Pull up a chair...

Every weekday morning, I get to work/school before the building I need to be in is unlocked. So, I go sit in the lounge in another building and wait out the 30 minutes kicked back in front of the fireplace, pretending to do work. Today, two other people had the same idea. The lounge has comfy chairs and couches and little coffee tables, and these two were sitting at one of the chair-couch-table clusters. The girl was sitting primly on the couch, legs crossed, hands tucked under one leg, and she'd squished herself tight up against the arm of the couch. The boy had melted himself in one of the chairs, legs spread wide, arms flung out over the sides, head laid back. It all reminded me of an article I read a while back, which of course I can't find now, about the differences in the way that girls and boys sit, and why.

Girls: We sit with our legs crossed or close together. It's proper, its appropriate. We are taught, whether directly or indirectly, to take up the least amount of space possible. We usually jam ourselves as close to one end of the couch as possible. We wouldn't want to make someone uncomfortable by having to sit awkwardly next to us! We don't let limbs overflow from the sides of chairs, we don't kick our legs out to encroach on others' space. And god forbid we expose ourselves in any way! Look at a woman sitting somewhere sometime. She'll probably have her legs crossed, to hide her "you-know-what", and her arms positioned in a way to cover "the girls". And her back straight, of course. It's the whole "seen and not heard" idea, only "seen" as little as possible as well. You know, ladylike.  

See how proper and reserved women are? ("Morning News" by Jack Vettriano)

Boys: They sit, splayed out, taking up as much space as possible. They are comfortable. Confident. They own that couch, dammit. They're slid way down on the seat, laying back, legs spread wide, arms up on the back of the chair. Or they're sitting backward on the chair, or leaning forward with their elbows on their knees (which are spread wide again, of course). What girls try to hide, boys put on display. They have nothing to hide, and nothing to hide from. They're in charge. They're manly.

The interesting thing is though, I don't sit like a girl. I plop myself down right in the middle of my couch, and then I expand. Too bad if you wanted to sit there too, because I've managed to take up that entire middle cushion, and then some. Or I slide myself down into the chair so far that I may as well be laying down, prop my legs up on the table and put my hands behind my head.  

This is NOT how pretty girls sit. (Wow, I really looked like a little boy with that haircut!)

(I wonder if the way I sit says something about the way I was raised. Or maybe its the way my brain functions. My sexual orientation, maybe? Of course, it could also be that I'm just way too lazy to worry about being proper...)

Blurry picture from High School. Wasn't I so ladylike?

Why do you suppose we still do this? Why do any of us care? But really, its an unconscious thing. We sit the way we've been programmed (Nature? Nurture?) to sit, and we think it looks "weird' to see a girl sitting backward on a chair, or a boy with his legs crossed. Really, we do. Take a look around the room. If all you could see were black silhouettes, could you guess the genders of the people around you by how they're sitting?

Be Equal

Last night I was thinking - I talk about equality a lot. Its my thing. Y'know, everybody has a thing. Equality is mine. Gay rights, gender equality, civil rights on a global scale. All men are created equal. Its a beautiful idea (ideal), isn't it? But the truth is, its all a load of bullshit. No no, keep reading. I might not say what you think I'm going to say.

When I say that equality is my thing, I mean big-picture equality. But this starts out so much smaller...or it should, anyway. We need to have equality in our own lives before we can have it in everyone's lives. Think about it. We all assume that we are more something than someone else: smarter, funnier, better looking, a harder worker, a better provider, etc. We know more, we do more, so we are more. Take an honest look. We all do it. I'll be the first to point it out in myself (I'm a bit of an elitist). 

But in order to find ourselves "better than", someone else must somehow be "less than". You can't have "better than" and "less than" and equality at the same time. So yeah, maybe he's funnier or smarter or whatever, but maybe she's prettier or has a better (there we go again) job or something else. Doesn't it all even out in the end? When you strip all of the "betters" away, we're all the same. We are equal. 

There's another thing we do in our everyday lives that gets in the way of equality. We let ourselves get caught up in and defined by our "roles", or we stick other people into them. Now don't get me wrong, roles aren't automatically bad. In fact, they're necessary. What isn't necessary is attaching different levels of importance to them. For example - doctors and lawyers are important (read: make a lot of money), so if you're a doctor or a lawyer, you're "better than". You're better than the teacher that taught you to be a doctor, better than the cop who enforces the laws you uphold as a lawyer, better than the cashier at the grocery store that sells the food that feeds the cops and teacher and doctors and lawyers, and better than the single mother on welfare that raised that grocery store cashier.  

That is what I was talking about earlier when I said it was all a bunch of bullshit. I'm not better than you. You're not better than the woman at McDonald's that gave you your coffee this morning, and she's not better than the guy that's been living on the street for the past year. Get rid of the roles and the titles and the value that we've arbitrarily assigned to them, and we're all the same. Really. 

