pronoia

RBOC: Holiday Edition

• Yesterday was Practically Perfect In Every Way: breakfast out, followed by coffee-shop time (Ms. P studying, me writing holiday cards), a quick lunch, collaging time, the end of a movie, tarot reading, and sex. Does it get better than that?
• I'm out of sorts today because the power went off and on several times last night, making something in our house beep -- which made Gracie freaked, drooly, and in need of snuggles. Not only that, but she took over my pillow. All of which means I got much less sleep than I needed or wanted.
• The boiler is out at church, which means my not-enough-sleep grouch was augmented by cold-for-hours whine. When we got home I added a sweater, turned up the heat, and made myself tea. It won't fix the lack of sleep, but it will fix the cold.
• Thanksgiving with two close friends is just perfect -- it's enough to be festive without being overwhelming in any way.
• Four days off of work, as much as I love my job, has been heavenly. I've installed the new printer, made the external hard drive my bitch (seriously, those instructions were worse than useless), and done metric tons of laundry. That all of that got done alongside collaging and meditation and reading and journaling? Heavenly.

All the Queers are White, All the Blacks are Straight; or, Seriously? We're Still Falling For This Nonsense?

It's taken me a while to recover from the news about Proposition 8. While I know that the march of progress will continue, it's hard to be the ones whose lives and relationships hang in the balance in the meantime.

And I'm pretty disturbed by the turn the conversation around Prop 8 has taken -- blaming people of color and in particular Black people for its passing. The argument seems to be that the extra people-of-color turnout for Obama is about the same as the margin of victory -- therefore, it's their fault.

This argument is specious on so many levels, not the least of which is that A HUGE PROPORTION OF WHITE VOTERS HAD TO VOTE FOR IT TO PASS BEFORE THESE "NEW" VOTERS WOULD HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE. In fact, FiveThirtyEight.com has a lovely rebuttal of the blame game, pointing out that if California's electorate had been the same as it was in 2004, the measure would have passed with an even greater margin.

But do we then have news stories arguing that white people are homophobic? No, we don't. And we don't because we don't ever assume that white people do anything as a block, but we do assume that people of color are homogenous. Does the news media stop to think about the fact that there are people of color who are also queer? Or that many people of color are highly progressive, while many white people are very, very, very conservative? Apparently not.

One of the things stories like this accomplishes is to further balkanize different identity groups. Let me be clear: white-identified/begun equity movements have often brought such balkanization upon ourselves by assuming that white experience constituted the whole of the movement. Just look at the history of feminism and the ways it excluded the experience of women of color as well as queers. LGBT struggles have often done the same thing: assumed that white (often male) experience was the "norm" and marginalized everything else.

But moments like blaming minorities for the passage of Proposition 8 only reinforce such division and hatred. What they really do is suggest that there's only room for one (non-male, non-white, non-straight, non-rich) identity group at the table at any one time -- and so we have to fight each other to be that chosen group.

Resist this. Resist the idea that we are in competition, that justice for one group necessarily means injustice for another. Resist the idea that the groups are themselves separate and homogenous, that we don't all overlap each other in so many ways.

Stories like this, they're business as usual. While I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe they're deliberate, they participate in an age-old consolidation of power that keeps those out of power unbalanced, disconnected, and squabbling.

There is room for all of us at the table. All of us. One day. But we have to stop falling for the idea that we're not all in this together.

And a shoutout to my white, queer friends: examine your own racism in this. Seriously.

But also

Despite all of my optimism and elation about the presidential election and what that means for our country, I'm also mired in despair: California voters passed proposition 8 amending their constitution to ban gay marriage.

Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida also passed gay marriage bans, but when a state that already won't let me get married says, essentially, "and we mean it!", well, I just want to give them the finger.

But California is different. In California, it was legal for a brief, shining moment. And thousands -- tens of thousands -- of people who were married just yesterday woke up today not-married -- becauase bigots decided we can't play their reindeer games.

If you're married, if you're legally married, can you imagine what that must be like?

Today my heart is full and broken, both at the same time.

A New Day

I never blogged about politics, mostly because I'm sure all of you know without my having to say it who this queer girl was voting for, but also because if you were undecided, you wouldn't be looking to me to help you out.

But yesterday I woke up to a country that had never elected anyone but white men to our highest office, and I went to bed in a country that has a Black man as our President-Elect. I woke up today in a country where more people can see themselves reflected in the halls of power. I woke up today in a country that did more than pay lip service to the ideals of equality.

This will not, as some of my friends are saying, magically make everything else different. Partisan politics still abound, religious fundamentalism and racism and classism and sexism and ableism and all the other isms are still putting limits on what people can become, and we've still got to find ways to address the economy and the wars and many other things. But this is a step, a change, and whatever happens next, this happened. We were there. We remember when.

Sabbatical

I'm doing something radical: I decided on Friday to take a two-month sabbatical from my social life. I'm going to the things that are already planned (two dinners, an election-night hangout, two trips to GradSchoolTown to see the in-laws, and two holidays), but I'm making no new plans and not seeing anyone until 12th Night.

Instead, I'm clearing space for all of the things I want to have in my life but don't: deep thinking about and talking about race and adoption and ethics; manifested creativity; time with myself and my own brain and soul; puttering about my house. For once I want to be the center of my own life, my own first concern.

I realized that, when we moved here, we didn't just move into already-existing relationships; because of Ms. P's depression and R's divorce, I showed up here necessarily other-directed, and my life in this place unfolded from that beginning. I don't regret it; I'm glad I was able to be there for both of them. I'm glad we already had people here we knew and loved and wanted to spend time with. But now it's time to reclaim my own time as an invaluable resource.

I don't know if it's growing older or if it's the spiritual work I've been doing or if it's some planetary alignment, but I'm experiencing right now the preciousness of my time -- how little of it any of us really have in this life. I want to spend it wisely, I want to come out of it pleased with what I've made of my days.

Trying to carve out space hasn't worked. One of the blessings of our life here is that we have so many people who love us and want to spend time with us. But it's also like being pecked to death by ducks. Dinner here, dinner there, brunch here, coffee there -- and very little time for myself, in the end. And so the more radical version of things is where I've landed. I'm sure it won't be popular -- but I also know this is necessary to decouple myself from other people's expectations and desires. We'll all live through the experience.

There are so many layers here -- about growing up female and trained to judge my worth by how many other people wanted me, about prioritizing the internal over the external, about negotiating the kind of life I want to be living, about balancing the go-go-go of the city and of modern life with the dappled slowness of my soul. I'm looking forward to seeing them unfold.

The Art of Disappearing
by Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.