alana


abstract

April 18, 2006 Today was an interesting and somewhat sleepy day. I woke up after my housemates had been up drinking and lamenting. A person my housemate was seeing decided to start dating someone else without telling her. Complicating matters was the fact that her best male friend was dumped by the girl in the equation for my housemate's current love. Santa Cruz is such a small place. Perhaps it is because the majority of my friends in undergraduate either did not date, or were in serious relationships. Normal standards of decency that people hold towards one another as friends are lost when romantic terms emerge. I suppose it is because dating is something entirely new to me. Treating someone poorly or leaving them on a whim seems baffling.



background

Taking someone into your life, to me at least, means that you hold them dearly and try to treat them with the happiness that knowing them brings to you. Even when people end-up treating me in less than thoughtful ways I can't imagine reciprocating this behaviour. Perhaps this is my boundless idealism and contentment, but I can only imagine regarding a friend, especially one with whom are you more deeply involved, with kindness and care.



description

Every second of being alive, and the smallest touch, and ability to feel the people and life around oneself brings me such joy. The people that I know, however flawed or beautiful, have their own circumstances for behaving in certain ways that I can't start to understand. I feel like especially recently, I have loosened some of the rigidity I used to hold up for myself. Living life at such an accelerated pace has it's benefits, but it also means that you miss out on learning how to relax. In approaching other people, I just want to support them in doing what makes them happy, even if I disagree with it personally, like eating meat.



analysis

Accepting that everyone has to make their own decisions and not trying to overwhelm them but simply leading by quiet example has the surprising effect of garnering a great deal of interest and positive feedback. For example, at the Passover feast Jasmine and I put on for our friends this weekend, there was a great reaction to the v. matzo ball soup. The next day at the dining hall Ed's girlfriend Joyce was commenting on how good the soup was, which she had heard from him.



conclusion

There is a new art movement right now, relational aesthetics, which works with the concept of sharing and creating enjoyable spaces for people. A gallery will feature an artist gathering a group together and cooking dinner. The idea of something usually regarded as a private, or even unappreciated practice, being made public resonates with me. Repositioning cooking, which is usually relegated to the domestic sphere, also seems intriguing. There is an element of protest by valorizing a process that is such an ordinary, or traditonally female, practice.



references

thanks for reading!