Not Bad.

Seen all over the Berkeley campus today (click for larger):







I believe in Sherlock Holmes.

"Agency is predicated on self-reflexive, interpretive framings of power which are embedded not only in language but in relational sequences of action."

"Legitimation can be understood as constructed and mediated by two poles: the site of instantiation and the Archimedean point of the authorizing center."

"Thus there is a need to interrogate the mythicizing reception of violence in order to trace the path by which ideological readings of violence engender the subject of the act and the extrinsic site of legitimation in a single moment."

"Legitimation resides in the construction of a fictive depth, a dimensionality of force which draws consciousness away from the concrete material investment in acts and effects that reproduce domination in time and space."

I NEED A SPORK FOR MY BRAAAAAIN! GAH!

It's not that I can't parse this shit; it's that the language is obfuscatory rather than illuminating, and that just pisses me. the fuck. off. (Edited to add: OK, so 'obfuscatory' isn't exactly a common, everyday word either but I claim an exemption on it since everything I know about the word 'obfuscate' I learned in The Sentinel fandom. :D)

And how's your day going? ::g::

All quotes randomly pulled from Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence, pages 1-3. I've got roughly 170 more pages to get through today.

How nerdy does it make me that the highlight of my week (I'm really excited) is that Henry Jenkins is coming to speak on campus? Or that I liked one of my professors just fine until I found out she's on the TWC board, at which point I became totally starry-eyed. A lot, right? I ♥ acafans.

Today is my first day of school. I'm a little bit nervous; I haven't taken a strenuous academic class since before the cancer/chemo/medically-induced menopause thing, and I know I don't think as well as I did before all of that happened. (On the other hand, 3-1/2 years down--which is incredibly optimistic--and 1-1/2 to go until I can say "I beat this thing!")

I am used to community college campuses, where there is a broad range of ages in every classroom. Berkeley won't be like that. There will be other older students on campus, but not in the numbers I'm used to, and my fat*, 55-year-old self is going to stick out like a sore thumb. This is going to be especially true this semester, because three of the classes I'm taking are lower-division 'Intro to' classes (they're prereqs for upper-division classes I want to take, and too specialized to have been offered at the community college level), so most of my classmates will be straight out of high school.

I'm also excited. It's Berkeley, and it's going to be full of smart, interesting people and smart, interesting discussions, and I get to be part of it. Amazing.

*This is not me beating myself up or exhibiting body dysmorphia. It's as true a descriptor as 'I have blue eyes and brown hair.' Some of it's genetics, some of it's personal history, some of it's meds (four rounds of prednisone this last year; god, I hate prednisone). Most of the time I'm so aware of how lucky I am to still be breathing that the idea of worrying about my weight is laughable. In a few minutes, though, I'm going to be on a campus full of young women, most of whom will have very strong negative feelings about fatness, and who will judge, and that ratchets my anxiety levels way up. But not enough to keep me from going.

Go Bears!

I am grateful that Prop 8 was overturned. I am sooo grateful that Prop 8 was overturned. I am kick-up-my-heels, giggling with glee, dancing in my chair (and in the living room, and in the kitchen...) grateful that Prop 8 was overturned.

I am grateful for a Court that understands that one of the important tasks of government is to protect us from each other. I know that this isn't over yet, but for today, I'm grateful.

elf posted about The Gratitude Project today. I hadn't heard of The Gratitude Project before, but I have been recently reminded that remembering to be grateful never goes amiss; that it can, in fact, actually make one's world a better place. So.

I am grateful that I am affluent enough to own a decent computer and also able to afford reasonably high speed internet service to use it with.

I haven't really posted in close to 6 months. I've been in a (much needed) introspective and re-evaluative place, parsing out where, at this time of my live, the differences are between who I say I am (to myself and others) and who I actually am. (I've kept for years a book I didn't love because I do love and am haunted by something it says on the cover: "What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?")

I am dealing with rage, mountains and mountains of rage, most of it decades old, most of it related to how a girl child was treated in my family, is treated in the world. ("What a gift your anger is," says my therapist. "Doesn't feel like much of a gift," says I. "Do you want to be what they want you to be?" "Oh, GOD, no." "Then the anger is a gift," says she.)

Through it all, as has been true for years, it's you guys who get me through. When I'm irritated with life, I come here. When I'm dissociative and having trouble staying fully in my body, I come here. When I need to relax, or laugh, or breathe, I come here.

