Selma - Choices

If there were some moments in the movie where I was tense because I knew what was going to happen, there were others where not knowing did not relieve the tension.

When James Reeb's name was first said, I knew it was familiar but couldn't place it. It wasn't until they left the restaurant and were approached that I remembered "minister beaten to death".

With Jimmie Lee Jackson, I am not positive, but they might have avoided saying his whole name until after he was dead. Honestly, I probably still would have been slow to remember. Because I didn't know, all of my tension was focused on his grandfather, Cager Lee.

I saw Jimmie's passion for the cause, but I also saw his constant worry for his mother and grandfather as they participated in the demonstration at the courthouse and then the walk. The whole time I was afraid for Cager, and then Jimmie was shot.

Before that, I was thinking that maybe it would have been better for Cager to stay home. Yes, he cared, and for people who were being denied the vote the demonstrations were one of the few available options to make your voice heard, but then there is this worry.

I was thinking about that throughout the movie, with no good answers.

The movement had martyrs, and that contributed to the cause. Observers were outraged, it gave a clear picture of the situation and the stakes, and yet looking at any case before, you aren't really going to want it. Cager Lee was the first person in his family to vote, but if you had asked him to give his grandson for that, what would he have said? Then what if you had asked him to give his grandson for the Voting Rights Act, where it wasn't just his vote, but everyone's?

Actually, I'm pretty sure he would have said "Take me instead". It's not even that you don't always get that choice, but often it isn't obvious that the choice is being made. When you are walking into a line of mounted police, you know there is danger, but just leaving a restaurant like James Reeb was doing probably seemed safe. Of course it was an integrated restaurant, and he was in town for that walk across the bridge.

Viola Liuzzo survived the march, and before that she survived her NAACP activism in Michigan. She died giving marchers rides. There were catcalls, but the march itself was over. It could have seemed safe. Sometimes you die just because of where you are in the church when the bomb goes off. You don't know what will happen.

But you never really do. You can just as easily die because someone was drinking and driving, or because your car looked like someone else's car, or you slipped in the shower. The only thing you can really decide is to live well.

That means different things to different people, but it shouldn't mean oppressing anyone else. It shouldn't mean supporting the oppression of anyone else. It should mean being informed about what's going on around you, and not blindly accepting the status quo.

I don't feel like I do very much, and what I do tends to be more for individuals than for society, but there is guidance, and I am trying to follow that. That is worth developing. Sometimes that guide will keep you out of danger, or lead you out once you are in it, but even if the danger overtakes me, I want to know that I was in a good place, doing a good thing.

Selma - Emotional Impact

I am wrapping up a week of vacation now, which I will write more about later.

Having some free time, I finally went to see Selma on Tuesday. I had a strong reaction to it that may have actually been multiple reactions. Since it is Black History Month, this seems like a good time to write about it. In trying to think about how to get everything in, I can't do it in one post, so then it gets back to organizational issues

I think the place to start is with the emotional impact. I had not read a lot about the film because I didn't want to be spoiled. I did know there was going to be a reference to the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing. It didn't help.

It happened early in the film. The way it was handled was perfectly placed. You saw the Kings preparing for and attending his Nobel Peace Prize reception, then the girls talking about how beautiful and fashionable she was as a start to their scene. After the bombing it goes to a meeting where one of the points made about the importance of voting rights was that if you are not registered to vote you cannot sit on a jury, and all white juries were continuing to acquit the perpetrators of terrorism and hate crimes like this. It was perfectly logical. It was also gut-wrenching.

I have seen the usual pictures of the girls, which I think are school pictures where they are in school clothes. I knew the four girls had died, but had more recently learned that another was injured. I also thought I remembered hearing "basement" somewhere. Somehow that led to a picture of girls in school clothes sitting in a basement, like maybe they were meeting after school.

No, it was on a Sunday. There were 22 people injured. I learned that later after realizing I didn't understand it. So when I saw one boy and five girls in church clothes - beautiful dresses, and so pretty - heading down the stairs, the picture changed. I realized it was coming. The boy turned back, and the last girl stopped, and it did not matter how close I knew it was, I was not ready for it.

I couldn't stop crying for a while, so if I am wrong about the next scene being King and Johnson meeting, that is why. It hurt so much to see it. It wasn't gratuitous, but it was enough.

One thing the movie did was remind me of the importance of seeing instead of just reading.

I remember once being out with a friend who was a young woman in the '60s, and she talked about seeing these things on television and how shocking it was. It was shortly after I read Abernathy's And The Walls Came Tumbling Down (I think that's why we were talking about it) so I had understood the strategic importance of being well-dressed and using passive resistance, and how that visual impact had been important. It is not the same as seeing it.

The movie showed that with the footage of the clubs and gas, but they also showed people watching on television, and I remembered my friend. One woman they showed weeping, and then volunteering, and of course that made sense that she would want to take action, but then I heard her say her name, "Viola", and there was that emotional thud. It was Viola Liuzzo. She was going to die from this. I knew something about her, but I didn't remember that it was the Selma march where she got killed. I will never forget that now.

I knew about the Edmund Pettus bridge, and John Lewis getting his skull fractured, but the image I had was of him in a hospital bed. Seeing him continuing to work with the back of his head bandaged was different. I read some comments from other people that seeing things in color made it different. Remember, there are a lot of people still alive who saw the original images in black and white.

