Today's Harvest

Two pieces written without prompt, waiting at a table with one or two others for the teacher to arrive:

It wasn't supposed to rain today, and I dressed accordingly. But it rained while I was stuffing envelopes at the SPCA this afternoon. My first clue was that the patio was wet when I left the building. Then the water drops on my car and the dry area underneath it confirmed the diagnosis.

It's odd that I didn't notice the rain while inside the building, since there were windows near where we sat, and the room was fairly quiet. But none of us heard the rain - or at least commented on it aloud.

It sure snuck up on me. And then the rain came again, only for a minute or two, as I parked the car at home. But then it very kindly stopped so I could stay dry on my way into the house. Most obliging of it.
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The clock ticks steadily. It sounds like a tin soldier marching. Melodies form in my mind to keep time with it. My teeth try to tap in time with it. I think of meditation and the passage of time. Raindrops and tick-tocks blend together in my mind, and I wonder if there's a leak in the building. Chinese water torture comes to mind, but so far the sound is inoffensive.

I'm sitting here with Beth, and, although neither of us was able to write at home, here we are putting pen to paper - in the absence of our teacher - because this is the time and place for our writing class, and because two of us together have many times the creative energy of one.
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Then we came up with our own prompt about the relationship between sleeping with women and being a lesbian:

Being a lesbian does not require an active love life. Being with a man is never going to be a possibility for me, no matter how long I go without a woman in my life. Being a lesbian is who I am, not what I'm doing.

Not only is it the fact that women turn me on and men don't, but it's also that I've turned my back on the whole female mystique - dresses and make-up and high heels, and seeking to please the male gaze and to generally be subordinate and dependent.

Now I know that there is such a thing as a straight feminist, so the terms lesbian and feminist, although they overlap considerably, are not synonymous. But for me, a lot of my feminism preceded becoming aware of my lesbianism, which then made a lot of sense once I knew. And for me, feminism implies having no need for men, even for sex. On the other hand, men come in handy when I have something heavy to move.

So, anyway, my current lack of a sexual partner does not undermine my lesbian identity at all.
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Then the teacher arrived, and gave us the prompt to write something dangerous.

What would be very dangerous would be to reverse the tilt in the playing field that causes money to flow towards the wealthy few and away from everyone else. We need to change the tax law so that investment income is taxed at twice the rate of wages. We need to shrink the amount that is exempt from estate tax and level at least a 50% tax on the first tier of estates, and higher rates as they get bigger.

And we need to put those tax revenues back into the social safety net: universal healthcare, social security, highways and bridges, day care, free public education through grad school, all the stuff that made this country great.

Even the oligarchs are starting to realize that they can't make money from selling products if no one else has money to spend on them. Honestly, folks, student loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy? It's a formula to create a permanent underclass. Everybody who works full time deserves a living wage. Everybody.

Walmart would still be profitable if it paid a living wage to full-time employees. The family should be ashamed of having employees who qualify for food stamps. Are they some kind of royalty, to be lording over serfs by divine right? Something is very wrong with America.