burningbright

The interim review of the project went well. I argued that, although architects do not like to think about the suburbs, and although this sentiment is in some senses justified by the fact that speculators, not architects, have been in charge of the suburbs from layout and infrastructure to the shape of the houses since the very beginning–despite this, I believe the architectural dismissal of the suburbs on aesthetic grounds is about to become irrelevant.

My critics appreciated my research and the thoroughness of my investigation and explanation of the basis for the project.

They wondered how I planned to move forward, and I realized that I had completely forgotten to talk about this project being an exercise in sustainable re-design. I didn’t even mention sustainability.

So, retrofitting suburban houses–my critics saw this moving forward as a study of demographics, of what people want (or are likely to want) in their homes, taking into consideration the size and makeup of families, and then building a suburb to accommodate them, and building it green.

They suggested that I take into consideration what would draw people to want to re-inhabit abandoned houses; how to sell the worth of the idea of retrofitting an existing structure, make it desirable. How to sell retrofit, in order to avoid greenfield development.

My adviser, on the other hand, saw it in almost the opposite way; instead of basing my design on demographics, he interprets my project as a kind of eco-Frank Gehry exercise, where I do whatever it takes to reach zero-energy, and whatever it looks like is the aesthetic I present. As he put it, “domestic flexibility and energy are driving this thing; if it pushes aesthetics while doing so then so be it.”

For me, this project is about where those two intersect. Or more accurately, it’s about zero-energy, as informed by the variables which in 2010 we now know, including such things as potential demographics, and high performing landscape modifications.

The following are some ideas in order of my interest in them:
1. what does a retrofit home look like
2. what are the systems that go into it
3. if all the houses had these modifications, what kind of energy savings and livability improvements does it add up to
4. how much do they cost the residents
5. could the costs be put on a sliding scale
6. how do the modifications complement the families who live there
7. what kind of infrastructure improvements do they slot into, what the high performance landscape looks like*

Things that would make me happy at the final review would be cool renderings of spaces, and “sweet infographics” illustrating systems at a couple of different levels.

So I guess my first priority is to choose a home and design a retrofit, then diagram how it works, calculate loads and savings, cost, and how this works out for the people likely to live there as the sub/exurbs are re-inhabited.

Design thoughts:
-flexibility of space is useful to a wide variety of inhabitants
-flexibility of space with regard to seasonal use is a feature of zero-energy design
-need a catalogue of moves to apply to a basic plan/section
-uniqueness comes from applying a series of moves, which are oriented according to the cardinal directions, to a series of plans, which are oriented to their cul-de-sacs

Things still bugging me:
-I’m concerned about maintaining a balance between designing for a target market, which can be a powerful driving force and a great design motivator, as evidenced by the Solar D house; and designing a series of modifications that could be widely applied across a lot of suburban cookie-cutter housing. In other words, the balance between specificity and broad applicability.

*Wait a sec, if I’m reusing a neighborhood instead of designing a new neighborhood, then it doesn’t matter what optimal, high-performance neighborhood design looks like…or at least, I don’t need to waste time researching it.

March 6th, 2010
Categories: projects . Author: ximena . Comments: No Comments

Givens:

People like the suburbs, people want to move there, and people don’t have a problem with the iconic image of a house, gables, siding and garages.

But just because they tend not to be at war with the basic form of the suburban home (in the way that architects and the design-minded often are after prolonged exposure to modern lines and the industrial aesthetic) — just because the average homeowner is at peace with the typology, doesn’t mean that there aren’t some major features in suburban housing that they might well be willing to modify or sacrifice.

A number of real estate trend websites indicate that affordability and flexible living spaces are the foremost desires of homebuyers. The living room is almost extinct, in favor of the family room with entertainment systems, and the number one home remodel is kitchens–bigger, more livable, more beautiful, better lit, more accommodating to a variety of activities, and with more work space. Kitchens and family rooms are blending and mushing, with a preference for open lines of sight, or even a completely open plan between those two spaces.

