In the doc’s waiting room, chatting up the staffer because reading is no longer possible now that my pupils have been dilated beyond the sockets, and I find out she moved as a teenager to the US from Croatia; except for a few months elsewhere, has been in New York ever since.
And the great thing about this woman (besides her willingness to chat up a wide-eyed girl), is that stitched into her Croatian-accented English is a New York (Queens?) accent.
Excellent!
I am so fucking tired of having to generate outrage at yet another horrendously stupid or awful comment on or policy regarding women.
It’s not that I’m no longer capable of outrage—note the existence of the ‘Rant’ category (or see this post)—but JesusMary&Joseph can I not simply walk away from idiocy on occasion?
Look, I’m old—an old feminist, and shit that used to rile me is now far more likely to lead me to roll my eyes. Some dickwad thinks women can’t think and menstruate at the time and I’m supposed to engage in a point-by-point rebuttal of this so-called argument?
Can’t I just laugh in his face and move on?
C. and I were discussing our respective positions vis-a-vis feminism the other night; while her views generally might be described as feminist, she declines the term. I’ll leave it to her to explain why—she’s working on a post on the topic—but she was clearly weary of the ‘rules’ of feminism. Do I have to invoke ‘The Patriarchy‘ every time some guy acts like a douche? Can’t I just say, This guy is a douche?
I think patriarchy is a key concept in understanding the development of male-female roles and relationships across societies; I also think such understanding requires a sense of critical distance from the term itself, as well as an ability to distinguish between overarching/underlying structural dynamics and the idiosyncracies of individual behavior.
Translation: Yes, sometimes a douche is just a douche.
But even if I think that scripts for individual behavior are shaped (not determined) by those structural dynamics, it doesn’t necessarily mean I have to go nuclear every time someone tosses a dart my way. Sometimes I can just toss it back—bent, if I so choose. Sometimes I can just duck.
This is called judgment, and one of the benefits of aging is accumulating enough experience on which to base this discretion.
This does not make a bad feminist or a sell-out or blinded by privilege. (Grrrr, now there’s a word that sets me off. . . .) As a long-ago grad school colleague responded to a newly-out woman’s hectoring her on not being a good enough lesbian: I’ve been out since I was fifteen, so I don’t need any lectures from some baby dyke.
Was P. invoking privilege in her put-down? Yeah—an earned one. And P., an exceptional mild person, didn’t go any further in criticizing this woman’s zeal; rather, she made the practical observation that the way one relates one’s sexuality to the world changes over time. Such change, needless to say, can indicate development in as opposed to repudiation of an aspect of one’s identity.
So how I’m a feminist has changed over the last thirty years—which strikes me as a good thing. I was twelve or thirteen when I first identified as a feminist, and took to it with a teenaged zeal. I ain’t knocking adolescent views—they’re entirely appropriate for adolescents—but, really, how sad would it be for an old broad like me to ignore the fact that I am no longer thirteen?
It is true that in those intervening decades I have come to question feminism and to shift where I locate myself within the spectrum of feminisms. It’s not that I’ve abandoned my previous commitment to equality, but in recent years I have focused more intently on issues of liberation and domination.
These are big topics, but here I want simply to make the practical point that domination affects all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. Some people might focus on race or ethnicity or class or sexual orientation or gender identity or disability or any number of other boxes in which we find ourselves, but it seems to me that we can share the general goal of liberation, as pursued in our particular ways.
So while I might have to start calling myself a ‘libber’ to reflect that larger project, my entry into this project was as a feminist. It has formed my thinking and guided my development regarding liberation, and I see no reason to discard it, now.
(There’s also the little matter of rank oppression of women world-wide and the necessity of recognizing that however general the goal of liberation, it is in fact experienced in the particular. Women’s rights may be human rights, but you can’t neglect the former and hope to achieve the latter.)
Still, I share C.’s wariness to some versions of feminism, those which traffic in conversation-stopping jargon and which allow for no nuance in how we actually inhabit this world. We discussed a couple of websites and their contributors, and the constant jackhammering in their posts.
