DC Black Pride -quick and durrty- from a Black Girl's POV

Friday evening, I wait a good four hours to see Fertile Ground perfrom. Of course it was well worth it. As usual, when I go to the club I wear fantasy makeup, I didn't think about the fact that the lead singer does as well and that I would be singled out as a fanatic fan. (secret... I have yet to buy a cd of thiers...) It must have been fated for me to see them because saturday morning I wake up to "Black Sunshine" playing on my computer-turned-stereo.

I spend most of Saturday chilln' at the host hotel (M Street) with Sarah and her friends from Philly. I missed my opportunity to see the film festival, due to it being sold out, but I did get to see sexy ass Fiona and McKenzie at Lambda Rising. Later on that evening I went on and attended the poetry slam--had the best seat in the house, and it was pretty fire. Had a grown woman blushing a few times though.

Sunday, the fact that I lost my ATM card friday night turns out to be a more drastic situation than I expected. I didn't have cash money on me to get into the festival, but luckily, after an hour or so of wandering around trying to find someone to commit credit card fraud with, I run into life saving Rachelle who loans me some doe.

The festival was cool. Vivian Green was having a bad day, but I met some great people and had dinner and a few laughs with them. That evening, I broke into my change piggy bank and decided to shake my booty. I was really serious about dancing, and not about being cute, so for the first time at a club I didn't wear 3 inch heels... it was good. Makes a sister actually like the club.

Monday was the best day of all. Mel returned from Bama with a spring in her step and we all went to the outdoor-social-gathering at Fort Dupont Park. Our little section became the spot to be at because Mel is so damn popular, and again I had the greatest time ever, despite the oppressive heat that made a sister break out by the end of the day.

Basically, DC Pride is 100 times better than Atlanta Pride... particularly for the ladies who are much better represented here. Also, there were more activities for the women, something Atlanta Black Pride has needed to work on for the past few years. Makes a sister not even want to go this summer...

The devil that sits upon my chest.

I woke up early this morning because High Priestess summoned me. I don't exactly know why, but I began to ponder these things in my waking up. I don't know if it was really her or her playing on my computer-turned-stereo that did the trick, but as the moon was setting outside of my window Nina Simone was singing "House of the Rising Sun."

There is a house in New Orleans
Call it the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin
Of many a poor girl
And me, oh Lord, I'm one

I sleep with the computer-turned-stereo on these days. I used to do this all the time, particularly when I wasn't getting enough sleep. Those times would cause me to awaken with "the devil on my chest."

Now for some of you who ain't heard that term (in a long time or ever), waking with the devil on your chest is an old folk term my mother told me a while ago which refers to when you are fully conscious mentally, but you haveno control over your body. A purgatory between sleep and awake. For me, this is dreadful, and I often find myself having panic attacks when this happens.

If I'd listened what my mama said
I'd be at home today
Bein' so young
And foolish, my Lord
Let a gambler lead me astray

When I was a child and this would happen to me, I was often sleeping in a position that was closing my air passage, this, is where I think my panic attacks come from. But it goes a little deeper than that I remember choaking on my own fluids in the womb... but that's another blog.

I don't know where, but I learned the trick of playing music sometime when I was in college. I wasn't really superstitious at first, but when I saw that dead man in my hallway, and found out I was sleeping on Civil War battlegrounds, I began to get a little Nawf Cackilack in response to my sleep, and imagined the beauty of music scared shetan away.

All a gambler needs
is a suitcase
and a trunk
the only time he's satisfied
is when he's gone drunk

Superstition or not, when I play music (and I am sure to when I am sleep deprived) I wake up fully aware and in control of my body. There is something particularly interesting about being in the dream world and waking to know in a most morbidly mortal way, that you are tied to your body and not knowing if your dream world would continue to exist if your body perished.

Before I woke up I dreamed I was driving and Nina was blaring on my radio. I am fully aware that she is on the radio because she is playing on my computer-turned-stereo in the earth world. I am usually aware that I am dreaming when I am dreaming. There seems to be something urgent in her voice and I consider waking up. I turn up the volume in the dream and am reminded that she is a pisces... a dreamer... a high priestess at that. I wake up with little reluctance. My ear is bleeding and I am cold, I went to sleep nude last night, not considering the chill the moon leaves behind upon its setting.

