I must, I must...increase my blog

I'm pretty frustrated with my own levels of production on this blog. My posting has been more sporadic and less profound than I imagined it would be. Mind you, I'm not exactly putting too much pressure on myself - best to leave it and let things evolve organically rather than forcing myself into a corner to write something on a particular point...
As Shumi said, LJ and I were away all last week and got back a few days ago. I took LJ home to Ireland where we spent most of our time in the countryside visiting with my mum and her husband with a day-trip to Dublin to see my father and a friend of mine who is about to have her first child (Oh, and the Guinness factory too, which was LJ's sole request when I broached the idea of a day in the big city). Now the prospect of going 'home' has kind of become a scary one in some ways. I've been living overseas for six years now, and this is the closest I've been to home (closer in that it's now a one-hour flight as opposed to a twelve-fourteen hour flight(s)). Last year I went back for the wedding of a friend and my sister's birthday which turned out to be a five-week hell of anxiety that ended with me asking my GP for something to 'help' the panic. I spent the next nine months on SSRIs which totally helped but threw into relief for me just how stressful these trips back were. Anyhoo...this trip was much much better in many ways - it was short (five days), we stayed at my mum's the whole time (no trooping back and forth across town to stay with different friends each night), and I didn't see that many people (less is certainly more).
I find the dynamics that exist for me with my friends back home kind of interesting and frustrating. I've accepted that a large part of how I feel about this is really down to me in that how I choose to interpret conversations and events can have a huge effect on my feelings. In a sense I can 'choose' how to feel about things. For the past two or three years there has been a sharp acceleration in the marriages, house purchases, pregnancies and ensuing babies and career progressions back in the homeland. The choices I have made in my life so far have removed me from this cycle or particular mode of living. Sure, I have doubts sometimes about my life-style, and frustrations with lack of funds, security... Going home is a challenge because it inevitably results in comparisons. I wish I didn't do this but I do and it's a toughie because on the surface the lads and ladies who stayed home (or at least didn't stay away quite so long) 'have' a whole lot more of the things that we are brought up to believe we want, or should want. When I say 'brought up to believe', I'm not really talking about my parents as they have been consistently tolerant and even supportive of my roaming, but more the direction that I, as a white middle-class educated woman am suggested I should want to head in by 'society' or 'the media' or whoever you choose to believe is pulling the strings on our desires. So...it does play on my insecurities (of which there are many) to see the other side of the coin, and I do struggle with feelings of inferiority and I do react defensively in order to justify my past choices and my plans for the future. While I'm getting better with this, (a few drops of Bach's Rescue Remedy has replaced the hardcore medication) a trip home still leaves me feeling a whole lot like a twelve year old in my self-doubt and snarky self-justification. I'm working on it though...
Getting back to where LJ and I are calling our 'home' these days was pretty sweet, as was catching up with Shumi on Tuesday and yesterday - she's paying me back in the abandonment stakes next week when she's off on a trip of her own, leaving me back to work at my part time job and at other times stuck to my desk trying to do a good job on our second semester essays. More on the essays another time. More on it all another time really...it's almost 9am and I'm only a fraction way through my daily blog-reading and news catching up. That or I could go back to bed for an hour...
Later.

i miss gxx and LG - it's been 'torture'!

so, it's been about a week without them both! well, not really, but it feels like 3 months. before she left, gxx reminded me to update the blog. maybe it's b.c she's returning today that i feel i can write - it's like a surrogate conversation of the one that i hope to be having soon! ok, enough of my lamentation, which is really just a testament to gxx's awesomeness in sheep's clothing. :-)

so, i've been trying to think of something that i could post on. just yesterday, i remembered a conversation that i had with 3 of my flatmates over dinner. one of them mentioned something about the 'dungeon' museum (apologies if i'm getting this wrong, i've never been, and i don't know all that much about it) in york, which is, i guess, a museum of medieval? practices, including torture. well, the concept was explained to my chinese flatmate, S, who wondered when and where people engaged in these practices. so, having just completed a course on the 'body politic' in early modern england, i was keen to talk about my paper on performance and lady margaret clitherow, the sharp stone that was placed underneath her and the 800 pounds of stone on top. K, being the astute historian and world-traveler that she is, clued in S to the various chinese practices that have taken place over the years, including beheading and such. and then, abstract thinker that i am, my wheels started turning and i began thinking about torture as a discourse - about what constitutes torture, and under what parameters it becomes institutionalised. i mean, yeah, discipline and punish and foucault and everything in my back pocket, i was, clearly, equipped with a steady set of critiques and lens' in my approach to this topic. but, i started thinking about the death penalty in the states, and lethal injection and gas chambers, and how scott peterson was just offered a choice between the two. gas chambers? a composite of 2 or 3 poisons injected into a person's body, foaming at the mouth, all that? it's tough stuff, eh? but then i also thought about rape, and how the scars that my friend B had after her boyfriend raped her, to me, are the remnants of torture. and the wars waged against people's bodies in all sorts of different ways. keeping in line with the feminist track, what about episiotomy? women being slit open to 'facilitate' childbirth, then stitched back up? i guess that this phenomenon is particularly disturbing to me, b.c it's so obviously couched in heterosexual, sexist, medical institutions and practices...evidence being that women are scolded for and discouraged from opting for caesareans. why isn't it ok for women to choose where to be cut up if it's bound to happen, one way or another?

