We're All Incoherent, So There!

It seems as though I must already backtrack on a claim that I tried to put forth in my very first entry in this blog. Well, hey, I expected that to happen. This is a learning space. It looks less and less like I will be creating an identity around, or somehow owning this space, and more like I will be existing and interacting within it. At the moment I am along for the ride, and I'll figure out what happens as I go.

At the beginning, aka a few weeks ago, I decided that I would be "figuring out who I am and discovering my 'identity' from various sources, blah blah blah." This is a misconception that many people seem to have about life writing: the coherent self. It is a myth; it doesn't exist. There isn't one self that remembers every past to present, and who can encompass every identity, affiliation, relationship or interest that one has. Smith and Watson have a good way of putting it (47), "We are always fragmented in time, taking a particular or provisional perspective on the moving target of our pasts, addressing multiple and disparate audiences." Autobiographical writing is instead a performance.

Words from the wise:

~Tiresias - The prophet who existed as both a man and a woman throughout his life claimed that to fully know oneself was to die. Living happens in the exploration and realization of our many aspects.

~Virginia Woolf in Orlando: Orlando tries to call up facets of himself in order to discover which is the "true self", when in fact all are true, but they do not mesh together as one, supporting the idea of the fragmented self.

So, there we have it. No more coherent "self-discovery" from me. Just a performance - or in my case, perhaps an incoherent improv will have to suffice :)

Imbolc

Brighid's Gift

Aimlessly,

I wandered the icy garden

With a chill against my neck from more than the wind,

When I saw a woman before me,

Waiting by a fountain, filled with snow.

She smoothed her long red hair away from her eyes and

Smiled at me with her arm extended,

And told me that she had brought be a gift.

I moved closer, slipping ungainly on the ice toward her

Until I could see what she had brought for me.

She covered the remaining few feet, then stood behind me and

Clasped a thin, intricately woven iron chain around my neck.

I looked down, and there was the heart-shaped locket

That I had lost in the snow over a year ago.

It was newly forged from different metal, but I

Recognized it as my own

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Imbolc is one of my favorite pagan traditions, because I always encounter something new, no matter what. It is celebrated at the beginning of February and is known as a fire festival and honors the Celtic goddess Brighid (goddess of light, poetry, healing and smithcraft). It heralds the return of spring, and more importantly the life giving force behind the season. The tradition began in a climate with harsh winters (Scotland, Ireland) so people were expected to look hard for small, but sturdy signs of life. This sentiment was rather fitting this year. The ritual I attended was cancelled once due to a snow storm, and actually took place on Bryn Mawr's second winter weather advisory day. The goose prints all over Rhoads beach were a good sign, although it turns out that new signs of life on Bryn Mawr's campus are not all that subtle. They staged a loud, honking takeover of the athletic fields after all. A tradition that is usually observed is a meditation upon what one would like to see grown in health and strength, working toward the upcoming season. A meditation and ritual knotwork served as a calming catharsis to the uproar over the weather here.

"Whole Foods to give greater employee discounts to workers with lower BMI"

There was a lot of hype generated on the internet when this information became public. There was a lot of speculation. Since this release, the New York Daily News has spelled out a bit more information.

When I first heard about discounts based on BMI, I was outraged. BMI is such an inexact science and it has led to many people developing an unhealthy relationship with their bodies and with food. I am still outraged, but from a slightly different angle, now that I know that Whole foods isn't presenting this idea to the public at large, but to their employees.

Other factors such as cholesterol levels and blood pressure play small roles in determining whether or not the employee is in shape, but a lot rests on the BMI.

There have been points made against this endeavor that have been brought to the table publicly already:

-Whole Foods is rewarding people who are naturally thin, and this can be seen as discrimination.

-In a way, they are judging people on how they look.

-As one man stated - a healthy eater who is "kinda chubby" has to pay more to continue eating healthy.

I agree with all of this. The entire policy can promote poor body image and it is discriminating against a portion of the population. It can also prevent people from buying foods that are healthy for them, because they are forced to pay more. Shifting the demand curve here does change someone's relationship to the food they eat.

