Learning, learning

Why is it that when I SHOULD be going to bed and sleeping, the Muse decides to pop in for a cuppa? I'm not complaining - I would much prefer to see her at 3 A.M. rather than not at all. However, my brain feels like TV snow, so I'm going to indulge my OTHER muse right now - photography.

So.

My family has a pretty darn fantastic eye for photography: Popi, Dad, and at least two of my cousins. Apparently, so do I (eye, har har).

Anyway, this is something I want to learn a hell of a lot more about (settings, depth of field, yadda yadda). I even bought a new purse so that I could always have my camera on hand. So ... here's the first post showing some of my beginning tries at being a shutter bug.

(And if I see these photos anywhere else without credit to me, I will find you and give you an Irish Hardshoe lapdance.)

Emo barf

Okay, I wrote the below tripe on July 6 – Dad’s anniversary. I was watching “Across The Universe” and blabbering and bawling like a fucking baby. So – it’s a bit incoherent. And I’m tempted to edit it, but I’m not going to. I’m linking the songs that struck me, that tipped my brain into the weird space that I was in. Maybe you’ll get it, maybe you won’t.

Also, today my dear, dear friend’s mother died. She was also my friend, not just her mother. I will miss her sharp wit and humor.

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Growing up, I never “got” The Beatles. Dad, his friends, his contemporaries, even MY contemporaries, loved them. I just didn’t understand, didn’t get it. I mean, c’mon … “Hey Jude … ?” It never had any relevance for me. Not then.

The last decade or so, I’ve started to understand it more.
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I think I was about 9, maybe 10, and Dad was blasting “Strawberry Fields Forever”. It’s minor and dissonant, and that struck a chord in me that just didn’t harmonize. Not yet, anyway. For some reason, probably due to the internal jangling I just didn’t know how to parse, the song made me feel at odds with myself. It made my brain react on some visceral level in a way that I just could not … GET. I remember looking up at him from my homework and saying, “Really? This is what you like?” Dad just kind of chuckled and said, “Yep. It’s the Bee’ouls.” (When you read this, mentally read “Bee’ouls with a glottal stop, a bad American accent trying its damndest to try a Cockney accent on for size.) Then he went back to making dinner, not quite silently humming to himself a medley of Beatles tunes.

Click this, but don’t watch. Just listen. Listen with your pre-teen mind. The one that is still innocent, and can’t quite get the underlying meaning. Just open yourself up to the music and tonality. Take yourself back to the black and white of childhood. Take yourself back to the time when there were no shades of grey …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywg-PdeGVL0
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There’s something universal about The Beatles. About love. About loss. About pain. About joy. About frustration. About anger towards the “other”. And, because it DOES need to be said twice … about love.

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None of us are one thing or another. We’re a weird mix of disparate ideologies. Now … now, we understand the difference between supporting our troops and taking a stance against war. We can love our friends and families because of, or in spite of, their stances. No longer do we spit on the troops. Now … now we welcome them with open arms, even if at the same time we (internally) rail against a war we do not agree with.

I never got how Dad could have such a deep love for “hippy” music, for “Hair”. Especially since it was so anti-war, anti-Vietnam. But now? I get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChTBKjtfd2w
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It was the late 1990’s. Swing was in full revival. Life was good. I was happily typing away at my computer at work, and Tanya calls. “Hey Tanj” I say. Her first words, “The US is sending troops over to Iraq, again.” I never really understood what people meant when they said, “I was hit in the solar plexus”, but now? Now I got it. You see, I was dating someone who was active in the Navy. And Tanya, bless her heart, knew that. She also knew my past, and knew that I would automatically think of Dad. (Forewarned is forearmed, and all of that.) I really don’t think I can describe the feeling of my heart leaping into my throat at that moment. That moment where I thought, “Holy shit! This man that I adore COULD be sent to a foreign country and die .,.” There really is nothing more awakening than realizing this: we are all infallible, and mortal, and that some man in a suit and tie holds our own life, our own breath, in their hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwB8QiKWodk&feature=related
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He signed up. He wasn’t drafted. He did what he felt was right, what was his patriotic duty. The generation before him, and before that, fought in WWI and WWII. Some even Korea. That’s the mentality that held many men of my (and your) father’s generation – the mentality of “duty” … just something that had to be done. Many then, and now, may ask, “Why? Why sign yourself up for death and emotional destruction?” Well … it just what you had to do. He could have dodged, but he didn’t. And by NOT going against his own grain, it changed him. For better or worse.

