Fredonia Woolf went on the rare road trip this past weekend. I try not to leave the swamp, much less the state, but my friend The Women’s Studies Professor did something too painfully strange to be believed, so I tagged along. Each year since 2006, the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials (GABEO for short) has hosted a reenactment of the 1946 lynchings at Moore’s Ford Bridge, near Monroe, a small town in between Atlanta and Athens.
Seriously. Black people pretend to be the four victims: Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, and George and Mae Murray Dorsey. White people pretend to be the mob members. Spectators gather at the bridge to watch the Malcolms and Dorseys get pulled from a car, dragged to the riverside, shot multiple times, and then worse: a mob member cuts open Dorothy Malcolm’s pregnant belly and pulls out her seven month fetus (in this case, a black baby doll).
The point is to mourn communally and to call for justice. No one was ever prosecuted, despite an FBI investigation. A $35,000 reward remains active for information that will lead to arrest and conviction of the killers. The reenactment is filmed and posted on YouTube (search for “Massacre at Moore’s Ford”) to assist in the effort.
The reenactment, the only one of its kind in the country, is controversial. The Moore’s Ford Memorial Committee, an interracial group that was instrumental in starting the dialogue about the case, plays no official role even though some of its members take part individually. Other members find the reenactment distasteful. Many local whites wonder why anyone wants to bring up a history that they think is better off buried in the first place. Laura Wexler’s book about the lynchings, Fire in a Canebreak, says the part about Dorothy Malcolm being pregnant is not true. The Professor thinks that the memory of what happened at Moore’s Ford might have gotten folded into the memory of another terrible story, the 1918 lynching of Mary Turner, who was eight months pregnant when she was killed near Valdosta.
The people in South Georgia still don’t talk about what happened in 1918. Most of them probably don’t even know, even though somewhere between eleven and eighteen African Americans died including Mary Turner. The Professor says that the incident shows up in all kinds of art and literature, and even folks in Brooks and Lowndes remember it in weird ways. A few years back, some boys painted a bunch of Barbie dolls back and hung them from nooses in the trees at a local high school. And almost stranger than that, as The Professor and I drove up I-75, she pointed out to me a billboard at the very spot where Mary Turner was lynched and her fetus was ripped out. It was one of those right-to-life affairs picturing a giant baby in the womb. “Heartbeat Begins at 18 Days,” it said. Kind of made we want to get up there with a can of spray paint and add, “And Ends at 8 Months.”
The people in North Georgia had the decency to put up a historical marker. Even if some people don’t agree with the reenactment, it beats the ways that memories eek their way out circuitously the way they do in South Georgia. Juvenile delinquents lynching Barbie! What will they think of next! Memory always finds a way out, especially bad memory, so my vote goes with the folks who find a way to acknowledge it.
It’s like evil spirits. You can pretend they don’t exist until one gets into your house. But by then you’re cooked. The furniture’s all tumbled up, drawers pulled out of chests, plates broken, flour and corn meal strewn all over the kitchen, pets cowering out back with their tails between their hind legs. Better off to just go ahead and put up some bottle trees by your doors to catch the spirits before they get in. That bottle tree says, “Hello, Evil Spirit, I know you exist, but this is as far as you can go. You have to stay in this blue bottle here and not go into my house.” And that is actually a good thing, because evil spirits prefer blue bottles to your house. That’s why they mess up your house when they get inside – it’s not a blue bottle.
All this talk of blue brings me back to Blue Spring. My weird rash still has not completely healed. Some wounds, I think, never do. But I’m getting away from my point – or am I? Georgia has certainly not cornered the market on stories of racial violence. And in Florida’s book of myths where certain names do not appear, what evil spirits are not getting acknowledged? The Professor tells me that only Rosewood has an organized group devoted to remembering lynching in Florida, even though the state ranked seventh in the nation in total numbers.
We can choose to be like the folks in North Georgia, or we can choose to be like the folks in South Georgia. The question is, do we want to acknowledge the devil’s presence up front or just wait for him to catch us unaware? As for me, I’m making some bottle trees.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
White-Haired Man Speak With Forked Tongue
Florida’s governor, Charlie Christ, is a good environmentalist. He cares about manatees, and he has recently helped broker a deal to sell U.S. Sugar’s lands south of Lake Okeechobee to the state. This major accomplishment will not exactly restore the Everglades to their former capabilities, but it will go a long way.
For those who don’t know how the ‘Glades work, pull out a map of Florida and look for the huge blue bowl in the state’s southern third. That’s Lake Okeechobee. A low lip on the lake’s bottom end used to spill out into what guardian angel Marjory Stoneman Douglas called “the river of grass.” Not exactly a river, the nearly coast-to-coast flush once made Florida Bay one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Let’s just say that a lot still flushes from the Everglades, and that the past century’s mega-development, corporate farming, and attempts to re-engineer the area have done some serious, almost irreversible damage. A rhetorical question: how healthy would you be if Florida’s washouts were spiffed up by transfusions through your life-blood?
With U.S. Sugar, a major polluter, soon to be out of the picture, I imagine that Saint Marjory is doing a spiral dance of joy to all the goddesses from her grave.
Meanwhile, a few doors down those gold-paved streets in Heaven, another Marjorie (Carr) is freaking out, having tuned in to MSNBC.
“Archie, Archie, wake up!” She runs over to her husband, a famous environmentalist himself, who is dozing in the hammock dreaming about the mysteries of Kemp’s Ridley Turtle and sloths in the trees of Nicaraguan parks.
“The sea turtles are in danger off Florida’s west coast,” Marjorie cries, dumping Archie out of his hammock. “Charlie Crist has reversed his position on offshore drilling! We have to get busy”!
“Jeezus H. Christ!” the notoriously potty-mouthed Archie yells. “Oh, shit, not you, Lord. That was just an apostrophe. Marjory S.D. Quit your dancing. These ghosts have some haunting to do!”
