so we suddenly have a cat!

he’s pretty shy at the moment. he’s spent the past 2 hours hiding behind the curtains, making a photogenic snap damn near impossible.

not christened him officially yet (his given name, “sky”, is just out of the question). for now, we’re calling him “dumb cat behind the curtain”. and “bob”.

he’s very cute though. not that you can tell from the photo.

song of the day: cowboy junkies – hold on to me

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some sunny music for spring…

MP3 playlist (M3U)

featuring nick drake, beatles, bob marley, aqualung, lou reed, and ryan adams.

here’s the .

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mp3

i have an eye infection. blech.

i am loathe to call it “conjunctivitis” because it sounds about as nice as saying i’ve got leprosy. but my left eye is swollen and painful and bright red and yucky. as my friend stacey would say, i feel *pretty*.

and so i’m sitting at home today. i felt kinda lame calling in sick for an eye infection, but no one likes to share a computer keyboard with the office leper. plus, it hurts. i can’t even put my contact lenses in, so i am sitting here in my ancient 5-prescriptions-too-weak glasses, squinting at the screen from 6 inches away through my bleary, smeary eye and getting a massive headache.

j, of course, thinks it’s hilarious. and i can’t stop touching my stupid eye.

aren’t you supposed to outgrow this kind of thing along with babyfat and security blankets? i thought so.

song of the day: matisyahu – close my eyes

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an 8 year old boy is so obese, he is almost unable to walk. social services are trying to decide whether or not to remove him from his family.

advocates have argued that if a child were starved instead of overfed, there would be no question the child should be removed, for his own safety and health.

but think about it for more than a nanosecond and the difference becomes blindingly obvious.

parents everywhere make all kind of ill-informed dangerous decisions on their child’s behalf every day, some with all the best of intentions. refusing blood transfusions, omitting seat belts, smoking in the home, opting out of innoculations. these are all potentially just as lethal, but no one proposes to remove children from their parents’ care because they’re not immunized against chicken pox, or mum is a human chimney.

But all that aside, what it boils down to is this: Ignorance and unwillingness to change is fundamentally different to *actively attempting to inflict pain on a child*. Starving a child is an active attempt to harm. Beating a child is an active attempt to harm. Laziness is very BAD parenting – but it’s not abuse.

There are plenty of children who desperately need to be protected by the state from horrific parents who are trying to hurt and maim them. But this isn’t one of them. Send the ignorant parents to counselling – save precious resources for the kids who really need to be saved.

song of the day: the band -the weight

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obesity, child abuse

i’m going to break one of my cardinal blogging rules today: nothing about anyone else without their consent. and i’m doing so only because i’m pretty sure she won’t mind. besides, this is more about me than her.

j and i went to k & a’s house for dinner last night. and k & a are the kind of friends that are kind enough to never mention all the embarrassing things you say and do when you’re drunk – a state we often seem to find ourselves in when hanging out with them (and you can either read that as an endorsement of their hosting skills, or a commentary on my lack of willpower – most likely a deadly combination of both.) and they’re the kind of people who can always be counted on for plenty of honest, intelligent, opinionated conversation, which is something i value in my friends.

but last night, at around 3am, after far too much wine and in-depth discussion about religion and traditional marriage (warning! danger will robinson! danger!) k and i found ourselves suddenly, unexpectedly and explosively at loggerheads. which took both of us by surprise, i think. one minute we were talking, the next minute we were arguing angrily, full-on. which caused my eyes to start leaking (coming from the emotional equivalent of a sicilian family makes it hiding my feelings pretty damn impossible.) as i went to the bathroom to dry my eyes, i found myself feeling as if i’d just walked away from a car wreck. what the fuck just happened here? how did we manage to go from having fun to fighting in under 60 seconds? my head was spinning from the combination of alcohol and whiplash. anger and confusion were whirling around, but mostly, i was hurt. i felt like just getting my things and going home. in my tipsy state i just wanted to escape and lick my wounds and wait for an apology to surface in calmer waters.

