What a week. The low point -- my cat crapped on me on Thursday morning. You know it's going to be a bad day when you have to pick up cat shit with your bare hands. She is leashed trained and reliant upon us to figure out her "I gotta go" signals. I guess something got lost in the translation this time. High point -- I've been trying to figure out a project that would bring my Ph.D. life together with my creative life. We had a meeting Friday with a media consultant and I am inspired. I think I've figured out the next thing. I'm not going to jinx it though. I'm waiting to talk to some people before I write about it too extensively. Let's just say it involves lights, cameras and some action.
BTW, I found out this week that lack of sleep makes me paranoid. I also found out that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the cat won't crap on you.
Okay, I'm in a bit of weird mood.
The fat culture stuff seems to have struck a chord. I'm excited about that. Carl and I have been thinking about making audio culture jams. It seems to be the missing thing in culture jamming efforts, most of which emphasize the visual. Well, we have this radio show, so it seems an appropriate place to start for us. Of course, it means that we are going to have to listen to some commercial radio to see what we can jam. That will be painful. I've learned to toon out so much in advertisements. But one of the ideas I have is to spoof Jenny Craig ads and I think that could qualify as fat culture. I'll definitely let people know if this thing works out.
In the meantime, I've decided to mark as many fat sites as I can find and see if I can come up with a pattern, then I think I'm going to just start an on-line fat institute that emphasizes resources and cultural creations about fat. Who knows maybe even start a kind of forum myself. It may take some time in my complicated busy life, but I am going to do something about this fat culture idea.
I have come to an important conclusion during the past five years. This conclusion has affected how I live my life, how I think about life in a profound way. I have concluded that politics is not enough. In fact, being a part of the political system, i.e., protesting, writing letters, making my opinions known, might actually be adding to the problem rather than taking away from it. Everytime a protest occurs, it reifies a broken system. People point to the protestors and say "see, the system works, people get to voice their opinions." But the system hasn't worked because nobody actually listens to the protestors, they simply use the act of protesting to solidify the status quo. Does that mean all is lost? No. It means that the battle is fought on other grounds. In my humble opinion, those grounds are the grounds of culture.
There are a lot of meanings to the word culture, but the meaning I am using now is one of shared values, shared understandings among a group of people. Culture gets created in a number of ways: traditions, child-rearing, education, entertainment, commerce, sports, language, writing, pictures, audio and spoken word, music and just about any way that two human beings interact with each other. In order for person A to be able to understand person B and vice versa, something of a shared value or understanding has to be reached. To the extent that this is successful, the two people interact and each one is changed because of the interaction. Very few political protests that I have participated in have led to a mutually shared understanding or value. Most of the protests I see on American television are used in ways not intended by the protestors. In fact, getting their message across is the single most frustrating thing in an activist's life.
That is why I find myself drawn to culture jamming. We have to find someway to stop the flow of cultural production and begin to produce new kinds of culture if we are going to change this world into a sustainable place. North Americans are killing the earth and they are doing so because it feels right to them. They are doing so unquestionably. They are doing so without real thought. Culture jamming jars us out of our sleep and gives us an opportunity to examine.
I've been thinking about culture jamming and fatness lately. Specifically, I've been thinking about the place of cultural production in the fledgling so-called fat movement. Marilyn's book was a good first step, but judging from the gab cafe, it has not led to much. The people in the cafe spend more time correcting each other than they do thinking about how they can change the world around them. I've offered an episode of First Person, Plural to them several times and have never received a comment from anyone but my closest contacts in the cafe. There is a woman in Oregon who is doing a fat show every month on local radio, but no one in the cafe even talks about such effort. Others discuss how they'd like to make a movie or write a book, but no one really does anything other than smile and (((hug))) and then go back to discussing the View or some movie star.
I brought up the topic of a fat institute -- a place where the brains and creative spirit of people in the cafe could come together and do something to change how the culture views fatness. No one cared to talk about it for more than a day or two, yet weeks of sustained conversations about Scooby Doo or movie stars' hairdoes or pornography continue. When is somebody going to do something more than whine and when some of us do do something, when are we going to find support from a real fat community, a fat culture? It is frustrating.
