Die if necessary, but never kill.

Like when you pick up the phone to call Zoe and she is already there on the other end of the line, we are both studying dances of Africa. Lenya's instructor is from Tanzania and he wants to help us to become friends with the ground. This is sometimes hard for Lenya because of my ballet background, but it feels so good to be expressing the joy and confusion of my soul in body movement. This is crucial to the human experience. My gentleman friend joins me for these classes and he is the only boy student. Now why on Earth is that? The other evening, my gentleman friend asked Robert, our dance instructor, how he was feeling. Robert answered very honestly that he finds teaching difficult because there is just too much of African experience that his students in the US do not understand. Sometimes, to watch us doing these dances that mean so much to him is not uplifting. We told him that it is an honor for us that he shares this gift with us, but I realized that the only real way to show what an honor it is is to acknowledge that I do not fully understand but to try as hard as I can anyway, and to dance with a certain freedom and respect.
In Moldova, Lenya took a lover who was an Ethnobotanist. She was being funded by the government of Peru to learn the medicinal secrets of the Amazon. It was a chancy endeavor for her, after all, the motto at the Bureau of Indigenous Relations is "Die if necessary, but never kill." My friend discovered that medicinal knowledge is passed only from one generation's shaman to the next. Thousands of acres of the Amazon are destroyed every second for the production of newspapers, catalogs, and toilet tissue. Young people are leaving their communities and there may be no one left to whom this ancient information can be passed on. Still, many shamans would rather take their secrets to the grave than share them with the unworthy. The knowledge is sacred, and must not be misused.
Robert is sharing something very special with us. There are elements of the history of African dance that are shared by all of humanity because so much of human history developed there. African music has most likely influenced every type of music that exists throughout North and South America. So these are some of the connections that I can fairly make. But there are other things that I do not understand because of differences of modern history, race, nationality, food, war, and money. I do not understand these things from an African perspective because I have been on the end of things that blindly benefits from the Differences. And yet he shares these dances with me. The only thanks he expects is that I will do my best to truly express myself in the language he teaches.

The Sexual Politics of Animal Research

In a dream two nights ago, I had started a job as a research assistant at the hospital nearby. We were studying a tumor growth and had to go to the basement where all the animals were kept to retrieve two boxes of small, soft, grey female mice. As I followed the primary investigator down the hallway to the mouse room, I saw in front of me a young sow. She stood on a metal cart that was designed to prevent her from lying down. We wondered why she had been left there in the hallway - there did not seem to be any other person nearby. The primary investigator went to get the mice, and I walked to the sow. She grunted softly as I approached her. I came close and scratched her head, patted and stroked her back. As I placed my palm on the warm, smooth area behind her ear, I tried to send her love, calm, and respect. My employer came back with the mice and smiled at us. "I hope they are nice to you," I said to the sow as we walked away. I felt helpless, hypocritical, and confused. When we returned to our lab, I excused myself for a while. Later I remember finding out that she had been killed in the experiments that day. All I could tell myself was that she met a kinder end than if she had been killed for meat. She had been fully anesthetized, for example - but what narrow paths for meaning we allow these strong and gentle creatures to walk!

I have read two of Carol Adams' books - "The Sexual Politics of Meat" and "The Pornography of Meat". I read "Pornography" first and I did not expect to like it. I felt she used the word pornography in the title because she assumed that I, the reader, am opposed to pornography. This annoyed me. Once I began reading it, I found Carol's writing style to be unfocused and unclear. Her interpretations of heterosexual intercourse are certainly a part of its violent history and construction, but she doesn't encourage a radical reinterpretation. Is she sex-negative? She seems align herself with Dworkin and McKinnon on topics of sex and female subjectivity. I was also frustrated by her lack of proper citations. She gives example after outrageous example of disgusting (male) behaviors toward women and animals, but you must take her word about incidents and interpretations because she rarely includes her sources. That being said, I would recommend these books to anyone. Her ideas are so important for us all to consider and struggle with. Now that I have read the "The Pornography of Meat," I am no longer annoyed with the title. Carol and I may have different views on pornography, but that does not change the fact that the images she presents and analyzes in her book are exactly what she calls them. They are advertisments to (male) spectators enticing them to objectify, dominate, brutalize, penetrate, consume, and disregard (feminine) animals. I am grateful that she helped me to make this connection so clearly, and to consider its implications in my own life.

Beachbirds for Camera

The wind is cold and wet. Still in bed this morning, as I wrapped myself up in my blanket and looked out the window, I thought of the cold Autumns I spent in Moldova as a child. Things have been hard for Lenya since Merce Cunningham came to Bloomsburg University last weekend. The audience was horrible - laughing awkwardly when the disturbing movements and gutteral soundtrack made them nervous. Pathetic! But what did it matter to him that I was there in the audience with my heart in my throat, devastated by the forceful elegance of his dancers...he does not remember my audition seven years ago, neither him nor that awful stage manager, Svenko...I lingered outside the stage door after the performance for a while, watching a few of the dancers chat before slipping into hired cars. Then I went home and cried bitterly. Lenya is not a dancer anymore.