Happy Birthday Me
Thanks for the well wishes.
The mist was soft on the backyard yesterday. I gave myself a birthday morning off from going to the gym. From tasks. Some years I go for a morning hike, but job changes meant that this year I went for quiet reflection and showering in my own shower. Mmmm hot water.
We had spent a lovely weekend up in the Russian River area drinking luscious wine (and taking notes) and eating wonderfully paired food (also with notes/visiting the website - the clam chowder really stood out in retrospect. Some very nice polenta dishes too). It’s been part of the pattern of my life for years now, which is nice. A privilege to be in a position to visit beautiful countryside. Talk to my father over the phone while walking next to a river. Looking at green leaves turning brilliant scarlet.
This morning, I wrote my now traditional short story for my birthday. Adding chapter 45 to “Forty from the Mirror”. This year, Liberty and Justice being much on my mind they went to the bridge and found a wall. Did what Liberty and Justice do. Plus I femmeslash them.
I tend to think of my birthday as the opening of the time of reflective part of the year. Fall as a time for thinking. Writing. Opening myself up to the accumulated thought of the year. Perhaps purging.
I suspect that with this year’s ugly election cycle and the ugliness of 2016, I’ll be thinking about the kyriarchy. I’ve already begun. I’ve tended not to think of myself who has encountered much in the way of misogyny, but I’m coming to the conclusion it was more like smog in the air. Smudging the mountains. But without the obviousness of mustard gas. We all grow asthmatic. Sig alerts driving the young and old inside.
Now I in the middle. Middle age has a sort of stigma as a term. Now admittedly I have every reason to think I’ll make 100 so I haven’t quite hit the middle, but there are no guarantees. The middle not defined until the end is reached.
But I certainly am in some sort of middle. Not Baby Boomer. Not Millenial. Certainly not the iGeneration that follows that Millennial tide. Finding myself more and more defined by my experiences rather than the lack of same. The experiences of those around me. Thinking on the ways I can and can not reinforce the kyriarchy.
Years ago, I went hiking with my father on Mount Baldy in Southern California. Surrounded by pale shale and stunted brush, we climbed in the late summer heat up the mountain side. We reached a vista point and I looked down at Riverside-Ontario-theLAMegalopolis. I saw the smog in the air and commented to my father that we were now above it. We hiked higher through the twisted shrug brush and pale blinding shale. The track switched back and forth until we came to another vista. I looked down and the smog was even denser in the valley below. I remarked that we hadn’t been out of the smog before at all. But now, surely now as I high as we were on the mountain, we were above it all. More track and trail. More twisted brush baking in the sun. A rattlesnake in the distance. Irritated rattle echoing. We came to that next vista and I’m sure you know what I saw. Looked up at the mountain peak and thought that even if we climbed to the top, the air, though thinner, wouldn’t be some imagined clean.
That’s the moment I tend to think of when I think of the ingrained power structures that surround us. Inform the air we breath. Make it hard for hikers to climb and stunt plants. Well, fine, it’s also a desert, so the metaphor break down on the shrubs and yet…
There’s this atmospheric phenomenon in So. Cal called the Santa Anna winds. Positive hot winds blow out of the desert. Making everyone itch. Tempers rise. Snap. Crackle. Pop off.
I think about the Santa Anna that is… not precisely Trump. He’s a human being and gets to own his words. His choices, as I own my words and choices.
I keep thinking of a comment from that trial this summer in which a Stanford swimmer was tried for sexual assault. Convicted. Given a summer’s worth of a sentence. Looking at the way his lawyer framed his bright future and sought to tear down the victim’s past sexual history, someone made the comment that in our society men have future’s, while women have pasts.
This is BTW damaging in both directions. How rudderless to be without past. How anchored as we strive for some future.
I wrote a post on Facebook, pernicious place of reflexive remark, about my dismay about what the current polls for the election has to say about our society. That a man with all the downsides that Trump has, the leaders of his own party hardly seem able to say his name, runs so close against a woman who, twenty years of smearing aside, has dedicated her life to promoting health care, children, families, and yes politics. The grubby work of compromise. It got the response I expected from one of my relatives. Completely missing the point that my point was about my dismay. That I don’t need (nor do I think I could) convince him a negative isn’t true. I could no more prove (as I put in my answer) that I didn’t steal the Apples of Youth from the Asgardians than whatever he believes isn’t true about Hillary. But then, he, I think wants to argue about his anger. When I wanted to post about my own.
Soon enough FB will go back to cat videos (or in my case cow videos taken by mid-west relatives). The Santa Anna of it is fairly pronounced. Yet, strangely addictive going into the wind.
I had a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago. She’s been studying NVC (Non-violent communication). We talked about the privilege distress as expressed by Trump supporters. She talked about how the Left will need to reach out in understanding to help them with their distress. It was very NVC of her, but did lead me to wonder what about the distress of the Liberal.
It perhaps plays into gendered POV, but that does assume that the Left/Liberal needs to descalate the anger of the Right. And yet if we don’t, it’s just everyone screaming. Which certainly feels like what we’ve been living in.
The arc of history is long and certainly things are better than eras when say the VP and the Head of Treasury dueled and the Sec of Treasury was shot. Or spasm, Pres Jackson. Or the presidential campaign where the candidates accused each other of being in no particular order a hermaphrodite and dead. I.e., don’t vote for him, he’s literally dead.
It was one of the pleasures of when my birthday lies that I always feel like I’m voting for my birthday. That this gift, not yet a 100 years old, is for my birthday. Like here, be a citizen.
There’s no mist on the morning here. I suppose I should shower so I can go do that.
