Wecome To Clawland

 

Claw-crossed lovers: “Oh, hi. I didn’t see you there. Say, you’re cute. And you like me, I can tell. You’re smiling at me! I want to take you home. I know it’s a longshot, but I’ve got a pocket full of change and I’m willing to take the risk.”

When I was in elementary school my best friend and I went along with her dad to a bowling alley where he was in a league. Having no interest in watching men throwing large objects in a straight line, Heidi and I wandered off to focus our attention elsewhere. They had a claw machine by the lanes and that night we won, not just once, but four times. It was unbelievable! Unheard of! I recall that one of the stuffed animals was a white seal. This handsome fellow was about the length of my forearm and was dressed in a cap and scarf with a X-mas feel to it. I looked upon him fondly over the years, even as my distain for cold Michigan winters grew.

I always have thought of that victory as magical. Something made it stand apart from other “small” victories when I was young. Truth is, the literal thought of memories has always felt a bit foreign to me. I had my first seizure when I was four and I took powerful medication for epilepsy up until the end of my elementary school days. This combination really seemed to pull out my memories’ stuffing for those years. I put time into lots of playful activities back then. For example, I took ballet for many years. Though, while I have pictures to prove it, I don’t actually recall any of my time in those tiny pink shoes. I do however have some memory of the day I took home Mr. Seal and his friends from the bowling alley.

“Where there is love, there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Last year, an article was written about the late James Akers Jr. In it, his widow recalls when they were first dating: “We went to the old Zodiac on North China Street for dinner. The hostess says ‘two?’ and walks off. I follow. But when I went to sit down, Jim wasn’t there. He arrived shortly with a big grin on his face. ‘They have my claw machine.’ ‘Your what?’ ‘I said.’ “I didn’t know arcade games like he did. When his first marriage was over he put his arcade games up for auction and the people at the Zodiac happened to buy it.”

 Striking the notion that James had ADHD, I think it took something with real magic to lure him away from his future wife. Unlike his first marriage, James stuffed pals were dependable. Stuffed animals don’t break or dent. They have a lasting durability and can be fixed with a needle and thread.

There truly is a special bond that occurs when we interact with our stuffed friends. We have an unwritten agreement to watch each other’s back. They support and carry all of the emotional weight we throw into them and, in exchange, we keep them "safe." We feel in control and capable of nurturing them. Many times when we part with an old friend we arrange a re-homing (give away to someone) adoption (garage sale) or we may live with them through retirement age (donate) and we are never happy to see them "die." Putting a loved stuffed pal into the trash is depressing and is likely done quickly and kept out of view. The idea of tossing them into the kitchen garbage to be covered with plate scrapings is, surely, an action reserved for some kind of monster.

Welcome to Clawland..

The toys that live in the Plexiglas boxes at bowling alleys, restaurants and supermarkets live in Clawland. It’s a place that celebrates helplessness and doesn’t condemn it. It embraces the softer side of search and rescue. They won’t be crushed or tugged at, but gently swept up and away like a freshly blown bubble, delicately adrift. Their fuzzy faces smile at us as they await their turn to be outside the looking glass. The silver claw shines in an offer of support, not judgment. It doesn’t care how old you are. Unlike Toys ‘R Us “where a kid can be a kid!”, but an adult just buying stuffed animals for themselves “can be a weirdo!” By claw law, obtaining squishy, stuffed pals is socially acceptable.

Clawland celebrates all major holidays, of course. The Plexiglas crew sports festive attire when appropriate and sometimes even long after. And yes, there is a Santa Claws! Or Santa Claw, as the story goes. In 2011 the Gizmodo Gallery in New York had a 2000 pound claw machine that allowed participants to try and win prizes from the comfort of their own home.The catch of this installation being that grabbing a prize meant whoever was in the gallery awaiting a prize got to keep it. Being that you could only play this online, you had to hope that you would pick up one of the special prizes that would then be mailed to your home address.

Part 1: Fluffy Meets Toughie..

Like other strong cultures, Clawland also celebrates its athletes in a grand competition. Though not the Olympics, the World championships were help in Olympia in 2012. The World Arcade Claw Organization’s (WACO) championships featured a day long competition. With sixty-five competitors from across the world: kids, men and women from all walks of life faced off. Competition started with a demanding test of endurance with twelve hours at the claw. This helps to “…separate the real champion competitors from the pretenders,” according to Gregory Kproku, an underground claw legend and founder of WACO. The endurance round is followed by a skills round and the champion is determined by the last round that measures speed.

Sadly, the truth is that (outside the Plexiglas), corruption had been lurking in the world of competitive claw machine championships. The rigged, tainted competitions started back in 2001 and ramped up in 2009 when winners got large payoffs, lawsuits came out over money and fame promised to one chosen victor, and even the possible murder of John Koflanovich; the former president of the (now dissolved) International Crane Machine Association.

