New Life, New Perspectives

Close to the end of my first year of law school and I'm re-evaluating everything. Mostly, career pathways and I am now even more excited I chose this path. Going into this career, I knew I was interested in advocacy, primarily from a political vantage point. But hearing about other activists use of private practice and litigation as a pathway for acquisition of civil rights for queers is opening up not only my career opportunities, but allowing me to revise the way strategically think about advocacy.

This semester has included Constitutional Law and shown me how gays and women have used the Supreme Court to ensure protection of our rights. I never considered litigation until I took this class. I finished my oral argument yesterday and aside from my sheer nervousness, I felt great about the experience. I not only enjoy taking the current law and framing it in a way that works, but I am learning I am pretty good at it. Nice to have chosen a path that suits my skills.

While I do hate heavy burden of school and the rat race aspect of law school (not to mention the kinds of people who tend to be motivated by the financial side of law and lack any real deep thought or unique personal experiences), I overall feel great. I love engaging with smart folks and have met some really considerate, interesting folks at school.

Back to studies!

Oh, you're engaged? Must I feign excitement?

Another one bites the dust. I was informed via text message of a her engagement. Upon returning from what I swear is her 10th episode in a bridal party in the last 3 years, her boyfriend of a year and a half has asked her to join the club.

Beyond my imminent fear of having to don a bridesmaid gown, I had a very strong reaction to the news for other reasons. I forced myself to respond with a text dripping with edited simplicity I am hoping she didn't see through for its clear falseness, condescension and horror: 'Congratulations!'

For me, this is the reaction I feel compelled to react with in order to spare the feelings of my friends getting engaged. I want to be supportive, I really do. But I'm torn between challenging the institution and accepting my friends as people, capable of making mistakes and with evolving politics, particularly relating to marriage. I just don't know how to reconcile my palatable distaste for the whole institution and complex relationship it has with civil rights. I will continue to feign excitement, suppress what I really want to say (Why in god's name would you do that?) and grimace through the ceremonies when the bride is not looking.

I've been struggling with how to react when someone forces their choice to upon me. What I think is, "Does this declaration come with a manifesto?" I want to know that you've thought through all the complications of this issue and arrived at a place that is politically and morally sound. I need deep thought, I need justifications. If me and my gays can't get married, how is that fair? Do you blindly move into a privileged, hetero world without even acknowledging how this resonates with a broader culture of inequality? Why do you think you deserve state and federal benefits more than unmarried folks? What about the very real chance you'll end up like the more than 50% of Americans whose marriages end in divorce? How will marriage actually change anything about your relationship for the better? Are you doing this just to validate you in certain social circles? How do you reconcile the historical role marriage has played in the oppression of women; as a tool to ensure that men can transfer property down their lineage with greater assurance that 'their' progeny is theirs?

AHHHH. Ok, clearly, I am not headed in that direction, but I have thought deeply about these questions and reconciled that marriage is not a system I feel comfortable joining. But too many of the people who have told me they are heading down the aisle as of late have one thing on their mind: this is what I've always wanted (like since you were a little girl and thought deeply about social systems bathed in oppression) and they want to procreate. Babies = Marriage? I don't think so. I think you can be committed without being married. I think you can reproduce successfully without getting married. I think marriage is opting into a system of privileged that, if blindly entered into, only enhances the inequality in civil rights for people in this country. It can't just be about celebrating your love no matter how you cut the cake.

The Waiting Game

It has been so long since I've done anything on here, probably for a number of reasons... top of the list would be Law School Applications, 11 total. Second would have to be my band. We're practicing/writing/playing out a lot now.

Too many updates to note now, but I guess this is the place where I vent my fears and excitement for what the future holds. Since I'm applying to such a huge number, I assume I'll get in. But, perhaps I won't? No need to be such a pessimist here...

I'm incredibly excited to possibly move to Portland, DC, NYC, the twin cities (St. Paul) or San Francisco. If I remain in North Carolina, my band can stay together (woo hoo!). The band is obviously rooting heavily for this choice. I gotta say, no matter what, I do love living in North Carolina. I do love my life. I am bored, but not entirely unhappy at my job, and I am generally excited about the future.

The fear is a healthy reminder to appreciate what I do have, never to stop pushing myself, and will be entirely forgotten in 8 short months...

Sadly, my desire to read literature fell off after graduating

Cheater post, nothing new here except a list of books I'd like to store as worth reading.

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Ronald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Rain on the rooftop

There's nothing like a little turbulance in your life countered with a moment that just makes you stop. Stop stressing. Stop thinking. Start listening.

I've been frantically trying to plan and prepare for my trip to Mexico the day after tomorrow. I've been keeping my social life up to date, prioritizing visits with loved ones and melding into the local music scene. But tonight I came home, exhausted and it started raining the minute I climbed into my loft. I have a lofted sleeping area where it feels like your in a barn. There literally is hay inside the adobe walls! I just love the sound of soft rain on the rooftop. I'm so close to it. I can hear the wind and rain coming in waves of dull percussion. The best of the best lullaby. I only wish my the man were here to lay in silence with me while the symphony entertained.

I'll be in Mexico for the next week and a half or so! I'm scared, nervous and dreading the horror I've heard the subway is for females. But all that turbulance in my head is minimal now. Not while its raining.

