The Blogstress
It's been too long, friends.
I don't have much time tonight, but I wanted to point out two articles I just read in the good ol' New York Times:
Primero:
Indians raised and trained in the US don't always love working in India. But, like, isn't it in their, like, genes or something?
Segundo:
Western men are doomed because they can't be more like the Chinese/women; Or, David Brooks' How I Learned to Stop Grouping Animals and Love the Relationship.
There are some assumptions happening in these articles about 1)ethnicity and 2) nationalism that I find pretty interesting. What do you think?
2.1.2009
RIP, Li'l Blue.
Maybe I feel so inspired right now because my car broke down last night, and instead of a huge worry, what I felt was a huge relief. A burden lifted off of my chest by the hands of a gracious providence that also puts food in my mouth and rain in our soil and sun on our faces. Not that savings are bad, but if I hadn't blown all my extra dough in Chile, if I wasn't living so hand-to-mouth, I would have felt an obligation, a responsibility, to take the car to a mechanic. But since I can't even afford to have it towed anywhere, I'm donating it, and I am so excited about not having a car. Really just DOING IT. Plus now I don't have to worry about it breaking down on me in the middle of the freeway or something.
But back to what inspired me, besides my car gently and graciously giving up the ghost: There seems to be a convergence among my friends, like Lady Parts,Lion Mouth, Merde, and the community house, a confluence, a telepathetic speaking-out. Permaculture, urban (or dreams of rural) homesteading, re-evaluating the nine-to-five, the supposed security of the "nest egg," the validity of the terms "fail" and "succeed" as defined for us by someone else. (No surprise, perhaps--we are all friends, after all.) For a while I thought I was flailing blindly, but now it seems that all I had to do was crack one eye open to see everyone around me doing the same thing. And now, more than ever, the future is set before me like a big ripe blueberry.
I must admit here to a fair amount of worrying about the economy and the future of society. And these are probably completely justified, as far as worrying is ever justified. But it has occurred as a fully-formed thought to me today that this meltdown of the economy, this unique crossroads of disillusionment with the current economic system coupled with the growing acceptance that a continuance of life as usual will make life impossible on earth, is the perfect storm for a total revolution. Plant food on your lawn. Bake your own bread, make your own yogurt, hang a clothesline, reject what you know to be harmful. We know what we need to do. And we can do it now, with much less fuss than ever before, it seems to me.
And don't forget to see Milk.
1.1.2009
Michael Scott, Doppelgänger
I've been watching copious amounts of The Office, due to being cheap, Jerry being gone, and it being on Netflix Instant.
It occurred to me while watching "The Secret" from Season 2, that I am a lot like Michael Scott. He overreacts, he's needy, he's indiscreet, sometimes mean. At my worst, I am all of those things. Perhaps that's the appeal of watching the show--seeing someone behave badly.
A friend and I were discussing this morning whether or not one would ever drink again if a video of one's drunken behavior were made available the morning after. Probably not, we decided.
We watch Michael Scott blunder, and because he's not us, we can go out and make similar blunders, in the real world, in much bigger places than an office.
Here's to a more aware, kinder year. Happy 2009, everyone.
Thoughts on Culture.
“White bread.” “Twinkie.” The blandest of bland food was the only metaphor ever applied to my skin color, or I should say, the skin color I was told to acknowledge as my own. Having a Hungarian-immigrant father, I grew up with a sense of myself as different, special. My father always made sure we knew where Hungary was, making us find it on the globe. It was so tiny compared to the sprawling United States. It seemed to me private and special, as though no one else could ever be or ever had been from there. If it had been up to me to choose a food metaphor for myself, it would have been “paprika” or “palacsinta.” I went to far as to mark “other” on any form asking me to identify my race until high school, when my band director looked at one of those forms and said, “You’re just a white girl, aren’t you?” He seemed genuinely confused about it.
I was too embarrassed to say that I thought of myself as Hungarian-American, and truthfully, scared that if I did he would find out that my Hungarianess was only skin deep. I didn’t know the language. I didn’t know the culture. I barely knew the food. I didn’t even know what it was like to live with snow in the winter. And yet I clung to that description of myself, at once completely true and totally misleading. What else is the “other” option for, if not for those who, for whatever reason, don’t wish to identify with their race? Why wouldn’t I want to be white? Most of my friends were white. I was not opposed to white people in any way. I suspect it was because white Americans are said to have “no culture.” I didn’t feel like I had no culture. My father was from Hungary. My mother’s grandfather was from Tennessee, and her grandmother was from Ireland. I had roots, something to live up to. I felt, if sent back to the Old World, I would fit in, the way I didn’t growing up. I wasn’t awkward; I was just misplaced.
