applause is the last bastion of adult peer pressure. sitting at opening night of the san francisco ballet and we applauded everyone and everything at every turn. i’m all for positive enforcement but it seemed excessive. in between each scene, at the final curtain, at the second curtain, hauling the conductor on stage, the director…by the end i refused to give in to peer pressure any more.
it helped that the last dance was less than spectacular.
i know little of nothing of ballet. this was my first experience in the flesh – spurred on by a pbs special on the sf ballet’s 75th anniversary. with 10 choreographers commissioned to do new pieces i thought this was a perfect chance to expose myself to something new.
so i sat with a friend (a former ballet dancer) and took in the opera house – opulent, gilded – watched people dressed in formal furry and flowing gowns…and, this being the bay area, the occasional person dressed like duckie from pretty in pink.
the first two were interesting…the music melodious and the movement…mesmerizing. i am awestruck by a body’s ability to bend and arch…
my first opera was a comedy and i laughed uproariously. my first ballet, a potpourri of styles, modern edge to a classical craft. i’ll have to go again to see if it truly resonates with me.
friends have been sending me invitations to facebook for about a year now. early on i had a page on friendster, and after erasing that i had one on myspace (that i maintain solely for one of my oldest friends who refuses to simply email me like a normal person). i drew my arbitrary line in the sand at facebook. even with the lure of online scrabble i have been resolute and downright stubborn.
vindication in my choice came in the form of headlines that revealed facebook profiles are NEVER erased. no matter what you do it lingers in their archives where they refuse to remove them.
i still don’t have a facebook profile but i now have the FAMU equivalent. i can only describe it as a cyber class reunion. as someone who hasn’t gone back for a high school reunion it may seem strange for me to be so excited about a college one…but then the only class ring i have is from FAMU and my fondest “youth” memories are from there too.
and so i put up a basic profile and a a few photos and began looking for long lost loves and friends and just people who touched my life in one way or another more than 10 years ago. and it’s been fun. interesting to see how some relationships can maintain their integrity even with 8 years lapsed, that change is relative, and that people grow up and do amazing things.
i’m not big on social networks but i am oh so glad i took part in this little cyber reunion.
Saul, i tried to respond to your email but it says that you have restricted messages. please send me your info i would love to catch up on you and the family!
this morning i had a few things to do but weary for no particular reason i lingered in my covers reading Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. and that is how i came to buy the most expensive eggs of my life.
the premise of the book is that the american “culture” of industrialized agriculture is unhealthy on every front…for animals, humans, and the environment alike. he spends chapters explaining in pretty readable detail the different ways the food industry is doing a disservice to us all.
feeling smug in an organic supermarket…he pulls back the covers on that. what about those vegetarians and vegans out there…not nearly as morally superior as they appear at face value. his point is that the natural food chain is a complex and diverse force that doesn’t just feed us…it feeds everything from bacteria and ruminants to cows and people.
what does that have to do with expensive eggs?
the further i go into the book the more uncomfortable i am with available foods. i’ve always had a certain intangible disdain for organic (circa whole foods stores) and reading pollan made my feelings a little more tangible. even so, for the first two-thirds of the book i felt helpless. in the face of all this damage where could i shop, what could i eat that wasn’t damaging me and the space i inhabit?
right now i’m resting on chickens. of all the animals mistreated in our current system – and trust me all of them are!- he singles out laying hens…even beyond cows lying about in their own fecal matter and pigs chewing on the tails of the pig in front of them. laying hens are crowded 6 to a tiny pen where they are unable to even spread their wings. often their beaks are clipped to prevent them from pecking each other to death as they are prone to do. and, distressed as they are in this little slice of hell, they rub themselves against their wire cages until they lose all their feathers and bleed their breasts there against the metal. that doesn’t even touch what happens as they near death…
so i sound like an animal enthusiast at this point. i sound like someone who doesn’t believe in the natural order of things where some animals are predators and others prey…only that’s not it at all. i love my steak and chicken and boy do i love bacon…but i don’t believe that my dinner has to suffer in order to be my meal. death is a part of life, it is how all animals gain sustenance whether it is the death of a plant or an animal…even so, i don’t believe a chicken should have to endure a lifetime of misery so that i can have an omelet or fried rice.
so, today, i stopped at the farmers market and with measured consciousness…asked the guy selling eggs just how free range his chickens are. do they have access to a door to outside that they never actually use? no, they live outside in the grass…eating grubs and flapping their wings as chickens are wont to do.
