Yom Kippur (belated) and Endings in General

Yom Kippur has been very challenging for me in the past, and this year I came to understand why, and to begin to move into a new stage. I think that it is challenging for me because it emphasizes endings, and because it emphasizes the impossibility of finding closure. I used to hate it because I interpreted the liturgy and ritual structure as actually intending for people to feel at some point that they have expiated, via perfection in repentance and intense self-beration. As someone who tends to be obsessive and a little self-hating anyway, this was a recipe for disaster. I ultimately walked out of a Yom Kippur meditation service a few years ago because I was feeling so paralyzed by the process.

I've also had similar trouble with appreciating nature, as disconnected the two themes seem to be. Three things that I really loved at one point were autumn leaves, snow, and waterfalls. And I live in an area where those three things are all plentiful. But I have tended to go in and out of periods in which I find myself staring at beautiful landscapes and thinking "Why can't I appreciate this the way I once did? Why doesn't it 'click'?" And the longer I stay there, and the harder I try, the worse it gets. And, of course, Yom Kippur is in the fall, so I tended to have this double dose of "I'm somehow unable to be appropriately affected by my experience." (Even Rosh Hashana has some of the same feeling, because I felt like, "This is the New Year, I am supposed to feel like I am transitioning, like I am ready for the new and able to leave the old behind, but I just can't get there. " I guess there's a reason that religious ceremonies and compulsions are both called "rituals.")

Wild Palms/If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem

I read Faulkner's novel Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem] yesterday.  I was led to read it because a friend had the quote "Between grief and nothing I will take grief" on his gchat status, which struck me as very personally relevant right now, so I asked him about it and found out that it was from Wild Palms. The book intrigued me even more because the more recent title (If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem) is a reference to Psalm 137, which I am newly familiar with this year thanks to observing Tisha B'Av for the first time.

**WARNING: BEGINNING OF SPOILERS**
So, the book is two stories interwoven, "Wild Palms" and "Old Man." In "Wild Palms," I was struck by the romantic relationship between the two protagonists. The basic thing is that the man, Wilbourne, falls in love with a married woman, Charlotte, and the two go off together, with the husband's bitter consent. Throughout the story, Wilbourne and Charlotte have conversations about the nature of marriage and love. Time after time, they uproot themselves from whatever life they are living, when they start feeling "too married." When Wilbourne feels bad about not always being able to support Charlotte (he has difficulty finding jobs because employers find out that he is "living in sin"), Charlotte reminds him that she didn't go off with him because she wanted another husband. The arrangement that they have is a fairly scathing comment on marriage--and, not incidentally, on capitalism. The two choose to live in very harsh conditions, because it seems that only under conditions of physical suffering and financial scarcity are they able to maintain some kind of authenticity of feeling. Every time they drift toward stability and comfort, they find themselves bound up in the pursuit of "respectability"--which seems to terrify them more than anything else.

Hamekhinah (Three-Part Chant)

Based on one of the blessings in Birchot Hashachar.  Getting grounded is something I often need a little extra help with, so I thought this liturgical excerpt would be a good choice 😉

On retroactively convincing myself to go out on my bike on a summer Saturday evening to raid post-yard-sale free piles

Because it’s cooler now,

because I can,

and because last Saturday I found a red fleece body suit and Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast.

Because if I take my bike out on a jaunt I will subsequently be more motivated to bring it inside so that it doesn’t get rained on (that’s the real reason),

because it’s not actually as dark as I thought,

because this is the only time when I’ll find myself on Auburn Street for any other reason besides being lost,

because who knew there was this burnt-out building in the middle of town, and who knew it was a music center,

and because my body knows to avoid the hard places, except when it takes me directly to them, like for example, here’s where my ex-girlfriend used to live, and here’s where my never-girlfriend used to live.

Because there’s an easel and it’s free but it won’t fit in my backpack,

because there are too many words in my head and I need to clear them out,

because there DEFINITELY are too many words in my head because that was a huge pothole that I almost just landed in,

because if I go far enough in any direction I will hit the highway,

because not everyone in this town is rich, who knew,
like when my brother and I biked behind the grocery store and found the trailer park and the soggy mattresses by the polluted stream where the homeless people camp, and we biked through silently, and when we biked out I looked at him and he looked at me, and he said, well the fish restaurant wasn’t in there,

and because this is the fourth cat I’ve seen.

Because that car let me have the right-of-way, to take a left turn, in the dark, on my bike,

because that’s free, but it’s an armchair, and won’t fit in my backpack,

because you’d think a mosquito couldn’t hold on when I’m going this fast,

and because that dark thing is the river, let’s not bike into it, folks.

Because I like biking on bridges, one pedal-thrust up the arch, then glide across and down,

because that’s the second pile of free flowerpots that I’ve seen, and they would fit in my backpack, but I need to keep up my reputation as a plant-killer,

because if this is a good neighborhood for foreign-exchange-student-host-family-seeking flyers, probably it’s not a good neighborhood for garage-sale-leftover free piles,

and because when did garage sales start being called yard sales, and why didn’t anyone notify me?

Because I mean I know this town is by a lake, but, I mean, it really smells like lake out here,

because that’s free but it’s a birdfeeder nailed to a two-by-four and come on people, that really can’t fit in my backpack,

because there’s a shopping cart on that corner and people conferring quietly around a pickup truck on that corner, and I know enough not to hesitate, to just keep going,

because that’s my professor’s house, isn’t it, yes it is, no it’s not, yes it is,

because I have to choose between impaling myself with that crabapple branch and impaling those people with my handlebar, easy choice,

because that looks like a free box but actually it’s someone’s recycling,

and because I’m okay with these words wilting and dying in the humidity before they make it inside and onto paper.

Slim pickins tonight.

Feminist Responses to Sex Work: Healing the Wounds of Patriarchy, Capitalism, and Classism

What do we mean when we speak of sex work? Sex work is essentially any form of labor in which persons receive money in return for using their bodies in some way to titillate or arouse their customers. Broadly, then, sex workers include pornographic models, phone sex operators, high-priced escorts, street hookers, and even sexual surrogates. Some sex workers are self-employed, and some work for bosses (sometimes called madams or pimps) or companies. Sex workers include people of all genders, races, classes, and nationalities, although people who start out with more marginalized identities are likely to find themselves operating under more stringent working conditions.

Sex work is not monolithic. Within every country, every city, and every branch of the profession, there is a diverse range of experiences. Nevertheless, sex work is often discussed as if it were one single issue, a “topic” that can be defended or opposed. In this essay, since I am focused on analyzing these modern feminist responses to sex work (I will only be considering responses since second-wave feminism), I will be omitting discussion of many of the (especially gendered and raced) complexities of sex-worker experience; however, it is important to keep in mind this present absence.