tari rocks

Just a little FYI...

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 19:30:00 +0000

If you want to see/hear/read more from me, you can find me at:

Tumblr
Instagram
My new music site, which includes a blog.

I'm doing stuff on the internet again! YAY!!

Dear Sugar (a rambling thank you note)

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:55:00 +0000

This is a bit of a thank you note to Cheryl Strayed, aka Sugar of the "Dear Sugar" advice column at The Rumpus. It won't seem like it at first, but I assure you it is, if you stick with it long enough.

First, though, I have to talk about mental illness, artistic ennui, and "The United States of Tara."

Hey, I guess I never really ever could say
That I saw it coming
But when you push a feeling far away
Still your body's humming
And I held it in
Long as I could then
But now all that's changing

This story starts during the holidays last year. I was in a less than awesome place, as I almost always am at that time of year - on top of the usual holiday chaos most folks deal with, my day job goes completely overboard with work and stress for year end....but this year there was the added layer - as there had been a couple years prior - of a major child rape "scandal" weaving its sick way through news and blogs and pop culture. Cue sleeplessness and anxiety and emotional volatility and all the fun that PTSD can be. It got so bad that I stopped looking at my Twitter feed more than a couple times a week. I only logged onto Facebook to message back and forth with a friend who shares some of my issues around anxiety and abuse. The "Mark All Read" button on my feed reader got a serious workout almost every day. I couldn't watch Rachel Maddow or Jon Stewart or any of the other sources that I count on to stay informed about current events and politics and activism and most of the things that shape my world outside work and music. I distracted myself with cookie-baking and holiday music; sometimes it almost worked.

It got so bad that, when I sat down with my guitar and a notebook and a pen, I would stare at the blank page and nothing would happen. I would play the same covers - George Michael's "One More Try," The Eagles' "Take It To The Limit," "Somewhere Different Now" by Girlyman - over and over, trying to find something of my own to express. Night after night, nothing.

So, I guess you never truly ever can know
Where on earth you're headed
You just barrel on down that road
Till that road starts bending
Here we are again
Not a bitter end
But the end of something

My therapist sat with me in her office, and we talked about going back to two visits a month. I'd been really happy about cutting back to one visit a month after starting out at two a week way back in the day, but I knew things were getting rough again. I hadn't regressed back to daily panic attacks yet, but I could tell that the basic functionality I usually maintained pretty well was wearing a bit thin. We talked about deep things, heavy things. I told her sometimes I felt like my entire life was built on top of a bottomless black reservoir of rage, pain, despair. I told her that, yes, I had been much better about letting myself feel my feelings; if I felt like crying, I went ahead and cried....but I never felt better after. It wasn't cathartic, it wasn't cleansing. It was just one more way of being in pain. The reservoir never seemed to get any less deep.

I'd come home from work and try desperately to turn my brain off. I watched the entire series of "The United States of Tara" in, probably, less than a month. I felt drawn to it - seeing so many sides of my own experiences...having been a child of a parent with significant mental illness and knowing the incredible unfairness of that, the constant internal battles and the inevitable, horrible mindfucks; standing on the inside of my own mental illness, and watching how it laid down challenge after challenge not just for me, but for anyone who cared about me, too. Then, of course, there was the part where we learn (spoiler warning) the root cause of all Tara's issues: she was molested by her stepbrother as a very young girl.

My first reaction was: well, I'm doing great, ain't I - at least I haven't dissociated! My next one was: the world of pop culture thinks what happened to me is bad enough to cause a person to shatter their identity into seven different people. That's how fucked up the world thinks I am.

That is how fucked up the world thinks I am.

Well, I guess I know a thing or two about hell
It's when you lose your fire
You go back to the same old well
Without the same desire
I've been treading earth
From the time of birth
You can't stop this turning

That's why it took me so long to dig into the work of trying to heal this bullshit, that's why I didn't talk about it for most of my life, that's why it was always this thing that I knew, in the abstract and in my gut most days, was not my fault...but I still had to be ashamed of. Thirty years I spent (mostly) silently bearing the pain of something that was so awful, so horriffic, it could justify massive dissociation - because silence was easier than bearing that pain openly and adding on the spectrum of bullshit that comes with that openness. Because that's how fucked up the world thought I was, and I didn't want to let them know they were right - because, on some level, "that" was how fucked up *I* thought I was, too.

In the very last episode of the show, there's this moment when Tara's husband (played by the always fantastic John Corbett) totally loses his shit. He breaks down in a screaming rant in the middle of a family dinner. He throws a turducken across the room. I can't even describe to you the sound I made watching that moment. I was instantly crying the kind of sobs that hurt. He says: "It's not fucking funny, and it's not fucking fair, and we deserve some fucking mercy!" Exactly, something in me was screaming: we deserve some fucking mercy.

Life, though....life doesn't care about fair or mercy. Life marches on right over the top of pretty much everybody, and no matter how sad or tragic or deserving or horrible, the options are simply and starkly: keep living, or don't. I get furious that that's what it all boils down to, but there it is, whether I like it or not: keep living, or don't.

So gee, I guess anyone could've been me
Staring at my reflection
Wanting just a little bit of relief
From my self-deception
There's nowhere I can run
This is how it's done
You just start all over

So: Dear Sugar.

One afternoon in May of 2010, I followed a link on Twitter (tweeted by the also inspiring and badass and fucking fabulous Shannon), and read this column through tears ("This is called fuck yes!"), and then another and another, until I'd read all of them. There were twelve.

I happened upon Dear Sugar at a time of pretty intense transition. I had recently moved into a new apartment, alone. My job situation was super complicated and stressful. I still wasn't really "over" the massive triggering that started with the whole Polanski business. I was having panic attacks every morning before work, and really struggling just to get through every day. Two months later, I Nervously Broke Down and spent three months off work getting my head on straight. To encounter Sugar at just that moment was a little bit like a beacon for me. It was amazing to me to see someone giving such radically compassionate advice - to see someone hold both the precious fucked-up-ness and the everyday amazing-ness of the human condition - while also pushing people to be fucking real with themselves and others - while grounding in gratitude and joy and beauty - while acknowledging the gravity of the truly terrible that sometimes must be lived with. I don't want to say that Sugar's the reason I eventually got some professional help, but I would be lying if I said that the tenor of her advice didn't give me hope that there was a chance I'd find help that would actually help, without making me feel like total shit.

I wrote Sugar a couple different letters over the months after finding her column. She didn't answer them, and I'm frankly glad. They weren't the real questions I wanted answers to, anyway. I bet she knew this when she read them, hearing the empty places of the words I didn't write just as clearly as the words I did. I could totally be projecting, but I just get the sense that Sugar has a really good bullshit detector.

Earlier this week, on Valentine's Day, this dearest of Sugars came out as Cheryl Strayed. I had never heard of Cheryl Strayed, but I immediately went and read all of her work I could find online. Then I ordered both her books. Because Cheryl is Sugar (the second one, anyway) and Sugar (the second one, anyway) is Cheryl - the writing (I could find) isn't really all that different, even without people asking for advice. Because, for some people, telling their life story is the best advice they can give. And - maybe I'm projecting again - because it seems like maybe there might be someone else walking around creating joy and light, and carrying a bottomless black reservoir of rage and pain and despair, and not pretending otherwise. Not pretending those things are mutually exclusive.

And that's some shit I want to read. And also, you know, vote with my dollars and support indie artists and whatnot.

"Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it’s one thing and one thing only: it’s doing what you have to do."

- Cheryl Strayed, Love of My Life, The Sun, Sept. 2002

I've spent most of my life ignoring, bottling, denying, and suppressing my emotions; it wasn't perfect, but it's how I survived and managed to grow into someone reasonably functional who I didn't totally loathe. This process over the past couple years of, like, stopping that? Has been incredibly challenging on many levels, but I am fucking doing it. Even when it's not fun, even when I feel like it's pointless, even when it turns out I am a goddamn cry-er. Even when it's all bottomless black reservoirs and no fucking joy. I'm strong enough to handle all that now, I think. Maybe I can do enough meditation and yoga to find some kind of peace. Maybe I can take enough deep breaths followed by more deep breaths to find a still center from which to move through the rest of my life like a serene Buddha.

I think probably not. I like the word "fuck" way too much. And besides, I'd just be happy with getting to a place where dinner out with friends doesn't make me want to hide in my bedroom for a week.

Because I'm an artsy type, I tend to look to artsy types for inspiration and comfort when I'm feeling overwhelmed. There are a few artists whose voices have been hopeful, twinkly lights during my own personal dark nights: Girlyman, Patricia McKillip, Van Gogh, even (don't fucking laugh, assholes) John Mayer.

And this time around, a wee little advice column written by Cheryl Strayed, for which I am grateful beyond my ability to express. But:

Dear Sugar,
Thank you.
Love,
Tari

* Lyrics quoted are from "Empire of Our State," from Supernova by Girlyman.

Lessons in Limitations, or What I Learned From Wet Birks

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:52:00 +0000

So, yesterday just at quitting time, the skies in Chicago opened up and poured down rain for the evening. My cursory check of the forecast in the morning had not revealed any chance of rain, so I was unprepared - no umbrella, and my customary Birkenstocks instead of a sensible, closed shoe.

There are few things in life I dislike more, in terms of physical comfort, than walking in wet sandals. I'm klutzy on dry ground with bare feet, let alone wet pavement in soggy flip flops...and I have a long history of skinned knees and bruised shins and scraped hands to prove it. So, as a rule, when it's raining, I like a nice closed shoe that keeps my foot dry and offers a little more stability than a wide-open sandal that doesn't even buckle on.

But yesterday I pretty much had no choice. Walking, in the rain, in wide-open sandals.

I was a little prepared for how slippery the whole affair would become, so I went very, very slowly. In fact, I went so slowly, I found the whole thing sort of meditative. I had time to consider what this experience might have to teach me.
It was frustrating, because moving slowly meant I was getting rained on pretty fiercely, and that's no fun. But, I mused as I plodded sloshily along, better wet clothes and hair than a slip and fall and scrape or bruise or crack or wound.

