Inhibition & Identity

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All of our actions go through a personal filter. Thinking and doing are separate things. When these things approach being the same, what happens to us?

 
NYC New Years
Many of us just went through this New Years Eve. People traditionally gather on this evening for the sole intent of getting totally wasted in company just because ‘Why the heck not? I don’t have to work tomorrow, and neither do you!” Most of my peers are somewhat ‘used to’ getting drunk. The have a certain drunk identity that has been integrated into their view of themselves (or not if they like the ‘I was drunk’ excuse for every time they’re a bit tipsy). For someone like me that has lived most of their life without alcohol at all, and has a natural tolerance to not get drunk even when drinking, I wonder who the hell I was the night before. People are comfortable doing things they wouldn’t normally do and knowing they likely will do them. People are used to saying, “Oh, he’s normally a great guy. He’s just like that when he’s drunk.” I can’t pass the buck so easily.

 

I was so drunk that my vision was blurred, and I still spent most of the night with someone who is ‘my type’ while beating off a total asshole who happened to be married. So, my judgment wasn’t excessively off. How was I different?

 

I was even more bluntly crass- saying what I thought when I thought it. Little surprise there.

 

I did a few things that ‘seemed like a good idea’ and ‘made sense to me at the time’ that on further thought, may have only made sense to me. For example, if you want to counter someone’s statement that “rape is funny”, you disagree. If you then ironically grab his ass- you may think it makes a point and is great comedic timing. However, if the guy is someone to say “rape is funny” chances are, he’s not going to get it. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

I enjoyed dancing. The only dancing I normally enjoy is moshing or, when I used to act, musical numbers. That night, though, I danced more than I did in all of 2007. I struck an impressive figure, taring up the floor to bass beats. And if that’s not true, I’m sure people don’t remember clearly enough to contradict me.

 

I took chances. Saying whatever I want is a chance I’m used to taking. I’m not used to taking chances with trusting people I haven’t known for very long. I’ve never gone to a party at someone’s house I don’t know. I’ve never decided it was a good idea to stay there after all the people I knew well were gone. The list goes on into the night.

 

So I’m left to wonder, since these were things I never would have done without drinking, was that me?

 

The best answer I can come up with is: that is defiantly part of who I am. It was me minus certain inhibitions. It was not someone else minus those inhibitions. Underneath it all, I am the type of person to rip up the dance floor, I am the type of person to say no and slam a sliding door in an asshole’s face if they don’t seem to get it, and I am the type of person that will trust people when they’ve given me no reason not to trust them, even if they haven’t had long to give those reasons. Even if I don’t normally do these things, I at least want to on some level.

 

So what do I say to “Oh, normally he’s a great guy. He’s just like that when he’s drunk?”. I say, underneath it all, he’s really like that. The rest of the time, he’s probably just thinking or wishing those things. While they’re not the same thing, it shows you what they would do if they didn’t spend the additional moment to think. We all have that person underneath. That person for me is a good dancer, even if she’s more likely to get into sketchy situations. I’m okay hanging out that person every once in a great awhile.

 

So what about your lack of inhibition identity? Do you like hanging out with them? Do you make excuses for them? How do they measure up to your sober selves?

 

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you’ve all recovered by now.

Parent Pressure Balance or Break

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Warning: contents under pressure. Additional pressure may result in blowing up or petering out: in short, getting absolutely nothing productive done.

 

Painful areas

I know that for many people, a small amount of external stress can be a motivational tool. For people like me, I need very little. I might be slightly allergic. When I get too much I become sluggish, have trouble breathing, and have urges to watch stupid television (even without basic cable). I am naturally instilled with a love of working and learning. As a backup, I also come standard with a guilt complex that makes me do things even when nobody is watching. Get your own Cindy for only x/hr plus vacation days and benefits. She will get what she was supposed to done, do it well, or will lose sleep trying. You need not do anything except occasionally smile at her. Giving her cookies may increase productivity.

