Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

Nip and Tuck your self-esteem December 30, 2010

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 3:52 am
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Beauty — be not caused — It Is —
Chase it, and it ceases —
Chase it not, and it abides —

Overtake the Creases

In the Meadow — when the Wind
Runs his fingers thro’ it —
Deity will see to it
That You never do it –

-Emily Dickinson

Think about Michael Jackson and what are the first things that come to mind? Well, there’s all that great music, of course, but right up there is going to be ‘plastic surgery.’ When you talk about Michael’s plastic surgery, you’re not thinking, “Wow, he had surgery and he looked so great!” Nope. You think how attractive he was before he got onto the surgery cycle, and you wonder what he was thinking to have started in the first place.  Right?

Have you heard about friends or acquaintances who are considering cosmetic surgery, wrinkled your eyebrows and asked, “Why?” You don’t see anything wrong with the part that your friend obsesses about. You’re right. There isn’t anything really wrong, it’s all in the friend’s head. Time for you to tell her how beautiful she is just as she is. You’ll probably talk until you’re blue and all she’ll do is sigh and tell you how her (absolutely perfect) breasts are too small, or her (perfectly fine) belly is too thick, or her (completely normal) nose is too wide. Everyone else can see that the issue is not in the part, but in the artificial perception about that part.

Poor Michael, despite all his talent and riches, he had serious self-esteem issues relating to his physical appearance. Look at the final Michael and the young man back in the Off the Wall days, for example. He was a much nicer looking young man before all those surgeries. (Here’s a visual guide to the sad slide).   Jackson chased an idea of beauty and his beauty ceased.  He became freakish.   In most situations, cosmetic plastic surgery is not about improving real defects, it’s about fixing self-image issues, and those issues remain after the nips and tucks.

On the TV show Plastic Makes Perfect (a rhinoplasty episode), I heard about a study which showed that while self-image definitely goes up immediately after a cosmetic surgery, within a year, there is no difference any more.    The self-image is back to what it was prior to the surgery.  What happens then? Does the person remember that boost she felt after the last surgery, and so goes for another one, hoping to find that sense satisfaction?  If studies show that the satisfaction is only temporary, we see why so many people end up addicted to plastic surgery and end up looking worse and worse. They’re searching for a feeling that isn’t about what’s in their mirror, it’s about what’s inside their head.  They’re obsessing about someone else’s image of beauty, instead of embracing their own.  They’re chasing after beauty and they can’t catch it, because real beauty isn’t physical.

Artificial breasts, new noses, and fat suction aren’t the way to improve your life. If you think it will be improved by artificial changes, then you have a lot of work to do with your local psycho-therapist. The problem is deeper than the surface thing you want to believe will make a difference.  It simply will not. Your dissatisfaction isn’t really about your nose or breasts; it’s about what you believe about yourself. You need to accept and embrace that you are worthy of admiration and love just as you are. If you think you need to fix some physical attribute, you’re losing yourself to meet someone else’s mold, instead of being the better thing: the real you.

Learn to love and celebrate that very part of you that bothers you. (Yes, there’s a reason I wear a jewel in my nose). Self-acceptance is found in knowing yourself, not by being trimmed to someone else’s image of you (even your own artificial image). Your unique beauty is better than anything that a doctor can craft for you, because your beauty isn’t about physical features, it’s all about your self-confidence. How you wear your weight, your nose, or your breasts is what reflects your sense of self. People respond to that confidence. Believe in your beauty and celebrate it as it is. Be a real you, not a fake Barbie version of someone vaguely like you. Even if people smile and say, “Wow, you look great!” You should know that behind your back they’re thinking, “Wow. How sad that she has so little self-esteem that she needed to do that. Poor thing.” Be someone that they can admire for your obvious confident sense of who you are. Your beauty will overtake the creases, and remain forever.

 

fear December 28, 2010

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 1:34 am
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Jian Ghomeshi was interviewing Andrea Martin on CBC today, and they were discussing fear. Jian was surprised that so many performers are terrified before they go on stage. Andrea confessed that she also is always afraid. The fear isn’t really a surprise, what is truly admirable, is that those people don’t let the fear win. They don’t remain cowering in their houses wishing they could perform, they face the fear and they get through it. They conquer the fear EVERY time they need to go on stage, and every time they make it through, they have won the battle.