And, yeah, that's kind of a good metaphor for me right now. I get frustrated with myself and how I work since Nervously Breaking Down last year, but the reality I'm faced with is that the pace of my life before that was toxic for me, and I can't expect to go back to that toxic pace and those toxic habits without expecting that I'll also go back to having panic attacks every day and un-fun bouts of depression. I am frustrated that I still have limited energy for my social life, that work takes so much out of me (and must, what with the whole need for a paycheck and all), that music is next on the list and takes its pound of flesh, that my commitments to re-connecting with my family in the hinterland and to my closest friends here in Chicago is next on the list, and then whatever's leftover is for everything else I care about in my whole freakin' life.

But, the fact is that I have limited time and energy, and running myself ragged or trying to squish a bazillion things into every minute will not somehow give me more time or energy. I can either plod along slowly and carefully, and get where I want eventually, if a little wet...or I can push-push-push and hurry and wind up slipping and falling and hurting.

Not much of a choice, when you really look at it.

Shitty economy? Not exactly hypothetical.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:00:00 +0000

The economy sucks. I've seen I dunno how many posts and articles and graphs showing how much it sucks, no matter what Washington or Wall Street might want to tell themselves and the rest of us.

The housing crisis? Still crisis-a-licious.

Unemployment? Still sky high. (And then there's the "speedup".)

...and so on and so forth. There's plenty of information out there.

The numbers are irrefutable and stomach-turning for me, and all things considered, I am incredibly lucky - I still have a job, I still have health insurance, I still have time before retirement for my 401k to bounce back, and I even have a small pension that took less of a hit than my 401k. But, even for me, a single woman who doesn't own a home or carry any debt, this shit is not hypothetical: the awful economy has been like a repeated punch to the gut. What does it say about the horrible-ness of it if someone like me, who ought to be relatively insulated from the crisis, is still feeling it significantly?

What do I mean, though? How has it hit me?

Well, first, let's talk about the fact that I work for a big multi-national corporation. In the past five years, we've paid cash to acquire two other companies and sponsored one of the world's most popular sports franchises to the tune of $20 million. Every quarter, our shareholder return grows. This year, my CEO got $6 million in bonuses alone. Meanwhile, hundreds of jobs here in the U.S. were eliminated and then replaced by offshoring operations in India and Mexico. That small pension, which should've been growing more every year, was frozen last year. My health benefits decreased, my deductibles increased. My salary, unlike shareholder returns, didn't increase enough to keep up with cost of living increases. On my little six person team, two of us have taken leaves of absence for major health reasons. I'm pretty sure all of us have been on anti-depressants and/or anti-anxiety meds at some point, and we're all working harder than we ever have, trying to keep up with expanding workloads and decreasing support. We're using outdated hardware and software that further challenge our efficiency, and management has become more and more draconian, because we're all supposed to be so grateful to even have jobs anymore.

So, yeah, I am luckier than a lot of people have been in this recession. I still have a job. But it's becoming less of a blessing every day, and I don't see much of a chance that trend will change anytime soon. I'm still holding on, but I'm not sure how much longer I'll still be able to say that.

"Conscious tending to well being."

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:10:00 +0000

I had a hermity weekend last weekend. The previous two had been spent away from home, so this was a bit of catch-up on housework and downtime. I’m being pretty careful about giving myself plenty of downtime these days, having recently recognized just how very toxic notable parts of my life are….and since they can’t quite be jettisoned just yet, I’m walking a very fine line in trying to balance the burdens they create in me.

(It turns out that spending 40+ hours a week in an establishment that is a poster child for everything that’s wrong with capitalism, corporate greed, and patriarchy…..um, reallyreallyreally sucks. If you can imagine.)

So, yeah, I’m being super gentle with myself, since I’ve decided to carry on with the corporate day job for now.

Saturday morning, I tried a few new yoga routines. I have one I cobbled together that I’ve been working for years, but sometimes I like to see what other poses and techniques might be out there. During one of the routines, the lady running it was really explicit about keeping poses comfortable and making adjustments as needed for the yogi’s particular body. She kept coming back to that in each pose, talking about “conscious tending to well being.”

Boy did that phrase strike a chord with me. It’s become my whole modus operandi these days, trying to always be conscious of where I am and what my needs are – and then to actually make those needs priority enough to take care of them properly. This seems like a no-brainer, but I have found it pretty challenging in surprising ways. Like…I am so very tired, but rather than sleep, I can always come up with something else to do – some book to read or list to write, some show to watch or chore to take care of. Or I’m super thirsty, but can’t get a drink till I take care of just this one thing. It’s fucking stupid, and it pisses me off when I see myself doing it…but these are patterns I’ve spent my whole life creating, and they’re not going away without a fight. So, you know, I walk that fine line…compassion, gentleness, comfort….and pushing, stretching, shifting.

Sometimes my life feels like a yoga pose, like I’m balanced in downward facing dog, feeling the stretch in my hamstrings and calves, balancing on my arms, feeling my spine opening and stretching, breathing and holding and pushing just that tiny fraction further into the pose, and breathing and holding again.

33 and all's (mostly) well.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Thu, 12 May 2011 19:41:00 +0000

I’m 33 today.

Birthdays, like the turning of the calendar at the new year, are a big deal to me….I like marking time as it passes. I think I find the scale of it, the acknowledgement of my life in a temporal context, comforting somehow. Or alternately, on days when I’m feeling inadequate and insignificant, alarming.

I’m at an interesting juncture in my life – both more at peace with who I am and how I move through the world…and more certain that some things in my life are in need of significant shifts. The past year has brought me down a rough road, but one that I believe eventually leads me to a more authentic, more honest place that’s more in line with my values. I think that’s the big lesson I get every year – the more I learn about me, the less interested I am in trying to meet someone else’s standards, the more bullshit “rules” from society or assumptions I’ve made about what I was “supposed” to do or be I reject utterly in favor of letting my choices come from my internal compass…and my definition of that internal compass gets clearer and clearer.

Unlike the ideas I had when I was a kid, watching my dad navigate a complicated divorce with grace and aplomb at this same age, my current beliefs about “growing up” take into account the fact that I’m probably not going to ever “get my shit together,” let alone really understand what that means in the first place. I feel good about resigning myself to being mostly uncertain about a lot of things. C’est la vie.

So. At 33, I know that I don’t know much, but I’m really interested in learning more. I know that I’m fucking fabulous and probably only going to get cooler. I know that I’ve been blessed with some wonderful gifts and the resources to more or less successfully weather some pretty shitty stuff. I know that I am lucky enough to have a family that – even at its most dysfunctional – loves me very much, and am further honored to call a tremendous roster of truly amazing people friends.

To everyone who’s taken a moment out of their day to wish me happy birthday, my deepest thanks. I have guarded my time and energy so jealously over the past year (even more than usual), and I truly recognize the gift it is to share that moment with someone. I am so grateful for each and every person who took that effort on my account. Between now and my next birthday, I hope that I can find more energy to return the favor, in gratitude for everyone who’s made a little room for me in their thoughts and their lives.

One of these things is not like the others.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:58:00 +0000

"We have to renew people’s faith in the promise of this country together: business & government, workers & CEOs, Democrats & Republicans."

- President Obama, via Twitter in February.

I believe that Barack Obama is an idealist. I buy that, on some level, he really, genuinely, whole-heartedly means what he says when he says shit like the tweet above. I think he thinks that all those disparate forces can really come together at a picnic table at the White House and drink beer together, or something.

I also think he's smart enough to know, on some other level, that he's totally full of horseshit. I said it before, I'll say it again: he's a Chicago politician, not some fresh-faced yokel just off the turnip truck. I think he knows what political realities are at play in Washington and elsewhere, and I think he makes the compromises he has to in order to act upon his priorities.

But in that statement above, one of those disparate forces stands out to me: workers. The rest of them - CEOs, business, government, Democrats, and Republicans - these are all powerful groups of people with deep coffers and plenty of access to decision-makers and policy-makers. All of these groups are doing just fine, making money and profit and doing each other favor after favor. CEOs and Big Business (which are really effectively the same damn thing) basically give campaign money and kickbacks and freebies to Democrats and Republicans (who pretty much are government); in exchange, government gives Big Business tax cuts and favorable legislation (health care "reform" and globalization and farm subsidies, etc.).

Workers on the other hand? Get nothing but screwed. I am starting to wonder if the president really has the good of the common person at heart....because his actions leave a lot of room for question there.

Groceries v. Debt

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:45:00 +0000

While I was spring cleaning (and prepping for a landlord visit with a plumber) over the weekend, I set my Roku to the Newscaster channel and watched hour after hour of traditional Sunday political shows. It was nice to see David Gregory (who’s no effing Tim Russert, more’s the pity) actually push both sides and not just pander to the right (which he’s always seemed to me to do). I also stumbled into the delightful Candy Crowley, whose “State of the Union” hour easily became my new fave Sunday show when I watched her quiz Trump on the birther thing (and WOW is he off the effing grid on that!), plus she grilled Tony Blair about Israel & Palestine, and I like that a bunch.

I haven’t been a regular Sunday show watcher since Tim Russert passed, broadcast TV went digital, and I switched to Roku. Of course, not long after, I started pulling back from politics to focus on my own personal shit, and I’m only just now really starting to get back into the thick of it. Frankly, I can’t think of a better time to dive back into politics. I don’t know that there’s been a moment in my lifetime where the stakes were so clear and the battle lines so starkly drawn. Watching a concerted effort by Republicans of all stripes (not just the far-right fringey tea party folks!) to undermine women’s healthcare, social programs (and I swear, if I hear one more jackhole call them “entitlements” my head may ‘splode), unions, and all the other protections that make this the land of opportunity? It sickens me, and it makes me want to scream from the top of a building about the injustice and the bullshit.

People need to know this stuff, and so many who're directly affected by these policy decisions don’t. I understand why that is...it’s so hard to stay engaged when it’s so thankless, when the news is rarely actually good (sometimes it’s not horrifying, but that’s not much of a standard), when the leader of the fucking free world is AWOL while the core values of his party (and the essence of what we stand for as a country) are attacked and eroded.

It’s been awhile since I yelled at my TV because some ass said something totally fucking ridiculous. Like, say, anything that came out of Paul Ryan’s mouth. Anything at all. Or, when the goddamn president lauds a shitty budget deal where more and more people are more and more screwed - unless they happen to be rich and totally fucking okay anyway.

