October 2018
Monthly Archive
Oct 30, 2018
It’s been 15 years since Rachel Barenblat started blogging as The Velveteen Rabbi, and recently Rachel suggested that several of our long-time writing friends create a post to mark the occasion. The result was a rambling Google Doc conversation with Rachel, Beth Adams of The Cassandra Pages, Dave Bonta of Via Negativa, Dale Favier of Mole, Natalie d’Arbeloff of Blaugustine, and me: six writers reflecting on 15 years of blogging and the friendships that grew out of it. Below is an excerpt from that conversation.
Buried Temple, by Natalie D’Arbeloff. Acrylic on paper, 37cm x 37 cm.
Rachel: Writing is one of the fundamental ways I experience and explore the world, both the external world and my own internal world. I think it was EM Forster who wrote, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Blogging as I’ve come to understand it is living one’s life in the open, with spiritual authenticity and intellectual curiosity, ideally in conversation or relationship with others who are doing the same.
Dave: At some level, it’s easier to keep blogging at Via Negativa, the Morning Porch, and Moving Poems than it is to stop. Basically I’m an addict. Writing poetry is fun for me — entering that meditative head-space required for immersion in writing. As for the social aspect, I’ve been in, or on the periphery of, several distinct blogging communities over the years, and at one time, we all commented on each other’s sites, but with the rise of social media, most blog commenting went away — and I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing. Writing and responding to comments did take up a lot of my time ten years ago, and now that I can scratch that conversational itch on Twitter, or in real life with my partner, I’m OK with most interactions on my blogs being limited to pings. But I must immediately qualify that and admit that Via Negativa is a special case, because for well over half its existence now I’ve enjoyed the virtual companionship of a co-blogger, the brilliant and prolific poet Luisa Igloria, and a small number of occasional guest bloggers as well. I wouldn’t say I’m competitive, but Luisa’s commitment to a daily poetry practice has definitely forced me to up my game. Then there’s Mr. Pepys. My Pepys Diary erasure project grew directly from sociability: my partner and I wanted to read the online version of the diary together, and I worried I might eventually get bored with it if I weren’t mining it for blog fodder.
Lorianne: I am not attached to the medium, but I am attached to the message, and the process of creating/sharing that message. There has been a lot of hand-wringing among bloggers over the “death of the blog,” with long-time (and former) bloggers worried about attention divides between blogs and social media. Where do “I” live if I post in multiple places: on blog, in a paper notebook, on social media? For those of us who do all three, the result can be confusing, distracting, and frazzling…or it can be creative, collaborative, and synergistic.
Dale: I didn’t really expect ever to have readers, so in a way, having readership dwindle is a return to the early days… I’ve outlived some of my personas — I’m no longer recognizeably very Buddhist, and my politics have morphed in some odd ways. I don’t think I’m as salable an item as I used to be 🙂 But the inertia, as Dave said. When I do have something to say and my censor doesn’t step in, the blog is still where I go. It’s been home for fifteen years: my strand of the web… The community that was established way back when is still important to me, and still a large part of my life. And there’s still a lot of value in having a public space. The act of making something public changes it, changes how I look at. I become the viewers and the potential viewers. It helps me get out of myself. It helps me work through my favorite game of “what if I’m wrong about all these things?”
Natalie: Why the hell still blogging? Not sure I am still blogging. I put something up on Facebook whenever I feel like saying hey, listen, or hey, look at this. Then I copy/paste the post to Blogger where I keep Blaugustine going, mainly out of a sense of imaginary duty. The idea that there are some real people out there who may be actually interested in some of my thoughts and/or artwork is undoubtedly attractive, even necessary. I live a mostly hermit life and don’t get much feedback of any kind. But my interior life is very active, all the time, and having a tiny public platform online where I can put stuff is really helpful. To be perfectly honest I think that’s about it for me and blogging at present. I don’t do any other social media, it would all take too much time which I’d rather devote to artwork.
Beth: I think a lot of it has to do with a sense of place. My blog is like a garden or a living room that I’ve put energy and thought and care into as a place that’s a reflection of myself and is hopefully welcoming for others.. The discipline of gathering work and talking about it coherently has been extremely good for me and for my art practice. And I’ve also really appreciated and been inspired by other people who do the same, whatever their means of expression. There’s something deeply meaningful about following someone’s body of work, and their struggles, over not just months but years. In today’s climate of too-muchness and attention-seeking and short attention spans, I feel so encouraged and supported by the quiet, serious doggedness of other people like me!
Oct 14, 2018
A little over a week ago, J and I adopted a new cat. “Magic” came into the shelter raggedy, scrawny, and sick, with bad teeth and uncontrolled diabetes. After starting regular insulin injections and having all but three of his teeth extracted, Magic was ready to come home. Since we often re-name cats we’ve adopted (and since we’re Celtics fans who didn’t want any of our pets to be named after a legendary Laker), we’re calling the new guy Larry.
