Publicly Flaying the Flayed Dog

Oh, Odys.

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:34:32 GMT

The number one thing I don't like about having a dog is that my cat doesn't hang out with me as much. Because he likes my cat and wants to play with him and Nikos, generally, does not want. But today, shut up in the bedroom with presentations to write, notes to copy, and grants to prepare, the dog is out in the living room watching football with the boys. And my cat? He is stretched out on the bed right next to me.

The number two thing I don't like about my dog is that he does not know how to lie down on command. It clearly our fault (we don't take the necessary time to train him) but he is also far more obstinate than my cat ever was. He is also less easy to train with food because he gets so excited about it. My cat knows 5 times as many commands as my dog. What is up with that?

The number three thing I don't like about my dog is that he had two accidents today. He is six-months old and he rarely has accidents, but ... he shouldn't have any. Why, dog?

The number four thing I don't like about my dog is that, despite (what I think is) real consistency in leash-training, he still pulls when we are walking. I certainly can't trust him off-leash. And running is difficult, too (but more because of the occasional jerks than consistent pulling). It makes it harder to exercise with him and both Guille and I are getting less exercise now than before we got him.

The number five thing I don't like about my dog is my new theory that he is mostly NOT a border collie (despite what his foster mom suggested) but, in fact, a Smooth Fox Terrier (or at least that's the dominant breed). That's not good news for the long term safety of my cat, but despite his over-interest in Nikos, so far we've seen no behavior that suggests aggression.

Smooth Fox Terrier 1 Smooth Fox Terrier 2 Odys, my puppy

You'd think, wouldn't you, with all that to complain about that I would not like my dog at all. But I do. I love him. He's a snuggle bug and a lovey and energetic outside with good indoor energy. He's crate-trained and very good about staying out of off-limits areas (like the kitchen and laundry room) despite the fact that we have no barriers there. He does not bark except when Guille is trying to get him to and then it's more of a yodel. And I love him. Oh well.

Does this count as procrastinating?

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:00:22 GMT

I'm writing a paper that's due tomorrow at 2pm. It's 10pm now, and I am just really starting. Here's what I've got:

The rhetoric of teen pregnancy is a crucial site to examine race. It carries enormous emotional weight for almost all participants in debate on the topic and sex education (one of the major goals of which is to avoid teen pregnancy) is “deeply grounding when it comes to morality” (Luker 185). Teens are between childhood and adulthood, and are moving from being “at risk” to “potentially dangerous,” and the act of becoming pregnant is often seen as forcing that social transition. Thus, descriptions of pregnant teens are descriptions as passive as “children having children” and morally aggressive as “welfare queens.” Both of these descriptions are loaded with racial meaning, but it is a meaning that relies on a degree of flexibility that seems absent from biological conceptions of race. Instead, Stoler’s emphasis on the folk theory of cultural contagions (151) coupled with the idea that such contamination is never entirely erasable (Dawdy 150) provide a useful starting place. What they discuss indirectly, I hope to reframe here in an exploration of the role of aging in racialization.

Normally, this would all be erased by the time the paper got handed in, replaced by something that hung together a little better. But I just haven't had the time, so it may just make it all the way.

Wish me luck!

My poster is READY

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:36:02 GMT

I am a beast. I finished the poster I'm going to present at the SMAs. I haven't checked it for punctuation or anything, but it's done. I leave for Yale this afternoon.

That's two cartoons about sex ed, a Female Reproductive System, a chart illustrating my data and a pretty white poodle-like dog with toenails painted pink. Can we review one more time how proud I am of myself? Or maybe that's just 4:30 a.m. talking ...

Good night!

Anxiety Dreams

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:55:30 GMT

It used to be that when I got stressed out I would dream of driving a stick shift car in first gear in circles around a Takoma Park parking lot, just barely holding it from crashing, scraping the wooden fence all the way 'round. But now I own a stick shift car and I actually enjoy driving it FAR more than I EVER enjoyed driving a standard.

Last night my dreams were about hamsters. Because I leave for the SMAs TOMORROW and I STILL don't have a poster ~~that I'm happy with~~ at all, I tried to dream about sex ed so that I would wake up inspired. Instead, I dreamed I was going through my old stuff back in D.C. and I found one of my old hamster cages. I was about to empty it of the pine shavings when I saw something moving. It was, beyond all reason, a hamster. It had survived the past eight years with no one looking after it. I went to look for some food to give it and when I came back I realized there was another one. And then another. My three cages were overflowing with hamsters. I tried to separate them, knowing that two hamsters together almost always means more hamsters. But I didn't have enough boxes! And suddenly it became clear how these hamsters - some now massive, easily as big as the rats I owned in college - had survived the neglect - they'd been living off each other's flesh. Although none of them bit me, I just couldn't keep up with separating them, couldn't find enough places for them.

