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From what I've gathered from my US friends, eggs have become hard to find and are super expensive. Likewise, it's been hard to get your hands on eggs over here too, and I've only been able to get imported ones thus far. This is of course pretty frustrating for someone who uses eggs in cooking frequently.

If you're struggling to afford eggs, and you live in areas where people keep chickens, your first point of call should be to chicken owners. You will be able to grab fresh eggs, generally at a cheaper price than supermarkets, and support local business too!

If you don't have access to this, you can also use plant substitutes in your cooking. This is particularly useful for vegans and those with egg allergies too. I found this table, which will hopefully help you out with using egg substitutes in your cooking. ~Tal

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if you see this post, drop what you're doing rn and what you'd like to be doing rn in the tags°•

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Netflix is rolling out its new system to crack down on password sharing in Canada, one that will see customers who share their accounts across multiple locations pay an extra $8 a month.

The streaming giant says it will begin notifying Canadian users today by email about limitations on who can access their account outside their household.

In Canada, the new rules are as follows: An ad-supported plan that can be used by one person on one device in one location will cost $5.99 a month.

The same basic plan without ads will cost $9.99 a month.

Under what the company calls its "standard" plan for $16.99 a month, a user can watch on two devices at the same time, but they must be in the same physical location. If they want to watch in different locations — at a parent's home and a college-aged child's dorm room, for example, or between two members of a couple who live apart — there will be an extra fee of $7.99 a month.

The standard plan will be limited to one additional user. [...]

When Netflix launched in Canada in 2010, it cost $7.99 a month and had no formal limitations on the number of devices on the same account, although its selection of titles was much more limited than what was available in other countries for the same price. [...]

Netflix did not say when it would begin enforcing the new rules, but in its most recent earnings report it said it planned to roll out the new rules worldwide some time before the end of March.

"Over the last year, we've been exploring different approaches to address this issue in Latin America, and we're now ready to roll them out more broadly in the coming months, starting today in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain," the company said.

Once the system is in place, customers will have to set their "primary location" for their devices but they will be able to "still easily watch Netflix on their personal devices or log into a new TV, like at a hotel or holiday rental." [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

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Orthodox Jewish

Religion

With Judaism there’s a tremendously wide range of observance, between Reform and Conservative and Orthodox (and Reconstructionist and Humanist and…)

But the same is true within Orthodox. One of the most frustrating things for me with media portrayals of Jews is that there’s basically two settings, non-Orthodox and extreme Hasidic.

So here’s the thing. Being an Orthodox Jew, as opposed to being other denominations, means you accept that Jewish Law was given directly by God and also that the ancient Rabbis were given authority to make certain legal rulings within a certain preset framework. Within that definition there’s a lot of variety.

I myself am fairly right-wing modern orthodox, but I have straddled the line between that and non-hasidic ultra-orthodox, and I have orthodox friends on either side of me.

So I only wear skirts that cover my knee when sitting, and sleeves that cover my elbows. but will wear sandals, and shirts cut low enough to show my collarbone. My friend wears pants. My other friend keeps the entirety of her leg covered, what isn’t covered by a skirt is covered by stockings, and her collarbone is always completely covered. All of us are Orthodox.

Another example: I’m writing you a post on tumblr. I have friends who do not use the internet. I also have friends in communities where internet use is frowned on but they use it anyway. All of us are orthodox. (Similarly: some orthodox jews avoid secular books/secular music/secular etc, some don’t)

Another example: Some of my friends were set up by matchmakers and didn’t exchange phone numbers with the boy they were dating, relaying back and forth interest in continuing to date and planning for where to date entirely by proxy. I was set up with everyone I dated, we were given each other’s phone numbers and left to navigate for ourselves. Other friends met their husbands/boyfriends in coed environments, flirted, one asked the other out, they dated. 

Clothing

Orthodox Jewish women are bound by the laws of modesty. Actually, so are Orthodox Jewish men. 

I already stated above that there’s a lot of variety.

For myself, personally? I’m married, and I cover my hair with a scarf. It’s meant to cover the entirety of my hair, but if it slips in the front a bit I don’t consider that a big deal. I have an entire bin of scarves I liked and bought, and I try to match them up with my outfit. I also have some scarf accessories like pins, that I usually only bother with when dressing up fancy. There’s a ton of ways to tie the scarves, although when I’m in a rush I usually go for the easiest wrap and tie… When I’m too lazy to wear a scarf, I wear a hat that I can fit all my hair into so there isn’t any showing in the back (other than the little fuzzies at the nape of the neck, which are a hopeless cause)

As mentioned, I also wear skirts that cover the knee and shirts with elbow-length or longer sleeves and reasonably high collars (all around, no low backs) and no belly showing. It can be tremendously frustrating to go clothing shopping and like many many Orthodox women I find myself layering inadequate-coverage shirts over plain-colored base shirts.

Culture

My favorite fictional portrayal of a Jew that I ever encountered was the shingeki no kyojin Levi-centric fic “Remember the Days of the World”, because it managed to capture something I’d never seen properly captured before, which is how incredibly important books, scholarship, and history are to us. We kiss our books when we close them after a session reading from them. Also, holding a Torah scroll is an absolutely terrifying if awe-filled experience because they’re heavy, and if you drop it you have to fast to atone for not being careful….

I was raised in a family where we argued about theology a lot. The arguments followed along tracks laid by rabbis from previous centuries although they covered new, modern ground. This is one of my fondest memories, my mother and brother arguing over Maimonides’ definition of angels and whether all miracles are subsets of natural phenomena. The jewish style of learning is called “shakla v'tarya”, aramaic for “to give and take”, and it’s meant to be a discussion. The Talmud is an enormous compendium of arguments.

You become familiar with the personalities of the commentaries you learn frequently, and I feel a strong emotional connection to them, Rashi, who is kind and patient, Ibn Ezra, who is scathingly sarcastic and blunt…

History isn’t very distant. You learn it, as your own history, and there’s a lot of ritual built around remembering, you remember those murdered in the destruction of the first Temple, the destruction of the second Temple, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Cossack-led pogroms… Jewish history is basically a long history of persecution, and writing books, and reading books, and arguing about books.

Holidays

First,a pet peeve: Hannukah is a minor jewish holiday. The only holiday more minor is the New Moon each month. It is not Christmas for Jews. It’s a holiday celebrating victory over assimilation, so the irony is particularly painful.

The Three Festivals are: Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks?), and Sukkot (Tabernacles).  Pesach celebrates being freed from Egypt and being made into a nation, Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah, Sukkot celebrates how God took care of us in the dessert. When there was a temple, Jews went up to it these three times a year. 

Pesach has the commandment of getting rid of all leaven, and of eating matzah, and of having a seder. The seder has a variety of special foods associated with it, the matzah of course, but also 4 cups of wine (or grape juice), bitter herbs, bitterer herbs, and charoset. I, personally, really enjoy all of them. There’s some peer pressure to have the “longest” seder so people will brag about it lasting till 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning… Then there are some people who after the seder is finished have the custom to stay up all night. 

After the seder night and subsequent day (x2 if you don’t live in Israel), there’s what is called “chol hamoed”, which is a lower level of holiday when you can go on trips with family etc. Ideally you’re supposed to take off from work although some people can’t.

Shavuot is a very brief holiday because it does not have chol hamoed attached. There is a custom to stay up all night learning. Also a custom to eat dairy. So everyone pretty much takes that as an excuse to go wild with their most elaborate dairy recipes. Yum…

During sukkot you are supposed to live in a hut you build outside your home, or the duration of the holiday (including chol hamoed). There is also a commandment to wave a collection of four plants (palm fronds, willow leaves, myrtle leaves, citron). So you might see jewish men carrying these long, skinny plastic bags or containers to hold the plants in so they don’t get damaged and become invalidated.

In addition, there are the High Holidays, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. On Rosh Hashana the entire world is judged, it’s also the anniversary of the creation of the world. For the month before Rosh Hashana you try to prepare and improve yourself (which of course you should do all year but the month before Rosh Hashana is particularly intense).

