Un-bum.

I wrote a real bummer of a blog post this morning, because I'm bummed, but instead I'll just post this video.



It's a half an inch of water, really.

Anger Week is Coming to a Close, but I'm still gonna snarl

The blog was pretty intense this week. Anger was foremost on my mind, and I can tell you after a week of it, I'm feeling pretty good. Lots of energy, pretty hopeful.

So I'm just gonna keep rolling on the pissed off train, but since I wrote about it all week, let's talk about something else.

I did some childcare last night, which is exciting because I can go months without seeing a little kid. Just like how I can go months having no contact with seniors. I got to help two girls with their homework. Homework is so terrible because everyone else in the world is doing much more interesting things, and you have to sit at a table by yourself looking at some stupid worksheet with some stupid math problems on it. It's so terrible. It's a traumatic event, one that I obviously resent in my own life and have empathy to spare for. I wish someone would sit with me at a table and tell me I'm almost done and keep asking me to read the next question aloud.

There were little boys there, and they were totally taken care of as long as they got to chase each other around the room. It didn't take 10 seconds of knowing each other before they knew they wanted to chase. It was like a dog park.

I'm now a volunteer for the Chicago Childcare Collective, so I babysit while these kid's parents are participating in community meetings. It's a win-win for me because I cannot stand community meetings, despite wanting to support organizing. Probably because I was the little kid bored at community meetings a lot. Or maybe because they are so goddamn boring. Why is that? How come when the subject is inevitably really important and urgent, the meetings are so eye rollingly, offensively boring?

Man Hatred

Hmmmm, I have struggled with this. Especially the summer I was fired for writing about my period on my blog, from the job where a scary coworker who sat across from me would surf myspace all day and call women he didn't know bitches and sluts, and it felt like the whole world hated me for saying open mics weren't friendly places for women.

And that all happened the same week. It was a hard week.

Since then, I've seen how likeable young men are in the workplace, how they are assumed to be hyper-competent, how people pull for them, how they get to live out an extended adolescence, and recently, how their rages and the damage they inflict during them are quickly, quietly forgotten.

But you know what? I found the secret to not hating men. The secret is remembering you never have to keep silent. You really never ever have to. If you keep silent, if you keep the shitty stuff a secret, you will hate the shit out of men. You will burn all your insides up with rage. But if you speak up and point it all out the rage won't eat you up. You will lose jobs. You will lose 'friends.' You will definitely have people hate on you. No doubt you'll be called ugly. But you will be able to meet individual men and judge them as individuals.

Because when you keep silent you're doing the oppressor's work for them, and you carry it around inside you, and every man you meet you think "It's so unfair he's making me keep silent!" But he's not. He can't. That's the one thing men really can't do to you. They can talk down to you, they can hit you, they can fire you, they can rape you, they can make jokes about you, they can call you names, they can stalk you, they can say you're crazy, they can refuse to hear anything you say. But they can't keep you from telling the truth about what they're doing.

And maybe you saying something does something, very probably it does nothing, but it will keep you from hating them. And not having to hate half the people in the world is a beautiful thing.

On Criticism

I think I've got the calculation wrong on criticism. I take most criticism I get to heart. You have to be a real shithead for me to dismiss what you say about me right off the bat. That's backwards. You should be someone I really respect and want to be like before I consider your criticism. You should be someone I believe really wants the best for me. And people I really respect and want to be like who want the best for me make up .05% of the population. MEANING- most criticism I'm gonna get is going to be bullshit, created by people who I don't particularly admire or even like, who are telling me more about the anxieties floating around in their heads than communicating anything real about who I am with their criticism.

So that's another resolution of mine, besides getting angry quickly and often- being real real picky about whose criticism I listen to. Katt Williams puts it very eloquently:

Why I Don't Take Better Care of Myself

I bought some more self help books. Whoopee! I think my problems in romantic relationships have come to a head. I haven't had even one where I felt free to express my anger and insist on things I needed, despite having A LOT of romantic relationships. With all kinds of nutcases. And since the common factor is me, and since I do very badly want a relationship that nurtures me, I'm getting serious about standing up for myself.

So I bought this book "The Nice Girl Syndrome" by Beverly Engel and I'm going to work through it, and I may as well do that online, since unveiling myself on the internet seems to be able to motivate me to self-reflection more than anything else.
So here's an exercise from the book:

Write down the reasons you believe you do not take care of yourself.
- I know I can do without
- I think my toughness is admirable
- I feel panicky when I spend money on myself
- I like dirty, gritty people better than clean ones
- Taking care of myself makes me look silly
- There are other people who need the money more
- The world needs me to consume less
- I'll have to take care of any possession I pick up, and I don't want to be tied down
- I'll get used to good things and then I won't appreciate them
- I can get through tough times

What beliefs do you have about your right to take care of yourself?
- There are other people who need immediate care much more than me
- I will look like an asshole for taking care of myself
- Living a hard life will make me a better person than living an easy life

List all the ways that you deprive yourself of nurturing, support, protection, and so forth:
- I don't identify things I would enjoy and ask my friends to do them with me
- I don't keep food I like in the house
- I don't ask for more hours at work, so that I won't be so scared of not having enough money
- I have one on one talks with anyone who wants one, rather than asking that we do something I want to do
- I keep quiet when someone does something hurtful, because I want to be fair to them
- I keep quiet also because I think everyone will see me as an angry person they won't want to be around
- I don't buy books I like, or keep the books I like
- I don't buy movies I like
- I don't buy stylish clothes
- I don't buy or steal music I like
- I drink coffee so I can be in a good mood all the time, rather than letting myself be in a bad one
- I don't make plans to travel to places I want to see

Things not to budge on

I am a creature in need of many comforts. I know saints have walked this earth and foregone much more than this, for the love of god or man, but I am not a saint and become even less of one when I give these up.

