Christmas Haiku

On Christmas morning,

I still get excited, Ah!

A Buddhist failing.

May everyone have a safe and happy holiday.

Google Reader

The tag cloud from my Google Reader pretty neatly sums up my life. 

Big Brother is Watching My Uterus - Part 3

The start of month 3.

Let's play a game. It's called "Symptom or Side-Effect".

First some easy ones...

Dry Skin? Side-effect

Chapped Lips? Side-effect

Runny nose? Probably allergies, so Symptom.

Now the hard ones...

Joint pain

Muscle pain

Stomach Issues

Headaches

I've been on this medication for a full two months now.  It's nothing nearly as bad as I expected, but there are so many things I didn't expect when I went on it.  You can never imagine just how dry your skin can get, or how chapped your lips could possibly be, until one day you realize that a significant portion of your brain is distracted by how much your arms itch and a significant portion of your time is spent licking your lips in a painfully counterproductive attempt at keeping them from bleeding.  

What I really didn't expect though, was how much I'd worry that every little ache or pain or twinge or bad mood was a side-effect of the medication.  The list of side-effects on the information sheet from the pharmacy fills the better part of an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet... at 7 point type.  The information sheet included with each 10-pack of pills, 2.5 x 3.5 when folded, unfolds to a daunting 34 x 19 - double-sided- 5 point monstrosity (not all of which is side-effects, much of it is the chemical information for the prescription, precautions, information about the ipledge program and birth defect information- arguably a side-effect, but not for my purposes).

The short list of side effects includes psychiatric disorders, intracranial hypertension, pancreatitis, elevated lipids, hearing impairment, hepatitis (elevated liver enzymes, not the kind caused by a virus), IBD, and vision impairment (including decreased night vision). Considering all the potential side-effects, it's no wonder that any time my head hurts, or my stomach is upset I wonder if it's the medication.

To some extent I've experienced a lot of things that could be side-effects of the medication, but I can't be sure. Of course the dry skin (which has now developed into eczema) and chapped lips are a given. 

But what about the muscle pain? Or the headache? 

Too much drinking? Which, of course, you're not supposed to do at all because of the increased incidence of pancreatitis.

What about the stomach issues?

Too much junk food? Not enough exercise? Not enough sleep?

Or the decreased night vision?

Am I tired? Are my eyes just dry? Did I leave my contacts in too long?

I've been lucky that my bloodwork has stayed completely normal.  My triglycerides were 72 last week and my bilirubin is exactly the same as when I started on Accutane. I guess all that drinking hasn't compounded the potential side-effects of the medication.  It still leaves me to wonder (and worry) though, that everything I feel is a potentially dangerous side-effect.  And even scarier, potentially something that will cause me to have to stop treatment.  (The fact that I think being forced to stop treatment is scarier than potentially life-threatening side-effects is even scarier still).

Right now though, it's time for me to go bathe in baby oil in the hopes that the itching will stop. 

Then to pick up round three at the drug store.

Round Three!

Fight!

Big Brother is Watch My Uterus - Part 2

5 weeks in.

Big Brother might try to control my uterus, but he's impotent.

Which is probably good, cause I'm trying not to get pregnant.

I spent a month on birth control. As usual I ended up gaining weight, having mood swings, and generally not feeling good. I did manage to keep from getting preggers, though. But after a month I'd had enough. I managed to make it 9 years without popping out spawn, I think I can make it another 6 months doing what I've always done. So back off birth control and on Accutane.

(It's actually Claravis, made by Barr, not Roche, who manufactures the original Accutane.)

I can't complain too much about the actual medication. Generally I've felt fine, some muscle pain in the beginning, the obligatory dry skin and cracking lips, but in general, nothing major. The depression that scared me the most before going on this medication has been nowhere to be found. In fact I'm the happiest I've been in a long time. It seems I got all worked up about the side-effects for nothing.

That's not to say the side effects are negligible. I cannot begin to describe how dry my lips are. It's always fun to go to work in the morning looking like someone punched you in the lip- swelling, bleeding and all. There is not enough Chapstick or Vaseline in the world to keep my lips hydrated. They're dry from the inside out.

Like my lips, my skin is dry, close to unbearably so at times. I expect it'll only get worse as the weather gets colder and dryer. The doctor prescribed some weird Swedish foam moisturizer for my face and a steroid cream for my lips. 150 dollars later neither seems to be doing much. Maybe I'm just not noticing it.

So far the Accutane seems to be doing it's job- which in the beginning is making my skin worse. I keep telling myself that in 5 months I'll never have to worry about acne again. There's spots of light at the end of the tunnel though. I can see it getting better, just not in the spots that have gotten tremendously worse.