this is the second sunday i've stood on my soapbox. last weekend it was in an email to the increasingly amazing F/G. i'm attributing it to all those sunday's watching 'meet the press' with my father as a child. he'd whip up his specialty "everything that's in these is good for you," waffles, and i'd sit there watching him watching the tv, spilling batter and burning fingers, catching my mom's eye from the morning paper... brother still asleep upstairs. i think i've cultivated the bug of tradition. contemporary and feminist, grounded in a precious memory. cue the song of Tevye(?), please.

xo. shumi

Proposals

Today I'm working on my dissertation proposal and I'm going reeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallly slowly with it. Actually, I'm happy enough with how my ideas are shaping up, it's just that I feel like I'm saying the same thing ten different ways in order to follow the proposal conventions our lecturers laid out for us. One thing is becoming clear: I'm going to have to maintain my motivation and focus in order to avoid an eleventh hour panic situation, the thought of which fills me with horror (the panic situation that is, not the maintenance of my motivation although...). Classes are finished for this semester and we don't have any classes next semester apart from a weekly 2 hour workshop session which I look forward to. I think I'm best in a situation where there is a problem that I can help tackle. I've noticed that I am quick to put other people's ideas into fairly coherent language. What this says about me, I don't know, though it has brought up the whole question of what I want to do after this. I've stopped saying 'what I want to be when I grow up' simply because, at almost thirty, I suspect it might sound a little silly. So....perhaps more thoughts on that another time.
Dinner tonight is Vegetarian lasagne. I have flirted with the idea of going fully veggie a few times as we only eat meat a couple of times a week at the moment. I think it would take some education regarding meat alternatives and some practice cooking with beans and tofu and so forth. Perhaps I'm making excuses though, when the real truth is that I really like meat on my pizza and the odd bacon sandwich and I know I'm not too hot on the willpower thing (though I did well giving up smoking). Certainly the kind of meat LJ and I can afford to buy at the moment is probably not doing us any good and we would be nutritionally better off with a few chick peas and lentils. Eating veggie does seem to agree with me and it's cheaper too. Hmmm, I'll raise it again this evening (LJ incomunicado due to computer-game fixation at the moment). Perhaps I should look up some recipes and give my brain a rest from dissertation stuff for a while. Hang on...wasn't updating the blog supposed to be my break...oops

back in business.

Alright. I'm back. Apologies for the hiatus, but I've been mulling over quite a bit in my head. Also, this past week (yesterday, actually) was the last week/day of classes. More specifically, yesterday was the last day of classes/class for me ever. According to my budding 'career track' I no longer have formal classes to attend. Instead of it being momentus, yesterday was strangely anticlimactic. But, I think that that's good. I think that it means that things are progressing as they should, and that I'm just along for the ride. Not to give up all of my agency to the hands of fate/god/whatever, I've been incredibly conscious of where I'm at in my life and what I'm doing for a bit of time now. I'm making choices with intention, and that's really, really cool.

Moving on, I, too, would like to revisit the monologuing experience. It was really good to go to both performances. Not only did I get to watch all 3 of my coursemates perform, but I got to compare and contrast the productions. They were both great, don't get me wrong. But it was interesting to see how two groups of people took one idea (or framework, really) and manipulated that into something own their own design/creation. As gxx mentioned, I also thought that it was very, very cool to see all of the women together. That kind of solidarity (real or imagined) is something that is rarely developed. There was a certain energy (particularly on the 2nd night) and it felt positive and uplifting and calm. I could see gxx's stresses melt away with each laugh - even if they were to return shortly after on her ride home.


