Workshop Piece I

So, Sly has a post up about rings, since he is now wearing one that used to belong to the boy. I commented over there, and it got me thinking about rings, weddings, and the like. So I thought I would post a piece from the writing workshop. Just so you know, the prompt was a slinky. Generally things are good on the homefront, though this week is a little insane, a party to celebrate a dear friend being in town tomorrow -- complete with planned sleepover (I'm packing my PretentiousToteBag when I'm finished with this), and then the the writing workshop on Wednesday, and oh, yeah, work and the gym and stuff too.

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I remember this, this slip of synchronized metal between my fingers, from hand to hand, one big enough to flop-glide down the stairs in the old house. Inevitably tangling, and I would spend so much time trying to untangle it, make it perfect and smooth again. The twisted wires were permanently scarred they remembered each fall and gyration, and forevermore had unsteady hips. That old house was never finished and was born scarred. It’s funny that I call it the old house since technically it was really quite young, built the year before my sister was born, my mother laying stone for the fireplace while pregnant. Those warm stones were for children and cats, both not yet made. What an act of faith to build a home together, in truly the middle of nowhere. What the hell was she thinking? But she must have been thinking, the slinky of her brain tracing down all the steps without tangling. and what does twelve years from now mean? Twelve years from that fireplace we were all sitting around a cold empty pizza box, drinking cranberry juice and wondering what was next, leaving the old house. Her plan inevitably tangled, incredibly tangled. We are all, each of us, incredibly tangled. Our desire to flop-glide through life means nothing. We walk with unsteady hips, or lie curled and still. Slinkies extend and fall – that is where the tangling happens at the tipping point where the world collapses down on itself until I’m standing alone at the door on a warm day with a cup of hot coffee watching you leave. Just for a while, just for school, no comment on me or cats and children not yet made.

Since then my mother has laid down other stones, pregnant with a vision. Her garden falls gently to the brook, or grows up to the house. Either way there is less of a plan. Those steps are the ones we’ll use in September, guiding a cadre of unsteady hips and heads through a wedding. What a strange and novel idea. When was the last time we did one of those? The 70s.

I talked to my sister today about her wedding, my planned time off, the role she will want for me to play in that week. Going for long walks, keeping her calm, serving as the all important buffer zone between her and my mother. Helping everyone navigate tricky waters, hold the unsteady hearts close and help them slide-glide over steps. Your job will be to hold my own unsteady hips in the night.

Beep-Beep-Ba-Beep

We interrupt our normal broadcast to bring you: Racism Today in HarborCity (and the US)

First, you have to understand that I ride the train to work every day for 45 minutes in each direction, in this time I eavesdrop, read, read newspapers over people's shoulders, drink my coffee, and sleep. Over this past week, I've been keen on the reading over people's shoulders.

In the little newspaper that they hand out for free they have this column called "The Debate" where they ask three people off the street their opinion on something and write it up with cute little pictures of the poor fools. On Wednesday the question was: "How do you feel about violence in the city?" This is a totally valid question HarborCity has a homicide problem, particularly in poor communities of color where folks are poor, desperate, etc. So here is my beef with the piece.

All three respondents were white, two were students and the third was a business analyst (also all from comp. safe neighborhoods, and under 30) their three responses were:

"I've never felt threatened or intimidated. You just need to be smart about where you go and what time you go there"

"It's not as bad as people make it out to be"

"It's terrible that such a thing can happen in a city where you feel safe. It seems to be centralized in certain neighborhoods"

Ask people from the affected communities. If you don't it's a sham. Oh, those poor people in those poor neighborhoods, I guess they just made a bad choice to live there. This is such a lie. We don't choose where we live, for the most part that is decided the urban geo-econo-politics that surround, envelope, and drown us. Further, do not claim that something you simply don't experience isn't that bad. I think I'm more angry with the choice of people than any one thing they said -- but if you want to start a dialogue about the role of violence in our community, you're shutting it down by printing bullshit like that.

Also, Bush signed the Voting Rights Act this week, to make it effective through a few more shitty elections. The headline I saw was "Bush OKs Voting Rights". This made me laugh, and it made me really sad that that is all he did. He didn't celebrate the Voting Rights Act, or commemorate it, or do anything more than put his rubber stamp on and have some people take some pretty pictures. This is an outrage. If he *actually* cared about the principles of democracy there would have been..... well, nevermind.... I guess democracy was just a dream we had once.


PS. If you can't tell, I'm moving out of my funk, I've got my snarky on, and I'm in steamy, steamy, BigCity hangin' with SIster, Esq. and her partner. These things make me very happy.