The most interesting thing that the Accutane has done is changed my relationship to my own self-image. Right now my skin is too bad to hide behind make-up, it has a mind of it's own- one day it's fine the next it's a war zone. I can't cover it up-make- it tends to hurt and certainly doesn't help my skin.

I can't pretend it's not there. I can't put my life on hold for months until my skin clears up. So what that all means is that I can't worry about it. I can't control it, or rather I'm in the process of controlling it. But I'm ok with it. My skin is my skin, and I'm comfortable in it.

Who knew it would take my skin getting worse for me to stop caring what people thought of it?

Big Brother is Watching My Uterus - Part 1

I don't believe in conspiracy theories.

This isn't so much a conspiracy theory as an observation- Big Brother is Watching My Uterus.

I know that makes me sound a little like a crackpot who's about to start going off about the Lone Gunman and Area 51, but bear with me for a moment.

I've always had bad skin.  There's really no two ways about it.  I have acne.  It sucks.  After about 10 years, and just about every product on the market, I am at the end of my rope.   I've done Proactive, and Neutrogena, every over the counter product shilled by every celebrity out there.  I've tried every prescription pill antibiotic, cream, and ointment.  They have succeeded in doing little more than make me photosensitive, ruin my clothing, and deplete my bank account.

I always hoped I would just 'grow out of it'.  That has yet to happen.

So now I'm at my last resort.  It's something I resisted when I was younger.  I tend to shy away from medication in general.  I would rather try to solve health issues with diet and exercise, instead of resorting to the Big Pharma Drug Pushers.  But I'm at the end of my rope.

It's not really about my appearance so much as it is about my comfort.  Sure I'd be much happier with the way I look if my skin were clearer, but in the end- and anyone who has ever had severe acne will know- acne hurts.  It's painful.  Even when I'm not looking in a mirror, I know it's there.  And that's the reason I've finally given in.

I decided to go on Accutane.

This was about three months ago.  In my naivety I assumed it would be like going on any other medication.  Go to the MD; Get a prescription; Fill it; End of story.  I knew it had some pretty dramatic side effects- extreme photosensitivity and depression being the two primary ones, not to mention the dry skin- but I didn't think it was that big of a deal.

I don't remember the last time I was that far off base.

The book of required reading for 'Female Patients Who Can Become Pregnant'  is about 50 pages long.  The vast majority of it is dedicated to educating girls who failed their sex ed classes that sexually active does not mean that if you lay perfectly still you will not become pregnant.  The rest of it is about the horrible birth defects your child will have if you get pregnant while on Accutane.  I understand that 'knowledge is power', 'knowing is half the battle' and 'the more you know...', but this is overkill.

The other portion of this guide is dedicated to laying out the rules under which this medication will be prescribed to 'Female Patients Who Can Become Pregnant'.  This is where we come to the title of my post.

Big Brother is Watching My Uterus (and Big Pharma's Back).

For a doctor to prescribe Accutane (or it's generic partners) a 'Female Patients Who Can Become Pregnant' must be on not one, but two forms of birth control, a primary form and either a second primary form or a secondary form of birth control.  Acceptable 'primary' forms of birth control are-

• a hysterectomy
• partner's vasectomy
• iud
• or hormonal birth control- the pill, patch, NuvaRing, Depo, etc.
  

Secondary forms of birth control are the barrier methods- condoms, diaphragms, sponges, etc. Whatever method of birth control a woman chooses, she must discuss it with her gyn who then has to fill out forms- signed, sealed, delivered- the attest to the fact that this patient has not only received 'contraception counseling' but that the gyn believes the patient will consistently use at least two forms of birth control at all times.

First of all, we're going to ignore the fact that they're listing a hysterectomy as a form of birth control for 'Female Patients Who Can Become Pregnant'.  We are not going to ignore the fact that they are listing both an iud and a partner's vasectomy as practical options for birth control for women and girls looking to cure acne.  I don't know about you, but I don't know too many 15 year old girls with iud's (many gyn's won't even consider inserting an iud for a woman who has not had a child).  I also don't know too many 17 year old boys who have decided, 'you know what, I don't ever want children, I think I'll have a vasectomy'.

So at this point we've narrowed our primary forms of birth control (for your average 13-25 year old) down to just one, the hormonals.  Hormonal birth control was revolutionary.  It allows women the opportunity to take much greater control over their own sex lives and the decision to have or not have children.  Awesome.  The Pill Rocks... except when it doesn't.

