50 Shades of OMG WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE?

What does this say about us?

I read 50 Shades of Grey over the summer, and I must admit to being titillated, but only because I happen to love erotic fiction.  In all honesty, I had no idea what all the hoopla was about when I ordered the books on my kindle.

Several times during my reading, I had to turn away out of horror and outrage.  The feminist in me couldn’t stand for it.  We are being sold this message that women are inherently submissive by nature and if we’re young and waif-like, naive and “pure,” then we can hope the man of our dreams, a rich handsome entrepreneur will marry us and make all of our dreams and wishes come true.

Provided we give up our autonomy and agency and allow him to beat the shit out of us because he’s paying our way.  And because this is how he gets his sexual kicks.

I don’t pretend to know much about the lifestyle of BDSM.  It is a lifestyle that simultaneously fascinates and horrifies the tender recesses of my fragile heart.  But having seen this book in bookstores over here in Sweden, I am truly saddened.  The fact that this book has become an international best-seller just means that violence against women is normalized and justified, because hey, we must want this.  After all, women are buying the book, and a woman penned it!  What do women want? Apparently the masses have spoken and it’s Christian Grey.  50 Shades of fucked up abuse please!  Thank you, sir, may I have another?

Human Trafficking and Sexual Slavery is one of my pet projects, a cause dear to my heart and soul, for reasons I will never discuss.  But suffice it to say, I feel very empathic to women forced against their will into sordid lives of degradation and sexual abuse.  Isn’t BDSM the same thing?  The lines become blurry.  Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and it’s very strange when fiction excites us on such a massive global scale.  What does that say about us?  Are we all just savage primal beasts?  Is violence against women ever okay? I mean this was consensual role-playing.  Perhaps I’m over-reacting here.  After all, it is just a story.

Here’s another one:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/i-was-a-fifty-shades-of-grey-style-sex-slave-1143087

This month is National Novel Writing Month www.nanowrimo.org when I will attempt to start and finish (the finishing part is the most important here, at least for me) a novel of at least 50,000 words by November 30.  Although it’s November 2, and I have quarantined myself in a hotel room this weekend to jumpstart the process yet still have diddly squat, I am comforted by the fact that the 50 Shades of Grey Trilogy made such an impact on the world.

Can I just say as a writer and critic, the plot was pretty formulaic and the prose wasn’t much to write home about.  It was no Pride and Prejudice, let me tell you.  There was nothing memorable beyond an annoying amount of “Oh my”s peppered in every time Christian Grey decided to have his way with the plucky confused heroine.

But hey, sex sells right?

Grey Matter

There are some days when the world is too much.  When the grey cold sky outside seems to press down through my body, flesh and bone, chilling the very marrow until I feel the weight of the wind and the clouds and ether, all the histories of people that came before, under this same impassive indifferent sky, the unanswered prayers, I feel them all in the marrow of my bones.

I feel like I’m going to be flattened against the pressure of being so infinitesimally small and out of control.  There is nothing I can measure, nothing I can control or fix, a meteor might come out of this sky and kill me, lightning could strike me dead, zap me like a fly.  So inconsequential.  An airplane crash, God’s wrath.  The sky is unpredictable and deceptive.

There are days when I lift my eyes to heaven and see the world, see my life stretching on without trouble or heartache or pain or accident or disease or any unfathomable pain, just smooth sailing ahead.  Pleasant dreams.  This fictional life is something I pray for, but my prayers are unanswered and the sky mocks me yet again, pressing me down to earth, down into myself with cruel gravity.

And during these times, I feel so heavy.  My bones weigh a ton, my body feels like concrete, I cannot move my limbs.  I am immobilized, stone, cold.  My tears feel like ice on my face and no matter how tight I hold myself, I still feel numb, as if I’m not there and there is no amount of warmth and love that will melt me into something malleable and soft again.

During these times even bed feels false, it’s not strong enough to bear my full weight.  I will break the frame, I can hear the wood bend; it’s not strong enough to bear the full weight of my pain, and sky, those prayers, and tears, heavier than stone and statue.  The bed will break because I cannot.  So I curl in a fetal position on the floor, rocking myself through sobs, feeling the pressure of the sky and life moving through past, present, and future adding my inconsequential insubstantial emotions to the ether while I pray for weightlessness.

