I love women because I think they’re wonderful. What I hope is that you might also share that opinion, especially if you are one. That could sound sexist; there’s an implication there that I think women are better than men. That’s not the case at all! I just like them more, personally. (You’re welcome to write all about the greatness of men if you like, but I don’t care to.) Beyond that, though, I use that specific superlative because I like that I can interpret it both as “full of wonders” and “causing one to feel wonder”.

I feel it’s important to clarify that just because I make such a sweeping statement about that half of the human race doesn’t mean I think it’s necessarily true about every individual who happens to have (or appear to have) two X chromosomes. There do exist bitches who are nowhere close to fitting my broad declaration. And by now you may have noticed that I avoid referring to women as a gender and that’s also a conscious decision. I’ve come to think that there are a great many points between completely masculine and completely feminine on the gender spectrum and that any individual may well fit anywhere in that range, regardless of their physical appearance. But I’ll explore that topic more later.

Going back to my argument, I look at something like this video of mostly women dancing and I think there is much remarkable within them. They stir a sense of admiration and awe within me.

http://www.youtube.com/v/nN0AyGVN-eY

It’s not just their grace and physical prowess, though that is impressive. I see many more qualities in that routine that exemplify what I love in women:

• There is physical contact and cooperation aplenty right from the start. These women don’t merely follow a plan; they can meld their bodies together to work as a fluid whole. Each is individual and unique, but all invest themselves into this performance to make it the best they can together.
• They dress up in costume. Pop psychology may claim that wearing a mask indicates a dislike of self or an act of cowardice, but I don’t entirely agree. I feel that taking on a masquerade can indicate a strong sense of identity. These dancers don’t need their faces to be visible because they are confident in who they are and what they are doing so can take on another guise just as confidently.
• They act like peculiar characters. When a person can pretend to be someone or something very different from herself, it shows me a tremendous empathy. That ability to really project oneself into another’s mindset is a valuable asset in many endeavors, not the least of which is communication.
• They are passionate. The range of emotion that these women convey in their movements is as astonishing in its magnitude as it is in its subtlety. I don’t know if I feel that much. There are definitely times when I wish I did. Yet I know from personal experience that this is still just a glimpse of the fires that can burn within women.
• They can be silly! Oh, that is such a difficult thing for me to be. It lifts my heart when I can see someone set aside the seriousness of the world and infuse their actions with happy insouciance. It is an element of childishness that helps make life enjoyable and I envy women that so many can keep it through all their years.
• They are purposefully pretty. There’s a cruel deceit pretending to be on the side of empowering women that claims wanting to look nice is shallow and therefore undesirable. That’s nonsense. Certainly, there are more important things in life than having a pleasant countenance, but it is ingrained in all of us to want an attractive exterior. Just as it can be a valid observation that when a person doesn’t care about their appearance they may not care about themselves, the opposite is also true. Denying the fact that when we think we look good, we feel good, is no more helpful to anyone than denying that a pain can indicate an injury. Of course, that analogy gives me a fine place to point out that hurting yourself in the attempt to look good dismisses the value of your feelings and that is going too far.
• And of course, they are creative. Not only are all but two of these performers women of varying ages, the choreographer is a woman as well. Look at what they can create! Even among my small circle of acquaintances, I never stop being amazed at the artistic capabilities and sensibilities I find in the women that surround me.

That’s just a bit of what I see in that performance, but I’ll stop rather than keep going on about it. And even that video only just touches upon what moves me.

That word creative reminds me that women carry most of the burden of creating life. I am not particularly impressed that women have uteruses, ovaries, and vaginas nor that they can carry a child in their wombs. Those are all lovely but they are mere facts of biology. On the other hand, I am amazed that women can choose to suffer the indignity of having their bodies attacked and distended from within, can voluntarily experience the worst pain imaginable, and then sometimes even choose to repeat the process. And when they choose to undergo such experiences, it’s in order to bring about a new life to love which will, frankly, burden them for a damned long time.

Of course, men can possess most of the qualities above; not every woman possesses them all. And men and women both can contain numerous great characteristics that I haven’t even listed. My point again is never that women are better than men. Sometimes, they’re not even all that different. That last bit is why I don’t believe that women should be given some sort of special pass just because their biology isn’t the same as that of the patriarchal designers of most cultures around them. Every woman, just as every person, should be judged on her individual merits.

No, it is just that these are aspects that I can find in women and I often do find them in tremendous amounts. They can be so great that my breath is taken away and my heart swells and I find them glorious. Yet, and I touched on this in the last post, some women either don’t believe that they possess such worthwhile features or dismiss them as unimportant. And I am astonished by that!

