Truly Outrageous

The Brain to the Heart

Stars tied to breath
don’t have to be there
when you look.
No more than drops
of blood on ginkgo
leaves & inconsequential

eggs & frog spittle
clinging to damp grass.
Sure, I’ve seen doubts
clustered like peacock
eyes flash green fire.
So what?

When days are strung together,
the hourglass fills
with worm’s dirt.
What do you take
the brain for? I know
how hard you work

in that dark place, but
I can’t be tied down
to shadows of men
in trenches you won’t
forget.  You look at
a mulberry leaf

like a silkworm does, with all your insides,
but please don’t ask me to be responsible.

-Yusef Komunyakaa

I voted for Hillary Clinton in California’s primary on Tuesday.

Why? Not because I want to draw a line in the sand, not because I want to make Obama into some sort of devil. It’s easy to overlook the deeply personal reasons we choose to support one candidate or the other for president, but I’ll put mine out there. I want a woman in the White House — now, not later. And for that, I am willing to take a lot of shit.

I’m not willing, though, to turn on folks who think differently, who are maybe a little less (more?) cynical than me in reference to policy decisions or political machinery.

For instance, when Sylvia writes:

There are problematic aspects with both Clinton and Obama on foreign policy issues, on health care issues, on fostering unity within the United States, and on creating a content and productive country over the next four years.

But you know what? Those are the stakes involved, not Hillary’s vagina or Obama’s brown skin. (Or his middle name, for that matter.)

To the contrary; I see exactly where she’s coming from. If I didn’t believe that Clinton could do the job — if I didn’t have some strong reasons, personal experience being one of them, to think that some of her more loathsome decisions are in fact what’s enabled her to get this far, and that anything less would mean she would not be a plausible Democratic candidate today — I would say the same thing.

Here’s my problem. I’ve cast my vote, but I’m not going to start spewing faulty logic like one minority’s time has come and it should come before another’s. But let’s take a deep breath before we start comparing Clinton — whatever her networks are — with Dick Cheney and his paranoia. Both of those divisive editorials were published in the same newspaper and have gotten plenty of attention. Is this really the level of discourse we’re working with?

What are we gaining here? Why was that last, ‘cordial’ debate between Clinton and Obama seen as such a snore? I will never argue for a lack of disagreement or accountability, but here’s something exciting. People who do not vote, or who are voting for the first time, people who are switching their party to Democrat to vote for one candidate or the other (I saw a woman switch from Libertarian at my polling place!) — they’re excited. They’re motivated. Let’s not lose these folks before November.

Please, continue to point out the differences, continue to discuss your motivations one way or the other, but don’t tell me that if your candidate isn’t top billing on the ticket you won’t vote at all. My question for you: how do we have this discussion in a way that really builds what we want our next president to accomplish? (If you’re already having that discussion, and I’m missing it, please let me know.)

Ponder, if you will, one parathetical aside from the NYTimes review of There Will Be Blood:

(Like most of the finest American directors working now, Mr. Anderson makes little on-screen time for women.)

That sentence; the film itself; the fact that I now work in a traditionally male-dominated field whose goals for growth and models for success are based on the lifestyles of ambitious unattached men; and while we’re at it, the total eager anticipation of every mainstream, hell, alternative, you-name-it media outlet eager for some sort of Hillary vs Obama deathmatch; blame them for what’s coming.

All you motherfuckers:  get ready. 

Imagine, Refugee

Dream blood, dream red, dream.
The r and then the ea and the dm.
Let the letters ride there, then subtract it.
The roof of a shelter, the grandeur
of smoke, a sun print on a rocket.

I have come to the border town.
Take away the I and put it in a shelter dream,
now fill it up with bullets, now dream
bull. Now take the b out of it which is
the engine that makes it go.

There’s a baby in a basket. There’s a burning
basket lullabye. You know the words.
The words are mixed with the soil when
the soil is lifted with a shovel.

Place the soil on top of the wooden boxes
whose bodies dream oo’s and ah’s,
of fireworks branching out in the sky
on holiday, pots and pans clanging,
children playing by dawn, a dream
nailed down to a box.

