Opening the door

The door’s locked against me

Or maybe it just sticks

as if it wants to guard against entry.

Put some muscle in it and I’m popping the lock

Or the block

Each piece of furniture

something I took in after others had abandoned it

maybe I can make something of it

Each piece of furniture

carries its own damage

occupies its own space

Even the two that match refuse to sit

together

It’s not all about measuring lengths and widths

The TV stand where something red spilled

a reminder without memory

The dirty, scarred file cabinet

where I store all the sorrows that took my tears

I’m empty of tears now

but I can’t have my sorrows staring me in my face

One day I might fill myself enough to face them again

This space that should be mine is not my space

Is it a room or a storage place?

Or a reminder? A cliché?

Of how none of the pieces of me fit

Together

Of how nothing that is mine is sacred

How others feel free to carve scars, spill pain on what should be mine

Because I allow it

Healing gestures

When they leave they can renew their lives

Exchanging my gift with reminders

Of how I don’t fit in here

In this space that should be mine

The heat never reaches full potential

And being a hot blooded woman

I need this space to generate full heat

The blind is broken

A reality with weight for a girl traumatized by nakedness and open windows

Another story waiting to be told

Meanwhile

The blind is broken because

When it was Randy’s room

He jury rigged the window lock to slip out and in without my knowing

I had not expected his gratitude

for what I did for him

that was for love

I was surprised by his anger, his resentment

What did I do but love?

I sent him away with all I could afford

a bus ticket and no fond farewell

caring would have cost too much

He left me questions and a broken blind

More than the blind was broken

Maybe there’s a reason, after all these years, that I don’t repair it

so that it can easily close again

The blind is broken but

I’ve built a mountain of papers

Making it hard to find whatever I need

Making the space useless

But never again will someone I trusted

Betray me by stealing what I left where just anybody could see it

If I can’t find what’s important to me

Neither can you

This space is not my space

Not the refuge I sought

for gathering thoughts

crafting words

This space is a fort,

a last resort

Where I might survive the siege

If I push, I’ll see

The door’s not really locked

I just have to put a little muscle into it

The Hunger Games: For What Do They Hunger? Why Do They Play the Game?

The 2008 novel The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins became a 2012 movie hit. Both novel and film are set in the world of Panem where Districts that were once at war with the Capitol city were forced into submission. As a reminder of the war, we are told, the Districts are forced to participate in a yearly lottery called a Reaping which selects a young boy and girl from each District to participate in the Hunger Games, a battle of survival in which only one of the 24 will emerge alive. This basic plot line is in both book an film; however, if I’d only watched the movie, I’d be left with questions begging for answers.

First of all, I’d want to know what’s their hunger? For what do the people in the movie hunger? And secondly, why do the Districts send their young to fight to the death each year? What coerces them?

Because I read the book, I know that most of the Districts, except for the privileged Districts 1 and 2, are supposed to be starving but several characters don’t even seem to be hungry. Peeta Mellark is understandably heftier and healthier looking than other characters in both the book and the movie because his family owns a bakery. However, both Katniss Everdeen and Gale Hawthorne look just as hefty and healthy, a look that doesn’t fit people who are supposed to be deprived of food by the Capitol.

As confusing as this was to see, it was more disturbing to have some important characters missing. For instance, except for a photograph briefly shown on a mantel, we know nothing about Katniss’ father who taught her the skills she had to survive in District 12 as well as in the games and from whom she learned the song she later sings during the games. We never meet Madge Oversee, the mayor’s daughter, who gave Katniss the mockingjay pin that was clearly important to her even in the movie; however, in the movie we never know why nor is it clear why Cinna, Katniss’ “stylist,” had to sneakily get it to her. The book tells us that each contestant was allowed a token so why the secret? We also never know Peeta’s father and therefore do not know of the connection between the Mellark family and the Everdeens. There is only a brief hint in the movie of how Peeta defied his mother and fed Katniss when she was hungry, earning a beating for his defiance.

