Done for a bit

All my little birds have flown.

That day again

I am Surrendering to gravity of the unknown

catch me, heal me, lift me back up to the sun

I choose to live

Vague

Can I see inside and find it?  Can I reach inside and pull it out? Can I look at it long enough to form the words? Can I commit to it? Can I be fearless? Can I make the decision?
Is this the time?

The little blackbird in my head is insistently pecking away, trying to chip its way free and fly. Fall is gently prodding with its frost fingers, nodding its hoary head. The scent of possibility is in the air. What does spring know? Autumn is the fullness, and the harvest. The new year. The richness of another beginning. I was born in the Autumn, a child of the equinox, and so my constant striving for equilibrium. I yearn for the fires and the magic. Come Mabon and Samhain. the mother is croning. We are moving into the time of wisdom. It is the twilight time, and Raven sees through the veil between light and darkness. Great Bird, whose image resides in my name, Let this be the time.

A Respectful Letter.

Dear Members of Congress,

Hi, it’s me, Corvid. It has been a while, so I thought I would drop a line to see how you were doing. I have been hearing a lot of things on the news lately about your plans, and I know I am just an ignorant plebeian, but I wanted to speak up and give you some encouragement.

It seems that you are having some money troubles and you can’t agree on how to fix them. Boy, do I know the feeling. Some of you think that cutting all that wasteful spending to scientific research will do the trick. Who needs science? Especially when 95% of scientists agree on that pesky climate change issue, and keep bugging you about it. Don’t they realize we would have to change our entire way of living? Just to save the planet?! I mean really, our kids can take care of that, right? And space exploration? Yes, I know that most of the technologies, especially the medical ones, we use today were in some way developed through the space program, but hell, we don’t need NASA to keep us at the top of our game! Dick Cheney got his heart pump, and THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS. Let’s just hitch a ride with the Russians... Maybe we can help them get to the moon because they were never able to make it there back in the 60’s when we did. Talk about international cooperation!

Some of you want to cut spending to those awful, socialist entitlement programs. I mean, what the hell was FDR thinking? New deal? Everyone knows Americans are dead lazy, and would rather live on the street and eat out of garbage cans than work a decent 9 to 5. Hell, I have been tempted myself. So what are you going to do about all these worthless freeloaders? And don’t even get me started on the old people. They should work, whats with this retirement crap?! Look, unemployment is at a record 9.5 percent and if you don't do something fast, all these freeloaders are going to drain the country dry scrounging for their handouts. CUT THEM OFF. End it all. Unemployment, food stamps... hell, if we cut off medicaid that should shave a pretty good chunk off the population. Just give the hospitals the right to refuse. The clean up might be a little on heavy side at first, but once all those freeloaders die off, we will all be better off. Survival of the fittest, right? Population and economic control all in one fell swoop. Way to go Congress! Are ya feelin’ me?

Deregulation of financial institutions is a great idea. They have our best interests at heart and would never take advantage. Right? And taxes for the rich? Haven’t those billionaires suffered enough??? COME ON! I don’t think they should have to pay any taxes at all. Hell, we should be grateful to them for... something... I’ll think of it in a minute. I got it, lets pass a new law. We will just pay THEM 25% of our income. Those poor rich guys need a break!

Let’s talk about schools. Teachers are lazy. So are the kids, for that matter. Like Michelle Bachman said, what kids need are jobs. PUT THOSE LITTLE FUCKERS TO WORK! They aren’t learning anything anyway, and who needs to know all that liberal, revisionist history stuff anyway? Throw the bums out. We would be saving a big chunk of change.

and lastly, 3 Trillion dollars on war is not enough. It gratifies me to know that you are cutting Nasa’s budget to the quick because providing air conditioning to the troops in Iraq costs more than the space program’s yearly budget, and by God we need those funds to keep our boys cool! This is the war on TERROR! We are making Iraq free, and hell, we can’t quit now. And as for Afghanistan... we will show those damned Russians that we can succeed where they failed. Just keep pluggin’ away, I say. It’s worth every red cent, and the 4474 American lives lost in Iraq, and the 1,769 lost in Afghanistan... but hell, that’s okay cause we showed them! We killed 1,455,590 of those ragheads, we got them 325 to one! HOO DOGGIES! THAT MAKES ME PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!!