Calculations of Self Worth

I know I've been MIA, and it's because I've been in a funk. My insides churning with reformulations, and my mouth tightly shut. I've been disengaging from the world, pulling into myself and trying to figure some stuff out.

So, in the past month, I've picked up my running program again, sent a loved one thousands of miles away, started a new job, and started doing creative writing with some intention. All of these things have made me wonder who I am, what I'm doing, what I'm worth. Not without some anxiety and self-deprecation. I think that all of us have these demons gnawing at us, and I am trying very hard to keep them at bay in my own head.

NewJob is going well. I haven't screwed up royally yet, though I'm inclined to think that it could happen any day. The whole idea of this job, for those who missed the memo, is to figure out whether I like research and economics enough to pursue a Phd in that accursed discipline. The trouble is with the word enough. I feel like I've chosen a path, but I think that I might define anything as 'enough' to not have to admit that academia isn't what I want, because if it isn't that I have no idea what is.

TP left about a week ago. The visit was wonderful -- not without disagreements or hard days, but each of those led to growth, and I miss hir everyday, more than I can quite admit to. There is more to say, but the wheels of my brain are still spinning desperately trying to make sense of my heart.

I went to a writing workshop last week, and wrote and read what I had written. It was wonderful and intense. The format was to receive a fairly open prompt, my favorite was a miniature slinky passed around the group, and then write for 20-30 minutes, and then read. In three hours we did three prompts, and I wrote about: marriage/committment/divorce, body issues, and my own contested and conflicted gender identity. I left feeling like I'd voluntarily slammed myself against a concrete wall, but it was a cool wall, and the day was so warm... I'll be going back there. Plus, it's an explicitly queer space, and I need more of those. (I might post some workshop pieces if it seems worthwhile -- any votes?)

And then there is the running. I think that the above three things have been enough to throw my sense of self a little out of whack. Especially some combination of the career apprehensions and the renewed interest in creative writing, something that 8 years ago would have been at the top of my life goals.

So how do I handle these waves? I take them out on my body. When my other measures of self-worth are failing, I fall back on crappy societal standards of body image. So, I'm back to old tricks (that aren't quite mine) -- logging 20 mile weeks, and counting calories. I bought a heart-rate-monitor yesterday, and was running at 6am. The thing is that running is good for me: it lets me clear my head, and enables me to feel okay about my body, and is a way to be outside. But it slips far too easily into a scary terrain I've always kept myself on the edge of, and I'm still there on the edge, just this side of the numbers.

There are so many measures of self-worth -- intellect, integrity, compassion, work ethic. I've used each of these models. But there is also a way in which I was taught to gauge my self-worth off of my grades and my body. It was never that explicit, but I did grow up in an imperfect radical feminist household where grades were posted on the fridge and everyone went around the table at night and said how many grams of fat they'd had in the day.

Is it any wonder that I don't know what to think of myself?

(PS: I'd find a better ending, but I want to go watch the sunset with my gin n' juice, and who can deny me such a simple pleasure)

Sliding Scales

On Thursday TP and I went to a QueerOpenMic which is one of my favorite queer spaces in HarborCity, hands down. I read Good (Almost) Man and it was well received. I think that on Wednesdays I'm going to start going to a workshop run by one of the folks there to work on my writing more, because, while economics is cool and all there is a part of me that will always want to write poetry. And God knows I need more fun queer community in my life.

Both of these places, and many others I go to, operate on a sliding scale/pay what you can system. In the past I have depended on that policy to be able to go to these events, and I honor the diversity that policy allows and engenders. So, here is the story, NewJob pays me well, better than OldJob and includes benefits that make me feel a little bit like EliteU doesn't know what to do with all its money and so throughs it at its employees in the form of really cheap gyms and incredible healthcare. I can no longer pretend that I have anything but a middle class paycheck. So I'm a radical queer with a middle class paycheck, who spends a lot of time in fringe cultural spaces. This is new to me. On Thursday for the first time, I paid the upper end of the sliding scale at the open mic. On Wednesday I will need to decide how much to spend on this workshop that I'm going to.