Though even the most tragic outcome of life on the dark side of the claw started out with magic. John and his college roommate, co-founder of ICMA, and current member of WACO Kevin Mattingly never sought out these machines at first. According to Mattingly, “I don’t know where it came from, but a crane machine turned up, tipped over in the middle of our room. Rather than get mad about this strange hazing, we picked it up, plugged it in and started playing.” This state of innocence was a far cry from John’s malicious behavior that included spreading rumors, shaking down people for cash and the roughing up of 2008’s champion Joe Nguyen, who beat out the rigged winner based purely on being a better player. In a newly run WACO, the 2012 championship was rightly won. The trophy and prize money was handed over to Nguyen. In the speed round he freed 104 new stuffed friends from a corrupt past, an entire village worth.

Part 2: Speaking Up for those without a “Push-to –talk” Button

            It’s nothing new to hear about the stuffed animals that reside in “bad neighborhoods” described as sad and depicted as a lost cause. In a film produced by Aaron Cansler called “The Saddest Claw Machine in New York,” she reinforces this old stereotype. We know, of course, that our stuffed allies don’t ask to live in any particular area. Though Cansler only seems to notice the graffiti and plastic bag, worn in defense of the weather. One reviewer (Mario Agular) defends those stuffed inside saying, “ .. is a machine still wonderful when it is worn and weary? Yes, yes it is.” And “ Is this a story of existential persistence? Perhaps. But it seems more like a statement of universal truth: Claw machines are always wonderful.”

Though many haters may hate, our pals keep on smiling. There is no rage in the claw machines. In fact, harmony is upheld as a way of life and the more friends they live with, the better life seems to be. The cotton-faced, live atop the polyester eared and the rayon dressed alike. In the eyes of our plush pals, all creatures (flesh or fluff) are equally machine washable. Some people, though, want to start labeling the huggable for the sake of the all mighty dollar.  

Part 3: It’s a ‘Dry Clean Only’ World Out There

            This past January, Senator Kelli Stargel proposed a bill to determine legal or illegal standing for Clawland residents. What is the main factor of rightful residency, you ask? The answer: “prize value.” The bill would make it clear that claw machines would only be legal by following a set minimum value for its stuffed residents that the skill-based game directly dispenses. The Senator is looking to only allow those valued at $5.75 to stay until they are naturally relocated via Claw law. The cost is based on how much seventy-five cents in 1967 is worth today; the idea being that prizes of seventy-five cents are not things that would entice people to play games.

In fact, some Claw-landlords put their money where their claw is. Some claw residents at Bob’s Big Boy in Barstow are presidentially dressed in ten, twenty, fifty and even one-hundred dollar bills that are belted with a rubber band. Louie Musa, who owns many Barstow claw machines, reported that even though many people win prizes, most people visit such machines and take pictures without taking a new friend home. He admitted to also having shoved in i-pods and laptops into some machines based on his belief that people don’t want to spend money on claw machines. Though times they are a changing, it continues to be that with mo’ money comes mo’ problems.

The Leap Home...

            Who doesn’t prize an endless hug? Someone who will always wait for us with a smile? Unlike hugging a person or animal, there is no length of time reached when reassurance from a stuffed pal turns into an uncomfortable moment or “the claws come out” to cause hurt. They are so considerate, in fact, you can spend the day together and know they won’t leave you with a mess to clean up or parts to find dropped somewhere.

            What an invaluable contract we have with them. They give us emotional protection in exchange for being their physical guardians. A good example of this is from when I was a kid and I had a stuffed animal net. It was like a hammock for plush pals, hung high in the corner of my bedroom. I could look up from my slumber position and see all their smiling faces above me in their “safety net.”

             The claw itself, as a tool, is half the harmony in Clawland. It plays the role of caregiver before we do. Because of this, I had to wonder if a claw by any other name would be so sweet? So, I looked into another kind of “claw competition.” I found out that the MCM & CIC Crane Operator Rodeo -with Regional Qualifying Rodeo hosts in cities across North America— is the largest crane operator recognition program in North America. The parallels to Clawland cranes were plain to see. Obviously, the holding of a grand competition is one. In competition, the tests are also measured three ways. They are timed and monitored by the judges for load control, depth perception, and accuracy. In addition, one objective of the competition is to introduce young people to crane operation (as a profession). The main objective though is to underscore the need for safe crane operation. This is repeated throughout the literature, as care and delicacy are prized.

