Maternal Devotion and Self-Love

I went to see my ex last Sunday so that he could visit with our daughter. He is living in a residential hotel, a little clustered strip of brick buildings hidden behind a tower of storage units. Well, this hotel room is just a bed, a TV, a table, a dresser, a kitchenette, and low-pile carpet. He has his VHS collection stacked against one wall, the same one that he had when we met, and a pile of pumpkins, and a dresser covered in skulls. He has his guitar and mandolin and his PlayStation and a heart-shaped ashtray half-full of cigarette butts. We sat on the bed eating fast food and watching an old-school Care Bears movie.

Our daughter kept wanting him to take her to the sink to wash her hands, then to pee pee in the pot, then to feed her bites of food. She kept nudging the fork into his hand so that he would eat, too. I remember that about him--I would cook, and he wouldn't eat it. He didn't understand how the refusal to do something together is sort of a denial, like you are saying no to the person without doing anything. It was other things too, how he would fall asleep on the couch or keep his shoes on hours after he came home.

He said in a voice that I don't like for a two-year-old, an annoyed and patronizing voice, "You can feed yourself."

Well, ok. I am learning how to make my daughter happy. She is almost two, and I only just figured it out. She wants me to be her mommy. She wants me to wipe her mouth, get her Sprite, help her pee, pretend to do chores with her, hold her, cuddle with her, and watch cartoons in a little snuggley ball in a mountain of stuffed animals. 

I do not think that I understood until recently what the interaction thing means. It is about burrowing deep down into a person, until you are finally eye level. It is a way to look around and see the world the way they do. From this vantage point, I know what my daughter wants. 

"She just wants you to do stuff with her," I told him. "She wants you to eat with her."

I have been thinking a lot about something I read last week in Force Vs. Power, one of the many hippie books I've been reading lately. He talks about self-love in a way that makes me think about maternal devotion.

"At this more evolved stage, nothing 'out there' has the capacity to make one happy, and love isn't something that's given or taken away by another, but is created from within."

I have been experiencing, some evenings, a glowing sensation that wells out of my love for my daughter and into our apartment, covering the pile of laundry, the furniture, the musty yet comfortable scent of our home. It comes out of me, but it also wraps around me. This is, I've been thinking, my maternal gaze turned inward onto myself--and outward onto the world. "Above all things have fervent love for one another, for love will cover the multitude of sins."

Love in this way, as a blanket of warmth, rolling out to bathe and massage the cracks: love that is drawn from an infinite source--I think that is how to be a mother. Or an ex-wife. Or just a person. IDK think about it.

Dubstep Remix of Ellie Goulding Covering The Weeknd

I have insomnia tonight, so I'm doing whatever it is I do on the internet when I can't sleep. Tonight, the google tangent served me well, and went like:

-Look up lots of Ellie Goulding songs
-Finally listen to Ellie Goulding covering The Weeknd
-Look up dubstep remixes of Ellie Goulding covering The Weeknd on Soundcloud.
-Find a real good one.

I just feel like there is so much awesome happening in this song.

Non-Violent Communication and Parenting

My daughter is two years old.  She has been violent in her communication since before she was born, when she would kick my stomach so hard that I would see the full imprint of her foot. My daughter had colic. She cried for four-six hours a day for as many months. I am conflict-avoidant, neurotic and submissive in my interpersonal style. My daughter totally stressed me out. She still does.

I have been arguing with one of my friends for a few months now about how I parent. He thinks that I need to be more stern and punitive with my daughter, who now screams and flails like an epileptic fish when I won't let her drink my wine or climb the monkey bars. But I know that the punitive style will not influence my daughter, which is why I have found a much more way to sway her: with love.

Best Dubstep Songs According to Jenna

"cinema" skrillex remix  "under the sheets" jakwob remixes ellie goulding "headbanga" excision & downlink "ghosts n stuff" nero remixes deadmau5

I don't like house music. It annoys me. Well the beat annoys me. Sometimes if the house music is pretty enough I like it. I like dubstep because the bass kind of shakes my body and feels good. 

I like these four dubstep songs a lot. 

 

“Cinema” Skrillex Remix

 
I like Skrillex. People think he's cheesy, and I get that. But his music is really exciting.

I saw him at an electronic festival just now and he told us to dedicate "Cinema," to the aliens. So we put our lighters and glow sticks in the air and sang I guess to the aliens, which is awesome when 20,000 people are on molly. 

This song is so romantic and I love it. The lyrics are sentimental but the bass is hard and masculine. Really cool. Skrillex remixed this track by Benny Benassi. He is a house DJ and the original is boring.

Skrillex is dating Ellie Goulding. Or at least the internet told me that. I hope so.

“Under the Sheets” Ellie Goulding 

Remix by Jakwob

 
I listened to this Jakwob remix a lot when I was pregnant and the biggest thing I remember about this song was going dancing New Year's Eve with my friend Katie and dancing to this song and thinking about how I couldn't drink for a really long time. 

It was at a dive in the Tenderloin in San Francisco and this song came on and I danced awkwardly because dubstep is kind of hard to dance to. Here are some pictures of Katie since she is so beautiful. 

“Headbanga” by Excision & Downlink

 

 

   
 At that CounterPoint rave there were two tents in the back for dubstep and a bunch of Pretty Lights artists. The best one for me who played was Excision. It was really sweaty and crazy in there.

So I guess a lot of metal heads go to dubstep, according to this guy I met at that rave. So that would make sense about this "headbanger" song being such a big deal.  

The part "I'm a fucking headbanger" is from a Busta Rhymes song where he is using the phrase to playfully change its meaning to describe shooting someone in the head. 

Yeah it's a good song. 

 “Ghosts n Stuff” by Deadmau5 // Nero Remix

“It’s been so long, I’ve been out of my body with you/

I feel alone, feel at home, feel like nothing is true…”

 
These lyrics could be sad, or not, just like raving. Being high on molly rules. Coming down off it sucks! And the sound of bass and the frequency releases dopamine into your body. 

Also the feelings you might have for someone at a party but it just goes away when you try to hang out afterwards.

This remix by Nero has a little bit of that comedown feeling.