It could be because I haven't been working out as much this week as I should have, or because I had a protein-heavy lunch, or because of a number of reasons, but today, I took a two-hour nap and am still exhausted. It may also be because of the new food combining diet I'm trying, which isn't working out as well as I'd wanted it to, but it has caused me to rethink what I'm putting into my body, why, and how my body responds to individual ingredients in food rather than just broad groups of foods. I'm looking to eliminate foods from my diet that make me feel bloated or sick just after I eat them, and I fear wheat might be one of them... if so, it's a gluten-free life for me, and that's hard. :(
Too sleepy to think. I'll go read The Well of Loneliness until I fall asleep. At this rate, it will take years to finish.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
It's the End of the World
I watched a documentary online called HOME yesterday that has scared, humbled, and plagued me ever since. I cried through the last half of it and aside from using reusable bags at Kroger and Wal-Mart, driving as little as possible, and opting for the fan over AC whenever it's possible, in the current world, what else can the individual do to take part in both the larger movement and society without committing themselves to living in the woods, under solar panels, greening all over themselves? I'm disgusted at my own complicity, and yet like anyone who reads this, I'm unalterably complicit.
According to Jim just came on...
According to Jim just came on...
***
Tonight I feel completely helpless as I consider what impact I can have on any other person in this world. The more I think about it, the more I realize I should just be by myself becuase a) I'm no good to people and b) people are no good to me. It's not their fault, just like it's not entirely my fault that I'm bad to them -- but the point is it doesn't matter who is at fault because rather than blame assignation, I want joy. I want peace. I want a slice of happiness that comes from deep within, not from the satisfaction I might gain from making someone else happy for a fraction of a second. My work on this earth is for me, not for others. Others have to do their own work.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Longing to be Embodied
The free gym on campus that we go to isn't open on the weekends, so for 2 days a week, I sit at home thinking about a treadmill (but not of the 1.8 miles of road between home and the treadmill...). Running (jogging, I guess, really, but I call it running because that feels more empowering (like "I could run all day and never get tired," that thing we say about our selves in childhood but would never envision for ourselves as adults -- shit -- I've made a parenthetical within a parenthetical), and converting my own power from metaphysical into material, resourceful, and beneficial is presently a priority for me) reminds me that I'm fully and wholly heavy, a million systems under one agreement that is me. It's an avenue that seems to help me connect my mind to my body in a deep, core-strengthening sort of way.
The vision of myself as an older woman who runs and stays in shape came to me when I lived in Heidelberg, Germany, in 2001. A few girlfriends of mine and I were about to catch a street train a few blocks from my apartment when we saw what must have been an 80 or 90-year-old woman with a cane pulling herself up onto a train cart. It's nothing to see folks that old or older walking unassisted, even riding bikes and grocery shopping. They're spry -- spitfire -- a quality I value in myself, though at my age (almost 29!) it's called energetic. Ten years ago, they called it obnoxious, so at least I've learned a bit of self-restraint. It's that control -- that ability to leash in some of my energies and direct them into a project that's meaningful, helpful, and rewarding that has been my salvation, and it's taken the most work from me to get a hold of and control... I'm learning to control my ability to control, if that makes any sense. I'm metacontrolling? Theorizing the phenomenology of control? Yeah, maybe.
Another thing that's been on my mind as of late is the intersection between embodiment and culture, particularly religious cultures. I believe that Christianity -- the religion I know and therefore the one I'll talk about subjectively -- is a long-term practice in sustained disembodiment. The ideal is out there, somewhere, nebulous in the ether between myth and history, for followers of Christ to seek but not find, knock but not be.... you know. It demands its adherents struggle toward righteousness while knowing they'll never get it. It's sameness through pursuit of "excellence," the same rubric that guides the lives of perfectionists and genocidal dictators. No wonder there's so much depression, PTSD, and a host of traumatic-overload mental conditions: we live in a world that pushes contradictory information upon us constantly, information that skews the boundaries between reality and make-believe, what we are and what we should be, our bodies and our selves. It's a vicious cycle that keeps people locked into a source of power outside of themselves to insure they'll never claim control of the powers they actually do have. It's devious, the descent of man.
