A Dyke A Broad #76 Glass Half Full Edition
A bit of lesbian news, plus birds, no bees, and a peek at the WIP. And many photos.
Hello from Paris!
In a bit of good news for lesbians, a landmark decision by a UN women’s rights committee, found that the criminalization of consensual, same-sex intimacy between women is a human rights violation. This, after a Sri Lanka woman, Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, brought a complaint. I’m not sure what real world effect this will have, but still, yay.
In other very good news, which does have immediate consequences, but mostly just for the inhabitants of my building, workers finally started installing the long-awaited elevator, so even though we’re facing several months of noise and dust, there’s hope that by September I won’t have to limp groaning all the way up to the fifth floor when my knee craps out or I sprain my ankle yet again.
Most importantly, our window boxes are declaring that it’s spring.
There are blooms on the grape hyacinths in the back. The one near the kitchen has been taken over by mint. Friday, I glanced over and a sparrow-like bird with a yellow belly had its fat ass in the thyme while it chewed at the mint. The next time I looked over it was sitting smug and glassy-eyed on the railing with so much shredded green stuff sticking out of both sides of its beak, it looked like it had a flower on its face and not a mouth at all.
No, I don’t have a picture of it, only the naked stem that it left.
Saturday we went for a picnic with a friend in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Where, being lesbians, we ate homemade hummus, and being in France, ate gooey cheeses and baguette. On the way out, I was surprised to notice Walt Whitman reclining under a tree.
Sunday, things got depressing. We went to a disturbingly tiny demo in support of Ukraine attended largely by Ukrainians and Chechens, with a few Russians thrown in, very few French. In case you’ve quit following things, Ukraine is holding off Russia, but at the price of having its cities pulverized, and a lot of people killed and/or starving to death. Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had begged NATO for 1% of its stockpiled tanks and planes. After initially promising drastic sanctions, NATO (and the EU) don’t seem willing to sacrifice themselves much, preferring, I guess, to sacrifice Ukrainians.
If you want to help out dykes and women there, think about donating to the European Lesbian Conference which is busy on the Polish border, but also inside Ukraine. The International Rescue Committee is also reputable.
As for The Book. I’m making progress even if it is driving me insane—a question of self-censorship. I write feeling the same terrified dread as I had when I was four or five years old, and got in trouble, and my mother said something along the lines of “You just wait until your father gets home.”
If I have a heart attack, please don’t send flowers. Good thoughts or money will be enough.
If you want a peek at what I’m doing, here’s a little excerpt before I get to the harder-hitting stuff. Part of it is for subscribers only.
Chapter 4. A Brief Meditation on Desire
Until that trip to Texas, all I did was yearn—which is not the same as desire. I was an expert yearner of the mute kind. Not at all like my sisters who were vocal and specific in their desires—for the denim grip of Calvin Kleins, a sloppy kiss from that boy with delicious blonde streaks in his hair, a car, freedom far from my mother with her rage and rules. My yearnings were always desperately vague. Pouring over poetry and scripture, I’d feel this huge pull for something out of reach, unattainable, unspoken, maybe unspeakable, and I’d open my heart, offer up those feelings to God and call it prayer.
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