 

I’ve heard parents are supposed to know their children the best. They’re supposed to be able to push the buttons that make the child do what they want when they want it. If this is so, most parents (or children) are broken. How do they get busy child to clean her room? Well, they think, let’s treat her like she’s an insolent slob and shame her. Let’s threaten her. Said child goes to start cleaning their room, and then gets treated like an insolent slob or punished. Suddenly, child doesn’t want to clean their room and won’t, where she would have before if you’d just asked. Parent’s take note. If you push too hard in one direction, your children, no matter how far into adult hood they wander, will push the opposite way. Or, the will fall down. The direction does not matter.

 

I recently moved back to the area I’m origionally from. I’ve been gone about five years. In those five years I somehow managed to find a steady stream of interesting work, while I was still a student even. I aimed high managed to not work at fast food chains. Even for the worst of those jobs, I sometimes had to spend weeks looking and not getting the jobs I sometimes felt I was over-qualified for. Sometimes I got it on the first try.

 

Now I’m doing this song and dance again. I have a degree, refrences, and work to show for it. Still I don’t have fifty people breaking down my door asking me to work for them for $60,000 a year. This is no suprise to me, but it’s still a lot of pressure. Additional pressure is not needed at this time. I can read my bank statements and bills. I understand enough math to know how interest works.

 

I know I’m not the only person that is going, or has gone, through this.

 

So this is to all parents out there. If you want us to become productive, independent beings who will take care of you some day, first you have to have confidence that we can do things. Even people who don’t appear to be completely ego ridden and narcissistic are hard enough on themselves when they are trying. We need parents to be on the team cheering for us, especially past childhood, even more since we aren’t even on that team.

 

Show your confidence in us by not telling us what to do. You may think you aren’t, but your disapproving head, shaking suggestions might as well be mind control. Even though you, the parents, are the pillars of success and all that is right in the world, you got there by figuring it out on your own. Chances are, you ignored your own parents and still do to this day.

 

Parents out there, we appreciate that you help us all you can. Take us out for meals, make us care packages, and listen to our trails and tribulations without god-like judgment. However, be sure what you’re giving us is help. Don’t weigh us down with extra pressure, because we’re trying to learn to solely help ourselves, and that pressure alone could very well make us stand still, fall, or break.

 

This has been a public service announcement- brought to you by non-ham-like ham (but not spam) and the letter Y.

 

Poke me gently. I’m under a little pressure.

 

Oh, and I think the interview went well. Thanks for asking.

Sculptor or Potter?

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As artists, if we made ceramics just to be functional, we wouldn’t be making ceramic art. We’d be making ceramic tupperware. Think about it. Tupperware is very light, cheap, portable, durable, and stackable. You can heat, store, and eat your food out of it. Plastic tupperware is automatically more functional than any dish made out of ceramic due to the properties of the material.

If your statement is to make things functional, then why make things out of clay? Our statement cannot simply be one of function, it is one of design elements that convey additional content.


As clay artists, we especially cannot be caught thinking of a cup as ‘just a cup’. It’s function is to hold and allow us to enjoy liquid, but its function is also and primarily art. It’s function is sculptural as much as utilitarian. Otherwise it wouldn’t be art, it would be a slip-cast mug or a plastic tumbler from a department store.

If we know this, then why is it when I meet another clay artists, one of their first questions is inevitably, “potter or sculptor?”, “pottery or sculpture?”, separate and concise categories without a thought that they may be the same thing.


What do the tile makers say to this? They are often utilitarian clay artists, but when someone says ‘functional ceramics’ they inadvertently are expecting ‘pottery’. Tile is not really considered sculpture either, existing in both the two and three dimensional realms to varying degrees according to the artist. They are forced to answer to this question with, “None of the above.”

How many clay artists make both pottery and sculpture or consider our pottery to be as sculptural as anything labeled sculpture? To say that something is ’sculptural pottery’ is a misnomer, telling people that other utilitarian pottery itself isn’t at all sculptural. To define pottery as utilitarian is to define it as being functional before being, or without being, art. These definitions are inaccurate for the contemporary clay artist.

With the risk of sounding like a post-modernist saying, “Everything is art,” I’m going to have to say:

“All pottery is sculpture.”

