Metacentricities

Jane Rule, the well-known lesbian writer, died on Tuesday. I had the great pleasure to go to Galliano Island, where she lived, and meet her a few years ago, because a good friend of mine was a friend of hers.  Jane was wonderful to spend time with.

I had one of those interesting experiences, where you think about what your younger self would have thought if you had been able to see yourself in the future. I remember quite well going to the movie “Desert Hearts” with my girlfriend at the time, when I was a very young 26. The movie was pretty ground-breaking - a movie about lesbians with a happy ending, in 1985. The book, “Desert of the Heart” that it was based on, was itself groundbreaking - part of the first wave of lesbian literature.

She gave so much, and will be remembered well.

I know that Friday Cat Blogging is probably out of style now, but I can’t help it. We have a new cat, whose name is Chivotigre (or Chivo Tigre.) If you don’t speak spanish, it means “goat tiger” or “goaty tiger”. Chivotigre (or, as we sometimes call him Chivito Tigrecito) is a Siamese/Tiger mix, and he is way, way cute.

There was a bit of a rough start last week when we brought him home (he bit me pretty hard) but he’s calmed down, and has become a wonderful mellow kitty (and even lets us put nasty antibiotic in his ear - he has an ear infection.)

Anywhere, here he is. There are more pictures on flickr.

One of the things one does when one moves, at least what I’ve almost always done, is sort through old stuff. Usually, I do it before I move, to cull things I don’t want to go to the new place. I’d had this box of old letters in my friend’s attic, from when I stored some stuff there during my time in seminary. I moved it, and I’m just now sorting through it.

Reading old letters from friends is always a heart-tugging process. It’s been a while since I did it. Most of the letters are from people I no longer am in touch with. Almost everyone I’m not in touch with is because we’d lost touch before the days of email and, later, social networks, which is how I’m increasingly keeping connected with friends (I even have a few college friends on Facebook and LinkedIn.) Lately, I’ve been drawn to Google people, although that more often than not results in dead ends (or in one case, an obituary.)

There are the letters from college friends, to addresses in Cleveland, where I went to grad school. Then there are letters from Cleveland friends, to addresses in Colorado and Massachusetts. A series of letters from an ex-lover. A college roomate once sent me a series of postcards from New York City. Letters from an old friend who I am still in email contact with, and many long letters and cards from a close friend who is estranged. And there are a few letters from people I hardly remember.

One of the most poignant set of letters is from a good friend in Cleveland whose presence no longer graces this planet. It’s also one of those small world stories. I lived in Ruth’s house in Oakland for a short while, and the woman whose room I took had lived in Cleveland at a time that overlapped with mine. We knew some of the same people, and she did seem vaguely familiar, but we hadn’t really known each other. I asked about this friend, Shana Blessing, and she said “she took herself out of this world” - that is, she committed suicide.

In reading the letters from Shana, I am reminded of how tortured she was, and, at the same time, how deeply she felt the world, and how she struggled to find her place. In one of the letters, surprisingly, is this line: “I really feel it is time to return to school. I began by looking for theological schools in the Bay Area, but there does not seem to be a program which approaches spirituality non-traditionally (or should I say traditionally but non-patriarchally).” I wish I could tell her about what I’d experienced, and how life-changing seminary in the Bay Area was for me. Perhaps she already knows.

• Ron Paul is a Republican candidate I almost can support. Almost, but, utlimately, not. He’s right on so many issues, like getting out of the empire business entirely, and on limiting the government’s ability to spy on us. But he’s anti-choice, seems like he wants to eliminate the social safety net, and has some other stands that I have a hard time with. There is so much to like … and so much to dislike. Sigh.
• Pat Robertson endorsed Rudi Guliani. Huh? One of the prime spokespeople for the radical right is endorsing the cross-dressing pro-choice, pro-gay rights ex-mayor of New York? Triple huh?
• Who the ^*&^ is Duncan Hunter? Doesn’t really matter, I’m not voting for him. But the way he talks about the blogosphere sounds like he’s never actually been here.
• John Edwards has a great comeback to the haircut thing.