Then G called to remind me to stop hiding in bed from my work. Thank goodness for supportive husbands.

Lil Mama needs to go to allies 101, but my bro-in-law just graduated

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:07:17 GMT

Because I'm sitting here trying to read a friend's thesis and give feedback (omg, why am I such a friggin' slow reader of nonfiction?) I declined G's offer to join him in watching America's Best Dance Crew.

We had really enjoyed watching all the back episodes, marveling over the Jabbawockeez and excited about the presence of Vogue Evolution, a crew made up of four black men and one black trans woman. They weren't necessarily our very favorite dancers, but we liked their energy and we definitely liked their presence on the show. It seemed like Lil Mama, one of the judges was one of those people out to show off how cool they are by liking gay men, but there are worse sins.

Like, for example, when in the last show, Lil Mama took it upon herself to criticize Leiomy's femininity and to teach her how to be a real woman. While I could not be shocked, I was still SO disappointed. Leiomy's sitting there pissed as hell and all the boys around her are nodding and whatnot and I'm like, DAMMIT, NO ONE IS GONNA CALL THIS WOMAN OUT!

And they haven't, as far as I can tell.

But today, while I was sitting here and trying to read, I heard G and his bro talking about the show in the living room. And it was not G (who I expect such sentiments from), but his brother (the Iraqi war vet) who called her out. "'This is how to be a woman,' shut the fuck up! She was totally out of line," he said disgustedly.

And that was the moment I knew that he could live with us as long as he wants. :-)

[ETA: Thanks to my friends who help check my language.]

Life update

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:46:42 GMT

Life. It seems to be going pretty well, I think. There's some stuff going on work wise that is neither full of drama nor angst, but is still difficult. I think that's a good thing. School starts Monday.

Family is doing well, as far as I can tell. I got to visit my sister in San Diego over the weekend and that was very yay. That trip, obviously, also involved multiple instances of getting to be Auntie Sam, which is always fun. I have learned about myself that I am not the fun aunt. Despite insisting to Mason (my nephew) that he think of Jelly Bellies when he thinks of me, I think, instead, he thinks of a second-rate unbuckler of carseats and a really awful stroller-pusher. ("Mommy," the two-year-old darling announced to my sick sister upon our return from the walk to the park, "Auntie Sam is a bad driver.") The thing is that I really enjoy reading him picture books and letting him make me pretend sandwiches, but I guess I just don't have the energy to spoil him. I am a failure of aunt-ness!

It was nice to come home, though. Guille is sick, but nice, and yesterday I got to see a whole bunch of friends from school. I realized that I think I can actually count many of them as friends and not just mere acquaintances, despite the transitory nature of grad school peer relationships. Life with the puppy is going very well, too. He and Nikos get along very well so far (knock on wood) and play together a lot. Life in a house that I own is going pretty well, too. We might buy a new car on Monday, too.

work ethic

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:21:36 GMT

Dear Work Ethic,

Where did you go? When our relationship took a new direction last Fall, I realize things got hot and heavy really quickly, but I need you in my life. I mean, it doesn't have to be like before. We don't have to call each other three times a day "just to check in" and stay on the phone for hours talking about our feelings. But maybe we could still hang out?

I know things got a little stifling. We could have handled things better. Fine, I could have handled things better. But it had been a while since I'd done this while in school. We've taken a break now, and lied to ourselves that we weren't the whole time. But I'm in a better place now, and I think I can make this happen in a sustainable way.

Miss you ...

-Sam

Can you believe it?

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:46:12 GMT

I own a house and I am living in it.

Still no go

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:18:24 GMT

Still moving from house to house. Yesterday we signed all the paperwork to buy the house. Today we signed it a second time because they didn't like Bill's signature. It has to read "[G's grandma's name] by [G's dad's name] Attorney-In-Fact" on every line. Some of those lines were tiny and it went to the next line. That's why they sent it back. We were supposed to have MOVED IN last Tuesday. Since then we've been shuttling between friends' houses.

If the story weren't different every day ... or maybe if it hadn't appeared that we wouldn't get to buy the place at all last Friday due to a major money difference (that our agent messed up) ... then perhaps I wouldn't be constantly on the edge of tears.