However, concurrent with the desire for an open layout, spaces that can become home offices and “bonus” rooms are also in demand. A master suite with a large bathroom is expected in new homes, and popular features include walk-in closets, separate bathtubs (preferably with whirlpool) and roomy showers. Laundry features near the bedroom or kitchen (no longer in the basement) are also much in demand.

Finally, ever-escalating allergy and illness problems make indoor environmental quality issues a top priority, paving the way for low VOC finishes and natural materials, or reused materials cured by age.

In my opinion, three things become clear:

1. There is room for improvement in the design of the suburban home from the point of view of providing flexible and useful space to the homeowner–

2. Which makes energy-efficient renovation an easier sell; not only are homeowners more interested in so-called “green” products and design than ever before, but good passive and energy efficient design is completely grounded in improved livability, and thus–

3. Maybe it all adds up to a new way of thinking about the layout of a house. Instead of pre-labled bedroom, living room, bonus room, and all the other lingo, why not just the family room/kitchen, surrounded by enough rooms, to be slept in or otherwise used as each family sees fit? As long as a room has good sound insulation, light and some storage space, it is truly flexible. A family of four might need five or so rooms of varying sizes, for bedrooms, office space, convertible guest space or play space.

Need:
-to figure out modifications to a North, South, East or West facing wall to meet performance needs
-to figure out how an N/S/E/W modification would work depending on the room it intrudes upon

February 16th, 2010
Categories: environment, projects . Author: ximena . Comments: No Comments

Here’s where I’m at: Have been trying to narrow potential sites by looking at census data and housing prices and potential transit lines to figure out what might be a suburb that is both a) in danger of failing, indicating that houses might be in need of work and b) in a promising location to be worth retrofitting. This is proving to be difficult, and inconclusive.

So, I randomly picked a suburb, and looked at a couple of streets that are in the past 10 year bracket. The thing is, after talking to a landscape architecture student, I’m finding that this particular suburb may actually be an example of [relatively] progressive planning, in terms of land use anyway, and it seems to be doing pretty well. Obviously, this is the opposite of a good argument for retrofit.

Two other things to note:

This other student is currently doing a thesis involving the calculation of payback and financial benefits from utilizing LEED ND in planning. He’s actually writing a consulting manual for a nearby county which is expecting growth in the next decade. It’s not retrofitting but I wonder if something there could be useful.

Also, my chain of thought, in case you want to poke holes in it, goes something like this: A series of houses built with less attention to craft (the infamous shoddy construction we hear about in development housing) will be extremely energy inefficient, which in combination with driving distance will make it undesirable, which will cause blight as homes are unable to be sold, and meanwhile people who own them will go broke trying to pay for the energy which will lead to foreclosures. These neighborhoods cannot be salvaged without a couple of key adjustments: 1) public transit (urban planning solution), 2) greater density of residents, as well as some walkable amenities (urban planning/architecture solution) and 3) energy efficient, site responsive structural adjustments (architectural solution). I want to focus on number 3, with intelligent dabbling in 1 and 2.

What am I doing wrong??? Seriously, I’m swimming up Niagara Falls here. Not getting anywhere, spinning in too much information, but not finding an intelligent basis for this project, or any local data backing it up, despite all of the generalized articles out there in the media that seem to support the thesis concept.

Either a) it’s not happening here, which is why I’m not finding anything, or b) it is but I don’t have the statistical/data sleuthing skills to know what to look for (extremely likely), or c) it doesn’t matter to the scope of my project and I shouldn’t even worry about it. But if c is true, then what on earth is the point of my project? Is it just that “sometime in an energy-scarce future people are going to want to retrofit their suburban homes, here are some ideas?”

Maybe I should start there, and just do a completely visual analysis, using other people’s data to guide my design, and come up with 100 design solutions.

February 12th, 2010
Categories: projects . Author: ximena . Comments: No Comments

I like to eat. I have a bad habit of indulging in a slightly tastier dinner with a couple more little side-bites of somethings during times of low-level ongoing stress, particularly when I need to do some serious, down-to-business procrastinating, like right now for example, in school.

