"Are those Turkish brownies?"

I help run a group for girls at Urban. It's called Students for Women's Equity and Rights (SWEAR). Helping out with the group involves running their online conference/discussion. I try to keep my voice to a minumum on there to give the students more space; sometimes, I am inspired to post something. What's below is in response to girls writing about their ambivalence on being "feminine."

* * *

Circular narrative ahead...

I made brownies for some friends. One of them asked, "Are those Turkish brownies?" I thought about it for a second. I did follow my mom's recipe, and she is Turkish, but...these are just brownies. I didn't realize brownies had a nationality. I said (insert smartass tone here:), "well, I made them, so yes, I guess they are 'Turkish'." Other times, when I do something that puzzles people and they ask, "Is that a Turkish thing to do?" with a sort of innocence in their voice that comes from lacking information ("ignorance" sounds too harsh here), I say, "Well, I did it, so it must be, I suppose."

I think about what it means to be feminine in the same way. When I climb up to an apartment's balcony to let in a friend who just locked himself out and he says I'm "so butchie," I get annoyed. No. If I am going to fit into one of those dichotomies, it's probably "femmy," and this is what "femmy" looks like because I am feminine and I did just climb up a railing and hoist myself up into a balcony.

I am a woman. Whatever I do, then, is womanly/feminine.


tk

_________________________
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.
:: James Baldwin ::

a half-baked idea...

I've been thinking about not teaching full time
...because I value time more than money.

I want time to read, write, be guiltfree on a beach on a Sunday (grading day!), do art.
15 essays fewer a week means over 6 hours of additional free time -- that's huge! That's an entire Sunday afternoon reading Baldwin instead of essays on "Othello" by adolescents who think they can analyze a man's internalized racism in two double-spaced pages.

I mentioned the idea to my department chair today. As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt a little scared. The idea is now out there in the world; it's a real possibility now.

It sounds simple maybe...

It's not.

If this doesn't work financially, and I am finding that I am not able to make ends meet, I can't just get a job at a cafe. I can't temp. I can't register as a sub. I am on a work visa, and the only employer that can -legally- give me money for my work is my current employer.

If I commit to being part time and it doesn't quite work out the way I am hoping it will...well, I guess there is always dog walking and baby sitting and tutoring folks on Craigslist for cash.

Yes, the idea of going part time and voicing it in front of my department chair scared me, oddly...and that is precisely how come I think I need to consider the option.


(Any comments?)

Rain and leaf stencils in San Francisco

Ever since I went back to Fort Funston and spent some hours in a late afternoon's mist and an early evening's fire-lit quietude, I've been ready for the rain.

At the end of a long day of classes and meetings, on my way back home, I walked up Dolores Street in the light rain and smiled. Up the hill from 18th Street to my block were the haiku moments I had been missing in my life and more, all within a three-block walk.

The negative-space trace of trees on the concrete made from rain falling between leaves.
Leaves so yellow they seem to insist on their color even lying still on the gray sidewalk in the dark.

I have been in this city long enough to know that several of these leaves will be stepped on with just enough force, just enough times, by just enough people, at just the right pace, and the rain will cease and the sun will come out from behind the clouds for just long enough that the concrete sidewalk will be stenciled with dry fallen leaves for a couple of days.