Random Acts of Value

I apologize, my dear readers, for my silence as of late. Midterms seemed to kill all creative juices and I couldn't really write about anything. Perhaps that's not true, but that is the story I'm sticking to because it's the one I'm choosing to tell.

Truth be told, I haven't really been motivated to write much of anything--I have had no real epiphanies to report, no new found information, no single ray of light emitting from God's Mighty Hand to enlighten me--to instruct me. I won't call it writer's block...I'll call it life. Life happens just as much as shit does. And Boy does shit ever happen.

I finished this novel by Margaret Atwood called "The Handmaid's Tale" and it scared the shit outta me--everywhere I look I am reminded of the oppression that permeates from a patriarchal society. Carrie was right, once you see the world through a Feminist's eyes, you can never go back. It's now become this Albatross that hangs around my neck like a noose---slowly tightening with each passing second. I didn't see it before, and I certainly didn't feel it. The nerve endings have awoken--a mixture of strength and fear. And I'm searching for the knife in my boot to cut it off--wishing someone would do it for me.

I came across this website last night: http://www.girleffect.org/ Go check it out. Do it now. I'll wait.

Do you know what my favorite part is? When she goes to the village council and she tells them that all girls are valuable.
Let it sink in.
Valuable.
Main Entry: 1valu·able
Pronunciation: \ˈval-yə-bəl, -yə-wə-bəl, -yü-ə-\
Function: adjective
Date: circa 1576

1 a : having monetary value b : worth a good price
2 a : having desirable or esteemed characteristics or qualities b : of great use or service
Function: noun
Date: circa 1775

: a usually personal possession (as jewelry) of relatively great monetary value —usually used in plural

We once only fell under the first definitions: "Worth a good price" and "Personal Possession." I don't want to be these kinds of valuable--to be someone's personal property, to fit on his arm like a jewel or a trophy. This brand of value is something that will most surely depreciate. This is a KIA--a vehicle that will be worth nothing once it is driven off the lot.
Now, this second meaning--"having desirable or esteemed characteristics or qualities," it seems rather problematic. Are not all people, by this definition, valuable? If they are, why do we allow certain people who love each other to marry and yet others are denied that right? Why do we fight in silly wars? Why do we murder? Steal? Covet? Why do we oppress Women? Children? People who are different from us? Where is the value in all of this?

This week for my Women's Autobiography: A Narrative Scandal class, we read Dorothy Allison's "Two or Three Things I Know For Sure" and I finished that 94 page book in a matter of hours. I consumed it--or maybe it consumed me. If you haven't read it yet, go pick it up--or perhaps I'll let you borrow it, if you ask me nicely. One of the italicized portions was this: "Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form." I sat and pondered this for a while after I finished the book. It's a perfect thought. And I thought about how if I changed it by removing beauty and adding a form of "value," that it would be just as true.

So I'm telling you here and now. I value you. I may never meet you. I may never shake your hand, kiss your lips, feel your touch. But I value you. Never stop fighting. Never give up. And never let them take you alive. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.