Dear FAR readers – please find photos from a celebration of the 101 anniversary of women’s suffrage, the 19th Amendment, that I attended August 26, 2021. That day marks the end of the 100th year of women having the right to vote.
Dedicated to Carol Christ, 1945-2021, who taught so many of us how to love the Goddess
She is called “Nude Woman” and currently lives in her natural museum house in Vienna. Nude woman. She is art, but she is not in an art museum. And there are questions: why was she originally painted red? Why are her breasts so large? Why is her stomach so large? Why does she fit in a human hand? What was her purpose? Was it to entice men, or to comfort women? Historians disagree. Is her hair woven? Or is it a hat? Why does she have no eyes? No feet? Why is she there?
this body opening against itself over and over… an existence moving through fibers was
the one thing I had. When was the time…breathe in? Breathe out.
My existence to myself was the most political act. You can’t erase me. I exist for myself.
I am thirteen. I stand next to my father and say, “Don’t you touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again.” My mother stands by the sink, her hand reaches out and clutches its edge. My father sits and looks up
at me. He opens his mouth and closes it. I turn away, expecting his hand to land across my back.
I imagine me falling. But that doesn’t happen. Not that day.
That day I stood up. Said no, turned my back and walked away. I am a political act.
I am a body with a voice and I heard myself speaking for myself when no one else would, I said no.
No is the most beautiful word in the English language for a woman who learns its power.
The spell of no. I cast it when I was thirteen.
The gaze is
when they saw me. I started to erase myself, I was without fingers first. They kept finding me, so
I erased my hands. They kept seeing me, so I erased my arms. They kept locating me, so I erased my feet and my legs. But they kept finding me. I erased my secret places between my legs—what they most wanted. I erased my belly so I wouldn’t be seen eating, and my breasts so I would not be noticed as
a girl. But they found me anyway. I erased my neck and my head disappeared.
All that was left was my shoulders. I felt the weight of their gaze, and everything they wanted and took. And so, I lifted my shoulders, and I found my wings.
And I flew, and in flight, I let all of my parts come home.
A woman flying was the one thing they never thought to look for. But I found her. And she was me.
Can I recall a time when my resilience surprised me?
My mother always said, “If you feel bad, go out into the garden and eat worms.” Sigh. We didn’t have a garden. My resilience. My head hits the counter, as my father’s hand slams into the back of my head. I am locked in a closet. I am. That would be my mother as I grew up. Kicked up. Weeds grow. They do. What is surprising to me at sixty is not my resilience, but the fact that I never leaned back. Stopped. Being resilient is the inside and out of my blood type—moving through all of my veins. I am surprised if I cut myself there is blood left. But there is. I still bleed.
This is resilience.
Can I recall a time when resistance was the only option?
My father. I am twelve. My best friend is over. I go in the other room with him. I have to. She hears this, my best friend. I resist shame like a knife blade I hold. I leave the room with the blade held out. Shame then holds out a cloak promising me something. A space to hide maybe. I resist. I am in a cold fever. My best friend and I sit; we are watching a documentary on TV. My mother sits behind us. She says to no one, “Things happen at everyone’s house. I bet things happen at your house, too.” My best friend and I say nothing. I resist feeling. On the TV are flamingoes and I will hate flamingoes for the rest of my life.
The papaya, the lemon, the squash.
The everything going bad—not yet.
I can pickle anything I can save—still. And I am never still.
Still…at sixty-four here I am. Rise. This is age—still.
2.
I have a passport to somewhere that does not
exist. As a white skin person with color
roots that do not show. My grandfather could not
have had the chance I have to walk at night
in a white neighborhood and nobody knows who I am,
until they know. And still… I am here. This is race—still.
3.
An ivory castle, an ant hill teeming with fire ants, a
stop sign, the rich woman’s house my grandmother
cleaned, the rich woman was my English teacher. My
father beat me for wanting to go to the Ivy League
school, Sarah Lawrence—I could not want to go
where he did not go. So, I went—to the state school.
But, I went, and I did, and I still…I’m
never still. This is possession.
This is wanting—still.
4.
The dark room without a light. The stars
blink at me to move along. I am less
afraid of a coyote than a man out
with my dog at night walking
it off. Walking off the fear of a pandemic virus.
Walking off the fear of—everything—
where are we headed?
Somewhere.
Walking somewhere – my dog ahead of me,
Her ears pointing. She is…I am
never, ever still.
*
I am a rape survivor many times over, and I survived
to be this woman with a pen. And I am…
never still. Stillness as location.
For this is location—still.
5.
A red apple on the teacher’s desk is never
enough if you are not in the class.
The guy said I wouldn’t get the job at seventeen
because it had to go to a boy even though I
created the job the summer before—
a park director in a dangerous neighborhood that I made
a park because no one wanted it. But I did. And I did.
I knew he was wrong, but it would be twenty years
before the words sexual harassment became a
tool I could use. Because…and still. I am
now. I am never still. This is gender—still.
6.
I am a wave, a crash, a body among bodies
among bodies. I believe in people
fighting for what’s right. My wife and I
got married in 2008 and two days later
the state shut down gay marriage and we
spent our honeymoon protesting.
Her first protest sign,
“When do I get to vote on your marriage?’
*
And here I am. Still. Still protesting this shit, is
a sign I would use later. Still. I am never.
I am never still. And this is relationship—still.
*
It’s a long life, I say to students. A lot can happen.Miles to go before you sleep.
A long road. At sixty-four I think, yes. Maybe yes, it is… A Wonderful Life. And still…
I am never still.
This body I am. This story I am
is to be continued. And still.
For I am never…I am never still.
–Marie Cartier January 9, 2021
With thanks to LA’s Cuties Coffee Shop, Poetry Workshop
Marie Cartier has a Ph.D. in Religion with an emphasis on Women and Religion from Claremont Graduate University. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall (Routledge 2013). She is a senior lecturer in Gender and Women’s Studies and Queer Studies at California State University Northridge, and in Film Studies at Univ. of CA Irvine.
Photo by Ted Fisher and Douglas Mcculloh. Author, mixed media installation, “the story of ohhh.”
Georgia on my mind, so goes the song, and right now the road leads back to you, Georgia.
The run-off election which could make two senators blue and give control of the Senate to the Democrats, remove a Republican as speaker, and Goddess willing, and the creek don’t rise…make America kind again… is happening now.
Early voting started December fourteenth and the federal election will be January fifth.
And then we will know. For right now, Georgia is on our minds in these United States.
There are white Southern political leaders who treat the Southern states they work in as if…
it is an acknowledged fact that the states are racist. But states are made up of people,
and all of those people are not racist. Racism may have worked as political strategy,
My wife and I woke up to the fact that Joe Biden surpassed 270 electoral votes needed and that it appeared that he was in all likelihood going to be our next president and Kamala Harris our new VP, and the first ever female, first Black and first Asian American to hold that position. We watched television daring to believe these facts for four hours. Then I said, “We need to drive around.” I just felt we needed to celebrate with all of us who have wanted this so badly.
We yanked the lawn sign off the lawn and drove all around Long Beach, honking the horn, as I jumped up through the moon roof in the rain, my wife honking the horn and folks high-fiving us, thumbs up, waving and yelling shout-outs.
Feminism and Religion 