Sheeba's Dirge

"I seek to root out the phallic mother from her real and imaginary place at the heart of what I call psychoanalytic modernism."-- Marcia Ian in her introduction.

I was fascinated by Milkman as a young girl, and yet, I have turned my back in defiance on the old guard of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker in my old age, and yes, it troubles me, especially as I accept the science of evolution. Our DNA is primarily African. We're all hermaphrodites modified from a basic female template, and embryos go awry, much as I did, but biological explanations are one thing. Social dynamics are another, and I am not predisposed to be optimistic about transhumanism or our future, merging ourselves to technology and robotics. Perhaps I demand too much of Toni Morrison, demand solutions of her that I absolve in Richard Wright or Ralph Ellison. I respect Ellison. Invisible Man is as yet an argument in my psyche, still wrestling in the ring, with little love lost, on my part, for African American contra indicators as Philadelphia and other venues have presented it. Certainly there is a difference between behavior and the equality of opportunity, but equality is a bad thing. It lies about strata. It lies about caste and it lies about difference, dependence, and fails to address what liberty and freedom are in a world burgeoned with a successful species that is toppling under its own weight. The stupidity of how we entertain ourselves, whored to impulse products and mediocrity of content, and by the same token, to dazzle with masterpieces, is at the same time disjunctive with routines, patterns we fall into, aging into risk adversity, sating appetite with culinary ambitions, intensity of erogenous sensation.

The deft cruelty of Baker's character in Prada toward Hathaway's Sachs is something no woman ever truly gets over. She moves on, wises up about sexual motives, but that deflating blow against superlative romantic inclination shows what can be done with a golden boy vanity in the right hands, despite the fact that Baker comes off as vapid and somewhat clueless when lending himself out for interviews, or doing banal move to DVD flicks like S&D 101. Nothing wrong with a light sexual comedy that makes fun of itself, but no idiot would mistake a sick old woman in the dark for a centerfold offering coitus for being a good front. The script and direction could have been slightly more integral, biting, at least sufficient to offer pause. Oversexed as we are, we shield ourselves from the consequences of aging, the inability of the medical model to do anything but contain the decline, offer props. Oxygen, catheters, face lifts. We break, yet epitomize the vanity of perfect chic and the convenience of style, with less fortunate in looks relegated to being lesbian office assistants.

Shirley

Simon Baker's little escapade with Winona serves as an example of why I do not utilize comedies all that often. I am interviewing a student this afternoon, and if the student doesn't work I talked with another resident's CNA, whose name is, in fact, Shirley (score a double entendre for Hazel, as I did not realize my post title was playing second base) and may simply wind up with her after my viola training with Craigslist.

At this point I anticipate offering the horn of Africa visitation rights while I take a fugue conniption in a sand dune. My mother was, cruelly put, skid marks in a fat lady's underwear, which is why I have not the least idea when it was last I wore panties, as I'm an impaction on a roll, like my ex, Frank, indolent on stained underliners. Taupin, of course, meant "Stinker," to be a subversive celebration of the sixties counter culture, but being the real thing is the source of much of my masochism: if not my father threatening my life, then my landlord always in a state of warfare. Never changes. I could stop writing and simply police my own odor borne clutter and it still would not change. I have a complex and graphic story I am working on still called "The Monsters That Go Bump" where I try to offer my readers a visual of my assault as it happened rather than abstracting it in an essay. I still get heart palpitations when I remember it. I based my main character on a dead social worker, but what I have to take care not to be too blatant about in a blog post I let all hell break loose in this fiction, and the crippled woman, under therapy for it in prison, kills her quite innocent attendant in revenge for the assault.

It is a hard story, one I may never finish and may fain find a publisher for, as I make no apologies for its glittering hatreds. Not that I plan any harm to any paraprofessionals, but I hate them all. Most of them. Hate is the one emotion that streams a constant in my fountain. This one woman who contacted me sounds incredibly devout, so upon turning it over she's a skip, almost an anachronism, much like Shirley Booth, in a dinosaur age.