Bathsheba Monk's Blog, page 4

Let Us Now Praise {American} Men

“Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth."   Chuck Norris

I think Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" was a real man.     Me.  

“No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.” 
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

"To have done no man a wrong, to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude this is to be a man"--Orison Swett Marden

"A strong man doesn't have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn't match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world." -- Marilyn Monroe

"What our voters are in the pit and gallery they are also in the polling booth. We are all now under what Burke called “the hoofs of the swinish multitude.” The multitude thus pronounces judgment on its own units: it admits itself unfit to govern, and will vote only for a man morphologically and generically transfigured by palatial residence and equipage, by transcendent tailoring, by the glamor of aristocratic kinship." George Bernard Shaw, intro to Man and Superman

becoming a stereotype

Two days ago I was charging out of the front door of my house to the car when my cell phone rang, It was Mom and we started chatting and I half-noticed a woman getting stuff out of her car, which was parked right behind mine. She stopped unloading her car and flagged me down. She was a middle-aged Latina in hospital scrubs. I told my mom to wait while the woman nervously said, 'Is everything alright? I'm a nurse and I'm doing a home visit." she pointed across the street to where Agnes lives.  I've seen lots of different cars parked here in the last year, nurses and aides going to see Agnes, who is declining. They go briskly about their business becoming part of the backdrop. But this woman insisted I talk to her, so I hung up on Mom and said, "Yeah, everything's fine. Do you need something?" Fear on her face, she repeated that she was a nurse doing a home visit. "Great, wonderful!" I said, wondering what was really going on when a picture of me, a white middle-aged woman talking into a cell phone popped up. I was that woman calling the cops because I saw a brown person in my territory.

Then yesterday,  two young black men, high school age, were walking down the street when I was getting out of my car.  I was on my phone again and as they passed in front of me I smiled and said hello and they... physically recoiled.

A white rookie cop shot an unarmed crazy brown person less than two weeks ago in our neighborhood. The unarmed crazy brown person is being buried today and police supporters are protesting the funeral because the rookie cop has been charged with voluntary manslaughter. Fear that blinds the mind and pulls the trigger. One person dead and two families ruined because of it.

When I moved to Allentown and took a gig teaching at LCCC in downtown at night, I got a letter from the school administration warning the faculty not to park in the downtown because it was dangerous, and so my husband ferried me back and forth until I finally said, you know, I'm not really afraid of other people. This is ridiculous. And I started driving myself. That was ten years ago, but I didn't see it for what it was. The students themselves were not warned of this danger. I know because I asked them. Perhaps, it was because they, mostly brown and black children, were assumed to be the danger?

I know I know I know white people don't know about racism and privilege and we can go around oblivious to the rest of humanity happy as pigs in a pen. I don't know how to fix that. It's only been recently that I felt I personally wasn't being seen as an individual (Ah! we have that in common!). That I've become a stereotype, a white woman wielding a cell phone like a semi that can summon a cop and ruin a life or four, just because I'm scared. That makes a large number of my fellow humans scared of me. I know they're scared of me.  I have seen that fear before--on the faces of people I had to fire on the job. Of lives I had to disrupt if not ruin. Justified or not. A big reason I left corporate America. Then, I had the luxury of walking away. But I live here. There's no quitting this one.

Karma Comeuppance

A Buddhist explained it to me like this:  In the west, we tend to think of karma as social justice. If someone robs a little old lady, karma, in our view, would turn around and smack the robber where he lives--like having his own mother getting mugged.  But karma is 'like throwing a fistful of dirt into the wind', this Buddhist said.  It comes back instantaneously and is manifested internally.  Every action has a consequence. So even if the robber took his money and went to live in the Virgin Islands, and everyone would think he got away with it, he would always be looking over his shoulder for the tap.  He has to live with it. The stress. The guilt.

Evil actions, Buddhists say, come from concern with the ego.  As a westerner it's hard to say that ego is evil.  Doesn't all achievement come from ego? I think yes, but ego also says, "I don't have enough." Never enough to feel secure certainly.  Look at the Koch brothers. They never seem to have enough, when their just-getting-by is enough to support a million lesser egos.  None of those rich guys seem happy, you notice that?  Their expressions are pained and twisted.

