While I’ve been dealing with this depression cycle, I’ve been working on my latest zine! It should be out and ready to go by the end of the week. It’s called, “Remembering the Sun,” and is poetry, stories, and letters of surviving and rebirth.
There will be two styles–one will be just the paper zine–the other will be the zine wrapped in a durable cover–so that you can carry it in your purse or in your car or whatever and it will stay safe. I made a lot of changes over my last zine–this one will be stapled (or otherwise made secure) so that all the pages stay in order.
The one with the cover will cost a little more–I’m thinking that I may sell it to the first X number of people who donate, say, $5 or $10 bucks or something. Not sure. The paper copy will be sold for a buck, like the first one was! Oh, and the one with the cloth cover may need to have more postage tacked on–I’ll find out once they are ready to go!
Anyway. That’s what I’ve been up to during the past few weeks.
In the middle of the night, I got out of bed to go to the bathroom. I shook the whole time I was out of bed, our house is old and cold.
As I returned to bed, I took the time, even in my tired-eyes-barely-open state, to carefully pull the covers up over me and tuck them around my shoulders.
As I did so, I said to myself, “I am helping you get back into bed, because you are cold. You deserve a warm tender safe place to rest because I love you so much.”
It was the first time anybody had ever done such a thing for me.
basically guiding folks through self-induced abortions, alternative contraception, and other ways of not being pregnant…
i first got interested in self-induced abortions and contraception at the same time that i started to study midwifery. to me its all about being willing to mother ourselves, our bodies, and our intuition. throughout human history, around the globe, people have known how to not be pregnant. we have used herbs, movement, light, scents, touch and whatever means were necessary to not be pregnant. this knowledge isnt lost. sometimes it is buried under the bones of folks who died in childbirth or bled to death from the complications of a miscarriage. it has always revitalized itself nurtured by our desire to define for themselves what is freedom, mothering, pleasure, sacred, death and life.
so that is what i am offering us. stories and practices in an effort to redefine our basic understanding of reproduction and life.
that is what the lilith plan is. a celebration of our survival by any means necessary.
here you will find tips, strategies, research, history, pictures, journal entries, articles, interviews and whatever else i run across that supports our relationship with our reproductive health.
Portraits and narratives of ten transgendered Africans from seven countries in East and Southern Africa by Gabrielle Le Roux in partnership with IGLHRC exhibited for the first time by Amnesty International – Amsterdam. The exhibition celebrating transgendered Africans opened last Thursday in Amsterdam.
The exhibition honours brave transgender activists in Africa who put their lives on the line for the human rights of all people to be true to themselves and express their identity as they feel it.
From a transgender person, it is constanly demanded of me to explain and justify why i do not fit into other peoples ideas of what a woman or man should be . we are now claiming language and claiming spaces. Transgender people have the potential to radically challenge discriminatroy praces in a way that hellps to free all people from sexism We the trans community have the right to tell our stories and have them heard and to have our lives protected. Victor Mukasa Ugandan amnesty frontline human rights defender and program associate IGLHRC
yeah, im that chick.
when i hear a good song i hear the beat. and in hip hop i listen for the swing of the vocal rhythms. that is the hypnotic (and i mean that word) captivating (yeah, like a slave) power of hip hop for me. that fills my desire for aural pleasure. my ear wants sensual complexity, a polyrhythmic, polytonal, polyvocal sound.
often the lyrics are secondary to my pleasure.
this is not an excuse. it is the fact that i trust my desire. this desire and i have been together for a long time. more than three decades. it has grown with me since my mother’s womb. it has been beaten, raped, locked away, and has always punched back. has always demanded to be listened to.
it has been interrogated. how could it not have been? self-dissection comes much easier to me than self-trust. and it has been a long journey for me to trust my desire, my pleasure. for me to claim it as a part of me, and not something ‘out there’. something i could manipulate and mold into an acceptable form. that is what i was taught. you like girls, well…don’t. you like sex, stop. you like hip hop…smarten up. you like boys…get a clue.
I can’t emphasize enough that I think each person’s first move is different. That each person is being held in their own prison. So each person must mold a response to that prison in his/her own way.
I read this:
“The fire in Manipura chakra give you your “glow,” burnishes your ego, and illuminates your mind; it helps you to see the world around you clearly….If the fire in Manipura chakra blazes out of conrol, it can blind you to your own faults, leading to egotism. People with too much fire have a fierce intelligence but can come across as arrogant, vain, and insensitive. They believe they are always right, get angry easily,, and seek to control others through their anger. If the fire in Manipura is inadequate, it makes you depressed, insecure, and extremely introverted; it becomes hard to see your life clearly, leading to a feeling of heightened vulnerability.”
