This community is incredibly disturbing. Particularly when I get to quotes like this:

"How do you guys feel about Rice Cakes? Too fattening? It just when i get to feeling to weak i need to naw on something and I defintley don't want to eat a load of food.yuck just thinking about it makes me feel dirty."

or:

"He called me up and said I need to eat. God, what do I have to do to get him off my back? I know he really cares about me, but he knows it is making me go over the edge by contiunely asking me to eat. [Shakes her head in disgust] No one is going to make me eat except myself. Only me and that will never happen.... I hope. "

It makes me sad. I'm off to go eat something now.

As it is past midnight, and therefore officially September 3rd, I have two things to say:

First, I would like to wish the happiest of birthdays to doctorgogol! It still amazes me that I had the good fortune to come across someone who would end up becoming so dear to me through this medium. Back in December, when the doctor was still a professor in these parts, I certainly didn't anticipate that doing a "similar interests" search would lead me to someone who would end up being not just an online acquaintance, but a trusted friend. I was very, very lucky. And, good doctor, you have a package on the way, but it will be late, because I never manage to send birthday presents on time.

Second, as of today, I have had a LiveJournal for exactly one year. I hereby post my stats:

Account Number: 13685
Account type: Paid Account, previously an Early Adopter
Date created: 09-03-2000
Journal entries: 320
Support points: 8
Comments: Posted: 2,037 - Received: 1,715

Holy cow. The thing is—and I know I've told a few of you this—I never meant to keep a journal here. I had been following some other people's journals, and I created an account so that I wouldn't have to post anonymous comments all the time. I signed my name when I commented anonymously, but still, I felt like I needed to jump into the fray more officially, especially "Shasta" is one of those names that seems made-up to many people.

It took a while, but I got sucked in. I look back at my early journal entries, and it's obvious that I wasn't very comfortable posting in my journal. I used the account mainly to post comments for a while, but after a few weeks, I decided to add some people to my friends list. I kept coming across interesting people, and going through several other people's friends lists started to seem silly. I remember adding blackhellkat and unquietmind and whorlpool and zuul very early on, and I also remember being shocked that they were adding me back.

I don't think I actually started feeling comfortable here until January or so. I think that at some point, I decided that it might not be such a bad thing for me to share parts of myself in this format. There are all sorts of things I just won't say here. At the same time, there are things I say here that I don't say to most of my real-life friends. I've written about things that have been painful, and I've found the process cathartic. Writing here has challenged me—and I think it's because the pressure I sometimes feel to come up with something interesting makes me to dig a little bit deeper, to be more introspective than I might otherwise be. And I'm thankful that LJ's features make it possible for me to do this in a way that seems safe to me.

I didn't know that a few of you would be people I count among my closest friends. The surprise was both unexpected and delightful. As for what I did expect: I enjoy following your adventures, plunging into your darker moments, wondering along with you when you're feeling doubtful, joking with you when you're feeling silly, and celebrating with you when you're feeling cheerful.

I like it here. I like it a great deal.

I'm developing a real hatred for one of our mail carriers.

I know which one it is. It's the one who walked up with the mail not long after we moved in. "Hi," I said.

"Keep your dogs in the house!" he shouted.

"Umm... they are in the house."

"Keep your dogs in the house! I've been bitten before!"

"Well, I'm very sorry to hear that you were bitten. Still, the dogs are in the house. They love people, and even if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to bite you, because they're inside and you're outside."

"Just keep them in the house!" The man was only capable of some variation on this phrase, I swear.

Now, he's decided to refuse to deliver the mail to us when I have the screen door closed but the sliding glass door open. He sent us an official letter saying that dogs had been known to bust through screen doors to attack letter carriers, and that until we create a more secure environment, he won't serve us. When it's 90 degrees out and you don't have air conditioning, leaving the glass doors closed is a poor option.

When the postman comes up, the dogs stand there and wag their tails at him. The whole thing is absurd. Always rings twice, huh? You don't even ring once, you rat bastard!