–Tina Chang

My response is forthcoming, Ms. Amazon… but in the meantime…

‘Tis the season, so consider this a special Christmas dedication to the motto ‘But — let’s just support each other!’ and all the damn fools on the Internet who believe in that shit like Santa Claus. (See Sudy’s video for clarification on how that ’support’ turns out, if you’re not clear.)

*[Please go here if the above video is slow to load/shitty quality.]

Where the hell is Toni Braxton?!

I’m serious.  I need a deep, sultry voice on my hip-hop/R&B station.  Alicia Blah Blah and Rihanna Umbrella are not doing it for me.  My other question:  why did no one ever writeToni a decent single?  I think that’s probably related to the answer to my first question.

Friends, I’d like to refer you to this story by Eirann Lorsung, a writer I’ve just discovered. It’s gorgeous and unusual writing, which always makes me cozy on chilly days. (It’s chilly bordering on downright cold in Southern California, I swear.)

—-

I’d also like to respond briefly to a post BA wrote awhile back — it’s a very late response in blog time! Sorry Ms Amazon!

Glamour ( I just quoted Glamour on this blog help us all) has this survey and it shows up every three or four months in the other magazines as well , touting the ” sexual standards /Shocking thing 78.6 percent of women/ what’s totally normal”And it bothers me because once again something very intimate and personal is being normalizedFirst of it presents sexuality as this great mystery that needs to be unraveled by public vote. Not to mention it concentrates on doing so in a manner that emphasizes you not being ” out of the norm” No seriously it’s called the do’s and don’ts of sex.

I had a visitor this past weekend and by chance she left the January issue of Glamour here at my place. The rest of the world may already know that the mag has a regular “Am I normal?” feature — this month’s was commitment, with a helpful “Normal by the numbers” section. Are you a woman? Are you 26? Are you married? Well, good, you’re normal! What’s so devious about this kind of feature — whether we’re talking about normalcy in sexual behavior or in attitudes about commitment — is that it pretends to comfort its readers, to take out the mystery, as you’ve said so well, to explain exactly what’s really going on. What it in fact does, of course, is feed into expectations that often make Hot Sex/Real Commitment seem even more alien, particularly for all of us whose personal expectations aren’t set to the same “normal” setting. For example, in this same article we are told that “33% of women say they wouldn’t want to commit to a man who isn’t good in bed.” I sincerely hope that Glamour included in their poll non-hetero/polyamorous women, because otherwise my question would be: That’s it?! 67% of straight women are fine with bad sex for eternity? So the real secret of the article is that bad sex is normal and a reality if you, the straight pro-commitment woman, want a long-term relationship (trip to Tiffany’s not included)? So you asked me:

Petit explain this to me, what the heck is with everyone ratcheting DOWN the stakes. Self care sexual care big fucking deal

It’s a fairly basic tactic of those in power to downplay any issues that might lead to change in the status quo, as well as co-opt the tactics of people trying to make change happen. So let’s pretend to downplay sex, let’s pretend it’s not a big deal that STD stats in the US are rising so quickly as to set records (because safe sex seems to be much more of a mystery than “What ‘Good Sex’ Means to A Guy”), let’s limit our scope to presumably white and absolutely middle-class experiences of sex and meanwhile let’s always remind our readers of the real goals of apparently carefree sexual adventures — to catch a man! So it’s not that we’re not worth seriousness, per se. It’s just that our serious attention should be paid, not to sex, but to (heteronormative) commitment– and sex is just a means to that most important end. This is actually demonstrated quite obviously in another story in the January issue, “One man’s New Year’s resolution: I promise to have sex every day.” Daily sex will strengthen your commitment! And not only that, but on the last day of the experiment (second day in a row with no sex in six weeks!):

“No sex again tonight,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “I still feel rough.”"I don’t understand,” I said. “Did we overdo it?”"No, not at all,” Jane replied, a smile slowly creeping across her face. “I’m pregnant. That’s what happens when you have sex every day.”

People, I can’t make this shit up!

So, Dear BA, I hope you write back — and are faux epistolaries like faux fur hoods, because I am so over that — and would you say more about the idea of sexual care feeds into the idea of self-care? Because I think there’s a lot more to say about the Young “Normal” Woman’s Guide to the Mystery of Sex and Romance hiding in how those two concepts overlap.Also can you come out west with your machete? Because the fucking traveling noose parade is harassing port workers in my new hometown.

