Rancho Tarzanadu: "Witch Academy?"

     After graduating, Miss Linda floated in the pool exactly one time – there was so much going on in the world that there didn’t seem like enough time to float in the pool. Her online meditation instructor would say that that was the exact reason why she should be floating in the pool with ear buds in, listening to Chakra-healing meditations and micro-dosing psychedelic mushrooms.

     She thought about what her “Nation and Empire, Law and Government”  Professor had asked her at graduation: “What are you going to do now?”

     She had recently been unpacking the last of her mother’s things, brought home from her 94-year-old boyfriend’s house; very personal items like journals and small paintings and notes, leaving Miss Linda’s heart swollen like a gigantic purple cabbage, effectively temporarily immobilizing her. She wandered through the house like a ghost herself, feeling melancholy more often than not, and caught herself sighing loudly. She didn’t want to drive off the tenants who survived the Pandemic with her – the Mime (hardly anyone noticed he was still there), the German Dog-Trainer (whose pack of dogs made up for the Mime’s muteness), and the computer-graphics editor (no one really knew what he did for certain), so she knew she needed to snap out of her ennui. She incorporated deep breathing techniques, creative expression, and more exercise as remedies.

     The Pandemic had scattered people far and wide, blown them across the states and the world as if transported by a raging tornado, and the emotional gaps and chasms left in its wake felt ocean-sized sometimes; she was also searching for a remedy for that, and wished she could conjure a potion of “Emotional-Gaps-and-Chasms-Elixir”.

     Her diagnosis of Stargardt Eye Disease left her with a monthly government stipend, and miraculously free health care (something everyone should have). She actually had time now to change the world for the better – although she had gotten a pesky call from the government that morning (she let it go to voicemail), reminding her that they could still find work for her, no matter her disability, which made her feel immediately nauseous, envisioning herself working inside a sooty factory, or a coal-mine, or breaking rocks apart with a sledgehammer while wearing iron ankle shackles, getting paid with a small pouch of coins and some cold porridge.  

     There had to be a better way!

     She had been writing protest songs on the piano, and was learning how to record them, although it was a slow process considering not only her eyesight issue, but the fact that she was still a doll (which she had actually gotten used to by now).

     She had also been writing tragic Sylvia Plath-inspired poetry, and working on a magical-realism novel, but she doubted that the Government would view either of those pursuits as “valid” work.

     The world was spiraling voraciously around her, eating up women’s rights, gnawing on them and spitting them back out, while “religious” zealots ruled the Supreme Court, and a criminal ex-President was throwing plates of Ketchup at walls, smashing dishes, and attempting to strangle Secret Service agents, while truck-loads of people were dying from heat-stroke trying to cross the border, the war in Ukraine roared on, the pandemic continued, the lunatic white nationalists stocked up on even more guns, and the emotional gaps and chasms were far and wide, all around, even between people living in the same cities. On top of all of that, the government was now hinting that they wanted her to work in a coal-mine in spite of her disability and get paid in cold porridge?

     Miss Linda had to say, “No thank you…I’d rather remain a State-sponsored Artist.”

     Although she had to admit that even though writing protest songs and tragic poetry felt really good and filled some of the emotional gaps and chasms, she wondered if she should be doing something more – like fighting in the Resistance or volunteering for the Progressive “agenda”. One of her friends (the Psychic Cloud-Reader) had decided to open her home to wayward girls and women whose bodies were so tightly regulated by their states that they had to seek refuge in California for certain matters.

     The Supreme Court had just ruled that private religious schools could get funding by the State, so now might be the perfect time to open a Witch Academy; she might get even more funding because of her impaired vision…maybe she could get a grant for a non-profit organization? Maybe that Master’s degree in Humanities would come in handy after all?

     Miss Linda wondered if the State funds for religious schools only went towards certain religions, or to only one religion?  

     Because “Freedom of Religion” sounded like it would apply to all religions, but she also knew that not everything is always what it appears to be, and that words can be twisted to confuse the average citizen – hence the need for a good lawyer at certain times.

     Something to meditate on…maybe while floating in the pool with a Bloody Mary, while there was still enough water in the City of Angels to keep it filled.  

Rancho Tarzanadu: "With Distinction"

     Miss Linda graduated “with distinction” from her Humanities MA program, and noticed that it irritated some people around her in mysterious ways. She did her best not to brag about it too much, but she was honestly really proud of herself for accomplishing it, especially considering her rocky academic past, when she was running around Los Angeles ditching High School, smoking pot, having sex, and singing in Motley Crue cover bands. To be honest, she felt it was worth it to postpone her academic career, considering the life experience she gained while not in school. But some people don’t necessarily like it when other people do things in a manner they are not “supposed” to do them in.