For some people birth control is the magic pill- lighter periods, less cramping, clear skin and oh, yeah, no babies. For some people birth control is a living hell- nausea, weight gain, mood swings, cramping, not to mention the risk of a stroke.  I have been on birth control several times over the course of my sex life, with varying degrees of success.  The first time I tolerated the nausea and weight gain (nearly 20 lbs) for well over a year.  The second time, on top of the nausea and weight gain I had such violent mood swings that I started to believe I was bipolar.  

My doctor changed my prescription and while the mood swings that had made me a terror to live with subsided, I was still unable to lose any weight or control my near constant nausea.  When routine thyroid function tests started coming back abnormal I finally said enough is enough.  I went off birth control and promptly lost 15 lbs.  My thyroid function went back to normal. I swore I would never go back on birth control again. The only thing to recommend birth control? I had clear skin.

Now, 4 years later, at 24 years old, I am left with a difficult choice, give up the right to decide what I put in my own body, or stick with my decision and be denied medication, that, while not necessary, is my sole remaining option.  Thinking I could deal with anything for 6 months, I gave up my uterus to government control.  I agreed- feeling quite as though I had no other choice- to go back on birth control.

I know this appears a failing on my part.  A weakness of will.  In part, it is.  I don't have the time, energy, or money to fight the FDA.  I certainly don't have the time, energy, or money to fight Big Pharma.  They have all the power at this point and I have nothing to bargain with.  It is of no consequence to them whether or not I take this medication.  Had I decided not to, someone else will be happy to shell out 300-600 dollars a month to a pharmaceutical company that has seized control of her reproductive rights.

Moving Day

Deflated air mattress

Sitting, thinking 'man, this sucks'

The sex was really good.

I see you Mara.

On paper, it seemed like a pretty terrible idea.  Me in a 105 degree, 55% humidity room, doing yoga for an hour and a half.

After the fact it's still not the brightest of ideas, but that won't stop me from doing it again.

One of my co-workers talked me into it, but it didn't take much convincing; after 8 years (on and off) of yoga, I'm usually pretty open to trying something new.  I'd wanted to try Bikram for a while, even if it is a distinct departure from my normal vinyasa/ashtanga/power bend.  Ignoring the controversy over Bikram and his copyright issues, I figured it was something worth trying.  

Heat plus exercise always equals a workout, and I'm always looking for a good workout.  By the middle of the class I felt like I had already gotten exactly what I bargained for.  Barring the intense nausea (which I expected) and the lightheadedness (which I also expected) I felt pretty good.  I don't remember the last time I sweated like that.  It felt good, it beads up and rolls down your shoulder-blades, or down your temples.  

I had moments where it got to be a bit too much though.  The moments where, had I been outside (say at track or softball practice), I would have just given in to the dizziness and nausea.  But since I was in a yoga studio as a new student, I figured it best to pace myself and wait for the tumbling sensation to go away.  The temperature was about 106 in the studio today, but the humidity much higher than the usual 55%.  It's been raining for days and so that contributed to the heat, 

What surprised me most was that I didn't really notice a distinct increase in flexibility.  I think part of that probably owes a lot to the fact that I am more out of shape than I realize.  I didn't notice a change, but I suspect my baseline is not where I expect it should be at the moment.  

City Beautiful

I am beginning to really appreciate time spent on the train.  I've been spending a lot of time in the city as of late and so a lot of time on the train as well.  Its an hour of time with 'nothing else to do, nowhere else to go'.  I could catch up on any one of the books I'm reading, or listen to my ipod- both of which I do occasionally- but the past few times, I've spent a large part of the trip just staring out the window, trying to let my thoughts come and go as they please.

For the most part it's been pleasant thoughts- excitement, contentment, and a general sense of well-being. I've been generally happy for a few months now, and so I'm perfectly happy to stare out the window as my thoughts come and go like waves rolling onto the shore.

The Legend of Billie Jean

A week ago I cut off nearly 2 feet of hair.  

I've been doing a lot of reevaluating my life lately, a benefit of having a roof over my head, a steady income, and the luxury of making changes in my life and more importantly, in myself.

There are a lot of changes to be made.

I want to love more, without reservation; without worrying that I might get hurt.  I want to have more compassion.  I want to live more- to adventure, to explore.  I want to experience new things and new people.  I want to be more patient.

I want to fear less, to worry less. I want to be less judgmental.  I want to give up on mistrust of others and doubt of myself.  I want to let go of my hang-ups and be more honest with my friends and lovers.

I want to live my life without the need for guilt or regret.  

This is what I want to change.

The best Defense is a good Offense

#480

1001 Things I want in a Lover

9 May 09

#480

Someone who is a part time lover and a full time friend.

