i dont know where to start. i need to express, to write about it, i need it to come out in a way i can mass produce. but i cant seem to sit down to do it. the thing is, i dont want it to be MY story. i want it to be many people's stories. because my experience was unique but i feel this need to take the me out of the equation. terry remarked that i seem more angry since i got back, and i was asked if there was one thing that set me off and i cant really say that i know why or what, i guess just everything. being exposed to that level of physical protection of the elite just does a job on my psyche. and my experience wasnt really even that intense, relatively. my chem exposures were mild, i wasnt hit with anything although i was in danger of it. but to be treated in that way for doing nothing wrong, and to know this isnt something unique really but just the historical manifestation of what has been going on for centuries, perhaps even millenia.
i feel a responsibility with this knowledge, all knowledge that i have. a responsibility to share, to make others understand/ yet i feel a fatigue with this neverending task; my sense of what is happening in the world is the result of complex processes, of purposeful and circumstantial pursual. i cant give it all to someone else, as they cant give me theirs but i need others to understand and i get frustrated that they wont/dont i guess i have been hesitant maybe to speak about miami because i need to do it with someone that can help me analyse it rather than someone i have to explain it all to...
i really need this meeting on wednesday to be fruitful..
today on Cops (ponge loves cops) ponge saw a three year old with his ear pierced and called the mom crazy and i said it was no big deal, i had my ears pierced when i was two and all the girls in senegal have the same thing. he said well yeah but theyre girls. i said that his culture loved doing that, more so than mine, this differentiation between what a girl should do and a boy should do and that didnt interest me at all. i was kind of pissed when i said it, and this was the most confrontational i've been about the issue. he said that it did interest him a bit. i said well then there is a difference between he and i.
we spoke no more about it but i am going to bring it up again, and soon as it weighs on my mind and i see it influencing my attitudes with him. the thing is to formulate it in a way that will bear useful discussion, and the mood i was in at the time was not a patient one. he's blind to certain things - like he claims that there is only one race and accepts race as a construction (though does not put it in those exact terms) but does not get the gender part of social construction. he also doesnt hesitate to divide things up into racial categories despite his claim of "there is only one race."
like he'll talk about how white people are and etc. even though he sees examples that disprove what he is saying right in front of his face.
disturbed. thats how i feel. i have so much shit flying around in my head and nowhere really to go with it. i guess i should try to reach out, isolation sure wont do much for me at this point... this stupid ass diary isnt doing shit. i mean, maybe a little. but the photographs on here have little to do with what is currently important to me yet i dont feel like dicking around with things to change it
i feel like i need to express this physically, like combattative sports training of some sort.
im going to get laid tonight, and i want it hard and fast and rough.
i feel R A W
an animal
warrior
yet
helpless
confused (welcome to reality)
angry angry
raw
part of my thing, i think, is that i went there totally alone. i vaguely knew a few people and did develop an affinity group, but pretty much i was alone. i didnt get a chance to decompress with my affinity group since my ride group left before our planned decompression and decompressing with my ride group was different since we had different experiences. so my experience was with myself for a good measure and i havent got a partner or several to talk about things with who is on my same level of experience. there were a few radical cheerleaders from madison, but they werent with our larger group for whatever reasons.
come to think of it, ive been alone for a really long time now. i went to senegal alone and i am here in madison recreating my life alone. i have people in my life whom i am with but no one that has been on a sustained journey with me. ponge doesnt know me before last year and he doesnt fully know me even now, nor i him. all my old madison peeps have had a much different five years than i have since i lived here before and all my new madison peeps, are just that - new.
my mpls peeps i miss but what can i do, they are in mpls and i am here in madison. i have no idea about where to live, lately i really miss my mpls peeps but i know i would also really miss my madison peeps. maybe i shouldnt worry about it and just let whatever is, be. anyway tonight i am feeling very alone. we are all alone in our private life journeys, but i dont feel connected with anyone accessable to me at this time. today is one of the days that i think of this marriage as this thing im going to do for a couple years before we inevitabley move on with our lives. i wonder if ponge ever thinks like that? i know he has thought about divorce before because we have talked about how we would like our relationship to be (as friends) if we ever ended our relationship as partners. to me it seems like he is afraid to even think about it, like talking about it will somehow curse us or make it happen or something.
i dont think ive had one good nights sleep since i left. i feel very tired frequently and early in the evening yet to go to bed just seems depressing.
