AD: Have you heard?! We’re allowed to get married now! My partner just called me crying! I can’t wait to tell our daughter!
Me: Wow, that’s amazing! *gives her a hug*
Despite my cluelessness about the California Supreme Court decision that overturned the ban on same-sex marriage today, I wish all those affected a happy congratulations! It’s about damn time.
I learned in psychology that when kids reach the age of 2, they discover that they are autonomous beings, with their own identities and feelings and desires. Which is why 2 year olds are notorious for being terrible. “Eat this.” “No!” “Let’s go here.” “No!” “Go to bed.” “No!”
For awhile I’ve been pondering my tiger within and trying to figure out why I get so enraged when someone disagrees with me. I pinned it down to secretly being afraid of annihilation - if my opinion doesn’t matter, then maybe I don’t matter. But this morning on the bus I took it a bit deeper - maybe I get so angry because I’m afraid that the person I’m arguing with might be right and therefore I might be wrong. Which really points to a deep insecurity that I myself don’t actually know what I believe in and know what’s best for me.
Looking at it from this angle, I realize that I’m constantly bombarded by the voices in my head. But none of those voices is mine. They’re the voices of my parents, ex-boyfriends, hardliner activists, people in my religious community. I have a gift of being able to move among many different kinds of people - rural Armenians, radical San Franciscans, ritzy Potomac residents, homeless people, feminists, Republicans. But this gift is also a burden if I don’t learn to be grounded in myself first.
Hmm. Maybe that’s why my parents always grounded me in high school?
In my new journal I wrote that I feel like I’m in a stage right now where I’m becoming. And then I wrote about who I want to become. My vision was of someone rooted in herself, a strong, spiritual, loving woman who knows her worth: priceless.
I’m not there yet. But now I think I’m on the right track. I’m a young woman who knows her potential worth. Professional, spiritual, relational worth. I can compromise on decisions but I don’t have to compromise my true self, because that is a constant.
And on that note, here is Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All.”
On the plane ride from DC back to San Francisco. Actually… this scene is pretty much constant.
ROMANTIC ALLISON: Ah, love is so wonderful. Wonderful boyfriends are wonderful. I’d give up just about everything to be with my wonderful boyfriend. Maybe I should move to the Middle of Nowhere to be with him and his wonderfulness.
FEMINIST ALLISON: That is stupid. You have a job you like and live in a really cool city. You don’t need to compromise anything. WOMYN OF THE WORLD UNITE!
LOGICAL ALLISON: It’s not a question of romance or feminism. It’s just practical to stay at a job that is good for your career. You can’t be moving cross-country every time something you like comes up.
ROMANTIC ALLISON: But how practical is it to be far away from the one you love?
SPIRITUAL ALLISON: “Let us then try what love can do.”
LOGICAL ALLISON: Be realistic. Think about your future. Both of your careers are important, especially since neither of you is ever going to make much money. You can’t live off of love.
SPIRITUAL ALLISON: “Love is the first motion.”
FEMINIST ALLISON: I can’t believe you’re even considering this! You know he’d never do the same for you!
ROMANTIC ALLISON: Mom and Grammie say that a woman always has to sacrifice. Especially if you want to have a family one day.
FEMINIST ALLISON: *rips out hair* GAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
SPIRITUAL ALLISON: “Way will open.”
FEMINIST ALLISON: Goddammit, shut up with the quotes!
SPIRITUAL ALLISON: “Learn to tame the tiger within.”
When I first moved to San Francisco, I got a temp job working in the finance office of the SF Housing Authority. It was smack in the middle of the Tenderloin District.
Since I’d come almost straight from rural Armenia, the Tenderloin was a terrifying sight to behold. Where was the America for which I’d been so homesick for two years? Certainly it wasn’t here, with homeless people lined up on the street, corners smelling of piss, human shit on the sidewalk, crack being dealt right in front of me. I promised once I got settled I’d do some volunteer work and educate myself about the issues.
I got settled. I trained in massage therapy to learn how to touch people with intention. I no longer take the Geary 38 to the Tenderloin, now I hop on the California 1AX which takes me straightaway to the Financial District.
