Storytelling Festival

Been a while since I posted.  Many things have happened.  So first an update.

I’ve been working hard to reclaim my space, and find forgiveness.  Neither one has been easy and neither one is really complete.  Time and action are required for both.  I’ve been really kind of surprized at the mental and emotional blow that incident hit me with.  I became kind of paralyzed and numb, walking through my life and seeing friends without really connecting.

Luckily for me, I have had the most amazing womyn enter my life and take me out of myself.  I am blessed with the best of friends and the most wonderful lover ever.   Through their gentle emotional connects and real, physical help, I have come to a place where I am not stuck any longer.  Yay!  It’s still a day to day process and I have to really let go of the resentment that I was unable to do the things I needed to do to get ready for the Season of No Light.  But I’m making it.

Okay, on to other stuff.  I love story.  So much so that I am in charge of a grant at my school to sponsor storytellers to come in and teach my students how to go from the oral tradition to the written form and back again.  At the end of September, I went to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee with my lover.  It was interesting on many levels.  First, let me just say that we totally loved it!  The weather was perfect, the town was lovely, with an amazing little chocolatier that you definitely wouldn’t expect to find in a town that has mostly just it’s main street to boast of.  Earth and Sky Confectioners made a perfect treat for the end of our days!

When you register, you are given a little square of fabric to pin to your clothing.  This is your admission ticket to all of the daytime shows.  My lover and I got to experience a number of really quality storytellers!  Some of our favorites were Sheila Kay Adams, who demonstrated an amazing ability to think on her feet and held an audience in rapture for over 15 minutes while a freight train rolled by, interrupting her story.  She’s a tiny powerful womon who can make you cry with laughter.  Gay Ducey, from San Francisco, stopped me in my tracks and made me call my doctor from Tennessee to schedule a mammogram.  ( By the way – it’s time for you to stop reading and go schedule yours – the latest recommendations be damned!  Go!  Now!  I’ll wait!)  Although she did crack a joke about bearded womyn.  My bearded girlfriend and I were quite surprized, seeing as she was from San Francisco.  Other stellar performers were:  Donald Davis, who told school stories about how teachers touch the lives of their students in ways they can’t really know, (how could I not love him?!), Nial de Burca, who flew in from Dublin to entertain us (what a sense of humor! and flair for drama!), and the Rev. Robert Jones, whose Sunday morning story was one I’d heard before, but was richer for hearing his telling of it! 

There were a couple of storytellers that we didn’t care for so much, but it was mainly that we didn’t connect with them or their style.  But one, one storyteller was really so offensive to me.  This woman’s resume led me to believe that she would be something to behold.  2007 Oklahoma Librarian of the Year, Storytelling Circle Award winner.  I was looking forward to hearing her craft a tale.  She strode onto the stage, this slim blonde powerhouse, like she owned it.  And she did.  She was speaking to her people.  The audience was obviously familiar with her.  Barbara McBride-Smith was preaching to her choir.   Ms. McBride-Smith is obviously an intelligent, well-educated Christian.  And as such, especially with her job in the educational field, I was expecting something that might not have been my spiritual cup of tea, but respectful.  And then she opened her mouth.  She referred to Jewish people as “those Manischewitz drinkers.”  She went on to reinforce several stereotypes in her stories in a way that made my jaw drop.  It’s been a couple of months, and I don’t want to put words in her mouth, so I won’t quote anything else, since I can’t remember the exact wording.  I was embarrassed for her that as an educator she had the opportunity to change opinions and open hearts and minds, but didn’t. 

 Jennifer Armstrong, a new voice to this venue, was probably one of the bravest womyn there.  In her story (and we saw her a couple of times) she rewrote Christian (the Lord’s Prayer) text to be more inclusive, and came out in this tiny little Southern town.  I saw people get up and leave her show, but I also saw many approach her after with congratulations. She’s from Maine, and holds her own Pie and Story Festival, which I plan to attend next year.  But for this year, I’m going up to Lewiston on December 11 to see her perform.  Anyone want to join me?