There is a special impact that a moving picture can have. When it is put together in a strong narrative, it can be a very powerful thing.

If that leads people back to more books, that's great. There were a lot of people and names in Selma that don't usually get mentioned, but there is a lot more to know about them than the movie covered, or even could cover.

Selma reminds us that there is something there, and that it's important. That it is so timely doesn't speak well of us as a country, but perhaps that is just one more reason that there were so many tears.

Album Review: Fall Out Boy American Beauty/American Psycho

As long as we're reviewing new albums this week, I thought I might as well check out the new Fall Out Boy record, released January 20th.

I have a lot of love for Fall Out Boy, but the real reason I felt compelled to check it out is that the kids have been complaining so much.

The complaints have not only been about the music; there was even more fall out when the band announced they would be touring with Hoodie Allen and Wiz Khalifa, two hip hop artists. Fall Out Boy was not hip hop, so what were they trying to prove? Was this just a way to jack up ticket prices?

This was easier for me to deal with because when I was getting ready for the Keane concert I found out that they had collaborated with Wiz Khalifa, which seemed even weirder, frankly. Different artists collaborate with each other, and that's just a thing. I admit to having my own concerns about Pete Wentz going blond, which I blamed on Adam Levine. Actually, "Irresistible" reminds me a little of Maroon 5.

Some of the complaints were worse than others, and I am sure that there will eventually be a post on how weirdly possessive and controlling some fans can get, but this is just going to be my take on the album and the band.

One thing worth pointing out is that for Save Rock and Roll there were collaborations with Big Sean and 2 Chainz. Of course that record was all about the collaboration; other artists who were featured either on the album or in music videos included Elton John, Foxes, Courtney Love, and Tommy Lee. Taking the audio and visual together, it would be reasonable to conclude that for Fall Out Boy the answer to saving rock and roll was to work together across genres.

With the follow-up, PAX AM Days, they went in a completely different direction, a marathon recording session with Ryan Adams. Looking at the two together, that shows a commitment to trying new things. Being experimental has its downside sometimes, but it at least indicates a desire to fight complacency.

American Beauty/American Psycho isn't bad. It's different. I get the concern with that. Once upon a time when a band I loved released something new I would be excited, but then afraid to listen to it, because what if I didn't like it? (Now when I put off listening to something, it's usually because I have too many other things to listen to. There are worse problems to have.)

The first thing I need to say about American Beauty/American Psycho is that I am probably missing things. The title refers to two iconic films that were released a year apart. "Uma Thurman" has lyrics that bring to mind Pulp Fiction. I have seen none of these movies. There could be themes of the hollowness of the American dream, and they could be saying very smart things about it, and I do not know. On the plus side, this may align me more closely with the younger listeners, but I am surprised by how many teenagers have seen American Psycho.

There are other nostalgic references across the album. "Uma Thurman" references the theme song from "The Munsters", there is a "Tom's Diner" reference on "Centuries", and my favorite track, "Favorite Record" mentions Rancid. The title track has a layer of '50s feel, though it is more intense than actual '50s music.

While bringing in the Munsters theme as they do is kind of cheeky, in other ways the album is less playful for them, with fewer obvious euphemistic wordplay. Combining that with the nostalgia, it does make for a more mature record, in keeping with some of the themes of death and immortality. This is a more reflective Fall Out Boy, feeling their way around to their next steps. It's not The Black Parade level of profound, but that doesn't happen very often. It doesn't rule out them having that kind of an album in them.

I still think Fall Out Boy is doing interesting things, and it's worth sticking with them. If any band is used to fan complaining about the new material, it's them.

This does seem like a good time to quote Frank Iero, but there's really no such thing as a bad time for that, so here it goes:

“I like hearing what a band is up to when it’s not just writing a single. I think that’s when you get to really know what a band is all about. That’s when you love a band and not just the music. There’s a big difference between being a music fan, or a popular music fan, and a fan of a band. When you’re a fan of a band, you don’t have to like everything, but you have to follow them, because they know better than you do what their band is supposed to be doing. And when you do follow, and you do give it as many listens as it needs to have for you to like it or to appreciate it, then that band has opened your mind a little bit, and you’re a little better person because of that band, and that’s why you’re a fan of that band.”

Album Review: The Amplifires Life's A Gamble

One of the nice things about doing reviews is seeing the bands that you take an interest in go forward. I've recently been able to listen to new music by The Amplifires, previously reviewed in June of last year:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/06/band-review-amplifires.html

One aspect of the initial review that was frustrating was that while listening to the tracks on Reverb Nation I had the feeling that the sound quality was not accurately reflecting the music. I am happy to report that Life's A Gamble, released on December 22nd, sounds great.

That makes it much easier to appreciate the instruments. The funk on the intro to "Fat Cats" stands out, contrasted with the more classic rock feel of the title track. Perhaps bassist David Brunt had more influence on the first, while guitarist Steve Rawlinson played more of a role on the latter. Realistically, they probably all work together to achieve the sounds they want. You can hear both of them blending with drummer Sandy Mitchell on "Watching the Walls".

Previously the strongest memory was of Sharon Clancy's vocals. The voice is familiar, but with the clearer resonance of the instruments it stands out more. There is something spectral about her voice, and when combined with the earthbound accompaniment it brings you to the right spot. I feel like there is something very '70s about it, but at the same time, I think fans of Concrete Blonde should check out The Amplifires.

