Color

(c) 2014 L Keane

It's been a really long time since I've drawn anything. Last week, my friend Becky asked me to draw her D&D character, a cleric of the Raven Queen named Penny Dreadful. It's Penny's sad fate to remain alive to spread the good word about death to the living. As such, she is a cheerful goth chick.

I know it's silly, but I am hugely, inordinately proud of myself. I've always been pretty bad at coloring things; in school my primary art medium was pencil or charcoal. Shadows and light make sense to me, but color has always been messy.

At any rate, I'm happy with how this turned out. I always find myself a little in love with the characters I draw. This one is the same. I think it's because I managed to capture some kindness in her expression, with a hint of wry, self-deprecating humor. Also, I gave her freckles, and I've always been a sucker for freckles. She seems to be a lot of contradictions - goth and sweet, angular and full, luxurious and austere, soft and sharp, kind and severe. She seems like someone I want to get to know.

People often talk about their art coming to life on their own. Despite how many characters I've written and how many pictures I've drawn, this is the first one that ended up surprising me.

I love that feeling.

I need to start creating more. I also need to collaborate more with Becky, because clearly our visions combine into excellent things.






On my trip to Vegas, I got to play music. Like, with other people who play music. It's been such a long time since I've gotten to just sit and indulge in a boring musician's jam session. Taking turns playing songs, following along with chords you don't know, humming when you don't remember the words. The kind of thing that would be desperately dull for anyone not actively participating.

I miss that. Becky and Molly and Meghan and I used to do this all the time, figuring out a new Decemberists song, or four part harmony to something we loved from the 90s, or just messing around on our guitars.

Playing music on your own can be right, exactly what you need - just you and the keys, just you and your vocal chords, losing yourself to the song, shedding embarrassment, silencing the internal critic for just a little while. I miss the practice rooms in the music building at my college. I'd head over there at midnight, have the security guard let me in. I'd find an empty practice room and sit down at the piano bench, surrounded by plywood pegboard walls that were painted a dispirited bluish grey, and I'd run my fingers along the smooth, cool keys, and I'd put the stress or heartache or worry or anger of the week into the instrument. I would play until I was falling asleep over the keys, hands getting numb with cold, the hum of the empty building the perfect white noise to drown out the circular internal monologue. I'd play until I'd bled off whatever extra emotions had been pressing on the inside of my ribs, hammering them into something beautiful as they escaped.

But college was also a time to play music with people - not polished, tight melodies. Just messy togetherness. No technique, just joy or heartbreak. Twining your voice around someone else's, peeled and raw, not worried about sounding great or being impressive. Just sharing.

It's true that musicians can be self-absorbed. I'm speaking as a musician here. It's true that we're showoffs and vain and competitive. But there are times - just sometimes - when you just close your eyes and abandon the ego, when the music is more important than who's making it and the only thing real is being a part of it.

I miss being able to make the space for those moments to happen in.

I think I've been starving the artist in me for too long. I have to remember to take the time to put on the admittedly-sometimes-pretentious glasses (metaphorical ones, of course) and to see the world and myself like an artist.

best friends

Leaving Becky always feels a little like cutting off a limb. I know it won't kill me and that I'll be able to adapt to the sudden space where there used to be something important, but it's never easy or painless. This is what happens when you've had the same best friend since the age of eleven.

Cool kids hanging out by the fire hydrant. I think I was ... fourteen here?
Look, I didn't own a pair of jeans meant for females until I was sixteen,
whereas Becky has always been Fashion (that is a belt made from a jumprope).

Have I ever mentioned how we met? It was early August, the summer after fifth grade. I'd just moved to Illinois from my childhood home in Michigan. I hadn't made any friends and mostly stuck in my room, looking at the books I'd read too much, trying to figure out if my stuffed animals would make me feel less lost (they didn't, really).

But that weekend, our subdivision hosted a big neighborhood potluck with a DJ (usually one of the high school kids) and lots of games for the kids to play, and lots of beer for the parents.