Which brings me to the other truly remarkable thing about that weekend.  I have lived in the Northeast for so long, I had forgotten what it is like to be an out dyke in a place that not only frowns on it, but has a culture of active discouragement.  So there we are, my lover and I, walking hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm down the only main road in this little town and I start to notice something.  People won’t look us in the eye.  We went into a little shop, and the teenager behind the counter nearly tripped over his own feet trying to point us out to the other employees.  Other lesbian couples (yep, there were a few) wouldn’t look at us, or each other – as if acknowledging we existed would get them pegged.  Now one thing you have to understand.  While my lover is probably one of the most beautiful womyn in the world, to the world-experience challenged (ie: never left their hometown) she can seem a bit exotic.  One of the things I most appreciate about her.  So when we walk down a street, we don’t exactly blend.  I had forgotten the discomfort of the hate glare, the challenge of smiling at ugly and actively laughing and enjoying myself when others around me would prefer I not exist.  I used to live like this.  I used to live in the South.  But it’s been years.  And so it has also been years since womyn who don’t know me have come up and thanked me for being out and visible.  And that happened to my Girl and I.  More than once.  There is still oppression happening in this country, and there is still a need for queers of all stripes to step out, be visible, and be friendly in the face of discomfort and hate.  I hadn’t realized that we would be a symbol of freedom in this place – I just thought we were going to hear good story, but we were, and we did it with joy and pride.  Next year (and we are going again!) we’ll be more out, more proud, and we’ll bring friends!

Rape and Compassion

I have spent the last two days cleaning.  Scrubbing shit out of hardwood floors – literally shit.  Scrubbing walls that had something I don’t want to know on them.  Vomiting as I cleaned.  And I have spent the last two days trying so hard to convince myself that this was not my fault.  That I have not caused it.  If you’ve ever been raped, if you’ve ever had a home invasion, you know the feeling.  Of no safety, of crawling out of your skin, of utter devastation, of thinking that if only I had been more aware, or paid better attention, then this would not have happened.  But the truth is, there was no way to foretell or to know to prevent what happened.

What happened?  Well, you know I’m a story teller, so let me tell you my story.  Please keep compassion in your heart for everyone involved – right now my anger and hurt may not allow me to write from the perspective that would reflect the compassionate womon I strive to be.

If you’ve read my blog all along, you know that last year I went away and left my son in charge of my home for a week, during which a large, scary, home destruction party took place.  You can read the entry, called It Feels Like Rape.  Anyway, this year I knew I would be away for a couple of months and I really wanted to get someone I could trust to come in and look after my cats, keep my home, and mow the lawn.  I found someone who was a friend of a couple of people that I really trust and respect and who was looking to move to the area.  And she was a Festie! What a win/win!  She and her partner could stay here for free and look for permanent housing, and I could go work for Fest with a sense of peace.

Two days ago, I came home.  The lawn had never been mowed.  The grass was a foot and a half high.  My house looked abandoned.  Have you ever watched with morbid fascination the videos of animal control officers going into “the cat lady’s” house?  Seen the shit and urine everywhere?  The open cans of cat food that have been there for weeks, in the can, on plates, covering the floor?   The piles of dirty dishes and laundry in every room?  The tub filled with water and bad, bad unidentifiable things floating in it? The mold?  The slime on the walls?   The ripped down curtains?  Things broken and not cleaned up?  And then the interview with the cat lady who doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about?  Yeah, that is my house.  Be grateful you can’t smell it, too.

I can’t tell you what happened to the womyn who stayed in my home and destroyed it.  I can tell you that I found many prescriptions for pain and anxiety.  I suspect that they both have issues that bloomed in each other’s presence, and someday I will truly be able to believe that they were doing the best that they could do.

Right now,  I’m feeling… I don’t know what.  On the verge of tears, hard core anger, total helplessness,but mostly numb.  I have a couple of really good friends who keep reminding me that small and compartmentalized is best. 

I can’t really describe what has happened in my house – but it, and I have been violated.  I smudge often.  I am having to spend money I don’t have.  Small, but important things have been broken or sullied.  I slept in my car the first night, because there was no safe space for me.  And the lies.  The lies.  The lies.  I have tremendous fear that there will be more that I have yet to uncover.  I want to read my mail, but the cats have shit and peed all over it.  I want to clean, but when I opened the drawer to get a rag, there was dried cat vomit and piss all over the rags.  Every place I turn, every cupboard I open, any place my eyes can see, I cannot find safety.  Today I will clean the shower – because I need to take one.  But I cannot find my towels and really, it doesn’t matter because I couldn’t let them touch my body anyway.