            It didn’t take long to stumble upon a tale of magical success either! One of the regional hosts for this competition is Imperial Crane Services, Inc.  An “American success story that began with a simple, uneducated man – a son of German bean farmers – who in 1969 had the courage to buy a single 25-ton crane … outspoken John Bohne worked his knuckles raw to become one of the most powerful businessmen in Chicago, while also building what has become one of the largest crane companies in the world … consistently delivering to their clients the highest levels of safety in the industry.” Unlike the WACO tale of deviousness and betrayal mentioned earlier, B.J. Bohne (John’s son appointed CEO after his passing) seems to have better ethics. His bio states that “he serves as an avid philanthropist through his charity, The Bohne Foundation, dedicated to needy children, education, medical research, and to serving the needs of local communities around the world.” Surely B.J. is living by Claw law in wanting to protect others.

My First Claw..

            I must admit, my outside the box crane query has some deeply laid roots for me. I spent many, many years just loving construction equipment without a clue as to why. (Likely due, in part, to the phenobarbital I took for my epilepsy years ago.) Still, I was drawn to it. Seeing construction sites popped an instant smile on my face. The connection was buried until my late teens, but for all those years prior, my smile was all the (muscle) memory it took to convince me that I had Claw Love. Wonderfully for me, when I was getting into adulthood, I passed by a park I used to play at as a kid, and there it was. In the far corner of the sandbox, sturdy as ever, perhaps some yellow paint chipped off to show the shiny silver belly beneath- was my first crane. It all came together in my mind. It suddenly all made sense. I knew it had been my prized love on the playground. I would sit and play for hours and hours..

When it comes down to it, love and safety are based in memories. These memories can be seen in the mind or felt in our bodies, but are equally as precious. I do not have Mr. Seal any longer and I’m not that kid who stumbled into the magical claw machine in that bowling alley. I did stumble into a magical claw machine in a dive bar a few years ago with a good friend, resulting in multiple victories. I do have Mr. Dragon now, who is green and the size of my two hands. Like when I was a kid, Mr. Dragon stays nearby while I slumber. Not resting in a net, but close to the ground and in the bottom of a cat tower. As a natural emotional guardian, Mr. Dragon sits close to my chocolate reserves. Though the contract may have been re-written, the magic remains and an endless hug always awaits.

Sourced:

Agular, Mario. "This Beat Up Old Claw Machine Will Charm and Delight You." Rev. of Saddest C Claw Machine in New York. Web log post. Gizmodo.com. Gizmodo.com, 12 May 2012.

Cejnar, J. (2010, Sep 10). Claw games lure travelers with surprise incentives. McClatchy – T Tribune Business News.

Chatham (2011) The santa claw at gizmodo gallery: Newstex.

Kam, D. (2014, Jan 16). Stargel bill addresses arcades' issues. The Ledger.

Rasmussen, F. N. (2013, Aug 30). James L. akers jr., arcade machine collector. McClatchy – Tribune Business News.

Sparks, Brandon. "Cranes, Claws And Controversy in Olympia." Web log post. OlySports. Sparks,1 Apr. 2012.

"What Is the Crane Rodeo?, Chicago, IL." Crane Operator Rodeo. Crane Operator Rodeo, n.d.

The Invaluable Grey

 Mirrors should think longer before they reflect. – Jean Cocteau

 

As a kid in Michigan, WJR radio was turned up to hear: “It’s time once again to ask Dr. Science. So, let’s ask Dr. Science. (That’s me.) Remember, he knows more than you do. (I have a master’s degree.) In Science!” This musing short radio spot created in the 80’s involved a man answering listeners’ questions. Most recently, on his website, he posted a response about social scientists. “Your average social scientist is the kind of guy that likes to dress in a lab coat and dance alone in front of a mirror. He’ll practice his Nobel Prize speech when he’s in the shower. Deep down, of course, he knows this is all just a fantasy, but what else can he do when his own work is so unrewarding.”

I think what Dr. Science has to say about evaluating ones reflection with our lab coats on, makes a good point. Information gathering, whether done in a lab, by a computer algorithm or by ourselves, needs somewhat of a smeared lens approach. The black and white facts often

apply to very few of us entirely because it is only in combination that we see all of the invaluable grey. Seeing each other with our eyes shouldn’t be the end-all, be-all of how we view one another. Stephen Jay Gould wrote that, “humans use our power to manipulate the world." This is a truth whose branches stretch into the vastness of the ever present future and roots that sink as far back as human history. In the 1800's Paul Broca manipulated data to suit his racist and sexist views and then others took these manipulations and used them to try and keep people from having rights. He gathered this (now) defunct information on people character and criminality through craniometry; "sorting people" by their cranial measurements.

