Words

Gossip is ugly.
Your words are a lie.
Feeble attempts to prove they know more about me than I.

My dignity is mine.
Words strike deep.
My composure and my reputation I am fighting to keep.

The tongue is a flame.
Read James chapter 3.
Think twice next time you try to demoralize me.

The actions of which you speak
Are the worst sort of dehumanization
Of me, woman, God’s prized creation.

Female, am I.
Male, are you.
Remember, I have dignity too.

Patience. May take up to 20 seconds.

So I'm on Facebook, "writing a paper" AKA wasting time doing the usual Facebook things. Then, the disclaimer on the page load read something to the effect of "Please be patient. Page load may take up to 20 seconds."

I laughed (alot) at the idea that Facebook was apologizing for making me wait 20 seconds.

I mean, I'm wasting time and doing nothing already, so what is 20 more seconds going to do?

This seemingly insignificant detail is proof of the fact that we have lost the ability to wait for anything. We want everything immediately. This could be due to the fact that the page that came up was not in fact worth the 20 second wait; but if nothing is worth waiting for, what's the point of living? What are we even living for anymore?

Take Lent, for example. I gave up sweets for Lent. I caved after a week like a Whitney to some crack. After I cheated once it became less of an ordeal and more of a small oops! I couldn’t think past the chocolate in front of me to the beauty of Easter in 40 days. So, needless to say, when Easter came around my excitement level was not where it normally was. The fact that I didn’t make the small sacrifices before, diminished my ability to fully participate in the glory of Easter. I couldn’t WAIT for something as small as sweets ruined the much larger, delayed celebration. Despite my twinge of regret, God still made Easter beautiful.

There are more important things in life to wait for than mindless web pages and chocolate cake but if we refuse to wait, they become much less important.

Music Abounds!

This is my current musical obsession

http://www.blogotheque.net/spip.php?page=cae_all&lang=fr

This site is really fascinating due to the eclectic mix of artists it hosts, along with the fact that not a word of the text on the page is in english. Due to the overwhelming amount of artists, I reccommend starting with "Tegan and Sarah" or "Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos".

Something Beautiful

I saw something beautiful as I stared off into space in the library.

There was an old little nun seated behind a large book she seemed to be studying for some important purpose. After many minutes elapsed, she shut the cumbersome volume and her eyes. She exhaled and slowly made the sign of the cross. She sat with her bony fingers tightly intertwined as if she was holding onto something with all of her being. I had never seen anyone pray that way in all my years as a missionary kid or in my entire time at this Catholic university. She prayed as if she were all alone with God, even though she was in the middle of a very crowded library. She didn't seem to be asking God for help with the book since she was finished with it. Rather, she seemed to be thanking Him for the gift of the knowledge inside. Her face, when she emerged from her prayer, seemed unwrinkled and young for a split second and I envisioned her as a younger form of herself as she calmly rose from the table to return the book to the shelf.

How often do we thank God for the knowledge at our fingertips?

In that moment, beauty was simplicity.

untitled.

Hi, I’m them.
Those people.
That problem.

Throw money at me so I can succeed?
No.
You’re not fulfilling my real need!

Accept me to college
Fill my head with knowledge
But the first thing we will all acknowledge:
I am a them.
Part of the they.
I hear that shit every day.
“Do you speak Mexican?”
“Oh, I love tortillas!”
“I bet your name is Maria!”

So maybe it is Maria...

But until you try and cure my so called ignorance,
Cure yours.
While you demand that foreigners learn what is it to be American
Learn what it is to be Mexican, Chinese, African, or Puerto Rican.
Educate yourself, beyond the bookshelf.

Try learning about me
Instead of dealing with my race.
Look me in the face
Misconceptions?
Those I’ll be happy to erase.

love the art not the artist

While watching the movie "Nine", I was not very impressed with the sheer amount of sluttly, scantily clad women and the image they portrayed of all women in general. However, as the movie progressed and the complaints of my movie partner increased I began to see the movie as a journey of the writer. To anyone but a writer, the movie is “weird” and “boring.”
The end product, which was the movie, could not have come to existance had the writer not transformed his life into art.
“My life is art.”

The fact that the man writes and directs beautiful films does not make him any less of a cheating bastard. However, his work is for sell not his personal life. Is the art less beautiful if it comes from an individual who is openly promiscuous, damaged, addicted, etc? Would the fact that something worth reveling in came from a less than perfect person make it more valuable? Does a flaw in the artist in turn flaw the art? But who isn’t flawed? We are all real fucked up. Some of us just hide it better than others. That is an art in itself.

So where is the value and integrity of the art? Within the creator or the finished product? I value Bob Marley, John Mayer, Andy Warhol, and Billie Holiday’s art. Their openly questionable lifestyles do not make their abilities any less wonderful and the art that came from these people touches a place within people around the world. So, love the art not the artist.

Art: love. passion. pain. sex. emotion. purity. sin. Heaven. God. Epiphany. Darkness. Revolution. Life embodied.

Resistance

NO-NO-NO-never.
I will not!-NO-never.
What am I fighting?
Pull. Push.
Scratching.
Kicking.
Dare I scream?

Scream, yell
till my voice is no more.
Go to hell, then
if you think I've the brain of a whore!

But is this true resistance
or is it
adolescent rebellion?
I could resist the urge to
Appall.
Act in haste.
Reject.
Renounce.

Speak, listen
till my heart isn't cold.
till my head isn't empty.
till I know who I am
till I don't need to be
don't need to resist
existing as...who?

Know-know-know-always.
I will know-always.
What am I seeking?
Stretch. Expand.
Growing.
Dreaming.
Dare me not to.

pretty ugli

I bite my nails.

