midnight bridges

A List of 5

2008-11-12T21:57:00.004-05:00

1. I started out the fall with an addiction to national politics and the election, and have ended up with an addiction to Rachel Maddow and the Colbert Report. This means that I now feel like I need to stream at least two TV shows a day, which is at least one more than strictly necessary.

2. I am in the midst of grad school applications. It makes me wish that I had more time to read and write, instead of write about reading and writing.

3. For those who are keeping romantic tabs, I'm in a relationship again. SB is wonderful and ornery. In fact, given only two adjectives for him, those might be ones I would choose.

4. My roommates and I have yet to turn on the heat for the winter, our incentive is that we can turn on the heat as soon as we finish shrinkwrapping our windows. The upshot is that my room is not drafty, but the heat isn't on.

5. I have a cold. I'm drinking tea. Lots of tea. Breathe Deep tea that is supposed to, well, help me breathe.

P.S. I found my template.
P.P.S. Still trying to figure out what this space is for me. I'll get back to you.

Economics ...

2008-10-01T14:54:00.002-04:00

Love this post. Totally lovely and hilarious and true.

P.S. I can't find my template, where did it go? I wants to edit it. Where is it? Help. Blogger? Anyone? Help?

Infrastructure Projects Take Forever. It's Just Their Way

2008-09-19T12:10:00.001-04:00

Dear Interwebs,
I don't know how I feel about you either, but I'm in another moment of crossing wide deep waters in my life, and wonder whether this bridge has been repaired. I'm taking over from my alter-ego Corinne, now I will be blogging as my ego (let's be honest). I'm making no commitments; I'd like us to have a casual relationship. I fully intend to have a relationship with other media while spending time with you. Cool? Readers, you say? Yeah, I don't know if any of the old folks will show up again, or if new folks will stumble upon this, and I don't know what my 'subject matter' will be. I'm a little high maintenance that way, or, perhaps, refreshing. Let's say I'm refreshing.
Love,
Andra

Bridge Closed Due to (Re)Construction

2007-07-04T06:53:00.001-04:00

Deadlines (a.k.a. All I Blog Are Lists)

2007-06-05T22:04:00.000-04:00

1. There is so much snot in my head, I think that if I could blow my ears (or eyes for that matter), it would make me feel better.
2. I have to read for the new endeavor tonight, and maybe tomorrow night, and maybe Thursday morning too.
3. There are deadlines popping up with the new endeavor, and the car, and the job. Life just keeps happening and I think that I'm keeping on top of everything reasonably well, but, goodness, who knows? And sooner or later my smile won't get me as far as it usually does.
4. TP and I might go for a walk on Monday. A real, in person, walk. I am all kinds of not ready for that.
5. In ten days, I'm flying to California to go backpacking, probably in the Big Sur area. It will be a whole new landscape to soak up.
6. There are deadlines for most things and they help me to get my ass in gear. But there is no deadline for this pain, or the ways we wind our path.

Things That Are Over and Done With

2007-05-28T15:14:00.001-04:00

1. Linear Algebra and Multivariable Calculus as a thing in my life; the discipline will continue quite happily without me.
2. My relationship with TP; a.k.a. a whole set of dreams and goals and commitments I made to another human; a.k.a. the most significant adult romantic relationship of my life.
3. Another year; today is my birthday.

I'm sorry, I haven't been able to muster the emotional energy to write here, there has just been too much.

Concrete

2007-05-04T13:22:00.001-04:00

con•crete
1: naming a real thing or class of things
2: formed by coalition of particles into one solid mass
3 a: characterized by or belonging to immediate experience of actual things or events b: specific, particular c: real, tangible

Announcing the first open call for submissions to Concrete, a literary print journal through Sideshow Press, a publishing house for the rest of us. Editor and publisher, Toni Amato will work with one guest editor each issue.

Our premier issue will be guest-edited with Andra Hibbert, a queer writer and researcher who lives in Jamaica Plain, MA and is negotiating the concretes of faith, love, food, and vocation.

For each of us, there is a moment where our abstracts --home, recovery, ability, family, grief, faith -- become concrete. For the first issue of the journal, we are interested in creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction that present the personal and particular negotiations and explorations of these moments.

Submissions may be no more than 15 double-spaced (12 point, Times New Roman or Garamond) pages of prose or up to 5 poems (not to exceed 15 total pages). Include your name and the title(s) of your pieces and be certain to paginate. Please send your work as word document or rtf attachments. Be sure to include a valid email address and phone number. Selected authors will receive two free copies.

Submissions for the premier issue are due by May 30th, but all work will be considered for future themed issues as well.

Send inquiries and submissions to:
ssp.submissions@gmail.com.

11 True Things

2007-05-03T22:57:00.000-04:00

1. I realized just now that I missed blogging, I'm here, kids, I'm not slipping or falling away from the blogosphere.

2. Most of the things I feel moved to write about right now would reveal to you the city I live in, the job I have, the darkness that slides around behind my heart.

3. If you commit yourself to enjoying the aesthetics of your situation, and you are creative, you can enjoy almost anything.

4. Right now I'm curled with a ceramic mug of ginger tea, scattered white pages of math, wrapped in a HUGE gray cardigan, my bare feet on a red footstool -- this is all most pleasant because of #3. I'm not sure the math test tomorrow will be quite as charming.

5. Something has shifted this week such that I have been enjoying my job a lot more than recently. Maybe because of the abstract sent off to a MajorNationalAssociation (MNA), or because I got to spend time with reference librarians (and really, what more can you ask for in a day's work?) Maybe because of some chemical tweaking that I am not privy to, in any case. I feel better there and more engaged. This is good.

6. I get to see Female to Femme next week. I'm excited to the core, and I shall have most excellent company.

7. By the end of the summer, I will be leaving my quirky yellow garret room, and I'm almost sad about that. But then, maybe my next room will have a closet, maybe?

8. I hate that my google account follows me wherever I go on the web, particularly when I am signed into email as *me* and I want to leave comments on blogs as *Corinne*. Has anyone figured out a loophole for this?

9. I bought some color coded folders this week to organize my life into. I'm very excited, but still haven't taken them out of my messenger bag. That said, my messenger bag is a good deal more tidy than this, though also a bit less interesting.

10. Next weekend, I'm going to be home in HarborCity, right now the only things I have planned are a film and a morning of writing by myself in a coffeeshop. I also desperately want to scrub the kitchen floor and make sourdough. It will have been almost two months since I've had such a weekend. 10 more days until I can be the homebody I really am.

11. For the next four days I'll be in BlueCity, RedState visiting TP ... and my aunt and uncle, and my mother and sisters will also be down there -- it's a big get together that was *totally* not my idea, and hopefully will not be too awfully stressful. But then, what could be more stressful that using the simplex method to solve the dual problem in game theory (see #4)?

Oh, right, sisters and mother and food and alcohol and the opportunity to wear bathing suits. Catch'ya on the flipside.

Violence and Writing: Incomplete Thoughts

2007-04-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

I have not been following the Virginia Tech stuff very closely; but I have been musing nonetheles on violence in our society, how we all handle it, and how it invades us. Cho Seung-Hui was invaded by violence, and wrote violent creative writing that should have been a tip off, or that's what they say.

I took one writing class in college. It was an Introduction to Fiction Writing class
taught by a man who was nice, but, frankly, had no idea what to do with us ELAC-kids when we got going in a classroom. Many things went down in that classroom that were sexist, racist, etc. (Imagine this: someone asked me why there weren't more father figures in my short stories, and suggested the "return of the father" as a plot point for... everything.) I digress. One day in class, we were critiquing a story that was about graphic, violent, rape. This story was gratuitous in its descriptions, and sexist in its characterizations of both men and women. The community context of this classroom was that no less that seven women had recently gone to the dean to report sexual assault. It was a bad spring at ELAC, and I was thick in the planning of Take Back the Night. My friend L., another TBTN organizer, after trying to talk to this boy about the violence in the story and having him defend it, had to leave, slamming the door. Sitting there in that classroom, I felt that this boy and the story had committed another act of violence.

I don't know who in that classroom I would have referred to psych services based on their writing, but thinking about Virginia Tech, and I am very wary of censoring creative minds as they begin to explore their own inner workings. But I have thinking about what my role in a classroom would be and what the role of violence is in art. (Very few people express violent urges in economics problem sets.)

Let me be clear: I have written about graphic violence. Much of my current work deals with the outrageous violence that we do against each other in society and the ways in which that breaks a society apart. Some who have read it, included Sister, Esq. have been stunned by my capacity and willingness to describe a violence that I have never witnessed. I feel like I am with violence everyday, that is surround and pervades me so completely that writing it out is a way to counter, no perpetuate it. My writing is violent, but I hope that it never does violence, I hope that the ways in which it disturbs always probes myself and others to reach out of the darkness and push against the cold damp stones of the trap we have set for ourselves, into a brighter day.

Epilogue: The guy who wrote the rape story now runs a small porn company. I have a feeling it is not the happy sex positive porn that I would like.

Girl Skills

2007-04-26T19:14:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, you all want to hear about some reading that happened two weeks ago or whether I've found my life path or at least given up and really failed that stupid math class. But I don't want to talk about those things, yet.

However, in the ongoing hash out of femme. I've decided that one of my favorite new femme skills is the ability to look really put together and bad ass when I feel totally brokedown. Read into that what you will about my current state. But below are two pictures of my newest tool in this endeavor. Ten dollars, sidewalk sale - yes, oh yes. This post should keep sulky fashion minded butches at bay until I want to actually fill you in on ... anything.
And I know that they look a lot like the heels from last October, but trust me, they are different, more brown, more everyday, every bit as sexy.

Lemons, Limes, My Wrist: One from the Archives

2007-04-10T18:27:00.000-04:00

I was told by a Jamaican friend last summer that limes "cut your nature". That they will calm you down when you are horny. I hadn't really thought about citrus in connection with sex again until about five minutes ago.

Today, my boss strolled by my desk and asked if I had a knife. When I told her I didn't, she showed me the problem -- inside her red waterbottle was a lemon wedge, which she had squeezed in there, but could not remove. Thirty seconds later the waterbottle is upside down over my trashcan and my hand is all up in there. My wrist starts to hurt, but I'm determined, and with a few more movements, the lemon is free and I'm left with a juicy hand.

Remind you of anything? Yeah, it reminded me too. Sometimes I think that when TP goes on T I will be subjected to dealing with someone with hormones raging around like an adolescent boy -- then I remember that sometimes I think about sex like a teenager too.

Easter, of a sort

2007-04-08T12:19:00.000-04:00

This morning, just before sunrise, two dear friends and I walked up to a hill near our houses and sang and prayed and greeted the day and the new life within each of us asking, only, for us to roll away the stone.

There was Mary Oliver, e.e. cummings, Sara M. Campbell, Ted Loder, a hymn, a gloria, confession, the sun and birds, each other and other things most holy.

I had meant to write this post about recognizing holiness and creating sacred space and how that is done, but now, I just want the fact of it to sit on my lips for longer before I try to analyze. Suffice it to say that I felt more at peace and filled with purpose walking home than I have for a while, even in the midst of everything.

"Rouse us from tiredness, self-pity,
Whet us for use,
Fire us with good passion.
Restore in us the love of living,
Bind us to fear and hope again."
-Hope Again, (author to be looked up and posted later)

This Post Has Been Brought to You By: Irish Breakfast and the Compound Sucrose

2007-04-03T22:58:00.000-04:00

Right now, I want to stay up all night writing and drinking tea and reading and thinking and not doing my math homework. I know that that sentence is too long and poorly constructed, but I --- am caffeinated.

Instead I'm dealing with eigenspace. Let me know if you have any clue what that is, and I'll send you a sparkle. Honestly, doing my math homework makes me feel like someone has taken a series of drill bits and put them in my skull. Right now, that way that I'm counteracting this effect is by looking at MFA program websites. Can I take this as a sign?

I should blog in a non-snarky way about the fact that I'm not doing well in this math class which was supposed to be my all powerful signal to Econ. grad schools. Instead I'm looking ahead to a meeting with a mentor next week, where I need to let her know where I'm really at.

P.S. Where am I really at?
P.P.S. I promise that someday I will blog about something other than my navel, which can best be described as an inbetweeny rather than an outie or an innie... in case any inquiring minds would have wanted to know.

Lookee!

2007-04-01T22:12:00.000-04:00

Hey,
My life is insane. The season of change which cometh upon you in the night has cometh. I have an ex (not the ex) in town this week, next weekend my mother will be in town, the weekend after that I'm going to BigCity to see Sister, Esq. for her birthday. The weekend after that my father will be in town. The weekend after that I'll fly to RedState to see TP and visit family. By the end of May, I could have moved "across the river".
However, in the meantime I managed to escape to CoastalHaven for the weekend and all I got was more freckles and a this new mug to replace the mug that busted last week. If you realized how much tea and coffee I drink, you would realize how significant a purchase this was, and it's really quite fetching.

Kisses,
C.

Am I Not Plain? A List of Responses to Definitions

2007-03-26T00:52:00.001-04:00

I could write a whole other post about why I'm writing this instead of doing work, but I want to write this, because there are good reasons I don't want to think about the rest of my life.

Plain:*

1. Not decorated or elaborate; simple or ordinary in character.
That my dears, depends on the day. But I would like to believe that femmes, when we claim that as an identity and not a descriptor are just as femme when they are traipsing through the woods with axes as when they are wearing heels, and dangling jewelry. I don't want there to be a contradiction between wanting someone to open my door for me (sometimes) and being the one wearing carhartts fixing the leaky sink. So decorations depend on the day, but I don't think simple or ordinary in character makes much sense.

2. Without a pattern; in only one color.
I am not this, and neither are femmes worldwide.

3. Bearing no indication as to source, contents, or affiliation.
Probably true. My femme-ininity is a mish-mash-genderberry-mosh-mess. I was raised by a hairy-legged woman who used her hippie cred and class aspirations to cast aspersions on makeup. I am, at base, a country girl, and a tomboy who is learning how to be a girl (more on the particular challenges of this to come). All these factors means that gender expression is a little bit up in the air, and so it is not so surprising that the gender itself doesn't bear clear markers.

4. Having no pretensions, not remarkable or special.
Remarkable and special, yes please. But can that be with pretension on the side?

5. Without title or status
Right, other than femme, and potentially lady, girl, etc., I don't want title or status. I want to be down in the ditches working on the work with everyone else. Which isn't to say that I don't like the occasional femme worship ;). It just isn't a title or status thing. It is a respect given where due thing. I hope.

6. Easy to perceive or understand; clear
I am not this, femme is not this. It is a complicated, messy, misunderstood thing. That is why Hannah and I get to have tea. That is why I'm writing this. I cannot perceive or understand myself in relation to femme, I am not clear on any of it. I don't know many people who are clear on it. So, no.

7. Clearly expressed, without the use of technical of abstruse terms
Well, here is something to aspire to, but seeing as 6 isn't true, I don't know if I'm equipped to go about describing this without the use of technical terms. I may have read too much high queer theory to be able to do that. Tainted forever by Butler and Foucault and caught red-handed in my po-mo linguistic gymnastics.

8. Not using concealment or deception, frank
When I first was called a plain femme by the online quiz, the first thing that sprang to mind was the idea of a "plainclothes femme (PF)" like a plainclothes policeman. Undercover in the gender war... Yeah, it has potential, especially because it allows the PF to be in disguise in both the straight and queer communities -- which I feel like I am. In straight spaces, I am read as straight, and in queer spaces my position is much more complicated, but I don't ever feel like I am not dissembling somehow. I would love to leave the stage sometime, but I'm not sure how. This, too, is a whole other post.

9. Not attractive.
See #2.

*I have no idea how to cite a widget, forgive me.

In Other News:

2007-03-18T21:14:00.000-04:00

1. An online quiz just told me that I am a "plain femme" -- we'll deconstruct that another time, eh?

2.I had dinner with a wonderful new butch friend of mine, who blows my mind, and I hope will talk to me more about class, gender, race, and activism. I have so much to learn, and sometimes it is nice to hang out with folks who remind me of that.

3. I just had a conversation with my mother who honestly asked me why food would ever be stressful...STUNNED SILENCE...This from a woman who had her daughters, ages 14, 11, and 8 go around the dinner table and say how many grams of fat they'd had in a day. WTF? She has the most amazing selective memory.

This Post Will Self-Destruct By the End of the Day

2007-03-18T13:44:00.000-04:00

**POOF**

You Know You Make A Lot of Sourdough When...

2007-03-17T12:32:00.000-04:00

You are amazed by how quickly your yeasted whole wheat bread rises and fills the bowl and pushes the towel up and you barely catch it and punch it down before it makes a big mess in your clean clean kitchen.

I have been very productive this morning - scrubbed floor, swept whole apartment, reorganized pantry - mainly because I've been procrastinating going through my writing and pulling things to read to some queer youth I'm hanging out with tonight. I'm very excited, but choosing pieces to read is always a little harrowing. Hopefully the deep slush piles and ice puddles won't deter the plan.

