Friends, mostly. 
I'll add you back, probably.

One of my goals was to clean up my sunroom, which had started to devolve into a dumping ground. Here, Lucy models its new incarnation as Place You Want To Be:


Technically, it's a cat-free room, but you know how that goes.

Tags: house, lucy, photos

If you look down from my deck to the Victory Garden, this is what you will see:


Down below, under all those leaves, are tomatoes, waiting to ripen:


And squash waiting to be sauteed with garlic:


Our Lady of the Peas watches over the vegetables. Here's what she sees:


But look, she has widened her domain to include Nasturtium! Our Lady of Nasturtium smells the flowers:


The Nasturtium form a crown for Our Lady:


and they grow up and around her:


And up above, on high, Lucy sees all. You better stay on her good side if you know what's good for you.

Tags: garden, lucy

For the past two weeks, I've gone to Quaker meeting.  And I think I'm going to do it again.

But don't worry (if you are), I'm still an ethical atheist.   As in: I don't believe in god because I want to do good anyway.

I've spent many hours in meeting, but most of them were at the Quaker school I attended from 5th to 12th grade.  Back then, I was so angsty and enmeshed in such drama that I had a hard time just sitting with myself.  Now, I sort of missed the silence and wanted to see what would happen if I went back.  "If anyone talks to me about God, I'm out the door," I promised myself.  

Not only did no one talk to me about God or even the Bible, but a woman came up to me after meeting to say that one of the things she loved about this group was the diversity of faith including, she stressed, athiests.  How did she know?  She introduced me to an older gentleman with a cane and long beard, who said "Us Quakers came to Philadelphia to do good and we did well."  He issued this statement as a challenge.  "This room used to be the women's meeting room," he said.  "We don't challenge ourselves enough."

Quaker meeting is a lot like livejournal.  We all sit there and then someone stands and speaks.  Then we sit in silence.  Then someone speaks.  Some people say short little things, and other people work out longer thoughts.  I can't hear what everyone says, or make out what they're saying, but I look at them as they speak and have my little thoughts and wonder what moves those of us to speak if we don't believe it's God or the light or spirit.  I decide it's us ourselves.  I kind of like that idea. 

The room smells of old wood, aged in heat.  The benches creak as we move around.  Some people sit with their heads down on the back of the bench before them.  Others sit with their hands in their lap.  Some sit with their heads back.  I can hear one person's oxygen supply come in short bursts of air.  I can hear the birds singing.  I breathe and let myself think.

And that first time, after about fifteen minutes, I thought, I've been here before and it comes back to me slowly.  A talk by Leslie Feinberg on trans liberation.  I sit right there, in that middle pew across and to the right from where I am now.  Cassandra sits next to me.  I met Ben S that day.  I talk to Leslie Feinberg, who is a kind and generous spirit.  I go home.  There was some reason why I had to bike home right away.  Hadn't I asked to use the phone at the front desk? 

And then I remembered: this was the last place I was before I found out for sure that Ethan was dead.  A man had called me earlier in the day to ask me out.  I had met him by Ethan's bedside and gave him my number so we could keep in touch.  He asked me if I'd like to go out some time.  I tried to deflect his interest by suggesting that he and I go out with Ethan. 

"Ethan's dead," he said.

I didn't believe him.  I tried to call Gene, but got his answering machine.  I left a message saying I'd heard a rumor about Ethan and would he call me back?  I had called from the meetinghouse to check my messages.  There were none.  "It's probably a misunderstanding," I thought, but I biked home with my heart in my throat anyway.

And I called Ethan's dad again and he said that the rumors were true.  Ethan was dead.  

So that time in the meetinghouse was the time before I had to expand my mind to accommodate the idea of Ethan and dead and murder.  And I sat there smelling old wood and watching the faces of everyone just sitting quietly and turned that idea around in my head and it felt ok, kind of muted with age, its edges less sharp.  I felt good to be there, now, after all these years, sitting quietly too, with all these people I didn't know, because there's some sort of strength and wisdom in people who gather to sit and let ideas wash over and through us, and some of them might think "God" and some might think "Light" and some might think "Divine," but I just thought, it's me here in the quiet and still, fingering the edges, again, of a world without god or Ethan.

