Pleasure Notes

I’m just going to say it… I really love money. It brings me great pleasure. The acquisition of it. And the spending of it. What keeps me up at night, however, is the lack of balance between those two pursuits. I seem to be exponentially more skilled at spending the stuff than acquiring it. I’ve been working on changing that, but it’s a very slow, painful process.

Image from Treehugger.com

I’ve cut up all of my credit cards. I’ve created a budget. And I now have a full-time job. But, truth be told, I still live beyond my means, and continue to practice a elaborate routine of dancing on air in a frantic juggle between when payments go out and paychecks comes in. With an astronomical debt, unexpected expenses and weak P.O.P-avoidance control, I live in the red. I haven’t seen a saving account or a 401K or an IRA except in books. I get panic attacks when bills are due and the salary check won’t be here for another week. Today, that means waking up at 4 a.m. and venting my fears here.

I don’t want to carry this anxiety into my day. I really want to go back to sleep. I don’t want to begrudge others their successes. I don’t want to think the system is out to get me. I don’t want to live with a warped world view that has me splashing in a pool of self-pity and mistaking it for an ocean of real poverty. So here’s what I have to remember today:

1. I have a roof over my head. It’s a pretty cute roof. It’s paid for through the end of the month. And, though I think it’s tiny, it would house three families in two-thirds of the other countries on the planet.
2. If things got really, really, really bad, I have friends and family on whom I could lean without destroying their own stability. I would just rather eat nails.
3. A bounced check will not kill me. A missed credit card payment will not kill me. Another PB&J using the cheap bread will not kill me. Hell, even bankruptcy, if it comes to that, will not kill me. Anxiety about it all, though, just might.

Do I still want a sugar daddy, or a fairy godmother, or a newly-discovered, unlimited trust fund. HELL YES. But I’ll just have to settle for getting them in my dreams. I think I’ll head back to bed now, to work on that. I may actually be able to fall back asleep.

About a month ago, I wrote about a Sudanese woman named Lubna, whose story I came across while reading Nicholas Kristof’s blog. Her trial was today. She did not win. She did not lose. She is now at a crossroads. As I sit here in my jeans and cleavage revealing tank top, I wonder what direction I would take in her position, secretly considering how I very likely would never have had the courage to be at this crossroads in the first place. Let me explain…

A few months ago, Lubna went to a cafe. She was wearing pants. She was arrested. Other women were arrested too. The other women accepted their punishment. Lubna did not. In the past month, Lubna has attempted to raise awareness about the punishment and, more importantly, about the law itself – a barbaric misinterpretation of Koranic Law resulting in Sudanese policy that women can not wear pants in public.

And Lubna has been successful, both in Sudan and abroad. She wants the law changed. Others agree. Her courage has inspired theirs. They showed up at her trial today, to lend her their support. Some of the women even wore pants (and were promptly arrested). Faced with so much attention, the judge decided to fine Lubna rather than force physical punishment on her.

And this is the moment.

This is the moment in which most people would see a straight road to freedom, accept the ruling, and run. For Lubna, however, this moment is her crossroads. She is refusing to pay the fine. She risks imprisonment, and potentially worse physical punishment than the initial charge conveyed, but standing by her charge that the law itself should be invalidated.

This has never been about Lubna not wanting to get hurt. She wants to change the system. And, as much as the idea that a woman could be brutally punished for wearing pants shocks me, the idea that one individual could have the courage to suddenly stand against the status quo, with a rallying cry of “NO MORE,” awes me.

Lubna isn’t the first person to do this. She isn’t even the first woman. And, I hope, she won’t be the last. I just wonder what mixture of nurture and nature made it so that she is one of the select few who step so far out of their comfort zone that they attempt to change the world for the rest of us, and enter the annals of history.

I do not think I am this kind of person. Perhaps I am, but I have yet to be tested. It’s possible. It is more likely, however, that I am one of the many who would have just accepted the flogging. I could easily have been the one to pee my pants in fear. Or, hell, I probably wouldn’t have worn pants in the first place. Fear is a powerful thing.

Thank god there are people out there, like Lubna, who remind me that, while fear may indeed by powerful, it isn’t ALL POWERFUL. It can be overcome.

