Friday cat blogging

Fuzziest buddy ever.

On how to write about a squidgy thing.

So, here I am at work, on my lunch hour, taking a break from looking up various numbers to compare with the numbers on how expensive (supposedly) the KSM trial in NYC may be (I feel like this is the Surviving Rape, And Also National Security Law and Human Rights blog, which is a weird combination, but, there you go)(also, did you know that next year, the Department of Defense is going to spend $718,795,000,000*? YES. IN ONE YEAR. On killing people and/or unnecessary and poorly managed wars! I love America!)

Anyway. The other night, when I had a bad night, I lost my own little war with myself to not hurt myself. And. I am trying to figure out how to write about that. Or whether I should. (This is SO NAVEL-GAZEY, sorry. Not only am I thinking about writing something extremely personal to process it, I am now writing about the thinking about the writing in order to process it. This is, like, small intestine gazing, right here).

Part of the problem is: people I know and deal with daily may read this, and I don't want them to feel sorry for me, because I hate that, or ask me about it, because I don't want to talk about it (I think? Let's be real, I don't know if I want to talk about it or not), or treat me differently, like I am made of glass, which I am not (at the moment).

But I also made the decision to be as honest and open in this space as possible, because this blog was to be an aid in recovery (and you all reading this are helping! Thanks. Seriously). And, too, maybe the blog is to document the journey, just to bring light into some of the very deep, dark, scary places one ends up going in trying to work through the trauma. After all, monsters that hide beneath the bed and in the closet are only scary until you turn on the light and see there's nothing there. And it could help, on this journey, to see where I have been, to mark a path, know that I am going somewhere, or at least moving and not stuck, and then try not to double-back on the huge potholes in the road.

So, basically, I think I am going to write on this, but I am looking for the words to help me frame it. How do I explain this in such a way that well-meaning friends won't panic over me? Or scold me for not calling them? Or try to give advice, as if I had done something wrong? Or, no: how do I tell about something when there is no response I can think of that will feel good and be helpful to me, because I am totally unsure of what I need from other people at the moment?

I am not saying don't comment to this post! It's just hard to write a play, if, you know, you don't have any idea how you want the audience to feel about it or react to it or think about it.

So, essentially, there will probably be a fairly substantive post coming, probably about me and rape surviving and feminism and patterns of women's responses, especially how women's responses are fucked up or sad because of the way women have internalized social messages, but yet, even though I think they are fucked up or sad, I can't. stop. doing them. And this aggravates me to no end.

But for now, I am back to looking up numbers. And looking at all these budget proposals to spend on weapons, I can only wish you all peace.


*This is Obama's proposed budget for next year, 2011. So, really, it could get higher or lower, but it will never get low enough that I will ever be able to comprehend that much money.

Promise.

Tomorrow I will not fantasize about doing violent things to my body.

Tomorrow I will not do violent things to my body.

Tomorrow will be better. And I will be ok.

Promise.

So, if I understand this right . . .

. . . John Yoo will protect testicles, but just testicles; he has no problem obliterating millions of people in one fell swoop, 50% of whom will ALSO be attached to testicles, but regardless. This is fine. And legal. Even when it is not. And he is lying. And he has already sanctioned horrendous torture on unknown numbers of people who were actually totally innocent of anything.

But he would resign to save the testicles.

Well, that's alright, then.

More emails from the exciting adventures of online dating!

hi there

nice pic and profile, not only you are an attractive and gorgeous girl but at the same time seem to be a person who has a balanced life and priorities..

I moved recently from boston to washington dc, I was getting my second masters at MIT and now work here for a consulting firm as a vice president..I was in brazil 2 months weeks ago and totally loved it....I love travelling too and have been to 15-16 countries....I live to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and go to the gym very regularly..like to maintain a sound balance in my life ..fairly well settled...like finer things in life..nice restaurants, exotic travel destinations..my mercedes cls550 etc. etc

would love to hear from you..my email is [redacted]
ciao

So, I don't know . . . I keep staring at it, but my panties don't seem to be getting wet. What gives?

They never show this part in the Lifetime movies.

Here's the thing about trauma: it gets SO BORING.