And so a holy trinity of Florida environmentalists gets busy doing what they do best. The trouble is, they can do only so much from behind the Pearly Gated Community, which keeps folks in as often as it keeps them out. As usual, however, they know before everyone else the wages of environmental sin.
Are we going to do what we did before, and ignore them as strange voices crying in the wilderness until we realize that we’ve gone way past FUBAR?
Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, is a good environmentalist, who loves manatees and brokered a deal to sell U.S. Sugar lands to the state. What’s that? A small voice in my head – where could that be coming from? – tells me that U.S. Sugar was in a pinch because Earth Justice held South Florida’s Water Management District’s feet to the fire, resulting in a successful lawsuit that was about to send the polluter to the poorhouse. What’s that? The voice tells me that they had to unload that property or else they’d be in a real fix. So Governor Crist really did something that was good for business, and the environment was just sauce on the gravy.
Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, is a good environmentalist, who loves manatees and brokered a deal to sell U.S. Sugar lands to the state. He would not steer us wrong on this offshore drilling thing. Our nation is in an oil crisis. Our boys and girls are dying in Iraq. No more blood for oil. What’s that? A small voice in my head – where could that be coming from? (o.k., maybe that one is “welling up” from deep inside me) – tells me that our boys and girls should not be fighting a bogus oil war in Iraq to begin with. And Americans should stop driving those gas sucking pigs of vehicles. And wasting energy in hundreds of ways big and small. No more blood for oil is absolutely right, just not in the way that most people mean it. Have you ever seen what offshore drilling looks like, the voice in my head continues. It is ugly business that will destroy some of the last vestiges of beauty that Florida has. It is one thing to take Florida’s washouts through your lifeblood, but damned if I want to take oil washups on my coasts.
But Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, is a good environmentalist, who loves manatees and brokered a deal to sell U.S. Sugar lands to the state. He would not steer us wrong. And don’t forget, the voice nudges in again, he’s completely and utterly heterosexual. He recently became engaged to the lovely Carole Rome. And certainly, the voice gets in one last dig, no self-respecting queer would purchase his beloved’s ring at strip mall (Eegad, does that not defy everything we have learned from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”? Where is Carson when we need him?).
The ghosts will continue to keep watch over Forked Tongued Charlie from their live MSNBC feeds to Heaven.
For those who don’t know how the ‘Glades work, pull out a map of Florida and look for the huge blue bowl in the state’s southern third. That’s Lake Okeechobee. A low lip on the lake’s bottom end used to spill out into what guardian angel Marjory Stoneman Douglas called “the river of grass.” Not exactly a river, the nearly coast-to-coast flush once made Florida Bay one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Let’s just say that a lot still flushes from the Everglades, and that the past century’s mega-development, corporate farming, and attempts to re-engineer the area have done some serious, almost irreversible damage. A rhetorical question: how healthy would you be if Florida’s washouts were spiffed up by transfusions through your life-blood?
With U.S. Sugar, a major polluter, soon to be out of the picture, I imagine that Saint Marjory is doing a spiral dance of joy to all the goddesses from her grave.
Meanwhile, a few doors down those gold-paved streets in Heaven, another Marjorie (Carr) is freaking out, having tuned in to MSNBC.
“Archie, Archie, wake up!” She runs over to her husband, a famous environmentalist himself, who is dozing in the hammock dreaming about the mysteries of Kemp’s Ridley Turtle and sloths in the trees of Nicaraguan parks.
“The sea turtles are in danger off Florida’s west coast,” Marjorie cries, dumping Archie out of his hammock. “Charlie Crist has reversed his position on offshore drilling! We have to get busy”!
“Jeezus H. Christ!” the notoriously potty-mouthed Archie yells. “Oh, shit, not you, Lord. That was just an apostrophe. Marjory S.D. Quit your dancing. These ghosts have some haunting to do!”
And so a holy trinity of Florida environmentalists gets busy doing what they do best. The trouble is, they can do only so much from behind the Pearly Gated Community, which keeps folks in as often as it keeps them out. As usual, however, they know before everyone else the wages of environmental sin.
Are we going to do what we did before, and ignore them as strange voices crying in the wilderness until we realize that we’ve gone way past FUBAR?
Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, is a good environmentalist, who loves manatees and brokered a deal to sell U.S. Sugar lands to the state. What’s that? A small voice in my head – where could that be coming from? – tells me that U.S. Sugar was in a pinch because Earth Justice held South Florida’s Water Management District’s feet to the fire, resulting in a successful lawsuit that was about to send the polluter to the poorhouse. What’s that? The voice tells me that they had to unload that property or else they’d be in a real fix. So Governor Crist really did something that was good for business, and the environment was just sauce on the gravy.
Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, is a good environmentalist, who loves manatees and brokered a deal to sell U.S. Sugar lands to the state. He would not steer us wrong on this offshore drilling thing. Our nation is in an oil crisis. Our boys and girls are dying in Iraq. No more blood for oil. What’s that? A small voice in my head – where could that be coming from? (o.k., maybe that one is “welling up” from deep inside me) – tells me that our boys and girls should not be fighting a bogus oil war in Iraq to begin with. And Americans should stop driving those gas sucking pigs of vehicles. And wasting energy in hundreds of ways big and small. No more blood for oil is absolutely right, just not in the way that most people mean it. Have you ever seen what offshore drilling looks like, the voice in my head continues. It is ugly business that will destroy some of the last vestiges of beauty that Florida has. It is one thing to take Florida’s washouts through your lifeblood, but damned if I want to take oil washups on my coasts.
But Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, is a good environmentalist, who loves manatees and brokered a deal to sell U.S. Sugar lands to the state. He would not steer us wrong. And don’t forget, the voice nudges in again, he’s completely and utterly heterosexual. He recently became engaged to the lovely Carole Rome. And certainly, the voice gets in one last dig, no self-respecting queer would purchase his beloved’s ring at strip mall (Eegad, does that not defy everything we have learned from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”? Where is Carson when we need him?).
The ghosts will continue to keep watch over Forked Tongued Charlie from their live MSNBC feeds to Heaven.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Itty Bitty White Boy Dick
It’s that time of the year, my pretties. Summer: when tabloids take zoom photographs of starlets’ cellulite-lined thighs. “Guess Whose Ass This Is!” The Nationalist Speculum screams. All manner of butts line the cover. Fat butts, skinny butts, butts from girls on coke. Black butts, white butts, even butts from boys sometimes. But(t) you know it’s mostly us ladies who are the tail-end of this joke.
Why are people so fascinated with who has cellulite and who doesn’t, when cellulite is a naturally occurring phenomenon on all women’s bodies? All women, after a certain age, have cellulite unless a) they have it liposuctioned away or b) they are Olympic track runners, whose bodies are in temporarily unnatural states of being anyway – these women often don’t menstruate.
A certain amount of lower-body fat, as I understand it, is necessary for a human being to sustain other human life forms inside it, which most women – if they choose, and if there are no medical problems preventing them from doing so – can do. A brief tangent. This leads me to another annoying Nationalist Speculum headline: “Starlet Du Jour Drops 35 Pounds! Her Secret for Losing Pregnancy Weight.” Um, wouldn’t that “secret” be “having a baby”?
To sum up: cellulite’s presence can be an indicator that one is, in fact, a woman and not a) a plastic Barbie, or b) a South Beach drag queen. An aside: while I do think there is indeed something wrong with being a plastic Barbie, I do not think there is anything at all wrong with being a South Beach drag queen. We need much more of that kind of gender bending in the world. I’m not sure who said this, but I read it somewhere (if anyone knows, please help me out!): If you want to eradicate the category of gender, multiply it exponentially. Sounds like Foucault. At any rate, that’s what drag queens do, and that’s why I like them. Even ones that look like plastic Barbies. What I’m saying is that you can usually tell girl butts from boy butts by the cellulite, if you’re trying not to be surprised by whom you’ve picked up on the beach in Miami. Then again, maybe some surprises are not too unwelcome. Remember that Kinks song, “Lola”?
Back to the point. I wasted a lot of time as a young woman worrying about my ass wrinkles when I could have been plotting the revolution. Leg lifts, Nautilus equipment, brisk walking, thigh creams, you name it. Why didn’t someone tell me back then, as I am telling you now, that harping on cellulite is a patriarchal plot against women? It seems obvious to me that The Nationalist Speculum’s editorial staff is dominated by straight men heavily invested in women’s oppression or else they would devote equal front-page space to critiquing men’s packages.
Oh my pretties, can’t you just see the captions? “Who brought that kielbasa to the picnic?” “Looks like we’ve got some shrinkage here!” Who’s the white guy with the Big Bamboo?” Or, worse, “Who’s the gangsta with the itty bitty white boy dick?” No wonder he’s so “hung” up on hos and bitches. Maybe his fear of inadequacy prompts him to put women down. Maybe no one ever shared that line with him about it not being the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean. Welcome to Jamaica, Mon, Have a Nice Day, my ass.
Which brings us around, of course, to a comparison between the ocean and my ass. Quit staring at my butt’s ripples and waves as if they were anything less natural than those on the water and the sand that everyone is there to enjoy. Thank you, and Have a Nice Day, Mon.
Why are people so fascinated with who has cellulite and who doesn’t, when cellulite is a naturally occurring phenomenon on all women’s bodies? All women, after a certain age, have cellulite unless a) they have it liposuctioned away or b) they are Olympic track runners, whose bodies are in temporarily unnatural states of being anyway – these women often don’t menstruate.
A certain amount of lower-body fat, as I understand it, is necessary for a human being to sustain other human life forms inside it, which most women – if they choose, and if there are no medical problems preventing them from doing so – can do. A brief tangent. This leads me to another annoying Nationalist Speculum headline: “Starlet Du Jour Drops 35 Pounds! Her Secret for Losing Pregnancy Weight.” Um, wouldn’t that “secret” be “having a baby”?
To sum up: cellulite’s presence can be an indicator that one is, in fact, a woman and not a) a plastic Barbie, or b) a South Beach drag queen. An aside: while I do think there is indeed something wrong with being a plastic Barbie, I do not think there is anything at all wrong with being a South Beach drag queen. We need much more of that kind of gender bending in the world. I’m not sure who said this, but I read it somewhere (if anyone knows, please help me out!): If you want to eradicate the category of gender, multiply it exponentially. Sounds like Foucault. At any rate, that’s what drag queens do, and that’s why I like them. Even ones that look like plastic Barbies. What I’m saying is that you can usually tell girl butts from boy butts by the cellulite, if you’re trying not to be surprised by whom you’ve picked up on the beach in Miami. Then again, maybe some surprises are not too unwelcome. Remember that Kinks song, “Lola”?
Back to the point. I wasted a lot of time as a young woman worrying about my ass wrinkles when I could have been plotting the revolution. Leg lifts, Nautilus equipment, brisk walking, thigh creams, you name it. Why didn’t someone tell me back then, as I am telling you now, that harping on cellulite is a patriarchal plot against women? It seems obvious to me that The Nationalist Speculum’s editorial staff is dominated by straight men heavily invested in women’s oppression or else they would devote equal front-page space to critiquing men’s packages.
Oh my pretties, can’t you just see the captions? “Who brought that kielbasa to the picnic?” “Looks like we’ve got some shrinkage here!” Who’s the white guy with the Big Bamboo?” Or, worse, “Who’s the gangsta with the itty bitty white boy dick?” No wonder he’s so “hung” up on hos and bitches. Maybe his fear of inadequacy prompts him to put women down. Maybe no one ever shared that line with him about it not being the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean. Welcome to Jamaica, Mon, Have a Nice Day, my ass.
