A Note from Mama

That I would like to pass on to every living individual capable of understanding these words in any way:



My Girl:
Love yourself unconditionally.
Talk to your Self using words you desire to hear from another's lips.
Treat your Self the way you desire others to treat you.
Love your Self the way you yearn to be loved.
Honor your whole Self as you wish to be honored.
Sound Difficult? Just remember who you are, that you deserve it ALL - and the most powerful resource you have is within.
WALK TALL my Girl... and other's who do the same will come your way.

The Bug In the Mirror!

Attention World:

The part of me that was open to disrespect and mistreatment is now closed forever.

Every day I see myself a little more for who I am capable of being. I Am My Best Self. And with each new experience, my best self keeps getting better.. and always will!

I am not someone who needs to take disrespect and dishonor from anyone. I can say no. I do stand my ground. And I reject anything less than what I deserve.

Hello world! My eyes may still be slightly swollen from the tears of last night, but I am seeing my reflection so much clearer.

When you are disrespected and then left in the dust, you have a choice. You can be abandoned, broken, victimized and alone. Or you can recognize that newfound strength it took to reject mistreatment, and seize the opportunity to walk on your own two feet.

Thank Life for seemingly devastating experiences. How would I make these leaps in my self-awareness without them? How else would I know my own strength?

What she said.

Listen. I say so.

http://www.therushes.net/tonyrush/secret.html

I am NEVER changing my last name. (again...)

My ethics teacher: very well educated, intelligent, opinionated professor. Articulates himself well and will show you exactly where you are going wrong when you get confused. Other than getting his lectures across and understood, very disinterested in his students individually. I absolutely respect but am absolutely intimidated by this man.

When I went into class today he pulled out the big stack that was our mid-term papers. I was immediately full of that combination of excitement and anxiety that I get whenever I'm about to see me work judged by someone I respect and who knows the subject well. First thing he says:

"Strange statistical fact, almost all of those whose last names start with an 'h' did really well."

So I'm excited but thinking I could be the one person that made that "almost all" instead of all... He starts handing them back and I see other people have notes and scribbles all over every page. Pencil marks and notations, lines through their words, etc. Anxiety building.

He calls my name and hands me my paper looking almost identical to when I turned it in, save for a check in the margin here and there (that he presumably made as he progressed through the paper). Then, at the very end "Well written and argued; good structure. A"

I literally almost cried... but then I remembered I was in the middle of class and that people don't get emotional in class over silly mid-terms.. usually.

That feeling of having my work regarded as not only worth-while, but well-done by someone whom I respect and admire...

I wish I could just trap that feeling in a bottle somehow to have and to hold forever. Something from which I can take a good deep breath when I'm feeling overwhelmed and unsure of myself. This head-swelling feeling is one of my favorite experiences. Period.

A quick quote before class:

Or 2:

"Most people... take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course in philosophy."

and

"We must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us."

-Aristotle.... as translated by... someone........

Why am I such a (married) nut?

'Cause I can be! That's why!

But really, I was thinking today... Why did I feel the need to not only privately/psychologically solidify my commitment to my "morally virtuous hexis," my "education," to myself, but why the need to write it out, describe it as a marriage, and announce it to the world?

Because I am a fluid, ever-changing being who, if nothing else, wants to maintain my adventurous, motivated, passionate attitude toward my life.

I tend to struggle with people, with relationships, with loneliness, with commitment. My insecurity in these areas all too often detracts drastically from my education and my overall emotional state. Potential romantic relationships (or not even potential sometimes, but mere daydreams of them) can be particularly crippling. Then, when I am actually faced with them in my reality, I am only comfortable with the commitment for a short period of time, and almost always only if I make it known that it will probably not last in the long run. Why?

I just noticed that I have done this with the last.. oh.. why count? Every person I have dated, pretty much, since my divorce in '06. "Great, I love being with you... just know I'm moving 800 miles away in a few months.... just know I'm moving god knows where and won't take you with me when I finish my bachelor's.... just know I don't think it will work out in the long run..."

Why do I do this? Well I could go in a million different directions (psycho-)analysing myself there, but I think I'll start with my hexis, since it is the one and only strong, positive heart pumping extraordinary life into my being. I have seen more friends and meet new people all the time with incredible foundational hexis potential who absolutely sabotage themselves into despair, forcing their arteries shut. My hexis has been threatened in such a way before by my own naive choices. Luckily, I made it out alive. But I will not go back. I will not do that to myself again.

But a life and/or choices based in fear will only guide you downward. Fear of putting my hexis in compromising positions only confines me within a narrow safety zone, preventing the very adventure that I seek. So what is the solution?

