40 Days of Writing, Day 24: Dear Jesus, What Do You Think of Abortion Killers and Fish Fry Fridays?

Dear Jesus,

Do you like Fish Fry Fridays?

When you came here to save the world, did you ever imagine that – in addition to breaking bread at eucharist together – we’d slap some fish with oil and fry it up in your name?

What do you think of fish sticks, as opposed to fish fillets?

If you fed a crowd of 5,000 without counting women and children with a five loaves of bread and two fish, does that mean we should be feeding cities with our Costo amounts of fried fish, baked potatoes, and french fries with cole slaw?  We are greasing up our cafeterias and kitchens every Friday during Lent to be in community and not eat meat together.  We eat our fill of the most unhealthy food there is on earth.  Again, we do this IN YOUR NAME!

There are so many things done in your name, or, at least, in the name of values found in Christianity.  I wonder what you would think of Dr. Tiller’s murder as he was shot on the steps of his church as he handed out the bulletin?  I wonder what you’d think about this man who performed late term abortions –

supposedly out of care for the mother’s life

because the mothers were scared out of their minds

because there was no other place to turn

and in turn,

this man, Tiller, was taken out of this life and into the next

by a bullet

in your house?  On the steps of your father’s house?

If you drove out vendors with whips and anger out of the temple

because you hated your father’s house turned marketplace —

what do you think of your father’s house turned into a

political scandal

a deathbed

a firing range

a raging inferno

Oh, Jesus, c’mon and tell me what you think.  There’s so much wrong in the world done in your name, why won’t you please clarify and correct your name and restore it to some thing of meaning, of peace?  In the Philippines women are dying because of botched abortions. The Philippines –  the country where divorce is illegal, the crops are dried, the national import is human bodies, abortion is illegal, and there is no seemingly distinct line between the church and the state, women are left with the rhythm method, no education, and botched abortions.  What say you on all of this?  And that’s no demand, it’s a plea.  Respond to this madness!

So much is done in your name, I am left wondering if you have plugged your ears.

Holla back,

Lisa

40 Days of Writing, Day 22: Jesus for Dummies, (Meaning) Jesus for Me

When you commit to a deep study of a complex subject, you become humbled in the vastness of the knowledge available and how truly little you understand the subject.

This is what I have to say about giving a 1 hour presentation about Jesus Christ.

You’d think that for me, a 32 year old Catholic who’s talked, prayed, studied and lived the faith for all of my life, I’d be able to ZIP ZAP through the bare essentials of who the Big J is and why He’s so rocking awesome to study and contemplate.

That was a dumb thought.

Forcing myself to explain who Jesus is and was in the context of the Nicene Creed is and was a daunting task.  I just finished the lecture about an hour ago and felt defeated.  Deflated.  Uninspired and sad.  A complete 180 from when I wrote it.  The euphoria I experienced writing it should have been bottled. I could have sold it as I’VE GOT JESUS IN THIS BOTTLE.  YOU SHOULD TRY IT.  Somehow, though, that euphoria didn’t translate into a lecture.  Before 30 people of various backgrounds and ages and beliefs, I felt inadequate and desperate.

Maybe I was trying too hard.

Maybe I should have prayed beforehand for help.

Maybe I don’t know Jesus at all.

Maybe I just can’t sum up the most complex figure in the history of the world in one hour.  (I’m such an overachiever.  I really thought I’d do a kick ass job…)

What people wanted to understand is the Trinity and Heaven.  How is God 3 person?  How is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit all a part of ONE God?  And heaven …  how is heaven “here” in our midst as Jesus says, yet we are bombing the shit out of Libya and we kill each other everyday and we poison the ocean, burn our forests, and stuff chemicals in our bodies, and rip each other off, and push profit over people, prize material over the spiritual and bring people down and keep them down…how is THAT the kingdom?

Uh, well, has anyone ever heard of this word called MYSTERY?

It’s a real doosy to think about Jesus, the Trinity, and heaven.  I know.  I’ve been thinking about it all my life and I still haven’t got it figured out.

But, I believe there is something I can’t explain to a class of 30; how I know that all this shit is worth it and it’s leading me somewhere good.  I believe that in all of the limitations of my mind, language, time, and oral history, I still have this euphoria when I write about love.  When I write about this guy that walked around talking to the people that no one liked, when I write about this guy that lived to challenge systematic oppression, the guy who made servants equal to masters and turned water into wine, and raised the dead back to the living; the man who forgave everyone who asked and was nailed in his limbs for a simple message, “Love one another,” — when I write about him, a euphoria comes.

