The Joneses

 I recently watched a movie titled “The Jones” A movie about a too “perfect” family that moves into the perfect neighborhood, that resembles the perfect definition of Affluenza. Why is it so important that we keep up with the Joneses? Why do we put ourselves in dept, hurt those we care about most? Labels consume us in our over consumption and capitalistic society. We crave recognition and are willing to pay the price; but at what price? We wear the label that we paid top dollar for, yet the designer should be paying us, we are advertising their name; the athlete gets paid to impress us with the designer goods so we become the label whore. The portmanteau, Affluenza is the perfect term for our over consumerism. My nine-year-old child proudly expressed to me that if we don’t recycle we will ruin the ozone and the sun will burn us like lava. How do we recycle ourselves? Is bigger really better? My heart is who I am not the name printed across it, or the car I drive.

Sea Shells

She sells seashells, as they come with pleasure and despair.

She sells seashells, tossed by the waves some broken some survive.

The heave and tug of the moon wax and wane, slowing, tiresome.

Her womb distinctively her own; haunted by the reaping of harvest not yet ripe. The right of choice distinctively hers, mourning the decision. There is no talk of the aftermath, the broken seashell. Tossed by the waves, lost forever. Intertwined in the matrix of politics, her God(s). US out of my uterus, rolling through her mind like the tiny shells undulating on the shore. Somehow the soul is lost, set inside a paper cup. No ethics lives. Here to heal, love, warm, birth, re birth, she sells seashells by the sea shore.

Barbie Doll

Barbie Doll This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy. Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat legs. She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity. She went to and fro apologizing. Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle. Her good nature wore out like a fan belt. So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up. In the casket displayed on satin she lay with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on, a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie. Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said. Consummation at last. To every woman a happy ending. --Marge Piercy Copyright, Middlemarsh, Inc.

Because i have somewhere to go

Has feminism become to abstract? Are we too concerned with pornography, subjectivity, objectivity? Are we objectifying our selves? Are we buying into media with our obsession with reality TV, The Housewives, the Jersey Shores, The Bachelor. We have become comfortable subverting and co~opting language to justify our voyeurism.

The media has become a distinctive sort of executioner, with its stereoscopic displays of virtuality. We buy into this un~reality all the while neglecting reality which is women still struggle, we are homeless, we are not all wearing tiaras and crashing White House parties; women who do not speak the feminist language. Words are both important as well as unimportant, in our celebration of self ~expression we must dissect what is true expression, real feminist expression is not being on Girls Gone Wild, a bikini wax, or double D implants. We are still struggling with real oppression in our economic, social, political, and sexual lives. We have so far to go, and must not forget this. I will not be a round peg round hole kind of girl, many have tried to file my edges to no avail and I will not watch my expressive manifestations come second, or never to full realization.  I know what I need, please don’t tell me what I, we, she needs. I have never asked what feminism is, I just knew innately the difference between, just, and un~just. I have been silent for far too long, and now I speak.

Discord exists; it cannot be ignored or afforded the luxury of overlooking conflict. We ourselves are in conflict with each other. Are we not ourselves, yet the forgotten women of our millennia, those who forged before us, for we ourselves? Not only are we born socialized; we are born into conflict. Are the misogynists all male? Are we truly becoming a society of female chauvinist pigs? I for one am over bored with the it is my right as a women to become empowered by flashing myself on Girls Gone Wild, I hate to break the news to ya sisters, we are raising a little heard of little piggies! I watch the moon change, becoming full and can not overcome the feeling of woman. The inner strength of what is truly feminine, what is uniquely mine, a vessel, a womb. It belongs to me and is not for display, dishonor, or sale.

So with this said, why are we fighting each other? The licentiousness has got to stop being placated, the media is its own type of executioner. 

