I'm so glad yahoo.ca published this...now we can all get back to having a good time...

Sydney gets New Year started, but Gaza spoils party

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I figured I'd wait until she blogged about herself...

I texted CJ's partner a few nights ago to get him to tell her I'm finally on skype so we could do a voice to voice. He texted me back a bombshell. She had been hit by a truck. She was fine, but a little messed up. Today I went over to her place and saw that she had blogged about it. Best wishes to you, CJ and a speedy recovery.

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I've honed my seeker bot/spider/probes quite a bit since I wrote this post...

Friday, January 27, 2006

Seeking....

I got off the computer yesterday feeling dejected by my options for creating community where I would be supported as a pregnant mama. Everywhere I look people are full of words that sound good, but that aren't backed up with any conscious substance.

Early on in my pregnancy I had prenatal depression. I raged and cried and felt hopeless and thought of removing myself from this cesspool of a world and felt alone.

I found a counsellor who actually dealt with wimmin living with prenatal depression. I was skeptical, not because she wouldn't understand life chasing after a toddler or the hormonal changes that pregnancy could bring...
NoPe.
I understood that it would be difficult for her to truly offer me support if her political and social analysis wasn't as developed as my own, which by her own admission, it wasn't. If she had no historical, herstorical analysis of her own whiteness, her own class privilege, her own conservatism, her own sexuality, her own gender binary ideas, etc to layer on top of her clinical experiences, we literally would not be able to share useful space in deeply moving and generative conversation.

This is what happened when I finally sat down to speak with her on the phone for our first session. She was a nice woman, who wanted to listen to me. But she literally could not comprehend my identity as it had been painstakingly built by me in resistance to the effects of domination and colonization in my life. She could not connect with or make sense of the roots of my isolation, the systemic sources of oppression that had driven me into isolation and had infused my creation of a community that would shelter me and my family. She could not understand the life or death nature of the struggles inside my community and why we had all tried for so long to find solutions.

In short, she could not offer me any solace, because the society she occupies with comfort, the world she understands to offer so many options to the women/mamas who are her clients, is understood as a source of torment and oppression by me.

In an earlier online exchange she had written that she thought she could "help me". I replied that she could not. I didn't explain to her the inequitable power dynamics infusing her choice of wording. I told her that it wouldn't be possible for her as a practitioner to "help" anyone. People help themselves. They can be offered new tools or new perspectives that can turn out to be useful and transformational in their everyday lives. But in the end it's all about them, their commitment to gathering information, to seeing and making changes in their lives that leads to them "helping" themselves. I let on that what would be really useful would be for her to learn about herself as a way for dialogue about what supportive interactions could look like between the two of us, to actually flourish. She disagreed saying that the impulse to "help" and her clinical skills was all she really needed.

I got off the phone already knowing in my heart of hearts what I would do, knowing what I could not do, what it would be impossible for me to put myself through. That was our first and last session. She emails occasionally. I think she's curious about me. Although it would be good to talk to someone who knows mamas, she won't be able to understand this mama without recommencing her own education.

I live alienated from wimmin in my age peer range taught to give up their personal power through silence, soft intonation and carefully chosen word subtlety, taught to fear/accomodate/crave/ acquiese (to) power hierarchies for safety and defininition of self...

I live alienated from mamas of squealing babies and tantruming preschoolers...

I live alienated from Black conservative good girls who understand themselves as liberal, radical or revolutionary who are, nonetheless, products of our extremely classist and conservative Black communities...

I live alienated from political wimmin who only feel safe to speak their truths when safely surrounded by an approving herd...

I live alienated from queers of color worried about how much they can come out and be their whole sexual selves for all to see and still get really well paying jobs...

I feel alienated from younger wimmin of color who define as radicals...in relation to a world where an extreme right swinging social pendulum has shifted even what it means to be left, shifted the very nature of resistance.

I live alienated from thankful immigrants feeling so glad to "be here" where they can "make something of themselves"...

I live alienated from white queers arrogantly and knowingly sitting in positions of white cultural dominance...

I live separate, apart from everything that would cause me to understand myself as crazed, ugly, less than, abnormal, wicked, dirty, lower, too dark, too fat, too old,...blah, blah, blah. I cling to/indulge in aloneness, decadent, reliable, secure, impenetrable.

But I am a mama and my daughter was not born to be alone. So I try to be less of a loner.

But, as I sit surrounded by abundant sources of "help" who think it's enough to just "be there", white hands to stroke my hair when I cry (please don't touch my locks), to just "be there" to support a queer mama (I don't care who you sleep with, so don't talk about me and my man), to just "be there" to stand in solidarity with a Black woman (There's nothing I can do about my white (or light) skin. When I look in the mirror it's just there), to just "be there" we're all mamas who need support (but why do you need to be so judgemental and overly assertive?), to just "be there" sure come on over and we can talk over tea (let's say grace before we eat our snack)...
none of this looks like support when coupled with my would be "helpers'" uncritiqued experiences of oppression and access to privilege.

If someone trying to "help me" or just "be there" while fully functioning as a foot on my neck was to draw close, I would scream, I would stiffen, I would be triggered into herstorically grounded rage with their every other uncritiqued and privileged word. I would need solace and support, need some drugs, need a knife for my wrists, need to fuck the pain away, need to spend too much money on what I didn't need, need to walk out into a fast moving traffic filled street with my babies after being "taken care of" by them.

See? Get it?

Still seeking...

Is it that hard to find?

Wanted:
a few knocked up revolutionary women...
or revolutionary women with analysis who are child and mama friendly not perpetrating...
or revolutionaries who have a living analysis
all of whom hold their ownselves accountable to what they say they believe, so I won't have to...

Possessing:
Consciousness that moves beyond lefty/liberal/anarchist/radical/academic word play right on into everyday life;

Brave hearts willing to open, to know and to fully feel;

Fiery spirits, indominable, present, ethical and unwilling to back down;

Cutting intellects that never stopped asking "Why?" Never stopped exploring, stretching and growing even in the grips of hormonally induced mamabrain.

If you are one of these or know of one or two or three, especially if they have blogs or websites?... send them on through. Then stand back and watch the sparks fly.

Learners not in charge of their own educational process (I can't be your personal search engine), People who don't understand their own emotional landscape (not interesed in recognizing/locating/ articulating/claiming your feelings and needs for you), alchoholics (recovered without any ongoing self-knowledge journey, too), sex addicts (folks who filter all life experience sexually), perpetual victims (especially those willing to utilize trauma or survivor status to manipulate the unsuspecting) or adult "children" (I'm a mama, but I ain't your mama) in need of care need not apply. I've got my own learning, recovery and re-parenting of my tiny child to do.

probe launched by Dark Daughta at 8:09 PM

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Hi, Kelly...welcome and feel free to look around...comment at will...

