Posts
16 hours ago
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
How I Got My First Doll
My parents were hippies. They were the fascist kind though. I guess what you might call P.C. now. We couldn’t have toy soldiers or guns. Not that any of that mattered to me. I just wanted a doll. Any doll.
We couldn’t have those cool small plastic cowboys and Indians. We weren’t allowed to call them Indians and this was 1969? WTF. Maybe that was normal hippie stuff. I don’t know. We never watched westerns but they did let us watch some movie called Soldier Blue. It was probably one of the most violent movies I have ever seen. Sick stuff but it was supposed to wake us up to the reality of what the “white man” was capable of doing.
There were some arbitrary distinctions drawn over what constituted white. My mother was white and so was anything uptight, repressed, formal, unemotional, polite, institutional, conventional, and the list is too long to mention here but I think you get the idea. My dad is Puerto Rican and deeply and vocally resented all of the aspects of the United States that he secretly wished he was. I think he wanted to be a Kennedy, not a Mayflower descended WASP, but a privileged Irish-Catholic whose great grandparents built America with their hands and earned their position amongst the elite. That kind of white was okay. We were labeled “white” whenever we bought into any of the mass media bullshit the mainstream was feeding us.
We were white when we didn’t “speak our feelings.” I hated speaking my feelings. I was a kid. I made up feelings just to get out of having to think about what I actually felt. Mostly I said whatever I thought my dad wanted to hear. In college when I finally did start to speak my feelings which were at that point pretty dark, I realized the rest of the world black, white, green or purple, did not really want to hear me say, I FEEL LIKE I’M BLEEDING ON THE INSIDE AND I THINK I MIGHT BE LOSING MY MIND! I walked around frowning and resenting everyone who passed me on the street, shouting, “Smile! It can’t be that bad.” F%*k You! I am not here to make your world prettier by smiling!
When I was in sixth grade, my dad picked me up from school one day. My brothers and I usually walked home by ourselves but for some reason this day was different. New York City public schools were tough and I could never figure out how, aside from fighting which I found loathsome, I could earn the respect of my peers. The next day at recess Yvonne asked me, in front of all my classmates, “Why didn’t you tell me your father was black?” I knew I was not supposed to say the answer that popped into my mind but, crap, I didn’t even realize he looked black. I just shrugged my shoulders and said I didn’t know and watched my social status rise.
My dad called himself Puerto Rican or Hispanic if you were going to generalize and we always said the same. I parroted his “Spanish? I’m not Spanish. Spanish people are from Spain. I'm Puerto Rican.” It didn't sound credible coming from a tiny pale girl speaking annoyingly proper English. This was before Latina came into fashion and besides my Spanish was fairly limited. “People of Color” is loathsome to my dad. I can’t remember why. Something about everybody being a color or the condescending sound of it. Maybe it is because people might think he was black if they had to pick a “color.”
Don’t get me wrong, black was cool in our house. His students came over to our house and spray painted “Black Power” on our walls. I mean they had permission and all. There were some crazy parties that we slept through. We woke up to find people sleeping on the floor in the living room, glasses half-filled with beer and cigarette butts, extinguished tiny ends of joints in the ashtrays, and our long hallway covered with red and black slogans of the time graffited all over. “Power to the People” “Make Love Not War” “Burn the Bra” Stuff about freeing people unjustly locked up, Mao, “pigs,” and “women’s lib.”
That was another reason I couldn’t have a doll. Fashion dolls like Barbie represented the objectification of women we were fighting against and baby dolls let little girls pretend to be mommies when there were other goals we were supposed to have. Banned professions to aspire towards were nursing, teaching, stewardess, beauty queen. There was a Barbie knock-off doll tied around her neck to a lamp swinging naked as a symbol of… I still don’t know. I really wanted to cut her down and sew some cool bellbottoms for her or maybe a dashiki.
