Yes, I’m starting off the new year with an old photo. In part, it’s because I left my camera at home and won’t have time to pick it up until later in the week. But I’m also choosing this particular self-portrait because it’s part of a resolution I never completed — like most resolutions, it was forgotten by February. Well, not forgotten–I felt terrible for not following through with it–but brushed aside. When I captioned this, I made note of the fact that it was a hectic week due to the beginning of the Spring 2010 semester and other beginning-of-the-year chores I needed to take care of, but hoped that the rest of the semester would run smoothly.

It didn’t.

After I took that photo, I threw myself full force into the six classes I was taking at the time while still trying to complete my duties as Outreach Coordinator of my dorm and officer of two student organizations. Then Onion died. Then a certain professor decided to make my life a living hell. Then a certain (wonderful) dean had to appeal for me to withdraw from said professor’s course in late April — a good two months after the add/drop period. Then I moved out of the dorm I called home for two years (devastated). Then I moved into the college house I’m currently living in, which was broken into after only a month, leaving me without my laptop, the class notes I had stored on it (and I was taking summer classes…), and thousands of pictures I never backed up. Already five months behind on my 52 weeks project, I accepted the fact that I probably wasn’t going to see through any of my resolutions for 2010.

And I’ve decided that’s okay. This year, I’m setting goals for myself, as always, but I’m not going to beat myself up for failing to complete them — or worse, try to do a half-assed job of completing them for the sake of completing them. There are a few things I actually need to do, of course–write my thesis, finish undergrad, find housing for next year–but aside from that, I’m going to write and take photos and update when I can and when I feel like it. I’m still working on starting various projects for 2011, mostly because I like planning and making lists, but for right now, it doesn’t matter where I go with them. I brought in the new year with someone I love, had an amazing night, and basically couldn’t be happier.

So, happy 2011! I hope you’re all starting off the new year feeling well and excited for whatever is coming your way…

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As I’m sure many of you know, some students were upset about the rally. These students were also largely misinformed about the purpose of the rally, the events surrounding Tyler’s death, and the history of queer students’ battle for safety and recognition at Rutgers. It’s no coincidence that Tyler is the second queer student at Rutgers to take his own life in the past year or that this particular incident occurred after a horrible violation of his privacy.

For those arguing that this “isn’t what Tyler would want,” you’re probably right. He wouldn’t have wanted a group of students rallying around his death because I’m fairly certain, based on his own online postings as well as basic common sense, that he never wanted his privacy and safety so violated in the first place. Unfortunately, because that’s what happened, a public response is necessary. And when this happens in the context of a university whose housing department continues to refuse LGBTQ students the safe spaces we deserve, even after the suicide last year, it becomes even more important.

At the rally, I heard a number of disturbing comments, largely coming from students who showed up to defend the actions of Tyler’s roommate, arguing that he advertised this private encounter out of “concern” for Tyler. Some were upset at the idea of using Tyler’s death as political leverage, claiming that “no one would care if this were a straight student” (because we all know how biased the world is against heterosexual people, right?), while others simply laughed at the protest and made derogatory comments about a friend of mine (“ew, he said he was transgender, does that mean he was born a woman?”) as well as other students at the event.

The fact that these students are comfortable enough in their own privilege to make such blatantly homophobic and transphobic comments at a rally organized by queer and allied students perfectly illustrates the kind of environment we are dealing with. This type of ignorance is not limited to the students I interacted with, either. Months ago, the head of housing at Rutgers told me that because safe spaces imply that other areas of campus are not safe, she will never agree to the idea of safe space residence halls. Of course, by default, no place is a safe space–but even in the wake of this tragedy, many students and administrators prefer to remain ignorant to the pressures facing LGBTQ students and the fact that homophobia and harassment were indeed at the root of Tyler’s death. It’s just unfortunate that our school is so willing to neglect our need for real safety in order to protect the illusion of safety they so pride themselves on.

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Anyway, I took this photo on my phone during a creative writing workshop that was held in the library. The quote on the wall says “libraries enable the past to talk to the future,” which I thought was funny, considering the quote was painted on the doorway leading to the computer lab section of the library, which was basically the only part of the library being utilized. That’s one thing my high school does have in common with this one — our library has a computer lab, and couches, and a study area, and even a reading room, but the books themselves haven’t been touched in decades. I think that’s more because the students typically buy their books rather than because they don’t read, but it seems odd to have a whole dusty collection of books just sitting there like some sort of decorative accessory…

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Highlight of the assignment:

Instructor: “Alright, what else can we put on the list?”
Student: “Cleavage.”
Instructor: “See, this is where it gets tricky. We’re all going to code that differently. What is considered too much cleavage? What kind of cleavage is inappropriate?”
Student: “…women’s cleavage.”
Instructor: “Right. Okay.”