Go tell my baby sister
Never do what I have done
Shun that house in New Orleans
They call it the Rising Sun


I've been thinking about Nina a lot recently. I took a look at her memorial service program a few weeks ago while I was cleaning. My heart got heavy from the realization that I will never meet her in this earth life. It's a comfort to think that she may be speaking to me in my dreams. Replacing the "demons" that threatened to take my life while I was sleeping. Those deamons that tainted the sanctity of my dream world. Guiding me, urging me to hurry up and create my world, to leave home when necessary in search of new homes. To dare to sing/say/create change. Not to mention to add a little beauty to this drab world, if not with my presence :-) then with my art.

To inspire a generation and be buried on other shores. Just to prove a point: don't hurry visiting my grave, I ain't there no way.

Goin' back to New Orleans
Race is almost run
Goin' back to spend my life
Beneath the rising sun

Content to Create

My current state of contentment has lead me to want to create a lot. I've expanded the torsion project into the three different works; I've been thinking about doing a visual project loosely related to the lynching artifacts project I'm doing that looks to the media and ad campaigns for images of "owning" black people. (Amp'd mobile is one of them.) Then the lynching scholarly project itself--I'm finding ways that I can incorporate my own creativity, and keep that part of my scholarship alive and vital.

Also, after looking (over and over again) at the dirty old man skirt expose... Guess what NEW ART series! I hadn't expected, for example the image of Sarah Baartman to be so similar to one of my poses in the pictures... It was then that I realized that the project was worth more than pondering--but in need of serious exploring. After reading an essay on Aunt Jemima and corpulence in the Black community in Kimberly Wallace Sander's Skin Deep Spirit Strong, I've decided that it might be worthwhile to discuss the Black communities relationship to corpulence to my own history of eating disorders.

I'm finding that my art is a lot more confessional than I would have expected it to be. But it actually feels right. I'm being political, but not dogmatic. I hate dogmatic art, and I want to bring this issues home. Even it its only in my chest. I guess this is where I am heavily influenced by Frida Kahlo. While some have actually compared my work aesthetically to hers (and I have to admit, there may be some influence there), what I admire about Kahlo as an artist is her ability to talk about her pain in a confessional yet political way. Her art is the prime example of how the personal is political.

Kahlo's body being ravaged in the trolley accident is proof within itself of the class issues that Mexico was facing (and still faces) at the time. Furthermore, the way in which she was injured...How she was rendered incapable of having children because of the handle bar that entered her vagina and exited through her hip--the way she highlighted the effects of that event in her life were also infused with how she saw the influence of capitalism, imperialism, and racism on the bodies of women (in Mexico and the U.S.) especially her own.

I dig that ability to see beyond the self, yet not negate the self. It's important for scholars not to forget that. My creativity helps me to re-member.

Technorati Profile

Love.

Yesterday I went from being totally annoyed with people, and anxiously crabby, to loving infinitely and feeling connected to the universe.

Yesterday was my last class session for my first year in the PhD program in Women's Studies. As I was sitting over my pina colada at Synthia's I realized how desperate it was that I not go home and just sit like I'd done all semester due to my work load. After talking to Ana SchoolGirl P, I decided to go out to a poetry reading, write some poetry, and generally feel myself. I did and it was great.

I rocked my Cave Canem "Fake it till I make it" bag. A real Cave Canem poet approached me and I shamefacedly told him that I was only aspiring. He told me about how he came across Cave Canem in an attempt to assure me that it is not a daunting process. He gave me a card and a flyer for a Cave Canem reading in the area. I will so be there wishing and hoping and praying I was on that level.

I sat and wrote poetry in my journal. I kept finding myself writing about pleasure, love, and contentment. This was so new to me. I also bought two books: a signed copy of spirited: affirming the soul and black gay/lesbian identity by Lisa C. Moore and American Sublime by Elizabeth Alexander. I'm so exited about getting into them this summer.

