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January 15th, Two Thousand Five: I've found myself fixated today on the small things any of us
do alone, in only our own company, which others just don't know
about. I'm not talking about things which would be in any way
embarrassing, rather, that others don't know because we don't
think to share them, think they're unimportant or irrelevant or
they simply never come up.
I started thinking about this because I was sitting in a hot bath
some hours after boxing and being out in the incredible cold,
reading the first three chapters of my yellowed, battered copy
of Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being aloud to myself, with intense and purposeful slowness. If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can
stand out against it in all their splendid lightness. (Just listen
to those vowel and consonant balances between "eternal return"
and "heaviest of burdens." So simple and beautiful. Or all the
words ending in d and t in the second half of that sentence, letting
the reader feel the lightness discussed. Brilliant.)
Bathrooms have great acoustics. Yet, I tend to reserve singing
for the shower only. The best way I know how to utilize the acoustics,
the solitude and the mind-quieting powers of the bath are to,
instead, bring in a book with beautiful, lyrical language, with
words, phrases and sentences brilliantly constructed and well
worthy of pondering, be it poetry or prose, and read them aloud,
ever so slowly. I'm an insanely fast reader, so it's a luxury,
an aural delight, for me to read aloud slow, savoring every word,
its meaning and its sound. And it's interesting I do that, because
in general I cannot bear being read aloud to by anyone else. (In
general. I had a lover once who shared my love of Donne and who
could whisper whole sonnets into my ears while we were fucking.
Where, like a pillow on a bed / A pregnant bank swell'd up to
rest / The violet's reclining head, / Sat we two, one another's
best. With a fast balm, which thence did spring; Our eye-beams
twisted, and did thread / Our eyes upon one double string; So
to'intergraft our hands, as yet / Was all the means to make us
one, And pictures in our eyes to get / Was all our propagation. Le sigh. I had no complaints. Small children are also exempted
from my usual annoyance with being read to, as is anyone who simply
MUST read something aloud because they're blissing out on whatever
it is just that much.)
But it struck me that I don't think anyone at all knows this is
something I've done somewhat regularly for years. Why doesn't
anyone know this or other tiny, individual and intimate things
like it?
Are these things truly irrelevant to them, or do I just assume
they are? Do I not share them because I don't think to, or because
I don't want to? Is something taken away in another knowing? How
many of these sorts of things have I ever known about people I've
been intimately close to, for that matter? If I don't know some
of those things, or they don't of me, how well have we really
known each other? Or, more precisely, without knowing things like
this, how well can any of us know anyone as the person they are
without our influence or presence? |
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January 10th, Two Thousand Five: Just wanted to poke in to make clear I do still live and breathe.
I do still feel some of how I was feeling last time I wrote, and
I keep finding I'm guessing the absolute wrongest thing at any
given time to provide me comfort, which is frustrating. Saturday
-- I came down with some bug, am still trying to dropkick the
little stinker -- the good thing to do seemed to be to go through
what few old photos I have of growing up, of the school, what
have you. Bzzzzt.
| Wrong choice, really. Saw way too many photos where I recognized
the context they were taken in and knew my smile or manner was
complete bravado or plastic, or that at the time a photo was taken,
I was standing on the edge of yet another precipice, unknowingly
about to fall in. For instance, I really, truly did not need to
remember the first holiday I went back home after leaving home
where I was terrified the entire time that my stepfather would
come at any minute, despite my only agreeing to come were he not
present. |
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I didn't need to see a rare, rare picture of me smiling at 15, knowing from the clothes I was wearing that I would have
been in the middle of the first massive love of my life, clueless
that I was in for a horrible, violent loss mere months later.
Some of the photos made me happy and wistful, but what others
poked at undid the good stuff.