Then on Rosh Hashana itself there’s lengthy prayers, accompanied by the blowing of a ram’s horn. For the meals there is a custom to eat foods that have associated good meanings, like honey for a “sweet year”.

For the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur (inclusive), the pressure increases further… And then there’s Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is my favorite holiday. True, it is the longest fast of all the fasts, but it is inspiring and uplifting and affirming. When you sing at the services you know there are countless Jews all over the world with you. It is also a deeply loving holiday. You apologize to the people in your life, which is always very intense and tends to involve crying and hugs and just appreciating how lucky you are to have them, but also you feel deeply loved and cared for by God.

Another minor holiday is Purim, you dress up, you bring food baskets to other people, you have a festive meal, are required to give charity separate from other charity obligations…

And lastly there are the fasts, which are basically all in commemoration of tragedies. Aside from Yom Kippur there are five fasts, of which Tisha B'Av is the most major and the only other fast that starts in the evening and lasts till the next evening (rather than starting in the morning)

Finally, not a holiday, but every week there is Shabbat (the Sabbath). I think if you’ve never kept it, it can sound quite difficult, but if you’re used to it, it is wonderful, one of the major perks of being Jewish. Because you’re not allowed to work, you’re basically freed from stressing about it because it’s out of your control anyway. Shabbat has always been the oasis in my week, a time to really focus on the people around me….

Misconceptions

Judaism is not Christianity minus Jesus.

Judaism does not think Jesus was a prophet.

Judaism does not think that if you’re not Jewish you’re going to hell. You do not need to be Jewish. If you are not Jewish and you are a good person you are probably going to heaven.

Judaism doesn’t even have a Christian style eternal hell. The afterlife plays a much smaller role in Jewish theology in general, but what sources we do have speak of a temporary purgatory.

“Jewish” is both a religion and an ethnicity. Yes, that’s what happens when you’re a segregated and persecuted minority for 2000 years.

Judaism doesn’t have Christian style creationism because you are not supposed to learn the verses of the Bible without commentary and basically no commentators think the first chapters of Genesis are meant to be literal. There are orthodox Jews who believe the world is only thousands of years old, but there’s plenty who follow the scientific consensus about the age of the universe because there is zero religious requirement not to.

Judaism is pro-sex. You can’t be a high priest if you’re not married. You’re not supposed to be a judge or rabbi, either.

I’m just going to copy-paste from newredshoes because she says it best: Jews do not worship an angry, petulant, vengeful, rigid, jealous God. When you say something is “Old Testament” and mean it like that, generally you’re being pretty offensive, not to mention dismissive. (Actually just read that entire list)

MicroAggressions 

I think it’s kind of sad I have to say this but missionizing at me is super offensive don’t do that.

How about just assume there is no such thing as a funny holocaust joke, okay? I feel sick just writing that.

Atheists who feel the burning need to:

tell me that I can’t be a scientist because I’m religious or

 blather on about how stupid my beliefs/practices are or

ask me what’s the big deal, have a pork sandwich, God will forgive you, live a little

Things I’d like to see less of and Tropes/Stereotypes I’m tired of seeing.

Jewish mothers/mother-in-laws, specifically the nagging, over-protective, interfering kind. I actually have met one person who sort of matched this stereotype. One.

Hopelessly loserish jewish boys. Have not personally met any of them in real life, but they’re, what, over 50% of all jewish characters on screen? (They always have curly hair so that you know they’re jewish. And they have nagging mothers. And they keep Jewish christmas. And that’s about it, as far as their jewishness goes….)

Jews who are really, really willing to abandon their Jewish identity. At its most offensive they convert, but sometimes it’s just that they’re totally happy to celebrate Christmas, that’s cool, that’s not the anniversary of horrible blood libels or anything, they didn’t have ancestors who were threatened with death if they didn’t convert to Christianity.

Similarly, Jews who are totally eager to intermarry, that’s not a painful decision for them at all. Maybe they have a mean family that doesn’t understand, because they’re old fashioned and close-minded. Actually, so many jewish characters are so eager to intermarry I’m really struggling to think of any Jew-Jew relationships I’ve seen in media (except jewish parents of jewish characters). Are there… any? 

Token jews whose only jewishness is they keep jewish christmas! especially when “jewish christmas” doesn’t actually fall on christmas, and yet somehow that’s when they’re keeping it anyway!

Things I’d like to see more of 

Honestly it’s hard for me to articulate because the vast majority of portrayals of Jews are so upsetting that I just stop watching/reading/consuming media that introduce a Jewish character. I’ve seen so few decent portrayals of Jews it’s hard for me to imagine what a decent portrayal would even look like. 

I’d like to see Jewish characters whose Judaism permeates their entire lives the way it does mine and the people I know…

Mostly, I guess, to be respectful of our religion, not treat it as something light and flimsy to be thrown away and ignored. It is deep and weighty and precious to us.

Note from WWC Jewish mod: 

I wanted to help you out with some cool Orthodox representation I’ve read this past year! The Mirka books are super cute graphic novels about a girl who lives in an Orthodox community and has fantasy adventures, and Playing With Matches, a YA contemporary about a girl who tries to repair her relationship with her sister by accidentally becoming an undercover matchmaker. I have other Jewish recs, but they’re not necessarily Orthodox. And since you mentioned romantic relationships between Jews rather than Jewish-Gentile romances, I hope it’s okay for me to mention that’s a good chunk of what I write. (feel free to message me if you have questions about the other books.)

Thank you for submitting this and I agree with all your pet peeves.

–Shira

Read more POC Profiles here

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American Jew (PoC Profile -Religion)

I am not an immigrant or child of an immigrant; my great-great-grandparents are the ones who brought my family to America, but I thought it would be interesting to see how my cultural experience compares to those who are immigrants or immigrant children.

Beauty Standards

Of course, there is the typical stereotype that Jewish people have big noses. I’ve heard people comment that someone doesn’t “look Jewish” because their nose isn’t as prominent. Just because someone doesn’t fit the stereotype doesn’t mean their identification is any less true or important. 

Food

Food tends to be a big part of Jewish culture. I don’t know if this is true for others, but in my family we have a joke that goes: “They tried to kill us, we won, we ate”. This is pretty much used to sum up every Jewish holiday because the holidays tend to revolve around the Jewish people overcoming an obstacle or celebrating a victory. Some of my personal favorite foods from my culture are latkes, sufganyot (jelly donuts), matzah ball soup, and falafel. On the holidays, my extended family gathers and provides a feast. Some of my childhood memories are of my mom making homemade latkes and my dad and I eating all of them before anyone else could get to them. I also have memories of my great-aunt spooning me bowls of matzah ball soup to hand out to family and of my grandma bringing us lots of kosher for passover foods.

History

There’s not much to tell since my family is very Americanized. No one in my family is a immigrant or immigrant child, so there are no stories of that kind to tell. My mother will tell the story though of how when she went to college, some of her roommates had never seen any Jews and thought she’d have horns, because that’s how they were raised. My grandma and grandpa were both born in 1938, so they have vague memories of the Holocaust. 

Holidays

In my family, we don’t celebrate any of the minor holidays. We only celebrate holidays such as Passover, Chanukah, Rosh Hashanah, etcetera. On the holidays, most of my extended family gathers at my family’s house. Together we provide a feast of foods like brisket, meatballs, potatoes, latkes, and more. We all chat and tell stories and eat a lot of food. Our families don’t go to temple all together, as most of my family lives out of state and doesn’t belong to our synagogue. I remember enjoying services when I was younger because my parents would allow me to bring books to read because we attended the adult service, and not the kid service. I remember dreading services after my parents stopped letting me bring books because in my mind, they were very boring and dragged on forever. Now, I get a little bored, but my rabbi tells interesting stories and makes a few jokes to keep us entertained.

