Stuff

For most of my adult life all of my worldly possessions fit into two boxes and a suitcase. I amassed furniture and books and all of the usual detritus and then I'd move and sell most of it. I usually needed the money. I did hold onto one book. I always dreamed of doing pottery. I did take a class and now own two thick bottomed, badly glazed, small pots in which I stash pens and pencils. But I love the thinking in the book. The cover is now ragged.

I have three pair of scissors. Four if you count the Joyce Chen's. One I got when I was working at EA and needed a pair often enough to rationalize buying one. One Mom sent me in the endless supply of stuff she's getting rid of and one I got years ago to cut yarn.

I mean.

Why?

How did this happen?

It's sort of good to have a pair in the kitchen (other than the JC's since they are for food alone) and a pair at the desk. I guess.

I have lived in my apartment longer than I have lived anywhere, ever. I have many, many more books. More clothes. Furniture that I like. Kitchen stuff. Posters in frames. Little plastic animals that came out of bars in three different states.

I mean ...

The thing is I kind of like it. Not the three (four) pair of scissors exactly. It feels like I'm more rooted than I've ever been. It's not true because someday I will need to move to a place with no stairs.

Oh. Lord. How many boxes will I need?

No Fat Kings

I've been watching the last season of The Tudors. I don't get HBO so I always see these things a long time after they air and there is a long time before I see a new season. From the beginning I was confused by the choice of actors to play Henry and wondered how they would make him fat. I cringe at the idea of a fat suit but they would be using makeup to age him so ... maybe it would be OK. It never happens. Henry never seems to age and he never really gains weight. He gets some grey hair, walks with a bit of a limp and is a bit padded but really it's all pretty token.

I'm hyper aware of how fat people are represented in culture. Henry has always been an icon of gluttony and excess, which seems historically accurate. It would be silly to be offended by that portrayal. But HBO ignores it. I spent sometime this morning listening to interviews with the actor who explains this as HBO trying to make the history more appealing to young people.

I used to get this kind of feedback when I worked on The Sims. One art director said to always make pretty Sims. Pretty? What does that mean? Sims are cartoons. I often heard people refer to a Sim as "hot". Our ideas about beauty are so distorted that cartoons are thought of as "hot". The Sims 3 has great tools to make a real variety of Sims but we needed to make "pretty" Sims. What comes first? Ideas about beauty? Or Media portrayals that teach a narrow idea of beauty?

Henry is not an endearing guy. In this series he is portrayed in a somewhat complicated manner. He is manipulative, paranoid, self centered and cruel but he is also loving, generous and interested in learning. I like all of that. But he is also always young and virile and never fat. This is the kind of thing that usually makes me angry but it's so extreme I find myself somewhere between stunned and bemused. I'm not an expert on the time but it seems that a fair amount of money has been spent on historically accurate costumes and sets. So why not lean toward a more physically accurate Henry?

The acting is pretty good. The writing is pretty good. Anne Boleyn gets more coverage than any of the other wives. It's entertaining. I just wonder why it has to be so ... thin.

Movie Theology

I have never read the Harry Potter books. I'm sure they're a fun read but I'm not that into fantasy fiction and there are always other books clamoring for my attention. And I've never seen the movies from beginning to end. I've seen most of them in chunks on TV. This weekend there was a marathon and I kept seeing ten or twenty minutes here and there. On Sunday I just kept it on all day. I still wasn't sitting and watching so I still have holes in my understanding but there were things that I really liked.

I like that Harry is suspicious of his own specialness. In one scene his friends were talking up some of his feats and he said they were mostly about luck and nothing to envy. He wants to understand why he is who he is but he worries that his difference may make keep him separate.

Oprah has thing about not believing in luck. She says luck is about preparation and being ready when opportunity arrives. Some times. Maybe.

Earlier in the weekend the Matrix movies were in a marathon. It almost embarrassed me to admit how much I like those movies. The fight scenes are dance like and the mash-up of religion and philosophy makes me smile. I like the bring it on hand gesture.

There's a moment like that in one of the Potter films. He doesn't really want to fight but he really has no choice. Even though he has no choice it still matters that he makes one. He stands in the moment. I've always liked the hero journey thematically.

Maybe I felt the need for some kind of theological musing since it was suppose to be the end of the world.