Frankly, I'm not sure how to negotiate this income shift. Sure, I'm putting more money in my savings account. Generally I think that I am the most radical investment I can make. The world will benefit from me being able to afford graduate school, and the books I want to read, but probably not all the books I want to read, and certainly not the cute clothes that I sometimes want to buy. And none of it will mean much at all if the community organizations that I depend on crumble due to lack of funds. From an economics standpoint it's an interesting model -- it would be better if I had the energy to actually create/find a graph for y'all to see. But basically you pay a price for something, and some people want it, but are only able/willing to pay less for it than the price, and so they don't get it and some people are willing to pay more for it, but don't and sort of get their cake and eat it too. The sliding scale/pay what you can system asks everyone to pay what they can and what the "service" is worth to you, eliminating that eat your cake and eat it too phenomenon, but also providing access. So what I should do is ask myself this question: How much would it need to cost for me not to go? One dollar below that is the amount that I should pay... hard to do in practice.

But this doesn't even scratch the surface of how uncomfortable people are with differences in wealth and the ways that having money are connected to being inauthentic. When I pay more money I am sincerely thinking about investing in spaces, and holding them dear and trying to help them balance their books. Yet, I also don't want to distance myself from people by paying more money. Keep in mind that these are small communities where 'nigh on nothin' stays private. Privilege is best when it is easiest to abdicate, to cast off and spread around, like so much shit (compost metaphor), and I think this is one of those cases where that can happen, if there weren't so much angst around it.

But, for real, bottomline:
I hate money.

P.S. It's Saturday night, tonight TP and I grilled veggies, and walked up to the pond in the sunset, and now we are listening to Louis Armstrong, I'm blogging and ze is reading the latest Harry Potter book. Totally priceless.

Queer Theater

On Saturday night TP and I went out to a play put on by a queer theater group in HarborCity.

For us, going out is an excuse for TP to be charming, dark, and handsome, if not tall, and an excuse for me to be a flirty femme, who is sometimes fatale. Really, for us, the theater started far before we made it to the actual location of the event, and the costume designers were the stars. I was wearing a v. low cut wraparound black dress with a lace hem, my new heels, and my new red dangly earrings. TP was wearing a nice shirt and tie that I love, and, in the interest of full disclosure, was a present from me. We looked nice. Hot, even.

There was some drama about getting to the theater (that pun was not intentional). But we got there and got our tickets and watched a play set in a pink motel room, that was very queer and highly, highly surreal. Now, as we walked in, there was a lady, who was maybe 70, and had a nice white bun of hair on her head, and a nice husband at her side. She smiled and winked at me. She was starting to flirt. As we sat down and looked through the programs, she caught TP's eye and gave hir an approving look, and then looked me up and down, as if to say, "Nice catch". It was hilarious.

After the show there was a little gathering with wine, cheese, and disgusting Mike Hard Iced Tea. It was fun, the cast and crew were maybe 10 people, and the audience was only 15, so it was an intimate crowd. Or at least that's what the little old lady thought. She flirted with everyone, could talk to anyone. It was amazing, the thing is that it was this very funny mix between the somewhat standard old-lady-nice and the classic somewhat bawdy flirt. I loved it.

We talked to one of the troupe founders about potentially touring one of their shows to ELAC and URedState. We mingled. We never mingle -- we are both shy and sometimes awkward, but somehow that husk started to fall away in that setting. I love being queer out in the world. Being femme, holding TP's hand, having people recognize us for who we are -- so often we get read as something other than how we think about ourselves, even, and most painfully, within GLB communities. But in that theater our performances were respected.

That was a big part of what made it such a lovely evening. There was also the moon, the booze, and the sweetness of any moment spent with TP. Ze is flying home next Wednesday, and I'm very sad about it. But that is a whole 'nother story. I want to find more places where I can feel recognized in a sexy black dress as the radical queer I am, and I also want those places to be comfortable with me being in carhartts and a button-down shirt. Do you think I'm asking too much?

Requisite Update

Some things you should be aware of:

• This was my first week at NewJob. It was exciting and challenging and a little mundane. Basically I am ResearchGirl for two economists who do fascinating work and each see their role in my life as very different. A communication challenge, let's say. It'll work out
• TP has been here for several weeks now and is leaving in about ten days. It's been good and complicated, and I will be very sad when there isn't someone to come home to, and talk to, and kiss, and all those nice things that TP does in my life.
  
• NewRoomie arrived on Monday and thus far has been fabulous introducing a nonchalant attitude about food, making yummy bread and dinner, going for runs with us, and practicing her violin beautifully. She's a keeper. Her initial is B.
  
• I just made the most orgasmic Rosemary Olive Sourdough, and it might be what I have for dinner along with the Hit the Trail Ale from Vermont, which is a lovely state with incredible beer.
  
• **** Nubian "features" some of the most fucked up shit I've seen in a while. ****
  
• I have a long list of blogables in my brain. They'll be "uploaded" soon enough. Hang tight, kids.
  