Complaint Department

I complain too much.  I don't usually notice it.  I kind of gloss over it in my daily life as just something I do.  I bitch about the weather, or the people on the other end of the phone.  I bitch about the horrible drivers or my graphic design class. I just bitch in general.  

I don't think I bitch any more than the average person, and I don't put much weight in my complaints.   I complain as a matter of course- everyone does it.  It's how we relate to our coworkers- we often don't share the same successes, but can all commiserate about our frustrations;how we related to our families- oh no, crazy uncle Bill is at it again;  how we relate to our friends- my parents are on my back again about when I'm going to visit/get married/have kids/become straight.  

We as a society deal with our pain by bitching about it.  

But the bitching, even for that fleeting moment makes us focus on the pain, and rather than dealing with it- acknowledging it's existence, accepting it as a part of life- all of a sudden we create suffering around it.  It's aversion instead of compassion.  Like Noah said at Lila 'staying pissed off out whole lives doesn't work'.  

So I'm trying now to stop feeding into that compulsion to complain.  I'm trying to give up that idle bitching, that unhealthy fixation with things I usually can't control.  

Today was Day 1 of that journey.

It's not going well.

But I don't expect it to.

It's incredible once you're aware of it how much we do idly complain.  Being aware of it is the first step in my journey, and I appreciate (if sometimes less than others) the people who have made me aware of it.  I don't think that in the end I'll be any less of a pessimist.  I don't think not complaining will change my view of things, but maybe after a while more of the annoying stuff will roll off my back, and maybe it won't distract from the good stuff.

Spring

sitting quietly, doing nothing

spring comes

and the grass grows by itself.

-zen proverb

 Main Entry: 

mis·an·thrope 

Pronunciation:

\ˈmi-sən-ˌthrōp\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Greek misanthrōpos hating humankind, from misein to hate + anthrōpos human being

Date:

1683

: a person who hates or distrusts humankind

I've been feeling like this quite a bit lately.  It's not directed towards anyone in particular.  In fact I feel like I've been connecting with my friends and coworkers more than before.  It's just this general feeling of not 'getting' people as a whole.

I don't get the person tailgating me on the parkway in the morning.  I don't get the impatient person in the supermarket or the person being rude to the cashier.  I certainly don't get the people in the newspaper- rape, burglary, assault, gay marriage bans, ponzi schemes, million dollar bonuses to CEO's of failing companies, mass murder,  and the obsession with Michelle Obama's wardrobe.  I don't get the nurses I talk to every day who make it clear they don't really want to be there, or the doctors who can't be bothered to acknowledge that they received results on a patient whose INR is elevated and they're going to bleed out.

I guess it's been a good exercise in equanimity.  I have to learn to let go when people do things I just don't understand.  It's not like I can stop them and get them to explain to me just why they did what the did or acted the way they acted.  I can't expect anyone else's behavior to conform to my standards of what it logical or make sense.  And more than that, I can't spend time worrying about it.  That confusion, and need to understand the method to someone else' madness has the same effect as anger- the ember you hold on to, getting burned in the process.  

This Body, This Breath

I've been practicing yoga on and off for over 7 years.  After softball and fencing, I've stuck with yoga longer than anything else in my life.  Like anything else I've had ups and downs, periods of time where I wasn't practicing, or when I was but something just wasn't right.

About 3 months ago I noticed a change.  It's not that I was all of a sudden stronger or more flexible (in fact as of late it's been quite the opposite).  But all of a sudden the pieces have come together.  

I'm finally, after all this time, feeling connected to my breath.  

It's finally clicked.  I've finally gotten to the point where I don't think about it (so much) anymore.  I can finally exhale and just let my muscles relax around my bones in down-dog.  I can finally feel the inhale pull me into up-dog.  I finally feel the rise and fall of my breath carry me through sun salutation.  I think it's finally given me a piece of the peace that yoga promises.

I'm not sure how this will change my relationship to yoga in the future.  I've wanted to teach for a while now, but I wanted to teach yoga without it having the hippie, new-agey, crystals and candles feel.  Yoga has always made me feel powerful and I want other people to experience that same strength.  I've never thought of yoga as anything more than an opportunity for a focused, dedicated workout.  To me, my meditation practice complimented my yoga practice, but they weren't different means to the same end.  I turned to yoga for balance, strength, flexibility, poise, and grace, but I was never really looking for peace.  

Maybe it's not really peace, but that purest of focuses.  That kind of single pointedness where everything has just come together. Maybe this is really what I've been striving for all along as an athlete.  

It's the click.

