Monthly Archive

So, this is a great podcast which I highly suggest subscribing too - the link here is an episode that covers a lot of ground, including the media continuing to exoticize women of color when they are finally represented (if you haven’t seen the Aishwarya video I posted earlier, well then you need to, particularly if you are skeptical of this belief. Of course if you are…you probably aren’t reading this site ever.)
Listen to it while having breakfast or during your lunchbreak.

This is about language people! Language!

Aishwarya Rai is one of those women that I give a lot of credit to for paving some way for Indian women to be maintstreamed somehow but Lord Knows she could easily pass for exotic white and isn’t really helping by remaining passive about the language used about her. Then again, my victim-to-system blame lens reminds me that this is really about the public being eager to pounce upon any chance to objectify the other…

“My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. You fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.
Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial destortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and co-optation.” -Audre Lorde, The uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism

“I’m not telling you that women are weak. Women are strong. Women can do everything as well as men. Women can do much more. But a woman has to seek that vein of strength in herself.” -Nair

I hate this feeling of being tired but having postponed writing that now the need to write has outweighed the fact the my bed is beckoning a mere yard away. So, I shall try my best to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time, and if I don’t make it past a couple of points, well I’ll just continue tomorrow.

> First, the many quotes I’ve been meaning to put down for others to read - I’m reading my last summer book, Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair, which is in a word, stunning. I haven’t begun my paper but now I realize Nair’s book will be the center of my writing. The quotes don’t need any sort of introduction - those who understand will wince and those who don’t…are lucky?

“I’m not who everyone thinks I am”…
“I know that now. But you hide behind such a stiff armour of control that most people must be in awe of you,”…
“…I wasn’t always like this; so stiff and restrained. I had to grow a shell around myself. To protect myself. To deflect hurt and pain. If I hadn’t, I would have gone insane.”

“Sometimes when friends came calling and there would be a little girl whose father beamed proudly at his daughter’s quick answers, Sheela would want to butt in and plead, ‘Don’t do this to her. My father was the same. He thought it funny when I was cheeky. Only now he calls it back chat and it makes him furious. Please, don’t do this to your daughter. She is going to grow up thinking this is the way to be. Instead, teach her to swallow her words, make her mouth nice and pleasant, innocuous things. Kill her spirit and tame her tongue. So that when she grows up, she won’t be like me, wondering what it is I said wrong and what blunder I am going to commit next by opening my mouth”

“…She thought, all these women….are trying to make some sense of their own existence by talking about it to anyone who will listen. I am the same, she thought. I’m trying to define the reality of my life, justify my failures and my own sense of hopelessness by preying on the fabric of their lives, seeking in it a similar thread that in some way will connect their lives with mine, make me feel less guilty for who I am and what I have let myself become.”

The whole book could be a quote, really. But ya know.

>I wanted so much to talk about how lovely yesterday was, but maybe I will save that for another day.

> For the first time in so long I actually miss the feeling of being interested in someone. Of classic teen-movie romance. Something I should have experienced at the generalized age of 14? 15? In reading Ladies Coupe, I wonder if it’s even possible for me to feel that kind of butterfly/first date/getting to know you love. That feeling of fascination and excitement - the last time I felt that way was…when I met P. Almost two years ago now. Before and after that…there was just… Struggle.
It makes me angry that the most female-sensitive/forward thinking/cream of the crop males are still intimidated by women in power, women who are smarter and louder and more opinionated than the normalized idealized woman. Why are the few who can handle it praised so highly for being exceptions?

> I need a new name for this blog because I realized that my fatalistic title has done just that - provided an easy out clause for my writing, so that I never feel obligated to process in text once college starts up again. But in wanting to make the effort, I have decided the first and easiest method of commitment is to change the title from seasonal to defining.
Of course the question that arises is, what to name this blog of genre-less deconstruction? Will I even need it when the year begins? It became so useful in providing a means of communicating with people and continue my habits as an antisocial, hibernating introvert. Maybe someone can throw out a suggestion.

11:49! It was an early morning so I don’t feel guilty about sleeping so early. Especially after discovering my new love for sleeping in bed diagonally.
Till tomorrow.

I’m back!
with a computer that has a new harddrive
…with my old hd went the last 2 years of my writing/music/papers/photos/letters/etc.

I have come out of the week feeling recharged..
With an article about something beautiful - the only soccer player of Indian decent in the world cup is actively speaking out against homophobia
And we love him for it.