Hello Brooklyn

Posted on July 19, 2010
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Found this video when looking for inspiration. So classy.

Jay Z - “Hello Brooklyn” from Greg Solenström on Vimeo.

The phony

Posted on July 18, 2010
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Maybe you know, maybe you don’t: I lost my phone Thursday night. It slipped into the cracks of a cab–Not just any cab, a minivan cab (somehow this detail is significant), and was literally never heard from again.

While my luck is renowned for ripening to rotten, I realized that this was the first time in my life I had lost a cell phone. The time my primitive Nokia was stolen at Target in Corpus Christi, TX doesn’t count (I was 17 and admittedly a little too ghetto, as was Target at the time). Then, at age 17 i.e. 2004, having a cell phone was crucial but still leaning towards optional. Now everyone has a cell phone; Even the famous comparison to the Eastern world “starving child” won’t do– That kid probably has a cell phone.

So I started thinking about all of this, and realized that this loss (which initially drove me insane and brought a sudden flood of severe depression) could easily be turned into an opportunity for a new-age social experiment. Alas, I have made no effort to get a new cell phone. I have been thinking of ways I could combine other various technologies to survive without one.

Additionally, I have had an amazing few days. I forgot what life was like when you could just go somewhere and not always have the nervous habit of checking your phone for something that’s happened or someone that’s called. I am sure I have spent an enormous chunk of time watching the pot boil. Knowing you simply “cannot be reached” is a phenomenon in this day and age. It’s one less trace back to your name, which now is less of a token of identification but more of a token of attribution. Perhaps this is why I focus so much on people calling me “Chelsea.” At one point the somewhat unique spelling of my named symbolized a personal choice made on behalf of my parents, and has in indirect ways affected my life. But now my name is just tired and only worth its generic phonetic spelling, or just the understanding for simple attribution–I paid $x to XX, I have account #xxxxxxx. Why am I even fighting to say there is a “y” at the end of my name? My name seems to just be here for others and not for me.

Communication is exhausting. Its form does not follow function. I walked through the park all day completely at ease with everything just because my phone does not exist. I have often suggested creating a filter for phones allowing a person to set up specific life modes. If I am driving, my phone won’t ring. It will go straight to voicemail. If I am home (in home mode) then it will ring, but not from work. If I’m at work my phone will only ring for certain people. It’s just like when you used to pick up the phone to return a call and you’d say, “Sorry, I wasn’t home.”

Thus I begin this pilgrimage to relax myself into a positive combination of technologies. Surely the same combination method can’t benefit everyone equally.

Self-Made Man

Posted on July 16, 2010
Filed Under May I Interject?, Thought | 1 Comment

My friend Matt (McKinney) recently gave me a book to read called “Self-Made Man” by Norah Vincent. He had read it in a gender studies class, and he suggested to me based on my fascination with masculinity under the feminist movement.

The premise: Norah becomes Ned. What I mean is, for over a year, Norah dressed as a man in different scenarios women are always curious about–strip clubs, monasteries, bowling leagues. In real life, Vincent is a lesbian, so to begin, her opinion of men is nothing extraordinary. By the end of the novel, she comes to a lot of conclusions about men–mostly positive. This happened to me, too (surprise!).

I bookmarked some passages that resounded with me personally.

From the chapter “Love:”

“If the most disgruntled women I met and dated as Ned had ever been attuned to men’s signals, by the time I met them, they were long past receiving outside information of any kind. Moreover, if the way they discussed their pasts and the way they approached me was anything to go by, they seemed incapable of seeing any new man as an individual. Worse still, they seemed to transform each new man, benign or otherwise, into the malignancy they were expecting him to be. They tended to see a wolf in every man they met, and so they made every man they met into a wolf–even when that man was a woman.” - p. 107

From the chapter “Work:”