Disagree if you want, but you can’t argue with the functionality of tupperware.

Childhood in Uxbridge

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It was Thanksgiving. After a morning of running around breakfast, putting on our showers, and gulping down our getting ready, we managed to get everyone packed in the car. Dad drove us around Uxbridge.

Uxbridge was an old mill town perpetually trying to stay an old mill town even as everything around it changed and grew. People lived in places parted by inched lawns nestled side by side, trimmed guardian bushes, and trees out back. Many lived in large houses at the end of winding dirt roads unseen by any neighbor. The only landmarks to their house would be trees and maybe a mailbox, probably camouflaged in green on a wooden post.

The town had the air of things passed. It had different areas, down town, north, south, but no one would refer to any part of Uxbridge by saying so without a slight sneer or bit of sarcasm. Saying Uxbridge had a down town was pointing out a gas station, a liquor store, and the bank and calling it the big center of it all.

Then there was the river and it’s canal that flowed through the town, including the down town, where it cascaded into a waterfall right outside of the liquor store waiting to catch those who would not wait to return to their homes. This valley clutched to the idea of people coming together around the river out of necessity. In more recent times it was a smelly, sewage line through the town with walkways along side it so people could walk their dogs and try to catch sight of the mutated frogs. Sometimes you’d catch a brave soul canoing. You’d stare like a redneck at the NASCAR race track, waiting for the boat to capsize so you could have something to say around the dinner table that night or chat about on the ride to Grandma’s house in this case. You could take turns predicting what terrible diseases they could get. My money’s on leukemia. Chris says cancer. I say leukemia is a type of cancer. Chris says it’s not. We are silenced by a twisted figure in the passenger seat pointing a finger dangerously.

“You better shut up, right now!” threatens my mother. We revert to arguing in glances.

“Would you relax, Ann?” my dad mutters. This only makes mom angrier.

“It’s awful to be saying things like that about people! The river is fine! All sorts of animals live by it. You remember Jeremy? He used to go canoeing in it all the time, and he’s fine. It’s not nice to joke about cancer! Would you rather we still lived in Whitinsville? Or Worcester?”

“Oh, they like it fine here, Ann,” said my dad as patient and cheerfully as he could muster, “They’re just joking around, right?”

“Sure,” me and my brother both intoned, surprised to find ourselves in agreement. I knew that wouldn’t do.

“It’s a bit isolated,” I admitted, daring my mother’s wrath, “We have to drive at least a half hour to get anywhere. There’s nothing to do really.”

“Nothing to do?” my mom asked incredulously, “What do you mean there’s nothing to do? I’m sick of you two always saying you’re bored.”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Chris.

“You just did,” I told Chris.

“Well you can travel where ever you want to and live where ever you want to live when you’re older,” said my dad, the diplomat, “You’ll come to realize that exciting places have bad things about them too.”

“Yeah, but I bet their schools don’t suck as much,” muttered my brother.

“Don’t swear!” screamed my mother, rounding on him with the finger.

“What? I didn’t swear! What swear did I use?”

“Yes, you did. You know you did. You said it sucks.”

Hating to side with my brother, but needing to be honest, I came to his defense, “Mom, sucks isn’t a swear.”

“It’s not a nice word! And I don’t want to hear it again!” yelled my mom resolving the matter, “Besides, you’d belly-ache about school no matter what school you went to.”

“Yeah, school sucks.”

“Christopher!”

“Oh, right. School blows.”

Nobody answered Chris that time. I was amazed my mother fumed silently. She did this very seldom.

Finally my dad pulled over at one of the nature preserves for the river and got out his camera. He wanted to let us run around a little and take some pictures. My dad was a carpenter and car guy, but underneath that with his manual 35mm Minolta in hand, he was an art-tist!

Late at night when he’d had a few beers in him he would take out boxes of pictures he had taken all over the country. He said they used to be in albums and packets, but my mother had unsorted them all on various occasions wanting to make new albums but never finishing. My dad would tell me of an ancient time before I was born.