We consume the messages we hear, read and see. We’re a human racket-ball court, bouncing messages about who “someone like me” should be into our internal walls of understanding. Like any exercise, we may feel depleted or energized after a hearty game of play. Dale Spencer wrote, “There is not always encouragement and acceptance for those who try to introduce meanings for which there is no conceptual space in the social order." Broca’s time on the (racket-ball) court may have been obsessively life-affirming and likely still is for white males today. In part, Broca’s ideal “gym fit” body type triumphed due to lack of media representation for non-white males. Nearly two-hundred years after his birth, the representation in media of white males is still in the lead. Though, with online pages like Facebook, Twitter and blogging sites, the right to become a powerfully represented force in media is fair game for all. Women are often consumed by the media and made, in fact, into consumable things. Today, the use of popular web tools has given a roaring voice to so many women and I am grateful for that.

Chimamanda Adiche's Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” is a great example of one such strong female voice. Adichie talks about starting a story from “secondly” because if we only hear a single story, we risk a critical misunderstanding. To think that there could ever be a set of beliefs that held true about an individual throughout their lifetime, let alone a country of people, is boring and reprehensibly ignorant. Furthermore, it is mental laziness to prefer to look externally rather than inside oneself, only to fear, hate and blame our neighbors. We should all use our ignorance for the power of good. It should empower us to ask questions of one another and ask questions of ourselves. I think there is often this invisible finish line for knowledge. A favorite blogger of mine, Allie Brosh, gives great insight into this idea when she writes about adulthood. “At some point, I start feeling self-congratulatory. This is a mistake. I begin to feel like I've accomplished my goals.  It's like I think that adulthood is something that can be earned like a trophy in one monumental burst of effort and then admired and coveted for the rest of one's life.”

The idea of forecasting any kind of finish line for knowledge is dangerous and prevents us from delving into the limitless knowledge in our world. Even scientists capable of the least biased research can’t find the conditions that will “make happiness.” Just as the world’s most brilliant artist could not paint what our imagination looks like. Nick Carr's article in The Atlantic discusses how future forecasting has affected our relationship with technology. In "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" he mentions a study that negatively reports “power browsing”’ as a way online users avoid traditional reading. He reflects on a new kind of lazy relationship with online print.

Personally, I don’t consider reading something online in the same way I consider reading printed words or even a PDF document. I recognize the online space as different and a space

that allows for more engagement with one’s senses. I would think that a lax in the amount of reading that Carr refers to would be easily compensated by the ways in which one can respond to words read. I can place my pen in the margins of a printed text, but online there are spaces provided specifically for me to give such a response. One could argue that such tactics encourage me to read less. In which case, I would be encouraged to imagine more and I ask, why that would automatically be a negative?

Carr also mentions Brin , the co-founder of Google, who advises us that we would all be better off if our brains were supplemented, or replaced, by artificial intelligence. Online technology articles often address a concern over lack of privacy, and it would be easy to argue that having ones brain replaced would be invading ones privacy. What may be less easy to see is how our privacy can be invaded through online algorithms. Still harder to see is when scientific research is done that reports to us what is normal for “who we are,” or through stories about people we share similar external qualities or similar heritage. All these are methods to invade upon our privacy and to manipulate it.

           As a woman, I feel that it is extremely important to define what I want privacy to be in my life. Externally, a woman’s joys or pain is viewed as never private. It is exploited in the media, used in political wars, and every exposure is deemed as necessary or appropriate. Female State of Michigan representatives (Brown and Byrum) were banned from speaking on the House floor after being told that the use of the word vagina was offensive in discussion on an anti-choice bill. This is the kind of reprehensible ignorance I mentioned earlier on in this post. So, where and when we can, women need to write our own privacy laws.

Of course, this is an exercise that would benefit all of us to do. Racism, sexism, classism, ageism, these will all be battles that we continue to fight. These are all issues that turn up their noses up when we ask them to keep out of our rights as human beings. But we can all write our own laws on what serves us and what doesn’t serve our lives. I have a postcard in a frame kept by my bedside that reads, “Most women need a room of their own, even if it is outside their home. Germaine Greer, 1939” The image is a photo of a woman, sitting outside closed doors, on a dirt and stone road, one hand petting the side of a strolling cat, both sandwiched near a blockade built of beautiful castings of cherubs and ethereal women. This, I see as a beautiful example of defining individual privacy. 

 

The danger of the single story affects our privacy in a way that’s largely reflected in our health. Our personal definition should reflect a respect for our health. I take my mental health very seriously (I respect it) and partly define privacy as the time I have spent in therapy sessions. Having used free services to do so, this has given me a rich variety of experiences. One provider of services I used required that I be recorded on video. I was used, in a way, like a case study. Random samples from the sessions would be viewed by a group of soon-to-be-graduates and their teacher to aide in discussion for that term. I viewed the experiences by what my reasons for use were and disregarded what these student’s reasons could be. I guess I could have considered myself an example of a woman that these students would possibly try to fit into some pre-set definition. In my case, I viewed the work I did there purely from my intentions. I was the alpha, I forwarded the work and I depended on my bias to function there.

