Meta Watershed

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP 17 MAY 2011

Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

WADING

(Photo at the edge of the Lea Marshes, London, taken by Margot Williams, April 2011)

I woke up at 2:45 (after a 4-hr REM cycle and an Architecture Dream) and stayed up 2 hours, rereading Ginny Bates from the point where I had dipped in to get an excerpt for M. (Keyword search for that massive manuscript was "overalls", I had to laugh at how many hits there were but it finally surfaced.) Reached the birth of the first grandchild before I fell back asleep. That book looks like one long prayer of manifestation now.

I am living still in an altered state of "Be here now" body anchor and "Dream it forward" recovery, a swaying hammock that requires constant adjustment. And unlimited patience. I keep making 100 day plans, and at each new draft, there is definite movement but never as much as I had wanted. At those times, I have to staunchly resist the pull to Blame Self as best I can. Or blame at all. Blame is how my father glided through his oblivious life, and I want to do more than survive as long as he did, stepping over the bodies of those he claimed to love.

But Mama's pattern, of trying to assume responsibility for what which she could not change, is equally murderous. It is the lesson of being a girl in this country, and if you did not have it lacquered in thick coats onto your spirit before you were even a year old, I do not think you can truly Get It. It's a conditioning my generation, at least some of us, wake up to wearily every morning and mark the new perimeter, like a personal glacier's retreat or advance, so as to know our task for that day.

Has nothing to do with hormones or what attire we put on -- those illusions do not buy respite. Not for me. Not for Margot. I buzz my hair, she grows hers to below her ribs, and we are still both reacting to girlhood messages about female = wearing your hair for others. The Male others and their sheriffs.

Intimacy with another woman is a revolutionary act. It defies the most cardinal rule of the patriarchy -- Do not prioritize that which we call female. I don't mean love: "They" claim love for us. But here inside, we know what real love breaks down to, and thinking well about another female, valuing her intrinsically, is the act that threatens all the foundations and sets then whistling for the harriers.

The folly of the patriarchy is to try to control the Mississippi at all. The defining river of North America has traveled where she needs to for millenia, but within my lifetime men decided to stop its western advance -- because how can you own property near a force of nature otherwise? So now they are opening the Morgansas Spillway, saving New Orleans (this time) by flooding Cajuns. The hierarchy is always written plainly on the wall. Now that the Ninth Ward has been emptied of blacks, New Orleans is valuable enough to spend money on future lawsuits and a few insurance claims from those who will be under 25 feet of water by this time tomorrow. Blacks and Cajuns are both expendable. just at different points on the scale. But that difference is exploitable enough to get the Cajun vote for David Duke and Bobby Jindal.

Look deeper, bigger. See what the original watercourse was and get the fuck out of the way of her path. Women have always loved each other this much, when we could. I feel raw and uprooted only because I grew up with Boys running the world. I stand in rising waters that are from a broken dam, and I breathe, refusing to panic. And I have a strong hand firmly in mine, someone who for two years has not faltered with me, not once. A girl-hearted woman who keeps saying "We ALREADY have it." I stand on submerged granite and build leg muscle back. And think of the poem by Louise Glück:

THE UNDERTAKING

The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.
There you are — cased in clean bark you drift
through weaving rushes, fields flooded with cotton.
You are free. The river films with lilies,
shrubs appear, shoots thicken into palm. And now
all fear gives way: the light
looks after you, you feel the waves' goodwill
as arms widen over the water; Love,

the key is turned. Extend yourself —
it is the Nile, the sun is shining,
everywhere you turn is luck.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

GOOD NEIGHBORS

For seven years I lived in San Francisco on a narrow street of railroad flats. My flat shared a wall with the house next door, and for a while two gay men were loud neighbors who eventually became infamous.

One of the men -- we'll call him John -- worked at some demanding downtown job. The other -- we'll call him Desiree -- stayed home to play music, tend their menagerie of snakes and tropical birds, and pick up guys at Cafe Flore. At least, that appeared to be their division of labor. But they had frequent, protracted, verbally heated negotiations about this domestic contract. I didn't need to make an effort to hear every word. I was only surprised none of the parrots or macaws ever learned the term "bitch".

Things came to a head one week when John found himself too busy to shop for clothes and handed Desiree $100 in cash to do some shopping for him. This was 1980, when that amount of money was more than I paid in rent. Desiree vanished for three days and crawled back home at dawn smelling of poppers, with not a dime left.

The screaming matched lasted for hours. At some point Desiree produced a single pair of socks he had managed to purchase for John (I suspect then departing with the sales clerk for the Black and Blue or the End Up). John was incredulous enough about the return of only two socks for $100, but then he apparently examined the label and discovered they were seconds. His voice reached mezzosoprano levels as he kept repeating "Seconds? I paid a hundred buck for a pair of seconds?"

Within a week, John had moved out, leaving Desiree to fend for himself. Desiree was unable to find another benefactor, despite his considerable good looks, and so two months later the landloard began trying to collect unpaid rent. Desiree had found the funds to change all the locks, and for a few days we heard pounding at the door and yelled threats of eviction from the foyer next door, occasionally interspersed with insults hurled back by Desiree. Desiree was gifted at outrage.

The next week, I quit my delivery job to make my annual trek to the Michigan Women's Music Festival and visit Mama in Texas. When I returned two weeks later, I noticed the building next door had new glass in the front windows and a fresh coat of paint. My roommate wasn't home yet, so I asked the dyke on the other side of me in my building if Desiree had been evicted. Joan said with relish "You missed it" and filled me in.

Ten days earlier, there had again come pounding at Desiree's front door with a man demanding entry. Desiree had responding by tossing out a lit cherry bomb. What he failed to notice is that the man on the landing was wearing a uniform. The SFPD was immediately informed of an attempted "attack" on one of their own, and our block was soon chocked with SWAT vehicles. Joan had tried to come home during the siege and was kept behind a barricade for several hours.

The back wall of the garden next door was several feet high and topped with barbed wire, common in that part of SF. To gain entry, the cops wanted to go over our adjoining wall at back, but they could not rouse anybody at the downstairs flats -- we were all at work. One upstairs neighbor, Merry, was in but she was a good radical and she refused them entry to her flat. I'm surprised they didn't bust down her door. She said she spent the next while hiding in her bathtub.

Instead, they opened fire on the building holding Desiree. Joan said all of the front rooms had required replastering when they were done. Desiree fled to the back garden and crawled into a large pile of compost. When the cops finally decided no one was left alive in the flat and broke in, their search failed to turn up Desiree. They packed up and departed.

An hour later, Desiree emerged from the rotting vegetation and hightailed it elsewhere, getting a shower and then a lawyer before turning himself in to the police. We never found out how many of the tropical animals survived the assault, or saw any sign of Desiree again. The next tenants were a trio of New Jersey dykes, one of whom pounded copper art platters as a hobby, but she was quiet by comparison.