Observations in this first week

So this is my 5th entry in the Blog Every Day in September Challenge and I've noticed some things.

First off, since I work for CUNY, this week had been very hectic. I've been busy all day every day with not a lot of time to goof off on the internet or even do anything creative until I got to lunch. And yes I do take photos during lunch. I also read and journal. But one thing I haven't done much of is Facebook. I've checked every now and again and maybe reposted something that amused me but I haven't been very active. I haven't been hanging out there. And I haven't missed it.

I spoke with my brother this week on the phone. I reached out to him instinctively to ask how he felt about babies and having children. We had a good long talk about it and I learned a lot. I also just had a chat with one of the younger faculty teachers here at my job who's wife had their first baby, a boy about three months ago. I can tell from the look on his face that he's still totally tripped out by it. In his eyes I can tell that he's still adjusting to the fact that he's a father.

In addition to committing to the challenge of blogging every day in September I also made a commitment to myself months ago to post a poem a week at my wordpress site, eternalista.com. So it goes without saying I have a lot of writing to do every week for no other reason than that I want to. There are other reasons of course and they will reveal themselves in time.

"The Conscious Parent" book continues to trip me out. I wish I had enough time to describe how revealing it is, not about the biological experience of having a child but about how being conscious about the relationship with your child is an acceptance of lessons that will expand your own sense of self and of life. It's crazy. It's scary. But it's also amazing. Because if you're open to it, you also learn how you got to be the way you are, what was passed down to you by your parents consciously and/or unconscionably that helped or hindered your development as you become yourself. This is the first parenting book I have ever read so I have nothing to compare it to but it is definitely one of the best books I've read this Summer. And yes I know it's officially September but I reject the idea that Summer is over with all my being. I'm wearing a halter dress and sandals and my hair in a bun. It's hot and humid out. Sorry September.

Yesterday was payday and as much I probably need to shop for Winter things, the last place I wanna be is in anybody's store with throngs of hot, frustrated, dissatisfied bodies looking at size tags and price tags. I just want to be on the grass. Or in a Museum. I'll let you know how that works out.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Selfie Pleasure

Go google selfie now

Let me tread lightly to begin here. The definition of a selfie as we are most familiar with it is a handheld arms length photo usually taken with a cell phone camera. I haven't done any research or looked up any studies but I'm gonna make a bet that females make up a larger percentage of selfie takers than men just because...you know, society is obsessed with our appearance on a level that far surpasses the obsession with how men look.

Okay, so I started taking photos of myself for the first time as a teenager. This was before cell phones or digital technology. I was old school with a Nikon film camera and a tripod handed down to me by my dad. Every woman has a unique relationship to her reflection, to her appearance. I can only speak to mine. I had no desire at the time to share any of these photographs with anyone except maybe my closest peers and even then I never took photos of myself to be seen by anyone but me. It just never occurred to me. I took them, had them printed and looked at them and sometimes put them up in my room. I was looking at many things when I looked at these pre digital age selfies. I was scrutinizing, admiring, making choices. Most of my photos of myself were taken by my dad who was and is the photographer in my family. Having the opportunity to turn the camera on myself as a teenager was an act of empowerment for me. Here, I could look at things about myself which did not require obligatory smiling and thoughtful outfits or whatever would suit the occasion for the kind of photographs parents traditionally take of their children. I could be serious, flirtatious, funny, naked, sad, ironic, and even things which I could not readily identify by looking. It was an experiment for the most part which I never desired to share with anyone. I didn't think of myself as a photographer then but a writer. The camera was like a toy to me and I was open to discovering what it uncovered for me in ways that were very different from what had been demonstrated by my father's photography which I also loved.

I'm reluctant to say that most selfies are bad self portraits. It would really depend more on what you look for in a good photo and what constitutes a good photo for you. For many females in this generation the selfie is nothing more than a photo of the physical self in order to show for example, what you wore that day, make-up choices, jewelry, etc. But the over arching message is "Look at me." That's it. Look at me. Because selfies are put out into the world in such volume and at such a staggering rate and seen by so many, there is no doubt that the intention is to be "seen." Again, I don't want to make assumptions but my guess is that when you're super invested in getting out a stream of selfies to be seen by whatever public you cater to, you're probably more concerned with their response than your own. Digital technology does that. In a Capitalist society, commercialism has a very pervasive nature even when you try to avoid it. Case in point, my clever word play in the title of this blog. In our culture the idea of self pleasure is titillating and eye catching and selfies are an extension of that. I think every woman should get off on her own selfie but I would encourage us to get behind our own self creation in ways that take apart the well worn gaze of constructed social ideals of acceptability which seek to validate some and ostracize and demonize others.

