Self Promotion Corner

You can read three pieces of my poetry work HERE.

People have no sense of humor anymore. Here’s what my author’s bio SHOULD have said:

Elisabeth J. Green is a mixed media artist and photographer currently living and working in the Baltimore area who feels awkward writing a third person bio. Since receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree from Towson University in 2011, she has been focused on scuba diving in as many locations as possible and finding a way to write a decent comedic haiku.

-elisabeth.

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Let’s talk about the ladies.

Let’s talk about women. Girls. Ladies. Chicks. Broads. Honeys? …No, that just feels wrong.

Seldom do I get so irritated by my own gender as when I read “I just want to find someone who will treat me like the princess that I am.” (Or some variation of that statement).  The reality is that if women were actually treated like princesses, they would have no rights to their bodies, to own property, or to chose their partner. Princesses were essentially alliance-sealing objects. If a Queen only produced girl children, she was beheaded for “treason” and the King then found himself a new Queen with whom to try for a male heir.

Then there are the women who are so desperate to find and/or keep their man that they will fake a pregnancy. Never do I experience such a “WTF” moment as I do when I overhear that sort of conversation (and I have overheard this sort of thing on numerous occasions). No wonder men say “all women are bat-shit crazy.” If I was a dude and some girl did that to me, I would kill her. We’re talking cold-blooded murder completely devoid of remorse or regret.

We also don’t want to read your every thought and movement as documented on your twitter or facebook. It’s awkward. Don’t do it.

Where are the Mary Reads? Where are the Elizabeth I’s? The Deborah Sampsons? Alice Paul? Rosa Parks? The real badass women of history who paved the way for the rest of us to experience true awesome-ness. But instead of that, I see generations of child-sluts prowling the mall and maliciously attacking any other girl who shows any sort of creative thinking.

These girls are a cancer, and this is the next generation of women. 

It is frightening.

-elisabeth.

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Poetry Corner, again again.

Long Trip, by Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

The sea is a wilderness of waves,

A desert of water.

We dip and dive,

Rise and roll,

Hide and are hidden

On the sea.

        Day, night,

        Night, day,

The sea is a desert of waves,

A wilderness of water. 

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On ideas.

Humans have this obsession with how they will be remembered. Making as much money as possible, leaving a legacy of children to carry your name and dysfunction to the next generation, and dying unhappy. This is the American way. There is an entire industry that preys on this preoccupation with “living on” – they sell us marble slabs with tasteful engravings to mark the place where we will rot. Flowers are arranged and paid for and delivered. It is all ridiculous, and it is all pointless.

 We should leave something greater than ourselves – an idea. An idea is more powerful than any memorial or obituary. An idea can live on in a painting, or a song, or a poem. An idea can be adopted, argued, loved, or hated for more years than any human can walk the earth. They can free you or lock an entire country in chains. 

 The idea of celebrity has been cultivated to such an extent that America might never get away from it. All of a sudden our experts on social injustice, the arts, and lifestyle are unqualified and uneducated reality stars. These are the leaders we have chosen. And it’s embarrassing.

 Who was Nikola Tesla? Who were Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington? No one knows or cares. But everyone knows whom Kim Kardashian is sleeping with.

There are no markers to identify where Leonardo DaVinci is buried.

Because it doesn’t matter. 

He wasn’t famous for who he was screwing.

-elisabeth.

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Love of the Fellow Man

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I say to you, do NOT underestimate the ability of foreign public transportation to screw with your mind. Because it can and it most certainly will.

Take one young adult woman with no cell phone, who has gotten off her 5 hour bus ride from Coco to San Jose at the completely wrong stop in a capital city where no one speaks her language. She is lost. She is trying to go home. Add one Costa Rican cabbie, who when she can’t find a pay phone, lets her use his cell phone to call her friend for help. Even after she tells him she can’t afford a taxi to where she needs to go, he continues to help. Example: taking me to the local (T.U.A.S.A.) bus stop and writing down in Spanish what to tell the driver. Then he goes one further – he walks with me to the bus and helps me get my bag on board, then explains to the bus driver in Spanish what the situation is. I am now on the bus with a 50 lb duffel bag. No one gives me ugly stares – they instead try to help me whenever they can, even though I can’t speak their language.

