Yellow Tarps

As I was driving up the I-5 freeway one day late last summer on my way to the post office, I came upon some traffic. It was at the Downtown San Diego S curve going north. I was on my way to the the Midway Post Office to drop off my works quarterly newsletter. A simple task...a routine errand. As I slowed down to heed the brake lights in front of me, my gaze moved to the left. There were flashing lights, fire trucks, police standing around, orange flares...warning us to stay away from the scene. Next I saw a smashed beige four door sedan of some kind. It was facing the wrong way on the freeway...sprawled out across the lanes...looking very out of place and too quiet. The next thing I saw was a yellow tarp. It was draped across the dead body of whoever owned that smashed beige four door sedan.

I held myself together for the next couple of miles. Once I pulled into the Post Office parking lot, I lost it. My thoughts going to the family of that person under the yellow tarp. How this day... that one moment on the I-5, would change their lives forever. The sadness and grief of that family ripped through me as if it were my own. And I suppose on many levels....it was. When you lose someone tragically in your lifetime (as I did my mother when I was seven)...you tend to have this supersonic ability to feel others' pain and loss. A sad moment like the one I experienced that day on the freeway turns into much more than a sad moment. It replays itself over and over again in my mind.

I can't stop imagining the mourning family... flailing around moaning and weeping as if they themselves will surely die. I try to picture what they look like. What their houses look like. I think of the dead persons belongings and how the family will perhaps walk around with these things clutched in their hands to try to be as close to the deceased as possible. Maybe the persons wife or husband will go to the closet and bury their face into their dead loves clothes.... to pick up the scent that they surely will never forget.

After that day I was turned upside down for awhile. I wrote the below poem during that time....

i called you all last night…

but none of you were her.
all i see is a yellow tarp.
laid over my brain...
i'm seven years old.
and thank god i didn’t see
the yellow tarp.
thank god...there was
not one for me that day.
but for her...yes. it was her
day. never mind her children.
never mind her youth.
and never mind their children.
the ones that die every day.
yellow tarp, draped.
across freeways.
across generations.
people are dying...every day.
and we sit and laugh as if
life is something that we
have a right to.
but, all the while death's knock
is at our back door.
ready to surprise us...
ripping and shredding
through our souls...
our hearts...our
sanity.
tell me what you think
of when you see the
yellow tarp?
are you grateful
for your life? do you
understand what it
means to be ALIVE?
or do you think your life
is something
that is owed to you?
do you think that you deserve
it? and please tell me why?
freeways eating up our loved...
while public transport gets
eaten by big oil, automobiles.
of course.
and our freeways are killing.
oil is killing.
yellow tarps draped
across the world.
yellow tarp draped across
a human being. someone.
someone like me, someone
like you. tell me again
why you deserve
to be here? why you think
you're so special?
you think the freeway
won't get you? think again.
big oil won't shed a
tear. neither will
GM.

-tpd
17 March 2009

Some recent thoughts on my broken GI system...

From journal entry 01/28/09:

God I am so sick of this unyeilding nausea! Sometimes I feel as though I'm living out some twisted curse, or unresolved bad karma from a previous life. Perhaps my mental grief is bigger than I know and expresses itself through my tortured guts. I pray for relief everyday.



From journal entry 02/03/2009:

The nausea continues today. My ticking torture gut bomb of madness. My never ending saga of pukey stomach drama. Well, I take the pukey part back. If I were to be pukey, perhaps that would help the situation. Whatever it is inside me, I wish it would find its way out in one pukey mass of relief. But alas, it sits there like a psychotic warthog with severe diarreha and a terrible case of genital sores. Roaming around my insides with its disgusting pus filled eye sockets, drooling and stumbling against the inside walls of my stomach. Creating a chaotic bubbling mess of my gastrointestinal system. Wrecking havoc on my digestive mechanics like a blind being with no arms or legs, but just a useless flailing stump of an existence.

I still pray for relief.

-tpd
6 February 2009

Child of the Americas

(this artwork is by stephanie dodson. http://www.stephaniedodson.com/)

In the Sring of 2007, I took my first Womens Studies class. It was entitled: Women's Studies-Cross Cultural Perspective, and was taught by Sophia Arredondo. Words cannot touch how special this class was to me. It was a lesson in healing, in finding my own creative voice; not only as a woman, but as a survivor. During this time I was able to pay tribute in several different ways to myself and my life, as well as to my mother and her memory.