The selfie does not always have to be about "beauty" persay. It can also be about documentation. It can be about exposing injustice or deconstructing an idea. But I get just as excited and inspired by selfies of a new shade of nail polish, a favorite outfit (I love taking fitting room photos) or someone in their favorite spot in Central Park. I try as often as I can to see the truth even in the most artificial forms of expression because it's what I respond to the most and it's always there whether or not it is the intent of the selfie taker. It's what stays with me. But then didn't someone say something once about truth being beauty?  I don't think beauty is something that should be avoided. It is however, within the context of selfies and in general an idea that bears constant rediscovery and redefinition.

Seeing Again

Harlem

Lenox Coffee Poet

How can I explain to you how amazing it is to be able to rent a two to three hundred dollar camera lens for like twenty bucks? Unless you really love photography, it’s kind of difficult.  To me it’s up there with finding out last weekend that CUNY students get into the Whitney for free!!! FREE!  It’s twenty bucks to get into the Whitney. Non CUNY students pay sixteen! I can waltz up in there any time I want and the MOMA as well. You’re probably starting to understand what a nerd I am.

Back to the rented lens.  My cell phone camera has taken over my photographic output for over a year now. And I had been promising myself to get back to work with my DSLR but I have all these “I can’t untils” in my mind. I can’t until I get a newer, better camera or a newer better lens. I remembered a photographer who I met on a photo shoot telling me that you can rent cameras and I filed that information away for almost a year. I went online a few weeks ago to check out B&H and Calumet  online.  Renting camera bodies is expensive and they are rented out separately from lens. But it occurred to me I don’t really need an entire camera. I’ve been sweating a Nikon fixed prime lens forever and that’s all I really needed.  I've had my DSLR with me almost every day since I rented the lens and it makes me feel different.  It makes me feel legitimate. LOL! I love carrying it around and looking at things differently again.

My output with my Nikon is very different than with my cellphone camera. I think more about light settings, depth of field and color, because the world through a fixed prime lens is never flat. It’s magical and filled with layers and variations. So I do less but it feels like more because the quality of the exposure is higher and I can see that the image is a result of subtle choices I make.  There is of course the ongoing discussion as to whether cell phone photography can actually be considered to be art or critiqued on the same level as SLR or analog film photography. I think it’s about what tools you need to express or document what moves you. I love my cell phone camera and my tried and trusted collection of photography apps. But there are certain things that only a good SLR lens can do. And following really good photographers helps me to see things that inspire and motivate me towards lugging my camera around more often.  There are limits to it just as there are limits to cell phone photography but I welcome the perceived limits that push me to be more creative. Getting too comfortable with my cell phone camera was starting to make me feel like I’d reached a plateau with no challenges or surprises, no happy accidents.  An endless learning process is the only process worth sticking with for me.

The Conscious Father?

So as I mentioned I've been reading this book called "The Conscious Parent." I'm halfway done now and liking it very much.  Every time I open it I learn something new. But it occurred to me today while reading it that somehow, although her language is very inclusive that Tsabary seems to speak about things which are more, how do I put it...inclined to make sense to women than men. 

My husband and I went to see "Boyhood" this weekend and while observing the lack of stable male role models in the young boy's life it occurred to me while reading today that there aren't many books that I know that speak to a father's relationship and bonding process with his children during infancy.  I guess it's just natural to expect that a mother be the closest to her baby during the first few months to a year.  So far in TCP I've read only one case study example that uses a single father's difficulty raising a son as a way to illustrate the importance of not projecting  ones own issues on your child. Perhaps there are more to come. It's just becoming more obvious to me why men are scared to have children in ways that differ a lot from the fear women have.  And I think that letting yourself be vulnerable, while we all have issues with it is an area which just comes much easier to women. We open to let love in all the time. We open to let men in. We are conditioned to give in ways that leave us open to vulnerability and we can cry openly and shamelessly if we wish. Men have so many conditioned walls to break down before they can allow themselves to feel in ways that females are allowed to express from infancy.  But when they can, I just think it's makes them more whole and more attractive.