so i sucked it up and paid the $2 for six eggs. and then i went to eatwild.com and started researching ways to make sure my meat sources are allowed the same basics of life. it’s an expensive peace of mind but…if tomorrow i get eaten by a rouge tiger (which isn’t that far fetched here in the bay) at least i will have had the freedom of eating what i want to eat and being left to my own devices…why can’t a chicken have the same?
i’ve been stewing.
i didn’t start off this way. at first i was panicked. turning on my television last tuesday morning i caught the blue ticker tape running under a video of obama. “obama talks about race today”.
i cringed and immediately my finger pressed the off button. it was instinct. i was mortified, certain that the sneaky treacherous but oh so cunning clinton camp had manipulated him into a “black” corner. i was certain that the only thing missing was a large neon sign blinking “black man running for president, black man running for president” (and then i realized the sign was there in blue ticker tape underneath his image).
it was the beginning of the end.
later, my dad called to tell me how amazing it was. i groaned. my sister blogged about how moved she was. i wondered. finally i followed her link to a transcript and read what he had to say. and i was ashamed.
how could i lack audacity when he is so bold as to demand it even as he stood before america trying to explain what we have been unable to collectively understand since “we held these truths to be self-evident”?
i read and was moved. i saw myself and my own experiences mirrored there. i heard someone who looked like me acknowledge the nuances of fear and ignorance. i read a challenge – not a plea – for change not in the vocabularies we use in public, but the conversations we have in private.
and i didn’t think he should do it.
all these months and he’s managed not to be the “black” candidate, just a candidate who happened to be black. but there he was, plastered all over televisions, pundits pontificating if this was his political death knell.
only they missed the point. like i missed the point. people keep asking if this will be enough to save his political career – his aspirations to become president…only it wasn’t about that. i don’t believe he gave that speech to to save his bid. if that was his aim it could have been safer and riddled with lines for people to applaud.
instead he stood sober and alone, finally revealing to those who questioned, that he never once forgot who he is, what he looks like, or what his name is. he always knew he was a black man, even if america was content to pretend it didn’t notice for a while.
he gave that speech because it was truth, and he is an earnest man. he gave that speech because relationships are complex and sound bites don’t tell the whole story. he gave that speech because when all is said and done, he will still have to look his two daughters in the face and show them the type of person they should aspire to be.
that said…i’ve been stewing. stewing since tuesday because after challenging america to think and respond differently than we have always responded to issues of race, people declined …they declined to stop a moment and ruminate on what he said. instead i read comments to articles that mangled and misinterpreted his meaning. instead i read vitriol where there was the chance for deep breaths and attempts to wade through decades of discomfort in an effort to move beyond it.
so i stew…conflicted that i hoped for more, disgusted that that hope wanes.
i’ve heard people reduce obama supporters to swooning masses praying at an alter to obama. i do not believe him saint. he is flesh and blood man, strength and beauty and of foibles and weaknesses – like the rest of us. but he appears to strive to be more tomorrow than what he is today, to know more tomorrow than what he knows today, to expect more of us than we expect of ourselves.
so for now, in honor of a man who strives to be what i strive to be…better…i will continue my internal struggle – encouraged me against exasperated me, trusting me against jaded me, hopeful me against everything else…and who knows, maybe tomorrow will get the “better” of me.
Tags: politics, race, soapbox, socialcommentary
my pity…my empathy…is on reserve.
the “oncoming mack truck” stare of the betrayed wife may make a great photo opportunity but my heart breaks for the females not caught in rapid fire flash.
the daughters.
spitzer may have cheated on his wife but his daughters lost more than devotion.
i don’t know his three teenage daughters. i am amazed at the seeming restraint of the media for not adding their, what i can only imagine as grief-stricken faces, to the front page of newspapers all over the country. instead i am left heavy with sadness on their behalf.
my father is the epitome of man for me. he represents what i base my idea of male strength and compassion on, my example of husband and partner. i know my dad isn’t perfect, that has never been my expectation, but he is a good man and a wonderful father.
i can’t imagine the devastation spitzer’s daughters are facing (mirror images of chelsea clinton in the wake of the cigar scandal). i can’t imagine how the edges of their world must have thinned and blurred and come apart at the seams. the personal betrayal, the reassessment of what is true, a distorted vision of man.
parents can’t be blamed for everything… aren’t responsible for all things…but i can’t help but grieve for three daughters whose first vision of man/father/husband has been shattered not in the privacy of their home but on a national stage.
i pray they know grace and can extend it without damage to the fragility of the image of daddy – as daddy becomes merely a man
Tags: soapbox, socialcommentary
Saturday I spent most of the spectacular blue skied warmth inside my house staring at little black cards with various portions of my lines on them. When I finally emerged – huge bag in hand weighed down with black clothes and accent accessories – I was a whirlwind of last-minute errands to prepare for both my debut and encore performances in the Oakland Community production of eve ensler’s vagina monologues.
