Three humor videos with fearsome subtexts: about “throwing away” our old material (and perceptions of self — hello Buddhism); economic violence and growing up poor and Black in a food desert in the U.S.; and . . . well, while there’s nothing inherently sad or scary about being hard of hearing / deaf / Deaf / fluent in sign language, but watching it pushes me to consider how, for every hearing person who enjoys and appreciates it, there are countless events that remain stubbornly inaccessible to non-hearing folks.
Case in point: the other two videos in this post.
If I’m being honest, I feel like I don’t have time to make transcripts for the other videos. If I’m being really honest, I mostly just don’t feel like doing it.
[Fast-forward an hour of wandering the internet aimlessly, feeling background-guilty about not writing transcripts, and noticing a stream of thoughts that justify why I don’t have to do it.]
[Now starting to write transcripts. Hey, this ain’t so bad. Kinda fun, actually. Helps that these two ppl are talented.]
Selected and /or outlined transcripts below the jump. Imperfect.
Concluding this spontaneous miniseries on companionship (or maybe not concluding it — who knows? — it’s spontaneous), we arrive at Ryan. You know, my partner, the guy from kale vs. flowers and Bad Good Romance. The other day, I read a passage from James Agee’s Southern novel A Death In the Family that reminded me of our household dynamic. Specifically, the ways that we negotiate gendered roles, try to both anticipate and discuss each others’ needs, and occasionally discover “dhamma,” or insights about the nature of things, right in the (dis)comfort of our own home.
In this scene from the book, Jay has just jolted awake in the dead of night thanks to a call from his brother Ralph, who drunkenly warns that their father may soon die from long-battled heart problems. Jay has decided to take the train up to his parents’ town, and he and his wife Mary, also awakened by the phone call, are getting him ready to leave.
“It may all be a false alarm. I know Ralph goes off his trolley easy. But we just can’t afford to take that chance.”
“Of course not, Jay.” There was a loud stirring as she got from bed.
“What you up to?”
“Why, your breakfast,” she said, switching on the light. “Sakes alive,” she said, seeing the clock.
“Oh, Mary. Get on back to bed. I can pick up something downtown.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, hurrying into her bathrobe.
“Honest, it would be just as easy,” he said. He liked night lunchrooms, and had not been in one since Rufus was born. He was very faintly disappointed. But still more, he was warmed by the simplicity with which she got up for him, thoroughly awake.
“Why, Jay, that is out of the question!” she said, knotting the bathrobe girdle. She got into her slippers and shuffled quickly to the door. She looked back and said, in a stage whisper, “Bring your shoes — to the kitchen.”
He watched her disappear, wondering what in the hell she meant by that, and was suddenly taken with a snort of silent amusement. She had looked so deadly serious, about the shoes. God, the ten thousand little things every day that a woman kept thinking of, on account of children. Hardly even thinking, he thought to himself as he pulled on his other sock. Practically automatic. Like breathing.
And most of the time, he thought, as he stripped, they’re dead right. Course they’re so much in the habit of it (he stepped into his drawers) that sometimes they overdo it. But most of the time if you think even for a second before you get annoyed (he buttoned his undershirt), there is good common sense behind it.
Ryan tells this funny joke sometimes about one method, half-conscious at most, by which person X tries to evade domestic work and pile it on a partner. “But you’re so good at [cooking, doing laundry, calming a fretful child]. If I do it, I’ll just fuck it up.” A passive-aggressive compliment-trap, which leaves the other person feeling obligated to do the thing they’re so much better at doing.
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Obviously, this is one of the big problems with the naturalization of gender roles in heteronormative family requirements. Men are raised to believe that they don’t have to learn how to cook/clean/mend/mind children because women are so naturally good at it. Jay appears to have no clue that his wife was brought up to learn how to be a “good woman,” which means acquiring certain social and reproductive skills, including staying attuned to the needs of her socially-sanctioned husband and children. She might enjoy learning those skills; she might not. The point is, the skills aren’t endemic to her based on her gender. For a whole host of reasons that I won’t get into here, she’s not really free to self-determine her own gender identity and presentation, fertility, or (as a working-class person) the circumstances of her productive and reproductive labor.