Everything I Never Wanted

The past few days I've had a chance to take a good look at my life. Things are good for the most part. I have a job, which means a steady income. I'm doing well in my graphic design class. I'm healthy(ish). I have a roof over my head and food in my belly.

But everything I have feels in some way or another everything I never wanted. I'm still sitting there saying to myself 'this isn't the way things were supposed to be', even if it doesn't have that same feeling of desperation that it did 3 months ago.

I have an office job, customer service actually. I have to dress in 'work clothes' every day. Dress pants, nice shirts, high heels. I sit in a mini-cubicle with a brand new phone and nameplate velcro-ed to the fabric covered partition that divides my desk from my boss'. I have an extension... x1125. I clock in and clock out. I grab hot water out of the coffee machine and make nearly undrinkable tea on my break. I work for a company with training manuals and headsets and sexual harassment videos.

By all accounts I should hate my job.

I don't hate it though.

That's not to say I love it and want to make a career out of it, but it doesn't suck.

I never thought I would be anything but miserable in a job like that. The thought of what is ostensibly a corporate 9-5 would have made me cringe while I was in college, but now it's just a necessary not-so-evil. I have moments when I get frustrated and castigate myself for going against some loose anti-establishment ideals I feel like I'm selling out on. Most of the time though I recognize it's just practicality. I took the opportunity that was offered to me, even if it isn't what I thought I wanted.

Does that mean I'm officially an adult? Making decisions based in what's practical rather than what I want in my 'ideal' world? Is there any turning back from that? Can we go from being practical, taking the job we don't love, paying our bills, putting money in the bank, and worrying about our credit score, back to "I'm going to save/beautify/inspire/explore the world"? Are the two mutually exclusive in the first place? Is there a way to find balance between practical and ideal; a way to keep your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds and to be happy with the whole situation? Now that I have my Office Space-esque job is it possible to still keep my feel-good movie dreams?

I guess the problem is that I'm so afraid of losing my dreams.  I'm not even really sure what I want out of life, but I'm worried that I'll end up settling for something less.  I don't want to wake up in 25 years wishing I had done ___.  I want to wake up in 25 years and think 'THAT was fun.  I can't wait until tomorrow".

Down the Rabbit Hole

Down the Rabbit Hole

Homework number 5.  We've moved on to Illustrator.  I've skipped a couple in here.  Just haven't gotten around to posting them yet.  This was supposed to be a simple still life with three objects.  I chose to continue feeding my slightly unhealthy Alice obsession and go the Wonderland route.  I'm still editing it a bit, but at this point there seems little reason to.  The entire class is a clusterfuck- a professor who doesn't teach but grades everything like it's an MFA thesis studio and students who can't seem to get their heads above water.  The few students who do know what they're doing, don't work as hard as they could, earning them the professor's ire.  It's just a giant mess.  I'm just glad to have the chance (and the impetus) to produce real work.  

The Persistence of Chrome

The Persistence of Chrome, originally uploaded by SuburbanDecay2.

My second homework assignment for my graphic design class- a study in surrealism in Photoshop.  

Flashback- Livejournal circa 2000

It's time to indulge in a bit of nostalgia.  I've been avoiding the '25 Things' meme like the plague.  The 'Put your iTunes on shuffle' one seems silly to me.  This one was posted on Facebook by my friend Nicole.  It was nice to finally see a silly internet meme that seemed worth doing.  

I remember back in the 'Age of Livejournal'  doing these things all the time.  Filling out question after question of where you'd kissed someone- in a car, in a bar, in the rain, on a train- it was very Seuss-ian; or the seemingly never-ending list of favorites- book, movie, color, time of day, ice cream flavor, ad infinitum.  Then there were all the quizzes you'd take somewhere else and post the results on LJ.  It was all juvenile and silly, but it made sense at an age where we were supposed to be figuring out just who we were.  I mean, it's self-reflection of the shallowest form, but reflection nonetheless. 

(Really the last two paragraphs are just a good excuse to post an internet meme I really wanted to do.)  

Using ONLY SONG TITLES from ONE artist, cleverly answer these questions:

Pick a band/artist: Smashing Pumpkins

1. Are you a male or female: I Am One
2. Describe yourself: Bullet with Butterfly Wings
3. How do you feel about yourself: The Sacred and Profane
4. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: Let Me Give the World to You
5. Describe your current boy/girl situation: An Ode to No One
6. Describe your current location: In My Body
7. Describe where you want to be: Blissed & Gone
8. Your best friend is: Spaceboy
9. Your favorite color is: Blue
10. You know that: Aeroplane Flies High
11. What’s the weather like: Winterlong
12. If your life was a television show what would it be called? Soot & Stars
13. What is life to you: Today
14. What is the best advice you have to give: Slow Down
15. If you could change your name what would you change it to: Luna

The Belated and Truncated Obligatory Anti-Valentines Post.

