birds and banners

yesterday morning the birds were singing in my back yard. the sun was out for a good part of the day. i left the doors open. the pain wasn't so bad yesterday. yesterday... all my troubles seemed so far away. not so much now. wow. it is the only near expletive i can think of that really sums up my experience this moring. WOW. fuck is useful, dammit--not bad, but wow really kind of encompasses the wide-eyed wonder of the ongoingness of this condition. i don't dream in pain, thankfully, and waking up to it is such a stark and unpleasant contrast that it catches me off guard every time. like i said last post, i always think its over now. i really believe i'll go to sleep and wake up and be clear and jump up and make coffee and write for awhile, and wham. I guess this is evidence that pain meds work on some level. every day i believe it is over now. I'm better. And I am. I'm another day through this one. I am deeply apologetic for whining over such an extended period of time. I've had 3 pretty major surgeries in a year: tumor under my chin, exploded appendix and now, shoulder repair. its no wonder I'm depressed. and i know i am.

back to the birds. i used to dread the sound of birds in the morning, proof of another night spent, another chance to sleep lost, another day when my sleepy-eyed little boy would wake up, innocent of my sins, and i would hear him stirring and scurry to my unmade bed to pretend to wake up as he crawled in bed with me. I am glad i maintained the illusion of sleep, but it was thin, and he saw through it eventually. "remember when you never slept and all we ever had was peanut butter and crackers?" we think they don't know.

Birds in the morning, sign of spring, evidence of god, of hope, the world turning, the end of pain. my personal pain. I will make my bed, begin my day in the dark of my bay window, overlooking clinton street and the waking others who share my world. I love spring. I am grateful to be alive.

Nicole came over yesterday to see me. Just to see me. I like being her sometimes mother. She went to a punk show the night before and a band called WWPRF played. the PRF stands for Punk Rock Faggots. apparently the queer community got ahold of it and protested the name. See the portlandindy site for an exhaustive discussion. exhausting. it provoked a lengthy discussion of PC behavior, punk theory, who gets to wear which banners of oppression, the definition of faggot. me? i think many things: queer adults could find a larger battle than 15 year olds who are all about shock me shock me shock me with that deviant behavior.

banners. so many to choose from. mine are: woman, mother, wife, writer, artist, junkie, drunk, criminal. they hang in my closet, rattle like the skeletons they are. useful in a pinch, but costumes one and all. distancing mechanisms. this dialogue provokes in me questions about banners and epithets, slurs, internalized oppression and the apparent competition for who is the most oppressed. why is it that I, as a straight adult, should probably say "the gay community" while gays can now say "queers", why blacks can call themselves niggers again, why I have to say the inconvenient "native american," rather than indian. I like the word indian. it slips easily from my western tongue. I have my own bags to carry. As a white woman, raised in Southern Oregon, I am born racist, even though i was not raised racist and do not knowingly participate in discrimination. I benefit from white privilege with or without my consent. I don't see myself as homophobic, but I am deeply homobored. The whole notion of PC language is discouraging to me, especially as it evolves and seems little more than fashion. I hate to be censored, regardless the cause. Were the kids right? No. They rarely are. But they do love attention, and this was certainly galvanizing. I'd like to say to the guy who spoke for the queer community, "this isn't about you," but he wanted it to be, so now, apparently, it is.

the thing is this... no one owns the word faggot. pc language is about exclusion, about separation and entitlement. our collective life is suffocating under the great flat hand of neocon powermongers who use fundamentalists (whether hamas or gay activists) as the puppets of separation. the soil beneath us all is shifting, is on fire, and we are attending to our crotches? please tell me there is something more important, at least more INTERESTING to defend, than what humans suck on in their private moments.

my contribution to the dialogue is this: choose your battles. divide and conquer was never more visible or pathetic than the squabbling of well-fed liberals when competing in the "most-oppressed" category. It is the single, most powerful tool of the oppressors. and in my overblown opinion, the only voice that should be louder is that of the environmentalists, although truthfully, i don't think we'll live long enough for global warming to be an issue. we'll be too busy warming our feet at the cold chemical campfires of an urban wasteland.