Why?

I don’t know!  Let’s call it mystery.  Just like everything else in faith.

I don’t know if Jesus had siblings.  I don’t know if Mary Magdalene was His honey.  I’m not sure why he’d pick Peter, the biggest goof of them all, to be the first leader (maybe to say that if Peter can do it, ANYONE can do it?)…

What do I know?

I know that someone was born in the most unthinkable of places – a flipping manger, for God’s sake – surrounded by manure, hay, feed, and livestock and then proceeded to live out the most unthinkable message of love and action and justice.  And then he died an unthinkably brutal death because the society of the day rejected this rebel, this revolutionary.  Jesus was a radical and he was executed for it.

I know that living out these values has brought me into a clarity, it’s given me a gift of prioritizing the world where I see the poor and marginalized as the answers and the rich as oftentimes the problem.  It’s given me the ability to believe the socially discredited and love the forgotten, even when I feel like a big failing and flailing jerk in attempting to do so.  That fact isn’t taught very often: to be radical in today’s society, you often feel like a wandering idiot.  To be counter cultural is to live experimentally, trying to look at things differently, trying to come at problems with a different lens.  I’m not always sure that it’ll work, I’m only sure that coming at it with the same lens that everyone else is going to look at it will not result in a new answer.

Being different means being uncertain and, unfortunately, living in uncertainty.

I’m not certain of anything about Jesus, despite what I teach.  I lead with faith, not certainty. 

I’m not looking to be right, though.  Just good.  And just.

Always just.

That’s what I know about Jesus.  And it’s not very much.  Apparently, though, that’s enough to live out in question for the duration of my life.

Gendered Pain: A Free Write on Birth, Partnership and the Woman’s Body

There’s nothing sexy about pain.  There’s nothing even remotely redeeming, glorified, cute, or remarkable about pain.

I came into this realization quite quickly Sunday morning when I was dressing Isaiah for mass. I began lowering him to the floor, felt a horribly familiar pop! in my lower back and I immediately recognized that telling radiating heat that spread throughout my lumbar region as I fell on one knee. Isaiah screamed in my ear as he harmlessly wobbled back from me so he peer into my face to see what was wrong.  All he could see was my face going paler by the second and my breath quicken in short spurts and outbursts, trying to control the pain.

No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.  No.

Not again.  Not again.  Not again.  NOT AGAIN.

I just got back to the gym this week.  I just started getting back on the treadmill, back in the zumba studio, back for my first swim in the pool.  I just …

I just got over my back injury from last month.

Remembering my phone was in the inner pocket of my purse, I slowly walked to my purse on the ground and gently leaned forward.  I reached and immediately fell and screamed in pain.

I somehow got my phone, I don’t remember how.  (A friend told me that when her back went out, she blacked out from the pain.)  I remember feeling calmed by the smooth surface of my phone, thanking God it was charged and relieved that Nick was only 5 minutes into his day, ahead of me, and on his way to work.  I whispered frantically to Isaiah that everything was fine and threw him a toy as I winced in pain.  He hobbled away, whimpering at the site of his mother in such disarray and distraction.

I burst into tears and could barely get the words out to Nick, “My back…w-w-went ou-ou-out a-a-a-gain…”

It was at that moment that I retreated from the world, the pain was overwhelming, almost blinding.

A co-worker told me later she saw Nick walking on the street when he was talking to me, all dressed up for work, briefcase in hand, but in an unusual walking speed, “a near run” she told me.  So she stopped and offered him a ride to wherever he was rushing to.  “Home,” he said, “Leese threw her back out again.”

It’s hormones, my chiropractor told me yesterday.  All the hormones and chemicals that loosen the pelvis and back, readying the body to deliver a baby, are still in your body and, likely, the lumbar region isn’t as tight as it was before and isn’t as strong.  Doing household chores and lifting things can sprain, strain, and injure the lower back, says the doc.

All of this from hormones?  Still?  It’s been 14 months.

Hormones and chemicals can linger in your body, doc says.

A number of friends – all who have given birth in the past two years – have confided of their recent and surprising chronic lower back pain, some so severe that it prevents mobility.  Few have found comfort.  All have tried natural healing, gym trainers, chiropractors, physical therapists. This strange community of back pain mothers comforts me.

