FLUXLIST: Grizzly Girl/Pardon the interruption

[suse]

Pardon this rant--I know I shouldn't --ignor it of course if you like--perhaps it is not fluxus related--been ranting for days--spose I need a blog. Anyway, I am over and out fer awhile again after this one... so don't fret Grizzly Girl Or The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Or The Two Americas Revisited, Or How I became a Street Thug by Suse Allison   I recently and intensely experienced a fall common to the humanoid; The dreaded dark night of the soul. What makes this particularly dangerous for me in particular is that I like to hit bottom. I don't know about other people, but I am almost happy when I finally hit bottom. I act it out with a joie de vivre that only the French can make sound as delectable as it is. Seems a paradox, no? Believe me, the falling itself is agony, the subtle, daily, slip-sliding is no picnic. Ah, but hitting the bottom somehow feels like home again.   I am ready now, here, in desperation to march down the Middle of Main Street. I remember a movie poster from the early 60's. A lithograph featuring a gigantic woman, crushing the highways, picking up cars in her hands with vicious intent. I never saw the movie but the movie poster was enough; her sneer is what I feel. Her deranged scowl as she wreaks havoc on the civilized world is exactly what I have in mind.   I am ready again, to March down the Middle of Main street--against traffic, just like Vesta Thomas used to do. Or As his friends call him, Vesta Arresta--so called for having the longest arrest record in Middletown History. Others call him bear, because they know him as one of the warmest, gentlest in Middletown History.   So, what started the fall? I quit my job. Quitting a job is something I have been warned since childhood to never, ever, do. It is like jumping off a moving train or boat-- you will never catch up again. You need to wait until you get to a junction, a station to change trains, or a life boat at least to get you to the next place. Something. You don't just quit your job. Well, I did. I knew I would find other work. And I did. The only problem is that having been diagnosed with breast cancer and the subsequent surgeries and treatments have left me in reduced capacity to work--at least temporarily. Still, if you are living simply, as we do, one missed paycheck begins a devastating downward spiral as the paychecks disappear completely. An epidemic of famine hits the home finance department and tensions rise, things taken for granted become precious.   And yet, I have done it before. Am I just that selfish? Of course I am--it is another way to beat yourself over the head as your outlook follows your finances into the abysmal downward spiral. I have jumped off the train before and the adventures I have had along the railroad tracks have been some of the most intensely beautiful moments of my life. The paradox again is that those moments give you back reason for staying on the train again in the first place. As you watch it disappearing round the bend.   Affirmations of living are important to those who dwell often in melancholy. We would trade our lives for but a moment in the sun. But then comes remembrance, responsibility and the emotions that tie us to this earth. The fantasy, it turns out is not enough, a return to obscure torture is demanded.( remanded?)   But the long dark night of the soul, after three or four sunrises does not seem so bad. It is no mystery to me why so many of the earliest religions worshipped the sun. What a super-yang-spirit-phenomenon with an accountability record like no other--except the moon. The moon! Ah, the moon! The Sumerians called her Sin. What a sultry-yin-spirit-perfectly diametrically opposed orb, with a compassion and regard like no other--except the sun! And when both are full and round, one comes up as the other goes down...   So, why is one of the subtitles of this essay The two Americas...? Well, because when you are sliding down the slippery slope from security to despair, or, as in my case, you've already hit bottom-- you encounter and entirely different set of connections and possibilities. Points of view become clear from which you were previously occluded. At least in my experience, a stirring of compassion, not just the daily kind, with which you commiserate with acquaintances over casually--but the electrifying kind, the feel it in the blood kind, that makes you compassionate with the oppressed, or the starving, or the brutalized, or the merely innocent.   It is not always apparent either. I am certain that others feel it. We only need to pay attention to the rants and tirades in our own speech. What angers you when you read the newspaper or watch the evening news?. Is it Abu graib? It is prices? Is it another politician revealed? It is when you begin to rail out loud when no one is around--it is during those moments when you most locate your brothers and sisters; your kindred spirits. Those who endure what you endure. Who have perhaps been enduring it for ages, or who will most likely have to endure further because nothing is being done. You lash at your future, their past. You fight the discrepancies in your own life choices--how you sold out--how you participate in your own downfall.   You shovel yourself from hovel to hovel in absurd and desperate acts. Vast confusion obscures the way to proceed.And so life can become an absurdists joke, and all you can do is try to keep it real, do you know what I am saying? Or, you can join in solidarity with those with whom you feel most alike with. There are forces which beckon at your door. Is it a wolf? Are the wolves at the door? Bloody likely.  Are they looking for food, a leader or a mate? Perhaps none. Perhaps all.   I find that I want to become a street thug. If my life were a story then the appropriate way to end this story, or at least chapter, would be for me to become a street thug; then everyone would live happily ever after.   As the Swedish American poet Lennart Bruce once wrote: '...there are occasions when a "lawless" community becomes more humane than a "society of law and order."  When reaching such a community's deepest layers, there sometimes remains a latitude for benevolence in its original form, free of legal technicalities, a pure compassion under utterly harsh conditions, a necessary goodness that emanates from the depths of the human soul." (From the introduction to The Second Light: Vilhelm Ekelund). This describes one of the two Americas.   The haves are on corporate retreats right now; they are taking their annual sales meetings down in Bermuda; they are ensconced in one of their many homes or are out spending a day at the spa. They talk about the Americans winning gold medals at the Olympics and chat surreptitiously about goings on in Washington. Then, they decide to meet for cocktails and toss their fears aside with a drink, a fine dinner and hopefully, a hot prospect.   The have-nots, well, they are mostly taking care of each other's children or parents because there is just not enough money, room, or food. The original struggle was subsumed by subsequent struggles. Too frequent are the times when you just want to kill someone who calls you a name, or who is already killing in the name of your country. The have-nots cannot afford so many funerals.   I want to walk down the middle of Main street, dressed as a street thug, with a towering sign over my head that says STOP BUSH NOW. I want to wear my street thug parka over my face to protect myself from hate. That will be the appropriate end to this story. The hippiewife artist finally flips out and becomes a street thug. Then I can start a new story. I can begin to transmute the stagnant hatred --the hatred that gets into me, runs through me and then back outagain, and then holds me still, and holds everyone still, no matter how many bombs they throw. In the next story the heroine will heal herself by transforming the hate into something as un-mysterious as help.