The Empire Strikes Back

Kiki noticed it first. When the tv was on you couldn’t hear it, but after everyone else was in bed, there it was, like an amber alert. The sound was agonizing and primal, like birthing or fightclub. I figured it was rats because of the scratching that accompanied all the squealing. But, as fast as Kiki had jumped into the bathtub, feverishly scratching at the drain, she bounced. This was no rat. I hesitated just long enough for the trespasser in residence to jettison a plume of roadkill that wafted up through the tub drain just as I had leaned in for a good inspection. The air was painted with a Sicilian industrial waste yard odor. It burned my throat, a burning that was part rubber-on-fire and part bottom of the compost bin onion enzyme. The same skunk who had stolen our eggs the week before had moved into the crawl space, just in time for indoor air season. In spite of best efforts, that included infra-red spy cameras, rehab and cocktails of temptation to move on to a better life, the skunk family got cozy and invited friends to party chez nous. In varying degrees of putrid and vile smells, the winter of Covid was shared with Pepe Le Pew, the thief, his wife and her lover … and all their kits, Hollywood style.

Now, thanks to the stinkers, I have noticed all the places where the fencing needs mending. In spite of the need, it feels too late to fix. Cookie broke on through and so far he’s not even sending postcards from the edges. No, it’s gotta be a brand new border wall. Nevermind that the cost of a new fence is prohibitive, thanks to the wood being needed at home inside of the Mother trees for our mutually assured salvation, thanks to the sun for cracking through that biggest hole of all, the big O. It’s all or nothing now. Find a new resource(s) for all that infra - structure - burger - ing and pick on that for a while, you supply chain do-ers. Here on Me-f, when I really look around the fields all I see is the rotted out bottom boards and the peeled back wires of 50 year old fencing. Even way over yonder where the alfalfa ends and the heavy woods stretch upward I can make out in soft focus, the animals playing poker by the moonlight and strolling paw in paw in dawn’s dew. Closer to home, and in sharper progressive lens relief, I can see all those places through the tall grass where the Me-f fences used to be a borderline. The worn over, dug out places are compromised just enough for a surfeit of wild mammals to squeeze through. The question is, why do they want in here when they have all that, out there? I have just realized that all good escapes start with a small hole no matter who's side you're on. Just a pinprick is enough to feel the other side.

I have a confession. I have second Cookie. She is not a Cookie replicant. Not a back up. She just happened to have the same name. The force is strong with this Cookie. She’s been with me since about or around 2015 and her full registered name is Cookie-Monster. She is persistent in her pursuits. She knows her limits and she tells me when she needs more juice and when she is full up. She makes me happy because I never need to tell her anything twice. It’s like she is programmed only to help me. And, that is more than enough. I love Cookie-Monster. She is a low profile, first generation irobot sweeper. She makes my life one sliver easier and that is fucking gold. When I push her buttons she goes directly to work rolling around my floors collecting dog hair, dirt, dead bugs and dust without complaint. I don't expect anything more or anything less of her, ever. I am content with her to just ‘BE’ herself, the Cookie-Monster. Most of the time I forget she's even there. Once in a blue moon she gets stuck trying to squeeze through a hole that is too small but I know that she doesn't mean anything by it. She's not plotting to leave me by escape.

I would like to program my people to respond to me the way that Cookie Monster does, without complaint or animus. Although, if I only had one shot at engineering a code, just one slight modification to my Me-we, it would be the listening one. I want to everyone to be heard, sure, but especially Me-me…the first time. GM⧬! That would be my wish. I don't want to live in a house where "Nevertheless she persisted" is the battle cry. It would be so nice to not have to persist. I'm tired. Besides, it's just the three of us here; Me, Me-d and Me-h. If a housewife talks in a forest does she make a sound? Sometimes, the act of disappearing requires no energy at all. Sometimes, they do it for you. Ecoté and Repeté.

