Me and my new boyfriend

Please note, to the right and in the middle, that wedding ring. Alas. Also, genetically speaking, this union would portend bad news in the hair department for prospective offspring. Still, poetry crushes die hard.

Enough already! This gushing sycophanticism simply must end. It does not become me.

Other people named Marjorie just SHOOT their chickens

During one of the presentations given at the SFA symposium this weekend, a woman read an excerpt from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, famous Southern-ish (Florida?) writer, in which Ms. Rawlings described a near-calamitous episode featuring a shotgun, a chicken and a professor who just about lost a tooth on the bullet he found in his serving of bird. Southern food/lit/social politics folks love a good shoot-the-chicken story.

This brings to mind a near-calamitous dream I had while I was attempting to complete my graduate manuscript for my MFA. First of all, most of the poems in that manuscript are about using Southern cooking as a method for dealing with assorted racial identity issues that arise when you're a white girl from the South-- and you leave the South-- and people assume that a) you're a demonic racist asshole and/or b) you've slept with a sibling and/or c) you don't own shoes (anyone who cares to contest this one, I'd invite to tour my closet, except that you really can't walk in there because there are too damn many shoes in the way (last count: 65 pairs, not counting flip-flops because flip-flops do not really qualify as shoes, even if you THINK it's a fashionable idea to wear them to work.)). So, all that's just to say that I've been toying with notions of food and identity and politics for a while, now.

So the dream goes, I was somehow put in charge of offing chickens for some large family fete. I have a memory of being kept in the house as a child while my dad and some neighbor or other slaughtered chickens on our farm out in West Tennessee-- but other than a cloudy image of a pimply-looking already-quite-dead, featherless creature, I don't remember much of anything about the actual practice of chicken-killing. My dreaming self, however, determined that the best plan of attack would be to attempt snapping their scrawny li'l necks. As it turns out, I'm not the greatest at chicken-neck-wringing. It seems that I maimed and deformed quite a few chickens without learning an effective manner for actually breaking a chicken neck. In the chicken yard of my dreams, 20 or 30 chickens hopped about, shrieking in pain, with their heads all at half-mast. It seems that I was unable to kill them, and therefore, was readily inflicting pain on myriad god's little critters-- and was also failing in my duties toward the production of a bounteous feast. I was feeling pretty awful about my dream-self, I'll tell you what! It wasn't the best dream I've ever had.

Were I to play Freud with myself for a moment, I might point out that my inability to properly kill a chicken (where's a dream-gun when you need one?) serves as a most blade-like and incisive metaphor for how I felt about finishing my manuscript, and followingly, finishing grad school. In taking a third year to complete my degree, I felt confident I'd injured my manuscript pretty severely--it screamed and moaned and copped attitude with me on a daily basis. But I could no more find a way to heal it than I could find a way to kill it good and dead.

But Freud is passe and I'm no kinda analyst.

Why is it that I'm still relieved when I realize I don't really write poems anymore?

SFA belly overload

Yeah, so, I've thrown my wheat-free veganism to the wind this weekend. There'd be no surviving around this crowd of pig-eaters otherwise. This large-scale consumption of animal agriculture is giving me both a planet-concern-related heartache and a lard-ass, but whatever. And I've already made a red velvet commitment for next weekend... because all my DC friends know not of the joys of cream cheese icing and red food coloring...but soon enough, I'll be back to my monastic lentils. Hopefully, I'll get there without becoming obese in the meantime.

So, here are the Highlights of the SFA Symposium's Saturday Events According to Marjorie:

1. Kevin Young. Dear lord. It has long been the case that, when I needed to be reminded about how much--and why-- I love poetry, Jelly Roll is one of the books to which I regularly return. But today he read some new poems that drew quite a lot of laughs from the audience. Laughs at weird stuff. We were an eager audience-- so much so that we had one of those great rare moments in which non-poets cheered and whistled at the end of the reading. I, of course, welled up-- partly because I was so excited to hear this particular poet, and partly because it was so great to be reminded about how wretchedly cynical I've become about how receptive folks are to real, challenging, thoughtful and innovative poetics. Quite simply, we ate it up. And the work--he read a bunch of new stuff that has a habit of cracking wise, then ripping the rug out from under you. It mourns. It fleshes. It was lovely. Good god, I love this poet.

