tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17730398532190715512024-03-13T10:57:35.381-07:00Masculine Adventureseveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-21270640296885495912015-06-20T06:46:00.000-07:002015-06-20T06:46:10.697-07:00POLICE WORK<div align="center" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 100%;">When
I was still a member of American Mensa, I ran what was known as a
Special Interest Group, or Sig: Social Change and Renewal. It was
an attempt to introduce and maintain a level of philosophical inquiry
into what was primarily a social organization.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There
were two topics I knew I couldn't present without being tackled by
kneejerk opinions: abortion and the O.J. Simpson trial. But I did
try two that bore unexpectedly disappointing results. One of them
was police brutality.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
publicized topics always had a tag line, and I'm not certain I can
remember exactly what it was in this case. Living as I did at the
time in New York City, I can fairly assume that there was some
headlined case being bandied about in the papers that lead me to
start the discussion. Anyway...</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There
was a fair turnout for the group; I would say perhaps seven or eight
including a ranking police officer. Being the facilitator, and
knowing the largely undigested opinions of many club members, I
anticipated trouble. It presented itself right away. Legs akimbo so
as to facilitate perhaps a comfortable living room approach to his
participation, he declared flatly “There is no police brutality.”</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There
is a long enough list of victims; the one coming to mind is Amadou
Diallo. Most likely an unsuspecting subject of a police pursuit, he
was trapped in a apartment building vestibule. Removing a wallet
from his pocket, the officers cried “gun” and a series of 41
shots rang out, killing Amadou. There was also the hideously
gruesome men's room assault where a police baton was introduced into
a man's rectum. These, for me, are the kind of troubling details
that are even more troubling left unaddressed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Here,
in Newburgh, the situation is no different: if not police violence,
police indifference. I myself have a history of being victimized
more than once. The subject of neighborhood harrassment, I was left
without the resource of community policing. Too, some years later,
and after a diligent course of observation and reflection, I
attempted to file a criminal complaint. When I went to the precinct
to obtain a copy of the associated report, I was treated to something
resembling small scale Vaudeville act. After a slovenly officer
pretended an inability to read, a more imposing invidivual came out
with the seeming objective of bamboozling me. Left without the
necessary information the local District Attorney required, I
abandoned my pursuit of justice.</span></div>
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</div>
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<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There
have been marches, demonstrations, organizing efforts in what seem to
me heartbreakingly futile attempts to establish some kind of
municipal or community oversight. Right now, we can only hope for
opportunities to publicly grieve our losses and voice our rage. Come
the revolution, we can hope for much more.</span></div>
eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-36162656378586711902015-05-11T13:03:00.001-07:002015-05-11T13:03:24.260-07:00SAINTS AND SINNERS<div align="center" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 100%;">Long ago, I read an article in </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 100%;">The
New York Rocker </i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 100%;"> daring to
suggest that salvation could be found in the locations some of us
frequented in our desperation to find release in rock 'n roll. Could
a kind of saint, or perhaps even Jesus himself be discovered in these
dives?</span></div>
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</div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I was
one of their patrons, moving back and forth in the strange dialectic
of its time from the conservative restrictions of a corporate
secretarial job to the weekend exhilaration of the thumping,
dissonant, arrogant insistence of what has since been condensed into
the word 'punk.' At first blush, there was only the largely
indifferent population of students from the nearby learning
institution, but the jukebox melody that was a favorite captured my
imagination, promising much more. I moved through this bar, and
eventually more, in an inevitable dreamlike state. Here was the
ignored underbelly of daily routine, both
the fear
and fantasy of what
might take its place. The music gave us certainty. If we were bold
enough, we devoured it; it made us all stalkers of the unknown.</span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
the long history of the Church, desert monastics searched through
empty days, finding in this silent focus evidence of spiritual oases.
The redemption elaborated by saints was a withdrawal from the world,
a hermetic ism that promised security if only we could face away from
urgency.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In
the exact obverse, we went defenseless. In our determination, we
trampled what was expected in order to encounter life head on. The
surprises that ensued changed history, and is always the case, this
groundswell only reached public awareness after the initial
excitement had transformed itself into philosophical and artistic
statement. The discovery of
anyone living on this edge was the excitement of the edge itself in
all its excitement, and our desert was a romantic insistence on
crossing over its boundary. If one was in despair, one need only be
bold enough to take a final risk of living or dying.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<br />
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Covered
in glitter and dog poo, we had our sadhus, those who had given up on
convention. What had become a self-conscious construction of
trendiness was eradicated by defiant guitar chords, insulting in
their spontaneity. In our intoxicated fandom, we crowded around
these stages, looking for the spark of redemption.</span></div>
eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-44510205419397161402015-05-03T17:01:00.000-07:002015-05-03T17:01:10.760-07:00THE GLOBAL SEX TRADE<div align="center" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 100%;">Once,
while still in The City, en route to some unremarkable location, I
fell into a state of shock passing the street hookers who had
positioned themselves on 10</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 100%;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 100%;"> Avenue alongside what I can
only imagine was the welcome heavy traffic of the West Side Highway.
It was a young, shapely, attractive woman who remains in memory,
wearing an elastic waist thong, gartered stockings and high heels.
These women had remained unperturbed by law enforcement, no doubt
because they were not an obstruction to local residents.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Further,
in my skid row courtship with my late Ex, I would listen to the
stampede of street hookers up and down the stairs of the Elton Hotel.
I don't know what would set them off, but I did once witness a
passer by solicit their trade, and was struck by the brashness
involved in being one of their Johns.</span></div>
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</div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">To
get to the point, globally, the sex trade, rather than just the
cottage industry of the street, has become big business, including
the availability of sex vacations. These would inevitably include
the Asian peninsula, where I can only guess prostitution is nothing
more than a common, acceptable way of life, for those pushed aside as
the brackish residue of globalization. Women can be rooked, abducted
and then trafficked across borders, with the returns of a villainous,
unregulated income for those in charge; but always by the ancient and
unending need men have to put women into subjugation, offering money
in exchange for the intimacy of their sex organs. It is only in
Western society where the fantasy of the high end hooker can have
some basis in reality, turning what might otherwise be considered
sordid into a business proposition. (I couldn't pass up the
temptation of reading Xavier Hollander's <i>The Happy Hooker</i>
when it was first published in the '70s.)</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So
instead, here I am, in the 21<sup>st</sup>
century in a mid-Hudson city riddled with crime and prostitution,
saddened by the occasional woman in
dowdy dress in freezing weather, perhaps looking for $15 to turn a
quick trick. Too, for protection, prostitutes also tolerate a male
figure in the background, taking their chances that the relationship
will be a mutual windfall and not something than will compromise
their safety or quality of life.</span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<br />
<div align="left" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There
needs to be more than one answer to this worldwide double standard.