What frustrated me beyond belief, though, was the constant talk about “debt reduction” and the fucking budget deficit, as if those are the most important things on our national agenda right now. I didn't see a single economist, pundit, or wonk pointing out how debt reduction isn’t something you do when you’ve got sky high unemployment and an economy that – despite the recovery being felt by Big Business and the upper one percent – is still trying to dig down to whatever’s underneath rock bottom. Debt reduction is something you do when you have basic needs met, when you have a working infrastructure and average salaries that are keeping pace with the cost of living, when the middle class is growing and not shrinking.

To break it down in really simple terms, it’s pretty fucking stupid to pay down your credit cards instead of buying groceries or medicine. And by short-changing recovery efforts in the form of unemployment extensions and Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and tax increases for the people who aren’t drowning, that’s exactly what our government is doing. I mean, yes, ideally we would be able to fund a social safety net *and* pay down our debt (which, incidentally, is the kind of thing you do with a big ol’ surplus, like, say the one Dubya was handed after he stole the election and then proceeded to squander instantly with tax cuts and invading other countries). We're not living in an ideal situation right now, and before we start doing some credit repair thing, we need to make sure people aren't sick or starving first. THEN we can get all fancypants worried about our goddamned credit score for when we buy a house in five years.

If you’re not reading Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, I highly recommend. He’s one of the few people talking sense these days, and just seeing that someone else sees things as they are, not as it’s more profitable for them to be….well, it helps keep my head from ‘sploding.

Love of My Life.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:44:00 +0000

On this day of widespread cultural propagation of bullshit stereotypes and false boundaries related to love and romance, I sometimes find myself frustrated (if you can imagine). As a non-partnered person, the pressure to couple up can be a bit stifling, especially since even my wee black heart has internalized some of those mythologies...plus, the truth is that I would actually like to build a stable long term partnership someday, and that's been a stalled process lately, what with my own mental/emotional fragility.

I know, however, that I am surrounded by love - family and friends, for starters. Today, though, I want to talk about my soulmate. Because if love is that thing that brings you to your best, highest, transcendant self....then music is my soulmate.

I remember with startling clarity the first time I got an inkling of how important music was to me. It was a winter day, and my mom, my brother, my sister, and I were on the highway to the university where my mom needed to hit the computer lab to do some homework. We were in the pea green Chevy Nova my mom drove at the time; I remember the snow-covered fields of semi-rural Michigan rolling past outside the windows. I had scored the front seat, and I was singing a very silly song I had just learned in music class (this one, if you're interested). I loved the song, and I loved singing it.

My mom, however, did not share my love of me singing it. The words - and I'll never, ever forget them - she used were: "couldn't carry a tune in a bushel basket." Those words hit me in a pretty squishy place, as if they were trying to suck out a piece of my soul.

Many years later, after spending most of the intervening years learning how to sing properly and making music one of the best and happiest parts of my life, I tried to give it up. I went to college to be an engineer, and between classes and homework and two work study jobs to pay for what my scholarships didn't cover, I didn't have time for music of any kind, let alone the time and energy it takes to rehearse, perform, or otherwise create music. This was before the days of constant iPod companionship, so I didn't even listen to much music...the best I could do for music was VH1 on my tiny black and white TV in my dorm room, or my equally diminutive tape collection, courtesy of a brief Columbia House memebership. (Ye gods, how old AM I??)

There were a lot of things that contributed to my eventually dropping out of college...but the biggest qualitative difference? Music. After I dropped out, I bought my first guitar and started teaching myself to play it. I studied different styles of singing and performing (to expand my choral/classical background), and I took the first baby steps toward what I would eventually consider to be the closest thing to a life purpose I can imagine for myself.

The first time I ever played a song I wrote in public, it was a revelation. I'd been performing in various kinds of shows since I was a little kid, but to perform something that - start to finish - came out of me....was so much more intense - and it felt so completely right and natural, in a way very few things in my life ever have.

Often when I am playing (whether for an audience or not), I lose myself completely in what I'm doing. I used to call it "stage blackout," but I think it's actually something like a peak experience. I think of it as being so present with what I'm doing that the internal running commentary, whatever it is that catalogues my activities for future review, stops working. The downside is that I don't really have clear memories of my some of my performances, but the upside is that nothing makes me feel more wholly myself, more completely where I am "supposed to be" doing what I'm "supposed to do" than making music.

There's an ad campaign for Breedlove guitars (which are, incidentally, fucking gorgeous) that says "Who says your soulmate has to be a man or a woman?" and sometimes I really get that. I've had feelings for people before, and likely will again; maybe someday I'll find a partnership that works for me in the long term, though that's not something I can plan for. Music, though, is always there, and always takes what I give and returns it many times over. And that, to me, is real love.

Darkness, Darkness...

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:02:00 +0000

Darkness, Darkness, be my pillow
Take my head and let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep

You know that scene in "Good Will Hunting" where Robin Williams' character tells Matt Damon's character it's not his fault? And Will has this gut-wrenching sobbing breakdown?

It wrecks me, every time. Just thinking about it right now, I'm all teared up. Despite cultural narratives about bootstraps and the inherent moral superiority of this or that "kind" of person...life just isn't fair, and people who are overflowing with virtues and have done nothing to deserve a karmic ass-whooping and who spend their time trying to make the world a better place often get sucker-punched by the Universe. It's not their fault.

It's not my fault.

Darkness, darkness, hide my yearning
For the things I cannot see
Keep my mind from constant turning
To the things I cannot be

When I was a little kid, my dad used to talk about "starving kids in Africa," as a way to remind me that my life was really all right and whatever I was whining about was, in the grand scheme of things, not that serious.

That is totally true. On a global scale, there are people whose suffering dwarfs mine, who deal with horrors on a daily basis that I will never encounter or experience. By virtue of circumstance, I have a whole litany of privileges that make my life easier in ways I don't even know about ('cause that's how privilege works!). No matter how rough my life gets, there are probably a billionty people who'd trade me in a heartbeat. Objectively speaking, I'm very lucky.

The problem is that life is not lived objectively. I carry around all this cognitive dissonance, essentially frustrated with myself for feeling hurt or sad or angry about what's going on in my life...because it could be worse. I won't let myself really, truly get angry or sad or hurt, because I ought to be cool with it, I ought to be grateful for the blessings in my life, I ought to be able to access cool reason and logic and keep it all in proper perspective.

Just because things could be worse, though, doesn't mean that they aren't awful. Right now, I'm working very hard on figuring out how to keep things in a global context without trivializing my pain. I've been trained so well to disregard my own feelings that this has become a pretty challenging endeavor.

Darkness, darkness, be my blanket
cover me with the endless night
Take away the pain of knowing
fill the emptiness with light

Sometimes I wish people really did have stuff tattooed on their foreheads, like "abuse survivor" or "clinically depressed" or "born with six fingers" or "writes horrid poetry" or "wants dad's approval and never gets it" or "in physical pain every day" or whatever.

I think it would be enlightening and equalizing to see how every single person had a whole bunch of tattoos on their forehead. If we were faced with the undeniable fact that merely being human meant dealing with these sorts of complexities, might we be kinder or more compassionate to each other? Could we ditch secrecy and shame and fear? Would it be so easy to perpetuate stigma and oppression?

Don't get me wrong, we'd find a way. Humanity is talented like that.

Darkness, darkness, long and lonesome
Is the day that brings me here
I have felt the edge of sadness
I have known the depths of fear

I thought I had learned long ago that if I didn't give myself what I wanted, nobody else would. I've always been good about giving myself opportunities for art and travel and music, for experiences and beautiful things I enjoyed. It's why I put time and money into my home, why I invested in my wardrobe and experimented on my hair. I firmly believe that doing that stuff for myself is a gift that nobody but me can give, and that's important.

On the other hand, though, I have started to see how there are so many ways I completely disregard what I really want. It's like I indulge my superficial, material needs and wants, but let the visceral ones be completely overrun. It almost scares me to see how little I have cared about myself in really vital ways.

Is it even possible I could have a self esteem problem? Maybe. Ugh.

Darkness, darkness, be my blanket
Cover me with the endless night
Take away this pain of knowing
Fill this emptiness with light

There's a reservoir of purified rage that's been simmering down in the depths of my wee black heart for most of my life. It's tinged with despair and loneliness and fear, and sometimes it screams about how unfair life is. Mostly, I keep it bottled up and silent, but I've been trying to pop the cork recently, in hopes that it won't always live under everything I say or do....because right now, I'm pretty sure it does.

Lyrics from "Darkness, Darkness" by Jesse Colin Young.

Thoughts on Ethical Meat, Vegetarianism, and Saving the Planet.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:59:00 +0000

I'm in a crap place these days...my grandfather passed away on January 10, and that's shaken me up pretty well. Other stuff is going on, too - some good, some challenging....but all of it is leaving me pretty low. I keep trying to write about it, but I just get so tired of feeling like all I ever do is whine and bitch, so I never post anything. At some point, I imagine I will, but for now, it's easier to ramble on about something else. Feelings are confusing and frustrating; green activism, particularly food activism, is less so - and what does that tell you about the shit in my head, eh??

So, TreeHugger asked the question "Is Eating Meat the Best Way to Fight Factory Farms?" The various conversations around this topic bring in a lot of perspectives, because this is an incredibly complicated question to ask. Personally, though, I think even that complicated question is an oversimplification. Let me explain.

First off, there are two major reasons to oppose CAFOs (which I'm separating from factory farming, because factory farming also includes non-meat crop farming...which is awful, too) and consider going veggie: either for what I'll call Compassionate Reasons or Environmental Reasons. (I am choosing to ignore religious/spiritual reasons, even though there's some overlap, just for the purpose of keeping this relatively quick.)

If you're doing the compassion thing, the major concern is usually animal cruelty: animals in CAFOs live pretty awful lives. Overcrowded into standing-room-only cages and pens, fighting with their brethren for food and water and space. Poultry birds are debeaked so they can't peck each other. Excrement fumes and dust are inhaled by the animals with every breath, requiring prophylactic antibiotics to prevent illness. Some animals never see sunshine, or eat anything approaching an actual plant. And all of that's not even looking at how factory farmed animals are slaughtered....to put it mildly, it's not done kindly. (And, as someone who grew up seeing livestock and wild game slaughtered, I believe it can indeed be done kindly and ethically.)

