the meta and the minutiae

approximately 36 hours ago, my internet service went down. the wireless router, the airport in mac-speak, has been pissy for some time, so occasionally service is interrupted and a simple reboot is all that's required for my home to crackle once again with interweb connectivity. this time, no such luck. the next morn a call to the gracious, knowledgable, generous folks at comcast (in this sentence the sarcasm drips liberally) worked their voodoo and determined that our modem was a 2004 model. which is apparently comparable to finding a chunk of amber in a muddy crevice, a true dinausaur. my good friends at comcast promise on the goddess of high-speed internet to show up between 12 and 4 on wednesday. yeah, right.
 
the day plodded on without internet. laundry got washed with a new efficiency of movement between hamper, washer, dryer. shopping got done, with staples appearing in the pantry as soon as their paper parcels hit the kitchen countertop. bread was baked, bathroom sink tub scrubbed spotless, quality conversation flowed, and planning for future parties and work squealed to a halt. time moved slow and steady, and a sense of the present was stronger than it had been for quite some time. thoughts happened. dinner took place when dinner was done, soulful music played, and reflective tears flowed during fireworks, marking joy and sadness, longing and desire. as the day moved on, i even lost the desire to send text messages to twitter, a small comfort seized early in the day when connectivity panic was at its peak.

i woke this morn, a new sense of place and time restored to my daily consciousness. returning to my computer to select some music to go with morning tea, i spied the telltale green light on the airport, the woeful blinking amber light of yesterday gone. energy surged through my limbs, and as i asked my trusty computer to open firefox, i quickly debated whether or not i should hit gmail, twitter, or the weather forecast first, eager to prioritize lest my ancient modem give out once again.

and then the telltale thought signalling my full addict personality surged forth:

i need to blog about disconnectivity!

it's entirely possible i'm beyond rehabilitation.

amidst the longest, most annoying day of errand running, i paused for a tea. at this point i was still under the delusion that i would be able to attend my favorite yoga class. the hazy detail-remembering part of my brain brought that to a squealing halt when i recalled that i had to make a bank deposit on today's business, or kneel at the schlong of Monsieur OverdraftFee and slurp. so, i kept my afternoon beverage adventure to the basics and stopped at suxbux for an iced green tea. grr, woulda been a perfect prequel to yoga.

i order my beverage, add a splash of cream, and scout for a desirable seat. i see from the back a woman slightly reminiscent of the lumpy, frumpy, loud, stereotypical british mum, but with a bit more floral flourish. i sit down, engage my respectful peoplewatching mode, and take it all in with subtlety. now parallel to, oh, let's call her 'doris', on a barstool looking streetward, i realize that she is indeed the worst-dressed middle-aged MTF i have ever seen.

hmmm, how best to describe? she's in all likelihood around 60 years old. she appears as almost a comical farce of herself, sporting a garish, ill-fitting floral dress. she fidgets a great deal, as if she's crossing her legs for the first time. ever. she has no idea how to hold her arms. she's either grown her own hair into a wispy bob or she got seriously jacked at the wig store. she's covered in what can most kindly be termed hastily-applied makeup, including a thick dollop of bright orange lipstick that has been applied with skill characteristic of a 6-year-old playing dressup. i speculate endlessly on if this really is her first day in drag.

and she's wearing a rainbow nylon pride lei as her main accessory. but why? because we might not read her as a gender transgressor? i'm uncertain. any desired object and subsequent coupling will be queer, there's no doubt about that.

but, what's best about doris is her energy. she's smiling. no, she's beaming. all the time. looking out on pedestrian traffic on belmont ave as if she's in love with the world and poised to find the same emotion projected on to her. a bio woman walks in wearing a caftan-esque tie-dyed dress. doris hails her, gushes about the dress--where did she get it, does she love it, her enthusiasm is infectious.

in no time i fall madly in love with doris. she may very well be a window salesperson, a high school principle, or a computer programmer. but as she enthusaistically waves to her new friend goodbye, and as i stroll out of the cafe, belly full of green tea, headed for the bank, i find myself holding back one small comment--"nice bag". even now i can't believe i didn't recognize a fellow gender warrior as such with the simplest of remarks. beyond that, i failed to congratulate a stylish stranger on a good accessory choice.

frankly, i don't know which is worse.

flags are weird. through an expanse of interwoven threads, affiliations are signified. insider and outsider status are positioned. and political locations are marked.

so, you noticed i used passive voice, did you....well, there's something vaguely passive about the act itself, don't you think?

