Out There, In Here

Yes, I am womun
And yes, you do look at me.
You see me every day
But always in the same way
So you do not really see
Who I really am, and who I allow myself to be.

Who I am out there, is who I am in here,
So do not attempt to construct me with your petty gaze.
I assert my assertiveness,
I conquer my conquests,
So don't label it "bitch" and do not label it as a "phase."

Yes, I am womun,
And yes, I can feel you look at me,
This trope of visibility cannot confine me
For who I am out there, is who I am in here,
So no matter how hard you try to pin me down
My resilience remains unmatched

And those fools who thought they knew better
And those who were lost in their ways
Must be brought back down to see
What they have not been able to make of me

I do not confuse confusion
With your distorted perception of reality
With your multi-faceted explanations of self-worth
And with your endless excuses about me

My behavior need not be analyzed, scrutinized, certified, multiplied
Terrified, you remain close to your so-called "Beliefs"
Hiding behind your ignorant words, you fear
That who I am out there, is who I am in here.

Bodies

life is a series of "backspaces" and "inserts"

they didn't know the earth was round. i think we're in the same position...ignorant about the lives we lead, not realizing they'll come full-circle.

a rose petal fell off, dead and stiff. its texture was different, hard and brittle. it was darker, maroonish rather than red. wrinkled and no longer smooth. if i hadn't told u i was talking about a rose petal, would my descripters have lead u to believe that i was talking about something completely different? probably...i doubt "rose petal" would be the first thing to come to mind. as corpses we lose our humanity...life is the "essence" and we are robbed of it...or relinquish it, either ways, it's gone.

so what will i be?

our identities are more priceless to us that anything else in the world; we spend our entire lives piecing together who we are...but the minute the heart stops beating, all of that is gone.

there's an exhibit near my place...the "Bodies"...it houses several corpses, preserved and intact, and people see u literally stripped to the bone. they literally see what's underneath the skin. people's hearts are on display. their privates cut up and opened. the dead baby room lives up to it's name...fetuses lined up, children that never made it past week 9...week 24....birth. bodies displayed as a work of art. the nervous system, slices of the brain, lungs, kidneys and other organs...all with a little blurb about what role they perform in the human body. i feel like it's an oxymoron to even call it a "human" body...the whole experience is inhumane. interesting, fascinating, yes...but inhumane.

it makes u wake up and smell the pungent stink of your daily routine, your "goals for today", your failures and your meaningless dreams.

A Lesson in Herstory - The Silent Noise

The tv was airing some new dishwashing detergent commercial in the background. She sat at the desk checking her email....junk...junk...junk...automatic bill pay reminder...junk...junk...email from dad...junk...junk...

"Hi, I was wondering if you were busy..." Tony, our boss, popped out of nowhere. "I have some, uh, files here I need you to look at."

"Sure thing," I said, taking the pile out of his hands. They weighed a ton and smelled like rotten old goat cheese.

She turned away from her desk and smiled at him. He smiled back, gave me a small nod, and walked off. She turned to the tv and started flipping the channels.

"Are you done with the computer?" I asked, slamming the files down on the desk.

"Uh, yeah, whatever."

I carried out my tasks like a faithful soldier ant, completing each file one by one. She started watching some daytime soap opera. Ofcourse, she had to comment every other second about "how silly" these shows are, and "who would believe that load of crap" and "god, how stupid do you have to be to watch this shit???" Funny how I was thinking the same thing. I managed to tune her out, like I usually do. I've gotten pretty good at it actually. You just have to concentrate on what you're doing. And even if you're not doing anything, you can just stare out the tiny window on the right wall and start thinking. Like sometimes, I like to watch people go by and give them names I think they might have. There's a lady who brings her two girls in for ice-cream next door every Thursday after their soccer practice (the kids have their jerseys on and mud on their knees)...she wears alot of pastels and has big sun-glasses that cover most of her face. I call her "Laura." Her two daughters look alot like her. I call the older one "Ashley". She's probably around 10 years old, wears braces, always has her long auburn hair up in a pony-tail, and usually gets the double-fudge ice-cream in the vanilla cone. Her sister, "Ness" (short for "Vanessa") is probably around 7 and prefers to wear her her in pig-tails. She likes the strawberry/bubble-gum ice-cream (it's pink, so it has to be one or the other) with lots of colorful sprinkles.

"Oh my god, did I tell you?" She turns around with her eyes sparkling as the soap takes a commercial break. She has that "wait-till-you-hear-this" look on her face, I've seen it 100 times.

"Tell me what?" I ask, not really caring.

