1TBM

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

If only...

...she'd said "deception, denial and avoidance will not protect you" I'd have a very different relationship to feminism and feminists of all ethnicities right now.

Oh well. I guess I'll write it -

The manufacture of alternative hierarchies and the maintenance of deception, denial and avoidance in our lives, relationships, alliances and families will not protect us or further any of our causes.

Phew! That felt...necessary.

Oh and...If you celebrate any of them, please have a happy and consciousness filled set of state identified high holy days.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Try Jah love?

Nah. Dearest Jah, this anti-patriarchal feminist queer deviant daughta of the diaspora thinks it would be best to pass on that invitation. But hot damn! Do your believer/sons ever make some beauty music. Pretties. ;)

Monday, December 14, 2009

It would have been more powerful if she'd gotten messy and muddy...

But the song still works for me in certain ways...

Monday, November 30, 2009

New Relationship Energy...

New relationship energy (often abbreviated as NRE) is a neologism used within polyamorous communities referring to a state of mind experienced at the beginning of most significant sexual and romantic relationships, typically involving heightened emotional and sexual receptivity and excitement. It is described as beginning with the earliest attractions, growing into full force when mutuality is established, and slowly fading over months to years. It carries an explicit implication of contrast with the feelings involved with "old" or ongoing relationships.^[1]^{[unreliable source?]}

^more...

i am

precious and rare...
i am a woman who runs with the wolves...
i am a succulent wild woman...
i am a maturing woman who connects powerfully with the child inside...
i am a darkdaughta...

wrongly labeled as curmudgeonly, unkind and arrogant by those who prefer to, in deep denial, swim peacefully with the tide not rage valiantly and vigilantly against it...

i am a...
41 year old, fiery WYSIWYG, Black conscious, caribbean (not at all the same thing as a Black amerikkkan), north amerikkkan raised, first born child of divorced parents, capricornian, anti- (capitalist/imperialist expansionist corporate) war, dark(er) skinned, matriarchal, polyamorous, class conscious, fat, tall, rogue scholar happily living in exile, eclectic/solitary practicing pagan ancestor/universe/ goddess worshiping, kinky (doesn't mean i'll be sexual with just anyone), queer'd (i lived a good portion of my life as a lesbian turned dyke before i decided queer as a way to indicate my radical sexuality-oriented political worked...that's in flux...oh, wait...identity related dimensional shift in process...in my head i've been trying on "heterosexual" for size), cisgendered, femme, polymath, bottom (who can but doesn't really prefer to switch), far-seer, verbal, confident, introvert who presents as extrovert, RADICAL lefty, feminist, anti-authoritarian, socialist, homebirther, full-time radical attachment oriented parent.

tha mission

for starters, if you don't believe that the oppressed can be expected to be accountable for their own actions, or that they can live deeply human and humane lives where they take responsibility when they have truly done something profoundly fucked up...this includes wimmin, black folks, people of colour, queers, lesbians, gays, leatherfolk and other sexual minorities, transfolk, working class people, fat people, people living with disabilities, survivors of abuse, psychiatric survivors...
then you believe in an essentialist politic predicated on powerless victimhood where any action, no matter how screwed, is justified and acceptable...because we're oppressed.

unh...
if this sounds like part of your politic, i will probably want to give you a fairly wide berth because in my books this means you're capable of pretty much doing anything, even to me and that if you do inflict harm, you will expect to be seen as not responsible for your actions because you are oppressed, a victim of systems of domination with so little power the experience has literally addled your brain and you don't know right from wrong.

bullshit.

if you don't want to take responsibility for your life choices please don't use the political to justify it.

if you conflate being blamed for your own oppression and for any abuses inflicted on you with being expected to take responsibility for embracing healthy change and choices in your own life, we will not get along not even slightly.

i am responsible for my actions.

i try to be accountable.

i use my blog to support myself to be more accountable and to make less space for lying, denial and hiding in my life.

i use this space to invite others to claim their choices as a way to embrace healthy, honest accountability, as well.

nuff said.

here in my blogland home i don't write about "news" items...at least in ways other bloggers do.

i mostly blog about power, dominance, speaking/silence, fear/courage, the concept of family, relationships, what is palatable/what is not, what is seen/what isn't, resistance, emotional intelligence and the massive, ofttimes unclaimed, definitely unexplored underbelly of things considered political.

i do this with a vengeance, not so that i can be feared and/or villified.

this is an act of love...not for any individual popular bloggers feeding off cults of personality. no.

this is an act of solidarity with things political in the hope that what we understand as politics on the "left" will one day be fused with a well developed sense of ethics and emotional intelligence.

i write here to soothe mySELVES and so that other wimmin might perhaps not be tripped up, blocked or harmed by oppression inside the ranks of those who consider themselves political as i have been.

oh, and...i'm not here to amuse you, to please (or upset) you, to make you feel better (or worse) about yourself or to befriend you.

if reading me is the only thing that causes you to feel despair or doubt about things on the political left, then you're doing some really good drugs. can i have some, too?

all this to say...

if i make any real friends along the way, i will be thankful but extremely surprised.

one last thing?

i'm typing this stream of consciousness often while breastfeeding and balancing a squirmy three year old on my lap.

