Musing on Dr Who (specifically The Ponds, probably because they are gone now)

I watch lots of Dr Who. I completely understand if you don’t. But that’s what I’m writing about today. Please note, if you are a fan, that I wrote this off the top of my head so it’s entirely possible that I’ve smudged some details, and this is really focused on just one little thread in a very general sort of way because I’m a big picture person. Feel free to argue with me in the comments because there is lots and lots that could be discussed that I’m not really touching on here. Hopefully at some point I’ll have the time and motivation to add in links to some of the critiques I’m referencing. I highly doubt it.

Moffat gets a lot of flack on the internet from feminist Dr Who fans. I can see why, but I don’t agree with a lot of it for the same reason I disagree with a lot of the feminist critiques of Mulan: they are too surface level, and they seem to be made from the position that these creations should be showing us the ideal. Ideals are important and we should sure have more examples and models in the media of what they might look like in practice. However. Most of the time the value of really good pop culture writing is that it gives us a reflection of current struggles and contexts.

A lot of the criticisms seem to be centered around the characters of the Ponds, and particularly the treatment Amy’s character gets. There’s lots of ranting about how she is sexualized and thereby reduced to a trope. That’s not how I see the character at all. I see in her so many of the women I know: women who are highly sexual, adventurous, and in so many ways unconventional and inconvenient and haunted by a sense of inadequacy because whenever they try to fit those more conventional and convenient molds they die a little, or a lot, on the inside.

Like Amy, they’ve been told their whole lives they’re broken because they won’t compromise their inner truths (“Twelve years and four psychiatrists…I kept fighting them [because] they said you weren’t real” and in that statement I think the Doctor can be seen as a stand in for Amy’s desires and needs). Like Amy, many of them are in marriages or relationships with men who are more conventional in terms of what they want from their lives: a job that carries some respect with it, kids, a house, quiet and simple life styles. Like Rory’s character, these guys do actually have an adventurous side, that’s how they got into these relationships in the first place. And Amy and the women like her wish desperately they could want these things because then maybe they wouldn’t be seen as broken by themselves and others (ie all the seasons dealing with Amy’s ambiguity toward marriage, which was also an ambiguity toward social scripts and institutions).

But Rory doesn’t really fit traditional conceptions of masculinity well, either: he soft hearted, nurturing, more open about his vulnerabilities and he doesn’t present with a lot of swagger and confidence. He knows it, and he’s constantly insecure about Amy’s attachment to him because of it. They both have a sense inadequacy because neither of them really fit the mold.

Just like in these real life couples,  Rory’s compromises are easier to see than Amy’s, because what he gives up better fits the social script of what’s desirable. Even in the relationship neither of them can see Amy’s compromises as easily as Rory’s, leading Rory to believe she loves him less than he loves her, and Amy to have immense guilt that she can’t be what it seems like he wants. That’s what that whole thing with not being able to have kids was about in Asylum of The Daleks. There were so many complaints about that, but to me it seemed very real. Amy wasn’t really just talking about a physical inability to have children, she was talking about an inability to give Rory the sort of life he seems to want. To participate in a quiet and conventional life with the same satisfaction he would. I thought wrapping those feelings around one concrete thing (no babies) was very true to life. People do that: when we have big, complex, abstract feelings we center them around a tangible anchor and it often looks a little bit crazy and, well, out of character. But it’s not, it’s taking very abstract feelings and putting them into concrete metaphors that are easier to wrap words around. Once she was able to do that, wrap words around it, both of them could recognize her struggles, both of them could see her compromises more clearly (like getting married, for example, see above), and Rory could voice to both of them that she is worthy of love and acceptance as she is and valuable in her own right.  They became able to maneuver through and heal the misunderstandings between them.

So, I think what I’m saying here is that if you read these interactions and these characters as a reflection of what is rather than a vision of what should be everything becomes a little deeper and a lot less sexist. I really sort of see a lot of compassion in the writing for Amy’s struggles and for the struggles of Amy and Rory as a couple who are attempting to create a loving and functional relationship in relatively uncharted territory. I see in it a reflection of the struggles a lot of my friends have gone through, or are going through currently.

