How do you find out about new artists and bands you might like?
It's a list, list day...
- students
- coworkers (mostly at the bar, but also at the colleges)
- pandora
- internetting, while I'm supposed to be doing homework
- friends
Which yet-to-be-released movie are you excited to see?
- Get Smart
- The Dark Knight
- Baby Mama
- Narnia: Prince Caspian
- Hellboy II (but I finally need to watch the first one first)
What's your "go-to" movie? The one you watch when you need to just get away from it all?
Submitted by uncagedbird.
- Fried Green Tomatoes
- Firefly - the series
- Serenity
- Kissing Jessica Stein
- Queer as Folk - the series
- ...
So I've been hairy-legged for nigh on a decade now. Up through my divorce coming in final, I was a faithful shaver of all gender-prescribed parts, going so far as to re-shave all of it every 3 days, sometimes every day. (Which seems excessive to me, but then I think to myself, well hell, maybe all shaving women shave every fucking day. Sheesh.) When my X left, even though I'd spent years pretzeling myself around to get him to stay, I pretty much decided that from then on out, I'd just as soon get rejected for the woman I am, rather than for any number of someones I'm not.
The decision to give up spending money on razor after razor after shaving cream after after-shaving-lotion in the pursuit of a scrape/razor-burn-free life was easy to make. I had been raised in one of the many hippie capitals of the midwest, a child of the family-therapy and second-wave feminist movements, so I had no shortage of models for the choice, and no lack of friends who dug it. The guy I was dating at the time was a huuuuuge fan of the natural woman, so that was nice, too.
Not to say it wasn't nervewracking that first summer, taking my hairy legs out into the world. Having hairy armpits wasn't a problem at all, for some reason, perhaps because they're just terribly cute hair armpits. People look really weird at hairy legs on a girl, though, and I was definitely self-conscious, especially waiting tables, where your look has a lot to do with your overall pursuit of twenty percent. But the sheer delight of feeling the breeze making the hairs tickle my legs, combined with the remarkable increase in a sense of self-worth that arises from choosing my body as it naturally occurs--that made it hugely worth any social anxiety. I fairly quickly got over any worries, and just let people feel weirded out as they needed to. Their weirdness tends to arise and fall away with reasonable speed, anyway.
Teaching has me thinking about shaving again, though. I dress pretty casually to teach, but I do some version of business casual, especially at the Community College. The cutie outfits I want to buy and wear (if I ever earn enough money to go shopping) simply don't jive with a hairy-legged aesthetic (I will not be shaving my cutie pits), and I'm also not sure I want to put up yet another 'Bodhibound's weird' block for my students to have to grapple with. So I'm thinking about it.
And I get all girly-excited about the pretty skirts I might wear, and all tired-adult excited about not having to deal with an extra level of other people thinking I'm odd. But then I get sad--I think of my legs, which received so much of the short end of the stick of my self-loathing over the years, until I stopped shaving them, which demanded that I confront that I had no right to be so mean to an actual part of my own body. And I get sad--I think of the other girlies out there who actually think that a woman with hairy legs seems somehow unnatural, un-womanine, as if our bodies in their natural state could possibly be unfuckingnatural, the girlies for whom I hope I pose just a teeny little gentle challenge to that kind of normative self-hate.
Sigh. Any thoughts?
Ok, I posted this on accident the other day without finishing it, because I couldn't get the changes to work properly. But now Changa's done her meme-work, so I'm going to get my act together.
Below is a list of the 106 books most likely to languish, unread, on the bookshelves of people who only want to seem cultured and well-read (of which I am neither). If you want to play along:
bold the titles you've read on your own,
underline the ones you had to read for school,
italicize the ones you started but didn't finish,
bold and italicize the ones you hated,
bold and underline those you'd recommend
What was your first car?
A big, beautiful, beat-to-shit 1960 GMC, with a rack welded together by a dear friend for a wedding (first wedding) gift. Loved that vehicle.
I know my posting here lately has been a little heavy. What with the trials and triumphs of the end o' term and end o' program season, I've been being pretty serious, one way or the other.
And so, in the name of lightening the fuck up, ;), I'm starting a new meme. The always delightful and ever sharp Changa recently posted one of the Dalai Lama's excellent pithy phrases. In delighted response, I left a line of Flannery O' Connor's, and it got me a meme-dreamin'.
