scrabble

We just finished playing scrabble with a friend of ours. I won miraculously in the late stages. It wasn't a very high scoring game. It's late Sunday night. I've got nothing tomorrow and The Man is sick with a cold that he seems to have postponed earlier this week, only to have it come back yesterday.

I am kind of annoyed still about the debacle with going home. I think it's just a bit much on top of all the changes I need to do to visas and passports and all of the little worries about going through immigration when we go home. I have plenty of time, but this incident has set of my alarms around things going wrong when you least expect and want them to.

I feel like the red tape here is so impossible to understand. And once you come across it you discover it's not so much red tape as a giant steel door that you can't go through, or around. You just have to turn around and go back. Also I am starting to feel freaked out about living in Wellington. I don't know why!

I think it is just my anxiety working its way out. But I don't like it.

communication

I am so tired of the lack of communication in this country! I am ready to go home now! Which is annoying and I think speaks of how angry I am right now. Due to some red-tape we would have to pay for one whole month's rent to stay for one night in August, which includes the last night in July. Flights to New Zealand are only three times a week, it seems at the moment. We could have been coming home as early as the 28th if only someone had taken the time to properly prepare. It's so hard to get treated as if we are idiots when actually the person organising our departure from our town is the idiot. Now it will cost us a few hundred dollars (at least) and a week of our time.

Mostly I am bummed out that instead of going home on the 28th. We have to hang around until the 2nd. Also, it bugs me when the Terms and Conditions that come with my booking are disregarded by the airline. I hate international travel. Also I'm angry at myself. I don't know why because I didn't know that any of this was going to happen. But I feel like I should have just booked tickets for the 28th anyway.

Grrrr. Arrgh.

happy music

I have a problem with depressing music. And that problem is listening to it and loving it and buying more of it. I have enough depressing music to last my entire life, honestly. So I am working hard to find happy music. And it is hard work. But I've found The Ting Tings. They are infectious. This is my favourite:

Crime Fighters

hornet

Yesterday, a hornet flew into our house. It flew in the window right beside me where I was taking a shower. I freaked out, ran away, and googled what to do. Thank the lord for the internet. So now there is a giant hornet, a wasp on steroids, slowly dying in our vacuum cleaner as recommended by the internet. Because I am so paranoid I taped the end of the vacuum closed with layers and layers of duct tape. Now I am just waiting for it to die so that I can vacuum our house again.

Devour!

This post is so totally awesome. I've been reading feminist blogs for a while now, and some fat acceptance blogs for a bit less time. But where has this blog been all my life!? Holy cow. I read it and my brain goes DING! DING! DING! That food thing, about fries, about finding out you don't actually like something, that happened to me last week.

I baked a cake for someone's birthday. As I do. Often. And I was like: "Cake, meh. Don't want it thanks". Then I ate a piece because I didn't believe it. But I stopped because I was like: "No really, no cake thanks". It was so strange for me. Cake has always been my holy grail. Well, cake and fries! It is amazing to eat like this. I still have bad days where I medicate with enough potatoes to sink a ship. But most of the time, it's like being surprised constantly by what I want to eat. It is fantastic.

one eye on the world

It's Friday afternoon. I am groomed; I smell of moisturiser and rosemary and mint. The Man jokes that my new deodorant is Roast Lamb scented. I guess that makes me the lamb. I am trying to decide if I should buy some really cheap tickets to Christchurch after we get home. $156 for two people return is amazing. But I am still anxious about money. Sometimes I wonder if it would be beneficial for me to go on anti-anxiety medication. That would take the edge off. I found myself yesterday, contemplating marijuana as a way to relax.

Lucian Freud's painting "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" that sold for an exorbitant amount of money has been floating around in my head for days now. I am absorbed by the painting itself and have spent, what I am sure must amount to hours staring at it. The colour grabs me, her shape, so familiar to me. The vulnerability of her legs tucked up together, her breasts, the soft belly. Even her knees captivate me. Part of it is that it is very rare for me to see a fat nude that is not sexualised. And part of it is it's rare for me to see fat nudes at all. He has even captured the faint, faint stretch marks on her stomach. I don't really like his attitude to her that comes across in interviews about the paintings. And I don't like the art critics who are saying that it's a response to the prettiness of art. I don't like the assumed ugliness of her body. Because honestly I can't see anything but beauty when I look at that. From how she is asleep, to her hand gripping the back of the sofa. It all speaks to me of care and vulnerability and when I look at the painting I see love. I don't know why I see that but it's interesting to me that I do.

