Feeling Is First

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet who wrote in German and French. Some of his work is really beautiful, including an entire series of poems about Mary, the mother of Jesus. Even though he was a white dude writing a hundred years ago, he demonstrates immense respect, reverence, and empathy for women and mothers. His best known work, however, is not any of his poems or poetry collections; it is his correspondence with Franz Xaver Kappus. Kappus was a fan of Rilke, and a student at the same military academy that Rilke had attended. The young Kappus sent a few original poems to Rilke and asked, "Should I be a poet?" Rilke wrote back, and the two maintained a correspondence for a few years. Rilke's ten letters to Kappus were later collected and published with the fitting title Letters to a Young Poet. Two different people gifted me two different editions of Rilke's work, (and they each very sweetly annotated them for me - so romantic!) and I too...

I saw The Play That Goes Wrong at the Altria Theater in Richmond, Virginia on October 27th, 2019. Afterward, I wrote this:  I go see a play and watch a group of men violate the body of an unconscious woman as part of the plot, you know, for the LOLZ, and boy do they get 'Em. Thousands of people in the audience around me are in stitches. The whole place is an uproar of laughter. And in this moment it feels like all of them are laughing at me.  Triggered is when your heart sinks into your stomach and every cell in your body is quivering and you HAVE to leave the situation. As I get up to leave, I am astounded to see that I am the only one in the hallway, seemingly the only one upset enough to walk out. How is that possible?  So now I'm doing math in my head. There are 3500 people in that audience. Maybe 1750 of them are women. About a fourth of them have probably been victims of sexual assault. That's over 400 women. How am I the only one who couldn't take it...