So one day as I was walking past Lampston’s right across the street from our apartment on Broadway and 102nd Street, I saw in the window a black doll. She was wearing the exact same dress and shoes and socks as the white doll in the box next to her and she had the same exact features. She had arms and legs that thanks to plastic sockets bent at the hips and shoulders. The only difference was she had black curly hair instead of blond curly hair and brown skin instead of white. I could still dress and undress her, give her baths, put her to sleep in a shoebox bed where her lids would shut when she was tilted backwards. I hoped her being black was the loophole to the “No Dolls” rule. I planted the seed by declaring one day, “I want a black baby!” It got my dad’s attention so as my eighth birthday approached I dropped hints about where my dad might purchase such an item.
Here I am at my birthday party proudly holding my doll, my smile betraying the joy at realizing that if I could just find exceptions to rules, I would not have to be bound by them.
We couldn’t have those cool small plastic cowboys and Indians. We weren’t allowed to call them Indians and this was 1969? WTF. Maybe that was normal hippie stuff. I don’t know. We never watched westerns but they did let us watch some movie called Soldier Blue. It was probably one of the most violent movies I have ever seen. Sick stuff but it was supposed to wake us up to the reality of what the “white man” was capable of doing.
There were some arbitrary distinctions drawn over what constituted white. My mother was white and so was anything uptight, repressed, formal, unemotional, polite, institutional, conventional, and the list is too long to mention here but I think you get the idea. My dad is Puerto Rican and deeply and vocally resented all of the aspects of the United States that he secretly wished he was. I think he wanted to be a Kennedy, not a Mayflower descended WASP, but a privileged Irish-Catholic whose great grandparents built America with their hands and earned their position amongst the elite. That kind of white was okay. We were labeled “white” whenever we bought into any of the mass media bullshit the mainstream was feeding us.
We were white when we didn’t “speak our feelings.” I hated speaking my feelings. I was a kid. I made up feelings just to get out of having to think about what I actually felt. Mostly I said whatever I thought my dad wanted to hear. In college when I finally did start to speak my feelings which were at that point pretty dark, I realized the rest of the world black, white, green or purple, did not really want to hear me say, I FEEL LIKE I’M BLEEDING ON THE INSIDE AND I THINK I MIGHT BE LOSING MY MIND! I walked around frowning and resenting everyone who passed me on the street, shouting, “Smile! It can’t be that bad.” F%*k You! I am not here to make your world prettier by smiling!
When I was in sixth grade, my dad picked me up from school one day. My brothers and I usually walked home by ourselves but for some reason this day was different. New York City public schools were tough and I could never figure out how, aside from fighting which I found loathsome, I could earn the respect of my peers. The next day at recess Yvonne asked me, in front of all my classmates, “Why didn’t you tell me your father was black?” I knew I was not supposed to say the answer that popped into my mind but, crap, I didn’t even realize he looked black. I just shrugged my shoulders and said I didn’t know and watched my social status rise.
My dad called himself Puerto Rican or Hispanic if you were going to generalize and we always said the same. I parroted his “Spanish? I’m not Spanish. Spanish people are from Spain. I'm Puerto Rican.” It didn't sound credible coming from a tiny pale girl speaking annoyingly proper English. This was before Latina came into fashion and besides my Spanish was fairly limited. “People of Color” is loathsome to my dad. I can’t remember why. Something about everybody being a color or the condescending sound of it. Maybe it is because people might think he was black if they had to pick a “color.”
Don’t get me wrong, black was cool in our house. His students came over to our house and spray painted “Black Power” on our walls. I mean they had permission and all. There were some crazy parties that we slept through. We woke up to find people sleeping on the floor in the living room, glasses half-filled with beer and cigarette butts, extinguished tiny ends of joints in the ashtrays, and our long hallway covered with red and black slogans of the time graffited all over. “Power to the People” “Make Love Not War” “Burn the Bra” Stuff about freeing people unjustly locked up, Mao, “pigs,” and “women’s lib.”
That was another reason I couldn’t have a doll. Fashion dolls like Barbie represented the objectification of women we were fighting against and baby dolls let little girls pretend to be mommies when there were other goals we were supposed to have. Banned professions to aspire towards were nursing, teaching, stewardess, beauty queen. There was a Barbie knock-off doll tied around her neck to a lamp swinging naked as a symbol of… I still don’t know. I really wanted to cut her down and sew some cool bellbottoms for her or maybe a dashiki.
