I waste time. I watch TV, I get on the internet... and things don't get done.
I did clean the kitchen and the bathroom tonight. I did the laundry.
Jay and Dwayne are possibly coming over Sunday for dinner so that gives me a reason to clean.
I am going to see The Labirynth (yes, the David Bowie flick of your youth) tomorrow night with some friends from work. Every time I plan things with them I think, Should I stay in Chicago?
I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do. I have lives planned in my mind in multiple cities. They are similar yet vastly different. In each of these lives I carry with me the fear that I should be somewhere else and I just wonder why I can't find a home, a place where my soul resides, a place I know I need to be. And then I think what if I never find that and I spend my whole life dragging my husband and dog back and forth across the country, packing up my life, renting a U-Haul, getting new checks, new address labels... what if I never find a home?
My soul is unsettled. I feel like, for the first time in a long time, I have things figured out. I know what I want to do with my life (well, mostly) and I know what I'm good at. I know who I'm going through life with. I know what's important to me. I know what I believe.
But there's this part of me that calls me somewhere else, says I'm not standing in the right place, shifts the land under my feet until I topple over, legs and arms, mind and heart, tossed in different directions. I don't know where to go.
I don't know where I belong. My independent spirit is better suited to the thirteen year old I once was, when the world was wide open and nothing tied me anywhere. I like what ties me to Chicago: my hubby, my dog, my friends, my house... but when you're that young, when you're thirteen... you think, maybe I'll live in Oregon, on the coast, in a lakehouse. I'll write all day long. That's all I want. When you aren't thirteen, when you've lived some of your life, you realize that you probably couldn't afford a lakehouse in Oregon, you wonder how you'd drive your carsick dog that far, and you wonder if your current condo has enough resale value yet. You worry. When you're thirteen it just sounds like fun. Everything is plausible.
I know I am still so so young. I know I don't have kids (not that I ever will), I know I don't lead a life that bores me... I have ambitions, I have a passion for life. But so often I miss the girl I was when life first began to present its options to me, when I had all the confidence in the world, when my choices were not attached to job prospects, real estate...adult stuff.
I know we all remember the past more fondly sometimes. I know I'm not unique. But somedays, as I ride the bus south, along the lakefront, or when I walk around the city, I just think.
I think.
I wonder what the hell I'm doing.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
why i write
At night, my balloon lamp glowing in the corner, my collection of Trolls and E.T. memorobilia casting shadows on the wallls, my parents would take turns reading to me, my little brain imagining the illustrations, the scenes, the faces. I decided that for each year of my life I should get one book. So, the night of my fifth birthday, I selected five books for my mom to read me. They were short picture books, but still a hefty load for a mother who'd worked all day and then worked all night at her second job as a wife to my dying father and as a mother to my adventurous young self.
While my mom did most of the reading in the house, my dad did most of the writing. He had been somewhat of a freelance journalist in his hometown on Bayonne, New Jersey. After we moved to Indiana, he would send the newspaper back home regular updates on his new life outside of the city. I imagine him lamenting the homogenous cul de sac we called home, dreaming of the immigrant neighbors he once knew who would bring him bread and stews in his bachelor days and came to bless me with their spells and potions when I was born. He wrote to them about his luck in finding an Irish community in his new city, but how they were all men merely decending from "the green place" and some had never even been there. With pride he recounted being chosen to ride on the Ancient Order of Hibernians float in the Indianapolis St. Patrick's Day parade. I wonder how many people read my father's words so far away in his old life, his old city. I wonder how many of them still remember a passage or a word or a quote or even his name.
My few memories of him lead me to our solid oak dining table where he always sat to write. He would set out his mug that read "DAN" in huge brown letters down the side, fill it with tea, and then begin to write. I remember hearing the typewriter that always sounds so loud and obnoxious in movies, but at home it came out like waves on the bottom of a boat, or a breeze, or rain.
