-:- The Conversationalist -:- http://transcendancing.posterous.com On love, connectionism, personhood and equality posterous.com Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:26:00 -0800 Bravery for 2013... http://transcendancing.posterous.com/bravery-for-2013 http://transcendancing.posterous.com/bravery-for-2013

This is my yearly introductory post to my theme, it's my way of marking the new year and new journeys, new focuses and personal growth. Last year's theme was 'Renewal' and it was an intense but ultimately rewarding and beautiful year that delivered all the promise that a word like renewal holds. If you're interested in themes for yourself, I wrote about how I go about putting together the concept and practise of a theme, which is essentially a year long enquiry. It's a little about letting the world go to work on you, and a little about going to work on the world as well. It's all very personal so it can be anything you want, really. 

So, 2013. Bravery.

2013's theme is already well underway though I've not tried to write about it to formally open up the enquiry till now. Afterall, how do you write about bravery when you are feeling anything but? 

And yet, feeling brave or not I am practising bravery and that's really at the heart of things. It's not about *feeling* brave all the time. Instead, the focus is on being aware of myself, taking a moment to consider saying 'yes' to things I'd ordinarily decline. Bravery is about operating entirely outside of my comfort zone in massive ways, tiny moments and all the in between. 

The central event that will define this year and this theme is that I moved from Perth where I was living with my fiance and his boyfriend (plus three cats and a dog), and moved to Melbourne. I left another partner and a new love, an incredibly strong, broad and inspirational support network of friends and community.

I've moved to a place I am more in love with than I thought possible. I am head over teakettle in love with Melbourne. I also have partners here, one that is for the first time not a long distance relationship and another boyfriend who recently migrated with his fiance from Perth to start medical school. I have other romantic connections here but they're less defined and more nebulous in feel... they're potential and that's open to move in any direction really. I have friends here, close friends and people I want to be closer to. And not just in Melbourne but all throughout the Eastern states... being here in Melbourne I can pursue those connections too. I think Melbourne will be good for me career wise and academically. 

But what I'm saying is that... moving like this is the bravest thing I've ever done. I've turned all of my deepest and closest relationships inside out. Nothing is comfortable and I am in the midst of a liminal, ephemeral experience of uncertainty. It's also exactly the right thing for me to have done, I know that deep within me no matter how wretched I am feeling right now. 

My fiance has been part of my daily life for most of the last 16 years... and unlike when I moved three months ahead of him to Perth, he's not coming to join me soon. It may be two years before he and his boyfriend make it to Melbourne, though that is the ultimate plan. I've never really consciously lived anywhere else than with him, or in any other kind of situation. I've never had my own place before. 

And even though I am poly, my experience of this has been less a conflict of busy schedules (a common difficulty), and more the difficulty of schedule mismatch and distance. That's just been magnified in a truly magnificent way, and right now it's the thing I'm finding hardest to deal with here in my beloved new city where I can't yet put down roots or nest. 

So right now, each moment is a moment of emotional bravery, forging a new path and gaining new understanding of myself and how my connections work, how I work in my connections. The difficulties in asking for what I need both for me and for others. There aren't really any direct fixes here, just riding out the feeling of being overwrought and lonely, being ruthlessly gentle on myself and remembering that most of this present feeling will shift when I have a job and can start to really *live* here in Melbourne. Right now it's more of a floaty existence. 

So bravery is already being incredibly demanding of my emotional and mental fortitude. I wonder right now, does it get easier from here? Does the hard just shift and change as I get a job, find a place to live and start to form patterns of everyday life and nest?

That's all part of the journey... 

I've been thinking about this post since New Year's Eve, since I was packing to move, since I embarked on the drive over here (yes, I drove with my best friend across the country in my little blue car now named the Tardis for how awesomely she fit all my stuff). There are a number of ways in which I want to explore bravery and things I want to do that seem to be part of what I want from this enquiry. In no particular order.... 

  • Explore options for permanent employment that I might be willing to commit to that allow me to progress my career as a business analyst. 
  • Do some sort of training in Agile methodologies, preferably at the expense of some awesome employer that I'd like to commit to. 
  • Volunteer with OTW and enjoy getting to hang out with cool people doing something I think is amazing and getting Agile familiarity while I'm at it. 
  • Explore yoga and pilates as things that may have some positive impact on my pain levels. 
  • Take up a latin dance class, particularly interested in Argentine Tango, but I enjoy them all and clumsy or not it's fun. 
  • Try (or re-try) a bunch of other different sport/leisure things that I've mused about trying for ages, like rock climbing, horse riding, sailing, cycling, swimming. 
  • Go to a conference related either to my work interests or academic interests. 
  • Develop a wardrobe appropriate for the kind of job I envision myself doing, but managing to fulfil comfort and creative requirements. 
  • Get my P plates once I'm comfortable driving in Melbourne and the CBD, including on tram lines, hook turns, stop start traffic, and other complexities.
  • Go on road trips, hopefully go on a road trip by myself once I have my license!
  • Explore Melbourne, so many festivals and events and random stuff happening - I want to go to a bunch of things and just enjoy that this is possible and happens here! 
  • Find an awesome place to live with a housemate or two in the area around Brunswick. 
  • Nest in new place to live. 
  • Do well in my last two units for my degree and work out where to apply for Honours and talk to useful people about doing that. 
  • Read 100 books including completing the Australian Women Writers Challenge for 2013 and also reading some of the texts I've bought that are nonfiction that I haven't found my way to yet. 
  • Keep involved with the Down Under Feminists Carnival including writing pieces to submit to it.
  • Try and keep up with my blogging both here and at my personal journal. Especially include more personal photos in my personal journal. 
  • Send out postcards and letters - reduce the stash! 
  • Explore cooking adventures, particularly in cuisines and techniques I'd like to be more proficient cooking in. Consider doing this similar to how Calli did it once upon a time with a month long focus on different cuisine. 
  • Nurture my relationships abundantly especially since they've all been turned inside out. Be brave and gentle about all the changes. 
  • Spend time with my blood family, including introducing boyfriend and girlfriend if I have an opportunity.
  • Support boyfriend in his med school adventures, being a guinea pig where useful.  
  • Learn basic chemistry, physics and biology via Khan Academy. 
  • Look out for opportunities to have unexpected adventures and say 'yes' more often. Share these adventures with others whenever possible. 
  • Be my best self to the best of my ability and remember that I didn't create the art separate from myself, that I get to make a difference just by being myself in the world and that's amazing (and discomforting), inspiring (and confronting). 

Dear 2013, you are going to be a massive challenge the entire way through but I am ready for it and willing. I am excited about everything I'm going to learn and hope to make the most of all the joy and love around me through the hard bits. Through this enquiry I will truly reconnect with that experience of myself as a Giant and share this with others. Here's to a busy, productive, amazing and challenging year. I'm starting without a comfort zone but I am optimistic and determined. 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Sun, 03 Feb 2013 19:27:00 -0800 Completing 2012's theme: Renewal http://transcendancing.posterous.com/completing-2012s-theme-renewal http://transcendancing.posterous.com/completing-2012s-theme-renewal

Wow, I know it's February and I'm only just writing about this, but I couldn't quite find the words until now - and things have been so very busy! Renewal was throughout the year an amazing balm, I really did spent a lot of time and energy focussing on rejuvenation, and feeling renewed in myself, both in energy and in my identity and sense of who I am in the world. You can read my initial post and also my halfway point reflection if you like. 

I worked hard on myself, but it was work that was measured in joy, not sadness, and the things I put to rest were possible because there was happiness, good memories and joy balancing out all the things I'd been fearful of, sad about and hurt by in recent years. I spent more time experiencing myself as the person I delight in being and less time trying to find where I'd left that person or being afraid of her. 

I experienced not only an increase in my inner sense of credibility for all the ways I've grown and changed, all the ways in which I felt rewarded for time spent learning in years gone by, but also an increase in external validation. There was a whole lot less room for negative self-criticality. I spent a lot of time practising faith and trust in the words and love of others toward me and have that be so beautifully and deeply rewarded. 

I felt renewed in so many ways last year, though particularly in my relationships. I met and connected with beautiful people, and let them into my life in varyingly deep and fulfilling ways. The triad dynamic I mentioned settled into a partnership between me and one guy and a deeper blossoming of his relationship with his other partner with whom I've become close friends. It hasn't been an easy pathway for the three of us, but it has been rewarding, we've all learned an incredible amount and come through stronger and shinier. My partnership with my boyfriend just takes my breath away, it's everything I could have wished for. My friendship with his now fiance is so beautiful and precious to me, I delight in any chance to spend time with them.

Other relationships deepened, a lover became a partner quite unexpectedly and in one of those odd ways where, nothing actually changed and yet it kind of did too. I met an amazing woman who is somehow so incredibly like me, we connected instantly and it's just like magic - we're both amazed and bewildered that we found one another and the connection we have. To be in the same room with one another is for us to blush and fumble with words, it is... incredible.

My beloved fiance, I am so proud of him, though I felt like I barely saw him last year, and it's kind of true as his business took up an immense amount of his time, and knowing these few years are critical for success in that area and for his dreams to come true, I've kind of stood back and marvelled, with incredible pride at how amazing he and his vision are. I had such a sense of being polyamorous and getting to live that in a really outward way, I spent time with partners, not just one on one but with friends and introducing them to one another and enjoying their company with me together - that never fails to make me melt with happiness.  

In looking at the specific points I outlined, here's where I ended up and where useful, my thoughts on going forward (though mostly I want to keep going forward thoughts for my upcoming 2013 theme post). 

 

Professionally: 

  • Explore the qualifications I may be eligable to pursue as a member of the International Institute of Business Analysts. 
  • Continue working professionally as a Business Analyst and seek employment opportunities that align with this. 
  • Consider working as a volunteer in an open source project as a junior Business Analyst as a means of gaining development and mentoring, while improving and testing skills and contributing to something I believe in. 
  • Remember that I'm studying this year and that particularly in second semester, this will be very intense and I need to make space for study to happen. 

Overall, I didn't get as far with this as I'd expected... but I also didn't expect it to be so much a year that was characterised by romantic relationships and new connections as it was. So, given I'd been craving and hungry for that, and I got it, I'm not sad about where there was less time and energy, less focus on other things.  I did work as a BA, but it was adhoc and I really want to spend time in an established project office with other BAs and also access Agile training. 

Academically: 

  • Complete the 5 remaining units to make up my degree. 
  • Aim for distinctions in the work I am doing, but remember (particularly with what promises to be a grueling second semester) that as long as I am passing, I am doing sufficiently well. 
  • Read outside the course materials, I have several texts that I have purchased and which to explore in more detail. I'd like to actually do this in 2012, as it didn't happen in 2011. 
  • Do a practise run at writing and submitting either a conference paper or a journal article that accepts undergraduate submissions. 
  • If I can magically afford it, go to the Crossroads 2012 cultural studies conference in Paris in July. 
  • Remember that I'm likely going to be working full time throughout the year and that I need to take this into account and make allowances for how study will happen. 
  • Explore options for post grad study, talk to institutions and their academics as well as friends. 

I completed 3 units, and have two left. I got very good marks in first semester, but hated the unit I did in second semester and my Credit mark shows that.  I didn't do a practise run with any kind of paper or conference submission, but I'd like to explore something this year. I did start to explore postgrad stuff, but it's really a job for this year. I didn't really read outside the course materials, the year ended up much more socially and relationship focussed than I'd anticipated, and there is much to be joyful about in this respect. 

