On Wednesday I gave my ninth and tenth grade students a history mid-term---an hour and a half long test that spanned centuries and continents. As I read over the questions I'd written on the board (my school cannot afford photo-copies), and listened to the choir of pencils scratching, I marveled that these teenagers were capable of explaining the crippling effects of colonialism and analyzing the convergence of geography and history.
Later that evening I found out that Howard Zinn, author of "The People's History of the United States" had died. His brilliant history book is one of the reasons my students are such critical thinkers (I wish I could take the bulk of the credit, but really, I am a conduit). His approach to history reminds me of this African proverb: "Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter."
Zinn re-wrote our history from the point of view of the lions, the people who were often (brutally) mistreated by conquerors, masters, and capitalists, not to glorify or simplify or patronize them, but to humanize them. He reveals the humanity of the conquered, the enslaved, and the workers, in order to reveal the humanity of us all. He uncovers the darkest moments of our history so that we might also see the light. When my students ask why history is so depressing, I remind them of Zinn: "I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare."
Thank you, Howard Zinn, for making my classroom come to life with truth and compassion.
(For a lovely tribute by the editor of The Progressive), click here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/29-6
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Rainbow
Lured outside today by the sun, that hussy.
In the state park we climbed slippery trails, slowly peeling off layers. I relished the view of Santa Rosa, our little valley town cradled by bright green foothills. A storm hugged the downtown buildings, fuzzy and gray and insistent. I watched it blow towards us.
The damp forest was so quiet that I heard the drops before I felt them on my skin. Suddenly, faced with the decision to turn back or keep going, we chose neither, veering off onto an unknown trail. Rain came on as we knew it would, and still we climbed, wondering where we were headed and why. Finally with numb fingers and saturated tendrils, we surrendered. Our hike now loomed laborious and fearsome: Isn't it at least an hour back to the car? Is my new Tin House getting soaked in the back-pack? How long til my feet are cold? And I thought, how quick my descent into worry.
Sure enough, soon came nature's gentle remonstrance: as we emerged from the forest, the sun came out. Standing in a meadow fit for hobbits, so homey and green, warmed by that brilliant yolk, the gentlest rain falling, I felt like God had a secret to share with me. A clean rainbow hovered over us. The storm rolled on. We sat in the grass on a raincoat, shared a tart apple, and stared hard back at her, that fickle sun, until she weakened, as we knew she would, and we were left with a muddy trail back into the trees.
In the state park we climbed slippery trails, slowly peeling off layers. I relished the view of Santa Rosa, our little valley town cradled by bright green foothills. A storm hugged the downtown buildings, fuzzy and gray and insistent. I watched it blow towards us.
The damp forest was so quiet that I heard the drops before I felt them on my skin. Suddenly, faced with the decision to turn back or keep going, we chose neither, veering off onto an unknown trail. Rain came on as we knew it would, and still we climbed, wondering where we were headed and why. Finally with numb fingers and saturated tendrils, we surrendered. Our hike now loomed laborious and fearsome: Isn't it at least an hour back to the car? Is my new Tin House getting soaked in the back-pack? How long til my feet are cold? And I thought, how quick my descent into worry.
Sure enough, soon came nature's gentle remonstrance: as we emerged from the forest, the sun came out. Standing in a meadow fit for hobbits, so homey and green, warmed by that brilliant yolk, the gentlest rain falling, I felt like God had a secret to share with me. A clean rainbow hovered over us. The storm rolled on. We sat in the grass on a raincoat, shared a tart apple, and stared hard back at her, that fickle sun, until she weakened, as we knew she would, and we were left with a muddy trail back into the trees.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Haiti: The Heartbreak of Colonialism
In 1492 the Spanish crown made a fateful decision. Europe was in need of a water route to Asia, now that the Turks had turned Constantinople (once the capital of Eastern Orthodox Christianity) into Istanbul (now the capital of a Muslim empire). Portugal was experimenting with rounding the cape of Africa; Spain decided to chance crossing an unknown ocean. Of course, when Columbus landed in the Bahamas, met by dark lean natives who greeted him with generosity and warmth, he thought he had made it to India (which he insisted upon until his dying day).
