Questions of perception have always plagued me. It always disturbed me that someone as evil as the current pope, for instance, could actually believe that he is a benevolent force in the world, even though we he was a "reluctant" member of Hitler Youth and he regularly preaches hatred towards homosexuals. Or that people with extensive cosmetic surgery could think that their plastic lips and frozen foreheads could possibly be attractive and youthful looking.
The perception of one's physical self has been a particularly problematic concept in my life. Recently, I've been increasingly more at ease with what I've been seeing in the mirror, because I'm slowly losing a bit of weight and have been fitting into clothes better. So the typical female disgust with my appearance hasn't been at the forefront of my mind, thankfully.
Until this morning, however. Unfortunately, the pictures taken at a family party yesterday reveal otherwise. Needless to say, I was mortified by how fleshy and over-weight I looked. Which brings me to the point of this post: how could what I see in the mirror differ so vastly from what I look like in reality? Granted there are the postmodern arguments that a photograph is not actually reflective of the truth, but I am of the school of thought that believes if a picture isn't photoshopped, it is an accurate visual representation of that millisecond of time. As a rational, pragmatic person, if terrifies me that what I think is physically acceptable (my outfit, or hair) when I see it in the mirror may not actually look nice to any other observer. And I'm not talking about fashion, I mean appearance, in general. And short of developing some sort of giant instant-Polaroid picture system, I don't know what to do to remedy this discrepancy between my mirror self and my physical self. This isn't even a unique existential conundrum; I cried about this many a time when I was fifty pounds lighter than I am now. Is there a way to align the two perceptions?
I know this discussion makes me seem terribly superficial, but it would be a lie to say that our physical selves do not play a huge part in shaping our identities. I can only hope that the rest of society isn't as critical of my appearance as I am.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
This Is Either Proof That There Is No God, Or That There Is, And It HATES Me
Aside from a few really dark moments in my short life, this is the lowest I've felt both physically and emotionally in at least a decade. To be brief, I had a rather routine bladder infection for which I went to the doctor, got antibiotics, and proceeded as usual. In the past, after 3 days of meds and that stuff that makes you pee neon orange, I felt immensely better. This time it was the opposite: day 4, and I'm in an intense amount of pain near my kidneys and lower abdomen. To make matters worse, it is now Saturday, my doctor's office is closed, the urgent medical place in the next town is closed, and the other emergency care place doesn't open til 9am. Making matters mentally distressing, I was supposed to leave for Vermont with my friends this morning to visit a dear friend, whom I've missed very much; my parents are still in the fucking Caribbean, by grandparents have work/commitments, my only other local friend is also away, and my fiance was at work. The word "distraught" is not a severe enough description of how I felt.
I get in at this place, and thankfully I'm in and out fast, but only to find out that my antibiotics are working as they should be and "you really shouldn't be in as much pain as you are" was the response I got out of the doctor. Her only suggestion was that my intestinal area may also be inflamed due to my agitated bladder coupled with regular PMS symptoms. Oh, and a rather appreciated script for Vicodin.
So here I am, thoroughly spaced out from a mere half of a Vicodin, depressed, alone, and unable to operate heavy machinery. It's times like these when my atheistic inclinations seem justified. Would a benevolent god punish a decent person in such a fashion? Probably not. An Old Testament god would, undoubtedly: just look at what happened to poor Job. Buddha would say my suffering is normal as it is a symptom of human existence, which seems most believable. So: either I have a huge amount of negative karma, the god(s) have it out for me, or I'm currently just being clusterfucked by coincidence and bad health.
Either way, I'm trapped away from my friends, and I can only hope that something good will happen to me soon.
I get in at this place, and thankfully I'm in and out fast, but only to find out that my antibiotics are working as they should be and "you really shouldn't be in as much pain as you are" was the response I got out of the doctor. Her only suggestion was that my intestinal area may also be inflamed due to my agitated bladder coupled with regular PMS symptoms. Oh, and a rather appreciated script for Vicodin.
So here I am, thoroughly spaced out from a mere half of a Vicodin, depressed, alone, and unable to operate heavy machinery. It's times like these when my atheistic inclinations seem justified. Would a benevolent god punish a decent person in such a fashion? Probably not. An Old Testament god would, undoubtedly: just look at what happened to poor Job. Buddha would say my suffering is normal as it is a symptom of human existence, which seems most believable. So: either I have a huge amount of negative karma, the god(s) have it out for me, or I'm currently just being clusterfucked by coincidence and bad health.
Either way, I'm trapped away from my friends, and I can only hope that something good will happen to me soon.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Living in a Material World, and I am a Material Girl.... To My Dismay
So today, my karma righted itself so swiftly that I hydroplaned into a phone pole and dented the front right panel of my perfect, beautiful new car. First: both myself and the rest of my car are fine: it runs great and the tires are sturdy (my passenger seat is still a bit discolored because the coffee and tea I was transporting spilled all over anywhere and despite the Oxyclean treatments it's still kinda stained).
I think the thing I found most disturbing about the experience was my thought process while my car decided to not turn when the wheel did. Not: "Oh my god I'm gonna die!" or even "AAAAAAAHHHH!"
It was "FUCK MY LIFE MY CAR IS GONNA GET FUCKED UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" After I righted the car and got into the school parking lot, and I checked the damage and saw that the light was ok and there was only superficial stuff amiss, I still wanted to lay on the floor and burst into tears, not because I had a really close scare, but because my pristine, lovely new car was scarred.
