Maybe it's just me, but sex (and, more specifically, the intersection of love and sex) is terrifying. I mean, I know I have intimacy issues and so most things that involve other people are terrifying in one way or another, but man. Feelings and sex are the worst.
It's pretty easy to have sex when you don't care. Really. (I'm sure someone out there will mutter "Slut" under their breath. I could write you a whole different blog about slut-shaming and sex-shaming in current culture. I probably will. In the meantime, just don't say it to my face, ok? I'm likely to burst into tears and embarrass both of us.)
But the reality is that we now (for better or worse, and I happen to think it's a little bit of both) live in a culture in which sex is divorced from most of its traditional meanings. We hold onto the vestiges of those past associations, but really, everyone's out there doing what they do, and not a lot of people think that intercourse equates to commitment anymore. It's just sex. It feels good. It's a biological need like any other. Take your pick of rationalizations.
In a permissive culture, it's really easy to end up having a lot of sex. (I have.) And it's really easy for that sex to be utterly, completely, and absolutely meaningless.
And that, my darlings, is called a defense mechanism. It's really easy to just have at it when you really, truly do not give a flying fuck about the person that you're fucking. Said with less profanity, when you don't care about the person you are engaging in intimate acts with, the acts are no longer intimate. Intimacy (like arousal and attraction) are first and foremost states of mind, not states of body. The brain is the most highly developed and intensely sensitive sexual organ we possess.
But there's a lot going on in the act of sex without intimacy, and on the whole I think that it can contribute to a whole host of sexual dysfunctions that are increasingly common, or, increasingly talked about. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a rise in actual instances of a thing, or just a rise in the number of people willing to talk about a thing.
I came across an interview with a woman who's working on getting a campaign called "Make Love Not Porn" off the ground. It's not what it sounds like. There are no prescriptives about waiting for true love or marriage, there is no moralizing or shaming involved. Rather, she's concerned that because the focus of sex-education initiatives have been on these lines, young people are learning what sex is from porn. Porn has become the standard by which we fuck.
And that's awful. I think we can all agree on that.
Porn is not real life. Porn is entertainment of a specific variety, and it's direceted primarily at men. Porn is all about the money shot. Porn is about male pleasure. The focus is getting a guy off.
And that's how we're having sex these days. Like porn stars. And rather than a give and take, rather than an intimate exchange between two people that have feelings and are engaging with each other, we are all of us focused on the idea that good sex is sex in which a man has an orgasm and a woman moans a lot. I think that's supposed to mean she's having a good time, too, but it's hard to tell. I mean, the last time I (accidentally) watched some porn, I was actually sick to my stomach because the woman in the scene was so obviously drugged out of her goddamn mind that I was watching a rape, and painfully conscious of it. There is no way she could have consented, much less have been enjoying herself.
So there's some feminist undertone to this whole sex-as-porn thing; it is enormously detrimental to women, since the focus in porn is men. But I also think it's detrimental to men. There is no intimacy in the way we, as a culture, approach sex anymore. In that way, my own issues are part of a much larger malaise. We don't know how to be intimate with each other even when we want to, because porn-as-sex is so steeped into our consciousness.
And I believe (despite my intense feminist leanings and occasional rage) that we are all human beings first, and gendered human beings second, and men/masculine-leaning beings desire intimacy just as much as anyone else. And they, too, are being denied the tools to achieve it physically with their partners by this culture that replaces sexual intimacy with caricatures.
I can't put my own problems with intimacy on the porn industry. I was never much of a porn watcher. I mean, I've put in the minimum requisite hours for someone of my generation on redtube and I've read far, far more erotica than a lot of people I know, but I never really got into it. Porn consumption is essentially masturbation with some technological twists, and I've never really got the point of masturbation, either. But it certainly doesn't help. Being trapped in the idea of porn as sex means that even when I want to care, even when I find myself desperately longing to actually achieve intimacy, all I can think about is whether or not I'm any good, and good is measured by the unreality of porn.
