I’ve been such a good kid.  I’ve resisted the blogging impulse more times than I can count, and I have the manuscript pages to show for it.  But hey again, it’s the New Year, and since two kind-of-irresistible quotes just came my way, it seems churlish not to pass them on.  The first is appealingly inscrutable:

“Joy is that kind of happiness that does not depend on what happens.”

Of course being me, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, and went and checked the source.  Turns out it’s from David Steindl-Rast, who’s a Benedictine monk deep into Buddhism, and part of the Lindisfarne movement.  Which means, I suspect, that his idea of joy is far more solemn than mine.  Regardless, I like the Sufi-like play of it, since the word ‘happiness’ comes from ‘hap’, meaning chance, so I will happily de-solemnize it.   Not least by giving you the second quote, which a friend emailed me this morning.  It’s from E.B.White.  Yes, he of The New Yorker:

“Every morning I awake torn between the desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it.  This makes it hard to plan the day.”

This is particularly well-timed for me since like a fool I agreed to speak about why we advocate for social justice at a Seattle University book-festival breakfast next month.   My “interlocutor” (“can’t we just banter instead of interlocuting?” I whined) is a Jesuit priest.  No comment on what kind of idiot agnostic agrees to take on a Jesuit at all, let alone for breakfast.  But at least I now have my opening sally.  Thank you, Mr White.

and since I’m guessing it was recorded on a phone, here’s (I think) what I said:

“Okay, I’m going to be totally uncool, because that’s what happens when you invite a hermit to what looks like being the best party of the year.  That’s what writers are when they’re in the middle of a book, hermits, so I’ve been spending my days shut up at home, wrestling with this one like crazy.   I mean, I know it seems like I should have figured out how to write a book by now, but it still feels like I’ve never done it before.  So once again I’m sitting there, wondering why I do this weird, lonely, difficult thing called writing, full of doubt and hesitation, and then The Stranger turns up at my door with this gorgeously disgusting sheet cake, and a check, and the biggest gift of all, which is renewed faith in what I do.  Thank you.”

And wow, I was right:   The Stranger knows how to throw a party!

Yup, I’m a certified genius, the certifier being The Stranger, Seattle’s famous (make that infamous) alternative weekly.  The cake is sweet notice that they’ve given me a 2011 Stranger Genius Award.   Which is way cooler than I have words for.

Now all I have to do is live up to it and produce, um, a work of genius.  I’m thinking the chocolate might help…

A big smile because Levine is a mensch, a real mensch.  His poems are “gritty, hard-nosed evocations of the lives of working people,” says NYT critic Charles McGrath, somehow missing the point that in Levine’s hands, grit becomes haunting, soulful music.  And totally missing the point that here is a poet who resonates with the millions of “working people” not working right now.

Why do I love Levine?  Here’s the beginning of one of his best-known poems, What Work Is:

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is — if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants…

And here’s a video of him reading another poem, Belle Isle.

See what I mean?

All of which is by way of saying that I think I’m going to have to take a break from posting here on the AT for a while — a few months, probably — and really focus in on getting a full draft written.  Because though I know some people are capable of stunning amounts of multi-tasking, I also know I’m not one of those people.  I need to become what any writer mid-book really is:   the most boring person in the world, totally mono-focused, all but unaware of everything else that’s happening.

The problem is that writing this blog is a wonderful and (to me, at least) surprising exception to that opening statement that writing is hard.  I find blogging a delight, and somehow even when I write out of anger, it’s still fun.   And your responses and comments are part of the delight and the fun, as well as enormously encouraging.   It really does feel like an ongoing conversation, and one I will badly miss.  So not-blogging (unblogging?) is going to be hard.  Which of course means that if I can’t resist, I may still post something from time to time.  Just not with any regularity.  Not until I have a full readable draft of The First Muslim (yes, that’s still the title).

There’s an upside, though:  not only will the book get written sooner, but when I come back to regular blogging (like three times a week), it’ll be with a huge amount of pent-up energy and appetite for the fray.  So this is absolutely not a farewell — not least because I’ve only just begun to touch on all the things I wanted to explore when I began the AT fifteen months ago — but just a temporary au revoir.

So please, bear with me, and wish me luck and bon voyage.  I’ll send postcards from time to time, telling you where I’m at.  And I’ll be back!  — Lesley

BHL is outraged — outraged! — that New York District Attorney Vance took the word of a mere hotel maid over that of an esteemed member of the French establishment.  He also blithely ignores the DNA evidence and the maid’s injuries, assuming that if she had lied in the past, on her asylum application, she must of necessity be lying now.

(Word of warning to all women:  never tell a lie in case you get raped, because we all know that it’s impossible for women who lie to be raped.)

Nocera rightly calls out BHL on his elitism.  And takes pride in the fact that the case is in jeopardy not because of DSK’s multi-millionaire lawyers, but because of  the hard work of DA Vance’s horribly underpaid team.

It’s just a pity Nocera’s piece didn’t run yesterday, Independence Day:

I can’t see what Vance did wrong. Quite the contrary. The woman alleged rape, for crying out loud, which was backed up by physical (and other) evidence. She had no criminal record. Her employer vouched for her. The quick decision to indict made a lot of sense, both for legal and practical reasons. Then, as the victim’s credibility crumbled, Vance didn’t try to pretend that he still had a slam dunk, something far too many prosecutors do. He acknowledged the problems.

Lévy, himself a member of the French elite, seems particularly incensed that Vance wouldn’t automatically give Strauss-Kahn a pass, given his extraordinary social status. Especially since his accuser had no status at all.