2. The connections between food and linguistics/semiotics and between race and gender and between food and race and gender and between food and race and gender and semiotics all joined up and interlocked in my head today. And this happened with Bernard Herman's arguments regarding the apotheosis of so-called low-brow foods and cooking methods (i.e., pretty much all that is Southern, as opposed to that which has a more rarefied, or ethnically (European) unmixed heritage, such as the haute cuisine, which is obviously French, and only French, in derivation). And "apotheosis" is exactly the right word here. Allow me to take a quick meander through these ideas because, otherwise, I might lose all that good thinking I got done today: let's say there are two manners of communication. Herman calls the first "restricted code" and by this term, he means an limited-vocabulary manner of speaking that is readily accessible to most folks-- and we can draw an easy metaphoric link with this manner of speaking and homestyle cooking. And then he spoke about elaborated code, which is more specialized and containing a very specific jargon and can be metaphorically linked to professional cooking/chefery (spellcheck says I just made up that word). So, there's that-- and to extend it just a little farther, a discussion arose in a Q&A about how women are cooks and men are chefs, which then drops the lens of gender over this differentiation in vocabulary, implying that the food of women is easy and accessible, while the food of men is elite and specialized and requires a convoluted vocabulary. So, despite my clearly simplistic re-rendering here, that's pretty interesting. But then, this relates back to some of the stuff that I was talking about yesterday about appropriating, fetishizing and developing connoisseurships around the food preparation of marginalized peoples-- hence that concept of the "apotheosis" or ascension of that which is traditional, homey and "low", now achieving new heights in terms of cultural capital. Oh, this is all very messy, and I'm far too excited about the implications of this thought process to be able to relay in any logical fashion, but I will say that food academics are super cool. And listening to them is straight adrenaline to the synapses.

3. Another metaphor between food and language continually arises throughout this discourse: Ingredients are like the vocabulary while the method is like the grammar. Food has a syntax. No wonder it translates so handily to poetry.

3. I'm making friends with sweet potatoes, a heretofore repugnant-in-my-opinion vegetable. Sweet potato flan helps. And, to be fair, the Thai-esque vegan sweet potatoes I made last week didn't hurt either.

4. I may well have been won over to the pro-boudin camp. I'm still a little wary about exactly WHICH pig parts they put in that shit... but, oh, my god, I have been missing out on some pork!

5. Peanut cotton candy is amazing. Wonderbread icecream? Not so much.

6. Free Abita. Need I say more? Probably not, but I will say that there is no more enjoyable way to support a New Orleans business than to make your mom drink New Orleans beer. That said, Pecan Harvest is no Turbo Dog. There is no equal to the Turbo Dog.

7. Never underestimate the collard green. Particularly if there's bacon involved.

8. A little tip: if you are interested in pursuing a degree in, say, interdisciplinary critical and gender studies, buy the books of gender studies gurus and have them sign them. They sometimes have a delightful way of offering to introduce you around their programs. OOooH, I just got shivers! I heart smart people. I really heart smart, generous people.

SFA brain overload

I've trekked down to Oxford, MS this weekend for more than a glimpse at Faulkner's house-- and for more than a book-buying spree at Square Books. This weekend is the Southern Foodways Alliance's annual symposium, and once I learned that Jessica Harris (famed culinary anthropologist, southern food genius and English professor all in one) AND Kevin Young, one of my favorite poets, would both be speaking, there was no way I'd have missed it. Joe Allison, don't tell me you're not jealous!

So, anyway, Kevin Young speaks tomorrow but I sat right across the aisle from him today and kept stealing star-struck glances. He busted me a couple of times. And Dr. Harris spoke this morning and was not a let-down in any way. Though I'm already pretty familiar with most of her research, she leads the room as though she is queen-- and for her contributions to this field of scholarship, she most certainly is. And so, she's something pretty fantastic to hear.

Now, for the purposes of concise reportage, I'm going to regurgitate just a few of the amazing tidbits I've learned today.

1. The sensors for bitterness in our mouths warn us of poisons. Sourness sensors indicate spoilage.

2. Absinthe never was poisonous or hallucinogenic. The only reason people were thought to go crazy from drinking too much of it was because unscrupulous distillers often added poisonous copper derivatives and the like to cut costs. Also, they're re-legalizing absinthe in this country as of next week. I tasted some once when I was in college and am excited about the opportunity to do so again.

