of dislocation & graceful unravelling

juliosalgado83:

For my mami and my sister.

(via permanentaddress)

Art of Not Sitting Pretty (by Jessica Hopper)

I had seen Andrew Neel’s documentary about his grandmother, Alice Neel, so I knew a bit of the arc of Phoebe Hoban’s Alice Neel biography already, but even so it didn’t make it any easier to take. Neel’s long road to popular success, her triumphant acceptance into the art world in the mid-seventies is a wonderful story—inspiring, and untypical. For every Alice—and there was only one—but for every bigger female art world known name, there were still many, many than languished, but Neel’s talent was singular and she painted for fifty years with hardly anyone noticing and giving a shit.

Then there is Neel as mother. Neel who stayed with a man for 16 years that beat her, and worse, tortured and threatened her young son that was not his. Her children loved her, love her, miss her. It is hard to reconcile, as a mother, that she often subverted her role as a mother, that her art always came first. You think, for a slim second, there is something brave in that—it is manly, for vision to come before duty. It defies “motherhood”. It uncomfortable to read, to consider—the neglect and willfulness, staying with someone who hurts your kid because he supports your art, and/or because you are sick and twisted up in all manner of dysfunction. Or losing her first two children, her daughters, one, perhaps, in part because she was too poor to afford heat—the other shipped off, relieving her, freeing her to dedicate herself again to painting. But then, as it is now, you are presumed to be giving up yourself and your life—however it existed—for your babes. And she didn’t. At all. She is perhaps no different then Keith Richards dragging his little son on tour for years to live off room service ice cream and wake him up when he nodded off with a cigarette; loving your kiddo—but your artful pursuit always a given. How bad of a parent does that make you?

I thought of art-making as instinct until I had William, and now, I think of it, like everything else, as a choice. It would be easier, much easier, to be only a mom—not to write, not to fill his every nap and night time with work or trying to keep up on music or reading or ideas. I think when you become a parent, everything outside of that relationship shifts to being a choice, even the things that seemed immutable, automatic and absolute before—those are secondary, or at even further down the list. Your old hours seem a luxury, you cram where you can—your inner artiste has been deputized to other duties.

To have both—“a life”, or a job, or a modicum of creative fulfillment—and a family is to “have it all” though, right? Really, just to feel human and a continuing participant on Earth—BOTH seems the minimum. That choice of making art is choosing to live, choosing to continue your existence—beyond being a vessel, a minder, a milkmaid and a parent. But as moms, we are supposed to begin and end there, in that purpose. Reading about Neel, haphazardly balancing art and motherhood, demanding to live to fulfill her singular purpose all else (kids, lovers, friends) be damned—I feel empathy and something like contempt. I feel angry for those kids, now old men, that suffered so the world could have their mom’s brilliant, important work.

—Jessica Hopper/tinyluckygenius

The photo on the left is “‘Karen B.’ holding her newborn daughter for the last time on August 1, 1966” from this Adopted or abducted? article (via Yahoo!News). Right side is myself, May 2006, home from the hospital after willingly giving my daughter up for adoption.

I guess I wanted to get all pissy about Yahoo/Dan Rather elevating/validating these stories for Public Consumption, stories that women have been telling that are out there (even if not everyone knows, they are out there, I promise), and that Too Little Too Late is what I think about when I think about men sympathizing/apologizing these days, even though I don’t want to feel that way forever…

But I don’t care about talking about that stuff because of “Karen B.’s” face and because of how that immediately reminded me of my own photo which I thought is like the same face, only a bit more polite, because I am friends with the lady who took that photo and because my situation was not the same, but similar.

The pictures from my daughter’s birth were taken on film and so I didn’t see them for a few weeks after the fact. So I had these memories and journal entries and an idea in my head about what everything looked like, and I was excited to see the pictures. But when the pictures came they immediately overrode my memory and it was the strangest thing — like I had accidentally objectified myself, like my mental images weren’t stable enough — because now, when I think about that day, I don’t visualize what I saw through my own eyes, I see the pictures instead. I see myself looking at myself. I tell this story all the time in class discussions when fellow-artists defend photography’s memory-making/preserving aspect, to illustrate its objectness, and because it is a casual way to let someone know This One Time I Had a Baby and Gave Her Away and It All Worked Out in the End, NBD.

