status: still pissed.

 

Elsa Lancaster; an early Skunk.

Dear Sisters,

Ooh, I keep thinking I have been pissed off enough, that now all that is left is the open expanse of set freeness; but no, it is like the maze of the minotaur, and when I think I am at the last corner of pissed off, I turn and find another corridor of anger, another inner chamber of rage.

I suppose all this further insight into the twisted fucking patriarchy should feel like progress, but it sends me reeling with futility.  When, I ask you, will I be accepting of this crap?  When will my crystal vision be all that there is?  Landing with a thud, yep, there it is.  Thunk.  Not anything to get your feathers fluffed about, just another example of how Man has screwed us all over, and himself, too; probably on accident, but whatevs.

I think about making cookies, about making them to give to people, to say, to mean: here, invite me in, take some nourishment from me; I made them so that you may feel pleasure, that's all.  But cooking, at home, unpaid, is the purview of women's work; mothers, sisters, aunts, wives.  And so what does that make me, as a person who made you cookies?  Just another woman embodying a stereotype, adding to the problem.

  

PS  Here is a film that I never saw before, and I don't know how I missed it, but, then again, maybe a few days ago was the right time for me to see it.  I really hope you will watch it, though; I know, I am asking a lot: listen to this, read these lines, make this, click here, think about that, study this, watch that.  It's a lot, isn't it, that I am asking for?   A whole lot.

a path

 

Illustration by Gustave Doré.

Dear Reader,

I hope you know that I want the best for you; I hope you know that I care that you see long and far and for ever, because I want to see that way too.

It might be that you find that seeing so far leaves you wondering what you have done.  It's not a problem, that was then, it is always a mulligan, a do-over.  So do-over endlessly; there is no penalty.

Here is an essay saying a lot of things that I think are the best; that I think you should know, the better to see long and far and for ever.

And now, let's go again to Grandmother's house, and see what can be done with the Wolf and The Woodcutter.  We can whistle this tune, while we walk.

Miss Fisher; Feminist.

 

Dear Gals and Allies,

(Gallies, perhaps?)  Yes, beginning a sentence with parentheses is something you can do here!  Isn't it marvelous?  There is so much we can do, if we go ahead and do it.  You feel, I bet, like there isn't much to do right now, but I saw something the other day that really crystalized this spacious opportunity for me- But, that's not what I wanted to write to you about just yet.

I am writing you today to talk turkey about Miss Fisher and her Murder Mysteries.  You may think that you don't want to watch any more screens, and I hear you, that's valid, that's good.  That's noble and pure and dignified of you, too.  And if you find yourself with some time that you don't want to be noble and pure and dignified, maybe you will remember to check these stories out.  

Miss Fisher is every girl-child feminist's dream of a female character: she has power, money, prestige, and compassion and empathy.  She holds to principles that go beyond the law and religion, and she is sympathetic to everyone's plight.  She also gets to try everything (racing cars! adopting young ladies in need! piloting a plane! joining the circus!) and she garners the esteem of everyone she encounters.  She also maintains enough humility and vulnerability to prevent her from slip sliding into some awful kind of super hero archetype.  She is a flawed character; like you, like me.  

I love her; she is the answer to James Bond, for me, and I hope you will take a look at her and her adventures sometime!

Oh, but wait!  I intended to talk to you about the place we are in, the times we are having; about the opportunities for you to tell us all what you think and what you want and what you believe.  

In the old days, there were things called galleries, I know, they are like covered wagons; no one uses them anymore, so don't worry about what they were; quaint little rooms and buildings where people sold art to pay the rent.  It sounds nice, doesn't it?  To show your artwork in a place that would sell it for you?  Thinking on it now, it sounds absurdly romantic, and totally impossible- like winning the lottery: too good to have actually been true!   Well, now you don't need that gatekeeping system- you can put your work in front of anyone using the internet.  You are saying, "well, sort of..., what about selling things?" To that I say to hell with selling things- nothing good ever came of putting a price on creativity anyway.  "And what about all these viewers?  What about getting my work in front of millions?"  To that I say, don't be greedy- if two people see it, that is plenty!

What I have here is glorious and irrefutable proof of just how broad and big the available exhibition space is on the internet:

Well now!  Is it art?  Is it good?  It surely is spectacle, and I don't think I care much about the other two 

appellations.  I care more about the impulse to decorate, to make, and the invitation to all of us to view it, and to perhaps be impelled to respond in some way.

