I’ve been moping, no question about it. But moping (in my world meaning protracted depression) does strange things in my brain. I start to get more creative in my thinking, rather involuntarily, and things start to string together in new ways.
Maybe this is just a function of getting older and accumulating experience over experience. Unlike when I was younger, current happenings seem to trigger memories that show patterns over time and briefly reveal things about the world, about my life, about human nature.
My husband spoke with me last night about the research he is going to be doing in his neuroscience studies. Whenever he speaks about this stuff, I either start to glaze over because the terms are so unfamiliar, or I immediately jump in my head to metaphor between the way the brain lays down and conveys information and the way life seems to organize itself. It’s kind of like a mirror in a mirror in a mirror (or Stephen Colbert’s latest portrait in the Smithsonian, if you prefer). The preceding parenthetical reference is apt since there is an element of narcissism to this kind of thinking — a self-obsession with how my life maps against the ages, how my perceptions track with objective physical reality and the cumulative experiences of human consciousness (you know, the whole “Carl Jung” thing and stuff).
But I am getting off track. I’d like to reduce this down to just my own life first before connecting to the collective, if I may be so bold
I wrote in my last post about this fear that I live outside the world of others who make clear choices, consciously, and move ahead. My choices always seem tortured by ambiguity. I doubt a lot. I also look back on my life and regret most the decisions I made out of fear, not the truly voluntary, but undeniably intentional, f@$%ups. The f@$%ups seem to come with the territory of learning, and demonstrate that hope springs eternal. But the fears, well they seem less innate than they are acquired. I’ve acquired quite a few.
So much so that there are times when, as Andrea Dworkin wrote about, it feels like my brain has been colonized. Indeed, 15 years ago, I wrote and performed a one woman show about how my brain as a woman has been colonized with the need to be thin and attractive — so much so that the “success” of my sexuality had been given over to the subjectivity of others, and I became my own object. In this state of mind, I would turn myself into a pretzel to create the perfect tableau moment for a lover or husband: that moment when you feel like the prettiest in the room so he doesn’t have to be embarassed by you; the moment of the faked-orgasm-as-gift The behavior is repeated and repeated until the self is no longer there — the culture and the needs of the observer colonize your brain.
This is a form of slavery, but, as Dworkin wrote, a voluntary form. She noted how brilliant it was: the system (an organic power structure that’s arisen over repeated periods of violence and conquest, not a conspiracy per se) is set up so that women spend their own precious resources of time, money, and energy to further the cause of the colonists. Without this, there would be no Victoria’s Secret. It’s nice that men go in there on the holidays, but the money being sucked up by that corporation is largely coming from the anxiety (and hard-earned paychecks) of women.
So, should women wear only plain cotton underwear, no makeup, and sensible shoes? Well, no. That’s a reaction (unless you genuinely LIKE that style :)) that can be an expression of sexuality that’s been shut down out of sheer fatigue with keeping up with it all. As such, it can be just as much a symptom of the colonization as anything. The challenge is to be able to rise about the external messages to find what is truly you about you. Maybe that’s a thong with tube socks — whatever floats your boat. But it’s your boat, the woman’s boat, that should be floating. Bad metaphor, but you get my point.
Now, to extend the boat metaphor excruciatingly further, what kind of boat is it? For me, it’s kind of been like sitting in a dinghy hanging off the cruise ship called the “SS Daddy.”
Probably the hardest thing for me to feel capable of is steering my own life. A colleague of mine long ago characterized it as “falling into the vortex” of whatever comes my way. But despite personal histories, life brings opportunities to do things differently. Perhaps the greatest change I ever experienced was quitting drinking, and I’ve managed to stay sober for over 15 years, so change is possible, and opportunities come around every day.
There is no opportunity in my personal life at the moment that seems feasible, but there is an opportunity in the public realm, and I’m so colonized that I couldn’t even see it. Until this current brick hit me in the head, I was voting for Edwards, and then Obama. My rationale: Edwards had a better health care plan and would be nicer to labor unions. Obama, well, what better role model could I ask for my biracial son than a biracial President? Also, I don’t particularly like the tactics of the Clinton campaign so far.
But, you know, all of these folks that run have flaws and are potentially “ethically challenged” to one degree or another. And in a high stakes game like the presidential elections, it seems that there are backroom deals and manipulations on all sides. Please — why do you think John Kennedy got elected?
So, what is it that makes me cling to Obama so much? Well, my dinghy would now appear to be hanging from the deck of the SS Mommy. On some level, I’ve transferred my feelings of disempowerment and invisibility to my son, to the point that I feel I owe him even what I do privately in the voting booth.
Now, I can get used to being interrupted by him in the shower, or being called when I’m in the bathroom, or being woken up at 5 in the morning with “Mommy…I’m hungry.” I don’t like it, but I can get used to it. But, is my mind SO colonized that I’ll give even my civic right to vote to the cause of my son? Is that healthy?
Robin Morgan was on NPR yesterday and was talking about the the misogynistic humor that’s out there about Hillary: nutcrackers, t-shirts, and the like. She talked about that horrible Hardball guy, Chris Matthews, and all of his woman-hating comments that went unnoticed until challenged. In the wake of “nappy-headed ho’s” and the firing of Imus, we can still make awful comments about a powerful woman (note the modifier “powerful.” I don’t want to be accused of being inconsistent with my previous post about man-bashing. Sexist humor about your everyday disempowered women, save among jerks who LISTEN to people like Imus, has largely been deemed socially unacceptable). I don’t know why, but I know this: When I saw a Hillary nutcracker in some novelty store a few weeks ago, I got an instantaneous nauseous feeling in my stomach. I felt battered by it, really demeaned. The nutcracker was her thighs, of course, and that’s a part of the body about which I’ve always been particularly vulnerable.
The thighs are the entry to the most private world of my body. They are where Blake lays his head an falls asleep. Mine are particularly generous. They are also powerful — I can do a lot of weight with my thighs that my arms just can’t lift. A woman standing on her own two, powerful legs means something. We like our women’s legs to be spindly, and I think we like the visible fragility, like she may twist an ankle and fall at any moment, needing rescue.
Hillary is like me: smart, under-appreciated, a dinghy on her husband’s off-course steamship. She’s broken free from deck, and is rowing on her own now, anchored only by the mistakes of the very person whose shared success brought her the opportunity to get to this level of prominence. Yet she rows.
I want to break free. I want my own steamship. I want my son to respect the women in his life, and learn to row beside them rather than attaching them like an appendage to a narrow, self-driven course. I want my soon-to-be daughter, an Ethiopian girl, to have a whole darned fleet to herself.
And that’s why, despite every urge heretofore to the contrary, despite the fact that I don’t really like her very much, despite the fact that I so want to swoon in the poetry of Camelot 2 and all that unbelievable Obama charisma, I’m voting for Hillary.