On that first voyage to the New World, Columbus's ship, the Santa Maria, ran aground on the western side of a large island that he named Hispaniola (which translates to "The Spanish Isle," but which was home to thousands of Taino people). The native Taino called their land Ayiti, meaning "land of mountains," and eventually this name became Haiti.
With the timbers from his wrecked ship, Columbus and his men built Fort Navidad---the first military base in the Western Hemisphere. Then he left two dozen men behind, with instructions to find gold, and sailed back to Spain with some captive natives to show to the king and queen. The Spanish government granted Columbus a second voyage, with seventeen ships and twelve hundred men, and when they returned to Navidad, he found that the men he'd left behind had been killed. After raping and plundering the Taino in search of gold, these outnumbered Spaniards were finally killed by an otherwise peaceful people. This would be the last time this balance of power occurred; within a hundred and fifty years of Columbus's "discovery," through mass murder, mass suicide, and enslavement, the island of Hispaniola had not one Taino left. The genocide was complete.
Of course, now that the Spaniards had established a lucrative plantation system, growing sugarcane for export, they imported thousands of Africans as slave labor. Today 95% of Haitians are of African descent; they practice a mix of voodoo and Catholicism, the religion of the slaves and of their oppressors. The French came next, and under their rule, Haiti became the most profitable slave colony in the world.
But here is where history turns. In 1791 Boukman Dutty, a voodoo priest, urged his fellow citizens to take up arms against the plantation owners, with the words "Throw away the thoughts of the Whitegod who thirsts for our tears, listen to freedom that speaks from our hearts." This incited the only successful slave revolt that led to independence, the second independent republic in the Western Hemisphere (after the USA), and the very first Black Republic. But the venom of colonialism continued to spread, though the snake had slinked away.
For decades the people of Haiti have seen their government vacillate between corrupt dictatorships, military coups, violence, rigged elections, and martial law. In 1915 Haitian law prevented foreign ownership of Haitian land or businesses, which prompted the U.S. to invade under the pretext of.... you guessed it, national security. Many people cite the positive outcomes of the U.S. occupation: infrastructure was built, including roads, schools, hospitals, and lighthouses. But Haitians opposed the martial law and military occupation of their country, sometimes violently, and thousands of Haitians died in the rebellions.
Today, Haiti is still the poorest country in the West, with adult literacy and life expectancy hovering around 50. It is no wonder that in the wake of a devastating earth-quake, the country is ill-equipped to handle the fall-out. Is it unfair to blame colonialism?
Only if you don't know your history.
On that first voyage to the New World, Columbus's ship, the Santa Maria, ran aground on the western side of a large island that he named Hispaniola (which translates to "The Spanish Isle," but which was home to thousands of Taino people). The native Taino called their land Ayiti, meaning "land of mountains," and eventually this name became Haiti.
With the timbers from his wrecked ship, Columbus and his men built Fort Navidad---the first military base in the Western Hemisphere. Then he left two dozen men behind, with instructions to find gold, and sailed back to Spain with some captive natives to show to the king and queen. The Spanish government granted Columbus a second voyage, with seventeen ships and twelve hundred men, and when they returned to Navidad, he found that the men he'd left behind had been killed. After raping and plundering the Taino in search of gold, these outnumbered Spaniards were finally killed by an otherwise peaceful people. This would be the last time this balance of power occurred; within a hundred and fifty years of Columbus's "discovery," through mass murder, mass suicide, and enslavement, the island of Hispaniola had not one Taino left. The genocide was complete.
Of course, now that the Spaniards had established a lucrative plantation system, growing sugarcane for export, they imported thousands of Africans as slave labor. Today 95% of Haitians are of African descent; they practice a mix of voodoo and Catholicism, the religion of the slaves and of their oppressors. The French came next, and under their rule, Haiti became the most profitable slave colony in the world.
But here is where history turns. In 1791 Boukman Dutty, a voodoo priest, urged his fellow citizens to take up arms against the plantation owners, with the words "Throw away the thoughts of the Whitegod who thirsts for our tears, listen to freedom that speaks from our hearts." This incited the only successful slave revolt that led to independence, the second independent republic in the Western Hemisphere (after the USA), and the very first Black Republic. But the venom of colonialism continued to spread, though the snake had slinked away.
