These days, not only can Jesus give you a second virginity, Dr. Halipam can too. From the website:
"Mrs. Yarborough paid $5,000 (£2,860) to a cosmetic surgeon to stitch her hymen back together so she could “lose her virginity” all over again and her husband would have that thrilling conquest at the grand age of 40."
And somewhere in the background Madonna sings, "Touched for the very first time."
More info:
http://www.cosmeticgyn.net/media_times_london.htm
Classes start at PSU on Tuesday!
I'll be taking: Intro to writing fiction, journalism, and possibly another course.
I have an audio file of Adrienne Rich reading this poem on my ipod. Love it.
Diving into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.
I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
I would just like to announce that the Katie/Rich duo are brilliant and publicly congratulate them on their fabulousness.
Way to go getting into such great grad schools! I'm so proud of you both.
Yes, its beautiful. And yes, I'm spending all of Friday there! I'm going with my friend Matt, who is a photographer, so maybe I can cajole him into taking some live shots.
For more info on the hike (as if you needed another reason to move to Oregon) check out http://www.oregon.com/hiking/eaglecreek.cfm, the page from which these photos were taken.
Just watched Shopgirl, the film based on Steve Martin's novella. Good, in that it deviated a bit from the standard romantic film. Bad in that the ending was a little forced and the narration only added to the awkwardness. it was beautifully shot, though. I loved the framing--from the opening scene with Claire Danes and the hand model to the bedroom scenes with the square lighting. Danes put on a bit of a one woman show, as neither Martin's nor Schwartman's characters are developed very much. She did so beautifully, accomplishing so much with her facial expressions, accentuated as the dialog was appropriately sparse. Now I'm going on as if I know what I'm talking about. Well, one woman's musings.
SELF-PORTRAIT
It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned,
if you can know despair or see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eye,
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living,
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.
~ David Whyte ~
(Courtesy of Abe)
I read last week some of Alice Walker's more recent work and was extremely disappointed. It lacked any sense of plot, which I can handle, but the characters were so flat and two dimensional. These stories were, lets be honest here, terrible. There is no way they would have ever gotten published had they not been written by Alice Walker. Now, I love The Color Purple, which makes me wonder how an artist can go from such a beautiful, layered work to writing something that fails as propaganda let alone as literature. (I say this because at least one of the stories was written to make a point about pornography, while the others have that same feel--like she's trying too hard to make a point instead of writing a story.)
Is it laziness? My friend suggested that Walker may see herself as a brand name--thinking the quality exists because Alice Walker writes it. The focus here being on her and not on the text.
Is it happiness? Alice Walker lived a tortured life when she was writing her best work--is torment necessary for great work?
For me, this brings up so many questions about being a writer. Will I have to be in perpetual anguish to produce good work? Is it worth it? What do I have to sacrafice?
Annie Dillard (who has shown a similar decline, but that is for another day) writes in Holy the Firm, "How many of you, I asked the people in my class, which of you want to give your lives and be writers? I was trembling from coffee, or cigarettes, or the closeness of the faces all around me. (Is this what we live for? I thought; is this the only final beauty: the color of any skin in any light, and living, human eyes?) All hands rose to the question...And then I tried to tell them what the choice must mean: you can't be anything else. You must go at your life with a broadax."
With a broadax. I've been devoting most of my time lately to writing. Eeking out little essays and poems, most of it not worth reading. Yet I somehow feel more sane for the process. The hours it takes me to complete something. Labor pains. All of the different analogies put out to try to make the process sensible. For me, its delphic. A flood of words, (a monkey at a typewriter, so to speak), that gradually begin to form some type of meaning. Some beginnings and ends. Some half evolved creature rising from the muck and cursing me or blessing me as I scribble away furiously. Cursing me. Or maybe that is me cursing myself.
Cursing myself and looking for a coherent way to end this post.
Then and now.
Click on the link to see the rest of the story.
http://www.thebricktestament.com
Went out dancing last night and had so much fun. I've always been the weird, slightly funky dancer, and last night, I fit right in.
Go Portland.
"We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people's models, learn to be ourselves, and allow out natural channel to open."
-Shakti Gawain
Incidentally, I'm joining a writing group next week that I'm super excited about. For sure. Like, totally.
And classes start in a week!
I seem to write some of my favorite things in my letters to Griffin. From today:
I was walking down the street today in my purple and gray knee high socks carrying a bunch of freshly bought chrysanthemums (4$ and they last forever! yay) and a bag of vegan chocolate chip cookies, when it occurred to me: I'm rather fond of the me I'm becoming.
Not that I didn't have some rather frantic phone calls to my support women this week, "What am I doing with my life?!" "Will I ever be happy?" "When will my boobs start growing?" Well, not the last one. cough.
