Catnip Mobster

            In the quiet days of my early adulthood, coming home from work meant the promise of a relaxing evening with a romance novel and a cup of chamomile tea. How I long for those moments! These days, leaving work is the first step in a series that lead to the discovery of awaiting disasters at home. Every afternoon I pause at the garden gate – what waits on the other side?  The mangled body of a crow, the discarded remains of yet another bamboo scratch post, tufts of cat hair lying around the yard, dead frogs piled at the French door, a note from an irate neighbor – not a single of these situations would surprise me. Every afternoon around four, I sigh, close the gate and start the clean up.

            Who, you might be wondering, is the culprit of this daily mischief? One year ago, I rescued a tiny orange kitten and made the promise to provide shelter and love to him for the rest of his days. Manicito, as I dubbed him, seemed to be the ideal kitten - he slept during the night, learned to use a litter-box quickly, and became fast friends with the household dog; yet within a few weeks, Mani started to misbehave. His antics began innocently – food snuck off the table when no one was looking, a few shredded shoelaces; after six months, shoelaces graduated to shower curtains. A year later, Mani’s crimes have landed him the status of local mobster.

            Taking a break from cleaning up the most recent crime (the complete annihilation of my favorite potted viola, I have to ask – why did the adorable kitten “go bad”?

Wherever the fault may lie, there is no denying that the adorable kitten I brought home has turned into a brawling tomcat, running rampant through our charming neighborhood with his loyal neighbor and sidekick Chancho*,  a fat black and white cat with a personality like Jack Black’s famous character Nacho Libre. Together they rule the streets, sneaking around from porch to porch, consuming all the food they can find in unprotected food bowls, attacking neighboring dogs, and generally causing as much havoc as possible while at the same time looking sweet and cuddly. It is a well-known fact on our block that any catnip, whether kept under lock or naively left sitting on a pantry shelf, ultimately belongs to Mani and Chancho – and ill tidings for the human or animal that gets in their way! Although their network may not cover as much mileage as the Mafia, this criminal duo stoops to levels of crime that would make the Godfather blush.

            Considering the company that Mani keeps now in his adult life of crime, is it possible that his delinquent ways found their beginnings under the tutelage of kitten-hood friends? His first companions were a sneaky dachshund and a stocky brown lab with a learning disability. Both of these companions had a somewhat dubious influence on the young kitten - from the dachshund he learned the art of con, while the lab taught him how to play dumb and make loud noises to get attention; for a young kitten, these new skills must have opened a whole new world of possibilities and experiences. Imagine the first time Mani successfully conned me into giving him an extra helping of tuna fish – what a rush of adrenaline that must have been! Rather than existing on the sole attribute of kitten charm, Mani now had a whole range of tools. What power!

*Cat’s name changed to protect his identity and to emphasize his weight problem, the name “Chancho” of Spanish origin, meaning “little piggy” or “little fatty”.

One...Two...Three! Jump!

Oh. Bother.

That was the first thought that ran through my head this gloomy Monday morning, as I looked around my cluttered apartment. The clutter is normal, weekly accumulation from two busy college students that also work and attempt to have social lives. On an average Monday, this would not bother me; however, this particular day, I am beginning a journey into a new phase of my life - living low impact and sustainable.

I wrote a blog around the beginning of the year, about how I wanted to make my life more affordable. I tried my damnedest to do such, but my life style has mostly prevented me! The more I look at my budget and try to make ends meet in a satisfactory way, the more I notice that it is perhaps my life style that is the problem! Between eating out on a daily basis, splurging on Starbucks, and purchasing those oh-so-needed clothes for going out (because heaven forbid one wear the same outfit twice at a club!) I am realizing that I SPEND SO MUCH on things I truly can live without! Even more than the spending, is the mindset: consumerism.

After watching several movies, reading books, and perusing blogs on the matter I have decided to take some radical steps in my life. The most inspiring of all these has been the documentary No Impact Man, in which a New York family makes the commitment to live sustainable and low impact for a year. It can be done, and I have decided to start moving in that direction, in ways that make sense for my life.

Today marked the first day of making changes. I spent the morning procrastinating, because it seems so daunting! By the time I sat to write this blog, however, I had whipped my butt into action and implemented some changes.

-I am cutting out trash in my life. No more grocery bags. No more magazines, paper bills, plastic containers, plastic water bottles, or junk mail... as the weeks go by, I expect this list to expand as I discover more that I can reasonably cut out of my life.