Home/Family life/Friendships

Being Jewish hasn’t really affected any of my relationships. All of my extended family is at least ½-Jewish, so they all understand at least some of the culture and traditions. My town has a high Jewish population, so I’ve never felt out of place because of my religion. My middle schools were dotted with bar and bat mitzvahs, which got repetitive after awhile, but it was still nice to see my non-Jewish friends participating in prayers and songs. 

Language

Growing up, my parents sent my brothers and I to Hebrew School at our temple. My town has two main temples, so our classes were pretty small. I’m sad to say that while I do know the Hebrew Alphabet and can read fairly fluently, I don’t know the meaning of the words. My Hebrew School also didn’t teach us to read without vowels (most Hebrew is written without them), so when my family traveled to Israel we had difficulty reading signs and directions.

Microaggressions

It annoys me when people assume I’m Kosher just because I’m Jewish. It also generally annoys me when people mock my traditions or are just plain ignorant about them. Just because they don’t know about my religion doesn’t give them the right to make fun of it. Ignorance is not an excuse.

This was actually more than a micro-aggression to me, but an acquaintance and I were having a friendly insult battle, and they referred to me as a “terrorist” just because my ancestors are from the Middle East. At the time, I laughed it off, because though it’s a terrible thing to say I know my friend didn’t know what she was implying (which of course doesn’t make it right). But months later, I still find myself thinking about that comment. I don’t make fun of my friend for her Albanian and Greek culture, and yet she referred me to in such a negative way without even realizing the magnitude of what she was saying. 

Things I’d like to see less of

I’d like to see less of people caring about others’ religions. This doesn’t mean you should be ignorant about them, but I hate seeing religion cause rifts between people. Just because people believe something else than you doesn’t mean they’re wrong. 

Things I’d like to see more of

I’d like to see more people having awareness/knowledge about other people’s religions. Most people only know about their own religion and don’t know anything about other religions. I’d also like to see more of schools discussing the Holocaust and other major events that revolve around religion. I don’t know if this is true for other schools, but in my school we never talked about the Holocaust. Most of my friends only know that it was something involving the deaths of many Jews and it was caused by Hitler, but that’s all they know. They don’t know about the atrocities committed or the lingering affects; the Diary of Anne Frank and all of the people who were killed just because of their belief.

Tropes/Stereotypes I’m tired of seeing.

I’m tired of people picturing Jews and only envisioning Orthodox Jews. People think Jew, and they picture a man wearing a tallis and a yamaka/kippah who keeps Kosher and has a prominent nose. Everyone assumes that we all are this religious when whether or not you celebrate the Sabbath and wear religious clothing doesn’t determine your Jewishness. I’m tired of Israel being just thought of as a conflict zone, when if you go there you’ll discover an amazing, rich culture and history. I’m tired of people being ignorant of our struggles and conflicts throughout history

–

Read more POC Profiles here or submit your own.

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POC Profile: Jewish Middle Eastern from Israel

I was born in Israel and moved to the United States later on. I’m of Yemen, Egyptian and Syrian descent but am 100% Mizrachi Jewish. My family all moved into Israel in or right after World War II, having gone through its affects in context of the Middle East. I am bilingual (Hebrew and English) so I may also point out some bilingual experiences. 

I see a lot of talk about Ashkenazi (European) Jews and the Arabic/Muslim community in the Middle East, but barely see any information about Mizrachi Jews (which is a huge ethnicity). 

Culture/Holidays: Even though Mizrachi Jewish culture is very similar to its surrounding Middle Eastern community it’s also extremely different. Because Jews were segregated from Muslim (and other goy religions) neighborhoods they grew their own cultures and traditions, and because they were far away from their Ashkenazi sisters the holidays are celebrated differently. Some even created new holidays! A good example of this is Mimuna, a Moroccan-Jewish holiday celebrating the finish of the intense Kosher within the Passover season. I’ve noticed that in my Grandma’s Yemen household we celebrate holidays differently than in my Ashkenazi friend’s households (also extremely differently than in American Jewish households). We read different parts of Magalas, sing different songs, and if we do sing the same songs they are probably set in different tunes. Simply, search up traditions for the specific area you’re writing about, because chances are they celebrate it differently than most Jews you see in the USA (or any European country) do.

Food: You know how people make jokes about white people food being bland? It’s the same in the Jewish community. Food is very different within the Jewish community. You heard of kugel? That’s an Ashkenazi food. So is defiltefish and chunt and matzabre (although matzabre does have a Yemeni equivalent called ftut where you soak the matza instead of fry it). Middle Eastern Jewish food is amazing! Although I can mostly only tell you about Yemen food, it’s such a great area to explore. Yemeni Jewish food is very filling and has a lot of dough based recipes (such as jachnun and malauach), and has amazing spice and sauces like schug and chilbe. A lot of the food is also pita based (the cuisine very rarely involve bread). And Just like how the shnitzel snuck into Ashkenazi food, goy Middle Eastern food became a common in the Mizrachi community, like shwarma, falafel and shakshuka. 

In Israel there are some really common food differences than in the USA. Falafel is the common street food (similar to getting one of those ham and egg bagels in a coffee shop in an inner city area in the USA). Almost every house is equipped with pita, and bread is of higher level than the usual pre-cut soft white bread that is found in Supermarkets in the USA. The Mizrachi and Ashkenazi cuisine gets really mixed (such as having Ashkenazi defiltefish with Yemeni chilbe as a spice) and there are some stables that everybody eats (like shnitzel with ptitim or spaghetti).

History: The main thing I want to say here is that yes, the Mizrachi community was affected by WWII. Just like with Trump, when a powerful nation f**** up, the whole world feels it. The Holocaust was not exclusive to Europe. The Mizrachi community was hunted for literally thousands of years in the Middle East (seriously, that’s what many of our holidays are about) and it absolutely did not end until we were able to move out. My Yemeni grandmother had to run away from Yemen and walk the whole way through Saudi Arabia to get to Israel because their community was being murdered in masses, the Jewish community in Yemen is practically extinct, everybody who could moved to Israel. My grandfather in Egypt faced the same causes to move into Israel, even though his family was powerful in Cairo back then they left all their belongings when his uncle was killed on the street by an anti-Semitic riot.

Identity Issues: Back in Israel my identity wasn’t an issue for me. I was Jewish (like everybody) and Mizrachi (like many). But when I moved to the USA it was different. All the Jews here were Ashkenazi (except for the small Sephardi community) and none of the Middle Eastern community here was Jewish. They barely even thought it existed. I still have people who are shocked when I say I’m a Mizrachi Jew, because they thought that Judaism was almost exclusively a white religion. Which I can’t blame them for when that’s all they see around them. But it’s still a problem. Middle Eastern meetups commonly wouldn’t accept me as a Middle Eastern person, and even more so shunned me for being Israeli even though I’m not anti-Palestine. I would still go to meetups like this even though I was commonly called a terrorist or would have to deal with anti-Semitism, because even though I was the only Jew there, these people still dealt with similar problems to which I did living in this which supremacist nation - I felt closer to them than I did to Ashkenazi Jews (and unlike in Ashkenazi communities I was not treated as a token POC).  I stopped going when my mom banned me from such meetings, because someone in the group threatened to hurt me. I’m not saying it’s not okay to be disgusted by Israels actions against the Arabic community around it (I am too), I’m just saying that shunning me from that community when I had no other community to go to because of something I could not and did not have any say in was not the right answer in my opinion.

Language: One aspect that the Ashkenazi and Mizrachi community have in common is the Holy language, Hebrew. In Israel that’s the main language that is spoken, other than minor communities who speak Arabic or Ultra-Orthodox communities who speak Yiddish. Still, the communities were separated for so many years that there are many alternate pronunciations and accents. As you may have noticed in the food section, Ashkenazi food names are a lot more European, while Mizrachi names are a lot closer to Arabic and other Semitic languages. 

