The Total Femme

         

This morning I was stopped at a red light right behind a big ol’ SUV. Yep, there I was, gayly assuming we were both going gayly forward, when, right in the middle of the intersection, that big ol’ SUV slammed to a halt and turned on their left blinker. Oh, now you tell me! At the time I was quite justifiably annoyed, but now the whole thing kind of makes me giggle. That classic Boston driver move, straight out of the manual*, is just exactly what it is. Reminding me that out of everywhere else in the world, this is where I live, this is what happens. Reassuring and grounding, somehow.

Part of the reason I think I’m oddly grateful for this devilish traffic maneuver is that I’m feeling very floaty and out of it today. Everything is swirling around in my mind and my heart, and by everything, I mean all the sadness, all the negative. It isn’t everything, actually, if it’s only the negative, but it sure does feel like a lot. Funny, isn’t it, how something negative helped punt me back into the actual everything, because then…when I pulled into my driveway, there was a gust of wind and a gorgeous swirl of oak leaves tumbling and skirllng and I sat and watched and I breathed and smiled.

How is it that the Boston driver prompted me to write this post, and not a friend’s head-explodingly cute very new puppy I had only this morning been holding in my arms and she fell asleep? Heavy and round and so soft. She opened my heart and lowered my blood pressure, for sure, but somehow it was that sneaky left turn that got me to you this morning.

Dancing, twirling, tumbling, orange and crumbly at the edges oak leafy autumnal bonfire beautiful and queer femme sisters, don’t we sometimes need a slightly salty reminder, tugging us back to the whole? Don’t we oh-so-often tend to veer? I know I do, getting bogged down in all the sadness, all the disappointments, turning it in on myself and wanting-not-wanting to stay there forever.

Be it a puppy or a regional annoyance or something completely different, how can you use that crazy thing to remind you to pause for a moment today in the all and everything instead of the very specific and infuriating? Even if the thing itself is infuriating? Ha! Life is weird. Do what you can do, my beloveds.

And remember: always use ya blinkah!!

* The Boston Driver’s Handbook: Wild in the Streets by Ira Gershkoff and Richard Trachtman

Many a Monday I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

Do you have a meditation to share? I would love to welcome you here! Email me at: thetotalfemme@gmail.com

“Trammeled” is a lovely word and so fitting for these modern times. It’s so soothing to be able to pull some old-fashioned comfort into a world changing so quickly that AI appears to be the answer to a lot of people’s love, parenting, and medical challenges, all things that used to be offline (remember offline? it’s hard, isn’t it, even for old timers like moi). Even just saying “my trammeled life” gives me leeway to slow down a bit, put things in perspective a bit, think about things from the inside out and how they affect me, personally, me, the Total Femme, instead of just hunkering down for the inevitable minute-by-minute barrage.

I have been thinking about the first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and how the guy going into space talked to his daughter and wife on TV. It was so wild and weird and unbelievable! Obviously, it made a huge impression on me. But now… As I may have mentioned here before, it was so much more fun to read about or watch weird future-y things like computers and robots, than it is to live hand to jowl with them now.

My pixie-a-late-bloomers, my screen shot sugars, my jubilant updates-for-your-conveniences, let us pause (oh, for a pause! a healing pause), just for a moment, a momentary pause, to shake it off, all the crawling, mewling, grasping trammel-inducing clamors for your attention, no, your fucking soul, let us pause.

Look around. Rest your eyes on something old, something from before it all, something that has been always offline and still is, thank you, thank you, thank you. For me: my upright piano. Our tablecloth from New Mexico. Vinyl records (round and round and round!). A fountain pen. The cat. The dog.

Now imagine how you might keep just one of them untrammeled.

“As soon as they make us all have tablets, I’m quitting,” a fellow alto two said to me recently as we watched our director poke and fuss at hers.

She and I are untrammeled when we sing from sheet music on which we have scrawled notes and reminders.

