Hegemony, Rhetoric, the usual stuff

Erika Lindemann said that rhetoric is a form of reasoning about probabilities, based on assumptions people share as members of a community.  “506 – I just watched a girl in the library pull a vodka bottle out of her bag.  I think I’m going to give her my number” (tfln.com).  Applying Lindemann’s hypothesis to the popular web site Texts From Last Night seems like a bit of a stretch.  The open-door policy the web site employs makes it questionable that it would even contain any sort of argument.  However, the site contains a loyal following, all members of the community that is the American university.  These members remain nameless, only to be identified by the area codes of their cell phones.  Regardless, they have created, shaped, and projected a sense of hegemony through their posts, and in doing so, have laid the foundation for a new brand of talk on the Internet through the aid of hyper personalization.  Rhetoric plays a role as TextsFromLastNight.com fits and defines perfectly the five elements of rhetoric.

            What the crude posts of Texts From Last Night evoke is homogeny in the college scene.  Despite vast regional differences, students across American campuses are succumbing to the image that the site comprises.  Such aspects of the image include obvious wit, a dauntingly careless level of promiscuity, the will to binge drink and do drugs, while maintaining intelligence and some level of higher wealth in an intelligent subconscious.  The goal of TFLN is to elicit a sense of belonging and in essence, of community.  In his article entitled “Cultural Hegemony,” Damien Perrotin argues “…that the structure of society is not only defended through political or economic coercion but through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the bourgeoisie – or of any ruling class – becomes a kind of generalized “common sense”, the end result being that even those sections of the population which have a vested interest into changing the status quo actually actively help to maintain it” (Perrotin 2010).  Such “common sense” is the phenomenon that such shocking behavior go on allowed and unquestioned by its community members.  “303 – if I die I am blaming you for not answering to tell me how many horse tranquilizers to take.”  The nonchalant nature of the posts maintains the image by seemingly jading its readers.  By keeping the site anonymous, users post without attaching profiles or any attributes by which they may be judged; such selective personal communication allows readers and members of the ongoing community to simply base assumptions about the writers solely based on their “texts.”

            In 1996, the concept of “hyperpersonal communication” was introduced by Joseph B. Walther in his research study on computer-mediated communication.  “Newer theories and research are noted explaining normative “interpersonal” uses of the media. From this vantage point, recognizing that impersonal communication is sometimes advantageous, strategies for the intentional depersonalization of media use are inferred…Additionally, recognizing that media sometimes facilitate communication that surpasses normal interpersonal levels, a new perspective on “hyperpersonal” communication is introduced” (Walther 1996).  Walther defines the term as being able to highlight certain personal characteristics while downplaying others.  In the case of TFLN, members of the community subject themselves to judgment solely based on their drunken antics.  “415 - Just threw up in Nordstrom while shopping for moms b-day with Dad.  He distracted workers for me.  No more tequila.”  Because this poster is simply known by this post, readers are allowed to automatically assume the lifestyle in which he or she may live.  Readers do not know whether this person is bound for success, if this person is moral, or which sex this person even is; what readers do know is that this submission reasserts the hegemonic norms of the lifestyle that comprises this site.  On the other end of the spectrum, this idea of hyper personalization especially pertains to the online realm of profiles and blogs, which aim to create the illusion of total exposure of the individual.

In Karen Tracy’s book Everyday Talk: Building and Reflecting Identities, identity is defined by character, personality, fixed characteristics like age and sex, as well as situational attributions.  Character is meant to include whether a person is “honest, considerate, or sleazy” while personality refers to someone being “overbearing, quiet, or thoughtful.”  Through hyper personalities, online surfers are given the flexibility and privilege of choosing what traits to advertise, what to keep hidden, and what to exaggerate or fabricate.  Freddy Mini is the CEO of a French web start-up company called Netvibes.  On the subject of hyper personalization, Mini said, “People want to consume information the way they want, when they want, and for the deliverer to be smart enough to know what they want before they even want it” (Martinez 2009).  It is no secret that people market themselves online, seemingly selling themselves for their ideas and ultimately, for acceptance.

Douglas Ehninger said that rhetoric is "…that discipline which studies all of the ways in which men may influence each other's thinking and behavior through the strategic use of symbols."  Texts From Last Night definitely influences thinking and behavior, by decreasing shock factor of indeed shocking activities as well as letting the college population see such activities as normal.  Philosopher Gerard A. Hauser identified five elements crucial in the school of rhetoric: Context, goal, medium, voice, and audience.

The context of the popular website textsfromlastnight.com is that of explicit debauchery, raunchy sexual escapades, and a brutal sense of detachment amidst ironic humor.  Of explicit debauchery, “443 – please tell me how you mysteriously remembered your social security number when we were checking you into the ER again last night” and “925 – I have minimal recollection and a lot of burns on my tongue and my vagina hurts” and “614 – I wish I could sell my textbooks to my drug dealer and cut out the middle man.”  Of raunchy sexual escapades, “845 – im not going to any frat parties next semester.  For once I want them to think it’s actually hard to get in my vagina,” and “515 – im going to sleep with her just to prove to my roommate that she’s a slut and he’s wasting his time.”  The senders elicit zero sense of personal affection or attachment, and so carelessly state actions that would alarm parents and teachers to a mass extent.

