[In which I explain my long silences, interrupted as they are with outbursts such as these, through quotations by Nina Simone, Adrienne Rich, Franz Kafka, Pixies, and Pat Benatar.]
Two weeks ago, in my most recent comment (out of four) to the thought-provoking post, O the Joys of Being an Empowered Sex Worker at The Reclusive Leftist, I alluded to my intent of returning to the hiatus-state thusly:
So I’m going back into my habitual hunker-down mode. I’ll have a more active online presence (here and elsewhere) when I’m done with what I have to do, which is going to involve the completion of many long-languishing works in radically different mediums (ranging from memoir and poetry to collaborative sociological research), as well as work toward developing truly ameliorative, justice-based direct service and legislative initiatives which have been on my proverbial back burners for some time.
That may take awhile. (For one thing, I don’t just have books and nonprofits to raise; I also have actual breathing children, the youngest of whom won’t be leaving the nest for a minimum of 12 years.)
All that was (and remains) true enough, but even from the assumed state of relative silence, I can’t stand the inadequacy of that explanation. So much is going on right now, that I’m utterly unable to break things down into manageable, blog-postable snippets - or even extended rants; everything I start derails itself, not because I don’t have enough to write, but because I have too much; everything I start tries to become a book (or several books).
This is a real pain in the ass.
For one thing, I really wanted to break from the hiatus at least temporarily, in order to participate in Lauren’s admirable Help Us Help Ourselves Initiative. When I read Dr. Socks’s contribution on making divine brownies on the cheap, I immediately thought… Okay, but how about if you don’t have an oven? Because so much of my life has been like that, not having jack shit to work with.
Tonight, Nina Simone was required listening, for the song she sings so well, that starts with lines like these:
Ain’t got no home, ain’t got no shoes
Ain’t got no money, ain’t got no class
Ain’t got no friends, ain’t got no schoolin’
Ain’t got no wear, ain’t got no job
…but concludes with glad, imbued-with-Grace-like-only-Nina-Simone-has revelations about what she still has, like:
I got my hair, I got my head
I got my brains, I got my ears
I got my eyes, I got my nose
I got my mouth, I got my smile
Of course, she continues with the itemizing of retained assets, which include her hands, fingers, toes, feet, and even her liver!
Okay, back to the ain’t got no oven, how’m I gonna make these yummy brownies? quandary. (To clarify: yes, I actually do have an oven, now. Point is, I wanted to go back to when times were so bad that just staying alive everyday was a major accomplishment; to render very specific, practical advice that I would certainly have appreciated during the more desperate years.)
So the article I wanted to contribute to Lauren’s project was going to be called How to Survive Being Homeless.
But of course the m-fing thing grew way beyond its originally slated proportions, and was nowhere close to completion by the time that call for contributions was winding to a close.
So, here’s the dealio:
I’m still going to do this particular article, I just have no idea when.
I’ve got a hell of a lot on my plate.
Like:
Being sick as a dog since August. On my third or fourth cycle of antibiotics and prednisone now, killer cough syrup, etc. just to not keel over from the worst respiratory distress of my life. All of this being, no doubt, some neat medical metaphor for the summer of still-unspeakable revelations that have left me literally breathless (but at least, gave me a wonderfully hilarious, tender-in-its-way photograph of the late Senator Wellstone in a skirt.)
Of course, there’s more (way way more) but this is about all I can say about specific barriers/quandaries right now.
Meantime, do know that to whatever extent I may have an inconsistent presence here (and in other spheres of interaction), my silences must never be misunderstood as apathy. The situation is quite the opposite. I care about so many issues and so many people so deeply and so sincerely that every day, I have cause to wonder (again!) whether “what I must engage/…is meant to break my heart and reduce me to silence,” as Adrienne Rich previously wondered, in what is still, in my estimation, not just one of her most profound poems, but one of the most profound poems of the 20th century, North American Time.
Jesus, but I am tired. And sick. (And sick of being tired/ tired of being sick.)
But I’ll come back, like some kind of pruned tree after the winter.
Kafka wrote that a book should serve as the “axe for the frozen sea within us.” Thing is: for me, others’ books can’t accomplish this for me anymore.
This, despite my recent addiction to LibraryThing. Have catalogued about one-fifth of my collection so far, with a whole separate profile for my obnoxiously long wish list. Fortunately, free accounts are capped at 200 books, so I can’t add that much more to the wishlist, although I did spend my birthday money on a lifetime membership for keeping track of the extant collection.
Bottom line: I have to get back to writing my own books, or I’m going to spontaneously combust from all the amazing crap I’ve lived through, witnessed, been given the opportunity (and the obligation) to understand.
Of course, Kafka gives us another goody (good enough that I could care less about his ‘universal’ male pronouns):
Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.
So this is it: I’m in the ruins!
And sifting all its fine, horrific contents through my fingers.
Of if you prefer your metaphors courtesy of some Pixies (and with Kim Deal being so amazing, how could you not?), I could characterize all of this as digging for fire.
Which brings it all back to Pat Benatar, who composed so much of the music I screamed along to as a preteen and then a teen. Pat Benatar, whose voice guided me through one of my most pronounced experiences of exile: in 1984, after a fellow eighth grader sexually assaulted me, and was subsequently assumed by my father and stepmother to have been my consensual sex partner - following which I was slapped around, called a slut, and sent back to live with the mother (who, for her part, had been imagining I was a “slut” from the time I was eight, if not earlier).
No, I won’t be taken in by fire and ice.
Instead, I’m going to write using both elements, and then some.