conservatives would generally say that men and women are different sorts of people as a result of our genetic disposition. however, they would also say that individuals become homosexual as a result of poor relationships with parents or other environmental issues. liberals would say that you are born gay. however, they would assert that the gender roles most often ascribed to exist because of cultural pressures.
nature nurture nurture nature
round and round
also, i resent being told by someone who is supposed to be teaching not preaching that being pro-life is being anti-woman.
posted by renee 2:59 PM
Monday, April 26, 2004
today i am disjointed
happily unmotivated
i'd like more than anything to sit still and eat orange sherbet
actually, i can think of one thing i'd like better
to sit still and eat orange sherbet with fresh strawberries
i'd like to stop thinking
just for a minute
about how you can ever know who you're supposed to marry
and how you can ever decide what you want to do with your life
and about how i still embrace the performance demon
after all these years, i am still desperately straining to be good enough
i'd like to give it a rest.
maybe play the piano for awhile.
maybe eat orange sherbet.
posted by renee 8:49 PM
Sunday, April 25, 2004
perhaps my delirium was evident enough in my last post without the whiny explanation. regardless, i get a chipotle gift certificate out of the deal and seeing as i'm finished now, it seems worth it. after completing my open this morning, i was whisked off to bethleham and reinvigorated with the idea of church planting. overseas ministry always excites me, but the dynamics of a brand new church stateside is gaining appeal as well. i won't try to replay piper unless you really want to know, but a church that is outward focused instead of waiting for the world to come to it is an attractive picture indeed.
so, for today and everyday: "God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work" (II Corinthians 9:8) meaning "good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10).
lavish. without loophole or small print. bold and all caps.
AND GOD IS ABLE TO MAKE ALL GRACE ABOUND TO YOU, SO THAT IN ALL THINGS, AT ALL TIMES, HAVING ALL YOU NEED, YOU WILL ABOUND IN EVERY GOOD WORK.
posted by renee 1:38 PM
Saturday, April 24, 2004
i was scheduled to work from 9:00 to 5:00 today. i left at 7:45 tonight after 10 straight hours of standing up. and somehow i got coerced into helping open tomorrow at 5:45 am because they are going to be short staffed for the second day in a row. stupid stupid boss.
so i get a little proud of my stoicism. so i start to feel like i'm a great kid, hard worker, meeting expectations. but i actually was half an hour late this morning because of last night's mental breakdown during which i needed my boyfriend and he was away from his phone. cry in bed and hit redial every ten minutes. what can i say... i'm a girl. anyway, so i was up later than i should have been and 8 'o' clock came too early. then steph delayed another ten minutes by making me crepes. and i think, well, so i was pretty good today, but not perfect.
I'M NOT PERFECT. and when i get close, i am filled with pride. i have NOT conquered the performance demon. i hate feeling like i'm a disappointment more than i hate anything else. i wish i was more confident that people don't wish deep down that i was different. i cannot understand how God does. grace eludes me today. my patience is dwindling. also, i'm using my roommate's computer. she has a webcam and her boyfriend can see me. i think i'll go to bed.
posted by renee 8:53 PM
Friday, April 23, 2004
someone told me today that i look like scarlett johansson. even though i'd need a major lip job to give that an ounce of truth, it's still nice to get compliments... at least i assumed it was a compliment. i'm in the mood to clean. better get on that before i realize i'm crazy.
posted by renee 6:43 PM
Thursday, April 22, 2004
there are so many things that are good. it is good to work hard on a paper and get a B+ that you can be proud of. it is good to wonder whether or not i would have gone to freedom summer had i been a college student forty years before. it's good to be challanged to go this summer to repeat the concept with immigrant families. it is good to learn from other people's mistakes. it is good to get rides to school with maria. it is good to learn from your own mistakes. it is good to be invited to professor's homes for dinner. it is good to oversleep sometimes. it is best of all to be satisfied if i am sent away or kept here. to be satisfied if i get a real job or go to more school or do something crazy.
it is bad to stand up your boyfriend twice in one week. sorry sorry sorry.
posted by renee 9:07 PM
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
as if that wasn't enough.
i just looked at the clock and it was four twenty on four twenty.
mmm... the printer is running. i hope my paper sounds better than that last post. i am worried that because i've been struggling to stay awake for the last couple of hours, i might now struggle to fall asleep. stupid brain takes too long to switch gears. turn off thinker, renee. turn it off. tomorrow is not going to be pretty. (also: tomorrow i will not be pretty, unless you consider a greasy haired delirious pajama girl more attractive than i do).
blah. school is almost over. thank goodness.
posted by renee 4:19 AM
want to go to bed. must finish paper. hate school. miss micah abby lisa. everyone has cancer. tired. stupid stupid paper.
posted by renee 4:04 AM
Monday, April 19, 2004
finally the bus strike is over. i never would have thought the sight of a large, white, squarish hunk of metal on four wheels could make me feel so free. too free, almost. i was tempted to spend my evening downtown instead of here working on homework, but luckily i came straight home from work. however, i still managed to not write my paper, and the hours are ticking. i'm tempted to pull an all nighter even though i know it's not really necessary, just because it's almost the end of the semester and i could get away with it. blah. write write write.