You can learn a lot about life riding buses.
On the 38, the bus was diverse, often full of immigrants, mostly Chinese and Russian, speaking Chinese and Russian to each other or on cell phones. Come to think of it, the 38 was always noisy.
On the 1AX, it is always silent. I never answer my phone on the express because I don’t want to receive cold death stares. The people look more like me, wearing what I call “biz-cas“, armed with iPods, newspapers, paperback books so that no one ever has to talk or look at each other and everyone can pretend that they aren’t riding the bus with other people at all.
Even boarding the bus is different. I got the following diagram from Stuff Asian People Like. In this case, the blue represents the 1AX and the red represents the 38:
Just for fun, here is a diagram for the marshutka I used to take from Berd to Yerevan in Armenia:
The black dot on the right is the driver. That dot is always a man, and he is always smoking. He may even have a shot of vodka. The other black dot is me, and I am sitting on the marshutka because I’ve arrived at 8 am even though it won’t leave until at least an hour later when the other black dots show up.
Eventually there will be about 12 people in a white van-like vehicle, and they will all stare at me and ask where I came from and if I’m married and why not and if I want to marry an Armenian man and why not and hey you speak pretty good Armenian and where do you live and who do you live with and how do you like Armenia and what is better, Armenia or America and how much money do you make and how much do your parents make and where is your family and do you know the entire ancient history of Armenia… all this while listening to a tape of Tata over and over.
For Mother’s Day I got my mom this is who I am, a book of “photographs and essays on women, body image and compassion.”
This is a total gamble as a gift, really. My mom was a nurse so I think she’s okay with looking at naked people. I hope she likes it and finds it as beautiful as I do, but there’s always the risk she’ll think I’ve been kidnapped and brainwashed by San Francisco lesbian hippies and New Age massage therapists.
If she does think that, oh well. In all truth I wish there were also pics of transgender women and women with disabilities (hell, why not add men too?) but that’s who I am, and I am not most people.
There was one essay/photo by an African American transracial adoptee who said she never liked her body until she met her birthmom, and after that she felt pride in looking like someone. That made me think, because I’ve never met my birthparents and I certainly hated my Asian self growing up.
Now I try to remind myself that I am a child of God and I am beautiful.
If I ever have kids, I will be sure to tell them every day that they are beautiful, and I will make them stand in front of a mirror and shout it out loud! They will tell their friends that their mother is crazy but when their friends come over I will make them do it too! I want to provide them all with the necessary armor to protect them from the media onslaught that causes people to hate themselves and their miraculous bodies.
Yet another lesson in the so-called life of Allison Young.
Talking to Mr. Guitar last night, I found out something that was terrible, really very horribly terrible.
Sometimes, the man doesn’t agree with me. Yes. I know. The nerve! How dare he disagree with moi, Me Who Is Always Right.
And while inside I had a tantrum of the caliber my boss would throw - “FUCK! You’re fired! Whoever said you were allowed to have an opinion in the first place?!” - the part of me that very much does not want to become my boss dove into my heart and reminded me why I am with Mr. Guitar:
He is the man of my dreams.
We all have heroes. But I think my biggest hero at the moment is He Who Can Put Up With Me Who Is Always Right.
It’s a tough job, and nobody has to do it. But he does. And because of that, it changes Me Who Is Always Right into…
I have been reading some blogs that discuss religion’s role in a post-modern world, which you can find here, and here, and here. These posts were very interesting to me, but they left me with one lingering question…
WTF is postmodernism?!
I posed this question to the first oboist on our carpool ride to orchestra practice. He’s very smart and artistic and twice my age so I figured he’d know. He said his dad was a modern architect, and that modernists believe in rationality whereas postmodernists say all different perspectives are needed to come up with what’s really right.
Hmm. Maybe that’s why Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead makes me want to rip my hair out. And explains why I butt heads so often with my 63 year old father.
That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.
Um… let me restate: WTF?!
I am a Korean-American adoptee. My parents are white Christian Republicans. I was a cheerleader and now I work at a feminist organization. I speak English and Armenian and some Spanish but not Korean. I play piano and oboe, and yesterday I played the triangle. My boyfriend is a white classical guitarist in an interracial hip hop band who is learning tango. My brother’s facebook profile says his political views are Very Conservative. My friends are all over the map geographically, sexually, spiritually.