The mist was soft on the backyard yesterday. I gave myself a birthday morning off from going to the gym. From tasks. Some years I go for a morning hike, but job changes meant that this year I went for quiet reflection and showering in my own shower. Mmmm hot water.
We had spent a lovely weekend up in the Russian River area drinking luscious wine (and taking notes) and eating wonderfully paired food (also with notes/visiting the website - the clam chowder really stood out in retrospect. Some very nice polenta dishes too). It’s been part of the pattern of my life for years now, which is nice. A privilege to be in a position to visit beautiful countryside. Talk to my father over the phone while walking next to a river. Looking at green leaves turning brilliant scarlet.
This morning, I wrote my now traditional short story for my birthday. Adding chapter 45 to “Forty from the Mirror”. This year, Liberty and Justice being much on my mind they went to the bridge and found a wall. Did what Liberty and Justice do. Plus I femmeslash them.
I tend to think of my birthday as the opening of the time of reflective part of the year. Fall as a time for thinking. Writing. Opening myself up to the accumulated thought of the year. Perhaps purging.
I suspect that with this year’s ugly election cycle and the ugliness of 2016, I’ll be thinking about the kyriarchy. I’ve already begun. I’ve tended not to think of myself who has encountered much in the way of misogyny, but I’m coming to the conclusion it was more like smog in the air. Smudging the mountains. But without the obviousness of mustard gas. We all grow asthmatic. Sig alerts driving the young and old inside.
Now I in the middle. Middle age has a sort of stigma as a term. Now admittedly I have every reason to think I’ll make 100 so I haven’t quite hit the middle, but there are no guarantees. The middle not defined until the end is reached.
But I certainly am in some sort of middle. Not Baby Boomer. Not Millenial. Certainly not the iGeneration that follows that Millennial tide. Finding myself more and more defined by my experiences rather than the lack of same. The experiences of those around me. Thinking on the ways I can and can not reinforce the kyriarchy.
Years ago, I went hiking with my father on Mount Baldy in Southern California. Surrounded by pale shale and stunted brush, we climbed in the late summer heat up the mountain side. We reached a vista point and I looked down at Riverside-Ontario-theLAMegalopolis. I saw the smog in the air and commented to my father that we were now above it. We hiked higher through the twisted shrug brush and pale blinding shale. The track switched back and forth until we came to another vista. I looked down and the smog was even denser in the valley below. I remarked that we hadn’t been out of the smog before at all. But now, surely now as I high as we were on the mountain, we were above it all. More track and trail. More twisted brush baking in the sun. A rattlesnake in the distance. Irritated rattle echoing. We came to that next vista and I’m sure you know what I saw. Looked up at the mountain peak and thought that even if we climbed to the top, the air, though thinner, wouldn’t be some imagined clean.
That’s the moment I tend to think of when I think of the ingrained power structures that surround us. Inform the air we breath. Make it hard for hikers to climb and stunt plants. Well, fine, it’s also a desert, so the metaphor break down on the shrubs and yet…
There’s this atmospheric phenomenon in So. Cal called the Santa Anna winds. Positive hot winds blow out of the desert. Making everyone itch. Tempers rise. Snap. Crackle. Pop off.
I think about the Santa Anna that is… not precisely Trump. He’s a human being and gets to own his words. His choices, as I own my words and choices.
I keep thinking of a comment from that trial this summer in which a Stanford swimmer was tried for sexual assault. Convicted. Given a summer’s worth of a sentence. Looking at the way his lawyer framed his bright future and sought to tear down the victim’s past sexual history, someone made the comment that in our society men have future’s, while women have pasts.
This is BTW damaging in both directions. How rudderless to be without past. How anchored as we strive for some future.
I wrote a post on Facebook, pernicious place of reflexive remark, about my dismay about what the current polls for the election has to say about our society. That a man with all the downsides that Trump has, the leaders of his own party hardly seem able to say his name, runs so close against a woman who, twenty years of smearing aside, has dedicated her life to promoting health care, children, families, and yes politics. The grubby work of compromise. It got the response I expected from one of my relatives. Completely missing the point that my point was about my dismay. That I don’t need (nor do I think I could) convince him a negative isn’t true. I could no more prove (as I put in my answer) that I didn’t steal the Apples of Youth from the Asgardians than whatever he believes isn’t true about Hillary. But then, he, I think wants to argue about his anger. When I wanted to post about my own.
Soon enough FB will go back to cat videos (or in my case cow videos taken by mid-west relatives). The Santa Anna of it is fairly pronounced. Yet, strangely addictive going into the wind.
I had a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago. She’s been studying NVC (Non-violent communication). We talked about the privilege distress as expressed by Trump supporters. She talked about how the Left will need to reach out in understanding to help them with their distress. It was very NVC of her, but did lead me to wonder what about the distress of the Liberal.
It perhaps plays into gendered POV, but that does assume that the Left/Liberal needs to descalate the anger of the Right. And yet if we don’t, it’s just everyone screaming. Which certainly feels like what we’ve been living in.
The arc of history is long and certainly things are better than eras when say the VP and the Head of Treasury dueled and the Sec of Treasury was shot. Or spasm, Pres Jackson. Or the presidential campaign where the candidates accused each other of being in no particular order a hermaphrodite and dead. I.e., don’t vote for him, he’s literally dead.
It was one of the pleasures of when my birthday lies that I always feel like I’m voting for my birthday. That this gift, not yet a 100 years old, is for my birthday. Like here, be a citizen.
There’s no mist on the morning here. I suppose I should shower so I can go do that.