So one day as I was walking past Lampston’s right across the street from our apartment on Broadway and 102nd Street, I saw in the window a black doll. She was wearing the exact same dress and shoes and socks as the white doll in the box next to her and she had the same exact features. She had arms and legs that thanks to plastic sockets bent at the hips and shoulders. The only difference was she had black curly hair instead of blond curly hair and brown skin instead of white. I could still dress and undress her, give her baths, put her to sleep in a shoebox bed where her lids would shut when she was tilted backwards. I hoped her being black was the loophole to the “No Dolls” rule. I planted the seed by declaring one day, “I want a black baby!” It got my dad’s attention so as my eighth birthday approached I dropped hints about where my dad might purchase such an item.
Here I am at my birthday party proudly holding my doll, my smile betraying the joy at realizing that if I could just find exceptions to rules, I would not have to be bound by them.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Some highlights of summer
I spent some time out in Amagansett with my bro. Bri and my mom even came one weekend. We had a little BBQ. I left all the cooking to everyone else and had a delicious burger without the meat. We also grilled the zucchini from John's New Lebanon garden. Wow! They were delicious.
Lily had a wonderful time too. Boy does she like to be out of the city. Our time upstate and out on the island were the best for her. She was so lively, leaping through the grass, chasing butterflies. Here she is exhausted after a long day.
This is an afghan I knitted this summer while I was recovering. Bri brought it to Ireland for my mother-in-law. I think she liked it.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Postcards
I have not got this picture posting thing down yet. I will try again with my postcards. This one is sideways but it is a print of my actual MRI on sheer fabric over a tie-dyed fabric my brother Tim gave me. He always wanted to collaborate on something. Over the tumor, I added some beads to look like a raspberry. The actual tumor outline is bigger as you might be abe to tell. Scary huh? But guess what! I had my follow-up MRI and it is all gone. That means it can't grow back. I do have a hole in my brain where the tumor used to be. It's not going to go away either, according to Dr. Sen.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Mentally exhausted mind state
I slept until 10 AM thiss morning. Very late. I guess relief from finishing my postcard book. I am too tired to write or post the excellent photos right now. In case anyone was wondering, I have been working on this obsessively for weeks and that is probably why none of you have seen me or heard from me. Now I have to clean up a million assorted pieces of art supplies and (here is the hard part) put them where they belong. I am gearing myself up for going back to school. It is going to be fine.
KISS. Student directed learning this year. The burden is on them. No passive learners. Just got to get them motivated and confident.
KISS. Student directed learning this year. The burden is on them. No passive learners. Just got to get them motivated and confident.
So much art this summer
I finished my fabric postcard challenge for Quilting Arts Magazine today. I got to the post office at 4:45 and overnighted it. I hope it gets published. This is the cover, well a scan of the cover. It looks much better in person.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Creative juices flowing
Since I am nearly all better now, my mind is constantly churning up ideas for things I am going to make. The Renegade Craft Fair this weekend was great. I did not buy much because, like most people there, I think I can make it all myself. Hmm. I looked for some hand spun yarn since I have not mastered that skill myself but no luck. Sachi and I both won raffle bags full of free stuff from Adorn magazine. Hooray!
So here are my projects:
1. I was trying to knit the "Sunset" dress from the Rowan Kasbah Collection. I probably knit and frogged (pulled out) over ten samples. I brought my samples into Dona at Yarntopia and she helped me tweak some minor details. Then I began the pattern in earnest and all the same problems. I wrote an angry letter to Rowan yesterday and if I do not hear from them, my angry online tirade will begin.
2. I am making a t-shirt quilt for Sachi. She has many cute logo shirts that are too small but so soft so they are going into a quilt. I found a lady who will do the quilting with her long arm machine for me.
3. A series of vacation postcards for a Quilting Arts contest. Since on my last vacation, I was basically obsessing about brain surgery, I am incorporating some disturbing imagery. I will post as I get closer to being done.
I have to go to school today because my classroom is a mess and I am sharing it with another teacher this year.