-No more paper coffee cups. I am going to carry my own coffee tumbler with me, for those days when I absolutely need a cup of coffee.

-I am going to try and eat seasonally, relying on farmers markets and locally grown foods. This will cut my super market spending way down, and get me out of the house.

-Toilet paper and tampons are being kicked to the curb. Except for the roll kept in the bathroom for my house guests, I will not be buying the tree-wasting, money-guzzling paper butt wiper. After research, I have decided to clean the simple way: with small squares of cloth that are afterwards soaked in a pail, much like cloth diapers, and washed with the laundry. There is a certain ewww factor that resonates in me, going into this change, but I suspect that the feeling will go away. It is sanitary, safe, and actually quite more comfortable on the tush!

As for tampons... bye! And hello to GladRags! I was squeamish at first, at the idea of washable and reusable pads that can be carried around in a water-proof bag in one's purse, but after contemplation, the idea has grown on me. I can make this happen- women used rags and cloths during menstruation for centuries before the disposable pad and tampon were invented: why not me?

-I am also making the commitment to buy nothing new for the next 6 months. Any furniture and clothing I need can be found at second hand stores. Just this last weekend, I bought a cute, warm sweater, a beautiful skirt, a scarf, and a pair of plaid Mossimo canvas slip ons, all for 20 dollars. Brand new, those things could have cost me up to 100 dollars.

But my changes are not primarily about the money I can save, though the extra dough is a serious perk! It is about changing my mindset from consumerism and wasteful habits. It is about what I can do, as an individual, to help protect our environment and create social change.

What an adventure this is going to be!

Rachel Winn

23 November 2009

To Live Uniquely

There will come a time in your life when a circumstance or occurrence forces you to take a deeper glance at the root of your existence. More often than not, this could happen during the experience of transitioning from the familiar to the un-known, whether it is moving to a new city, taking a new job, graduating from college, getting married, loosing a loved one, or having a child. Just as often, it could happen when you least expect it; you could be sitting in your favorite coffee shop with a good book, sipping on a latte, when you suddenly realize that your life has gone by in a whirlwind and left you in this particular moment. You look over your life in reverse, pondering the years and days that brought you here, and it starts to seem meaningless! You aren’t where you envisioned yourself being when you started college; as a passionate freshman you saw yourself living life to the fullest and pursuing that which you love, and yet here you are, lost in a mundane life. “What has happened to my dreams?” you ask yourself. From that moment on, you are filled with doubt about your life, about yourself, and about your values.Maybe you have the car, the house, the life that projects acceptable happiness, but for what purpose? You say the right words that your friends and close ones expect to hear; you hide the truth of who you are from them. Have you bought into your societies values? Have you surrendered that which is most beautiful- your personal truth? How do you go about reclaiming that?

Without a doubt, showing your true face to the world is very difficult; as my personal guru Ralph Waldo Emerson stated in his essay titled Self Reliance, “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps…the independence of solitude”(263). You have to break down the walls that keep the true self hidden, and doing such is often a journey that takes months, if not years. When you become an adult, it is much easier to conform to society’s values than to live for personal values. In today’s society, materialism is valued more than the heart of a person; you are expected to graduate from high school and jump right into college to earn that piece of paper that enables the securing of a “good” job, which in turn secures you a car, a home, nice things, and a comfortable savings account. You are also expected to date, marry, and have babies with another socially acceptable person, and together project a life of happiness and contentment.

Perhaps, if you are the type of person that enjoys a stable, normal life, buying into such values is a perfectly alright thing to do; however, there are many people that, when they become aware of the flaws of such a system, feel a drive to chase down their true purpose and personal values. For some people, this means a drastic approach to changing their life, as in the case of a young man named Christopher Johnson McCandless.

McCandless, whose adventures were chronicled in a book by journalist Jon Krauker, was born in 1968 to a financially successful, yet dysfunctional family. He discovered throughout his life that society lacked meaning and relied on unimportant values, and he was completely dissatisfied with his findings. Directly upon graduating from college in1990, he took the remaining $24,000 0f the $47,000 given to him by his parents for the last two years of his education and donated it to a charity. He destroyed his I.D and began traveling under the name “Alexander Supertramp”. Over the course of the two years, McCandless traveled throughout the States and Mexico by car, kayak, hopping trains, walking, and hitching rides. In April 1992 he trekked into Alaska to live in the wild, taking with him a 10 pound bag of rice, a Remington semi-automatic riffle with 40 rounds of ammunition, several books (including one on the local plant life in Alaska), and some camping gear. In September 1992, McCandless’ body was found in an abandoned bus in which he had take residence, close to the Denali National Park. His cause of death was pronounced as starvation, but due to the contents of the journal he wrote during his time on the bus, it was later speculated that his death was caused by a type of fungus poisoning, from eating moldy seeds.