I don't remember what I did for most of the early evening. Probably sat with a plate of potato salad on my lap and my face stuck in a book, ignoring everything around me. But eventually, once the last little gold of sunset had started to go blue, I got up and joined the other kids dancing by the DJ's station. It was probably less an urge to socialize than the fact that it was too dark to keep reading.

At any rate, I turned around and there in front of me was a girl with a handkerchief tied fashionably over her hair. I don't know what we said, but I know we danced like crazy, doing that grabbing-hands-and-dipping-down-and-touching-the-ground-behind-you-with-your-free-hand-and-then-popping-back-up-and-switching-hands-and-repeating-the-whole-process-again thing. Is there a name for that dance move?

About a week after that, our moms conspired. My mom told me to walk down the street and see if Becky wanted to play. And that was it. From that point on, I spent almost as much time at her house as I did at my own. I got to know Molly (who had to write my name on her hand so she wouldn't forget it). We spent our time thundering up and down the stairs of their house, pretending we were rock climbers, or nurses during the Revolutionary War, or reenactors working the tourist trade in Sleepy Hollow when weird things start happening, or students at Hogwarts.

Yes.

And when we outgrew playing pretend, our conversations turned to music, books, boys, politics. Almost all my fond and formative memories from adolescence take place with Becky.

On this trip to visit her in Vegas, we talked about how friendship, and pretty much any worthwhile relationship, requires effort. "I think friendship has to sometimes feel like work," she said. Otherwise, what's the point? If you never have issues, you're just existing on surfaces, never digging deeper.




We also meditated on the nature of kindness. It's only partly the conscious curbing of one's naturally selfish instincts. If selflessness and kindness were the same thing, then human doormats would be universally praised. But selflessness taken to the extreme strips you of agency, and without agency, what use can you possibly be? How would you be able to offer anything to anyone? Kindness requires clear perception, objectivity, honesty, agency, generosity, and the knowledge that being kind doesn't necessarily mean being nice. Being kind is about giving, to yourself and to others - not about just sitting there and having things taken from you.

I had a brief conversation with Jamison, too, and he wanted to know if kindness was based upon intent or on actions. That's not an easy question to answer, because an individual doesn't act within a closed system. Kindness is partly intention - although if one's actions are used to further a cruel cause, does that make the act ultimately unkind?

Despite this murkiness, and despite the side of me that demands consistency and logic, I know - with a nonfactual and entirely emotional, body-resonating sureness - that kindness is important.

Tavi Gevinson, creator and editor of Rookie Magazine, has said, "You don't have to be special; you just have to be kind."

And, shit, this sums up my feelings about what kindness is by illustrating what it isn't: the drive to be thought of as better than or more than others. It's okay to be regarded and well thought of - but if that's the end goal and driving force behind your actions? Then, okay, that's a life lived unkindly.



I don't know what it is about visiting Becky in Vegas, but I always come home with an extra dozen pages filled in my journal. Must be something about the sere simplicity of the desert juxtaposed against the tangled wayward mass of humanity that kicks the introspection muscles.

A good influence

 I know I've been referencing my old college blog a lot lately. I promise to produce some fresh material soon.

In the meantime, a recent conversation with Becky and Austin reminded me of something I'd written back in 2008.

Sweat in my eyes. I don't really care. 

I'm sweaty right now. I just ran a mile and did some sit ups and some push ups and core exercises. It hurt. It was great. I can't do the splits anymore. At least, I can get all the way down, but it hurts like hell. But there's still hope. 

My iPod died halfway through, but I didn't notice for a while, and when I did, it didn't really matter. It was nice being completely mindless for a while.

It struck me, as I was walking along an uneven sidewalk early this afternoon, that I no longer care. I've spent my life identifying myself as weird or nerdy or, most recently, awkward. And while I may be all of these things, I think I'm done with categories. It's the cheap way out. An excuse. A reason to avoid taking risks. A reason to run away.

If I act, I want it to be my own action - not the inevitable result of fate. And I want to stop labeling things as awkward. They are what they are. I've let too many things go by, left a lot of things unsaid or undone, or have said or done too much, because of a word. Because of awkward. 

