Poem about Vanity and The Last Dragon

The Valentine's art at the end is what they call NFSW

Feb 14: In the early morning, before the light in the sky, I rose to meet myself on this day. I puttered around the kitchen, lit candles, lit a flame, layered a steel pot with ingredients for chai. Water first. My breath, I noted, was unscathed, full and relaxed. The breath of a well rested woman. I think whales breathe like this. I like how it felt. It felt like nothing. Now, as I type this around noon, I must remember to breathe. I must learn to forget to hold my breath. Breathing has nothing to do with the mind. A natural, easy breath flow is not a product of thought. That’s the same thing as making a human child inside of me. When I was pregnant, I never thought to myself: Today I will add more cells to the baby I am making inside me. Now, I will fill out his arms, and now I will sketch out his nerves. No, I made him instead from a wisdom unfathomable. That’s the same well I draw my breath from, I think.

I like rising early. It takes a good bit of discipline the day before. Restraint. Restraint is an important quality in a lover. I am my own lover, too.

My son and I have been watching The Last Dragon daily. This is an iconic member of the hip hop cinema canon. A tribute to another time in Black and Asian relations. Listen to the pledge of the powerful, “I bear no arms. May god help me if I ever have to use my art. Conscious is our god. Peace is our shelter. Beauty and perfection is our life.”

See, (Bruce) Leroy is tough enough to not let any small dogs provoke him with bark and cheap bite. And he gets the girl, Laura Charles played by the immortal Denise Matthews. In a cherished scene, Laura Charles sings a very weird, delightful song called 7th Heaven. From the bottom of my heart, I need you to understand that this is one of the first times I’ve seen a gorgeous woman be this odd, and it is giving me life.

I’ve been hesitant to be as beautiful as I am, naturally. It’s hard to know what to do with beauty. Annihilate? Make it a point of sale? Here, in this moment, Denise Matthews is one of the most free, prettiest ladies, and quirkiest humans I have ever seen. I count this version of her as a core role model, now and ever after. Academia never gave me role models like her.

Denise “Vanity” Matthews, was called Vanity by Prince. Yes, that Prince. She was so fine, so bright. Denise Matthews’ life sort of followed the trope of the tragic mulatta - a mixed woman, who yearned to break free of sexual slavery, and found no relief or hardly any before she died in her 50’s of addiction complications. Ani Difranco sang, “everyone harbors a secret hatred, for the prettiest girl in the room.” That was her. This is still true.

Side note: I am searching for a copy of her 2010 autobiography, “Blame it On Vanity: Hollywood, Hell and Heaven.” It is no where to be found, not Amazon, not World Cat, not Ebay, not used booksellers with millions of books, not my trusty local independent booksellers. Nowhere. Can you find it?

I think her book is hard to find because Denise Matthews writes frankly about growing up in sexual violence, and not being able to come out from under the heavy blanket of sexualization almost her entire life. This was true of many of the women in federal prisons I have worked with. They typically had a carceral home as a child, were trapped in violence as a wife or mother, and are now prisoners of the state.

The heavy blanket. I had a lovely talk with my doctoral advisor the other day, Tsianina Lomawaima, the first Native woman to come out of the anthropology program at Stanford. Dr. L broke the academic silence around Indian boarding schools. Her dad was in one, and she interviewed hundreds of others who made it through his school to live to tell it. Her overarching message? No matter the heavy blanket that covered the Indian boarding schools, there was agency there in those halls and rooms, in those children. Agency. Something we should not rob ourselves or any one of. Subversion, in any form, is a kind of agency. Kindness is its own subversion.

During our talk, in between the smiles and the serious, she shared with me about her father’s mausi, her namesake. Tsianina Red Feather, a legendary guitarist and singer (this linked clip of her playing in 1918 may be the earliest footage of anyone playing the slide steel guitar). Princess Tsianina was a shining star of the (Indian) Lyceum circuits which swept the nation, they were a major entertainment feature of early 20th century America. Those nation building years in the U.S. had room, space for Native American artists, dancers, singers, musical bands, and orators who worked ceaselessly as long as they had the stage, to raise awareness about the Indian struggle for freedom. We don’t hear about the Lyceum circuits.

I was glad to hear from Dr. Tsianina Lomawaima, hear her voice, learn from her. Whenever I speak with her I invariably trip over myself in excitement, the words come rushing out even when I really, really want to listen. I have spoken to Dr. L every month of my life since I first sat down next to her at the PhD recruitment dinner in 2015. I had picked up this terrible book on the Comanchee people at the airport, and cringe-read it on the plane as I made my way to Arizona. The Comanchee were “dark” and “savage” on every fucking page. But I was learning about them as well, aaarggh. We hit it off immediately, commiserating about the NY Time bestseller. We never stopped talking. This was the longest we had gone. It had been a few months since we last met, voice to voice. During my sad year. 2023. The sad year to end all sad years.

One growing edge I am propulsing at - a pink spring bloom moving slow, green, and patient in the tree branch - is to not subvert myself. I was in academia, a rebel without a cause, for so long that I learned quite well how to subvert authority. But I don’t want to buck myself, or give my own dreams the finger. Well, fingering them may be okay, lol. You know what I mean.

My god help me if I ever have to use my art.

Christians have Easter for resurrection. I’ll take Valentine’s Day to resurrect in any day. Today I did laps and I heard myself breathe under water. I’m always making a sweet sound when I work out. I mean, I guess it sounds like a moan to all our dirty ears. I breath, and sound comes out, and it’s sweet as ripe melon. Sweet enough to turn heads. I do my best to ignore the attention. I don’t hear anyone else making sound as we swim laps, and splash, and sway. Well, men often grunt and huff in the gym. But in the water, does no one breathe the way I do? Maybe whales? I wondered, with the crows and falcons coasting the blue sky overhead, if whales might hear me, if only I sounded off under water in just such a way, that my undertones could be heard forever, across oceans. Across the air we breathe, to the air they breathe.

I’ve been pondering lately: whose to say oceans aren’t the portal to space. What if the space above is our most limited one. And the unexplorable depths of the sea open to the oneness, limitless.

Today is the day before I meet a lover. He has been good to me so far, and by that I mean, his steps are quiet. Nearly soundless, hardly a ripple. He moves like a ninja, discreet, powerful. I don’t mean to engage him much. Just to join parts for a spell. I am generally celibate these days, for the very longest and first time in my life of nearly 50 years, I have had year on year of no entry. I have hardly known what to do with my fields able to replenish naturally. I am fertile and full of sweet romance.

Poem about: The clip below is a bit racy, but it is Valentine’s and Gal-entines, and Pal-entines, and all it is, is me with my hands on myself, breathing. The video was taken a year ago. The poem was written today.

The poem for today:

breathe like you'll
live every bit
bite down
on your breath
suck it good 
from the ether
till if fills
you with red
blossoms of grace