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I.
today was a very creative day. i haven't been good at taking time to be creative. i think i'm going to schedule a minimum of 3 hours a week for myself, one saturday, one sunday, and one over the course of the week. it was good, relaxing. a friend was over to sew snap tape on her pants to make tear away pants for her upcoming very first real burlesque act. i worked on a cross stitch i had hoped to have done for my father's birthday in june. but sewing circle lasted a good 5.5 hours. and then after she left, i went for a walk, then watched a movie and sewed again. and now that i've watched it, i want to read and discuss and do Analysis, which is a different sort of creativity.
II.
i just finished watching "brief conversations with hideous men." i was poking at hulu thursday while at work and alone in the suite, saw it was available, and saw it was expiring this weekend. it was one of those back of the mind meaning to see type movies. it's based on a david foster wallace book, you see, and he was the writer in residence or some such position at my college, and being an english major, i probably saw him in passing once or twice, but i never had the energy, focus, or drive to audition for any creative writing classes. i heard of him second and third hand, and always meant to read something of his. so watching this movie seemed like a good cheaters way to start. there was a saturday meeting of the english department when he hung himself, i believe it was. it was after i'd left, but i still knew people who were there who told me.
brief conversations with hideous men. it reminds me of an english class my senior year, race, gender & science fiction. not in the syllabus, but in the personal content of the class. the class had two dear friends and one awkward boy connection and a class blog and the realization that every single race or gender focused book in the course had at least one rape.
my brain is having a very hard time reigning this into coherent, linear though, so i apologize in advance for any incoherencies.
the movie dealt with men in the post-feminist movement world, being interviewed by a woman at a university, and her personal life, and a student's paper and two students academic argument about modern woman. the university woman is the only significant female character. the movie largely reaffirmed my belief that i'm far batter off being romantically interested in women, and aren't i lucky to be wired in a way to prefer them. but another running thread through part of the film is rape, and the concept of a male being raped.
in my class, on the blog especially, a lot of the students whined about the race and gender. i put some very venomous posts up, explaining why it mattered, and you can't just choose to ignore it, particularly in a class focusing on it.
the rape part hit hard. it was almost like, to be empowered, you had to be raped. overcoming normal difficulties just wasn't enough. and having been date raped and doped up on pain killers and fucked at and then, oops, come morning my intestines exploded and i almost died, i have a hard time with rape. and people joking about it, or belittling it. i mean, i was never okay with it, but post-experiences, it's more visceral.
what was particularly hard was not just vilifying men in arguments, making it inclusive of men, because they can be raped too. because the guy in the class that i'd had a one night stand with talked to me rather deeply first and told me about being bipolar and refusing medication, and being raped. and so after my freakout the next morning (we hadn't used protection because we both stated no penetration as a boundary) and subsequent calming down, i tried to talk to him and see how he was, and got radio silence. so there's a part of me that wonders is i took advantage of him, put him back in the same space as when he was raped. so knowing he was in the class, and what he had said, and what had passed between us, it was really hard to walk the line, not just make it a specifically cast power dynamic, but a generalized power dynamic.
in the movie, when it comes up, at first it's introduced in the abstract, then as happening to his sister, then to him. he's talking about horrible, depraved things being good for a person. he keeps asking does it matter if it's [person/more personal]. it was very uncomfortable. because, while you're definitely entitled to your own opinion, i don't like when people try to foist theirs upon others. and while, at times, i think everything that happened in my life is important and i wouldn't change any of it, even the awful stuff, i increasingly regret the roads not taken and could very much do with not having some of my very negative experiences.
i have a friend who, in college, when she was looking at being a woman's studies major, was working on developing a paper for a class and was told to contact another professor about, roughly, marginalization of black lesbians and the need to pick one of the identities over the other. she got an email back from this professor telling her she was making up ridiculous segregation and trying to make something from nothing and being offensive thinking she knew anything about this. when my friend wrote back saying she was a black lesbian, and was friends with may black lesbians, and was asking about a trend noticed from personal experience, the professor was suddenly all helpful and apologized, saying based on how she spelled her name, she assumed my friend was white.
i'm not sure how i feel about the mentality that one's opinion only matters, is only REALLY valid, if it's related to personal experience. i think it often bothers me, though. it doesn't allow for a sympathetic ally, or a third party perspective, something removed and possibly more rational.
i liked the way the story was told in the story. i could have done without the commercials, but such is the price of hulu. there were some really interesting moments of overlap of scenes. it wasn't entirely linear, which i liked. i will likely watch it again after reading the book.