So this is the background against which Ryan and I operate. Furthermore, Ryan works. I “work” from home on grad school (viz. this blog, or planning for EastBaySol). I spend more time at home so its levels of (un)tidiness affect me more, which makes me more inclined to change/correct them myself. Also, I like to cook more than he does. So he takes pains to counteract the assumption that just because I know how to cook, and even enjoy it, that this means it’s effortless for me, and that he’s entitled to its products, as though he were plucking a ripe plum from a backyard tree. And those times when I do wind up cooking more than 50%, he makes sure to do the bulk of the cleanup. Last week when I started washing dishes out of turn after lunch, he straight-up chased me out of the kitchen. Another morning as I slept he made breakfast and green tea, then came back to bed to cuddle me awake.
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Maintaining mindfulness around housework distribution doesn’t have to be robotic or transactional. It’s actually a pretty emotional and tender process for us, and I think for a lot of people. The other day I was talking to a woman who lives with her girlfriend, and was telling me that even though her partner works longer hours than she does, they cook dinner together every night and split the remaining housework evenly. “I just knew I would be unhappy otherwise,” she said. I love that this negotiation takes the feeling of work into account, and not just some supposedly objective measurement of household labor — in joules, or whatever.
Jay and Mary’s middle-of-the-night crisis management takes a turn for the tender, too. I see many of my relationship dynamics reflected between them.
He sat on the bed and reached for one shoe.
Oh.
Yup.
He took his shoes, a tie, a collar and collar buttons, and started from the room. He saw the rumpled bed. Well, he thought, I can do something for her. He put his things on the floor, smoothed the sheets, and punched the pillows. The sheets were still warm on her side. He drew the covers up to keep the warmth, then laid them open a few inches, so it would look inviting to get into. She’ll be glad of that, he thought, very well pleased with the looks of it. He gathered up his shoes, collar, tie and buttons, and made for the [bathroom], taking special care when he passed the children’s door, which was slightly ajar.
Continuing in the vein of plants, pets, and partnership — or the ways in which companions both reflect the quality of our treatment, and express their own nature independent of us — in the past 20 hours since we brought her home, our newly adopted kitten Eloise has proven both delightfully surprising and shockingly predictable.
At the city shelter where we adopted her, the staff warned us that Eloise would probably be extremely shy. She and two siblings were found in a car (not sure whether this makes them stray or semi-feral), terrified of the long human arms reaching down to nab them. Within the cat pound’s contained visiting space, surrounded by cages, she seemed calm enough on our betoweled laps, but didn’t purr or rub her head against us like some of the older cats did. One of the women on staff wore a foreboding face when she advised us to handle the kitten as much as possible once we got her home, so that hopefully she would grow comfortable with humans. Sobered but optimistic, we left her over the weekend to be spayed Monday morning. Following that surgical ordeal, we anticipated a drugged bundle of quasi-hostility retreating to the remotest corners of our bathroom for the first days or weeks.
Sure enough, the minute we lifted her from the vet-issued cardboard carrying case and set her on our bathroom tiles, she fled to the farthest (and dirtiest) corner (straight past the cat bed I so lovingly fashioned for her out of a cardboard box and an accidentally-shrunken cashmere sweater). There she remained, cowering behind the dusty toilet.
I hear that in Narcotics Anonymous, they advise people starting or re-starting recovery to avoid taking a lover. Human relationships are complicated and fraught. First, start with a plant. If you can keep a plant alive and healthy, then you might be ready to adopt an animal. If you can care for the animal for a good while, then you might open to the possibility of a romantic partner.
In some ways, companions are mirrors for our own behavior. Can we water a plant faithfully? Can we walk a dog consistently, and clean out a cat litter box regularly? Can we respond reliably to the needs of another being?
And in other ways, companions remain true to their own nature. For instance, if a cactus plant needs to be constantly avalanched with sunlight, it might just go ahead and die in our small dark Seattle apartment. No matter how tender our plantly serenades, or how perfectly calibrated our soil-dampening schedule, this thing needs sun, and sun we ain’t got.