Bravery is accomplishing things even though you are afraid. Strength of character comes from winning the daily battles.

 

tradition December 25, 2010

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:21 am

Gathered around a Christmas tree, all over the world, are people exchanging gifts and celebrating the joy of being together.  There are also strains, as broken families try to create new traditions.  There is sadness, as people remember those lost to them this year.  There is pain, as people suffer from abuse or illness.

Whether your family celebrates the 24th or the 25th or whether they celebrate a religious Christmas or a secular one, think of those for whom today is not a joyous occasion.   Keep your eyes open for them and share some of your joy.

Merry Christmas to one and all.

 

class act December 22, 2010

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 6:35 am
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Do you know the phrase, “You can dress them up, but you can’t take them out?”

I watch What Not to Wear with fascination.  Every week someone is transformed from a slob into a fashion plate.  We’re introduced to these amazing people with horrendous style.  They spend a week learning what to wear, how to style their hair and wear make-up and then they appear in a mirror.  Their shoulders come back.  They walk with confidence.  They find their inner beauty.  Their exterior now manifests their amazing interior.

I wonder how hard they have to work to find people for that show, because you know that there are a lot of people out there, who despite the best efforts of the fashion stylists, will always be slobs.  There will be no inner beauty to find in them.  Sometimes you recognize them: the plastic, soul-less ones who may show air-brushed magazine perfection to the world, but it’s meaningless.  Nothing good can come of their physical attractiveness, because they are cruel and hollow inside.   They may manipulate and abuse people to get what they want.  People may even worship at their beautiful feet, but it’s never going to turn out well. 

One wishes for transformations that are more than physical.  Transformations that reflect the inner wisdom, consideration,  and intelligence, not intensify superficial superiority.   You can dress them up, but they’ll never be better than the shallow, ugly people they really are inside. 

Class is something that develops early on.  If you are still enjoying barf, fart racist and sexist jokes in middle age, you never developed it, and you’re not going to.  Trash always shows itself eventually, the garbage smell leaks out the polished shoes.

Class is something that can’t be created in a make-over.

 

DDT December 21, 2010

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 3:22 am
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You know, I’m thankful for the ban on DDT. Back when I was a kid, I never saw hawks, falcons or eagles. Their population was decimated by toxins through their ecosystem. Their eggs were weakened to the point of losing viability.

Now, I can’t go for a drive any distance without seeing a few raptors. A bald eagle here, a red-tailed hawk or a peregrin falcon there. How privileged we are to have them back.

It was a lucky escape.

 

V-GER heads off December 18, 2010

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:32 am
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Do you remember Star Trek: the Motion Picture? (aka Star Trick: The Motionless Picture according to some SAIT nerds 20 years ago). V-Ger was a giant, living machine tracing through the universe trying to learn all that was learnable and return the information to its creator. Who? 20th Century humans from NASA, of course. V-Ger was actually a Voyager space probe, which had been travelling for 300 years collecting data.

This week, the real Voyager hits the edge of our galaxy and heads off into the universe. 30 years ago when they made the movie they were imagining this day.  I remember it seeming impossibly distant, and yet, here it is.  Science fiction being made real. I remember worrying about whether we really want to draw attention to ourselves…  In 300 years will Voyager return having discovered  or become a lifeform?  or will some life forms have come to see what Earth is all about for better or worse?

What an amazing time we live in.  Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner have been a strange part of it, as the visionary inventions of the tv show and movies are now part of our lives- from automatic doors to flip phones.  Now V-Ger is off to places no human has been. 

Bon Voyage…r

 

Flight December 15, 2010

Filed under: book reviews,Commentary,Literature,Reading — Shawn L. Bird @ 1:42 am
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Just finished reading Sherman Alexie’s Flight. I was asked to read it for assessment of school use. The first chapter had me adamant that it was completely inappropriate. By the end I was thinking, “Well…maybe.”

Alexie is just so gritty. His characters are coarse and vulgar. They grate against sweet, prudish, slightly virginal English teachers. However, they also reflect a reality that a lot of our students know only too well. I’m not into censorship, but I don’t have to teach a book I don’t like either. That’s a nice thing about professional autonomy. Not having prescribed curriculum or literature means we have a lot of freedom to teach process and encourage analysis using literature that is particularly relevant to our teens. For some kids, this will be a powerful reflection of their world.