Now, it's not like I'm the only person who would be upset about something messing up their new car. But it really fucking irks me that I'm still so bent out of shape about it (yeah, I made a terrible pun: deal with it)! Why can't I just be happy that the damage wasn't worse, or that I didn't hit a pedestrian? I'll admit, mostly I was stressed out that my father was going to go apeshit when he found out. Thankfully, no one has told him about it yet because he's leaving for vacation tomorrow, and only a fool would spoil Vacation Bob's good mood. But when he gets back and goes to clean the cars as per his weekend ritual, he's going to freak out.
But it's more than just my father's obsession with car appearances, I feel like it's a societal standard to go nuts if something happens to one of our gadgets. Yeah, an ipod or a Blackberry or a laptop are expensive pieces of equipment, and it sucks major if they start to dysfunction. But.... it's just a thing! Will it shorten my life because my phone is on the fritz? Does the giant scratch on the back of the ipod make it any less effective? NO! Why does it bother us so much? Is it that we're all obsessed with perfection? It can't be that, because if this happened to me in my old car, I wouldn't have given a shit because it was old and beat up to begin with. This preoccupation with "newness" translates across all sorts of barriers. Take for instance our apathy and general neglect of the elderly in this country, and our obsession with babies and young children. When old people die in a fire, we think "oh, that's a shame, but they lived a full life and were probably going to kick it soon anyway." When babies die in a fire, the media goes into a frenzy and there are candlelit vigils and memorial services. Really, both instances are tragic and unfair, but we care far less about the old folks than we do about the babies.
What is it about "newness" that drives our society so crazy? Have we all become so capitalist-minded that we can't be reasonable about the quality of our private possessions? Because I'd like to continue believing that Marx and Engles were wrong about human history being completely driven by economic motivations. If all we care about is getting the most bang for our buck, do we really have time left over to appreciate the fact that 95% of everything surrounding us is a luxury? I don't think so. The carpet under our feet, the stylish roofing tiles over our heads, the hamburgers on our plates, the cell phones in our pockets - none of them are necessary to sustain human life. Do they make societal living easier? They sure as shit do. But we put entirely too much emphasis on these things, and there really is no turning back from indoor toilets and the internet and text messaging.
I guess what I'm saying is: Madonna was right: we are living in a material world. And we're all material boys and girls, even though it pains me philosophically to admit it. I wish there was a way to set myself outside of the cycle, but unless I want to become a nomadic hunter gatherer in a nature preserve somewhere, I don't really have a choice.
I think the thing I found most disturbing about the experience was my thought process while my car decided to not turn when the wheel did. Not: "Oh my god I'm gonna die!" or even "AAAAAAAHHHH!"
It was "FUCK MY LIFE MY CAR IS GONNA GET FUCKED UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" After I righted the car and got into the school parking lot, and I checked the damage and saw that the light was ok and there was only superficial stuff amiss, I still wanted to lay on the floor and burst into tears, not because I had a really close scare, but because my pristine, lovely new car was scarred.
Now, it's not like I'm the only person who would be upset about something messing up their new car. But it really fucking irks me that I'm still so bent out of shape about it (yeah, I made a terrible pun: deal with it)! Why can't I just be happy that the damage wasn't worse, or that I didn't hit a pedestrian? I'll admit, mostly I was stressed out that my father was going to go apeshit when he found out. Thankfully, no one has told him about it yet because he's leaving for vacation tomorrow, and only a fool would spoil Vacation Bob's good mood. But when he gets back and goes to clean the cars as per his weekend ritual, he's going to freak out.
But it's more than just my father's obsession with car appearances, I feel like it's a societal standard to go nuts if something happens to one of our gadgets. Yeah, an ipod or a Blackberry or a laptop are expensive pieces of equipment, and it sucks major if they start to dysfunction. But.... it's just a thing! Will it shorten my life because my phone is on the fritz? Does the giant scratch on the back of the ipod make it any less effective? NO! Why does it bother us so much? Is it that we're all obsessed with perfection? It can't be that, because if this happened to me in my old car, I wouldn't have given a shit because it was old and beat up to begin with. This preoccupation with "newness" translates across all sorts of barriers. Take for instance our apathy and general neglect of the elderly in this country, and our obsession with babies and young children. When old people die in a fire, we think "oh, that's a shame, but they lived a full life and were probably going to kick it soon anyway." When babies die in a fire, the media goes into a frenzy and there are candlelit vigils and memorial services. Really, both instances are tragic and unfair, but we care far less about the old folks than we do about the babies.
What is it about "newness" that drives our society so crazy? Have we all become so capitalist-minded that we can't be reasonable about the quality of our private possessions? Because I'd like to continue believing that Marx and Engles were wrong about human history being completely driven by economic motivations. If all we care about is getting the most bang for our buck, do we really have time left over to appreciate the fact that 95% of everything surrounding us is a luxury? I don't think so. The carpet under our feet, the stylish roofing tiles over our heads, the hamburgers on our plates, the cell phones in our pockets - none of them are necessary to sustain human life. Do they make societal living easier? They sure as shit do. But we put entirely too much emphasis on these things, and there really is no turning back from indoor toilets and the internet and text messaging.
I guess what I'm saying is: Madonna was right: we are living in a material world. And we're all material boys and girls, even though it pains me philosophically to admit it. I wish there was a way to set myself outside of the cycle, but unless I want to become a nomadic hunter gatherer in a nature preserve somewhere, I don't really have a choice.
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