I remember in "Best Man Holiday" my favorite scene ever was seeing big, beautiful Morris Chestnut with a tiny newborn baby in his arms and holding it expertly with tears in his eyes and with a nurturing energy that completely transformed what stereotypical manhood looks like. He was no less strong, no less physically formidable, no less a man. But he was more. He was vulnerable and let himself be so without fighting it. It was sooooo hot. LOL!!

But I suspect that the whole act of spending nine months or more hosting a baby in your body, even if you'e not a woman who's into that kind of thing, will make anybody vulnerable weather you welcome it or not. For men the vulnerability comes from a different place inside. It's something I never thought about and which I am only learning about now, reading this book, taking in all of the activity of babies, kids and children with parents and parental guardians in New York City and listening to my husband talk.

As isness

Before this day gets away from me, I just want to announce that I have been challenged to make a blog entry here every day this month. For me right now issue is not what do I write about but what do I choose to write about.

Before I rush off to Central Park to get in some nature communion, let me just say that I've been reading this book "The Conscious Parent" recommended to me by my good friend and book nerd pal at soulsistah4real.com I'm reading and learning more about myself than ever I thought I would reading a book about parenting of all things. The thread with seems to run through the book most consistently is accepting what is. Tsabary is all about this as isness. And it's rough. It's not all cake and flowers and cuteness and I can see that parenthood is not for the faint of heart. But I also see that there are effective ways to make it less of a challenge than it needs to be and it has a lot to do with self work.

The as isness aspect is about accepting people and life as it is and not how you wish it to be which often the beginning of so many problems. But it's so hard to accept things as they are when society seems so wired towards escapism, disconnection, tuning out and avoiding even the possibility of pain on so many levels. As a child for instance, being read fairytales is perhaps the first foray into fantasy and imagination. Imagination is a wonderful way for a child to experience the beauty of everyday things using their own capacity for creativity and fantasy as a expressive genre is a wonderful context within which to explore that creativity but the problem occurs when we see our lives only as successful, pleasurable or valuable within a context of escapism and disconnection and fail to see the whole of life, it's downs as well as ups as a teacher and a partner rather than a constant adversary. She also writes about mistaking the ego as ourselves and being over reactive, losing ourselves in ego based drama.

I get that intellectually. I do. I get it.  AND THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT PARENTING! WHOA!
It just makes me ask myself the question over and over in my mind. What is the right reason to have children? There are many practical and sentimental reasons, romantic, selfish and ignorant reasons. But are there any right reasons? I don't know. I think it might be about wanting to allow someone into your life who will awaken things in you, challenge you, require more from you in ways perhaps no the relationship ever will. So having children is still about relationships. Everything and everyone you relate to is about what you are choosing to learn about who you are. It's about growing yourself while helping to grow others. It is not merely about identifying control and authority and imposing discipline as a way of maintaining these roles primarily to reinforce the ego. Nor is it about projecting all of your insecurities, and perceived feelings of under-achievement on little people who you feel should feel obligated to realize your dreams for you. I guess no relationship should ever be about that.

Accepting your children as they are, as isness, is only possible if you can accept yourself and life as it is. Now that's a challenge. 

Frank Sex Talk

I have a really good friend who has been away on vacation for a while and just recently returned. She is one of the few people I know who has never been shy about sharing the details of her sexual experiences with me and over the years I have really grown to appreciate her openness and candor about being sexually active as an adult woman.

Yesterday I was having a conversation with a woman, a friend and I forget how it got there but we started exchanging stories about the crazy things we've done in our youth, times we almost died and things like that, things that would make our mothers hemorrhage. Then I shared a sexual experience I had in high school with her. I didn't hesitate. It just came out. It was just another story but sexual in nature. It was an interesting and pleasurable experience and for some reason I felt very comfortable sharing it even though this friend is not necessarily someone I hang out with very often. She shared a similar experience with me which also occurred in her teens and I was fascinated, not only by her candor and honesty but also with the fact that like me, she was quite comfortable sharing the story. It was a moment of feeling like I was not alone. I don't usually have that kind of frank sex talk with anyone besides the friend I mentioned earlier.