Kelly has left a new comment on your post "Seeking....":

Hi,

I've been reading your blog here and there for awhile now, and felt like
saying hi. When I first read your blog you scared the shit out of me. But
I'd like to thank you for existing as loudly as you do cause you inspire
me to be a bit less cowardly and you really set the wheels in my head
turning.

My name is Kelly and I'm breastfeeding my daughter as I type this w/ my
left hand and I bet you're one fast typer with either your left or right
hand. I'm out of practice and I have a lot to say so this will take
awhile. First let me humbly ask and thank you if you'll be my one woman
audience because I feel like I don't know who else to say this to-

So you scare me. Hi, you're really intense. I've never come across anyone
so free as you. I've been repressed all my life. First by other people
until I could do the job even more efficiently myself and I'm just now
slowly letting go. And I've got to for my sake and for my daughters' sake
break this nasty cycle.

I confess just reading your blog feels empowering, but I don't want to sit
on the sidelines patting myself on the back while my spiritual butt gets
all fat from no action. So I'll start by saying hello to the powerful
scary lady who makes Oprah look like a puppet...and boy do I like puppets
cause they're so much easier to watch (and yet easy is so insidious, isn't
it? because then you're likely to become some kindof controlled object for
someone elses' uses (yikes!)). I have to say that the puppet show has
seduced me for quite some time. And still it's tempting to sit and try to
enjoy the show...

So first you scare the pee outta me. Then I feel jealous cause here's you
doing your thing and all this time I've been nodding my head to anyone and
everyone who tells me to do this or that- and to top it all off you not
only have this strong sense of self but this sense of racial identity that
I thought I'd really like to have.

Society really would like everything to be clean cut: black white/ good evil
capitalism communism/ heads tails. And ever since my mom reluctantly let
me out of the house people have been trying to shove me neatly into some
convenient check in the box and they always put me down as white. And I
let them for some time til I looked at my brothers and sisters who are
various shades because my mother is half Filipina half Dutch first born in
the US generation of her family tree and somewhere along my dad's side of
the family there's suspicious looking hair and nose genes that are
carefully shushed in geneaological records. So I'm just a blob of nothing
that no side claims. A mutt. A mix. Not pretty or rich.

So I'd lately been feeling really confused as a result of my shushed
history. And I never seem to fit into any of these tidy boxes- though I'm
consistently priveleged as being almost consistently accepted as white. Only when I got to high school did I feel wrong about this. I felt like to check the
white box is to deny half of my mother and half of my seven siblings. And
I laughed as peers tried to guess my heritage all over the globe. Then
privately felt frustrated at this ignorance not only on their behalf but
of my own...

Then this collision of events (including reading the trip that is- your
blog) recently lead to a soul strengthening epiphany: I was watching a
lecture series on linguistics. The professor was describing the
classification of languages and how someone (shocking!) noticed that a lot
of borrowing, stealing, trading, reforging of words was going on between
two languages. So academia decided to call this new animal a mixed
language and as they went along with their notebooks and tidy little check
boxes they became increasingly uncomfortable... Because language is a
living thing and when you boil it all down every language is a "mixed"
language- aaaaaaaaah the impurity!!!

That's when I realized that this so called curse of always checking the
"other" box under the racial question is a great boon because it has
forced me from a safe group identity into considering humanity as a whole-
and as a result I now claim that I am of all things first human and I'll
swear allegiance only to life, love and beauty- not to any artificial
construction of country or nation, etc.

And it's time for me to stop all this shushing because I have learned that
silence is a deadly surrender. My silence has contributed to wrongs. So
thanks for being outright and forthwith. It's contagious!


May our daughters, all children feel strong and free.


Thanks for your time,

Kelly

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LP and 1TBM...the conversation is almost one year old...

Holy, this conversation has been attempting to unfold for quite some time...abortive stop/starts/stops...starts...?

minority-midwifes-question-about...Thursday, November 01, 2007

where-pecola-entered...Sunday, December 23, 2007

im-glad-you-came-back-again-pecola...Thursday, January 03, 2008

i-invited-freeslave-over...Monday, January 07, 2008

loving-pecola-i-read-this-and-should...Saturday, January 12, 2008

oh-loving-pecola...Wednesday, January 16, 2008

space-of-our-own...Sunday, January 20, 2008

how-do-you-remember-dates...Tuesday, January 22, 2008

i-dont-think-its-gonna-do-any-good-but...Tuesday, January 22, 2008

loving-pecola-my-one-woman-calvary-is...Tuesday, January 22, 2008

loving-pecola-this-is-late-but-i-had-to...Tuesday, January 22, 2008

loving-pecola-i-totally-get-what-youre...Tuesday, January 22, 2008

loving-pecola-i-read-this-and-should...Saturday, January 12, 2008

oh-loving-pecola...Sunday, February 03, 2008

loving-pecola-ive-got-question...Sunday, February 10, 2008

as compartments collide...Wednesday, February 13, 2008

fight-or-flightfight-or-flight...Friday, February 15, 2008

lp-im-glad-you-liked-color-purple...Tuesday, June 10, 2008

lp-allopecia-is-hardcore-prevalent...Tuesday, June 10, 2008

any-time-loving-pecola...Thursday, June 19, 2008

lp-im-sorry-i-didnt-respond-sooner...Friday, October 24, 2008

hi-lp-i-read-your-response...Monday, December 01, 2008

tiredso-tired-this-morning...Tuesday, December 02, 2008

sex-was-about-power-and-power-struggle...Wednesday, December 24, 2008

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Thanks, Aspasia...

Aspasia has left a new comment on your post "Gaza, Palestine - 2008":

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com just published a good article slamming the American mainstream media in general and specifically on their soft questions with regard to Israel's attacks on Gaza and the lead up to the war in Iraq/American occupation.

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Rj on LP and 1TBM...acronyms are us...

Rj has left a new comment on your post "LP, I told Papster that you finally "jumped" and w...":

I sat in the bathtub and read this entire "exchange." It was so intense, I had to keep adding hot water--no, I would have done that anyway. The words of the two of you ignited my screen. I can feel LP's pain, not in that we share anything similar, but in that I have heard several Black women say that they fuck just to fuck. As if it makes the time pass by. And each time I hear it, I am surprised as if it were the first time; but it hurts me to know that there isn't power and joy in it for all. You are robbed, robbed like a rape victim and yet somehow it seems that you have made a choice to be in this position..a fetal position? helpless? but "alive" within something else. Where are you living [in your mind, spirit, and soul]?

1TBM, Dare I say you are so right about such a sensitive issue about the child and "itself" and the need to refocus her energies...among other things. I'm drained.