I am so tired of not being able to escape the issues in my head. I am tired of the anxiety. I am tired of the nightmares about being raped every night (I GOT IT, brain, SHUT UP). I am tired of the sometimes near-crippling fear that strangers might touch me when I am out in public. I am tired of pretending that I am fine, and I am tired at watching myself play-act at being fine from across the room, because I have fucking severe disassociative disorder.

It is just, frankly, annoying that I cannot ever get a break, I cannot ever just take all this baggage and shove it in the back of the closet and forget about it, even if just for a little while.

I am SO OVER MYSELF, you guys. I can't get away from myself, and I am boring myself to death.

So, in the spirit of not wanting to process anything right now, because I AM TOO TIRED FOR THIS BULLSHIT, have a cat!

Amouch, sleeping on my tummy while I try to read for class.

On doing the right thing, and how sometimes that is nearly impossible

I think Ralph Nader is kinda an asshole, but he's still right when he says the lesser of two evils is still evil.

In presidential elections, with our shitty two-party system, you don't really have a choice (and when those two parties are barely distinguishable, you have even less of a choice). Did I vote for Obama? Yes. Am I ashamed that I voted for Obama, because I think he is just terrible? Yes. But would I go back and change my vote to McCain? Of course not. And part of why I voted Obama and not a third-party candidate was McCain was so fucking awful (and DO NOT EVEN GET ME STARTED on Sarah motherfuckin' Palin) that imagining him president made me begin to tremble involuntarily. So, in elections, we do what we have to do; and it doesn't sit well with me, but I see no other options at the moment.

In policy debates, however, there's a lot more wiggle room. And I at the moment am trying to figure out if I will be contributing to some of the evil.

To give an example of this bind: healthcare debate. Ok, so, when the Senate bill came out, it was bad. No, it was REALLY bad. It may have helped some people, but far, far less than everyone had hoped, it was actually just mandating all of us to buy shitty private insurance, it had no legal mechanism and no punishments to hold companies accountable for when they denied you coverage/denied you for ridiculous "pre-existing conditions," and without a public option (which HAD A SUPERMAJORITY of the American people for it), it was only a matter of time before the ruthless insurance industry lawyers (I hate lawyers, I know I'm in law school, but I do) figured out how to fuck everyone over. Like they do.

On the left, there was serious disagreement about how to proceed. Some very smart people were arguing to kill the bill; other very smart people were arguing it made sense, even if it was a shitty bill, to keep it. There were a lot of fairly nasty recriminations being sent around amongst the factions, but that was silly: both sides had very smart people, who in the end, had always wanted the same thing. It was merely a debate about the best way to get there.

I fell on the kill the bill side. And it is not because I am a ridiculous idealist with no understanding of reality (although I am a ridiculous idealist). It is because I saw some very bad real-world implications of this bill, and thought it could be more dangerous than good. You can see in the above paragraph everything that was wrong with the bill, but there is the fear that later on, we will never have this kind of momentum to actually FIX healthcare in any real, substantive way for gods know how long. And lots of people that we essentially gave up on and said, well, sorry we couldn't help you, but this is the best we could do, would keep dying. And then, of course, when there is an inevitable swing in public politics, there is always the chance that when this bill fails to do enough, or hardly any, good, conservatives can come along and say, see? We tried to do it the liberal way, with the socialism, and it didn't work! Let's privatize more, to the point where only really rich people can get health care because the rest of us have been dropped for such pre-exiting conditions such as the need to blink occasionally!

So, see? Smart, rational minds disagree here about what to do. I had conversations with people who were against killing the bill, and one who even thought it was completely insane to take that position, until he talked to me, and I managed to get my argument across without, I don't know, screaming or flinging poo. Everyone was in good faith here. It's just . . . hard to know what will be best.

I mean, look: I expect more. I KNOW we can do better. Always. My faith in humanity is in fact that strong (and you'd think that faith would have been extinguished by now, what with, you know, EVERYTHING, but surprisingly, even to me, no). I get mad when people say, well, that's just how things are, because no, that's just how things are because you've already accepted that that's just how things are. That kind of thinking is lazy, and unsupportable, and dangerous.

But also, because I DO live in reality and engage with the consequences of my actions, I am always afraid to capitulate and admit, well, ok, maybe this is at least better, maybe the lesser of two evils is still less evil and I can still sleep at night, because then, with no one yelling from the other end of the spectrum, the debate shifts (and, to see evidence of that, turn on your computer/read a newspaper/talk to anyone. Republicans frame the debate now). You end up having an Overton window problem, and that is something to really consider when you are deciding how to situate yourself in the present.

