play me like a jukebox

I was raised Catholic, Catholic school, choir, all that jazz. Church songs (and girl scout songs, and the theme song to The Greatest American Hero) are programmed into me, in a disturbing way. I walk around humming them a lot.

When I played a board game in high school with my friends involving song lyrics, they came up with lyrics from pop songs, or classic rock. I consistently came up with church songs. I desperately wanted to come up with a Joy Division line or something, to restore my coolness. No can do.

Imagine my pleasure when I've been walking around for two days singing a church song that is apparently pro S/M, and pro role swapping: "Oh Master grant that I may never seek so much to be controlled as to control - ol - ol. To be understood as to understand. To be loved as to love with all my soul -ol -ol."

Only this morning did I realize it's probably "consoled" rather than "controlled." I guess my head is combining cultures, much like how Catholicism is combined with indigenous beliefs in Mexico, giving it some aesthetics it lacked otherwise!

good friday

My grandma died almost 20 years ago. They say things happen in threes, and that particular three was that my friend Darrin died, Operation Desert Shield began in earnest and my Grandma died.

Darrin was cremated, and because of that, I don't think I ever accepted that he'd died. Where the hell was the body? Why was nobody singing Ave Maria? He died on Christmas, someone performed an opera he'd written at the funeral, nobody mentioned him being queer, and then the war really picked up, with people leaving my classes to go fight. I went to some protests and borrowed a five inch black and white tv so I could watch the footage of bombs dropping at nighttime. I continued working the late shift at Yogurt N More, without Darrin.I took my bevy of foster kittens to visit Grandma in the nursing home, and got freaked by all the people who were so desperate to get out, and would grab my hands when I tried to leave. She couldn't swallow, and the staff could never quite remember to sit her up before feeding her. I don't remember when her birthday was, not even what season, but I do remember that she was buried on Good Friday. In my head I've made Good Friday her day.

Gram would be 110 years old this year. The exact same age as my house.It seemed significant in some way that she was buried on Good Friday, a holy day that I'd tried to respect in all the right ways, but with my usual failure at praying. I did all the stations of the cross and inhaled incense until I was dizzy, and spent what felt like forever in perfect silence. That year, we flew to North Dakota with the box of her ashes, and buried it in the grave of the husband she hadn't seemed too close to, and that I'd never met. It was a military graveyard, the ground was freezing my feet through my shoes, and there were deer there on the next hill. I remember reading Susan Faludi's Backlash in the back seat of the car, and feeling very adult and very kid at the same time. I didn't have any money or nice clothes, so my mom had had to buy me a dress.The dramas of Holy Week and the dramas of Passover blend in my head, even though I know they're not the same. The image from Passover that sticks is the blood of the lamb over the doorway in order that your house is passed by the angel of death. I'm more an amulet person, I suppose, than a blood sacrifice person, and my version of this is blueing. I could swear I knew that people in Morocco put laundry blueing on their door lintels as protection. I'm convinced I've seen pictures where it's rained, and the blueing has left stains running down the doorjambs and the door itself. I was sure that people painting their doors and even courtyards blue came from the tradition of safety through blueing. According to the internet, I might have made it up.I used to hang those little blueing tablets tied in cheesecloth bags in my own doorways. Bundles of Ocotillo branches above the door, blueing hanging into the passageway. I had to protect myself.
Maybe by talking about smearing the blood and hanging the blue to avoid death, I'm blending them with Ash Wednesday, too. It's weird, you have to admit, seeing people walking around with an acknowledgment of their mortality on their face all day. I'll be safe over here, behind my amulet.

churchgoer

OH YEEAH! Big Saturday Night: I went to church. Well, a concert in a church.

I can't really explain what possessed me, except that I liked this sign, and I'd been curious about the church architecturally. It was built in 1725, was used as a prison during the revolutionary war, has a really old cemetery in the yard, and has a little preaching perch out front, on the street, with stairs to climb up to it.

The bells were amusing enough. I thought they'd be played by seniors, but it was a whole group (what do you call them, a band?) of teens. I got to sit in the balcony, on the organ bench, under all the big organ pipes, and check out the building relatively undisturbed. But then, there was a trick. The bells ended, and a teen choir started singed "God is in control." I got out quick.

There is one thing I miss about church, and that is that even the people with the bad voices get to sing. But clearly there's a lot I don't miss. Glad to have made it out unscathed.