Culture:

  • Go and see performances because I want to, and enjoy the opportunities I get to see something alone as much as when I get to attend in a group. 
  • Blog about the performances I've gotten to see over the year regardless of how big or small they were. 
  • Read fiction that takes me to a happy place, fiction that enrichens my experience of the world. 
  • Read fiction that is fluffy and light, that I can appreciate when my brain is tired from studying and working. 
  • Use my enjoyment of television as study breaks so that there is an opportunity just to stop for a set period of time. 
  • Read 100 books this year for the Goodreads 2012 Reading Challenge and do reviews of them at the very least using that platform. 
  • Publish at least half of the reviews for the books I read this year on my blogs. 
  • Participate in and promote the Australian Women Writers Challenge for 2012. I've committed to reading 6 books by Australian women writers and reviewing 3 of them here on this blog. 

I attended arts/cultural things! With people and by myself, amongst them was a talk by Germaine Greer (interesting, though I reject her transphobic notions and wish she would shift in those views), the Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer, Roxette (and that was a childhood dream come true), some dance performances as part of the Perth International Arts Festival including a latin-swagger ballet (so awesome). I saw Meow Meow in a briliant caberet performance, saw 'Bladerunner' as an interactive experience on the public screen in Northbridge, and once again attended Swancon and Supanova. I didn't however blog about it as much as I'd planned.

I read a lot of fiction including completing the Australian Women Writer's Challenge, and read 65 out of 100 books that I'd planned to read. I read a mixture of interesting/engaging and challenging work - 'Ammonite' by Nicola Griffith and 'The Courier's New Bicycle' by Kim Westwood were stand outs. I also read a lot of comforting fluff, I reread the Miles Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster-Bujold, reread Anita Blake by Laurell K Hamilton, and started reading the Otherworld novels by Yasmine Galenorn. I also loved the series 'Chronicles of Elantra' by Michelle Sagara and highly recommend them to fantasy readers who love interesting female characters.

I watched quite a lot of interesting television, focusing in particular on shows featuring fantastic female characters, storylines and relationships (I should probably blog about that separately). Notable was Rizzoli and Isles, Silk, Scott and Bailey, Sons of Anarchy, Castle, Leverage and White Collar. 

Online:

  • Read the Down Under Feminist Carnival (DUFC) and submit to it at least 6 times throughout the year. 
  • Continue utilising online applications to streamline my information consumption and sharing. 
  • Blog more frequently here and keep up my personal blog elsewhere. I need to keep in mind, particularly for this space, that it doesn't have to be perfectly polished. I can trust myself to write decently and that everyone get's it wrong occasionally. I can trust my ability to deal with anything like that as needed. 
  • Continue to use my online tools to nurture my relationships and connections as well as to form new ones. 

This was successful throughout the year, though my posting here did taper off toward the end of the year - mainly because I was so busy out doing things that I didn't have enough brain left over to sit and write. Also, once the heat kicks in I find it much harder to concentrate, however much I desire to. I hosted the 51st DUFC in August with the theme 'Personal Positives'. It was incredibly successful with a number of people responding to my invitation to post on the subject. I hope to host again in 2013. 

Personal/Other: 

  • Travel to see my interstate partners at least once and preferably twice or three times this year. 
  • Celebrate my 15th anniversary with K' in style. 
  • Keep my relationship network map up to date. 
  • Do an artistic mindmap on my 2012 theme of Renewal
  • Be gentle on myself with all the emotional intensity and work of last year, allow the healing to take place. 
  • Practise asking for more and not feeling guilty or fearful that I am asking too much. 
  • Continue to address health concerns with professionals as required, and find ways of building in exercise that doesn't result in more pain and less coping/energy. 
  • Continue to consider and engage with the idea of food and eating patterns and also enjoy any cooking I wish to do but without making it a focal point of the year. 
  • Play games, guilt free just because you want to and it will be pleasurable once a week. 
  • Continue exploring my talent and commitment for Conversations and being a Conversationalist and whether I could possibly make a living from this at some stage. 
  • Maintain integrity with myself as my own best friend, my own partner and beloved and consider holding another 'Dear Self: I Do' event. 
  • Go on adventures and be less concerned with being well behaved - have fun and let go a little, don't focus so much on how I look/sound and how I might be judged. 
  • Explore new relationship opportunities if they arise. 
  • Travel to Brisbane and Sydney if I can magically afford it. 
  • Explore how I will move to Melbourne and taking on the challenge of (even more) independent living. This involves grappling with money as well as massive fear of changes. 
  • Continue to send postcards and letters to friends, Loves and strangers. 

So I didn't travel interstate after my February trip, although I'd wanted to. Anniversary celebrations ended up being low key and rather belated, but perfectly heartfelt. I actually had quite a lot of updating on my Relationship Constellations Map to do throughout the year, and enjoyed that. I did end up mindmapping Renewal, but not until January 2013 :P  I had less health concerns, and addressed some of them but need to follow up on this as my hiatus from pain has ended. I did some awesome cooking throughout the year, particularly with my boyfriend who is an amazing cook and sharing that with him was much of the happy-making. I played games - if not once a week then quite often! Also more boardgames! I was consistently kind to myself, and healed a lot in my sense of pride and confidence in myself, though I didn't hold another 'Dear Self: I do' event. There were new relationships and oh how I revelled in them! Melbourne got put on hold, but is part of the shape of 2013. I didn't send many cards or postcards in the end, I think that had something to do with turning my energy inwards. 

The year was amazing, challenging, empowering and a wonderful reminder as to who I am in the world, how I'm moving through the world and the kind of connections and relationships I want to pursue and delight in. I let myself be a Giant, and I had wonderful conversations with others that resulted in their taking Giant steps too. The year was so much bigger and more amazing than I could have hoped and I learned a lot, gained a lot and really think I got the best I could have out of Renewal as an enquiry. As usual, the actuality in the end was quite different from my imagining - not better or worse necessarily, but I always notice that my original envisioning is only part of the process, it's not prescriptive, it's paint on the canvas and that will shift and change over the year - as it is meant to. Thank you 2012, thank you Renewal, we were truly amazing together.

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:25:00 -0800 2013 Australian Women Writers Challenge Pledge http://transcendancing.posterous.com/2013-australian-women-writers-challenge-pledg http://transcendancing.posterous.com/2013-australian-women-writers-challenge-pledg

Last year I had immense fun taking up the challenge to read Australian Women Writers - a bunch of these authors already number amongst my favourites, but I love the attention being paid to some incredible writers out there. 

This year I'm going to take up the challenge again - there are still a whole bunch of books I never got to read yet, so I have plenty of material to choose from! If you're interested in great new books to read, and community to go with it, sign up for the 2013 Australian Women Writers Challenge

Awwbadge_2013

One of the best things was browsing the various reviews people wrote, because there were some books I picked up that otherwise I wouldn't have thought to read - like 'The Courier's New Bicycle' by Kim Westwood, which was one of my best of 2012 reads

This year I've set myself the 'Miles' challenge for reading and reviewing. I'm committing to reading six books, and reviewing four of them for 2013. Hopefully I'll overtake this and do more reading and reviews, but since I'm moving interstate and still have study and work in mind, I'll set myself an achievable goal. 

I'm also going to stick to speculative fiction again, as it is my favourite genre to read, but if anyone has any particularly strong recommendations for books outside the genre that it would be worth me trying, I'd love to hear from you. 

Additionally, I've also renewed my goal on Goodreads to read 100 books for 2013, I didn't achieve this goal in 2012, but I did read 62, so I was well over half way there. Hopefully this year I'll make it all the way! 

Feel free to friend me on Goodreads or follow me on twitter if you like, my username for both is 'transcendancing' (unsurprisingly). 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Sat, 22 Dec 2012 21:37:00 -0800 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Complete! http://transcendancing.posterous.com/2012-australian-women-writers-challenge-compl http://transcendancing.posterous.com/2012-australian-women-writers-challenge-compl

Back in January I pledged to do the 2012 Australian Women Writers Reading and Reviewing Challenge, and as of this morning, December 2012 I have completed the challenge! 

Awwc2012_-_bookdout_-_shelleyrae

I pledged to do the challenge as 'purist' reading in the science fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction genre. I pledged to read 6 books and review three.  In actuality, I read 9 books and reviewed 3. The list of books I read are detailed below with links to the books on Goodreads and also to the author's websites. 

The Full List

The Reign of Beasts (Creature Court #3) by Tansy Rayner Roberts  

Debris (Veiled Worlds #1) by Jo Anderton

The Courier's New Bicycle by Kim Westwood

Diamond Eyes (Mira Chambers #1) by A.A. Bell

Finnikin of the Rock (Lumatere Chronicles #1) by Melina Marchetta

Froi of the Exiles (Lumatere Chronicles #2) by Melina Marchetta

Burn Bright (Night Creatures #1) by Marianne de Pierres 

Angel Arias (Night Creatures #2) by Marianne de Pierres

Shine Light (Night Creatures #3) by Marianne de Pierres

 

The Reviews: 

The Reign of Beasts by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Debris by Jo Anderton

The Courier's New Bicycle by Kim Westwood

 

I had a marvellous time with the challenge, I read a whole lot of reviews and they certainly influenced my reading choices. I did find new authors to appreciate, and I got to have a whole lot of discussions with people about the books that I read. Two of the books I read for the challenge ended up being part of a tiny number of books that constituted my best reads of 2012, namely The Courier's New Bicycle and Diamond Eyes

I plan to take on the challenge next year too - I got so much out of the sense of community from the challenge, and also the fact that women writers and Australian ones were part of a constant conversation around me online for the whole year! So wonderful and I'm proud to be part of it. 

 

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:50:00 -0800 The Courier's New Bicycle by Kim Westwood http://transcendancing.posterous.com/the-couriers-new-bicycle-by-kim-westwood http://transcendancing.posterous.com/the-couriers-new-bicycle-by-kim-westwood

Awwc2012_-_bookdout_-_shelleyrae
This is a review for the Australian Women Writer's Challenge 2012 and has been delayed becuase I'd been trying to find time to do it justice. Justice or not, time is running out, and so here is my (belated) review. 

This is Book #3 based on my original pledge back in January! I'm certainly ready to complete the challenge, and this post will constitute the formal finishing, though I am hoping for an opportunity to review a few more books in depth. I have done some reasonable reviews on Goodreads througout the year. I am planning on continuing the challenge into 2013, so if you're also on Goodreads, feel free to friend me

Title: The Courier's New Bicycle

Author: Kim Westwood

Publisher and Year: Harper Collins Australia, 2011

Genre: Science Fiction

The_couriers_new_bicycle
Blurb from Goodreads: 

Join Salisbury Forth on twenty adrenaline-fuelled days as a courier of contraband in the alleyways of inner Melbourne, a city of rolling power outages, fuel rationing and curfews.

Life’s stressful, post-pandemic: a vaccine dispensed Australia-wide has caused mass infertility and people are scrambling for cures. This would be fine for the hormone business, except the new government has banned all remedies except prayer.

Now the pious gather under the streetlights at dusk and the Neighbourhood Values Brigades prowl for ‘transgressors’. Meanwhile, the out-of-town animal farms have started up a barbarous form of hormone production and the Animal Protection Vigilantes are planning their next raid.

For Salisbury it’s not all bad. Love is in the air, and the job is a joy—until someone starts distributing suss hormones stamped with the boss’s Cruelty-Free Assured logo. This bike courier turned accidental sleuth has to discover who’s trying to destroy the business before it all goes belly up…

'The Courier's New Bicycle' is one of my stand out best reads of 2012, and thats why I've delayed this review so long as I was trying to find useful words to review it with instead of flailing wildly with joy and splattering words all over the place... not sure I've moved on sufficiently, but we'll see. 