tonight i sit on my couch recovering from my third dyke march. positing itself as less driven by marketing and mainstream visions of gayness, dyke march offers a feminist alternative/compliment to pride parades. a witty friend recently opined that such "sounds painfully dogmatic", and he's in large part right. however, there are those of us who seem to seek such painful dogmatism, if for nothing else than to feel active in public culture and political resistance. i'll leave that desire, perhaps calling it the will-to-revolt, for another post.

the 2008 chicago dyke march took a noteworthy detour from past years. DM is usually comprised of sashaying queer women as they offer smiling waves to friends and neighbors throughout andersonville, the women's gayborhood of chicago. this year's version instead marched through pilsen, the adored-yet-complex neighborhood of yours truly, which is 9 miles and several worlds away from the former promenade. having served as the center of mexican-american life for chicago immigrants during the latter half of the 20th century, the czech-architectured streets of pilsen now offer taquieras and catholic churches, but not so many explicitly queer spaces. although the last few years have brought in a small yet noteworthy influx of baby d's, pilsen remains miles away from being a recognizably queer section of the city.

despite my own complex and winding relationship to queerness, for the past few years i have felt my dykely soul at all times. the polyamorous relationship i have with my bio-boy partner is about the queerest opposite sex partnership i can imagine, yet i still struggle with feeling visible enough. despite the fact that i regularly drag my personal gaggle of dyke friends and the occasional girlfriend into the neighborhood, i sense that my public presence passes largely as heterosexual along the streets filled with catholic families and lascivious latino men.

a few weeks ago, upon hearing that dyke march planners had finally made good on their intentions to move beyond preaching to the choir of lesboville, ahem, andersonville, i felt my excitement build in anticipation of queer public culture noisily thronging in my own street. as i made plans to feed my friends a celebratory brunch prior to step off, i could scarcely imagine the wild pride i'd have experiencing lesbian feminist energy in my hood. suffice to say, it was glorious.

what surprised me the most was my own reaction to seeing the rainbow flag swirling throughout the streets. although i often experience that strange sense of kinship when i see the flag on a stranger's house, car, or person, i have never felt as though it were my emblem. more like the insignia of a neighboring clan with whom i had political allegiance and overlapping experience, but simply not a marker of my people. sure, i have my slogans. i've got the bi flag lurking on backpacks, office doors, bikes, and bumpers galore. strictly speaking, this feels like a more honest representation, even though i vehemently prefer the word "queer" as my own label. i've claimed the terms dyke and lesbian for a few years, but this felt disingenuous at times. in other ways, i signify my commitment to non-monogamy and lesbian feminism, but in the most descriptive sense, i am a kinsey 5 and thus not a good Lesbian. as such, my identity has remained a fragmented and incoherent function for some time.

today for reasons i cannot fully articulate, that shifted a bit. as the bright colors of the gay flag lilted through the pilsen air along with the bell of the popsicle vendor and the smell of carcinerias, i connected with it as a marker of me. i sensed the alignment of how i viewed myself along with how the world saw me in one of my most important spaces.  it was a lovely feeling.

oh, yeah, and the march itself was pretty cool as well. hot women, glorious sunshine, political action and community education. the usual dykes on bikes, latino children stomping their feet in rhythm with the pail drum ladies beats, shirtless women with electrician tape Xs covering their nipples. the turnout was even comparable to last year's. all in all, a fine day.

ok, so i admit, i'm new to blogging. and, i'm a fairly young citizen of twitterville. however, i find it endlessly tacky that some of my former favorite bloggers are interfacing twitter into their main blog. one has even mostly ceded her blog space to a daily encapsulation of tweets.

folks, THEY. ARE. DIFFERENT. FORMS.

the charms of microblogging don't translate to blog entries. the banality that is so appealing in twitter just appears terribly self-absorbed in the most dull way in a regular blog. and, if you're too lazy to blog anymore, shut down the blog. abandon. pull the tarp and move on.

(a slight wooshing sound is produced as i slide my soapbox back under the bed)

Just back from the triennial conference for historians of gender, The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, colloquially known as the Berks.

No, no, no, not Birks…

The Berks.

Now, that’s not to say that hippie sandals can't be found at the Berks. Oh, can they. You see, there’s a bit of legend that one can determine when a woman historian got tenure through the careful dating of the period from which her daily costume hails. Yes, that’s right, obtaining tenure means you no longer have to shop. The rewards of academic job security are endless, it seems.

Despite my own need for wardrobe maintenance, I received a delightful little present at this year’s conference: I felt young again, like a young fawn cavorting across the meadow of feminist wisdom. Sure, the panels--which varied from stale to sublimely engaging--put me nicely in my professional place. I am a youthful academic. I have much to learn. I have political skills to develop and a body of experiences to gather before I will arrive. But my reconnection to vulnerability was more of a much more flirtatious yet equally important nature...