While marriage is considered the benchmark of stable society, it only
masks the insatiable need for a greater license in pursuit of sexual
gratification. The prostitute, otherwise frowned upon, upholds the
standard of the woman unbound by considerations of convention,
promising unconditional acceptance, and opening the door to the
unqualified encouragement of the sex act.</span></div>
eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-81044484125634204732015-03-16T06:34:00.000-07:002015-03-16T06:34:21.610-07:00American Medecine A<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">t my last chiropractic appointment, I jumped up out of my waiting room chair to share a sudden thought with the receptionist. We only bond with or understand one another when we're sick, I explained. Or, as I've often ruminated, we're eager to help one another die, but don't assist each other in being alive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> There is no dearth of talk show features on the latest medically identified disease or the narrative of someone's survival of cancer or other life-threatening illness. In the ultimate symbiosis of life and death, we provided the throwaways of Guantanamo with state-of-the-art technologies in a final sentimental apology for having imprisoned them. I once worked with a woman with whose relationship I struggled. She did make the effort to visit me in an intensive care unit, but regularly shucked opportunities for simple gestures of social interest. I have what could possibly be considered a macabre empathy with those who live in extremis, i.e. isolated in prison cells, politically persecuted, stranded in starvation or caught in the snares of war. I'm unafraid of being perceived as callous at the nausea I feel with the endless parade of bald children who suffer from the side effects of chemotherapy. They, at least, are from families affluent enough to afford treatment. I'm unwilling to shove aside my emotional involvement with people tottering on the brink of extinction to reach out in spirit for those who have merely suffered some interruption to their complacency.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Then there is the other angle. Of late, I've evolved almost a kind of embarrassment at visiting medical offices. In the barren landscape of my social life the thought has begun to intrude that in keeping these seemingly endless appointments that they also provide a kind of sociability and good will. It's too easy to get on board the campaigns of the American Medical Association. As part of my participation in the local mental health community, I've been subjected to endless moralizations about cigarette smoking. Besides the fact that I'm more concerned with the financial devastation poor people expose themselves to, I'm impressed with the hypocrisy with the associated issues, including second hand smoke. I remember a time when a simple opportunity to smoke recreationally in drinking establishments was still inside the law. What about the kind of moral destitution that leads to addictions? What kind of even simple gestures have been made to address the desperation of those caught up in the routine demoralization of either poverty or the ennui and alienation of suburban shopping mall culture or the stranded rich? People should be allowed to kill themselves slowly or dramatically, in my never very humble opinion, rather than be subjected to the sentimental swill of moral inculcation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Anyway, I'm of the mind these days to excuse myself from the scare tactics of advanced imaging and medical procedures designed to produce evidence that the chances of your life coming to a conclusion are mathematically increased. What's the point of extended your life if it's not worth living to begin with.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-42244597847678955292015-02-14T16:29:00.000-08:002015-02-14T16:30:55.575-08:00Once upon a time...<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Once upon a time, some of us would gather at the Sheridan Square newstand (when there were still such things) and wait in the early morning hours for the drop off of that week's <i>Village Voice</i>. In those days, apartments would go for under a hundred dollars, sometimes well under, and you could easily pick up a new life where the old one left off.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Usually a fresh coat of landlord-supplied paint would cover up the fact that you were in some way indigent and living marginally. Then, as you began to settle in and get your bearings, you would accommodate yourself to the toilet in the hallway and the bathtub in the kitchen. Life wasn't so bad. After all, you had your autonomy. You were free; you didn't need to grovel in the marketplace of money and show yourself off with the results.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Sometimes the relocation to The Lower East Side, aka East Village, was to meet up with friends and associates already in residence. Other times, it was to connect to the electrical currents always surging around discoveries in the arts and unending experiments in new ways of living. It was in the '60s and through my associations at City College that I first discovered the East Village. My mother had warned me against 'the commies', but I soon found my way to the radicalism of the south campus cafeteria and that was when my life began in earnest. I eventually found my way to the New York Federation of Anarchists and would journey from my parents in the East '80s to dinners on streets numbered in single digits. I remember distinctly macrobiotic meals with grain so stalwart that I would have an entirely unexpected bowel movement the next morning. Also, for the first time, a woman with an eye catching ankle length skirt who did artist's modeling. Who ever heard of such things. Too, a copy of the <i>East Village Eye</i> caught my attention, the first ever of the underground press.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Transitioning through the sixties brought me into the turbulence of the revolutionary antiwar movement and the beginnings of women's liberation. The East Village became a vortex of a global paroxysm of what could be, rather than the tired remains of what had always been in place. Now I am a homesteader away from the megalopolis of New York City, with the lingering memory of what has now receded into the past. The East Village went from the hallucinogenic floral explosion of the sixties into '70s New Wave, leaving in its wake a residue of gentrification and a brief proliferation of galleries in the '80s. In one of the last visits I made, I was astonished that this excitement had relocated to an outer borough. Despite geographic dislocations, the diaspora of risk-takers will never spend itself to a conclusion.</span>eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-9558208185382303982015-01-28T12:59:00.000-08:002015-01-28T12:59:35.026-08:00Further..<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm reading Mistry's <i>A Fine Balance</i> a second time, and only last night noticed that after a gap of some ten years, I was waiting for certain details to make a reappearance. To wit, Omprakash's affliction with both head lice and tape worms; and too, the horrible emergency government round-up resulting in forced labor, and the sad denouement where the two main characters become beggars.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> I was saddened by the contrast between the distractions I seem afflicted by in developing a reading habit and the ease and analytical insight I've come to enjoy watching movies. Every film seems to break down into easy, directorial segments, making my future destiny as a film director believable (ahem). Anyway, I think all of this constitutes a pleasure zone, i.e. when we have the luxury of sinking into an experience and let it take over. For after all, the fiction writers enjoy their craft, otherwise why...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span>eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-66978446007202994552015-01-27T06:23:00.000-08:002015-01-27T06:23:31.415-08:00Rohinton Mistry<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm unsure how to handle blog posts on anything more frequently than monthly, but I'll try.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Reading <i>A Fine Balance</i>, and this for the second time, my train of thought heads in the direction of a writer's awareness of what works...and doesn't. Although I must say, <i>all</i> of Mistry's craft has its desired effect.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The last episode dealt with a political rally. Endless buses picking up endless shanty town dwellers, if not of their own volition, then with some not-so-gentle coaxing with police batons. As the thousands assemble, the pageantry begins and the hot air balloons dispense their cargo of rose petals, sometimes reaching their destinations of stage and crowds, sometimes missing the mark and providing some local goatherds with an unexpected blessing. What is impressive is the dishevelment and mayhem of the subcontinent of India. Shocking to the Western reader is that despite the chaos of the struggle for survival, the human prevails. The routine of emptying one's bowels at the nearest assembly of train tracks is no more than the writer's opportunity to elaborate dialogue, and the sordid search for a place to hang one's hat an opportunity to provide details of the sordid accumulation of debris and trash that a slum dweller simply takes in stride.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Now what do I do to end a post? Sudden death?</span>eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-86817978726347484222015-01-01T08:35:00.000-08:002015-01-01T08:35:53.446-08:00I'M BACK, AND RECOUPING LOST GROUND<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Picking up a pencil, it seems, in order to write a blog. My life has been dishevel and in arrears since last winter, and things have gotten behind.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> What did I want to write about? It was March, the end of Lent, and on Easter weekend there were a number of documentaries on the Holy Land going back to the time of Jesus.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In one notable moment, Jesus was shown rubbing his thumbs over the eyes of a blind man. I liked this Jesus: he was kind of frumpy. His hair made him seem like he could've been a homeless man in any American city. I reflected on the classic image of Jesus in commercial depictions. Vidal Sassoon...was this his stylist?!