“Here’s one of my hotrods,” he said, then going on to say what specific car it was and what it had to make it go so much better than other cars, “This one I crashed while I was tripping.”

“What happened to the other ones?” I asked, eyes scanning the shiny red machine.

“Kids. That’s what happened. I met your mom. I sold my hotrods.”

It was a sad tale. I bowed my head in respect, then thought of another question, “What happened to the camera that you took all of these pictures with?”

“Your mom. That’s what happened to it. Every time I take it out to go shooting she takes a bunch of crap pictures that are out of focus and over or under exposed. When I try to explain it to her, she gets mad at me. If I tell her she can’t use the camera, she gets mad at me. So, I keep it hidden away.”

It was a sad tale. My dad would continue on to other pictures.

Now he had a generic automatic Kodak camera that even my mom could take pictures with. You could still always tell which ones my dad took.

“C’mon, let’s get a group shot by the river.”

We all went off next to the Blackstone river, pretended to like each other enough to get closer, closer. Mom smelled like stale cigarettes, my brother like piss.

“Chris, put your hand down and stop being a wise ass. Now everyone smile!”

Bodies – Chapter 1: Life and Death

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I saw The Bodies exhibit today, visiting New York City. It was inspirational in a lot of ways.

– – – – –

I could only stare at her as she lay somewhere between life and death. The green light conducted a series of continuous, monotonous pings which told that technically she was with the living. Seeing the pallid, paper skin, my eyes told me otherwise. A poor, trapped soul in a lifeless husk. I imagined for a second what it would be like to be trapped in that cold prison. I shivered involuntarily, empathic pity welling through me. My god, how could they let her stay like that…

* * *

“Are you saying that you support pulling the plug on patients?” inquired Phil, one of the med students from the neighboring university, both mortified and intrigued. I sighed. I wasn’t what I meant, but I guess it was true. Typical. How could I expect to get through to a third year med student about empathy?

“Just forget I ever said anything,” I said with a tinge of annoyance, but mostly disappointment.

“Hey, whatever Silvie, just trying to start up a conversation,” replied Phil defensively. I knew he didn’t understand what he’d said wrong, but I let it go. I really didn’t expect him understand feeling the emotions of people, or lack there of in the case of the girl. The sweet, cherry blossom teenage girl with the slight frame and speckled pallid skin, with the dark hair that reminded me of innocence gone with adolescent promiscuity. Angelic little demon of living death, whatever could possess your soul to stay nestled in your inactive frame?

“What is the case with that girl,” I ventured curiously, “Why doesn’t her family pull the plug? What happened to her?”

“Hm,” Phil smiled slightly, “Well, that’s the funny thing. There is no plug to pull. She just stays like that. Even when we found her she should have been dead from dehydration, but she wasn’t. She still clung on somehow. Of course, they do have her on an IV, but to tell you the truth, I’m not sure she needs it. And as for her family,” Phil swallowed and grinned, “there’s only an older brother, and he’s either just not stepping forward, or he’s long dead.”

I couldn’t help but wonder what gave people like that the thrill in telling people’s tragic tales like fairy tale fiction. Emotions, Phil wouldn’t understand, but a girl who could live without food or water, that was certainly the type of thing Phil would believe. But, I didn’t say anything. Again, I knew that it would be useless arguing the point with Phil, so I told him goodbye and headed down the steps outside the hospital I regularly volunteered at.

And with the steps away from the distance fading hospital I found that my thoughts of the girl did not fade.

* * *

So, this is the new store Karen was telling about, I thought. It looked quaint enough, not the occultish looking place I was expecting- probably becuase it was in the mall. Somehow the lack of scary mysticism made me happy. The place was simply called “Andorra’s”. I opened the ringing door and stepped right in. The inside was almost as simple as the out. That actually almost made it more eerie than the scary occult shoppes of back-water Lassington and industrious, smog-ridden Worner.