Misconceptions: Judaism is not a white religion! That is not to say that Ashkenazi Jews aren’t white, but saying that Judaism is a white religion cuts POC Jews (or JOC? I’ve never seen that in use) out of their goy communities. Judaism is found all around the world, there are Latinx Jews, East Asian Jews, African Jews, Hispanic Jews, and Middle Eastern Jews. The only place I would be shocked to find a Jewish Ethnicity in would be Native American tribes. Also on a different note, bilinguals do mix up languages. I see bilingual people shunning monolingual authors for having characters accidentally answer in the wrong language, saying “whoops! I was thinking in my /other language/!” But I do this so commonly that my friends joke that I’m a badly written bilingual character. I’m just saying that the bilingual experience is vast, and not everybody thinks the same.

Things I’d like to see less of/Stereotypes I’m tired of seeing: Every Jewish family being written like the Maus family. All of them are white German Jews who’s family suffered through the Holocaust. Don’t get me wrong, Holocaust survivor’s stories are so so important. But all the Jews I see in media are Jewish studies professors in the upper middle class suburban area who adopted a kid of a different race and made them hilariously Jewish in an out of place way. It’s so boring. And nonrepresentational. Please stop creating stereotypical cookie-cut Jews. Also the idea that Jews are the extreme end of being white, where Jews can’t even start to understand people of color, or white Jews marking themselves as people of color. 

Things I’d like to see more of: More Mizrachi Jews! I’m telling you this is such a rad community, and it is barely explored in literature. Once when I tried to find any books or studies about Yemeni Jews in English, and all I found was one book about Yemeni-American second generation girls in Michigan (it’s called “All American Yemeni Girls” by Loukia K. Sarroub, and is an amazing study you should read). All I found was this one book! This tells me that both the Middle Eastern and Mizrachi communities are lacking in literature. 

Please just consider integrating different Jewish communities into your story if possible.

Shira’s Note:

Great post! I just wanted to add a note that I’ve seen a Native+Jewish blogger on Tumblr; I’m not sure if there was a conversion or intermarriage at some point but I would hate for that one blogger (whose URL escapes me at the moment) to feel erased. Another note about the bilingual thing: it is VERY, VERY important for people writing bilingual characters to understand that different languages treat their bilingual speakers different ways. The ways Yiddish sneaks into English are different from the ways Spanish sneaks into English and both are different from the way Mandarin sneaks into English. Don’t extrapolate the Yiddish-inflected English from TV sitcom Ashkies as the way Spanglish works, for example. This post is a testimonial as to why.

Third, lol: “All of them are white German Jews who’s family suffered through the Holocaust.” it me, so thank you for contributing this post so that my voice isn’t the only one on here. We all really appreciate it.

–Shira

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Half Romani, Half Caucasian Bisexual Woman

notice: racial and lgbt slurs mentioned from a woman within the groups.

I’m an author of YA fiction and long-time lurker on this page. Thank you so, so much for creating and maintaining this resource. I finally decided to submit my profile because IF I HAVE TO READ ONE MORE USE OF THE WORD “GYPPED” IN A PUBLISHED NOVEL, I WILL SCREAM.

Ahem. So.

I’m sorry this profile is so long, but I’m assuming the reader here is starting from zero. Romani are in a unique position in the United States right now. Our ethnicity and customs are treated like lifestyle choices. Even the most liberal, politically-correct allies think of us as unicorns.

A quick few quick notes about terminology:

“Romani” refers to the race—our people as a whole. “Roma” or “Romni” are the terms used for women, depending on your family tradition. (We use “Roma” in my family.) “Rom” is universally used for men—you would never call a man “Romni.” You will see people use “Roma” to refer to the entire race, and particularly to one extended family, because we’re a patriarchal society but a matrilineal people.

“Gypsy” is a word given to us by our oppressors. Like the word “Indian” for Native Americans, it assigned us a race that had nothing to do with us—Ancient Greeks and Romans once thought we were from Egypt. The word refers to both Romani peoples—of which there are hundreds of subcultures—and the Irish Travellers, who aren’t related to us ethnically or culturally.  We do use this word to describe ourselves, but that’s in an effort to reclaim its power.

In the USA, the word “Gypsy” is used like an adjective instead of a noun… whenever that happens, it’s racist. Just like using the word “Indian” or “Native” to describe a rug pattern, or using the words “African-style” to sell a dress made in China. There is no excuse for calling something Gypsy if it is not made by or related to a Romani or Traveller person. Remember: the dictionary has more than one meaning for “f**got,” too. These aren’t overt cruelties, but rather the casual racism we all fall prey to when we aren’t paying attention. It’s just gotten extreme because, in the United States, you’ve all forgotten that the noun form of “Gypsy” even exists.

About me

My mother is Sinti Roma and German. My father is English and German.

Ethnically, I am one quarter Roma (or thereabouts—it’s difficult to measure with so much intermarriage). Culturally, I’m half Roma as my mother was my Romani parent. If my father had been the Romani one, I would be considered “less Romani” than I am now. Biologically (according to my DNA test), I am 40% English/Welsh, 32% German, with the remaining divided up between Norway/Sweden, Ireland/Scotland, the Indian subcontinent, and Russia.

I have red-auburn hair and blue-gray eyes. My skin is extremely pale—paler than any of my relatives, on either side. I don’t freckle. I’m average height for an American and wear a US size 12 dress.

I identify as a cisgender female, and I am bisexual.

I’m 33 years old.

Beauty standards

I pass for white. I mean, I think I technically am “white,” since that word refers to color and not culture. My entire Romani family passes, and that is typical of our race. My ethnic heritage is Sinti Roma, which is a Central European group. My mother always says we are “white” the way Jews in America are white—we have defining features and practices, if you know what to look for, but the burden/blessing of identifying as “other” usually falls to us.

Romani don’t have one particular “look,” per say, because we have intermarried with our neighbors all over the world. This is a massive misconception in popular culture, where the “Esmerelda Look” is considered the standard of beauty for our women: tall, tan, svelte, with giant breasts and SO MUCH black hair. And incongruously blue eyes? Not that the combination is impossible—anything is possible—but I’ve never actually met a Roma person who looked like this.

Representation for all non-white races was limited in the 1980’s and 90’s, but for Roma women it was basically just Esmeralda, Scarlet Witch, and the mystical Trash Heap on Fraggle Rock.

While I was growing up, the “Esmeralda Look” became the absolute beauty standard for Roma in the USA. Women started dying their hair black, getting fake tans, wearing colored contacts. I know many with breast implants. If you’ve ever watched My Big Fat Gypsy anything, you’ll know exactly what look I mean. (If you haven’t seen it, please don’t seek it out. It’s the actual worst.) This is an example of the incredible and sometimes devastating power of representation. We had one—just one—positive role model in the media, and we were desperate to meet that standard.

I don’t. Never have. Other women in my family, though, have worked hard to get pretty damn close.

Of course, on top of all this, we aren’t immune to the universal standards of beauty in the countries where we live. I was born blonde and blue-eyed in a sea of dark-haired cousins, so I was the automatic beauty of the family, even though my hair shifted to gingery auburn in childhood. My reign lasted until my youngest cousin stole the title when she was born—you guessed it!—blonde and blue-eyed. Before the two of us, no woman in our Romani family tree had ever been naturally blonde. It was a Big Deal.

Despite being the baby beauty, my sibling and cousins are considered better looking by current American standards. There are almost all taller than I am, and they are all thinner. They mostly have dark hair and tan easily. Many people in my family, men and women, have tattoos—this includes my mother and my grandmother. My grandma got her eyeliner tattooed on! And they are all incredibly well dressed and immaculately groomed. I am the family “hippie” because I regularly go without makeup and nail polish.

Clothing/grooming

Romani traditions put a lot of emphasis on cleanliness and grooming. The stereotype of the unwashed gypsy couldn’t be falser—we are pretty much always the cleanest people in the room, because we have cultural rules about hygiene. Part of the reason that stereotype got started was because Romani were forced to live in the worst parts of town, where water wasn’t safe to drink or bathe in. That’s still true in many countries.

