I just came home from a bad night a bad week a bad year so far, who am I kidding? Stopped at the bar at the corner before I came back because I had no booze in the house and it seemed wise to take the edge off all the pistons misfiring–the fight I had tonight, the hot-hot-hot flamenco to which I bore witness, the revelation that my burning love for someone had been a tiny subplot in his burning love for someone else. So yes tequila tequila before entering my house. (Don’t want to scare Grace.) Continue Reading →
Archive | Feminist Matters
This Is Really Happening
Do you hate when people tell you about their dreams? I don’t. I like hearing about them, and I like sharing mine. In this messed-up world, it’s the only time we talk about the divine unconscious, which is why dreams often offer an ideal entry point to my Ruby Intuition sessions. Goddess knows dreams reveal all.
Last night: A dream of tiny vicerous* teeth embedded in the diamond ring he once gave me; the nightmares always nightmares of other people owning my body because i am pregnant. i did not wish either state, either title. I did not wish to bear young nor be a mother. Nor did I wish to wed nor be a wife. Wife and mother, mother and wife: no thank you. I wished for writer, actor, woman of the world. And i knew by age 20 that it was a fancy of the wealthy–a fancy of the fancy, if you will–to believe that women did not have to choose …men butch people really didn’t but that’s because even in 2018 they were the exception to a golden rule if they made parenting their raison d’être. The miracle was they could choose at all and from an early age i knew my choice but did not own it until I was nearly the age I am as i write this. you are not living up to this calling, whisper the voices as i drift to the surface of consciousness. you must be of service not just nervous….
I wake with dread.
*a word my unconscious manufactured meaning “viciously, viciferously visceral.”
Space Crone Sob Stories and Secret Shames
“Sally and Sara,” Milton Avery. 1947.
I wake with a Laurie Colwin quote flashing in my mind’s eye.
I’m always smartest when I first wake up. My ego’s still out of the picture and I’m open to the divine intelligence that supports us even when we don’t support ourselves.
So the Laurie Colwin quote: “There’s a difference between privacy and dignity but they look the same.” I don’t even have to think about why that quote is showing up now. I’ve been totally sequestered, and that line explains why. In short, I’m ashamed, and it’s easier to stay out of everyone’s eye while I feel this way.
In general, I’ve never given a huge shit what people think of me. I wasn’t out of grade school before I realized everyone’s too busy worrying about how they are being judged to judge anyone else. By my 30s I stopped taking self-esteem cues from other’s interest if I didn’t reciprocate it; the futility of all that hope and will just made me sad.
But I don’t like people feeling sorry for me.
Sympathy to my mind is inherently distancing. Empathy I can bear; empathy is what I bear. But I don’t offer sympathy, ever, and I don’t appreciate being on the receiving end of it. Sympathy is just so condescending. It says: I see you in that hole and god knows I wouldn’t want to be in it so I feel bad that you are. Empathy says: I’m in that hole until you climb out, and I’ll love you no matter where you are. Continue Reading →