i collected myself, and went back to the now-silent group. i wasn’t sure what to do. i wanted to leave – but i also didn’t want to leave it like that. tension and hurt hanging in the air. a good amount of stubbornness rising to meet them. fear that leaving things unsaid now would leave them unsaid for a long time.

and so i plucked up my courage, swallowed my pride, and asked her to go for a walk. and somewhere in between the sobering chill and the early hours and the listening and the talking and the walking, we worked it out. y’know – like you’re supposed to do with people you care about.

and we hugged and smoothed things out, and both felt, i think immeasurably better than we had 15 minutes before. like something had gone almost to the edge, only to be caught and pulled back at the last second. perhaps that sounds overly dramatic – but it felt dramatic at the time. i don’t have the same depth and breadth of friends over here as i’m used to back in the states – i can’t treat them as casually as i am used to, with the cavalier knowledge that they will always be there to fall back on. those few friendships that i have here are a bit more precious, held close to the chest. and that made the argument feel far more dangerous than just a frivolous spat.

and so in a way, i think we’re both shyly proud of coming through the other side of it with the thread intact. it’s so easy to let hurt feelings and embarrassment keep you from taking a step towards reconciliation, no matter how badly you want it. it would’ve been easier for us to try to pretend it didn’t happen, chalk it up and just take a half step back from the relationship. mentally rescind that offer of trust, rather than allow the vulnerability of apologies. save face at the expense of a friend. we could have done, might have otherwise done, all those things. we’re similar that way – a bit too hard-headed for our own good. and instead, we decided to extend ourselves in the face of the instinct to retreat. be a little braver, more open than we felt. we haven’t acknowledged it out loud – but i sense a new layer of understanding running between us that adds a certain solidity and weight to the idea of “friend”. it’s encouraging.

the moral of the story here is twofold: 1) never discuss religion when drunk (duh!) and 2) sometimes the test of a relationship reveals a strength you didn’t know it had. a shatterproof quality you weren’t aware of until you dropped it. and maybe that makes it more valuable than the relationship you handle with kid gloves.

you don’t want to go throwing it around carelessly – but it’s not as fragile as you feared. because *you* are not as fragile as you feared.

it’s nice to know.

and i’m sorry.

song of the day (with tongue planted firmly in cheek): OK GO – get over it

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after i got home from work this evening, i changed out of my work clothes and went for a long run in the cool dark air.

got back and watched my favourite t.v. show, “masterchef” while stretching.

took a long hot shower and got into pyjamas.

had a big bowl of pasta and a large glass of red wine.

it’s 8:00.

life is good.

song of the  day: the cure – friday, i’m in love

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since the beginning of the year, i’ve been walking during my lunch hour. usually i go along with a colleague friend of mine, and we talk about socialism and work and life. some days we can’t co-ordinate our schedules, so i walk alone.

i walk across vauxhall bridge, past millbank, along the waters edge following the thames, up to the houses of parliament, westminster abbey, big ben. i skirt all the tourists stopped in the middle of the pavement pointing their cameras upward, around the metal barriers and cops. then i walk across westminster bridge, past the london eye and the aquarium, i walk around all the pedestrian traffic heading for big ben, walk past the souvenir stands, down the other side of the thames, past albert embankment and the imperial war museum, past the big imposing mi5 building, and back to my office.

there’s a guy directly across from the houses of parliament. his name is brian haw, and i see him every day because he’s camped there. for almost 6 years now, he’s been in front of the government, staring them down, watching the mps that arrive and leave throughout the week. he’s there trying to stop the war in iraq. he has a tent, a small cohort of supporters that come along in shifts, and his handmade placards. he has a bullhorn, and every once in a while, he uses it to let people know. day after day, he’s there with his conscience and his pride and little else. they’ve passed laws to try to remove him, stolen his property, harrassed him and ignored him. every day they ignore him, and every day he stays in spite of it. holding out hope that they can’t ignore him forever.

and every time i see him, i wonder if there’s anything i would give up years of my life for. if, in spite of all my noise, i’m no different than the people who pass him every day. who see him without seeing. who never walk the walk. i’m both inspired and ashamed by his simple act of commitment to something he believes is worth sacrificing everything for. unwavering dedication in the face of overwhelming defeat. brian haw will never save anyone’s life, in spite of all his passion. yet he shows up with the same amount of it, day after day. goes to bed with it. eats it, breathes it, lives it.

he puts me to shame – and some days, i find myself averting my eyes when i get to parliament square.

it’s easier to look away than look inside.