This is not going to be some anti-love diatribe or an anti-materialist/consumer culture rant. (I think love is pretty kick-ass and everyone already knows all about the materialistic bullshit that comes with the day). It's also not going to be about how it's a day designed entirely around making you feel inadequate- either for the fact that you are single, or that you're not romantic enough.

It will be Anti-Valentines though, as I have found something new to hate about it. The existence of this holiday alone is bad enough, but this year I find myself more than a little annoyed by it's pervasiveness.  I don't remember Valentines day ever being this widespread before.  Everything all of a sudden seems pinker and more heart-shaped and glittery-er.  Restaurants all have their valentines specials on boards outside, and the newspaper is advertising obscenely expensive holiday messages- because nothing says "I love you" more than a spot in the classifieds.  There's pages in the paper of 'special advertising' printed in black and red; I never knew there were so many lingerie stores in the immediate area.  

Fuck the sentiment and the candy chariot pulled by bunches of roses it rode in on.

To be a student again...

The Elephant Quilt, originally uploaded by SuburbanDecay2.

I decided this semester that it was time for me to start building a marketable skill-set;  I've set my sights (for the time being) on graphic design.    

The image above was my first homework assignment.

February 5th 2009

'Anniversary' Flowers, originally uploaded by SuburbanDecay2.

Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Reading "Reading the OED"

I have a feeling my spell checker is going to have a meltdown by the end of this entry.  I can't imagine obscure words from the Oxford English Dictionary are included in your generic, everyday spell-check.  

I've been reading a lot lately. It makes me feel like I've accomplished something after a day of sending out resumes that will never get a response and wasting an inordinate amount of time on Facebook and twitter. Between Stephen King short stories -'Trucks' being a new favorite- and a book on writing Haiku I sat down and read Reading the OED by Ammon Shea.  My mother had just finished it and had delighted in telling my father and I some of the more amusing words as she read along - 

Umbriphilious was for my father (meaning to be fond of the shade) and Keck, for the cat (to make a sound as if one were about to vomit).  

When I started reading, I found some of the earliest words reminded me of other people- Aerumnous (full of trouble) and Agathokakological (made up of good and evil) in particular, as well as the word Infelicitate (to cause to be unhappy).  

The rest, well, just made me happy to know.  

I'm a word person to begin with, but the book was written with a lot of wit.  I laughed more while reading this than I've laughed at just about anything in a while.  My repeated iterations of words I found amusing, or thought-provoking, or just plain weird, tended more to annoy than enlighten my mother, who more than once had to remind me that well, she's already read the book and didn't need me repeating the whole thing back to her.

So rather than annoy her any more, I figured I'd share with those who might not have read it yet (although I highly suggest you do) a short list of the words I learned and found a great appreciation for while reading Reading the OED.

Atechy- lack of skill/or knowledge of art.  This word describes pretty much the entirety of my Art 130 class.  

Constult- to act stupidly together.  What is the point of good friends if you can't constult?

Desiderium- a yearning, specifically for something once had, but has no more.  I love how poetic this word is... and that it exists at all.

Gymnologize- to dispute naked, like an Indian philosopher.  

The author's take on this one- "There are only several plausible reasons I can think of for having an argument while naked, and none of them happens to involve indian philosophers."  I think that about sums it up for me as well.  

Happify- to make happy.  Just saying this word makes me smile.

Heterophemize- to say something different from what you mean to say.  I do this every day of my life.  Now I just have a more technical word for it.

Misandry- the hatred of men.  The counterpart to misogyny.  I wonder why this never caught on during the Feminist movement. (I have to make a note here that 'misandry' is so far the only word in this list that has not shown up as horribly wrong according to my spell checker)

Parabore-  a defense against bores.  I think if I ever create some steampunk-y invention for a character and need something to call it, this would be the perfect word.

Tacturiency- the desire of touching.  This is something I am most certainly afflicted with.  Not in any sort of sexual sense (get your mind out of the gutter) but in that I want to touch things- the marble or chrome on the outside of a Diner, that piece of clothing in the store I know I'm not going to buy anyway, the Rosetta Stone. As much as I am a visual person, that doesn't mean I want to admire things from afar.  There are so many different textures out there that simply cannot be appreciated with sight alone.

Of all the words in the book there was one that I just fell in love with.  According to the OED, it's never really been in use, it's only citation being from another dictionary, but I think it's one of the most beautiful words and concepts I can imagine.

