Somebody might read this.

Sometimes it is hard to see through a situation. Why did I waste all that time being uncomfortable? What was I doing? Why am I writing this? Someone might read it.When I was in Finland over the winter I had a dialogue with Jennifer Sullivan. We called it an interview, and I learned a lot of stuff from answering her consciously lame questions.
When she asked me about who my role models were, I learned that I had none outside the people who I have intense relationships with. Those people are the only people I allow myself to know, and for being a social person, I am not very open to learning very much about new people.
The people I elevate to role models are the ones who make me feel the best. It is a waste to spend time around people who make you act in ways you don't like. Or that is what I have been saying. But maybe it can be useful to pit yourself against someone who challenges your idea of your so called self. It is hard to stay in an uncomfortable situation. Immediate gratification in any given social situation usually makes the boundaries for interaction. I only present what I want to show and you only stay in the conversation until you are finished presenting yourself. We both push the easy buttons to get what we want, which is usually some sort of self serving advertisement of what we think the other person will like about us. The more people who like us, the more successful people we are.
In social situations past, I imagine people playing more risky interpersonal games. With less stimulation in other facets of life, socializing and relationships must have been more stimulating. The fertile ground of a context can be explored, an exchange can be manipulated and experimented with, and a conversation can be an outlet for creativity. Instead it seems that our creative output is hoarded, compressed, digitized, and distributed freely to an anonymous public, but it is egotistical or un-hippishly immodest to present your ideas, creativity, or complicated self to a local public. It feels compromising to invest in new relationships because it requires a conversation that goes beyond comfort in order to make it special. They might steal your ideas, your ways, your stuff-- your soul.For these reasons, I stayed home the last few weekends. I don't want to go back outside until I have the will to experience people with fewer needs- more selfless and more adventurous. The rest of me can just fit into this web-like infrastructure.

SANS MASCARA

The mascara test has been going pretty steady. There were definitely some weak moments, but I think the addiction has been reversed. Today and yesterday I wore a slight bit, but it was because I wanted to match my outfit (stylistically- less rugged country bumpkin) but not because I wanted to look like who I think I have to be.

Isn't it supposed to take 3 weeks to be over an addiction or to form a new habit? So maybe I am in the denial phase. Yup, everything is fine. No mascara, no evidence of cry. Maybe what really led to the mascara freeze was the three weeks of depression I endured, and the annoying aftermath of black crust after a sudden dip in mood. Maybe I am making a myth out of a practical decision. Maybe folklore comes out of logistical situations made into something worth retelling.NOT PURENESS.

Sometimes I actually enjoy the concept of eye makeup because I would like to rebel against superficial purity. Like the kind you get in flow yoga class. So while I do want to feel authentic, purity is not what I am getting at by wearing no eye makeup. Sometimes I see people who look pure and often they have heavy eyeliner and eyemakeup on, and it makes their eye balls light up. So I don't want to hate on the practice of putting effort and experimentation into beauty, but it does not have to be basic to existence. It would be great if it became part of a special ritual for a certain kind of day. Like maybe I will wear it only when I teach in the Bronx. Every day in the Bronx is a special day, and any tears shed can be marked with black streaks on my cheeks.

Grad School

Why would I do that? Would it mean that one day I could do design work for Gucci? I mean I am already doing a lot of their work for free. I was starting to write my application, stating what led me to the decision to apply... what events? I was born, I saw well designed stuff, I wanted it, and I can't stop trying to make it. Please teach me how to do it better and for free. Done.

A solution

So it turns out I am a scorpio. I feel afraid of what I seem to be doing all the time! Here is my solution.




``I like to ask audiences to consider this as a hiring decision,'' Clinton said on MSNBC's ``Countdown with Keith Olbermann'' show. ``If you were to hire the person you thought was ready on Day One to do the toughest job in the world, what would you look for?''

Everything. And if I was hiring a boyfriend? Also, everything. Let's make everything into a personnel decision. Send it to human resources. Do the paperwork. Invoice later.

Day 3: No More Mascara

As long as I can remember my mom was wearing mascara. When things were bad it would pool under her eyes. As she got older and the skin around her eyes became looser and drier, she had some difficulty wearing the same eye shadow system that she had developed over several decades, but mascara never caused any problems so it remained part of a daily and weekly beauty regiment. Her eye shadow routine is more complicated than I could understand at its most refined and practiced point, but the application involved layers of dark shadows deepening creases blended with layers of light, bright, iridescent, and undetectable hues to advance important bones and shapes. When she felt she had gained weight and her face shape became rounder and the contours less defined, it became all the more important to feature her eyes with plenty of strategically placed color. As I grew older these types of small adjustments in routine and aesthetic seemed commonplace, and I adopted these systems, though I never refined the processes the way my mother had mastered them.

The weird thing is that my mom developed these operational aesthetic systems by herself. My grandma didn't ever wear makeup, and even bragged to me as a teenager that she never even considered it an option, and her skin was nicer than my young and vibrant mother's ever was because of it. My mom had two brothers and lived amongst farm fields where tornadoes, tupperware, horses, and Catholicism ruled, so her expertise was self taught.

Just because you have nothing doesn't mean you have to look that way.

I guess I thought that the mascara was a requirement for existence. When I was in Finland, isolated from humanity, I was to be found walking across frozen lakes, mascara running down my cheeks when the wind made my eyes tear up. When I was avenged by Montezuma in the Yucatan and hadn't managed to eat for 8 days, I did apply a little mascara before I visited the doctor. It didn't feel like a choice. I also didn't take it for granted.

Every day it feels like a luxury to apply some black muck to my long eye lashes. A little magic trick. I know it changes my whole profile. I worry that I might actually look like a completely different person, maybe not even a female person if I don't have this little accent to my face. Yesterday was day two of no mascara. That makes today day three with no black magic eyes.

Everyone has treated me the same so far. Less gunk is in my eyes when I wake up. No black spots on my pillow revealing the position of my face for 6 hours.

Is this the end of something? I will keep you up to date.