Which brings us around, of course, to a comparison between the ocean and my ass. Quit staring at my butt’s ripples and waves as if they were anything less natural than those on the water and the sand that everyone is there to enjoy. Thank you, and Have a Nice Day, Mon.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Beware! Beware! The Flashing Eyes! The Floating Hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
"Kubla Khan: Or, A Vision in a Dream," Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
“Diving into the Wreck,” Adrienne Rich
Not too long ago, I visited a favorite watering hole – Blue Spring State Park in Orange City, north of Orlando. The place gets mobbed in the summer, but it has historical resonance, and like all Florida springs the water, bubbling up from the aquifer, stays constant at 72 degrees. When July's heat and humidity seem to hover in the low 90s day and night, the number 72 resounds like a magic spell in my mind.
I took Elvis, the young Dominican-born man who works for my cousin Buddy and sometimes for me, and Elvis's new lady friend. I have taken it upon myself to see to Elvis's moral and cultural education. (I do not mean that in an anti-Dominican way. His upbringing was just fine. I mean that the moral and cultural education he has received since coming to the U.S. needs serious help.) Buddy is a bad influence. I want Elvis to graduate from college without a) getting arrested, b) becoming a redneck like my cousin, or c) getting Disneyfied. While in reality, I should fear letter "a" the most, I have never been a realist, so "c" is something I try to do something about. This remains an exercise in futility. Elvis's American Dream is to strike it rich through one of Buddy's alternative economic enterprises, cash out and enter some legitimate business, marry a smokin' hot huge breasted girl who made it through college with her virginity intact, take her on a Disney cruise, and buy a gargantuan house with multiple large screen televisions in a community not unlike Celebration. The dream involves endless nights of great sex, culminates in some tiny Elvises who also worship the Rat God, but after that it gets somewhat fuzzy.
Elvis's dream mystifies me as much as my obsession with steering him away from that dream. The kid also likes his literature classes, so maybe I see a glimmer of hope. Last term, he read Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," hence the road trip to Blue Spring.
We pull up to the park on a steamy, blue-skied Sunday morning. The swathe of grass above the spring run is already so packed with bodies that we have trouble finding a spot to put down our lawn chairs. I scurry Elvis and his lady friend along the boardwalk to the spring head several yards away. Surrounding the water basin is a tangle of palmetto brush, water oak, and curling vine. The basin itself forms an aquamarine circle maybe fifty feet across, filled with bubbles from the water shooting up and kids in flippers and snorkel masks, trying their best to dive into the water's source and being spit back up again. The water is so clear that one can see all the way down to where the spring caves begin and the water gushes out. The rocks look like vaginal lips. The whole thing recalls a giant vagina for me, with those caves leading back to the essence of life itself: Florida's aquifer, the source of our drinking water. Our great Floridian womb. Our mother. Our soul.
I begin to overexcite and gesticulate. "This is the Real Florida, Elvis. 45 minutes from Rat World, and you've got manatees, real animals, not consumer cartoon characters. And primeval forest, and gushing springs, and water so clear you can see into caves that go on forever. Behold! It's fucking Xanadu, right here before your very eyes!"
Coleridge is said to have based his description of Kubla Khan's Xanadu on William Bartram's description of Blue Spring. Alph, the sacred river, corresponds to the St. Johns that Blue Spring feeds into. The caverns, interconnected with the extensive aquifer system, are indeed "measureless to man." The spring itself discharges 104 million gallons of water daily – talk about your "ceaseless turmoil seething"! Bartram traveled through Florida in the mid 1770s on a natural history excursion – collecting plant specimens; drawing images; writing descriptions of the native flora, fauna, and folks; and along the way finding his soul. I can guarantee that you won't do that on a pilgrimage to the Rat God’s temple.
On an earlier Bartram trip, William's father John was less impressed with a nearby Florida spring. "Tastes like bilge-water," he observed. Elvis might as well have been John Bartram. "Where's the concession stand?" he asked, "I want a Coke."
This is point at which my story starts to go downhill fast. The point in which I have to ask myself not, "Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill," but "Why oh why didn't I stay away from all recreational drugs entirely"?
Elvis, the lady friend, and I stomped back down the boardwalk. Well, I stomped. We got the Cokes, sat in our lawn chairs, and Elvis pulled out brownies. I know better than to indulge in anything that comes from Cousin Buddy's kitchen: a) I learned that lesson when I was much younger, and b) the product is just a lot stronger these days. To reiterate: Buddy is a bad influence. But I was miffed at Elvis for thinking that the Real Florida would be better enjoyed under circumstances of Altered Reality. If I wouldn't take him to the Magic Kingdom, then by God, he would bring the Magic Kingdom to Blue Spring. While on one hand, my decision to eat the brownie makes no sense (why should I alter my reality too?). On the other hand it does. I was angry. The brownie had chocolate in it.
After a few minutes, or hours, or perhaps a week or two, I began to feel all Adrienne Rich inside. So much for Coleridge. I wanted to get some flippers and a mask, swim up the spring run, and dive into that cave. In Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving Into the Wreck,” she talks about getting back to the source, “the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth.” Sometimes, not just when I’ve been eating Buddy’s brownies, I get to thinking that through those caves, beyond that aquifer, lies the source of all mystery. It’s not just Xanadu down there, but the origin of all life and the culmination of all death. I didn’t just make up this idea from drugs. Some of Florida’s native inhabitants believed that springs were sacred portals to the underworld. The difference between them and me is that they did not cut a ridiculous figure in rented snorkel gear trying repeatedly to nose-dive a cave with a bunch of ten-year-olds.
