pleasuring oneself

it is always interesting to me to watch japonisme as waves, washing over the west over the decades, as this is highlighted in one year, and that in another. from its first faces in the haystacks and bridges of the impressionists, still painted with the hand of the west, through the blossom of the poster with its asymmetry, blocks of color, outlines, and more, and on through to the beginning of the art deco years.

it is in those years, the 20s and 30s, the jazz age with its flappers and charm, that we see some of the most clearly influenced images of all: the chic simplicity of the faces of women. in magazines (and on their covers), and on the covers too of sheet music, we see as nowhere else an almost perfect uh, mirroring of the faces of the bijin in the japanese prints.

throughout the west posters, magazines, illustrated sheet music proliferated for many of the same reasons, which continuously fed back into each other: the development of modern printing, modern communication and modern transportation technologies passed new styles and info around the world as quickly as they used to pass around town after a sunday morning in church.

this is the moment when the ideal woman's body became elongated and ultra-thin, just as utamaro had fantasized in his prints. everything now must be streamlined, swift, be it autos, trains, buildings, costumes, or, of course, women. the requirement of 'charm,' was forwarded by 'movie stars,' (in her book 'charm,' actress margery wilson insisted, among much else, that 'girls' must learn to walk on 'one line,' not 'two lines.' try it.)

as women's freedom grew, so grew the strictures by which she must present herself physically. the mirror of this in the sixties are the books 'fascinating womanhood,' by helen andelin and 'the feminine mystique,' by betty friedan as analyzed brilliantly by holly welker in bitch magazine. (note: at the time, i found myself in both consciousness-raising groups and fascinating womanhood classes. come to think of it, the second actually led me to the first.)

from bitch: '[where] In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan complains that "the only passion, the only pursuit, the only goal a woman is permitted is the pursuit of a man," Andelin insists that a “fascinating woman” finds happiness precisely by assuming a secondary status and lacking an inner life. Being infantile, manic, pixie-ish, and dreamy [is] posited as an important ingredient in attracting a mate, which is the most important element of female happiness.'

in yet another iteration of several of my favorite themes i look at how malleable we as women are expected to be, even more so as we assume increased power. in any number of ways what is likely a majority of women still include a husband and children in their 'must haves.' and as long as that remains true, the girdles and facepaint will remain in the weekend bag. and it will always remain true.

sitting getting my taxes done last month in a small office surrounded by three other menopausal women, i was surprised that i was the only one to whom it had occurred that if 'mating' ceased to be a goal (and yes, that included getting laid), the need for so many other things fall away as well. we get to please ourselves, pretty much for the first time. it can be hard, but, ladies & gentlemen, it sure is sweet.

notes from the internets

You can't prevent poets and writers from comparing women to flowers in the same way that you can never tell designers to stop bombarding runways with floral maxi dresses when it is time to showcase their spring/summer collections -- considering the name of the season itself implies as such. 1

There is an awful lot of debate still ongoing about the running of the F1 in Bahrain. The pretty odious Bernie Eccelstone , whos hobbies include comparing women to domestic appliances and praising hitler has said that the raging battles for democracy in the state are nothing to do with him. 2

TOO MANY ASSHOLES ON MY FACEBOOK TONIGHT ARE COMPARING WOMEN TO APPLIANCES…

I JUST WANT TO SMACK THEM IN THE FACE!!!I AM NOT LIKE A FRIDGE OR A VACUUM CLEANER, OR A VENDING MACHINE. I AM A FUCKING HUMAN BEING WHO DESERVES MORE THAN YOU WRITING A WITTY CRITICISM OF HOW YOU WANT ‘YO WOMAN’ TO ACT. ESPECIALLY WHEN ONE OF THEM IS A FAMILY MEMBER.

I SOMETIMES WANT TO SCREAM 3

Here's a Georgia Repub, comparing women to pigs, cows, and sheep: "State Rep. Terry England was speaking in favor of HB 954, which makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks even if the woman is known to be carrying a stillborn fetus or the baby is otherwise not expected to live to term. 4

Preibus wasn't comparing women to caterpillars. He was pointing out how rediculous it is to point to poll numbers (rather than actions) as proof this 'war' exists. 5

The authors believe in wild oats and are full of advice for sowing them: comparing women to wines, for instance, they suggest trying "the mellowness of experience" as well as the "exuberance of youth," and the pleasures of oral sex are not neglected. 6

You can't prevent poets and writers from comparing women to flowers....