Thoughts I Don’t Have Time For

One of the first things they tell you if you are majoring in any mental health field is that you probably have a diagnosis, or at least some issues. They tell you that’s probably, sub-conciously, why you’ve chosen the field. There’s truth to that: nothing’s more dangerous than a professional who hasn’t “done their own work” because they tend to do more harm than good by projecting their own crap onto their client’s. But I think there’s more to it. I think you can’t develop a desire to walk others through their pain unless you’ve seen and lived some pain and know its face and its ways.

I have been remembering all the drug use that went on around me in my teens. I remember the kids who were on an eternal search for pot, or always digging through their parents liquor cabinet, or who sold their Ritalin in the halls. It’s no wonder I grew up highly skeptical of the psychiatric model of medicating away psychological and psycho-social problems: the only difference I could see between self-medicating and getting a Dx and an Rx was who wrote the prescription. I think now that at least some of those kids were just precocious and sensitive and saw the hypocrisy and uncertainty in the world and their own families before they had the frontal cortex to deal with it. That’s a painful moment and I’m not surprised they tried to numb themselves to it. Others, of course, had more serious pain to deal with and no one to properly help them.

The LA riots of 1992 have always stood out to me. Somehow the memories of watching them on the news are all collapsed with the memories of the first adult I encountered who abused their authority. Sadly it was a teacher, and she left me with a mistrust and dislike for most teachers for many years (I’m over it now, though she was not the last asshole teacher, I had enough really good teachers over the years to balance it out a bit). The same year, a black boy in my class was nearly expelled while his white friends were let off with detention for the same incident. Nobody understood why I was relieved that he wasn’t expelled. I’m not sure I totally understood why at the time. I think I get it now: the riots were reflecting the same thing back at me on a larger scale. The Rodney King beating was an abuse of authority, the verdict was pretty blatantly biased, and at the time I saw the involvement of the National Guard in subduing the riots as horrifying (I’ve since come to a more nuanced understanding, there was a LOT going on with those riots, man). I also had a vague sense that this was about more than one guy getting beat up. The message I was getting that year, both at school and from the news, was that authority is often unjust but if you protest you will be subjected to a worse abuse of power. Which is weird because my mom intervened with the teacher and she was always very cautious in her dealings with me after that (if you knew Mother Mayhem you would understand, don’t EVER mess with her kids) and I presume this other kid’s parents, and maybe others, intervened to ensure he wasn’t actually expelled. So I could equally well have walked away with the message that loud protest is the way to go. It still kind of makes me a little sick when I think of the assembly where the principle felt it necessary to announce to the whole school that this little dude had been considered for expulsion but yeah, yeah, they were awfully compassionate as a school and he could stay. Fuck that. They decided a public shaming for him and self-congratulating for them was the way to go. I may have lost my faith in humanity at the ripe old age of nine.

These things are probably all tied together, somehow.

Saturday Afternoon

I have had lots of musings and big changes- internal and external- over the last few weeks. But they’re all too big, too interconnected, and too amorphous to make blog fodder out of. Things that would make good blog fodder haven’t held my attention, because these other things that I can’t quite articulate are too absorbing.

Right now, I’m indulging in an afternoon beer and thinking that all my friends who have had kids started drinking regularly by the time their kids were toddlers. To the best of my knowledge we are none of us abusing the drink, but most nights we all seem to have a beer or two when we get home from work, a glass of wine with dinner, or a cocktail after the kids are in bed. I take this as a testament to the difficulty of reconciling our various creative and unconventional selves to the tedious and conventional work of parenting. Or perhaps just the grueling nature of the early child rearing years for us. I realize there are people who claim they do not find those first four years grueling at all so I don’t want to make any blanket generalizations here. Certainly there was a lot of joy for me in watching a little ego blossom, and the intensity of the love between us- I’ve never been that utterly devoted to another living being and don’t believe I ever will be again. But I also felt confined and stifled. I still do, sometimes.