Rich talks about “a book of myths / in which / our names do not appear.” I often think that living in Florida is like reading that book. Florida history as written is all Paradise, Sunshine, and the Florida Dream. And sometimes, not just when I’ve been eating Buddy’s brownies, I get to thinking that if one could dive into the spring and explore the caves far enough one could time-travel backward to learn the names and stories that got left out.
On this excursion, however, I learned a more frightening lesson. The short version is this: Florida’s springs are growing more and more polluted. Many swimmers are coming away from the most popular springs – Ichetucknee, Wakulla, Wekiwa, Rainbow, Fanning, DeLeon, and Blue – with mysterious rashes. State officials suspect, but have not yet confirmed, a blue-green algae called Lyngbya wollei, which has multiplied because of pollution-spurred algae blooms.
Here is how I found out: I dove and dove and dove until the point of exhaustion. I wound up passing out in my lawn chair, a collapsed manatee of a nearly middle aged woman. Elvis and his lady friend (whose name I have not used because I suspect that her utter embarrassment over the entire fiasco precludes her from being part of his continued American Dream) performed manatee rescue services, depositing me safely back to my swamp, for which Elvis now swears upon the Holy Bible that I promised him a trip to – of all places – ANIMAL KINGDOM!, the most infernal of regions. My attempt to find “the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth,” this time, resulted in a three-day hangover and a series of oozing, red, egg-shaped welts across my back. Still, you have not heard the last from me on a) our polluted life-source, and b) Florida’s book of myths where certain names do not appear.
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
"Kubla Khan: Or, A Vision in a Dream," Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
“Diving into the Wreck,” Adrienne Rich
Not too long ago, I visited a favorite watering hole – Blue Spring State Park in Orange City, north of Orlando. The place gets mobbed in the summer, but it has historical resonance, and like all Florida springs the water, bubbling up from the aquifer, stays constant at 72 degrees. When July's heat and humidity seem to hover in the low 90s day and night, the number 72 resounds like a magic spell in my mind.
I took Elvis, the young Dominican-born man who works for my cousin Buddy and sometimes for me, and Elvis's new lady friend. I have taken it upon myself to see to Elvis's moral and cultural education. (I do not mean that in an anti-Dominican way. His upbringing was just fine. I mean that the moral and cultural education he has received since coming to the U.S. needs serious help.) Buddy is a bad influence. I want Elvis to graduate from college without a) getting arrested, b) becoming a redneck like my cousin, or c) getting Disneyfied. While in reality, I should fear letter "a" the most, I have never been a realist, so "c" is something I try to do something about. This remains an exercise in futility. Elvis's American Dream is to strike it rich through one of Buddy's alternative economic enterprises, cash out and enter some legitimate business, marry a smokin' hot huge breasted girl who made it through college with her virginity intact, take her on a Disney cruise, and buy a gargantuan house with multiple large screen televisions in a community not unlike Celebration. The dream involves endless nights of great sex, culminates in some tiny Elvises who also worship the Rat God, but after that it gets somewhat fuzzy.
Elvis's dream mystifies me as much as my obsession with steering him away from that dream. The kid also likes his literature classes, so maybe I see a glimmer of hope. Last term, he read Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," hence the road trip to Blue Spring.
We pull up to the park on a steamy, blue-skied Sunday morning. The swathe of grass above the spring run is already so packed with bodies that we have trouble finding a spot to put down our lawn chairs. I scurry Elvis and his lady friend along the boardwalk to the spring head several yards away. Surrounding the water basin is a tangle of palmetto brush, water oak, and curling vine. The basin itself forms an aquamarine circle maybe fifty feet across, filled with bubbles from the water shooting up and kids in flippers and snorkel masks, trying their best to dive into the water's source and being spit back up again. The water is so clear that one can see all the way down to where the spring caves begin and the water gushes out. The rocks look like vaginal lips. The whole thing recalls a giant vagina for me, with those caves leading back to the essence of life itself: Florida's aquifer, the source of our drinking water. Our great Floridian womb. Our mother. Our soul.
I begin to overexcite and gesticulate. "This is the Real Florida, Elvis. 45 minutes from Rat World, and you've got manatees, real animals, not consumer cartoon characters. And primeval forest, and gushing springs, and water so clear you can see into caves that go on forever. Behold! It's fucking Xanadu, right here before your very eyes!"
Coleridge is said to have based his description of Kubla Khan's Xanadu on William Bartram's description of Blue Spring. Alph, the sacred river, corresponds to the St. Johns that Blue Spring feeds into. The caverns, interconnected with the extensive aquifer system, are indeed "measureless to man." The spring itself discharges 104 million gallons of water daily – talk about your "ceaseless turmoil seething"! Bartram traveled through Florida in the mid 1770s on a natural history excursion – collecting plant specimens; drawing images; writing descriptions of the native flora, fauna, and folks; and along the way finding his soul. I can guarantee that you won't do that on a pilgrimage to the Rat God’s temple.
On an earlier Bartram trip, William's father John was less impressed with a nearby Florida spring. "Tastes like bilge-water," he observed. Elvis might as well have been John Bartram. "Where's the concession stand?" he asked, "I want a Coke."
This is point at which my story starts to go downhill fast. The point in which I have to ask myself not, "Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill," but "Why oh why didn't I stay away from all recreational drugs entirely"?
Elvis, the lady friend, and I stomped back down the boardwalk. Well, I stomped. We got the Cokes, sat in our lawn chairs, and Elvis pulled out brownies. I know better than to indulge in anything that comes from Cousin Buddy's kitchen: a) I learned that lesson when I was much younger, and b) the product is just a lot stronger these days. To reiterate: Buddy is a bad influence. But I was miffed at Elvis for thinking that the Real Florida would be better enjoyed under circumstances of Altered Reality. If I wouldn't take him to the Magic Kingdom, then by God, he would bring the Magic Kingdom to Blue Spring. While on one hand, my decision to eat the brownie makes no sense (why should I alter my reality too?). On the other hand it does. I was angry. The brownie had chocolate in it.
