“I am writing and writing and writing even when I am not writing.” (Jami Attenberg)

Wednesday songs: My Door is Always Open, Noah and the Whale; Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes; Midnight Radio, Dar Williams; Generator ^ First Floor, Freelance Whales; Abigail, Coyote Grace; Rose for the Lady, Folded Light.

I’m obsessed with writing about road trips lately. Well, just one, and I have no idea where it begins, but it contains some vague notion of Utah:

On the way, we stop at a diner, and over coffee and French fries, he draws dragons on the thin paper placemats. The dragons have braces on their teeth and all wear mismatched socks. When he runs out of space on the placemats, he starts on the back of my hand, the ink seeping into the lines of my skin. This dragon has long eyelashes and a star on its cheek.

Also, there’s this:

For a little while, we’d send each other things in the mail: a monster finger puppet, a picture we took in the photo booth at the Ace Hotel, a candy necklace, a Trivial Pursuit card, a movie ticket stub, a bead, a pencil with shamrocks on it and a green eraser.

(Paintings for sale, Emek Refaim, Jerusalem, July 2010. Photo by me.)

sluts and prudes: some reading material

 

Not to create a dichotomy here, but both of these words were in my Google Reader Feed today, so, here you are.

First, from TumblinFeminist:

“”Slut” is just another way of saying “worthless” without having to come up with a reason. Little girls get called sluts before they even know what sex is.

If someone calls you a slut, there’s nothing you can say to refute the claim because it never had any cognitive content anyway.”

(from “Sluts Like Me,” http://bigthink.com/ideas/38362)

And second, from the brain of Tracy Clark-Flory:

In Defense of Prudes: http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/05/09/prudes/index.html.

“take care take care take care” (lower east side graffiti)

 

I just sat down on one of these benches that’s on the island that runs down the middle of the street and realized that I am doing so at the hottest time of the day. In Jerusalem, people don’t even leave their houses at 3 pm. They nap. They go to the darkest, coldest part of the café, or they lay under trees. I would always forget this, and end up desperate, sweaty, dehydrated and burnt. True to form, I am not planning on moving from this bench. Beside me, a man is explaining to his female companion that therapy will help her.

Yesterday, I was sitting at Columbus Circle again, writing whatever it is I’m writing, and along came this balding,middle aged white guy, wearing white and khaki and a jaunty straw hat. He looked at me, and because I’m scared of everyone, I pretended not to notice. He sat down near me but not next to me, by the fountain. After a while, he got up to go, and waved at me. I took out one of my ear buds.

Man: Do you have wireless access out here?

Me: No.

Man: Oh. Where did you get your glasses?

Me: Um. I don’t remember.

Man: Well, I like them. They make a statement.

Me: Okay, thanks.

And then I put my ear bud back in, to signal that our conversation was over, and he looked at me with his mouth open for another moment, and then he walked away. I can’t remember if he shook his head, or if he seemed pissed off, but as I watched him go, I thought, Oh, I am so mean.

This sort of thing has happened to me before, I might have even written about  it here. Jonathan Ames, whom I adore, has a thing about plagiarizing himself, how he does it all the time, so if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. 

When I get approached by strange men on the street, I run. I don’t think this is a bad policy. (Cue the comments about how I’m scarred or I hate men or that I should be More Open, as this is the way to finding true love or deep friendship!) Once, I was trying to get a cab and a guy came up and starting talking at me about my bag or my handkerchief or something, and it went on for way too long.  I walked away, and he yelled, ‘You don’t have to be such a fucking bitch.”

Yeah. If you’re a dude, approaching a lady on the street, you have to be prepared for this kind of reaction. In turn, I have to be prepared for the reflex of immediate remorse-I should have been nicer. I should have talked with him longer, I should have smiled. That’s sexism. Even if this guy was a psycho, I should have been nice, because otherwise, I’m a bitch, and that’s the worst thing ever.

Being inculcated with a feeling of vulnerability is the result of a culture that makes it not only awesome, but mandatory to our concept of masculinity to treat women like public property, and if we object, well, then-someone hit the “bitch” alarm. Ding. (No, but seriously, it’s way louder than that.)

the truest thing I have heard lately, along with a picture of a giraffe.

 

“The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that (s)he is most alive when alone.” (Martin Amis)

(Amherst, MA. photo by me.)

“oh, please don’t grieve for days that fell like leaves.” (ben gibbard)

(purple bike. photograph by Yael Ben-Zion.)

The word describing how I most often feel on Sundays is parched. It’s hard to explain-I put a lot of pressure on every day to be shiny and life altering, and by the time I get to the day that everyone seems to fill with brunch and laziness or brunch and running errands, I’m completely exhausted.

