Kulture Klatch
Jacqueline has been writing personal observations and stories for the L-Word monthly since 2001, and we've got a bunch of them here, listed by date and title (you didn't know they had titles? they do now). If you remember one you'd like to see, tell us at The L-Word and we'll get it in here
- Seriously, December 2001
- Abort, September 2002
- Touch, November 2002
- Queen, March 2003
- Rude, September 2003
- Marriage, March 2004
- Message, August 2004
- Halloween, October 2004
- Write, April 2005
- Dia de los Muertos, November 2005
- Intention, March 2006
- Big House, April 2006
- Lilith, August 2006
- Lover, September 2006
- Genetic Engineering, September 2007
- Restoration, December 2007
- Choosing, November 2008
- Character, December 2008
Seriously
KultureKlatch – December, 2001 – [Seriously]
Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
Recently I embark on my eighth annual journey to the volcano Shasta. I still haven’t seen any Lemurians. Sleeping on Shasta isn’t just a camping trip, although this year I bring some marshmallows. This is really a pilgrimage to the power place where I am taught. The magik of Shasta’s influence begins the moment I leave my home.
As I approach Willow Creek or near there, I see a woman on the side of the road giving the universal sign language for, I’d really like to get a ride. At first I think: what if she’s going all the way to Redding; then I have company on what is preferably a solo journey. Being a bear I’m not sure I want company. In an instant I hear an old phrase from the seventies; women pick up women, a law that is never disobeyed. My car pulls over. She’s going all the way to Redding.
I don’t really get a good look at her before she gets in. Her baggage is small. Her name is Seriously; she’s twenty-five and just off the lines with the Mattole Forest Defenders. She’s been on the road since the age of nineteen. At that age she sits in a park, gets the urgent message that something is wrong, she must travel. She travels to central South America and now around the country doing this and that for this and that cause such as the Mattole, such as the needs of the Hopi and Navajo people. She learns quickly, engages, deeply, travels freely. I talk about the need to be in my own bed.
She speaks of being a warrior. She tells a story about being on a beach and confronted by a man with a gun. He wants her knapsack and her guitar. Neither is really of any value to him, but definitely to her. Sometimes, she says, she likes to win so she engages in a mighty physical struggle with this guy; she gives it her all and in the end has to surrender, sort of. She gets up, says: okay you want the contents of my bag, here. She throws at him the bag’s entire contents one item at a time, the last is a box of colored pencils. He lowers his gun and tells her the story of how it came to be that he robs people for a living. After he goes, she’s overcome by intense fear.
We talk for some three hours all the way into Redding. She uses the word warrior a lot. I use the word transformation a lot. We talk of the need for a community of elders and warriors and wanderers and gatherers. This reminds me of many evening conversations in a lesbian boarding house in Northampton, Massachusetts in the seventies. We make this a lesbian boarding house because my friend Marion becomes the housekeeper and thereafter whenever a room becomes available she makes sure to rent to a lesbian. No meetings, no plan making; just do it and it gets done. Seriously likes that story.
When we sit in the car, we’re the same height. When we stop in Redding, she gets out and is much taller than I am. From this view, she looks old as in from another time. In the car, her presence is light as air. In the lot, her presence is that of, well, a warrior. She offers me some herbs primarily lavender. Then she offers me a deck of angel cards from which to select. I draw sisterhood. She draws freedom. The words are in Spanish.
My last glimpse of her is when she dons a black wide-brimmed hat with a fringe of dangling cloth balls. I’m told later this is her signature hat. As I continue to Shasta, I remember the myths about goddesses who disguise themselves and ask favors of travelers; she needs to cross the river so the traveler carries her over. She is always disguised at first, then later reveals herself as who she really is. I feel that I’ve undergone a transformation from her presence. I wonder as I journey, guided by Shasta, if perhaps I’ve just given a ride to a goddess. Seriously.
Abort
Kulture Klatch – September, 2002 – [Abort]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
In 1971, Massachusetts Puritan law states that the only legal sex is in the missionary position (man top, woman bottom; in that order, those genders; that’s it). The use of, education about contraceptive methods are illegal including birth control pills and "devices" except for Vatican Roulette (the rhythm method). It’s illegal to show any pictures, even the pills. The use of condoms isn’t open to discussion.
In the case of The Coil, it’s just as well it’s illegal. This device looks like the spring from a bad mattress. Doctors recommend its use, although no one can understand how it controls birth since there’s an open space in the middle of it. Perhaps the theory is the sperm gets dizzy going around a spiral, loses direction and falls out. There’s a biting humor joke about how a woman births a baby who comes out holding the coil in its hands. It’s not funny reality is that it’s actually a torture device; it has a tendency to work its way into the uterus where it shreds the walls. That’ll teach us to have illicit sex. (Illicit means unmarried, sexual pleasure without reproduction as the goal.)
Our Bodies, Our Selves is a 136 page newsprint document selling for thirty-five cents. It’s surreptitiously published by a semi-underground group of women in the city made infamous by the phrase "banned in Boston." The book is very much illegal to distribute because the contents include pictures of sex organs, birth control pills and devices. In this (il)legal climate women work to make changes against all the odds. When I return to Amherst from an abortion conference in New York City, my pack is stuffed with contraband leaflets to distribute to and discuss with lesbian co-conspirators.
In 1972 a group of us "women libbers" have developed a well-honed tactic of strolling around the anti-abortion tables in the student union. Our tactic is quick verbal confrontation, then retreat. As we go, we pass out copies of Our Bodies, Our Selves which we carry inside our jackets.
Sometimes one of us lingers to debate while another acts as lookout for campus police. One day I pair up with Libby who’s a lesbian refugee from Alabama; the FBI chases her out of the state for her antiwar activities. I don’t ask her if the activities include bombs. When engaged in guerilla tactics, it’s best not to know everything about each other.
This day Libby is the debater; I’m the lookout and bodyguard. Libby is a great talker; she knows more language than is commonly used. She’s studying to be a lawyer. Legalizing abortion is her special mission. She’s getting down furious with the anti-abortion tabler; then he makes a terrible mistake. He preaches: Abortion is murder and anybody who has an abortion is a murderer. I see that Libby is gonna bite off his dick, but I wait a moment. She says: I’ve had an abortion. Then the guy makes an even dumber, bordering on fatal, mistake: Well, then you are a murderer.
My adrenaline skyrockets; I know what this means. In a flash Libby leaps over the three foot wide table with her hands perfectly aimed at the guy’s throat. His chair tips from the energetic force of her forward momentum. This woman has a roiling rage. There’s about to be a broken person sprawled on the floor. I care that my pal not go to jail on his account. In a breath’s second, I grab her belt, pull her straight back into my arms, face her fiery eyes and go nose to nose with her: "Libby, not today."
When we’re safely in my room of the Norhampton Green Street lesbian boarding house, Libby sobs until she shakes: I’m not a murderer; he hurt me bad, I want to punish him. Her pain is acute. Libby was pregnant and had an abortion at sixteen. She comes out as a lesbian later. I’m not sure what to say. I know how to break up a fight, but I don’t know how to disperse this kind of pain. I struggle: Some day it’ll change because of what we do now. It turns out that "now" is longer than we imagine.
