Chicago Sunday, and other stuff. Including H-bomb.

[fflo]

As I drove into the (windy) city yesterday morning I realized that there's only one person besides me in my entire known extended family who could be said to have liked big cities: my great aunt Louise, who left South Dakota for KC. Within the clan, such as it was, I may be more of a weirdo for loving a big city than for anything else.

So, yes, I did a one-day quickie yesterday to see upsidedownblue, here on the precipice of his soon-to-be quite-the-new life. (!!!) We had a fine meal, wandered about, and then saw Alison Bechdel present material from (and on the creative process involved in writing/drawing) Fun Home. She was sincere, open, direct, funny, humble, revealing---all kindsa good stuff. And present. Humanly present, through her talk & even when we got to the front of the book signing line, when she'd already been at it for quite a while. I was so ready for her to be on auto-pilot that it really threw me off to be met with the regard of her real gaze (sans the specs) and clear openness to connection; I found myself wishing later that I'd taken better advantage of the opportunity of exchanging a few words with her.

My question to her during the Q&A, having heard that she models herself as her characters (using the digital camera) for a visual guide for the panels (including in Dykes to Watch Out For), was whether she gets a fat sub model for shots involving fat characters. Cuz, you know, Jezanna ain't shaped like Alison. Seems she does, in fact---that is, she's had a fat friend do it, or has used photographs, cuz fat does sit on the body differently in different quantities. Her response was so matter-of-fact that (with her tone, and perhaps the fact that I was in a sort of feminist atmosphere?) it only later occurred to me that there had been a chance she would react in her answer to the charged social-context aspects of fat rather than to the simple factual body ones I was asking about.

It had been quite a while since I'd been in a women's bookstore. My mother and I looked into buying the 31st St. Bookstore in B'more, before it became a co-op, before it died. We were quite serious about it---bet you didn't know that, even those of you who've known me a while. Even looked into financing alternatives involving a D.C.-based women's bank, as I remember it.

Anyway, those lesbo-feminist first wavers who get kicked about so much nowadays for not having been "sex positive" (don't get me started) made some great places in those bookstores. I mean, I too scoffed at the Olivia Records records and tarot dream journal crystal pendant incense holders, and I rolled my eyes about plenty of what seemed sanctimonious in that sub-subculture, but I also got quite an education in those stores, without benefit of formal instruction, and in a way that the public library couldn't have come near providing. Plus there's something about older dykes and the way so many of them take/took themselves seriously. There's something about taking yourself seriously. I don't know how to say what I mean about this thing at the moment, but there's something about it I'm knocking around in my head---something that I recognize when I see it, and I like, and I wish to aspire to more. And yesterday I liked just being around some of those older dyke presumption-of-taking-self-seriously wimmin (sure, I wink with that spelling---and so do many of the first wavers, fer cryin' out loud).

And I may have to get militant on some asses next time I hear foremother crones maligned en masse for the now-stock evil they supposedly perpetuated about not cheering on everyone's specific sexual practices sufficiently---or, hell, about flat-out taking theoretical feminist positions that raised questions about power dynamics, in bed and out. It pisses me off to see that knee-jerk blanketing declaration about a whole universe of gutsy women who were daring about sex themselves---pisses me off in a way not unlike the way the HRC pissed me off in its early days, distancing itself from the fringe, the drag queens, the very folk who fought back at Stonewall and laid the path in so many other ways that that night of uprising was just symbolic of. I mean, have a little appreciation for the envelope pushers who went before, you know? At least give a nod to our debt before (or while, or after) pointing out where you disagree, or how they fell short, even very short, for you/us.

But I digress.

Gonna sit down with Fun Home in a little bit & savor it. I'm so glad I was introduced to it with the author's reading it to us.

She was very funny saying, deadpan and sincere, how she spends so much of her time/life thinking about herself. How that's what interests her most---along with "self" itself. It was vaguely-transgressively truthful, and undermining of the etiquette of self-abnegation. She'd responded to her long-ish introduction by commenting that she felt thoroughly contextualized, and that also got a pretty good laugh. It must be an odd business to be moving through the world with this version of her experience out there, and talking about it with strangers all around the country.