3. I'll freely admit that I don't know a hell of a lot about alcohol, but I was unaware that "cocktail" isn't a generic term used to indicate all mixed drinks. A cocktail, in order to be considered a cocktail, should have whiskey, cognac or brandy in it and MUST have bitters. A drink with whiskey, cognac or brandy without bitters is called a "slide."

4. I learned of several new restaurants that I MUST try in the DC area, including Gillian Clark's Colorado Kitchen-- where I just might get a decent mess o' greens in the big city.

5. Conceptually speaking, American barbecue is to white Americans what curries are with white Brits. If we can take it for granted that barbecue is a cooking method that we southerners have co-opted from the natives of this continent-- usurped, fetishized, mythologized and developed conoisseurships around-- through the vehicle of the objectifying "colonial gaze" (I just learned this term and I love it and equate it with the "male gaze" terminology you'll find under that gender-relations lens), well, then, Brits have done a very similar thing with the conoisseurship they've developed around their very Brit interpretation of Indian curries, post-British-Raj, that is. After hearing this analogy come straight from his mouth, I immediately high-tailed it to Square Books to buy Andrew Warnes' lit crit book, Hunger Overcome?: Food and Resistance in Twentieth-Century African American Literature.

6. Katrina pervades. Present tense. This is not an historical event here in Mississippi-- or in NOLA, obviously. Though there are at least two different kinds of fried chicken you can find in the Quarter by now, this hurricane and her after-effects are a wound in the souls of Southerners. And there is fury when multi-millionaire white San Diegans claim those fires are "their Katrina" on the evening news. 800 homes burned? 800 pieces of the most valuable real estate in the country? one woman asked,then adding: try 150,000 people displaced! Maybe it's petty to compare, and to put tragedy within the framework of race and economics. But how can I help but think in those terms when a touchstone of my culture-- native? adopted? abandoned? I don't even know anymore-- continues to flounder?

7. I think I might have wagered my soul to Square Books.

Love of my life

OK, potential suitors, here's your only real competition. Unless your feet ALSO smell like delicious corn chips and you can look at me as though my very existence fills you with an utterly ecstatic variety of joy, you'll pretty much lose out to this guy every time.

Oh, how I've missed you, Noah, my love!

But this makes it all better

I always KNEW this could be true!

Heartbreaking

Sad news!

Here's why this is so sad to me: not only do the evolutionary findings described in the article indicate that more, um, inclusive attitudes toward relationships exhaust the body and soul of any given animal, they'll eventually leave the girls of the Geritol set--of any number of species--lacking in a male peer group. Not good statistics at all. Gender diversity is a GOOD thing, after all.

Not only that, but it indicates that my slutopian dreams might encounter difficulties in terms of sustainability... especially if the boys just can't keep up.

I feel daunted.

What the internet tide washes in

I've said before how much I love all the oddities of the internet. Here are a few more examples of great weird crap available to all who care to look:

1. Japanese sex dolls: This hysterical article pretty much says it all, striking just the right tone, somewhere between derision and self-mocking. But to make it even better, I found the actual site. This is endlessly funny to me and I feel totally juvenile for thinking so. The best part though-- and you really mustn't skip it-- is if you go to this page, scroll to the bottom, and watch the video of the hand squeezing the tits. It goes on forever. And then it loops. And it's so rubbery and un-sexy-- so damn funny!

2. A documentary about the history of vibrators: This article provides a write-up, but my friend Nadeea says she just might be in San Francisco during a showing. I have every intention of commissioning her to go and see it on my behalf and then, upon her return, she shall write a guest blog post for me. You're up, Nadeea.

3. A show about sex and design: Here's a great little slideshow. Why didn't I know iPods came with a dildo attachment?

4. A cultural history of virgins: Yeah, it's weird to me, too, but here's a write-up.

5. Why life just might be easier if I was French: This is yet another article on how Americans proved that their cultural heritage resides in the Calvinist prudery of the Puritans when they freaked out about Monica Lewinsky, while the French happily fornicate willy-nilly, seemingly without a need to reconcile such behavior with their Catholicism. In so many words, at least.

I wish I could find a way to play on the internet and get paid for it. Why, no! That is not AT ALL what I do all day. Shame on you for making such an assumption...

A couple of confessions and a reminiscence

When I was in graduate school, I was working really hard to be both a lesbian and a monogamist. I was pretty successful-- one can do anything when one really puts her mind to it. And while there can be no denying that I loved-- and still love--my ex-girlfriend very much, I am not, nor was I ever, above developing crushes. Both bodily and brain-derived crushes. In fact, I find I'm desperately bored--bored to the point of mild depression--when I find myself sans-crush.