     Some of Miss Linda’s friends and family had snarky comments about her educational goals later in life, like: “What do ya wanna do that for?!” and: “What’s the point?!” One friend literally said: “School? You’re too old for school!” (and that was when she was still in Community College!). Some family members ignored her graduation completely, as if it was non-existent. Some thought it was the “Devil’s Work” and that she was being indoctrinated into the Elite Intellectual Globalist Cabal attempting to create the New World Order. Some said “Congratulations” through gritted teeth, as if saying the words made them feel sick to their stomachs.

     Of course, many more supported her endeavors than not, but she found the silent and begrudging ones especially interesting, and liked to dissect their motives and emotional states late into the night when the world was still and silent; she thought she might be able to use them as characters for something later on. So many characters. She also wondered if they thought she wouldn’t notice their pronounced silence or snarkiness? (Miss Linda noticed everything; hence her high GPA.)

     She was also baffled by the fact that not one of her professors (all of whom possessed PhDs) had noticed that she was a doll throughout the entire program! These were people who were supposed to be smart! She realized that she probably got away without being noticed because the classes were done on Zoom, but even when the cohort met in person for their convocation, no one mentioned it. Maybe they were trying to be more “inclusive”? She herself was surprised at how short one of her classmates was in person, when she had expected this person to be much taller, and was impressed with the height of one her professors, as she had expected him to be much shorter (he was also handsome and charming…and married). But to not notice she was a doll…that was stretching things a little far.

     But maybe they were just doing the same thing some of her friends and family had done regarding her graduation – not mentioning it because it made them feel…uncomfortable? Sick to their stomachs? Angry? Resentful? Dismissive? Maybe they were shocked that a doll could actually earn a Master’s Degree (even though it was “only at a State college, and not even the best of State colleges” as her faux step-sister reminded her, sneering). Her professors may have thought, “If a doll with a hereditary eye disease can get an overall 4.0 and graduate “with distinction”, how valid is this degree, anyway? How valid are any of my degrees?”

     Everyone kept asking her: “What are you going to do now?” She told her tall, handsome professor that she was going to get stoned and float in the pool all day, like in The Graduate, but he didn’t like that answer, and kept pressing her. She told him she was going “to write poetry, record songs, and make art” (after all, that’s why she got this degree in the first place – to “validate” her artistic pursuits), but he seemed a little on the skeptical side about that answer too, even though she was dead serious.

     “What are you going to do now?”

     “What are you going to do now?”

     “What are you going to do now?”

     She knew that everyone wanted to hear something practical, but how practical did they expect her to be, getting a Master’s Degree in Humanities in the first place?

     One of her professors spoke at her Hooding ceremony, and said that this was probably the only Master’s program that left students with more questions after graduating than any other program (except maybe for philosophy). Miss Linda certainly had lots of questions, and wondered about all kinds of things: the different ways humans interact, the way they can support each other or tear each other down, the way love can be given generously or withheld for various reasons, the way money rules the world, and the idea that getting an education for the sake of expanding oneself can be viewed as a complete waste of time by some, the way some people stumble through life never contemplating anything, while taking comfort in their smug “superior” position, only seeing things through their own myopic lens, and judging others harshly for doing things “differently” without ever walking in their shoes.

     Miss Linda knew what she was going to do right now: decorate a frame to hold her freshly-delivered diploma; probably something in pink and green, adorned with flowers, glitter, and bluebirds (the echoes of her faux step-sister hissing “Princess!” fading into the ether). Then she was going to smoke a big fattie, and smell the actual roses on this glorious June day, which was mild with cool breezes and little puffy clouds in the blue-blue sky. She was going to enjoy the fruits of her labor, and pursue her creative endeavors, even though to some, she would always be “just a doll”.

     Doll or not, Miss Linda knew who she was.

     She wondered if some others knew who they were?

Queen of the Mundane

 

You

crave control like an addict.

 

You

know-it-all-nothing.

 

You:

Ego fragile as tissue paper.

 

I see you

(even with my blind eyes).

 

I see right through you;

my Third Eye developed over time.

 

I stared at people as a baby; I read their minds...

they all ran away screaming.

 

I only smiled for my mother

(which secretly pleased her).

 

Now I bite my own tongue –

otherwise all Hell would break loose;

 

black bats and ravens

would darken the sky.

 

Sometimes

I even scare me, myself, and I.

 

Witch.

 

You

wouldn’t know what hit you.