So here are my projects:
1. I was trying to knit the "Sunset" dress from the Rowan Kasbah Collection. I probably knit and frogged (pulled out) over ten samples. I brought my samples into Dona at Yarntopia and she helped me tweak some minor details. Then I began the pattern in earnest and all the same problems. I wrote an angry letter to Rowan yesterday and if I do not hear from them, my angry online tirade will begin.
2. I am making a t-shirt quilt for Sachi. She has many cute logo shirts that are too small but so soft so they are going into a quilt. I found a lady who will do the quilting with her long arm machine for me.
3. A series of vacation postcards for a Quilting Arts contest. Since on my last vacation, I was basically obsessing about brain surgery, I am incorporating some disturbing imagery. I will post as I get closer to being done.
I have to go to school today because my classroom is a mess and I am sharing it with another teacher this year.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Thank you
Thanks to everyone who read my blog. I am feeling so so much better. More relevant as to why I have not written is I am tired of being unwell, talking about it, blogging about it, even thinking about it. I want to rejoin the land of the living. I do want to start a new blog and I will leave the link on this blog for anyone interested. I went to field day for an hour. I am going to graduation, sixth grade promotion, some parties, a new class, just one thing a day for now.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Pleasure and pain
Ah, that they were only equally balanced in life.
My philosophy is that there is fortune and misfortune in everyone's life. While things are good, enjoy it but don't be surprised when the bad drops in on you. It is inevitable. Hence, my take-it-in-stride attitude when news of the angioma came along. "Brain surgery? Okay, thanks for letting me know. I was wondering what the next hardship to befall me was going to be."
My friend David told me that his father always told him that life is about problem solving. On any given day, before you go to sleep, what challenges will you face and overcome. I do get frustrated when the problems are caused by the incompetence and stupidity of others. Looking over the credit card bill, you notice that Duane Reade charged you twice for your recent purchace. This will necessitate a phone call, some discussion, possible correspondence to save you from being charged an extra $27.16. In the hour it takes you to complete all the task, you could have been solving a bigger problem. This is the nature of life.
So pleasure and pain, the extremes of the human experience. They are both so distracting. Very little can be accomplished while in the midst of these sensations. In moments of intensity, the brain ceases to form words, the mind goes blank. Having spent the last three weeks in varying degrees of pain, this topic is interesting to me. Why is pleasure in the extreme so fleeting? There is the obvious - thirty seconds? The endorphin rush during exercise - moments? The first few bites of chocolate or something delicious - two minutes? A massage - thirty minutes? A nap on the beach with a tropical breeze - two hours? And as the strength of the feeling intensifies so the the amount of time we experience it diminishes. Why is the same not true of pain? We are capable of experiencing intense, debilitating pain for very long periods of time. Why are the two experiences not balanced?
I never questioned this before. The fortune-misfortune balance makes sense to me having experienced both. In retrospect though I realize I am one of the lucky people on earth. Even with the brain surgery, the good in my life far, far outweighs the bad. There is no formula. There is no way to anticipate either. It is pointless to pursue only fortune or pleasure as life will just get in the way and the disappoinment can be profound.
I suppose that is why some people become heroin addicts. Having no experience with this myself, I rely on the impression I was left with after watching Trainspotting. It (heroin) appears to produce a longlasting, very distracting, even debilitating feeling of pleasure. This inevitably is followed by what appears to be an even more intense degree of pain, as the addict is forced to withdraw. While I was having coffee with Aimee this morning at the Silver Moon Bakery, there was a woman with whom we were forced to sit laughing at nothing we could discern. It was very disconcerting and finally she moved away. I am sorry but anyone who experiences nonstop pleasure with no outside influence appears to be pinwheels-spinning-in the-eyes crazy.