After a few minutes, or hours, or perhaps a week or two, I began to feel all Adrienne Rich inside. So much for Coleridge. I wanted to get some flippers and a mask, swim up the spring run, and dive into that cave. In Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving Into the Wreck,” she talks about getting back to the source, “the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth.” Sometimes, not just when I’ve been eating Buddy’s brownies, I get to thinking that through those caves, beyond that aquifer, lies the source of all mystery. It’s not just Xanadu down there, but the origin of all life and the culmination of all death. I didn’t just make up this idea from drugs. Some of Florida’s native inhabitants believed that springs were sacred portals to the underworld. The difference between them and me is that they did not cut a ridiculous figure in rented snorkel gear trying repeatedly to nose-dive a cave with a bunch of ten-year-olds.
Rich talks about “a book of myths / in which / our names do not appear.” I often think that living in Florida is like reading that book. Florida history as written is all Paradise, Sunshine, and the Florida Dream. And sometimes, not just when I’ve been eating Buddy’s brownies, I get to thinking that if one could dive into the spring and explore the caves far enough one could time-travel backward to learn the names and stories that got left out.
On this excursion, however, I learned a more frightening lesson. The short version is this: Florida’s springs are growing more and more polluted. Many swimmers are coming away from the most popular springs – Ichetucknee, Wakulla, Wekiwa, Rainbow, Fanning, DeLeon, and Blue – with mysterious rashes. State officials suspect, but have not yet confirmed, a blue-green algae called Lyngbya wollei, which has multiplied because of pollution-spurred algae blooms.
Here is how I found out: I dove and dove and dove until the point of exhaustion. I wound up passing out in my lawn chair, a collapsed manatee of a nearly middle aged woman. Elvis and his lady friend (whose name I have not used because I suspect that her utter embarrassment over the entire fiasco precludes her from being part of his continued American Dream) performed manatee rescue services, depositing me safely back to my swamp, for which Elvis now swears upon the Holy Bible that I promised him a trip to – of all places – ANIMAL KINGDOM!, the most infernal of regions. My attempt to find “the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth,” this time, resulted in a three-day hangover and a series of oozing, red, egg-shaped welts across my back. Still, you have not heard the last from me on a) our polluted life-source, and b) Florida’s book of myths where certain names do not appear.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Nearly Naked Sushi Fu
I read in the St. Petersburg Times last week about a restaurant that just opened somewhere in Tampa Bay called Nearly Naked Sushi. As the name suggests, patrons select their sushi options from plates spread out upon bodies of prone g-string and pasty-clad ladies. An accompanying photograph showed the torso only of one such nubile nymph, with a plate of some seaweed-wrapped rice and fish dish perched upon her mons, with patrons standing in the background as if this were any normal cocktail party.
Gives new meaning to the phrase, "tastes like tuna." Or, as Toni Morrison has said more poetically, "smells like the ocean, tastes like the sea." (An aside: in an unexpected simile, one of my new favorite writers Junot Diaz says, "tastes like Heinecken." My friend Raymond and I get quite a kick out of it. This is how you know I am not a male basher. One of my very best friends is male. Raymond likes to ask me, "want to go out for some Heinecken tonight?")
Don't these people worry about getting pubes in their sushi? I have also wondered this about the men who frequent Café Risque on I-75 just south of Gainesville (Couples Welcome!). I went in once – don't ask why – and saw guys eating burgers and drinking beer right there where the bored/stoned out of their minds pole-dancers were gyrating and squatting. Of course, I also noticed, with both the pole-dancers and the Nearly Naked Sushi girls, that wearing the g-string entails shaving off one's pubes entirely or so closely that they might as well be gone.
Number One: without that protective coat of hair, I would soooo get a yeast infection – which results in something else one does not want to ingest with sushi or burgers. Number Two: without the hair, doesn't one's pussy look a bit prepubescent? (Um, that's why it's called pre-PUBE-scent, right?) With all the brouhaha about Amber Alerts and sexual predators around, why isn't anyone questioning grown men wanting grown women to look like twelve-year-olds "down there"?
Why, precisely, does our society ostracize child pornographers and make jokes about pussy tasting like tuna, then turn around and open up a restaurant where people eat raw tuna off a woman's shaved pubic area?
And Raymond tells me I'm crazy. "It's edgy," he says of Nearly Naked Sushi.
"Right," I say. "Edgy in that retro sort of way. Like the 1950s. Edgy like Playboy Bunnies. Edgy in the way women's bodies as objects of conspicuous consumption have always been edgy."
"If you want something really edgy," I tell Raymond, "Let's go in there with those biker dykes you know and see how people react."
"Are you kidding," Raymond laughs, "lesbians are totally hot."
"That's true only if they're young, breasty, and Scandinavian, or maybe that Afrolatinasian mix. I don't see Howard Sterne begging someone's Meemaw and Aunt Gladys to do a lesbian shower scene."
Raymond concedes the point. A rarity for him.
"In my fantasy," I tell him, "the Nearly Naked Sushi girl conceals a razor under her tongue that she flips out mid-sashimi. One by one, the poly-blend tropical shirts and gold-chained chests of the day traders and house flippers tumble. One by one, their plastic-boobed, strappy-sandaled pseudo-Barbies get upended. Headline reads: 'Tragedy Slashes Tampa Bay Eatery.'" My fantasy is all razor-toting, g-string fu, to use Joe Bob Briggs' term for B-movie violence.
Raymond tells me, "Your fantasy sounds a lot like Quentin Tarantino's. Talk about women's bodies as objects of conspicuous consumption. Nearly Naked Sushi girl as Uma Thurman."
I concede the point. A rarity for me.