Whether it was an actual joy I found in words while being read to, a way to mimic my father, or the realization that I would never be able to mimic my mother's musical abilities, I took to stapling together construction paper, making my own paperback books. I would examine books my father had by his bed or by the sofa or in the car or in the kitchen---he read everywhere. I would examine the way the books looked and remake them. On the back of my homemade books I would draw a picture of myself and write a short biography. I would make a cover, a title page, and leave a blank page before the story started like I often observed in "real" books. I would hold books, smell there musty pages, their clean and new pages, listened to the way their spined snapped, the way the library's protective plastic jacket crackled, the definitive way the pages and covers came together with a slam. I got to know their bodies in an intimate way, opening them and closing them and holding them just to see how it felt.
Too young to tackle all of the pages in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, my mom took me to see it in the theatres when Susan Sarandon and Winona Rider made it a popular story again. I felt a sudden kinship with Jo when Professor Bear pointed to her ink-stained hand. Her travel to big cities and lofty universities became my visions of my future, and the image that I tried to articulate when adults would ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Traveling to New Jersey and New York the year after my father died to visit his family, I thought about the movie and if I'd ever live in New York, and if my dad would be proud that while he left his urban home, I would come back to it.
One of my favorite writers these days is Thomas Lynch. He is an undertaker by trade, and it greatly influences his writing. His ideas about death and life are attractive to that part of me who encountered the death of my father at a young age. It helps explain it to me, explain my mother's actions at the time, explain the way I felt. Most importantly though, Lynch's lapsed yet loyal Catholicism and his Irish heritage bring me to my living father. The concrete memories of him are few, but the essence of the Irishman, writing in a darkened dining room in the suburbs of Indianapolis in my youth haunt me, taunt me, make up a crucial part of my identity. Perhaps his identity as a writer is why my identity is so tied to words. It is me, but it is also him. I am not the first Sweeney to claim space on pages of newpapers and journals, to struggle for hours in a dark house in the wee hours of the morning, the love of my life supporting me, but also finding it strange. I am the second, even if I'm the last, I am the second, so that my father was not the last. So that he is not entirely gone. So that he is still with me in a real way that I can touch, see, and believe. Not relegated to a ghostly or angelic make believe, hovering above me with a god I have never been able to acknowledge as present or plausible, but hovering in my mind, in my hands, in my words. He is there. So am I.
While my mom did most of the reading in the house, my dad did most of the writing. He had been somewhat of a freelance journalist in his hometown on Bayonne, New Jersey. After we moved to Indiana, he would send the newspaper back home regular updates on his new life outside of the city. I imagine him lamenting the homogenous cul de sac we called home, dreaming of the immigrant neighbors he once knew who would bring him bread and stews in his bachelor days and came to bless me with their spells and potions when I was born. He wrote to them about his luck in finding an Irish community in his new city, but how they were all men merely decending from "the green place" and some had never even been there. With pride he recounted being chosen to ride on the Ancient Order of Hibernians float in the Indianapolis St. Patrick's Day parade. I wonder how many people read my father's words so far away in his old life, his old city. I wonder how many of them still remember a passage or a word or a quote or even his name.
My few memories of him lead me to our solid oak dining table where he always sat to write. He would set out his mug that read "DAN" in huge brown letters down the side, fill it with tea, and then begin to write. I remember hearing the typewriter that always sounds so loud and obnoxious in movies, but at home it came out like waves on the bottom of a boat, or a breeze, or rain.
Whether it was an actual joy I found in words while being read to, a way to mimic my father, or the realization that I would never be able to mimic my mother's musical abilities, I took to stapling together construction paper, making my own paperback books. I would examine books my father had by his bed or by the sofa or in the car or in the kitchen---he read everywhere. I would examine the way the books looked and remake them. On the back of my homemade books I would draw a picture of myself and write a short biography. I would make a cover, a title page, and leave a blank page before the story started like I often observed in "real" books. I would hold books, smell there musty pages, their clean and new pages, listened to the way their spined snapped, the way the library's protective plastic jacket crackled, the definitive way the pages and covers came together with a slam. I got to know their bodies in an intimate way, opening them and closing them and holding them just to see how it felt.
