postgraduationhaze

The" Sauerkraut " Entry
Date: two days before valentines
Climate: the sky wants to snow. I can feel it.
Eating: said...vegetable
Drinking: water
Feeling: Minnesota
Listening to: "We were lovers...we were kissers...we were holders of hands, we were make believers..."
Watching: --
Reading: billboards
Traffic is one thing that I will always become a major bitch over. Seeing as I spend most of my day in it, its no wonder that when nine pm hits, i'm in just a grating mood.
Tonight I went out to Elmhurst to visit Julie and I ate sauerkraut on rye bread. Its a step in the right direction, I tell you.

Work was long and arduous today. It was hard to be back in the projects, where finding locations was hit or miss, seeing as they're tearing things down left and right over there. Part of that Daley "neighborhood revival" crap///or good deeds.

I got offered what I sorta knew was coming: in April, i'll be sent off to a "battle ground state" to work on the democratic presidential campaign, along with surveying various households to see what issues that household has, be it pro guns, we won't send them gun control lit, if they're pro life, we will hold the pro choice information, and so on and so forth...to help persuade them to vote democrat to get Bush out of office...you know the story.
It should be well worth my time and in the end, it will actually be what I had wanted to do all along--work for something in the political spectrum since it "is an election year"

Posted by * at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments

The" Ida B Wells " Entry
Date: 2.10
Climate: getting chilled
Eating: --
Drinking: h2o
Feeling: confused
Listening to: NPR news
Watching: Oprah
Reading: Tunnel Vision

Today I watched Oprah, as it was re run at eleven thirty after I got home.
Ironically, I began watching thinking she'd have her deconstructed female stereotype/empowerment schtick on full throttle, which I rationed could help me out of this state I am in...
Yet like the perfect world it is, the first half of the show was devoted to this BBC show where these two gorgeous women deconstruct other women's fashion sense, or lack thereof. For Oprah, they picked on a handful of women, pointing out just how badly they looked in their "before" shots and how stunning they appeared after they got their hair cut, dyed, wore what was considered "better fitting" clothing, got their make up done, and figured out how to hide their "problem areas."
Just what constitutes a "problem area?" And does investing dinero into attire that is designed to "hide" or "conceal" it (One woman charmingly said "with the folds on the shirt, you don't know if its fabric or fat") make you really feel any better? Or just confused that to look sexually and socially acceptable that you have to wear carefully crafted clothing in case you can't shed that extra fifteen pounds because you had four kids?
And not to pull the gender card, but rarely do you see shows like this for men. And when you do, they don't shove them into clothes that are "strategized" to make them appear in a way that they just aren't built: they're just shaven, get a hair cut, and put on clothes that are a stark contrast to what they typically where: never does it get personal.
Thats what struck me about the show, just how personal it was. No one understands why some women pay their dues to the fashion gods and the image pyrhana's (I know I spelt that wrong but i'm on a roll), and some don't. OR, why some women feel it just to judge others on what they view as acceptable attire and hair styling.
Truth be told, I have always been told that I dress well and all that good stuff, and seeing the acid washed tapered, high rised pleated pants wasn't pretty, nor was the cowboys boots and broom skirts with peasant blouse. YET if it were to appear on a rail thin fashionista vis a vis Nylon magazine, its trendy; en vogue; and oh so haute.

These women were women, with "saddle bags" (who invented that term? Who? Bring them out into the yard and shoot them, women aren't and never should be compared to livestock), big or small breasts (what again is the ideal cup size?), short legs (but remember, to wear pants that hit the base of your heel so as to appear to have longer limbs)...they were just typical women who run households, jobs, and lives that span over twenty five years.
It made me think of the time I asked my mother what she remembers the 80;s to be like, and she simply responded: "I don't remember the 80's. I was having babies"

But I don't have children and don't intend to have any (knock on wood)-- not in the near future, at least. I see this on TV--on Oprah for chrissakes--and it just makes me think "Oh, i'm glad I didn't eat again. Because I don't want to get saddle bags and have to invest in clothing that will hide my 'problem areas.' "

Eddie is more than upset. If anything, its a paradox: I want to begin a normal nutironal pattern to appease him and to become "healthy" but my fear of blimping out so that he loses his attraction to me overrides that...even though we all know that me as a headcase is much more unappealing--yet my rational is solid. I wish I was a drug addict or a sex fiend, too, so that I didn't feel like I was intellectually deconstruction reason/irration in why I can't bear to eat.