It's a tough, tricky thing, history. During times like these in
my life, I feel the whole of mine weigh on me so heavily; I see patterns I can't seem to escape, no matter how
hard I've tried. Tragedies seem inevitable. The isolation and
just -- I don't know, feelings of having been through so many
things so many people can't understand, or couldn't understand
the effect those things have had. I suppose in part that's loneliness. |
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(And before anyone leaps to prescribe for me yet again despite
my endlessly asking people not to, yes, I know having some community
where my yuckier experiences were shared might help. But there
is just no way I can go to THAT goddamn many support groups, and
to my knowledge, there isn't one easy "abuse survivor-rape survivor-poverty
survivor-suicide survivor-homeless parent survivor -this, that
and the other thing survivor support group" around I'm aware of.
Maybe I need to start one, something like the Survivor of Nearly
Bloody Fucking Everything Bad Support Group, but in all honesty,
if I have to lead one more thing or person I will plotz, and to
boot, I'm with Woody Allen when it comes to wariness of groups
who'd have me as a member. I also don't imagine it'd feel particularly
good to try and drum up something like that when I'm feeling like
this and be the only one present.)
But I have slowly been able to work again, and I've found that's the best
place for me right now. It's tricky around too many people in
my periphery at the moment, because too many folks are just coming
to me in a way that is a big part of what has been driving me
apeshit, and I'm just incredibly tired of endlessly pointing out
what's not okay to do with me and having it ignored, dismissed
or trivialized. The absolute worst for me right now, I'm finding,
is a few folks seeing I'm in a bad space, and saying they want
to help, yet who are people who have contributed to my BEING in
this space, and would help me a whole lot more by just minding
requests to leave me be. I find that even my friends who treat
me well, who I do have a good, reciprocal relationship with, have
a hard time understanding how my history weighs on me, because
they don't have similar experiences, so again, I end up feeling
like an alien or some sort of saint. (I was, however, kidnapped
earlier this week for an afternoon by Heather and Carissa, and
we were later joined by Becca and Peter-Paul, and that was a help.)
Half the time I can't express all of what's going on with me to
people anyway: it just seems too hard to express it well, or like
way, way too much to say in a sitting, or I'm just too scared
of betrayal or lack of connection to divulge in the first place.
Working, creating, is good, even if it isn't easy. (It got a bit
easier after I got my period Friday, truth be told. My body really,
really doesn't like it when I'm off schedule, and extended PMS
does not good art make. I'd say someone need to tell Karen Finley
that to attempt to be witty, except that I think she's absolutely
brilliant, so I'd be lying.) I started a new photo series Sunday,
which the photos here are from, I'll be working on for a bit,
and even found that shooting with a fever had the effect I was
hoping for (namely, my being less self-aware on camera than usual).
Last week I did pick up -- at a steal, no less -- a scanner/thermal
printer/copier so I can do all the parts of the overlay work at
home, so I'm looking forward to the process.
In any event, expect me to be relatively incommunicado for a while,
still. One of the things I've realized that's adding to my upset
is having so many people who are strangers to me, to varying degrees,
connect so strongly and so positively to my work. It stands in
rather sharp relief to the profound disconnect, the distance,
I'm feeling and often feel with people who actually have a relationship
with me of some sort, or know me in person, as a person, not just
as the person who does my work or knowing me only through my work.
The more time passes, I'm finding that it's becoming more and
more difficult to be known, held, loved, respected or even vaguely
understood in any other way besides via my work, even by people
close to me, and that just sucks. I don't know if it's anyone's
fault, and if so, whose fault it is, but I'm not happy about it.
That may perhaps make it seem silly for me to then do MORE creative
work, but I need the process, need to be in it because whether
I'm creating visual art or playing piano and singing or writing
fifty thousand unfinished poems or letters, those are places I
feel able to be in completely and without reservation. While I
don't always like how they make me feel or what they illuminate
for me, I trust them to be truthful; to be real and to give me
things I can actually hold unto and keep with me. Ever since I
was little, creating has probably been the most stable, reliable
thing I've had in my life. In many ways, that world, those strange,
uncertain places I explore are, and always have been, my only
real home. When friends, out of concern, jibe me about being a
workaholic, I'm not sure they realize that while that is also
true, I am far, far more stressed and distressed by NOT working,
or being unable to work, than I could ever dream of being when
I'm working. Without it, I feel transient, homeless, hungry. Lost.