I toss two pills of Alleve in my mouth and tried to smile at Isaiah in the kitchen.  He put his chubby arms up for me to carry him and starts grabbing my clothes for leverage, like trying to climb a tree.  Nick immediately scooped him up and tries to cheer him up with a jolly, overly boisterous voice.  The shriek out of Isaiah’s mouth was one I could interpret instantly, “What’s the matter with you?  Why won’t you pick me up?”  He’s taken away from me and, out of nowhere, I have an image of him being taken away from me the moment he was born when all I wanted to do was hold him.  I shake my head, and gently stir the boiling orzo.

Is this what birthing mothers deal with, I asked my head as I stare at the back of Nick’s body.  His is so strong, so solid.  Simply clad in jeans and a white tshirt, Nick’s body looked beautiful to me; his wide and capable back seemed fearless.  His stride was fluid, like a complicated piece of piano music keyed effortlessly.  I look down at my body.  A staccato mess of surgeries, stretch marks, and my skin’s opinion of the pregnancy weight gain and loss.   I see my scarred belly from three surgeries with another scheduled in the summer to fix an umbilical hernia.  My inner eye sees an exhausted and red lumbar region, a weakened lower back throbbing with stubborn stiffness.  It strikes me, with almost a pin needle acuteness, that Nick’s body hadn’t changed at all since we had Isaiah.  Nick’s body remained intact, with no incisions, no stretches, no torn anything.

I pause in that realization.

His tongue had never mistaken water for metallic liquid.  His nose never became so sensitive as to be able to detect the cleaning fluid on the floor of a grocer.  His heart ventricles never widened to allow more blood flow.  His calves and feet never swelled with unbearable water retention.  His chest never billowed with heart burn.  His mind never clouded with postpartum depression.  His nipples never cracked with pain so deep that his shoulders shuddered.  His skin never broke out in rashes.  He never vomited from anesthesia or used his foreman to protect a 6 inch abdominal incision against a winter chill.  He never had a catheter put in at the same time as a suppository while compressors pumped blood away from his legs.  He never had an abrasion in the back of his eye because the surgeons forgot to completely close and protect his eyes before surgery.  He never had to take pills to stop, prompt, or control a menstrual cycle.  He never felt a flutter of life in his belly or feel the hiccup of a new being inside his womb.

Because he doesn’t have a womb.

Nick did and does everything a parent could possibly do.  He transformed his emotions, his life, his commitments, and reformed his schedule to accommodate me and every little thing I needed throughout my pregnancy and birthing experience.  He respects anything I tell him or request.  Nick continuously and gladly lays in a metaphorical railroad track for me and our son.  If that’s what needs to happen, that’s what I will do, he says.

But in the confines of my bed, nursing this near paralysis, when I hear Isaiah’s laughter and Nick’s efforts to keep him occupied, I realize, with ringing clarity something that I could not have known or respected prior to going through it myself: our bodies are entirely different and our needs are entirely different.  My body endured all of this and my body cried differently than his. I knew this beforehand, but I never really Knew It beforehand.  Maybe my body never really cried until I became a mother.

So this difference between Nick and I exists.  It exists as sharp as a paring knife, as real as our love.  That difference – that my body changed while his did not – initially sprouted a rocketing resentment against anything him, society, and anyone else that didn’t Get It.  It = women’s bodies are a terrain that only we ourselves can travel.  It is not for anyone to lay laws upon.  It is not to be conquered, violated, disposed, or mishandled.  Along with the resentment, I also noticed a widening reverence for my body.  From which new life travels, the woman’s body is the canal to existence.  It is from our very bones, the calcium of our teeth, the marrow of our own breath that the woman’s body offers and sustains a new being.  The woman’s body is the epitome of automated self-sacrifice.  It is the ground zero of renewal — if the environment agrees that her life is valuable and the time to recover is respected.  We women, we give birth.  And we are also born into a new identity and a new body.

Give.  Birth.

Give.

Birth.

Are there two more powerful and daunting words in the English language?

But we women are also prone to set back and injury because of what our spines uphold.  Our bellies swell with life and our spines pull back to hold us up and in shape. Sometimes, though, the spine gives way and loses its strength.