So keep up the good work Gentlemen! You are good patriots and will do this country proud.

Love and kisses,
Corvid

Burned

<--- that's kind of where I am at right now. I don't really like to carry what is going on in my 3 dimensional life, to my digital one. Nothing worse than listening to someone go on and on about how their life sucks.

But one bad thing that having a hard time does, it screws up your ability to empathize. Empathy is really necessary to a friendship.

Not to mention the fact that I am a bad listener.

I think I pissed Sasha off pretty good today. I am good at that, it's my special power. I am sort of pared down to "take care of shit, just do it," mode. So I have a tendency to barf that all over anyone else who says "I am having a hard time."

I am an imaginer of worlds and a creator of personas. It is because I love to write, it's a passion. But it's also because my world, and who I am... who I really am. Well, not so great. I am sure there is a psychological term for that.

I do not regret what I said. It is where I am right now, and if I came to him, I would expect of all people, the unsentimental, truthful, blunt, unpolitically correct Sasha to give me straight talk, and then tell me to shut the hell up and get on with the business of making things work. But that is because that is who I percieve he is. Just like he most likely percieves a gentle and compassionate Corvid. We just got a small taste of reality.

This blog was not intended to be a forum for he and I to write about each other. We are just taking a small station break to figure a few things out. Regular programming will resume shortly.

To my friend. Sorry about that.

Since we are posting music.

for no one. And everyone. But mostly for Sasha and Maya.


Saw the gap again today
while you were begging me to stay
take care not to make me enter
if i do we both may disappear

Saw the gap again today
while you were begging me to stay
managed to push myself away
and you as well my dear
and you, as well
pushed you away my dear

I will choke until I swallow
choke this infant right before me
What are you but my reflection?
who am i to judge or strike you down?
who am i to judge or strike you down?
but your pushing me
and i'm shoving you
and your pushing me
and i'm shoving you

Rest your trigger on my finger
bang my head upon the fault line
You better take care not to make me enter
if i do we both may disappear
if i do we both may disappear

but your pushing me
and i'm shoving you
and your pushing me
and i'm shoving you
you still love me
you still love me
you still love me
you still love me
and were pushing and were shoving
and i'm pushing as your shoving

And i'm slipping back into the gap again
i feel alive when you touch me.
i feel alive when you hold me........down

slipping back into you
slipping back into you

i am somewhere i don't wanna be, yeah
put me somewhere i don't wanna be
push me somewhere i don't wanna be
seeing someplace i don't wanna see
never wanna see that place again.....

saw the gap again today
while you were begging me to stay
managed to push myself away
and you as well my dear
if, when i say i might fade like a sigh if i stay,
you minimize my movement anyways
i must persuade you another way
pushing and shoving and
pushing and shoving and
pushing me
there's no love in fear

starring down the hole again
hands are on my back again
survival is my only friend
terrified of what may come

Remember i will always love you
As i claw your fucking throat away
It will end no other way
it will end no other way.

What is 'it?'

Should I feel like an internet succubus?


I am Corvid. No really, I am.

I am also Krsna Hare, Krsna Samsara , Zeraphael, and Zera, and there may even be a little Maya in there too. But all these little pieces, these single streams, come together at some point and are part of Corvid, who goes by another name on the other side of the keyboard… but a crow by any other name is just another black, dirty bird, right?

I’ve used a lot of names. We’ve used a lot of names. We have shared some personalities. We are still who we are. Who we were.

I was Krsna, he was Neuro, the playground was Secondlife, or more specifically, a roleplay sim in Secondlife. We liked to talk, we liked to roleplay. There was drama and we got caught up in it, like you do.

Time passed. He came back. It made me glad. And really, after the intitial “hey, glad to see you, sorry about the bullshit,” we fell right back in like we had never stopped talking. He wonders how that could be. I don’t really question it. It doesn’t bother me. I am happy it did.