The goal aspect of the website is explained in the About section:

Texts From Last Night (TFLN) was founded in February 2009 by two friends for reasons that may or may not include: the tendency to press send more easily as the night turns to morning, friends' social habits, disgraced government officials, exes, law school, closing down bars and leaving tabs open, general debauchery and/or a common disgust for all the negativity surrounding the 'sexting' phenomenon.

We prefer texts, not conversations. We reserve the right to post portions of conversations without duplicating the entire thing. It's not because the entire thing isn't funny, but the funniest texts are those we can all relate to, so without the context of the conversation, they become really funny.

Our goal was to create a site that was revealing in nature while concealing the identity of everyone involved. This is why we only ask for an area code to accompany your text messages.

We don't want texts that are offensive to the point of being viciously personal, racist, exceedingly profane, violent or excessively graphic in nature. It's a very hard thing to judge, but we'll do our best.

Clearly identified is the cultural norm of text preference to conversations, the sense of belonging, and the concealment of users.

Medium plays a major role to the phenomenon that TFLN has become.  With the simple accessibility and widely known label into which the site has evolved, students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four combine the two most utilized forms of communication they have: texting and the Internet.  Perhaps these two components created the equation of success that is TFLN. 

The casual nature of submission supplements the message itself.  The Dual Capacity Model of communication by Sitkin, Sutcliffe, and Barrios-Choplin identifies “…two components of a medium's ability to carry information. These two components are the data carrying capacity and the symbol carrying capacity” (Sitkin, Sutcliffe, and Barrios-Choplin 1992).  The capacity of data carrying measures the amount of information an instrument may possess and transfer.  For example, a text message is limited to a certain number of characters depending on the model of the phone, and even then, a text message lacks the rich media of a video conference, or even a phone call.  The symbol carrying capacity of the dual capacity model entails “the medium's ability to carry information about the information or about the individuals who are communicating.”  This refers to what the choice of communication is saying about the message.  For example, an urgent matter typically merits a phone call, and a quick question typically comes in a text message.  This is what makes Texts From Last Night so intriguing, as it breaks the societal norms of communication by opting to text in the events of life-threatening predicaments or humiliating circumstances, traceable by phone.  The fact that such messages as “846 – he rubbed his balls on my face to wake me up…this friends with benefits thing is really getting out of hand” are in fine print is alarming.  The mode of transfer one chooses to execute some message is crucial in understanding the message itself.  For example, think of what Person A is saying by text messaging “I’m sorry” to Person B, who wrote Person A a four-page handwritten letter about how hurt A made them, how A had zero compassion for B’s cat dying, and how B really wanted a full-on apology from A.  Clearly Person A has little to no regard for B, and is unaffected by B’s outcries.  Furthermore, A is communicating little to no interest in the continuance of a relationship with B.

The fourth element of Hauser’s model of rhetoric is voice.  As previously touched on, the style and voice of Texts From Last Night is frighteningly nonchalant.  To say that the writing form is informal would be an understatement of the extreme.  (Note that the “texts” inserted to this document have been autocorrected by Microsoft Word.)  Capitalization and correct grammar usages are few and far between to say the least, and the contraction of “you are” seemingly does not exist.  Nonetheless, TFLN employs a certain style and flow to its posts.  In all actuality, the lack of simple third grade grammar adds to the message itself.  Nevermind that a message about a pregnancy scare is being communicated through text, for that is the nature of content accustomed by TFLN.  That the text message about a pregnancy scare has spelling errors is the fiber of its entertainment. 

The voice of the “Texts” is sarcastic, detached, nonchalant, although mature.  The voice knows what disgusting activity it is doing breaks the boundaries of good morals, otherwise, why send it?  “732 – I tried telling you she just blew me in the bathroom but you were too busy making out with her to listen.”  This tells readers that the sender of this text message is calm and rational, despite the raunchy nature of his behavior, and apparently of his friend’s.

Even so, the goal of Text From Last Night’s voice is to relate to the reader.  The posts exercise a sense of homogeneity throughout, creating the illusion that any one of one’s friends wrote a particular post.  Additionally, the posts work in concert with one another, allowing the reader to assume the same male and same female wrote every single “text” corresponding to their sex without sounding ambiguous or repetitive.  Without crude activity, humor, and shock factor, a text will not post.

Perhaps the most crucial element in the five that define rhetoric is that of audience.  Without audience, there would be no community surrounding Texts From Last Night.  Without a sense of community or even such tangibility of community, there would be no culture.  “Culture is a way of life of a group of people…the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.”  The audience TFLN targets are in fact those very people posting and commenting on the site.  The website aims to please and humor the likes of college students in the social scene of drinking, doing drugs, and have promiscuous sex despite coming from what sounds like the typical middle class family.  “734 – I can’t believe I am actually paying for a night in a hotel for my parents so I can throw a party the night before Christmas Eve.  I also can’t believe they think it’s their Christmas present.”  This post does not segregate any one region, tax bracket, or in this case, even sex.

