Critiquing shit you love is as important as critiquing shit you hate
June 2013
May 2013
Hi tumblr.
It’s been a while. I came back on here with a sense of having nothing better to do, as I’m sitting in a worthless class that I am enrolled in and barely giving the bare minimum to in order to bridge this one last step to getting my Bachelor’s degree. And it’s a sad and kind of sobering feeling to realize the passivity that I am approaching this last step of my academic career, but I’m learning to see that I don’t need to give everything my all and to be so… not aggressive, but active in my life, because I have realize there is a limit to the amount of labor I can give. Anyway. I’m here. And I’m speaking into the void, which is really common with blogging, I think. But something as trivial and choosingly mindless can be honest, too.
I’ve been attempting to catch up with friends that have fallen out of my immediate life, in a mutual attempt to remedy our neglect (or rather, our choices and veering life paths), and it’s been daunting to say the least to try and sum up what I have been doing this year, in a way to describe myself as anything other than a sloth (because emotional labor is not regarded as higher importance — I am guilty of this too). I’ve been getting steady work in theatre, especially without a conservatory program to rely on, and have been busy with academics and working to get a job that is probably not going to come through, and looking for more and more opportunities. And I’m trying to get all praxis (a word that I recently uncovered the meaning of, thanks to a dear friend [just realized how horrible sarcastic that sounded and I do not mean that at all], meaning theory and practice coming together) and wanting to not view my life in a progress narrative… because progress is looked at as linear and with an end, and I don’t want my life to be like that. I want my life to be an infinite multitude of different paths and options and schematic potential that will not help me create who I am ‘meant’ to be, but create different overlapping facets of myself that will ultimately just help me express the infinity that I am, and that we all are.
So. I’m doing a show a quarter. I’m running a performance group. I’m working. I’m finishing school. This is what I tell people, because this is how we all mutually accept an interpretive retelling of cumulative activity, in a way that actually has very little interpretation.
Great.
And I want to say more. We all do. Because “How are you?” has some of the most potential because we hear it all the time, but it’s also the most limiting — if you say anything other than exactly (or a variation of) “I’m good, how are you?” then it’s uncomfortable. Because honesty is also emotional labor, and we are all tired from the grind. And you don’t want to connect with everyone because that is also emotional labor that is more labor that people don’t want to put in anymore. And you can’t really blame anyone for this.
So, we keep going. And we keep it in. And we try to connect with a few people. And not to get all problematically neoliberal, but we are our own people at the end of the day. This mess that is our bodies and our minds.
And now that I’m here, I don’t know where I’m going with this anymore. But, I guess I am just trying to explain technological absence to no one in particular. And I guess that I would like to ask “How are you?”, because I really do want to hear you, and for you to know that I mean it when I want to present that option of honesty and vulnerability, but will absolutely understand if you don’t want to take that path. Either way, I hope you’re okay, but that it’s also cool with me if you’re not.
-t.
“I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they touched a woman’s body without her consent. After a moment of hesitation, all of the hands of the gay men in the room went up. I then asked the same gay men to raise their hand if in the past week they offered a woman unsolicited advice about how to “improve” her body or her fashion. Once again, after a moment of hesitation, all of the hands in the room went up.
These questions came after a brief exploration of gay men’s relationship to American fashion and women’s bodies. That dialogue included recognizing that gay men in the United States are often hailed as the experts of women’s fashion and by proxy women’s bodies. In addition to this there is a dominant logic that suggests that because gay men have no conscious desire to be sexually intimate with women, our uninvited touching and groping (physical assault) is benign.” —Gay Men’s Sexism and Women’s Bodies by Yolo Akili (via plightofthepretty)
These questions came after a brief exploration of gay men’s relationship to American fashion and women’s bodies. That dialogue included recognizing that gay men in the United States are often hailed as the experts of women’s fashion and by proxy women’s bodies. In addition to this there is a dominant logic that suggests that because gay men have no conscious desire to be sexually intimate with women, our uninvited touching and groping (physical assault) is benign.” —Gay Men’s Sexism and Women’s Bodies by Yolo Akili (via plightofthepretty)
April 2013
“
I’m an English major. It is a language of conquest.
What does it say that I’m mastering the same language that was used to make my mother feel inferior? Growing up, I had a white friend who used to laugh whenever my mother spoke English, amused by the way she rolled her r’s. My sister and I tease Mami about her accent too, but it’s different when we do it, or is it? The echoes of colonization linger in my voice. The weapons of the death squads that pushed my mother out of El Salvador were U.S.-funded. When Nixon promised, “We’re going to smash him!” it was said in his native tongue, and when the Chilean president he smashed used his last words to promise, “Long live Chile!” it was said in his. And when my family told me the story of my grandfather’s arrest by the dictatorship that followed, my grandfather stayed silent, and meeting his eyes, I cried, understanding that there were no words big enough for loss.