I’ve cancelled my credit cards.  I’ve notified my bank. 

And as to the cat ladies?  Well, they really don’t seem to think anything is all that wrong.  They did take my cats to the vet (for fleas?!?)  And I am actually grateful, because what I thought was old age in my oldest guy  turned out to be something treatable.  They fed them expensive veterinary food, treated the fleas, bought lots of cat toys with feathers and catnip.  They even listed me as a reference while apartment hunting.  Really?  What they have never done is apologized for the horror that was my home.  Or even acknowledged that they had done something so out of bounds that it could send them to jail.  Or offered to help clean.  Or offered compensation for the things that I will need to have repaired or replaced.  And now they want to let me know that the cats are due back at the vets for follow up treatment for ear mites and fleas.  Really?

So, I know I am notoriously hard to buy for, and my birthday is coming up.  Here’s what I want:  chopsticks (don’t ask what happened to the old ones), sage for smudging, your good thoughts, and that feeling of safety and security to come back.

Soon, really soon, I hope, I’ll be able to write about what an amazing, life changing experience I had at Fest, and about the beautiful loving womyn who are a part of my life because of it.

Not so Popular

Okay, what I’m about to write seems like it’s not going to be so popular, given what my friends are all posting on FB.  Or maybe I just haven’t reached a high enough level of non-judgement yet.  Michael Jackson is dead.  And the death of a person is a sad thing.  Yes, he was very talented and his music was the soundtrack of my generation.

But, the man was a pedophile.  He was cruel to animals and the things he has done to his children – they may never recover from.  I vowed a long time ago that no money of mine would be spent supporting this man.  I did not want to financially support someone who seemed to live above the law.  Many of my friends, when downloading his music, would give excuses – “But it’s just such a good song!”   “He did this one BEFORE he molested that kid.”  “It’s only a dime to download.” 

I’ve never understood the lack of moral outrage at what this man got away with.  The excuses for his behavior - from an abusive father - to childhood stardom made him lose touch with reality, are just that – excuses.  Pedophiles are mentally ill.  Michael Jackson was the poster boy for mental illness, but he should have also been held accountable.

As an abuse survivor whose molester was a high up muckety-muck in his company, I know the helpless outrage of others working to protect his reputation instead of saving me.  How must Jackson’s victims feel? 

The man died.  It’s a sad thing.  But I won’t use his passing to celebrate his life.  For me, his music is the soundtrack of abuse and I can never celebrate the man who harmed so many.

Going Home

It’s that time again.  I’m getting ready to go Home.  Every year around this time, thousands of womyn across the world start getting this restless feeling.  Moving toward Home.  I’ve noticed my inbox is fuller, womyn reaching out, checking in, reconnecting.  I’ve noticed my FB is much, much more active.  Even womyn who won’t physically be able to come Home this year are feeling the pull, thinking out last minute options, selling beloved things so they can get to where they need to be.  Home.  There are many tears shed, there are even more smiles and hugs and moments of Festival Majik.  Strangers send out money and love and ideas to help the sisters that sometimes they have never met get Home.  I love this.

This year, for the first time, my mom is coming Home with me.  It’s going to be amazing!  I hope her Fest is everything she needs it to be.  More amazing though, is that, at 64, she is still so interested in what makes my life rich that she wants to experience this.  I want to be her when I am older.  Okay, the her that doesn’t have the irritating faults that I’ve worked not to own.  But the open curiosity, the complete love, and the willingness to do something not so comfortable because she wants to be closer to her daughter.  Wow!  Next year, I’ll take her on a more spa-like vacation.  But who knows, maybe she’ll want to go to Fest again.  I talked to my step-father last night.  He’s worried she’ll fall in love with a womon at Fest and leave him.  I doubt that, but she might have a Festie Fling.  It’s just that kind of place.

So I am packing to be with my tribe.  I, too, am taking care of last minute details, sending tickets to womyn I’ve never met, because I love my Home and I want it to prosper.  I am lucky enough to work there, and be a part of providing a welcome and a hug to every sister I see.  It only seems right that I give back for that.

