Friday, October 24, 2014

A List Poem

Written in Janell's class last Monday:

My Longest Plane Trip So Far

Packing proceeds smoothly,
I find everything I seek
after remembering everything I might need.
I am calm and optimistic --
no headache, no indigestion troubles me.

The airport shuttle comes
precisely when promised,
blue paint gleaming in the sun.

My bags nearly hop aboard themselves,
so eager do they seem to travel.
The ride to the airport is smooth,
nice women converse with me
and carsickness does not dare intrude.

My bag practically checks itself in,
and I proceed through security
in a meditative state.
After locating the gate,
I buy a book of sudoku
a bottle of water
sugarless gum
and a few snacks,
then hit a candy store or bakery
for some true indulgence.

I remember more than a dozen
cross-country flights in my youth,
starting when I was small enough
to sit in the aisle and sing to myself
while the stewardesses stepped over me.

The long flight unrolls at a stately pace,
classical music
followed by an adorable comedy,
followed by an acceptable meal.
Then I use alcohol
tranquilizers
and meditation
to get somewhere close to sleep.

When I swim up to consciousness,
scrape the sleepseed out of my eyes,
and look around the cabin,
I feel comaraderie with my fellow travelers.
That sound is the landing gear descending.
That was the flaps opening.
Bump, we're back on land.
Here I am in Auckland,
en route to Sydney.
Another, much shorter, flight to go today,
but nearly there.

Being a kid who commuted cross-country
really helped build my travel muscles
for today's marathon flight.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

My Performance Piece

This is what I delivered from memory at the Feminist Festival of Transformational Art. It's assembled from pieces I wrote for various Mothertongue scripts, for my synagogue's prayerbooks, for the heck of it, and for the festival itself:

Hi, there, my name is Dana.

I joined the Festival because I wanted people to laugh at my wit and recognize themselves in my foibles and trials.
I wanted to help the other performers realize their intentions.
And I wanted to hear what they have to say and learn from it.
____________________

So, here’s what I have to say. When I was little, I hated the color pink. It was too girly and feminine, and conflicted with my self-image as a tomboy. Blue was my favorite color then, the boys' color, the color of strength and action.

When I was in law school, a woman friend told me that pink blouses would look good with the blue clothes I usually wore. You know what; they do. Now I'm a fairly butch lesbian, so all of my pink blouses come from L.L. Bean, and my favorite one is plaid flannel.
________________

How did I become butch? It might have something to do with being raised by single men from when I was nine years old until age 15, first my widowed grandfather, and then my divorced Dad. When I was 15, Dad died, and my brother and I finally went to live with our mother.
___________________

Here are some things my mother said to me:

"When I'm alone, I'm in bad company."
"Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."
"Pray for potatoes and pick up the plow."
"They tell me I was a cuddly drunk."

"That poncho is ugly," the one I designed and made for myself out of fake fur.

When we first came to live with her, she said to us, “I figure you’re grown up enough, and I won't try to raise you. I’ll just make meals and write checks from the money your father left you.”

Many years later, she said: "I want you to complete the following sentence: Mother, I hate you because ..." I declined to respond, knowing that I wasn't ready to say, and she wasn't ready to hear, what might come up. My brother, not so canny, had replied - 'I don't hate you, but I don't love you either, since you weren't there while we were growing up.' After that, she never had a good word to say about him.
_____________

In light of that caliber of mothering, it makes sense that I’d be fond of flannel. I'm driven to seek softness to make up for my lack of cuddling as a child. In fact, I have quite a fetish for softness - for really soft sheets, towels, and T-shirts, for fuzzy plants and my cat's fur. My nearly irresistible urge to pat a crew cut - on a man or a woman - or to stroke velvet or fur that's being worn near me.

I also wonder about my thing for silver foxes. From my 30s, at least, I've had a soft spot for women with short silvery hair. So much so that my longest relationship was with a woman 15 years my senior. I'm probably still seeking the mothering that I missed as a child. But now I'm the one with short silvery hair. Hey, maybe I can be the mother that I've been looking for.

Getting back to my father, though, he never remarried after the divorce, but sometimes there was another man living in his house when my brother and I visited him. Only after his death did I learn that he was also gay. So, we never talked about his gayness or mine. Maybe it would have helped me with my lesbian identity. God knows, my years as a Christian didn’t help.

In fact, I’m still angry at the Christian Church because of the damage it did to my developing sexuality. As a little kid, I played doctor with my friends, male and female alike. I got crushes on my girlfriends in school, but it wasn’t until college that I had a full-fledged affair, with my roommate. So far, I knew my sexual activities should be kept secret—but I had no problem enjoying them.

Then, when I got involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, I was told that homosexual behavior is an abomination. OK, I thought. I was in love with God at the time, and it didn’t seem too much of a sacrifice to end the affair.

After moving to San Francisco, I started meeting gay Christians and Jews and envied their freedom to be both spiritual and sexual. But I couldn’t just pick up my sexuality where I left it. By rejecting my entire sexual being, I damaged it big time.
__________

For example, sometimes I “clutch” during sex. I start wondering if and when I’m going to have an orgasm, and then I shut down.