Of course, on top of that, the owners of the house we've been staying in all year decided that they think that the house is in bad condition. I can't tell you how hard we worked on it. But the fact that they went out of their way to do us a favor and now they regret it, despite me and G's mom working so hard, just makes me feel sick.

And then I found out that Corinne died Sunday night. She was not a person who should die young. She was a person who loved life and laughed maniacally when things turned to crap because of it. She was light.

If I were in D.C., now is the time that I would say, "I give up" and run and spend the night at my friend's house no matter how much it left G high and dry.

Do not pass Go

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:44:07 GMT

It's 3:30 and with the help of G's mom the house is in really good shape to pass back to its owners. These owners arrive tonight around 10:00 p.m. G's mom (and dad, brother, and nephew) are in a hotel.

But wait!, you might say, why aren't they in the house that you closed on yesterday. Your new house with three bedrooms and that unfortunate wall that previous owners painted black? You know the one!

Um, yeah. We didn't close on it yesterday. For whatever reason (it involves paperwork, and faxing between Boca Raton and Tucson and G's dad having power of attorney for his grandmother and omg I am so glad G's the one taking care of that end of things), we had to wait. So now we're hoping to close by Monday. It's (remotely) possible it will be done by Friday. It's (depressingly) possible that it will take all of next week and into the next.

In the meantime, G and I are hopping from friend's house to friend's house (thank goodness anthropologists do their research in foreign lands every summer) and blessing our lucky stars that we made some friends here. Also for the graduate student listserv.

I am taking the next few hours to catch up on some ~~work~~ taiwanese drama. I am so tired that I sort of want to cry. I feel like I should tell people I love (e.g. dad) the new state of things, but I really don't have the emotional energy to engage in conversation.

On Being Prepared

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:16:21 GMT

I'm sitting in Bookman's. A NEW Bookman's, with a much much smaller (but more manageable) kids section. I'm not actually here for the kids section, though. I'm here because I needed a place near campus to work where I wouldn't have to pay for the privilege. Mostly I've done coffee shops where I pay for coffee, which is usually much cheaper than paying for parking by the anthro building. But it's too tight for that these days, so I was planning to spend the day at the library. But it turns out that even the library downtown makes you pay for parking after an hour. Bookman's however, has Wi-fi and tables and chairs and outlets and is 100% free. I <3 Bookmans.

Today is a little scary. At 1:00 I am meeting with some top people at my site. I had an almost disastrous phone conversation with the executive director the other day where she asked me lots of detailed questions that I stumbled a lot trying to answer. I am determined to be more prepared today.

My We'Moon '09 Gaia Rhythms For Women Datebook is now full of meetings, and I'm beginning to really feel like I'm working on My Research. But I'm still moving too slow to be able to accomplish all the different goals I set for myself this summer. I'm not really sure what to do about it. I can't NOT do any of these things ...

One day at a time, I guess.

Suck it up - an appeal to LJ-motivation

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:06:48 GMT

It's almost 3:00 pm. That means that I need to leave the house in an hour and a half to pick up Guille from work and go to the gym. I have been ready to work for the last six hours. I have accomplished nothing.

I have a lot to do. Here's a short list:

contact TOPS to make sure they're down with me doing research there
write a first draft of my IRB proposal (no pressure for quality, but it needs to be done, like, yesterday)
finish reading When Sex Goes To School. It's nonsense that it's not done yet. Like, really. I like it. It's an easy read. And I should have finished it two weeks ago to be on track with my independent study.
email The Unknowable Dr. S (henceforth, Tuds) and get her feedback on the research ideas. Also JRG.
email Ms. Red again. Hey, maybe this time she will actually have some advice about what I need to be doing with myself.
stop avoiding the SMA poster. (Ms. Red's question should motivate you to think of a timeline. Because really, if you put off your research, you'll just be here another year, but if you put off the poster, you will make an ass of yourself at your first professional conference.)
stop avoiding creating the Anthgrad Wiki. Because, really, isn't that a better way to waste your time than online Backgammon?

Okay! Great! So obviously the reason I can't get started is that they are all tremendously vague but monstrously important things. (Except the wiki, which is just so relatively unimportant that I can't bear to begin there.) So the obvious thing to do is to create small but achievable goal/steps.

But the thing is ... there are plenty of small steps and I'm just not taking them because what I REALLY need to be doing - getting the IRB so that I can start collecting data - is overshadowing everything. Like a big spaceship threatening to destroy Earth. Really, do you care about getting to work on time when you see a spaceship? No! Okay, that analogy makes sense in my head. I'm not going to worry if it makes sense to anyone else.