It seemed that Broca, Carr and Adichie all share in a common anger: a protective concern over those who would try to replace what they knew about themselves. Broca’s more rooted in vanity (the present), Carr’s in technology (the future) and Adichie in false tales (the past). Creativity is often championed as the way to live. Like an internal navigation process that lets us affect the world. In this way, “Creativity is like driving a car at night. You’ll never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way” ( E.L. Doctorow). I think that we need more for our journeys. Why not live more imaginatively? Imagination can create the path for our creativity to illuminate. Working imaginatively keeps our minds and bodies open to change and more accepting of not needing a creative solution to fix something when we are wrong. It’s time we stopped “re-inventing the wheel” and start moving Dr. Science closer to Dr. Seuss.

Sleep told from 3 persepctives

Sleep..

Streetlight hits me from all four windows, while I give comfort and warmth to her. She keeps me close and wears me like water. I swirl with every leg kick, every twist from shoulder to shoulder. She is my gardener. I am the field of flowers she lays down in. Hot or cold wind, flattened or swirled, I know that she owns me. (I have no say for who comes and goes.) I can feel hot air swirling at opposite corners of my garden. This warmth only adds to the power of my cheerful flowers. It is my true sunlight. I hear the magic words spoken to work like poppies, begging her to sleep.  She puts her head beneath my flowers and begins to till at my garden once again.

                It’s 12:50! I’ve been trying to sleep for an hour. My mind can’t seem to stop racing with fear.  My stomach is having a strange conversation with me due to the Aleve I took for my aching jaw or from the all the water I drank it down with. The Ayurvedic sleep gels have not lead me to sleep, but instead left a taste of orange on my tongue. My eyes are painfully frustrated from exhaustion. As it sits by my bedside, there is still a hint of my favorite soothing candle in the air. Atop my comforter, my laptop illuminates a happy floral print. I have the sound of my heater in my right ear and The Bachelor Party episode of Angel playing in my right. I usually fall asleep by the line, “Cordellia, this is my wife.” Not so tonight though. I throw the comforter entirely over my head and shift my body again and again.

Mom gave me food a while ago and said a word that means she wants to sleep. Mom always puts noise and light by her head. I like sleeping with her most nights cause I love my mama, but tonight she keeps waking me up. Her toes aren’t happy like mine. I feel the floor shift and it makes my head and paws move. My eyes become ajar and my ears hear too much commotion. I think I should move, but when I lift up my head, mom’s claws are coming toward my head. Her “long toes” and claws feel good and so I lay my head back down. Mom smells like something, but it isn’t my food. I flop my spine against her foot. I stretch my front paws way out, but she has moved her other toes too far away to reach them.

My gardener has been under the sunlight too long. I feel her foot plow through and out one corner of the field. Like a tidal wave she unearths her head. Her arms, now also, weigh heavy on me. I start to flux and crumble like the tides. She awakens the white beast for the twentieth time. My owner is soft, but this small creature is softer and scarier. He blames me and is angry. I have not comforted her and will be punished. My petals are swallowed and spit out. They are stomped on until they are tucked against my gardener, who now wears these flowers like chains on her legs.  I take my punishment and then the white beast’s attack is called off. I fear he may stay and sleep in the field, but instead is sent away to watch from above in his guard tower.

This isn’t working. My hair is starting to feel hot and heavy. My body won’t rest. I feel too hot. I feel every tingle in every toe shouting at me.  My whole body wants to be able to just be and stay still, but it’s too hot to stay this way. One leg comes up for air, but I still hear my head shouting, “Where will you live? When will they tell you all that they aren’t saying? How will they try to control you next?” Fuck this. I am awake and angry. I don’t want to feel so angry right now. I want to sleep. Shit.. I WOKE UP Jarvis too many times and he is pissed or waking from a nightmare or something. He starts to straddle my leg and naw and bite and tuck the fabric tight around each leg. I suck. I have failed him and now I have to try and salvage this sleeping arrangement. I throw down my comforter away from my fevered face and arms. I attempt to reset the night by lifting up his perfect furry body, but he won’t have it. Off he takes across the bed and (one, two jumps!..) into his cat tower to roost alone.

My gardener reshapes new hills and valleys, folding her shadow across many of the flowers. A cool breeze begins. Her shadow removed, she casts a new spell. I hear the rain. It falls across the air.  It falls on all of the petals. It falls on her. It falls over the white beat up high. She puts her crown over her eyes and lays down to find sleep.

I have to sleep. I lurch my body across the bed and change my heater to a cool breeze. I leave my Netflix on, but seek out a bookmarked page of rain and thunder. One storm to silence the other in my racing mind and heavy heart. I put on my pink bear sleep mask and try to melt away into my pillow.