But then: here I am.

I have been working in national security law, counterterrorism law, and human rights. I worked for a brilliant non-profit last semester as an intern, and I just started at a new brilliant non-profit as an intern for the rest of the semester and this summer doing similar types of things (I will be working on everything to do with this). But there is a fairly large disagreement between these two organizations, and it's about policy, and although everyone wants civil liberties and human rights to be respected, there is argument about how to do that. Mostly, the problem is over military commissions (also, about detention and law-of-war powers to detain and then how those detained will be labeled under jus in bello and the scope of the battlefield, but this post is already too long, so: military commissions).

I am anti-military commissions. I have a lot of historical, legal, and practical reasons for being so. I think they are a terrible, awful, no good, really bad idea. And the organization I worked for last semester was completely in alignment with my beliefs. We all thought that this new system of justice, which Bush thought up to simply get guilty verdicts for every detainee at Guantanamo, whether they were guilty or not (and mostly of them are not guilty) was unjust, and unnecessary, and unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has agreed. There are already two fully functional and successful court systems in this country: Article III courts, which are the federal courts terrorists have always been, very successfully, tried in, and the military court system, under the UCMJ, which was used for soldiers during wartime (the Nuremberg trials were UCMJ trials). Bush's military commissions did NOT follow any of the constitutional and due process provisions under Art. III courts or the UCMJ (these are extremely, extremely similar - both require all statements admissible to courts to be voluntary, a version of Miranda to be read, lawyers to be provided, etc.). Military commissions are, in all ways, illegitimate (there have been congressional overhauls in 2006 and 2009, but they are still unconstitutional, and global opinion does not regard them as just).

And my last organization, being anti-military commissions as well, surprised me - when I asked about the newest incarnation of these commissions (passed last year), I was told they had been involved in the process, to advocate for the rule of law and to make them as just as possible. The thinking was, well, there are going to be military commissions anyway, and while we'll keep advocating against them, we'll sit down at the table and at least try to make them as just as possible, given their inevitability.

Which: fine. I totally get that. And I think I agree? But what about the fact that just sitting at that table lends the military commissions legitimacy that they don't deserve at all? What if sitting down and debating people over military commissions undermines YOUR point that there IS NOTHING to debate, because these are completely unsupportable?

Guys, there is no way to win here. Either you are shut out of a debate and do not have the chance to try and make evil less evil, or you legitimize the evil in the first place. Nobody wins. And how did those end up being the rules of the game, when we are all just trying to do what's right?

I am finding myself conflicted, now, because my current place of work accepts that there is a place for military commissions in the current detention/trial scheme. The organization absolutely believes that Art. III courts should be used first and foremost, and on this issue, my current workplace and my last workplace are actually working together. But I think that accepting military commissions undermines the strength of your argument for Art. III trials for terrorists. Also, Audre Lorde lives in my head, and she reminds me, always, that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. And I think, if ANYONE is right here, it is Audre Lorde.

So: I think I am suddenly on the side of lesser evil. And I don't really want to be on the side of any evil. And I think I am ok working at my current job, legitimizing and lending my labor to an organization that backs a policy argument I don't totally agree with, because everyone wants justice and the rule of law, and wants human rights and civil liberties to be respected in the end, and we are just smart, reasonable people disagreeing on how best to get there.

I think I am ok with this. I mean, after all, I have no other choices - my former organization doesn't take repeat interns, and no other organization which has really, strongly, been working on issues of law and national security and human rights has, you know, agreed to hire me.

But I can't help feeling just a little bit evil. And I can't help feeling like, being on the side of the angels, maybe the dice were loaded from the start. And this is why the angels? Never seem to win.

Azrou is very "helpful."

Tonight, he "helped" make the bed.

No, I do not know what is stuck all over me, either.

Just another day in the life of the slightly deranged.

How to completely blow it on every conceivable level

There are SO! MANY! THINGS! WRONG! HERE! that I am just going to focus on one thing. Otherwise, it will be too much to try to cover, and my head will asplode.

Dear Mary mother of Jesus, who EVER THOUGHT this was a good idea?

