I’ve been here before; it feels like 1999.
Archive for the ‘holidays’ Category
historical mystery
Posted in holidays on December 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
conduits
Posted in holidays on December 16, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
photo by VDH
Clouds hung low
concealing
buildings designed
to scrape the sky,
hands were formed
into spoons
in an effort
to stay warm; the
trees were wrapped
electric.
distilling my own resolve
Posted in family, holidays, questions, want on December 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
If I tell you my identity, will you tell me what to buy?
Cleveland, OH (photo by Atlee)
Ask me questions. I want answers.
This time of year brings out a different kind of angst in understanding who I am. From pressures to BUY SOMEBODY SOMETHING to calibrating the dangers of assimilation (of all kinds), I appreciate everyone who has added to my voice and sense of agency.
I’m tempted to make promises that I can’t keep.
Oscillating between choice and denial has sparked new, and powerful, imaginary yearnings. I want that feeling of checking your assumptions; a feeling of being heard. Let’s practice justice everyday so that these memories are in our muscles, so that we are conscious when we fail.
Can you feel the rush for the end?
We report back different memories. Like when we visited her in the mental hospital and learned how tradition is precarious security. She sadly handed each one of us a painted gold angel made of plaster, which I still carry with me as evidence. It was the only thing she could provide to us, a product of her extreme sadness. You said we baked chocolate chip cookies in the industrial kitchen and have no memory of her angelic presentation. We both agreed that she was never coming home again.
How will you remember me?
gravity
Posted in holidays, questions, sad on November 18, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
justice will take us millions of intricate moves
- William Stafford
Miami, 2012
As each day tucks into the next, I add up the cumulative influence of how silence can be a weapon of intention. My head reminds me that this is the familiar effect of winter and the reappearance of those heavy memories that not-so-gently announce its arrival. My heart has been in hibernation for weeks.
There is nothing left for you; I promise.
Shall we think of junctions as felicitous opportunities to recast and reassess? If the rumors are true that the world is ending in less than a month, let us wake up each day with strategic purpose. This ritual is bigger than you or me.
pornographic dreams
Posted in holidays, want, work on October 7, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Have you noticed that the air smells sweet with rotting leaves?
photo by Atlee
I think constantly about familiar tensions:
sunny winter blue skies.
I am dreaming in violence again.
The holidays are nearing.
I want to only read radical things:
text
images
selves
this weekend never happened
Posted in family, holidays, mundane life, work on July 8, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The Angelus of Gala (Portrait of Gala) – Salvador Dali
There were places I was supposed to be this week.
Instead, I appreciated that my shadow was in front of me.
Living in bear country – a landscape of turn ons and fractured binaries -
I analyzed the world through a post-choice lens
and declared my love for the Datsun 510.
I remembered the 4th of July that was
an inappropriate miniskirt with a zenith of vodka tonics
followed by a drive home powered by a miracle and freedom.
Reminders of where I used to be frame where I see myself now.
They are the optics that position an erotic that begets joy.
remembering is my favorite sport
Posted in holidays, mundane life on May 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Give me a kiss / show me what I’ve missed” Postal Blowfish, Guided by Voices
I was born into a complex relationship.
There was no choice but to embrace multiple perspectives.
You said truth is an aesthetic and my heart skipped a beat.
Neptune has taken residence in my seventh house.
It will be there until I die, and longer. It means boundaries will dissolve – escapism of the best kind. This requires awareness, in all the ways awareness can be interpreted, from conscious to knowledgable.
My leisure has run away with my intentions.
I am delighted that I cannot control that fact.
protest signs are a cultural history of synonyms
Posted in holidays on May 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
C’EST le PIED!
There was a protest banner that spread the words, “Castrate the State!”; articles about fetal rights as civil rights; and a revelation about a perceived ”intensity gap” in pro-choice institutions.
This was the narrative arc leading up to Mother’s Day 2012.
We are supposed to celebrate those that have participated in accouchement, the standard and narrow definition of mother.
The anti-sex and the pro-parental zealots sound the same to me – both promote progeny.
~~~~~~~~~~
In this land of homogenous seasons, I am afraid I missed my hibernation cycle.
~~~~~~~~~~
She told me that I need to understand the difference between worry and disconcert; there was empowerment embedded in that assumption. There is also tension in that settling.
like a fish out of water
Posted in holidays, menstruation, questions on December 25, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Happy Birthday Jesus.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
found via reCycling, source The Frisky
An interview with myself:
1) What was the first word or phrase you thought of when you woke up this morning?