There are at least 31 flavors of feminists who are also workers, wives and mothers doing things that matter. The triple threat feminist, the WWMD. We are all doing, all - the - time. Doing, doing and doing some more. As women, we persist in our doing so well that most of the time they forget we're even here doing it. Doing all of the invisible stuff. As a society, one with social responsibility, Ah- hem, the royal we are negligent with our stockpile of WWMDs. There is a tenacious attempt to rattle WWMDs as useful deterrents for conflict when we should simply strive to diffuse them/us all the way down to their/our essential elements. With just a pinch of being we could stop the ticking. With a dash of less wanting, we could all enjoy a little bit of nothing…together, after the laundry is folded.

Let's try to understand the empire for what it actually is, while we still can. I keep trying on memes to find a hemline I can feel good about. RN, I am a Carrie more than a Debbie, I think. I like to look to the glitterati for some sparkle in my f-search. I spy something from other people's dreams that cannot be ordered or polarized, yet, I try. I think this is a form of mental retrogression, trying to make sense of it all. It can overwhelm a gal. Especially when you’re not pulling sense out of IRL. Music, movies, Congress…. all of it sparkles hard but it doesn’t help those of us who don’t know how to persist in only one way. A manifesto by definition is too one direction to be useful. Even one that features fight and flight is not the same as two wrongs making us right, possibly, especially, when it is perpetrated by a Republican turned Democrat. (I see you Liz aka Special Advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - nicely done Mam) I want to be more than a persistent pussy. I want to be free to be a woman whether you hear me or not. Rinse et Repeté.

Family life is full of doing and being, conflicts and failings, addictions and clemency. It’s the hope of things all tangled up in love and safety, loyalty and longevity all the way to forever and a day. It's the stuff of Empires and Glitter. One night, after a full family imbroglio ended with a full familial hug that signaled the end of the conflict and the beginning of a new starting line, Me-h pumped both arms up in the air and yelled "the Empire still stands!". It stopped me in my tracks. His winner take all stadium style victory punch helped me to realize the part that I hold here, my part of Empire, that part is fundamental to the pyramid. I’m not up at the top where I thought he was supposed to want to hold me, way up there. I’m underneath everything, holding all the soil and the bricks. I’m down in the mud holding it together. Holding is tricky. Holding can be a penalty. What I hold here in my Me-f is a key ingredient for this Empire pie with empirical truthiness. Without my contribution, which is almost always creating some kind of negative space, creating something from nothing, a space for others, without that, things get tight and break. Maybe this is the secret to the Foundation for all the Empires, all the Wars, the Galaxy Hitchhikers, the negative space. (I see you Isaac Asimov) I think that the holding I am referring to here, that critical, beautiful negative space is what the Bible calls ~ ugh, forgiveness. So, we let it go. I don’t want to cry for time lost or time gone by or Motherhood gone sideways. And, I certainly don’t want to hold on to that which I cannot Carrie. But, I do, so desperately want to get it right for my daughter. #Lifeistooshorttogetitrightthefirsttime

I got a trick letter in my mailbox today. It was from my neighbor. The envelope was disguised as an invitation but really it was propaganda for what the Bible says. It said that if we can really believe what the Bible says, then we would be able to hold hands in our neighborhood as the end times happened around us, implying that the time is always now and at least we would have each other. I like that my neighbor doesn’t realize that she really doesn’t have the time to manage me as a member of this local suffering group, maybe she does know and purposefully invited me anyway? I don’t know. Anyhoozle, I married a card carrying atheist and I don’t have any extra time for that kind of doing. Also, not for nothing, I don’t really like to read and talk about the Bible. I do like to listen to it through the radio, while I am sweeping.

In the end of times, I think that it is forgivable to mix up holding with being. I also think that this is a nice way to be feministic. I like being the opposite of reckless now and being carried through a negative space that was carved out, by me, especially to hold my specific brand of isotopes without jostling them too much as to cause fission. Fissile fe-noms. I know that space will always be held there for me reciprocal-like by my gal pals anyway. So, end times or not, I don’t mind holding it for them, Me-fs in the meanwhile. The catch is to hold that space for folks who don’t hold back. #Life