I Was Fifteen, And When I Picture

...the Gym Is A Kind Of Wildlife Preserve For Bodily Exertion. A Preserve Protects Species Whose Habitat Is Vanishing Elsewhere, And The Gym (and Home Gym) Accommodates The Survival Of Bodies After The Abandonment Of The Original Sites Of Bodily Exertion.

I'm Grateful That, After An Early Life Of Being Silenced, Sometimes Violently, I Grew Up To Have A Voice, Circumstances That Will Always Bind Me To The Rights Of The Voiceless.

Beauty Is Often Spoken Of As Though It Only Stirs Lust Or Admiration, But The Most Beautiful People Are So In A Way That Makes Them Look Like Destiny Or Fate Or Meaning, The Heroes Of A Remarkable Story.

Every Woman Knows What I'm Talking About. It’s The Presumption That Makes It Hard, At Times, For Any Woman In Any Field; That Keeps Women From Speaking Up And From Being Heard When They Dare; That Crushes Young Women Into Silence By Indicating, The Way Harassment On The Street Does, That This Is Not Their World. It Trains Us In Self-doubt And Self-limitation Just As It Exercises Men’s Unsupported Overconfidence.

In The Aftermath Of 9/11, People Had Not A Good Time, But A Deep, Profound, Rousing Time, Woke Up From Their Ennui And Isolation And Trivialization To Feel Engaged, Connected, Purposeful, Ready To Give, To Engage, To Care, To Learn.