The band seems to be getting some notice on independent charts, so let's hope that is a sign of good things to come.

Life's A Gamble is available through Amazon and iTunes, and some proceeds will go to Love Hope Strength:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/lifes-a-gamble/id943245370

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_srch_drd_B00OG3CR6C?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=The%20Amplifires&index=digital-music&search-type=ss

http://www.reverbnation.com/theamplifires?mfg_profile_popup=true&utm_campaign=aprofile_mfgmodal&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link&utm_source=mfg_share_auto_tweet

Bad at sports

I just wrote an entire post and realized it was the wrong one for today. It was related, but it went off track. I'll save it for later.

All right, I kind of stopped looking at myself at 6. Part of going through the pictures is remembering that I used to like how I looked. There is a really early picture where I think I look like the Gerber baby, and then some later pictures where the head full of curls reminds me of Shirley Temple. There was a loss there.

There was also a loss of knowing my physical capabilities. I thought of myself as fat and not-athletic, but when I was in high school I would go on six-mile bike rides just for fun, and I didn't think anything about it. There was some actual fitness there.

I was not a great athlete, but I did play volleyball, basketball, and softball on church teams. I was never outstanding but I did make the occasional outside shot in basketball. Even continually running up and down the court requires a certain level of fitness, but I didn't see that.

Some of that went back to grade school. When we would do the yearly fitness testing, there were two areas where I would always fail. I did great on all of the others, and that should have meant something, but I was just more aware of what I wasn't good at.

Those two were the flexed arm hang and the distance running. I believe the distance running was for endurance, and I don't remember how far we had to go in what amount of time, but for the flexed arm hang I know it didn't matter how long you were supposed to stay up because I could never get up in the first place. I had the same issue with the rope climb, which was not a part of the testing, but I had the same problems with it.

I never watched "Dave's World" on a regular basis, but I did tune in a couple of times, and one episode had Dave go to the school for one of his sons. He ended up in the gym with a teacher telling him to climb that rope, which he had never been able to do. However, the teacher told him to grip with his legs and scoot his way up, and he was able to do it.

It never occurred to me to use my legs and my lower body. I was trying to pull myself up with my arms. I thought if you were strong you could do it, and I was weak.

It occurs to me now that there might have been techniques that they could have taught us for running, like what stride to use and how to pace yourself - because maybe you need to work up to being faster instead of trying to keep up with the kids who are already fast and burning out early.

I feel like we had a very Calvinist view of athleticism; you were either predestined to be good at sports or you weren't. Fine, some people are naturally better at things, but I took some coaching classes in college, and there are drills and exercises and things to become better at the things you aren't good at. I guess if they are cutting P.E. classes there is no need to figure out how to do them right, but it seems unfortunate.

The other memory that comes back now was from junior high. I used to be decent at hurdles, and this one year I did them on field day and I knocked over every single one. A friend of mine started singing "I'll Tumble For You" when I got back. It was bad.

It had not occurred to me that my body was changing. It may have thrown off my center of gravity some. Instead I just saw it as more proof that I was not athletic.

Some time ago I made some calculation, and I realized that the weight gain really took off after I turned 14. It is hard to tell, because in addition to avoiding looking at pictures, I also really avoided weighing myself, but there seemed to be a change there. At the time I chalked that up to puberty, because I was not yet admitting that the other thing that happened at 14 had a psychological impact.

It's not necessarily unrelated. Two of the changes that came with puberty were my breasts, which were sizable and well-developed at an early age, and that might be part of what led to the harassment that day. Steve went straight for my shirt, and other guys had shown some preoccupation with them before. Everything relates.

My point is that without being able to accurately see or appreciate my body, I didn't understand what was gong on with it, and I lost things that way. It's been a long time since I've ridden a bike. That may come back easily, but I've tried roller skating again since the time when I was good at it, and that is not the same. Running up and down a basketball court does not feel good now.

I can probably get some of those things back, but if I had stuck with things then, that would have been better. Lots of high school students do hurdles at track meets, and they probably had to readjust after growth spurts, but they found a way. I probably could have.

Also, it's just really important to know that your body is good.

If you have a body, you are an athlete. - Bill Bowerman

I had thought that next week I would write about some of the things that I started focusing on instead, but I may take a break to celebrate Black History month, even though I have not done this year's reading yet.

Losing touch with my body

As I write this, I am having to deal with my own shame about my body, and I know it has been destructive. There have been a couple of articles that have hit close to home.

http://blackgirlsguidetoweightloss.com/the-study-guide/is-there-enough-fat-shaming-in-the-black-community/

That one was disturbing not just on its own but as part of a larger trend toward fat-shaming infecting health care. Shame about your body is not helpful. If there is any group that is not hampered by it, do not work against that, and don't pretend it has anything to do with health and wellness.

The other one was still worse:

https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/mom-claims-school-fat-shamed-6-year-old-the-mother-110557012432.html?soc_src=mags&soc_trk=tw

It's not even kids on the playground; it's the school nurse. BMI is not great science anyway. It may not be completely useless, but I don't think it should be done on pre-pubescent children. Their bodies are still growing and adjusting at their individual paces, and this goes beyond ridiculous into evil territory. If the child is does have weight issues that need addressing, you can know without the BMI.

It hit harder because six was the age when it happened to me. I was also an active, healthy child, and I lost my ability to know that and hang onto it. The next two posts are writing about how that happened.