1. Biking every day
2. Cooking every day
3. Alone time
4. good things to read
5. an animal to love
6. clothes that fit
7. 8 hours of sleep
8. Human contact

This list may seem cloyingly minimalist, but it is a real struggle to keep these elements in my life. The biking thing- I budged on that for a job I thought was real important, and all that ended up happening was I went off my rocker. I can't budge on it again. The cooking thing- that's very very easy to forget about if you're super busy, but again, I can't budge on it, I'll go nuts. It's not a good situation for anyone if I go nuts. I've learned in adult life all of these turn into luxuries, and you only lead a life of luxury if you act real entitled and uppity.

Luxuries are funny. The more a person needs luxury items- fancy vacations, gorgeous clothes, shiny cars- the more likely they live in a manner that doesn't allow them the daily luxuries of time and routine, that relaxed pace that lets you spend 20 minutes chopping vegetables, and then leaf through a novel. It's not easy to maintain that pace in your life.

I'm so close to the precipice of mental health that I have to be vigilant about these daily routines. A few days without biking, going on birth control, eating from the microwave, working too much, a few drinks; all of these developments could make me foam at the mouth. I am looking for how to not be so close to the cliff. I'm taking St. John's Wort now, and magnesium still. But throughout history there have been many people who looked around at their villages and said, "I need to live in a place where everyone's silent, we always eat at the same time, someone gives me a discrete task to concentrate on for hours, and almost every day happens the same way. And we're in the woods." It's not so nutso to need to do and be less.

Dog Music

by Paul Zimmer

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.
My big dog sang with me so purely,
puckering her ruffled lips into an O,
beginning with small, swallowing sounds
like Coltrane musing, then rising to power
and resonance, gulping air to continue—
her passion and sense of flawless form—
singing not with me, but for the art of dogs.
We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust,"
"Naima," "The Trout," "My Rosary," "Perdido."
She was a great master and died young,
leaving me with unrelieved grief,
her talents known to only a few.

Now I have a small dog who does not sing,
but listens with discernment, requiring
skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.
I sing her name and words of love
andante, con brio, vivace, adagio.
Sometimes she is so moved she turns
to place a paw across her snout,
closes her eyes, sighing like a girl
I held and danced with years ago.

But I am a pretender to dog music.
The true strains rise only from
the rich, red chambers of a canine heart,
these melodies best when the moon is up,
listeners and singers together or
apart, beyond friendship and anger,
far from any human imposter—
ballads of long nights lifting
to starlight, songs of bones, turds,
conquests, hunts, smells, rankings,
things settled long before our birth.

Men Explain Birth Control

It's only poetry in it's sublime ridiculousness.



I'd look pretty dumb. Not this dumb, but dumber than I should look.

Jaime Sabines

You Have What I Look For

You have what I look for, what I long for, what I love,
you have it.
The fist of my heart is beating, calling.
I thank the stories for you,
I thank your mother and father
and death who has not seen you.
I thank the air for you.
You are elegant as wheat,
delicate as the outline of your body.
I have never loved a slender woman
but you have made my hands fall in love,
you moored my desire,
you caught my eyes like two fish.
And for this I am at your door, waiting.

A Happy Poem from Mary Lamb

(To celebrate a working oven and stove top.)

Breakfast

A dinner party, coffee, tea,
Sandwich, or supper, all may be
In their way pleasant. But to me
Not one of these deserves the praise
That welcomer of new-born days,
A breakfast, merits; ever giving
Cheerful notice we are living
Another day refreshed by sleep,
When its festival we keep.
Now although I would not slight
Those kindly words we use ‘Good night’,
Yet parting words are words of sorrow,
And may not vie with sweet ‘Good Morrow’,
With which again our friends we greet,
When in the breakfast-room we meet,
At the social table round,
Listening to the lively sound
Of those notes which never tire,
Of urn, or kettle on the fire.
Sleepy Robert never hears
Or urn, or kettle; he appears
When all have finished, one by one
Dropping off, and breakfast done.
Yet has he too his own pleasure,
His breakfast hour’s his hour of leisure;
And, left alone, he reads or muses,
Or else in idle mood he uses
To sit and watch the venturous fly,
Where the sugar’s piled high,
Clambering o’er the lumps so white,
Rocky cliffs of sweet delight.

Lucille Clifton


it was a dream

in which my greater self
rose up before me
accusing me of my life
with her extra finger
whirling in a gyre of rage
at what my days had come to.
what,
i pleaded with her, could i do,
oh what could i have done?
and she twisted her wild hair
and sparked her wild eyes
and screamed as long as
i could hear her
This. This. This.


the times

it is hard to remain human on a day
when birds perch weeping
in the trees and the squirrel eyes
do not look away but the dog ones do
in pity.
another child has killed a child
and i catch myself relieved that they are
white and i might understand except
that i am tired of understanding.
if this
alphabet could speak its own tongue
it would be all symbol surely;
the cat would hunch across the long table
and that would mean time is catching up,
and the spindle fish would run to ground
and that would mean the end is coming
and the grains of dust would gather themselves
along the streets and spell out:

these too are your children this too is your child

I've declared it poetry week, and here are two by Linda Pastan


The Quarrel

If there were a monument
to silence, it would not be
the tree whose leaves
murmur continuously
among themselves;

nor would it be the pond
whose seeming stillness
is shattered
by the quicksilver
surfacing of fish.

If there were a monument
to silence, it would be you
standing so upright, so unforgiving,
your mute back deflecting
every word I say.



The Obligation to Be Happy

It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.

And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.

Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.

I just discovered Richard Brautigan

Your Catfish Friend

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."

I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t

I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.