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A lot of us will probably justify this by attributing these feelings to not wanting to be greedy (reasonable), or attempting to be health-conscious (also reasonable), but it’s interesting that you rarely hear men talk like this. I’m sure part of it is about greed and gluttony, but only in the sense that women are brought up to believe that their desires are somehow wrong or that they should feel guilty for having any desires in the first place. Men don’t necessarily have a particularly healthy relationship with food in our culture, either, but they’re less likely to feel like they don’t deserve to “indulge” or take what they want. We women, on the other hand, seem to believe there’s something intrinsically wrong with food, that there’s also something wrong with us for wanting it, and that taking what we want will result in an immediate and obvious weight gain that will show the world how awful and undisciplined we are. We’re basically taught to be ashamed for taking up space.

That’s not to say this craze about being “healthy” in a fast food nation is unreasonable, but it certainly manifests differently according to gender. Men don’t just want to be healthy; they want to bulk up, be more muscular, take up more space. Women don’t just want to be healthy, either; we want to be slim, toned, and often, even invisible.

(Note: Men are not immune to disordered eating, but women are much more likely to actually develop eating disorders… and I’m willing to bet that even the types of eating disorders they tend to develop show more gender distinctions. It would be an interesting topic to do more research on, but I just wanted to point out that I’m not saying men can’t or never do develop eating disorders.)

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I visited my high school on Friday — a trip that’s always followed by a frantic search for old photos, essays, projects, and whatever else I can find as I subject my friends to cheesy anecdotes and a list of complaints about changes I do not approve of (a maroon carpet, really?). What I found last night were these photograms, made during my senior year with whatever jewelry I was wearing that day in the fall of 2007 and the help of a pen flashlight from my Harriet the Spy phase. If you’re wondering why I was still carrying around my spy gear at age 17, take this as a hint that you should never have private conversations within earshot of me…

So, in the midst of a rant about the class registration process, I mentioned to my former photo teacher that I’m taking Digital Storytelling next semester, a class he was already familiar with, as the new film course at Prep is apparently an offshoot of some of the Literature & Technology courses at the Writers House. They created this course with the help of the former chair of our English department at Rutgers, whose daughter I had just met, randomly, in the art studio… and I’m now absolutely certain of my theory that when you graduate from Rutgers Prep, the “six degrees of separation” phenomenon is cut to just half that. I’m hoping that next time I visit, I can meet a student who is somehow related to Mariah Carey. In the meantime, I’ll begin composing my list of reasons why I’d make a better spouse than Nick Cannon.

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Here is my proud bed-racing team from the Charity Bed Race event that Demarest Hall participated in tonight. On the bed, from left to right, we have RJ, Dan, and Andrew (whose breasts looked fabulous — even better than they did during our drag show last year, when he wore the pink bra I lent to him from the picture on the right). Finally, squatting down, we have Catherine, who led our team to victory in the first round.

As outreach coordinator in our dorm (sorry, “residence hall” — apparently “dorm” sounds like a prison), I signed us up for this event and pitched the idea of a drag theme for our dorm. It was a subtler version of my original suggestion, “Free our Bathrooms,” which was a response to the housing administration “taking away” our gender neutral bathrooms this year, despite the fact that gender-free bathrooms have been a part of our dorm’s culture for years (largely because of the queer presence here, but also for the convenience of all residents, as we pride ourselves on having a very active and tight-knit community, and regulating which bathrooms students can use in a place they consider to be their home is absurd). However, a charity event didn’t seem like the appropriate venue for such antagonism, so we ditched the toilet seat and went with a giant purple penis modeled after the now infamous Power Penis Vibe. I’ll save the story behind that one for another time.

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This photo was taken at Passion Puddle, located on the border of the Cook and Douglass campuses at Rutgers (you can’t see the lake itself too well in this photo, but I only had a few minutes before the bus left, and at the time I was busy taking some freshmen on “vacation” — an activity that involves a Saturday afternoon bus ride to Sears, where we enjoy napping on real beds for a few hours). According to legend, when a male from Cook College and a female from Douglass College hold hands and walk around the water three times, they will soon become engaged. This myth seems to have been slightly modified since the merging of all undergraduate liberal arts colleges at Rutgers and changed simply to a male and a female — though I don’t think we’ve progressed to the point of incorporating same-sex hand-holding into the passing of the legend. I’m not sure I mind being left out, of course, because Passion Puddle is primarily known for another myth involving the very unromantic excavation of a body from the bottom of the lake, which leads me, in a very morbid transition, to Virginia Woolf…