I think a lot of Republicans come from a place of 'never-enough'.  Insecure egos manifest themselves as fear.  And Republicans are a fearful lot. Afraid of other people especially.

This isn't to say Democrats get off Scott-free. Ego is also giving charity so you feel good about yourself. On a more readily recognizable level, ego is using your position to get large fees for speaking or writing about your experiences doing good so those of us who identify with them feel good by extension.

Countries have karma too.  What happens when we betray our allies? When we betray our ideals? I think we're dealing with that karma comeuppance now.

We betrayed our very essence. We see everyone as our enemy--the very definition of bad karma. We no longer speak of human rights violations. We talk about people running for their lives and seeking sanctuary here as "breaking the law" ergo deserving whatever indignities we chose to impose on them. We talk about KKK members, who are scared of everyone not named Bubba, as "very fine people"

Trump sees everyone as his enemy. That's really bad karma.  But look at what he has, you may say. Okay, he is president (a job he, by all accounts, didn't really want), is rich (the source of said wealth may very well prove to be his undoing), has a loyal and beautiful wife (whose worth he has compulsively degraded), and loyal sycophants (who are willing to put the shiv in when he deserts them.)  He can't sleep and he's afraid of being poisoned. He's afraid. He's tainted the national narrative with his fear.

But you know what? Maybe it started before Trump.  Maybe our bad karma started when we said/say torture is okay.

Hell, maybe it goes back even further.  DeToqueville in Democracy in America said we were never going to be able to live down the legacy of slavery and-- as long as black men get shot in the back fleeing law enforcement who are in a rage because a vehicle is missing a brake light--he's right.

Maybe it goes back even further. We had to slay a lot of Indians to get to Thanksgiving, probably the most fraught-with-bad karma holiday on the US calendar.  Read advice columns that time of year.  "I have to go home for Thanksgiving and my father/mother/brother/sister/aunt doesn't blah blah blah love me."

By now you're panting, waiting for the answer to get rid of bad karma, right?

It's simple and not-so-simple.  Simple in that all you have to do is be aware that your ego is fearful and insatiable and that actions have consequences.  I mean really aware though.  Not just put up a meme on FB that says, "actions have consequences"....Sitting Bull.  You have to know it in your gut and there's nothing stopping you from knowing it now.  It's impossible to be perfect so just be aware of when you're acting out of ego and know that whatever you're doing has consequences.

Just stop, take a breath, and know it.  Simple. And not-so-simple.

Join me in Tulum!

I'm teaming up with Acautic Lofts and Tribal Yoga Tulum to create a 5 day intensive writing/yoga vacation....November 15-19 in beautiful Tulum, Mexico.  Discounts on bike rental and diving equipment.  Register here.  VERY limited class, so if you're interested jump on it.

The Definition of Is

1. I was listening to Armed Forces Network when Reagan was debating Jimmy Carter. The moderator asked a question and Reagan went off on a detour about how swell it was to drive on Route 1 up the California coast, completely sidestepping the moderator's question. I said to myself, "Wow. That guy has a major part missing" and it turned out that he did. He suffered from Alzheimer's, but the country shrugged. He was an actor. What did I expect? Well, perhaps not an actor with Alzheimer's?
2.  Reagan lowered the bar, I think, so when Clinton, asked about his liaison with an intern, lied into the camera and said, "It depends on what the definition of the word 'is' is," we had officially moved into upside down world where there was no direct line between word and meaning.
3.. Now, presidential discourse is barely language, but symbols for pique, tantrums and revenge fantasies. And everybody's talking about that, of course, because 45's piques and tantrums and revenge fantasies impact our lives. But it's only because we're fed a steady diet of it and we gobble it up like greedy bastards.
4. We talk about politics like we're watching the Superbowl. We're cheering for a porn star only because she makes the other team squirm. Because, really, who cares who a man-not-your-mate sleeps with? Unless you're an insufferable busy-body.
5. My position (no pun intended) has always been that the only problem with L'Affaire Stormy is that 45 allowed himself to be blackmailed.
5.  Blackmail-ability (I just made that up) is the biggest factor in not granting security clearances. If you would compromise yourself and your country so your secret won't get out, you are a huge risk for blackmail. I don't think that Kushner is the only person in this administration who should be denied access to Top Secret information. Am I wrong?
6. Now we hear that Fox and Friends are taking over the government. Which makes sense in the context of this upside down world we live in. After all, Fox and Friends are the only people that 45 listens to, every morning for hours. After which he regurgitates their opinions--now his own--out to the world.  It makes sense he would move his real advisers closer to him so they can whisper their symbols of loyalty, love and conspiracy-theories directly into his ear.
7. Hey! Maybe this spells the end of Fox and Friends because 45 has a short attention span.
8. Wishful thinking.
9. How long, though, before F&F lean in nervously and ask him:
10. Is you is, or is you ain't my baby?
11. It depends on what the definition of "is" is.

