OnLine With Zoe

Secrets I Long to Tell

Clearly I can keep a secret.  I was not clear on any other component though.  Oddly, what really threw me was the crew constantly asking me, “Are you prepared for her to be dead?”  At first it was shocking.  Why would we be doing all of this if she had passed?  Then it was annoying and I wanted to say, yes I hear you.  Yes, I am prepared.

The time it really threw me was when Ann Curry asked me.  The question must be real if Ann Curry is asking me on camera.  My answer to Ann was, I think you will understand more than the crew.  I am a Buddhist.  We are always aware of impermanence, of age, of death.  I do know she is a bit older than I am.  The fact was, I had no idea where she is or what she is doing. The shoot continued which could only mean that no matter the circumstances, it was not going to impede us. 

The question I kept asking was, Can I tell people?  OH NO.  No, you cannot share your photos.  You can not talk about this on social media.  You cannot say who you are looking for.  You cannot tell people if you find her.  Heck, most of the time they didn’t even tell me where we were going.  I got a text the night before.  (virgo, cap rising - steadfast, premeditated, strategic).  My mantra for all 14 days was ~ surrender.

When can I tell people?  The funny thing here is that everyone I asked, anyone I asked, had a very different answer.  The possibility of error was maddening.  The PBS USA office said, I could reveal anything five minutes after they did.  The sole caveat was that the photos I shared could not include the crew.  So that’s what I did.  Remember, I have not seen the show.  It was all like describing a gift before you open it.  In tiny increments, PBS USA revealed this and that.  I followed their lead.

Breathe.  Show and Tell.  I was hoping to meet Sonia Johnson again.  I had not seen her for 36 years.  We parted in the Springfield airport and neither of us was well.  Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was not just saying goodbye to my sister fasters but also our standing guard.  AND goodbye to the ERA.

Finally, Day 14.  There she was.  – you will have to watch to get the whole story as I traveled to 5 states, recapitulated my summer of 1982, and met up with my Mentor.

PBS, We'll Meet Again
Tuesday, January, 8,  9/8c

May 14, 1982 I Thought the ERA was Ours.

This is my diary entry from Friday, May 14, 1982.  It is the opening chapter of my book, The Hungry Heart, which is the actual diary of my 40 days in Springfield, Illinois.  Phyllis and Ellie, NOW v Eagles; Equality was on the line and still is.  Many of us who are working on the election of the first woman president are hoping that it will renew a bright light on Constitutional equality.  I mean after all, the president should be included in the US Constitution.  

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

La igualdad de los derechos bajo ley no sera negada ni sera abreviada por los Estados Unidos o por cualquier estado a causa de sexo.

Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

MAY 14, 1982
This is something I want so much, I am willing to die for it.  The fact that I want it for all women for all time makes it profound and suffocating.  I feel like I am being crushed inside a storm of feelings, fears and certainty.  I need some relief.  I know this is the right thing to do.  Food, cigarettes, privacy, pets, home and family -- take it.  I want this more. 

All I did was answer the phone.  It sounded like every other ring that had called me to the phone.  It rang in early May.  It was Sonia Johnson calling.  We had met in the Fall when she came to my bookstore to sign her book, “From Housewife to Heretic.”  We talked of the deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment, July 1, and promised one another that no matter what we did we would do it together.  "We are going to fast for the ERA,"  Sonia calmly explained to me.  "We are going to go to Illinois, sit in the Springfield rotunda, live on water only and win the ERA." 

I met Dina at the Long Beach airport at 8 A.M.  I think we are doing awfully well considering we both stopped smoking just four days ago.  Maybe in the face of not eating, not smoking seems negligible.  At least it seems to be just another task on my ToDo list.  With an extra hour before the flight, we had breakfast.  It was the first in the continuing series of meals we ate today.  Eggs, Pancakes, Toast, O.J., Coffee.  We ate as if there is no tomorrow. 

The flight to Chicago was uneventful but we missed the connecting flight to Springfield.  It took three attempts at stand-by to actually make it.  The good news is that we were able to eat another meal; packing it away like chipmunks in Fall. 

A thoughtful woman named Marion picked us up.  She is studying to be a Methodist minister.  She made the mistake of asking us if there was anything we wanted to do before we went to the meeting place.  Fried Shrimp, Baked potatoes, Blue cheese salad, Pie, Coffee.

The mystery of where we are going to stay is solved.  We have permission to stay at Kumler Methodist Church for two weeks.   We are going to sleep on the floor of the Sunday School classrooms.  The desks and chairs are itsy bitsy.  The bathroom is down right comical as the sinks and toilets are all scaled down.  The really bad news is that there are no showers.  I am really taken back about no showers.  It is muggy May in Southern Illinois.

The classrooms are stifling.  I guess they only open the windows on Sunday mornings.  The walls are covered with posters of Jesus.  This is not the Jesus I love.  This one is fair skinned, sandy hair, manicured hands, sweet little smile.  The pictures show him surrounded with pastel covered, adoring fans.  This is not the dissident, powerful, charismatic carpenter I would like to know. 

