i’m in ur house/impeachin ur d00dz via boingboing
(if you don’t get the reference, it’s explained here. hilarous [and ubiquitous] catz “i’m in ur” photos here.)
election humour, "i'm in ur..." so after much encouragement (read: bullying 
) by family and friends who read my travel blog, i have been convinced to try and “do something” with my writing.
it’s a bit scary putting this down in words. i suppose i’ve always had a fragile little bubble of belief that maybe (just maybe) writing might be something i could be halfway decent at if i really tried. a tiny secret desire i harboured, but never actually admitted to because it felt too vulnerable. writing is something i do for soul sustenance, something that fills me up and balances me out. do i really want to put that out there for public consumption and criticism? am i strong enough to withstand the possibility of having that bubble popped? i have writer friends who make their living stringing words into images, arguments, and information – quite frankly, i am in awe of them. what on earth makes me think i am good enough to do what they do?
but i am also jealous of them. i would give my eyeteeth to do what they do. to do something i felt real passion for. to work hard at something that felt good. to be able to pour my energies into something that absorbed my interest. to have something to show at the end of a day. if there’s even a smidge of a chance that i could make that happen, don’t i owe it to myself to try?
so i’m putting this out there – not because i’m looking for any external validation of my dreams, but because if i tell someone i will do something, i damn well will. no matter how big, how small, how scary. i’m just stubborn like that. it’s the capricorn in me. how else do you think i ever made it through the start line of a marathon? i told people i would, so i did.
so i’m telling you, dear internet. i will try this. i don’t know how, but i will. i don’t need encouragement, so much as courage, in written form. the permanence of putting something into words so that i can make it happen.
any suggestions as to where the hell to begin, gratefully received.
my spirits continue to rise.
- the first female speaker of the house
- dems winning the senate
- and the icing on the cake, the resignation of rumsfeld
i didn’t have a blog back in march 2003 when bush began bombing iraq, but the moment that war began is forever frozen in memory for me. i can’t begin to describe the utter desperate revulsion, shame and fury i felt, all at once. i wanted to peel my skin off just to be shed of its association with massacre. i wanted to *do* something. i couldn’t just sit there and let it happen without some protest on my part – an individual statement of horror and adamant objection. and i would have been protesting in the street at the first opportunity – except that i was so worried something would happen to jeopardise my move to the uk in two weeks time. i felt like my hands were tied. it was horrible.
i wrote this later that day in my journal:
war has started.
i want to scream.
i want to shout.
i want to throw myself in front of the planes if only to slow the killing by my small act of resistance. i can’t believe they are killing people in my name, as an american citizen – yet somehow i believe it deep within the grief of my bones.my outrage sputters against the dark.
i moved to london 2 weeks after that, and since that day every time i turn around the news just gets worse and worse. every time i hear it, my heart my stomach my morale just sinks. i never thought bottom could ever get this far down.
but finally, there is reason – to think the pendulum might start to swing back, to think we’ve hit the bottom and are trying to surface, to think that maybe we’ve lifted the moratorium on questions, to think that maybe we’ve had enough fear and frustration, death and despair.
maybe we finally want more from our government, ourselves.
maybe hope floats.
rumsfeld, senate, house, iraq war, midterm elections a huge thank you to: south dakota, for showing common sense even when your leaders have none.
shame on: Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, South Dakota, Colorado, and Wisconsin for banning same sex marriage. you may constitutionally restrict “marriage”, but you will never be able to legislate who someone falls in love with.
boo hiss for: arizona, who in a demonstration of pure xenophobia voted to make english the official language of the state. too bad no one remembered their *own* immigrant origins.
and a hearty congrats to: massachusetts, for getting back to your democratic roots and electing the state’s first black governor. I couldn’t agree more when he said, “This was not a victory just for me. This was not a victory just for Democrats. This was a victory for hope.”
it’s such a nice change to wake up in the morning with a tiny hint of cautious optimism. i only vaguely remember what it feels like… but i could certainly get used to it.
midterm, polls, election, arizona, abortion, massachusetts, , election results, south dakota anxiously awaiting the election results. (which won’t even begin to come in until midnightish here.)
because, you know, things *have* to start getting better. they just have to.
right?
midterm elections and after spending 6 months worrying about getting sick in a foreign country with foreign medicine, foreign food, and foreign germs…
…i forgot how sick london always makes me. not home even 3 weeks and already i have something which feels suspiciously like the beginnings of the flu. gah.
as expected, saddam was sentenced to death yesterday. what a farce.
The u.s. only “allowed” Iraq to try him because it was the easiest way of killing him without turning him into a martyr. Make no mistake, this is a proxy execution.
I’ve had lots of people question my anti-death penalty stance with hypotheticals: “what about if it was hitler?” “what if it would save innocent people’s lives?” “why doesn’t ending genocide justify even one death?” Many would say that this is a test case for exactly that kind of scenario.
And I can continue to give no other answer but this: death and the justice system cannot co-exist in a civilised society. No one will ever convince me that murder is a rational, thinking crime which can therefore be deterred by the threat of execution. Murderers are rarely logical people. No one will ever convince me that even if we could prove guilt with 100% certainty, that that gives us the right to kill another human. Guilty or not, I don’t ever want the responsibility of participating in death – I can’t live with that on my conscience. It makes me no better than the killer I abhor.