It’s not a good thing, stress-eating, and what makes it so insidious is that it’s not a 100% bad habit. Unlike smoking or drinking or gambling, you have to eat. But if you don’t want to get fat, and if your idea of being in good shape is that you can still propel yourself from the couch in one relatively smooth motion, then you have to be somewhat mindful of eating reasonably.

It’s not that I don’t eat well–I’m vegetarian, I don’t keep snacks around, I don’t even like most sugary treats and never have them in the house, and I rarely indulge the juices, sodas, or any kind of dessert. My weakness is creamy things, like avocado, butter, cheese, mayonnaise, half & half, and the very occasional taste of Bailey’s. My great love on this earth is pasta in all its forms, especially when combined with cheese, butter, or cream. You get the idea.

There’s no way to say no to these things, and saying no isn’t really the point anyway because even if I tried for awhile, I would have to eat something, and most likely I would plunge back into my favorites with redoubled zest. Besides, all addicts know that self-denial never works.

Calorie and point-counting doesn’t work either. It may help, in order to figure out how much you should reasonably consume, and therefore how much you need to NOT eat, but it doesn’t offer very good motivation besides the usual self-scolding and willpower, see what I did? See how much I lost? See how I’m keeping it off? Yeah, right, do you really think I’m stupid enough to be tricked? And for that matter, do I really want to work within a system that’s based on deluding myself into thinking there is a simple fix?

There is no simple fix.

For many women, who are the biggest demographic of emotional eaters, at least a couple of times per week they find themselves standing in front of the stove at dinner thinking, what the heck, I’ll just throw in an extra bit of this, and one more of those tonight–I’m hungry, I’m tired, I just want it, etc.

Here’s the question: Why do you want it? Is it your body craving sustenance, or your emotions making you want something to chew on? Choose a or b.

If you chose b (you chose b, the answer is always b), the next step is to analyze those emotions, and this part is hard. You might decide; work is what’s bothering me. In that case, what about work? A variety of things? Write them down, write a rant, really stew about it, but write it all down.

Now refine what you’ve written into a sentence. Then craft a haiku. This is the problem. This is what is making you want to consume a little more comfort, above and beyond your body’s hunger.

Here’s what I think: the key to managing the amount you consume is to understand why you are eating, and the thing you are trying to understand is the emotional construct which has built up inside of your mind, manifesting in your body’s desires, like a swelling wave, causing you to run for higher ground at the top of a taller pile of dinner.

Are you still craving extras? If not, don’t eat them. If so, then eat the extra and enjoy, but understand why you are eating. Know thyself, said Socrates. This is not a program for denying yourself, this is, quite simply, a reminder to be fully aware of the reasons. And by the way, everything changes, so remember that tomorrow you’re going to have to know thyself all over again.

It doesn’t end; there is no stasis or balance point or quitting. This is what makes food unlike other addictions. People’s relationship to their bodily fuel is necessarily dynamic, changing with location, seasons, age, pregnancy, illness, and state of mind. You can’t hope to separate food from emotions, for the two are entwined, and to dull the emotional aspect would inevitably dull the enjoyment of beloved tastes and associations as well. This is why even the most carefully calculated formula of points will forever remain an artificial illustration of an idealized relationship, a set of restrictions imposed from outside. It is doomed to fail because few people can maintain such a loveless relationship with food for long.

You don’t have to set goals, or stop, or do less, or be better. You just have to understand and accept, and then change will come.

February 10th, 2010
Categories: deep thoughts . Author: ximena . Comments: No Comments

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that we’re doing a project about the suburbs. What’s going on, in 2010, post housing-market crash? Are poorer people moving out there? Are the people out there just seeming poorer by virtue of lost jobs? Are the houses losing value?

What’s going to happen when the energy for heating, cooling, and commuting gets to be expensive? Really expensive?