you know there are a lot of ways that ponge thinks that i accept because i know what culture and situation he is coming from. but a good deal of me is on an active mission to re-educate him about things like race and sex and gender and corporations and the usa and such. i believe he has a good heart and critical mind and that he just hasnt been exposed to a lot of the info i have.
but what if he doesnt change in the ways i think he can by the time i start running out of patience. will i start running out of patience? certainly with the male/female roles my patience was thin today. i mean, this is a really huge issue in how i want my children to be raised. i dont want them being told that homosexuality is wrong or that there is some definition for what it means to be a man. yet i am certain that ponge would express those things if he had kids that he was active with today. part of me imagines us havng kids and then him leaving somewhere, like back to senegal. part of me actually wants that. a larger part would prefer things work out elsewise, but if things between us were to end i would want control of the kids i think.
i am so fucking glad we are developing our marriage in the united states. the other day we were at his cousin gail's house for korite (holiday marking the end of ramadan) and a situation came up where either ponge or i would need to get up to go get both of us something to drink. i started to get up because it seemed like my turn, when his cousin eugette told ponge to go get it for us. then this other senegalese woman was like - no no dont start turning things around just because we are here (ie not in senegal), it should be she that gets it for him. ponge was like, no really its no big deal, and he got up to get the sodas.
but i know if we were in senegal people would be up in our business all the time telling both of us that i should be cooking and serving and blah fucking blah. i just dont get it. i have no access to that mindset. these days both men and women work in senegal and yet the men still get served and slaved upon as if they were bringing all the finances. i can see where if one partner does the out of home work that the other partner would be responsible for a large portion of the in home work, simply as a matter of having more time for it than the out of home partner.
but i cannot see why the fuck someone identified as Woman should be the grunt of an entire household. to me, its BULLSHIT, and here was this woman reinforcing it, saying it was right. now i see eugette as an ally and her as an enemy. not in terms that black and white, but in a certain way i know i cant trust this other woman.
there are things i like and dislike about each society, but the power of conformatity i found much more difficult to deal with in senegal. perhaps this was in a large part because i hadnt had 21 years to develop tools for it like i have for american society. but people there get in each others business as a matter of course, and there is much less acceptance of diversity in some very significant ways.
i very frequently did things in senegal that i didnt feel like doing simply because i was afraid of seeming rude or didnt know what my other options were. but here i know lots of options and i know the rules for what is rude or not so i can choose if i want to be rude or not.
the women there almost seem to hate themselves - not like the women i met in kenya. i dont mean this in a real way, like i would never publicize anything (i hardly consider this diary a publication) stating it as such..but its like the women there wear the most femme-y clothes you can possibly think of, put themselves through hours of pain to have fake hair that is long and straight (i cant help but think of this as racist or uncle tom or something...) all the time, make up, high heels, serving men, lots of gaudy gold jewelry, etc. the ideal woman there is everything i rise against.
now, in kenya, i had a chance to "meet" a few women who did not seem to emulate what i, perhaps incorrectly, view as the white ideal of a woman. hair kept naturally short, no make up, clothing really no different than the men's. jewelry was elaborate beading. i had no real interaction so i have no clue about actual gender roles in masai society, but these bald women were a welcome sight to my sore eyes during my stay in senegal.
if it were just me, i would know damn well that i would rather stay in the states or go exploring other countries than go back to live in senegal for any length of time anytime soon (like in the next 10 years). but its me and ponge, and possibly children. so i have to take senegal into more serious consideration than i would. in fact, if it were just me a hell of a lot of things would be different. whether the one is better than the other, i have no idea, since i have but one life to live. all i know is that i want that should one day i feel like i need it to be my way only, i am not so intertwined or dependent that i dont know how to do that. in other words, i know now that there are always options and i want to be sure i dont forget that.
a lot of this is maybe negative, but its reality and i will not at this time pepper it or tone it down with the positive things that are also in my heart. even mentioning the positive exists is a form of toning down which i am tempted to erase. the reason: i am tempted to put all flowery things at the end to create "balance" so that if people i know are reading this they do not interpret things as all bad. but i resist this as i am not feeling balanced i am feeling negative and i have to be able to be raw in a diary because thats what the fuck its for. in 7th grade i couldnt write anything real out of fear someone would read it. now i struggle to write something real knowing damn well someone is reading it. this is a process, you see. and i am going to fucking win this process, i will achieve my goal of fearless honesty in the face of anonymous known observation.