This past week I finished reading Mrs. Dalloway for the second time in one of my courses, and during a class discussion, the subject of food was brought up in relation to the way Virginia Woolf’s anorexia seems to affect the meaning attached food in her writing. The passage we spoke about involved Miss Kilman eating a pink cake — Woolf’s description of this act is unmistakably resentful, with Miss Kilman’s eating directly paired with her own feelings of worthlessness and the narrator’s repulsive depiction of her. The image of food itself, though, is somewhat glorified — there’s a subtle sense of indulgence in the very hateful way she writes about food, with great care taken to describe in detail the way Miss Kilman speaks while handling her food, and finally swallows the last bit of her eclair, and then wipes the chocolate from her fingers, and then finishes with a cup of tea. A friend once jokingly suggested that the reason anorexic women so often work around food or otherwise aspire to go onto culinary school is because “it’s like porn for them” — and I think that’s the kind of withheld desire evident in Woolf’s writing… that there is something almost pornographic about the experience of watching someone eating while personally abstaining from food. When a person spends so much time thinking about and obsessing over food, I think that obsession can manifest itself in all sorts of ways, whether it be through one’s profession, writing, or artwork… I’m thinking Fiona Apple’s The First Taste provides an interesting musical comparison to Woolf (or perhaps Paper Bag, with its more blatant references to hunger and loneliness).

What I also wonder about, though, is the presence of Elizabeth in the pink cake scene, and how her relationship with her mother, Clarissa, might complicate Woolf’s ideas about food. It seems to lend to to the idea that eating disorders often develop out of an inadequate relationship with a woman’s mother, which would certainly make sense in Woolf’s case, given her mother’s death at such an early age. Either way I think that understanding Woolf’s relationship to food adds another dimension to the novel I hadn’t picked up on before now…

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To understand my love for animals, you’d probably have to understand what my house looks like. By no means am I exaggerating when I say the vacuum is considered our house pet, which means animals are strictly forbidden. As a child I launched a number of unsuccessful campaigns for a house cat, dog, hamster, frog, and eventually a fish — but even that suggestion was shot down. I once managed to bring a plant home, but that only lasted an hour or so before my mom removed it from my room and exiled it to the kitchen counter, where she could be sure if its whereabouts. Why, who knows what kinds of messes that plant would have caused? If you think I’m exaggerating, just talk to anyone who has actually been inside of my house. It’s rare that one makes it through the door without already breaking a rule — there’s a very strict shoe removal policy that involves careful placement of the feet so as not to track dirt into the house. However, bare feet are also strictly forbidden. Socks are a must, as foot sweat poses a great threat to both tiled and hardwood floors. And heaven knows even after a thorough mopping session, my mother can tell where those bare feet have made their mark. OCD doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Growing up around that kind of obsessive behavior makes me constantly examine the level of stress in my life, and the extent to which my own behavioral patterns contribute to that stress. I’ve always seen my busy schedule and level of involvement as a positive thing, and I still do — but I’ve learned that certain things aren’t worth my time. I put too much work into meaningful organizations and people who appreciate that effort to worry about those that maybe aren’t so rewarding or useful. I’m proud of my involvement with various activities and I enjoy a lot of what I do, but from now on I’m resolving to cut out the things in my life that I spend more time complaining about than enjoying. It’s never too late in the year for a new resolution, right?

Oh, and number two: get a puppy.

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My recreation came out a bit differently:

Some things were changed intentionally: I didn’t zoom in as closely, I wore different clothes, and so on. I wanted the photo to look similar while also reflecting on how my life has changed since I shot that first image. Still, the differences that stick out the most to me are not the ones I added intentionally, but the subtle changes — the new thermostat in the background, the missing jewelry box in the center, the different porcelain figurines. Things I didn’t really notice until reviewing the photos together afterwards.

When I visited my high school, I picked up on the same sort of thing. Schedules had changed and there were a lot of new faces, but I expected all of that. What I never expect are things like new carpeting, different lighting, changed rooms and other things that were once a part of my daily life. Things I would probably pass by mindlessly if I were still a student there, shrugging them off as insignificant compared to completing the previous nights homework, attending a meeting or studying for an afternoon test during lunchtime. To me, what’s so interesting is how all those little changes seem to ultimately reflect that which remains constant. Time can change your experience of a place so drastically, but the comfort and the familiarity never seem to leave you — and for that, I will always return home from these visits with a sense of satisfaction.

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