On This Gray Morning

Let’s remember the dead.

Five years ago, I felt a peculiar, very organic, animalistic sense of dread. Now I feel as though there is very little justice in this world, or perhaps none at all, and nothing matters much, but the slogans matter least of all.

“He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” – James Joyce.

I am a Fatalist

Even after the gut-wrenching S & M Jesus, “‘Sugartits,” the insistence that Jews are responsible for every bad thing in the universe starting with the pimple on my chin, and a wife turned into a “rock” and a baby-machine, I still find myself having the occasional indecent thought about Mel Gibson.

Eat that, crazy (azure-eyed like me) Catholic. You’re leading me into sin (our babies would have those azure eyes as well). Hypocrite.

The Passion of the Natalia

The passion here is writing, of course, and the topic of the evening is writing groups. Or, more specifically Mythical Writing Groups That Don’t Actually Suck.

This post on Miss Snark brought back some unpleasant memories, you see.

When I was a delicious little bebe, I kept trying to join a writing group. The first one, in high school, fell apart due to apathy and gossip.

The second one, a local community thingie, was populated by horrible, horrible people. One was a convicted felon, very boastful of his past, who had a habit of trying to pet my knee when he talked. I was fifteen, and very frightened, as was the friend who came with me. Another guy in that group wrote long soliloquies about wanting to pop Viagra and get laid. A third one fell asleep and snored.

The women were generally better, but we were all essentially drowning in the mis-placed testosterone of a bunch of guys that thought that if they joined a writing groupd, they would get to meet all these buttoned-down, secretly shameless sexy librarian types who are all dying to read a few quick lines of Shakespeare by the moonlight before getting down and dirty. I stopped going after a handful of meetings.

I joined a writing forum for a while, but things there became ridiculously politically correct and frighteningly structured. If you were a woman, writing about a female character, and happened to mention something about “breasts” or “underwear,” you were taken to task for being “perverse” or “romance-novel-ish.” Right. Bugger that idea.

Last fall, I took a very helpful writing class in creative nonfiction. For the first time, I saw the way in which a proper writing group ought to operate. But now that I live outside the confines of the university, I am frightened to venture out to the bookstores and community centers in search of a writing group I can call my own.

Are there any normal ones out there? Hello?

Hello?

Get Your Damn Priorities Straight

From Feministe.

“Colombian Catholic Church Excommunicates All Involved in 11-year-old Rape Victim’s Abortion.”

No word on whether or not they actually excommunicated the adult male rapist, although I doubt it.

I have no problem with the excommunication per se, but that’s because I’d never consider converting to Catholicism in the first place. I wouldn’t want to be part of an institution that would require a child, or any victim of sexual assault, to carry a pregnancy that resulted from said assault to term. I would happily tell this (male-dominated) institution to take a flying *bleep* on a rolling doughnut, with no offense to my Catholic friends. That sort of thing is not for me, and neither it is, I suspect, for the people involved in the abortion. Congratulations on your excommunication, guys.

When terminating a child rape-survivor’s pregnancy is considered a bigger deal than the actual rape of a child, I have to wonder just what value is being placed on the life, well-being, and dignity of the little girl. This is one of many cases wherein the rapist’s actions are obscured by the so-called “larger picture.” The fact that he is not being excommunicated speaks volumes.

For as long as females are considered, by some, to be walking baby-making machines, “vessels,” and “receptacles,” this sort of madness will, I believe, continue. Abortion is horrible, unthinkable, and brutal to these people, but a rape is something more natural, something they are certainly willing to deal with, particularly if the male perpetrator “feels bad,” and I am sure he has already told the Church officials this much.

I wonder how the Church is treating him anyway. Are officials bringing him cookies in jail? “Moving him to a different parish” (kudos to a clever commenter on Feministe)?

And what sorts of dealings are they going to have with the little girl? Is she going to be raised to believe she is a “murderer”? I certainly hope not.