III.
my apartment is a wreck and i haven't done anything today.
today was a very creative day. i haven't been good at taking time to be creative. i think i'm going to schedule a minimum of 3 hours a week for myself, one saturday, one sunday, and one over the course of the week. it was good, relaxing. a friend was over to sew snap tape on her pants to make tear away pants for her upcoming very first real burlesque act. i worked on a cross stitch i had hoped to have done for my father's birthday in june. but sewing circle lasted a good 5.5 hours. and then after she left, i went for a walk, then watched a movie and sewed again. and now that i've watched it, i want to read and discuss and do Analysis, which is a different sort of creativity.
II.
i just finished watching "brief conversations with hideous men." i was poking at hulu thursday while at work and alone in the suite, saw it was available, and saw it was expiring this weekend. it was one of those back of the mind meaning to see type movies. it's based on a david foster wallace book, you see, and he was the writer in residence or some such position at my college, and being an english major, i probably saw him in passing once or twice, but i never had the energy, focus, or drive to audition for any creative writing classes. i heard of him second and third hand, and always meant to read something of his. so watching this movie seemed like a good cheaters way to start. there was a saturday meeting of the english department when he hung himself, i believe it was. it was after i'd left, but i still knew people who were there who told me.
brief conversations with hideous men. it reminds me of an english class my senior year, race, gender & science fiction. not in the syllabus, but in the personal content of the class. the class had two dear friends and one awkward boy connection and a class blog and the realization that every single race or gender focused book in the course had at least one rape.
my brain is having a very hard time reigning this into coherent, linear though, so i apologize in advance for any incoherencies.
the movie dealt with men in the post-feminist movement world, being interviewed by a woman at a university, and her personal life, and a student's paper and two students academic argument about modern woman. the university woman is the only significant female character. the movie largely reaffirmed my belief that i'm far batter off being romantically interested in women, and aren't i lucky to be wired in a way to prefer them. but another running thread through part of the film is rape, and the concept of a male being raped.
in my class, on the blog especially, a lot of the students whined about the race and gender. i put some very venomous posts up, explaining why it mattered, and you can't just choose to ignore it, particularly in a class focusing on it.
the rape part hit hard. it was almost like, to be empowered, you had to be raped. overcoming normal difficulties just wasn't enough. and having been date raped and doped up on pain killers and fucked at and then, oops, come morning my intestines exploded and i almost died, i have a hard time with rape. and people joking about it, or belittling it. i mean, i was never okay with it, but post-experiences, it's more visceral.
what was particularly hard was not just vilifying men in arguments, making it inclusive of men, because they can be raped too. because the guy in the class that i'd had a one night stand with talked to me rather deeply first and told me about being bipolar and refusing medication, and being raped. and so after my freakout the next morning (we hadn't used protection because we both stated no penetration as a boundary) and subsequent calming down, i tried to talk to him and see how he was, and got radio silence. so there's a part of me that wonders is i took advantage of him, put him back in the same space as when he was raped. so knowing he was in the class, and what he had said, and what had passed between us, it was really hard to walk the line, not just make it a specifically cast power dynamic, but a generalized power dynamic.
in the movie, when it comes up, at first it's introduced in the abstract, then as happening to his sister, then to him. he's talking about horrible, depraved things being good for a person. he keeps asking does it matter if it's [person/more personal]. it was very uncomfortable. because, while you're definitely entitled to your own opinion, i don't like when people try to foist theirs upon others. and while, at times, i think everything that happened in my life is important and i wouldn't change any of it, even the awful stuff, i increasingly regret the roads not taken and could very much do with not having some of my very negative experiences.
i have a friend who, in college, when she was looking at being a woman's studies major, was working on developing a paper for a class and was told to contact another professor about, roughly, marginalization of black lesbians and the need to pick one of the identities over the other. she got an email back from this professor telling her she was making up ridiculous segregation and trying to make something from nothing and being offensive thinking she knew anything about this. when my friend wrote back saying she was a black lesbian, and was friends with may black lesbians, and was asking about a trend noticed from personal experience, the professor was suddenly all helpful and apologized, saying based on how she spelled her name, she assumed my friend was white.
i'm not sure how i feel about the mentality that one's opinion only matters, is only REALLY valid, if it's related to personal experience. i think it often bothers me, though. it doesn't allow for a sympathetic ally, or a third party perspective, something removed and possibly more rational.
i liked the way the story was told in the story. i could have done without the commercials, but such is the price of hulu. there were some really interesting moments of overlap of scenes. it wasn't entirely linear, which i liked. i will likely watch it again after reading the book.
III.
my apartment is a wreck and i haven't done anything today.
