upon black mountains dark storm breaks open, spills out snowy streams of light It seems that every holiday event I've attended thus far has focused on light. I think it says something about humanity that we all (and by all, I mean major religions that my friends observe) find in this dark season a reason to celebrate light. Of course, I know that it isn't the same, cold December the world over, and certainly not in the places where the faiths of which I speak originate, but maybe what we really yearn for, what we really celebrate this time of year is more metaphorical.
Perhaps people gathering together to light a small candle against the darkness around them would do a whole lot of good.
PS: Look guys! I posted something! Crazy. Happy midwinter holiday of choice.
Joss Whedon just got a whole lot more awesome in my eyes. I found this via Sociological Images and Feministing (best logo ever), which give women and men reason after depressing reason to join Joss and others in the fight for equality.
This hits on something I've felt over the past three years, and especially in the last couple months: It's only by shithouse luck (if you'll excuse the expression) that, from the beginning of my college experience, I've fallen in among friends and family whose attitudes are progressive, inclusive, and inherently loving and empowering. It goes beyond just having heroes that represent the unrepresented. It's the implantation of an entire culture that thinks I'm important, not just another pair of tits stuck to a vagina. I shudder to think what might have become of me if I had not stumbled upon these treasures: people who were willing to be patient with me as I groped and faltered my way through the darkness; people who trusted me with their true selves, whether gay, bisexual, transgender, cisgender, or straight; people who will stand with me against the flood of hate.
Whether they know it or not, these people have given me a power that I have never had before.
An enormous part of that power is the comfort of knowing. For instance, I know I will never have to spend my life silently hating the men around me for the unequal way they treat me. I know I will never have to worry how my husband will react if our child turns out to be gay or transgendered. I know I know that the people around me act only to bring more good into the world. These are good things to know.
Another part of that power is getting to have a richer range of experiences as a human being. Unlike generations of women before me (and even, unfortunately, many of the women of my own generation), I will have the pleasure of washing dishes, doing laundry, visiting Planned Parenthood, vacuuming, making decisions, and living alongside my husband, not for him. I hope to be there when Sara and Aly welcome their baby into the world with all the love, pride, and happiness that anyone would on such a momentous occasion. Someday I hope to watch as my transman friend walks down the aisle with his beautiful bride and my dear gays join each other at the altar. Some of it is sad: I will never see the media the same way, and I will spend hours questioning the equality or inequality of each part of Ian's and my wedding ceremony. But let me tell you: I'd rather spend my time loving and being loved than hating, fearing, and discouraging love.
And so this was Christmas, a fine event if there ever was one. A virgin, impregnated by the power of God (who'll apparently go to great lengths to avoid the "birds and the bees" conversation), rides into the overcrowded town with her newly-shotgun-wed husband to pay their taxes, when, after weeks on the back of some poor burro, the thirteen-year-old miraculously pops out her first baby in a spray of blessed afterbirth and only the most pious amounts of pain. And so, to commemorate the occasion of this supposed anniversary (the birth certificate got lost in the mail somewhere), we fret over buying one another just the right thing, the thing that will prove that we love them forever (until Mothers' Day or their birthday or Valentine's Day); we pretend for a few hours to care about the poor, cold, sick, and downtrodden, the huddled masses (as long as we can also pretend that they are all so adorable as Tiny Tim or as poignant as The Little Match Girl); and we play obnoxious nonsense songs the meaning of which few understand (leave belief out; no true beliefs can be built on ignorance).
I'm not trying to be glib or flippant about Jesus' birth. I guess I just have a hard time looking at religion without looking at the bare bones of it. I think rationality is something applied to religious beliefs far too little, both in the beliefs themselves and in the practices which accompany them. It's not what I set out to write about tonight, but I thought Christ's Mass deserved to be noted before it slipped away, and this is what came out. I suppose that it's the product of a rage that's been building for some time now. That anyone can profess to follow in the footsteps of the Lamb of God, The Prince of Peace, that great forgiver of all sins and lover of all sinners, and yet deem someone - anyone - unworthy of HIS love - oh, my friends, I become very upset. My minority, non-Christian friends lie back and take it, even expect it. I know, though, that the baby that shivered in the night those many years ago didn't care if the arms holding him were gay or Jewish or even if they belonged to the Pope himself.