(photo via parliament-square.org.uk)

song of the day: nikka costa – push and pull 

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protest, parliament, iraq, brian haw

so as part of our anniversary celebration last night, j and i went to the cinema (yeah, we’re crazy like that!! just party, party, party. for the record, it was the first time in more than a year that i’ve seen a current movie in a theatre, since the “dias de furia” disaster doesn’t count.) we saw “the last king of scotland” which was great.

but at the same time it made me so furious, because it’s just another sad story about what happens to a country when the west meddles and muddies around, props up puppet politicians, then washes its hands of the whole messy affair. and because it’s only another poor country, state supported killing is ignored until long after the fact. cambodia, uganda, serbia, afghanistan, iraq.  lather, rinse, repeat.

when we were in cambodia, we went to the s21 genocide museum. disgusted by the complicity of the u.s. in supporting the sadistic regime of the khmer rouge, i wrote this:

and so i feel compelled to bear witness. to try to examine in my own way, the cruel cancerous biology of genocide that invades, multiplies quietly, ravages and destroys a people, and is always identified far too late. to pay my respects to those who died unnoticed by the rest of the world.

i feel compelled to see for myself, the worst of humanity on display – the stark, indisputable evidence of our most craven and cowardly need to deny the existence of evil and suffering in front of our faces… millions died because we failed them. we can’t keep looking away.

when the fuck will it all end? when will the governments of the west acknowledge their role in the bloodshed? and more importantly, when will they care enough to do something about it *before* millions more die?

song of the day: the juliana theory – if i told you this was killing me, would you stop?

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genocide, uganda, amin, the last king of scotland

Dearest J -

Last year on our anniversary I wrote:

i never would have picked j as someone who was exactly perfect for me. but he’s steady and ambitious and incredibly goofy. he’s got a perspective on life which constantly amazes me and he always knows what’s really important, yet never takes himself too seriously. he makes me laugh like no one i’ve ever met, is completely unafraid of facing stuff head-on, is always up for fun, and can still kick my ass at chess.

and for some unfathomable reason, he seems to fancy me. and makes me believe. he makes me believe in pablo neruda love poems, and 50 year anniversaries, and in that impulse that would make one lay down their life for another. he makes me believe that there might be a force in the universe which has a plan for my life, and that perhaps he is part of that plan. because i can’t conceive of any other explanation for it without attributing to blind luck, and i refuse to believe that such an incredibly significant event in my life could only have occurred through a random act of capriciousness.

he makes me believe in the possibility of forever – because i can’t imagine my life without him.

And since last year, we’ve been around the world and back again. We planned and plotted, got lost and lost the plot. We spent 24/7 joined at the hip, waking to brilliant cold lake mornings in New Zealand, playing dominoes in the spartan mountains of China, riding through a rainstorm in Cambodia, watching the sun drop into the ocean in Costa Rica.

It only made me love you more – I didn’t even know that was possible.

But lying on top of that hill in Fiji, watching the night sky so full of stars I thought my heart would burst with the beauty of it, holding your warm hand, I remembered reading this to you from my vows on our wedding day:

a slow shift in the stars
an imperceptible twining
of my soul with yours
my hand with yours
through subtle spinning of the earth
which brought us here and now
as if it never could have been otherwise
as if nothing else ever was

Happy anniversary, baby. Two down, only 48 more to go.

because it makes me think of you: leona naess – home

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“It’s a hard thing, the expat life – because you never lose who you are, no matter who you eventually become. You never stop missing home, even when it’s no longer home.

