creeping alternatives

I hate cat-calls. I hate being yelled at from moving vehicles, I hate whistling, sexual comments from strangers that are actually harassment and never compliments, I hate it, hate it, hate it. Never have I gone from, "wow, it's a beautiful day and I am in love with the world" to "what did I do? who the hell? get me inside now" in one instant flat.

Today, a co-worker had this terrible experience, came in to my office space to relay, and told me of her retaliation: whenever someone yells suggestive comments from a car window, especially if she's in a car sitting in traffic (but she assures me this could be equally handy for pedesterians), she sticks her finger all the way up her nose. I mean, the girl really digs that finger as far up as it can go. I'm wondering if I could really overcome my fear of the upper nostril just to stick it to the creeps.

I bet and firmly believe this is totally possible.

She also mentioned that she did an experiment once (for a class) where she cat-called out car windows, whistled, sent verbal "you-are-nothing-more-than-an-object-to-me" cues to unsuspecting men. She reports that they ate it up.

I contend that these men would not continue to eat it up if this shit happened to them throughout their entire adult lives and, most wretchedly, throughout a good part of their upper childhood.

When you yell "oooh sexy!" at me from your car while I wait for the walk signal, you are not making me feel better about myself. Instead, you make me feel angry. Rage steams in my ears and boiling blood rushes through every vein. You make it hard for me to refrain from blaming all of the world's problems on men and projecting this hate onto the men in my life (minus my brothers, of course, they can do no harm, and if I hear you criticizing one of them I will come after you without hesitating).

You make it hard for me to live my life.

But we all do, anyway. Maybe I turn down a sidestreet to avoid confrontation. Maybe I wear sunglasses when I don't have to. Maybe I always have my cellphone attached to my ear even when I'm not on a call. Maybe I took 12 hours of a self-defense class. Maybe when I travel solo (one of my favorite things) I plan my plane and trains around daylight, so that I won't arrive in a new city in the dark. Maybe I repeatedly lie to strangers when casually asked what I do for a living, where I went to school. Maybe I'm afraid to drink more than four beers at a bar. Maybe being friendly becomes a bad idea after ten minutes of conversation. Maybe I should smile less. Maybe I should laugh less. Maybe.

Maybe I smile anyway. Maybe I laugh anyway. Maybe I wear make-up anyway. Maybe I travel solo anyway. Maybe I don't always hate half of the population. Maybe I love some of those men.

I just hope the ones I love think of me next time they are tempted to whistle.

worst lunch in town

Why did I go back?

Last Wednesday, I had a pretty bad lunch that cost a goodly amount. But, I was with a friend, and so the company outweighed the negatives.

Today, I went back to that same place. Call me a masochist. Call me afraid of seeing my bagel lady twice before noon. I just wanted a damn cup of coffee and lunch in one foul swoop.

It was foul, all right.

I ordered a cookie, an americano, and veggie mac'n'cheese. My coffee cup is leaking, they forgot to give me the cookie, and the mac'n'cheese is so incredibly greasy I feel like I need to eat ANYTHING to sop it up. (You're probably thinking, why did you order anything with cheese if you are afraid of grease?! If you could try this, you'd wonder if they dumped a quart of oil in the mix. I don't expect oil in the cheese.)

Gross, gross, gross.

I guess I'll drink the dripping coffee and go get a candy bar from the gas station down the street instead. I know, I know, I'm the picture of health in your mind right now.

addendum

"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.
If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime."

WHY AREN'T THERE ANY FISH IN THE RIVER?!?!

submerged

Balancing has never been my best act. As my job indulges my intellectual interests more and more (thank goodness for superiors who actually listen!) and steers clear of the mundane as much as publishing three grades in two years will allow, I find myself in continuous awe of academics. Basically, every hour of my day minus sleeping and eating should be devoted to reading and studying if I want to accomplish everything I've successfully started. Starting is always successful, in my view. Finishing, sometimes can be, but that is never expected. There's always that possibility of failure, but you can at least start, right?