My theory is that those houses will be abandoned, or possibly filled with the disenfranchised, living off the grid post-apocalypse style, see California Love. Can you dig it? In a way, this isn’t a totally disagreeable image. There must be a thousand post-apocalypse stories which essentially boil down to a dream of a simpler life, where choices are clearer and there are only two ways to be, a kick-ass survivor or dead. Where the urban landscape, embodying the money and the master plan of people richer and more powerful than you, has become merely a surface to navigate, a derelict playground divested of rules, conventions and the need to share space with a million other people.

An emptier place.

Unfortunately, most of these stories seem to be predicated on one particularly flawed premise, which is that the world will be an emptier place when all of those resources run out. In fact, it’s likely to be a more crowded place, with an ever-increasing need for housing. So while we might not have the resources to maintain all of those suburban homes, chances are they will be occupied anyway. Sound like a recipe for horrible things like rampant violence, disease, injury and fear?

The ability of an elected governing body to create a semblance of order is inextricably tied to its ability to guarantee a degree of safety and consistency, and equally important, resources such as water, food, and power to its constituents. I don’t love the idea of a big unwieldy bureaucracy, with attendant corruption and costs. But in light of the fact that I’m not alone in the world, it seems like a not-unreasonable sacrifice to give up the illusion of being sole master of my destiny, in favor of being able to access the information, the creativity, the tools and ingenuity and systems that are a product of organized human networks.

With that in mind, it seems to me that something has to be done about the suburbs before they are beyond repair, and beyond the reach of a city’s, a society’s, resources.

It has to be systematic, an intervention at every level, and one of those levels is the individual house. The split-level McMansion cookie cutter snout-house: I think maybe I might have some ideas for what to do about them.

February 9th, 2010
Categories: projects . Author: ximena . Comments: No Comments

I’m alive, I’m back, and I’m applying for graduate school.

I haven’t been blogging because of above reason, and being out of town visiting my grandmother who does not have internet access, and being on vacation in southern California.

I’ve also been gone because the spam I get in comments was overwhelming, and I haven’t had a chance to upgrade to a later version of Wordpress (this problem should be fixed next week sometime).

Anyway, excuses aside, I’m hoping to make a go of the blog thing again this year. It has become foreign to me, like an uncomfortable friendship where we’re on the phone and I don’t know quite what to say…hoping to remedy that!

And also needing to write two final essays/writing samples to submit with my final application. Somebody throw me a social issue to pontificate about, please.

January 20th, 2007
Categories: happenings . Author: ximena . Comments: 1 Comment

I’m back. Summer sure went fast. It’s cold here these days, carrying my luggage through Tokyo was the last time I’ve sweated in a week (only a week ago?).

The family vacation was good, my mom fell in love with Japan and my brother didn’t exactly (he’s a big old travel wuss, shared youth hostel bedrooms make him uncomfortable and communal bathing was out of the question) but they both thoroughly enjoyed meeting my teachers and friends and seeing the sights. And I enjoyed being their tour guide, I felt like I was genuinely useful in my ability to show them a few things that they most likely wouldn’t have experienced without the benefit of my background knowledge of the country.

Let’s see, I also met the Gaijin Girl, who doesn’t seem to be committing social suicide nearly as effectively as she claims and was actually quite delightful. I think I babbled her ear off. Sorry GG, too bad I missed you on my way out of Tokyo!

After seeing the family off, I met my travel buddy P-chan. We went to Sado Island for two days of a three-day concert series by the Sado native Kodo drummers and a guest group, Tamango’s Urban Tap. Tamango was cool, Kodo was hot. I actually saw Kodo in college when they came to my university, so I knew they’d be hot. Who can resist the pounding of a 10-foot drum that deafens you…by a nearly naked man whose muscles are stagelit most becomingly?

Weary of the sauna-like heat, P-chan and I moved north to begin my first (and her third) WWOOF experience. Willing Workers On Organic Farms is pretty much that–you choose a host based on their self-description in the guidebook, go there, and help them out every day in exchange for room and board and the family experience.