But what is “it?” What is it that makes us look for the little green online indicator? What makes us spend prodigious amounts of our free time in google docs, or google talk, or InWorldz?

I can’t speak for Sasha. He can speak for himself and contradict me or, most likely, tell me that I am over thinking things. I can only speak for myself.

First off, what “it” is not.

This is not love. It’s not romance. It isn’t lust. It’s not cyberperversion. At least on my end, none of those feelings are in play. I don’t think it is the case on his end either. He loves his wife, I like to listen to him talk about her, she sounds amazing.

So, what is it?

Can it be friendship? Can it be possible? We have never, and most likely will never see each other face to face. We haven’t spoken in any other medium than text. Our interaction is oddly comfortable and well worn. I imagine having dinner together, getting to know his wife. Watching his kids play. These things, I know, will never happen. But those are the things that qualify friendship. Does an online, text based interaction count? Is it destined to implode?

Is there a terrible consequence for friendship? Is there a price? Do we have to pay it? Or can we dine and dash?

Even our roleplay characters have a comfortable, if not conventional mesh. No matter who we come up with, they go well together, even if we are torturing them horribly. We both seem very interested in delving into uncomfortable places that are not easy to go, not easy to explore or commit to words. We have done this in the context of roleplay, and I think we are branching out from there. As Sasha has said to me… roleplay has too many rules. It holds you back. And He’s right.

The question why sits there, but I don’t have anything for it. I don’t know why we clicked so fast. I don’t know why we write about strange things. I don’t know what the future holds. I just hope he is there, in it, in some form.

I am being sentimental again.

One thing I like about Sasha. He isn’t sentimental, he doesn’t bullshit. He’s smart, and funny, and interesting. He makes me laugh and makes me mad and makes me think.

Who wouldn’t want to talk to someone like that? Who wouldn’t want to be friends with someone like that?

Corvid does.

Playground

I'm not Sasha. And she's not Corvid. We met a long time ago in a digital playground, where we played analog games, using names that weren't our own. We called it Roleplaying. Kids call it Pretend. We were other people and it was good.

We still do that. We write stories and shape make-believe lives, toying with conflicts between good and bad. Pretty and gruesome. I've been doing that since childhood and, apparently, never got over it. That could be a problem right there, but at least I get to mold that problem into a make-believe character. Grow it, twist it around. Exaggerate. It makes me feel simple in contrast. Safe, even when there's no reason to.

We haven't spoken in years, Corvid and I. And now we're playing again. I keep wondering why it is we went from 0 to 100 so fast and what the price of that will be. Because I'm sure there will be one. There always is. But for the time being, I'm having fun in this dangerous imbalance. It's a hell of a ride, even if I know it won't last. School's coming soon. And a change of jobs. The nights are just too hard, and I miss falling asleep with my wife. Even though I was never much good at that last bit.

We came up with a new story a couple of nights ago. Sasha and Maya - two junkies in a post-apocalyptic world. There is no romance in that story. There's plenty of pain, though. And fear. And self-abuse. I don't know, it makes little sense to me to project yourself into a stream of bits, just to shape creatures as miserable as those two. To cast them into a vicious environment and torture them in morbid games of survival. Make them lose their minds. It's something Real Writers do, and I can't say I am one. The process of writing, I just can't imagine it to be like this. There's too much burnout in this game for it to last a whole book. Too many haunting images, ideas, words.

I work a couple of hours drive from where I live, a thing which awards me with a lot of free time, alone. Driving. Just me, music, and haunting thoughts. So today, as I listened to the road's ever changing soundtrack, a few things clicked. And at the time, made me want to share. So I stopped the car at the nearest cafe and sat down to write.

I think I'll start with one for Corvid and Sasha, the digital personas. It's not really who we are... but in a way, it is. When we're in the playground.

Don't mind the video. There are no fancy visuals on the road. Only words, music, and delirious minds.

And here are the lyrics, translation courtesy of Google. It does sound better in Hebrew.

