I've been reading about the virgin Mary. She always was the most interesting part of Catholicism to me.

In the Middle Ages, plays would be done at Christmas to demonstrate the nativity. In them, Mary would painlessly give birth to Jesus, filled with joy. Part of this was to show that she remained a virgin in CHILDBIRTH. Because Jesus is magical.

Since the Qur'an doesn't believe Jesus is magical, etc, the chapter about Mary (yes, there is more about the virgin Mary in the Qur'an than in the Bible...) describes her childbirth as horrifically painful. She goes through it alone. Joseph doesn't even exist in Mary's life in the Qur'an.

People have also debated a bunch about if Mary stayed a virgin her whole life. It's a conflict of the duties of a woman to matrimony and subservience and the duties of mankind to purity and spiritual devotion. Joseph gets drawn a lot in art looking really old and harmless, sleeping and things. See? Why would she have sex with a very un-verile man? But that wasn't very impressive to some Catholics, so they drew Joseph being more useful and sexy so it was a challenge for Mary! Such lengths are gone to to prove Mary is a virgin. The bible talks about Jesus' bretherin, and scholars claim they are just Jesus' cousins from Mary's mom. But Mary's mom is supposed to be almost barren and really excited she even got to birth Mary. I think a big part of the insistence on Mary's virginity was: why would she have sex for babies if she already got to have the most incredible baby/God ever? Because she wouldn't just have sex for pleasure. It seems to be a conflict that Mary goes between stories of her leading a usual matrimonial life and the part of her that is supposed to be sheer divine purity.

Another interesting thing about Mary is the fixation on her as the partial antidote to Eve. Since people claim Eve introduced sin into the world and cursed women to be treated like subservient beings with evil tempt-y wiles, Mary somehow was supposed to have done everything the opposite of Eve. Eve introduces sex, Mary introduces celibate birth. Eve disobeys God, Mary obeys God. Women were told to look up to Mary as their guiding figure- as a woman, wife, mother, etc. At the same time, they were told they could never ever attain any of her qualities and should sulk to show repentance for Eve's sins and being related to Eve. Why did they gain strength from an ideal that served as the framework to make them feel like they were sin filled? And yet she is quite the attractive mentor and martyr.

It's interesting that she accepts God's word in the Bible with no consideration otherwise. She just obeys, like Abraham or Moses or whoever have you from the old testament. She's a feminine ideal of unattainability with qualities of old male followers of God. She is so passive and strong at the same time in her obedience, like them. She's just a tool of things, not a person.

That's why the Madonna and Child portraits full of loving touching are such an interesting contradiction- we see Mary's humanity. But she is supposed to be so inhuman in her rejection of sin. While appreciating the pleasures of motherhood, which are earthly pleasures as well.

I thought I would paint her and the christ child with the christ child sticking a finger up her nose and her laughing for my project. I'll upload that if it doesn't suck really hard. I want to twist the maternal joy into a very earthly version of itself.

It's an interesting concept, that Mary and Christ make each other into pseudo gods and pseudo humans when together on earth. She gives him this fleshy, vulnerable body- he's painted nursing with her often even- and he gives her this transcendent peaceful gaze and glow. They live in a pseudo state in those paintings together, tainted and enriched by the heavenly and the earthly. SO weird.

I remember when I was a kid, being so confused by the feminine ideal of Mary. I was maybe 9, crying to my mom about how all the church wanted out of me was that I laid around passive for men and popping out babies and keeping quiet and never doing anything... somehow chaste in my lack of personal opinions.

Maybe some women worshipped Mary as they did just because she created without needing an earthly man and seemed to raise the child on her own.

Merp. Good night. Religion is a strange thing. It shifts a lot. It's strange how it can affect your life so much too, before you can back up and even think about it, it can teach you some fundamental beliefs and feelings about things you may not even know you have.

Even though I don't logically believe in christianity anymore, I feel like it would be really comforting for me to pray to her or for her, on a rosary, whatever. I have a little statue of her in my room. I have conflicts with my current agnosticism and my appreciation of Catholic art. And it's so beautiful and peaceful, I guess sometimes. It roots me to my childhood and my family and friends and town from another time.
The way Mary just watches. She does things silently, as seem wise to do. And so often just watches. An expression, witnessing an event, loving a person, looking at you. And others paint her into different contexts and roles. She's even been painted as a warrior figure in chainmail. There's something pretty and eerie about it all. Sad too.