It's stupid to let a word govern my life. 

I realize that being awkward has been a shield. I've held it between myself and everyone else the way some people hide behind their hair, or behind the excuse of alcohol, or whatever other guards we manifest to take the blame instead of us when we fuck up. I've used the excuse before - even recently - saying with a shrug, "I'm awkward," which really means "I can't be held accountable, it's fate, it isn't my fault."
But I think, now, I want it to be my fault. 

My actions, or lack of actions, my words, my thoughts, and doubts, hesitations, recklessness, caution, wins, are my own. When I succeed, I want it to be by my own hand. When I fail, I want it to be me failing. Without grace, without frills or excuses, just me alone. Responsible. 

Austin had mentioned that "awkward is a state of mind". I went back and reread my post and was gratified to realize that, although I've forgotten to keep a weather eye out for self-limiting labels, I've done a decent job of living without them. (Maybe I've gotten a little too self-congratulatory instead.)

At any rate, I hope I can take more risks, live a little more open, let the definition of who I am gain a little more depth, a few more colors.

As maudlin and self-important as my teenaged self might have sometimes been, she was also pretty perceptive. Gotta remember to let her have a good influence on me now.

Shark Week

I've gone back and forth about writing this, because it veers dangerously close to the dreaded TMI Zone (or maybe it sprints headlong into it, I don't know). But I ultimately decided to go for it because stuff like this shouldn't necessarily be too much information. All right, it's not exactly charming dinner conversation, so here's a warning.

WARNING (I GUESS):

DO NOT READ WHILE EATING, UNLESS YOU DON'T FIND THE INNER WORKINGS OF LADIES' BODIES ICKY AND NAUSEA-INDUCING, IN WHICH CASE, READ WHENEVER THE DAMN HELL YOU PLEASE

There seems to be a prevailing mindset, even among well-educated women, that talking about our bodies is impolite, particularly when it comes to the menstrual cycle.

I can almost hear the clicks as people calmly but briskly close this browser tab.

(Aside: I think a lot of the reluctance to discuss what one of my college friends adorably-yet-slightly-distressingly refers to as "mensies" is related to strong cultural taboos against blood. Touching blood, bleeding - these things have almost universally been thought of as wrong and unclean. It's why bloodborne diseases tend to be thought of as especially bad, and their victims correspondingly cursed/guilty. Also, people think of menstrual blood as being "dirtier" than the blood inside veins/arteries. Must research this - I don't actually know what menstrual blood is composed of; I'm shockingly ignorant about my own body.)

This reluctance to discuss Shark Week (which is probably my absolute favorite slang term for periods) is silly. Most ladies spend roughly a quarter of their time (one out of every four weeks or so) dealing with a uterine lining that's given up the ghost. We all have to figure out the bizarre world of tampons and pads and cramps and upswings in emotional sensitivity. We all have to deal, at least once, with the nighttime dilemma of either waking up our partners in the middle of the night to strip the sheets off the bed or else waiting until the morning and hoping the spot of blood you leaked doesn't set too much into the fabric.

It's embarrassing. Maybe we don't talk about it because we hope that ostriching will actually work - if I don't think about it, I won't have to deal with it.

I know some women (womyn?) wax sentimental about the beauty of the menstrual cycle, how it connects us with the moon and with other women and is a reminder of the female superpower of bringing life into the world.

I'm going to go ahead and just assume that those women have painless, tidy, neat little periods that last for two days and occur at a fixed interval.

Bully for them.

But for the rest of us, it's inconvenient if not outright annoying. Listen, I understand and appreciate the miracle of the human reproductive system. But I can tell you for sure that it's gotta be the product of evolution because it's messy, circuitous, and inefficient. Or, okay, maybe it was created by a jerk god that likes to see its creations be uncomfortable.

Here's where things get personal:

When I was twelve, I remember coming home from school and finding a book on my bed. I wasn't too surprised; when my mom ran across books she thought I'd like at the library (where she worked), she'd drop them on my bed. However, when I got around to actually taking a look at it, I realized this was different.

