do you ever feel like

dear hannah,

where did you go? and who is in your place?

sincerely,

hannah

i’m bringing sexy back

I just wrote four pages in my journal and I started with “I really don’t like my body.”

It’s not bad, for sure, but there are some things wrong with it. Namely, a) my thighs are always a tad bit too jiggly and thundery for my taste, b) all of a sudden my stomach is where I harvest extra fat, and it’s pudging out in a very unattractive way, c) my breasts won’t stop growing, and d) blah blah cellulite and all that stuff that everybody hates. I certainly wouldn’t trade my body with a vast lot of other people’s, but there’s always room for improvement, and who would I be to the female race if I didn’t stress about my problem areas?

But then I was thinking about something that is both reassuring and terrifying, at least when applied to me personally. I don’t know about everyone, but with most people I know, none of whom have perfect bodies or perfect personalities, but who have high enough marks in both areas, it is not a real problem to have a sex life even when you don’t look like a celebrity. Clearly famous people are not the only ones who get laid. I suppose I don’t have much of a problem in that area; I can certainly find people to sleep with me, if not to date me, so where I need to work on my personality, I evidently don’t need to work on my body. Even though I do. According to me.

So I guess what I’m finding out is that, at least in my experience, it doesn’t take a perfect body to get what you want. Is it that guys are just horny and don’t care? Is it that I’m too easy? Or is it that guys don’t notice imperfections, even if they are actually quite noticeable? I’m assuming it’s a combination of all of these things. But, given that I am probably not the only girl who has hooked up with people when she has wanted to, I’m confused as to why we flip out so much about not looking perfect. And why magazines can’t find a way to say this in a real way, rather than saying something like, “You’re perfect just the way you are!” or “He likes you for who you are.”

That said, sex is not enough for anyone. Not even for me. Most of the time. But I don’t like the attitudes about it. Maybe I’m just a socialist, but I think that even if the farmer is willing to give you some free milk, if you like the taste of it, you should damn well buy the cow off of him. Because we all need to make a living.

so.

I think I feel happy. I’m also terrified of school, because it’s actually kicking my ass like I never knew my ass could be kicked, and I don’t know what to do about that, because school has never been that for me. I should be happy for the challenge, but flailing through neuroscience isn’t really a challenge the way a hard piece of literature is.

But aside from that, I think I like where my life is headed for now. I feel a lot better about what’s on my plate, and about people who are becoming more important in my life. It’s like I’m calming down.

shabbat shalom

I spent this past week in Clayton, Georgia, doing training for my Hillel internship this year, and just being more Jewish than I have been for quite awhile. I still can’t really say I’ve ever been to the South, because soul food and kosher food are not really the same thing, and Jew camp in a mountain isn’t really Atlanta. But, regardless of my geographic location, I had a great time.

I grew up Jewish, but the religion wasn’t really the main part of it, and I decided on my own to quit being religious when I was about 13. Since then, I’ve found I really want to go back to it, but it’s been hard, because you feel very uncomfortable when you’re a college student but you were never bat mitzvah’ed and you don’t read any Hebrew. Hillel’s siddurim do not have romanized transliteration of Hebrew, so I am completely lost when I go to services, and that is why I bought a teach-yourself-Hebrew book. I have yet to open it, but it’s a start.

Since we were really there for training, we spent a lot of time clustered up with another campus, Rutgers in my case (and our cluster was cluster F, so we had a lot of fun with that), and did bonding things and leadership things and peer networking things, since that’s the basis of our internship. However, we also did a fair amount of Jewish learning, and since I was there over the weekend, we had Shabbat stuff to do that was wonderful.

Before this summer, it had probably been about seven years since I had attended a Friday night service. While I was in Uruguay, we went to services, but as I wrote, I didn’t always enjoy them, though just the feeling of being around people chanting in Hebrew was very comforting. This Friday, though, was the best feeling I had felt in a long time. It made this summer finally feel like summer (magical), and it made me feel as if going to services more often (and taking a b’nai mitzvah class if I can find any free time and more participants) would really help me keep my sanity. I loved it.

Though this is a very ancient tradition, the custom of wearing white on Shabbat has kind of died, I think. But it is apparently a camp-y thing to do, so almost everyone was wearing all or mostly white as we had three processionals to the outside arena where we met, sang, danced horas, and learned other nigunim (songs without words, but sung with many voices including things like “lai lai lai” or “bim bim bom”). Then there were many options for services, and while I could have gone to a traditional one, I chose to stay for the one that other students had put together, which was not very religious, but included singing, active resting by learning about yoga, discussion, reading, etc. I forgot how wonderful it is to go to a service, and I re-familiarized myself with songs, terms such as “d’var torah” (a chosen reading from the Torah that is used to start a discussion about a value, current event, book, or whatever), and just the customs that I grew up participating in (though in a very lax, reform way). I felt really uncomfortable a lot of the time, like on Saturday morning, because I had never been to a morning Shabbat service, and I still don’t know all of the mourner’s kaddish or every song to sing, but even in my moments of discomfort, I’ve scarcely felt so peaceful in recent memory.

