Friday, February 10, 2017

One Billion Rising Budapest Fundraiser

Dear Friends,
Please join us February 18th, 2017 for the One Billion Rising Anti-Exploitation Ball: an evening of dance with all proceeds donated to local women’s rights groups. The evening is hosted by Barrio Del Tango, with a guest DJ.
While Budapest is famous for many things including its nightlife, it is also famous for its exploitative sex industry. The One Billion Rising Budapest 2017 campaign supports three nonprofits working to end the exploitation of women. The first, Józan Babák, helps pregnant women and women with young children become substance abuse free (many of their clients are prostituted women or exited women). The second nonprofit is JÓL-LÉT Alapítvány, which works to support women’s rights in the workplace. And the third is Női Érdek, the Hungarian Women’s Lobby, which strives to build a feminist culture and defend women’s rights. Representatives from these organizations will be available at the ball to answer further questions.
One Billion Rising Budapest is seeking donations to ensure that these NGOs can continue to carry out their work in Hungary and to help exploited women rebuild their lives. You can donate and dance at the Anti-Exploitation Ball on February 18th, or you can transfer funds directly (even from abroad) to these accounts:
• Józan Babák: Magnet Bank 16200216-17085906
• JOL-LET Alapíitvany: Magnet Bank HU48 1620 0151 1852 8549 0000 0000
• Magyar Női Érdekérvényesítő Szövetség (Női Érdek): Unicredit Bank, Hungary HU32 1091 8001 0000 0019 8472 0012
Please note “One Billion Rising” on transfer.
With thanks,
Janet Kelley, One Billion Rising Organizer and Hungarian Women’s Lobby Volunteer
For more information about One Billion Rising, a global campaign to stop violence against women: http://www.onebillionrising.org/
One Billion Rising Anti-Exploitation Ball:
February 18th, 2017. 8 pm – 12 am
Barrio Del Tango
1053 Budapest, Irányi utca 18-20
No formal dress required! Come dressed to dance!
Entrance to the party is free. Cash bar.

Thursday, February 02, 2017

Winter Sundays



THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS
Robert Hayden, 1913 - 1980


Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, 
then with cracked hands that ached 
from labor in the weekday weather made 
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 
When the rooms were warm, he’d call, 
and slowly I would rise and dress, 
fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

Speaking indifferently to him, 
who had driven out the cold 
and polished my good shoes as well. 
What did I know, what did I know 
of love’s austere and lonely offices?


Sunday, January 29, 2017

Women's March on Budapest: Video

This is the amazing drone video, provided by Greenpeace, that captures our human chain of solidarity formed over the Chain Bridge in Budapest.