Touch
Kulture Klatch - November, 2002 - [Touch]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
I lounge in the living room of my high school crush. My breathing pattern is strange to me. Mandy slowly rises, stands and says: I’m going to bed now. She says without saying so: are you coming? Hoo, if you insist; suppose so. This is The Lesbian Moment; come on, come in. So I do. I get into the bed; there’s about three feet between us. I’m scarcely breathing although it feels like I want to hyperventilate.
She whispers something and in order to hear her, I have to move closer to her. So what are you gonna do? Well then, I kiss her. I probably ought to remember that kiss, the first kiss to lesbian lips. I don’t remember. What I remember is that neither one of us is sure what to do next. I’ve not ever had a next moment with a woman. She’s a femme; her lover is a stone butch. She doesn’t know the next move either. During one of many pauses, the phone rings. It’s her lover whose ship is ported in Hawaii. I’m not breathing again; I’m not supposed to be there.
Marion assigns herself the responsibility of having sex with every newly out lesbian with butch tendencies. She feels this is her duty. This is a risky business since most of us newly out lesbians may have already had sex with a woman but probably we haven’t fallen in love for the first time yet.
We want that first falling in love experience just about the time Marion shows up; and she’s not the one. She has no intention of falling in love with any of us. She teaches us how to do the butch part. She has a vibrator dildo which I refuse to know anything about. She realizes she has a different kind of butch in her bed so she teaches me about clitorises.
I don’t date in high school. I have a brief encounter era with men; I’m not much impressed. I have still not had my first orgasm, woman or man initiated. I’m 24; I want one like now. I want to be consumed with passion, to fall in love. Marion has already moved on; I’m on my own.
Diana approaches me, looks into my heart with intense eyes. I actually feel exposed because I’m a stoic and nobody sees my emotions. I stand there and feel the heat and knowing that is between lesbian bodies. This is a way intense woman. I have no trouble imagining her in a forest naked enthralled with the ecstasy of an ancient Dianic ritual. She kind of scares me; and that’s why I decide to know her and let her know me.
She is a bisexual sensualist. One day we stand naked in front of the mirror. It occurs to me that I am 24 and this is the first time I have ever looked at my own body. With her touch, I experience profound stillness. That touch is exquisitely delicate, slow beyond patient, barely near the skin’s surface, leaving a trail of longing. There is palpable, intense heat coming from her hands. She caresses all of my body, every pore fills with the passionate energy of her hands.
I lay there like a cat curled up in the light and warmth of the sun. I am fully trusting; I am wide open. She moves her hand along my butt and slowly that heat moves with her hand. She is barely, barely touching me. This creates a potent, yearning desire. Her heat and mine mingle into a conflagration, and I am transformed, transcending into altered dimension of self.
She leans close to my ear and whispers: what’s that. I demur: I don’t know. Now she lays her body on mine without the skins touching; I feel heat all at once in my whole body. Her voice deepens as she presses for my response: what is that; say the words. I have suddenly gone all soft: an orgasm. She still is not satisfied: whose orgasm. Now I know why she scares me: my orgasm; my orgasm from the heat, light, touch, knowing of a woman. I am a lesbian
Queen
Kulture Klatch - March, 2003 - [Queen]Jacqueline Elizabeth LetalienIn 1985 I ride in a car with a gay man; we’re conversing pleasantly when he makes a silly mistake. He says: I am a feminist man… The liberationist in me protests: Nope, unh-unh, wrong. There is no such thing as a feminist man. In these times there are supposedly feminist men; many women’s libbers have morphed into feminists. This is one of those new ideas I have trouble embracing. I am on the verge. He makes a second mistake: “…I find drag queens very offensive to women.” He has the arrogance to think he knows about a woman’s view. He may be going for points with me since he perceives me as a radical dyke; he assumes therefore that drag queens are anathema to me. Seemingly he doesn’t know the importance of drag queens to gay liberation. There is Stonewall and without that event, there is no gay liberation; without drag queens, there is no Stonewall. Apparently he doesn’t know what a liberationist is. In the seventies feminist men are definitely impossible. First of all the phrase “feminist man” isn’t often use; women are libbers or liberationists. The Women’s Liberation Movement is a movement by, about and for women. To the point, no wavering. There are men who are allies and men who are feminine. Feminist? Nope, not until every woman is empowered to make her own choices. Lucky for this present day feminist man, I’ve moved from my days of rage. I simply say: I like drag queens because they teach me about women. He doesn’t understand and he can’t think of anything to say. The guy goes suddenly quiet. This is good. First lesson in the ways of women is to learn when to be quiet. The second lesson is to know when you don’t know what you’re talking about. In 1972 the gay bars I go to always have a couple of resident drag queens. They are the tricksters of the bar. They reflect us back to ourselves; not always comfortable, but beneficial. The drag queens I know are hustlers. They sit at the bar if they are attached with the bartender; they never stand because it’s unladylike. They pose at the tables when they are hustling the straight men who come into the bar to hassle the lesbians. This is a function of the drag queens: they protect the lesbians from these dudes by drawing attention to themselves. As I learn the drag queen ways, I discover that straight men don’t seem to know that they’re talking to men. They are absolutely convinced that they’re picking up a woman. This teaches me about the social perception of women. The social definition of women is an illusion. Only a few seem to know anything more about women than fashion, makeup and effect. I learn that what is seen in women isn’t our interior heart, soul, spirit but something that is applied to the exterior. These queens take very seriously the donning of a woman’ persona. Sometimes I sit with the drag queens in the bar and our conversations are concise, cutting right to the profound essence of a question that brings sharp clarity to a dilemma. When I think about the possibility of alliances with men, I wonder if a feminist man or a drag queen is my best ally. I choose the drag queen. The reasons are simple. Drag queens literally walk in the shoes of a woman. They know the dangers of walking in high heels, the humiliation of a run in a stocking, the constriction of wearing tight dresses, the stamina of putting cosmetics on right; and the violence against women. I restate my question: if I get into a fight with a man and I’m considering doing harm to his machismo, who would I rather have covering my back? I’d prefer a drag queen who knows what It’s like to be mistreated as woman, who’s likely to know what it is to be raped. A feminist man might intellectually understand my ideology; a drag queen might not, or might even make jest of it. Yet a drag queen feels a woman’s terror, suffers her shame; she knows a woman’s rage.