... a red red rose, maybe?....

(this all written, still, heart in my throat)

perhaps i'll cry

there is one reason why i have not torn out my hair nor moved to wordpress (nor have i posted, though): a couple of years back, google decided that any user like me who was still using the old format could just forget accurate links to older posts if they were foolhardy enough to not want to update.

like now, there was a huge uproar which went on and on. if i recall correctly, even when a googmanager did post it was not very friendly. but we perservered in our protest.

finally, someone wrote some little fix that we oldies could tack onto our templates and make it work for older posts. why they didn't do it sooner i do not know.

but this is the only reason i am slightly optimistic even after all the heedless bullshit: they have made right, at least once, in the past.

meanwhile, while this GUI is still available, i might as well use it; the making of this blog seems to have been encoded in my cells after all these years; it organizes how i think.

meanwhile, check out this endlessly marvelous (new?) site featuring wondrous sheet music cover art. but only go when you have a lot of time to spare.

fever

Never know how much I love you,

Never know how much I care.
When you put your arms around me,
I get a fever that's so hard to bear.

You give me fever,
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
Fever all through the night.

Sun lights up the daytime
And moon lights up the night..
I light up when you call my name
And you know I'm gonna treat you right

You give me fever
When you kiss me,
Fever when you hold me tight.
Fever! In the morning,
And fever all through the night

Everybody's got the fever

That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago

Romeo loved Juliette
Juliette she felt the same
When he put his arms around her he said,
"Julie, baby, you're my flame

"Thou giveth fever

"When we kisseth
"Fever with thy flaming youth
"Fever! I'm afire,
"Fever, yeah, I burn, forsooth."

Cap'in Smith and Pocahontas
had a very mad affair
When her daddy tried to kill him
She said,"Daddy, oh, don't you dare!

"He gives me fever with his kisses
"Fever when he holds me tight
"Fever! I'm his Mrs,
So"Daddy, won't you treat him right?"

Now you've listened to my story,
Here's the point that I have made:
Chicks were born to give you fever,
Be it Fahrenheit or Centigrade

They give you fever
When you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn
Fever! 'till you sizzle

what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn
what a lovely way to burn

THE DELIGHT SONG OF TSOAI-TALEE

I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind

I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star
I am the cold of dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake

I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things

You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive

N. Scott Momaday

from In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961-1991. Copyright ©1991 by N. Scott Momaday

Haven't They Always Been Saints?

Washington D.C., Jan 20, 2012 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News)

The recent announcement that Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha has been approved for sainthood is generating great excitement among the Native American community. “There’s an awful lot of interest,” said Monsignor Paul A. Lenz, the vice postulator of Bl. Kateri’s cause for sainthood. Msgr. Lenz told CNA on Jan. 19 that he has seen an “unbelievable response” to the news of the canonization, with reactions pouring in from all over the United States and Canada. Msgr. Lenz, who previously worked in the Black and Indian Mission Office in Washington, D.C., said that Native Americans are extremely excited about having a saint come from within their own community.

Although the date for the canonization has not yet been announced, he said that multiple groups are already organizing pilgrimages to Rome to be present when the first Native American is officially elevated to sainthood. When the date for the canonization is made public, Msgr. Lenz believes it will attract lots of attention in both the religious and secular media.

Known as “the Lily of the Mohawks,” Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha was born in upstate New York in 1656. Her father was a Mohawk chief, and her mother was an Algonquin who was raised Catholic. She was orphaned at age four by a smallpox epidemic that left her with poor eyesight and a badly scarred face. After encountering several Jesuit priests, Bl. Kateri was baptized, despite objections from her family.

Her conversion caused her tribe to disown her, so Bl. Kateri fled to Canada, where she lived as an outcast, devoted to prayer and the Blessed Sacrament. She died at age 24. After her death, witnesses said that the scars on her face disappeared, leaving her skin radiantly beautiful.

