Watched Nomadland--yay Frances McDermott and Chloe Zhao. It was ethnographic, as I understand it from the way I justified my research methodology. It reminded me of the dream of people moving about the country, the planet, as climate refugees, covid refugees. Leaving the old way behind and moving forward with what is possible. Building the infrastructure for welcoming the refugee into our refuge. Dignity, belonging. Mutual aid. Thinking about the scenes in Hulu's Handmaid's Tale of intake in Canada--everyone gets a cellphone, Debit Card, clothes, food, housing, education--they get set up with what they'll need to heal from the trauma they just escaped as well as support the basics of life. Give people time and space and resources to heal, and they can do that and then begin to do the other things which are evidence of thriving--like making art or spending time with family or enjoying themselves with whatever hobby or inclination sparks them.
Got a covid vaccine Monday. Feeling hopeful.
Plant based society versus carbon-based, oil.
"In Good Faith"
curation and identity themes-- JG
Traumatized kittens
two contradictory signals (Kittens are so soft and warm and cute; will bite scratch if threatened)
The desire to control and force things is hard to see. Marty and I had the cats contained in a bedroom for several weeks, and we would visit them when we wanted a kitten break, between phone calls, or in the evening while we worked a crossword. We noticed that once we let them have free reign of the house they were much more scarce to us, perhaps available to us for pets and purrs for about 25% of the time they were when we were setting the terms of engagement. Which means we were overestimated how much time they wanted to be pet by us, we wanted to engage with them 4 times as much as they now want to be engaged with by us.
give people space, a path out (cat can leave the room safely). People need to feel not-coerced ffs.
I don't ever want to work for assholes again. It's a creative challenge to find wonderful people to engage with. I feel like I am succeeding.
Corrupt relationships "sugar on top and sugar on bottom"
transactional relationships
meeting people who exchange cards/ideas but then they find out that I really can't help them, then they'll be gone.
Karening
rigidity of thought
religion
permanence
stability
always can count on
illusion or creating stratifications
set a rules you can live by but they just keep the system together
directly confronting parents with how they intentionally overlook aspects of the whole me
either you accept more of me or I will be in a little box for us to b
you're a placeholder in my own view
your wants and needs don't matter because i'm in charge
i'm just going to categorically not count you
I don't want to spend my energy trying to bring her along==not to the beloved community I envision
I'm going to build my beloved community
pour energy into reciprocation
It's okay to draw away from relationships that drown you
there are no consequences for parents who abandon their children...opposite
We should be organized like a matriarchy
should recognize that we are
the patriarch started the lineage
The intersection of things--pope going off on gay marriage, the crown, amplified waves
You don't have to listen to the pope, the queen of England, pledge of allegiance to things that are designed to have a certain blood not anyone else
They need to be in the news to be relevant--it is in their interest to have the paparazzi
IN order for a brand to have any value, it has to be recognizable...
Gives brand awareness
So what? Windsor should pay taxes, pay reparation
why regency over revolution
why did this occur--there was a vacuum of power under king George...
House of Lords--the Senate
ptsd
I read a thing ysterday about ptsd, that it’s not a disorder but a circumstance
they were not training you to be adult
seizing all the power never planning for a succession
we have a political class of old men, we are in charge and we don't want a pathway in this structure that will deny us power
civics
we are creating voters
we are creating ppl empowered in democracy
we've gotten really cynical about democracy
rush Limbaugh on--reactionary outrage culture since the 80s culture war stuff LGBT,
white evangelical Christian city on the hill whiteness
we have to have a functioning society
food prep, repair, if you are connected to a society that is contributing, you should have water, house
overpopulation
of whites...
ppl don't want to have children too expensive
it's not something I could do and still stay safe
didn't want the what if and let my kid down
I couldn't even buy a home--how could I have enough $ to raise kids.
sperm counts are down...chemicals
when we have a happy ecosystem, it reproduces
there is something really broken about society,
econ...etc.
species dysfunction
Dysfunctioning species
People want servants, be taken care of
Safe protected
Doesn’t mean you get priority
“How dare you”
Seize power, make a decision, system creates reality
Everybody wants their own house—was a joke then
This is a timeline: people lived with extended families until fucking baby boom, built white suburbs and senses of entitleme
Selfish: I wanna stay home and not do anything
Usurping space and time and thoughts
Are humans so uncontrollable? Done something awful, knowing ly or not, so we just have to accept these faults? Rigid, fixed
New teaching job—classroom of kids, certain manipulations you have to produce
Depends on what you’re good at? Disrespect, abuse?
