Life Wish #12: So be it, see to it
Howdy! How was your weekend? Did you take some time off screens? Maybe a whole day? If you did, drop a comment or reply and let me how it went for you!
I succeeded in staying off screens Saturday, and as I anticipated, it left me feeling a lot calmer inside. My body really needed rest so I took it easy, napped on a vibrating body-size heating pad, read some books, wrote in my journal, drank hella tea … all the relaxing and soothing activities.
I spent much of the day on a lovely book about Octavia E. Butler, called A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky, which is beautifully written and even gorgeous as a physical object, with a stitched binding and smooth thick paper.
The book is not a biography or scholarship about her work — it’s more about how she crafted herself. She knew a writing career was a gamble for someone like her — poor, black, female, unknown, unconnected — and she kept doubling down anyhow, speaking and working her desires into destiny as she spent years doing manual labor and waiting on checks to arrive. Using basically nothing but sheer determination and the public library, she was able to create herself as a writer as surely as she created worlds and civilizations in her work. As she often wrote in her journal, “So be it, see to it.”
The way the book is written, I felt like I was walking alongside her through these trials, and I got a sense of the massive force of will it took for her to carve a space for herself. I am inspired by her struggle, and also wish she didn’t have to struggle so hard for so long.
After spending Saturday with Octavia, I then fell into a Dolly Parton rabbit hole on Sunday and just count me blessed because there’s a huge cornucopia of Dolly Parton gems available out there.
Here she is singing one of her first hits, “Dumb Blonde,” in a melon-colored ensemble that makes me swoon. Proto-Dolly, playing with folks’ minds from her very first album.
Here she is looking like an angel and singing one of my very favorite songs, “Early Morning Breeze,” on Porter Wagoner’s show. His aesthetic, on the other hand, is TRULY SHOCKING.
And here is an interview with Barbara Walters from 1977 that is shocking in a different way — Barbara doesn’t treat Dolly particularly respectfully, but Dolly’s comportment is a masterwork of self-knowledge and humility and power and WOW that Southern shade. Dolly knows exactly who the fuck she is and what she wants, and has no apologies to make about any of it.
The whole thing is pretty amazing, but at about the 7 minute mark, it gets low-key wild when Barbara asks Dolly to stand up and show her figure (WHAT) and says, “You’re very beautiful, you don’t have to look like this.” Dolly replies, “I don’t like to be like everybody else … I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable, that’s the easiest thing in the world to do ... I know exactly what I’m doing,” followed up with a beaming smile at Barbara and her up-to-the-minute New York fashions. “Show business is just a money-making joke, and I like to tell jokes.” Which is a deft and elegant and frankly 100% baller rebuff.
Barbara presses on — “but do you ever feel that you’re a joke?” Dolly demurs, and explains that she knows exactly what she is doing. “I am sure of myself as a person, and I’m sure of my talent, and I’m sure of my love and my life and I’m very content. I like the kind of person I am. So I can afford to doodiddle around with makeup and clothes and stuff, because I’m secure, with myself.” Another sweet smile at Barbara. Dolly is shady and a lady.
She doesn’t shy away from her ambition either. She says she loves freedom in her marriage, she doesn’t worry or even want to know about her man messing around with anyone else, and she wants to be a massive star. She wants to make millions of dollars and make as many people as possible feel happy. She says the words, “I would like to be a superstar” and then she proceeds to become one. Amazing.
Maybe I gravitated towards Octavia and Dolly this weekend because this is the energy I need right now. Speaking what I want! Putting it front and center in my mind! Doing whatever I can to help it happen! Dunking on haters without even mentioning them!
Here’s what I want: I want to help create and live in a world that works for everybody, that is based on respect for all forms of life, that allows us all to flourish. I want to have some fun and make some art along the way. And I am definitely working on all of that.
So it’s US Thanksgiving and here I am talking not about gratitude but about more shit I want. Ah well. I am grateful to have this space to talk with you about where we are and where we wanna go and how we intend to get there, and I love to hear your thoughts on all of it. Drop a comment or hit reply and let me know where you’re at.
Lots of love and enjoy your food coma! I know I will!
Madge