Moojinorbit

Last week Katie and I went up to Winter Park for two different work-related gigs. It turned out to be peak aspen-viewing on Highway 40. Driving up separately, we were each slack-jawed before the glory, our amazement recorded in texted installments. We agreed we’d have to check it out together on the way back, when there was more time to gaze. So on Sunday, after curving down from Berthoud Pass but before Empire, we pulled our cars onto the shoulder and plunged our eyes and our hearts into the beauty of it.

A year ago I was, unknowingly, days away from the throes of a painful breakup. Three hundred sixty-nine days back I would have a delicate trust broken in the way I most feared and be launched into a period of introspection and blinder-removal that would be solemn and unnerving and intense. It would be the kind of crisis that catalyzes a dark, grieving, quiet period that also breeds the courage to initiate a turning point. Gradually new light would dawn and I would find myself on a path to what has very possibly been the happiest time of my life, the last ten months. So I know it to be true that the light can break through at the end of a long, black tunnel. It is also true that the tunnel is sometimes a requirement for illumination.

Yesterday I sat for forty minutes with the lover who athletically wrangled in my heart, only to squash it like a cow patty under her tires. She was visiting from the South with the woman for whom she left me. She will ship out for Afghanistan in a couple of months with the Army. She’ll be working to save lives and reduce infant mortality in that acutely dangerous area at the border of Pakistan. Her boots will tread the same ground in which Al Queda operatives hide and plan. She will be on her journey.

We drank tea, we chatted about the new lives we now live. We are both happier, calmer. All of the blood and fire we sewed is now water under the bridge. Mostly, it was good to see her face. Mostly, I wanted to hug her tight before she went to war, not knowing how long it would be and under what conditions I’ll see her again.

It wasn’t hard, I wasn’t holding my breath, my chest wasn’t tight through it. Still, I cried when she drove off, and it felt like clear water running out. And though it didn’t hurt, was surprisingly light in the heart area, it hung with me throughout the day and at night I took one of the blue sleeping pills I bought in Barcelona and drank it down with a glass of red wine. I wanted to shut off my thinking brain, to not start the musing process. Just sleep. I set my alarm to wake me before the sun came up.

And it did, and my room was dusty blue-black. I blearily hit Patty Griffin on the playlist and lay in bed with her songs under the comforter. Not recent Patty; Patty from a handful of years back. And it wasn’t until “When it Don’t Come Easy” came on that I realized what I’d chosen. To remember it all. To commemorate it a year later, which my cells had been doing anyway. And then release it back.

Sorry I about the lag on posts. I’ve been in the academic writing mode, which is often so tortured and uneven compared to the sweet pleasures of blogging that I can’t suffer the comparison, at least until I’ve achieved something close to my daily page goal. So the blog tends to get back burnered.

This morning I’m thinking about Paco, my ten year-old black cat. As most of you know, he’s a sight–looks a little like a black Oscar the grouch, or like a very small, very round bear cub. He has the most beautiful glossy green eyes. I found him on a snowy evening in March of 1999, and he’s been my steadiest companion for the last decade, has patiently zig-zagged the lower 48 with me in crates and cars and airplanes. I’ve been newly appreciating him after a recent, financially painful trip to the vet that reminded me not to take my kitties for granted.

Paco is like some Zen sage in my life. A gentle teacher who leads by quiet example. Yeah, he can be a pain in the butt, but mostly he’s a little furry master.

He cares only about four things (if I know him at all), in order of importance:

4. Play/roll around, preferably in dust or dirt.

3. Sleep.

2. Me–i.e., where is mommy, so I can lay near her?

1. Eat.

This priority set makes him a fat, lazy, sleepy-eyed love monster. Heart of my heart.

Paco is chill, and that is how he teaches me. The dude has no agenda unless it relates to the four priorities. When he was younger he had a fifth: Explore. But that led to a lot of plaintive meowing from the tops of tall trees, and two long experiences of someone having shut the door behind him in a dark space. I think once your body has lived off its own fat for 8 days before the neighbors come back from vacation and open their garage door, you’re not so into Explore anymore. But Paco doesn’t seem to miss it much.

Paco does not sweat the small stuff. A bee buzzing around him is merely interesting, whereas for me it’s an occasion for manic spaz dancing and hollering. This morning when the neighbors’ significantly psychotic cat Ami came to the edge of her front porch to peer down at Paco (who is, in fact, her only friend) and started growling and hissing (perhaps mistaking him for Rico, her avowed arch enemy), he merely looked her in the eye, let her have her fit, and did not move from his rosebush. He was present, and nonreactive.

Paco tolerates pain without complaint. This worries me, because How Would I Know if he was really hurt? When I took him to the vet for a very obvious abscess I found on his jaw, he turned out to also have a painfully rotten tooth and–sorry, guys–a burr stuck in the sheath of his penis. I’d have never known; the only thing the kid ever whines about is food.

Paco gets along with everyone. He enjoys a loud house party, will actually flop down in a crowd of legs and slopping drinks. He’s also kind of a Don Juan: everywhere we have lived, he’s made friends with the local lady cats. I can’t tell you how many neighbors have told me he’s the first cat their little lady ever let hang out with her. My neighbor Shawn’s cat, who has never tolerated the presence of another feline, keeps her door wide open for my waddly fur ball–she lets him eat her food, use her litter box, and lay next to her. I don’t know how he does it.

Unlike my other cat Rico, who is half-wild and hypervigilant and a bit fear-based (abandonment issues, no doubt), and who has Kill, Maim, Patrol, and Fight–and also Nurse Nanny’s Neck–on his priority list, Paco is, well, unambitious. Unless ambition can be quantified in hours of sleep and regularity of eating. But he is entirely present. Sometimes, when I’m restless, or anxious, or in the middle of a difficult project, I’ll go to wherever he’s sleeping and put my head on his belly. He purrs. He calms me. Sometimes he puts his paw on my face. He knows. Beside him I can quit spinning about McCain and the Economy and the Presidential debates and the million other things.

No one wants to hear this much about someone else’s pet, I’m sure. But I am grateful for Paco’s love, for his presence, for his teaching.

When it comes to green things, there is no doubt
I’m all about the brussel sprout
It really don’t matter, day in, day out
I keep running back to the brussel sprout.

People don’t like ‘em, some folks recoil
But sauteed or steamed, on the blanch or the boil
The sprouts do deliver on texture and taste
If you know how to cook ‘em without stress, without haste.

Sweet little cabbages, tucked up tight and petite
You can serve them with pasta, they complement meat
Salty blossoms unfolding, a treat to the tongue
Plus they blow out your bowels, keep you young–indeed, hung.

So much Vitamin K, you can throw out your pills
Plus, with C, A, and fiber, they’re a cure for all ills
Sure, your farts might astound you, wake you up in the night
And green poo in the morning–well, it can be a fright

Small prices to pay, though, for a gift so delicious
Sprung straight from the earth, because God is ambitious!
You can keep your weak veggies, your carrots and peas
Your celery and lettuce, can they live through a freeze?

Brussel sprouts can, cuz they’re hearty and stout
Those things could survive a tsunami, no doubt
I’m not letting them go, I will never sell out
I’m down on my knees for the brussel sprout.

 

(Portraits from http://mygapyearat50.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html)

On a little road trip this weekend, Katie and I were wondering, as I’ve wondered over the years, what would be the equivalent of “mooj” for a man. This after Marshall sent Katie a postcard featuring the legendary Al Green looking kind of, um, moojlike, for a man.

Can we agree that a man-mooj would have the following characteristics, male parallels to the taboo-defying, groundbreaking, and gender expectation-busting mooj? He:

• loves, supports, and respects women–and this is not lipservice
• is not afraid to weep, dance, parent, clean up, or be vulnerable, because he doesn’t cowtow to society’s imposition of narrowly defined masculinity
• nevertheless is not soft in the pushover sense; he will stand up for the right, the good, the important
• has a wicked, sometimes self-effacing sense of humor
• cares deeply for other people
• believes in full-blown human equality and therefore navigates “marriage” as partnership
• listens
• expresses openly, but without sniveling

Stuff like that. I tried to think of all the men I know that fit this category, but have I forgotten anything?

Anyway, what word could we use to describe such allies and heroes? People like (off the top of my head) Barack Obama, John Cusack, Jerome Irons, George Stephanopolous, Michael Phelps (? the guy seems to adore the women in his life), Ben Harper, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Anderson Cooper, Keith Olbermann, the late James Baldwin, Eric Schneider, John Bon Jovi (don’t ask me why), and Damien Rice. These are some of my man heroes.

Katie and I came up with “homb”–prounounced hOHmb. It retains the Spanglish origins like mooj, but also has linguistic kinship with “homie”(is that good) and “womb” (good). I don’t know if it’s catchy enough, though. I need suggestions.

And, yes, Rachel Maddow has been all that I could ever ask for on her new show. I’m stuck like glue.

Palin, on the other hand, might be, as Jen suggested, categorized as an evil mooj, though I don’t like putting those two words together.

Ok, I admit that I arrived fairly late to this party. Marce and Mom have been hanging out on the fanwagon, they gloat, long before she was ever on my radar. But that’s no reason not to dedicate a post to the ascent of my latest mooj crush and celébre, Rachel Maddow, who debuts her own show tonight after Olbermann on MSNBC.

Hmm. Wow. She looks familiar, kind of reminds me of someone I know, dark hair, dark eyes, big white smile…who could that be?

To me, this election seems to be as much about the rise of this smart and sparky political analyst as it is about certain other bright new stars we might mention. The woman is like all the moojes I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by: witty, pretty, funny, no-nonsense, able to knock it out with the big boys, and generally badass. Did I mention Rhodes scholar, Oxford doctorate, and, um, contract gardener when she needs the cash (not that she needs it anymore)? She’s openly lesbian (a first for the major networks), and better yet tomboyish, but more importantly in the age of Fox, she’s openly progressive, having rocked her own show on Air America for the last few years. I also appreciate that she refuses to wear earrings.

I can’t imagine it’d be easy to get a word in edgewise against Pat Buchanan, but she manages, as evidenced in this clip. (By the way, lest we think Maddow is a symbol of how far Americans have come in their acceptance of gay women, check out the comment I found below the clip above: “That Maddow dude is one of the strangest looking human beings I’ve ever seen. That weird voice, combined with the terrible hair and poor posture comprise an especially creepy person. Why on earth would MSNBC give him his own show??” What an idiot.)

There was a moment I liked better which I saw live but couldn’t find on the web, where she reminds Buchanan, in one swift sentence, what his appearance, as an “anti-homosexual rights” candidate at the RNC in ‘92 communicated to her about what he thinks of “people like me.” Anyway, the point is that we need Rachel Maddow out there representing for the rest of us. I know her radio show fans are probably nervous about this “mainstreaming” of their heroine, but I’m psyched I’ll get to see her rock the big time five nights a week, moojing out left and right. Or mainly left.

Here, here, Rachel Maddow!

More on the incredible unfolding Palin story later.

Meanwhile, this is what you get when you fall asleep with your maw dangling open in the row in front of me on an airplane when I’m really fidgety and bored. I snap your photo with my laptop and post it to my blog. She’s lucky I didn’t pour my water down her wide open throat.

The truth is that I’m utterly jealous of people who can sleep sitting up, on a plane, with all the lights on. They look idiotic but at least they get some rest, unlike me.

In this election cycle we’ve seen more high-profile women rocking the spotlight than we even expected. Two decades ago this would be hard to imagine: not just the first viable female presidential contender in U.S. history, but a possible African American First Lady, a woman House Speaker, and now a gal as the high-risk GOP Veep nominee—all in the same year.

Since Sarah Palin suddenly appeared on the political stage Friday morning, I’ve been pondering what all this means for the category of mooj. Let us recall, that a mooj is, in essence a strong, independent woman. The original acronym Dawn and I developed circa 1988 was M.T.B.D.: (Mujer) Mooj To Be Dealt with. (Somehow the capital W never joined the acronym.) A mooj is someone you might have to deal with, who’s going to stand solid in her own boots, or sneakers, or heals (no flats, we hope, but she could if that were her preference) and look you in the eye without flinching. A real mooj doesn’t diminish herself for the sake of men, manners, playing the little lady, caving to social expectations, kissing up, whining, manipulating, acting desperate, and other silliness—though she knows how to execute an appropriate, gracious concession from a place of strength, which Hillary performed masterfully at the DNC. A mooj in the American political game has to have a thick skin, be tough enough to withstand the relentless onslaught that is U.S. politics, without turning into a man or a bee-otch, in the sense of mean or small (though guaranteed she’ll be called one). She’s also got to have enough gravitas to stay true to the essence of who she really is. Don’t let ‘em distort or reduce you, woman, and don’t ever let anyone drag you around by the hair. She is mooj, hear her roar.

Of all ironic political twists, Alaska’s Palin clicked onto McCain’s campaign stage to the tune (I’m not kidding) of Helen Reddy’s second-wave feminist anthem, effectively serving up a big, sweet, pink and white Holly Hobby cake to the same crowd that supported Phyllis Schafly’s anti-ERA crusade.

Schafly killed the ERA, in case anyone forgot, and despite today’s female candidates for the highest offices in the land, women have no formal gender-based equal rights in the Constitution. (My favorite Schafly quote on sex education: “Just tell them to keep your hands out of what’s inside your swimsuits – that takes care of most girls and boys.” ) Schafly mothered six kids, Palin five so far. Palin might one-up her traditionalist predecessor by having a Down’s baby who, poor guy, gets paraded about as the symbol of nobly not choosing abortion, but one of Schalfly’s sons turned out to be—oops—gay. Like Phyllis, Sarah supports a distinctive up-do. Palin’s also like Phyllis in the sense that she gets to symbolize traditional womanhood while enjoying gains made by feminists that enable her to be a high-profile, upwardly mobile working mom with a supportive, yet still manly, husband. (Wasn’t it bizarre that McCain’s handlers in Pennsylvania kept boasting about Palin’s husband being the four-time winner of the Iron Dog Alaska snowmobile race? Translation: she may be, as governor, in an unconventional role for a woman, but he’s an ordinary, blue collar real guy; woo hoo!) Unlike Schafly, Palin (at least according to the pitch) has taken on corruption issues in GOP state politics, gotten in the faces of big guys in blue suits in and beyond Alaska, and governed actual communities (if not for long), not just barked from hallowed halls of the Eagle Forum. Sarah acts like a member of a younger generation, one that inherited rather than fought tooth and nail the revolutions of second-wave feminism, which produced things like more female mayors and governors, even in wild and crazy frontier states. Unlike Schafly, who lost a bit for Congress in 1952, Palin was elected into two executive offices (granted, one in a town of less than 6 thousand).

Okay, but does any of that make her a mooj? My first impulse is to say no. Parading around terms like “hockey mom,” “PTA member,” and “proud wife” doesn’t exactly ring moojworthy, though certainly there are moojes among any of those categories of women. The question for me is, who are you to yourself, Sarah Palin, not just to people you’re expected as a woman to take care of? On the other hand, it’s still a reflection of how nervous we are about gender equality that all female politicians have to verify their “ordinary gal” and “nurturing woman” credentials; even Hillary had to bake cookies and have good hair–and she still got teased for her cankles.

There’s also the problem of Palin’s super Perky McPerkster voice, which makes me cringe. Reminds me of a girl named Susie Paulsen in fifth grade. Practically a midget, her perky, ponytailed bossiness was frightening and made worse by the fact that her dad was Principal.

On the other hand, Palin seems to her constituents to be a helluva mooj. Last year her over 90 per cent approval rating from Alaskans made her the most popular governor in the country. People seem to like her fight, her chutzpah, and what they see as her integrity on their behalf. If it’s true, it should go without saying that integrity is a mooj quality. That whole pork barrel “bridge to nowhere”line has a ring of irreverence to it that I like, though I don’t pretend to have researched the details. (This post finds me again in the Atlanta airport, though it’s much quieter on Labor Day.) Maybe Palin’s a politician in the late Ann Richards vein: sparky, witty, blunt, and determined. I think Richards qualified as a mooj, as have a handful of GOP women. Perhaps, when McCain is not elected as President and she gets to go back to Alaska, she’ll carve herself a strong, independent record as a mooj politician.

In the meantime, a fantasy:

Some reporter on the campaign beat starts nagging Sarah Palin about stupid stuff, like how often does she nurse her Down’s baby on the bus, and what’s her favorite color and how lucky does she feel to be plucked up by the grumpy albino snapping turtle (McCain)—and all of a sudden she reaches into her glossy brunette bun and whips out a silver, pearl-handled .38 revolver and waves it at the idiot. “Quit askin’ me irrelevant nonsense, Mr. Reporter,” she cracks, “or I’m gonna smack you upside the head with this pretty little piece!” She proceeds with a concise monologue about her plans for office, then hops on a big black Appaloosa and rides off.

Unlike in this picture.

Ironically, as the DNC unfolds, and with Obama giving his historical speech tonight,
I’m stuck in a huge hotel/convention center/mall complex in Boston with, get this, 6,000 political scientists.

Help me, help me. Save me from the cacophony of pontificating voices. I’ve run away and am temporarily hiding in my hotel room, escaping the voices not just of poli sci nerds, but those I consider my good friends.

It’s all going well, but there is no time to blog on the million things I want to muse about. I’ve only had time for the post below, sketched on the airplane out here. But I haven’t disappeared.

Kisses from the land of professors in bad fashion.

This Tuesday afternoon finds me entrapped in a little corner of Hades. I just deplaned in Atlanta from an aircraft graced with no fewer than five children who, free of responsible parental intervention, managed a chorus of screaming in stereo mid-plane, in front and behind me, for a solid ninety minutes. I’m now seated on sticky blue vinyl seats between an imposing woman chowing Popeye’s fried chicken (who for some reason commandeered three straws for her coke), a swarm of kids fighting over the video games, and two sweaty, sleeping guys who look like they just broke out of the county jail. The waiting area is packed with human filler, successfully remote controlled by the nonstop streaming CNN from the flat screens suspended on the ceiling. No different, really, from any other day in American air travel.

“Feelings” acknowledgment:

It disturbs me that we are not given a choice about whether we want to hear CNN’s reporting from speakers blaring above us. It’s discouraging that fast food is the only choice in the C terminal. It makes me sad that two-thirds of the people within eyesight, like two-thirds of Americans, are overweight. I feel angry when I hear CNN report that activists protesting at the convention—not police who surround, intimidate, and pepper spray them–“can make things dangerous.” It gives me knot in my stomach. Oh, but that’s not all.

How about the fact that in the post-primary season Americans are allegedly (say the papers) so desperate for proof that Obama is “average,” and “understands ordinary Americans,” that they’d like him to muffle his oratorical gifts and rein in his intelligence? The right employs, and people buy, the “elitism” charge. They don’t want him to “talk down” by doing things like demonstrating in public that he actually understands intricacies of foreign policy and global economics. I’d like to believe that the pollsters who say small-town, “ordinary” Americans need the candidate to seem “more accessible” and “like them” are wrong; I’d prefer to think they’d want the potential leader of the free world to be wicked smart, stunningly articulate, charismatic, a world-class communicator, and maybe even, oh my god, different from what we’ve had over the last few political cycles. To me it would make sense for even an accomplished person to feel intimidated before the skill set of a really capable U.S. president, or senator. But “ordinary” Americans chose the paragon of mediocrity, W., the little prince, over smarter and better contenders—twice in a row, so who am I to say.

As deep as my loathing for such attitudes run, I know it’s not all our—or “their”—fault. We’ve been track-homed, Wal-Marted, Gapped, TV’d, TEVO’d, and Targeted to the point of idiocy. (I don’t exempt myself; I was sucked in by even the Coke commercials during the Olympics.) The numbing of the masses through consumerism, corporate control, and simple, media packaged framings of “American,” “middle-class,” and “patriotic,” worked better than C. Wright Mills or Aldos Huxley ever imagined. Eric Alterman, in a smart piece in this week’s The Nation, calls this a “constricted establishment consensus,” which reflects

the retrenched power of the established order. It is enforced by aggressive lobbies—the military industrial complex, Wall Street corporate interests—and rationalized by well-upholstered house scholars. The establishment’s strength is its ability to simply exclude alternatives from serious consideration.

What he’s saying is that power brokers tend to be in power because of their ability to convince ordinary people that the way things are is normal, or rational, or right. We drink the Kool-Aid they feed us. So we bite the bait that a new leader on the rise must be “talking down” to lowly average people, while someone like Bush, the ultimate beneficiary of elite privilege, we see as “just like us.” Did early twentieth century human filler want Woodrow Wilson to be “more ordinary”? Did they wish FDR wasn’t so talented? Would they have been relieved if Abraham Lincoln had been a little more of a paunchy shlub?

By which I mean to say: What the hell is wrong with us? Michelle Obama was great last night at the convention. She was poised, strong, clear, and focused. But she was also meticulously packaged as a nonthreatening and, god forbid, not angry black woman. Why should she have to be asserted (as Hillary also was in 1992) as “loving mother,” “caring wife,” “sweet daughter,” and “sister,” over Ivy league-educated badass community advocate and mooj in her own right? Why should she have to get on her knees and admit she loves this country, even though she’s been known to critique it harshly for failing its own ideals? Isn’t that what loving this country used to mean? Why do we have to make her a little smaller to be able to relate? Do we need our heroes shrink-wrapped so we can eat them on the run? Should King have been a little more bumbling at the March on Washington? Come on, people.

Two tracks from here (but no time to follow through):

1. How am I duplicitous in same-same thinking
2. God is reflected in all things, even human filler.