So it is not that I’m trying to reveal some secret reason to appreciate women. It’s not that they possess attributes that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s that we shouldn’t, nor women nor men, dismiss the obviously fantastic traits in womanhood. It does not matter if you find creativity or passion or some other great quality in every single person around you. Its prolificacy does not diminish its value.

Stop ignoring the beauty that so often runs deep in women and perhaps you’ll start to agree with my opinion of them. Really, at that point, it should be no wonder.

I plan to write several installments on this topic (hence the part 1 in the title). I am ambitious, indeed, for a blogger who… you know… doesn’t blog. This topic, though, has worried at my mind for months now. You see, I think I love women and I want to tell you about it.

I don’t mean that I love several women, though I do. I don’t mean that I have sex with several women, and I don’t do that anyway. I mean that I cherish the female sex, I value its members dearly, and I want to do what I can to support and strengthen them. I think everyone should. Women are wonderful. I speak to you.

You are brilliant, strong, talented, artistic, logical, athletic, passionate, careful, carefree, wicked, compassionate, wily, honest, wise, foolish, and beautiful. Yes, wonderful.

With anything that is wonderful, however, there is a danger that people will start taking it for granted. In the case of women, I’ve come to think that they even take themselves for granted. That’s not to say that if you happen to have a uterus you should behave as though you are the greatest thing ever. But you should value yourself. I’m sad to say that many of my female friends don’t seem to realize their own worth.

It’s implicit in the decisions they make about family, career, and relationships:

“I want to travel to Europe but my mother gets so lonely, I should stay and keep her company.”
“I’d love to move to New York and join a dance company there, but I don’t think I’m good enough for that.”
“He doesn’t always remember to think of me, but when he does pay attention to me, he’s really great!”

There’s a school of thought that women are designed to be nurturers and put others before themselves. I’m going to point out here that it’s the year 2010. In the USA, we’ve had suffrage for ninety years, and we just came within inches of having our first female President. Using our genetic or divine programming as an excuse for having some self-destructive tendency is just giving up. Men may be designed to be vicious assholes but that’s not acceptable either. We have intelligence, sentience, conscience, and community. We can choose to overcome any programming that may or may not be present within us. Of course it’s difficult and of course you won’t be able to rise above your weaknesses every time but neither of those are good reasons not to try.

Women should take care of themselves. They are as valuable or more so than the people for whom they traditionally sacrifice their happiness. If you choose to care for someone in ways that disadvantage part of your life because that nurturing fulfills you as much in other ways, that is a fine and conscious choice. But if you sacrifice some of your own happiness for the sake of another person or thing just because you think that you are not as deserving of it, you are only making it so. Choose to be strong and fiercely embrace your joys and you will be deserving of that as well.

But pause a moment. There is a danger here to swing to an extreme that I associate with old-fashioned feminism. Not so long ago, women had so many societal structures stacked against them, that in their fight to realize equality, many pushed too hard and ended up overwhelming others in their struggle. Feminist action has, I believe, occasionally resulted in giving excessive advantage to women over all others. There’s a possibility of infringing on others’ rights to freedom of religion and speech, to squash the liberties of other genders, races, and creeds. That is pushing too much for my taste.

I separate myself from traditional feminists then by thinking of myself as a humanist. I don’t believe everyone is equal but that everyone’s rights are equal and opportunities should be as well. There is no true victory of freedom from oppression if it results in oppressing others in turn. Take hold of your self-worth and hold fast, but do not take away from others. Your own worth is already great.

Despite how far we’ve come, there is a ways yet to go. In your time, many will seek to rob you of some of your measure of your own value. Nobody can ever take away your worth, but stealing your belief in it is just as harmful. Your boss, your friend, your peer, your teacher, your family, your child, your neighborhood, the news, magazines, books, television shows, movies, computer games and many other elements of your surroundings are all laced with a nearly inextricable bias to try to make you think that you are not formidable. Yet, that is what you are. Still, every choice you make cannot help but be influenced by those perfidious persuasions. They are diminishing, yes, but they are still there.

All I ask is that when you make your choices in life,
when you feel that hesitation that pulls you back from what calls to you,
remember that everything telling you that you cannot succeed will be meaningless in the face of your demonstration that you can.

Of course, you can succeed. You’re a woman. You’re wonderful.

I haven’t blogged in months but I’m not going to apologize. I post private notes on facebook and rarely go as much as a day without tweeting something, but I tend to save blogging for when I have something both significant and universal to say. Hello again.