So, Cindy Gallop: I am with you. Let's make love, not porn.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Have You Ever Been In Love
Have you ever been in love?
Have you known what it feels like to be able to follow your instincts without worry. Have you known what it's like to compare the color of your lover's eyes to the fallen leaves of autumn after a rainstorm has dulled the colors and shined the surfaces. Have you not been self-conscious about it. Lovers make ridiculous comparisons. Have you accepted "You are the air in my cerebral lungs" as a basic fact, not a flight of fancy. Have you believed that without yourself, someone else would not be able to think. It is far more powerful than believing that without one, another cannot live.
Have you known yourself a muse.
Have you known what it is to lose yourself in someone else's world, and in turn to pull them into your own. Have you known what it is to construct an entirely new reality on the basis of shared understanding, and to stand in that brave new world and laugh at everyone on the outside that can't come in and won't come in and isn't invited in and will never know what we two know or feel what we two feel or the completeness of two people so perfectly complementary.
Have you known what it is like to fit.
Have you known what it is to hear someone's terrible confessions, and to accept them. Not to argue about them, or convince him otherwise. Have you known what it is to let someone tell you their greatest failings, their greatest amoralities, their greatest secrets and simply absorb the knowledge and go on loving. Have you known what it is to love a monster.
But we're all monsters, aren't we. One way or another.
I have loved a monster, and I am become a monster. I have loved a monster and I love a monster still and that has made me the most grotesque and monstrous of things. This love for the blackness of someone else's soul that I carry around in my heart and refuse to cut away has poisoned me and I can't love anymore, not unless you are a monster, too, in which event I will love you like you have never been loved, and never will be loved, because monsters are the easiest to love. His love is a plague, and I will die without the pieces of my heart that he has claimed but I will not die if I keep on loving him in those pieces of my heart. Love cures all ills.
He is the one that taught me survival above all things. He is the reason I can survive his absence, with my wasted heart and my hardened edges.
I have loved a monster, and I am become a monster, and have you ever been in love? Because if you have then you have loved a monster, too. We are all monsters. One way or another.
Have you known what it feels like to be able to follow your instincts without worry. Have you known what it's like to compare the color of your lover's eyes to the fallen leaves of autumn after a rainstorm has dulled the colors and shined the surfaces. Have you not been self-conscious about it. Lovers make ridiculous comparisons. Have you accepted "You are the air in my cerebral lungs" as a basic fact, not a flight of fancy. Have you believed that without yourself, someone else would not be able to think. It is far more powerful than believing that without one, another cannot live.
Have you known yourself a muse.
Have you known what it is to lose yourself in someone else's world, and in turn to pull them into your own. Have you known what it is to construct an entirely new reality on the basis of shared understanding, and to stand in that brave new world and laugh at everyone on the outside that can't come in and won't come in and isn't invited in and will never know what we two know or feel what we two feel or the completeness of two people so perfectly complementary.
Have you known what it is like to fit.
Have you known what it is to hear someone's terrible confessions, and to accept them. Not to argue about them, or convince him otherwise. Have you known what it is to let someone tell you their greatest failings, their greatest amoralities, their greatest secrets and simply absorb the knowledge and go on loving. Have you known what it is to love a monster.
But we're all monsters, aren't we. One way or another.
I have loved a monster, and I am become a monster. I have loved a monster and I love a monster still and that has made me the most grotesque and monstrous of things. This love for the blackness of someone else's soul that I carry around in my heart and refuse to cut away has poisoned me and I can't love anymore, not unless you are a monster, too, in which event I will love you like you have never been loved, and never will be loved, because monsters are the easiest to love. His love is a plague, and I will die without the pieces of my heart that he has claimed but I will not die if I keep on loving him in those pieces of my heart. Love cures all ills.
He is the one that taught me survival above all things. He is the reason I can survive his absence, with my wasted heart and my hardened edges.
I have loved a monster, and I am become a monster, and have you ever been in love? Because if you have then you have loved a monster, too. We are all monsters. One way or another.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
It's Called "Disobedience" for a Reason
Yesterday morning, following an overnight clash between protestors in the financial district of Boston and the Boston Police Department, the mayor of Boston, one Thomas Menino, called into a morning news show and offered this little gem:
"I will not tolerate civil disobedience in the city of Boston."