So I started at a horse farm in Aomori. The gig consisted of the expected poo shoveling, and also garden work, traded for riding lessons in the mornings. It had its ups (early mornings, cooking our own food, riding, breathtakingly beautiful night skies) and downs (bugs biting me on the ass, mentally scarring episode involving P-chan on a bucking horse and me on the horse it was bucking at). I don’t really wanna be a cowboy.

The farm’s specialty was therapy for mentally handicapped children through riding, which wasn’t really something we could help with. The garden was not so much organic, so we lived a somewhat afterthought existence in a warehouse as opposed to with a family per se, but got to watch hot chicks do yabusame, or horseback archery, and see the Milky Way every evening, so whatever, it’s all good.

Then we moved on to Nikko, to a guesthouse. We looked forward to yoga in the mornings and aromatherapy every other day. “It says vegan diet on the profile,” I joked to P-chan, “but I bet this guy pulls up in an SUV.” Lo and behold, what should pull into the train station parking lot at that very minute but a gigantic red Ford Expedition.

Driven, as it turns out, by an angry, sarcastic, and questionably insane Japanese man who also doubled as a 35-year veteran of California and conservative fucknut. The first thing he did back at the lodge was ask us about our politics and tell us (without bothering to wait for an answer) that we were spoiled. The next day he refused to feed P-chan the strict diabetic diet that she must eat, and that he had agreed in our email exchanges would not be a problem at all. To make a long, uncomfortable and in the end slightly scary story (that man has a road-rage problem and should not be in charge of a multi-ton vehicle) we told him we would leave the following morning.

Actually we left that very night. In between the blowup wherin we announced our decision to leave, and P’s and my frantic discussion of what to do next, I managed to sneak up to the customers’ computer and steal enough internet time to download a train schedule. There was one more train to Tokyo that night.

I said “come on P, I’m out of here in 15 minutes, are you with me?” She wrung her hands, “I don’t know, I can’t decide so fast, maybe we should stick it out, I can’t pack so quickly!”–but I had never felt more sure and more excited about a breakaway. Moments of my life that I could never get back, wasted in a hateful lodge with a hateful man; I was certainty embodied.

“Just think, we could go to Yoyogi Park on Sunday!” She stopped. “Alright then,” she said “you know, all I needed was a reason.” She started throwing her stuff in her bag, an assembling process that usually takes an hour crammed into 10 minutes, with a few spillover bits that I crammed into the top of mine. Another poor WWOOFer who had been sticking it out for a week already, looked on in dismay at our efficient getaway. We wished the stuck WWOOFer luck, marched up into the kitchen, requested a ride to the station in the sort of polite Japanese tone that left no room for argument, and left Nikko without a backward glance.

Incidentally, don’t ever go to Nikko Park Lodge, it’s a dive, there’s nothing organic in that cheap vegan diet, untrained volunteers (there is no hired staff, the owner is too cheap) do all the sheet-changing, building maintainance, scrubbing and cleaning and the poor yoga teacher who does the rest of the work is probably being held captive.

Tokyo was everything I dreamed it could be. It was the first time I really, truly enjoyed Tokyo.

Alas, our friends left town and we needed one more WWOOF host before our Japan time ran out. This time we went to Ibaraki-ken, on the Pacific coast. The kitchen was deplorably messy and the weeds in the garden unbelievably high (and the “short bike ride to swim in the ocean” was more of a 25 km roundtrip to wade at the ugly beach), but the lady in charge was wonderful inexhaustibly energetic and kind, and her family lovely, and I couldn’t have asked for a better place to round out my two years in Japan.

While there, I was also treated to dinner by a friend from junior high, my neighbor down the street in fact, now a JET. It was by chance that I ran into her at JET orientation in Chicago two years ago, and just barely that I recalled her mentioning a prefecture beginning with ‘I’, north of Chiba. Anyway, she’s staring down a third year…you go girl! What luck, that we could meet up?