I don't even think it's really about his fear at this point, either. I think I have managed to become embroiled in a power struggle with our postal service representative. He is trying to drive me mad. Or make it really, really hot in my house.

The meter readers don't have this problem. They walk right into the yard, say hi to the pups, and do their job. Meter readers are a tougher breed than mail carriers, I believe.

1) Waking up on a cold weekend morning, feeling warm in bed, realizing I don't have to go anywhere, and snuggling back under the covers to drift asleep again.

2) Sitting in front of a window and watching a storm.

3) That feeling you get just before you kiss someone—you know the one.

4) Resting my head on my partner's chest, listening to his heartbeat and his breathing.

5) Sitting around with friends, having a wonderful conversation, and then realizing what a wonderful conversation I'm having.

6) Reading the last fifty pages or so of a great book. I start to realize that I'm going to part with it soon, and I do all sorts of things to prolong the experience—I turn back a few pages, read certain passages over and over again, let myself linger a little longer over the words.

7) Rolling down Imperial Highway, big nasty redhead at my side. Oops—that's from Randy Newman's list.

8) Hiking up to a secluded area, sitting near the edge of a cliff and feeling as though the things I'm seeing have managed to go straight from my eyes to my heart.

9) Floating.

10) That feeling of hope that comes when, no matter how things look, you realize that somehow, some way, things will be OK.

My former housemate is OK. I'm still waiting for word on my uncle.

My boss's daughter is in Boston. She was about to take an American Airlines flight to San Diego. Her flight was scheduled to leave soon after American Airlines Flight 11. She watched the passengers—at least one of them a terrorist—board flight 11. And now, she knows that everyone she saw this morning is dead.

I'm crying again.

"We face as a nation the deep, profoundly perturbed and perturbing question of our relationship to others—other cultures, states, histories, experiences, traditions, peoples, and destinies. There is no Archimedean point beyond the question from which to answer it; there is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships among cultures, among unequal imperial and non-imperial powers, among us and others; no one has the epistemological privilege of somehow judging, evaluating, and interpreting the world free from the encumbering interests and engagements of the ongoing relationships themselves. We are, so to speak, of the connections, not outside and beyond them."

—Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993)

I can't fully comprehend what happened on Tuesday. I don't understand, and I'm not going to. I feel a tremendous sadness, and I'm frustrated and angry. But I also feel hope. And, as I try to figure out where to go from here—as I decide what I'm going to do with the emotions I've experienced—my hopes have begun to acquire a shape.

I hope that we continue to take care of each other. The compassion I've seen people express has been astounding. People have reached out to each other and responded to each other. Concern and empathy are good things always, but they are especially good right now. The interaction I've seen among LJers alone has been both comforting and inspiring. I think it's important for us to continue to reach out and support one another, to allow for the wide variety of emotional reactions we have all experienced, and to give ourselves room to feel differently and heal differently. This support and appreciation for diversity among ourselves is powerful.

I hope that we each do something to help. We can give blood. We can donate money. If we are in a place where it makes sense to do so, we can volunteer our services. There is a post with some good resources here: http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?itemid=10562015&nc=2.

If you have already taken advantage of these options, or if you cannot, for one reason or another, there are still things you can do: you can organize a vigil, among friends or on a larger scale—this helps, too. You can think carefully about how we will discuss these issues with children. You can tell our government officials how you would like them to respond in the face of this crisis. These sorts of things are important.

I hope that we each cultivate and maintain critical perspective. This is the hardest part, because this is where we decide what do to with our anger and how to channel the pain we are feeling. The media coverage of the events in New York City and Washington is problematic at best. There is a tendency to move to the right in the face of a national crisis. I've heard people saying that we should "nuke 'em all." I've heard people saying that we should change policies to allow for the assassination of suspected terrorists without trials. I've heard people saying that we should deport any people from the Mid-East currently in this country, including those on work or student visas. I've heard people reviling all Palestinians because they saw a horrifying picture of a group of Palestinians celebrating Tuesday's tragedies.

