I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel

When I was a kid, May Day, we would get flowers and leave them on neighbors' porches--dingdongditching the flowers.  It was perfect fun, for me.  Excitement, generosity, learning to give without expecting anything in return, confusing people.  I don't know where my mom got this tradition.

Then when I was a teenager, friends with pagan poets, I danced around a May Pole.  It felt lively.  Then I took a dip in a creek.

I learned about communism and noticed May Day is a pagan holiday and a worker's holiday.  I didn't really understand.  How did they get connected, was it pertinent anymore.  It seemed old fashioned.  No basement communist meetings anymore.

This is probably my favorite line of my favorite Allen Ginsberg poem, "America."

America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49305/america-56d22b41f119f

I learned about a May Pole symbolizing fertility, virility.  I felt a bit creeped out by that--a holiday for horniness.  If the May Pole is representing a giant penis--did I really need more penis worship in my life, penis energy?  I saw a lot of patriarchy all around me.  Penis power seemed too violent and didn't need more airtime.

But there was a naughty aspect, like we're very clever for worshipping penises, aren't we, that I didn't really buy.  I don't know what the past was really like.

A lot of paganism seems to be pretending we're doing an ancient thing.  In groups, I mean--on my own, I can do whatever I like.  But I feel confused about my ancestors, other ancestors, folk religion, and how to approach it all.

Then the May Day stuff in Las Vegas was and is such a mess, different groups having conflict, different organizers having conflict--a struggle for sure.  I spoke about radical mental health one year at a May Day rally.  Ming had Street Medics things to do.

I got a new understanding of May Day.  We support the workers, simple as that.  I think I like my current grasp.  But maybe I still don't get it.

I know it's general strike.  I don't have a paying job.  I wondered what I could strike against.  I could strike against Ming, but he doesn't oppress me, at all.  I could strike against some org I volunteer for, but I totally believe in them.  That would make no sense.

Who oppresses me who I should strike against?  There's capitalism.  I could make a point not to buy anything.  I could spend the day reading Emma Goldman?  Nothing really feels right.

So much is like that.  I'd like to make it my own, but I'm not sure how.  This kitty is cute, at least.

ps  Solidarity forever.