I had two separate conversations with two people from my dept. last week, following both performaces. The first person is a phD student and an audience member on the second night. The second person is an MA student as well as a member of the cast which performed the first night.

conversation 1:
this person asked me if I liked the performances, etc. I said that I did, and that I liked them, in fact, better than the professional production that I had seen several years ago. We talked back and forth for a few minutes before she mentioned something about how she would have liked the audience to have been exclusively female. (cue record player screeching) I stopped short. She continued on to ponderings about whether or not that could, actually, legally be done. I was surprised at her comment, b.c I wasn't aware that there was such a strong second-waver in the dept. (ok, that was snide) and, even more so, b.c there were several men in the audience (on both nights) that were incredibly, incredibly supportive of the women performing and of the whole v-day concept. Apparently, she sat next to a hetero couple that consisted of the male becoming increasingly uncomfortable as the production went on and the female increasingly needing to 'tend' to his discomfort by rubbing his back and whispering, "it's ok...". Well, gross. And, that sucks and all, but what about all of the other male-folks who were shouting out "TWICE, TWICE!" at the top of their lungs in support of the "happy fun-fact" of the clitoris having twice as many nerve endings as the penis as it was reiterated, time and time again? And, what about the female audience members who squirmed in their seats and said, "Ew, gross..." as the cast performed the segment on first mentruation? Is it even useful to compare?

conversation 2:
The second person that I had a chat with was, as mentioned, part of the cast. Apparently, the monologue performers had us ALL fooled (including person number1). Person number 2 filled me in on the myriad conversations that were had between cast members (of the first performance) over the course of the rehearsal/planning stages. I guess that there was considerable hesitation from some of the cast members to perform the monologues in a way that might be perceived as 'too feminist'. Um, what? You're involved in a production of the Vagina (f*ing) Monologues and you're worried about coming across as feminist? Ok; right. This, by the way, does not diminsh the fact that the monologues were performed, and well, to boot. But it is, nonetheless, sad.

I think that I've written a lot.

Maybe I'll post more later.

cheers, shumi.

I remember...

Between one thing and another (teething problems working the blog thing and a lot of other things taking time and energy) I never did get to write more on the Vagina Monologues. Now I rather feel that the time has passed. Having said that, I have found that after some time it's interesting to think about what has organized itself as the memory, kind of like the 'official line' of an event. Plenty of times I've caught myself creating a memory that is is a little on the hole-y side. So what is my memory of last Tuesday at the VMs? Shumi making that comment about the group of women, with their different styles and common purpose and how I started to think about collaboration (which could also say something about the potential of this blog to influence memory). I also remember a couple of parts of the performance and that I was impressed just as much because I know that I'm really not capable of dramatic performance myself. In fact the idea makes me feel all uncomfortable!

Retrospective Vagina Monologues

Between one thing and another (mostly between American Idol and Super Size Me)I didn't post again yesterday. Despite my tardiness I'd like to put down a few words on the VMs before my memory is too distorted by time. First, I think the experience was a little influenced by one of my classmates being in the production. I felt nervous for her which was not eased by her's being one of the last monologues so I got to watch her getting visibly more nervous etc... Overall I liked it. The atmosphere was fun and friendly and poignant without being too earnest. The general quality of the performance was pretty good but I had a strong feeling that the performances were actually less important than very act of staging them, the gathering together of men and women in respect for and celebration of the vagina, a body part that doesn't often get to speak for herself.
On the bus on the way home I gave twiffer a mental hug.

Vaginas & Collaboration

As we sat waiting for The Vagina Monologues to begin last night, Shumi (who went back for a second show) mentioned how nice it was to see the cast of women sitting together. Some looked a little nervous, some excited, but they had an air of 'being in this together' and of being proud of the performance that they had worked hard to prepare and rehearse around their Uni work and whatever else they had going on in their lives.
It seemed particularly apt that Shumi should make this observation as it fit with what she had talked about in her last post and with what I have been mulling over myself for the past couple of days. One of the things I, too, am hoping to achieve with this blog is to engage in a very self aware process of how ideas can develop in our online collaboration. Putting ego and competition aside and really allowing myself to enjoy the process and (hopefully!) the results. This is not an easy thing for me to do in some ways. I don't trust people easily, and have tended to be somewhat protective of what I have seen as my 'intellectual property'(however paltry it may be) in the past. Getting over this pushes me into somewhat unfamiliar territory, and I'm excited to explore it!
Back to the VMs: I was kind of stressed out before the show with stuff from work and feeling under pressure on a number of levels, so it was a little strange in that I really enjoyed the performance but almost immediately afterwards I found myself unable to really think about it too much as my earlier stresses seeped right back into my head again. I do want to think it over though, and will hopefully get a chance to post again today in detail.
Okay, gotta run and go learn how to lift boxes without hurting myself for work.