Chakra Yoga: Balancing Energy for Physical, Spiritual and Mental Well-Being. Finger, Alan. Repka, Katrina. pg 53
And I know that while Sara Connor is working on her biceps, I will be focusing on the area that makes up the Manipura Chakra.
“I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns, and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you will understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you – I love you.
I just finished read this post by Lisa , where she discusses her metamorphosis as a writer–from activist and a desire to fit in, to an observer and love.
Feminism exists for all of us to live richer, deeper, more fulfilling lives. Feminism exists for us to question what we want to question and to live as we want to live. The lives of artists, the lives of those who create are lives that are often imbued with resistance; they live counter-culturally. Artists, the souls who create something out of nothing, those who build from ill-fitting pieces possess a strength that reveals itself in their life choices.
I no longer worry about whether I or my writing fits. Rather, I focus on whether or not I am truthful, committed to creation and relationship, and love. Always love.
Her post reminded me of when it first became clear to me that “activism” was not something that truly interested me–not in the way I thought it did, at least.
I was in Colorado–away from my family for two weeks. It was the longest I had ever been away from my family ever–and I spent an incredible amount of time crying and being really fucking depressed. And then we were poor and our pay-by-the-minute phone ran out of minutes and the computer didn’t work and it was so unbearable I could hardly take it.
I went to see a movie during that time. I was sort of excited that I would get to see a movie without the kids up my ass–as most parents know, that’s a rare treat.
I went to see the movie Up, by pixar. And within minutes of the movie starting, I was sitting in the theater crying my guts out. My throat ached so badly, I could hardly breathe.
I walked back to my dorm, crying most of the way, and when I got there, I discovered that W* had not paid a bill so that we could have more minutes on the phone. So I cried some more and called him and continued to cry.
Up is not a particularly “activist” movie (although Pixar often is willing to take a more “activist” slant to their storytelling.). And many feminists pointed out that Up followed the Pixar tradition of centering males in its storytelling. It is a very true critique, and as a lover of Pixar, I have often had trouble justifying.
But the thing that nobody really talked about was the *function* of Up. That is–the work of art that is Up (and all Pixar movies) served a function for humans. A deeply necessary function that hundreds of authors and artists have written about and contemplated and reflected on. And used to guide their work.
The function of explaining and understanding life.
Up explained life to me at a time when I was confused and lost and so alone I could hardly function. It brought me closer to my family. It helped me to understand my world and my life. In a way that some theory did, a little bit of activism did–and absolutely no blog post ever had done.
Being lonely and missing family is a condition of humanity. But it seems that only the artists (who are often theorists and every once in a while, activists) are willing to explore that condition and help us to understand it. Human beings don’t want to get out of bed for various reasons–they want to kill themselves, they want to scream and yell, they want to laugh until it hurts–all for various reasons. And they *also* want to understand those feelings and know that they aren’t alone.
Up (as are all the Pixar movies) centralizes the human need to understand loneliness (or fear [Finding Nemo], love [monster inc], loyalty [cars] etc) –and it does it in a way that media justice activists in the blogosphere shy away from. Ignores. Refuses to even contemplate.
Which makes it a worthless medium, in my opinion. And makes the “activism” that the blogosphere claims to participate in little more than misdirected screaming.
The thing is, though–I know that artists are not the cure all. While I was at this thing in Colorado, I told W* how the most artistic part of me felt almost stifled being surrounded by so many other artists. It was the closest place I’d ever been to being in a separatist community–and I couldn’t take it. Artists get artsy fartsy when they take themselves too seriously–and even I can’t stand it. Often, the most political conversation I heard was how “real” writers hate the internet (because you can’t smell the lovely smell of a freshly cracked open book, see), and good lord if I ever hear the word “like” out of one more rich white affected artist’s mouth, (like, i totally tried to, like, see that point of veeeuah, but, like, i totally wish you would change this, like, once sentence,) I’ma gonna tear my eyeballs out with my toenails.
But even as I recognize that artists are no easy answer for me. That they don’t save me from my disillusionment with activism and media justice, etc–I also recognize that when I needed it, I turned to art–not blogs, not activists, not even theorists (although to be fair, I’ve turned to theorists many a time in the past).
