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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets Law Amidst the Rest SUSAN AYRES _______________________ Sage Why should a man die whilst sage grows in his garden? - medieval saying Now at the age of hiding your true age from new colleagues and friends, having young children when you should be planning your retirement, what have you gotten yourself into? What else would you be doing? It's easy to imagine the dinners, the trips - but are those childless couples happy? What keeps their nights sleepless? What keeps them young? I meet you for lunch and while we exchange interesting stories, I silently wonder if all couples meeting this way try to make each minute count double. We look like two people hungry to know each other the food/sex connection strong. You know the look. But we aren't on our first date. It's an old story, how children changed our lives. My career fizzled like the tail of a comet, while yours exploded into a new galaxy. []
I have time to garden, and plant timeless perennials and herbs: borage foxglove lavender betony echinacea sage rosemary basil roses. The children traipse after me like a cure for old age. []
The Beauty Bar Botox? Pink? "Pink, Powerful, Legal"? A beauty bar sponsored by the local bar. Style show. Skincare. Hair removal. What is this? Judith Butler, in her words: "gender ontologies always operate within established political contexts as normative injunctions, determining what qualifies as intelligible sex . . ." A Stepford Wife in the courtroom, legal and powerful and beautiful in the eyes of the Father. The parody, pastiche of woman, parody "of the very notion of an original." Here we go again. Isn't this an old story? The hegemonic language of lack. The "‘Other' of the always already masculine subject." The Beauty Bar inscribes "the law of their desire." Another pink invitation. I must still be in Texas where it's law and the politics of the body. The only thing to do is to attend. [575]
ATTENTION LADY LAWYERS: Attend the Beauty Bar, Attend the Law Firm Boutique, Attend the Neiman Marcus Event. "[T]here is a subversive laughter in the pastiche effect of parodic practices in which the original, the authentic, and the real are themselves constituted as effect." Twenty bucks guarantees we will be beautiful before the Law. Note: The Judith Butler quotes are from Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1990). [576]
Susan Ayres lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband and three children. Her poetry has appeared in Kalliope, descant, Cimarron Review, and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. She received her J.D. from Baylor Law School and a Ph.D. from Texas Christian University. She is on the faculty at Texas Wesleyan School of Law. "Sage" was originally published in the Palo Alto Review. |
