Julie R. Enszer's Blog, page 14

Places We Call Home

Some early mornings and evenings, there is  smell here in Florida that fills me with memory. Though, of course, I have limited memories here. I smell this smell and I think this is what Florida smells like. I do not know why I think that. The smell is smoky, like burning green matter smoldering in humidity. Some mornings, letting out Tibe, it greets me, whispering Welcome to Florida.

In Maryland, I missed what I consider the Michigan smell: pine and cedar trees in August when the evenings are cold and you know winter is coming to blanket those trees. At long last, I have marked home on the map on my iPhone so it is easy to get directions there, or here, when I am out, but the electronic marking of home, the return address on envelopes, the postcards announcing a new home, these are all misleading markers of home. Home is not a geographic experience, it is not a point on a map, not a address. Home is not flat. Home includes some kind of bodily experience. Home is olfactory–the smell of Florida, those pine and cedar trees with their knowledge of winter. Yesterday when Tibe and I walked out of the house and saw a cardinal bathing in the pond and two white cranes standing in the water watching the cardinal, then watching us before they took flight, we felt a moment of home. An hour later when two turkey hawks landed their huge bodies in the yard and poked at the grass for ten minutes, we watched them and wondered, is this home? Today we mark six months of living on this piece of land, in these structures, so yes, I can saw this is our house; this is where we live.

Home though is much more complicated. Home is both where we live and how we imagine our lives. Home is also who and what and where marks our death. My fabulous friend, the historian and writer, Tim Retzloff is curating a new public history project, Michigan LGBT Remember. The site marks the lives and deaths of LGBT people in Michigan. In the process of documenting what obituaries exist and what obituaries do not exist, by writing life stories and gathering obituaries, Tim is mapping the meanings and resonances of home not only for individual people, but for a community, for a gathering of clans, for a network of communities. As the months pass and Tim adds more and more obituaries and more blog posts that reflect on the significance of this work, new pictures of LGBT history in Michigan will emerge and influence a broader understanding of queer life, and love, and home.

Michigan will always be one of the places that I call home, even as a new state wheedles it’s way into my unconsciousness. Apparently sunshine is tasteless and odorless but plants and flowers reach for it as if they are drinking some delicious nectar and Tibe and Vita love nothing more than lying on their back letting sunshine roll across their bellies. They may consider home wherever there is a bowl of food and a hand for petting. I wait for the smells, the smoldering heat of fire, the anticipation of a freeze. I hear birds squawking as they fly overhead and a train roll down the tracks miles away. There are many places we call home. Some we remember, some we are just discovering.

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Adrift

So far as we know, Tibe always has had another dog companion. He is a bit a loose ends this week. Today though was a harvest day at the Strawberry field next door so when I returned home from teaching he could hang out outside, peering beneath the fence and supervising the harvest. He did a lot of running, a lot of watching, a lot of supporting for the harvest. The men and women in the fields spoke quietly to him letting him know it was ok. He likes to run with the tractor and the trucks. At four, he was so exhausted he came in and panted for a full fifteen minutes before he went to sleep. I worried that he had overdone it. 

In the evenings, he runs outside, surveying the entire perimeter. Sometimes he sits in front of the casita and wants to go inside to see if Emma is there. Vita, too, is more needy than usual. She likes long cuddles. She sleeps more on the bed. She has come up a few times to head butt Tibe to say, give me love, I am lonely too.

Now we have a menagerie that is very young. Tibe just three and Vita only two and a half. We miss the wisdom of age. The way Emma nudged and guided the pack in their daily behaviors. We are all a bit a wit’s end. Though we are sleeping now. One one each side of the room. We are finding our way without.

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What We Need

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On Saturday night, around nine, I called home. Emma had been sick during most of my trip. Before I left she had the itchy scratchies, but it seemed more than a skin irritation. It was. Liver failure. The beloved had to help her pass from this life. Optimistically, I thought making my call that there might have been if not a cure a quick fix. No. The beloved told me that Emma had passed. She could not talk; she was home. Crying upset Tibe and Vita. And she had no one to comfort her. In Washington, D.C., outside the conference hotel, I set my phone on marble and cried. A woman appeared before me. An angel. She hugged me. She comforted me. It was what I needed.

My mother used to always say, too little, too late. An explanation. A mantra. A way of knowing the world. Too little, too late. It sets one’s mind at ease in some ways for disappointment. It mitigates despair. It is a reminder of the folly of caring too much, of expecting happiness from the world. Too little, too late. It is a potion, an antidote. Too little, too late.

