sunflower season

i had a dream that i cut
down your tall sunflower
at its base, where the stem
is thickest and meets
the roots that have grown so
strong this summer and can
now hold the weight of bright
heads with round brown faces
perfectly centered and the landing
stop of bees yellow furry with pollen.
i cut it with a garden tool,
somewhere between a scythe and a saw
and let it fall by my feet;
it bounced slightly, cradled by the foliage.

in my dream there were rings in the stem
like the ones that determine ages of trees.
but this stem just had rings for the past three months
one per day
which told the day's story.
it wasn't much of a story, which is how i like my summer days.
some cold beers and a sweaty tee shirt;
finding grains of sand in my bed, in my hair;
the sweet tang of fresh tomatoes that had dirtied
my fingers and made me smile.

i lost track of how many times i said
the tomatoes tasted like candy,
but i meant it.
i popped an orange one into my mouth,
no bigger than a quarter,
and held it there feeling the roughness,
taking pleasure in imperfections.
(doesn't calling something "perfect"
make it less so?)
i used my teeth to break the thin skin
which held taught inside it the bursting
of flavor and seed and a
sweet messy juice.
i couldn't stop, so i had
two more
while i sat under your sunflower
which, when cut,
would later remind me of this day.

blogs of shame

i came into work this morning to find Outlook, my email software, to be a bit bonkers. i think i did it yesterday on a mad dash out of the office for a job interview. anyway, it won't "send/receive" and therefore what good am i today?

i opened up google reader and settled in with my Polar seltzer (cranberry-lime, y'all) with the pervasive numbing hum of the air conditioner(s!!!) soothing my hangover (i had just rolled in from about 5 hours of sleep after bar-hopping to burlington's finest collection of jukeboxes, free popcorn and pbrs. the creme de la creme.) Two co-workers began some baseball chatter, which i easily made sound like the adults in Peanuts cartoons. because i don't give a fuck. i don't even know if they were talking about baseball! so i'm sitting there, paranoia of a future of a flat ass somewhere in the back of my mind, wondering if i'll barf today in the very forefront of my mind, trying to recount how many cigarettes i actually smoked last night and reasoning with myself why i didn't spend that money on a savings account instead of that last 4 beers. and i'm feeling anxious for a time when i'll do something meaningful with myself and, when i do, if i'll just want something more meaningful after that and that first meaning will cease to be enough for me as if i'm building up alcohol tolerance. i'm trying to remember a facebook invite i wrote in my head last night for a dance party that should have happened 10 times already this summer (because we're feeling rough we're feeling raw we're in the prime of our lives) but has not and i'm hoping i didn't drink my wit away like i did any hope for a good decision. elissa said "make sure it says _____. don't forget!" "i won't forget," i said. and that's the only part of it i remember.
i was snapped out of this typical wednesday morning (see also: typical thursday, typical tuesday) suddenly not by pangs of responsibility or by the who's who of athletes who have been accused of rape, but by some fuzzy sounding guitar coming from my external harman/kardon speakers, a kind of validation of myself in this place, and HEY LOU REED DID YOU JUST SAY SOMETHING? i can't stand it anymore more either. thanks for always being there for me, though i'm sorry to be listening to your music in such an unsavory environment. (there's white out on my desk.) and i can't stand it anymore.

Spare Razor? Spare Time!

watch this film.

hey yall,
can we talk about leg hair for a sec? oh, you're sick of talking about leg hair? sry.

I don't shave my legs. Haven't shaved my lower leg for probably 2 years. I hate the process. I hate the price. I hate that it took me so long to realize that shaving cream wasn't a necessity, and neither were all the other "shaving products". I hate when it grows back THE DAY AFTER, and that I have to start the process over again. So i stopped shaving. At first it was weird; my leg hair was so dark that it was completely noticeable. if i wore a skirt, i looked like a man in a skirt (from, say, the knees down). this was some real fuckin' leg hair. but it was not a statement (other than letting my leg hair say "meh" for me). i was not expressing my womanhood or telling men that i don't have to shave to live up to society's views of beauty, which they happened to define as an unrealistic virginal pre-pubescent whore -- among other things, completely hairless. wtf? i can usually relate ideals of beauty and attraction back to our homo sapien uncles (no homo), i.e. men are attracted to women with big hips because it signifies fertility. women are attracted to men with big noses because they signify virility. so it would make sense for men to be attracted to women whose pubes are super long so that their vaginas are kept toasty and release pheromones. no?
but wait, i'm not even talking about pubes. i promise! come back!

so i stopped shaving but felt that it still looked kinda weird and i didn't feel feminine at all. and i like to feel feminine sometimes. but i like to feel it when i want to feel it. and i like to feel it for me. i guess i kinda think of it more as a time saver. like my time is more important than to be spent on hair removal, then subsequently obsessing over said hair removal. so i started waxing! i remove it when i think of it, or when i have time. or when i'm going somewhere exotic [i have a waxing appointment in half an hour that i made in time to go to NYC.] my mom has been waxing for like 30 years and she could probably count on one hand how many leg hairs she grows now. it's so awesome. expensive? yes, but so are all those venuses. painful? shit hurts so good. but it lasts longer! and eventually (as proven by my Mama Wolf) it grows back finer! also, think of the time yr saving!

in fact, here's a list of things you could do with all the time you've saved from shaving every other day (WWWTTTTTFFFFFF??!?!!111!?!??):

1. get waxed once a month (or less, depending on how little a shit you give)
2. spend your shower time deep conditioning. or masturbating.
3. write a blog post!
4. cut a pair of jeans into short shorts to show off your sometimes-smooth-sometimes-hairy-depending-on-what-your-schedule-has-been-like legs!
5. hike up yr skirt a little more (and show your world to some bro)
6. bake a zucchini bread! or, if you're shaving the whole legs, bake a yeast bread!
7. brush up on politics using wikipedia.
8. read a list! and then comment on it!

Carried Away by Consumerism

It only took several months after Obama was elected president for many countries to restore their faith in the American people, or at least one dude sitting in an office in D.C. We were not, after all, a nation of stupid consumer-driven sheep who would re-reelect an incompetent man-boy as our leader.

Then Sex and the City 2 was made. I had a love/hate relationship with the HBO series, perhaps because I don't "get" shoes and I consider myself more of a country mouse. However, Miranda was a highly-functioning professional woman, and Samantha reassured that women can be (and are, duhhh) just as sexual as men are expected to be. [I've always thought Charlotte was obnoxious as hell, and Carrie made good jokes but I got distracted by that weird pouty horse-fish face she made.] I could enjoy this show from the comfort of my own living room, with or without 'tinis, knowing that there's was not a reality and that I could still be a woman even if my closet looked less like a 2nd bedroom and more like a closet.
So, even though I laughed when I probably wasn't supposed to laugh, and really wanted to shake the hell out of the fab-four, I went to see this atrocious abomination of cinema (read: Hollywood) with my former SATC-obsessed roommate. For the record, I will say that she does not play the part of a typical SATC fan and lives a normal female life like me.

This movie represented everything cringe-worthy about our country. It took place in Abu Dabi, though it was filmed in Moroco, and what brought the ladies there was an all-expenses trip that they took full advantage of to get them out of the mediocrity of wealth, family, work, and life. Woe are they that are the haves. Seriously. Carrie complained about Big not going out to soirees and galas and bashes with her and getting take-out so they could spend time together in. This is when I knew I was a spectator of this movie from some other planet. So they fly 1st class to one of the wealthiest, most extravagant cities in the world. The ladies are greeted by their own personal servants (like, one Indian man each), and luxurious transportation (like, one car each). So, World, if we didn't strike you as oil-obsessed, insensitive, over-privileged half-humans, what say you now?
Anyway, Miranda quits her job so she can spend more time with her fam. Charlotte realizes that just because she's threatened by her nanny with huge tits, she still needs her to make her kids shut the fuck up. Samantha is probably banned from Abu Dhabi due to shouting at Muslim men during prayer that she has lots of sex while wearing short shorts; she also fellates a hookah hose. Carrie 'gets over it,' but only because Big changes, so essentially she changed him, so she didn't get over but instead is a big baby. Liza Minelli performs "Single Ladies," there are some gays who get married probably only because they are two gay men, and we all know that my gay best friend and your gay best friend would be perfect for each other because they're, like, both gay.
I sat through this 2+ hour disrespectful fashion show for over 2 hours. Maybe it's the English degree talking (it doesn't get this opportunity too often), but this movie lacked a thesis/story/plot/point/gist. Was it an excuse for director Michael Patrick King to play with real-life Barbies with an arguable modern feminist twist, to go balls-out commodification? Or was it an opportunity for him to take a stab at cultural competency? The image of Charlotte trying to get service on her iPhone to call her husband from atop a camel makes me think it's probably the former. I had to ask myself...wasn't there something better they could have spent this money on?

srsly.