“If they don’t know what sex you are, they literally don’t know how to treat you. They don’t know which code to opt for, which language to speak, which specific words and gestures to use, how close they can come to you physically, whether or not they should smile and how….So prevalent was this gender-coded behavior that I came to ask myself whether it isn’t almost impossible for any of us to treat each other gender neutrally as it is to conceptualize language without grammar.” -p. 224

From the chapter “Self:”

“But for these men, living in their man’s box wasn’t a particularly good fit either, and learning this in spades may have been Ned’s best lesson in the toxicity of gender roles. Those roles had proved to be ungainly, suffocating, torpor-inducing or even nearly fatal to a lot more people than I’d thought, and for the simple reason that, man or woman, they didn’t let you be yourself. Sooner or later that conflict would show, even if you weren’t trying to cross the boundaries of sex.

Manhood is a leaden mythology riding on the shoulders of every man.” -p. 271

“I don’t really know what it’s like to be a man. I never could. But I know approximately. I know some of what it is like to be treated as one. And that, in the end, was what this experiment was all about. Not being but being received.

I know that a lot of my discomfort came precisely from being a woman all along, remaining one even in my disguise. But I also know that another respectable portion of my distress came, as it did to the men I met in group and elsewhere, from the way the world greeted me in that disguise, a disguise that was almost as much of a put-on for my men friends as it was for me. That, maybe, was the last twist of my adventure. I passed in a man’s world not because my mask was so real, but because the world of men was a masked ball….Only then did I know that my disguise was the one thing I had in common with every guy in the room.”

Someday we won’t look back on this; subsequently, we won’t laugh.

Posted on July 12, 2010
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Welcome to Meatopia– NYC’s BBQ of 2010 on Governors Island.

You might be wondering why I <places palm flat on chest> would go to such an event. I blush when I admit it was an attempt at irony in action. But it failed. Note: by “it” I mean the attempt and Meatopia. My witness is a carnivore (Norman).

Let’s start the adventure of complaints.

1. The event required that you print out a ticket to enter. Apparently Meatopia has checkpoint technology comparable to that of an airport. Also, we can deduce from this that all meat-eating humans own printers (classism GOAAAAAAAAAAAAL).

2. The aesthetically-sound printed ticket listed the location where the ferry would pick us up from Brooklyn and take us to Governors Island. When we got there (after already traveling quite a bit), they told us the actual free ferry location was a 30-minute walk elsewhere. Or we could pay $6. No.

3. At this point, I’d like to mention that the cheapest ticket price for the event was $26.50. With that kind of ticket you were allowed to taste a dish from three different booths (so three dishes). Each booth represented some kind of meat company, or whatevz obvz. Everything looked/sounded fantastic… But then.

4. Beer was not included in the ticket price. You had to buy a wristband for beer which was $6. Then you had to buy beer tickets. That’s right. <points to self> Sober non-carnivore at a meat conference.

But it looks fun right–The music, the trees, the echo of burly bald men chomping . . .

5. Yet the beauty of moving time can never fully be depicted in a still photo. For, the wait for each line was about an hour or more. The bass of joy was throbbing and booming along inside my little sweaty (STILL SOBER) head.

6. It was hot and it also rained. Twice. OH AND YOU BEST BELIEVE AT&T DIDN’T GET RECEPTION THERE.

7. After waiting in the first line for 45 minutes, we reached the very front. A random girl who knew the people in front of us cut in with them and got her pretzel roll. And then I got to the table. “We’re all out,” the guy says.

I could go further, but I just want to say there is a constant in my life guaranteeing I always get screwed over by some moron who cuts in line. myStupidLife = x + y(lineCutter). Sing it.

The rest of the event progressed in the same fashion. We waited in so many lines for so long but never ended up getting our three meals guaranteed by our stupid print-out tickets.

Norman and I silently retreated to a pub in the financial district. We wanted to quietly drink and finally eat (we were starving). My iPhone pointed us in the direction of the pub, “Fraunces Tavern.” We walked a bit to get there only to find–tadah!-it’s a museum. Apparently George Washington drank there after the Revolutionary War. And apparently that means that we can’t drink there in 2010.