And it’s always been that way. It wasn’t Gloria or Audre or even feminism that kept me from killing myself as a depressed suicidal teen–it was music. Although feminism gave me the words to name my problems as a mother, it was Sylvia Plath’s poems (in particular Ariel) that kept me alive. I think that women of color theory/work has been the one type of mediathat has done the most to cross activism with art and vise versa. And that’s why I’ve stuck with it the longest.
And that’s also why I’m not going to be just eviscerating all ties to the radical woc movement, no matter how discouraging ‘activism’ is to me these days. This movement is where I learn–how to be. How to claim space.
But I also know that activist media assumes a lot about a being. That a being is activist to begin with. That a being has the time, energy, ability to be activist. It assumes that the reader of a piece of work will change. Will be motivated by the feeling in the art. And change.
And maybe I’m tired of writing and creating and *reading* art that does that. Maybe I’m tired of the goal of media activism being “join the movement” rather than “stay alive.”
Maybe I need help understanding why I missed my family so much it almost killed me. When I’ve been taught my entire life to never ever be that vulnerable to any human being, ever.
I dunno. I think I am riding a border right now. Navigating an overlapping space that I need but need to have on my own terms. Maybe I’m just being a nit picky EMO outsider who survives on being “unique.”
Whatever it is–all I know is that the blogosphere (of which I am a part of and include myself in the critique), has no theoretical foundation that serves a reading community–it has no theoretical understanding of what it’s purpose is or what it’s obligation is to humanity.
So it is not art.
And that makes me much less interested in it.
I’ve written before about how I overeat to cope with isolation, bullying, and abuse. I lied to the cashier about why I bought so much salt/sugar (”I have friends coming over”), and I’ve lied to my social justicey friends about it as well…In fact, few people in the parts of the fat acceptance blogosphere I’ve been in ever want to hear the word “overeat.” I’m sure they wouldn’t want to hear that you’re trying to “diet” by quitting sugar either. Why?
In these scenes, the main character, Evie, is thrown into jail, tortured, has her identity removed through various methods (shaving, prison clothes, etc). Eventually she discovers that the whole jail thing is a scam–that 1. she could’ve left the jail at any time, but she didn’t because she was too afraid to and 2. it was her “mentor” V that made her think she was in jail.
~~
I’m starting a new phase in my life. I’m integrating exercise into my daily routine. Not just the walks I’ve been doing for over a year now. But exercise.
And I’ve struggled quite a bit with that. Not the integration–Like my quitting sugar, I’ve actually been preparing for a long time to integrate exercise. No–what I’ve been struggling with is the way “exercise” is used in the US.
I’ve struggled because of exactly what Quixotess points to up there in her quote. I am betraying a movement of people (the fat acceptance crowd) by thinking about exercise. I am betraying myself because I’ve worked really fucking hard over the years to say fuck you to anybody who tries to pin me down with body image shit. I’m betraying myself because nobody–NOBODY–tells me what to do. People who know me well know that if you *tell* me to do something (without explaining why I have to do it, or why you are telling me instead of asking), I won’t do it. And even if you do explain it to me, I more than likely won’t do it, because fuck you, that’s why.
So–people telling me for the past 20 years to exercise have gotten a firm middle finger in the face.
Unless, of course, those people have scared me shitless or otherwise played on that desperate fear that controls me. At which point I pull my hidden whip out of my jail toilet and beat myself endlessly with it.
And I assume that my whipping must be some sort of exercise.
I’ve found other ways to do exercise without really *doing* it. I’ve done (re)thinking walking. I’ve done tremendous amounts of hiking. I’ve cleaned and done gardening.
I’ve beaten my ass endlessly with whips of words.
But the (re)thinking walking series in particular has really allowed me the space to interrogate what “exercise” is. And more importantly, how it is used–how it is used in the US to *control* the body. How it is used in the US to *imprison* the body–a prison sentence that nobody really has to comply with, but far too many of us do. A prison that most of us keep ourselves firmly locked in–because we are too scared, hurt, violated, abused, or even just plain old confused, to step out of it. There is no guard any more. The system ran out of money for that a long time ago. So they use us to guard our own cell doors.
What good guards we’ve become.
We’ve forgotten we’re in prison, even.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Angela Davis and the Sara Conner character in the second terminator movie. I’ve been thinking about how much I admire those women. About how Angela exercised while in solitary confinement. Because she *recognized* that she was in prison. And that she’d get out eventually. And she needed to be ready and strong. And prison was being used as a way to break her.
Exercise for Angela Davis (and Sara Conner) wasn’t really *exercise*. It was a tool of survival. A fuck you. A method to stay a live. A way to keep fighting.
