“No pressure or anything, but this has to be the best night of our lives.”

So New Year’s is one of those things that makes me incredibly sad and lonely, regardless of who I’m with or where I am. I am currently  self medicating with coffee and various marathons of the serial killer and Jersey Shore variety. And somehow, it just occurred to me that  it’s the end of a whole decade, instead of  simply the end of a really mercurial, ridiculous year. (Today there has been some argument about whether or not 2009 was actually the end of the decade. Either way, I am delayed in noticing.)

In the spring of 2001, I was sitting in a van in Birmingham, Alabama, with nine other people, staring out at a church with bars on the windows. We were going to sleep in this church, hang out with its parishioners, help coax it back to life with paint and our minimal construction skills. We  probably thought we’d be driving  forever, but there we were, freaked out by our eminent undertaking. In the midst of our staring, someone said, “It’s all just hype.”

It was, of course, hype, about leaving the safety of the van, of having to do what we actually came to do-confront poverty and history and racism and privilege in a real way, instead of just intellectualizing it all in our ivory tower.

I’m not sure why I’m remembering this particular experience on New Year’s Eve, other than the fact that it’s also hype-related. It’s a good example of transition, maybe, and of what’s possible to do even if you’re terrified. That trip to Alabama changed me, in ways remain difficult to articulate, and still come back to me in spades.

I get really nervous on New Year’s in a way that I don’t on Rosh Hashanah, the actual New Year (see the piece I just wrote at the Sisterhood regarding this). It feels more like the door is closing on Everyone Else’s New Year’s Eve than it does on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, and that makes me frantic, as if every decision, every plot point for the next year has to be made between now and midnight. And as I’ve said before, I am excellent at character building, and terrible at plot.

On “No Easy Decision”- MTV and Abortion

Last night, MTV aired a half hour program called “No Easy Decision,” in which three young women discussed their decision to have an abortion. I”ll be honest-my muscles are sore today from how tautly I was holding them last night. I was  really scared of how MTV would treat this, what sorts of myths they might perpetuate, how they’d talk about the decision and if they’d let actual young women talk about it in their own words.

I’m not going to recap the whole show, there are plenty of good places to go for those. I’m going to point out some salient moments, though, and places where I think MTV did a tremendous job and a less tremendous job.

1. Shelby Knox‘s tweet after the show ended sums up a lot: “It was too short, it should have had advertisers, & it shouldn’t have been on so late.”  Also, there’s no indication that it will be rerun. 16 and Pregnant and the specials associated with it are on at least once a day, so I don’ t think this is an accident.

2. There’s an extended interview available at http://on.mtv.com/eFbOPC. I just watched it, and there are some interesting details that were left out of the show that aired.   Natalya discussed being forced to see the sonogram during the counseling session that preceeded the abortion. (In the televised segment, Natalya talked about living in a state that had parental notification laws, and having to seek a judicial bypass-permission from a judge-so she didn’t have to tell her parents.) Markai: “They made you see the sonogram? That is horrible!” Natalya: “That felt like such a violation, that was the hardest part.” I’m not sure of the editing process behind this, but it’s strange to me that this wasn’t included in the footage. Natalya also mentioned that by talking about her abortion, she feels “like I’m making up for everyone else’s silence.”

3.  T and I discussed afterwards the fact that show was hatched as a result of Markai, a teen mom who was on an earlier episode of 16 and Pregnant, and her second pregnancy which she chose to terminate. This seemed to us to be an easy way out-by portraying someone who was already a mom, there was a certain amount of pathos that she automatically got. After all, she was doing what was best for her daughter, since her situation was already so hard. The function of the other two young women, who didn’t have children,  might have been to counteract this,  but it’s still interesting to me that it originated from Markai.

4. Dr. Drew: I was fully expecting to feel enraged, but it didn’t happen. “My hope is that people honor this conversation,” he said. He made sure to normalize abortion as not only an option, but a safe, routine medical procedure. Most notable for me was when he told the audience that there are all sorts of reactions to abortion, ranging from feeling sad and depressed to relief and happiness.

