Le flâneur


Woman’s movement, 6th Ave, NYC.

Who’s the walker and who’s the watcher? Enjoy this short Wikipedia entry on the flâneur, and you decide.

I’m not at all sure when or if I will be able to manage a full-on prose recap of this past weekend I spent in New York for the BlogHer conference. Many others have, so that’s something. Michigan Womyn’s Festival meets Sex In The City. And if that clash of seemingly utterly unrelated, polar opposite/oppositional cultures confuses, then good. It might be one apt take on the whole shebang. The point for me was less the clash, and more the coexistence, the mutual consideration, sometimes for the first time, and always (sez me, ever the bridge-builder) for the good.

When you see the list of panelists and speakers, though, all attempts to reduce and oversimplify scatter like roaches under a naked kitchen bulb. Some 2,400 women in control of their own media came to engage in dialog with these people and each other.

Meanwhile I’m editing photographs, rolling around the various tastes, reflecting, digesting. If the trip was a hot dog, it was a jumbo dog, everything on it: mustard, sauerkraut, ketchup, you name it. The kind whose juice and toppings drip all over your hand as you eat it, and you’re okay with that. Taste lingers long after the meal is over.

Yeah, so I’m a vegetarian. It’s a metaphor.

The short version of it all: us women got it going on.