Fun on the Monkey Bars

File this in the "Every Day I Live in the Patriarchy" Section of your lives.

So today I went for a long run, and along my run I came across some bars upon which to do pull-ups, so I was doing my routine of tricep-dips, pull-up negatives, chin ups and push ups. This list makes me seem much more cut than I actually am.

As I was doing my routine, I heard a child's voice behind me saying "Look at HER!" I turned around and saw a little girl pointing at me. She was walking with her brother and father, and her father looking up and seeing me said, directly to his son, said, "Do you want to try that?" The boy, who never responded to anything in the interaction, didn't respond the question at which point the man came over the bars and sort of winked/smiled at me and did a few pull-ups and went on his way with his children.

What the F?

A. Girls, when they express interest in being strong, should be allowed to be f-ing strong.
B. Dude, you have issues with strong women if you're so scared of:
1. Your child becoming one.
2. Needing to assert your physical dominance over the one that you see, or bizarrely attempt to hit on her.

BUH.

I love my life in the patriarchy.

P.S. Did Title IX actually exist, or was it a good dream I had once?

An Honest Day's Work

The federal government redefined work yesterday, or, rather it redefined it for the 53 million families who received TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) in 2005 (calendar year). There is, naturally, at least one snarky comment to be made about whether a body that does so little work, and work of such poor quality has the right to define what is work for 53 million families that are struggling to make ends meet? That is an important question, but there are other axes I want to grind with their decisions.

Work and Values
The ideology that underpins this provision of welfare reform from 1996 to the present is that work is valuable for work's sake. The idea is that children learn important lessons from having their parents be part of the workforce, they learn about the value of money, the self-esteem and feelings of self worth that can come from work. Maybe, maybe, but I don't know how much you learn about those things if you never see your parent because ze is working ten hour days and multiple jobs. I also don't know how many low-wage workers would say that they got their self-esteem and self-worth from their jobs. I don't want to deny that possibility though, since I've had minimum wage jobs that I've loved and living wage jobs that killed my soul.

There are problems with this ideology, it privileges wage labor over home production and education. This came out strongly in the regulations put out by the Feds yesterday. It is no longer considered work to care for a disabled relative. What values does that teach our children? Do you think these people have the resources to ensure that their relatives are cared for properly by someone else? But apparently caregiving is lazy. If the federal government said that about middle and upper class stay-at-home parents there would be a media war (oh wait, that's already happened).

Another highlight of the new regulations is that homework time for job training programs only counts if it's in a supervised study hall. What? These are people with kids, do you think that they can pay for another hour of childcare so that they can go to bloody study-hall? Do they need bathroom passes?

Doing More Work?
All of the statistics point to the fact that TANF caseloads have decreased over the last ten years, and that more people are in wage earning jobs. However this might also mean that there are many families who don't bother to apply for welfare because they know that they will be shut out or who are "saving" their TANF months for a time when things are even worse. Also it's not entirely clear that they are better off when they are working than when they were collecting welfare. These rules also don't ensure that more work will happen, even if we agree with them that that is a goal which makes sense. If anything I think it makes it likely that people will leave the programs because they can't make those studyhalls or just have to take care of that sick family member. Which means that the caseloads will continue to go down and things will continue to look good, while the fruit rots under the skin.

The people who it will mean more work for is the people working in welfare offices across the nation, because they Feds also issued new guidelines for tracking the work activities. This tracking will be a near impossible task, taking up resources that could be devoted elsewhere... if we actually wanted things to change.

I know a lot of people who did an honest day's work yesterday -- but they sure weren't the people writing these rules.

(Full Disclosure -- I haven't read the new rules yet, just the NPR story and the I can't find them right now, but I will read them soon and get back to y'all if they have any redeeming value)

Ten (Tipsy) Confessions

1. I'm starting to think that living as a couple might be something I could do after all, after years of saying that community living was all I would ever want.
2. Oral sex, as a blogging topic, bores me - I haven't read the posts, I haven't read the posts in response to posts or the comments. (Sorry y'all).
   
3. I've found the *actual* oral sex in my life delicious, boring, hot, gross, and confusing in turns... fortunately, now we are on an upswing.
4. I hate it when TP talks on hir cellphone for long periods of time.
5. Who am I? I got tipsy after one beer (granted I hadn't had dinner yet).
   
6. I'm really looking forward to starting NewJob next week, I love vacation, but I get fiesty and stircrazy.
7. I drank a beer today while my two roommates went for a run -- this will catch up with me eventually.
8. I've been wearing shorts that are shorter than any I've worn since childhood, but it's fecking hot up here. In my defense, I think they are average femme-woman length, but they aren't my norm.
   