Everything that I had learned told me that fat was ugly, and I would use the word ugly to describe myself, or not attractive if I needed to be less blunt, because "fat" was so horrible that even saying the word was too emotional. The first thing that I did was stop looking in mirrors.

I didn't completely stop, because it was still necessary for brushing hair and some basic things, but they started being really quick and cursory glances where I was not really taking it in.

I did the same thing with photos. We would get school pictures back, I would look and see that they were ugly and quickly look away. Two years later, I would come across them and think they weren't really that bad, but this year's photos were horrible, and that cycle continued until I started hating pictures that were a couple of years old too, because I was so fat.

It is easy to believe that you are ugly, and easy to find reinforcement. In 4th grade there was apparently a boy that liked my butt. That was a weird thing, that I did not comprehend. In 6th grade there was a boy that called me Bubble Butt, and that I understood. Even in the past few years, when guys have hit on me (which has happened periodically) in my mind it indicated they had a fat fetish or something gross like that. It couldn't be real.

The thoughts that make it into your head are powerful. Being ashamed of them meant that I didn't say my worst fears out loud. Someone might have contradicted them then. I'm not sure if it would have helped, but I didn't really do anything to fight it. To be worthy of love and acceptance I was going to have to lose weight, and if you show an inclination toward that there is always someone willing to support you and offer tips, reinforcing that clearly you were right all along.

It is just very unfortunate that weight loss is difficult, and dieting changes you mentally. It's bad enough on its own, but when all of your future chances of happiness depend upon it, that's a lot of pressure for someone who has already learned to have a low opinion of herself.

Dreaming

The organization for this section of my writing is very difficult. There are a lot of layers, and they aren't even neatly stacked, but all knotted and twisted together. The insights have been good. Even just thinking about what to write this week I have made some connections that I hadn't before. There are just going to be a lot of detours along the way, and in some ways that makes it easier.

I have sort of an instinct about what to read when. One of the directions I have been led in recently is about dreams. I will probably write more about that later, but one reason it interested me is that I used to have more productive dreams, where I would get a lot of story ideas from them and insights about where I was in my life.

I had been in a rut lately, awake and asleep. All the dreams I could remember were about trying to get someplace and encountering obstacles, or having tasks to do that keep expanding. It's not that those dreams were not saying anything valid about my life - they totally were - but I was wanting more, both awake and asleep. I thought the reading might help me get unstuck, and there have been two dreams recently that have been kind of pertinent. I want to write about one.

I have written about finding one great friend in grade school and then a good group of friends in junior high. Things changed a lot in high school, and my friends changed too. Some of that was different activities and interests, but part of that was also just lunch schedules. It changed a little every year, but for a while I was eating with one old friend, one new friend, and a couple of people that I didn't love.

I still hadn't gotten into "frenemy" territory, because no one was doing any manipulation or power plays (or they went over my head if they were), but I didn't connect to the others as well. One of these was Michelle.

A memory that comes back to me periodically is that we were talking about marriage and how old we wanted to be when we got married and things like that. I thought I would be the first married because I was always all about that and the whole chastity thing. I said I thought I would be first, and Michelle contradicted me in a very knowing way.

She was correct - the people that I know of have all been married and I have not - but the smug way that she said it kind of bothered me, like she knew something I didn't. I would sometimes think that I should have asked why, and I had thought that recently.

Well, the night of the 6th, I dreamt of Michelle. We were riding a bus (public transit, not school bus) and we recognized each other so we were talking, but she had headphones on and she kept mishearing me. Everything she heard was insults. I didn't pick up on it right away until she repeated something, but then I was horrified and trying to correct her, only she kept the headphones on so it was not going well.

I went past my stop to try and fix it, quite a bit out of the way. I was trying to transfer to the MAX line to go home, and we ended up crossing the river into Sellwood. Finally she said, I guess as an explanation for why the communication was so difficult, "I am an unhappy and judgmental person." Then we hit the end of the line, and she was the relief driver so she left the conversation to go drive the bus. It occurred to me that I should have asked about that other incident, but she was already gone.

There are many things that I could see in this dream, and probably some things I am missing. I don't think I was insulting to her back then, but I do know that there are people I deal with now who take me wrong, and I think it is fair to believe that they are not hearing me right. It doesn't mean that I couldn't do things better, but there may be some points that it's not worth making.

That's just something I thought of now. What struck me then was that I do let other people's needs take priority over my own, sometimes pointlessly so. If she was that motivated to understand me, she would have taken off the headphones.

When I do this, I let other people set the course. Okay, I don't drive. That often puts me on the bus, I do run into people that way, and I am fine with that, but here she literally became the driver, and I was not.

I am working now with issues of communication, but also with issues of prioritizing my own needs. I know it has not been my strong point, but that was a highly visual representation of how far I can end up off course if I don't put my foot down.

The other thing that was nice was that it answered the question for me. I know that I have my insights now into how I got from there to here, including never having been married, but there was this thought that if I asked then maybe I would have learned something valuable. Now it clearly feels like a "no", she did not have any valuable insight for me. She didn't really know me or care about me, so she was not going to give me wise counsel.

The blogging right now is more about my past, and the things in my dream were really more about my future, for getting where I want to be (and for the present, for some of the things I am dealing with), but it all connects. As a person who was part of that time period that I am going back to, she was a good representative for the dream, but she also reminds me of what won't work going forward.

It works for me.

Band Review: Butch Walker

I started following Butch Walker on Twitter because of other musicians, but I hadn't been familiar with his music as all. With new album Afraid of Ghosts out this week, it seemed like the time.

That lack of previous familiarity makes it harder to know where to focus on this review. I listened to Afraid of Ghosts first, and it was powerful, but then listening to the rest of the extensive catalog was so different and so good that I'm torn. I'll still try, and maybe I can distill it into two moments.

The first was during the first listen on Afraid of Ghosts. Six tracks in "Bed on Fire" came on. I had watched the video for it a few days previously. Distracted by its unsettling imagery, I hadn't realized that the music had made much of an impression on me, until the first chord struck heavily. There was this visceral burst of recognition, "That's it!"

The second happened just a few tracks later. As the final track on Afraid of Ghosts ended, it was time for Walker's 2011 album, The Spade. The first track, "Bodegas and Blood" started and it was a jolt, like I had suddenly started listening to a different artist in a different genre. It suddenly became raucous and rollicking. It stayed more like that for the other songs.

I enjoyed both moods, but they resonated completely differently. The songs from 2002 to 2011 were fun and well-played and Walker has a good voice. It felt like mainly rock, but there would be touches of other things, like sometimes it would remind me a little of Hall and Oates or Third Eye Blind, and other artists who sound completely different from each other - not derivative but highly varied and a lot of fun.

In that sense Walker reminded me most of listening to Reggie and the Full Effect. They don't sound alike, but after all the variety you realize that this is a musician who can do pretty much anything he wants to do, though I think Walker comes off as less light-hearted than James Dewees, even though he is often humorous.

So to then switch to Afraid of Ghosts is a shift to a completely different place. "Still Drunk" retains some of that gritty humor, but in a quieter vein. Everything is more contemplative.

Only one track reminded me of any one else at all, in that "How Are Things, Love?" reminded me of "Sleepwalk" by Santo & Johnny, with moody slides and eerie twangs. There is a feeling that this is all Walker and it is his deepest core.

It is not surprising to learn that the album was influenced by the death of Walker's father, and a friend, and also you get some emotions from Bob Mould on the death of his father.

This is a very mature record, with a grown up looking at life and death. It is powerful and emotional that way. It may not be a permanent change, but it does feel new and it should be embraced.

Afraid of Ghosts can be ordered digitally from iTunes or on vinyl from http://butchwalker.gomerch.com/.

http://butchwalker.com/

https://www.facebook.com/butchwalker

https://www.youtube.com/user/butchwalker

https://twitter.com/butchwalker

Band Review: Better Things

Better Things is a band out of Burlington, Vermont. They list themselves as alternative/punk, but one reviewer heard some resemblance to ska.

I would probably just say rock, based on the strong guitars and the energy. There are some moody overtones that make the argument for being more alternative, but the overall energy is still high, like punk. It seems that the band made the correct call.

Better Things has a 4-track digital album available via Bandcamp, as well as another song, "Hindsight 20/20", for which there is a video. It was in watching the video that I noticed how effectively the band uses the voices of multiple members to give appropriate strength to the song. I believe their unity is the key to the energy they are able to achieve.

"Hindsight 20/20" may be their most traditionally rock song, but check out "Asphyxia" for the raw yearning.

These Roads Lead to Nowhere can be purchased on Bandcamp, and Better Things has several East Coast dates scheduled for the rest of the month.

I like them.

http://betterthingsband.com/

https://www.facebook.com/betterthingsband

https://betterthings.bandcamp.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVuIcJtQC3ueDKLTIImf4gg

https://twitter.com/betterthingsVT

Synergy

I have recognized the power of the two formative moments for a long time. One was "learning" that I was fat, and the other was learning that boys could only like me as a joke. What has been new to me is seeing how other factors contributed to my impressionability, and to reinforcement of the message. And, you know, actively trying to heal from it.

Anyway, once the message was picked up that I was fat and that was a problem, that was only going to be reinforced. The thin ideal female is held up as the standard of beauty for images used in entertainment and advertising, and there is a huge industry revolving around weight loss. That machine is there, and it would be very hard to miss it.

I want to explore the second lesson a bit more.

I don't think it is obvious now how much of a romantic and how relationship-focused I have always been. I was engaged to the boy next door at three. We agreed to get married when we were twenty and I kissed him on the cheek. Our families were friends, so even though they moved shortly after the engagement we still saw each other sometimes, and he was actually my first date the day before my sixteenth birthday.

(Sounds cute, but we really didn't have much in common at that point.)

I was always all about getting married and having kids. On one level, that was how I was going to fix everything that was wrong in our family, because my new family would make up for everything. I totally bought into fairy tales. I did not have a strong preference between starting as the princess or the peasant girl, because the important thing was happily ever after.

I always liked boys. Even though I was engaged to Shawn, I had other boys I thought were cute. When we moved and I started school, I was aware of boys there, and it didn't take long for me to fall for Casey. When that went wrong, it was easy for me to take comfort that Shawn was still out there.

Reasonably I was remembering that someone had liked me once, but also it did start a habit of always focusing on someone who was not around. It was safer, obviously, and it didn't feel like it was something I was doing deliberately. The feelings that I had for the person who was at another school or had graduated already felt real, but it also kept relationships very abstract and future.