Rude
Kulture Klatch - September, 2003 - [Rude]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien In 1970 the UMass, Amherst accepts me as a transfer student. Four students are shot to death by the National Guard during an antiwar demonstration. Very many lives are altered by this event. This transfer student begins an intensive journey with gay and women’s liberation, the antiwar movement. My intention to return to college for a BA to be a librarian swerves abruptly in the rapidly changing tides of social, cultural, political life on a radicalized university campus. I attend just enough class sessions to get decent grades. I spend most of my time majoring in social upheaval. When I go to my parents’ house to visit and do the laundry, my father and I often get into raging arguments over the Vietnam War. He is a WWII veteran officer, retired. What his government does is right, always was and always will be. We argue from a visceral place in our experience, his from Okinawa as soldier surrounded by death and mine from daily life as commie peacenik in a hostile world. Then Kent State happens. My father sees this on the evening news, and he cries. The government has no business bringing the war home, no business killing our sons and daughters, especially not the daughters. All he can see is that his daughter could have been one of those students. We argue no more about the war. At the university, I work long hours for three movements simultaneously. This isn’t unusual in these times; we (radicals and gays and women and peaceniks) are all engaged in this work fully. I don’t smoke pot until later in college. Don’t need to; I spend long hours into the night sniffing magic markers (the really good toxic kind) making signs for demonstrations. Even though I am involved in several groups, I am essentially a shy loner who is a friend over time. Sometimes I venture out to peer sex sessions with a croup of queers to talk about “what it is to be gay.” Once I go to one of these a bit drunk on beer. This was the session when The Question some dopey dude asks for the umpteenth time - what do lesbians do? Whereupon I respond: if you know how to make love to a woman, you would not have to ask that question.My main function is steady, dependable, quiet organizer. I write several letters to the university newspaper editor about women, gays, war. The writing gains public attention often involving me in conversations with people that make me uncomfortable because I’m shy. I’d probably prefer it if they just send me a note. One night I sit at home with my three nonlesbian roommates. Since Amherst at the time is a rural area, doors are often left unlocked. The front door opens suddenly letting in a puff of snow from the flurries outside. A kind of tallish, substantial guy stomps into the room, steams straight toward one of the women. He knows Merry from a class. I know him from a story, that he threatens to rape my friend the woman chair of the Young Socialists Alliance because she’s a commie. In a perfectly even voice, I let him know that he has left the door open and there’s a woman standing outside. I direct him to bring the woman in and close the door. Whereupon, he slams the door, leaves the woman outside. The wind denies his slam and the door remains open until he has to close it gently. This somewhat deflates his entrance. He strides into the room, heads again toward Merry, calls her by name and speaks in large volume. He demands to know how she could allow herself to live with a sick dyke commie peacenik. She doesn’t seem to know what to say. He doesn’t seem to know it’s me he’s talking about. So I speak up. That woman is standing right here in this room. I am the lesbian peace activist, women’s liberationist you are talking about. You are in my house; stop now and leave, and he does. Merry berates me for my rudeness. I am unrepentant. Rude feels ever so good to a shy 23 year old. Back to Kulture Klatch list
Marriage
Kulture Klatch - March, 2004 - [Marriage]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien In the seventies women’s liberation movement, we let go of the vision for liberation and get mired in equivocation, a drive for equality that thirty years later we still haven’t got. We settle for equality which quite often means the same as. We can make the same money as a man for being a CEO and earn more money than any human has a right to or a need for. This is a result for many liberation and civil rights struggles that emerge from the era. In our political activism we’re often met with adamancy, stridency, resistance. Ultimately we get out-chessed in the game. The experience for some of us leads to a cutting cynicism from knowing that not all that much has been changed. When the outcome is broadened to the world, the effort still has a long, long way to go. We haven’t been able to bring down the patriarchal institutions; we haven’t been able to eradicate the pervasive attitude regarding women’s status. When gay folks begin the chants for marriage, I’m sitting here saying to my self: oh yeah here we go with the same as. We’re still failing to get at the linchpin, to fundamentally challenge the institutions that keep the patriarchy looming over us. Now we’re gonna get the right to divorce and have nasty custody fights and spend too much money on a wedding. Swell. Still I can’t stop reading or watching the persistent stories, listening to the rising swell of voices, observing the narrowing focus on this one issue. As this goes on I notice something amongst the clamor and clash and flash of it all. There’s panic; the reaction to the call for gay marriage is inducing a panic. This is different than the adamant negative reactions to Blacks calling for civil rights or women chanting for equal rights or even gays asking for the simple right to be out. When gays start with the right to marry, though, one state after another scrambles to pass laws stating that marriage is between a man and a woman. The news media and even those of us pushing for marriage seem to miss this panic. The overriding description of the action is that this issue is one of equal rights. The recurring legal argument is that separate but equal hasn’t been right for other groups and it isn’t for this group either. Because we’ve used this rhetoric for so long to wheedle and cajole bits of rights, we fail to understand what we’re really getting at. When I see a picture of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin marrying after 51 years of a committed relationship, I notice something. They are the same height, the same build; and obviously they are both women. Suddenly I get what the panic is about. We have finally, though perhaps unwittingly, found the linchpin of the patriarchy and we are tugging furiously to pull it out. Marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman. Traditionally in that relationship the man is taller, broader. Often the woman is his little lady. Even when a woman hyphenates her name, the man is still the reference point. Even if they use an “alternative” commitment ceremony, most usually it’s the man’s name she adopts. These are vestiges of the premise that women are literally the property of their husbands. In a lot of places in this country and around the world, the sun hasn’t really set yet on that premise.The panic about gay marriage isn’t about the need for the species to reproduce more. If we were rabbits, humans would be finding ways to reduce our population. The resistance isn’t about the natural order of things. Gay is in the wild as well as the history of the strongest civilizations. It’s not about the Bible. There are several instances of gay that God doesn’t seem to notice. When men marry men, they are refusing to own women; when women marry women, they are refusing to be owned by men. The ownership of women is the linchpin of patriarchy and we are about to pull it out. The panic is that when we manage to do this, the patriarchy is coming down.
Message
Kulture Klatch – August, 2004 – [Message]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien When I attend UMass Amherst, I major in sociology. I choose this major because I want to know the people’s stories. This is because even though I have cynical moments (ach, people, who needs them anyway), I love the people. I am hungry for a good story. What I am taught are phrases like abstinence syndrome. Sociologists get lost in the syllables; we study studies, we study black dots on demographic maps. These black dots represent people of certain classes, cultures, educational levels and other such groupings. Sociologists like to look at groups with a good deal of distance between them and the individuals of the groups. Perhaps they really believe that the dots and numbers tell a story. In some ways they do offer some information. For example, when the groupings have to do with poor people of color living in the projects, the black dots are crammed all together in the center of a city. When the groupings have to do with rich people living in estates, there’s more space and room for a person’s life. I take one day away from the university to visit a friend living in New York City. I am a working class rural woman of color (which I don’t realize then). She is an upper class urban woman. At a drug rehab program I meet up with her; she once is a client and now is a member of the staff. She introduces me to a young (actually we are all young) poor Puerto Rican woman. We spend the day at the beach, all of us together. We are able to converse with each other, enjoy the company of each other even though we come from different realities. When day is done, we take Maria “home.” Rising from the ground is a cluster of sixty story buildings in which thousands of people live. She advises us to stay close with her and not to stray. As we go up many stories on the elevator, she explains to us that the noise level is always 24/7 as loud as it is now. I am sure there are studies that talk about the effects of constant noise. We get off the elevator about midway up the tower and go into her apartment which is hermetically sealed: no windows open and all the sound is shut out. I am certain there are studies about the deleterious effects of oxygen and sound deprivation. We sit at her kitchen table and she tells me the story of her eighteen year life. At fifteen she is a prostitute, at sixteen she is a heroin addict, at seventeen she is raped and all she can think of to say is, don’t mess up my new boots. The way she tells the stories makes me listen with my whole body; I feel every word. Then she asks me about my life. I explain I am going to the university, that I have political activist friends who are working hard to improve the quality of life. She gathers me in with her fierce ebony eyes and holds me very firmly with them as she says: I want you to go back to the U-ni-ver-si-Ty of Masschusetss Am-Herst and I want you tell your po-li-ti-Cal activist friends that they don’t know Nothin about My life. She is not angry with me; she just wants to make sure I have her message and that I will deliver it. She gives me my work for the whole rest of my life. I am to tell the stories, mine and hers. I am to stand at a bust stop and listen intently with my whole body as a perfect stranger tells me the story of life full of pathos and terrible things and profound courage. I am to know that each dot represents a life. I am to know that abstinence syndrome means puking up all the pain and sweating out the horror of a life someone has the courage to live. Ultimately, this life’s work that she gives me is as described by the poet Muriel Ruckeyser: Time comes into it. Say. Say it. The universe is made of stories not atoms.
