Jill Rants and Raves

Sentimental but not drivel

A while ago, I wrote about having to euthanise two dogs who mauled my small dog, Roo, almost to death. The act of killing Mamma and Yogi was, believe it or not, the right thing to do. They faced a life of complete restraint within an outdoor pen. The last few months of their lives had been their happiest and their healthiest after a life of hardship on the streets of industrial West Oakland. That the last moments of their lives were terrible shames me. But until that moment, they lived loved by all who met them.

Then I wrote about the numbers of pitbulls and pit mixes in animal shelters that are dying because we, as a society, don't have the guts to control breeding. Last week I penned a piece titled 'Adoration' which was about my desire to experience emotions to the fullest, no matter how painful, or even unrequited. In that blog I wrote about finding a dead cattle dog by the side of the road, and how, in spite of laws forbidding it, I stopped on the freeway to pick up her body.

That is the life and the thinking of an animal rescuer. We are different. Our eyes dart to the side of the road while driving, scanning for the dumped kitten, the carcass of a dead but beloved dog whose owner still longs for closure. Animal rescuers are both excited about the potential 'find' and scared that it will be of the dead and not the living variety.

But it is what sets us apart from those who do not live on this side of the tracks. And I wonder sometimes whether we have at some point in our lives been separated from 'normal' human emotion. Actress Catherine Deneuve - who by the way is so homophobic that she threatened a lawsuit against 'Deneuve' magazine, forcing a name-change to the bland and unmysterious 'Curve' - once said of the far more sultry Brigitte Bardot 'Of course she loves animals. She has been never been able to sustain a real relationship with a man.' (Or words close enough)

Bardot as most people know has transformed her sex kitten persona into a cat lover as she has matured. Her animal rescue efforts in the south of France are the stuff of legend. And what is a 'real relationship' with another human being, if it does not ring bells in your soul? And those of us whose bells ring with fanatical devotion to other species need the comfort of a kindred spirit to feel whole.
They don't have to be fanatics like us, but they need to understand you can't critique us out of our passion.

There is so much disapproval, so much damning faint praise, so much head shaking and bewilderment from those who feel we miss a crucial component. Somehow they always start a conversation with 'I love animals.....but....'
Being on the defensive about this passion, this innate connection we feel with animals, is one of the challenges of this psychic state.

Yesterday, as if in honour of the little red cattle dog dead on the 205, I 'rescued' another little red cattle dog from an animal shelter in the Valley whose date with death was imminent, and transported her with glee to the woman with whom, for me, the bells do ring. The building in which this dog was housed - with up to 100 other dogs waiting for what is euphemistically known as the 'due out day' - has no windows and no air, the lights are dim and oftentimes the animals are barely visible in the concrete bunkers. Urine swims in the kennels, and feces grips the pads of the dogs' feet as they run backwards and forwards. There are no descriptions, no names just numbers.

I'm proud to feel this deep, primal sense of responsibility and love. And I love those who feel the same way. What piece are we missing? Or is that we in this subculture, are the ones who have been endowed with an extra gift - a gift of unconditional love.

Adoration

Strange evening. Strange how death and it's imminence makes me anything but sentimental. My friend, and often time inspiration Tee Corinne is ill and dying. Tee is one of the the original sex radicals - a photographer and artist who refused to have her lens dimmed by societal disdain or disapproval from her own community. She produced some of the earliest iconic imagery of lesbian sex and sexuality.
Yet her work was often seen as soft core by the generation that followed her pioneering work. Having grown up in an era of sexual exploration they couldn't imagine a time when a photo depicting a woman's finger dipping into the petals of a flower could have been seen as an explicit lesbian image. But it was, and Tee, genteel as she could often appear, had the determination of every revolutionary - an absolute sense of the righteousness of her cause.

But my drive home back across the Bay Bridge has unsettled me as much as the benefit for Tee that I went to this evening. I decided to listen to my ipod - loud and overpowering, and to listen to a CD made specially for me by someone I am in a state of utter adoration with and yet seemingly cannot be with - I am in a rage, but not an angry one. I am filled with a sense of loss about this love affair that I cannot overcome, cannot escape from in my mind and in my being, and while I have privately sworn never to get really personal about heartache in this blog - I just can't keep my end of the bargain with myself. Is that a contradiction in terms?

