I love swimming so much. When I am in the water I am completely free, I am weightless in both body & mind. I like the feel of the swimsuit on my body, I like the feel of it wet & taut against my skin, almost like a second skin. I like the water all around me, I like just floating on my back or facing down, I like the graceful feeling that i get when just let go & cut through the water, it’s like I am made of spandex. I like my ears getting blocked with the water, I like the dizzy feeling that comes after swimming for too long at a stretch. I like the shower after getting out of water. And I absolutely adore the completely light & breezy feeling that stays with me for a few hours after a swim, everything seems wonderful, life feels easy, the world feels beautiful. I am so glad I finally learned to swim this year.
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
— Albert Einstein
I love this film. It’s so subtle & beautiful. You really have to watch it several times to get the true feel of the movie. Bertolucci surely draws the best out of his actors, be it Liv Tyler in Stealing Beauty, or Eva Green in this film. She is perfect. The cinematography is breathtaking, the soundtrack complements the movie perfectly. My favorite scene.. it’s the lovemaking scene between Isa & Matthew where Theo walks up to the stove & starts frying eggs. Beautiful is the only word that comes to mind.
Top 10 Ways that Men Benefit from Feminism (click for source)
viviopsis: i-am-the-lighthouse:
Structured like a David Letterman countdown, [Gloria] Steinem’s list of benefits to men included the following:
10. Through feminism, men are liberated from stereotypes, too.
9. Women’s skills are required to raise children. But, men have them too.
8. Men have been shortchanged by being told to marry someone who can cook rather than someone who can be a companion. “I’m sure that men who have been trained essentially to marry their housekeepers were lonely,” Steinem said.
7. The women’s movement can increase a man’s life by an average of four years. Steinem said that if men were to eliminate causes of death typically attributed to masculine roles, including deaths from violence, speeding and tension-related disease, their life expectancy would almost equal women’s. [Lighthouse adds: not to mention dangerous workplaces which are over-represented by men]
6. Boys can remain close to their mothers. [Lighthouse adds: not sure about this one, many hyper-masculine men are close to their mothers. It does however encourage respect and reverence for women]
5. If men aren’t hooked on dominance and hierarchy with other men, they are saved from the self-loathing that comes from the need for control.
4. Laughter can once again become commonplace, even in serious rituals. “In ancient cultures like Wilma’s, seriousness and laughter are not separate,” said Steinem.
3. Men can continue discovering talents, without being divorced from them.
2. Sex and race are intertwined. You can’t uproot one without the other. “There’s really no such thing as being a feminist without being an anti‑racist,” she said.
1. Eliminating the sexual caste system – the cult of femininity and masculinity – eliminates the root cause of almost all violence.
I’d like to add to this:
I was talking to a male friend the other day about our high school and the drug culture within it, and he basically said, “You know, I’m not trying to be sexist, but I think that for boys it’s different - like, when you’re in high school, what are you going to do when you hang out together? It’s not as acceptable to just hang out and talk about stuff as it is for girls — so a lot of guys do drugs or drink together because that’s the only thing to do.”
[That said, I’m not against drinking or drugs (legalize away!) — I just get concerned when people, especially younger people, do it in excess, without control or greater understanding of what they’re doing (not ageist here, either - I know a lot of kids who use but do so with active concern for their wellbeing; the problem is that a lot don’t).]
