The Justice Center Bike to Work team
At the beginning of this month, I’d intended to post a poem — mine or someone else’s — every day in honor of National Poetry Month. I fell down on the job. But today it’s still April. Besides, my friend Kathy asked me to post one. So here’s one.
She stands outside & in me,
a flicker beckoning
at the inmost limit of vision
where the blind spot is insufficiency
of self-knowing.
She leans to whisper in my breath:
“Heed my green flow in your blood;
drink the wind; inspire
the medicine of trees.”
Leaves flutter, inviting.
She is visible in the dappled breeze
among the white trunks.
At the back of my mind she is visible,
backgrounding all.
[written in 2000; published in Teresa McPherson, ed., Transformations, Anchorage, AK: Radical Arts for Women, 2002.]
Metsän henki (Finnish) means forest spirit. Hence, an alternative name for my central “household god,” the forest spirit Mielikki, who is metsolan emäntä: Mistress of Woodland. The name Mielikki combined the word mieli = heart, mind, consciousness, desire, etc., plus the suffix of endearment –kki.
On April 28, 2010, the Alaska chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and the Anchorage 2nd Amendment Task Force demonstrated on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus against University of Alaska Regents Policy and UA regulations which prohibit carrying firearms on UA campuses. Four protesters openly carried firearms, were cited by University Police Department officers, and were asked to leave campus, which they did peacefully. I’ll be writing a “real” blog post about this in the next coupla days. Update: In fact, I didn’t. Instead I got skankthrax, & then recalibrated.
[Note: After being challenged by a couple of contacts on my Facebook page, my opinion has been changed on the “hostile workplace” claim — but I still consider it a workplace safety issue.]
Editor’s note: A couple of days ago in “Jane Doe, Finnish style” I wrote about how Rachel Meikäläinen, originally a character in my novel-in-progress Mistress of Woodland, became a philosophical antecedent & historical figure in the fictional Consensus society in the story universe of Long Dark & Cold. I also said that she might be writing some guest posts “because so much of her stuff about integrity and violation is relevant to the ways the Real World we live in screws with us too; & also how we keep it together.” The following, excerpted from a work of hers tentatively titled Whole Numbers, would have a major impact on the Long Dark character Esti Gusev when she read it as a ward of Mars Authority at Apollineris at the age of 14 years, about two years after the destruction of the New Nazareth armed cult at Gusev Crater, where she had been born. – Mel
The root of the word integrity, is the Latin integer, which means, literally, untouched. And so an integer is a number that hasn’t been broken or fractionated. It is complete, a whole number. Something which is integral is something which is essential to completeness, something which is integrated, which is to say, something which has been incorporated into a functioning and unified whole. And so to have integrity is to have wholeness, completion, undividedness. But if integrity is undivided, unbroken, untouched — then what, in this context, is it to be touched?
Touch is not a bad thing, usually — but in this context, to be touched is to be breached, broken, violated. That’s at its worst, anyway. But the worst happens, over and over. Even when no harm is intended, harm often comes; and very often, of course, harm is intended. The harms may be physical; the harms may be emotional or spiritual. Abuse. Coercion. The most common harm of all to human beings — the one that most harmed me — was the simple and common harm of those who convince themselves that they are well-intended when they attempt to coerce an individual into behaving according to their arbitrary standards, rather than according to the individual’s integrity — to what should properly be understood as that individual’s true selfhood.
Integrity is whole. The root of the word whole is the Old English word hal, which is also the root or closely related to the roots of the words heal, hale, holy. To be truly whole, to be fully and completely healed, would be as though one had not been touched by the harm that had touched one. But you have been touched, so how, then, can you become untouched again? Here’s the strange contradiction of it: you must incorporate the experience of that touch, that harm, into yourself. Meaning literally — because incorporate comes in part from the Latin root corpus meaning body — that you make that touch, that hurt, part of your body: but in a hale, healing way. How? When you eat an apple, does it stay an apple inside your stomach and gut? No, it transforms: your body transforms it with its acids and enzymes into nutrients for your body, while expelling the waste. If someone has poisoned the apple, you might not survive it, true — but otherwise, all but its waste products become part of your body. Call it incorporation, call it integration: transformation comes with the territory of it. You have no choice about the harms that others inflict upon you: but if they haven’t actually killed you, you usually still have the choice to transform those harms within yourself to integrate them into a new whole, a new integrity. You are not exactly the same self you began with; but you are still your own self. The Self itself is change.
Late on the evening of April 18, I turned on the TV for company while I finished up my previous blog post, & discovered SyFy’s new production of “Riverworld” was playing. This is an adaptation of the “Riverworld” series by Philip José Farmer, which began with his Hugo-winning novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971).
SyFy had made a previous attempt at adapting it when it was still the SciFi Channel, & it sucked. I thought this one might be better. But it wasn’t. And next thing you know I was embarked upon a spontaneous livesnark. (Intermixed with a few comments on that night’s action at the Alaska Legislature — the last night of this year’s session — which some of my more politically attuned friends were attuned to at the time.)
(Last time I’d done a livesnark was with my friend Janson — we snarked the Schwarzenegger movie “The Running Man” one day last October. Too bad he wasn’t around for this one!)
I was snarking away until 2:00 AM. Dumb on a night before work, but there you have it. My advice: read the books.
My plea to Tahmoh Penikett (Helo of “Battlestar Galactica” & Paul Ballard of “Dollhouse”), who I quite like: find some projects that allow you to really use your acting chops. Please. It was really nice to see Thea Gill (Lindsay Peterson in “Queer as Folk”), but she wasn’t given much to work with here. Alessandro Juliani (Felix Gaeta of “Battlestar Galactica”): also not given much to work with — his role seemed mainly to smile a lot and then get killed by Pizzaro. I like Alan Cumming a lot, but again — not much to work with here. His Evil Smurf’s real character name was apparently “Judas Caretaker.” It’s been a long time since I read the books, but I’m pretty sure they had no such character. Those are the actors I was familiar with.
I’ve seen the the guy who played evil Sir Richard Francis Burton in something else, but can’t think of what.
It was the most appalling thing about this adaptation that Burton was turned into a one-dimensional evil bad guy. In real life, he was a richly fascinating person. Wikipedia:
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.
He was the protagonist of Farmer’s books, and as I recall was pretty interesting in them too. A far more interesting protagonist than the one-dimensional generic good guy Matt Ellman played by Tahmoh Penikett, who differed from the one-dimensional generic good guy Jeff Hale played by Brad Johnson in the 2003 SciFi Channel version only in profession (2003: American astronaut; 2010: American war reporter).
Like SciFi Channel’s “Earthsea” miniseries in 2004, which completely screwed over Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels, both this and the prior adaptation of “Riverworld” are fine examples of good science/fiction fantasy made into bad by writers and producers who just can’t seem to give a sh*t.
After “Riverworld” I went to bed. The rest of the day’s tweets are from the workaday day.
On the third day of writing Long Dark during NaNoWriMo 2009 — which is to say, on NaNovember 3, 2009 — I made a surprising discovery: that another character of mine, from a completely different project that has nothing to do with terraforming or space exploration, was a historical figure in the Long Dark/Cold story universe. The other project is Mistress of Woodland, a long-term project I began in 1998, which is a kind of fantasy/magical realism novel with lots of Finnish mythical content, and which originated as sort of a story way to deal with some hard stuff I was going through back then.
MoW’s main character, who in the novel is in something of the same circumstances I was in the Real World, is named Rachel. And if Rachel is a historical character in Long Dark (and by extension Cold) — wooo, spooky — that means that, in a sense, I’m a historical character in my own novels. Spooky spooky. And … er… egotistical? Umm… err… I think I’ll stick with spooky for now.
It all makes a certain kind of sense, anyway. In my first day’s NaNo 2009 writing, I’d discovered a character named Mordecai, who in the early days of my invented society the Consensus of the Main Belt & Outer Solar System, or whatever-the-hell I’m calling it — the Consensus for short — had been a Consensus spy and “data thief” on the Moon. That was, of course, before formal recognition by the inSystem governments of the terrestrial planets and Moon of Consensus independence and sovereignty, at which point Consensus had to pay attention to trade agreements covering such inSystem legalities as copyright. Mordecai appeared in my story telling a Consensus “data trader” in training, Louava who was on her way to Earth — and who was actually the protagonist of that writing — about how the philosophical basis of much of Consensus thought had to do with certain ideas about integrity. Which were based, in fact, on ideas I’d started developing for myself on a discussion list I was on in 1998 where Mistress of Woodland was born.
Here’s an excerpt from my Mordecai writing from November 1, 2009, exactly as written.
Mordecai was a legend. He hadn’t been a data trader or diplomat: he’d been a spy and data-thief, back in the days before the governments of the Inner System had finally given in to the reality that the Outer System was no longer in their control – that if they wanted any of the riches of the asteroids or the gas giants and their moons, they were going to have to deal with the Consensus as a sovereign government. Mordecai, a Belter born and bred, had lived inside of Consensus thought all his life; but somehow, he’d learned how to pass himself off so convincingly as a groundbound that no one of the Moon – his main area of activity – had ever clued in to his real identity or origins. He’d inserted himself into [the base at thus’n’such place on the Moon] and used his position there [to steal all kinds of cool data that helped the Consensus in all kinds of cool ways – scientific info mainly, engineering stuff, perfections of CELSS and blah blah].
“How did I do it?” he asked them. “Mindfulness. In two aspects: first, there is mindfulness of who you are, as both an individual and as a member of Consensus. It’s something you can never forget, or you’ll cease to remember why you’re there, doing the work you’re doing. If you forget, that’s where the corruption begins: your purpose becomes confused, and merit begins to dwindle away. You understand this: integrity, a wholeness of self, is the very basis of our philosophy, whatever else your individual religious beliefs may be; and integrity is in ideal terms about having a clear hold always on who and what you are and what your relationship is to your family and friends, your Kitcheners and colleagues, all the consensuses of which you are a part including the overarching Consensus we all belong to – and also to your antagonists and enemies. Or, if you prefer, your relationship to those who have a different purpose than you do – those whose purpose goes crosswise to your own.
(Note: I typically use square brackets for placeholders when I don’t have exact words and would get hung up and slowed down in my writing to think of them in the moment. Kitcheners in the Long Story/Cold story universe, are people who share a common kitchen as well as toilet facilities — – since in the artificial biospheres of outer space, it would be difficult and a waste of scarce resources to provide each and every nuclear family with its very own separate kitchen and toilet facilities. Thus a Kitchen is an important basic social unit, including typically about six families, about 20-25 people.)
Two days later, I was writing about a different character, Esti Gusev — & its through her story that I discovered my MoW character Rachel was one of the intellectual/philosophical forbears of the Consensus. She was also important to Esti personally: it was in fact (I discovered with that writing) Rachel’s writings which led Esti to join Consensus, & ultimately end up on one of the ships crossing the Long Dark to another solar system where the terraforming project of Cold would eventually take place.
Thing is, in MoW I’d never given Rachel a last name. She hadn’t needed one. But now she did need one, because she was going to be quoted and otherwise referred to here & there in Long Dark and Cold.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out what it would be.
If you Google the word meikäläinen — you can just type meikalainen if you don’t know how to type an ä with the dots — the top search result you’ll get is a page from the Finnish Wikipedia for Matti Meikäläinen. If you ask Google to Translate this page, it’ll tell you its title means John Doe and will inform you in that special Google-translation-style of pidgin English the following:
John Doe is an example of a man, which can be used as a defendant or the owner of the legitimate example. It can also be used for the person whose identity is unknown or which is intended to be anonymous . An unknown woman is commonly known as Mary Doe. For example, the United States responsible appointments are John Doe and Jane Doe or John Smith.
In more fluent English: Matti Meikäläinen is used in Finnish, as John Doe is used in English, to designate an anonymous or unknown person, or can be used as a pseudonym for someone whose real identity must remain confidential, as in some legal cases; and can also simply be used as a depiction of the “typical Finn.” As explained by user sakvaka at WordReference Forums,
Matti Meikäläinen is a very known person here in Finland. The name is associated with the “commonman”, somebody who can be anyone of us. It is used a lot in sample photos of credit cards and passports, in which real names and personal information must not be visible.
And later,
He’s just an average person, someone that can be anyone of us – just a normal guy.
The first names Matti and Maija are Finnish equivalents, respectively, of Matthew and Mary. But the “surname” Meikäläinen is only used as a “surname” in this context: it’s not a surname that any real person has.
But meikäläinen is a real Finnish word — a noun derived from the Finnish pronoun me (English we) meaning one of us:
or, as sakvaka explains,
“something that originates from us”. “Meikäläinen kahvi on maailmankuulua” – Our coffee is world-famous. “Älä ammu häntä, hän on meikäläisiä” – Do not shoot him, he’s one of us.
So don’t be fooled by any of the numerous people named Meikäläinen on Facebook (many of them Matti or Maija as well) — these are folks who are preserving their anonymity.
As I decided Rachel wanted to do as well. But more than that –
– picked that “common person” surname — obviously not her real surname, which I still don’t know what it is — because she identifies herself as of the common people, one of us — entirely fitting to how she’s viewed by Consensus some three or four or five or something centuries after her stuff is written. As I told my friend Chris in an IM chat last November, “you know me … i need my words & names to really mean stuff….”
So now my main character from MoW has also become my vehicle for elucidating some of the philosophical stuff that was already implicit in this imaginary society of Consensus I was inventing anyway.
I think she’s gonna be a guest poster on my blog, too. Because so much of her stuff about integrity and violation is relevant to the ways the Real World we live in screws with us too; & also how we keep it together.
Today was a day focused on writing. But I want to highlight a couple of stories from today re: animal abuse. First one from Alaska Commons, in which John Aronno reports on how he and Heather, househunting, discovered an ugly situation of ongoing abuse & neglect of a dog. Turns out the Municipality of Anchorage doesn’t have a very straightforward way to report animal abuse & neglect, and John & Heather are working to rectify that.
Later in the day Sean Cockerham of the Anchorage Daily News reported from Juneau that the Alaska Senate, in the closing days of this year’s legislative session, finally made sexual abuse of animals illegal in Alaska, with an 18-1 vote. I first learned of this bill when I wrote a post countering some of Jerry Prevo’s numerous lies about the Anchorage equal rights ordinance AO 2009-64 last May: one of his lies was that the ordinance, if passed, would grant “legal special rights” to anyone engaging in such sexual practices as pedophilia (sex with children), necrophilia (sex with corpses), and zoophilia (sex with animals, also known as bestiality) — never mind that pedophilia and necrophilia were already illegal by Alaska law (which no Anchorage ordinance could overturn), and House Bill 6, which at the time Prevo’s lies were first promulgated, had already passed the Alaska House, would explicitly make sexual conduct with animals a Class A misdemeanor. HB 6 had been written by Rep. Bob Lynn (R-Anchorage) after an April 2008 case of a man raping a dog in Klawock brought to light that that the existing “cruelty to animal” law didn’t explicitly forbid sexual abuse of animals. According to a Huffington Post story last March,
[A] 26-year-old registered sex offender was accused of molesting a local family’s pet dog.
The man was spotted by a local woman coaxing the Labrador retriever into the woods near a ball field. There he allegedly tied it to a tree, taped its muzzle shut with duct tape and had sex with it, witnesses told police at the time.
The man had been twice convicted of raping a young boy and more recently had served probation for assault after lunging at a child. While the incident with the dog was reported to the police, Klawock Mayor Don Marvin said nothing happened for two days while fearful parents escorted their children home from school.
“When this incident happened, we had a community that was scared,” Marvin said.
Because Alaska has no law against such an attack, Ketchikan District Attorney James Scott eventually charged the man with two counts of criminal mischief, which was later changed to a theft charge.
In requesting a $10,000 bail, Scott told the court that the state was concerned that if a small child had been available and unattended that day, “the small child would have been found taped (and) tied in the woods.”
A lot of people have asked why there was one vote in the Alaska Senate against HB 6. According to Sean Cockerham’s report yesterday on the ADN’s Politics blog,
Kenai Republican Sen. Tom Wagoner was the only vote against House Bill 6.
(Update -Wagoner told me afterward that he probably shouldn’t have voted against it but was just frustrated that this is how the Legislature is spending its time at the end of the session, instead of dealing with issues like child molestation.)
As I wrote in reader comments,
I’m sorry Sen. Wagoner thinks humane treatment of animals in itself is a waste of the Legislature’s time — but I hope someone will take time to educate him that sexual & other abuse of animals are closely associated with domestic violence (see http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/forum/26/3fall2009/d_animalabuse.html) and sexual crime against people including child molestation (see http://www.hsus.org/acf/cruelty/publiced/cruelty_sexual_abuse.html).
Here’s the day’s tweets:
in reply to cadaverousapple #