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| (taking a break from comments for a bit, too.) |
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January 4th, Two Thousand Five: I came to a realization yesterday. After getting so frustrated
trying to work when I felt so unmotivated, after trying to do
anything that'd give me a shake, snap me out of it -- some piano,
some cleaning, a walk, some coffee, some reading -- I just went
and flopped on my bed and laid down with the dog, something I
just don't do midday.
I realized that I feel lost. Quite intensely. And that I feel
completely unable to talk about it, because I feel disbelieved
or dismissed when I try to. It appears that the idea of me --
because I'm generally so driven, so motivated, so charged and
so determined -- feeling really lost is somehow inconceivable.
It feels inconceivable to me too, is the thing, which only makes
me feel MORE lost. I've been finishing my nightly piano sessions
with this every night, and I often leave it unfinished because it just
hurts to voice this stuff. I find I feel ashamed, I feel unworthy,
I feel embarrassed, even in my own company. Another part of why
I feel unable to voice this feeling is because I am humiliated,
ashamed, to feel this way. It makes me feel less than I am; it
makes me feel ungrateful for what I do have and what I know I
am capable of.
I look at all there is to do and I feel both overwhelmed and underwhelmed
all at once. Heather and Carissa called last night about going
bowling with a few people, and I just couldn't bring myself to
go; I feel transparent around most people right now, and I tire
of either faking it, or being so quiet in an attempt not to that
everyone needs to know what's wrong. The best I could do right
now, really, would be to say, "I am lost," and I can't get real
specific with that because there's truthfully not an area right
now I don't feel lost in at the moment, be it work, my personal life, my emotional timbre,
my family, even just the minutiae of my daily life. I feel like
some things I was so certain about are more uncertain than I could
have imagined. I don't trust my intuition these days. I feel like
I am flailing, fumbling, faltering, fucking up.
When I ran the school back in the early nineties, I had a wee
student who at times would start stomping around, a grimace on
his face, fists balled, muttering, "I want... something." (He had issues with some consonant-vowel combos, so he'd actually
say "shumting.") After a while, I'd gently ask him WHAT he wanted or needed,
and he'd get red in the face and yell, "I don't KNOW! SOMETHING!" Eventually, he'd wearily fall into a chair or on the floor,
utterly frustrated with this feeling of wanting something, not
knowing what the hell it was, but finding nothing that was that
mysterious something or could quell his desire, no matter what
he was offered or had already.
I think he and I have shumting in common these days. |
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January 3rd, Two Thousand Five: Pity there are more jobs in construction than destruction.
Yesterday, I got to spend four hours or so being Babe Ruth with
a sledgehammer, destroying (with permission and encouragement)
every single thing in Becca's kitchen: all the cabinets, the walls,
the whole enchilada. There really are not words for how satisfying
this was, minor hand scrapes and mold allergies notwithstanding.
They need to market this shit as therapy. Next time I need something
demolished, I'm so putting an ad in our women's weekly. Need free license to smash the living crap out of stuff, yell
your lungs out, and not risk arrest? Demolition Debbies wanted.
Tools which truly will destroy the master's house, raucous, angry chick-punk and vegan
pizza provided.
I gotta tell you, that worked better for me than any sitting meditation
over the last few weeks could even aspire to. It's so easy for
me -- for any of us, I think -- to leave unaddressed or to dismiss
how much anger, how much frustration, how much aggression we carry
around with us; how much of it builds up, festers and bleeds into
things. I have plenty of outlets to deal with and address my sadness,
or a lack of energy, even some of my loneliness, and plenty of
outlets and places to put my joy and my compassion. But my art
and the heavy bag are what I have for my anger and even then,
I know I water it down aplenty. Certainly, I transform it into
"better" energy with plenty of things, but that's not the same
as expressing it. Anger is so easy to be scared of, and in my
case, I know I'm extra-nervous about it a lot of the time because
of the abuse in my history; because of having people unleash it
on me so violently in the past. I should probably make it a goal
this year to trust myself more with that, given I've got exactly
no reason to believe I can't be trusted to funnel and express
it safely. I should likely allow myself to have it: I do have
plenty over the course of my life to be very validly angry about,
and there's plenty about which I've never even just said, "I am
fucking angry about X."