All I know is that I was born in 1982 and this is how my life is. I never thought about classifying it as postmodern. The rainbow lens is the only way I know…
I recently have desired to learn more about my best friend’s religious beliefs even though I’ve known her for about 13 years. I still remember the first time I met her:
It was the first day of 7th grade. We were in Spanish class, and I noticed that a new girl was sitting behind me. With all the courage I could muster up (as well as some tips from a Teen magazine article on how to make new friends), I introduced my 12 year old self.
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
For my Mormon education, she recommended the book Mormonism for Dummies. Today at lunch I went to the San Francisco Public Library and picked it up. I can’t wait to read it!
My best girlfriends and I have shared a lot growing up. We talked about periods before we got them, boys before they liked us, high school before we entered, college before we were accepted. Now we discuss careers, marriages and families before they’re necessarily anywhere in sight.
Interspersed with important topics like boy problems and show choir, there has always been earnest discussion about philosophy and theology. What happens when you take 5 girls raised all different religions - Mormon, Catholic, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish, Episcopalian - and put them in a room together? Well, I think you’ve got an interfaith movement right there!
I am so grateful to have these women in my life as we travel the world on our different paths and challenge our beliefs with yoga, Buddhism, paganism, Spiritualism, and for me, Friends. As I can’t imagine life without our nights of binging on cheese and crackers, I also can’t imagine life without the spiritual growth they’ve inspired in me.
If you ask my mom whether her non-Christian friends will go to heaven, she will tell you she doesn’t know and it’s up to God to decide.
But I believe heaven is here on earth and happening every day among friends. I believe in the rainbow and that which unites us all.
Much to the shame of Mr. “I’m not a music snob!” Guitar, his girlfriend (aka me) has a mass-minded taste in music. This cannot be passed off as just ignorance, as the offender was classically trained at a young age, but by choice. I actually know the words to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys and am outrageously unapologetic. Woe is he when we end up in his car together and I hook up my mp3 player and put on Rent and Newsies and sing at the top of my lungs irrespective of pitch or tone. One time when we had just started dating, I even decided to entirely forego the radio or mp3 player and tortured entertained him with my 25 year old rendition of the Little Mermaid.
Now, that is love.
As is braving a 2,764 mile relationship for two years.
That is hella love.
As is putting up with me over the phone mouthing off on corporations, the government, religion, men, white people, computers, Western medicine, rich people, consumerism, the President, Republicans, my parents, and much, much more.
That is hella hella love.
So without much further ado, I’m going to ask for all of you to follow Mr. Guitar’s example as I post a song that I am particularly feeling today. Before you yell at me for my taste in music, remember: YOU LOVE ME!
I originally was going to write a post on gender. I’d been pondering Gender: the Final Frontier by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, who says, “I’ve found that pretty much the only people who don’t define themselves and others by their genitalia are trans people… So if it’s not our crotches and their playgrounds that define masculinity and femininity, what is it?”
And then Mormonism was in the news because of the raid on Yearning for Zion Ranch, an ex-communicated fundamentalist sect. Having a best friend who is Mormon, I always feel called to be an interfaith ally as well, and that often means defending Mormons from accusations of being polygamous or a cult.
So I was wondering, what should I write about? A post on being an ally to transgender people or to Mormons? And then I thought, hey, why not both?
Here is my post on being an ally:
Smile. Introduce yourself. Let people talk about themselves and see how they want to be treated. Be nice and genuinely interested. Make friends. Act stupid together.
This has been my all-purpose strategy for survival all over the world. I think I am generally pretty good at it, especially at the acting stupid part.
All I want in this life is more friends. I am greedy. There are so many people to be friends with! I want to be friends with the liberals and the conservatives, the religious and the nonreligious, the abled and the disabled, the homed and the homeless, the homo and the hetero. I want to be friends with everybody!
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
~ E.E. Cummings Joy is a form of protest. ~ Burning Man T-shirt You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life. ~ Walt Whitman