And so, there was a boy on whom, during grad school, I had a somewhat embarrassing, yet totally manageable crush. He's real cute. Beyond that, he's so swooningly talented that, in the reading of his work, I found that I wanted to eat the paper on which the poems were printed. And seeing as I wrote a fat lot of nada during my first three semesters of grad school, I was pretty much intimidated by ALL of the other poets in the program. But, I found I particularly responded to this poet's idiosyncratic word choice, eroticism and explorations of body-consciousness.

So, I just read his recently-released chapbook. And godDAMN it, it's hot! The work has evolved quite a lot from the earlier work that I saw way back when-- and I'd seen a good bit of it published in other venues. But really, with this kinda poetry in the world, who needs a vibrator? His full-length book is due out any minute and I'm perfectly breathless about it.

Also amongst my recent readings is the book of another grad school cohort to whom I may have referred previously. While Spring and I were never close enough friends for me to know all the aspects of her that gleam through this text, it's full of all that I couldn't help but intuit about her. I find that there is something funny that happens when you know a poet. In general, I assume that at least half the work of some piece of art coming into existence is the responsibility of the reader, and therefore, once the work is out of the artist's brain, it belongs to the audience. However, when the audience has a personal acquaintance with the artist, it is difficult to see the work as anything other that the product of the soul of a friend. And that's what Spring's beautiful book is to me. And that why I also have a crush on Spring. And that crush is why I'm prevented from offering any particular insight into her work, beyond a vehement recomendation that everyone should read it, because it really is a fascinating piece, full of the searching through of at least a couple different souls. Oh, and buy it! Support kore press! They're good people, publishing great work by phenomenal women.

And on another note, I learned today that one of my grad school professors, Jon Anderson, died recently. My experience with him was curious. He led my first graduate workshop and, man, I was scared. As I mentioned, I was pretty convinced that all the poets with whom I went to school were significantly more talented than I was... and that first workshop was a big part of the reason why I felt that way. Fairly early in, another poet, who's since published a handful of knock-out little books, brought in a poem that contained an image of a 12-year-old boy cutting a hole in a mattress and masturbating into it. When his reading was complete, the lot of us sat their silently for several beats-- after all, we didn't yet know each other well enough to feel comfortable jumping into that sort of discussion. So Jon goes, "Yeah, you know, I, for one, like to use a galosh!" And just like that, our classroom comfort zone was established!

And so, this is a post of pining for poets and poetry and reading and language and grad school. And one of excitement for all this great work. And there's more coming! How lucky am I to have known all these people before they made stuff for which I need clear space on my shelves?

Good god. Why am I getting all mushy over the good ol' grad school days? Something strange much be affecting my body chemistry today. I've been eating a lot of sweet potatoes lately. Yes, clearly, the onset of autumn root-vegetable season turns a brat sentimental.

... take my sofa. Please!

The time has come for the infamous Bird Sofa de Chez Marjorie to find a new home. It's a lovely sofa, it really is. I've taken many a satisfying nap thereupon. However, it's getting replaced by a sexy new clean-cut version. And the sexy new clean-cut version happens to be swathed in a deeply erotic cranberry-red microsuede. *Shivers!* More than likely, it's so sexy that no one will want to buy the new one from me when I'm done with it... if my gist isn't too distastefully blatant. The Bird Sofa, however, is in near-pristine condition, due to the fact that it's been slipcovered most recently. So, despite all the napping, there has been no drooling. And it's for sale!

In a slightly misguided attempt to reach a wider audience, I'm posting about it here, just in case somebody in the greater Washington DC area happens upon my blog and is in desperate need of a sofa with birds on it. For cheap.

You know you want it! You know you have a friend with a truck who'll drive you to Alexandria to pick it up! C'mon... It can be your sexy new clean-cut Bird Sofa!

Just take the flippin' thing, damnit!

Lars Von Trier and his sacrificial lambs

About a year ago, I put up this post about Dogville and Dancer in the Dark and how I struggled through my viewings of those films. I'm not quite sure why I thought I'd be in for something different with Von Trier's 1996 film, Breaking the Waves, but I was lured by the blurb: "A paralyzed man asks his wife to satisfy his sexual desires by seeking out other men." I mean, there is potential here for an alternative love/sexuality story that exceeds norms and leads to some sort of liberation for all involved. But, alas, Emily Watson's female lead, Bess, is another of Von Trier's cherubic, innocent women who allows herself to be destroyed because she has so little agency of her own.

