Monday, June 28, 2010

First of all:

http://lexgill.com/2010/06/28/urgent-conditions-at-629-eastern-ave-illegal-immoral-dangerous/

Second of all. This G20 stuff has filled me with so, so much rage that I can hardly breathe. Yesterday i felt my bones itch with the painful, desperate need to be in my city fighting alongside my friends and comrades. Several of my nearest and dearest were detained, threatened, and clubbed. The reports of their safety are now pouring in, but it doesn't undo the horrific amount of police brutality that went down this weekend.

But: lying in bed with the phone cradled to my ear, scheming and plotting protest hijinx with my long-distance lover until we both fell asleep? That. That made me feel stronger.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

smaller, smaller

I have a guilty admission to make.

I shaved two days ago. It was an act of desperation; of scraping off as much of myself i could without hurting myself, without bruising my knees on the bathroom floor and retching up the contents of my stomach.

It wasn't premeditated. It just...happened.

Not shaving is a point of politics and pride for me. It has been a way for me to reclaim my body and show myself that I cannot and will not adhere to standards of beauty that are, to me, obsolete and ridiculous. I don't judge women who do scrape the hair off their legs and armpits and cunts, but it does make me a little sad. When I see other women with hairy armpits and legs, my heart does a bit of a leap and I feel loved and hopeful. This is maybe naive, but it's honestly what i feel.

As i watched these tiny hairs make their way down the drain, i felt this stab of pain and regret, my level-headedness returning to me. What the hell just happened?, i thought.

It was like being in a trance of utter self-loathing. I'm glad that I didn't hurt myself physically, but this really does hurt my heart. I feel weak. Personally, I mean. I don't think other women who shave are weak by any means - but this is something i have spent a lot of time thinking about and have decided is important to me.

it'll grow back, of course.

Friday, June 18, 2010

we had hot caramel sticking to our teeth

I got a letter in the mail today from Lisa.

Lisa appeared in my life when I was 15, wandered right on in, all wild curly hair moccasins the faint scent of patchouli patchy jeans little girl giggles and calligraphy-penned notes passed through boring classes.

Lisa knew how to find beautiful lace slips and paisley-printed vintage tunics, ancient beautiful wedding dresses and pocket watches, even in the most picked-over of thrift shops. She knew how to scent her letters without getting grease stains, knew how to make moonshinish strawberry wine in secret, squirreled away in parents' attics.

We were, in many ways, the most embarrassing white-girl cliches. But I loved Lisa so hard. Her and the girl I fell in the sort of deep love reserved for in-the-closet-highschool-girls, would always joke that they were stripping me of my innocence. But to me it felt more like they were carefully undressing me, exposing me to the sunlight in ways my pale skin hadn't yet felt.

I can't remember the last time I saw Lisa, with her untamable thatch of hair that made her, with her long slender body, look like a dandelion in the breeze. But hearing from her like this, as she writes to me from across the country - still the same Lisa running with horses and tending farms and feeding the birds and bedding brown-eyed musicians - makes me feel more glad of her existence than ever before.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

She is robed in strength and dignity; she smiles at the future.

It's been almost a month since I last posted and an almost comically large quantity of things have changed in my life since.

Disclaimer: This is a somewhat ridiculous post about marriage. Not for those who can't stomach the sickeningly sweet.

A week before I left for Israel, Gab and Ferron and I lounged on the hardwood floor of their apartment, sunlight filtering through the windows in bars that bisected and trisected our lazy bodies, warming us in selective stripes which made me keep taking off and putting back on my cardigan.

"I can't see any reason for getting married," said Gab. I expressed some sort of tepid agreement, mildly acknowledging that I had enjoyed some weddings - they were just not something for me. It seemed like a waste. Of money, of time. Having a huge expensive party for myself? It seemed like it would be lovely and thrilling but also embarrassing and as if it might accidentally tread into the valley of the selfish.

Then, little more than a week later, I found myself chewing my lip with great concentration, willing tears to roll back within me, as my new brother-in-law sang to my elder sister at their wedding. A friend who I had made that day - a brown-eyed bespectacled henna artist with a laugh that hit me tenderly right between my ribs - whispered a translation in my ear.

Eishes chayil is a song from the Book of Proverbs that describes what a virtuous woman should be like. From that description, one might expect something painfully outdated and possibly offensive.

But it is the most beautiful song I have ever heard in my barely-over-two-decades life.

And watching my sister leaning her face on her palm as she listened to my brother-in-law sing to her gave me more happiness than anything I have felt to date. This is no exaggeration.

Anything that can give someone that degree of happiness, completely inadvertently, cannot be anything but good.

And I decided then that marriage is totally a party that I can get behind.