Notes on Being Christian: Part I

2007-03-16T18:46:00.000-04:00

So, I've been thinking lately about whether or not I'm Christian. And if I were to identify as Christian, how that would change how I am in the world. There are very few people in this world with whom I can have this conversation - hence the loveliness of the blogosphere.
This is a Part I post, because if I were to try to write a post that distilled everything I had to say on the topic, it would never get written and would fail to say the most important thing, which is that whenever I have thought about religion over my life I have felt both profoundly lost and profoundly lost in the Mystery of the divine. Also, I can't seem to string more than two paragraphs together here these days. So bear with me as I puzzle this out, if you have thoughts, please share them, and there will be a series of such ramblings.

Jesus Christ:
I realized at Christmas (a holiday which I adore, and which is deeply spiritual for me) that there should be a church where instead of having Christ as Lord, you have Christ as Metaphor, that would be about right. Jesus was amazing, and I believe in him as a pioneer and teacher in the realms of social justice that matter to me deeply (see Jackson Browne or the Chieftains' song Rebel Jesus, also Martin Sexton Hallelujah). In this way Jesus and his teachings are an example, but there are certainly others. I don't believe the Jesus is the son of God, at least no more than the rest of us, and that is one of the major stumbling blocks (ha! somewhere in the Deep South someone is talking about Christianity and a very different kind of stumbling block) to me being Christian. Maybe being Christian is about having one really wonderful example against which to hold your actions accountable.

I helped a woman find her train today. She was very confused and maybe drug addicted or learning disabled or both, and when I walked by she was trying to explain her situation to a law enforcement officer who wasn't getting it. On many levels. So I offered to show her where the inbound trains were, and she was incredibly grateful. But sometimes, folks aren't grateful, sometimes they spit in your face and have good reasons for doing that, and you have to fall back on the idea that you were doing your best to do something "good", and maybe it would be easier to do that if your fallback was that you were trying to do something "Christian" and have both a community and a text that validated your work.

The problem is privileging Christ over Buddha over Muhammed over Zeus* over Krishna, etc. That is the part that I can't quite get behind. So metaphor and example, here I come.

Alright. It's a night of fermentation - feeding sourdough, drinking beer, baking challah. More later.

*Not generally known for his social justice values.

Gender Trouble: An Open Letter

2007-03-10T22:52:00.000-05:00

Dear Transguys:
I have a deal for you - let's trade! I'll give you some facial/body hair and you can give me some rack flesh*? I see it as a win-win.
Oh? That's not how it works? My mistake. I guess I'll just work on being a better feminist. Sorry to trouble you,
Love,
LaFemme

*I don't know how I feel about the term "rack flesh" but didn't want to offend the recipients of the letter with a girlier term. Now I just need to think of a supremely girly name for my mustache... yeah, nothing's springing to my mind, either.

Int'l Women's Day-Three Emotions on Being a Woman in Public Spaces

2007-03-08T22:53:00.000-05:00

hate.
He is barking as I walk toward him. A man a few years older than me walking with his two young kids, and before him running for the train is a woman. She is running for the train like anyone would run for the train, the slide and shuffle of an adult dressed for work along the public tiles in the tunnels of downtown HarborCity. My body shakes before I speak, and he just stares at me, blank, and my body keeps shaking. The next morning, I am rushing down the stairs, we are like electrons in a wire, moving along, jostling. He is walking up the stairs and collides with a woman in front of me, as he slides his way along the railing toward me he says, "Fat fucking cunt". I look him in the eye and ask him loudly what he just said, he brushes past me, knocking my elbow.

love.
He is asleep. His finger between the pages of a book that has closed. There are fine wrinkles behind his eyes and the eyes move quickly behind thin eyelids, dreaming. He opens the door for me and takes me to lunch, it is a the shelter where he eats everyday and he signs me in as his guest, his knuckles are gnarled and his whole hand shakes as he lifts food to his mouth. He is telling me a story about how his old lady left him for Jesus, and how can an honest guy compete with that? It is raining and cold, I'm crossing the quad in not enough clothing, my shirt getting wet, he sees me and crosses grass to reach me and hands me his umbrella, walking away before I can argue, his shirt tented over the broad span of his shoulder blades. I keep the umbrella in my room for a whole day before taking it back to him, looking at the sleek dark folds of kindness.

fear.
I am coming out of the train and feel his body against me. I had paused, turned, and he, his dark gravely voice in my ear and his hands on my shoulders turned me around. I fill with panic, the moment is short, his deep voice only says "sorry" and his hands release my shoulders just as quickly. He didn't even spill my coffee that cools too quickly in the frigid winter air. Running, in the morning in the dark around the pond, I notice the signs that say that there have been coyote sightings and to call animal control if you see one. I don't, but rounding the corner where there are no lights, I see his form moving, walking slowly, hips low, legs swinging, a huge dark jacket, and a hood pulled low over his face. I square my shoulders and run a little faster, pulling knees higher, stretching legs longer, muscles pulling on bones to reach a few more inches. I reach my hand into the pocket of my windbreaker and lace my keys between my fingers. I know how to throw a punch, and the keys would dig sharp into his cheek and the soft tissue of an eye. This is how I would collect DNA evidence. He ambles past me, and I feel foolish.

Beg, Borrow, and Steal to Go See This If You are in NYC

2007-03-05T18:07:00.000-05:00

Home: Queer Soup will present a one night performance of "Home". "Home" delves into a family whose faith is rocked with the death-bed revelation that the minister’s grandfather was born biologically female. A talk back is scheduled to follow with the cast and members of Queer Soup. Presented in collaboration with the Center Voices and the Gender Identity Project.

When: Friday, March 9th at 8 PM

Where: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011 (Click here for their link for the event!)

Cost/Tix: $10

For more information: queersoup.net

Reservation line: 212-620-7310

Also: A little birdie told me that they are touring it to educational institutions, group homes for queer youth, and communities of faith in the New England area. Are you affiliated with one of these things? Talk to them about coming to do a show. I make no promises, but they might say yes, and they would be happy to hear from y'all.

Do Something Anti-Racist Today

2007-03-05T08:19:00.000-05:00

Reading this could be a good start.
Kisses,
C.

Trivia

2007-03-01T20:18:00.000-05:00

Blame a catholic fellow of my acquaintance whose identity I am protecting.

Create your own Friend Test here

Space - I've Finally Made Some for Myself

2007-02-17T19:24:00.000-05:00

So, I'm sick. Fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, whiney disposition - these are my symptoms. My roomies are going out dancing tonight and I'm home, perhaps to write, maybe do some calculus (did I mention that I'm putting myself through this again?), I will undoubtedly drink tea, and maybe even draw myself a hot bath.

I had big plans for this weekend. First I was supposed to go to California, and then the tickets were too expensive, then I was supposed to be spending the weekend at IdyllicAncestralHome with my family, but I decided that that would be stressful. Then Roomie and I were going to go for to the cottage on the coast, but I decided that I needed this weekend to be actually in my life in Boston. This was a really good decision, even before I kissed a genderqueer with a dodgy immune system last weekend. (Or maybe, in all fairness, it is my immune system that is the dodgy one.)

In any case, I'm home for the weekend. This does mean that I have gotten around to a few things that I've been meaning to do for months. The most notable of which is that I have cleaned my desk. Really, deep down, cleaned it. Critically reimagined its organizing structures and cleaned the damn thing. I am not posting a before picture because the dust and clutter alone would send some of my readers into anaphylactic shock, since some of my readers keep an usual number of swiffers in their lives. I don't know what has been holding me back from this, options include:

At some point I often become an ineffective human being because the blues pull me down too far.
I don't think I deserve the things I could make for myself.
Because of A or B or both I don't prioritize properly and make the time -- see above discussion on where I'm spending this weekend.

I've been realizing lately that I hold myself back from a lot of things that I really want. There is a fine line between holding myself accountable for these things and beating myself up further, which would be counterproductive and lead to situation 2. In any case, the after picture is below. It looks a little odd because there is no computer there, but I'm using the fancy laptop to take the picture. Just to the left of the picture is the one window into my quirky garret bedroom, for context. I have posts brewing in my head about being a girl, and a nostalgic. But I'm hoping that I will be more willing to sit at my desk in the coming weeks, since I hope to preserve some portion of this open space.

ELACTown; Chipotles; Pear Tart;Etc

2007-02-04T17:16:00.000-05:00

This post is going to be slightly scattered and I apologize. I spent the weekend in ELACTown, spending time with two of the three people mentioned in this old post. Both of their houses have been such refuges to me, and it was really wonderful to re-enter those spaces as a friend role. Roomie T. and I made HAM dinner (more on this later) and it was very yummy, but she was so grateful it kind of blew my mind. She has been incredibly busy, and can't remember the last time someone made her a meal. I really love feeding people when they are hungry, and the food sustains more than their bodies.

I also had a chance to spend a bit of time with the chaplain at the school, a wonderful man who helped me begin to re-encounter G-d when I was an undergrad. I saw him do some of his work yesterday, skipping a memorial service to find someone shelter, and it was deeply good to know that that work was being done, and watch him do it. He is phenomenal and I think I can credit him with teaching me what it means to truly be Christian. (More musings at some point on whether or not I am Christian.)

We made a pear tart yesterday that was very simple, with a pie like crust in a tart pan and then thinly sliced pears that we soaked in Riesling, ginger, and brown sugar for about an hour before putting it in the pan and baking for about 45 minutes. It was served with small dollops of ginger ice cream. I think we pretty much achieved dessert perfection, a simple clean not-too-sweet-or-heavy unusual flavor, delicious flaky pastry crust. It was amazing, and the genius-note was definitely the Riesling. If you have half a cup in your fridge, this is how you should use it. If you don't have a half cup (and alchohol is a wise choice in your life) you should go buy a bottle so that you *can* have a half cup of it in your fridge. While there, buy some pears.

Now I am back in this life in Harbor City. I am in the process of making food for the week, which means using the ingredient pictured above liberally. I am trying out this radical idea where I exercise *and* eat three meals a day. We'll see, but the chipotles in adobo certainly won't hurt, especially since I also have sweet potatoes and brown rice boiling, and I do love me a good burrito. Seriously, if you like chipotle and haven't experimented with this ingredient, but it when you buy the pears and wine. Other than that, I need to clean my desk and do some work. Buh. But doing work right now will mean that I get to go runs three mornings a week, and maybe balance is somewhere around the corner. Maybe.

New List

2007-01-30T22:24:00.000-05:00

1. I've been a little distracted lately. By distracted I mean that I have been involved in some serious soul-shaking explorations. I feel a bit like a tree in November with my leaves scattered about me, but trees that time of year look taller than sometimes, and have the patience to make it through until spring.
2. The preceding metaphor depends a bit on the idea that winter actually happens. Catastrophic global climate change may mess with our entire fabric of images and metaphors -- wordsmiths, beware!
3. I came out to someone at work today. Suffice it to say that the conversation started with Mary Cheney and ended up with me describing the words "queer" and "genderqueer" to a Catholic woman in her seventies, who is a staunch Democrat and had a crush on JFK back in the day.
4. She declared that she never would have guessed I was queer because I was so "attractive and well-dressed". From this we learn that queer people are ugly, I've known that all along.
5. The five hour A&E Pride and Prejudice is the perfect stress relief tool. I think it is better for me since I'm horribly attracted to both of the main characters. How I long to make Miss Eliza Bennet blush, and I think I should like to make Mr. Darcy smile, or sweep me off my feet, or some such nonsense. Also, there are the clothes, and the landscape, and the language, and, oh, right, the sexual tension.

Dreaming

2007-01-27T13:13:00.000-05:00

I've been having vivid potent dreams this week. I think because of the amount of caffeine, the small amounts of sleep and the general level of dreaming that I've been doing in my life. Period. I was asked this week if I would prefer to have small dreams... I think it is just very hard for me to give up the idea of having attainable goals.

I've been dreaming all morning, and people didn't used to dream this way, with google as a main tool for image finding, and spreadsheets to help us budget out dreams. It's a funny way to spend the day.
___
P.S.
It really bothers me that Blogger can't fix its grammer such that there can be "1 comment" on a post instead of "1 comments".

I should have known earlier... about everything

2007-01-23T22:49:00.000-05:00

Let the record show that the first story I ever wrote that was longer than 3 pages was a story about a gender-bending Robin Hood who seduced and married the princess so that they could institute better income redistribution policies...

Really, why did it take me so long to figure myself out? I was pretty blatantly me at the age of 12.

Just sayin'.

(Correction: It was a five-act play - intro, rising action, climax, denoument, conclusion- we read a lot of Shakespeare in seventh grade)

2007-01-21T17:18:00.000-05:00

This is me, except that it is all metaphorical, because I'm afraid of heights.
I'm taking a big, and I think good, risk right now, and I move each moment from falling to flying and back again. I am sorry to be cryptic, but it's hard to explain the jump while your falling.

And one final thought:
"I'm a good jumper, he said. But I'm not so good at landing. Maybe you should stay closer to the ground then, I said, and he said, No. The ground was the whole problem in the first place."
-Brian Andreas

A More Serious Attempt

2007-01-18T22:43:00.000-05:00

Corinne is a queer. She lives in HarborCity, but misses mountains in both Americas. Not fitting easily into any box, she creates space by playing with words, lipstick, census data, and bread recipes. She hopes that someday the words will be read by generations, the lipstick will flirt, the census data will liberate, and the bread will sustain.

In Which Corinne Deals with Angst by Writing Silly Bios

2007-01-17T22:27:00.000-05:00

Corinne is a dreadfully self-indulgent feminine thing who spends too much time reading books with pretentious titles or trying to write them with extremely limited success. She has never been published. She can flip her hair flirtatiously now that it is shorter and she is willing to talk to almost anyone about almost anything.

Corinne is a writer and research assistant living in HarborCity. She is not currently saving the world, but bakes a damn good loaf of bread and thinks this should count for something. She loves words and has a dictionary within arms reach at the dinner table. She fucks someone who is ambiguously gendered and occasionally writes about it, and you all occasionally listen.

Corinne lives in HarborCity and when she grows up she would like to make books, policy, and babies. Until then, she would like to play more often with words, lipstick, high heels, and economic data. she has never shaved her legs or been to California. She would like to go to California someday.

Corinne flirts dangerously with the faggots of her acquaintance and can't actually handle the real attentions of people who are actually interested in her. She writes bios like they might be personal ads. She has nothing to say about her writing. She wishes that someone else would do this for her. Her mother has offered to write one in the style of Marquez and this scares her particularly.

Corinne writes things that are sad or sappy or r-rated and require disclaimers, she rates the success of her writing by how many of these categories can be applied to each piece. she falls in love too easily and lives with two good friends on the third floor of a dilapidated house in HarborCity.

Gender Identity?

2007-01-16T22:33:00.001-05:00

Oh?
I never knew, thank you so much, darling intahnet for revealing my true self.
Love,
C.

You Date Like a Man

According to studies on dating, you date like a man.

You date casually and frequently, getting serious with select people over time.

Physical attraction and chemistry is very important to you.

And if there's nothing more than a physical connection, that's okay with you (at least for a while).

You are definitely looking for love, but you are in no rush to find it.

You figure love will eventually come your way, and you're not going to live like a monk while you're waiting!

Do You Date Like a Man or a Woman?

My Father's Most Enviable Skill

2007-01-14T17:11:00.000-05:00

I'm in IdyllicNewEnglandState celebrating Christmas with my father, divorce is a funny thing, it will change your ideas about what is important about holidays (hint: dates matter not at all). It's lovely and vaguely stressful. My family is a blessing I can never quantify. They love me more than anyone, and know me as well as they can. But increasing it is a blessing I find I would rather endure with TP by my side, gently guiding me through it's labyrinths.

My father's skill is buying people books. Knowing that he cannot possibly read all the good books in the world before his death, he takes incredible care selecting books for others. He chooses not only based on his own (impeccable) tastes, but also on the reviews and lists he comes upon. (This is man who will read a book, and then read several books in its bibliography.) This in and of itself is not uncommon. What is amazing is opening a package from I can tell by shape and weight is a pages filled with words I know that one or both of the following thoughts will emerge as I peel back the colorful paper he chooses with equal care:
-I've never heard of this!
-I've been wanting this read this for some time!
After Christmas we all, him included, settle into makeshift beds, or the large armchairs and finger our new treasures often succumbing to food coma before really being able to enjoy them, but knowing that they will be there for us when we emerge from our slumber days or months later, finding them tucked among other books that seem unfit in some key way. Occasionally he has to be buy a present for someone he doesn't know well and he as to fall back on his standards --The Good Soldier, Underworld, The Milagro Beanfield War . They are partially standards to be relied on, and standards with which to test new people in his life. TP received a copy of the Good Soldier as a Christmas gift, and I felt like ze had truly arrived.

Books I received this morning, have started, and can't wait to continue:
A New Way to Cook: She uses ingredients inventively and is much more interested in teaching you how to take what is in your pantry and make something amazing without "following a recipe". Not a new way to cook, for me, but that little push of inspiration is always nice. Also, well written copy with lovely pictures, not a bad thing.