9. I'm painting new roommate's room and walked all over town covered in paint today, in the short-shorts; no one seemed to mind.
10. I'm so pathetic at thinking of interesting confessions that I've asked TP for help, ze is feeling equally unoriginal.
    

Mix(ed) Tapes and Marriage

So, the car that L and I just bought dates from the mid-nineties, which is fine. It's a Toyota and so I have perfect faith that it will continue to drive along in its understated loveliness for some time. On the music front, it's a little sad. I think that I need to find some way to adapt my iPod to the tapedeck, for now, I and anyone who rides in my car is stuck in my seventh grade life.

Now, there are some great mixed tapes (Is there a standard here, mix or mixed? What should that modifier be?) from that era, it was the period of my first eposure to the Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco, but they remind me of being desperate, bitter, angsty and in the closet. Not a scene I wish to revisit. I think that the music you listen to makes a difference. As the main character in one of my favorite movies says:

"People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" (Rob, High Fidelity)

So, driving back from Idyllic Ancestral Home, I listened to one of the mixed tapes that my sisters made for me that winter of 7th grade. Who were they at this moment in time? Sister, Esq. had just finished her first semester at Women's College and was coming out as a lesbian, Sister, MD was a sophmore in high school and struggling with her body, her brain, and her peer group. On it there are a surprising number of song that sort of mock marriage -- Liz Phair's "Divorce Song", Mary Chapin-Carpenter "He Thinks He'll Keep Her", the song about a "matchmaker" from some musical I've never seen -- those were the songs both about straight people, and about long term pair bonding. Sure the songs on that mix about queer relationships depicted plenty of torture and anguish, but then I was 12 I wanted anguish, I wanted to experience everything. This mix was very much my older sisters teaching me, picking out these very specific cultural productions and showing me what was "cool". Marriage wasn't cool, at best it was empty and conformist, at worst it was a painful trap. At the same time I was listening to these bitter songs, I was also watching about three romantic comedies a week, the really fluffy kind. "Pretty Woman" was my favorite movie for a very long time. I have no idea how I incorporated these saccharine fairy tales with the bitterness of Ani DiFranco and Liz Phair, but I did. I wanted to fall in love just like that.

I'm not saying that I think that listening to this music turned me into the radical queer anti-ish marriage person that I am, or that the romantic comedies provided me with faith in humankind, but I did learn from them. The things I learned were not always true -- queer relationships can be abusive and stifling (I've been in them), and straight ones can be amazing, and either way, regardless of the sex of the individuals involved marriage is a mixed bag on a personal level. Politically, well, I promise to write about that this week. Maybe this is all about role models. I didn't have very many role models for stable long term happy pair bonding. My parents were divorced, and most of my mother's friends were either lesbians, with quasi-rotating lovers, or not also divorced. My father sort of remarried, but I didn't know enough about their relationship to feel like it was something I would want mine to mimic. So, it was up to pop culture. And really, bottom line is that you should never let pop culture teach your children about something -- not race or gender, not sex, and apparently, not marriage either.

We'll leave it there for now, theory will come soon, promise. Right now, I'm feeling very in love, and listening to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack... not that that really gives me faith or anything.

The Good Life

(I've been on the computer for about half an hour, putzing about, and go and sit by TP and put my head in hir lap)
Me: Are you waiting for the computer?
TP: I sort of was, but now I'm reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", and hoping you will come cuddle.
Me: I thought I was cuddling.
TP: You are, but I was hoping to sustain it.
Me: Oh, okay. (I go and find a more comfortable way to curl up on the couch with TP)
TP: Where is your book?
Me: (Closing eyes, sipping coffee) You're reading, I'm doing the cuddling part.

When did life get so good?

Yeah, I'll get back to something real maybe Saturday.

June In Idyllic Ancestral Home

TP and I are at my mother's house in New England State, also known as Idyllic Ancestral Home. This means that we are eating fabulous fresh produce and drinking red wine. Tomorrow I'm going to visit my ancient Latin teacher (he's ancient, so is the language). Tonight we had dinner with friends L. and M. L was my creative writing teacher in high school and is a lovely woman who reminds me vaguely of Anne of Green Gables, M is her British husband who makes me smile and is tall and lanky and an incredible dork. She is still my most faithful of critics, and I love handing her over my rare little poems to read over and comment on. Someday I'll write some more fiction as she always encourages me to, but it's so time consuming.