Even without them, it's a world worth living in and even delighting in and I biked home full of something like grace.

Tags: ethan, happiness, quaker

Yesterday was another installment of the So You Think You Can Dance roaming party.  I invited my new friend Erica to join us and she just sort of blended right in with the group.  After dance three, I announced to the group that this was all just too perfect.  There were still plenty more dances to see, and I could sit on Susan's sofa drinking wine and eating hummus and be surrounded by lovely people and I just COULDN'T BELIEVE that I got to have this evening of delightfulness stretch before me. 

After the show ended, I wasn't ready for an end to the evening, so I asked Susan to show us an episode of Obsessed, a new reality show about OCD.  She and I had already watched it, but I wanted everyone else to see it as well.  It was about a woman who was obsessed with her mother's hands, and her obsession prevented her from spending any time with her mother without spinning into a panic attack.  The other person was a woman who kept thinking she might kill someone, so she isolated herself from all her friends.  

Watching them suffer like that -- knowing their fears were irrational, but unable to stop them -- was so heartbreaking.  I wanted to will them better.  But I will also note that seeing them work their way out of this trap while I was surrounded by friendships that feel effortlessly amazing made me realize how really lucky I am to live this particular life at this particular time. 

I stayed up an hour past my bedtime because I wanted to bask in this feeling.  When I woke up at 5:30 this morning, I was bleary and dragging, but even so, I could feel the residue of last night and I thought, it was worth it.  It is always worth it. 

OK that's an excessively provocative title for this post, but I promised Jamie in a moment of audacity that I would use it.

I guess you have to decide for yourself if you think Michael Jackson was inappropriate with those boys. Here's how I see it: adults have no right to impose their sexuality on children. When they do, it's called child molestation. For me, the fact that one of those boys could describe his penis as spotted like a cow (due to his skin disorder) is enough evidence to conclude that yes, he imposed his sexuality on a child and, in my book, that makes him a child molester.

But then there's this:

He was raised by grown ups who denied him a normal childhood. He performed adult themed songs and did adult themed dance moves for adults. Nothing's wrong with that, I guess, but in this case, I can't but help but wonder if his adult childhood made him seek out a childlike adulthood.

He was surrounded by people who indulged his every whim when he got older. Want to convert a ranch into an amusement park? Fine. Want to turn your body into some sort of a-gendered, a-racial elfin Peter Pan? Go right ahead. Want to have slumber parties with children? Okey-dokey.

He struggled. We all saw it. He was in pain and he had the resources to alter his body and shape a lifestyle and environment to play out his turmoil for all to see. His damage was literally written on his body. His whole life was the hyperbolic caricature of a damaged, damaged man.

So we sort of get it. We even sort of forgive him. He never grew up because he had to grow up too soon. He was just trying to find love and a lost childhood. He was a genius. His music was safe to play for our kids (back in the 1980s, I mean). His image was a safe one for them to hang on our walls. How ironic.

I remember the desire to redeem artists we love. I had the same sort of reaction when I found out that Bertrand Cantat had killed his girlfriend. The mind struggles to find excuses to keep pure those we adore. But what if we didn't?

What if, instead of avoiding the whole child molester thing or dismissing artists for their horrible mistakes and cruelties, we forced our brains to do the same work of understanding for those who don't get to write out their inner turmoil so hyperbolically?  What if we saw Michael Jackson in our mind's eye when we think of a child molester?  What if we saw all child molesters as possible victims of their environments? As damaged souls? What if we held child molesters accountable, but also the adults who damage kids who grow up to be child molesters, and adults who prey on those molesters in various ways, and all of us for looking the other way because it's inconvenient to think complex thoughts when those we love and admire do bad things?

Cognitive dissonance makes my brain ache, but it's better than the contortions I see people undertaking to avoid admitting that Michael Jackson was a child molester and that was sort of ok.