What was that? I hear more noise and my tail gives a twitch to see what has happened and returns itself to the circle. I press my spine against the walls of my tower and my head against some pink feathers and go back to sleep.

I think of a short time ago that I was kept away from light before my gardener took me out again. I know I can give her comfort and wonder why she does not let me do this always. I know I can get dirty, but what are flowers without soil? If this does not favor her, she can always send a flood and I am bright once more. I hope that she will always make me bright once more.

I drift and pull my mind away from the walls of time: Away from the future that can make me feel helpless, away from a past of aggression and abandonment and away from the hate and toward a love of self. I must accept my body having to stop fighting to sleep. I must accept that will find a safe place for us.

Prrrrrrzzz….prrrrrzzz…. I am happy. I see my mom. We are on the floor and her hand feels nice on my belly. She is smiling. I see boxes on the floor. I’m scared and mom starts to kiss my head. I don’t want to go, but she carries me up high and holds me tight. The boxes are getting closer. I start to struggle and claw. Mom puts me down atop the boxes and I take off running. I run and run and start to see more things I know. I see my tower and I run back to find my mama. The boxes are gone and she has brought me food. I don’t have to leave. I don’t have to go away. I am home. 

--Narrated by my (flower print) comforter, myself and my cat as we try to sleep with the warmth of a heater.--

Feeding the Absent Referent

 “The men… were better hunters than the women, but only because the women had found they could live quite well on foods other than meat.” (Alice Walker)

               Sadly, the roar that many women can be heard making comes from their stomach. In our society, attention toward the health and welfare of women is starved and often women are (truly) starving for others. The U.S. dinner bell does not signal the trough of equality to appear and ask any and all to step up and “pig on out!” The reality is that those who are poorer will eat less food, have access to less medicine and end up receiving lower quality care from both. Even worse is that many women will likely eat very little or low quality foods in order for their children and/or partners to benefit. As a woman, this makes me sad because I know that life should never be about making yourself hollow, but instead should celebrate your abundance. There needs to be consistent recognition for women’s self-worth and a promise to locate empowerment every day.
 

           In her song Death By Chocolate, songwriter Sia belts out, “Death by chocolate is a myth.. Death by crying doesn’t exist..Death by anger, this is true.” I can verify that a heavy

cacao-rich diet doesn’t hurt you and that crying won’t cause death (or blindness for that matter). But death by anger, this is true. The way our body reacts to anger is similar in the way it reacts to when it is being starved or feed troublesome foods. I recently went to Mountain View to see an Talya Lutzker speak about her Ayurvedic cookbook. In her book, she discusses how the five senses are connected to the five elements and that the five elements are organized into three doshas (body types). Any symptoms, illness or disorders are an excess or depletion of one or more doshas. Doshas are the language of Auyrvedic medicine. Part of women respecting our bodies most definitely includes respecting our stomachs. Society has held onto phrases like “trust your gut” and “listen to your gut”, but ones gut is too often un-honored as a trustworthy source. Why is this so?

            There is a disconnection. Patriarchal culture asks women to live by insane reasoning through following contradictive dominant ideologies of womanhood. In fact, we are asked to be connected and disconnected at all times. We are asked to nod along or embody such ideas that as being passive and fragile while bearing and raising a child. This being the case, not just in the U.S., but all over the world, is it any wonder that woman have a history of being disenfranchised? Is it any wonder that the majority of those who starve are women? Access to food and medicine is too often out of reach, not to mention attaining an education on both. Because such problematic societal structuring exists, “going with your gut” is not always as instinctual as it could be. In 2012, RaceForward(.org) reported that 40 million households in the U.S. suffer from lack of access to adequate foods and 111 million people are classified as obese. Women of color are confronted with the experience of this death-defying tightrope walking more than others. 

            With all of the images presented to consumers daily, the thousands showing women’s bodies, revealing to us these tiny tummies, how come we are never left to think about those that are left hungry? Most often, the implication lingering from an ad that features a woman is the need for something else to be filled. On behalf of all women, I state (as fact) that death from lack of sex is not a thing, but death from lack of food actually is. “Economy is the bone, politics is the flesh. Watch who they beat and who they eat.” (Marge Piercy) For all of us that are made into absent referents in society, it is our job to be more aware than who would want us placed in hiding. The mindset of those in power is sometimes like that of a bad babysitter. They get paid to tune you out, enforce rules, threaten to get you in trouble with authority figures and likely tell you to “go hide”, only to “seek” after they finish talking to a friend about their problems.