Apricity- the warmth of the sun in winter

It's silly and beautiful and poetic.  I have very much fallen in love with the word as a literal, and figurative- both standing out in the snow with the sun shining on your face, and the idea of the there still being warmth in the depths of the deepest 'winter'.   I think I have a special affinity for it now, as I feel lost in my own winter forest without bearings.

Not so secret Hope

I really HOPE he doesn't fuck this up.

Things I've learned while walking my dog.

The snow really is gorgeous at night when there is just enough light to make it sparkle...

no matter how cold it is out.

And-

There are few things more beautiful than two pairs of footprints, side-by side in fresh snow.

All the time in the world

I just finished Lynne Truss' 2008 American version of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.  I've always been a bit picky with grammar, selectively so, most of the time, but picky nonetheless.  Misuse of 'there', 'their' and 'they're' drives me up a wall.  I want to rip my hair out upon reading mixed up 'your' and 'you're's (I'm actually not sure how to punctuate that).  I really can't stand people with mix and match colloquialisms and phrases a la the bartender in Boondock Saints- "People in glass houses sink ships".

On the whole I was kind of proud of myself after reading it.  My grammar isn't half-bad, despite living in the age of the e-mail and text message. There was one section in her book that I found really poignant, though.  Transcribed here from Chapter 6- "Merely Conventional Signs" is the passage I found most interesting, not because it was espousing some particular nuance of grammar being lost to T9, but because as a bit of a grammar nut and a bibliophile it struck a chord.

Having grown up as readers of the printed word (and possibly even scribblers in margins), we may take for granted the processes involved in the traditional activity of reading- so let us remind ourselves.  The printed word is presented to us in a linear way, with syntax supreme in conveying the sense of the words in their order.  We read privately, mentally listening to the writer's voice and translating the writer's thoughts.  The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it.  Picking up the book in the first place entails an active pursuit of understanding.  Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity.  knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate it's literary authority.  Having paid money for it (often), we have a sense of investment and pride of ownership, not to mention a feeling of general virtue.

All these conditions for reading are overturned by the new technologies.  Information is presented to us in a non-linear way, through an exponential series of lateral associations.  The internet is a public "space" which you visit, and even inhabit; its product is inherently impersonal and disembodied.  Scrolling documents is the opposite of reading: your eyes remains static, while the material flows past.  Despite all the opportunities to "interact", we all read material from the internet (or CD-roms or whatever) entirely passively because all the interesting associative thinking has already been done on our behalf.  Electronic media are intrinsically ephemeral, are open to perpetual revision, and work quite strenuously against any sort of historical perception.  The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself.  And having no price, it has questionable value.  Finally, you can't write comments in the margin of your screen to be discovered by another reader fifty years down the line.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves, p. 153-54

It strikes me now, the irony of writing my own commentary on a quote such as that on a blog, or on the internet at all for that matter. 

The Internet: the ultimate unmediated medium in which anyone can write anything about anything regulated by nothing.  

I used to hate it when people would write in books.  Maybe it was something that was drilled into me as a child. I remember carefully covering Elementary School books with brown paper bags at the beginning of every school year; the threats of the teachers of fines for books returned with doodles in the margins.  Even into High School books were sacred- despite how much I might have loathed the subject.  Around 11th grade things changed a little, I'd doodle inside the front cover, draw boxes around headings out of boredom; but write notes in a literary book? Never.  

My World Lit. teacher in 12th grade gave us The Norton Anthology: World Masterpieces- Expanded Edition In One Volume as our text. At over 3000 pages it was a massive tome; not something your average high schooler wanted to carry around.  My teacher's suggestion?  Take an X-acto knife and have at it; cut it up into pieces.  

Parts I, II, III, and IV were given the most unkindest cut of all.  Parts V and VI, were spared the knife, left to live out their days still connected to part VI.  As much as it was done for convenience, I think quite a bit of the decision to slice apart the book was rebellion as only an All-honors, A-student can do it.  "Fine, you assigned me this book. I'm gonna cut it apart! How do you like it now?!"  (Just fine I'd imagine- as he was the one suggesting we cut it apart in the first place, mostly to decrease the frequency of 'I forgot my book cause it's to heavy' excuses.)

I regret cutting it into so many pieces now though.  Two would have sufficed, dividing it at the end of part II; but hindsight is 20/20.  Despite creating Frankenstein's monster out of my World Lit book- and excepting my name on the front page- I never wrote in it.  

