How I am alone...

So I was reading one of the blogs on my list, and saw this poem on it:
How to Be Alone

I live alone. I have basically been alone since I was 16. Apart from the years with the ex from 27 to 32.

I used to dance by myself as a teenager. And I think I need to start doing that again.

I go to museums alone. I travel alone. When I went alone on the Queen Mary, people asked me why. I answered that I didn't want to wait for someone to come along who would do these things with me, because if I did, it might never happen.

Its more likely for me to do things alone than with someone. People I know all have their own lives, and their own agendas. They have kids, they have full-time jobs, they have family close by.

I have family in the summer, at certain times of the year. I go to the theater, go to concerts... but yes, I go to movies alone. I eat out alone.

Alone isn't hard, and alone doesn't have to be lonely. Of course, sometimes it is. And of course, sometimes its hard. But generally, I like alone...

But I like people too.

Makeup and me.

So I should really be getting ready for work, but instead I felt that I absolutely had to blog about makeup, nail polish, etc...I have a love/hate relationship with beauty products. I love the way I look when I wear makeup, I love color, painting my face, looking jazzy. However, I hate the chemicals in the makeup. I hate the artificial gunk, I hate the time it takes, and I'm not very good about incorporating it into my daily life. I tend to wear it when I'm being dressy.

What I wear? Eyeliner, eye shadow (blues, greens, gold, maybe copper, and sometimes purple), blush, and lipstick. I'll wear nail polish from time to time too, but am not very good at maintaining it.

You HAVE to be careful about colors. I spent the eighties looking as if I had been punched in the face with my purple eyeshadow (its was a strange bruise shade). I also had this odd matt blue nail polish... that being said, the new blues in nail polishes are fabulous. I've gotten compliments on the teal and green nail polishes I've worn....

I just bought some new makeup the other day, so I'm psyched. New eyeliner in a nice vibrant green, and new eyeshadow in the same. I do wish more of the natural cosmetic companies made funky colors and shades... I just love color, particularly in the summer....

I do think one needs to be careful with makeup...too many women end up going overboard and look too made up, or they look too natural...or even look like it was just slapped on. None of those work.... You have to have a balance. Figure out your best features (eyes and lips) and figure out how to highlight them....

Why being single sometimes sucks....

When your car decides to break down, after everything is closed. And you can't get hold of the rent-a-car place. And have to get to work the next morning.

Thank God for good, staunch friends.

Thank you, Michael, for getting me home...

The Power of Prayer...

This is inspired by my priest's homily this morning...he spoke about the Lord's Prayer and how he was always asked to recite it for guests, and how excited he was to know it by heart because it made him a prayerful person!

I learned the Lord's Prayer as a child, but was never asked to recite it for guests. I never identified knowing it with making me more prayerful, either... It has given me great comfort, at times, but my life has been so different from the 'traditional' Catholic life that sometimes I'm left at a loss for words. In NO way am I a traditional Catholic woman. I left the church in my teens, became agnostic, then came back to it at a later date. I'm not saying I don't have great love for my faith, but I've never learned the names of the saints, I don't stand up when the priest enters the room...

I think one can be prayerful without the Lord's Prayer, and prayerful with it. You can lead a prayerful life... but I think Jesus gave the disciples the prayer to show a new way of praying. To show that you don't always have to pray in the conventional manner....

Is this why Americans are fat? A plain and simple reason.

I went to a mainstream grocery store the other day. I know, I know, you are all aghast and amazed. They already had Halloween candy out. It was already on sale, too...something like a dollar a bag. They stop selling summer clothes and summer things halfway through the summer (Fourth of July, really), and its just becoming insane. Lets go back to when candy corn was actually a seasonal treat, can we? And when was the last time you could find a serving-size bag of something in a grocery store?

(Incidentally, I will be going back. They had some of the gluten-free stuff I like at much better prices than Whole PayCheck)

But even at Whole Paycheck I am amazed at how much processed food there is. How much candy, sugary stuff, etc....

What did you expect?

My friend Patrice posted this a while back, on her blog (Update the blog, Patrice! Tell us about Argentina!), and this morning, as I realise I am approaching my 40th birthday emotionally, its resonating with me a little bit.

I was supposed to be in New York with my parents this morning, but that did not happen (illness on my part).

I never thought I would still be single, living on my own, in my own house. I always thought I'd have some kind of interesting career, but it feels as if my life stopped being interesting in my mid-twenties, in some ways. I always thought I'd make a difference, change people's lives, in a good way.

