Hanne Blank's Blog, page 5

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Laura Jackson

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share.  Each person answers the same questions.  All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party.  Enjoy.

Laura Jackson is a therapist in Austin, Texas, who specializes in helping “twenty-somethings” find their way in the world. She has found hers, mostly by trial and error, and is largely unrepentant. She believes that the soul’s voice is worth listening to.

One thing I love about Laura is that her door is almost always open.

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less.

I’m a GenX feminist mystic, a queer-friendly Episcopalian, and a supportive pants-kicker. I suspect your crazy dream is not that crazy. I blog at www.kitchentableaustin.com.

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

I grew up in New Orleans, which explains almost everything, from my taste in coffee to my appreciation of the absurd.

My soul-friends include clergy of five religions. They have more in common than their communities might expect.

It seems to startle people that I can write in cursive on an Etch-A-Sketch.

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

Becoming a really damn good restaurant dishwasher for a couple of years while I figured out what else I wanted.

Teaching myself theatrical lighting design on the job.

Having the courage to quit office work and train to be a hospice chaplain.

Growing from the crisis interventions of chaplaincy into the longer-term work of counseling.

Essentially: being willing to reinvent myself (and seek out new skills) while fiercely hunting my heart’s desire and refusing any less.

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

Hot-breakfast delivery service.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Take a thirty-minute walk by yourself, with no machines. Brain science has good reasons why the mystics were right: a long walk is like cleaning your soul’s glasses.

                                      

Spend 100 Days With Me

In my recent interview with Kyle Cassidy, I talked about the value of easing into a new body practice by choosing to try the experiment of doing it for a chunk of time that is short enough to be doable and imaginable, but long enough to let you actually sink into what you’re doing and start to feel comfortable with it.

My favorite length of time for this is 100 days, because it’s a nice round number, but one that also doesn’t seem interminable.  I have a friend (hi, Shelly!) who used to do 100-day projects a lot, with the general idea of increasing her awesomeness levels, and I have to say, it worked for her and it got me started playing with the 100-day idea, too.

I like 100 days.  With 365 days in a year, it’s less than 1/3 of a year.  It’s about the length of a college semester… or a little less.

As it happens, it’s also the length of time between February 1 and May 11, 2013.

This seems to me like a perfect time to experiment with a new body practice.  I’ve been working on figuring out how to do something new in my own body practice, and facing all the usual wibbles and wobbles and walls, and was just thinking last night that it might be time for me to do the 100 days thing myself.  And then I thought… I wonder if anyone else would like to join me?

Shall we?

Here’s the rules.  There are only 4.

1) Before February 1, decide on a new body practice you’d like to experiment with.  It can be vague and open-ended, like:

“I will move my body in some way I find pleasant for half an hour.”

or it can be very specific, like

“I will swim 25 laps of backstroke.”

“I will tapdance for twenty minutes to the music of Philip Glass.”

Note that this is about something you’ll actually be doing, not about outcomes.  We don’t care about no stinkin’ outcomes right now (see Rule #4).

2) Write it down!  You can write it down in a comment here, or send it to me in email at hanne at hanneblank dot com if you like, or just write it down privately.  Writing it down helps give it some weight and intention.

3) Starting Friday, February 1, commit to doing your new body practice at least every other day until May 11.  You can do it more often than this if you want to, but not less.  The rule is that if you didn’t do it yesterday, you do it today.  (Unless you are too sick or injured.  That’d just be silly.)

4) Let this be just about doing the thing that you’re choosing to do, and not about “results.”  This is an experiment!  This is to find out what it feels like, what the experience is like, of doing a particular thing with your body on a regular basis for 100 days.  That’s all it is.  Your “result” is going to be that you get to the end of 100 days having done something particular with your body at least every other day for the preceding hundred days.

Along the way we can talk about the experience; you’ll hear some about mine in this space.  If you also do this and blog about it, let me know when you post, since I may link to some of your posts so other people can find them.

Who’s in?  Email me or comment with your goal if you want me to include it in a post on February 1!

                                      

Your Body Practice Goals

Remember this post?  Where I asked you to tell me about your body practice goals, and how you wanted them to make you feel?