Thanks for attempting to get into some of this with me. I notice that usually when I engage with another middle passage sib around our shite that most folks, even other middle passage sibs, tend to steer clear...which is not a useful, community minded or political response. So sad.

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I don't wanna talk about it...men and depression, take 2...

Rj has left a new comment on your post "I don't want to talk about it...men's legacy of de...":

I saw the book in the bookstore about a year ago. I flipped through it. I couldn't believe it. It described the man I was involved with at the time to a "t."

Sadly, RJ...
I think it describes more than a few of the men most of the wimmin I know are partnered with. It really should be required reading. I'd like the men I'm interested in to read this book. hmmm...I wonder...

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Anti-Zionism is not the same thing as anti-semitism...to conflate the two is dangerous...

Their homepage is down right now. I suspect given what's happening in Gaza, they're probably revisioning it to address the issue.

But when I clicked around on their site this is what Jews Against the Occupation were saying...

Jews Against the Occupation is an organization of progressive, secular and religious Jews of all ages throughout the New York City area advocating peace through justice for Palestine and Israel. Our points of unity are as follows:

NO OCCUPATION IN OUR NAME

We as American Jews reject the Israeli government assertion that it is "necessary" to subjugate Palestinians for the sake of keeping Jews safe. We assert that security can only come from mutual respect, and that the occupation of Palestine is only worsening the position of Jews in the Middle East and around the world

RESTORE HUMAN & CIVIL RIGHTS

The Israeli military fires bone-crushing rubber bullets and live ammunition at unarmed Palestinian civilians engaged in peaceful protest, failing to distinguish between peaceful and violent resistance. The Israeli government has been demolishing Palestinian houses and crops in the Occupied Territories, while allowing Jewish settlers -- many of them American -- to illegally occupy the same land.

END U.S. AID TO ISRAEL

The U.S. government provides more aid to Israel than to any other country—the vast majority of this is for military purposes. Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have propped up the occupation and fueled the Israeli government’s war machine (as well as disguising the occupation’s true cost). This aid must end.

STOP ECONOMIC ATTACKS ON PALESTINE

The Israeli government has attacked the Palestinian economy by: closing Palestinian banks; imposing extreme taxes on business; withdrawing operating licenses; destroying industrial equipment; bulldozing farmland and banning fishing; restricting workers' movement; controlling the export of Palestinian goods; closing the borders of the Occupied Territories; and refusing to fund infrastructure like water and electricity -- even in Arab villages within Israel

LET PALESTINIANS RETURN HOME

Thousands of Palestinians were driven out of their houses and off of their farms during and after the creation of Israel. They must be allowed to return to their homeland.

ANTI-SEMITISM VS. CRITIQUES OF ISRAEL

Jews Against the Occupation stands firmly against anti-Semitism and racism in all its forms. We see our historical struggle against anti- Semitism--a cornerstone of European white supremacist ideology--as inherently linked to all struggles against oppression. We therefore stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom.

Judaism is a cultural and religious identity, which must not be equated with Zionism, a political movement. Criticism of the state of Israel, its policies, or the idea of a Jewish state does not by itself constitute anti-Semitism. Dismissing critics of Israel or of Zionism as "anti-Semitic" is a means of stifling debate and masking the impact of the occupation.

More information relating to JATO's points of unity.

UN Resolutions Supporting these Positions

International Humanitarian Law: the Geneva Conventions

Five Reasons to End US Aid to Israel

More about Anti-Semitism

Independent News Sources	Not-so-independent Sources
Electronic Intifada	Al Bawaba, the Middle East Gateway
Islamic Association for Palestine	ArabNews
LAW Society Daily Updates	BBC - Middle East
Mid-East Realities	Drudge Report
The Nation	The Guardian - Israel
Open Democracy	Google News - Palestinian
Oznik News Service	Ha'aretz Daily
Palestine Chronicle	Independent UK - Middle East
Palestine Daily	L.A.Times
Palestine Indymedia	MSNBC - Middle East
Palestine Media Center	PBS Newshour - Middle East
Palestine Monitor	Reuters/AP
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights	Robert Fisk articles
Tikkun	Tehran Times
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs	Washington Post - Mideast Peace
World War 3 Report	Wire Service Photographs
Znet Middle East Watch	Yahoo News - Middle East

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This one I found a version of this song over at the Peace Tree this morning...

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Breathe it out...jump...breathe and jump again...

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LP, I'm so sorry...

Loving Pecola has left a new comment on your post "LP, I told Papster that you finally "jumped" and w...":

I feel the shift on my end, too. And I'm glad we had this econversation so that as I leave it's not some vaporized disappearance that doesn't acknowledge that I was here, even if you don't recognize it as me being here. But before I go, I have to say that some of what you have said is the same thing that every other breeder mama says (in their own way) when they encounter childless mamas....

"I'm a breeder. :)

Papster's sperm make extra space inside his testicles. He makes too much sperm. :)

He's a breeder. Though he's been trying to tell me he's pretty much done. But I think I've got one more in me...so many eggs...so little time."

This fucking hurt. The smiley faces did not make it easier. I know you're a breeder darkdaughta, I've seen the pictures, remember? When I walk through the world, I recognize this as privilege. From back when women who couldn't have children were shunned by those who could- as they still are. Every childless woman has heard the fuck better, fuck for fun, take a break, you've got time, know yourself, a baby isn't going to fill you, a baby wont fix it and on and on. It always comes from women who already have children and it hurts big time. Yeah we know it going to cure the world. But still, we'd like to be mamas, too, after all how many truly self actualized people do you know? Most people who bring children into the world do not know fully know themselves, they just have the privilege of being breeders anyway. In the months (years?) that I have read here, I never shared this part of me in detail.

I, no matter hard it was, read everything else here anyway. I thank you for sharing, for responding, and for always being clear about what you're looking for and want and need and deserve. I realize we've been in this same kind of space before. Sometimes you saying "come closer" but me hearing it as "go away" but other times you asking "why in the hell are you still here?" Usually, I have departed because I thought you wanted me to, or because my schedule doesn't allow for me to stay up till 4 am writing like I did last night, or because I don't know what to say anymore. But this time it is because I am making the very conscious decision to exit conversation because I realize, as you did a long time ago, that an alliance between us just isn't going to happen.

As I said in my email to you a couple weeks ago, I truly hope you find what and who you're looking for. Things seem to be looking up, and I hope they continue to do so.

From the bottom of my heart I hope you have a fantastic, fulfilling, fruitful birthday TJ,

LP

sigh..
Oh, LP,
:)
I will. That's why I couldn't spend time trying to unpack your stuff with you. When it was clear that you actually embody quite a bit of what I find upsetting about the people I come from, when it is clear that you actually have no interest in challenging the oppressive values you were raised to hold dear, when it is clear that that you were going to great pains to ignore massive segments of who I am so as to better bond with my gender and skin color, when it is clear that for me to offer you care would be to offer care to someone who could not help but allow oppression to resonate in the air between the two of us...

