Ask an abortion provider
by V.E. on March 3rd, 2011
filed under beauty, favorite, health
This. Wherein an abortion provider (an actual, real-life one!) answers the questions:
Why?
What’s it like?
What about the patients? Like, who are they? and
What’s the craziest thing you’ve encountered?
And this:
I speak of my abortion as a positive experience… to save a seat for the possibility that this doesn’t have to be the worst thing that ever happened to you in your whole life… If you think that’s a bullshit line… think of why you’re a person who doesn’t want someone to do the best that they can under the circumstances they’re in.
(h/t Feministe)
She Walks in Beauty
by V.E. on February 27th, 2011
POEM: She Walks in Beauty
BY: Lord Byron (George Gordon)
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
(Photo: KLD and VED at Descanso Gardens on 26 February 2011. Photo credit: CBD.)
Penny Arcade: The Series, season 1
by V.E. on February 23rd, 2011
filed under beauty, entertainment, recap/review
Mike and Jerry, creators of Penny Arcade
NOTE: I am reviewing Penny Arcade: The Series without having watched the bonus episode, the deleted scenes sample, or the second season. That is, this review is about season 1, episodes 1-27 only.
I finished watching the first season of Penny Arcade: The Series in late August last year and am just now getting around to reviewing it because I want to watch the second season. But I can’t watch the second season without having written about the first because if I do write about the first season after having already started the second, the review will be influenced by the latter. So I’m writing about it now, damnit!
I don’t actually read the comic very often, except as it pertains to the behind-the-scenes series (as in the case of “The Fourth Panel”), and when someone else I know who reads the comic tells me to read a certain strip because it reminded them of me, or whatever. Anyway, the first season of Penny Arcade: The Series (PA:TS from now, on) was good. Each episode is a five- or six-minute segment “catalogu[ing] the victories and secret shames of the .jpeg business”, a cross between “day in the life at the office” and interviews of the Penny Arcade creators and staff. If you read Penny Arcade, you’ll recognize the names Gabe and Tycho, among others. PA:TS is a behind-the-scenes look at the webcomic’s creators, the people with whom they work, their families, and other things they do in relation to Penny Arcade, including Child’s Play and PAX (East). As was mentioned in one of the later episodes (maybe the finale), each part of the first season focused on an event—rather than day-to-day operations—highlighting, for example: Child’s Play Charity, company ping pong, or hiring a new employee.
Now sitting here in late February, a few things stand out to me. “The Fourth Panel” episodes are always a neat look into what it takes to create a comic strip from two people who do it for a living every day of their lives. (Don’t get me wrong, though, and don’t get them wrong: they love doing it. And they purposefully try not to think about their success too much in case they jinx it or something.) Mike and Jerry, the creators, are truly human; they love their wives, each other, and their kids, but they also have no qualms about cursing on camera or having tattoos. It’s refreshing that their 
success hasn’t gone to their heads as I suspect my (hypothetical) success would (should I ever garner any to speak of). Seriously, every episode is really worth watching: they’re short and sweet and get the point across nicely.
I think my favorite episode, though, is the one about drugs. In it, Mike and Jerry talk positively about their taking prescription drugs for depression and anxiety—something I can relate to—and Mike mentions his brother’s (illegal) drug use, overdose, and subsequent death which, he says, “really fucked me up.” While Jerry is very open and liberal about his past recreational drug use, Mike has never done any illegal drugs and is very against it. In speaking about his brother’s progression from addiction to death, he says about himself:
Mike: I saw what it [drugs] did to him [Mike's brother]… y’know I saw where he started, and I saw where he ended up and, uh, saw what it did to my parents and then, y’know, what it eventually did to all of us… and, you know, I know that it’s completely ridiculous to think that if I smoke a joint that I will then overdose on some drug and die, but… um—
Jerry: I think you’re allowed that.
Mike: Yeah, I mean, there’s things that happen in your brain that—like connections that get made that you just don’t have any control over…
Jerry: There may not be a pill for that.
