Reflections

What I'm Thinking About

I'm thinking about intuition. Noticing how when I know something, I know it.  I may story it differently, that is, I may attach different explanations, fictions or truths to how or why I know it, but...I know it.  For example, I may stop and "tune into someone's energy" and know what kind of mood they are in.  Or, I may decide I know this because of our recent conversations, and the path they were going down.

I notice a temptation to story things with less tangible narratives, and how that temptation has lately been giving in to a more rational bent--that is, I'm feeling more likely these days to look for the empirical, or scientific story to make sense of something. A crisis of faith?  A rise of skepticism? The veneer of Northern California finally wearing thin?

I'm thinking about whiteness. How white people almost never bring whiteness and white privilege into a conversation, or want to talk for longer than say, oh, fifteen seconds, about how it might factor into a given issue, even while I'm thinking, Wow, I have a whole whiteness narrative I could attach to this that might illuminate a number of things.

I'm thinking about narrative.  About narratives, AKA truths, fictions, stories, explanations, and how these structure the way we understand our worlds.  Now I'm thinking about thinking about narrative.  (Don't worry, I don't need to regress further than that.) Here are some of my thoughts about thinking about narrative.  First off, if we never think about narrative, that is, if we never stop to ask ourselves what story we're attaching to a given phenomenon, moment or event, we take our own stories as truth. When we think about the way we're understanding something as "a story" rather than "the" anything, we open up the possibility for seeing it from multiple perspectives.  When we have multiple perspectives, we have greater possibility choice: of point of view, of action, of result.

I'm thinking about how sometimes intuition comes first, and story later. About how emotion is different from intuition, but overlaps as well.

I'm thinking about consciousness, and stages of development, and how I used to twist my perceptions around some story about how we are all equal.

We ain't.

We're at different levels of evolution, and not just skewed by age.  Our consciousnesses differ radically in how developed they are--along many axes. Knowing this helps me have more compassion, more acceptance for people (sometimes even including myself) for exactly where we are. It also helps me stand in my unapologetic hunger to be met exactly where I am, to have my consciousness mirror, be mirrored and reverberate with a similarly capacitated being.

Dayum, that feels soooooo good!

A Huge THANK YOU to those of you...

who have the courage to  move beyond the surface of things.  You know who you are.

How glorious to dance with what lives (and breathes, and squirms and shudders with pleasure) between sentences, behind assumptions and under fear...

Photo by Zena Holloway

Orange you glad I love you?

Last weekend, Alex and I went to two weddings, one outdoors and one orange, and also hosted our own anniversary Shindig.  The first wedding was my beautiful brother- and sister-in-love, Davi and Nacha, on the side of a mountain in Pt. Reyes, with birds overhead, led by their friend Philip, a Lakota chief. Afterwards we went to Nana (Alex and Davi's mom, Cainan's grandma, my mother-in-love)'s housefor dinner and further celebration. Here's the two of them cutting their organic raw vegan cake from Cafe Gratitude:

The next day was Alex's and my own lovefest.  For months, we had been planning our "Help Us Scratch Our Seven-Year-Itch Spin-the-Bottle and Play Party."  With the house prepared, the baby safely away for the night, and our kissable beloveds invited, the party went oh so delectably. 

The very next day, we hauled ourselves into presentable mode, donned orange, and headed to Annie Sprinkle's wedding at the CSC, the second of seven. I always love going to the Center for Sex and Culture because I tend to encounter members of the microscopic pool of folks who know and admire my work.  On a recent visit, Carol Queen, one of the Center's directors, introduced me to one of their interns.

"This is Jill Nagle, editor of Whores and Other Feminists," she said.

The young woman got that star-struck look and covered her mouth.

So funny to receive this kind of reaction for something I did over ten years ago, and have so little active connection to now.  Yet I felt an ego boost I don't often get.  It made me want to do more worthwhile stuff.  I've been enjoying living and loving and writing without the pressure of a Book Project looming, but now I'm starting to itch to sink my teeth into something, metamix intentional. More on that later, perhaps.

This particular event included scads of people I hadn't seen in years, some I didn't even recognize.  It's Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephen's orange wedding, to represent the second chakra.  They're moving through all seven chakras, one per year, as part of their Love-Art Laboratory. 