Natural wood walls with stained shelves, neatly arraged with bottles and books, a display of handipped candles, tools tucked away on either side of the room on the floor, and a cushioned, round seat at the back wall under a blank wall surrounded by neat piles of books lay half cluttered about the store. A white-haired woman sat crossleged. She put down the book she was reading and smiled. You could tell her personality was a smiling one. She glowed with a white, gold, and silver laced aura. There was a quiet confidence about her with wisdom in those faint blue eyes.

I felt like I had just gone home.

* * *

“Why don’t you go home, Silvie. You seem like you could use some rest,” said Bonnie, one of the nurses. She didn’t reprimand, but seemed genuinely concerned. Her round face smiled in a serene way that often soothed patients. She had caught me staring off again while I was supposed to be busily handing out fruit cups and fruit-flavored gelatin.

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m just a bit distracted,” I said moving off down to the next patient.

“Uh, huh,” she stood in front of me blocking me with her wide frame and crossed arms, attitude demanding an explanation. I slid the metal tray down onto the foot of an unoccupied bed and sat next to it. I knew Bonnie thought it was her job to cure the ills of all the world, patients and people alike.

“Do you know the girl in room 358? The one they found in a coma?”

“Why, yes,” Bonnie jiggled in recollection, bringing her hand to her face, “You were with her last week. Phil mentioned that I shouldn’t put you with her again.”

“Oh, did he?” I asked suddenly angry.

“He was just concerned about you, is all. He said seeing her made you really upset.”

That was defiantly Phil’s prescription for emotions. If something made you feel something other than happy, it was best to cut it off.

“It looks like he was right,” Bonnie continued, “I can understand that. I read to her on my breaks. It’s tragic. They just don’t know what happened to her and there’s no one to come forward and shed light on the situation. I know there are lonely people in this world, but still, not even a friend or coworker has come to see her.”

“Do they know who she is?”

Bonnie sat next to me, shifting the tray of gelatin and making it wobble, “No. No, they don’t. There’s no clue on her body either. She wasn’t beaten or anything.”

“Then why would she go into a coma?”

“Emotional trauma is the doctor’s best guess,” Bonnie shook her head, “It’s amazing what the mind can do to the body.”

We sat there on the bed together a moment thinking. Bonnie’s pager beeped. She went to dash off but gave me one last smile,

“Why don’t you go on over and see her, Silvie? Read to her or something.”

– – – – –

Reading is good for you I hear. Goodnight, people.

Sexy Brow Stubble

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I’m not exactly someone who’s followed the pack- catching on never, embarrassingly later, or so far before that I’m over it by the time it’s cool.

So, yeah, I miss things, and every so often I’m quite shocked to discover what it is that I missed. This story is in reference to a good, long close up look I’ve had at a few good friends lately.

Fred approaches the mirror. He thinks “Damn, I’m a strikingly, amazingly hot stud and user of adjectives.” But then, he furrows his brows in disappointment: his thick, bushy brows that some might say frame his deep, dark, fall into and sprain your ankle eyes. He stares at those brows and a bit of water begins to caress one eye and then the other. “I hate myself,” he states to his complexion, his eyebrows staring back, “And it’s all your fault.”

He reaches for a weapon that will scar his face with stubble for life and put a bandaid on his ego. The tweasers remove the offending bit of hair whose only crime was being where God damn well put it and meant for it to be.

“Much better. Now they are super thin like the ones in this here underwear ad. But, something’s missing…” his pointy-thin, dotted-line eyebrows stare back in earnest like a . . . ., “They’re thin… too thin… too weak.”

His self esteem plummets and the tweezers fall to the bathroom’s tile floor, bouncing with a resonating clamor that echoes between Fred’s ears in a mocking cacophony.

It is then that he sees Jane’s head shaking in the mirror, arms crossed and breath sighing, “It’s okay, Fred,” She approaches with what looks like a pencil and tilts his head down towards her, “There,” she states moments later after drawing upon his well-sculpted face.

And his brows are great, sexy, pencil thin and strong…

…until tomorrow when the dots appear around his new brows, growing in defiance.

“You could always get surgery for that,” suggests Jane nodding to herself.

A black cat on the sofa stares for a moment and then goes back to sleep, thinking how humans are such stupid, silly pets, but he loves them anyways.