Reading Left: Part One

After working through college as a church sacristan, Dean applied to remain employed by this Catholic church at this Catholic university. Knowing the university and the Church's policy on homosexuality, he has simply opted to keep his sexual preference and his boyfriend to himself. I know Dean. Dean is not Dean's real name. He has everything to do with many of the literacy events in my young and slightly leftist life.



1.

Dean, let me reconstruct your face before I begin this. The reconstruction is a hard one, for one moment I look in your eyes and there is a sadness, another joy, and then there is the pride that is nearly as bad as the sycophancy. How to say the things I want to say to you. There's never been time. You see me in a church when you see me at all. My world is books. From the Bible to the Advocate the words I read have changed me, and as I change, so does what I read. This is the circle of literacy that makes the words from my mouth and the words out of my pen those of a leftist and a liberal.
Being born Black, Hispanic, Third World, female, gay or anything else that would be perceived as a minority, as something disenfranchised, does not make one an activist. That is my problem with you. I would expect that it would, that I am outraged and loud and longing because I am Black. Maybe not. Maybe it is because I am me. And I expect you to shout because you are what you are, because you showed me once and then never brought it up again. Does this make me naive or you weak? Or is there something in the middle?
I am holding to what Harold Washington said when he was mayor of Chicago, that Black people must be fairer than fair. That after a history of enforced bondage, rape, killings and misuse we, fortunately or not, have lost the right to carry this vengeance on anyone else. Because we've seen much misfortune, we are obliged to see it in others and stand up against it, as if it were our own. And so I could very well be a fool to think that I am angrier than you, though I open my mouth and say things out loud, and you sit on your hands and take it all in.

Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
(Catechism, 566)

I am angry when I write this and angry with you for sucking it up and plastering yourself to a wall. There used to be so much color in you, and now it is gone. Sometimes there is such a rage in me I think I will explode. But maybe my out loud rage is better. Maybe it's safer than what smolders in you, beneath quiet eyes.

The act of writing is the act of making soul, alchemy. It is the quest for the self, for the center of the self, which we women of color have come to think of as the "other"-the dark, the feminine. Didn't we start writing to recognize this other within us? We knew we were different, set apart, exiled from what is considered "normal" white-right. And as we internalized this, exiled we came to see the alien within us and too often, as a result, we split apart from ourselves and each other. Forever after we have been in search of that self, the "other" and each other.

(Anzaldua 169)


That is why I write, but that is why I speak as well. Why I act. I know you've made the trade off, to shut your mouth and have a very little. The church job is so comforting to you, what the Church says is good to you for the most part. When I say a thing I see how it shocks you. You're not the first to open your mouth and gape, to wonder why I didn't play the game, why I will not shut my mouth.

Andrew's End

I got an e-mail. Actually, about six of us got an e-mail from Andrew at Andrew's Life officially saying that his blog had come to an end.

Well, here is Witch's Blood, still alive, and often written in sporadically. There was a time when I needed to post and I needed comments everyday, and there was a marvelous community of bloggers right here, at WB. Now is a time when I post once a week, and usually don't get comments. New people don't come very often, or if they do, they don't come again. And while we're being honest, I generally don't read other people's blogs very often.

Blogs and books have lives. They exist in different incarnations in different places. Sometimes many people are reading, and then again sometimes no one is. Sometimes all emotion is written into them, and then sometimes very little is written for a long time. But the way a blog does differ from a book is that it is never finished. This is never it. Witch's Blood today is what it is today, this article, this moment. And what it will be tomorrow. I can't often say.

Saturday i i

You have come back home
in this new skin things change now
and this house is new

tear down these rafters
knock down the walls and the floor
only you remain

The major problem this week was writing, that I had finished working on something and didn't know. I have been trying to lengthen Colossus of Rhodes, but I think it's done now for the most part. It will be the shortest thing I've ever written. Things are always changing. My writing style is changing. It's like I am always changing without asking my permission.

Saturday

I haven't written here all week. I've been writing other places, for other things. But the week was wonderful, the week was sacred.

The room still smells of incense after Shabbos prayers. Everyone here is purified. All minds are clear. The week comes to an end in holy peace.

Saint James is having a bookstore sale. The bookstore has been shut for a while. So I bought two rosaries, one of blue glass that was only five dollars, the one I'd always wanted, black beads, that was only one buck. It was a day of sales. At the incense shop a box of Nag Champa which ought to be at least-- on a good day-- six or seven dollars is there for two. The woman at the counter slips one of my bills back to me.

On the bus I take out the bag a sniff the incense. It is rich and deep. The boy across from me, black hair, black rimmed spectacles says, "What kind is that?" I pass it to him.

"That's the only kind you get. That's the good stuff he says."

I've seen him before, I think, last week he was going on a protest rally when the President came.

Monday

I’m not ready for class tonight. I’m so tired. I want to go right to sleep. I know that being
in class will wake me up, though.

This is a different type of tired. When I got out of bed I didn’t know if I could do all the
things I needed to do, wanted to do. This is a pleased weariness of a day fulfilled.

I thought there was so much I would have to write, but I have written all day after the last few weeks when I would just write about writing.