Me: leg salad (both an image and words)
2) What was the last thing you picked up off the street?
Me: a fortune that said, “FORTUNE TRULY HELPS THOSE WHO ARE OF GOOD JUDGEMENT”
3) Name something you wish you would have picked up but didn’t, and why didn’t you pick it up?
Me: a twisty balloon that looked like a strawberry, it was in the middle of a busy street and I thought it belonged to a baby that had just passed me
4) What do you wish you were doing right now?
Me: walking in dry, crunchy snow that is glittering in the moonlight
5) Do you like to ask questions or answer them?
Me: I tend to ask questions but really enjoy answering a good question.
6) What are you currently obsessed with?
Me: contradictions, dichotomies, and the space in between
7) What makes you angry?
Me: traffic lights that make you push a button in order for you to walk, murdering animals for food, invoking sexuality to sell fast food
8) What makes you happy?
Me: epiphanies, phrases that make your heart stop for a nanosecond, uncovering the obvious
9) What makes you brave?
Me: knowledge
10) What are you excited about for the upcoming year?
Me: riding my bike, making music, and deconstructing the hype of an impending apocalypse
holiday dysphoria
Posted in awesome, feminism, holidays, lists on December 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
To quote Kim Gordon, “my future is static, its already had it ” (Schizophrenia). My holiday wish is pretty simple: please let the next sixteen days zip by and let the future year roll forward like it’s no big deal. Expectations, purposely constructed or illusionary, make me nervous and if past experiences are indicators of anything, vehicles of disappointment. This is not an indictment. It’s a calculated reference to the above label.
I love reading the top searches that a random passerby used to find this mess of a blog. Child vagina (WTF?!) and man pussy apparently are two tubes you can take to find this url.
As American feminists were hissing about the Plan B reversal due to “common sense”, British feminists rallied for the muff, in her original glory. The body politic is gloriously exposed; sexuality was rationalized on the lips of politicians and defiantly displayed on the streets. It’s all so Victorian. Foucault just yawned.
A random list of ten good things from the last three months:
- kisses in elevators
- braless weekends
- pink sunsets
- responding
- doing
- thanking
- protesting
- speculums/feedback
- solo expeditions
- December sunshine
photo by atlee
my heart is weltschmerz
Posted in holidays on February 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Valentine’s Day. Meh.
“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.” — Haruki Murakami Kafka on the Shore
Juliao Sarmento
manufacture desires
Posted in awesome, holidays, marketing on November 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Manufacturing desires; it’s that time of the year when you try to fit your square self into round uniform pegs.
Like getting denied access to a speakeasy because you “didn’t make reservations”, following the rules is so unhip.
I want, oh god I want.
feeling presidential
Posted in holidays, lists, mundane life, vacation on July 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I did go outside this weekend, I promise. Today is the first day of summer in the Emerald City which means 10 o’clock sunshine and vitamin D euphoria.
- 7.2.10
- 7.3.10
7.4.10
Summer Wish List:
new-found freckles
out-of-body experiences
thought-provoking catalysts
obsessions
Posted in abortion, art, birth control, family, holidays, menstruation, politics on May 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
artist: Lorena Vigil-Escalera, found via design work life
artist: Rob Mongomery, found via girlafraid
artist: Sarah Small, found via 1000 words photography
Happy Mother’s Day! And even happier day to those of us who choose not to birth or be restricted by our wombs.
Gail Collins’ Op-Ed column in last week’s New York Times, What Every Girl Should Know, is a stark reminder of how precarious our happiness is and how we all need to be advocates for our choices, lest they be made for us.
Sometimes it feels like change is glacial. Yet it’s only been 50 years that the birth control pill was approved by the FDA, 45 years since married women were prescribed the pill, 36 years since single women could gain access to the pill, and it’s only been 37 years since abortion was codified. It can seem like menstruating women are measuring time by trimesters and months.
We often forget that transforming the cultural landscape is a modern project of progress. We assume that we can map out all the complexities of change and have thousands of theories of action to document these assumptions. But this is a project where constant change is the chorus and trying to interpret the illogical can become an obsession. What we choose to focus on and obsess over matters greatly because if change is the constant, you may find yourself looking back and not recognizing where you came from.
I’ll never forget
Posted in holidays on December 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ll never forget the last time I sat on a Santa’s lap.
It was the first time I learned about boundaries.
I’ve been busy
Posted in holidays, mundane life on November 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Photo by me. Dolphin Bay Hotel, Hilo, HI fire alarm in the “Superior Suite”
I’ve been so busy that I had to go two pages into CuteOverload.com to catch up.