"those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are those who want crops without plowing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. power never concedes anything without a demand. it never did and it never will. find out just what people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both."

- frederick douglass

get ready for a BUMby ride

here, in a completely unwomanly, yet thoroughly enjoyable way, i can openly and shamelessly scream, rage, plot, cry, moon, howl, roar, sulk, worry, giggle, hum, claw, masturbate, tantrum, moan, cry, stomp, yell, punch, go for tha jugular, holler fuck you at oppression or just because someone got on my last good nerve.

this is a space for me to give voice to all parts of myself from the youngest and most vulnerable to the oldest and toughest, from the shrillest and most confused to the most composed and logical...it's all in me.

this is a place of rampant musing, courageous dreaming, heated creating and inexorable building of personal power.

this blog is about me integrating all of me.

this is not a proper place, a nice space, an edutaining space, a tidy space or a space for people who want to be associated with surface popularity or cliques.

this is a lone space probe, a craft on a mission seeking other lone defiantly complex autonomous needles in a planetary haystack diseased with domination.

so, if you visit and read and happily see kindred in these lines of mine, write me
...the more words and ideas the better.

but, if you visit and don't get me, don't feel the love, don't feel safe or don't feel welcome...take some deep breaths and ground.

do not email me invitations into circular debates that have no meaning and no intelligent end in sight. do not write me hate mail under an assumed name.

do not invite your blogland cronies to email me exorcism invitations. don't even botha thinking that the threat of labeling me not nice, troll or bully in an attempt to control my flow will do a damn thang.

just call it a day, back away slowly and close the door on your way out.

words that keep me going

"our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. it is the very last inch of us. but within that inch we are free."
- v for vendetta

"there's no limit to the depths you can sink to, there's no limit to the heights you can climb."
- rough trade, crimes of passion

"no person is your friend who demands your silence."
- alice walker

"i must not fear.
fear is the mind-killer.
fear is the little-death
that brings total obliteration.
i will face my fear.
i will permit it to pass over me.
and when it has gone past
i will turn the inner eye
to see its path.
where the fear has gone
there will be nothing.
only i will remain."
- frank herbert, litanty against fear

we cannot expect others to respect our truths and love us when we will not live our truths and love ourselves, standing firm for what we believe...i said that.

"and if going home is denied me, then i will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture - una cultura mestiza - with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar and my own feminist architecture."
- gloria anzaldua, borderlands/la frontera

"...sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."
- the matrix, morpheus

"i write what i like"
- steve biko

"i am not wrong: wrong is not my name
my name is my own my own my own
and i can't tell you who the hell set things up like this
but i can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life"
- june jordan, poem about my rights

"art is not a mirror held up to reality,
but a hammer with which to shape it."
- bertolt brecht

"healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics.
wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength.
they are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate, and their pack.
yet both have been hounded, harassed, and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious,
overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors...a healthy woman
is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving,
territorially aware, inventive, loyal, and roving."
-clarissa pinkola estés,
wild women who run with the wolves

"being a sex radical means being defiant as well as deviant. it means being aware that there is something unsatisfying and dishonest about the way sex is talked about (or hidden) in daily life. it also means questioning the way our society assigns privilege based on adherence to moral codes. if you believe that inequities can only be addressed through extreme social change, then you qualify as a sex radical, even if you prefer to get off in the missionary position and still believe there are only two genders."
- pat califia

"cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."
- susan b. anthony

"oya is the powerful yoruba goddess of the winds of change; the primeval mother of chaos; queen of the nine (for the nine tributaries of the niger river). using her machete, or sword of truth, she cuts through stagnation and clears the way for new growth. she does what needs to be done. she is the wild woman, the force of change; lightning, fire, tornadoes, earthquakes and storms of all kinds are ruled by oya."

i tried to be perfect
it just wasn't worth it
nothing could ever be so wrong
it's hard to believe me
it never gets easy
i guess I knew that all along.
- sum 41, pieces

shove me in the shallow water
before I get too deep
don't let me get to deep
- edie brickell and the new bohemians

i am still just a rat in a cage.
- smashing pumpkins, bullet with butterfly wings

i'm not here for your [edutainment]
you don't really wanna mess with me tonight
- pink...sorta, u & ur hand

she's a bitch
you can't see me, joe
get on down while i shoot my flow
she's a bitch
when i do my thing
got the place on fire,
burn it down in flame
- missy, she's a bitch

makes me that much stronger
makes me work a little bit harder
makes me that much wiser
so, thanks for making me a fighter
made me learn a little bit faster
made my skin a little bit thicker
makes me that much smarter
so, thanks for making me a fighter
- christina aguilera, fighter

need more friends with wings,
all the angels i know put concrete in my veins
- billy talent, nothing to lose

"leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. they include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. true leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders."
- john holt, growing without schooling