"may she find what she's missing, even if it's not what she lost"

mattilda's public art project, lostmissing, is an open letter, a lost cat flyer, a tantrum a question a pressure point a release, the present holding the past, and hunger.
If you can relate, participate by posting her flyers, making your own, and sending photos.

pickle

Status update (a): Fermented Beverages

I "made" my own kombucha mother rather than ordering one or harassing people I know for handouts, and I did it based on the thin instructions of the people I've come to call the "kombucha femme boys". (You know from me that's a loving term—aggro-sincere.) I was discouraged for a full month, poking at it and sniffing it. Apparently, there's no warm enough place in my house, not even on the shelf right behind the wood stove, so it just took a dang long time. But...success! A mother is born, and she's happily floating in a new batch, looking like a crazy jellyfish.

Then there's the ginger beer. Tasty to me, lemony and fizzy, but too strong. No-one looking for a soft drink experience would like it. Again, I think it's the heat cold thing: too cool, so that in waiting extra long for the fizz to come, the acid flavor overrode the sweetness. I'll try again in warmer months.

Status update (b): Root Cellar

The veggies are going strong. Hudson valley squashes and radishes and potatoes and apples and onions and garlic and carrots are still fresh and crisp after being under the cover of darkness since late October. Why haven't I done this in previous winters? Why doesn't everyone (who doesn't live in a tropical clime) do this? I'm having a conspiracy moment, convinced our lack of veg storage knowledge was perpetrated by Green Giant or somebody equally as cunning.

Status update (c): Merit Badge cute news

The woman who's daughter's girl scout vest kicked off the abovegroundpool merit badges awards contacted us to say she likes the idea of recycling scout merit badges for righteous activist activities. Unlikely scouting bond!

tool talk - open sesame

I have a little tool I love called a "slicky." When I went to look it up online, I learned that slicky means either "the biological moistening (slickening) of one's vagina in preparation for penetrative sex" or is "GI slang in Korea for a thief used since the Korean War." When I went to the website, I found a big picture of a cookie. Zowie. My slicky is an innocent little sesame seed grinder.

I could spend a year of tool talks on Japanese tools, since there is cultural importance placed on the ritual of everyday tasks: tea cups fit perfectly in ones hand. But I recently got this silly little plastic sesame seed grinder, and love it as much as I'd usually reserve for tools made of stone or wood or copper. Sesame seeds are one of the oldest condiments, and contain lots of good-for-you minerals, including copper, and grinding them releases their wonderful oil and scent.

Last night we went to a friend's noodle shop. There people were making mochi (rice cakes) for the new year in the traditional method: pounding rice with big wooden mallets in a hollowed out tree trunk. Fascinating, but I'll hold on making my own mochi for the moment. For now, how about roasted radishes with soy sauce and sesame. An easy way to try out some of those radishes from the root cellar and the slicky, both!

A call out to Kiosk, the wonderful little gallery slash shop where slicky came from. They specialize in everyday tools from around the world that have outstanding aesthetic qualities. Get your dowsing rods here! Thanks, too, to The Perfect Pantry for the photo, and the lovesong the slicky inspired in her.

tradition

I like a little ritual in my life, so on christmas I want to listen to Elvis records and eat tamales and bourbon balls. I can't help it. A nip of brandy doesn't hurt either.

Though I've lived away from the southwest longer than I lived there, my lust for tamales (and other foods local to AZ) stays.


It's sometimes hard to find vegetarian tamales, and definitely harder still to find vegan ones, so it's a good excuse to make up one's own big batch. When I'm already making masa, it only makes sense to make pamonha too, a Brazilian version of the sweet tamale made with coconut. Enjoy your own holiday rituals, and happy solstice to you.

touched

We've talked botanigrams before (moss graffiti, guerilla gardening and the like), billboard alteration, and wheatpasting, but here is another version, clean tagging or reverse graffiti. This version, by Paul Curtis, is paid for by advertising agencies, and riffs off those who've been writing messages in dirt for years. Using graffiti styles as advertising isn't new, unfortunately, but creative types are happy to steal back methods that have been lifted from street artists.

Using cleaning brushes (or in some instances, power washers and stencils), tagging or drawing into grime does have the allure of things that have been touched or used a zillion times. Picture the worn and darkened wood of your grandma's trowel handle. It can be that beautiful.