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I suppose it was from that moment that I formed a different conception of this man's life. Yes, he was in all ways unremarkable, unremarkable except that he healed the sick, made the blind to see and raised the dead to life. A man so unremarkable, in fact, that in the end there were no misgivings about delivering him to the same gruesome execution reserved for thieves and blackguards.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> This, then, is the revelation of the Christian faith, now no longer a mystery. How unremarkable we all are until the moment when we can see one another, relieved of dross and cloaked in glory. I further reflected, in avoiding the conventional obsession with the crucifixion, that surely it was the resurrection and not his death that constituted our liberation; but then, what about those of us who have abased ourselves with mayhem and butchery? Alas, being nailed to a cross couldn't be avoided.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Buddhists don't have a gory revelation at the center of their theology, only frightening ones. I think fondly of Mahakhala as the deity who kicks our asses if we somehow upend the Dharma.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So it remains a mystery how we are redeemed from suffering by being made to focus on it. But then, is there any worse destiny than to not be forgiven? Isn't this what hell is made of?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-5076213001141436212013-03-31T17:06:00.003-07:002013-03-31T17:06:54.127-07:00AMERICA ON STEROIDS<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Recently I
had the displeasure of a sojourn in a psychiatric ward, my fourth and first in
20 years.<span> </span>I was left with the dubious
ambition of indulging in some current movie fare… Hollywood potboilers.<span> </span>A mix of comedy and action thriller, I was
left with some rather depressing thoughts on culture.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The comedy, <i>Observe and Report, </i><span> </span>was about a disgruntled security guard who
subsequently runs amok with a colleague.<span>
</span>As I was incarcerated in a locked ward, I was slack jawed at the depiction
of a female date being offered Klonopin in addition to her “Nurse please.<span> </span>Four shots of Tequila.”<span> </span>The ultimate fucking scene showed her to be
more than half alive, something I know to be impossible.<span> </span>Too, at one point the two men get drunk and
do drugs, with one of them shooting smack.<span>
</span>Is there still a censorship code for American movie making?<span> </span>And does it still have to do solely with sex?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">I forget the
name of the B action thriller, but I found the routine, gratuitous and
obligatory murders and bomb explosions tedious and painful.<span> </span>As though I still had to be convinced of the
popularity of this genre, I stayed put for <i>The
Expendables</i>, and all stops pulled cast including Sylvester Stallone and
Arnold Schwarzenegger in a minor role.<span> </span>The
gun bursts in this one were carried out nonstop for a full 15 minutes, and I am
embarrassed to admit that even I was engrossed.<span>
</span>A blockbuster, no doubt.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Just as an
afterthought, there was also a Pixar feature with an elderly curmudgeon in a
starring animated role.<span> </span>Before long he
was assailed by an overweight Asian boy scout.<span>
</span>I can’t be the only one to notice the continuing depiction of our
children as being grossly overweight.<span> </span>I
have some thoughts on this too.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Why would we
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thriller, as with state-of-the-art video games, the faster and less interrupted
the violence the better.<span> </span>But why do we
put up with it at all?<span> </span>I’m one of those
strange, paradoxical antiwar activists who is also mesmerized by war, something
more than an action thriller. <span> </span>If reality
is not already threatening, do we need to make it so?<span> </span>How many nation states can we demonize,
threaten with war and sanctions?<span> </span>How
many people, individuals and groups, do we need to Satanize in order to
preserve our own comfort zone?<span> </span>I’m free
associating here, but there is indeed something Satanic about American
culture.<span> </span>The right hand won’t
acknowledge the left.<span> </span>We condemn
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Are we
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shown in many of these grade Bs?<span> </span>Is this
how we prepare our psyche to deal with ‘the other’, either foreign or
native?<span> </span>Everything needs to be
killed.<span> </span>I like to think I focus on
loftier Hollywood fare, but I found and find the kind of movie making I
deliberately exposed myself too in the environment of the Bon Secour psych ward
troubling enough to comment upon.</span></span></span></div>
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<![endif]-->eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-42244235785291599922013-02-05T17:37:00.000-08:002013-02-05T17:37:05.264-08:00THE GREAT AMERICAN PASTIME<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Last summer, while at a day’s retreat at a nude resort in
New Jersey, I looked up from reclining on my beach towel and saw, in the look
of another guest, the wry look of ridicule that I’d become accustomed to over
the course of a lifetime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over a year previous,
a familiar cycle of sexual innuendo had begun, something I had never thought
would once again assail me so late in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The public review of my sex life had begun, with clever, sly references
everywhere on the media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what I’m
trying to say in the leading sentence of this blog entry is that I now knew
with finality that my public pursuit and persecution had become encoded into
the national DNA, a periodic American recreation.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The ideology of this public humiliation goes back decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The psychopath who was my neighbor on a crime
ridden block in the mid ‘70s East Village could not let alone the fact that an
otherwise unidentifiable single woman had compromised his standing in the
drug-running mob world organizing the lives of the inhabitants on 9<sup>th</sup>
Street between First Avenue and Avenue A.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The result:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was run out of my home,
became first a vagabond, then an outcast, then a mental patient, this over the
course of five years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During this time,
I was in the grips not only of a sneering public opinion, but of powers and principalities
beyond my control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could I possibly be a
prostitute?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Try it on for size.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, to reference a previous blog post, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gay Octoroon</i>, was I gay or
straight?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The vector of public
humiliation was an attempt to out me, way before bisexuals enjoyed any comfort
zone in the gay community, at a time when gay liberation was not more than half
a dozen years old, and I no more than in my early 30s.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This time, however, as the all too familiar oblique
references began to play out in the work place, I made the determination to
step down from my job, put a handle on my torment for the first time with the
twin vows that:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1) this time it was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my </i>script; and 2) this time I was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> going to be destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the cornerstone of my personal/political
philosophy is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘everything happens for a
reason’</i>, and as the end result of having been stalked to a long familiar
nude retreat in the nearby Mohonk Preserve, I ran home to research bisexual
resources on Facebook.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I realized that
the first step in my strategy for untying my chains had to be a firm commitment
to my sexual orientation, shrugging off any compulsory identity as a
monosexual, rejoicing in the both/and rather than the either/or.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I slowly came to an understanding of some of the routine
slang:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>batteries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeah, OK, I needed public injury and insult
in order to become the life of the party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yeah, sure, this makes perfect sense as people who are abused, including
myself, want for nothing but to retreat and withdraw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Makes for a good party, tho’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, sadly, I realized that everything I
said and did was instantly committed to public record; the aperture and the
microphone imposed an aberrant lifestyle on me, and even now, at the start of
the third year of this cycle, I carefully script and edit everything out of my
mouth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s too painful to speak too
freely and expansively since this can only lead to social approbation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consequent to the realization that I was
under unrelenting surveillance, it became a matter of simple determination that
I had to “bolt” down everything I’d become committed to in life to prevent it’s
being destroyed by ‘fear and malice’.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But I suppose the sum total of all of this, and what made it
the Great American Pastime, is that the lights, camera and action of public
scrutiny led to the concept of ‘auditions’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In fact, I’d become the all American whore, with my brief sexual
adventures in the halcyon days of the lower Manhattan culture of the mid-late
‘70s turning into folklore and legend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was the eternal Jezebel, born into life to be a lecherous woman, held