In yesterday's blog, I said that we should all BE LOVE. Well here's the next step - BE EQUAL. Because we are love and we are equal. Intrinsically. Automatically. So really, I guess, let's just be ourselves. 

Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan... they know what they're talking about.

Blame It On The Train

Happy Monday everyone! ...I had no intentions of writing anything this morning - the extended weekend (snow days!!) made me wish for a permanent weekend. But, here I am anyway. Blame it on the train...

Believe it or not, my favorite time of day is my train ride to school/work every morning. It’s early as hell, and the sun is barely even up. Everyone but the conductor and I are usually asleep. I love it. It’s quiet and I can just relax and listen to music and think. Or not think at all. Today I was not thinking. I was staring out the window…just sort of ‘existing’. The snow was glowing in the sun and hypnotizing me, so I started watching the buildings flash by. That was hypnotizing as well. Mondays make me want to go back to sleep. Eventually, I noticed a hawk flying off in the distance; he was flying in the same direction that the train was going, so I got to watch him for a while. I was excited. Hawks are one of my favorite animals. Anyway, he flew over a graveyard that I had never even noticed was there. It was a very strange feeling; watching a beautiful bird against a blue sky that was getting brighter by the minute and then, oh shit, where’d that graveyard come from? Granted, I had been forced to sit on the opposite side of the train than I usually do, so it’s not really all that odd that I would notice something new. But really? I missed a whole graveyard? I thought, “Hmm... maybe I should sit on this side more often”.

It turns out, from this side of the train I could also see all of the graffiti that is all over the fences near the train station. Classy. Lots of things that I’d rather not repeat here, some pictures of indistinguishable something-or-others, some rap lyrics…and among all of that, someone had spray painted “BE LOVE”. Nothing else. No fancy graffiti-font, no pretty colors. Just bright red, all capital letters – BE LOVE. Well, so much for finishing the train ride without thinking. In there, among all of those ‘destruction of property’ charges, someone actually wrote something profound. They didn’t say “love everyone” or “love yourself” or "love the earth" or anything like that. It was “be love”. Sounds like a fantastic idea to me. Don’t just love someone, be love in general. It’s not an action, but a state of being. Not something you do, but something you are. And it really takes a whole lot less work to be love than to be hate.

So a hawk showed me a grave yard, and somebody with a can of spray paint showed me the best way to live my life. Not bad for a Monday morning. And I think I’ll sit in a different spot on the train again tomorrow. Maybe I’ll learn something else.

This is snow laughing matter!

Today, everyone here in the Midwest seems to be preparing for what we have lovingly termed “Snowmageddon”. We’re supposed to get over two feet of snow in about a 12 hour span of time. The grocery stores are packed, even though there’s hardly anything left on the shelves. The plows are ready and waiting. This is some Y2K level snow we’re talking about here. 2012 has nothing on this. Or something…

Everyone seems to be planning on staying home. My mom is talking about a “Shoveling Party” at my house, because our driveway is so long. I’m not sure how she plans to make the drive to my house to do that though. My dad is pretty much planning to spend the next 12 hours with his snow blower. I hope they get along well. The Other Half is envisioning getting snowed in, and spending the day with a book (or 3) and a cup of tea (or 13). I have two images in my head.

Image #1: I’m running. No, I think “hauling ass” would be a better description. So, I’m hauling ass as fast as I can, with a huge cloud hovering just behind me. Death snow. There is a wall of white falling from the sky…not in individual flakes, but just one giant sheet of snow-type-material. And it’s chasing me. Not just coincidently behind me, but actually, actively chasing me. With intent. It’s going to get me. And so I’m running. “Snowmageddon! Run! Run like hell!” And everyone around me is running too. “It’s gonna get us! Noooooo….”

This image is absolutely hysterical in my head. I’m actually laughing out loud right now. That’s what I feel like people are thinking this is going to be. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that this is going to be some pretty intense weather and all. But really, this isn’t the end of the Mayan calendar. It’s just snow. Come on people, we live in Chicago! Since when are we surprised by weather?

Image #2: We’re snowed in. Seeing as we’re supposed to have 35mph winds and 5-10 foot drifts, we’re stuck. In my head, I finally manage to crawl out the front window (because I can’t push the door open), and I slither into a snow pile with my shovel twirling in front of me, like a drill. And in my head, this isn’t a drift. We have about 10 feet of snow. Everywhere. Just a massive chunk of white over everything. I can picture building a system of tunnels, catacomb-style: to my mail box (how mail would be delivered is irrelevant), to the garage (for no real reason, seeing as I can’t get the car out anyway), and down the street to the grocery store (we’ll just pretend it’s open). This image isn’t so much funny as it is fun. Can you imagine all of these extensive snow-hallways? Wouldn’t it be great?

I revert back to being 8 years old when it snows. I feel the need to run and slide and fall. I love watching it. I love how quiet it makes everything. And right now, I love the idea of having a day or two off from work and school, and being trapped in my house with The Other Half and our other roomie/sister. Sounds perfect. Snowmageddon, here we come!