Zen Men: A Rant
essay

"Zen Men" used to be called "Dubya," but I think I'll save that title for a more focussed rant on G.W. himself.

"Emilia Kellos" is a character I write in when I'm bored, angry, and am not utterly certain I feel justified in certain extreme beliefs... She wears baggy, shapeless overalls or khaki fatigues, round glasses, and braids her hair in front of her ears.

Yeah, not a pretty picture, but she sometimes has fun things to say, when she's not trying to get herself killed.

All this male chest-beating stuff has got my dander up in a serious way. I can't decide if I want to bake cookies or start a nuclear war.

Still, guess I'm thinking seriously about forming a back-to-basics women's group with my friend Marlene. It's kind of a twelve-step program for recovering feminists. Gonna call it the ‘We don't really hate men' club.'

And I don't, naw, not really. Just got such an earful when I was living up there in Petawawa with my boyfriend in the military and all about the inferiority of the female sex. Sanctity of male identity my shapely female don't-you-dare-pinch-it ass. Stuff like that really sticks in my craw. Gets me wanting to go out in the woods and beat something, and I don't mean a drum.

I mean, what have men contributed? Okay, I'll give them most of the major religious movements. But some of them. . .

I mean, take Zen. There's a male idea if I ever heard one. Trust men to find a way to justify doing nothing. ‘Take the pebble from my hand, grasshopper. . .'

I can almost hear that flute theme from ‘Kung Fu' playing in the back of my mind.

And it was monks invented beer, you know. Monks! Ever think of nuns drinking? I thought not.

Nuns pray and do all that self-sacrificing medical orphans and war-widows stuff.

The guys? They're off having a booze-up, illuminating some manuscripts, having a big old-fashioned argument on the nature of man.

And the nuns? They're lying prone in front of the altar ten hours a day to apologize for Eve.

History is written by the victors, ladies.

Ever thought that snake in the grass story was a little too pat? Way I see it, old Adam snitched something out of the fridge that God was saving for a special occasion, and the first man sets an eternal precedent by blaming it all on the woman. God kicks them out for being bad house guests, and Adam starts re-writing things to suit himself.

Eve, of course, wants to forgive and forget, but Adam, now that he's got a new version, gets going on how it's all her fault, and life would be so cushy if only she hadn't. . .

Ladies, they've been selling us this story for thousands of years.

And here (I'm only telling you because of course you can't see me doing it), I cross myself for effect, and say:

Cross? You bet!

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