make it good

I really do amaze myself sometimes. How is it I can be so pragmatic and unemotional about certain things, but then completely lose my mind when it comes to a few select others? I guess "lose my mind" is the wrong expression. I don't think crazy thoughts about these delicate issues, but I seem to constantly be feeling strong feelings that manifest themselves in uncomfortable physical conditions, like a constantly tightened diaphragm, shortness of breath, stress stored in painful lumps at the base of the neck. My rational mind knows what is happening, knows it is powerless to control the situation in any way, but my cardiovascular system and adrenal glands don't see it that way. My body sees this thing as a constant threat to its wellbeing, perhaps its very existence. So how do I eliminate from the body the thing that has permanently altered the mind, like a rare hallucinogen? The cerebral effects are somewhat pleasing even when they are unwelcome and unexpected, but the physical overstimulation is more than I can stand. I ache all over.

I'm not really scared, either. It is merely uncomfortable.

This all could just as easily be the fresh array of symptoms from some degenerative disease that has been dormant until now.

Strange, though, how it coincides with this utterly absurd time in my life. I wonder how this absurd time will measure against all the others I've already lived through. Does this take the cake? Mmm, cake. I had a chocolate muffin from Robeks today.

I feel like I need a full body cast just not to melt into a puddle of human fragility. I need something solid to contain my strange ethereal essence. Feeling connected to everything all at once, even on a purely philosophical level, is exhausting... As is pining away for something you can probably never have.

Also I am newly addicted to Nat Shermans.

Merry holidays!

false gods?

uncomfortably numb

Ariana Huffington encourages people to blog their passions.

My passions have never been easily articulated. Activities that I enjoy immensely can also bring me emotional agony. My only passion is experience - the solid, tangible feeling of "doing something" and deriving sensations and thoughts through that action.

I love to read and write, but not when my mind is preoccupied with longing.

I love to sing, but not when the sound of my own voice makes me cringe with disgust.

I crave attention and affection, but resent it when it's given as a matter of routine.


I love to learn, but can't seem to find any practical use for my knowledge.

Being back from my short trip to New York feels surreal. This is the life I thought I was used to, but it only took a couple of days in a totally different environment to make me feel like a stranger here. I suppose I always felt that way, but didn't allow this awareness to creep into my conscious thoughts. At least in a big, bustling city I can be one among many strangers. Here, I am truly alone.

Listen to the latest podcasts, won't ya?

http://www.switchpod.com/p19578.html

my beautiful disorder

For what seemed like the hundredth time, I was reading today about personality disorders, or PD's, as they are lovingly dubbed within the psycho-therapeutic community. More than anything else I fit the profile of a person "suffering" from Histrionic Personality Disorder. The word "histrionic" itself stems from a Latin word for "actor", and quite logically, this disorder is characterized by theatrical, animated behavior, the need for attention and acceptance, and inappropriate seductiveness and sexuality. Incidentally, this is a disorder apparently plaguing the female population... Meaning that any time a woman expresses any sexual tendency or extroverted behavior, she is abnormal. In the ancient world, it was referred to as "wandering womb". By the middle ages, any behavior perceived to be improper in women was blamed on witchcraft, moral weakness, and demonic possession. In the age of psychoanalysis, such great minds as Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich blamed women's "weak nervous systems" and "penis envy" for their troubles. Apparently it was strange to them that women that lived either as idle slaves (wives if the wealthy) or actual slaves (wives of the poor), were bored and unsatisfied with their lot in life.

As I read such garbage and reflect upon my life thus far, I realize just how deep-rooted and corrupt society's attitudes are towards women. Virtually every conflict I've ever experienced has stemmed from such thinking, perpetuated even by women themselves. We are taught to hate ourselves for our natural desires, our appearance, our mental flexibility. Even our brave new "modern" world offers no real solace. We question our every move, wondering if we'll be perceived as improper or too aggressive, or too passive, or just plain dull. Whether we are politicians or doctors or housewives, the stigma of weakness and being inherently flawed follows us everywhere.