Though my experience in the world is so different than my mother’s. More than too little, too late, I find the world delivers what we need at the moment we need it. The woman, the angel who held me when I learned that Emma had died. The home where we could all live together after the bullies drove us from our home. The work that presents itself each morning, work that the world needs even if it unrecognized, unrealized. What we need appears when we open our eyes. My beloved Emma. My beautiful Saint Bernard. Her death. My sadness. The woman, the angel; her name is Camille.

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Sinister Wisdom’s Iconic Poster

I cannot remember the first time I saw it. Perhaps it was at Ann Arbor’s Women’s Crisis Center. It was there that I learned of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Project. A poster of the full triangular table against a black background was mounted on foam core and hung in the volunteer space. We looked at the place setting unable to quite see them all from the poster but still awed by the power the installation accrued. When the Women’s Crisis Center closed, I rescued the poster from the garbage and have carried it with me now for over twenty-five years. It sits behind me as I work each day.

For this reason, I believe that I did NOT first see Sinister Wisdom‘s Iconic poster with a photograph by Tee Corinne at the Women’s Crisis Center. I think with my imperfect memory that someone I knew had it hanging in her house. Even by the late 1980s it felt like an unbiquitous image. At the very least, it was everywhere I was looking.

Part of its power is of course the image of two women, naked, embracing, intimate, making love, fucking. Describe it however you wish, there is power in two women together. Power to challenge patriarchy, heterosexuality. Power to imagine a world where two women can be intimate, together, unashamed, unafraid.

Another part of its power, though for me, in the final years of my adolescence, was the simple concatenation of those two words at the bottom: Sinister Wisdom. I knew the journal and, perhaps more importantly, I knew what it represented: lesbian literature, art, and culture. Sinister Wisdom was the journal the imagined lesbians as having a culture, as creating literature worthy of broad consideration. Sinister Wisdom imagined a life for me in the future where I might publish (I lacked the chutzpah to imagine actually editing the journal, of carrying a particular mantle of lesbian culture forward.)

The poster for over twenty-five years has been an imagined and coveted object. I have seen them in a few women’s homes in recent years. Admired them. Lusted them, even. I have never found one for sale. I nearly was resigned to admiring it from afar when I visited my dear friends in San Francisco in November. They had a copy of the poster framed along their wall of naked women. Artful nudes, I think they called it. Both friends helped me pack up the Sinister Wisdom archive and ship it to my home in Florida. And then, in a magical offering, they said, why don’t you take the poster for your office. I demurred at first. No it is yours. It is too beautiful. It suits your home too perfectly. They insisted.

So today and all day, the poster hangs on the wall near my computer. Near where I edit the journal. Near where I handle the business aspects of the journal. It is beautiful. I am lucky. To have such friends. To have such pleasure. To have such responsibility. To have such a life.

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Sinister Wisdom Back Issues

In November, I moved the Sinister Wisdom storage unit from Berkeley, California to my new home in Florida. It was actually two adjoining storage units, ten feet by twenty feet. In total, with the help of a dear friend (over and above the call of duty, my dear!) and UHaul helpers, ninety-nine boxes of back issues weighing 4,000 pounds moved in to the second floor of the office.

Getting the books to Florida from California felt like a massive project. It was, but now in retrospect it seems manageable. Then getting the books organized and ordered seemed like a massive project. It was, but now, all of the copies are in labeled boxes, and I have an inventory of the books. Now, figuring out how to liquidate aobout 5,000 copies of Sinister Wisdom back issues is my massive project. I determined that I need to mail about 100 copies out a week–on top of the usual order fulfillment. I will be wearing the path thin between my house and the post office.

I have a bunch of strategies for distributing these copies, and I have had practice with this work after liquidating the back issues of Conditions. So I know that it can be done, even though my efforts will need to be amplified considering the longer run of Sinister Wisdom and five times the boxes.

While I know it can be done, the work now feels more urgent. I want these issues out and in the world as a part of a larger preservation strategy for lesbian literature and culture. While I love our new home and hope we spend many years here, I am aware acutely of the realities of needing to pack up and move quickly, to flee, to uproot for principle, for love, for life. Should that happen again, I do not want to carry the Sinister Wisdom boxes with me. I may not be able to carry the boxes with me. 

In the weeks that the back issues have been in my home, I have come to think of each of the books as little stars with the brightness of lesbian life contained within their pages. Each of these stars need to be in the night sky shining their light for future lesbians. Yes, there is a nearly complete set at the Library of Congress. Yes, there are a handful of academic libraries with full runs of the journal. And yes, this may not be enough to preserve lesbian literature and culture in a time of extreme nationalism and burgeoning populism–or worse. Our memories, our stories, our lives, our theories, our words, our expressions of power, truth, and justice are within the pages of Sinister Wisdom. I am dispersing these lights to anyone interested and willing to hold the light for future generations. And while I am flinging stars into the sky with the help of the USPS, I am generating new stars, new issues, every three months. The night is dark, but we bring the light of our lives into our future. Cris Williamson says it best:

Come to your life like a warrior

Nothing will bore yer, you can be happy

Let in the light, it will heal you

And you can feel you

Sing out a song of the soul

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Projects

I have always had a lot of projects in process and imagined projects. Chairs to be refinished, sewing projects, crafts, paper making. I love both making things and imagining making things. On bad days, the beloved will say that I do not finish projects; on horrible days, I will agree with her. When we moved, I abandoned some projects, leaving the raw materials at the side of the road: an antique mirror that I thought could be reframed beautifully, a stool that I wanted to paint. In June and August of last year, I could not imagine making things for a home.

