Take that Break

Three days to go. You've been writing. You've written from apps while waiting for the bus. You've written on the bus. You've managed to squeeze in a few words before bed on some days and posted wonderful, long posts on others. You've snatched a few precious minutes time from the grip of school, work and personal schedules. And you've made it so far.

Today, take a deep breath. We're almost there.
Take a few minutes and take a break.
I know I'm doing just that.

Via Xhelsea Mikael:

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

On Sunday afternoon, I did two things that I haven't done in longer than I care to admit. I cleaned the kitchen with the latest two episodes of Galactic Suburbia (one-and-a-half episodes, if you insist on accuracy). I used to listen very, very regularly to the GS podcast while I still commuted to school, or walked around campus. Since I've been on a break, however, not so much.

Oh wait... I've gushed on about this podcast before.
My "Culture to Consume" list grows dramatically after I listen to the podcast. My SF/F news comes from there. But most of all, I love, love, love that they bring up things that are always thought-provoking - even for someone who isn't interested in genre.
In listening, I thought of at least two things that I wanted to blog about (re-blog, okay! okay.)

I had the lofty idea of saving these wonderful Galactic-Suburbia inspired posts for later.
But then, I just saw this from "I Fucking Love Science" on facebook. (Friend that page. Seriously. Friend it.) And the post that appears after the jump just had to be written.

"Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know."

~ Jeremy Knowles

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a truly extraordinary woman.



Oh come on. You did not know that.
Shamefully, neither did I.

The inequality of women in the workplace (to keep with the topic, in the Sciences) is not a new thing. Even when it does not seem like it exists. 

You're familiar with the stereotypes of women in science - the geeky, socially awkward, dorky and dowdy - think Amy Farrah Fowler from Big Bang Theory (played by the Neuroscience-Ph.D.-holding Mayim Bialik)*.

There are worse ones IRL.
For instance, I was talking to a friend (you know, the same one who got lectured by the doctor about her moral responsibility to stay home with her baby instead of choosing a career). She has a doctorate in Neurobiology. She is also pointedly not dowdy - her wardrobe is always (has always been) painstakingly put together. At a conference where she was presenting a paper, she got told, "Honey, you're too well dressed! Nobody is going to take you seriously!" She brushed it off, presented a fantabulous, well-received paper that eventually got published.

The same friend, while on an internship, also heard from her male supervisor. "Go home and change and come, your shirt is distracting me."
(And if you're thinking "maybe her shirt was too _________________", you need to go back and re-think the whole victim-blaming thing.)

The IFLS meme made me think of her. And of the politics of gender everywhere.

There is, apparently, no winning this without a penis.
I've been asking myself what the point is of talking about this - and I think the answer is that discussion is the first step to reform of any kind.

More along these lines, tomorrow.

*(With apologies - a footnote.) I know. This is a rooted in a specific culture. So help me here, what's the Indian stereotype of the Science Woman? Sibling? S.B.? Anyone else reading? )

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Here's what today looks like:

And I plan on enjoying this bright and sunny day by just lounging with all the blinds drawn up.

Oblivious to the glorious outside, the tedious tasks of domesticity pile up in the sink and hampers.
Unlike most other Sundays, however, I'm claiming today for the joy of kicking back and chilling out (not to be confused with sleeping).

Here's what I've planned - An early Sunday post (check), Breakfast with the family (check), Reading of Favorite Blogs (Check) followed by catching up with Mail, some Ravelry projects, and some offline reading.

Here's wishing you the Best of Sundays.

Bupkis

This has been my most persistent headache yet. Despite an hour's downtime and three cups of chai the damn thing hasn't given up. And my teeth are rotting.

And that makes me feel like this:

Roz: ...I'm in a very crappy mood.
Niles: Are you limping?
Roz: I twisted my ankle on the stairs. And you know how that happened? I couldn't find the shoes that went with this dress so I wore these stupid three-inch spikes and the "check-engine" light on my dash keeps coming on.
Niles: What does that have to do with your ankle.

Roz: Nothing! It really Ticks Me Off!

