Episteme

"When sex becomes the subject of self-improvement, when couples monitor the frequency and intensity-the regularity and reciprocity-of their erotic contact, it becomes as dull a drudgery as their day job, as boring a routine as biceps curls."

Say what you will of bicep curls, Cristina Nehring writing about a new book about sex, marriage and ourselves, is right. I find myself keeping mental logs of these things (well, we did it twice last week, once this week -- OMG! there must be something wrong if we're not humping every day!), and am embarrassed to say as much because it's really foolish and neurotic.

But I've been reading almost every column, article, blog entry I can find on women, sex and marriage. I'm not close to being married and even farther from kids (something I find complicated and terrifying) but I can't help but wonder how women are doing it -- marriage, kids, personal life, sex, careers -- without ending up divorced and destitute when they are 50 or completely giving their identities to marriage. Are any of them doing without those problems?

What ends up being our choices? A frigid horrible bitch, like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada or the anonymous but ubiquitous soccer mom. I wonder how Simone de Beavior handled it (wrote amazing books on philosophy) or Margaret Mead (if you read Betty Friedan, Mead really fucked it up for the women's movement)?

And there's Britney's crotch shots and Paris Hilton's sex tape and I get totally confused -- are they liberated or just stupid, entitled sluts? Is that where post-feminism is leading us or is that another incarnation of the "feminine mystic"? Nehring cites Walt Whitman (who knew a thing or two about sex and self) and says simply "We all...contain multitudes." It's layers upon layers of ourselves that crowd our thinking and even being with family, going home to the most familiar human beings on Earth, it seems like I know less and less of them because we spend little time together throughout the year and these aren't subjects we broach in the politest of terms.

Posted by Dawn at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As strange as it sounds, my life in the weirdest place on earth is getting a little mundane. Age, like Dawn says, changes you - it's not university classes and growth so much anymore as doing the little things we need to do to keep living. So much of life seems to be just that, maintenance. So what about the higher meaning, expression, sacredness? How can we live in a space like that if we're not artists, or monks, or philanthropists?

With the daily repetition of it all, it feels like we get used to things that aren't really consistent with the way we saw the world before. What does it mean when we see people suffering and don't or can't help? If a poor person is begging in the street, should I give her money or not? How do you weigh personal risk along with the idea that you might just be perpetuating begging, and the fact that you just might not feel like digging in your pocket for change? Helping people just doesn't feel convenient anymore, walking by is easier. Then the routine doesn't change. Just outside, inside, eat, sleep, out again.

Continue reading "Patterns" »

Posted by Kim at 03:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was a white Lego paradise in Oslo. Nearby the National Gallery, thousands, may I hazard millions, of Legos where left out in a public square for people to assemble. It was part of another public exhibit encouraging people to construct buildings, real and imaginary, from Legos in a makeshift city of skyscrapers, futuristic domed dwellings and rather fantastic towers. What I appreciated most was how none were vandalized or destroyed, though some in were in various stages of disrepair or disassembly.

After a few drinks with a group of friends, we came upon the eerie white constructions late one evening. Maybe is was the drinks I imbibed but I was taken with the wonderful site and amazed that people constructed replicas of the TransAmerica Pyramid and Eiffel Tower on these folding tables laid out along this square.

Continue reading "Art in Public, 2" »

Posted by Dawn at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh the art! I've been thinking about the art, the art from Europe, the pictures I took surreptitiously while away, in all the many weeks I've been lamely absent (but always thinking about posting). Those gallery guards would turn their backs and I'd snap a photo - BAM! - inside that small contraption, an image, frozen of something meaningful to me. The art I love, always so simple, always so very much what it's meant to be, which I don't always know but I know it's good because I can feel it. Some of the very best art I saw while in Europe was in the public sphere, meant to be engaged by anyone. There's something so grand yet straightforward about public art projects, especially the good ones, which are rare, alas.

In this exhibit I participated in, you make music with your ass. Quite literally. This was one of my favorite examples of the public art projects I saw, this time in London on Sept. 16.

Continue reading "Art in Public " »

Posted by Dawn at 07:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jane Jacobs died this week while I was in the middle of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I saw her give a lecture at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco little more than a year ago. If I had read her book(s) at the time, I probably would remember more of what she said, but I do remember is how she got into writing, urban planning and journalism: all by accident. She loved New York City, what made it New York City, at a time when the great experiment of suburbanism was getting underway and people were evacuating cities as though to escape pestilence.

Continue reading "Death of Cities, Death of Jane " »

Posted by Dawn at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)