For decades the people of Haiti have seen their government vacillate between corrupt dictatorships, military coups, violence, rigged elections, and martial law. In 1915 Haitian law prevented foreign ownership of Haitian land or businesses, which prompted the U.S. to invade under the pretext of.... you guessed it, national security. Many people cite the positive outcomes of the U.S. occupation: infrastructure was built, including roads, schools, hospitals, and lighthouses. But Haitians opposed the martial law and military occupation of their country, sometimes violently, and thousands of Haitians died in the rebellions.
Today, Haiti is still the poorest country in the West, with adult literacy and life expectancy hovering around 50. It is no wonder that in the wake of a devastating earth-quake, the country is ill-equipped to handle the fall-out. Is it unfair to blame colonialism?
Only if you don't know your history.
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Long Loneliness
This year, for the first time ever, I took my boyfriend home to Lafayette, Louisiana for Christmas week. Going home is like going back to the womb, coziness and comfort and ease. And, of course, indulgence. This year, gifts of luxury, like white satin pillowcases, leather-bound journal, and sugared body scrub. Practical gifts, too---stamps and manuscript mailers and patchouli soap. The living room carpet flooded with ribbons and shiny paper, half-eaten plates of ham and potato salad. A dozen different kinds of candies and cookies---sand tarts, pralines, pecan fudge, peanut butter balls.
At the center of it all is Maw-Maw---mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, the sun who keeps everyone in orbit. Her magnetism is polar: she is at once provincial (a born and bred Cajun who grew up in New Orleans and can understand that old bayou French) and cosmopolitan (not even a weakened heart can keep her from jet-setting to France in a few weeks).
Her suffering has become a joyful wisdom. Her burdens have bequeathed wit. She is religious, a devout Catholic, but so too is she spiritual. Last year, when she gave me the autobiography of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, I shelved it in favor of Dave Eggers' "What is the What." An old Catholic lady's mission, I thought, what's exciting about that?
I love when I'm wrong about a book. Dorothy Day's "The Long Loneliness" felt like it was written for me. Day was born in 1897, and came of age in Chicago during the height of the labor movement. The long bread lines and unsanitary working conditions moved and confused her. "I felt even at fifteen, that God meant man to be happy." Though her family was not religious, she was compelled to go to church, where she wondered: "Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves but to do away with slavery?"
Her mission in life was to serve people, to uplift them from the drudgery of soul-bribing work, because she intimately understood "the initial agony of having to live." It was this spiritual connection with humanity that informed her political views---Day was an unabashed feminist and anti-capitalist. She not only espoused, but lived the concept of voluntary poverty, forgoing non-essential luxuries like cars, cosmetics, cigarettes, movie tickets, even privacy, so that other people might have access to the necessary food and shelter. (And here I thought my four dollar thrift store shoes and twice yearly haircuts were frugal.)
Having been raised Catholic, witnessing first hand the incongruities of the organized institution with the vision of the revolutionary Jesus---wealthy priests, segregated churches, its patriarchal subterfuge of women's rights---I read with trepidation about Day's conversion to the Catholic church. Why? But it was after her daughter was born (Day never married), so flooded with joy and love, that she felt "the need to worship, to adore." And, she wrote, "My very experience as a radical led me to want to associate myself with the masses in loving and praising God."
Never have I read such an eloquent synthesis of radicalism and spirituality. For Day, class consciousness and Christianity were inseparable. After all, she said, "Christ came to make the rich poor and the poor holy." She was not a missionary; in fact she felt uncomfortable with the idea of "preaching to empty stomachs." She did not try to convert the poor, sick, drunk, criminal people who sought refuge in the ever-multiplying community houses and farms that she helped set up all over the country---and world (and which are still in existence today). Instead, she lived to create community, the cure to "the long loneliness" that too many people experience. As St. John of the Cross, the Christian mystic said, "Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love."
Day is an inspiration to me---to the fiery feminist, anti-capitalist, and radical teacher, and to the spirit seeker. I realize that my spirituality and my revolutionary ideals need not be at odds. In fact, as long as I strive to emulate Jesus, who wanted to heal society's greed and oppression, then I am a Christian in the truest sense of the word. And my community are all of those people out there---my friends, co-workers, family members---who also try as best we can to do unto others as we would like them to do unto us.
