2011

Do you ever feel like you're on this bike, and you've been pedaling in place for a really long time because your tires are stuck in mud, but when you finally break and decide to check out what's going on and you look behind you and you see an entirely different landscape and you look in front of you and the horizon has gotten infinitely closer and it turns out you'd been moving all along?

I feel like that all the time. Happy new year.

Rebel girl, you are the queen of my world!

Today, whilst on the phone with my boyfriend, I said that I'd been listening to a lot of Bikini Kill lately. "Oh," he replied. "Goodbye." I laughed.

"I mean, if you wanna grow out your armpit hair and rip your bra in half, go ahead," he continued.
"At this point in my life, I think I'm less likely to become a true riotgrrl, so don't worry about it," I responded, jokingly.

Thinking about it, if I had gotten seriously into Bikini Kill when I was 14 and getting into punk, I might have turned out to be a super-feminist Kathleen Hanna wannabe with an attitude and a nose ring and an uncensored hatred of patriarchy. I consider myself a reasonable feminist who just wants a continuation of the progression society has seen in the past 20 years or so of equal rights. But shit, growing up with my mother who is an ultra-feminist to the point of having a "women can do everything better" standpoint, listening to Rebel Girl in my formative teen years could have sent me over the edge.

I was reading about the mini-feud between Bikini Kill and NOFX recently. First of all, I love reading about band feuds. It just makes me feel like the world of music, which seems so large and intimidating and all encompassing, can actually be really small and splintered. Anyway, apparently Kathleen Hanna called NOFX a bunch of misogynists (perhaps for their numerous annoyingly uninformed songs about lesbians?) causing them to write the song "Kill Rock Stars," a direct attack on Hanna.

"Kill the rockstars" how ironic, Kathleen 
You've been crowned the newest queen 
Kinda like the punk rock Gloria Steinham 
You can't change the world by blaming men 
Can't change the world by hating men
Alternative\Republican

Just cause I don't know the reason you're so pissed 
Don't dare tag me mysoginist 
I thought the goal here was mutual respect 
Not constructing a separate sect 
I wish I could have seen Courtney 
Demonstrate some real misogyny 
Can't change the world by hating men 


While I am certainly not a fan of NOFX's "Creeping Out Sara," (Maybe I just pissed her off when I asked her if her sister and her had ever had a threesome/Where they both ganged up on one girl/
A fourgy or a five-some/ Do they think strap-ons are groovy?) and also the Courtney Love ref was kinda lame, I can see Fat Mike's point on this one. It's really hard to get people to listen to you if you're constantly berating them. Feminism is such a sore point with men now because they've been hearing about it from strongly opinionated women like Hanna, who don't see a discussion to be had--only a lesson to be taught. I've seen this at AU with Women's Initiative. WI claims to want to create a dialogue between men and women, and then turn around and make sweeping statements about men based on the few shitty sexist assholes they've come across. And it sucks for everyone involved. Men feel attacked, and thus feminism gets a really bad rap. The riotgrrl movement was a really awesome way for women to get out into the music scene, which I really appreciate because that's a tough thing to do--especially in a typically boys-club genre like punk or hardcore. I think it was fucking great that this movement happened, and I think women needed it. But besides empowerment within the female community, I don't know how much positive impact the movement had on society as a whole. 

But Bikini Kill is sweet--they're rough and rude and unapologetic, and sometimes you need that. I'm a feminist and I believe all that Kathleen Hanna, Kim Gordon, and Allison Wolfe believe about reproductive rights, rape, domestic abuse, and freedom of sexuality. But I know that to really see equality--to really get both genders on the same page--there may need to be less screaming, and more listening.

127 Hours.

Aron Ralston was 28 years old in May of 2003, hiking Blue John Canyon in Utah when a boulder became dislodged and crushed his right forearm, pinning it against the wall of the canyon. He stayed trapped in the narrow crevice for five days. 127 hours-- until finally, in order to get out alive, he cut his arm off with a dull pocket-knife.