It occurred to me how heavy the burden of sexism is on women when we are  unable to share our sexual experiences with each other without the fear of slander, slut shaming and cultural exile. We enforce these negative stereotypes among one another as much if not more than men do. It's like a straight jacket of restriction from all sides. We normalize it so much that if we are lucky enough to find a female friend (because men are easier to be honest with about certain things we would never share with another woman) who we can share intimate details of sexual desire and experience or vice-versa it can be an adjustment process. I know that for me, in my adult years it's not even been something I think is necessary until I have the opportunity to do it. And then I feel relieved, liberated, fascinated and energized! Imagine how many other woman have stories like this hidden inside, fun, intimate, joyful memories that only ever see the inside of a journal, a therapist's office or just the mind. Women don't embrace a locker room culture like men do. Of course when men share stories of their sexual escapades, embellished or not, they leave out any emotional feelings they experience the way we as woman leave out the graphic details. We're all so trapped.

I mean clearly I'm still trapped, otherwise I would be able to share with you the exact stories I shared with my friends. It takes a considerable amount of maturity and purposefulness to understand that life's sexual experiences are not like pornography. Even pornography is not like pornography. If you asked any male or female sex worker to be graphic and candid about their actual experience it would never read or look like anything you can see on a screen. That's because stories are about whole individuals having a personal experience and the degree to which they are present in that experience will always reveal what they got out of the experience. Our perceived need to fragment, compartmentalize and selectively interpret experiences keeps us at a distance from each other and ourselves. Speaking for women, we can't get any further from ourselves than we are now.

I recently followed a talented sister on IG whom I've known online for years but never met. I came in contact with her through a common artistic hobby we have. I was thrilled when I saw an announcement she made that she was on Instagram and I followed her right away. As I scrolled through her feed I was struck by an image she posted of Niki Minaj on the cover of her album, "Anaconda." I'm not going to lie. I was like oh wow! The judgment was banging at the door. But then I saw that her observation of the photo was in admiration of Niki's amazing...ummm her butt! Okay, see how that just took so much for me?

Well needless to say I was challenged to appreciate this take on the cover versus something that tore Niki's character down on the grounds that she was indecently exposed. But I grabbed that old church lady in my mind and told her to take many seats while I took a second look at this photo and the comments on it below. There were other comments (from women I'm guessing) to the effect that they wished they were rockin that booty as well. It sure made me appreciate my friend more. She didn't think this was slutty or indecent. She revered it.

It's so hard to take the white male gaze-o-meter off! But when it comes off, or when you get a glimpse of sexuality without it, ohhhh it's a beautiful thing. It's way more beautiful than the messages we get about beauty and sexuality from a society bent on keeping our expression of it hog tied and pacified. 

Love, Sex, Drugs and Funk

I started reading "Glow", the autobiography of Rick James last Sunday and now, already more than halfway done with it, several things have become clear to me.

1. As a child born in the 70s I was most definitely conceived to some 70s music on par with "Fire and Desire." I just know that in my heart.

2. R&B owes so much to great 70s artists like Rick James. Hip Hop and Rap sampled the hell out some Rick James hits.

3. To a large degree Black music in the 70s was about love, soul, spirituality and accessing a higher plain of consciousness. It had not come very far from it's African roots. Black artists in the 70s funk genre weren't afraid to let their Freak Flag fly because they knew that so-called freaks were on a journey towards liberation, fearlessness and joy and for a brief precious moment that was more important to them than impressing a target market with imitation. So much of what often embarrasses or discomforts people about the flamboyant and sexually loose style of the 70s is that those who represented it best, like Grace Jones or Rick James, didn't give a shit what people thought. They went with their gut and their spirit and those who couldn't copied them. Elvis, Prince, Madonna, Gaga,  all learned how to draw a crowd by copying, appropriating, deriving and expertly reinterpreting the best in the business.

Ever wonder where African Shaman got their "style" from?

4. Prince owes about 70% of his career to Rick James. Everyone steals, imitates and borrows but James, cocky as he was, seemed more humble or came from a more reverent generation. Prince was a cold, insecure asshole in his early years.

5. The 80s was the dawn of artifice and excess. It produced a lot of great stuff with regards to music and it was the era I came of age in but what ever soul it had with regards to Black music was derived from what came before.