Halloween
Kulture Klatch - October, 2004 - [Halloween]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien On Halloween platoons of children and parents swarm over neighborhood streets in search of the ultimate sugar rush. As parents wonder how they’ll pay the dental bills, the dentists dream of ways to spend this windfall profit. Each child dresses as their favorite goblin, ghost or comic character. Many greeting cards sport a green faced witch. These are the surrealities of a pagan holy day that is separated from its traditions by patriarchal misinterpretation. So much wicce has been negativized by malevolent, sensationalist reports from the malleus maleficarum and about satanic cults which are patriarchal perversions of matriarchal beliefs. There is a lot to contemplate while munching on Sugar Daddies. Halloween is a sacred time to remember the millions of women burned as witches during an orchestrated orgy of exploitative gynocide. This is a trick that is not a treat. Women property owners, women without men as well as women witches, healers and midwives are summarily robbed, tortured and murdered with the excuse of some vague notion of evil doing, not the least of which is being an uppity woman. This time is known historically as the dark ages and known herstorically as the burning times. This is a time when the light of metaphysical practice and belief is shrouded in darkness. Wicce is a feminization of spirituality, a reclamation of feminized images and a realization that the goddess archetypes are expressions of the feminine inner self. This holy day is a time to honor the wisdom of women. In fact the word “wicce”, from which the word “witch” derives means “knowledge”. Halloween is a time to affirm the old knowledge of the spirituality of paganism: the abilities to heal, to give birth, to pray, to transform, to fly. When I am ten I slide into a perception warp that enables me to see and hear in an exceptional way. When I am twelve I look out the window of the house at night on Halloween. Along with the usual gaggles of costumed tricksters or treaters, I see spirit forms traveling in the neighborhood as well. I wonder at this sight and remain silent; it is my secret.Early on I learn the value of secrets. When I am ten, I tell my mother that I see and hear in an unusual way. I describe to her what it is that I see and hear. Her face becomes quite stern as she says: stop this nonsense; people who see and hear things that are not there, get locked up. While she does not say any more such as where or by whom, I realize I have no friends here. I feel an unreferenced fear (perhaps from the burning times). I learn that extrasensory perception is not a good thing. I remember and learn to try to forget what I know. I say “try” because I do not forget. The knowledge in me, just is. Yes I am able to keep a secret. Yes I manage not to get locked up. Yes sometimes I believe that what I know is not possible. And in the more than four decades since the warning, ever persistently, I see and hear things that are not there. Ever consistently, I have dreams that teach me a philosophical principle, dreams that preview a “real” circumstance. Ever increasingly, there is a direct connection between prayer and manifestation. I come to Humboldt to practice what the teacher has taught about insight, healing, magik. I read a multitude of books Wiccan, First Nations, Buddhist traditions, fiction and nonfiction. I go to the woods and the sea to chant. I watch the multitude of birds flying. I watch the sky and light change. I experience the seasons. I bathe in light from the stars and moon. I live with my heart beat that is my drum rhythm. It is still a tricky business: there are still people even among friends who are wary of the word “witch”. Still an intention for my life persists. I am a woman who does work to heal myself so that I am strong enough to give birth to prayer, to transform reality as we know it, and then to experience the particular pleasure of flying.
Write
Kulture Klatch – April, 2005 – [Write]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
I’m not a famous writer although wherever I am, my work is well known as a poet journalist and sometimes as a performing artist. I work for little or no money which maybe keeps my integrity intact. I am not big on awards unless considerable money comes with them. My integrity maybe stays intact.
Sometimes the poetry goes places I haven’t been such as England and Germany. That’s a pleasing satisfaction. Fame is not the goal or the reward. When people say that a story I scribe inspires them to write or encourages them to perform; that is a reward that’s awarded for the effort. It’s not the goal.
As much as any reason, I write for the experience of writing. I am engaged by the mystery, uncertainty, risk of published writing. The uncertainty arises from not knowing how the words are interpreted. The risk comes from making the commitment to write and when the due date arrives, there will be nothing to write.
I search myself for some sign of a story. Each time I begin such a search I have apprehension that there just will be nothing to find, not a sentence or word. My brain says there is nothing there to write, not a sentence or word. Yet once I sit to write and give myself even a minute moment, the words do come. It’s rather mysterious.
Sometimes my brain thinks that I haven’t got one more thing I want to say about anything. I think I should just hang it up and not write another thing. I have written for at least forty years; there can’t possibly be too much more to say. Yet there is writing persistently. I am the scribe for the words as they come. I am quietly compelled to write.
Emily Dickinson writes for decades and only upon her death is it discovered that there is a trunk filled with hundreds of poems. While it’s true that in her day women are not encouraged to write, never-mind publish, she continues to write without fame, awards, or audience. She is quietly compelled to write.
This is not some special ordination; being a writer is not in the category of being a yogi or the like. For sure not every one writes; on the other hand not everyone fixes cars either. Yeah sure a writer can sway a crowd with concepts written in stories, poems, words in a way that an auto mechanic doesn’t. Even though there are times when it seems more physically useful if I could fix my car rather than being able to tell a story, I am still quietly compelled to write.
When I am taught that I am able to write (not when I am taught that I am able to learn how to write) the focus is the experience of writing rather than the grammar, form or structure of writing. Sentence diagrams are still remembered as my favorite exercise in grammar. Knowing how to do that is not what leads me to writing.
When I begin to write poetry, I’m instructed to put a pen in my hand and rest that hand on a piece of paper and just sit still until there is something to write. Then of course I should write it or rather let it write itself using my hand to do it. I’m skeptical of this lesson because what I know from school is that I’m supposed to have a topic in mind before I write. My brain also tells me I might not be good at this. Even so, I give it a go.
With nothing in mind, I sit until there is something to write. Surrender is necessary. This part is difficult for me: I am a person who takes the “surrender’ card out of her Angel Card deck. I do as told, however: I sit, wait, and surrender. A spark floats in; I blow on the spark to ignite it and increase the light of the flame. As excitements are, this one is really very subtle and simultaneously exquisite. It is for this simple reason that I write: to feel the exquisite excitement in the experience of spark igniting to flame.