#sistermarch #womensmarch #budapest #bridgesnotwalls #greenpeace

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Women's March on Budapest


Good morning! Thank you for joining us!
I am Janet Kelley, one of the organizers of this march.
Recently we’ve heard so much abusive language toward women, immigrants, people of color, and the LGBTQ community that at times even leaving the house is in itself an act of courage.
The fact that you showed up today to march for Women’s Rights is a tremendous act of bravery. Give yourselves a round of applause!
Our banner says, Build Bridges not Walls. Why? Because we believe in bridges. Connections. Alliances. Networks. Conversation. Communication. So turn to your neighbor and introduce yourself. Your name, what you do, why you march today…
As we build bridges today, look out for each other. Give each other space and patience as we cross the bridge.
We are building bridges. A bridge is a testament to humanity’s intelligence and ability to solve problems. To join what has been divided. Budapest is a city defined by bridges--the Lanchid was the first bridge to join Buda and pest and now the city is defined by many of them.
As we drop our banner today, we will stand at the center of the bridge. Let us have the courage to work for Women’s Rights from the center of the bridge—putting our stories, our demands, our power, our voices center stage.
We need to acknowledge that we live in a world with an elected leader emboldened to denigrate and sexually assault women. We cannot stand silent. We cannot close our eyes. We must start today to resist such leadership.
Some people have criticized this march as futile, or frivolous, or ill-conceived--or all those other words used against women to undermine them when they stand up for their rights. But I know one thing, when my children and grandchildren ask me what it was like when Trump was elected, I can tell them: Women joined forces around the world to say: Our power is real. Our courage is real. And we are watching you.
We are joined with the Women's March on Washington to send a bold message to the new American government on their first day in office, and to the world, that women's rights are human rights. We stand together, we recognize that to defend the most marginalized among us is to defend all of us.
There is work to be done. In America. And in Hungary.
We have asked Kevehazi Kata to speak about Women’s Rights in Hungary. She will speak briefly in Hungarian to let us know more about the situation for women in Hungary.
(Kata speaks)
Thank you Kata, and special thanks to Greenpeace for their tremendous support in planning and carrying out this event today. And a special thanks to the police who willingly cooperated with us to provide us our route.
Mostanában olyan sok sértő és megbélyegző dolgot hallhattunk nőkről, bevándorlókról és menekültekről, kisebbségekről, az LMBTQIA közösségről, hogy ha kilépsz otthonról, már önmagában az is bátorságra vall. Az, hogy ma itt vagy és felvonulsz a nők jogaiért hatalmas bizonyítéka a bátorságodnak. Tapsoljuk meg magunkat!
A jelmondatunk: „Falak helyett hidakat!” Hogy miért? Mert hiszünk a hidakban. Kapcsolatok. Szövetségek. Hálózatok. Párbeszéd. Kommunikáció. Fordulj oda a szomszédodhoz és mutatkozz be neki! Mondd el a nevedet, hogy mit csinálsz, hogymiért menetelsz ma.
Mivel ma hidakat építünk, figyeljünk egymásra, amíg átkelünk a hídon. Adjunk helyeés legyünk türelmesek egymással.
Hidakat építünk. A híd az emberiség intelligenciájának szimbóluma. Annak, hogy képesek vagyunk problémákat megoldani. Összekötni azt, ami korábban külön volt.
Budapest meghatározó elemei a hidak. A Lánchíd volt az első híd, ami összekötötte Budát és Pestet és mostanra a várost ezek a hidak határozzák meg.
Amikor ma kifüggesztjük a transzparensünket, a híd közepén fogunk állni. Hadd vegyük a bátorságot ahhoz, hogy a nők jogaiért a híd közepéről dolgozzunk – hadd legyenek a történeteink, a követeléseink, az erőnk, a hangunk a színpad közepén.
Fel kell ismernünk, hogy hol tartunk ma. Egy olyan világban élünk, ahol egy választott vezető arra bátorít, hogy rossz hírbe hozzunk és szexuálisan bántalmazzunk nőket. Nem maradhatunk csendben! Nem csukhatjuk be a szemünket! Még ma el kell kezdenünk szembeszegülni az ilyen irányítással.
Néhányan bírálták ezt a felvonulást azzal, hogy hiábavaló vagy haszontalan vagy rosszul van megtervezve vagy bármilyen más kifejezéssel, amit azért használnak a nők ellen, hogy ellehetetlenítsék a helyzetüket, amikor kiállnak a jogaikért.
De egy dolgot tudok: amikor a gyerekeim és az unokáim megkérdeznek, hogy milyen volt, amikor Trumpot megválasztották, azt mondhatom nekik: a nők világszerte egyesítették erőiket, hogy azt mondhassák: Az erőnk valódi. A bátorságunk valódi. És figyelünk téged.
Csatlakozunk a washingtoni Nők Felvonulásához, hogy Trump elnökké avatásának másnapján üzenetet küldjünk az új amerikai vezetésnek és a világnak, hogy a nők jogai emberi jogok. Kiállunk egymásért, mert rájöttünk, hogyha megvédjük a leginkább kitaszítottakat, akkor mindannyiunkat megvédjük.
Sok munkánk van Amerikában és Magyarországon is.
Megkértük Keveházi Katát, hogy beszéljen a nők jogainak helyzetéről Magyarországon. Ő fog szólni arról, hogy mit tehetünk a
nők jogaiért itt, Magyarországon.