In 1980, she became the first Native American to be beatified. On Dec. 19, Pope Benedict XVI formally recognized a miracle attributed to the intercession of Bl. Tekakwitha, clearing the way for her canonization. The miracle involved a young boy in Seattle who was inexplicably cured from a flesh-eating bacteria that had disfigured his face and left him near death.

Msgr. Lenz said that the boy, who is of Native American descent, looked “worse than a leper.” However, he completely recovered after his family prayed and asked Bl. Kateri to intercede with God for him.

Msgr. Lenz explained that Catholic Native Americans have a strong faith and devotion to Bl. Kateri, whom they are familiar with from the Jesuit writings that have been handed down since the time of her death. In his 35 years of working with Native Americans, Msgr. Lenz has found that they are almost “always a friend” of Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha. “They’re very proud” of her, he said. (from)

But... wait a minute...! All of the notables here are pictured with halos, and for good reason.

By the Jewish calendar, we are currently in the holiday of Passover, where Jews celebrate with a ritualized dinner called a Seder. (The Last Supper was a Seder.) There is a word sung in a joyous song at the Passover Seder. The word is Dayenu and means “it would have been enough.” It is a word of gratitude and awe. 1 Dayenu lists the 15 gifts and miracles (like parting the Red Sea) bestowed upon the Jewish people by God in the Book of Exodus. The idea that each blessing would be enough on its own, even without further or more profound blessings, is a central theme during the holiday. 2

Looking back at the deserved sainthood of may generations of Native Americans, I think we can make a Dayenu for them easily.

If you had brought us seeds and foodstuffs in exchange for blankets of disease -- Dayenu!

If you had honorably tended your land and kept your faiths in the face of those who would steal both from you -- Dayenu!

If you had taught us to tap the Sugar Maple for her sweetness while your voices were silenced -- Dayenu!

You begin to see what I mean. May we all spend our Easter and Passover goodwill on tolerance and respect, perhaps the most difficult tasks any human being has to face.

don't believe a thing i say!

okay, april fools and all that, but i'm not completely kidding (and since i didn't finish this yesterday, it might not count anyway). sometimes in the mythologies i try to untangle for you i get some things seriously wrong for one main reason: i forget to check the dates. in fact i wouldn't be sur- prised if i haven't attributed some things to some artists that happened long before, or long after, they died. i hope you know what i mean!

let us begin with, for example, gustave courbet who died at age 58, in 1877. he was born in 1819. obviously. see his example above right? very natural clouds. no outlines. (they really tend to not have any outlines; i have been checking.) and then we have hokusai: all outlines, nothing realistic about them. while he was born in 1760, he was producing artwork until his death in 1849. quite an overlap in lives, these two. the moment of japonisme would have passed hokusai by completely, while all of courbet's training and experience, and the way he saw, were set by the time of the invasion.

now to put these generational questions into some context, may i mention that hiroshige lived from 1797 to 1858 (getting closer to courbet, aren't we?) and monet lived from 1840 to 1926. monet, the impressionists, were the first artists to imbibe from the teacup of the japanese, but the next gener- ation made things extremely interesting. there were the cowboy painters, painers of the mesas of utah and arizona, dixon, cassidy, and borg: realistic clouds with outlines.

they were the next generation; they, these brilliant western painters, were of the same generation as some of the artists we have gotten to know well over the years: henri riviere, pierre bonnard, frances gearhart, and, only slightly younger, hiroshi yoshida. yoshida did not even begin to make prints (he had been a western-style painter, as they were called then) until he was in his 40s -- one year before arthur wesley dow died!

what this boils down to is that any illustration i have given you of influences yoshida may have had on dow are completely erroneous! arthur wesley dow's birth (1857 - 1922) occurred one year before hiroshige died! dow was more a contemporary of monet than the many proponents of japonisme with whom i have linked him; dow was, as was monet, the first wave -- the primogenitor of influences of japonisme, and not any part of the gang.

henri riviere, pierre bonnard, carl oscar borg, maynard dixon, and hiroshi yoshida all died within four years of my birth. these donors of legacy are no further in the past than is world war II. these artists are of the generation of my grandparents, or great-grandparents. in other words, we still swim in their stream. there was no flood diverting it.

so with regard to clouds (and we have discussed them before; just click on the 'clouds' tag to see the other discussions), we now have a much clearer line of inheritance: it is obvious that the japanese gave us outlines and we gave them perspective. they gave us simplicity and we gave them the multi-pigmented shades of color of which the world is built.

see here the same cloud, albeit different times of day, as offered by frances gearhart and hiroshi yoshida. many similarities. yoshida's work presents far more subtleties than does hokusai's, and gearhart's far more outlining and simplifying than courbet's. but who learned from whom? do they more accurately owe each other a debt as do artists working at the same time? i think they do.