But shortly thereafter we fell upon the Dubliner, which worked out nicely when we got a table outside on the cobblestone street (complete with an umbrella, so no rain was felt). Naturally, the World Cup was full force inside the pub. I would describe that meal as: Wine, wine, lobster salad, (pointless) CHEER!, lobster salad, so forth.

Then Spain won. This bald guy clapped at us. Norman turned his head to look. (See last photo)

And that was our day. Summed up: Veggietopia woulda had their shit together.

“It’s Been A While” -dude from Staind

Posted on July 7, 2010
Filed Under May I Interject?, New York, Thought, Work Cyclical | Leave a Comment

I guess I am sorry for not posting more often. It’s only symbolic of a short, thorough frustration with not having air conditioning, and thus numbing myself each night so I can actually sleep.

Did an Examiner post today: “KittehRoulette - The more ENJOYABLE ‘roulette’.” Gonna try to actually do those more often (not always involving cats).

Didn’t realize it but I didn’t explicitly say where I am interning this summer.

Still didn’t say it.

I am interning at the Guttmacher Institute. It’s a think tank that conducts research and presents statistics about sexual and reproductive health. We work to provide information for the World Health Organization and the UN, as well as everyone you know.

I’ve wanted to work there ever since I got into reproductive health. For me, it’s the employment mecca. I’m 23 and already here–I’m a lucky little woman. AND it’s even better than I expected. The people are amazing. The work is amazing. Every day I am busy, which I love. I’m confess I am kind of sad it’s just an internship, especially since they currently have job openings for which I am already eligible. It’s weird to think I already have one college degree and in a year I will have two.

I illustrated a pregnancy test yesterday. Pretty much highlight of my life so far.

I need a haircut and to do the things I said I’d do this summer. Like read for thesis.

Blah blah New York

Posted on June 21, 2010
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Before I moved to New York, I had a number of what I’ll call “suggestions” for activities to help jump-start the summer. A few suggested I start a blog on New York. In the taste of some, the blog would have been private so that I could reveal in fine, liberal detail. Others really just wanted to know where I was going to eat while simultaneously judging (and patronizing) my review of the MoMA.

Well I’ve fooled you all. I have taken my preexisting blog and made one post to sum up my summer so far. No captions either.

But seriously, I made a bag rack out of a broken umbrella.

G Train

Posted on June 15, 2010
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An email to Laura Scott:

“i had a great experience the other night. it wont sound like a completely unique ny experience, but it was, ive confirmed! i was waiting for the train. the g train always takes forever, so a lot of people were there waiting. on the platform i had passed a cello player who was kind of playing silently and not making any significant noises. the crowd kind of stopped bustling in for the moment, and all of a sudden, from across the platform (straight across from the cello player) a violin player appeared out of nowhere and gave the cello player a signal. on cue, flawless, they played mozart from across the platforms with each other. the acoustics in the train station are beautiful. it sounded like i was at the new york symphony orchestra hall. they played until the trains came–about three songs. in the crowd of probably 100 people, i think i saw all of them give one of them money (depending on what platform they were on). and me along with many others were crying because it was so beautiful. it was like this cap to this day. we were all stuck there. we were forced to listen to this beautiful thing. we were forced into this experience that made us FEEL something. in a dirty rotten subway with rats and litter and bums.

i searched twitter later that night to find if anyone had posted pics/videos/ etc. from the incident and i found a few people, which made me really excited. somehow that experience changed me a little.

i think it kind of reminded me how i’d feel if i met someone that i could truly be in love with. i think right now i feel like life is a subway station and i don’t get cell phone service and i’m always waiting for a train to take me somewhere that takes me nowhere else in my mind. but then when you least expect it the subway station–the rats, litter, bums–becomes a symphony hall! beautiful.”

The photos I collected: