These are very very delicious. I mean it, so, so tasty. They might be the only really good reason for Easter to exist. Well, that and time off work or school. I would definitely bow down to them, maybe even pray to them. Ok, not really. But anyway.
[the BYU (private Mormon-run university in Utah) Honor Code comprises the rules you have to live by on campus or you'll get kicked out of school]
I never really thought this would happen. I feel ambivalent.
Check it out.
But I do want to say, unequivocally, that I hate Provo. That will never change. Also I like the phrase "ecclesiastical endorsement" just because it's sort of fun to say.
Okay done.
Thank you for your thoughtful question, MNS (see preceding post). So as to give credit where credit is due I pulled "sie" (pronounced like "see") and "hir" (pronounced like "here") from Dean Spade's recent article in the Berkeley Women's Law Journal, "Resisting Medicine, Re/modeling Gender." Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Legal Resource Program, cited them from Leslie Feinberg's 1998 Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue 1.
Alternatively I recently found a quote by James Green, in an email to Patrick Califia (regarding trans activitism at the 1995 Michigan Womyn's Music Festival) which Califia used in his Sex Changes: Transgender Politics, using "s/he" which I've always liked, and "heesh." If I remember correctly, Green was letting the Festival's leadership know that Feinberg would make their discrimination public "in every public speaking engagement heesh does" if it continued.
Now forgive me, as I'm a grammar freak but may not use the correct terminology. I'm still not sure what a dangling participle is, though I'm quite sure I rarely if ever use them ;) But it seems the personal first and second person pronouns are safe - I, me, you - as they are not and have never been gender-differentiated. As are their respective possessive versions - my, mine, your, yours. And now I'm good with the basic third person - in sie, s/he, and heesh, if I'm reading them accurately. They overlap, yes? Third person possessive is probably my favorite with hir. But what about her/him? Am I missing it? I don't think I've found it yet, maybe I need to go back to the original Feinberg. Shim?
The bottom line: if I become interested in having myself referred to with neutral pronouns, I'll let you know. I have some internalized misogyny to work out before that time, if it comes. [God damn it.] But I think I will continue to use sie and hir in referring to unknown or generalized individuals. I prefer them to s/he and heesh because they are further from the gendered originals - s/he and heesh, to me, imply more that a choice can or should be made, whereas sie and hir feel more definitively neutral, identity in their own right. Which is the point. At least I'll do so as long as I remember. And, I guess, thank my lucky stars that I have the luxury of forgetting. And try not to forget.
Comments? I'm sure I'm overlooking some strange thing. Or not strange. Anyway.
Novelist Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84.
He died. I am very sad. He is truly one of my heroes.
I wonder if it was a blue tunnel after all.
"When I think about my own death, I don't console myself with the idea that my descendants and my books and all that will live on. Anybody with any sense knows that the whole solar system will go up like a celluloid collar by-and-by. I honestly believe, though, that we are wrong to think that moments go away, never to be seen again." 1974
Because words. Words are everything and nothing. They're all we have but they're not real. All. None. Our utmost connection and our utmost separation.
Not real, not tangible. Esoteric floating out in the air. Nonexistent and untouchable in space, in essence, not even real in energy. In the energy spent to write them, maybe, but not energy of their own. Random marks assigned random meanings that could have been any meanings at all but are the meanings they are. Words words words words words words words words words and more words words words words words words words.
Which brings me to connotation and how meaning is meaning but it's not the same; it's meaningless too. Like when as a kid you wonder if you're colorblind but realize you might never be able to find out, because if you see (what you call) red and somebody else sees it as (what you call) green that person will still have grown up identifying it as "red" so their red is your green but they're both called red and it will never make sense you'll never know what they're seeing or if it's colorfully similar to what you see. The meanings. The meanings. Not saying what you mean because the recipient of communication has hir* own connotations and you can't know them, not all of them. Can't know the memory that comes up when you say a certain word at a certain time. There's no communicating we are all stuck in our own world and even shared experiences have individual connotations, though you won't necessarily know it because what you call green is still what sie* calls red even though it's still green.
For his sake I really hope he's gone, gone and didn't have to go through the blue tunnel, because gone is all he always wanted to be, really.
and people who tell me it's not sad, since he had a long life and left all his writing behind, your optimism angers me. I don't feel like explaining myself, since it won't mean to you what I mean to say anyway. You make me tired.
It's not that I feel as alone as I sound it's just that
Well, it's just something.
*I decided to use gender-neutral pronouns today so work on it.
I suspect that my slowly growing social and political awareness is causing me to feel worse and also not better
Because of a distinct (distincly mine) lack of power
& what about when you're working your very hardest and doing you very best
but it's not enough
what about that
sometimes it's not enough. it's not okay
just because something has to be okay doesn't mean it is okay
what then
Is this nauseating up and down really all there is
Am I really supposed to be okay with that