I still liked boys a lot. In 7th and 8th grade I could have easily named 30-40 boys that I thought were cute, and that I had developed code names for with my friends. As much as I knew that I was fat and that I could not let boys know that I liked them, it still wasn't as terrible as it was going to get.

Before I get there, I keep thinking of two movies. I have never even seen one of them. It was a 2004 film called Sleepover. I read the review, which was not flattering, but the part I remember is that one of the girls in the film (it would have been geared to young teen girls) was heavy, and her friends told her that she just needed to find a boy that likes brownies, and she did! The review used this as an example of the amateurish writing, but I remember thinking it was wrong anyway, because if it was a boy flick, the fat boy would find a pretty (which means thin) girl who liked him anyway because he was funny or did something brave.

The other was from 2001, so both of these movies are from long after the events of this blog, but they illustrate something because they have fat girls. A lot of movies don't, and even plain girl just means that she is wearing glasses and has her hair tied back.

This was a television movie, Kiss My Act, a Cyrano de Bergerac story set in stand up comedy. I was still periodically doing stand up then, but the real attraction was that it starred Camryn Manheim and Scott Cohen, both of whom I had loved the year before in The 10th Kingdom.

I did find him attractive, and I liked her, but it hinges on them being able to be a couple, even though as a fat woman she cannot see it happening, and she does hide herself (she is giving jokes that she writes to an attractive woman).

Even though the whole premise of the movie is that she deserves love and she can have this attractive guy, it feels wrong at the end. The kiss is handled clumsily and it's not romantic. It feels like they are settling for each other. She even says "gross", if I recall, and it's a joke, but is it?

I bought it too. It did not feel right to me that a heavy woman could end up with an attractive man, though the reverse happens a lot. So actually, the bravest most subversive movie of my youth was probably Hairspray, though I did not see it then.

This is what I am getting at. When I was 14, and some boys started asking me out at lunch, and it was not to really go out with me but to make fun of me, it had the same sort of clarifying effect as that moment on the playground eight years earlier. Now I get it. Boys will not like me. And it made sense to put them together. Boys can't like me because I'm fat.

It was hammered home pretty hard, and it was painful because everything I wanted revolved around boys liking me. Okay, happily ever after only requires one boy, but if none of them can like you because of something so basic about you, it's hard to take.

When I disconnected from my body - which was more of a process than an event - it really seemed like the only possible course of action. Both of those crystallizing moments were based on lies, but I didn't know that. I did what I could to get by, and there were real problems with that. There were benefits too, though I like to think those would have been possible to get some other way.

I can only vouch for what did happen. And try and learn from it.

The message

When I wrote yesterday about things that made me receptive to the message that I was fat, it was specific to my circumstances, and those factors may be more important for how I dealt with it.

That being said, there are a lot of factors out there in the broader environment that are telling you - especially if you're female - that you're fat.

I don't think I really got the full message when I was 6. I mean, I got that I was fat, and I got that it was bad, but I had just learned to read. I was not reading magazines, I didn't watch that much television, and there wasn't the level of exposure that there would later be.

I know Mom dieted. I remember calorie charts and exercise booklets (that I would frequently refer to growing up) and times of going to aerobics and jazzercise. I don't remember diet pills, but I do remember a chocolate candy-like weight-loss suppressant that was actually quite tasty. This was unfortunate, because kids would get into them and eat a bunch. In fact, I believe one of my younger sisters did so, which may have been when we stopped keeping them in the house, but the real problem with that product was that it was called "Ayds", and when a frightening new disease with a very similar name was called that a few years later, it was a problem.

http://www.dietspotlight.com/ayds-review/

Actually, those things weren't so much about telling me personally that I was fat; which only takes being told once (maybe more than once, but it sinks in.) What it did reinforce was that no one wanted to be fat. Fat was a very bad thing to be, and since I was fat, that meant that on some level I was bad. Then fat being bad is what the media really reinforced.

There are many things that are sad about this story, but the worst may be that I really wasn't fat.

I thought I was, all along. That was the image I carried in my head from 6 to 21. Then at the Missionary Training Center they recommended that you have some pictures of your family to share because it helps people relate to you as a person, and not just as a missionary. I had not brought any, so I wrote to my mother asking her to send some.

I meant current pictures of the family, but I hadn't specified, and she sent a bunch of old pictures, including one of us up at Mt. Hood. I am about 6 in the picture, so that was when everything was happening. My attention was diverted from the camera to the snow in my hands, and I look remarkably angelic. 

I don't remember ever having seen that picture before, meaning it probably hadn't made it into one of the albums. That was not surprising, because we still  have lots of plastic bags full of photos. It did surprise me that I didn't look fat. I had become fat since then, but I thought I had just been staying fat.

That picture was important, but the more useful one may be my first grade class picture, where I can be seen among other children. I am in the back row, third kid from the right. I look normal. If I were to guess what someone would tease that girl about, I would guess the thick unruly hair.

My level of memory for this picture is remarkable. I have forgotten the last names of two of the kids, both of whom moved, but I still remember the full names of the other three kids who moved, and who went by their middle name and whose last name changed because of divorce, and who had a skin condition, and which kids were best friends. Some of that is because I knew them for longer than this year. However, I can safely say that after this year, I never knew how I looked.

Laying the groundwork

It seems like going over how I disconnected from my body, and why, is integral to writing about reconnecting, but I am finding it difficult. The initial circumstances weren't pleasant, but also so much of it is wrong and stupid.

