The Furious Spinner

Two days ago I pulled out the last cactus thorn from my body—finally. This one had dug into my left arm, near the elbow, and I kept thinking it was gone and it would pop out again. But I think—I believe brothers and sisters—that I have extracted that pointy part of the desert from my body, and it's beginning to heal. Strange how long the little bugger hung on. About as long as my "desert sickness" (as opposed to "home sickness"). I always have withdrawal symptoms or melancholy when I return from the Southwest. Now I am firmly ensconced in the PNW again. (Although I was trying to figure out a way to go back down for my half century birthday on March 25; I’ve given up on that.)

In case you haven't heard, we are in a drought here in the Pacific Northwest (and much of the West). It is so dry that I need to water my flower beds already. This is March. I usually don't have to water until August. Let's just sit for a moment and let that factoid sink in....

Snowpack is about 25% normal. And that's where we get our water. If you live in the West, you already know that water is one of the biggest issues we've got. Who has the water, who has rights to the water, etc. Of course, throughout most of the world, clean potable water is already a problem and has been for some time. Because of the drought (and the school across the street spewing pesticides), I'm considering taking out my organic garden this year.

All around, trees are beginning to bud out. The ice storm damaged so many trees in town, so it's good to see the surviving ones putting on a bloomin' front. A huge old tree down Vancouver Ave. is tipped over on its side but it's now dressed to the nines in Easter white blossoms. Poppy greenery is up all around our yard, preparing a nice green wraparound for the orange blossoms when they finally emerge. We all watch the rhodies to see when they will begin their bloom: how did they survive the ice? In Portland, pink blossoms flutter open on cherry trees up and down every other boulevard

While we enjoy the sunshine, we all know it ain't doin’ no good. Haze already hangs in the air so that the entire Gorge feels like the inside of a smoky bar.

Speaking of bars and that good ol' sleazy feeling: I got quite the reaction from the Joe Bageant article I talked about ("Poor, White and Pissed.") I didn't agree with everything he said, but I thought it was a fascinating look at how one segment of the population might feel. Of course, it's only Bageant's view of their view. I certainly can't speak for all the people in my socioeconomic class ("Almost Poor, Pretty White and Definitely Pissed"), and he can’t be speaking for all his peers either. But I don't believe I'm a snob because I don't hang out in bars and get drunk.

Genevieve from Canada wrote a nice long reaction to the article, and she agreed to let me excerpt some of it here: "I resent the implication by Bageant that somehow the brand of poverty he sees in his area ... is somehow more holier and worth eliminating than that experienced by the liberal poor. Crap, I say, crap. Poverty is poverty wherever you find it. What poverty does not define, however, is the way the person faces life and makes choices. Does 'holy' poverty mean that one has to vote for Bush or hate those of other religious persuasions or buy into propaganda, 'swill beer', or 'pick his nose'? ....What I see is additive behaviors (alcohol, sugar, consumerism, racist, prejudice) that have been pushed by governments and corporations to make the public so concerned where their next 'fix" will come that they have no time to question the government or corporations fixation on acquiring more and more power, control and profit....What I do think is needed is a grass roots movement that demands that everyone (rich, poor, "left", "right", deserving, undeserving, urban, rural...) be treated with dignity, respect, love, worthiness, care and so on, and that those in turn look around and do the same for others and for their environment...."

Right on, Genevieve! And I still don’t understand why the Republicans are less elitist than the liberals, according to Bageant. Do you?

You've probably heard that Senator Byrd is getting a lot of crap for mentioning the Nazis in speech he gave on the Senate floor a few days ago where he was opposing filibuster rule changes. The Republicans want to end filibusters, essentially. They want to change the rules so that a filibuster can be ended with a simple majority instead of the three-fifths needed now. This would cement their takeover of our government, essentially, because they have a simple majority. Without a filibuster, the Republicans would win on everything. Byrd is concerned about this. He said, "Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law. Hitler needed a two-thirds vote to pass that law, and he cajoled his opposition in the Reichstag to support it....Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that effective revolutions, in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power of the State: the correct order of events was first to secure access to that power and then begin his revolution. Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

Now the GOP is foaming at the mouth, accusing Byrd of comparing them to the Nazis. I say, "If the jack boots fit..."

Every day I am a little more perplexed by the majority of American people. Congress is getting ready to pass a bankruptcy bill which will make it more difficult for poor people to declare bankruptcy and easier for multimillionaires to hide their assets when they declare bankruptcy. Why isn't everyone standing up and screaming "Que freaking pasa?"

So I sit and try to figure out what I should do. At night I dream of spiders and water and cobra snakes. Last night I woke up sick and spent most of the night moaning on the couch. After I returned to bed, I dreamed I could heal people. Everyone but myself, it seemed, although that was still a possibility...When I finally dragged myself out of bed, feeling like crap but better than I had in the middle of the night, Mario looked up at me from the bottom of the stairs and said, "You may have been up all night sick, but geez, you look gorgeous." I laughed and glanced at myself in the mirror. "I guess you're a man in love," I said.

I spent most of the day curled up on the couch, recuperating. I feel all kinds of stories bubbling up within me. I'm ready to write, write, write. I want to write a short story tomorrow: "Dreambacks," and start a new YA novel on Friday. I'm hoping I'll get into the flow and finish it by my birthday. Mario stayed on the floor near me much of the day, putting together another poetry book. This one is called Love Life. Here's one of the poems from it:

This is the First Place I Touched You

This is the first place I touched you.
It was a wilting East Lansing summer
and this is the first place I touched you.
You wore that bare-backed dress
and this is the first place I touched you.
I was uncharacteristically bold and
this is the first place I touched you.
As I recall it now, the middle vertebra
was the the first place I touched you.
You didn’t move away when I put my hand
on the first place I touched you.
And even now I place my palm
on the first place I touched you
and it brings back that Michigan August
and the first place I touched you.

—Mario Milosevic
5 October 2001
Gooding, Idaho 0 comments

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.