Correct myself in thinking that my hexis is something so fragile. It is only fragile if I allow it to grow weak. So I take that deep fear of being committed to another person, to both having and not having important people in my life, to stability and unchange, and find my foundation. I need other people in my life, but I can not stand and look them in the eye until I can stand on my own two feet. By psychologically, publicly, symbolically, and officially binding myself to it for life, I commit myself to live a life inseparable from my hexis, from that power and potential within myself. No matter what I come across, this will still be within me. No one can take that away.

So where does this get me in the realm of human relationships? Well I can't tell you for sure yet, and probably won't be able to give you an absolute answer until I am on my deathbed. But I will say that by committing myself in such a way, I am necessarily rejecting my fear of what may be and what isn't between myself and other people. This attitude is not conducive to and could never be a product of my healthy hexis.

Yeah, ok, so I reject my fear! Ain't I tough? I know it's not that easy. Loneliness and human interaction can be a complex, confusing, liberating, devastating, revolutionary thing. And I plan to thrive to tell about it!

I am displaying all this publicly because

1. Making it public, seeing it in words outside of my head, creating it as an actual empirical experience, makes it all the more real to me. Kind of a psychological trick on myself. Like that wedding video that (successful, healthy) couples watch on their anniversary that allows them to reflect on where they started, why they said "I do," and just how far they've come.
2.Also, fully realizing how nutty I sound saying that I am married some Greek term that no one knows the meaning of, I have done this to put out there that this is not only possible, but a necessary step to wiggle your way into the life of your dreams. Recognize your deep, possibly very repressed, seemingly childish curiosity. Let it grow into strength and ambition. allow it to devour your entire disposition/mentality. Commit yourself to it, to a life of continuous curiosity, adventure, introspection, and growth. To a life, as the great DeeGoddess would say, of eating frogs. Regardless of where you stand in your life, this is achievable. The day you realize your inner virtuous hexis and begin to nurture it, thereby nurturing your best self, this is the first day of the rest of your life!

Announcement: I am married!

Declaration of Marriage:

I have decided to announce that I am married!



Avec qui ? Pas qui, mais quoi !

This is a relationship that has been growing for several years. Technically you could say all my life.

Who’s heard of that good-ol’ Greek term hexis? Good luck trying to translate it. People have been arguing about it for as long as Aristotle’s work has been translated into different languages. What I take it to mean is an over-all stable disposition of living actively. To Aristotle, moral virtue is a hexis; one where the individual lives by active deliberation, lives conscious of the world and life around him/her as well as participating in introspection (as opposed to being oblivious, unconcerned, and/or ignorant of the majority of what is within and/or without the self). All these things result in the betterment of the individual. Knowledge and wisdom are acquired, virtues are strengthened, efficacy as an individual is improved both in the context of society and within the context of one’s personal abilities and goals.

I am married to my morally virtuous hexis.


For those of you who are unable to grasp what I mean by hexis:

I am married to my education.

Not just formal, socially structured education, as in going to school (that too though) but the over-all education (meaning gaining of knowledge, growth as a fluid ever-changing, ever-evolving individual).

As in every marriage, my relationship with this hexis, and my work to build a life with it, is and will always be my number one priority. This hexis will always come before all else. I will love, honor, cherish and protect this hexis, as I know it will love, honor, cherish, and protect me in return.

Due to the nature of this relationship, it must necessarily be polyamorous… not in the sense that I’ll be fucking hexis and other people, that’s just silly. But that other relationships of all shapes and sizes, the “with who” relationships, will be absolutely necessary. This is for two reasons: 1) Because not only is my hexis strengthened with the experiences of knowing other people with (and perhaps without) their own unique hexis, but that I hope to be able to experience this marriage with another individual, sharing the wonders of such a life with each other. And 2) because although this marriage will have an incredible impact on my life, it only gains significance if it is able to touch, in any way, more and more lives outside my own.

During my relationship so far with this hexis, I have already experienced how others can support, encourage, and benefit my adoration and devotion. I have also already, especially recently, experienced how my adoration and devotion has touched the lives of others: those that have come into my life long enough for them to at least be inspired, if not enabled to recognize their own “morally virtuous hexis,” and are motivated to find out just what happens when their potential, their passion, and their energy are put to good use together.

I have also discovered that there are people and situations that try and try and try to destroy my deep commitment. I don’t usually recognize the person or context as such right away. When I do, sometimes it’s as easy as recognizing it and changing my perspective, or turning on my ipod and not listening; sometimes it’s as difficult as breaking with someone whom you thought to be your best friend for years and whom you have loved whole-heartedly.

