Schmatas, a case for same sex marriage

Finally NJ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally posted 2010

part 1 of 3

I am far off my main topic today, the issue of whether gays should be able to marry on the Ocean Grove boardwalk. That's not my concern since the topic of marriage is so fraught with and compromised with value issues, issues of ownership and relationship. I think the topic is best to avoid and what else, if nothing else, is neurosis good for, if not to avoid topics that are uncomfortable. But more to the point and closer to my level of appreciation is the issue of walking down the boardwalk in a schmata. As most people should know, a schmata is a rag that became a house dress.  (Miraculous transformation - not.) My mother wore them. She would even customize her schmatas by tearing out any sleeves that were nicely sewn in and sewing stitches around the gaping armhole she left in its place. Her needlework reminded one of Dr. Frankenstein's handiwork on his walking corpse of a monster. (Frankenstein's monster wasn't as charming as a golem. (A subject for another day.

part 2 of 3     

Warning. Corrugated sentences to follow.

Is it more important to challenge the freedom to marry the person of the same sex on the boardwalk when, as many know, at low tide the stink of seagull poop and dried Sargasso can challenge anyone's nostrils, or to protect the unarmed public from the view of anyone walking down the boardwalk in a schmata?  I think a net that can prevent that from entering the hallowed grounds, air and boards of Ocean Grove should take precedence over whether or not two people wish to bond and subject themselves to the convention of being conventional and nonconventional in a conventional world while challenging the convention and aping the convention simultaneously; as if locked in embracing funhouse mirrors, in a possibly limiting or expanding role of their relationship, is far less important for the actual direct aesthetic benefit that could be had from limiting schmata wearing on the boards.

part 3 of 3   

As I am reminded of my mother's schmatas, or schmatas of the past, I am also reminded that any two women can choose, at any time, to walk down the Ocean Grove boardwalk,

arms linked in intimacy, wearing schmatas, and apparently nobody can stop them.  If this doesn't show the impoverished and impotent ability of the Homeland Security Act, what does?  Our way of life is threatened by schmatas and everyone should know of this danger.

Popeye Theory Kaput

 There are those who view the world with pre-Einsteinian philosophies.   They're not convinced that the world is round or that gravity curves space.  I refer to a popular philosophy of these people as the Popeye Theory.  Everything in this world-view is based on a utilitarian theory of life.  Smack a zebra into an oak tree and you get zebra coats on wooden hangars.  It's a formulaic approach to life that doesn't necessarily lack imagination but does hinder the possibility of different realities.  Popeye physics is in direct opposition to the wave and particle theories which are a natural extension of Albert's algebra. 

Simplified, particle physics holds that everything is always in motion.  Therefore an object that appears solid is really a trick of the eye.  Popeye physics says you can't be both a particle and a wave, you must be one or the other.  This world-view is famous for the creation of zebra coats and dichotomies.

When someone pigeon-holes you, puts you down, or simply, calls you a name, they're practicing the Popeye Theory and living by its mandates.  One of these mandates holds that if you’re a such and such, that's all you are. Nothing else.  You can't be a lesbian and a fully functioning human being at the same time.  It's one or the other.

Objectified as such, you're perceived as a human target not a human being.   The world of strip malls and highways, beaches and offices is turned into a Robin Hood Festival and Popeyan people take aim at you as if a bull’s eye is central to your core.  Under these circumstances, it's not difficult to appreciate the hard work in coming out.  If you're a queer, dyke, faggot, fairy, lezzie or lesbo then you're an automatic finalist in the Run the Gauntlet Arrowfest.  That's why coming out is more of a process than an event.  There will be many, many arrows heading your way. (Some, hopefully, will be Cupid's.)  Stripped down to the bare essentials in a Popeye universe, your diminished self is seen as a target for every pot shot from amateur and pro alike. 

Many gay people hate how other gays use the names mentioned above as well, though some believe, as I do, that the sting of the epitaph is reclaimed when you take it back and make it your own.  They become words of power and privilege.  Privilege, because when you use that word you're infusing it with content and meaning.  You're extending the definition of the word to include pride in an aspect of your being; you're adding a cultural reference to your identity; you're being defiant and strong, and claiming the ones that you refuse to stop loving.  Popeye physics, by limiting realities, makes your love invisible when it's most successful or an object of ridicule when paradox creates a crack in its fragile world-view.   

I hold to the Theory of Relativity.  Like it or not we're all connected.  If you diminish someone or a group of people you diminish yourself, reduce your possibilities, and limit your world.  Don't buy into that.  Even pigeons can't return to smaller pigeon holes.   You're worthy of a full spectrum of rights, dreams, lives and honors.  And don't stand still when they try to close the borders on our lives.  We're here.  They can't take that away from us.  Not in this reality. 