So, anyone else needs their home demolished, I'm your girl. I'll
bring the L7, you bring your own earplugs. |
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January 1st, Two Thousand Five: Becca and I were incredibly pleased with our anti-NYE last night.
- 1) No other people. None. The park six blocks from her house with the flooded rink
area was totally empty save us. Additionally, no one we knew seemed
to believe that we were truly going to go spend NYE out in the
frozen tundra in the dark on skates, so we had no latchers-on.
- 2) No hangovers. When we went back to her place, we had not even two glasses of
champagne, and I added something herbal to my skating earlier,
but this morning, while the rest of the world moans in agony,
desperately reaching for the aspirin, we're right as rain.
- 3) No driving.
- 4) No dressing up. My oh-so-not-stylish NYE ensemble was composed of jeans over
cotton tights, a t-shirt, the Ugly Pink Sweater™, the Nepalese
earflap hat that is warm as hell but looks like a pterodactyl
that landed on my head and died, thick gloves, jacket and ice
skates.
- 5) No injuries. Becca had one fall that gave her a sore hand, but it appears
to be minor.
Given, the ice was insanely bumpy, and had all these air pockets,
and the park was very dark, so at times, one felt a bit of concern
that one was perhaps skating through a minefield, but one got
over it. It was also cold, and so when we got in, my ass was burning
from the cold then the heat (and you'd think with an ass this
size I'd be insulated just fine, you know?), but not so cold that
your fingers fell off when you were putting skates on outside.
Even though my very first job in juniour high was helping teach
little kids to ice skate (which really was about skating low behind
them and just scooping them all up as they fell over and over
again), I can't tell you the last time I was out on the ice to
skate. I was sure I was going to go down immediately, but lo,
I never did. Didn't get back up to speed skating or any jumps
either than a couple tiny bunny hops, but didn't fall, could go
backwards, and got at least a few brink runs around the pseudo-rink
in.
There was not, however, any music. Which is why the whole city,
every last denizen of Minneapolis and its surrounding areas, is
thankful it was not anywhere near us, because we provided what
was lacking. Becca only knew some of the words to the theme from
Ice Castles, and I knew none, so we couldn't belt that one. So very sad.
Next time.
But what we could do was filk a few tunes and make them about
ice and skating. Becca has a good thing started with The Rainbow Connection (why are there so little/songs about ice rinks), and I think
I heard her working on something to 76 Trombones that seemed promising.
I firmed up a couple tunes I got a good start on last night this
morning.
To the tune of Wouldn't It Be Nice
(You have to do the bumba-bumba-bumba-bumba thing the Beach Boys
do at the start, for the record, or it's just No Good.)
- Wouldn’t it be ice if it were colder
Then we wouldn’t have to sing this song?
And wouldn’t it be ice we'd have together
In the kind of rink where we belong?
You know it’s gonna be just that much better
When we can stay upright and skate together.
Wouldn't it be ice?
Wouldn’t it be ice if when we wake up
In the morning when the day is new;
And after having been out in the weather
Hypothermia I'd have with you?
Sappy rhymes together we've been bending,
While our shins we have been overextending.
Wouldn’t it be ice?
Maybe if we drink and swish and dope and stay skating askew;
Baby, then there wouldn’t be a single lake we won't fall through.
Then we would be buried,
And we’d be unhappy,
Oh, wouldn’t it be ice?
You know it seems the more we glide around it,
We only find more ways to slip and pound it.