For real. The man said this. On television.
I had to go find a video of the incident, because for a few minutes I just couldn't believe someone could so grossly misunderstand both the level of disenchantment festering among the populace AND the nature of civil disobedience. But apparently, Mayor Menino can.
I don't speak for anyone but myself, so I'll not pontificate on the reasons for the massive Occupy Together encampments and marches that are happening all over the country. I could tell you my own reasons for desiring to protest, but that seems silly as I'm really a very lucky ducky when you get right down to it, as evidenced by the stories told in this blog.
So let's talk about civil disobedience. First of all, it's called disobedience for a reason, and that reason is that practitioners are disobeying. They are deliberately choosing not to follow certain laws or directives from authority as a means to call attention to an injustice or an issue or to make certain that their voices are heard.
From a moral perspective, it is always any person's right to refuse to follow a law or directive that is in opposition to their conscience. And from a legal and civil perspective, it is always the state's right to enforce laws and directives by using coersion to ensure compliance. When I tweeted about this yesterday, I got a lot of responses along the lines of "How dare he! It's our right!" which is technically true, but it's also true that he, as the executive of a duly constituted governmental unit, has the right to make sure that there are consequences for disobedience.
That's how a government, and a civil society, functions. We hand over certain powers to the state and the state uses those powers with equal distribution, meaning that the laws are applied the same to everyone.
(This is the ideal definition, by the by, and I am more than aware that human practice of ideals leads to human error in the application of principles. This, in a nutshell, is why protest ever happens at all: because some people feel that the civil contract has been violated by an unequitable application of agreed-upon principles. The more people feel that way, the more likely it is that protest becomes action and a new contract is formed. Cf.: Every revolution in history.)
So the position of nontolerance for civil disobedience is the only one that the mayor can take. It is his duty to enforce the laws, and if the laws include prohibitions on the occupation of public space, well, then.
But what is so tone-deaf about the statement is that Mayor Menino SAID IT OUT LOUD. It is as if this man either doesn't think people are smart enough to realize that civil disobedience is, in fact, disobedience and therefore has consequences, or that if he just sternly tells them to stop they will meekly walk away, crushed by the specter of Authority.
It is UNBEARABLY paternalistic.
The Occupy protestors, despite what you may have heard, are not stupid. They realize that by taking over public spaces in ways that are, in fact, expressly forbidden in municipal codes they are risking arrest. They are AWARE that what they're doing is civil disobedience, and they are aware what civil disobedience means. So you telling them that it "won't be tolerated" is silly. They know that. That is, in fact, THE WHOLE POINT.
And if you're trying to frighten them into backing down by saying something like "civil disobedience won't be tolerated" I have to just laugh. Because people that are willing to risk arrest and pepper spray and bodily harm to make their point about the laughable inequity of the current system, and the egregious ways in which our social contract has been violated and the need for a new one, aren't going to back down because you wag your finger at them and tell them there will be consequences.
Because you see, Mr. Mayor, the consequences of remaining silent and allowing the continued unequal application of our governing principles to flourish unchecked are far, far worse than anything you can threaten.
"I will not tolerate civil disobedience in the city of Boston."
For real. The man said this. On television.
I had to go find a video of the incident, because for a few minutes I just couldn't believe someone could so grossly misunderstand both the level of disenchantment festering among the populace AND the nature of civil disobedience. But apparently, Mayor Menino can.
I don't speak for anyone but myself, so I'll not pontificate on the reasons for the massive Occupy Together encampments and marches that are happening all over the country. I could tell you my own reasons for desiring to protest, but that seems silly as I'm really a very lucky ducky when you get right down to it, as evidenced by the stories told in this blog.
So let's talk about civil disobedience. First of all, it's called disobedience for a reason, and that reason is that practitioners are disobeying. They are deliberately choosing not to follow certain laws or directives from authority as a means to call attention to an injustice or an issue or to make certain that their voices are heard.