I got on the green line to go back home and was beaming. I was so in awe of my own clarity of mind. Suddenly I understood my position in this world. I saw my art as meaningful, my research as worthy, and my whole self deserving of love.

Cunt/torsion/art/is

I know this blog will only make sense to a select few who have seen the sketches, or to whom i've talked about this project... if you have any questions feel free to email me.

So I have been thinking about Shani's suggestion that I title my project "Contortion Artist." I thought it was the best idea, and I am still ruminating on it. Thoroughly even. What I am considering is what a contorsion artist is, what contorsion signifies, and what that means in relation to medicalization and of course my torsed ovary.

Here are my musings about it all. I'm a little disturbed by the fact that what I had was called a "torsed" or "contorted" ovary. "Contortion" implies flexibility, and is often used within the context of things that can be put back into their regular shape. There is an agency about "contortion" that doesn't sit well with me.

But then again I began to think about the process of gynecological exams more closely. The positions women have to perform in order to be examined properly. Putting legs in the stirrups, scooting down just far enough off of the table so that there is no support for your tail bone. The mental contortions--trying to forget the cold speculum so that you can flex you muscles to lessen the discomfort. Facial expressions even.

I began to have images in my head, of actual contortion artists, yogis etc. People who can and deliberately move their bodies into seemingly "unnatural" positions. Then I thought back to the word contortion the roots of it:

Contort: To twist or bend out of normal shape.
Tort: Wrongful act or infringement.
Torsion: The action of twisting

These words seem to be juicily related and so perfect for this project. Because I am likening the torsed ovary to be like a lynching, a murder, abortion, or suicide. There is this connotation of it being a wrongful act. It of course, in a real sense was an infringement on my life. The pain of it--how I had to halt all of my other obligations in order to tend to my body.

Bending and flexibility are not things I necessarily associate with what happened to me because it implies passivity to me. But maybe this is an inaccurate association. What is real is the ways our bodies must flex in order to endure life, oppression, the middle passage, childbirth, rape, a first date, coming out, goodbyes, everything.

The complexities of the word are lost in "contortion artist."

But the questions do not end there. What are the implications of placing "artist" in the title? It is about me, to an extent, but it is not about art, or any other artist really. What does it mean to associate my ovary with art? The politics of this ovarian torsion with art? This I have not muddled through yet. (Hey, this is why I'm blogging it... to get feedback.)

So this is where I am with it:

Some kind of "breaking up" of the word contortion (i.e. con/tortion). Or possibly an intentional misspelling (i.e. contorsion, cunt-or-shun, or cunt/orishan). Maybe even a shortening of it all together (i.e tortion or torsion). Another option is a quite literal approach (torsed artist, or artistic torsion)

The "artist" part... I just don't know. What do you think?

Also... more shit to be depressed about. They could have saved it: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/506238

Everyday I'm hustlin'

..and they gotta put my money in my hand.

I've been thinking about hustle. I think it's mostly because of my anxiety about my fellowship running out and the pressure of maintaining my life and lifestyle. I guess I am also thinking about hustle right now because I am at work selling my soul to corporate america. Submitting myself to all kinds of mental violence for the allmighty dollar. I don't know somewhere in the back of my mind, all I can think about is the CD/DVD man or the sock man... or my days as a Mary Kay consultant and wonder. How can I get a new hustle?

So I was thinking (and talking to Ana, the shit seems to be synonymous these days), that I would start hustling my massage services. I did something similar back at Spelman where I would give massages for favors-- a loc retwist, some food, whatever I needed. (By the way D you still owe me for that massage in 2004.) I'm thinking I could do the same now but things are a little different these days. I no longer attend an HBCU for women where sisterhood is at core. I am now a different body. A black female body... and massage is so intimate. Is this line of work safe?

I then got to thinking about sisters who hustle in general. And how the hustleman is exactly that... a man... Rarely do you see a sister standing on the corner selling that new T.I., porn, the latest action flick, or spike lee joint. In LA, I remember black women would sell sandwiches and fruit salads in the hair shops downtown--baked goods. (I can make cookies...)