I'll let you know if this posting actually helped in a few days.

Avoidance, Alcohol, Academia Here I Come!

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:45:17 GMT

I had a massively unproductive day, intellectually speaking. I was supposed to be nailing down some general thoughts about my research, like, oh, why bother? But it wasn't happening. I was overwhelmed, and avoided thinking in lots of productive and unproductive ways.

Productive Ways:
+ folded eight loads of laundry
+ cooked lunch for myself
+ went for a morning run
+ showered and shaved my left leg (this is an incentive to shower again tomorrow and shave the right one)
+ wrote letters
+ continued Nikos' hoop-jumping training (okay, that's only minimally productive ...)

Unproductive Ways:
- read children's picture books! (OMG Shaun Tan is amazing. Like whoa.)
- watched three episodes of the Korean drama "My Girl" (and can I just ask: why do all drama heroines thoughtlessly step out into traffic requiring saving from hunky and disingenously disinterested heroes?)
- drank 3/4 of a bottle of wine

I avoided all day long, but the drinking began later. We don't normally have wine on hand, but I needed some for a recipe (BEHOLD: I AM COOKING!!!) and then, after Guille and I failed at the gym, we came home and hung out together in the kitchen. I don't normally talk about research at home, but I felt inspired. And, after a few glasses, I started talking about sexual citizenship and sensorial anthropology and thinking about "education" beyond cold cognition and BOOM! I was off to the races!

Don't get me wrong. I've got a long way to go (and the first round of the IRB is only a very early step), but this is still very exciting. Time to email some professors. Or maybe once the wine wears off a little more.

Discomfort about Racism

Sat, 16 May 2009 21:47:16 GMT

I feel like I have learned an enormous amount from the RaceFail posts. I have not engaged, except to occasionally thank people, because as I have watched other people make mistakes I would have made and be quite rightly corrected, I was able to understand the importance of just sitting back and listening, Of learning without burdening others with my slow steps.

But I face a dilemma. I am an academic, a grad student anthropologist, and I am writing papers and presenting at conferences. I have a responsibility to incorporate racism. I simply cannot sit back and listen, my career depends on me speaking up. And the big reason that this IS my career is because I WANT to speak up and make change.

That means that I'm going to try to make my slow steps public. It means that I'm going to try to benefit, professionally, from attempting to be anti-racist. And even though I am certainly not a white person whose social network is made up exclusively (or even predominantly) of white people, and even though there are WoC who write and work on issues related to racism who are helping me check my work, I am still painfully aware of how much of a novice I am in recognizing my privilege.

My problem is by no means a new one. Even though I'm not trying to speak for others so much as for myself and the world I want to live in, my failure, because of my privilege, will hurt others more than me. I am going to f* up, and I am going to hurt people in the process. And it is a fact of my privilege that I will be able to do this and it probably won't hurt my career. But the alternative, making my career about something else, is much worse. I feel called to educate. I feel called to make change for social justice. And I believe that it is my moral obligation (as a human being, as a Christian, as a future-mother of future-children of color, as well as my personal calling that I am morally obliged to follow) to make my life about this.

So, I am uncomfortable. As I should be. Discomfort is not fun.

--

P.S. Feel free to pat me on the back, this is MY lj, after all. However, if you're going to suggest that it's not a big deal that I'm going to hurt people, or that I shouldn't worry so much about my privilege, please refrain and read some of the amazing stuff by brilliant people on why that is not the case.

ETA: also feel free to disagree with me. Duh.

The Whiney Season

Tue, 12 May 2009 07:34:45 GMT

Yes, it's paper-writing time. I totally enjoy the researching part of it and I really really dislike the writing part. Getting all of the ideas in my head to lie flat on a page is never easy - I do much better with conversation/argument - and then organizing them into something that makes sense to anyone else seems like trying to decipher Linear A.

Luckily, this time around, I actually have something to say. And once I'm done, I'll have one more paper under my belt moving me closer to how to research and write about my real research interests.

Lessons Learned Spring 2009

Sun, 10 May 2009 23:16:04 GMT

This semester I learned that even when a professor tells you its too early to start worrying about writing their paper, it's really really not.

It's not that I'm a procrastinator (although I can be) so much as that I need time for ideas to settle, and for the crap to sift out of them. This is a lengthy process. The longer the paper, the more lengthy it is. A week is not long enough for the crap to fall out of a twenty-page paper.

