Prolific Immigrant

Very often, women are pitted against one another, so many represented as not being “a girl’s girl.” You know these women, we all know at least one woman around whom we are uncomfortable when they get too drunk and start show-boating for male attention. The woman who would justify sleeping with the man on whom you are crushing because “it’s not like he was into her, and why shouldn’t I? If I avoided every man who every one of my friends liked…, there’d only be 30 billion more…”

You know her. And she turns your stomach. And you should pity her because usually, her self worth rests entirely in the realm of how men react to her. And woah is her when her looks shift.

Listen. I too need attention from men. When I don’t even know I need it, and I suddenly get it, I would be a lying liar who lies were I to lie: It doesn’t affect me, I don’t even notice it. And when it’s from a boy I actually like, even better. I am overrun with a hysteria that amounts to a mass email / text to all of my female friends, and where my phone is broken, I will send smoke signals that HE SMILED AND SAID HI AND DO YOU THINK MY OUTFIT IS OKAY, SMOKE SIGNAL LOOKS A LITTLE BLOATED, etc.

But for a normal healthy woman with her self-esteem recipe in good shape, this comes in measured doses. It is not a daily thing, but rather a once in a while thing. Our self-worth is composite of an awareness of what we bring to the human table, rather than what we bring to — specifically — the male table.

That girl mentioned above, contrary to what media keeps trying to shove into my head, is not the norm. Or maybe I have just been blessed with most of the women in my life. (And I hope that you are, too.) She is not the norm.

The norm is women who love one another deeply.
Women who love one another even when we want to punch the other one in her stupidity.
Women who support one another when there is nothing left to say, but only the deepest most heart stopping pain to manage.
Women who tell one another that they are better, that they deserve better, that they can do better, that they will do better, and that they don’t have to show their boobs to get there. But if they did, “then I’ll help you get the right bra, but I would just like to raise my hand and say that I don’t think you need to show your boobs to get this. Let’s go shopping! I love you.”

That is the norm; these women, are the norm.
And if you don’t know these women, then you need to seek them out, to learn from them, and to become one of them. Trust that they will enrich your life, as they do mine.

All of the above to say, please read this article by Emily Rapp, an ode to the beauty and power of female friendship, the love story that all too often goes unsung. A snippet: I was that desperate mother now; it was my baby who was going to die, and soon. It was already too late. I literally could not bear it. I asked for help and I got it. My friends stood with me in the middle of the scary, sky-howling road I was on, knowing they couldn’t take away the pain of the experience, but promising to be there when I emerged on the other side of the grief tunnel when my child would be gone. I feel them, every day, standing there as I stumble through the blissful, heart-breaking hours with my son whose brain and body fail him a little bit more each day. It is not an exaggeration to say that I would not have survived – that I will not survive — without my women friends.

Share it with the women you respect and hold dear. Share it with your daughters to lead by example, and to remind them that their strength is not in how men react to them, but also — if not more importantly — in how women who know them, are women who respect and love them.

Thank you for your friendship.

==========
**As balance to the earlier article about when to pull support from friends, this is a necessity.

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
How blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere
They’re in each other all along.

- Rumi

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the groups and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
- Thomas Jefferson 1802

(Comments closed.)

O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for God, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety; and fear God.
- Qur’an 5:8

I hope your first day of fasting was as rewarding as intended.

“[W]hat lengths men will go in order to carry out, to their extreme limit, the rites of a collective self-worship which fills them with a sense of righteousness and complacent satisfaction in the midst of the most shocking injustices and crimes.”
-Love and Living, by Thomas Merton

“We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves, and have neither thoughts nor feelings to impart to them.”
-William Hazlitt, from On the Pleasure of Hating

Whose flesh are you touching and why? Whose flesh are you recoiling from and why? Whose flesh are you burning and why?”
- Daniel Berrigan

So crisp and clear with challenge.

(I am in love with this man, and I don’t mind that he’s over 90 years of age.)

.1. I’ve had to place comments on moderation once again because there is a crazy pervert on the interLoose. Sorry about that; please understand that unless you’re the crazy pervert, this isn’t about you and your wonderful comments.