I was 12 when this happened. "Holy shit," my dad told me when I got home from school one day. "A hiker in Utah cut off his own fucking arm with a knife. A fucking pocket knife! His arm was trapped under a boulder. So he cut it off. Can you believe that?" I couldn't.

After seeing the film 127 Hours today, I can. James Franco plays Ralston, a mountaineering adrenaline junkie with the knowledge and the balls to bear out most of his daring adventures. But, like most of what happens to us in life, a stupid, simple slip of his foot ended the life he had lived up until that moment. In the course of probably 30 seconds, Ralston found himself in a narrow chasm with a 400 pound rock on top of his right arm.

127 Hours could have been claustrophobic. Dull. Slow-moving. Torturous. But it wasn't--it was one of the most compelling movies I've ever seen in my life. The camera was constantly moving, cutting back to images, flashbacks, fantasies. We saw Ralston's thoughts, his memories, his desires. Counterposed with the fast-pace journey of his brain was the slow turn of days into nights as Ralston tried every escape method he could with painstaking concentration.

After spending 75 minutes or so with Ralston, watching him narrate the occurrence on his Camcorder, mentally beat himself up for not telling anyone where he was going, attempt to erode the rock with his knife and drink his own urine, I was ready for him to cut his arm off. There was no other way to get out alive. I could see it, and so could Franco, as he bent his arm backward against the boulder and broke it. In a five minute sequence, he tied a hand crafted tourniquet around his bicep, jammed his pocketknife into his arm and began to saw.

I don't know that anyone can perceive desperation and willpower until they've seen this movie. As stupid and arrogant and dangerous as it is to not tell anyone where you're going, one has to admire someone like Aron Ralston. Holy shit.

waking up

Nothing stays the same, and yet everything here is almost as I left it. My kitchen looks like it did in 1998 when we first moved into this house, but I opened my silverware drawer today and found we have a new divider. My bathroom has had the same shower curtain for years, but it was completely bare because my parents were showing our house to prospective buyers. My cats are getting old and my parents' friends are getting sick. And my friends are still goofy and dumb, but they've changed too, marked by the dark approachment of adulthood and independence.

This past summer was a standstill for me. Things were hot and simple and fun but I felt like I was missing so much of my life in D.C. And when I came back in the fall, people had changed and I guess I had too. It's hard to know where I am and what I want. I feel like a ball rolling toward an undetermined destination without a conscious mind. Sometimes I open my eyes and it's like I've been on autopilot for the last couple of weeks and my life has been cycling without me. Like I've been watching myself go through motions, watching myself fuck things up, watching myself be selfish, mean, careless.

But other times I feel good, like I'm doing things right, different, better. Like I'm meeting the world rather than waiting for it.

My life is different now: different than it was two years ago, last year, last summer. I have to find a way to be okay with it.

climbing with no harness

I sense that we are

Losing our ground.

I’m trying not to fall but

I am constantly grabbing a stone

That is slipping.

I am smoking with asthma

I am drinking with a sick liver

I am buying furry cat upon furry cat—

And sneezing all the while.

I sense that our tongues are drying.

I talk for hours to my bedroom wall.

What a pleasant companion it is:

Stuck holding the floor and the ceiling together

Forced, then, to listen to my incessant chatter,

My insecure wonderings,

My silly questions—

Such silly questions.

I hear the creaking of a door closing,

Anticipating the wind in my face when it is finally

Shut.

Cool party. Like, what's your major?