Roma women wear makeup, get their hair done, paint their nails. I’m generalizing, but that’s because we’re talking about “standards” here. Those are ours. I do very little of that on a daily basis, and ALL OF IT for big family events. I married a Gadjo (non-Romani), so his expectations of my appearance are very different from my family’s. I wear much nicer, fancier clothing when with my Romani relatives, and I make sure my daughter does, too. It’s important that my family see my husband as a good provider, and this is a major way to demonstrate that.

Religion/holidays

The ancient ancestors of Romani people were Hindu, and there are some who still practice. Every Romani I know in the United States is either Christian, Agnostic, or an Atheist, but that is because we live in the United States—there is no “Roma Religion,” and we are master chameleons. Most Romani people practice the dominant religion of the region they live in. We celebrate the same holidays, attend the same churches/temples/mosques, and our traditions look a lot like everyone else’s. My great-grandfather was a Presbyterian pastor.

The exceptions to this are cleanliness and generosity: They are the central tenets of our daily lives, and treated with the seriousness of religious practice. The home and person should clean at all times. The Romani kitchen is expected to be spotless (although not everyone lives up to this, myself included). You might notice that some Romani don’t shake hands upon greeting—this is because it’s considered unclean. Anything you have should be available to someone in need, but particularly food. We eat often and well, and sharing food is an important part of Romani life.

Culture/identity issues

The first rule of being Romani is: You do not talk about being Romani.

Secrecy and assimilation have, literally, kept us alive for thousands of years. There is no part of the world where Romani have settled that has welcomed them. There’s a misconception that Romani are travelers by choice, but the reality is that we had no other option for most of our history. We were major victims of slavery in the medieval era, forced into assimilation throughout the 17- and 1800s, and targeted for genocide during the European Holocaust.

In the modern era, our children have been taken by the state “for their own safety” at rates higher than any other ethnic group in the United Kingdom. Since the end of the Kosovo War, Romani communities in that country have been systemically annihilated. Our women have been forcibly sterilized as recently as the 1970s. In 2008, two Romani children died at a crowded Italian beach while onlookers stood around doing absolutely nothing. There were witnesses quoted saying things like, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

France 2010: the government demolished at least 51 Romani communities because they planned to “repatriate” them—to send them back to their “countries of origin.” Except France was their country of origin. This led to years of violence and illegal deportation.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I’m not going to tell you much about our culture. My family has spent their entire lives blending in with US mainstream culture, and blatantly lying about their ethnic origins. We don’t want you to be able to recognize us. We don’t want what happens to Romani in other parts of the world to start happening to us here. If you have a Romani friend or coworker, you probably do not know it. I’m considered a dangerous radical for even admitting I’m Roma to outsiders. 

If you’re interested in Romani cultural customs, I suggest reading/watching:

American Gypsy: A Memoir by Oksana Marafioti

We Are the Romani People by Ian F. Hancock

Ceija Stojka: Even Death Is Afraid of Auschwitz

That’ll be a good start.

Dating and relationships

Most of us date like any other American would, although I have noticed a tendency to marry younger. I married at 25, which was considered old in my family and very young in the rest of my community. I’d been with my husband for five years when we married, and this is also typical—we don’t “date around” as much as our Gadjo (non-Romani) neighbors. This has started to change in the new 20-somethings, I think, but my brother and similarly-aged cousins all followed this pattern.

I will mention that boys have more dating freedom than girls do, but less marital freedom. There is a lot more pressure for a boy to marry a “good Roma girl” than for a girl to marry a Rom. I think this is because Roma mothers handle most of the child-rearing, and therefore a child is thought to be “raised Romani” if its mother is Roma. (You can research the concept of “Romanipen” to understand this better.) That said, my brother married a non-Roma, and that was totally fine.

Divorce is really rare for traditional Romani couples, but not as uncommon if you marry an outsider. Probably about the same as the national average. For reference: My mother has only married Gadjo men, and she’s been married three times. HOWEVER, all three marriages occurred before she was 25, and she’s been with her third husband for 30 years. They actually lived in separate homes for years rather than divorce. There’s a strong stigma against it but, again, I think this is fading for the new generation.

As a bisexual Roma, I didn’t come out to my parents until after I married my cisgender male husband. HOWEVER, this wasn’t because I thought my parents would react badly—the only girl I was romantically involved with in high school was deeply closeted, and it would’ve immediately outed our relationship if I were known to like women. I kept quiet to protect her. When I did tell my parents, they were supportive and sad that I’d waited so long to tell them. None of my aunts, uncles, or cousins cared at all. Some of my extended family are bigots, sure, but definitely not more than in non-Romani families.

Daily struggles

People wear my race as a costume EVERY FUCKING YEAR. At my neighborhood Halloween party, the storyteller told my daughter she’d dressed as a “Gypsy Roma"—complete with coin belt and head scarf. She said this to a Roma child. Not that she knew that. I honestly wonder if she’d care?

Every Gypsy I’ve ever seen on TV or in movies is either a) magical or b) a criminal. Sometimes both. That’s a really hard thing to take in as an adult, and heartbreaking to explain to my child.

Country music really sucks for us. We are blamed for everybody else’s shitty behavior. Remember that Zac Brown song? “You gotta gypsy soul to blame and you were born for leaving.” That’s the usual sentiment.

Because my family doesn’t want to be outed to their communities, I’m under pressure to keep quiet about my race. That means, as a writer, that I can’t openly call myself a Roma in my biographies or press releases—if I do, I out my entire family. People still lose jobs over being Romani. They still have their families targeted by Child Protective Services. And, of course, most of my relatives have been lying to the people around them about their ethnicity for years. If they’re caught at it, it will only reinforce the stereotype that Romani people can’t be trusted.

Secrecy is always a struggle. It’s hard to bite your tongue as a kid when people mock and denigrate your family, without even realizing they’re talking about you. We don’t educate ignorant outsiders, the way I’m trying to do now. We don’t tell our own stories. Most of us don’t even want to.

Micro-aggressions

1)      The word “gypped.” This is a word meaning “cheated or swindled,” and it is a racial slur. STOP USING THIS FUCKING WORD.

2)      Seeing the word “Gypsy” slapped on everything from travel trailers to face wash, none of which is EVER being created or sold by a Romani or Traveller person. I cannot fathom an actual Gypsy putting that word on their products, unless they were an author or entertainer of some kind.

3)      “Can you tell fortunes? Was your grandmother a psychic?”

4)      When non-Romani people wax rhapsodic about their “Gypsy souls.”

5)      “Do you live in a caravan?” Ugh. Some people do, sure. I never have, but my grandfather did for a while. My great-great grandparents lived in a traditional wagon, or “vardo”—they were forced to live in them from birth to death because it was illegal for my ancestors to buy property pretty much anywhere in Europe.

6)      So, bonus micro-aggression: Seeking to recreate a “Gypsy wagon” for fun is racist.

7)      People name their pets Gypsy all the time. When is the last time you met a dog named Chinese?

8)      Assuming our elders (parents, grandparents) are racists, homophobes, or under-educated.

Things I’d like to see less of

1)      The MAGICAL GYPSY WOMAN™

2)      Similarly, The ROUGISH GYPSY CRIMINALS™

3)      Romani living in caravans—the majority of us live in permanent homes and travel for fun

4)      Anything where we steal/find/get handed a baby that isn’t ours

5)      Undereducated Romani children

6)      Romani women who sleep around or walk out on relationships—everybody’s an individual but, culturally, Romani are expected to be virgin brides and grooms, and divorce is frowned upon

7)      Super-hot Romani men and women in revealing outfits, dancing

8)      Roma child marriages—yes, they happen, but this is a VERY OLD-FASHIONED practice that makes most Romani cringe, and the “children” are 16-19

9)      Our incredible singing voices and instrument playing (although, full disclosure: my family is extremely musical, and I don’t personally know any Romani people who aren’t)

10)   Submissive Roma brides and domineering Rom men

11)   Violent Romani athletes—particularly in regards to boxing, which was something Rom did in the past as a way to make money in communities where they couldn’t legally work

Things I’d like to see more of

1)      College-educated Romani

2)      Romani characters married to non-Romani (we call them “Gadjo”)

3)      Romani love interests who aren’t Manic Pixie Dream Gypsies (I see you, Johnny Depp)

4)      Unmarried adult Romani

5)      Romani working in fields other than physical labor or the arts—science, for example, or education; hell, even a coffee shop

6)      Modern Romani who are mixed-race (as most of us are)

7)      Romani with horses! Because that’s a real, significant cultural legacy!

