Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
”
— Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath

Another Michael pic ... just because

the space between

I could exist in the moments
In the clicks
The flashes
Those are beautiful
It’s the happenings
The scenes that play out
The movement
The passage of time
That’s ugly
It drags the rake across the sand
the scars of age are left behind
it fills the moment between the laughter
those moments we do not care to record

i'm confused?

In my Freshman year in college, our Human Sexuality Professor posed the following questions and asked us to go home and think about the answer.

What makes you a man, or a woman?

What determines your gender identity?

Was it you who made the decision, or was it a decision imposed on you by society?

If you didn't know what gender (sex) you were, would you still think you're a man or a woman?

Is it your biological attributes, your genetalia (what is between your legs)- is that the true determinant of gender identity?

Some say it's nature - we just know by instinct and some say it's nurture -- what we are fed (often subliminal messages from media, society, mother dressing you in only certain colors [pink and dolls for girls, blue and trucks for boys], media depictions, gender roles (the man pays the bills; the woman is the one who should take care of the child and the home and serve the man). Annneeway.


Our professor, (who is gay - no seriously) went on to tell us a story he said was factual; about a boy, who, at the age of 3, was involved in an accident where his penis was so severely crushed, it had to be amputated. At the time, the only medical recourse for a child that young was for the parents to make a decision for gender reassignment or have a boy without a penis. They decided on the reassignment and thereafter, dressed him and raised him as a girl. They began hormone replacement medication at the age 9.
As (s)he got older, (s)he felt that something was different about her. (S)he wasn't like the other girls. Sure (s)he had boobs growing, thanks to the hormones, but was becoming increasingly depressed because inside her, she felt she was a boy, not a girl. She found out about her early childhood defect and had gender re-reassignment, becoming a male once again.


We went over the whole issue of nature verses nurture. Still, the question: What makes you a man? What makes you a woman? According to our professor,(did I mention he's GAY) anyway, he believes that gender identity is an imposition of our society, and one that we should not accept. We should decide what our gender is no matter what body we are born in. So he was saying that even though the boy in the story above couldn't have known he was a boy, nature informs you of who you are so women who are born with male body parts are the ones who should know whether they are really a boy or a girl and society shouldn't dictate that. Like -- what the fuck --anyway, he then brought a transvestite into the classroom (a man turned woman) and that just blew everything out of the water for me.

My question at open floor time to our 7 foot, blond wig, NFL line backer, transvestite guest who embraced the ideas of our professor was this: "If you do not agree that gender should be imposed on us by society, what on earth makes gender reassignment necessary? Since you claim that you don't agree with society for saying that "in order to be a woman you have to have a vagina", why did you surgically manufacture one? You've played exactly into society's hand by becoming a woman in the physical sense prescribed by society. You've played into the very same rules you set out to defy. Why would you need boobs and and vagina in order to feel like a woman, since according to what you are telling us, our genitals do not make us male or female?"

The answer: you guessed it. Dude was stuttering. STUMPED. I never got an answer. He solicited other questions and was only happy to answer the dumb blond chick with her stupid question in that annoying air-head voice "how does it feel to have a vagina!?


I think I forgot to mention that our transvestite guest was also married to a woman and forced his wife to seek professional help because she couldn't come to terms with the fact that he wanted to become a female and she would have to become a lesbian in order to please her husband who is now a woman. She has to learn to eat out a woman and call her husband Donna, and tell her friends. Yet he's acting like his wife was the crazy one. Meanwhile, my legal brain is telling me that his wife should sue his ass for taking away her dick? He also had an 18 year old son who now had to call him Mom and ... just how does he break that kind of news to his college roommate and how does he get a girlfriend who will not be worried about having two mothers-in-law (as if one wasn't bad enough) or will the poor girl always be wondering if he will turn her into a lesbian like his father did to his mom, and what will their children say to having 3 grandmothers, and will she be able to introduce his parents to her parents? I don't understand. Only a White woman or an aspiring lesbian would accept such a ludicrous proposition. In my country they would have burned down the house with both of them in it... not saying that is right -- I don't subscribe to violence against people who made choices with their own bodies but Jamaicans once used to fiercely protect the idea of FAMILY.

These are all important questions and they deserve answers. But such is school life in the USA.

As for me - I know I'm a woman...and mostly it's because of my vagina, my excessive tear ducts, and that monthly reminder, yes, I'm talking about my credit card and unreasonably high cell phone bills ... ok, and my PMS.

Michael Jackson dies .... the end of a music era

I can't believe Michael died. I never cried for a celebrity before. I was in 5th grade when Thriller came out. Michael was my idol! I'm in shock. I used to tell my sisters that Michael picked me up at night when everyone was sleeping and they used to believe me. This is the end of a music era. Janet Jackson is gonna go to pieces and gain 1000 lbs. I can't believe I'm crying. I can't believe this. My first love is dead.

Sorry Farah Fawcett. Michael overshadowed your death. All she'll get is a reference. Obama comes into the Whitehouse, and all this shit has happened this year but Michael Jackson's death has overshadowed everything for me. I'm not even going to work tomorrow. I'm in mourning. Cardiac arrest did not kill Michael Jackson ... America killed Michael Jackson. America kills everything good.