undergroundwoman

we are connected

This was the first night I've really danced in a long, long time. Even though there is a lot of amazing music being made right now and even though "hands in the air" moments do still happen, they are scarce these days. Sure, some people are jaded; some burnt out by excesses. More fundamentally, though, I think that people who used to be happy and connected have experienced a break with the spiritus mundi -- the sputtering flame of our imagination and faith is so starved for the oxygen of connection and meaning that it becomes all too easy to retreat into non-action, instead of blazing forth into the darkness with inspiration and all of its transformative power.

Something in your set tonight reminded me of who I am and who I'm not and, most importantly, who I should be.

Enough gush and plur -- thanks.

jondi and spesh ... last night a dj saved my life ;-)

looking for a job

I hate, no, scratch that ... I HATE looking for a job.  I was forced out of my job at company A.  Oddly enough, immediately after telling me this, they offered me 3 months of contract labor ... what? in lieu of a severance package? Due to a lengthy recent illness, my savings are totally depleted, so I felt like I had to swallow my pride and take this temporary employment.  Can we say awkward???

I got a couple of genuine lead and 2 definite nibbles today. Hopefully, I'll know something before the holidays.

Anyway, here are some things I've been reading lately.

I know it's true that tanstaafl (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch), but I somehow missed all of the back and forth over google's and gmail's invasion of privacy.

Read this gmail privacy faq for the lowdown.

Someone else says that it's all a tempest in a teapot.

There's a sucker born every minute. I tended to believe that google was not evil. Now, I'm not so sure.  I tend to get annoyed to find out that someone is setting 38 year cookies on my computer.  Sure, I won't be using this computer for 38 years, but since I use their gmail, they could conceivably tie all new computers that I will use into the older cookie profile information.

It's not even that I do anything bad or illegal on the net. I just don't want them knowing what I do.  It's just kind of creepy.

I think that I will stop using google asap and start using clusty.

hello from the radical middle

Here I am, back on the web, after an absence of, what? two or three years!  I got inspired to start a journal again when I went to the web in search of solace over the recent election results and their aftermath.  There ARE people out there who actually like to think about things and don't paint everything and everyone with two broad brushes, one black and one white. So, this journal will be about current affairs and pop culture, but with a bit of personal scrapbook thrown in.

About my handle.  I've been undergroundwoman for almost as long as I've been on the web (since '94).  The name works for me on several levels.  I read Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground when I was 19 and the character of the underground man resonated very strongly with me. Like him, I tend to be introspective, judgmental, fearful, neurotic, but also capable of incredible perceptions and honesty.  He judged other people harshly, but he judged himself more harshly than anyone, putting himself through rituals of self-punishment when he indulged in a petty or spiteful act.

I've struggled with this for a while, mainly due to the fact that I've always felt impotent when it comes to understanding the world and affecting change in it.  I've spent the last several years in various cultural undergrounds participating in various lovely hedonisms as a protest to that feeling of impotence. I have no intention of putting aside my hedonisms, but I'm tired of running from the defining identification of my internal life. I have been seized and possessed by the image of Medusa for almost 12 years now, but I've never known what to do with the possession.  She is my constant companion and teacher, even though I am afraid of the lessons that she teaches.  Until I learn them, I will never know her power. I am determined to confront her, so this journal will also detail my encounters with myself.

I feel a responsibility to interact with the world on a more basic level, to get in touch with the incredible power I know to be buried within me.  It's not that I mind being selfish. I don't. It's just that I have to take a stand for things that I feel are right and beautiful in the humanity and in myself to combat the terrible fear and negativity in which the world is immersed at the present time.  Even though I have a lot of work to do on myself to make myself a better person, I finally realized that it's not all about me. Part of the reason I think I've been so stuck is because I'm afraid of getting involved with people. In many ways, I've always been a spectator, cut off from other people, afraid to let them see me, afraid that they would destroy me by thinking me monstrous, because I could so clearly see the monstrous characteristics within myself. It's not that I'm truly unhappy or clinically depressed -- I'm not. It's just that I'm not who I should be.

This is day one of a new attempt to move forward.