My Blog

Going down by the river where it's warm and green...

slade34 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:56:25 GMT

Or humid and smelly, as the case may be. I'm moving back to new orleans just as soon as I find a job there...I've been living in another state for nearly two years and could never bear to change it on my profile. I dream about my home all the time. My work there is not done. I can't wait. My friends there are already saying to me, "welcome home."

My dark places

slade34 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:04:46 GMT

It's funny what can send a person into her dark places. Sometimes it's something seemingly small, an idle comment made by someone while you are in Target, buying socks, being flipped off by an obnoxious driver for no discernible reason...little things. A dear friend asked me once what it felt like to be "crazy" (my word, not his). I told him it feels like beating against the inside of my own skull, trying to get out or trying to get a moment's relief from the old tape recorded messages, the nauseating swirl of anger, despair, self-loathing, fear, and deep down sadness that I feel in my guts. And everything I know of that stops that feeling is something self-destructive. There's this great movie starring Jeanine Garofalo (sp?); I can't remember the title. She plays this suicidal woman, and at one point she states "I am so sick of myself". That's how it feels. But you can't get away from yourself. You know, people always say that when you're really f***ed, you should reach out. But we don't want that, not really. Nobody wants to hear about the dark places. It's too scary, I guess. And most people really feel like they don't know how to help. I guess they don't realize how useful it can be just to let someone talk, without judgement. I ran into this group of New Agers who had this idea that we are responsible for every single thing in our lives. If we get hit by a car on the way to work, we somehow caused that. I told one of the more obnoxious of these people to go tell that to the families of the people who died in 9/11. Yeah, tell them that their sons and daughters and fathers and mothers drew a hijacked plane into their lives. I hate dumping my problems on other people, but I have to put it somewhere. Posting in cyberspace feels a bit like putting a message in a bottle, somehow more hopeful than writing in a diary. YOu at least feel like you are communicating with other human beings, not just talking to yourself. I hate the insistence in my culture (southern USA) that you smile, smile, smile, even when you feel like you are dying on the inside. I hate the layers of pretense in my rich family, how they harp on small things (the new SUV, the new flower arrangement) and ignore the Really Important Things, like playing "don't ask, don't tell" will make problems evaporate. That is one of the reasons I stay away from them, but then they try to put me at fault for keeping a distance, like there's something (else) wrong with me because I don't want to be around them. How do I tell them they sort of make me sick? I don't; it's not right. I'm rambling...

Why is it?

slade34 — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:27:34 GMT

That it is nearly impossible to have an intelligent discussion about so-called "women's issues" (shouldn't some of these issues more properly be called "human rights issues') without so many men (and some women) immediately feeling the need to try to discredit any point that is said, no matter how rational and well-supported it is, and start mudslinging at the speaker, calling her a crazy feminazi bitch or something similar? Why do I feel the need to have to qualify my statements with "now I know **all** men aren't rapists/murderers/stalkers, etc. blah blah" before I can even make my point? I really don't give a rat's sweet butt what men's problems are (don't women spend enough time catering to men's wants and needs as well as figuring out how to stay away from the creepy ones? Don't we give men enough of our attention?). And I am sick of people extending the issue to put men's hurt feelings or indignation or denial at the forefront, indicating that we shouldn't talk about certain issues because we might hurt the men's feelings (or piss them off?). Why is there such a social prohibition from seriously acknowledging, let alone intelligently addressing something like male violence against women? And isn't that especially wierd when male violence against women is so much part of our popular culture, embedded in so many movies and TV shows? But I guess rape is acceptable if it's passed off as "entertainment." And the fact that it is scares the hell out of me. And the fact that many people don't notice or care scares me more. I am amazed at how many people try to discredit individual experience by saying "it didn't happen" or "you're exaggerating" or "yes, but (insert supposedly mitigating circumstance)." There are no mitigating circumstances to torturing a woman and killing her that make it excusable. How the hell do you exaggerate a loaded Sig Saur held to your head by a man intent on raping and killing you? How do you look at crime scene photos of women who has been tortured, raped, and mutilated beyond recognition and say that we don't collectively have one big fucking problem? God, how long do we have to fight this battle? Why are we not collectively enraged over what is done to women all over the planet? And here I go with the disclaimer--yes, I know horrible things happen to men too. But you know what? That doesn't make it okay, and that doesn't mean we should all look away. I am sick to death of being called "sick" because I give a shit that women on this planet have acid thrown into their faces and are raped and murdered on a daily basis. I am sick to death of our bodies on public display everywhere I look, on billboards, TV, magazine covers, CD and DVD covers. I guess my anger must be pretty damn threatening to someone. I have found that anger has been the best motivational force in my life because it was what made me get off my butt and take action. And yeah, I'm angry. I'm angry and I feel like my head is going to explode if I keep living in a world of silence and denial. So I ask myself, "who benefits from my silence?" The answer? The perpetrators and their collaborators. WHO BENEFITS FROM YOUR SILENCE?