The only thing which will halt the machinery of death in this world – whether through war, genocide, or willful abject neglect – is when we stop trying to use the machine to our own purposes. we may believe that we have the right and ability to control it – but it controls us. we become a part of it. all our “good intentions” or moral arguments for the “marginal cost of death prevention” matter not – it bloodies our hands the same, no matter how just we believe our actions. and in that way, death turns us into something less that what we aspire to be – it does not elevate us, but vitiates our humanity at the most fundamental level. by devaluing a person’s life, we intrinsically cheapen our own.
it is impossible to kill and not become, by definition, a killer.
and i don’t think that’s something any society, justice system, or individual should ever participate in willingly, even gleefully. vengeance is never justified. and that’s all the death penalty ever is – legalised vengeance.
it’s not that saddam hussein deserves better – it’s that *we* do.
justice, iraq, war, , saddam hussein, death penalty we had k&t over for dinner last night, and of course, being bonfire night, the fireworks started going off shortly after dark and continued for hours. but around eight o’clock i stepped out onto our new balcony to let some cool air into the flat, and was instantly transfixed. i could see fireworks from canary wharf all the way to wimbledon – a horizon full of electric blooms hanging, glittering and dissolving in the night air, with a luminous milky full moon floating above the haze. it was absolutely beautiful – bursts of colour as far as the eye could see.
if only every night fireworks.
bonfire night, guy fawkes hallelujah! i didn’t even realise it before, but only just noticed today that we have (drumroll please…) proper mixer taps! you’d have to be north american to understand what a huge pet peeve this is for me, but suffice to say the fact I can create warm (not hot, not cold. warm) water in my bathroom without filling up the sink is a very. big. deal. indeed.
(no outlets, of course – but i wasn’t expecting miracles!)
also, i have a dryer. i know drying clothes tends to be quite a different experience over here (i.e. they’re basically cooked in their own steam) , but if it actually works and i can get even a few pairs of underwear dry without festooning every available surface of the apartment with wet laundry like some bizarre dali-esque loungescape and cranking up the boiler til the windows sweat… well then, I will be a very happy girl.
it has a lovely stand-up shower. it has central heating and double glazed windows.
i am loving this apartment. i may never leave.
(internet service, however, will not be connected for two loooooonnnnngggg weeks. so updates may be a bit sparse.)
so i have an apartment… that i don’t want to move into.
i don’t know why i am suddenly so reluctant to move – it makes no logical sense, for sure. i have been wanting an apartment of our own for so long – since j and i got together. i haven’t had a flat that i didn’t share since my ex and i split up more than 5 years ago. ever since, i’ve had a flatmate – some better, some worse. there was johnny, my close friend’s brother back when i still lived in boston, who was funny and cool. there was angela, from my first move to london, who was lovely. there was arlene, who was a ditz and annoying, but kindhearted. there was alex, who was a depressed unemployed slob – not so good. and always, there were our friends next door – kerryn and tracey, who are really just family in the form of neighbours.
i was never alone. i’ve been surrounded by friends and family wherever i went.
and being on the road for 6 months, the one thing you get truly homesick for are your friends. it’s friends you wish were there to have beers at sunset in fiji. friends you wish were there to go snowboarding in nz with. friends you wish were there when you’re at a sidewalk cafe in santiago, or dazzled by the salt plains of bolivia, or sucking down pad thai on khao san road in bangkok. it’s friends you can’t wait to share stories with when you get back. of all the things you leave behind, it’s friends you miss the most.
so since we’ve been back it’s been so wonderful – we’ve been staying with kim and andy at their place, who’ve been so generous and warm. and honestly, like a parched plant, i’ve just been soaking it in. it is so nice to be surrounded by friends again. to have people to talk to, to have the luxury of familar faces and comfortable companions. i am sad to leave this cocoon of embrace.
finally moving means the trip is genuinely over. finally moving means being truly on our own, and facing london again. finally moving means losing our built in circle of family and friends and flatmates that i’ve taken for granted for so long. more than anything else, that’s what i don’t want to let go of.
i know it’s time. i know we’ve worked hard for this. i know our flat is still close by. so it makes no sense, this reluctance.
but if you had the friends i do, you’d feel it too.
what’s the most ridiculous amount of money you’d imagine paying to get a single pair of keys cut?
if you said £12, you’d be right!
when the hell did keys start costing £6 each!?? i wandered down the street, dropped off the keys, came back 5 minutes later, then had my jaw hit the floor when he said “that’ll be £11.80″. i had £8 on me and my phone (because who’d figure a set of keys would cost more than £8??) i had to leave my phone as collateral, take the original keys, go all the way back to the house and get more cash before returning to get robbed pay and collect the bloody keys. what’re they, made of gold or something?
gah.
i’m inordinately happy that if you google “jen”, my site is on page 7.
woo hoo! number 67 out of 104,000,000!
yes, i am *that* pathetic.
we got a flat, hooray hooray! we get the keys this evening.
here’s some pics from the estate agent:
it looks a lot bigger with less furniture!
now we just have to get dishes… linens… a telly… well, everything really!
but it’s all good. watch your inboxes for a housewarming invite soon!
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