I am untrammeled when I walk the dog sans phone, saying hello to other dog walkers, stopping to look in Little Free Libraries, watching his sniffing and purposeful peeing, hanging out with him in his world, as much as that’s even possible with my incredibly stunted sense of smell.

I’m not saying you have to unplug and go hide in a yurt in the woods (although Tex and I fantasize about that quite frequently), just remember a bit, untrammel a bit. Remember who is the boss of you.

Maybe your shoulders and your jaw and your gut will unclench. Maybe you’ll see something that makes you smile. Maybe it will help you next time you’re so stressed by technology that you just don’t know how you’ll go on.

I think untrammeling connects us to each other way more than connecting online. We do lots of that already (you know I would be coming to you in a column in a hearty queer IRL newspaper if I only could!). In person, people!

See you in the park.

See you at the concert.

See you!

* “something impeding activity, progress, or freedom as if by a net or a shackle” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, my emphasis

Many a Monday I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

Do you have a meditation to share? I would love to welcome you here! Email me at: thetotalfemme@gmail.com

Recently, at a local art opening, I had occasion to divulge to an acquaintance that less than two years ago I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and how impossible it’s been.

Rather than sympathizing (she had just asked after my health), she blurted out, “Did you have a sweet tooth?” Ignorantly, innocently, idiotically.

We were in public, I like her, I was wearing my very most excellent chicken dress, Tex was by my side, so I found the wherewithal to say, as mildly as possible, “It’s an auto-immune disease,” just as Tex was repeating, “Type one.”

Even more recently, at another local art event, I had occasion to think, probably for the first time in my life, about visual art and people with visual impairment or blindness. It was a special accessibility evening for an art exhibit, a Visual Description event, attended by both sighted and non-sighted folks.

I work with words, but even still I use descriptive language referring to visual things all the time, along the lines of “as blue as the sky,” or “as cryptic as the Mona Lisa’s smile” and etc. How do those things land if you’ve never seen blue or a reproduction of the Mona Lisa? If you can’t see a piece of visual art, how does a description of it by the artist render it in your heart, emotions, mind? How many times do blind people have to field stupid as shit questions about all the above and more?

To her credit, my acquaintance shaped right up and made much more supportive and kind remarks once she got the drift of things. I have friends whose pancreases work just fine, but who have made it a priority to learn about adult onset type one so that I feel a little less alone with it, not bearing the entire burden on my shoulders and my shoulders only. One even just wrote a deliciously snarky comment to the NYT (thanks, Jones!) encouraging them to get their shit together about being clear about the very large difference between type one and type two – everybody always thinks diabetes means type two and they don’t even know what that means, witness my acquaintance’s witless comment.

As for me, now that I’m aware of this beautiful, community-building Visual Description event, I’m all in with the organizer to try and get every art exhibit in the area to embrace this model. I plan to bring it to the attention of the art and the disability communities.  I’ve also let the artist who organized the event I attended know that I’m ready to read at any time should he need me. Little by slow, as we say in Al-Anon.

Delicious and scrumptious left-over Halloween candy squirreled away for a weekday treat, my cream tea darlings, my apple cake yummies, my Danishes, my apple cider donuts, are there things integral to your hearts and lives that people get wrong or denigrate or dismiss all the fucking time? That you pretty much have stopped talking about in public because it will for sure just bring about grief? How lonely it makes us feel!

There’s a difference between protecting yourself and deep down horrible terrible isolation. Femme sisters, don’t we know it! But if you can, my popcorn kernels, my walnuts, my cranberry muffins, reach out when you can to educate and bring more allies and friends into the fold. Not because you have to in some moral high horse way, but because it builds all of us stronger, because it makes life more complex and varied and good.

If you want, start by telling me. I love you. I’m listening and ready to learn.

Many a Monday I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

Do you have a meditation to share? I would love to welcome you here! Email me at: thetotalfemme@gmail.com