The Delicate Flowers That Fall From Your Lips As You Run

Let's sit down, shall we?

I am warming up to write these cold months.  The season of hypergraphia is upon us.  It is just beginning to open its fingers to me. 

This season comes again, and, with it, comes Marías:

Confronted by that feeling of being examined, however, we all instinctively feel a need to pass, simply because it's a challenge, and still more if the person assessing and judging us is someone we admire. 

I understand why you shy from me. Why your face flushes, your heart beats faster. Why you care too much what I think. 


(pause)

In other news: this weekend I assisted a friend of many, many years in finding a gown for her birthday.  It is gorgeous.  Metallic. Gold and copper and silver and black, all in one. I stood outside of the dressing room and ran back and forth with different bras, slips, corsets.  She will be beautiful on the night of her party.  She is always beautiful.  

I'm proud of her.  

I've watched her start to celebrate her own fabulousness over the past few years.  I've watched her shed a fear of all things feminine. Both always feel so incredible to see.



I've also watched her become supportive of unions, which matters.  

Sometimes people aren't so much "anti-union" as they just didn't grow up with them. They weren't around them, and so think : why would you take more money out of your pay check to be a part of one? And by not having been around unions growing up, they just didn't understand them, necessarily. 

Strangely, and not so strangely, it's the people who grew up with unions around them who understand this, I think.  

Not exclusively, but largely. 

I think sometimes it's the people who grew up with unions who understand that that knowledge, that information, is passed on through families or neighborhoods or trades or jobs or is simply a part of the culture or the local history that surrounds them.  Who understand that it's best to explain because of course it makes sense for there to be working people who are disconnected from labor history. Or from union history.  All of that history: the good and the bad; the solidarity and the total racism. All of it. Because it's all important, really.  The dirty deals. The just causes. All of it. Dismissing a person who isn't outspokenly pro-union isn't the best strategy because, well, what if the person just doesn't know?  Ideally, isn't that what organizing is? Talking with people? Listening. Answering. Questioning. Talking with.

And if the person knows- if the person has time to ask questions and learn more about it - that they may end up being a supporter, after all. A leader, even. 


In any case, this isn't about some idealist concept of unions.  Just something I'm thinking about in relation to my friend.

I'm proud of her. 

Her strength, her convictions, and her washing away of the fear of lipgloss.

Somehow it feels fitting that her gown will be metallic this year:  Strength and beauty, all in one. 



be well; be loved,

k.