Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Red dress dancer

 There's music, and there's a woman in a red dress, dancing on the yellow beach this evening. She's joined by a man in a white shirt. They dance to the strands coming from a speaker they've stood upon a stone. I can see them from my veranda, through the paper bark trees.

This week I drove to the city to work and also to attend the March for Justice. These protests happened around the country and the Albany march was attended by plenty of women, men and children.

 


We were asked to wear black (something I'd neglected to let my mum know, who turned up in full pink regalia). As I neared the railway line on my way to the rally, an old bloke fell in alongside me. 'Well, you're wearing black and holding a sign,' he said. A train chundled by and so we stopped to talk. 'I think I'll follow you.'

'Are you going to the rally as well?' I asked him and he nodded.

As we walked across the green lawn marked with so many pram tracks, he said, 'My wife is speaking today ... and here she is!'

Out of all the English and Indigenous Studies unit's I'm tutoring, this week we were doing the depiction of the 'other' in colonial discourse, plus Enlightenment period thinking, Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication for the Rights of Woman and some work by Mary Robinson, among others. It seemed so fitting. We are still asking for individual freedom, that our senior law makers be impeccable in their behaviour past and present, and that the rights of man continue on to the rights of women.

I guess this is why, when I returned home from a long drive, I was so pleased to see a woman in a red dress dancing on the yellow beach on the edge of the inlet.

 

9 comments:

  1. I love the idea of your mum turning up in pink, as if she was still capable of embarrassing you in front of your mates.

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    1. She's a fucking hero, pink clothes or black.

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  2. Yep. This is huge. And it's not ging away now. These events also confirm whats going on astrologically if you haven't read my last post about that. The astrology actually gave me hope that THIS was it, this was the time. I don't even know where to start expressing myself.

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    1. I haven't read it yet. Things have been very busy lately. But I WILL!

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    2. Sarah I don't kow if you are into astrology at all but the planetary transits are uncanny in regards to a shake up of patriarchal dominance and the rising up of women.

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  3. Fighting for the rights of women is always high on my agenda. You go! Your Mom showing up in pink is hilarious. Even unknowingly, she knows how to throw a curve. People must have wondered: What's with the pink lady?

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    1. Mum has always known how to throw the curve. Thanks Susan x

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  4. My pharmacy has recently informed me by text that i am now officially a 'pink diamond princess' say hello to your mum from me ��

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