Let's collide unbounded!
Wouldn’t it be ice?
To the tune of Everything's Coming Up Roses
(You know, very few things rhyme with the word roses. I say this
in my own defense.)
- We can skate! Ain't it swell!
Now that it's frozen over in hell!
Starting here, starting now,
Honey, we'll sing while blowing our noses!
Off the bench! Make ice tracks!
Freezing our asses off in these slacks.
Become Swiss, here and now.
Honey, we'll shoot the duck on our toes-es!
Now you're spinning. Just don't fall on your ear!
Are you grinning? Do you think the ice is thinning?
Laces pop! Winter bites!
If you die I'll read you your last rites!
You just fell. You're irate.
Oh, the fun that we have when we skate!
I think that both my feet are turning blue!
Honey, we'll need brand new HMO-ses before this night is through!
Good times, man. Good times. |
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December 31st, Two Thousand Four: It's snowing right now outside my windows, wile Sam Phillips
is crooning "When I Fall." It's really pretty timely: when i fall / i'm amazed by it all /
control is letting go / and i'm the last to know / we might land
beyond the wall / i might give love to you / i might step right
on through / i think you'll be there when i fall.
The wind is intense today, so all the chunky, white flakes are
flying it in, looking like the world of people usually does, everyone
streaming in essentially the same direction, hurrying because
of momentum more than anything else. By a trick of the wind, some
of the flakes appear to try to move against the grain, in different
directions; those twirl, tumble and leap up, landing on my windowsill,
perhaps for a rest, perhaps in giving up, perhaps because that
was where they were intending to land in the first place. There's
no telling what their course was, or how and when it was decided.
Probably they don't know: maybe it's random, maybe it isn't, but
there's no telling any of it, whether we're talking about snowflakes
or about ourselves, is there?
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* * *
The light when I shot some portraits the other day was really
unusual. It was foggy out, but still bright through the thick
haze, the light infused with a ton of blue. At first when I saw
what that created I'd wished I'd chosen to something different,
more intricate, more with the mood of the light. |
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But now that I processed what I did do, I'm glad I did what I
did, which was to go themeless and just try and capture a few
hours without a given direction, with me just looking like I often
do at home, in my usual jewelry, a simple cotton tank and undies,
even with my glasses on in many of the shots.
As an aside, I'm distressed to find that for some reason, glasses
seem to make some nude and seminude photos look more porny. That
doesn't make any sense to me, because it's not as though those
of us who are blind as bats aren't often found wearing little
or nothing but still wearing our glasses. The only real reason
I tend to shoot with contacts, besides when I'm doing something
in a character or where I really wouldn't be wearing glasses,
is because not having a lot of photos of me in my glasses does
provide me a degree of anonymity on the street which I enjoy. |
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I don't get why glasses seem to have that effect in some of the
photos. Maybe only I see that, I don't know. But I don't like
it.
In any event, the blue, diffused light upped the texture in every
shot, including skin texture (though a lot of that gets lost when
the photos are made tiny, as those on this page are). So, while
likely it's not something I'd use for other models, because I'm
not sure most folks would be as comfortable with that much of
their own texture out there, I'm digging how it pulled up scars,
pores, peach fuzz, sometimes freckles, moles, grey hair, wrinkles,
skin color and moisture variances, and so forth. One of the physical
things I like is watching my skin become more weathered as I age;
seeing the marks of experiences specific -- like the dog bite,
my internal surgery, my hands, my horrifying case of chicken pox,
how often I smile, and the fact that I clearly grin to one side
-- and those more general, just from the passage of time, what
muscles we use most, how the sun has touched us, how it hasn't,
how much wind and rain we've had on our faces. It's cool to me
that my skin is so soft in some places and so rough in others.
This lifelong process of becoming is so fascinating to me, and
I'm ever amazed that people can get there in terms of accepting
becoming is what we are doing emotionally, or with our achievements,
but not physically. Physically, these changes are so often seen
as something complete decaying or spoiling, losing its lustre,
rather than as yet another magnificent becoming. (I really, really
need to find some very old people to sit for me for portraiture.)
