From the Archives
(March 2005) Sunday night. I pulled out clay yesterday but never got around to sculpting anything. Have been wanting to shape something with my hands, which is a very different creative process than painting or drawing, less cerebral.
There’s something very satisfying about digging your hands down into your medium, getting them dirty, something very sensuous about molding a human form accurately out of clay.
Shaping it with your hands really makes you think about the hollows and curves of the human body, makes you pay attention. Tactile.
Or maybe this is just sexual frustration....
Guess I won’t get to experience this sensuous pleasure for a couple more weeks though, since I’m off to the lowlands soon and the process is really not very satisfying if you can’t complete at least the basic form in your initial sitting.
A sculpture is like a poem that way. I fine-tune poems to the nth degree after writing them and am always walking around with them in my head, trying to find a more precise word or phrase or image that will make them a little cleaner, a little tighter, that might scan a little better while providing deeper meaning, better music, nuance. Whatever.
I edit them on an ongoing basis, but really have to get the whole poem down on paper in my initial sitting or it’s lost.
Got up at 6 this morning and worked for nearly 7 hours on the second edition of my completely subjective compilation of poems that I think are good. The book is 200+ pages long and there’s at least one beautiful photograph on every spread.
I got the idea for the compilation a couple of Christmases ago after several friends said they would like to read more poetry, but wished I would give them some idea of where to start.
So I pulled poems together quickly, typeset the pages, made 20 or so funky leather covers, and handed the first, homemade books out as holiday gifts.
Like all rush projects, though, my initial edition contains errors (gasp!). I’ve promised books to other pals and some have reminded me that I haven’t yet delivered though, so it is high time that I finish a new edition.
This collection works very well sequentially, although the only real themes I used when compiling it were the moon at the beginning and rain at the end. I do cringe every time I discover another typo though.
Thought I could proof the whole thing and complete the rest of the updates yesterday morning, but I included some of my own poems in the collection and an unexpected result of proofreading was that I stopped proofing and instead reworked three of my own poems.
The changes are minor—just two words in one poem, a new stanza in another, and several new lines and phrases in the third—but improvements nonetheless, and two are already published in their earlier form, but at least I know they’re better now.
Have pondered one of the poems for a long while but couldn’t quite put my finger on what to do to make the meaning so clear that even an editor on the Sinister Wisdom collective would comprehend my meaning.
Now that’s not a very nice thing to say, I know, but the editorial collective of that fine journal rejected the poem and actually returned it to me with a condescending lecture along the lines of um, you probably don’t know this, living in the South as you do, but the word "nigger" is considered offensive in most circles and MLK and other activists worked and died in your region to make you people aware of how offensive you are when you use that term.
Guess it was clearly time they raised my consciousness about these facts since, excuse me, I’ve been living in a holler with all my barefoot and pregnant sisters and rapist brothers drinking moonshine these last forty-some years.
Let me back up here and say that a one-time colleague of mine actually founded Sinister Wisdom (the first lesbian journal in the US) many, many moons ago and she’s the one who suggested that I send this poem there.
The journal is run by a collective these days though, and I suppose those nice urban lesbians saw my southern address, saw that word, and didn’t even bother to determine what the actual poem said.
That’s the only explanation I have for their condescension, since over twenty readers commented on earlier drafts and not one of them had any trouble grasping that the poem actually comments on the damaging pervasiveness of racism and religious bias and poverty in the south.
The poem’s been published elsewhere now, but I guess it’s obvious that their letter still goads me and I pondered long and hard how to beat people over the head with my message without compromising the poetry.
Seemed obvious, once I figured it out.
Derogatory comments about Southerners (or poverty) rarely surprise me anymore, but they do offend me. You can practically watch a non-Southerner register your accent then drop their perception of your IQ score by 30 points.
Once, in the city, I was at a karate party with the great-whatever-granddaughter of—O hell, I’ll just say his name: David Hume—and little Maggie was so condescending to me that, after she said who her great-whatever-grandfather was for about the third time, that I said “O, who’s that?” in a smart-ass voice (to mostly amuse my friends and myself).
She replied “Where did you go to school?” and I told her the name of the southern state university where I completed undergraduate work—one that ranks consistently ranks among the top ten state universities, mind you, but she walked off shaking her Yalie head, satisfied that she’d just verified how backwards the deep South is and I didn’t even bother correcting her.
Now if she’d wanted to discuss the education I received in public schools prior to going to college, then that would have been another story....