I have written so many lists this week. Pages of lists. Each one makes me feel even more relaxed. And I have removed dairy from my diet again. My skin is almost instantly better, my stomach doesn't hate me and my sleep is better, my breathing easier. But no beautiful dairy! I think it's worth it. Even if I have to be a little more alert with the food planning.

A friend of mine had her baby. She is suddenly a mother to me. A quick transformation, that as always makes me think of my own possible motherhood and my own not-entirely-decided childlessness.

unveiled

(I wrote this post on Monday in the dark depths of depression. But I wanted to post it anyway.)

I'm a bit down and disillusioned today. Partly my own fault. I spent too long in a cold house, under layers of clothing trying to make myself warm. After turning on the heater my mood improved, but I am still feeling it like an echo, throughout me.

Just now in our local supa I was buying tofu and vegetables. As I was perusing the carrots selection a child yelled and pointed at me, passed and continued pointing and talking about me the whole way around the supermarket.

I'm not perfect at this living overseas thing. I am too conscious of staring and too willing to chalk it up to rudeness rather than curiosity or whatever the happier gaikokujin manage to think. Instead I get melancholy and grumpy. But I didn't always.

At the moment my fat body is foremost in my mind. I can't stop thinking about it. Ani DiFranco has this new song Present/Infant and in it there is the line:

lately i've been glaring into mirrors
picking myself apart
you'd think at my age i'd of thought
of something better to do
than making security into a full-time job
making security into art
and i fear my life will be over
and i will have never lived it better
always glaring into mirrors
mad i don't look better

The emphasis is mine. I always get to that part and think, yes, why am I so preoccupied with how I look and what people think when they look at me? And well it's because it's pretty much impossible not to worry about it. I have always felt that the power structures very cleverly force women (and men, but differently for men) into caring about their bodies as a way to distract them. I can't manage everything in my life whilst thinking about how fat I am, or how beautiful I am, or how attractive people think I am. And my life is not full of children, or a full-time job. My life is full, it's just that it's full with fighting depression, overthinking, worrying about my body and the rest of the things I do.

I get reminded on a daily basis that people think I am ugly, or too fat, or unhealthy, or abhorrent, mostly by myself. And I can't figure out whether it's my mental illness that makes this bad, or my mental illness comes from this. I have spent so much of my life working to be a good fatty, and a non-hysterical woman. When in reality I am a fatty and a woman with emotions that are framed by the general public as hysterical or overly sensitive. This is my reality. And it's hard for me to let go of the good fatty idea, or the idea that I am not a stereotypical hysterical woman. Because I placed so much of my self worth in those things. I learned those messages too well and now unlearning them makes me feel like I am breaking in two sometimes.

The part that makes this hard for me is at the same time that I am berating myself for being a bad fatty, or a hysterical woman, I am berating myself for caring about it and then berating myself for whining when some people don't have enough food to eat, they don't have shelter, or water, and many people live lonely existences. But I keep thinking why is it so hard for me to get out of these mind tricks? I know the answer is depression and anxiety and disordered eating. But I don't want to take pills to fix any of that.

I also think that I spend too much time alone here and in my head. There aren't enough libraries or enough people here to talk to. If I make Japanese friends it is rare that we can converse deeply, as I love to. And I tire quickly of superficial friendships. And the bottom line for me is that most of the people that I meet here are too busy seeing me as a foreigner to see me as a person. One person I know here was surprised one day when I talked of some family problems. She said: "Oh, I didn't realise foreigners had family problems."

packing

Today I have been writing lists and packing boxes. I have been thinking about what we will take home for a long time now. And slowly my list is getting whittled down and down until I think I'm close to what we will take home. I have packed one whole box of books(!), and that's with the exclusion of some titles too.

Because the Japan Post website is so helpful I made sure all the boxes I was packing had the appropriate dimensions before I started. This was to avoid the giant mess that I witnessed last year when a whole bunch of people we knew sent their stuff home. I have allowed myself three medium sized boxes and one smaller one. As long as they stay under 20kg we are looking at 300-500 dollars to send home our important stuff. Obviously it won't arrive for 1-3 months, but that's no big deal to us. It does mean that I'm considering every piece. My stick blender? The new cups I got recently? Vodka? Do I ship home my tramping boots that have been here and back twice? And what about all that paper?

Also, I have a new goal. I must practice saying no when my gut says no. It is obviously much harder for me than I first anticipated.