(From Frasier, SE8Ep.2)

That is me.
I have a headache. And a toothache.
My attempts at gift making have been consistently disastrous. My knack for artsy things, it turns out, is bupkis. It is " less than bupkis. (It is) what Bupkis keeps for lint in its pocket." (Also a Niles Crane Quote)
And I haven't heard back from any of the people to whom I've written about internships. Bother.

#EndofRant (Sita, this is for you. I should apologize for not resisting, no?)


On the upside: I'm adding more books to my reading list (also updated on the reading list page).
1. A Quiet Revolution by Leila Ahmed
2. The book of the Long Sun  by Gene Wolfe.

Day 14

(Other titles that I briefly considered for this post: "They're writing songs of love" / "The Obligatory Valentine's Day post)

As an adult (as opposed a teenager with a half-developed hypothalamus), I haven't thought with any seriousness about Valentine's day. But after reading posts for the day by Pearls & Jades, Sita and DM, and after seeing Jumbo Jibbles' Jibbly Valentines, I now want to make a Valentine's day post.

And so I've spent half the day trying to think of memorable Valentine's Days from my Takei Youth. Because, you know, I was much more reactive then than I am now. The Hallmarkity of the holiday bothered me so much more then than it does now. And to my crazed youthful mind, demonstration was the only acceptable way of expressing one's disdain of popular norms.

The first of these demonstrations that comes to mind is the time when a bunch of us (RDP, Witches - y'all have got to remember this) went to college dressed entirely in black. Black trousers, black shirts. We had to have looked like little mad goth kids.  It helped a little, I think, that we were doing a visual presentation on the Lord of the Flies. But this also meant we wore little chains made of seashells which, from a distance, looked like little skulls (I realized this much too late). Fun Valentine's on the whole.

The other Valentine's occasion that I remember (I can't be sure that it was on the day, specifically) is when I wore a self-painted "Ask Yourself", T-shirt to work in order to offset some rather misogynistic "Why do fools fall in love?" black shirts that some of the guys had printed for themselves. This might (I'm fuzzy on the details) have been prompted by their refusal to let the girls join in their black-shirt-wearing business.

This Valentine's day, here I am, sipping my first Sprite in a long, long time, writing this post. Like Pearls and Jades, we too had pizza chez-nous. And that is our big gift to ourselves. We're just relishing the complete lack of post-dinner clean up and spending that time doing other things instead.

We Jazz June

D.M talks about not judging people for their choices in her latest post and that made me think of Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool".

I'm constantly haunted by this poem.

In teaching freshmen, I found that poem to be a particularly good way of starting a conversation about life choices and about the individual need for validation.

Of course our need for validation makes us vulnerable.
But this shared vulnerability is such a delicate, beautiful way of forging connections with other human beings. At least, it should be. Much too often, however, any exposure of vulnerability is read as an invitation to flood you with advice  (at best) and unproductive, acerbic criticism (at worst) for not conforming to popular norm.

For example - a dear friend took her ill seven month old to a doctor at Rainbow Hospital, Hyderabad. The doctor took it upon himself to lecture her about her utter failure as a mother for working while leaving her child at a day care facility. (How dare she! She birthed the baby, how dare she not put her life on hold for him!)

This makes me livid. (I have same reaction to people pestering single folk - often in my knowing, single women - to get married.)

I agree with the general logic that everyone has to have some driving purpose in their life. But the idea that this purpose - this elusive route to happiness is the same for everyone is patently absurd.

The Compensatory Post

Yesterday I learnt that one can fall asleep sitting up. Completely and deeply asleep. I stayed that way until the partner walked in and coaxed me to lie down.
So, with apologies, here's my post for yesterday.

In the last two days, I've been reminded to be grateful for the wonderful, beautiful people that I know.

Sometimes, I'm grateful for the strangers in my life.
And I do meet the strangest strangers (Usually and completely believably on public transport).  Sometimes these are just quirky people who are full of themselves. At other times, these are strangers who will talk to me, whatever their misgivings, to share the most random details of their lives. And some of them are downright creepy (most recently a Creepy-Man-on-the-bus tried to convince me that Hoosier was just a nice way of saying KKK.).


I'm grateful today for all these encounters with random strangers.
Thank you for sharing your stories with me.