From a moral perspective, it is always any person's right to refuse to follow a law or directive that is in opposition to their conscience. And from a legal and civil perspective, it is always the state's right to enforce laws and directives by using coersion to ensure compliance. When I tweeted about this yesterday, I got a lot of responses along the lines of "How dare he! It's our right!" which is technically true, but it's also true that he, as the executive of a duly constituted governmental unit, has the right to make sure that there are consequences for disobedience.
That's how a government, and a civil society, functions. We hand over certain powers to the state and the state uses those powers with equal distribution, meaning that the laws are applied the same to everyone.
(This is the ideal definition, by the by, and I am more than aware that human practice of ideals leads to human error in the application of principles. This, in a nutshell, is why protest ever happens at all: because some people feel that the civil contract has been violated by an unequitable application of agreed-upon principles. The more people feel that way, the more likely it is that protest becomes action and a new contract is formed. Cf.: Every revolution in history.)
So the position of nontolerance for civil disobedience is the only one that the mayor can take. It is his duty to enforce the laws, and if the laws include prohibitions on the occupation of public space, well, then.
But what is so tone-deaf about the statement is that Mayor Menino SAID IT OUT LOUD. It is as if this man either doesn't think people are smart enough to realize that civil disobedience is, in fact, disobedience and therefore has consequences, or that if he just sternly tells them to stop they will meekly walk away, crushed by the specter of Authority.
It is UNBEARABLY paternalistic.
The Occupy protestors, despite what you may have heard, are not stupid. They realize that by taking over public spaces in ways that are, in fact, expressly forbidden in municipal codes they are risking arrest. They are AWARE that what they're doing is civil disobedience, and they are aware what civil disobedience means. So you telling them that it "won't be tolerated" is silly. They know that. That is, in fact, THE WHOLE POINT.
And if you're trying to frighten them into backing down by saying something like "civil disobedience won't be tolerated" I have to just laugh. Because people that are willing to risk arrest and pepper spray and bodily harm to make their point about the laughable inequity of the current system, and the egregious ways in which our social contract has been violated and the need for a new one, aren't going to back down because you wag your finger at them and tell them there will be consequences.
Because you see, Mr. Mayor, the consequences of remaining silent and allowing the continued unequal application of our governing principles to flourish unchecked are far, far worse than anything you can threaten.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Playground Revenge
A few weeks ago, I took my daughter to the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Honestly, it was a truly gorgeous day and the Packers weren't playing until later and my mom needed some quiet house time, so I tossed her in the stroller (ok, ok, she climbed in herself) and off we went.
A few disclaimers, before I go further. I was probably dressed like a celebrity trying to hide from photographers, complete with inappropriate dress, oversized sweater, scarf and hat. G was probably also inappropriately dressed, and by that I mean barefoot and not wearing her own sweater. And I am known to be pretty sensitive to condescending and/or patronizing behavior. I have been since I was a wee bairn. And I may have been moderately hungover. Hangovers make me cranky.
But it was a beautiful day! Check it:
So there we were, happily at Lake Park playground. G is running about like a mad thing, sliding on slides and digging in sand and climbing on dangerously unstable chain ladders and I am happily parked on a bench in the sunshine, checking twitter and occcasionally snapping a picture of her and often letting my head fall back to rest oh-so-gently on the back of the bench while I try to banish the throbbing knot of having drank too much last night from my temples.
I turn my head to the right. And there I see them, a group of parents from G's school. including the principal and his wife, sitting on a picnic blanket together and talking loudly and raucously as they share organic snack cakes and keep vulture eyes on their various children.
Oh shit, I think. At least they are over by the little kids area and we're over here on the other side of the playground.
FYI, NEVER think that. Because your toddler will immediately run over to you, dump her shoes in your lap and tear off barefoot toward the people you are happy not to be interacting with. She got to the swing set and called me over at the top of her lungs to push her. But she said "please" so I didn't really have grounds for refusal.