Okay, some girls circled me on the playground and marveled over how fat I was - I know I am not the only person to have experienced this. I'm probably not even the only person at that school; I only remember Suzy picking on me once, and it would be kind of weird if that was her only foray into bullying. It affected me deeply though, and possibly abnormally.

I accepted their judgment of me completely. It feels necessary to figure out why I did that, but also it feels really self-indulgent like I am wallowing in the pity of being poor me, and I hate that. Bear with me.

I think there are a few things that worked together, and some of them are even things that I have written about recently, though I was not at the time aware that they would relate to this, but it all works together.

For example, I wrote about being discouraged from crying on December 22nd. I wrote that because the song countdown gave me a reason to remember the different incidents, and the song countdown felt like a reasonable thing to do. As I was doing that the natural progression felt like I should be going through old photos next, and I vaguely felt that it would be related to my self-image, but now it hits me that it is at least partially about looking at what I refused to look at.

So some of the roads I take may be annoying, but they all feel necessary based on my inner compass.

One thing I have written about before is my tendency to be a people pleaser and how that is related to a sense of shame. I can look back and see possible reasons that was my tendency, but I am not really sure. I have four siblings. We were all raised in the same house and same way, but they all have different issues and coping mechanisms. Is shame more common for the middle child? I have no idea.

It was impossible to be good enough for my father, but we all had that. There was a persistent sense that we did not fit in at church when we moved here, but we all had that. The only thing I can really see as possibly unique to me is that I did not socialize well, even before we moved. I was younger than most of the kids in the old neighborhood - not by a lot, but when you are young a year or two can make a big difference. The one girl who was my age was really bossy and not a lot of fun. I did spend time with the other kids, but I spent a lot of time by myself too. I have been told I had an imaginary friend, but I don't remember it.

I suspect that the early crying suppression, which I heard not just as "Don't cry" but as "Your feelings do not matter to us" may have increased my feeling that there was something wrong with me.

Based on that, it seems possible that the reason the playground incident had the impact it did was that I had known there was something wrong with me and suddenly it was like "That's it!" It was because I was fat. That was why people just wanted me to shut up if I was sad, and a boy who was my friend wouldn't want me to like him, and it was okay to be mean to me.

It finally all made sense.

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-week-of-sad-things.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/12/with-little-help-from-my-friends.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/06/please-please-me.html

Band Review: Late Nite Reading

Late Nite Reading is a pop rock band from Indiana. Listening to them has been good.

The songs are solid, easy on the ears, and leave you feeling good. (I have had some bands that have left me really irritated over the past couple of weeks, so I may currently be more sensitive on this point.) There is a passion and youth that you can hear in songs like "Writing On The Wall".

While some of their acoustic songs like "Just How I Do It" have the potential for country crossover, the band rests pretty solidly within pop rock. One good example of this is their interesting take on Foster The People's "Pumped Up Kicks". The techno elements are stripped away, and you hear the rock. There's nothing wrong with the original, but the cover is worthwhile, and because the original is there for comparison, it gives you a good feel for Late Nite Reading's aesthetic.

The band is currently augmenting regular performance dates with house parties, allowing some unique experiences for fans, as well as working on new music.

Worth checking out.

https://www.facebook.com/latenitereading/info?tab=page_info

http://www.reverbnation.com/latenitereading

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4KzkeMbMrA-cXlo0hABOig

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/walls-ep/id641259285

http://www.latenitereading.bigcartel.com/

https://twitter.com/latenitereading

Band Review: The Delaney

The Delaney is a singer/songwriter/poet in London. He is not my thing.

The singing is pretty flat, and occasionally out of tune. If often goes off-tempo, similar to Cake and I hate that about Cake. At one point I thought maybe this would work for fans of Joe Cocker, but I did some listening to Cocker to verify that and Joe is more fun.

I thought perhaps it was unfair to critique him as a performer if he is more of a songwriter, but he seems to perform on a regular basis. If the performance is not doing the lyrics justice, that could be an issue, but he has lyrics posted on his web site so they can be examined separately.

Those didn't really appeal to me either. I feel like they are trying to be witty social commentary without actually being that witty, and yet maybe if I were also in London some of it would have more resonance.

All of this combined makes it feel very self-indulgent. I can't rule out that I am missing something, but I cannot recommend. He does play guitar well.

http://www.thedelaneymusic.co.uk/

https://soundcloud.com/thedelaney1

https://twitter.com/thedelaneymusic

Getting back in touch with my body

When I was going through the exercises in Fat Is A Feminist Issue 2, it was mainly because they were in the book, and I felt that if I did not do the exercises I would be missing part of the book. (I did the exercises for Rozema's Behind the Mask also, though they didn't affect me as much.)

Somewhere in the process of all of the reading and thinking I realized that I was very disconnected from my body. I had kind of known it before, but I was past the point where I could ignore it. I had to do something about it.

I was very true to myself in forming a plan of action: I put action items into a spreadsheet, and when I wasn't sure what action items I needed I did a Google search.

That brought me to this page:

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-14660/20-ways-to-get-in-touch-with-your-body.html

It was helpful, but also the search started to automatically fill in "getting in touch with your chakras":

http://www.eclecticenergies.com/chakras/open.php

Every time I plan on going through that one I end up not doing it, but I can't quite write it off.

I am not actually done with my list, but it still feels right to start writing about the process now, and the first thing I want to say about it is that it can get kind of excruciating.