Avoiding the suits, seeking other opportunities, drunken noodles, remarking that writing and reading all day makes one a poor communicator, and a quick phone call to the one who birthed me; it’s been a long, remarkably unremarkable day.
Happy Labor Day!
Posted in fun, holidays on September 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Forgiveness and Unconditional Love
Posted in awesome, holidays, mundane life on April 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Embedded video from CNN Video
Art is Useless – Oscar Wilde
Posted in awesome, holidays, mundane life on March 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The best 232nd birthday present America could ask for…
Posted in holidays, krazy konservatives on July 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Happy Mother’s Day!
Posted in holidays on May 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
winter / holiday season
Posted in holidays, sad on December 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Gobble! Gobble!
Posted in holidays on November 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
– Happy Thanksgiving –
Posted in holidays on November 23, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Diamond Anniversary
Posted in holidays, menstruation on November 19, 2006 | 1 Comment »
Happy 75th Anniversary to the tampon!
On November 19th, 1931, (only one month after Thomas Edison died) either Dr. Earle C. Haas or Dr. Philip Harville submitted a patent for an “invisible” device that once inserted into a woman’s body, collected her menstrual blood. A little device called a tampon.
Whoever submitted the patent did so with the explicit notion that women should not have to touch themselves while inserting said devise. Despite its initial association with destroying women’s lives (rupturing sacred hymens did not help it’s initial sales), tampons were considered a convenient revolution. It wasn’t until the 1960′s that the general public shed the illogical belief that a tampon was synonymous with a dildo.
With menstruation becoming obsolete, will the tampon remain revolutionary?
Place Your Bets
Posted in holidays, krazy konservatives on November 12, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Reposting the conservative christian’s interpretation of a liberal holiday wish list.
I wonder which liberal agenda will be passed first? Which will be Bush’s second veto?
My money is on the last one minus the terrorist rant.
Here is what we can expect if the liberals win:
- Amnesty for 12,000,000 illegal immigrants.
- A push to make homosexual marriage and polygamy legal in all 50 states.
- Only liberal judges will be appointed. They will create laws to implement the social agenda liberals cannot get passed through the legislative process.
- Liberals will make the killing of the unborn more difficult to stop.
- Liberals will continue to try to rid our society of Christian influence, including any reference to God in our Pledge and on our currency.
- A return to the “Fairness Doctrine” in broadcasting where opposing views must be given equal time. Every conservative talk show host will be forced to give a liberal equal time on every issue. The purpose of this rule will be to shut down conservative talk shows.
- An increase in taxes to push new social programs.
- Passing a new “hate crimes” law making it illegal to refer to homosexuality in a negative manner.
- Liberals will give terrorists from other countries who try to kill Americans the same rights American citizens enjoy under our constitution.
- We will withdraw from Iraq, sending the message to the terrorists that if they will just be patient they can win and bring their terrorist acts to the U.S.
Easter Bunny
Posted in fun, holidays, mundane life on April 8, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Sloppy Seconds
Posted in holidays, politics on December 25, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
Happy Holidays!
It’s good to see Rummy hard at work.
Crisp white shirt.
No hairnet.
Pocket protector.
Serving a woman soldier murder.
Home for the Holidays
Posted in holidays on December 8, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
The perfect image of americana domesticated “holiday” spirit. That’s a lot of gingerbread, icing and posturing.
Spooky!
Posted in feminism, holidays on November 1, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
Happy Halloween.
Another nominee. Another white man.
Maureen Dowd’s synopsis of the future of feminism was just as depressing and arrogant as Bush’s pick.
Make-up, sex and children. Lack of job opportunities and sexual objectification. Discussing the dichotomy of why Maxim allures and frightens, Dowd fails to breakdown the consequences of such absurdity. Her lack of class analysis was the most frightening of all. Quotes from overly educated, privileged single women who blame their ringless fingers on their positions of power is grotesque.
Feminism is much more than these sexy bytes of information. It is about analyzing the structures of power that create and maintain hierarchy. Trying to squeeze into a bankrupt system is the last thing this “modern girl” wants to do.
Post Sweetest Day Hangover
Posted in holidays, musak on October 25, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
Revolution?
Posted in feminism, holidays on March 10, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
It was a great honor to be an American woman on this International Women’s Day 2005.
Democrats restated their pro-women stance, the First Lady pondered the novel idea of a different kind of White House chef, and some women even received presents on this heralded holiday.
The post-feminist revolution has arrived. Unfortunately it was not televised. It should come as no surprise. Cowboys are not always catalysts.
