Seems like most of you have a poem on being a woman... SO here is mine:



A woman,
sometimes,
to me that is just a word.

Yes, there is that monthly bleeding
which I absolutely detest
waking up to find my bedsheets
a cranberry mess
I have to handwash
my red underwear
and think of fish dying everytime
the only thing I like is the sound
ripping the pads from the disposable wrappers.

And, I do not have that extra piece of flesh
dangling like a changable iceberg.
Physically I feel little differences from the
supposed opposite sex
but I seem to find more commonalities.

How I hate being called the weaker sex
because I feel that we are all strong
all weak
not to mention how pissed I was that we were taken out of someone's else's rib
a spare part
meant to keep a certain Adam happy.

Society classifies me a woman
but till this day I wonder
what is that suppose to mean?
What does it mean to be a woman
I find it so much easier
to be a human
with sneakers on my feet and if I can run along side
another human being
man or woman

One day perhaps my belly will swell
with new life
but that does not make me
more or less a woman
and the same questions will still face me everytime
when I look in a mirror
fill in a form
go see a doctor
shop for new pads
worry about my skin
when a guy holds a door for me
when a woman struts past drowning in perfume
when I go to a toilet
when I see blue and reds

And my least favorite word
I could almost say hate
is Feminist, Feminism
there is no such school
women who burn bras are crazy
repressed
or want a bit of fun
I do not detest men
or try to be an equal
because in fact we are
so the whole thing is a bloody joke

Being a woman is so easy
so difficult
such a puzzle
with clarity


So does my poem make everything quite clear about being woman?
No.
Precisely the point.

By: Nippy | Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 12:43 PM | |

AS always it is communication with others which give me inspiration and thoughts worth jotting down. And Jing, after our conversation, I wonder. Do children and parents ever brdige their differences? Does the point when a child becomes a parent eventually means a meeting of point of view, finally a deep reconciliating understanding? Because I still feel resentment against my parents. Quite frankly I dread their coming, although in ways I look forward to it. Expectations, a deadly thing or is it still something that arises out of love. I think a love that does not hold certain expectation degrades into a kind of sloth, a justification to remain in stunted growth. Expectations and challenges pushes people to grow, and it pushes people into new areas, into virgin lands to self explore. And love in whatever form, does exactly that. It forces you to grow and venture.

On the other hand, I hate expectaions, I hate how it always reveals how we are always falling short, always imperfect, always a lack. We will never be beautiful enough, we will never be smart enough, we will never be perfect enough, and there are always things for them to pick on. Our bad skin, our bad attitude, our ways of doing things. And of course there is that imbalanced power structure, where it is perfectly ok for you to brandish out criticisms, but I can never fight back on an equal footing, nor criticize you, simply because we arrived from your womb.

And that is the power they will not give in. They will always reserve the right to be insensitive to your feelings, pour all sorts of cynical comments on your excited plans. Just to remind you that they are still incharge, and when you fight back with anger, remind you once again how you are still a child, so childish to respond in such a emotional way. And no matter how old I am, how far away I am, that string still binds me and still holds me. It catches me when I fall, but tugs me back when I want to fly.

I can feel their anxiety when I mention moving out, as if our separate existence threatens their own. Perhaps being a parent really has its selfish sides, things you do not want to let go off becuase it subtracts from you, your power, your meaning, your life. As your child, yes your blood runs in my veins, and your genes are constantly guiding my hand, moving my face, reeling my thoughts, so that I want to think I am independent and can escape from you, but your voice and your thoughts surface and peeps through although I try to supress them. But from the moment I broke free from the darkness of your womb to the lighted air, and the moment the chord which binds us biologically was cut, I am my own individual and has been. I am distinct from you, although you like to think I am yours, I have my thoughts, and my desires which sometimes might, selfishly, not include you.

And all your years of devotion and care, and worries and slaving away, may see that your offspring wants a life where you are not centrestage, where you are but a sideshow along many others. And suddenly you feel yoruself loosing grasp of the string to the kite, should you smile and let it float with the wind and see new places and visit new adventures, or do you want to hold on to it and save it from the wild wind whcih may ravage yoru handy work?