While these missing or changed characters contributed to small changes in the plot, the omissions from book to movie are bigger plot failures. One of the film’s failures is to never mention District 13 and its fate. Only in the book do we clearly know about the war between the Capitol and 13 Districts.  Only in the book do we learn how District 13 was destroyed for leading the rebellion and the other 12 Districts’ punishment is to compete in the Hunger Games every year. 

In the movie only 12 Districts are featured as they compete in the games. We fail to see the distinctions among the Districts in the movie while the novel explains how each Districts specializes in manufacturing or producing one product. Although those who read the book could understand the symbols that each District wore in the parade of competitors and why the Districts closer to the capitol were better trained, those who only saw the movie could not understand the symbolism of the fire on Peeta’s and Katniss’s costumes as representatives from the coal produing District 12; or the overalls worn by Rue and Thresh from the farming District 11; or the superior strength of Cato and Clove of District 2 which specializes in masonry;  or the superior equipment of Glimmer and Marvel from District 1 which produces the luxury items the Capitol desired.

One of the movie’s biggest failures was to never reveal the prize for the “winner” of the games. There were many opportunities to bring it up when Hamish Abernathy, the former District 12 winner, appears or when the games are explained at the Reaping and when contestants appear on a talk show. Only in the book do we understand why Districts bother to send their young people to compete and the self-interest in why each District roots for its representatives.

It is difficult to include all the details in a book when making a movie, but some of the changes and omissions from The Hunger Games the novel to The Hunger Games the movie change the point of it all. The novel is about the hunger we see in the starving bodies of the outer Districts compared with the healthier bodies of the inner Districts. It is about how those Districts struggle to survive day to day and why they are desperately willing to risk the lives of their youth to feed an entire District well for a year and reward the winner with food and luxury items for life.

The movie is more about the games. This is probably why we don’t see some of the scenes that explain the characters. Instead they rush the story to get to the “action” and the spectacle of young people trying to kill each other for reasons that the movie never explain. It pains me to see promoters act the role of the oppressors -- President Snow and the Capitol -- by asking young people to choose between Team Peeta and Team Gale. 

The movie gave us awesome actors and some fantastic visuals but it left me hungering for more.

                 

It’s not about the hoodie

In my household, at least once a week – sometimes more often – Trayvon Martin comes up in conversation. At some point in the conversation, someone is bound to voice the idea that he was killed because he was a black male teenager wearing a hoodie. That’s when I’m driven to mutter, “It’s not about the hoodie.”

I wasn’t compelled to participate in demonstrations where people wore hoodies because – well – it wasn’t about the hoodie. When I taught at an alternative school, hoodies were not allowed over the head. Strangers then, knowing our building had security cameras, couldn’t pull up their hoods for disguise before entering our school to do harm to our students. They would have been stopped at the door. They’d have to be strangers to be unrecognized by the security cameras because we knew our students even when they wore hoodies. Hoodies worn up when it isn’t raining or cold sometimes is a disguise to cover wrongdoing.

Sometimes the hoodie is a shield against the pain of the world. Often, when students were bothered by something, they would pull their hoods over their heads and scrunch down behind their self-imposed wall to shut out the world. As a teacher, I saw it as a sure sign of depression – or even Depression. The hoodie was a signal that the student needed counseling as soon as s/he was able to leave his/her shelter. Sometimes the student needed help just to get out from under there. Male students, especially, shelter this way because they didn’t want people to see the sorrow well from their eyes.

The hoodie was one of the reasons George Zimmerman targeted Trayvon Martin for suspicion but the hoodie is not the reason he was killed. When we reduce Trayvon’s death to the hoodie or use the hoodie as a symbol against racism, we miss what’s important.

Although Trayvon Martin’s race and attire may have been factors, even if he had been wearing no hoodie and had not been African American, Zimmerman would have looked on him with suspicion because he was a young man whom Zimmerman didn’t know who was inside a gated community that had sheltered behind its own “hoodie” and set its residents up as vigilantes to do what they felt the police had not. Zimmerman was part of a community in a state that approved this attitude and guaranteed no consequences should they act on their fears.

That’s why Zimmerman ignored the police directive to not follow Trayvon Martin. The police had not stopped previous thefts in that neighborhood and they could not keep Zimmerman from getting their job done. Not only was the Florida law on his side, his might was his right.

