From September 18th, 1991 ...

Ultimately the only thing that has any meaning in life is poetry.

    After reading an article menopause yesterday, I was left with the feeling that human beings are primarily bags of hormones. 

    Life filters through us, leaving us with the impression that our thoughts are own, somehow original.  But in fact everything is formed and shaded by the chemicals that happen to be passing through our system at the time. 

    Can logic transcend those chemicals?  And what about religions feeling?  I picture my mother and her journals full of “sins”. 

    I think as a kid I tried to split my parents into good parents and bad parents.  I used my mind to separate the wheat from the chaff.  I became a close observer of their personalities.  When were they giving me good advice and when were they on one of their manic binges? 

    These days I alternate between incredible fatigue and excess energy.  Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with dry-mouth.  I went to the drugstore and found a toothpaste specifically designed to combat dry-mouth.  It claims dry-mouth is a symptom of aging.  Wonderful.  And the joints in my hand ache when I wake up as if I’d been holding my hands clenched for hours. 

    Ultimately the only thing that has any meaning in life is poetry.  Because the only “meaning” life has comes from us.  The rest is hormones or the calculator. 

I never felt you could win at the Young Woman’s game.  All that effort to be physically attractive and so forth.  What a hassle. 

    Peter and Miles headed off for school and work.  Miles is going to Barcelona [Middle School, Glendale, AZ], to the gifted program.  He seems to like it a great deal.  The school is about 20 minutes from here, not a bad drive, but it does mean I have to stop everything to pick him up in the afternoon. 

    Yesterday after school we went to Elbo’s, a glorified junk shop, which sells all the retro kitchenware and furniture and posters, calendars, etc. that you could hope for.  Much of the stuff is similar in kind to stuff I’ve collected over the years. 

    I don’t know why this old stuff appeals to me so much.  Some of it is simply a question of design. 

    Then, later, we went to the video store, where I asked if they had any Sam Fuller tapes.  Who, what, duh? 

    Our last stop was at the mall, where Miles insisted we check out the animals.  There was a strange-looking cat with her ears flopped forward and a bunch of zonked-out puppies.  Miles is convinced that a gerbil or hamster would bring him true happiness.  I am convinced otherwise. 

    I had a series of dreams in which I made my way to a house in the heart of the woods.  A little old lady there in an atmosphere of peace and harmony.  I keep thinking that this is a figure in my psyche, the Wise Old Woman.  That’s okay with me.  I never felt you could win at the Young Woman’s game.  All that effort to be physically attractive and so forth.  What a hassle. 

    My sister keeps insisting she wants to move out here.  I sent her some catalogs of house and apartment listings.  Needless to say, she was taken with the cheap housing. 

    So I haven’t discouraged her, but I have concerns.  In the last year or so, I’ve changed a lot.  I think she may still think of me as the dominating big sister, and probably I still am, somewhat.  But my main interest is very much in developing myself, not anyone else.  I don’t have the wish for big, extended family anymore.  I’ve given up on my life-long dream of losing myself in a crowd of friends and family. 

    Quite frankly, there was a time when I would have been thrilled if she’d brought her family out here.  And of course, I’d still be happy.  But I don’t think I’d get involved the way I once would have. 

    Which, from her point of view, has its upside and downside.  The upside is that I won’t be so bossy.  The downside is I won’t be so generous, most especially with my time. 

    Now that my mother is functionally gone, I don’t think my sister has any hope of connecting with her, anymore.  Not that there was ever any real hope.  But the illusion of hope existed. 

    The sky is overcast.  The temperatures are supposed to be headed down, which will be a relief on our electric bill.  That’s the other thing, I really don’t know if my sister and her family could adjust to this climate. 

    Well, I have to iron a few things.  I save money on dry-cleaning by washing clothes in the sink.  You can do this with everything but silk.  Lately I’ve been on a get-organized kick. 

The world offers a million ways to destroy oneself.  For women to neuter themselves emotionally in order to succeed in the masculine world is just one way of self-destruction. 

    I’m reading an interesting book, The Beauty Myth.  The author’s proposition is that despite women’s sexual, political, and religious freedom, gained over the last several decades, women are fundamentally unhappier than ever because they are trapped in the cosmetic web.  It is not enough to be successful, you must also look perfect.  Your body must be a slick icon of youth, no matter what your real age, no matter what your experiences have been.  It goes beyond a trivializing of women because it’s so pervasive, this religion of feminine perfection. 