Where this movie is different, however, is that, as Bess becomes more debauched and ruined, she becomes the vehicle of redemption and recovery for her husband. When Jan (the husband) becomes paralyzed, she begins to bargain with God, giving herself over to all sorts of behavior that makes her feel degraded, in exchange for Jan's recovery. And with every so-called sin of the wife, the husband does, indeed, recover a little bit. And in her ultimate death, he walks again. Blockbuster Online blurbs the film, saying, "With Breaking the Waves, director Lars Von Trier fashions an often disturbing tale of the singular power of love." Again, it's no wonder I was misled, because, I would argue here that the real subject of this movie is not Bess' overarching love for Jan, but Jan's vampiric, though not entirely conscious, abuse of Bess. And that's why this is a Von Trier film.

In last October's post, I talked a lot about the sick thrill an audience of one of these films receives as we watch the ruination of yet another image of female innocence (and interestingly, female stupidity) progress. Again, I have two problems with this filmic conceit. The first being that there is no representation female goodness without rendering the character as a simpleton, as is the case with Kidman's character in Dogville, Bjork's character in Dancer in the Dark, and again here with Bess.

And then, the second is that a conventional ideal of moral virtue is equated with victimhood. Now I don't really know if Von Trier's second contention here is true or not. In some ways, I think it is, but there are also plenty of examples of innocent ignorance being an active, rather than passive, destructive force-- like in Genesis, maybe? Also coming to mind is a curious little novel I read when I was in high school called Photographing Fairies, in which supposedly innocent little girls went around picking off male fairies as they attempt to fuck female fairies, because the girls are "innocent children" and therefore do not understand the generative quality of the act. But, I'm getting derailed. Von Trier posits that female goodness is a liability. And then he takes great joy in proving this notion, through an extended degradation of one such innocent. And again, I'm troubled by the fact that my role as audience member makes me feel complicit in his thrill. It seems I haven't really moved past this problem in the year since I saw Dancer in the Dark.

So, now, this brings me to a fascinating paper I just read about representations of sexuality of Kubrick's much critically maligned film, Eyes Wide Shut. Now, I could go on and on about how I think there's good stuff happening in that movie, even though the critics pretty universally panned it, but that's not really why I'm bringing it up now. The paper discusses at some length this notion that, in modern western culture, there has been a "sexualization of love" --i.e., a conflation of sexual desire with relationship and affection--and how this has been a heretofore unknown concept (because it's been only recently that people starting pairing off for reasons relating to affection and/or desire-- throughout history, it's been about money, property, family and/or bloodlines, right? ) But then, Deleyto makes a very interesting point that I think is relevant to Von Trier's overriding perspective:
"Torben Grodal [a film critic] has recently challenged this perception [that until recently, sex has not been a culturally available solution for women in the throes of marital discord], taking issue, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, with the contemporary tendency to reduce all types of emotions, particularly, love and desire, to a single origin, namely sex. For him, love and desire are clearly differentiated emotions that have different historical origins and that may interact with each other in historically specific manners but must be kept apart in cultural analysis. Film genres reinforce this division, with romantic films being about 'personalised bonding' and pornographic films about 'anonymous desire.' That is, for him not only are the two emotions different in theory and in people's real experience but cultural discourses such as films also keep them separate, in spite of the insistence of ideological critics who tend to either collapse the two or categorise them according to fixed ideological apriorisms: that love is repressive (for women) and desire is liberating, or, in other words, that the only liberating way of conceiving love is by equating it with desire. In his view, the fashionable link of love with patriarchy and desire with emancipation, fluid gender roles, and the body does not stand up to historical investigation."(Emboldening is mine.)
So, if I'm understanding correctly, Deleyto is saying that Grodal is taking issue with the popular "academic" notion that love is stultifying for the female, but sex is not. And I suppose, I had never considered the idea that this was a fashionable, though flawed, concept-- but now that I do, I see some truth to the labeling it as such. On a side note, I would argue that Grodal is missing something however, in that he does not address how, in many popular discourses (let's just toss Black Snake Moan back into the pot for a moment, shall we?), female sexual liberation is seen not as liberation at all, but as acting out and/or trying to solder over some psychic wound-- that a woman cannot be sexual for the sake of sex unless she's damaged in some way. But again, I'm digressing.