How to Read Like a Writer: The first three chapters (which I read this afternoon) are titled "Close Reading", "Words", and "Sentences". I love it. She makes me want to read everything with a moleskine at my right hand and in cool silent room without distraction. Unfortunately, in the back of the book she has a list of "Book to be Read Immediately" which may consume me for many months.

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor: So perfect for me it boggles the mind. I love it. I read the first chapter of this too. Everyone else napped and I read, and had a cup of coffee. This seems be a pattern.

Queer OpenMic, Redux

2007-01-11T22:55:00.000-05:00

QOM was amazing tonight, it was the 7th year anniversary and so there were many people who came back, the whole night was like a train on a track gathering speed with each word like another piston thrusting perfectly, and the feature was amazing and I bought hir book.

Speaking of features, to be clear, I'm featuring on Thursday, April 12th. I'm considering giving further details here, but it would mean outing myself and I have mixed feelings.

As to the bio, I haven't started it, it still terrifies me. Jack, you were helpful, but now I have a set of goals and goals mean only one thing... impending doom and failure ;). Further, one of the main barriers to me being a writer, at all, like typing this right now, is thinking that I am being dreadfully self-indulgent and maybe a little catty. Both traits I abhor in myself (and others, but mainly, myself). Write a bio, believing that you have a bio to write is self-indulgence defined.

As to what I'll read -- also complicated. My mother is thinking about attending. I will need to inform her that I identify as femme, am a flirt, and talk about sex, a lot. Other people who have never seen me in this community may also be there. It should be interesting.

What it Means to be a Lesbian... Sort of

2007-01-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

True (googlechat) conversation between TP and myself: TP: I'm wearing my boots.
me: You own boots?
TP: Doc Martens. me: Oh. Mmm.
TP: I've still got lesbian feet, baby.

Foodie Meme

2007-01-08T18:39:00.000-05:00

(Thanks to GreyMatters for allowing me self-identify, do yourselves the same favor).

What cooking shows do you watch?
Sister, MD and I have been watching Top Chef. It is one of the only cooking shows that doesn't mildly annoy or bore me.

Your top three favorite cookbooks are:
The Joy. Moosewood Cooks for a Crowd. Essentials of Classical Italian (Marcella Hazan).

Your must-have kitchen accessory is:
Silicone spatula, cast-iron skillet/frying pan (the one with sides).

What is your go-to ingredient?
Olive oil, garlic, cumin, red wine. Fresh produce.

How many courses should a meal have?
Um. However many it needs to use up the yummy things in your fridge?

What’s your favorite course?
I've always been really intrigued by cheese courses, I also love salads. Dessert is yummy. But really, most of the meals I cook don't have courses, they are just a bunch of food on a table that people enjoy, with dessert at the end.

What nationality of food do you like the best?
For real? You want me to choose? Italian, South American, TexMex. Spicy things, things that make *amazing leftovers*.

What’s your favorite meal of the day to prepare?
Breakfast, dinner. I also *love* baking bread and cakes, and whichever meal you want soup to be a part of.

Where do you find inspiration when creating a new dish?
Whatever is in the pantry.

What is your favorite comfort food?
"I sold my soul for fresh-baked bread."

Do you ever eat fast food? If so, what?
Does TacoCabana count?

What restaurant do you want to eat at that you haven’t yet?
So many, anything that costs more money than I've spent on a meal for a while, and some specific names that will out where Harbor City is.

What’s your favorite dessert?
The wedding cake my mother makes. Baked custard.

Are there wines or liquors that you cook with?
Usually just red wine... but I would like to expand my reportoire. Suggestions?

How much time do you spend cooking a meal just for yourself?
Usually around 15 minutes, sometimes up to three hours.

What scent in the kitchen do you love?
Fresh baked bread.

What ingredient(s) do you avoid/dislike?
Bacon. Highly process salad dressings.

What’s your secret splurge at the grocery store?
High quality chocolate. Organic, good-cuts of meat.

What’s your favorite midnight snack?
Blue corn tortilla chips, cheddar cheese, salsa.

Oh, and please deal with the Mission mentioned below, pay no attention to the ways in which Jack's comments make it impossible.

Your Mission

2006-12-30T11:25:00.000-05:00

Hello.
I am sitting in my favorite coffeeshop in LiberalCity, RedState. TP is reading "Genderqueer" sitting next to me, and reading me tidbits occasionally, and I also have a HUGE cafe au lait next to me. This femme hasn't been happier for some time.

If you haven't been following the anti-transwoman stuff happening *all over the place* (but start with brownfemipower). Check it out. Bonus points to reading Winter's post, which deserves a hearty AMEN at the end of it. On Tuesday, there is a discussion on TransFeminism at the local feminist center for thought, and this has all given me plenty to think (and vent) about.

In April I am going to be the "feature" at the QueerOpenMic. This is really exciting, and a little bit terrifying. First I have to have enough stuff to read to fill 15 minutes. Really this won't be that hard, I have pages and pages of things. Honestly, I haven't even really processed what featuring will feel like. But before I even get around to writing more things or editing things I've written I'm faced with THE HARDEST WRITING ASSIGNMENT EVER. So I'm passing the buck.

Here is your mission:
Write my bio. Post it to the comments or email it to me: corinneblogger at gmail dot com

I hate writing this kind of thing, and I know that everyone hates writing this kind of thing. Generally though I wouldn't mind writing other people's bios. So write mine. My mother thinks it should be written with some magical realism. Since few of you actually know me. I'm very curious to see what you come up with.

Greetings from the Outpost

2006-12-23T16:10:00.000-05:00

Hello All,

I'm holed up in IdyllicAncestralHome, with my extended family. Today is our "Christmas Eve" because Sister, MD has to work in the hospital on Monday, and Sister Esq. and her partner are leaving to celebrate with her partner's family. Our time together is a little shorter this year as a result, but we are making up for it by making those traditional Christmas cocktails.... Ginger Margaritas and Dark n' Stormies.

Later we will read children's books and go to bed and try hard to fall asleep so that Santa can come. In truth, after the food and booze, we may have no trouble at all falling asleep, and I'm so full of anxiety about the quality and quantity of the presents I'm giving that part of me just wants the whole thing to be over.

I love my family and Christmas, but it does seem like every year it gets just a little bit more stressful. As we all grow up and pull away in our own ways it gets harder to pull it all back together without tension over the holidays. I think that by the time Wednesday rolls around I will be more than happy to leave on a jetplane for the RedState and a much anticipated visit with TP.

Things I will blog about before vacation is over:
1. Exciting QueerOpenMic news.
2. The potential of outing my true identity here
3. Work, maybe.
4. Most likely some more holiday angst.
5. The hardest writing assignment ever... that y'all are going to do for me.

Also, I owe some of you personal emails that I *swear* will be forthcoming. Until then, I hope that each of you are doing whatever makes you happy this weekend. But, really, I hope that you are doing that everyday.

I'm being called into cocktail hour. Wish me luck.

Oh, also. I will be attending at least one Catholic mass between now and Wednesday, and maybe connecting with an old friend from high school.

Queer OpenMic Night Priorities

2006-12-14T18:09:00.000-05:00

I've chosen my outfit, put on my makeup, poured myself a drink, and now I'm sitting down to edit the piece I'm reading...

Yes, I have my priorities in the right place.

Butch/Femme -- Continuing Thoughts

2006-12-10T01:16:00.000-05:00

A bit I read at QueerOpenMic last month:

You leave shit here all the time, and I never know what is important to you, or what to throw away. I know that you want me to keep your zippo lighter, you don't smoke, but you like the feel of it in your hands, you like the weight in your pocket. Sometimes when you are drunk you smoke, but more because you like to wave a cigarette around as you talk, loose-jointed in your tipsiness and talking a bluestreak of queer theory and flirtation that has had me hooked for two years, solid. What you want is a cigarette holder. The kind used by femmes and faggots in the 30s to make your cigarette longer, your gestures wider, and everything more elegant. I want to find one for you and give it to you with a pack of candy cigarettes, since you berate me for my one cigarette a month habit I feel like yours should be made out of sugar - to cut down on hypocrisy in the world. I know that it would be ok with you if I threw away the gum wrappers and the gum that you leave on the shelf I clear for you in the closet, but I can't bring myself to do it, quite. I do, but first I bunch them in my fingers and think about how they smell like kissing you, especially since they have sat there on the shelf that will always smell like you because of the cologne you spilled there.

You keep the subway tokens in your wallet; I found one when I was down there and almost wanted to tell you to get rid of it since by the time you live here they might be totally useless, and I'm not sure when you'll make it up to HarborCity again. But I know how you like things that are small cool and hard, like your lucky bullet, how you hold them in your slender fingers. Your hands always reminds me of a bird, fast and fluttering, they are awkward as hands, not terrestrial in that way, graceful when given flight in conversation or fucking. and maybe you are like a crow hording shiny things in some nest. But then what am I? a shiny thing? No, I'm matte, on special days maybe eggshell or semi-gloss, but I can wear the clothes you leave behind. the men's jeans and button downs. they fit me better, my shoulders are still a little broader than yours so the seam sits just outside that point of bone. this is when you call me your butch. You are masculine and I am butch, it works, even when I'm femme. I am your butch when my fingers are inside; and I am your femme when my mouth is on your clit. And sometimes I do them both at the same time. I am your femme in public, even when I am being your butch, because they see my long hair and hear the cracking in your voice and think they know something about our lives, and they do. I am your femme when your fist is inside me, when your mouth is on me, when you make me coffee in the morning, and when you call me "baby". I am your butch when I have the answer for your questions. I am your femme when I straighten your tie and adjust my bra. I am your femme when I take care of you when you are sick. I am your butch, holding you as you cry. I am your butch when you say that the curtains have fallen down and you don't know what to do, and I look at them and ask for pliers and a screwdriver and for you not to hover so close when I'm balancing one foot on the chair and one foot on the windowsill. Afterwards you ask me how I knew how to pull the right tools from the box. But there is no theory to explain this skill and you kiss me and call me handy, and pull at the belt that I'm wearing, my belt on your jeans. Then we go and buy you eyeliner and I buy a bright red lipstick. My lips are red and liquid smooth, I smile at you, your eyes are smudgy and dark, but smile back. When you smile at me I am your femme, your butch. Your smile, more than anything else, unzips me from these words and either way I'm blushing. Either way when I look back at you there is no theory for this.

Also: I went out tonight; I wore tight jeans, cowboy boots, and the red lipstick, as I was heading home a new friend of mine, a man, offered to walk me home. I felt guilty, but safer saying yes, and the company was pleasant. Safer because he is bigger than me and passes pretty well and the walk is a little long for late at night. Guilty because there was part of me that felt like I should assert that I *would* be fine walking home alone. This is what I usually do, to show my independence, etc. But what is the point of asserting that to a man who grew up as a girl afraid to walk herself home?

Really? Are You Sure?

2006-12-08T22:33:00.001-05:00

Hibernation Mode

2006-12-07T22:06:00.000-05:00

Thank you, all, for your comments on the Self-Titled Album.

So, it's getting chilly here in HarborCity and so Sister, MD and I were in hibernation mode today:
-beef stew
-red wine
-ice cream
-television
Yes, I know that the ice cream makes no sense. But it was organic and only cost $1.29 at WholeFoods... do reasonable people say no to that kind of thing?

It was a wonderful and yummy thing. I love having my sister in this city, our conversations are not always easy, and sometimes, like tonight, we barely talked at all, but it is a joy to curl on a couch with someone you know that well, and drink wine and laugh about pop culture and share a common-ness that is *so* hard to find in other places and people.

Midnight Bridges (The Self-Titled Album)

2006-12-05T19:33:00.000-05:00

I have never tried to articulate what a midnight bridge is, except once, the day I started this blog, in a poem to TP. I'll give you the first three lines, the next 11 (yes, I write strange sonnets) belong to TP.

"there are midnight bridges i want to build
with you, working in hard rain toward morning,
waking from nightmares for fresh cut flowers"

What is a MidnightBridge? It is the kind of connection made in the middle of the night, the kind of work that takes all night, the connection that people haven't thought about before. The combination that makes people reconsider their assumptions. It the work that we need to do personally to be who we need to be professionally, publicly, personally. It is, and has become, everything that this blog has been for me in the last nine (!) months.

And I have no idea what it, or this, will become. It would be incredibly pretentious and true to say that someday I want to reveal my real name and promote a newly minted novel from this page. It would be a little sad and true that I expect this page to dwindle as I devote myself more to both work and writing, and try to reconfigure my head so that writing can be considered both work and leisure. It is also true that this space has given me new ways to think about myself. Has made those combinations that have made me reconsider my assumptions, and that has to be a good thing, right?

Options I see before me:
A: Navel-gaze when tired and tipsy to the amusement of others
B: Write dense theory posts.
C: Try to talk about economics in ways that at least inspires me.
D: Share more workshop/journal/open mic writing-stuff.
E: Blend above with panache

Thoughts? Votes?

So what proclamation do I have tonight? What prediction for my future? What exhortation to my (~3) readers?

Go build yourselves a midnight bridge tonight. Let me know if it's a good route to somewhere awesome.

Grief, Souls, Questions

2006-11-28T07:04:00.000-05:00

When do children become beings which we can mourn?
Why am I so sure that yesterday's lost one has a soul?
What is a soul and how do we get one again?
How does all of this match up with my politics?
What would it mean to be a person of faith? Am I capable of that series of acts?

I'm grateful to the world this morning, for my friend B. , who lets these questions be unanswered in my heart, while feeding me chocolate and manzanilla te and rubbing my feet. I hope she will do that kind of thing for always, even when she is my minister.

Crazy Week Wrap-Up

2006-11-21T19:27:00.000-05:00

TP is flying into town tonight... I'm bursting at the seams with excitement, nearly waltzed out of the office tonight, and am now hunkered down with a "Jumping Cow Amber Ale", a pile of dirty laundry, and pop music. Tomorrow we are driving to my father's house in NewEnglandState, and spending a few days with him before heading to my mother's. Hopefully at my father's the sleeping spaces will be first come first serve because then TP and I will get the one with, you know, the *door that closes*. I might be making some coffee soon to be able to stay up.
GM, this will be of particular interest. Last Saturday my housemates and I hosted 20 people for a Thanksgiving feast. It was *amazing*. I really don't think that any one event that I've hosted has ever made me this happy. It was a fun blend of people, who didn't know each other beforehand. The food was also amazing. Cornbread hazelnut stuffing, and the pumpkin chiffon pie were my personal highlights, though the turkey was also amazing.
Check out this Apple ad, click on the Better Results TV ad. As we all know, usually I love Apple, and I admit that I find their computers sexy. But this is a little bit too much like "First we will objectify the woman, then we will objectify the fake woman who is a work in progress, and of whom its creator is ashamed." Am I crazy that this is a little screwy?

Things to Know about My Life:

2006-11-15T23:46:00.000-05:00

1.I left my computer charger in ELACTown last weekend, my amazing friend is mailing it to me, but for now, I'm living off of carefully rationed battery life. Go MacBook battery, go!

2. I'm writing a story about a coroner in a city that is experiencing a spell of (as yet) unexplained violence. What does this mean in the life of Corinne? I've running a google image search on the word "atrocities" and downloading JPGs for ideas. I've also created a powerpoint slideshow out of them so that I can watch them at my leisure. Is this is a sign of any diagnosable disorder than anyone is aware of? Nevermind, don't answer that.

3. 7 word music review: "Hello Love" - The Be Good Tanyas = **fantastic**

Dear Co-Worker,

2006-11-08T22:52:00.000-05:00

It is not that I want to fuck you. It is that when I see you walking down the hall in your janitor's outfit, talking hard with the boys in Spanish, I want to strip you down to your bra and boxers, run my hands through your hair, tilt your head, draw a fine line across the back of your neck, and give you a haircut. You are almost butch, almost sexy, but your hair touches your ears, and spikes in unexpected lengths from the top of your head, and I could fix that. Give me a Sunday night in summer on a backporch, I'll wear a short skirt and brandish a beer, scissors and clippers. I will keep everything symmetrical as I dance around the chair I have sat you in, asking you to hold still while I straddle you to get to the awkward spots. I will not give you a mirror until the end. Just let me strip you down, give me access to the soft curve of your cranium, to the space between ear and hairline, to your girlish neck and I will make other girls' head turn in your direction. Guaranteed.
Love,
A Fascist Femme

Election Version 1.0

2006-11-07T21:55:00.000-05:00

F*ck you Rick Santorum. Watching CNN, there is a BlogParty -- teehee. I can't imagine sitting in a room full of bloggers, while blogging.
Official languages suck. Boo Arizona. Go Bernie! All eyes on VA.

Holy Sh*tMonster

2006-11-03T17:15:00.000-05:00

Blogging from my new bloggerwidget. This is hotness, as defined by MacBook and Google. I'm such a tech slut.

