Meta Watershed: 9/5/10

Saturday, September 11, 2010

DAILY UPDATE 11 SEPTEMBER 2010

Again only seven hours of real sleep and now once again a slight stomach ache after breaking my fast, so I'm waiting it out before taking meds and pushing the body. Slow start. Plus I dreaded about an ex (again). Still I went to sleep considering the excellent late-night sharing with Pamela and thinking about creative options, and I am feeling good about my life.

To answer another friend, I don't know how I stay so sane and clear except that the alternative is a greased chute to death. I know that firsthand. And please don't put yourself even metaphorically in that "I couldn't do what you do" camp. It doesn't make me feel better about what I do, it makes me feel separated from you. Imagine doing what I do and stay here with me.

I don't know which I am more ravenous for, human company or nature.

I'm trying to think and write about atonement today. But I keep being distracted by wondering what will be said about me, honestly and in private, when I die. I have really hurt people I love along the way, I have failed grievously, I have been afraid and stupid and mean. Where I have seen my errors, I have at least taken the repeat journeys to apologize and undertake change. That is all the comfort have when, like last night, I can't find an easy quilt of sleep.

One of the quality-of-life issues I'm dealing with now is that I've had to stop taking the pain medication I've been using since I left the hospital ten months ago. It's only one a day, but my physician doesn't want to renew the prescription without my coming in for a check-up, a physical act I cannot manage right now. Maybe once I get a hospital bed -- which I cannot afford and have no insurance to cover, but I'm on a waiting list for a free one which does show up every few months. A hospital bed will dramatically alter my bed mobility and ability to do exercises semi-weightbearing, which with another long push of work will mean I can transfer and get to a doctor's office, maybe even move around on my waker again. So there is light somewhere down that tunnel.

In the meantime, no more generic Lorcet. (Doctors don't make house calls, especially for uninsured patients.) So two days ago I switched to Tramadol. It has some effect, it's definitely better than nothing. But it's not taking care of all the swelling and stiffness, for sure. And with my current GI issues, Naproxen worries me. I'm back to living with a higher level of chronic pain. I know how to do it, I'm very good at it. But it does dim the spark a tad.

And right now, until my belly settles down, I can't take the Tramadol, even. In an hour I can have some bread and fruit, and get all the meds on board. Maybe I should have postponed writing this until then. The content would be different, definitely. However, today it is as it is.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

PYA: CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

To begin reading this sci-fi novel or for background information, go to my Chapter One post here. To read about the background of the first novel, read my post here, which will also direct you to appendices.

For more detailed information, posted elsewhere on this blog are:

Pya Dictionary from Skenish to English (complete up to present chapter), with some cultural notes included
Pya Cast of Characters (complete up to present chapter)
Owl Manage on Saya Island, original plans
Saya Island Eastern End After Development
Map of Pya with Description of Each Island
Map of Skene (but not Pya)
Map of Saya Island and Environs When Pyosz First Arrived
Map of Saya Island, Teppe and Pea Pods Environs After Development
Skene Character Lineage at Midway Through Pya Novel
Skene, Chapter One (With Cultural Notes in Links)

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

Pyosz was no longer able to make milk deliveries because of the lifting, so Vants was coming to do it for her each morning. After she saw her off, Pyosz ate a second breakfast with Merrl, who was especially garrulous today. She did the dishes and escaped to her studio, trying to finish a commission in case the baby came early. As she was finishing one set of glaze, Merrl burst in the door.

"Habibi say come now!"

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

HUBBLE THURSDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2010

(Heavy runaway star rushing away from a nearby stellar nursery at more than 400 000 kilometres per hour in 30 Doradus Nebula)

Every Thursday, I post a very large photograph of some corner of space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and available online from the picture album at HubbleSite, followed by poetry after the jump.

THE SUMMER OF THE GERMAN DYKES

In 1980 I lived in a two-bedroom railroad flat in the Mission District with Renee, my best friend at the time. We had claimed the first two rooms as our bedrooms, once parlors, with sliding wooden doors between which we often left open because we were so close. We often slept together as well. For a while, Sharon lived with us in the "real" bedroom next to the kitchen, but she went away for CETA training during the spring.

Renee worked part-time at the Women's Building and she was naturally gregarious, chatting up all the women visiting from elsewhere. Often she offered them out spare room for a night or two. That summer, however, we had a month-long visitor, Ina, a German dyke who was radical, funny, and the perfect blend to our household. That year the exchange rate was very favorable for Germans visiting the U.S., and Ina extended her time with us, using our home as a means of exploring much of California.

We were really sorry to see her go. Thus, then Renee showed up with another German lesbian needing a place to crash, we were both excited. Her name was Efa, and she had hitchhiked her way across country to reach the West Coast. She was very striking looking, six feet tall, wide-shouldered, with black hair, pale skin and bright blue eyes. She habitually wore dark coveralls, looking like a tradesperson, which was uncommon attire then even for dykes. Her first night with us, we asked her if she had encountered any problems hitchhiking, despite her tough appearamce. Her English was not as fluent as Ina's, so after struggling for the words a minute, she simply grinned and pulled from her coveralls side pocket a massive, wickedly sharp metal hook, saying "I show zem ziss." We collapsed into laughter.