To sleep without dreaming
To sleep without knowing
To lie without thinking
To love without touching

Going to speak
A conversation without hearing
To whisper from afar
To whisper and run away

Airplanes pass low
Taxis return at night
From the north to the South
And I'm always below

To sleep without dreaming ...

The business of never forgetting.

There are two children. Sasha and Corvid, and they are friends.

 Sasha is from a rough neighborhood, he has been around the block a few times. He knows what it is like to take a punch. His people have been in that same neighborhood for generations.

Corvid comes from a nice neighborhood. It’s relatively safe and sheltered. She is secure, in a manner of speaking, and her family has lived in the same place for generations.

They meet on the playground everyday. They are friends.

One day, another kid from a rough neighborhood comes to the playground. He sneaks up behind Corvid, jumps on her, and beats her up. Then he runs away and hides.

Corvid cries. This has never happened to her before. She is scared, but most of all she doesn’t understand why.  Sasha isn’t too concerned, this kind of thing happens all the time, and Corvid should pick herself up, dust herself off, and get over it.

She keeps asking, “but why? I don’t understand why this happened?”

Sasha says he doesn’t know. It happens. Where he comes from it happens every day.

“But why?” Corvid says…

But why?

The more Corvid asks why, the more irritated Sasha gets. Why didn’t she understand, this happens? This happens to everyone else a lot more than it happens to her so why can’t she just shut the fuck up about it? All the other kids on the playground get irritated with Corvid. Why is she so special anyway?

And she still asks. “But why?”

For the past week and a half we have been going through the business of never forgetting.

We won’t “never forget.” It doesn’t work like that. What we need to do is ask why. And keep asking why, until we get an answer.

I wanted to write about 9/11 because it happened, and it affected me... and,  I didn’t want to write about 9/11 because I am tired of career politicians using it as a political weapon. I am tired of cable news commentators hyperbolizing it. I am tired of flags, and eagles, and heroes, and 9/11 commemorative plates with hand painted gold piping for only $9.95. Radio specials, TV specials, bad made for TV movies, etc.

 I thought of several different approaches, analogies, analysis. But in the end, I can only tell one story. My own.

The Event.  9/11. some men got on some planes, and they made the planes fly into buildings, and the buildings fell down. And a whole fuckload of people died.

People.

Regular people. Just people. Not heroes, just people.  3000 people. Moms, dads, kids, husbands, wives. People.

People, most of whom didn’t know much more in life than getting up, feeding their kids, going to work, going home, paying bills, doing homework, sharing dinner, going to bed. Getting up and doing it all over again. Just like me. They were just people.

Those people in those buildings didn’t do anything wrong. They were just like people all over the world, just trying to live. Just trying to get by.  Just people.

But their story isn’t my story.

The most indelible image of two skyscrapers burning and falling to the ground 1,800 miles away from where I lived, were of the people jumping from the top floors of the towers because they didn’t want to burn alive. I stood there, watching, because I didn’t know what else to do. I cried. I wanted to run, to catch them, to cradle them, to save them. I wanted to do something, but there was nothing I could do. I wanted to know why.  I cried out, “why.”

It is the same question that the women and men who run out into the street after a car explodes in their marketplace ask… as they cry, and press hands to wounds, and try to do something.

Why.  We all ask why. I am just an ordinary person living my ordinary life. Why?

The rest of it didn’t happen to me. I didn’t smell the smoke or have the buildings crash down on my head. I didn’t dig my hands bloody and stagger in exhaustion trying to save my neighbors.

My story went more like this…

It was an ordinary day. Then I saw the news and watched in disbelief. I was afraid and did not know what was going on. I had never heard of the Taliban. I did not know who Osama bin Laden was. We thought, at first, that it was an accident.

Then we knew it wasn’t.

My home town is basically a small civilian pocket in the midst of several military installations. On the day, and for many days after everything shut down. It all came to a screeching halt. The roads all closed, the bases shut down, and the civilians who worked on them were not allowed to leave, they could not go home to their families for days. There were armed soldiers everywhere. The major highway I used to drive 75 miles to the next town where I went to university was closed.