It has been a dreadful week healthwise, but a great week workwise (something that rarely happens in my life). My acupuncturist is sick and I haven't had a treatment in close to six weeks now. I now know why I'm paying the big bucks for treatment. I have so much more pain. It gets tiring. I have costochondritis brought on by lupus or fibromyalgia -- I'm not clear which or maybe both. All I know is that the joints and muscles where my ribs join at my sternam are causing me a great deal of pain when I breath or cough. I can't find a comfortable way to sit or sleep and, of course, that means more pain as the viscious cycle of pain and sleeplessness begins. The less I sleep the more I hurt, the more I hurt, the less I sleep. I solved the afternoon sun problem. I'm spending my afternoons at U.Vic's library basement on hot days and closing my drapes and hiding out in my apartment on cool days. I'm glad to see some cooler days this weekend. I've been taking pain medication this weekend -- something I hate doing and don't do often. It makes me dull. I feel like I'm walking around in gelatin.
Kell and Tish have been contemplate the fat movement or the lack of a fat movement. I am especially interested in the discussion about health and fatness because I've often felt a bit weird about all the healthy food and exercise exclaimations as if fat people have to prove their health to the world around them. On the other hand, I really object to "fatness as disease" model. Even with so-called super-sized people, I think it is a big mistake to talk about the fat being the disease. Maybe it is a symptom of disease, but it isn't the disease itself. Tish said this so much better than me and I know somewhere in my foggy brain is a really good piece about diesease and society and fatness, but not tonight.
Tomorrow I look for a new acupuncturist or a temporary one, at least. I can't go on in this fog any longer.
WARNING, TODAY'S EPISODE OF FATTYPATTIES IS ESSENTIALLY A BITCH SESSION. BUT HEY, WHAT'S A FORUM IF YOU CAN'T VENT...
I hate summer, or rather summer hates me. Okay, I'm a reasonably intelligent person and I am an extremely educated person (I have the debt to prove that one) and so I know intellectually that summer isn't an entity that hates or loves. But I don't care. Summer hates me. The temperature has been around 30 (celsius) for the past few days. (Follow the conversion: 30/5 = 6 x 9 = 54 + 32 = 86 degrees Fahrenheit.) Okay that doesn't seem like a heat wave in most of the world, but in Victoria no one has an air conditioner. The high 80s outside means my 3rd story apartment is in the mid-90s with no goddamn air conditioner. On top of it all, my neighbor likes to smoke on her balcony, so I often can't breathe when I have the windows open. My apartment sits on the northwest side and all the afternoon sun comes pouring in with no shade. When we moved into this apartment last November, we didn't realize how much sun a northwest apartment gets in a Canadian city. It is difficult for this southern girl to realize how long the days are in the summer time and how far north the sun travels.
If you think me unreasonable, I suggest you look up the symptoms for lupus. When I get too much sun, I get rashes, my joints ache and I feel feverish. It's like having the flu all summer long. In truth, there are people with lupus who have far worse symptoms from sun exposure. The worse thing that has ever happened to me is a few summers ago I got a nasty rash from being in the pool late in the afternoon (the sun was low, but it was reflecting off the water, apparently pretty intensely) and my blood ANA count shot up. This indicated a big immune reaction, but it didn't damage any organs and it went away once I started swimming after dark.
I moved to the westcoast of Canada to get away from the sun and the heat. In truth there is much less sun here in the summertime than elsewhere in Canada. Fog rolls in, it is cloudy for part of the day, etc. But we keep having these four or five days in a row of bright, sunny, hot days. Then I suffer another three or four days recovering. I didn't want to move again. I wanted to settle into our beautiful apartment for a few years until we were ready to buy a house or something, but I don't see how I can take another summer in this apartment. I need no afternoon sun and a dark space during the day. I need air conditioning. Today I'm going to get that at the U. Vic. library. Thank goddess for lap top computers.
I have to admit that I hate having a chronic illness. Sometimes I'm cool with it, you know, it's just one of those things you take care of in life, like brushing your teeth or taking a shower. But when I feel overwhelmed by the heat and sun, when I feel sick with the flu, I get paranoid. I feel persecuted and punished. What did I ever do to the sun anyway for it to hate me so? The first book of any note written for lupus patients was The Sun Is My Enemy by Henrietta Aladjem. I've never read the book, but I do understand the title.
The good news is that it's only 41 more days to Autumn Equinox and shorter days.
Last night on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show the actor Paul Rudd made a fat joke. It wasn't as rude as it could be. It fell into the category of "good intentions" instead of "out and out hostility." But it hurt nonetheless. It hurt most because I've seen Stewart be far more considerate of fat acceptance. He had Camryn Manheim on his show a few months ago and I thought he was going to jump her right in front of the cameras, he was so flirtatous. He obviously respected her as well and allowed her to talk freely about the fat acceptance movement. I was heartened.