The Saturday of Halloween weekend is the prime night to get ridiculously drunk. At my college, this is the night when frat parties are the perfect location to let loose, and abandon those inhibitions--and maybe a few articles of clothing. All are eager to gulp down free jungle juice--a hideous and deadly combination of Everclear and some variation of fruit punch--and cat piss that passes for beer. I wish I could say I was above this American Pie aspect of a college career, but I usually enjoy going to frat parties. They're fun and stupid, and technically free. So, why not?
American University is a dry campus. Thus our frat houses aren't on campus. Thus the way to get to these parties is through a ride system. This means a mass of people wait in a designated area, just hoping to be the apple of some frat bro's eye. Unsurprisingly, girls have an easier time with the transportation. But, with a 60-40 ratio of women to men, there are usually tons of cute girls waiting for a ride, and the brothers in charge of prioritizing pretty much have your night in their hands. So, basically, if you are a female and you'd like to get a ride to a frat party, and you don't happen to have any sort of connection, you're going to have to talk to one of these dudes in order to distinguish yourself from the pack as being desirable enough to get first ride.
There are some girls who are masters at this, my roommate being one of them. It is incredibly impressive to watch. They go up to these guys and just start talking to them, smiling widely and joking with them. Making their mark in the frat hierarchy. Last night was no exception. I watched girl after girl approach the guy who seemed to be in charge--a short Jewish dude wearing a red-velour pimp suit with zebra trimming, who used his pimp cane to point at groups. A guy who I therefore, unfortunately for me, could not take seriously enough to converse with.
But I realized, standing out in that cold parking lot and watching these girls, that I just can't really do it at all. I just cannot bring myself to attempt to befriend someone simply for the purposes of getting a ride to a sweaty party. I can't try to smile and giggle with someone who doesn't seem terribly interesting--a pimp suit? Really?--and who I don't particularly care about. It feels cheap and annoying to me, and I feel fake whenever I try. Also, I'm kind of bad at it. Since I don't see the conversation going beyond, "Can, like, me and my hot friends get a ride," and "Yeah, totally," I'm not too invested in a blossoming friendship. And why should I be?
I want to spend my time talking to people that matter to me. I just don't see the point in talking to douche-bags in pimp suits who would probably rather not be talking to me unless I seem like a promising attendee. And apparently my bright smile and sparkling wit are on permanent mute when I'm standing in a cold-ass parking lot, trying not to roll my eyes. I just don't feel like being charming, so I'm unsurprised when frat boys are less than enthusiastic about my intended arrival. This is clearly my own fault: I understand the system perfectly and I still ignore it.
But I just can't muster up the energy or gusto to extend my half of the conversation beyond, "So, how do you like Greek life?" I guess my secret misanthropy is out to ruin my good, clean, fraternal fun. Oh, well.

NYC

I went to New York, where the people are deliciously vulgar--you motherfuckin' bitch, fuck that, cocksucker can eat shit--and the streets are piled with natives running their routes like trained hamsters,or else tourists biting the apple, and everyone is walking on top of each other, avoiding the dirty bums who look you straight in the eye and know you, and the buildings are tall, but it's really the multimedia screens in Times Square that engulf you with their impossible neonety and moving advertisements screeching at you to buy clothes and watch television, a nightmarish prophecy that only Aldous Huxley could have dreamed up, and there's dirt, dirt, dirt, and New York City doesn't have any alleys, so the trash bags are on the streets and a certain smell takes over, a rich, ripe, real smell, it's sentient, it smells like humans, the waste that we make, the waste that we are, and there are still more people pushing you, God, there must be a million, jillion people on this street, everyone in the whole world is on 43rd street with you and they're all a thrumming, throbbing mass trying to cross the street onto their important lives.

When the sun goes down in New York City, life is different. The dark lets the dirt and smell live peacefully unnoticed, and the tourists with children retire to their overpriced hotel rooms. The energy levels from a boisterous nightmare to a quiet excitement, a slow and steady rhythm. Because it's cool, it's sweet, so sweet to be in a city at night and to feel the dark lift your feet. People laugh more at night, because they're done with work, and it's time to feel good, to feel like you're actually thrumming with this strange pulse instead of fighting against it.

I won't ever live in New York City. But I may go back.