Showing posts with label southern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label southern. Show all posts
Friday, September 21, 2007
9. WELL SAVE MY SOUL!
From the Archives
(March 2005) I’m a contributing writer to our local independent newspaper and wrote an article about how strange it was to return to my grandmother’s tiny farming community and her Southern Baptist church for her funeral.
Most of my family still lives in one of the most conservative states in the south and that was where I returned with my manly haircut and nose ring and urban garb for this funeral. And I waxed poetic about this experience in the paper—delved into how strange it is, when you think about it, that otherwise sociable people in a community with little variation are stopped dead in their tracks by difference, that those same women who get up early to cook food for a wake, who hug strangers who visit their church, who grew up pampering you and doting on you and calling you sugar are leery of you now because you deviated from their norm.
Now I don’t know if it’s this way in other rural communities but, in Southern Baptist ones, difference is dangerous, is wrong, is something to be suspicious of, cured. And conversion drives the Baptist faithful (whose newest plan, incidentally and according to my mother’s mission magazines, is to convert the Mormons).
And try to convert me they did. My grandmother’s preacher—who stared at me with contempt when I stuck out my hand for a handshake—knew immediately that I was the granddaughter who had long worried my grandmother, the queer one, the one who left town as soon as I scraped together the resources to do so and rarely returned. He told me that my grandmother died worried for my soul because she knew I’d burn in Hell.
I drove home thinking about how odd the accident of family is—how strange it is that I give leeway to people I would otherwise never endure simply because I’m tied to them by blood and know we’ll circle into and out of each others' lives for as long as we breathe.
And I thought about the fact that our family tree includes all these details about my grandmother’s five children, her sixteen grandchildren, and her eighteen great-grandchildren, but not a word about the woman I’d been partnered with for, at that point, six years—the person I most considered family.
And I thought about the power of naming something, of just choosing not to record or acknowledge a reality. And I wrote about this whole strange experience in a public forum.
I don’t feel that I was disrespectful of my family, but I did write about how strange it felt to always be Other: to notice the silence that always follows even the most casual declaration about my life if it includes a reference to my partner; to know that, in my nieces' and nephews' eyes, I am not the whole and interesting person that I am but am, instead, their queer old-maid aunt, a stranger they define by my love—about how strange it is to not belong with the people you’re bound to by blood, and to have to, instead, form your own chosen family with people who never even knew you as a child.
The newspaper is just getting around to posting their archives online and this is one of a few of my articles they’ve posted so far. Unfortunately, my grandmother’s little farming community has an unusual name and I used it, so a parishioner in her church discovered my article only a few months after the funeral. He shared it with the church and my family and it apparently caused a big scandal and definitely prompted fury within my family of origin.
(OMG What will they do when the, um, novel comes out?!)
Now no one would accuse my aunt Betty of being a kind woman. She’s never been able to sustain a relationship for more than a year and is, really, just a bitter and bigoted person.
My most enduring memory of her is this: every Christmas Eve of my childhood, she passed out purple mimeographed pages of revised carols (that smelled good) for us to sing. Then she very carefully gathered these pages back up (which means that I never managed to snag a copy of her songs, although I’d love to have one).
The Christmas carols in the old Baptist hymnal are just not Baptist enough for Aunt Betty, so she reworded them for the benefit of her family's souls.
Here’s the first verse of the only one I can remember with certainty:
(March 2005) I’m a contributing writer to our local independent newspaper and wrote an article about how strange it was to return to my grandmother’s tiny farming community and her Southern Baptist church for her funeral.
Most of my family still lives in one of the most conservative states in the south and that was where I returned with my manly haircut and nose ring and urban garb for this funeral. And I waxed poetic about this experience in the paper—delved into how strange it is, when you think about it, that otherwise sociable people in a community with little variation are stopped dead in their tracks by difference, that those same women who get up early to cook food for a wake, who hug strangers who visit their church, who grew up pampering you and doting on you and calling you sugar are leery of you now because you deviated from their norm.
Now I don’t know if it’s this way in other rural communities but, in Southern Baptist ones, difference is dangerous, is wrong, is something to be suspicious of, cured. And conversion drives the Baptist faithful (whose newest plan, incidentally and according to my mother’s mission magazines, is to convert the Mormons).
And try to convert me they did. My grandmother’s preacher—who stared at me with contempt when I stuck out my hand for a handshake—knew immediately that I was the granddaughter who had long worried my grandmother, the queer one, the one who left town as soon as I scraped together the resources to do so and rarely returned. He told me that my grandmother died worried for my soul because she knew I’d burn in Hell.