It's also really cool -- odd as it's going to sound given how
very much self-portraiture work I do, and portraiture in general
-- when I manage to take portraits of myself that, to me, really
look like me, both in terms of being very candid, and simply look
as I see myself most of the time. I think I'm actually better
at doing that for other people than I am for myself much of the
time. It's a little disarming, though. For instance, there's a
photo in the new set that I looked at and realized that I was
basically looking at myself as someone next to me in bed (or some
other locale conducive to being horizontal) tends to see me. Showing
something like that -- even though, likely, without explanation,
few others are going to know that's what's being shown -- to people
who aren't or haven't been in that space for real with me is a
bit uncomfortable.
* * *
For the record, because a couple people have asked, yes, I am
going grey and have been for quite some time (and the blue light
in the last set shows that more obviously than usual). No one
ever believes me when I say that, but then, for instance, Sabrina
sees me coming out of the shower with a wet head, when the hair
that isn't grey or white is dark, so the antiquated stuff all
glistens out intensely. Both my father and my paternal grandmother
went full on Emmylou Harris before they reached 30. Might be the
northern Italian thing, who knows. Sadly, I've gone less gradually:
I'd love to have a full head of white hair in that way, rather
than the streaks of whites with the ash and moving-towards-blonde
of the rest of it, but then, they didn't have the Irish mixed
into their gene pool.
So, it's been my plan since always not to fight my greys (and
no, not in the other special places they crop up, either). I stopped
coloring the base of my hair some time back. A lot of the red
in there is from streaks and highlights I still get, though some
natural reddish-blonde is still trying to hold the fort. The more
grey I get -- I'm mainly going from the front back -- the more
white streaks Sy just puts into the front, so yes, over time,
it is leaving me looking more and more blonde. Her plan for me
(yes, she makes plans about people's hair: the girl takes her
work seriously) in a few years when it likely has gone mostly
grey, as it all seems to be accelerating a lot in the last year,
is to just keep matching the natural white streaks with more unnatural
white streaks and leave the ash be, maybe tossing some black in
there for the hell of it, because if Exene Cervenka can do it,
well, so can I. But if it's important to you for some reason,
do be aware that in a few years, if you're still around, I'm still
around, and you look at images of me, you probably won't be looking
at a red-haired girl.
It's a silly thing, really, to even discuss. Superficial, for
the most part. But anyone with red or reddish hair can likely
tell you that people get very attached to it. Some people are
redhead KOOKY. Just remember, kids: redheads are redheads even
when we go grey (and heck, a lot of famous redheads weren't naturally
red-haired at all, but who the heck is going to argue that, for
instance, dye or no, Lucille Ball wasn't a real redhead?), a reaction
between sugar and lust in our bones, as Tom Robbins so perfectly
explains.
* * *
And yet more silly, just because it's apparently Disclaimer Day
here at Chez Corinna. No, I am not cutting, and that is not what
the big scratches on my arm are from. Rather, Zoe, one of my cats,
has picked up the completely appalling and grotesque habit of
starting to hack up hairballs while I am sleeping not only unto
my bed, but near my HEAD. Even though I'm a very sound sleeper
when I do sleep, this rouses me, and I grab her blindly and do
my level best to push or hurl her as far away from me as possible.
because she seemingly feels she should fight for her right to
puke on me, she doesn't like this and sometimes retaliates, marking
me for my efforts.
