emerging (short fiction)

“Okay, fine. Pick me up in an hour.” My voice sounded defeated. I hated people. I really hated Christmas. I hated my best friend for making me go to this retail Christmas party, when I could be in bed watching the final episode of , “Battle Star Galactaga,” for only the sixth time. I always cry when Starbuck becomes an angel and flies into the sun.

Shit, she was going to be here in ten minutes. I had thrown practically the entire contents of my closet on the bed. Not one pair of jeans would fit. The doctor shook his head at me the last time I was sitting on his table. In his thick, Persian accent blasting old man breath, he said I had to lose weight. He said I had an eating disorder and told me I needed to go to Overeater’s anonymous. I actually went. They put all of us fat, compulsive eaters in the same room with the bulimics and anorexics. We all had eating disorders they said. I was just lucky enough to have the kind that makes you a huge, ugly, eyesore to society.

At least the skinny ones were doing the world a favor by making themselves the picture of feminine, barely there attractiveness that society holds so very dear, even though they are told they are sick for trying so hard to get that acceptance from other people. As if everyone else isn’t trying to do the same thing. Overdeveloped outsides wrapping around their underdeveloped insides. The fatties, however, we are very different beasts entirely. We are worse than lazy. We are selfish and nonconforming to society’s standard of beauty, uncaring of the blithe we are imposing on eyes narrowed in scrutiny as we walk down cracking sidewalks. We are sick for not trying hard enough for outward validation.

Instead of transforming food into energy we transform it into walls of flesh. Borders that most would not dare to cross. Layers upon layers that protect us from any form of outward intimacy. Our body becoming something that we can hide behind, showing to the world only bulging, dimpled flesh, becoming invisible underneath it. The frail, tiny anorexics looked at us compulsive eaters fearfully, as if we would slurp them up at any given moment.

I sighed and settled on wearing what I always wear. A faded, black, long sleeve, knit shirt with a dark, olive green skirt that pretty much scraped the floor when I walked. I covered this with an oversized hoodie, also a faded black, completing my modern day burka.

“I see you dressed in your usual camouflage,” said my best friend, who is always trying too much to get me to go out.

“It is a war zone out there.” I replied promptly.

“Well c’mon then. We’ll smoke a joint on the way and you’ll feel better by the time we get there.” She said patronizingly. I tell my friends that pot makes my social phobia better. I even have my card. The truth is that all I want to do is lay in bed, in my bedroom that I painted a deep, endless indigo, whether I was stoned or not.

As we passed the joint in the car, my best friend babbled to me her gripes with her boyfriend. When she first introduced him to me, she introduced him as my dream guy. Certainly he was kind, handsome, and played guitar. His long hair framed big, dark eyes and his skin was rich like a mocha latte drink. I liked him immediately. She wanted us all to go out to the Malibu Inn together to see this amazing singer/songwriter from Hawaii. As we were driving to his house to pick him up, she looked up at me and said that she would want him for herself if she weren’t married. At the show they ended up making out all night long while I tossed back shots of cheap tequila. That was a year and a half ago, my best friend is now separated from her husband, and her and my dream guy are still together.

In the front of the store was a cheap, tinsel tree. The dirty cement floor had been painted with green and gold glitter and a fold up table with wine, crackers and cheese was displayed next to the cash register. I made my way towards the wine and busied myself with the task of pouring into a plastic glass.

I adjusted my gaze upwards and saw something that immediately turned my stomach into a brick. It was William. William was my best friend’s uncle. Seven years ago, when I was a stripper working out of a seedy club off of San Fernando road in Glendale, Uncle Will came in and I ended up going home with him. I had always wanted to fuck him and I knew he had his eye on me, the strip club was a perfect place to explore desires that both of us knew were only topical. I had played the role of the shy sex object and he played the role of the L.A. prince who could whisk a girl away from all of the filth. He pretended he could love me and I pretended that his dick wasn’t smaller than a super absorbent tampon. I also pretended to cum multiple times. I’m not really sure why, I guess I was trying to make him feel good about himself. I went home before the LA sky was dyed pink by the waking sun and he called me two weeks later. I never returned his call.