The avon lady... and more close to my heart the Mary Kay lady are hustles that are a bit classed. They require more capital than a bag of socks... or my measly $10 massages. They also rely on networks of professional women. Mary Kay particularly has a code against hustling or setting up shop anywhere. (I remember this clearly being told to me at one of the sorority like meetings... the one where I was officially pinned a mary Kay Consultant.) I wonder if it is because they know it ain't safe out there for women. That women selling on the street usually means pussy.

What if a massage is really just a massage? This is not a foray into the sex industry, but as a woman, am I already on the sex market? Am I forever bound to pimp out my friends in order to stay safe?

The truth is what I am doing right now is a hustle. Working in a law firm is not a permanent thing for me (hence the "temp" in "temp agency"). Furthermore, my body is exactly what is on display here. I am fully aware of the fact that being the only black female in this entire office gives a certain amount of credibility in this world. My boss' clients who are of color or working class identify through me. It's a different type of selling my body and I ain't even getting paid for that.

What the moon and I have been doing.*

A recent conversation has brought me to thinking about my astrological signs. My sun sign is pisces. And I am one at full force--consistently dreaming, creating my own reality a positive attribute and a flaw. I love the movement of water, and I love moving with it. The chaos of unknowing in water... the certaintly of currants. They will take you somewhere won't they? They all embody how I walk through this world. Ebbing and flowing, always parting in two directions. Which fish could be your dish at any moment? This is something I've known for a while. For my family to be extra Christian, we are up on our astrological signs, I even inherited a virgo broach owned by my mama (great grandmother). My great grandmother was virgo in this life, my grandmother a leo, my mother a virgo. I am the pisces. But my moon is in the sun.

My moon sign is leo. Leo is guided by the sun. Leo's element is fire. I thought this was crazy when I first found this out, but as i read through those layers of meaning, it began to make perfect sense to me. Maybe this was why I am close to my grandmother. Why I admire her the way I do. I see myself in her. (It sucks for me when people say I don't look like her, i've examined every part of our faces and I swear I have her bone structure.) But it also solved some questions for me as to why I am although in love with water, I am also equally and literally afriad of it.

I almost drowned twice when I was a child, and have sense have garnered a cat-like (the lion?) phobia of deep waters. I think it's the middle passage/lioness in me. The one too afraid to jump over, and brave enough to sit in her shit and let the story be told. (ref. Quilting the Black Eyed Pea by Nikki Giovanni) But fire and water? Don't they extinguish/evaporate each other?

They do, and within me there is this balancing act of being feirce and passive at all times. Extravagant and introverted, analytical and everdreaming, chaotic and able to see each atom. I am the steam that is able to float, warm and cool. The humidity that sticks, that is mangled in your sweat. I am in and out of you raising and lowering your temperature. I am air and water. The steam of life, the cycle of water personified. I am that... essence... that ever present thang never to be bottled or touched. Only felt.

Only felt.



Who is up in your moon? Your sun?


*Title referential to a poem of mine: "Progeny."

Revisiting Aunt Jemima's Big Black Ass - The Dirty Old Men Skirt Expose

I took this series of photographs with my laptop camera. The fact that the camera is attached to my computer made taking wide angle shots cumbersome, and so I didn't bother to do it. I instead wanted to zoom in. Never showing my face or even my torso in an attempt to reclaim the gaze I talked about earlier. I guess there would be no knowing that the model in the photographs is me if I had not told you. But isn't knowing resistance in this instance?

The "bigness" of the legs is important here. Particularly in comparison to the skirt. Quite obviously, there is much more flesh visible than skirt. Here, I wanted to emphasize the "enveloping flesh" idea I mentioned earlier. Also, the location of skirt, thighs, legs, which further symbolize this ideology around penetration. The fact that legs, split from one another is the ultimate symbols for sex, is also important because what does it mean then, for these "gatekeepers" to be larger? (More territory to conquer (penetrate), occupy (own)? But I am explaining too much here. Tell me what you think.

For info behind the meaning of this expose, go to my blog entry on Aunt Jemima's Big Black Ass here.

Racism / Gay Pride in Atlanta

Morning folks.