This evening the menu was:
-mango salsa and chips
-red wine or rhubarb juice with seltzer
-broiled wild salmon
-broiled asparagus (the fattest I've ever seen in my whole life)
-salad with four kinds of lettuce (L brought it over in an industrial size trash bag) and arugula and beet greens
-creamy basil pesto pasta
-vanilla ice cream and fudge sauce

YUMMY.

I love being home this time of year, everything is so green and eager about life. Makes me feel the same way, and having TP here is special because everything looks new again as I look at it through hir eyes.

I'll get back to the serious stuff in a while. I'm too busy basking right now.

Marriage and Fear

So I've been watching a lot of this recently. Don't ask, just blame TP. But hey, at least there is a queer subplot that is just that -- a subplot and the queer characters have all the normal problems as everyone else (if magic addiction is normal). Anyway, in the sixth season there is an episode where Xander is going to marry Anja (former vengeance demon) except a demon comes back to stop the marriage and poses as Xander as an old man and shows him images of himself and Anja sixty years down the line and how miserable they will have made each other. It freaked me out a little bit and not the least because while I was watching it today I was also working on my wedding present for Sister, Esq. and her partner, and thinking about Sister, MD and her new love, and thinking about TP and me. (Have I mentioned that maybe I should just think a little less?)

I have a lot to say about the politics of marriage and long term monogamous pairbonding. I've been meaning to respond to Mamita's post for almost three weeks at the point, and not being able to find a way to crystallize everything I have to say about marriage into one piece.

A lot of what I have to say is about an idyllic vision of queer politics and poverty reduction, and really hard core theory that I love and can totallly have a dork-fest about. But there is also a scared little girl who really wants to believe that two people can know that they love eachother and decide to make that work, and lively mostly happily for a very long time. This is the same little girl who grew up knowing that that wasn't really a possibility and needing to choose between deciding that people who love eachother can make each other unhappy and believing that her parents had never loved each other, or that one or both of them is inherently unloveable. Of course, really I'm scared that all of these things are true and true about me, and I'm scared that I won't be able to figure it out, and that not figuring it out will be the big way I fail at my life.

I've been avoiding really thinking about marriage for a long time. I just theorize about it, but this fall, when Sister, Esq. and her partner tie the knot I'll have to actually deal with the viscera of it -- this is not a task that I'm looking forward to particularly. I'll write more about this soon, I really do want to lay out some of the theory stuff sometime soon. Hold me to account on this, while this space is totally bizarre in my life, part of the reason that's the case is because it's so very separate and that's a good thing.

Enough babbling for now.

Feminine-Minded -- Indigenous Feminisms

I'm reading a truly excellent novel right now, called The Polished Hoe, written by Austin Clarke (see link in sidebar). It is about postcolonialism, race, and sexual exploitation, some of my favorite themes, right? In it, the main narrator is talkign about her history with her sexual exploiter, Mr. Bellfeels, and touches on feminism, and its applicability to women of color, and women in the postcolonial world. I've heard this sentiment expressed in theory and personal statement before, but never this explicitly or elegantly.

" "That was done in times when a woman, with no education to speak of, didn't know the term 'feminine-suffrages'. We knew we were feminine-minded-women, though. That was driven into us, by instinct...

"There was no feminine-suffrages in my time, Constable. But we still knew what was happening to us, in this Island. As women, we didn't comport ourselves with the talk of English suffrages-women. But that voice was buried inside our hearts. And although we could not, dare not, shout-out a dirty word in Mr. Bellfeels face, or pick up a rock-stone and pelt it at Mr. Bellfeels, and break his arse... Pardon my French!...and watch his head burst-open like a watermelon, and that the blood spurt-out like the water from a water-coconut, all those thoughts and buried acts, and stifled wishes concealed in our craw, were always near the top, near to erupting. We couldn't act like this modern generation of dark-skin women I see walking-'bout this Village, in dresses of African print; and wearing their hair natural; uncomb. But the plot of defiant words and Africa was already hatching inside our heads. Yes. "-Austin Clarke, pg. 59-60, The Polished Hoe

There are very few things that I would say are truly indigenous to the human spirit. Heck, some of the time I don't think I believe in 'the human spirit'. I do think that a desire for liberation is indigenous to the human spirit, I think that the ways that people go after that goal vary drastically over time and space. But it's always there, bubbling up under and against oppression, pushing for resistance anywhere that hegemony gives it a space. I think one think that I like so much about this passage is that it conveys that bubbling, and the very visceral ways in which that manifests itself. I also really appreciate the fact that she identifies this "feminine-mindedness" with exploring and expressing their African heritage. This is not something that white-liberal-middle-class-feminism would take for granted.