I understood a long time ago that a tie with you was not what I needed. At different points I did check to see if you could make yourself useful. Being of use would definitely have mediated they ways I chose to engage with you. Papi's mother and I are not located in similar ways yet conversations flow and we speak our truths to each other from time to time. I have another friend who is a caribbean woman who has absolutely no analysis but she has functioned as a friend in ways that brought both of us comfort, joy and laughter.

I can see what you're writing about the hurt and upset you carry with you that you have chosen to smear onto me and onto this conversation when I refused to see to your needs, when I refused to tip toe around the reality of what it is you are attempting to do.

I think that one of the many things you've chosen to ignore about me is the fact that I really don't share your value system.

There is no way for me to commiserate with a legally married, patriarchal, monogamous, christian raised, silenced, heterocentric woman of any culture over her not being able to conceive a child that she feels will validate her existence on this planet and justify her being sexual in a societally validated relationship context.

You brought that for me. You brought an expectation. You brought an assumption that was completely predicated on you insisting on reading me as another married Black woman who has borne children for her man inside the context of a legal heterosexual union.

LP, you brought that to me and I was annoyed about once more having who I am brushed to one side so that you might better service your own need...at my expense.

No. For me to gentle you as you selfishly brushed aside the deaths of tiny iraqi children in a way only an amerikkkan could, choosing to instead focus on your obsessive want of a baby, would not have sat well with me.

For me to not unpack your clearly messed up relationship to your own erotic, messed up well before baby making to be clear, would have allowed you to believe that you and I share similar ideas about what it means to be Black, female and sexual in this world.

We don't.
For me to focus on fucking a white man, with the emphasis placed where it is comfortable for you, on whiteness, would have once more allowed you to avoid the reality of the fact that I'm not a fucking straight woman who worships men's genitalia and allows their cocks, in through my ear, deep penetrating into my brain, defining my reality and altering my understanding of my worth.

I like to suck cock...a lot. :) But I'm not a fucking straight lady, LP. I understand that you like to forget that. It does not benefit me to let you. :)

I'm not sure who these unique collector's item Black wimmin are who you've encountered :), but don't any of them tell you when to fucking quit it and stop doing weird shite? :) They should. You'd be further along in your process if folks stopped blowing sunshine up your ass for having managed to not get pregnant and having gone to school. It's not enough, LP. There's more to being a warrior woman than that.

Sooo..yah.
I'm gonna find what I'm after. I'm gonna find who I'm after, too.

When Papster read your note he asked how I felt. I said that I was glad you were self de-selecting. It's taken a year or so for you to do it. I really didn't have it in me to do it. My little inner girl was like: "Don't get rid of her. Maybe she'll turn around and do right and you'll see that you and her could be friends, just like she said. Don't be mean. Be nice. Just give her some time."

LP, my little girl is gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay, too. :)

And you? Well you've self de-selected. You've chosen to move back out of range. I think that's a good step. Next I'm hoping that you move right into range of your own Self. Find her. Dear goddess, LP, find her.

And now for a musical number that perfectly illustrates what a g'won and how deep the collective lobotomy inflicted on heterosexual Black wimmin has cut and mutilated...eyes turned up to gawd...dressed in white, she's so demure, she's prepared to give herself up entirely...if she can find a man who will consent to love her...so sad...so clear...sigh...it's in here with me, too...the programing...that's why I can't hang out with straight ladies who don't have analysis for very long...either I start breaking out in hives or they pull out their home lobotomy kit and ask me to sit, lean back and just relax...

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

Gaza, Palestine - 2008

I'm so fucking sick of virulent nationalism and the oppression, specifically classism, elitism, racism and imperialism it cradles at its breast. A gift from me to the powers that be who stoke the fears of every day people and inform us via the "news" months in advance of the attrocities they plan to commit? Two burning flags for the price of one.

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

I've given up long distance...relationship...thing...ees...but, I'm still smiling...

Today while I was venting some old stuff that still needed to come outta me and be let go I found space to smile.

See...
When I came to blogland literally big with child, experiencing massive amounts of prenatal depression, living in an intentional community that was at war with itself...as I was struggling on every front of my day to day...I came here seeking new possibilities.

I found a few lovely people...who weren't particularly brave or able to move in ways layered enough to allow them to understand let alone deal with the shit storm that unfolded around me.

I think they tried to be there. I just can't deal with them, anymore. I can't blog in relation to them anymore. But I do understand that they tried to find ways to be present with me as I roiled and as waves shook some of the places where I chose to surface. These dear hearts I forgive. :)

When the evil dead full of shit/storm created by power brokers in the feminist/woman of color and assorted minions hit me, I was alone real time but I was also alone here because most of those who had tried to befriend me did not really understand what was happening and definitely did not want to be harmed by the mob.

This is part of why I interrogate allies both here and real time...same thing has transpired real time in this city. Truly politicized allies who have a complicated multilayered critique who know how to step in, step up really are in short supply.

This is part of why I check for the size of their balls...big ovaries work, too. This is part of why I check to see if they are brave. This is part of why I check to see if they push forward and speak and blog when everything around them says hold back, hesitate, worry, be filled with anxiety, choose your battles and don't choose this one, this will not make you popular, this will not get you additional links...

This is why I check and why I am so careful to point out when someone comes with the insecure, popularity or validation craving, cowardly, single or overly simple issue focus as the only way they can engage with me.

Most might think they're trying to make friends with me.

I think we have conflicting definitions of the word. For me friends are warriors who know how to protect my back and who don't mind openly doing so. With the memory of a few too many tussles still really present for me, I'm not particularly interested in shooting the shit unless the shit is seen as a multifaceted, crazy making, depth blogging worthy, emotionally stunted, linked to various interlocking systems of domination and to the matrix of power, construct that we can rip apart via conversation with each other as our eyes sparkle and we make a friendship grounded in something more than how courteous or friendly either of us is. :)
sigh...

Today as I read and blogged and remembered...
I freaked for fifteen minutes. I was triggered...drawn back into a blogland event that can only be described using the word "Ick".
I remembered and as I did so I realized that although I had left over emotion that hadn't been fully expressed, I'm not there anymore.
I'm not in that place where I was isolated, depressed or vulnerable.
I'm no longer in that place where I lived when other people's shite hit my fan.
I'm not where I was in 2006.
This is 2008.
I'm smiling as I'm typing.