Closer home - and so much less creepily - friends, family and blogathoners near and far.
It's midway through the damn month.
We're all tired (for whatever reasons) and cheating or not cheating, y'all are still keeping up. This year more than the others, this is overwhelming me. Y'all are awesome and always an inspiration.
You rock my world.
I'm thankful for you. <3 p="">

P.S. Notice, dear reader, that I've successfully avoided footnotes and Asterisks in this post (because, a dear reader -you know who you are - pointed out that it was entirely too tedious). I could not, however, resist this post-script.

A Sunday Post

Apparently, I've left two blogs off the blogathon scroll. Unbeknowst to me, Simbly Bored's friend, A has been blogging along, here, as has the sibling's friend, SSK (whose posts I couldn't find until she helpfully created a page link on her site).

We're almost halfway there. I know! Already!

Sundays are always the most difficult days to post. It is when I actually have time for myself. And time with the family - it's glorious. I can do anything! Read! Nap! Clean the House! Go Out with the Significant Other.

But usually, I just throw myself onto the couch and just vegetate. There's some reading involved. And today, there was movie-watching.*

There's work to be done. Writing that I need to get to. Gift-making. But all that can wait.
For the next hour or so, it is still Sunday.

*Batman.

Books and Yarn

Each time I have to buy a book - you know, when I love it ardently enough to own it, when I want to read it but it isn't available at any library nearby, when I'm at a used book store, when I was at the Sunday Book Market in Koti - I now have to ask myself if I want an e-book or a regular paperback.

E-books work especially well because my situation requires a good deal of moving - we haven't put roots yet - and it is just so much easier to keep track of one's books when they're on an electronic device. Since I use a kindle or a kindle app - aside from the horror of Amazon going in and deleting books for which I've paid, I don't particularly have to worry about losing my books.*
Sometimes, e-books are cheaper than their print counterparts.

On the whole, I'm no luddite. But paper books, ftw y'all!
Yeah, yeah you've heard all the romantic and not romantic reasons for owning tangible books.
But me, the biggest reason I'm a fan is that more than once, entirely by accident, I have found cheap, used paper books that are signed copies. Each of these times, I paid less than four dollars for the book (Grad Student. Cheapness is key).
And this is what I miss when I buy ebooks.

Besides, I keep thinking, What if I Love This Book and then run into the author.
How will I get the book signed? 

(This is a jagged jump, agreed.)
 I've been thinking of Jon Armstrong's "Grey" and it's sequel, "Yarn" (Thanks to the Galactic Suburbia Podcast from sometime last year). The series apparently puts fashion at the center of an sf/f story.
And with my newfound love of knitting, I'm so toying with the idea of putting these books on my reading list.

Alongside, I'm finally getting to a knitting project that I've been meaning to start on for months now. I'm no skillful and elegant knit-wizard. And knitting, to me, is so much like cooking - a pleasure ridden with guilt and dread.

Small wonder then, that I've been dragging my feet. The most I've done is to visit the new local yarn store to getmyself the right kind of needles and wool for a couple of projects that I have In mind.

Next, I'm going to try and use Ravelry more actively to do something about the pretty yarn stash that I've somehow collected. (If you're there, find me.)

Exciting. I love new projects.

*Just in case I wasn't clear - this is creepy as hell and not something that I can stand for.

A Quiet Post

Over the last few days, I've reserved this post-dinner time (however late) to writing my post for the day. Today, other things are gnawing at the edges of this little fabric. And I'm beyond exhausted.

So all I'm doing for now is sending lots of love and positive energy to RDP and her family.

And I leave you with these Doctor Who Valentines.
If I wanted to participate in the glorious embarrassment of Valentines day, this is what I'd like:

From here:

Today - The Library, Theory and Practice

I was telling the sibling that I don't have a post today (for realz).
After hearing my reason for it, she suggested that that be my post.

Ergo, here it is:

I went to the library today.

You're supposed to read - "I Went To The Library Today Full Stop"

While at the library, looking through the stacks, I started thinking about the idea of reading and theorizing one's actions in the real (read non-academic) world. While this is in part prompted by my own attempts to articulate how I feel about The Academe, it is more immediately triggered by Sita's post.

More important than (making a change in the world) is to simply think about the way the world is today, is the need to do so critically. It is not enough to wake up one day and say "I want to be the change I want to see in the world." You have to go about trying to understand what it is this change you want to see in the world is. For which, (and this is where I am possibly a snob), you have to read.