A well-heeled Philadelphia school district gave out laptops to students—then used the webcams attached to covertly spy on them, both at school and at home, according to a class-action lawsuit. The case, Blake J. Robbins v. Lower Merion School District, was filed after one of the school’s vice principals disciplined Robbins’ son for “improper behavior in his home,” using a photo taken from the camera as evidence, according to the filing.

The laptops were issued to 1,800 students at three high schools in the district, each with a built-in webcam that, according to the lawsuit, administrators can activate remotely and covertly. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all the students and their parents. They’re seeking damages for invasion of privacy, theft of private information, and unlawful interception and access of electronic information.

And I may be in law school, but I don't think there is a layperson out there who would not recognize this to be illegal. As well as unconstitutional. Also: why is there not a child porn charge slapped on there? And: WTF?????? I . . . I mean . . .I . . . huh???? Seriously.

Ok, so, you are probably cognizant of the fact (as you can read!) that I was a teacher (and I think we should not conflate the school administrators, who did this, with teachers, who did not, and probably had quite enough of their kids during school hours, thank you very much). I taught middle schoolers, ages 10-14. And, let's be real: I DID NOT REALLY WANT TO KNOW what they were doing with each other in their bedrooms. Although they would compulsively tell me! All the time! GAH! But this was because none of the grown-ups in their lives could have a grown-up conversation about sex with them. It occurred to me, over and over again, that teenagers? They so got their sexuality. They have everything under control. It's the adults who were a mess about it.

I felt that it was my job, as a teacher (and a semi-parent and therapist and friend and role model and all that) to be a good sexuality educator. After all: teenagers are sexual creatures. They are! I was! You were! WE ALL MADE IT OUT ALIVE. So let's teach them about how to own their sexuality, let's affirm it in healthy, positive ways, let's teach them about consent and communication and how to be comfortable and present in their own bodies. Let's teach the boys to respect women as sexually autonomous human beings and help women celebrate their sexuality, instead of having to hide it, barter with it, or use it to get the supposedly worth-affirming male attention. I would tell kids that they were only ready to have sex once they really knew their own bodies, could communicate their needs and desires, knew how to set and respect boundaries, were fine explaining their fantasies and their fears to their partners, and had a birth control/disease prevention plan. And then had a disease/pregnancy prevention back-up plan (and did I maybe teach all my kids to put condoms on bananas? Maybe! And I would have been so fired for that, you guys; I would have been fired like 6 0r 7 times, had anyone found out).

One of my proudest moments as a teacher occurred a year after I finished teaching. I went back to visit my kids in the charter school in the South Bronx where I'd taught for two years. One of my former students, now 16, pulled me aside to talk. She had started having sex with her boyfriend; you wouldn't believe the "are you fucking kidding me" look I got when I asked if they were using condoms. They had both talked about sex beforehand, had waited till they were both comfortable, and were very open about the whole process and their feelings. Now, though, they had both decided they wanted to concentrate more on the foreplay, get better at it, and maybe wait to have sex again for a while. Except, they enjoyed sex, so they just seemed to end up having it in the end every time! Did I have any advice, she asked, about how to focus more on the foreplay?

I was so pleased. Because that is some seriously mature shit, right there, and this is how I taught them to think about sex and their bodies and themselves. Like I said? THE KIDS ARE FINE.

But you know what is not teaching kids about a healthy sexuality? PROSECUTING THEM FOR IT.

Also, if the school administration is all worried about sexting and kids sharing too publicly about their sexuality, it doesn't really help teach what behaviors are appropriately private by violating these kids' privacy so they have none at all. Just: that seemed like an obvious one to me. In fact, "irony" is an important literary theme, dear readers! Have you heard of it? I hear they teach it in high schools, sometimes! Just like this one!

Anyway, there are a gazillion other reasons this article made me seethe (there is a personal story floating around somewhere about how that same charter school I was in told kids they could punish them for anything they did outside of school, ever, and that even holding hands, even with your friends, was INAPPROPRIATE, and all touch was baaaaad, and anything that involved your body, besides maybe breathing and blinking, was ipso facto sexual, and this was also baaaaad, and they should REPORT EACH OTHER, and it was SO INSANE and inappropriate I had to spend an entire fucking class period calming them all the fuck down)(I might have been fired 9 or 10 times, actually, for that condom lesson). But, we're going to stop here. I mean, there's a lot of feminist and queer and cultural theory that could be discussed and bandied about trying to explain this completely unacceptable act and how anyone in their right mind could have justified it, but I just really wanted to focus on the well-being of the students here.