We must remember that there are people in the countries we feel threatened by who are mourning along with us, who are as scared as we are. We must remember that blindly striking out in retaliation would destroy innocents as well as the potentially guilty, and it would not necessarily remove the threat. We must remember that cultures are multifaceted, and that most of those of Middle Eastern descent who live among us are both horrified by Tuesday's events and frightened for their own safety. We must remember that, just as we distance ourselves from those in our own country who perpetuate hate crimes or spout ignorance—"that's not us," we say—many people in Palestine are thinking the same thing about those who celebrated in the streets when they heard that the World Trade Center had been hit.

We might not feel up to the challenge, but I think we are at a point when it is absolutely crucial that we do challenge ourselves, our news sources, and our own assumptions. We probably will not (and should not) understand the hatred and the bloodlust that caused so many deaths on Tuesday. At the same time, we can (and should) try to understand why so many people in other countries resent the United States and its foreign policies—not because we should feel sympathy for murderers, but because the actions of our own government have often been profoundly troubling, and because we are blessed in this country with a voice, with the ability to effect changes in our government's policies. It's difficult work, to be sure, but we have that capability.

Moreover, exercising that capability—our right, our responsibility to express informed dissent and to clamor to make our opinions heard by those making decisions—by no means indicates that we despise our country. On the contrary, taking such action is a decidedly American thing to do. The kind of debate it engenders is the very core of democracy, and believing in that process and appreciating our access to it—even when we do not condone our leaders' foreign policies, even when we question those leaders' own commitment to the democratic process—makes us citizens in the truest sense of the word.

To that end, I would urge you all to seek out alternative sources of news and opinions. I would urge you to compare perspectives. Most of the links I am about to post are left-oriented, because those are some of the sources I have found most helpful when trying to wrap my mind around some of the perspectives lauded in the mainstream media—most recently, George W. Bush's claim that the attacks happened because "we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." This is a gross oversimplification, though a useful one if we wish to cast this conflict as a straightforward battle between Good and Evil. Reality is, as always, considerably more complex.

Some resources:

Always interesting, it provides information on numerous US involvements in foreign conflicts, some of which I—quite shamefully—had never even heard of before I saw discussions of them in Z Magazine. Very much left biased, but quite powerful.

My first experience with The Nation was when I had to write a paper on propaganda and the Spanish-American War. Unfortunately, my library carried none of the Hearst or other publications that provided such propagandistic points of view, but it did carry The Nation. I was thus forced to change my paper topic to "Moderate Reactions to the Spanish-American War." Editions of The Nation from this period were invaluable, and the publication still reflects its original commitment: "to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred."

Formerly hailed as a non-corporate alternative to NPR, the Pacifica Network has been beset by controversy over management and content. I used to make a yearly donation, and I no longer have enough confidence in the network to support them financially. Still, they provide much programming that I find both enlightening and refreshing.

Mother Jones always has interesting content, and they do provide some web exclusives. It is primarily a print publication, so don't expect to rely on it as an online source.

I do not aim to turn you into a Chomsky devotee or to convert you to a darling of the left. I simply hope that we will do the work necessary to provide us with a wider variety of perspectives on the state of our nation, to sift through point and counterpoint in an effort to find out where we ourselves really stand. And I do this because, as Edward Said claimed seven years ago, "We are... of the connections, not outside and beyond them." Let us not forget that we are not only of those connections by default, but that we can shape them if we have the resolve and the energy, and that the attempt to do so is a profoundly optimistic act of faith in the principles upon which our country was built. Peace and healing to you all, and I mean that sincerely.

I don't remember learning how to swim. It seems like something I've always known how to do. I remember learning one stroke—the butterfly—some time in elementary school, but learning the other strokes was like learning how to read. Once I could do them, I couldn't imagine not being able to do them.

When I was in high school, I was on the swim team. I swam fly: the 50 fly in the medley relay and the 100 fly individually. I swam other events, too, but those never felt like mine. Strange that I gravitated towards the only stroke I recall actually having to learn; I don't know what that means. I smelled a little like chlorine most of the time, a lot like chlorine some of the time.