(Dad and Malcolm are at 0:32, Dad at 0:34) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Idr8Z_VTSA
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This … this is the song that allowed me to love The Beatles. Unabashedly.

With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps

From the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdaa6M8DN7g

From The Bee-ouls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHChc2I7FKk

With Abel, I KNOW there are were many, many things wrong with “us” … but, I do know … I KNOW … that I can totally and completely break down in front of him. And know that he won’t judge me for it. I guess … hmm, I guess that is what I’m looking for, what I am striving for. I DO want to lay my soul bare, and know that I won’t scare someone away. Yet … yet …. when I do open myself like that, I want to know that that they will still be there, fully and completely, when I butterfly myself open. When I lay myself raw. (I don’t want them to shy away from salmonella now do I? Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck.)

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Three years ago today is the day I found my bulwark, my FATHER, bloated. And … stinky. Smelling of death. And endings. And that? That is something I NEVER wanted. I always had these … “hopes” … that one of his friends would “find” him. And that they would call me. That they would call me with the news. I never, NEVER, wanted to be the one to find him. Find him so laid bare. Even though, deep down, I knew. I KNEW … I would be the one to find him. I never wanted to. Ever. Even though I knew that was the way it HAD to be played out. Finding him … gone … that killed a part of me I’ll never get back. It killed some of my innocence. Even though I knew my innocence was long gone before this that day.

I’ve been going through some major transitions, life transitions. And even though it’s a transition I NEVER thought I’d go through … it is what it is. And I always thought that Dad would be here through all of my changes. I feel like a failure – I wasn’t able to make my marriage work, I wasn’t able to bring into this world a child, a grandchild. I feel like a failure, of epic proportions. (I know I’m not.)

My friends, my true friends, who know me, know how hard it is for me to lay myself so bare. So … “butterflied” … it’s a painful experience for me. Yet … yet … I know this is something I need to do, something that has to happen. It has to happen for me. It has to happen so that I can move forward. And even though it makes me seem weak (at least, in my own mind) it’s something that I have to do.

Mom was an unabashed hippy. She wanted to hitchhike to Woodstock. How she wound up with a dyed-in-the-wool Republican is beyond me. However … they made it work. And it gives me hope.
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A quote from “Across The Universe”: Music is the only thing that makes sense anymore. And now? NOW … I get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQNpEET9WqQ&feature=related

(EDIT - A month later, I finally realize something. I really wish he was around, now, even if just to see this movie. Some of the views he would not agree with, but overall, he too, would "get" it. So, thanks Dad. Thank you for not just teaching me, but showing me how to see both sides of the coin. In your depression, you really, truly, and honestly, taught me how to keep hold of my sanity. I love you.)

It's my brain

I have these words in my head … so many words. These words in my head tell a story, but the story just doesn’t want to come out. I’m staring at these words, these black and white words on a page, and they are staring at me, as though THEY are the enemy, and I am the enemy, when, in fact, they are truth. These words, these same words on the page, belie both their hurt, and my acceptance thereof. My willingness to see the meaning behind the words. It’s an infinite loop – both sides tell the meaning, the truth. Each side is unwilling to see the meaning behind the words, behind the meaning.

This is the Gordian Knot – both sides have validation. However, this is my truth. My past. Something I haven’t wanted to face for a long time. Because those words tell a story, my story. And I hate the fact that my words (my story) opens the door to some ugly truths about the human psyche. About MY psyche. About YOUR psyche.
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It’s Memorial Day Weekend, a time which we should spend honoring those who have come before us, and have gone – some before their time, some after it. But each one deserving of a short moment taken out of our day, to give them a nod: A nod of thanks, a nod of remembrance, a nod of honor, a nod of love, whether or not we agree with the politics that took them. It’s a time to reflect upon the past, both general and personal, a time to invite the past to sit down and have “a cuppa”, and to speak.

This should be a weekend of reflection, of intro (and outro) spection. A time and place to honor those that came before us, who allowed “us” to be. A weekend where we should allow ourselves to look at our past, at the steps that we’ve taken that brought us to this place we call “the present”. Because – past, present, and future – they are all inextricably intertwined. Our past leads us to our present, our present leads us to our future … Sometimes holding onto our pasts will make for a very uncomfortable present, which will lead to a wonky future.

Maybe over “a cuppa”, when we meet face to face with our lives up till now, we can exorcize the demons of our pasts, and allow us an open road to the future, the present. Embrace that past, both bad and good, and enmesh it with our present selves, to clear the path for our future selves.

