You Don’t Get to be Grand Marshall of Every Parade

I’ve been mostly ignoring the FemFuture because I feel like I get to be old enough now that I can ignore things that annoy me.

But I have learned of this and I have to take a moment to laugh. You want to come to Texas, in the middle of an ongoing Texas movement, declare the movement over, and tell people in Texas, some of whom are still participating in the ongoing protests, how to keep up momentum now that things have died down?

I just have this mental image of a huge crowd of Texas women doing their thing while so many of us cheer them on and they get 3/4 of the way down their particular parade route and here come the Big Name Feminists rushing to the head of the parade, trying to get their uniforms in order, declaring the march just about over and begging for someone, anyone, to tell them where the crowd wants them to lead them.

Feminism as a philosophy will continue to be popular. Women want equality. But third-wave feminism, as a movement, is stalling out. And it is exactly because of that old change/exchange problem. The Big Name Feminists just want to be the ones setting the cultural agenda for a while. They don’t actually see how changing said agenda would involve not leading the parade, but just marching in it.

October, October

How is it that August never ends and September is so quick? I mean, next weekend is halfway through the month. Bam. Just like that.

So, October.

If you have witchy things, I’ll take them up until October is over. After that, I’ll just print them out, crumple them up, and let the cats use them as cat toys. So, if you read something in the beginning of October and are like “Christ, I could do better than that, B.” please, go ahead! I’ll post it!

Also, the reading on October 15th is going to be at Mad Donna’s at 7. I think probably upstairs. I’m doing something from A City of Ghosts and something from The Wolf’s Bane, which is Project X’s official title. I don’t know who the music is going to be. Hopefully someone who knows all the words to “Monster Mash.” I hope we get a really cool poster. You know my love of framing things.

And the first issue of Betwixt comes out in October! You may remember, they bought “Beyond, Behind, Below.” I don’t know if it’s running in that first issue, but any publication that understands the special bond between a… um… dude…. and his cabin is a publication we should support.

In non-October news… Okay, let’s call it pre-October news, there’s also this going on next weekend at the Idea Hatchery.

 

Poetry

Before the miracle of the trotting dog, I was thinking on my walk about poetry.

The thing about words is that they’re not the things they are. This is the word ‘cat.,’ but it’s not a cat (or a pipe, as you know). But part of how we get by in the world most of the time is to just make the leap from these squiggles–cat–to the concept of cat as quickly as possible. So fast and so easy that we don’t notice that we’ve made a leap. Certainly we don’t look down and see just how vast and cavernous the distance between squiggle and thing is.

But a poem that works does so, in part, because its asking you to look down, to live, for a little bit, in between the squiggle and the thing. It asks you to wait and see what might come up out of that infinite space when we sit with it, not just hurry over it.

Something Weird Happened on Our Walk This Morning

We were heading back toward the house and I unhooked Mrs. Wigglebottom so that she could do as she does every day–slowly walk back toward the house while I got ahead of her and got my shoes and socks off. What happened instead was that I unhooked her and she took off at a pleasant trot toward the house.

She ran.

So, let me tell you, I don’t normally recommend stuff. And I don’t know anything about this company, VetIQ. They may be terrible or a subsidiary of McDonalds or some other thing that’s going to make me uncomfortable that I wrote this post. And certainly, these products come with some drawbacks–for one, the stuff in the blue bag smells like the Devil’s butt. Seriously, the first time you open it, you’re going to wonder if this is what zombies smell like as they stumble around rotting everywhere. If you leave the bag unsealed, it will stink up your whole house with a smell that can only be described as shockingly noxious. The other drawback is that I’ve only ever seen them at Walmart. So, yeah, fucking Walmart.

But Mrs. W’s skin problems are, while not solved, better than they have been in years. I mean, she has no spots on her sides that are bare and her neck is finally starting to heal up.

And this morning, Mrs. “Maybe you should just go for a walk by yourself, because I’m too old” Wigglebottom beat me back to the house.