Immersion

For the past few months, and for the first time in many years, I have had a full time job. More than full time, actually. Five days a week. Ten hours a day. And I love it. One of the ancillary benefits of this development is how bloody grateful I am for the weekend when it comes. Suddenly, Saturday and Sunday are precious gifts of time. A three-day holiday weekend, like I’m experiencing at the moment, is almost orgasmic. So many possibilities, opportunities for spontaneity, moments in which to indulge in simply BEING. I immerse myself in the pleasure of time off – time in which I can choose to do NOTHING… or EVERYTHING.

A perfect day can be attained so easily when I dive into it and don’t fight the currents. A friend calls unexpectedly. Or I write all day and ignore the laundry. Or the ocean lures me out to meet it. I am rejuvenated. I am surprised. And I am delighted.

I hope you are in the midst of some perfect days. Let me know how they look for you.

Stuck!

I simply can’t stop giggling. There is nothing really to say. I fucking love this bathtub plug. Love as in I’m tempted to get it for every single one of my friends and family. It is the absolutely perfect stocking stuffer… Look at that! I am so inspired by the damn thing, I’m already ahead on my Christmas shopping. Awesome, I say. Flipping awesome.

Price: A Steal. Available at Perpetual Kid and various novelty stores.

Red Straws by TheTruthAbout/Flickr

I love straws. All kinds of straws. Bendy straws. Straight straws. Colored straws. Striped straws. Curly-cue straws. Animal shaped straws. Day-glo straws. Cocktail straws. They bring me pure pleasure. It may have something to do with an oral fixation of mine. Or it may be my inner-child. I just know that any drink is better if drunk through a straw.

I like chewing them, too. And tying them into knots.

But I got to thinking about how environmentally unfriendly they probably are – the costs of production and disposal, you know. So I decided to see what other things straws might be good for, other than making me happy (which, while super vital to me, may not justify the destruction of the planet)… I’m happy to report, I found enough to alleviate my guilt.

Post-modern artists and designers help me do that for almost anything, since they create their masterpieces with almost everything. In fact, I may owe Scott Jarvie a soda, in gratitude for his imaginative use of my favorite sipping aid.

Clutch Chair by Scott Jarvie

I’ll just ignore the fact that his conceptual floating lounge chair is a commentary on our disposable society, and instead marvel at how much patience it must have taken to align the 10,000 straws incorporated in this little beauty.

Clutch Spotlight. Designed by Scott Jarvie

The wall lamp he created is even more awesome, don’t you think? And you know how much I like cool lighting fixtures.

Mr. Jarvie isn’t the only one who thinks straws make great home decor, either. Tal Gur, one of Isreal’s leading designers, created a chair and table for Promise Design that remind me of those little bottles of colored sand you can buy at any beach town souvenir shop. I can’t even imaging how many straws were used.

Tal Gur at Promise Design

Not as many as Tara Donovan needed to create her wall art. It doesn’t even look like straws from far away, does it? More like snow, or cotton balls, or a really bad plaster job. But I totally dig it.

By Tara Donovan

And it really is made of straws.

Detail of Tara Donovan installation

But now the guilt is seeping back in, because I’m guessing that all those straws weren’t just slowly collected over twenty years of culling garbage dumps. Only aliens would do something like that.

Instead, I bet all those thousands of straws were created specifically for Ms. Donovan’s project. And that’s not going to help preserve nature’s straws at all!

Photo by Dave Bunnell

Beautiful, no? Soda Straws are the most fragile of stalactites, and hollow, just like the plastic one in my iced tea, which I guzzled because it is so damn hot. Probably due to global warming. Or the forest fires. Which are also probably due to global warming. Or the fact that it is summer.

Venezuelan NesTea Ad

It’s all so overwhelming, really. I’d love to continue drinking my iced tea without pondering whether it will somehow end up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or if my niece will end up having to live with landfills full of my straws. That said, I’d also love to eat cheese straws without getting horrible gas or high cholesterol. And suntan without running the risk of skin cancer. And wear pretty four-inch heels without looking like a new-born giraffe or getting numb toes. And dance naked in the rain without freaking the fuck out of myself and my neighbors.

Okay, maybe not the last one. The heat has clearly made me loopy. Perhaps I’m dehydrated. I need another iced tea. And it’ll go down better with a straw.

For now, that’s just the way it’s gonna be. I’ll worry about saving the planet once I’ve quenched my thirst.

Thank you, Mr. Stone, for making that so easy.