Dia de los Muertos
Kulture Klatch – November, 2005 – [Dia de los Muertos]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
In the sixties the police have the right to harass, beat up and jail lesbians and drag queens. These are not wanton acts of violence by rogue cops. The law of the time clearly states that “sodomy” is a crime. Gay bars stay open by giving free drinks and payoff cash to cops. Our protectors are the mafia.
In the seventies lesbians who are married and have been enlightened and are getting a divorce, face the probable loss of custody of their children on the basis that lesbians are unfit mothers just because they are lesbian. Some lesbians of the time stay married just to be able to keep their children.
In the seventies Harvey Milk is shot to death by a cop turned council member. He is arrested and goes to trial. The infamous Twinkie Defense gets him off thereby igniting a gay riot in San Francisco. That defense is acceptable in large part because Harvey is gay and Moscone is a gay sympathizer.
In the eighties a man I work with at a women’s bar in Oakland is murdered in Concord. When there are large parties at Ollie’s, he shows up in a black cocktail waitress skirt, complete with frilly white apron. Our current governor would probably call him a girlie man. This Black Cherokee gay man who survived the Indian reclaiming of Alcatraz is found hanging from a tree in Concord. No one is ever arrested because his death is ruled a suicide. I still cannot imagine how he hangs himself with a backpack strap or how while choking he manages to scream.
Around the turn of the millennium there is a case brought to trial regarding the murder of a young Oakland Bay Area transgendered man/woman. The defense is that the young boys who are involved in doing the fatal beating should be forgiven by the rationale that they are duped and then embarrassed to find out they’ve been intimate with a man’s body. There is still socially acceptable justification for the murderers of gays. The jurors still struggle with the issues because the murder of someone gay is different than the murder of someone who is nongay.
About the same time Arcata High School administration bars Spare Change from doing presentations in part because of the frankness of their presentations about sexuality. There are those, including a school board member, who loathe the idea that the group also includes intentional information about the “disgusting lifestyle” meaning those disgusting queers. Underscore: this is said in Arcata not just in Myers Flat.
In 2005 locally there is a politician whose sons make sport of harassing two neighboring lesbians. He says of his sons that they are just “boys being boys.” There are young queers disowned by their families or afraid to come out because they still justifiably fear being cast out by their families.
In 2006 there will be scores of teenage lives ended by their own hands because the pressure of being queer in high school is too great. They will be harassed either because they are gay or their parents are. It may even be because of the more benign seeming but pervasive trend among teens to tag anything or anyone odd as being “so gay.”
I would like to believe that all this happens in a red state. Truth is the acts of deadly violence and spirit killing happen everywhere, even in the annoyingly self proclaimed “progressive” City of Arcata. The savage cruelties of the persistent loathing of gays is still pervasive.
We have come a long way from the sixties. It is now nearly thirty years since the spark that ignited the fire of gay liberation, of our passion for the pursuit of life, liberty, happiness and pride. We are one nation and queer folk are a vital living people of this nation.
In our rush for rights it is important to know that these rights are useful only to the living and those who are murdered will not enjoy the fruits of our labors. It is important to remember those we know and those we will know who are killed because they are gay. May their memory be for a blessing.
Intention
Kulture Klatch – March, 2006 – [Intention]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
Recently I go to a slam style Spoken Word performance by Saul Williams. I am astounded by the linkages and the metaphors. One piece in particular has a long genesis of folks and poets and liberationists; included among this lineage is the name Sylvia Plath. I go home and pull out Ariel from my poetry collection. Her words and that particular book catapult me to a time in Northampton when I live in a lesbian boarding house across the street from the campus of Smith College. In this woman dominated household and the feminist literature courses we create, Sylvia Plath is required reading; she is "one of ours".
As I look out a window of the Green Street Lesbian boarding house, the campus of Smith College is all there is to see on the other side of the street. Sylvia Plath is a fifties summa cum laude graduate of the college. She writes 400 poems and most of those are not published as books until after her death. She is a student of Smith at a time when a great number of the women who go to the college are upper class and destined to be society ladies.
There are lesbians at Smith and there are many stories about women being disinherited from considerable wealth because lesbianism is unbecoming to a society lady. To get the money, a woman has to be a lady; apparently a lesbian cannot be a lady. Disinheritance is dispensed as discipline even into the seventies for any stray from society life strictures. In the end these restrictive proscriptions on a woman's living may have squeezed the life out of Plath.
There is a tragedy in the absence of her. Her continuing life is lost to us; her evolving insights are prematurely curtailed. Even so her lingering legacy is kept with us; we have her books. There is a courage in her choice to sacrifice herself rather than succumb to despair in increments or death by electroshock. For those of us who become twenty-somethings in the early seventies, the sacrifice of her life sparks our determination, strengthens our resolve, enflames our passions. Her words and her mad genius and her suicide shape the work we do as women's liberationists. Her story, her death, her life illumine the urgency and rage and terror and pain in the daily life of the feminine, underscore the absolute necessity for talk among the womenfolk. Our silences, invisibility, secrets are killing us.
The urgency comes with the telling of the stories we speak in consciousness raising circles, stories about what's really going on in this seventies time of a Donna Reed, Norman Rockwell fantasy world. Passing through the fifties and sixties despair or desperation, considerations of suicide are fairly widespread among women. The rage flares with the knowing that we are losing a lot of women's lives in a multitude of ways. Included in the mortality rate among women is suicide which quite often involves Plath's method of gas and oven. The terror is the danger of being overwhelmed by despair or desperation and succumbing to a false persona, as in the original tale of the Stepford Wives. The pain sources from the mortal wounds to a woman's self.
A woman of the seventies writes: Our heroes died in childbirth from peritonitis, of overwork, of oppression, of bottled up rage; our geniuses were never taught to read or write. We must discover a past adequate to our ambitions; we must create a future adequate to our needs.
With the lesbians of Green Street, Plath's presence is called in, her absence is remembered as we create an ideology, set the intentions for the work of the women's liberation movement. The intention of the liberation of women is that we find the cure for the dis-ease of despair, that we commit acts of rebellion against domestication, that we rise up from desperation. The intention of the liberation of women is that we eradicate false personas, restrictive social structures, and hostile house-holds. The intention of the liberation of women is that we create ourselves in our own images, that we make our own choices in our own ways, that we serve our own purposes.
Big House
Kulture Klatch – April, 2006 – [Big House]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
Some time ago one of the Kulture Klatch writings talks about gay marriage. That writing could leave the impression that I encourage gay marriage. I do and I don't. I do because it's a choice, and I encourage the right to choose. I don't because it's complicity with structures that continue to institutionalize oppression. Whatever truth is manifested by my life, the same has not ever been legitimized by the Big House. I am not welcome there.
I remember the night of a fundraising dinner for a foundation that consists of the children of very wealthy massas who live in very big houses. These children have broken from the strictures of their class and use their money to fund a wide variety of community organizations, the kind that scrap for every dollar and over and over make the miracle of the fishes and loaves. The speakers include people from the neighborhoods who do everything they can where they live to save lives, create change, manifest dreams. There are also luminaries such as Joan Baez and Alice Walker.