The fact that this particular expression of resistance would not be takend for granted brings up another issue with truly believing in indigenous feminisms. It is total hogwash to say that everyone has an indigenous desire to have the right to vote, or access to birth control and higher education, or any of the other gains of the feminist movement in the First World. They might, or they might not. Really believing in indigenous feminsim and having faith in it means taking it on its own terms, and in its own manifestations every time.

Adventures of a Pretentious Tote Bag

1. This is the news and notes post, I seem to tend to write more than one post at a time, one more issues based, the other more newsy. I write and post the newsier one first, so it is further down on the page, I do this to clear my brain of some of the detritus and because I figure that people who just show up here, should read about what I'm actually thinking about and not my mental detritus.

2. My left hand has been cramping really badly over the past couple of days. I can't make a fist and several of the my fingers are in constant tingle mode. I helped Sister, M.D. paint her apartment this morning, and she diagnosed it as a simple strained muscle, but man, does it hurt.

3. I went out to the Human Resources Office at NewJob and they gave me many brochures and pamphlets that I may or may not read, and they gave me a v. pretentious tote bag in university colors with their logo on it, and I mean, really? Could we be more dorky? On the other hand, on the train ride home I realized how useful it was, despite it's dorkage. I'm lost.

4. Sister, Esq. and her partner are going to be in town tomorrow and are staying with me. I feel a little angsty about this because, well, my house is nuts over the next couple months, by July 20th the people who actually will be living here for the next twelve months will be the only people here, but until then it's a little revolving door. This would be fine, except most of it is imposed by my people. On the other hand, I get so little time with Sister, Esq. and her partner and adore them both so much, that I don't really want to sacrifice any of that.

Steady On

When you live in a town that doesn't have a grocery store, an orthodontist, a dentist, a middle school, or... ok, well, anything except a high cow to person ratio, you end up spending a lot of time in the car, add on to that that you are a **Child of Divorce** and you are basically glued to your bucket seat. This means two major addictions are likely to be inflicted upon you -- NPR and particular music selections. One of the lesser known properties of family cars is that they are vectors of inertia*. This means that once a tape is in the car the likelihood that it leaves the car within a decade is close to zero. Heck, sometimes it doesn't even come out of the tape-deck for a good six months.

The other thing about that music that gets left in the car is that it becomes integral to your emotional life. I have a lot of songs that I can attach to a particular moment or person or place, but because these songs never left the playlist they are touchstones to go back to, they are the able to untangle any emotional knot. I was a fairly introspective kid, and at the point where you're spending that much time just sitting and listening to music and thinking... it's inevitable that these songs become so important.

In my family, that music which never managed to escape the vortex was Paul Simon's "Graceland" and Shawn Colvin's "Steady On". They are both really good albums, though clearly you can't really compete with Graceland. Until I was about 12 I thought that Graceland was one piece of music, like a symphony -- then we got it on CD and inadvertently put it on shuffle. It scarred me for life. But I got the CD anyway so that it would make it past the technology change and be safely burned onto computer and loaded onto my ipod. "Steady On" fell by the wayside -- until today. As I was cleaning up TP's room in my attempt to pack after being there for two full weeks, I found a CD copy of "Steady On" and borrowed it, and I'm listening to it right now. Sure, I'm sitting in an airport terminal and typing on a laptop, but I could be driving through rural New England, watching the raindrops on the windows and unravelling the current knot in my heart.

* Yes, vectors of inertia is a technical term. No, I just made it up.

ESPN2

Ok, I know I don't strike you as a sports-watching cable type, and I'm not. But I am right now, because I'm in an airport and have no control over what I watch, and because the Mundial/World Cup is on and I like me some futbol.

But back to ESPN -- there is something very strange about our culture when we relegate both world class soccer and the **national domino championships** to the same backwater channel. Really, is there anyone out there who springs for the extra 50 million channels of cable so that they don't miss that Dominoes final?

Another Post on Pronouns (Plots, and Theory)

Today, I totally can't focus, this is the third post I've started, but I just have too much to say. I need to compartmentalize better, but it all blends together into a post that looks like this oldfriendshoutoutgendermarriagesexqueercommunity.... yeah, I can't make head nor tail of it either.

Anyway. I remember when TP first changed hir name, I put up on my dorm room door (yes, I am that young) that femalename=masculinename to remind myself that this person whose name I was just integrating into my dreams was changing names. In general, the switch wasn't hard, we'd only been dating for about two months, but it took a while to stick, and the time that it finally did was when I went to visit for a weekend and there were others using the new name and finally it felt right and natural to use the newname.