I get there and realize that my fear of being forced to interact with these people is completely unfounded, as they all ignore me. Completely. Even after the kids make the connection that some of them are in the same kindergarten class and some of them are in the class next door.
Whatever, I'm cool with that. All these parents are between fifteen and twenty years older than me, and I guarantee you that none of them were out drinking too much the night before. Also that none of them finished their evening at three ante-meridian with take-out nachos from the delightful Mexican-Californian biker* on their front porch. Interacting with them would probably be painfully awkward for everyone involved, so I'm quite happy to be spared the increase in my head pains.
But then things start to happen. A group of boys (dark skinned, which I must point out since I live in the whitest-white-bread neighborhood ever) with toy guns appear as if by magic and start pretending to shoot each other as they chase all over the playground area. A grizzled, old white man in a USMC baseball cap sits in a camo-print camp chair on the very far edge of the playground and doesn't really watch them.
Ok, now, yeah, a bunch of eight- to fourteen-year-olds running over the toddler play area is a recipe for disaster. Some eighteen-month-old will get run over, or some four-year-old will try to climb and jump like the big kids are and break something. I get it. So the principal of my kids' school asking the boys to go play somewhere else is not really out of line.
BUT THEN. HIS WIFE. This woman has got to be the most loud-mouthed, judgmental, politically correct, condescending thing in the ENTIRE WORLD. Before the boys leave, she starts talking (at the top of her considerable voice) about the inappropriateness of guns as toys. She bullies all the other parents in her little picnic into acquiescing to her superior viewpoint. And she openly (and still loudly) wonders at parents who "dump" their kids at a playground "with weapons."
First of all, the kids can hear you, lady, and you're not exactly showing them any kind of respect. Second, the other parents in your little clique are aware of how disrespectful you're being but you've got them cowed because you treat life like middle-school and you have to be the Queen Fucking Bee. Third, the guardian of these kids, probably a foster parent or grandparent, can hear you, and I guarantee you he doesn't need your moralizing from the high-and-mighty throne of your affluence. Being well off and liberal doesn't give you the right to passive-aggressively tell everyone else in the world how to live.
It took most of my self-control not to whirl around and tell her off. But I do try not to swear in front of my own kid, and I don't think I could have accomplished the verbal tonge-lashing this woman needed without dropping at least two f-bombs. Also, yelling at people is no way to solve anything, and berating this woman loudly for berating the state of these kids loudly would have been ineffective at best. So I held my tongue. It was hard.
But then I got my sweet revenge. You see, by this time, I had tamed the hangover (we'd been at the park for close to two hours) enough to be playing with my sweet little girl. We were sitting in the sand, raking it into a pile and smoothing the sides, digging a circular hole around it, placing rocks and sticks. The whole thing was actually quite soothing, building this mountainous castle, and the feel of the sand slipping over and through our fingers was delightful. I started making a rock garden outside the castle as she kept working on the walls, and suddenly other children were there to help us.
First, the daughter and son of Mrs. Judgmental Loudmouth. Then another boy from the playgroup.
AND THEN: the youngest three boys of the gun-toting group came to see what we were up to. Two were six-year-old twins; one was an eight year old. They came and sat down with us, wondered what we were doing. I told them. They asked if they could help. I asked them to please put the guns down somewhere else and join us.
And they did. We spent a solid forty minutes, the group of us, coming sand into a pile and then another pile and building a bridge between them. We put flags on top and dug a ditch around. We created an entire rock and stick garden around the exterior, and raked the sand in into patterns that included the first letter of each kids' name.
And Mrs. Judgmental Loudmouth sat on her fat ass on a camp chair not five feet away from me, and looked slightly aghast the entire time I played with her children and the gun boys and my kid. And she couldn't say a word. Because we were all quite happy together.
When her husband came to collect the kids into the minivan to drive home, he smiled at me and said hello and thank you and I smiled back and said hello and then I turned to her and with all the courtesy I could muster I sat up straight like a steel ramrod and looked her dead in the eye and gave her my most mega-watt smile ever and doffed my cloche to her. I totally saw her teeth clench. It was a beautiful moment.