I had never heard of Keith Olbermann before tonight when I was shown this video. It sums up all I believe on the subject. Thank you Mr. Olbermann for standing up; you give me hope.
This is mostly intentionally punctuation-light. I think I'll call it poetry. Feel free to put in line breaks and punctuation how you imagine one would. We could call it creative essay, perhaps. This is what listening to Tegan and Sara does to you. I'd listen to this song while reading in order to get the full effect. Boy, do those girls have a way with things.
I want you close to me like the music like when you turn up the volume louder and louder until it almost hurts and you’re cringing but that’s not enough so you press the headphones deeper into your ears until it almost hurts but this time not because it’s too loud but because it’s still not enough because you just want it inside you, inside your head, inside your heart in your belly in your hands in your feet Oh God, I can’t get close enough I can’t I can’t I can’t
But you go and I know you must, so I put my music on repeat and turn up my headphones.
I want to see you like when you read a book all about someone’s life and how they seemed to know just what to do at every turn or they didn’t but it doesn’t matter because isn’t it wonderful that somebody had a life and that they lived it, and if it’s gone now it doesn’t matter it’s just that they lived they loved and I want that I want to know that it all turns out okay that we hold hands peacefully when the sun explodes and I try to remember the future but can’t.
But you go and I know you must, so I plot out the rest of our days with a little room for secret plans.
I want to feel you like a painting when you look at the lines and the woman’s face and the colors how they mix and blur and you can’t touch it because the sign says and because you can’t; it was another time another place and maybe the artist made love with the model every afternoon, but he was bothered because he couldn’t paint the little lines in her eyes just right I’ve tried to draw you, your eyes your eyes, but I just couldn’t get it right and nobody would understand and I don’t think I do either
But you’re tired and want to sleep so I stare at your eyelids.
can he even know the time travelling he does while his eyes are shut? the clock shines 1:30 where he sleeps but the dark, silent star of my 12:30 dream sighs and turns his cheek an hour away
She tossed something in the trashcan and stepped out of the bathroom just as he walked in the front door – late. She smoothed her shirt and fixed a quavering smile on him. He darted a glance at her, then swung open the door to the hall closet between them.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked, his voice muffled by the closet full of coats.
She smiled and leaned against the wall, thrusting out her hip and staring at the closet door. “Nothing special,” she chirped. He impatiently exhaled the closet’s mothball-scented air and shut the door.
“Sounds exciting,” he dryly drawled.
She frowned and pressed herself flat against the wall. “We can make it exciting. Candles, a tablecloth, real napkins – I promise I’ll make it exciting. I’ll even open that bottle of…” She stopped as if rethinking her next words. Ignoring this, he mumbled, “Did you clean up your puke mess from this morning?” She pushed herself off the wall and into his arms, startling him.
“I love you,” she breathed. He looked down at her awkwardly.
“I can’t do this, Louise,” he said, shoving her away. “I have some papers you need to read and sign.”
Dr. Ashcroft's glasses, I think, are what bugs me. They make his eyes look too big for his face; like a dog with its raised hackles, he seems to try to look larger, more intimidating, the academic equivalent of nature's bluff "Don't mess with me, I'm smarter than you think."
This room is too hot. Somebody in the back needs to open a frickin' window. I've forgotten to pay attention again, hardly noticing his nasally voice as it mixes with the dust motes in the air. I now listen. The sound, though unequivocally devoid of any depth or richness, evokes a dark philosopher's study, the kind where the oriental rugs and the dark and the leather-bound tomes and the heat - the goddam heat! - block out everything in the outside world until you've forgotten that there was ever such things as tandem bicycles or fall leaves or kids with strawberry ice cream cones that melt all over their tiny fingers. Ashcroft ignores the flickering, tired glittering of the dust as the motes turn in place, suspended in the sunlight. He continues to give the lesson, drawing on the board. I don't realize until the male students chuckle that the symbols Ashcroft has jotted are rather phallic. Knowing Ashcroft would never see it that way, I smile. He never sees anything in any way but his own, not even if it's well reasoned. He hates when I raise my hand; I'm a girl and I should sit in the back and be quiet, but he doesn't know that I don't intend to give him the peace he thinks he has earned with his tenure.