People were frightened, frantic. There was a strange, pervasive silence everywhere… as if we were collectively at a loss for words.

We wondered what else was going to happen. We wondered why?

When the roads opened up and I was able to go back to school everything was different.

The day before, I met with Khadija and Johnathon. We went to the little Moroccan café where they gave Khadija and all her friends the royal treatment because she was from their home town. Johnathon  would make sure that we understood he was Guatemalan, and didn’t do any of that Mexican shit. Julio, who was a basketball player and as loud as he was tall, had just converted to Islam the month before and was filled with excitement about it. He loved to come to the café and yell “Assalaamu 'alaykum,” in his big, cheerful voice. All the Saudi boys played endless football games on the mall, the kids from India and Sri Lanka sat on the tables in front of the engineering building and studied together. Professors from all over the world were teaching classes, imparting philosophies, exchanging information.

On coming back, Khadija was gone. Her family brought her home. Johnathon had tried to go home to Chicago, and was approached by security, thrown to the ground, frisked, and detained because he looked like an Arab. Professor Singh was assaulted three times in a single day because he wore a turban. The Saudi families had to go register with the FBI and report to them on a weekly basis. Julio never shouted his cheerful greeting again, he never went back to the mosque because he was afraid to. We were worried how it would affect business at the café and tried to patron it as much as possible, showing our support for a family who had been in the US for over 20 years. Suddenly, everyone was from someplace else. Everyone was different.

The ROTC Batallion at the campus did a tribute to the fallen. They fired a howitzer. I remember how everyone at the student union center fell to the floor when they heard it. It was quite possibly one of the most terrifying sounds I have ever heard. Later that year there were fireworks at the stadium across from campus housing. Instead of running outside to watch when I heard the BOOM BOOM BOOM,  I freaked out until I figured out what was happening.

These are the things I remember. Ordinary things. The things that keep coming back to mind whenever someone mentions 9/11. I remember the change. The difference. We lost something. We never thought about how easy and free we all were, and then it was gone.

When I was a kid, I liked to run. I ran over the grass as fast as I could go, and the world was big, and wide and endless with possibility and wonder. And I loved it. I loved the world, and I loved being in it. The world was beautiful.

On 9/11 strange men I never knew and had no understanding of, tried to take that from me. For reasons unknown to me. I still ask why.

Why they tried to take my freedom.

You see, freedom is not about national security, or the right to vote, or civil liberties. Freedom is not about symbols, or patriotism, or politics, or democracy. Freedom is not about what country you live in, what nationality you claim, or what philosophy you hold.

Freedom is running and running and never stopping, because the world is endless, and it’s beautiful.

When that comes under attack, we have to ask why. And we have to keep on asking why until we find out. We have to question it. Not just the crazies, the fundamentalists, the jihadists.. but the militarists, the nationalists, the religionists... all of them. All of them.

I will not lose my freedom. I will cling to it tenaciously. I will love the world. I will look at it with a sense of wonder. I will be hopeful. I will never let anyone take that from me.

I am Corvid. I am an American. I may be naive, but I will never stop asking why.

9/11. The mandatory post.

This is not going to be politically correct. Or nice. Or compassionate. I'm not going to hang my head in remembrance. I'm Sasha, I'm Israeli and I'm fucking fed up.

Ever since I remember myself I've been pumped full of our collective suffering. The Jewish people, the Israeli people - our romance with hatred, suffering and death goes a long way back. I don't have to explain antisemitism, since most people know what it is. Some practice it, a lot of them being from Arab origins, which are just as semite as Jews. Duh. I don't have to remind anyone of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as most people have heard about it, and to this day have no idea what it means, beyond "terrorist bombers" and "occupied terroritories". And all of this has absolutely nothing - and everything - to do with 9/11.