Raymond has given me something to chew on. As free as I think myself, I remain a prisoner of the male gaze.
I'll have to reconsider my position later. Right now, I have new fantasy film in mind. Pissed off razor-toting grannies take control of the country, starting with Florida. I'm calling it Meemaw-Fu.
Gives new meaning to the phrase, "tastes like tuna." Or, as Toni Morrison has said more poetically, "smells like the ocean, tastes like the sea." (An aside: in an unexpected simile, one of my new favorite writers Junot Diaz says, "tastes like Heinecken." My friend Raymond and I get quite a kick out of it. This is how you know I am not a male basher. One of my very best friends is male. Raymond likes to ask me, "want to go out for some Heinecken tonight?")
Don't these people worry about getting pubes in their sushi? I have also wondered this about the men who frequent Café Risque on I-75 just south of Gainesville (Couples Welcome!). I went in once – don't ask why – and saw guys eating burgers and drinking beer right there where the bored/stoned out of their minds pole-dancers were gyrating and squatting. Of course, I also noticed, with both the pole-dancers and the Nearly Naked Sushi girls, that wearing the g-string entails shaving off one's pubes entirely or so closely that they might as well be gone.
Number One: without that protective coat of hair, I would soooo get a yeast infection – which results in something else one does not want to ingest with sushi or burgers. Number Two: without the hair, doesn't one's pussy look a bit prepubescent? (Um, that's why it's called pre-PUBE-scent, right?) With all the brouhaha about Amber Alerts and sexual predators around, why isn't anyone questioning grown men wanting grown women to look like twelve-year-olds "down there"?
Why, precisely, does our society ostracize child pornographers and make jokes about pussy tasting like tuna, then turn around and open up a restaurant where people eat raw tuna off a woman's shaved pubic area?
And Raymond tells me I'm crazy. "It's edgy," he says of Nearly Naked Sushi.
"Right," I say. "Edgy in that retro sort of way. Like the 1950s. Edgy like Playboy Bunnies. Edgy in the way women's bodies as objects of conspicuous consumption have always been edgy."
"If you want something really edgy," I tell Raymond, "Let's go in there with those biker dykes you know and see how people react."
"Are you kidding," Raymond laughs, "lesbians are totally hot."
"That's true only if they're young, breasty, and Scandinavian, or maybe that Afrolatinasian mix. I don't see Howard Sterne begging someone's Meemaw and Aunt Gladys to do a lesbian shower scene."
Raymond concedes the point. A rarity for him.
"In my fantasy," I tell him, "the Nearly Naked Sushi girl conceals a razor under her tongue that she flips out mid-sashimi. One by one, the poly-blend tropical shirts and gold-chained chests of the day traders and house flippers tumble. One by one, their plastic-boobed, strappy-sandaled pseudo-Barbies get upended. Headline reads: 'Tragedy Slashes Tampa Bay Eatery.'" My fantasy is all razor-toting, g-string fu, to use Joe Bob Briggs' term for B-movie violence.
Raymond tells me, "Your fantasy sounds a lot like Quentin Tarantino's. Talk about women's bodies as objects of conspicuous consumption. Nearly Naked Sushi girl as Uma Thurman."
I concede the point. A rarity for me.
Raymond has given me something to chew on. As free as I think myself, I remain a prisoner of the male gaze.
I'll have to reconsider my position later. Right now, I have new fantasy film in mind. Pissed off razor-toting grannies take control of the country, starting with Florida. I'm calling it Meemaw-Fu.
Monday, July 7, 2008
The Monkey Takes Flight: A Declaration of Independence
July 4, 2008
When the course of current events compels a person to dissolve the political bands which have connected her, something the highly esteemed Founding Fathers declared unanimously that Nature and Nature's Deities entitle her to do, and form a nation unto herself, it seems reasonable and in keeping with historical, legal, philosophical, and literary precedent that she should outline the causes for her separation.
I agree with the basic tenets of the original Declaration (slightly revised and updated to include those people like me who did not fully count back in 1776): that all human beings are born into this world with equal opportunity to pursue Life, Liberty, and Happiness. In order to secure and defend these rights, individuals form governments that derive their powers from the consent of the governed. When governments fall short of their duties, individuals have the right to change, even abolish, those governments. Obviously, governments should not be overturned on whim, and, obviously, the original document was more of an ideal that the nation needed to continue striving toward than a fully constituted reality. However, as the decades and years wear on, and the nation moves so increasingly far from the goal that it mocks the very document itself, I cannot help but, in the words of one of the great political philosophers who started this whole trajectory into the abyss, "just say no."
I secede from the Madness of King George the Younger and Dumber.
I secede as well from Change We Can Believe In. Show me a Revolution We Can Believe In, and maybe we can talk.
I secede from an economy based upon worker exploitation, nationalist aggression, and environmental destruction.
I secede from hatred in all forms. But not anger.
I secede from violence against other people and animals. But not against property.
I secede from patriarchal oppression, and the economic, religious, educational, and social structures that support it.
I secede from cleaninglaundrycookingshopping, the mommy track, makeup, body enhancement surgery, little dresses, cute shoes, and pantyhose. I don't want a pedicure, but the whole world needs a Man-o-cure.
I secede from television.
I secede from Disney World. Especially those damn Princesses.
I secede from the Disneyfication of the world. I secede from McFoods and McMansions. I secede from the mind control that passes for public discourse in the media, from the control over information that passes for security, from the control over my body that passes for rights, and from the control over my food and water that passes for health.