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Last week I brought home three Haworthia plants, of a genus native to Southern Africa. I’m not sure how well they’ll do in our house: one on the kitchen windowsill, one on the dining table, and one in our bedroom, brightening our meditation space (which I’ve temporarily surrendered to a small but persistent faction of the invasive Argentine ant supercolony that has overtaken the West Coast).
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On Thursday, Ryan and I went to the Berkeley city animal shelter with our friends Kate and Rane, and after hours of tough deliberation (so many cats to love = virtually impossible to select just one), signed the paperwork for a semi-feral black kitten, two months old. She’ll be spayed Monday morning and then come home with us, sequestered in the bathroom until she gets comfortable enough with us, her bed, litter box, etc., to finally roam the apartment. I hope she likes it here.
So yeah, co-adopting an animal. How adult-like. It’s nearly two years that Ryan and I have been together, including nine months in this apartment. He’s lived with a partner before. First time for me. I watch myself adjusting to coupledom.
Ok, Jamie Foxx sometimes seems like an arrogant, misogynist asshole (have you ever listened to his XM radio station???), but this had me crackin’ up this morning.
And speaking of musical improv . . . last night Ryan and I went with a friend and our neighbor Ineva to Monday Night Karaoke at a little neighborhood bar down the street from our apartment. None of us sang, but Good Lord some of those folks were talented, and talent or not, everyone was havin themselves a good time. Mostly middle-aged Black folks. Mostly Motown/R&B/soul, with Erykah and Jill Scott and the Temptations and Marvin all making appearances. If you know me and my outdated musical tastes, you’ll appreciate the extent of my enthrallment.
Love this image from Mingus' site, labeled "watercolor painting of an octopus done in greens, yellows, oranges and pinks."
To me, femme must include ending ableism, white supremacy, heterosexism, the gender binary, economic exploitation, sexual violence, population control, male supremacy, war and militarization, and ownership of children and land.
Yesterday: downtown Oakland is in full Art-And-Soul festival mode, and a small squad of us from East Bay Solidarity Network gather outside its gated entrance to do our own jovial yet serious work. Once we finally locate one another in the crowd (who has whose cell numbers?), it’s on to the business of distributing xeroxed posters and tape (did we bring enough tape? it sucks to run out), and divvying out areas to flyer. Some of us are slow and others are impatient. Caught in between as an unofficially appointed problem solver, I feel my face edge toward a scowl. Luckily, though, our little gang laughs together more and more as months pass. And laughter is nature’s aspirin for the headache of logistics. Besides: no one’s getting paid here, and there are no managers or fears of getting fired and losing that paycheck, so we’re more free to move at our own pace.
Have I told you about our current fight? Mel Hill was a security guard working for ABC Security. After working at a number of different locations, he was stationed way, way out at a bus yard, miles from any public transport. The way Mel puts it: “I had leg muscles big as Popeye from walking to and from work.” He posted up in a little World War II tin shack (“hot when it’s hot; cold when it’s cold”) with no heat, electricity, water — nothing. Leaks in the roof let the rain in. Misery. After months of enduring this, with no administrative response to his complaints, he began bringing a yellow blanket along on his shifts, to keep himself warm. This, he was told by management, is “unprofessional” and unacceptable. Eventually Mel was fired, and brought his case to us, the East Bay Solidarity Network. We explained that in order for us to take on his fight to win his job back and improve site conditions, he would have to join the network and agree to be there for other people’s fights, as well.
There’s more than enough fights to go around.
Economic need compels people who don’t own the means of production (a.k.a. the vast majority of us) to work in conditions that are often terrible for our bodies. Job conditions are set up that way in order to save time and production costs (including wages). If we object, as Mel did, we get the message (implicitly or explicitly) that (a) we’re lazy, or (b) our bodies are the problem; our bodies are defective. Look: other people can do it. Why can’t you? Stop bringing the blanket. It’s unprofessional.
What can we do about this core of ableism within the exploitative, competitive, profit-driven system?
