Tag: dpearcewrites

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JOIN ME? IN THE BEWILDERNESS

I spent a transformative hour this morning in the Bewilderness with poet Ellis Elliott. I signed up for her course and spent an hour with a group of other authors as we put the rubber on the road and wrote in response to two poems Ellis shared with us. I struggle with giving my own writing practice the time and respect it deserves, so it took a lot of hemming and hawing for me to allow myself to spend this money on myself/my writing, to register, and think I was even three minutes late, as I found other things that definitely needed to be done right away before I joined the class. During the session, which lasted the perfect amount of time, IMHO, we each came up with two pieces. They were remarkably different, and some (mine, I’m going to say) were less polished than others, which was fine, because polish isn’t the point. What is the point is going barefoot in the grass, or, in my case, the mud. Getting in there and feeling it is the point, and getting it down on the stubbornly Teflon pages I always seem to have… Why won’t my writing stick there? Well’p, it stuck today. And, guess what: no one says a peep about anyone else’s writing, so it is 100% a safe space where you create, and off you go into your own ether, unmolested by critique. 

I loved it, and I cannot recommend it enough. 

Why don’t you sign-up already?

Bewilderness Writing

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WHAT TO DO POST-RUMPOCALYPSE

Here’s my suggestion on what we should do, if anyone is interested.

The situation: The Republicans, and the people who vote them into office, currently, have a culture of grievance.

For example: college is too hard, and they want good jobs without it, and they also don’t want others going to college and being successful because then they feel less-than. They don’t want vaccines or masks, and they don’t want us to have them, in case it gives us an edge, and so forth and so on. Right? “We want to be miserable, and we want you to be miserable too.”
And “We love eating tacos and Chinese food, but we don’t want them people around us.”

One way to respond to that is this:

1. Women/LGBTQIA folks move to safe(r) places, like California, as much as possible. There are many places where it is affordable in CA still. Don’t count a place out as a safe place to go because you think it is too pricey.

2. Create support groups in as many places as possible, but especiually safe spaces were folks might migrate too.

3. Women/LGBTQIA/immigrants seek remote jobs, as much as possible, to facilitate #1.

4. Women who can hire, hire women/LGBTQIA/immigrants (train them if needed, hire them while they’re still working toward a degree).

5. Women who can become landlords to other women: rent your extra space to a single mom, an immigrant, an lgbtqia person, a foster kid, etc. Create your own safe spaces.

6. Women who are able to mentor other women, do so.

7. Help other women have access to birth control, explain it to them, buy it for them, so that they don’t end up needing an abortion. Think of all females old enough to menstruate (some girls start at age 9) as WOMEN, and, if you know one, give her information early. Give her encouragement too.

8. Avoid grievance yourself. Not that we don’t deserve it, but make a conscious effort to be the people of “This isn’t what I like? I’ll try to fix it,” rather than to complain about it. Attempting to fix things is much more empowering.
Use rage for good. Right? Because we’re not going to change the minds of JDRump voters, and the Republicans can do almost anything they want to do now. We can’t make policy or change the courts, and they reject our beliefs of education, freedom, openness to different peoples and cultures, etc.

So we do things for us, anyway, in spite of them, in places where we can do them, and we help other marginalized people to freedom and safety and gainful employment and a decent place to live, as much as we can.
Together we can help each other, and make the unlivable, livable.