That each text avoid singling out of any one area or income circle is also a criteria for the audience.  Suppose each text made references to specific bars, specific libraries or campus buildings…of course pupils of that student body would appreciate it even more, but the site does not discriminate against anyone inside the cultural norm it has created and manifested.  The audience of TFLN adores it so much because humans enjoy being included, by nature.  Forty-two-year old Angela Clark, mother of the writer of this publication, closed the website upon reading seven posts.  “I don’t get it.  Why would a girl say that about herself?  And what guy in his right mind would put his recreational drug use into words like that, when just a simple phone call from his father to the phone company could trace him right back to ‘last night’ when he did acid?” Clark refused to read any further, asserting that such disgraceful behavior should not be published on the internet.  She also asserted that her daughter, a college student, block the web site and any derivatives of such (as in Totalfratmove.com and FML.com) because they were a waste of time and an immediate deterioration of my – I mean her daughter’s – brain cells.

Despite the harmful nature of the context Texts From Last Night values, it is perhaps perpetuating the lifestyle on college campuses nationwide.  As Douglas Ehninger said, “[Rhetoric is] that discipline which studies all of the ways in which men may influence each other’s thinking and behavior through the strategic use of symbols.”  One may not influence without power.  According to their theory that “relationships are the bases of social power,” John French and Bertram Raven outline the five sources of power.  Reward power is the ability to grant or deny positive sanctions, while coercive power is the ability to threaten.  Legitimate power is recognized, as in a supervisor, and expert power is some acknowledgement that one contains some information, knowledge, or skills over another.  In the rhetorical analysis of Texts From Last Night, the power utilized is that of referent power, in which one exercises power through identification.  Such power is common, and often critical, in politics, wartime affairs, and of course, hegemonic structure.  Man is the symbol of ego, thus he (or she) likes to think that whatever good and right justification there is belongs to him (or her).  When someone of identifies with an ideal of another, the two sensationalize their points of view, and supplement one another with confidence. 

On TFLN, what might have been a humiliating or even traumatic event actually looks a lot like the weekend a reader might have just had, or so the reader would like to think.  When these activities are given the forum and freedom to be considered entertaining and hilarious, they emit a sense of imitation by their readers, who would perhaps like to be seen as the nonchalant blacking out kid with zero memory of sleeping with someone.  By identifying with the site, college students are earning the right to every sanctioned element of college life in this era.  When Brother Bluto belligerently smashed the guitar of a soft-spoken, non-drinking musician on the staircase of the animal house during a toga party, people adored him, and aspired to be him once in college.  Today, when a student reads “781 – I was told by the cop that my party was the most epic party they ever crashed,” he aspires to one day necessarily send the same text message.  

The Great Dictator

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

The Suggestion Box

I reserve the right to post my stories on here...so...yeah here's one.  I just wrote this for my final in creative writing.  It's pure fiction, from beginning to end.  So...yeah.

The Suggestion Box

During the summers, I live in the South, in Marietta, Georgia, with my grandparents.  They own the local grocery store, Marietta Grocery.  I work there all summer to save up for books, rent, and the other stuff I have to pay for at college.  Last summer, for about a month I guess, a woman used the suggestion box that my grandfather installed for customer complaints and well, suggestions.  Anyway, this woman used the suggestion box as her diary, we think.  Either her diary or her talks to God.  To date, she is the only customer to ever use the suggestion box, and my grandfather keeps it there just for her, always with a fresh stack of his letterhead for the grocery.  (He’s too cheap to buy cardstock comment cards.)  I think of her often.  Her last submission was Tuesday, June 23, 2009.  Her pieced together story ends abruptly, hence my often thoughts of her hilarity, her frequent inclusion of good music lyrics, and for her very personal pain.

Monday, May 11

Today I came into your store and waded through a sea of good-for-nothing teenagers who gawked at me, like the nerve I have to come get a few apples and some pasta.  The girls were outside, basically blocking the door with their navel piercings and bad roots.  One blew her gum at me.  (Yes, at me, in my direction, condescendingly.)  I brushed through them and was pleasantly welcomed to the produce aisle by their boyfriends.  Have you ever finished out the remainder of your grocery shopping soaking wet from fake rain?  I heard the routine fake thunder and felt a water spout on my back.  One of the little pricks had gotten hold of the hose and “thought I was someone else.”  Yeah, thought I was someone nicer.

Why do people reproduce?  I’m beginning to think I was smart not to have kids, so there’s that Mother, wherever you are.  I mean, what if I had the kind of kids who hung out at the mall, just gawking at people, sucking overpriced soft drinks out of barrel-sized cups?  I would feel like a complete failure.  I would pick them up from the food court each night at close and be in my bathrobe and self-pity, probably with curlers in my hair, and hopefully with a stiff drink hidden in my thermos.  Those poor women.  They’re just waiting for their pathetic husbands to come home and watch Pat Sajak tell some poor beautiful woman to turn a box into a letter.

Motherhood is such a fad.  And like all fads and every single pair of jeans I’ve ever owned, they get old, get forgotten, get tossed out, get laughed at.  Sure, a life is never a mistake and every second of a child’s life is worth it.  I’m talking about the idea of owning the title of mother like a Fendi bag.  “Yeah, I’m a mom.  Jealous?  I have one in high school on the track team, one in middle school in the band, and my baby just lost her first tooth.  Yeah, everyone always talks about how attractive my kids are, they all look just like me.  They’re angels.”  Great.  Keep them out of my grocery store.

