I went to see Monumental by Holy Body Tattoo and Godspeed, You Black Emperor a couple of weeks ago. It was unbearable. Unbearable in the way Art with a capital A should be: a gut-wrenching reminder of the joy and suffering, the struggle and the weariness, the futile resistance and the final giving up, theContinue reading “Making Friends with the Anvil: On Bearing Witness”
Category Archives: Personal blog
I am an Adult but I’m Not a Grown Up
I am an adult. I have kids, a job. I pay bills and do laundry and sign permission forms. If the hot water heater is broken, I have to call the plumber, buy a new one. If there are mice in the house (and ugh, there are indeed mice in my house) I have to figureContinue reading “I am an Adult but I’m Not a Grown Up”
A Hellish Year, Part 4: On Unsustainable Patterns
For many years I had a post-it note above my desk with the words TRY HARDER on it. The letters were in all caps, scratched angrily into its small yellow square. TRY HARDER. TRY HARDER. TRY HARDER. If I didn’t find the time to write during the day: TRY HARDER. If I felt too tired to make aContinue reading “A Hellish Year, Part 4: On Unsustainable Patterns”
A Hellish Year, Part 3: On the Stories We Tell Ourselves
I met a man once who left his wife a few years before I knew him. Now despite being just as broken by his actions as I suspect his poor wife was, he was still searching for answers for why he did what he did. But instead of simply accepting that he made a mistake, thatContinue reading “A Hellish Year, Part 3: On the Stories We Tell Ourselves”
A Hellish Year, Part 2: On Reflections and Not Existing
The most castrating thing J said to me this last year was, “Lina, you’re a wonderful woman.” Oh, there were things, small cruelties that might on the surface seem worse, especially as most of them were untrue. But the, “Lina , you’re a wonderful woman” comment stung the most. Why, you may ask? That seems likeContinue reading “A Hellish Year, Part 2: On Reflections and Not Existing”
A Hellish Year, Part 1: Shame
This year has been the year of the violent metaphor. When J first announced to me that he “wasn’t sure he wanted to be married anymore” (yes, that is the way he put it), it was a bomb exploding on my lap. No. He was the bomb and I was caught in his blast radius. I haveContinue reading “A Hellish Year, Part 1: Shame”
A Hellish Year: An Introduction
I have been avoiding this blog for months now. Part of it is self-censorship. How can I possibly start talking about what happened without getting too personal or saying too much and hurting my children? (I can’t. Warning: this is going to get personal). Part of it is that the pain and anger and tidal waveContinue reading “A Hellish Year: An Introduction”
Burning down the house: Using Woolf’s Three Guineas as a template for a manifesto against gendered cyberviolence, part I
I attended a symposium about a month ago for stakeholders of a Status of Women grant to brainstorm strategies with which to “eliminate and prevent cyberviolence”. I know. Kind of a herculean task, don’t you think? Might as well ask, how do I prevent war? Oh wait… As those who have been reading my blogContinue reading “Burning down the house: Using Woolf’s Three Guineas as a template for a manifesto against gendered cyberviolence, part I”
On Killing the Angel
First of all, I just want to put this out there: I am in love with Virginia Woolf. Although I had read Mrs. Dalloway (twice) and To the Lighthouse and loved them, I never realised how prolific she was and how fierce and intelligent her essays were. I have recently finished A Room of One’sContinue reading “On Killing the Angel”
Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Part IV
On the Little Pigeon Hole I created for Myself OR Who Do I think I am? Quote from Solnit’s essay: “Woolf is calling for a more introspective version of the poet Walt Whitman’s “I contain multitudes,” a more diaphanous version of the poet Arthur Rimbaud’s “I is another.” She is calling for circumstances that do notContinue reading “Highly Personal Musings Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Essay Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, Part IV”
Lina Branter 