You were awesome, and so were your responses, both in email and comment form on the blog… so here’s some of what you all had to say:

My body practice goal is to move more! I sit all day at work, and I’ve done much less walking now that I’m not at school, and have a car (thus using less public transit). My reason for wanting to do this is to build up my stamina, strength and wind. I finally quit smoking a year ago, and I would love to feel more like I can really breathe well, which working on my stamina should help too (I think?). In the end, I’d just love to be able to run without getting winded as fast. I don’t feel the need to run a 10K, just chase after my daughter when we’re at the park.

My body goal is to go swimming twice a week. It is the one exercise I truly enjoy and the last time I went swimming I thought 20 lengths would be good but I managed to push myself to 30. I felt brilliant after doing that! Eventually I want to learn to scuba dive, but I want to be a stronger swimmer before taking those lessons. I also want to try and fit in a weekly meditation class, but at least I’ve got a definite plan to begin with.

My body goal is to reduce the chronic pain in my shoulder so I can restart my yoga practice. I pinched a nerve a few months back and haven’t regained strength or flexibility. Living with chronic pain just makes everything harder. I really look forward to being pain-free and able to do the things I love to do, rather than feeling limited by my body. Being able to move and live in my body more freely has a massive domino effect on my wellbeing. Less pain and improved ability to engage in activity means a clearer mind, lighter-feeling body, and a greater connection with my Self!

My goal is to stretch for five minutes, at least once and preferably twice a day. I want to get to the point where I feel comfortable with the discomfort (physical, emotional) that goes along with this practice. Stretching improves my mobility and helps with pain management. I’ve known this for years, but get stuck on the temporary discomfort. This year I want to change that.

My body practice goal is to faithfully use the Couch to 5K program three times a week, because I’d like to have more stamina and better breathing.  And I want to feel positive emotions while I’m doing it. I don’t insist on “runner’s high,” but I’d like NOT to feel bored, or frustrated, or angry. Happiness, contentment, even smug self-satisfaction will do, just so that I don’t feel the USUAL emotions I feel when exercising for exercise’s sake, which are basically “I would rather be cleaning the cat box than doing this.”  Music doesn’t tend to alleviate it, because I wind up associating the music with the exercise and coming to hate it. I’m hoping audiobooks will help.

My body goal is to give it a good, long lasting massage. I often push myself too hard when I workout and i end up ignoring the little aches and pains until they become big aches and pains that prevent me from working out. The self sabotage has to stop, and it needs to be replaced by some self love instead.  I know I’m not alone. I’ve been working on this weight loss, fitness thing forever, and the biggest set back I see is girls who go too hard, too soon and end up injured and discouraged. Lets listen to our bodies and give these miraculous things some loving instead!

My body practice goal is to do yoga twice a week in 2013 – I want to feel calm and at home in my body while I’m practicing.

My body goal is to be able to do a full Turkish Get-Up (TGU), from floor to standing, with my 8kg kettlebell. This will be huge for me because now, I can barely do it from floor to standing without weight (it’s called ‘naked’) and I can only use my 8kg kettle bell to the ‘hand’ position. (I know…..it sounds like I’m talking a foreign language here, doesn’t it?). I want to feel strong, fit, healthy and confident while doing this full TGU. It makes absolutely no difference to me what my body size is when I do this TGU – I just want the joy of really feeling fit and healthy.

My body practice goal is find some weight-barring exercises for my troubled knees. Ever since I was hit by a car a few years ago, I haven’t been kind to my body in they ways I used too due to pain. This year, along with finding good exercises for my knees, I want to go back to being kind to myself and showing my body its worthy like I used to do.

My body practice goal is to stretch every morning. I want to feel my muscles stretching out and being ready for the day. I want to feel my body waking up.

My body practice goal is to move. I had a year where any kind of exercise was close to impossible. The meds I was on gave me chronic insomnia and random attacks of vertigo. I was in pain a lot of the time. I spent a lot of time just playing video games because that pulled me out of my aching body.  Now that I’m off the meds and feeling much better I’m feeling the urge to get up and move my body. Go for walks. Sign up for a yoga class. Ride my bike. Do things around my house. I’m so enjoying just being able to do things instead of collapsing into a lump when I get home from work. It’s wonderful.