 

A favorite song of mine is called Food by artist Nellie McKay. In her lyrics she spirals up from hopelessness to joy, “For to starve is to hate is to kill is to sin. Better love's on your plate, get your fill and dig in.” That is truly my hope for all women, to eat with love and abundance. Nellie, like me, eats a Vegan diet. I feel that eating a Vegan diet encourages a person to engage with their food on many more levels. For one, it begs for answers to questions and illuminates injustices. I want to point out again, that women are asked to connect and disconnect. Society tells us it is bad to feel “treated like a piece of meat,” but meat is still seen as “king” and meant to be eaten by real men. It’s a bleak message that if in wanting to be with a real men, we must in some ways want to be made a consumable thing.

            I feel that a meal should honor health because food is our history of health. Unfortunately, our country’s history of food honors violence over health. Men have long been seen as being stronger than women and that has also meant that they require more food to maintain this strength, particularly meat. Carol Adams discusses this in her invaluable book The Sexual Politics of Meat. Women, even when pregnant, have been seen as weaker and requiring less food, particularly less meat.  Meat represents virility whereas in vegetables represent weakness and are seen as “feminine foods.” The myth of meat providing superior strength to those superior in a hierarchy fans out into not only gender to race in this country. It is suggested by black historians that one of the reasons that black people were enslaved by white Americans instead of Native Americans is because of the of income made from the slaughter of fur bearing animals. 

            It is tragic that we are not commonly taught to move our minds within the gaps in popularized, patriarchal history. How much more filled with urgency and action we could all be if we could see others oppression more clearly? The absent referent does not stand apart from history. Why do all those seen as absent not stand side by side then? Why not stand together to show that we are not lost or waiting for others to seek us, not absent, but very much found.

Oops!... I Did it Again: Surmounting the Genius

 To read like a writer you have to know something about what type of writer you, yourself, are. I am referring to that which you have “penned” and that which you have expressed vocally. What extravagant statements do you fondly recall making as a group of people took pause and interest? We all need to be able to label what we know as truth or as a lie, even if we find out otherwise later on. These things are required because we each need to be able to rate our level of doubt and know how impressed to be. That lets us be critically aware.

Reading something that I feel is good writing means that my imagination has been called with the utmost sense of urgency. By urgency I also am referring to the first impressions I have of a story. First impressions, written or spoken,  matter because they determine how you get to your next set of impressions. I am a writer and I enjoy writing. I want to tell my story in a way that I have yet to fully define, but I know is authentically to me. Like I said, first impressions are important. I want to communicate an urge toward imagination and a drive that makes me want to write with beauty. I want to stand un-terrified at the center of a  house of mirrors and find that my typed thoughts and feelings were easily reached reflections.. To allow myself (and feel allowed) to write with the kind of beauty and creativity that tends to swim in the puddles left by the storm clouds in my mind.

{I want to produce good writing based on the urge I described above. I want critiques, to be exposed to the genius of others thorough their lens on life and super smart comments. I want to learn what others value in my writing and their overall impression (a.k.a. my overall style). My career path definitely involves writing and I have been cultivating knowledge about my own style for many, many years, but this evolves like everything..}

I feel it's important that you to have something to say about what you write or are reading. This does not require planning. As an actress, I’ve used stream of conscious writing as a tool to enrich characters that I’ve played. For example, let’s say you’re going to be Santa in a play. Stream of conscious writing about a story from Santa’s childhood could reveal that, like you, she also was scolded for clothes bleeding in the wash and turning whites to red. Maybe this made her embrace red and wear it often. Perhaps that is the mysterious feeling you would portray while wearing the suit tied to just that secret. (The thing to remember is, even when you are standing up as someone else, you are standing up for yourself.)

 It's a brilliant thing to kick away limitations. A great rule of improv is that you can always heighten in a scene. Meaning that your imagination is solely responsible for the characters you play or those you interact with. I can always express my feelings through my eyes or anyone's of my choosing. I can embody whomever (or whatever) I needed to in order to say something.

I think that, while asking what it means to read like a writer is important, I must also ask how do I read text as poetry?  A poem is not a song until you sing it. A rhythm is not silent until you read it. If you are mentally wading through a thick peanut-buttery text and want to find a poem in it, you’ve gotta feel it. You’ve gotta feel your story, not the one that’s been laid out. You must ask what your imaginative urge looked like when you were reading the text? If you think that rearranging words is stealing then you’ve already lost your story. -And it is and will be yours every time.- When we write, with any words, we are echoing a past life- our past in our life.

I use words like echo and reflection because our words repeat and this factor is of huge importance and necessity. You may have noticed that I’ve referenced Britney Spears in my title. I do this because repetition, adaptation, beauty and likability are important in words and in life. Her hits have won favor across every social, economic and racial demographic. Once words with that much draw are out there, it doesn’t stop at just one more time. Everyone from Tori Amos to Old Dirty Bastard (a.k.a. Big Baby Jesus) have coveted her lyrics and have made them their own. They could do so and be successful because they knew what kind of writer they are. They were critically aware of what they were doing with their words. They made sure that they had something to say and (because of this) they could surmount the genius of another and also have their genius surmounted.

