"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Anais Nin

note to self

jogged by the review of  The Sound and the Fury:
what if my writing were not chronological or linear? could i incorporate chronological journal entries without the rule of the passage of time?
what if perception were jumbled and not forced into a formula?
what is the magic formula for not adhering to chronology and yet not losing the thread in a story? creating strong threads that weave in and out together, regardless of the concept of past, present, future...

it's all happening right now anyway.....

Posted by: brutallycurious at May 01, 2008 16:42 | link | comments

the dogwoods are in bloom, the cars are coated with yellow dust, the azaleas are blooming....this is my favorite time of year. After having the flu last week, my  mood has improved dramatically with the warm weather. I am ready for spring!

Posted by: brutallycurious at April 03, 2008 20:03 | link | comments (2)

Transitions

This is an honest, well-written article that reminds me to be present with whatever work is before me....glamorous or mundane. I struggle every day with being present in a situation that is highly valuable for it's lessons, but ultimately still a transition in my life.

Excelling in a Transition Job

Posted by: brutallycurious at March 22, 2008 10:53 | link | comments

Dormez-vous?

I don't get outraged often, and it's not because I'm not paying attention. It is mainly because I have cultivated a detachment to the ills of society. Detachment is not the same and being cold and uncaring....many of the world's problems break my heart, but I do what I can do and I hope enough others are doing their best and that our combined efforts will help heal the world.  My detachment looks somewhat fatalistic...either we'll figure out how to heal the world, or we won't. The outcome depends on us, and at the moment we are in the proverbial handbasket. 

But now I'm mad. I've been mad all last week about the Eliot Spitzer affair. The pun is absurdly easy. But I haven't really crystallized what my anger is about. I feel all sides of this issue;  He's bad, prostitution is bad, prostitution is a normal part of a messed up society, he didn't do anything we wouldn't expect from power-hungry men, Goddess help Silda Spitzer.

But the NY Times article today, Postfeminism and Other Fairy Tales  reflects some of my  feelings and what may be going on. I am really amazed at the misogyny being uncovered by the candidacy  of Hilary Clinton, and now Spitzergate. Most of society is still blind to it and therefore accepts it as normal.
I am fighting mad at  the hypocrisy of both condemning  Mr. Spitzer and the hypocrisy in his own life.  We still objectify women and Silda is as much a party and victim to that as young woman he paid to visit him.  Even I buy into it in subtle ways at times when I catch myself dressing in ways that aren't really me, or fall into pleasing others instead of making myself happy.

Let's be honest: this is not a culture of mutual respect as we would hope for. The vast numbers of  feminists and those who just believe in their own freedom and inherent value still have not managed to sway the course of the culture as much as we would want.  We have a long way to go as a culture until we are not judged by  the size of our breasts, our hairstyle or the way we dress before others listen to what's actually coming out of our mouth.  Even then, we are expected  to be demure, conciliatory and subservient.  Hilary certainly isn't any of those things, but she still has had to fight to be heard, to fight through those expectations coming from others.
 I am not a huge fan of Hilary, but I love the strength she shows in choosing her own path and challenging our perceptions.  She is truly a politician, and that's not a compliment, but she is also a woman and the prospect to me of having a woman in the White House who will meld those two ways of looking at the world excites me. 

I have a long way to go before I am always myself regardless of what others want me to be, before I am true at all time to my inner nature, before I never think "does this make me look fat?" when I get dressed in the morning, before I accept myself completely without reservation and step out boldly into the world judging my  life by my own standards. And I consider myself a feminist.

It's been 100 years since feminist artists like Anne Brigman declared the power of the Feminine through their art and we haven't quite embraced the message fully. To do so would upset the predominant paradigm of somebody-has-to-rule-the-world-and-men-are-the-best-ones-for-the-job.  Whatever Hilary does to wake us up to the paradigm still in place and shake it up is valuable.  I'm awake now.  I'm painfully aware now how much work remains.

Posted by: brutallycurious at March 17, 2008 10:06 | link | comments (1)
feminism, self-image, body image, hilary

"There are roads out of secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others" Romare Bearden

Posted by: brutallycurious at February 19, 2008 21:44 | link | comments (1)