My New Year festivities for the second time in a row were held at Lindy Focus amongst dozens of actual friends and hundreds of potentials. While there, I got into a conversation with a dear friend that encompassed many ideas about relationships. One segment stood out in my memory and went a bit like this:

me: I don’t know what I’m passionate about.
she: Words? Do you even want to be passionate about something?
me: Women want men who are passionate.
she: [patted me consolingly on the arm]

I don’t think I was wrong in my assessment there, but I left out many important bits: that everyone is attracted to passion, that I have experienced many times of passion, and that passion drives me and everyone around me to some degree… just to mention a few. That is to say: the conversation reminded me of one benefit of passion, that it is attractive, but that wasn’t all there is to it. Still, my major concern there was that in a moment of introspection, I couldn’t name something that drives me like that off the top of my head.

She was right, of course. Words are my passion. It’s become such a reflexive response to the questions asked of me, though, that I’ve grown suspicious of it and had to reexamine once again. The thing is, it’s not just prose on virtual paper like this that I mean by ‘words’.

By WORDS, I mean the whole complex layered thing that is the magic of communicating ideas from one mind to another mind or several other minds. Some people can do that by painting or sculpting. Others can do that by leading great lives of purposeful example. Still others can communicate with their movements. I am impressed by them all!

I am not good at creating poetry; I fully realize I’m a hallmark card hack when I try. But in other respects, I think I treat words well in expressing myself. I think can turn a phrase just so and allow you to see it better. I can write it by hand or type it out quickly. I can speak the words as well as I write them, if I take the time to do it with care. I can read my own or those of others and I think my voice can convey as much as I feel. I can even sing to add more layers, though again I can’t write songs to save myself.

The words drive me. They drive me to wake up early and stay up late. I’d rather oversleep from having had too late a conversation than greet the day early because I kept words to myself. Yes, Words are still my passion: their curves, their spaces, their rhythms, their decorations, their meanings and their meanings, their sounds and their absences. Their music.

I’m not sorry for not blogging in a while because if I’d just done it for its own sake, it would have lessened what I had to say. I am sorry that I didn’t have better things to say. I am sorry that I haven’t explored more ways to say them. I’ll be trying to find more of these waves of passion to share with you this year. I may even sing them if anyone can reassure me that my voice is better than bad.

I’ve found you again, passion. And now I’ll share you.

I’ve never been interested in travel.  That’s not the same as disliking it, the way I really dislike moving.  Travel has just always struck me as a means to a goal rather than a goal in itself.  I grew up as a child of the military so would routinely move from one home to another every couple of years.  My parents would take me from Korea to Japan to Hawaii to Maryland to Illinois and back.  The trips themselves always seemed to get in the way of our purposes, which were generally to visit family.

When I settled into high school and then college in Maryland, I finally stopped moving with my family and was happy to put an end to the traveling, too.  On my own, I never went anywhere far from home.  With the onset of my dancing career, I started to travel for the purposes of getting to those dance events which were inconsiderate enough not to be in my backyard.  What I thought was that everywhere is pretty much the same.  People, places, things.  Gravity?  Yep, still 9.8 meters per second per second.  Now, where’s that venue?

It wasn’t until I started dating someone who loves to travel that I slowly began to understand a little bit of the allure.  The fact that every place is influenced by its own history and that the history of every place is different from its neighbors.  The beauty and uniqueness of each environment.  The culture and practices of different peoples.  There really are places where the grass is greener, the water is bluer, the horizon is wider, and the sky looks bigger.  There are towns where I fit in as if we were designed for each other and there are cities where I would always stand out no matter how still I stood.  The weather travels more than any of us and it has its favorite places, too, depending on its mood.

Even in that relationship where my eyes began to open, I still didn’t want to admit the fun of going to a new place and exploring it.  It has taken an overlong time for me finally to confess that the world is an amazing place full of astonishments and that all I need to witness more of those surprises is to stand on a different patch of land.

Two years ago, I started to enjoy traveling for its own sake and went on trips just to go on the trips!  Last year, I let go of the last of my reluctance and began to embrace every bit of it.  I liked the driving, I liked the flying, I liked the getting lost and the getting found, I liked encountering the people who spoke differently and ate differently and thought differently.  I sang along with the Discovery Channel commercials that declaimed Boom De Ah Dah, the world is just awesome!