Funny thing happened. I went to hear several small musicians play last weekend (yep, they were midgets. just kidding. I love how I write just kidding as if you couldn't figure this out for yourself. But, hey, its Portland) And I sat by this guy and struck up a conversation. He was really funky and talked at length about his interest in shadow puppetry. It was pretty fascinating. Anyhow, he's having a big birthday party tomorrow and invited me to attend. I wrote down his address and then promptly lost it, as I am wont to do. So I tried to look him up online. Turns out, he's a pretty well known artist in the area. So I shot him an e-mail and hopefully he'll get back to me so I can go to the party--he's going to do some of his shadow puppetry. Funny how you bump into all kinds of cool people here.
Speaking of cool people, um, you are. A cool person, I mean. You could be cool people, but I'm not sure what that would entail.
Apparently, the Mount Hood climbers that were rescued survived because of their labrador, Velvet.
I am so getting a dog.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17237251/
His career as a movie star is beginning young: check out my nephew Wynn!
In the podcasts section.
http://web.mac.com/wildcharlock/iWeb/Wild%20Charlock/Welcome.html
I went to play checkers with a friend last night at a coffee shop. In between games we read poetry. My favorite:
Persimmons
by Li-Young Lee
In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose
persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet,
all of it, to the heart.
Donna undresses, her stomach is white.
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down.
I teach her Chinese.
Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.
Naked: I’ve forgotten.
Ni, wo: you and me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.
Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
Fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.
Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class
and cut it up
so everyone could taste
a Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat
but watched the other faces.
My mother said every persimmon has a sun
inside, something golden, glowing,
warm as my face.
Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,
forgotten and not yet ripe.
I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill,
where each morning a cardinal
sang, The sun, the sun.
Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father sat up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons,
swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.
This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.
He’s so happy that I’ve come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.
Under some blankets, I find a box.
Inside the box I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.
He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?
This is persimmons, Father.
Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.
I'm working a big event for Title Nine Sports, a women's outdoor gear and clothier. I'm not sure I just used clothier right. Anyways, here's a goofy catalog cover. Meeting a lot of cool outdoorsy women.
There are no monsters under the bed,
He tells her.
Hot breath and a
Wet goodnight kiss.
-Adelaide
I'm beginning to think that my apartment is a black hole, a vortex from which no technology emerges. These are the last pictures taken by my camera. Rest in peace, little buddy.
As I slowly figure out the Mac blogger, I'm going to continue to post here.
When asked your preference for airline seating, you are given the choice of aisle or window. You notice there is no option for that awkward seat in the middle between the fat guy and the narcoleptic woman with uncommonly large elbows. As far as I can tell, there are no discernible benefits to having the middle seat. Sure, you can look out the window, but I always end up feeling like a peeping Tom--a voyeur--as if I'm actually watching the person next to me and the window is just my cover. There are no bathroom benefits, either. The aisle person can come and go as they please, but being the middle person is one of the few times in adult life when you must ask to go to the bathroom. I'm surprised they don't make you carry a hall pass. And once the tray tables are down, you can forget about any bathroom related activity at all.
I did not have the middle seat on my flight, although I considered saying that I did just to make my ramblings on the subject appear to have some relevance. In truth, it is a theory added to my increasingly bizarre collection of musings. Like whether or not small dogs harbor a colossal angst against the world in their tiny, furry bodies, or if my particular way of washing dishes is efficient enough to be televised. Others philosophize on the nature of reality or the essence of beauty; I'm stuck on airplanes and tea cup poodles.
Which is all well and good until you decide to talk to strangers about these matters. Take, for example, at a dinner party. If you have become deluded enough to think your pet theories would draw even amusement from strangers, you're stepping on dangerous territory. Perhaps strangers do not want to hear your recounting of why your appliances are possessed by Satan. You run into all kinds of problems here. For example, your listeners may like Satan and find your tone offensive. This always creates an awkward moment. Or, you might be with someone on whom the joke is totally lost--someone who offers to discuss with you, in length, the technical nature of your problems with your toaster.
Here's a good tip: toasters and microwaves are the generic joke appliances; the equivalent of "A priest, a rabbi, and a lawyer walk into a bar." I say this in hopes of eliminating future awkwardness and misunderstanding when I make jokes in front of other people.
As if that were possible. I was recently a bridesmaid at a wedding where the groom had a female in his party. The bridesmaid beside me whispered, "I'm going to have to walk down the aisle with a girl." I said, "Hey, if you're into that kind of thing..." Which would have been funny if she hadn't been one of those people who believes you can pray your way out of homosexuality. The way she looked at me, you might have thought I had suggested she likes erotic encounters with hamsters and goldfish--not only was it wrong in the sight of God, it was just plain weird. Awkward moment.