I also lifted weights. My legs are naturally much stronger than my arms and shoulders, but I was working out around 15 hours each week, and my shoulders and back grew enormous. An enormous that I quite liked. I remember trying on formal dresses with my friend Rachel—unlike me, she was built to do amazing things with her arms. She started lifting weights about a year after I did. The very first time she ever had a go at the bench press, she kept asking me to add weight, and I told her that she needn't take things too fast, that she didn't want to hurt herself. But she really did know what she could handle, and what she could handle was three sets of ten at 140 pounds. Her very first time lifting, ever. She later went on to be an NCAA All-American because she could shot put and throw the discus—especially the discus—like no one else I've known personally. And, before this dance we were going to, she and I tried on formal dresses, flexed at each other in the mirrors, and laughed. We both had to buy dresses that were two sizes too big for every part of our bodies but our backs.

I knew I was strong. I knew I could swim for hours and swim some more, and I still love the feel of it. Running competitively ruined me for running; I still do it occasionally, when I hit a workout stride, but for me, it lacks the kind of purity that swimming still holds. I'm sure this has everything to do with where I was emotionally when I started to get sick at every track meet, with the injuries I ran through in spite of the fact that I was really too injured to be running, rather than with the activities themselves. But the swimming... there was a rhythm to it, a peaceful, almost meditative quality.

That's what I was thinking about when I was on vacation with my family in Maui, where I did a great deal of ocean swimming. Ocean swimming is different from pool swimming. Salt water makes the body float more easily, currents require that you compensate for movements you didn't necessarily expect, and waves make it necessary to turn your head farther to the side when you breathe. And there's always the awareness that you don't know exactly what's beneath you or where the bottom is.

One afternoon on this family vacation, my stepfather and I decided to take a swim out to a buoy that was some distance from the shore. We had done this swim several days in a row, and it was starting to become a vacation ritual—strange that such a term makes sense, no?—but on this afternoon, we miscalculated. It was too late to be out for a swim in the ocean. We swam, and I aimed for the buoy, paying no attention to anything else. I reached it, and then took a moment to tread water and look around me.

Everything was black. The sun had gone down, gone down that fast, and I could no longer see anything. I wasn't tired, but I tried to stave off the panic I was feeling. Which direction, which way? I turned around, and around, but I didn't know. And then I saw some lights—faintly, because we weren't staying in a metropolitan area—and I knew that I should aim for them. So I did, but as I swam back, I was acutely aware that the current seemed much stronger than it had seemed on my way out, that I was perhaps getting turned around, and that I was in the middle of something huge, huge and powerful.

I looked up to reorient myself periodically, and I kept swimming. I remember the feeling of relief that came over me when I first was able to touch sand with my feet when I looked up, and I remember finally stepping out of the ocean at a spot nearly 200 yards to the right of where I had started. I walked along the shoreline and found my very concerned father waiting for me—he had noticed that it was getting dark early in our swim, and he turned back after trying to get my attention with no luck.

I wonder where the shoreline is now, and I wonder if I have enough energy to get there. I see some lights, but they seem distant, and I keep having to check to make sure they are still there. I'm afraid. Afraid that I don't have enough energy, afraid that even if I do make it, everything will be changed once I have returned. That I won't reach the spot where I started, but will instead return to a shoreline that itself has shifted 200 yards right. Not me, it.

And I wonder how long I can tread water.

I got out of the house for a while yesterday. I received an email on Friday saying that my brother's band would be in LA this weekend, and it suddenly seemed very important that I see him. They were playing at the Santa Monica Pier, and I arrived quite late, but I went. He saw me step in front of the stage, and he got a big smile on his face, and when the song ended, he said, "Hey, you guys, that's my sister!" to the band members. He didn't know I was going to be there.