Pain, whether it’s the lower back or elbow, or migraine, or menstrual, is a debilitating state of existence.  Not because of the physical pain itself.  It’s debilitating because chronic or severe pain draws our minds inward, incapable of fully giving of ourselves to anything or anyone else.  In pain, I become unlike myself.  I don’t unravel.  I do the opposite, I am mummified.  Most people, but especially me, are social beings.  I feel endorphins from conversation, laughter, and intellectual exchange.  However, in the confines of a bed and four walls, my spirit goes down.  My intellect goes dim and my emotions begin to go dark.  Swathed and cast in my own stillness and short breaths, pain dictates my freedom.  I no longer care about anything.  All that matters is finding a pain-free, mobile existence.  Which is why when I check all my social media outlets – email, Facebook, Twitter, newsfeeds, and listserves – I shake my head that the world is celebrating Mardi Gras and International Women’s Day.  I wish I had the energy to care.  I find all kinds of interesting stuff to read, but before my mind digests in the information, my back spasms again and I nearly drop my laptop in shock.

Pain draws us inward.

So for me, today, the one day (unfortunately) that calls women from all over the world to stand together, I lie in bed, with my eyes closed, waiting for relief.  Luckily, for me, I am certain of two things:

patience and writing can be worked on in bed

and

I do and can stand up for women’s rights and gender justice on a daily basis.  But right now, regaining my spiritual and psychological composure after a back injury and remembering the awesome capacity of a woman’s body seems like my fight for today.

Tomorrow it may be something else.

There is No Grind

There is no greater falsehood that is perpetuated in the new year more than the cliche, “It’s back to the grind.”

Grind.  Is that the way, is that the best descriptor we can come up with to summarize how we live our lives?

Ah, yes, the catch — that’s assuming that we are, indeed, living our lives to the fullest.  I wouldn’t dare describe myself, my life, or my routine of life as the grind unless I was, well, grinding.

You grind coffee.  You grind things, but life, life is not meant to be grinded nor are we supposed to be grinded by life either.  I guess we’re somewhere in the middle.  The place where I live is part routine, part inspiration.  The half and half of life is the have to-s and get to-s.  I have to work, but I get to work on really beautiful and amazing projects that tap into freedom and creativity.  I have to exercise, but I get to attend these really amazing dance classes that make me feel free and beautiful.  I have to take care of my son but I get to spend time with this angel of a person called Isaiah.

The grind is the life where we find ourselves, not what we choose for ourselves.  What we choose for ourselves is much more powerful than a grind.

Many years ago, I stopped groaning on Sunday nights about Mondays.  I stopped yawning at work and rolling my eyes at 4:45pm.   I stopped doing this when I noticed that so many people at work complained about Mondays, caffeinated themselves on Tuesdays, bitched about how long the week was on Wednesdays, couldn’t wait for the weekend on Thursday, and left early on Fridays.  And they complained about the weather everyday.

There is no back to the grind for me.  If I must use a cliche, I use this: Life is what you make it.

Indeed.  If you create nothing for yourself, back to the grind you go.

My Nicaraguan Father: Reflections on Feminism, Letters, and Digital Media

My Nicaraguan Father: Reflections on Feminism, Letters, and Digital Media

Dedicated to Don Manual Montiello

My Nicaraguan father, who I had not seen in eight years, died this week. A man with a heart condition, he fell onto a street, his face purple, and died. He was walking the barrio, our home, Catorce de Junio, in Nicaragua where I used to live.

I don’t know where this piece is going. Like a storm, I sense something brewing. The signs are there: quiet moments (dark clouds), tears (rain), and fear (wind). A perfect writing storm. This time, though, I have no predictable end. Something is needing to come out and so I write. I write. There’s a lot that’s been thrown in the eye of my hurricane. I’m going to try and let it out…

* * *

In feminism, particularly the feminist blogosphere, the word “intersectionality,” is strewn around like a popular masthead. For those unfamiliar with this term, in a nutshell, it’s a nugget word of the third wave of feminism, a term to explain one’s ability/responsibility to see/understand the complex layers of oppression and severity. It is a theory by I don’t even know who that suggested we look at the varying intersecting locks of lived experience. To put it bluntly, it says that the middle of the wheel is braced together by several spokes. Look at the spokes, it suggests. Consider the spokes.

I’m not the best person to talk about intersectionality. I’m not the best person to talk about intersectionality because I was introduced to it in the feminist blogosphere and the way I have observed its lack of application – its sore failure – makes me a non-believer in the term. I just don’t see any difference “intersectionality” has made in the lives of womyn offline.

My momma raised me to see the soul, not spokes.

* * *

February 11, 2009
I am in a coffee shop. I see a sign: Imported from Nicaragua.

A small thump hits my gut.

* * *

March 2000
“Buenas dias, Dona Adelia! Como estas usted?” I called out to a neighbor while I was walking in the barrio. It is a hot morning in Managua.

