Went out for my regular Sunday morning walk/doughnut run.
A middle aged woman followed me around town this morning. It's hard to say if she followed me--downtown Carlsbad is pretty small, but I saw her in four different places on my walk. At the stop light we had the following conversation:
woman: It's a beautiful day!
me: Yes, the weather is nice.
woman: It's so lovely and warm. Where did you get your sunglasses?
me (crossing the street): I don't know. Yes, uh, it is warm. Have a nice day.
Conversations about the weather seem especially stupid in San Diego, and yet we still have them. I went to the doughnut shop and saw her across the street. Then I saw her on the bottom floor of the little outdoor, um mall thing (I'm not sure how to describe the building) as I got my coffee, and then she sat on the bench next to me in the little park overlooking the beach. I was wearing a hat and sunglasses, and I was careful to never look up from my book. (Lester is one footed and fluffy asleep on my knee).
Marginal middle-aged women I don't know are frequently hostile to me in coffee shops, but not only coffee shops. They try to steal my seat, or they want to help me be born again, or they ask me a lot of questions about my writing, or they come into the dance studio while I am working and demand, really demand, to know whether or not they look like ballerinas, or they poke me--often while smiling and speaking to me as though I am a child and say things like: "Do I have to tell the manager that you won't give me your seat?
O hostile women, what am I to learn from you!?
Have any of you had experiences like this? I know that you all have had hostile encounters with men, but I want to know about your hostile encounters with women you don't know or barely know.
~
I just started reading Iovis by Anne Waldman. Last week I became nervous (again) that one of the series I'm working on is a cliched feminist Buddha universe poem and that because I've moved to California I'm going to write awful poems about dharma and liberal politics and womanhood. I don't mean I worry that I will write about these things, because I think they're interesting things to write about. I just mean I worry that I will write about them in boring ways. I find it helpful to pay attention to these kinds of paranoias while I'm writing because they remind me of what's at risk--or should be at risk--in the work. And so I'm reading Iovis. It's an epic in that Olson way (uh, speaking to a large social group in a kind of prophet/shaman like way) but it's also personal, it's concerned with gender and with bodies--what is masculinity?, what's my relationship to it? (complicated), etc.
And it mentions dharma.
9 comments:
I love Anne Waldman! She is so nice and energetic and supportive and creative.
I don't have strange run-ins with random middle-aged women, but I do have problems with specific middle-aged women. Specifically, I am forever getting into very hostile arguments with female teachers. I think it's a generational thing. Older (60+) women are generally very very nice to me, and give me things. But, as I'm sure you've noticed, I'm very willing to be the subservient one in a woman-woman encounter, even if I don't honestly feel like the woman has any special qualities to make her dominant. Maybe your refusal to be nice and chatty in a girly way brings out the demons in them.
i was at the post office last week and a Older White Southern Lady (the kind with gloves, but she didn't have gloves) came up next to me and was complaining--in a very thick accent that I couldn't understand at first--that the P.O. workers were rude to her, that they acted like they "didn't enjoy their jobs." I was quite sure they weren't actually rude to her so I said, "well, I'm sure it's a rough job to have" but if she was listening very hard she would have detected that the sublinguistic message was "you fucking racist republican bitch!" i think she might have detected b/c she didn't try to chit-chat with me anymore after that.
When I have opportunities to talk to random oldre women, like on an airplane, I do. Sometimes we have very good conversations. I see it as
1. a chance to practice my social skills (which get rusty, like if you haven't done ballet in awhile)
2. a chance to unload all my deepst darkest secrets to someone i'll never see again. this is very satisfying.
but perhaps one annoying thing about the chatty-older-woman is similar to the annoyance of the chatty-older-man, and that is, "what gives you the right to talk to me?" well, what gives both kinds of people the right seems to be, that you are a "young lady." you are sort of automatically exposed to be "talked to" by virtue of your age and gender--and in your case, your beauty probably doesn't help.
i think it was katharine hepburn who had a great quote something like, "I hate chit-chat."
almost as great as Garbo's "I want to be alone."