But it doesn't mean I have to give up spray paint!

all souls

Halloween, all saints, and all souls all make us have a look at death. All the grim reapers and skeletons running around, the gravestones my friend with cancer reported decorating the walls of her chemo lab, all the graveyard visitation and wishes for the souls of the dead. I've always been a Day of the Dead and sugar skull fan, and recently learned about the Yi Peng festival in Thailand, where some reports say those releasing the lanterns let their troubles float away, and others say they release the souls of their dead. I'd hoped to go to one of the city's largest graveyards today to have a sendoff for my own dead with the accompaniment of a Haitian band, but was too caught up cheering the tail end of the marathoners.

Whatever your celebration of the dead may entail, here's a nod to your deceased loved ones, as well as you and yours still living.

tenuous connections

Artist and ecologist from South Carolina, Danna Ray quietly reminds us that we're attached to one another, to our surroundings. That delicate moss and tiny sprouting plants are of great importance. That in our world, devastation and beauty occur together.

The way her work makes me feel reminds me of my first trip to Staten Island.

This NY borough is famous for it's enormous garbage dump, visible from space. I first went to Staten Island when in art school, to see a collection of Fluxus work that included several feminist and queer artists I respected. I was transported from my by-the-side-of-the-freeway New Jersey existence to beautiful old buildings, built by the navy, in a large and lovely park. I didn't see Fresh Kills on that trip, but was thinking about garbage canyons anyhow when I saw the Yoko Ono piece that has continued to resonate for me. Her piece consisted of smashed teacups carefully pieced together and glued, placed on a table and chairs, ready for the ritual of having tea together.

Sitting down with another person for tea is such a small act in the face of something as horrible as the Vietnam War (about which the piece was made). Small but critical. Sitting face to face. Seeing one another, acknowledging one another's value. And connection.

It's worth cobbling together our broken lives, our broken spirits, our broken earth.

fear and anger, anger and fear

Since when is anger a bad thing? It's a response all animals have to disturbing situations and it helps us, the same way that pain stops us from causing ourselves greater harm.

People who are afraid to face their discontents like to write off activists as not being in charge of their anger. Bush made reference to the "angry left" at the RNC this week (though of course calling centrist Obama "left" is laughable). What sane person wouldn't want to riot?

I think anger is an incredibly valuable response to all kinds of things, and it's one of the ways I know I'm alive, and conscious. I don't only feel anger: I (and all those other "angry activists") are driven by love and hunger and other passions.

I get weary of being asked why I insist on acknowledging my anger. Silence = Death may be an old school slogan, but Act Up knew what they were talking about. Silence and the lack of truth telling keep us in our place, keep us numb, keep us isolated and questioning our own sanity. Not speaking makes sexual abuse able to go on, allows all manner of violation to occur.

Speaking up and fighting for improvements is about being alive. I fear the outcome of numbness and complacency far more than I fear anger.

Without anger, I am as dead as one of Annette Messager's sparrows. The ritual of clothing and protecting them and treating them gently doesn't make them any less dead.

abovegroundpool merit badges

I was a girl scout for many years, and loved it. I knew some of the stuff we did was goofy (endless lanyard making, kissing the bishop's ring, weird rituals involving bridges over tinfoil ponds and reciting oaths while making extra-terrestial hand gestures). But I got to go camping a lot, make crafts, and earn merit badges. I'm not even a Virgo, but merit badges were an obsession. I had to have as many as possible to fill up my vest and sash. I thought boy scouts were cooler, since they got to do hardcore outdoor survival stuff, but I was still happy to be a scout.

This explains the box covered in rainbow unicorn stickers, filled with merit badges. The god's eyes I got rid of, the badges I kept.

I know how conservative scouting organizations are in the U.S. I realize that gender indoctrination is part of the package, christianity is assumed, and non-white participation is minute. They're also responsible for my ability to throw a clay pot, to build a good fire, and for my stash of embroidered patches.

I thought I'd finally put these babies to good use, and give them as awards to those doing great things in the world. Check the merit badges label to see all awards given. Write me or comment to nominate a person or group or action that you think deserves a badge of merit.

Photo courtesy of The House of Kent.

fireworks or war?

