susanstinson

In the evening, I had the pleasure of going to a $3 outdoor concert at Prospect Park in Brooklyn with my friends Sarah Van Arsdale (that's a great picture of her at the link, with info about her most recent book, Blue. She also wrote the wonderful Toward Amnesia) and Alison Smith (the link has info about her beautiful memoir, Name All the Animals, plus a picture of Alison, too). I wore my cherry sundress, and we had a picnic on a blanket on the grassy hill (Alison pointed out that the trembling of the ground was the subway passing underneath!) and ate chicken and salads and heard great, invigorating, moving music from Toshi Reagon and Big Lovely with Bernice Johnson Reagon and the band Juca, too. I was kind of swooning from contentment, except when rocking out. I ran into stillwell and her partner on the sidewalk afterwards! And Sarah and I had lovely talks on the subway, and at her apartment with her partner over breakfast.

Before I had to catch the train home on Sunday morning, I went to the New York Historical Society and saw a great show, Legacies, in which contemporary artists reflect on slavery. This helps me in thinking about slavery in the novel I'm working on now. It was all powerful work, but the most intense, for me, was Ellen Driscoll's complex piece. It was a camera obscura inspired by the story of Harriet Jacobs, who, in escaping from her slave owner, lived for seven years in the eaves of her grandmother's shed, with only a small peephole through which to look out at the world. When the guard told me that I could open the door to the small space and go into the camera, I was disoriented by the total darkness, and then rivetted by the floating images from the peephole camera of the objects circling outside. I stayed so long that it was hard to find the door when I was ready to leave.

I also went upstairs to see paintings from the Hudson River School, including the series "Course of Empire" by Thomas Cole -- seeing those paintings help me thinking about my brother's work and the possibility of collaboration with him.

I am a home economist's daughter. Here are two things I would like from the fat girl flea:

• a beautiful, summery vintage-ish dress that, you know, fit.



• to learn my actual measurements. I get all sorts of weirdly various numbers when I attempt to do this myself. I will bring a tape measure, in hopes of skilled assistance.

I haven't been posting about my trip to New York and all because I've been so busy and because so much great stuff happened that I wanted to get it together to write about it in a way that would do it all justice. But time's passing, and things are too wild, so I'm going to do it scattershot, starting with:

One of the other readers of at the Lambda finalist reading was Morty Diamond, editor of FROM THE INSIDE OUT: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond from Manic D Press. I first heard about Morty from charlottecooper because of his website, My Year In Pink, documenting a performance art project of a year of wearing pink from head to toe. We had a lovely conversation, and I just noticed that he posted about it the next day, with emphasis on my "very good looking beard" (thanks, Morty), and solidarity with all those who don't fit the norms.

It was great meeting daharyn, there through the urging of misia!, too. More on the reading, which was rich and varied and moving, later.

It was also lovely to have dinner with eleanor on Friday.

The fat girl flea was intense and primal -- so so so so many clothes. Mountains of clothes, heaped high, high, high on tables, many of them in the 3x-4x section by yours truly (among many others -- there were more than 40 volunteers.) So so so so many people shopping. We generated a lot of heat, and one of my favorite moments of the flea was when Leah, who was central to organizing the Bluestockings reading for Venus of Chalk last year, stood up to her full height, raised her mighty, ringing voice, waved a stack of brown paper towels over her head and called out, "If anyone needs a schvitz rag, someone will be coming around the room to offer one to you." Everyone heard it, but it took the very small, warm smile on Bertha's face where she was helping me pick out my dress for the Lambda Literary awards from amongst her gorgeous, sassy Size Queen fashions -- I so love that the dress that I'm wearing to honor the character of Carline was made by a fat lesbian who clearly sews with deep passion -- that is so right for the book -- it wasn't until I saw Bertha's smile that I realized what a beautiful, gracious, body loving gesture that announcement and those sweat rags were. I heard women talking appreciatively about it on the elevator, too, just before someone offered to buy the shirt I was wearing...

And beatgoddess looked stunning at the Northampton Pride march on Sunday, leopard-print bra to match leopard-print hat and all. There was an article about the book-signing that Judy Frank and I, among others, did at the Pride&Joy booth -- very fun doing that with Judy -- much more fun than alone.