Another Molly Song

Dear Mollies,

This is one to watch.  It gives me all kinds of ideas about stop-motion film-making and feminism.  It's a treat.  Enjoy!

Police my Desire (if you Dare).

Dear Dazed & Confused,

I am delighted to read this essay, which sends my mind in a hundred directions, with a thousand threads to follow.  Is then, the poet the poem?  Because I have heard otherwise.  Is the actress the character?  Is the protagonist the author?  Is the audience the believer? 

Will everything be swept under the rug?  Can desire even be policed?

French women: yes, I love to love them, and probably for the same reason men do, which is to say that they aim to please visually.  I always thought, though, that they somehow didn't care if men weren't pleased.  The French Woman* is, of course, a construct of mine, and yours, and everyone else's, and I wish they all could be California Girls. 

I have been watching a French Female, in an anthropological spirit, on YouTube- she gives rules and advice for being and looking French.  I think she tapes these dubious lectures in Berlin, where I suppose it is easier to separate the distinguishing characteristics of the French Female from the rest of the world.  Watching one of these videos on How to Wear Perfume Like a French Female, I noted that I would never presume to speak for the American Female in such a general, published way (although, you might want at this point, to call my little kettle black).  If the 19 minutes of video is to be believed, there are many proscriptions to be followed in the application of scent on a woman in France. The author/protagonist/actress/poet of these videos talks with her hands mesmerizingly- her long fingers are painted with bright polish that the eye follows back and forth across the screen, like the ball in a tennis match.  So you don't trouble yourself to watch it, let me tell you the thesis of it all: do not apply so much perfume that anyone who isn't French can smell you.  Hmm, actually, maybe I missed the thesis after all?

We may never know what these French women of my imagination and acquaintance think and feel, but I adore the chance/desire/leisure/liberté to put on some lipstick and consider it all, don't you?












* She wears a scarf just so, she is rabidly self-assured, she is never 'too much,' and she always looks as though she knows a secret that you do not.

Lucky 13.

Dear Who-Ever,

This is it, she's here, and I wonder if she is my Woman?  The Woman I hoped Wonder Woman would be, a face for feminism in the 21st. century.  There ought to be legions of faces of feminism, of course, and there will be, one day.  Note her garb, and although you can't see them, she wears sensible work boots that mean business.  She dresses for adventure.  I hope you do too.

Last night, I saw her on the big screen, and I am happy to report that although there were only about a dozen viewers, one young woman was dressed exactly like this Dr. Who.  I felt keenly the bonds of sisterhood. 

See how they haven't made the mistake of dressing her as a sex object?*  I send whoever was responsible my deepest thanks.  True, she looks like a wasp and she's blonde and very pretty, and that isn't asking much of me as a viewer, but the character of the doctor has the card-carrying power of the sci fi alien- always a visitor; and never fully aware of canons like Western Feminine Beauty, so there will be opportunities (I hope) to examine our expectations and conventions through this stranger's eyes and ways.

As an example, I have been fretting about how much she looks like a bank teller since last year, but when I watched her be The Doctor last night, my assumptions of her appearance were subverted, and I am pretty sure that I Approve.  Now, anyone who watches any of these shows knows that time will tell, because we are made aware of the character's complexity over many episodes and narratives.  Which is really the glory of television:  meeting in time, across seasons and years, to listen to some adventures of characters we have the chance to get to know well.

*  Don't get me wrong, of course I want my cake and eat it too; if this 13th Doctor doesn't have or allude to many amorous encounters of the 'man in every port of the cosmos' kind, I will be greatly miffed.  Try this for a song for today, and note the de Chirico set.

Lips v. Mouth

Dear Open-Mouthed and Willing Lipped,

This is a very compelling discussion of the meaning of words, which relates to some recent readings posted here at the Dodo.  It's got me thinking a lot about the *difference between lip and mouth.  Lips frame a mouth, but maybe not a message?  A word?  Voice is not lips, that seems sure.  Do you convince with your lips, your mouth, your mind?  Do you rule with your thoughts, your words, or your stern glance?  Shall woke women now use 'mouthstick' to avoid being doormats and wallflowers?








*Don't give me no lip.  Enough of your smart mouth.  Hmm. 





PS  This, on the history of the bottle cap opener.

And then there were two.

Dearest Girls, Women, Ladies, Mothers and Sisters,

Hallelujah!  Now there are two of us who are publically on record as disappointed in the new Wonder Woman!  I feel much better knowing that I am not alone, but I still feel a little sad that I am supposed to like her, and that I wanted to like her.  I also feel sad that it is so clear what is expected of me, and that I am going to have to decline, once again, to give it over.  It just isn't good enough; you will find me at home, watching Xena reruns and listening to Laurie Anderson and wishing that things were different.