If those are the reasons someone opposes factory farms, then eating grass-fed/small farm/ethically-raised-and-slaughtered meat is a much better option (though it's been my experience that many of these folks just oppose eating animals in general), since the animals usually have less horrible lives that end with much less misery. So, yeah, if your goal is to put CAFOs out of the business of torturing animals for us to eat....then yeah, eating meat from small farms with ethical agricultural practices is a good way to vote with your dollars - it more directly gives huge corporate meat producers a profit incentive to change their ways. If you stop eating meat altogether, they may not even notice; if you give their competition a bump, they're more likely to see it and maybe consider trying to get your money.

The other major reason for opposing CAFOs is the environmental one. CAFOs, in addition to all the awful crap already mentioned, also wreak total havoc on the environment. I don't just mean the shit lagoons that stink up the neighborhood and necessitate all that over-medicating the livestock....I'm talking about soil and groundwater contamination (not only with poo and bacteria, but also with those antibiotics I mentioned), I'm talking about waterways flooded with waste, I'm talking about massive fish kills, I'm talking about huge amounts of methane and carbon dioxide produced en masse by confined livestock. Beyond that, CAFOs are an integral part of the overall factory farm system, driven by petrochemically-supported monocrop operations that produce bumper crops of corn and soy that have to go somewhere....like, say, the mouths of food animals in CAFOs. The system as a whole is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, the oil industry via petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, and climate change overall.

If those are someone's reasons for opposing CAFOs, then it's still true that eating ethically produced meat would be a good step to take. The mechanics of a CAFO are not such an issue for small farms, since the volume of waste is significantly smaller.

However, both of these perspectives miss a bigger issue: even ethically produced meat can be problematic, environmentally speaking. The bottom line is that meat - regardless of how it's produced - requires more resources than plants do. More water, more time, more energy....and if you're trying to find the most environmentally conscious way of eating, meat is likely to be a small part of it, simply because eating vegetarian has the smallest footprint. Even if you don't "eat local," a vegetarian diet uses less water and less oil, and produces fewer greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

Also, as it becomes clear that global hunger is definitely going to be a huge issue (hello, food riots), the plain fact is that feeding food plants to animals instead of hungry people...is not exactly groovy. (Ditto putting food plants into gas tanks, ethanol!) If people ate less meat, that would mean fewer crops would go to feed livestock, meaning they could be shifted towards solving that hunger crisis thing.

So...if the point is to stop CAFOs, yeah, I guess eating ethical meat could be more helpful than skipping meat entirely. But if we think just a smidge bigger, to the overall global environemtal and sociopolitical issues that loom large now and will only become more and more critical, the truth is that eating less meat overall - if not going totally vegetarian - is the best choice for the health of the planet.

Of course, that's on a broad, global scale, and the other truth is that there are tons of complicating factors of economics, physical and mental health, etc. that make it tricky for lots of people to go veggie, even if they wanted to. As in most things, there is no such thing as One Size Fits All.

Thoughts on Making Music: The Art of Craft, and Snobbery

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:38:00 +0000

This is long and rambly and less cogent than I would like. But I'm tired, and I want to express my opinion, finish my late lunch, take a sleeping pill, and go to bed....so mmmmmmfuckit, I'm posting away. Like it or not, people!

I recently came across a couple unrelated pieces of commentary from sources I respect, lamenting various aspects of the State of Music Today. Technology has progressed so much that any-ol'-body with a laptop can crank out a record. Our new-thing-is-the-new-old-thing consumerist flavor-of-the-moment culture pressures musicians to make lots and lots and lots of music all the time. A new album every year! Plus bonus content! And website freebies in between! Plus live cuts! Plus design tee shirts! Plus tweet and Facebook and cross-promote and network and street team and yada yada yada.

And all of this is why we have so little truly good music, with the staying power to be listened to for decades versus days. We have quantity, but very little quality.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I know there's a lot of crap music being foisted on the unsuspecting masses. I've been making my own music for a decade, and I have seen performers who couldn't carry a tune, strum a chord, or string together a coherent lyric...and somehow still manage to assemble the nerve to get up in front of an audience and do their thing. (I will try not get into the sidebar discussions about the subjective nature of taste - I mean, I love bagpipes - or the capriciousness of musical success - which I firmly believe is 5% talent, 10% work, and 85% pure luck.)

I've also spent a fair amount of time combing through various sources in search of new music for my own listening enjoyment - particularly places like garageband.com (now defunct), Amie Street (now defunct), and the old mp3.com (also now defunct), where indie musicians could share their material without paying through the nose. I have listened to a lot of random tunes over the years, and I have found some really amazing stuff....but I've stumbled onto way more mediocre-to-awful stuff.

So, yes. Point taken that the instant nature of the internet and the relative availability of the means to produce and distribute music have made a lot more crap a lot more easily available to a lot more people on a lot shorter timeline. A profit-driven music industry has encouraged this because more new music means more money to be made, especially if the big labels aren't shilling out on the front end. Toss on top of it a music blogging scene that puts every blogger on the hunt for a fresh discovery and the ego stroke that comes of finding that ever-elusive needle in an ever-growing haystack? Well, it's not exactly an environment that rewards musicians willing to study, hone their craft, and lavish extensive time on creating music - especially not the kind of music that is universal and classic and stands the test of time (which, for purposes of this ramble, we're going to use as the definition of Great Music).

But the world of music is not so small that there isn't room for diversity in more than just genre. I mean, I think Van Gogh's Starry Night is the most beautiful painting I have ever seen with my own eyes. It stole my breath and left me in tears, and seeing it was one of the most vivid experiences of my life. In my apartment, though, I have a piece of glass artwork, carved in a damask pattern in black and silver, made by a local artisan. Is it as beautiful as Starry Night? No. Does it make me cry when I see it hanging on the wall every day? No. Does it have less value in my life? Tough call....but I know that I like it enough to display it in my home, and that has worth. There's room for lots of different types of art and beauty, and they are all valuable in their different ways....and the same is true for music.

Which is my way of saying there's room for one-hit-wonders and cheesy pop songs and mediocre bubblegum. A songwriter friend of mine used to tell herself, whenever she was feeling like her lyrics weren't meaningful or elegant enough, "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah." I mean, even Lennon & McCartney didn't write nothing but "Yesterday." Hell, my fave songwriter of all time wrote both "Time in a Bottle" *and* "Rapid Roy, the Stock Car Boy." A songwriter's catalog is likely to be as diverse as their experience....which, you know, goes for music in general, as well. Art, life, yada yada.

There's a kind of snobbery that I see in a lot of this sort of conversation about the arts, and often it comes down to the idea that, essentially, there's "good" and "bad" art. There's art that has value (the Mona Lisa! Swan Lake! Kandinsky! Shakespeare! art house flicks! Beethoven! etc.), and art that is...disposable? Less meaningful? Lower brow? (Dogs Playing Poker, comic books, Britney Spears, stand up comedy, romance novels, boy bands, action films, etc.)

I know this snobbery exists because I fight the inclination in myself, particularly when someone mentions singing karaoke. But I recognize that that's my ego talking. I want to feel superior because I've put in time and effort in service of my art. I want to feel like I've somehow earned superiority. And that is total crap.

Art is subjective, in both the creation and consumption. There is no One True Way to make music (or any other art), any more than there is only One True Kind of music to enjoy. The beauty of this diversity lies not only in the way people can sift through the maelstrom to find the creations that speak to them in the voice they want to hear....but also in the way different processes of creation can develop. Some artists need or prefer or have the *luxury* of hiding in a cabin for two years creating their masterwork...and some take whatever demo their manager hands them and spend twenty minutes pouring it into a microphone to be Auto-Tuned and compressed into submission in the mix. Much as I'm sure my own personal biases show in the way I phrased that...I don't believe that one of these is a more valid way to make art, or yields music that is inherently more worthy than the other.

One of my least favorite aspects of this bullshit hierarchy is the concept of a guilty pleasure. You know, stuff you really like, but don't want to admit to liking because some invisible authority looks down on it for some reason. Anybody who's seen me roll my eyes at the slickly over-produced electronically-augmented "perfection" of Glee knows that I sometimes instinctively buy into that invisible authority myself....but since I have paid money for music by Hanson, the Spice Girls, Garth Brooks, Debbie Gibson, Chumbawumba, and the Black Eyed Peas, I'm not sure why I have it in for the latest incarnation of Pop Music Goodness. Obviously there are times when slick and overproduced don't bother me at all. (Say it with me: taste is subjective.)

When I play out, I tend to get a lot of positive feedback. My singing, in particular, tends to garner me a lot of compliments, and one of the things I tell people is that a lot of my vocal skill is the result of training. "Anyone could do it," I say, "if they spent ten years learning how." I really do believe that is true, but I'll tell you what I believe that is more important: I think people should feel free to sing even if they haven't studied it for ten years. I think people should feel free to make music even if they can't carry a tune, strum a chord, or string together a coherent lyric. I think making music is a birthright of the human race, and that anybody should make it if they feel like it, regardless of whether they're "good" at it, or if the music they make appeals to anyone else. I think that music, whether I actually like it or not, is just as valid and valuable and worthy as the music I make.

Furthermore, it's this bullshit hierarchy, this idea that there's "good" and "bad" art, that keeps so many people from expressing their creativity. It keeps art of all kinds from being considered as vital to education as math or science or geography or language. It keeps people from trying, from taking creative risks, from exploring the full extent of their own potential as human beings.

There is value in studying a craft and learning from what others have done. There is also value in following inspiration, regardless of precedent. Excluding either diminishes the whole.

Case in point: any asshole can write a blog.

It's like a sampler pack of actual blogging.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 01:44:00 +0000

I was watching this movie, part of which involves this group of folks hacking their way through a jungle. It's one of those romantic travel movies where some kid from the suburbs randomly falls into global adventures, and where it's never explained how he manages to pay to get from point A to point B or, you know, beer and food. This film was an alright example of the genre, which I have an incredible soft spot for. I sometimes feel like the older I get, the more boring my life becomes. I mean, most of my ridiculous stories involving crazy shenanigans come from damn near a decade ago.