5. At one point, the three young women, sitting next to each other on the couch, were holding hands, and I cried. MTV made me cry- giant, feminist tears. I was really not expecting that moment, full of affirmation and power and strength between women. It was such a relief to see the decision being recognized as one that’s complicated, scary, and worthy of compassion and respect.  Katie said, “It wasn’t shirking my responsibility. My decision to terminate my pregnancy was a parenting decision.”

After the show, of course, MTV returned to teen moms in the 16 and Pregnant reunion special. If you haven’t seen one before, it basically features Dr. Drew skewering both the teen moms and dads and making them talk about things like how they got pregnant in the first place. Of particular note was Emily and her boyfriend Daniel, from Alabama, who were asked about the kind of sex education they’d gotten. Not surprisingly, the answer is abstinence only, to which Dr. Drew replied that negotiation skills are entirely left out of the conversation. There’s never a discussion of how to talk about what you want and don’t want,  hindering any hope of healthy conversations in relationships, an excellent way to get pregnant. Emily’s dad: “There have to be other options, they have to talk about real choices.”

So, in the end, I feel somewhat better. I’m not satisfied, of course, because the question of whether women are allowed to choose remains one of the best examples of deeply held misogyny that still needs to be contended with, and it makes me crazy that we’re even talking about it. “No Early Decision” is a good start, but make no mistake, there is a  long, long way to go.

me on the pursuit of harpyness!

Amazing-the post I wrote about not shaving a few months ago is now up at the Pursuit of Harpyness, a great, snarky feminist blog:

http://www.harpyness.com/2010/12/29/the-one-with-all-the-body-hair-a-guest-post-by-chanel-dubofsky/

 

 

“what a concrete mess we live in/and what an icebox heart I’ve been given”

tuesday songs: location, the freelance whales; under the gun, the killers; hey rose, girlyman; urge for going, joni mitchell; goodbye, the nields; not a lullaby, the weepies; move away, the killers; santa cruz, erin mckeown.

Crazy walk just now that began on the Upper West Side and involved 9th avenue in the low 50′s. People are moving slowly, and there are lakes everywhere, and snow piles and disgruntledness (me). I like to move at a good clip, because I’m usually listening to music that propels me accordingly, and I don’t like to be stopped or interrupted. This is the explanation for if you see me on the street and I either ignore you and/or look scary.

A few weeks ago, I had to throw out a pair of sneakers, my black Converse low tops, so well-loved in all their hipster glory. I have owned one previous pair of these shoes, which I finally had to get rid of after I climbed a mountain in Ecuador in them. A poor life choice, yes, but a romantic end. I’ve done quite a lot of avoid throwing out  particular pairs of shoes, or rather, buying new ones-duct tape, most famously. This last pair of chucks, however, wereunsalvageable. JF and I walked across the Manhattan bridge, and by the time we were back in town, my heel hurt so badly, I couldn’t put it on the ground. I had literally worn a hole in the bottom so wide and deep that it couldn’t really be considered a shoe anymore and thus was not supporting my foot. So I threw them in the trash when I got home, and now I’m wearing  a reasonably new pair of grey and mauve Sauconys, which I have luke warm feelings towards.

The walking obsession is hereditary, I think. My grandmother used to take enormous walks, which I never gave much thought to until years later, when I was living in Boston and doing the same thing. She talked about those walks constantly when she was no longer able to do them, and thinking about it now makes me realize that we both had the same hunger for perpetual mobility, although it manifested very differently.

I wonder if her wanderings resulted in the same odd combination of calmness and exhilaration as mine do, if having sore feet and numb ears and being sweaty in below freezing weather was as much a part of her daily life as it is of mine. I keep discovering more annoying things about death. Today, it’s the frustration of not being able to have answers to questions I never would have imagined wanting to ask.

only held by gravity

songs for Monday: hummingbird, the weepies; you’ll never leave harlan alive, red molly; it happens every day, dar williams; don’t shoot me santa, the killers, i know where you are, girlyman, how will he find me, deb talan.

The city is spectacular and perilous in the snow. I am so glad Christmas is over that I don’t even really care that I’m stumbling around in drifts that are literally taller than I am (which, admittedly, is not very hard). I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there is only so much time I can spend on the couch watching crime drama before I start to get restless and freaked out (serial killers-they’re everywhere!).