Efa only stayed a week. She did not know Ina personally but there was some sort of communication network they were plugged into and she had gone to the Women's Building hoping to find Renee. She made dinner for us one night, a potato and cheese casserole we liked, but what really wowed us was the fruit salad which had an unusual and delicious flavor. We pressed her for the recipe, and she told us the secret ingredient in German but we couldn't figure it out. Finally she thundered down the hall for her dictionary and ran back to sit at the table as she looked up the word. "Gin!" she announced triumphantly. Renee and I were both nondrinkers but we laughed and ate every bite.

I left in early August to drive to the Michigan Women's Music Festival. While there, I led a workshop for survivors of child sexual assault, the first ever. I was also interviewed on the subject by Pacifica Radio. The large number of attendees, most of whom had never told anyone what happened to them, and the emotional demands of trying to help them left me overwhelmed. I caught a ride into the nearest town where, besides getting a cheeseburger and Coke, I went to a phone booth and called home collect, hoping to talk with Renee.

Instead, a strange voice with a German accent answered our phone. She refused to accept the collect call. I called back, making it person-to-person for Renee, and again the call was denied because the same voice said she was "not zair." Frustrated, I called Joan, one of the dykes who lived next door to us, who wasn't thrilled about the collect charges. I asked what the fuck was going on in my house. She explained there were two new German dykes installed, Isa and Sylvia, and apparently they didn't know who I was.

I asked Joan to inform them I lived there and to accept collect calls from me, and to tell Renee I had called. I went back to the festival feeling cheesed.

It turned out our luck had expired with Isa and Sylvia. Referred by the same word-of-mouth network, they were not nearly so friendly or responsible. In particular, they spent hours in the bathtub running hot water to counteract the chill of August in San Fran. The clouds of steam created a fine speckle of mildew all over the bathroom walls. They didn't replace food or chip in for utilities, either. After they left, we had to scrub down the bathroom walls with vinegar and repaint them.

Still, we agreed, Renee should keep bringing home travelers as she saw fit, and we had a soft spot for German dykes.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

HOW IT'S GOING

I am great in emergencies. I not only can think of the right thing to do, I can instantly come up with a creative solution particular to that crisis. I have been through serious car wrecks where I was the rescuer, blood stauncher, counselor, and advocate all at once, on the spot. I once found the emergency kill switch on a Sears escalator when a toddler riding on it got his foot caught and mangled in the stair-fold mechanism, holding that child and keeping his mother from hysterics as we waited for the paramedics. (Which is why I avoid escalators now.)

I think much of my skill comes from growing up poor. You face the unfaceable and stay thinking or things go much, much worse for you. I count as my kind the folks from the Cypress Street Projects, one of the poorest and "most dangerous" neighborhoods in Oakland, who poured out of their homes when the 580 freeway beside them collapsed onto itself in 1989. They assembled makeshift ladders, ropes, anything they could use to clamber up 30 feet of concrete pillars into the narrow gap where crushed cars filled with screaming people were starting to burn.

By the time official first responders were able to find a way to the wreck of a roadway, those folks from the projects had already saved most of the survivors, getting them to relative safety, comforting traumatized children, giving drinks of water, starting to joke about how scared shitless they had been. Nobody took their names or did a news feature on these heros, because they were too poor, too black, some of them too clearly high and pissed off. But I know what they did and how they did it. It was much like any other day, really.

But as well as being a child of my origins, I am also a class traitor. I have sought out and absorbed the intelligent remnants maintained by other classes, I have loved and made allies across the divide, and one thing I have learned is that living in adrenaline mode kills you fast. So when I have a breather, even if it is only ten seconds long, I have tried to take it, make the most of it.

Thus, after the paramedics hauled away that sobbing toddler and his mother from Sears, with her looking beseechingly back at me as if I was part of their family and should be accompanying them, I had to sit down on that Berkeley sidewalk because my legs would no longer hold me up. I sobbed and shivered violently, letting myself feel what I had just witnessed, "processing" as my little brother Bill would say with such intense scorn. Bill who died at 42 because the male raised-poor approach finally ran out of any rope at all.

I began running out of rope myself in 2005, and as resource after resource dried up, I eventually, finally, became hopeless. A few folks hung in there with me, although nobody knew how really bad it was for me. Now the pendulum is swinging the other direction, and I am (tiredly, dutifully) using my out-of-immediate-danger time to face how close to immolation I came. I'd much rather eat sugar and watch Youtube and write cryptic poetry that doesn't pass my own Tell test.

But living to be old means I clean up what I can when I have a chance. And the trail of mess goes all the way back to infancy, to betraying my mama by admitting how she failed me, to betraying my family by telling their nastiest secrets, to facing those of you who are clean and educated and making good choices with the hope that I am worthy of you choosing me, too. Fake it til you make it.

Because sometimes you can't save yourself, and you'll have to say yes to others crawling through the debris to reach you. And you have to love yourself to say yes. Loving yourself is the ultimate revolution. You can't do it and live in fear or isolation.

And, you know me -- I write about it as I go along. Tell until your lips are chapped, that's my credo. Thank you for listening.