An expat is a square peg, always trying to fit into a round hole. And even if you no longer fit your country of origin (as I don’t) it’s hard to know you might never fit anywhere else either.

And sometimes, in the daily exhilaration and exhaustion of always having to learn to navigate new places, you just want the comfort of the familiar. The ease of knowing how to operate, speak the lingo, blend in, be the insider. Someplace you don’t have to think about or adjust to. Someplace that has memories and family and pull on the heart.

I’m sure some of this has to do with your experience of the other day. But it happens to all of us from time to time.

I miss it too.

Just know you’re not alone.

Jen”

song of the day: bernard fanning -songbird

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so j and i’ve been looking for a cat for a few weeks now. part of the difficulty is that all the shelters have said something along the lines of “we don’t place cats individually” or “cats need access to the outdoors” or “cats need companionship during the day”, in essence implying that my desire for a single, indoor cat is akin to animal cruelty. and as for needing companionship during the day? um, last i checked most cats sleep up to 18 hours a day and are naturally nocturnal – apparently working professionals cats are like the sad latchkey children of the cat kingdom, home alone for a whole *8* hours a day, pining away for their owners.

yeah, right.

so, giving up on the shelters, i started looking at local classifieds. where unsavoury, disreputable types are selling regular run-of-the-mill moggies for up to £200! (that’s nearly $400 for my stateside readers) . and i *know* there are truckloads of stray cats being sold as housepets, because *none* of the available males i’ve enquired about are neutered.

if you’ve ever spent a day around an unneutered male, you understand there is no way those cats live indoors. two words: territorial spraying. so the neutering is a bit of a dealbreaker for us, since i don’t wish to forfeit my entire rental deposit, no matter how much i want a cat.

so after being turned down by 4 shelters, and 4 private enquiries that didn’t pan out, it’s getting very frustrating – particularly since i have all the patience of a fruit fly. i want a cat *now*! i’m trying to be zen about it, and failing miserably.

i just know there’s a cat out there waiting for us, needing someone to love. and i know eventually we’ll find it. it’s just the anxious anticipation and the searching that’s so hard.

song of the day: jets to brazil – cat heaven

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i’ve always had an incredible affinity for elephants. i don’t know why, but it’s been a recurrent theme for me for many years. if ever there was a totem animal that reflects me, the elephant is it. and it was probably the highlight of my year when in thailand i finally got to experience some incredible close-up-and-personal time with the ellies, alongside people who love and respect them.

which is why i can’t stand to see people riding them like common donkeys, or hitting them with sticks, or parading them through the streets with chains around their legs. it just hurts my heart – i can’t look. (and if you want to know how elephants are tamed, google “phaajaan” or [if you have a strong stomach] see the sickening video here.) in the countries which purport to revere them most, they are cruelly manipulated to fill the demands of the ignorant tourist industry.

so a little part of me rejoices when they finally fight back, when they refuse to play polo and perform tricks like circus animals.

but sadly, i also know that it only reinforces the idea that they are dangerous creatures who must be beaten into submission. for every elephant that gets angry and breaks free, more are horribly abused.

and it kills me to feel so helpless to stop it.

song of the day: the be good tanyas – in spite of all the damage

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elephants

yes. this.

As for your question: what am I going to do with my life? I must say (emphasis on the must) that this is a question I ask myself all the time. “What am I going to *DO* with my life?”

As if I were not already doing *IT*. I mean, does the part of life-living that involves kissing/playing/suffering/caring/worrying/feeling exhilarated/then bored/then happy/then sad again… don’t we deserve to credit ourselves with all that? Isn’t *THIS*, and nothing more than this, what we know in our hearts will be flashing before us when our bodies give out and the final curtain comes down?

When I ask myself the “DO” question and start feeling depressed I “do” this:

I imagine a world without resumés, without virtual “professional success measuring sticks,” without people we know who are more or less accomplished in their careers. I imagine the peace of mind of feeling that I don’t have to do anything with my life except live passionately and with integrity. And then? What I “do” then is focus on the fact that *THAT* world–that ideal–already exists, but only if I want it to.