Setting high expectations, challenges, giving individuals time, fun as hell
Get good groovy feeling going and do something with it
Rigidity due to inexperienced, versus the flow of confidence
Like learning how to ride a bike to develop the vocab
Leaders don’t jump in unless shit is guaranteed
Don’t take risks unless likely to succeed
manipulating--shame, comparing students, label people, scarcity
for teachers
Mrs Frizzle at the flower shop
Enthusiasm for learning
for relating
Me to Everyone (11:56 AM)
Filmstrips
Gotta write about the kittens--softness and also needles, mixed messages, 25% of the time if up to them
I'm thinking of how these choices are presented as binaries, and you know, I gotta trouble those. It's possible to be both childless and nurturing children/others as if they were one's biological children. It's possible to call multiple places home. It seems to me my focus has shifted from stuff about me personally, the Karen Lemke of the Karen Lemke brand, to a relational entanglement of who I am to different people in different contexts being [more important] (I'm also troubling whether things are important/not, good/bad) than what I think I mean to myself as some sort of fixed reality that is definable.
I follow Jenny on Twitter! Yes, I think there's a lot to be written about age, gender, parental status, professional recognition, "legitimacy", and meaning by folks like us. She's on my list of LU women writers in my imagined collection of essays about why or why we didn't identify with Downer Feminist Council a quarter century ago. I've been spending a lot of time thinking/writing with Kelly Flemming ('95) about these issues, which is a bit of a bildungsroman of our evolutions as "feminists", why we resisted the term then and now, what that means, how we navigate things.
Yes, music and flowers and writing: I'm writing this week about how shifting an identity from income-focused work to the hobby or passion-work that thrills us is the direction I think we need to go--with automation and other big shifts (women being forced to "retire" by not having access to work one used to have access to, by having to quit paid work in order to manage kids' zoom schooling) to rethink who we are. Even if we have a day job, letting go of the class marker/prestige attachments to it will liberate in other ways.
Re accumulating degrees: omg the number of young female college students who gush to me at the flower stand about how they'd love to do what I do. Mostly I do not say "I have absolutely no formal training in this! And neither does the owner of this shop! Don't worry about changing your major from whatever it is, because education is not actually a pathway to this outcome. I have a doctorate for fucks sake. I was just in the right place at the right time, and I'm willing to work for $12/hour and not complain about it. I couldn't have created this outcome if I tried! We don't have control over anything! Nothing matters! Stay in school kids!" I have decided I'm going to exchange contact info with them now though, because a few months ago a customer about my age and I exchanged contact info and I got her hired to help out during Valentines Day, and now she's STARTED HER OWN FLOWER BUSINESS and says that *I* inspired her to do so. So, I'm not going to hold someone back by telling them they can't do something when clearly some people are able to do things, even if presently I feel like I am unable to do the things I thought I was going to be doing (and yet I am doing things, inspiring people, even when I don't think I have the capacity to do so). But back to my point, she was TAKING CLASSES IN FLOWER ARRANGING, working toward a certificate (I don't have a certificate! I don't think my boss has any sort of certificate). Having developed curriculum and spent some time examining the politics of how new educational programs are birthed into existence, I'm a bit jaded on the value proposition of getting another certificate or degree or license, especially for women, who are now super credentialed in comparison to men and yet it doesn't translate to opportunities, jobs, prestige, recognition, legitimacy. It looks more like exploitation, selling the dream, yet the access gate is firmly closed for some. I rant because I'm still processing some feelings :S. I'm just a little done with paying people to give me degrees for a while.