Neither woman (and goddamn I feel sacrilegious comparing the very real awesomely fierce Angela Davis to a movie character!!!!) was using exercise to “lose weight.” Or even “to be healthy.” They were using it to survive. To live.
And so it wasn’t really exercise that they were doing. They were doing something more. Something scarier. Something braver.
They were aware of their prison. And they knew it was only a matter of time before they left it.
~~~
Me–I’m afraid I’m not so brave nor so aware. I am Evie. I am motivated by fear. Controlled. It would take me years to finally get up enough guts to just *touch* that prison door handle, much less open it up.
So it never really occurred to me that I could be strengthening myself in prison. Stretching. Moving. Building endurance. It never really occurred to me that there is life in prison, outside of it, and that life is worth fighting for.
I was born in a prison, told to stay there, and so I did. Sure, there has been a lot of different methods, many of them violent, used to make me believe I couldn’t leave–but I have never been Sara Conner. Or Angela.
~~
Things are different now. I’ve changed so much, just in the past month or so. Living my life with intentionality has changed things for me. Made things so much clearer.
And now I see, I’m in prison.
I know my prison intimately. And I’ve described a bit of it already here on the blog–but have done a lot of work around it offline. I think a person like me HAS to study things before she makes any big moves.
But now I’ve decided. It’s time for me to go, time to leave this joint. It’s time for me to live.
~~
So, I’ve struggled with this “exercise” thing. What to call it. What to do with it. The reasons to engage in it. Can it be “reclaimed?”
I know a lot of people think about movement (or, “reclaimed” exercise) in really beautiful ways. In dancing. In stretching. In swimming. I saw a really beautiful clip one time of a fat woman who had taken up swimming–and she talked about how beautiful she felt in the water. How she challenged the snotty “you’re a whale” comment. She realized as she floated and twisted and moved under water, she identified strongly with whales. She realized that whales were beautiful. That the insult didn’t hurt any more.
That clip has stayed with me for a long time–beauty like that opens my heart.
But I’ve come to realize. I am not a beautiful person. I don’t make beautiful things. I admire the shit out people who create beauty like that–but it’s not me.
I am working class. I deal with oil. And dirt. And grease. And sweat. And broken. And misery. Stink. Rot. Death.
Massaging, watering, loving, hoping life back into the middle of deathly hell.
It follows, then, that “reclaiming” exercise will follow those same patterns for me.
It will be about me gathering and nurturing the few small strands of strength I have to confront fear. And touch that prison door. Open it. Then move, with my head held high and my shoulders thrown back–down the hallway and out of the building.
For good.
To live a life that will never be easy, clean, beautiful or inspiring. But will always be free.
Losing weight? Hahahahahaha, honey please. There’s no time to worry about that. Not anymore. I’m too focused on that door handle.
Some “health experts” may say–well, if that’s what she needs to tell herself in order to get off her fat butt and exercise, then so be it. She’s exercising. She’ll lose weight. And then we’ll all be happy!
To which I respond–well, if that’s what the “health experts” need to tell themselves to explain a fist in their face and a gun on my hip–then so be it. I’m surviving. And pretty soon all the prisoners will be free. And then the “health experts” will be out of a job and liberation will be upon us.
I realized something: I secretly lose a little respect for people that display “interest” in me (attraction, sexual, intellectual, etc). Because what kind of a person would ever be attracted to me? What is wrong with this person?
I am so happy to realize that I think like this. To have this thought exposed to me.
Today I chaperoned my kid’s class trip to the skating rink. And for the first time in my life, I ice skated.
I’ve wanted to ice skate since I was six years old. Since the first time in my memory that I watched the Olympics. But skating was expensive back then, it required an hour long trip to a different city, using gas we couldn’t afford, using money we didn’t have to get into the rink, etc.
But god–I wanted to skate anyway. I poured water on the floor of my basement to create a Mexican ice rink (hee hee), I found even the rockiest nastiest peice of ice on my way to school and pretended I was a figure skater in Russia–I made do. As we all always do.
But today I did it for real. I didn’t fall once. My feet and my legs and my ass burn like hell. But every time I said I was going to get off the ice and rest–I decided one more time around.
The wind blew my hair off my face, the skate blade hitting the ice left a satisfying sheet of peeled ice in my wake. I was worthless as a chaperon, and almost rammed into at least two little girls that could barely control their own skates.
And I laughed so hard my stomach still hurts.
I finally did it.