Anyway. This film tweaked my Macchu Picchu lust something fierce, but also made me laugh at myself when they showed this kid wielding a machete all day on his first day, no gloves, no nothing. The color commentary voice in my head was all, "What? That guy would be crying 'cause of all his blisters." My next thought was, "Well, Follett, when have *you* hacked your way through a jungle? How do you know?" And then the one right after that was, "Well, except for that one day you worked as a Christmas Tree trimmer and spent all day hacking at pine trees with a machete, and were crying 'cause of all the blisters you got 'cause you didn't wear gloves."

After which I drove a 4x4 down a mudslide. True story! I was an idiot when I was younger.

=======================================

I've been off work for awhile, trying to recover from a nervous breakdown - specifically, a pretty fierce panic disorder. I tried to handle it in bits and bobs, and it just got to a point where I couldn't take it. The good news is that my treatment team (yeah, I have a team) is awesome, and things are improving, though not exactly "better," whatever that means. I'm down to an average of only one panic attack a week, which is a huge improvement. Of course, the idea is to get rid of the dang things entirely.

I comfort myself with the fact that the litany of bullshit that has landed on my doorstep over the past few years (both through my own jackass choices and through the blind nature of life being rough all over), when compressed into a twenty minute recap, has been shown to drop the jaws of professionals. So, you know, I guess I have some stuff to be legitimately stressed and depressed over.

I vacillate back and forth over whether to be really transparent about what I'm going through, in the hopes that it will help break down some of the ridiculous stigma associated with these kinds of mental health conditions (not to mention save me awkward explanations down the road)....or whether it's too much work to try to express my experience effectively. Plus, I always have a vague worry that I contribute nothing but whining to the internet...then again, what is the internet for? Besides porn, obviously.

I still haven't exactly decided one way or another....so in the meantime, I'm just posting what I feel like and that's that. I go to therapy, I do a lot of yoga, I read about anxiety disorders (self help books, woo hoo!). I play my guitar a whole bunch. It's been hard to write much, my brain has been so scrambled and restless....but that's starting to be easier again. I take naps, I take walks, and I spend a lot of time thinking and processing my feelings. Sometimes I have rough days where I can't talk to anyone or do anything without feeling like I'm the Universe's Emotional Punching Bag.

It seems like this much time off work ought to be more fun.

=======================================

I picked up Rob Brezsny's Pronoia the other day, for the first time in yonks. Since my wordy brain is starting to come back, I though it would be nice to try that book, as an alternative to the whole twelve-step way of doing things (and put a pin in *that* for later). I flipped to a section at random, and read:

Teach them the difference between oppressive self-control and liberating self-control. Awaken in them the power to do the half-right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing.

It was good to read that, and I am reminded how much I dig Brezsny. I totally recommend that book if you're of a spiritual bent, particularly if you like your reverence significantly irreverent.

=======================================

So, at my therapist's recommendation, I went to a handful of different Al-Anon meetings. (I know I'm blowing the Anon part by talking about it, but here's me not caring.) The short version is they didn't really work for me. And I'll tell you why!

I hadn't ever read the twelve steps before going to a meeting, and when I did, I was really shocked. I didn't love the religious overtones (especially when 3/4 of the meetings I went to were in churches), but I could actually handle the Higher Power bit alright.

It was the idea of powerlessness that rubbed my fur the wrong way. I mean, I've been powerless. I know what that is, and maybe it's one of my issues, but I am not interested in accepting that state of being in my life now. Sure, there are things I can't control, but that's different from being powerless to me. I don't always have a good choice or a comfortable choice or a convenient choice or a pleasant choice or a desired choice....but there's always a choice. I would rather put my energy into recognizing the choices I have made, making better ones where I can, and having compassion where I'm still making less-than-ideal choices.

I totally get why a lot of people really dig the Anon meetings. They're obviously a powerful tool for so many people....but I just couldn't dig it. So, as often happens in my weirdo life, I find a different way to get there. Good times.

=======================================

I've been learning a lot of covers in my time off (since I haven't been doing much writing). My favorite so far (and who knows if this will ever see an audience other than my cats) is Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" smooshed in between verses of Queen's "We Will Rock You." I don't know why I think those songs sound right together, but I do.

So far, the cats agree.

=======================================

I blew my health insurance deductible for the first time since I switched to a high deductible plan, lo these many years ago. Considering this year has put me through pneumonia, persistent back-related bullshit, and a nervous breakdown....it makes sense. Makes me grateful for the luxury of insurance. And wish for actual universal health care. Le sigh.

I cut my hair off. Like, more than usual. I will post some pictures at some point. Probably.

For anyone who's sent me a message or note of encouragement....I'm grateful, even if I haven't acknowledged it. I appreciate the thoughts, though I am pretty much total shit right now at dealing with anyone but my therapist. That will change, and - depending on whether I wind up on antidepressants in the long term or not - drinks are on me sometime over the holidays.

Thanks for being patient with the crazy girl, y'all.

Inconsequential Greatness: a Ramble.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Mon, 03 May 2010 00:08:00 +0000

"It wasn't exactly like I'd sold out on my life and dreams and all that other bullshit, because the truth was I'd never actually had anything to sell. It was more like I slowly froze in place...more like some part of me just fell asleep one day and never woke up."
- Elizabeth Hand, Waking the Moon

Things at work are pretty crazy at the moment, such that I'm actually mostly doing actual work most of the workweek. Surely this offense to the natural order of things will pass soon, and I can get back to reasonable amounts of multi-slacking and stuff...but in the meantime, there's a certain satisfaction in it, a kind of honest challenge and joy in problems solved.

Friday, I left the office just after 5:00 and walked around downtown. The air was warm, humid, poised on the edge of storm, but it was nice enough that the sidewalks were packed with people: office lackeys like me, in Friday casuals and flip flops, walking from store to store; kids of every stripe, wearing shorts and radiating energy, excited to be outside and warm, like it was the first time this year; families of tourists, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to look at street signs, crumpled maps, and eventually passersby, in the hopes of finding someone who wasn't glaring and might be willing to give them directions. I stopped at a tea shop and read a few pages of my book while sipping a strawberry green tea concoction that was a refreshing counterpoint to the humidity and cigarette smoke and rushing.

I made my way home eventually, ignoring the creep on the train who asked me if I wanted a lollipop while staring at my tits, and walking the three quarters of a mile from the station to my apartment, slowly, as the sun set. I made dinner and ate while reading, then grabbed my guitar and held on to my hair as the music started pouring out of me.

I went to bed late, and woke up early, and went straight for the guitar and the notebook. I still liked what I'd written the night before, and was excited to tweak it a bit and run through it over and over until it felt right. I stopped to eat breakfast and get back to Sweeney Cassidy's story. I read all day, in between bursts of cleaning and unpacking and internet-ing and a walk around the neighborhood in the sunshine and a long phone call with my sister. After dinner, I fell asleep in front of the third Mummy movie, only to wake up later and rework an old set of lyrics from a notebook I unpacked earlier in the day.

I finished the book early this morning. After, I did some more housework and finished painting the den. I had a long conversation with my dad about politics and religion and overpopulation and genetic destiny and how much he doesn't like San Antonio. I made myself coffee and pancakes with lingonberries, and took an afternoon nap after fiddling with some more lyrics. I pulled off the painter's tape in the den and started pulling out stuff to hang on the walls.

Now I'm sitting on my couch in front of the open windows in my living room. Someone in my neighborhood is grilling steaks, and the smell of hot charcoal and seasoned beef is blowing in every now and then. It's cool, and twilit, and the sounds of traffic on the street outside don't bother me anymore. As I'm sitting here typing this up, there's a feeling in my gut like I've taken a breath for the first time in a long time, as if some tension I didn't even know I was holding has been released. I feel....content?

I'm not saying there isn't angst and whatnot still going on, for there surely is. I'm not saying that I'll be able to hold onto it, but for this moment, I just want to keep breathing deeply, keep feeling this satisfaction. I want to remember this peacefulness, this pleasure in the mundane details of a quiet weekend spent alone, at home. I haven't done anything spectacular or even particularly noteworthy....just eaten and slept and cleaned and read and made music. It still feels like an accomplishment to me.

When I was a little kid, Howard Carter was my hero. I aspired to do what he had done - make some revolutionary discovery, do something sensational that would change the world and put my name in history books. I wanted to be special like that, Destined For Greatness or something. It's not that there isn't part of me that still aspires to greatness, or holds out the possibility that maybe someday I might find myself a historical footnote.....it's more that the older I get, the more I believe that that kind of "greatness" has less to do with hard work or brilliance, and more to do with circumstantial advantages and pure chance. The kind of greatness I can count on is the kind I felt this weekend - the satisfaction of everyday tasks completed, of a comfortable home (or working towards one), of creative expression and good food and books and rest and sunshine. (And yes, I recognize how much that kind of greatness is tied to circumstantial advantages and pure chance, too, but that is a ramble for another time.)

Maybe it's complacent or even lazy...but honestly? It feels as close to happiness as I've been in awhile, and that's a nice enough feeling that I don't really give a damn.

Notes to self.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:53:00 +0000

1. No amount of desire, ambition, or excitement will suddenly give you the energy (or budget) to do everything you want to do Right. This. Second. So stop attempting to do that, recognize your limits, adjust your fucking plans, and get the hell over it already.

2. When you get that pre-panic-attack feeling because you're trying to force both brain and body to do seventeen things at once? Stop the out-loud litany of "come on, Follett, get your shit together." Wherever you are, whatever you're trying to do, just sit down. Give yourself the gift of three minutes where you can be silent and breathe and not froth at the mouth because you're late or behind or can't find an outfit you like or haven't unpacked what you're looking for. The world won't end if you are late, or take another hour to find an outfit you like, or don't get to everything on your To Do List or never unpack anything again ever. Panic attacks, on the other hand, hurt like a bitch....so just, you know, don't.

3. Until you consistently have room in your head (not to mention your schedule) for three squares, a good night's sleep, the day job, and music....do yourself a favor, and don't try to get all political or into some huge community-garden-project or something. It will not help with the aforementioned pre-panic-attack thing.

4. You say it to other people all the fucking time, but do you ever actually do it? BE WHERE YOU ARE, ASSHOLE.

A Love Letter.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:14:00 +0000

I love my hands.

Now, generally speaking, I recognize that I have a thing for hands. I have been reading palms for over half my life. Hands are one of the body parts I tend to find super hot on a dude. I love watching a guitarist's hands while they play. I dig the idea of hands (and their delightful opposable thumbs) as one of the driving factors in human history. There's a certain romance to hands - they're such a basic way humanity interacts with the world around us. (The geek in me wants to call them the Original Interface Device.)

