circa 2006?

My dreams are full of shoplifting and minor acts of defiance

My subconscious can’t stay out of jail for more than a week

I’ve been stickin’ it to the man every evening since 2003.

What type of a refuge is sleep,

When big brother peers at me from beneath my eyelids

And I’m always running from the po-lice?

The standard psychology text of the western world mislead us

No, Freud didn’t do it on purpose!

He couldn’t help but project his neuroses,

(It was a neurosis of his)

Instead of Freud I’m hoping Jung will do

Or maybe looking to aboriginal dreamtime would be of use?

My dreams are full of shoplifting and minor acts of defiance

My subconscious can’t stay out of jail for more than a week

I’ve been stickin’ it to the man every evening since 2003.

What type of a refuge is sleep,

When big brother peers at me from beneath my eyelids

And I’m always running from the po-lice?

You see, all I really want is a nice flying dream

My homies have them all the time

I need to find a way to save my subconscious from being subversive!

I’m tired of being singled out.

Lucid dreaming: great. 

But what’s a poor girl to do once her metaphysical pockets are already full?

If I can’t keep my sleeping brain out of the big house,

Well, maybe I’m made up entirely of former felon’s, you know, their quarks.

Would that explain this slumberous anomaly?

The aborigines might answer that waking life isn’t the real thing.

My dreams are full of shoplifting and minor acts of defiance

My subconscious can’t stay out of jail for more than a week

I’ve been stickin’ it to the man every evening since 2003.

What type of refuge is sleep?

More old writing, Propaganda for the Multitude:

Manufactured from Scratch about 4 years ago

Anarchism has always seemed to me to be the very hopeful and empathetic politics of humanism, which is infinitely appealing.  Inherent within its principles is the preservation of the individuality of the self-reflective human spirit as a valuable participant in collective process, and a respect for all of the creatures of the world. The goals of the anarchist can be furthered with the help of others through principals of solidarity, reciprocity, mutual aid, critique, direct action, and PRAXIS all of which work towards the ultimate goal of symbiosis, for the anarchist of today could be a Black Panther, a radical environmentalist, a primitivist, an animal rights activist, a feminist, or an advocate for the rights of those who chose to identify outside any pre-fabricated pigeon-holes to forge their own way. Peaceful co-existence is often spoken of today as a far-fetched dream, but the anarchists of today are committed to the intolerance of intolerance, and when they can’t organize themselves (and they often manage pretty well) either because of factions within the movement (everyone has their own adjective following anarcha/o-) or any other reason, their decentralization can sometimes work to their advantage too.  As subscriber to some of these previously described ideals, and what Teddy Roosevelt might have deemed a “rugged individualist,” I chose no affiliation over having an affiliation. And as accepting, inquisitive, and fluid as anarchism is, I haven’t been kicked out of the club yet. 

Published in the zine Harmful Free Radicals from the Marlboro College "anarchism tutorial" with Meg Mott 

Old Writing/process work

An open letter to my Mother:                                                                                                  10-11-08

Dear Mama,

I’ve been reading this zine “On the Road to Healing: A Booklet for Men Against Sexism”, as I do with all of the zines that I receive before submitting them to the zine library.  The zine contains a number of articles, creative writing pieces, and testimonials from men confronting their sexism, and there is a transcript of a conversation had between three men who are engaged in a self-reflexive re-education process for themselves and other men who are involved in the struggle against hierarchy based on socialized gender particularly within the “punk” or “anarchist” community.  One of these men has a moment where he’s very earnestly describing his feelings of remorse for his behavior towards his mother and his sister while he was growing up, continuously challenging their feelings with a logical argument, and generally de-valuing the voice of his mother because it wasn’t a male voice.  

It made me think of how critical I used to be of your part in our arguments, and how I always used to try to take on a male voice to defy you and defeat you, to argue my way out of something that made me adolescently indignant; like not getting to go to Toquet Hall with my friends late at night, when I hadn’t been to school that day or had arrived late or hadn’t done my homework in a week.   It wasn’t the content of the verbal altercations we got into that was unusual, I think it was typical adolescent fare, but it was the way in which I engaged with you that seems rather grotesque to me now in hindsight.  I guess that I was intuitively aware of how little power feminine discourse has in the political sphere, so within the private sphere I tried to replicate masculine discourse (on my end) to manipulate the outcome of our arguments, using the tools that I saw being advantageously used by male students and teachers against me in the classroom.  I’m so sorry for bringing the oppressive language of the patriarchy home, and acting as an adversary instead of an ally!

When that didn’t work, I would switch up my tactics, trying to appeal to you using the whiny circumstance of “exploration” and my “lack of social life” using language I knew we had in common.  I was a female chauvinist pig! Fuck!

And it wasn’t always my perceived lack of confidence in your speech or your approach with arguing me that I would take issue with and decide to despise, but I also used to make fun of a phenomenon that you exhibited symptoms of, and that I now notice in myself as well, that we can trace back to grandpa Max, and of course, foreign language acquisition.   Dogberryism.  Malapropisms.  Malapropisms are extremely endearing (and a sign of an active and creative mind) if you’re feeling tender, they are a good jabbing point if you’re not.  How hypocritical of me to jab.  I’m so sorry!

Love you very very much, Lily Sage