Ah, I'm a big fan of Garbo. I think you're right on about the fact that a "young lady" must be spoken to. There's something that many people still find disturbing about a young woman alone in public.
It's true, I'm not that willing to engage in chit chat with people I don't know--I'm just automatically suspicious of strangers, and with good reason. But these encounters don't usually begin with chit-chat, although today's did. They're usually more along the lines of "GIVE ME YOUR SEAT!" and me smiling and saying "no," or "WHY ARE YOU WRITING?!" I think that weird marginal middle-aged women are often not docile.
What you say about specifically having problems with middle-aged women is interesting. "Middle-aged" is pretty much the age of our mothers.
Not docile + age of our mother = 99% possibility for competition and/or anger?
I'm not so good at being subserviant, but I can be maternal--this is why I don't actually have any mentors. I have women whose work I admire and study and learn from, but no mentors.
But the weather is really nice today. Mark and I might go have a beer on the beach.
right, well, my tendency to slip back and your tendency to take charge seem to work together well.
yes, around our mothers' ages. i was thinking specifically of susan howe. i don't know what it is. she's my poetic idol. and i can't talk to her.
it sounds like you're running into very crazy women, though, but hey! you're not alone. one of my friends (blond ambition tour member S.) was *stabbed* in the back by a crazy middle-aged streetwoman. so. apparenlty, 1.) it's not just you, 2.) that generation is a little fucked up, and 3.) even beyound the extreme cases, there's some element of tension (power struggle? competition? the "young ladies must be spoken to" thing?) inevitable in young-to-middle-age women interaction.
but, as i've said, i've found it entirely different with older women, like Silent Generation (rather than Baby Boomers) (maybe because the Silent Generation has the highest incidence of alcoholism, regardless of gender? they're just... drunk?)
enjoy your beer on the beach. i hear you can use your palm pilot as a coaster if you drink Corona. xxox
maybe it also has something to do with "that age," i mean, the age they're at (like the terrible two's)... that the boomer generation is just beginning to deal with feeling "old" and having adult children. and it's not like they were terribly good at dealing with reality in the first place. where the older women (say, 70+) have gotten over that stuff and can relate to you like a real person. or maybe i am just lucky with who i run into.
i read this really good book--gave it to my mom for xmas-- by doris lessing, "the summer b/f the dark." if you're looking for a relaxing, easy read that's very rewarding, check it out. unless you've already read it. :)
"even beyound the extreme cases, there's some element of tension (power struggle? competition? the "young ladies must be spoken to" thing?) inevitable in young-to-middle-age women interaction."
Yes, I think that's it. If I were to be overly general, it's partly because we are exactly the women who are taking their place in the patriarchy. Again, to be overly general, men tend to not compete for middle age women sexually, and if you've been brought up believing that you're only important when tied to a man, then being a woman alone and in her 50s would be terrible. Middle age is also the age of menopause, which can be terribly difficult and have a huge effect on emotions, etc--I've learned not to underestimate the importance of hormone levels.
No, the boomers are not good at dealing with reality.
There's less direct competition with older women. Mmm--didn't you blog about female-female competition in the past? Part of what I hate about these encounters is that they're passive-agressive. I'm not saying I want to be literally stabbed in the back (!), but at least there the sentiment is clear. Yikes.
Thanks for the book recommendation. xoxoxoxoxoxox
"Yes, I think that's it. If I were to be overly general, it's partly because we are exactly the women who are taking their place in the patriarchy. Again, to be overly general, men tend to not compete for middle age women sexually, and if you've been brought up believing that you're only important when tied to a man, then being a woman alone and in her 50s would be terrible. Middle age is also the age of menopause, which can be terribly difficult and have a huge effect on emotions, etc-"
this is what the book is about. you can probably get it for $1 in a used book store b/c lessing was the joyce carol oates of her generation. it's a beach book--but you (*) live on the (*) beach! :) that's so great.
Then I'll just have to buy it and read it on the beach!
you wish you lived in the sea shells?
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