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Some people have told me I have a remarkable mind, and I don’t quite know how to react. To quote Tim Minchin, “This is my brain, and I live in it … it’s where I spend the vast majority of my time” – to me, my thoughts (logical and circular, true or false, healthy or self-perpetuating) are just those – MY thoughts. There’s nothing remarkable about them. They just … are. At least, that’s how it seems to me.

I spent most of my life (at least until a few years ago) trying to forge my own self, my own identity – something, and someone, separate from my mother, whom I never really knew.

I never felt remarkable – I was always trying to live up to some other persons’ ideal version of me, some mold they were trying to fit me into. A mold that didn’t quite fit right in the shoulders, and tugged a bit at the thighs. It was a close enough fit, but the lines didn’t fall right. And I admit it – I tried to shape myself into those odd fitting clothes for a while. Tried to tell myself that the fashion they were touting for me was the fashion I wanted.

Reverberations of, “What would your mother say?! What would your mother think?!” still haunt me. And you know what? From all I’ve learned, from all I’ve gleaned, my mother would say, “Good for her! She’s becoming her OWN PERSON!” And even though I really didn’t know her, I want to take a moment and give her a nod of thanks. Her nudist and anarchistic tendencies, they have been passed down to me. Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood. “They” didn’t get it, but we (she and I) do.

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My friends only know me as “me”, as ____, and they love me for that. And for that fact? I am truly grateful. They weren’t there (excepting a rare few) when my Mom’s family was trying to fit me into the Katie-mold. Instead of letting me make my own ___-mold.

Because of that, I judge myself harshly. I try (tried) to be the person in the corner- the quiet one who doesn’t make waves or draw attention to herself. When I tried to enact my own way of being, I was shut down. When I showed a spark of creative thinking, of going outside of the status quo, I was met with the argument of, “That’s not how your Mom was”.

Well, the stories that I’ve heard, of Mom, have told me that THAT was who she was. Always the individual. Yet, when I tried to forge my own individualism, it was shot down. Put in the parentheses of, “That’s not how your Mom was”, when in actuality, it WAS how she was. As an adult, when I met with her friends, and they told me, “Wow, you are very much like your mom”, and I took that as a “good on ya”, instead of seeing them trying to fit me into her mold. I took it for what it was – a compliment.

I wish I had the strength of character, then, to say, “Stop! Stop trying to turn me into your dead daughter! I am her, I am my father … I am ME!”

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This staid person you see? She’s just a façade, a straw (wo)man. Straw burns easily, and I DO love me some fire. Now, finally, am I able to embrace “Anni”, and not “Anni, trying on Katie for size”.

Now … who has some marshmallows? They always go well over a fire.

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It’s all about baby steps. This red hair, these freckles? It’s not just my mothers. It’s also mine.

There was always some sort of benchmark to live up to, and now that those benchmarks (well, the people who held them for me) are gone, I’m feeling a bit … moor-less. It’s forcing me to find my own identity, separate from the confines that were ascribed to me. I’ve been given a blank slate, and I have a pen in my hand, but the paper is still blank. At least to my eyes. Others, looking at the “paper of me”, see varying things – a scribble here, a dash of color there, a whiff of Amber (if the wind is just right). And I guess I see those hints as well, but they haven’t formed a coherent picture yet, not in my mind.

In my mind I’m still a frightened little girl, hiding in the bedroom linen closet with a flashlight and the newest installment of the “Create Your Own Adventure” book. (True story – linen closet. Flashlight. Book.)

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I am me. Hear me roar. *squeak*

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What spurred this emotional vomit? Tim Minchin: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDGuPp1np4o)

Did you know ...

... that, IN CANADA, the plural of "fish" is ... "fish"?

Thus spake The Canadian.

I can't believe that his genetic material will continue after him.

Communication to our youth, or lack thereof

It’s spring. There is a change in the air from the coldness of winter to the melting spring, a renewal, a resurgence. Outside it’s blue skies and birds chirping. But inside my 8th grade classroom it’s a darkened room, a quiet chatter of hushed voices, completely at odds with the birdsong outside. There’s something palpable in the air – a sense of excitement, uncertainty, and curiosity. All I can see are the silhouettes of my classmates from the glare of the TV screen in front of the room, heads close together whispering. Sister Maria shushes us in her thick brogue, “Now, now ladies. It’s time to be quiet”. Then … then, our “educational” video starts.

All I can really recall from class that day is a vague feeling of repugnance and disgust, and a lot more questions than I was willing to ask at the time. Two other things that I remember: red, lots of red, and the sounds … a vacuum-like whirring. This whirring was the medical procedure being done, known as vacuum aspiration or D&C. (I think one of the girls had to leave the room in the middle of the video.)