Tags: personal philosophy

I'm trying contact lenses again. They're on my eyeballs RIGHT NOW and it feels very strange, and I can't keep my eyes focused because they're freaking out a little at this new kind of seeing-effort, and I keep worrying I'll blink them off, even as I know that will almost definitely not happen, and my face looks weird and it turns out I have dark smudges under my eyes I never really saw before, and my nose is kind of pointy and my eyes are really blue. Huh. Who knew?

I just got tired of adjusting my glasses back on my nose after any sort of salsa dancing, and putting them on any time my yoga teacher demonstrates a new move, or being reminded by T that I look like a teacher *all the time* and not just when I'm actually being a teacher.

So we'll see how this goes. I keep reminding myself that there are people who put these thingies on their eyeballs every day and it's no big thing, but it feels like a big thing to bespectacled me.

By coincidence, I get to take these things off my eyeballs just in time for my salsa class.

Tags: salsa, yoga

Philippe the fish and Roomba the snail want one of these critters to join their little underwater family.

Tags: fish, snails

These photographs are from a mock victory rally Mike organized at the end of the first Iraq war. It was fucking brilliant.

There were six foot cardboard penis cutouts signifying "naked aggression." There were signs saying "Who needs smart leaders when you have smart bombs?" There were chants like "We win! You lose! Haha! Fuck you!" and "Don't ACT UP, don't fight back, don't fight AIDS, fight Iraq!" There were giant face puppets blindfolded with yellow ribbons. There were talking heads inside cardboard boxes painted like TV sets.

And there were performances.
The one I remember in particular was a mock poll in which only white people (wearing signs that identified them as "African American" or "Arab American," etc.) all rated the war with 10.0 scores.

I remember that one in part because I was the "Arab American." I gave the war a low number until someone pointed a gun at my head. Then I gave it a 10.

Those were heady times. I gave my first speech at an anti-war rally (an elaborate extended metaphor about war, rape, and birth control). It was amazing to be even a small part of the movement. It was also demoralizing, and the protest had an edge of bitter rancor that comes of protesting a war against such odds. But for that afternoon, we were all in it together and when I see these two photographs of me standing up there holding my "Arab American" sign, I can remember for just a moment what it felt like to be an idealistic college student in a community of idealistic (and talented) college students.

Protest has changed in the ensuing decades. There was a swing toward the Large Mass of People March on Washington type protest in the early 1990s. Then I remember a hard period when I was involved with WHAM! -- we would try to have masses of people, but not enough people showed up and we sort of ended up looking weak. I remember arguing that we needed to focus less on turnout and more on being clever and theatrical -- that we could make our point through the bite of wit rather than the glut of bodies. There were some grand gestures, like women chained to the Liberty Bell pavilion to protest the PA Abortion Control Act. There were some flops, like a silent march around 30th Street Station where we blended in with the commuters.

Since then, there have been a few moments when I got caught up in a glut of people and it had its own thrill every time. Philadelphia is also a city with some pretty amazing street theater. But nothing ever really lived up to that Mock Victory Rally. Maybe it's doing something for the first time; maybe it was the political climate; maybe it was the people in our movement; maybe it was me -- still so wide open and fearless. Whatever it is, there are moments when I miss the certain ardor that filled my breast as I moved through my days.

Tags: college, photos, remembrance of things past, so i always know where it is

it's been around, but I liked it anyway and want to put it somewhere:

BLESSED ARE THE
CRACKED FOR THEY ARE
THE ONES WHO LET IN THE
LIGHT!

Tags: so i always know where it is

I'm mad at Shane Sparks and the judges of So You Think You Can Dance. 

Sparks choreographed two hip hop routines for yesterday's show and, both times, the dancers were panned by the judges.  The dances were bad, true, but the judges would only blame the dancers for how they danced, not Sparks.  Most of the critiques, however, were not about the dancers' technique, but about the choreography.  One judge even complained that the dance was just getting good in the last part and then they stopped dancing.  What were the dancers supposed to do??  Just keep going after the routine is over?  Sheesh!