I had wanted desperately to make them an orange wedding cake, but realized I had my hands full with Davi and Nacha's wedding and our Seven-Year-Itch spinfest.  So we went, and got filled up with bright orange love and ecstasy.  Here's Annie and Beth taking their  in front of their guests with Carol Queen officiating:

Annie and Beth made vows to all of us, written on oranges, trailed behind Annie like a veil and Beth like a cape (if I remember correctly), a handsome answer to how to render a butch counterpart to a veil.  The lovely gray head below is Juliet "Aunt Peg" Anderson, who made her porn debut some twenty years ago at age 39.

Each of the oranges had a different vow written on it, and Annie and Beth invited us up to pick an orange for ourselves.  I picked one that said, "We vow to be ecstatic with you."

A number of folks performed, read poetry, or had tattoo- or orange hair-dying booths. One of the many folks I ran into was Gabrielle, Wendy Chapkis' partner.  Wendy's book, Live Sex Acts, came out from Routledge (my publisher) right around the same time Whores did, so were doing parallel publicity, and even did a radio show together.  Here's Gabrielle:

One of the things I love most about Annie's events is that all these hot dykes my age and older (a particular weakness) seem to come out of the woodwork.  But my favorite attendee of all was the 6'3" "butch dyke" I arrived with and left with.  Things have been feeling awfully sweet with us lately after some weeks of confounding struggle. Nacha and Davi's wedding, our spinning love fest and now this orange sex chakra celebration was just the series of elixirs we needed.  And come on--who could not love this punim*?  Click and adore.

*Yiddish for face.

For Jewish Girls

For Jewish Girls
Who Have Considered Cloning
When the Mirror
Is Enuf

J to J

On a page might spoon

On a rampage under moon

Might fill to the curves

Might spill, and swerve

Might fall, and unnerve

Upside down, one might hook

On another, might look

Like her mother, for a moment

We know

We’re never Other

J on J

On a surface might clash

With teeth, might gnash

Against hope, might dash

Into rocks

Against clocks

Without socks

Naked feet might press

Soft skin might nest

Against skin, under moon

“Not now, but soon”

On the Sabbath, a croon

Like they did long ago

We know

We’re always Blood

Jewish girls unhinged

Linking curves, skin singed

With the heat, candles burn

Leave their marks, skin turns

Into soot, no waste

Every pore a new taste

Like you knew it might be

Might unfold into sea

Waters part, then red

Over skin, onto bed

Now soon here too

Another exodus new

We know

Where we’ve been

nightfly

You sleep now.

I imagine your face, relaxed and soft, like a baby’s, your plump lower lip pouting out to be kissed, and brushing you lightly with my lips.

I remember the feel of you curled around me, of me curled around you, of us entwined, of you pounding into me again and again, somehow just touching the surface of all the ways you’ve been inside me before and since.

Sometimes the physical body mocks the other ways we touch, like an echo that never quite duplicates the original sound, coming too fast, too shallow. 

Or not at all.

That original sound, the vibration pushing through insides that don’t digest, filter, breathe or leak, but rather dance and play with energy.  We are energy there, we are light bodies twining with other light bodies.  Our organs move and follow that energy, but they are not the same.

You inside me, moving up and down into pleasurespots behind my ribcage, up my back, behind my neck.

How can this be?

I know you’re here when I feel you, and I feel you like a low hum or like drums, or like a lot of thumbs, pressing into me, making me shudder, scream, or come, in waves.

Where will you travel in sleep?  To a time/space where we might meet, fly, dance and make love next to a red or green or pink planet, light years away?  Where nothing looks familiar, and we see things through godeyes that turn us inside out, upside down? 

Or will your body keep you near, twisting warm under loving covers, your shoulders curling into cloth caressing you, childlike, quiet, and silky under the dark day?

I sit and type, stand and brush my teeth, fix food, wash dishes, move through all the parts of my life, all the while the little bird on the shoulder of me whispering an invitation in your ear.

I know you hear me.

I kiss your sleeping cheek.

I know you hear me now

Birdwave

This morning

unlike yesterday

opens to a sky of fog and sun and possible     rain

with a thread to the evening

The first bird calls

we answer (but not really, we never heard her)

to cell phones, alarms and a cop whistle

through intersections

of time, speed and light

slicing through what we call day

to the darkening

to the place where fields collide

The bird covers miles

We traverse continents with emails, phone calls

Traipsing toward day's end

In the darkening

Black wings flap, settle onto a branch

We don't see her

But as we close in on the graying day, pushing a new

cycle through this time womb

She settles by the window

Her shuddering body

Sending imperceptible waves

Up and down the softness

of skins