Two Observations

Sun, 03 May 2009 18:59:02 GMT

1) The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication is an amazing thing and will hopefully help me make my ethnographic discourse analysis paper on livejournal worth reading.

2) There's no way in hell this paper will be done by Wednesday.

Ruminations

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:41:37 GMT

Sometimes I use LJ to think "out loud" about my research, about theory, about papers, etc. Mostly, I make such entries private, mostly because I don't want to bore those who follow my lj any more than I already do.

If, however, any readers DO want to read such ramblings, comment and maybe I'll reconsider.

Go me!

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:14:25 GMT

I went for a run this morning at 8:00am. I wasn't going to. I WAS going to attempt to do work, but probably actually screw around on the internet. But after reading another anthro blog, I was inspired.

This is the first time I've felt like doing anything healthy for weeks. Those of you who get personal correspondence from me will understand why. So it's big news.

Also, looking at this photo, I realize that my nose is bigger than I had previously appreciated. It's not a bad thing, but a little weird. I don't think it's my nose that's changed, just my perception of my own face.

And after that bit of inanity, it's time for work!

Poor me

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:08:02 GMT

Didn't get the NSF. Life goes on.

School is Cool!

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 04:44:36 GMT

Okay, so there's like a million awesome school things to talk about today. So awesome, in fact, that I have to list them. (A great opportunity for a pretentious list, too! Can this day get any radder?)

(adviser) I met with SS today. She is a total beast. I've been wanting her on my committee but she's been in the field all year and wants to KNOW ME before she jumps on board. So, I'm taking her class on Women in U.S. Health next semester.
I want her because these are the research interests she lists: Identity, ethnicity and community in health care; United States; HIV/AIDS; governmentality; access to health care; social movements; gender and sexuality. Did I really not immediately identify her as THE NUMBER ONE PERSON I TOTALLY HAVE TO WORK WITH?
And I read one of her articles on the "Politics of Recognition" and she talks about getting away from bounded notions of identity and "cultural competence" in health care and towards a participatory model based on reciprocity and getting target communities involved in their health care instead of some hierarchical, "here's what your people need" approach. And, can we just review? Her work is totally theoretically grounded AND applicable in meaningful (politically engaged) ways! *dorky cry of glee*
And when I met with her? I was totally cogent talking about my research!

(bootstrap bullshit) After that I went to a talk about welfare queens. That is, the scholar - a prof who opened by telling about her teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, and use of welfare - debunked a lot of the ideas held about what mothers on welfare look like. She presented all of these amazing women - most women of color - who fate had shit on, standing up and getting degrees and pulling themselves out of poverty. She challenged the problematic scapegoating of teen moms, and the awful oxymoron of saying teen moms are too immature to be welfare recipients (cuz they'll just spend it on fake nails) - it was all very relevant to the lit review I did last semester. The PROBLEMS were that she really didn't ultimately combat the problematic bootstrap myth, the neoliberal discourse of choice, that underlies all of this demonization of poor women. And she reinforced a couple of things about Latinas (specifically that Mexican American families don't want their daughters to be educated). But, she said some really important things about higher education as, economically speaking, the best route for gov't intervention for poor people.

(committee) THEN I met with SL, my prof in the History of Anthro Theory and told him about my secret intellectual idea about writing an article type of thing defending tenure. I have this whole thing in my head. With a little more cross-cultural research, I think it could be really good. And it would be very differet from my main research, which could be good for showing my depth down the line.

(dissertation) And then there was ANOTHER talk, this one about undocumented students, and making schools safer places. They basically compared the problem with "color-blindness" (that is, teachers pretending that their students "don't have a race" and thereby erasing their identities and their real lives) to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell approach to legal status. On the one hand, I'm with it. On the other hand, however, I think that community work has to happen alongside this, because getting kids talking about legal status with OTHER kids who might tell their Border Patrol mommies and daddies is not cool. Also, I have my doubts about school as a safe space for immigrant kids of color, regardless of this silencing of legal status. I mean, as long as gang involvement is linked to immigrant status and ethnicity, and as long as suspected gang members are being targeted for policing (e.g., "go home and change that shirt, there's too much blue on it!"), I doubt that creating spaces for students to talk freely about a (stigmatized) legal status is very helpful. HOWEVER, the idea that there should be an oath for teachers protecting them from having to share information about students that might incriminate them seems like a pretty good one to me, as long as it puts no other student in danger.