The more important derivation of this notion (to me) is this: if white Americans have no culture, there is nothing to maintain, nothing to fix, nothing to be proud of, nothing to protest. The only culture we claim, if we claim any at all, is European, but we know deep-down that that is not true. That is the dream of elementary school children with overactive imaginations. We are not European anymore than Europeans are Americans. This is a lesson learned the hard way, on personal and society-wide levels. It is a way of throwing the blame on something or someone else, and not taking the responsibility for oneself.
If we reject the claim that we have “no culture,” what are we left with? A few observations: War—our economy depends upon it, in far-reaching ways. Violence. Television and entertainment. Hypocrisy about sex and family. Optimism. And now I’ve strayed from “white Americans” meaning just that, to “white Americans” meaning middle-class Americans, non-immigrant Americans. Well. Just some thoughts that I thought my go into a Personal Statement at one point, but which ultimately was too much of a rabbit hole to include.
Questions? Comments? Email me.
12.2.08
Damn. All you people driving cars out there, this is for you (us).
1. Please remember that you are behind the wheel of a huge piece of machinery with a COMBUSTIBLE ENGINE in it, traveling at speeds that are certain to kill/maim you or and/or others.
2. So, don’t be a maniac.
3. I mean, don’t yell at me to get off the road because I am on a bike. The law’s on my side, you know.
4. Also, don’t swerve at me just to see how close you can get before I topple over into the gutter. (See no. 1)
5. And if we’re both in cars, don’t tailgate me, please. Just go around, I’m more than happy to accommodate those sorts of maneuvers.
6. Don’t talk on your GD cell phone. Really. Can’t it wait? Plus it’s now against the law.
7. Maybe try to stop driving so much. The air is really hard to breathe, plus you’re probably not getting enough exercise anyway. You’re probably a fat middle-aged man in a blue 15-passenger van scrounging around for something in your glove box when I try to give you a dirty look after you swerve at me for sport. Twice.
Can’t we all just transport ourselves in peace, even those of us who choose more constructive modes like bikes? Who issued you a license to drive? Why do I get a $45.00 ticket for leaving my car harmlessly on a quiet residential street all night while every day people risk lives with their idiotic driving and avoid any consequences?
I’m fed up with this hooey. It’s time for a revolution. Let’s block all the freeways with our bodies and demand all vehicles that get less than 20 MPG be recycled into light rail train cars.
…It’s probably a good thing I’m leaving Glendora soon.
11.21.08
This is what I have been writing lately: long academic sentences about who I am and what I supposedly want to study more than anything else in the world. This is difficult for me, as I am a world-class dilettante. Nonetheless, people don’t let you in to graduate school, much less fund you to do so, when you say, “I just like to study.”
This is what I have been thinking: Don’t be so lazy, ride your bike to the train, quit your job today, don’t quit until you’ve been there at least a year, that didn’t mean anything, that meant everything, your life is so good, your life needs serious help, you should go to graduate school, you should never darken the door of another institute of higher learning in your life.
As the day approaches for me to submit my applications to the different programs I’ve chosen, I’m getting nervous. What if I write a horrible statement of purpose? What if the economy fails even more and I can’t afford it? What if what if what if.
Today I took the day off of work and I felt guilty and worried. I am a chronic worrier, I find. Churchy talk, like saying “God’s got it!” used to help me put things I worried about on the back burner. In a way, this was good, but I found that it left me suppressing concerns that a good person, a good citizen, would not suppress—global warming, to take an example at random, or world poverty and suffering.
In a perverse way, I like to worry. It helps me think that I’ve got a definition of myself all ready to hand out, like a flyer. “Hi, this is me. I worry, I’m 5’9”, and I’m from Southern California.” I tell myself that I’m preparing for the disaster that is coming, that is inevitable. I don’t believe myself when I say, “But if the disaster comes, it will hit you just the same whether you worried or not.”
Really, the worry is one more smoke screen, another infinitely complex barrier I’ve set up to keep myself from my own mind, and maybe it works that way for you, too. The real wisdom, I suppose, is to be at peace with yourself and the world, but not complacent. And if anyone figures out how that is accomplished, let me know.
I don't have much time tonight, but I wanted to point out two articles I just read in the good ol' New York Times:
Primero:
Indians raised and trained in the US don't always love working in India. But, like, isn't it in their, like, genes or something?
Segundo:
Western men are doomed because they can't be more like the Chinese/women; Or, David Brooks' How I Learned to Stop Grouping Animals and Love the Relationship.
