Why Women Are not Feminists.
My Mother and sister came to visit me last week, and it was difficult but at the same time rewarding. I love my mother, but as I have grown older i have found that she is extremely self-sacraficial to the extent of masochism. She would always give up the window seat, offer to carry my bags, sit in the middle of the cab. I don't think it was because she was trying to be nice as much as I believe after all of these years being a mother she places everyone elses needs above her own...hell, I'm not sure if she even recognizes her needs anymore. I know my father is aware and imposing with his needs, to the extent he couldn't sacrafice a week off from work to visit me. My mother took off. She bought me a Christmas gift, she calls me, I feel her presence when she's gone. That may sound stupid, but I think its an interesting contrast to not only the feeling I have towards my father, but the feeling most of my friends have towards their father. Who is he, what does he do all day? Are they silent because they're thinking, working out something I wouldn't understand? I have a good relationship with him in comparison to most, but I just can't comprehend how the mother can be so present to the point of intrusion and the man so easily nonexistant. It became apparant to me more since I've been to England. Phone conversations occur only if my mother isn't home, and even then I feel like every second of conversation (or grunts) is painful for him. I think men aren't typically raised to connect with the rest of their family on the other's level. they have work and stuff.
When I woke up last Friday, my sister and mother had left for the airport. I didn't mean to but I cried, for the first time in months. I have been on my own for so long I forgot how much I loved them, forgot that home was people and not some badly decorated apartment. It was also really painful in that I had to see the fact that I wasn't really a part of either of their lives anymore. I hadn't seen my sister in six months, and I didn't even realize it had been so long. Its the same thing with my friends in texas. No matter how much catching up we try to do on the internet, text messages, whatever, the facts are the facts and we have created these new worlds and people come and go and you do too...cling all day but months down the road you're going to take a step back and see that these friendships and people stopped existing the day after they happened. Its alright, I have this new life, I am a different person, but you always fear that when you come back someone will have left or gotten married or died or something while you were off being independent. I guess I just am becoming aware of the fact that I'm older, my father is old and he is sick, and he could die and someday he and my mother will die and I will have to live with that. I don't know why I'm thinking about this. Or updating livejournal when I swore I never would again. I guess this format makes me feel like maybe writing this has a vague purpose even if it is to bemuse some random person rather than sitting and rotting in a diary in a desk drawer.
My friend Cason came too, but left early because I was literally so "difficult to be around." I just couldn't help it. I didn't want to do touristy things...I LIVE HERE...and talking to her is like talking to a twelve year old. I guess that's mean, but I've run out energy trying to pretend someone is interesting or stimulating or has things to say I could learn from when they don't. Cason is a nice person, and I tried to connect with her, but that would have involved me sitting there with a blank stare, listening to her rant on about how special ed kids should all be intigrated into regular classrooms or how it really is necessary for elementary school teachers to go to college for 5 years to learn how to teach "midget drunks" how to write cursive. Kids are midget drunks. They say what they think, can't walk straight, are prone to unprovoked acts of violence. Yeah, that's another thing. Cason is going to be an elementary school teacher. Which I guess makes her brave, but more than that it makes her stupid. And if that offends anyone I don't really care because I'm mean and so are you only I'm going to use the energy usually invested in acting otherwise on more productive things. Like working on my new line of clay pig jewelery.
This entry has become very long on accident. Tomorrow I am going to Iceland, and then on Sunday I'm going to Italy with my photographer's society. I don't give a shit about Italy, really. But Iceland is giving me an orgasm just thinking about it. There's something so appealing to me about sparsely populated arctic climates I can meander around by myself. Well, unless you count the hidden people and elves which frolic along the fjords. BLESS! (Icelandic for Goodbye)
COCOROSIE is a great band, everyone get their album "noah's ark." its two girls who sing about things like "fucked up shoes" and songs about theiving bastard beautiful orphans with antony from antony and the johnsons who Im embarassed to say I really love.