Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Salad: The Key to Women's Happiness?
No. But if you relied solely upon the media's projection of salad, you may be tempted to believe such. Seriously. Try and find one picture of a woman alone with salad where she's not laughing. It's uncanny. I don't know about you, but I don't find myself exploding with laughter and joy every time I eat a salad. I mean, they're good, but not that good. I don't even laugh when I eat cookies, let alone salad. Anyway, scroll through Women Laughing Alone with Salad to see more pictures of women being unusually happy eating their precious salads.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
The Human Body Is a Paradox
Yesterday morning around 7 A.M. the sound of sirens leaked into my window. At the intersection just up the street from my house, a woman had been killed. She was crossing the street on her way to work, and in the darkness was struck by a 49-year-old man driving a GMC truck. She was a single mom, and later, her three daughters, ages 12, 14, and 16, told police she was walking to work because the brakes in their car were broken.
When I first heard this story, I was in shock. I stared at that intersection, now busy with cars full of people rushing off to buy milk or to get home to their families after a long day at work, and could only think about how a woman had died there this morning. But the ground was not sacred. At least not to them. They drove over it again and again, completely ignorant of the life-shattering moment that had occurred there only hours earlier.
Imagining a truck striking a fragile human body fills me with pain. It's like imagining a sledge hammer coming down on a piece of ancient pottery, the brute and unrelenting force crushing the delicate structure. It's not a fair fight. I can almost feel the way the internal organs crush, unable to withstand the pressure of impact, and the way the skin tears and bruises, leaking out its red contents. The human body is so delicate. So very, very delicate.
I can't help remembering the bodies of babies I saw in the ICU, resting in incubators next to my brother's after he was born. They were so small and so utterly helpless, like baby birds confined to their nests. Or the time I went cliff jumping and landed wrong when I hit the water, earning myself a bruise the size of a cantaloupe. I stared incessantly at my raised purple and blue flesh, feeling my nerves scream when I brushed my fingertips ever so lightly across the surface. I apologized to my body. I'm sorry I did this to you, I said. I'm sorry.
But the body is a funny thing. It's amazing that the same set of DNA, the same set of arms and legs and muscles and bones that can carry my little brother on my back all the way up to Timpanogas Cave can be completely wiped out by a microscopic virus. It's amazing how the same body that can climb to the top of the highest mountain in the entire world, surviving on minimal amounts of oxygen, can die from a blood clot the size of a nickel.
If given enough time, the body can adapt to almost anything. The muscles in our bodies rise to meet the challenges presented to them, tearing themselves apart and rebuilding over and over again until they are at last strong enough to resist what resists them. The body is a paradox. It is durable and delicate; sensitive and tough. It can adapt and it can demand.
It is an amazing piece of work.
Sometimes I think it's easy to criticize our bodies. We get so lost in the wrapping, in the way our hair falls around our shoulders, the shape of our nose, or the color of our eyes. It's easy to become angry at our bodies for not looking or acting the way we want them to. We forget so easily. We forget what a gift our bodies are. We forget how much they can do. Bodies are precious. They deserve our awe and they deserve our respect.
And most of all, a body deserves protection—even if it isn't our own.
When I first heard this story, I was in shock. I stared at that intersection, now busy with cars full of people rushing off to buy milk or to get home to their families after a long day at work, and could only think about how a woman had died there this morning. But the ground was not sacred. At least not to them. They drove over it again and again, completely ignorant of the life-shattering moment that had occurred there only hours earlier.
Imagining a truck striking a fragile human body fills me with pain. It's like imagining a sledge hammer coming down on a piece of ancient pottery, the brute and unrelenting force crushing the delicate structure. It's not a fair fight. I can almost feel the way the internal organs crush, unable to withstand the pressure of impact, and the way the skin tears and bruises, leaking out its red contents. The human body is so delicate. So very, very delicate.
I can't help remembering the bodies of babies I saw in the ICU, resting in incubators next to my brother's after he was born. They were so small and so utterly helpless, like baby birds confined to their nests. Or the time I went cliff jumping and landed wrong when I hit the water, earning myself a bruise the size of a cantaloupe. I stared incessantly at my raised purple and blue flesh, feeling my nerves scream when I brushed my fingertips ever so lightly across the surface. I apologized to my body. I'm sorry I did this to you, I said. I'm sorry.