 

 

I have disappeared.

I am experiencing major health issues, and they are tied into the way I feel as well.  Unfortunately I don’t know how to reach a doctor here, so until I come back to myself, I’m going to take a break from writing…I might give too much away.  It’s so strange, I’m sleeping rather well (thank God) but when I wake, I feel I could have slept another 12 hours, and my eyes are bloodshot and cracked and the skin beneath is dark and puffy, as if I hadn’t slept at all.  My body is not happy and I have no clue where “I” went.  My feet and legs are swollen and I don’t recognize myself; it’s like I’m outside of myself and I don’t know who to turn to or talk to, and the world keeps spinning and I am uninterested in participating but I must because I paid a lot of money to come here.

I had an attack the other day, it came out of nowhere; I thought I was dying (choking on air and couldn’t catch my breath) and it scared me so much, I didn’t know who to tell and I tried to keep it under wraps; I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t swallow; I couldn’t think.

All of this has got to be psychosomatic.  I’m not crazy; but I can recognize my mind and body are not in balance (maybe my kidneys are failing?!), and I don’t know what to do.  I could try to find  an E.R. somewhere; but I’m scared.  Holy shit, I’m scared, and I can’t believe I just admitted that.  In typical American fashion, I keep thinking I can push through this, whatever it is, I can do this, I can get through this.  So…I’m taking a break until I get over this.  Thank you for your understanding and concern.

Love and the Absent Professor — IT’S OVER.

Okay, so I’m in the middle of a branding lecture and I’m being a horrible student right now.  (I’m listening, but I understand the concept, and I studied this in grad school).

Didn’t anyone get the memo on my thoughts on a polyamory?  I wrote a whole blog about it (link to be posted later)

I want it all.  He keeps coming back with the same nonsense.  I feel like I wasted 15 years of my life.  He loves me, he loves me not.  Why the hell did he even tell me at all if he supposedly just wanted to be friends?  He loves to lead me on and he wonders why I allegedly tried to destroy him.  Oh, I’m livid.

I am so glad he’s in Hawaii because I have half a mind to knock some sense into him.

If and only if I’m going to be treated like crap by a man, I want to be able to have some semblance of security.  A marriage.  A home.  Children.  Liabilities.  Assets.  A white picket fence.  A marriage contract.  A great legal department.  A great psychiatrist.  A great medicine cabinet and a fully stocked home bar.

My own fucking wing/library/writing room where I can mope around drinking, smoking and emoting while pretending to write, while my “better” half is out fucking everyone else because he loves me so much.

Why does he always do this?  I went to bed at 4:30am with thoughts in  my head of leaving my life and holing up in some obscure convent, drop off the face of the earth, and devote the rest of my life to God because men don’t deserve me.

Disney should have prepared me better.  *sigh*

My exes started blurring together last night in a hazy fog of love, regret, memories, and pain.  I didn’t know what was real except for the tangible evidence, emails and the empty hole where my heart should be.

I woke up feeling numb.  Cold and indifferent.  I really wish I could pop off a few rounds at the shooting range, but I’m pretty sure guns are illegal in this socialist country.  Maybe I’ll anger-bang some lucky Swede I pick up in a bar tonight, then leave in the morning.   Nope, can’t do that either.  Need to work.  Have too many projects spinning in the air, and not enough sleep or hours in the day.

Damn you to hell, you toxic evil person.  You have stolen my youth and my idealism and thoughts on love.  And every time I think I’m doing well, like the sneaky fox you are, you weasel your way back into my life and worm your way back into my heart.  If my heart is an apple, you’re the worn inside of it.  You have poisoned me; you steal all that’s good and pure in my soul when I think of and believe in love, and then sit back and watch the bomb you created detonate then blame the chain reaction on me.

I feel blue anger.  I’m seeing blue-white.  Not red.  Cool anger.  It’s dangerous.  I feel quite…unpredictable.

Must focus.  I have a client meeting later.  Must channel this energy into work.

