10/18/2004 but I'm a cheerleader

"And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay
And follow thee my lord throughout the world." Romeo and Juliet.

Nearly 2 AM and just got back from DC where I cheered (a radical cheerleader) at the million worker march. A start. The trip was awesome and I love, love love the radie cheerleaders. I felt so sad leaving everyone. It was SO great and I know I made the right decision to go and stay overnight Saturday with about 15 people I met that night and cheer the next morning and WHAT an experience that was. None of my squad, the NYC, was there so I spent time with the Buffalo people and one from DC (who I stayed with) and two from Richmond whose moves are far more fancy than ours: they are all over the place. But I am happy that I met people and had a real social experience (as opposed to leaving 6 AM sunday, staying for a few hours, then taking a 5 hour bus ride back, which I did for March for Women's Lives and which was unfulfilling and extremely stressful experience for me: hence why I wanted to stay Sat night. Long story short, someone offered their place and I managed to get included.....) and got to do some major dance moves like a thigh stand. I tried it a couple times and fell but I finally got it down Sunday. PIx were taken of us and me standing on thighs so I can see it and blush at some point.
So I got some culture lessons: life in the Dixie radical scene, the introduction to. different cultures and people and the people I met were awesome! I bonded really strongly with the RCs for some reason. People come and go in many activist groups but there tends to remain a core of dedicated ones. Not like we don't have disagreements. Some people flee when things get heated but others stay. I haven't left. Well, that's getting on a complicated thing.

10/19/04
But.....on to the larger travels. This was a start. I was going to go to LA for an actors' connection conference but it turns out to be super expensive and......well, there must be other ways to network. Plus, I have to find someone to sublet my apartment and finding someone has been a treacherous process....ohhhhhh......and it's ongoing. I engage in mind-purifying rituals like yoga and reading to stay sane, because this is a VERY stressful. Reread parts of The Feminine Mystique today and it's eerie how some things have not changed.....in spite of women now being "liberated." Stuff like progressive dehumanization and sexual evasion or something like that. Women seek status through sex because that is the opportunity that exists for them: the pro-woman line! I read also an astrology article detailing different women's planetary placements and how this causes them to be neurotic in love life in different ways (ie a Saturn/Neptune clash: falling for Mr. Wrong). Still, I think this writer was kind of harsh: all this stuff on life lessons and "choices" we make, but we as people don't control the movement of the planets. Why are so many women "escaping into romantic fantasy" ? Sure, housework sucks, but so does the cof-fice. We have a long way to go......but I'll stop here for now.