During each critique, the judges sent out propers to Sparks, who kept his face set at neutral the whole time.  And I get that they have to compliment the choreographers to be diplomatic, but Sparks let his dancers down and I wish there were some way to acknowledge that. 

I don't think Sparks let down his dancers because they were unable to do the dancing style, as one judge suggested -- after all, everyone's dancing out of their comfort zone, they're expected to do it anyway, so why should hip hop be any different?  I think Sparks let his dancers down because he's evolving as a choreographer.  I think he's trying to merge hip hop with lyrical dancing, which is a neat idea, but which seems to have taken the power out of the form without exactly knowing what should go in the power's place. 

When my students learn a new way of writing, their prose gets worse for awhile -- it's normal, and I tell them to expect it.  And I think that's happening here, but it doesn't seem fair that these dancers have to pay the price for it. 

My heart went out to the dancers, in their ridiculous commercialized hip hop light outfits, doing this inchoate new dance form.  I wish Sparks and the judges could say, "hey, you're part of a new experiment and we appreciate you helping Sparks cultivate lyrical hip hop" and then give dancers AND choreographer suggestions.  I wish, in other words, that this show could stop being a reality show competition for long enough to fan the flame of innovation instead of pandering to the base survival of the fittest rules of competition shows.

On nice -- or even mostly nice -- days, I like to eat breakfast on my deck.  Here's why:


note the flowers in reverse shadow cast by my table.  Note the plants all over.  Note the chicken wire.  (OK that's not so great, but it enables Lucy to go out on the deck and not accidentally fall off).


Here's the right side.  I used to have chairs along the edge, but decided to move them to fit in more plants.  And there's Lucy, enjoying the view.  See?  That's why I put up the chicken wire.

I got that plant in the foreground at a supermarket in West Philly about ten years ago.  The hibiscus is from the trash.  Crazy! I know!  

Here we have the first window box of the spring.  I love how architectural those pale green plants are.


Begonias make me weak in the knees and I finally seem to have discovered what makes them happy -- less sun, lots of water, but good drainage.  I found these in the fruit and vegetable stand out near the barn.


This weekend's (unplanned) project: something resembling verbena (but not, apparently) and lobelia, which I love for its electric blue audacity and its perfect name.   Lobelia.   Lobelia.  Lobelia.  Someday, remind me to name a foster cat lobelia. 

LOOK at those colors together!  Look at how delightfully alive!

If you ever find yourself in Philadelphia, invite yourself over to my house and bring your sunscreen, because I will seat you at that table where, surrounded by flowers, I'll smile like an idiot at how lucky I am to have you here amid all this glorious living color. 

Tags: garden, house

My sister: 5
Me: 8
Sister: 11 "bring it on F!"
Me: 14 "oh it's on"
Mom: 17 "It's on me!"
Sister: 20 "boo yeah"
Mom: 23
Me: 26

I don't think you're supposed to bid against family, right?  But apparently art auctions are a sort of drug for my family, rendering them the opposite of sensible.  Me included.  

Tags: art auction, family

My teaching week is over and, recently, I've spent Thursday evening eating and drinking with friends while we watch So You Think You Can Dance (Dance Dance Dance). Before going to bed last night, I finished the book Dan loaned me, which was amazing.

When I wake up, the cats give me snuggles and Lucy proudly burrows under the comforter. BrAvery is just bursting with news he's been holding in all night, and Mabel comes out of her clubhouse all wriggley and delighted.

I have fresh eggs from my chickens with a cup of coffee before leaving for yoga with the ever delightful Julia.

Usually, I go riding in the afternoon and then dancing at night, but this Friday, I won't ride since the sky is watering our gardens for us and I'm going to spend the evening with one of my favorite people.

All a pretty good deal, if I do say so myself.  

Tags: friends, happiness

I don't remember taking this photograph, but I do remember the events that led up to it and the events that came after it. A bunch of students took over an administrative building and then, when the opportunity presented itself unexpectedly, Xavier and I took over Bishop House. We each handcuffed ourselves to a radiator and one thing led to another, and then the building was full of students and empty of administrators.