Which is what that administration? Completely forgot.

*New Feature* - now with more asshat!

So, we here at Unnatural Forces (yes, I have made myself royal) just can't seem to get enough of the douchehounds of the world - the rapists, the asshole exes, the male friends who don't respect boundaries, and Rick Hertzberg.

And just for your reading pleasure, we are going to bring you: more asshattery!

Two friends and I, for shits and grins and because we all work too much and needed some goddamn DISTRACTION, decided to sign up for online dating. I kept my end of the deal - I was the first to set up an account on, for legal reasons, I'll refer to as "Schlemistry," wherein I had a nice, normal time of it. Absolutely nothing crazy happened that would translate into good stories the three of us could chuckle over. I met a really fabulous, wonderful woman, who unfortunately lives far away and I'm in law school, and . . . no, that was the end of the sentence. One cannot begin a long distance relationship when one half of this relationship is in law school. I have since removed my profile totally, because in case you have ever read anything at Unnatural Forces, you may have noticed that I am GOING THROUGH SOME SHIT.

But one friend finally opened her account last week, on "Natch.crom," and voila! she immediately got the funniest, most awesome, redonkulous emails ever. From big, obnoxious wankstains. We have decided, she and I, that keeping these emails to ourselves would be selfish and irresponsible, nay, cruel; you, too, should be able to partake of the comedy gold!

So, from now on, whenever she gets an insane email, we're throwing that shit up here in the spirit of general merriment (and often complete bemusement - because, WTF with the zany emails no one would ever reply to, gentlemen??? Does this ever work for you? I don't understand).

To start us off, we have this beauty from Mr. Insults are Actually Suave:

Hi

I was looking through all these ads here on the internet thinking to myself
"Look at all the poor, desperate, lonely women..." and then I saw your ad and
thought to myself "Hey, here's a poor, desperate, lonely woman that's actually CUTE..."
so I thought I'd write and see if you're as interesting on the inside as you are in this picture...
ME

I will give you one guess as to whether my friend emailed back.

Holy. Shit.

So, my very favorite feminist writer? Just linked to me. I am the only link in the post. Oh god.

It's my very first real post that explains this whole venture, but the thing is: being a rape survivor is the loneliest thing. There's your life, out there in the world, and then there's your trauma, that lives in your head, and rarely do the two meet. And sometimes, if you're me, you try to erect walls between, because you are afraid your trauma will infect the rest of your life. But you never really manage to do that successfully. But because you are trying so hard to stuff your trauma back in your head, and get it to behave, and just SIT STILL and STAY, damnit, when people ask you how you are, or what's wrong, you simply can't answer them. To tell them the truth would mean admitting that the trauma has infected everything, and that you are not in control, and let me tell you how control is an issue for me as a rape survivor.

Part of the disconnect is because shit is going GREAT for me right now. I am in law school, and I LOVE IT (a former co-worker calls me, "the happiest law student on earth"), and I have had amazing internships and opportunities (I will post about my time in South Africa at some point), and I got to teach middle schoolers for 6 years before this and I loved that, and was good at that, oh, and this summer I am research assisstant-ing (yeah, that) for the most amazing, brilliant professor and might work on international human rights cases against corporations and am also working full time doing national security and counterterrorism law and human rights with a woman who is just stellar and inspiring and so, I mean, RIGHT? Shit is GREAT. I can not even begin to tell you how grateful I am.

Except, also? I am a giant fucking mess, and I feel like I am falling apart all over the place, and the inside of my head looks like a hurricane and a tornado were fighting, and then a volcano came and erupted all over them.

And the thing is, now that I am working through my 3 years of awesome skills at pretending-nothing-happened and my turning off of all my feelings and my depersonalization disorder to cope . . . . there is SO MUCH. Anger, sadness, crazy, crazy anxiety, just emotions like WHOA all over the spectrum, and they are overwhelming. Sometimes, I think I'll just drown in them.

This blog has, a little, allowed me to let some of that out. And I can keep my head above water for just a bit longer.

I never thought I'd be read, let alone linked to, let alone by someone who inspires me and I am kinda in awe of. And that didn't matter, because the point was to at least let some of this stuff go, put it out there into the intertubes, so that I could maybe just breathe a little.