Like she says, later in her post, part of what being the academy does is train you to think of things critically. And I agree, ideally, every one of us needs to theorize our actions - I'd say everyday actions, but, at the very least those "grand initiative / change the world" actions.

Sure, we're all a little bit snobby about knowing more about our own fields than others, yeah? At the same time, what bothers me is that often (so often, too often) the snobbery associated with theorizing seems deliberately exclusive - with the result that it (the idea of theorizing) spirals upward and locks itself in a tower, proud at its inaccessibility.

I've seen my peers do it (Hells, I've probably done this too) and more disturbingly, I've been in classrooms that pedagogically encourage this kind of theorizing (clearly, I'm trying not to say anything more accusatory).
This is disappointing.
What use is knowledge that you can't apply? What use is theorizing as an end in itself?
And what in the name-of-all-that-is-blue-and-flies is the point of simply sneering at people who don't theorize?*

And this is why and where Sita's call to theorize - to question one's premises, impulses and motivations offers a bridge, a way of connecting Theory, Praxis and Practice.

*I have a lot of Opinions about the levels of judgement in graduate school, but also in the Academe in general. I'm not even touching that here. 

Time and Photography

After that little boast from yesterday about being able to think up a post while doing other things, I find myself today with time to write and no coherent post at hand. *Smh*. Bugger**.

"Why not, F.D.?" You might ask, indignantly.

Because, y'all! Squee! I spent most of my day today looking for End-of-Blogathon Gifts. I'm trying to look for gifts that I can make (oi! Stop With The Scoffing) - because, you know, that's more meaningful and fun! (More Squee!)

I may, or may not, but most certainly have narrowed down the possibilities to two things. But no... I'm not telling. You'll just have to wait to see what you get. (Mostly because my ability for skillful artisty DIY things ranks only slightly above my skill for underwater-breathing-without-assistance. Oh well.)

----
(Edited to Add a post that was on hand, after all)

And then, there's that thing about Photography - Pearls & Jade - seems to be doing a series on Photos from her trips and the questions that they bring up. Her posts have made me think about the idea of photography as well.

When she talks of an Orientalist / postcolonial view through the lens, my mind turns to Zizek recently saying:

If you mention the phrase “postcolonialism,” I say, “Fuck it!” Postcolonialism is the invention of some rich guys from India who saw that they could make a good career in top Western universities by playing on the guilt of white liberals.

(As an aside, What would Prof. M say about this, Pearls & Jade? Would you ask him for me?) 

I find this (perhaps naively) problematic.

I'm not saying Bhabha always makes sense or that Spivak is always right. (In fact, I often emphatically think this is *not* the case). But this blanket rubbishing of postocoloniality as a political correct piece of crap is much too facile for my liking.

Take, for instance, the way in which the foreign is adored and elevated in India even today (no joke, I saw ads for a Salon on the streets of my hometown showing blonde-haired blue-eyed women. Wtf is that!) That is symptomatic of a larger residual love of the foreign, the white - a thing that comes from the Colony.

Sure, the autowallah, or the ektara player on the streets of Rajasthan may not phrase it like this or even see it this way. But that doesn't make it the exclusive imagining of rich Indian academics capitalizing on white guilt.

*Ahem* I totally went off script here.

What I was going to talk about was the Ethics of Photo-taking.

Photography, as is often widely acknowledged, is voyeuristic. I'm not sure it is possible to take (or see) a photograph divorced from this impulse.

But then, it is also a record for posterity of a fleeting moment. It is a communication of how I see a specific moment (what Bresson calls the decisive moment) in all of time and space. A poignant, meaningful photograph then, is the perfect union of subject and object.

Henri Cartier Bresson says it so beautifullly:

...photography is the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second of a significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of form which gives that event its proper expression....for reactive living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us, which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds: the one inside us, and the one outside us. As a result of a constant reciprocal process, both these worlds come to form a single one. And it is this world that we must communicate. 

And if this reflection is retrospective, like Pearl & Jade's, I think, it is revelatory - of one's mindset in different moments in time. And that cannot, to my mind, be anything other than good. 

Of course, all this is armchair philosophizing on taking photographs etc.