Köszönjük neked, Kata és külön köszönjük a Greenpeace-nek a hatalmas segítséget a mai esemény szervezésében és lebonyolításában. És köszönjük a rendőrségnek, aki készségesen együttműködött velünk és biztosította az útvonalunkat.
Keveházi Kata vagyok. 17. éve dolgozom a nőkért, és van 3 lányom. Büszke vagyok rá, hogy itt lehetek, és résztvevője lehetek ennek a napnak.
Ez egy történelmi nap. Mától a világ leggazdagabb és legbefolyásosabb országának vezetője egy olyan
férfi, aki megtestesíti mindazt, amitől ez a világ, amelyben élünk, romlott, veszélyes, és fájdalmakkal teli: a férfiuralom erőszakosságát, gátlástalanságát, agresszióját és fölényességét.
Legyünk bátrak kimondani, hisz tudjuk: a háborúk, a szegénység, az éhezés, a környezetrombolás, a migráció, mind a patriarchális hatalmi célok, hataloméhes férfiak végzetes, százmilliók pusztulásával járó játékának következményei.
Az erőforrásokért, pénzért vívott véres vagy vértelen ütközetek leginkább kiszolgáltatott áldozatai a nők és lánygyermekek. A nők elleni erőszak jól bevált tömegpusztító fegyvere minden háborúnak, a zaklatás a munkahelyi kultúra és a mindennapok része, a verbális, sőt a fizikai bántalmazás sokak családjában az élet természetes velejárója.
A mai nap történelmi nap, hiszen világszerte nők tömegei menetelnek, hogy megmutassák a nők erejét.
Igen, nagy utat tettünk meg, mi feministák, és a nők egyenlőségét támogató férfiak az elmúlt 100-150 évben.
A nők tanulhatnak, fizetett munkát végezhetnek, választhatnak és választhatók, javakat birtokolhatnak, saját akaratukból házasodhatnak és válhatnak el, dönthetnek arról, mikor és kitől
szeretnének gyermeket vállalni. Már ott, ahol. Mert vannak országok, társadalmi csoportok, ahol ez korántsem evidens.
Sok mindent elértünk, de tudjuk, hogy mindez kevés.
Garantált jogok ide vagy oda a férfiuralom megszállottjai és gyakorlói (és velük a nekik bólogató nők ) elidegeníthetetlen joguknak tartják, hogy előírják,
- mit tudunk – többnyire nem eleget, de azt se jól
- hogy mire vagyunk képesek – na jó, középvezetők esetleg lehetünk,
- hol a helyünk – otthon, természetesen,
- mi a feladatunk – a szeretteinkről való gondoskodás - mert magunktól eszünkbe sem jut
- hogy mennyit érünk – annyit semmi esetre sem, mint egy azonos képzettséggel, tapasztalattal rendelkező férfi,
- hogy mennyire és mennyiben vagyunk hasznosak a munkahelyen és használhatók az ágyban.
A többség társadalmi megbecsültségét mind a mai napig az adja, van-e mellette férfi, elég szépek, kedvesek, alkalmazkodók vagyunk-e, szülünk és háztartunk-e rendesen.
Magyarországon nem sokra becsülik a feminizmust. Kommunista métely, amúgy is posztszocialista örökség, hogy a nők és férfiak egyenlőségét a törvény biztosítja - ez nem is kérdés.
Hogy romlott a nők helyzete?
Hogy az idősgondozás, a házi betegápolás gyakorlatilag megszűnt; hogy továbbra sincs elegendő bölcsőde; hogy az egészségügyet már csak a dolgozók tartják életben; hogy a sérült gyermeket nevelő anyák 10% alatti arányban tudnak dolgozni; hogy csökkent az iskolaköteles életkor; hogy Nyíregyházáról nevezik el Amszterdamban a piros lámpás negyed egy részét; hogy nő a női
hajléktalanok aránya, hogy a legkonzervatívabb muszlim országok szintjén áll a parlamenti képviselők aránya, és hogy 1 árva nő sincs a kormányban? Ugyan.
Annyira egyenlők vagyunk, hogy nőkérdés más nincs is. Csak családok vannak, az alkotmány által is védetten. Nem érdekes, hogy minden ötödik család egyszülős, ahol 90%-ban a nő a családfenntartó. Hogy a 3 éve alatti gyermekgondozási segély vagy a sérült gyermeküket, hozzátartozójukat gondozó nők által igénybevető ápolási díj összege a létminimum egyharmada. Hogy a gyermekek fele szegénységben él és 50000 7 éven aluli gyermek éhezik. Miközben 4 milliárdért rendezünk be egy várbéli dolgozószobát. Az sem indokolja az Isztambuli Egyezmény ratifikálást, hogy a magyar rendőrség még mindig ott tart, hogy családon belüli erőszak esetén ki sem jön, ha nem folyt még vér. Ha mégis, hát nem történt semmi. Minek ugrál annyit az asszony. A parlamentben is megmondták, hogy „Fogd be a szád, anyukám”!
Hát mi befogjuk. És gályázunk és gólyázunk.
A férfiuralom nem lenne a nyakunkon, ha a nők többsége el ne fogadná alárendelt szerepét. Saját és gyermekeik anyagi és biztonsága érdekében alkalmazkodunk a zaklató főnökhöz, a bántalmazó férjhez, hálásak vagyunk a buszsofőrnek, ha vigyorogva mégis kinyitja az ajtót, és megdicséri a külsőnket.
Csapda ez nőtársaim, hogy a férfiak, az erős férfiak teremtik meg a biztonságunkat, miközben a legfőbb veszélyforrást a világ biztonsága, és hétköznapjaink biztonsága szempontjából éppen az
arrogáns férfihatalom jelenti, az egyenlőtlenségek növekedése, a hatalom nélküliek elnyomásán és semmibevételén alapuló patriarchális értékrend fennmaradása jelenti.
A mai nap azért is történelmi nap, mert ma világszerte milliók menetelnek együtt azért, hogy kifejezzék, nem, nem fordulunk vissza! Nem engedünk az eddig elért emberi és szociális jogainkból,
szolidárisak vagyunk egymással, minden kisebbséggel, a kiszolgáltatottakkal.
Kedves nőtársaim, elég erősek, okosak, önállóak és felelősségteljesek vagyunk. Ne féljünk a vezető szereptől, ne féljünk az érdekeink és gyermekeink érdekeinek képviseletétől, álljunk ki a jogainkért, a kiszolgáltatottakért, a társadalmi igazságosságért, egymásért és önmagunkért.