But even above this thing I have for hands, I really dig my hands specifically.

It's not just that I think they're attractive - though to be clear: I do! I like the shape of my fingers and my fingernails and the proportions and the ratio of palm-to-fingers and the texture of my skin and even the small mole on the back of my left hand that reminds me of a beauty mark. An ex once earned himself big gold stars by stumbling into my hand-related vanity and constantly raving about my fingers (and not just in a naughty way). Sure, they're big and strong and not small and dainty the way girl hands are supposed to be....but my hands are nonetheless pleasing to my eye.

More importantly, though, I love the gifts my hands give me every day.

They give me the feeling of a string meeting fretboard, plucks and strums and the edge of a pick hitting wound bronze, the sound of pen moving across paper to jot down lyrics and chords. They let me make music in any number of ways, and that's pretty damn awesome. My hands are a big part of how I enjoy the finish of my dining table and the faux fur duvet on my bed. They give me a lover's heartbeat and take away boring white walls. They help me play games and fiddle with tech gadgetry and assemble shelving and put my books in order.

They also bring me information - whether or not it's raining, whether or not the oranges have gone bad, not to mention the more intangible kinds of information they bring me via all this typing. Which reminds me - they're also a huge part of how I make a living.

My particular hands are not without their peccadilloes. Like many guitarists, I have obnoxious tendonitis - my brand is tied mostly to my thumbs, which I have to be careful about stretching and not overusing. I worry about carpal tunnel, too, since I do make a living at a keyboard. I have crackly knuckles and weak fingernails that break all the time, and that one finger that I jammed in a door in high school that's just never been the same.

They have some scars...they've borne their share of the ramifications of me being pretty klutzy, and two non-declawed cats who I insist on playing games with leave their marks, too. And of course, there are the guitar calluses and the bump on my right middle finger that holds my pen when I write. Character, I guess, is what I think my hands have, and the older I get the more of that I expect they'll develop. I'll probably have to be more conscious of stretching and taking breaks and using lotion and parraffin dips and all the care-taking I do in a half-assed way these days.

Today, though, as I was painting a second coat of paint on the wall of my den, and my tendonitis was firing a few warning shots across my bow, I was just thinking about how much I enjoy my hands, and how grateful I am for the gifts they give me. It's a privilege to have them, and not one I should take for granted.

The Post I Wasn't Sure I Would Ever Post.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:50:00 +0000

I can't remember a time when I wasn't a survivor of sexual assault.

Literally, I can't. I was three when it happened. I'm one of those girls you hear about on the news, and everybody is shocked and grossed out by the whole thing, and talks about how incredibly fucked up some guy must have been to do something so awful. Sometimes, they talk about how incredibly fucked up the girl will inevitably be, too.

There's a chance she won't remember it at such a young age, though. When my parents found out about me, they consulted some child psychologists and learned this, and took the gamble that I wouldn't remember. This means there was no media coverage, no court battle, no horrible testimony from a toddler. There was no counseling, no painfully uncomfortable explanations, nothing that would make the incident bigger or more traumatic, and thus more likely to stick in my memory. This is all very logical, and I can see why the choice was made.

The problem in my case is that I did remember. Everything (or at least a significant enough chunk that I could've recounted gory details at any point in my life). I remembered what happened and where and how; the awful conversation with my mom involving anatomy books, where she put two and two together; the visit to the doctor that was pretty much just as traumatic as the actual abuse. I remembered it all, right from the get go. I remembered it so well that until I talked about it for the first time with my dad a few years ago, I always thought I had to be five or six, the memories were so clear.

So essentially my whole life, I have borne the fact that I am damaged goods. Before I was even really goods, I was damaged goods. (Thanks, Patriarchy, for making sure I learned that my value was mostly as a pristine sex object, which - of course - I could never be!) This has, not unsurprisingly, been the biggest, thorniest, most painful challenge of my life - which, if you know me very well at all, means something; my life hasn't exactly been devoid of complicated and ugly challenges.

I learned later that my dad had talked to the guy's mom (he was a teenager from across the trailer park where we lived at the time who would sometimes babysit me and my sibs) and made her promise to get the kid into some serious counseling. I wonder sometimes if that ever happened, but mostly I just hope he hasn't ever hurt anyone else....and feels the black mark on his soul. I'm not above wishing he bears the weight of his actions for his entire life the way I have to.

And that, right there, is the thing that really rankles for me - that I will bear, for the rest of my life, the wounds from this stupid fuck's choices. My personality, my sexuality, my ability to trust and love and form intimacy - even in non-sexual contexts - have all been shaped by this baggage, and I am, nearly 30 years later, still stumbling into new triggers and new fears and new issues. Despite over a decade of work to shed the shame and fear, I still have trouble talking about it. Despite working very hard to reclaim and engage with my femininity and my sexuality - and feeling generally very good about where I am with both those things - I still have trouble sometimes with wanting to deny parts of them, either because being too "feminine" (or what feels that way to me) makes me feel too vulnerable, or because I spent the greater part of twenty years developing a habit of shoving both femininity and sexuality into a metaphorical closet, tied up and gagged, and that's a hard habit to release.

Part of me gets furious at how unbearably cliche it all is: the fat girl who was sexually abused as a kid. (I mean, it's a fucking Oprah's Book Club book plotline!) I hate nothing in the world so much as being typical.

This, then, is why I was triggered so hard when the Roman Polanski business came up last year. Since my brother went to jail for his own statutory rape conviction a couple years ago, I had slipped back into a place of denial. The anger (among other, darker, emotions) that came up during my brother's hooplah, I just didn't want to deal with - because part of it was genuinely about my brother, and part of it was about a jackass teenager from the early 1980s in Wyoming. So I didn't deal with it, employing the aforementioned metaphorical-closet-shoving technique. It reared its ugly head again during the glut of Polanski stuff, though, so much so that I pretty much couldn't think about anything *but* that denied clusterfuck of conflicting, gut-wrenchingly raw emotion.

I have been sitting with it, consciously and unconsciously, during the chaos of my life in the past few months (this is one of several reasons I've not been posting much). I'm still not sure I've parsed out everything I need or want to parse out, but I at least feel like I'm not denying what's there.

Here's what I know for sure: I have been shaped in undeniable ways by someone else's selfish, cruel actions, and I will spend the rest of my life dealing with the consequences of those selfish, cruel actions. Sometimes I feel like I've made my peace with that fact....and other times it pisses me off beyond belief and I am practically withered by my own bitterness. I imagine that the victims of my brother and Roman Polanski - and any other person dealing with the harsh reality of child rape - may, whether or not they're conscious of it, deal with something similar.

My brother got out of jail this morning. He's going to have a pretty tough time, between the economic climate where he lives and the fairly severe parole restrictions for sex offenders. I don't really feel sorry for him, in some ways, because I believe it is just for him to suffer the consequences of his selfish actions. Still, I'm glad he's out, and I am very hopeful he can get back on his feet and make use of this second chance he's been given.

2009: I've had just about enough of you, mister!

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:59:00 +0000

Every year, I suppose, holds some challenges. I'm sure if I went back and read prior years' penultimate day entries (for some reason I tend to reflect on that day), I suspect most of them would start with something akin to "This has been a hard year." And, well, inasmuch as life itself is filled with challenges and that's just the nature of the beast, I suppose it's true.

All that said, I don't know many people who didn't spend 2009 dealing with a heaping helping of obstacles, with a side order of heartbreak and/or grief. Between political, economic, and cultural wtf-ness, I just think a lot of Americans are generally in pretty rough shape these days - and even if they aren't objectively sucking wind due to bad luck or shit happening or whatever, I think there's an energy permeating our cultural landscape that just weighs on us all, particularly those who already carry the heavier burdens of oppression.

Among the foibles of my life this year, I have felt more and more battered, with less and less refuge. Can you say burnout?

As usual, with the year drawing to a close, I have many more questions than answers. I've been struggling to hold a center of gratitude, as I wade into the anger, fear, impatience, sadness, and despair that have been coming up again and again. Circumstances and choices have converged to push my buttons in shocking new ways this year, and I've been struggling with old reflexes.

I recognize, like many before and after me, that I really am getting older, and that means more than getting rid of all my heels and not wanting to drink my weight in tequila five nights a week. I'm getting more honest with myself, and I'm kicking even more bullshit I entertained for the benefit of other people straight to the curb. Some of this year's revelations:

* I don't want kids. I used to say I wasn't sure. I used to say, "Maybe someday." Fuck that noise: I just don't want to have kids. I can barely make a commitment to a hairstyle, and I'm gonna jump into a lifetime of inescapable connection to another human being? I love that there are people out there who are totally into it, but that is not me. And I don't want to hear that I just haven't found the "right person" yet...if finding the perfect partner changes me such that I suddenly *do* want the child-having lifestyle, I'm not so sure that's really the perfect partner.

* I don't actually love the holidays anymore. I used to. I have fond memories of carol singing and tree-decorating and family gatherings and whatnot...but for the past ten years or so, the holidays have coincided with the busiest, most stressful time of year for my day job. December, for me, is almost always a marathon of ten and twelve hour days, and when I'm not chained to my desk, I pretty much just want to sit alone in a dark room with a drink. Also, toss in my anti-consumerist politics and the fact that I'm not a Christian, and we have a recipe for further complications. This year, as I was sitting in my dad's living room, gritting my teeth at casual bigotry and feeling more out of place than ever...I just gave up. I don't love this time of year, I endure it. I take a vacation every January to congratulate myself on not losing my shit in December.

* I am tired of compromise. I know that I won't be able to escape it, what with the nature of the universe and all....but my only New Year's resolution is going to be to compromise as little as possible, to stop being the guy who sacrifices my own preferences because I think I can handle disappointment better than someone else. Fuck that. I work fucking hard, I am getting what I want every time it's possible. I deserve that, and if I don't give myself what I want, who the hell ever will?

In other news, I have been sitting on a blog update about the whole rape thing. It's pretty intense, and I'm not sure I'm ready to go there. But...I also kind of want to put it out there. We shall see.