This attitude has brought me to the realization I came to rather calmly this morning, when I rose at six to study at seven, class at eight, work by ten. My current schedule will not produce satisfactory academic success. The two hours of exercise and one to two hours of "nap time" that I've recently incorporated into my day (making me a nicer and healthier person) must go if I am to read an hour of French phonetics each week, finish the linguist's take on beginning spelling, take notes on four chapters of syntax, rewrite and reorganize my last assignment, compose seven decodable stories from a limited word list (this is the one of the hardest things one can ever do), coordinate worksheets and art manifests and readers and lesson plans, contract freelancers to begin work on grade 1, brainstorm and create ways for children to practice writing numbers that are not goofy; this is not to mention things I want to do.

Yes, this is me expelling.

My biggest problem is that I am young. Shouldn't I be out drinking and socializing, traveling and conversing, diving in dumpsters and jumping onto trains? Where's the balance? Can I live my life and still prerequisite my life?

I'm wondering where my revolution fits in all of this. Instead I'll end up publishing theories on revolution, criticizing the man while profiting from the elitist status provided to me by the man.

And I'm not a man. I'm a woman. So basically anything I do in this patriarchal society is betraying my hard-fought sense of self.

But I remain calm and continue to create a list of linguists whose work I'd like to peruse.

Am I defeated already?

the slant

a building settling around me
my figure female framed crookedly
in the threshold
of the room
door scraping floorboards
with every opening
carving a rough history
of bedroom scenes
the plot hard to follow
the text obscured
in the folds of sheets
slowly gathering the stains
of seasons spent lying there
red and brown
like leaves fallen
the colors of an eternal cycle
fading with the
wash cycle
and the rinse cycle
again an unfamiliar smell
like my name misspelled
or misspoken
a cycle broken
the sound of them strong
stalking talking about their prey
like the way hammer meets nail
pounding, they say
pounding out the rhythms of attraction
like a woman was a drum like a body was a weapon
like there was something more they wanted
than the journey
like it was owed to them
steel toed they walk
and i'm wondering why this fear of men
maybe it's because i'm hungry
and like a baby i'm dependent on them
to feed me
i am a work in progress
dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding
offering me intricate patterns of questions
rhythms that never come clean
and strengths that you still haven't seen

a song to my nose

I'm quite the baby when it comes to being sick. You'd think getting a severe cold/sinus infection twice a year would not be the end of the world. Hell, I never breathed through my nose during my entire middle school career!! Now that I've grown out of the nasal affliction, whenever it comes back I fall apart.

I hate taking sick days. I'd rather somehow accumulate these days and try for extra vacation time somehow. This is why I have gone home sick two afternoons in a row. Which equates to one day. One day spread over 48 hours where I do nothing but sleep and moan and blow my nose and manically clean the back porch (which was formerly serving as our catch-all for trash and recycling), manically light tiny candles along the perimeter of said back porch and sit on the couch in my pajamas, hoodie up, orange juice and tissues in hand, and think, "Wouldn't this be great if I were well?" And then I work from home on my laptop. Ha! Take that sick day! I'm logging in at least 3 hours today! Which means I've only taken 3 sick hours today and 3.5 yesterday! The workaholic persists again!

I think I'm delirious.

je sais cette langue!

I'm taking a Linguistics graduate class each semester while I work full-time in town. (Gotta keep that mind active.) This semester I bravely decided to take Applied Linguistics for Teachers of Foreign Languages, even though I am neither a teacher nor fluent in another language. The professor assured me my minimal knowledge of French combined with my growing knowledge of linguistic theory would see me through the course. And now it's time to turn in the first assignment, and I am afraid. I know the material. I know the terminology. I am comfortable with discussing theoretical principles of teaching languages. But my French? Ghastly.