Thursday, May 14

Great wine selection today.  Also, the grapes I bought the other day were some of the freshest I’ve had since, well I don’t know, but the bottom line is they were very good.  I’m not a big wine drinker, but last night I opened the La Crema and put on some Big Band music and had a ball.  My husband even came out of his little nook to see what all the fuss was, thought maybe we’d won the lottery.

With the Scotch glasses my father gave me, I drank the wine start to finish in the backyard with some of the large candles lit, and the neighbors probably watching.  Thanks to the wine I really noticed how beautiful our house was (is).  I guess I’d never seen it lit up that way, in the summer evening, very golden and French-looking.  (I hate to sound ignorant.  I feel like Americans use “French” in place of “beautiful” all the time when talking about Spanish villas in Marietta, Georgia.)  Our house is just so regal, small-scale regal.  I meandered through the kitchen doors and into our cozy white, bookshelf-lined living room.  I admired my aunt’s artwork with the furniture and then decided to shake, shake, shake it up the wooden stairs and into my bedroom, the pillar of European antique, and then into my bathroom to float around the appliances I spent the rest of my life savings on.  Once I had fully confronted myself with the numbers and all the rustic fashion, I decided to gamble into my husband’s nook.  I wanted this to be my bedroom; it overlooks the backyard, my jungle, and is only six feet wide, but the entirety of it is lined with windows.  He somehow convinced me to give it to him to work.  Guess who feels duped…

I got a sensation and went up in the air, coming down in slow motion.  My husband just had to be thinking, “My girl’s a sensation.”  To say the least, he was not very excited to see me.  He was even less excited when I spilled the La Crema on his briefcase.  Why does he even need a briefcase?  He doesn’t leave the damn house, or really his nook for that matter, except for his monthly trips to the mountain with old friends, without me.

I didn’t care though.  Grace Kelly overcame me and I sang the fun melodies at the top of my lungs until I was safely back outside and could have more room to dance.  The house was positively glowing by now, all the golds and pearlies and everything I had worked for, there they were.  And then I realized that there I was, in my slip, in my backyard, in over my head with the red wine I drank at Communion.  (I doubt St. Joseph’s sprung for La Crema.)  I drunkenly pretended to be interested in gardening for a minute just in case the neighbors were watching, and then made my way inside.

Monday, May 18

Well I actually did it: I got everything I needed on Thursday.  Actually, I got everything I needed FOR Thursday, and then my husband went out of town Friday, so I treated myself to eating out every meal for the weekend.  He got back yesterday morning.  I hate it when he’s gone, I have nobody to aggravate, plus I feel so pathetic just waiting for him to return.  I do like it, however, because this particular trip to the mountain, he brought me back a pearl necklace.  I’m not even a jewelry fanatic, but I love sentimental items such as these.

I was sitting on the couch reading when his car pulled up.  He sat inside of it for a long time, probably collecting his garbage littered about from the drive, then finally got out and came inside.  I called out that I was on the couch, and he approached me exhausted.  He’s never been good at giving me things, so I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t crack a smile when he bent down to kiss my head and tossed me the box.  He’s never been a good receiver of excitement either, because when I jumped up to thank and embrace him, his arms felt limp around mine and he just sighed, just tired probably.  I put the necklace on with my chemise, which I stayed in until this morning, and he quickly burrowed back in his nook.  He still hasn’t come out, and this morning when I peaked in with some coffee, I saw the little chaise lounge he had taken from my study, upon which he was fast asleep.

I know I’m just being sensitive, but he didn’t even want to just sleep next to me?  He’ll probably be awake when I get home.  He’s just been in a funk lately because he has serious writer’s block, and I know that if I nag him about sleeping in there and hiding from me, he’ll tell me what he always does.  “You are a woman in every area, but the way you break when someone seemingly wrongs you, you are a little girl.”

Monday, May 18 again

I have no idea why I’m continuing to write to you, whomever you may be.  I guess I haven’t written in so long, and I feel better when I jot down my thoughts and frustrations about things to a stranger, in a non-horror movie fashion.  Maybe I’m subconsciously writing to God?  Or whoever is out there above or around us?  I’m just seeking peace of mind I suppose.  And money can’t buy that.  Neither can sex, drugs, or you.  Everyone has to find it in their own way, and maybe this is mine.

So whoever is reading or shredding these, thanks for acknowledging, and for always keeping the cheeses stocked.

Thursday, May 24

Still looking for some peace of mind.  Still writing on Marietta Grocery Suggestions for the Marietta Grocery Suggestion Box.  I called an old friend from high school, whom I heard had joined the convent, and she actually drove an hour to meet with me at my house.  Nancy told me that what I’m doing is good, that everyone has their own mode of communication with God (or whoever/whatever you believe in) and that I should keep doing what I’m doing.  Which reminds me, this stack is running low, as well as the dark chocolate selection.