My friend Julia who was walking beside me smiled as Dona Adelia opened her mouth and fired off a response so quick and urgent, I blinked in surprise.

Julia translated for me, “She said, ‘well, that depends. Do you want to know how I am doing economically, physically, emotionally, mentally, politically? It depends.’”

I’ve thought about Dona Adelia’s reply to my simple greeting for nine years. She is a woman, elderly in her seventies, who loves people with so much strength that I pray I am like her when I mature into my later years.

One moment. One response. To my face. And just like that. I understood “intersectionality,” or the multiple intricacies of being. Language, culture, soul. There are so many layers to people; so many things that affect how we perceive one another.

I didn’t need a theory. I needed a teacher.

* * *

The failure of intersectionality is not surprising. Most correlate the term as a method to measure oppression and study its affect on diverse individuals, as if there is a way to truly trace the insidious and camouflaged roots of societal and social demons.

What troubles me about this method is its obsession with oppression and lack of focus on liberation. From what I have observed, most feminists want to understand the surreptitious spreading and practice of oppression – they want to understand that justice is unevenly distributed because of skin color, race, ethnicity, physical and mental mobility, religion, citizenship, class, education, property, age, sexual orientation, gender, and sex – but they don’t want to listen when it comes to transforming the world for liberation.

If liberation means a radical, and by radical I am referring to the Latin origin of radical meaning ROOT, transformation of the world, we need feminists to become more visionary. And fast.

Intersectionality is useless if it merely raises your consciousness but does little else. Ok, so YOU’RE enlightened. Great!

Now what?

The life of intersectionality is brief. It’s a theory. Nothing more.

* * *

April 2000

Don Manual has a heart condition. Somewhere, in the maze of awkward translation, I learn his quiet demeanor cloaks a very gentle man. After a long trip to Bluefields, the eastern coast of Nicaragua, I return to my home in the barrio. Once in my room, exhausted, I begin unpacking.

Don Manual walks into my room.

Puzzled and a bit anxious because he has never entered my room before, I turn to face him.

Just a few pebbles of his words were caught in my translation. There are two things I remember, “Allegra. Muy allegra.”

He was happy to have you back home. He was relieved. Others translated the conversation for me later.

And then I remember that he covered his heart, his weakened and diseased heart, as he spoke. He softly tapped it as he told me he was glad I was home. Then he and his eyes smiled into me and turned away.

* * *

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I am nearing the end of my three month writing stint at Bitch magazine. The experience has taught me so much about writing and confidence, I find it difficult to translate it to those who do not engage in writing practice.

Recently, I wrote a piece about Nadya Suleman, the woman who recently birthed octuplets and is now a mother of fourteen. In my article, where I raised questions about the issue of choice outside the realm of abortion, I asked that we engage in critical and rich discussion but to do so without berating any one woman or a segment of population of women.

That didn’t go over well.

The feedback and comments ranged from, “I think this has nothing to do with race, I never even thought of the idea until people like you to inject race into the subject to cause controversy,” to suggesting that I “become a conservative,” to “What a goddamned shithead.”

Simultaneously, I received an email from Alex Blaze, the managing editor at The Bilerico Project, who let me know that there had been good news concerning a post I had written two months ago about Agnes Scott College, a private all woman’s college, allowing a degrading and anti-feminist movie film on its grounds. The update alerted me to heightened policies the college had adopted in response to the online noise generated by senior, Louisa Hill.

I learned about Agnes Scott debacle from Jess Hoffman, a visionary friend and co-founder of make/shift magazine, where I am a section editor. It was through her that I heard about it, connected with The Bilerico Project, and helped create some online shaking.

The result: not perfect, but improved policies.

While the situation at Agnes Scott College is not the most ground breaking news or the most inspiring story, it gave credence to the power of blogging and communities working together. As Blaze wrote in his email, “Blogging can improve the world!”

Indeed.

It can also destroy.

These are the opportunities before some of us. And there are many sides to align yourself with. What do you choose?

Do you align yourself with the offense, berating women like Nadya Suleman, defining what is right and good for a woman of controversy and poor decision, but nonetheless a women in the name of feminism and “liberalism”? Or the side that tries to outreach and make one corner of the universe slightly better than it was yesterday?

It’s not that simple, I know, and the situation calls for reflection.

But is calling her a “shithead” how we move forward?

* * *

Thursday, February 12
A friend is driving me through Cedar Lee, an area of independent theaters and coffee shops. A wide sidewalk is cleared for winter, but in the summer, Christina says, the restaurants have great outdoor seating.