Blogging at Dinner: An Economics of Race/Culture Post

2006-11-01T17:13:00.001-05:00

So, I'm sitting in my favorite burrito place gnoshing on my chicken burrito with mango and hot sauce and sipping on a nutella smoothie, and thinking about my hot brainstorm yesterday. I mean, really people, does it get much better? No.

So, I'm actually going to blog about my work. Radical, I know.
Hmm. How to write about this without writing about it. So, several of the projects that I'm dealing with right now are about race. Actually, they all are. But, that aside, they talk about how people of different races react differently under different situations, and they all talk about it as though the effect were cultural (people with bad eyesight place a high cultural value on carrots) or an in group effect (so, for example, people who have bad eyesight will give more carrots away to people, not because they themselves have ever needed a carrot, but because they can imagine themselves or people like them needing a carrot (thanks, Weezy). But none of them talk about the contexts or different social experiences that different groups have. Maybe Blacks react differently not because they *are* different, but because of, you know, that whole set of experiences with racism in white America that they and their ancestors have had to deal with -- something that's hard to quantify.

The trick: Find two groups of people are the same now, but for one group their ancestors were white when the immigrated to the US and for the other group they were not white. Like cohorts of whiteness. Then you could show that they react differently based on the different "minority experiences" they had instead of some other dimension. Think about the history of immigration and whiteness.

That was my hot brainstorm yesterday.

Writing the Impossible: Three Letters

2006-10-29T21:59:00.000-05:00

So, in the last few days I've had to write three fairly impossible letters (two down, one to go).

1. CreativeWritingMentor from HighSchool, who is also a dear friend, the next door neighbor to my mother's house and the woman whose wedding I trespassed to get to in time is just entering second trimester of a difficult pregnancy (and her first): difficult decisions have had to be made, she is physically and emotionally totally exhausted, and the end isn't really anywhere in sight, the likelihood that she will lose the whole pregnancy is still fairly high. I love this woman and she has shown unfailing support for me in all of my endeavors: personal, political, intellectual, and creative. I wish that I had the write words to lift her up and support her from hundreds of miles away, but I'm at a loss. She is also a fairly private person and that makes things trickier especially because I got this update through my mother, who bless her heart, is a pregnancy gossip. On the other hand, I can't NOT write a note.

2. WomenStudiesMentor and mother of children who I babysat and adore was diagnosed with epilepsy this summer and continues to struggle with meds, seizures, and managing life and family with this evolving and changing disorder. I love this woman and she has shown unfailing support for me in all of my endeavors: personal, political, intellectual, and creative. When I go back to ELACtown in a couple of weeks, I'll probably stay with her and her family. It's a funny thing to try to be the friend of a former mentor. I definitely get the vibe that she wants me to be her friend -- but I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants in that friendship more than I do in most. Probably because I hang on to boundaries that aren't there anymore. I just wrote her an email pinning down details of my stay (and checking *one more time* that I'm not imposing).

3. HistoryActivismMentor is applying to a tenure track position at the school where her partner teaches and has asked me to write her a recommendation letter. I love this woman and she has shown unfailing support for me in all of my endeavors: personal, political, intellectual, and creative (are you sensing a theme?). The department that she is applying is has asked me to evaluate her skills as a teacher. HOLY SHIT! I told my sister, who was also HAM's student that I was doing this, she agreed that it was an impossible task and we decided the letter could go something like this:

"When I was a freshman HAM taught me what gender was. Then she taught me what history was. Then she treated me like a fellow scholar. Then she taught me about campus politics, myself, housesitting for her adorable cats, being a bitch to get out of being overcommitted, and gender. I still don't think I'm done thinking about everything that HAM taught me. If you don't give her this position you are damn fools, but I'll be happy because she will still be on the East Coast."

In closing:
GAH. Does anyone know how to write this kind of letter?

A List of Five

2006-10-27T17:46:00.000-04:00

Right now, I'm doing that classic Friday night thing -- drinking beer, watching television, and blogging. Okay, well, at least the beer and television are classic.
I've been writing and thinking a lot about butch/femme. I know that that line alone has made some of your ears perk up. I'll get back to you. Yes, this is in part been prompted by my illusions of grandeur and Maria Angeline's call for submissions. Truth of the matter is that I've been writing more, which is part of why I've been seeming a bit scarce around these parts. But the files are piling up, in my Documents\writing folder and someday the better ones may see the light of day.
I went for a run on Wednesday morning, and I've only weighed myself once this week. Both of these are good things.
I agreed to take on five more hours a week of research time. In some ways it's great. Doing more research, more, always more is the key to the game. It means that some of time that I spend working on PotentialCoAuthorship Project will be paid. I need to broach the "taking work home" subject. Because while I think that I'm happy to take on five more hours a week in front of a computer thinking about economics, I'm not sure that I want to spend more time in front of *that* particular computer. The work I do is pretty portable, and I don't really think that my boss will mind but I'm still nervous about bringing it up. (By the way, it's really funny to refer to a professor as a boss, because he doesn't have any of that boss vibe to him).
My dear, dear friend B. played her guitar and sang songs that she had written and we were all there sitting in a coffeeshop while she *featured* at our local OpenMic and clapped like mad. It was a good night.

Sunday Afternoon Meme; Narratives about Unpleasant/Naked/Trespassing Pasts

2006-10-22T13:02:00.000-04:00

1. Dated outside your race? Yes.
2. Singing in the shower? Almost always.
3. Spit in someone’s drink? No.
4. Played with Barbies? Like once, maybe.
5. Made someone cry? Far too often.
6. Opened your Christmas presents early? Never, some things are sacred.
7. Lied to a friend? Yes, not proud of it.
8. Watched and cried while watching a soap opera? Nooo.
9. Played a computer game for more than 5 hours? Yes. Myst. I was 11.
10. Ran through the sprinklers naked? Yes.
11. Ate food that fell on the floor? Almost daily.
12. Went outside naked? Yes. (Has anyone ever heard of an indoor sprinkler?)
13. Been on stage? Yes.
14. Been on stage naked or close to it? No. My apparent love of nudity has its limits.
15. Been in a parade? No, I don't think I have.
16. Been in a school play? Yes, sadly.
17. Drank beer? Yes, indeedy.
18. Gotten detention? Yes, twice. Once for being loud in study hall, flirting with the girl next to you has its price. And once for attempting to strangle a boy who told that girls couldn't play with boys, he also called me a "blonde bimbo"; I called him a "brunette bastard", chased him down, and tried to strangle him.
19. Been on a cruise? No.
20. Broken into a house? Yes. I forgot the directions to my friend's wedding and so I broke into a house in the middle of nowhere, said hello to the dog, and looked up the phone number for her parent's house and got directions. Got there just in time.
21. Gotten a tattoo? No.
22. Gotten piercings? Ears, and a nose stud.
23. Gotten into a fist fight? Unless you count the wrestling matches with my older sister or the "brunette bastard" incident, no.
24. Gotten into a shouting match? Yes, with my older sister, and AbusiveCollegeGirlfriend. Both periods of my life I want to move beyond.
25. Swallowed sea/pool water? Yes.
26. Spun yourself in circles to get dizzy on purpose? Yes.
27. Laughed so hard it hurt? Yes, including last night.
28. Tripped on your own feet? Sure.
29. Cried yourself to sleep? Yes.
30. Cried in public? Yes.
31. Thrown up in public? No.
32. Lied to your parents? Yes, being in the closet for a while will do that to you.
33. Skipped class? Yes.
34. Cried so hard you threw up? Yes, see shouting matches, crying to sleep, and AbusiveCollege Girlfriend.
35. Had a one night stand? Yes.
36. Left restaurant without paying tab? No.
37. Been fired from a job? No.
38. Wanted to make out with your massage therapist, therapist OR hairdresser? I have an active imagination, so that is a yes.
39. Had a drink "sent" to a stranger at a bar? No, wish I had the balls for that. Or that someone would do that to me someday.
40. Been winked at and loved it? YES.

Evidence of La Femme (Identity)

2006-10-15T21:52:00.000-04:00

So, I bought myself these two colors of lipstick this weekend along with some other markers of femininity that are highlighted later in the post. It was wonderful. I was shopping with TP and hir roommate B. -- so, essentially, for the purposes of makeup consumption -- two gay men. They bought eyeliner, I bought the above shades of red. (Mouths look so weird without faces, btw). Then we went home and played. I don't think I have ever *played* with makeup before in my entire life -- it has always been a tooth and nail struggle to the bitter end with haphazard results. Last night, it was so much FUN. Why don't most women give themselves permission to do that kind of thing?

Also, I got these at a thrift store -- there combined price was $55, but I was freaking out about being a capitalist, so I only bought the cowboy boots, and then after much conversation and
consternation. I went back and got the heels. Two things to know about these pairs of shoes:
1. They are both comfortable. I have big and wide feet, comfortable shoes are basically the holy grail.
2. The heels are a much more amazing deep plum color in person, and yes those heels are HUGE by my standards.

In Defense of Data: Long, Meaty, and Raw

2006-10-14T12:51:00.000-04:00

Background: I have a major in Economics, a research job, and an interest in Sociology, Demography. I spent about twenty hours this week doing data programming. Also, if this were a working paper in my field it would read in big block letters:

PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE: COMMENTS WELCOME.

A while ago EL of My Amusement Park posted about the New York City's board of health allowing transfolk to get new sex-corrected birth certificates, and asked an important question about why we feel to need to ask that question there. I posted a response. And so did Jenn. You can take a look at the whole exchange here. Though I will also quote below.

Jenn wrote:

I know demographics are supposed to be terribly helpful. Like, they're supposed to help the medical establishment deliver better health care... to those tragic white men who can't get their peckers up. I know demographics help the government figure out what "minority" groups really need, so they can withhold it until they get enough vote service. It helps teachers know which kids to attend to and which are destined to fall through the cracks anyway and aren't worth wasting time on. And don't forget how it helps businesses determine that yes, Virginia, only the needs of white male consumers matter.
Without demographics, we'd have to go back to plain old KKK style bigotry. It's so much nicer to be able to couch it all in lots of scientific-sounding numbers (that we've manipulated to support our pre-existing POV).
Bigotry is dead! Long live Bigotry!
What does knowing someone's gender really tell the govt that it needs to know? I can't think of anything except whether the person deserves first-class treatment or second.

And I understand her point. Demographics can be **terribly** helpful. They are a lynchpin in the bio-political power that the modern nation state has had in the last one hundred and fifty years. Now, some theory:

Bio-power is one of the many technologies of power that was elucidated by Michel Foucault. In History of Sexuality, Vol. I. he describes “the emergence in the field of political practices and economic observation, of the problems of birthrate, longevity, public health, housing and migration. Hence there was an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations” (Foucault, 140). It is closely linked to bio-politics, which David Hoy defines as “the strategies that are to be pursued in implementing bio-power”; these two are so linked that at points one of them will be used to signify both (Hoy, 74). This “management of life” permeates into people’s private lives through the techniques of bio-politics that govern people’s sexuality and other aspects of their biological existence (147). Sexuality is more intensely regularized in this framework because it is at “the juncture of the ‘body’ and the ‘population’” which are the main targets of disciplinary and regulatory power respectively (HOS 147). He describes the place of sexuality in a bio-political framework thus, “Through the themes of health, progeny, race, the future of the species, the vitality of the social body, power spoke of sexuality and to sexuality; the latter was not a mark or a symbol it was an object and a target. Moreover, its importance was due less to its rarity or its precariousness than to its insistence, its insidious presence” (147-8).

The fact that bio-politics creates a poor population that is inherently “lazy, indigent, and undeserving” blinds those with who have privilege from interrogating the structures of poverty in their society. As Foucault notes the divisions in society take on a biological rather than political level. This allows those with privilege to be politically complacent and ignorant. They are permitted to think about poverty as the problem of a population rendered as other through appeal to unchangeable characteristics. Because this is the dominant view, mobilization does not occur in resistance to the techniques of bio-power. This complacency breeds more privilege and the perpetuity of those ‘unchangeable’ characteristics. This social blindness and abdication of responsibility is one of the most pernicious effects of the bio-politics that surround welfare policy and poverty in the United States.

And I get all of that, heck I wrote that above "block-quote-bigger-than-something-big-in-your-vicinity". But I also think that data has some advantages that I break into two main sections (for now).

1. The Master's Tools will Never Dismantle the Master's House
And yet, they are what we have. They are like props for some grand improv theater game, and while I think that other tools will be created, imagined and will become powerful, I also am not quite ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I also think that the "Master" probably doesn't exist anymore: what we have is whole cadres of people who are trained to think like him who may or may not agree with him really -- but only know how to talk about things that the way that they were taught. I want to talk to them. A lot of scholarship in Sociology and Feminist Economics is using these tools, and using them to ask the questions in different ways. [examples will be included in full version~]

2. Narrative is Also a Trap: Pixillating the Narrative Trope
The only opposition in the world is not: Data v. Narrative. But let's pretend for a moment that it is:

The discourse of confession and truth-telling has made the creation of a personal, individual narrative an imperative. Often this personal narrative follows a pattern that is edging on trope whether it is a story of birth, death, or coming of age. Because of this patterning, the narrative may not be liberating or reflective of much, as was noted by Eve Sedgewick in The Epistemology of the Closet. In this way the individual, in a true sense, is lost in what the current age rabidly declares is an expression of that very individualism. Part of this mythic belief in the personal narrative is the idea that any method of truth gathering that denies the individual the opportunity to tell their own story is inherently oppressive, veiling, and authoritarian. These methods, typified by data collection, reduce the ‘individual’ to a mere number, masking the nuances of their experiences.

In this scenario the individual was lost to the collective, and individual lives were created and ended on the basis of the desires of a racist state with police powers. This power dynamic can have significant pernicious effects on populations, as evidenced by institutions like public assistance programs and AIDS funding policies in the United States.

Generally the very methods of data collection feed into the power of the state, limiting the ways in which people can identify and describe themselves and their families. I faced this in a very tangible way when I realized that the data set that I was using for my thesis did not allow respondents to label themselves as either more than one race or as Latino/Hispanic (decidedly, and happily, NOT the case with census data). Another example is the way in which sex and gender identification are constantly regulated through data collection that only allows people to identify as “male” or “female”. These racist and hetero-normative assumptions about the ways in which respondents will identify and respond clearly truncate the potential for liberating truth gathering. However there is no requirement that questionnaires be constructed in this manner, they could allow for a much broader range of responses with only minimal inconvenience to the statisticians who analyze the data. While there is major institutional foot-dragging to prevent this from happening, it is possible. Ultimately more accurate and precise measurements are always in the interest of the researcher because it means that they can state with more confidence that their findings actually mean something.

If we return to the problem of the narrative as oppressive because of the way in which it compels subjects to follow a preset trajectory, what are the possibilities associated with looking toward data collection? Data collection has many problems, yet it is very effective at breaking up the stories that people tell about their lives. Instead of asking people if they are healthy, there is a series of questions that ask about specific behaviors that a healthy person can do in a day, such as climbing a flight of stairs, and then codes them along a preset scale. While these scales, particularly of health and fitness, may be very subjective and problematic there is a value to the way in which people’s experiences are pixilated – broken, disintegrated, and potentially distilled. The conscientious researcher could rearrange these pixels, creating them into an aggregate picture that was used not to oppress or regulate, but describe the lives that people are living in ways that they may not be able to articulate. Once these new articulations are provided, the possibilities for uses for the new information abound. This is particularly true where the stories that people tell about themselves serve as barriers to the building of coalitions and communities. If there were data explaining the common problems between various populations with the state policing their family structures it is possible that a coalition would be more forthcoming. Whereas without that data, strong narratives of gender, sexuality, race, and class might prevent those coalitions from being built.

Further, often the narratives are not personal, but rather are cultural. I think probably the best example that I can give of this (without revealing where and for whom I work, and what I'm working on) is the narrative about the middle class. The middle class in America is constantly thriving - everything is constantly getting better. This is the story that is told and that we tell ourselves and often believe. However, in the last few years this has broken down -- crumbled even - why? Data. Data that says that homeownership is a trap that is just as likely to put you in debtor's prison as deliver you to a white picket fence. Data that says that the rich are, in fact, getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and everyone else is just scrapping by. And folks are starting to not believe quite as much anymore Do you need to know people's gender to know that this is happening? No, you don't, but you do need it to talk about the ways that elderly women are more likely to be poor than elderly men because pension benefits screw them over (if you have access to JSTOR or other academic loveliness - do yourself a tiny lil' lit search, if not take my privileged word for it).

Ok. I'm done. I'm sitting in a coffeeshop in LiberalCity, RedState, with TP. And I have some work that I brought "home" with me over the weekend, not to mention a novel to read, and a person to kiss. Congratulations for making it this far.
___________________________________
Dork-out further here:

*Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. Random House, Inc., New York, 1978.
*Foucault, Michel. Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France 1975- 1976.Translated by David Macey. Ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. Picador, New York, 2003.
*Hoy, David. Critical Resistance: From Poststructuralism to Post- Critique. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

~Said version may never be written.