At precisely that moment, the beloved stepped up and did a beautiful project. In the basement of my parents home was an outdoor loveseat that had sat in the laundry room ever since I was a child. Usually it was covered with dirty clothes or boxes of stuff. The cushions were plastic and from the 1970s. It was originally cream. It is sturdy. Solid. I have always liked it. In June, when we cleaned out the basement, the beloved brought it out to the back patio in Saginaw. She knew it could be a fun place to sit on summer evenings in Michigan. She knew it could be  patio piece for our new home. She loved it into being. She painted it green, bought new cushions. It is beautiful. I have sat on it many mornings drinking coffee, watching the sun rise, watching the dogs romp in our yard.

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Today, for the first time in a long time, I did my own project. When we first set up the lanai, we needed side tables for morning coffee and afternoon ice teas. We had an old white wicker stool and a small metal table from the beloved’s childhood home. They were both worn. I knew fresh pain would make them beautiful and tie the room together. Today I spray painted them both. We are pleased with the results.

Doing the project was great. I remember what our life was like before. I am thinking about what new projects I might cook up. What projects are you doing?

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The white wicker stool is now green.

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The black side table has been freshened up with a coat of shiny black paint.

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Vita’s Excellent Adventure

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Every morning when I go from the house to the casita where I work, Vita takes “Disney Transport” to the office. Her personal Disney transport system from the house to the casita is in my arms. While early in her life, I walked her on the leash, in the new house, she has a screened cattery that lets her enjoy the great outdoors without danger to herself or the birds. By and large, she has not been a cat seeking time outdoors. She does not sit by the doors to make a run for it. She does not look longingly out the windows.

Until recently. Out in the casita, Vita hovers by the front door. Most times though she is corralled indoors by the dogs coming in or out. The week before last, however, she snuck out when I went to the big house for lunch. I looked out the window near the pool and there she was slinking by the lanai. I rescued hr immediately and she had to stay at the big house. For the balance of the day. She was not happy and mewed on the patio for a good thirty minutes.

Then on Thursday, at noon, she somehow got out. I did not realize it until about four in the afternoon. Then I heard her but could not find her, the HVAC repair man was here. No one saw her. Finally at dinner time, she emerged from the plants behind the pond. I carried her inside. She ate dinner as usual, but spent the evening sleeping. Overnight she slept in her bed next to ours. In the morning, she dragged her tired body from her night bed to her day bed (the guest bed in the front of the house). I worried midday that something was wrong. Perhaps she ate something poisonous? Ran into the frog with teeth? She was eating though and purring. I decided it was just exhaustion.

Today she seems fine. Though next week will be a struggle. She cannot stay in the casita if she is going to try to escape. The sun is too bright. The osprey across the street, while primarily pescetarians, might enjoy a feline. We will have to find a way to work it out. For now though, I have dubbed Vita the Trampa of Tampa.

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What Feminism Teaches Me

Two dynamics have been troubling me over the last weeks and months. Here I am finally linking them together, connecting them with feminist pedagogies, and, most importantly, rethinking how I teach Women’s Studies.

The first dynamic is expressed in multiple phenomenon and observed behaviors over the past number of months, particularly post-Trump’s come to prominence as a nominee and now as President Elect. I see people unfriending people on Facebook because they are Trump supporters. I see people ending friendships and relationships because people voted for Trump or express support for Trump’s ideas. More broadly, in safe space conversations, I see people wanting to create spaces of harmony and accord, which I appreciate, but I do not see people seeking spaces for dissent, for working through disagreements, for clarifying difficult positions, for arguing, for suasion.

The second dynamic comes from working with a young woman on an editorial project. We had a challenging assignment to create a book and most of her engagements involved statements that began “I think” or “I feel.” I appreciate those opening to sentences and significantly I recognize them as a mode of thinking and speaking from feminist pedagogies. Yet for this project, which involved multiple people most of whom had more experience, more knowledge, and more authority in the project, those declarations grew tiresome and the young woman could not recognize that her contributions did not help build or move the project forward. Instead she became frustrated and could not find a mode to contribute to the work. I also became frustrated with her and did not engage the mentorship work to help her learn and grow from the project. What I wanted to tell her is: I do not care what you think or feel. I care about what is possible for this project, what moves this work forward, how can we craft something that satisfies multiple priorities, some of which are in conflict?

