out women, writing, old age

I want to be loved by someone beautiful, asian, young and rich. I suspect I am somewhat in love with Kim Hyun Joong. (Not that he's rich...but really why am I falling in love with some pop star at my age?) But  Ben is such a healing force for me. 


If I can manage to put all that love into Ben's character, some part of me will be healed...although I've got to say that it does make me vulnerable to put all my love for Ben into the novel. But hey, that's what makes my novels work. My heart is there for all to see and mock or commiserate with.



Maybe all older women in the west are going through this phase. A coupla days ago I was so crushed. I felt very old, bvery black, very sickly, very ugly and kept thinking now I have moved out of beauty...because older women fall off the beauty bar...and older black women are not really considered beautiful anymore. We have to deal with that. It's partly because of society, and it's partly because of the media, and part of the male-run world which is based on male hormones. For whatever reason, God created a world where men can discard older women yet they themselves remain sexual so they can sow their wild oats (hence they need young women and are attracted to them, and to youthful women.) 

In just 20 years I have become an old woman. It is all very devastating.  

And I have not had the youth I should have had. 

To have lived the past 25

with grief, ill health, money issues .. old before my time one might say...

with no chance of restoration

even if i become very rich and famous now,

the joys i could have had..had i been able to sleep, had I been healthy, had I had money, had I had good friends, had I had fame. 

had i been healthy

Those days are gone

One can't conquer MT Everest when one is 79

so it's a kind of female mid life crisis

my mother died when she was 68 or so. How long do I have?

Funny thing is, I don't want to be madly-inlove with.

but something must be done,must be felt, to redeem this life that has been so hard, so lonely and so unloved.

And now to fall away from the definition of beauty because I've gotten old....well, i would so like to be loved by some good gorgeous guys 

(which is odd because we will all be gorgeous in heaven and we will all be individually and passionately loved by everyone.)

There is also that part of me that was rejected as a kid, rejected as an adult by the inlaws.

So some female part of me wants that love I should have had, and some womanly part of me so desires that part of me that was rejected by the in-law's family. All my writings are focused on healing those rejections. All these families formed inside longhouses, all these families formed inside and outside and beyond blood families.

I am very focused on the male characters in my book. Partly because women have wounded me so much. Partly because I have sons. Partly because male pain has always interested me (from seeing all those 60's and 70's movies by white male writers about white men and white boys.) I really suspect that watching Hamlet and Edmund  did more to affect my creative interest in writing about men than my own issues. Yet, my own issues are definitely in the mix.

A feminist white female writer friend thinks i need to focus more on strong women

A black male writer friend says that as well

but I want to show my own issues and the issues I've seen in the lives of other women.

A) how women are pulled along in men's wake

our desire is to our husband

how marriage pulls you into a lot of grief because of the in-laws and the family one has married into.

Oh sure one can have great feministy souls

who divorce their men or who don't get into these situations or who aren't affected by the clan they've married into

but this is rare even among feminists (Witness Simone and Camus.)

The plain truth is that the average women

have a life that feminists don't show

because feminists get so caught up in showing empowered women

but women around the world don't have all that western middle-class privilege

And for a black male writer to tell me my women are weak is also wrong. I simply do not care to show women with lances, shields, and hottie armor. I want to show normalcy. 

Even so, I think it's pretty feministy of me to want to show how badly women have it (but apparently i'm all wrong to do that.)

And I get pretty slammed as well, I think, when I focus on

how men suffer at the hands of the male societal ideals.

Psal and Ephan in Constant Tower  and Loic in Wind Follower really have a tough time in the warrior world

so that should've pleased feminists because I was concerned with gender issues and male pain. 

I con't... I can't really write to preach

If I preach, my preaching is to show reality.

I can't write to "show" women what they should do or to show women as strong or christians or good or noble nubian warrior queens

I just can't do it

i seem called to sow reality

all this shoulda coulda idealism crap can get in the way

particularly when it prevents you from enjoying what you have

   or from showing the pain of a present situation.

And should I not write about black women's pain and weakness and sadness just because white women have done it all? And should I not write about weak sad black women because black men want Nubian well-adjusted warrior princes? 


Seriously, white women may find it old hat to have their vaginas praised and put on pedestals. The vaginas of black women my age were never praised. While white women were getting annoyed at having men hold doors for them and were tired of being enslaved to rich houses in the suburbs, we black women were not considered sexy or beautiful and were pictured as whores. And I?? What has happened to me? Old... old... and suddenly an old black woman in this sad world.  

Rant over.