It is prudent to note, too, that all the major world religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism, help to instill this view of women in our collective psyche. This helps to explain why someone like Sarah Palin was so poorly received by most rational women. Her belief in a patriarchal religious system supercedes her empathy toward other women and their struggles.

In any case, I'm not sorry. My histrionics keep life fun.

i like it

about chicken?

The other day my husband made me watch a random documentary available for instant viewing on Netflix about chicken(s).

It started on a happy note, showing how chickens live on small farms. People apparently become very attached to their avian friends, cooing to them lovingly, holding and petting them like little lap cats. This one old woman even gave a hen of hers mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after she got caught in a sudden snow while brooding in the small wood around the farm. The poor hen froze to what seemed like death, but the old woman thawed her out and breathed life back into her. I really hope she only uses her hens to lay eggs. It would really be a shame to slaughter someone whose beak you've pressed against your lips in a gesture of ultimate love.

Other stories included strange men who had unhealthy attractions to cocks... As in roosters, you sickos! They would raise prize fighting roosters, clearly to compensate for some lack in manliness on their part, but unable to afford a luxury vehicle to replace this cock obssession... It struck me as very peculiar that these unattractively mustached men doted on their cocks to distraction, raising them like their own children, showing them plenty of affection... only to send them into a violent, bloody, untimely death.

The saddest of all, though, were the factory chickens. It showed lonely rows of eggs in giant rotating incubators. Then the baby chickens would begin to hatch, in an empty metallic space, surrounded by what must appear to them to be a sea of other baby chicks, but with no mother hens in sight. Then the conveyer belt would send them, scambling over one another, down a chute to a sorting facility, where hair-netted ladies would grab the babies by whatever appendage was handy and pluck them out of the steadily pouring stream of fuzzy yellow life, and throw them into one of several bins or piles, like they were mere objects being readied for packaging. By what criteria they were sorted, I cannot even begin to imagine. All the chicks looked fragile, and yellow, and tiny, and squeaked incessantly. But the factory workers just grabbed them and threw them according to some pre-established order, no doubt mangling and maiming them in the process. Then it showed the sad, pale, confused adult chickens in the factory, sitting atop one another, scrambling for air, for food, for comfort, for anything that didn't feel like raw panic. An endless sea of struggling, suffering, debased creatures - they reminded me most of the pale skeletal ghosts of people in Nazi concentration camps: forlorn, betrayed, alive, but just barely.

There was more to the film, but I had to stop there. The tears started to choke me. The idea that this is the way food is produced for mass consumption is sickening to me. I got into the habit of saying that I gave up eating meat mainly for health reasons. People tend to react to that in a positive, encouraging manner. Caring about one's health is admirable. Not eating meat for moral reasons, however, provokes hostility. Forced to examine the moral correctness of eating their precious McNuggets or rotisserie roaster, people get defensive. It's hard to imagine that something so delicious can be a sentient, noble being. Being a coward, I would learn to shy away from total honesty, and just stick to my health story. Now I feel a bit more compelled to be perfectly candid and tell people I encounter that not only is eating meat unhealthy, but that under current conditions, it amounts to endorsing mass genocide of the most wasteful kind.
The bill passed in California providing for more rights for factory chickens is definitely a step in the right direction, but I still can't help but feel that somewhere down the road we went totally awry in how we deal with our food. Killing animals for food has been an integral part of human evolution, but we never used to care so little about doing it.

listen!

Tammy Bruce is just one in a chorus of Liberal-hating, "freedom"-loving conservatives. Just like her counterparts, she is extremely unpleasant, has a very bad sense of humor, and exudes an aura that is the antithesis of sexy. There's just one thing that makes her "special". Unlike most other self-proclaimed conservatives, Tammy Bruce is a lesbian. The fact that by her own philosophy she should fear and hate herself seems to be lost on her, and that is why she is a prominent topic on the most recent edition of The Mariya Alexander Show.

Check out the podcast here:
http://www.switchpod.com/p19578.html

Or find it on iTunes. Simply search your iTunes store for The Mariya Alexander Show and catch up on all the podcasts you've missed.