Love and the Absent Math Professor

She tries to remember the way his hair felt beneath her fingers.  Silky, but not fine.  The color.  Was it brown or reddish-brown?  She wonders if he wears it long still.  Every memory out of order like a slide projector click click clicking through their shared moments.  There are blank slides.  Disordered chaotic, forgotten moments that he remembers and she doesn’t or that he tries to forget and she uses as ammunition.  Around and around like an old-fashioned Kodak carousel, they keep sharing moments even though they’re so distant.

No one understands the attraction; she wonders what she sees in him and also wonders what it’s like to see herself through his eyes.  He’s hard to pinpoint, though he’s a stable constant and her only stability is she’s likely to do something completely unpredictable and brazen.  He says odd things at parties and she flirts and always gets her way.

They love each other, but are they meant for each other?  They love to destroy themselves and rebuild the foundations again and again over whiskey and wine like the click-click-click of the photo carousel.  As years pass, the flashes may become more in line, the blanks less frequent, the distance nonexistent.

There’s a quote in a favorite read that says, “One is loved because one is loved.”  She tries to remind herself of this while dissecting his reasons for ripping the bandaid off her heart by coming back into the blank slides of her click-click-click carousel.

She feels frustrated at the distance.  Both physically and emotionally.  She wants to scream or throw things, maybe break porcelain dishes (they make a satisfying smash to add to the cacophony), but she learned long ago it doesn’t matter, so what good would it do?  She’d have to clean up the mess.

The words, to her, seem simultaneously promising and empty.

He loves her, he said.  He said it once.  She can’t remember the last time he said it or if he did.  He probably did.  They’ve been going at it, around and around, for almost half of her life.  In her head, these words fill her up with a spectrum of life and light and beauty and sound, memories to come already imagined and lived through, blank slides made up, re-arranged, all ebulliently happy images.  So full she cannot contain her indescribable emotions; her heart will spontaneously combust with overload of happiness.

The words, to him mean: She doesn’t know.  He never gives anything away, and he’s terse on the phone.  The distance seems further than it should.

Hollow like the echo of a bad connection.

Then silence with only the click-click-click constantly running in her head to keep her up at night and make her imagine things that may never have existed to begin with.  She invents stories, he said once.  The distance has always made anything seem possible.

Today is already yesterday, but it still should be commemorated

9/11 — An American tragedy that united our nation

Grandparents Day

My birthday.

Gratitude for the bootstraps that made our country so strong.

I admire that meritocratic archetype, a resilience beyond belief.

A rebirth.

 

Thoughts are swirling,

like the red wine in this glass.

 

If nothing else: Gratitude stands out.

That’s all that’s necessary.

Everything else is superfluous white noise

clouding reason

and giving me a headache.

 

WTF Does Homeland Security know?!

Ok first the CDC.  Now the Department of Homeland Security.

It’s coming.  The Zombie Apocalypse.  It’s real!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/homeland-security-warns-the-zombies-are-coming_n_1862768.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

I’m so proud of you

What I wish my parents (that are dead or non-existent) were saying about me.  ”I’m so proud of you.”

“Everything’s adding up, I went through hell and back, that’s why I’m bad as fuck!” — Drake

I miss Black people.  I’m talking American Black people.  We run the world.  Hip-hop, Jazz, Olympics, Rap, NBA, NFL, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson King of Pop, Whitney Houston, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, BARACK OBAMA!  We’re blowing up!  (All you racist mothafuckas, you SHOULD be scared.  Black people are AWESOME.  And we’re taking over and having mixed babies.  We don’t hate, we pro-create!)

It’s because we keep it real, and keep it moving.  Shit gets bad, but we were dealt a crap hand.  Crying about stuff that went down 400 years ago solves nothing, neither does getting knocked up (just keep it moving, do what you gotta do, and do you).  We are the strongest race on the freaking planet.  And every single person genetically came from Africa.  So all you haters, keep on hating, because I’m gonna do me!

Miss Black America over here in Sweden doing my thang, you know?!  So whenever I need a pick me up, I’m gonna turn to rap because seriously, we spin the illest rhymes.  :)

Hysterical.   Go here:

http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com

Gangnam Style!