This is a historic day. From today, the leader of the world’s richest and most influential country is a man who represents all that makes this world we live in rotten, dangerous, and full of pain: chauvinistic aggression, scrupulousness, and arrogance.
Let’s be brave enough to say, since we know it’s true: war, poverty, hunger, environmental destruction, migration are all the result of patriarchal aspiration to power, the result of the games of power-hungry men, destructive games that come with hundreds of millions of casualties.
The victims of the battles for money and resources, bloody or not, are mostly women and girls.
Violence against women is an effective weapon of mass destruction in every war, harassment is part of workplace culture and our everyday life, and verbal and physical abuse are natural parts of life in many families.
It’s a historic day because around the world, masses of women are marching, to show their strength.
Yes, we’ve come a long way, we feminists and men who support equality, in the past 100-150 years.
Women can study, earn a wage, vote and be elected, own property, marry and divorce at their own will, and decide if, when, and with whom they have children. In some places. Because there are countries and communities where this is far from the case.
We’ve achieved a lot, but we know it’s not enough.
Regardless of actual rights, believers in and practitioners of male dominance (and with them, acquiescent women) feel it is their inalienable right to dictate:
● What we know - mostly not enough, and what we do know, we don’t know well
● What we’re capable of - okay, we can be middle manages
● Our place - at home, naturally
● Our job - to care for our loved ones, because we wouldn’t have realized this ourselves
● Our worth - in any case not as much as a man with the same education and experience
● How useful we are at work and in bed
The respect of the majority in our society remains determined by whether a woman has a husband or boyfriend, is pretty enough, nice enough, accommodating enough, and whether she bears children and keeps a household well.
In Hungary, feminism is not valued. It’s a communist fluke, a post-socialist inheritance that equality between the sexes is enshrined in law - there’s no question about it.
Has the situation of women deteriorated?
Perhaps because care for senior citizens and homebound patients has disappeared? Because
there are still not enough nursery schools? Because only the hard-working staff keep our health care system alive? Because only 10% of women with disabled children are able to work.
Because the required school-leaving age has been lowered? Because in Amsterdam, part of the red-light district is named after Nyiregyhaza? Because the percentage of women in the homeless population is rising? Because the ratio of female MPs approaches that of the most conservative of muslim countries? Because there isn’t a single woman in the cabinet?
No. We’re so equal, there’s no question about women. There are only families, and those are protected in the constitution.
It doesn’t matter that every fifth family is a single-parent one, of which 90% have a woman as the sole breadwinner. That the amount of support for women raising a child under three, caring
for a disabled child, or caring for a family member is one-third of the subsistence level. That half of the children in our country live in poverty and 50,000 children under the age of 7 are hungry,
and that the children of parents struggling to make ends meet are taken away.
In the midst of all this, we furnish an office in the Castle District for 4 billion forints ($14 million). And the ratification of the Istanbul Convention doesn’t influence the fact that the Hungarian
police still does not come to the scene when cases of domestic violence are reported, if blood is not flowing. If they do, well, nothing much happened. What’s the woman going on about? In parliament they’ve said, “Close your mouth, woman!”
We do close our mouths. We put up with it.
Male dominance would not be burdening us today if the majority of women didn’t accept their subordinate status. We put up with our abusive bosses and husbands, we’re grateful to the bus driver if he decides to open the door, and compliments us on our looks – all in the interest of our own and our children’s safety and well-being.
This is a trap, my fellow females. It’s a trap to think that strong men provide our security, while the main threat to the security of the world and of our daily lives is that arrogant male dominance, which leads to the rise of inequality, and the perpetuation of a patriarchal value system based on the oppression of the powerless.
It’s a historic day also because around the world, millions are marching together today to say "No, we’re not turning back! We’re not giving up any of our hard-won human and social rights. We’re in solidarity with each other and every minority, every oppressed group.”
My dear women, we are strong enough, smart enough, independent enough, and responsible enough. Let’s not be afraid to be leaders. Let’s not be afraid to represent our interests and those of our children. Let’s stand up for our rights, for the oppressed, for social justice, for each other, and for ourselves.