 

You

wouldn’t even see it coming

 

until it was too late;

my words would eviscerate –

 

it’s in everyone’s best interest

that I bite down (hard) on my tongue,

 

feed on my own blood

(loose lips sink ships);

 

remain, not only blind,

but mute as well.

 

You

think you know me.

 

You

haven’t a clue.

 

You – fixated

on controlling the mundane.

 

Bitch,

it’s better for both of us

that way.

Miss Linda's Humanities MA Final Comprehensive Timed Essay #2

     There are so many examples of freedom versus rights happening currently in the United States, but I will focus on abortion rights (or lack thereof) for women. The Pledge of Allegiance to our country’s flag states: “…with liberty and justice for all”, but it seems as though liberty and justice are only available to straight, white men and not provided to women, or provided differently to women, who must ask for permission from men to do what they want with their own bodies. Gloria Steinem says: “The definition of patriarchy is to be able to control reproduction, and that means you have to control women’s bodies” (Kelly). Presently Roe v. Wade hangs by a thread while the conservative Supreme Court justices appointed by the Trump administration decide the fate for every woman in the United States.

     Carolina Cuellar at NPR writes: “In South Texas, 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera is being charged with murder because of a, quote, ‘self-induced abortion’” (Cuellar). Women’s rights to sovereignty over their own bodies are being rapidly chipped away by men in mostly Southern states, using their own religious beliefs as a basis for “judgment”, and continually mixing religion into politics to appease their right-wing base. They are wielding this weapon of religion to force women into a “guilty” role, criminalizing them for wanting bodily autonomy, which these men themselves are able to enjoy without question.

     The inequality of women in our country is ingrained in all of us from a very early age. Lori Baker-Sperry writes in “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales”: “The feminine beauty ideal can be seen as a normative means of social control whereby social control is accomplished through the internalization of values and norms that serve to restrict women’s lives” (Baker-Sperry). We all grow up as children learning that women are subordinate to men through cultural examples that are set for us: men take action while women react, men make decisions while women “stand by their men”, men have adventures while women keep the home fires burning.

     An example of this early indoctrination can be found in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, in which human clones are raised in a State-funded institution, and told from a very early age that they will be donating their body parts in service to others (real human beings). Miss Emily (one of their Guardians) lectures them at their daily assemblies that they are “Unworthy of privilege” (Ishiguro 43); this can also be seen reflected today in the United States that women are “unworthy” of basic human rights in autonomy over their own bodies – they are seen as “less than”, they are not the Norm. Men making the rules are the Norm.

     Margaret Sanger said: “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body, no woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother” (Sanger, 1920). Women have been fighting this uphill battle for over a century, and now after almost fifty years possessing the right to choose what happens with their own bodies, the Supreme Court is teetering on the brink of repossessing those rights. Our governing systems are still run mainly by what my Professor Claire White calls “the Old Weirdy-Beardies”; old white men who are stuck in the past and want to keep all of us stuck there with them, because it caters to their own needs above everyone else’s.

     Michel Foucault describes biopower as a regularization process of humanity, in order to gain the most production from it. Whereas the previous sovereign powers utilized the threat of death, biopower uses the regularization of life: “Power is decreasingly the power of the right to take life, and increasingly the right to intervene to make live” (Foucault, 248). Biopower seems to me to be reflected today in the current fight over abortion rights for women in various states such as Texas, Missouri, and Michigan among others. The regularization of women’s bodies is moving from the private, individual level to the public, collective level. The lines of the “right to life” are being blurred: who is deserving of the right to life? The fetus? Or the woman carrying it?

     Regularization has steadily increased back in to track, monitor, and vilify women for decisions they should be able to make over their own bodies and the state of their bodies (in my opinion, as a woman). This time, biopolitics has gone one step further in incorporating the random citizen in Texas to create a bounty on a woman’s head for attempting to get an abortion, or for even thinking of getting an abortion. Women can potentially be tracked over state lines, if they flee their own state to obtain an abortion in a neighboring state; their doctors, families, and even their cab drivers could be potentially implicated in this bounty hunt.

     This is a horrible regression of women’s rights, and places women in the position of second-class citizens, in which men are making the decisions for them – and now not just politicians, but random citizens endorsed by the politicians. Judith Butler asks in “Violence, Mourning, Politics” who counts as human? In a world dominated by power, violence exploits certain people and cultures who are outside the “norm” of white male heterosexuality, and we have become accustomed to accepting these inequalities because they are constantly being force-fed to us by the people in positions of control and the media machine. There is a general idea of the “normative body”; those that fall outside of that are often seen as less than human, and become invisible and unrecognized. Butler writes that violence against these people doesn’t really count as violence because it is expected to happen and is normalized. These people are viewed as “unreal” – not really existing in the first place: “If violence is done against those who are unreal, then from the perspective of violence, it fails to injure or negate those lives since those lives are already negated” (Butler 2002, 33). Stripping women of the right to govern their own bodies is a form of violence, persecution, and oppression. If women are viewed as “earthen vessels” (as North Carolina Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn recently stated in the House of Representatives) or inanimate objects, they are non-human entities, only existing to serve the needs of the “humans”; straight, white males in power.