What I’m describing is the sexual education we received in 8th grade in Catholic School. There was more covered, I’m sure, but what stuck with me almost 20 years later, was that video. We had to have a parental consent form signed to see this video – we were very curious about that. All of us were excited and curious – “what would they show that needed our folks’ okay? It MUST be nudity! I mean, this IS sex-ed, right? Why else would they segregate the girls from the boys, just to show a video?” Well, that’s what our 13-year-old hormonal selves were hoping at any rate. Boy, were we wrong.

The video? It showed an abortion being performed.

In a way, I get why they showed us that – it’s an impressionable age and scare tactics do work. The Church is vehemently anti-birth control and anti-abortion. Brain washing and indoctrination is best done starting at an early age.

Gina was never a friend of mine during our Catholic School years, but once in public high school, we did become friends. Our educational and religious background was the same and our family background was similar. So – why did she wind up pregnant at 15/16 and not me? Why was I able to continue to go out on weekends and experience teenage life, while she was stuck at home, watching her body slowly expand in order to shelter the new life growing within?

Some of that, I think, goes back to those unasked questions from 8th grade. At some point I DID ask. I found trusted adults and asked my questions, I listened in on adult conversations (it’s amazing that people think that kids don’t hear things), I ate books on every subject (though we won’t go into my guilty love of sci-fi and fantasy here) … and I think that search for knowledge might have made the difference. Gina thought (at age 15/16) that you couldn’t get pregnant if it was your first time. Sadly, so did her boyfriend. Talk about a life lesson, eh?

I still think about Gina – wonder how she is doing, what type of person her child has grown into (wow, she must be 16 by now), and hope that she will teach her about sex. Teach her openly and honestly, without relying solely on the school or church to do so.

Education, of any kind, needs to be supported at home, including the uncomfortable subject of sexual education.

I’m of two minds regarding this story (comments in parenthesis are mine) - www.dailygazette.com/news/20..._sexed/.

“The parents said they had collected 163 signatures of residents opposing the introduction of Planned Parenthood materials or organization-developed instruction in the school.” (Now, I’m curious – are these just residents, or are the majority the parents of children in the aforementioned school?)

The article links to a site (www.notinourschool.com) which is the spearhead behind the fracas. I didn’t spend much time looking at the site, but one of the ideas they state is that Planned Parenthood purposely uses bad condoms, so that there will be an increase in a need for their abortion services. Huh?

“Deborah Young said she started researching Planned Parenthood education guidelines and found passages that suggested masturbation is a source of pleasure.” (Uhm, yes. Maybe I was a hyper-sexual child, but I remember being very young and figuring out that certain things just felt good. Of course, I would never ask about it, because I knew it was “dirty”, so I was left to my own devices to explore and not have any idea what was going on, physically. Children are naturally curious creatures – isn’t it better to give them the information about their constantly growing and changing bodies, instead of leaving them in the dark and having them muddle through?)

“Dr. Michael Rochet, a physician, said the school district should search for alternatives for Planned Parenthood programming because he believes the instruction will facilitate curiosity among students.” (First off, I do not want this man as my doctor. Secondly, is curiosity a bad thing? Isn’t curiosity what spurs open discussion between people, friends, lovers, and parent and child?)

But then, he redeems himself in the following statement - “We don’t have to follow everybody else. Let’s lead the pack,” Rochet said.” Now, I understand how people will be quoted out of context, in order to fit in with the authors’ viewpoint. This statement, taken just as it is, I completely agree with. Why not build something that will fit in, and be tailored to, your own community? A program that is built by and for the community? A foundation that is community led, parent led, but with feedback from the people that are being proselytized to?

When I read this story, I could see both sides. However, reading this story through the spectacles of my own life story, I can honestly say I wish I had Planned Parenthood teaching sex-ed in my school. Alongside the abortion video. I think it may have saved me a lot of angst. And questions. A LOT of questions. The private school education I received I would never give up. But, there is a difference in private vs. public school education. Private school has a lot of heart behind it (right or wrong) and public school has a lot of information, with the heart lacking.

I really don’t want this to turn into an issue of pro or anti-choice, pro or anti-abortion. It’s one where I want people to question, to communicate, to dig down deep and find out what they want to teach – what to teach to friends, what to teach lovers, what to teach their children. We create our community, we say what is okay to teach, and what is NOT okay to teach. We are the ones that say what questions are okay to ask, and what ones are not.