As the conference got underway, I quickly observed that all panels worthy of two hours of my attention seemed to be related to history of sexuality or queer history. Frankly, women’s history as it is currently understood could use a big ole adrenaline needle in the heart. From my modest survey, we have not broken fresh and exhilarating territory for some time in the history of women's experience. That’s not to say I don’t admire, respect, and climb the shoulders of the women historians that went before me and made a place for more inclusive narratives of the past—I do. But the innovative, exciting, rigorous interpretive work of today, the pathbreakers that have taken up the activist torch from our foremothers does seem to reside in the newer subdisciplines of the history of sexuality, disability history, and LGBT history.

And, where groups of liberal ladies gather, so do the dykes. As a girl whose heart is more likely to pound for a woman with brains, I had an eye- and brain-candy filled weekend. By Saturday afternoon, I had developed crushes on no less than three youthful-yet-wizened professors. They were equally as vibrant in the role of panelists as they were panel attendees. When I saw their faces amongst the crowd, I knew the forthcoming roundtables would be engaging. By the cocktail hour reception Saturday night, I had a trifecta of queer women scholars firmly wedged in my starry eyes.

Imagine my thrill upon finding them in a lively yet intimate circle over subpar cheese and house wine. As the night progressed, the objects of my infatuation were never far from one another, making easy work for my crushed-out eyes to scan the crowd and feel my pulse simmer. As my darling grad school colleagues and I compared notes, it emerged that all three were favorites across my cohort. Even our straight sisters twittered over hawtness of the youthful powerhouses.

And then my friend and I went to the bar.

And then I pivot slightly, as I feel a presence behind me.

And there she is. Let’s just call her Fran. Yes, she’s the cream in the coffee. The salt in the stew,

Our eyes meet. She’s nearly as tall as I, a sure chemical for the structural disintegration of my knee tissue.  She smiles quickly, I smile back. She’s projecting some unbelievable mixture of self-possession yet approachability. Fueled by three glasses of mediocre sauvignon blanc,  I seize the precious moment: “Due to the late night prior, I missed part of your paper, but what I heard was really amazing.” Although the compliment genuinely rolls off my tongue, although her first book was the one of the three most brilliant of the nearly 200 titles I ‘read’ for my exams, I nonetheless hear my own decree of a “conference-long moratorium on asslicking”. Quickly I overrule this as mere flirtation and therefore exempt from said moratorium, holding the smile meant to charm. As she smiles in return and I get less sure of my upright position vis-à-vis the floor, she thanks me and shoots back the line that made my weekend:

“Well, I really liked your comments in that last panel.” Her voice sexy, her tone laced with just enough crackling heat to catch my friend's ear, her eyes holding mine for a delicious and gratuitous moment too long.

I thank her, smile warmly, and move through the rest of the evening dancing (yes, this conference included a dance—don’t ask) as though I could once again be the young object of lust in a powerful (and really, really sexy) elder’s gaze. For the entirety of an evening, I am the wide-eyed ingénue that I have not been in a very, very long time.

Thank you Fran.

Legend has it, my grandfather didn’t like chatter. My mom, aunts and uncles have always confirmed his ogre-like position on the topic. “Children should be seen and not heard,” and if the dinner table got a bit more boisterous than he liked from the activities of six children, he’d bellow a cogent “LESS NOISE!” As the story goes, this mandate was most effective. Now, it should also be disclosed that he transformed himself from a quiet, small, restrained Irish man to a ranting, antic-prolific drunk on a very regular basis, as our kind is wont to do. However, even contextualized in his otherwise anti-social and reprehensible behavior, I’m quite sympathetic to his desire for peace. For silence. For less noise.

As I get older, I find myself desiring quiet time with greater frequency and realizing more dire results if solitude eludes me. Folks, it ain’t pretty. I get cranky. I get less than helpful, I dislike in broadcast. And finally, I realize, retreat, and restore. Part of my difficulty in recognizing my own need for seclusion is that I also have a raging need for people. I love people! People are so fascinating! They say funny things and make sweet gestures and act in random, often inexplicable ways.  They wear silly things, they look to each other for the most random and insane array of need fulfillment. Really, if you haven’t spent time with people, I highly recommend it. More bang for your entertainment dollar, to be sure. So, how do I navigate such divergent desires? “Come here, play with me, tell me about yourself, GET AWAY!” Well, it’s hard. That perfect mix is an elusive one.

