"After The Movie" by Marie Howe

My friend Michael and I are walking home arguing about the movie.
He says that be believes a person can love someone
and still be able to murder that person.
I say, No, that's not love. That's attachment.
Michael says, No, that's love. You can love someone, then come to a day

when you're forced to think "it's him or me"
think "me" and kill him.

I say, Then it's not love anymore.
Michael says, It was love up to then though.

I say, Maybe we mean different things by the same word.
Michael says, Humans are complicated: love can exist even in the
murderous heart.

I say that what he might mean by love is desire.
Love is not a feeling, I say. And Michael says, Then what is it?

We're walking along West 16th Street - a clear unclouded night - and I hear my voice
repeating what I used to say to my husband: Love is action, I used to say
to him.

Simone Weil says that when you really love you are able to look at
someone you want to eat and not eat them.

Janis Joplin says, take another little piece of my heart now baby.

Meister Eckhardt says that as long as we love images we are doomed to
live in purgatory.

Michael and I stand on the corner of 6th Avenue saying goodnight.
I can't drink enough of the tangerine spritzer I've just bought -

again and again I bring the cold can to my mouth and suck the stuff
from the hole the flip top made.

What are you doing tomorrow? Michael says.
But what I think he's saying is "You are too strict. You are
a nun."

Then I think, Do I love Michael enough to allow him to think these things
of me even if he's not thinking them?

Above Manhattan, the moon wanes, and the sky turns clearer and colder.
Although the days, after the solstice, have started to lengthen,

we both know the winter has only begun
.

How to get unstuck

“When you feel perpetually unmotivated, you start questioning your existence in an unhealthy way; everything becomes a pseudo intellectual question you have no interest in responding (to) whatsoever. This whole process becomes your very skin and it does not merely affect you; it actually defines you. So, you see yourself as a shadowy figure unworthy of developing interest, unworthy of wondering about the world - profoundly unworthy in every sense and deeply absent in your very presence.”

- Ingmar Bergman

This is what happens after college sometimes.

After college, you're a bit like a city kid getting airlifted into the Adirondacks. Most of the knowledge you've spent years acquiring is useless now, because you are no longer rewarded for following rules. Are there even any rules in the woods? There are, but they're different rules. You don't know how to read the signals that surround you. Are there edible berries? Roots? What does that even mean, "roots"? Tree roots? What's that rustling sound in the bushes?

If you don't have any clues at all for how to create a meaningful post-college adult life, no wonder. You've never had to build a life from scratch. Perhaps nobody ever made you prioritize "derive sense of joy from personal discipline and independence", "consciously eradicate all self-pity", "set measurable goals", "take responsibility for all aspects of your well-being", etc, in your life. It would be unusual if someone did. You've been a part of families, or universities, with rules and meals and goals and a concrete ranking system. You've been praised.

What parents and teachers don't understand, I think, is that "unmotivation" isn't laziness. It's a disconnect between your soul's desire and what you think is possible. If the things you dream of, deeply desire, don't even seem possible in the world - because you're disillusioned with the only ideals you know of, whether they're theater, nonprofits, the publishing industry - and you can't even articulate the seat of this unrest - then it can seem "adult" to start ignoring the impulse to find something better. This is a mistake.

I think many people I know have made this long-term emotional mistake. It's not a dramatic mistake, but a quiet one. The shining, burning part of you is buried. The most tragic thing is, it's a simple misunderstanding of how awesome things can be. It's the daily miscalculation of what is possible around you - or what you need - or what makes you happy. It's waking up every morning, feeling miserable, and thinking, "Oh well. Guess that's what life is like." And then... doing that for months. This is how people become bitter.

Inevitably (I hope), one day, something surprises you. You find a group of people, a profession, an art form that you didn't know existed. And whatever-it-is is exciting and fulfilling and interesting in a new way, like nothing else. And you realize you've been doing the math wrong all along. The world has more things like this. You need to find them. You need to start finding them right now! They're all around you! Other ones that you haven't even found yet! Time is short!

And luckily, all that time you've wasted comes in handy, because you've developed a razor-sharp sixth sense of what you will never settle for again.

It's possible to train yourself to pick up the scent of adventure, like a bloodhound. You'll start to trust the feeling of catharsis, of activity that takes you out of yourself. The river of passion that you'd forgotten about will surge up, from where it was buried underground, silent and invisible. Small failures are funny and okay because they teach you things. Life is not abstract; life is real and messy and forgivable and lovable.

There are small magical pockets of people: burners and blues dancers, coders and hackers, freelance classical musicians, crafting circles, choirs, contact improvisers, clowns. And other ones I haven't found yet, and look forward to finding.

The "war on men" essay: a surefire way to make your moderate friends rant until they and you are flecked with spittle

Hey kids - here is the article tearing up those Facebook charts. Shiny and new, hot off the presses! I'm sure conservative odes to Good Old-Fashioned Gender Roles are clogging up blog servers all over the place, but for some reason lots of people seem to be reading this thing, and now we all have to read it.

Feministing wrote a snarky rebuttal and Jezebel has an even snarkier one, but the prize goes to the Washington Post (WashPo?) for its piece, "Straw Feminism 101". I am fried from my new job, so all I can do is repost large portions of the original and snort into my soup.

*****

But let us return to the words of the article. How have women changed?

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs. Now the men have nowhere to go.

Aha. Well. There you have it.

How is it that women have changed? More visible ankle? Fewer hope chests? More voting and owning property?