8)      Romani leaders of non-Romani people

9)      LGBTQA+ Romani (we exist! And our families don’t hate us!)

10)   Teenage Romani exploring their own culture and history

Check out more POC Profiles here or submit your own.

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Indian - PoC Profile

Hey there! I’m Indian and I’ve seen a few books with my ethnic representation but always Anglicized. Obviously, I’m talking about 1st gen, but even the diaspora of Indians in America have a culture which you need to know, even if you’re talking about lots of generations down the line. If you’re considering adding an Indian character, or a South Asian character, or heck, even an Asian character (we can draw parallels if you’d like), you might find my profile a worthwhile read. Los geht’s! This got pretty long, sorry ‘bout that.

Beauty Standards

Very prevalent and mostly even throughout the amalgam of various cultures and languages that is India. In general, fair skin, thin, and well-endowed are the basic beauty standards. Oh, and straight hair, preferably black. We’re actually very careful with our hair in general, oiling and washing quite often. Everyone has their own preferences: coconut, sesame, almond, etc. And natural remedies are actually more common than you’d think. Everyone’s grandma has a remedy for some or the other skin problem, hair problem or heck, even illnesses. If you’re lucky, they might even work. If you’re wondering, no, they don’t work for me. 

Clothing

We have various types of ethnic clothing, that we display most fantastically during our festivals. Generally, shorts and frocks are acceptable until maybe, 14 or 15 years of age, after which less-revealing clothes are preferred, like jeans, t-shirts, or salwar-kameez (everyone wears it, regardless of religion). In more conservative families, standards are vastly different. And ofc I’m talking about girls. Boys are boys. 

Culture

You get the gist already. Protect the girls, let the boys go wild. Or maybe not even keep the girls. If you’re wanting to dive deep into it, you’ll find a lot about it. Pretty depressing actually. It seeps into the minds of even the ‘modern’ families, makes them favour their boys over their girls, and so on. My mother was strongly impacted, and even I felt the after-effects. The most modern of my relatives (…relatively) pride having boys and no girls. One word: disgusting. 

And then the beauty standards for the girls, don’t get me started. Fair skin or the lack of it, it affects everything negatively. Your pride, your opportunities, your work life, your choice of suitors. It’s a crippling standard that some celebrities even actively endorse. And with the inherently misogynistic, cliched, not true to life (at all) Bollywood film culture, it’s a miracle that Indians are as sane as they are. 

Conservative families are usually more religious and more superstitious, along the lines of don’t wash your hair on this day, don’t trim your nails on this day, etc etc because it’ll be unholy. Of course, blasphemy.

We also have a hierarchy based on biological age, and we never call people older than us by their names, unless we have their explicit permission. It’s seen as extremely rude or demeaning. We call them aunty, uncle, big sis, big bro (the actual words depend on the language) even if we have no blood relations, because that’s just the way it is.

Dating and Relationships

More proactive than you’d think! Even though arranged marriages are the expected norm, you’ll find that dating culture is quite developed, especially if you’re just a normal teenager from a not very conservative family. Not that families like it. But it’s pretty normal, you’ll just have the cultural influences, but the inherent feelings are the same. But opposition, yes. That’ll make it a lot dramatic than it is.

Language

We all have lots of languages, each coming with its own culture and its own preconceived notions. Tensions are usually thicker when it’s brought into politics, because there’s a long history of colonisation and English over Hindi (a major national language) or Hindi over the others is a pretty tricky debate. There’s even one going on at the present about a new educational policy draft. Do tread very lightly if you want to bring it in, if ever. 

Of course, English is preferred, but personally, most of the English taught here is not enough. But most value it over their own language, not because they want to, but because they should. My mom doesn’t know English and it’s her worst, most crippling vice, or so she thinks. When I see half the drama in America, or predominantly English speaking countries, I am not very glad I know English. It is true English can open up opportunities, but I am adamantly against it encroaching my identity, though I might have not minded it too much at first. I wish the rest of India had even an inkling of such.

Daily struggles

Most students here go for coaching, a fancy way to say cram school if you’re a little in touch with Asian culture. It’s no surprise education is at its most oppressive here, with intense competition amongst lots of people. And hence, it’s also no surprise to see failure related suicides or deaths.

But this doesn’t mean we’re all smart. Maybe a few are book-smart, but you’ll find lots have sporty hobbies, even if they’re not given the proper platform. Academics are not the best thing in the world, but you can’t change centuries of ingrained notions in a few years. 

For 2nd gen or 3rd gen, they’ll still have the pressure. That kind of pressure weighs on them, an effect that you cannot ignore. But they’re not always book-smart. Some of the people I’ve known of my own ethnicity go from plain simpletons to downright manipulative. You have all kind of people, don’t force us into a stereotype. 

Tropes/Stereotypes I’m tired of seeing.

Exotic Indian features (what?!)

Spicy food (you’re missing out on a whole plethora of other dishes that are not spicy!) 

Smart, the problem-solver sidekick (a well-developed backstory might make it fine but it’s very imposing and you’re doing it wrong most of the time)

White girl/guy in a relationship with a poc being the dominant one, or even vice versa. 

Read more profiles here

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Someday Something Will Grow Here

I have planted a small garden

On my small balcony.

There are peppers and marigolds

Tomatoes and basil

Rosemary, oregano, thyme, mint, and morning glories

And a slightly failing container of greens

(And one of cilantro)

I sit across from them on a small bench

Watching how the light seeps in

Luminous and liminal

And I think about Göbekli Tepe

And how a temple led to a garden

The first one

And how there was something so holy

People needed to plant art like seeds

Into the earth.

No one really knows what they worshipped

Or why they buried it

Letting it germinate for thousands upon thousands of years

Past Sumer and Akkad

Uruk and Bagdad

While Constantinople became Istanbul

And time, like a skein, unspooled.

Nobody knows.

But I have a feeling.

Here, on my balcony

Where the angled crook of the elbow corner

Spills with living green,

Where I sustain and am sustained in turn

Like the Fertile Crescent,

Like that bend between the Tigris and the the euprates returned.

What feeds us is sacred.

My little green tomatoes, their plump roundness, cherubic, saintly —

The peppers, devas,

The herbs, priestesses

in the holy communion of eating

Is it any wonder that Inanna’s greatest tales are of feasts and plowshares?

Diety is in the making, the nuturing

The cycling of care and sacrifice and offering

On this tiny balcony,

Just past downtown Calgary,

I root in my own garden of Eden

Shaking a chili plant

Like God trying to convince

Adam and Eve to pollinate

And be fruitful.

There is religion in gardening, I think.

Something that, like a seedling,

Sprouted from that hill in Turkey.

Even here, even now,

On a Wednesday afternoon

In the midst of urban sprawl

There are still

These certain rituals in it all:

Cover the plants on cold nights

Transplant according to the almanac

Deadhead and wait

Like the beanstalk and Jack.

And the universe responds.

Not immediately - which is where faith dwells

Trusting time and Soil and seed

To stretch and spread and

— Like Adam and Eve —

To be fruitful

Because it wasn’t the garden that came first.

It wasn’t plowshares and oxen.

It was the temple.

It was the trust

It was the dreaming of it

The ritual of planting

The dark nights of waiting

And the hope of ancestors

That gathered as they hunted

That live in the soil and the cells

That breathe with the stomata of green leaves

It was the knowing:

Someday, something will grow here

And we will care for it

And it will care for us

And our children will be blessed

There is benediction built into the bones of it,

Blessings flowing with every clear pour

From my flamingo watering can.