Home & my Heart

Mamma I’m coming home, is home truly where the heart is? In a day and age of nomadic necessity where does the heart live?? Is it your birthplace? Or is it with those you have shared your heart and inner most thoughts, fears, insecurities, and dreams? My heart is bicoastal and probably everywhere but here. My heart lies within those who have held it tenderly and firm.  And home is within oneself, where the heart is. Home is the stranger inside whom changes daily yet remains the same, my mirror, my stranger. The one who now loves me the most, my home? So many years it has taken to earn that love, to find it, ignored, lost, betrayed. Yet always home. If the image is peeled free from the mirror it becomes clearer. Life is to be a feast of adventure.  Today I felt the sand beneath my feat with those who have known me most of my life and I was home.  Wave caressing the shore, trees, sky, stars, voices. WE are free; paradox and possibility, old friends are we; fine intelligence and fools. We are alive and free. As we sat around our second fire of the day our minds wandered to self, God, Buddha. Communism capitalism my ink, our ink, disease, longing, loss & love, lost & found. Healing, cleansing, silence & sounds. Sense & Sensibility. Home is where the heart is on not necessarily the ground upon which we place it. <3

I'm Tired

Excuse me, but didn’t I pay for that.

In a time of turmoil I ask the age-old question, the chicken or the egg, I think I bought them both and eat neither. In my 45 years I have lived some life, good bad and indifferent.  I am the defender of the uneducated, the insolent, the deprived. Yet I am tired. Learned helplessness.  I use this term as often as any, I defend with a sociological view, and yet I am tired. 

If you have a pack of Marlboro reds in your purse, you can pay for your pre natal vitamins, or better still a condom. AND Really Coos County,,?? Must you continue to smoke in your car with the windows up and your children with you?, yes plural.

Will I also pay for the tubes that will be placed in your children’s ears? Will I care for them in the hospital post surgery and weep silently for their pain, pain they did not ask for. 

America needs to pull up her big girl panties and stop crying. We are in crisis. Who holds the purse strings? Corporate America has had control for far to long. Home of the free my ass, more like home of the helpless and greedy. Education is our only hope,, teach them to fish.

And further more, When did it ever become ok to wear your PJ’s in public, with slippers?? Accountability &  Entitlement , Chicken or Egg?

Eyes Wide Open

I am freshly home from a fabulous birth. The scent of new baby still in my subconscious. I managed to sleep for about three hours and wa la, eyes wide open. I am enjoying an amazing summer after a mind-bending year of school. Why does my brain still want to work in over drive?

So back to my spectacular evening, I have now attended One Hundred One Births, each and every one of them as special as the divine one before. My baby this evening is number 101, I attended the birth of my newborns’ big brother and am so very privileged to receive him this evening. We started our evening with the usual suspects, Mom, Dad, well meaning friends and family and our ever so special labor nurses. After all of the logistics were worked into place we began our walk around the hospital and outside compass. My laboring mommy and I are kindred spirits in the “I need to be outside, and give me space kind of way”. Let my toes be free in the grass, to feel the warmth of the Earth beneath me, and my contractions are manageable. This event sparked the interest of the hospital security, who promptly called L&D and report that there was a women “squatting outside, and in labor” hmmmmmm. Should I be concerned? Legalities? Who really holds shares in my woman’s womb, or mind? I will continue to advocate for the right to choose on the part and for those in labor. In our post-industrialized society we live in we have lost so much freedom. Pregnancy is not an illness, and birth is not a disease to be medicated or controlled by others decisions. Education and freedom are power. I am however grateful for the awareness.

As the breeze became a bit chili and the contractions stronger and more powerful we moved inside and into the birthing tub. Water, Air, Earth, Hips, Bosom, Power; The form not to be diffused by the distractions around us, as the place is held unwavering. The flow of energy, the swelling and aching contractions, the weightlessness of the body in the water, as labor should be, the bath of birth all kept in rhythm, in sync, in the elements we held steadfast to within our grasp.

As the pressure and burn became without dismissal we gently moved to the birth bed. Twenty-seven minutes later a new life emerged before my eyes. Eyes wide open, and filled with tears of joy and honor, to be a part of this miracle, is beyond my realm of vocabulary.

As Mr. Walt Whitman has said, “Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest, You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul”.

To encapsulate what is truly divine, to seal the pearl in the shell and let it be released, to know, it is woman. It is a secret society that grows and changes with each birth, a fledgling is transported into the sisterhood.