While I, personally, haven’t traveled the world to visit adoring fans or won prestigious and recognized awards, I do have my own methods for crafting something I can deem successful. If it is a body of writing that is composed by myself alone, I really need solitude and silence. Also, creature comforts are required. I tend to stick to my home to write, zone in and rarely take breaks. If I am reading, I tend to want the same, but there is a little more flexibility and the location could be debated. This is because, unlike mine, all the author’s thoughts are tidy and kept in waiting until I need them. The only spontaneous part that I play in their writing comes when I, say, jot a note in a margin or cross out words and write “fuck that” nearby.  

I have what could be called a mantra that I say, and it goes, “feel what you feel until you feel something else.” Another way you could read this is- feel what you feel so you can feel something else. Good writing is an action that helps to get you to that “something else.” To me, being a writer means wanting to echo my past in a story I write and also being able to read my future.  Whether I read an author or I am the writer of the story, that action is taken for love and hope. It’s a way that I can claim my future by moving into the next chapter of my life.

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Mirror, Mirror..

 Darkness scares us..We yearn for the comfort of light, as it allows shape and form. Allowing us to recognize, to define what is before us. But what is it that scares us really? Not the darkness itself, but the truth we know that lies within.

It is our job to know ourselves, develop self awareness and strive to increase our E.Q. If we do not feel the need to look inward, we will only project out- judging ourselves at a distance and within others. There is a big difference between expressing your feelings by stating "I feel that..vs. I think that you.. " What we yearn for, what we hate, things that define our core can be lost to our awareness when we simply glance and then dismiss. It's the "mirror, mirror effect". Who is the greatest of them all, we ask and not- Who lacks conviction these days? or Who is now highly inpatient? We may walk around like geniuses, confidently boasting- "I know who I am!" (and possibly adding "and no thanks to you!") But when is the last time you actually checked in with yourself?

It's a great thing to do and it will almost always leave you feeling surprised. Make a list of your best and worst qualities and ask yourself- "Is that me now?" It can be the hardest when looking at those things that you take pride in. Sometimes we are wearing the crown or holding a trophy that's been neglected and covered in dust. I remember the first time I did this many years ago and I realized that the stunning patient award was no longer part of my reign. But that is part of everyone's life- change. What we want changes and so does our good and bad qualities.Yes, you heard me- we get new ones! This really is quite logical as we live with a body that is always changing and growing year after year. Still, it is easy to grip till our hands blister to try and keep sunken into our past. It is not productive though and limits all kinds of forward momentum. It keeps us in battle against ourselves when we keep hitting walls that "should be easy" because of our out-of-date "best quality list". And it keeps us from progressing and learning when we see ourselves constantly overcoming out-of-date worst qualities that we demolished years ago.

Most times we stride through a day wearing our known pros and cons list  pinned to our growned-up selves and navigate accordingly. And what we tell ourselves one day can become a routine and become (sometimes) instructions to live our lives. In the short term this could effect the jobs we take. For example, I told myself that I loved structure and routine at a job. When actually my strong work ethic was being trumped by my o.c.d. and I really like variety and change in more recent years. I am better when I have variation in my work. I grow more and develop more of a creative and skillful mind.

Long term, pinning this list to our chests can do a lot of damage if we base our strengths and weaknesses around a time when we were hurt. "I am awesome at never doing certain things and therefore I will never get hurt!" or "I am only weak if I allow myself to do a few certain things because then I will get hurt." It is possible to live decades or even a lifetime avoiding lots of  life. And we are offered countless opportunities to heal when we have been hurt, left, abused, dismissed or done one or more of those things to another. People in our lives will offer support to heal, but we know when those times are at their ripest. We feel it. Something stirs or kicks you on your ass and that is your brain and body telling you to act. To do something. Most importantly, to do something different! (As Gwen says, "what are you waiting for?") And everyone gets these feelings and chances in their lives. Even one of the more "I wanna soar high!" people I have met in my life, I've seen shut down in 2 seconds flat by simply ejecting a "I wouldn't like that" at the faint possibility of beyond what they know at that exact moment.

So, we can try to steer our course by claiming control over it all. Feeling that the waters of life only present themselves when we alone are present, but life is a tidal wave and our brain controls a bathtub worth. It may be comforting to feel in control of the path we illuminate, but it is all glued together by the edges far off in the darkness. Ones we won't control and (thankfully) don't have to. The only discovery we can truly lay claim to is oneself. We need to nourish our bodies and minds by being as present and aware of oneself as possible. Acknowledging our current good and bad qualities that reside in us today. Using them to help us grow and better ourselves and allowing us to stop hurting and fighting ourselves and others.