Fashion for Writers

Good morning, morning glories. Here I am drinking a freshly squeezed glass of orange juice, one of many I consumed daily, in the main square in Marrakech. How to explain the long absence and how to express everything I am feeling right now? I went to Paris for a week and Morocco for another. I slept in a wonderful loft apartment in Paris that reminded me of the treehouse bed I never had because I never had a tree house and I was too timid and too fussy about my complicated, multi-layered, petticoat and tulle lined skirts that I wore throughout my childhood to climb trees.

In Paris, I looked at art, made out when I felt like it, read indoors and outdoors, wrote in cafes sometimes, and ate dumplings almost everyday, saw Rosemary’s Baby in the theatre and The Dame From Shanghai and fell asleep during the best twenty minutes (I was told.) I drank cocktails at the top of the Pompidou and drank wine outside and wished mon enfance could remain inside me like a seed that grows but never dies.

In Morocco, I let myself be bathed by beautiful Moroccan women in not-shy underwear and watched them scrub dead skin off my dead skin and cover me in mud, and I climbed a mountain in a gingham dress and Madewell oxfords by accident and kept thinking I was for sure going to fall to my death, but my Berbere tour guide held my hand the whole way. In Fes, I was stung by stinging nettle, I mean clever nettle, and I guiltily spied on two Moroccan teenagers making out on a rock formation. In Marrakech, I spent four beautiful days with my best girl, Laura, who I wish lived closer to me in France, although we are close enough, and she has the mountains and the sea and I just have the place where the Popes chilled, and Le Pont d’Avignon, which is not very impressive and ends abruptly in the middle of the Rhone.

On top of my internet only working sporadically these days, and mon avenir looming over me like a black poisonous cloud with no sense of humour or levity, I also can’t help but feel empty and scared rather than charged and determined (which is exactly the sort of powerlessness I should strive to reject and overcome) when I read about the anti-union, anti-worker bill, which strips public sector employees of their rights to collective bargaining, recently signed into law in Wisconsin, and similar bills being considered and fought against in Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan and Florida. I can’t help but feel demoralized and dehumanized as well, even though I’m in France, far away from all of this, and even though I have the privilege of disengaging from what’s happening in the US whenever I want, I still can’t keep my shit together whenever I think of how much our society valorizes and privileges the notion of work, of being hardworking, of productivity, of being good at one’s job in America, while at the very same time does everything possible to devalue and insult the worth of working folks.

The gap between the minimum wage and a living wage? Demoralizing. How much shit workers, especially in the apocryphal service industry, are expected to take on vis-a-vis how much we are willing to compensate our workers and what benefits we are willing to ‘give’ (as if basic things like health insurance are a gift and not a right?) Demoralizing. How in a few seconds time, everything that workers, labor activists and unions have ever fought for was completely shat on and taken away? Demoralizing. It’s great that people are angry and mobilizing against Governor Walker for targeting teachers, police officers, and firefighters, (basically the equivalent of cuddly puppies, cute kittens, and rosy-cheeked babies in the hierarchy of workers, aka the workers for whom Americans tend to really sympathize with,) but I just hope these feelings of anger, insult, betrayal, this moment we are in, the critical mass that has finally come together to pursue justice, to defend and uphold the rights of working folks, is expansive enough to include all working folks–public and private sector, documented and undocumented workers.

And then there’s the proposed cuts to Planned Parenthood, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Al-Jeezera video I can’t stop watching of the anti-Muslim rally, organized by Teaparty activists (how I hate using those two words together,) held in Yorba Linda, California last month. The video shows protesters heckling Muslim families with  children, who were attending an Islamic charity fundraiser, and saying really hateful, hurtful stuff like, “GO HOME,” and really stupid stuff like chanting “A-mer-i-ca!” All I can think when I watch this video is: how could something in 2011 remind me so much of what happened outside of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, when pro-segregation protesters bullied and harassed the nine African-American students, who had to be escorted by the National Guard into the school? And in 2011, we have an elected government official, City Council member Deborah Pauly casually making death threats to Muslims in front of a crowd of cheering hatemongering racists???? She says at one point, “I know quite a few marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in Paradise.” It’s just too much to bear.

And on top of all of this, a representative from my own county in Long Island (I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised considering my own personal experiences with bigotry and racism growing up in Long Island…) has begun Congressional hearings on the threat of homegrown Islamic radicalization and the threat of domestic terrorism from American Muslim communities, and there are actually people who think this is a good thing, a long overdue thing, a brave thing. The reasons for why these hearings are not any of these things are, no doubt, obvious to our sage readers here at FFW, and when I listen to Rep. Peter King say in his opening statement, “To back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness,” I just want to throw eggs in his face, because I’m so sick of the term, ‘political correctness’ as if not wanting racism and bigotry and persecution based on religion, ethnicity, sexuality, or gender to exist in the world is just a burning desire for ‘political correctness.’ Who in this world is fighting for ‘political correctness?’ Who are these activists committed to the righteous cause of ‘political correctness?’ Who here finds Congressional hearings that target only Muslim Americans abhorrent on the basis of ‘political correctness?’

And the nerve of King to say, ‘There is no equivalency of threat between al Qaeda and Neo-Nazis, environmental extremists, or other isolated mad men. Only al Qaeda and its Islamist affiliates in this country are part of an international threat to our nation. Indeed by the Justice Department’s own record not one terror related case in the last two years involved neo-Nazis, environmental extremists, militias or anti-war groups,” when just one day prior, Kevin Harpham, a white supremecist with Neo-Nazi affiliations was charged with “attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and possession of an unregistered explosive device,” (sorry, italics are mine,) in a plot to bomb the Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington!

All I can say is that everyone should watch this video of Representative Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, and the first Muslim to be elected to the United States Congress, testifying on the first day of the hearing. It made me cry while I was doing some dishes last night.

There are people demanding revolution in the Middle East. They are demanding change, fairness, dignity, and I am often at a loss for how to support and show my solidarity with the people of Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Mauritania, Jordan, Algeria, Kuwait, Djibouti, Sudan, Syria, Morocco, and Palestine.

And then there’s the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The images and the videos of the destruction have been ubiquitious, so I won’t say much more because other people are already saying it, and saying it better. This link, “Japan Quake: How Can I Help?” taken from my friend Sam‘s facebook page is pretty good. Just to further steal from my friend Sam‘s FB page, he also wrote: “I urge you please please please consider donating to the Japan relief effort, I have a strong suspicion that people would be less sympathetic just because Japan is a 1st world country and as prepared as humanly possible for such a disaster. As things stand right now, death toll expected to be over 10,000 and fear of meltdown of a 2nd nuclear plant.” Thanks for saying what I couldn’t figure out how to say, Sam!

With so much devastation to the human spirit and humanity at large, how, how, how could I ever adequately write a blog post expressing all that I want to say and all that I feel right now? I don’t know, and I apologize for this mess of a blog post, which starts off about me, per usual, and ends on a note of mememememememememe. My apologies for not knowing how to look and think beyond myself in the midst of all that is happening.

Your homegirl,
Jenny

PS- I know Meggy & I have been away from this blog for some time now. We have a post in the works about the future of FFW (it’s a good future, I promise!) Thanks for sticking with us as we try to figure it all out.