Ariellah workshop and performance at the Black Hearts Ball

slade34 — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:11:59 GMT

on Feb. 2, 2008 in Jackson, Mississippi. Ariellah will teach a 4 hour workshop that Saturday, and the Black Hearts Ball will be Sat. night, with multiple performers from the South and with Ariellah as the star. Email me for more info.

life sucks right now

slade34 — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:00:36 GMT

I have to vent. Today is the anniversary of that bitch Katrina. I don't live in NOLA anymore. I teach English at a community college in a very small town in Mississippi. I woke up feeling like I am getting a cold, it's August 29, and I get to my first class, a very basic developmental writing class, and we are reviewing how to brainstorm for ideas to write a paragraph. We were doing an exercise in the book that asks the students to describe different clothing styles. So I get them to start listing different general styles, like preppy, "urban", gothic, nerdy, etc. They then choose "urban" as the style they want to develop into a paragraph. So they list elements of this style--big white tshirts, air jordans, baggy jeans, etc. We write the paragraph together. I ask them to pick another style for more practice (this class is very very basic writing) and they picked gothic. So off we went--one student said 'black clothes" and another said "skull jewelry" etc--just describing a "Hot Topic goth". And then one young man said he didn't like the exercise because he felt we were stereotyping goths and that it was racist (wtf?). I thought he was joking at first, but when I realized he wasn't, I asked the class how describing goths was any different from describing "urban" teens in baggy oversize white tshirts. They didn't get it. So I asked if it was stereotypical or racist to describe pentecostal women who wear long skirts, long hair, no jewelry. My point was, it's just a description; we were not saying anything derogatory, and we were not claiming that *all* goths wear skulls, etc. I assured them that many goths do indeed wear black (almost by definition) and some of them wear skull jewelry. My young man said it was racist because goths were white. I told him I knew Asian and Black goths. Meanwhile, the class was getting agitated for reasons I really don't understand. I appreciate his concern re not being racist; it just didn't make sense in this context. Then he said something about me being the only white in the room, and again, wtf? I tried to explain that it would be stereotypical if we were claiming that *all goths were satanic baby eaters*. They didn't get it. When I mentioned that I knew Black goths, they gave me this disbelieving look and they asked what they looked like. I described them. One student said it looked like I "had been around that block a few times." I was getting pissed and trying to control it, and I reminded them that I had just lived in, hello, New Orleans. As in, a real urban area with all different kinds of people. So then one of the students asked if the henna design on my foot was real (meaning permanent). I assured her that it was not and decided not to mention my 3 real tattoos. Then someone else asked if I was pentecostal (I have on a long skirt today) and I said no. Another student pops up with "pentecostals don't wear shoes like that" (I have on black shoes with a slight platform and a zipper) and another popped up with "and they don't wear toe rings". I mean, wtf? Maybe they were just being good natured, but it just seemed a bit judgemental, and I have dealt with far too much judgemental shit growing up based on my clothes, hair style, etc. And it blows my mind how small some people's worlds are, that they even find toe rings comment-worthy. Just scary. And I basically just went back to the grammar exercises in the book, but I felt like screaming or clawing my own flesh off. I am in my office, and my xanax is kicking in, and I am becoming comfortably numb...

Halloween in NOLA

slade34 — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:47:02 GMT

Halloween weekend in New Orleans-- Tthis coming weekend will involve fishnet and tribal jewelry, lots of bellydance, lots of black, old worn out Doc Martens, alcohol, bellydance, absinthe, old friends, and dancing my butt off until 3 am or until I fall over. It's time to scratch the itch.