I drove home thinking about how odd the accident of family is—how strange it is that I give leeway to people I would otherwise never endure simply because I’m tied to them by blood and know we’ll circle into and out of each others' lives for as long as we breathe.
And I thought about the fact that our family tree includes all these details about my grandmother’s five children, her sixteen grandchildren, and her eighteen great-grandchildren, but not a word about the woman I’d been partnered with for, at that point, six years—the person I most considered family.
And I thought about the power of naming something, of just choosing not to record or acknowledge a reality. And I wrote about this whole strange experience in a public forum.
I don’t feel that I was disrespectful of my family, but I did write about how strange it felt to always be Other: to notice the silence that always follows even the most casual declaration about my life if it includes a reference to my partner; to know that, in my nieces' and nephews' eyes, I am not the whole and interesting person that I am but am, instead, their queer old-maid aunt, a stranger they define by my love—about how strange it is to not belong with the people you’re bound to by blood, and to have to, instead, form your own chosen family with people who never even knew you as a child.
The newspaper is just getting around to posting their archives online and this is one of a few of my articles they’ve posted so far. Unfortunately, my grandmother’s little farming community has an unusual name and I used it, so a parishioner in her church discovered my article only a few months after the funeral. He shared it with the church and my family and it apparently caused a big scandal and definitely prompted fury within my family of origin.
(OMG What will they do when the, um, novel comes out?!)
Now no one would accuse my aunt Betty of being a kind woman. She’s never been able to sustain a relationship for more than a year and is, really, just a bitter and bigoted person.
My most enduring memory of her is this: every Christmas Eve of my childhood, she passed out purple mimeographed pages of revised carols (that smelled good) for us to sing. Then she very carefully gathered these pages back up (which means that I never managed to snag a copy of her songs, although I’d love to have one).
The Christmas carols in the old Baptist hymnal are just not Baptist enough for Aunt Betty, so she reworded them for the benefit of her family's souls.
Here’s the first verse of the only one I can remember with certainty:
On the first day of Christmas my true lord came for me, but I was not re-e-eady....
Then, yes indeedy, we go on a merry, instructive holiday journey through Hell.
Aunt Betty sent me the following letter after reading my article, along with two heavily highlighted paperback books about the sin of homosexuality:
Dear Niece,
I didn’t get a chance to talk with you alone at Christmas and don’t know if your mother told you or not, but a church member read your newspaper article and gave me a copy.
I was hurt, to say the least, that you would do this to us and to Mother’s memory.
It was briefly discussed at Sunday evening’s service (the last one I attended) that Mother’s gay granddaughter had written an article.
I am sorry that you feel the way you do, but I happen to love our community, our church, and our people.
I have become a Christian, and was librarian and on the flower committee. I placed many books in the library in Mother’s memory, as she taught a class there for many years.
I’m not one to argue with anyone about religion—however, it is every Christian’s duty to attempt to witness and save the souls of those they love.
There are some people I hope to never see in Heaven, but you are not one of them. It grieves me and breaks my heart to think that those I love will not get there.
I’m even tempted to tear a page from my Bible and send it to you—please read 2 Timothy, chapters 2 and 3.
In Christian love,
Aunt Betty
Sigh.
LISTENING TO: Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Before You Were Born" (Before you were born someone kicked in the door. You are not wanted here; get back where you belong...)
READING: Paradise Garden: A Trip Through Howard Finster’s Visionary World by Robert Peacock with Annibel Jenkins
3. WAS JESUS AN LGBTQ-FRIENDLY CAPRICORN?
From the Archives
(March 2005) People are funny today and I suspect it’s because this vacillation between gorgeous spring weather and cold-ass winter days is getting to us all.
First, an editor whispered to me in the local java joint “Ever seen the same student here twice? Me either. I think they’re all really aliens.”
Then, as I was waiting to pay for my coffee, someone behind me said “Excuse me” and someone else replied, “Excuse you? I can’t even explain you.”
And all this before noon!
I’ve also been making carpooling arrangements for an upcoming statewide LGBTQ leadership planning session.
One thing I learned at the last session is that local progressive religious leaders have formed a religious coalition for marriage equality. The MCC pastor who was describing their work said that the coalition came about because local leaders understand that effective movements in the south require religious, political, and legal components.
This group currently includes 250+ pastors and other church leaders, many of whom are straight and all of whom believe that “the most fundamental human right, after the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, is the right to affection and the supportive love of other human beings.”