C. was pissed off, but I (uncharacteristically) took more of P.’s mellow line. Look, I said, those websites are geared toward a particular audience—a younger, academically-oriented one. They’re pounding away on stuff that we might already have learned to deal with. In and of itself that’s not a bad thing, but for those of us outside of that target audience, it’s bound to produce its share of irritation.
Then C. asked a very good question: Where the hell are those websites for women our age?
Beyond the mommy blogs, I couldn’t think of any. Katha Pollitt keeps on keeping on, but where is the Gen-X version of Feministing or Jezebel or Pandagon? (Could we call it BabyBust? Or would that just be too cute?)
We need a site which takes account of our nicks and scars, defeats and victories, and which doesn’t expect us to get riled up every damned time someone says something stupid about women, somewhere. Righteous Broads? Crone? Or, to call on an earlier post, how about Mormo, a.k.a. She-monster?
Something which encourages us to laugh and dance and not be perfect, but human, instead. Politics, liberation—yes, but life, too. Life, always.
So I had this here rebate card from Verizon. Fiddy bucks.
That would buy alotta kitty litter. Toilet paper. Cheese.
So did I spend it on household urgencies (and yes, in this household, cheese is a requirement)?
Hah. No.
With that card in my frosty little mitts, I headed for the Strand and feasted on books. Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, The Mapmakers, The Failure of Political Islam, and two books of poetry: Kay Ryan’s The Niagara River, and Agha Shahid Ali’s The Veiled Suite.
Thassright: I scored the collected poems of Ali.
Jealous, aren’t you?
I did, regretfully, put back Mary Oliver’s Thirst, her meditation on the death of her longtime partner, Molly Malone Cook; another day, I said.
Still, I’m very happy with the Ali. I haven’t had a chance, really, to do more than scan the pages; what follows, then, is one I simply plucked out.
And then I cheat, and add another, a ghazal, for no other reason that the repetition which nonetheless moves you as well as returning you to where you have and hadn’t been before, moves me and returns me to where I have and hadn’t been before.
Yes, there’s a telephone in each poem, but what binds them is more the tone: the lighting upon the humorous and then the tragic, the surface slice and the deep thrust to something below.
*Sigh* I may have to add a Friday ghazal in addition to the regular Friday poem, lest I ignore all other poets in my lust for Ali.
From Bell Telephone Hours
5.
Today, talk is cheap.
Call somebody.
I called Information Desk, Heaven,
and asked, “When is Doomsday?”
I was put on hold.
Through the hallelujahs of seraphs,
I heard the idle gossip of angels,
their wings beating rumours
of revolts in Heaven.
The I heard flames, wings burning,
then only hallelujahs.
I prayed, “Angel of Love,
please pick up the phone.”
But it was the Angel of Death.
I said, “Tell me, Tell me,
when is Doomsday?”
He answered, “God is busy.
He never answers the living.
He has no answers for the dead.
Don’t ever call again collect.”
~~~
Here’s what Ali himself had to say on the ghazal:
The ghazal can be traced back to seventh-century Arabia. In its canonical Persian (Farsi) form, arrived at in the eleventh century, it is composed of autonomous or semi-autonomous couplets that are united by a strict scheme of rhyme, refrain, and line length. The opening couplet sets up the schemes by having it in both lines, and then the schemes occurs only in the second line of every succeeding couplet—i.e., the first line (same length) of every succeeding couplet sets up a suspense, and the second line (same length but with the rhyme and refrain—the rhyme immediately preceding the refrain) delivers on that suspense by amplifying, dramatizing, imploding, exploding.
See how he runs. . . .
Of It All
I say This, after all, is the trick of it all
when suddenly you say “Arabic of it all.”
After Algebra there was Geometry—and then Calculus—
But I’d already failed the arithmetic of it all.
White men across the U.S. love their wives’ curries—
I say O No! to the turmeric of it all.
“Suicide represents. . . a privileged moment. . . .”
Then what keeps you—and me—from being sick of it all?
The telephones work, but I’m still cut off from you.
We star in America, fast epic of it all.
What shapes galaxies and keeps them from flying apart?
There’s that missing mass, the black magic of it all.
What makes yours the rarest edition is just this:
it’s bound in human skin, final fabric of it all.