And I tell it to the bees

That fly up my three stories

To snuggle into the funnel of pepper flowers:

“This is the seed that sleeps in the hill.

This is the dream of my ancestors.

I am the garden and the harvest.”

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Cross-posting from my main blog.

The Great Work

(For Celine in her recovery)

I’ve been thinking a lot

About all the beautiful words everyone has been saying.

Words that mean love and hope and care and forever,

And about how I am a writer.

And somehow I have none.

I can say hope,

But I want to talk about wildflowers.

I want to say something about how I’ve been cycling a lot lately,

Which you love

(and which I do to stay sane through this horrible year)

And I want to tell you how I started to cry over purple-tufted thistles

Along the sidewalk.

The way they towered over the yellow clover

Reminded me of you

But then I had a panic attack on the side of 34th and couldn’t catch my breath.

I went to the river to learn how to breathe again

(don’t worry, it was close)

And there were bees and butterflies and cicadas

And the water was green jade

And clear

And I knew it would be alright

(Because of the bees and the butterflies and the cicadas)

But I couldn’t stop crying anyways.

There was a man sitting on a sandbar

So I pretended I wasn’t.

I picked up some litter,

Because when you’re hurting the best thing you can do

Is make someone else’s life better

(and the Earth makes all our lives better, so why not help a gal out?)

And I spied along a culvert, in the stillness

A little family of ducks

Kicking their palmate feet in the green

And they made me think of you, too.

I didn’t cry that time, but I did smile

Pretty weirdly, probably

Because that guy on the sandbar was staring.

So I put foot to pedal and wheel to pavement

And then the revolutions came,

One after the other beside the green jade river.

The current moved unconcerned

Ever-flowing from glacier to ocean

And it felt a strange place to be,

Caught between the rail yard (a city of industry!)

The river

And the cottonwoods on the other side (lovely, dark, and deep)

Like a swallow struggling south;

An ant pushing tiny boulders up a hill.

I used to think that if I got outside I could spread all my problems out

Like bedsheets, unfold them

Take them and smooth them

And fold them back, one by one.

Tighter, neater, so they took up less space.

I’ve never been able to let the wind whip one off the line.

These days, the linen pile just gets bigger.

I’m scared all the time.

I cry almost as much as I did when I was a kid.

I’m worried about the world, and the plague, and the fact that there are nazis again

And that the police should keep people safe, and not kill them

And that your brain should keep you safe, and not try to kill you

But your brain expands with tumours

And my synapses misfire

And sometimes I think very hard about biking

Just straight into that jade green river

And letting the current take me all the way to the sea.

I want to say beautiful words in your recovery

But all I can think of is how this is a plague year

And how so many things that matter seem to have been taken from us

I think about the act of grieving

And how it feels suspended now

(but isn’t it always something out of time? Waiting for us? For us to arrive?)

And the word quarantine, and how it comes from

Quarranta – fourty, for fourty days in port.

Fourty days and fourty nights

And about the Deluge, and how it was real

And how I feel sometimes, a lone boat

Trying to stay afloat on words I don’t want to say

And tears I don’t want to cry

And a history I wish I could drown.

I bike along a derelict train

The cars are black capsule pills

And I don’t want to swallow.

I’ve swallowed so much already.

I think I’ve got something in the pedal well –

It would be just like this year to gum up the gears.

To the right is a parking lot – for what I don’t know

There’s nothing but field stretching to the railyard and condos

Nothing but field.

I’ve been trying to find the Inglewood Wildlands for years, you see.

The thing is, I don’t like maps, I like discovery

(Which means sometimes it takes me years to find things)

I had thought it was the small field across from the Bird Sanctuary

(Based on a description from a kind guide at the centre)

But I steered off the pavement and onto gravel and into the tall grasses and up the hill

And you should have seen the wildflowers

And the bees, and the butterflies, and the cicadas

And the way the hot sun glinted off the leaves

Burnishing grass gold.

The thing about the Inglewood Wildlands that touches me most though

Is all the bad things that happened to this land

Colonialism first, and then an oil refinery, and then a bitumen plant

32 hectares of land

Slowly poisoned with spillage

Hydrocarbons in subsoils and ground water

13 years alone, isolated, trying to heal.

And then the great work began.

They did surgery here, too – did you know?

They scraped away barren soil, and then transplanted fertile.

They turned what they couldn’t get rid of into a lookout hill

So they could see how far they’d come

So they could see the change, the bloom

Of bad to good, of clover and thistle and dandelion plumes,

And they chose what to plant. But they planted what made sense.

What grew in this land originally – what should have been.

Do you understand? Do you see what I’m trying to say?

Wolf willow, saskatoons, buffalo berry, cottonwood, spruce.

And then yarrow came on its own, and the clover, and the aster.

Tansy and goldenbean, and all the wild grains came after.

They grew on their own.

They came back –

With the bugs and the ground hogs and the deer –

The grass is so soft and so safe

They bed down right in the middle of it

And when you’re out of the hospital,

I’ll take you there.

And maybe it was never the space I needed

To spread out my linens and air my heavy thoughts

Maybe it was the place I needed

To feel my muscles work and my heart pump

And to feel the wind on my face

To hear the buzz of insects working quietly in the fields

To get hot sun delirious

To tramp into places unknown

So I could know them

To watch the trailing flight of butterflies

To listen to the twittering birdsong

And watch clouds trek across the gradient blue

From pale jean to cerulean

To spot deer runs and find their safety

And leave them to it

To know that it all continues

The great work

If we just leave the world to it.

~ Natasha Levesque

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23.5 Degrees

Small mercies to carry us through the days ahead

as the universe bends ever so

adjusting by tenths and fourths

against the sharp angles 

of your absence.

I always thought loss was a hole.

An emptiness

that vacuumed everything into the space that was left

But its not that at all, really.

It is so big

that we are plotting new routes around it –

inventing new physics to feel the shape of it.

We are taking turns

carrying the weary along the paths

that we are cutting through the sudden tangle.

But ever so, ever so,

birds flash in a spray against the sun,

and bosses murmur understanding, and there is time, there is time

and the necessities of babies and pets

keep our feet moving –

slow as they may be,

as we cling to the ledge, rope-tied, together

our palms flat on the grit of our grief

rubbed raw against the mountain.

It splits the horizon.

But the sun still wheels above, ever so,

and below, the spring trickles in on the melt

and the politicians we abhor

avoid our non-partisan, non-profit work

so we don’t have to navigate the busted trailhead

of watching our tongues

and caring about that, too.

Tenths, fourths, five-eights

centimeters, two degrees left, an angle, a tilt,

and the universe shifts, ever so, ever so

as we remap the terrain of living

around the space of your loss –

and how vast it feels,

pressed against these small kindnesses

these tiny motions

of love and comfort.

Just one degree –

and then the next –

that keeps us moving

and spinning

around that warm sun.

~Natasha Levesque

[cracked-spines-smudged-words]

I Have Decided to Ration the Toilet Paper

I have come to that part of the year where I am down to one roll of toilet paper and lack milk for my tea.

December is all air and cold in lungs and hair and I do not want to leave the warm comfort of my small apartment home with its bed and its warm blankets, and the cats that stretch their long bodies on them leaving so much cat hair that the vacuum is more of a hope and wish than an actual cleaning implement.

I do not want to leave my bed and my cats to don duck-boots and mitts and toque to turn off my podcasts - the ones that make me laugh to check my wallet and my keys and my reusable grocery bag

-- twice, just in case

and trodge into the white with the flakes freezing my face and from the wind, my nose beginning to run, pretending my jacket is plenty warm and that I don’t need to turn back for that bulky parka packed in the back, and that I am not shivering -- and oh, could that be the sun? Peaking out behind those downy white clouds? (It’s not. Certainly not. The sun will be setting ten minutes from now.)

Ugh.