This felt important, but it also felt a little weird. Like, I wasn't supposed to talk about it. I closed my door and paged through it. It's a great book - informative without being intimidating, candid without being intimidating. However, if my mom was expecting me to take the initiative to bring up questions and concerns, she was mistaken. The innocent method of delivery, perfectly fine when the subject was some frivolous scifi novel, was somehow an indication that this important topic was a little shady, like a silent drug deal or something. Like it was best to pretend it wasn't happening, to deal with it in private, and to present an unruffled face to the world.

Of course, I didn't have too many questions or concerns. It all seemed pretty straightforward. When you're twelve, you deal with mood swings and irritability all the time. It's a way of life. PMS wasn't a huge issue for me, and getting my first period was surprisingly businesslike. Here's a box of tampons and the instructions, here's a mirror, here's a stack of pads if you prefer.

Getting my period was mostly about learning how to keep the blood contained. I didn't have a big talk about Becoming a Woman, or about the Gift of Childbirth. Nobody took me out to dinner to celebrate it as a milestone. It was just another responsibility - one more task to add to the list of personal hygiene, like flossing or washing your face.

I don't mind this view. It's pretty much how I think about my period now - matter of fact, a thing to be dealt with. Of course, I don't plan on having children (if I want to raise a kid and turn it into a decent adult, I'll just adopt one of the kids that already exist on the planet instead of making another one), so the whole thing is really just a nuisance. How else should i view it than a burden?

Some women see this a betrayal of the sex - like not loving and embracing a week of pain and messiness every month makes me less of a female, like it's an expression of internalized misogyny. But it's not - I am fascinated by the biology, and I think it's amazing that some ladies put it to use and GROW HUMANS with it. But for me, the whole ovaries/uterus/fallopian tubes thing is about as useful as my appendix. It's a vestigial system. It's as potentially hazardous as an appendix, too.

Here's where things get really personal:

A couple weeks ago, I was caught unawares by a Shark Week that came out of nowhere. No preceding week of being hypersensitive to criticism, no cramps, no bloating. Just, BAM, PERIOD!

On top of being unannounced, it was also the. heaviest. freaking. period. I have ever had. I'm talking soaking through a heavy-duty pad every hour for four days and nights straight, and distressing clots, too. I told you it was personal.

Menstrual blood is not part of the circulatory system, so losing it doesn't normally make you faint or anything like that. But the body does depend on it for iron. Usually, women get a little low on iron during their periods, but you usually only shed a couple tablespoons of blood. When Shark Week is particularly gory, women run the risk of becoming dangerously iron deficient.

This happened to me. I started noticing it around day two - walking even short distances left me short of breath with a pounding heart. I scheduled an appointment with the gynecologist, who ordered a complete blood count (CBC). She told me I had extremely low iron counts, and that she was surprised I had as much energy as I did. She also said that, often, clots are caused by the body in an attempt to slow the rate of blood loss.

I'm on iron supplements for the next couple months in order to rebuild the stores of iron the body keeps in bone marrow. In the meantime, I'll continue to have a rapid heartbeat and shortness of breath.

What's bizarre is that, two weeks ago, I had no idea this was a fairly common issue.

I texted a friend and asked her about it. We have a history of talking about things that you're not generally supposed to talk about, so this openness about Shark Week - though unusual by the world's standards - is pretty par for the course for us. She explained that menstruation-induced iron deficiency is totally a thing.

I feel a little indignant about this. This monthly mechanism should not put me at risk of anemia. Evolution was supposed to weed that out, although, stopping to think about it, cave-ladies probably didn't deal much with periods, because they were probably pregnant all the time. Fine, evolution, you get a pass on this one.

But I still feel a little betrayed by my body. A normal function it performs has rendered me a weak, winded wimp. A woolly mammoth would definitely have caught and trampled me by now.

I know this post has been kind of aimless. Blame it on the lack of oxygen in my brain.

Basically, I think it's ridiculous how ill-informed both men and women are about their own bodies, and the taboo against talking about those bodies' mechanisms needs to be overturned.