Too young to tackle all of the pages in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, my mom took me to see it in the theatres when Susan Sarandon and Winona Rider made it a popular story again. I felt a sudden kinship with Jo when Professor Bear pointed to her ink-stained hand. Her travel to big cities and lofty universities became my visions of my future, and the image that I tried to articulate when adults would ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Traveling to New Jersey and New York the year after my father died to visit his family, I thought about the movie and if I'd ever live in New York, and if my dad would be proud that while he left his urban home, I would come back to it.
One of my favorite writers these days is Thomas Lynch. He is an undertaker by trade, and it greatly influences his writing. His ideas about death and life are attractive to that part of me who encountered the death of my father at a young age. It helps explain it to me, explain my mother's actions at the time, explain the way I felt. Most importantly though, Lynch's lapsed yet loyal Catholicism and his Irish heritage bring me to my living father. The concrete memories of him are few, but the essence of the Irishman, writing in a darkened dining room in the suburbs of Indianapolis in my youth haunt me, taunt me, make up a crucial part of my identity. Perhaps his identity as a writer is why my identity is so tied to words. It is me, but it is also him. I am not the first Sweeney to claim space on pages of newpapers and journals, to struggle for hours in a dark house in the wee hours of the morning, the love of my life supporting me, but also finding it strange. I am the second, even if I'm the last, I am the second, so that my father was not the last. So that he is not entirely gone. So that he is still with me in a real way that I can touch, see, and believe. Not relegated to a ghostly or angelic make believe, hovering above me with a god I have never been able to acknowledge as present or plausible, but hovering in my mind, in my hands, in my words. He is there. So am I.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
I was watching LA Ink last night (don't judge me...) and a girl came into the shop wanting a tattoo of Rosie the Riveter... except "Can you, like, make her face skinnier? Make her prettier?" The girl basically wanted a sexy pin-up girl with a bandana on her head, flexing a muscle. Which is fine...but the girl was talking about this tat being a symbol of the strength of females in her life.
She used the term, "Girl Power."
I remember "girl power" as being something on obnoxious pink t-shirts when I was a little girl. The words were usually surrounded by something typically female, like flowers, and other shirts hanging near it said things like, "Girls Rule, Boys Drool." What this does to establish equality between the genders, or to empower women alone, I'm not sure. But I got to thinking about it after this girl on LA Ink kept using the phrase Girl Power. I thought, do you mean Feminism?
Maybe feminism is too scary a word for some people. Probably, because most people think it means they can't love men, or they have to be butch, or a myriad of other things that we all know too well. While some women have identified as feminists through cutting their hair and not sleeping with men, feminism is in, fact defined as a quest for equality between the sexes. And isn't that what we all want? What's so scary about that?
It's the reason no one in mainstream politics calls themselves a feminist, or even uses the word. We talk in code about "women's issues" or the "female vote" ...even Hillary, who has been so supported by feminists unwilling to vote for anyone else, merely to see a fellow sister in the presidency, doesn't use the word. Because it has become loaded and scary.
I think that's an example of why we need feminism more than ever. Those who don't want equality between the genders LOVE that we're afraid of the word, afraid of the movement, afraid to take action because we don't want the label. That keeps us deradicalized, decentralized, and silent. Perfect.
So what we have today, instead, is Girl Power. What ideology exists behind this phrase? Surely not dialogue about reproductive rights, the suffrage or equal pay. It is vague and void. It doesn't tell girls what their power is, or what power they don't have that they should.
Feminist theory and thought exists so women can talk about these oppressions. It exists so we might no longer be oppressed. Girl Power just doesn't cut it.