Sherman Alexie is a Native American writer from Washington State. His books explore his world and observations of the interaction of his two communities. He has challenging ideas to both and this book reflects them.

It is the story of Zits, a kid whose native dad left, whose white mom died, and who has been shuffled through the foster system. He has to come to terms with his identity, his abandonment, and his anger. The method is essentially a series of parables. Zits travels through time to inhabit the bodies of whites and natives from Little Big Horn to his father.  Watching the ‘native experience’ through other eyes leads him back to the beginning, and gives him a chance to make different decisions in order to attain a different outcome.

Alexie is accessible as a Native writer. His young characters are funny, ironic, and believable, but they’re gritty. Their lives are hard. Their experiences have been horrible. Alexie doesn’t sugar coat the misery, but he forces the protagonist (and therefore the reader) to decide whether he will allow the past to rule his future or whether he will carve a new path. 

The hopeful message is what wins me over.    He has used the graphic language and rebellious attitude of the first chapter or two to grab his audience.  The time travel is confusing enough to keep them curious.  The ending is satisfying.  We all want to believe that everyone can have a happy ending.

 

Canadian Thanksgiving December 13, 2010

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:09 am
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I was just reading a children’s novel about polio and came across the snippet that Thanksgiving was celebrated in Canada by Martin Frobisher and his crew in Newfoundland a couple of decades before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock.  That Thanksgiving had nothing to do with a good harvest. They were celebrating their thanks that they had survived a journey through the treacherous North West Passage of the Arctic Ocean: a journey that had killed two previous expeditions. 

Who knew?  We Canadians have bought into the American propaganda about “The First Thanksgiving” and some of our schools even decorate with pilgrim themes.  (I went as a pilgrim for Hallowe’en when I was 11.  Apparently I  was quite Puritanical in my youth!)  Time for a shift of perception!  Here is an interesting article from the Globe and Mail. (I wonder if it is the very one that prompted the author to include the fact in the novel?)  

Next year, decorate for Thanksgiving  with icebergs, Polar bears, sailing ships, and salt cod.  Be a Canadian original!

 

shovelling December 12, 2010

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:26 am

There is a rhyme I remember from when my kids were little.  It goes, “Cleaning the house while the kids are still growing is like shovelling the walk while it is still snowing.”  I was thinking about it while I shovelled my driveway.  The neighborhood was silent, except for the music of the snow hitting my hood.  The street lights were reflected in the whiteness of the snow, so there was a glow.

I was the only one out shovelling, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise considering that it was after midnight.  Most people don’t keep my hours.  More the pity, because it was beautiful to shovel in that romantic white light.

There were five inches of wet snow to clear, and there was half an inch again already at the top of the driveway by the time I reached the bottom.  Still, there are five inches less than will require my attention tomorrow.  Unlike cleaning the house full of children which truly never ends as kids come behind you trashing all you’ve cleaned, at least taking off some snow means less work later!

 

dental month

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:30 am

As you’ll recall, a few weeks ago I had a tooth extraction.  Subsequently it developed dry socket and a bone infection, which explains why I haven’t been quite as prolific on the blog lately! 

Earlier this week, I bit into a soft piece of bread, and with a crunch that reverberated through my head, I found myself with a broken tooth.  Luckily I had a scheduled dental appointment that day, and I was able to have it repaired in a couple of hours.

Around the same time, Dusty dog started to cry when he ate.  Bad sign.   His rank breath and nasty looking teeth have made it clear that major dental work was in his future, but I had hoped it could be delayed until the new year.  No go.

Today Dusty dog had his own dental surgery and he had SIXTEEN teeth removed.  We were presented with a lovely canine dental chart diagramming all the extractions. Did you know that dogs have 11 teeth per quadrant?  44 teeth!  I had no idea.  So Dusty has 28 teeth left, which is still more than I have.  (With  our wisdom teeth we have 8 per quadrant- 32 altogether.  I have no wisdom teeth and one extraction so I’m at 27 this week).

Tooth pain is really nasty.  Any head pain is nasty actually.  Migraines.  Ear aches.  Teeth.  If pain is in your head it buries into your brain and submerges your consciousness. 

Dental pain also causes financial pain.  Especially when it’s not just one tooth, being removed with the pillow of a dental plan, but sixteen teeth removed for cash…