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.

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.

el viento y el duermo

The wind is so loud here. I think it’s just our room, though, like there’s something about being on the tenth floor and about facing whatever cardinal direction it is we’re facing that makes it really loud. Because our room has definitely had some strange noises to it. But this wind sounds like the cyclone sounds in “The Wizard of Oz.”

I love to be woken up in the middle of the night, as long as it’s actually the middle of the night. It’s very disappointing to be woken up just before your alarm goes off and realize that you don’t have time to go back to sleep. However, if I am just woken up because the wind is blowing or because a light has been turned on, I really don’t mind. I will mind if someone actively tries to keep me up, but otherwise, even if it’s people having a conversation, I almost never have a problem with it. I’m not sure why that is, but part of it is that I really, really enjoy the process of falling asleep. I love to daydream, I love to fall asleep and listen to music, I love to plan out stories that I’m going to write. And there’s something delicious about being awake when the rest of the world is just spinning away and being asleep (except the wind or the rain or the motion light in the carport) and knowing that you have all the time in the world to pick up where you left off and begin daydreaming again.

I also have a lot of distinct memories of being conscious of the fact that I am asleep and dreaming. Is that possible?

oh, oh, it’s magic

I have been complaining for weeks, since my Archive concert, that I lost my H&M sunglasses. The next morning after the concert, I looked in the case and they weren’t there. They weren’t in my backpack. They weren’t in my purse. They were gone. It was depressing. There were a few reasons for complaining. First, we all know how hard it is to find a good pair of sunglasses. They have to be the right size and shape for your face. They have to have a tint that doesn’t distort your vision. They have to be loose enough (if you have a big head like me) that they don’t give you a headache. Second, I couldn’t buy another pair, because I bought them last December in New York, and not only would they not still be selling nearly a year later, but we don’t have H&M in Arizona, anyway. Third, they were kind of awesome, because people often ask me if they’re Chanel, and it’s like, “Yeah, bitch; but yours cost $200 more than mine.” That’s always fun.

So I’ve just been mooning around for weeks, wearing an old pair of sunglasses that are so tight, I get massive headaches every time I wear them. Seriously. Finally I caved yesterday and bought a new pair at some kiosk of scarves, jewelry and sunglasses on the mall. I got a yellow scarf as well, and in total it was $10, so no matter what, not a total loss. The new glasses are brown, which I almost never do, and what I didn’t realize until I walked away is that they have nasty zebra stripes on the side. But that you don’t see when I wear my hair down, which is almost always, so whatever. Sunglasses are sunglasses, and squinting is annoying.

The old case for my old glasses has just been sitting on my desk forever. I knocked it down yesterday, and since I was cleaning my room just now, I figured I’d pick it up and put it back on my desk. Strangely, it felt heavy. So I opened it. And my old sunglasses were inside.

I swear that I checked when I couldn’t find my sunglasses. That’s how I realized they were lost–because they weren’t in the case. How did they get there? Magic is so cool.