A few days ago I was making a thing in my journal: part ink doodle, part calligraphy, part watercolor. It was a creative impulse that had grabbed me and I knew it had to be followed regardless of the quality of the result. Pookie wanted my attention and was rather thrown that I had said I would play Dollhouse once I made my tea and then suddenly announced it would have to wait another twenty minutes or so. It was one of those moments when words tumble out your mouth without you consciously putting them there:

“Listen kiddo, you haven’t seen me do this much the last seven years because it took so much creative energy to grow you and get you this far. You are worth every ounce of that energy, but now you’re bigger and you don’t need as much from me and my creative energy is coming back and I’ve got to listen to it to stay healthy. Otherwise it will get all crumpled up into a ball of cranky. So you can paint, too, or you can watch an episode of My Little Ponies, but I’ve gotta do this right now and I’ll be with you when I’m done.”

I was totally right. Hopefully I haven’t given her some kind of complex.

Right now, I’m indulging in an afternoon beer and typing in the garage. The door is up so I can see my dad, and my brother, and my boyfriend talking business in the sun. My dad and brother have been digging up the yard to plant a garden because Mother Mayhem has been taking Master Gardener courses and Dad’s always loved building things: it’s how he feeds his creative energies (last year he converted his van to a camper and built a greenhouse). The weather is gorgeous: after weeks of last minute snow flurries and gray skies and cold air we have a day that feels like summer. Pookie was out here earlier “helping” but she’s gone in to watch TV and “rest”. I like listening to them strategize and brainstorm as they lean against shovels or sprawl on what’s left of the lawn. I like listening to the birds, too, who are also probably strategizing, or at least expressing some creative energies.

Changes afoot.

Pancakes

There is one thing about Sundays I very much appreciate, even though I am often reluctant to begin the activity: making pancakes. For about forty five minutes, every Sunday, Pookie and I get a taste of what I wish our time together  could always be like. We always cook to music, and for pancakes our favorites include Elizabeth and the Catapult, Of Monsters and Men, and The Head and The Heart. We’ve always made them together, and I’ve always let Pookie “help” with whatever was not going to completely ruin them. Over the years she’s expanded from doing all the mixing, to basically doing all of it except buttering the griddle and getting the eggs out (she can’t reach them). I supervise and offer feedback and put together a little fruit salad to go with them, or do dishes and wipe down counters. We chat and goof around and sing along and that’s about all there is to it.

Pancake making when Pookie was about four

This simple ritual, however, combines a number of elements that can not be depended on to come together, especially all of them at once, during any other point in the week. 1. I’m teaching her something of practical value that expands her sense of self-sufficiency. 2. There isn’t really any pressure to be anywhere or do anything so I can more easily relax into being present in the moment. 3. We’re having fun. 4. We are listening to good music. 5. She ends up getting fed something that was made from scratch (and at least partly by her own hands, bonus). Both my need to nurture and my need to encourage her autonomy get met (which is to say my need to see the light at the end of the tunnel of having someone totally dependent on me). Both her need for my attention and her need to discover her own capability are met. I get to do one of my favorite things- cook breakfast while listening to music- and get that “good mom” feeling at the same time.

I never rarely feel like I’m a bad mom, I’m just often aware that I rarely get the chance to be the mom I’d like to be. I’m mostly okay with this: nobody gets to play any role in their life in a way that satisfies their ideals all the time, and very few moments in life live up to their promises. But pancakes live up to their promise, so on Sundays I savor the idyllic interlude, and I’m grateful I have one I can count on on a weekly basis. Thank you pancakes.

From wikimedia commons, by Kanko

Playing With the Theme

Yes, the page looks all different. I’ll be mucking about with themes and setting for a while deciding what I like and what I don’t.

