Write your best haiku!
April, with its showers sweet
is Poetry Month

People think that verse
is for the highfalutin’
not the average Joe

but the verse came first
Homer and his epic songs
and old Gilgamesh

were the Idols of
the proto-literate bunch
like TV stars now

long before novels
by Cervantes and Trollope
or King and Grisham

Try to remember
the last novel you read and
quote from memory

or quote from a show
without having to look up
the words on Google

you can’t. But I bet
you can remember a poem
you read as a child

maybe Mother Goose
or a limerick by Lear
you can quote by heart

because poetry
does not touch the human brain
it touches the heart

that is why when we
memorize, we will forget
but to learn by heart

means we will not lose
what we have learned, but always
keep it to savor

It quiets the soul
when the brain gets in the way
poetry is love

but if you want a
less pretentious offering
here’s one from high school:

Deep dish hot pizza
with glistening seas of cheese
and boats of sausage

I’m usually pretty good at things I like to do.  I’m craftsy, sort of artistic, intelligent, blah, blah, blah.  So pretty much anything I set my mind to doing, I can do.  Particularly if it’s something I LIKE doing.

I like archery.  A lot.  I like the people I shoot with, I like the culture of archery, I like the moments when I do a perfect release and the arrow hits the target with a healthy thump.  I like my wooden longbow and my custom arrows (with green, purple and white feathers, which are my heraldic colors) and my awesome purple leather quiver with the hummingbirds tooled on it.  I love my cool little Robin Hood hat Verena made for our archery team.

But I totally SUCK as an archer.  Seriously.  I have the world’s worst aim. 

I always was lousy at things that require gross motor activity.  The fine stuff, sure; if I had been inclined that way, I bet I coulda been a neurosurgeon.  I used to make calligraphed documents and petitpoint pillows for dollhouses.  I still do really detailed illuminated manuscripts.  Fine motor skillz, I haz them.

But gym class?  Night. Mare.  I have a brain, and I have a body, and never the twain shall meet.  Good thing my bones don’t break easily, cuz when you look up “klutz” in the dictionary, it has my picture.  Big feet, long bones, and eternal weight issues do not make for grace and poise.  Trying to coordinate all of them in any kind of sport is problematical.  The only things I was ever good at was swimming and horseback riding–two sports where something else was carrying the weight.  I didn’t keep them up, unfortunately.

And now I have been peer-pressured into standing once a week with a 6-foot longbow and hurling pointy sticks at a teeny round target a mile or more from where I’m standing.  Okay, the target is actually 40 centimeters across, and it’s more like 20 yards distant, but when you’re standing on the line and aiming at the thing, it looks like a pinprick.  My hands and arms are encased in leather because when that string twangs, it can hurt if it comes in contact with any part of you, and feathers can cut.  It’s unbelievable, but I have the scar to prove it.  My longbow is a dinky 28#, which has something to do with the amount of force that it provides when the string is drawn back and released.  One of the archers who is teaching me shoots a 110# longbow, which I can’t even budge the string on.

We all, whether we shoot a longbow, a recurve, or an Asian horse bow, look down on the weenies who shoot compound bows.  Sights?  We use our eyes, as God intended!  Triggers?  Nope.  Fingers, dude. Fingers. Okay, we do wear gloves, cuz we’re not stupid, but any weakling can get a lot of power out of a fiberglass bow with all kinds of pulleys and stuff.  I’d like to see one of them pick up Dougal’s 110# longbow and try and shoot it.

But my point – and I do have one – is that for the first time I’m attempting to achieve competency in a sport.  I’m tracking scores and monitoring progress and even competing in a small way.  I’m doing it because it’s fun, and it fits in with my Society for Creative Anachronism addiction, and because my friends all like it, and because I have wonderful people helping me learn what not to do.  But I’m doing it.  And I’m not good at it.