This image (from ayres no graces') is sortof how I feel about fireworks. I'm sortof scared of them, freaked out by all the war noise, which, when we're honest, is what they're meant to evoke (see The Unapologetic Mexican). Most years I'm paranoid or grouchy or both, and lock my scared cats up in the house with my scaredy cat self during fireworks. Read this hilarious post on tiny cat pants about a fireworks accident this year, which made me feel sane for hiding out. (Wait, or is it the drunk straight people I'm hiding from?) Anyway, ran into this bit from last year when, apparently, I was feeling bolder:

Almost two decades ago I took a marine biology class that field-tripped to Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico to spend our days gazing into tide pools. That is where I learned about bioluminescent animals and organisms, and that those organisms are why the ocean sparkles at night. Standing by a bonfire on the beach looking at the night water, the smallest beings creating such vast beauty had a big impact on me. The ocean can sparkle on its own, with no moon.

I thought about it this week when I visited my CSA's distribution pretty late in the evening. The dense show of fireflies over the fields was absolutely stunning, second only to one summer evening I spent in a field thick with fireflies in the mountains of North Carolina. My insistence on comparing the view to laser light shows (events usually accompanied by Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon") made me laugh at myself. It is so beautiful and fascinating that I'm only able to absorb the information by comparing it to something much flatter, and made by humans.

Growing up in the sunset-rich Sonoran desert, I'm familiar with this absorption issue: Visitors almost always look at the spectacular sunsets for 10 seconds, take a picture, and spend hours looking at the photographic image of that sunset.

This weekend also came with holiday fireworks. I think that because of the fireflies, I was more open to the fireworks this year. Instead of looking and sounding to me like a simulation of war, I was reminded more of fairy dust and making wishes by blowing on dandelions. I saw a woman wearing sparkling lotion over her whole face and her hair and neck and clothes. Though I don't think I'll be purchasing any of this lotion, I understand the desire to glitter. Who wouldn't want to be a part of the world of the fireflies, the world of the ocean organisms, and be able to shine instead of just reflect?

gay marriage

While "the gays" have been celebrating in California, I've been mum on gay marriage. That's because I'm not into it. I like ritual sometimes, I like queers being committed to one another (monogamous or no), and I get warm fuzzies when I hear about those couples who've been together for 60 or so years.

But in my mind marriage is a stopgap. It might get a couple of queers health insurance. But shouldn't we all have healthcare, whether we're in relationships or not? It may help a queer or two not lose their child or their home when their lover dies. But that really hasn't been tested yet, has it?

Gay marriage doesn't solve our problems. And when everyone's atwitter & aglow over their new right to marry, I feel like a jerk pointing out those problems. My co-worker reinforced that feeling this week when he quoted a gay man as hanging his head and saying "I miss having something to be angry about."

Sorry ya'll. I like a party as much as the next one, but that's no reason to invite the government to regulate my relationships, no reason to invoke old institutions that secure property. My dear old friend mattilda bernstein sycamore always comes to the rescue when I am without words, and I stumbled on this Alternet post from mattilda today. It's not just about wanting to be different.

I'm not going to spend my time fighting against gay marriage. I still haven't recovered from a late eighties gay rodeo protest where our signage (as queers against animal abuse in rodeos) wasn't clear enough, and the local paper clumped us with the protesting Christians. Still, I would like to be able to give a clear answer when people ask me about it, or assume I'm on the bandwagon fighting for my right to marry.

P.S. As unattractive as it may be to some, I'm still angry. Remember Sakia Gunn?
P.P.S. Image courtesy of Gay Shame SF.

to the archives

I have a full belly after a potluck at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. With plenty of new dykes to meet and vegan food to eat, I didn't get to paw through the archives themselves. There was evidence of fierce dyke activists all around: Lesbian Avenger banners, Dyke Action Machine posters, and many more delicious materials. To make my flashback complete, they even had Joan Armatrading playing on the boom box. I hadn't been to the archive for at least a decade, and probably closer to two, but I feel sure that my memory of it, like sorting through my friend Bob's stuff after his death, had some impact on the decision to begin the abovegroundpool online archive.

The gathering reminded me, too, of ye olde days of potlucks. Back before Isa Chandra Moskowitz was the vegan cookbook queen, and even before Post Punk Kitchen, she was organizing anarchist women's potlucks. These events (held in Park Slope, Prospect Heights, and the East Village) often doubled as planning meetings or info shares, with the constant of good food. (Yeah, there was always someone lazy who brought a bag of chips, but the bulk of the gang made a good effort.) When organizing materials for the abovegroundpool archive recently, I ran across copies of Eat Me, the potluck zine. Isa was sharing her recipes even then.