Ever since I remember myself I've been pumped full of our collective suffering. Our memorial day for the Holocaust exposes a whole nation to unfathomable horrors, inducing nation-wide PTSD. Things that can't possibly be grasped by kids are taught in our schools again and again, year after year. Graphically so. Sure, the content is "adapted" to something kids could contain... but that's little more than lip service. Genocide can't be adapted, nor contained. Luckily, it can barely be grasped either. But still, we keep trying to force feed it to our children. For the sake of remembrance.

The memorial day for Israeli war veterans. Exactly one day before our Independence Day, forcing a switch from recollections of war to celebrations and fireworks. And yes, it's that way on purpose. It might not sound like much of a big deal if it weren't for the fact that we all go through military service. We all wear the uniform, do basic training and spend 3 years (2 if you're a girl, 4 if you're an officer) - 3 of our best years - in the army. Again, not much of a big deal... except, like I said, we pretty much all do it. This means that all those kids who die in wars, terrorist attacks and whatever... they're us. People we know. People we served with, went to school with. Kids we played with in kindergarten or out in the playground. We force ourselves to remember them on that one special day, and then switch over to fireworks. Some might say "to remember what they died for". Others would "to forget".

And so we remember. Every year. And it's always there, hovering like a black cloud - someone died so you'd live. Someone died because they were just like you. Could've been you. Could've been your friend. Neighbor. Wife. Parent. Child. Same odds, really. Hell, if your family is from Eastern Europe, it was probably your grandmother. And her entire family. Oh, she survived the death camps? great! I'm sure none of that reflected in how she raised your parents. Now run along and listen to that memorial siren, m'kay?

So yeah, there's 9/11. And the world hangs its head. Not me, though. I'm done with this force feeding of collective sorrow. It's not the dead we're remembering anyway. Not most of us. It's our own fear of dying. Of losing our warm, fuzzy, safe feeling. Well you know what? I lost it long ago. And hanging my head won't bring it back.

I'm done with these fucking memorial days. At least till next year.

Vive La Revolution!!

This is Louise... well, this is Corvid, the picture is Louise. Louise stands outside a coffee shop on the main drag down the street from my house. Everyday Louise is dressed in different attire, exhibiting a different pose, and making a different statement... all the while with her Geez Louise Coffee cup in hand. Today Louise was feeling a bit naughty and dangerous. She wore a black lace thong, and a construction worker's vest. The vest had slipped to the side and Louise was showing a little more skin than perhaps she should have at 8am. I believe it was her response to Hot Chickalatte a few blocks west.   Hot Chickalatte is a shocking pink establishment, not nearly as classy as Geez Louise, with its green lettering and art installments. The roof is the pitched, alpine affair indicating a past life as a Der Weinerschnitzel, with a large glass service window facing the street. Inside there are several young girls in various assortments of bad lingerie serving even worse coffee. The construction workers don't seem to mind.

The young women stand out on the street hula hooping to draw in business, and Louise, being the savvy business manequin that she is, knew what she had to do.

For years Louise has thrilled us with her wardrobe, dressing in everything from Ghetto Fabulous, to Glitter Disco Diva. Her upraised hand a salute to us all, sending us on our way in the morning, feeling a little bit better for having witnessed her agressive fashion sense, and caffinated cheer. But then, when "boob coffee," as my daughters refers to it, moved into the nieghborhood, the sense of fashion whimsy turned into all out offense coture.

Out came the gas masks, and the pregnancy suits under polyester teddies. Rainbow clown wigs coupled with vinyl catsuits, combat boots and bikinis... the shit was getting real.

If the girls down the street could hoola hoop half naked on the longest main drag in the US, then Louise was going to do them one better... hence the shocking exspanse of skin in the wee hours of the morning. You go girl.

Now, of course, the nieghborhood continues to frequent Jeez Louise because it is a great place with fairly good coffee, and even better atmosphere... Boob coffee isn't really much competition for them.  Boob coffee appeals to a different crowd. Mostly men... the dirty, old kind.

But we all raise a fist in solidarity with our favorite fashion manequin and wonder what she will be wearing today, and what will it say...

Vive La Revolution!! Vive Lousie!!

Being a Woman...