"I was returning some photocopies back to Tony this morning, and I heard him talking on the phone with..." I watched as her lips moved with enthusiasm. She had a small mark near the corner of her mouth. It fascinated me for some reason, and I always resisted the urge to reach out and touch it. It looked like it might have been a scar or birth mark, but I couldn't tell unless I was really close to her...

"...and he's going to get her FIRED!!! Just because of that little bitch who couldn't keep her mouth shut!"

"Wow," I replied, focusing back to the computer screen. "I can't believe it."

"I swear, I told Diane about it over lunch and she couldn't believe it either." She smiled as she said that. She looked so pleased with herself. I looked at the time...two more hours to go. The goat cheese smell from the files was really starting to get to me.

"I'm going to take a short break," I said, backing away from the desk. "Would you mind covering for me?"

"Um, sure...I don't think I can be near those files, though, they smell kinda funny and they'll make me nauseous..."

"Nauseated."

"What?"

"They'll make you nauseated."

"Oh, yeah, whatever."

I stepped outside and sat on the bench. It sound of mild traffic was surprisingly soothing. The sky was fairly dark and windy, there was some hurricane approaching from the west, but no one seemed to be paying much attention to it. I lit my cig and watched as "Mrs.Magoo," an old lady who was always screaming about "the damn flies in this neighborhood!" shuffled along to buy some groceries from the corner store. She always bought bags and bags of potato chips and corn syrup. I saw her drop her shopping bags once, and all these bags of potato chips and plastic corn syrup bottles scattered on the ground. "Carson Stonywall" ran out to help her, he's the retired veteran who owns the "Sell Your Nick-Knacks Here" store across the street from us. He looks like a sweet man, but he comes out swearing on the top of his lungs at "Cody" and "Teal," two teenage boys who steal almost every other 2 weeks from his store. I don't know how they manage to get back in unnoticed every time.

I went back inside after dusting the chalk off my pants, courtesy of some dumb kid who had been sitting on the bench before. She was on the phone now, giggling to someone about some friend's screwed up boob job. The tv was still on, a rather muscular man was talking about easy weight-loss...

"Oh my god, I hope she doesn't breast-feed,"...

...the fax machine was whirring...

"With this workout, you're going to be the envy of all your friends"...

The tv news bulletin flashed a hurricane warning on the screen...

"And I wonder what Alessandro said when she came home with those big two..."

"This just in: the mayor has annouced a strong advisory against...*static*...please be careful...*more static*..."

...the phone in Tony's office was ringing...

"Oh please, the one Dr. Patel did on Sonya was so much better..."

The room got very dark as the windows rattled hard...

"Hello, Mansi, are you there? I can't hear you..."

The lights went out, the tv went off, and the lines were torn loose from the howling winds.

What's MY diagnosis?

i see my headaches rather than feeling them. they're like friends who come to visit...except they visit alot more than my actual friends. i thought, actually, i think about coming out and saying something...but then i think "what's the use?".

no one's listening, anyways. no one cares for longer than 2 mins, and then it's all over and forgotten.

i know i'm not the only one who thinks they're crazy...but these ARE my thoughts, and i DO feel in a certain way...but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because we don't believe in "personal" or "individual", no no no sir, we believe in "collectivism," for those are the values we've been taught -- "don't think about yourself," she said, "you have to think about others, and what they will think."

well fuck you very much, but i really don't give a damn.

so did i compromise? did i say "fine, if no one's going to give a damn about what i think/say/feel about myself, i'm going to do something where people DO give a damn about what i think/say/feel about THEM!!!"

did i?

*** we will take a brief minute here to ponder over what i just wrote, call it a short epiphany break if you will***

hmm. can you really come into this world from the loins of a people-pleaser and spend your life torn between what you want and what others want of you? i think about morals...our moral obligations. our gendered moralities, womyn seen as serving their moral duty by caring for others, men serving their moral duty by sharing what they achieve through work. gender strategies we develop over the years, a pot-purri of our early experiences, our parents' lifestyle, cultural beliefs and textbook definitions. is that why i am who i am? running away from each aspect of my life like it's the bubonic plague, constantly building and destroying my gender strategies, concepts, roles, and the like.

no self-introspection means "you don't know who you are", "you're lost", "you're confused because you don't know yourself and don't understand why and how you feel"...

well, guess what, too much self-introspection gets you right back to square one too.

life's a bitchy full-circle.

i can't even embrace my neuroticism, my flaws, my obsessiveness, my compuslsions, my inability to just "go with the flow"--- i just stare at them, like i do with my headaches, and wonder how long it'll be before...