| But wait, there's more! Yes, I look pretty tired in some photos
lately, even a bit worn, and even when I'm smiling. It was a weird
day: I kept getting incessantly interrupted by the phone, and
my remote refused to work, so I had to self-time, which is doable,
but I prefer not to work that way, because it takes longer. However,
when I'm distracted, much as it annoys the crap out of me, I sometimes
get more honest shots because I'm less focused, and thus, less
careful, less intentional. It's been a couple of months with so
many twists, turns, challenges, ups and downs, affirmations and
doubts, so much uncertainty and intense happenstance, and I tend
to wear my heart on my face as well as my sleeve. Of course, the
oddity -- perhaps it's not odd at all -- is that some people can
see that stuff and others seemingly really can't, so, your mileage
may vary with this particular disclaimer. |
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Yet again, I really am okay. Some folks continue to be worried:
some of that concern is well-intended and truly caring, some of
it is patronizing and projection, honestly. I had someone write
in a few weeks back disturbed by a couple pieces of my photography,
stating hat they were upset to have found work that was "triggering"
without some sort of warning or explanation. Now, I'm of the mind
that good art is SUPPOSED to trigger us emotionally and intellectually,
and I very much do not want to help people avoid that. When an
artist really can do that, it's a triumph, and I wish I could
be good enough, brave enough, skilled enough to do it far more
often than I do. Yes, I understand that the current pop psychology
approach is to be very mindful of people's triggers and try and
help them to avid them, but I have to call bullshit on that. I'm
a survivor of a lot of nasty shit myself, and while I don't particularly
enjoy rubbing up against my still-healing or scarred wounds, I
think that out and about in the world (rather than in intimate
interpersonal relationships or our own homes), we need to deal
with that, experience that so that we ARE survivors, not victims.
I bring that up, because I think the point of art being "triggering,"
shaking us at our roots sometimes, is because LIFE is supposed
to do that. I'd like to think that art can serve to remind us
how to feel, how to LIVE. Both as an artist and a liver-of-life,
it's okay for me to be shaken, it's all right for me to falter,
fumble and fall, and it's necessary for me to feel lost, even
to be lost, sometimes, and to let myself experience all of that
as fully as I can. It's even all right for me to get really fucking
pissed off when I feel like the universe just will NOT stop yanking
my goddamn chain. So, folks just gotta let me go there: people
very close to me generally figure that out in due course, especially
since there generally is no keeping me from places I am just going
to go to, fun or no fun. Physically and symbolically, I am very
good at falling. By now, I know how to do it with a minor amount
of harm to myself, and I also know how to pick myself up and brush
off my knees when i's time to do that.
* * *
I've been having some thoughts about gender lately: quite a few
thoughts, in different areas, but something in particular struck
me last night which I found interesting.
In just one day, I had three friends tell me on the phone, about
completely different things, that I was very masculine. A week
ago, I had a close friend tell me she thought it's really a pity
I don't date men, because I'm more "like them," and would probably
have easier relationships with them. Now, the whole arbitrary
mishegoss of what's masculine/male and feminine/female aside,
the whole butch/femme business set on the shelf for the time being,
next to ideas about how straight women and dykes differ, this
is not a new evaluation of me or aspects of my character or behaviour.
I've heard this sort of thing since I was a kid. Heck, someone
once even told me that I wasn't "supposed" to -- based on how
I looked -- have the deep voice I do, laugh that loudly or cuss
like a sailor.
Even though I have very strong features, even though I'm usually
pretty muscled, save the occasional person who decides I look
"mannish," I tend to appear to most as looking very much like
a woman. I've got substantial tits, wide hips and a big ass, I
don't dress like a jock unless I'm training, or a lumberjack unless
I'm camping. In short, I've never been mistaken for a guy, not
even when I had my head shaved and lived in t-shirts, overalls
and steel-toed boots. And in many ways, based on the usual arbitrary
standards, you could class a lot of my nature, character and behaviour
as feminine: I create things incessantly, I'm a hardcore communicator,
I'm incredibly affectionate and demonstrative, I'm a caretaker,
I'm a bit of a romantic, I'm groovy with gardens, fuzzy animals
and kiddos, blah blah blah.
 |
On the other hand, I'm ferociously independent. I'm impulsive.
I don't do subtle. I like to fix things, I like to take care of
things, I like to lead, I like to hit things. I don't dig people
attempting to dominate me, and I say attempting because I don't
actually think it's even possible for someone to truly do so.