Master of not-fitting: Chican@ queer & disability scholar Gloria Anzaldúa
Been a little under the weather, on and off, over the last few days. Downsides: pain. Upsides: opportunities to observe pain, and taking time to lie low and read hella articles on the Innernet. Here are three of them which happen to be about self-defense.
Colorlines has a meticulously researched article about the secrecy and opacity shrouding Oakland police personnel reports. Some say that if the public had access to these files, they could be used to weed out ‘loose cannon’ cops before their aggression leads to fatal shootings. But problems with policing go way deeper than that, if you ask me — including pro-ruling-class trends in the laws that police are paid to enforce as an arm of the state. In any case, responses to OPD brutality seem to fall into three camps: individual lawsuits; accountability/reform measures; and resistance/defiance. I was sensing some author bias toward accountability, but you can read for yourself. One of the only mentions of on-the-streets resistance to OPD brutality, the riots following Oscar Grant’s murder, is glossed over in a somewhat awkwardly placed sentence: “Rachel Jackson, an organizer of the Bay Area protests of Oscar Grant’s killing, says the indictment on murder charges of ex-BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, following widespread public outcry, is proof of the point: ‘If there’s street heat, they’ll do something.’” [Emphasis mine.] On one hand, I appreciate that the author is illuminating OPD murder cases besides Grant’s. On the other hand, the lack of elaboration on Jackson’s crucial political claim seems, uh, strange. Given that we regard OPD murder patterns as a problem (to say nothing of other types of police-on-people violence, like sexual assault), what are our best strategies for self-defense? Shouldn’t we discuss that underlying orientation?
In a very different and awesome take on community safety and protection:
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Feeling a bit sick today, but wanted to share a few fotos from this weekend’s meeting-slash-potluck. Originally conceived as a mini reportback and collaborative skillshare between San Francisco Solidarity Network and East Bay Solidarity Network, only one SF member was able to show, so we pumped her for a lot of info. :) And sat around eating homemade vegan cornbread, spicy green bean and potato salad with caramelized-onion-mustard dressing, vegan mango lassi, risotto, brownies, and Mel’s sweet potato pie that will “make your arms go up in the air.”
Wrote This On a Plane to Houston, On My Way To Guatemala
I like to pretend sometimes,
that I got this hunching spine
from working so meticulously at my craft.
Each day carefully placing my toolbox on the table,
unfolding the lid and curling my soft pink fingers into their positions
to forge these words into some kind of weapon,
to whittle at these ideas until they pierce the chest.
I like to pretend sometimes
that this glow is a kiln,
I wipe my brow, and it makes no matter
that my hand comes away dry.
Because this feels like the work of a workman,
and I make like I’m adjusting my spectacles
and gripping my tweezers
as I deftly shift another syllable.
I like to pretend sometimes
that I’m just like that man I watched
crack firewood with ballet strokes,
cut grass finely with a dull machete,
coax coffeebeans to fall with massaging fingers,
like the spider spindling the fly.
From Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, about her experiences as an agitator and organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or “Wobblies”) at the peak of its power, in the 1910’s:
Foster’s campaign against dual unionism was aided by Tom Mann of England, who came over on a speaking trip in 1913.
. . .
Never had I heard such a flow of fast-spoken, picturesque and colorful oratory, charged with tremendous fervor and fighting spirit. It was a hot night and after he finished some English weavers took him away with them, promising to bring him to the railroad station to make an eleven-thirty train back. They came rushing him along at the very last minute, bubbling with reminiscences of where they knew him and had heard him speak before. We asked, “What did you do, Tom?” and he said cheerily, “They took me for warm ale. There’s nothing like it after a speech.” He was a living example of joy in struggle and proved that a light heart makes the road shorter and the load easier. He lived to be over 80—oratorical, exuberant and vital—a great agitator to the end.
How do we nurture joy in struggle? For me, it’s a dialectical question. How do we struggle? Strategically, which courses do we choose? And how do we nurture joy? What traditions and methods do we adopt, adapt, learn, preserve, and transform? And how do we live joy in our struggles? And how do we live struggle through our joy?
Kloncke 