…or maybe it was twice. Come to think of it, it was definitely much more often than that.
It was, after all, all about the time. Then again, it was also about the place and the people who were there and the things that happened. So maybe I need to restart.
Once upon a spacetime, I was there. I have been an observer. Somehow I adopted the notion that it was important for me to observe and record. If not me, who?
It all started with a vision, although it may have started before the vision and elsewhere. That’s the trouble with spacetime. One wherewhen’s herenow is another wherewhen’s therethen. But for the life of us we keep counting the time. Sometimes it becomes all too apparent that it is a dwindling resource.
Rummaging through ornaments, I pick up three of my favorites. A trio of polar bears, made from a kind of velvet elvis-like material. They all have this innocent hey lady, where’s the hot chocolate and cookies look when really, they’re eyeing the red-lacquered wagon. And they do it every year … ha! One bear climbs in as the other two take up positions pulling and pushing the wiggly little cart across the window sill. It’s a sweet little vignette until the “it’s my turn to ride in the wagon” starts. But we’ve all been there…
The snowmen, generally a more gentlemanly bunch, find a place around a sparkly tree on a quiet sill away from the bears. Greenery gets hung around my fire place (as much make believe as the polar bears and snowmen), and I light candles in its pretend hearth. The collection of Santas, with big bellies and spindly legs, have gathered around the wood-cut fir to admire the fine glass sleigh parked there and piled high with packages. Christmas music is playing and this year, snow surrounds my little place.
There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. ~Erma Bombeck
I like make-believing. I especially like make-believing in Santa because he always has faith in what kids believe, seeing beyond wish-lists and into their innocent hearts. The right jolly old elf doesn’t just leave a doll or stuffed animal, but playmates who never tire of tea parties, building forts in forests, or turning sticks into swords . These rag-tagged companions never object to being dragged along on all the Lewis & Clark-like expeditions kids love to make.
On Tuesday I received a letter from a former student at the University of Central Arkansas, where I transitioned from 1992 until 1994 and where I taught for six more years after that. From time to time, people from that spacetime contact me. There are other people at Daily Kos who have been faculty or students at UCA. The memories of there/then are bittersweet.
It took several days for me to formulate a response. I’d like to say that I was just too busy to write back immediately since it was Finals Week here at Bloomfield.
The truth is rather that it was too difficult to come up with any quick response…and that the letter deserved a more thoughtful response than what I could immediately come up with.
I’m not even sure if the response I finally came up with is appropriate or sufficient. But it is what I have.
i was going to write about what i imagine it will be like to live in leiden, the netherlands. but it’s been snowing all day and i have on christmas music. i’ve done a little decorating, have the candles lit, and poured a glass of red wine.
i’ll be out of this place in a few weeks. life or time or whatever it is keeps us moving… and we seem never to stop making changes. my nephew ryan turned 10 today. on christmas day, i’ll be 53. holy fucking moly.
but tonight, i’m happy. i love how snow quiets things down. slows things down. i love milky night skies and how moon glow backlights falling, floating drop_lets. i love snowstorms and being out with my dog. I love the way the snow catches in his fur and how he rolls on his back. i love the sun coming out after a big storm… and the glint and sparkle of the snow snow snow.
i love the way a house can smell warm when you come back inside. oh… and sometimes it’s so nice to curl up into blankets and take a nap. not really sleep though, but how you feel in those perfect moments between sleeping and waking.
i decided i should take some pictures of my little cottage-like apartment, with my few christmas decorations and the abundance of snow outside, and show you all where i am right now and where i won’t be for much longer.
and yet, right now i’m so fully here. not fully grasping deconstructing all of this. walking away from each part is an odd thing. how it all changes and the things that held you in orbit have disappeared. and you walk away. energy going forward in light years or heavy years. the drag of memory, holding you still. making you think you’re still where you’re not. it will all melt like the snow outside. the landscape. the way it looks right now. it will never be that way again.
big chest-heaving sigh.
and i’m up in five minutes and maybe i’ll just keep writing this in the comments. as i chase after myself. as i try to let go and grab onto something new, all at the same time.
hey. here i am. that’s funny now. here i am. until i melt away.
One night in the FarAway/LongAgo, I had trouble getting to sleep, so I sat up for several hours thinking about some things and felt like writing a bit about them. It was a bit of a ramble.
I had not really been sharing much of my writing at the time because I came to a point where I thought that other people in the gender community needed to find themselves more than they needed to listen to what I had to say. Someone questioned that stance and I thought it through and realized that I had perhaps been too hasty.
The following is a rewrite of that ramble, with some new words hung like ornaments here and there. It was originally written as an address to my community. Ultimately, however, circumstances did warrant continuation of that withdrawal. There are limitations on how thin one can spread oneself and still be able to delve deeply. Decisions made about which is more important have consequences.
Yes, that’s correct, I’m one of those anal retentive writers who believe in spelling and capitalization and punctuation and grammar. Links lend credibility and context.