One of those was an assignment in which we were to recreate a poem written by feminist scholar/author/poet Aurora Levins Morales. This process was an absolute joy from start to finish and in the end I produced one of my favorite pieces of writing. Please read on for both Aurora's original work (which is lovely to be sure!) and my own rendition.


Child of the Americas

I am a child of the Americas,
a light-skinned mestiza of the Caribbean,
a child of many diaspora, born into this continent at a crossroads.
I am a U.S. Puerto Rican Jew,
a product of the ghettos of New York I have never known.
An immigrant and the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants.
I speak English with passion: it's the tongue of my consciousness,
a flashing knife blade of cristal, my tool, my craft.

I am Caribeña, island grown. Spanish is my flesh,
Ripples from my tongue, lodges in my hips:
the language of garlic and mangoes,
the singing of poetry, the flying gestures of my hands.
I am of Latinoamerica, rooted in the history of my continent:
I speak from that body.

I am not African. Africa is in me, but I cannot return.
I am not taína. Taíno is in me, but there is no way back.
I am not European. Europe lives in me, but I have no home there.

I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish.
I was born at the crossroadsand
I am whole.

-Aurora Levins Morales


Child of the Americas (my version)

I am a child of the Americas,
a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman of
Norwegian descent, though my Norwegian history is forgotten.
I am slightly touched by an unknown ancestry that allows my skin
to brown instead of burn in the summer sun.

I am a lower middle class Caucasian American,
a daughter of a construction worker. A daughter of the labor union.
I am a product of the North as well as of the South of this
stolen land. This California. This, my home.

I am a child of prejudice and ignorance,
Transformed by knowledge…inspired by the world.
I am a woman creating her own reality, a woman empowered
by her choice to move through the world
unchained by dangerous ideology.

I was raised within a culture of abuse.
Alcohol, drugs.
Murder. Murder. Murder.
My young mother robbed of her life, ripped from her children.
A young daughter left motherless. A young daughter left to grow up with
A black abyss in her soul where her mothers light should be.

I am a child of the trees.
My connection to the earth and the natural, is my connection to "God".
I am a child of rock and roll, but have been utterly seduced
by the hypnotic rhythms and sensual beats of the electronic world.
I speak from that movement. I sweat from that movement. I love from that movement.

I am not a capitalist by choice, though I am forced to live as one.
I am not a victim, though people may see one in me.
I am not a proud American, though I am proud of who I am.

I am new. History made me. My only language is English.
I was born at the crossroads.
I am whole.

-Tiffany Kay Olson

Peace.

-tpd
22 January 2009

A bit about the name...

Why "The Proletariat's Daughter", you ask?


I have a true and deep respect for manual labor. I suppose you could say that it's something close to my heart. My father was, is and will be until the day he dies, a devoted union carpenter. I'm a tried and true union baby. Support of and respect for the Carpenters Union was instilled in me from very early on in my childhood.



Because of this positive discourse surrounding my fathers occupation, I came to look up to my father for the work that he did. I've always held him in high regard because of his unyielding work ethic as well as his dedication to the field of carpentry. Gratefully, my father passed on his tireless work ethic to me, his oldest child.



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There is something so remarkable about someone that can build things. From the bloody, smashed fingers to the distinct scent of oily wood on their skin. The dirt and grim; and the wholesome tiredness that can only come from using your body all day long to lift and move and hammer and climb and carry and build. Over the years these things have become endearing and special. At present there is a little place in my heart where builders of things will always have a place.



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I truly believe that basic carpentry is one of those skills that every person should have. It's one of those life skills that everyone (at one time or another) is pissed that they don't have. (Ahem, myself included!) Mechanics is another one. In high school they should teach Mechanics 101, Carpentry 101, and Finances 101. Seriously people! What the fuck am I going to do with the knowledge that I learned in Chemistry 101?



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So that explains the name choice for my blog...with a few side notes.

Happy Building!

-tpd

21 January 2009