My options are exploding and expanding all over the place! :)

Today I facebooked and tentatively tried to set up a night out with that poly mama I met.
In recent weeks I've had really wonderful, hot sex that didn't result in any drama...for me...close to home...
I've met a really gentle smart man who I'm not sure is gonna stick around cuz he lives far away...in kkkanada, but not close...though, to snuggle with him I'd travel. :)
I've also met a man who lives closer who is attempting to engage with my politic as well as the rest of me...not sure if he's given up or if he's ready for the next round. :)
Today I IM'd people.
Today alone (!) I had two conversations with two really sterling potentials this afternoon. Sadly they both live far away. Too bad because they were smart, intelligent, vibrant, friendly, not fearful of my fire, one of them made me giggle and laugh out loud...the other I had a more courteous exchange...both of them I wanted to hug and hold for a long time.
Knowing that they were both really cute in that silvering wolf nearing or over forty way I'm growing to really appreciate, I nonetheless said "no" to both of them...while smiling, flirting and receiving their copious compliments by offering them compliments of my own...hotties...this I did from a place of abundance...from a place of certainty that told me that no matter how annoyed about not having a few bona fide poly relationships or very many whole and fulfilling real time friendships, right now...
I will be loved. :)
Today was mostly a wonderful day...
I answered LP's comment and felt a shift between her and me.
I responded to another comment about my blog sent via facebook.

I am not yet ensconced in a community where I feel safe.
But I'm no longer alone and without options.

I'm so thankful to so many wonderful people here in blogland for being the ones who pulled me through a really awful time in my life.

I'm so thankful even though I may not end up getting pics of all your faces for my birthday, I cherish the ones who gave a woman who was literally breathing fire and brimstone a chance to calm down enough, to vent enough to just shine. :)
I've still got fire and brimstone...as you all well know. giggles...
But I'm feeling a whole lot more snuggle-able than I did when I made most of your acquaintances.

Thank you blogging family. :) You are a family of sorts to me...even the ones who keep trying to back away slowly...I see you there...I know you'll come back cuz you always do cuz ain't nobody got a blog like this...giggles... :)

love and hugs,
darkdaughta

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

I am a leaf on the wind...watch how I soar...

happy thoughts...wistful, yet still happy thoughts...HAPPY THOUGHTS, DAMMIT!...sigh...happy thoughts...

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

I don't forget any of you who were here, who came close when I first came to blogland...

I came blogging clear in 2006...
I came close yet still located outside your amerikkkan universities, located outside your amerikkkan communities, located outside your fucking amerikkkan experiences...
You did not know how to step outside your fucking amerikkkan cultured lives...
You did not understand how to actually occupy the politics you claimed to profess in blogland...
You did not know how to embrace my complexity, my passion and my fierceness...
It was easier to swarm and denigrate me for speaking, for being different, for not falling into line, for asking questions...
It was easier to tar and feather me for not following your idiotic, dimwitted and clearly backward leaders of whatever color...
It was easier to construct me as evil other...
It was easier to pat each other on the back and speak lies...
It has even been easier for some of you to come here and attempt to engage with me while still telling lies...
...of omission that erase memory and pave the way for newer diseased engagements...
I know that when you airbrains turned away and left me to my lone wolf blogging you thought I would go away...
I know that when you all withdrew the validation and support you understood as pivotal, that you had constructed as pivotal so as to better justify your collective need to tow the fucking line, validation and support that I in truth did not need, you thought I would just go POOF and be no more...
I carried my son to full term...
I birthed him from inside mySELF, my psyche reeling and screaming...
...filled with the memory of the mob rule horror I had encountered in this place...
...this blogverse...
I suckled him and hoped that my milk, grown inside a mama trying not to grow bitter, would not poison him or destroy him...
I held my daughter and realized that I could grow a smart, brave and trustworthy chicky I could stand to share space with...without trying to kill...
I chose herbs for my garden, planted them with love and let their combined aromas heal my stuttering, snot nosed, foul breath, hungry self...
...And I blogged again...
And I blogged somethin' fierce...
And I blogged despite all your treachery...
And I blogged even though all I could type was murder/death/kill...
I blogged knowing eventually when my puss filled wounds had drained and the maggots had eaten their fill of gangrenous rotten cerebral flesh my blood would once more run just red...
...and I would be human, I would feel human, again...
It's been years since I've seen you...years since I called you...years since I needed you...years since you so dismally failed...
sigh...
Thanks for the link, though I worry that linking to me will give you cred you don't deserve.
Thanks for the link but I think I'd prefer truthful, sane, depth oriented conversation...
...don't worry, your note tells me you don't have it in you...
Are you erect?
Were you erect when you read my words?
Did my post give you a happy boner?
Did you jerk off and compulsively cum oodles of sperm at the thought of my offending, annoying, worrysome mouth being plugged full of pumping clueless, white cock?
I won't allow the formation of this scenario in my brain to make me fall out of love with what I wrote. :)
Just note...
I am still here.
I remain.
This is me saying go jerk off, then fuck off and die.

(insert: the tears come. i'll be fine. i survived what all of you tried to do.)

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.

LP, I told Papster that you finally "jumped" and we both fell off our chairs...

Loving Pecola has left a new comment on your post "The sex was about power and power struggle, LP...":