I am surrounded here by people who are smart and articulate, who have intelligent opinions and aren't afraid to use them (even when they're not popular ones), who are gifted storytellers, or gifted with invective, or gifted at being honestly themselves. People who make me think and frown and laugh. People I admire.

I only use reading filters to screen out newsletters; my default view is every personal journal I've friended/subscribed to. If you're on my flist/in my circle, it's because I want to (and do) read what you have to say.

I maybe fangirl you a little, too.

I'm definitely thankful that you're there.

HAPPY U.S. TURKEY DAY, Y'ALL.

( Someday I will write about these things. They are old, and hard. )

And when I am ready to write about these things, I WILL NOT DO IT HERE. I'll do it at stand_up_eight instead (true for both DW & LJ). I set stand_up_eight  up for just that purpose. It may stand empty for years (it already has on LJ), and that's OK. I'm not ready, yet. But someday.

This journal, though, this one right here, isn't the place for that. It's my safe place. It's my place to be fannish, to play, my window to the world, to check in on y'all, to read amazingly astute commentary from stunningly bright minds. Sometimes it's my place to deal with current stuff in my life, but I generally cut-tag that.

I'm posting this here, now, because my DW stand_up_eight account is getting invite codes to hand out,  and I love handing out invite codes. *g* So I've put up a post there directing people here, but figured an explanation was in order. Plus, it's maybe time to explain to my long-time friends here why I frequently go radio silent, even when I'm clearly still hanging around (reading doesn't trigger the old shit, but interacting sometimes can -- which doesn't mean that I don't want to interact, because I do, I do. Just, sometimes it's harder than others.)

Crossposted to LiveJournal

Several people on my flist have stepped up to the plate and made a public stance today on RaceFail09. I haven't, because (1) my flist is tiny and (2) OMG, y'all, I'm so open about who I am that you have to know where I'd stand on this one.

Then I read this response from bossymarmalade in kita0610's post on why saying something publicly is important (thank you janedavitt for the link): "My sister (who recently has been diving headfirst into discussions of race on her journal due to her work on the Avatar whitewashing protest) has been telling me that with every post she makes, new people on her friendslist reveal that they're *not* anti-racists..."

So, maybe y'all don't know.

On Bigotry of Any Kind, Anywhere: No "othering" ever. Ever. Not because of who you fuck, or how you fuck, or whether or not your legs work, or what church or coven you do or don't attend, or what clothing size you wear, or whether your genitals are innie or outie or have been surgically altered, or how much cash is or isn't in your pocket, or how much pigment is in your skin, or, or, or. And anyone who has ever been othered for any reason has the right to use whatever tone they please in calling out people who other others, consciously or not, including me. Because I grew up in the U.S., and the messages of dismissal (at minimum) and hatred (all too often) are endemic, and I am appalled when I spot my own unconscious internal biases, some of which even apply to groups of which I myself am a member.

Specifically Regarding Race: I used to think highly of the little, local police department in the small town where I work. But then, I have never been pulled over at night while wearing my store's work uniform and asked what I was doing in the neighborhood. Every single POC who works on night shift with me (and we've got a rainbow) has had that experience. That's my white privilege showing. When I was younger, because of other -isms that apply to me, I didn't think I had a whole lot of privilege; I would have argued the fact. Boy, was I wrong. I am now trying to sit down, shut up, listen, and learn.

On Outing: No. Nope. Nada. Nein. Never. Not anyone else's decision to make, nor repercussions to live with. Just, no. (OK, one exception: any public authority figure who gets caught engaging in a behavior they have publicly excoriated and who then tries to deny it, i.e. any politician who spouts homophobic rhetoric who then gets caught in a homophilic act. But that's not what happened, here.)

Being back at work is Kicking. My. Ass.  Exhaustion from the (now) unaccustomed physical labor, exacerbated by the inevitable sleep deprivation that comes from switching sleep schedules, has had me brain dead and zombie-fied in my off hours.

On the other hand, I've already lost six of the thirteen pounds I put on being sick and sedentary.  

And my hair's coming back in!  It's almost a half an inch long, now.   I keep catching my kid looking at me funny, though.  "What?"  "It's not red."  I've been artificially auburn for so much of her life that the real mousy brown stuff growing in seems weird to her.  (Conventional wisdom says don't chemically process it until it hits an inch in order to give the follicles time to get strong again.  I've got the L'Oreal ready and waiting.)


(Also, I'm apparently in love with parentheses today.)