40 years on 4/4

I've recently discovered Blue Oregon and would like to point out a post by Chip Shields: Wages and War - the King Speeches You Won't Hear Today.

My favorite quote from the video clip below? "I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and attack it as such."



Noticing how much these issues are intertwined is imperative if we are to truly find and make change. Forty-plus years later, it's still true.

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.

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.

. . .

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.

Passage

In this part of the world, the agricultural year is ending and Death, a necessary element of Life, predominates as growing things roll into fallow time before life returns in the spring. The other night, I described to C how my pagan practice has changed over the years, and now I don't engage in much ritual or pageantry, but rather I simply feel the seasons, the cycles, the shifts as energy mutates and transforms. I honor it quietly, feel it deeply.

Last night my grandfather took passage from what we know of this life. I am profoundly relieved. Yesterday was quite awful, as I felt him dying all day, and felt his children's pain in watching their father die. Although I am nearly 800 miles away from where it took place, the energy of the events surrounded me.

Today I have a sense of peace and am glad that he has taken passage into the Mystery. Grandpa frequently referred to death as graduation, that one completes this life and moves ahead to the next thing. Though much of my family and I may differ in how we conceive of what happens after death, I am comfortable with the graduation analogy. He completed his time in the form in which I was blessed to know and experience his spirit.

My love for him is intense and honoring his life and celebrating his passage feels highly appropriate during this liminal time in the solar year, as light fades and solstice begins its approach.

Rites... updated ... and updated again.

Before I moved away from the only state I had ever lived, I made a difficult but deliberate decision. I did not make the 12-hour trip to see my grandfather. I wanted to remember him how he was during my previous visit, about a year before. I knew I might live to regret that decision, and I didn't make it lightly.

About an hour ago, I was told that Grandpa is en route to Salt Lake City to undergo surgery after taking a fall. More details as they become available. **Update: he broke his hip, had surgery, developed pneumonia, is now doing better, and I've talked to him on the phone.**

He's worked so bloody hard his whole life. First as a miner, then as his town's garbage collector, then as a thoughtful and supportive grandfather to his fifteen living grandchildren, many of whom had no other grandparents except for him. He would say to me fondly, "You were the first one to call me grandpa."

During my tearful call to TW, she offered to take him flowers at the hospital tomorrow. Her angelic presence and willingness to be at his bedside in my stead deepens my devotion to her. That's what's so wondrously surprising - that my devotion could grow any deeper than it already was.

**SECOND UPDATE: Just heard that he's suffered a stroke. As of yesterday he was doing much much better, was actually sitting up, eating solid food, coherent, and was being transferred to a rehab facility sooner than initially expected. Sometime during the night he had a stroke, his pneumonia is back with a vengeance, and his body is full of infection. If the antibiotics are going to work, we're told, they will do so within the first 24 hours. And so we wait. And I fight back tears at work while coping by writing this update.**

M-m-miners

Maybe I should make this a mining blog.

Because I was at work, after seeing this headline I had to consciously set out of my head the complex layers of gold, consumption, labor, and (in)justice. We're assured that the trapped miners have water and the mine is well-ventilated and that no one has been hurt so far. And maybe I'm just playing into the trapped-miner-sexy-media factor. But this stuff really strikes me. Strikes me deeply, as I've discussed at length here and here.

I guess it's like looking at a bad accident. Or listening to Neil Diamond. Sometimes you just can't help yourself.

Or more accurately, I can't help myself.

Trapped in Earth-Tunnels

Along with my father, I have a tendency to pay close attention to mine accidents, those inevitable consequences of digging hundreds of feet into the earth and putting humans there to blast and gather and cut away stone. I generally ignored the news this week as I settled into PDX and studied for the exam I took yesterday. Last night on the BBC news service I read about two US mine accidents and my belly rolled over.

No one in my family works underground anymore. But my connection to mining persists; I cannot shake free from the prickling awareness of what happens in the heartstone of Gaia, where we've tunneled and taken. Don't misunderstand by my word usage that I am vehemently opposed to mining. What would be the point of such opposition? I am acutely aware of why people work in mining and logging and for defense contractors. The food that fueled my lengthening limbs, the house that sheltered me, the books that expanded my sharpening mind - these were all acquired by the modest salaries derived from work I find politically objectionable.