I guess the girl on LA Ink really did mean girl power, and not feminism. Making Rosie the Riveter skinnier and prettier... seeing beauty the way a man might see beauty rather than a woman, a FEMINIST, who might look at a woman like Rosie and see the beauty in her strength, her ability to have short hair and wear something besides a dress.
But, just as Rosie the Riveter served as a temporary propaganda poster during the war, feminism seems to have served an older generation, their wants and needs, and now the heart and soul of it is gone. It has been reduced to girl power.
When I saw Judy Shepherd (Matthew Shepherd's mother) speak about her son's murder and the current state of gay rights, she asked, Where all of my hippie friends? Where all of my student protesters? Where have you gone?
Where have you gone? The new generation doesn't understand the work you did for us because, well, you're not doing it anymore. Where are you?
She used the term, "Girl Power."
I remember "girl power" as being something on obnoxious pink t-shirts when I was a little girl. The words were usually surrounded by something typically female, like flowers, and other shirts hanging near it said things like, "Girls Rule, Boys Drool." What this does to establish equality between the genders, or to empower women alone, I'm not sure. But I got to thinking about it after this girl on LA Ink kept using the phrase Girl Power. I thought, do you mean Feminism?
Maybe feminism is too scary a word for some people. Probably, because most people think it means they can't love men, or they have to be butch, or a myriad of other things that we all know too well. While some women have identified as feminists through cutting their hair and not sleeping with men, feminism is in, fact defined as a quest for equality between the sexes. And isn't that what we all want? What's so scary about that?
It's the reason no one in mainstream politics calls themselves a feminist, or even uses the word. We talk in code about "women's issues" or the "female vote" ...even Hillary, who has been so supported by feminists unwilling to vote for anyone else, merely to see a fellow sister in the presidency, doesn't use the word. Because it has become loaded and scary.
I think that's an example of why we need feminism more than ever. Those who don't want equality between the genders LOVE that we're afraid of the word, afraid of the movement, afraid to take action because we don't want the label. That keeps us deradicalized, decentralized, and silent. Perfect.
So what we have today, instead, is Girl Power. What ideology exists behind this phrase? Surely not dialogue about reproductive rights, the suffrage or equal pay. It is vague and void. It doesn't tell girls what their power is, or what power they don't have that they should.
Feminist theory and thought exists so women can talk about these oppressions. It exists so we might no longer be oppressed. Girl Power just doesn't cut it.
I guess the girl on LA Ink really did mean girl power, and not feminism. Making Rosie the Riveter skinnier and prettier... seeing beauty the way a man might see beauty rather than a woman, a FEMINIST, who might look at a woman like Rosie and see the beauty in her strength, her ability to have short hair and wear something besides a dress.
But, just as Rosie the Riveter served as a temporary propaganda poster during the war, feminism seems to have served an older generation, their wants and needs, and now the heart and soul of it is gone. It has been reduced to girl power.
When I saw Judy Shepherd (Matthew Shepherd's mother) speak about her son's murder and the current state of gay rights, she asked, Where all of my hippie friends? Where all of my student protesters? Where have you gone?
Where have you gone? The new generation doesn't understand the work you did for us because, well, you're not doing it anymore. Where are you?
Monday, February 11, 2008
We took Jake on his first long car trip this weekend. The only other time we've had him in a car was bringing him home when we adopted him. On the way back, he drooled more than any dog I have ever seen. But the trip wasn't that far, and once we got him out, he stopped. We laughed it off. Apparently he drools a little when he gets nervous.
A little turned into buckets during our three hours to Indy. It was, without any exaggeration, as if there was a faucet in his face that wouldn't turn off. We had his blanket under him, and there were good portion of the blanket that were saturated, soaked through, with drool. His little paws looked as if he'd been jumping in puddles. It was funny...and gross. I guess cars make him nervous yet, and it makes sense. Some of us humans sweat when we get nervous, and dogs "sweat" by panting. If this was what happened, Jake was one nervous dude.
Pictures will come later today when I get home. I can't describe it well enough to give you the full effect. Hilarious.