Where I think Grodal and Deleyto are onto something, though-- and where it applies to Breaking the Waves-- is that I think, perhaps, Von Trier espouses this "fashionable" idea that love is repressive of the female (OK, OK, if I'm really being honest, I must concede that sometimes I espouse the self-same thought. Juries still out on whether or not I actually believe it.). Here, I'll point out that Deleyto pretty consistently uses the word "love" as a synonym for "relationship," rather than as a synonym for "affection"-- big frickin' difference, eh? The character of Bess destroys herself because of her love (read: relationship) for her husband-- and for her god. Because she has a pre-existing condition of being in love, any sexual experiments outside of her marital relationship are not freeing, but horrific and they happen ONLY because she is enslaved by her relationship with her husband-- and by her relationship with her god. And so, her only moments of happiness occur when her emotions of love are conflated with her feelings of sexual desire as directed towards her husband.

Deleyto goes on to say that Grodal's arguments eventually fall apart on one level: "While no doubt encouraging and inspirational for people whose alternative sexual habits have previously been socially denigrated, the insistence of much of film theory on equating heterosexuality and/or romance with conservativeness and patriarchal oppression runs the risk of becoming just as oppressive and inhibiting for many other people." And I guess I think this is where Von Trier's perspective falls apart for me, too. If I'm feeling generous and assume that Von Trier is after more than getting his kicks from telling gratuitously salacious stories about ways in which sweet, simple girls are abused-- and that he's really after proving how our culture treats what is commonly perceived as a feminine predilection toward romance in a consummately predatory fashion, well, then, I can't help but feel that there IS something oppressive going on there, too. Perhaps I feel this way because Von Trier writes a story in which activities that have the potential to be liberating for Bess wind up being used in service to her deference to her husband. So, if all of her motivations stem from her need to maintain romantic connection with a man who, though seemingly kind and affectionate, does not have her best interests at heart, Bess becomes a victim of the, uh, what shall I call it? The Patriarchality of Love? An to this end, it is not the love that's so important, but rather, Bess' victimhood. And therefore, Von Trier is necessarily complicit in her subjugation. And I, as voyeuristic audience, am as well. That, in a nutshell, is my problem with Von Trier-- he offers no way out in which people can be both sexual and be in love. More to the point, he offers no way out at all, especially if you are good-hearted and a woman.

And this brings me right back to the idea that, in the cultural discourse, being a good woman is perceived as a) not possessing a faculty and/or desire for sex for the sake of sex itself (i.e., un-entangled with the desire for love/relationship) and b) as being necessarily disempowered. Fuck! This is so blasted frustrating! My blogging is taking on the characteristic of something vicious and cyclical. I just can't get away from harping on this one point, time and time again, now, can I?

This is why I need to go to grad school again, write this damn book that's in my head, and hope I can make some peace with my little demon-in-the-discourse. So, OK, critical film studies programs-- you're on notice. I'm coming. Sooner or later, I'm coming!

When life calls you a freak, find some scholars who are thinking thoughts similar to yours and make freak-ade.

It's true that in my every day life, acquaintances who stumble upon my blog gain a whole lotta insight into my strange perspectives. At a recent family wedding, a cousin to whom I'd sent my URL admitted to me that, as he read my post about Anne Sexton's poem, "The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator," he kept thinking that he shouldn't be reading the sorta stuff I write-- that somehow, he was invading my private world or something. Secretly, I was a little thrilled to have excited such a sentiment. If I wasn't looking for intimacy through language, I don't quite know what I'd be doing with myself, even if that means exposing parts of myself that are not readily available to all who know me in real life. After all, I am not so presumptuous to assume that my public persona is anything other than basically, mundanely normal.

