“it’s not healthy to keep eating a whole bunch” I say to Jack. He wants another Klondike cookie sandwich ice cream. They are good. I could eat another one too. It’s hot today. Very Hot! But it’s also National Beer day, I’m drinking a Lagunitas IPA. I had a good day in the studio. Painted like crazy, feel a bit crazy, like manic. Maybe it’s the time of year. The most remarkable things happen on late fall nights. Under a clear sky, stars in view. Inspired by the grey squirrel, jumps from one trunk to another. “Hello squirrel, what are you doing?” I ask. He doesn’t tell me, he keeps going up higher and higher into the trees. I go to my studio, hot from my hike. I stink. I start to paint. I get paint on my good yoga clothes. I am disgusting. I take a shower. Feel better. Paint more. Paint stains on my arm. My hands disgusting. I am disgusting and wonderful. My daughter draws beside me. “Color, color, color color” she says, over and over as she scribbles with a pen. “This is all the water” she says. “with a butt. With a vagina.” A cup of beer and dirty hands. I’m so glad Hugh Hefner is dead. Someone wrote “good bye to the father of Patriarchy” on Facebook. An article said he changed the way we think about sex. When I think of the porn industry and the primping and prepping and sculpting of women. Making us think we need to perform in a certain sexual way, look a certain way, think a certain way, I say Fuck You Hugh Hefner. I thought about how I got mad at a male painter. In his catalogue he talked about his work and how he went to the rain forest for years working on these wonderful paintings and notebooks. He had kids. I wondered how he did it. They stayed home with their mother. I was mad. I said it’s not fair. Then I had kids. I kept working, I kept studio hours. I created. Now I have a book about to be published and an art show coming up at a fine Gallery. I have a vagina and boobs and wrinkles and a crazy old mind. But I keep on working.
Category: Seximsm
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I watch as Fiona takes Pink Bear to the diaper changing table; she first puts down a soft cloth, she wipes his bottom, telling me he has a poop, she’s as gentle as can be. She attempts to put on a diaper, but needs my help. I help her with the diaper, then go back to the kitchen where I am making dinner. Jack keeps asking about watching Mickey Mouse. I say “No”, he falls down crying. We repeat this scenario several times a day. He always forgets about T.V. after five minutes, or candy, his other true passion that he loves to whine about. Jack and Fiona are only two and a half, I forget that, I feel like they are so much older and wiser. Like somehow they can understand my total devastation and depression; fall out from my New American Administration. An administration I attest. Yesterday I said “Goodbye Cruel World” to my on-line communities, Facebook and Nextdoor. I sit here this morning missing my people, but yesterday I made the decision to get Off-Line and take to the streets. I made the decision to reach out, person to person, find ways to be involved in my community, meet new people in real life, make new friends in my neighborhood. On Friday night I felt like I was having a breakdown. A psychiatric breakdown, “911 what’s your emergency?” I reply, “Trump was elected president”. I needed a stronger drug, a tranquilizer. (that didn’t really happen, but I imagined it happening). Yesterday I took my babies to the park, met up with a friend. Jack and Fiona went off and explored every inch of the playground. I sat and talked with my good friend. They were all the sudden like little kids, not babies. On the drive home, I heard the announcement about Steve Bannon becoming Trumps chief strategist. After Jack and Fiona went down for their nap I researched Bannon. I started to feel physically sick, like I was going to throw up. That’s the moment I deleted my nextdoor and Facebook accounts. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle the furry of conversation and outrage online, I knew I didn’t want to focus my energy on posting and sharing articles on Facebook, I KNEW NOW WAS THE TIME TO HIT THE STREETS! I went to my stationary bike and worked out, sweat, then filled a hot bath, I lay down in the tub, under bubbles of lavender and sobbed, just as I did on Friday listening to Leonard Cohen. I sobbed with pictures in my mind of Jack and Fiona playing at the park, knowing that all the optimism and idea that racism and sexism was on it’s way out in their bright new world was dead. I sobbed with my mouth wide open, spit coming out, thinking of all the non-white people in American feeling scared as shit right now. I sobbed about the car posted on Facebook that had “Fagot” spray painted on it. I sobbed about the KKK not being stopped YET, that they are allowed to have a rally. I sobbed about how easy it is for white people to just “accept Trump, give him a chance”. I deleted my Facebook account and miss all my friends from around the world fighting the fights of justice. I will miss keeping in touch with them and everyone. But I am here. I am hitting the streets, there is too much to lose, too much at stake not to get involved, to stay on Facebook griping and moaning and sharing articles. I want to be a physical part of the movement. Me and my babies. I don’t know how I will do it, how I will get the information I need to be part of it, but they did it in the sixties, I’m sure I can figure it out today.
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Heavy Shit. I let my boobs bounce free today and wore my Hilary Button on my shirt. I cried talking about the election and had a strange encounter with a Trump supporting kid at the park. I’ve been blasting nineties hip-hop in the car driving the babies around, Jacks learning to chair dance. I feel mad, sad, and ready to fight for Democracy in America. I will NEVER accept Donald Trump as my president. I DON’T care what that stance costs me. I will NOT let this fly. I do not see the silver lining in it, except for my eye balls being ripped open, my callused white, liberal, life that left me thinking that “things can’t be that bad” during the “Black Lives Matter” movement, to knowing now, that things are that bad. My eyes have been ripped open to the systemized racism in America, the pitfalls of our national education system that’s left people ignorant and mislead. My heart bleeds for the pain and suffering for our world, in this country and all other countries. How can we come together? How can we be that final movement to end this constant oppression and theft of our innocence and inherent kindness? The past two days I’ve hugged and kissed my babies harder than ever before. I see their pure love towards everyone and everything. They want to help people, to be nurturing, to be kind. Children do this naturally. Children are taught hate and prejudice. They are taught to only care about themselves, to be selfish. So many of us wonder, “How can people not care about the Syrian refugees?”. They don’t even want to help when they can. They give all the reasons why not, instead of thinking about just helping people. Where I live in San Rafael, we have a good homeless support system, a St Vincent’s, A Ritter House, residents of San Rafael are constantly trying to make services for the homeless move somewhere else. They complain about too many homeless people, instead of having some compassion and thanking God that they aren’t homeless themselves. Drop off a Turkey people! Sorry, that was a rant. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me now. I can’t help but blame myself for not staying involved in politics for the past fifteen years. After seeing the live bombing of Iraq broadcast on TV after 9/11 I’ve been dismayed. Since being in Marin, working at Nordstroms, where I was told I wasn’t aloud to talk to people about the war and how we needed to end it. I was told once during an art class I was taking that a person was very offended that I talked about animal rights and asked her to donate to PETA. The government shut down made me so mad. I was harassed with my Obama sticker on my car in Marin. My car was keyed and my Jerry Brown sticker ripped off in Marin. It’s scary and I’m a white suburban housewife. Things are not good in this country right now. Forget about being a teacher, I need to be an activist. We can never become complacent.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 