But there are parts missing. Like, how did handcuffing two people to radiators lead to a complete building takeover? How and when did I get unhandcuffed? When did people leave? What convinced them to leave? What actually came of that protest? What happened to those people?

I remember leaving the building a few days later, before the takeover ended. I was annoyed because every time I came into a room, the men there would say, "Stop talking; the feminist is in the room." I knew they were mostly joking, but I could hear what was underneath all the same, and it irritated me. I thought in pretty absolute terms then. I focused on how Things Should Be, and less on how we could really get there, aside from making bold statements and doing bold actions.

While we were in Bishop House, the LA Riots started. I remember going back to say that a revolution was happening in LA. (Or, at least, what felt like a revolution at the time). Another activist jumped onto the railing across from where I am in this photo and shouted, "No! THIS is the revolution." And even then, I thought, "a bunch of college students taking over a building is not the revolution." But I have to admit, it felt a little revolutionary anyway -- like were were back in the 1960s or something; like things were happening and we were there.

Earlier that week, the police had gotten rough with some protesters. A few students were injured. My roommate and I made a sign connecting the incident to the Kent State shootings. We went out onto College Avenue and protested. Things, like I said, were very clear, as I judged them. We were right; the police and administration were wrong.

So yeah, the whole thing felt kind of revolutionary, even as some of us suspected that ours was a revolution in a petri dish and not an entire ecosystem.

But petri dishes are designed to allow you to try things out to see what will happen. Then you move to the ecosystem. My next ecosystem was Philadelphia. I spent two years working in a bookstore and wondering if there ever could be a unified women's movement. While I did my first MA, I got involved with anti-racist work. Then I started thinking about gender and how uncomfortable it was for some people and got involved with trans liberation. Then, while doing my second MA, I started thinking about trauma in terms of political injustice. When I started my third MA and then my PhD, I started thinking about harm reduction. That theory felt like an answer to a lot of the stuff I'd been mulling over -- a way to make health care accessible, to recognize the humanity of even the most marginalized people, to solve actual problems, to work with and against power. I went into the teaching gig and now I'm watching my women's studies students jump start their own campus revolutions.

Harm reduction helped me make sense of my own life, too, and it has given me a model for social justice as well as educational interventions. But it has also taken something away. I had to give up absolute statements about how Things Should Be -- about what's right and what's wrong. Making bold statements, it turns out, is often not that useful. Rather, harm reduction has taught me to find ways to do pragmatic things to fix actual problems. And I think I'm ultimately happier in that nuanced place, even if I miss the occasional moral absolute, the pleasure of judgment.

I wonder where those other people went -- I'm sure they moved on too, but the kernel of ourselves as people who gave a crap about issues is in that photograph. We gave a crap and we did the best we could.

Seeing it now, after all these years, helps me recognize that while some of the transitions in my life have been abrupt and complete, everything I am now can trace its origins to the way I was then. All these things are just pieces of a whole. I'm glad I know what's it's like to be handcuffed to a radiator. And I'm glad I've found new, effective ways to start new little revolutions. There might be less leaping onto banisters, but there's still that feeling that things are happening and we are there.

Tags: academics, college, harm reduction, photos of me, remembrance of things past

If you were at the City Kitties Art Auction and you took any nice photos, would you mind sending them my way?  Getting people to take pictures was on my to-do list, but it slipped my mind until it was too late and I sure would like to have some.

At the end of last year's auction, I first said "never again!"  Then I slept for two days.  Then I said, "next year: five thousand dollars."  

Then the economy tanked and I thought, "OK, three thousand is good enough."

We're not done counting money (because a certain Fleck family needs to send a check and a certain event organizer needs to figure out how much she owes, but is busy sleeping), but it looks like we did it. FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!

We sold lots of art.  We drank lots of wine.  We ate lots of nibblies, including bread from my new favorite bakery.  We listened to lots of music.  We were amazed by Garincha's students, who demonstrated the tango and salsa.  We had out portraits taken by RA and his fabulous photobooth.  We raffled off fabulous donated things. 