Why did McCandless walk away from his money, his family, and the life his college education would have provided him? To do that thing which most avoid: to follow his heart and live with personal meaning. Emerson wrote “My life should be unique: it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine” (263). What he was saying, and McCandless lived out, was that every man should live his life according to the call of his heart, and not by the values set in place by society. Never mind that McCandless’ adventures were a bit reckless and ultimately led to his death; the point is that he did in fact live, with no regard to how others thought he should. He broke all the rules, spoken and silent, and simply went where his feet led, making an impression on the hearts of the few people he befriended along the way.

While such a life choice seems extreme for most, it is a good example of what people can do to re-claim their true selves. A simpler path would be to first examine what is important in a person’s life, and what is holding him/her back from pursuing it. For the woman working in a stifling 9-5 office job, perhaps her self-freedom comes from quitting said job and moving to Europe to study art. For the man working 40+ hours a week, it could come from cutting back his hours to pick up his neglected guitar. For students in college, struggling to choose a major, perhaps taking a variety of classes will help them discover what they truly love to do. Finally, for any person feeling mired down by their routine life: get outside! Too often we spend our lives hiding away from the sun and the trees, which were put on this planet for our enjoyment. Spend time with a child: in their eyes we cannot help but to see the truth. Emerson wrote “Infancy conforms to nobody, all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it” (261). To spend time with a child is to reconnect with the simple truth: we are human, and we are all unique. We cannot pretend around children, yet as adults we build rules to support our pretense. What are we pretending as a society? We pretend that personal values have no place in society, and that the man or woman who chooses not to buy into social values is not as important as those that do.

So when you ask the question “who am I?” should you settle back into your routine after a brief contemplation? No! You should travel the road to discovering your personal values, and when you arrive at them, you should stand up and shout out “This is who I am, and I am not afraid to live it!” Then you should live that truth. You want to climb a tree on your walk home? Climb that tree! You feel like having a squirt gun war with your roommate? Do it! You feel like randomly leaving town for a week and going somewhere you’ve never been? Go explore! If the people around you show contempt for your choices, who cares? The fact is that the person judging you is actually jealous, because they, for all their contempt, are still locked away in their mundane life.

Works Cited

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Self Reliance. A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers.

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild/ John Krakuer. p. cm. originally published: New York:Villard, 1996

At the salsa club

I see
the way you stare at me from
behind your wife's shoulder.

Such a pretty shoulder, so smooth
under the pink shirt she must have
bought to please you,
straps falling down to her mid-arms
as she leans in to kiss you.

Still, you look at me, even though her
luscious lips caress your chin.

What is it about me that makes you
look so intently?
What could possibly entrance your coffee-brown
eyes so much that
you must watch me dance?

One, two, three, four,
twirling, grinding, stepping to the music,
my hips in the hands of men we both call
friends.
Hair pasted to my sweaty face, arms entwined with a partner's,
feet speaking a languange that matches the
pulsing of the music,
hips speaking words I cannot say
yet feel racing through my veins.

I dip, my back arches to the ceiling, my hair
reaches for the floor,
legs wrapped around his waist,
and I see your eyes...

only your coffee eyes.

I do not hear the applause, do not taste
the cranberry and vodka placed in my hands...
I see only your smile.

I see her smile.

While you watch me because you want me,
I watch you
because I miss what you have sitting beside you.

Love.

She loves you, she bears your children,
presses her hips against you while you drift to sleep.
She wears clothes to please you, smiles at the words you
whisper into her ear.
She lives for you, can't you see that? She lives for your
kindness.

I would never be so attentive, because all I would take from
you
would be the color of your eyes, the
brightness of your smile. I would
paste them on my ceiling to remind me when I awake
that there is still desire,
there is such a thing as chemistry,
and to prove that

I am worth something more.

I deserve honest eyes, looking down into my own...
never from behind another woman's shoulder.

Finals: Two Down, One to Go!