In any case, then that was how I thought of myself afterwards: I thought of myself as that picture of myself, and how that is the face of realizing you were wrong about actually being able to control anything in your life at all. That’s the face of growing up real fast, overnight, and how even if you’re getting drunk every day you are doing it with the utmost responsibility and maturity. That’s the face where your young & naive assumption that you could trust everyone ‘til they (always shockingly and impossibly because People Are Good, Right?) hurt you suddenly changes into the suspicion that everyone is out to get you and you are going to have to be wary ‘til they prove their trustworthiness. That is the face where you understand that no matter how much you know and remind yourself that everything will be okay and you made the right choice and the best choice for you and certain parties involved and that you are still truly happy, you are still crushed and resentful that you’ve seen this total unfairness and complex imbalance and you should’ve known anyway, ‘cause dad always told you, Nobody Ever Said Life Was Fair. You have a regret that you are going to carry around forever, you have a sadness that has influenced every decision you’ve made since that moment.

That is the face where you hold this paradox of having experienced something that is at the same time the most beautiful and the most devastating thing that ever happened to you, and it is okay, you have accepted. It is giving UP not giving up.

"There is a crucial question missing from the conversation — what about the parent’s needs? Do these not count? With attachment parenting and gentle discipline it seems that I must be omnipresent in my children’s lives, and that leaves little room for me to be present in mine."

Rhiana Maidenberg, “Attachment Parenting, Please Don’t Take Away My Time-Outs!”

Some day, I am going to be the best worst Mom ever, because I only have these two guidelines:

1. Oh shit, sometimes in life, your needs are going to be left unmet! & guess what? You’ll live.
2. NO CRYBABIES.

feministfilm:

sunneinsplendour:

So this is a post that has been a long time coming, ever since I started tracking the Betty Draper tag basically and was exposed to a whole new level of vitriol that I didn’t think a fandom - whom I always used to consider pretty classy - was capable…

I just started watching Mad Men and I’m only in the middle of Season 3, so I’m not sure if my opinion would change as Betty’s character is further developed. Also I have not explored any Mad Men fandom type forums at all and only had a few discussions about Relevant Issues regarding the show.

That being said, in re: item #1, “Betty Draper is a bad mother” - as yet in my viewing experience, I haven’t labelled her a “bad mother.” Partially this might be due to my own childhood; I was raised by parents who were not necessarily opposed to shouting at or spanking a kid for disciplinary purposes. It didn’t happen often, but it was a thing that happened. (At the same time, my mom raised hell when she found out my Kindergarten teacher was smacking me around.) And although I wouldn’t spank my own kids, I don’t personally feel that what I experienced was all that detrimental in the long run, despite the fact that it would be defined as abuse nowadays, technically. (And also despite the fact that surely some people will say I’m messed up for thinking what happened to me is not messed up, when taken as a whole. Whatever, unabashedly confessional y’all.)

So far as I’ve watched in the series, there have been many tense moments where Betty is mean, cold, or curt to her kids. I actually thought this was kind of a brave thing to be showing on TV (though I am loathe to describe a television program as “brave”) because I read it as a kind of authenticity. I mean, you have the cheerful 50s mom Leave It to Beaver-esk stereotype — all of which is covered in the linked commentary. But still today, regardless of our privilege of 20/20 hindsight into how messed up the past was, this stereotype of the happy mother joyously sacrificing everything for the sake of her angelic children is still all the rage.

Motherhood-as-a-concept is made out to be this life-changing experience where despite all the sleepless nights and poopy diapers and stained clothes and hurty tits (not to mention finding time for the rest of your life and maintaining sanity and being an individual person with thoughts) — you are so happy, so so overjoyed, and it is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To You (tm). Which I wouldn’t argue with per se. I have experienced the feeling of overwhelming love for one’s child and it is a thing that is real. But then there are the other realities of cleaning up messes and crying and losing your mind and being exhausted and also at the same time, making sure to always have something grateful to say about the joys of parenting and always have a happy face. These are the things I haven’t experienced and this is part of what terrifies me about eventually raising a kid… what happens when I mess up? There’s a lot of pressure to Not Mess Up around your kids because if you get angry you will RUIN THEM FOR LIFE.

So to me, Betty Draper’s character as a mom offers glimpses into a kind of parenting that can be a real thing. Not the kind you’ll see on cutesy Facebook posts or photo albums. There are going to be days when the parent is tired and snaps at the kids. There are days when the parents can’t take it anymore because as precious and beautiful and amazing as children are, they can also be hellish. I know this because I used to be a kid and I was kind of an asshole sometimes. Parents don’t become perfect and infallible after having kids; they’re still human and they still have to deal with their human shit while also being responsible for a smaller human. Life doesn’t stop being difficult forever simply because something allegedly miraculous happened to you once or twice.