I just received this email over the Queer Progressive Agenda's (QPA) listerv. I have to give complete props to Deepali for standing up to the white liberalism/racism that is pervasive in LGBT relations--particularly in Atlanta. Being a member of the LGBT community doesn't make anyone any less of a racist than heterosexuals. The assumption that whites who fall into marginalized categories are therefore free of racism, sexism, size-ism, classism or any other systems which promotes the supremacy of white, ablebodied, men of wealth is frought with the very real issue that racism is pervasive accross communties, marginalized or not.

We talk about this a lot in terms of gay black men, for example who benefit from male dominance, and perpetuate misogyny. Regardless of thier ultra-marginalized position as Queer men of color, because of thier location as men in a male dominated society, many of Black LGBT men ignore the issues that face Black LGBT women. The very event of Black Pride in Atlanta reveals the male dominated bias. But anyway, following is a Southern Voice (SoVo) article on a panel discussion that discusses the white supremacist overtones of the Atlanta Pride Committee. Again I thank Deepali for being real about the whole situation. Let me note the marginality of the perspective of the article. For me, a black queer woman who lived in Atlanta, ZAMI was the gay orginization for me. The fact that the author felt compelled to give a short and flipant description of ZAMI shows how separate the queer communities are according to race. To visit Deepali's blog, and her take on what happened, go to: http://queerprogressiveagenda.blogspot.com .

Women, Hip-Hop and Popular Music

I've gotten this CFP in my email box at least three times already. Maybe folks should know about it.

Women, Hip-Hop and Popular Music - Call for Papers

For a proposed special issue of Meridians: Feminism, Race,
Transnationalism, we invite critical essays, creative work, and
interviews or conversations with music artists/practitioners from a
variety of disciplines, practices, and cultural scenes. Music may be
broadly defined to include spoken word, dub poetry, DJs, low- and
high-tech innovations, etc. We especially invite submissions that
highlight global and transnational perspectives on women, hip-hop from
around the globe, and other forms of popular music, such as rock, pop,
punk, alternative, new age, R&B, gospel, jazz, country, Latin,
reggae/ragga/reggaeton, soca-calypso, Bengali, various "world" music
genres, etc. High priority will be given to submissions that utilize
critical race feminist analyses.


Subjects covered may include but are not limited to the following:
- popular music and feminist consciousness (performers, political
activists, lyricists, producers, compilers of music CD/albums, club and
radio DJs, etc. who engage in "feminist" and social justice issues).
- marginal pop music personas (e.g. Enya, Zap Mama, Sade, Me'shell
Ndegeocello, Ani Difranco, Bj�ƒÂ¶rk).
- historical recoveries and research of women's popular music in the
past.
- marginalization of women musicians (including vocalists and rappers)
in music industries and/or academic studies.
- representations of women in popular music, the media, public
performances, etc.
- music at the movies (marketing of movie soundtracks, silent movie
era, movie portrayals of music artists, Bollywood playback singers and
item girls, etc.).
- local artists, global markets, world music scenes (cross-cultural
efforts by women music artists to increase their profiles, cultural
appropriations, and/or globalizing trends).
- appropriation of women's music (male and/or mainstream takeover of
female music expressions).
- hip-hop, popular music, and the prison or military industrial
complex.
- teaching hip-hop and popular music in the feminist classroom.

Essays should not exceed 9,000 words or 35 pages, including all
endnotes and references (typed and double-spaced, using Chicago style);
abstracts should be 150 words. Please send email attachments in Word
format to R. Dianne Bartlow at dianne.bartlow@csun.edu and Janell
Hobson at jhobson@albany.edu by December 1, 2006.

Likeness / Dos Autoretratos

untitled and unfinished colored pencil sketch, 2004
colored pencil, paper

"my picture-1.jpg", 2006
icam photo

"I love to you"

Last night I finished reading chapter 2 of Precarious Life by Judith Butler. I've been waiting to get an opportunity to read it since I was made aware of it's existence last summer. What she discusses in this book is national melancholia in the aftermath of 911. While I'm so done with the discourse surrounding 911 and its aftermath, I love her observations on mourning as a way of reading into the ongoing struggles of Colored people all over the globe. She purports (in academia no less) that the process of mourning is one of loosing the self, because we all depend on each other for identity formation:

"For if I am confounded by you, then you are already of me, and I am nowhere without you. I cannot muster the "we" except by finding the way in which I am tied to "you," by trying to translate but finding that my own language must break up and yield if I am to know you. You are what I gain through this disorientation and loss. This is how the human comes into being, again and again, as that which we have yet to know." (Butler 49)

Butler's observations reminded me on Luce Iragaray's work on Love. In which (and I am paraphrasing generously) she argues that in love humans are longing, very much like the Greek myth of the origins of men, women, and the intersexed, to be bound to one another—that this longing constitutes an infinite search for other and of the true self called love. I wonder then, if this mourning or sense of loss is not akin to this Iragaray’s idea of love—that humans are continuously reaching outward for a sense of inward truth. And that knowing the self is what love is. Now in conversation with professor Hite, this is a project of narcissism and not love. But I would argue is that we would stop searching, and limit our interactions with others if that were the case. Wasn't it Narcissus' curse that let him to only interact with a reflection of himself--rejecting the rest of the world for himself. It was a curse because he no longer remained human but a solitary flower.

Love is an outward reaching process where you seek out yourself through others not only to know yourself, but to understand yourself as human. This mourning we experience when we lose someone is the sense of loss of self--the very realization that we are human--mortals who will cease this intoxicating search (unless one believes in the afterlife, which I do). Love is the journey to self--the fear of death is the fear of never knowing. So on to my own journey, the infinite search of myself in "you" -- loving to "you."

On Inspiration.

Instead of writing the two 20 page papers I have to write I have been concerned with compiling a CD of some of my influences. It's come to my attention during this project, that not only do I have more musical influences than I had imagined, but that they repeat for separate reasons, each individual song revealing a part of my love affair with music. This CD will be given to my uncle, for his reference during the creation of this album. I realized I may frighten him with the depth and breadth of the list, but also with the subsequent list of musicians who have inspired me that didn't make it to the CD (Because of format issues, how do you transfer vinyl to mp3 format?) The CD I ended up creating has the following joints:

1. Infinite Possibilities - Amel Larrieux (for message)
   
   
2. Self Love - Jaguar Wright (for content, stream of conscious style, no holds barred brazenness)
   
   
3. Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair - Nina Simone (for Troubadour influence in Black classical music.)
   
   
4. Rosie - Inmates of Parchman Farm Penitentiary (I wasn't lying when I said chain gang chants inspire me, I love the urgency, the style, it stirs my soul, the rhythm is so fly and simultaneously depressing)
   
   
5. You're Not the Man - Sade (It's Sade, enough said.)
   
   
6. Tain't Nobody's Business - Carmen McRae (Love the feminist take on a self deprecating torch song. Her brazenness.)
   
   
7. Old Folks - Carmen McRae (Storytelling)
   
   
8. Midnight Sun - Ella Fitzgerald (It's Ella enough said.)
   
   
9. Trouble - Amel Larrieux (Her use of vocals as a brass instrument see above)
   
   
10. Sassy's Blues - Sarah Vaughan (My second favortie song done entirely in scat.)
    
    
11. Providence - Ani DiFranco (Story telling, poetry as song, musical layers the addition of Prince is so fly. The bass line is great too.)
    
    
12. Mack the Knife - Ella Fitzgerald (It's Ella, enough said, but I will say more. The way she imitates Sachmo in her scat is AMAZING. I love the flexibility of voice in music.)
    
    
13. How High the Moon - Ella Fitzgerald (My favorite song done in scat.)
    
    
14. Acknowledgment - Doug and Jean Carn (Great vocal take on a Coltrane classic.)

What had happened was Part I

For those of you who know me, you know that I am currently working on an art series that deals with the medicalization of Black women's bodies. I am doing this through self-story telling and visual art. I began by writng the events that led up to my surgery, and so much began to emerge. I was suprised by how much I could remember. I decided to get feedback on my testimony through my blog. Because of the length of the story I will only post in peices. Please respond. Anything will help me through this process of understanding, as I still am trying to peice together exactly what happened. Here is part one of the story:

February 10, 2006

It all began with a dull but faint pain similar to menstrual cramps. I thought it was because I hadn't taken by birth control properly, and my period was beginning early. Over the winter break in Louisiana I was unable to renew my prescription for birth control, and I had to wait until my return to Maryland.