At the center of it all is Maw-Maw---mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, the sun who keeps everyone in orbit. Her magnetism is polar: she is at once provincial (a born and bred Cajun who grew up in New Orleans and can understand that old bayou French) and cosmopolitan (not even a weakened heart can keep her from jet-setting to France in a few weeks).
Her suffering has become a joyful wisdom. Her burdens have bequeathed wit. She is religious, a devout Catholic, but so too is she spiritual. Last year, when she gave me the autobiography of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, I shelved it in favor of Dave Eggers' "What is the What." An old Catholic lady's mission, I thought, what's exciting about that?
I love when I'm wrong about a book. Dorothy Day's "The Long Loneliness" felt like it was written for me. Day was born in 1897, and came of age in Chicago during the height of the labor movement. The long bread lines and unsanitary working conditions moved and confused her. "I felt even at fifteen, that God meant man to be happy." Though her family was not religious, she was compelled to go to church, where she wondered: "Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves but to do away with slavery?"
Her mission in life was to serve people, to uplift them from the drudgery of soul-bribing work, because she intimately understood "the initial agony of having to live." It was this spiritual connection with humanity that informed her political views---Day was an unabashed feminist and anti-capitalist. She not only espoused, but lived the concept of voluntary poverty, forgoing non-essential luxuries like cars, cosmetics, cigarettes, movie tickets, even privacy, so that other people might have access to the necessary food and shelter. (And here I thought my four dollar thrift store shoes and twice yearly haircuts were frugal.)
Having been raised Catholic, witnessing first hand the incongruities of the organized institution with the vision of the revolutionary Jesus---wealthy priests, segregated churches, its patriarchal subterfuge of women's rights---I read with trepidation about Day's conversion to the Catholic church. Why? But it was after her daughter was born (Day never married), so flooded with joy and love, that she felt "the need to worship, to adore." And, she wrote, "My very experience as a radical led me to want to associate myself with the masses in loving and praising God."
Never have I read such an eloquent synthesis of radicalism and spirituality. For Day, class consciousness and Christianity were inseparable. After all, she said, "Christ came to make the rich poor and the poor holy." She was not a missionary; in fact she felt uncomfortable with the idea of "preaching to empty stomachs." She did not try to convert the poor, sick, drunk, criminal people who sought refuge in the ever-multiplying community houses and farms that she helped set up all over the country---and world (and which are still in existence today). Instead, she lived to create community, the cure to "the long loneliness" that too many people experience. As St. John of the Cross, the Christian mystic said, "Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love."
Day is an inspiration to me---to the fiery feminist, anti-capitalist, and radical teacher, and to the spirit seeker. I realize that my spirituality and my revolutionary ideals need not be at odds. In fact, as long as I strive to emulate Jesus, who wanted to heal society's greed and oppression, then I am a Christian in the truest sense of the word. And my community are all of those people out there---my friends, co-workers, family members---who also try as best we can to do unto others as we would like them to do unto us.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Blue Moon Birthday
Me and time, we have an uneasy truce. Since it insists on passing, I insist on tracking it. Anniversaries, ends and beginnings of months, new moons, solstices, equinoxes, half-birthdays, even the very passage of the day‘s hours, I am tuned in to frequencies both natural and arbitrary.
To give an example: 24 hours ago I wandered the French Quarter, sipping an iced coffee and Kahlua, cozy beneath a bright white scarf and furry boots in the meager wintry sunlight. One week ago I introduced my boyfriend to the women of my family as they chopped, rolled, grated, dipped, and simmered the Christmas delights we feasted on for the next three days. Two seasons ago I swam in the Mediterranean off the coast of Turkey as the sun sunk low. A year ago I bought champagne and raspberries for my 30th birthday party. I ate a savory brunch and pondered what it actually meant---what I should feel---why it felt so essential to feel---that it was my last day of being 29, my last day as a 20-something year-old.
So here I am again. Only get this: this year, my last day of being 30 is the 30th. Tomorrow, my 31st birthday is the 31st of December. This will happen but once in my lifetime. There's more: tomorrow night is the first full winter moon (and a blue one at that!) How can I possibly honor/record/appreciate/celebrate this unthinkably profound day?! How can I relish the fun without imbuing it with such meaning that all meaning slips from my desperate fist?