I'm just going to end on this photograph that I took more than a year ago, while visiting a dear and adorable friend in Albany, NY.

**Nod to my dear friend, Australo. For Today's Phone conversation. 

On Being Happy

Lately, I've been thinking about choosing a direction for the next few years. I've been thinking of academia, of the skills that I've acquired over the last decade or so, and about where, if at all, I could put them to use with the greatest satisfaction*.

And then I spoke to this guy (in the video). 

His talk (oi! the video below) is about Dis-Existentialism; but, really, even if you're not in any way interested in disabilities or disability studies, you should watch it. 

The timing of this couldn't have been better, really. Because even while the philosophy that frames his argument is familiar, the content has got me thinking about Happiness And Being. 

Particularly Victor Frankl.

Much too often for my comfort I've heard "Life is short. We have to be happy and not. Take things seriously."

See, that right there is some upside-down, back-to-front thinking. And I'm now especially convinced about Frankl's argument that this business of pursuing happiness as an end goal is, in fact, counterproductive.

At the same time, when Frankl writes that "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." - I have to stop and ask myself if that is indeed entirely true. What happens when you're not from privilege (even given Frankl's particularly horrendous historical, if not personal circumstance, aren't there more people, even more disenfranchised than he today?)

I want to believe that there is truth to this (psychologically, spiritually - we imprint our brain WTH our attitudes through repetition / practice). But then, as Aditya asks in the video, do you think is this true? Can we really choose the way we react to our circumstances? And can we do this often and consistently enough to actually make a different?
What do you think?

*And without living in a box. 

Day 4

This year, I don't have to grade while trying to squeeze in a post a day. I don't have schoolwork. I don't have deadlines to meet and papers to write* And so I've been diligently reading the posts of everyone who signed up to do this.

And...Oh My Goshiness of All Goshinesses, Y'all.

I'm overwhelmed - first, by the sheer commitment to this madness of writing every day and next, by the things that are being written. This year especially, so much of what I'm reading is making me think about my own stances / views / preoccupations (see my last post) and keeping me honest (see zugenia's post for the day)!

(In a related aside: You should go order stuff from Jumbo Jibbles' store. If you do it in the next half hour, you can use that fantabulous 40% off discount she's running right now.)

And for all that - this is a very public thank you, just four days in. We're a little over a sixth of the way there. Woot!

*Because, you know, I've taken time off school for the moment.

--------------------------------

Writing everyday is making me mentally sift through things that I want to talk about on the blog. This is good because it keeps me from ranting endlessly. But it is also frustrating because sometimes, I mentally find the perfect way to say what I want but can't get to a writing device on time and so that phrasing evaporates. (Aight, just because I'm not in school doesn't mean I'm free, etc. My hours are otherwise filled with things that need doing.)

And one of these things I managed today (see, segue!) was to finish reading Stupefying Stories December 2012.

I'm wary of doing a full-fledged review (S.B. just did one of a different book on her blog).
I enjoyed the read - although several of the stories tread a predictable path - humans exploiting other worlds, invasion of the body-snatchers, hope in a post-apocalyptic world, that sort of thing.
On the whole, however, the writing of the eleven stories is engaging.

Jon David's "We Talk Like Gods" is delightful.
And despite its rushed ending, I also loved Mark Wolf's "Tiny, Tiny Hungers".
Both, Shaun Duke's "In the Shadows of the Empire of Coal" and Joel V. Kela's "The Gods of Sand and Stone" have some pretty evocative imagery.

A. A. Leil's HoPE does interesting things with narrative voice - although, again, the idea in general put me in the mind of Justina Robson's, "Natural History".

The one story that I absolutely loved, however was Lou Antonelli's "The Relic" with its little tongue-in-cheek commentary about decontextualization of history.

I'm undecided on how I feel about only two of the stories having female protagonists ("MoonBubble" by Eric Cline and "Avocado, Rutabaga, Aubergine" by M. Benardo).

But in all, you should pay a Dollar ninety-nine and get the kindle version of the book and read it.

-----
Oh Deary, Deary Me. It's past midnight and my carriage has turned into a pumpkin, apparently.
Well, time for some pie, then.