I have come to that part of the year where the winter has won with its cold and so much air, and my warm house, and my bed and blankets and cats and how little I care about the milk for my tea.

I’ll drink green instead. I’ll drink the black with honey and lemon. I’ll turn over in bed. And I’ll ration the toilet paper Until tomorrow.

~ Natasha Levesque

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There is Still Juice

I am finding, these days,

That there is a place for it all.

I used to think

I had to be perfect

To be worth anything.

A masterpiece. A model. A platonic ideal.

I thought I was meant to be a whole orange.

But there are more things in heaven and earth

Than are dreamt of. More philosophies, Horatio.

More truths. More selves. More segments under the skin.

And in each segment, more vessels, and in each vessel, juice.

 It was so hard, you know, to try to be one whole thing

To try to be one perfect thing

I was leaking at the seams of it.

My pith couldn’t hold me together any more.

And I believed perhaps I was a bad orange.

Or a bad person, if you don’t care for the metaphor.

Something was piercing my rind, and I didn’t understand it.

I learned about wabi sabi

And how the imperfect and impermanent were beautiful.

In their own, muddled way. In the off-kilter rim of a bowl

That had found its own shape

And someone that had found out

That shape could still hold water.

Still contain juice.

 It was me, in the end, that was cutting through the skin, you see.

It was always me. It had to be me.

It’s a metaphor.

 I learned about Kintsugi. Kintsukuroi.

Whatever it is called is right.

Because it is about the breaking.

And so the word broke, like the bowl, like the orange.

And it spilled juice

All gold

Along the seams.

And what it means is this:

There are more truths. More selves. More segment under the rim of the bowl

Under the dimpled skin of the orange.

And in each segment, more vessels, and in each vessel, juice.

And all juice is gold.

 This is the work.

This is what it takes.

It is about the breaking open

All ribs out and heart red.

It is about taking the shards and segments

And putting them back

While the juice runs in the seams

And turns them into gold.

And then saying:

 This too, is good.

This shape is many shapes.

It is imperfect. It will be broken open again.

There are so many segments still left inside.

So many vessels. So much juice. It is saying:

I found this shape.

And It still holds water.

It still contains juice.

And when I break it open again,

It will still spill like gold

Into the fractal. ~ Natasha Levesque

[cracked-spines-smudged-words]

Incantation

The times we thought we were magic We were nine, and thirteen, and sixteen, and twenty-six. And we were. We were magic. Called by sun and sea and sky Rooting hands in dirt Bootlaces tracking like snakeslithers Across dusty fields where grasshoppers leapt and dived Heralding the length of our arrival through The tall grasses bent before us like we were wind The mayflies and dragon flies coursed blue-winged and waiting by our heads When the sunshot shade of the forest called us home To our dogwood groves. Sometimes there were Yankee candles. Stones. You know the ones – from the new-age shop. Fallen tree altars ringed with circlets of wildflowers Strangled and sacrificed, acrid, two-dollar incense Smoke rising While words, carved cybelene into consciousness, Were murmured low and careful. Your fingers tingled. You heard the forest breathe. You were a potent potion in a stream. We are shapeshifters. It’s a secret. No one tells. A mystery. The herringbone braid stretches Lengthens like the bones in your legs And your hands and your veins. When your flesh ripples into soft waves And smudges straight edges like dark eyeliner. Old skin stretches and breaks. The snake sheds. There is so much they don’t tell you, When the skin of your life lies at your feet. So much they don’t say, When you are pink and raw and new. They don’t tell you how you shine How you glow Golden-limbed Hanging in the street like a harvest moon. They look at you, and they are scared. You are an eclipse. Your shape is a silhouette that blocks out the sun. You steer the sky like a wheel around your hair and your lips And your long, awkward legs, and your new breasts. You are a solstice that changes the season Regnant over the tin-roof weather of their lives. You are immediate Burgeoning – a spring bursting clear A mountain top breaking the horizon in two The geography of your life is a waxing moon Crowning full in the sky. You had to discover it When you shed your skin and changed your shape At nine and thirteen, at sixteen and twenty-six Thirty-two, fifty-four, sixty-five, eighty-one The times when you thought you were magic. You are just like a bird, hollow-boned and instinctual Heading for the river. You change, and the world shifts. They are scared. They have fear. And make no mistake, you are a fearsome thing. You are intoxicating. You are primordial. You are a kind of magic. You are a wild creature. Inside you, girl,  Inside the labyrinth that exists in your being The cosmos spins. You are the sun and the moon and all the stars. You are earth and air. Fire and water. Shape-changer. Beast. Skin-shedder. Fire-breather. Here there be dragons. And they are right to fear.

~Natasha Levesque

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Two Fishermen On the Bow, as Seen from St. Patrick’s Island

It is late summer.

Fishermen wade waist deep and cast their lines

Out across the surface of flowing green water.

They are so sure.

Their lines issue forth, swinging out wide and curved.

 Observe. Look closely.

See how the lure dips – there – sinking into inkwell waters?

Snapped up, drawn suddenly, wringing,

Like a bell

Tiny vapourous droplets, misting, writing

In refractions and light the illuminatory passages

Of silent, monastic ecstasy.

 Water birds break,

And in a small revelatory moment, it all hangs

The birds fan and snap.

The droplets fall.

And the fishermen gather their lines.

~ Natasha Levesque

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A Thousand Secret Things

Author’s note: This is an excerpt from an unfinished novel.

She couldn’t say for certain whether the change would do her good, but there was something inside herself that needed to fly. The winter that year was stifling, a heavy, obscuring whiteness that lay over everything like some lethargic blanket, covering her hope for some renewal, like the bright green shoots of spring.

Her steps were slow and her breath steamed, and she day dreamed about the yellow feeling of the sun against the back of her neck, warm and tingly and good. She thought about the feel of sweat, and the smell of heat in the cypress trees she’d never met, and in her mind, they smelled like wet pines. When she thought of it, she was happy.

When she slept at night, she dreamt of swamps and Spanish moss and she would wake up with sweat between her breasts and on the inside of her neck, like she was feverish with it. If she’d had wings, she’d have taken off in the night, like a sleepwalker searching for home.

Nine to five and invisible, she took public transportation, and went about the space of her days in small, solitary movements. Her friends were elsewhere, blossoming into the lives they’d created, concerned with their becomings and journeying towards something like adulthood, whilst she bided her time writing tutorials and user-guides for software, instead of poetry and novels.

She tended to drink alone and read by herself, and when the spirit moved her, she would write, and glean some sort of peace from the act, some serenity in the click-click of the keys and the spinning of a world from her fingertips. Most of the time, she imagined humid air that caught in her throat, black bayou water, and a thousand secret things she didn’t know about, down there in Louisiana, where she went in her dreams.

If you asked her why Louisiana, why Lafayette, she wouldn’t be able to tell you. She had no history there, no connection to it, just a vague sympathy for the deep dark richness and mystery that the south presented in novels and the blues songs she liked. Something like authenticity, and the noble rot of age and tragedy that gothicized and eroticized everything, exposing fragile natures, and revealing magic things. Voodoo was part of it, something about magic seemed rooted there in her imagination. Romance, too. All of it together was an elixir she had not yet drunk from – something heady and satisfying, and at the moment, out of reach. It was dark red wine, when all that was served was cheap beer and rye and coke.

The night outstripped the day. The hours spent outside, between work and waking, happened all in cold, with nothing but the slivered moon for familiarity. When one long moment, everything seemed unbearably strange – the grey-brown cubicle with it’s requisite fifteen pieces of flash, the scripted conversation that clunked out of her mouth into place as she typed words in a strange language that meant nothing – when a heat settled on her forehead, flushing her cheeks and spreading like honey, thick and slow across her shoulders, delirious and sweet, there was nothing to be done. Two weeks later, she’d sold or stored the entire contents of her apartment – hand-me-down couches and second-hand store lamps, a desk salvaged from the dump, and touched down in Louisana Swamp land with nothing to her name except two suitcases and a box of books.