Chaa Chaa Cha Chaanges

So a few things are shifting in my life:
1. Housing.
I'm moving into the ultimate hippy commune/my own garage apartment where I'll only have to share a kitchen/laundry area with people. I love it. My current roommate has destructed into a slobby, inconsiderate ghost. I look forward to clean spaces where the mess left for weeks at a time is entirely mine!

2. Grad School.
I'm applying to Law School/Public Policy schools where I can get a joint degree and focus on women's studies. I know....science-enviro-nerd....now doing law? Well, I love the idea that I can be flexible, will possess a skill that will be applicable to all my social justice causes and provide me the means to be effective in my intellectual pursuits! Yay! More on that later....

3. Work.
My best friend just got fired from our job and it's been hard to keep morale high. I know it was partly her fault, but it nonetheless damaged the family-like quality of work I've been enjoying. I may just go work at whole foods if I can't handle it prior to entering graduate school. Who knows? Also, another co-worker was systematically pigeon-holed into quitting. She was a huge problem for me for a long time and just in the last 6 months, I had figured her out. I also got mad props at my job for learning to work with her. I know it's because of my Buddhist practice. She challenged me to figure out a way to deal, be compassionate, and ultimately build a relationship with her. While I wouldn't trust her as far as I can throw her and don't actually see her as a friend, I have a comfortable faux working relationship with her. And she quit. :( I won't miss a lot, but the less-than-a-handful of things I will miss, will be genuinely missed.

4. Love.
I'm in deep. Its wonderful. And he's moving. My Buddhist practice, once again, keeps things in perspective. When we're together: magic, fireworks, explosions (the only way!!!). The move will give us perspective. Are we meant to be? Only time will tell....and buddhism is keeping me in the moment, enjoying every second of it.

5. Family.
Mine is awesome. Littlest bro and sis are planning to visit me. Bro is hoping to move here (AMAZING, Progressive, great music-filled, young-person-filled area) and I know he'll love it. Anything is better than the conservative, elderly, polluted south. Sis is needing an escape and I miss her dearly. I hope they visit before I head down to s. America!

6. Bike Tour.
Planning takes forever. If I'm headed to Law School next fall...well....right before I enroll is the ONLY chance for freedom-based goals to be fulfilled. So, I'm doing a bike tour of some historical region of the U.S. or Canada. Thinking a month and a half of cycling. And possibly by myself. AND I'm shaving my head. Cliche? Sure. But something I've always wanted to do. Why? Freedom. From sexual desirability. From beauty pressures. From mainstream culture. From myself. And, when the hell else will I ever get the chance to do this again? As a lawyer? Hayl naw! So I gotta do what I can while I still can.

Self-Awareness can be a curse

I have come to realize that my smile: is a complex expression; happiness, sadness, manipulation of others. I resent and embrace that my primary source of power in this society has to do with my looks.

I have come to realize that when I talk: I still haven't shut down the voice in my head that tells me I'm stupid. It delays what I have to say and sends me offtrack more than it should at my age. I am intimidated by what I perceive others to think.

I have come to realize that if I get emotionally attached to someone: That kind of investment doesn't go away.

I have come to realize that I need: artistic expression combined with at least the feeling I'm making a difference.

I have come to realize that I lost: my need to make everyone think the way I do. I have a lot more respect for differences of opinions than I ever had. I am nonetheless extremely radical and opinionated and happily discuss my point of view with respectful friends.

I have come to realize that I hate it when: people only act in their self interest. I am too big hearted to understand how people can be totally self-serving. I hate feeling like I have no back up plan. I am not comfortable with taking great risks.

I have come to realize that if I'm drunk: I can be mean. Anger is a common denominator in my life for good and bad. I try not to get drunk.

I have come to realize that marriage: is a way to force heteronormativity down women's throats at a young age and the wedding culture makes me want to vomit. I reject the religious institution
it was born out of and resent the lack of equality set out by those backing hetero marriages....i.e., it ain't for me. If gay marriage becomes legal, I might consider joining the club.

I have come to realize that work: is so much better if you feel like you're making a difference and can see the big picture.

I have come to realize that I will always be: able to see the problem for what it is; figuring out the solutions will be a tougher matter. Also, I need to be around people. Solitude is not my favorite pastime.

I have come to realize that I like: surrounding myself with other independent, thinking women.

I have come to realize that the last time I cried was: when my lover told me he may be moving away. I am happy for him, but I fear losing him again. When will I feel strong enough to handle it?

I have come to realize that when I wake up in the morning: I enjoy doing the dishes, laundry and ironing. I am a morning person apparently. Or I just need to be in a vegetative state to enjoy mundane tasks.

I have come to realize that today I will: Try to balance living in the present with a fear and anticipation of what may come.

I have come to realize that tonight I will: be in the arms of the man I love, and that those times are always limited and should be cherished when they can be.

I have come to realize that tomorrow: I have a list of things I really need to figure out...but probably won't.

I have come to realize that I really want: a life fully lived, with a partner and a healthy sense of indepence.

I have come to realize that my favorite place in the world is: travel with good friends.

I have come to realize that I'm most thankful for: knowing the everything that happens is meant to be and I just have to have faith in myself and learn to be fully appreciated.