But–the question is–do I want that? Am I ready for the clicking realization that comes from clicking together my ruby slippers? Do I really want that ideal, that peace, that simplicity, that quiet-mindedness? Or do I value my ambitions above all that?

Think about it, Jen, if you are working for your *SELF* (and not for the recognition of others), does it really matter if it takes 9 or 19 or 90 years for the realization of your next big “project”? Don’t rush yourself! Be calm and quiet and serene. Never let the rush inhibit the free flow of all the magnificent creativity that everyone who knows you already knows you possess.

My advice to myself–which I share with you–is that the universe is *ALWAYS conspiring* to help you, Jen, even when it seems that quite the opposite is true. Allow yourself the time and space to get in synch with that universal jive or force or beat or whatever. If you quietly surrender to your creative intuition instead of trying to dictate to it, then you can’t go wrong.

song of the day: colin hay – overkill

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happy valentine’s day. i love you.

Song of the day: Crowded House – Fall at Your Feet

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I’m still getting my ass kicked by this birdflu. it’s now moved into my chest and throat – which is interesting because i’m getting really hoarse. when i get sick, my voice often goes all gravelly and deep, like a phone sex operator, just not on purpose. still, for about a day it’s kind of cool to sound all sultry and smoky, like lauren bacall (in between all the delightful coughing and sneezing, that is.)

the next day, however, my voice invariably heads into the ultrasonic registers that only dogs can hear. i sound like minnie mouse on helium. ummmm… not so sexy any more.

still, i’ll enjoy it while it lasts!

song of the day: ben harper – sexual healing (cover) 

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i wrote the other day about how rape is not taken seriously in the u.k.

this just underlines the point – the bbc, no less

The BBC has been accused of “trivialising rape” with its new show The Verdict, in which a jury of C-list celebrities decides the outcome of a mock trial.
…
The fictional rape case involves a 19-year-old waitress who claims she was subjected to a degrading sex attack by a footballer and his friend. All are played by actors.
…
Professor Liz Kelly, campaign chairwoman, said: “The Verdict is guilty of trivialising rape. This is reality television that misses much of the reality of rape – for example, the fact that most women are raped by someone they know.

“With rape rarely dealt with at any length by broadcasters, The Verdict is a missed opportunity to show the facts on rape. The bleak truth about rape is that little support or justice exists for women in this country.”

because rape is always a surefire ratings winner.

sickening.

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rape statistics, uk

So in spite of the bird flu, I had to drag myself out to the shop. on the way back, i’m trudging along, laden with groceries. it’s just stopped raining and there’s a fresh breeze blowing across my face, lifting my spirits as dusk descends and the city lights emerge. ipod snugly in my ears, suddenly an old skool “de la soul” track comes on…

and i’m transported to a brooklyn rooftop in 1992, and it’s a thick summer evening with a film of smog hanging over manhattan in the background. the bulwark of the brooklyn-queens expressway overpass separates us from the glow of downtown manhattan, where *everything* happens, all we can hear and see are the cars and horns and rumble of trucks, but it’s magic just knowing it’s there on the other side. it’s me and garnett, shelly and dre – friends who chose each other to stick together and became family. and we’ve got a dime bag of weed, a cheap cigar, and a 40 oz. bottle of malt liquor (which we probably bought with subway tokens at the corner bodega, because we bought a lot of things with subway tokens in those days). that and a portable radio is our only entertainment, but it suits us just fine. we’re broke and tired from working long hours for no pay, but there’s something exhilarating about it all anyway, so we don’t mind so much. and we spend our summer evenings hearing police sirens mingled with the music and getting drunk and high and running our mouths and thinking about what we can’t see on the other side of that overpass. we spend those summer evenings being family in the way only friends who’ve fallen in love can be, and sitting on the dark rooftop in a haze, bone weary and busted, but it’s all good. because we’re high on a rooftop in new york with friends who are family.

and we’re on top of the world.

song of the day (with apologies for the quality) De La Soul – Eye Know

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(and yet more technical difficulties plague us – my internetz at home is broken, and won’t be fixed til the end of the week. grrrrr.)