Sometimes I feel as though words and language are doomed to failure. I feel as though interpersonal relationships are likewise doomed because without language how can we communicate and with imperfect language how can we ever communicate perfectly? I'm in a strange mood today because it's cold and I've been having weird conversations with people.

politics

Since I've been thinking about politics with reference to my own blog this was a great blog post to read.

beth ditto

I used to say that no, I didn't. Sometimes, you feel uncomfortable but then you look around and realize it's not you -- it's what other people project onto you. It's not really how you feel about yourself; it's the way the world makes you feel. It's not even a real emotion, but it definitely affects you. When I was a little kid it was really hard for me. One day you're a cute, chubby kid, but then you get boobs and your mom realizes it's not baby fat. You start to feel a lot of weird pressure. There were times in junior high when I'd say, "When I get older I'll be thin." I thought it would go away.

But then high school came and I got into riot grrrl. My best friend, Jay, was also this fat gay boy. I would watch 'Jerry Springer' and there would be fat girls in bathing suits, and I would be like, "Gross!" And [Jay] would be like, "Who cares?" It was the first time I was ever like, "Oh, yeah. I don't really think it's gross. I've just been told that it's gross. I have that body. Why would I think it was gross?" It was just very deep. Some days you wake up and you're like, "Oh, God, it would be a lot easier to be in a different body." But I think everybody feels that way, no matter what body they have.

"I sing the body electric"

I have so much thought energy right now. I am alive and electric and I cannot stop thinking. It is a beautiful thing.

Also. Sometimes I think it is strange that I love Walt Whitman. He ticks so many boxes on my suspicion scale. But, nevertheless I read his poems and jolt awake. I sing the body electric indeed.

people pleaser

I am so tired of being a people pleaser. All this week I have been planning a dinner party for a friend's birthday. The guests were invited. Then things went awry.

BUT, I put myself in this position. I decided to hold a dinner party (and here's the bottom line) because I want people to like me. Damn you brain!!!

nihongo

Sometimes I despair about my language ability. I feel guilty that I am not better at Japanese. It's just one of the things that I like to make myself feel bad about, it seems. But... I just negotiated the door-to-door chemist that called me to ask if he could come and check our supply box. And then he came and we talked about how long I've been in Japan and whether I like it, etc, etc. Small talk. But you know. My Japanese isn't bad. It's just not exactly good.

It's easy to not see your transition from a person who doesn't understand, to a person who does. Whilst I still have that voice in my head that freaks out when someone is talking to me in Japanese, I also have the person in there who understands what's going on. And it's somewhat reassuring.

Also, I am once again a passport carrying New Zealander! Yes! I can now buy tickets home and go and get my visa repaired. Excellent. I was beginning to get worried. The new NZ passports have a really interesting hard page that presumably is where the chip is. For all my trouble my passport will last one year longer than the one I damaged. A five year life-span is not really that convenient. But then I've applied for three passports in the last six years. One expired and was replaced by the second which was damaged not by me which was replaced by the last one that was damaged by me to be replaced by cutting edge passport technology. Amazing.

rationalising

I read a lot of feminist blogs. Recently I read one that considered changing your name to be pretty damn patriarchal. In part I feel bummed by this assertion because, well, I've sort of changed my name. I have two now. But also because it felt to me like this blogger was ignoring that marriage is basically the base unit of The Patriarchy. The whole deal. The whole show. Not just whether or not you choose to change your name. I kind of feel like it was just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I was a feminist when I met The Man. I was a feminist when I was happy that same-sex couples could marry in my country. I was a feminist when I started talking about marriage with The Man. I was a feminist when I did an about turn and agreed to marry him. But the name change thing, I don't get. Why does it drive so many people so bonkers?

I welcomed the chance to change my name. I could finally give myself a middle name (or two). And I could move on from that person I used to be. I could move on from my family. Because you know what, if getting married and changing your name is fucked up, surely being named for your father is also just as questionable. One of my first pen names used my grandmother's unmarried name. I know she was just named after a long line of men. But it felt important to me.

Names are so fraught. I don't think that I would have changed my name without the excuse of marriage. I might be an ungrateful and distant daughter, but I didn't want to change my name by myself because I knew it would wound my father. I am happy to have The Man's rare and beautiful name. I have a secret need to have the surname Darling, but that's another story, entirely.

the bad

Bad body image days are haaaaaaaaaaaaaaard. It is like the sludge of depression but almost, more nonsensical. The thing that I find scary about intuitive eating is that there is a chance I will put on weight. And there is a chance I will lose weight. And there is a chance that this will happen independently of my intentions for the rest of my life. And I'm fine with losing weight, mostly. Because it totally feeds into all of those pleasure centers that I was socialised into. But gaining weight? My body shape changing? Frightening.