I’m smashed, fine Enemy, in your isolate mirror.
Why the diamond display then—in public—of it all?
Before the palaver ends, hear the sparrows’ songs,
the quick quick quick, O the quick of it all.
For the suicidally beautiful, autumn now starts.
Their fathers’ heroes, boys gallop, kick off it all.
The sudden storm swept its ice across the great plains.
How did you find me, then, in the thick of it all?
Across the world one aches for New York, but to long
for New York in New York’s most tragic of it all.
For Shahid too the night went “quickly as it came”—
After that, old friend, came the music of it all.
(for Anthony Lacavaro)
for·mi·da·ble /ˈfor-məd-ə-bəl also for-̍mid- or fər-̍mid-\adj [ME, fr. L formidabilis, fr. fordimare to fear, fr. formido fear; akin to Gk mormō she-monster] (15c) 1 : causing fear, dread, or apprehension <a ~ prospect> 2 : having qualities that discourage approach or attack 3 : tending to inspire awe or wonder
It’s a fine word, don’t you think? Tending to inspire awe or wonder—excellent.
And the whole mormō she-monster thing? Perfect!
Which feeds quite nicely into today’s question: Where are all the formidable women in film?
There are a few in politics—hell, just about any woman in politics, left or right, has to be formidable, if she’s to be taken seriously.
No, Sarah Palin is not formidable.
Formidable women all over academia. Good luck getting tenure without having qualities that discourage approach or attack.
But in film?
We had no problems with women of past decades: Rosalind Russell, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis. Lauren Bacall is still around, but she’s really of a previous era.
But today? S. and I were stumped.
Cate Blanchett, we decided. Perhaps Kate Winslet.
Anne Hathaway could become formidable, depending upon her willingness to withdraw herself.
‘Maybe we just need more actors named Kate,’ S. suggested. We agreed, however, that Kate Hudson was not formidable.
We didn’t quite define formidable, but there was some notion of distance, even regality. Any sexuality couldn’t be too far forward, and any weaknesses not gladly—or at all—discussed.
The sexuality ruled out Susan Sarandon. She keeps her personal life to herself, but even at sixty she can threaten to light others on fire.
Jane Fonda? Too talky about herself.
Oh, and this is problem for contemporary formidability: If the actors are gabbing away on The View or making themselves in any way approachable or, goddess forbid, friendly, forget it. We gotta be a bit afraid.
There are a couple of African-American character actors I can think of who could make me shake in my boots (Jenifer Lewis, Janet Hubert [she played the original mom on Fresh Prince of Bel Air]), but neither is a star.
Maybe Phylicia Rashad, especially since she’s moved to the stage. She’s gotten some distance from Claire Huxtable, but even Claire was less cuddly than Cliff.
I was in the midst of writing this yesterday when my friend T. called.
Perfect timing: T. is a theatre maniac, and watches plenty of movies. She immediately suggested Judi Dench, though I thought she might be too approachable.
Marion Cotillard, she said. Have you seen La Vie En Rose? You have to see it, she said.
Then she mentioned Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren. Oh, yes, I agreed. And Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant. Isabelle Huppert, she suggested.
(Which reminds me: Watch Huit Femmes—a campy delight with Catherine, er, Mesdames Deneuve, Ardant, and Huppert.)
Tilda Swinton scares the hell out of me, though she’s a bit odd, and a bit smug about her oddness.
Miranda Richardson. Perhaps Kristin Scott Thomas.
Of course, all of these women are European, and work for European directors. Might be something to that.
Oh, what about Anne Bancroft, T. said. (Yes! But also of a previous generation.) Or Helena Bonham-Carter. Eh, I said.
Angelina Jolie? Too sexual. And too eccentric (which might also disqualify Bonham-Carter, tho’ T. disagrees).
Shirley MacLaine? Um, that eccentricity thing. . . .
Allison Janey? Perhaps. Bea Arthur? Absolutely!
Audra MacDonald, T. thought. We both sighed a bit over Audra, and I admitted to a bit of a crush on her.
Still, even crushing as I am on Ms. MacDonald is, I don’t know that she can pull off formidable in her personage—tho’ her talent clearly is formidable.
