The Stories We Tell

I haven't been posting as much as usual. My writing continues but it has migrated to a more personal level involving poems and stories. Politically, the repression our uprising faced has caused a period of remission, a time for self-reflection and regrouping, a gathering in of forces.

This blog celebrated its two year anniversary on February 10th, 2013. Two years in the blink of an eye. I began it in a time of great change and upheaval as an attempt to support the worldwide struggle against capitalist oppression and economic inequality, not to mention the many other forms of discrimination it engenders. Yes, I know that these ideals are ridiculously high and I wish I actually possessed the power to instigate real change. 

I was also coming to terms with my diminshing rights as a worker as well as my demotion from the middle class to the working class, a status I'd tried all my working life to transcend. The dawning of awareness that this was not a personal failing but a shared predicament illustrates the way that mass social movements are born. 

Blogging is a remarkable thing, it's a kind of open diary and a chronological framework to a person's state of mind, and, through their eyes, the state of the country and the world. It produces something notable, like a time capsule, even if it is not read by many. 

The other reason I began blogging was a story I'd read in the New York Times Magazine called "Cyberspace When You're Dead," about ghosts that linger on the Internet long after their creator has passed on. As a cancer survivor, I'm acutely aware of how quickly that rug can be pulled out from beneath your feet! The idea of an online legacy is an intriguing one, an interesting and provacative way for a non-famous person to leave their mark on society.

In newsrooms, online and printed alike, personal blogs are now utilized as research material after death. Regardless of the quality or merit of the writing, they provide a window onto a person's thought process, the way they percieved their personal universe. 

As a sixty-something, lesbian woman, I am trying to make sense of my time on earth, to turn it into stories and poetry because, just like every one of us, I have a unique and compelling story to tell. My mother, who died at 48, never had this chance to look back on her life from a distance and tell her story. I know these extra years are a gift, one I don't want to squander.

The Internet and Sleeping Dogs

Me in My Early Years Online

The problem with the online world is that is has presented us with a way to reconstitute the ghosts of the past. Yes, now we can reconnect with folks we may have gone to college with, known in high school or even grown up with as children. On its face(book), this doesn't seem like such a bad idea. I have both uncovered friends of long ago and been discovered by them. It's a heady reunion at first. We exchange excited emails, reminisce, catch-up. Then the weird part sets in. Email is not like snail mail. It's too fast and easy. My best friend in high school isn't necessarily someone I want to talk to every day, once a week, or even once a month. Why? Other than our past shared experiences, we no longer have anything in common.

This is probably more true for alternative folks than for traditional people. I'm not saying that my old junior high and high school friends weren't fun. We hung out, went to see our favorite bands, skipped school, shoplifted, did drugs together. Good times. But, even then there were red flag warnings letting me know that my life would be different from theirs. They were attracted to guys and I was not. They wanted marriage and children, the whole package. It made me gag. Around 1967, when I was in High School, I saw Gloria Steinem, for the first time ever, on the Phil Donohue Show. She spoke of a new movement called Women's Liberation. It was an aha moment! I thought, oh my god, I'm not alone. The lesbian thing hadn't really hit me yet, but I knew that the idea of subjugating my self, my ideas and personality, to a male was not going to work for me.I'd read all the stupid articles in Seventeen Magazine that talked about how you needed to pretend you were genuinely interested in your guy's football team in order to "catch" him. Why didn't he feign to share my interests as well? Questions like this weren't supposed to be asked.

When I told my high school friends about my feelings, my theories, my new ideas, they listened politely but they weren't driven by the same forces. I became Joan, their odd friend, the "women's libber." When we meet up via the internet they have husbands, ex-husbands, pastors, kids, grandkids, American flags waving from the porches of tidy houses. They might become uneasy when I write about my partner, my politics, my friends, even a book that I'm reading. We exist on different sides of the looking glass. I feel at a loss to explain myself because, the road less traveled is not well documented on television or in magazines.

I still care about my old friends and wish them all the best. But as people grow their paths diverge. I now have renewed respect for sleeping dogs of my history, having acquired a larger perspective regarding what lulled them into slumber in the first place. There are sound and valid reasons for leaving the past behind. That's a lesson I'm still learning.