posted by renee 8:47 PM
Sunday, April 18, 2004
the day of the update: clearly i'm avoiding my homework
lightning just sent outrageous wattage through the window and thunder shook the attic immediately afterward. then a bird sang. hello hitchcock on the third floor. mmm. the sky is greenish grey. i hope there's not a tornado warning because we'd have to go to my basement and it's scary down there.
posted by renee 6:39 PM
i just took a test on the internet to see if i'm a good kisser or not. then they asked me to join netflix and if i wanted to consolidate my debt or look at pictures of singles in my area. then they asked me for my email address. and they never told me the results of the test. now i'll never know. dang it.
posted by renee 3:20 PM
i remember sitting in the grass bowl on west bank one night a couple of years ago when the temperature was absolutely perfect and there was a hint of breeze. there was an upright bass player practicing outside the music building in the dark. the scene and the soundtrack.
a boy i thought i might love someday sat with me and we solved the great bohemian mysteries of the world in an hour. the dialogue.
it didn't work out. the plot twist.
and yesterday i rollerbladed on another perfect evening with an old sleeping at last album in my ears. when i got home, i shed the wheels and sat soaking up the sun and the last two tracks in perfect bliss. the resolution.
i think the reason i like music so much is because it's the soundtrack to my movielife.
what is it about clusters of vibrations in the air that move us? sound swells and our emotion with it. we use music when sinking in hopelessness or love or anger to intensify it. i have a hard time understanding people who don't connect with music in that way. to me it seems inextricably tied to feeling. totally illogical, but so so good. and that is the end of waxing philosophical today. listen to songs. let them affect you. when it's nice outside, go outside. au revoir.
posted by renee 11:51 AM
Friday, April 16, 2004
imagine a rich and powerful woman. someone who was born with wealth and half by wits, half by luck increased it to one of the biggest fortunes in the world. she is in her fifties, slightly wrinkled, and by no means a true beauty. she is hardened by her money and probably imagines herself to be more the center of things than she is. however, because of her power, she is rarely questioned and her arrogance is never checked, except by the couple of pesky ex-husbands who demanded too much. imagine an interview with her and her current partner. he is a male model, with a perfectly sculpted body and an exotic accent. before the interview with the couple begins, the news team shows several video clips of fashion shoots with the man wearing revealing clothing. then the two of them sit down together, she in professional attire and he obviously the visual attachment. he says their relationship works because "she is beautiful, intelligent and has a wonderful heart." she says it's because "he's not high-maintenence. i mean, for someone else, he might be high maintenence, but we just get along really well."
or does it somehow make more sense if the roles are switched and donald trump gets to have his pick of foreign beauties to come live with him in luxury for the low cost of never complaining and providing sexual diversion whenever called on. it was painfully obvious. i can't believe he didn't at least pretend he cared about anything she had to say.
posted by renee 8:30 PM
Thursday, April 15, 2004
There is no excuse for theft. However, I find this to be ridiculously funny and it should be extended from Adam's readership to my own, so I am stealing it from him. As much as modesty is a legitimate issue (no argument from me there), I question the necessity of an Amish standard in swimwear. It is true that the beach has always seemed to be an exception to the rule. Shirts can be too tight. Shorts can be too short. But on the beach a skin-tight, short-short, spaghetti strap ensemble is suddenly acceptable? I don't understand it. A bikini in any other context would be obscene. Regardless, I would avoid the beach completely if this is my only recourse.
happily rolling down the bike trail i passed a cycling ex boyfriend, a dead rabbit, and santa claus.
all in all a good day.
for my methods class we did a field observation exercise during lab. my partner and i did a loop on the campus bus through saint paul watching people. i kept hearing people having awkward conversations. the seven second silence rule kicked in and stiff giggling and loud yawns ensued. practicing awareness of the strangeness between two people you're observing heightens the sense when you're experiencing it yourself. it's one thing when you feel strange talking to someone you don't know well for longer than you'd both like. you happen to run into them and you're both going the same way and start walking together. despite the intention to be friendly, sometimes you simply don't have much in common and the conversation inevitably becomes uncomfortable.
it's quite another thing when you're talking to someone you used to know well after the things you had in common have faded. it's a sad thing indeed. if only santa and i could still be friends...
posted by renee 1:18 PM
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
i slept long and hard and woke up sweaty. time to get rid of the flannel sheets.
it's going to be sixty degrees and sunny today.
two words:
flip
flop
posted by renee 10:06 AM
Monday, April 12, 2004
i had my first bridesmaid dress fitting this morning. it's a barbie-like floor-length satin number and fits in a way that if i lose any weight between now and july, it will look bad. so i guess i need another cadbury egg.
at least that's the way i'm choosing to look at it.