Friday, May 22

Last night it occurred to me around ten that I hadn’t asked Nancy what she was up to, what she had been doing…why she had joined a convent.  I called her back, and she told me to meet her near her around midnight.  This was so odd to me.  (He didn’t ask where I was going.)  I got in my car and drove to a Waffle House of all places and met my childhood friend.  I had always known her to be the girl who spent weekends in Folsom, Louisiana with her grandmother, and the rest of every waking moment with her little boyfriend, he was so cute and sweet.  Then Nance got a scholarship to NYU, near me at Columbia.  We were always close school friends, but being the only child, Nancy rarely went out.  Everyone knew her boyfriend was playing ball at Georgia Tech and that they’d split up or just make each other crazy, fooling around on one another.  I remember seeing her a few times during that first semester.  She got really skinny, wore trendy clothes, and was never seen with the same person twice.  I never thought much about it, or her really.  And then I just stopped seeing her.

Once inside the muck and smoke of the Waffle House, I pinpointed Nancy at a table by the bathroom.  Great, I thought.  She was wearing a sweater and some old jeans, and seemed anxious.  I asked her outright what the deal was, and she took a deep breath, ordered me a coffee, and told me about her “path to Christ.”

Once in Manhattan, Nancy received a telephone call just before a long October weekend telling her that that sweet boy had been in a car accident, with his girlfriend, and their unborn child.  Needless to say, Nance went off the deep end.  She got really into coke, got really into her coke dealer, got really into a bad scene, got really set up, and then got really sent home.  Her parents decided that her punishment would be the convent, which is great Catholic logic at its finest.  For the first time in years, I felt free.  Freer than someone else, I guess.

Saturday, May 23

Last night I was eating my stuffed artichoke and drinking my La Crema in the backyard again.  I took a leafy bite and tasted something strange.  No, there couldn’t be cheese in this, I thought.  That’s exactly what it was…spearmint cheese.  Yes, there was a wad of GUM in my artichoke.  I was so grossed out that I finished the bottle of wine and slept in my clothes.  Please don’t let that ever happen again…

Sunday, May 24

This morning I took a long time getting ready.  I’m not sure what I was getting ready for, but I was going to be ready for it nonetheless.  I don’t really want to give myself away if you guys haven’t figured out who I am by now.  This morning though, I noticed that I have very elegantly beautiful features, however, my body is beginning to age and shift its weight to new places.  My old Levis, which belonged to a boyfriend of mine and I had them tailored for me, are beginning to sit tightly around my thighs, though still compliment my waist.  My golden hair has thinned dramatically since my glory days, and my cheap Irish skin is looking more splotchy these days.  At my most beautiful, I’m wearing a long ivory robe, no shoes, and my hair in a messy chic bun, accentuating my high cheek bones that never got me anywhere, like Mother promised they would. 

Anyway, today I climbed up on the large window sill around my tub, and got a full shot of myself in the mirror.  As I stood there turning and sucking and perking and arching, I became aware that I’m rather ok with my physical appearance.  Does this make me glutinous in the ways of succumbing to physical appearance and the fact that I’m pleased and honestly relieved by what I see?  I can be so vain…

Tuesday, May 26

Tonight I’m going to cook a special very cheesy romantic dinner for the two of us.  The kicker is it will be all organic, and only go according to plan if he comes out of his nook.  I just want something to, well, not relight the spark.  The spark is still lit; it’s just that, well, it’s a tiny birthday candle on the cupcake of a one-year-old rather than a wildly dancing gaslight.  We really are so in love.  I don’t expect him to create banners and poems and paintings saying “I LOVE YOU,” but sometimes I forget how much he thinks of me, and how much he really does love me.  Speaking of, you are out of a few of the ingredients I need for Crème Brulee.  I got a torch last year, and haven’t used it.  And I love the torch.  So either you order the necessary ingredients or I go on a burn spree in my backyard.  Maybe then he’ll get his act together and trim some of the shrubs!

Wednesday, May 27

Dinner went, surprisingly well.  Once I began cooking with garlic, he was showered and having wine with me.  We listened to old music we both love, and though it’s about breaking up and being alone, we kept “Girl Has Gone” by Smokey Robinson on repeat for several hours, just dancing and singing and laughing.  It was just what I’d imagined.  I loved every minute.  He seemed unwittingly high the entire time, but I was drunk from the wine so I can’t complain.  I guess I’d never really written that.  My husband smokes more dope than is typically confiscated in high schools.  The bottom line is that we made love for the first time, well, in months.  OK a year.  I feel a lot better about US now.

Thursday, May 28

My mother-in-law came over. 

The woman walked into my home as if she were stepping into a locker room.  After seeing the empty room we have in our home, which I’m going to eventually make MY study, she decided it would be her sewing room.  The woman lives forty-five minutes away, in a nice condo.  I guess sometimes sewing rooms forty-five minutes away are necessary in old age.  My husband offered to move the necessary furniture and items into and out of the room for her while I took her to collect fabrics and “equipment” at the store.  Hey thanks!

The sewing community really is a snobby one.  Granted, I’m not into it, so I’m just superficially judging from afar.  HOWEVER, how was I supposed to know the difference between Chinese silk and Indian silk?  And what makes a woman with mom jeans and a bad accent an authority over me?  When the levee breaks, I’ll see her in hell.

The sewing room really is pretty though.  He really set up very nicely.  I have mixed feelings, however, about my grandmother’s chaise lounge in there.  I’m mad she’ll be using it, but I’m glad he won’t be sleeping on it.

