I'm in love and it's time I came clean with it. I am absolutely and totally in love with my daughter's body. I mean, really in love, like can't stop touching it and looking at it love. It started in Brazil where we all lived out of clothes more than in them -and it has continued into Minneapolis summer. I notice that I am looking for opportunities for the children to get naked. Wow! Look! You can't see your breath when you blow out, let's take off the jackets and while we're at it, just strip down! What? Hang out in your backyard with your children? Do you have a little plastic pool that we can fill with water that will get all grassy and disgusting and then can the kids clamber in and out, naked and covered in sunscreen?
There is something about that unselfsconscious nakedness, about those muscles and that shiny growing skin, that just does me in. They are stunning. Completely stunning. And I am in awe.
We exchange pictures among friends - all of us sending links to our websites, attached photos, sometimes versions of the same weekend trips. There are often naked pictures in them, our children holding hands and jumping into the lake, into the slimy pool, resting in the grass. I can't help but think of Sally Mann, the photographer whose photographs of her naked children have generated so much controversy. And not only Sally Mann, but the photos siezed by Scotland Yard at the Saatchi Gallery because they were of naked children, the woman I read about a few months ago who was arrested when she tried to develop photos of her naked children. Most of the time I laugh at these stories - come on, people, there is a difference between pedophelia and loving your children. Lighten up.
But when I am smack in the middle of that intensity - watching Luca running and I can't take my eyes off of her and I can understand why some people might be afraid. Something primal or old, something that doesn't smell like baby powder or pastel colors comes up when I watch Luca twisting and turning, limbs splayed. I grew that, my little Petrie dish. In my body, that beauty grew. But it's more than that. Something aching about how life in its purest physical sense is supposed to be, without guile or self consciousness but purely with this turning skin drenched thing.
I do get a feeling that feels kind of like hunger, but a hunger that doesn't have a food to feed it. It's not a lost longing kind of hunger, just something deeper under the skin. And it's funny, because while I can watch the beauty of the other children in my life, admiring them, enjoying them, the feeling isn't as intense as when I watch Luca. When Luca dances, naked in the sun and without pretense, in some wierd projected maybe invisible umbilical cord maybe in misguided ego way, it is also about me. And I love it.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Starting massage school
Yeah, it's official. I am going to start training to be a bodyworker in the fall, beginning with a massage therapy course mixed in with craniosacral therapy. I am thrilled, elated, anticipatory...
And scared. It's a funny scared feeling. Lung-tightening. My partner, Raquel, keeps asking me why I'm scared. Most of the time I don't know. But I think it might have something to do with suspending the absolute hold I've let rational thought play in my life.
Meaning, I usually deal with strife by thinking through a problem, understanding a perspective, gaining more information, making lists and graphing out a solution. While I can't imagine giving up information junkiehood, I have been hungry for something else. I want something that combines that rational part of me with those places that feel unexplainable. Oh, shit, this all sounds so cheesy and I hate how absolutely cornball anything related to bodywork and intuition has become. Talk about a gendered conversation - don't mind the girl in the corner, she just wants to touch people and wander around their auras.
But I want it. Intensely. I have started to dream about it, to look for the seams in this world, this way of being, and to watch for where the seams start to get threadbare and open up to something.... cheesy again.
As I sat in my interview this morning, I looked down at my hands and noticed my nails. Kind of raggedy and long. After over ten years of living with a butch top, I've not even had to think about my nails. That was her job. Well, time to make sure they stay short again.
And scared. It's a funny scared feeling. Lung-tightening. My partner, Raquel, keeps asking me why I'm scared. Most of the time I don't know. But I think it might have something to do with suspending the absolute hold I've let rational thought play in my life.
Meaning, I usually deal with strife by thinking through a problem, understanding a perspective, gaining more information, making lists and graphing out a solution. While I can't imagine giving up information junkiehood, I have been hungry for something else. I want something that combines that rational part of me with those places that feel unexplainable. Oh, shit, this all sounds so cheesy and I hate how absolutely cornball anything related to bodywork and intuition has become. Talk about a gendered conversation - don't mind the girl in the corner, she just wants to touch people and wander around their auras.
But I want it. Intensely. I have started to dream about it, to look for the seams in this world, this way of being, and to watch for where the seams start to get threadbare and open up to something.... cheesy again.
As I sat in my interview this morning, I looked down at my hands and noticed my nails. Kind of raggedy and long. After over ten years of living with a butch top, I've not even had to think about my nails. That was her job. Well, time to make sure they stay short again.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
finally
Oh how it feeds my Leo soul to have so many people ask me why I haven't blogged in awhile. It makes me feel...sniff sniff... wanted.
I've been told I'm supposed to write about culture shock, returning to the US, reflections on Brazil now that we're back here, visions for the future, funny things that people have said, all of that. Considering that we still don't have an internet connection at home and, unlike my esteemed fellow bloggers who all seem to work government jobs where they sit in front of the computer with huge spans of thumb-twiddling time, I come to the internet cafe to WORK and PAY MY BILLS, I am feeling rather wordless.