New additions and a quick, quick post

First, some housekeeping:
My dear old friend, Jumbo Jibbles has also been blogathoning. I'm excited! You should go to her blog and buy some of her stuff. It is awesome. She made me these, two years ago. Around February, too!
Hello, old friend. She's not yet on my scroll, but I'll put her there when I'm at a real computer (and not a mobile device).

Also, you'll notice that I somehow left Pearls and Jade off my kick-off tally. So, hello, Pearls & Jade. (She's on the scroll already.)

And, A-Pisces now blogs here. (Sidebar link to be updated soon).

Now, onto other stuff.
I *do* have more to say about the rubbish ideas about motherhood and work that continue to persist in our world - with anecdotal evidence, of course. But, nevermind that for today. I'll get to it.

For right now, however, it Superbowl Sunday and everydbody's having having fun, fun, fun.
As am I, even if i know less than squat about American football.
And so it is, that I'm taking a page out of Zugenia's book and soaking up Sunday family time. This weekend that has meant house-cleaning, a wee bit of consumerist spending, thinking about sleep training and cooking.

I've also been reading Stupefying Stories and thinking about BattleStar Galactica and Pearl & Jade's post on the ethics of photography. In other words, dear reader, this will have to be today's post - with just a hint of the things that might surface in posts during the week.

Ice-creams, Eve-teasing and This Whole Woman Thing

In all fairness, only two of those three things are related.

I mention Ice-cream - the unrelated element here - only as a hat-tip in the direction of the sibling.
In her post today, she accuses me reminisces about the childhood us - specifically, about me gobbling up my own choco-bar  and then staring at her mango bar until she let me have some of it.
This, unfortunately, is true.

As karmic payback perhaps, I haven't had real ice-cream in well over six months, now. Seriously.
I'm rather sick of coconut milk vanilla bean ice-cream, which as delicious as it may be, is not ice-cream.
(Deep Sigh.)

I *do* recommend this vanilla pudding, though. Like the author says, it's not ice-cream, but the flavor is a-mah-zing! (lilt voice here).

As part of today's Blogathoning, Pearls and Jades talks of her trip to India and of the incredible creepiness of being harassed on the streets of Delhi (you know, rubbing of body parts against you, yelling, cat-calling, inappropriate touching, open masturbation).

I'm ashamed. And I want to apologize for this terrible experience of - Ahem! - Incredible India.

Incredible is one word for it, I suppose.


Unfortunately, though, this has been my experience of good 'ole India as well.
(Pearls, as a teenager traveling in Delhi, I've had someone rub their penis into my back through their clothes and mine. I empathize. It's not that you're a stranger, it's that you're a Woman Person.)

So much so, in fact, that when I travelled alone on overnight buses (for work or pleasure), I've carried a kitchen knife on my person.
I've used it.
Once.
To jab at a groping hand.

I know friends and family who have carried other things - safety pins, mace, chilli powder.

I've heard the "Asking for it" argument by way of explaining this behavior way too many times. And each time that logic made me livid (the sibling will vouch for the severity of my anger). Simply because, this line of reasoning essentially boils down to:
1) "You're a Girl / Woman / Person with Breasts and A Vagina. Therefore, you're asking for it."
2) Men are, by default, harassers, assaulter, and rapists. They're Allowed To Be That Way. You - for #1 above - clearly have to do the changing. Apologize for being and therefore awakening the Man's clearly uncontrollable natural state of being.

Because, you know, we have a choice over the sex that we are.
Oh wait. We Don't.
 (There's that other thing - the gender we enact, but that's a whole different story for later).

And this is why posts like this one - despite their ostensibly good intentions and goading to take personal responsibility - also make me angry for the appropriation of Ho'oponopono to tackle systemic and systematic injustices.

I can't help feeling that this idea:

I'm fully and completely responsible for this situation in my life.This is happening because of some sub conscious memory, I don't need to know what it is.
I'm sorryPlease forgive meThank youI love you

and calling everyone to take *equal* personal responsibility is just another form of victim blaming.

A Somewhat Unfinished post about Cooking

Cooking is a relatively recent love. And A Love of which I am almost always conflicted. Because, where I come from, cooking has not (make that emphatically NOT) been reclaimed by women as something to be done out of love and pleasure.