He was looking at me quizzically. I tried to avert my gaze, to disappear, I was in a panic. Uncle Will began to make his way towards me. Before I knew it, he was a foot away from my face.

“Rachel?” he asked.

“That’s me.” I had nowhere to run.

“I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“I know,” I replied too quickly. “I’ve put on a few pounds. Wow! It’s been forever, hasn’t it? How have you been?”

“Great,” he smiled. “I’m married now.”

‘Um, awesome!” I tried to nod my head in approval but ended up spilling some red wine on my shirt.

“How about you? I hear you have a kid now?” He was still looking at me in this half puzzled, even concerned way. It made me despise him intensely.

“Yah, it’s um, really great. Really great!”

“I heard something bad happened to you.”

“Yah, well, I was raped. But, I’m fine now, that was a pretty long time ago.” I smiled even more to reassure him that everything was indeed great.

“Well, I’m sorry that happened to you. If you need anything…”

“Yes, yes, thanks. I’m fine, really. Um, excuse me for a minute?” I began to back away and accidently bumped into someone. I turned and made my way to the bathroom. My best friend intercepted me with big eyes and a sheepish grin.

“Oh my god, honey. Uncle Will!” she giggled. “ I swear I didn’t know he was going to be here!”

I nodded and kept walking. I passed the bathroom and kept going until I was out of the store, blanketed in the crisp, LA air that signaled winter in Southern California. I fixed my eye on the darkest spot in the furthest distance and began to walk towards it.

My first e-book

My children's story, "The Very Last Caterpillar," is available for download as of today! This story is my take on death, and explaining it to children. I believe that "hiding" death from children can actually be detrimental. This book also challenges the more dominant, linear perspective on death as well.

You can get the book here, with its adorable illustrations done by my little cousins.

don't feed me that bullshit called love

This society binds all women's choices up in flimsy wrappings called, "love."

Why does love denote such a degree of servitude for us women? We are brought up to believe that romantic (hetero) love is the most important thing that can happen to us,while at the same time telling us that if we love someone, we will want to cook and clean and sexually gratify, pick up dirty laundry, produce babies and put 90% of our time and energy caring for them, for other people. Then refer to us in such ways as, "The old ball and chain." If we don't want this, we are looked down upon.

wtf?!

A SPELL FOR THE NEW YEAR

Steps to a wonderful new year:
1. Write down everything you want to “leave behind” on a piece of paper. These are things you don’t want or need any more, they may have been necessary at one time but are no longer needed for growth. Some examples would be addictions, insecurities, destructive relationships and/or patterns.
2. Burn this piece of paper under the moon and either bury the ashes or release them into some form of running water (yes, a toilet would suffice). Ask Divine Goddess to take these things from you and transform them into something new in Her Cauldron of Change.
3. Take a hot shower or bath and do a self blessing(I think I have one on my blog somewhere).
4. On a new piece of paper, write down a list of things that you want to bring into the new year. Some examples would be health, love, balance, creativity, peace, prosperity…
5. After writing these down, create something on a new medium that represents these things that you want to bring into the new year. It could be a poem, a painting, a collage, a decorated candle; anything that involves the creative process.
6. Keep this thing with you so that you can look at it before going to bed and upon waking up. Meditate upon it if you can. Look at it every day for the next 30 days.
7. On February 1st, which is Imbolc, take the list and a small piece of the creative project and burn it in a safe place like a big pot. Mix the ashes with fertile soil and plant new seeds of a favorite plant or flower in this soil.
8. Nurture your plant and your dreams throughout the year. Notice that our dreams are a garden that requires careful tending and nurturing and patience.