I’ve been in San Diego the last few weeks for work and, coincidentally, for the wildfires. While there was no damage to the city proper I did have a day or two of driving around in perpetual sunset, watching ash fall onto my car — and, back inside, nervously tracking the fires’ progress on interactive maps like this one. That’s when I accidentally came across this story:

Six undocumented Mexican immigrants were arrested today by U.S. Border Patrol agents at Qualcomm Stadium, after a report that they were stealing food and water meant for evacuees, according to spokesman Damon Foreman.

San Diego police responded to a call about alleged theft from the evacuation center and encountered six people in a van who didn’t speak English and didn’t have California driver’s licenses, Foreman said. The police officers called the Border Patrol, who arrived at the stadium and made the arrests, he said. Foreman said the immigrants admitted they were Mexican citizens and that they were stealing.

From another story:

Officers called U.S. Border Patrol agents, who arrived at the stadium and made the arrests. The six thieves admitted that they were indeed illegal immigrants from Mexico taking advantage of a devastating situation.

And another:

Authorities say evacuees at Qualcomm Stadium told police they noticed a group of people loading supplies onto a truck and driving away. San Diego Police Spokeswoman Monica Munoz says witnesses saw the group return three times to pick up supplies.

Munoz: What they were doing was taking those supplies and selling them so what we did was detain those individuals and spoke to them and they told us they were undocumented and what exactly they were doing so we turned them over to the Border Patrol.

Munoz says four of the eight people taken into custody were released. She said she did not know where the group resold the items, nor to whom.

I encountered this attitude myself last week at one evacuation site. A woman asked me if I knew places donating parrot food, and, in almost the same breath, began a tirade on the audacity of ’some homeless people stealing our supplies!’

Ah yes, San Diego really rallied together to help people in need. Well. Except for, you know, those people.

UPDATE: Cheers to BFP (see her post here)for pointing me towards several posts on the treatment of immigrants during the fires by Latina Lista, including a request for aid for displaced farm workers, who apparently aren’t enjoying the surpluses I encountered around the county. Nezua also has more.

UPDATE THE 2nd:  The San Diego Immigrants Right Consortium, with the ACLU and Justice Overcoming Boundaries of San Diego County, has put together a report, Firestorm (pdf file), in response to

hundreds of reports of civil liberties, civil rights, and human rights abuses. These include undocumented immigrants and homeless evacuees denied emergency services and shelter because they could not provide the proper identity documents; an extended family with three children arrested and deported for taking more donated goods than someone thought reasonable; a young Filipino volunteer evicted from the stadium for helping evacuees carry donated goods to their vehicles; and a number of journalists denied access to relief operations or otherwise precluded from doing their jobs.

Check it out.

Siren

I have a fish’s tail, so I’m not qualified to love you.
But I do. Pale as an August sky, pale as flour milled
a thousand times, pale as the icebergs I have never seen,
and twice as numb—my skin is such a contrast to the rough
rocks I lie on, that from far away it looks like I’m a baby
riding a dinosaur. The turn of centuries or the turn
of a page means the same to me, little or nothing.
I have teeth in places you’d never suspect. Come. Kiss me
and die soon. I slap my tail in the shallows—which is to say
I appreciate nature. You see my sisters and me perched
on rocks and tiny islands here and there for miles:
untangling our hair with our fingers, eating seaweed.

–Amy Gerstler

Ficus

When they said, “like searching
for flowers in a fig tree,” they meant
in vain. The embarking on,
the sap we find in our finger grooves,
a certain parse petalessness

like an empty room and the allure
of a life unlikely. Not growing younger
but the negative space
of the unmade up mind,
and those modest, figless self-embraces,
just how nice it sounds to be lonely
when you are not.

To be fair, the trees do flower
and every town is waiting to unfold
into the one in which you still live.
But the fruit is both
product and prolonged. The wasp door,
the sappy tongue loll, the hairless disguise.

The other kind of not-caring, before
the caring too much, before this one.

–Twilight Greenaway