Dina and I are the first to arrive.  The other women are due in an hour or so.  They are driving from D.C. and Virginia, where they have been stumping on the ERA trail.  This is giving me too much time to sit and stew and get really scared.  I can hear Dina in the next room; she must be recording her journal.  I am stuffed but wonder  what will happen if I don’t have food for forty-four days.  Maybe it won’t take forty-four days.  I’m hungry.

What if no one cares?  What if there is no press coverage?  If I was the opposition I would deflate this by ignoring it, trivializing it or even mocking it.  But I have to remember that there is a magnificent precedent for fasting.  Most of my favorite people have fasted.  My heart says I have no choice. 

I hear the others have arrived.  Maybe they have some food. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
To purchase a copy of The Hungry Heart
Lune Soleil Press

My Fifth Book, Miss Alice Paul ~ The Heart of an Activist

My fifth book.  I am thinking my last book.  Not because of a time element but that I have chosen a different literary device and delivery system.  It took me years to build confidence about this content and another year to really suffer over the method. 

Of course, it is about Miss Alice Paul.  She is my primary muse.  I have invested forty years in knowing her, understanding her and, sometimes, unintentionally emulating her.  I mean much more than fasting.  She was a force of nature.  She was single minded, unrelenting, often rude and always challenging.  Miss Paul was not at the front of the march but in the office drawing maps, listing components, assigning tasks.  She was the brains of the operation and if it did not go her way, she was not happy.

On the other hand, she had her reasons as most often when things went off the rails it was because people did not listen or, worse yet, did not ask.  She was not a diva.  She did not attend final votes or bill signings.  She was arrested, fasted, was force-fed and served the longest prison sentence.  She was prosecuted by the Department of Justice and labeled as mentally ill by the jail psychologist.  She was not austere but deeply intentional.  She was privately conservative but publically the most radical.   Well known to be unappreciative, however she would say that the work is for equality not for her, so she did not have to say thank you.  To know her, you have to face a lot of facts. 

I have read over fifty books now and have another fifty on the table.  I have learned that many authors have no idea who she was.  I would hit a story and think – whoa – wait, that isn’t right.  Much of the best information was in articles or footnotes or the outstanding phone interviews with women who knew Miss Paul.  Can I even say that one included my fast pointing out that it was in the lineage of Miss Paul.  FLIP ME OUT!

The Challenge,

• to write about Miss Paul as an activist.  She was an activist and I am an activist
• to compare and apply Miss Paul’s methods into current day activist practice 
• to write this without an end, a deadline, a coda
• to not spend a year writing and then be broken hearted that there is so much more to say

The Solution

• write it in serial format
• publish it online as I go
• keep this open ended and see where it goes

BOOM   I just got to thinking – why stop there?  Just keep adding more 

• My speaking information – PowerPoint and youtube
• Bibliography – the most comprehensive I have ever seen
• Guest page for you to submit something
• Miss Alice Paul Shop with contemporary designs

I hope you enjoy my every expanding universe.  The introduction and first chapter are up now.  The second chapter will be up in a few days.  Come by often as it is constantly growing.  I love showing Americans that Miss Paul is our very own Non-Violent Direct Action expert.  She has a lot to teach us. 

http://MissAlicePaul.com

 

Fast for Families ~ Beginning Third Week

http://fast4families.org/

Every eating day, the body has a big task.  It is the most sophisticated food processor imaginable.  Blood rushes, the brain signals, the muscles squeeze and churn.  There is food to be deconstructed, transformed and mostly sloughed.  It is a very full time job.  In fact, every moment while this complex task is happening, it is a challenge to think, to compute, to read, to collect ones thoughts; as evidenced after lunch at work.

Fasting is the most counter-intuitive, unnatural, stern, delicate thing one can do to their body. It is a slow and painful pulling the plug on your food processor.  Headaches begin shouting, where is my food?  (loudly for sugar eaters).  The whole body is slowly and unwillingly going into stasis.  It is literally pulling away down from its primary activity.

But as the processing of food decreases many, many, many things escalate.  By day 12, you can hear as never before.  You can smell a pickle, a tic-tac, dirty sox and, mostly, bad breath as never before.  The feel of your blanket is articulated; scratchy or soft.  And feeling is now far beyond fingertips; as reception is amplified through one’s entire body and some radiating distance around it.  Clumsy, shrill, insensitive actions are now razors that cannot be explained, as even explaining it is too hard.  Such a statement, any self-serving statement is too painful to one’s conscience.

That is all that is left now - the body has fallen asleep and the spirit is fully awake.  Possibly one’s spirit is always as awake but the shouter, the stumbler, the thinker, the food processor is now asleep.  Tread softly around fasters, not just because they hear and feel as never before but because they are awake. 

  SIGN THE PETITION