Coda:  Make nice; be good. Peace.

Lena Karpf

Leaping Lena would have been 102 this past Wednesday, October 9. 

from a part of Lena's Kaddish...

 Each part precious as memory.

A sacred tile in the mosaic that is my mother's legacy.

Is that why we leave stones at the grave -

to remember with weight the love that

lingers through time and mistakes?

There is a river in Yakutia with her name.

In the winter it is a road.

People are not isolated by the season

and are able to float down the river again in May.

There are so many ways to travel a river,

to accept memory,

to move down that long stretch of grief

and warmth in the seasons

that are not time

but a daughter mourning.

Friends and affirmations

When you’re having a dark night of the soul, and it’s lasting all day long, you have to reach out to speak to your friends. If you just ask yourself what your friend would tell you you’d be on the way to being all right.  It’s sort of like bread crumbs, that is, the trail that friends leave for they confirm and affirmation yourself.

It’s true that good friends will call you out on your stuff.  That’s sort of like when your mom would call you to dinner.  In the city, everyone could pick their mother’s voice out from the crowds of sounds that people, buses, trucks, trains and everything else created and know it was time for dinner.

Well, a friend calls you when you’re wrong and right. And you know it is, as a friend of mine would say, “Spot on.”  They got you and it’s time to go home for dinner.  This time it might be eating crow but another time you might be able to have that dessert.  The information from a friend doesn’t seem as difficult to take, the being wrong part that is, as it might from someone else. There’s power structures all over the place and somehow a friend is excluded from them, they’re not a part of that cause and effect reflex many of us have that makes us grit our teeth and grrrrrrrrrrrrr when our partners or supervisors or whoever it is in the structure “above” us disagrees or criticizes us.  As Yoda might say, “Amazing it is the power of going along with someone and finding common ground.” Friends bring their own circle of peace along with them.  That friend gene is ingenious.  It’s the psyche’s soft judo.  The energy is molded to the situation and there’s a smooth turnover from the place you thought you were in to the one you find yourself now. And sometimes that’s clear across the room.

If there’s not enough hours in your day let the dark nights go. There’s got to be a better way. Talk to someone, talk to a friend.

Put your feet down where your soul wants to go

Despite the fact that I managed to put my binoculars, the good ones, 8x42, in the car so that after work, after the gym, I’d go there and just be there and see what I can see. It was that hope really, of connecting with the wetlands that lifted my spirits enough and got be out of the house to the job.

When push came to shove, when the day was over, I was actually mighty fine considering the long day and a gaff at a meeting. My mood was lifted. The fog was gone from the wetlands on the way out this morning toward work. I guess that was a sign.

So here I am then, home now after a really delicious meal whose component parts are all interesting and together it was a fabulous creation that was totally satisfying; satisfying to conceive of it also to tell the truth; and I didn’t go to the wetlands. What happened was this argument I had with myself. I was tired after work, after the gym and even though I remembered, which was something of a miracle, that I had my binos in the car, on the way to the gym, I also knew, on the way to either home or the wetlands, that I would regret one thing or the other. I’d regret going there and not getting home sooner to see Molly and start dinner. I would regret not going there and seeing whatever there was to see. I’m sitting here now, night’s firmly settled in at 7:20PM and I really wish I could go there.  I wouldn’t see much of anything. There’s no moon to speak of tonight. None at all from what I can tell.  I’m here at my desk, the window is open; an occasional car is going by somewhere near and the sound it makes somehow amplifies the night and the moisture hanging in the air.  I wish I had chocolate. Who doesn’t after a good meal? There’s no room for it. There is for the cool air that’s meeting my right side because the open window is just 18 or so inches from me. A dog is barking across the street. I hear cars in the distance; a child’s shrieking. 

I remembered the sounds I was met with yesterday, the honking and rattling as the Cornell people describe it of the great blue heron and the belted kingfisher.  It’s all connected. It’s all good.  I wondered why I let everything that got to me get to me – some attitudes, some disappointments, some frustrations. I wondered why when I was making the happy noises that I let loose on the way to the gym, why I let the turkeys get between me and these good things. They’re not worth it. These good things are really worth knowing all the time or as much as possible.  I wonder why but I know it happens.

Right now I have two pair of binoculars in the car. The good ones and the ones that were really good until they came along. There’s nothing to see with them now. But then again, I guess some things don’t require magnification. Just patience and putting your feet down where your soul wants to go.