Folks have been caterwauling for seven years (a magical number!) about terrorists hijacking planes to take down the big phalluses of globalization, but who has raised a peep about the terrorists who've hijacked language itself? Those who convince us that wrong is right, evil is them, injustice is constitutional, slave is free? Those who convince us that we need to live in fear every single day of our lives, lest the axis of evil get us, the sexual predators get us, the gangbangers get us, the e. coli get us, the Asian bird flu get us, the West Nile virus get us, the African killer bees get us, the hurricanes get us (they originate from the Dark Continent, too, you know). Maybe we should just stay inside our houses, where it's safe and climate-controlled, watching the shiny box with its smiling drones telling us what we can do to prepare. Can duct save us from the apocalyptic loss of freedom that we have suffered in this country? We did not lose it to Al-Qaeda. We surrendered our birthright willingly for a mess of cheap goods from Wal-Mart, cheap entertainment from Fox News, and cheap government from U.S.A., Inc.
Simply put: I quit. Like Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, I prefer not to.
I have retreated to the swamp to live off my wits and what I can beg, borrow, and steal. I would cast my lot with the Seminoles further south, but they won't have me. They know better than to trust white people. (And they're also too busy right now, taking back the land that was stolen from them, one blackjack game at a time.) The Miccosukees still haven't signed a treaty with the U.S. Like them, I am a nation unto myself. Where I am, you won't find me. Osceola led battles from the Second Seminole War from here. Before that, escaped slaves called Maroons lived hidden from prying eyes in this hammock. Before that, Timucuans led DeSoto's army on a fool's errand for fool's gold – in chain mail, in August (suckers!).
No, I don't have Internet access out here. I use the public library, although technically, I am no longer "public." (This is why my declaration, written on July 4, is posted on July 7 – had to wait for the library to be open.) I reach out through this blog because, like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, perhaps on the lower frequencies, I may speak to some of you. I cannot bring down a system by myself. I'm only one monkey flying under radar. But maybe a whole bunch of flying monkeys could wrench some real wizard ass.
Sometimes this blog will be serious. Sometimes stupid. I hope it always makes you think and frees your mind in some small way.
Come fly with me.
When the course of current events compels a person to dissolve the political bands which have connected her, something the highly esteemed Founding Fathers declared unanimously that Nature and Nature's Deities entitle her to do, and form a nation unto herself, it seems reasonable and in keeping with historical, legal, philosophical, and literary precedent that she should outline the causes for her separation.
I agree with the basic tenets of the original Declaration (slightly revised and updated to include those people like me who did not fully count back in 1776): that all human beings are born into this world with equal opportunity to pursue Life, Liberty, and Happiness. In order to secure and defend these rights, individuals form governments that derive their powers from the consent of the governed. When governments fall short of their duties, individuals have the right to change, even abolish, those governments. Obviously, governments should not be overturned on whim, and, obviously, the original document was more of an ideal that the nation needed to continue striving toward than a fully constituted reality. However, as the decades and years wear on, and the nation moves so increasingly far from the goal that it mocks the very document itself, I cannot help but, in the words of one of the great political philosophers who started this whole trajectory into the abyss, "just say no."
I secede from the Madness of King George the Younger and Dumber.
I secede as well from Change We Can Believe In. Show me a Revolution We Can Believe In, and maybe we can talk.
I secede from an economy based upon worker exploitation, nationalist aggression, and environmental destruction.
I secede from hatred in all forms. But not anger.
I secede from violence against other people and animals. But not against property.
I secede from patriarchal oppression, and the economic, religious, educational, and social structures that support it.
I secede from cleaninglaundrycookingshopping, the mommy track, makeup, body enhancement surgery, little dresses, cute shoes, and pantyhose. I don't want a pedicure, but the whole world needs a Man-o-cure.
I secede from television.
I secede from Disney World. Especially those damn Princesses.
I secede from the Disneyfication of the world. I secede from McFoods and McMansions. I secede from the mind control that passes for public discourse in the media, from the control over information that passes for security, from the control over my body that passes for rights, and from the control over my food and water that passes for health.
Folks have been caterwauling for seven years (a magical number!) about terrorists hijacking planes to take down the big phalluses of globalization, but who has raised a peep about the terrorists who've hijacked language itself? Those who convince us that wrong is right, evil is them, injustice is constitutional, slave is free? Those who convince us that we need to live in fear every single day of our lives, lest the axis of evil get us, the sexual predators get us, the gangbangers get us, the e. coli get us, the Asian bird flu get us, the West Nile virus get us, the African killer bees get us, the hurricanes get us (they originate from the Dark Continent, too, you know). Maybe we should just stay inside our houses, where it's safe and climate-controlled, watching the shiny box with its smiling drones telling us what we can do to prepare. Can duct save us from the apocalyptic loss of freedom that we have suffered in this country? We did not lose it to Al-Qaeda. We surrendered our birthright willingly for a mess of cheap goods from Wal-Mart, cheap entertainment from Fox News, and cheap government from U.S.A., Inc.
Simply put: I quit. Like Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, I prefer not to.
I have retreated to the swamp to live off my wits and what I can beg, borrow, and steal. I would cast my lot with the Seminoles further south, but they won't have me. They know better than to trust white people. (And they're also too busy right now, taking back the land that was stolen from them, one blackjack game at a time.) The Miccosukees still haven't signed a treaty with the U.S. Like them, I am a nation unto myself. Where I am, you won't find me. Osceola led battles from the Second Seminole War from here. Before that, escaped slaves called Maroons lived hidden from prying eyes in this hammock. Before that, Timucuans led DeSoto's army on a fool's errand for fool's gold – in chain mail, in August (suckers!).
No, I don't have Internet access out here. I use the public library, although technically, I am no longer "public." (This is why my declaration, written on July 4, is posted on July 7 – had to wait for the library to be open.) I reach out through this blog because, like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, perhaps on the lower frequencies, I may speak to some of you. I cannot bring down a system by myself. I'm only one monkey flying under radar. But maybe a whole bunch of flying monkeys could wrench some real wizard ass.
Sometimes this blog will be serious. Sometimes stupid. I hope it always makes you think and frees your mind in some small way.
Come fly with me.
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