on another note, i have lifted the double major weight off my poor shoulders and it is freeing to find myself with fewer classes to take than fit in the allotted time i have left. however, this leads me to think that i should begin to develop some idea of what i want to do in graduate school so i'm not applying with haphazard classes called "oppositional cinema" on my transcript that i only took because i don't think it's fair that everyone else gets to have labs where they watch movies... however, if all i really want to do is open a restaurant, maybe i should skip grad school and move on out to the east coast for awhile for inspiration. ha.
posted by renee 10:00 PM
Sunday, April 11, 2004
a friend of mine from high school used to claim that we have identical brains. down to the same ACT score and frequently "i was just going to say that." but he has grown up and passed me. he spouts off obscure authors' musings and advanced metaphysical thought with an air of pensive relaxation. it's a good thing we only talk for a couple of hours every few months. he makes me feel like a fraud. i use up my entire academic repertoir and start to wonder if i can think of anything else interesting to say before he's even gathered steam. if we still lived in the same city, he would figure out pretty quickly that i'm not nearly as smart as i can pretend to be for the duration of a coffee date. and now he's going to oxford for a year. i almost wish he was going to a mediterranian country instead - it would be good for him to spend a significant amount of time in a culture that embraces real life and moves a little slower. but he will have his wits quickened and his knowledge rounded out. i just hope that doesn't result in a dusty desk job. a professor of his said "the great thing about academia is that within the space of a couple of years, you can be the foremost expert on something, as long as you pick a subject small enough. but what, i ask you, is the point of that? if knowledge is pursued for knowlege's sake, intellectuals just produce work for only other intellectuals to ever read, while nothing is really done about it in the real world.
that does not sound so fulfilling to me.
posted by renee 1:17 PM
i like bright colors and warm weather and the funny faces cats make. hunger is symbolic and photography is a great way to express yourself. car advertisements are all the same and kids are cute. took the test, passed the quiz, survived the lecture, wasted time.
this is the most anyone could expect from me today.
posted by renee 3:37 PM
sociological research methods test in 8 hours and 10 minutes. i have learned very little in this class and am thrilled at how close i am to completing it. five weeks of school! but then i have a couple of weeks off followed by more school. then a couple of weeks off and more school, then it repeats one last time. and then, horror of horrors... i will have to get a job. it is finally sinking in. "what do you want to do when you grow up?" isn't a hypothetical question anymore. i am growing up in spite of myself. a year from now i best have a better idea of how to answer that question than i do now. "change the world" isn't the sort of career goal that pays the rent, and i'm doubting my parents are going to want to have any part of that anymore... crap crap crap... who knows? maybe my band will turn out to be really good and get signed to some fancy label and we'll tour europe. i have to work on my resume....
posted by renee 1:39 AM
Friday, April 02, 2004
in high school i was always really outgoing. i'd always be the one to say hi in the hallway or to go up and start a conversation at musical practice... forever the instigator. every once in awhile, i would start to wonder if anyone would talk to me if i didn't talk to them first. my experiments to test this never lasted very long because usually sitting back and waiting for people to come to me meant a very quiet day, which drove me crazy. i still feel the same way. most of the people i'm close to are people i've chosen. of course there are a few here and there that adopted me, but they're the minority. sometimes i get tired of trying. i want someone to seek me out for help when they're sad or frustrated. and i want someone to notice when i'm having a hard time. but again, i'm probably giving myself too much credit. i don't really put as much effort into relationships as i feel like i do. sometimes, though, i think that if i didn't call people, no one would ever call me. that's totally not true. in fact, i hardly ever call anyone, and i do have some semblance of a social life. stupid moodiness. i miss abby and lisa.
posted by renee 7:25 PM
Thursday, April 01, 2004
i'm so self indulgent in my moods. i wallow in my saddness. i bask shamelessly in my happiness. and on the days when i feel like no one would understand, i don't tell anyone to find out. part of it is that i can't explain myself sometimes. part of it is that i don't want to make other people deal with my uneasiness when it's so abstract, and i don't know that they really care to try. but part of it is that i LIKE feeling misunderstood. i LIKE faking being okay and having people not see through me. i LIKE allowing myself to pull my head back into my shell and just sit there all balled up and inpenetrable. i couldn't let you in even if you wanted to understand. you probably don't want to anyway.
we're all damaged. and we all think much more about ourselves than other people think of us. i am going to bed.
posted by renee 11:55 PM
i find myself unnecessarily affected by other people's moods
i was sitting in class last tuesday, my freshly completed paper still hot from the printer nearly burning a hole in my backpack. except it didn't quite burn that hole and i ended up forgetting to set it on the table on my way out. minus one grade level, stupid. i put it in the professors box an hour later and told her i had done so. in my childishness i believed that should be good enough. after all, what she really wanted was for us to have our papers done in class. clearly she didn't read any of them in the hour following. it's time i learned that the real world doesn't care about my excuses. boo. i'm tired of school. however, this should not make me want to cry, and it did today. i wish i could go home instead of having to be on campus all day. maria will take me home early from navigators, though. good to have nice roommates....
posted by renee 2:08 PM