Sunday, January 08, 2017

Does my haughtiness offend you? Still I Rise

Still I Rise


You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-i-rise

Friday, January 06, 2017

"So what moved him to not-say I-love-you?"



'I Love You'

Related Poem Content Details

for Geraldine Monk
'I love you,' he wouldn't say: it was against his philosophy; I-love-you
didn't mean what it meant, plus the verray construction of the phrase
caused bad-old-concrete-lawman-vandal-verbal-mildew-upon-the-grape-
harvest-and-war-for-rare-minerals-required-to-manufacture-commu-
nications-devices damage; saying I-love-you damaged love, subject and
object; plus he could prove this in two dense and delphic languages
suitable for philosophy, opera, cursing, and racking the nerves of arti-
ficial intelligence machines that perhaps could love but would be
hard-wired giammai to dare say so. So what moved him to not-say
I-love-you? What wake-up-and-spoil-the-coffee ashtray-licking djinn? I
have to start to agree. The verbness of it impropriety (eyes glob up the
syringe when you're giving blood: semisolid spiralling); perhaps too
active... I-love-you, I sand you, I drill you, I honey and set you for wasps,
crimson you like a stolen toga, add value applying dye, fight owner-
ship, I cite you to justify skilled outrage, put your name as guarantor
on an astronomical mortgage, I admit desertification comes as a relief,
from I to O, O my oasis, O my mirage. Maybe the verb is a tending-to-
wards? A tightrope? A tropism? A station? But that's meeting him on
his own ground; plus I can't disprove entire languages; plus those
three little words aren't meant as saying. An icy drink in stormlight. A
looked-at leaf left to transpire its own way until... And sans I-love-you
the centuried moon rose above dinnermint stone; many men contin-
ued  talking; a woman lifted her sarsenet skirt, peed on green lilies and,
utterly gracious, walked through the archway to join the mixed group
delighting in — word! believe it! — fresh air.
Vahni Capildeo, "‘I Love You’" from Measures of Expatriation. Copyright © 2016 by Vahni Capildeo. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press, Ltd..
Source: Measures of Expatriation (Carcanet Press, Ltd., 2016)



https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/91724

Wednesday, January 04, 2017

In the Dark Room by Susan Faludi

PREFACE

FIRST LINE:


In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father.