It’s disgusting.

I realize I only do it when I’m supposed to be doing something else; studying, listening to a lecture or homily, talking to mama on the phone, or filling in the answers to a difficult test of quiz. If I am completely occupied by something else, my nails are safe from harm.

Biting your nails is like smoking a cigarette. You get a strange stress relieving feeling while you’re doing it, but then afterward you feel all icky and you regret it.
I’m staring at my ruined manicure, agitated with the knowledge that I will be spending time (that I don’t have) fixing it later and spending a week waiting on my nails to grow back.

Maybe I like biting my nails because I know I’m not supposed to. But biting nails, while on a much smaller scale, is like destroying anything. You feel great being a badass and doing what you want but then you look at what is left; jagged, ugly pieces of what was smooth and healthy before.

It’s so much more difficult to smooth over the messes we make than it was to create them in the first place. You’d think we’d learn our lesson.

Madd Movements!

Facebook is fraught with ways to avoid doing homework. Rather than aimlessly "liking" photos and status updates I found a large forum of thought in the This is what a Feminist Looks Like group.

Sifting through the differing opinions of feminism and I came across http://www.iamthatgirl.com/#/About_Us/.
The Bellist movement is one I am not at all familiar with. It seems to be centered around the idea of beauty and passion.
"We work hard, play hard and are unapologetic about looking good while doing both." The idea seems nice, but I am not sold. Why should it matter if you can change the world AND look good? Why not just do big things and not dwell on being pretty? Or on another note, if looking good is so important; why not just be beautiful?

Feminists for Life (www.feministsforlife.org) was also mentioned but did not receive rave reviews all around. It is the belief of some that being Christian and a feminist is impossible. I couldn't disagree more.

It is interesting to see the diversity of thought brought on by the word "feminism". The word seems like a sure way to begin a heated discussion.

Wow. Just, wow.

I am a regular reader of feministing.com, an extremely liberal/pro-choice web page. Though I do not agree with their ideas on abortion and a person's right to live, reading about the other issues from a feminist perspective is a convenient springboard for thought.

However, today's reading experience was quite different. Disagreeing with ideas and being disturbed by them are two very different things; and today I was most definitely disturbed.

This video is all over the internet. Things like this are what make young women believe they are invincible and that promiscuity has no consequences. Morals aside, being a stank ho is dangerous!

I don't need to say anything else. The video speaks for itself.

Just Be

"Be who you are."

What does that even mean?

Everyone, myself included, wants to be smarter, have more money, be better looking, be more athletic, or possess exceptional talents in the arts. I find myself going about my day doing everything within my power to achieve these ideals and realize, only when I am spent, that I have left myself behind. What about just being as I am? Striving for excellence is great, but being a different person is not an achievement; it’s artificial. The hardest thing to do is to look inside and pull out the best bits of yourself.

Being exactly who you are is a beautiful challenge. You cannot model yourself off another person or copy their tendencies. You are the only you; which is the beautiful part. You cannot be replicated, cloned and improved upon, or erased. You just are. We all just are.

Does being who you are condone becoming complacent? No, it means quite the opposite, really. Accepting the good, and bad, parts of your person allows you to be realistic in the areas in which you improve upon yourself and those you leave alone. Maybe I am a few pounds overweight. Maybe I suck at math and my work ethic leaves something to be desired. Maybe my writing only scratches the surface of an idea. These things are perfect opportunities for growth. Opportunities to grow into the people we should be are not to be ignored.

The plan is. Grow. Focus. Learn; but most of all, just be.

The Versatility of Woman

As i sat people watching rather than studying today, I had an epiphany.

We women have such a versatility in appearance. To be viewed as attractive, a woman may be short, tall, skinny, curvy, muscular, etc. However, attractive men are expected to be tall, muscular, and broad shouldered for centuries. Within the 20th century alone, the en vogue body type for women has changed over and over again-flat chested in the 20’s, more buxom in the 30’s, super skinny in the 90’s, athletic in the 80’s, and currently, either very curvy or super skinny. The idea of a woman’s body has changed with the fashions but male body expectations have and will remain consistent must be very stressful.

For a woman, there is hope that in the next decade or so, her body type will be the “it” look and that her day will come. However, for a short, shrimpy guy that same glimmer of hope does not exist. Not only that, but Spanx, Victoria’s Secret bras, and the myriad of inventions I have failed to mention enhance a woman’s body shape. Where is a man’s Wonderbra? There are no artificial biceps and pecs for them. Women do not just hide and enhance their body shape, but their face, hair, feet, hands, legs, eyebrows, eyelashes, skin-clearly the list could go on for days. We women can, to a degree, appear as we wish to be seen. However, men have to proclaim themselves just as they are. If a guy has a pimple, concealer is not an option. The pimple is there clear as day. High heels are not an option for a man or short stature unless he wants to face serious ridicule.

For men, being ridiculed for small things like high heels is almost too easy. If a man knows everything about the Versace spring collection rather than the score of the Super Bowl his masculinity is questioned, but a woman with knowledge in both of these areas is perfectly acceptable. The narrow spectrum of knowledge that is deemed masculine is quite constraining for all men. Besides the knowledge expected of men, personality traits follow the same pattern. The expectation to be strong, rational leaders makes a man's function much less versatile than that of a woman. While it is common for women to be viewed as submissive, the recent trend has been for women to emerge as leaders and rely less on their feelings.

There has been an enormous amount of focus on body and beauty issues within the female population; and while this movement has been very successful in raising awareness for women-what about men? Just as women want to be accepted as they are, men too need a little wiggle room. Let’s be a little more forgiving if a man doesn’t look like Hercules and can tell you when your jacket is out of season. He’s still a man, no?