No. It was the pedestal. We got off our own pedestal.

That was our first mistake.

Unexamined, the idea of being on a pedestal sounds pleasant. People lay wreaths at your feet. The view is nice. But after a while the stylite’s existence pales. You discover what being on a pedestal entails: remaining decorative and immobile.

Stop climbing and taking the men’s things. Shoo! Back! Back to your pedestal! Possibly women weren’t angry until they read this article, but now, if I am anything to go by, they are practically irate.

On setting boundaries and feeling like life is more awesome as a result

Lately I keep thinking about setting boundaries. So many people hate doing it, or feel like they don't have the right.

The formidable Alison Green has a good post up about how to set boundaries with an amorous coworker who can't take a hint:

Additionally, when he offers to walk you to your car, say, “No, thank you, I’m fine.” If he insists, then you need to get firmer — “No. I’m fine.” And you say this in a serious tone — not smiling, not lightening your tone. People (especially women) often try to lighten their “no” because they feel rude. But if someone is showing you that he’s not hearing or respecting your no, then you need to be much more clear, and that means risking offending the person, because your right to assert your own boundaries needs to trump your desire to be nice.

And when he lingers at your desk and disengaging isn’t getting the point across, be direct: “Bob, I need to work. Please don’t stand there.”

Frankly, you also might need to stop driving him and your other coworker home after work, at least until you’ve re-built the boundary there.

Take note - this response does not involve agonizing, flailing, castigating yourself for being insensitive, telling all of your friends, feeling furious, feeling guilty for feeling furious, saying vaguely upset things on Facebook, or writing apocalyptic Tweets to your locked account. It's so important to know how to address a problem like she describes above - logically, calmly, while taking your own needs into the equation. Reacting firmly when someone crosses a line. Dialing down the drama, in other words.

And Captain Awkward has a wonderful post up about setting boundaries at work and troubleshooting the process. This bit is how to deal with the "wounded innocence" of people who are being called out on inappropriate behavior, when it's been making you uncomfortable but you haven't said anything.

When you enforce a boundary you haven’t set before, even well-meaning people can get really weird about it. Sometimes they get embarrassed about their own behavior and take it out on you for making them uncomfortable. They see calling them out as a hostile act on your part, when actually, asking someone calmly and directly to stop doing an offensive thing is the most professional and chill way you can behave. You might get some version of the “But you didn’t say anything before, so it was okay before, so I thought we had an unspoken agreement that it would always be okay and now you’re ruining everything by changing the rules on me!” defense. If you get sucked into this logic, you start thinking that only boundaries that are set perfectly from the very beginning of a relationship count, which is, frankly, the stinky poop of of a cow and I have no patience for it.

She is great. I especially love how she pointed out the crazy thinking of "you're not allowed to set a new boundary once I've established a pattern of behavior". (It also reminded me of Scarleteen's page on sexual consent. This talk of "boundaries" has a HUUUUGE application in romantic relationships.)

Luckily, most people can take a bit of criticism or boundary-setting without melting down. (The ones who can't, I think, usually have problems setting boundaries themselves.) It's momentarily uncomfortable, sure, but the feeling of emotional health and security that you get from having your needs met is like a Jacuzzi and a double-shot of espresso. Everyone else's lives improve too. Nobody is stuck waiting in the deadly emotional bus station of "I know something's wrong, but I don't know what, and I don't want to ask."

Emotional agency! It is for everyone! It is like sunshine, or air, or how health care ought to be.

“I have always believed that each of us is responsible for doing her own emotional homework, that the process of facing down our ghosts is our small, attainable contribution to a kinetic process that holds the potential for healing the world. And why not? After all, the opposite is true: History has proven that people who are unwilling to catch and release their individual sadness, disappointments, and hidden motivations have compensated by wreaking havoc on the world. Good and evil lie within each of us, and every day we choose which potential to fill.”

- Deborah Daw Heffernan

Not that healing the world begins and ends with that, of course. But this applies - especially to people who tend to rush around fixing things, keeping busy, and then collapse in a heap.

Last weekend brought strange weather. It was warm, with a grey sky that seemed to muffle everything like cotton. I went walking in the park, and all of the leaves falling from the trees had very muted colors. The haziness in the air made everything seem like a movie from the 70's - translucent and dull orange. It was like a filter had been put over the camera, and it was all sepia-toned.

I saw diving ducks in the pond, all black except for their little bright blue bills. They'd pop under the surface - blip! - and reappear a minute later. I also saw cardinals chasing each other around the inside of a leafless bush. It was a good day for climbing up on fallen logs.

I've been so busy! I have a big stack of links I want to think about and talk about, but the last week has been a whirlwind of logistics and meetings and friends and karaoke. I go home for a week with family tomorrow, and I plan to lounge around and be thoroughly useless, at least until it's time to make the pies.

"What Happens to Women Denied Abortions?" (Scientific study)

It is late and I am reposting, so in brief:

First long-term study of what happens when women are denied abortions. What happens mentally, emotionally, financially, etc. In brief: if women were allowed to have abortions, a year or so down the line, they were more likely to be employed, less likely to be in an abusive relationship, less likely to be on government assistance, and less likely to be living below the poverty line.

If they are not allowed to have them, and carry their babies to term, only 11% give them up for adoption.

Also:

We have found that there are no mental health consequences of abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. There are other interesting findings: even later abortion is safer than childbirth...