.2. I had brunch with K+S a few days back and had an absolutely amazing time. They are soon moving to Vancouver and although I am extremely excited and happy for them, I do already miss them.

But enough about them.
They met Lulu!

And this morning, S sent me this:
“It seemed impossible that I had ever lived without Lulu. And the closer I got to her, the more I knew that she was the only person I had ever cared to know. Lulu was an entire population. You could string adjectives together like daisy chains and not describe Lulu. Verbs came closer: soaring, crashing, yearning, laughing, dreaming, kissing. But metaphors came closest: Lulu was a white-hearted starburst, a silver-crested wave. Lulu was the sound electricity makes.”
- from ALL ABOUT LULU by Jonathan Evison

…because that’s just the kind of friends that God has blessed me with.

(Pretty fkn blessed, indeed.)

.3. I am reading a book titled Ezekiel on recommendation.

This book is killing me as I am having a very difficult time reading it in one fell swoop. Or maybe it’s because I should be reading it in one full swoop?

Anyway. I usually read several books at a time, something with which most of you are familiar. Ezekiel‘s placed a damper on that reality, because Daniel Berrigan’s work is anxious and immediate and rushed and angry and confused and confusing and challenging. I can’t read more than a few pages a day, because…

…while reading, the words tumble quietly through my head until they start to push against the insides of my mouth and my face because they want to be screamed aloud for everyone to hear them.

It’s brilliant; he’s brilliant; read him.

.4. I carry sunshine around in my pocket. Did you know?

.5. July’s 2008 CrackBook status updates are linked here.

.6. Thanks to all for the wonderful and kind notes of love re Dave McMurran. You always overwhelm me. Always.

As for Yazo’s Q. The only thing I can say to you about Dave is that if ever there was a righteous cause and a righteous side, Dave found it and stood firm. He did it with full conviction and honesty of spirit; both of these things a rarity in this day and age.

He genuinely and unflinchingly cared for the well-being of others and carried around a pure heart.

Allah yir7amuh.

.7. I’m learning how to deal with a variety of new things…namely the tackling of my own level of patience (of which I actually have none). It’s a real trip, this tackling, and any lessons that life is willing to teach me, I try to always be a ready student.

.8. Am off to Montreal for the weekend to chill out with R. I’ve been promising to get out there for an extended period of time so that we may do nothing while being around one another and I’m finally getting there to do just that (especially since I didn’t get to see her last weekend while there for less than 24 hours). All other trips have been committed in haste, but inshallah, not this one. Can’t wait.

.9. I’ve found the perfect excuse to shop for a new wallet. Theft.

Last week, my wallet was stolen from atop my desk (hurrah for workplace security!). To avoid the confusion that I had to work through, I strongly encourage you to immediately:

- Make a list of all items in your wallet and keep the list apart from your wallet.

- Within that list, keep the numbers of all cards (including things such as library cards or Shopper’s Drug Mart or MEC or whatever…).

- If you are a moron and you keep your SIN in your wallet, take it out immediately. It is with your SIN that individuals can commit full identity theft.

- For the Canucks: As soon as your wallet is stolen / goes missing, ensure that you contact the three following credit bureaus and notify them of the loss. They will flag your name / file for the next 6 years, indicating that there is a higher risk of identity fraud where you’re concerned. What this does is it ensures that should anyone apply for a loan in your name, extra security measures are invoked in an effort to protect you. Experian at 1.888.826.1718; Equifax at 1.800.465.7166; and, TransUnion at 1.800.663.9980.

.10. Last but not least…in fact, last and most difficult is that I have to soon say goodbye to one of my dearest friends. Simply put, I love this woman and when she told me that she was moving out West, it broke my heart a little. Or a lot. She is soon to become the Dean of Applied Sciences at the University of British Columbia. I am proud. (But still, when she told me over dinner…I had to pretend I was extremely interested in my food so as to not show her the first signs of my tears.)

“We have come and we have stolen their country…We must do everything to insure they never do return.”
- Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion

“apartheid nature of Israel state”
- UN Resolution 338/339

Not everyone in the Jewish community celebrates this day. Please visit NION for more information.

“Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see.”
- William Newton Clarke