Based on BMI alone, even if I had an extremely low fat percentage, the way my body is built means that I would still be off from my target number. My "ideal" weight is impossible to attain based on this scale. I realize this, but there are some people who do not and will try anything to reach it. Some go to the extreme and stop eating.

Something to think about: people pay a higher price if their BMI is high, but nothing happens if it is below the proper range. This is a dangerous line to follow.

A Matter of Taste > Ethics? Scary, but quite possibly true

A discussion in Food and the City touched on the question of why we eat what we eat. It is a matter of taste development. The culture that I grew up in has a lot of farming history, and there are still a couple of small New England farms in the family. I've grown up with hearty, somewhat simple meals of farm fresh vegetables and meat when they are available. Even though I do not live on a farm, part of the year my immediate family gets a lot of our food from our own garden when it is in season.

On the other hand, yes, I am a meat eater. I tried to go veggie a couple of times, but it didn't really work out for me. Meat has been ingrained in my eating culture for my entire life. My uncle still owns a small farm in rural Vermont, and that is where my family gets a lot of our meat. Chicken, lamb and occasionally pork can be found, free range and truly organic.

I grew up with this option in the past, but the body does seem to dictate what you want to eat. Here at Bryn Mawr, I still it meat. Unfortunately it is a matter of taste. Watching Food, Inc. just made me step back and look at the situation again. I know where the mass produced dining hall food comes from. Seeing this process on screen made me confront my own actions...again. I feel guilty ever time I actually take time to think about this. Apparently the visceral effect is really strong, because it seems like regardless of how many times I try to theorize meat eating at Bryn Mawr from an ethical standpoint, I still end up eating it at some point or another.

I worked a prep shift in Haffner last year and had to chop impossibly large chicken breasts for the salad bar. They came in plastic wrapped trays as far removed from an actual chicken into the industrial realm as possible. The film got me even closer to this experience, because we saw the chicken house stuffed full of birds that were engineered to produce white meat. The breasts are caused to be so large that they were damaging their internal organs, and the chickens themselves can't even stand up on their own two feet. That's where that chicken on the salad bar came from.

I wish there could be more options for meat around here. Since there are not, I have a dilemma. So far, the choice seems to have been made for me by my compulsion to eat meat regardless of the fact that the slow food option is not there on a daily basis. There is a serious disconnect between how I feel about where my food comes from and what my body wants to eat.

--> Instant commentary from a friend reading over my shoulder as I'm typing this entry that brings up a tangent point:

She buys stock in what she calls the "anthropological" viewpoint, and is wondering why I even have an ethical dilemma at all. This is what humans are supposed to do - go into an area and exploit resources to our advantage. She also brought up the point that we genetically modify plants, and just because people always see "critters" as living beings, does not mean that plants are not.

I do not agree that this level of exploitation has to be the natural order of things. Humans have enough of a superiority complex as it is. However, there is one good point here. GMOs that are associated with the fast food agro industry for plants should be given the same consideration, but generally are not because the harms to do not show up as dramatically. There is a need for an understanding that the harms are there, and that people really do need to explore different options for where they get their food. Think of what the consequences of our eating habits could be if alternative food systems became more mainstream.

Multi-Weapon Wonder...or Disaster depending on how you look at it

All this talk about identity has made me think about the role of identity in the fencing world, which is surprisingly very prominent, even though it may not be discussed in such certain terms. Upon meeting, one of the first questions that two fencers will ask of one another is what weapon they fence, and an opinion will be made almost immediately, even before the conversation goes any farther. Fencers classify themselves and are put in categories by others based on their weapon identity. As soon as you make the decision of what weapon you are going to fence, you have taken on that identity and will be held accountable for that for the rest of your fencing career.