I want to start the body practice of walking in the pool this year. The water supports my weight so I can walk with minimal pain. I want to feel stronger, and I want to especially strengthen my left side and improve my balance, both so I can feel more steady and so my husband doesn’t hover over me when I am transferring between the car and the chair. Right now, we are both worried about my losing my balance and tumbling, so I want to make that transfer (both ways) less risky.

It may sound too meta, but I want to be able to think about body practice at all without the negative memories of my mom’s refrain of ‘I could get you such pretty clothes if only you would lose weight. Don’t you want to be pretty?’. Trying to answer this has been pulling that up every time, which only reinforces it, dammit.  I would like to feel pleasant and positive and fun while I’m doing physical therapy, rather than desperately trying not to show the other people there how I feel it’s a probably-failing rear-guard action in keeping any mobility.  I would like to be able to consider where these 30+ lbs in 3 months came from without the panic that has the words ‘cancer’, ‘bariatric surgery’, or ‘imminently exploding uterus’ crawling across my visual field like some differently-surreal New York Times Building scroll. I would like to feel badass in my body again.

So my body goal is to take up weight-lifting again. I used to do it as a teenager, and I always felt really sexy with my strong muscles, but I got gender-shamed about that. Now that I’m an adult, I want to re-focus on getting sweaty, getting strong, and being really hot for my own biceps and quads.

The body practice I want to do is: dancing! To some really fast complex mostly percussion music I have. When I am doing it, I want to feel joyous, exuberant, light, childlike, playful, free to be silly and laugh.

My body practice goal is to go to the aqua aerobics class at my local gym once a week. I want to feel my body being active in a way that doesn’t hurt so much or encourage me to get frustrated at what it cannot do. I went last night for the first time and it was wonderful. Also the first time in years that I left a workout or physical therapy session without thinking about ice packs, pain killers and anger at my disability. Rather, I felt awed and inspired at my body and what it CAN do still.

My body practice is going to be to move my body. How do I want it to feel?  I want it to feel like I’m alive.  

I want to hike in Runyon or Bronson Canyon at least twice a week.   I would like to get to a place where this hike does not make me feel out of breath.

My current goal is to floss the way my dentist told me, starting with the bottom teeth, every night. I want to make it feel routine: I’ve changed this practice in the last week, so right now when I pick up the floss I am reminding myself “no, don’t start at the top left.” I also want to remember that I am doing this for my sake, to take care of my teeth, not to make the dentist happy (even though he’s a nice dentist).

One person sent me a copy of a poster she made for herself in answer to my question, and I thought it was so cool I present the text to you in full:

Each morning I wake feeling connected to my body. I sustainably add fun, social activities to my weekly schedule that bring me a sense of connection and community along with feelings of strength, joyfulness, flexibility and stamina.  I challenge my body on a daily basis to safely stretch beyond old beliefs.  I love dancing, yoga, swimming, sex, bowling, bike riding, chasing squirrels with my dog and learning new things. I am curious about martial arts, rock climbing, kayaking, snowboarding, belly dancing and drumming. I remain curious and open to possibilities beyond my imagination!

 

Thank you to all who participated, and GOOD LUCK with all your wonderful body practice goals.  I don’t know about you all, but I’m stoked just reading them.

The three of you who I’ve chosen as my book giveaway winners are KrisR, Rikibeth, and Heidi B. — I’ll be emailing you!  Congratulations!

                                      

for a change of pace

The redoubtable Kyle Cassidy, photographer to the stars and gentleman adventurer, has an interview with me about the new book (and a book giveaway!) up on his blog, which you can find right over here.

As for me, I’ve driven about 18 hours in the past 2 days and am going to go fall over now.

                                      

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Laura Antoniou

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share.  Each person answers the same questions.  All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party.  Enjoy.

Laura Antoniou is the author of the well known, now 20-year-old Marketplace series of erotic BDSM novels, and many short stories, essays and rants cleverly disguised as speeches. Laura is a two-time winner of the John Preston Short Fiction Award, and has received the Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the National Leather Association and the Pantheon of Leather. In addition, she is the co-author (with her wife, Karen) of a ritually correct Leather Passover Seder, Avadim Chayanu (Once We Were Slaves) She has traveled the world, teaching hundreds of classes in alt sexuality at conferences, schools and organizations.