College changed that though.  Maybe it was the fact that I owned all of my books now (although that seems to go against my desire to possess books as objects of reverence), maybe it was convenience.  Really, I think it was a combination of a single professor and the discovery of non-fiction I actually enjoyed.  I wasn't stuck reading about how economics played a role in the election of blahbity-blah, or how statistics work (Oh, math, how I loathe thee.)  I was reading about Zen Buddhism in Japan and writing papers on the architecture of tea houses.  I was reading about the history of world architecture and the Vietnam war.  This stuff was cool and I finally had something to say about it.  

I also had a professor that took the mystique out of books.  He asked what the hell books were for if you didn't write notes in them, underline the important stuff and generally interact with them.  It was his opinion that books weren't just for reading, but engaging, thinking about, understanding; making mental connections and taking note of them; doing all that interesting 'associative thinking' Lynne Truss talks about.  

After that professor, I can remember my own excitement in college taking books out of the library only to discover inscriptions on the title page from A.D. White, the first president of the university, or just the enjoyment I'd get from reading other peoples' insights scribbled in margins, or manifest in an underline, or a box around a quote (even if that enjoyment often came from disagreeing with the penciled-in observations).  They gave the book more a life, a history, a place in a larger picture.

I guess this is my way of writing in the margins, maybe not for someone else to discover 50 years down the line, but maybe to lead someone to the library tomorrow to take out a book that might otherwise languish, unread, on the shelves, and maybe, just maybe, make a connection to an idea, a history, or another person, writing in the margins.

I'm a 'nester' by nature.  That's not to say I'm a homebody (although I am prone to it at times), but I am someone who wants to feel at home, no matter where I am.  I am made uneasy by 'nomads'.  Upon walking into a nomad's home I tend to wonder how someone can live without any 'stuff'; how can they live in such austerity?

This isn't so much a debate on materialism- although the possessing of objects comes into play- but a question of homeyness, of the physical expression of the occupant.  It's also not a debate on cleanliness.  My space is just as much mine when it's messy as when it's clean.  

When I was a freshman in college two of my friends and I signed a lease for an apartment.  The housing market in Ithaca is one of the strangest markets imaginable- we were signing a lease before Thanksgiving for an apartment we wouldn't move into until August (in ITHACA).  What that did mean though is that my friends and I had nearly a year to plan our move: to claim rooms, buy furniture, dishes, and accessories.  We had a year to decorate and you can be sure we used it.  When we moved in, up went a new shower curtain emblazoned with sayings like 'naked and happy' and 'i'm so cute'.  Up went christmas lights, dry-erase boards on the doors and even a poster of a naked chick over the toilet.  We threw a Playboy Bunny blanket on the couch, liquor bottles on the mantle, and a brand new teapot on the stove.

It certainly wasn't classy, but it definitely felt like home.  Before I even slept the first night in my room tapestries hung on the walls, pictures were FunTac-ed above my desk, and Keith Haring's baby crawled along next to my closet.  The same scene was repeated again the following year, when my roommates moved out and two new girls moved in.  Out went the hammock (stolen form the fraternity next door) and the pump bottle of Jagger on the mantle; in came new pots and pans, posters, and stuff in general.  

One of my new roommates had a problem with cleaning; she never did it.  One of my fondest memories from that year was waking up one morning to find my one roommate piling all of the other girl's dirty dishes into a pile on her bed.  All the shit I took for it later was well worth the amusement.

But back to nesting...

When I moved into my second apartment with roommate number 6 we also started planning early.  We wrote lists, made plans, divided up 'who was bringing what' so that we would have a fully stocked apartment from day one.  I already had almost everything I really need from two years of apartment living (and one year in a dorm), but number 6 went all out.  He showed up with everything from a flat-screen tv to a dining room table that seated 8.  We repainted the apartment, sanded and waxed the floors, hung curtains, shampooed the carpet.  We siliconed the rotting wood in the bathroom, re-caulked, and scrubbed.  When we were all done, we couldn't help but feel like we were home. 

I have been known to carry photos if I know I'm going to be away for a few weeks.  I can't imagine not injecting at least some of myself in any space I inhabit.  Away at camp my friends and I would got to Pen State's school store and buy push-pins, scissors and magazines, cut them up and adorn our dorm rooms for the week we'd be there.  

On the other side of the coin, the nomads reign.  The people who can live for a year in an apartment without hanging up a poster, who are content to claim nothing of their own.  While the Buddhist side of me admires that lack of attachment I also find something unsettling about it. (It also reminds me of the idea that is it much easier to live a spiritual life apart from the world than in it.)  I don't like feeling transient in my own space.  The current moment is all there is, so why not own my space.  I don't want to think 'I'll only be here for a week/month/year, so why bother?'.  

The 'why' is precisely because I will be here for a week/month/year.  

I'm here now.