It was a bizarre pain. Usually while in the heaviest moments of my period I didn't cramp up. This pain was clear and constant--never letting up.

After work, I went into my car and lay back in the driver's seat. I just felt like I needed a moment to collect myself. Maybe I was constipated; maybe I just needed to drink more water. I started to rewind in my mind the past few meals I had in order to decide whether or not I had any salt. I read somewhere that sodium causes cramps.

I went home and lay down. I tried to sleep but the pain increased. It was actually beginning to be frightening--this pain was no cramp. I called my mother.

She suggested I go to the emergency room. I thought she was overreacting. She is very over protective of me. I was a sickly child and she never took chances. I said I would go in the morning if the pain didn’t subside. She gave me the name of a local hospital that was recommended through my aunt. [Name of the hospital omitted].

February 11, 2006

The next morning, I was surprised to find that I was still in pain. Immediately I began to work in order to pull up directions to this hospital. It wasn't too far away and I hoped that because it was a Saturday morning, the wait wouldn’t be long. I drove to the hospital slouched in my car. It was the only way I could sit without screaming in pain. I was not a pleasant person.

After a two hour wait and a pregnancy test (although I made it clear that there was no possibility that I could be with child), I was able to see the emergency room doctor. As he entered I was staring at a splotch of blood on the white sheets that covered the stretcher I was lying on. It was my own. My period, or something like it had come. I didn’t know what to think.

The doctor pushed down on my lower abdomen and into my pelvis to see where the pain was, how it was. He told me I was in "hormonal withdrawl." That the crimson stains on the stretcher sheets were proof of this. That this was not my period but a simple sloughing off of my uterine lining. I was experiencing cramps he said.

I explained that I never had cramps before, especially this badly. He began to explain to me what cramps are. They are uterine contractions he said. I began to ponder if his response to my interjection was anything different from what he had explained before.

He sent me home with a prescription for oxycodone and ibuprofen.

That afternoon, my friend Ana came over to spend the night. I told her about my adventure and we began to share our frustrations with our bodies. We shared a similar reproductive ailment: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). My PCOS made my menses stop, which required me to take birth control in order to regulate my period. These are the affects of not having access to birth control for a while. I was given a new prescription and would start the next day (Sunday). ... to be continued.

Working through the Pain/Happy May Day

Speaking of being tied to my body. Recent mornings have found me wincing in pain--a strange burning sensation where the incision from the operation is. I'm afraid I may have hindered the healing process, prancing around and gyrating my hips in my apartment (albeit with a cane). I simply can't help the gyrating thing, Amel Larrieux's new album makes it impossible not to. I want to avoid the strongblackwoman ideology, but really, recovering is boring! I mean, there is no need for me to put my life on hold any further. Really, where would we be if Frida had decided not to paint because of pain?

It is in fact, pain that makes life so vibrant. This is because the vibrancy of life is created through resistance. I resist being tied down by things I cannot control. Women, have for a long time, resisted the social implications which make living in the female body hard. There are so many layers of resistance that I have to break through--I have no time to be boggled down by my physical ailment! Of course I will take care but I will take it all as well!

Today is the national day of protest: "a day without an immigrant." I would like to be in solidarity, but due to the two months of recovery I had to go through because of the surgery, I have missed two of the four meeting times for class today. I don't feel bad about attending class today because I already understand the department to be supportive of the immigrant issue, and it would be, more or less preaching to the choir. Not only that, but as the progeny of a forced immigrant, I feel my attaining a degree is enough protest within itself. I will however refrain from commerce, and if I had to work today, I wouldn't go. (Good thing I don't I need that dinero.)

But on the other hand some announcements:

The Duke Ellington School of the Arts Literary Media Students
will perform their written work in "Vernacularity" a show that
looks at James Baldwin's question, If Black English isn't a
language then tell me what is?  Show also features dancers
from the dance dept.  Thu, Fri, Sat May 4,5,6 at 7:30  Tickets
are $10, $7 seniors/students.