I am not at my highest weight now, but I am more aware of my stomach - hanging in front of me like a large lump of bread dough - than I have ever been before. My skin is dryer than it used to be (except for my nose, which is oilier) and it is obvious.

I used to be really good at shrugging off pain, but now I feel it more, and then even if my tendency would be to try and ignore it, I can't do that because the goal is to know what's going on. I used to be really good at pushing through things, and now I am aware of needing to drink and eat and sleep. (I am still quite productive, but I haven't felt invincible for a while.)

I have to be aware now that what I had tried to write off as sleeping wrong, but it grew to several nights so maybe it was the mattress or an injury that I had forgotten though it was weird that it was both arms, instead appears to be fasciitis, And that makes a lot of sense, because I have had issues with plantar fasciitis recently and I was diagnosed with fasciitis in in junior high, so clearly my fascia are not above acting up, but now I have to deal with it.

There is a warning here that if you are disconnected from your body that it is better to address that sooner rather than later. Age does not tend to improve many of the discoveries. Also, there are things that probably wouldn't have happened if I had never lost touch.

It is a very tangled thing. I was trying to shut down emotional pain. I still felt it, and I felt physical pain too, but I didn't grasp how much I was ignoring. I did not grasp how much they were connected. Still, my emotional pain was because of what I believed my body was, and that's what I was trying not to know; it would have been weird if it wasn't all connected.

Now seems to be the time to get into all of that: why I disconnected from my body, what it led to, and finding my way back. I know I'm not the only one, and so there may be something useful in this, but I guess I needed to start with the warning. This is physical and tangible and that includes the opportunity for a lot of enjoyment and pleasure, but it also brings out pain, which apparently you cannot make disappear by ignoring it. The pain has its value too, but it can be off-putting.

Life is not for the faint of heart.

Birthday Dinner - The Chinese Meal

When my birthday plans were karaoke chaos, I decided on it and sent out invitations in November. That seemed like a very long advance, but it worked out. This time I sort of made my plans in July.

One of the books I read for my long reading list was Fat Is A Feminist Issue 2 by Susie Orbach, and it had several visualization exercises, some of which were surprisingly powerful. One was "The Chinese Meal". Obviously you were visualizing being out for Chinese food, but there were various questions that were asked as to how the food was being served, and if anyone else there had food issues, and did you feel like you could have what you want?

Initially, I did not. I love Chinese food; my family does not. Even the friends I have who like Chinese food tend to like different things, so sharing isn't usually a real option. What if I wanted to have both a pot sticker and an egg roll with my entree? That could never happen, because you can't order them individually and no one else wants the same things, so it's too much food.

As I went through the activity I started to think, well, there is such a thing as leftovers. What if I just decide that this is what I want, and I am going to have it? If other people want to share, or not, that's okay. I started to imagine being with people I trusted, and also trusting myself, that I could have what I want, and neither short myself nor glut myself, and just be okay with it.

It started to seem feasible. I had not completely committed to it back in July, but as my birthday got closer I realized that seemed like the best thing to do - the birthday activity that would be the most helpful and gratifying. I started to agonize over dates and times and whom to invite, and then I just went decisive, picked 6 PM on my birthday at Jin Wah, and sent e-mail or Facebook messages to the people I wanted.

The lead up was more emotionally taxing than you might expect. I was going through a rough spot and that made some of the declines hurt more than they should have, I guess. That whole thing is probably something I am going to get into later. I thought many times that maybe I should just cancel the whole thing, but I didn't.

And then it was really wonderful.

I had decided that what I wanted to order one order of spring rolls, one of pot stickers, and an order of Peking Duck, all to share. The first two things are just things I like, but the third was something I had never had before, and it sounded interesting. For some restaurants you need to order in advance, but not at Jin Wah. Then everyone could have their entrees. If there were leftovers, fine, and if not that was fine too.

Peking Duck is a complicated dish, coming out one tray with skin, meat, steamed pancakes, sauce, and green onions, and another tray with the rest of the meat and bones. One friend had eaten it before, and was explaining it to us, but then one of the wait staff gave us a tutorial.

It was good, but then I read after that it involves force feeding, so I was thinking I could never have it again, but then also the dish normally is all skin without much meat, so I kind of wonder if maybe they make it with a regular duck, and maybe that is why they don't require special notice.

Everyone tried some of the duck, had one spring roll (out of four), and one pot sticker (out of six). Between those and the individual entrees, there was a lot of food, and a lot left over.

I was planning on paying for the three shared items and my entree, but I was ready to pick up the other three entrees too just to be safe. My friends split the check three ways, even though they had all brought gifts too. I objected, they insisted, and they won, and so I spent no money and had boxes and boxes of leftovers.

It was good before that, because even though I was the only common bond between the three, they got along well and talked and everyone was interesting and kind, and I needed that time with them. And I was safe and loved, and was able to get what I wanted and needed and try something new.

It doesn't mean that it will always be that way, or that it even should be that way. I mean, there is nothing wrong with only having an egg roll or a pot sticker or even with getting salad rolls because that's what someone else wants. This was my birthday, and so for that I was making it special and more than normal, which worked. It is very powerful to see that you can have what you want and it can be okay. Maybe for a lot of people they already know that, and it's not a big deal, but it was for me.

I suspect next year's birthday will be based on "The Ideal Kitchen" exercise, and it won't really be about the kitchen.