English is a language of conquest. I benefit from its richness, but I’m not exempt from its limitations. I am ‘that girl’ in your English classes, the one who is tired of talking about dead white dudes. But I’m still complicit with the system, reading nineteenth-century British literature to graduate.
Diversity in my high school and college English literature courses is too often reduced to a month, week, or day where the author of the book is seen as the narrator of the novel. The multiplicity of U.S. minority voices is palatably packaged into a singular representation for our consumption. I read Junot Díaz and now I understand not only the Dominican-American experience, but what it means to be Latina/o in America. Jhumpa Lahiri inspired me to study abroad in India. Sherman Alexie calls himself an Indian, so now it’s ok for me to call all Indians that, too. We will read Toni Morrison’s Beloved to understand the horrors of slavery, but we won’t watch her takedowns on white supremacy.
Even the English courses that analyze race and diasporas in meaningful ways are still limited by the time constraints of the semester. Reading Shakespeare is required, but reading Paolo Javier and Mónica de la Torre is extra credit. My Experimental Minority Writing class is cross-listed at the most difficult level, as a 400-level course in the Africana Studies, Latina/o Studies, and American Studies departments, but in my English department, it is listed as a 300-level. I am reminded of Orwellian democracy: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
” —Monica Torres, “Majoring In English,” The Feminist Wire 3/29/13 (via racialicious)March 2013
- end of essay: u feel me??
February 2013
me in class: wait what happened.... →
goo.gl
me in class: wait what happened
me in class: what do we do
me in class: what do we write
me in class: when’s the test
me in class: what is this
me in class: how do you do this
me in class: whatMy lovely followers, please follow this blog immediately!
January 2013
“For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it.”
—Audre Lorde
selling my vintage floral 1990s doc martens! →
etsy.com
Size 8 / 8.5 Excellent condition. International shipping available, just message me!
my dream is to create a brand of pads and tampons called “THERE WILL BE BLOOD” that’s non gender specific and is all black and red and the ads are just death metal and like everyone who menstruates just mudwrestling in blood and and punching republicans and everyone is all different races and sizes and ages some people have body hair and some people don’t and it just ends with the words “BECAUSE YOU’RE A BAD ASS MOTHERFUCKER”
Please.
Would buy.
sounds reasonable
Do you ever meet people where like
you just think… God I would take you. I would fuck you so. Hard.
What am I talking about, of course you do.
justin timberlake is back
destiny’s child is back
thank u obama
#a mitt romney presidency probably would’ve meant creed releasing a new album
or nickelback
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE IS RELEASING A NEW SONG
exercise
exercis
exerci
exerc
exer
exe
ex
ext
extr
extra
extra s
extra si
extra sid
extra side
extra side of bacon
I wish viagra commercials were as embarrassing as pad/tampon commercials. A bunch of guys coming up to their friend saying “hey buddy, we’re going to get some chicks and get laid, wanna come with” and this guy crosses his legs and puts his hands in his lap and whispers “I can’t” and then they all laugh and give him some pills and then this guy can poledance in a tram or a bus on the way to the beach, that sort of thing, I want to see that.
“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.”
December 2012
I’m so tired. And my heart is so weary.
“What’s the cure for sadness? she asked. And the other girl replied, There is no cure for sadness. You can take the pills and write your feelings out in a journal and that sadness may ease a little; it may even stop consuming your life so entirely, but it will never completely disappear. Like a ghost, sadness will always knock on your door, no matter how hard you try to prevent it from getting in.”
—Fragment 90 (via writingsforwinter)
“i just know
the more i gain
the more lonely it is
but when people grow together
its something that is not easy but is nice
and that is something” —dk
the more i gain
the more lonely it is
but when people grow together
its something that is not easy but is nice
and that is something” —dk
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who finds the holidays incredibly depressing.
- me half the time: i'm so insecure and so ugly ew
- me the other half the time: i'm flawless don't touch me peasant
Doctor Who Christmas special. wut. i
i just can’t
how
my feels
oh god
POND?
SHERLOCK?
AWESOME QUEER INTERSPECIES COUPLE????
IT’S TOO MUCH
I'm getting really tired of everyone's favorite book being either something John Green or The Perks of Being A Wallflower.
And then they’re like “omgah i luv reading eyem so edukated n quirky”.
awkwardly have 3 john green books and a reread of perks on my reading list
and there goes the pretentious people being elitist about literature again
cheese.
My guy makes me smile. And it’s been a while since someone could do that. He’s helped me see me for who I am: a smart, sexy, funny, sweet, fierce, passionate, and independent woman. And better yet, I have never had to change for him. He likes me for exactly who I am.
In short, he just makes me so happy.