I'm starting to worry about our sanities, though. I have this voice that I do...that is supposed to be Jake. I think it is how Jake would speak, and more than once on our car ride, "Jake" and David and Mary-Margaret had coversations. They weren't long. Don't lock me up yet. But perhaps the two humans in Jake's life should be mindful of the trend, and to keep it in check.
A little turned into buckets during our three hours to Indy. It was, without any exaggeration, as if there was a faucet in his face that wouldn't turn off. We had his blanket under him, and there were good portion of the blanket that were saturated, soaked through, with drool. His little paws looked as if he'd been jumping in puddles. It was funny...and gross. I guess cars make him nervous yet, and it makes sense. Some of us humans sweat when we get nervous, and dogs "sweat" by panting. If this was what happened, Jake was one nervous dude.
Pictures will come later today when I get home. I can't describe it well enough to give you the full effect. Hilarious.
I'm starting to worry about our sanities, though. I have this voice that I do...that is supposed to be Jake. I think it is how Jake would speak, and more than once on our car ride, "Jake" and David and Mary-Margaret had coversations. They weren't long. Don't lock me up yet. But perhaps the two humans in Jake's life should be mindful of the trend, and to keep it in check.
Monday, February 4, 2008
The past week has been full of emotions. I don't know where to begin. Long story short, I have realized that my friend Chris was right last year when he told me that weddings bring out the worst in people. It will bring up old family drama, old agendas, and feelings get hurt all too quickly. The strange part is, none of it has to do with the point of the wedding, which is the two people gettting married. For example, with me, it has been about my mom's husband's children and now about my mom and her best friend. Go figure. The stories are too long and not interesting to anyone else, so that is all I'll say. Weddings are ridiculous.
Speaking of weddings, a big ol' slice of heteronormativity for ya, I started classes last week and discussions taking place in my classes touching on gender/sexuality have made thinking about my wedding really interesting. It's helped me to put it in perspective, helped me to define what getting married means to me, and has helped me to, essentially, raise the middle finger to any and all who are trying to tell me, and us, what being married is all about, what a wedding is supposed to mean, and how we are supposed to go about all of it. Why is marriage this one-size-fits-all model? Not just that it's held as this ultimate goal, or ultimate state of a relationship, but that within marriage, it has to be a certain way? Again, not even something as "controversial" as same-sex marriage, but within the context of my heterosexual marriage, I am still being told how to go about it. It doesn't stop with one man marrying one woman; the DOMA definition (grrrrr Clinton!) is not enough. I have heard the following statements since expressing the fact that I am getting married:
1* "No more going out with your male friends, just the two of you! Get it out of your system now!"
2* "Well, now wherever you go to grad school he has to go...or if he finds a job in a different city than your grad school, someone will have to compromise. Shouldn't you guys wait until you're older, more settled?"
3* "When are you guys having kids?"
4* "I can't believe you're getting married. Aren't you like...a feminist or something? Aren't you a queer community ally? Are you selling out?"
1* This implies that I just won't be able to keep myself from sleeping with any of my male friends, or that they aren't trustworthy, either. Couldn't this also be said of close female friends? You don't know anything about me, jerkface! :o) Not to mention that some married couples choose to have an open relationship. I don't know that I could do it, but others can and really enjoy it. Your definition of marriage is not everyone else's.
2* Well, that ship has sailed. We own a home together. We live together. We have a dog together. I don't need a legal document to keep me in the same city, the same household, as David. I choose to do that. We've already moved to Chicago together, chosen to stay in Chicago together, and look forward to being nomadic together in the future, if that is indeed what the future holds. As David says, "we're both set...career-wise, I mean. People eat and have sex in every city."
3* Never. And I think if Planned Parenthood really stood for a woman's right to choose, you wouldn't have to be of a certain age or be psychologically evaluated before having a tubal ligation. What if we change our minds? Then we do. But I don't see how that is any of your business and where you have room to judge if our minds will change or what our lives will be missing if they don't.