Sex Work as a Means of Resistance for Women

Marriage in our society is a patriarchal construction that gives unequal economic power to men and puts women in a position where they are often economically dependent on their husbands, especially after having children. Our society promotes the nuclear family as the cornerstone of our nation, using heterosexual marriage as a means to ascribe gender roles to both men and women. When a woman deviates from these gender roles society punishes her both informally by casting her as a social pariah, and formally by punishing women single head of households by withholding affordable childcare, universal healthcare, and welfare policies that criminalize women of little economic means for being mothers. In some cases, adult, sex work in the United States can be seen as a form of resistance to traditional marriage values and patriarchy. Through this type of work a woman may be able to economically survive without dependence on a husband or the state that serve to control her body and subordinate her spirit. By making prostitution illegal and blocking sex workers from having civil rights, protection and respect, prostitution is made a male dominated, predatory industry that is oppressive to many women, while serving the dominant class at the same time.


In the Berkeley Women’s Law Journal, the definition of sex work is, “…the practice of selling, explicitly and contractually, the private performance of specified acts of a sexual nature ... the sale must involve a contract specifying the items of exchange.... The prostitution contract includes both implicit and explicit agreement regarding access to the body ... of the seller in a private setting.” (Duarte,2003). This narrow definition is used to illustrate the mutual adult consent that is necessary to constitute the sex worker/client relationship. In addition to that definition I find that it would be reckless to omit the fact that socio-economic statuses, country of origin, as well as race/ethnicity affect the delineation between choice and victimization. A woman who is engaging in prostitution because it is her only means of economic survival is not given the option of choice. Women in developing countries, especially those recovering from colonialism and are further plunged into chaos by neo-colonialism, may have little choice when it comes to career choices or means of survival. Global Capitalization has made this much worse, as well as the feminization of poverty that is occurring around the world, regardless of ethnicity. This narrow definition shows sex work to be another form of service work; however, housekeepers, cooks, food servers, nannies, massage therapists, manicurists, etc do not make nearly the same money, nor take nearly the same risks as sex workers. I also cannot speak for male sex workers, as men do not inhabit the same matrix of domination that puts women in a position to be economically dependent on a man within marriage.


Prostitution wasn’t always considered profane to the civilized world. In fact, there is evidence that it was seen as sacred. “Sacred Whore temples flourished in ancient India, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Asia. The word ‘whore’ was a title, used in much the way our work ‘reverend’ is employed today…Whore-priestesses were revered because they taught ‘a combination of mother –love, tenderness, comfort, mystical enlightenment and sex.’”(Muscio, 90-91). Sacred prostitution was respected and whores were considered very valuable members of society. Later, when patriarchal religions began to govern the people, these sacred temples were plundered, the priestesses murdered and the teachings destroyed. The woman’s body was no more a doorway to enlightenment and self knowledge but instead a dangerous commodity that needed to be controlled. Even today, in 2009, women are stigmatized for exhibiting a sexuality that illustrates agency over their own bodies, as well as stigmatized for not allowing themselves to be sexually objectified in a subordinate position that services the desires of heterosexual men, and reaffirms a construction of masculinity that puts men in the position of controlling women’s bodies.


In the article, Class in America, by Gregory Mantsios, he writes, “People do not choose to be poor or working class; instead, they are limited and confined by the opportunities afforded or denied them by a social and economic system. The class structure in the United States is a function of its economic system: capitalism, a system that is based on private rather than public ownership and control of commercial enterprises.” (Mantsios,193). If this is true that private ownership and control of commercial enterprises is what makes up our system of capitalism, then by preventing women ownership of their own bodies and the ability to use their own bodies as an economic resource and commercial enterprise is indeed denying women participation in capitalism and restricting the entrance of autonomous women into the “American Dream.” It seems when any woman in this country seeks to take agency over her own body, the peanut gallery always deafens us with accusations of immorality that could be likened to, “Burn the witch!”