simultaneously in contempt and in awe and watchfulness till the time of another
performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I came up to Newburgh and
the Mid Hudson Valley now almost 14 years ago to go on yet another venture,
becoming a homesteader along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was aghast at how all the apparatus and public expectation of almost 40 years
ago were exhumed, taken out of mothballs in a bizarre dislocation of
urbanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was expected to stop
traffic, have lines waiting to see me in public spaces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This painful misunderstanding continues to
this day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again, I’ve taken refuge
in the psychiatric community for understanding and hopefulness, but every time
I venture out to do simple errands, I am jarred with the realization that I may
never be seen by the world for who I truly am, will always be expected to
accept the coin of the realm in bypassing my own interest in forming
relationships and instead bowdlerize myself into obligatory sexual encounter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-85666963442444540672013-02-02T11:19:00.002-08:002013-02-02T11:19:40.844-08:00No Soap, RADIO<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’d forgotten what it was like to listen to David Rothenberg’s
<i>Here of a Saturday Morning</i> on WBAI, a
radio show I religiously tuned into every weekend while still living in The
City.<span> </span>Suddenly, I’d turned the TV off
and some of my old habits began floating to the top of my mind.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When I’d first made the determination to tune into FM radio
and screen out the static and commercialism of television, I vacillated back
and forth between NPR and listener sponsored WBAI, a station taking a more
militant stand on matters of social change.<span>
</span>The problem seemed to be one of holding my attention, which wandered
rather recklessly back and forth between the airwaves and the activities of the
nearby fish tank.<span> </span>Many I know keep TV,
and perhaps also radio on as an aural backdrop, but I’ve always resisted the thought
of doing this.<span> </span>Even now living
comfortably with myself involves a process of clearing away the energy of one
activity and then moving with peace and intention on to the next.<span> </span>In this context, background noise could only
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Maybe what this blog post is about, rather than the choice
of media, is making more unconventional and inventive use of leisure time.<span> </span>We’re supposed to mainstream our leisure
time, with television as a cornerstone.<span>
</span>I do admit I remember how pleasant it once was for me to think of coming
downstairs from a nap to <span> </span>the reassurance
of a human face, but now I listen to WAMC’s <i>All
Things Considered</i>, dismissing Wolf Blitzer and CNN’s Situation Room.<span> </span>All this might seem somewhat severe, except
that in the evening I sometimes take in a YouTube or Al Jazeera documentary.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">People I know in the City of Newburgh have long since given
up TV.<span> </span>One couple watches DVDs, another
tunes into Hulu if they get the urge.<span> </span>I
suppose my life has taken a more Spartan or stoic turn in this decision of how
to structure my leisure time, but it’s taken on advantages in steering me away
from the tiresome drone of advertising and into an at least occasional exploration
of the Internet.<span> </span>Not so bad, spending an
evening delving into all the videos you’ve sequestered away from Facebook and into
your YouTube <i>Watch Later</i> folder.</span></span></div>
eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-81358953765387676662012-12-27T10:46:00.004-08:002012-12-27T10:46:51.167-08:002ND AMENDMENT GANSTERISM<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I originally wrote a December post on the Newtown, CT
shooting, including an introductory link from the World Socialist Website; but
when I pressed the preview button on Google, I got a prompt saying it had been <i>published</i>.<span> </span>I subsequently looked at my blog and saw
nothing.<span> </span>As I’ve no idea how to retrieve
anything out of the blogosphere, I’m rewriting my thoughts, subsequently
updated.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">At a recent gathering at my home at the Winter Solstice,
conversation inevitably turned to our most recent school-shooting tragedy.<span> </span>Someone had read an editorial in that
Friday’s <i>New York Times</i> elaborating
an opinion on Second Amendment rights.<span> </span>I
hadn’t known there was a conversation underway to repeal it.</span></span></span></div>
</h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And what was the reason for this amendment, he wondered, as
he was particularly troubled by the use of the word ‘militia’.<span> </span>I quickly jumped in, sensing an opportunity
to connect my own personal dots on the subject.<span>
</span>The Constitution grants us the right to dissolve our governance if it
improperly serves us, casts us into hopelessness and does not serve our
wellbeing.<span> </span>This undoubtedly was the
reason for the use of that word.<span> </span>How to
assail the existing powers, however duly constituted, without arms?</span></span></span></div>
</h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Later I reflected on the growth of gun culture in the United
States.<span> </span>I’d recently been told by a
colleague at my rehab program that guns are freely available, even placed on
tables for sale at gun shows.<span> </span>Then, in a
180 degree pivot that seems possible only in our culture, I heard in a television
news announcement tonight that areas in some states are publishing information
on the location of privately and legally held firearms, the disclosure of which
was <span> </span>not well received by all.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In evidence that the Civil War still stalks the political
landscape in this country, there is a widespread affinity among some to display
the Confederate flag.<span> </span>Overcoming my
repugnance, I now began to reflect upon the reactionary nature of this.<span> </span>The rebel yell is alive today in the
imagination of some who object to the indifference of American political
life.<span> </span>Into this sometimes also goes
racial prejudice, jealousy in the workplace and a resentment of the openness of
our immigration policies resulting in a concept of armed militias and a
revolutionary resistance, however simplistic.</span></span></span></div>
</h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The missing ingredient in this stew of constitutionally
allowable discontent is, simply, intellect.<span>
</span>The romance of bearing arms seems a reductio ad absurdum for the awesome
undertaking of reconstituting government.<span>
</span>Among this subculture of discontented shooters, who would have the
political imagination to forge a new constitution, a Bill of Rights?<span> </span>I think my biggest single argument with
American culture, besides its obsession with violence, is its discouragement of
intellect.<span> </span>In a clip I saw recently of
the film <i>Lincoln</i>, he is arguing
passionately for the phrase <i>we hold these
truths to be self evident</i>.<span> </span>Why would
he be so emotionally moved by what we take to be a tautology?<span> </span>Could it be because the power of his
leadership lay in his ability to be moved by what is freely available to all,
namely the simple use of logic and common sense?</span></span></span></div>
</h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We are then left with devastating explosions of
murder/suicide.<span> </span>The licentious
availability of firearms coupled with the painful mental and emotional
dislocations of American life from time to time produce monsters.<span> </span>We can’t then just turn around and say the
parents were oblivious, or our mental health system is deficient.<span> </span>We lack wholesomeness in the way we conceive
and think about our own governance.<span>
</span>Cynicism blunts intellect, and we all too frequently think not in
threads of conversation, but in ideologies.<span>
</span>I’m not one to blindly salute authority, but perhaps before we resort to
arms we should rethink our identity as Americans.</span></span></span></div>
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eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-39796728006522385732012-11-12T11:46:00.000-08:002012-11-12T11:46:05.845-08:00MENTAL ILLNESSI am struck by how symptomatic states often resemble the despair and descent of poetry. Last month I had an extraordinary break with normality and was toppled into hopelessness, placing my hands against the window with only a memory of what it was like to be outside. A horrible summer of self-incarceration came to a conclusion when, too, in a state of rage, I sped my car over a curb and destroyed it. I’d never been in this part of hell before, and was discovered in a dream in a bone-chilling location that I am at a loss to describe.
In the current psychiatric rehabilitation program I am engaged with, I was surprised with recollections of my first recovery. Apparently, in something called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, there is something called ‘Downward Descent.’ I recalled the strange vertigo of anxiety that was routinely triggered by inappropriate and destructive relationships. Working with a Sullivanian therapist, there was the classic moment of transference where I reached out for her hand, realizing for the first time that it was available. In a dream, a ship in the distance headed towards a beach to rescue me from an entrapment in another ikon of therapeutic relief.
In my current flailings about with a Nook, it has occurred to me that I should download En Saison en Enfer. Not infrequently it crosses my mind in more frivolous moments that I should open a travel agency. Receiving etheric instructions to adhere to draconian discipline in purges of valuables, eating habits, social interaction and even suicide constitute a harrowing journey into a complete loneliness also impossible to describe.
In the PROS program, sadness is often referred to and the word ‘despair’ omitted. The searing pain in my solar plexus I experienced while in a profound, clinical depression could be referred to as an ache, and the melancholia afflicting Abraham Lincoln was diagnosed as ‘dystemia’, a mild but chronic state of sadness and dysfunction.