Long story short, as in any marriage, I must be selective in how I allow the world and the people therein to affect me and my relationship. Anyone who doesn’t understand and detracts from my commitment will be expelled from my life, as much as I can possibly judge them so. Anyone who at least tries to understand my undying love is welcome to join me in this adventure called life to see what we can find and figure out, learn and contribute together.

As many of you know, I recently got a new tattoo. This symbol is a mark of my commitment, devotion, and ability to remain everything I’ve just described.

Due to completely thorough socialization, I may even feel compelled to wear a ring on my left ring finger.

In the words of Dido:

“I will go down with this ship

And I won't put my hands up and surrender

There will be no white flag above my door

I'm in love and always will be”

One must remain commited to be truly free! ...What?

Juuuuust a quick note during my break from homework:

First, a quote:
"It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow." -Ralph Ellison

That commitment MUST be made to and for yourself, because it must be you that makes the effort and it is in you that the results are manifest.

An example of the former can be made of quitting smoking. It takes a deep commitment to yourself to succeed in quitting. This commitment must be to yourself because it involves nothing outside of you to have the willpower to quit and it is your habit and no one else's that you are changing. When a commitment of the sort is made to someone outside of you, you are not likely to succeed. If you do succeed, the results aren't likely to stick.

The latter, that thing they call personal growth, is a smidge more complicated. As I see it, personal growth involves expanding our not only knowledge, but understanding of no one else but our very own selves. My personal growth involves me working to gain knowledge and a better understanding of no one else but me, which allows me to tighten a few screws, make some alterations where necessary, and continue to evolve as an individual. This journey takes tremendous commitment to yourself.

To be committed to yourself in any way requires knowing at least in what direction you want to move forward in (which usually involves having a fairly well defined idea of a desired end), believing that you are capable and deserving of becoming "better" (however you've chosen to define "better"), want it bad enough to be willing to undertake all the challenges necessary to accomplish your goal, and practicing unfaltering honesty with yourself in all of the above.

The commitment for growth is more of a mentality and way of life that one (but not all) develops. That is NOT to say that it is not something, like all commitments, that has to be renewed, reevaluated, reestablished, etc over and over and over again.

Over the years I have developed a standard for respect of other people that includes some level/variation of this mentality. Until now, I haven't been able to fully articulate this, but I am just beginning to see a pattern in my recent years of behavior that signifies the development of this standard. I have repeatedly gotten into relationships, friendly and romantic, which I try and try and try to make work only to reject the individual because, though I couldn't put my finger on it, I just wasn't satisfied somehow. Because I have not been conscious of my tendency to judge whether or not other people have this mentality, I dive in only to eventually find that I cannot develop some form of respect for them.

Well kids the blond finally gets it. Now the question that remains is this: Does this crystallization of my already existent intuition offer a short-cut to the path of being able to surround myself with only those that can positively influence and support me and that can be positively influenced and supported by me? Or does this newly recognized standard of mine exclude people that should/would be important to my life?

If the first option is the case, I am faced with the challenge of cleansing my life of those that lack/reject the aforementioned mentality, which is not an easy task. There's a fine line here between being a judgemental bitch and a wisely selective individual looking out for her own wellbeing. Also, as experience has already informed me, cleansing your life of those whom you have loved, but whom you no longer can respect is a painful process.

If the second option is the case, then clearly I need to reevaluate my standards and how I see people.

So where do I go from here?

Queer Response Paper NUMBA 5, and actually the final one for this class

Judith Butler offers her readers one of the most clear and mind-boggling works of words that I have ever read. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” articulates the paradoxes encompassed not only in the conceptual and/or normative meanings of words like heterosexual, homosexual, gay, lesbian, but in how we take on these words by using them to identify our “I.” To someone unfamiliar with the topic, that probably sounds like absolute gibberish. What I mean is the concept of heterosexual, especially as a normative standard, is dependent on the concept of homosexual as either a deviance or a copy-cat version of heterosexuality for comparison and contrast in order to stabilize the definitive standards it’s attempting to maintain. And vice versa: homosexuality is dependent on heterosexuality to define what it’s not. At one part of her argument, Butler says “if it were not for the notion of the homosexual as copy, there would be no construct of heterosexuality as origin” (313). It’s a chicken or the egg paradox.

Also, when applied to an identity, both labels restrict thoughts, feelings, desires, and acts to what fits within the boundaries of that label. This effect is even more dramatic the more “specific” (or “loaded” or “confusing” or “opaque”) the label (male/female, lesbian, gay, butch, femme, straight, macho, etc.).

