some thoughts
While an undergrad, I did a bit of research and writing on the idea of “writing the body.” It came from a feminist discourse, study of the so-called “French feminists,” Irigaray and Cixous and the like. And then of course our prof tossed in Butler to screw things up a bit more.
If I had/have the time to dig up Donna Haraway this might make more sense. But it is constantly interesting to me that in a virtual-world like the blogosphere, where one’s body is not visible or tangible through the array of technology that creates our little online worlds, so many of us choose still to write from the point of view of our bodies. I cannot be anyone but who I am, I suppose.
This may be why I resist the typical journalistic fetishization of “objectivity” as a good in itself, because it erases the speaker/writer from existence. The “objective” journalist must have no race, no gender, no sexual orientation, no ethnic background, nothing but language, which is presupposed to be masculine, right? (Lacan, I’m looking at you.)
I will not be erased. I don’t post a picture of myself next to each blog entry, but I am out here in the open, my real name on the page, easily linked to Twitter and Facebook and Flickr and any number of things that tell you more and more about ME.
So even though I could create myself an identity online that is not gendered, I don’t and many of us don’t. We could leave our bodies behind and write from some disembodied place that claims authority–the God trick, right?
But it’s not really possible, is it?
So do we write our bodies because they have constructed us, or in an attempt to define, construct, and reclaim them?
(feel free to ramble back at me in comments)
Sometimes I am prescient.
Other times I’m just tired and want to curl up on the couch with the dog, my fuzzy faux-leopard blanket, and Marlon Brando’s broken nose on the TV.
Certain things are always and forever comforting even when I’m not quite sure why I’d be in need of comfort. Retreating into my own little world, with work to do, yes, but not enough to make me feel bad for putting it aside except for the story brewing somewhere in the back of my mind. The story has a hand twisting a ring, red lights reflected on the rain on a cab’s windshield, whispers, and a space of inches that might as well be miles. I’m not sure how it’s coming together yet, but it will.
The books that surround me on the couch are all begging me to read them for different reasons. A collection of Neil Gaiman’s short stories, my Law text, “The Political Economy of Media” by my fave media scholar, Robert McChesney, a couple of Warren Ellis comics, and my notebooks full of bits of thoughts, research, quotes and more stories.
The dog missed me for the last two days while I was couch-hopping in NYC seeing my favorite people (many of them, anyway) and thinking and seeing the glitter of lights on tall glass buildings reflected through train windows into my eyes. Watching a pretty boy reading a magazine in the reflection in the window. Dreaming.
Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront is beautiful, strong, and innocent. A good girl that I’ve never been. A static character, sure, but one that thinks and feels and loves and hurts. She’s a rock that Brando can break himself against or can use to pull himself up to his feet and be a man.
I always believed I could be that person for someone. Now I’m not so sure.
I’m too foul-mouthed and cynical, too practical and too good at hiding my romantic streak. I hide my heartbreaks inside laughter and flirting and jokes about my tits. I am too willing to argue. Maybe once upon a time I was innocent and unscarred and willing to open up, but it’s been a while since I’ve even unscrewed the jar I locked my heart up in and poked at it to see if it still bleeds.
I write better when I’m half-asleep, lost in thought, barriers down. The passion my professor wants from me–yes. But if I let it out, will I be able to stop?
maybe she’s just pieces of me you’ve never seen and there are so many pieces of me that most people haven’t seen. Just a few who’ve seen me break down completely and still love me.
I resist and you resist and we resist and we end up alone.
The person I spent the longest time with, the one who heard me say “I love you” more than any other, never knew me. And only partly because he didn’t want to. The rest was because I wouldn’t let him. And yes, he would have left, and that would’ve been the right thing, because I faked it too long and too hard and I wasn’t going to be happy with faking it. But of course I kept it right up.
What’s wrong with us that so much of our lives are a performance?
I prefer the performance I give here. The bits of honesty. Then I don’t need to put on a brave face. I can put on movies and try to cry.
I cried when my cat died. I cried when a security guard yelled at me at the end of a long day. I cried at my friend’s wedding, and I cried at a memorial service in a hospital in Maryland for a friend who was still nominally alive in a room down the hall.
Lately I just want to cry to remember what it’s like to feel things. To remember what “I love you” felt like when I said it and meant it.
Searching for something to blow my mind again.
