Remembering To Remember

Lately, I can think only in yin
In pink and profit
Humanity traffiked through the one way mirror
Of memory,
Honest as a hieroglyph
Or a scale of cyclopses

I always blamed her mouth, a stiletto thin spike of focused light, the little girl perpetually poised
Over the magnifying glass 

Or that's the way it seemed

I used to believe in kindness diligently, watched her hands like garderners through wax fruit and
Rubber gloves, 

Before that last back handed 
Compliment about a lost shoe

I palmed a prism
And never said her name
aloud again

it was highschool
In a closet
Of psychic ties
Too obscure even for a scientist to recognize, 

And I swallowed the things she said
 eyes and limbs divorcing from 
Their logical conclusions

And limped back from love in monochrome

An Aside...

My girlfriend writes some of the sweetest things.

I love dating a poet. 

So much. 

That is all. 

Jennifer Beals Said...

"You have to realize how precious human life is, when there are tsunamis and mudslides, when there are armies and terrorists -- at any moment, you could be gone, and potentially in the most brutal fashion.
"And then you have to realize that love is truly one of the most extraordinary things you can experience in your life. To begrudge someone else their love of another person because of gender seems to me absolutely absurd."

OMG! 

Juneteeth, You, Me, and Story

Simone De Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, claims the "regular", "non-descript" human, in culture at large, is the male and that women are somehow derivative, an aberration to "mankind." I believe this also holds for race. The generic, non-descript person is still white. And any person of color is an "other."

Today, from my front yard, I could hear music from our local park and the Juneteeth festival happening there. And, I couldn't help but cry. It was beautiful to me that people who once had there culture ripped from them, could now begin to celebrate it again.

It seems odd I reacted so viscerally, and sad that it seems odd. On one hand, I don't understand why everyone isn't weeping, for the humanity we share. The fact that we can hurt each other so deeply.

On the other hand, I realize, a white person, that it is a privileged position that I can cry about something not specific to my history. I've never felt odd, wrong, or out of place as a caucasian person. It'S wrong to appropriate someone else's history, someone else's past and present struggles, to empathize with a wound I've only seen others sustain. 

It irks me even more that, a white woman, even a cripple or bisexual, an "other" in other contexts, race is still such a problem for me. And for America. 

Or rather, I hate that I am the problem.

No matter how "progressive" I want to be, it's a huge exercise in humility to realize, like confirmed "racists" and "bigots", I, too, have internalized several oppressive attitudes and behaviors from my family and from culture at large. I feel them when I walk down the street and see a black man walking towards me. I have to shove the stereotypes down when I'm in racially mixed groups. Skin color is the first thing I see. It's written into the culture, and it's written into my personal history.

It has been drilled into me, as de Beauvoir might say, that I am the default. Maybe not explicitly, but it doesn't have to be. I go to church with white people, live in an almost exclusively white suburb. When I go to a movie, I see my ethnic group represented. When I  look to my local leadership, I see people of my race. No one stares at me (because I'm white) when I walk down the street. I never have to "behave", or to act a certain way to represent my race. I have never suffered violence for being white, and I have never been called terrible names for it either. People like me are the rule, and anyone else is a variation, an aberration, an abomination, or a novelty.

Of course, as a cripple, it would be easy for me to say I understand. I don't. I may have an analogy with disability, feeling out of place or marginalized because I'm different. This is, I realize, only an analogy. Similar, but not the same. 

And, while conservatives claim that it's not "our" fault that slavery existed. It's not "our" fault that Jim Crow existed. It's not "our" responsibility to apologize for something we didn't do. They might say it's not my fault, nor my burden to bear. 

However, these same folks fail to realize how removed they may be from the experiences of people of color (it seems). Of I fail to realize how removed I am. It is my responsibility to get over the bullshit!

Sotomayer is NOT a racist. She, like any of us, has sovereignty over that which she understands, her heritage and experience...

It's remeniscent of well meaning people who exclaim "I broke my leg and was in a wheelchair for two weeks. I understand."

Let me tell you, people who break their legs only "understand" about two weeks of my life. They don't know what repeated exposure to rejection does to you, especially when your body, your circumstances, are not in your control. At least, not in the specific way I do, the way a differently abled person does.

Of course, the analogy stops here. I don't understand. But, I know a way white folk can help effect racial reconciliation, is to understand how little we do understand...

This is my first step. What the bleep do I know?

*insert smarmy music here*

Mark and I are outside, tapping away on our computers. He's wearing one of my plaid jackets and his plaid pajama pants looking a little like a lesbian...or, more specifically, my twin brother. 

Right now, I'm being a solipsistic limerist (if you don't know what that means, look it up). Today has been fun and sleep is beginning to appear attractive. Though, there is one problem. When Mark and I separate for the night, I'll be alone. 

Which is ok, since being a hermit by definition means one is comfortable with being by her lonesome.

But I miss her and, these past few nights have seemed longer than usual. Even longer than the past few weeks. Which have been long without her.

And, I miss her. I miss everything, and I want everything even though I have everything...

Is that weird?

Tonight

even the moon 

is breathing

Good Day

Tonight was good, even getting off to a shaky start. The family, all of us sleep deprived, headed home from the beach.

As you know sleep = sanity and I was feeling like roadkill again. I made the mistake of rereading a journal from age sixteen after two years of "madness". I wrote of the women I loved at summer camp, there were many and nostalgia appeared in full force. For the feeling of community there. I am much less social than I would like to be. And then it turned into oh no! God is gone again! (not true). And that turned into shades of existential panic.

Fortunately, these days, the voice of sanity is louder than it has ever been. I told God, and myself, that I would have "faith". That I would trust that the feeling was temporary and that I was sleep deprived and everything would work out. Instead of mourning, or freaking out, I decided to accompany my mom and aunt to a concert at auntie's church. 

This has never happened before, the ability to say: "stop freaking out and keep moving."

The concert was good and God seemed to comfort me. And, since it was a worship concert, I actually worshipped. Which, seemed superfluous before like "why does an omniscient, perfect being need us to stroke His ego"? 

Short answer? He doesn't. We need to see Him. I, personally, desperately needed to see beauty and purity and love. And, seeing and communing in this way, was nourishing and was a step of faith. It reminded me that it's not all up to me and there is a magnificent transcendence in which to lose the ego.

And, three out of five of the "major" religions recommend losing the ego...

That being said, I didn't want to buy the guy's cd since it was worship thing. But a nice lady decided, out of the blue, to give it to me anyway. I suppose this is either a message or an example of the rampant commercialism in christianity. Mine. And Everyone else's. I think, or choose to trust, that it was a message. 

The cool thing I read about depressives is that the worst thing you can do is be nice to them. If you make them function, they can. Because, while depression is an illness, it's also a neural pattern and a pattern of habits. You can't erase the craving to smoke, but you have to change the routines that trigger you too. 

God, I believe, understands this and forces me to stretch. Another instance of grace. C'est belle!

Later, I tweeted snarkily about "Christian culture" and auntie messaged me about it... This is going to be a fun discussion (not really) *groans internally*

What is Christian culture?

The fact we honor our itinerant, Jewish Carpenter by singing "Christian" songs, in a "Christian" place and buying "Christian" stuff. I'm bad as anybody, so I can't talk. But my conscience was pricked about money and my relationship to it and the way I waste it. And the way faith can be so masturbatory.

It's about us and Jesus. And our Starbucks and our apathy about problems in the world (guilty as charged). 

But I digress. 

Tonight was good. And now, I think I'm gonna sleep.