REEDUCATION
Distant traffic hums in the early morning just as it did where I grew up, near but not too near to the highway. I like it because it is the sound of eternity, the sound of the universe. It causes me to wake up happy but I still have to remember not to censor this, since in Reeducation it was “denial” to claim one had ever felt happy or calm as a child. Happiness undertaken outside Reeducation was false. It was yet the more false if it had not been undertaken under the sign of a single, directive God. That distant traffic hum from the liminal space in which one exists before entering the authoritarian world for the day IS reality – I say – a reality much more real than the whiteman’s world of neurotic rules.
MEN GIVING ORDERS
I am still, after all this time, trying to discern the source of all of this incredibly poor “guidance” I have so often had volunteered at me by officially concerned, but really condescending and destructive men. Don’t teach – you will be perceived as incapable of research. Don’t present your actual research results – they will be perceived as wrong. Don’t think – it might disable your feeling function. And on, and on. Do everything except show your true face.
I have found myself at the most frustrating moments in these conversations, when I was listening to the most rampantly incoherent falsehoods, saying through my teeth: I. am. not. that. stupid. What I have gotten in response, from three different people, has been a giddy sort of grimace. The only thing I can come up with is, men really do think I am that stupid. In Louisiana in my experience, many also really do think women are just here for service, and are willing to say so in so many words.
Addendum: I AM COMPLETELY SAVAGE. Proof:
WHITE MALE, but non-Whiteman Student: It has been a pleasure to take a course from a conservative professor like you.
Professor Zero: It has been a pleasure to have a conservative student like you. That is, it is a pleasure to know you call me “conservative” because I insisted you learn to scan verse, not because you do not realize I have a Dennis Kucinich bumper sticker on my fuel efficient car.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 