Since my senior year in high school, I like to fancy myself an existentialist. This based on reading Crime and Punishment and Camus' The Stranger. "The benign indifference of the universe." There is no point in cursing the heavens as there is no power out there determined to make you miserable. Stuff happens and it happens to all of us. So then why do I pray? For the most part my prayers are expressions of gratitude for all of the positive in my life. When I am facing adversity or I am afraid, my prayer takes the form of admitting that I may not have control of the outcome. By putting my fears out there, I can relinquish them. I let go so I do not have to worry anymore. Prayer gives me a sense of relief that I do not have to pour energy into a problem over which I have no say. I do not pray in the morning that I will eat enough protein to help my nerve cells heal or accomplish my chores for the day. I can work on that. But I prayed that while I was unconscious during my surgery I trusted that whatever the outcome, it was all cool. I can't even say I ask for a positive outcome because that's not really the effect I expect from prayer. I acknowledge my puniness and I feel better as a result.
Today I am very glad to be out of excruciating pain.
My philosophy is that there is fortune and misfortune in everyone's life. While things are good, enjoy it but don't be surprised when the bad drops in on you. It is inevitable. Hence, my take-it-in-stride attitude when news of the angioma came along. "Brain surgery? Okay, thanks for letting me know. I was wondering what the next hardship to befall me was going to be."
My friend David told me that his father always told him that life is about problem solving. On any given day, before you go to sleep, what challenges will you face and overcome. I do get frustrated when the problems are caused by the incompetence and stupidity of others. Looking over the credit card bill, you notice that Duane Reade charged you twice for your recent purchace. This will necessitate a phone call, some discussion, possible correspondence to save you from being charged an extra $27.16. In the hour it takes you to complete all the task, you could have been solving a bigger problem. This is the nature of life.
So pleasure and pain, the extremes of the human experience. They are both so distracting. Very little can be accomplished while in the midst of these sensations. In moments of intensity, the brain ceases to form words, the mind goes blank. Having spent the last three weeks in varying degrees of pain, this topic is interesting to me. Why is pleasure in the extreme so fleeting? There is the obvious - thirty seconds? The endorphin rush during exercise - moments? The first few bites of chocolate or something delicious - two minutes? A massage - thirty minutes? A nap on the beach with a tropical breeze - two hours? And as the strength of the feeling intensifies so the the amount of time we experience it diminishes. Why is the same not true of pain? We are capable of experiencing intense, debilitating pain for very long periods of time. Why are the two experiences not balanced?
I never questioned this before. The fortune-misfortune balance makes sense to me having experienced both. In retrospect though I realize I am one of the lucky people on earth. Even with the brain surgery, the good in my life far, far outweighs the bad. There is no formula. There is no way to anticipate either. It is pointless to pursue only fortune or pleasure as life will just get in the way and the disappoinment can be profound.
I suppose that is why some people become heroin addicts. Having no experience with this myself, I rely on the impression I was left with after watching Trainspotting. It (heroin) appears to produce a longlasting, very distracting, even debilitating feeling of pleasure. This inevitably is followed by what appears to be an even more intense degree of pain, as the addict is forced to withdraw. While I was having coffee with Aimee this morning at the Silver Moon Bakery, there was a woman with whom we were forced to sit laughing at nothing we could discern. It was very disconcerting and finally she moved away. I am sorry but anyone who experiences nonstop pleasure with no outside influence appears to be pinwheels-spinning-in the-eyes crazy.
Since my senior year in high school, I like to fancy myself an existentialist. This based on reading Crime and Punishment and Camus' The Stranger. "The benign indifference of the universe." There is no point in cursing the heavens as there is no power out there determined to make you miserable. Stuff happens and it happens to all of us. So then why do I pray? For the most part my prayers are expressions of gratitude for all of the positive in my life. When I am facing adversity or I am afraid, my prayer takes the form of admitting that I may not have control of the outcome. By putting my fears out there, I can relinquish them. I let go so I do not have to worry anymore. Prayer gives me a sense of relief that I do not have to pour energy into a problem over which I have no say. I do not pray in the morning that I will eat enough protein to help my nerve cells heal or accomplish my chores for the day. I can work on that. But I prayed that while I was unconscious during my surgery I trusted that whatever the outcome, it was all cool. I can't even say I ask for a positive outcome because that's not really the effect I expect from prayer. I acknowledge my puniness and I feel better as a result.
Today I am very glad to be out of excruciating pain.
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