There are some assumptions happening in these articles about 1)ethnicity and 2) nationalism that I find pretty interesting. What do you think?
2.1.2009
RIP, Li'l Blue.
Maybe I feel so inspired right now because my car broke down last night, and instead of a huge worry, what I felt was a huge relief. A burden lifted off of my chest by the hands of a gracious providence that also puts food in my mouth and rain in our soil and sun on our faces. Not that savings are bad, but if I hadn't blown all my extra dough in Chile, if I wasn't living so hand-to-mouth, I would have felt an obligation, a responsibility, to take the car to a mechanic. But since I can't even afford to have it towed anywhere, I'm donating it, and I am so excited about not having a car. Really just DOING IT. Plus now I don't have to worry about it breaking down on me in the middle of the freeway or something.
But back to what inspired me, besides my car gently and graciously giving up the ghost: There seems to be a convergence among my friends, like Lady Parts,Lion Mouth, Merde, and the community house, a confluence, a telepathetic speaking-out. Permaculture, urban (or dreams of rural) homesteading, re-evaluating the nine-to-five, the supposed security of the "nest egg," the validity of the terms "fail" and "succeed" as defined for us by someone else. (No surprise, perhaps--we are all friends, after all.) For a while I thought I was flailing blindly, but now it seems that all I had to do was crack one eye open to see everyone around me doing the same thing. And now, more than ever, the future is set before me like a big ripe blueberry.
I must admit here to a fair amount of worrying about the economy and the future of society. And these are probably completely justified, as far as worrying is ever justified. But it has occurred as a fully-formed thought to me today that this meltdown of the economy, this unique crossroads of disillusionment with the current economic system coupled with the growing acceptance that a continuance of life as usual will make life impossible on earth, is the perfect storm for a total revolution. Plant food on your lawn. Bake your own bread, make your own yogurt, hang a clothesline, reject what you know to be harmful. We know what we need to do. And we can do it now, with much less fuss than ever before, it seems to me.
And don't forget to see Milk.
1.1.2009
Michael Scott, Doppelgänger
I've been watching copious amounts of The Office, due to being cheap, Jerry being gone, and it being on Netflix Instant.
It occurred to me while watching "The Secret" from Season 2, that I am a lot like Michael Scott. He overreacts, he's needy, he's indiscreet, sometimes mean. At my worst, I am all of those things. Perhaps that's the appeal of watching the show--seeing someone behave badly.
A friend and I were discussing this morning whether or not one would ever drink again if a video of one's drunken behavior were made available the morning after. Probably not, we decided.
We watch Michael Scott blunder, and because he's not us, we can go out and make similar blunders, in the real world, in much bigger places than an office.
Here's to a more aware, kinder year. Happy 2009, everyone.
Thoughts on Culture.
“White bread.” “Twinkie.” The blandest of bland food was the only metaphor ever applied to my skin color, or I should say, the skin color I was told to acknowledge as my own. Having a Hungarian-immigrant father, I grew up with a sense of myself as different, special. My father always made sure we knew where Hungary was, making us find it on the globe. It was so tiny compared to the sprawling United States. It seemed to me private and special, as though no one else could ever be or ever had been from there. If it had been up to me to choose a food metaphor for myself, it would have been “paprika” or “palacsinta.” I went to far as to mark “other” on any form asking me to identify my race until high school, when my band director looked at one of those forms and said, “You’re just a white girl, aren’t you?” He seemed genuinely confused about it.
I was too embarrassed to say that I thought of myself as Hungarian-American, and truthfully, scared that if I did he would find out that my Hungarianess was only skin deep. I didn’t know the language. I didn’t know the culture. I barely knew the food. I didn’t even know what it was like to live with snow in the winter. And yet I clung to that description of myself, at once completely true and totally misleading. What else is the “other” option for, if not for those who, for whatever reason, don’t wish to identify with their race? Why wouldn’t I want to be white? Most of my friends were white. I was not opposed to white people in any way. I suspect it was because white Americans are said to have “no culture.” I didn’t feel like I had no culture. My father was from Hungary. My mother’s grandfather was from Tennessee, and her grandmother was from Ireland. I had roots, something to live up to. I felt, if sent back to the Old World, I would fit in, the way I didn’t growing up. I wasn’t awkward; I was just misplaced.
The more important derivation of this notion (to me) is this: if white Americans have no culture, there is nothing to maintain, nothing to fix, nothing to be proud of, nothing to protest. The only culture we claim, if we claim any at all, is European, but we know deep-down that that is not true. That is the dream of elementary school children with overactive imaginations. We are not European anymore than Europeans are Americans. This is a lesson learned the hard way, on personal and society-wide levels. It is a way of throwing the blame on something or someone else, and not taking the responsibility for oneself.