I have a terrible relationship with relaxation, so I cleaned, and because  I like to make lists, here’s what’s on the table next to my bed right now: quarters, hairclips, coffee mugs, a hairbrush, a glass jar with scissors, pencils and paintbrushes in it, my passport, eyeglass cleaner, a ceramic bowl I bought in Amherst last year that holds barrettes, beads and hair elastics, two bottles of pills, a picture of me in my prom dress, deodorant, squares of stiff colored paper, my phone, my yellow scarf headband with the purple polka dots, a pile of pictures cut from magazines, pieces of cardboard stamped with the names of my characters.

Additionally: Made and ate a deliciously buttery, super burnt grilled cheese sandwich. Reaffirmed the fact that Zabar’s coffee is infinitely better and cheaper than Starbucks. Thought about writing a story just about the evolution/variety of someone’s nicknames. Took a long walk listening to Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, laughing to myself and looking possibly insane. A lot of people seem to be pregnant, in a hurry to get somewhere, grocery shopping, dressed in fancy clothes, walking their dogs, going to the gym, sitting on benches, wearing hats, and wondering if it will rain.

poetic dispatch: margaret atwood

 

Spelling

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

*

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

*

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.

*

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

*

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

*

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

 

Saturday, 8.30-10.00 am

(Amherst, MA. photo by me.)

Today feels like it has been three days. I’m going to be writing this up more thoroughly for the Forward, but in the meantime, here’s an overview.

At 730 am, I was on the train, listening to a Tablet podcast episode and trying to not spill my coffee. I was at Planned Parenthood by 830, wearing a blue smock and opening the door.

The protestors showed up by 9, which apparently they do on the first Saturday of every month. There were probably 45 of them, with crosses and rosaries and a bullhorn and even a violin, chanting Hail Marys over and over. (I can probably recite it now. Thanks?) Also, there were some dudes from Bikers for Life, walking around with flyers. The whole point of an escort is to get people who need to get into the clinic into the clinic. Sometimes, that means going over to the person telling a woman she’s about to murder her baby and helping her extract herself from the lecture. Other times, it just means making eye contact and opening the door.

People who live in the neighborhood stopped to chat with us, we petted their dogs, answered their questions about the protestors. A guy in baggy shorts with a camera told us we were rad. Women and men went into the clinic and came out. Sometimes, men went in with women and came out alone, asking us where to get food or coffee. One of the Bikers for Life kept saying, ‘It’s such a nice day. Isn’t it a nice day?’

When I left at 10.15, the protestors were kneeling on the ground, their hands clasped in prayer. For a second, I remembered being eight years old and seeing my mother light Shabbat candles for the first time, ever. I put my hands together, fingers pointed up to the sky. “Don’t do that,” my mother said. “That’s not what we do.”

“my heart licked perfectly clean” (leslea newman)

 

(painting by Lee Price)

I am now a person who eats anything-turkey sandwiches with avocado, bacon, and aioli mayonnaise, burgers with sweet, limp onions and melted cheese, food prepared inside a street truck and presented to me in warm aluminum foil. I keep talking and thinking about my new eating behavior, because it’s so weird to be not maniacal about keeping kosher. Every time I put these foods in my mouth, I wait for terror, for the desire to purge it, but it never comes. Instead is the feeling like my stomach is falling. It’s a strange sensation, light and fast and fleeting.

Today is International No-Diet Day. INDD is about affirming our right to self esteem, emotional and physical well being, as well as a chance to celebrate body shape/weight diversity, learn about the impact of dieting on health,  the implications of dieting on violence against women,  and take a break from obsessing about food, body size and weight.

I’ve never been on a diet, but I have also had very few periods in my life where I can remember having a healthy relationship with food. I’m very aware of the fact that I’m not skinny, which I think I’m becoming okay with, although I’m constantly thinking about the fact that if you aren’t skinny, you always have to be acting like you want to be, or like you’re trying to be, because the fact that you aren’t thin, or that you’re fat, is totally unacceptable. 

There’s a pretty loud voice in my head saying,“if you just lost weight, you could love your body.” Through a feminist lens, I know this isn’t true-we live in a society where no one is allowed to love their body. It’s important, of course, to know when weight is impacting health, but fat phobia is not about that. Health becomes another vehicle and pretense through which to humiliate someone and punish them for deviating from a norm. It’s about deciding that a person is aberrant, gluttonous, it’s about fearing how much space people take up, especially if that person is a woman. 

I think it’s a lot to expect that we’ll learn to love our bodies, or rather, that I will. It’s a hurdle I’ve been trying to overcome for years. Quoting the folk over at Fat and the Ivy: “For those who are interested, the day after tomorrow is also no diet day. And the day following. And the one after that. Ad infinitum.”

Now, go have a snack.

 

stewart o’nan, on writing

“Saul Bellow once said, ‘A writer is a reader who has moved to emulation’ — which I think is true. I just started writing and made that jump from reader to writer and learned how hard it was, but also how much fun it was — losing myself in these imaginary worlds.”

advice

 

“The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.

I hope when people ask what you’re going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you’ll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say oh.”

From Dear Sugar, at the Rumpus.Net