One thing that probably shouldn't have surprised me, but sure did, was that hearing/reading about (and looking at) her relationship with her father (which I'd known is central to the book) would get me to thinking about my relationship with mine. Duh! One of those surprises (I love) that are more surprising cuz they should be no surprise. I'm sure there'll be more resonating in that dept. (Bring it on, I say, perhaps foolishly...) I'm looking forward to more about butchiness and nelliness, too.

ANYway. Quite glad I decided to do the quickie trip. It was worth being tired today & not getting the trash/recycling/compostables out this morning & having to put off attending to the (now much less goldenroddy) garden & the other TCB stuff I'll fit in later this week.

On the way back I had a long conversation with T in Jersey.

Today there was a little more dyke drama to deal with. I'm beginning to see a new angle on some of that that's making me think maybe I need to get a tune-up on my manipulation detector as well as my automobile engine.

And, as I'm still always doing to one extent or another, I've been missing Holly. What??, you say? Well, it is while carrying, yes indeed, an ever-stronger sense of my own perspective, of the crack-up, of many of the many ways I'm so much better off, and of how the Holly I knew/miss/loved no longer exists (and, yes, I understand, may never have really existed). Of all that stuff. I imagine it makes some of you groan to see me say it, but (a) I spare you most of the time and (b) it's not a horrid painful achy thing any more, at least.

In fact I think it's become mostly a very good thing. I think I have reclaimed something of my own positive, happy experience with her, and I maybe even own it now. It may be mine. You could say that the hardest part of that whole business was the gaslighty aspect of all I had known being called into question so thoroughly that I just spun & spun, while she couldn't even keep a date to arrange for getting her shit, let alone actually talk to me about what happened. I had to go through a long, difficult process of imagining how that could be, and find a way to make sense of it in order to make some sense of the world. Having managed to do so has, among other things, and with the benefit of the passage of some serious time, given me back a good hunk of what I gained from/while being with her.

There's a version of mourning what's become of her that--- well, I still can't go there for long. It's so sad that thinking about it directly sucks me down into a very low place. That's what the weak-in-the-knees is from, I reckon now, shmizla---not fear; sadness. Big sadness, not exhaustively explored, as there was other stuff to work on, and as it comes with the danger of moving me to worrying about her: a place I must not go. ("She can take care of herself," I hear you say. "People like her always take care of themselves." Well, I don't know how well they do, by any quality-of-life meter I value---but you're fundamentally right, of course, and it's not my business to root for her any more anyway.)

Okay, okay. What's for dinner?

Comments

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

That was a marvelous rant in defense of Old Dykes! You should probably try not to write too many more like it if you happen to have any aversion to receiving sudden marriage proposals from me. I go for that sort of thing.

The missing Holly part was good, too. It sounds like the same sense in which I miss Christine, and I probably always will miss Christine, even though at the same time that I miss her, I also still don't want to speak to her ever again (not that I could anyway, since she probably feels much the same way about me).

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

Good to hear (okay, read) that bit about your maybe owning something of the good parts of the relationship. Because there were lots of them, and it was a relationship that was in itself good for you (and, I think, for her too, even though she's revised it in her own mind) while it was going on.

And you know that I'm with you on the sadness thing. But you're also right that it would be dangerous for you to worry about her.

I liked your comments on older lesbians, too. I guess I've only started to realize that there are such generational issues going on in modern feminism. (I'm obviously traveling in the wrong circles. Seriously. In a way, I even miss academia.)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I just noticed that (the Michigan Women's Music) Festival this year has a workshop called "Breaking the Waves between Second and Third Wave Feminists ---and my first thought was of this post, and how I don't know what the hell I'm talking about in the larger debate. Just gets my back up anyway. It's actually 2nd-wavers I mean to defend, of course---shows you how badly versed I am in the debate.