I would like to go to England and Canada and Australia and Japan and the various tropical islands where people play in clear sweet waters.  I’m sad to say, though, that I am a little stuck.  I have become estranged from my sister and mother and I think that my birth certificate and most recent passport were last in my mother’s possession.  I have a driver’s license and social security card, but no way to prove… well, that I was born. My physical existence notwithstanding, I’m at a bit of a loss as to how I can show that I exist and thereafter how to get a passport as a U.S. citizen.  My friend, Soo, has given me some ideas and so I will try to see if I can get a passport this year despite the odds.  I hope that I am not deported in the process.  Damn my slanty eyes!

Even if I don’t get a passport, I’m going to stay open to the opportunity of travel.  If I see a cheap flight to Boston or somewhere in Florida, I’m going to try to go!  Las Vegas, Seattle, anywhere in California?  Yes, please!  And if there is ever a last-minute cheap flight to Hawaii, I am so there.  Hmm, I need to find a dogsitter.  Or make friends with a pilot who likes flying with dogs.  Oh, man, that would be great!

Thus, I resolve to travel to places this year not just because a dance event is happening there (although I am looking forward to New Orleans for Showdown!), but just because I haven’t been there yet.  To give myself two quick guidelines: if I can drive there in less than four hours, it doesn’t count; if it’s specifically for a dance event, it doesn’t count.  I’ll start small and aim for just one completely new place before the end of the year!  And if I manage one, I’ll shoot for a second.  And if I manage two, well, you can see where this is going.  This resolution will go hand-in-hand with my fourth resolution and I will try not to let a lack of a clear plan prevent me from moving toward that new destination.

It’s taken me a while to admit it but the world really is awesome, and I want to see more of it.  Here I come!

I like to think I know what’s coming.  I try to prepare for the future by planning out my own path and predicting the obstacles I will encounter and then ways to get around those.  I don’t think this is a bad characteristic, necessarily.  After all, Carrie taught me that a man with a plan has a better chance of being a man with a happy girlfriend.  The problem that I have with planning is getting stuck there.

There’s a mental momentum to traveling from A to Z by visiting all the letters in between.  Missing a stop is at least disconcerting and at worst makes you a horrible speller.  I am not proud of the fact that when my contrivances have gone awry, I have reacted poorly in the past.  It’s not as serious a problem for me these days; I’ve become more flexible and accepting of accidents of circumstance.  Still, even if I no longer wail and gnash my teeth when my schemes fall by the wayside, I continue to begin each day and each task with a recipe of ordered steps.

Just as staying along the edges of life restricts me from encountering more of what there is to discover, so too does staying on a prescribed path.  In the musical, “Into The Woods,” when Little Red Riding Hood is attempting to evade the Wolf and stick to the path, he replies:

Just so, little girl – any path

So many worth exploring

Just one would be so boring

And look what you’re ignoring…

Sure, he’s just trying to catch her to satisfy his own vile desires, but he makes a valid point that has stayed in my mind for well over a decade now.  By staying on the path, I don’t know what I’m missing.  That’s not to say I shouldn’t try to get to my goals, and certainly the straight line appeals to my efficient scientist’s mind, but crooked lines possess a beauty of their own.  When I have strayed from the straight and narrow, I have found things like amazing architecture, intoxicating restaurants yielding exotic foods, magical sights of nature, and at least one remarkable girlfriend.

In 2008, I got a really good GPS device (my previous Magellan was garbage) from Navigon.  Since this acquisition, I have found myself happily driving off in random directions just to see what’s out there, confident that I can eventually find my way back to my goal.  But in doing this, I’ve also come to realize that I could have always made those drives.  I have no problems stopping and asking for directions, and roads always go somewhere.  It was fear more than disorientation that kept me on the well-known lanes.

Today, I have a credit card, a reliable cellphone, and that nifty Navigon.  The only thing that keeps me from wandering the world is me.  I think I am capable enough that I can get back safely wherever I go and whatever I do on the spur of the moment.  There are facebook events to which I get invited, there are Meetups that seem interesting in passing, there are flyers for events all over the place.  I turn away from things too often because I’m not prepared for them.  But what would it hurt me to try things without preparation?  I might stumble and look a bit foolish, but there’s no lasting damage that comes from foolishness.  Unless you consider knowledge to be lasting damage, and that’s debatable.  I want to shake off my anticipations on occasion and just do stuff because I really don’t know what will happen and I find myself yearning to find out.

Thus, I resolve this year to jump into things without plans.  No, that’s not a plan, just a resolution.  A goal, maybe.  So, I’ll say yes to more invitations.  I’ll hear about something in passing and try it.  I’ll point to places on google maps and just go there.  I’ll call up friends and ask if I can join them in whatever they’re doing, just because I have some time to do it.

Speaking of which, what are you up to?