I think, “Am I going to come?” “What can I get her to do that would make me come?” “Could I ask for the vibrator without hurting her feelings?” or “How long before I can just get her to stop?”

Then I try to stop thinking at all, and maybe start up my mantra to help with the rapidly mounting anxiety. I want sex to be fun again.
______________

I was also left with body image issues:

Two different women look at me from the mirror. The one I see most often has a round face, a pasty complexion, and acne. Her expression is blank; she is plain. The other woman has cheekbones and a chin line. Her skin is clear and she looks wise and confident. She is attractive and I enjoy looking at her.

How can the women be so different? How can they both be me? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is the difference in my head rather than my face? Is it that how I feel about myself affects how I look? Or maybe I just look better at some times than others.
I don't know. But it would be nice if that attractive woman were the one I saw most often. 
_________

And I’m still working on other issues. I put off doing the things I need to do, and I do other things I know I’ll regret. In short, I’m at odds with myself. I have this committee inside my head, and not only does control shift wildly from one member to another, but sometimes it’s completely deadlocked.

So how do I kindly and gently, and with curiosity and humor, recognize all the recalcitrant parts of myself, and persuade us that we're all on the same team? That we'll accomplish more and be happier if we act together? Perfection ain’t gonna happen, but a little progress now and then would be nice.

I'd like to have compassion for myself when I get stuck in a painful place, instead of beating myself up about it. I'd like to remember that hope can return when I journal, meditate, take a walk, stretch.

Even if I just remember to breathe with awareness. Although each breath is a new one, I'm inhaling molecules that originated in the stars and have been breathed before by many, many people over the millenia since they were created.

Remembering these things helps me realize that I’m just another human being, no better and no worse than others. And that’s enough.
____________

So now I’m going to close with a hope of mine:

I want to write something with such beautiful images that reading it would lift anyone's heart, would give hope to the most despairing person, would bring a smile or a tear to any face. I want to write a picture so beautiful that it creates in all who read it a yearning to be better, a yearning to live in hope, and the recognition that this beauty is here and now, right here, right now.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Recent Writings

I got to do two writing sessions in the past week. Here are the better bits:

A good day tomorrow would begin with a good sleep tonight. My car won't get a parking ticket. My SFOP meeting will be productive, relaxed, and fun. The weather, or a friend, or the hand of the Goddess will draw me outside for air and exercise, and I'll find in myself a modicum of discipline, enough to get my chores done. And enough to do a little tai chi or yoga, to keep my body from seizing up. What I write in my journal will be pithy and gratifying. And the food I eat will be tasty, good for me, and easily digested.

______

Asked to write something about the flow of nature, I wrote:

Thinking about flow brings other people's poetry to mind. Nature and I interact like snapshots on postcards--fall colored trees, red mingling with green mixed with yellow. A sunset with that magenta shade of pink against the blue and white of clouds, some mysterious erection black and featureless beneath the sky.

Such moments of beauty prompt me to praise and thank their creator: good job on the sunset, God; that's quite nice.

What nature has done for me lately, though, is to make it so hot outside that I'm even less likely to go out than usual--which isn't much to begin with. Mouth-breathing to get enough air dries the inside of my mouth to dust in seconds, while my hair squishes against my sweaty scalp.

______

A thank-you letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren:

You are my heroine. I was watching you being interviewed by Rachel Maddow tonight and had to tear myself away to come here to write. But I comfort myself that the DVR is watching for me, so I can finish watching you when I get home.

You are so straight-forward, so honest, so candid about who you are fighting for - America's vanishing middle class. You clearly see and explain how the game has been rigged against us, and you have moved mountains to get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established. It was a major snub that the Republican Congresscritters wouldn't let you head the bureau, but their opposition backfired on them. Now you're a Senator, and are free to champion all manner of middle class causes.

Many of us would love to see you become President. I can't help believing that your good-hearted wisdom would be so refreshing for this country. Even if you were able to accomplish only a quarter of what you took on, we would be so much better off.

I admire your optimistic approach to stating your convictions, your hopefulness and absence of cynicism. Maybe you get grumpy and tired in private, but we'll probably never know for sure.

Thank you, Senator Warren, for what you have achieved so far and all the promise that you bear.

_____

I also wrote about a time I asked a teacher for help.

When I asked Corky for help, I was literally asking a teacher, because she teaches public speaking at SF State. I was also asking metaphorically, because her performance in Mothertongue Readers Theater so many years ago was so inspiring that I joined the group for a decade.

Many years after leaving Mothertongue, I joined a weekly brunch group that Corky also attended, and we resumed our friendship.

A few months ago, I was trying to construct an 8-10 minute monologue, using an assortment of pieces that I had written over the years - not just for Mothertongue but also for my synagogue's prayerbook and for this feminist festival of transformational arts that I was preparing to perform in.

I lack perspective on my own pieces, and asked Corky to come over and help me deal with them. She told me which pieces she found most powerful, reminding me of what I already knew - that the most idiosyncratic, revealing, and discomfiting pieces were where the juice was. She also helped me put them in a good theatrical order. And she made costume suggestions and lent me a lovely floral necktie to complete my ensemble.

I memorized my script, and performed it without memory gaps, to great acclaim.

My mentor, Corky, really came through for me, and I love her.