Tee's imminent death simply reminds me of how little time there is to waste on things that do not matter. Love matters. Passion matters, being filled with adoration for another matters. It isn't trivial godammit. We have become so obsessed in this state of self absorbtion with 'healthy' relationships that we are discouraged from taking risks, deterred from experiencing great huge feelings -
as if big emotion is somehow sinful and as if these feelings will come again soon enough. What if they don't? What if one walks away from someone with whom the sweetness and the torture are of equal measure. So what? Why not be open to it all?  The act of devoting oneself to being in love, in lust, in utter flagrant excitement with another is so fleeting, why not just sink into it, like into a rich bath of chocolate.

On Thursday, I saw a dead dog, a cattle dog, by the side of the freeway. I did exactly what I am not meant to do - I stopped on the shoulder and lifted this recently killed animal with her guts spilling onto my hands as I lifted her into my car, onto a towel in the back. I drove her small frame, white with red spotting with a badly docked tail, to the nearest animal shelter so that at least, if there is someone looking for her, they will find her. My life is full of the stuff of drama. I don't turn away from the ugly, from the controversial, from the difficult. I seem incapable of self protection. And moving past 50 didn't make me any better - if anything, it makes me want to open up the wounds so that I am completely conscious of feeling.

I might regret writing this tomorrow. Tonight, I regret the losses. the deaths of Kathy Acker, Doreen Querido, Jude Milhon, June Jordan and many more. I regret not being able to feel love, of turning away when I should have turned in, and of not being able to offer more unconditionally.
But adoration comes with a price. Adore you? Adore me too. Chances are if you are being adored without condition, you're involved with a teenager who doesn't have a great deal to offer. If you really want unconditional love - get a dog.

fuzzy feeling

Was flattered by an email from a guy in Berlin who has a serious Nina Hagen fetish. Arne B. runs a fan site with dozens of mind blowingly weird photos of punk shock rocker Nina over twenty years of re-inventing herself. Ok, go running for your old vinyl stashed in cardboard boxes ready to sell to Amoeba Records for 5 cents apiece to see whether you have any of her old stuff.  This photo had been published in 1979, but since then who even knows who Nina was...or Lene Lovich...Hazel O'Connor...remember them? So Arne says 'hey Jill, hope you don't mind I downloaded a pic from your website to put on my site. Mind??? Of course I don't bloody mind.

Just like I didn't mind when I got a sweet almost deferential e mail from a man in Chicago who had made an amazing drawing of June Jordan by copying a photo I took of her. I think it's pretty cool, personally, when someone is so enamored of a photo I've taken that they want to steal, borrow or copy it. I actually got a kick out of the fact that my first book, Spray It Loud, published in 1982, was the most shoplifted book in one alternative bookstore that Christmas. I suppose I could have taken a dim view of this pilfery, but I think the anonymous graffitists whose work I featured in the book felt a sense of righteous ownership, and were telling one another that the book could be taken easily from a large pile by the front door. And you don't argue with posessive behaviour no matter what the object of territory is, right?

Anyway, bottom line is - if you are a major corporation, magazine or book publisher or media conglomerate, don't even think of using my work without paying what I'm due - but the rest of you - just have the courtesy to credit me and run a link to my website, don't sell the damn thing as if it were your own....and tell all your friends what a nice person I am. That'll make me feel fuzzy when all around is feeling ragged.

Bushwhacked

Jan 16th 1991
George Herbert Walker Bush begins the First Gulf War.

A Dynasty of Bombers -

George
The Elder

George
The Younger

Jeb

Jenna for President
2032...cant you just see it now?

Photo: Jill Posener, San Francisco, 1991 © Copyright photo. All rights reserved.

All shook up

I've been in such a depressed state of mind for the past few months, I've not even been up for a decent fight with a bunch of dog breeders who oppose my Berkeley proposal to introduce mandatory spay and neuter for pitbulls, related breeds and mixes where pitbull is the dominant breed. But now that the American Kennel Club (AKC) has devoted a page on their website to agitating Berkeley 'dog fanciers' against the proposal, I'm ready. In fact, you might even say 'JILL'S BACK!! I am so annoyed, I'm not even thinking about my heartache most of the time. Well, that's a lie, but this is my blog, so I can lie all I want.

Look, I'm a libertarian at heart. I oppose lifestyle legislation. I was uncomfortable about seatbelt law (I had to get three tickets before I was finally convinced), and I felt sorry that we wouldn't see free flowing hair on a Harley anymore after the helmet laws were enacted. But you know what? It saves lives.

The AKC -a bunch of showdog, championship cup, Best In Show, breed standard, wouldn't touch a cross breed with a ten foot pole ninnies - don't give a toss that up to 80% of dogs killed in California animal shelters are pitbulls and pit mixes. They don't even like those dogs as they don't conform to the breed standards. So killing the poor dumb happy as a sandboy brindle pitbulls is fine. Just don't go proposing to fix 'em.