Do you like your selfie?

We have so much—more than any civilization in the history of the world—yet we’re miserly not only with strangers but with each other. We talk now about God deserting us because we took him out of the public sphere, and I would agree that we took him out of the public sphere by disobeying his golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We are fouling our nest by declaring a free-for-all on the earth—God’s bequest to us. Mine! Frack! Drill, baby, drill! We put down animals who foul their nest because it’s a sign of madness yet we prop up our own mad King Lear who encourages the worst in us: greed, lies, fear, and anger. There is no more talk of human rights abuses when we negotiate with other countries. We no longer even pretendto walk the moral high ground. That card is not in our deck. Our national vocabulary no longer fosters common human dignity. Instead we talk of other countries being shit holes, immigrants from countries with non-Aryan populations being garbage, racist beings called “pretty good people” by King Lear. And the crowd roars. Wisdom from the Talmud: we don’t see things as THEY are, we see things as WE are. We voted for King Lear and his court. Us. Do you like who we are? Are you ready for your close-up? Smile for the birdie.

Grace

As a youth, I was transfixed by this picture by Grunewald--the Temptation of St. Anthony--which I thought a horrible misnomer.  What could possibly be tempting about monsters clawing at your flesh?  I became obsessed with the figure in the lower left and made countless copies of it, red sores on green flesh, which somebody along the way thankfully tossed. I was equally perplexed by Flannery O'Connor, a writer I admired for her Southern Gothic sensibility, not the discussion-stopping pronouncement that her writing was about grace.  What grace is there in being shot by a kidnapper? It took me literally decades to realize that St. Anthony wasn't fighting the urge to debauch--my earthbound definition of temptation--he was fighting despair that God or goodness or righteousness didn't exist. He was fighting to be graced with hope. And the obnoxious grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is on the brink of being murdered when she finally has the grace to drop pretense and see people as basically the same: "You could be my child," she says, right before he plugs her. In Catholic school, the fourth grade nun drew pictures of two milk bottles on the black board, one big and one small.  They were to connote souls and it didn't matter the size of your soul, your mission was to fill it up with grace to the brim. Top it off!  And that's what I wish all of us for the New Year. A bottle full of grace.

Collateral Damage

is a phrase associated with war time shenanigans.  You got to wipe-out a few civilians, as it were, to get the real target. That's war, baby. Now we're in a culture war and we still have collateral damage. The rich powerful men who have exercised their droit de seigneur
and are now being called out on it. Sorry about your lucrative careers, family, etc, but someone has to take the hit and you're big targets, even though, I know, I know, everyone does/did it.  Believe me, the #metoo thing isn't an aberration (two martinis and I'll tell you mine), tho most of us haven't swum in gold lined pools so it wasn't Harvey Weinstein or Louis C.K. waving their magic wands at us it was Harvey the factory supervisor who could give us overtime or Louis the case manager who could get our kids on disability. Aside: remember Casablanca and that Romanian woman having to sleep with Claude Raines to get her and her husband out of Casablanca? Nobody in my hearing ever mentioned that as odd.  But, in a world  that is starting to realize that Pussy Grabs Back, someone's got to be sacrificed and, well, bye bye.