And at the end of the night, people gave us money and took the art and we cleaned up and I went dancing and then slept.  A lot.

When I wasn't sleeping, I was at the barn, or at Julie and Dan's drinking margaritas, or doing the victory garden tour with my family, or trying to saw down the ginormous shrub in front of my house with Julie, or eating meals on the deck (which is bedecked with flowers and herbs) with family and friends, or trying to decide where to hang my art, or cleaning my mountain, or going to the farmer's market, or whispering sweet nothings to my snap peas, which are just emerging from the dirt.  

There's a passage in my favorite memoir, Autobiography of a Face where Lucy Grealy, who has a disfigured face, talks about how much she loved Halloween and winter  as a child because she could cover her face with a mask or a scarf.  She was convinced that everyone else must walk around every day feeling such gratitude for their normal faces.  Of course, we know they don't.  We take that stuff for granted, but we shouldn't. 

And recently, I've started to wonder if other people walk around every day feeling gratutude for being happy, or just ok.  It still seems so amazing to me.  I can feel the residue of that pain in my chest, like tall grass that has been pressed down by some animal sleeping in it.  I have a muscle memory of the constant downward pull of depression.  And so each day that I just feel nice is something I notice.  I suspect it's becoming tiresome, but I don't really care.

Somestimes, I exclaim: "Look Julie!  Look at this life we get to live!"  And we clink our coffee cups together in a little toast to this life we're making in our little West Philly neighborhood. 

Sometimes I just grin smugly to myself at my good fortune. 

Sometimes, I marvel at my energy to do things.  I'm not pushing through thick liquid.  I'm just moving through air.

Sometimes, I notice how things don't bug me so much anymore.  I just note them and move on. 

I look at the little post it notes I stuck around my house when I was sad:

"Remember to enjoy things"
and
"Make the sort of life people want a part of"
and
"Be not afraid" (Regina my yoga teacher)
and
"there is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in" (Leonard Cohen)\
and
"nothing is ever always"

and I remember when I needed those messages.  Now I look at them and I think yes, I'm doing that now.  May it last a long long time.  I promise to try to remember to enjoy it.

Tags: art auction, family, happiness, rosie, salsa, talented friends, victory garden, yoga

I'm sitting here grinning like I have this secret, so I though maybe I should just share it instead.  

My mother, sister, and brother came to Philadelphia for the Art Auction, where we had a time that couldn't be beat and all bought lots of art (more on that later).  After we took down the show, I went over to Take the Lead, where I danced for about half an hour and then went home to sleep.  The next morning, Susan joined us for an Old Thyme Country Breakfaste on the deck, where we ate bread baked by a local baker; then, we went to see Susan's garden, and then to the farmers' market.  

I drove out to the barn and groomed Rosie while she ate dinner.  The I put everyone out for the night and came home to a message from Julie that I could come over when I'm ready for margaritas, enchilladas and poker.  I put on my new t-shirt (more on that later) and went over with Mabel.  

Sveta and I parked on the sofa to watch a  poker match and drink margaritas.  And that's when I thought, again, what keeps coming back to me each day over the past week or so.  

This is my life.  And I love it.

That's the secret:  my life these days feels like this rare gift.  That I get to live it seems like more than any person deserves.  A few months ago, I was so desperately unhappy that I had difficulty breathing and had to get my heart and lungs checked.  Now, I almost burble with gratitude at this life.

And yes, a very small dose of Paxil did its job, but mostly, I think, it's the gift of my friends and my neighborhood and my human and furry family and this unbelievable life. 

Tags: art auction, happiness

Second Annual City Kitties Auction: CHECK
Recovery: IN PROGRESS

Tags: art auction, citykitties

Kyle just swung by to drop off not one, but TWO signed portraits of Neil Gaiman with his cat for the City Kitties Auction.  Signed by whom? you ask.  By NEIL GAIMAN, of course!

Seriously!  How cool is that?!

Tags: art auction

Amanda Palmer just plugged City Kitties on twitter.  I'm sorry: Amanda freaking Palmer!

Tags: art auction