Around puberty my birthday started to feel burdensome, a too-warm blanket, a too-full stomach. Why did I have to be born on the last day of the year? Why did I have to share my birthday with THE most significant time-tracking holiday? Just six days after Jesus, fellow Capricorn, I bear the cross of order: my age perfectly aligned with the new year. It's not just 2010, it's the year of being 31, no longer in contact with the 20s, no longer a newbie to this decade of the 30s. Here is where Fear flaps down from her perch and insinuates: What are you doing with this one precious life?
Typically I've answered her by imposing the utmost order on the day itself, minutely mapped out, time tables strictly adhered to. Anticipation and anxiety double-team me. Except this planning denies my essence: I thrive on spontaneity; I find inspiration in the unknown spaces (the silent pauses)that life has yet to fill in. Too often my birthday is so hyped with expectations of PERFECTION that inevitably it winds up being just another sweet day: never special enough, never long enough, sunny enough, cool enough, active enough, contemplative enough, loved enough.
How can it be anything when it has to be everything?
Time gives me a piggyback and I remember: puberty ushered in more than braces and perms. It was when I first became aware of my obsessions and compulsions. Mailing letters was a minefield loaded with potential mistakes. Wearing perfume too risky---it might wear off. My room so sacrosanct that not even friends were allowed in---who knew what they might do while I was in the bathroom? Order became my saving grace, a cushion floating me above a sea fraught with mistakes, incongruities, sabotages. Curse the messy waves that spilled into my lap! I had to navigate to shore; I had to save myself somehow.
This year I've already received a blessed birthday present. On Christmas evening, sated and slow, Mom went digging into the VHS archeology and unearthed a long forgotten tape. There I was, in eighth grade, 13 years old. Me plus three best friends equals Silly. We sang Christian pop songs, we danced, we bashfully (except for me) revealed our crushes to the camera. We laughed constantly and hard. We poked sugary fun at each other, savoring our wit and embarrassment, our clever spoofs, our effortless goofs.
Mom watched with rapt attention, her face pure joy. At first I cringed at my blemished face and shiny metal smile and thick Louisiana accent (still lurking, I now gladly realize). I scrutinized my body: were my legs thin enough to pull off those short basketball shorts? Why did I wear such baggy T-shirts? But as the tape rolled on, from backyard trampoline to Kart Ranch to Jeannine's room, I let go my fear that I would say something to incriminate my pubescent self.
And I noticed happiness. Innocent happiness. I saw a 13 year old who loved her life and her friends, who felt at home in her (always moving) body, who wasn't cowered by adults, who relished each opportunity to laugh. I heard a 13 year old confident in her voice as she exclaimed: I am a Louisianan and proud of it! I saw a girl living every moment, not striving for anything, least of all perfection.
Now, on the eve of my 31st birthday, may I surrender to life as faithfully as she did. May I continue to know how perfect she already was.
To give an example: 24 hours ago I wandered the French Quarter, sipping an iced coffee and Kahlua, cozy beneath a bright white scarf and furry boots in the meager wintry sunlight. One week ago I introduced my boyfriend to the women of my family as they chopped, rolled, grated, dipped, and simmered the Christmas delights we feasted on for the next three days. Two seasons ago I swam in the Mediterranean off the coast of Turkey as the sun sunk low. A year ago I bought champagne and raspberries for my 30th birthday party. I ate a savory brunch and pondered what it actually meant---what I should feel---why it felt so essential to feel---that it was my last day of being 29, my last day as a 20-something year-old.
So here I am again. Only get this: this year, my last day of being 30 is the 30th. Tomorrow, my 31st birthday is the 31st of December. This will happen but once in my lifetime. There's more: tomorrow night is the first full winter moon (and a blue one at that!) How can I possibly honor/record/appreciate/celebrate this unthinkably profound day?! How can I relish the fun without imbuing it with such meaning that all meaning slips from my desperate fist?
