double-standard honor?

Last week, a friend of mine sent out this article to a small group of people. A woman in Lucknow, India severed a man's head when he tried to rape her while she was cutting plants. My friend later told me she thought carefully about who to send it to given what type of responses she may get in return from some of her friends. Despite the censorship, she was still taken aback by some of the comments. The general responses found the article laughable - the thought of a woman beheading a man and then carrying his head through town is a ludicrous image, I'm sure. But why laugh at a woman trying to defend her honor? Although we may not condone it, we at least take seriously honor killings that occur by men. Women burned with their husbands, women killed after being raped - they're disgusting but they're not comical. Is it because we are accustomed to men doing the killing in the name of honor? Perhaps this is a generalization, but most women think about and understand (consciously or not) that they represent the honor of the family, community and culture. And while they are vulnerable to their honor being tainted, it is the men whose place it is to traditionally defend it. Is there something humorous, then, about these roles becoming convoluted and a woman deciding how she will defend her honor and dignity - as horrific as it is? One of my friend's characterized the incident as "a real honor killing". Horrific, yes. Humorous, hardly.

you were supposed to dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4

clean slate

I didn't mean for there to be such a long hiatus since my last post, but here we are, another late night, another city...and another computer. I'm currently borrowing a friend's computer, given that mine is currently inoperable. This past week, my hard drive crashed and I lost five years worth of writing, music and pictures. It's one of those events that make you realize, there's more to life than your computer. Oh, sure there is BUT I know that as soon as koobi (jr) is back, I'll be putting the rest of the world on a pause. I had been pretty down about losing my writing - it meant losing papers, some poetry, free-writes, starts of stories, letters, and probably a file of ideas. It's a lot to lose; they were evidence of thoughts and feelings and knowledge - essentially, they were parts of me on paper. But, as I was telling a friend, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. I had become too accustomed to my writing, and was having a difficult time letting some go. With writing, as with other things one can do, there is always something to improve on. The crash forced me to let go and start again with a fresh mind - certainly it helped me to not be tied to stale ideas and styles of the past.

It's 3.26 AM and I can no longer churn out my best piece of work at this hour of the night. Unfortunatley I think graduating from college means they take away that power. LifeasIknowit in the middle of the semester in the middle of the night in a sentence summary: cold feet about journalism; excitment about classes; letting go (or, as Adrienne Rich would say "stepping backwards"; too bad she didn't write it about computers); dreams of brunch; intention of drawing again; potential photography.