Okay, the mom is me. And the baby is me. And this is me, by the way, as in... not Sasha.

So today's conversation consisted in large part in talking (or writing, more accurately) about writing. To sum it up in a few words I mentioned something about getting frustrated with writing. And he said "why frustrated?" And I said "ANGST!" (which is short for about 90 paragraphs of blithering comprised mainly of fear and self loathing). And he said -

So, essentially you are being a woman?

Now, I know that my female peeps out there (all two of you) look at that statement with a collective "WTF!?" but wait...

He's right. Yeah, I know, my first impulse was to rise up like a feminist version of Che Guevara amped up on yerba mate and Ani DiFranco. But, Sasha isn't really in the habit of being PC, and he wasn't trying to be insulting. So I put away the big guns and thought about it, and... he's right.

Now, why is that?

Well, lets look at growing up female in United States culture. This is just one account.

It's 1967, Lyster Army Hospital, Ft. Rucker Alabama. The blanket is pink, the teddybear is pink. The mousie is pink. I have been gender codified at birth. I will then be given, over my formative years, a laundry list of female appropriate toys. Babies with bottles, tea sets, play stoves and pots and pans and mops and brooms. All items meant to instill in me my purpose in life. In order for me to understand what is normal, I receive dolls with breasts bigger than their heads and waists smaller than their thighs, dolls which I am meant to dress in a variety of gowns, skirts, aprons, lingerie... all for the pleasure of the one male doll who came with this fashion harem. Oh, there are a few career examples with said dolls... waitress, stewardess, nurse.

I am discouraged by means of corporal punishment from expressing my opinions or displeasure, termed "talking back," by the elder women in my family who give me my gender education. I am discouraged from "unladylike" behavior. At the age of five or six my mother begins to scrutinize my weight. She begins to ration food like armageddon has rained down upon us and we didn't stock up like the Mormons. She measures ice cream to make sure I didn't sneak any. She disparages my failure to be thin. She tries mockery, humiliation, and starvation... all to no avail. I have failed in the first duty of a woman. I am not thin.

I am bullied by boys in school. There is no corrective action. I speak out of turn in class. I have corporal punishment used against me. I am learning the most important lesson for women in our culture. Shut the fuck up.

I fail math. This is not considered a big deal. I drop out of highschool in the tenth grade. This is not considered a big deal. Like 1 out of every 6 American women, my first sexual experience was rape. Like 44% of female victims in the US, I was under the age of 18. Like 93% of juvenile sexual assault victims, I knew my attacker. Like 60% of sexual assault cases, it went unreported. It wasn't a big deal.

My grandmother, however, went ballistic when I told her neighbor that I did not go to my highschool prom. "We don't tell people things like that. It's embarrassing." This was a big fucking deal. I have failed in the second duty of a woman. Boys do not find me attractive.

I am 15. My grandmother asks me if I am planning on being a nun for the rest of my life.

I am 16. My best friend is male. I stay at his house on a regular basis. My mother thinks we are having sex, but this is no big deal, because that's normal. What she doesn't know is that he is gay. It's the '80's. He has things a hell of a lot worse than I do.

I could go on.

What is the point of this?

The point is, we learn how to be women from our culture. Women my age were too young to actually participate in the women's movement, and still suffered the influence of our mothers and grandmothers who were taught that a woman's place... is a woman's place.

We look around ourselves and say... "Hey, this is America. We are free! We have it best!" but fail to realize that women have only had the right to vote in this country for the past 91 years. That women still do not get equal pay for equal work. That murder is still the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US. That there is still a glass ceiling. That in classrooms, boys are still called upon for answers more than girls. Stereotypes like "girls are bad at math" are still propagated.

Now, this does not mean that no progress is being made. There are positive statistics too... among my favorite are that American women are now earning more graduate degrees than men.

But what does this have to do with what Sasha and I were discussing? Because, this, I think, is what he meant by being a woman. Maybe not exactly, but to some degree.