Since it’s 3 am and I can’t sleep, I figured I might as well come jump off the fuckin precipice. .. literally. I have been avoiding entering this territory because where I see myself situated when it comes to fucking is somewhere else entirely. I rarely fuck for pleasure anymore. In fact, that hasn’t been a privilege of mine for nearly a decade. My fucking is timed. Is sterile, literally. My fucking is routine and desperate. I don’t find myself powerful in fucking, in fact I find myself completely and totally powerless. I feel more powerful when I am not thinking of fucking because for me fucking is babymaking which I have failed miserably at. And that makes me feel weak. Incredibly, frustratingly, uncharacteristically weak. I hate that feeling. And when I’m fucking, that’s how I feel. Useless. Intellectually I know that fucking is not only for babymaking. I remember when I fucked for fun and for love and for power and for expectations and for money and for revenge and for passion and for orgasm and for sport and for the challenge. I remember when fucking was more political for me. I remember consciously choosing not to fuck in order to give myself more options than I had previously been taught was allowed under the system of poverty that reinforced that that was one of the few things I would be able to do with my life. I was supposed to only lay down and get up with belly. I had been told that that was what I was good for but also that that was the worst thing to be. My family didn’t tell me that, but it was all around me. So I had a point to prove and fucking was taken off the table in order to prove it. Then I reached my goal baby-less age and I said, ok, now I can fuck. And fuck I did. With vengeance. And pride. And freedom. And guilt. And shame. And fear. And wonder. And disappointment. And love. And pain. And pleasure. That was political. That was me saying I have control over my body- as much as I knew what that meant at 18. And then at 20 I got married, for several reasons that I already mentioned here on this blog. And then I fucked to maintain this marriage because monogamy prevents him from fucking someone else when I don’t want to be bothered. I gave up. Relinquished. Fucking surrendered…willingly… some power of my own to be in this relationship. I can be a midwife who walks around talking about women’s power to choose who they love and fuck and partner with all I want, but the reality is that I gave up my own rights, human rights- the right to autonomy and love and thought and choice, in order to uphold patriarchy, monogamy and christianity- all of which are always working toward relegating me, as a woman especially, to the margins of the world. And then I fucked to make babies. And I have been fucking for this ever since. This fucking is political, too. But just when I have some great realization about how and why, it is completely overtaken by emotionality because infertility is a highly emotional process. But the political is still there… small moments of resistance… like ignoring the “expectant mothers” parking that’s popping up everywhere. I’m talking about this because it has to do with why I have a hard time entering a conversation about fucking. It is a slow death for me to keep talking about fucking. It is a spiral into depression that I can’t allow myself to fall into again. I have not, cannot, separate fucking from conceiving and therefore my inability to do so. I’m not there yet. I am sexually stunted. Maybe I got stuck in that place where most women temporarily suspend their own desires, whether they be for golden showers or BDSM (IDK, do they?)or whatever else because they’re pregnant… and because I was never allowed to conceive, give birth, I was never able to get back to myself.. back to exploration… back to sex… I don’t know if that makes sense to you, it is only recently beginning to make sense to me as the years wear on. I rarely get hot for sex for more than 2 seconds anymore. Because of the role sex has played in my life for the last several years, I get off on other things entirely. Sex just isn’t it for me. I hear you when you say your weekend date was about power. I get that. I know it’s layered and complicated. I recognize I entered on one of the few posts where you’re talking about fucking a man. But it is also a post where you’re talking about fucking a white man, which isn’t usually appealing to me but I still found it hot. You focused on the fact that I chose to respond to that post about you and a man, I was focused on the fact that I responded to a post where a black woman was fucking a white man and asking him to rape her and that I still somehow found that hot. There’s more to me than monogamy. There’s more to me than sex… which is my way of saying to myself there’s more to me than children. I’m not going to comment on all the sex posts. I’m not going to comment on all the bombed babies posts. You what I’m thinking when I see bombed babies? “Yes it’s hard, and I’d want to kill myself if those were my children that I just saw mauled in front of me… but… but… at least she got the chance to carry them… to birth them… to see them… to hold them… to love them… at least they didn’t die before they even made it to her uterus…” I know that won’t sit well with everyone. But that’s what I’m usually thinking. I know that that isn’t what those posts are about, but that’s what I see… what I say to myself… what I cry for, when I see them. When you talk about fucking, I am not only standing on the precipice saying “oh god, here we go, I am the monogamous one, I am the one who is buying into patriarchy, I am the one who listens to her grandmothers with reverence, I am the one who upholds the familial, hierarchical patterns she was taught and dares visit 1TBM without unpacking them every single time… umm, ok, ever… I am the one who simply will not do exactly what she wants me to do when she wants me to do it, the one who can not enter a conversation about fucking and power and homophobia…” I am also saying “fuck fucking, what’s so good about fucking? What has fucking gotten me for the last 8 fucking years? How much can I talk about fucking before I just quit fucking all -to –fucking- gether?” Cause see, we talk about fucking ad nauseum in my house for about 15 days out of the month. I know this aint the same kind of politic, the same kind of fucking, you talkin about, but seriously, I barely remember any other kind.
Hmm. Just to avoid avoiding this shit one.more.time, let me continue… I’ve been thinking about what I might want from communicating with you and whether I want to continue communicating or just go back to being a silent reader like the 99million other folks. It’s obviously easier to just come read and go on about my business. Watch a fellow warrior woman (even it’s not on the scale of the woman in the picture) work through her life as I continue to work through mine. I’ve figured out that one of the things I want is access to another brown skin woman’s existence to add to my collection of “this who brown women are.” I think for me it has been crucial to see brown women with all kinds of lifestyles in order to really be able to imagine a life for myself where I can be whoever I want to be. Like many other brown women in my life, you are unique, and add considerably to my idea of the possibilities of how freely I can live my life. I can understand how who I am only speaks to some miniscule part of your whole being, and how you cannot build an alliance off of that one fragmented piece. I get that. That’s it for now, but hopefully more comes along as you gear up for your birthday.

Maybe this post about fucking is a "to be continued..."

Yesterday I was talking to Ophelia about Rozena's completely ballzy and important work The Writing Circle which I've talked about off and on here on this blog. I said that I knew people had critiqued her work because the wimmin in it weren't likeable, not nice enough? Not friendly enough.
hmph...
I said that I didn't think that was an issue for me as I know what wimmin actually think beyond, underneath what they share in polite company, beyond what they will verbalize with pretty much anyone.
It's written in the absence. It's written in the silence. It's written in what we...no, that's too collective for my liking :), in what they choose to avoid discussing or exploring.

I said to Ophelia that my difficulty with Rozena's characters is the way they zone out, disassociate from their experience, from their pain, from the reality of their day to day.

I said that I don't tend to do that. I said that even when it's horribly uncomfortable or even embarassing I work hard to stay present. Of course this results in me being severely haunted by past conversations, by botched attempts at engagements, by times when I made awful choices, did awful things.

I don't have anywhere to run inside here. Most of what I've seen and done bounces around inside my head on the daily.

I write my blog to anchor me. It helps me stay with what I'd dearly like to avoid. I egg myself on. I share the unshareable. I try to openly explore what most would agree should stay hidden.

LP, human beings are severely, royally fucked up. :)
We shit and piss and vomit and bleed and sweat and drool and smell and cry and yell and whine and hork and snivel...our genital openings swell and crave touch and move us, control us, drive us...we rub them with other people while thoughts of what we've done, what we'd dearly like to do, thoughts of who we've been and who we'd dearly like to be flash through our brains interspersed with bits and pieces of raw, completely undecipherable, mostly unpalatable, unacceptable emotion flash through our brains, driving us to rut and juice and howl and grab and tear and scratch and bite and ride...
We spend most of the time we have on this planet pretending that we are capable of none of this, pretending that our parents are capable of none of this, that our grans never did any of this...

There I go again with that We. I hate that fucking We.
I don't want to be a We. I want to be a Me.

LP,
I read what you wrote and felt happy that you had shared...something.
I felt glad that you had taken a look...for a few minutes.
Does it haunt you? The fact that you looked? Let it. Make space for the haunting. It's not actually paranormal...abnormal. It's the real part. The rest is fake.