Class Today

I finally feel like I had a really interesting class today. It's frustrating because we're one week from the end of term and next term we don't have any coursework, only dissertations. I wonder perhaps if the class was especially interesting to me because it was on something I find particularly interesting or if it really did have the spark that I thought I detected.
Anyway, we were talking about something called the Glide Project which was put together by a woman called Diana Reed Slattery and her associates Daniel J. O'Neil and Bill Brubaker. For class we had to look at the Glide Project website and also read the first part of a print text that Slattery wrote called The Maze Game. Well I loved the story and plan to read the rest of it when I get some pleasure reading time. A few things have really gotten under my skin since I started studying again, and this is one of them. One thing I thought as I was reading was that, surprisingly, all those hours spent watching LJ play Ultima Online were actually paying off. We used to have a kick-ass office set up with a huge desk for our computers and comfy-ass desk chairs - he would play for hours while I surfed and faffed about online and when I got bored I would watch him play sometimes. After a while I got kind of into it, the character creation, strategy, little alliances and grudges. Well, reading The Maze Game I started thinking how our assumption is with fiction that it's supposed to be 'real' despite maybe being set in a different world at a different time. I mean that the characters are 'real' people. Moving that assumption aside I could imagine the story as one enacted by virtual characters, characters in a game in a book but without (a need for) an explicit explanation of this. I tentatively mentioned this in class but I don't think I really followed it up or pushed the point to generate discussion (I also have my suspicions regarding how many of my classmates had actually read the entire section of the story anyway).
Still, in my little class postmortem I've found myself thinking a lot about the material and the discussion. One thing was totally clear - that each one of us is a different reader with a different king of baggage that we bring to our texts. For me this throws up all kinds of problems with generalisations and the possibility of having any kind of theory that sticks. The curse of post-modernism!

shumi shumi!

chuckle chuckle.soooooo.... shumi is going to see the vagina monologues tonight at uni. the show starts soon, but i'll be sure to make a post about it after i've returned. gxx is going tomorrow, so, hopefully, she'll make a post and then it'll be interesting to see how our responses compare/contrast. don't think you've seen it before, right gxx? i saw it once before...about 3 years ago. the first time i was introduced to them (the monologues) was a couple years before that. the first one that i was heard was 'the flood'. a girl in one of my classes read it aloud as part of her presentation on sexuality. i found it particularly poignant. and, i thought it was very courageous of her to read it in front of the class. and i remember seeing it performed...and feeling a bit disappointed. the performance was done comedically - and i don't think it's a particularly funny monologue. so, i preferred my classmates offering. but, so... yeah. i'm quite eager to see if i have any different reactions/feelings from it (the whole production) this time around. the one thing that i remember the most about last time around was that i felt uncomfortable. not b.c of the subject matter - although the 'rape' monologue is a tough one - but because of the performers/type of performance, i think. and, the audience. with a performance of this nature, if the audience isn't keen/mature/fun, it's just not sucessful.alright, i'm out the door!

I am Help Personified.

Right. So, i'm super-excited to help give gxx a little push of confidence into the world of blog-writing comfort. it's getting a little late and i've just sat through a few hours of reality-tv. so, not much to write (apologies, g)...although i think that i got a bunch of random messages today about putting myself first. i've been (trying to be) a big advocate about taking care of myself for the past few months...guess i'm starting to realise that part of that goes beyond the basic mind, body, spirit - eat well, get good sleep, etc. hmm...alright. off to (hopefully) find/buy contact solution at the corner store so i don't have to catch a cab home!

I need help...and help is at hand.

Ok, so I was telling my friend about this stagefright I'm having and she piped up that she would love to contribute so... I'm hoping that the next post will a)be longer than my first tentative steps b)not by me!
Yay! I am really pleased. I think that I'm certainly someone who benefits by having someone to bounce ideas off and to throw me a ball to run with. What does that mean? That I wouldn't come up with very much if I was by myself in a cave up on a mountain?

Stagefright

I'm putting my reluctance to update this down to stagefright. I see myself approach the blog, look at it a bit and wander off again. However, in the spirit of the current 'productive' and 'progressive'mood I've been in for the past couple of years, I'm forcing myself to do it anyway. LJ is showing me how to make links so I guess I'll pick it up as I go. He is being impatient with me on this one, which is good because it's pushing me when I am trying to resist and be lazy. He knows that this is an important thing for me to do, which is cool.

The Apprentice

I'm watching the British version of The Apprentice. The men's team won again. And they deserved to win again. It's been very frustrating to watch.