I love being Jewish. I can’t wait to become more so this year.

Next time, a blog about other ways to be Jewish, and other things I learned.

battlefield

Everybody talks to themselves….right?

This is the last thing I would ever want to sound assertive about, because it’s a quality in myself that terrifies me and makes me feel very uncool, because I often find myself walking and thinking, and then I realize that as I’m passing all these people on campus or wherever, my lips are moving. It’s entirely embarrassing, but then again, it could be one of those things like how nobody but me notices that my nostrils are crooked. So is it?

The reason I ask you, empty Internetlandia, is because I find myself having really insistent conversations tonight. I cannot keep my head in my book, partly because I was listening to music, and when you listen to music and read, it should be music you’ve heard before, not a newly downloaded album. I also partly can’t keep my head in the book because it’s The Journals of Sylvia Plath, and it’s a very exhausting read that will take me about a hundred years, because I usually only manage about 10 pages per sitting. But I also just can’t concentrate on reading because I keep thinking about conversations I’d like to be having or things I’d explain to people or whatever it is that is unimportant but that I think about. It’s like I’m absolutely desperate for conversation.

I haven’t exactly been Suzie Social since I got home on Wednesday, but I’ve certainly had contact with other humans since being home, so can I really be starved for company? I don’t even like company; I’m always thinking about how I love being alone or with a small group of people. But it’s summer, and it’s maybe a bit unnerving that I don’t know who is available to be my human company if I want it. I like being sort of lonely and out of touch with people during the summer, but that feeling has dwindled slightly since college threw me and all my relationships with people out of whack. Maybe it’s that I just spent six weeks doing one of those magical summery things, but it didn’t feel as magical as some summers. It felt many other positive and negative things, but it didn’t really feel like summer. Then again, I was in the southern hemisphere, so in a technical way, it wasn’t summer.

But I’ve grown accustomed to (that’s not quite the verb I wanted, but the Spanish verb “soler” doesn’t really have a good English equivalent…”be in the habit of” doesn’t have a very nice ring to it) pairing summer experiences with great, long conversations, and I haven’t had one of those in a long time. My, do I miss my Fridays. And writing camp. And cherubs. And knowing where I am. This is very off-putting, because I do not know what I’m supposed to be doing. That also means that I am doing a lot of reading and I am feeling compelled to write, and I’m actually writing, so it’s not really a bad thing so much as just a necessary discomfort for a good thing. However, it would be nice to occasionally spice my old maid lifestyle up with some good conversation and chai or something.

a cold summer in montevideo

It’s funny, because I love to learn languages and meet interesting people and experience new things, but I’m learning that I am really not a good traveler. Like, I really don’t like to be away from home. Who knew that after spending my entire childhood and adolescence begging for boarding school, for my mother to accept a job working abroad, for college out of state, that I would end up a homebody who loves spending time with her family? This is some weird sort of karma.

It’s not that I don’t like being in Montevideo. On the contrary, I was actually really happy yesterday to return after a weekend in Buenos Aires (beautiful, beautiful city, but snooty people and lots of dirt and a somewhat unpleasant hostel experience). I’m sad that I haven’t gotten to take full advantage of my classes or internship, having missed more than a week due to my flu, but I really like working at NGOs, and working at a Latin American NGO is twice the experience, because it’s work experience and language practice. But traveling in a group is just not my thing, and I feel very off-balance not being at home. I’m too accustomed to being settled. Apparently I don’t like change. Apparently I actually like my life in Tucson. Interesting.

Something that has always astonished me is that I can’t really write when I’m on vacation, even though being in another country (or just another state–pretty much everything is different from the desert) gives me a lot of inspiration and generally feels exhilarating, at least for awhile. But I don’t feel compelled to pick up my journal, I think partly because there is so much to say that I don’t know where to begin. All of a sudden there is a new climate, new streets to learn, a new culture of people, new stores and restaurants and foods, new phrases, and now a language that I’m starting to think in. It’s like there’s so much to say just superficially, just to establish my new place in a new world, that I can’t actually get to the point of talking about my feelings or new friends or specific experiences. It’s a daunting task, and I simply can’t say anything without spending two hours just writing in a journal. And there’s no time for that, because I’m on vacation on a specific program and I have things I need to be doing. And on days like today, when I spend my afternoon alone in my hotel room on my computer (though I was actually looking up important information for the rest of my trip, like hostels and bus fares and things), I feel like a failure on both parts, because why should I be in my hotel room when I’m neither experiencing the country I’m in nor doing something I would do at home, like work on my writing? I don’t have all the things I need to feel at home, but I also feel a bit overwhelmed always being here.