The extrapolation of mental and emotional states into scientific and systematized terminology is something like the duodecimal system of librarians or the organization of the botanical world. It provides practitioners with an objectivity essential to diagnosis, but that can also divorce them from the suffering of their clients. I often feel, in the process of group sharing, an insight into the conflicts of my peers, helpless, all the while, to help them professionally. It is only when I dip into literature, when writing poetry or reading it, that I can touch on the thin membrane that separates scientific distance from the truth of experience.
eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-43945627991371489362012-10-02T13:57:00.000-07:002012-10-02T13:59:11.798-07:00ANOTHER TESTAMENT No one wants a slut in their congregation. I’ve been pushed out the door of more than one church due to perceived inhibitions in sexual conduct, consequently judged indecent and unworthy of tolerance. After a lifetime, if you want to consider 27 years a lifetime, I decided instead this past Sunday to purchase and read the Sunday New York Times. My premise for psychological growth has for at least the same interval of time been to identify and let go of, or rid myself of relationships to individuals, communities and institutions that have proven poisonous to my sense of dignity and self-esteem.
There are a couple of old saws that are applicable here: looking for love in all the wrong places, and that there is something inherently hypocritical in organized religion. In the desperate sloughs of despond in my journey through life, I’ve resorted to Sunday worship, seeking community and relief from the heap of burning ashes my life had become…and this more than once. I’ve been a congregant in Baptist and United Church of Christ, Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian and even Unitarian churches; and with the possible exception of the muddied reception I got at Judson Memorial, I’ve been ostracized in one way or the other from all of them.
There is a managerial imperative in being installed as a priest. The word of God needs to be shaped in such a way as is appealing to the majority of those who attend services, this, if for no other reason, than to insure financial viability. Secondarily, there need to be identified those who will volunteer their efforts and time in service to the congregation’s, or at least the presiding priest’s agenda. I think I was over doused in the work ethic to the point of being singed. Headlong I hurtled into committee attendance and even committee formation, also organizing forums on social issues, attending training courses on congregational enrichment, and very briefly, filling in for Sunday School. The returns on all this effort remain questionable.
I have one true friend, a woman I met at Park Slope United Methodist. A true eccentric, she teaches medieval history at a military academy and as avocations, sings lieder, writes historic novels and quilts. I’ve spent more than a few happy hours with her at her home in Brooklyn. With her playful quirkiness, she existed far enough outside the complications of church social life that I could find some meaning in an association with her. My last attempt at connecting with a church community in Newburgh, one that I’d first been involved with for 10 years, then left, then went back to only to leave again, and then finally thought I had made a firm determination on, proved to me beyond a doubt that I could not navigate the bizarre social conventions leading to visibility as a ‘church lady’.
eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-86311999948920347972012-08-18T15:22:00.001-07:002012-08-18T15:22:24.002-07:00REHAB
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As once before in The City, I am
again involved in what is otherwise known as ‘Day Treatment’, or psychiatric
rehabilitation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I’ve suffered from
mental health issues on and off throughout my life, I thought it would be interesting
to reflect on some of the recurring themes involved in getting professional
help.</span></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The
umbrella organization in Orange County, NY is Occupations, and the specific
offering for individuals such as myself is PROS, or Personalized Recovery
Oriented Services.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I began at the
Middletown branch, and have since moved to the much smaller population served
at nearby New Windsor; but both have involved an acquaintanceship with staff
and peers, resulting in a daunting learning curve.</span></h1>
<h1>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This may be a snarky or cynical
framing of it, but my observation at times has been that some staff serving at
these facilities have been tracked into a career that they reckoned would be
easy work for a fat paycheck; in other words, a sophisticated form of
babysitting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The prime motivating reason
for my departure from the Postgraduate Center for Mental health in NYC was
being assigned to a counselor who seemed utterly passive in delivering
services, a kind of psychiatric sponge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although
a kindly person, I had determined I needed to escape from the sensation of
being allowed to indulge in runaway logorrhea.</span></h1>
<h1>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sometimes the result of this kind of
professional passivity is a regrettable loss of control, at times
unrecoverable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve seen individuals
allowed to continue onward with cross conversation all the while others,
struggling to be heard, are discounted or dismissed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one group, involving anger management, an Eastern
European émigré struggled to express her anxieties, only to be waved away with
a diagnosis of ‘acid reflux’ disease.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Driving back to Newburgh after this particularly chaotic workshop, I
struggled with how this dismissive atmosphere had been allowed to thrive in
what is supposed to be a caring environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the same workshop, a younger woman held forth for a good 20 minutes
with a looping complaint of how she would continue to refuse medication until
and unless a stomach complaint was diagnosed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At one point, she averred she’d previously been on meds for something
like 26 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later, since she’d been
incarcerated, I figured it was more like crystal meth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In no way had she been on psychotropic drugs
for that length of time; too animated, ADD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But then why had the facilitator just put up with her floor show?</span></h1>
<h1>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then there are the New Age types who
bring extensive texts on ‘Metta’ meditation, thoroughly confusing some
clients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A recitation of Buddhist maxims
invites the question “Do we have to do this?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Or the exasperating reliance on pages of boilerplate seemingly exempting
the group leader from retrieving clinical information from her own memory bank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What,” I found myself thinking, “you can’t
hold forth on guilt?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Give me the
group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got a lot to say.</span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></h1>
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eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-73817172772370565012012-07-04T11:50:00.000-07:002012-07-04T11:53:10.068-07:00BERGDORF GOODMAN'S<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As I was growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, then
known as the working class neighborhood of Yorkville, I was subjected to the
jumble of rich and poor residing within the width of the island as it existed
at that point. My father, being a German
immigrant, came to the country unable to speak English and so put his shoulder
to work as a laborer at a variety of jobs ending with the title of Receiving
Clerk at the 57<sup>th</sup> Street Stouffer’s restaurant.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Often, while I was still in grade school, my mother would
bring me downtown and then my father and I would begin our stroll up Fifth
Avenue and through Central Park until we got back home to 85<sup>th</sup>
Street. We would always stop at FAO
Schwartz, the classic kid’s paradise of toys, and spend at least half an hour
there while I played. (Subsequently, at
Christmas, I could expect at least one thing I had especially enjoyed.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But what this is all leading up to, is that on the other side
of the Avenue was another store:
Bergdorf Goodman’s. Every window
contained a female manikin with a designer gown, stunning and gorgeous, but
also containing a clear message: this is
something you cannot now and will never have.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Much later on in life while living on a sixth story walkup in
Greenwich Village, a friend and I, while spending a day together, wound up
there. We accepted the challenge, and
fully dressed in lesbian schlep, walked in.
It was a moment Tyler Durden would have savored. There was nothing as welfare dykes that we
could possibly consider purchasing, but I suppose our objective was more along
the lines of shocking ourselves into role of guerrilla warriors in even daring
to look. All I remember seriously
regarding was a silken scarf of some kind, handling it and turning it over in
my hands. We left without stealing
anything, and considering our level of disgust and alienation, I suppose we
deserved a subclass medal of some kind.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In reconsidering and reflecting on this as a subject for a
blog entry, I came to the realization that there are all kinds of sign posts in
our country directing traffic along gender, racial and ethnic and finally,
along class lines. And it’s the
strangest thing, whenever I begin a serious reference to my working class
roots, it brings up other people’s defenses:
suddenly everyone wants to be working class! But why?