Change is Gonna Come

it is your final quarter, and you begin to realize that you will never in this lifetime learn the answers to every burning question you carry and net even counting The Big Ones, i mean the daily important (to you) ones, like Who is the Artist(s) for the Issues of St. Nicholas and Munsey Magazines Below?

a season begins and there are too many changes to process. two doctors disappear and another moves 20 miles further away. one replacement doctor is nice, but the other is six feet tall (i'm 4'11". having shrunk) then sits me in a normal chair while she settles astride the largest balance ball i have ever seen. she's peers down at me from an ungodly height, then emails, accusing me of "trying to get away with something" with regards to my meds which i don't understand at all.

i need to crawl under the covers. i need to pray for rain. i need the saturation of primary colors. i need a new crossword puzzle. i need a bath.

i know it's easy to say 'i'm having a senior moment,' when in fact you've always been this forgetful, this addled, this easily roused.

Two other things happen in this moment, increasing its feel of import. have i ever told you about mary ellen robertson? yes, i see that i have. best friend from high school, though i haven't exactly been able to explain why, and why, after hearing of her death, the only thing i could do to find relief was to shave my head, and it is shaven still.

last month on pbs, there was a full show from broadway of Memphis. see it. in it a character sings of a moment that changed his life in The Music of My Soul. he was a white southern christian boy, but that was the moment that black music started being heard by white ears.

the character, Huey, sings: When I was a young boy/ My daddy sat me down/ He said “son, don’t you never go / To the dark side of town/ I’m talking downtown Memphis/ See, that’s where the black folk play”/ And I said “Yes sir daddy”/ And then I snuck down anyway/ See never was taught to read none/ Oh no never taught to write/ The only thing my daddy taught/ Was white should stay with white/ But I heard it through the alleys/ It floated on the breeze/ It burst out through the doorways/ And it knocked me to my knees/ It broke down all of my senses/ And make me feel so good/ See I was lost but now I found/ The music of my soul /The music of my soul.

this was me and mary, see. she knew the music. i taught her how to dance. this song, this musical, at last allowed me to specifically name mary's and my bond by its true name: mary & me found soul. this touched me more deeply than anything other than hearing of her death has touched me in a long while. there is something so integral about this moment it is like watching my birth through a window. the moment of recognition.

TRYING TO NAME WHAT DOESN'T CHANGE

Roselva says the only thing
that doesn’t change
is train tracks. She’s sure of it.
The train changes,
or the weeds that grow up spidery
by the side, but not the tracks.
I’ve watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break,
doesn’t grow.

Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train
is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn’t change.

Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire
in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried
under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its
ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it
every time.

Naomi Shihab Nye
from Words Under the Words:
Selected Poems
(Portland, Oregon:
Far Corner Books, 1995).
Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

as my mind kept cataloguing the changes i couldn't keep up with, the flock of Cedar Waxwings came to the cotoneaster, covered in red berries. it felt like it had been forever since i had seen them. wasn't this the wrong time of year?

when i moved into this house -- it'll be 20 years in august -- i began a bird record-book. that way i could learn who was who, and when they came. this has led to some amazing 'coincidences' -- ie. things that often occur simultaneously, year after year, without announcing themselves. simple to not note. yet because of the book i noticed that a baby hawk sat at the top of the tallest tree being dive-bombed by all sorts of other birds on july 25 and 26 in 1995 and 1996, and that the hooded oriole showed up in the same week in '94, '96, and '98.

it feels like everything changes, until you look more closely. the waxwings have landed the first week in march in 1997, 1998, 2003, and 2008. and again this year. they were right on time.