The Endless Search

You start out intending to end, but that is neither here nor there, for you are always in the middle of something. It's an insult to my experience on the planet to play along with the conventions of openings and resolutions. Each deviation from a sense of ongoing journeys, each negation of the interwoven nature of any thinking process with another, brings me closer to a state of acceptance of closure and origination.

To put it another way: I have been ending and starting all my life. With a single syllable, word or sentence, I simultaneously break from the past and dash into the future - and yet the further I rush from my uncomfortable history, the more it haunts me, filling in the gaps without my conscious consent - but by tuning into the thoughts behind the thoughts that most leap out into the page, by peeling back the layers bit by bit, I delve into a mutlifaceted whirlpool which dissolves even as I conjure it as vividly as possible... the atmosphere has transformed into a calmer windiness which begs for articulation immediately upon conceptualisation. And I do struggle with the wording, although it is also effortless in a sense. The free-floating nature of my desire to express myself, nestled within the harsh confines I must appropriate in order to 'make sense'.

Gender-based Insecurity

As a postmodernist, I don't take labels very seriously.
Sometimes a label is an effective one-word protest at hegemonic ideas, and as such proves some use to me. Feminism is my label du jour.

Here are some things I do which can be affiliated with my version of feminism:

a) I don't shave my armpits, legs or genital area.

Why? Because I find the hair on these parts of my body acceptable. It serves the purpose of protecting me, grows naturally and, having tried shaving, waxing and even plucking, have decided that it's not worth the time. 

b) I don't wear make-up.

c) I watch non-aggressive porn on the Abby Winters site.

d) I blog about gender equality, contribute to discussions in various online spots where feminism-minded individuals congregate.

So if I examine how these relate to each other...

I watch pornography of women whose bodies are mostly hairless. I blog about not wearing make-up. It's refreshing to see women in porn without make-up, but alienating to find they have had their natural body hair removed. Apparently the most desirable kind of female body is still modified. I want to live in a world where women are encouraged to feel good about the hair they come with, grow into. I don't regard hair as some unwanted and unseemly sprout which I must meticulously conceal the tendency to hold. And yet, the mentality that women should go to all lengths to achieve an unnatural look which makes them more attractive continues to erode our collective self esteem. I'm not just talking about women's self esteem, but also men's. For what are men to think when they see women changing their natural states to cater for perceived male desire? It means that men are conditioned to desire the scrutiny which women subject themselves to. They are taught to find it valuable in a woman that she stigmatise a part of herself that she can't help but possess. They are taught to exacerbate the neuroses of the women who grow into them. It's a system of mutually enforced gender-based insecurity. Isn't that awful? But it can change, you know. If you want to know who can be an agent of change, look in the mirror.

A sound and space of one's own

When I listen to 'Dancing on my Own', 'Love Kills' and 'Time Machine' by Robyn, I'm fascinated by the way the lyrics and the music work with and against each other. I could say "the euphoric dance music serves to block or distort, or soften the punch of the sad lyrics" or perhaps "the repetitive rhythms offset the melancholy melodies" or allude to "a dialogue which ranges from the conspiratorial to the schizophrenic"... Did Robyn wonder how to reconcile the dejected narratives she was drawn to and the optimistic, wholesome aspect of her music orientation, and eventually decided to play them off against each other?

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Did you know that the word vagina originates from the Latin word for 'sheath, scabbard'? Germaine Greer offers an alternative word, and with it, a potentially empowering perspective.

Brene Brown on 'Listening to Shame'

One of the best TEDTalks I've ever seen... Sometimes I feel like everybody is just dancing around their shame - so unspoken, yet so inescapable.