Oh eh.
I wish I didn't lead myself into dead end thoughts.
Agonize, agonize, construct an argument against the already determined verdict. agonize. peace with the suckage. thought... agonize! argument... wait.. peace.peace... peace... oh shit I forgot to care about school because I kept myself in a peaceful place.
Schoolwork, schoolwork, hooray! applying myself! applying myself to agonizing thought? nooo! yes, it's time. agonize. no i need to do school! that's why i plugged my thoughts in! nope, agonize. quick, dramatic catty action that might make my agonizing go away. oh shit. more agonizing! shame about my character! take it out on schoolwork! schoolwork! now i'm really tired from my thoughts but i'm not done. bed.!

I always forget how centering it feels when you finish a delicious novel finally after everyone's gone to bed. I remember at my mother's when I finished Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murikami sometime this year and ended up crying and thinking and getting an interesting closure on various things I though I'd already felt closure about. Crazy!

I have a lot of experimenting to do with what feels right for me... in what I care about, in how I react and think and value things and see things... because a lot of presumptions about how things should be keep peeling off. I think I like it. But I keep finding myself humbled. Oh. I took it way too far, this way, or that way, I'm persisting or agonizing too much, I'm expecting too much out of myself, etc. etc. Baaaalance is hard and I don't think I'll ever get it just right because few things in life are that understandable and normalized and routine...?

Reading a novel really helps my attention span, too. It's such an indulgent thing, to be able to pursue an idea for so long- that someone has elaborated to that extent with that holistic nature and trust in the listener to keep listening. It makes me want to listen to more long, meaty stories that I can use to open my eyes to others, relate, learn, reassess...

It is also very important to have dance parties and drink too much sometimes.
It is also important not to be scared of silence
these are lessons i'm having pounce on me
it is also important not to use others like a diary.
this doesn't count cause it's blogger and like 4 people occasionally read it.
right????
never lost all my myspace exibitionism/ psychoanalytical lack of shame

If I blog while drunk
does that make me raw as shit
uncut 2 the core
no social niceties
don't even know what i'm LIKE
uh
okay so this is sally
and she is pissed she go to bed soon
and she rests her heacy head on her arm
and tomorrow will be full of tea and paint and making screen prints
reading would be nice too
i am bewildered by things to the point they're now almost unthinkable
grieving is the dumbest process i've ever encuntered
it doesn't seem to really eber get those seesout of my ycyles
i am covered in slime
i gollowed around girls who understand hat it's like to deal with this bullshit
i danced my ass off, it was aswersome.
i wish i could play mistress witch of mcclure on the ukelele
my sister said
sally you'll find as you get older
people follow a code less and less


it's so sad
we can't even remember what we got taught in kindergarten.

A new confession every day of the week

I am a control freak
you were the only thing I couldn't control myself around

I've viewed life as a trade to hone
I wish the world wasn't so random and I wish I really did have big lessons at the end of the day that held importance.

I remember one of the top ways to annoy me as a kid was to tell me "Well Sally, life's not fair."
It was really angering because it felt like they were telling me not to even TRY and make life fair. It felt so mopey and lazy and immoral, and so forth. Truely, a travesty they didn't care that I didn't get to go on the swings.
ANYWAY! But I finally had to admit, life isn't fair. Karma doesn't exist. Those who get hurt don't always get to see the comeuppings of those who hurt them. And those who have bad shit happen may never have it even out- and those who have great things happen may never have to experience anything too awful as a balance, etc. etc.
So. Life isn't fair, but I've gotten the upper end on that deal so often. The fact I was born into a pretty affluent society. The fact I was raised by loving parents and the fact I was born into the time I was, and not as some black person into a shitty area of detroit, etc. I've been very lucky. I have my health, I have my mental health. All members of my immediate family are living.
So yeah. I need to get over the feeling that those messed up people who only make my life worse need to learn a lesson. The fact is, life isn't fair, they'll probably never learn shit even if I tried to spoon feed them the message that they are kind of being awful. They'll have to want to learn or have the strength to. And I'm not the vigilante of moral character. People can be shitty assholes around me. They'll continue to get off not learning a thing and will probably keep doing what they do. We're big enough to take control over the person we are.
I feel like such an old cranky person, the way I value people's "character".
I feel confused about what actions I should take with most things I encounter.