Out of nowhere, a thought slips through my window

I haven’t talked to my Nicaraguan family in years.

And here is where they have five dollar theater tickets with all you can eat popcorn.

I haven’t even thought about them in months. What happened to when I used to think of them everyday?

You’ll love it here, Lisa.

Raquel would be…my G*d, twenty-one years old now. They wouldn’t want to hear from me. What would I say anyway? My Spanish has depleted so much. Let it go.

* * *

Both on and offline, it’s not our race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other spoke on the wheel of “intersectionality” that divides us. It’s our objectives. It’s how we measure liberation and what we are willing to do with our privileged lives in the name of transformation. The differences in our objectives are as transparent as our URLs. Some are here for fun and professional advancement. Those of us who are here for more than business are here to question the systems that contort liberation.

Is there any wonder that there is a divide?

For me, there is only one question: what are you willing to do for liberation?

If it begins and ends with blogging, then don’t bother reading the rest of this piece.

If you say you want a world without rape, what are you doing to transform binary definitions of sexuality, relationships, and love?
If you say you want a country of peace, what cost is paid by other countries?
If you say you don’t know the answers, what are you doing to rectify that?

These are the questions before us. What are you doing?

* * *

The face of G*d for me is the liberation of those in pain, myself included. My definition of feminism is not a worded explanation, limited by my westernized and elitist tongue. It is a drive, dare I write spiritual drive, to do what I can, when I can, and make one thing, or as many things, better for another human being born in my lifetime, on our planet, this place we all call home. With all the mystery and fear in my body, soaked in ethnocentric alcohol, I sober my life by sitting on the edge of my bathroom sink and pulling the bathroom mirror into my face.

I look up.

* * *
February 16, 2009

I open an email letting me know about a post raising questions about feminism and digital colonialism.

* * *

For the most part, generation X has been the largest population which the digital age has watered. We’re the first generation of this “new media” and its shifted the way we think, communicate, and organize. It’s even changed our dreams.

As little girls, I would bet those who journaled and dreamed about writing imagined hard cover books or putting pen to physical paper; their name in print.

Blogging has ushered in a new alternative to traditional publishing and while it has created this avenue for information exchange and sharing, it has also created a monster. We, privileged activists and writers with the most immediate form of communi/gratifi/cation at our disposal, gladly reap the surface benefits of new media and, I fear, are satiated by that. We’ve yet to fully incorporate a feminist energy and discourse to digital media. Bloggers, writers, web-users have yet to fully embrace the power and responsibility to transform knowledge, journalism, and expression and bring it to a feminist standard of acceptability and practice.

We’re working on that. We’re still debating and defending privilege.

There has been no sustainable on-going and consistent effort to confront the communication patterns of womyn/gender-centered/feminist blogs or dialogue ethos. Who has time to create that analysis, to write about it? To try and put a lasso on a thousand bucks gone wild?

We’re either too busy feeding our children, finding sustainable employment, caring for our ourselves and loved ones, and making ends meet to commit to dismantling the ways blogging and new media perpetuate the existing kyriarchal systems. It is, after all, a flick of a hand to turn off our screens or we can simply walk away.

Or we’re too busy maximizing our latest idea to utilize blogging as a means to further our professional careers.

There’s a pull in two legitimate different directions that leaves the middle empty. What’s left? The space of blogging. THIS space that we say is the resting pulse of the “women’s movement.” All of it goes unchecked, with no accountability, no rules. We can call each other out, but in the end, if you think it, you can write it. We obviously don’t want a hierarchy or limitations on our speech, right? It’s as if we have lost the capacity to freely explore options and conversation, we don’t know how to dictate basic premises of decency on how to relate to one another over lines of difference.

And so the cyclic, vicious feminist problems continue. The conferences are divided, the blog wars are revisited, the colonialism/racism/classism/capitalism/ everything-ism continues in its original score. Actually, I think this screenplay was written decades ago by our ancestors. We’re all just assuming their roles.

(Who wants to play Sojournor Truth?)

* * *

February 16, 2009
I receive an email telling me of Don Manual’s death just hours after he had passed. I read the words and am confused.

My emails are usually about the latest happenings in the activist world, listserves I love, writers I follow, blogs I cherish, and updates from friends. This message was nestled in the midst of RSVPs to my 30th birthday party. Requests from writers to blog about a spreading story. The message startled me, but not more than my own reaction.

My heart continues to audibly break with each letter I type to admit this: momentarily, I didn’t even recognize Don Manual’s name.