When you wrote about choosing to not fuck I thought about the fact that I started fucking at fifteen. I saw this fairly unassuming 22 year old Black man, I think a jamaican, sitting on the couch in the apartment of one of my frienemies. Her family name with Sophia. Outside everyone new her as Heather...or was it the other way around? No matter. :)

I had been watching a movie...Little Darlings...Tatum O'Neal and Kristy McNichol. Two white girls, camp, virginity, a dare to lose it...giggles. I had no friends to play truth dare double dare with. But I did have these puberty related yearnings that were completely exacerbated by the fact that none of the white boys...who, as I've mentioned here on this blog, seem to have grown into men whose peers powerfully lust after me, didn't, at that point find me particularly attractive or interesting.

In short, my fifteen year tartilicious self old self wasn't getting any play whatsoever. :)

Then I laid eyes on this 22 year year old man who I now, years later, understand had just recently entered physical maturity, sitting on that couch. :) He was...useful. I didn't get pregnant at fifteen, LP. I'm not sure my plumbing was all there because we did do it bareback. But I did get a yeast infection which, because I hadn't yet begun to educate myself about STDs, I actually understood as an STD and not as evidence of how thoroughly sperm can throw off the pH balance of my vagina...which it does. :)

I fucked off and on for most of my teen years. There was a birth control clinic in my white middle class suburban school that opened after school was closed. I guess they didn't want any of the little princesses with their princess diana haircuts to get pregnant unexpectedly. So they, and as a result, I, had access to the works...pap smears, free birth control and loads of information.

I didn't ever become pregnant by accident...I took the morning after pill once in the first or second year of university when the Estonian and I ended up fucking without a condom when I wasn't on the pill...I think that's what happened. I'm sure I'd remember better if I ended up giving birth to any little estonians at twenty or twenty-one. :)

I guess what I'm trying to say LP is that your understanding of why it is you chose to not fuck resonates with a lot of patriarchal, monogamous, sexual conservative mythology sold to young wimmin, to young Black middle classing wimmin, to young career driven wimmin to stop them from exploring their desires before they can be suitably controlled by a patriarch who is willing to take possession of them and their cunts.

Having sex doesn't make for babies conceived accidentally. Having lots of sex doesn't kill or infect. Being a sexual teen or young woman doesn't make people disrespect you or doubt your intellect.

Lack of education, lack of information, lack of communication, lack of access to birth control, oppression and sexually conservative, hateful indoctrination are the true culprits.

As you wrote I thought about the few sexually repressed good Black girls I've met over the course of my adulthood. I thought about who I would have been if I was raised by my mother and her catholic husband. phEW! That was close. :)

I thought about how the combined impact of colonization, systemic and day to day racism, lack of solid education (I'm not talking about rote learning leading to college, but actually being taught and encouraged to think regularly, deeply, critically about...anything...besides race and Blackness...), patriarchal oppression, class oppression and struggling to find surface seeming ways out of all this really fucks over the erotic of many Black wimmin.

How can I perform valuable, intelligent, going places, respectable, educated, nice Black girl? What publicly, systemically, familially, governmentally, educationally validated short form, iconic representation can I utilize to prove that I'm all that?

Oh...I can choose to not fuck and make sure that everyone knows I don't fuck easily or at all. If I can control or render nonexistent my desires then people will respect me and treat me with dignity.

I remember one of the wimmin in the intentional community I attempted to start who went to great pains, her nose in the air, to often explain to the rest of us Black wimmin who had been raped, sexually abused, or who had chosen to fuck with much abandon for whatever reasons, that she had an intact hymen...at twenty fucking years old... (OOps!) that was supposed to read: twenty fucking SEVEN years old.

She would say it with such attitude. Her vagina had never been entered by a man. It was clear that she drew much self worth from this fact. It was clear that she believed that there was a certain amount of status to be had among us who had been fucked or who had chosen to be fucked by regularly reminding us that she was a virgin. giggles...

You know I had a field day with her, right? :)

First I engaged with her around the fact that clearly underneath her attestations of being a wiccan, there still lay much catholic (did I mention that she was raised hardcore, obsessive, shame filled catholic?) guilt and fear around sex that she had decided to spin doctor into the facade of powerful dyke witch...who needed to make wimmin who had been penetrated feel awful about their sexual, choices.

Then I asked her to actually discuss what she meant when she said she had never had sex with a man in all these years of being partners with men who were clearly very sexual creatures. What did she give up? What did she allow herself to do? What did she allow them to do? How much of that hymen was actually left? How much of it existed only in her head? giggles...

Of course this was conversation we had with the exact same wimmin she had been attempting to hierarchically place herself above as virginal huntress witch/dominator.

We also had conversation about what it meant for her to have started off as a promise keeper, who then morphed into a perpetually "virginal" girlfriend who oozed sex and attempted to use the offer of sexualness as a way to maneuver in community, who then morphed into an unpenetrated witch who utilized sexual energy to continue to manipulate safe passage with men but also to manipulate herself into positions of dominance with wimmin who she nonverbally defined as used, trash, dirty, of less consequence.

Oh...we had some good conversations, LP. :)

I told her to either shit or completely get off the pot. Either she would verbally embrace her relationship to her own sexualness and stop pretending that she was untouched, thereby admitting that she was a sexual being who craved more sex but didn't actually understand sex very well...
or...
she should claim full status as uneducated virgin, willing and pitiful spinster chick...

giggles...
Basically I asked her to stop working both sides of the oppressive patriarchal sexual divide and to admit if she had been or was actually sexual with men and allow herself to find other ways to define her worth than attempting to shame other wimmin about their sexual choices.

She doesn't talk to me anymore.

Our conversations eventually morphed into actual battles. I found her insistence on finding disempowered and oppressive ways to feel powerful distasteful. Somewhere around the time I realized she was even willing to compete with Stinkapee, because as a educated, career driven Black girl, all she knew was competition on every possible front...
Because lying and hiding and avoiding...also self suppressing and self denying were all she had been taught to do, that these were her survival skills, I knew we couldn't be anything but enemy combatants.
sigh...

LP, fucking for procreation and not being able to actually make the conception thing work and feeling unsuccessful and less than because of the failure to produce offspring is an experience I don't understand.

I started bleeding two months after I had Stinkapee even though I'd heard stories from other mamas about not getting their periods for months or even over a year.

After I had Shmolee I got my period in a month.

I'm a breeder. :)

Papster's sperm make extra space inside his testicles. He makes too much sperm. :)

He's a breeder. Though he's been trying to tell me he's pretty much done. But I think I've got one more in me...so many eggs...so little time.

When I had dinner with Ophelia and her male partner, Papster's biological father, him and I ended up having a back and forth.

giggles...
I try to avoid these mostly. But this one was okay. I was talking about avoiding the folks I'd met in circles where people define themselves as the Black artsy intelligensia...unh...I wouldn't call them that. :)

I told him that although they occasionally try to make contact with me, most recently I've been getting invitations to "friend" a frienenemy who was a lover who referred to his penis as his "thing" (I didn't tell Papster's fragile and sex negative progenitor about the "thing"...he would have keeled over and I would have had to resuscitate him)...I told him that I can't stand the thought of interacting with them..most of them being folks who give him a lot more attention and credence than I ever will.