They oppose “the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equity to same-gender couples.” They also strategically place straight white preachers in their media spots.
I grew up way down south in the land of cotton and still have trouble fathoming the fact that many southern metropolitan areas now feature at least a few LGBTQ-friendly Baptist churches. I mean, just ponder that reality for a minute.
The Southern Baptist church I was raised in was so rabid that conservative Christianists can still give me eye tics when they begin talking about their god. In fact, I’ve told more than one such person that I am allergic to their god but the fact of the matter is that I’m allergic to their narrow monochromatic version of god and I get really annoyed when they presume to have the right to tell me what I am supposed to believe.
My father is an enigma to me in many, many ways, but one blessing is that he was a free-thinker in a community that was nearly devoid of philosophical variation and I was the child born with my father’s philosophical bent.
He spent much of his free time reading philosophy and talking about it with me so, even as a child, I believed that the Christians got it all wrong.
God is a verb, not a noun, in my book and she always has been.
Discovering personification only cemented this view in my mind. Jesus is an idea, an ideal, a whispered message reminding us of the importance of recognizing and maintaining a common vibe, a world community, connection. No more high or low, babycakes; we’re all in this stew together—including us LGBTQ folks who frighten the straight-and-narrow Christianists so.
Jesus’s message, to me, is about nurturing these connections and respecting each other and tearing down those artificial walls that divide our common family. This makes much more sense to me than some white-bearded old patriarch sitting up on a cloud somewhere just waiting to punish people for masturbating.
LISTENING TO: Lucernarium: Paravi lucernam Christo meo, performed by Chants De L’Eglises Milanaise
READING: Rodale’s Successful Organic Gardening (springs a’coming!) and re-reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Muriel Rukeyser’s Meaning of Poetry
(March 2005) People are funny today and I suspect it’s because this vacillation between gorgeous spring weather and cold-ass winter days is getting to us all.
First, an editor whispered to me in the local java joint “Ever seen the same student here twice? Me either. I think they’re all really aliens.”
Then, as I was waiting to pay for my coffee, someone behind me said “Excuse me” and someone else replied, “Excuse you? I can’t even explain you.”
And all this before noon!
I’ve also been making carpooling arrangements for an upcoming statewide LGBTQ leadership planning session.
One thing I learned at the last session is that local progressive religious leaders have formed a religious coalition for marriage equality. The MCC pastor who was describing their work said that the coalition came about because local leaders understand that effective movements in the south require religious, political, and legal components.
This group currently includes 250+ pastors and other church leaders, many of whom are straight and all of whom believe that “the most fundamental human right, after the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, is the right to affection and the supportive love of other human beings.”
They oppose “the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equity to same-gender couples.” They also strategically place straight white preachers in their media spots.
I grew up way down south in the land of cotton and still have trouble fathoming the fact that many southern metropolitan areas now feature at least a few LGBTQ-friendly Baptist churches. I mean, just ponder that reality for a minute.
The Southern Baptist church I was raised in was so rabid that conservative Christianists can still give me eye tics when they begin talking about their god. In fact, I’ve told more than one such person that I am allergic to their god but the fact of the matter is that I’m allergic to their narrow monochromatic version of god and I get really annoyed when they presume to have the right to tell me what I am supposed to believe.
My father is an enigma to me in many, many ways, but one blessing is that he was a free-thinker in a community that was nearly devoid of philosophical variation and I was the child born with my father’s philosophical bent.
He spent much of his free time reading philosophy and talking about it with me so, even as a child, I believed that the Christians got it all wrong.
God is a verb, not a noun, in my book and she always has been.
Discovering personification only cemented this view in my mind. Jesus is an idea, an ideal, a whispered message reminding us of the importance of recognizing and maintaining a common vibe, a world community, connection. No more high or low, babycakes; we’re all in this stew together—including us LGBTQ folks who frighten the straight-and-narrow Christianists so.
Jesus’s message, to me, is about nurturing these connections and respecting each other and tearing down those artificial walls that divide our common family. This makes much more sense to me than some white-bearded old patriarch sitting up on a cloud somewhere just waiting to punish people for masturbating.
LISTENING TO: Lucernarium: Paravi lucernam Christo meo, performed by Chants De L’Eglises Milanaise
READING: Rodale’s Successful Organic Gardening (springs a’coming!) and re-reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Muriel Rukeyser’s Meaning of Poetry
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