Around puberty my birthday started to feel burdensome, a too-warm blanket, a too-full stomach. Why did I have to be born on the last day of the year? Why did I have to share my birthday with THE most significant time-tracking holiday? Just six days after Jesus, fellow Capricorn, I bear the cross of order: my age perfectly aligned with the new year. It's not just 2010, it's the year of being 31, no longer in contact with the 20s, no longer a newbie to this decade of the 30s. Here is where Fear flaps down from her perch and insinuates: What are you doing with this one precious life?
Typically I've answered her by imposing the utmost order on the day itself, minutely mapped out, time tables strictly adhered to. Anticipation and anxiety double-team me. Except this planning denies my essence: I thrive on spontaneity; I find inspiration in the unknown spaces (the silent pauses)that life has yet to fill in. Too often my birthday is so hyped with expectations of PERFECTION that inevitably it winds up being just another sweet day: never special enough, never long enough, sunny enough, cool enough, active enough, contemplative enough, loved enough.
How can it be anything when it has to be everything?
Time gives me a piggyback and I remember: puberty ushered in more than braces and perms. It was when I first became aware of my obsessions and compulsions. Mailing letters was a minefield loaded with potential mistakes. Wearing perfume too risky---it might wear off. My room so sacrosanct that not even friends were allowed in---who knew what they might do while I was in the bathroom? Order became my saving grace, a cushion floating me above a sea fraught with mistakes, incongruities, sabotages. Curse the messy waves that spilled into my lap! I had to navigate to shore; I had to save myself somehow.
This year I've already received a blessed birthday present. On Christmas evening, sated and slow, Mom went digging into the VHS archeology and unearthed a long forgotten tape. There I was, in eighth grade, 13 years old. Me plus three best friends equals Silly. We sang Christian pop songs, we danced, we bashfully (except for me) revealed our crushes to the camera. We laughed constantly and hard. We poked sugary fun at each other, savoring our wit and embarrassment, our clever spoofs, our effortless goofs.
Mom watched with rapt attention, her face pure joy. At first I cringed at my blemished face and shiny metal smile and thick Louisiana accent (still lurking, I now gladly realize). I scrutinized my body: were my legs thin enough to pull off those short basketball shorts? Why did I wear such baggy T-shirts? But as the tape rolled on, from backyard trampoline to Kart Ranch to Jeannine's room, I let go my fear that I would say something to incriminate my pubescent self.
And I noticed happiness. Innocent happiness. I saw a 13 year old who loved her life and her friends, who felt at home in her (always moving) body, who wasn't cowered by adults, who relished each opportunity to laugh. I heard a 13 year old confident in her voice as she exclaimed: I am a Louisianan and proud of it! I saw a girl living every moment, not striving for anything, least of all perfection.
Now, on the eve of my 31st birthday, may I surrender to life as faithfully as she did. May I continue to know how perfect she already was.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Colored Arrows: A Tribute to Sylvia Plath and Jenna Dur
Reading and teaching Sylvia Plath has been an unexpected treat, like warm cookies on a rainy day, like a found twenty crumbled in a pocket. Sure, I had read the anthologized poems in college, knew the whole head-in-the-oven suicide. But there was so much I didn't know, like the brilliant balance of darkness and playfulness in "The Bell Jar," like Plath's deep reverence for villanelles.
Plath's autobiographical novel captures the stale stage upon which women were supposed to perform in the 1950s. The heroine, Esther Greenwood, is pressured to learn short-hand and get married, but she would rather write and read. Her desire for men is less about the physique--- "The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed"---but about "discarding" a virginity that weighs "like a millstone" around her neck. Even at the ripe age of twenty, she challenges the gender specific sacredness of virginity. The novel is full of these sharp moments of cultural critique as Esther is seduced by suicide and slips further into a debilitating mental illness. When Esther's mother advises that she put her institutionalization behind her, like a "bad dream," she reflects on the absurdity of such dishonesty, recalling her painful memories, noting that "They were my landscape."
Plath finally succeeded in killing herself (a wish that her body, with its insistent heartbeat, trumped for years) when she was thirty. She'd already published a novel, grieved a failed marriage, and given birth to two kids. Now that I am thirty, I take stock of my own landscape---I can't deny the jagged mountains of regret and the sea of shame. But, thankfully, in sharper relief: a meadow vibrant with wildflowers, a trail of curiosity winding through June-green forest.