In happier news, if you're in Chicago during the month of January, you can see me play shows on January 5th (at Uptown's fabulous Wild Pug's "Unpugged" acoustic night) or January 16th (at the New Moon Music Showcase at The Leadway in Andersonville). Both are free shows, with great acts joining me on stage. Hope you can make it out!

And if you can't, well, I hope 2010 brings you exactly what you want, whatever that may be.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:54:00 +0000

I have a massive headache right now, so this will be short....but it was too long to fit effectively into 140 characters, so here we are. The point I wanted to make was just that important, that I feel like it needs to be said at length and with some background.

The point: the internet is completely voluntary.

Let me say it again: the internet is completely voluntary.

I could certainly be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that there aren't very many people who are reading or watching stuff on the internet with some asshole holding a gun to their head, making them do it. I'm guessing there are very few people who're tied to one of those internet exercycles that's wired to a bomb such that if they stop surfing, it explodes. I find it pretty unlikely that anyone out there has actually become dependent on the internet for life. So, yeah. VOLUNTARY.

So, when you get to a post that's rubbing you the wrong way, and it's not something you've deliberately sought out (like, say, my exploratory foray into the wilds of right-wing nutjobbery the other day), and it's not something that's making you think (like, say, my bumping into an essay about St. Patrick and being led to question what I thought I knew about him), and it's just not blowing up your skirt for whatever reason....you have some options.

You can choose to comment on it. Damn near every site on the planet has comments these days, and lots of good, productive, informative conversations get started this way. If you do choose to comment, maybe keep in mind, though, that making demands of content providers is kind of a jerk move. Nobody is obligated to provide you with the content you would like to enjoy, in the way in which you would like to enjoy it. At the end of the day, unless you're actually paying them to do it (and even then, there'd be some arguments both ways), someone who's putting stuff out on the internet doesn't really owe you anything. So, if you're gonna comment, may I suggest keeping it on topic, sharing your thoughts and thoughtful arguments and personal experiences, offering constructive criticism (if you feel you must offer criticism), and avoiding giving orders or bitching about what's being posted. 'Cause seriously, the internet owes you nothing.

The other option is a really simple one: surf away. Close the window, find another site, move along. Avoid whatever's pissing you off. Skip what's bothering you. There is no requirement that you read every site, or even sites you like if you're not feeling it. I usually like to keep up on news headlines, but this whole summer I've been only catching a few every now and then. I don't have the mental capacity to deal with much trouble beyond my own sphere, so I've just been, you know, NOT. And lately, I've even been avoiding blogs and bloggers I really, really love to read, because they've been writing about stuff that's triggering me. Since it's not my place to dictate their subject matter, I just skip the posts that I think will bother me. And you know what? The internet police didn't show up to haul me in somewhere for not looking at certain sites. Nobody gave me the stinkeye for skipping my usual reading list. I was penalized in no way. BECAUSE THE INTERNET IS VOLUNTARY.

To sum:

* If you don't like a blog, don't visit that blog.
* If you don't like a particular writer, don't read hir writing.
* If you don't like a website, don't visit that website.

The internet is voluntary. Your participation is not mandatory in any way. Humans lived for millennia without the internet, and it's still possible today. If you do choose to surf the internet, do so with the understanding that - excepting what you yourself create and publish to it - the internet may or may not be to your particular taste, and there's not a whole lot you can do about that. Except NOT SURF.

Why reading about Polanski sucks for me, in particular.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:54:00 +0000

The phrase "child rapist" is being used a lot lately, and it's starting to really get to me (and not just because its current ubiquity in the feminist blogosphere is getting to be kinda triggery for me). Roman Polanski is, obviously, a convicted rapist who would very likely be years out of prison, had he served his sentence instead of fleeing the country and using his wealth and fame to evade justice. His choices are clearly despicable and it is pretty sad to me that so many public figures are leaping to his defense.

Unfortunately, though, I can understand a little bit of where that's coming from. See, my younger brother is currently incarcerated for a similar crime.

When I first heard of the accusations against my brother, I didn't want to believe them. My brother is certainly no angel, but I just couldn't wrap my head around the possibility that he would rape a thirteen year old. Lie about tons of shit, steal, cheat, get involved with drugs or fistfights with his wife....I can see all that. But to rape a girl who's only barely a teenager? I had trouble even calling it rape at the time, and it's still hard now.

Ironic, actually, since you'd think my own personal experience with childhood rape would make it pretty fucking black and white.

And yeah, it does in some ways...I know that what my brother did, regardless of the level of violence or "consent" or whatever allegedly mitigating circumstances exist, will unquestionably mess with how that girl relates to sex and men and power dynamics and intimacy and a whole host of other seemingly unrelated things. I am consistently surprised by how often I have to face yet another shadow of The Ordeal, even now, more than ten years after I started actively acknowledging it and working on healing some of the damage (and well over twenty years after the actual incident). I have no doubts that my brother's actions have done incredible harm to that little girl - not to mention the present and future impacts to his two young daughters, his (now ex-) wife, and his family and friends (plus, you know, the way he's pretty much fucked his own future prospects).

When I finally got to a place where I accepted that he'd actually done it...I lost the ability to sort out how I felt about him and what he'd done. No, that's not true - I condemn what he did with every fiber of my being, and when I think about it, it makes me so angry I want to hurt him. I want to hurt him for what he's done himself, and in proxy for the sonuvabuitch who did it to me, and in proxy for all of the motherfuckers that do shit like this to people, who have such unconscionable blindness to the way their instantly gratified urges wreak havoc and pain and misery on others. It makes me furious.

But this is my brother. I know he's imperfect, and that he has many flaws....but I love him anyway. We have almost the same face. I spent most of my childhood getting in trouble for shit he started, like happens with little brothers. He can be incredibly sweet and surprisingly smart and genuinely accepting and kind. For as many times as he's hurt me directly, and done things I find despicable, and used me or our family members...I can't not love him. I don't know how to stop that.

And that's maybe what I'm most angry about. If he were anyone else, I wouldn't have a problem condemning him and his actions and not wasting another iota of my energy on it. But I love him, and I believe that what he's going through in prison is awful and inhumane in many ways (since I believe that the whole prison-industrial complex is inherently awful and inhumane, for lots of people besides my brother). I can't just write him off, and so I have a lot of trouble reconciling my love for my brother and my hatred of what he's done. So much trouble, in fact, that I have spoken to him only twice in the two years he's been locked up, and still agonize over whether and how to maintain our connection. It's easier to avoid thinking about it, to get lost in my own life stuff and pretend that I'm not the sister of a rapist.

I'm not even going to get into the fact that he, by all accounts, still doesn't think he's done anything wrong.

So, yeah, I guess I can understand why so many people are jumping to Polanski's defense...it's really tough to grapple with the idea that a person you love has done something so categorically wrong, has left behind a devastated human being who will likely spend the rest of her life trying to overcome the aftereffects, has committed a heinous crime. The difference I see between my brother and Roman Polanski? My brother's in jail, going through rehab, and suffering the consequences of his prosecution. I'm not saying it makes him the better man, I'm saying it makes him the one who's serving justice.

And now I am going to do my best to stop reading about Polanski.

ETA: All good intentions set aside, I am really not interested in getting feedback on how I have chosen to deal with my brother's circumstances. This post is more about acknowledging the complexities of rape, and how it affects victims, perpetrators, and the people close to them.

How I am and stuff.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:13:00 +0000

First, I just want to say this really clearly, so there is no confusion: I am (relatively) okay. I am not having a breakdown or freaking the fuck out or anything else extreme. I am in (relatively) decent health, mentally and physically, and I am in no danger of doing myself - or anyone else - harm.

I recognize that I have not been exactly a ray of sunshine on the internet (or, you know, anywhere else) these days, and that may be worrisome to people. For that, I am sorry - it is certainly never my intention to cause anyone any worry - and I am grateful for the sweet inquiries I have received about how I'm doing, as well. Just as often as I am surprised by what jackholes people can be, I am surprised (and delighted!) by how much kindness is out there to balance it out.

So what's going on with me? Why all the dour, irate, enraged, cranky, curmudgeonly, dark, nasty, vicious (etc., etc.) tweets and Facebook updates?

Well, you know, my life is not in a totally awesome place lately. For a lot of reasons, some within my control, and some not.

I lost two grandparents in just over six months. I've been thwarted romantically a couple times recently. I had a really shitty birthday. Many of the good things I have tried to do for myself over the past year or so (travel, music stuff, classes, etc.) have not worked out the way I planned or hoped. The weather has been all weird and unseasonable. My living situation has been increasingly trying and disappointing. My work situation has been stressful and intense. Most of my closest loved ones have had crises of their own going on, and I have an unfortunate tendency to take on some of that, whether I want to or not.

So, yeah, you know, it's life. It gets overwhelming every now and then. Sometimes I handle it better than others. And, contrary to what folks often think of me, I am a dark, twisty, sarcastic, angry introvert...which isn't to say that I'm not also often lighthearted and giggly and joyful, but that - you know, like anybody - my life and state of mind is difficult to reduce to 140 characters...or, really, any number of electrons. This construct you see before you isn't really me (or really real, for that matter)...but a projection of an interpretation of an expression of a shade of a reflection. That's valid, and it's something I find useful in many ways, and I think there is almost always a kernel of Truth in there - but it's just inevitably much too simple to capture anything close to what's really there in any kind of fullness.

(And we could get into a whole side discussion about what's real anyway, in a Buddhist sort of "life is an illusion" kind of way....but that's a whole other smelly kettle of fish I'd like to save for the next time I'm drunk and maudlin.)

A sidebar I would like to get into? Why I put all this crap out on the internet in the first place. Why I Tweet and blog and whatever. Brace yourself for a shocking answer.

I fucking like it.

I like doing it because I find it a useful tool when I am trying to promote a gig or music or an event or an opportunity for activism (which I haven't been doing much of lately, but am perpetually trying to get my shit together on). I like doing it because I find it a useful tool for self-reflection, reading back over my posts or updates to see where I was a month ago, a year ago, or longer in some cases (hello, Diaryland diary!). I like doing it because it's sometimes nice to feel like my voice is heard, even if all it's saying is "whine, whine, piss, piss, moan, moan" - and it's nice to see that I'm not the only one out there dealing with whatever I'm dealing with. I like having an immediate outlet for the random thoughts that pop into my head, for the news and blogs and notices I stumble into as I'm bumbling about the internet in between doing actual work.

