The meme below is one I found on the page of yet another white man over 70 who took me to task for being blasphemous, which I ignored other than to go briefly to his page and confirm he was a. white, b. male, c. Catholic (he’d used white male Jeebus with a sacred heart as a featured photo more than once). And, I also saw this, which – you gotta admit, is head-bangingly ironic given his stance – with me in the ‘argument’ and revealed on his wall – on abortion.
Poor kitties, being forced to give birth to a litter of critters before they’re full grown!! Imagine how a 12-year-old girl feels, you dickhead?! Oh, no, right, you can’t – you lack empathy for women and girls; you have empathy for cats, instead, and I bet you have a ton of empathy for your fellow man, I mean men. Ick.
But speaking of spaying, how about mandatory vasectomies for all men over the age of 12 and under the age of limp-dick-i-tude, say – 65? 70? Vasectomies are reversible, menstruation and endometriosis and fibroids and cramping and hysterectomies are not.
Blasphemy is speaking or acting irreverently about or against ‘gawd’ or sacred things; But I don’t believe in gawd, or that ‘things’ – chalices, wafers, linens – are more sacred than actual living, breathing human beings – particularly women and girls. The need others but especially men have to ‘correct’ what they perceive as my infractions against ‘the truth’ is staggering at times. The dominant culture – white, male, christian (small ‘c’ used deliberately) – is still doing well, why must the rest of us agree with these brother-fucking assholes? Because they said so.
Being respectful of other people’s beliefs is a good thing, but being force fed any belief, being shamed or berated for not believing, or for questioning the over-arching system – any overarching system – is bad.
As I write this yet another shitty red state (Ohio) has passed a bill seeking to punish trans-kids and adults, a vanishingly small segment of our population, with regard to bathrooms and girls’ – and only girls’ – sports. At the very same time, a former youth pastor in neighboring West Virginia has been charged with almost 200 counts of sexually abusing children – mostly female, possibly all female, including many of his own, younger, relatives – over the past thirty-plus years. Drag queens and trans athletes are not the problem, are not even a problem, but here we are.
You want to help women and girls (well, no, many white men do not – nor do their female enablers – the youth pastor’s wife knew, I gather, and is also charged) but – if you do: #SmashThePatriarchy and that includes – for me – celebrating the Winter Solstice not that made up b.s. we just ‘observed’ yesterday with our usual rush to buy, spend, and charge and waste. Ooooo, I am in a sour mood today. LOL.
Personally, I love winter – except for the holidays and the ridiculous requirement that I socialize, as if that is ever needed; it is, but not in ridiculous clumps, or when wearing ugly sweaters is deemed ‘mandatory’. FTS. LOL. Introvert alert, y’all. But, that said, happy happy hols. May your days – all of them, winter, summer, fall, spring – be merry and bright, although yes, rainy, slow, overcast days – snow days included – are fan-fucking-tastic, in this women’s opinion.
*Because it’s Christmas Eve, and because it’s been a long week after a long month plus after a mostly disappointing election (Slotkin, Baldwin, Alsobrooks etc. notwithstanding) and I am tired, because all of these authors and these specific quotes inspire me during those moments, hours, and days during which I wonder why I write, at all. Finding our voices, seeking out our purpose whether as writers, teachers, leaders, humans – is essential, is powerful and is deeply subversive – especially and particularly for women and other marginalized communities (fifty-percent of humanity can be identified as a marginalized community, think on that for a mo’). When the stories and voices of half the world’s population are ignored, erased, marginalized, absent – we collectively suffer. #WomenWrite
Once, many years ago, a male friend, after attending a reading of one of my plays, said the following, “It would be perfect for Lifetime TV”, which he meant as a compliment but – really? Really, dude? Was he, a white, gay man, actually that unconscious about what he was actually saying, which was that my play – a story featuring women written by a woman – was meant for that “women’s channel”, because women’s stories aren’t by definition mainstream? I think he was unconscious to that, but – ahem – he didn’t stay that way for long. By the way, he’s still alive, in case you’re wondering, and we’re still good friends.