At the end of the day, being brought up working class means being psychically
beaten to a pulp as frequently as is convenient by family, school and society.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Somehow, in the middle of all this, I was inspired by a high
school teacher to regard myself as an intellectual. I took the challenge seriously, but upon
arriving in college the other more subterranean agenda took hold, which was to
in some way to achieve this goal while being undermined by family
dysfunction. I was far from being a
superior student, and it was not until later in life as a returning student
that I came into the possession of the skill sets easily inherited by others of
more affluent and comfortable backgrounds.
Even today, I am still galled that in having relocated to the Mid Hudson
from The City that I thought my way into settlement here was to put my shoulder
to the wheel and commit myself to volunteer work in every organization I could
identify for myself. Too, there are
people in the arts world who are worker bees, but never achieve the degree of
recognition they deserve. Is all this
because some of us have been brought up to believe that this is the only
position we can or deserve to occupy in society?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">My current circumstances involve living in the City of
Newburgh, a crazy quilt pattern of neighborhoods varying in income levels, yet
somehow peppered ethnically. Too, my
life has deposited me in the mental health community, a double edged sword of
downward mobility but also an oasis of friendship and support. Today is July 4<sup>th</sup>, and the past
year has led me to a surprising appreciation of my American citizenship. As a high schooler, I was something of a hyper
patriot, needing something to identify with and hold onto without the benefits of
higher education. Today I realize that
we all forge both our identities and agree upon what we have to contribute to
the world. </span></div>eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-34971839509941441852012-06-03T16:11:00.000-07:002012-06-03T16:11:00.593-07:00ELSIEGrowing up on the streets of New York in the ‘50s was not a joke. All kinds of merriment, but also social tragedy came into play.
Across the street where I lived in what was then called Manhattan’s Yorkville, was a row of tenements that were later converted into a post office. Some of the inhabitants were Italian, as was pointed out to me by my parents, German and Finnish. Further down the street on my side was a candy store, home to a juke box and, for want of a better description, some West Side Story inhabitants. There was also ‘Fleischman’s’, a small depot for eggs and milk, used by friends of the family, but not by my own.
My point in writing this entry, though, is not some of these more picaresque details, but Elsie, a tall, slender older woman living in the tenement next to ours. She would appear, always with a cane, and sometimes with a another woman. They were slightly older than my mother, say in their ‘50s, and seemed ciphers to me. I was always provided with an unspoken message as we would sit on the stoop socializing, to avoid them, and still remember Elsie’s stare. It seemed like there was an unbroachable chasm between us. There was one instance where I remember the two women coming over to us, but they were seldom seen.
I began this blog because of a continuing sense of isolation having relocated to New York’s Hudson Valley from The City. Last summer, after having homesteaded in Newburgh’s West End for 12 years, I suddenly came under siege from my neighbors, an unrelenting harassment that ruined my summer. In my astonishment at this, I fought back, ending in some ridiculous scenarios such as walking down my very long driveway nude to fetch my mail. But in the midst of all this hostility, there was the awakening in remembering my childhood, that Elsie and her partner were lesbians.
I recently revealed this heartbreak to my psychotherapist, the woman running a bisexual support group at the White Plains Gay community center known as The Loft. It was such a strange experience that it defied any explanation to either my attorney, the city police, my social worker, or either of the two ministers I counseled with. My home had also been entered, and it took quite a while to do the math on what had been taken. At first the damages seemed minor until months later I realized that both my external hard drive and cache of photographs for framing had been stolen.
Over the years, as I once attempted an explanation of my adult life, there have been issues following me everywhere I’ve chosen to hang my hat, all surrounding my sexual identity. In fact, this same kind of neighborhood discomfort and hostility is what originally removed me from my humble home in an East Village tenement. At the end of the day, I am always seen as an obstacle requiring removal.
Not too long ago, doing some simple paperwork for a resident in Newburgh’s historic district introduced me to some of the terminology involved in City politics, something I’ve never chosen to involve myself in. In struggling against a continuing message of unwelcomeness, it suddenly occurred to me that I was a ‘stakeholder’, that I had bolted myself down in my home, with the determination not to be removed from it.
Recently the President declared June to be LGBT Pride month. Let’s celebrate it.eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-37619602109992334232012-04-27T08:06:00.001-07:002012-04-27T08:06:48.473-07:00CONSPIRATORIAL RELATIONSHIPSIn my continuing explorations of the local Unitarian Society, I have found the same repository of human dysfunction as elsewhere in my continuing search for community.
For half a year, I’ve been struggling with the concept of an LGBT social group, and in turn, struggling with the personalities critical to forming it. A friendship I thought I had secured while hobbling and homebound from crippling orthopedic issues went south on me once I recovered a sense of expansiveness and hope. Suddenly, at what I termed the ‘formative’ or exploratory meeting of ‘Club Sandwich’, there arose all kinds of problematic concerns not only with my competency to both facilitate and publicize, but also some perceived insult, entirely unintentional on my part. Some people will help you die but refuse to help you live.
A very long time ago, while living in what used to be an East Village bursting with life and Bohemianism, I thought of an assumed name: Eve Invisible. Over my years of living alone I’d become inured to being overlooked. This is still something I struggle with. Now too, in the Hudson Valley poetry community, it seems okay if you keep a low enough profile, but if you should begin to attract attention, the issue then is one of perception.
I’ve encountered countless ‘in’ groups, both in secular life, political and otherwise, as well as in church communities. People seem to feel more comfortable in conspiratorial relationships, and I never seem to fit in. Ironically, I’ve found some of the most painful exclusions in religious communities, where ideals of compassion and acceptance are touted and proclaimed, and then discarded when, for instance, issues of human sexuality arise.
But the parade of attempted and failed attempts at establishing the kind of connectedness I seek are numerous: I’ll go back to the mid ‘60s and both the Lower East side anarchist community as well as New York Radical Women, then the lesbian feminist community, then the arts and music explosion in lower Manhattan in the mid ‘70s, then a succession of church communities: Judson Memorial, Park Slope United Methodist, St. George’s Episcopal, Calvary Presbyterian. Not to mention a singles resort I was involved with for 10 years, first as a paying guest and then as work exchange. Oh, and certainly the Omega Institute deserves an honorable, or dishonorable mention.
Anyway, this is how the blog got started. I am continuing to fight my way out of the isolation I sunk into subsequent to my geographical relocation out of the City. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-45497286887436339042012-03-31T15:00:00.001-07:002012-03-31T15:00:05.337-07:00LET'S GO FOR ITRecently something happened to me that I thought never would: I became a patriot. In the dramatic pre-election tension between America’s two parties, I began reflecting for the first time on what is involved in living in this country.
In the sweep of time since the winter of 2010, it became clear to me that I was too far along in years to settle for uncertainty and conflict, but to arrive at an assertion of my identity as bisexual, I had to withstand enormous pressures pushing against me.
Freedom in this country is a much mangled word. In the gibberish we hear from the campaign trail, for instance, we are urged to take a stand and free ourselves up from paying insurance premiums into a nationally mandated health plan. Or we are to be ‘free’ of ‘big’ or too big government. Yet these same charlatans are all to eager to interfere with a woman’s constitutional right to regulate her own reproductive destiny. Freedom, in fact, is a word bandied around like a ball in a sports game. Poor freedom. Never mind the millions of war dead resulting from the last global conflagration to fight for our freedom from the ideology of slavery.
If there is any freedom guaranteed to us in these United States, it is the freedom to forge our own destinies. Sometimes this is not easy. We can comfort ourselves in our living room easy chairs and cast ballots, only to engage in consequent bellyaching when we do not have things exactly our way. Many do not understand that we live in the stream of history at least up to our ankles, without even experiencing the sensation of the flow of time and change.
