Wanted: One Lazy Day

The weather seems perfect for it. I've got another half an hour of Arwulf to go, and a little bit more smoothie in the blender, and coffee. But boy is this place a wreck. For starters, I need to spend more time in the kitchen than it takes to make coffee. 10 minutes of cleaning there but scratches the surface. Merely makes a gesture in its direction. Hardly touches it at all. Leaves improvements so slight as to be indistinguishable.

There's other stuff to do, too. Stuff outside. Stuff in the world of errands and chores and research. But I'm going to give recovery a little while longer, at least, if not all day.

- + - + -

Last night I ventured to the world of the oddly upper-middle-crusty conventional and closeted. I guess you could say it was a vacation, of sorts. It was a potluck, but they'd never call it a potluck. First thing my buddy said to me when we got back in the car, and the long-restrained laughter subsided, was how glad she was, knowing what the gathering turned out to be like, that she'd gone along, so I wouldn't have to have been through that alone.

Don't know whether to bother sharing details of clashing world views here. It's kind of like a long, detailed dream that way--- seems like you have to write an awful lot to get it all out. I suppose I could boil it down to a few representational moments, but then again, maybe not; the effect of the accumulation of those details has something to do with the extent of the "ugh" of it.

In the smoky debriefing afterwards, back in town, we talked of alienation, and attitudes toward alienation, and degrees of questioning and acceptance, and how queerness and feminism and fat fit in to those, and class and race and education, and the sliver of people among whom such discussion is welcome. I've also been thinking of having heard more stories illustrating in jaw-dropping detail how very very sucky my friend's youth was. And then a little of the FestiFools, and the breathing room there is among people who make and like things thoroughly nonutilitarian like gigantic street puppets vs. people who are confused by the very concept, "lesbian"s or not.

By a certain age, that things suck mightily, and that there is such great suckage--- these concepts form a kind of given, a foundation, for pretty much everybody who's paying attention in ways I seem to consider essential. Then there's what you're going to do, how you're going to be, in the face of that. What comes next. That's where I am, and want to be, and hope to continue to live, as much as I can manage. That's where my fellows are. That foundation of the suckage, though, must be there, cuz it is there. Knowing it is informs everything. It enables feeling. Feeling for real; feeling intensely; feeling beyond fear. You don't have to touch your bare feet to it too often, and with luck maybe you'll get some good long stretches of not being directly in touch with it, and there's maybe even something about transcending it, but it's never not there. A thought once thought cannot be unthought. That's one of those curses that's even more a blessing.

And no, I didn't go on like this at the dinner party. I was mostly a good girl. Except that a really good girl would have called out some bitches on their racist bullshit. (For instance.) Or their Ugly-American presumptuousness, or their some people shouldn't be allowed to be naked, or their incredulity that (I'm not making this up) their overstuffed SUV isn't welcome absolutely everywhere, or their directly-stated inability to conceive of a value system outside of what's embodied by the suburban castle. But boy do they understand keeping it secret that they're eating pussy. It goes without saying that you wouldn't want something like that to get around.

So much opportunity is wasted on the privileged.

- + - + -

This coming week is the week of my local film festival. I've finally broken down and arranged for a pass to the whole thing. It's about time. :)

Wanted: One Lazy Day

The weather seems perfect for it. I've got another half an hour of Arwulf to go, and a little bit more smoothie in the blender, and coffee. But boy is this place a wreck. For starters, I need to spend more time in the kitchen than it takes to make coffee. 10 minutes of cleaning there but scratches the surface. Merely makes a gesture in its direction. Hardly touches it at all. Leaves improvements so slight as to be indistinguishable.

There's other stuff to do, too. Stuff outside. Stuff in the world of errands and chores and research. But I'm going to give recovery a little while longer, at least, if not all day.

- + - + -

Last night I ventured to the world of the oddly upper-middle-crusty conventional and closeted. I guess you could say it was a vacation, of sorts. It was a potluck, but they'd never call it a potluck. First thing my buddy said to me when we got back in the car, and the long-restrained laughter subsided, was how glad she was, knowing what the gathering turned out to be like, that she'd gone along, so I wouldn't have to have been through that alone.

Don't know whether to bother sharing details of clashing world views here. It's kind of like a long, detailed dream that way--- seems like you have to write an awful lot to get it all out. I suppose I could boil it down to a few representational moments, but then again, maybe not; the effect of the accumulation of those details has something to do with the extent of the "ugh" of it.

In the smoky debriefing afterwards, back in town, we talked of alienation, and attitudes toward alienation, and degrees of questioning and acceptance, and how queerness and feminism and fat fit in to those, and class and race and education, and the sliver of people among whom such discussion is welcome. I've also been thinking of having heard more stories illustrating in jaw-dropping detail how very very sucky my friend's youth was. And then a little of the FestiFools, and the breathing room there is among people who make and like things thoroughly nonutilitarian like gigantic street puppets vs. people who are confused by the very concept, "lesbian"s or not.

By a certain age, that things suck mightily, and that there is such great suckage--- these concepts form a kind of given, a foundation, for pretty much everybody who's paying attention in ways I seem to consider essential. Then there's what you're going to do, how you're going to be, in the face of that. What comes next. That's where I am, and want to be, and hope to continue to live, as much as I can manage. That's where my fellows are. That foundation of the suckage, though, must be there, cuz it is there. Knowing it is informs everything. It enables feeling. Feeling for real; feeling intensely; feeling beyond fear. You don't have to touch your bare feet to it too often, and with luck maybe you'll get some good long stretches of not being directly in touch with it, and there's maybe even something about transcending it, but it's never not there. A thought once thought cannot be unthought. That's one of those curses that's even more a blessing.

And no, I didn't go on like this at the dinner party. I was mostly a good girl. Except that a really good girl would have called out some bitches on their racist bullshit. (For instance.) Or their Ugly-American presumptuousness, or their some people shouldn't be allowed to be naked, or their incredulity that (I'm not making this up) their overstuffed SUV isn't welcome absolutely everywhere, or their directly-stated inability to conceive of a value system outside of what's embodied by the suburban castle. But boy do they understand keeping it secret that they're eating pussy. It goes without saying that you wouldn't want something like that to get around.

So much opportunity is wasted on the privileged.

- + - + -

This coming week is the week of my local film festival. I've finally broken down and arranged for a pass to the whole thing. It's about time. :)