YUK

When you hear what the film "Precious" is about, you would think it would make you sick. But it’s acutally the Bonus Material with the director, Lee Daniels, and Ms Paula Patton that make you dash for the loo. So this guy gets to direct the film based on the fantastic book "Push" by the author Saphire. The story is absolutely harrowing. Teenage girl grows up being physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually (have I skipped anything?) abused. Two kids fathered (so to speak...) by her father. She is black, obese, and undereducated. Not a winning ticket. The film is shot as if you were in the room with Precious, the girl. But it’s not that jagged pseudo-amateurish camera job. It is acutally just calm. Lots of close ups of faces that speak the unspeakable. Really good. But then only God (“Hello are you out there?”) knows why Lee Daniels and his side kicks have to go and turn the story into a soap opera when they talk about it in the interview. Seriously, get the DVD, watch the film, but DON’T WATCH THE BONUS MATERIAL - or keep a bucket close!!

Brilliant!

It should be feasible in this day and age with social networks, twitter, email, instant messaging etc....for word to go around about what I would call a No Knock up Night. One 24 hour period of not conceiving. Worldwide. Can you imagine the powerful message that would send when nine months later, the birth rate drops to near nill for a day? Just one day.

Disreputable

There is so much to say, to shout out loud into the busy noise of our daily lives, about the gnarled idiosyncrasies of a woman’s life, that sometimes I wish for the world to come to a screeching halt - just long enough to take a good long look and then, hopefully, readjust its course.

Population growth could be a thing of the past.

Things may have changed, but when I went to school, I was never told about the effects that childbirth may have on my life. There was no mentioning of the part-time trap or of forgoing years of paying into a state pension fund.

Never were issues such as physical and emotional strains of child bearing and raising openly discussed. The exhaustion which goes along with attending to the next generation was a slightly disreputable secret just like worn-out bras.

Menstruation was a biological fact young women had to learn to cope with. In no way was it considered a rite of passage that bestowed powers of reproduction to be both acknowledged and reckoned with. And as far as my sexuality was concerned, the pill was to take care of that.

And so I entered adulthood as a complete ignoramus ready to take on the double day.

Completely oblivious of what that would entail, of course, for I thought, that I was free to choose any carrier and decide how I was going to live my life - ah yes, those mirages of endless opportunities!

Entering university, I had a pretty good idea of how to work towards future employability, but over the years I was sobered by numerous reminders that instead of venturing out into the remunerated work force where glass ceilings, harassment, double days and unequal pay were awaiting me, it may be wiser to stay closer to home and settle for biological fulfillment.

Under the circumstances, certainly not a bad idea. Thank you very much.

And so after having given birth to three children spaced neatly three years apart, I opted out and left it to my partner to play the chicken ladder game. An impregnable uterus is - after all - another disreputable fact, that doesn’t sit well with employers. If nothing else, it defines one as ‘different’ - especially in the more profitable lines of work. And ‘different’ is seldom a good thing - especially when ‘normal’ is defined by the bully.

My cousin once asked me, whether I had wasted my education when opting to become a stay-at-home mother. As much as the question shocked me for its brazen disrespect, I have thought about it time and again and wondered how I would answer it with what I had realized about the myths of self-determination.

Get a job, a hobby, find a worthy cause, some would say. But luckily I don’t need either. What I would like much more is to enter in a dialogue about the most crucial aspects of our lives as women and mothers, some of which need to be addressed urgently.

But here is one more disreputable side about me: I don’t care enough about all of this to lend my time and energy to those who prefer the status quo and will cowardly defend it by all means for fear of even the mildest challenge. And so I wait that some day, a critical mass of people will join the discourse and that the bullies who had their turn will simply disappear.

In the meantime, stay posted for a brilliant idea....!

Gotta try a little harder

When the pundits marvel about the hapless war in Afghanistan, they tend to point to a history based on tribal structures and warfare in that region. Accordingly, what we witness today, the stubborn resistance to outside ideas, whether introduced with method or might, is at least in part a manifestation of that history.

I wonder if one might apply a similar analysis to the ongoing trouble in the US. The surprisingly hotheaded approach to basic principles of the common good originated in the minds of people who ventured out into the unknown to find greater freedom.
Whether gun control, freedom of religion, or health care, the issue is not as important as the fact that no one is supposed to mess with it.

At this point, the conservative fraction is reaching a point of hysteria for fear that some of these rights may have to be mitigated for the benefit of the community. So now they point crosshairs in every direction.

The question to ask is how one can turn a country’s historical baggage into potential? How can one introduce a sense of security in a nation that is still fighting the ghosts of the past?

Obviously not just by using rhetoric along the lines of “God bless America!”

Good-Byes

To this point, I have avoided funerals, because the one I went to, my grandpa’s, just made things worse. From the onset the pastor had taken over our thoughts and memories and ran off with them. Although he had never met my grandpa, he seemed to have a lot to say about him. Trite sentimentalities and pseudo insights into the complexities of a wonderful person. I had never felt so alone in my life.

So from that point on, I stayed away from final good-byes.

But with J. I felt, I had to make an appearance. For one, it probably wouldn’t have been any good to tell the family that I was probably going to hate their funeral service; and then I didn’t feel good about lying to them either. So, brave little Julian and I went. And I am glad we did.

It was a simple ceremony. Her husband had written the eulogy. And with very few frills and elaborations, he managed to bring her back among our midst. And so what made that terrible day good in a way was that, not only for the first time in my life I had arrived on time for something, which would have made her proud, but above all that everyone who had come was able to reunite with her through these few words, which would have made her very happy.