And of course, the only way I can really hold these ideas is because I'm in a situation where my basic needs are met. I don't have to make rent based on a regular income because I live with someone who is paying for most things. If I didn't, I would be working a lot more hours probably doing things I don't prefer doing, and not having time to write. So again I want to tell stories of how nice it would be for everyone to be able to choose to work, how it would upend the coercive systems in place, how it would make shitty employers behave better or perish for lack of victims of wage theft/exploitation. How parents and other caregivers can focus on that work during the seasons of their lives when that is needed and also be able to participate in the paid economy when they're interested in engaging/re-engaging. It's a big juicy feminist project to support :)
Self-orphaning: this has grown more this year as a concept of analysis. I started the Huerfano project thinking it was about forces/structures which create orphaning--the religious families of my Dad's biological parents for example, the urge to preserve/create Whiteness and respectability, reputation, access to the so-called Middle Class which being a proper person allegedly grants, the "legitimacy" that a father's acknowledgement grants. There's still a lot of that happening, but I also have a growing section on self-orphaning, the ways that we create separation from our biological kin (in order to be college-educated, for example, needing to leave home to attend elsewhere. In order to win an academic appointment, the willingness to uproot from family/community/religious support systems in order to wed oneself to a college community, in order to follow one's work requirements, the willingness to delay having a family, to manage one's fertility (abortion, IVF) for the convenience of others). I self-orphaned by leaving Oconomowoc because I wanted more than what I thought would be available to me there (I left the church where I was confirmed, longtime friends, friends' parents, my parents' friends, my teachers, community activities, my siblings and cousins, the places I volunteered, etc). It's still fuzzy. It's about who we choose to be in relations with, which communities we choose to identify with, which communities we shun through embarrassment as we're trying to build our brand, our individual recognition of our successes as distinct and separate from the people and places who made them possible with us. I'll pull all this together into something that looks like a chapter, or maybe a collection of essays in a section. There's a third section now too which is the "what next?" part--how to come in from an orphaning, how to connect with others, to create reciprocal healthy family-like relations based on trust, respect, communication, recognition, autonomy, shared responsibility, accountability to each other. Explicitly articulated values. Hence my interest in cults, how to recognize them, when to join them, when to quit them, when to start them.
What a great image from your therapist--I'm imagining being in a river, struggling versus going with the flow. For me the orphaning ideas lead to a lot of flailing around, crying about being rejected, unlovable, never being quite right. There's a time for that and also a time for the "what next?" part--so yes, X person seems to have rejected me and/or what I represent to them, and so therefore, I can accept that nugget and do something with it. Cry about it because I want it to be different and/or pay attention to/listen for/notice if there are other things going on, other people who LIKE me and/or what I represent to them, and what might happen if I pay more attention to situations where I feel good about myself because I feel recognized, appreciated, legitimized, cared for, LOVED? What might happen then? :)
K Lemke Consulting
Creating Beauty and Connection
Spreading my papers out, my notecards out, helps me make decisions.
It helps me see patterns. Yes, it is like the meme with the deranged-looking guy pointing to papers taped up on the wall, with red string connecting the dots of pushpins, "Pepe Lives". Yes also like "A Beautiful Mind" strips of paper to hold onto ideas before they slipped away in relevance. Maybe I'll need this. How can I see it everyday, passively, to remind me to remember it? I'll tape it on the wall.
Today I gathered up the notecards of 2020 into a stack. Sorting the cards. Shuffling, Cutting the cards. Deal them out again. A Tarot set. Another Tarot set. These are sketches of ideas which could be characters, which are characters, archetypes, faces of the divine, mythological goddesses and gods and engendered deities, real deities, life energies, vibrations, sounds, quivering movements. A heartbeat which pulses out into the world and is reflected back on every surface, changed slightly and echoed back.
Marty and I participated in an Ancient Greece trivia contest this week, and wow, Ancient Greece was super gay. Like so supergay yes-homo that I think the early Church/Institutionalized Patriarchy said wow, it would be a radical thing to justify building a dynasty of inherited privilege based on legitimacy of male heirs. If we could convince people they'd be able to accrue multigenerational wealth power privilege political sway for men if only they'd swear in front of the church and everybody that the male spawn of this union I'm making with a virgin female are legitimized by me, acknowledging them as my sons, which is really important. Like because our concept of God is actually based on father-son inheritance.
We can create an androcracy! Male supremacy will be enshrined in law. Textbooks will tell the story of the birth of western civilization with *our* origin story. Non-males can best participate as wombs, receptacles of our seed, tenders of the spawn into men stages. We'll define citizenship as something for male participants in the landed class, and everyone else as lucky to have a role in our hegemony. Ostracism is a choice, from our perspective. Play nice, go along with what we say, or you're excluded from opportunities. Cancel culture. Everyone but these male citizens are cancelled out of that culture.