Sometimes people mistake my style for stream of consciousness. They would be surprised to learn that almost everything is outlined and constructed. What I do is tell stories, like Garrison Keillor or Mark Twain or Dashiell Hammett. Because most of them do in fact come from personal experience while they have a middle, they seldom have a firm beginning or end; though I am always trying to make a point.
In the beginning. Where is that exactly? First the Earth was formed, then the dinosaurs came and Jesus rode them like ponies. Homer started his poems in medias res and at the beginning we are on the shores of Troy or Ithaca and have the great relief for the rest of the tedious tale that our hero makes it that far at least, so we have no serious concerns for his welfare.
Much of the rest may seem mere wandering flashbacks but because the reader has peeked ahead they are assured they will eventually get somewhere.
So every essay is also all about process as long as you learn from it.
Here I’ve been experimenting with form, trying to write shorter, and more political, and shorter AND more political. An ideal Front Page piece will have 200 to 500 words and at least one graphic or blockquote for visual interest. That’s about 4 or five paragraphs. Not much time to get to the point.
It seems to me that many of our political views, especially the ones we find ourselves least willing to fudge, depend crucially on what we take human nature to be. But we can ask a prior question, and I think asking it might be a better place to start.
Is there a singular human nature, or or are people truly diverse? Is each mind a new construction — an alien, finally, to her peers? Or do we all have something very deep in common? And is that deep commonality, should there be one, enough to justify a social order which cherishes its nourishment, or a revolution to install a social order which does?
Maybe I was born this way. Maybe it’s a genetic mutation.
Maybe it happened when I was sitting on the dock of the bay in my hippie youth.
Maybe it happened because once upon a time it became clear that my life and my needs didn’t matter to the progress of this thing we call human society and its relationship with and survival on this planet.
Which means maybe Poul Anderson is to blame.
Maybe it happened because I’ve lived so close to the edge of death by my own hand so many times. That could have singed away any real motivation for the self-interest that I have been told recently is at the heart of every human being’s motivation and that virtue is only enlightened self-interest.
Although I had lived, and hiked, and backpacked in the Southwest for twenty or so years, encounters with rattlesnakes were pretty rare. If one sees snakes at all, they’re usually stretched across a trail or road. I had sure never encountered one where it posed a problem, like crawling into someones sleeping bag. The closest anyone I knew ever came was when I was hiking with my nephew, he once sat on a large large rock that had a rattler underneath. When it rattled, he moved. This is generally considered appropriate behavior. He might have been maybe a little too excited, and ran much farther than he needed to, but the move-away–leave-it-alone strategy is all one really needs to do in most cases. The people that do get bitten are usually young, drunk, and male.
Most people in rural areas with great hideouts like barns and woodpiles, will usually handle rattlesnake encounters with matter-of-fact blowing them away with a shotgun.
I somehow got a job at a nature sanctuary near a small town and moved there from Tucson. I had been a volunteer for a few years and Jerry, the manager, finally had the funding to hire some help. Meetings with rattlesnakes increased.
I gave myself an assignment on Tuesday. I decided I needed to write about one of those topics I have the hardest time with. I assigned myself the the topic of Hate. I’ve also had difficulty writing about Love.
Go figure.
Once upon a time I appeared in an anti-hate commercial, part of the the Hate Free Zones campaign sponsored by the Arkansas Progressive Network back in the late 90s.
My partner (at the time) and were seen walking along the riverfront in Little Rock, an interracial lesbian couple, one of us transsexual and the other bisexual. The commercial displayed all sorts of human targets of hate, set to the music of INXS’ Mediate. The final video scenes showed the burned out station wagon at the scene of slaying of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.
It has been a difficult time lately for some of us. Not only have we discovered that political symbolism trumps equal protection under the law and the importance of coalition building, at least when it comes to protections for people like us, we get told in the back pages that we really need to shut up about our concerns, that speaking up for ourselves is the crassest form of selfishness.
It comes at a bad time of year. It’s a time of year when we remember those who have fallen, and invite other people to remember them with us. On Tuesday, November 20, is the 9th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. Special props to Gwendolyn Ann Smith, who started this. Some people know Gwen as a columnist for the Bay Area Reporter, whereas I know her as someone who transitioned at the same time I did. Thank you, Gwen.
I won’t be able to post anything on that day. It’s our last day before Thanksgiving Break and I have to teach three classes and chair a meeting of the Bloomfield College Gay/Non-Gay Alliance, where we will continue to plan our Safe Space training for the spring semester. That, I suppose, is just more of my selfishness rearing it’s ugly head.
“What is a LEADER?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“A LEADER isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. It’s realizing that every experience develops some latent force within you.1 You begin to understand that vision is the art of seeing the invisible2 so that when you want to build a wagon, you don’t gather the other toys to collect wood or assign them tasks, but rather you teach them to long for ways to traverse the endless immensity of the backyard.3 Then you become a LEADER.”