In the article, Sex and Race, by William Chafe, he writes, “In 1898 Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued in Women and Economics that the root of women’s subjection was their economic dependency on men….In fact, the issue of women not controlling their own money has long been one of the most painful and humiliating indexes of inequality between the sexes…”(Chafe, 664). I would like to reiterate that not allowing women control of their own bodies is equally, if not more, humiliating and painful. Since this society only promotes sex within marriage as normal, women who do not conform to this role are ostracized from society in many ways. As sex workers, women are criminalized and therefore are denied the fundamental right to control their own body or economic autonomy. Furthermore, stigmatizing sex work is also an example of using values and attitudes to reinforce the power of the dominant class by creating moral arguments that serve to distract the rest of us from the real immorality of imperialism and neo-colonialism(Alexander, 3); and thereby causing opposition within the dominated groups. (rcg671). The dominant group also maintains control by defining good and bad sex and women’s roles regarding sex, reproduction, and sexuality. Some women engaging in sex work are opposing and reclaiming those definitions for themselves and therefore defining their own existences and identities while maintaining economic independence from men or the state





Works Cited
Alexander, M. Jacqui. Pedagogies of Crossing. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2005. Print.
Chafe, William. "Sex and Race: The anthology of social control." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 659-72. Print.
Duarte, Susana (2003). PROSTITUTION POLICY: REVOLUTIONIZING PRACTICE THROUGH A GENDERED PERSPECTIVE by Lenore Kuo. Review of Berkeley Women's Law Journal, 18, 308. retrieved from GenderWatch (GW) database. (Document ID: 507748691).
Frye, Marilyn. "Opression." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 154-58. Print.
Johnson, Allan G. "Patriarchy." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 158-67. Print.
Mantsios, Gregory. "Class In America-2006." Race, class, and gender in the United States an integrated study. New York: Worth, 2007. 182-95. Print.
Muscio, Inga. Cunt a declaration of independence. Seattle: Seal, 1998. Print.

MY BLOG IS ONE YEAR OLD!

It's blog, It's blog, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood. It's blog, It's blog, it's better than bad, it's good!

To celebrate blog's first trip around the sun, I'd like to celebrate my mother lines by posting an ethnographic interview with my own grandma.


My grandmother on my father’s side is named Edith. She was not given a middle name, although her sister was given two middle names. She and my grandfather are very important to me, and have been a stable foundation in a somewhat unstable family life and childhood. Always kind and gentle, I remember Edith, whom I call, Nana, always being a warm and nurturing light. She has never spoken one harsh word to me, nor to anyone else that I’ve heard, except for my grandfather on occasion. The worst word I have ever heard her say was, “stupid head,” to another car on the freeway, for which she apologized for immediately upon utterance. When I called her to ask for an interview, she was surprised and wondered why I would ever want to interview her. She claimed that I should interview my grandfather, because he did much more than she. I replied that we all know what grandfather has done, because he tells us at every family gathering. I told her that it was her life that I was interested in, and that her contribution to the world was great and valuable. She was still a bit resistant when my cousin Michelle and I arrived at our grandparent’s house in Oceanside, CA. This is for reasons that I will explain later. Michelle brought a video camera and was maybe even more excited that I. After playing a board game with my daughter, Michelle, and me, we adjourned to the living room and began our interview. We left my grandfather and daughter in the TV. room so that they couldn’t hear, I wanted my nana to be very honest, which I knew she couldn’t do with either of them present.

The first thing my grandmother did was lay down some ground rules. She didn’t want any dates in the interview, not even the year of her birth. She said she wanted to protect her privacy. I knew exactly why she would say this. However, I pretended, along with the rest of our family, that we didn’t know. Edith Palman was born in Frankfurt Germany, around 1922, as I believe she is between the ages of 85 and 87 in 2009. When she was less than two years old, her mother and sister sailed on a ship for two weeks to meet her father in America. He had traveled to America some months before and established himself in Southern California. Edith’s mother, Mary, was already a seamstress in Germany, and began reproducing styles that she saw in department store windows on her own sewing machine. My grandmother says that one of her earliest memories is sitting on the floor, looking up and watching her mother spin yarn on a huge spindle. The old fashioned kind, the kind that the mythological Three Fates use to spin each and every one of our destinies. Edith’s father began to take English and accounting classes and eventually became a CPA. However, and this is very interesting for this day and age, he quit his job with his accounting firm in order to support his wife’s embroidery business that was beginning to do well. When I remarked on how rare that seemed for any time, especially then, she replied that her father was a rare man. She said it with a certain tender affection that was touching. Her father had passed away before I was born. Edith remembers her childhood as lonely. She shook her head and said it wasn’t very good. Her parents were always gone and working, like many immigrant families at that time, both the mother and father worked outside the home.