“A word after a word after a word is power.” – Margaret Atwood
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath – The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.
“Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery. The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” – Muriel Rukeyser
“Tell your story.
Shout it. Write it.
Whisper it if you have to.
But tell it.
Some won’t understand it.
Some will outright reject it.
But many will
thank you for it.
And then the most
magical thing will happen.
One by one, voices will start
whispering, ‘Me, too.’
And your tribe will gather.
And you will never
feel alone again.” ~ L.R. Knost
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing…and keeping the unknown always beyond you.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle
“Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.” ~ Audre Lorde
“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” – Maya Angelou
“Socrates said, ‘The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.’ He wasn’t talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth. A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well, they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
“The moment Eve bit into the apple, her eyes opened and she became free. She exposed the truth of what every woman knows: to find our sovereign voice often requires a betrayal.” – Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Is that even a name? Well, yes, yes, it is. And let me say right here and now, I love, love, love, love, love her work. I stole an image of hers from the interweb I have used on this blog, but then lost the link to who, what, where and was so happy to recently find her again, and be able to celebrate and share this deeply gifted indigenous Canadian artist. Born on south Baffin Island, Kenojuak grew up traveling from camp to camp on south Baffin and in Arctic Quebec (Nunavik). In the late 1950’s (Kenojuak was born in 1927 and died in 2013), Kenojuak began experimenting with carving and drawing and aren’t we all luckier for that. Yes, we are.
Kenojuak’s drawings were immediately celebrated once seen, as they were and main absolutely captivating; in 1961 she was the subject of a film produced by the National Film Board of Canada about her traditional life and art, a film that is still shown today in Canada. It’s only twenty minutes long, available on Youtube if the link posted below doesn’t work. In 1970 her print, Enchanted Owl (1960) was reproduced on a stamp commemorating the centennial of the Northwest Territories, and again in 1993 Canada Post selected her drawing entitled The Owl to be reproduced on their .86 cent stamp.
Kenojuak received many honors during her life as an artist. She was made a Companion in the Order of Canada in 1967, and in 1996 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards Ceremony in Vancouver, and in 2001, Kenojuak was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame. She was the first Inuit artist to be included (which is nuts but there y’go). Kenojuak traveled all over the world as an ambassador for Inuit art.
In January of 2013, after a long and illustrious public artistic career, Kenojuak died at home surrounded by family. She worked in stained glass, pencil, beads and paint – among other mediums. Her wiki page link is below, but be warned, the story of her life was one of immeasurable hardship – largely due to her being born in the early 20th century as both a female and indigenous person. Her father was murdered by Christian converts, she was forcibly hospitalized by the government having tested positive for TB, seven of her children died in childhood (she had eleven live births, adopting five other children), and all three of her husband’s pre-deceased her, one after the other, in the 1970s. Despite this, her work is full of light, love, brilliance, and beauty – as was she.
*a poem by Deborah Garrison, more about Garrison on Wiki, linked below with a few of my comments.
My childhood room, hippie flowered spread folded down at the single pillow, wood dresser with battered corners breathing out scents of other rooms; owlish bedside clock whose trusting face met mine as it shirred the seconds; fearsome length of the closet, holding silence, its sliding panels overlapping slightly, like sisters, and brother window at whose sill I pressed my case on stars in the night’s steep middle.
Then the wee hours awake in bed, rocking and meditating, strangely blissful loneliness and insomnia, the sound of my own humming and the house ticking, the first tears after the first death—
I’ll never go back there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Garrison Unlike Ms. Garrison, I have no problem thinking joyfully about being back my childhood room; I’d love to be back there, although, to be sure, not as a child or half-adult (eighteen to twenty-five!). Our youthful bedrooms are storage units of pleasure, pain, wonder, and mystery and – for many – locked, done with, ignored, forgotten, long buried. Like looking at childhood photos, so much can and is revealed by where a child’s bedroom is or was, which sibling got which room, which roomed together, which left home first…the list and possibilities are endless. There are, however, other rooms, places, and even other relationships I would not seek out, would not enter again, including entering or reviving other iterations of myself…
