Power and Pride

Pride month began this last Sunday, as Rache and I went to see a revival of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, a fiercely brazen 90s rock musical about a trans woman's journey.  I'd seen the film, back in the day when I imagined myself edgy and progressive, but the musical itself?  Never.

The show was well worth seeing, with excellent performances from the two gifted actors playing Hedwig and her lover Yitzak, and a tight and kickin' backup band playing the Angry Inch.

Hedwig's tale is a rough one.  

Her character is...complex.  She's fierce and fabulous and talented, of course.  But there are strong intimations of sexual abuse in Hedwig's nascent queer boyhood, coupled with a relationship with an American G.I. that's blatantly predatory.  Her transition is botched by an East German back-alley doctor, leaving her with a residual male stump...the eponymous "angry inch."  Her one great love...a geeky army brat who's into D&D...abandons her upon being forced to confront the fact that she's not biologically female.

Darkly funny, relentlessly profane, and unquestionably fabulous, Hedwig is also kind of a horrible person.  She's carrying so many scars, both figurative and literal, that she spreads her damage around.  In particular, she's gleefully abusive to her lover Yitzak, a beaten-down drag queen who she berates, belittles, and oppresses with a performative and casual cruelty.  It's a show with emotional depth, and for all of the rock-and-roll sturm und drang, remarkable subtlety.

Which made this a pungent show to begin a Pride month.  

"Pride," glower Christians who have beef with Queer folk, "is a sin.  Pride goes before the destruction, and a haughty spirit before the fall, Proverbs 16:18, right there in the Bible."  Which, on one level, is true.  

But on another level, it's completely and willfully missing the point.  Being Queer isn't itself evil, brothers and sisters.  It's a person's nature.  It's morally neutral, and has no bearing on a human being's decency, compassion, or capacity to live according to the teachings of Jesus. 

"Only if you're in power," comes the progressive reply, "because the First law of Intersectionality is that those without power cannot sin."  Which, on one level, is true.  If you are utterly powerless and have no agency, you cannot sin, because you can neither intend nor act.  

But all human persons have agency.  We are gifted at finding those weaker than themselves, and as hurt people, we hurt people.  Queer folk are persons, not flawless magical fairyland creatures.  All of us are beautifully gifted and a hot mess, all at the same time.  And Lord have mercy, do we hunger hunger hunger for power.  

Hedwig, as a character, is just such a soul.  She finds power in her performances, power in creating desire in others, power in the attention her musical giftness creates, power in her charismatic forwardness.  She's filled with pride, and it is from that pride...her sense of her own dominance, her power of role and place...that she dehumanizes and demeans Yitzak.  Pride as sin needs inferiors, needs dominance, needs to belittle and oppress.

Like Mister sins against Celie in THE COLOR PURPLE, so does Hedwig misuse her place of agency.  It's only when the hold of power is broken that Hedwig's tale takes a turn towards healing and a willingness to let go of her hunger for dominance and let others thrive.  Humbled, Hedwig makes space for her lover to express their gifts...which only pride imagines diminish her own.

Better to be lowly in spirit along with the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud, and that we Christians so easily forget.  

Proverbs 16:19, eh?

Blueberries and Catbirds

As the first wave of summer heat spools up, my little garden is almost ready for the second wave of harvest.

Asparagus is the tip of the spear, rising when spring first whispers at warmth.  Those delectable first fern shoots are now long gone, allowed to grow to their natural man-height, a riot of delicate whiskers and poisonous berries.

This week, I'll be gently digging out my overwintered garlic.  Their great-great-grandmother bulbs were Trader Joes organics, which I bought five years ago to plant rather than eat.  They're an indeterminate softneck variety, which I plant copiously in early fall.  Last year I got 25 bulbs, and as I'm of the "triple the garlic" persuasion in any recipe, they go to good use.  This year, I'm hoping for thirty out of two four-by-eight beds.  It's the most I've ever grown, and I may even try intercropping this year, as Nosferatu's Bane seems to ward off early season deer depredations. 

While the garlic hangs dangling in the shade of our carport to cure, I'm also turning my attention to the blueberry bushes in front of my house.  They're a twelve year old planting, and at this point every year they're fat with bunches of ripening blueberries.  Hundreds of berries hang heavy on the bush, and as they blush green to pink to lavender, I'm always convinced we'll maybe this year have enough for a pie.

Until the grey catbirds arrive, that is.  Unlike the local mockers that have taken up regular residence in one of our boxwoods, catbirds aren't seen much around my garden most of the year.  But when the blueberries arrive, it's a catbird feeding frenzy.

Now, I don't mind sharing.  Setting aside something for our avian friends is a fine Mary Poppins thing to do.  For a few years, I'd tried putting "bird netting" over the bushes.  But "bird netting" required building a frame, without which the mockingbirds and catbirds just ate the berries right through the mesh.  Then I tried putting small fine mesh bags around individual bunches of berries, leaving others for the birds.  This worked for one half of one season.

But unlike our fractious, combative, disposable sparrows, who'll also feast upon the berries but were clueless about how to circumvent the bags, catbirds aren't morons.  Like their mockingbird cousins, they're inquisitive and adaptable creatures, and they quickly figured out how to pull those mesh bags off. 

For the last few years, I've gotten no more than a couple of handfuls of berries, and the catbirds have feasted.

So this year, I tried a new tack.  I covered three quarters of my plants with some drawstring fine mesh bags large enough for me to stand in.   But not all, never all.  

Do not harvest to the edge of your fields, as the Law puts it, and that applies to humans and catbirds alike.   That, I thought, will surely do it.  They'll go for the easy pickings, and we'll be copacetic.

After putting the nets on, the very first thing that happened?  

I netted a catbird.  Glancing up from my laptop "office" by the kitchen window, I saw a wild fluttering of grey wings inside the netting.  Rather than eating some of the dozens of ripening berries I'd left easily available, it set hungry eyes on the portion I'd set aside for myself.

The net being fine mesh, the persistent little critter wasn't tangled up at all.  It had just figured out a way to nose through the inadequately tightened drawstring opening, at which point it realized that getting out was going to be a little more challenging.  It flapped around in a panic, the berries forgotten.

I wandered out, and after opening up the netting, with some encouragement got it to fly away, meowing anxiously.

Don't get greedy, little birds.  Don't get greedy.