i sick le.

yaa, sick i le. sooo sick what i didn't know what were happ'ning. i was shouty, incoherent, foul-tempered. i b'lieve i did even shove my cat when the poor beast tried to comfort me the last few; s'okay, as the roomie notes, was just two pussies changing roles for once. (my cat abusive, a.)

sooo.

saw iron jawed angels, renewed my fiery spirit. bin so tired by this season of politix, everything is which white man has a bigger cox. ('shoulda joined skull & bones when i hadda chance.' - damn that nakashima-brown, that is one fine story: prisoners of uqbaristan; note to self: investigate possible connexions to encyclopedia brown).

but i digress. i.j.a. made me squirm in ecstatic delight (shuddup, weren't just ms. swank wanking inna bathtub nor were it nasty prison fetish. [subliminal message OZ]). i mean, damn. those are some brave women. those are some brave women i gotta remember the names of, read the stories of. we didn't learn that in school.

i remember what we learnt. some were useful: gerry unger has my undying thanks for grilling us mercilessly with his ex-catholic priest democratic socialist politix and his beautiful logical mind on the political process. i remember alumnae telling me he was the finest teacher they ever had in their pre-college days and thinking they were mad as he was, but now all of us agree...

but mostly i remember the facts i hadda correct. i remember catholic school: fighting with the teacher i had a serious crush on during class over the textbook on the americas. what a little hellion i must have seemed. i remember crying in rage over our fourth-grade textbook calling native people - me! - in the past tense, by the wrong names, by the wrong word. eskimos inhabited the far north. i said, "inuit inhabit the northern polar region," and would have screamed "capitalist running dog" if i knew the phrase. blank stares were the norm when i angrily countered the book's claims about the genocidal policies of andrew jackson, the arch-traitor whose own life had been saved in battle multiple times by a special unit sent by the tsalagi nation (cherokee) and who authorised against congress' explicit law both removal of the tsalagi and the other 'civilied tribes' and the use of germ warfare - smallpox-infested blankets - and other horrors. general slack-jawed drooling when i pointed out the narragansett tribe had members in our class and that we indians didn't appreciate being described as lackeys, willing slaves, peacefully ceding land to the invaders.

my parents' home is less than a mile from the great swamp fight. all around us, i said, are markers of mass murders of human beings and our textbook makes it sound like we disappeared into the mists. naw, we were murdered, tortured, raped.

those that survived influenced society, too: american democracy, and american feminism - both are inspired too by native practices, by the iroquoian and algonkian peoples' social and religious practices. don't fuck with a narragansett woman, that's one lesson you learn growing up southern rhode island. and where did those early feminists live? in the middle of the league of peace.

anyway. i am reborn from fire. i am an iron jawed angel and i shall prevail. i am informed by english and european desires and ideals and by native practice. both are present and screw those who think ignorance is okay.