Lingerie and Ruby Slippers

Late this summer I attended my first lingerie trade show, Curves, at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Much as I loved working the show, one of the highlights of my day at the fair had nothing to do with undergarments, although it had everything to do with sex appeal: namely my visit to the Christian LouBoutin boutique, home of the signature red-soled stilettos.

I have a passion for shoes, which I seem to have inherited from my daughter. Shoes should be either fun or beautiful or both—blue Mary Janes made from Brazilian rubber, sneakers of silver kimono fabrics, bejeweled copper sandals. Unlike my tall daughter who favors heels that put her on a par with her 6’3” brother, I’ve always insisted on shoes that I can walk in, that is, flats. But that may be changing.

I was sitting in the Double Helix bar with my assistant, Rachel, having a quick lunch of Cosmopolitans, pate on toast and mocha cake when I noticed the shoe store a few yards away. Although I had never seen even a single pair outside the pages of a magazine, I recognized the boutique, named after its French designer, at once. The prices were as high as I expected, well beyond my usual splurge, but the red-soled shoes were also more exquisite than I had imagined. Beautiful but barely functional. Although there were a few token pairs of pointy-toed flats, not even these looked comfortable. No, this was part of the beauty as torture, “no pain, no gain,” aesthetic. As a young feminist, I hadn’t seen the point. Now, with two bad knees and chronic heel pain, I didn’t dare to even try on a pair lest their gorgeousness sweep aside my common sense.

There is one pair in particular that haunts me, a pair of burgundy patent heels that seem like the couture version of Dorothy’s ruby slippers in “The Wizard of Oz.” For me, ruby slippers are a metaphor for my Kansas childhood, my fascination with the faraway, the maelstroms of life, and my belief that in the end, we come home to ourselves. In the third grade, I had my first and only starring role as the Wicked Witch of the West (she who melts away while trying to steal the magical slippers) in a neighborhood production. Now, as an adult, I keep a photograph of a pair of sparkly red high heels to remind me that I can always click my heels three times and (with a swipe of my credit card) find my way home to San Francisco.

Since coming back from Vegas, I seem to be seeing pictures of red-soled shoes everywhere. And I’ve learned that CB as well as other famous shoes designers have actually created crystal-studded ruby slippers for the upcoming 70th anniversary of the movie. Although I’m not ready to fly to Vegas just to buy a pair of shoes that I couldn’t stand in without pain and that cost nearly a month’s rent, I have realized that these lovely heels do have something in common with undergarments after all. Just as a well-fitting bra can compensate for gravity’s effects, so too can a pair of stilettos. And then there is the argument that I may not be 25 or even 38, but maybe I’m still young enough to learn how to walk in high heels, and certainly more able to now than I will be at 70.

In the meantime, in my dreams, I’m painlessly and pertly prancing down the yellow brick road in ruby stilettos, in absolutely no hurry to get anywhere.

Twenty Years

How bad will climate change be? Is it irreversible? And if so, how much time do we have before we're all in really big trouble?

For one answer to these questions, turn to the last page of the November, 2008, U.K. "Harper's Bazaar," where British designer Vivienne Westwood, she of the famed corset dress, plugs her "Art Manifesto" (www.activeresistane.co.uk). Click to enter and look to the far right for an interview by Decca Aitkenhead with Jame Lovelock (reprinted from "The Guardian," March 1, 2008). The 'maverick" climate scientist is best-known as the father of the Gaia Hypothesis, the theory that our planet is "a self-regulating super-organism," an idea which, according to the article, "forms the basis of almost all climate science."

What is Lovelock's answer to the questions above? Bad, very bad. By 2020, less than a dozen years from now, he expects extreme weather to become normal. And it's too late to do anything about it.

In a nutshell, Lovelocks thinks we're fucked, pardon my French. When the interviewer asks what he would do if he were her, the octogenarian answers, "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky, it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan."

From an individual perspective, his advice makes perfect sense, regardless of global warming. None of us knows how many hours we have left. Most of us plan our lives assuming that we will wake up tomorrow morning and the next and the next for decades to come, but most of us also know that this assumption is just that, an assumption that can be shattered by an earthquake, an aneurysm, a terrorist attack. If nothing else, enjoying life is an antidote to the fear of our individual mortality.

But collective mortality is another matter. As the mother of two adult children who are just beginning to carve their way in the world, who have always talked about the children they someday hope to have, my stomach clenches reading Lovelock's words. How does one plan for a future of mass chaos? And yet this is already the case in much of Africa where climate changes such as desertification and viruses like HIV have combined with human greed and hatred to produce large-scale death and destruction. While the rest of us might prefer to think that Africa's fate is far removed from our own, Hollywood is already busy imagining what might happen when the icecaps melt.

So how do we reconcile the need to live our everyday lives, with their individual dramas of hopes and dreams, loves and losses, with the knowledge that we may all be living in the equivalent of Darfur sooner rather than later, in this life and not in some future circle of hell? Perhaps Lovelock is right and it's already too late, but it seems to me that we have a moral obligation to try to stop the rising tides. It's time to put the environmental crisis, not the credit crisis or the Middle East crisis, front and center on the international agenda. And at the same time, try to enjoy each and every moment.

The Real Rapture

I woke up this morning to Beauty. The beauty of a small pug dog snoring softly beside me, The pleasantly heavy warmth of the down comforter, its red sateen cover glowing in the morning light. The scent of roses on the nearby table. The taste of strong hot tea with milk. The music of Snow Patrol urging me to forget the world outside.

And yet I also woke up to the world outside, remembering a broadcast I’d heard just yesterday. The G7 had met and there was talk that in bailing out their financial institutions, the Europeans had just blown their environmental budget. Each country had its predictable sob story as to why it couldn’t meet its target for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Poland cried that it was too poor to revamp its Soviet-era coal plants, while Germany wanted to protect its car manufacturers. The Brits proposed paying developing nations to not cut down their rain forests, in lieu of lowering its own carbon footprint. At least they all agree that global warming is a man-made crisis and are committed to some level of action, unlike the powers-that-be in this country who are just getting to the point of admitting that climate change is happening. And while humanity dithers, the polar ice caps and the Greenland Ice Sheet continue to melt, drop by drop into the oceans, causing them to slowly rise, and eventually flood the coastal cities where much of humanity now lives.

There are some who view this as good news. The New Agers hope that collapse will bring on a more sustainable civilization. And if not, they’ll tell you that since “we’re spiritual beings having a human experience,” what happens on this planet doesn’t really matter anyway. And then there are the Christian fundamentalists who are looking forward to the Apocalypse because they’re so convinced that in the “Rapture,” or the Second Coming, Christ will beam them up to the Pearly Gates. It never seems to occur to those who take pleasure in shooting wolves from the air that God might think twice about allowing into Heaven those who managed to turn the Garden of Eden into Hell on Earth, even, or especially, if they did it in Her name.

If we were not in such a hurry to transcend this world, perhaps we could slow down enough to see its beauty and be moved to protect it-- out of love. There is the immense beauty of the disappearing Amazon Rainforest, the melting Greenland Ice Sheet and the dying Great Barrier Reef, but there is also the everyday beauty that still exists in even the most impoverished or frenetic of lives: the sight of the crescent new moon, the quiet sound of snow falling, the bittersweetness of dark chocolate, the scent of wild fennel growing along the bay, the warmth of a friend’s embrace, the ecstasy of a lover's caress, the heart-opening beauty of a child’s smile. If we could see how each of our lives is shot through with beauty, perhaps we could learn to cherish each moment and each other as well. And that would be real rapture.

Whatever Happened to Compassion?

I listened throughout the debate between Vice-Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin for the topic of abortion to come up, but the interviewer focused on economic and international issues, denying Governor Palin the chance to state again her ardent belief that even incest and rape survivors should be forced to bear their rapist’s babies, that even if her own daughter were raped, she would want her to “choose life.”

When I was raped at 16, I chose life—my life. And thanks to the passage of Roe. v. Wade the previous year, I was able to choose to save my own life.

At that time, there was no word for acquaintance rape. Rape happened when a strange man, usually of a different race, jumped out of the bushes with a knife, not when a co-worker with coloring like your mother’s got you so drunk you blacked out and then “took advantage of you.” Like a good Catholic girl, I blamed myself, my naivete, my drunken state, my midriff-baring top, not to mention the fact that I had already lost my virginity. As though any or all of those factors negated my right to bodily integrity.

I couldn’t tell my parents. And I knew at a gut level that if I did, I would be blamed, and that if they called the police, I would be the only one on trial. Alone, I found my way to a health clinic where I got the morning-after pill. When that didn’t bring on my period, I arranged for a menstrual extraction at five weeks, one week short of the then-six week waiting period for a pregnancy test. I’ll never know if I was actually pregnant, but I wasn’t going to wait the extra week. The doctor who did the procedure was the coldest I have ever met, but I am nevertheless deeply grateful to him. Ten years passed before I could acknowledge that I had been raped. Thirty-five years this month have passed since the rape and never have I had one single moment of guilt about my decision to choose my life.

I have two healthy, amazing adult children. No woman should be forced to bear a child she does not want, no matter what the circumstances of conception. But if that woman conceived as a result of rape or incest, forcing her to bear that child is beyond unconscionable.

To say that a rape or incest survivor should “choose life,” may sound noble to some, but few wish to imagine the gritty reality behind Governor Palin’s statement. But ponder this, dear reader. A girl of 11 or 13 or 15 has been impregnated by her father/grandfather/brother/uncle/cousin. Do not try to envision the horrors that this girl has already lived through, the excruciating pain of having her young body violated, most likely again and again, the broken heart that comes from having one’s basic trust devastated, the perhaps subtle neurological damage caused by this trauma, which will impact virtually every aspect of her life for decades to come. Now imagine the usual nine months of pregnancy, with its myriad physical discomforts, and the agonizing pain of childbirth-- difficult but ultimately worthwhile challenges for adult women who want a child but pure torture for those who do not. And after childbirth, what will this abusive family choose for this girl? Whisk away the baby to be adopted or keep the baby, to be raised alongside its mother, perhaps used as a hostage to force her continued compliance?

Whatever happened to compassion?

And for those who look to the Bible for their answers, I find it hard to believe that the compassionate Jesus of the New Testament would agree with Governor Palin that the innocent should be punished in a cycle of violence without end.

Return to Another Planet

Here I am again, back at the Anaconda Bar, in the El Monte Sagrado hotel in Taos, New Mexico, listening to Jimmy Stadler and Don Conoscenti playing “Moon River,” which they’ve dedicated to the bartenders Dexter and Rushan. A woman walks past wearing a bejeweled T-shirt with the words, “Wild West.” My mind drifts to earlier conversation in which a local mentioned that the midwife here packs a 357 Magnum under her front seat (for the rattlesnakes?). I thought to myself, “Honey, you are in the Wild West!” As opposed to Santa Fe, or “Fantase,” as artist Felipe Ortega calls the city an hour south of here, land of velvet broomstick skirts, cowboy boots and Wild West T-shirts.

The café gallery where I was so inspired on my last trip has closed but the friendships I made within those four walls seem to have generally survived. And the surge in creativity that I experienced before has happened again, albeit not as strong as before. I feel the absence of what Julia Cameron calls a “fuse lighter,” the person whose enthusiastic support of our artwork fuels our own creative fires.

While I’ve been somewhat less productive this visit (5 paintings instead of 12), I’ve done more exploring. I’ve seen the awesome Rio Grande Gorge and the bridge that crosses it, the second highest cantilevered bridge in the U.S., and the Earthships, a fanciful term for the housing development outside of town employing sustainable rammed earth construction methods and recycled materials, notably old tires. I’ve soaked in the mud bath and iron pool at Ojo Caliente, one of the oldest hot springs in the country. I discovered that I’m allergic to some part of the juniper plant, although I’ve had no trouble imbibing gin and tonics. And most nights of the week, I’ve gone dancing to music played by bands both local (Tijerina from Albuquerque) and international (MindFlow, Brazilian progressive rock).

I’ve gotten more used to driving my Beetle down dirt roads and, ironically, being out in the country has encouraged me to embrace my inner glamour puss, thanks to Eliza, owner of The Muse, an eco-lingerie shop. I’ve also felt myself slow down here, feeling my body and my emotions more, a healing process that continues to unfold.

And then there is the sacred Taos Mountain, which exerts a gentle but inexorable pull. I am not surprised when another local tells me that beneath the mountain are metal deposits so dense that they can be detected from space by U.S .government satellites. I too, am relieved when he goes on to say that, fortunately, the Red Willow people of Taos Pueblo aren’t about to let anyone close enough to the mountain to investigate.

When I was here before, more than one person told me that the mountain either accepts or rejects newcomers. In the three weeks since I arrived this time, I’ve been trying to guess how she feels about me. The night my glasses break, followed by my digital camera and new sunglasses disappearing, I thought that might be a sign that she wanted me to leave. Then a woman from Taos Pueblo told me that the mountain accepts each in its own way, which gave me some hope; the camera and sunglasses resurface, the glasses get fixed.

Despite the complaints by old-timers that the town has changed and that it’s almost impossible to make a living, for me as an artist/writer with virtually no corporate experience, Taos seems to have more possibilities than the overcrowded metropolis of San Jose/San Francisco/Oakland (its official name). Perhaps it’s the wide-open spaces and big skies,, or that so many people here are also in the arts, or even that housing is a whole lot less expensive.

Other things, like drinks in this bar, which caters to tourists, are only slightly less expensive than at home. Of course, it’s all relative; to my son who lives in London, everything in the Bay Area is cheap. The upside is that unlike many small towns which wallow in provincialism, Taos has a uniqueness which draws visitors from all over the world, so that the person sitting next to you at the bar could just as easily be from Sydney as from Denver.

Unlike my last visit, where I sat in the Anaconda sipping a prickly pear margarita and feeling like an alien, I feel more like a local now. Instead of watching others, I’m participating, flirting with the bartenders, laughing with my friend, and dancing (but not the two-step). Instead of black, I’m wearing an aqua floral silk garment, one which is considered a dress here and in L.A. but a nightgown in Silicon Valley.

As Don sings “Beautiful Valley,” my heart resonates, and I wonder again if a girl from the Valley of Semi-Consciousness can find happiness in the valley of the Sacred Mountain.

A week later, I’m back in the San Francisco Bay Area, driving along Ashby Avenue in Berkeley. The stoplight turns red and I glance up, only to have my breath taken away by the sight of the hills dotted with houses and the blue sky streaked with clouds. A block or two later and to my right I see the Bay glittering in the distance, with the Pacific Ocean stretching beyond.

Where is home?

June, 2008

Artist Statement: Forbidden series

As the name implies, the series “Forbidden: Women’s Lives in Afghanistan under the Taliban” explores the sequestered life of Afghani women under the Taliban regime, as an example of how fundamentalist religion restricts and reduces the lives of women in the name of maintaining men’s honor. The work was inspired by a variety of sources, including Eve Ensler’s book, “Insecure at Last: A Political Memoir,” the movie “The Kite Runner” and the work of RAWA, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, but also reflects the artist’s long-standing interests in woman in Islam, the subject of her undergraduate thesis at the University of California, Berkeley, and the intersection of religion and women’s bodies.

Judith created the series during a retreat in Taos, New Mexico. Their genesis was a surprise to the artist, who bought several sheets of handmade papers at a local shop, intending to create a piece based on New Mexico, but found something entirely different emerging.

“Forbidden Self” is part of a larger series of yoni (vagina) paintings. The image of the woman locked in her house is a metaphor for the locking in of women’s sexual desire. The full moon, in the position of the clitoris, represents the potential for pleasure that women are born with, a potential which is seen as threatening to male dominance and too often ripped away under a practice euphemistically referred to as “female circumcision,” not only in Afghanistan but in other parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

As in the other pieces, the windows in "Forbidden View" are blackened, a Taliban rule ostensibly made so that no unrelated man can see the women inside the house, but in fact keeping women from looking out. In this case, one young woman breaks the rules, standing on rocks to peek out at the full moon.

“Forbidden Knowledge” is inspired by the secret girls schools set up by RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) after the Taliban outlawed female education.

Among the many things that women and girls were not allowed to do under the Taliban was eat ice cream, because this pleasure, like others, was seen as lascivious; “Forbidden Pleasure” refers to the secret ice cream parlors which Ensler describes in her memoir.

“Forbidden Love” depicts a woman holding a love letter, which resulted in her being stoned. This last piece was also inspired by a conversation overheard in the cafe/gallery in Taos, New Mexico. A local woman who was stationed in Iraq in 2007 with the Army National Guard described seeing an Iraqi woman being stoned, a horrific event which both she and her platoon were not allowed to interfere with or stop.

Shapeshifter

Like a cat,
She grows talons
Sharp enough to tear
Human flesh.
Her body elongates,
Sleek black fur,
The gold of her eyes
Gleams in the darkness
As she bounds away
Rider and Ridden.