I realize that I need to be grateful that I'm a blogger with a few (minor) publication credits to my name, still giddy about my romantically budding relationship, still dreaming about kids. Is it a blessing that I haven't "succeeded" as Plath had? Perhaps. Then again, I surely can identify with her intense need for validation, her fear and self doubt. But it is this sentiment, from "The Bell Jar," that made me sit up, grab for my pen, and decorate the margins with exclamation points:
"I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket."
Inspired by Plath's use of form as a way of grounding and ordering her fierce dreamy words, I wrote my own villanelle about my arch nemesis. And then one about liquid rainbows running bright through moonscapes. And then one about the writing craft. And then one for my youngest sister, Jenna, who turns eighteen years old today. The thirteen years and hundreds of miles that separate us are dwarfed by the ancient, sturdy bridge of reading and writing where we meet above that swift moving river of time. Here's to Jenna, and the budding of her own landscape:
Blooming, blooming as her birthday nears
A wordsmith, a phoenix, a bohemian doll
Hard to believe she's breathed eighteen years
The last to be born in the kingdom of tears
Shivers warmed by curiosity's shawl
Blooming, blooming as her birthday nears
Like cave-cradled crystals, insight so clear
Humbled since birth, an ego grown small
Hard to believe she's breathed eighteen years
Safe is she who can see through her fears
Calmly answering panic's call
Blooming, blooming as her birthday nears
She slices lies with the sharpest of sheers
For peace to build, the Empire must fall
Hard to believe she's breathed eighteen years
A childlike madcappery she engineers
Join her party, she's open to all
Keep blooming, blooming as each birthday nears
Hard to believe you've breathed eighteen years
Plath's autobiographical novel captures the stale stage upon which women were supposed to perform in the 1950s. The heroine, Esther Greenwood, is pressured to learn short-hand and get married, but she would rather write and read. Her desire for men is less about the physique--- "The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed"---but about "discarding" a virginity that weighs "like a millstone" around her neck. Even at the ripe age of twenty, she challenges the gender specific sacredness of virginity. The novel is full of these sharp moments of cultural critique as Esther is seduced by suicide and slips further into a debilitating mental illness. When Esther's mother advises that she put her institutionalization behind her, like a "bad dream," she reflects on the absurdity of such dishonesty, recalling her painful memories, noting that "They were my landscape."
Plath finally succeeded in killing herself (a wish that her body, with its insistent heartbeat, trumped for years) when she was thirty. She'd already published a novel, grieved a failed marriage, and given birth to two kids. Now that I am thirty, I take stock of my own landscape---I can't deny the jagged mountains of regret and the sea of shame. But, thankfully, in sharper relief: a meadow vibrant with wildflowers, a trail of curiosity winding through June-green forest.
I realize that I need to be grateful that I'm a blogger with a few (minor) publication credits to my name, still giddy about my romantically budding relationship, still dreaming about kids. Is it a blessing that I haven't "succeeded" as Plath had? Perhaps. Then again, I surely can identify with her intense need for validation, her fear and self doubt. But it is this sentiment, from "The Bell Jar," that made me sit up, grab for my pen, and decorate the margins with exclamation points:
"I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket."
Inspired by Plath's use of form as a way of grounding and ordering her fierce dreamy words, I wrote my own villanelle about my arch nemesis. And then one about liquid rainbows running bright through moonscapes. And then one about the writing craft. And then one for my youngest sister, Jenna, who turns eighteen years old today. The thirteen years and hundreds of miles that separate us are dwarfed by the ancient, sturdy bridge of reading and writing where we meet above that swift moving river of time. Here's to Jenna, and the budding of her own landscape:
Blooming, blooming as her birthday nears
A wordsmith, a phoenix, a bohemian doll
Hard to believe she's breathed eighteen years
The last to be born in the kingdom of tears
Shivers warmed by curiosity's shawl
Blooming, blooming as her birthday nears
Like cave-cradled crystals, insight so clear
Humbled since birth, an ego grown small
Hard to believe she's breathed eighteen years
Safe is she who can see through her fears
Calmly answering panic's call
Blooming, blooming as her birthday nears
She slices lies with the sharpest of sheers
For peace to build, the Empire must fall
Hard to believe she's breathed eighteen years
A childlike madcappery she engineers
Join her party, she's open to all
Keep blooming, blooming as each birthday nears
Hard to believe you've breathed eighteen years
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Shame on You, Obama
The term "blowback" first appeared in a document entitled "Operation Ajax," the CIA's now declassified plan to overthrow Mohammad Mossadeq, the popular nationalist prime minister of Iran, in 1953. Even though Mossadeq was appointed prime minister of his country by the Shah (king), and the people overwhelmingly supported him, Britain asked for the U.S.'s help in getting rid of him.