We pondered the effect of the stage: That women who’ve performed in the theatre have learned something about presence which is unique to live performance.
Still, it’s not as if Broadway has gone anywhere, so, again the question: Where are all the formidable women in film?
T. theorized: Because the kinds of movies which are produced today aren’t like the ones which produced a Hepburn or a Russell. T. argued that because women in the forties and fifties were not liberated, i.e., they lived dull lives at home, they wanted something different when they went to the movies. They wanted, even needed, those strong women on screen.
Today, T. shrugged, it’s not necessary, and, more importantly, doesn’t make enough money for the studios to justify making those types of films.
I don’t sign on to all of T.’s sociological analysis—this liberated chickie loves to watch strong women—but I do think there is a connection between the roles and the actors. Maybe—probably—Rosalind Russell was nothing like Auntie Mame or the Mother Superior in The Trouble With Angels, but she was able to occupy fully all the space that those roles allowed, and they allowed a lot of space.
There are still the occasional (American) roles like that—Amanda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, for example—but not much else. (And it’s not as if Meryl Streep cultivates hauteur.)
Joan Allen in The Contender and the Bourne movies?
There’s M—who Dench owns—in the Bond movies. CJ Cregg from The West Wing.
Any other roles which inspire fear and awe? Any other actors who inspire fear and awe?
Or has the era of the formidable woman come and gone? Katie Roiphe had a faintly (tho’ not-quite-wholly) ridiculous piece in recently in the Times on the passing of a particular kind of absurdly virile male; maybe those—is there a distaff version of virile?—female roles have also been exhausted.
Or maybe the mormō just needs to be resurrected. If she’s managed to last a few millenia, why not a few years more?
Mary Oliver is lately known as a nature poet, not merely chronicling ‘the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground’, but tuning her sight into it.
Lately: She’s been writing for over forty years, the last twenty or so which light on the natural world.
This is when I came to Oliver, in The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and watched as she picked up flowers and mice and (figuratively) bears and skunks and turned them over in her hands.
Taken one by one, these poems are a wonder, a pause in the rush of life.
I admit that I prefer her poems this way, one by one, rather than piled up one after the other. The images fade into a kind of nature-walk report, losing the distinctiveness of her attention, of that pause.
I offer two poems this week, the one meant for Friday, the other for a friend.
The Friday poem appears in a kind of fulcrum period of Oliver’s writing. Her early works are full of people and direct questions of the world; those later works take in all creatures except the human, drawn around owls and egrets and hermit crabs.
But in the middle is the mix of humans and animals and questions pointing toward answers. She is still attached to the specifically human world, but beginning to loosen us from our own centrality.
I went back and forth between this poem and another, finally deciding on the one below because it was the one I said Yes to first.
As with other poems by other poets, the one I choose is not necessarily the poet’s ‘best’ poem, the one with the most precise rhythm or exact language or most indelible imagery. But, as with those other poems by other poets, something about this poem snagged my attention, today.
Perhaps it is the new year, which yesterday I disdained as any kind of marker (even as I marked it). The poem is a bit more incantatory than I usually like, but the juxtaposition of a specific life mattering in the general disinterested universe, well, that works for me, today.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on you knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild gees, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~~~
The second is a poem for a friend. I hadn’t been thinking of her as I thumbed through the pages, but when I scanned it, then read it again, slowly, I thought of her. So, for you.
A Visitor
My father, for example,
who was young once
and blue-eyed,
returns
on the darkest of nights
to the porch and knocks
wildly at the door,
and if I answer
I must be prepared
for his waxy face,
for his lower lip
swollen with bitterness.
And so, for a long time,
I did not answer,
but slept fitfully
between his hours of rapping.
But finally there came the night
when I rose out of my sheets
and stumbled down the hall.
The door fell open
and I knew I was saved
and could bear him,
pathetic and hollow,
with even the least of his dreams
frozen inside him,
and the meanness gone.
And I greeted him and asked him
into the house,
and lit the lamp,
and looked into his blank eyes
in which at last
I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done
had we loved in time.
AbsurdBeats 