I'm head over teakettle in love with Melbourne, and Westwood has evoked the essence of Melbourne beautifully in this book, including taking it into a darker place where conservatism rules. The politics of this book resonate with me strongly and I appreciate Sal as protagonist being someone with a non-binary gender presentation, and also a non heteronormative sexuality. And, it isn't as though these are immediately central to the plot, except they are in an oblique way becuase they are central to Sal, who is fielding this new future society that distrusts and despises zer. In a future weighed down by fertility crises, it is no surprise that the politics of gender, sexuality are central themes. 

The characters in the story have a realness to them that I really enjoyed, they're ordinary people living in a society that they struggle with, who acts against them. And yet they still seek to act for the greater good,  trying to make a difference whether to battery farmed animals, or to each other. The importance of chosen family is emphasised in this book, and this pleases me as someone who appreciates both blood and chosen family in vastly different ways. 

Sal's integrity is one of the things I like best about the character, forthright and honest, there is struggling with keeping secrets, even if for good reason. Reluctant detective or not, Sal is believable throughout the story and the gentle threads of romance and friendship that underpin the story are brilliantly woven. 

Shortlisted for  the Tiptree Award*, it's easy to see why, the exploration of gender and sexuality politics is deft and insightful. There are easily recognisable echoes of existing fears and politics in these areas for those of us who are queer in our gender, sexuality, or lifestyle. It's not to hard to imagine this kind of future, but knowing others are able to imagine it makes me feel a little less alone in this fearful imagining. Also, this book has a story so well told that I have to hope it will reach people and open eyes previously closed to the lived reality of people who are othered. Some have described the books as dystopic, however I'm not among them as I find the future described in the book all to plausible. 

Highly recommended, I just can't say enough good things about this book. 

*Thanks to Tansy correcting me that this book didn't win the Tiptree, but it was shortlisted, now corrected! 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:38:08 -0700 Hold Tight Your Grand Narrative http://transcendancing.posterous.com/hold-tight-your-grand-narrative http://transcendancing.posterous.com/hold-tight-your-grand-narrative

The idea of the personal narrative is one that has surfaced several times over the past year, from a few different thoughtful people in conversations I’ve gotten to share with them. In particular, the idea of a grand style personal narrative.

This is probably a good point to go into the definition space. What on earth am I talking about, personal narratives – grand ones at that? I’m referring to the fact that we all have a personal narrative about our life, about how we share our lives with others like family, friends, or even community. It is our internal telling of our story, past, present and also our future. A personal narrative is about your life, so it will reflect your individual way of moving through the world. That individuality also means that your personal narrative can be about *anything* in your life, career, personal wish lists or bucket lists, family, education, any other kind of goal or significant (to you) milestone. This is just a name I’m giving to something that we’re fairly aware of existing generally speaking. The ‘grand’ aspect comes into it in the way that, the narrative that someone has for their life has some kind of perceived grandiose intention, perhaps it is changing the world, somehow.  

Many of the people I know have a grand personal narrative – and largely that is focused on making a difference either in the spheres of personal influence, or in bigger spaces like local community, people in our state or national locale or bigger still… all people in a group, or simply all people, everywhere. Often this grand  narrative has a certain kind of gradation to it, the action may be in a direct sphere of influence, but the intentionality may be rooted in a much bigger space for change or cultural shift such as for a marginalised group or society at large. I am reassured by the fact that the people surrounding me all have some kind of bigger vision about them, some kind of thing they’re working towards, committed too, striving for. I want always to be surrounded by people who are thinking big and where we are challenging each other to think even bigger.   

I want to tell you that I’ve been having conversations with people who are intensely engaged in the positive, the overt ways in which they are running with and living their narratives, grand and otherwise. Unfortunately, mostly these conversations have been around people coming to terms with this idea of a grand personal narrative and the judgement from others surrounding this. I feel that the judgement comes from the space where others give voice to their personal cynicism and wish to visit upon the other person and their narrative. It is a little like censure in the sense of ‘how dare they think that they can really pull that off/make a difference?’ For the most part I don’t believe that this imposed cynical judgement intentional, often it’s meant to protect from disappointment, from giving too much, from perceived negative outcomes, and other similar fears.

It isn’t even as though these fears are groundless, often they do have a base for concern. But, that doesn’t mean it’s a reason not to follow through. This idea of a grand personal narrative is a big one, it requires a deep personal commitment and it demands self knowledge and often personal sacrifice. These are the spaces of questioning the commitments we have, the things we believe in and believe we are committed to. Operating outside of ourselves and our individual concerns requires bigger thinking, more consideration, more compassion and more intentionality. If housing the homeless, feeding the starving, creating space for other marginalised groups was so easy, we’d have done it by now. And these are just examples, they’re not indicative of the only spaces a grand narrative can occupy. But the point to take here is that, our commitment to our narrative(s) is tested, time and again – in part it is about our stamina, but also our willingness to evolve our view and actions in relation to our narrative. It involves being willing to go back to that question of what does doing this thing really mean to me, why do I care so much? If it didn’t matter to us, we wouldn’t make it through the hard parts, the testing parts, we wouldn’t question ourselves and our course(s) of action. 

The negative judgement around grand narratives and the effect they have on the lives of those undertaking the narrative, or those surrounding them seems to be concentrated in one of a few ways. Such narratives are perceived to be of detrimental effect on the person doing the action, there is the perception that the narrative or its purpose is of questionable value, or the perception that whatever your commitment is, it’s ‘someone else’s job’. There’s also that strong pull toward being part of the group and the status quo preservation - and that's the antithesis of undertaking any kind of grand narrative. It’s that desire for everyone to achieve to about the same levels as each other, avoid standing out too much, don't be a 'tall poppy'. There are always people who truly excel are rare and celebrated but always in spaces where ‘heroes’ are recognised – in Australia that’s the sporting arena. It's generally seen as not okay to want to be your own kind of 'hero', making a difference, especially if you're open about it. 

Well... I am out to be a hero. I am out to make a difference. I am out to shift culture and have there be more space for everyone to exist in their own way, where we don't diminish others, where equality is not just available but is present in useful and flexible forms. I have a grand narrative, it's about the importance of love and seeking to 'unfuck' the conversations we have about it. My narrative is about the importance of kindness and that all of us are human, moving through the world trying to do the best we can.  

Why is this important to me? Why do I want to be immersed in spaces where people have varied flavours of personal narratives? This is our life… this is my life. I want to give everything I can, I don’t want to waste a moment or wonder if there was something else that I let slip by. What on earth is the point of not having something that you’re working for, fighting for, seeking to grow or change? No matter how small or big you think it is… having *something* I think is incredibly important and how we mark participation in society, being part of it – recognising our own ability and responsibility to contribute and influence things.  

This is the world I have to live in, and it is often an unkind world, there is a sense of ‘not enough’ and ‘too much’ and vast differences and inequalities between these spaces and those who occupy them. I’m not a huge fan of the status quo, I appreciate the need to plateau and stabilise things but I never want to be standing completely still. I want to appreciate where I’m at, where I’ve come from… but I always want to be moving forward being my best self and making a difference for the world in my own unique way. Oh yes, my grand personal narrative? Well I’m certain that there is more than one going on. And I am definitely on the level of global humanity, with various subsets, depending on the individual narrative.

Don’t be sad about or seek to come to terms with having a grand narrative… take it and run with it, both hands and trust yourself and that you have the right to give back and contribute, to make a difference on a small or large or massive scale. You have every right to your commitment to whatever it is that drives you, compels you, keeps you up at nights and thinking or dreaming about a different or modified future. You get to do this regardless of how others value your commitment, you are the person you have to live with inside your head for the rest of your life. Trust those inside questions that make you squirm, like how much does your belief in something *really* mean to you… does it mean enough to you to give up something, or take on something, be brave somehow, learn something, teach something, listen or speak to something. Only you can answer that and no one else gets to make that decision for you. Or how you go about things. Or what success looks like.

 

This post is dedicated to all of you with whom I’ve shared this conversation, your personal grand narrative is your amazing theme song and I want to see you live it with all the commitment, flair, personal compassion and integrity that I know you have. And all the other quirky and uniquely you aspects too. I want to, and look forward to, marvelling at your awesome and I wish to do this many times over.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Mon, 24 Sep 2012 08:13:00 -0700 On Love... http://transcendancing.posterous.com/on-love http://transcendancing.posterous.com/on-love

For me, love is not a single thing or moment, not a single emotion or definition. Love is multi-faceted and liminal. It is both here and between here and the next moment, a threshold. Love is whole within me, and also whole within the person who loves me. Whole within each person where the dynamic has a multiplicity. Love is also held in the space between us, space created and nurtured by each of us. 

Love exists as we each individually define it and that definition is immediate and personal. That we all define it and apply it personally resonates culturally and allows a cultural definition of to surface. A cultural definition is the collective agreement we share on a societal level about how we experience and practice love in particular ways, involving certain things. There exist many expressions and practices, beliefs, understandings about love, but the cultural definition is the one we understand as what 'everyone knows' or more accurately what 'everyone agrees to'.

Love as a cultural definition is tempered not only by how we all collectively experience love, but by how we believe love to exist and how we reinforce the resulting social structures. We simultaneously release and imprison our experiences and definitions of love, leaving us with a confusion where we distrust the personal over the structured social rules about love. This is how love can become smaller, paler and more insipid, less powerful and less believable.  And this too is valid… but it is not the *only* way in which love is valid. In my experience, this paler practice and expression of love on a wide social scale obfuscates that there are other valid ways to experience, define, and practice love. We don't share choices about love easily with others. We don't teach our children or young people about different ways love occurs, we leave everyone to reinvent this wheel, or to roll it along the socially accepted track without pause or thought for other possibilities. 

I am personally dedicated to love and I seek to break through the structures and beliefs that imprison our ability to experience and express love, to believe in it, accept it, personally define and understand it. I seek in everything I do, to give love away, to add love into things. 

In each moment where we act with love, we create it, define it, and affirm it anew. Such actions do not occur in a vacuum. Acting with love, adding love into things, and creating space for love to be defined and affirmed personally, individually, adds to a collective resonance that creates a bigger, living and breathing social understanding and definition around love. One big enough and broad enough for all of us.

This is post in many ways links to my other posts in recent months on relationships, but it is also completely separate and stands alone. Love is such an integral part of how we move through the world, it's not just about how we relate to others, but also ourselves and the world around us. So this is my understanding and experience of love, my attempt to add to the many definitions of love.

In this post, I make no attempt to look at any particular kind of love, and instead seek to look at it from a more abstract perspective. Well before such specifics about types of love become useful, how do we understand love, amorphous and nebulous in itself - what does it mean when we allow it to transcend our desire to categorise and contain it? I would welcome your adding to this and sharing with me your own definitions about love, particularly in this abstract and conceptual space.  

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Tue, 28 Aug 2012 07:38:10 -0700 Being Someone Who Cares, Seeking Care http://transcendancing.posterous.com/being-someone-who-cares-seeking-care http://transcendancing.posterous.com/being-someone-who-cares-seeking-care

Caring is one of those fraught topics. I find that it is in many ways an invisible thing and to draw attention to it is to sound ungrateful for the care you receive, or like you begrudge the care you give. Or, perhaps simply worrying that you might sound like a petulant child complaining that ‘It’s not fair!’

Then there are the different ways in which caring happen and the way that it seems like, some forms of care seem to have more legitimate cause to draw attention to the invisible work load; such as caring as a mother or primary care-giver, caring for an elder person or providing care to someone who is disabled. These areas are so important to focus on and I appreciate the need to continually reinforce the nature of this unpaid care work that happens.

However, care work also happens in less obvious places and these can also be difficult to navigate in terms of receiving care, recognition or balance. There is the general expectation of caring because you’re female (and are therefore good at it). This gets more focus in the other specific areas I mention above by their nature as being spaces where women caring is prevalent. But, I think that while these specific spaces draw attention to the idea of women as caregivers, it is also important to discuss it as an overall issue.