So while I can’t bring myself to be totally me, neither can I stop myself. I really want to be writing. I want to be working on my novel, and I want to be working on my essay for Ann’s book, and I want to be working on that other novel I started, and I want to start developing some really good short pieces, because it’s about time I started submitting stuff and making money off my writing, and it would be prudent to start publishing in the genre I want to have a career in, rather than in all the others that I just do for fun. But I can’t work on things here, because I’m very materialistic and high-maintenance, and I don’t have all my drafts or my big old desk or my things. Things, things, things. This is why I’m a bad traveler. I can’t pack light. Physically, mentally, or emotionally. I have lots of baggage.

It’s not all that bad. I’m learning, and that’s really all I care about. This is probably the first summer experience that doesn’t feel like summer (which it shouldn’t, because I’m in the southern hemisphere and it’s freezing). What I mean by that is this is the first summer experience where I’ve gone away to a program and have not felt like it’s completely magical or that I’ve made friends for life. In fact, the only person I see myself really remaining friends with is the one person I knew before coming, though I really did not know her very well. That’s totally fine, I guess. I am a huge cynic, and since college I have become a lot more particular about the people I make friends with. I know lots and lots of people, and I really like it, but I also really like just having a handful of really, really good friends, not a bunch of friendships that are all high-maintenance. There are people I have a deep necessity for, and they generally make me happy. The rest make me happy, but they’re not necessary. And that’s the way life goes. In this group of people, I feel very, very old and stuffy, and I guess I kind of am, but it’s also just how I’ve developed within this group of people who are not very much like me. And it’s fine. I am enjoying my learning experiences, and I am very excited for my two weeks of travel with my friend.

I am all over the place. And where I’d really like to be is home, but I know if I were there, I would be complaining about how I never go anywhere. There is definitely more to traveling than just appreciating where you come from, and I hope I am doing that. I think I am more meant for individual and small-group travel experiences than strict programs with boisterous personalities. I am slowly drawing into a shell, and I really shouldn’t do that.

BUT planning for my traveling is so exciting! Another three days in Buenos Aires by myself, this time to meet my grandmother’s cousin and to go to museums and experience traveling the way I like to do it, then a bus ride to Iguazu, a stay at a hostel for a day or two, bus ride back, boat back to Uruguay, perhaps a day in Montevideo, then travel to the hot springs! It’s going to be a packed two weeks, but it’s going to be great.

crowd theory

I’ve realized that the reason I don’t enjoy large, loud concerts is because I am less capable than most at succumbing to a collective. Last night was the huge stadium concert, which actually looked fairly unimpressive, because the stadium seats 56,000, and about 12,000 people actually showed up to the concert, though close to none actually went to the entire six-hour event.

Anyway. Not my point. (But they should have had it in McKale so it would look more impressive.) I really, really enjoy good concerts. I do. I adore music, and there is something really special about witnessing its creation and performance live. But I am really not a very flamboyant spectator. This is how I know I would not be a good famous singer, much as I’d like to be famous. I can’t really free myself to move around a lot or scream or anything. I sing along, yes. That I feel almost compelled to do, and it’s hard to keep my mouth shut. But moving around and waving my arms and showing “my diamonds,” as Jay-Z asked us all to do, is hard to do.

Waving my arms is the worst. I feel supremely uncomfortable and self-conscious when I am doing that. I’m sure it’s actually gotten harder since leaving high school, since I don’t dance anymore. But it’s never been something I’ve been able to do naturally. It’s a strange feeling, but even though I feel stupid not doing it, I feel like I have a physical aversion to doing it if I actually try to be one of the crowd.

There’s this thing called crowd psychology, and you can google it or look it up on Wikipedia if you like. I think the best example of this is English soccer fans, if only because I’ve already had a long conversation with my friends about that particular theory and how it’s manifested in that group. But basically, it’s the idea that people do things they would never do otherwise when they’re in groups, and it’s also very easy to be caught up in a sort of collective conscious and feel the same, act the same, and react the same. This is how people can end up rioting after they win a soccer game, or how they can feel an amazing rush of adrenaline when they and their friends go after a rival team’s fans and start beating them to a pulp. Ahh, the rush of physical fighting! Such a guy thing. I really don’t get it.

This is also how people feel when they go to a school football game and find themselves with a passion for their team that they never knew they had, or they notice that they’ve never had such a potty mouth before, or they realize that they and everyone around them is saying the same things, “oh!”ing at the exact same time, stamping their feet together, clapping the same rhythmic pattern, or what have you. Crowd psychology. Try and say you’ve never experienced this.