It’s been just over a month since we put our cat Rocco to sleep after a two-year battle with small cell lymphoma, and it was Rocco’s passing that made room for us to adopt Larry. Although one pet can’t fully replace another, J and I view our house as a refuge for hard-to-place pets: when one dies, that frees up a spot for another needy creature. I’ve come to see the departed pet as a kind of sponsor for the new guy or gal who steps into their furry footprints. This is how Yanny followed Gumbo, Toivo followed Cassie, and George and Gracie followed Bunny.
If you’ve lived with a lot of pets, over time you start to see similarities between them. Hillary looks so much like Bunny, we often call her that by mistake, and lovable lug Luigi looks and acts a bit like Snowflake, who came (and passed away) before him. When we first adopted Cassie, I was disconcerted to realize her whine sounded exactly like Reggie’s, even though she looked nothing like him. Over time, Cassie’s whine became her own, and I no longer remember what Reggie sounded like.
But here’s the tricky thing: all those other pets came into our lives months if not years after their lookalikes had left us, calling to mind a pet whose memory was already starting to fade. But the eerie thing about Larry, on the other hand, is that he looks and even acts nearly identical to Rocco. The resemblance is so uncanny, it feels like we brought home a younger, healthier version of the cat we just recently lost.
When we first visited Larry at the shelter, I immediately noticed how his floppy posture and long, every-which-way black fur looked just like Rocco’s, and once we brought him home, the resemblance became even more obvious. When we walk into the kitchen, there is Rocco–I mean Larry–lounging under foot. When I load or unload the dishwasher, there is Rocco–I mean Larry–trying to crawl in. And whenever one of us opens a bedroom or closet door, Rocco–I mean Larry–immediately appears and tries to dart into whatever space is supposed to be cat-free, just as he always did.
Seeing how quickly and even seamlessly Larry has acclimated himself to our household, I think of the various sayings that refer to constancy in the face of change. The Queen is dead; long live the Queen. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Rocco wasn’t exactly the boss of our household, but he did have a larger-than-life presence. Rocco’s been gone for just over a month, and just over a week ago he came back to us in a slightly updated version and with a new name.
Oct 1, 2018
Like many across the nation, I watched Christine Blasey Ford’s Senate testimony at work on Thursday, streaming C-SPAN on my phone during my office hours. I found Ford’s calm, quiet voice to be devastatingly powerful and entirely believable. Like many women, I resonated deeply with the obvious terror and trauma she felt at being pinned down, groped, and muffled when she was a teen at a party.
I had classes to teach during Brett Kavanaugh’s corresponding testimony, but I watched clips from it later, and I was horrified by his partisan rancor and angry defensiveness. Nobody can blame Kavanaugh for being angry at the humiliation he and his family have faced in the media, but Ford has been subjected to the same treatment, and she didn’t rant or rage. A confirmation hearing is a glorified job interview, and given the serious issues the Supreme Court decides, I had no patience for Kavanaugh’s angry tantrums and disrespectful demeanor, especially toward Senator Amy Klobuchar. Regardless of whether Ford’s accusations are true, Kavanaugh’s true temperament was on display on Thursday, and his performance didn’t convince me he’d be a calm, measured, or impartial justice.
The full impact of both Ford’s and Kavanaugh’s testimony didn’t hit me until afterward. When I woke on Friday morning, I felt the same oscillation between sadness and rage I’d felt the day after the 2016 election. Although I’ve never experienced an assault as violent or traumatic as Ford’s, like most women I have my own history of uninvited encounters: groping and self-stimulating creeps on the T, a massage therapist who insisted on kneading my thighs and backside even after I repeatedly directed him toward my stiff neck and shoulders, and countless staring strangers and cat-callers.
To be a woman means being constantly on guard, something so ingrained it’s easy to forget that men don’t have the same worries. Without thinking twice, I check the backseat every time I get into my car; in parking garages, I quietly weigh the dangers of getting trapped in an elevator versus getting cornered in a stairwell. When I hike, I realize that if I were to be mugged or raped, I would also be blamed for that attack: what was I thinking when I ventured into the woods, even with a dog? On a daily basis, I envy men for the simple luxury of being able to walk outside after dark, and I wonder what it’s like not to see every lone stranger as a possible predator.
Years ago when my then-husband and I lived near a state forest with brown bears, we bought a shotgun for home defense. The first time I fired it, I was overwhelmed by its deafening sound and earth-shaking recoil. Never in my life had I, a petite woman, made such a strong and loud impact. “So this is what it’s like to have a penis,” I thought, immediately realizing that if I walked through the world with a weapon on my hip, nobody would mess with me. At that moment, I understood I’d been conditioned my entire life to see myself as prey: a small, vulnerable creature, ever on the defensive.
On Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford found something more powerful and earth-shaking than a shotgun: the power of a courageous voice. From where I sat, Ford’s calm and sometimes quavering words were more powerful than all of Brett Kavanaugh’s shouted rancor. I have no doubt the Republicans will confirm Kavanaugh, regardless of what a weeklong FBI investigation finds: patriarchy always defends its own, and the party of Trump has become the party of angry and aggrieved white men. But in the aftermath of Ford’s testimony, countless women like me will continue to do what we’ve always done, gestating our rage into resilience and simmering our sadness into a hidden elixir of resolve.
Hoarded Ordinaries 