But the idea that some nice strangers might read me now, too? Makes it a little less lonely.

Thanks, Sady.

So, what do you do . . .

. . . when you find out the boy you dated for a year and a half, and were very much in love with, and with whom after an amiable break-up you have stayed close friends based on the theory that he was just a little immature and needed to grow up (and even though he was horribly emotionally abusive to you, you made such-like excuses for him) and it just didn't work out because of timing, when in fact he was lying and cheating all along and was actually not just kinda a doof but a REALLY TERRIBLE PERSON?

You listen to The Gossip really fucking loud and sing your heart out and dance around in your bra, that's what.

You guys, and this is why I can't ever get anything done.

So, I am trying to read evidence law when I hear Azrou making a racket playing with something in the hallway. This is great, because it means that he is not bothering me for attention/crying in my ear for attention/lying across my book for attention, but I get up to see what it is, in case he is playing with something he shouldn't be (he's been really into stealing my roommate's blush brush recently).

And this is what I see:


Yes, that is what you think it is.


He has pulled an ob tampon out of my bag and playing with it like it is the best toy ever created on earth. Ever. Holy shit did I laugh so hard.

I don't know why I ever buy them anything at the pet store.

Lucille Clifton was my feminist foremother.

Lucille Clifton has died. I wish her much peace on wherever her journey may now take her. I have always loved her poetry - strong, direct, unashamed and unabashedly black and female.

This was the first poem I read of hers:

wishes for sons

i wish them cramps.

i wish them a strange town

and the last tampon.

i wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early

and wearing a white skirt.

i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes

and clots like you

wouldn't believe. let the

flashes come when they

meet someone special.

let the clots come

when they want to.

let them think they have accepted

arrogance in the universe,

then bring them to gynecologists

not unlike themselves.

I read that in 7th grade. And we little girls, oh my god - we LOVED that poem. We bonded with that poem. We talked about it for days after. It was this voice which acknowledged our experience, and sympathized with it, without ever resorting to victimhood. We felt vindicated. It was awesome. We would quote that poem to each other, and it was always followed by a "Fuck, yeah!" It was the first time I had seen male privilege pointed out, and it was liberating.

Later, I would read "my dream of being white," about fighting colonialism and be humbled by my own privilege; "homage to my hips" made me love my own curves; "the times" was a look directly into the face of seemingly pointless tragedy.

But it was her poem "i am accused of tending to the past" that has always haunted me; it is revolutionary, and dangerous, and I am waiting. She will.

i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother’s itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

Actual conversation on the phone with my therapist:

Therapist: So, you told him how you need him to act to feel safe around him, and then he insists on continuing to yell and curse at you, and then he tries to make you feel bad for asking him to stop? And recently he's been goading you into fights? This is abusive behavior. You should definitely not be engaging with him right now.

Me: Yeah, I realized that, but I waited for so long before disengaging because I am aware of my bias against [certain] people, and I wanted to make sure that wasn't influencing my thinking.

Therapist: *paaaaauuuuse* See, ok. You just think too fucking much.

I only got year-old love for you.

Okay, folks, let's be real: I am having a hard time with the love. Really! Even on Valentine's Day (which I maintain is, actually, a mean-as-shit holiday)! And the reason for this is that I am SO CONSUMED with hate for myself (it's fun vacationing here in rape survivor land, have I mentioned this?) that it is hard for me to pour myself into loving others. Which is what I usually do, and is actually one of my favorite qualities about myself. (Also: a severe case of this makes it pretty hard, too).

Anyway, this was a love poem I wrote last year. I don't want to own the emotions underlying it anymore, and so I am putting those emotions out there, and releasing them. Because I plan on never, ever being sorry for falling in love with anyone ever again, as if that would somehow inconvenience them or be a burden. Instead, I own my love - I think it is an awesome, awesome thing. My love is like pirates, but pirates who can swashbuckle AND move like ninjas. So there.

I am glad to let this go . . .


this is a story with no ending.
i’ve fallen in love with you.
there is only a beginning. it has always
been beginning, and nothing is changing.
the bell, to call me Home, has always been ringing.

i would go back if i could –
the long, slow run past still train cars,
the drop-frosted grass, the sun
glinting off the river –
cranes stand tall and white and straight
in the river in the morning.
i was everywhere, in everything;
you should have seen the skies.

i would will it otherwise
if such things could be undone,
unwoven.
the untied bits of me so tangled and twisted.