    When I first noticed the signs of aging: the protruding belly, the jowls and the double chin, the first gray hairs, I became conscious of a sense of dread that had laid buried beneath my ambitions to improve myself intellectually. 

    Of course, I want to be fit and healthy, but why should I have to apologize for the way I look? 

    This theme goes way back, to my confrontations over my appearance with my parents.  This was one of the areas in which they most sought both to define me and control me.  I resisted like crazy. 

    But I felt sensitized by their constant complaints about my weight, my make up, my choice of clothes.  Much of the energy I should have put into developing my education and career went into worrying about all the things that were so peripheral. 

    I felt intensely self-conscious all the time.  As a result, I didn’t take myself seriously enough where it really mattered.  What if they were right?  What if I really was as ugly and deserving of rejection as they insisted? 

    Look at one of my childhood memories: my father refusing to get me glasses because, in his words, I was ugly enough as it was.  So I was forced to go about in a blind fog from first grade until sixth, when he finally relented.  Could you ask for a more striking example of a mentality that seeks to control the feminine by crippling her? 

    Is it not time for me to arise and walk? 

    The beauty industry appeals to that in women which longs for sensual satisfaction and delight.  The masculine world is gray, sensible, ordered, and dull in our culture. 

    The world offers a million ways to destroy oneself.  For women to neuter themselves emotionally in order to succeed in the masculine world is just one way of self-destruction.  There are others.  But this way has been the most prevalent for ambitious women of intellectual or economic talent. 

I think it’s ridiculous to think that I should spend the second half of my life apologizing for getting old....

I am not going to let myself be disposed of by the shallow values we live with in this country. 

    So how does one resist all the exhortations to conform to the beauty religion?  Especially when it seems like everyone you encounter has received all the subliminal messages about what a “good” woman should look like? 

    Practically everyone I know has alluded to my unsatisfactory weight at one time or another, even Miles a few years ago. 

    Once a man in a grocery store asked me when my baby was due!  This left me with mixed feelings of shame, outrage, and humor.  Without the latter, I never would have survived this long. 

    Because I can remember times when I succumbed to the social agenda.  I dieted myself into illness, smoked myself into a fainting spell, punched my oversized stomach and clawed at my puffy face in frustration until I was black and blue. 

    Oh, how good it feels to tell them all to go to hell! 

    Why didn’t I do that sooner?  Because I was indoctrinated at such an early age that I wasn’t sure.  Was I right or were they? 

    Basically I thought I was okay, but the insidious seeds of doubt had been planted.  They grew and grew and threatened at times to choke off my airways, to dim all light of reason. 

    I think it’s ridiculous to think that I should spend the second half of my life apologizing for getting old.  Nor can I afford to spend energy on worrying about my appearance to the detriment of other, more important considerations.  I am not going to let myself be disposed of by the shallow values we live with in this country. 

    There’s another aspect to all this, and that the author’s idea of feminine guilt over “hidden dirt”.  We must see a hundred ads a day that prey on the need for feminine cleanliness.  This leads women to a state of constant anxiety that their “dirt” — that is, menstrual blood — will be revealed. 

    Time for me to go.  My little white cat is amusing herself with the blind cord.  She battles with it ferociously.  Now I will put her into the back room where she sleeps and lives while we are at work. 

A woman’s face must not show the impressions of experience, the sadness and joy of a lifetime.  She should be a plastic Barbie-doll with a molded expression of pleasant dumbness. 

    Yesterday was the anniversary of my brother’s birth, the first brother.  The second brother, I haven’t heard from him in some time. 

    I’ve been reading Alan Watts.  He helps me put it all in perspective.  Our culture works against experience — ego constructs are everything.  Robert Bly talks about the Wild Man within.  What about the Wild Woman?  A woman’s face must not show the impressions of experience, the sadness and joy of a lifetime.  She should be a plastic Barbie-doll with a molded expression of pleasant dumbness. 

    Experience is everything we are.  The patterns of Nature are sacred, but we deny them in favor of the idol of rules and regulations.  We hear the phrase “politically correct” these days.  But there is also the “socially correct”. 

    My parents were neurotic because they couldn’t accept themselves, took no pride in their Irishness, their Catholicism.  They were both obsessed with their low position on the social ladder.