Being down here these two weeks has been similar. In HarborCity, most of the people know me as a queer woman who dates women. This preconceived notion they have of me often means that the feminine aspects of TP are privileged in our discussions, like deep down ze is really a woman. I, too, am guilty of this tipping of the scales for the sake of simplicity. Here, people just know TP and so there are many people who use male pronouns and refer to hir as a "very busy boi" and so on, and so the masculine side of the scales has been getting some more weight. Of course, there are also spaces down here, particularly feminist places on campus that use the "one drop" rule to make TP a woman, because only women are feminists, right? I don't know if TP thinks of these masculine markers as just as wrong as the feminine ones, but for me they are helpful.

It's not just about pronouns.

Let's think of the definition of pronoun for a minute:

1. (grammar) A word that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase in a sentence, but which cannot ordinarily be preceded by an article and rarely takes a qualifying adjective. English examples include I, you, he, she, it, we, they.

(from wiktionary.com)

Something that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase in a sentence. TP is illegible, there is not language that adequately takes the place of the TP noun phrase in any sentence or situation, this is probably true for most people. However, we need to use these markers as place holders for a much more complex reality. In some ways, once we think of it this way, all language functions like a pronoun, a mere marker for the noun phrase that is our world.

Let's think about a scatter plot for a minute, nothing more than a map of markers. Imagine all the markers that are used for TP, drawn onto a scatterplot. In trying to understand, love, and support the noun phrase that is TP, I've been trying to find a line of best fit. Until I came down here I only had one set of markers, I didn't have the set provided by grad school friends, some of whom are (gasp!) bio-men, or the set provided by the queer community friends. This is what we call a data selection problem.

The line of best fit is shifting, and it all feels very natural.

East Nowhere, RS

TP and I temporarily surrendered our sanity when we decided to drive all the way to HomeTown, DRS on Friday and then all the way back on Saturday. This amounted to about 24 hours of driving in 40 hours. See what I mean?

On the way back at about hour 20 of driving I got pulled over and got my first speeding ticket ever. It is expensive, it is money that I don't really have, but it was also legit. I was driving through a residential area too fast. It was one of those roads where the speed limit is 65 between towns and 30 in the towns, and the towns are the size of the head of a pin. Since my mother lives on one of those roads I can sympathize with the residents and their desire to have a quiet street. So sure, RS can have my precious dollars to pave their roads or build washed out bridges between East Nowhere and Central Nowhere. Fine.

But why, oh, why do cops have to be jerks? Are they trained especially in some kind of special asshole tactics? Of course they are, they are trained to have no respect for the people they are "protecting" to ensure "public safety". At the end of the whole experience, I was glad that all he could find to rag me on was my intelligence and powers of observation. But it seems to me that I should be able to be pulled over for a traffic infraction without driving away thanking the stars that the person that guy pulled over wasn't trans or of color. Because then, I think that all hell could have broken loose, or, rather, I have no reason to think it wouldn't. I hate that the thing that made it ok, was that I played into his idea of who the public was, of who he was out there to protect instead of criminalize. I was the nice, blonde, straight woman, who was "Real sorry, sir". I hate that he thanked me for my courtesy. Like I had options.

Is all of that really in the best interest of Public Safety? Not when my communities are part of the public.

Rural Arkansas

TP and I drove through rural Arkansas on the way from RedState to DarkRedState and back. Here's the thing about places you drive through. You know nothing about them. I can read their culture off of the billboards, but if all cultures were judged by their advertising we would all be in trouble. That said, it's all very telling.

Huge porn stores, coupled with huge churches and the occasional fireworks warehouse. What is that about? Is it the theory that every force must have an equal and opposing force? My favorite billboard was one with TONS of hearts on it that said "Love Video: All Ratings". Naw-uh, that is not about love.

The actual land that we covered in our drive was beautiful. Arkansas is the southern terminus of the mountains that are mine, up in NewEnglandState where I grew up. (Kudos to my father for pointing that out). So maybe the affinity that I felt for the rolling green hills, herds of cows. Mainly it was all just brighter and a little bit bigger. I'm still put off my guard by how huge the sky can be here. It makes me feel exposed like something could swoop out of the sky and get me. On the other hand, driving through East Nowhere, RedState I encountered a rural landscape that was very foreign, and I still found it deeply beautiful. This made me think that maybe, despite my cosmopolitan leanings, I really am a country girl. My basic affinities are to places where there is a lot of space, and small clusters of houses that cling to each other against some harsh environment, and of course, where the sunsets are stunning and the cows are plentiful.