That is how removed I have been.

For a moment, I did not recognize the name of someone with whom I lived, had spoken, formed some of my brightest moments of life, embraced, and breathed.

* * *

That night I muster every strength I could to get over my own guilt and self-consciousness.

I call my family in Nicaragua.

With no fallback of translators, my mind rewinds itself to its rusted Spanish files, long put away.

I speak first with my sister, Lynette, who now has three children. When I lived with her, she only had one son. She is mopping and I can hear her smile into the phone.

Her father just died and she smiles at me.

“Necessitas, Lisa, regressar a Nicaragua pronto.”

You need to return to Nicaragua, soon.

Yo se.

I know.

I sputter out my condolences, whatever is left in my vocabulary and try to twist it, try to offer whatever G*d-awful limiting words that remain and tell her how much I miss her and will always miss her father. How grateful I am for all that they gave me.

All I can make out from her response is “triste.”

Sad.

She asks if I want to talk to her mother.

Dona Marta.

I remember why I was so afraid to speak to my host mother. She was soft spoken and that made translation even more difficult. I am shaking inside.

Unearthing itself after nine years, my intense desire to articulate the depth of my emotions runs again into the language barrier and I feel ashamed at my lack of Spanish practice.

It’s not just about language. Language, as once famously stated, is the house of being. It is a bridge of culture, a valor of heartfelt effort and humility. It’s not just about communication; it’s about respect and offering.

Her voice is barely audible and I want to weep in her arms. Or have her weep in mine.
Neither would happen.

I tell her that she and her entire family is always in my heart.

We have deep pauses of silence. I let them rest between us knowing the loss of her lifelong spouse cannot be explained in language.

We communicate what we can. We communicate love.

* * *

There comes a time to revisit our promises and commitments. We are forever in need of smoothing them over, enhancing the details for better fits.

I remember promising to write my Nicaraguan family. I said those words. In English. They understood.

I promise.

But I broke that promise, repeatedly.

I broke that promise to write when I decided to put it off and write about what I knew – feminism – instead of a what I needed to write, letter to my family. For every post on this blog, now past seven hundred, I allowed myself to slip away into what I knew was so dangerously easy about life in the United States: living individualistically.

Oh, I’ve learned how to be a married activist, a warrior poet salivating after Audre Lorde. I’ve written letters to lovers, biological family, posts, articles, and even begun book projects. I’ve collaborated with strangers who became confidants and healed broken relationship.

“Individualism” is no longer about singularity, it’s about living in a disconnected state, where we are accountable only to those who are like us, agree with, nod with us. Nuanced individualism is serving not just ourselves but only those we choose to be in our communities, those whom we deem supportive and relative, staunchly defining who we want and gives us what we need.

Gifts of baking pans, trinkets, and money mean nothing without connection and in some realms of life, attempted communication trumps clarity. I wanted to communicate safely, with a translator so they knew precisely what I meant and they understood me. I forgot that tapping one’s heart in gesture can convey more about concern and relief than words.

I waited for perfect communication. That day never comes.

In my subconscious fear of not wanting to be uncomfortable or reminded that I lazily let my Spanish subside, I never wrote a letter. Not one. I didn’t want to be reminded of my helplessness, the nightmarish panic I had of not being able to connect transnational experiences with my own damn life. I didn’t want to look at the clock and see that I had allowed so much time to pass.

And in the customary selfish rape of wandering foreign lands merely for one’s own enlightenment, I took my “enlightenment” and applied it to my own life.

I never wrote one letter.

I’ll set up a feeble social network online and write flip responses on the digital walls of high school acquaintances who have taught me nothing, but I won’t confront my own fear of inadequacy and contact a community, a family who gave me shelter and food.

Gringa.

And for those who do not understand the significance letters hold, paper that’s traveled the winds of ocean, just know that it delivers more than anything that can be conveyed in language. It conveys that they, the recipients of the letter, are remembered in a walled country that makes you forget.

* * *

Feminism is not about self-flagellation or “saving” the world, or even piping ourselves up by saying we have the capacity to do so. But I do believe it is about living an authentic existence that challenges our comforts, our talents, and agenda. I believe that we, those with unspeakable luxuries that we cannot put in context because few other nations can even compare to our excessiveness, must be held accountable to our neighbors. Not out of obligation, but out of love.

We are accountable. In our lives. In our letters. In our writings. In our blogs.