But isn’t that what life is? A journey of questions, then seeing where those answers lead us?

So tired, so much to say, but I just can't ...

I always thought that “feminism” was a dirty word. That if I stood against the status-quo, stood up for my rights as a human (not just a woman), that I would unbalance … something. That “something” was never fully explained to me, other than, “It’s okay for him – he’s a boy. If a girl did that, she’d be considered a whore.” That is a direct quote from my Ga, when I asked her why my Uncle and (soon to be Aunt) were living together, but not married, and “when could I have a boyfriend?”

I think Ga, if born in a different time, would have been one of those loud, brash, and outspoken feminists – she always believed, down to her marrow, that women and men were equal. Each one could do what the other could. She even had my career planned out for me: I would first become the first CEO of Shell Oil, and then the first woman President of the United States.

But then … then she would say something like the above (that it’s okay for boys, but not girls), and that would chip away at the foundation she was trying so hard to build for me. A foundation that (now) is starting to take hold, one where I am strong, confident in myself, and not afraid (well, not too often afraid) to speak my mind.

I always thought that “feminist” was a dirty word. That if I succumbed to the dreaded feminism movement, I would turn into a misandrist, wear sandals, chop off my hair, move to Berkeley, turn Vegan, and be an unloved spinster. (Okay, well, I did chop off my hair and move to Berkeley, but no sandals for me!)

From Dictionary.com:

Fem-i-nism
1) the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2) (sometimes initial capital letter ) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.
3) feminine character.

I prefer the third definition: Character: “the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing.”

We are all individuals, men and women. Each of us has strengths, each of us has weaknesses, and those vary from person to person. Being lumped into one category or another is unfair to us as singular beings, as well as the whole. Each of us has something to teach, and something to learn. When we start stereotyping based on gender, we lose out on this learning that we call life.

“Good lord woman, what’s got your panties in a twist?!” Quite a few things, actually: Honor killings theriomorph.blogspot.com/2008/....html, recent court decisions www.foxnews.com/story/0,29...173,00.html and www.pnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article and Phyllis Schlafly receiving an honorary doctorate degree from Washington University news-info.wustl.edu/news/pag...664.html. (This is also the woman who stated, “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape.”)

Gender equality has come a long way, and I am very happy to live in a country where I am allowed to voice my opinion, and where others can disagree with that opinion, and know I will not be stoned for looking at man by accident.

Some interesting takes are here, some I agree with, some I don’t: viv.id.au/blog/

This wasn’t as coherent or tongue-in-cheek as I wanted, but I’m friggin’ tired and sunburned. Night all.

From a "sister"

This is something that a near and dear friend of mine wrote. It gave me chills and I wanted to share it. I'm surrounded by some friggin' amazingly talented people, and for that? ... I'm grateful:

I am the new hope
The revolutionary Mint Edifice teeming with the helpers, the thinkers
The strange trouble makers.
I am filled with the exclamation of power,
Deconstructed, reconstructed
A puzzle of mismatched pieces
Housed and linked like a bight kaleidoscope
Bundled together, sheltered by a common dream.

I am the new hope
The awesome flower of desire
Unsupported, under funded, unimaginable,
Isn't it, that I Exist?
Within the realms, the borders
Against the grain, working toward expansion, the wide-open intension.

I am the new hope
The hope against hope against the suffocating tyrant
Tyrannical culture
The small beads of us, woven together.
Our faces look into each other
Under this roof of desire
We hold the promise, the awkward will to deliver
We release the fractured dove
Palms outstretched, faces to the sun.

We are the new hope
Forever revolutionary, standing among the rubble
The Mint Edifice dissolved.
Our sinking angry hearts hot
Kick with panic, sickly trapped
Undone by the double hold
A fear in our eyes so tender
We go numb without each other.

We are the new hope
Gone unsheltered and unclothed
The golden warrior spirit exposed
Our shields up in a circle, protecting ourselves
We move forward
Unsupported, under funded, unimaginable
We walk, Don't We?
Away from that which was
The Mint Edifice of shame and so much desire
Common dreams without without a common cause
Our leaders tired, so much defeated.
We are the new hope
Spirits renewed, we are not broken
We know our truths transcend
The walls cannot contain
Our hot hearts
They beat toward a new way of being
Into the future, we let go of those we tightly grasped
Because we know we are truly not alone
And together we are profound
Bound by experience
We forge ahead with a quiet burning peace
Beacons illuminated still
By the kernels of our intensions

We are the new hope
We've already changed the world.