Laura has edited about a dozen erotic anthologies and appeared in many more. In 2013, her first mystery, The Killer Wore Leather and the 6th Marketplace book, The Inheritor, and the first collection of Marketplace fan fiction, No Safewords, are all slated for release. Her website is lantoniou.com; there you can follow her travels, book her for appearances and read an occasional tirade.

Laura Antoniou lounges leatherily, languidly, and laterally.

Q: Please describe yourself in 25 words or less.

Writer, speaker, teacher, kvetch, spouse, dyke, boy, Jew, iconoclast, sadomasochist, entertainer, student, liberal, foodie, leatherwoman, panther, Trekker, under-achiever, humorist, Anglophile, geek, traveller, switch, fetishist, cook.

Q:  What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

I bet most people would be amazed that I majored in agriculture in high school and was a member of the Future Farmers of America. I worked on a dairy farm and at Belmont Racetrack to fulfill my requirements around working with large animals.

I’m a pretty major geek; I might have been to one of the first Star Trek conventions, ever, as a child, and was certainly one of the first female game masters to run games at Gen Con back in the stone age. I even edited a gaming magazine and industry newsletter while in college.

And speaking of college – I never finished. Many people assume I have an advanced degree, but that’s just because I read a lot and hang out with smart people. These days, it seems like half my friends have at least one masters degree and half of them are seeking a doctorate. I feel under-educated and intimidated by scholarly language, even though I can read and understand it. (Most of the time.)

Q:  Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

It took someone else to point this out to me, but The Marketplace was the first erotica series to feature an FTM as the romantic lead. I didn’t intend it to be that way – I was caught up in the larger story arcs of the characters, but when it was spelled out like that, I had to think about it. I’m kind of glad it wasn’t a calculated plan.

Q: What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

Other than my houseboy, who still hasn’t shown up? How about regular meetings & conferences for erotica writers, where we can discuss, brainstorm, network, and exercise our writing muscles? Or a packing dick that can actually be used for fucking without the wearer feeling like a contortionist? And why do we have multiple medications for limp dicks, but nothing that is really targeted toward getting rid of uterine cramp pain? Oh, and is it possible to get a fitted Oxford style shirt for a woman – that is, with a neck measurement smaller than 14″ and cuffs that don’t hit the knees? Butches need shorter ties, too. Sheesh.

Q: If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

If it’s for themselves, then I wish they’d all have the courage to tell the person they love/lust after the most exactly what they want, instead of hinting and wishing and hoping and manipulating.

If it’s for me, then I’d get them all to check out my writing and maybe buy something. You can’t attract a good houseboy on my tight budget.

 

                                      

Looking forward to St. Dolly’s Day

Y’all do know that January 19 is Dolly Parton’s birthday, right?

I mention it to give you time to plan.

The Philosopher and I pose with Miss Dolly
at Charis Books, Atlanta.

 

                                      

what I want for my birthday

I have a birthday coming up in February, and while normally I don’t ask for presents,  I’m going to tell you what I want, because I really really want it, and I know that some of you will be able to help me make this one happen:

For my birthday — and really, I’m open to celebrating anytime in 2013 — I want to come to where you live and talk to you!

I’d like to meet you and shake your hand, or give you a hug if you’re a hugger.   I want to drink tea with you, and meet your friends.

And here’s the catch: I want to get paid to do it.

I’m a working writer/scholar/artist/activist, and if I’m going to travel it has to get paid for somehow.  That means that if I’m going to come talk to you and have tea with you, I need you (yes, you!) to help me figure out how that can happen.

Are you connected with a college or university?  I do campus talks, workshops, and guest-lectures on a number of topics related to my existing and forthcoming work.  Women’s/gender studies and history of sexuality a specialty, but also body image and size-positive work, and other things as well.

Are you connected with a clinic, wellness center, gym, athletics program, or other health-care related organization?  I talk to and educate health care providers and average folks alike about sexuality and movement issues for people of size.

Get enough folks to chip in to cover my fee and expenses, and I’ll come hold forth in your living room… or at your place of worship, or your local library, or pretty much wherever.  (Hint for folks working with institutions: getting departments/divisions to cooperate and bring me in for multiple or jointly sponsored events can help with the finances!)