Another space where unpaid/under recognised care work can be overlooked is being in the position where you are good at caring. I find as someone who has a talent and desire for caring that being recognised as being good at caring kind of becomes the basis for what is ‘ordinary’ in how people engage with you and the expectations they have. At this point it is harder to be the person in need of care, as though being good at it means that you have things so marvellously together that you are less in need of the kind of care you give.

All of these spaces, those in focus and those more invisible show that there is a dangerous gap in how caring happens where in large part, the people doing the caring are less able to access it effectively (or at all). Or, even if they can access care themselves there is pressure for them to need it less because performing the work of care is perceived as being its own reward or caring in nature. Another aspect I've noticed is that in seeking care, those who offer it are more likely to be in need of it themselves, intensifying that need. Certainly this is personally true for me. 

The importance of care work continues to be one of the massive standing ‘elephants in the room’. The doing of caring work is so conditioned, the assumption that care work will happen is so ingrained, and the social constructions around the value of care work, are such that the entirety becomes completely invisible.

With the invisibility of care and its value, comes the difficulty in accessing care as a person who does the work of caring. It’s a fallacy that doing care or being good at caring negates our need to receive it. Here it’s probably useful to mention the usefulness and importance of self care, and yet being able to do this for yourself does not negate the need to experience care from others.

And yet, my awareness of this does not address the difficulty with which I may access care, or feel entitled to care. My conversations with myself in this area involve rationalisation and justification about the work I do to take care of myself, to balance the energy I spend on care giving and even that I simply must be better at asking for and articulating what I need. These are invariably, not useful conversations because they are all about creating conditions under which I am or am not worthy of care.

Simply put, being valued by the people in my life means I am worthy of care (it means I’ve designated these people being worthy of care in return also). That’s a very practical and immediately relevant way of articulating care worthiness, and it’s not the only way or even the kindest or most compassionate way of articulating care worthiness. However, talking about the people who need care because they do the work of care, makes it a more relevant distinction than simply drawing a blanket around the idea that we all deserve care (I believe we do).

How then to receive caring when it is needed? How to ask for it, how to articulate what is desired for care… Who is available to provide care – are they someone who is also over-allocated for care work and in need of care themselves? Is it about valuing care more – or more financially? Is it about getting more people to consciously act in the role of caring?

There are no easy answers to these (and related) questions. In asking or writing this I am still experiencing the desire for care and the awareness that care is not readily available to me in a desired form. Plus, allowing someone to care for me without guilt feeling like I should be caring is also a factor. Mainly in writing this I wanted to draw attention to those of us who wouldn’t be immediately recognised as someone over-allocated in providing care work. I’m good at it, I value it, I enjoy caring… and yet… I am also wishful feeling burned out and emotionally fragile, wanting someone else to perform care for me. Wishing I could relax enough to let them.

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:00:03 -0700 Sharing 'The Silver Brumby' by Elyne Mitchell http://transcendancing.posterous.com/sharing-the-silver-brumby-by-elyne-mitchell http://transcendancing.posterous.com/sharing-the-silver-brumby-by-elyne-mitchell

So Tansy has issued a Book Week Blog Challenge inviting people to write about their childhood reading. And I have a few things I wanted to share with you, but first of all I'm going to start with my favourite childhood book (and favourite series), 'The Silver Brumby' by Elyne Mitchell. 

I read this book (and the series) countless times and I have a new edition copy of the book waiting for me to reread yet again. Only this time, I'm hoping to introduce it to some of the significant people in my life. I've always wanted to read it aloud, and I'm hoping that I can do this soon with some of my Loves. 

As a child, I was completely into horses, and this book won my heart in the first pages. A foal is born, his mother loves him, he has a best friend and they have adventures throughout the Snowy Mountains. To this day I want to visit the Snowy Mountains and explore the places I remember reading about as a child. 

I loved the descriptions of Thowra's life and his journey, I loved his sense of character, I loved the other horses he came into contact with, his friends, his enemies. This is a book where kindness and wisdom were celebrated, where violence existed but as a last resort. 

I loved that these stories were about the world of horses and their society - there were no human voices to impose on this experience, humans were 'other' and unwanted, unnecessary to the life Thowra sought. And, though in the story he was sought after by humans, I loved that he was always one step ahead, I loved that he triumphed through many hardships, found and sought love, family, friendship and loyalty. 

Writing this makes me want to pick it up immediately, but I'm still holding out to read it aloud so I might poke those I'd love to introduce it to instead. 

Elyne Mitchell is an amazing woman who lived in the Snowy Mountains herself, she wrote and had many books published, many of them still in print. 'The Silver Brumby' is an Australian classic story and I would see it celebrated with more acclaim than it gets - all the fuss died down after the movie and the animated television series. I've been sad to see it omitted from Australian bookstores who have an Australian Classics section in their shops. The stories she told should be remembered and shared and I hope that some of you take the time to look up this book and try it out for yourself. It is something special indeed. 

This image is the same cover of the edition of this book I owned as a child:

Silver_brumby_cover_image

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Thu, 09 Aug 2012 07:43:11 -0700 Presenting the 51st Down Under Feminists' Carnival http://transcendancing.posterous.com/presenting-the-51st-down-under-feminists-carn http://transcendancing.posterous.com/presenting-the-51st-down-under-feminists-carn

Welcome everyone to the 51st Down Under Feminists' Carnival for the month of August. This month I undertook to highlight the theme 'Personal Positives'. I wanted to provide an array of posts that provide insight into our personal lives and stories as women.

To everyone who wrote for me for the theme, to everyone who wanted to or thought about it, thank you. Your stories and the difference you make is vital and important and this carnival is for all of you, and all of us. Because, we do make a difference just by being in the world doing our thing, the tiny ways we seek to make a difference... it all counts in critical and defining ways. Together, we wield our teaspoons, emptying our ocean of the ick and the muck. This month, I'm returning spoonfuls of positivity, visibility and perspective.

I've also collected with your assistance links on a range of other topics from various bloggers and I hope you'll find something interesting, something thought provoking and something that moves you. Thank you to everyone who submitted, your investment in the carnival is what makes it thrive. I hope you enjoy this month's carnival. 

First up, the collection of posts from bloggers who have all written about their Personal Positives, how they seek to make a difference in moving through their everyday lives. This is some personal and powerful writing and I hope it inspires you as it did me.

Chally from Zero at the Bone writes about Working Toward the Positive through support of bodily autonomy and boundaries. In Prime Number Modern Mama talks about being a parent, a wage-earner, and choices around maternity leave and bedtime rituals. Callistra discusses the evolution of self and choosing growth in her post Phoenix Arising: My Process of De-construction and Re-construction. Sky shares with us all the tiny ways she chooses her activism based on pragmatism and pleasure in her post My Trusty Teaspoon. Stephanie Gunn shares her experiences with depression and negativity and how she seeks to raise her son with a positive outlook in The Light in the Darkness is Always There: Personal Positives.

Flyingblogspot writes Swinging on the Spiral and talks about her relationship with curiosity as her way of making a difference in the world. And related, my own offering, Personal Positives: Love as Activism, where I share how love is for me, the way in which I try to give back to the world. Sunili gives us The Vagina Manifesto: #cunts and discusses reclaiming of the word as a key to the shift in her understanding and appreciation of women and ladybits. In Personal Positives: Experiencing My Mistakes, Steph talks about her time away from Melbourne in Beijing and how it has taught her so much about the making of mistakes and the good that comes from those experiences. Guest posting here at  The Conversationalist, Marianne de Pierres talks about wrestling her demons in Personal Positives: Marianne de Pierres on Defeating the Ego and the Importance of Mentoring. Also guest posting here is Maia, in her post Personal Positives: @agrrud on Day One she shares the changes in her life, her experiences of community, learning and being grateful

Thank you again to all who wrote or considered writing on this topic for me, I think that it is vitally important that we keep telling our stories, and keep putting good stuff back into the ocean as we clean out the muck.

On to the rest of the carnival!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Race and Racism

My Scarlett Heartt shares her thoughts on the judgement of being black 'enough', particularly considering the experiences of her daughter in her post Am I Black Enough For You?

In her post In Defence of Radicals, Utopiana of Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist shares her thoughts on radical feminism and its relationship to Indigenous politics stating "the radicals want to change stuff on a big scale. They believe that society, that structures, that laws etc have been built by those who have the power, to reinforce that power, and these need to be challenged and restructured."  

Sarah at Brown to the Bone discusses that programs like Abstudy are not about creating further divisiveness in Australian society but instead providing opportunities to address inequality where it is vitally needed in her post Positive Discrimination Not Reverse Racisms Mmmkay. 

 

Family and Women's Work

Made In Melbourne of Maintaining the Rage Makes Me Tired talks about being a lactavist and breastfeeding and about seeking to affirm women's choices for how they feed their children. In her post I'm Normal, she states that "There is no breast vs. bottle debate. There is just the fact that we need to feed our children. And that we do it as best as we can."

Tamara guest posts at The Thesis Whisperer on The Foibles of Flexibility discussing the downsides of pursuing her PhD while being a parent to two small children

Jo at A Life Unexamined in her post Mothers and Whores: Women in Ancient Rome gives us rare insight into women from ancient Rome, "They are spoken for, but never speak; represented, but rarely for themselves."

Deborah at A Bee of a Certain Age points out how citing childcare and family responsibilities as the reason women don't advance in the police force necessarily draws attention to the fact that the same isn't a problem for male officers. Her post Why Women Don't Make it to the Top in the Police Force rightly asserts that "A woman shouldn’t have to be a superwoman to succeed" 

 

Life

Karen Healey makes a splash when she calls for the women around her to talk about why they're awesome in her post I Mean You. This post is filled with brilliant and heartening comments from all kinds of women and it is well worth the read. Why are you awesome? Really... in a non self-deprecating way... go and share on Karen's post

Bethwyn at Butterfly Elephant talks about Learning to Step Into Your Own Power in relation to dealing with chronic illness, needing to rest and wrestling with external demands and misunderstanding. 

Alisa of Champagne and Socks talks about learning to see the glass half full in her post The Halfway Mark is Still a Milestone. She shares about the goals she's undertaken and the progress she's made becomes clearer to her as she examines her thinking around success. (Note: discussion of weightloss.)

 

Social Justice

TigTog at Hoyden about Town makes an excellent point in her post Deleting Blog Comments: Exercise of Property Rights vs Free Speech. In reference to that tired defence against comment moderation, that "'Free Speech' does not oblige somebody who owns a press to give anybody else access to it. Just like one cannot force the owner of a house to let one come inside, one cannot force the owner of a press to publish one’s words"

Grans Lock On comes to us from Helen at Blogger On A Cast Iron Balcony sharing with us the activism by a group of grandmothers in Toolangi (Mt St Leonard) trying to prevent the logging of the rain forest in the Central Highlands of Victoria

In her post Trigger Warning: Trigger WarningsLudditeJourno of The Hand Mirror talks about the cultural reasoning behind using trigger warnings in the feminist blogoshere. She states, "for me, oppression is trauma in millions of micro experiences, all the time.  Trigger warnings help me monitor on what level I'll allow myself to be exposed to oppression today" (Note: Trigger warning for discussion of trigger warnings, racism, oppression and rape culture.)

Sarah at Brown to the Bone blogs about Legitimating Oppression, how laws that allow police greater powers disproportionally affect marginalised groups, how crises like the GFC that affect groups of people are used to justify further marginalisation against certain groups of people.  


LGBTQIAU

The idea that by not being out about your queerness is deceptive comes under scrutiny by Chally of Zero at the Bone in her post Queerness and Deception. Partly what she highlights is that focus in this way hides the underlying fallacy that being heterosexual is 'normal' (and thus everything else 'abnormal'). 

From Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist, in her post Why I Support Marriage Equality, But Not Marriage, Utopiana advocates for equal access for all to marriage. However, she also examines the institution of marriage and discusses her concerns with marriage in a contemporary setting with all of the historical and traditional baggage

LudditeJourno of The Hand Mirror posted Marrying for Social Change, talking about why the debate for marriage equality is still dangerous and painful for people affected by it and that there is still work to be done. 

 

Feminism

Ideologically Impure critiques the National Council of Women in New Zealand's campaign about why feminism is necessary in her post, National Council of Women Acknowledges its Need for Feminism

The News With Nipples discusses the policing of women's behaviour in her post The Mirabella Story is About How We Expect Women to Act. She states, "if you think this isn’t about policing women’s behaviour, when’s the last time a male politician was criticised for not being warm or caring?"

Zoya at Lip Magazine writes about this bizarre notion that in identifying as feminist that we can in random acts or statements become 'unfeminist' in her article The Feminist Relationship. It is as though there is some sort of feminist police out to make sure we're all following 'the rules'. Missing one's partner is as feminist as any other choices we may make about how to enact our desire for equality and to end oppression.

Nicole at Wom*news writes how The Second Wave Started in Brisbane, with Merle Thornton and Ro Bognor chained themselves to the bar in protest of women's exclusion from public places in 1965. She talks about the impact of Thornton's feminism on her life and about sharing a drink with her in the 'Thornton Room' at the Regatta Hotel

Tallulah Spankhead of The Lady Garden invited a guest poster to share about her experiences of domestic violence in a post bringing Women's Refuge Week to our attention. In Guest Post: Women's Refuge Week,the poster is candid and honest, her story is hard hitting. (Trigger Warning: discussion of domestic abuse and violence.)

 

Sex and Relationships

I continue my foray into blogging about relationships in my post Redefining Success and Failure in Relationships here at The Conversationalist.

Blue Milk posts about Altitude Sickness as a Metaphor for Relationships, talking about how having small children often necessitates closing parts of yourselves as parents down. She talks about how often the parts that get shut down are the parts that as partners fell in love with and that it is something of an endurance race to live on thin air

Ideologically Impure also critiques of John McCracken's fear-mongering about the dangers posed by sex workers, in The Magical Sex Industry of South Auckland, with Your Host John McCracken

 

The Body 

Mindy at  Hoyden about Town draws our attention to the media sensationalism around the 'obesity crisis' that just won't quit in her post OMG Zombesity Crisis, Again.

Chally of Zero at the Bone talks about the way in which privilege can be discerned through entitlement to touch and whose boundaries are respected in her post Which Kinds of Bodies Are Respected?

 

Media

Helen at Blogger On A Cast Iron Balcony critiques the mainstream media idea that blogs are all written by people writing trivial things about their lives and their opinions on the world in her post I Don't Know Much About Blogs But I Know What I Like. It couldn't possibly be the case that the stories people share and the things we learn from one another through blogs are valuable and different from what is served up by the media, could it?

Orlando at  Hoyden about Town  talks in Why I Would Rather Let My Son Watch X-Men than Bob the Builder about the importance of female character representation and that it was more important to be showing media that involved multiple women being involved, doing things in the story than to avoid media portraying violence and good vs evil. 

Blue Milk asks Are Princesses Bad For Girls? linking to an interview with Brenda Chapman as one of the main writers of the film 'Brave' after her daughter went to see the movie with her dad. With the overwhelming amount of princess influence out there, Brenda talks about wanting "to break the stereotype of the princess, as well as the princess plot." (Brenda is quoted in Blue Milk's post.)

 

Geekery and Creativity

Tara at Settle Petal talks with great excitement about the CERN discovery that could potentially be the Higgs bosun particle. Her post Particle This! The Discovery of the Higgs Bosun and Women In Science and particularly that Ms Fabiola Gianotti as lead physicist on the ATLAS project addressing the press conference and being recognised for her contribution to the discovery. 

 

Language and Literature

Charlotte of Wom*news writes about patriarchal language systems embedded in culture in Herstory in Language. She articulates how partriarchy in language becomes invisible in the "way that terms such as ‘chairman/policeman’ are the default while ‘female judge/ female engineer’ appear as necessary ‘extra’ distinctions could be examples of the way in which language transmits the endorsement of this system"


Where the Wonder Women Are

Finally, last but not least, a selection from Tansy Rayner Roberts, she's been writing a blog series called 'Where The Wonder Women Are' about the female characters in comics. I've linked you to all her July posts, but she's definitely still writing and the posts are definitely worth a look, even if you've only a passing familiarity with comics. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's it from me for the August Down Under Feminists' Carnival here at The Conversationalist, I hope you've enjoyed the carnival and in particular the intimate and generous posts considering my theme Personal Positives.

The Fifty-Second Edition of the Down Under Feminists' Carnival is planned for 5 September, 2012 and will be hosted by the fabulous  Lip Magazine. Submissions for the carnival can be emailed to Dunja via dunja [at] lipmag [dot] com for those who can’t access blogcarnival.

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Tue, 07 Aug 2012 23:56:00 -0700 Personal Positives: @agrrud on Day One http://transcendancing.posterous.com/personal-positives-agrrud-on-day-one http://transcendancing.posterous.com/personal-positives-agrrud-on-day-one

I'd like to welcome Maia as a guest poster to The Conversationalist sharing her thoughts on this month's Down Under Feminists' Carnival theme, "Personal Positives'. Maia is dear to me and it is truly a pleasure to host her candid and introspective post here as part of the carnival. 


Today was the first…

Today is a lot of firsts.

I left a relationship a couple of months ago, the weekend before I
started my new job. Today my new job took me to another town. I have a
serviced apartment in the city, an allowance, a flight home each
weekend.  Inside my backpack - the largest I could sneak on the plane
- lay a coiled string of fairy lights: a home making device.

The company I work for prides itself on its culture. I chose it for
that. When I came out of my my post-PhD stupor and actually paid some
mind to my life again, I wanted three things in equal measures: highly
technical work; among diverse, open-minded, fascinating, socially
capable people; at an organisation whose values I love and respect.

I wanted to be part of a community.

I am an engineer. A scientist. No, an engineer. All of the above.
These are some of the things I am, certainly. Now I work in software.
They’ve employed me, this organisation full of wonder and generosity,
to break things. They trusted my sense in the world, though my
software ability is rudimentary and out of date.

Back home, where I’ll be spending weekends, I have a life so full I
can barely devote the requisite 40 hours a week to work. Where did it
go, the time? Me of the past slogged eighty-, hundred-hour weeks at a
thesis. Past me drove into town at 10pm on Saturdays, struggling
through post-football traffic, to run long, boring, finicky
experiments, week after week. I still work that hard, but when the
work itself dried up, I shoved things into its absence. Friends,
lovers, committees, science talks, acrobalance classes. Being in this
new place will be good; I want to devote more time to learning how to give in this field.

A car arrived at my door this morning, at an hour so early I can only
assume it’s imaginary. I was driven to the office when I landed.
Meetings. Coffee. Whiteboards. Access card forms. Do we know who the
knowledge experts on this project are right now? How about the success
criteria? Maybe tomorrow, when the vital person is back, we can run
through a few scenarios.

We are consultants, here to test their systems. I am learning how the
labyrinthine tools work, much less the client’s infrastructure. I have
a mentor. I’ll figure it out. I’m smart and capable.

We traverse this world, my heartache and I, and learn. No day is a
standalone. Day One is one of a continuum - a community of days, if
you will.

My mentor and I will be working closely. We discussed our
communication styles today, our strengths and weaknesses. We gave each
other permission to be pulled up when we stray from the path of
usefulness.

My life is…amazing. The opportunities I have are tremendous. I live in
a bubble. My friends, my lovers, now my colleagues - all think big.
All have at least some awareness of their own bigotry, and work to
correct it. My life contains kindness, intelligence, challenge,
generosity. I encourage it wherever I can. I have money and time and
love and friends and things and access. I am spoilt.

I remind myself, and the world around me, that this is luxury.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:01:00 -0700 Redefining Success and Failure in Relationships http://transcendancing.posterous.com/reconsidering-the-need-for-success-and-failur http://transcendancing.posterous.com/reconsidering-the-need-for-success-and-failur

Success and failure are familiar structures that we experience in our everyday lives within modern society. Perhaps we don't notice how necessary we find it to grade our successes and failures in some kind of comparative hierarchy where we fall in different areas of life. While our fascination with success and failure filters through most eveyr aspect of our lives, in my post I am again choosing to focus on relationships. This post leads on from previous posts in this series, Relationship Shapes, Spaces and Spacemaking, and On Relationships.  

Once again I’d like to emphasise that I do not speak from any position of authority or expertise. I speak from my deep commitment and passion for the subject of love, intimacy and relationships. I’ve invested immense amounts of time, care, conversation, listening, reading and study into these concepts and spaces. It is from this space that I speak and create a space for conversation and consideration where we can explore further together.

The purpose of this post is to begin to reveal questions worth asking so that we may explore in relation to how we culturally construct our relationships according to success and failure markers. This post focuses on the concepts of success and failure as a meta-narrative for how we impose these ideas in our relationships and thinking. I hope to reveal the spaces where assumption underpins our actions and beliefs around relations and the perceptions or success and failure here. In examining how we construct and understand success and failure markers in relationships I hope to create an opportunity for us to take on new constructions, or embrace existing ones with conscious thought.

As a culture worker, I am constantly aware that no action we take, no word we speak, no thought we think is separate from, or occurs outside the influence of our individual surrounding cultural concerns. At which point, if the idea of escaping this seems attractive I would also note that this firmly implants the notion of being trapped by culture. We are not trapped… we are subject to culture in all the ways that culture is subject to us and we have immense influence over this if we choose to utilise it. This interconnectivity is as fascinating and awe inspiring as it is potentially terrifying – intent and what you choose to put into the world is in my experience, what it is important to count.

Arbitrary designations such as success and failure are other traps of culture that we buy into and perpetuate willingly. With relationships the loops of thinking can become particularly vicious and complexly layered in their shared reinforcement. So in order to examine the context for success and failure markers in relationships, first we need to address the existence of success and failure.

I have a fairly fundamental philosophical approach to this kind of thing, namely: success and failure exist only because we say they do, and collectively we agree on that existence. Once I began to operate with this assumption that things exist only through statement and agreement… it became easier for me to willingly re-examine and redefine how I wanted to mark my relationships and my approaches to relationships. 

The other trap of how we conceive success and failure is that we set them up to oppose one another as a dichotomy. I’m not suggesting that this can’t be useful on occasion, but I find generally that especially in consideration of living life, that such simple good/bad designations through dichotomy are more harmful than beneficial. I find that it is useful to allow space for elements of success, failure – both and neither to exist as a spectrum for relating to our relationships.

The array of my relationships involves many lessons of success and of failure and how I've conceived of and refined my understanding and construction of these ideas. One particular failure comes to mind in that I was abandoned... the person I'd been in a relationship with for some years just stopped contacting me. There were issues at the time, but the last communication I'd received from them had emphasised their commitment to the connection and to being in contact. I don't have any other way to frame the ending to that relationship except as failure. And it is failure I'm unwilling to take on as my own, and yet I don't actually feel better about it for that, though by now I've mostly stopped asking myself how I could somehow have been better to not have been abandoned.

