Thunderbird Ascendant

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

It's been a maddening week. Difficult, frustrating, infuriating . . . and none of those captures it.

Part of it, of course, is the disruption caused by the artificial time change. This happens every year, and I dread it, but the older I get, and the worse my illness gets, the longer it takes me to adapt. Part of it is the fact that more than one of our days this week was thoroughly disrupted by unanticipated concerns, the kind of disruption that knocks your whole schedule off balance. Part of it is that it is spring, calendar notwithstanding, and the rapid temperature fluctuations and the high winds are killing me. Part of it is the damage to my hand, making not only typing but everything an excruciating chore while I'm waiting for it to heal.

Part of it is the same problem we face every year at this time, only more so: With the Pueblo closed for weeks yet, sales are few and far between; fewer and farther with virtually no winter tourism all season. Part of it is the constant problems with connectivity, problems exacerbated by structural inadequacies and by the weather itself. Part of it is the nonstop hackery. I'm really tired of feeling under siege, and all the more so when the only reason for it is having stood up to bigoted bullies on behalf of others (yeah, and look where that got me).

And part of it is the constant struggle against the eternal dynamics that a woman like faces: the purposed and purposeful invisibility inflicted and enforced by others, the intentional and unintentional erasure of my very self, my very being.

The last few weeks have been difficult for a lot of women of color on that particular front.

I get accused, fairly regularly, of being "angry." Accompanying that is the clear implication that because I'm not doing my part to make those identified (whether they know it or not) with the dominant culture comfortable, I'm a problem; I'm not "respectable" enough; I'm hurting "the cause," whatever that is; I'm inconvenient at best and more often an obstacle to be removed. An obstacle to comfort is what's really meant, by the way. Oh, and then there's that drivel I've been seeing lately in some places about what constitutes "strength," and who is to be derided as "weak."

Yeah, I'm angry. Come live in my moccasins for a week, and you'll likely have torn your hair out and run screaming down the middle of the highway. Long before the week is up. Take on my entire history on top of that, coupled with what I must battle on a daily basis, and then get back to me about definitions of "weak" and "strong."

Or not. I've ceased to feign any interest in what is, truly, just drivel.

My name has two meanings. The one with which I am particularly identified is that of Crane, but there's a secondary bird, too. And Thunderbird is now ascendant.

I have a lot of work in various stages of completion in the pipeline; mostly, it's waiting for my finger to heal sufficiently to permit real typing. I'll be posting the first in the days to come, followed by a number of others. 

A lot of you won't like it. I am blunt; I am profane; I swear for catharsis. It's a safety valve that permits me to get done all that I need to do in my daily life, in the face of obstacles most people can't even conceive, without unloading on people who don't deserve it — or even on those who do. It's meaningless other than that, but I can't begin to count the number of pompous lectures I've received from folks only too happy to tell me that my use of the word "fuck" is SO much worse than racism, and that I am of course hurting the anti-racism cause by using it (of course, these same people are generally the ones inflicting the racism in the first place, so you already know how much deference their opinion gets).  

But what I have to say, in the weeks to come, is in part to make a statement about the facts of how things are in this dominant culture when you are outside it. Part of it is educational, but that will work only for those willing to put aside their defensiveness and their reflexive protests and their insistence that they know best and actually stop, read, listen, sit with it a while, try to internalize it as much as is possible, try to learn from it, and then to adjust their worldviews and actions accordingly. That will be vanishingly few, I realize. It doesn't matter. What I have to say needs to be said, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes people.

And part of it is simply this: I refuse to allow anyone to render me invisible. Ever again. I will not be erased. I exist, no matter how much that discomfits some people, and I will own my identity and my history and my narrative and my self. In public.

No, that's not a thunderbird at the top, but she's as close as I could come, photographically. Her own ancestor played with the thunderbirds, and paid the price. She visits me almost daily now, and she clearly has something to say.

So do I, and Thunderbird is now ascendant.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.