TWO

"Haaallo?" my father said, with the protracted enunciation I'd heard so infrequently in recent years, that Magyar cadence that seemed to border on camp. Hallo. As my father liked to note, that telephone salutation was the coinage of Thomas Edison's assistant, Tivadar Puskás, the inventor of the phone exchange, who, as it happened, was Hungarian. "Hallom!" Puskás had shouted when he first picked up the receiver in 1877, Magyar for "I hear you!" Would she?

FIVE

My sense of who I am, to the degree that I can locate its coordinates, seems to derive from a quality of resistance, a refusal to back down. If it's threatened, I'll assert it. My "identity" has quickened in those very places where it has been most under siege.

TWELVE

In March 1939, more than two years before Hungary even entered the war, the Hungarian government declared Jewish men unfit for military action. . . . Instead, the Hungarian Labor Service System, unique to Hungary, conscripted all male Jews between the ages of twenty and forty-eight (and later, eighteen and forty-eight) into forced work units. . . . Conscripts were deprived of army boots and uniforms (other than yellow armbands identifying them as Jews; white for Jews who were Christian coverts). . . .these men provided the slave labor. . . .marched ahead of the regular troops through mine fields. . . .the laborers died in epidemic numbers, forty-two thousand before the German occupation.

Jewish men, no matter how convincing their false identity papers, risked what was euphemistically known as "trouser inspection" every time they ventured out.

THIRTEEN

I thought often of Nobel laureate Imre Kertész's assessment of his former home: "Nothing has been worked through, everything is painted over with pretty colors. Budapest is a city without a memory."

In 2003, Hungarian legislators, intent on making their country one of the first post-Communist bloc nations to join the EU, hurried into law the Equal Treatment Act. . . . And, remarkably, "gender identity," which two human-rights NGOs managed to slip into the the legislation. Hungary became the first nation in the world to guarantee equal protection to transgender people. 
      On paper. On the street, any urge to celebrate Hungary's declared tolerance was undercut by fear.

FOURTEEN

With Trianon, Hungary shed not only landmass but ethnic diversity. A vast portion of the country's minorities--those restive Romanians, Slovaks, Croatians, Ruthenians, Slovenians--now belonged to other nations carved from its borders. . . .With the exception of ethnic Germans, strongly assimilated yet in their own way outliers, the populace had gone from a roiling rainbow quilt to black and white: Magyar and Jew. One way to read the collapse of the Golden Age--it's what happens when a fluid system becomes binary. Magyars now represented 90 percent of the population. There were no longer the only slightly-less-than-half demographic who needed the Jews to be Magyars in order to construct their majority. The Jews of Hungary now served another purpose, as scapegoats for the "amputation" of the nation, the "mutilated motherland."

I can't bear to type some of the passages I have underlined. This chapter is extremely powerful and important for readers.

FIFTEEN

"The power of editing!" she said. "Waaall, I have to edit everything I do."

TWENTY

"Identity is" -- she deliberated--"it's what society accepts for you. You have to behave in a way that people accept, otherwise you have enemies. That's what I do--and I have no problems." 

TWENTY-FIVE

I studied my father's face, averted as it so often had been in life. All the years she was alive, she'd sought to settle the question of who she was. Jew or Christian? Hungarian or American? Woman or man? So many oppositions. But as I gazed upon her still body, I thought: there is in the universe only one true divide, one real binary, life and death. Either you are living or you are not. Everything else is molten, malleable.






Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Nutshell by Ian McEwan


EPIGRAPH

Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space--were it not that I have bad dreams.   Shakespeare, Hamlet


FIRST LINE

So here I am, upside down in a woman.