But time is moving too fast.  I haven’t planned well enough and I have major shopping to do.  There are closets to buy, shoes to try on, costumes to make, gifts to purchase and craft, cleaning to be done, oh, and bills to pre-pay.  So off I go, and if I don’t post again until September, you’ll know  why.  I’ll be Home, where there is no Internet, no cell, no electricity, no outside world.  Yay!

I’m Alive, I’m Awake and I feel Great!

Good-bye Woody. You were an amazement.

A little of this, a little of that…

Okay, so on Wednesday, on my way home from work, driving up I93, I got rear-ended.  It was peak traffic time and we were going pretty slow – my airbag didn’t even go off.  I pull over and hop out of my car to assess the damage, and the other driver gets out of his car.  He is an older guy, late 60’s early 70’s.  He looks at our cars, says, “Are you all right?”  As I nod my head that I am, his next sentence is, “So, how do you like that Kia?  Get good gas mileage?  They’re built pretty tough.”  HUH????  He went on to ask how my husband was going to feel about this, and to say that he really didn’t think we needed to exchange info.  I did not tell him that I’m queer.  I did make him give me his info.  And I’m glad I did.  Because my neck feels a little wonky today.  But really, “How do you like the Kia?”  OY!

Okay, so here’s a little musing I’ve been ruminating on stemming from a conversation I had this past weekend.  And can I just say as an aside that it was the most perfect weekend I’ve ever, ever, ever had?  So, we’re sitting there and the topic of lies comes up.  Specifically, lies and childhood.  And a revelation happened!  When I was a kid, and my parents were role models, lying was an expected part of all of my relationships.  I didn’t really think too much of it.  As an adult, I have run into trouble with my friends and lovers over lies.  It took me a while to understand that it was a big deal to them.  That it could affect the course of a relationship.  I used to be like, “Really?  It was just a lie.”  I have come to understand the truth about lies, and I don’t do it anymore, but for some reason, I have always thought that I was the only person in the world who had had that experience.  Who didn’t really see harm in lies.  But no, my friend had the same experience and as we talked about it, it was interesting to see that we had had the same perspectives and came to the same understanding that, yeah, no, lying really is a bad thing.  The conversation was short, only about 10 minutes of our morning, but it’s been sitting with me ever since.  Funny the things that will stick with you.

Sideways People

There are a couple of people in my life, okay, more than a couple, who are sideways.  We connect at really intimate places and enjoy some of the most stimulating conversation I’ve ever experienced, but this is not the habit of these womyn.  Generally speaking, they aren’t comfortable with emotion or intimacy.  So, much of our conversation is done without eye contact, often while walking, or sitting somewhere with a view.  These friends find it disconcerting that I look them in the eye while they speak, but looking me in the eye while I speak is okay.  They are kinesthetic, but not always tactile.  And they are my favorite womyn.  In the whole world.

One of my friends recently asked me why so many of my friends were like this and if it made it harder for me to be around folks who are so challenged.  I look at that last question and it makes me smile.  Challenged?  We all live with fear.  I do.  I just show it differently.  And the connections I make are the ones that make my life rich.  I get to offer genuine friendship and receive quality time, walk through the surface stories and build real community.  When I spend time with my favorite people, (and you know who you are,) communication comes with touch, and wordlessness, and shorthand sentences, and connections are drawn between the unlikeliest of things and boundaries are pushed in loving respectful ways, trust is intentionally built, and I come away from these encounters with more ideas and thoughts and that floaty feeling you get after a really good massage – yeah.  I’m soul-satisfied.   And my world couldn’t get any better.

Remind me again why you all live so far away from me?

I know I have more to say about this, and I’m not quite cohesive yet around my point, but I have to sleep and I didn’t want to forget to write about this.  I’ll be editing this post soon.

Personal Boundaries

I’ve been thinking a lot about personal boundaries lately.  How to keep them safe, when to stretch them, how to be graceful about them (putting them out there and making it known the line is getting pushed) and what to do when they are ignored.  This is so much a part of living fearlessly and being intimate.  All of it goes into trust.  But my personal emphasis right now is on self-respect and responsibility to myself.