So maybe I should keep doing it.  Because I’m not good at it.  It’s too easy to only do things that one is good at, and that’s something I’ve done for a long time.  I like learning new things, but I always have this internal critic going “is this something you can do?” even before I try.  I don’t know if I’ll ever get to be good at archery.  I may never progress beyond my dinky little bow (which I won in a raffle and is awesome beyond belief) or get to be one of the ones picked first for a team.  I may never win a competition or save the Midrealm’s War Points at Pennsic.  But that’s okay.  I’m having fun.

Sorry about the lack of bloggage, but I have been sick since THANKSGIVING.  Gah.  Currently dealing with bronchitis.  Spent the last four days in bed.  I haven’t hardly even written nuthin’ in the last couple of weeks.

Promise you a new post soon…

In the meantime, Michele ‘n ‘Jeff reviews has Finding Zach as one of Michele’s best books of 2010.  What????  Srsly.  Blown. Away.

and one last bit, from JRR Tolkien:

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

I believe that’s about Lord of the Rings.  Huh.

Okay, those of you who, like me, absolutely love The Importance of Being Earnest and think it is THE BEST PLAY EVER WRITTEN (sorry, Henry V fans, and you know who you are), know what I’m referring to by “Bunbury.”  The rest of you will just have to go read THE BEST PLAY EVER WRITTEN and find out.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.

While we’re waiting for them, I’m going to share something I found while I was researching the Derby (the English one, not the Kentucky one). Actually, I was researching Epsom Downs, which reminds me of the book Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, where the family’s house was called Upson Downs. But I digress. Come to think of it, digression is what I do best. I live my life tangentially. Is that the right spelling? Because I am quite a good speller, usually. I got awards for it in grammar school. If they had given awards for most times tardy, I would have won that one, too. But that wasn’t my fault.

Anyway, back to Epsom Downs and no I won’t go off on a tangent about Epsom Salts, though I’m dying to. Focus! The race we now know as the Derby (pronounced “Darby” in Britain) was one arranged by two people, the Earl of Derby and Sir Charles Bunbury, at an afterparty for the first running of The Oaks (another race run at Epsom Downs. It’s not just the Derby there). They decided the race should be named after one or another of them. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:
According to legend the decision was made by the toss of a coin, but it is probable that Bunbury, the Steward of the Jockey Club, deferred to his host.

For which we are grateful. Otherwise we would be watching the umpteenth running of the Kentucky Bunbury. I wonder if London businessmen would be wearing Bunburies as they carry their bumbershoots. (hmm… I need to look up the etymology of that one, too…)

A Bunburyist, according to Oscar Wilde (he and I share a birthday) is someone who invents a sick relative or friend whom one needs to visit when one is faced with boring or unpleasant tasks. Unfortunately, it’s a dying art in this era when people don’t feel obliged to attend anything they don’t want to. Society isn’t as formal as it once was, although in my opinion that’s usually an improvement. But just like chivalry and courtesy, a certain degree of social responsibility (by social, I mean Society, not social responsibility in the sense of giving to charities or building house for Habitat for Humanity, although people should do that, too) is due for a renaissance. RSVP, people. RSVP.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Bunbury.

Algernon: best character ever. And a secret Bunburyist.

Change of subject. Blake Edwards has died. I’m very sorry about that, because I loved his movies, most of them, anyway, and I like his wife, Julie Andrews, because she is just the coolest dame every invented. I want to be like her when I grow up, except you know, without the singing and acting and stuff. Cuz I so can’t do that. But anyway, Mr. Edwards’s ouevre (spelling again?) includes both Breakfast at Tiffany’s AND Victor/Victoria, two of the greatest movies ever made, IMHO. So I’m sad to hear that he has gone, but glad he lived in the first place.

And last but not least on today’s hit parade: Snakes. And Knots. And Math.

