the throbbing light machine

leonard ...

Dear Secretary Clinton,

this isn't the letter that I thought I'd be writing you today. But I wanted to write you anyway, because your run was historic and important even without a victory at the end, and I want to honor that even as I start to brace for what may be coming.

It meant so much to me, getting to vote for you. I'm 30 years old, and I was a little girl when you were the First Lady - and, along with my mother, you were one of my models for what a woman could be and do, and for how much a woman could do to change the world. And yes, watching you fight against the forces of cultural conservatism back then was one of my first lessons in sexism, as I began to understand exactly how much resistance powerful women could expect to face as they did their work. Those forces won a battle last night, but they won't win the war - the arc of the universe will bend our way, I know it, if we continue to work hard and uphold the faith.

The women who won us our right to vote faced uncounted setbacks, up to and including violent attacks on their persons, and yet they were victorious in the end. The women of the 1980s and 90s, who fought for the right to wear pants in the workplace and to outlaw sexual harassment faced both losses and victories. So shall we do. One of the little girls who saw you running your exemplary, intelligent, organized, high-minded campaign will be inspired - or one of the little girls who saw you working as First Lady in just the same way - and will try again. Maybe the world will be ready for us by then. I'm sorry, terribly sorry, that it wasn't you, because you would have been brilliant. But our day will come.

Your legacy of decades of tireless work on behalf of women and children stands. Everything you gave us - the hope, the solidarity, the brief shining moment of a utopian vision of a better future where "Madame President" would have been a common utterance - stands. I cast two votes for you, in the primary and in the election, while wearing suffragette white, and no one can take that away from me. Madame Secretary, we have already made history.

Thank You. And I don't accept your apology, because I don't believe you did a single thing wrong.

I'm trying to see if my understanding of the linkage of these two concepts as it currently stands in the US and the EU is accurate -- any corrections or further thoughts would be super welcome!

( Read more... )

This election is turning into the Vorrutyer inheritance plot from A Civil Campaign - Trump has to win, or else the law is going to be free to take him down. And he's not going to win. Between the "charitable giving" and the tax evasion and the non-payment and now apparently the deals with still-under-embargo Cuba, someone is going to have to get something to stick. As it is, I gather the Trump kids are mad about the negative impact dad's campaign is having on business.

It is probably not un-connected to the interior work I've been doing the last few weeks that I am also deep into a re-engagement with Madeleine L'Engle, who was my guiding star in childhood and who i have not read for near a decade now. I'm starting with the Murry-O'Keefe stuff, which was always the most important to me, but I maybe have to reread all of it - it's been too long on the Katherine Vigneras books, for sure, and maybe this time around I might like Troubling A Star.

Hard rec on the L'Engle-narrated audiobooks, btw. She has a lovely grandmotherly voice and great readerly affect.

I thought I'd do a post on each of the books, if people want to come talk? And I'm gonna push myself through some of the small fic I've been doing, see if I can successfully put work out sometime here. I miss putting out little fic on a more regular basis, I keep hoarding it all up into these big projects that take forever instead.

my internet went out @12:30 last night and finally I just gave up and went to bed -- feeling hella discombobulated this morning

(i don't know why i'm writing any of this; i'm going to post instead of deleting bc i want to be able to look back later and see if i can get a better grip on what's been going on in my head.)

( losing/regaining my religion )

Okay, after that introductory blather: I'm working on dealing with my angry inner child.

The woman I'm working with practices shiatsu, but I don't actually know what the lineage of the program we're doing is; we've been talking about Campbell, a bit, some kind of Jungian thing, she's sort of Caroline Myss-y. She helps me protect and elevate a space where I can be honest about the things that I know in my spirit. I like working with her, because she lets me use my own words and images, and I feel like when I tell her no or want to adjust understandings she listens and quickly groks my objections. She praises me for being brave. It's nice.

The last few years, I've been haunted by this sense of my inner child. A lot of the inner-child stuff that's out there is about accepting the child, or forgiving the child, but I've had the opposite problem: I see my child self as a blaze of power, and I'd been feeling like I'd gone and killed her, her pale ghost would show up sometimes to rub my nose in what I'd done. We're angry at me for losing ground to stupid stereotypical enmeshment with a man; we were supposed to be better than that. She's a snob, really, thinks we have to be held to a higher standard.

So at this point I guess I've got help to break through some of the frozen horrified paralysis I'd been experiencing when I'd seen myself as her murderer, and she and I are maybe going to have a bit of a fight now? Hopefully it will be one of those productive ones where things get hashed out, and I'm hoping it will help me understand why I've been experiencing so much self-perpetuating emotional pain.

I will write more about the child's anger, what language she uses and what I think she might really be angry about underneath, later, but this is all I can do for tonight. It's been awfully hot here the last few days, and the north wind didn't roll in last night until after 4 am, so of course I didn't sleep, haven't slept. Starting an essay on A Wizard of Earthsea, which is, you know, apt. Rereading Le Guin's excellent "The Child and the Shadow" first.

I actually really love the "Buffy is torn from heaven" S6 plotline, although it's wound around a lot of Spike/Buffy stuff that I'm sorry just squicks me. Her little descending musical line in OMWF is the best bit of the entire set, and one of the top memorable moments from the show for me. It drives home the truth that grief is not for the one lost but for the ones left; you can tell yourself, as Willow does, that your beloved one somehow needs your distress, but you'll be wrong. The dead are fine; it's the living who suffer pain.

I fell back into BtVS courtesy of Jenny Trout's watchthrough - I don't know that I'd recommend it though, really, I don't think her analysis is quite smart enough to be worth reading. But she ships Buffy/Giles in a loud, proud, and kinky way that seriously works for me, and I started poking through episodes to find bits she was talking about because her screenshots are all bleeding broken, and then I was in the middle of season 3?

-I like the arc of the whole story best when I'm shipping Buffy/Giles. All other readings are too depressing.

-I am still fucking easy for Angel though, and I don't understand why - after all this time, really? He just does it for me in some idk hindbrainy way. B/A is uncomfortable for me now, though, owing to Ex Issues.

-I don't like s4 on the whole but that is some boss shit it's doing at the end with Frankenstein/parenting issues/Haraway-style cyborgism. Hella fine structural work. Elegant af.

-Joss really does still work for me, in a deep and fundamental way

-although all of a sudden I think Willow is disturbing and creepy as a person, and i'm not at all surprised she skins a dude after a few years tbqh

-wow also Riley's Black Friend is the weakest character in the entire buffyverse, what the hell.