As I repeatedly learn in painfully elementary ways, “Not everything is about you.”
Your guilt. Your discomfort. Your understanding. Your. Your. Your.
“I don’t feel like engaging.”
“I don’t want to be attacked or misunderstood.”
“I don’t want to risk.”
“I don’t want to put myself out there.”
“I’ve earned this.”
“I already explained myself.”
“I need to defend myself.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

I. I. I.

If you can, unstick yourself.

Move beyond your self-consciousness.

We are accountable. To someone.

Without accountability, without liberating practices for all, there is no “Movement.”

Only noise.

Find someone to whom you are accountable.

Throw Your Shoe at Bush and Have Some Cake!

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, our favorite shoe throwing activist, celebrated his 30th birthday on January 17, 2009.

Mhm mhm mhm, what an act to do before your 30th birthday. What a statement to be able to say you threw your shoes at George W. Bush. Reports have come in that a few of the guards brought in a birthday cake. I hope it was in the shape of one large shoe. I’d eat the entire thing myself. A vanilla sole. Strawberry shoelaces. Swirls of icing for the knot.

Don’t forget to wish Muntadhar al-Zeidi a happy belated birthday as you throw your shoe on Tuesday. (Original post and instructions here.) Get your shoe selected. Pump up your throwing arm’s bicep because it’s going to be a big day! Let there be cake!

For Whom Are You Throwing Your Shoe at Bush?

Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the original shoe thrower, sent his footwear into flight in the name of “widows, orphans, and those killed in Iraq.” Hurling much more than his shoes at Bush, the shoes, I believe, carried the unfathomable pain of those who have survived eight years of Bush foreign policies. Not just in Iraq, but all over the world.

For whom are you throwing your shoe? Let the world know on January 20, 2009 when Bush officially steps down as the leader of the US government. Take a picture of your shoe. post of your site or blog. Link back to the original post for participation round-up. If you do NOT have a blog or site and still want to participate, send me your shoe (don’t throw it, just hand it to me via email awecdysis@gmail.com) and I’ll post (throw) your shoe on my blog. Don’t forget to send in a small bit about you, your shoe, and for whom your throw is dedicated.

Having problems deciding for whom to throw your shoe? Mhm, I agree, it is a large task. Eight years of blowing up our fellow nations, instigating our violence in the name of anti-terrorism, basically handing our planet over to Darth Vader, and leaving our economy in the gutter leaves a shoe thrower with much to contemplate.

But be specific.

After all, you only have one shoe. Make it count.
Here is my dedication:

I throw my shoe for the poor who are living off garbage mountains, literally. I throw my shoe for the stranger who yelled in my face, after learning I was an American citizen in his land, that his garbage mountainside community has been terrorized and threatened by the Philippine government in the name of the “US charge against terrorism.”

These people, who scour the mountain everyday for food or anything they can sell for a peso, have centered their lives on survival, not violence. They are the poorest of the poor – eating inedible food, trying to sell what is no longer useful – and yet they are repeatedly targeted and harassed, their youth kidnapped for days and tortured, under the blanket of “anti-terrorism” laws initiated by the US after 9/11.

My shoe will fly for this man who who repeatedly yelled in my face, “I am not a terrorist! Do I look like a terrorist to you? I am too small, too skinny to do anything but survive.”

In essence, he is dying. And our president, our country’s allowance of Bush’s post 9/11 reaction, have quickened the death of his friends, family, and freedom. The re-election of Bush in 2004 continued the reign of terror in unheard, unspoken communities in the darkest corners of the world where no one dare visit or bother to know.

My shoe will be for this man who screamed his pain into my eyes and I, with the humble privilege of life and blogging, will throw as hard as I can.

Throw Your Shoe at Bush on January 20, 2009

When two shoes were thrown at George Bush by a journalist who had seen enough dying children and blood spilled on his country, I watched in disbelief.

What stunned me further was how people debated – in detail – if this man should be imprisoned or punished. Let’s see what would happen if we could turned the tables. Suppose another country invaded our land in the name of democracy and freedom, and through years and years of violence, shed blood on the bones of civilians and children who were never officially counted or reported about in the news. Might you, filled to the depths of your soul with death and injustice, throw your shoes?

His family maintains he did this out of frustration. Others report saying he was influenced by someone who “beheads people.”

From my view, I saw a reporter, an alive being, but filled with death. He was filled with the death of his country and the violence inflicted upon it by the hand of George Bush and our country. For all that has been done to their people, a shoe – or two – seems hardly a reason to beat and imprison him. It was a gesture that, some have argued, is perfect.