26.6 Miles Later: Another Random Ten List

2006-10-11T23:21:00.000-04:00

I have a big meaty post in the editing stage about how data can fight racism, sexism, classism, etc. I talk about Foucault, and my work and it makes me smile. But it does not cohere, so it is not posted.
Backpacking was fabulous -- the most technically challenging stuff I've ever done, and one 11.8 mile day, so today is the first day that I'm not sore, but good God, was it gorgeous!
Today work was insane, maybe because it started out with me learning about improper integrals (you know the type, who show too much leg as they take the limit to infinity), and then I gave a pint of blood, and then, then, I actually started to deal with two data projects, a finance SNAFU, a new job assignment, and a new data project (with co-authorship potential!). Whew!
I'm performing at the QueerOpenMic tomorrow - an updated version of the piece about landscape/sex/home/transitioning that I posted here about a month ago. Someday, maybe I'll gain legitimacy in that space without being the partner of a transthing, maybe someday I'll stop worrying about my own legitimacy enough to live my life. Maybe, someday, my concerns about legitimacy will focus themselves on something other than what I should wear.
Friday I fly to RedState to visit TP. Just thinking about it makes me feel like I have wings.
Planning trip to ELAC-Town for Veteran's Day weekend, but HistoryMentor has a house guest that weekend so I can't stay with her. She just asked me for a letter of reference ::BLUSH:: and is one of my favorite people in the whole world, and sent me back an email with the houseguest news and the words "are your dates firm?" Well, I thought they were until I got that email.
It's National Coming Out Day. I'm living in a gray space with this at work right now. I know that some people assume that I'm with a man, and I know that some people must see my little sticker saying "Transsexual Women are Our Sisters", and I know that I hate not knowing who knows about my queerness.
I love working my body hard, depending on it to get me through the day -- why wasn't I called to be a construction worker or a farmer instead of a sedentary, data-crunching, academic. I would be just as useful to the world if my brain were hardwired to a keyboard.
I'm totally open to advice on any of the above 8 bits of life drivel.
Did you see the part in #3 about potential co-authorship? OMG.

Songs In My Head

2006-10-05T23:09:00.000-04:00

So, I've been remiss in my blogging efforts the past few days because I've been getting ready for my backpacking trip this weekend. On the other hand -- I'm going to be hiking up there for the next three days, and 25 miles. Ok, except tomorrow because I have to go to work and play with data.

But before I leave, a meme (my first!) from the lovely GreyMatters over at LobalWarming.

Seven songs in my head *right now* (in no particular order):
1. Thea Gilmore, Call Me Your Darling
I love the term of endearment darlin', especially coming from TP, and this song is happy and upbeat and yet yearning at the same time.
2. Indigo Girls, Lay My Head Down
Sometimes I feel this tired, and this in need of someone to hold me tight.
3. Leonard Cohen, Tower of Song
Always a fav.
4. Old Crow Medicine Show, Down Home Girl
"Every time you move like I've got to go to Sunday class ... your perfume is made out of turnip greens, every time I kiss you, girl, it tastes like pork n' beans" It is just so inexplicably sexy.
5. Black Cadillac, Roseanne Cash
I spend too much time thinking about death, this album helps me do it to a tune, with good rhythm.
6. Ordinary Town, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
Thinking about home, where I'm happy and find my peace -- very ordinary.
7. Not Pretty Enough, Kasey Chambers
"Is my heart too broken?" Good question, my lady, good question.

If I were a flirt, I would flirt with Sly, Jack, and Prof. Weezy.

Trig Function

2006-10-03T21:13:00.000-04:00

Trig functions make me want to gouge my eyes out with my mechanical pencil.
In other news: I made yummy cranberry almond chocolate chip granola bars for my backpacking trip this weekend.

Good Morning

2006-09-30T09:07:00.000-04:00

So, below are pictures of the quilt that I am making for Sister, Esq. and her partner. Keep in mind that these pictures were taken with my new computer -- so their quality is a little sub-par. But hey, you try taking a picture of your bed with your laptop.

This morning I got up early and scrubbed the kitchen floor and later on I will make K's birthday cake -- sourcream yellow cake, buttercream frosting, homemade lemon curd and homemade rasberry filling. I don't know why I feel the need to mention that everything will be homemade -- you folks already know this about me.

So, it's me the sunshine, the domestic arts, and the classical music station -- does life get better?

(Also, at some point, someone will need to explain to me why Blogger won't let you move pictures around in a post).

Tipsy Thursday

2006-09-28T22:57:00.000-04:00

So, have I mentioned that I'm auditing a calculus class?

I'm auditing a calculus class. Sure, I'm in over my head, but I've been there before, after all, I did take Macroeconomic Theory in Spanish -- which means I can explain policies in response to inflation - but only in espanol. I came home from work and did math homework for too long, and then L. came home and made dinner and then we talked (briefly) about backpacking next weekend and then we went out to the new *lounge*. Complete with boring quintet and sexy bartender -- I had a tequila, cassis, ginger ale concoction and then a Johnny Walker black on the rocks. Because a girl who drinks whisky is a girl indeed. If you know what I mean.

Now, I'm tipsy and blogging. Life could be worse.

Thursday is sleepy identity crisis day. I stay up late Wednesdays because of workshop and the high that follows and then Thursday morning I go to a "work in progress" research seminar that inspires me to be a social policy analyst -- and then I play with data all day wondering whether to unravel racism and classism for the rest of my life or just leave and write a novel.

Tomorrow:
9am: Integrals with pretentious undergrads
10-12:30: Data, hopefully meeting with Boss #2
12:30: Lunch with EconMentor
1:30-5:Editing for Boss #1
6-whenevah: Dinner with friend and roomies, carrot soup, baked apple thing, and maybe a bottle of wine.

Sounds like an okay day. Except for the integrals. Grrr.

P.S. What do the beginning stages of alcoholism look like?

Rhett Butler, Indigo Girls, and My Studio

2006-09-24T21:39:00.000-04:00

So, Roomie L. and I went to the coast this weekend and sat by a picture window and watched the fog move in and out, swam in the waves, made delicious food and watched "Gone with the Wind". Now, keep in mind that this is the first time **ever** that I've watched the whole thing all the way through. Now, there are many questions that it raised for me, many points were I rolled my eyes, dropped by jaw, and generally yelled at the thing -- but there is one, enduring question:

Why do I find Rhett Butler sexy?

No, really, why? Is it his dandy/butch tendency, is it his ability to cut through bullshit, do I love him because he's so fucken patronizing? Because really, deep down, he respects Scarlett? Please tell me it's not about the mustache...

[As a side note, the new Indigo Girls CD, "Despite our Differences", really is excellent. Check it out if you're the type. ]

The weekend on the coast was wonderful. L. and I had a chance to do the sort of conversing and hanging out that we need, and sustains our friendship. Frankly, I've been too busy this past month or so to really devote the time to that kind of thing, and because of that there has been tension and because of that I've been dreaming about moving into a studio closer to NewJob and workshop next summer.

Part of this is that I really want to live by myself at some point in my life. I want to have space where I find my own habits and patterns and can be by myself whenever I want to. I crave a big room with big windows and hardwood floors -- and I can't afford it anytime soon.

TP will probably be moving to HarborCity next summer, and doesn't want to live together then/yet, which I think, and let me stress this: I think that that is a wise and mature decision. But I also feel a little bit like someone is suggesting that I have an extra helping of brussel sprouts when I want a piece of dark chocolate. And even though I like brussel sprouts... Anyway, that and heading into month four of commuting forty-five minutes in each direction is starting to make me dream about living in a studio -- maybe with a writing desk? [Make any Woolf references you so desire here].

The other thing about the weekend on the coast was that it made me realize how sexy it is to spend a weekend in a cottage on the coast and made me think that, despite my present company, surely there was a place in the world for good queer coastal erotica, no?

I'll just leave you with those images for the evening. :)

Random Ten

2006-09-18T18:56:00.000-04:00

I have a three month evaluation at NewJob (nee DreamJob) tomorrow. It should be interesting, to say the least.
I made sweet potato burrito filling to make burritos to bring for lunches to try to save money.
TP was meeting with a dean a few weeks ago who referred hir as "Dick" for the first five minutes of the meeting -- is someone revealing their underlying anxieties?
Chocolate and red wine are the only two foods to be confirmed in multiple studies to be beneficial to your health -- I might be okay after all.
I LOVE my new computer. It's so fast, and has wireless, and the loooongest battery life known to man (maybe not, but longest known to me).
I have an ice cream date with a friend from workshop tonight -- I'm really excited. Making friends is my new hobby.
I spent last weekend spending time with my mother and Sister, MD which was a mixed blessing. I love them both - but neither of them nourish my body image -- for different reasons.
Is anyone else in the world as attached to Sarah Waters' novels as I am? Also, does anyone else see the similarities between Affinity and Alias Grace?
I get to vote tomorrow, which is awesome. I'm actually excited to vote, how often does that happen to the likes of me?
How much did posting pictures compromise my anonymity? It's not like anyone really knows what I look like.

Limited Time Only -- My new Computer has a camera and my new name is Narcissa

2006-09-15T18:37:00.000-04:00

Sorry, too late.

Fresh From Workshop

2006-09-13T23:11:00.000-04:00

The places we call home do not stay the same. They roll and change, the road commissioner comes and says more here, less there, a little bit of grading, and there is a pile of dirt in the middle of the road and we’re driving on the wrong side to pick up flowers for the wedding, trapped behind a flock of wild turkeys.

The places we call home twist and bend, navigating new curves. They slow at construction zones, deconstruction zones – following orange cones and blinkers. A curve straightened, a mountain shorn off. This past weekend, your body was my home-scape. Never before has your body felt so new and your love felt so familiar.

Last Saturday, after the wedding, it was almost like the first time we fucked except that I looked into your eyes for the longest time. It was almost like the first time, but I knew your body differently and your body was different, four months on T, and your body is my home landscape returned to and returning. It was almost like the first time, but we weren’t drunk, and we were in love. Your curves are straightening, without orange cones. Your landscape still fits -- fits you more. You still fit inside me, like you always have, but differently now that I look into your eyes. You still fit inside my mouth, but more because of this change and more because I’ve loved you in this changing. Like an old landscape in a new season. Roadwork sucks, a renumbering of exits, a repaving of roads can throw a whole population for months, the bumps and turns have changed, but the light still hangs the same on the trees in the fall, and the light still hangs the same behind your eyes. Your breath on my neck still has the warmth of a spring day.

We slipped into bed, after flirting and dancing and a day so perfect that now it feels like a dream. I cried through the ceremony, and you danced with my mom, and met my dad. I sat at dinner with an old family friend and you offered me your jacket and went to get some wine and she said, “TP seems great, but I’m not sure about pronouns”.
“Either, both, it’s a mixed bag” which is the honest answer. She nodded and said, "It looks like a good decision. " You were wearing the suit that you and your mother had picked out together – gray for weddings, and it hangs perfectly, the pants hang perfectly. I love a woman’s hips in men’s pants, and a triple Windsor knot in your tie to make it the right length. I can’t imagine your mom and you in a Salvation Army store in northern Mississippi trolling for a perfect gray suit until she found one that you looked handsome in, maybe this is her way of blessing you through her faithful fear of all you are – with her thrift store skills. It is a good decision.

You don’t remember the first time, you were too drunk, and you rely on my recollections. I remember that we fucked and dozed and fucked and I remember that you didn’t want to lean into me after we were done because you were afraid that you would hurt me. It was almost like the first time, we fucked and dozed and fucked again – much more quietly than the first time because my mother was in the very next room in an old house with thin walls. Afterwards you curled into the spaces, I lay on top of you, and we held each other close until morning. And this time you will never forget the way I screwed you. That is the difference.

People always ask me how transitioning has changed me, how it is to be with someone as their body changes and I don’t have the metaphors down yet. It’s like watching a child grow up – without the pedophilia reference. It’s like watching someone you love become more and more themselves, and that is liberating for both of us. It is like riding a rollercoaster and falling out of a window. It is like coming home to a season I’ve never known.

The first time we fucked I didn’t know your body, and you didn’t know your body. Now it is something we both explore and they always worry that the sex will be bad, or that I won’t continue to find my desire in your skin. But they don’t know the difference it makes to make love to someone who is comfortable in their body, to watch as their body is tailored to fit them, like your gray suit, picked up at salvation army, like the road commissioner looking down a stretch of highway and saying “more here, less there”.

In a month I will travel to your landscape and it will be different, it will be Texas in October and I will look through the crowd to find your profile, a button down and triple Windsor, and a slightly straightened hip, waiting for my hand, and tongue to show you the way home.

Mission Accomplished. Period.

2006-09-09T23:55:00.000-04:00

Update from la Casa del Matrimonio

2006-09-07T07:22:00.000-04:00

It's Thursday morning at 7:15. I woke up about an hour ago, but just rolled downstairs to have some coffee because I decided that you 'can't argue with awake'. My mother is doing some intense calculations about surface area and volume -- and creamcheese butttercream frosting for the wedding cake. We are the only two people awake and that is pretty nice.
Yesterday I had the totally bizarre experience of being a tourist in my own state -- scenic factories, scenic scenes, heck, even scenic fried food. We also worked in the garden some. All of this with an entourage of 16 people, three of them under the age of four. I got to be a fun auntish person - which is awesome, once these kids are married they better get to some procreating. (That IS what marriage is for, right?)
On the docket for today: the tent, my uncle, Sister M.D., my father, and the port-a-potty all have scheduled arrival times.
Biggest Joy: Seeing so many people who love Sister, Esq. and her partner gathering in one place and truly celebrating them.
Biggest Fear: That I'm just too f*cked up to ever do this, I may just not be the marrying type. Not sure what to do with that.
Up Next: Apparently there is a half-and-half shortage that needs to be addressed before the brides want coffee.

If You Thought You Have Everything You Need

2006-09-01T16:09:00.000-04:00

You're dead wrong. You want some of this stuff.

Daydream Drivin'

2006-08-29T19:09:00.000-04:00

Do you have an enduring daydream? One that gets you to sleep on the hardest nights, that fills the longest lines at the bank, through the ride on the crowded train, that pulls at your heart every time?

I want a red pick-up truck -- small, Toyota, standard transmission. I want it to grumble to life every morning after I crawl out of the back, where I keep my bedroll and my stash of books. I want to cradle a mug of coffee between my hands in a backwater diner, be asked where I'm headed and answer "Where the road leads me." I want to drive out of the closed New England valleys of my childhood to where the mountains are big and the sky is bigger. Where everything looks like this out my rearview mirror. I want to drive across the country by myself. I want to do by coming to each intersection and flipping a coin. I want to avoid highways and metropolitan areas, revel in the rural.

I lie down, trying to sleep, searching for something to soothe my crazy mind, and I come to this picture above all others. It's the freedom and the aloneness I crave, and also the exploration. It's my East-Coast-Manifest-Destiny-Neurosis. I first had it while I was still in high school and wanted out of that gray closed valley, and gray closed high school, more than I could describe to anyone, least of all my mother. Since then whenever my life feels like more than I can handle -- when commitments, relationships, and deadlines crowd my brain -- this is what I escape too. Someday I might actually get the balls to pick up and go -- but for now it's what gets me to sleep.

Ok, How does everyone feel about "Gertrude"?

2006-08-29T14:00:00.000-04:00

Sisters, Quilts, and Self-Induced Angst

2006-08-27T00:40:00.000-04:00

Tonight I finished the sqares for my sister's wedding quilt -- they are imperfect, beautiful, and done; there are still major design pieces that need to be worked out, but the squares are pieced and tomorrow I can start to size them and put them together, and have something to actually give the lovely women on their wedding day. If I can borrow my mother's digital camera you all might be able to see them, because really, I'm pretty proud.

But, of course, being me, I combined this process with a fair dose of emotional turmoil by watching Little Women while quilting. Other than the fact that we are only three sisters, and not four; that our mother was a single parent; no one has died of scarlet fever; and that it isn't the late nineteenth century -- I grew up in this book.

And it just *resonated* a little too fucking much tonight. Me and my handful of chocolate chips are going to bed!

Countdown to matrimony: 13 days (after midnight, damn, I need to go to bed)

New Name Contest

2006-08-25T18:23:00.000-04:00

So, I'm going to get a new computer. I will probably order it this week, and the weekend of my sister's wedding my mother, who in this context can be referred to as TechGoddess, will transfer all the stuff from my old computer to my new computer.

My old computer is an Apple iBook that came out in the summer of 2001, and she served me well through my undergraduate days. But in this new day of dual platforms and wireless, and the possibility that at some point in the near future I will want to play with data on my computer -- it's time for an upgrade (with help from the last of my money from my maternal grandmother).

So, I'm taking suggestions for names for the new computer. Suggest things in the comments, at some point I might let people vote.

Some background and ground rules: My current computer is named Miriam, my flashdrive is Esperanza, and my iPod is named Stella (yes, I know this makes me sound *totally* nuts). It's important that the name not belong to anyone in my immediate aquaintance and not be a name that I would think about giving to a potential child or pet (I do give priority to things that *actually* emote -- they get different names). I don't have a gender preference. Also if it matters in your name considerations, I'm getting the new mid-grade white MacBook. Take a peek here.

