Life is weird in so many ways.
Aging is weird. It turns out to feature a lot of odd realizations about how old you are (“old enough to be the parent of those junior rowers”, “almost as old as my MIL when I met her”, “ten years older than friends I class as ‘much older than me’ were when we spent time together”, etc.) There are also distressing realizations about things you can’t do any more, either for cultural reasons (the Birthright programs provides free trips to Israel for young Jews 18-27 – but I was 33 when it started) or physical reasons (I can’t do handstands any more, not for lack of strength or balance but because they hurt my wrists. I suppose it’s possible that my wrists were less troublesome in my youth not because of youth itself but because I didn’t row, type, or knit as much then – but I’m pretty sure age is a factor.) And then there are the other unexpected changes both in your own body (change in shape or cases like my chlidhood friend who has suddenly developed fibromyalgia (which as far as I can tell is defined as to “things hurt for no apparent reason, and it gets better and worse on a completely erratic basis – what a sucky disease) and in how people react to you (I *think* the coworker in his late twenties who recently referred to someone my age as an öld woman” was just trying to wind me up. But the guy in the bar talking about climbing who didn’t want to talk to me about it was a new phenomenon. Normally any climber is thrilled to talk to any other climber about it.)
Ethics are weird. By now I’m more or less used to the idea of purchasing as an ethical decision (I’m losing hope of an apology from Amazon beyond the one in the Seattle PI which I thought was weak not so much for what it said as for being in a blog in a single newspaper as opposed to an official press release. It was an apology and they’ve tried to fix the issue but I’m still troubled on both counts, so I have a hard decision to make.) However, I never expected submitting poetry to be a moral issue – yet I’ve had three separate issues come up in the last few months. first, there was the line I wrote – completely innocuous and appropriate for the occasion – that I realized I couldn’t in conscience read in public, because it felt exclusionary (it implied that romances have always included a man and a woman). Then there are the two submission issues: in one case it’s the poem – I’m worried about cultural appropriation with “Nokomis’s Lover”, much as I like the poem. In the other it’s the venue – I found a journal that seemed like a great fit for a couple of non-speculative things I’ve written – but apparently one of its founders and guiding spirits is someone whose behavior I find reprehensible (Orson Scott Card).
Sigh. Life is weird and sometimes recalcitrant.
My longest-standing sticky wicket poetry-wise has been what to do when I write something that my family would regard as inappropriate, hurtful, or hateful, or that others could use against me or my loved ones professionally. Somewhere in my basement there are several drafts I stashed away years ago because I couldn’t help writing them, but there was no way I was going to feel okay about submitting them for publication while my parents were alive. But I have colleagues who regard self-censorship as a greater sin (or act of cowardice); to each their boundaries.