To put it another way, even today cooking, especially in a domestic situation, is naturally (I'll talk about this in a bit) a woman's job. And in said domestic situation - when the man cooks (clearly, I'm only talking about heterosexual and pretty damn traditional domestic associations here - you know, husband/wife that kind of thing) it is .... well, it's an offer - which even when it is carried through is colored by self-importance, and framed, however subtly as an achievement, a favor.

Consequently, cooking which can be a glorious, fascinating hobby - for women becomes an immanent activity. An act of maintenance so that the household can sustain itself physically (Whereas it moves from the immanent into the creative for the man in this situation).

Right... where was I. Cooking.
What brought this on, FD? You ask, concerned (or not so concerned, if you know me). More than once in the last month, I've heard three (unrelated, unconnected) people (two women, one man) remark - "I don't like everyday cooking. I like to experiment and try new recipes".
And this has been on my mind ever since.

When I first took to cooking a few years ago, I did it because I had vast, unending amounts of time on my hands. And even then, I took to it reluctantly.

Now, I have to admit, I have enough fun with it that I sometimes forget my conflicts and my reluctance. Until the moment where someone says something entirely daft, or until I meet someone who has clearly not questioned her / his own premises / naturalizations about The Things That Women Naturally Do.

Here's where I want to point out the obvious thing - Cooking is not any more natural to a woman than it is to a man. Natural means occurring in / determined by nature. Have you ever seen a baby girl born with an apron and ladle?
No? Well, there you go.

I have more to say clearly. But this naturalization (women cook) is part of that other umbrella rubbish notion that "(Indian) Women Need to Be Able To Do Everything".
More on this at some later point.
But for now. Bah.

On an only tangentially related note, here are more books that you should read

February 2013 - The Blogathoning that the Mayans forgot

Excitingly, more than one person asked me to Blogathon before I badgered asked them if they would this year (Yes, you. You know who you are.)

How. Flippin'. Exciting.
(Seriously, you *have* to spare 55 seconds of your life to watch Maurice Moss. Do It!)

Here are our usual suspects for Blogathon Month 2013:
1. The Sibling
2. R.D.P
3. The Other Sibling
4. Simbly Bored
5. The Phoenix
6. Allison
7. Xhelsea M.

Plus, this time around, I've asked new favorite people to hop on board. And so, joining us for the First Time Ever:
*Zugenia - a new friend and a delightful blogger
*Apisces - another new friend whose work I can't wait to read
*Sita - an old friend and fantastic person

Also re-joining us, with the promise of regular, if not daily blogging this month,
* R.S. a.k.a PreventionGeek - her professional blog is here and a personal one (where she's one of the contributors) is here.

I'm behind on creating a blog roll for this specifically, but that'll happen in the next day or two.

The rules, as ever, remain the same:
1. Through the month of February (1-28), write one original, meaningful post a day (well, meaningful to you, if not anyone else).
2. Send me an email telling me you're on board and I'll add you to the 28 day blog scroll.
3. Invite other people if you'd like: the more, the merrier etc.

The only change is that this time I actually do have ideas for gifts and I'm getting better with my follow-up. Promise.

Now, if you're here and want to get on board and I've forgotten you. Send me an email (frozendry at gmail dot com).

Aside from that, We're On, people! 

The Grand Finale

That's it folks, we're at the end of the Blogathoning month.

The occasion was marked by a glorious 65 F day that has somehow now turned dark and windy.
We've had some rough news in the last few weeks, my family and I. And today started off with some more tumult.

But, the day also came scattered reminders of kindness and love. And the affection of strangers.
And so I'm ending this last post with another prayer; one this time for grace, strength and enduring support.

I'll be off here for a bit now. But, I'll see ya when I see ya.
Gifts are being planned for y'all who were on board. Expect emails from me in two, three weeks.

Blogging Out.

A Question, this time and a comment

How is it that despite a cancelled class today has been the longest bloody day of the semester so far?
I spent nearly half the day in school - no literally half a twenty-four-hour-day. This is not good for anyone's sanity. It is not, at any rate, good for mine.

I'm glad tomorrow is the end of the month. Blogathon aside, this has been one.long.month.
And, I'm glad of course that it's payday. Whoopdeedoo.