(Emphasis mine.) And it—honest to god—made me cry, and it made me cry watching it again just now, because he just basically explained my relationship to alcohol. I know that it’s completely ridiculous to think that if someone around me takes one drink that that person will then become a monster and hurt me, but I think I’m allowed that, too, because it’s already happened. Sometimes, I hate that I’m so much against something that seems to bring other people good feelings and happy times, but for me, I just see what happened to me in the past. I think there was a connection made in my brain that I just don’t have any control over, and Jerry’s right: there may not be a pill for that.
I really liked that episode because I saw two successful people talk about the differences between prescription and illegal drugs and the affects of each on their lives. I watched them talk about their histories (and they looked uncomfortable for a while—who wouldn’t be with such personal feelings involved?) and was like, “Yes! This!” It made me feel like it’s okay for me not to like alcohol; I’m allowed to dislike hate it because I know the horror it’s capable of wreaking on people’s lives. I had similar reactions to other episodes when the two creators (and staff) really put their thoughts and feelings on the line because it showed me complexity; I don’t dislike like the comic, but PA:TS is pure gold.
In any case, I highly recommend Penny Arcade: The Series (season 1), and I am going to happily watch the second season now. Huzzah!
How To Be Alone
by V.E. on February 22nd, 2011
filed under beauty, favorite, writing
(This makes me happy.)
POEM: How To Be Alone
BY: Tanya Davis
If you are at first lonely, be patient.
If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.
There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.
Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid-being-alone principles.
The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and so they, like you, will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo dessert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back like a book of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself.
Society is afraid of alone, though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
You can stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one’s in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high schools groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relived, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
Take silence and respect it.
If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.
If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
“Valentine marriage”
by V.E. on February 17th, 2011
filed under beauty, favorite, lgbt, politics, spirituality
In light of everything that’s been going on my life recently, I’ve been thinking long an hard about what I believe. I know many things I don’t believe in, but up to this point those things have been amorphous blobs on the horizon in my brain; I disagreed with something someone else said, but I never really thought about why in a way I could articulate to someone who disagreed with me. Most of my arguments with boyfriends, etc., in high school and college were primarily rhetorical and/or I just became “too emotional” to properly put into words what I was trying to say.
Now, this is something I can agree with, and it gives me hope for my (admittedly dim) outlook on the Church of Latter-Day Saints. The vlogger, melodramatization, (re)posted this short video (only two minutes, ten seconds) on St. Valentine’s Day this year (transcript below). In the section underneath, she wrote:
I put this video on MormonsforMarriage.com during the Prop 8 debate. At the time, speaking out via this video threatened my temple recommend and calling, and I chose to take it down to protect my standing in the church. I regret that decision and put it back up as a tribute to the legend of Valentine: http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/2011/02/first-comes-love-then-comes-marriage/
Transcript:
(A white woman with brown hair in her thirties* wearing beige clothing sits in a beige sofa chair in front of a white bookcase filled with books. She speaks directly to the camera:)
*Not sure of her age; “in her thirties” is really just a guess
My son, Wally, came home from nursery this Sunday with this picture. (She holds up a picture of four children inside a heart with a child’s scribbles on top.) Underneath the scribbles, you can see four children of different ethnicities holding hands in a heart, and at the top it says, “I will love others.” Wally learned an important lesson; he learned the second great commandment given to us by our Savior: to love others as we love ourselves.
Pictures like these are the reason that I go to church, the reason we wake up early on Sunday morning, and drag our children, and fight them through meetings. I want us to learn that we love others; not just those who don’t look like us, but those who don’t believe like us, either. Wouldn’t it be cool if in that picture there was a woman in a burqa, a Catholic priest, or even a man with a cigarette? “I will love others.”
So why is this church, who’s taught me so much about my Savior, asking its members for their time and their money and their votes [to] deny other people marriage? And why should I not follow them? This question has caused me a lot of time—a lot of reflection, and I had to figure out who I really am.
I’m Melanie Selco; I’m a wife; I’m a mom of five; I’m a loyal member of this church. But, I’m also a member of the community at large, and most importantly, I’m a disciple of Christ. And that last characteristic is what makes me obligated to follow my own conscience on this matter.
I still believe in these pictures that Wally drew, and in the primary lessons we teach in the simplest form. I know my church as good intentions in this legal debate; I know they’re trying to protect marriage. But I think my marriage can only be protected as much as the marriage that is least respected in our society right now, and that would be a gay marriage.