If you look closely there are stereotypical differences in styles, and some people swear, personality types between fencers in the three different weapons. On a serious note, the style of fencing on the strip is very identifiable. It takes a different type of mindset to fence each of the three weapons, so you can usually tell which weapon someone fences pretty early on. For example, foil is a point weapon with limited target area, so it takes a lot of point control. It also has right of way, so very deliberate bladework is involved as well. Epee is a point weapon as well, but the entire body is target area and there is no right of way (officially), so this weapon has a lot to do with timing and drawing out your opponent. Sabre is an edge weapon, so you can cut with it. Target area is anything above the waist since it evolved from a cavalry sword. Also because of this, it is faster because the timing is compressed and actions are typically more aggressive than the other two. I pride myself on having pretty good weapon-dar. As new fencers that I know have progressed, I have been able to predict their weapon before they had even made the decision. (I have only been fooled once by an oddly aggressive epeeist :P)

There is even some talk about personality differences between the three different types of fencers. Most of the time I don't buy into it seriously, but it is definitely the inspiration for some stereotypical jokes tossed around in fencing crowds. These are definitely a couple of my favorites:

Fencers in Town

...and one my coach has shared with the team many times:

Fencer Behavior at a Party:

Foilists: Typically the kind of sleazy guys who think they're cool, in the middle of the dance floor, awkwardly hitting on everyone that moves.

Epeeists: Traveling around in a little pack, sipping scotch and discussing philosophy.

Sabreurs: The ones at the table in the corner threatening to beat each other up while yelling, "MY beer!"

Throughout this whole process, I have had a very interesting relationship to weapon identity, because it was not so cut and dry for me. I'm typically referred to as the one with the "weapon identity crisis" because I fence two weapons - foil and sabre. Style-wise I'm a bit more of a sabreur, but I started out as a foilist, because that was the only opportunity I had when I started fencing back home and I don't want to give it up entirely. Both weapons are fun, plus I get twice the competition opportunity and I get to confuse people (although the joke is on me if I manage to whack someone upside the head with a foil, which does happen occasionally). Besides, I'd like to meet myself in a bar; I'd get to take awkwardness to a whole new level by hitting on people while dedicatedly guarding MY beer. It's been a fun experience. Sometimes I get to be the multi-weapon wonder, because I can fill in at team competitions wherever I'm needed. At other times, I get to be the multi-weapon disaster for the coaches who try to get me to train for both without confusing the two and starting weapon schizophrenia in the middle of a bout.

I had never really thought of the whole thing in this way until all of this talk about identity started. Although, I never really noticed how much identity had cemented itself in the sport culture until I came to terms with the fact that I was taking on two fencing "identities" at the same time.

What is a counter-riposte anyway?

The most difficult aspect of beginning a blog like this is being aware of an audience. This is considered public "journaling", but the key word is public. At first, I felt like I would have to make some sort of overarching introduction and justify myself to you, the reader. However, do I really need to do that? If you're reading this...you're already reading it, so there's no point in subsequently trying to convince you to read it.

There is another reason why I don't necessarily want to touch the traditional introduction at this time. Who am I? Or more importantly I suppose, who am I in this space? Well, I don't know. That's what I'm here to find out aren't I...in published form. I like it. Bring it on!

What this blog may have in store:

This won't be a themed blog, despite it's appearance at the moment. That feels far too limiting, since I may be going for some sort of (yes I know it's cliched...wait for it...) self discovery here. All nagging thoughts and ramblings are fair game. You are henceforth forewarned that you will be provided with the means to read far more about the world of fencing than you may have ever wanted to in your life (as if you couldn't tell from the layout :P). I will also attempt to wax poetic about dance, food, a bit of paganism, the Sherlockian world, you name it. In fact, I am quite content to sit back and just type.

And now for the awaited answer (for the non-fencing folk): Counter-riposte is a fencing term, of course. First, you initiate the attack against your opponent. Your opponent parries and then attacks you, but you do not run away or allow them to hit you. You retake the ability to attack with a parry of your own and finish the attack, scoring the point. That final action is the counter-riposte, in effect, giving you the last word. :)