So here's the rules:
- Read the quotes in the list.
- Read the last quote on the list closely, and choose a quote that somehow builds off one of the central ideas or values in the quote--critiques it, extends it, turns a good joke on it, whatever.
- Type or paste your quote at the bottom of the list, and link to the blog of the person you're following.
- Tag someone else. Or someones else.
- Ideals are very important in one's life. Without ideals you cannot move - whether you achieve them or not is immaterial. But one must try and approximate them. --His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- You shall know the truth, and it shall make you odd. --Flannery O'Connor (re: Changa)
First, I'd just like to say thanks to my neighbors here on Vox. Having this place to come and lay it out, and getting all sorts of encouraging words all the time, well, man, that just keeps me going. Thanks for taking the time to read and leave all the advice, cheers, and sympathy.
B offers a bristling intellectuality combined with passion, good humor, and even sweetness. There is, in the words of one of her professors, 'a decency about how she reads texts, a decency that serves as a positive reminder of what it means to be a scholar and teacher of the humanities, what it means to be a 'humanist.'''
She handles difficulty with wisdom and grace. She regards texts as a path to enlightenment. She regards students as ever perfectible. She is the student we all want to have; she likely will become the teacher we all want to be.
Done, done, done! Both of the last-MA-papers are done! And printing right now! Wonderful, wonderful world!
A couple nights ago, I took a break. It was very nice. SLP and I went to a little party thrown for us GA's by our really very lovely Department Head. We were in and out in just under 2 hours, and managed to escape most of the more pretentious conversations. Plus, the food was good and free.
I had worked on one paper or another all day (week, month, year?) and he had closed loans all day (bless him), and so when we hit the free air again at around 9, we did not go back to work. Instead, we changed our clothes and went for a walk through the first truly warm night, looking for ice cream. Our walk took us downtown, where we made our way through crowds of very nicely dressed folks-at-leisure, all going into and out of hip bars and restaurants with the speed of paparazzi chasers. For about five minutes, we felt a little underdressed, a little undercool. After all, we never go out, and when we finally did that night, we went in our scrubs, feeling very decadent and out-on-the-town. We quickly came to our senses, though, and ended up on the porch late into the night, chatting and smoking and noticing.
Noticing how beautiful everything was, how good things smell in spring, how remarkable it was to not only be not working, but to be not working as though we were done with our work, instead of not working while being plagued with burning anxiety that we should get back to work. Call it a miracle, if you like--it seemed like one to me.
At one point, sitting on the porch with a very healthy feeling ache in my legs from actually getting some frickin' exercise, with a clear-ish head and really very clear heart, I was really struck by that miracle. Thinking back over my adolescence and twenties, I could remember a lot of fun moments, a lot of beauty, but not a whole hell of a lot of just plain nothing moments that were actually miracle moments in which I was actually able to simply be present to the miracle nature of getting to be having a really nice nothing moment.
Phew. Right. But that was what I was tripping out about. For whatever reasons, I've had a lot of loss and pain and difficulty in my life, and a lot of depression and just plain sorrowing and hurting. For the longest time, I was chased by the deep conviction that I was at core purely gross and unworthy, and by the resultant anxieties and perfectionisms. I cannot quite find words that satisfy me to express my unfuckingbelievable gratitude for all that now, because without it, although I'm sure I could have had a lot of really great nothing moments, I don't think I would have been as able to be present to them, to notice them when they happened, to really get what awesomely, mindbogglingly miraculous gifts they were.
Hmmm...
I'm writing this post, because I'm having another one right now! Today was full of gifts--SLP, the cat, and I are all healthy and fine, as are almost all of our people; PTM came over and did her homework on the porch with me today; Heartswater has been making time in all her mad work schedule to cheer me on and cheer me up, and so on. But right now at this very moment I am taking another break! Another break where I'm not feeling all worried and tied up in the work I should be doing!
How totally fucking cool is that? Both papers, as of an hour ago, are almost completely done. The Af-Am Lit paper just needs a Works Cited page, and the 18th-Century Brit Fiction one just needs an outro and a Works Cited. And I totally have both time and energy to get them done in time to turn them in tomorrow evening!!!!
Sweet, sweet, sweet!
Hope the night is good to all of you!