So, because I'm watching the clock and have only 30 minutes left to finish this proposal for a NONPROFIT AWARD for lots of INNOVATION AND ADVOCACY for working with TRANS YOUTH (I hope that capital letters help this proposal) and I have to walk to pick up our new-old grandma car 98 Ford Contour thank you grandma in Ohio for getting too old to walk and thinking of me and mine and yes, we've sunk $400 in this car today even though it was supposed to be all free and clear of bugs, well, with all of that plus the fact that I promised I would make zucchini risotto tonight and it takes a while to grate a fuckload (here that, Vikki, it is a real measurement) of zucchini, well, I am going to be quick.
Let's see: Came back, no one had a meltdown, stayed with friends for two weeks while the renters moved out of our house, stayed with friends for longer while the housemate found a way to de-ick the frat house smell from the woodwork, couch, paint, dog's eyelashes, and yes I have now learned that the frat house smell is a mixture of stale cigarette smoke, stale beer, stale food, no washing and, stale pot, and oh yes, lots of incense to cover it up which then goes, yep, stale, but it got clean, still had not meltdown, went to Ohio to visit family and got said car from said grandmother who hasn't driven it in two years but it does have 66,000 miles on it and not 60 so it's not REALLY a grandmother car, and then came back, stopped at the Cranberry Expo in rural Wisconsin where we learned everything there is to know about the cranberry (information given upon request), came back, no meltdowns after 14 hours in the car there and back, moved into our house three days ago, are still moving in, getting rid of crap, we got rid of crap before we left but now after six months feel less connected to the crap that was left so now we're getting rid of more crap, hanging out with friends, it is BEAUTIFUL in minneapolis right now and did I still mention, no meltdowns?
Culture shock? At the airport in Chicago before we transferred to Minneapolis, everyone looked so AMERICAN in that tennis shoes, all clothes made out of sweatshirt material and baggy, that kind of look. Maybe it's midwestern but I see those people everywhere and on the record, I have never dressed like that. Tennis shoes for anything other than working out - ish! But I love my friends who do it. Culture shock: the first time I walked into our house and our friend's house, the warm color of the wood everywhere caused eye orgasms. Different from the glass and stone and clean lines of most of what we saw in Brazil. Plus, with a huge termite problems, not a lot of residential wood there. Culture shock: not much. Except for the size of people, the size of food ordered in the restaurant, that kind of thing.
We're all pretty adaptable. We've done this before. It's Luca who has amazed me. She has been seamless in her transition. Completely seamless.
Kisses until we have internet at home.
I've been told I'm supposed to write about culture shock, returning to the US, reflections on Brazil now that we're back here, visions for the future, funny things that people have said, all of that. Considering that we still don't have an internet connection at home and, unlike my esteemed fellow bloggers who all seem to work government jobs where they sit in front of the computer with huge spans of thumb-twiddling time, I come to the internet cafe to WORK and PAY MY BILLS, I am feeling rather wordless.
So, because I'm watching the clock and have only 30 minutes left to finish this proposal for a NONPROFIT AWARD for lots of INNOVATION AND ADVOCACY for working with TRANS YOUTH (I hope that capital letters help this proposal) and I have to walk to pick up our new-old grandma car 98 Ford Contour thank you grandma in Ohio for getting too old to walk and thinking of me and mine and yes, we've sunk $400 in this car today even though it was supposed to be all free and clear of bugs, well, with all of that plus the fact that I promised I would make zucchini risotto tonight and it takes a while to grate a fuckload (here that, Vikki, it is a real measurement) of zucchini, well, I am going to be quick.
Let's see: Came back, no one had a meltdown, stayed with friends for two weeks while the renters moved out of our house, stayed with friends for longer while the housemate found a way to de-ick the frat house smell from the woodwork, couch, paint, dog's eyelashes, and yes I have now learned that the frat house smell is a mixture of stale cigarette smoke, stale beer, stale food, no washing and, stale pot, and oh yes, lots of incense to cover it up which then goes, yep, stale, but it got clean, still had not meltdown, went to Ohio to visit family and got said car from said grandmother who hasn't driven it in two years but it does have 66,000 miles on it and not 60 so it's not REALLY a grandmother car, and then came back, stopped at the Cranberry Expo in rural Wisconsin where we learned everything there is to know about the cranberry (information given upon request), came back, no meltdowns after 14 hours in the car there and back, moved into our house three days ago, are still moving in, getting rid of crap, we got rid of crap before we left but now after six months feel less connected to the crap that was left so now we're getting rid of more crap, hanging out with friends, it is BEAUTIFUL in minneapolis right now and did I still mention, no meltdowns?
Culture shock? At the airport in Chicago before we transferred to Minneapolis, everyone looked so AMERICAN in that tennis shoes, all clothes made out of sweatshirt material and baggy, that kind of look. Maybe it's midwestern but I see those people everywhere and on the record, I have never dressed like that. Tennis shoes for anything other than working out - ish! But I love my friends who do it. Culture shock: the first time I walked into our house and our friend's house, the warm color of the wood everywhere caused eye orgasms. Different from the glass and stone and clean lines of most of what we saw in Brazil. Plus, with a huge termite problems, not a lot of residential wood there. Culture shock: not much. Except for the size of people, the size of food ordered in the restaurant, that kind of thing.
We're all pretty adaptable. We've done this before. It's Luca who has amazed me. She has been seamless in her transition. Completely seamless.
Kisses until we have internet at home.