One of the articles I came across this morning in my daily vetting of the newspapers was one that made me stop and read (although it was not one of the topics I vet the papers for).  It was written by a woman who struck me as reasonably intelligent and reasonably sensible, and it talked about her concern about her 3-year-old son wanting to be a princess for Halloween.  She was concerned, not because she cared that her son loved princesses and the color pink as much as he loved his trucks and machinery, but because she was worried about the potential for what she called “public humiliation.”  She is the breadwinner in the family, her husband the stay-at-home dad, so she has no problems with role-reversals, and in fact, seemed quite comfortable with her son’s choices. 

But it’s not so simple:

… among the strongest gender enforcers around, it turns out, are other children.

Three-year-olds are “still blessedly nonjudgmental,” neuroscientist Lise Eliot wrote in her thought-provoking book “Pink Brain, Blue Brain,” which argues that parents, teachers, peers and cultural factors unwittingly work to reinforce gender stereotypes.

“By four, however, many children enter an inflexible stage in which they start viewing gender choices as a matter of right or wrong, a phase that peaks around first grade,” Eliot wrote. “The remarkable thing is that young children are so much more vigilant about enforcing gender norms — what to wear, what to play, who to play with — than any adult.”

Okay.  But what REALLY bummed me out were the comments.  Even when they were supportive of the parents’ choice to permit their kid to wear what he wanted for Halloween, and even when they assured the parents that this did NOT mean their kid was “doomed” to be gay, the general consensus was that little boys having any feminine characteristics was either bad, unAmerican, or something to be reassured about.  On the other hand, if the situation was reversed, and it was a little girl wanting to be something masculine…  well, there wouldn’t have BEEN an article.  Because it’s OKAY for girls to emulate males.  It’s NOT okay for boys to emulate females.

 I always knew I was smarter than most of the boys I knew; I had five brothers and my parents never made me feel I was any less that any of them.  Even though I was growing up at the beginnings of the feminist revolution I never identified myself as a feminist.  I think it was because I was pretty much wrapped up in myself and never wanted anything that would have been kept from me because of my gender.  I liked the work I did and was proud of the fact that a man couldn’t do it any better—although I tended towards female-centered professions like customer service and administration, where one didn’t generally find males. 

But since I started writing m/m fiction, and began to get more involved in LGBT issues, I’ve started noticing that it’s not just about the sexuality, but about the gender as well.  And it may be simplistic to think this, but I believe that a lot of the anti-gay sentiment expressed by males is part and parcel of the general consensus that men are “superior” to women.  Even if they won’t admit they think that way.  Because in the straight male’s mind (I’m generalizing here, and apologize if this isn’t you, but if it is, think about it…) the only thing less manly than a woman is a man who (in their opinion) CHOOSES to act like one.  Even if they don’t—either choose or act like one.  Basically, it boils down to “Being a heterosexual man is the best thing you can be, and if you’re not it, you’re just not good enough.”  How many army movies have we seen where the gruff sergeant calls his troops “Ladies” to insult them?  How many times have we heard the phrase “man up” to express a demand for courage?  As if women can’t be courageous? 

Women are courageous.  Women work, women fight, women die for their country or their children or their city or their lovers.  Women are scientists, are soldiers, are policemen and firemen and lawyers and politicians and artists and doctors and CEOs.  Women do everything men do, only backward and in high heels.  WHY is to be a woman an insult?

Gay men are courageous.  Gay men work, gay men fight, gay men die for their country or their children or their city or their lovers.  Gay men are scientists, are soldiers, are policemen and firemen and lawyers and politicians and artists and doctors and CEOs.  Gay men do everything men do, on top of fighting societal pressure.  WHY is to be a gay man an insult?

For every whiny, cowardly woman, for every whiny, cowardly gay man, there are a dozen such heterosexual males.

I’d like to someday hear the phrase “gentlemen” used as an insult.  I’d like a tough guy to someday say to a whiny scaredy cat “Woman up!” 