On top of that, I like seeing where other people I know are - what they're reading or watching or thinking about, what's going on in their lives. I'm an awful correspondent, so it's nice to have a relatively simple way to keep tabs on my distant friends and family....'cause I might not call but once or twice a year, I might not send a substantive e-mail with actual personal content, er, ever....but I can make a relevant comment on a Facebook update or a tweet, to let them know I'm thinking of them. Maybe it's lazy, and maybe it's "virtual connection" and not "real connection," but at this point in my life, I'm probably not going to suddenly become an awesome letter-writer, phone-caller, or e-mailer....nor am I going to fall into buckets of money that will let me travel to see these people in person and remind them face-to-face how much I actually do care about them. So, you know, I do what I can for good or ill.

So, all that rambling aside...here's what I can tell you for sure: I am okay. I will be okay. I am in a bit of a crap patch. I will get through it one way or another, just like I have made it through much more trying circumstances that occurred before Twitter or Facebook existed for me to record my moment-to-moment experiences (thank all the gods). Someday - probably sometime in April, when my lease is up and my living circumstances will likely change drastically and give me one of those clean slate mindsets - I will wend my way out of the Dark Side, and stop tweeting snarls and growls and bitchiness and vitriol.

And to those who are worried about me...please accept my apologies. About 80% of the time, even my grouchiest posts are done with a pinch of salt and tongue firmly in cheek. No matter how shitty things seem to get, I am generally still laughing at it - especially at this point, when the "shit happens" mantra is less said with a shrug and more often uttered with a bitterly wry "of fucking course" prefix.

FUotD: PETA

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:33:00 +0000

Hey, PETA: FUCK YOU!

For most of us, summer is fading fast, but for residents of Jacksonville, Florida, bikini season lasts all year. What does the Sunshine State's endless summer mean for PETA? Our phone lines ring off the hook with reports of "beached whale sightings." Good one, guys.

Luckily, we know the secret to getting—and maintaining—a killer beach bod. Did you know that vegetarians are 20 to 30 percent leaner than meat-eaters? So, to help residents and tourists "lose the blubber"—and hopefully to deter prank callers—we're launching a brand-new billboard urging people to go vegetarian:

I'm not linking the post from PETA's blog quoted above, nor am I displaying the billboard in question (you can get them from Lesley's post at Fatshionista if you want 'em).

You know what, PETA? It is pretty damn unlikely that going veggie or vegan will actually result in a "killer beach bod" for many people. Even if I became a vegan and suddenly weighed 30% less...I would still weigh over 200 pounds, which I'm pretty sure would still qualify me as a "whale" by PETA standards.

Also, there are so many really good, ethical reasons to reduce or elminate meat consumption...taking it to a place of fat shaming is a lowest-common-denominator approach that doesn't actually fix the problem. It doesn't actually explain to people the reality of the impact of CAFOs or factory farms, and I highly doubt it will elicit any permanent lifestyle changes for most people.

So, PETA, shame on you. Fuck you for using scare tactics to try to manipulate people into making intimately personal decisions based not on facts and reality, but on fear. Fuck you for spreading total misinformation, encouraging disordered eating, and shoring up misogyny, racism, and fat hatred.

In conclusion, you incredible douchebags: FUCK YOU.

Family news, plus SFSV: The Reboot.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:40:00 +0000

Last week, shortly after I posted my glowy post-solstice happy post, my grandfather passed away.

On the one hand, this was not exactly out of the blue; he was in a car accident a year and a half ago that induced a stroke and left him needing twenty-four hour care. Sometimes he would be relatively lucid, but he was never the same, and I think even those family members who argued otherwise knew that it was only a matter of time. In some ways, his passing is a relief, freeing him from the purgatory of a nursing home.

My grandfather was...just this guy, you know? He worked at a factory until he retired, bowled in a league, drank beer, smoked until the doctors made him stop, played cribbage, hunted and fished. He and my grandma (technically my step-grandma) were kind of the "cool" grandparents - they had a hot tub in the sunroom, a motorcycle in the garage, and they travelled more than most of my relatives. He wasn't any great humanitarian, and I suspect he had a lot of regrets...but he was a good man, as these things go. He enjoyed his life.

His favorite insult, in jest or in seriousness, was "potlicker." Seriously. These are my people.

I didn't have to sing at the funeral (the church wanted, for some reason I don't understand, to pre-record the vocals and play them back with a live organist; needless to say, the singer was less than awesome and the song had zero punch....I could've made it a catharsis, but whatever, obvy the church dude knows best), which was okay with me, since doing so inevitably makes me ball like a baby after. Also, the preacher made sure to mention that the hymn was "a great song for Christians to sing," which had my sister whispering in my ear "yeah, no singing that one, pagan."

The preacher, as per usual in Christian funerals I have attended, attempted to use grief as a recruitment tool for the big team in the sky. I fucking hate having my loved one held hostage in heaven against my repentance. Why does so much of Christianity (as expressed by preachers in church, anyway) seem to hinge on fear and manipulation, when so much of what Christ espoused was based in love and tolerance and good works? I mean, do they cover that stuff when they're teaching the preachers, or is that touchy-feely crap only for the kiddies in Sunday school?

Anyway.

I am officially re-booting the SFSV plan, and going on a break. I am pushing back the recording process until the fall, I am going over my other upcoming obligations and considering which ones I'll maintain, and which ones I'll cancel or delay. If I could take a leave of absence from the office, I'd do that, too. Instead, I'm scaling back my expectations of myself, opening up space in my calendar to watch movies and wander along the lakeshore and get acupuncture and do nothing. I just can't handle trying to juggle much at the moment, and I'm tired of trying. Solstice weekend, with its surprise free time to enjoy the sunshine and indulge in fripperies, is more of what I need. As much as I want to get various projects done...right now the project I'm working on is not feeling like such shit.

Sunshine and darkness and time passing.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:56:00 +0000

Okay. This week? We're going on a diet. All of us. But this is a diet of a different kind. We're going to regulate the habit of unhappiness. We will make the conscious decision to make the most of what we have and pine for nothing. No undefinable need or vague despair. Enough!!! If you don't like it, FIX IT. If you can't fix it, PLAN B it. If you like it and want more, RESPECT IT. Clean straight lines of living.
- The Mayer, via Twitter

I have been unhappy a lot lately. No matter how many blessings I have tried to consciously celebrate over the past six months or so, I just couldn't shake the doom and gloom that has hung over my head since my grandmother passed away in December. I couldn't ever seem to catch my breath and find the calm, still center of myself, the part that is solid as bedrock regardless of the shaking of the world around me. I'm not used to that happening very often...I tend to - even when I'm standing in the midst of a shitstorm - be able to handle it from that place of groundedness, so that even if life is crap, I still feel okay, like it will pass, like I can handle it and things will eventually get better. I got very scared this time around that I'd lost that light at the end of the tunnel, that tiny glimmer of optimism that somehow manages to survive in the cynicism and sarcasm that is my standard operating procedure even in the best of times. I worried that I was losing hope.

That's only happened to me once before, and it was a warning sign that I needed a huge shift in my life, that something essential was missing, that the core of my life wasn't right. That was the day I dropped out of college, jettisoned my plans to become an engineer, and embarked on the journey to become the weirdo pagan hippie freako musician I am these days. It scared me a lot to think that maybe I was standing on the cusp of another horribly painful transition like that. I like change, but ripping apart my expectations of myself, not to mention my concept of who I am and how I define my own self-worth? Yeah, I could do without something quite that big just now.

(Sometimes, when I type something like this up, I feel incredibly dark and twisty and obnoxious. I recognize how melodramatic and over-the-top it sounds, even while also feeling it's honesty and truth. Can I simultaneously take myself really seriously *and* laugh at my own pomposity?)

Anyway. Last weekend was the Summer Solstice (here in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway), and through a series of unexpected events, I wound up at loose ends. Two days of unplanned, empty, sprawling free time with nobody around (roomie was gone the whole weekend). Just me and myself and 48 hours of sunshine and blue sky. The longest day of the year, and incidentally one of those big ol' holidays us crazy pagans go nuts over.

I won't bore you with the gory details of what all I did with my free time (suffice to say it was awesome and I enjoyed the hell out of it), but during the whole time, there was an undercurrent of reflection and rumination about what exactly was making me unhappy. Some of it, I found, was shit I can't change or control; all I can do there is try to bear with it and breathe deeply and endure. Some of it was shit I choose not to change or control; dealing with this was a matter of examining my choices and deciding to change them, or to make peace with them. Some of it was shit that is absolutely within my ability to shift, but that I haven't...and here's where the work was for me. Why have I been pouting about this stuff, when all along I had the power to embrace it or reshape it or drop it like a fucking hot potato?

Well, you know, I'm human. Sometimes it all gets to be too much, and the system breaks down. While my life experience has taught me that I am lucky enough to live a life where there's nothing that I can't endure, overcome, or walk away from...some of that is easier said than done. Sometimes I don't handle it well, and I lose my center, and I flounder around like a fish out of water. Or a human being out of her depth and at her wit's end. And, sometimes, I have avoided looking at things I'm afraid of, and hampered my own forward progress.

This morning, I read The Mayer's tweets above, and nodded so emphatically I knocked an earbud right out of my ear. Yes! This is where I am. It took the longest, sunshiniest, most gorgeous day, plus hours of connecting with my gawky teenage nasturtiums and my tiny baby basils and my toddling thyme sproutlings and all the other beautiful greenbloods I've invited to live with me....to remind me of how happy I can be. I doubt I'm done with the darkness, but I have had a break, and something has changed. If only a little....still a little.

This weekend.

noreply@blogger.com (Tari) — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:49:00 +0000

Brief recap:

* Worked late Friday.
* Saturday spent feeling like shit, sleeping, and crying.
* Sunday was bad news, bad news, crying, pottery, and sitting in non-moving el train watching paramedics on the platform treating a guy who'd been (?) stabbed and thrown onto the tracks. There was a lot of blood.
* Today, one ear has decided to get all stuffy, head feels like it's composed primarily of cotton,
and I'm trying to pack and prep for another trip to Minneapolis for work.

I'm trying to get it all in perspective, since, well, I haven't been stabbed or needed emergency medical attention lately (knock wood). More of same. I'm so sick of me.