The Impossible Only Costs a Little Extra

D.H. Lawrence

Barbara — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:00:54 +0000

I believe that my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a clearing in the forest. That gods come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will try always to recognize and submit to them.
-D.H. Lawrence

Found a dog

Barbara — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:33:26 +0000

Found in Mitchell Park in Milwaukee around 4 pm on May 14, 2012.

He was not wearing a collar and does not have a microchip.

I’d love to get him home to his people, but have nothing to go on. My vet said he’s a Lhasa Apso, though it’s possible he’s a Shih Tzu. Absolutely no idea how old he is. He has been recently groomed, probably within the last week.

Email senvara at gmail.com to identify and claim this little guy if he’s yours.

information overload – May 11, 2012

Barbara — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:00:55 +0000

Books (in progress)

The Happiness Project
Weird Sisters
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened
Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters

Books (finished)

Blogs

Netflixed

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 5: Darmok
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 5: Ensign Ro
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 5: Silicon Avatar

Movies

The Avengers
Thor
No Reservations
The Bourne Identity

If you use enough butter, you can’t taste the bitterness

Barbara — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:44:03 +0000

This day did not go as I planned. Not in the slightest. The workmen came and finally started putting our bathroom(s) back together. My five day headache continued apace. Battles were won and battles were lost and I only fought in one of them, which we turned into a hug, so I think that was okay.

And Maurice Sendak died.

This simple reality completely altered my day. First, I thought I’d write about it. Then I thought maybe I could channel that energy and finish writing about when Favorite Guy was in the hospital. Then I had lie down awhile because of the headache and I got distracted by the workmen and a problem with my server that was preventing me from changing something on the technical side of the blog and then there were husbands and kids and music and kids and all the while I was filling up, just filling up.

And I can’t let it out yet. It’s not like I’m afraid of it, it just isn’t ready.

And this left me with nothing to write and hours and hours of trying to figure out what I might say because my big, big, big internal life is still much too large to squeeze out through something as tiny as words.

So now I have only this paltriness, this small wasting of your time, and for that I am sorry. I am sorry because I want to give so much more in return for the gift of your attention. And right now, the words in my head are not my own.

But, you know, there’s something I’m finding out as I’m aging that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they’re beautiful. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. You know, I don’t think I’m rationalizing anything. I really don’t. This is all inevitable and I have no control over it.

- Maurice Sendak

Broken chain

Barbara — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:39:12 +0000

Broken chain

I draw witchcraft
on my skin in lieu of,
as if tattoos make
stories real.

I can see
nothing through the dark
dark window
across the way. Winter falls
sideways
in tiny pieces.

With so many edges
I can’t warm.
I fall
in the way of ways
until impenetrable motion
flows undistinguished
into night
the color of
water.

I turn left,
find an ache that wishes
to be a child. My belly swells
for the wrong reasons.
I seek sleep
for the grief as much as
for the dreams.
She would have had
red hair
and a name I found
behind the wind.

Women set like diamonds

Barbara — Mon, 07 May 2012 04:26:09 +0000

Sunday night is Date Night, so Favorite Guy and I went to see The Avengers.¹ We had awesome seats² and we’ve been looking forward to the film for some time. We rewatched all the other films in the last month in preparation. The film has lots of laughs and lots of action and more women in background characters than I’ve ever seen in a film that didn’t take place at a girls’ boarding school.

But I am disappointed.

Sadly, despite having two strong, capable, complex female characters in major roles,³ The Avengers fails the Bechdel Test.⁴ Each of the three female characters⁵ exists in a separate sphere. They never appear on screen together, and they certainly don’t speak. Each woman exists in her own tiny ring of men, just like a diamond set in a ring or brooch. This film still reinforces the typical movie mythology that capable women are rare in a world of men.

I am unaware of a similar test for evaluating how People of Color are represented in film, but the movie certainly fails this as well, with Nick Fury as the lone token in a world of white.

Such a shame. It would have taken so little to do so much better.

Footnotes

No worries. No spoilers here.
Our favorite movie complex has two theaters with super big screens and reserved “VIP” seating. The tickets for those seats cost a little more, but they’re reserved, so no need to wait in line to get in. They are also big and cushy and have tables. It’s worth a couple of extra bucks for these seats.
As major as any role is in an ensemble cast.
The Avengers – Bechdel Test
Black Widow, Agent Hill, and Pepper Potts.⁶
My iPhone is named Pepper Potts, btw.

I totally knew amputee porn was a thing (and other things we said this afternoon)

Barbara — Sun, 06 May 2012 02:58:06 +0000

Favorite Guy: So then, Chipotle will work for you?

Me: I can’t think of a time when Chipotle hasn’t worked for me. Chipotle makes me happy.

pause

Me: Besides, I have fudge.¹

pause

Me: Also, leftover lemon cake.

pause

Me: Basically, I’m Queen of the World!

Favorite Guy: And you have wine.

Me: Oh yeah!

Favorite Guy: And you’ll be husbandless for three to six hours tonight.

Me: That doesn’t sound so awesome.

pause

Me: Although I do have those two vibrators that EdenFantasys gave me at BlogHer⁴ and I’ve only tried one of them.