A friend has been reading this book. I downloaded a sample and it's interesting. He talks about not being able to distinguish good things from bad. He mentions realizing that having Cancer brought him closer to his family and friends but the radiation caused the heart disease he has now.

Movie theology always has an arc. Life is more meandering. The rapture is rescheduled.

More time to prepare I suppose.

Bully This

I'm listening to a hearing on bullying. Some guy is talking about free speech and the marginalization of people who think being gay is a sin.

God forbid.

Now a guy is talking about the separation of conduct and speech. Such a lucid rebuttal.

Lately I've been thinking about the It Gets Better campaign. It is wonderful and has my complete support but I feel resentful when I see it. I want to start a campaign for fat kids. I want to tell them it will not get better. They live in a country committed to labeling them as diseased. When they are bullied (and make no mistake, they are) they will be told to lose weight. It won't stop when they grow up. They will have trouble in employment. They will rarely see positive representation of themselves in media. Their health care will focus on their weight and sometimes miss other more serious issues. They may not have access to public environments because they may not fit in the seats and if they travel they may have to pay more or be asked to get off a plane and that may mean they miss any number of important events. Assumptions will be made about what they eat and how much they exercise. They will have to work so hard to hold on to their own experience and their own truth. Their families and friends may love them but may still want them to be something that they cannot really be. Again and again they will be told to eat less and exercise more and all the problems will go away.

And some of them will lose weight. They won't be thin. They may look thin but they will have a new battle. Fat people who have lost weight always describe it as a battle. They will have a damaged relationship to food and appetite. They will have a damaged relationship to physical activity. And all of this will be in the name of health.

Health.

It will not get better.

They will have a great opportunity for self definition and self understanding but they will need to do all that alone.

It's never useful to compare oppressions and there is lots of competition for the last acceptable form of discrimination but I am sure it will be weight based. There is no doubt in my mind.

It will not get better.

I don't think I am read much by the fat revolution community any more. I don't write much so why should I be? I imagine some of them reading this and wanting to call me from what must sound like despair. This isn't about despair. This is about hearing the same people who talk about the horrors of bullying talk about the horrors of childhood obesity. Because after all it's about health.

Health.

It's not about health. It's about hate and social control.

And it's also about my mood today. It's about my window being covered with rain and my COBRA running out and not getting enough sleep. It's about being angry the way a wounded animal is angry. It's about thinking the guy stepping off the back of the ferry into the Mississippi was selfish and wishing I could be that selfish.

Bully this.

Context

A sad truth about me is that I'm not really at home in the natural world. I like nature. Even a ride through the Presidio with the smell of Eucalyptus in the air makes me happy in the way only nature can. But I don't want to spend the night in a tent somewhere. This lack of comfort is especially true when it comes to animals. I love them. But I'm a little bit afraid of most of them.

Sunday I was sitting at the computer and I heard a bird chirping. It was so loud I figured it was right outside my kitchen window. Wrong. It was inside my kitchen window. Then it was flying around my living room. And I was out my front door. A humming bird the size of my big toe had chased me out of my home. Every time I tried to go back in the little guy flew around chirping. Intellectuality I knew I was being crazy but I was completely undone. Visions of Tippi Hendren danced in my head. Eventually the bird went back into the kitchen and I closed the door to the living room. After a realllly long time he flew out the window.

I've been trying to write a post about politics for a week or so. I think I used to do that a lot more often but these days I don't have much to say. I can go on and on. I can always go on and on. But, why? The left and the right sound the same to me. I agree with most of what the left has to say and cringe at the extreme right but so often they sound like resounding gongs and clanging symbols.

But then Republican Governors started trying to destroy Democracy and, oh lord! The push back! The push back is so amazing! And then there is the Arab Spring. It's like people are all standing up and saying: enough. It's all very encouraging. Scary and worrisome but also thrilling.

I heard about the release of the birth certificate first thing in the morning. I just felt sad. I understood why he did it but he should never have had to do it. After a day of listening to news talk I was back to being frustrated and angry. Was the wedding next? A day full of split screens with the wedding on one side and tornado destruction on the other. And of course the latest news. I liked the apparently not exactly MLK quote twice on Facebook.

It's been a wild ride and it seems like it may continue. I'm always filled with more than one emotion. Intellectually understanding and still feeling undone.