70% of the dogs sitting in the Berkeley Shelter kennels are pitbulls/mixes which then need 'rescuing' by our local animal rescue group who then have a bloody hard time finding them homes. Homeowners insurance is being denied owners of pits, condo regulations and rental units specify 'No pits' and if your job re-locates you to Denver....bye bye pitbull, as the breed is banned in that fine city (and many others). Just think about it - you can't own a pitbull and they have a perpetually lousy baseball team. Don't take the job, if offered!

Euthanasia in a shelter can be humane - it isn't always - and as some of you are squeamish I won't go into it, but most pitbulls killed are young, healthy, happy dogs that walk into the euthanasia room wagging their tails and smiling at their killers.

Prevention = Spay/Neuter. Just ask yourself. Why does a dog advocacy organisation like the AKC oppose spay and neuter? Why is it that we legislate the production of animals for food but we won't regulate pets even though when you allow your dog to breed, you'll be hustling to find homes for them, in other words - you'll be engaging in some sort of live animal exchange with strangers.
Why is it that many animal rights activists get outraged that we eat animals we don't call pets, yet don't get outraged that we kill, in huge quantities, animals we do call pets, pile them into barrels in the refrigerated room and send them off to the rendering firm?

Ooh, I'm all worked up now - which is good. Heartache is a dreadful thing, and political rage is a welcome antidote.

Build It and They Will Come

A friend told me that she receives a stream of questions about 'what to do about the immigrants'. No one asks me that question. It could be that she works in an industry where every customer call is answered in India, or perhaps her family tree's roots down south could explain the interest. Me, I'm just an immigrant that no one really notices because I didn't have to clamber across a ravine. And we all know of course that those pesky Mexicans are lugging 50 pounds of explosive across the border to blow holes in the American fabric, right?

But it's too bad that no-one asks me because I do actually have an answer. My brilliant brother Ben, who has done some really interesting radio features, once did a story about the factory in East Germany that produced the massive concrete slabs used to construct Die Mauer - the 'Wall' for all you slobs who don't know the most basic German. Well, this was obviously a great job for the Osties who worked there - full employment for life. Hmmm, who woulda thought the Wall would come to such a bitter and speedy end one afternoon?

After the collapse of the Wall, the factory didn't know what to do. So, it kept on producing these huge concrete sections for months before anyone cottoned on to the fact that this was obsolete - as were the jobs that this effort engendered. Oops. This was classic social caretaking. You can't put people out of work, so keep them working on a product that has nowhere to go but the dump.

So, the Mexico Wall is just terrific! This has years and years of productive jobs for all those immigrants who almost die trying (and those who do die) coming to America to work in low paying jobs that nobody here wants. Build the bloody Wall in Mexico, and hey presto, no more job shortages in the south, no more Second Amendment nuts patrolling the border shooting at shadows in the dusk, and a great fantastic Wall for every frustrated Texan teenager to graffiti all over. Then you can bring work crews - from Mexico of course - through little doors installed every 2 miles to paint over the graffiti with specially developed anti graffiti paint. Just think how satisying a job that will be.

You know what? Don't stop there. Mexican gardeners can plant little shrubs all along the bottom, and vendors will make an absolute fortune selling Taquitos and Churros up and down the strip, Odwalla can establish a bottling plant to sell 'at cost' spring water to thirsty workers, and all the housekeepers from the LA area can set up small laundry houses to provide clean shirts every few days. The Wall - the answer to everyone's problem immigrants and every immigrants problem.

This blog by the way is, for those of you who don't know the English very well - IRONY. So please don't get all huffy with me.

Rushing forward

Well, I guess some people don't like that I'm no vicious Rush detractor..no Al Franken 'Rush Is A Big Fat Idiot' stuff for me. Personally I think that liberal talk show hosts are as nuts as their right wing counterparts. And what the hell is liberal talk station The Quake doing putting Jerry Springer up there in the pantheon of greatness??? Does anyone still remember who Springer is????? This is the guy who perfected the art of getting under educated people to beat up on each other on television in front of millions of gawking strangers, and then laughing all the way to the bank while he donated gobs of money to the Democrats who took a high and mighty moral position on the right wing media going after Bill and his adventures in the skin trade.

Hypocrites - the lot of them. Oops, I just realised, I'm late for therapy. Gotta RUSH. More later.