a lot of things going on today, a lot of good things, true simple things. i'm trying to clear my inner landscape before the deafening clamor of the work week begins in what feels like an alarmingly short number of hours. i feel myself hurtling through time toward the grit of monday and i'm anxious. so i'm slowing things down, being deliberate, trying to be quiet and here, here now, breathing deeply because i'm learning that breathing grounds me. standing firmly and quietly within myself is a process, a years-long endeavour i'm not sure will ever be completed, and part of the process is talking about it. typing about it. writing about it. turning it over and over and over until, finally, the pearl.
{ listening }
i've been a little (ahem, totally) obsessed with music again lately --- i use it to express all the unsayable cluttered thought-motes constantly floating through my inner atmosphere. this constant swirling force of thought isn't a bad thing, but it can be overwhelming; it can feel impenetrable and obscuring. sometimes i need utter silence to disperse it, but sometimes i need music. sometimes that music is loud and obnoxiously poppy because sometimes standing up and bouncing around and yes, shaking it off is what i need. at other times that music is epic and swelling and intriguing and gorgeous, because it elevates my brain somehow and helps me concentrate, reassures me that there are great and beautiful systems moving through the world that are worth gazing at, worth trying to grasp and be taken up into.
the following album is the latter type of music. it's terribly beautiful and thrilling at the same time. it is just exactly what i need, and i stumbled upon it via one of NPR's playlists. a case of the interminable chutes and ladders of the internet working out, you could say. give it a listen only if you have some uninterrupted time to listen to it all the way through and if you aren't feeling twitchy.
{ reading }
i'm absolutely behind the times on this one, but after weeks of having "buy that book" on my to-do list, i've just started roxane gay's compilation of essays, bad feminist. i've only read the first handful of pages, but i want to share some of her initial thoughts. i'm looking forward to continuing with this book which feels extremely important, yet accessible too.
feminism has helped me believe my voice matters, even in this world where there are so many voices demanding to be heard...
i openly embrace the label of bad feminist. i do so because i am flawed and human. i am not terribly well versed in feminist history. i am not as well read in key feminist texts as i would like to be. i have certain...interests and personality traits and opinions that may not fall in line with mainstream feminism, but i am still a feminist. i cannot tell you how freeing it has been to accept this about myself.
i embrace the label of bad feminist because i am human. i am messy. i'm not trying to be an example. i am not trying to be perfect. i am not trying to say i have all the answers. i am not trying to say i'm right. i am just trying --- trying to support what i believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself: a woman who loves pink and likes to get freaky and sometimes dances her ass off to music she knows, she knows, is terrible for women and who sometimes plays dumb with repairmen because it's just easier to let them feel macho than it is to stand on the moral high ground.
[i] hope someday we will live in a culture where we don't need to distance ourselves from the feminist label, where the label doesn't make us afraid of being alone, of being too different, of wanting too much.
i am just one woman trying to make sense of this world we live in. i'm raising my voice to show all the ways we have room to want more, to do better.
music, books, french vanilla coffee and the promise of pizza and house of cards later as a final weekend indulgence. i'm filled with thanks for the life i live. i'm like a kid in a candy store full of beautiful sounds and big ideas. ta for now.
a big and beautiful sunday to you.
she
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