I met his girlfriend, and my friend Danielle and I spent a couple of hours with the two of them on the 3rd Street Promenade. Ethan's girlfriend is very tiny and very sweet. She's shorter than I am, weighs about 95 pounds, is covered in tattoos, and has several piercings. They seem good together. We talked, and we poked our heads into shops, and it felt strange to be in a truly public place. We looked around us.

I saw a little boy lying on the ground, writing on one of a series of posters that had been set down for people to write on. I saw a mannequin hanging from the roof of a shop, on the outside. She held on to the roof, one foot braced against the wall, and the expression on her face was vacant. I had never seen that mannequin there before, and I found it haunting. I don't know why it was there. There was a street performer, a boy of about 10, who was playing the guitar. He was actually quite talented, but I couldn't help but laugh at his song choices. He was playing Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, and when he started "Stairway to Heaven," I had to work hard to repress the urge to request "Freebird."

There was a woman dressed in multi-colored, flowing robes. She had a makeshift veil over her head made out of a shirt; I'm fairly certain that she wasn't actually Muslim, but wanted to pretend for a while. She came up and talked to us. Someone had been handing out American flags, and she wanted to buy my brother's from him. He just gave it to her, and she was very grateful, and I do think she was just a touch crazy.

Inspired by Kevin, I dug out some of my very first report cards. For the most part, they are unremarkable. The analyses of my academic progress are fairly predictable, except I didn't realize that I consistently did better in math than in social studies. But then, there are the categories, variously named—some call it "citizenship," some call it "work habits"—and there's a disturbing trend.

Kindergarten, School #1
Usually initiates a task when given a task - sometimes
Follows simple directions - sometimes
Willingly participates in learning activities - sometimes
Pays attention to a task for at least 15 minutes - sometimes

Comments: "Shasta demands lots of attention. She has the ability to do nice work but will not do her best unless we demand it. Hurries."

Kindergarten, School #2
Nothing especially interesting here, except the following comments:
"Enjoys cleaning." - Ha ha ha!
"Has breathy speech." - I still have breathy speech. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Mrs. Krempely.

It would seem that my "ball handling skills" also needed work.

First Grade:
Uses time wisely - needs improvement
Completes work - needs improvement
Works independently - needs improvement
Is self-disciplined - needs improvement

You get the idea. There would appear to be a long history behind my current state of dissertation despair. But I'll finish the damn thing. You just watch me, Mrs. Sonnamaker from Robert E. Lee Elementary School. You made me sit in a room by myself and alphabetize for hours because I had read all the books in your reading groups. Your pedagogical kung-fu was weak, but I shall overcome your curse. And I'll do it breathily.

I went to see the oracle this weekend. I had heard that she lived in a cave up in the mountains, and since I had nothing to do but work or get further in touch with my ennui, I dug my hiking boots out of the closet and filled a Ziplock bag with gorp.

The drive to the spot where I would begin my hike was uneventful, but for a close call with a deer and a fallen branch or two. After a few hours, I parked, strapped on my backpack, and set out. It was, by this time, about nine o'clock in the morning. The trek was more difficult than I had anticipated. The ascent was steep, and though the scenery was breathtaking—tall, towering trees, an occasional rabbit disappearing through the brush when it heard me coming—the ground grew rockier as I climbed higher. Off the faint and narrow trail, the drop-offs grew dizzying. After peeking over the edge and seeing the scattered skeletons of pilgrims who had come before me, I stopped looking down.

I had been walking for hours, and I was feeling fatigued, and I had a blister on my pinky toe, and the sun was disappearing, and I should have packed more trail mix, and I wondered if there was a little mountain stream somewhere, anywhere, because my canteen was already half empty. No, not half full, you optimistic fuck. But then, I found myself on a landing. I saw an aperture, big enough to step through if I ducked my head a little. It could have been for bears, but I knew it wasn't. I stepped inside, made my way through an impossibly long, dark passage, wondering if I hadn't been mistaken after all, and then I arrived. The natural cave had been enlarged to create a room that was curiously well lit.