Thankfully, I have many more constructions for success in a variety of ways:

  • My fiance and I realising that we were personally committed to each other getting to have the most amazing life possible, and that this transcended the need to cohabit in the same house/state/country if opportunity should knock. Knowing that he is always completely in my corner, and me in his is an incredible feeling whatever other difficulties we may face.
  • My lover of over two years has recently entered into a new and very different relationship and I am delighted that they will get something they've been seeking for years so much that I find I have incredible space for our connection to shift and change to accommodate that, though both of us wish to preserve the 'more than friends' nature of our connection and the related emotional closeness we've developed.
  • Someone incredibly special to me who is an interstate connection also shifted their relationship focuses this year and we shifted our connection to focus on our friendship and emotional closeness rather than our sexual connection because it worked better in context for where they were heading.
  • Sharing an incredible trust with my interstate lover where one of her partners had become an ex-partner to me where we both trusted in the integrity of care and support for each other despite the dissonance of the other broken connection. Trusting her that she understood and validated my experience of things and her trusting me to be happy and supportive genuinely of her relationship with the person in common.

You'll notice that not all of these are elation based successes. Also, none of them focus on longevity and rather draw on flexibility and a willingness to trust and work together for needs to be met and happiness to be shared. My experience of success and of failure is different from even a year ago and my practises and thinking reflects this. Taking into account all of my own experiences, all of the conversations I've had, the study and reading I've done, I believe that how we conceive and engage with the idea of successful and failed relationships is a subjective and personal thing.

There are common elements where discussion is worthwhile, but ultimately it has to work for you and those you have relationships with. Mindfulness and thought here can mean that there is a progression where how well things work can improve that also allows for how we change throughout our lives with the passing of time and taking on new experiences.

So, now we understand that we’ve nominated and defined the existence of success and failure in our current understanding of where we fit in society. Time for questions! How do we mark success in relationships?  How do we mark failure? Do we use these notions to inform us of worthwhile relationships to enter into and exit from? Do we use it to justify those relationships we choose not to enter into? Can there be successful entry and exit from relationships? What constitutes failure of relationships, failure of entry into or exit from relationships? Does our questioning of success and failure in relationships fundamentally reinforce the notion that we *must* seek out relationships and connection? How do we choose markers for success or for failure consciously? Do we *have* to choose markers at all… can relationships form some kind of understanding like breathing: they simply are? How do our experiences in the past, or our fears about living in the world inform our relationship choices and how we understand success and failure?

How do we begin to make sense of all of this?

So here we have a very meta-heavy context for examining of success and failure as a fundamental idea about relationships. What is important now is drawing these questions and concepts down into the context where the personal is a critical defining context. The personal experience you wish for and seek is of vital importance here for definition of success and failure (or not). By creating and nurturing some mental and emotional space around your personal views and thinking around success and failure in relationships, it follows that there is an opportunity to balance this by allowing similar space for others to have their own construction of relationship success and failure. The final key to this personal spacemaking for relationships and how we conceive of success and failure is the need for non-judgement and non-imposition of other structures and standards to other people and their constructions of relationship success and failure.

This is a beginning discussion, there is a lot here that can be examined in more detail and I’d like to do that in future posts. However, I’m interested in your thoughts at this point and how you understand your own constructions of success and failure. How do they work or not-work for you? Have you been through experiences that have led you to examine and redefine how relationship success and failure looks like? Have you experienced this in different kinds of relationships? Talk to me about what success and failure look like to you now, about what experiences have contributed to your understanding. I'd also really love to hear about how you think relationship success and failure in our social understanding and practices could be improved? 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Sun, 29 Jul 2012 21:42:45 -0700 Personal Positives: Marianne de Pierres on Defeating Ego and the Importance of Mentoring http://transcendancing.posterous.com/personal-positives-marianne-de-pierres-on-def http://transcendancing.posterous.com/personal-positives-marianne-de-pierres-on-def

I'd like to welcome Marianne de Pierres as a guest poster to The Conversationalist with her thoughts on 'Personal Positives' as the theme for this month's Down Under Feminist CarnivalMarianne is a dear friend and I am thrilled to host her thoughtful post here as part of the carnival and also as my first ever guest!  

I’m often plagued be a sense of hopelessness. I’m not sure if that is something I learned, or it’s driven by my own biochemistry. Suffice to say that when I was old enough to realise that I had developed such a negative pattern of thinking, I set about changing it. To this day it’s a struggle, but I I’ve chipped away enough to see where I’ve been.

It’s my hope that by continuing to fight against it, I become a better person; one who makes the people around me happier, more secure, more empowered. A personal mission if you like, or perhaps, a crusade – to engender the warmth and comfort and confidence that proximity to another human can give, when the energies are right. Sounds kind of simple and silly really, but I find it profound.

And it’s not to say that I don’t still lose battles. Ego is a great saboteur, usually lurking about in the guise of envy or righteousness. But I stand up to it by finding the pleasure and reward in mentoring. Mentoring is concept so overused and totally undervalued. It could be the single most important concept/deed that adds value to human existence. I treasure it and I’d be interested to know if anyone agrees with me.

Marianne x

-----------------------

Marianne de Pierres is the author of the acclaimed Parrish Plessis and award-winning Sentients of Orion science fiction series. The Parrish Plessis series has been translated into eight languages and adapted into a roleplaying game. She's also the author of a teen dark fantasy series and has published a highly regarded short collection, Glitter Rose through Indie publishing house Twelfth Planet Press.

Marianne is an active supporter of genre fiction and has mentored many writers. She  She lives in Brisbane, Austrlaia, with her husband, three sons and three galahs. Marianne writes award winning crime under the pseudonym Marianne Delacourt. Visit her websites at www.mariannedepierres.com and www.tarasharp.com and www.burnbright.com.au.  

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:41:01 -0700 Personal Positives: Love as Activism http://transcendancing.posterous.com/personal-positives-love-as-activism http://transcendancing.posterous.com/personal-positives-love-as-activism

I’ve been asking people around me to write about personal positives in their life, the way they make a difference in their own way, as part of their daily experience of living in the world. Now it is my turn to share with you about my life and how I try to make a difference. Where I spend the most time, energy and effort in making a difference entirely revolves around love

Space_heart

Image Copyright and Credit: IC1805 - The Heart Nebula Daniel Marqardt

Love as an idea and as a practise is where I concentrate on growing, understanding, sharing, and practising amongst the people in my life and communities on a daily basis. Love is what I seek to put back into the ocean, as I’m emptying the ick and muck with my teaspoon. Not only do I seek to put love into the world myself, but I seek to inspire and empower others to do the same. I seek to invest them with the kind of understanding that has them understand and value love in ways that can be overlooked and misunderstood based on how we are conditioned to think about love by media and modern society. 
 
I use conversation as my primary and most powerful mechanism for cutting through the cynicism and neatly boxed definitions of love projected from media and social structures. I tell the stories of myself and my life, I tell the stories of how love exists for me, how it works for me. I also listen to people tell their stories about their lives and how they conceive love. Most often my conversations on love revolve around creating more space, opening up little boxes that we’ve taken on that tell us love is a certain shape, means a certain thing, involves certain attributes over others, without much flexibility. I find that people already know the things that we talk about, but for several moments we’re discussing invisible elephants, until suddenly the elephants all appear. Immediately the tiny boxed definitions become inadequate, a guide if anything for what people can now see around them in their life and the ways love is present in unexpected ways. 
 
There is a rightness in the telling and sharing of personal stories, doing so confirms our own existence but also allows others to connect. The sharing of experiences, challenges, and triumphs draws us together and creates solidarity. On the internet it can be difficult to create that sense of being ‘all in together’ and ‘for one another’. But it isn’t impossible, and I believe it to be a worthwhile practice. A practice based on love, where we seek that which connects us as individuals without erasure of our precious autonomy and individuality. I’m reminded of a Martin Luther King quote that I came across in another blog post in the past month, and I think it apt for describing how I think love can provide the ability for us to transcend our differences, without diminishing each other and instead allow us to be greater together
 
"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction." - Martin Luther King
 
Our personal stories are where we draw our collective power, our companionship, our solidarity and support for one another. This is not to suggest that we all agree or never clash in ideologies or practises… but underneath those things we are people, together trying to make a difference. Our collective identity is most powerful when we come from a foundation of love. In this way, love becomes a powerful activism and it is not the activism of one space of oppression, but all spaces of oppression. Through love, we all are people, living in the world, seeking to get through the day, to live our lives, to make a difference, to survive. We are richer for all of our experiences, from all places of marginalisation, and all places of privilege.
 
Standing for love in modern society sometimes feels futile, there is so much cynicism. Messages of love sound trite and we can so easily dismiss the idea as being too simple, without engaging or appreciating that love is one of many tools. Love is a meta tool that makes the other actions we take more effective by drawing us together and having us work for one another and not against each other. Love then, becomes activism. 
 
Love as activism for me on an everyday level involves spacemaking for the people around me that they have what they need, and involves listening actively and avoiding judgement or advice giving in favour of support and encouragement. Love as activism involves a passionate commitment to self love and fulfilment of responsibilities toward oneself as the foundation for reaching out to others. Using love for activism for me is all of the tiny ways I constantly try and let the people in my life know how much they mean to me. It is the way I nurture the opportunities to spend time, to connect and be present and marvelling at the person or people in my life. Love for me involves constant amazement, abiding thankfulness and allowing myself to see each person as wondrous in themselves. Love as activism is allowing myself to love as completely, variously and fully as I am able
 
My activism is about my commitment to greater learning and deeper insight into love and how it is thought about, used, referenced, defined, promoted, and idealised. My activism means that I am standing for love, it means that I am willing to have conversations to ground those things in a daily reality, for myself and as needed for others.  Love itself does not conquer all, but it is a powerful tool that allows us to build a movement for change, allows us to shift the status quo, and allows us to create space for each other without diminishing anyone. Love makes a difference to how we get to be in the world, ourselves and the people around us through our experience of them.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Mon, 23 Jul 2012 01:33:00 -0700 Personal Positives - Call for Submissions to the 51st Down Under Feminist Carnival http://transcendancing.posterous.com/personal-positives-call-for-submissions-to-th http://transcendancing.posterous.com/personal-positives-call-for-submissions-to-th

In about two weeks I’ll be posting the August Down Under Feminists Carnival. In my original announce post, I talked in depth about the theme I wanted to focus on, ‘Personal Positives’. I’ve received some thought provoking entries on this topic and I’m hoping for a few more. In my real and online life I am surrounded by some amazing women and we all exist in the world, we breathe and move through our daily lives with all the joys and trials that involves.

 

These stories of our lives are important. Actually, I think they are critical because too often we wonder what we contribute, or wonder if we’ve made a difference. We wonder how other people live and go about their lives. And we do make a difference, we have stood upon this earth and breathed, thought, played, struggled, laughed, cried, reasoned and worked. I feel like we often have a false impression that our concerns and lives are too mundane to be ‘stories’ to be interesting, to inspire, to provoke thought, to offer insight. I seek to break that association, and l see the extraordinary in daily life all around me in all of you in my life. Who you are, how you live, and how you make a difference is of vital importance in the world.

 

Please consider sharing your story. Share your story either on your own blog, or make a guest post here on mine if you’d prefer.

 

We get endless repetition from media and society about how we supposedly ‘should’ live. We watch and read the complex stories about great and ordinary men’s lives through television, movies, books and other mediums. Using this carnival as one of many platforms and projects, we can shift this so that there is also a third option; how we actually live and move through the world as women.

  

By focusing on personal positives and the stories of our daily lives we emphasise our existence and the many ways we live. We also put something positive back into the ocean where we spend so much time addressing the ick and the muck of oppression. Removing the ick and the muck cannot make a lasting difference without something positive to replace it – and we get to choose that, we get to influence that and breathe life into it.

 

Aside from focusing on the theme for this coming month, I'm also interested in you sending me interesting blog posts you've come across in your travels across the internet. Anything by an Australian or New Zealand blogger on a topic relevant to feminism (and I tend to take a broad view of feminist relevance to be clear) is welcome. I'm particularly interested in featuring bloggers that don't get featured often and from a range of intersectional viewpoints. If you're unsure that something is relevant, send me an email - I'm always happy to discuss!