This came to head most recently driving through the mountains with my mom. As we drove through what for me is essentially a giant alter and nave, I got my introspective soulful groove on immediately. As our time was very limited,  I needed to make the most of an hour or so with only the briefest of stops. I roll down the window,  breathe in the mountain air, and proceed to perform what can only be called meditative driving. Yes, my eyes were open, thanks for asking. Meanwhile my mama continues her usual way-of-being and her chatting takes no pause. Quickly my irritation escalates into a full-blown bitchiness, and finally, I ask her as nice as I can if she’d just please shut up. She graciously complies, and I spent the rest of my time in the mountains contemplating my weird relationship to silence. I settle on the notion that while I’m not my grandfather, at least not yet, I do need to get better at owning my need for peace and graciously communicating that to the people in my life.

So, I got my wicca on, felt my soulful connection to the trees, the streams, the massive rock that supported myself and automobiles and miles of beautiful nature, and got quiet. And when you get quiet, things talk to you. Mountains and bridges and cattle will tell you tidbits that you need to hear exactly at that moment. When my inner chatter about needing silence subsided, I heard the forest tell me something about that very topic. The mass of trees shared with me the following: although language is the social liquid we all float together in, silence has its connections as well. And the best way to connect with someone while denying language is to get em naked and get frisky. Sex is our nonverbal communication. Of course, thank you goddess.

So, I return to my life armed with this wisdom. Watch out, folks, if you see me beckoning from a dark corner. Your best defense is to just keep talking.

So, I’m on vacation. And a work trip. Really a work trip, but it’s one of those weird work trips that I get to decide to take the afternoon off and go the beach. And I did. I am in Charleston, South Carolina conducting research for my dissertation with my mom. She has kindly (some may say crazily) offered to be my research assistant, so we started the day in the reading room at the Avery Research Center for African American Culture, opted out to the beach and subsequent Crab Shack, then returned back to our luxurious (and by luxurious I mean perfectly sufficient with surprisingly clean and enjoyable pool) Days Inn.

A few weeks ago, as I mentally prepared for this trip, I decided that I should, once again, attempt running. I will here keep my comments on my feeble attempts at running, and by running I mean a meager gesture towards a walk/jog befitting a 65-year-old polio survivor,  brief. However,  I have become enchanted with what happens to my brain when ‘running’. Not as quiet as yoga brain, running brain seems to offer intellectual friskiness along with a certain quiet of spirit that’s great for making wry cultural observations that I likely won’t remember by the end of the jaunt. Today, however, one stuck with me.

As good liberals, we all ought know the phrase ‘carbon footprint’. Our friends at wikipedia, whoever  they may actually be, define the concept as one which helps folks “conceptualize their personal (or organizational) impact in contributing to global warming”.  When wielded correctly, this two-word phrase lends an economical yet brainy heft—perfect for impressing others at cocktail parties with a paucity of syllables.  As I trotted, yes, let’s say trotted, across the most gorgeous, huge, and overwhelming bridge, it occurred to me that a full life is one that can defend making a greater contribution than withdrawal, however one might define such . That via some impossible formula, I could feel satisfied with my life if I knew that I gave more than I took. At first, this notion seemed to align with the pack-in, pack-out principle of camping. You know the one—leave your campsite in better shape than you found it. Which certainly seems like a good ethical basis for some duration of human experience longer than a three-day weekend.

At first my thoughts led me to the carbon footprint model, over which I struggled to think on a scenario in which a person could leave the earth in better ecological shape than when they first entered the world. My mind flashed to an leftist urban legend—the hippie freak that vows each year to produce less than a single bag of unrecylable, uncomposted waste in a year. The Minnesota version resides in Duluth and has been living this lifestyle for more than a decade. I’ve heard of a Vermont version, and I’ve got good money on Washington and Oregon generating just such a legend. Hell, prolly northern California does too.

But then my thoughts drifted in rhythm to other costs we exact in our daily life. And it occurred to me that one of the greatest, yet often least acknowledged costs of sustaining human life comes on the emotional and spiritual levels; that the energy expended in conflict, compromise, love, forgiveness, anger, desire, pain, faith, and connection. What might a culture look like in which all participants took seriously the soulful energy they put out into the world? What might happen to our political, cultural, and social worlds if each participant committed to leaving the human spirit in better shape than in which they found it? I propose a new NGO devoted to this very topic: an international coalition of organizations and individuals committed to sustaining community in the most expansive of definitions. Pay attention to the psychic footprint, say I!

Sure, sure, some might link this notion with the grumblings I’ve shared with a dear friend over our desires to gain electoral power and then legislate the interment of individuals with subpar emotional intelligence. We think they’d learn much from one another, as they caused each other great deals of emotional pain but kept their lack of self-awareness safe from, well, us. In fact, I think this has little to do with my autocratic fantasies. Really. I swear this train of thought has more merit than overblown yet inventive  self pity.

And suddenly my heels and lungs were killing me, and I downshifted to a slower gait, my own psychic footprint remaining pretty much unaccounted for.