It was my second time performing, but for some reason, doing them outside the context of my university increased the anxiety. We assembled at noon and with four hours before curtain call the day hung before me like wet clothes on the line…drying takes forever.
Sitting on the curb in the church parking lot, basking in the sun and enduring heart palpitations I wondered about who would come…how we would be received…how I would do…
Our first show was small. More than that, it was broad daylight. All the reassurances of, “it’ll be dark, you won’t see the audience” proved false as I looked directly at the cluster of colleagues who were kind enough to venture out to my performance.
Daylight be darned.
First show behind us we prepared for the evening show. This evening audience was invested. A crowd of women all dressed in black adorned with red boas marched in together and marked off their vagina territory. One look at them and we knew it would be a good show. No disappointment there…it was.
Our final show happened the Sunday. It turned out to be our biggest crowd. Still daylight, it was less distracting this time.
So we closed. And although I’m ok if I don’t hear any of the monologues again until next year I will miss the women I have gotten accustomed to laughing with since January. To quote our organizer, candance:
“our c@#*s rock!”
The sky, dotted with fluffs of gray-white clouds, is a washed out blue. The trees are lined with shiny green leaves blowing in an eager wind. And I sit staring out of a single paned window wondering when life makes the most sense, when life’s choices and chances seem less arbitrary and more methodical? Wondering if I’d even like them if they were…
My two-year blueprint for life spared me these musings. My time was spent finding and preparing for my next big thing…the future incarnation of my life- myself. And now, at a desk working on any number of projects, life’s less job –centered purposes float around in my head. Buying a home, finding love, moving overseas, settling, demanding more, become normal…and there are no right answers. Simply a string of “maybes” caught in the breeze outside whispering absolutely nothing to the shiny green leaves outside my single-paned window.
Tags: bay, future, me-ness, transition
One of Cory’s pictures from the Vagina Monologues.
Tags: bay, speakinggigs
conflicted
i’ve wanted to write for more than a week. so many things going on personally and beyond…but a friend of mine sent me this video and i finally got the chance to sit down and watch it…take 11 minutes and do the same. it isn’t the cause of my internal struggle but it does represent one aspect of it.
how did rev. wright become the issue? how do i separate what he says (in all its rightness) and his right to say it from the damage he clearly knows he is reigning down on obama?
and some would argue it isn’t his concern…it doesn’t have to be. only i know that although neither man is wrong…i am saddened by rev. wright.
i do believe that he was probably taken out of context. i do believe that “liberation theology” is worthy and important and relevant in the church (and has been since martin luther posted on the church doors and on to when martin luther king posited about utopian mountaintops he dreamed about. i believe that american foreign policy is responsible for a lot of the ill will we face in the world. and i’m pretty sure that the tuskegee syphilis experiment is probably at the forefront of rev. wright’s mind when he says america created aids and infected blacks.
but i also know that obama couldn’t win the rev. wright argument no matter what stance he took. in reality…it shouldn’t be an argument or test for him to pass. his options were to argue the details of a sermon he wasn’t even present for or shun the man that brought him to God. he did neither. instead he dug deep and spoke earnestly about the complexities of love, and relationships, race and misunderstanding.
and it wasn’t enough…not for the media and all us consumers eager for drama and pat answers…and maybe not for supporters of rev. wright who saw anything but complete agreement a betrayal.
only rev. wright isn’t the point.
and when i think about him…when i hear him on the news now, i cringe at the damage he’s done, he continues to do. i cringe and have to remind myself that his unwillingness to sit quietly for a moment is his prerogative. i don’t like it…i think it is short sighted…i think is approach is a little unfair…but it is his right. i can see that.
this video reinforces what i already know…what rev. wright has to say isn’t the problem…our inability to realize that all this fervor isn’t about him is…
Tags: race, soapbox, socialcommentary