Saturday, May 30

Today I heard a man’s voice, and then a child’s, and then the man’s again, followed by the child’s.  I heard laughter, and I heard foolishness and hilarity.  A look out of my window told me it was a father and son playing catch, my neighbors.  I watched them for a long while, and then I turned to make the coffee and watched my husband sleeping soundly.  How could he not be outside right now, playing the same game with his son?  Jake sent us his baseball picture every summer, and his Christmas card every Thanksgiving, and always addressed the envelope himself.  My husband never kept them out, and we never talked about it.  I asked once, and got an earful and a one of my plates broken. 

But how could he have the knowledge of a son in Vermont, comprised of his genes, his talents, his figure, and his same crooked smile, yet my husband never had the time or willingness to want to connect with his little boy?  This little boy, this human, who obviously wanted his father to be proud of him.  I want so badly to mail him something.  Perhaps my husband feels that he would just mess things up as a father, like his own father did.  From the time he could talk, he was ordered to listen.

Tuesday, June 2

People in coffee houses are so ridiculous.  You work in a coffee house.  Not at a Harvard library.  Now give me my SMALL COFFEE and CREAM and stop asking me about Ventis and treating me like I’ve never heard of Thoreau.  Where do these people get off?  I’m a well-read person.  I have the proper documentation to operate a vehicle.  I was about to strangle the little freshman in college with his own scarf.  Between drinks, he and his “I’m just experimenting” girlfriend would converse about prose in Shakespeare and the conflicts within German politics.  Great.  Do it all day long.  Just don’t bat your eye at me when I want the napkins you forgot to stock.  And Jesus, put a belt on your jeans, the ones from the women’s department.  It’s the coffee house type that I let under my skin.  Maybe I shouldn’t have married one.

Thursday, June 4

I haven’t been sleeping very well lately, so I’ve increased the amount of lavender that I put in my diffuser.  I’ve tried sleeping without the lavender, and with a melatonin tablet just before bed, but that gives me awfully excruciating nightmares.  Plus I love the lavender.  The oil gives him headaches, and last night at dinner he told me about them, and how he’s going to make himself a bedroom in the studio in our backyard.  I was upset about this, but it really is the only logical place for him to get good sleep.  (Wouldn’t want to interfere with his mother’s sewing, which has increased lately as I hear her arrive around five each morning and leave by nine.  And she keeps my grandmother’s chaise lounge littered in scrap material…)  After dinner I collected some pillows and sheets for his new bed, and brought them out there along with some candles.  To my astonishing sadness, I found he had already made himself a nice cozy bedroom.  For a moment, I thought this was going to be another sweet night, and was all just a set-up.  But peddling quickly past me, he quickly said, “Don’t lock the backdoor, ok?”

I feel that when I’m with him, it’s alright.  I know it’s right.  I’d give him the world and all the love in it, and I feel he’d do the same for me, but I also know he needs his space, as do I.  I guess I’ll just miss waking up next to him.

Friday, June 5

I am so frustrated today.  (But thank you for ordering that shredded wheat I like.)  Anyway, my cheap Irish skin began breaking out, which is bizarre for summer, and I went to the dermatologist.  I felt like I was on Candid Camera.  First I had to be in the same room with a girl who clearly had a skin STD, the one where she kept itching and shifting and tugging on the waist of her shorts so she could “scratch” the awkward place clearly affected by her…outbreak.  THEN the stupid teenage “assistant” who probably got her degree at DeVry, in the comfort of her own home, on her time!, mispronounced my name maybe six times.  It’s common.  And it was printed straight from the computer.  So no excuse there; it’s not like I wrote it in my physician’s penmanship.  I stood there for a minute until she properly pronounced it.  I didn’t catch her name, but I’m sure it was something immature and girly and on some gold chain somewhere in her possession.  Smiling and saying, “He’ll be right in” almost killed her, and she slammed the door of the exam room.  Yeah go smoke a Swisher Sweet in your Mustang, slut.  And naturally I waited for half an hour for my doctor to come in and prescribe me a topical ointment in under five minutes.  He didn’t have gloves on, which made sense, but I just hope he saw me before the itchy girl.

Saturday, June 6

Feminism is such a great idea, really.  But honestly, I’m really conflicted by the whole bit.  Yes, I’m appreciative that I may work side by side with a man, but I guess I just can’t even wrap my mind around why would ever even be an issue.  And yes, I think it’s just wonderful that women are doing everything these days, but Christ, do feminists have to be such hard-asses?  When a man offers to pay for the meal, let him!  You’ve given him the time of day and a few bites of your dessert, which he “only wanted to taste,” and he owes you.  And when he opens the door for you, don’t snarl and say, “I can open my own doors.”  I suppose these conflicting ideals stem from my syrupy sweet upbringing in Louisiana, though I fail at being syrupy sweet.