It's complicated to call oneself a Christian in America today, because with the fracturing and fragmenting of identity, Christian isn't the monolithic, homogenous cult that it used to be: it's now, in like order, a fractured and fragmented, loosely-affiliated grouping of religious ideologies held together by the shared name "Christian." Almost on a church-to-church basis, ideology changes to reflect microcosmic and macrocosmic histories and myths. Who-slept-with-who's-wife narratives bend and shape inteprerations until men can't wear shorts for fear of so distracting a woman, she'll drop her floor-length skirt in front of all the others and demand he procreate with her this instant! It's really quite an interesting cultural phenomenon, but it's one that's deviously hegemonic, so much so that people mindlessly follow it, demanding the same of their children and refusing "Satan's" higher education and "liberal arts."
While a disembodied heavenly host are singing, an action accomplished through the use of larnyx, lungs, and diaphragm. Make it make sense.
The vision of myself as an older woman who runs and stays in shape came to me when I lived in Heidelberg, Germany, in 2001. A few girlfriends of mine and I were about to catch a street train a few blocks from my apartment when we saw what must have been an 80 or 90-year-old woman with a cane pulling herself up onto a train cart. It's nothing to see folks that old or older walking unassisted, even riding bikes and grocery shopping. They're spry -- spitfire -- a quality I value in myself, though at my age (almost 29!) it's called energetic. Ten years ago, they called it obnoxious, so at least I've learned a bit of self-restraint. It's that control -- that ability to leash in some of my energies and direct them into a project that's meaningful, helpful, and rewarding that has been my salvation, and it's taken the most work from me to get a hold of and control... I'm learning to control my ability to control, if that makes any sense. I'm metacontrolling? Theorizing the phenomenology of control? Yeah, maybe.
Another thing that's been on my mind as of late is the intersection between embodiment and culture, particularly religious cultures. I believe that Christianity -- the religion I know and therefore the one I'll talk about subjectively -- is a long-term practice in sustained disembodiment. The ideal is out there, somewhere, nebulous in the ether between myth and history, for followers of Christ to seek but not find, knock but not be.... you know. It demands its adherents struggle toward righteousness while knowing they'll never get it. It's sameness through pursuit of "excellence," the same rubric that guides the lives of perfectionists and genocidal dictators. No wonder there's so much depression, PTSD, and a host of traumatic-overload mental conditions: we live in a world that pushes contradictory information upon us constantly, information that skews the boundaries between reality and make-believe, what we are and what we should be, our bodies and our selves. It's a vicious cycle that keeps people locked into a source of power outside of themselves to insure they'll never claim control of the powers they actually do have. It's devious, the descent of man.
It's complicated to call oneself a Christian in America today, because with the fracturing and fragmenting of identity, Christian isn't the monolithic, homogenous cult that it used to be: it's now, in like order, a fractured and fragmented, loosely-affiliated grouping of religious ideologies held together by the shared name "Christian." Almost on a church-to-church basis, ideology changes to reflect microcosmic and macrocosmic histories and myths. Who-slept-with-who's-wife narratives bend and shape inteprerations until men can't wear shorts for fear of so distracting a woman, she'll drop her floor-length skirt in front of all the others and demand he procreate with her this instant! It's really quite an interesting cultural phenomenon, but it's one that's deviously hegemonic, so much so that people mindlessly follow it, demanding the same of their children and refusing "Satan's" higher education and "liberal arts."
While a disembodied heavenly host are singing, an action accomplished through the use of larnyx, lungs, and diaphragm. Make it make sense.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Nothing to see here...
I've spent the last several hours trying to work out a kink in the left side of my neck. Those who know me know I have permanent and inexplicable pain in the right side of my neck whose current and past treatments have included Accupuncture, physical therapy, trigger point injections, magnets, patches, deep tissue massage, heat, cold, chiropractors, stretching, working out, and pain medicine and muscle relaxers ad nauseum. Now, the left side has a pulled muscle. It's sort of otherworldly having a new pain in such a tender location. I've slept the day away trying to get the accompanying headache to cease its attack on my frontal lobe.
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