He smiled his knowing, yet completely vacant smile. I talked about them being backward and backward moving. I talked about them being fearful, colonized and christian conservative. I said that I don't need to change them. I just don't want to be around them. I want something more for myself.

I said that I see the wimmin, many of whom are younger than me, walking around looking haunted.
Why?
Well, I think it's because they're not married (yet). It's a horrible painful irony, or it must be for them that a big fucking jamette like me, who clearly spits on marriage as a respected institution, who clearly spits on the nuclear family as an oppressive part of larger systems of domination, who clearly spits on motherhood as a cancerously oppressive patriarchally colonized identity, who clearly horks up massive gobs of projectile vomit at the thought of defining myself and my worth according to any of these, has what they so deeply crave.

I didn't define a good life, right work or true love according to the acquisition of any of these. I defined myself. I sought to understand myself. I tried to listen to myself. I made space for myself on this planet and these other experiences dropped into my lap.

I didn't think I needed or wanted them. Clearly the universe or the ancestors or the goddess or maybe a triumvirate of all three put their heads together and conspired on my behalf to offer me some things that would anchor me to this place when it was so clear that I was bent on not being here for much longer.

My self worth informs the kind of partner I am. My self worth informs the kind of mindful, politicized fucking I choose to do. My self worth informed the kind of sexual and politically conscious and perverse pregnant mama I chose to be. My self worth informs the kind of radical parent I am becoming.

These experiences, fulfilling them as part of a pre-ordained oppressive plan where I matter little but where my ability to tow the line matters much, will never give me self worth. That's basically putting the cart before the horse.

Fuck for yourself, LP.
Fuck for connection when you want to be connected to your partner.
Tell him to fuck off when/if you don't want to fuck.
Fuck for pleasure.
Fuck for release. Fuck to drive him and yourself consensually crazy.
Fuck to make sure you don't go crazy.

Fucking primarily to make babies and not ending up making babies will make you crazy. Then if you end up accidentally making one you'll be a crazy mutha to a baby you will drive crazy. Don't raise more crazy people on a planet already filled with crazies. :)

You have a hunger that doesn't have to do with making babies. You have a misplaced, projected hunger that predates any unsuccessful attempts at baby making. Having a baby is supposed to mean something massive for you. You sound as if it's supposed to do something for you...to your life.

It won't.

A baby means something to itSELF that will unfold inside of itSELF, for its own reasons, truth unto itself, growing inside of it's spirit over time as it grows, ages and moves away from you. Any baby you and your partner conceive will mean something for itself. It will not in and of itself mean anything to you...that you aren't already open to making, creating in your own life.

Whatever is there is what you'll have more of, stripped bare and unavoidable once you give birth.

LP,
You have to mean something for you as I have to mean something for me.

If you are not filled with yourSELF, LP, a baby isn't going to fill you. A baby attempting to draw from you as it attempts to fill itSELF will disappoint you, enrage you, hurt you, leave you feeling...empty...it will tell you about yourself and your w/hole and your hurt and your feelings.

They always tell us things about who we are. It's so awful to listen. :) It's worse when I don't. I have to...don't want to...haveTOlistEN...

LP, if I could say anything to you that would get through to you which I don't think it will but I'll write it anyways...
Stop.
Just stop.
Stop trying to have babies. :)
Take a moment to understand yourSELF.
Take a few YEARS!
Dear GAWD! You've got time!
If you're infertile now, there's no rush :) you'll still be infertile in six or seven years. But you'll be more self aware and infertile. woo-HOO! :)
If you're not actually infertile, you might just be having bad sex because you're stressed and just going through the motions. There's a reason why humaaans are built to have good sex, midwife. Good sex gets all the plumbing functioning as it should be which...if that's your thing, leads directly to baby makin'. :)

LP, aren't you even remotely interested in unpacking all the stuff you're walking with? I know you're walking with stuff. I'm walking with stuff. We're all walking with stuff. You ivy league education clearly has not helped you deal with your stuff. Don't you think it's time to see to that? Don't you think you deserve the space? Don't you think any child you have deserves a mama who knows something more than just what she was taught by her oppressed family and at a corporate based facility of mass education designed to convey status?

We can't do this together, LP.

I don't at all identify with your process. Mine has been really different. All I could do is traumatize you with perverse stories and emotional work I'm doing that resonates with where I sit impatiently waiting for someone who can match me to step to me. :) All I could offer are stories about times when I've painfully bucked up against struggling good Black girls who were drowning in the shite their parents and communities bequeathed them which automatically meant I was gonna battle with them to survive because they were taught that a sistren like me has no right to live free and happy.

LP, thanks for owning up to trying to make me part of a collection. I felt it. I understood it. But I needed you to own it.

D'you understand the purpose of your collection? Will you let the memory of all those you've encountered gather dust on your mantle while you continue in the exact same rut unchanged and untouched?

LP, d'you know how many good Black girls, or good girls period have tried to make me part of their street cred collections?

D'you know how many wimmin have come close, veiled, cloaked and otherwise completely covered inviting me to profoundly engage with them, without having the tools to do the same for me?

D'you know how many times I've requested entry past their fortressed built to withstand years of seige, gates and been refused on the grounds that they mostly just wanted to watch me do my thing, take notes, utilize what they could to manifest some sort of surface seeming and let me go....?

D'you know how many really difficult conversations and arguments I've had with folks who couldn't just admit to wanting to collect me cuz I might look good for them, with them, to them in a particular light, under particular circumstances...but not in polite or professional circles...?

D'you know how many times I've told them that they either needed to fully bring it or leave me tha fuck alone?

D'you know how many times people have stayed, trying to continue to pursue their agendas and frustrating me to no end, or how many times they have skulked away assuming I would not see them retreating and mark the pain I felt at them leaving...being absent...and thinking that because they left without saying they left that they could re-enter whenever they liked, plug back in, hook up with me at will because they never actually said they were leaving in the first place?

LP, thanks for this note. It was a refreshing departure from our usual cat and mouse communications. I appreciate it for that reason. But I also appreciate it because it has caused me to revisit past blogland and real time sore spots, sewing myself up and laying on healing hands as I type...relief...

A final word?

It's not that who you are does not allow for alliance at this point.

It's that what you are willing to understand of who you are, what you are willing to do in order to develop consciousness as you fully deal with who you are does not allow for alliance.

What you can manage at this point doesn't entice me closer. It only emphasizes the massive chasms between where you sit and where I struggle.

Thanks for offering words, rage, confusion, need, upset, nascent self exploration, LP.

You were passionately beautiful. :)

if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.