     Where could this end? Could these “normative bodies” as bounty hunters track women down like animals, and even kill them if they felt they were entitled to do so? If women do not have control over their own bodies, they are seemingly the slaves of men, and slaves of the system in which they fully live, contribute, and participate. If biopower is indeed there to encourage life, shouldn’t it be protecting the lives of women? Women, it seems, have morphed (or returned) into non-entities or objects to be manipulated and controlled more than men, and by men, and for men.

     Women are living beings, contributing to the ecosystem of biopower, working and being productive as well as reproductive, producing the babies that they want to produce. It appears that biopower is not satisfied with this, and wants to extract even more from them, while taking away their basic human rights to control their own bodies in exchange. Biopower seems to favor the masculine, while placing an ever-tightening rein on the feminine, which feels, from a female perspective, more and more like a noose.

 

 

Baker-Sperry. 2003. “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales.” Gender & Society, October 1, 2003.

 

Brechtel, Evan. 2021. “Cawthorn Calls Women ‘Earthen Vessels’ in Bonkers Anti-Abortion Rant on House Floor.” Second Nexus, December 3, 2021.

 

Butler, Judith. 2002. “Violence, Mourning, Politics.”

Cuellar, Carolina. 2022. “A Texas woman has been charged with murder after a so-called ‘self-induced abortion.’” NPR, April 10, 2022.

 

Foucault, Michel. 1976. “17 March 1976.” ‘Society Must be Defended’: Lectures at the College de France 1976-1976. Translated by David Macey, Picador 2003.

 

Ishiguro, Kazuo. 2005. Never Let Me Go. Vintage International, 2006.

Kelly, Mary Louise. 2022. “Gloria Steinem’s calls to protect bodily autonomy live on as Roe faces reversal.” NPR, May 6, 2022.

 

Sanger, Margaret. 1920.

Miss Linda's Humanities MA Final Comprehensive Timed Essay #1

     Carl O. Sauer writes in “The Morphology of Landscape”: “We select those qualities of landscape in particular that are or may be of use to us” (Sauer 1925, 325). Selecting good fertile land (space and place) is a privilege that is not available to everyone in the world due to social and economic inequalities. The rich and powerful are able to choose where they want to be, and claim by force where they will reside. In our current landscape, Russia is attempting to overtake Ukrainian land by force in order to obtain their rich land resources and become more powerful in the process, which would enable them to obtain even more spaces and places in the future. The acquisition of this land gives them the power to make decisions, laws, and give rights to their people, or take rights away. Living in a particular space and place may seem like a simple thing, but it is more complicated than it might first appear.

     Carl O. Sauer writes in “The Morphology of Landscape” about various ways to observe and document landscape, and tells us that attempting to pin down an accurate term for Geography is tricky, because it involves so many factors, which have fluctuated over time. He speaks about the need for a systematic approach, which would also incorporate the nuances of humankind’s influence on the environment, and the environment’s influence on humankind. He emphasizes the need to bring different aspects of study together such as history, the relation of phenomena, the migration of people and their effect on the land, and cause and effect (with an emphasis on climate) as a cohesive unit to portray a broader perspective of what Geography encompasses. The rich and powerful are able to live in the most hospitable regions of our planet, while the poor are left with the “unchosen” places, the leftovers, the spaces and places with the harshest weather conditions, which will only get worse with climate change. The wealthy are able to live in places with the greatest chance of human survival when the going gets tough; the poorest people will not have the same choices of livable land that the wealthy will have.  

     “Introducing Cultural Geography” and “The Tradition of Cultural Geography” by William Norton speaks on different groups of people, identifying landscapes, dominant cultural identities, nature, social sciences, the history of Geography, and the Landscape School created by Carl O. Sauer: “The landscape school developed on the premise that culture, operating on physical landscapes through time, was responsible for the transformation of those landscapes into cultural landscapes” (Norton 2014, 11). As people live and inhabit a particular landscape, they build their cultural and social identity there, and leave their own particular imprint on the space and place itself. Using the example of Russia overtaking land and resources from Ukraine, not only are the Russians displacing the Ukrainian people from their space and place, they are changing and destroying the cultural and social imprint of the Ukrainians and attempting to replace it with their own; the Russians believe they have the right to do this because of their power and domination tactics, and the belief that their own cultural identity is more important or valuable than the Ukrainian people.