 

Submissions for the carnival should be submitted to me by the end of July. You can submit through the blogcarnival form, or email me through transcendancing at gmail dot com.

 

If you want to post on the theme and are struggling with it or wondering if your idea will work, I’m available to talk about it. Additionally, if you are worried about making the deadline, send me an email - there's some room for flexibility, particularly around themed posts as I'm aiming for a strong showing on the theme for this carnival.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Tue, 10 Jul 2012 07:58:00 -0700 51st Down Under Feminists Carnival – Personal Positives http://transcendancing.posterous.com/51st-down-under-feminists-carnival-personal-p http://transcendancing.posterous.com/51st-down-under-feminists-carnival-personal-p

Dufc_logo
Greetings all, I’m Ju Transcendancing and will be hosting the upcoming Down Under Feminists Carnival – the fifty first! How did we manage so many?! If you’re interested in revisiting some of the marvellous carnivals that people have put together in past months, there is a conveniently compiled list. The upcoming 51st Down Under Feminists Carnival will focus on Personal Positives. That is, how we go about our daily lives and the little things we do to make a difference.

I’ve been thinking my theme for this carnival, because I really like themes as an opportunity to draw attention to specific areas of thinking around equality, feminism and intersectionality. I notice that for myself, what I write about is my life, myself in the world and negotiating that as best I can, getting tripped up and stumbling clumsy through situations, sometimes getting it right, more often learning more about how there’s always more growing and more thoughtfulness to apply. I try and write things that are about putting goodness and more of what I want to see in the world, out there for others. I appreciate the amazing work that people do in applying a critical lens to society and the way that it is constructed and reinforced in ways that both help and harm us individually and collectively. I’m a cultural theorists amongst other things and that kind of space is always interesting. 

However, when I think of the metaphor used for performing the work of engendering equality in the world that is ‘emptying the ocean with a teaspoon’ I think it is worthwhile to consider some additional aspects to the metaphor. It can be disheartening, the ocean is awfully big, and a teaspoon is a tiny thing. It can be uplifting: there are many, many teaspoons doing the work of emptying. In focusing on the emptying, I think it is easy to neglect the fact that for all the ick and muck that we empty out, we’re still left only with the status quo unless we consciously add the positives we want to see more of in the world.

I realise that this is a very subjective experience, what is positive through my eyes is not necessarily positive in another’s experience. But I do believe in the value of doing the best we can at any given point. And, I recognise that what constitutes ‘best’ is a flexible changing thing depending on the surrounds. Intentionality is sometimes considered the largest of ways in which we cause inadvertent harm, and yet it is also powerful in it’s collective form where the intention to give back, to put goodness in the world can be shared and what difference it makes can be appreciated – even if there are aspects that we find difficult or problematic on an individual level. Therein is the space for healthy critique and debate and for growing as individuals in our own thinking and feeling spaces.

Feminist and equality based blogging can often seem to be simply an issues based space, where the individual paths we all walk are obscured by our focus on these issues. If we are all doing the best we can at any given point toward equality and recognition for each other as human beings, there are stories to be told there. Individual moments captured from everyday lives, going about the ordinary and how our intentions for making a difference are enacted in the tiny ways we go about our lives.

So the theme that I’d like to put forward for this upcoming carnival is simply: Personal Positives.

Share with me the moments of your lives and the way in which you put goodness, positivity, back into the world, even as you use your trusty teaspoon in the ocean of ick and muck. How do you move through the world? What are you most confronted by in your experience of the everyday – where do you find that you compromise and when are you or aren’t you comfortable with that? Is there a practice or something else you’ve enacted that is entirely for the benefit of contribution to the world becoming a (very gradually) better place for everyone?

My intention is to draw attention to daily living, to daily intentionality toward making a difference, and to make visible the invisible daily lives of Australian and New Zealand women and feminist bloggers. We often remark that the everyday from history is filled with the experiences, fears and concerns of men – as is not unexpected in a heavily patriarchal society. My intention is to contribute to shifting that visibility to make the experiences and concerns of women inside their everyday lives in a contemporary 2012 visible and valuable.

Feel free to comment and begin the discussion on the everyday and feminism, what the idea of personal positives can mean and the value of visibility. This theme is simple in its heart but the surrounding context is multi-layered and spending some time looking into those layers would be most welcome, and perhaps beneficial to people considering contributing to the carnival.

Please consider contributing, especially if you haven’t before. If you’re unsure about your contribution for whatever reason, please feel free to contact me – I’m a conversationalist at heart and I will welcome the contact.  Submissions can be made via blogcarnival or by emailing me: transcendancing at gmail dot com and should be in before the end of July. If you’re having issues with the deadline, contact me and I’ll see what I can do.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Mon, 25 Jun 2012 22:24:00 -0700 Relationship Shapes http://transcendancing.posterous.com/relationship-spaces http://transcendancing.posterous.com/relationship-spaces

Leading on from Spacemaking in relationships, I’ve been thinking on the shapes that relationships take, and how it’s another thing that we don’t notice specifically, but is something that happens subconsciously as part of our engaging in relationships. We tend only to use a particular few styles of relationship shapes and I was thinking about this because the dynamic of my own multiplicity of shapes has changed quite a lot recently as have the shapes of a number of people close to me.

 

For myself, the change has come about because for the first time in a couple of years, I’ve got another set of relationships that are more like partnerships and less like satellite relationships. Another difference is that the relationship set is a three-way dynamic which is a relationship entity itself, but also comprises three sets of relationships between each person involved.

 

Some of you may find that this post seems more related to polyamory than relationships generally, and while I personally find it relates outwards to all my relationships, I am not separate from my poly-ness and others’ experience may vary. I’d be interested to hear from any of you who do or don’t find it applicable being less polyamorously inclined.

 

So when I talk about relationship shapes, I probably need to define that a little for sensemaking.

 

When I am describing relationships shapes, the notion of shape refers to how you draw your bubble around the nature or meaning of the relationship for you – and that will be different person to person. Imagine it’s like joining dots – only you get to choose dots that are meaningful/useful to you and so it’s not like tracing lots of perfect conventional shapes – each relationship is going to be different. Relationship shapes refer to how you mark the relationship, like a boundary or in a certain frame of reference. Markers vary between people, but can include the following (and many others I’m sure I’ll forget to mention): couple, threesome/triad, group, fidelity, monogamous, polyamorous, single, long term relationship, dating, short term relationship, long distance relationship, friendship, romantic, sexual, sensual, asexual. There are markers that will appeal to you, that describe different relationships to you and they are how you mark out the shape of the relationship for yourself and with the other(s) involved.

 

(If any of my geeky artistic readers can think of an artistic diagrammatic way of representing that concept I’m really interested in collaborating!)

 

I think of the shapes in my own universe (or network) of relationships as constellations and they are specific and sovereign to themselves, but also interrelate and enrich one another. . My array of significant relationships is quite considerable, and I have a mindmap that I use to convey to people a little of how my universe of relationships looks and the different ways in which I have conceived and created relationships, the  shapes within that map vary quite considerably.

 

You can see a public copy of the mindmap below where I've omitted names:

Transcendancing_-_relationships_constellations_map

 

In the universe of my relationships, there are more relationships that are non-sexual than sexual, there are more relationships designated as chosen family or ‘some kind of life partnership/companionship thing’ than there are sensual, sexual, or romantic platonic relationships. There are more singular satellite relationships than group relationships or couple relationships (by which I mean where the coupleness is noteworthy for those relationships). What is also useful to note here is that some of these relationships have shifted over time to become one shape from another shape. Fixedness is a false absolute, it’s a decision point that we commonly enforce upon ourselves, but unnecessarily so. Relationships can change their nature if there is an allowance for the possibility and this can occur through outside stimulus to relationships, or be part of an intentional decision between parties.

 

For example, a job opportunity may send Alex overseas indefinitely and they may choose to shift their relationship with their partner to being a friendship having no idea when or if they will return. Alex may also choose to continue the relationship long distance and that may be open or closed. Or, in another scenario Robin could notice that they feel their relationship with Jean is becoming less romantic for them and seek to shift it into a shape marked by friendship rather than romance or sexuality. There are many possibilities and permutations; this is just an example to give you some practical context for what I mean.

 

Ultimately, what I am drawing attention to is that, even being aware that relationships are all different and can happen in many different ways we still hang onto other societal conditions that we may not be aware of, that may be worth questioning. Consider that you get to choose your relationships – you get to influence the shape of your relationships in conjunction with the other people involved. You may think on this and still end up in the same place you started out and not change anything about how you construct and conduct your relationships – and the purpose of my talking about this is not to create shift or change. My purpose is to promote awareness and conscious thinking about how we draw mark and define the shapes of our relationships, extending from my previous discussion on spacemaking. Shapes are a way of creating space or marking out space.

 

I’d love to hear about relationship shapes that you’ve experienced that you found unusual for you. Or, tell me about how this idea of shape and relationships relates to you and your universe of relationships – not just romantic/sexual relationships, but friendships and family and others as well. Talk to me about the different shapes you find challenging or that don’t work for you – there’s so much to look at here and I’m curious how it looks for others.

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:14:00 -0700 Debris by Jo Anderton (Book #1 in the Veiled Worlds Series) http://transcendancing.posterous.com/debris-by-jo-anderton-book-1-in-the-veiled-wo http://transcendancing.posterous.com/debris-by-jo-anderton-book-1-in-the-veiled-wo

Awwc2012_-_bookdout_-_shelleyrae_jpg_scaled500

Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012: Book #2 (My original pledge post)

Title: Debris (Book #1 in the Veiled Worlds Series)

Author: Jo Anderton

Publisher and Year: Angry Robot Books, 2011.

Genre: Fantasy

Debris-small

Blurb from Goodreads:

In a far future where technology is all but indistinguishable from magic, Tanyana is one of the elite.

She can control pions, the building blocks of matter, shaping them into new forms using ritual gestures and techniques. The rewards are great, and she is one of most highly regarded people in the city. But that was before the “accident”.

Stripped of her powers, bound inside a bizarre powersuit, she finds herself cast down to the very lowest level of society. Powerless, penniless and scarred, Tanyana must adjust to a new life collecting “debris”, the stuff left behind by pions. But as she tries to find who has done all of this to her, she also starts to realize that debris is more important than anyone could guess.

Debris is a stunning new piece of Science Fantasy, which draws in themes from Japanese manga, and classic Western SF and Fantasy to create this unique, engrossing debut from the very exciting young author Jo Anderton.

This is the first book in a new series and is an excellent offering from Angry Robot Books! Debris is a brilliant book, I loved and devoured it!

Tanyana is an interesting and complex character, there's depth and roundedness to her that I find can sometimes be lacking in female characters. She's not cast in the archetype of 'good' nor 'bad' but instead, 'human'. She wants to do the right thing but her motivations are not always altruistic and I found this very reasonable and realistic thinking how I'd react if I were in her position.

The supporting characters are varied and interesting, and while only a few of the supporting characters become rounded and real, the others remain intriguing mysteries rather than cutouts.

With regard to the story, it is obvious that not all is as it seems right from the beginning, but how that unravels is quite surprising. I didn't expect the direction of the story, I was engaged by it and found it believable.

This is not your average fantasy story of quests and journeys... this is a story about a woman in a fantasy world, her talent which is stripped from her and how she adjusts to a life performing a role she hadn't previously imagined possible.

Congratulations to Anderton on an engaging and entertaining first novel! This book is one I would highly recommend.