Have at it!

Thursday if For Lists -- According to the Rules I've Just Made Up

2006-08-24T23:44:00.000-04:00

You wouldn't think that adding five hours to your work week would make it that much longer -- but this week has been long, and I'm so ready for the weekend.
Sister Esq. is getting married in 16 days. That is two times eight. Four less than twenty, and two days and two weeks from now. HOLY SHIT. Let me be clear -- I love her partner and think she's fantastic, and the wedding itself will be fun and incredibly stressful, but the whole **idea** of it makes me.... I can't even describe the emotion - sad, nervous, anxious, overwhelmed... I just don't know.
I love going to workshop, right now writing there is the most exciting part of my life, and I have to admit that I don't know what to do with that, except feel vaguely guilty and relish it every week when I get to go.
Blueberry sorbet, walnuts, and a gingersnap = perfection.
Tonight a good friend of mine played me some of her songs on her guitar and I read her some of poems, and it was a swap that we were both nervous about, and had planned for months, and it was wonderful. We need to do that again sometime.
Today I was walking home from said friends house, enjoying the fact that I was wearing a cardigan, carrying produce fresh from her mother's garden, humming along to a song I'd just heard for the first time, and wishing that TP was going to be home when I got there. It's funny, but sometimes it's when we wouldn't be spending time together that I miss hir the most -- when I long for the ways that we would find independence and be each other's touchstones in a shared life.
This weekend I'm going to the beach which will give me an opportunity to wear my Wonder Woman bikini -- with it's bright red top and blue bottoms with white stars and red trim -- Yup, it makes me pretty happy.
I need to make sourdough this weekend to remind my starter that I love her.
I'm thinking about buying a new computer -- which means getting rid of my computer that I've had for six years. This makes me really excited and also a little nostalgic. This will mean needing to name a new computer -- this will be a big event.
It's midnight, I've only accomplished half of the tasks I set out for myself to do this evening, and I'm sleepy and I still definitely need to shower before bed.

back roads*

2006-08-22T17:50:00.000-04:00

you kick up dust on the rutted road of my body.
i let you run over me, fast, like a kid in a pickup
music blaring. and i like it, your wheels rolling
hard, pushing me against the mattress, letting you
ride over me, but i will make you bottom out
'til your undercarriage shakes and trembles
for my top, my touch, 'til i flip your pickup, your wheels
spinning and the dust of this road licks
and curls around your screaming engine.

*because who doesn't need a (racy) poem on a Tuesday evening?

Also if you haven't read any good news lately, click on over to any of these places.
I also rescind MWMF related snarkiness, but am too lazy to edit, besides the sun is filtering through green, green leaves, and I might die if I don't go run around the pond RIGHT now.

That NYT Article that Everyone Keeps Talking About

2006-08-21T19:26:00.000-04:00

So, there has been much hubbub in the last 24 hours about the NYTimes article [not linked because of that whole pesky TimesSelect thing] about transmen, that was in the Sunday Style section [because queerness is the new black], and how the lesbian and queer communities respond to their existence, both in intimate relationships and as a political issue. There has been hubbub in the blogosphere and there has been SO much hubbub on the "partners of transmen listserv" that I'm on.

My thoughts on the issue are as follows, first the things that were good about the article:

That guy is hot. Shane -- the lawyer -- he's a hottie. Sure the pictures fetishize him a lot, but who could resist?
It is good that these articles exist -- it isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it does get people thinking and I'm glad that they talked about the fact that the Census doesn't try to count transfolk, because people need to realize the ways that these statistical gaps affect people (but this is a side-point).
Feministe has a very good write-up on this. Take a look, she says many things that I would say if I had time.

Here are my problems with it, from my citadel of privileged knowledge that I come across by loving and staking my life on a wonderful person who isn't a woman or a man and on a bi-weekly basis sticks hirself with a needle and shoots a powerful hormone into hir body.

They conflate. I'm anti-conflation. Issue #1: the challenges faced by lesbians who are partnered with transmen before they transition and have to reconcile themselves with the transition or leave the relationship. Issue #2: the bizarre nationalistic concerns that lesbians have that their category is "emptying out"* and the ways in which they allow that to tear a community apart [see Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and, oh right, any other place they get their panties in a knot]. Nationalism and balkanization don't work -- particularly when they are this petty and allow organizations to cut people off from the communities that nurture them and allow them to feel empowered enough to transition
Issue#1 = Issue #2? -- Um, NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can be a lesbian who is not transphobic and still not be able to be with someone through a transition. I know that they didn't exactly, explicitly say these were the same -- but something about the rhetoric of it all got under my skin.
'Young women who call themselves "gender queer"' -- um, TP is genderqueer, and not a woman, many of the genderqueers I know are men, some are women, some are neither -- Please use terms with some subtlety and idea of what you are saying.
Also, once and for all, sex IS NOT gender IS NOT sexual orientation!

Ok. I'm done.
*I think that Halberstam may have been taken out of context here, but I think that the phrase encapsulates many of the concerns.

[I apologize if this is snarky and off the cuff, all snarkiness is directed toward the NY Times Style section of the Sunday paper. No actual lesbians were harmed in the writing of this post]

Femme-and-inity

2006-08-20T20:18:00.000-04:00

So, I've been meaning to write a post for a long time about femininity and femme identity. Tonight is the night for things that I've been meaning to do for a long time. I drove back from CoastalNewEngland today in the rain and gloom, in stop and go traffic. It is just so sad to be in first gear on the highway. I was up there for a wedding party, which was fun. I got home, and after about ten minutes tore my room apart because I realized that tonight was the night to polyurethane my bed, a task I've been putting off for six months. Then I got polyurethane all over my hands, and have spent the last two hours going to buy paint thinner (which meant getting back in my car which smells like dead cheese) and worrying about the toxicity of the things on my hands.

Finally, my roommate, B., told me to stop freaking out and to come eat her experimental stir-fry -- which was a good call since the last and only thing I'd had to eat was a v. good and bucolic diner breakfast with LOTS of coffee.

Ok. Down to business.

I think that one reason I've been putting off writing this series of posts on femme is that I think that so much of gender and gender identity is about performance and when I talk about this with people in my life it is in the context of my own performances, which you don't have access to, and so I worry that you'll get some warped view of me. Weirdness of the blogosphere.

So all of this started with Jackadandy's post and me saying that it got me thinking and also reading Katia's interview with Elizabeth Stark. So, if you want background reading for this start there.

In high school I would wear a skirt one day and three piece suit the next. I loved the double takes that I got from people. I still really enjoy the ways in which my gender performance counters expectations -- no one expects me to be smart and sexy, or butch and an economist, and I like being able to push back against people's expectations of me, or of women in general. My sisters are both fairly feminine -- Sister Esq. is pretty urban hipster, funky attorney feminine, and Sister M.D. is more posh and put together. Both of them put significant pressure on me in my teens to be more femme, and it's a blessing that I've never tried to compete with them on the femme-front, because for the most part it still feels like a tune I'm supposed to be dancing to, and find kind of catchy, but can only sort of hum along to when I'm not too distracted.
It's a role that I enjoy, and yet, in part because I don't really commit to it -- I always feel vaguely like a failure, or like a small child wearing her mother's makeup. I don't (and have never) shaved my legs, I invariably screw up my makeup or laugh too hard or my hair is crazy or something, something is wrong with my femme performance.

Which is why I found the following Stark quote so fascinating (stolen from Jackadandy):

"Femmes know how to make love to other women, to butches, to transmen. In my opinion, this is an art and should not be overlooked. Femmes know how to fail and succeed at femininity at the same time. We use our flaws, our fat, our hairiness, our loud mouths, our oversized brains and our excessive accessorizing to celebrate ourselves and those we love and to foment revolution."

To know how to "fail and succeed" at something simultaneously. This sounds like fun. I think it is also the failures and fractures within femme that lend it some of its queerness and I think that this is particularly attractive to me. One of my main problems with being mainstream feminine is that I end up feeling like my queerness is not recognized by the outside world and I want people to have to reconcile me with the me they think they see.

I also love the powerful sexual imagery of femme. The way that she has power over her lover and with her lover and the acknowledgement within queer communities of the art of femme lovemaking. When I wear a dress and walk around with TP, it is this power that I'm tapping into and bathing in. To identify as femme is also one of the only ways to identify oneself as desiring butches and transmen and to extent that gender identity/performance is all about performing desire, well it's in my best interests to be femme. I also love the ways I'm desired, the particular escutcheons and performances of desire, when I'm femme and the person desiring me is playing with some version of masculinity.

Chris (of Jackadandy, who I sometimes, probably incorrectly, call Jack) in hys post also noted however, the differences between role, identity, and label. In general, I agree with hys analysis. I would add however that the slippage between identity and label is very significant and happens quickly. It is far to easy for things that one identifies with to become "citadels of limitation", and I'm anti-that so I've also been reluctant to take on the identity of femme. On the other hand, I recognize that it is an identity and don't want to trivialize it by calling it a "role" that I take on from time to time. I'm also not entirely ready to never be able to able to identify as butch. Here are some ways that I am butch:

I can and like to fix things.
I love men's clothes, on me, and on others.
I can open jars that are hard to open.
I have broad shoulders, lift weights, and love my body best when it's jacked.
I am a sometimes top, with a desire to unlock the pleasures and desires of my sexual partners.

So, I have no idea where this leaves me. Except that maybe I should go back to my high school ways, where I was either femme or butch and stayed away from middle ground. Of course the middle ground is also a pretty comfortable place at this point. In the end, I don't know what I'm wearing when I'm not in drag. The problem with this scenario is that it runs me smack dab into that "role" problem. My gender performance is, for me, a series of roles, but it also plays with other people's identities, and I don't want to "play butch" or "play femme" because that seems to undermine folks who identify with that. I think I mainly undermine that by being able to avoid the hard parts of butchness or femme identity because it's not what I'm doing full time.

I know that this is long and I've rambled horribly, and if you've read this far I'm impressed. Now, I'm tired and this might be the first in a series and I'll be able to hash this out some more - hopefully with questions/thoughts from y'all so I don't get lost in my own head.

Queer Books For Queer Kids

2006-08-17T22:41:00.000-04:00

Ok, kids. Here's the deal. There is a homeless shelter for LGBTQI [henceforth queer] youth in HarborCity, thing is they don't have a library that reflects this at all. So, in response, some folks from QueerOpenMic and the Workshop are collecting books to donate to their library (and potentially donate to other like-minded shelters nationwide).

Growing up queer is hard enough, growing up queer and homeless -- well, I can't write about that, I'm too blessed to be able to imagine it fully. But if you have any books, 'zines, movies, chapbooks ETC. that are lying around your abode that you aren't still reading/watching-- please consider sending them.

How do you send them?

Well, first you email me at corinneblogger@gmail.com. Then I perform some test wherein I determine whether you are an ax murderer and in which I ask you to protect my pseudonymity (sp?) -- then I email you my snail mail address and you mail them to me. I know that postage is expensive, but hey, they created media mail for a reason.

Think about it.

Oh, and the only guideline is that you can't send anything that is explicitly and solely erotica.

(Now, if you want to just send that to me, I'm not saying I wouldn't be grateful).

Life in the Passing Lane

2006-08-15T19:10:00.000-04:00

For some reason, for the last month, life has been swamping me. I would say that it's been life in the fast lane, but really it's been more like trying to drive a car you've never driven before in rush hour traffic where everyone is going somewhere in a huge hurry, but moving pretty slowly, and you have to keep looking around into mirrors and blind spots to make sure that you aren't fucking up royally, or denting anyone's fender.

Tonight I have a reprieve: Sister, M.D. called to cancel our dinner date; Roomie L. is at her family's house on the gorgeous New England Coast; and Roomie B. is playing frisbee. So, I'm home -- drinking a beer, listening to Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, doing laundry, treating the **new** wooden countertop, and blogging for the first time in an age.

NewJob is going well. I like the people I'm working for and even more I like having work that I like. I spend a lot of time thinking about graduate school, where I'll go and what I'll do. But really, I'm not applying until next fall (so matriculating in Fall 2008) and so for now I can enjoy having a job that I want to go to about 90% of the time. And for a 45 minute commute that's a pretty good percentage.

One of the major positive externalities to me of the job is that I'm thinking again -- thinking about future projects I want to do, thinking about things I want to explore, critiquing other people's work, etc, etc.. In this vein, I had coffee with my former thesis advisor and friend this afternoon. She just moved to HarborCity, and I'm overjoyed that she's here -- she's smart and supportive, and knows my econ-academic brain better than anyone else in the whole wide world.

I wrote a hard piece about AbusiveCollegeGirlfriend (henceforth ACG) in writing workshop a couple of weeks ago and last week at Queer OpenMic I performed it. I don't think that I was fully aware of the impact that that would have on me. I felt like I was bearing witness to my own pain and anger in ways that I never had before and telling the truth in very basic ways that also felt like I hadn't before. As I was nervously gearing up to read, I talked to the guy who runs the workshop A., and he was saying that I just needed to be prepared for people
to be sympathetic, and said that I could always say that it was a work of fiction, and I realized in that moment how much it *wasn't* and *couldn't* be a work of fiction in their eyes. Also, for the first time, I had friends at the Queer Open Mic and went out with them afterwards, and hung out with a different set of them beforehand. It was awesome, and new and felt so right and so queer I can't even describe it.

In the past ten days I've also cut about 8 inches of hair off my ponytail and "revised" my bangs several times.

That is the update from my life. I'll blog more soon, maybe, no promises, I swear I'm more reliable in real life than I am here.

Workshop Piece I

2006-07-31T21:52:00.000-04:00

So, Sly has a post up about rings, since he is now wearing one that used to belong to the boy. I commented over there, and it got me thinking about rings, weddings, and the like. So I thought I would post a piece from the writing workshop. Just so you know, the prompt was a slinky. Generally things are good on the homefront, though this week is a little insane, a party to celebrate a dear friend being in town tomorrow -- complete with planned sleepover (I'm packing my PretentiousToteBag when I'm finished with this), and then the the writing workshop on Wednesday, and oh, yeah, work and the gym and stuff too.

****************

I remember this, this slip of synchronized metal between my fingers, from hand to hand, one big enough to flop-glide down the stairs in the old house. Inevitably tangling, and I would spend so much time trying to untangle it, make it perfect and smooth again. The twisted wires were permanently scarred they remembered each fall and gyration, and forevermore had unsteady hips. That old house was never finished and was born scarred. It’s funny that I call it the old house since technically it was really quite young, built the year before my sister was born, my mother laying stone for the fireplace while pregnant. Those warm stones were for children and cats, both not yet made. What an act of faith to build a home together, in truly the middle of nowhere. What the hell was she thinking? But she must have been thinking, the slinky of her brain tracing down all the steps without tangling. and what does twelve years from now mean? Twelve years from that fireplace we were all sitting around a cold empty pizza box, drinking cranberry juice and wondering what was next, leaving the old house. Her plan inevitably tangled, incredibly tangled. We are all, each of us, incredibly tangled. Our desire to flop-glide through life means nothing. We walk with unsteady hips, or lie curled and still. Slinkies extend and fall – that is where the tangling happens at the tipping point where the world collapses down on itself until I’m standing alone at the door on a warm day with a cup of hot coffee watching you leave. Just for a while, just for school, no comment on me or cats and children not yet made.

Since then my mother has laid down other stones, pregnant with a vision. Her garden falls gently to the brook, or grows up to the house. Either way there is less of a plan. Those steps are the ones we’ll use in September, guiding a cadre of unsteady hips and heads through a wedding. What a strange and novel idea. When was the last time we did one of those? The 70s.

I talked to my sister today about her wedding, my planned time off, the role she will want for me to play in that week. Going for long walks, keeping her calm, serving as the all important buffer zone between her and my mother. Helping everyone navigate tricky waters, hold the unsteady hearts close and help them slide-glide over steps. Your job will be to hold my own unsteady hips in the night.

Beep-Beep-Ba-Beep

2006-07-28T23:39:00.000-04:00

We interrupt our normal broadcast to bring you: Racism Today in HarborCity (and the US)

First, you have to understand that I ride the train to work every day for 45 minutes in each direction, in this time I eavesdrop, read, read newspapers over people's shoulders, drink my coffee, and sleep. Over this past week, I've been keen on the reading over people's shoulders.

In the little newspaper that they hand out for free they have this column called "The Debate" where they ask three people off the street their opinion on something and write it up with cute little pictures of the poor fools. On Wednesday the question was: "How do you feel about violence in the city?" This is a totally valid question HarborCity has a homicide problem, particularly in poor communities of color where folks are poor, desperate, etc. So here is my beef with the piece.