My concern and discomfort in observing these dynamics is that I recognize that I contribute to these outcomes. I have a role in creating the societal conditions that lead to these situations. I feel morally and politically culpable for what I am observing happening. I know that the notion of creating boundaries, of drawing lines of people who are in an out of one’s social circle, comes from a point of strength and empowerment, two core tenets of feminism. I also know that the work of creating safe spaces is a feminist project. One that is important and has been successful. Yet, I am not comfortable with how it is being deployed in this particular moment. I recognize people’s need for safety and openness. I also feel we need to engage passionately with many people to challenge ideas and engage in the project of ending misogyny, sexism, racism, homophobia, and xenophobia (just as a start–there is more, of course).

Similarly, I recognize the power of I think and I feel as tools of analysis for understanding a world in which one is oppressed. I recognize my own work in helping people come to this language and give voice to these conditions. Yet, in the work situation, I found them so limiting and so ineffective, particularly without other tools–other tools that equally are feminist and powerful. I am distressed by these situations, and I equally am distressed by knowing that my labor contributes to them. Ultimately, too, I am disheartened to know that these situations evolved over months and years and that undoing them will require even more months and years–and engagements of many more people.

So what am I going to do differently? Two structural ideas that I will be implementing in my spring Introduction to Women’s Studies classes.

Rather than I think or I feel, I am going to invite students to engage materials with different modes of analysis. What if we enter materials and discussions with sentences that begin: I wonder, I observe, I did not understand, I looked for more information about x and I found y. What if we create a feminist space that recognizes: I have no personal connection with this material, yet it is important and I want to know more about it without making it about me?
Rather than an internally-focused classroom where students and student interaction become the process focus for thinking and learning about feminism, I am structuring activities where students engage people outside of the classroom in conversations about the materials we grapple with in class. For example, what do their mothers and aunts and sisters think about Linda Hirshman’s Get to Work? Where do we see examples of sex and gender confused as Joan Roughgarden outlines in daily conversations with people in our lives? How do we talk to people with ideas different from our own to learn?

Of course, both of these modes of engagement ARE a part of feminist pedagogies–and always have been. Yet, in this moment, center them, emphasizing them anew, is a crucial intervention in reworking how we as feminist approach the world. Ultimately, what feminism teaches me is that we can remake the world. Our world needs that; my vision of this remaking of the world includes at the moment creating more possibilities for feminists to engage powerfully and intelligently in the public sphere–from the personal public sphere of Facebook to powerful national media and national political stages–and for feminists to have multiple tools for making contributions to our world.

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Quilt made by Dhai Barr in Portland, OR. Photo Credit: http://quiltart.com/challenges/yoni/index.html

 

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Good Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert

The questions of who to trust, how to find people to trust, and how to save ourselves from the pain of trusting someone not worthy of trust remain important in my life. This weekend, I encountered a great article from Elizabeth Gilbert in Oprah Magazine. Gilbert writes:

I came up with four questions to help me decide who got to read my work when it was in its most vulnerable stages: 

Do I trust this person’s taste and judgment?
Does this person understand what I’m trying to create here?
Does this person genuinely want me to succeed?
Is this person capable of delivering the truth to me in a sensitive and compassionate manner?

I will be returning to these four questions in 2017 thinking about how to find these people and how to be this kind of person this year and in years to come.

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2016 Reading

Like most years, I read some books this year. Here are my thoughts on what I loved:

Three extraordinary biographies: Lola Ridge, Barbara Grier, and Eleanor Roosevelt (though I am not quite done with the last one.)

Non-fiction I loved: Susan Faludi’s In the Darkroom (an extrarodinary meditation on family, gender, governance, and life by a writer at the top of her game), Matthew Desmond’s Evicted (while this book was on a few best of lists, it was not on enough; what is so striking is Desmond’s empathy for all of the people in his story; he is a model for living in the Trump world), and Terrry Tempest Williams’s The Hour of Land (I was not expecting to love this so it proves that I love ANYTHING Williams writes).

Fiction: Weekend by Jane Eaton Hamilton (far and away the best book I read this year), LaRose by Louise Erdrich, Wind Woman (Such Is My Beloved) by Carole Hale.

Poetry: Odes by Sharon Olds.

I did not love as much as usual; I think that my capacity to love over the course of the year was compromised by other life events. I read consistently though which is what I wanted to do. And I am hatching some new ideas about lesbian literature over the twenty-first century. So that is positive.

I am excited to read more next year.

What did you read? What did you love?

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