But that is exactly why Vance should be applauded: a woman with no power made a credible accusation against a man with enormous power. He acted without fear or favor. To have done otherwise would have been to violate everything we believe in this country about no one being above the law.

As for Strauss-Kahn’s humiliation, clearly something very bad happened in that hotel room. Quite possibly a crime was committed. Strauss-Kahn’s sordid sexual history makes it likely that he was the instigator. If the worst he suffers is a perp walk, a few days in Rikers Island and some nasty headlines, one’s heart ought not bleed. Ah, yes, and he had to resign as the chief of an institution where sexual harassment was allegedly rampant, thanks, in part, to a culture he helped perpetuate. Gee, isn’t that awful?

The point is this: We live in a country that professes to treat everyone equally under the law. So often we fall short. The poor may go unheard; the rich walk. Yet here is a case that actually lives up to our ideal of who we like to think we are. Even the way the case appears to be ending speaks to our more noble impulses. Vance didn’t dissemble or delay or hide the truth about the victim’s past. He did the right thing, painful though it surely must have been.

To judge by his recent writings, Bernard-Henri Lévy prefers to live in a country where the elites are rarely held to account, where crimes against women are routinely excused with a wink and a nod and where people without money or status are treated like the nonentities that the French moneyed class believe they are.

I’d rather live here.

————————

Making the same point:  Peter Beinart in today’s Daily Beast.

1. Don’t put drugs in women’s drinks.

2. When you see a woman walking by herself, leave her alone.

3. If you pull over to help a woman whose car has broken down, remember not to rape her.

4. If you are in an elevator and a woman gets in, don’t rape her.

5. When you encounter a woman who is asleep, the safest course of action is to not rape her.

6. Never creep into a woman’s home through an unlocked door or window, or spring out at her from between parked cars, or rape her.

7. Remember, people go to the laundry room to do their laundry. Do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

8. Use the Buddy System! If it is inconvenient for you to stop yourself from raping women, ask a trusted friend to accompany you at all times.

9. Carry a rape whistle. If you find that you are about to rape someone, blow the whistle until someone comes to stop you.

10. Don’t forget: Honesty is the best policy. When asking a woman out on a date, don’t pretend that you are interested in her as a person; tell her straight up that you expect to be raping her later. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the woman may take it as a sign that you do not plan to rape her.

My favorite:  #5.

That’s Officer Alissa Hernandez proposing to her girlfriend during the 42nd annual gay pride parade, two days after New York state approved same-sex marriage.

Forty-four states still ban gay marriage, but the latest Gallup poll shows 53% of Americans nation-wide support it.  As the world doesn’t fall apart following New York’s decision, expect to see that percentage rise.

Could common sense finally be in the ascendance?

————-

Photo:  Michelle V. Agins/NYT

A cynical press was quick to label a “new wave” of feminists in the 1980s as “fuck-me feminists” (aka, with weird decorousness here in Wikipedia, “sex-positive feminists”).   Well, as the new generation of feminists would say, fuck that.

These are the fuck-you feminists.  The SlutWalk feminists.  There was lots of skin on display here in Seattle on Sunday, and great tattoos.  There were ripped fishnet stockings and day-glo pink platform boots and deliberately slutty thrift-store bras and teddies.  Five-year-olds with signs saying “Free to be me.”  A super-sexy Superwoman.  A woman in full Amish dress and bonnet carrying a sign saying “How I dress does not mean Yes.”  And lots of people with black teeshirts with “This is what a feminist looks like” in white lettering — many of them men.

“The radical notion that no-one deserves to be raped,” read one ironic banner.   “Fuck shame,” read another.  And “Jesus loves sluts” (directed at the nutters from Westboro Baptist Church — the ones who picket military funerals — who gave up and took their “Jesus hates fags” signs to a gay picnic instead).

Shameless?  You bet.  These new feminists are taking all the old insults — slut, bitch, whore, dyke — and running with them, turning them inside out.

Rocking and shocking their feminist forebears?  Definitely.  Too many older feminists have criticized the SlutWalk movement for feeding into the over-sexualization of women — which makes them  sound alarmingly like their own mothers criticizing them when they first took to the streets in protest (“I didn’t raise my daughter so’s she could go parading around like this in public…”)

Hey, the founding generation of feminists — my generation — don’t “own” feminism.  That’s the whole point of founding a movement.  You hand it on.  Younger women take the reins.  They reshape it, fight sexism in their own ways, redefine what it is to be free and female.  They make the movement their own.

So what if most of the SlutWalkers haven’t read ‘Against Our Will,’ Susan Brownmiller’s classic on rape?   They get it.  Stop blaming the victim;  blame the rapist.  Stop shaming the victim;  shame the rapist.  You don’t get raped because of what you wear;  you get raped because a rapist attacks you.  It’s not a sex crime;  it’s a crime of violence.

“I’m just sorry we still have to be out here saying this,” said one of the dozen or so women over forty in the crowd of over a thousand.   I knew what she meant.  In a perfect world, we’d be rid of rape.  But it takes more than one generation.  And this one’s going about it with an in-your-face directness that I totally admire.

So me, I just stood there beaming, aware of am alarming sense of absurdly maternal pride whelming up in me.  I was so damn proud of this new feminist generation.  Happy just to stand there and be part of their protest.  And as ready as they were to stand up to any police officer who asks what a woman was wearing when she was raped and say “Fuck that.”

——————

Later the same day, for those with ethical reservations:

Was just in Elliott Bay Bookstore and came across this:

And smiled.