Friends

Friends, originally uploaded by wlotus.

Brooklyn Heights Promenade
26 July 2008

There Is Always Room for Feelings

As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action. Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the true meaning of "it feels right to me." We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared.

~ Audre Lorde, "Poetry Is Not a Luxury"

I have never liked debate, though I could never point to quantitative evidence to justify my distaste. But this afternoon I read "Poetry Is Not a Luxury", and now I understand why I don't like debate: the way most people debate things like politics (since that is what is most on my mind when I post here, after photography) leaves no room for feelings. To many people who debate politics, it is not good enough to say, "It feels right/wrong to me," in defense of one's political position. One must stick to cold, hard facts or risk being called unreasonable, unrealistic, or, the most offensive thing any woman can dare to be in a society that expects women to be pleasant at all times to all people, angry. Anything other than facts is dismissed as irrelevant.

Separate your soul from your brain, and you end up with little more than a bucket of dirt and a few buckets of water.

I cannot separate my logic from my feelings and be whole. A lifetime of trying to do so is probably a large part of the mental woundedness I have been slowly healing over the past decade. My instincts knew the right thing to do, though; when teenaged me realized my feelings are not welcomed in the realm of debate, I avoided debate. I have not yet learned the language that will allow me to fluently share my feelings in debate and have my words heard and respected, so I stay far from it. Whenever I make the mistake of venturing into that realm, I end up flailing angrily at the injustice of being told my feelings do not matter, only facts do...and then, only facts the other side wants to hear. My flailing doesn't help get my message across, and others use it as "proof" that feelings have no place in debate.

A place that has no room for my humanity has no room for me.

Now I know, "Because it feels right to me," is as valid a reason for my political position just as much as unemotional facts are...more so, in my case, because experience has taught me my intuition is far more reliable than the "facts" of other people's words and public actions. I have spent most of my life watching people say one thing in the public eye and doing exactly the opposite in private. My intuition can pick up a fake far faster than I can find the words to prove it to those who are blind to the reality of feelings. It happened during Bush's campaign, in spite of being surrounded by people who claimed Bush was akin to Jesus Christ and just as good for our country. Sometimes I wonder what many of them think of him, eight years later; I am no longer part of that community, so I don't know. All I know is I was right about him, even before I had the words to "prove" anything, even when my only defense was, "Something about him just doesn't seem right to me." Absolutely nothing about what that man has done or said or NOT done or said is a surprise to me. I felt it coming when he first entered the race and the people around me began worshipping the ground he walked on. Now I just shrug whenever something new comes out and think, "I tried to tell them, but they wouldn't listen."

And so it is with Obama.

Why do I fight against Obama's campaign, in spite of Senator Clinton's public support of his campaign? Because it feels right to me.

Why do I find a dollar here and there to help pay down Senator Clinton's debt and send prints of my voters registration form reading "No Party" to every DNC request I get for contributions that I don't shred? Because it feels right to me.

Why do I support PUMA PAC with my time and money and energy? Because it feels right to me.

Why do I not allow dissenting comments on this subject in my blog? Because it feels right to me.