citrus dreams, why are we a luxury?

to be or not to be:

conference registration: $80ish
hotel, 2 nights: $170
gas in a failing car with no radio, high probability of falling asleep at the wheel: $150ish
overpriced food, hard to find vegan stuff, end up eating granola & diet coke: $30
drinks: $30
childcare: $40

or:
dinner with the kids at taquiera: $20
finally seeing Coraline with JRiver $3 (cheap movies)
hoe for weeds outside $10
lunch date w/ son: $20
printer paper: $3
evening w/ JRiver, looking at the plants @ Home depot that we can’t buy: priceless
hotel fee for not canceling reservations: $80

exactly my point. Yeah I would have learned alot, meet a few mujeres I respect, scribbled notes about this or that, felt inadequately out of place 80% of the time, an ya probably I’ll regret not going but I’m not there right now. And yeah it feels like all around everyone is failing, everyone deserved a big fuck you all around with a hearty helping of go to hell. Yeah I tried to hook up with other folks who were going but they’d already made arrangements and meetings are never made with single mamis in mind are they, who might work and who’s kids might need to go to sleep early? And hello, not to mention the pain that is with me, which you probably don’t know because you don’t ask about. Hell, I remember the easiness of having meetings in my house but also the headache of needing to have it clean, plus food available plus entertaining the kids plus if it was on a school night, making sure they were taking showers/doing homework. Because I don’t even know why I, we, try.
This is the way it will be, I make no great expectations.
And I remember why I said fuck it to all.

I wrote this back towards the end of March, the essay turned into a 2,000 word blog that I decided to make into a zine, but then I felt, why bother.But this portion pretty much sums it up, the repeated fucked up of opportunities gone to hell.

And again I find myself wanting to attend this or that and really it’s just not feasible. For example, earlier this year I was awarded an artist/writer in residency at Alma De Mujer in Austin, a one week retreat for women of color writers & artists. The opportunity is awesome right, to be made valid in this way was exciting.

Then reality set in.

A week-away from home.

How exactly was I supposed to pull that off?

There is no magical person I’m keeping in my back pocket to spring out at just the right time when I need child care.

My family is slowly moving away from el valle, really it’s just me and kids. Plus a week away from work, where I’m already stretching my time off staying home when the kids get sick because I have no one to look after them, so when I’m sick-I don’t have time to take to stay home.

It’s comical really.

And I have no solution to this. So I’ll let it go, because well that’s the way it is. It’s not just me, that’s the way it is for many,many single mamis.

And I want to go to AMC this year, like I wanted to go last year. I went in 2007 and while I learned a lot of things and met awesomely cool mujeres, I came away with a sense of what *I* wished could happen in the valley, the sense of diy community, youth, older folks, coming together.

I came away with a wanting-hey we can build it, they will come. And energized too, that energy that lifts you for a while, makes you think you can fly, or that you can incite change -or something.

But like last year, I can’t rationalize the money needed for the pasaje, even with the fundraising that was/is going on. How to explain all that time off work? Driving was suggested several times, because it’s cheaper, but it also means more than 2 days on the road travelling, time away from work.
and I want to have those break taking moments of connections that I hear about, where ideas are birthed, actions are taken, tracks are laid-is that privilege that I’m jealous of? I want to see through that mask of resentment and anger-it’s hard.

So I look for guidance in the elders of *my* movement.

my dear hermanas,
the dangers we face as women writers of color are not the same as those of white women though we have many in common. We don’t have as much to lose- we never had any privileges. … Writing is dangerous because we are afraid to what the writing reveals: the angers, the strengths of a woman under a triple or quadruple oppression. yet in that very act lies our survival because a woman who writes has power. And a woman with power is feared. … I have never seen so much power in the ability to move and transform others as from that of the writing of women of color… We can walk among each other talking of our writing, reading to each other. And more and more when I’m alone, though still in communion with each other, the writing possesses me and propels me to leap into a timeless, spaceless no-place where I forget myself and feel the universe. This is power. The meaning and worth of my writing is measured by how much I put myself on the line and how much nakedness I achieve.

gloria anzaldua

There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.

Lorde help us all

As we come more into touch with our own ancient, non-european consciousness of living as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and, therefore, lasting action comes.

. . . I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean–in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight.

For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

I know what I need to sustain me/my familia and I know what I need to be nourished & the two are not getting to know each other.

What’s valuable to me? It always comes back to that it’s necessary to do this work (money paying job-whichever it may be)-even though I’m thankful that I have a job, I’m thankful, fucking grateful-I know what I have is good. Full time job, insurance (even though I can’t afford the deductible for things I need like MRIs to figure out what’s wrong with my back, knees; tests, the hoops and diagrams).

And still, I am still in that segment of “underprivileged”-the kids qualify for state funded health care (Medicaid/ChIPS). I qualify for state subsided child care services (which I have yet to actually yet because the requirements are totally fucking ridiculous. I have taken so much time off work for this it’s not even funny. )

And I feel special once in a while working for something for “la causa” but when you work in a nonprofit, where you are part of that segment of folks you are supposed to be helping & identify with, you are made to feel you should settle for whatever pay you can get, for the greater good. And don’t get me wrong, I am grateful. But when friends and/or familia who are coparenting/married/ and/or have 2 workings folks in the house say they aren’t making it I have to think bull-shit. You make it work, you work that shit. And as a single mami, you ab-solutely fucking don’t fucking dare complain unless you want some idiot to question your choices, decisions, life, actions, job choices, education.

Of course I wish I could work full time (in a non 9-5 fucked up structure) for CAFE Revolucion, or creating/making/community teaching about zines, writing to heal, community healing, building, creating/organizing Mujerfests and gatherings; creating kid friendly/queer friendly spaces; skill sharing for the community; seeing grants that could totally be used for this but no, I can’t invest the time, energy, effort in these nurturing, important “hobbies.” I have identified numerous creative projects that excite me, that I’m like, fuck-I wish I could do this.

And yeah in theory I could write those small mini-grants late at night after the kids are in bed, the dishes unwashed, clothes still to be washed, not sleeping for a few days, I’ve done it before. But everything else fails right at that moment-and is it worth it?