4* Yeah. I'm a feminist and I'm also a huge supporter of acceptance for all types of families. David and I are already a family, legally or not, and until we can be fully recognized as such without getting legally recognized as a married couple, I guess we'll have to buy into the system. Plus, one of the issues I work behind is marriage equality...if I think everyone should have the right to marry, doesn't that mean staunch hetero feminists as well? We are planning our wedding with our morals and beliefs in mind; for instance, I am not throwing a bouquet. The idea of having my single friends clamour to be the next one plucked from her miserable spinster life is not in any way cute, not even for a photo op. We aren't using any readings with gendered language. We want the legal recognition, so we're getting it...and using it, unashamedly, to throw a big party for our friends and fam...and to register for gifts. :o)
So those are my thoughts.
If you cared.
Which you most probably don't.
Speaking of weddings, a big ol' slice of heteronormativity for ya, I started classes last week and discussions taking place in my classes touching on gender/sexuality have made thinking about my wedding really interesting. It's helped me to put it in perspective, helped me to define what getting married means to me, and has helped me to, essentially, raise the middle finger to any and all who are trying to tell me, and us, what being married is all about, what a wedding is supposed to mean, and how we are supposed to go about all of it. Why is marriage this one-size-fits-all model? Not just that it's held as this ultimate goal, or ultimate state of a relationship, but that within marriage, it has to be a certain way? Again, not even something as "controversial" as same-sex marriage, but within the context of my heterosexual marriage, I am still being told how to go about it. It doesn't stop with one man marrying one woman; the DOMA definition (grrrrr Clinton!) is not enough. I have heard the following statements since expressing the fact that I am getting married:
1* "No more going out with your male friends, just the two of you! Get it out of your system now!"
2* "Well, now wherever you go to grad school he has to go...or if he finds a job in a different city than your grad school, someone will have to compromise. Shouldn't you guys wait until you're older, more settled?"
3* "When are you guys having kids?"
4* "I can't believe you're getting married. Aren't you like...a feminist or something? Aren't you a queer community ally? Are you selling out?"
1* This implies that I just won't be able to keep myself from sleeping with any of my male friends, or that they aren't trustworthy, either. Couldn't this also be said of close female friends? You don't know anything about me, jerkface! :o) Not to mention that some married couples choose to have an open relationship. I don't know that I could do it, but others can and really enjoy it. Your definition of marriage is not everyone else's.
2* Well, that ship has sailed. We own a home together. We live together. We have a dog together. I don't need a legal document to keep me in the same city, the same household, as David. I choose to do that. We've already moved to Chicago together, chosen to stay in Chicago together, and look forward to being nomadic together in the future, if that is indeed what the future holds. As David says, "we're both set...career-wise, I mean. People eat and have sex in every city."
3* Never. And I think if Planned Parenthood really stood for a woman's right to choose, you wouldn't have to be of a certain age or be psychologically evaluated before having a tubal ligation. What if we change our minds? Then we do. But I don't see how that is any of your business and where you have room to judge if our minds will change or what our lives will be missing if they don't.
4* Yeah. I'm a feminist and I'm also a huge supporter of acceptance for all types of families. David and I are already a family, legally or not, and until we can be fully recognized as such without getting legally recognized as a married couple, I guess we'll have to buy into the system. Plus, one of the issues I work behind is marriage equality...if I think everyone should have the right to marry, doesn't that mean staunch hetero feminists as well? We are planning our wedding with our morals and beliefs in mind; for instance, I am not throwing a bouquet. The idea of having my single friends clamour to be the next one plucked from her miserable spinster life is not in any way cute, not even for a photo op. We aren't using any readings with gendered language. We want the legal recognition, so we're getting it...and using it, unashamedly, to throw a big party for our friends and fam...and to register for gifts. :o)
So those are my thoughts.
If you cared.
Which you most probably don't.
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