My second thought, though, was about (Lordy!) the use of the phrase "Breaking the Waves" by any feminists ---could these presenters, Sarah Bebhinn and Ryiah Lilith, possibly be intentionally referencing the horrible movie by that title? Could they possibly NOT? The waves are clearly the (construct) waves of feminism. If it is suggested that 3rd wavers would think that that veritable assault of a movie has something useful to say in a debate about options for expressing, enjoying, or engaging in sexuality, I would say only that there is such a thing as so vile a way to address even the most worthy subject that the resulting work deserves naught but contempt.

I sort of miss academia, too. Or I miss having that context and community and freedom/job for knocking things about in the world of ideas. And of course I never got so far as to do any real writing about anything, or dive deeply into literary theory/theories & broader cultural discussion.

Like the 2nd wavers, academics are easy targets for ridicule, but what's really going on in the academy (in the middle of pontificating and reputation-making and institutional politics and, yes, bullshit) does have to do with knocking around ideas, and interesting ideas, and potentially powerfully revolutionary ideas, and therefore useful ideas, and anyway everything doesn't have to be mundanely utilitarian to be legitimate, does it.

At least I get some contact in some of my daily life with people who talk about such stuff, even if they're so in it and I so not that we can't have the kind of conversations we could were I better read. Heck, that itch to be around thinkers, when you've been hanging with some decidedly less thinky people, was a big part of the initial appeal of Holly for me (speaking of it, and of her). When she asked to borrow that Janet Malcolm book, my (already noticeable) interest in her probably quadrupled.

Perhaps you might consider a return to academic life sometime?

Thanks for those other comments, too, m'dear.

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

I've thought about going back to school. I think that it would be good for me in some ways. But I don't think I could swing it while I'm working full-time and raising a child. I know that there probably are some "super-mom" types who can do that, but I am not one of them. I just don't have the energy to give my best to all three things (child, work, school), not to mention my marriage and home/yard and extended family. I have a hard enough time managing now. Perhaps when Jeff goes to college (assuming, of course, that he decides to do so). . . .

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Well, depending whether you guys could swing it on less income (but still a good sight more'n just hubby's), there's always the combo teaching assistantship (and/or fellowship) + being a student route. Together they amount to about a full-time job in time. True, even with the best deals you'd make a lot less dough. On the other hand, there's a great deal more flexibility about daily life scheduling when you're going that route. And you could always supplement the $$ with freelance work if, say, in the summer, you weren't teaching or on a grant.

It does require a little shopping yourself around to schools, though, and I know you want to stay where you live. But, then too, yours is an area with a LOT of grad schools/programs. I don't know if you'd only want something that's, you know, the cream of the crop in your area of interest... what WOULD you study, anyway, if you went back? Is the appeal discipline-specific?

I guess I'm just saying that the school-with-funding route might actually, in some ways, work better as a lifestyle to match the rest of your life these days than the current gig does, since the work/TA combo would not take up much more time than your job does now (and sometimes would take a lot less)---plus it has that blesséd flexibility. Not to mention what got us talking about it to begin with: that you'd get to enjoy even more noggin-noodlin' than you do at this engaging gig you're doing now.

You know, just to put a bee in your bonnet. I mean, it's hard for me not to suggest that it might be more possible than you think when it comes to somebody considering going back to the ol' academy.

Now I'm also thinking of what our friend C said to tell L when she was pondering going back to school but saying "I'd be 40 by the time I got the degree in x years" --- C said "You'll be 40 in x years no matter what---either 40 with the degree or 40 without it." 'Cept I think she put it more pithily than that. I don't know if the line made any diff to L at all, but I kinda liked that way of thinking about it. Not that it pertains here particularly.

Breaking the Waves

[(Anonymous)]

Hi :)
Just getting ready for the intensive and saw your blog. Never heard of the movie. Just decided on Breaking during a quest for good wordplay that applied to the content.

Sarah Bebhinn

Re: Breaking the Waves

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you, Sarah B! I'm quite glad to hear it. That movie pissed me off like no other (as perhaps you can tell).

Best of luck next week---a fruitful and lively and exciting time to you. Alas, I won't be at Festival, yet again this year... even though I live in Michigan now. (Somehow I thought it just sort of happens to you when you move here, but, come to find out, you still have to make a plan to go.)

Nice to kinda meet ya.