Pain

I’ve been in a lot of pain the last couple of days. Don’t worry, it’s nothing Serious, just a ruptured ovarian cyst, but if you’ve never had one of those let me tell you, they HURT, they are excruciating. I contend that this was actually worse than when I was in labor, because at least I got a rest between contractions, I was only in labor for four hours, and I knew it was a productive pain with a worthwhile prize at the end. This was continuous, for the entire 11 hours before ER doctors gave me some pain med.s (and continuing whenever the med.s wore off the next day), and I really couldn’t see anything productive about it. Unless you want to get philosophical about it, which I usually do when I’m in pain for extended periods of time.

I think pain is a very important thing, whether it is physical or psychological, because it lets you know when something is not working: when something needs to change. The immediate cause of the pain may not be anything you can do something about, like a ruptured cyst, or the death of a loved one. All you can do is wait it out, but the pain doesn’t seem to know that and just keeps on paining. But there are usually underlying causes that can be addressed.

by Nucleus Communications, retrieved from https://myhealth.alberta.ca/health/_layouts/healthwise/media/medical/hw/n1324.jpg

When I made the choice to get an IUD I was aware that they increase the likelihood of non-cancerous cysts that are big enough to actually hurt. I just didn’t really connect that dots that this might mean it could be a good idea to cut down on other things that can increase that likelihood- like coffee, of which I drink more than is really good for me on a number of levels, and alcohol, which I drink regularly though not irresponsibly. So all I can do with the actual cyst is just wait it out, take some pain and anti-inflammatory med.s to keep things from getting unbearable, and count my lucky stars that I live in a time and place where such things are available. But I can change my lifestyle: cut back on the caffeine and alcohol, increase the exercise levels (maybe), so I am less likely to get these things in the future. The pain from this is a message from my body, communicating in the way that bodies do, that I need to change something about the way I live. Maybe my habits are not overly-indulgent by some one else’s standards, but for me, for this body, they are a bit too much (at least while there is an IUD in it, and I am not getting rid of that over just one cyst incident).

Similarly, the constant psychological pain I was in toward the end of my marriage was also a signal that something needed to change. I couldn’t change my ex’s behavior, which was the direct cause of my anger and sorrow, but I could walk away from a marriage that had become toxic, which was the more fundamental cause.

I don’t really remember my pregnancy very crisply but I have the sense I picked up this listening-to-pain business then, which would not be surprising because I was on and off in pain, or at least discomfort, a lot then, both pscyho-emotional and physical.

I think I will switch to tea in the mornings, and reserve beer for weekends only.

Defragging

So, I more or less locked myself out for a few weeks. I forgot my password, and the site updated and didn’t remember it either. Then I woke up one day and magically knew what it was.  So, I’m back!

Being locked out meant that I didn’t do my usual New Year’s post. I give every year a phrase: a mantra, a battle cry, a chapter title, think of it however you will. This year it is but one word: Defragging.

from Wikimedia Commons, by Auslogics Software

Of course, if you plan to defrag that implies that there is fragmentation. I’m pretty sure that my head, my space, and my schedule got into that state in much the same way that a computer drive gets this way: things get very full and so you start stuffing anything new where ever it fits, as it comes in, and then it’s all a jumble with bits here and there and everywhere, and everything takes longer and doesn’t work as well.

I’m not really sure what this is going to entail, practically speaking, but I’m sure I’ll find out. I do know what I’d like the end result to be:

1) A living space that’s more functional and less cluttered, with things organized sensibly (as in, they make sense to me, I really don’t care if anyone else can make sense of it).
2) A magical arrangement of work, school, Girl Scouts, outings, errands, and all the rest of it, that leaves me less stressed, more connected to the important people I want to spend time with, and with more room for fun, creativity, and adventure.
3) Less space in my head, and emotional energy, sucked up by worrying, fretting, and ruminating on to-do lists, and more of that space and energy for being present and enjoying what’s actually going on in the moment.

So I have a point A and a point B, but in high Mumsy style I have no idea what’s in between, and I seem to have left the map at home. That’s the best way, really.