I WENT TO SLEEP A LITTLE SAD

 

17 of 100

April 22

This was not how I intended to start this post, but I ran across this image on FB. I am so-ever-so-ever-so-ever-so-fucking tired of the casual sexism of this. Maybe it was growing up in an environment where there were girly pictures, pin-ups, pornography, and sexual pictures of my mother in my father's domain, the garage. Then there was the pervasive and casual misogyny of my father's friends, many of whom I found creepy from a very young age. 

One of them, I believe his name was Bud Schroder, was a friend from my dad's camera club days. (There are still magazine and manuals about how best to light girlie pictures in the comfort of your own home in the garage.) For some reason, my father commissioned Bud to take family pictures of us. I was around 12 or so, and very uncomfortable around men. Particularly so when I had to wear my bathing suit for them and sit by the pool. I tried to shrink myself, hunching over and crossing my arms in front of my still-pretty-flat chest. I clearly remember how invaded I felt and how awful Bud was. I felt that way before I was subjected to his gaze at the command of my father.

I writing this only a few feet away from where this happened.

When the slides were developed, I heard Bud and my dad inappropriately commenting on the images. Bud said something about me looking like a little mermaid or some such. 

All that to say I am tired of random nudes and drawings and the billboards for men's clubs featuring women with "come on let me blow you" faces. I am tired to having to deflect and defend against all of this as if it did not affect me. As if this rapacious and visually greedy imagery was something I could go along with. Or ignore. Be blinded to it. Talk about your death by a thousand pin pricks, it is so enraging as to be flatteningly exhausting. 

And there is the fear of being labeled a fat old spinster fuddy-duddy. (Think again. You wish.) No sense of humor, blah blah de blabbity blah blah. I love double entendres, flirting, evocative sexy/eroticism. I am just tired of the eternal quotidian of having to be subjected to this careless bombardment of demeanment. 

On to better subjects.

(Is Fox asserting the patriarchy by putting his butt on the keyboard thus hindering my writing? He has taken over all the putative empty space.

The next day.

I went to sleep a little sad. I had been re-reading some of my blog posts. I always thought that depression, distraction, unburdening of possessions and cats were the major themes. But I have written quite a lot loss and grief, too. And here I was thinking I didn't know a thing about it ... or not so much.

I dreamt I had to drink a Coors last night. Might have been a Coors Lite.

I have been listening to Adam Schiff's Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could. It's quite a long book and I have two hours of listening before it gets automatically returned. So I should do that. I recommend it highly, although it assails and astonishes one with the number of crimes committed by the Fucknutshitgibbon Administration. The utter callous, calculating, and cowardly behavior of the GOP is stupefying. One wonders where the reality, the common ground might be. Maybe we are all just free-falling.

Let Love,

the water of life

flow through our veins.

Let a Love-drunk mirror

steeped in the wine of dawn

translate the night.

You who pour the wine,

put the cup of oneness in my hand

and let me drink from it

until I can’t imagine separation.

Love, you are the archer.

My mind is your prey.

Carry my heart

and make my existence your bullseye.

— Rumi, Gold, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori, New York Review of Books, New York, 2022