I look around me and wonder where the kids are that I wanted... where the supportive partner is. I wonder why I am always drawn in by guys who seem to have their own agendas, and then drop me. I don't want a married guy, I don't want a lunatic. I would rather, at this point, have a divorced guy who has learned from his relationship issues....

I thought I'd be thin.

I do tend to have this idealized life of what my life should be...even here, I look around and think 'well, once I get the walls painted, the garden done, the kitchen redone...' or that I'm going up to MA every weekend, (except that conflicts with church and the farmers markets). I'm going to go to a sperm bank and get sperm and have a kid on my own... (except that does scare me too.. I can't quite seem to let go of the hope that I'm going to have a partner to share in all this).

I want something in a relationship that neither my parents nor my other relatives (of that generation) had. Sharing. Equality. We both being responsible, individual people. I don't want to get sucked into a relationship that causes me to ignore my friends, my life... I want us to each have our own lives and intersect. And intersect on the child raising, both being responsible for it. I've seen it happen. I know it exists. But finding it? I wish I knew.

Basically, although some things could be better in my life (cast me in a role, please! Someone!) I am pretty happy with my life. Things just keep getting better and better. No, I don't have a high powered career or a full-time job. But I make beautiful art. And I am a beautiful person inside, minus some of the insecurity.....

Integration, healing: thoughts on women's rights, empowerment, and saying stupid things.

Ok, so this post was prompted by watching the news and being told that Sarah Palin had said something stupid. She had apparently tweeted that there should not be a mosque built near Ground Zero in the interests of healing. That's not really the stupid thing, that is her opinion. The thing that made her look stupid was the made-up word, 'refudiate' which the media made a big thing of. Now, maybe it was a simple thing where she did it on her cell, and didn't catch the right letter.... who knows? (my cell tries to do similar things to me...if I let it, it would make all kinds of nonsense sentences).


The thing is, though, we need healing. The mosque really isn't at Ground Zero. And comparing moderate, normal Islam to the extremists who hit the Trade Center is like comparing a splintery plank bench to a down sofa. They are both things you can sit on, but that's it. (enough people have made the comparison with Christian extremists, or cultists of various degrees) Most Muslims are people who want peace. Who want to be able to worship God in their own way, following in the footsteps of Mohammed. And it would be wonderful to have a symbol of peace and healing next to the site that was caused by extremists. Yes, its frightening to see what extremism can do, but isn't the reaction of folks who don't want the mosque extremist in their own way?

We seem to be splintering our society more and more, and I'm not sure why, or how we can fix it. I was reading a book on motherhood, and in it was an essay by a black mother saying that essentially she participates in reverse discrimination, to a degree, in that there is a program called 'Jack and Jill' which is for black children, to make them aware of who they are and their heritage. In it, she admits that a lot of black parents apparently have problems with their kids dating white kids (there's a lot more to the essay, but that struck me...). I just don't know where the line gets drawn. Integration is only ok to a point?

Its the whole thing with women's rights too. There's still a double standard somehow. To get back to Sarah Palin, she ran Alaska for a while. She obviously must have been capable to some degree. But then she needed a makeover because she wasn't classy enough? She's not portrayed in a fabulous light by the media, but she must have some brains to have managed to become governor of Alaska. I don't like her, but I do think she is used, to a certain extent, as a whipping boy, so to speak. We all say stupid things from time to time, only hers are immortalised.

I just keep feeling that even as we get more and more integrated as a society, people are retreating more and more to labels and separating ourselves out, labeling ourselves as 'Other', and grouping negatively. I know I'm not saying this clearly (I'm writing very stream-of-concioussness). I just wonder. I have friends who identify themselves very strongly as a particular facet of themselves, but I see them as a whole. Its very hard to explain. I don't see people as 'black' or ' white' (or purple, for that matter). I dated a man from Trinidad for a while, and he pointed out that we were a biracial couple. (I don't remember the context of the comment, I think it was in response to a news story). It was something that I never really thought about as a defining characteristic, it was part of who he was.

I went to school with a lot of different folks, and had a lot of exposure to different cultures growing up, so maybe I'm completely different from the average American, but I never saw where anyone was from, or the color of their skin, as the defining characteric of who they are. Its like with me, I consider myself an American. But I'm also Egyptian. I'm a woman. I have a hearing impairment. I act. I sing. I do ceramics. But none of these are more important than any other. I don't define myself by being Catholic, or being short. Or by being single or childless. These are all part of what makes me me.