My brain in winter feels  a lot like being stuck in a jar with a stubborn lid. I have two paragraphs of fiction which felt hopefully yesterday and not so impressive today. There is somewhat of a trajectory that I need to not lose in the next 13 days. Also, several impending deadlines. I could use a large cardboard wall to punch through. That sounds like it might help. Anybody have one?

 

interesting piece at ha’aretz

S just sent me this piece from the Israeli daily Ha’aretz about Israeli folks and childbearing choices. I feel like there’s been a lot of press about the topic of being child-free by choice lately, and it’s interesting to see it in the Israeli press as well.

Oh, and  here’s an excellent tweet from Shelby Knox: “Happy Christmas, if it’s your thing – hope all your celebrations are egalitarian & a least a bit subversive! If not, make it so!”

i might be creepy, but at least i’m not wasting time.

In my head, there is a lot of coffee, banjo playing,  kissing, and worrying. Also- parties, meltdowns, and phrases like “the cat’s pajamas,” “over the moon,” and “easy on the eyes.”  A girl walks around with one of her pant legs rolled up because it’s easier to leave it that way than fix it, since she rides her bike all the time, everywhere. People walk around with suspicious amounts of Lemonheads in their pockets. There is Thursday night dinner and a trampoline where a bed should be and a kid who stretches paint canvases for his dad after school.

“A character is never a whole person, but just those parts of him that fit the story or the piece of writing. So the act of selection is the writer’s first step in delineating character. From what does he select? From a whole mass of what Bernard Devoto used to call, somewhat clinically, “placental material.”  He must know an enormous amount more about each of his characters than he will ever use directly-childhood, family background, religion, schooling, health, wealth, sexuality, reading, tastes, hobbies-an endless questionnaire for the writer to fill out. For example, the writer knows that people speak, and therefore his characters will describe themselves indirectly when they talk. Clothing is a means of characterization. In short, each character has a style of his own in everything he does. These need not all be listed, but the writer should have a sure grasp of them. If he has, his characters, will, within the book, read like people.” (William Sloane)

regularly scheduled sexism

So, I just saw the following commercial:

Father and son are playing with food, literally. Father is pushing a bowl of salsa across the table, son pushes it back to him, because it’s apparently hilarious (?) and men do such things because they’re incapable of doing things that require intellect. Bowl of salsa glides across the table with ease until it collides with a bowl of chips and a huge mess ensues. Mom, blond and sweater clad, has been watching this with amusement and adoration. When said collision occurs, however, what does she do? She doesn’t walk away in disgust, or even seem mildly perturbed. She reaches for the paper towels being advertised and CLEANS IT UP. She doesn’t make her husband or her child get rid of  the mess. She DOES IT HERSELF. Because men and boys are helpless and women clean up after them and somewhere, someone sells a paper towel.

all right.

1. become obsessed with three songs. play them over and over, until you know all the words and each feels like an appendage.

2. find a new place to work. there seems to be one  outlet for a plug, and you’ve secured it, and now you feel invincible.

3. write  a sentence: “I love your beautiful, carnival sized heart.”

4. wonder what this jenny person might have done to brandon flowers (from  the killers) to end up in so many of his songs. decide it was probably nothing good.

5. make a note to call D on wednesday, his birthday. anticipate how he’s going to say that he’s getting old, even though you are a month and three days older than he is, and always have been.

6. remember the conversation you overheard in the indian restaurant with j on friday night between a man and a much younger woman. she was telling him about a dream she had involving a green gown and a scepter. recall how he sat back in his seat and said, thoughtfully, “For me, the most interesting part  is when the dream throws itself off.”

7. think about how it’s going to be christmas soon and how you hate christmas, because no matter where you are in the world, or who you are with, it has a way of making you lonely.

8. write two more sentences: “Can you see me?” “Yes. I can see you.” wonder what it might mean.

you should see what it’s like in my head right now. (or maybe not.)

Adge: If you tell me it’s serious, I’ll stop making fun of him.
Leah: It’s serious.
Adge (after a moment): When did that happen?
Leah: Last night.
Adge (after another moment): And?
Leah: And I’m nauseous and terrified and  I feel like I’ve been hit over the head with a shovel.
Adge: Do you want some unsolicited advice?
Leah: Okay.
Adge: If it’s good…just let it be good. You know?
Leah: I know. I’ll try.
Adge: Try hard, Bee.