I have no idea what Gangnam Style means, but this music video and song always puts in a good mood!  I love dancing to it!   It’s so catchy!

Celebrate Good Times, Come on!

This will not, I repeat, NOT become a Hyper Island blog.  I refuse to let this cult — I mean school — take over every aspect of my life.  But, suffice it say, our group presentation came together very nicely, and I feel we all worked well together, I think it was the best one we saw, but then again, I am biased.  Other people liked it.  And I got some nice feedback (apparently everyone but me thinks I’m a great writer, but isn’t that usually how it goes?).

Feedback is one of the cult’s rituals: we do this after EVERYTHING.  Basically, we use post-its to write about every single person in the group.  On the sticky, we write “What I appreciate most about you is…” and “What I would like to see more from you is…”  and then we give these post-its to the person after describing and listing what we thought while working with them in the group.  OMFG, it does sound like a cult, roflmao.  The person receiving the feedback has to take the post-its and say thank you.  It’s pretty intense, and scary to some.  Personally, I welcome feedback.  I used to keep the post-its because I want to remember how other people see me.  But maybe I’ll document some choice ones here.  So, the general consensus was I’m a phenomenal writer, but I need to be less sensitive.  I also need to share more of myself, and let others see my vulnerability.  WTF?  I blog about it for the whole world to see.  I think that’s pretty damn open and honest.  And the one I loved the best:  I am a bomb (not da bomb, or a bombshell, though I’d like to think I’m both) — and this forward motion and explosion makes magic happen.  I liked that one.

So very glad this was over, I will be posting the link to the entire IAD13 class’ collaborative research presentation (different from our individual projects) here soon.  I think the site goes live on Monday.

Moving on.  Three songs have been stuck in my head lately for different reasons.  I’ll post this one first, alone with the lyrics (in French) and then in English

Carla Bruni “La Derniere Minute” The Last Minute. I love the fact that’s about life/death, and it’s literally 1 minute and 30 seconds long. You can hear the ticking of the metronome. Very evocative.

French lyrics:

Quand j’aurai tout compris, tout vécu d’ici-bas,
Quand je serai si vieille, que je ne voudrai plus de moi,
Quand la peau de ma vie sera creusée de routes,
Et de traces et de peines, et de rires et de doutes,
Alors je demanderai juste encore une minute…

Quand il n’y aura plus rien qui chavire et qui blesse,
Et quand même les chagrins auront l’air d’une caresse,
Quand je verrai ma mort juste au pied de mon lit,
Que je la verrai sourire de ma si petite vie,
Je lui dirai “écoute ! Laisse-moi juste une minute…”

Juste encore une minute, juste encore une minute,
Pour me faire une beauté ou pour une cigarette,
Juste encore une minute, juste encore une minute,
Pour un dernier frisson, ou pour un dernier geste,
Juste encore une minute, juste encore une minute,
Pour ranger les souvenirs avant le grand hiver,
Juste encore une minute… sans motif et sans but.

Puisque ma vie n’est rien, alors je la veux toute.
Tout entière, tout à fait et dans toutes ses déroutes,
Puisque ma vie n’est rien, alors j’en redemande,
Je veux qu’on m’en rajoute,
Soixante petites secondes pour ma dernière minute.

English translation: (Forgive me, my French is a bit rusty!)

When I have understood everything, having lived down here,
When I am so old that I will not want myself anymore,
When the skin of my life will be dug roads
Of traces and sorrows, and laughter and doubts
Then I will ask for just one more minute …

When nothing will be able to make me keel over or wound me
And even grief will seem like a caress,
When I see my death at the foot of my bed,
I see Death smile at my little life
I’ll say, “Listen! Let me have just a minute …”

Just one more minute, just one more minute,
To make myself beautiful, or for a cigarette
Just one more minute, just one more minute,
For a final thrill, or a last gesture,
Just one more minute, just one more minute,
To go through and store my memories before the Big Winter
Just one more minute … without reason or purpose.

Since my life means nothing, then I want it all.
Whole, completely and in all its defeats,
Since my life means nothing, then I want more of it
I want to add
Sixty little seconds for my last minute.