I love her analysis of “coming out of the closet” (308-311). When one is coming out, te [(s)he] is revealing ter [his/her] “true” identity to the world, affirming what te claims te already was, but haven’t been enacting in some way. Now te is free to enact their true identity? Now te is not only “free” to, but expected to embody characteristics of gayness (or whatever identity was claimed). But what does that entail. As Butler puts it, describing her coming out of the closet, “before, you did not know whether I ‘am’, but now you do not know what that means.” She goes on to say that “maybe that is a situation to be valued,” but is it really liberating? Also, once we’re out of the closet, what have we come out into? I have never encountered a closet that wasn’t confined within some other structure. Not that structure is bad, but perhaps the idea of “coming out” a liberatory experience, defying normative social ideas to be who you really are should be reevaluated.

Maybe transsexuals are more aware of the nature of what they’re doing that most of the GLBT community: Transitioning from embodying one socially structured identity to another, with some level of awareness that by saying yes to femaleness and femininity, it is to some extent necessary to say no to maleness and masculinity, whereby recognizing and reinforcing the existence and meaning of both entirely socially constructed identities and how they are dependent on each other to define what they are not. “[G]ender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original,” (313) it is an imitation of norms that are constructed through social, in our culture heterosexist discourse.

Which reminds me of our next reading by Lynda Johnston (I had to read that a couple times to distinguish it from Lindon Johnson… which I thought was kinda funny) entitled “Bodies: Camped Up Performances.” She uses her observances of all men or all women pride parades as examples of how we embody gender in different variations and on different levels. I’m apparently rather uninformed on the subject and had to look up “camp,” I figured she wasn’t talking about sleeping in a sleeping bag. I had no idea there were so many definitions for this word! Here’s what I think she meant:

Camp /kamp/ adjective & noun[1]
A adjective. Ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate, homosexual.
B noun. Camp behaviour, mannerisms, etc.

In other words, embodying some exaggerated version of, usually, normative femininity, generally with a male body. But she uses the term in examples of exaggerated normative femininity or masculinity embodied in a female or male body, or any combination thereof, as a why to not only make a statement about the necessarily theatrical nature of the manifestation of gender, and poking fun at it.

As for my www.sex-lexis.com/a selection, I chose “39”, because I just happen to like that number. Its meaning in this dictionary of sexual terms is: “Code for anilingus, based on the ideographic image of a face buried between buttocks, the figure 3 being the buttocks, 9 the face.” Of the 4 discursive trends in sexuality that we have discussed, I think it being an actual sex act makes it fit under “libidinal economies” as well as “discursive desires.” I have to say, this was a new one on me! (Not the act itself, but 39 being used to signify it)

[1] From my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition. :)

Un Terme Important.. Euh.. in bugEnglish

Life noun.
The condition, quality, or fact of being a living organism; the condition that characterizes animals and plants (when alive) and distinguishes them from inanimate matter, being marked by a capacity for growth and development and by continued functional activity; the activities and phenomena by which this is manifested.

+

Passion noun.
A strong enthusiasm for a (specified) thing; and aim or object pursued with strong enthusiasm. Also, a strong barely controllable emotion [repeatedly referred to as even painful].
[these definitions come from my beloved Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition]

=

Life Passion noun.
A strong enthusiasm for the condition, quality, or fact of being a living organism, and all that that entails. Not merely the inclination to follow through with routine each day, but an ongoing awareness, curiosity and revelling of the beauty and/or potential in each aspect of each day. This is manifest in a theoretical burning ember in one's essence. Varying from a dim light to a blazing flame, this ember is vanquished only when one's life has ended. Does not seem to be present in every "living" human being.

Just a quick note...

About how wonderfully full of wonderful li'l notes this week has been. This is kinda sorta maybe a bit of a copykat blog to msGoddess' recent "Magically Funkalicious" blog.. but I happen to have had several magnificent emails and notes from people this week too.

I have had the privilege of meeting some incredible people in my life. I'm still learning which ones are really incredible... but when I receive updates from people that I don't get to talk to very often that both inform me of their growth, progress, and life passion, and also how high they regard me for mine, and are inspired by me to continue to fight for their Everything. iGoddess stated it so well in the blog mentioned above: "phenomenal compliment(s)...and that i know it's true only makes the compliment that much more powerful."

And that I have people like this in my life, even if I don't get to talk to them on a frequent basis, inspires and motivates me to continue to live my life of trying almost anything, accomplishing everything I possibly can, and being everything I'm capable of being.

*sigh*

Time for fabulous dreams :)