Monday, June 8

It’s too hot to sleep, and time is running away.  Last night we had a very quiet dinner, even more so than usual.  I don’t know what is wrong, or if it’s wrong.  I know that I don’t like it.  I never see him.  When I do, his cold kisses feel like compensation on my skin.  I just don’t see why I should even care.  It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.  Nothing has even happened.  No fights, no tension.  Just quiet.  Just hiatus.  Just biding time.  I don’t really know what I’m looking for from him.  I wouldn’t even know how to “confront him.”  I just want a partner.  I just want someone on my team, I suppose.  Gay couples are so lucky to be able to call one another “partner.”  Spouse has so many situational comedy connotations, mostly ironic and downtrodden.  I got married for the companionship.  I didn’t get married to be ignored when I attempt to sleep with my husband in our bed.  I’m tired to going to mass alone (yes, I go…and daydream the entire time, but I like going), tired of grocery shopping alone, watching new movies alone, feeling lonely. 

Tuesday, June 9

This morning I woke up before the sun, and luckily his mother wasn’t there sewing.  In the closet in her sewing room, I found all my old books.  I sat on my reading stool, which I bought in college in Amsterdam, and smelled the old texts and thumbed through a few.  From out of one chapter in something by Ayn Rand, fell a napkin with a passage from “Vandals.”  I shook as I read it, and I cried for a long time after.  “One night I got into his bed and he did not take his eyes from his book or move or speak a word to me even when I crawled out and returned to my own bed, where I fell asleep almost at once because I think I could not bear the shame of being awake.  In the morning he got into my bed and all went as usual.”  Maybe the college me was trying to tell the older me something, I just wish the younger me would’ve told me that the morning part wouldn’t actually happen.  I need him more than ever.

Thursday, June 11

So apparently I bear down really hard when I write.  (This must be my reason for detesting pencils, so thanks for always keeping a pen here now.)  Well according to the Cosmopolitan that was accidently mailed to our house instead of the teenager across the street, I bare down hard because I have a lot of purpose in my life.  (Obviously this magazine is a very credible source, as the article was opposite an advertisement for some kinky KY product.)

That’s a nice thought though.  And as much as I don’t want to believe it since these magazines could diagnose the biggest introvert as “fun and flirty” after collecting mostly Cs on a five-question quiz, I do.  It’s true that I have purpose.  I’m a realist, and I’m not going to be enthralled by the face-lifts and anti-aging creams that so many women my age become enthralled by.  Because there aren’t really any problems these days, only solutions.

Saturday, June 13

He left for the mountain.  He didn’t even want to hear about what happened today at the pharmacy.  He was in a hurry.  He hadn’t even come out of his nook in three days.  Then he was gone, after squeezing my hand goodbye.  No kiss.  So cold.  Something came over me.  I was wearing my white nightie in the kitchen, sitting there, thinking about what had just occurred.  I sat there until the gold rays of the sunset were now the cold reflections of the moon.  I floated through my house, humming psychotically, though gracefully.  “Come to me, run to me, do and be done with me,” I sang.  “Don’t I exist for you, don’t I still live for you.”  The house was freezing, despite the drastic summer highs.  I was weightless in Annie Lennox’s hymns.  I felt overcome with anger, not sadness, and I had a million realizations in my mind at once.  I wandered into the sewing room, with its darkness and huge windows.  I swam melodically about the sea of fabrics that had taken over the room.  I draped a long stretch of black silk around me and climbed onto the window.  I filled the frame with my frame, and stood there singing to Annie and felt powerful.  And then I fell back onto the chaise, wrapping myself tightly in the fabric.  “Well the more I want you, the less I get, but isn’t that just the way things are?”  I closed my eyes and felt the cold breath of the room, and shivered as I imagined the silk being his embrace, how the two felt so similar.  I really would be so content hearing the sound of his breath.  “Catch me and let me dive under for I want to swim in the pools of your eyes.”

Sunday, June 14

Dear God,

Do you get upset when people question your validity?  If you’re real?  And do you really get that angry when someone slams their finger in a door and screams your name?  Do you get mad when you see people grooming and improving their bodies and indulging in vanity?  Do you hate me?  I feel shallow, in the sense that I want to preserve myself, not in the ways of only judging someone by their bad roots or high pants.  I do use that in rants, but only because I’m angry.  I’m sorry.  I’m not trying to excel in society, and I’m not even an advocate of my duty being to keep young and beautiful if I want to be loved, so relax.

Wednesday, June 17

I have this strange reoccurring dream.  I’ve had it since I was a teenager, and it frightens me, though most of the time I’ve grown accustomed to it.  Basically most of my dreams yield some sort of physical restraint on my body.  Sometimes it’s a brace on my legs, preventing me from running from something, and then sometimes it’s a big metal plate in my mouth preventing me from screaming.  It’s only been on my hands a few times, but my hands are usually free and trying to break whatever the barrier in my mouth is.  These dreams aren’t always frightening either.  Sometimes the mouth or leg brace is merely just a frustration, making me inaudible in conversation or slowing my pace as I walk.  What is holding me back?

Thursday, June 18

This morning he asked me where the hose was.  I got excited, and said, “Oh are you finally going to get around to the garden?”  He looked at me sarcastically, and muttered something before saying, you never do anything, you do it.  I said, “I put up without a husband every day, that’s what I do.”  He laughed viciously, I got the chills, and he went back to his nook.  I feel like I’ve just been beaten up.  I’m tired of feeling nothing.  I’m ill with want for something that is not wanting me.  I fell onto my knees and cried.  He has no idea.  And then we had lunch, talked about baseball, and a new restaurant.  As he bent over to put his plate in the dishwasher, he put his hand on my hip for balance.  He then curtly said, “Back to work, thanks.”