Favorite Guy: Why have you only tried one of them?

Me: Dunno. I wasn’t that impressed, and mostly I forget about them. I haven’t used the Post-It Notes 3M gave me either.⁷

Favorite Guy: I never heard of that vibrator before.

Me: I should totally use this conversation for my blog post tonight.

And then we sprinted into Chipotle to pee before we ate and then I came home and wrote the whole thing down. Just for you.⁸

Footnotes

Purchased in the General Store at Cabela’s. This particular Cabela’s has a General Store, a Grill, an arcade shooting range, a bow-hunting shooting range, an Aquarium,² and multiple taxidermied wildlife displays. It’s an impressive, and slightly frightening, store.

Also, we hefted a bunch of shotguns, including one that comes with a nifty blind-your-attacker-with-the-built-in-strobe-light feature. I figured maybe we could get the same scare impact with a loud stapler and a strobe light. But a pump-action short-barreled shotgun is a lot more badass.³
With a curator.
And will look totally awesome on the wall on my side of the bed.
Disclosure: EdenFantasys totally gave me a bag of swag, which included two vibrators, some lube, and a couple of “Safe Sex” packets with condoms and mini packets of lube and handiwipes. I gave the Safe Sex packets to our daughters. Edenfantasys did’t ask me to review their products, but they did, no doubt, have some kind of promotional intent behind giving them to me, and I did not pay anything for them.⁵
The lube is very slippy and slippery.⁶
Which is kinda what you’d expect from lube, I think.
Disclosure: More swag. Most of all the stuff I got at BlogHer is still sitting in a bag in my office where I forget I have it.
Because I knew your Saturday night would be a little poorer, a little sadder, without this story. I’m generous that way.

In sequent toil

Barbara — Sat, 05 May 2012 04:28:21 +0000

I took some of my art over to La Rive Gauche¹ this week. I have really, really mixed feelings about this. I really like that I am making such a wonderful space to work in, that I can code and rock my geek at the computer, have meetings with clients, and also play the autoharp.

But my office at home feels a little bare, and this process feels a little too much like moving out. I’m not entirely comfortable with it.

I still live at home, of course, but more and more of the things I love are either over at the studio, or packed up in boxes. I can’t help feeling like this is a failure at some level. A failure in trust. A failure in parenting. A failure to really come together as a family.

There are really, really good reasons for me to have a workplace that is physically distinct from my home. Unfortunately it highlights the ways I don’t really feel like my home is my home. I often feel like I’ve been invaded by a bunch of teenage raccoons on spring break.²

I used to feel really great about myself as a parent. I had doubts at times, but mostly I felt proud of the way I was raising my kids. This is not so much true anymore. I am really not enjoying these late teen years. There are lots of good moments and our relationships are all in decent shape and I am actually really, really pleased with the trust and connection I have with Daughter#1 as she moves into adulthood, but the daily process of living with them is a significant challenge. So much so that I want to reinvent “slog”⁴ as a noun, as in “I was stuck in that slog for three years.” or “My forties have been a real slog, you know?”

I often feel like I’m swimming through molasses. It’s slow and sticky and while it doesn’t taste bad, it’s not exactly wonderful either.

Footnotes

The Left Bank. Also known as my studio. Formerly known as “the office.”
They rummage. They leave debris everywhere. And they guard their territory fiercely.³
“Territory” being defined as “the space I am standing in”.
to work long and hard at something for a long time with little progress

There is no fucking “because”

Barbara — Thu, 03 May 2012 23:00:53 +0000

I am so fucking! angry.

I just watched a TED talk that moved me and my nose was running and that reminded me that I’d left the Kleenex¹ I bought in the trunk of the car.

So I went out to get it.

And as I walked to my car, parked right next to my back door, a guy in some low-slung white car with a heavy beat slowed down and stared intently at me the whole way.

The whole fucking way.

I’m 43 fucking years old, and over-weight, and nobody’s ideal of anything, and yet, when I walk to my car, right next to my own home, at night, there’s some guy stalking me.

And I am so FUCKING angry.

This is what “rape culture” means. I cannot step 20 feet from my front door without some guy stopping to evaluate me, to look me over, just like a car, or a stud horse, to decide if I’m worth his time.

I am SO FUCKING ANGRY that my daughters are still growing up in this world.

I exist because…….

there is no fucking “because”

I am

I am, therefore

I do not belong to you;

I was not created for your pleasure;

I was not created for you to judge or evaluate

I am.³

Footnotes

®²
Because we dare not violate intellectual property.
Deal with it, already!

Bukowski might not always have been right

Barbara — Thu, 03 May 2012 04:50:52 +0000

“You wouldn’t be the first person”, he said, “to have a blog title and the post with the exact same content, ‘Vodka.’”

And Bukowski¹ said, “baby, air and light and time and space have nothing to do with it except maybe a longer life to find new excuses for.”

As far as I know, Bukowski didn’t have any relationships that worked.

And which is the better life? Art? or Love?

Who the fuck knows what the best life is?²

Footnotes

Who no doubt had vodka enough, and more!
Not me. That’s the one thing I know for sure. Not me.