Anyway, back to Tokyo, this time to stay with an old Tottori friend, recently promoted from the inaka to Sasazuka. He generously put me up for three nights, and even got me on the guest list to the reopening of the famous Absolut Ice Bar (where I chatted with the handsome Swedish designer of the bar’s icy interior). I spent most of my days in Shibuya, watching the bobbing unbrellas at the “tangle” crossing, worrying about whatever it is that I always worry about these days, anxiety having become the permanent state of my heart and chest. Not wanting to leave, wanting the flight to be over with, shopping with my remaining yen, despising the ambient media overload of Shibuya (I still hate you Beyonce). Feeling like I was losing my best friend when P-chan and I said goodbye. And then saying goodbye.

…
It’s weird to be back in the American Midwest. I feel out of synch with life here, and though the feeling gets less every day it’s nothing I can talk about without sounding like a worrywart and a whiner, dwelling on the past. Sometimes I wish I could express my true feelings, which are usually those of a worrywart and whiner who dwells on the past. Not that I’m the sort who worries about being thought of as a whiner who dwells on the past or anything.

I have to keep reminding myself that, though I was sad to leave Tokyo, I couldn’t have stayed–as GG said, sometimes Japan is what you need, but you gotta know when it’s time to go, before being a permanent gaijin sinks into your soul, before you get jaded and bitter and stuck. It was time.

Now what? Dunno, searching, thinking blah blah. Need to find ways to stay busy here while searching. It is easy to fall into depression when you’re living back at home and your friends are all busy with work (or dating each other, effectively cancelling each other out [or newly gone crazy and dysfunctional, also not useful]) and everyone you know is either married or already almost done with grad school or both.

In any case, “functionally illiterate and loving it” are days gone by, and the times, like this blog, must change.

September 23rd, 2006
Categories: travel, japan . Author: ximena . Comments: 3 Comments

I pack my life in stages; final conference and the suit goes in the suitcase, final classes, in go the work clothes. Final parties, toss in my earrings and heels; all the trappings of my small-town urban life boxed and shipped.

I’m left with my raggedest, ill-fitting, badly matched summer survival gear, sandals, a bottle of DEET, tickets to a concert and reservations for a nice long vacation followed by a month of WWOOFing.

After my family visits me and we travel to Kyoto, Tokyo and Hokkaido, I will check out the Earth Celebration concert on Sado Island, and then move on to Aomori in the north, where I and my friend P will shovel horse shit for room and board for a couple weeks, and then do housework and pick weeds in Nikko. I can’t wait.

No really.

Summer here I come!

July 20th, 2006
Categories: travel, happenings . Author: ximena . Comments: 2 Comments

Tuesday was the day I’ve been anticipating for awhile, ever since I watched the solemn goodbyes of leaving teachers, my first spring here at school.

I knew Speech Marathon Day was coming, so Monday I begged R-chan to help me translate my thoughts. I told her stories, and if she laughed, I had her tell it back to me in Japanese, in simple enough terms that it made me laugh, and wrote it down. First I wrote in kana, but I just couldn’t read fast enough so I cheated and wrote everything out in romaji.

Here’s what I said to the students, at the semester closing ceremony in the morning:

When I first arrived, I thought to myself, ‘I’m actually in Japan’ and I was excited. However, as I waited for the semester to start, I started to become worried. I am not good at public speaking, and I realized that being an English ALT was nothing BUT public speaking, every single day.
Damn, I thought to myself, maybe I signed myself up for the wrong job…but the escape ship had sailed by that point [literally, ã?‚ã?¨ã?®ç¥­ã‚Šã?§ã?—ã?Ÿ. This translates as something like “you missed it but the festival is over so you can’t go back and watch the parade now”].
Luckily, thanks to all of you, I had an enjoyable teaching experience. And especially thanks to the diligent and dedicated students of English here at Y-koko…ha ha, this is a bit of a joke. But truthfully, thanks to the kindness of teachers, and the enthusiasm of students in class. This is the truth.
I’m still not good at public speaking, but now, when I go back to America, I am thinking of continuing my studies to become a teacher.
Now I have a piece of advice. In the future, you will probably never think to yourself, ‘I sure wish I had studied more grammar!’ But the day where you think, ‘I wish I could speak a few words of a foreign language’ will surely come. Next semester, please do not waste this chance, and try your best in your studies.
Thank you for the past two years.