Surprisingly Harry Belafonte is there. I first hear him in the sixties and this lesbian is sitting there in the eighties listening to him again. In the first moments I'm adjusting myself in a time warp. When we are all one in the sixties seems like a long time ago. In the seventies separate groups partition into various branches of the liberation movements such as Student Liberation, Black Liberation, Black Power, Black Panther, Women's Liberation, Gay Liberation, and Lesbian Nation. These all evolve from the Civil Rights Movement in which "Freedom" is the power word.
Harry Belafonte is a radical man of the sixties Civil Rights Movement. He begins his speech by recounting the changes that have occurred since then: how many Black mayors, government representatives, fire chiefs there are now. I have no idea where he's going with this statistical accounting. I'm looking for the fire, some glimmer of the radical. He drifts into a story from the Civil Rights Movement.
There's a night when Martin Luther King, Harry and some others eat supper together. Martin is quiet all through the meal. Afterwards a group of them remain and gather to drink cognac and smoke cigars. Harry makes note of King's quiet and inquires as to the reason for it. The Reverend Dr. King responds that there's a disturbing thought that sticks with him. He considers all the work they're doing to get into the big house, and the thought occurs now that they're running into a house that's burning down.
I think of the houses that do burn down in the seventies with the bodies of radical groups buried in the ashes. Houses are surrounded by scores of SWAT cops and federal agents who enter shooting. Showing warrants, knocking on the door are unused formalities. These days are the beginning of the police tactic to shoot so many tear gas canisters into a building that it's set on fire. It's easier. The inhabitants will either come out and often be shot, or burn to death in the fire.
The power of the message rises as Harry chants a litany of causes, freedoms, rights and failure, massacre, genocide. Each one is followed by the same refrain: we go to them for... and they don't get it done; we go to them for... and they don't get it done. They don't get it done; why do we still keep going to them.
In the year 2006, it still is not done. We go to the churches for our dignity and they do not get it done. We go to the legislatures for our rights, they do not get it done. We go to the nations for our lives and they do not get it done. We go to the White House for our invitation and they do not get it done. We still keep going into a house that is burning down. It is still not done. There is nothing inside worth saving. Freedom is already out on the lawn and it stands inside each one of us. Let the house burn down to the ground. As we build anew, Freedom will sing.
Lilith
Kulture Klatch – August, 2006 – [Lilith]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
In the dimmed past the word "girl" is used to describe both female and male children. Ever since I've known this I wonder why the word use changes, what original reality the word's concept symbolizes. It could imply that all people at one time are hermaphrodites. It could also mean that there is a time when all children are female.
There are women who use the word "womon" to indicate the relationship between woman and the moon. The nature of that ancient relationship is stolen from us. Some of us continue to work to recreate myths from the few remaining fragments. The usage of "women", disconnects us from the moon, notably originates in the myth of Adam and Eve. Eve is said to come, not from the moon, but from the rib of Adam. The archetype underscores the misogynistic arrogance of relegating a woman to a part, a fraction of a man, thereby establishing our relegated role in the patriarchy.
My mother once takes on one of the uncles (married into the family) who is a far right Christian and a rabid sexist. He makes the mistake of saying to my mother that Eve is made from Adam to serve him and, by genealogical extrapolation, all women are created to serve men. At which point mother takes umbrage and sticks him with the point that Eve comes from Adam's rib, not his foot, not his head but from his side thereby creating woman equal in stature to him as a partner. Of course being her daughter and her legacy, I have to go further with the thinking.
When re-viewing what we are told, I look to the part of the story that disappears from the telling. There's the fragment about Lilith who exists before Adam or Eve and actually is equal in status to God. Eve is so inspired by Lilith that she deigns to eat an apple of wiccan knowledge. When the story part destined to become a lie is added that Eve is created from the rib of Adam and thereby less than he is, Lilith leaves the Garden of Eden by her own will. She realizes that the menage-a-trois of two patriarchs and one woman is going to lead to absolutely no good.
She leaves Eve with her freedom to choose, to stay or go. Eve stays hoping that she can change things. She needs all her wits about her so she eats from the Tree of Knowledge. God gets angry, Adam wimps out. Even so, Eve decides to go with Adam. I don't understand why she would miss the opportunity to go off in search of Lilith. The fragmentation begins with that separation.
Wemoon are separated from our ancestry, stories, cultural heratage; we are separated from our past as Lilith and Eve are separated from each other in the myth. I suppose in part I don't understand Eve's choice because I'm a lesbian woman/womon. By connotation lesbians are driven from the whole of womon, defined in such a way as to imply that because I am sexual with women, that I am more man than woman. There is another trick of patriarchal language. Nowhere in the word lesbian is there any indication that we are connected with women, that we are womoon, womon connected originally with the moon and Lilith.
Words change intentionally to reflect the structural reality of the world. Language has the power of symbolic magic which is probably why the Bible's creation myth has Adam obsessively naming everything. It symbolizes his "power over" all other creatures including women. Yet his is a false power because no man has yet figured out how to obliterate our true origin. The memories are carried in our blood even if the genes have gotten screwed up somewhat. Now, there are girls and boys rather than just girls.
A lesbian is still a woman and a woman is still connected with the moon which has the power to move oceans, influence the people, to hold and reflect the great light of the sun. If we remember our origin we will discover the knowledge. With that knowledge we'll become whole, the Garden will be restored and Lilith will return.
Lover
Kulture Klatch – September, 2006 – [Lover]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
Sometimes it seems like I must fall asleep standing up because I have a sensation of waking up to something that's changed and I don't know how or when there's a change. Then because the change is so pervasive, it seems as if my memory is faulty. I'm not sure a part of my experience is real. What seems to be missing is a word from the vernacular of gay life.
I admit that at times I mindlessly follow along with the whatever thang the peoples are doing, some new trend. No I haven't dyed my hair purple so I guess I'm not all that susceptible. Still, sometimes I just get carried off with the crowd; where they go, I go. Then one day I wake up and exclaim: Hold up; we've left something out or behind, relegated it to afterthought or antiquities annihilation. Perhaps I just want to mark the change or alert that we've lost something significant.
What seems to be missing is a word from the gay life vernacular. I don't know how this loss happens. Perhaps it's because of the push for domestic partnership and now we're intent upon the push for marriage rights. Now many of us whether we want to get married or not use the same words as everybody else. As we make our history, it becomes clear there's a practical need for establishing partnership of ongoing gay relationships within the positive purview of the law.
There are too many horror stories from the early days of the AIDS epidemic about families coming in and clearing out a household of their relative while the partner stands by already in agony from the loss of a longtime companion. At the time there's no legal recourse, no emotional outlet for the expression of such deep loss to relatives who are strangers and who probably may not be all that thrilled about having a queer in the family album.