All three respondents were white, two were students and the third was a business analyst (also all from comp. safe neighborhoods, and under 30) their three responses were:

"I've never felt threatened or intimidated. You just need to be smart about where you go and what time you go there"

"It's not as bad as people make it out to be"

"It's terrible that such a thing can happen in a city where you feel safe. It seems to be centralized in certain neighborhoods"

Ask people from the affected communities. If you don't it's a sham. Oh, those poor people in those poor neighborhoods, I guess they just made a bad choice to live there. This is such a lie. We don't choose where we live, for the most part that is decided the urban geo-econo-politics that surround, envelope, and drown us. Further, do not claim that something you simply don't experience isn't that bad. I think I'm more angry with the choice of people than any one thing they said -- but if you want to start a dialogue about the role of violence in our community, you're shutting it down by printing bullshit like that.

Also, Bush signed the Voting Rights Act this week, to make it effective through a few more shitty elections. The headline I saw was "Bush OKs Voting Rights". This made me laugh, and it made me really sad that that is all he did. He didn't celebrate the Voting Rights Act, or commemorate it, or do anything more than put his rubber stamp on and have some people take some pretty pictures. This is an outrage. If he *actually* cared about the principles of democracy there would have been..... well, nevermind.... I guess democracy was just a dream we had once.

PS. If you can't tell, I'm moving out of my funk, I've got my snarky on, and I'm in steamy, steamy, BigCity hangin' with SIster, Esq. and her partner. These things make me very happy.

Calculations of Self Worth

2006-07-25T17:57:00.000-04:00

I know I've been MIA, and it's because I've been in a funk. My insides churning with reformulations, and my mouth tightly shut. I've been disengaging from the world, pulling into myself and trying to figure some stuff out.

So, in the past month, I've picked up my running program again, sent a loved one thousands of miles away, started a new job, and started doing creative writing with some intention. All of these things have made me wonder who I am, what I'm doing, what I'm worth. Not without some anxiety and self-deprecation. I think that all of us have these demons gnawing at us, and I am trying very hard to keep them at bay in my own head.

NewJob is going well. I haven't screwed up royally yet, though I'm inclined to think that it could happen any day. The whole idea of this job, for those who missed the memo, is to figure out whether I like research and economics enough to pursue a Phd in that accursed discipline. The trouble is with the word enough. I feel like I've chosen a path, but I think that I might define anything as 'enough' to not have to admit that academia isn't what I want, because if it isn't that I have no idea what is.

TP left about a week ago. The visit was wonderful -- not without disagreements or hard days, but each of those led to growth, and I miss hir everyday, more than I can quite admit to. There is more to say, but the wheels of my brain are still spinning desperately trying to make sense of my heart.

I went to a writing workshop last week, and wrote and read what I had written. It was wonderful and intense. The format was to receive a fairly open prompt, my favorite was a miniature slinky passed around the group, and then write for 20-30 minutes, and then read. In three hours we did three prompts, and I wrote about: marriage/committment/divorce, body issues, and my own contested and conflicted gender identity. I left feeling like I'd voluntarily slammed myself against a concrete wall, but it was a cool wall, and the day was so warm... I'll be going back there. Plus, it's an explicitly queer space, and I need more of those. (I might post some workshop pieces if it seems worthwhile -- any votes?)

And then there is the running. I think that the above three things have been enough to throw my sense of self a little out of whack. Especially some combination of the career apprehensions and the renewed interest in creative writing, something that 8 years ago would have been at the top of my life goals.

So how do I handle these waves? I take them out on my body. When my other measures of self-worth are failing, I fall back on crappy societal standards of body image. So, I'm back to old tricks (that aren't quite mine) -- logging 20 mile weeks, and counting calories. I bought a heart-rate-monitor yesterday, and was running at 6am. The thing is that running is good for me: it lets me clear my head, and enables me to feel okay about my body, and is a way to be outside. But it slips far too easily into a scary terrain I've always kept myself on the edge of, and I'm still there on the edge, just this side of the numbers.

There are so many measures of self-worth -- intellect, integrity, compassion, work ethic. I've used each of these models. But there is also a way in which I was taught to gauge my self-worth off of my grades and my body. It was never that explicit, but I did grow up in an imperfect radical feminist household where grades were posted on the fridge and everyone went around the table at night and said how many grams of fat they'd had in the day.

Is it any wonder that I don't know what to think of myself?

(PS: I'd find a better ending, but I want to go watch the sunset with my gin n' juice, and who can deny me such a simple pleasure)

Sliding Scales

2006-07-15T11:17:00.000-04:00

On Thursday TP and I went to a QueerOpenMic which is one of my favorite queer spaces in HarborCity, hands down. I read Good (Almost) Man and it was well received. I think that on Wednesdays I'm going to start going to a workshop run by one of the folks there to work on my writing more, because, while economics is cool and all there is a part of me that will always want to write poetry. And God knows I need more fun queer community in my life.

Both of these places, and many others I go to, operate on a sliding scale/pay what you can system. In the past I have depended on that policy to be able to go to these events, and I honor the diversity that policy allows and engenders. So, here is the story, NewJob pays me well, better than OldJob and includes benefits that make me feel a little bit like EliteU doesn't know what to do with all its money and so throughs it at its employees in the form of really cheap gyms and incredible healthcare. I can no longer pretend that I have anything but a middle class paycheck. So I'm a radical queer with a middle class paycheck, who spends a lot of time in fringe cultural spaces. This is new to me. On Thursday for the first time, I paid the upper end of the sliding scale at the open mic. On Wednesday I will need to decide how much to spend on this workshop that I'm going to.

Frankly, I'm not sure how to negotiate this income shift. Sure, I'm putting more money in my savings account. Generally I think that I am the most radical investment I can make. The world will benefit from me being able to afford graduate school, and the books I want to read, but probably not all the books I want to read, and certainly not the cute clothes that I sometimes want to buy. And none of it will mean much at all if the community organizations that I depend on crumble due to lack of funds. From an economics standpoint it's an interesting model -- it would be better if I had the energy to actually create/find a graph for y'all to see. But basically you pay a price for something, and some people want it, but are only able/willing to pay less for it than the price, and so they don't get it and some people are willing to pay more for it, but don't and sort of get their cake and eat it too. The sliding scale/pay what you can system asks everyone to pay what they can and what the "service" is worth to you, eliminating that eat your cake and eat it too phenomenon, but also providing access. So what I should do is ask myself this question: How much would it need to cost for me not to go? One dollar below that is the amount that I should pay... hard to do in practice.

But this doesn't even scratch the surface of how uncomfortable people are with differences in wealth and the ways that having money are connected to being inauthentic. When I pay more money I am sincerely thinking about investing in spaces, and holding them dear and trying to help them balance their books. Yet, I also don't want to distance myself from people by paying more money. Keep in mind that these are small communities where 'nigh on nothin' stays private. Privilege is best when it is easiest to abdicate, to cast off and spread around, like so much shit (compost metaphor), and I think this is one of those cases where that can happen, if there weren't so much angst around it.

But, for real, bottomline:
I hate money.

P.S. It's Saturday night, tonight TP and I grilled veggies, and walked up to the pond in the sunset, and now we are listening to Louis Armstrong, I'm blogging and ze is reading the latest Harry Potter book. Totally priceless.

Queer Theater

2006-07-11T18:17:00.000-04:00

On Saturday night TP and I went out to a play put on by a queer theater group in HarborCity.

For us, going out is an excuse for TP to be charming, dark, and handsome, if not tall, and an excuse for me to be a flirty femme, who is sometimes fatale. Really, for us, the theater started far before we made it to the actual location of the event, and the costume designers were the stars. I was wearing a v. low cut wraparound black dress with a lace hem, my new heels, and my new red dangly earrings. TP was wearing a nice shirt and tie that I love, and, in the interest of full disclosure, was a present from me. We looked nice. Hot, even.

There was some drama about getting to the theater (that pun was not intentional). But we got there and got our tickets and watched a play set in a pink motel room, that was very queer and highly, highly surreal. Now, as we walked in, there was a lady, who was maybe 70, and had a nice white bun of hair on her head, and a nice husband at her side. She smiled and winked at me. She was starting to flirt. As we sat down and looked through the programs, she caught TP's eye and gave hir an approving look, and then looked me up and down, as if to say, "Nice catch". It was hilarious.

After the show there was a little gathering with wine, cheese, and disgusting Mike Hard Iced Tea. It was fun, the cast and crew were maybe 10 people, and the audience was only 15, so it was an intimate crowd. Or at least that's what the little old lady thought. She flirted with everyone, could talk to anyone. It was amazing, the thing is that it was this very funny mix between the somewhat standard old-lady-nice and the classic somewhat bawdy flirt. I loved it.

We talked to one of the troupe founders about potentially touring one of their shows to ELAC and URedState. We mingled. We never mingle -- we are both shy and sometimes awkward, but somehow that husk started to fall away in that setting. I love being queer out in the world. Being femme, holding TP's hand, having people recognize us for who we are -- so often we get read as something other than how we think about ourselves, even, and most painfully, within GLB communities. But in that theater our performances were respected.

That was a big part of what made it such a lovely evening. There was also the moon, the booze, and the sweetness of any moment spent with TP. Ze is flying home next Wednesday, and I'm very sad about it. But that is a whole 'nother story. I want to find more places where I can feel recognized in a sexy black dress as the radical queer I am, and I also want those places to be comfortable with me being in carhartts and a button-down shirt. Do you think I'm asking too much?

Requisite Update

2006-07-08T17:37:00.000-04:00

Some things you should be aware of:

This was my first week at NewJob. It was exciting and challenging and a little mundane. Basically I am ResearchGirl for two economists who do fascinating work and each see their role in my life as very different. A communication challenge, let's say. It'll work out
TP has been here for several weeks now and is leaving in about ten days. It's been good and complicated, and I will be very sad when there isn't someone to come home to, and talk to, and kiss, and all those nice things that TP does in my life.
NewRoomie arrived on Monday and thus far has been fabulous introducing a nonchalant attitude about food, making yummy bread and dinner, going for runs with us, and practicing her violin beautifully. She's a keeper. Her initial is B.
I just made the most orgasmic Rosemary Olive Sourdough, and it might be what I have for dinner along with the Hit the Trail Ale from Vermont, which is a lovely state with incredible beer.
**** Nubian "features" some of the most fucked up shit I've seen in a while. ****
I have a long list of blogables in my brain. They'll be "uploaded" soon enough. Hang tight, kids.

Fun on the Monkey Bars

2006-07-01T19:19:00.000-04:00

File this in the "Every Day I Live in the Patriarchy" Section of your lives.

So today I went for a long run, and along my run I came across some bars upon which to do pull-ups, so I was doing my routine of tricep-dips, pull-up negatives, chin ups and push ups. This list makes me seem much more cut than I actually am.

As I was doing my routine, I heard a child's voice behind me saying "Look at HER!" I turned around and saw a little girl pointing at me. She was walking with her brother and father, and her father looking up and seeing me said, directly to his son, said, "Do you want to try that?" The boy, who never responded to anything in the interaction, didn't respond the question at which point the man came over the bars and sort of winked/smiled at me and did a few pull-ups and went on his way with his children.

What the F?

A. Girls, when they express interest in being strong, should be allowed to be f-ing strong.
B. Dude, you have issues with strong women if you're so scared of:
1. Your child becoming one.
2. Needing to assert your physical dominance over the one that you see, or bizarrely attempt to hit on her.

BUH.

I love my life in the patriarchy.

P.S. Did Title IX actually exist, or was it a good dream I had once?

An Honest Day's Work

2006-06-29T15:27:00.000-04:00

The federal government redefined work yesterday, or, rather it redefined it for the 53 million families who received TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) in 2005 (calendar year). There is, naturally, at least one snarky comment to be made about whether a body that does so little work, and work of such poor quality has the right to define what is work for 53 million families that are struggling to make ends meet? That is an important question, but there are other axes I want to grind with their decisions.

Work and Values
The ideology that underpins this provision of welfare reform from 1996 to the present is that work is valuable for work's sake. The idea is that children learn important lessons from having their parents be part of the workforce, they learn about the value of money, the self-esteem and feelings of self worth that can come from work. Maybe, maybe, but I don't know how much you learn about those things if you never see your parent because ze is working ten hour days and multiple jobs. I also don't know how many low-wage workers would say that they got their self-esteem and self-worth from their jobs. I don't want to deny that possibility though, since I've had minimum wage jobs that I've loved and living wage jobs that killed my soul.

There are problems with this ideology, it privileges wage labor over home production and education. This came out strongly in the regulations put out by the Feds yesterday. It is no longer considered work to care for a disabled relative. What values does that teach our children? Do you think these people have the resources to ensure that their relatives are cared for properly by someone else? But apparently caregiving is lazy. If the federal government said that about middle and upper class stay-at-home parents there would be a media war (oh wait, that's already happened).

Another highlight of the new regulations is that homework time for job training programs only counts if it's in a supervised study hall. What? These are people with kids, do you think that they can pay for another hour of childcare so that they can go to bloody study-hall? Do they need bathroom passes?

Doing More Work?
All of the statistics point to the fact that TANF caseloads have decreased over the last ten years, and that more people are in wage earning jobs. However this might also mean that there are many families who don't bother to apply for welfare because they know that they will be shut out or who are "saving" their TANF months for a time when things are even worse. Also it's not entirely clear that they are better off when they are working than when they were collecting welfare. These rules also don't ensure that more work will happen, even if we agree with them that that is a goal which makes sense. If anything I think it makes it likely that people will leave the programs because they can't make those studyhalls or just have to take care of that sick family member. Which means that the caseloads will continue to go down and things will continue to look good, while the fruit rots under the skin.

The people who it will mean more work for is the people working in welfare offices across the nation, because they Feds also issued new guidelines for tracking the work activities. This tracking will be a near impossible task, taking up resources that could be devoted elsewhere... if we actually wanted things to change.

I know a lot of people who did an honest day's work yesterday -- but they sure weren't the people writing these rules.

(Full Disclosure -- I haven't read the new rules yet, just the NPR story and the I can't find them right now, but I will read them soon and get back to y'all if they have any redeeming value)

Ten (Tipsy) Confessions

2006-06-27T21:33:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to think that living as a couple might be something I could do after all, after years of saying that community living was all I would ever want.
Oral sex, as a blogging topic, bores me - I haven't read the posts, I haven't read the posts in response to posts or the comments. (Sorry y'all).
I've found the *actual* oral sex in my life delicious, boring, hot, gross, and confusing in turns... fortunately, now we are on an upswing.
I hate it when TP talks on hir cellphone for long periods of time.
Who am I? I got tipsy after one beer (granted I hadn't had dinner yet).
I'm really looking forward to starting NewJob next week, I love vacation, but I get fiesty and stircrazy.
I drank a beer today while my two roommates went for a run -- this will catch up with me eventually.
I've been wearing shorts that are shorter than any I've worn since childhood, but it's fecking hot up here. In my defense, I think they are average femme-woman length, but they aren't my norm.
I'm painting new roommate's room and walked all over town covered in paint today, in the short-shorts; no one seemed to mind.
I'm so pathetic at thinking of interesting confessions that I've asked TP for help, ze is feeling equally unoriginal.

Mix(ed) Tapes and Marriage

2006-06-25T11:52:00.000-04:00

So, the car that L and I just bought dates from the mid-nineties, which is fine. It's a Toyota and so I have perfect faith that it will continue to drive along in its understated loveliness for some time. On the music front, it's a little sad. I think that I need to find some way to adapt my iPod to the tapedeck, for now, I and anyone who rides in my car is stuck in my seventh grade life.

Now, there are some great mixed tapes (Is there a standard here, mix or mixed? What should that modifier be?) from that era, it was the period of my first eposure to the Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco, but they remind me of being desperate, bitter, angsty and in the closet. Not a scene I wish to revisit. I think that the music you listen to makes a difference. As the main character in one of my favorite movies says:

"People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" (Rob, High Fidelity)

So, driving back from Idyllic Ancestral Home, I listened to one of the mixed tapes that my sisters made for me that winter of 7th grade. Who were they at this moment in time? Sister, Esq. had just finished her first semester at Women's College and was coming out as a lesbian, Sister, MD was a sophmore in high school and struggling with her body, her brain, and her peer group. On it there are a surprising number of song that sort of mock marriage -- Liz Phair's "Divorce Song", Mary Chapin-Carpenter "He Thinks He'll Keep Her", the song about a "matchmaker" from some musical I've never seen -- those were the songs both about straight people, and about long term pair bonding. Sure the songs on that mix about queer relationships depicted plenty of torture and anguish, but then I was 12 I wanted anguish, I wanted to experience everything. This mix was very much my older sisters teaching me, picking out these very specific cultural productions and showing me what was "cool". Marriage wasn't cool, at best it was empty and conformist, at worst it was a painful trap. At the same time I was listening to these bitter songs, I was also watching about three romantic comedies a week, the really fluffy kind. "Pretty Woman" was my favorite movie for a very long time. I have no idea how I incorporated these saccharine fairy tales with the bitterness of Ani DiFranco and Liz Phair, but I did. I wanted to fall in love just like that.