Note: Review format is lifted from my friend Lauredhel's review of 'All I Ever Wanted' by Vikki Wakefield because it was simple, clear and awesome. 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Mon, 11 Jun 2012 04:06:21 -0700 Spaces and Spacemaking http://transcendancing.posterous.com/spaces-and-spacemaking http://transcendancing.posterous.com/spaces-and-spacemaking

This post leads on from the beginning I made with my post On Relationships...

Space is an abstract concept, but I find it is an important and useful one when considering how I negotiate the universe of my relationships. (All space metaphors, all the time, except when the metaphors are about buckets...) I thought I'd start by creating an understanding of what I mean by space, and then I can talk about spacemaking and how it's relevant as a relationship skill. 

Space...

Space is a many faceted thing. We use it in a variety of contexts. Personal space, for ourselves, for others, as an example. It's a tangible thing that we recognise as the distance between one thing and another thing. It's also a sense of energy and comfort - not standing on top of someone. Your home is a space, your bedroom, your computer, this blog... anything that you can draw a boundary like a bubble around, is a space. 

Spaces can be used to communicate respect, care or comfort. Space can also be used to protect yourself and as a retreat. Space can be used for confrontation, for challenging, for competition and argument. Anything you can draw a boundary around it and designate it as 'this place/time where I/we do/say/feel xyz'. 

Relationships are spaces... 

Relationships are spaces and just as we put energy and effort into building and maintaining relationships, part of that goes toward spacemaking. We don't think of it separately, usually. But I find that as a specific concept and strategy that it is something I continually refer to. Making space for, making space away from, making space where, which is to say: spacemaking. 

Spacemaking...

If you're engaging in spacemaking, you're consciously and intentionally creating a space for something to happen, or to prevent something happening. Generally I find that a positive directive is more useful - creating a space that invites what you're seeking rather than shutting out what you're avoiding. Even though you can go about it both ways, consider that you're putting conscious effort into this and that you may find that it makes more sense to add good things to your life and experiences instead of focusing on the negative. 

More practically...

Think about when you host a party or a dinner or even just a meeting. Anything doesn't matter what it is. Think about how you setup the location. Think about what planning you do beforehand. Think about how you make sure that the space is conducive to the aim of the event. As an example, for a party you might make sure there are tasty snacks and plastic cups. What you're doing when you do these things is spacemaking. You're consciously creating space with an intention that it will contribute to the purpose for an event. 

The same principle works for relationships. 

Generally speaking, you may wonder what the purpose for relationships would be such that this strategy would work. The purpose for a relationship is to relate, though the shape of relationships varies from person to person and style to style. A friendship I have with someone is different to your friendship with someone. The way I have a romantic relationship is also different to you, we have different parental relationships. You get the idea. 

Spacemaking as relating... 

Thinking about that purpose: to relate gives you the chance to appreciate the shape of the relationships in your life. This is useful as background knowledge for all relationship skills - and I should probably talk about it specifically at some stage. But it is useful for spacemaking because it has you think about how you relate and to relate is also to create space. 

If you're hosting a party, you're creating a space where people feel comfortable to step into it, have a good time and socialise together. 

If you're building a relationship, you're creating a space where you can connect with the other person, a space where there is communication and honesty, an openness, respect and listening. It's a subtle communication that happens as a function of tiny bits of all styles of communication. You contribute to spacemaking where someone feels comfortable, happy, safe and appreciated using your body language, using your speech and your mannerisms. It all counts and contributes. 

This is a good time to mention that genuineness is critical for spacemaking. You can't say 'the right words' and have it work without it being in alignment with the rest of your body language and non verbal communication cues. 

Spacemaking in relationships is a function of a genuine desire to engage, to relate and to build something. 

Spacemaking is a multiplicity... 

You can use spacemaking in a multiplicity of ways in a relationship, there's the space of the overall relationship. But, if there's an issue that needs addressing, you can also make space where that can be worked through gently, with respect and care. Any kind of space you take a conscious approach to engaging with, is spacemaking. There's no one right way to do it, but being conscious is the beginning. So, as a start... just notice the space around the things in your life and where you can recognise specific spaces both tangible and intangible. Then think about how you want to facilitate and nurture them. Try things. Refine them. 

Spacemaking isn't an exact recipe, it's a strategy that draws on things we do naturally but makes them a conscious consideration where we actively engage with making space that works for us and for others a priority. 

An example in employing spacemaking...

I thought an example would be useful to see in some small way what I've been talking about in action. I have a wonderful friend Flyingblogspot, we are close and beloved to one another but also very different people, with very different needs. We use spacemaking consciously and openly with eachother and it means that we both get what we need and get to feel amazing about that. One of the ways in which I create space for her, is through invitations to spend time and spacemaking around that. We love spending time and catching up, we're both busy and sometimes quite stressed. As an extrovert I tend to seek out pockets of company to alleviate this and recharge, and as an introvert she finds she needs lots of alone recharge time.

I've created space around invitations to catch up, because sometimes invitations can feel loaded, you can want to say yes to things where it's more out of a sense of obligation than genuine desire. It can be stressful and unpleasant. At the same time, inclusiveness is lovely and being invited it part of that. The space I've created for Flyingblogspot is basically my unequivocal reassurance that she could refuse one invitation, every other invitation, every invitation for six months and I wouldn't take it to mean anything else except that she wasn't available for the occasion of that invitation. I would not make assumptions that it was something about our friendship or that she didn't care, didn't want to spend time. Her trusting in this promise I've made is part of the spacemaking.

The result is I can make invitations whenever it occurs to me to do so, and she feels safe to say yes when she's up for things and to decline when she's not, she doesn't ever need to worry that I am quietly resentful or upset because she's declined one/three/ten invitations over a period of time. It clears out dross that can create misunderstanding and instead we just get to enjoy the relationship together. 

Talk to me about spacemaking... 

I'd love to hear how the rest of you consider the idea of spacemaking. How do you do it? What do you think is important in employing it as a strategy? I can only speak to my experiences and how I create space, so I'm interested in what the rest of you have to contribute here too.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing
Tue, 05 Jun 2012 02:11:00 -0700 Recent Movie Watching... http://transcendancing.posterous.com/recent-movie-watching http://transcendancing.posterous.com/recent-movie-watching

So, I’ve been watching a fair few movies lately as it’s a favourite shared activity between myself and my new loves that covers bases of sharing interests and cool things amongst one another plus cuddles and quiet quality time. Given that there’s been such a concentration of movies, I thought I’d do a brief blog about my thoughts. In several cases this is the first time I’ve seen these movies, though sometimes it’s simply first time in a *long* time. Regardless, if you’ve seen any of these and want to make comment, I’m very interested to hear!

 

Fantastic Mr Fox

 

This would be one of the favourite movies shared between my two new Loves, who quote it back and forth and are adorable about it. This naturally made me curious and so we sat down and watched it and it really is adorable. Mr Fox isn’t the most sympathetic of characters, and yet you like him despite this. I would have loved to have seen more of Mrs Fox, because she doesn’t ever quite get to be her own person and is part of the context for Mr Fox doing his thing. Their son Ash is an awesome and quaint character whom I really appreciated and Kristopherson (sp?) was a nice contrast to Ash and I enjoyed the bewilderment that is experienced between Mr Fox as the father of Ash, admiring his nephew Kristopherson, and the resulting rivalry between Ash and Kristopherson.  I love movies with a community of animals and this was present in the movie – though it wasn’t explored to it’s full potential, I didn’t really get a sense for how they were all a community together until the farmers (aka: bad guys) were threatening the safety of the whole community. I really enjoyed it overall, but there were things that felt missing for me as well.

 

Fox and the Hound

 

I haven’t seen this since I was a tiny child at the cinema, so it was wonderful to revisit. This was also a movie watched because it’s a favourite of one of my new Loves, and I enjoyed the chance to appreciate it though their gaze. I loved the playfulness of the baby fox and hound, falling over themselves and delighting in each other. I loved the on-looking of the other animals who served as extended family as well as friends for Todd and Copper. The story is sad in places, dealing not only with the idea that certain activities are prescribed for different species, as in, hounds hunt foxes, but with friendship being shaken and challenged. I really enjoyed revisiting this and I particularly liked revisiting the older female character and appreciating how awesome she gets to be in the movie.

 

Requiem for a Dream

 

So being told something is disturbing doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily more prepared for how disturbing. Aronovsky is brilliant in this and all the actors do an amazing job of telling the story from shiny beginnings through to horrifying ending. All of the characters are different, related and relatable. The way they slide deeper down the rabbit hole of drugs and dependency is deftly done in such a way that you really struggle to pinpoint where it all went so wrong and how in character, things could have been avoided or different. I’m really glad that I saw this, it’s a brilliantly done movie and engages with drugs from all sides in a way that is horrifying and yet isn’t about scaremongering and I appreciate that.

 

The Wrestler

 

I enjoyed this movie, but found it ultimately unsatisfying. I understand that getting to choose your life – and death for that matter, is important. But I never found that anything shifted or changed, there didn’t seem to be anything that got learned or really changed… and I don’t really see the point if it’s all about how things stay the same. I wanted to see more of the way the protagonist engaged with his estranged daughter and the almost/maybe that never quite happened with the woman he likes, whom he knows through her night job as a stripper. I just wanted… more, it didn’t take me on enough of a journey for me to feel that the ending made any real sense or had any real impact.

 

The Fountain

 

This would have to be my favourite movie of those I’ve recently seen. It’s a philosophical movie and one that layers a story with different points of view that contextualise the overall storyline which is both the obvious storyline, and subtly implied throughout. The Fountain is beautifully wrought, the detail is exquisite and the emotionality is never trite or insipid. The movie deals with losing someone to illness, with striving to find a cure, and acceptance, understanding how we fit into the cycle of life and death and what things are truly meaningful and important in our lives. I loved this movie, my favourite Aronovsky yet.

 

Alien

 

This was a watch because there’s the plan to go and watch Prometheus this coming weekend, and I hadn’t seen any of the prior movies because I don’t like scary movies. However I’d noted it as a gap in my geek education and awareness, so I had a desire to watch it somehow, this opportunity merely provided impetus for that. But, omg scary! OMG SO SCARY! And yet, worth the harrowing experience of watching it (I don’t watch scary movies, with good reason). I’m glad I watched it, even if it was hard work and I yelped and squealed and hid behind my pillow for significant chunks of it. I can see why this was genre breaking, why it is still so highly appreciated today, decades later. I finally understand the fuss about Ripley. The premise of this movie was brilliant and in part it was the realism with which I could (personally) see something that situation happening. I appreciated the setup of Ripley’s credibility, and the general banter about the ship between the crew. I love that I wondered if the kitty had been infected and that at  no point were the crew willing to forsake the kitty.

 

Aliens

 

I think I actually liked this better than the original, in part because it was more action based than thriller, which suits my tastes better. I loved the character make up again – appreciated how well constructed Burke was for hating. And oh how I hated him! But he did bring useful light to bear on the fact that even with the soldiers being all boisterous and crude at one another, it was underpinned by a strong sense of honour and respect for one another – they were all in it for each other. Contrasted to Burke who was unethical, amoral and charmingly trying to make it seem like he wasn’t doing anything questionable at all – and using every emotionally manipulative trick in the book. I found that some of the premises for the movie I didn’t buy, but the way in which
Ripley and Newt owned the movie just rocked my world so much that I don’t even care. I loved the way the two of them connected, loved the way Newt was treated as an autonomous and critical person with valid experience. I also love that the Artificial got a chance to sway Ripley’s bias in the end. I love that there was such diversity in the characters and that it didn’t follow the usual experience of all women/characters of colour dying in the first instance.

 

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

]]>
http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/880480/Transcendancing.jpg http://posterous.com/users/Ztkti0dLSVz Transcendancing Transcendancing Transcendancing