Saturday, June 20

What is so great about drugs?  Life here on Earth is just fine with me.  Some people can’t get by without some sort of aid.  I suppose I am intrigued by altered mental states, and how one may see rainbows and waves and breathing things in a completely stable room.  The music I’ve grown up with totally provokes me to try, but in college whenever I smoked pot, I felt lazy, worthless, and not cool in any way.  It’s great music though!

Monday, June 22

Just this weekend I was wondering about drugs when I found some in my own kitchen.  “Wait, I don’t cook with these mushrooms…”  Just then I heard him outside, reenacting a battle scene, laughing, falling, dancing, and rocking back and forth.  I watched him for a long time, kind of laughing, but more mystified by the scene.  Eventually I called to him, and he saw me holding the mushrooms in the air, not smiling.  He turned his back to me, and began ranting about how hard-headed I was, and how much of a nuisance I was.  I watched him for another thirty minutes; he was shaking his fists, kicking up dirt, and taking all of his frustration out on his imaginary mushroom friends, who, by his own admissions, were all starfish with cigarettes.

Tuesday, June 23

I suppose I should follow up from yesterday.  I hid the mushrooms in a potted plant, and he found them?  Naturally a heated argument ensued, and luckily the smoking starfish were not witnesses.  He told me I was in his business.  I told him he was my husband, thus my business.  He told me stay out of his things.  I told him the cabinet where I’d found them was part of “my things.”  He told me to have a great night, and slammed the door.  His car peeled out of the driveway.  I’m still mad, so I haven’t cried.

hold on...

Hold on, Kings, Kings hold on; it's gonna be alright.  You gonna win the fight.
Hold on, Kings, Kings hold on; it's gonna be alright.  You gonna make the flight.
When you're by yourself, and there's no one else, you just have yourself,
and you tell yourself just to hold on!

cookie!

Hold on, World, World hold on; it's gonna be alright.  You gonna see the light.
When you're one, really one,
Well, you get things done like they've never been done...
So hold on!

Junkie

Early morning

            News.  Pure and raw.  I go for the hard stuff.  Growing up I ate my breakfast to Matt and Katie, but always loved Ann’s segment of tough news, coarse enough to make my yummy kid cereal tough to swallow. 

            In the sense overload that is CNN, its anchor, its crawl, its weather icons and various Alerts!, I am immersed.  The bias is not there, I draw no assumptions, and I take everything at face value.  Interpretation comes later.

Mid-day

            Here is the interpretation, the noise, the cloudiness of the news I learned this morning.  The purity is gone.  Tainted is the information I met with good intentions, to solely know and to possess the ability to pass on without opinion.  I resent the voices representing this time of day discussing such news.  Headlines of fatal school bullying, the war, and political issues are frayed edges on the knit of celebrity gossip, viral videos, and tips for staying thin this season, whatever season it is.

Afternoon

            Topics are narrowed.  No matter what program, a bit of news from daybreak can relate.  “House Hunters” depicts the trials of our recession, the falling real estate market, and in most cases, the steadily climbing divorce rate.  Dramas like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” beg me to toss around my feelings on the death penalty, a rapist’s punishment, and make me want to adopt 19 kids who have been abandoned by their flat character crackhead mothers.  “19 Kids and Counting” makes me evaluate the moral and psychological tolls associated in having such a large household with only 2 parents and God.  It makes me think about God.  Suddenly it’s 4pm and I’m up to my eyeballs in morality, children, and how the hell a freezer can stock 500 microwavable mozzarella sticks.

Evening

            Local news attempts to resell the headlines of the morning, with more fervor and sheer terror in their voices.  If it bleeds, it leads.  (“Then why haven’t we ever had a woman president?” my brother always jokes.)  (That joke makes me sick.)  And after a slue of car wrecks, rogue shooters, and deadly cantaloupe, a feature story on a crazy-ass woman affectionately named by the community as “The Lady Who Never Met a Cat She Didn’t Know.” 

Then come the teasers.  These plague me.  “It’s one of the deadliest pesticides and it could be in your dinner casserole!  That story and more at eleven.”  I stare down at my dinner with fatigue.  I think, well, if I wake up dead tomorrow morning, we’ll know why.  (That was one of my grandmother’s favorite jokes.)

Late Night

            The clip about the pesticide was 30 seconds long, and about a pesticide 1 person found in Bangladesh.  (This person lived.)  (Sickly I find this disappointing.)  I think about all the wasted dinner casseroles, pleading their innocence on the way down the disposal. 

            Alas, the news I woke up to resurfaces.  Only this time, it’s hilarious!  Jay, Jimmy, Conan (though not lately) are a scream!  And my celeb crush, comedian extraordinaire Jon Stewart, lovingly twists the politico bull shit of the day into hilarity beyond laughs.  What began as the straight and narrow view of an issue is now completely off to one side.  I like the idea of agreeing with Jon Stewart.  I spend long, embarrassingly long, periods of time imagining our pillow talk.  I just know that my questions of morality, children, and the matter of the 500 mozzarella sticks fitting in the freezer could be solved by Jon Stewart: a person who watches the morning news.