But politics and personal family dynamics are a realm requiring deliberate navigation. How do I hold these seemingly disparate parts of myself? Will I continually mourn for unknown miners, trapped by tons of rock and soil, oxygen running low? Is that mourning a reflection of the sadness I feel toward the limited opportunities available to my dad and granddad? Grandpa's back was broken in a uranium mining accident in 1965, a cave-in that also crushed my father's 15-year-old shoulder. Dad's neck was broken in 1978 in a copper mine accident, and after recovering he went back to the mines as foreman. After Anac*nda shut down its Utah operation in 1983, he sought whatever mining work was available. Hearing of workers dying in a mineshaft fire, he'd rush to the mine to apply, knowing there were now openings. After being unable to secure underground work, as new veins and cheaper labor were harvested in South America, he moved on to defense contractor jobs, at Dugw*y Pr*ving Ground and then at Thi*kol. And how was my mother impacted by her husband's profession? How many times did she wonder if she'd see him again when he left for a graveyard shift as she put her small children to bed? How often did she expect to be a young widow?

There are things I recognize on a cellular level. Through my mother's body I recognize Oregon, the land here, as well as the proud hearts and minds of old-school loggers, who eschewed clearcutting and defended their work as promoting forest health. Through my father's body I recognize redrock desert, uranium dust, the smell of greasy manual labor, and the terror of being trapped in tunnels.

I wrote the following about a year and a half ago:

Sentimentality for the natural world could have easily overwhelmed me; gratefully, it did not. I am deeply connected to the western landscape in which I was raised and protecting the earth from abuse is a cherished personal value I hold. But sentimentality could never fully take hold because early on I realized that issues relating to natural resource acquisition and preservation of wild spaces are complex and require creative methods to find common ground.

My maternal grandfather was born in an Oregon logging camp, the son of a crew foreman. Before he died, my family took him to the forest areas of his childhood; Grandpa was shocked by the clear-cutting we found when venturing off the main roads. He recounted stories of his father covertly bringing forestry students to his camp, against the wishes of the company bosses, to advise the crew on healthier logging techniques. I thought about that story a lot on the drive back to Utah, realizing that my great-grandfather, who made his living from the forest, had a fervent desire not to see it destroyed.

While my mother’s family subsisted on the logging of trees, my father’s family endured by tunneling through the earth. My father and maternal grandfather worked in uranium mines in southeastern Utah, their very livelihood reliant upon a nuclear industry with undisclosed health and ecological consequences. I understand all too well why and how economic survival takes precedence, even in the face of extreme risk and physical injury.

In my family, balancing idealism and pragmatism was a necessity, not a luxury. As a child, I witnessed and participated in a working-class struggle for survival. Education was my ticket out of that cycle of hardship. However, I did not anticipate that education would create such an intense disconnection from my family. As my education and life experience grew, so too did my perceived sense of alienation from my upbringing. My beliefs have deviated from my family's, which has provided me the unique opportunity to recognize the validity and importance of a variety of perspectives and eschew ineffective dogmatic approaches.

* * *

I'll probably still continue to follow the progress in the mines. I can't seem to help myself. The simultaneous integration and untangling of emotion and worldview and cellular knowing is a lifetime journey; not something I expect will be quickly resolved. And for the families of those trapped, those praying for oxygen to reach their loved ones - I pray with you, eyes welling with tears. My body remembers.

Farewell (Faring Well)

The choppy and disoriented tone of the last few posts may persist as I settle into the first Big Move of my life. Abrupt, jerky movements have manifested as nasty scrapes and bruises all over the lower half of my body from stumbles and lurches.

Remember to breathe, Moss.

The See-Ya-Later Party was beyond words. The love I felt, the bright eyes and tight heart-hugs, the laughter, the touching things people wrote in my self-proclaimed "SLC YearsBook." And tonight I just saw some incredibly beautiful and heartfelt writing by Chicory about moi and feeling our friendship in my core.