But the body is a funny thing. It's amazing that the same set of DNA, the same set of arms and legs and muscles and bones that can carry my little brother on my back all the way up to Timpanogas Cave can be completely wiped out by a microscopic virus. It's amazing how the same body that can climb to the top of the highest mountain in the entire world, surviving on minimal amounts of oxygen, can die from a blood clot the size of a nickel.
If given enough time, the body can adapt to almost anything. The muscles in our bodies rise to meet the challenges presented to them, tearing themselves apart and rebuilding over and over again until they are at last strong enough to resist what resists them. The body is a paradox. It is durable and delicate; sensitive and tough. It can adapt and it can demand.
It is an amazing piece of work.
Sometimes I think it's easy to criticize our bodies. We get so lost in the wrapping, in the way our hair falls around our shoulders, the shape of our nose, or the color of our eyes. It's easy to become angry at our bodies for not looking or acting the way we want them to. We forget so easily. We forget what a gift our bodies are. We forget how much they can do. Bodies are precious. They deserve our awe and they deserve our respect.
And most of all, a body deserves protection—even if it isn't our own.
Lightbulbs and Kidneys
This morning I woke up and the bathroom light was burnt out. Lightbulbs burning out is always an unfortunate occasion, but this was particularly unfortunate because there is not a single window connected to our bathroom. The result? Complete and utter darkness. And as much as I enjoy showering in the darkness, peeing in the darkness, and brushing my hair in the darkness, I do not in fact enjoy doing any of these activities in the darkness.
I tried putting on my makeup via cell phone light and I thought things were going well until I went downstairs and saw myself in the mirror in the living room, illuminated by blinding sunlight, and realized I had done a very shoddy job indeed. However, on the plus side, things like zits are much less visible in the darkness and, as long as you don't look in any other mirrors, enable you to shove the memory of their existence completely from your mind.
It's also very frightening to stare into mirrors in the darkness. The whole time I'm doing so I can't shake images from my mind of ghosts appearing next to my face in the glass and laughing maniacally. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
Anyway, after we got home from church I once again headed into the bathroom, deceived by the light from the hallway leaking in, and shut the door only to find myself once again in total darkness and remember that the lightbulb was still out. I was sick and tired of this nonsense, but the way I saw it, I had two options: 1) pee in darkness; or 2) pee with the door wide open. Both were equally unsavory and repulsive activities, so in a moment of sheer brilliance, I found my solution. I looked up at the light in the hall and noticed for the first time that there were not one but two lightbulbs in the light fixture. I promptly unscrewed one of the lightbulbs from the hall and brought it into the bathroom light fixture, screwed it in, and basked in the fluorescent glow that spilled forth. There is now light in the hallway and the bathroom! So the moral of the story is lightbulbs are like kidneys: You can take one out and transplant it, and everybody will still do just fine.
I tried putting on my makeup via cell phone light and I thought things were going well until I went downstairs and saw myself in the mirror in the living room, illuminated by blinding sunlight, and realized I had done a very shoddy job indeed. However, on the plus side, things like zits are much less visible in the darkness and, as long as you don't look in any other mirrors, enable you to shove the memory of their existence completely from your mind.
It's also very frightening to stare into mirrors in the darkness. The whole time I'm doing so I can't shake images from my mind of ghosts appearing next to my face in the glass and laughing maniacally. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
Anyway, after we got home from church I once again headed into the bathroom, deceived by the light from the hallway leaking in, and shut the door only to find myself once again in total darkness and remember that the lightbulb was still out. I was sick and tired of this nonsense, but the way I saw it, I had two options: 1) pee in darkness; or 2) pee with the door wide open. Both were equally unsavory and repulsive activities, so in a moment of sheer brilliance, I found my solution. I looked up at the light in the hall and noticed for the first time that there were not one but two lightbulbs in the light fixture. I promptly unscrewed one of the lightbulbs from the hall and brought it into the bathroom light fixture, screwed it in, and basked in the fluorescent glow that spilled forth. There is now light in the hallway and the bathroom! So the moral of the story is lightbulbs are like kidneys: You can take one out and transplant it, and everybody will still do just fine.
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