(I'm totally a bad person and I'm going to hell but what the fuck ever.)
*I am going to get that awesome old biker hippie to teach me how to make tortillas if it's the last thing I do. Serious.
A few disclaimers, before I go further. I was probably dressed like a celebrity trying to hide from photographers, complete with inappropriate dress, oversized sweater, scarf and hat. G was probably also inappropriately dressed, and by that I mean barefoot and not wearing her own sweater. And I am known to be pretty sensitive to condescending and/or patronizing behavior. I have been since I was a wee bairn. And I may have been moderately hungover. Hangovers make me cranky.
But it was a beautiful day! Check it:
I turn my head to the right. And there I see them, a group of parents from G's school. including the principal and his wife, sitting on a picnic blanket together and talking loudly and raucously as they share organic snack cakes and keep vulture eyes on their various children.
Oh shit, I think. At least they are over by the little kids area and we're over here on the other side of the playground.
FYI, NEVER think that. Because your toddler will immediately run over to you, dump her shoes in your lap and tear off barefoot toward the people you are happy not to be interacting with. She got to the swing set and called me over at the top of her lungs to push her. But she said "please" so I didn't really have grounds for refusal.
I get there and realize that my fear of being forced to interact with these people is completely unfounded, as they all ignore me. Completely. Even after the kids make the connection that some of them are in the same kindergarten class and some of them are in the class next door.
Whatever, I'm cool with that. All these parents are between fifteen and twenty years older than me, and I guarantee you that none of them were out drinking too much the night before. Also that none of them finished their evening at three ante-meridian with take-out nachos from the delightful Mexican-Californian biker* on their front porch. Interacting with them would probably be painfully awkward for everyone involved, so I'm quite happy to be spared the increase in my head pains.
But then things start to happen. A group of boys (dark skinned, which I must point out since I live in the whitest-white-bread neighborhood ever) with toy guns appear as if by magic and start pretending to shoot each other as they chase all over the playground area. A grizzled, old white man in a USMC baseball cap sits in a camo-print camp chair on the very far edge of the playground and doesn't really watch them.
Ok, now, yeah, a bunch of eight- to fourteen-year-olds running over the toddler play area is a recipe for disaster. Some eighteen-month-old will get run over, or some four-year-old will try to climb and jump like the big kids are and break something. I get it. So the principal of my kids' school asking the boys to go play somewhere else is not really out of line.
BUT THEN. HIS WIFE. This woman has got to be the most loud-mouthed, judgmental, politically correct, condescending thing in the ENTIRE WORLD. Before the boys leave, she starts talking (at the top of her considerable voice) about the inappropriateness of guns as toys. She bullies all the other parents in her little picnic into acquiescing to her superior viewpoint. And she openly (and still loudly) wonders at parents who "dump" their kids at a playground "with weapons."
First of all, the kids can hear you, lady, and you're not exactly showing them any kind of respect. Second, the other parents in your little clique are aware of how disrespectful you're being but you've got them cowed because you treat life like middle-school and you have to be the Queen Fucking Bee. Third, the guardian of these kids, probably a foster parent or grandparent, can hear you, and I guarantee you he doesn't need your moralizing from the high-and-mighty throne of your affluence. Being well off and liberal doesn't give you the right to passive-aggressively tell everyone else in the world how to live.
It took most of my self-control not to whirl around and tell her off. But I do try not to swear in front of my own kid, and I don't think I could have accomplished the verbal tonge-lashing this woman needed without dropping at least two f-bombs. Also, yelling at people is no way to solve anything, and berating this woman loudly for berating the state of these kids loudly would have been ineffective at best. So I held my tongue. It was hard.
But then I got my sweet revenge. You see, by this time, I had tamed the hangover (we'd been at the park for close to two hours) enough to be playing with my sweet little girl. We were sitting in the sand, raking it into a pile and smoothing the sides, digging a circular hole around it, placing rocks and sticks. The whole thing was actually quite soothing, building this mountainous castle, and the feel of the sand slipping over and through our fingers was delightful. I started making a rock garden outside the castle as she kept working on the walls, and suddenly other children were there to help us.