ONE

Let me summon it, that moment of creation that arrived with my first concept. Long ago, many weeks ago, my neural groove closed upon itself to become my spine and my many million young neurons, busy as silkworms, spun and wove from their trailing axons the gorgeous golden fabric of my first idea, a notion so simple it partly eludes me now. Was it me? Too self-loving. Was it now? Overly dramatic. Then something antecedent to both, containing both, a single word mediated by a mental sigh or swoon of acceptance, of pure being, something like--this? Too precious. So, getting closer, my idea was To be. Or if not that, its grammatical variant, is. This was my aboriginal notion and here's the crux--is. Just that. In the spirit of Ex muss sein. The beginning of conscious life was the end of illusion, the illusion of non-being, and the eruption of the real.

TWO

Instead, he hopes to succeed by kindness and self-effacing sensitivity to her needs. I hope to be wrong, but I think he'll doubly fail, for she'll go on despising him for being weak, and he'll suffer even more than he should.

THREE

We'll always be troubled by how things are--that's how it stands with the difficult gift of consciousness.

FOUR

But here's life's most limiting truth--it's always now, always here, never then and there.

FIVE

Adversity forced awareness on us, and it works, it bites us when we go too near the fire, when we love too hard. Those felt sensations are the beginning of the invention of the self.

God said, Let there be pain. And there was poetry. Eventually.

SIX

"Seizing the law into your own hands--it's old hat, reserved for elderly feuding Albanians and subsections of tribal Islam. Revenge is dead. Hobbes was right, my young friend. The state must have a monopoly of violence, a common power to keep us all in awe."

Words, as I am beginning to appreciate, can make things true.

SEVEN

Only satisfied desire could have freed him.

Each of us, from each different point of view, is gripped by what's not being said.

EIGHT

But it won't end, the bad will be endless, until ending badly will seem a blessing.

NINE

The man who obliterates my mother between the sheets obeys like a dog. Sex, I begin to understand, is its own mountain kingdom, secret and intact. In the valley below we know only rumors.

TEN

A toast to love and therefore to death, to Eros and Thanatos. It appears to be a given of intellectual life, that when two notions are sufficiently far apart or opposed, they are said to be profoundly linked. Since death is opposed to everything in life, various couplings are proposed. Art and death. Nature and death. Worryingly, birth and death. And joyously iterated, love and death. On this last and from where I am, no two notions could be more mutually irrelevant. The dead love no one, nothing. As soon as I am out and about I might try my hand at a monograph. The world cries out for fresh-faced empiricists.

TWELVE

However close you get to others, you can never get inside of them, even when you're inside of them.

But it's hard to be separate from her when I need her. And with such churning of emotion, need translates to love, like milk to butter.

THIRTEEN

Lovers arrive at their first kisses with scars as well as longings. They're not always looking for advantage. Some need shelter, others press only for the hyperreality of ecstasy, for which they'll tell outrageous lies or make irrational sacrifice. But they rarely ask themselves what they need or want. Memories are poor for past failures. Childhoods shine through adult skin, helpfully or not. So do the laws of inheritance that bind a personality. The lovers don't know there's no free will.

FOURTEEN

a wonderful passage on revenge, which you need to read in context.

FIFTEEN

No one exclaims at the moment of one's dazzling coming-out, It's a person! Instead: It's a girl, It's a boy. Pink or blue--a minimal improvement of Henry Ford's offer of cars of any color so long as they were black. Only two sexes. I was disappointed. If human bodies, minds, fates are so complex, if we are free like no other mammal, why limit the range?

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen identities.

I'll feel, therefore I'll be.

Feeling is queen. Unless she identifies as king.

EIGHTEEN

She's memorising her memories.

NINETEEN

A voice on the radio once told me that when we fully understand what matter is we'll feel better. I doubt that. I'll never get what I want.

LAST LINES

And I'm thinking about our prison cell--I hope it's not too small--and beyond its heavy door, worn steps ascending: first sorrow, then justice, then meaning. The rest is chaos.



Tuesday, November 08, 2016

A Poem on Election Day: Liquid Flesh


Liquid Flesh

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In a light chocolatine room
with blackout windows,
a loud clock drowns in soft dawn’s
 
syllables, crisscrossed
with a broken cloudiness
I’d choose as my own bedcovers
 
but cannot. My choice of sleep
or sky has no music of its own.
There’s no “its own” while the baby cries.
 