(oh wait! it’s fixed! hooray!)

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Apparently, China is trying to teach its citizens to queue for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Anyone who’s ever been to the country knows just how hilarious a proposal that is. The only thing essential to the Chinese “queue” is the liberal use of elbows. In my month in the country, I never saw even two people in any sort of intentional linear arrangement. Most everything in China is “first come, first served” and that’s a motto they take pretty damn seriously. Queueing is a system for people assured of abundance.

It’ll be an interesting experiment to be sure.

song of the day: modest mouse – the world at large

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i know it’s only 10 days into the new month, but i feel quite safe in calling this particular race early. this month’s winner for “bizarre porn search leading to my blog” is…

women fucking vacuums

song of the day (in keeping with the search theme) Bouncing Souls – Hopeless Romantic

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search terms

an advert comes on television for a face cream. “pentapeptides make your skin appear fuller and smoother”

J sticks out his butt and slaps it: “i use pentapeptides on my bum, to make it appear fuller and smoother!”

(this probably seems a lot funnier to me because i have the bird flu, and am actively hallucinating at the moment…)

Edited to add: j just started talking about tying a ribbon around his bollocks for my valentine’s day present. when i told him i was going to put it on my blog he said, “you can’t put that on your blog – that’s *my* intellectual property! now everyone will be tying ribbons around their bollocks!”

the man has no shame.

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in talking about books recently, a friend said to me, “it feels like oatbran, when i could be eating nachos”. i love that line, particularly because it so aptly describes the guilty pleasures that everyone indulges in from time to time, all the while chastising ourselves for not devoting our brain to more highbrow pursuits.

we all know someone who claims to never watch television, or who only reads the most convoluted and obtuse novels. someone who consciously cultivates an air of pretension because it makes them feel superior. hell, in england, people even judge your social class by the newpaper you read on the tube – that copy of “the sun” says more about your economic status and educational background than anything you could convey in words.

and i know there are people who would judge me because i read and enjoy the “harry potter” series. i know there are people who would think less of me for admitting that i actually like to watch “america’s next top model”. and i have acquaintances who would look down their noses at some of the fluffier selections on my ipod. never mind that i can debate the latest foreign policy matters, love thought-provoking modern art, and regularly play chess – i’d still be considered an intellectual lightweight for reading anything that happened to be on the “oprah’s book club” list.

now sure, you can just chalk some of this up to bad taste if you like (and some of it definitely is!) but i have to admit that i don’t fully trust people who say they can find no redeeming features in the well-crafted candy hook of a catchy pop tune. i don’t trust people who feel that things like entertainment news are somehow beneath them. i don’t trust people who won’t admit taking special pleasure in some engaging lite literary escapism.

i don’t trust them, because i don’t believe them. we all have our guilty pleasures – the cultural equivalent to tasty, indulgent fast food. some people just won’t own up to them. i once had a neighbour who was a poet by profession. he didn’t own a television or a computer – but whose door do you think he came knocking on to watch the football game, or play the latest release of “doom”?

i am, of course, not advocating a steady diet of mainstream pablum. as in everything in nutrition, a balanced approach is best. but life is not all self-abnegation either – there is pleasure to be had, and it’s an important facet of being a well-rounded individual. after all, if we’re not here on earth as sensory beings to experience pleasure, then what the hell is the point, really? and if you can’t delight in the pure joy of a few of life’s more basic indulgences, if you’re so elitist that you can’t relate to the commonality of participating in a pop culture climate – well then, i’m not sure that i want to know you.

you can have your “james joyce’s complete works” and bowl of gruel. me? i’ll be over here with my “harry potter” and nachos.

song of the day (speaking of pop candy – this song is so inane, but it always makes me want to dance my ass off, and i listened to it on endless repeat all the way through china. and yes this is my one nod of deference to brit pop.) Orson – No Tomorrow

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pop culture