Later on Sunday I was having coffee in the Ferry Building where pigeons fly in and out and hover waiting for a dropped crumb. They never bother me.

Context is everything.

The Time is Always Now

In November Lewis Lapham wrote the last Notebook essay for Harpers. He was abstract in his explanation of why but I think he's just doing other things. I've had that issue of Harpers open on my scanner since then because of the last line.

I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.

At the time I think I had something to say in response. Something about writing. Something about the maze of the eternal present and/or the prison of the self. I don't remember. Mom was here and I become absorbed by the need to make a meal or help with something. And then she was gone and I gave myself permission to space out for awhile. The eternal present is, in fact, a maze. In another line from that last paragraph Lapham says it more clearly than I.

The time is always now, and what gets lost is all thought of what happened yesterday, last week, three months or three years ago.

I wouldn't say all thought is lost but certainly whatever (no doubt) (cough) brilliant thing I was intending to write has gone. And, more to the point, nothing has replaced it. But I've been reading more. And reading makes me think about writing. It might be a beginning.

Or just another maze.

Gleek

So....I was confused after I watched Glee the other night. Leslie Kinzel wrote a post close to what I might have written. Convenient because she embedded some video and does a break down of the show. I don't have as many issues with the show in general and I like Puck. The possibly redeemable bad boy is always charming to me. Where Leslie and I had the exact same reaction was when the fat girl finds Fat Bottom Girl offensive.

Wait. What? Indeed.

I've been thinking about it ever since. I've always loved the song. The suggestion that a fat nanny molested her charge is problematic but ... it's Queen. The hyper sexualization of fat bottomed girls is problematic. I guess. But I don't really have big issues with all of that. And when Puck was singing it I was thrilled. It was also a moment when we saw the fat girl soften.

I haven't loved the Ashely Fink character. She is always eating candy and she's just unpleasant. But she is also strong and self assured. Never more so than in this episode. and the softening, sweetness we see as the song is being sung to her adds dimension. She was extremely cool in every way but the song made her feel "like crap".

Wait. What?

My first size acceptance moments were somewhat passive. I wasn't loving being fat. I was just deciding to not hate it. I've never really celebrated being fat. I can't really get there. I don't celebrate things that aren't particularly interesting to me. Appearance is not interesting to me. I enjoy the feeling when I look in the mirror and think I look good. I enjoy seeing my friends and family when they look good, which they pretty much always do. I enjoy loving a physical feature when I'm feeling attractive. But these experiences are fleeting. I celebrate when something feels like change and joy and realization.

In the early days I didn't want to talk about being fat. I wanted it to not matter. As time has gone on I've realized how much a part of my identity being fat is. It's an important part of why I am who I am. And I am more aggressively fat in the sense that I do not suffer any foolishness about it. It's a political identity. I want nothing less than full inclusion.

I wish the show would have been more clear about why the character didn't like the song. There is an assumption that the audience would know why. It's confusing. It doesn't fit the character.

Puck also wooed Mercedes. And she was similarly dismissive of advances. I like that. I like that these young women have a sense of their own value. And I still love Mercedes rejecting the idea that she needed to lose weight and singing I Am Beautiful so powerfully. Glee does come through with a strong positive message about diversity. Generally speaking.

I have a similar experience when I talk about the fat revolution with people. The idea that being fat is an illness and must be confronted and changed is so deeply rooted. It's really hard for people make a full change of perception. Many of my best friends (including some in the fat revolution camp) hold onto the idea that fat equals wrong. I think that's why time and time again we see people from the revolution hedging on television when asked if they wouldn't rather be thin.

Recently I noticed that I seem to give people the impression that I believe I can't lose weight. I don't believe that. I do believe that I can't be thin. I've had the experience too many times. I lose weight but I never get to thin. And I don't care. This is my body.

Oddly enough I heard Oprah articulating how I feel in an interview with Barbara Walters. She said that she knows how much she needs to exercise and eat to lose weight and she isn't interested in living like that. She exercises. She eats in a healthy manner. She still wishes she was thin. But what has been so obvious with Oprah is that her body returns to fat if she doesn't work out like an athlete and eat with hyper vigilance. She seems to have given up on that.

So I think the thing that wasn't being said Glee was something like this fat girl is attractive and strong and does not need your approval but ... she'd rather be thin.

Maybe.

Something like that.

Sigh.