104. THE LORD’S LIBERTY COUNCIL AND TERRORIST SOCIETY

From the Archives

(June 2005) Refusal wrote this in his blog today:

Everyone likes a bit of chicken breast. And vultures will stick their heads into almost anything, no matter how dirty it is. They'll even go in up through a dead horse's rectum to eat all its insides out, and that's why they're bald. I'm bald due to an excess of testosterone, but if you've got somewhere nice you'd like me to put my head, I'll surely consider it.

Ha. I like his irreverence.

I want to read this award-winning memoir—Name All the Animals by Alison Smith (Scribner)—and this award-winning biography—Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux (Norton). And am happy to see that the hilarious David Sedaris won a lammy too.

In other news, I find it damn ironic and more than a little frightening that Jerry Falwell not only has a legal wing to his so-called ministry but that he calls it the Liberty Counsel.

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Found this out in the The Washington Blade , but this rag rarely reaches the mainstream. For example, raise your hand if you know about the diversity training video put together by the San Francisco 49ers' PR director.

This little jewel features off-color humor and a topless lesbo wedding taped in a strip club with the PR director (impersonating San Francisco mayor Newsom) officiating, and racial jokes and nudity are sprinkled throughout.

Meanwhile, out in the really world, these "harmless" little jokes encourage real brutality. And let’s don’t forget that our taboo "life style" that so fascinates the straight guys results in real women being placed under house arrest in Allahabad just a few miles away from the lesbian couple that attempted suicide after their parents forced them to marry men.

So many of us here have so many more options than we even realize, yet we paint ourselves in corners and believe ourselves helpless/out of options. Or we let others limit our freedom with alarming regularity.

What’s that Ferron line: Before you get to plea for freedom, you’ve agreed to being ruled.

73: FERRON, YOU ARE HALF-WAY PRETTY

IN THE MEAN TIME
by Ferron


So many people are so broken and this story's broken too
We go looking for forgiveness for things we did or didn't do
In our hearts we know we're goodness,
In our souls we feel the call
To be someone to somebody, each other, one and all.
I have wept upon the mountain, I have walked upon my knees
I have crawled along the rubble of broken promises and unmet needs
And the thing that I was looking for, and the thing I could not see
Was the image of a perfect girl ... the one I'd never be,
Oh my father, how I've missed you, having never touched your face
And just like you I feel a sorrow that time cannot erase
When I cross over will you meet me, will you walk me to the bright,
Will you lead me on the dance floor of that everlasting light
In the meantime, here on earth time, I am something of a song
But I once drank your whole abandon, wanting only to belong
Now I walk beside the broken, glass of water in my hand
And in the prism of their reflection I see the once invisible man.
You are with me as I love her, you are in me as I care
You have shown me not to hold back,
Knowing what is gone's .. not there.
You have helped me to be tender, you have helped me to be true
I went empty up the mountain and brought back a piece of you.

1. SUSTENANCE

From the Archives

(February 2005) The only intimate relationships I have ever been able to sustain for very long are ones with brilliant, headstrong women who are comfortable enough with who they are to not be threatened by my independence. I seek these women out, am drawn to them across rooms and crowds, am entranced by them.

I love brilliant minds, but know myself well enough to know that I am headstrong and incapable of remaining in a relationship if it compromises my ability to be my whole self.

I need space—lots and lots of space. I need hours of sitting alone—sometimes while the grass I know that I should mow grows taller—and a partner who understands that, while I may appear to be doing nothing, I am actually pondering the mysteries of my peculiar universe.

I need to do this in order to write, to thrive.

My big questions. The ones I ask repeatedly when I write or read or stare at the ceiling or consider pedestrians at the stoplight never vary much. They are

What does it mean to be human, to exist in a world where so many people brush up against you and color your life, then vanish?

What does it take to sustain some kind of faith in a world where mind-numbing atrocities are commonplace and the quest for the newest consumer product is offered as the stuff that will sustain people?

What does it mean to live in a world where God isn’t a profound concept, a verb, but is instead an angry weapon of social control hurled at nonconformists?

What makes some people cling to such narrow worldviews, swallow themselves and their longings?

How can one love authentically and on a long-term basis in such a world and sustain that love without losing herself?

How can one live as authentically as she can, taking in as much as she can and giving out as much as she can, and still manage to go to work every day and be productive?

What does compartmentalizing oneself for a job do to one’s soul?

What would it take for me to let go of my worries about financial stability and trust that following my path as honestly as I know how will provide enough sustenance for my existence? (I have mostly taken this route and am not debt-free, but am at least doing what I want to be doing—most of the time.)

And those other hard questions:

What do I do with my treasure chest of violent memories?

Is it possible to do something useful with them, to sift through them until they cease to control me?

How do I transform the terror that my body remembers as vividly as my brain into useful words, insight?

How do I let go of the anger that helped me to survive when I needed it and move beyond it to a place where I control it instead of it controlling me?

How do I learn how to take care of me?

How do I manage to trust people? And

How do I extrapolate a sustainable world from this jumbled mix of images, insight, scents, and random couplings—find the poetry?

Ferron already asked my constant questions: “Where can the quiet be? Where do I live in me?”

I have been fortunate enough to be loved by independent women who are not threatened when I go off wandering in my head. We are tethered at a common center but move away as individuals staked together by the magic of love. And we return to that center to ask deep questions and cook noodles and fuck and gasp and love each other. And, even after all this time, I remain amazed that two bodies can live in that sacred space that surrounds you when you love someone and lean into her precious body while doing anything together—washing the dishes or taking a walk or reading the newspaper in bed, or, and especially, making love—and there you are in that sacred center where you know each other at so many different levels, yet are still discovering new ways to love each other there.

That, to me, is what Heaven must be— that sacred place where the insights you gain from the world are balanced by that hard-to-find, loving space you share with someone else.