Woman-as-city; Woman-in-city: Babylon, Oakland & Me by Yosefa Raz

7/29/2019 Woman-as-city; Woman-in-city: Babylon, Oakland & Me by Yosefa Raz

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Woman-as-city; Woman-in-city: Babylon, Oakland & Me

In the Ancient Near East, cities are women. Cities are your mother and they

suckle and feed you, and cities are your lover, and you marry her by living in the city, you

enter her gates, and her towers are her bejeweled body. (In the Song of Songsthe lover's

neck is beautiful asa tower, in an amazing inversion of the land-as-woman metaphor.) In

war, cities are ravaged and raped, their nakedness is uncovered. When you are exiled

from your burnt down city you become an orphan.

I grew up in Jerusalem and everywhere around me there were songs about

Jerusalem, and the rocks who have a heart, and here she's a damsel in distress, waiting for

her soldier-sons to come redeem her. Here and there made of gold, turning all the male

poets into violins. Her sons are the warriors who came to save her. They stand weeping

at Walling Wall, in their dusty, sexy, paratrooper helmets. Could I be the city's lover? An

old problem for women poets, an old problem with the city-as-woman metaphor.

Because I am neither a son or a warrior-lover.

[now I'll read a poem fragment:]

She confused herself with the city,so she made herself gates,

wondered now who was going to fight to enter,like in her elementary school pageant:Six Day War, Seven Gates, brave beautiful men.

Its an easy confusion.You hear all those serenades:humans with hearts of stonesstones with human heartsyou cant imagine they were meant for inert rocksyou think they must be meant for youif youre walking through the parkand someone is singing.

Michal Govrin, who writes about Jerusalem and Derrida and mysticism, said

in a lecture here at Berkeley, "Jerusalem is the vagina of the world."


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The bible doesn't really like cities or the decadent power-hungry people that

live in cities, so Jerusalem is a kind of anti-city, a city without decadance, without Empire,

without flashing lightsall white stone.

The essence ofcity, Jerusalem's dark evil sister, is Babylon, seat of power and

domination. The Book of Isaiah has a fantasy about Babylon: (chapter 47)

Get down and sit in the dust, virgin daughter Babylon,Sit on the ground dethroned, daughter of Chaldea,they will no longer be calling you soft and dainty,Grasp the mill and grind flour, unveil yourselfStrip your train, bare your leg, wade through rivers

Your genitals uncovered,your shame also will be seenI will take revenge, and let no human get in the way.

So, the end of Empire in this metaphorical system is also the rape of a

beautiful well-dressed woman. Smash the flashing lights, smash the windows. Smash the

whore on the beast.

Babylon as Rome, as New York City, as Paris. Here is Henry James on Paris:

(from The Ambassadors)

"It hung before him this morning, the vast bright Babylon, like some hugeiridescent object, a jewel brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be discriminatednor differences comfortably marked. It twinkled and trembled and melted together, and

what seemed all surface one moment seemed all depth the next."

When I first moved to Oakland, everything seemed flat. Telegraph Avenue

didn't have a secret body. I lived in North Berkeley and right near this little park strip,

Ohlone Park, which was actuallythe green cover of the where the BART went. I

wandered around thinking, this is not my life. I'm missing my life. Everyone I met

seemed too thin, as if they would easily blow away. I saved a few empty computer files

under the title: "Your beloved thin beloved."


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I think I'm still looking for Oakland's body, which is sometimes the body of

my exile from my parents and my first language. Here is a walk I took with my friend

Maya around 2005. We walked from Woolsey & Shattuck up to college. It is really a

shorter walk than I remember:

The gardens darkened;its goes without saying

we used to slide down a monster with red tongues.

Im making small mapsof our everyday geographies. Imlayering memories like glaze

on a painting.You said,arent I interesting enough?Memorizing the patterns of the art deco entrance-ways

As if making an amulet,a shape with which to holdthis day, tumbled out far from center.How to give Oakland a body? And how to make it a body not to be ravaged? I

went on some important picnics with a crossdressing lover in Mountain View Cemetery

and near the Chabot Space Center. One day you reallyseesomeone who was previously

uninteresting, and suddenly they have these beams of light radiating out of them like a

kindergartner's picture of the sun. Afterwards, I met the poets of Oakland, and we met

the Black Panthers, and Occupy happened.

[I will read you another poem I wrote where I think I am trying to find

Oakland's body: ]


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Rate of Exchange

If all of Oakland was canals,scrambling off the boat to lock and unlock each level.Raise and drain the water.

The boat having a certain buoyancy,ingenuity to float up to the fancy hills of Piedmont, Wildcat Canyonor Sibley: the magmatic labyrinths are flooded

with this effort. The cows trundled upTo the highest surface. Eucalyptus working overtime.

If you could see through Oakland into other citiesportal, palimpsest machine: the layers of barricadesthe old city of Oakland with its walls,its ruined temples. Cranking the locks at the cemetery,kitschy angels and pyramids getting covered

in sea water. The water from Lake Merritteddying around houses of mirth and mourning.

If Oakland contained multiple academies ofdead languages, (studied after the conquest)I'd ask you to enroll as a condition of our love-ship,the way you ask me to state a political position.

If Oakland contained hanging gardensand water fountains in the shape of elephants, I'd saymeet me for a talk about our relationship by the elephant fountain.

If Oakland had large horse stableswe could get horses to ride through the marshy mess.

I remember myself now as more stupid than I must have been.If we reenacted Darger's battles in the downtown Oakland areaIf bicycles could still ride with one wheel stolen offIf I met you at a demonstration against thewar, againstawar, surrounded by beautiful men,against a landscape of green-blue water

Would you even listen?

Would you doff your hat to me?Would it still be impossible to conjugate redemption?

Documents

Woman-as-city; Woman-in-city: Babylon, Oakland & Me by Yosefa Raz