Then again, awkwardness was inevitable at this wedding. Take the lingerie/ bachelorette party. From a store filled with whips and lollypop penises, I had selected what I thought to be a rather tame gift: a little foreplay board game, body crayons, a boa, and some flavored lubricant. But as the bride opened present after present--all sensible cotton underwear in varying prints--my grip tightened on my gift. All I could think was, "Thank God I didn't buy the edible panties!"
Saying "Thank God" is very different when speaking with my Christian friends, as they assume I am referring to an actual person. Thus, my saying, "Thank God didn't buy the edible panties," sounds more like a story of the Lord leading me through a time of temptation than an utterance of relief that my bachelorette gift was not too scandalous.
Although it was, too scandalous that is. I had deluded myself into thinking otherwise, arriving in town with my gift tied up in an attractive red box. When another bridesmaid asked me what I got, I told her flavored lubricant. "What's that for?" she asked. Thinking it was somewhat self explanatory, I looked around to let her process the information. "Oh," she said, "My husband and I don't do that. We like sex, just not wild sex."
So when the soon to be bride puled the lubricant out of the box she said to the group, "Look lotion!" and then hurriedly returned it to its place. I thought that everyone had wink-wink gotten what the little container actually was, until later when the mother of the bride asked me, in all seriousness, what type of lotion I had gotten her daughter.
It was most likely flavored lubricant that ruined my marriage. After all, I was the only divorcee of the group and look what kind of gifts I had given. Apple tasting lubricant and feather boas--the Lord would smite me down assuredly.
And perhaps he did, as I found myself in the arms of my sister sobbing in a room far away from the reception. This was the first wedding I had attended since my divorce, since leaving (or being booted out, rather) my denomination, since the disintegration of my relationship with my parents. All of it, the vows about headship and submission, the father daughter dance, the enraptured couple--I managed one piece of cake before I had to find a quiet place to hide.
Grief is an awkward dance. How could I let myself feel what I was feeling without ruining the party? How could I cry in front of people who already see the word FAILURE stamped on my forehead? I was truly happy for my friend; she and her husband are crazy about one another, but her world and my world harbor a mutual antagonism for the other and pity.
It's the pity that's the worst. At the rehearsal dinner someone asked me, "Where's your man?" "We're divorced now," I replied. She leaned close to me, "I'm so sorry. What happened?" The bride and the groom were being congratulated in the other room, and, besides, I barely knew this woman. "I don't really want to talk about it," I said. She grabbed me around the neck and held me in a seemingly endless hug. "Of course not," she whispered, "I wouldn't want to talk about it either." Throughout the night she fancied herself my guardian angel, rubbing my back and making pigeon like noises when others spoke to me.
"You're on a higher plane," a friend told me. "You've left them behind, clinging to their religion, their ignorance. " He said this without passion; it was fact to him.
I couldn't think of my girlfriend, as she danced her first dance as a married woman as somehow clinging to ignorance. Nor could I envisage my sister, her arms around my weeping form, as somehow operating on a lower plane of existence.
It works for her, my sister. In our church I had always felt alien, trying so hard to be holy--white knuckled prayers--but, in the end, leaving our church became a choice of life or death for me. Yet it works for her. Works for her not in the sense that she goes to marches condemning the evil homosexual plot to destroy the family, and she doesn't believe that you can be Christian or Democrat, but not both--like many in our denomination believe. Christianity works for her in that it taps into the deepest level of her passions, that her love for God and her belief in his love for her creates an overflow of kindness and compassion in her actions. The very things that threatened to kill me bring vitality to her.
When asked when she had to get home from the wedding, she responded that she's been teaching ESL on a volunteer basis at night and needs to get back to her students. I was just planning on watching a movie.
"My spirit guide talks to me so much more than Jesus ever did," I tell her. My beliefs now are different than my previous attempts in organized religion. I don't necessarily believe that my spirit guide exists--I believe that believing that something is happening helps my life make sense. I'm not exactly sure who does the talking, if its a part of me or the aliens hired to fuck with my brain in particular, but I do know that when I listen to that intuition, my brain has more peace and less chaos. It may be nothing at all, my grasping for straws, I may be totally wrong for following its guidance, but I've given up a bit on being right. Things seem less and less to fall into those categories.
I forget how I got here in my ramblings. Something about airplanes and edible underwear. Hmm. And the possible diabolical connection between the two industries! In case you're wondering, this is another topic not to be brought up at dinner parties.
I bought a Mac today, and its fabulous. So I'll be moving this blog to a Mac page. Will post more details once I figure out how to make the flem flammin thing work.
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