But I swear I don’t have that. I feel detached from other people almost all the time. I have definitely felt some moments of belonging, so I guess I’m not a complete alien, but those moments are things like bonding with the party room crew while we were sitting by the haunted house at Bennington College, or snapping a photo with my Kenya group soon after we’d returned, just before we went inside to graduate from high school. Group pride, certainly, and a sort of collective understanding and a feeling like in that moment, I loved those people more than anyone else, but never have I really lost myself in a moment that became a collective moment.

Even when Obama won the presidency, ecstatic as I was, I felt like I was faking it. I cheered because, yes, it was a wonderful thing, and because everyone else was doing it, but it was conscious. That’s not crowd psychology. It didn’t take me over; I just observed it and blended as well as I could. And even then, in a moment that I was truly happy and hopeful, I was not part of a collective conscious.

So last night, though I loosened up as the night went on, and I shouted the lyrics to “99 Problems” like nobody’s business, I felt completely aware of how out of my comfort zone I felt. And shouting the lyrics and dancing a bit was the only thing I did. My arms feel too heavy to wave them like everyone else; I don’t understand that whole diamonds thing because I’m definitely not as cool as I like to pretend I am; I did not shout out to Kelly Clarkson, “Kelly, I love you!”** repeatedly, and even if it had happened to be a Mariah Carey concert and I was thinking that same thing, I wouldn’t say it. I was lost in the musical conscious, but that’s not tangible, and it’s not even human. I am incapable of being part of a crowd.

I take back my earlier statement. I probably am an alien.

**This same girl at one point turned back to me and asked me something; I think the question was, “Aren’t you so happy right now?” which, looking back, is a really nice feeling to have, and I just smiled, because I wasn’t yet ready to buy the whole Kelly Clarkson deal (though after her entire set, I am sold–hers may not be my favorite style of music, but the girl is well-trained. She can belt, she can sing, she can scream–all in one song). Later, Kelly played a song from her new album, and this girl immediately grabbed her BlackBerry and googled the lyrics so she could sing along. Best. Concert. Moment. Ever.

***Also, check out Cindy Pon’s blog, book, and contest. She’s giving away a beautiful brush painting/bookstore gift certificate, plus a signed copy of her book, which looks awesome. You should click on the book cover now. Do it.

colorblind

Race: a socially constructed category composed of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of a society consider important.
Ethnicity: shared cultural heritage
Minority group: any category of people distinguished by physical or cultural differences that a society sets apart and subordinates.
Not a number issue, but a power issue

I often forget that I am black.

Then, when I remember, the next thing I forget is that I am not black. I am half black and half white. I am mixed. Biracial, multiethnic.

This is, sadly, not that uncommon in my daily life. Or maybe that’s not sad. While culture and ethnicity are important to identity, I don’t think race is nearly as important. Skin color should just be an aesthetic thing, like when you’re picking out an outfit or makeup and something looks particularly gorgeous because it brings out your cocoa skin or your blue eyes or whatever. But maybe it’s strange, because remembering your skin color is one (though obviously not the only, nor the most important) way to remind yourself of your culture and ethnicity, and to find others to identify with.

I usually remember after I’ve hooked up with someone. Part of this is my very complicated ethnic and cultural background, I think. It’s also the media, because you know on TV and in movies, white people only date and marry white people, black people only date and marry black people, Latinos with Latinos, Asians with Asians, etc. I don’t feel all that “black.” I don’t know if anyone does. I don’t know how it would feel. But not growing up with a black family, I guess it’s not the immediate association I jump to when I’m thinking of my ethnic identity. It is the culture to which I belong that I have been least exposed to in my life.

When I process the hookup, or the date, if I’m actually being that respectable, I marvel at how wondrous and interesting it is that the person wanted to date/hook up with me. Since college started, the majority of the people I have hooked up with or dated have been white. I don’t really care, since I like who I like, not who I choose to like, and that stuff doesn’t really matter. But while it doesn’t matter, it also does, and when I think about it, I become paranoid wondering why they picked me. Is it that I seem exotic for not being white? Am I just the type of girl (ethnically speaking–you know how we all have the types of people we’re attracted to, and racial and ethnic identity is sometimes one of those things) they like? Or do they just not see the color? It’s not that I think people are shallow. It’s that we’re a color-based society, and sometimes it just baffles me. Are we all actually colorblind? Are we just colorblind in terms of who we like? Do we pick based on color?

It’s one of those things like wondering whether someone likes you for your looks or your personality. Like if I date a white person, I wonder if they just see me as “white.” Maybe they don’t but they think I’m interesting or I “act white.” Maybe they don’t see a thing and it’s just personality. Maybe I’m just really exotic looking. It’s so stupid, but I don’t understand how it works.