Social studies

Today is all about social studies, literally. As in presidential projects about old dead white guys like James Madison and Andrew Johnson, yes Johnson, not Jackson. Never heard of him? Well I now know all about him so if you have any questions please let me know. Another aspect of studying society may be the observation regarding young students waiting till 11:59:59 on the proverbial project clock to commence their large important projects, which, by the way require partners and collaboration and Modern Language Association formatting (I kinda think that's a fake out) and things like that. 

However, I do not care a lot about this and wish for it to clear out of my dining room and living room and kitchen along with the wormy macaroni and cheese and chilled hot tea and far flung counter-bedazzling toast crumbs.

I've got an anthropological eye on most of the time anyway so studying the social worlds around me comes naturally. Lately I've been observing the pubescent American female in her natural modern environment. I think the word modern here is the strongest modifier, and kind of nulls the other modifier, because actually the environment most of these creatures inhabit is anything but natural - as it is such for all of us 21st centurions, hence our collective anxiety and illness. 

Our brains and bodies hatch into this world programmed by millions of years of effective evolution expecting huge vistas, huge family-clans, huge amounts of babies and little kids and big kids and adults and old people all around all the time - a tribal commune all mixed up and sharing and eating and playing and working. However, so very oddly, (did nature screw up - or is this part of the master plan to put us on the same list as the dodo?) our little species created its own stuff that evolved (civilization) and (oops) it evolved faster than we did. So we are not fit to fit our world right now because it moved beyond us.

Calamity ensues.

I read an article recently about a researcher or something that studied what people all over the world in many many widely diverse cultures like to look at in a picture. The experiment was to show pieces of art to groups of people from different cultures, and have each person pick which picture they liked out of a group of differing choices. Like a face, an abstract, a square/geometric thing, or a nature scene, etc. Look at the different pretty art pix - what do you like?

Overwhelmingly across cultures the favorite "scenes" people were drawn to were eerily similar:  flat green/yellow vistas, often with a path and far off trees - remiscent of the African savannah. The thought was that this is our collective consciousness's most "normal" scene - programmed into our DNA by the first and largest part of our species' experience. You are African. And part of you remembers that. 

Does this photo please you? Calm you?

And the other idea is that this drives our desire to draw or paint or snap or look at similarish scenes - across all cultures.

Ploughing Scene in Suffolk (A Summerland) 1814, John Constable

Mont Saint Victoire, Paul Cezanne, 1906

Wheatfield and Mountains, Vincent Van Gogh, c. 1889

Ansel Adams - not sure of title

I have no idea when I read all that or where. My head is too cluttered - I read too much. Or did I make it all up? If so I should do this experiment and get my PhD.

The adolescent American females are engaged in a number of activities and rituals designed to signal status and mating availability, although they are largely unaware of this and probably feel like they are puppets in strange show run by a mean Geppetto. These activities include things like grooming, preening, cooing, displaying, and establishing rank. Since they're not surrounded by a cadre of aunts, co mothers, female cousins, grandmothers and co grandmothers, mothers, and sisters - they must look to their peers and our society's huge projections of what it is to be a girl. They are stunted in their education in this way - I think - because of the scarcity of close and diverse role models. Example - it's truly bizarre and unnatural to group people by age yet our entire school system sticks together five year olds and then continues with this hare-brained tactic till college and you're a flop flapjack dumbass if this doesn't work brilliantly for you. Hogwash. 

So we stick together hundreds of 13/14 year olds. And then wonder why they can't cope.

Do you have 11 minutes? If so please watch this:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

I've been observing these teen girl-creatures up close lately and I'm happy to report that I have not given up on them, annoyingly beautiful and beautifully annoying as they may be. 

LISTS

TEEN GIRLS:

Freckly

Chocolate milky

Mean as a snake on hot asphalt 

Breathtakingly beautiful and perfect

Couch inhabiting

Tea slurping 

Both

Neither

All

Blind as a bat beyond three inches 

Screaming screaming screaming for attention quietly 

Mercurial 

Dancey

A one man stand up show

Undone

Discomfortable 

Pretending to be not pretending 

Little 

Far flung 

Shattered

Perfect

SOME OF THE AWESOME CHRISTMAS GIFTS I RECEIVED:

A pink and white snugly shawl/scarf that inhabits my shoulders - from one of those creatures 

A plate of burnt super thin and crispy gingerbread man cookies

A jar of Nivea cream

Perfume - from another creature teen

Two 18 inch long Slim Jims

A shiny green leatherette manicure set

Black pajamas with little white polka dots 

A teeny tiny framed piece of art made of fish scales 

Isotoner gloves with special fingers that let you use an iPhone 

A collage and letter from one of those creatures I mentioned

Kitty socks

Oh yes, I forgot, this is supposed to be a blog about the dadaism of having breast cancer. Here's a short update on that: 

I feel fairly ok now but sad that food still is like hay and radiator water.

I have now finished four of the six chemotherapy treatments I'm supposed to have. I'm getting a little bit more used to the cycles (fair, awful, more awful, deathly, awful, bad, fair - repeat), so even though each one is horrible in its own special and unique way, I am growing more used to the idea that that disgustingtude will ebb and flow and will eventually go mostly away. I hope in months or a year my taste buds will spring back to full service. 

So I think it's gotten easier to stand. I think that that's what I think. I'm not sure. My next chemo is January 16, and the one after that I believe is February 7. They are on Thursdays three weeks apart so if I weren't so lazy sitting here freezing on the couch then I could go look at the calendar and tell you for sure, but I am very lazy right now. 

After that (how casually I say this) I'm supposed to have radiation. I might have to have another surgery before the radiation starts. 

I don't know when the surgery will be. 

I don't know if I'm having surgery. 

I don't know when the radiation will start. 

I don't know how long the radiation will be. I think it's five or six or seven weeks, every single day except weekends. But I don't really know. 

I'm not looking forward to anything. I don't mean that in a depressing way, as in "I don't like it and dread it" - I mean this NOT LOOKING FORWARD in the literal way. As in forward is over there on the West wall and my eyes are not looking at the West wall, they are looking at my nails so I can choose one to bite. Or forward is the Big Lots parking lot and I'm not looking there because I'm driving on IH35 so I'm looking at the road.

I'm just living today and a day or so ahead - so if you want to do lunch or a movie let me know but I can't tell you diddly squat about my radiological or skin slicing spring plans. I don't even care about it.

Was this blog:

Disjointed?

Random?

Irrelevant?

Yes very much.