I love the hustle and bustle of finals week! The frantic typing of students in the library, attempting to finish up those last -minutes essays, the spanish club practicing in the cafeteria, the teachers walking around with arms full of binders and books; all this screams THE END OF TERM IS HERE! By Friday, we will be free!

I had two finals today- WR 121 and Women's Studies. I did very well on both, I must say, despite being nervous to give my Feminist Action presentation.

Now comes the dreaded math final. Wish me luck!

The Pursuit of Passion

As a child, one is told "you should follow your passions, follow your dreams".

That is all and well, if you know what makes you passionate, if you know what your dreams are! I can't claim to know that one certain thing that makes me tick, that I live to die for; there are too many things that I am passionate about.
Let me list them, since I love to make lists:

-Dancing. I hear music, and it makes me want to dance, to express the sensuality of who I am.

-Reading. I pick up a book, and I fall in love with every word, every paragraph, every page.

-Sitting still. Watching the world dance around me in slow motion.

-Being outdoors. Going into the forest and loosing the hum of humanity, the bustle of thoughts. In nature one can commune with God and discover the answers within.

-Writing from my heart.

-Singing.

-Adventuring.



Let me also compile a list for you of what I am not passionate about:

-School. I cannot force myself to think like I am expected to think. As such, I am not doing my best in school... or, rather, I am... they just don't grade you for your true best work.

-Conformity.

-Leading a boring life.

-White picket fences.

-Conventionalism.

-Religious morality. Like my personal guru Ralph Waldo Emerson, I create my own morals. (Read his essay "Self Reliance" if this train of thought interests you)


As you might have gathered, my passions and my dislikes colide. This is making it very difficult to choose a major in school. Now that I am recieving financial aid, I am forced to make a decision; not right away, of course, but I should figure it out before too much time and money goes by. Choices, choices, choices! What's a girl to do?

I long to be a true gypsy, to travel, to write, to learn, to explore; and I can even do this in my own backyard! Yet the pressure is fierce from society to "make something of myself".

(Argh, in the most deep of piratey voices!)

Why can't I just live one day at a time? Why can't I pursue that which I most love, without having to get a degree and pay off school till I'm in my thirties? Why can't I dance, or sing, or just play? Why can't I write poetry about my past and whom I love, about the way the wind sings in my bones?
The reality is that I can. From the safe confines of my secure home, purchased with money earned from a "good"job, which was procurred by a degree after slaving through college and adhering to patterns of though which I do not endorse( except with the money they take from my pocket for classes that are required for my degree. Chemistry to be a early childhood educator? Really?).

Oh yes, we must pursue our dreams; we must live our passions.

For what purpose?

Cheers! to a new adventure!

The past few months I have increasingly awakened to the lack of frugality in my life, which is not suprsing, seeing as how I come from a poor background. Raised on Salvation Army 5 dollar "stuff-a-bag" sales, periods of foodstamp use, and the phrase "we can afford it when the financial aid check comes", I think I represent what can happen when someone from a low-income family earns a steady paycheck. In my case, the dreaded monster Compulsive Shopper mated with that devil called Must Have Nice Things, and subsequently produced a bad habbit called Wastefulness. Its a rebound, a cringing away from previous poverty that society looks down upon. In this materialistic society, having alot of really nice things is one way to prove that you are better than society first suspected.

Of course, nothing is wrong with having nice things; however, I cannot help but to feel that having too many nice things is over-indulgent and wasteful, particularily when they cost an arm and a leg.

So in the spirit of creating change and knowledge, I have decided to live frugally for a year.

How do I propose to do this? By returning to the tricks every person raised in a low-income or impoverished family knows:

(The list is quite extensive, so I listed my personal favorites.)

*Bookswaps.

*By shopping at Goodwill or any thrift store, one can build a decent and stylish wardrobe for a steal. I can't remember how many times I found American Eagle hoodies, Banana Republic sweaters and Paris Blue jeans for less than 10 dollars at a secondhand store.

*Public transit saves alot on gas... but so does riding a bike. It also saves you money.

*Coupons, coupons, coupons!

*Cooking your own food curbs your spending and eating habbits.

*Rice. Its cheap, easy, and delicious.

and etc...

Over the next year, I plan on living as frugally as possible and proving to myself that living in a materialistic society does not mean I have to partake in those values. I also want to prove, at least to myself, that frugality could be a key to rebelling against our capitalist economy.

Any suggestions? Hints?