Growing up in Silverlake, California, the only break from staying home with only her sister, or helping her mother cut string at the embroidery shop, were the German picnics and dances at the local park on weekends where her mother and sister and she would dance to the “ooompa ooooompa” music that was part of her cultural heritage. She also remembers the greatest times of her childhood being spent with her aunt and cousins in Wrightwood, CA. The Palman children were able to briefly get out from under the strict household of their parents, and were able to socialize with other children. At home, neither my grandmother nor her sister was allowed to have sleepovers, or parties, or sleep over at another friend’s house.

My nana believed herself to be a “nerd” in high school, not fully blossoming until she began to attend Los Angeles City College when she was around the age of 17. She remembers being delighted on her first day of school, when all of the male students noticed her legs in her new dress. Nana began to date regularly, and found this to be a time of freedom and possibility. She went dancing at the Palladium in Hollywood. She didn’t know what she was going to do with her life yet. When I asked her if she had always planned to be a mother and house wife, she replied that she had not. She didn’t have a plan for the future, she just wanted to explore and have fun. Sounds much like my perspective when I got out of high school.

One day, at one of the German picnics, my grandmother and grandfather met. My grandfather has stated many times that the first time he saw my grandmother he knew instantly that she was the one. My grandmother, on the other hand, makes no such claim. She thought he was cute, and nice, and that’s about it. She remembers wearing a new, beige dress that she had just made herself using very special ceramic buttons that her mother had hand painted. The dress was straight, with these buttons running straight down the middle. She was asked to dance by many men that night, but grandpa had stuck out. Nana denies that she was actually going with someone else already when she met grandpa but the rumor is that she was already in a relationship when they met.

Their first date was to the observatory. They began to see each other regularly. After three months grandpa finally kissed her, or so she says. (This is where it gets tricky. When I send a copy of this to my grandmother I will have to edit much of this out. I fear that if she sees that I have written this about her, she will never speak to me again. However, I believe this part of her story to be very pertinent to this class.) Within a year they were married. My grandmother says that because they were very poor, that she had to have a private ceremony and wear a black dress. This is a story that my cousins and I have heard before. I never understood why on Earth anyone would choose a black dress to get married in, even if they were poor. Being that my grandmother and her family were talented at designing and making dresses, this situation gets even more improbable. Then one day we did the math. Our grandparent’s first anniversary took place before my father’s first birthday. Suddenly it made sense about the black dress. Nana was pregnant with my father when they got married! In all of these years of protecting this secret, they had forgotten to move their anniversary year up one year to account for the discrepancy. This was the reason that my nana, today, 70 years later, was so adamant about not giving any dates. I think she realized that we were beginning to catch on. The shock of finding out that my extremely pure and gentile grandmother was having sex before marriage is huge for me. I always saw her as innocent, angelic and obedient.

Immediately after being married my grandfather went back to work. Struggling to make ends meet in a depression era, he worked very long hours. Edith’s life of dating, school and socializing came to an abrupt end and was replaced by a life of solitude in a small house. She never knew when her husband would be home, and I believe she wasn’t leaving the house to go anywhere or do anything as there was no money. She remembers this time of her life as very lonely. I could imagine that this solitude, partnered with post pardom depression was very hard on my grandmother. She began developing habits like having to touch doorknobs on both sides before closing a door, or having to stick her fist in a glass after washing it. I don’t know if my grandmother had always had tendencies towards OCD, but they began to manifest themselves much more apparently during this time. To this day nana still has these, as she calls them, “quirks.” Although she has never received any treatment for it, she seems to manage it well, as it does not seem to affect the quality of her life.

Somehow my grandfather avoided going to WWII so they got through the war fairly well, with my grandmother never having to take a job. She says she began to smoke during the war, that tobacco was rare and then all of the sudden the tobacco companies started to give away free cigarettes at the market. In a time where chocolate, meat, pantyhose and many other small luxuries were unavailable, smoking became very popular. However, my grandfather never knew about it. I mean never. My grandmother didn’t quit smoking until after I was born, and my grandfather never had a clue.