It made last night even more disheartening. In truth, Stewart could have been much ruder. There were no "ass" jokes (and the opening was there, he chose not to take it). But it would have been nice if it just hadn't come up. He tried to be polite about calling someone a "fattie." It would have been nice if being a "fattie" were considered something other than an insult.
A long and heated debate took place last week in the cafe about whether fat bodies are really different from thin bodies. It was in the context of questions about beauty and modelling and stripping and pornography. Two people I really like reading seemed to be very angry with each other over the question of who is fat and who is not. I thought they both missed the point. The point is that we do not get to decide who is fat. Fat is a social construction and like all stigmatized characteristics, the biggot gets to choose who is fat. Kate Winslet is fat in the world out there. Fat acceptance is not about accepting bodies, it is about accepting ourselves in spite of the pressure to hate ourselves. Debating over what is a fat body, and what is not, is irrelevant in a world where we do not get to decide for ourselves how to describe our own bodies, what to think about our own bodies.
That is why I believe that far from being in the "eye of the beholder," beauty is a taught value. We are told from a very young age what is beautiful and what is ugly. I saw a mother the other day in a local department store tell her daughter to "shut-up" while she was singing. She threatened to hit the girl for singing. Do you think this little girl will grow up believing it is okay to sing, that it is beautiful to sing? I was steaming with anger and wanted to scream at the mother, "what the hell is wrong with you?" I didn't though, because such an outburst would be "ugly." Beauty can be a conscious decision. I think it is a political decision to describe fat as beautiful, to describe old as beautiful, to describe dark as beautiful. It is radical politics to change one's perceptions of beauty. That is why "plus-sized" models wear size 10s. To look at a size 30 as beautiful is too radical for the fashion industry.
It is irrelevant to worry about what is fat and what is not. Better to welcome all who would choose (and it is a choice in North American culture) to see anyone who doesn't fit the narrow standards as beautiful. We need all the allies we can find for acceptance.
I SHOULD BE...
Those words are racing through my brain today and it seems that no matter how hard I try. I can't seem to do anything along those lines. That's not the truth. The truth is I'm making slow, but sure progress. The truth is that it is getting done, just not as fast I had hoped. But that's how I feel. Like running through a bowl of jello. It is hard to code data in my current mental state.
I'D RATHER BE...
Sleeping? Veging out? I dunno, I just don't have energy. It's a fibrofog day and I just don't have the energy to fight it. I'd rather be well.
These stories helped me a lot. They truly did. (I had to write nine words to make the links work. I hope I made that work right because that was a lot to ask of myself on a day like today.)
I am more organized today -- yesterday wasn't as productive as I had hoped, but I did sort through a lot of papers on my desk. How do papers build up so quickly? Of course, I do have about five big projects going on at once right now. I actually like that better than one project. I get bored easily I guess. I don't have much else to talk about today. I just wanted to write something because I promised myself that I'd start writing more often. I'm sure I'll be more clever soon.
I'm more rested than I was and less confused than I was. Too much going on in my life still, but I'm a bit more clear on how to handle it all. Being with my mom and my brother for the first time in year was good. I discovered I missed them more than I realized. I have an immigrant's heart now, I believe. I came to Canada for real reasons, good reasons, personal and political reasons. I do not regret coming. I am happier here. I like it here. I am beginning to fit in here and think of it as home. But, I left more behind than I realized and when they left on Saturday I cried. I am still crying. I wish they wanted to be here, but I do not want to go back there. So we remain apart.
I use vacations as self-examinations. I drew a few conclusions while I was meditating in Port Hardy last week.
1. I am not writing enough. I am a writer first and foremost. I lose sight of that sometimes.
2. I miss drawing, painting and photography. I am going to take an art class this fall. I need some sort of structure to push me into doing art. I can't seem, yet, to do it for the sheer pleasure even though I receive great pleasure when I do it.
3. I am not working as efficiently as I could as a researcher. I am going to be more disciplined.
4. I really like it here. It is time to make everything official. I've been biding my time, checking things out. It is time to commit to Canada.
5. I am happier and more satisfied with my life than I have ever been. It's time to let go of some of the pain of the past and to relax in the good stuff. I don't relax in the good stuff easily.
These are my conclusions. Whether they change my life remains to be seen.
But I did have fun last week. I decided to have fun and for the most part, it worked.
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