You said that your insides were falling out and that you wanted to "be somewhere" and I knew exactly what you meant. Though, not exactly since, if there's anything we learned from James Agee, it is that I know you only as I can know anyone...as a person, and that is my truth, albeit subjective. "It is simply an effort to use words in such a way that they will tell us as much as I want to and can make them tell of a thing which happened and which, of course, you have no other way of knowing...It is one way of telling the truth: the only possible way of telling the kind of truth I am here most interested to tell." But that made me feel sad then to think about these things with you, (as it makes me feel sad now to remember) you and me frequently blowing our minds as they grew to grasp notions of reality and cultural constructs and college education revolving around Franzia mixed with orange juice and how, no matter how well we can know another person, and know ourselves, we still never know exactly the truth of "the other," no matter how many times we sat on the porch with that other, or even if that other saw us cry.

And so when you said that your insides were falling out, I imagined you feeling scared and excited; panicking against your better judgment, but being excited against your will and longing for your connections, friends already cultivated and growing and reaching. "Wait, what?" you might have said. I imagined you sitting lonely at the Bangkok International Airport (isn't it strange how we can feel our loneliest surrounded by thousands?) with your things you had packed for the next four and a half months -- a journal and a pen, books, some sensible shoes, a dress you made, maybe, and some hand-crafted jewelry your sister made -- and i wanted more than anything to share that mindfuck with you. Maybe our insides would have fallen out together in, what I can only hope would be, a similar fashion.

A Feminist Looks at Bourbon Street

You find yourself in this city in the south, post-Katrina and not during Mardi Gras-- a time when New Orleans goes ignored like a pet during its owner's pregnancy. But even though it is not Fat Tuesday and you plan on keeping on your bra, you go to Bourbon Street.

You turn off Canal St. toward a neon pink "Hustler" sign and get a drink from the closest bar, one called Krazy Korner (or was it Utopia?) where a woman in a bra top and booty shorts is selling "shots,"artificially colored alcohol standing upright in what looks like a syringe. You opt for a margarita, with salt, to go, and sip down quickly from your green plastic cactus-shaped cup. You are shouted at by men on 2nd and 3rd stories of short hotels and lofts and think "ugh" but as you continue down the (surprisingly short!!) street, you begin to feel slightly overdressed. Not that you're not wearing your "goin' out" clothes, but that you haven't got much skin showing and these women selling themselves to sell a bar seem so confident and you want that.

But they also seem so sad.

"Do you think her mother knows?" you ask your friend, but you don't wait long enough to realize the unfortunate reality.

For a second you envision pushing through the crowd of men swarmed around her, taking her hand, and running away; maybe to a cafe somewhere where you could talk about how repulsive those men are, whose blue eyes glaze over and morph into venomous snakes (oh, those Biblical references!). Or maybe to France, to the real vieux France. Vive la verite!

Is this a positive step for our country? That our women (girls, really, as one "barely legal" sign informs you) can stand outside with their inner thighs and cleavage, sometimes asses, exposed and not worry about genital mutilation or being sold into sex slavery (god, you're naive). They use their sexuality as a tool and means of power over the men and women who expect them to be easy based on how they're dressed, and the more you and your friends go and stare and drink and stare and spend and stare, the more praise they get from their manager--maybe a slap on the ass for being good for business. But nothing is ever what it looks like--water is not blue and money is never just money, and this is not real confidence in these women. Bourbon Street is dirty and what many would call sinful but that doesn't stop you from having what you think is fun. This is a place where you can have your tits and eat them too because that's what it is known for, and this is America, and it's not like you're doing anything wrong, right?

Gone Beyond

i've been trying to figure out the difference between mindfulness and self-consciousness. i've tried to decipher and control the differences between thinking this is me!! and this is me??

but then i remind myself that It Is What It Is. but is "it" the same for everyone? i know the answer is no and i try to remind myself that, walking down the street and yearning for some kind of eye contact with someone that says "This Is 'It'" but that never happens. not sure if this is some normal type of social anxiety or some weird type of self-aware normalcy and maybe what i want is right in front of me and i can fulfill the thing i am wanting to receive from looking into someone's pupils.

then i got to thinking about psychology and the study of the brain and how, yes, it's a 'science' but how can you measure and compare the heated activity of one person's grey matter with that of another person's. especially when you're trusting lab rats to solve a puzzle for you.
so that when i say "i'm not happy," how do i know for sure that the feeling i'm feeling is different from depression or anxiety, as labeled in the form of a survey [I sometimes feel this way; I often feel this way; I never feel this way.] because when i was younger i thought that maybe my emotions were measured on a dial and at one point the needle would flicker into the green/yellow/orange, anywhere away from those blues, and that was when i would know and feel what it seemed like everyone around was all feeling simultaneously as happy.

and then i smelled saffron. and then i saw rabbit tracks in the snow. and then i heard a banjo. and the question is not solved but my needle peeked and i felt bursting and goosebumps and wondered why this is not a drug advertised by pfizer with side effects being that you are left wondering why you didn't know about this feeling sooner.