Per the entry title, I got to come back to Chicago (thank heavens) and was promptly placed in the projects: the Ida B Wells projects, where its true: they were constructed as though the poor were cattle: only one door in and one door out...and if there was a fire, god help them all. The windows were boarded up so it appeared abandoned, but when I walked the three flights of stairs upwards to find someone, and got yelled some sexually explicit comments on the way up, a level of fear that I have never felt rose up in my throat, in that "oh god, I can't believe that I have to walk down that narrow and cramped staircase to get out, where they'll be standing, making me feel uncomfortable and scared while they act inappropriate and say horrible things."
I won't repeat what they say, but i'm shivering thinking of just the look in their eyes.
Up until that point, it was mainly this phrase repetitiously going through my mind:
"even though they're poor doesn't mean they're criminals...even though they're poor doesn't mean they're criminals"

Posted by * at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments

Oh yeah.
Brian and Sarah LAPINSKI, in case you hadn't heard.
Yet more people I know who got married.

The whole concept terrifies me to such an alarming degree that when I hear of these things happening, and its all fine and good, I get even more weirded out.

Posted by * at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments

ps) that utterly romantic "Listening to" line was courtesy of Idlewild.

Posted by * at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments

The" L'album Noir " Entry
Date: 2.09.04
Climate: a gray, February day
Eating: --
Drinking: Water
Feeling: meh.
Listening to: "And even if the breath between us smells of alcohol, we'll call it confusion in the best way possible"
Watching: --
Reading: TIME, Nylon, Harvard International Review///et. al.

They say that admittance is the first step.

Step One:
Hello everyone, my name is Cherie, and...
I have a raging eating disorder.
I threw away all of the food I had in the apartment to encourage my starvation.
This is a fact.
Eddie is quite disturbed by this...well, he doesn't really know about this latest development, but we talked about the eating dysfunction at length last weekend on the way to the Holiday Club, which was a disappointment. Due to the said eating malfunctions, the absolut kurrant went down strong and kept me buzzing for longer than I would have liked.
I don't really know why I do this to myself, but I do. The guilt I feel when I do eat is overwhelming, and when I don't, I feel oddly satisfied. Everything feels thinner, which apparently is my goal.
I don't get it. I know its wrong but yet I do nothing about it.
I ration that since I got the Holmes Place gig, from 5am-noon thrice a week or thereabouts, and then working for seiu from 12:30-9pm, that I can avoid eating even moreso than I do now, which is definitely fucked up. On the days I don't work in the am, I ration I will work out, since this club is like the penultimate of luxury: I even get a free membership to their spa and the "ion filtered" pool...its posh.
But then my mind whirls back to why I feel my thighs are flabby, my arms droopy, and my belly far too soft.
I don't know. I know all of the rational arguments that will present themselves in what is left of my rational brain, but its like I just say "meh" and override them with this dying desire to be thin and gorgeous. Even though I am a size four. I mean, I KNOW why I do this to myself, psychologically and philsophically, but in practice, that knowledge truly is NOT power.
I see what is considered beautiful and feel oddly compelled to gain that type of status, which apparently is britney spears type breasts, kate moss's protruding hip bones, and so on and so forth. Perhaps its also because the people I value in life, friends and boyfriend(s) included, do-to some degree-pay their public homage to such figures, with slack jawed looks on their faces, statements of admiration, what have you...even if its supposed to be directed more towards the "music or fashion or acting" that the person engages in.
The grammy's were atrocious as usual, and I still dislike that fucking Outkast album, but once again, beautiful people running rampant.
I work in a field that is largely responsible for empowering those less fortunate to become counted on members in society: where wages and health care aren't just...why then do I fixate on something so unrelated to what I consciously view as important and worth fighting for? I don't work in the fashion or entertainment industry, where it may be logical for me to have this type of disorder, nor am I even in school anymore, surrounded by wanna be Barbie types and the males that ogle them, to which I was never an insider anyway...and then its like this swirling mess of "the Rules" where rule number One is to "display confidence in yourself as that is such a turn on" and here I am violating it...
I hate the standards women are supposed to live up to, yet consciously say they ignore: like they're just beautiful effortlessly and that they're soft core porn sex kittens underneath a badass assertive professional persona.
I don't really think anyone understands how goddamn impossible that is.
So why am I bothering with it at all?
Women are groomed from day one to know that they will largely be "observed" in society, regardless of the role they take on. Whether or not you pay heed to what will win you "praise" in that observation or if you can just say "fuck it" is what sets you and I apart, well adjusted female in her early twenties. Clearly I am not.

So thats that.
I have been listening to the Black album constantly. Its so great.

Posted by * at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments