The Politics of Childhood

I was born into the lower middle class.

I identify as female. I identify as bisexual. 

I describe myself as Christian, an Anglican. 

I am a democrat. 

I am the dust of a million dying stars. 

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When Dad and I went to the grocery store - a sad and dilapidated Super Fresh, surrounded by poverty and the smell of urine - I found such richness in mangoes, in the soft green skin; in boxes of pasta which rattled with a sifting sound, a sigh; in jars of tomato sauce promising sweetness and sausage; in a red and gold foiled pouch of beans and rice, salty, filling, inexpensive. Every face I saw there was a story, men in wheelchairs with hard rubberized curves, fat women in Sunday hats, art students lost in the city. 

When we went, it was a delight. I couldn't wait to go home, for dad to fill a pot with broth and chunks of hard meat, carrots which hadn't quite spoiled, a dash of beer - I could taste, somehow, not flavors but emotions, pride, food on the table. In the grocery store I smelled the five dollar wine and the ritual of Saturday night dinner. And maybe it wasn't just pride, maybe there was a taste of something other, a desperation, a get me out of here, and an, I wish things were better. Things which my eyes were closed to, like the shadow of amputated legs, poverty's reliance on salt and fat and scrap, the inability to work, a need for a liquid panacea to idleness. 

In 2013, this is not an unfamiliar scenario. And the privilege I had then, being the child of educated, native parents, and being lucky enough to get an education of my own - that privilege is more gleaming than gold. And I don't think, for one moment, that I wasn't lucky. 

People talk and talk about the economy, how it is the hottest issue of the decade, how no politician can succeed without a solid plan - part hope, part funding, part lie - to fix those parts of our country which have fallen between the cracks. We need a better plan, absolutely, to set things right. 

If they were ever right, for everyone. 

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That day in June, I wore my tie-dyed halter top, navel and back bared unabashedly, tight blue jeans, far too much glitter, and a grin. 

Baltimore heat makes you think about taking off all of your clothes, letting the shower head spray down on your nakedness, rubbing your wet self on something soft. It has a particular smell to it, part sewage, part sage, part sex. I sat on the curb of Charles street and let my skin soak up the scent of summer and freedom. 

I could claim my identity. 

I was young and foolish and terribly proud. Around me, men and women threw candy and beads, children laughed near-screaming, and I thought about my body and kissing and finally doing something which felt right. I saw shockingly beautiful women and their children, and their friends, and their partners, and I wanted to revel in their effervescence, the incandescent yes, the at last, the self. 

There's a bitterness that comes with too much happiness. The at last is not final. The positive will be negative. And being loved for a weekend in the June of 2005 was not, and is not, being loved for a lifetime in America. Hell, it isn't even being guaranteed basic rights. 

We talk and talk about values, and if we can get past dogmatic discourse, about civil rights. We engage each other in ceaseless debate, we poke holes in what some call religion, we make mockery of love. Politicians make or break their campaigns over this hot issue, and thank God, things have changed. Some things are better. Some things are right. 

If there ever were rights, for everyone. 

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My introduction to fiction class had me quaking in my flip-flops, and the thick silver hair of my professor, along with the abundance of sweating undergrads, made me think that I had made a grave mistake. One assignment, a vignette of sorts, and we would discover (or so it seemed) the true writers, the elect, the muse-touched. 

I went home and wrote about church. 

Words started shooting out of me like corks from champagne - the way an Austin organ coughs and groans, the crisp hems in Sunday suits, the chittering Cantonese of the Chinese parishioners, the vodka and vermouth, the pink Tokay and wafers, my father's sweat, the smell of the priest's tobacco-stained mustache. I wrote about holiness and I wrote about sin, and it was all a part of one big picture, one theme, being an Anglican. 

Being Christian in America. 

And I had never thought about that before. And I was merciless. And yet, I believed. 

My piece was well-received, but somehow more than that I remember that I had looked at my faith, straight on, and had found it richer for my questioning. 

Faith is indeed glorious, and it is as gall, and it is haunting. It is confusing, and it mystifies; it is inherent, and it is mystical; it is reviled, and it is there, again,to be picked up and nursed. Faith is our curse, and it is our comfort. 

I find myself talking and talking of faith, as does the country. And it's not just faith - rather, we debate on which flavor of devout we are, which rules to uphold, which God to worship or reject. Politicians, who have faiths of their own, balance the personal with the public, and issues of morality are mixed in with legality. Faith is a pale thing, and yet more relevant than ever. Maybe, the more we talk about it, the more we can accept it all, the more we can learn to accept each other. Maybe talking about faith is going to make this country a better place. Maybe we can come together and all be right, all have faith or non-faith again.

If all of us were right. If any of us had ever found acceptance and love, for everyone. 

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Reading comments on online news sites, from CNN to Jezebel, has forced me to realize (as if it weren't quite obvious) how liberal I am. 

It amazes me, still, that there are people out there who don't believe, don't understand, the fundamental truths of my life and of the life of my childhood - the rights given all people to be who we are, to love who we love, to protect our bodies from invasion and cruel, callous ownership. It never occurred to me, not for one moment, to judge how others lived their lives.

And then I look at the world around me, and I know that my naïveté has shifted, and those people who lace their words with hatred become a victim of my judgement. It's as if I've become a one-note character in the novel of now, in the future history of a people divided. As others are spiteful and ignorant and mean, so am I. I refuse to understand other people's viewpoints, when they contradict my own. 

I stand by my beliefs, and I am incredibly proud of them. But when did that pride become a rejection - when did my open-minded, righteous opinions become self-righteous and blind?

I am a democrat. And sometimes, I wonder, how could anyone be anything else?  And that is my basic failure, and America's failure; we are unwilling. We choose not to see. 

Everything I've described above, the silly small details of my life, fall back on the premise that some people are right, and some people are wrong. My childhood experiences molded me into a wild and rampant voice for liberalism and equality - and, you see, that's the way it is for everyone. It would be so simple to manipulate a childhood, to change the smells and the heat and the love, and make someone different. We bear a terrible responsibility - we create life, and we create our world. We have children, and sometimes, we fail them. 

Sometimes we make bitterness out of beauty. 

Watching Congress squabble and struggle over the financial future of our country is like observing how pitifully and how constantly we are divided, and I can't help but feel that some child, many children, will pay the price of right versus wrong, of liberal versus conservative, of narrow thoughts and small-minded adults. And I have the nightmare of those children, grown up, and becoming something that we wish we could fix.  They become us, they have our faults, they are representatives of our negativity. 

Sometimes, that nightmare is realized. Sometimes, we make monsters. 

I wasn't born that way. Were you?

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I'd like to end this on a positive, because despite my fears and despite the sadness in the world, there is something so incredibly beautiful about life, about the gift of waking up in the morning, about sun and incense and red wine. Still, as an adult, I remember the seductive smell of beef stew, how the meat simmered in the pot, softening; I remember the shine on my arms of glitter and sweat, and my first strand of purple beads, and the strong, soft hands of cellists and ballerinas; I remember the pinch of Sunday shoes, and the dry, rice-paper body of Christ, and my Grandpere intoning the Epistle. 

And there's more, now, because coming into adulthood has brought so much joy, the taste of red lipstick on my wedding day, the smudge of it on my husband's cheek. I've been given wonder in the form of my sister, more precious each day as she grows into a brilliant beacon of the world getting better. I have family and friends, and I have food, and I have love. 

This, this is how we are born. Our eyes open and feel the light, and we are stardust. 

We should be this way, forever. 

Football, Feminism, and Failure

I am watching football. 

My home team, the Ravens, took a loss today - though fortunately we lost when we have already secured our place in the playoffs. My second home team, the Redskins, are currently battling it out with the Cowboys. RG3, Morris, and Garçon are doing what they do, and I'm sitting in bed with a glass of wine and the love of my life, my husband, G. 

Concurrently, G and I have been discussing two books of essays on Joss Whedon's Firefly. We are both fans - I watched the series while it was on TV, G watched it after, and we saw the premier of Serenity, the film, together. 

At the same time, men on television form expert opinions on football, with brief interludes from female reporters on the field. 

And at the same time, a woman in India is mourned. Her death is a terrible and shining point of how things, everywhere, must change. 

Everything we do is so, so gendered. 

I have this game with television - I watch commercials and ask G to switch the genders. Car commercials? Let's have tough women and clueless men. Cleaning products? Obviously, Dad should be there with the Swiffer and paper towels. Power tools and home improvement? Let's see a hardcore mom with sweaty pits and various bits unshaven. It's my small fight with gender, the every day kind, the fight of not really having to feel the effects of gender discrimination and yes, true warfare, because I am so unbelievably privileged. 

Feminism is really, really important. And we need it to do more. 

We need to do more. 

It's really easy to call yourself a feminist when all you do is fight for your own rights. It's simple to play games with the TV. It's simple to point out inequality within semi-nuanced samples of American pop culture. I can rail against Joss Whedon until my face turns blue, and I probably will, and none of that makes a damned difference when we know - we bloody well know - that life being "gendered" means that women are raped and killed. 

Let me say that again. 

Women are being raped and killed. 

First world feminism is awesome. There are gender gaps in pay, in respect, in paid leave, in safety on the streets; there are gaps within our families, in who clears the table, in who is supposed to take care of the baby, in who cooks, in who cleans; there are gaps in how men and women are portrayed in film and literature, in who reports football, in who makes a good TV series. All of these things are so important, and none of them cover the true extent of how damned unequal life really is - not even in other places, now, but just, say, in America, where freedom is supposed to be our creed. 

It would be great to walk down the street without feeling like a potential victim. 

That's not just feminism.  That's human dignity. 

And maybe, sometimes, feminism distracts. 

There needs to be more horror, out there, because women are made victims, are made an easy and excusable target. That horror goes so far beyond the luxuries of independence that allow us to dissent. I am in no way saying that feminism in America is a lost or foolish cause, but I'm saying, in essence, that we still live in privilege.  

I know that rape is a huge problem (problem being a mercilessly paltry word) in the US - I don't need to be told that. I'm saying that perhaps unsayable thing, which is that talking about women's rights, about gender and sex politics, is a hell of a lot different than doing something about it. The fact that we can, in fact, talk about it, is the greatest gift our mostly messed up country can give us. 

Right now people are protesting to be able to discuss the fundamental rights of women. 

And I'm watching football, judging a TV show, and feeling stupid and oh, so lucky to be alive. 

The Skins seem to be doing pretty well, and I see men and women in the stands, full of delight and spit and hellfire. I still wonder what it would be like to live in a world of gender equality, where female commentators give us the scoop on stats and hormones. I still tell my husband that Joss Whedon couldn't write a female character to get him out of a paper bag. 

And women are being raped and killed. 

And that's it, that's the end, because here I am, in my lovely bed with my lovely husband, and I'm a feminist, and I'm not doing a single thing to help. 

I am a woman. I'm a feminist. I am incredibly privileged.  

And I don't know what to do. 

I know I'm not doing enough. 

A New Year, a Second Chance

I've spent a lot of time, over many holiday gatherings with family, friends, and several people I didn't know, reinventing myself.

The holiday season is a long episode of telling other people who you are and, more frequently, what you do. I've heard that it is a typical American thing to define oneself by career - perhaps, in other parts of the world, I wouldn't have faced the inevitable and continually perplexing (and perplexed) questions as to my chosen career path. We seem to know ourselves, from our daily goals to our supposed identity, only by how we earn money. I don't know if that comes with some expectation - a measure of self-worth, of supposed contribution to society, of how fiercely we are judged and praised. In other words, it seems that our jobs aren't just what we do, but who we are, and how valuable we are in the eyes of others.

Anything outside of the norm, then, is met with surprise and bafflement. My husband is someone who has an easily identifiable career, and while few people grasp the complexities of what he does, the words, computer programmer, are met with resounding approval. He has a real job. And what he does from eight to four on weekdays becomes a symbol of not only his identity, but his inherent worth.

This Christmas, I introduced myself as Alice, a writer.

I'm not going to go on to describe the various reactions (ranging from very welcome support to, most often, a series of follow up questions as to the nature of my prose, whether or not I'd been published, and, most remarkably, why?). But I will be honest, here, because I think that the most telling reaction was my own, which consistently hovered between pride, relief, and some pretty significant doubt.

Pride, because I am finally doing what I feel I've been called to do. Pride because I'm not putting my goals away, not folding them neatly in a drawer of regret and adulthood, not denying them because they seem unreasonable or selfish or unsustainable. Pride because I'm not giving in.

Relief, because I have, in the years since my graduation from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars program, lied to myself and maintained a fallacy of identity a fear of failure. Relief because I'm finally doing what I'm supposed to do. Relief because I'm just now, just when it is inconvenient and stupid and scary, being myself.

And, of course, terrible doubt, because here I am, standing on the edge, being something new.

And oh my goodness, it is terrifying.

My writing teachers were very clear - to be a writer, you must make a friend of failure. You're going to mess up and make shocking mistakes and dreadful dissonance; you're going to be embarrassed, you're going to write stuff that should grind down the sink like the sound of a garbage disposal. Ugh, ugh, there are going to be times when you think you just can't do it, you can't live up to your dreams, you've made an awful error, and calling yourself a writer will be bitter in your mouth.

And that's today. And maybe tomorrow. But to be a writer means that waking up and trying again is like being in love. Work, hard work, and joy.

There are times when being a writer means creating the voice of God. There are times when your words all come together and something good, some undefinable thing, some whisper of making the world a better place, pours out of you like spider silk. And those moments of success make your failure beautiful.

I'm Alice, and I'm a writer.

I don't know if I will write here every day, though I hope to do so more often. But I will write. I will write because, even if my career is confusing, even if I find difficulty in what to tell people, in how to say what I do and why I do it, I know. I found myself.

And my God, it feels good.

Easter

I grew up in the church. 

During my Intermediate Fiction class, I found myself floundering - the fact that I had been writing for years seemed to prepare me very little for the reality of peer review and hard grades. I've always been a writer, so much so that when I finally and reluctantly declared my writing seminars major at JHU my mother was both thrilled and (most likely) a little aggrieved - she had been telling me for far too long that I was, in my mind and heart, a writer, and I had been very busy ignoring her.  Intermediate Fiction was the first step, after the general intro course, into being a writing sems major, and I approached it with not a little fear and not a little bravado. I've got this, and, oh my God, no way am I good enough. 

My first piece, written in one of my fugue states of passion and near automatic dreaming, was about Easter Sunday. A section of it remains on my Facebook page, actually - I was so proud of that story, proud not only of the praise and critique it received but of the truths it unearthed - my deep discomfort and neutrality about the church.     

My writing asserted that the Easter Sunday mass was the after-party, the big shiny bow on the real Easter, which had happened at the singing of the Gloria the night before. Not only that, but the piece described in intricate and shaming detail the way that a martini might taste after the service. It maintained a true, religious, liturgical purity, while contrasting that with vodka and olives. 

A delicate balance, perhaps, but a dynamic inextricably linked in my mind. Somehow, even then, still a churchgoer, I found that God and his worship demanded a very necessary post- service cocktail. 

That short story was highly praised, and I felt terribly good. And I started, somewhere, to question. 

There are many reasons why today was the first day that I didn't go to church on Easter Sunday. I do still maintain that the real rising of Christ happens at midnight at the vigil, and certainly nothing compares to the almost pagan plunging of the paschal candle in the baptismal font, or the sheer exhaustion of the three hour suffering of the Good Friday before, or the feel of tight heels and caffeine induced jitters. But this year, I thought - what is God to me? What is God to my fiancé? And is my God found more easily in a service, that big shine of brass and hyacinth and liturgy - or in the quiet worship of my favorite hymns on iTunes and the indifferent cheer of birdsong on my porch?

There are so many reasons why people leave the church, and so many reasons why people cling to it. Reading online material like the belief articles on CNN gives me a wide array of mentalities to explore; this week I've read about Jews reclaiming Jesus, Obama's Easter luncheon, and young women performing exorcisms. Religion is incredibly diverse, and holds joys and disgusts for all of us. We all have our beliefs and non-beliefs, and are all to some extent incredulous of the practices of others. Religion is, in our culture, a way in which we divide ourselves. 

I freely admit that I'm a comment junkie - I sometimes click on articles just to see what people will say in the comments. Most often, I'm pretty disheartened. If Christianity is our way to salvation, it certainly is also a way to hate. If atheism is our way to rational thought, it is also a way to scoff and deride. I don't see the best of people on the Internet. But I do see something which is hard to ignore, something held in keyboards and bible quotes and vermouth. Something numbing. 

We do all of this stuff in the name of Christ, or any other mythic figure - we dress up, we sow propriety into gold threads, we make lies, we burn things, we enact forbidden paganism, we listen to sermons, we starve ourselves, we eat coconut cake. We limit; we reward. All of this we do in the name of something invented - the anthropomorphic god. I'm not here to argue that God exists, of course, but I do think of the trappings of religion and find that all of this terrible, counterproductive bother might take away from the real message. 

When I think of my God and his life, I think not of his divinity, but of his son's humanity. 

I tie up all of the threads, all of the comments, all of the years of church going and martini swilling, and I think, what a lot of mess for someone who was one of us. I'm not going to go into a sermon about the life of Christ - I would need to be a lot better informed, as would we all - but the details that stick with  me lead me to a basic and almost unspeakable point, that being -

Who we know as Jesus? He was human. 

Who we know as prophets? They were human. 

Who we hope will come? Can be nothing other than a real person, with real fears, and with real hope. 

Jesus's sacrifice was important, not just so we could quote scripture online, or just so we could air out the special vestments, and not just so we could pop open the absolut and reward ourselves in our sanctity. His sacrifice was so important because he truly was one of us. He feared. He entreated. 

He had friends. He loved deeply. He wanted to make his mom happy. 

I didn't go to church today, because I wanted to remember that my faith is rooted not in the hullabaloo of divine worship, but in the appreciation of the life of a man who wanted to ask his dad - please, spare me.  He didn't want to be on the cross any more than you or I would, but the great beauty of his human life is that he made a sacrifice. 

A sacrifice is meaningless without fear. 

A sacrifice is nothing to a God, but everything to a man, and everything to all of us, out here, who shouldn't feel the need for numbness but instead should feel this incredible strength in finding faith in humanity. 

Maybe good fences make good neighbors - but maybe joy and hope make good brothers. 

Maybe we shouldn't see our gods as the limitations on our humanity, but the celebrations, the comforts, the sons and daughters, the husbands and wives, the parents, the children. 

Maybe I don't want to kiss his feet on the cross. Maybe I just want to sit on the porch and find kindness in the fact that Jesus would be there with me, having a cup of coffee, and telling me about his parents. 

I think my faith is a lot more complicated - and a lot more simple - than high heels and martinis. And I hope, oh, how I hope, that we can all be citizens of faith and humanity. 

I'm an Anglican, and I didn't go to church. Jesus was a Jew, and a man, and a friend.  And maybe, maybe, we can meet somewhere, in that land of dreaming and introspection, and talk about what it means to be human. 

Spring

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about serious things. Certainly, the political climate as well as my own personal inclinations tend to lead me down a sometimes dark and often passionate path. I don't feel a need to explain my seriousness, but we all need a break from pensive wanderings, sometimes. 

There are so many joys in life. I think they are easy to forget, because they are commonplace and not particularly provocative. Sure, I could devote this entry to the awakening that is spring using terms of fertility and worship and mysticism - but I think I'll leave that be for now.

Columbia has been engaging in an on again, off again romance with warm weather. A month ago, I went out onto my porch to discover a robin hiding on my bird feeder - the first robin of spring, red and cheery and still puffed up and fat with the cold. This morning, I went out and was greeted by 32 degree weather and a desperate need for hotter coffee and long John pjs.  I've had margaritas and hot chocolate, skirts and sweaters, for quite a while.  We've learned, at school, to expect the unexpected - outdoor recess can be a blessing and a curse - and the days when I want to wear sundresses I find myself shivering and cursing any sort of fashion sense. Windy days and a most unlikely Marilyn Monroe.

But still - spring is waking up, not quite stretching or bursting, but insinuating itself into my soul. I pulled out the Buena Vista. I put away my winter clothes.  I started relaxing into the heat.  

Today, when my apartment feels like a refrigerator, I still refuse to give up the warmth.  Spring is my time, a time of re-emergence, a time which is religious.  It is immensely pleasurable.  And don't we all need a bit of re-birth, every once in a while?

I said I wouldn't go into the serious - but here it is.  There's a lot going on in Columbia right now.  School redistricting is coming, and there's talk of the bridge, and the mall changing, and we're all thinking about the Wegmans with awe (the massive parking structure and the fine cheese selection) and apprehension (oh, the traffic).  

There's a lot going on in our country right now.  Conservatives are throat- slitting, democrats are hoping for hope, and all we hear is this negative, this end of things, the shadow of end-of-life and end-of-woman.  End-of-marriage, end-of-love. 

If only we could hear the beckon of spring, the coming, the wakening. If only we were the robin. 

There's this great Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin comes running to Hobbes to report the first robin of spring.  Of course, Hobbes had already seen a robin, and Calvin's joy is smooshed. I think we can all be that way - eager for happiness and ready for defeat. I see this in myself, when I can't wait for the new grocery and am also already bemoaning the traffic on Snowden. I see it when I think about the bridge, and when I am anticipating the failure of this vital project. 

Republicans talk a lot of personal responsibility. This is a great hope, and a good idea.  And then they deny personal responsibility - they are ready to bestow the decree of failure upon people they don't agree with. 

Democrats talk a lot of change, and hope, and caring.  But they don't go far enough, because they know they will be defeated. We strive, but do we always hope to achieve?

I'm sitting on my porch, listening to Billie Holiday.  It's 54 degrees. My apartment is freezing.  And no, I'm not giving up on spring. 

There are so many pleasures in life - if only we could reach out and claim them! My family inspire me in this - my mother created a career which helps so many; my stepfather is passionate and caring and working, ever, so hard; my stepmother is a writer in her heart and devoted in her soul; my father changed his whole life with the ability to see and the need to be. Sometimes I look into them and see spring. And sometimes I can see in myself that capability - when I laugh with my students, when I scrub my kitchen and cook, when I love G, when I sit on the porch and put my iPhone on shuffle and adore, so completely, the blessing of the sun. 

We can be the robin. 

If you believe in personal responsibility, let others be responsible for themselves.  

If you believe in change, be change, fully and with hope.  

If you believe in Columbia, let it grow, without fearful restraint. Let it flourish. Be awakened. Let it wake.  

There is certainly a lot of fear in relinquishing control.  I hate that I won't really know if recess will be delightfully breezy or unbearably cold.  I hate that I live in Columbia and can't see how it can change. I hate that I believe in democracy and yet might find myself under the regime of those with whom I disagree. I hate that we all hate each other, for any reason, for politics or race or gender or neighborhood or just, simply, the way we were made. Sometimes I think it might be cold forever.  

And yet we can.  We can be.  We can be the robin. 

Billie Holiday calls to me.  Young people call out cheers, joyful exhortations, and defiant obscenities from below me on the humble playground outside my apartment. 

When I hear them I think about a city. And I think about a society of diversity. And I think, and I hope, and I pray for spring.  

I talk a lot in grand terms, and it always sounds nice, but here's where it really is - 

Wake up.  Find joy. Hate no one.  

And be. Be my robin. 

Hope. 

hocoblogs@@@

Eve

Sometimes, when I'm out with first grade recess, or when I'm in the tiled hallways, or when I watch children pick at their worn sneakers during math, I wonder how I could have been a child and not realized the incredible urge I had to run. 

Kids run everywhere. And they don't just run - at least once a day I see children vault themselves toward the ceiling, fingers dancing in door frames, untied shoelaces skittering on the floor. Children have such incredible energy, and when I think about anything I've lost in growing up I think about my sore knees and heavy limbs and how part of me still longs, thoughtlessly, to run. 

When we are children, our bodies are sacred. I don't mean untested, and I don't mean anything so puritanical as pure - I mean that we vibrate with captive energy. We scrape and scrabble, we dance and fizz, we treat ourselves with a divine lack of care. Every part of us is sacred, and every part is natural. 

Is this what people hope to preserve?

We hear so much rhetoric and spite when it comes to the human body. Some would be gatekeepers, guarding all against the nastiness, real or perceived, of the world. Some would wish to tell others what is proper or innocent or godly. Some think that innocence is anything other than that rough carelessness of childhood, the eagerness to explore, the feeling of asphalt and the raking of fingers against the sky. 

Some think that restraining the body of a woman means preserving decency, childhood sweetness, and unknowing. And while I applaud the sentiment of sanctity, and I understand the fear of things unsaid, I find so much sadness in relegating the physical to the impure.  

We have all been reading and watching the news, and it seems clear that there are many who believe that they have a say in the bodies and ethics of others. One need not look farther than one's Facebook feed to see reports of bigotry and hate. So many Americans are convinced that their faith or their morals or their upbringing can dictate the actions of others. What is lost, however, is the basic element of gender and personal politics, which is this -

Some people hate their bodies.  Some people hate the bodies of women.  Some people hate being physically tempted and revel in being religiously confined. 

This is, of course, an over simplification. I don't mean to say that any group of political activists consciously hate the human body. Certainly, people like a certain well-known and overly-hyped radio personality seem to revel in all of the intricacies of their flesh. 

But so many of us are maligned. We are cursed.  We are seen to be sinners.

Just today I was reading over material regarding a first confession. Apparently, I'm supposed to remember the sins I committed from as early as seven years old, and confess them as if I had any regret, as if I were at fault for irately stepping on the toes of a cute boy because I didn't know how to express affection. As if I could possibly confess to something, something black and dirty and wriggling, that neither my soul nor my body could reasonably comprehend. This material made me laugh, and it made me so angry. 

We are so obsessed with this idea of sin - religion and American politics has convinced us that sin is this definable thing, this little piece of nature, the flaw in our bodies. Sin is the byword of America. Sin is what makes tea parties out of narrow-mindedness and fundamentalism. We all know this word, and so it has been appropriated as a burrowing fester, an all-known excuse for hating other people, and for hating ourselves.  

I am a woman, and I am proud.  And I am proud of my sister, who is young and still reaches door frames, and I am proud of my mothers, who fight for wisdom and integrity, and I am proud of my grandmothers, who are made of poetry and passion and love.  And, before I am dismissed as a feminist with a match and a plan, I am so proud of the men in my life who love themselves and love me equally. I am proud of the rights I duly claim, and I am proud of the men who champion my rights. 

When I'm not bogged down by my adulthood, when my body springs to fullness, I jump and I run and I touch the ceiling.  

If we are so bothered by the reclamation of childhood, let us not be trapped by the physical and revel instead in the joyful. Never, in all of my childhood, did I think of myself as a sinner.  Never was I Eve - the wanton of temptation. Rather, I was a good beginning.  

I lived in a garden, unshod. And no part of me was wrong.  

And no part of me is wrong.  

I look at my kids. They are so good.  And it isn't because of their bodies - it is because they are who they are, sacred. It is through their roughness, their anticipation of recess, their need to run, that they define what so many wish to possess. Their innocence is in that there is no part of themselves which is hateful. 