Oh, the baby cries. He howls and claws
like a wrongly minor red wolf
who doesn’t know his mother.
 
I know I am his mother, but I can’t
quite click on the word’s essential aspects,
can’t denude the flora
 
or disrobe the kind of housecoat
“mother” always is. Something
cunty, something used.
 
Whatever meaning the word itself
is covering, like underwear,
that meaning is so mere and meager
 
this morning. Mother. Baby.
Chicken and egg. It’s so obnoxious
of me: I was an egg
 
who had  an egg
and now I’m a chicken,
as usual scooping up
 
both possibilities,
or what I used to call
possibilities. I used
 
to be this way, so ontologically
greedy, wanting to be it all.
Serves me right.
 
My belief in the fluidity
of the self turns out to mean
my me is a flow of wellwater,

                                                    
without the well, or the bucket,
a hole dug and seeping.
A kind of unwell, where
 
the ground reabsorbs
what it was displaced to give.
The drain gives meaning to the sieve.
 
As I said: a chicken who still
wants to be all potential.
Someone who springs
 
and falls, who cannot see
how many of us I have 
in me—and I do not like them all.
 
Do I like us? Can I love us?
If anyone comes
first it’s him, but how can that be?
 
I was here way, way first.
I have the breasts, godawful, and he
the lungs and we share the despair.
 
For we are a we, aren’t we? We split
a self in such a way that there isn’t
enough for either of us.
 
The father of the baby is sleepy
and present in his way, in the way
of fathers. He is devoted like
 
few fathers, and maybe hurts
like I hurt, like no fathers.
I don’t know what someone else
 
feels, not even these someones
who are also me. Do they hurt
like I do?  Why can’t they
 
tell me, or morse or sign: let
me know they know where and how
and why it hurts? Or something?
 
What is the point of other people,
being so separate, if we can’t 
help a person get that pain
 
will stick its shiv into anything,
just to get rid of the weapon
and because it can? For if we share
 
ourselves then they, too, must
also be in so much pain.
I can hear it. Oh, my loves.
 
The wood of the crib, the white
glow of the milk (which must
have siphoned off the one
 
and only pure part of me, leaving
me with what, toxicity
or sin or mush?), the awful softness.
 
I’ve been melted into something
too easy to spill. I make more
and more of myself in order
 
to make more and more of the baby.
He takes it, this making. And somehow
he’s made more of me, too.
 
I’m a mother now.
I run to the bathroom, run
to the kitchen, run to the crib
 
and I’m not even running.
These places just scare up as needed,
the wires that move my hands
 
to the sink, to the baby,
to the breast are electrical.
I’m in shock.
 
One must be in shock to say so,
as if one’s own state is assessable,
like a car accident or Minnesota taxes.
 
A total disaster, this sack of liquid
flesh which yowls and leaks
and I’m talking about me
 
not the baby. Me, this puddle
of a middle, this utilized vessel,
cracked hull, divine
 
design. It’s how it works. It’s how
we all got here. Deform
following the function . . .
 
But what about me? I whisper
secretly and to think,
around these parts used to be
 
the joyful place of sex,
what is now this intimate
terror and squalor.
 
My eyes burned out at three a.m. and again
at six and eleven. This is why the clock
is drowning, as I said earlier.
 
I’m trying to explain it.
I repeat myself, or haven’t I already?
Tiny self, along with a tiny self.
 
I’ll say it: he hurt me, this new
babe, then and now.
Perhaps he always will,
 
though thoughts of the future
seem like science fiction novels
I never finished reading.
 
Their ends like red nerves
chopped off by cleaver, not aliens,
this very moment, saving nothing for later.
 
He howls with such fury and clarity
I must believe him.
No god has the power
 
to make me believe anything,
yet I happen to know
this baby knows a way out.
 
This dark hole closing in on me
all around: he’ll show me
how to get through
 
the shock and the godlessness
and the rictus of crushed flesh,
into the rest of my life.
Source: Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012)