Now I Know His Name

For a long time, I didn't know his name, although I saw him almost every day. And then I fretted about not knowing his name.

But now I know his name. It's Jesse. He smiles and waves, "Hi, Mossie!" as I drive by, whether or not I have a dollar or a banana to give him.

The last few times I've had the first-in-line position, where I can roll down my window and talk with him until the traffic light changes, I've been especially sad. Today I was fighting back tears. But I still smiled at him.

He said, "You have such a pretty smile. It really brightens my day. It's great that you are so happy!"

"I'm actually really sad right now, Jesse. But I find that when I smile, it helps."

He smiles at me softly. "It helps me, Mossie. Thank you for your smile."

And so with tears splattering my lenses, I turned the corner and drove down Glisan Street to my office.

Smiling helps. Knowing his name helps, too.

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Fridge Wisdom

Last night I started clearing off my fridge and decided to finally recycle these scraps of paper I've hung in various locations for years. Since I'm not ready to let go of their sentiments, I'm posting them here in the form of a photo.

Unusual Reference

This is a once-in-a-blog's-lifetime-experience. In case you aren't already sitting down, you might want to do so now.

I'm going to mention The Bible.

Shocking, I realize. Not along my general lines of gleeful low-brow humor.

But see, I read this post by Derick about the number of times that homosexuality is mentioned in various versions of the Christian Bible, compared to how many times the concept of peace is mentioned, and of course I had to link it up here.

You can stand up now. The shocking event has passed. But seriously, go check it out. It gave even a heathen like me a moment of pause.

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Courage Part One

Eleven years ago I told my then-partner that I wanted to get a pet snake and overcome my intense fear of slithery creatures. What did I get for Solstice that year? You guessed it. I didn't mean I wanted to get a pet snake quite so soon. It was more of an in-the-future idea and one that I expected to tackle myself, not through a holiday gift. At the time, I felt freaked out and slightly resentful, although simultaneously invigorated with what was probably adrenaline. All of a sudden I was responsible for this living being whose mere existence caused me heart palpitations and sweaty palms.

I named my snake Hygeiea and she was a wonderful companion. After about a year, she went many places with me, wrapped around my neck for warmth. She and I were connected, and I continued to explore my own associations with snakes and serpents as "male" in juxtaposition to ancient traditions of snakes representing femininity. During Hygeiea's growth spurts she would shed her skin once a month, during the same time I was menstruating. I felt a profound systerhood and strong Knowing during those times.

Additionally, the life-death cycle played out in my tiny one-bedroom apartment when my partner acquired another snake and we began breeding rats rather than buy pinky rats to feed our snakes from the pet store. Now, years later, I revisit the conflicting emotions of seeing the mama rat frantic, pressed against the glass, whiskers quivering, as we fed her babies to our snakes in the other room. It is an image that haunts me. Life-death-life-death-life. It was intense.

What ended up happening to Hygeiea, some time after that partnership ended, is another story entirely, and ultimately one of liberation and joy. But the experience of caring for her was perhaps the first time I realized that my inner strength and ability to delve into new, terrifying realms is deep, wide, and mysterious.

Where am I going with this? I'm not sure. But I'll dig deeper in the next post.

Moved Me

When I watched this video today, I felt so much. My reaction was visceral and more profound than anything I've felt for an exceptionally long time. Perhaps ever. Sitting with my love at our dining room table, bearing witness via YouTube, tears streaming down our cheeks - it made for an incredible Sunday morning. I may write more about my reaction later, but for now, I'll simply hold this out as a humble offering. Maybe it will move you too.



Something else that moved me: Waking up early on Tuesday morning, the first day of the bar exam, padding into the kitchen to turn on the gas fireplace and make coffee, glancing out the sliding glass door, and seeing a beautiful bouquet of flowers, left for me by an incredible friend at 5am. I love to feel love.

consume this

Victor Lebow, a post WWII retailing analyst:

"Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.

This article, and the above quote, have prompted me to find creative ways around outright replacing my dear technological companion, though the prospect of being away from her again for repairs tears at my heart. (Why do they make these things disposable?! They told me I was LUCKY to get three years out of my laptop!)

So again I tell myself: Buy less. Live more.

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Men's Abortions & The War Mentality

Two weeks ago I read two articles about abortion on the same day. I'm glad I read them in the order that I did because the first one placed my paradigm in a more inclusive rather than exclusive stance.

The first article (A Change of Heart: From Pro Life to Pro Choice, AlterNet 1/9/08) included a perspective I needed to hear: "Our beliefs are not created by what -- or who -- we are against. They exist because of what we are for: comprehensive reproductive health for all, and the ability to decide for ourselves if we will or will not have an abortion."

A line from the second article (Changing Abortion's Pronoun, LA Times 1/7/08) elicited an audible groan from me, and my mind went to The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Starhawk's description of The Southlands in The Fifth Sacred Thing. A man, discussing his personal regret about several ex-girlfriends' abortions: "'I never really thought about it for the woman,' he says slowly." What?! He never really thought about the woman part of the equation in an abortion scenario? Excuse me?