     Wilbur Zelinsky’s “Process” from The Cultural Geography of the United States speaks on the ways culture affects landscape. Culture separates human beings from the rest of the “natural world” and is most dominant in creating change. Objectivity is a necessary element in observing culture as a science. The United States is a specific culture region with a unique identity, as Russia and Ukraine also possess their own unique identities.

     National identity is bigger than the sum of its individual local parts. Raymond Williams’ “Culture” from Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society speaks on the shared meanings of English culture, the relationship between words and social and cultural change, and the dynamic quality of meaning. Culture and society are constantly changing, and this is reflected in language. Old meanings linger; the overlap of meanings flows through space and place as one culture transitions from one thing into something else, like Russia into Ukraine, potentially back into Russia.

     The Battle of Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo in 1966 portrays the uprising of the Algerian people against their French Colonizers from 1954 to 1962. The film reveals how painful it was to be overtaken and colonized by a foreign government, stripping the Algerians of their sovereignty and forcing them to live in certain areas of their own country while the French reigned supreme. This resembles what is currently happening in Ukraine, although the space and place are different, it is still the more powerful insinuating itself on the less powerful in order to overtake and gain more power and control.

     John Hutchinson writes in “The Question of Definition” in Nationalism regarding a nation experiencing a common suffering: “National sorrows are more significant than triumphs because they impose obligations and demand a common effort” (17). The people of Algeria do just that, secretly forming the FLN (National Liberation Front), communicating through the passing of notes on the street, and incorporating everyone’s help including women and children to fight the common enemy, the French occupiers. The Algerian people are bound together by the love of their country, and their fear is overcome by their anger and their will to be free. I see commonalities in Ukraine, with women taking up arms to protect their country, and the sheer will of the people to fight off the Russian army to protect the land that they love, which is more than just a space and a place; it contains their identity, their family, their roots, and their home.   

     The Ukrainian people are definitely experiencing “national sorrows” right now, which are reverberating outside of their country into other spaces and places; the world is with them, and rooting for them, to fight off the dominant overlord who wants to tear them away not only from their land, the place they inhabit, but from their cultural identity and who they are at their core. Hopefully, with the help of other dominant powers aiming for justice, they will win their fight to retain their place in the world.

 

 

Hutchinson, John. 1994. “The Question of Definition.” Nationalism. Fontana Press, 1994.

 

Norton, William. 2013. “Introducing Cultural Geography” and “The Tradition of Cultural Geography”. Cultural Geography: Environments, Landscapes, Identities, Inequalities. Oxford University Press, 2013.

 

Pontecorvo, Gillo. 1966. The Battle of Algiers.

 

Sauer, Carl O. 1925. “The Morphology of Landscape”. 1925.

 

Williams, Raymond. 2014. “Culture.” Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford University Press, 2014.

 

Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1992. “Process.” The Cultural Geography of the United States. Pearson, 1992.

Claire Fisher -- a Peach of a Girl

Claire Fisher —

a peach of a girl.

 

Dreamy-eyed Pisces,

flame-haired

Spitfire.

 

Psychedelic

Marijuana-saturated

Bohemian Artiste;

 

her pink satin bedding

almost as smooth

as she.

 

Porcelain skin

tough as nails.

 

Dead Daddy’s Little Girl;

Mother’s living nightmare.

 

Locomotive

emotion.

 

Heartbroken

Heartbreaker.

 

Looking for love

in all the wrong places.

 

Shutterbug eye

(her Superpower).

 

Mistakes aplenty;

no regrets.

 

Always up for the challenge;

Carpe Diem.

 

“Promise me you’ll be who you want to be”

(Ruth Fisher to Claire).

 

She did,

and she was.

I Am the Open Source

I am the Open Source;

 

I don’t have to go anywhere,

or do anything.

 

I don’t have to cleanse my space with incense,

or sleep with a sigil under my pillow.

 

I don’t have to doll myself up

with false eyelashes and perfume.

 

I don’t have to get down on my knees

and pray for a sign.

 

“You’re so uppity!”

“Have some humility!”

 

I don’t have time for that;

none of us do.

 

I want to be flooded

with the blue-greens,

 

and burned

by the red-hots,

 

carried away with gusts

of swirling windstorms,

 

pinned to the Earth by the gravitational pull — all

available to me,

 

at my beck

and call.

 

Inside of me

(not outside);

 

all the rituals

simply flourishes

 

like icing roses

on a cake.

 

I am the cake;

I am the open source.