That said, I certainly do have my obsessions. In a deeply personal sense, I'm working very hard to carve out a life for myself in which I question social norms that do not seem to serve me well-- and then to go one step further, and question my own assumptions that, likewise, are not doing do my life any favors. To that end, I think and write and obsess a lot about how to be a sexual person and an self-possessed woman at the same time. And I mean, a lot. You might have noticed

So, then, it's really heartening when I find a cluster of articles that show that there are other brains out there in the world who've tapped into the same rivulet of thought that I've found. Here's a quick list of cool stuff the internet-cat dragged in:

1. This one that explores whether or not jealousy and feelings of sexual propriety are as ingrained as we've all grown accustomed to thinking they are.
2. This one that wonders, in the context of contemporary life, whether the very concept of monogamy serves us all that well in the first place.
3. This one in which the hyper-moralizing of American politicians acquires an air of hypocrisy, as, well, politicians, even Republican ones, are subject to the whims of their own physicalities-- as are the rest of us.
4. This one that points out how sheltering kids from all things sexual is detrimental to their education, their self-esteem, their reproductive health, their very senses of identity...
5. And THEN! Now, I know your excitement must be reaching a fevered pitch with all this fascinating text abounding, but someone wrote a book about how American culture is frighteningly invested in restricting sexual choice and denying relevant information about the very fecundity, variety and plurality of sexuality to assorted subsets of mentally solvent folks. And here's a review of that book.

On this note, I'll now mention that, last Friday, I went to a gathering of giggling women, during which I doubtlessly spouted off about how the last thing I want from a relationship is a situation in which I and some other poor sap feel it necessary to regulate each others' bodily functions. And, while most of my audience was at least politely sympathetic, one girl said something along the lines of, "Well, that's OK for YOU, freaky, weird girl that you are...but NORMAL people WANT to own each other (italics are my additions)." So, honest to god, it's such a damn relief to find reasonably articulate people writing articles and books that don't succumb to the ever-suspect conventional "wisdom" that espouses the paucity of sexual choices available to us. Especially if you throw them into contrast with the likes of Wendy Shalit and her paleolithic girls-n-modesty diatribes.

Thank heavens for scholar/freaks. I would feel so alone, were it not for them!

Paired passages on the topic of writerly aspirations

A couple of weeks ago, I found this review of a movie I'll never see, if I can help it. I'm not that interested in the film 300 and I don't think this particular article says anything above and beyond what every other critic has said about it: it's a lame, uber-violent, and yet still boring, extravaganza of homoerotica. I don't get the appeal, but then, I don't think I really have my finger on the pulse of money-making Hollywood anyway.

What I find interesting about this article, though, is the fact that Scott is talking about the movie-going public relishes fictionalized fascism-- a topic that isn't really dirty at all--but she relentlessly peppers the article with the spewages of her potty-mouth. In the first paragraph alone, we've got metaphorical circle jerks, tarted-up showgirls, and The Clap.



Now, I know I'm just a big ol' black pot here, trying to call out Scott for her black kettleness, but I really find her relentless sexualizing of her review language to be sensationalistic and distracting. I may engage in more than my fair share of gratuitous fellatio allusions, but at least I TRY to employ them in the service of discussing subjects about which sex actually pertains. So please tell me that what she does and what I do are not the same thing? That my explorations engage in something beyond cheap, attention-getting tactics in a misbegotten attempt to wow a readership with trying-too-hard brazenness ( or rather, the type of prudery that masquerades as self-conscious, scantily-clad brazenness?)



So, then, this morning, I found this article in n+1, which is, in general, a very smart magazine. Now I'm no critic of music at all--and though this article is basically about its author's disenfranchisement with rock and roll music--I think the sheer quality of this writing is able to bear the weight of so much sexual innuendo without seeming flashy and juvenile. Indeed, it is arousing both in terms of directional bloodflow AND synaptic response.



Daniels' writing is lyrical and associative, spastic and specific. He's talking about how rock and roll, through it's mechanized attempts to replicate the rhythms of sex, merely regulates them. And how this, ultimately, pisses him right the hell off. And so he is impassioned-- and disillusioned, as he points out he's paid his musician dues several times over. His, of course, is not a new sentiment-- I've been to two different Saul Williams performances (*swoon*), and in each, he did the bit about how the body's natural gesture in response to hip-hip is the rhythmic head-bob. A vehement nodding "yes," no matter the sentiment of the song. ("kill the sheriff" (yes! yes!) "slap the bitches" (yes! yes!) ) You get the picture. And how the imperative of the back beat can assimilate even the more rebellious of minds and bodies. This article swerves off the road and talks about more than just this back beat/copulation analogy, and I would argue that Daniels' employment of sexual language is effective beyond titillation-- and that his point is well-taken.

But moreover, he's a good writer, whereas Scott is more of a verbal pantyflasher and not in a good way. With luck, my own bloggish stylings will approach the former, leaving the latter gasping for breath in her dirty dust.