I’ve had a couple of incidences lately that have violated my boundaries in large and small ways.  Taken individually, I think that the relationship between myself and this other person would have been able to build some kind of bridge to healing and helped us grow together to become closer.  When I brought up the issues, though, what I received was flat out denial and lies. 

This makes me think that I have become more invested in this relationship than the other person.  I keep assuming that they care about me, and that they want what I have to offer and, in order to get that, will respond in kind.  What I have come to realize is that they want what I materially have to offer, but feel no sincere motivation to be reciprocal or respectful.  In the past with this person, I have tortured myself with what might happen if I stood up and held my ground, and then allowed myself to be emotionally manipulated.

I can’t do it anymore.  We want different things from our relationship and our lives, and I can’t be a party any longer to my own destruction.  So, tonight I will set the boundaries really, really far away from the reach of my home and heart and make clear the conditions upon which I would be willing to spend time with this person down the road.

The hardest part is that the love won’t ever stop, and I had to choose between two griefs – losing him, or losing me.  Maybe one day…

Changes

Today is clean out the basement day.  I don’t want to, I don’t like it, it’s never fun and I have to do it at least once a year.  And so, of course, I find myself procrastinating.  I went on to Ravelry (FB for knitters) to look up some patterns and see if I was interested in starting anything new – for later, as a reward for getting the basement done.  I started looking at my finished projects, and my queue and I saw a picture in my ‘friends’ group.  It made me so sad.

Last year, when I got home from Fest, I was just so adamant that my friends all come back with me this year.  One womon totally got hooked.  She jumped on board with everything she had from day one.  It’s funny, because at fest last year, I spent much of that time knitting her a snood in the most beautiful silk/wool combo.  It was gorgeous!  A couple of months ago, we found out that she had cancer.  She died last month.  And yet, there was her smiling face in my friends page.  On her page, she had written about what she planned to make next, how she had too much time on her hands at hospice, how she was searching for simpler patterns that didn’t take too much brain power.  None of that matters now.  I sat and remembered C, and then I clicked that majik button and unfriended her.  I’ll take memories of her to fest, and sit again with her in the root cemetary and wish that she had lived long enough to come home just once, and then realize that her spirit had found it’s way all by itself.

Intimacy vs. Fearless Living

Last night I had a really interesting conversation with a new potential friend.  She wanted to know – if I am committed to living fearlessly, why aren’t I intimate with everyone I know?  Don’t we refuse intimacy because of fear around what people will do with our deepest secrets?  Isn’t not trusting someone the same as living in fear?  Her question made me stop and think.  What I came up with is that in some relationships, intimacy is not necessary.  The clerk down the street doesn’t need to know that I am a left-leaning, Femme, feminist dyke.  It won’t affect the way money exchanges hands.  On the other hand, I would never dream of changing the way I relate to my lover in that store just because of who the clerk is. 

We also talked about intimacy in relationship to friends vs. lovers.  I find that I build intimacy with friends and lovers at about the same rate, but in vastly different areas.  My lovers might learn first about what my sexual desire is, or have more stories of my childhood.  My friends may learn about my passion around my hobbies, or my philosophical beliefs.  It’s like cutting a diamond.  You can chip away at one side or another, but in the end, you’ll see the prism of light through a completely transparent person.  That’s living fearlessly.

In my relationships, the levels of intimacy grow deeper with time.  Mostly they grow deeper by choice.  Sometimes they grow deeper because of necessity.  When I reach a crossroads with a friend, when I start to feel like we’re dancing around topics or conversations become uncomfortable, then it becomes necessary to look at my fear and walk through it.  What do I lose when I share who I am with my friends?  Nothing.   So what do I fear, the potential judgement of my friend, or the potential loss of that person in my life?   What is holding me back from being honest?  When I realize that I don’t really want to feel pain and it’s pain avoidance, then I can walk through and know the joy of my own truth regardless of the outcome.  That too, is living fearlessly.

I don’t have to be intimate with everyone I meet to live fearlessly.  There are some people I don’t choose to be intimate with, not because I’m afraid of what they will do, but because I am simply not interested in them.  No judgement, I just don’t have  the inclination.  And that’s my truth.

Did I mention that I love a good stimulating conversation?