For right now, though, I content myself with reading the graffitied backs of the chairs around me: "Mike sucks dick," "Fuck you," "'86." I've never liked graffiti, but at least it says something, at least it's free. The little man finishes his lecture, then turns around, blinking at us as if emerging from a cave. Maybe Mike does suck, but where am I? I'm stuck here, in the depths of Ashcroft's unimaginative, dank academia. Ashcroft calls on someone, then rejects their answer. The answer isn't presented just like he learned it seventy years ago; it is wrong. "Not today," I think to myself, taking a stand against someone, but nobody really takes note of a revolutionary whose soapbox is inside her own mind. Taking out my green pen and stealing a glance - the ferocious glance of a true rebel - at Ashcroft, who is looking like a particularly squishable bug, I issue my manifesto on the back of the empty desk in front of me. Maybe someone later will find the green outline of a heart and not care if love and freedom and tandem bicycles are well-argued, sound and logical.
Cars, close and blurry, whizzed by the lovers standing at the roadside. The sun's last rays cast blushes on the pair as they leaned against the fender of his prize ride, enraptured, embracing. Her long hair lifted gently with the pine-scented wind, and he whispered her name between kisses- "LaDonna, LaDonna...." She smiled shyly, and, reaching into her acid-wash pockets, pulled out a pair of cigarrettes. Her hands crawled slowly upward, coyly brushing long, red nails against his wife-beater-covered belly and combing his sparse hairs over the yawning hairless gap of the top of his head. Finally placing and lighting the unfiltered right where he always set it, in the crevice between his spotted front teeth, she took a puff of her own and sighed a smokey haze. "Le's git, Bobby Joe. Price Iz Right oughtta be on by now."
A vision tonight of us together in the most literal sense, our flesh exposed, juxtaposed, curves to muscle, softly rich sheets fold and rustle, ignored, the perfect mix of rhythm and rhyme, no attention to clocks and miserly time, shadows our solitude together, a beautiful irony that no one can find a reason to hate, skin, heavily lidded eyes and heavy indian summer feelings; now is the only moment, though a million more may come.
The world around me shuddered for a moment as my mind and body remembered this vision of what is to come. I miss you, not only you as you are now, but as a you that I won't have for years to come. Both are so far, in miles and months, in tears and kisses and coffees and caresses and fears and hits and misses.
touch your look on me and leave my soul rippling- love concentricly.
You stir something within me that I don't know how to get out. It is mysterious yet familiar- a face you see every day but somehow can't place a name or purpose to. Your absence only intensifies it. Magma built up with no caldera to relieve the pressure. Do I go deeper, to the core? Do I push through until it all spews out, a cataclysm?
I don't know.
Poetry doesn't stir in me often anymore. Tonight is a rare mood. Something about the past several days sets me off. I like thinking about the future, but it is slow torture. I am Tantalus reaching for the grapes, but this punishment was made by no Olympian, but by my own heart reaching for what has yet to be. The catch, Catch-22, is that I possess the grapes, but only in some future time. I envy my future self, enjoying her days and nights with you, doing all those things that she does, dishwashing, wine-sipping, dancing, decision-making, onion chopping, with you.
a picture sent a photo framed won't you fall on me? drip, your shapes curving face in my hands, my soul. rain on my head water, water please- don't leave me placid.
imagine please my voice flows the richness of mystery, drums and chords, winding rivulets memory and new creation
stay and maybe your face will feel ears will hear the rain that tumbles for you, for you listen, please won't you close your eyes? but only the streets are wet with rain and the mystery slithers away, unheard.