Why? Because Mossadeq, with the support of Parliament, voted to nationalize Iran's oil, which meant that the revenue from Iran's greatest natural resource would directly benefit the Iranian people. The British had established the Ango-Iranian Oil Company decades before and were not happy about losing their enormous profits. (Not only were the British siphoning oil profits from Iran, but they were treating the Iranians like second-class citizens, having established "British-only" water fountains at the company's site.) The U.S. complied and the CIA undertook a coup that resulted in Mossadeq's imprisonment and the Shah's heightened power.
When the Shah fled Iran on January 16, 1979, a ferocious revolution nipping at his heels, the country exploded into spontaneous excitement as Iranians danced in the streets and cut his image from their bank notes. The Iranians were thrilled to be rid of this greedy, ostentatious American puppet. Who knows what might have happened had the CIA not interfered with the fate of their government back in 1953. What we do know is that the CIA was well aware that their coups (and Iran is just one of many) would probably blow back to the American people, in the form of retributive attacks.
So why is it that 56 years later, the U.S. government is still involving itself in unpopular wars against countries in the Middle East? Why is President Obama sending more troops to Afghanistan? If the goal is to get rid of tyrannical governments, then why hasn't the U.S. invaded Saudi Arabia or Sudan?
We are told that Al Qaeda perpetrated the attacks on 9/11. Is the U.S. military really going to be able to sleuth out and kill every Al Qaeda operative? Could there be any other reason for increased troops in Afghanistan? Isn't the U.S. invested in an oil pipeline that runs through the country to the Caspian Sea? If the U.S. government had no qualms about taking out Mossadeq in order to ensure a steady flow of oil, despite the possibility of blowback, then doesn't that prove that the American people's safety is not the number one priority of the military?
And finally, is there anyone else out there who finds it unbearably ironic that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize is authorizing increased military force against a country?
Why? Because Mossadeq, with the support of Parliament, voted to nationalize Iran's oil, which meant that the revenue from Iran's greatest natural resource would directly benefit the Iranian people. The British had established the Ango-Iranian Oil Company decades before and were not happy about losing their enormous profits. (Not only were the British siphoning oil profits from Iran, but they were treating the Iranians like second-class citizens, having established "British-only" water fountains at the company's site.) The U.S. complied and the CIA undertook a coup that resulted in Mossadeq's imprisonment and the Shah's heightened power.
When the Shah fled Iran on January 16, 1979, a ferocious revolution nipping at his heels, the country exploded into spontaneous excitement as Iranians danced in the streets and cut his image from their bank notes. The Iranians were thrilled to be rid of this greedy, ostentatious American puppet. Who knows what might have happened had the CIA not interfered with the fate of their government back in 1953. What we do know is that the CIA was well aware that their coups (and Iran is just one of many) would probably blow back to the American people, in the form of retributive attacks.
So why is it that 56 years later, the U.S. government is still involving itself in unpopular wars against countries in the Middle East? Why is President Obama sending more troops to Afghanistan? If the goal is to get rid of tyrannical governments, then why hasn't the U.S. invaded Saudi Arabia or Sudan?
We are told that Al Qaeda perpetrated the attacks on 9/11. Is the U.S. military really going to be able to sleuth out and kill every Al Qaeda operative? Could there be any other reason for increased troops in Afghanistan? Isn't the U.S. invested in an oil pipeline that runs through the country to the Caspian Sea? If the U.S. government had no qualms about taking out Mossadeq in order to ensure a steady flow of oil, despite the possibility of blowback, then doesn't that prove that the American people's safety is not the number one priority of the military?
And finally, is there anyone else out there who finds it unbearably ironic that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize is authorizing increased military force against a country?
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