Flashback to the summer of 2014

Imagine if you will, it is midnight on a Sunday, and I am sitting reading Agatha Christie novels with tears leaking from eyes as I continue to eat chili powder and drink copious amounts of water. It is a strange scene isn't it. Especially considering that the last hours leading up to Mondays (of madness usually) should involved such strange activities. It almost makes you think I am making it up. But I am not. This has been part of my evening and for so many reasons.

Links from the WWW

Here's two pieces on gender that I read today and would encourage you to as well.


http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/11/17/casual_sexism_when_a_shirt_is_more_than_a_shirt.html

“So yeah, it’s just a shirt.

And it’s just an ad.

It’s just a saying.

It’s just a TV show.

It’s just the Internet.

Yes, but you almost make as much as a man does.

It’s just a catcall.

It’s a compliment!

It’s just that boys will be boys.

It’s just that she’s a slut.

It’s just that your dress is too short.

It’s just that we want to know what you were wearing at the time, ma’am.

It’s just it’s just it’s just.

It’s just a death by a thousand cuts. No one cut does the deed. In the end, they all do."

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/llQdMpUC1fLMxKV04r2MCK/Genderbased-violence-is-an-epidemic-in-India-Kate-Gilmore.html

"You can’t talk about one in three women experiencing violence at least once in their lifetime, in intimate partner relationships, and say it is other than an epidemic. "

What does it mean to be a good man? A good man does not have to beat a woman, he seeks consent for sex, he wants his partner to have access to a nurse and a doctor during pregnancy, a good man wants his children to understand their bodies."

November, or that month when I forget my name

It is ironic, the caffeine that kicks in four hours too late after class, one hour too close to bedtime. It is unusual to feel this awake. At this point in the semester, I have occasionally forgotten my name, often the date, and continuously the reason why I am doing this. To feel awake is an unexpected gift, I am uncertain what to do with it.

The tundra lives and flourishes. Temperatures are in ghastly lows and breaking winter records of all times. Meanwhile, we swathe ourselves in coats and caps and leg warmers and gloves and scarves, till motion is almost impossible, and somehow we trudge on. Waiting at the bus stop is an exercise in patience. The snow is beautiful, especially by the street lights. There is something about the orange overhead glow that makes the streets look like they belong to a different era. Of course, there is something about slipping on ice that takes away the beauty from it.

ix by Wendell Berry

(Shared by a friend at school)

I go by a field where once

I cultivated a few poor crops.

It is now covered with young trees,

for the forest that belongs here

has come back and reclaimed its own.

And I think of all the effort

I have wasted and all the time,

and of how much joy I took

in that failed work and how much

it taught me. For in so failing

I learned something of my place,

something of myself, and now

I welcome back the trees.

You are not

Via the lovely  www.meaganrianne.tumblr.com/

"You are not the heaviness

sitting inside of you.

You are not the battlefield

where the bodies fall,

and you are not the sound of cannons

breaking the sky open.

You are what happens after the war.

The surviving.

The healing.

The rebuilding."

—Y.Z, For the Bad Nights

Internet Finds

Please go and check out the cartoon strips at the following link:

www.conniewonnie.com


Current favorites:

http://www.conniewonnie.com/2014/10/just-right-amount-of-tired.html

http://www.conniewonnie.com/2014/09/the-other-side-of-discomfort.html

Unclenching

Tiredness tells its own stories. Its vocabulary is vast, it knows how to reach the hidden crevices of your day. And night. Its running companion is often guilt, not a welcome friend, but never enough of a foe to be abandoned completely.

The steady, comforting bus ride to work. The walk to your desk. The gentle trickle of hot water into your mug. The polite nods and murmurs at faces not familiar enough to slow down for (and the shame of realizing you make that distinction). The exaggerated sip of your hot beverage of choice. Leaning back into your chair and being suddenly aware in that moment of the silence around you, the steady snowfall outside, the intense lighting surrounding you, almost lulling you into acquiescence for this sort of life.

Do you marvel at the slow uncoiling of your heart? Are you surprised, you who thought, it was all under control? Do you slowly feel the rushing of your blood slowing down? I sometimes look at my hands and wonder at the strangeness of it all.

The inescapable sigh in your voice, I hope you don't ignore it. The tug of gravity feels stronger, you imagine your swaying is somehow the earth's fault.

In the end, you shrug, realizing there is only so much you want to do. This is your one life. The chapter of tiredness deserves only so many words, so many pages.