(i’m not always so clumsy with myself.
there have been other times, other lives,
when i’ve carried myself with grace.
it is never the ground that trips me.
mostly it has been your face.)

i am not sorry for my love, but:
i apologize.

spine, nerves, soul. i feel tied down, stretched spread-eagled
along the straight expanse of railroad track
overgrown, untraveled.
i am nothing that you can’t see.
bare bones, weeds, rust, ribs,
a monument to resiliency.

so, love.
oh, tomorrow.
i could smile, or cry,
or burn everything down, fires flickering
in the corner of my eye.
you could laugh, and i’ll put on a face to meet my day,
my fate.
whatever runs along the tracks.
i am not sure if the train’s whistle is its cry
of going back.

I Write Letters

Dear Hendrik Hertzberg,

Hendrik Hertzberg, I ask you, "WHAT???" And also maybe, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Lookit: you and I have not been friends for some time now. You were doing a smashing job during the Bush regime. You committed awesome acts of journalist. But now that Obama has won, you seem a little lost, Rick Hertzberg. You haven't found your stride. You don't know how to cover him; mostly, you have taken the reactionary approach, which is to staunchly defend him, even when he's doing something stupid, even when he's doing something you would have criticized Bush for doing. You have become one of those annoying Obama apologists, Rick Hertzberg, and this is bad. Not just for your journalistic credentials, Rick Hertzberg, but for our democracy. Because Obama? Is not only in some cases just as bad as Bush (see: all his counterterrorism policies), in some cases he is worse.

So, sack up, Rick Hertzberg, and do your job.

But, your political Beltway echo chamber bullshit, Rick Hertzberg, is not why you made me almost fall out of my chair whilst shrieking "WHAT????" today (and a lucky thing I did not read this in public, let me tell you). No, Rick Hertzberg, as per your suckiness of late, I usually skip right over everything you write in the New Yorker, because, as mentioned, you suck (FIX THIS, Rick Hertzberg. But we've already discussed this).

No, the comment in question was about the politics of the Oscar nominees, which, I thought, ok, Rick Hertzberg, this may not suck! I'll read about the politics of the Oscars with you! I was only in the third fucking paragraph, though, Rick Hertzberg, when I came across this, while you were writing about everyone's favorite comedy, Avatar:

Liberals are unhappy with the white-guy-rescues-the-natives aspect of the story, though this aspect surely has less to do with racism per se than with Cameron's reliance on old-movie plot devices.

And this is where I must ask you, Rick Hertzberg, "What the fuck is wrong with you????"

Because: these old movie "plot devices"? Are based on racism. They can't exist without racism. And the fact that it is ok to keep using these plot devices? Is because WE ARE STILL A RACIST SOCIETY. The fact that James Cameron did not look at that storyline and think, God, this is such a racist old storyline, I would never put something so offensive in my movie, IS WHY IT HAS TO DO WITH RACISM. Rick Hertzberg, must I explain everything to you? We continue to reify the racism underlying these narratives by continuing to use them. This is why we still have racist douchebags comparing Michelle Obama's relatives to apes or talking about planting watermelons on the White House lawn or WHATEVER (and no, I am not linking, I haven't the heart).

Because - you can't divorce the context and history from a narrative. You can't act like the white person saving the natives/people of color who clearly can't save themselves is now so divorced from its racist origins that anyone who uses it is just using some old-timey movie trope. Rick Hertzberg, this is pernicious and obnoxious racism, and it is everywhere. As Sady brilliantly wrote recently in her discussion about language, history, and context:

Because here is the thing: it is the ability to communicate concepts and define the reality of a situation from which the power of words is derived. When they become pure noise – divorced from reality, divorced from concepts, used at odds to the concepts and realities they should be defining – that’s when this all gets hairy. I can’t say “that’s so gay” because it makes me sick, because I know what it means.

And you know what it means to use these storylines, Rick Hertzberg; you just chose not to own up to the meaning, the context, the racist history. Your white privilege is showing, Rick Hertzberg, and it is gross. Go examine it until you have a good grasp on it, and don't come back until you can manage to not sound like a complete asshat.