Nothing Doing

Dear You,

I’ve been thinking of you, and of course, I know I should write, or at least send a message.  But, I am busy now, doing nothing.  I was planning to meditate, but doing nothing is so much more genuine.  If you ever meet someone you can do nothing with, clear out your spare room and invite them to live with you.  Of course, no, I am doing nothing, yes, but I am thinking and seeing much.  I need all this time to do this thinking and looking. 

I am doing nothing, but not thinking nothing- I am lousy at thinking nothing, so I never bother with it.  I am thinking of the Changing Face of  Feminism, and of the birds, and the wind, and of tattered books.  Also, I am considering less lofty things, like how I just threw out all the pencil shavings I was saving in a champagne bottle.  Was that right to do?  Perhaps it was nuts to collect the shavings to begin with and now I have set things to right by tossing them?  These are the issues I confront in the pursuit of what might matter.  And besides, you were right; I did have too many glass jars.

I am watching the house finches pick up fallen seed, and as I gaze at their movement, things on the edge of vision become blurred.  Substance flattens and becomes indistinct; it all seems to be one: the space, the ground, the sky-  I knew a wonderful professor once (a feminist as it happens) and she told me once of seeing the ‘etheric web' from her vantage point on a hill, or a slope.  She described her awareness of the interconnectedness of everything in a visual way.  I am pretty sure my lack of focus could be revealing the etheric web.

I have been thinking of you, wanting to send my greeting and thanks;  I know you are up north now, or out west... I will get a message to you soon, but for now, I simply must do nothing!

News Flash

Dear Mailbag,

Oh golly, it isn't on the regular Dodo schedule, but it is from People and it something you should see, so, here it is.

Say, speaking of the f in feminism- have a look at this method of telling the world just what you think of it.  I think you'll enjoy dreaming up two word phrases to consider for your collars!

There is a song, for today, too- it's 11:59.

Little Miss Sunshine's gonna steal herself some shadow.

Dear Princesses,

I was driving away from Los Angeles when I heard Carrie Fisher had died.  I always feel a bushel of maternal protectiveness for Hollywood damsels who become emblematic of what society thinks about women; living martyrs, consumed by our voracious appetite for symbol.  I did not love her right away, though, because I am suspicious of popular things, and I never want to read the best sellers, dance to the number one records, or see the big films until the hoopla has left the building. 

And so, I grew to love Carrie Fisher slowly: I saw her in Star Wars six years after it was released (see above).  I loved that she was a wise acre, I loved that she was a writer, and I loved that she married a musician for only a matter of months.  I loved that she crawled out of her own hell, over and over, because everyone does, or doesn't.  I loved that her fame was a hairshirt for her.  I imagined meeting her and telling her it was okay; she was all right with me, no matter what, with or without Star Wars and metal bikinis and addiction.  Yes, she was all right with me, just for trying to be herself in the first place.

Here are two songs to contemplate:  Carry on my wayward daughter, and she moves on.

Regrets? Not exactly.

 

 

Object

Meret Oppenheim, 1936.



Dear Boys and Sisters,

Boys, you know I do think of you all- now and then, when I am tying my sensible shoes.  I think of you, when you were sitting a little too near, and I was a little too shy, and I sometimes, very infrequently, hardly at all, really, wish I'd said to you it's now or never.  Or, that I'd leaned closer, to say, I'll be your baby tonight.  But, I drove an insured car, got good grades, and brushed my teeth, instead of calling your bluff. 

There are a lot of us out here, women that take care to be sensible, and many of you boys will never meet us, will never know us, because we can see from very far off that what might have been would be too little. 

To my sisters, to the women in sensible shoes, I say, we are legion, we are worthy, even of the attention of flakes, screw-ups, and bad boys.  However, proving this is not necessary.  You and I know it, and that will suffice.  Correspondingly, should you say "it's now or never," do not wring your hands, do not beat your breasts.  Just move on down the line.






PS

If you are wondering why I have begun this little diatribe with Ms. Oppenheim's sculpture, it is because there is no finer symbol of feminism and femininity.  This sculpture subverts the power of progeneration by rendering the dish useless to hold nourishment, and sexually totemizes the container by lining it with hide.   



PPS

Yes, sisters, there are men you could make a mistake over, and it would be worth it.