 Second collateral damage are former factory workers, people who were left with their wrenches in mid turn as the assembly line was reassembled elsewhere. What to do with them?  No longer of use to society which is hell-bent on filling the ether with apps that make it faster to buy crap from faraway places and filling our minds with enraging headlines. We give them pain pills and took away health insurance, then cut off food stamps.  So....what? Are we hoping they'll just die off?  Kind of seems that way.

That's it, but I have to tell you about these green tiles. I had a dream the other night that I was trying to get my wares into an Israeli toy store and they said no room for more inventory so I made them build me a room off the side and the whole thing was covered in these green tiles, including my matching room. No idea.

Pack Animal

In 1996 I was quitting my job in a big corporation. I had given my work to others, attended my going away luncheon party, and threw up in the bathroom because by quitting I was basically stepping off a cliff. Still, I had a few hours to kill before I could leave and I logged onto the internet, which was just gearing up. I sent some intra-office emails for fun, then went to the big world wide net and keyed in "Bethlehem Steel."  One lone article came up. I keyed in my name. Nothing. When I got AOL at home, the dial up was slow and made me impatient, because I was starting a long-distance relationship and losing connection was maddening. The internet, I thought, was a bust. I remember thinking when I was 10 years old that wouldn't it be great if we could access all the information in the world in our hand? A la Star Trek I guess. Now I can. You can. Remember when Wikipedia first came out? I was teaching college at the time and I wouldn't let my students use Wikipedia as a reference. The Encyclopedia Britannica if you please. Does that even exist anymore? How could the validation of information be democratic? How can you have an opinion about facts? Granted, my blue collar background made me a little happy that experts were getting a comeuppance of sorts. And by this time I had felt the sting of critics. But the fickleness of Wikipedia left me breathless. Anyone could add or delete any information from an entry. Anyone. I only did it once and that was after Seung-Hui Cho shot up Virginia Tech. No one knew who the shooter was at first and I thought, "please don't let him be a Slav" because I remembered the shame of the Unabomber being Polish.  Other people told me the same thing: "Please don't let him be gay, Jewish, Black..." whatever your tribe, please God. Let him be the other. As soon as we found out who the shooter was, something made me go to Wikipedia and look up Korean American and sure enough within 15 minutes someone had added Seung-Hui Cho as a famous Korean American and I took it out. By now I'm sure someone put it back in...the viciousness of the pack, but I don't have the heart to look. Especially not today.

It's for you

Since LGBT, immigrants, brown people, and women are out of official favor right now, can we agree that white Christian boys are the dominant force in the USA? I'm talking "cultural Christian" here, not religious Christians. Different species entirely. Cultural Christians rely heavily on Old Testament revenge and smiting fantasies. "Smite mine enemies, oh Lord!" How about serving up a plague of flies to those no-goodniks who are persecuting me?  Which is ironic considering that the Old Testament was written for and by Jews, definite bogeymen in the Cultural Christian world view. Talk about cultural appropriation! You got your own book.  Different plot and themes, entirely. Cultural Christians wrap themselves in the Confederate flag and worship at the altar of generals who inveighed them to join their war in defense of the Confederate 1% who owned slaves and then betrayed them and left them for dead on their destroyed land with the fantasy that they mattered to... anyone. But that's their business. Kind of like being a Detroit Lion fan. Practice masochism. I don't care what you do in the privacy of your own home on a Sunday afternoon.  We are at an interesting juncture: the west coast is burning and the south is flooding, the east coast is bracing for a mutha of a wallop. If you believe God owns the Weather Channel--and if you ever heard a tornado or a hurricane or a forest fire, you'd swear it was the Almighty talking--what do you think he's trying to say and to whom?  LGBT, immigrants, brown people, and women have had their tongues cut out, so they're powerless. Forget them. He must be trying to send a message to the Cultural Christians who are in charge and who are making such a racket about their fantasy grievances that he has to roar to be heard over the din.  And this is what he's saying: "Cut it the f*k out! You're killing me!"