 Men are taught to be decisive and not question their own actions or ideas. Men are encouraged to be aggressive, to take what they want, and to speak their mind freely. Not the case with women. We are taught to speak in the passive voice. To be ladylike. To not be argumentative. To not cause distress. We are taught to question our motives and decisions... our value. (and perhaps I should say "were taught," because I know many empowered and amazing young women. My generation of women has its struggles, but I think we can be credited for saying "fuck that!" and refusing to continue in the same vein.)

And so, when I try to write something serious, there are always questions. There is always struggle because I have a hard time believing my voice has a right to be heard. And maybe Sasha is right...

"Just write. And when you start "asking yourself" tell yourself to "shut up and write."

Imbalance

Sasha here. I'm not feeling very well. I've spent a lot of time on the road this past week, working not-so-late hours, but... somehow, by the time I got back home, I was completely exhausted. Then bathing the kids, dinner, putting them to bed. And either more work or studying. It's hard.

And then there's life online. I spend a lot of time here, telling myself it's what work and school demand. But that's a half truth. The other half is that it's easier than dealing with reality. It's a controlled environment and it's simpler. Plus, I don't have to do the dishes.

Not that I have problem with dishes, doing them is like zen meditation. But then, I do have a problem with dishes. Sometimes. When they're too real. If that makes any sense at all.

Corvid had this idea about us writing together. She seemed to have prepared a list of arguments to convince me, expecting me to say No, but I said Yes. I don't know why. Maybe because it simplifies our interaction, timezone-wise. Makes things more asynchronous. Allows me to cut back on my late-night online time, to sleep more. And not give up talking to her. Eat the cake and leave it whole. A perfect setup, right?

Every Saturday night this past month I've been attending these rallies, protesting against "the cost of living" in Israel. Things are pretty shitty, but at least people are waking up and demanding change. We march, tens of thousands of tired parents, students, minorities - you name it. Tens of thousands in Haifa, hundreds of thousands all across the country. We march for a few hours, demanding "social justice", and then go back home. It's late by then and most people head straight to bed. But not me. I logon and talk to Corvid. Or play these roleplaying games with her and a bunch of other friends. All in this controlled environment. We make up our own rallies, our own minorities, our own conflicts. Most of the others play supernatural beings - vampires, demons, angels. I always play simple people, shying away from grand battles of Good vs Evil. I play or chat for a while and go to bed for a couple of hours, eating my cake and leaving it whole.

Yeah... or so I tell myself.

Corvid, maybe you're right. Maybe there is no cake.

who are you calling PC?

Corvid here. Yes, this is my bright idea, and I think I just about have Sasha talked into it. If his words show up here, then we will know, won't we?

Why? I don't know. I guess because I like to write. I like Sasha. I like to talk to Sasha. I had an idea that I may like to write with Sasha. The rest, as they say, is a trainwreck.

I think this blog will have the potential to be fun, or mortifying. I will find out what he really thinks and be scarred for life, or it will be boring and we will drift off to other things. Or I will be a font of American Inanity and he will tell me what he really thinks and I will be scarred for life. Or his kvetching will get to me and I will tell him what I really think, and he will tell me what he really thinks.. and you know what happens next.

Maybe we will write about real things. Scary things. Hurtful things. Wonderful things. Ordinary things.

I am a little nervous about doing this, and very interested. I haven't nearly gotten a handle on Sasha yet. So much of the time he seems very much like me. We talk in the same language, we share the same ideas, we like the same things. But then a few words, just a few words... a phrase... and I can see that this is my own construct, and it's wrong. Not to say we are radically different... but in some things we are, well... radically different. It's strange because there is suddenly this wide space between us called "the world," and "culture," and "virtual reality," and,"life experience," and, "etc."

But I imagine he is someone I could be friends with. I imagine he is someone I would like to sit down in a cafe with, and drink coffee and argue and wave arms and gesticulate wildly. I imagine knowing his family, his lovely wife and children. Laughing. Friendship. I am sentimental like that.

I am hoping this will be about honesty.

I always stumble into these things with a child like sense of wonder and excitement. I have a feeling there is some lacerating wit out there just waiting to set me straight. I sincerely hope so.