(ethnography) And so I've been thinking about my research again, and I'm pretty excited about it, but that will have to wait for another entry since this one's already too long!

A few thoughts

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:43:11 GMT

1) As the Red Queen said, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" When I got to sit in on a group of high school seniors in Rincon H.S. talking about body image, I was in total awe. They were talking about Bourdieu, habitus, and decolonizing language and body. They were doing surveys, taking field notes, and becoming involved in school policy-making. It was awesome. And there wasn't a blonde head in the room.

2) I'm getting really excited about Bakhtin. Especially the ideas that Kit Woolard develops about moving bilingualism to the center rather than relegating it to the margins. When I think about my own research, and why I want to be working with immigrant Latinas, this is a big part of why (metaphorically, since I'm interested more in expectations and norms and embodiment than language, and what I'm interested in re: language has more to do with stance than codeswitching).

3) I love this. I definitely want to be an anthropologist. I just wish that I could take the pace down a notch.

4) We may be buying a house much sooner than I expected.

5) Brain, Child is an awesome magazine, and makes me remember why - even with all it's massive problems - 2nd Wave feminism still has some good things to offer. (Which is not to say I identify as 2nd Wave, cuz there's just too much wrong there, but there's some lessons I think get lost in later iterations. I'm especially fond of the importance of over-representing in your personal life - and your teaching of children - what is under-represented outside.) I was especially a fan of the article on cursing like a sailor.

6) Ack! I have class in an hour and SO MUCH LEFT TO READ! LJ, you time-succubus.

From "Re-think Immigration"

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:12:48 GMT

This is the Cartoon of the Day from "RE-THINK IMMIGRATION: A Monday-through-Friday, non-partisan blog covering the most contentious policy issue of our time: immigration."

I heard about it from StudentVoices on Twitter.

Sick of medanth

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:15:48 GMT

The articles I am reading for medical anthropology this week talk about phenomenology of the body and they challenge the old mind/body dichotomy. They also make the very important point that this (Western) dichotomy may make it hard to write an experience-based ethnography of the body because we aren't so much used to thinking about, say, a bodyful mind.

One example was when the author (Thomas Ots) and his Chinese buddy (in China) ate a bunch of crappy food on the train. Author started to feel nauseous. At this moment, his buddy announced that he was feeling vertigo (or something close enough to that I'm not going to bother explaining), which makes more cultural sense (he explains in the article, but I'm not going to bother here). Author stops, and tries to feel vertigo and sure enough, he realizes that, along with the nausea, his head feels a bit muzzy. Eureka! They go through "identical" experiences, and emphasize different locations for the yucky.

The problem for me is that, when I woke up, I felt a little sick to my stomach (after reading articles like this until I fell asleep last night). Then, I felt hungry. Then I felt hungry and nauseous. Then I felt hungry, nauseous, muzzy headed and headache-y, and my chest feels full of energy. None of this is actually very bad, it's all low-level annoying and could very easily be what the author talks about re: psychosomatization of emotion (ie, I'm pissed that I'm back to 7 days a week of work, there's nothing I can do about it, I swallow my bitterness, I feel like crap). But you know, it could also very easily be that because I'm reading about this stuff, I'm feeling it. I do that a lot. It's part of why I like books. My mommy says I'm sensitive. ;-)

My prof keeps asking us: why the HELL do healers want to be healers? Being around sick people sucks. They're sick! And needy!

More and more I've been thinking about this and about the fact that I really am not so much interested in making my life about sick people. And part of the reason that I like doing stuff with sexuality is that - even though there is DEFINITELY some big bad stuff out there - sexuality is a great thing.

Anyway, I continue to think medanth is SO KEWL and I want to keep doing it. Even if it does make me feel like crap from time to time.

*Ots, Thomas. (1991) Phenomenology of the Body: The Subject-Object Problem in Psychosomatic Medicine and the Role of Traditional Medical Systems Herein. Curare: Anthropologies of Medicine, special issue 7(91): 43-58.

Ots, Thomas. (1990) The Angry Liver, the Anxious Heart and the Melancholy Spleen: The Phenomenology of Perceptions in Chinese Culture. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 14: 21-58.

Spring Break '09 is over

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:59:36 GMT

Spring Break - which was, despite my being fairly consistent about doing work, super fun and relaxing - is over. Dad and Trish are here (actually, at the moment they are at the Desert Museum) and I am attempting to write essays. I'm struggling. Derrida is not my friend. But Derrida is not the problem. The problem is that Spring Break is over.

Commiseration welcome in lieu of flowers.