The first thing I noticed—the first thing anyone would have noticed—was that there were stones everywhere. Round ones, jagged ones, smooth little skipping ones. Boulders, pebbles, fist-sized chunks. And then the glittery stones: diamonds and mosaics and jade inlays on the walls. But I also saw a figure, a person hunched at an enormous marble desk, head bent over a manuscript, hair cascading so thickly over the desktop that I wondered how she could see what she was writing.

I stood there for a while, watching. I stood some more. Finally, I coughed conspicuously—not one of those "I'm-an-ignored-customer-at-a-New-York-deli" coughs, but a "perhaps-you-didn't-see-me-here" cough.

"I'll be with you in a second," said the hair, and I jumped a little, because the voice was decidedly male. Then, there was a tilt. I saw a face emerge from behind the locks, and it was a face I knew. The recognition made me groan.

"Christ," I muttered, not fully realizing I was speaking aloud. "I'm in Rockland with Allen Ginsberg."

"Don't forget about me!" piped a voice from one of the darker recesses. I craned my neck to see who had spoken.

"Hi, Carl," I said, staving off despair.

"So, Mr. Ginsberg, you're in the prophesizing business now?" I asked, not knowing how else to begin.

"Baby, you can call me Al," he returned, deadpan.

"You're not serious?"

"Of course not. And yes, I'm in the prophesizing business. It's been a writer's vocation for centuries, but few people realize it. And anyway, the agency was a little short-handed today."

"Whitman was sick?"

"Singing the body apoplectic," he admitted.

Well, it could have been worse, I thought to myself. It could have been Camus: "Keep rolling the rock up the hill, and imagine yourself happy." Some good that advice would have done me. Or Plath; she would have made a miserable oracle, grumbling about daddy and asking what did I know about pilot lights. Or someone closer to Ginsberg, even. Like Burroughs. Oh god, I would have had to turn right around and leave. I imagined Burroughs in the cave, a bushel full of apples beside him... "Just stick one of these on your head, little lady, and hold right still—"

"What can I do for you?" Ginsberg asked, interrupting my terrifying William Tell fantasy.

"Well," I fumbled, not sure how much I trusted a prophet who had taken so many bennies, "I want to know if I have a soul."

"That's easy," he replied, snapping his fingers to demonstrate his acuity. "Of course you do. It was nice meeting you. Have a good trip down the mountain." Disarmed but determined, I wasn't going to let him off the hook.

"Are you sure, Mr. Ginsberg?" I asked. "Because, the thing is, I'm considering forging a career in either university administration or some sort of corporate hoo-dee-da because I don't know if I'm as well suited as I thought for a life of research, contemplation, and overloaded composition classes. I'm wondering if that means that I somehow killed my soul."

He gazed at me for a while, and it seemed like he was thinking, but he gazed too long for that. When I saw his head droop down, hair curtain beginning to close over his eyes, I gave in to my frustration.

"Hey!" I half-shouted. His head snapped up, the curtain re-opening. "I don't mean to be rude, but are you going to answer my question?"

"How can I prophesize in your silly mood?" he queried, grinning mischievously. The man was an imp, I tell you. An imp.

I sighed heavily.

"All right, all right." He acquiesced, walking back over to the marble desk, sitting down and dipping a quill into an inkwell. He wrote for a little while, and then handed me a slip of paper. On the piece of paper, he had written:

In your dreams you will walk dripping from a sea-journey
on the highway across America in tears
to the door of a cottage
in theWestern night.

"Mr. Ginsberg!" I exclaimed, reprovingly. "I know you made a few changes, but aren't you, well, plagiarizing yourself? And even if you weren't, what kind of answer is that, anyway? These are desperate times, and obscure metaphors have no place in a moment of crisis."

"You know that's not the case," he said. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have come here. And you also know that one should never expect a straight answer from an oracle."

True enough. It was morning. Ginsberg gave me more gorp and water, I waved goodbye to him and to Carl, and I set down the mountain, musing about sea journeys, thinking about what the cottage would be like, and no longer seeing the skeletons of pilgrims littering the slopes below me.