Do you think a Costa Rican girl in D.C. or New York or LA would be given the same consideration?

Folks, we all need to get on this level.

-elisabeth.

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Tamarindo.

Tamarindo twice. Great beach/surf, chubby tourists, and several seedy locals. The first time there, I was accosted by three different dudes (who I am only guessing have never seen a lanky almost-albino chick before) and this last time I’m pretty sure that my leg was peed on by a monkey.  My life-long hatred of monkeys aside, fuck you, you monkey goof! Sitting up in that palm tree like you’re so special. Give me a wrist-rocket and your ass is mine. I will make you into a purse just to embarrass you, see if I don’t.

Also, if you drive to any semi-popular Costa Rican town, be prepared to meet “The Parking Guy.” I call him this because his sole job is to hawk around his parking lot, take your colones, “watch” your car for you, and look super creepy doing it. 

Costa Rica is, by definition, a third-world country. Which is something I forget when I pass by multi-million dollar vacation homes, gated communities, and the Four Seasons where Will Smith is supposedly staying right now. (Who cares?) But right across from that gated community, there will be a hut made of corrugated metal straddling a drainage ditch, and there will be naked children playing in mud puddles in the yard. 

On a lighter note, salt + wind + humidity = I have lost control of my hair (mostly because I don’t care what my hair looks like while I’m here). I think there are dreadlocks forming. Pretty sure it’s not a good sign when I walk into the local Auto Mercado (grocery store) and the female clerks all smile at me empathetically because they know I have given up. My hair wins. Uncle. 

Pura Vida.

-elisabeth.

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Costa Rica, so far.

So far, so good.

Some sort of tropical bird is making a nest in the window of the apartment across from me. I stepped in monkey shit yesterday. I broke a sweat walking to the corner store. Blowfish wash up in droves on the beach, like dying whales. There was a little girl slapping her brother with one yesterday at Playa Panama (Playa = Beach). If you’re tall enough to set the beer on the counter, you can buy it. There is an expat here who is going to take me to Nicaragua.  Rainy season just started today. Coffee = lifeblood. This morning, the security guard at the store (who spoke no English) showed me the injured hummingbird he found. Good humor is the universal language.  

It’s so strange seeing all these blowfish. But I can’t help myself - I laugh every time.

Rainy season, rolling in. I got stuck in that storm yesterday. 

Pura Vida

-elisabeth.

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Poetry Corner, again.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

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Mom, what’s a hipster?

Woops, forgot about the blog. I was busy living in the real world – it’s pretty great out here sometimes. I’ve returned, or at least popped my head back in to see what’s going on in inter-space, and have decided that it’s time to talk about something very serious. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to talk about BRANDING. If the word brings to your mind the smell of singeing flesh, NO. I’m talking about corporate branding. Marketing. Sales. The force that rivals gravity and the sun for the number one influence in daily human life.

For your consideration: “Die Wall Street Scum.” So hopeful was I that our youth was not this stupid that when I first saw the shirt I thought it might be a German slogan. (Die = the feminine form of “the”). But I read on. And it is catastrophic. And I almost died laughing. (Exaggeration). 

Where do I begin: a.) the t-shirt itself, which is still exorbitant even at its sale price, b.) the t-shirt itself, which is ugly as sin, or c.) the t-shirt itself, which embodies everything that those on the Wall Street movement bandwagon kinda meant to contradict.

They are selling your own ideas back to you, and it’s not even in good fashion. 

You can’t get better irony than that, hipsters. 

-elisabeth.

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Birds are smug. Also, Sociology.

I’ve recently been informed that everyone has ‘a word.’ Being a citizen of the world, I immediately had to figure out my word. But I couldn’t find one. I come from a generation where everyone feels an overwhelming need to classify themselves. What is your word? Personality quizzes instead of self-assuredness. What color are you? What season are you?

…What season am I?! Fuck off, seasons!

We’re not seasons or colors or words, we’re intelligent and complex human beings with the capacity to understand. Here’s a word: “Verstehen” = the German word for understanding, and is the term sociologists use to describe the deep understanding of something from another’s point of view. To wear the shoes of another. (My sociology professor in 2007 was fantastic. Thanks Prof. Pantoleo!)

In other news, I just yelled at some birds. So there’s that.

-elisabeth.

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