How can we allow anyone to denigrate that kind of holiness? How can we let anyone speak of women or lovers as sinful? How can we call our children and our neighbors the fallen Eve, when we all long for that time, that fruit ripe, that moment before we knew that something in us was supposed to be wrong?

I want to run. And I want to love. And no one, no one, can tell me how. 

Reclaim

I have a particular problem with the word, "moral."  In fact, I would prefer that people didn't use it - not because I think that morality has no place in the 21st century, but because I hate to see one little word so consistently misused and pointed, weapon-like, at people who are different - or even, God forbid, human, and entitled to the basic rights given us by nature and by our government. Having morals, now, is like taking an oath of office in South Carolina. And I want no part of that. 

I've recently been enduring driver's education classes. In our most recent meeting, the curriculum focused on operator errors - most significantly, driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. I've heard all of this information before, of course - that the choice to drive while impaired is, in fact, a choice, and that what we may do with our cars after a night of indulgence is, no matter what state of induced unconsciousness, still dangerous, and still a crime. I have no problem accepting this - as terrified of driving as I am, it seems unbelievable to turn on that metal giant of possibilities with even the slightest possibility of error. 

That said, people do make mistakes. In fact, most of my classmates were all too ready to dismiss the results of drunk driving as unintentional.  Of course, no one gets into their car with the purpose of murder and mayhem - most of us, I hope, do not wish to cause injury to others. I don't, and despite the level of sniggering and posturing in my driver's ed class, I need to believe that the typical human response to the idea of injury and death is to turn away and make a better choice. 

But, at eight on a Monday night, when we would all rather be anywhere else, I found myself surrounded by questions of intent - questions, in a way, of what constitutes morality. My classmates spent a solid chunk of time just trying to figure out if unintentional death was murder or manslaughter, if impaired drivers were ever really at fault for the consequences of their actions. 

We are increasingly living in a society that divides itself along lines of morality. And after delving into a pure lack of sympathy, of realization, of responsibility for someone else's death, I wondered if the kind of morality that dictates love, personal health, religion, is something that negates what I would consider the true morality - human decency, compassion, and flat out common sense. To make it simple - if we are all so concerned with restricting sex, restricting women's rights, restricting the good a government can do for its people, aren't we losing track of morality? Aren't we forgetting to teach our kids that morality is about love and empathy and respect? Don't we all suffer if the students at this or any driving school are more concerned with what charge might be brought rather than the reality of killing someone with their car?

And, of course, this - how can we, shapers of a message, voters in a democracy, drivers of our cars, accept that young people are so concerned with partying and denying culpability because that message we shape coins morality as the word which means denying sex, denying femininity, and denying compassion? How can we be such professors of hate and such apologists of, it's okay, murder is okay, if you didn't mean it. But love, if you mean it, is abominable. 

Conservatives, at least the most vocal and accessible, talk a lot about the personal. And it isn't just the sex, it's the idea of bootstraps, and the idea of poverty, and the mad thought that the government couldn't possibly care for people if they should care for themselves. It is the idea that they have no responsibility, not for themselves, their hate speech, and the welfare of the people around them. Well, heck. I've seen the consequences.  I've seen young people who want to get messed up and kill people and not be held responsible. This, this is what you are teaching. 

These are your children, and they see what you do.  And they can be heartless. And they can imagine no sorrow. And they know the word, "slut." And they drink, and they drive, cool and flitting like the blue of a dragonfly. And yes, they have sex, and yes, they are questioning, and yes, they seek a high. And they have no compassion. And their hope is for exculpation. And they are not guilty. 

We need to reclaim morality.  If we need to frame it in words of faith, we need to reclaim awe and reverence. If we should frame it in words of government, we must reclaim hope and equality. And, if we are to be blunt -

Let people love, and make one last end to fear. 

Let us be responsible and revere life. 

Let us be with the ones we love. Let us be safe. Let us be taught compassion. 

Don't drink and drive. And as for whom we hold, it isn't any of your business.