My church tells me there’s a slippery slope for allowing gay marriage rights, but they don’t talk about the slippery slope of not allowing it. What happens if we give our government the power to decide who can be married based on morality? Who’s to say they won’t come around in ten or twenty years and say that my marriage is immoral, that they don’t like the church that I belong to, or that they think I’ve over-populated the world, or whatever their reason?
I want to decide what a moral family looks like for me and try and live up to that. And I think that loving others is allowing them to do the same.
As if that wasn’t enough by itself to make me believe again that people are good, she later responded to a comment on her blog entry about it. The comment was:
PLJ
Posted February 15, 2011 at 9:55 AMIt’s a decent video and I support your freedom of expression. Too bad you can’t show the same amount of tolerance for polygamists as for just about every other lifestyle on the planet.
And she responded:
Mel
Posted February 15, 2011 at 1:48 PMPLJ – I agree that polygamy is a difficult thing for people to show tolerance toward. You could substitute polygamous for gay in my video and I would stand behind it. Happy Valentine’s Day.
OMG I literally cried from happiness. My faith in humanity restored once again! Hallelujah.
More from PostSecret
by V.E. on February 3rd, 2011
Previous favorites here.
PostSecret.
Twas the night before Yuletide
by V.E. on December 20th, 2010
filed under beauty, spirituality
Twas the night before Yuletide and all through the glen
Not a creature was stirring, not a fox, not a hen.
A mantle of snow shone brightly that night
As it lay on the ground, reflecting moonlight.
The faeries were nestled all snug in their trees,
Unmindful of flurries and a chilly north breeze.
The elves and the gnomes were down in their burrows,
Sleeping like babes in their soft earthen furrows.
When low! the earth moved with a thunderous quake,
Causing chairs to fall over and dishes to break.
The Little Folk scrambled to get on their feet
Then raced to the river where they usually meet.
“What happened?” they wondered, they questioned, they probed,
As they shivered in night clothes, some bare-armed, some robed.
“What caused the earth’s shudder? What caused her to shiver?”
They all spoke at once as they stood by the river.
Then what to their wondering eyes should appear
But a shining gold light in the shape of a sphere.
It blinked and it twinkled, it winked like an eye,
Then it flew straight up and was lost in the sky.
Before they could murmur, before they could bustle,
There emerged from the crowd, with a swish and a rustle,
A stately old crone with her hand on a cane,
Resplendent in green with a flowing white mane.
As she passed by them the old crone’s perfume,
Smelling of meadows and flowers abloom,
Made each of the fey folk think of the spring
When the earth wakes from slumber and the birds start to sing.
“My name is Gaia,” the old crone proclaimed
in a voice that at once was both wild and tamed,
“I’ve come to remind you, for you seem to forget,
that Yule is the time of re-birth, and yet…”
“I see no hearth fires, hear no music, no bells,
The air isn’t filled with fragrant smells
Of baking and roasting, and simmering stews,
Of cider that’s mulled or other hot brews.”
“There aren’t any children at play in the snow,
Or houses lit up by candles’ glow.
Have you forgotten, my children, the fun
Of celebrating the rebirth of the sun?”
She looked at the fey folk, her eyes going round,
As they shuffled their feet and stared at the ground.
Then she smiled the smile that brings light to the day,
“Come, my children,” she said, “Let us play.”
They gathered the mistletoe, gathered the holly,
Threw off the drab and drew on the jolly.
They lit a big bonfire, and they danced and they sang.
They brought out the bells and clapped when they rang.
They strung lights on the trees, and bows, oh so merry,
In colors of cranberry, bayberry, cherry.
They built giant snowmen and adorned them with hats,
Then surrounded them with snow birds, and snow cats and bats.
Then just before dawn, at the end of their fest,
Before they went homeward to seek out their rest,
The fey folk they gathered ‘round their favorite oak tree
And welcomed the sun ‘neath the tree’s finery.
They were just reaching home when suddenly it came,
The gold light returned like an arrow-shot flame.
It lit on the tree top where they could see from afar
The golden-like sphere turned into a star.
The old crone just smiled at the beautiful sight,
“Happy Yuletide, my children,” she whispered. “Good night.”
————
via
Happy Winterthing, everyone. ^_^