If we reject the claim that we have “no culture,” what are we left with? A few observations: War—our economy depends upon it, in far-reaching ways. Violence. Television and entertainment. Hypocrisy about sex and family. Optimism. And now I’ve strayed from “white Americans” meaning just that, to “white Americans” meaning middle-class Americans, non-immigrant Americans. Well. Just some thoughts that I thought my go into a Personal Statement at one point, but which ultimately was too much of a rabbit hole to include.
Questions? Comments? Email me.
12.2.08
Damn. All you people driving cars out there, this is for you (us).
1. Please remember that you are behind the wheel of a huge piece of machinery with a COMBUSTIBLE ENGINE in it, traveling at speeds that are certain to kill/maim you or and/or others.
2. So, don’t be a maniac.
3. I mean, don’t yell at me to get off the road because I am on a bike. The law’s on my side, you know.
4. Also, don’t swerve at me just to see how close you can get before I topple over into the gutter. (See no. 1)
5. And if we’re both in cars, don’t tailgate me, please. Just go around, I’m more than happy to accommodate those sorts of maneuvers.
6. Don’t talk on your GD cell phone. Really. Can’t it wait? Plus it’s now against the law.
7. Maybe try to stop driving so much. The air is really hard to breathe, plus you’re probably not getting enough exercise anyway. You’re probably a fat middle-aged man in a blue 15-passenger van scrounging around for something in your glove box when I try to give you a dirty look after you swerve at me for sport. Twice.
Can’t we all just transport ourselves in peace, even those of us who choose more constructive modes like bikes? Who issued you a license to drive? Why do I get a $45.00 ticket for leaving my car harmlessly on a quiet residential street all night while every day people risk lives with their idiotic driving and avoid any consequences?
I’m fed up with this hooey. It’s time for a revolution. Let’s block all the freeways with our bodies and demand all vehicles that get less than 20 MPG be recycled into light rail train cars.
…It’s probably a good thing I’m leaving Glendora soon.
11.21.08
This is what I have been writing lately: long academic sentences about who I am and what I supposedly want to study more than anything else in the world. This is difficult for me, as I am a world-class dilettante. Nonetheless, people don’t let you in to graduate school, much less fund you to do so, when you say, “I just like to study.”
This is what I have been thinking: Don’t be so lazy, ride your bike to the train, quit your job today, don’t quit until you’ve been there at least a year, that didn’t mean anything, that meant everything, your life is so good, your life needs serious help, you should go to graduate school, you should never darken the door of another institute of higher learning in your life.
As the day approaches for me to submit my applications to the different programs I’ve chosen, I’m getting nervous. What if I write a horrible statement of purpose? What if the economy fails even more and I can’t afford it? What if what if what if.
Today I took the day off of work and I felt guilty and worried. I am a chronic worrier, I find. Churchy talk, like saying “God’s got it!” used to help me put things I worried about on the back burner. In a way, this was good, but I found that it left me suppressing concerns that a good person, a good citizen, would not suppress—global warming, to take an example at random, or world poverty and suffering.
In a perverse way, I like to worry. It helps me think that I’ve got a definition of myself all ready to hand out, like a flyer. “Hi, this is me. I worry, I’m 5’9”, and I’m from Southern California.” I tell myself that I’m preparing for the disaster that is coming, that is inevitable. I don’t believe myself when I say, “But if the disaster comes, it will hit you just the same whether you worried or not.”
Really, the worry is one more smoke screen, another infinitely complex barrier I’ve set up to keep myself from my own mind, and maybe it works that way for you, too. The real wisdom, I suppose, is to be at peace with yourself and the world, but not complacent. And if anyone figures out how that is accomplished, let me know.
To Begin...
Hello. I am your friendly Shift Artists’ Collective Blogstress, also the brains behind the Victoria Magyar blog. I am excited and honored to be a part of this, and hope we will be able to appreciate each other’s good thoughts and ideas.
A word about who I am: Like many represented on this site, I went to college in Azusa. I’m currently preparing to enter graduate school in the fall of 2009. I am trying my best to live a good life. I am worried about my kombucha mushroom right now. I believe the avocado is the wunderkind of the fruit family. You can find out the rest as we go, or ask a question if you want. I am an open book.
Thanks for coming.
Love,
Victoria Magyar
The Blogstress is from Southern California, transplanted to the Midwest for the moment. Her birthday is August 18th. She has always felt like a Leo.