First, the daughter and son of Mrs. Judgmental Loudmouth. Then another boy from the playgroup.
AND THEN: the youngest three boys of the gun-toting group came to see what we were up to. Two were six-year-old twins; one was an eight year old. They came and sat down with us, wondered what we were doing. I told them. They asked if they could help. I asked them to please put the guns down somewhere else and join us.
And they did. We spent a solid forty minutes, the group of us, coming sand into a pile and then another pile and building a bridge between them. We put flags on top and dug a ditch around. We created an entire rock and stick garden around the exterior, and raked the sand in into patterns that included the first letter of each kids' name.
And Mrs. Judgmental Loudmouth sat on her fat ass on a camp chair not five feet away from me, and looked slightly aghast the entire time I played with her children and the gun boys and my kid. And she couldn't say a word. Because we were all quite happy together.
When her husband came to collect the kids into the minivan to drive home, he smiled at me and said hello and thank you and I smiled back and said hello and then I turned to her and with all the courtesy I could muster I sat up straight like a steel ramrod and looked her dead in the eye and gave her my most mega-watt smile ever and doffed my cloche to her. I totally saw her teeth clench. It was a beautiful moment.
(I'm totally a bad person and I'm going to hell but what the fuck ever.)
*I am going to get that awesome old biker hippie to teach me how to make tortillas if it's the last thing I do. Serious.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
An Ode to the Apostrophe
What is an apostrophe? A punctuation mark. It is one of those marks we use to communicate, one of those mysterious and mystifying little black boxes that we use to contain language. Language is the concrete communication of abstract thought, or the abstract communication of concrete concepts. The meaning of an apostrophe, therefore, is completely abstracted from the strange symbol on the page.
What does its abstraction signify? It is a mark of elision, used to denote a missing letter, dropped into the void and replaced by this strange little hanging dangle; or it is a mark of possession, of belonging. It is a mark of absence, or a mark of ownership. This dichotomy is one of the more extreme examples of bipolarity in the English language. The apostrophe marks the nonappearance of something. It marks the deliberate decision to remove. But it also marks possession. It marks the desire to claim something, to assign it an owner and controller. The apostrophe marks titular rights.
His fingers kept finding the apostrophe. There were apostrophes everywhere during that conversation. What does that mean? Is he dropping me? Am I to be the letter dropped from the word of his life? Will the shape of me be totally cut away, replaced by naught but a generic mark, a tiny blot where once the complexity of me used to curve and bend and stick? Does he dislike my curves, or my bends, or the hard ways I project myself out into the space of the world, into his life? Would he prefer the blandness of an apostrophe? Would he opt for the inoffensiveness of a tiny misshapen dot, for the ease of not having to say so many syllables? Perhaps I am too much. It has happened before.
Or perhaps he is trying to claim ownership. Perhaps he wants to possess me, to declare to the world that I am his, that I belong to him. Apostrophes are marks of possession. They declare the subject to be subjected to control, or at the very least, belonging to someone. Part of me thrills to that notion. Part of me rebels. Let me say this: I will only wear his apostrophe if he wears mine in return. I know that one to one ratios don’t exist, but fair is fair, and he can only claim me if I get equal rights to stake my own claim.
Oh, apostrophe, you mystify me! I know how to use you, but I don’t know what you mean. I know how to form a contraction, and how to form a possessive, and how not to form a plural, and even how to form a possessive plural. I know your history. I know you came to us through French, and that your use in elision once included not just dropped letters but unpronounced letters. I miss the days of “lov’d.” I know all about the man who, in 2006, was charged with vandalism for painting missing apostrophes onto street signs in the area of Royal Tunbridge Wells. I know about the people demanding you be restored to your rightful place in Harrod’s (now Harrods) and Selfridge’s (now Selfridges).