Whatever your decision, eventually there comes a point when you realize you can't draw the string anymore. And I have become a bird, I will fly back and revisit my nest and once-upon-a-times, the stories you once told at bedtime. But after that short stay, I will fly away again, to a life, somewhere else. And you think how amazing, and how sad, the past slips away.

By: Nippy | at 11:39 AM | |

Once in a very rare blue-grey-purple moon, discussions on what truly matter rises up from dark matters of our soul, and we debate. I cherish these discussions, though we may so often differ in our opinons and thoughts. Probably because we are people who are trying to find our way in this world and we stop to look and think, what is dark, what is bright, what is worth loving and defending, what is precious and needs guarding. What is important enough to be addressed with conviction, with zeal. What our friendship allows us to delve into and stand on different sides. So that we shout across canyons and seek to understand each other and see from one another's eyes. And we try to find a bridge across which our words, and our feelings and understandings can communicate. We get passionate about our ideas, we play fight with thoughts.

SO we debate. On ideals of justice, morality. And I konw we will not find an answer, or even an agreement, but we both agree on our continued search for answers. Answers to ourselves, that we may see the world without contradictions, without hyopcrisy. That we may question ourselves and find our own answers. Not the noise which our world is trying to invade and infiltrate our beings every second. We are similar and so different. Most turn to the world outside, to the external to make sense of their internal lives, we turn to what is inside to try and make sense of the world outside. And each and everyone of my friend has their view of the world, which I am always so honored to share when they gift me with a piece of their world-life. It makes my life immensely richer. Pieces of your past, shards of your dreams, thoughts and ideas decorate my mental room.

That is why I expect no less from my lover when and should I have one. Because I have friends like you all, this raises the bar, extremely, not to have intellectual debates like what rages on inside courtrooms, but to have a piece of someone else's world and to see through someone elses' eyes, past, mind, and to immerse in it, and then when the time comes emerge from that liquid world back into my own and let the others dive in. Selflessly.

By: Nippy | Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 1:02 PM | |

In response and as a welcome to a dear friend, who finally enters the blogsphere. Always not a trend follower, well, like they always say everything in their own time and place. You are such an odd unique one--in that weird time and space of your own making....

Well Jing, I am not sure people really do want babies. To think I see lots of proud, paranoid parents and totally clueless babies everyday. I think babies are more like accidents which happen, and are thrown onto paretns, like it or not. But then of course, as always(in all things in our lives) they are both curses and blessings. But Jing, whether the babies are monsters, germs, adorable or unplanned for accidnets. You have to see the look in the parents' eyes to understand that that new life in their hands, how they are so full of hope and fears and just that knowledge that their life is forver changed. I don't know, but I think people in our generation tend to have a deep distrust of children, babies. Maybe women and men now see more to life than procreation as a sacred mission, and of course we have birth control, but most importantly we just want so much out of life for oursleves that having children may seem like a burden, an obstacle.

But mostly I think we are all probably wrong to think that we know for certain whether or not we want to have children. It is strange, but I just watched a movie which had this same theme on motherhood. A woman is trapped in a horrible marriage, and the last thing she wants is to have a baby. Nonetheless she is pregnant, and the whole movie is about her being thrown into reluctant motherhood and all her letters to the baby she hates. But the most beautiful thing happens when she finally holds the baby in her arms, she realize she has a new life in her hands, and her own power to create a new life for that baby and herself. She finally drops a one line bomb to her husband about a divorce when she had been planning an escape the whole show from a husband she fears. In that maigc moment, she finds the courage and in a calm clearheaded line delivers the very truth she has tried to hide.

Well, Jing, I guess I am trying to say that, it is foolish to have some magical illusion about motherhood, or to villify it. It is an experience in life that we may or may mot be blessed to have. It will not be perfect, and we will be so scared when we are thrown with the responsibility. NO one prepares us for it, and it is a lot of groping in the dark and learning along the way. But it is one of those things which will change us forever, and reminds us that there is always so much to learn and discover about ourselves and our world, our little lives on earth. I guess we will only understand when we hold our own child and realize that our world is forever changed and rightly or wrongly, we can share our lives, our past, and future with a new being who will now have a new journey to set out on.

By: Nippy | Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 11:48 AM | |