Here’s some more info, with a video and some audio of the kind of things I do!

Let’s talk, shall we?  I’d love it.

                                      

fat: not actually deadly

Goodness me, such earthshattering news.

Fat does not automatically kill people.  CNN says so.  So does the Journal of the American Medical Association.

And goshamighty, even the New York Times agrees that physical fitness and condition may mean more than weight in terms of health repercussions.

Whatever could be next?  I’m betting on “Top Researcher Says Water Infallible Thirst Cure” myself.  Though “Blonde Hair An Unreliable Index of Stupidity, Study Reveals” may win.

And y’know, if you happened to be fat, and wanted to up your physical fitness level?  Or even if you just wanted to read about it?  There’s this book I wrote that you might enjoy.

                                      

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Virgie Tovar

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share.  Each person answers the same questions.  All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party.  Enjoy.

Virgie Tovar is a fat activist, writer and body image expert/coach. She is the editor of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion and holds an MA in Human Sexuality with an emphasis on the intersections of gender, race and size. Find her online at www.VirgieTovar.com.

 Q: Please describe yourself in 25 words or less. 

I’m a public intellectual in a pencil skirt: a fat Latina femme-rebel, daughter of feminist fantasies and immigrant dreams, beholden to no man’s law.

Q: What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

 I almost never wear matching socks. In fact, refusing to bow to sock convention has saved me literally tens of minutes over the past year.
I dream of having a taxidermy moose head in my bedroom – or an enormous conceptual vagina portrait.
I worry that I’ve lost my ability to be authentic in romantic relationships; I’m terrified of losing myself in someone.

Q: Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of? 

The amount of stuff in my wardrobe that has bows, pink, glitter, tiny cats or feathers on it, being a good daughter & sister, my apostasy, my world travels, and Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion.

 Q:  What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

An ambient sound machine – which through sophisticated mechanisms that measure my breath and heart rate – senses my awakening every morning and slowly begins to play Chaka Khan, incrementally increasing in volume until I’m finally completely awake and this is timed perfectly with the initiation of the “Ain’t Nobody” chorus.

Q: If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Take me to Gary Danko.

                                      

what you can

Happy New Year to you. I’m glad you made it.

I’m glad, because I know what that means.

It means that every time you thought “I can’t,” you figured out some way that you could.  Oh, not a way that you could always do the exact thing that made you stop in your tracks and go “I can’t.”

Though sometimes you did exactly that, ’cause you’re that kind of rockstar badass.

No, you figured out some way you could get close enough for jazz.  Or some way you could change the conversation, or finagle things so that something to which you could say “I can” could fit where the thing that made you say “I can’t” had been.

Some days that means that you just find somewhere to sit still and keep breathing while your world falls to ashes and the minutes pass.

Some days you do that with your eyes closed.  Sometimes that’s what you can.

But you do it.  You did it.  Every time, all year, you did it, whatever it was.

You found “I can.”

You did it while you found out that the Beatles lied to you and love isn’t all you need.  You did it while you bled and while you cried.

You did it while you wondered where the money was going to come from.  You did it while you learned the hard way that a loss you choose is still a loss, not just the losses you didn’t choose.

You did it in line in bureaucratic offices and medical clinics and  at the post office.  You did it while you made an impossible decision. You did it when you were beyond caring.  You did it when you cared so much that doing anything at all was terrifying.

You did it while you did things you knew were going to hurt.  You did it while you hurt yourself, on purpose.

You did it while you were exhausted, while you absorbed that news, while you listened to that diagnosis, while you waited to hear something that would change things you weren’t going to be able to ever change back.  You did it while you rode the train.  You did it while you drove home.  You did it while you dialed that phone number that time, and waited for “hello?”

You did it in the dark and you did it by your wits and you did it alone, because all of us ultimately do.  You also did it in broad daylight and with the help and love and strong backs of others helping to make it possible, because all of us ultimately do that, too.

You did it the way only you know how.  You did it.  You found “I can.”

You did it as many times as necessary.

We both did.

Well played, my friend.

Thank you.

Happy New Year.  May the worst day of the upcoming year be only as bad as the best day of the one just past, and may you always find the way to “I can.”