Many people argue Trayvon Martin’s innocence: “He was just going home with a bag of Skittles in his pocket.” Or “He had a right to be where he was.” What if Trayvon Martin had been a thief scoping out his next target? Then would it then have been okay for Zimmerman to shoot him? Was whatever he might have stolen more valuable than his young life? I say that Trayvon’s innocence or guilt doesn’t matter. Nothing justifies Zimmerman’s response.

Zimmerman said that Trayvon Martin attacked him first and that he, Zimmerman, feared for his life. Apparently, the jury believed him. (More later – in another blog -- on the all white jury.) Zimmerman’s well-being was threatened when he made himself a gun-carrying vigilante. He put himself in danger when he left his car in pursuit of his own personal sense of justice. The police who advised Zimmerman clearly understood this potential but the untrained Zimmerman certainly did not. This education gap is just another danger of vigilantism.

Siege mentality, fear of the stranger, high value on material possessions, low value on human life, and laws that not only feed those fears and values but also make weapons easily available to add fuel to the emotions: this was the volatile catalyst leading to a bad ending for two young men.

And all some people want to talk about is the hoodie.

Rocking with the Saints at the Holy Roller

“What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats

Every Wednesday night and Sunday morning, Aunt Yvonne entered the holy roller church and became a saint. She sang, shouted, clapped, and danced her praises to God in ecstatic abandonment. Her efforts, combined with other saints who had gathered for the service, moved the earth. The floor jumped with divine revelry, assuring that even those small bodies wanting to sit still, unnoticed amid the unfamiliar passion, also swayed to the rhythm of the tambourines. The shouts and singing and powerful pounding piano held enough strength to testify to the awesome and infinite presence of a terrible God. At times it seemed as if the roof would blow and lift all within directly to paradise. No one tired as the service meandered to its unclocked conclusion. I thought the saints would march until judgment day.

MamaGran’s Methodist church wasn’t nearly as enticing or entertaining.

The woman wearing sensible shoes and Aunty Vonne’s Sunday dress danced in the seat next to me, punctuating the sermon and the songs with calls on Jesus for help with an unvoiced affliction. Her tambourine kept the primeval rhythm against her hand or shot its bells in the air with a well placed, “Help me, Jesus!” Because I’d adjusted to the heady ambiance and the familiar stranger next to me, I no longer jumped out of rhythm. Until, without warning, the tambourine flew by my face and my hand, of its own volition, grabbed it from the air.

I hadn’t quite registered my acquisition before the strange Aunty Vonne next to me leaped from her seat to sprint up the aisle. “Yes!” she shouted to unseen spirits in the low rafters. Her face glowed with pure joy and I dared not disbelieve in that moment that she had indeed been touched by holy fire – but I still would not concede its location.

With eyes closed, she tap-danced a quick dash to the steps of the altar, kowtowed towards the cross, hugged her arms about her body, and began a slow turn towards the congregation. The saints reached a crescendo as my aunt’s joy slowed to a moaning song, hummed to a tune I’d never heard from my aunt. When she turned her face in my direction, the light illuming her face burned into my memory. It was not joy but I couldn’t call it sorrow; it was too peaceful. The sisters took up her rhythm from the pews, the mothers from their corner. Children sat surprisingly silent, men were struck dumb. The music was suspended as the women moaned their wordless sorrowing song. The cry seemed to rise up through the cracks in the floorboards, growing from the dirt just below. How did they know? Where had they learned their unrehearsed tune? It was clearly older than anyone present, than anyone I knew.

As suddenly as she’d started, my aunt threw up her hands, raised her face once more to the rafters and shouted a final, “Help me, Jesus!” Then she walked painfully down the aisle to the seat beside me, limping on arthritic feet. The preacher started a prayer and the choir responded with a song but my aunt did not reach for the tambourine I held. Her body swayed to the rhythm of the new song and her hands clapped and her feet danced where she sat. Her mouth smiled but she let me keep the tambourine. It wasn’t long before my hands found a rhythm I invented for myself. I could hold Aunty Vonne’s tambourine and even play some music but I could not hold her faith nor sing her song.