I don’t get to see my mom today because I’m working in the evening and schooling during the day.
It wouldn’t be a huge deal to skip work normally, but I just freaked out on my boss last week for scheduling me shifts I couldn’t work, and she changed everything for me. If I were to noshow, I’d be uberbitchtothemax.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.”
Alexander Pope
knowing half the story doesn’t give one insight into the complexities of it. It gives them a shallow understanding and an unjustifiably pretentious attitude. Lacking understanding of a situation gives way to uncalled for judgement and a never fading resentment from the other party.
While on Whyte Ave last month, I stopped at Earth’s General Store to make a purchase. After months of research, reading, and a general attitude of wanting to change the way I look at my period, I decided to buy the keeper. The Keeper is a great alternative to the wasteful imaginings of a basically evil marketing industry, that promotes a feeling of shame and the idea that menstruation is something that is dirty. Typically, manufacturers resort to neat, packaged terms that allow for them to completely disassociate the concept of menstruation from the product, because women obviously cannot handle scientific terms/phrases like “vagina”, or “the ovaries release of the egg”, or even “blood”. The wonder and beauty of menstruation are kept from generations of women for the sake of marketing. Pills containing excessive amounts of hormones are sold to teenaged girls (or sometimes much younger, given the prevalence of early onset puberty in north america) with the idea of “getting rid of that pesky horrible bodily function forever!” Menstruation isn’t pissing or shitting. Menstruation is the blood that comes out of your cunt, the blood of a woman, the blood that indicates the process of something beautiful happening inside your body. Understanding that makes it substantially more wonderful to be a woman. Ever heard of Menarche Rituals? Probably not…in North American culture, one ofthe most hypocritical and patriarchal cultures in the world, a woman’s period is something to be dreaded, something relegated to an embarassing moment with white pants and a classroom full of boys. Education about menstruation is given to the girls at a young age, and boys are forced to make horrid assumptions about a bodily function that their own mothers experienced. Imagine how different a place north america would be if a woman’s period was celebrated.
Anyways, back to the keeper. It’s a menstrual cup. Easy to insert, less harm to your body, less harm to the environment, lasts for ten years, and overall cost effective. Stick it to the industry that teaches a woman that her normal bodily functions are to be loathed.
I’m sitting here now, and eating chocolate and listening to NIN and kind of digging life right now, because I’m talking to you, eric. It was nice to be able to show this to you. and now I’m kind of confused as to what to write in here. I don’t know. I guess it will take a bit of effort to write in that sort of free style when no one read this. I also hate writing in first person, well the kind that is like this. It’s too now. Thank you for coming over today. no. I’m not going write like this. Too much like a letter. Starting again:
He came over today. I was dying, the smallest things seem to set me off lately. It’s a part of living on your own and going to school and working and trying to manage cooking and living and due dates and bills and paycheques and everything. It’s something that drags you down like crazy. But he shows up, and seriously, it just all goes away. And as much as escaping doesn’t solve the problem, it feels so good to escape. My own little world with the person I love. It’s amazing how absolutely nothing matters when he kisses me, the fact that I still get butterflies after he does.
It scares me that I’m so sick and gross and icky all the time, that my entire body is falling apart and that no matter how hard I try to manage everything, there is always something I forget. And it scares me because I don’t know how I’ll keep managing like this. I’m hoping the summer makes things better. And I’m counting down till I can appreciate it. I’m just looking forward to the time to read for leisure and make my brain happy again and make everything better.
He makes everything better.
I can’t ever be what you need me to be. I can’t ever be what my parents need me to be. I can’t ever be what god needs me to be, if he’s there.
I doubt I can be what I need myself to be. How can I, when I barely know myself?
Mobius Strip
The track I’m running on
Won’t be the same when I turn back
It’s useless to follow it straight
I’ll return to another place
I circle around but the sky changes
Yesterday I was a child
I’m a man now
The world’s a strange thing
And the rose among the roses
Doesn’t resemble another rose.
Robert Desnos
I am digging this new ratatat stuff, their new album, LP3 is a completely new, more worldly sound. They are no longer a band with one sound, repetitive beats, and catchy samples. What they’ve done is taken the best of what they used to have and coupled it with what feels like a trip around the globe. My favorite, mumtaz khan, is some sort of strange mixture of india and japan with hard hitting synths-and bells.
In any case, my brain feels just about ready to explode with frustration at my current situation of being unemployed, off school, and home all the time. Not to mention not being able to see him more than once or twice a week, and having to be sneaky about it at that. This whole hiding thing bugs me a lot more than it used to when I was younger. Things were much easier when I had no expectation of anything being produced from the relationship and everything was being done for fun, and meaningless to the future. But now it all means something. This entire relationship has been so carefully crafted, after five years of knowing each other, and a year of intense friendship, it feels so much mature than anything I’ve ever been in. The fact that everything has fallen into place so wonderfully, well, it’s like some ridiculous romance movie that everyone thinks is tacky but secretly love, and wish would happen to them. Right down to the picnic.
Other non relationship type things that are bothering me include the lack of philosophy courses being offered at my university currently. There is a price to be paid for small class sizes, I suppose. Everything being offered is so general, and I look at the stuff that the UofA is offering and it’s so wonderfully specific. An entire class on existentialism! Or the philosophy of love and sex! Epistemology is obviously very important, and a requirement for anyone wanting to pursue grad studies in philosophy, but at the same time, all these small things are so specific and interesting. I guess I can read up on them on my own though, and bring them up with likeminded friends and stuff. On a related note, I really wish my father would stop making digs about my major :S. He takes every opportunity he can to make fun of the fact that I am becoming a “philosopher”, and takes deep pleasure in it. It’s rather frustrating, but I just remind myself that things could be a lot worse. That seems to work.