It went well, they even nodded seriously when I complimented their diligence, and then laughed when I told them it was a joke. The teachers just might have laughed loudest.

The final enkai was in the evening. This was my evening speech:

I don’t think I’m going to be nostalgic about everything in Japan. For example, always being the last to laugh at a joke told in Japanese, assuming I got it at all, or the time when I had gained weight and my neighborhood Yakult granny patted my stomach and asked if I was pregnant, were not so much fun.
But seeing beautiful Daisen out the window of the school every morning, and more than anything, being able to work in the Staffroom with all of you, is something I’ll never forget. Being a part of the Y-koko staff for these past two years has been an honor.
Thank you.

K spoke, and Nagai-sensei in English, and then they turned on that damn emotionally manipulative natsukashii music they play during slideshows at high school graduations, and K and I both received flowers, from Nago-sensei my staffroom neighbor (who was looking very kakoii, yum), me getting all teary.

The principal gave me a gift, and shook my hand, and I went back to my seat. I was trying too hard to keep from breaking out into cathartic tears to even feel relieved at having finished speaking. So I started drinking instead. Good party, good day, good night and good luck, and goodbye.

July 19th, 2006
Categories: school, happenings . Author: ximena . Comments: 2 Comments

An article on remystifying the orgasm in response to a book:

It’s not that the sexual revelations and revolutions of the recent past have not brought considerable good. It’s great that men know more about women’s bodies than they did, great they no longer imagine, like the cad in Milan Kundera’s 1972 novel The Joke, that any sexual exchange short of intercourse is emasculating. What’s bad is that now we have books like Margolis’s O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm, which insistently and insipidly fetishize orgasms–adding, thereby, not just to our fears in the erotic realm but also, paradoxically, to our boredoms.

Nehring wants to “remystify” the orgasm. She even suggests that we have Christianity to thank for blurring religious and sexual ecstacies, making sex all the more exhilerating a treat for it’s forbiddenness.

I’m with her–not so much in that it needs to be remystified, but in the sentiment that we should not become attached to our orgasms like a cheap junkfood fix.

This is what I always hated about the HBO series Sex and the City. It made the taboo topic of women wanting sex accessible, surely not a bad thing. But it only replaced outdated lady-in-the-kitchen whore-at-night double standards with a high-heel wearing sexually promiscuous “liberated” woman questionable lack of standards.

Shock value was the substance of it. The sexiness of wild, wealthy carefree Manhattan living and daylong vibrator/orgy sessions seemed attractive only in contrast–like the way Siberia gets to sounding good when it’s 100 degrees and humid and they turn off the AC in the staffroom–with my, the viewer’s, comparatively cumbersome life of working and sweating and not EVER being dressed in the latest fashion (and not getting any sex at all at the time I was watching the show).

The actual characters’ lives, even their plentiful sex lives, were hollow shells of emotion-free hooking up, and I found nothing that made me want to trade places with them. They really seemed lonely and the sex seemed empty.

The best sex I ever have is the most emotionally charged. Oodles of orgasms easily had are a fun fantasy, but they are like those mini powdered sugar donuts, fluffy, eaten by the dozen, grounded in nothing and quickly forgotten.

I prefer mine rich and heavy, if somewhat fewer and farther between. With tension and buildup and plenty of time for contemplation of religious taboos I might be flouting (just kidding, Jesus doesn’t do it for me), and a technicolor finish. My best ones come with fireworks. I want tiramisu. Not grocery sheet cake with sprinkles; German Black Forest cake with fresh, juicy cherries.

July 13th, 2006
Categories: feminist, deep thoughts . Author: ximena . Comments: No Comments