I once read a story — I think it was in Breeder but I will have to go and search to confirm because I’m not totally certain — that was about how when a woman gives birth, she will undoubtedly (due to emotions as well as the rush of hormones) feel this overwhelming, universal rush of perfect love for her newborn; this helps in the initial attachment and bonding process. The author of this particular birth story wrote that after hours of laboring, squatting and on all fours, when her baby was finally born, the mother’s first thought was to eat her child. Like some kind of atavistic wolf instinct. I’ve never read another birth story like this. You don’t want to tell people about that feeling; that shit is weird and inappropriate. The mother was troubled by these feelings and regardless of her doing all the right things and being a good mom/caretaker, she still felt like a freak because Parenting is Hard and it wasn’t all cupcakes and rainbows. She loved her kid fiercely, but raising an infant for her was a lot of craziness. I loved that story because it was honest as shit. I don’t want to hear about how having a kid made your life perfect and amazing and everyone should have teh babiez it is the best!!! I want to know about the real human shit so that I don’t have to constantly fear that I will totally fall short of this unattainable magical standard of motherhood simply because I am a lady who can caretake and feel beauty and joy and overwhelming love but also who sometimes feels tired and sometimes gets angry and sometimes just doesn’t have time for the bullshit and needs to be left alone every now and then to think. Is there something wrong with still wanting to be a person while you’re caring for another person?

/TV SHOWS THAT MAKE ME THINK ABOUT SERIOUS ISSUES.

ETA: Case in Point: WHAT HAPPENED, MOMMY?

christinasayz:

Always there to remind me , even on the darkest of days.

(via rustbeltwhiskey-deactivated2012)

Espen Rasmussen: GEORGIA, Tbilisi. Family displaced by the war living in one of many centers for IDPs in Tbilisi. (from the series War in Georgia 2008)

"‘The jewel of the first water, the face of the sleeping child.’ I don’t know where the lines came from, where I read, ‘the nipple of the beloved wife, the beatific spine,’ but they stuck with me, and I wished I knew who had written them, then in my sixth month, when the sonogram promised a girl, I secretly named her Jewel. Swimmer, quiet turtle turning over, guiding and twirling me through a new dance, a fertile glide. I practiced saying good-bye.

“What bloodstorms blossom in a womanbelly, in a woman’s unsure heart? Of course they looked the best on paper; were the kindest, wisest of all the couples I’d talked to, but to imagine them carrying my bones away? The bindings in the hospital, the pain, and the breasts that are now softer to no purpose.

“I learned that mine was not the first illicit product of a love affair so named. My own minister was a braver, better man, but I raved like any Addie in her coffin, drinking and vomiting up the pain for months, the only anesthetic for the treasure I’d set free, leaving my own self the one buried.

“Babygirl, little sister, tiny mother who birthed out of your own birth a torn creature left heaving in your wake, rawborn and blood-drenched, but with none of the birth smear to rub into my skin, nothing to protect from the flaying of the air, the mockery of the daily routine, the kindness from my friends who thought they understood. The depths I surged to, the ugly fires I kindled and put out with my wrists, all hunting a little peace of mind.

And always, of course, the stupid, pointless lacerations of wondering. Are you the Christmas angel on the wheelbarrow of cut grass, a cornflower stabbed into your dark hair? (Is it dark?) Are you the girl cross-legged on the front porch making potholders on a plastic loom, and do you sing to yourself, and once in a while stare off, forgetting to weave, forgetting the song? Can you dial 911 if something happens and nobody’s there? Do your bones sing like flutes when there’s too much wind? Do you lie awake at night and make the room spin until your mind is dizzy, secretly sure you’re magical? How does she hold you and rock you when you get the littlegirl blues? The wondering about you that does not stop. The longing, the weeping, the surgery of tears.

“Chanter, whisperer, there’s a brave gaping hole in my chest where you used to live. I was just an apartment for you, a motel on the highway. A lifeboat until you could climb out, haul yourself up the ladder to a worthy ship, one that could carry you and keep carrying you to dry land.

“Did Oregon’s old-growth heal me? Not on the sweet blue gasp of your umbilical cord it didn’t. Released from the weight of you, a helium balloon let go, I should have floated up through pine needles to a sky-blue sky. Still I lumbered down trails, heavy and handicapped like a horse that runs fast for the stakes. Timber-criers sized me up and disdained me as no challenge, I was so eager to fall, to be pulled toward the center again, belly down on hot ground, crushed fern smell in my face and nauseous, blessedly nauseous again with the spinning of the earth.

“They say there’s no passion like a woman’s for her child. Somebody, give me a little hope. Lie to me on this one."

Joy Castro: “Giving Jewel Away,” as printed in A Ghost at Heart’s Edge, edited by Susan Ito and Tina Cervin.

Louise Bourgeois: The Birth, 2007
(via: Daily Serving)

Justin Maxon: from the series Mui and Pha
(via 500 Photographers)