It's an interesting catch-22. Though it disgusts me, it doesn't surprise me that anti-abortion activists will utilize women's termination regret to influence the courts toward the incorrectly-perceived need to "protect" women from their own choices. But would they do the same with men's regret as a motivator? To protect men from themselves? I do not doubt that some men experience loss or sadness over the termination of a pregnancy in which they played a role. But is regret the best measure of whether or not government should permit certain reproductive medical decisions?

Back when I was a married-to-a-man queer grrl, before the polyamorous part of our marriage was predominant, my husband and I terminated a pregnancy. In Utah. I wrote about it here, when the South Dakota mess was in the news. In the post, I half-heartedly pretended it wasn't me, but it was probably pretty obvious. Many women have termination stories; I have one. I don't see why men shouldn't get to tell their stories too.

My ambivalence toward abortion topics is deep and multi-layered. I believe it important to let stories and voices be heard, and yet I also recognize the deeply personal realm of reproduction, coming from a family where fertility, miscarriage, and ectopic (tubal) pregnancies were wrapped in whispered conversations, kept from children, spoken about with solemn secrecy.

The more we share, all of us, the more information we have, the greater likelihood that we might just be able to see each other and really connect and not live under the illusion that our way of experiencing the world is the only way it's experienced. The more information, more connection, more understanding, more empathy, the better. That includes having empathy for people who truly believe that abortion should be illegal. If I can empathize with their feelings, it may be a vital step in bridging the gap in our perspectives, and maybe that person will one day believe that even if abortion is not a choice s/he would make or want a loved one to make, it is a choice that should nevertheless be available in a legal and safe way. The "fight" is more about increased connection and communication rather than fighting. Give peace a chance, wo/man.

. . .

I Don't Know His Name

I see him almost every day on the offramp at I-205 and Glisan Street. When I don't see him, I wonder where he is and if he's okay.

Hard lives can age people; I really have no idea if he's sixty or forty. His right leg is missing below the knee. He has a white beard and kind eyes and holds a tattered sign that says, "Anything is a blessing. God bless." Based on my experience and observation, I think he really means that. Anything is a blessing. Some days my blessing is a smile. Some days it's whatever extra food I have in the car. He's always grateful, and he always smiles back at me, unlike the younger men who squint incredulously when I offer them fruit or a granola bar. They want money. But my guy, he's something else. After I handed him a tangerine he said, "Ooooh! These little oranges, they sure are good!" I smiled, "Yeah, they are. They are really sweet!"

The difficulty with his location is that if I'm not the first car stopped at the light, he usually can't reach me for a tangible exchange because of his crutches. Many days I have something for him besides my smile, but I can't give it to him without stopping a whole line of cars at a green light. So one day, between Christmas and New Years, when there was little traffic and I felt particularly flush, I gave him a crisp $10 bill. I'd been saving it in my glove compartment for him. He looked shocked, shook his head, "Too much!" My eyes welling with tears, I said, "I see you every single day and many days I can't give you what I want to give you. This makes up for that." He smiled at me shyly, his tears matching my own.

As I turned the corner and drove toward my office, I realized the truth in his sign. Contact with a person so humbled as to broadcast his need, to stand out in the freezing temperatures and precipitation, leaning against a cold guardrail with his crutches, to ask his fellow humans for anything they can and will share - I am blessed to be reminded of our shared humanity.

Anything is a blessing.

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Important Stuff

Twenty minutes. I'll be bold and say that you can't afford not to spend this twenty minutes. Maybe that sounds melodramatic, but this is one of those things that feels Important.

Maybe you don't want to watch it. Maybe you say to yourself, "But I like not knowing. If I don't know, I'm absolved of my participation." Or you say, "Look, I know, but I have a XYZ factors in my life that require me to live the way that I do." Or maybe you say, "I already know. And I live frugally and consciously and watching this is unnecessary."

But this is Important Stuff. Seriously seriously important stuff. And even the most examined life can use a boost, a reminder, a tool to share with others, perhaps. I'll embed a teaser below, but more importantly, go spend twenty minutes watching or listening to the film The Story of Stuff. Let a kid watch it. In fact, please, encourage your kid to watch it. Important Stuff.

Wind

Things can and do blow away when the wind blows.

It picks up, sometimes slowly at first, and builds, flicking around, rustling, crescendo, quicker now, and whips things from where they were. Or maybe where they were was just a temporary resting spot, in that metaphysical sort of way that life can take. Maybe those dreams, those possibilities, that DreamedLife, was waiting for the wind to take it to the next place, leaving space behind.

To say that death and loss are parts of the life cycle is obvious. However true, the actual experience of LifeLoss, or LifeTransformation, is something else. Something the body knows. The physical. The flesh.

Strong winds tonight; a lot of change. And also a strong intention toward blessedness and gratitude and spirit and Aliveness. The joy of Life punctuated by Loss. Letting go. Life passage.

* * *

Writing in this semi-veiled diarist (diarrhea-ist?) fashion, yet ever-conscious of the privacy of those around me, can be slightly challenging when something really huge is happening in my immediate domestic proximity.

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Bubbles

J: I'm leaving for Wisconsin on the 22nd, the morning of that dark solstice day. I get synced up, embarking on cosmically significant dates.

me: The time of solstice is actually tonight at 10:08 pm PST, making last night the longest night of the year and today the shortest day. Longer days and shorter nights from here on out - hooray for the return of light!
(pause)
me: Um. . . . Well. I'm sure your leaving for Wisconsin on the 22nd can still be auspicious, though. It's the second-shortest day.

Safe travels!

Bright Solstice Blessings!

Pondering . . .

. . . how these fit together:

Actions speak louder than words.


The pen is mightier than the sword.

More on this later.

Food, Health, & Self-Love

This post is rambly. And it's essentially just a reposting of my comment on Chicory's post, linked below. It's in response to three posts that clearly had a strong impression on me: Chicory's Not Giving Up, Something Other Than That at An Accident of Hope; M. Leblanc's Shapely Prose Nails It Again at Bitch PhD; and Kate Harding's The Fantasy of Being Thin at Shapely Prose, the post about which the first two refer.

I am glad to have been reading about self acceptance, fat acceptance, about body image, about health. Glad to be thinking/feeling it. Glad on a lot of levels and for a lot of reasons. Introspection, shame, denial, sorrow, regret, internalized beliefs — lots of stuff going on in my brain and heart. There are lots of things to unpack.

A few years ago, I became a raw vegan. I blogged briefly about my first raw Thanksgiving, my parents' reaction, and a mishmash of links and a video here. A number of factors have reduced my raw intake since then and I’m hardly raw at all anymore. During the summer months my intake of raw food increases dramatically. But you know what keeps me from “doing” the nearly-all-raw thing again? Well, it’s a couple things.

1. I became an annoying proselytizer, despite my best efforts not to be that person and despite disclaimers that I wasn't being that person, erstwhile emailing websites and personal testimonials willy nilly. How grossly annoying.

2. Other people’s reactions to the supposed dangers and how unhealthy it was and how I was buying into a myth of being skinny=being healthy. And/or people saying, “But Moss you look great! Those raw vegans are too skinny! You don’t need to do that!” as if the only reason to eat predominantly fresh, living food is because I don’t like the way I look. That food choice affects how I FEEL seemed so unreasonable it was never considered as the reason I was making my decisions.

>>2.a. Social interactions became very very difficult and awkward and I found myself either coming off as having an eating disorder because I wouldn’t eat anything I was offered or seeming to be a snob who was too good for what food was available.

And you know what? That’s just bullshit. It’s bullshit that 1. I won’t take control of my own propensity to proselytize and 2. that I would seriously let other people affect such a fundamental and personal decision like what to put in my body.

It’s especially bullshit because *I really REALLY like the way I feel when I eat raw vegan food.* I feel better than I have EVER felt in my life (which has led to that #1 proselytizing problem, but that’s not insurmountable if I just get a fucking grip already and remember that what feels good for ME and what works for MY life is just that - MINE).

I won’t even get into what I weighed or my size at different points in time, because those numbers on the scale or on the tags of my clothes are not the measure. The measure is how I feel, and that is incredibly subjective and not readily quantified to anyone outside my own flesh.

What most struck home for me about Chicory's post and about Kate’s original post, was that self-acceptance is so much deeper and more profound and perhaps more difficult than “just” body issues. This new life I’ve created in my new home in a new state has provided me ample opportunity to really look close and hard at who I am, who I think I am, who I project myself to be, and who I would really like to be. Working that shit out might be a lifetime project, but it’s one that I’m finally willing to tackle.

Is thinking/feeling/acknowledging the first steps toward action? I sure hope so.

Wimmin

XX1 to XX2, frustrated by trouble with her husband and anticipating going to work at a new office: Can't wait to meet these fifteen attorneys - most of them are men. I wonder which one I'll be f*ckin.

XX2: Men are so stupid. Our husbands treat us like shit, but they don't know that we can always f*ck around if we want to. We're the ones with the power.

XX1, nodding: Damn straight.

Me, listening in, picking my chin up off the floor.

There are real world scenarios for which Gender Studies could never adequately prepare me.

My Brain Turns WhichWise?

What was most astounding to me about yesterday's rotating image was that when C showed me, we were both looking at the same thing, and seeing her turn in different directions.

That was really cool. The nipples are also a nice touch.

(And see this science-y post for more info about the whole thing.)

Diff'rent Strokes

I'm a pluralistic kind of person, in case that isn't obvious. As a pluralistic sort, I have no problem with people who want to have kids. I do have a problem when people with kids think that everyone else should have them too. Yeah, I hear you when you say that having kids is the best thing in your life. I get that. Or at least I see that it brings you meaning.

But I see this image I think, "Mmm hmmm. Deciding not to have kids is the right decision for me." Not for you, but for me. It's all about me. Me me me me me.

Which might have something to do with my lack of desire to dedicate my life to a child . . . ? Sure. But at least I'm honest about that fact. What fact? That it's all about me.

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