I don't weigh myself. And apart from my jeans being a fraction (and I really mean it's a small amount) tighter around my middle, and some of my tops feeling a little tighter, I can tell that I've probably gained a little weight. Probably not much. Or maybe I've lost it and it's all in my head because my body shape has changed. I don't know. And I don't want to know because that number on the scale drives me to distraction. But at the same time I am working really hard to stop thinking about things that I should not think. Things that I don't want to think.

But here I am today, thinking and thinking my little heart out. I am so angry that I will never be thin. SO ANGRY. And it's really frustrating. Because I wouldn't feel like me if I were thin. And the hard part is that in order to stop feeling some of this anger I have to stop comparing myself to thin people. I have to stop looking at flat stomachs. Because really, the creamy center of my self hatred is pointed straight at my belly. I wonder if it knows it? My brain says, over and over: I could cope with jiggly thighs, and fat arms and even a double chin IF I had a flat stomach. But that's not going to happen brain.

Learning to out think myself is hard, yo.

the problem is not you

This post is definitely worth sharing. I agree with a lot of what she has to say. I am quickly coming up to four years with The Man in my life and I have been lucky enough to have another person who helped me open that door to start believing in myself. Both of these people have helped me immensely. One for telling me things no one had said before. And the other for doing it for four years through the day in and day out of me. People are good. Support is good. It took me a while to learn it. And sometimes I still forget. But I am very thankful for all the special people in my life.

A great post

Today I found a great post about the dust up in the feminist blogosphere and what is to be done about it.

I feel like it may be too soon to survey the damage in the feminist blogosphere, but I'm ready to look [read] and the way bloggers move on [post other topics], quiet themselves [no posting], take a break, or reflect. Things are quiet after the storm. I think we just experienced our own hurricane, one where many damns that held high emotions in check broke, people vanished, blame is thrown around, and the response to rectify the situation fails miserably.

This whole blog has some really good stuff to say. Particularly about white feminists who want to listen to WOC feminists. It struck me that it seems like a lot of white feminists want to listen and be given answers by WOC feminists instead of doing the work themselves, of realising that it's not the job of WOC feminists to educate us white women. Just like men who want to be feminists, white women need to find their own way and educate themselves. Listening is a part of it, but there is so much more involved. I'm being non-specific because it's a habit of mine when blogging. Because this is mostly a personal blog where being non-specific is appropriate. But those categories are at least superficially appropriate. The message is educate yourself about your privilege. And do it sooner rather than later.

I find myself in a weird position where a mostly personal blog is starting to twitch every now and then with politics. Previously I have just listened and learned. And I feel that's still important. But I don't know what to do about my voice. Because my voice is the same voice that's out there. You can find my voice in lots of places. And I am suspicious of any motivation inside myself to connect to or point to people who write from different perspectives. I am just one person struggling along, trying to get better every day. And I think that's all I can do.

Oh Poetry!

I have just stumbled across the new Apple word-processing programme. Silly me I thought it was only for Leopard, but no. Even those of us with computers that still feel new, but are alas, behind, can partake of this programme. After dealing with W0rd and 0pen 0ffice I'm pretty happy to have a mac dedicated word-processor that will export to pdf and allow me to move around pretty intuitively. Admittedly I've only been playing for a half hour or so, but in that time I've discovered that it will do most of what I want it to do. Which makes me a very happy woman. I was beginning to think that I was crazy for wanting to make a lit mag with the tools I had. Adob3 is so thoroughly priced out of my range I didn't even look. But this could be good middle ground.

It has me energised about my decision to do this. I have been thinking more and more about offering a pdf as an option and I am thinking this is now, more and more likely. Perhaps. I will think on it a bit more. For the moment I am wondering what else I need to do. A bank account? Registration? Anything else? I am so in love with poetry right now. It feels good. And it feels possible.

Thin Privilege

This is a list by one blog author of a Fat Fashion/Fat Politics group website that I dig. It's an interesting read. The comments definitely expose some defensiveness of the part of the commenters. Such as the cop out comment: "It's hard for thin women to find clothes too." Which whilst a valid point is again distracting from the discussion at hand. To me it is recognisable from so many different types of discussion. Whilst it's difficult for thin women to find clothes, they generally have many more options and the ability to spend less. For a long time I never bought clothes because I liked them, I bought them because they fit. Anyway. I'm reading fat politics websites today.

The Fantasy of Being Thin

This is a really good post from last year that I totally missed.

But for a fat person, it can be even harder, because so many fucking sources encourage us to believe that inside every one of us is “a thin person waiting to get out” — and that thin person is SO MUCH COOLER.