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.