It won’t happen.  Because in this culture, it’s inculcated in children that to dress as a girl when you aren’t one is WRONG.  If you’re a girl, it’s okay to emulate a boy, because everyone wants to be a boy.  Just don’t go too far.  (Someone did a study years ago to discover why girls aren’t as “good” as boys at math.  What they found out was that girls up to the age of eight or nine were every bit as good as boys at math and science, but that at around that age they figured out that boys don’t like smart girls—and they deliberately dumbed down.)  You can pretend to be a boy—as long as you always keep in mind that you can never BE one.

If you’re a boy, you can’t be anything but a boy.  You can’t be sensitive and artistic and emotional, because that gets you bullied for not being “manly.”  And as you grow up, you have to be more and more and more a boy, because to be anything else is to be “weak.”  This is how we end up with bullies and gay-bashers and date-rapists and wife-beaters.  Because to be anything else is “weak.”

I read a comment somewhere recently—I don’t remember where—where the asshat who wrote the comment said that it was okay for guys to enjoy watching lesbian porn “because it was more natural, and besides, most women enjoy watching lesbian sex, too…” or something like that (I’m paraphrasing because I can’t find the actual post anywhere.  If there is a God, I hope he caused a lightning storm to digitally erase such stupidity.  Not likely—he hasn’t done anything about Christine O’Donnell).  If I recall correctly, he said most women didn’t enjoy reading about gay sex.  Probably because most of the women he associates with are brain dead and/or terrified of what an alphole like him would do to them if they disagreed with whatever moronic pronouncements he makes.  I suppose he’s right—after all, women DON’T make up 80% of the people who read m/m romance, and they AREN’T 65% of m/m romance writers.  Oh, wait….

The fact is, women like stories about gay men, about as much as men like stories about gay women.  Possibly more.  But for different reasons—women who read m/m romance don’t read it to feel superior, or just to get turned on (though there’s that, too), they read it for the characters and the romance, not the porn.  Someone like that asshat wouldn’t understand that.

The difference between women and gay men (aside from the obvious, he-he), is that women don’t frighten men (usually.  Though Freud might disagree).  Gay men do frighten men (the important part of “homophobia” is the phobia).  Gay men are still men, and when men have been raised to think of themselves a certain way, those who do not think that way threaten them.  To the average heterosexual man, women don’t frighten them because they can never be a woman.  They’re a different species.  But gay men?  The IDEA of being gay frightens them—and the idea that someone just like them can be gay is terrifying.  Because to them, being gay is being lesser.  Being kicked out of the het male club.  Being Other.

I think it’s sad and hilarious that so many of these anti-gay, homophobic politicians and religious figures are getting outed.  Because that’s the biggest clue—they’re such cowards that they not only can’t accept the way they are, they need to HIDE.  And destroy the evidence.  Nowadays, if I hear someone ranting against gays, my first thought is “closeted.  Pathetic.”

The most frightening thing about them is that they are raising another generation of men who think that to be a man means hanging on to outmoded, meaningless stereotypes.  Men who are cowardly when they should be strong.  Men who are weak, who are stupid, who are caught up in the lies of other cowardly men.  Men who think being a man is just not being a girl, or gay.

Being a man is so much more than that.  It isn’t about what you’re not.  It’s about what you ARE.

A real man is sensitive.  A real man doesn’t think of himself as automatically superior by virtue of an accident of genetics.  A real man cares. 

A real man is gay or straight—it doesn’t effing matter.

A real man admires women.  And respects them.

Real men eat quiche.  And bake it, and do the dishes afterwards.  And put the kids to bed, and if one of them is a boy and wants to dress in pink, say “Go for it.”

Here’s how the article ended.  Made me want to cry.

But unlike three weeks ago, he now realizes that if he dresses like one, he risks being put down for what he likes. Before leaving for preschool one day last week, he pulled his tractor T-shirt over his new pink princess T-shirt, a gift from his best friend, a girl who just turned 4.

“If I wear the princess T-shirt, people will think I’m a girl,” he told my husband.

He seemed to have learned a life lesson. But in a way, my husband and I wished he didn’t have to.

 Me, too.