But how do I interpret your sudden appearance at the end of a sentence? What do you mean to say by such a breach of the way its always been before? How do I know what to make of you when you appear out of nowhere in a new place, in a new light, and I am forced to re-examine everything I know? You make me uncomfortable when you do that. You make me shiver and glance around my living room nervously, wondering if anyone can see over my shoulder. You make me lie awake at night, trying to decide if I like this new incarnation you’ve taken on. I lie in my cold bed and my heart warms to the thought of belonging, and then I remember that you are also an elision, an absence, and I am tormented by your duality.
You are a mystery, apostrophe. I am fascinated by your enigmatic uses. I am endlessly occupied by thoughts of you. I don’t know what to make of you. But I know that I am enjoying the making immensely. I know that I would like to know all the things that you have replaced in his life, and all the things you have claimed for him.
Dear, darling, beloved apostrophe: teach me to understand his meaning in your use, and I, too, will paint you on missing street signs and write letters to restore you to your rightful place in usage. Show me the secrets of his mind.
What does its abstraction signify? It is a mark of elision, used to denote a missing letter, dropped into the void and replaced by this strange little hanging dangle; or it is a mark of possession, of belonging. It is a mark of absence, or a mark of ownership. This dichotomy is one of the more extreme examples of bipolarity in the English language. The apostrophe marks the nonappearance of something. It marks the deliberate decision to remove. But it also marks possession. It marks the desire to claim something, to assign it an owner and controller. The apostrophe marks titular rights.
His fingers kept finding the apostrophe. There were apostrophes everywhere during that conversation. What does that mean? Is he dropping me? Am I to be the letter dropped from the word of his life? Will the shape of me be totally cut away, replaced by naught but a generic mark, a tiny blot where once the complexity of me used to curve and bend and stick? Does he dislike my curves, or my bends, or the hard ways I project myself out into the space of the world, into his life? Would he prefer the blandness of an apostrophe? Would he opt for the inoffensiveness of a tiny misshapen dot, for the ease of not having to say so many syllables? Perhaps I am too much. It has happened before.
Or perhaps he is trying to claim ownership. Perhaps he wants to possess me, to declare to the world that I am his, that I belong to him. Apostrophes are marks of possession. They declare the subject to be subjected to control, or at the very least, belonging to someone. Part of me thrills to that notion. Part of me rebels. Let me say this: I will only wear his apostrophe if he wears mine in return. I know that one to one ratios don’t exist, but fair is fair, and he can only claim me if I get equal rights to stake my own claim.
Oh, apostrophe, you mystify me! I know how to use you, but I don’t know what you mean. I know how to form a contraction, and how to form a possessive, and how not to form a plural, and even how to form a possessive plural. I know your history. I know you came to us through French, and that your use in elision once included not just dropped letters but unpronounced letters. I miss the days of “lov’d.” I know all about the man who, in 2006, was charged with vandalism for painting missing apostrophes onto street signs in the area of Royal Tunbridge Wells. I know about the people demanding you be restored to your rightful place in Harrod’s (now Harrods) and Selfridge’s (now Selfridges).
But how do I interpret your sudden appearance at the end of a sentence? What do you mean to say by such a breach of the way its always been before? How do I know what to make of you when you appear out of nowhere in a new place, in a new light, and I am forced to re-examine everything I know? You make me uncomfortable when you do that. You make me shiver and glance around my living room nervously, wondering if anyone can see over my shoulder. You make me lie awake at night, trying to decide if I like this new incarnation you’ve taken on. I lie in my cold bed and my heart warms to the thought of belonging, and then I remember that you are also an elision, an absence, and I am tormented by your duality.
You are a mystery, apostrophe. I am fascinated by your enigmatic uses. I am endlessly occupied by thoughts of you. I don’t know what to make of you. But I know that I am enjoying the making immensely. I know that I would like to know all the things that you have replaced in his life, and all the things you have claimed for him.
Dear, darling, beloved apostrophe: teach me to understand his meaning in your use, and I, too, will paint you on missing street signs and write letters to restore you to your rightful place in usage. Show me the secrets of his mind.
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