***

Now I'm sitting amongst boxes, filled with the knowledge that stuff, in general, is just superfluous anyway. Although toothbrushes are nice.

Flowing to the Ocean

After her unexpected passing eighteen months ago, I wrote about the beautiful MissyB and posted one of her art pieces. One of the ways those who love Missy stay connected is through this tribe group. In that group we post memories and things that remind us of Missy. V posted a chant that Missy taught her and someone else linked to the YouTube video of Missy singing it at a show back in 2003. V later posted an extended version of the song to the thread.

At the Salt Lake ceremony honoring and celebrating Missy's life, people created squares that were made into a quilt. I added the phrase "flowing to the ocean" on a raindrop/teardrop because that song always gives me chills, kept running through my head that day, and felt appropriate. At the time, I didn't even know if Missy knew that song, but clearly she did. (Be patient, you can hear her about 2 minutes into the clip.)

Compilation of different extended versions:
We all come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return,
Like a drop of rain
Flowing to the ocean.

Hoof and horn, Hoof and horn
All that dies shall be reborn
Fire and rain, Fire and rain
All that dies shall live again

(Chorus)

Air and earth, Air and earth
All that dies shall have new birth
Corn and grain, Corn and grain
All that falls shall rise again

(Chorus)

Sage and Crone, Sage and Crone,
Wisdom's gift shall be our own.
Crone and Sage, Crone and Sage,
Wisdom is the gift of age.

Chorus:
We all come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return,
Like a drop of rain
Flowing to the ocean.

Minimizing

B and I went through the last of the storage, sifting through material remains from our early years together. Like Cassie's first chew toy and the time capsule we made in 2000. We were left wondering about our state of mind based on the random shit we included. There were more than a few giggles at tweaker craft projects given to us by family members and therefore elevated to maybe-oughta-keep-but-what-the-hell status.

Two filing cabinets are now on the curb for neighborhood cleanup. I used one cabinet as a sticker canvas. The heart sticker in the lower left is my favorite.

Flag Memory

Since I couldn't be at the Rainbow Gathering, with proximate participation in peace prayers, I stayed at home Wednesday and cuddled with my dog, giving her regular doses of Rescue Remedy to calm her fireworks freakout.

After letting the Independence Day vibrations settle for a day or two, I decided not to let the day go unacknowledged. But how? Then I remembered this . . .

. . . which I stole from J in LA's tribe page. His explanation:

I actually sewed the flag onto this shirt in college, when i still thought the USA was a cool place (like in the way that peter fonda was pro USA in easy rider).

then i accidentally ripped the flag. i put the shirt in the closet for years, thinking (a) i don't want to wear a flag around and (b) it looks retarded because it's ripped. then i realized i could make a statement with it. and voila. people immediately responded.

but that was two years ago. i don't know if we can still fix it...

** ** **

My disillusionment waxes and wanes in cycles. Some days I feel hopeful and optimistic. Others not so much. My dad is a sentimental veteran who persists in reminding me that I have no clue how lucky I am to live in this country. I don't think I'm unlucky. I just think we can do better. If we can't do better, then I'm especially disillusioned.

I was born post-Watergate. The first president I remember was a memory-challenged actor who spoke in passive voice to avoid accountability ("mistakes were made"). The first senate hearings I remember were Oliver North in his medal-strewn uniform. Followed by Clarence Thomas and an uneasy conversation about race, gender, power. I remember a videogame-esque war when I was in junior high. Didn't it last but a week or two? Oh, and the US didn't leave Saudi Arabia like we said we would? Hmmm. A blue dress and a blowjob splashed the headlines during my (not so) formative adolescence. Wasn't there more to the Clinton administration than that . . . ? I'm not sure. Maybe the whole country was inhaling at the time. The Supreme Court's selection of the Executive Branch in 2000, manipulation of emotion post-9/11, endless war . . . and people wonder why my generation is jaded. And it's interesting to me that I don't associate the flag with the country, but with politics. And yes, to me the two are distinct.

That's enough. Right now, I have to study for the bar.