Edith had two more children after my father. My grandfather’s landscaping business began to do well and nana joined a women’s knitting group to alleviate the loneliness of her role in society as a housewife and mother. The family moved to Northridge, CA, where they lived across the street from Natalie Wood. Nana tells us that she never liked Natalie Wood’s mother. She would always call my nana and ask her for favors like taking her daughters to school, or borrowing my grandmother’s mink stole. She also wanted to take my aunt Linda with the Wood family so that Natalie’s little sister would have someone to play with. After Natalie had gained some fame in movies, her mother invited my grandmother to their new house in a more upscale neighborhood. My grandmother describes the scene like this:

“It was about 11 and Mary (Natalie Wood’s mom) and I were sitting in the front room talking when all of the sudden I hear this bell ringing. Mary jumps up immediately and says that it’s Natalie and she wants her hotdog. While I’m still sitting there she runs off to get it for her and bring it to Natalie who was still in bed.”
As Mary and grandmother were friends, after Natalie married Robert Wagner Mary told my grandmother this after Wagner had bought Natalie an expensive, toy tiger:

“I don’t know what he sees in her because she is so flat chested.”

My grandmother thought that the family was a bit strange so eventually lost touch with the Woods. Living in Northridge with her husband and three children, Edith took care of not only caring for the kids and the household chores, but paying all of the bills and household expenses as well. She had a method of rounding up in her check book every time she paid a bill and by doing that saved over three thousand dollars by the time my grandfather retired. When he retired he took it upon himself to take over the household accounting. Upon finding out about the extra money saved, he became angry and asked how my grandmother could have kept this money a secret. I forgot to mention earlier that my grandfather was very intent on being the sole provider of his family. This was a measure of his own manhood, and he took it very seriously. He would not even let Edith accept gifts from her family if they were not given on a birthday or Christmas. She told me he had made her return a pair of pajamas that her mother had bought for her one time.

My grandmother tells me that the single most important thing in her life is her grandchildren. Honestly, even though she is aging and visibly becoming frailer, I couldn’t imagine life without her. She is the glue that keeps my family even talking with each other. I fear that after her and my 90 year old grandfather pass, my father and his siblings will never speak to each other again. My cousins and I are pretty tight, but without my grandparents organizing family reunions and holiday get- togethers, we also may begin to spread apart. I am so grateful that my daughter has been given the gift of knowing my grandmother, and now that I’ve documented her life, she will have this too to remember the women who came before her, and the love and strength that has been passed down from her mother bloodlines.

practical spell application

The california budget crisis is stressing out students all over this state. They increased fees a few days before school started, and all those who didn't pay were dis-enrolled. There are no new admissions for any calstates in spring, so those who were dis-enrolled might have to wait a year to go back to school. I really feel for them.

Luckily, my grant covered my fees, and I was registered for 9 units. However, unless I have 12 units, my financial aid gets cut in half so I was desperate for 1 more class. I found the perfect class, called women, sex roles, culture - an anthropology class, at the perfect time. The only problem was that 10 people were trying to add, including me, and there was only one spot available. The professor said that after class, we adders would have to put our names down on pieces of paper that she would then put in a hat and pick one at random. We all had a 1 in 10 chance of getting in.

Still sitting at my desk, I closed my eyes and only in my mind, called in the east, south, west and north. Casting the circle around myself without moving or speaking a word, I called for the Goddess Sophia, who I believe is best for school matters like studying, exams and what not. I appealed to Her and asked Her so respectfully if she would make sure I got picked. After, I thanked her, and then all the elements, starting now from the North and working my way back to the east as to open the circle. Then I waited patiently for the end of class.

I wrote my name on the paper and kissed it for good luck. I never win raffles or lotteries or anything like that. I began to sweat as she pulled a paper from the hat and read it aloud.

Guess whose name got picked?


Estatic, I went to a grassy spot on campus right after class and thanked the spirits with loose tobacco from my American Spirit pouch, and water. I didn't care if anyone saw me or wondered what I was doing.

Dang it's good to be a witch!