I picked up a textbook on introductory French phonology and morphology from 1975, and I tell ya, I feel like I am understanding French for the first time. All my 12-year-old mind wanted in my first French class was confirmation that I was not going crazy. I knew something was up with the way I learned this language. My darling teachers, Mmes. Maruca and Romano could not help their Jersey accents. The overlay with French was fantastically catchy to the ears, but it left me to learn French in much the same way (I think) I learned to process English. Both languages are infamous for having many spelling alternatives that do not easily map to the sounds of the language. Developing an English reading program (my current day job) has revealed that as a child I somehow memorized all of the spellings for a sound. In this way, I can look a word and count the number of sounds in that word without saying the word out loud. Basically, I know that 'th' is one sound, 'ough' is a sound, and 't' is a sound. I think I learned by reading way too many books under my desk in elementary school. This is apparently not ideal. One should learn the sounds and then learn spelling alternatives for that sound. However, as I have proved that I can read, I have never worried about this until basically relearning my French as I read this amazing textbook by Albert Valdman.

My point: phonetics are absolutely necessary to teaching a Foreign Language. I think all students from middle school on up would benefit enormously from a quick class on phonology taught in the first 3 or 4 weeks of the school year. Use English, for sure, in teaching the principles, but be sure to point out all of the fun differences, and I assure you, the class will be brimming over with potential future linguists. This is the most consistently interesting stuff I've encountered in many years of schooling, and I think everyone gets a kick out of learning language tidbits, because we all use language and we can all relate. This is not chemistry, which seems veiled and hidden to the average person. This is everyday, everywhere, everyone.

I contend that

we generate our own light to compensate for the lack of light from above.

(this does not mean I am giving a nod to agnosticism, ahem.)

query

What if one day everything you used to think you knew turned around and turned the doorknob and just walked right out without you? Could you stand to just start over? Would it really be so bad? I asked my mom; she told me, "Go and ask your dad."

Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair

Last night I saw the Blue Man Group: How to Be a Megastar show. I can't remember the last time I saw music in a large venue--maybe Weezer in North Carolina in 2001? Regardless, it was hard for me to fuse the music, the lights, the excitement with the fact that I was sitting. I can't even sit still at small club/pub shows. My leg, I just can't control it, it needs to tap out the off-beat. Sometimes the music grabs me so much that I start to shake. My fists air-drum on my tummy and hip bones. I've been known to bruise myself in the moment. Even on long drives alone, I smack the steering wheel in solidarity with faceless gods. I sing along dramatically, enunciating each syllable as if it is my last breath, and dare my traffic jam compatriots to stop staring and join me in my quest to drive out the ho-hum-ness and alienation of being so close to so many people while siphoned off in a small metal box.

This is why it was so interesting to me to sit in the stadium alongside thousands of other human beings and still feel so isolated. Did the crowd need a ringleader? Someone to attract the stares, the hateful daggers that attempt to thwart any rip in the social fabric? Would I have thrust my fist into the air with more gusto if someone two rows ahead enthusiastically cursed the sky and roared into the black, mechanical dawn?

Perhaps.

But, probably not.

The band, the songs, the words, the percussion all combined to make me uneasy; the images on the screens suggested that I was ever more in the cubicle in the stadium seating than in dull, grey office existence. The lights and sound mocked me, and I kept looking around anxiously to gauge the reaction of the crowd. The screens literally told us to stand up, shake our fists, twist our pelvises, scream from our bowels, bang our heads---and I complied. It's part of the experience after all, yes?

I still couldn't shake the awful feeling that everything we do is a lie.

This isolationist thinking will only leave me lying curled on a dirty bed-roll under a train bridge somewhere, huddling around a barrel fire, staring at my hands, the ground, the flames, anything to avoid eye contact.

Or can this be our only freedom?

What if complying leaves me twenty years from now, plastic-surgeried, manicured, bone-skinny, standing on high heels to emphasize my toned but not too muscular calves that have developed from the strain of white picket fences and corporate jobs and elevators to the fifty-second floor?

I'd like to think the folks under the train bridge would accept me even if I showed up grey-suited and green-faced, nauseous from routine and disgusted with what I have done and what I have failed to do. We'd have a laugh; I'd look around nervously and sip the offered coffee cup for the vital elixir that it is. I would feel the lines on my face dissolve. I would feel the relief of taking off uncomfortable shoes after a long day without a moment's rest.

There must be community.

There must.

It has to exist.

But can it combat our nonexistence?

I shudder and wait patiently, as I have been told to do.