Having cut my teeth on the turbulence of the sixties, I build on a foundation of agitation for social change. This too is part of our legacy of Americans. 2012 will be a turning point for us. I don’t believe our current two-party system of government can endure, considering the poverty of the Republican viewpoint. An educated woman, I cannot even bring myself to understand what tradition they are attempting to uphold. Our constitutional heritage guarantees us the right to change our governance if it does not serve the people. Let’s go for it. We don’t need to use rifles.eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-22534298843683526342012-02-25T09:11:00.000-08:002012-02-25T09:11:36.986-08:00THE 'WE' QUESTIONAt a meeting of the Rock Tavern Unitarian Society’s ‘Covenant Group’ the other night, one of the attendees was freely referring to ‘we’. I began asking a question and was promptly stopped since I was doing so out of order. At the end came a section referred to as ‘Wishes and Likes’, and said I would like it if people indicated whether or not they were partnered, especially if they used that controversial pronoun. As this was my first attendance at this group, I’d not coherently pulled my thoughts together, and was promptly descended upon. I’d also declared myself to be an ‘out bisexual woman’, and had also thrown that into the mix.
Oh, I was told, I look at women all the time and my husband is OK with that. Oh, we have no problem declaring our sexual orientation. (I staunchly objected to that one.) One individual said she’d been married but was now single. “That helps,” I said. I don’t like the hierarchical structure of heterosexual society, or even partnered society, if that can be referred to. I’ve been single most of my life, have had to do everything for and by myself, including a not insignificant amount of suffering. I don’t like people slinging around the fact that they have the comforts of a relationship. It’s that simple.eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-74478095155423633332012-02-02T07:29:00.000-08:002012-02-02T07:29:40.811-08:00THE THRUWAY STOREWhat does it mean to get killed in war?
Up in my neck of the woods, culture is much different than in The Megalopolis of New York City. Recently, I journeyed over to a local landmark, The Thruway Store, located in Walden, NY. My purpose was to bring over flyers, six of them, announcing the War Healing Circle being facilitated by the Rev. Chris Antal of the Rock Tavern Unitarian Society. Earlier last year, due to disturbances in my neighborhood, I’d gone to its sports department with the intention of purchasing a hand gun, discovering that it was something of a local watering hole, a convergence of hunters, sportsmen, veterans and others involved in the military.
My first attendance at one of the Circles was an extraordinary experience. There were 8-10 of us in attendance: veterans, those active in the military but also including three of us from The Society. I was ambushed with tears remembering my antiwar activism of the ‘60s and took my turn speaking to that. An Episcopal priest was present who’d done much work with veterans. She told of a young man scarred by war. He’d relocated his family in order to make them safe from him, feeling his withdrawal and moodiness could only inflict damage. And she said she could sometimes see the firefight being played out in his eyes before they would once again fall numb and his attention would once again turn to a television screen.
I myself have been involved in studying war, and WWII in particular, for about seven years. I don’t know why. Many possible reasons have presented themselves: I was a warrior in a previous life/lives (even though I’ve told I’d been a monastic); since I’ve felt so embattled with the world myself, it makes me feel less alone; but perhaps it’s primarily mesmerized by the cruelty of how we butcher one another, the unfortunate primary way we seem to make history. Or perhaps it’s because for as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted it to come to an end.
The first time Rev. Antal came over to counsel with me, he was astonished at my admission that I watched the Military Channel, and then even more astonished at my premise that if society in general, and women in particular, would understand firsthand the experience of being in battle, that there would be a radical shift in consciousness, taking us beyond the ease with which we seem to enter into conflict. Instead of sentimentalizing the returning warrior, we need to reflect deeply on the cutting short of life before it has even had an opportunity of flowering into meaning.eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-38507701888913013692011-12-21T17:44:00.000-08:002011-12-21T17:44:46.124-08:00HUDSON VALLEY SANGHAAllow me, to my own relief, to turn from painful introspection to a new hopefulness. As life has tossed me around from one spiritual community to another, or if you will, from one set of pews to another, I’ve finally found a resting place at the Greater Newburgh Unitarian Society, located in Rock Tavern.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYUdTedt1WI-AsMHPTlbxZ_s361hv5UGm9dASZZqRsbUuBPVisvOzidT4cfchQZaI-JTdqycm9lHhNkg1PLccTzee1yicGDivfjsNCIi5h0WGRSaJRGRLpP-mcTjF2J4D4OoxAZiUmVMfb/s1600/Egyptian+Cock+%25234.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYUdTedt1WI-AsMHPTlbxZ_s361hv5UGm9dASZZqRsbUuBPVisvOzidT4cfchQZaI-JTdqycm9lHhNkg1PLccTzee1yicGDivfjsNCIi5h0WGRSaJRGRLpP-mcTjF2J4D4OoxAZiUmVMfb/s320/Egyptian+Cock+%25234.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.uucrt.org/Fall_Website/Main_Page.html"></a>
There were almost Biblical overtones in the way I’d been led there by a well known, local activist emeritus—I believe the quote goes somewhat like “whither thou goest…”. Just as with other very close friends and allies, she led me through the dark tunnel of earlier this year until now at its end, I am regarding a landscape containing some entertaining and even exciting prospects.
Stirring the pot of my own bisexuality, both at the LGBT drop in center in White Plains known as The Loft, as well as floating some ideas at The Society, it would appear that not only a monthly Bi Brunch, but perhaps also a more inclusive gay group may be forming in Newburgh. The possibility that this might ultimately morph into a service organization for the entire Mid Hudson region would rearrange the entire sociology of the region. As of now, there is a two-hour journey by car between the two drop in centers in White Plains and Kingston, with nothing in between.
In what I expect will turn out to be a series of conversations between Rev. Chris Antal and myself, he helped me connect with another ‘B’ in the congregation. Now that arthroscopic surgeries have been performed on both knees, starting the Brunch at a local diner is a mos def beginning in February, with my Bi support group facilitator helping with publicity. Too, the exchanges between the man who has said he would be my ‘minister’ if I liked, look as though they may well prove life changing. It’s taken a while to get my bearings with him. A fellow parishioner and I both made the observation that it is almost like meeting with a holy man, he seems so utterly unable to function, relate or communicate on other than the deepest of levels. Our first conversation felt like walking over a mine field, or perhaps a better characterization would be the sensation of falling off a cliff. With only a casual reference and a brief exchange, the most profound explorations open up. Whew! I’ll see him on Saturday for an unexpected Christmas Eve service, suggest we meet again at the end of next month.
In an unrelated development once again underlining my philosophy that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ I’ve begun initial conversations with a nudist colleague about opening up my house as a Bed and Breakfast, offering him a commission if he sends up business room the more populated NYC vortex. It would be the Belle Terre B&B since that is the moniker he gave my humble estate. The property is in excellent condition, and the woman from The Society who’s been helping me with some housekeeping is prepared to be the first, and perhaps only necessary employee. For the first time this year there were no prospects for renting the room, and since necessity is the mother of invention, let her give birth to an entrepreneur!eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-8844757723397648542011-11-19T18:24:00.001-08:002011-11-19T19:05:31.833-08:00CONNECTING THE DOTSI guess this topic has mainly to do with health issues and medical care, although I think it has implications beyond those concerns.
