Menstrual Hut
Blood Ties
Our experiences ranged from being welcomed warmly into a circle of elders celebrating the onset of our menses with ritual and lore to confronting a frightened woman masquerading as the mother from Carrie who handed over a box of something, pointed silently to the directions and the bathroom door, and turned away--probably to go to her own bedroom to cry. Most of us had experiences somewhere in the middle and have been cycling along ever since, quite happily forgetting all about it for 28 days at a time as we actually enact all of the activities featured in tampon commercials while wearing perhaps just a scant less makeup. But no one seems to want to jaw about it--unless they're selling a product to absorb, perfume, disguise, or abate it. Now happily pulling up a chair and slipping off our shoes, we'll be glad to talk about it. Write in and bitch to your heart's content; revel in the unexpected overnight visit from the pimple fairy; offer advice for those caffeine addicts who retain water like the Lusitania at 40 leagues; and rail at all of those loved ones and not-so-loved-ones who for a few days a month do not deserve to know you. Cry, weep, moan, complain, and just generally act badly. We'll love you anyway. We'll even print out and burn the best bitch and moan for you, and the winner receives a can of feminine deodorant suitable for destruction and a copy of Blue Jean magazine, the anti-heroic feminist slick aimed at the just-menstruating set to give to a young woman of your choice, compliments of Real Astrology. Here are three menstrual rants on wildly differing topics that we received during August.
Truly inspired by the power of menstruation, I have to let go of my virginal status as voyeuristic reader and plunge into the power of my voice. I am here to vent off about the bullshit of politics and the period. Did you know that up here in Canada we have to pay taxes on pads and tampons?!?! Our government considers them to be a luxury item, thus justifying paying 15 percent tax on those little pieces of cotton. Let's get real--a luxury? While I absolutely love being a woman, I harldly consider my period to be a luxury! It's about time all of us Canadian women--actually any woman for that matter--went up to Ottawa and squatted on Cretien's front lawn for the three to four days of our menses, and told him where to stuff his tax! Yes, some of you men out there, be afraid, truly afraid, of the power of womanhood. In that power we are going to restore peace and love to the planet,in partnership with whatever chromosone combinations want to join us. Love and light to all.
I don't really feel menstruation is like hell--just the opposite. Each time my period starts I breathe a sigh of relief--not the "thank-god-I'm-not-pregnant" sigh, though. To me it's a chance to get rid of all the built-up toxins and any "junk" I may have consumed in the previous weeks--a time to be reborn and start a new month all fresh and new. I breathe a sigh of relief that I am pure again--it's almost like getting to start life over again each month.
I went to sleep, knowing I was ovulating because of the sharp twinge in my right ovary. I woke in an erotic fog: having dreamed that my lover was eating crispy fried slices of Habersett's scrapple (a breakfast side dish, consisting of weird pieces of pork mixed with cornmeal, indigenous to the Philadelphia area) from my naked body. "Ah-ha," I told myself with Jungian glee. "Eggs and scrapple!"
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