I'm not saying that I think that listening to this music turned me into the radical queer anti-ish marriage person that I am, or that the romantic comedies provided me with faith in humankind, but I did learn from them. The things I learned were not always true -- queer relationships can be abusive and stifling (I've been in them), and straight ones can be amazing, and either way, regardless of the sex of the individuals involved marriage is a mixed bag on a personal level. Politically, well, I promise to write about that this week. Maybe this is all about role models. I didn't have very many role models for stable long term happy pair bonding. My parents were divorced, and most of my mother's friends were either lesbians, with quasi-rotating lovers, or not also divorced. My father sort of remarried, but I didn't know enough about their relationship to feel like it was something I would want mine to mimic. So, it was up to pop culture. And really, bottom line is that you should never let pop culture teach your children about something -- not race or gender, not sex, and apparently, not marriage either.

We'll leave it there for now, theory will come soon, promise. Right now, I'm feeling very in love, and listening to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack... not that that really gives me faith or anything.

The Good Life

2006-06-22T09:18:00.000-04:00

(I've been on the computer for about half an hour, putzing about, and go and sit by TP and put my head in hir lap)
Me: Are you waiting for the computer?
TP: I sort of was, but now I'm reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", and hoping you will come cuddle.
Me: I thought I was cuddling.
TP: You are, but I was hoping to sustain it.
Me: Oh, okay. (I go and find a more comfortable way to curl up on the couch with TP)
TP: Where is your book?
Me: (Closing eyes, sipping coffee) You're reading, I'm doing the cuddling part.

When did life get so good?

Yeah, I'll get back to something real maybe Saturday.

June In Idyllic Ancestral Home

2006-06-20T21:52:00.000-04:00

TP and I are at my mother's house in New England State, also known as Idyllic Ancestral Home. This means that we are eating fabulous fresh produce and drinking red wine. Tomorrow I'm going to visit my ancient Latin teacher (he's ancient, so is the language). Tonight we had dinner with friends L. and M. L was my creative writing teacher in high school and is a lovely woman who reminds me vaguely of Anne of Green Gables, M is her British husband who makes me smile and is tall and lanky and an incredible dork. She is still my most faithful of critics, and I love handing her over my rare little poems to read over and comment on. Someday I'll write some more fiction as she always encourages me to, but it's so time consuming.

This evening the menu was:
-mango salsa and chips
-red wine or rhubarb juice with seltzer
-broiled wild salmon
-broiled asparagus (the fattest I've ever seen in my whole life)
-salad with four kinds of lettuce (L brought it over in an industrial size trash bag) and arugula and beet greens
-creamy basil pesto pasta
-vanilla ice cream and fudge sauce

YUMMY.

I love being home this time of year, everything is so green and eager about life. Makes me feel the same way, and having TP here is special because everything looks new again as I look at it through hir eyes.

I'll get back to the serious stuff in a while. I'm too busy basking right now.

Marriage and Fear

2006-06-17T19:35:00.000-04:00

So I've been watching a lot of this recently. Don't ask, just blame TP. But hey, at least there is a queer subplot that is just that -- a subplot and the queer characters have all the normal problems as everyone else (if magic addiction is normal). Anyway, in the sixth season there is an episode where Xander is going to marry Anja (former vengeance demon) except a demon comes back to stop the marriage and poses as Xander as an old man and shows him images of himself and Anja sixty years down the line and how miserable they will have made each other. It freaked me out a little bit and not the least because while I was watching it today I was also working on my wedding present for Sister, Esq. and her partner, and thinking about Sister, MD and her new love, and thinking about TP and me. (Have I mentioned that maybe I should just think a little less?)

I have a lot to say about the politics of marriage and long term monogamous pairbonding. I've been meaning to respond to Mamita's post for almost three weeks at the point, and not being able to find a way to crystallize everything I have to say about marriage into one piece.

A lot of what I have to say is about an idyllic vision of queer politics and poverty reduction, and really hard core theory that I love and can totallly have a dork-fest about. But there is also a scared little girl who really wants to believe that two people can know that they love eachother and decide to make that work, and lively mostly happily for a very long time. This is the same little girl who grew up knowing that that wasn't really a possibility and needing to choose between deciding that people who love eachother can make each other unhappy and believing that her parents had never loved each other, or that one or both of them is inherently unloveable. Of course, really I'm scared that all of these things are true and true about me, and I'm scared that I won't be able to figure it out, and that not figuring it out will be the big way I fail at my life.

I've been avoiding really thinking about marriage for a long time. I just theorize about it, but this fall, when Sister, Esq. and her partner tie the knot I'll have to actually deal with the viscera of it -- this is not a task that I'm looking forward to particularly. I'll write more about this soon, I really do want to lay out some of the theory stuff sometime soon. Hold me to account on this, while this space is totally bizarre in my life, part of the reason that's the case is because it's so very separate and that's a good thing.

Enough babbling for now.

Feminine-Minded -- Indigenous Feminisms

2006-06-15T15:42:00.000-04:00

I'm reading a truly excellent novel right now, called The Polished Hoe, written by Austin Clarke (see link in sidebar). It is about postcolonialism, race, and sexual exploitation, some of my favorite themes, right? In it, the main narrator is talkign about her history with her sexual exploiter, Mr. Bellfeels, and touches on feminism, and its applicability to women of color, and women in the postcolonial world. I've heard this sentiment expressed in theory and personal statement before, but never this explicitly or elegantly.

" "That was done in times when a woman, with no education to speak of, didn't know the term 'feminine-suffrages'. We knew we were feminine-minded-women, though. That was driven into us, by instinct...

"There was no feminine-suffrages in my time, Constable. But we still knew what was happening to us, in this Island. As women, we didn't comport ourselves with the talk of English suffrages-women. But that voice was buried inside our hearts. And although we could not, dare not, shout-out a dirty word in Mr. Bellfeels face, or pick up a rock-stone and pelt it at Mr. Bellfeels, and break his arse... Pardon my French!...and watch his head burst-open like a watermelon, and that the blood spurt-out like the water from a water-coconut, all those thoughts and buried acts, and stifled wishes concealed in our craw, were always near the top, near to erupting. We couldn't act like this modern generation of dark-skin women I see walking-'bout this Village, in dresses of African print; and wearing their hair natural; uncomb. But the plot of defiant words and Africa was already hatching inside our heads. Yes. "-Austin Clarke, pg. 59-60, The Polished Hoe

There are very few things that I would say are truly indigenous to the human spirit. Heck, some of the time I don't think I believe in 'the human spirit'. I do think that a desire for liberation is indigenous to the human spirit, I think that the ways that people go after that goal vary drastically over time and space. But it's always there, bubbling up under and against oppression, pushing for resistance anywhere that hegemony gives it a space. I think one think that I like so much about this passage is that it conveys that bubbling, and the very visceral ways in which that manifests itself. I also really appreciate the fact that she identifies this "feminine-mindedness" with exploring and expressing their African heritage. This is not something that white-liberal-middle-class-feminism would take for granted.

The fact that this particular expression of resistance would not be takend for granted brings up another issue with truly believing in indigenous feminisms. It is total hogwash to say that everyone has an indigenous desire to have the right to vote, or access to birth control and higher education, or any of the other gains of the feminist movement in the First World. They might, or they might not. Really believing in indigenous feminsim and having faith in it means taking it on its own terms, and in its own manifestations every time.

Adventures of a Pretentious Tote Bag

2006-06-15T15:29:00.000-04:00

1. This is the news and notes post, I seem to tend to write more than one post at a time, one more issues based, the other more newsy. I write and post the newsier one first, so it is further down on the page, I do this to clear my brain of some of the detritus and because I figure that people who just show up here, should read about what I'm actually thinking about and not my mental detritus.

2. My left hand has been cramping really badly over the past couple of days. I can't make a fist and several of the my fingers are in constant tingle mode. I helped Sister, M.D. paint her apartment this morning, and she diagnosed it as a simple strained muscle, but man, does it hurt.

3. I went out to the Human Resources Office at NewJob and they gave me many brochures and pamphlets that I may or may not read, and they gave me a v. pretentious tote bag in university colors with their logo on it, and I mean, really? Could we be more dorky? On the other hand, on the train ride home I realized how useful it was, despite it's dorkage. I'm lost.

4. Sister, Esq. and her partner are going to be in town tomorrow and are staying with me. I feel a little angsty about this because, well, my house is nuts over the next couple months, by July 20th the people who actually will be living here for the next twelve months will be the only people here, but until then it's a little revolving door. This would be fine, except most of it is imposed by my people. On the other hand, I get so little time with Sister, Esq. and her partner and adore them both so much, that I don't really want to sacrifice any of that.

Steady On

2006-06-13T22:44:00.000-04:00

When you live in a town that doesn't have a grocery store, an orthodontist, a dentist, a middle school, or... ok, well, anything except a high cow to person ratio, you end up spending a lot of time in the car, add on to that that you are a **Child of Divorce** and you are basically glued to your bucket seat. This means two major addictions are likely to be inflicted upon you -- NPR and particular music selections. One of the lesser known properties of family cars is that they are vectors of inertia*. This means that once a tape is in the car the likelihood that it leaves the car within a decade is close to zero. Heck, sometimes it doesn't even come out of the tape-deck for a good six months.

The other thing about that music that gets left in the car is that it becomes integral to your emotional life. I have a lot of songs that I can attach to a particular moment or person or place, but because these songs never left the playlist they are touchstones to go back to, they are the able to untangle any emotional knot. I was a fairly introspective kid, and at the point where you're spending that much time just sitting and listening to music and thinking... it's inevitable that these songs become so important.

In my family, that music which never managed to escape the vortex was Paul Simon's "Graceland" and Shawn Colvin's "Steady On". They are both really good albums, though clearly you can't really compete with Graceland. Until I was about 12 I thought that Graceland was one piece of music, like a symphony -- then we got it on CD and inadvertently put it on shuffle. It scarred me for life. But I got the CD anyway so that it would make it past the technology change and be safely burned onto computer and loaded onto my ipod. "Steady On" fell by the wayside -- until today. As I was cleaning up TP's room in my attempt to pack after being there for two full weeks, I found a CD copy of "Steady On" and borrowed it, and I'm listening to it right now. Sure, I'm sitting in an airport terminal and typing on a laptop, but I could be driving through rural New England, watching the raindrops on the windows and unravelling the current knot in my heart.

* Yes, vectors of inertia is a technical term. No, I just made it up.

ESPN2

2006-06-13T22:42:00.000-04:00

Ok, I know I don't strike you as a sports-watching cable type, and I'm not. But I am right now, because I'm in an airport and have no control over what I watch, and because the Mundial/World Cup is on and I like me some futbol.

But back to ESPN -- there is something very strange about our culture when we relegate both world class soccer and the **national domino championships** to the same backwater channel. Really, is there anyone out there who springs for the extra 50 million channels of cable so that they don't miss that Dominoes final?

Another Post on Pronouns (Plots, and Theory)

2006-06-09T13:15:00.000-04:00

Today, I totally can't focus, this is the third post I've started, but I just have too much to say. I need to compartmentalize better, but it all blends together into a post that looks like this oldfriendshoutoutgendermarriagesexqueercommunity.... yeah, I can't make head nor tail of it either.

Anyway. I remember when TP first changed hir name, I put up on my dorm room door (yes, I am that young) that femalename=masculinename to remind myself that this person whose name I was just integrating into my dreams was changing names. In general, the switch wasn't hard, we'd only been dating for about two months, but it took a while to stick, and the time that it finally did was when I went to visit for a weekend and there were others using the new name and finally it felt right and natural to use the newname.

Being down here these two weeks has been similar. In HarborCity, most of the people know me as a queer woman who dates women. This preconceived notion they have of me often means that the feminine aspects of TP are privileged in our discussions, like deep down ze is really a woman. I, too, am guilty of this tipping of the scales for the sake of simplicity. Here, people just know TP and so there are many people who use male pronouns and refer to hir as a "very busy boi" and so on, and so the masculine side of the scales has been getting some more weight. Of course, there are also spaces down here, particularly feminist places on campus that use the "one drop" rule to make TP a woman, because only women are feminists, right? I don't know if TP thinks of these masculine markers as just as wrong as the feminine ones, but for me they are helpful.

It's not just about pronouns.

Let's think of the definition of pronoun for a minute:

(grammar) A word that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase in a sentence, but which cannot ordinarily be preceded by an article and rarely takes a qualifying adjective. English examples include I, you, he, she, it, we, they.

(from wiktionary.com)

Something that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase in a sentence. TP is illegible, there is not language that adequately takes the place of the TP noun phrase in any sentence or situation, this is probably true for most people. However, we need to use these markers as place holders for a much more complex reality. In some ways, once we think of it this way, all language functions like a pronoun, a mere marker for the noun phrase that is our world.

Let's think about a scatter plot for a minute, nothing more than a map of markers. Imagine all the markers that are used for TP, drawn onto a scatterplot. In trying to understand, love, and support the noun phrase that is TP, I've been trying to find a line of best fit. Until I came down here I only had one set of markers, I didn't have the set provided by grad school friends, some of whom are (gasp!) bio-men, or the set provided by the queer community friends. This is what we call a data selection problem.

The line of best fit is shifting, and it all feels very natural.

East Nowhere, RS

2006-06-08T09:59:00.000-04:00

TP and I temporarily surrendered our sanity when we decided to drive all the way to HomeTown, DRS on Friday and then all the way back on Saturday. This amounted to about 24 hours of driving in 40 hours. See what I mean?

On the way back at about hour 20 of driving I got pulled over and got my first speeding ticket ever. It is expensive, it is money that I don't really have, but it was also legit. I was driving through a residential area too fast. It was one of those roads where the speed limit is 65 between towns and 30 in the towns, and the towns are the size of the head of a pin. Since my mother lives on one of those roads I can sympathize with the residents and their desire to have a quiet street. So sure, RS can have my precious dollars to pave their roads or build washed out bridges between East Nowhere and Central Nowhere. Fine.

But why, oh, why do cops have to be jerks? Are they trained especially in some kind of special asshole tactics? Of course they are, they are trained to have no respect for the people they are "protecting" to ensure "public safety". At the end of the whole experience, I was glad that all he could find to rag me on was my intelligence and powers of observation. But it seems to me that I should be able to be pulled over for a traffic infraction without driving away thanking the stars that the person that guy pulled over wasn't trans or of color. Because then, I think that all hell could have broken loose, or, rather, I have no reason to think it wouldn't. I hate that the thing that made it ok, was that I played into his idea of who the public was, of who he was out there to protect instead of criminalize. I was the nice, blonde, straight woman, who was "Real sorry, sir". I hate that he thanked me for my courtesy. Like I had options.

Is all of that really in the best interest of Public Safety? Not when my communities are part of the public.

Rural Arkansas

2006-06-07T22:32:00.000-04:00

TP and I drove through rural Arkansas on the way from RedState to DarkRedState and back. Here's the thing about places you drive through. You know nothing about them. I can read their culture off of the billboards, but if all cultures were judged by their advertising we would all be in trouble. That said, it's all very telling.

Huge porn stores, coupled with huge churches and the occasional fireworks warehouse. What is that about? Is it the theory that every force must have an equal and opposing force? My favorite billboard was one with TONS of hearts on it that said "Love Video: All Ratings". Naw-uh, that is not about love.

The actual land that we covered in our drive was beautiful. Arkansas is the southern terminus of the mountains that are mine, up in NewEnglandState where I grew up. (Kudos to my father for pointing that out). So maybe the affinity that I felt for the rolling green hills, herds of cows. Mainly it was all just brighter and a little bit bigger. I'm still put off my guard by how huge the sky can be here. It makes me feel exposed like something could swoop out of the sky and get me. On the other hand, driving through East Nowhere, RedState I encountered a rural landscape that was very foreign, and I still found it deeply beautiful. This made me think that maybe, despite my cosmopolitan leanings, I really am a country girl. My basic affinities are to places where there is a lot of space, and small clusters of houses that cling to each other against some harsh environment, and of course, where the sunsets are stunning and the cows are plentiful.

Therapy, of a Kind

2006-06-04T16:44:00.000-04:00

It was my first full day here in LiberalCity and TP and I were jumpy, on edge, not quite used to each other and jumping at each other constantly. We get like this after not having seen each other for a while... it takes us a while to get back into our rhythms.

TP had therapy in the afternoon, and after that we went to a bar with a couple friends and commenced the boozing process. Which is to say we ordered margaritas. After those were had, I was debating whether to have another drink -- but not just any other drink a "Mexican Martini", which is like a martini, but with tequila (yes, there is a God).

Me: Should I get another drink?
TP: Do you want one?
Me: Well, as much as this makes me sound like a budding alcoholic, I think it would take the edge off and calm me down a bit.
TP: Well, it's only fair you didn't have therapy

We kiss. I buy a martini.

The Paradox

2006-06-04T01:35:00.000-04:00

The paradox is that when life is full enough to have stuff to say on one's blog one doesn't have the bloody time to do so, or is away from high-speed internet having adventures. It's nearly one in the morning, less than forty-eight hours since TP and I left LiberalBlueCity in RedState to go to DarkRedState to meet hir father.

There are stories, and musings.

But first a shower and one more thorough tic check and then lots of sleep.