(no subject)

I am struggling and a half with a personal essay I am trying to write. The deadline isn't until mid-October, but here I am, convinced I should be able to bang out something poetic in a couple of hours and I just can't.

The problem of course is that the thing that makes the story compelling is matters of serendipity, which means that the tale is not a narrative, but a collection of disparate elements. Unfortunately, one of those elements, the punchline element is something of an obscure factoid, leading me to the worst fucking sin in such essays - boring explanations of crap. Throw in all the other crap that makes the story perfect, and it becomes a long drawn out narrative about something you don't care about.

It's making me crazy.

I seem to write it fine in my head walking around the street, but when I get to the keyboard it's all over. I discovered the voice memo feature on my cell phone last night. It only lets me take one minute chunks, but perhaps that will help. The main thing I must solve is "What is the nature of the story?" and then I must be willing to omit all elements that don't speak to that and bend others to fit more closely. I think I've figured it out, but the thing is still pissing me off.

Had lots of great food at the Cow last night and a lovely time with orien and sola.

One of the eight zillion checks I am waiting on arrived, but it was one of the really small ones, so that's less exciting that it could have been, but I suppose represents progress in the movement of the world.

random

I am sick of news and magazine articles telling me what I want. Or explaining what women really want as if we were some strange animal on national geographic. I can't even bring myself to read the latest instance in the Times, the headline of which seems to indicate, "Well, all the _really_ smart women are totally going to give up their careers for babies."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/20women.html (having skimmed the article, I must say, in all fairness, it isn't that bad, -- as much as any article trying to ascertain if the choices women make make sense can be -- but it does make me crazy that women and their choices must always be examined as if we are "the other" whereas no such public analysis of men really exists outside humour columns).

I think I may be more offended by this than most. Afterall, I went to a school for ten years of my life where I got an astounding education, but knew every single day that it was such only for the sake of finding the best and most extraordinary match possible. I was given absolutely every intellectual challenge possible, so that I could serve men cleverly and then have enough babies to reclaim the feminity so obviously lost by blowing things up in a chemisry lab at age 13. By those standards, everything I do is a waste, and when you look at everything I do, how damnably ridiculous is that?

I am not, for the record, anti-children. I'm actually very fond of them and want them in my life, and very possibly in my home. I've just become self-protective of my body, defensive, strange about claims on me over the years, that I don't think I want to give birth to any (which, I realize I should figure out soon, being 33). I despise them as status symbols though. I despise the way we use them as signifiers for all sorts of attainments. I think it's unfair to so many people on so many subjects and makes parenting to much harder for absolutely everyone.

But is any women ever old enough to avoid being told how to be a good and clever girl? It doesn't seem so, even if we do eventually become old enough to ignore it.

It is worth noting that on the alumni application form for Stuyvesant, they have a blank merely for family, and you write in whatever. On the alumnae applicatoin for my prior school (which I am of course barred from not just symbolically, but in fact, not being a graduate), there is a detailed section for the husband, and then seven blanks to list the names of children. Seven. In New York City. In 2005.

arbitrary obsession of the day

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/houses.htm