server is not down, which it has been all day when I tried to do this for other people):

http://kevan.org/johari?name=bytheriver05

Because I got to 8 pages, which was my goal, and because Liz left her computer for like a half an hour and therefore I deserve a break too, and because I'm in a room with about fifty other people either working very hard or procrastinating very hard....

( more useless information about me )

Okay, back to work...

A little belated meme from priceofamemory. List 20 facts about yourself and then tag five people to do the same. So here goes:

( 20 very random things you never need to know about Felicity )

Okay, I apologize for the randomness of that list. Anyway. Tag: aznina, steph2137, carlyinrome, fourteenlines and hank_stamper. Go to it guys.

My alarm didn't go off this morning, so I slept through my morning shift at work. In the time I should have been awake and going to work, I had a dream that we stoned a man to death with books. Not really stoning, I guess, but it was far too serious to be silly and make up a name. A bad man, someone who had hurt me and people I knew, and we were punishing him. But somehow once we started throwing books at him, I stopped hating him, I felt horrible. He fell on the ground and I sat with his head in my lap while the heavy, hardcover books hit him, the edges driving into his skin. His pain seeping through my fingers. But he had to be punished. It was horrific. I was so relieved to wake up, to press my face into the sunlit pillows, even though I could still feel it in my lungs.

Not to end on that note, the rest of the day was fine. Our heat is on finally!

My next assignment for creative nonfiction is to write about someone else. We're interviewing another person in the class, and then writing three short fragments about them - anything about them. We are also free to interview people they know, or re-read their pieces, or gather information about them in other ways.

I was trying to think of random things I could tell someone. But then my partner turned out to be Adam. We laughed. "I know too much about you," he said, and I agreed, "I could just go write it now." But then he asked me to tell him about my brother, and I did, and he talked about his sister a bit, and class ended and we went to the Blue Room to eat lunch and continue "interviewing." Back and forth, details about people and things. Finally, he said, "I don't really know about your dad," and I nodded and said, "Most people here don't" and I told him. Pretty much everything - that could be told in a half an hour. I was as honest as I could be, not just about what happened, but about how I've dealt with it and where I am with it now. He listened very well, and responded very well. It was... intense, but very good. I told him about my issues around drugs, and around control, and we discussed anger, and what comes up for me now, and a generation of men who wanted to subvert social norms and how we admire that but how I, personally, have to draw a line, because you can cut off ties to society, but you can't cut off ties to your children... and it was a great conversation. And then I was late for work, so I had to go, but we're going to meet tomorrow and talk about it more, or about something. I want to hear about him, too, we mostly talked about me. Which in a way says something about him, because Adam of freshman year was very self-involved, and this Adam is not. I stood up and started walking away, and was hesitating, and then he stood up and said "I need a hug," and I was like "Good, I really do too," so we hugged, a nice, long hug and he thanked me for telling him, and I thanked him for listening, because I can't just sit people down and tell them these things very often.

I reaized that if it had been someone else, I may have talked about some of the same things, or I may not have, but I wouldn't have been able to open up the same way - with Adam there's already a base of trust, so I felt I could be completely honest and open about everything, which was so valuable - for me, but also for our friendship, which I think is growing a lot this year. Partly because we see each other all the time, but also because he's a different person, and I really like this new person a lot. I'm glad to now be in a position and have an opportunity to get to know him better, and let him know me better. It's odd how many of my friends here don't know an enormous part of me. In some obvious way no one ever really knows anyone else, and especially at college where people are totally decontextualized - but I imagine there's some things one can extrapolate about a person's background, and some things one can't, and that no one meeting me here would imagine my father was a drug dealer, and yet that fact, and all the things that surround it, shape me in a huge way.

I also think that not very long ago, I wouldn't have been able to have this conversation with anyone. The facts I would be able to relate, yes, but the emotional truth behind it, no. I think I'm getting better at that.

It was strange to have this very intense, emotional dialogue and then come to work.

Physically I feel like shit. Deep pain in the pit of my stomach since yesterday afternoon. It hurts worse when I eat. But when I don't eat, it starts to hurt too. My throat is sore and scratchy despite two cups of throat tender tea (they did help, only briefly). Stupid rain. Stupid Brown Dining Services food. I just want my body to function normally!

Otherwise, life is pretty good. Orientation is over. Tomorrow I meet my freshmen. My advisor seems really nice, and my Co-Meiklejohn is great. Liz's parents are here, and installed fire alarms. I should be cleaning/putting things in order, but I feel too crappy. So instead, since I was first on the list of people who should fill this out:

( 7 things... )

As we sat down to lunch Kate urged me to take a dance class next year and I replied casually, "It's not my thing. I'm not really... in my body." She looked at me like I was an alien. "What does that mean?" she asked.

What does that mean? We talked through lunch about being in and out of the body, about mind-body dualism, and writing through the body, and about the body (in fact I just typed up a mini-summary of this discussion, and had it deleted). Then we spent the afternoon writing, walking from place to place - a library, a bookstore, a fountain outside, city hall - and sitting, writing. I can't shake the conversation though. I believe what I said, but I don't understand it. I agree in principle that the mind and body are one, inseparable - but in practice, I speak of them as separate, I understand them as separate. Connected, but different. My body is something to be used, to be satiated, distracted, enjoyed - and then put away, so my mind can function. An unhealthy attitude? Perhaps. Yes. But it is how I am. Is that an excuse? Am I missing whole worlds of understanding, of feeling, are vistas waiting at my fingertips for me to take up yoga, and meditate, and be inside my body more fully? Or are we simply different people, with different needs and expectations and ways of approaching the world?

I was more eloquent on this point earlier, when we hadn't eaten too much homemade pesto.

By the way, these are all rhetorical questions for myself, not meant to be answered.

Kate is teaching her Italian roommate American phrases, such as "he's a hard nut to crack," "whatever floats your boat" (my alteration, thanks to Spencer Gourtney-Gibbs in seventh grade is "whatever flips your skirt up") and now "push your buttons." Yay for foreign language.