We work to change the law so that we're included in it and to make sure we aren't victimized or ignored by it. This all makes very good sense; this inclusion is practical and necessary. As we achieve recognition in the law, a new language is learned (legalese) and incorporated into our vernacular. I hear words like committed, partnered, partner, custody, adoption. These mean we can raise children without fear of their heart rending and once all too common loss through custody battles with ex-husbands; we can visit with our partners in hospitals, make health care decisions for them, get information about their condition.
I remember spending six tormented hours at the emergency room of SF General waiting for word on the status of my then partner, hit by a car as she walks across a street. These hours give me plenty of time to contemplate my nonstatus as a nonentity in her welfare, in her life as it interacts with the "outside" world. That is remembered as a very long night. Her family isn't in the picture at the time so I don't have to suffer being shunted aside as if I'm a stranger, as if my queries are the idle curiosity of the friendly. More than anything though, I want it to be understood that I love this woman.
Love is not defined by law. All kinds of behavior are codified by law; loving is not. Love is outside the realm of the practical, legal, structural constructs of codification, litigation, ajudication. When I come out as a lesbian I do not want to be married, I want to be in love. This isn't because being gay is outside the law and I can't be married. It's because marriage isn't one of my aspirations.
When I recently notice the missing word, I am bothered by its loss because it speaks to the romance of our relationships. I resolve to speak it again because it's still a true word for my experience and without it I'm an outsider to gay life as well. I'm a lesbian because I love women. The word I want returned to the gay vernacular is "lover". A lover is the source of the gleam, light, glint in the eye of the heart.
Genetic Engineering
Kulture Klatch – September, 2007 – [Genetic Engineering]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
Recently I read that a presidential candidate gaffed by saying that being gay is a choice. Apparently I've been napping again. In these times it seems that it's absolutely the right thing to believe that being gay is genetic; and choice is absolutely the wrong thing. While napping, apparently I missed the formation of the National Executive Gay Committee which seems to be telling us all, gay and straight, what to think. I find that just as disturbing as the other way around (the National Executive Straight Committee).
I'm inspired to google "heterosexual genes". That search retrieves an astonishing line: there are already proven heterosexual genes [and these are] X and Y. Really?!! Yeah it's contained in a blog. Even so it's an indication to me that the "science" is encouraging some weird linkages. I suppose the next logical scientific investigation should be for a Z gender chromosome that could be the cause of queerness. What I learn in school way back when is that X and Y have to do with gender and these are chromosomes not genes. Perhaps that scientific fact has changed too. Perhaps not, which indicates the level of the conversation is questionable and rapidly degenerating. The conversation is like grabbing for straws to keep ourselves from drowning in a sea of contempt, stupidity and fear. A little later in time I learn the view that Y is a broken X. That's still X and Y as gender related. XX is of course a same letter combination that creates a woman. XY is a different letter combination that creates a man. However, as some would later extrapolate: XX is a woman; XY is a broken woman. In line with the current quality of blog thinking on the topic, it could be inferred that the assignation of XY as heterosexual; and XX as gay. If that were a fact, it could cause great upheaval in gender social structure and sexual relations. No one seems to have gone that far yet. My google search netted me three pages on heterosexual genes (most of which were really about homosexual genes) and twelve pages on homosexual genes. I don't understand why homosexual genes get so much attention. Heterosexuality runs rampant in the world, contributing to an overwhelming mushroom of population that threatens to snuff out human life forms altogether because there are diminishing resources to sustain us all. I'd be more concerned about finding a het gene and eradicating it to save the planet. I can be sure that's the plan for the discovery of a queer gene. The truth about science is that it's a belief system that supports the prevailing views of a small group going for large influence in the world of humans. It's flawed; prevailing science on any given day can be disproved the next. (Scientists once believe that the world is flat.) The religion of science dominates in the world. Many of us believe without question that queerness is in our genes because some scientist somewhere thinks so. I believe it's a choice that's influenced just as many of our choices are by exploration, existence, experience. Science or belief, the outcome is the same for me; I'm a lesbian. A lot of the googled information is blog material churning out what at this time is at best shaky scientific theory. Some of the discussion is chock full of the same old anachronistic antigay posturing. Then someone whines the now common rebuttal: but it's in our genes. (…Maybe it's in the water?) It's really tiresome; all of it: our push to "respectability" and their push back to "perversity". I don't have to explain, justify, reason the reason for being gay. Each day I live my life the best I can. I believe life is a remarkable miracle, very well created by a source still a mystery even to scientists. The people who belittle my being a lesbian are people who are terribly ungrateful for this miracle of life and its astonishing plethora of possibilities. I have only one response to them. The slogan chant goes: we're here, we're queer; get used to it. I am here, I am a lesbian. No explanation, justification, apology is necessary.Restoration
Kulture Klatch – December, 2007 – [Restoration]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
A new-becoming friend takes me to a place called Fossil Bluff. It's rather amazing and kind of an adventure. It's in Scotia (the land of PALCO timber). The path to the bluff is right across the road from the gargantuan Very Yellow Palco mill building that's seen from 101; and reminds me quite a lot of a dinosaur. This is the first time I've set foot on the devil's soil. The clay bluff has many fossils of sea shells. I'm astounded: once upon quite a long time ago the ocean was up that far on the land; currently it's about several miles away.
To get to the bluff requires crossing a longish railroad trestle. Hoo shit. For awhile I'm walking the open ties which have rather large spaces in between allowing for a view of the distance between trestle and terra. Them's some hard earned sea shell fossils. At various moments, I consider stopping and turning around. So I change this walk into an extreme challenge strolling meditation. Suddenly revelation comes and what the new-becoming friend has said, gets my attention. There's a supporting beam to the side, under the ties so it blocks the sight of land far below. Phew.
As we return to leave, we see a guy closing and locking the 10-foot high chain link fence gate; he hasn't seen us. I think to my self that while I probably could climb the fence if someone is chasing me, I'd really prefer not to clamber over the obstacle. He still hasn't seen us. He gets in his landroverish SUV, drives a bit away, stops at her car; gets out of his vehicle, looks in hers. We both are waried by this so I distract him by yelling in big voice: We're here. Thereby I'm overlooking that draws attention to us, and temporarily forgetting we're on the devil's soil.
While he's backing up, I'm staving off images from a Massachusetts memory of an idyllic moment being created between two women lovers on the brink of fully expressing that love in a patch of woods surrounded by the Fall scent of maple and oak leaves. Apparently this patch of heaven is owned by a New England farmer who comes to check out who isn't supposed to be and who is on his land. He has a shot gun in his hands. This is an uh-oh moment; such farmers aren't reluctant to use their shot guns and the general population at the time isn't reluctant to hate lesbians. We get out of the jam with wit.
In the present moment I'm calling out to a guy who also is a guard of property, and also is about to encounter two lesbians, albeit friends. He returns to the gate, leans out his window. There's kind of an awkward pause moment. I ask him if he's going to let us out. I say this with a bemused and perhaps slightly charming smile. He kind of smirks as he exits his SUV like he knows how to drive trucks, Very Big Trucks. He approaches jeaned and big buckle belted; he lets us out, mumbling something about trouble with tree sitters so he's been locking the gate. I get an awkward silence in me.