I've all my life been a big fan of casual sex, even relatively
anonymous casual sex, sometimes utterly anonymous: I'm sexually
aggressive and I'm unapologetically promiscuous, though less so
than I used to be (no, seriously!). I'm direct, I'm brash, I'm
sometimes abrasive, I'm often crass. I'm a slob. I tend to like
my body hair and my smells as they are (though I did recently
cave and wax my legs, because my leg hair getting caught in my
boot zippers was driving me up the wall), thank you.
Mind you, I think affixing gender, and certainly sex, to most
of these qualities is pretty darn silly. |
I think doing so is often destructive, and a whole lot more about
seeking a superficial and simplistic means to create identity
than anything else, certainly more than about anything fixed or
biologically determined. But I also have noticed, through my life,
that this seeming juxtaposition between the "feminine" and "masculine"
aspects of both my appearance and my character are jarring for
some people and just...don't work for them. I've dated self-identified
butch women and men alike who have at some point reported to me
that I wasn't femme enough, or that I looked femme, but acted
awfully butch, and that wasn't workable for them. On the other
hand, I've had -- though they tend to be exceptionally rare --
intimate relationships where the other person was really, really
digging my personal combination, though in reflection, I have
to say that those relationships have usually either been very
short OR have been platonic. Most of the time, in romantic and/or
sexual relationships, this apparent conflict comes up as a problem.
When it is accepted and moreover, appreciated, I am nearly overwhelmed
with surprise especially when people I'd have tagged, for whatever
reason, as Least Likely To Get It do seem to get it and dig it.
| I could ID as genderqueer and then have that out there for the
people down with the lingo, save that I do not FEEL genderqueer
(and because I'm really burned out on and confused by labels as
a whole anymore). In other words, it seems to me that most people
likely fit this poorly to type or archetype, it isn't just me,
that gender is fuckin' queer all by itself. Perhaps in my case
it's more profound, but I question that, too. Now, I would LOVE
to be able to say I don't bring any expectations to perceived
or presented gender, but I know that I do. I do think I bring
less of them, or that my definitions aren't anything close to
rigid, but I can't say there aren't any there, though I seem to
base them more on experienced dynamics with a given gender in
terms of how I work and don't work with given genders than I do
on what I'm told given genders are or are not, have or have not,
and so forth. |
 |
But it all makes me wonder. I'm finding myself very curious about
what gender expectations people bring to the table, and how much
of them are based on appearance, the desire for the inside to
"match" the outside, and by what standards. When I look at myself,
when I'm in environments, which I usually am, where I can present
as I'd like, what I actually see is a perfect match, but perhaps
most people feel that way?
I'm all about people's thoughts on this stuff; comment away.
* * *
Susan Sontag dying was a sad thing for me, even though in light
of the tsunami's toll, I know it is terribly small. But not only
have I loved her work through my life, she was one of few women
who I could look at, look at her work and her life and think,
"Yep, there's pretty much no one who both ever agrees with her
or even wants to, but she doesn't seem to care, and moreover,
is deeply respected FOR that, rather than eschewed or dismissed
because of it." Role models like that are invaluable to me; women
who are just THAT maverick in so many ways and who seem to not
try to ever be otherwise.
Something that's become very apparent to me in thinking about
my last few relationships, and in thinking about what went down
in the UK and afterwards, is that if someone isn't willing to
really argue and debate with me, doesn't challenge me, I have
a really hard time respecting them, feeling respect for them,
and that's a huge thing for me. I'm a lion: I can't feel a kinship
to mice, nor can I work with constant crisis or anger rather than
genuine challenge. I need someone whose roar is as loud as my
own, because I'm unlikely to ever stop roaring and gnashing my
big choppers.
After all, it's a jungle in here, and I've yet to learn to be
-- or want to be -- a snowflake flailing in the wind, no matter
how well or how often I fall. |
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