I don't know how many times I've repeated to friends and health care providers both that I work with a homeopathic physician, have since January '09. In doing so, a pattern emerged due to an unfortunate series of illnesses about which I first consulted with my OB/GYN. With my thinking conditioned by medical science, I stubbornly equated the pain I was experiencing with infection, not an unreasonable anxiety. Unremitting pain can easily provoke panic, and in my case, led to much laboratory testing and high tech imaging, with no conclusive results. Culturally, we are presented with compulsory behemoths, among them the conventional practice of medicine. In the pattern I referred to, once all laboratory assays were completed and I was still afflicted with pain, I would then consult with Andrew Franck, the homeopath. Referencing other cultural models of medicine, he was able to diagnose and treat. In one stunning instance he recognized a disruption to the Chi as it would more naturally flow through the energy channels of Chinese medicine, what we very tediously refer to as 'acupuncture meridians'.
Anyway, in a more recent visit this summer, he advised me to "get in touch with my body", a rather remarkable prescription.
Walking out of the Healing Arts office nonplussed, it wasn't until an idyllic moment of sunbathing on my back patio that I did exactly that, and realized that my body itself was a remarkable instrument of healing if only I could trust it. <i>You can bring the horse to the water but you can't make it drink</i> is an old saw. In another one of these serial illnesses, I pleaded with urologist number 1 to please understand the chain of events as I understood them leading up to my symptoms. Arguing with this individual was futile, and I had to move on to another medical office before I was satisfied that <i>my</i> anxieties and concerns had met with the corresponding appropriate examination and tests. Ultimately it was once again Andrew Franck who diagnosed what turned out to be a stubborn abdominal spasm. But by this time I'd gone through five months of pain.
Too, I've put myself through a lot of unnecessary turmoil relationally with others. My tendency seems to push right up to and beyond my own boundaries of comfort in an effort to reach out, but my generosity in assigning attributes to people who then prove themselves uninterested in responding to me often turns around to bite me in the ass. There are some who would then cynically assert that any attempt at establishing loving relationships is futile. I'm not one of them, but I'd like to think I've learned something about staying safe. Sometimes we need the help of others to make sense of the world, to 'connect the dots', as it were. Staying free and autonomous better enables us to engage in the reality of others, but there is just as much legitimacy in walking away from those who can't assist us understanding what happens to us in life and why.eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-17905950552870278642011-10-20T14:35:00.001-07:002011-10-20T14:39:39.716-07:00My Anarchist LifeInterestingly, it was during a conversation with my pharmacy that I remembered, with all the drama of everyday life, that I was an anarchist. Perhaps the details are unimportant, but in being presented with a choice of colors for a night ware accessory, I chose black and red, pointing out that since I was an anarchist, why not.
Over the years, and in my attempts to accommodate the more drearily conventional organizations I had decided to involve myself with, I’d forgotten. Mensa, and church organizations, even those more liberally religious, had dampened my fervor. But once I began to reflect on it I realized this powerful body of thought, with its emphasis on individual autonomy, was the ribbon tying together the pattern of risks I’d taken in my own growth.
As a student at the City College of New York, I’d slogged my way through the alphabet soup of orthodox left organizations, finally accepting an invitation to attend a meeting of the campus anarchists. This proved auspicious as guests such as Tuli Kupferberg and Murray Bookchin, both now passed on, held forth. Through this aperture in my budding life as a political philosopher, I found my way into the New York Federation of Anarchists, dining on macrobiotic casseroles in the evening, then taking the First Avenue bus back to mom and dad later on.
I’m now remembering passed Federation member and poet Alan Hoffman, then residing in a rear top floor apartment on Avenue B. With an elision of time allowing for a mental/emotional harrowing in my struggles with my family, I later became involved with Steve Brownstein, a subsequent member of what became known as the Anarchos collective and lived with him directly below Alan in the same building. This was in turbulent, revolutionary antiwar years of ‘67/’68, and I became involved in the beginnings of women’s liberation.
As a founding member of New York Radical women, I helped formulate the principles of consciousness raising, moving us across the boundary from personal examination into the sphere of political action and thought. The idea of the individual as the repository of the way society is ideologically constructed moved me into the formulation that “the personal is the political.” That made it easier. It wasn’t just us anymore. We were caught in a snare of imposed thinking and role playing and it became increasingly clear that the only way out was through the vector of social change. I also participated in the lesbian feminist community in the early ‘70s as a ‘woman identified woman’. <a href="http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/wlm/womid/">http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/wlm/womid/</a>
Another elision of time, and I dove into the cauldron of cultural change holding sway in lower Manhattan in the mid ‘70s. Once again, I was caught in the doldrums of having survived a sojourn in another hothouse of personal/political growth and was ready to move on. It takes time to find others, but soon I became part of what was a powerful cultural transformation.
Now, having become a member of the Hudson Valley Diaspora, I am increasingly aware of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This is not going away, but instead is burgeoning into not only a community, but a neighborhood, movement and culture. I’ll be in The Megalopolis in November. Maybe I’ll have the opportunity to check it out.eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1773039853219071551.post-25946918899939242222011-09-16T10:29:00.000-07:002011-09-16T10:29:05.132-07:00THE GAY OCTOROONIn the Kern-Hammerstein musical Showboat, the onboard actress Julie LaVerne is found to be in an unlawfully miscegenous marriage by virtue of being an octoroon; or, as Wikipedia elaborates, “someone with family heritage of one biracial grandparent, in other words, one African great-grandparent and seven Caucasian great grandparents.” The separation from her husband results in a cascading tragedy, beginning with her removal as an onboard entertainer, and ending with her combing gambling halls and dives, struggling to find the men who can help her survive.<br />
This racial trope interests me as a bisexual woman. In my life, I’ve been torn apart emotionally and mentally in what was presented to me as a compulsory pigeon-holing in dualistic sexuality, i.e. the need to be one or the other, gay or straight. All gay people in the sandwich acronym we’ve acquiesced to: LGBT, struggle with the exclusion from heterosexuality and its privileges. There is a risible game, played differently at the different poles of socially acceptable sexual preference, with the common quest being to discover or identify who is homosexual. For straight folks, the result will be a shift in perception away from acceptability. For gay folks, the perception of homosexual preference constitutes an enhancement. But those of us whose lives have led us to some gray middle area expose ourself to a hazardous distortion of identity.<br />
For me, bisexuality has always represented the autonomy to love audaciously. Moving away from a confining sojourn in the early ‘70s lesbian feminist [separatist] community, I became involved instead in the New Wave of cultural exploration of that time. In the 2008 release of The Universe of Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf reflects on how everyone from that time was either bi or gay. Yes, I remember it well. Bisexuality often fares well in the hothouse of intentional community. But the exposure all gay people experience in the ultimate necessity to endure and survive in a heterosexual world involves the navigation of what is often a harsh and unforgiving reality.<br />
The workplace for one, unless one has a cache of fabulousness for an entre into the world of the arts or fashion, is largely a heterosexual environment. Perhaps real, perhaps pretended, but nonetheless one that needs to be ‘gone along with’. In our cemented, monolithic culture where marriage is the apex of an heirarchical pyramid of acceptability, those of us who make different choices fall to the bottom or perhaps through the cracks entirely. If we are enjoying the privilege that makes us acceptable hires, provides us with promotions and upward mobility, makes allowances for us to circulate socially and rear children, what would make us take the risk of a same sex relationship? Is there ever any room to move back and forth? The flamboyance of drag and the exagerated feminity of male gayness presents a face to the American public frivolous enough to have gained acceptance. But what about those of us who don’t want to put on a show?eveellenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16965422168496783770noreply@blogger.com0