He sees our rock picks and surmises we've been fossil digging and then goes into a brief acknowledgment of his childhood memory about going to the bluff. I show him one of my gifts. And I don't know what comes over me: I note that the bluff is all shell fossils so the ocean musta been there. Even though he's one of the my-family-has-been-here-for-four-generations timber-people, a look comes from his eyes like he's never considered that. He looks like how I feel when I realize that reality at the beginning of this adventure.
I ask if he supposed the ocean would come back. Standing on the devil's soil, the devil comes into me: I note that would be a true restoration. Again I speak with the bemused smile. Then cross-stereotype and conveying a sense of nostalgic loss, he protests that would mean the end of the trees. Nothing is said about the loss of the people or of the mill.
Choosing
Kulture Klatch – November, 2008 – [Choosing]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
In the recent previous column I wrote that I believe in magik not politiks. I'm still interested in the political and campaign matter; my inquiring mind, radical self is compelled to pay attention. By the time most people read this column, we'll have a new president of the United States. I believe that one will be the man who attracted over 200,000 people in Europe and 100,000 in St. Louis. These are extraordinary times with a politiks that will show us the magik of faith in change.
At the gas station there's a guy who's self described as white trailer trash (although the "white" is in his looks, not blood). He's loud; he dresses like a Player. I have to tell him not to use the words "fag" or "homo" as put downs. Amazingly, even though we animatedly debate many subjects, he doesn't ever debate those corrections nor is there a need for me to follow the corrections with explanation. It's an inexplicable friendship that we have. On the face of it we shouldn't really like each other; yet we have the capacity to get each other thinking about things and do so with respect.
In a discussion about the campaign, I expressed frustration with all the candidates because there's always some stance(s) on some issue(s) of a favored candidate that disappoint me. He said that he thinks the way for people to choose who they want as president is to decide the one issue that really matters to them and choose the candidate who advocates that issue. Well that's sort of like asking a person which of the five senses is expendable to that individual if one had to be given up. It's a difficult choice.
Even so I toiled on the task of choosing the one thing that really matters to me. The answer was really surprising and found in a serendipitous way. I'm an Internet junkie and one of my favorite sites is the Huffington Post. They've been running a series of photos of the candidates PDAs (public displays of affection, usually for their spouses). There has been at least one dedicated to each of the candidates for president and vice president: Barack and Michelle, Barack and Joe (!) as well as Michelle and Jill, Joe and Jill; John and Cindy, Sarah and Todd. There hasn't been one for John and Sarah (which is probably just as well).
These photos turned out to highlight the issue that's the deciding one for me. I found it surprising because the images' focus isn't easily categorized as political or social and yet it will have a profound effect on both. I viewed these PDAs and discovered that there's one set of candidates who display deep respect, love, joy for each other and their life partners; who fully meet the gaze of the other; who willingly allow emotion to well up, show up.
It's a persistently prevailing certainty for me that what's feared most by the oppressive, bigoted, hateful who claim authority over us, is heart because it's from this source that power derives its freedom, magnificence, sustenance. It's an unswervable soul force. Therein lies unflinching hope, undeniable change and indefatigable destiny. And if we stand on that ground, rise up from that place, live from that source -- the purveyors of hate, violence, vitriol, oppression, tyranny will lose form and puddle like ice on a hot stove.
When I showed these pictures to "Joe the trailer trash guy" and said look at these pictures because these represent the issue that's most important to me, he was really quiet for him. He didn't make a wisecrack or repartee from the devil's advocate point of view. He said that we have never had that, no presidency has ever had that, we have never seen that. The Clinton's relationship was a business deal; they don't love each other. Certainly it isn't the Bushes. I know that even the Kennedy's of Camelot didn't have that. As we reviewed the historical points, he really understood the substantial importance of this one image and its enduring impact on all of us.
Love, joy and respect may just be the incantation that sets us free at last.
Character
Kulture Klatch – December, 2008 – [Character]Jacqueline Elizabeth Letalien
In November's klatch I wrote of candidates' PDA (personal displays of affection) photos, usually with their life partners. I presented what I saw in one set of photographs as a noteworthy reason that matters in setting the basis for choice. Some exception was made to my making that a reason for choosing.
A choice commonly is made by issues-oriented evaluation, with our brains. The reality is with every political candidate's policies, I don't agree on all stances even with one candidate I may prefer. I admit I haven't been enthusiastic about any candidate in the past forty years or so. For me, there are no exceptions to that disappointment. We've had to choose the least worse choice, the lesser of two disappointments. Some of the choices for president are individuals who are far more effective as individuals, such as Carter and Gore, than as president, vice president. Sometimes I'm tempted to settle for less because the other choice is abhorrent.
I was horrified by the campaign run by McCain/Palin and the ugliness of their supporters' reactions: "kill him", "terrorist", "muslim", "uppity" and another epithet never spoken but lurking in the undertones. It was ugly bigotry without remorse or consciousness, not even a glimmer. I was infuriated that McCain and his "strategists" believed that they had found quid pro quo from Hillary Clinton to Sarah Palin, that she'd appeal to women just because she's a woman, that women are that ignorant. It's appalling that Palin does have quite a few women supporters.
I am weary of choosing the least worst choice. I want something, someone to which to aspire, who inspires me to be a better person. The path that leads me through this hall of mirrors, is an excerpt from Martin Luther King: I have a dream...they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The content of their character. This seems like an impossibility in the context of the political personality as we know it: lying, philandering, sleeze bag presidents; lying, abusive, tyrannical presidents; lying, sleezy, smirking vice presidents; lying, ignorant, fear mongering vice presidents. Their life partners all stand by with plastic smiles plastered onto their faces and the truth stuck between their teeth.
I return to the photographs. It is said that "a picture is worth a thousand words". What is shown in the photographs of Barack and Michelle is that they absolutely respect, inspire, honor, enjoy, love each other. Even when they stand apart, they're fully present with each other. The photos don't show these qualities just between Michelle and Barack. There's one photograph of Barack hugging Joe, fully Embracing. There are such photos of Michelle and Jill.
From Eisenhower to the last set of Bushes-- I haven't seen these qualities fully and unequivocally exemplified by ten presidents, vice presidents, first ladies. Only one candidate had impassioned heart, Robert F. Kennedy. At the end of the line there are speeches, words, actions that engaged our brains, refined tastes and particular preferences, satisfied our political views. Most quite often we settled for less because it was better than the other choice. It chills me to think of Kerry or Lieberman as executive leaders. Our brains, their brains failed us. The personal is political we said in the seventies. I saw in the photos a unique, positive, personal reason for choosing.
It's the content of character and heart that matters. I want a president who from the soles of the feet through the heart, up into the brain displays the capability, the unabashed example of respect, inspiration, honoring, enjoyment, love because that's rare and unique in politicians. At the end of the day this radical insists that these are the qualities that will inspire us to rise up from toxic hatred, fear mongering, abusive bigotry, appalling ignorance, separatist ideology to be freed at last to pursue the life, liberty and happiness to which we all are entitled.
I saw all that in some photos of hugging. From sunrise to sunset, this is a new day. This is the moment that has been dreamed since August 28, 1963. It's up to us to settle for nothing less. Si se puede.