Also, Rick Hertzberg, I had the most trenchant, incisive, seminal piece EVAH all ready for this blog, that I thought about really hard in the shower yesterday morning, and it was about Twilight and being different and why Twilight seems to resonate with adolescent girls. And instead, Rick Hertzberg, I got so mad this afternoon, I had to write about your ridiculousness. If that post never gets written, Rick Hertzberg, I am blaming you.

Now stop sucking, go check your privilege, and get back to doing the important journalistic work America needs you to do. I look forward to the day when reading your column, Rick Hertzberg, does not conjure a deep urge to throw my New Yorker across the room.

Sincerely,
Gayle Force

Snowgasm

I walked through crotch-deep snow to get these shots, and it was a bitch. Also, I have no idea why some people think cemeteries are creepy. I think they are so peaceful and lovely.

I make friends. With my blog. And navel-gaze a bit.

In 2002, I was writing mass emails (I still have a love affair with these, and I know they are annoying, but I get so excited about fun finds on these interwebbernets) about being a Teaching Fellow in Brownsville, Brooklyn. And this was because every day, I went somewhere far off the road map of reality - I had never seen any depictions of where I worked, or what my kids and their families were like or were going through, anywhere else. It was this little black hole in America, and I wrote these long emails to justify my existence, my kids' existence, to make sure that some bit of that came back to the "mainstream" intact. To show it really was just REAL.

This was also before The Wire was everywhere.

Anyway, a friend told me I should start a blog, and that seemed weird to me. Mostly because lots of other people have more and smarter things to say, and I'd rather spend time reading them and making myself smarter. Also, I am not good at sharing. I am super personal. And I think it is weird, this impulse to verbally throw up everywhere so folks can examine your insides. This is not my generation - fuck, no one I know had a goddamn email address until maybe my senior year in high school, and then we got them for the novelty of them.

My first blog I started in . . . I don't know, maybe 2005? It was so successful I cannot remember what it was called, the website name, or how to locate it, let alone get into it. So that went well. I started another one 3 years ago, in which I posted nothing, that Google Buzz found for me, and I'd forgotten existed. This has never been a successful experiment for me.

And the thing is (and this is TOO LONG already - I am clearly violating, like, blog ethics AND your patience, if you are reading this, which, SORRY, it's really not for you, it's probably really only for me), I still think I would be better spending my time reading other smart folks, and their takes on things, rather than penning my own. I am always awed at the smart, smart shit I read out there on the webbertubes. Some of it has made me a better person, certainly a better feminist, and far more aware of my mild transphobia, my ableism, the absolute obnoxiousness of my defense of my use of the word "retard" (I have gotten over that last one; the rest I am working on). Some of it has helped me as a rape survivor. A lot of it has made me more aware of politics and policy. And a huge chunk of it makes me laugh out loud.

So, why am I writing here? Because recently, my therapist pointed out (OVERSHARE ALERT) that living in rape survivor land by yourself and not telling anyone about your little vacation there can be dangerous. Actually dangerous. And I stay up late now, and chew things over in my head, and get these anxiety attacks over random WHATEVER, and my mania takes over, and maybe if I'd just WRITE IT DOWN, I could get it out of my head and go to sleep at night.

And I like sleeping. I have never had problems sleeping until the last couple months. I miss sleeping.

So, my goal is once a week, whatever is burning holes in my brain, I am going to spit it out onto this blog, and be done with it. I am not letting things eat at me (instead, I post them, and then they eat at you? Don't say you weren't warned).

It won't be taking time from me reading other smart things, or obsessively reading political news, or reading, like, actual books, the I bought for pleasure, rather than law school. (Speaking of pleasure: Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red? One of the most wonderful, beautiful things I've had the pleasure to stumble across). This is for when I cannot sleep, because I am, in my head, imagining take-downs of other people saying terrible shit to me (for instance: do not ever say, in anger, to a rape survivor: "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Because she will want to answer, "ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. Thanks for asking." And then she will stay up late at night, boiling mad), or some pop culture thing (TAYLOR SWIFT) is making me fear for young women and the messages they are getting hammered with (also: Twilight. OH, MY GOD, TWILIGHT. That might be a whole other post).

So, there we go. There's my first real post. And maybe, this time, I might actually post again. Friends, Twilight made me THAT MAD.

Guess what I got for my birthday, ducks?

A whole week off. Oh, and I got some snow, too.