Transitions

If you are still around here a year later then you will be interested to read this:

My life has been full of transitions and my hardest one was encountered over this last year. I hit a wall because I was declined hormones that would literally take my body on a transition, because my health has always been percarious I am able to understand why yet it still hurt in unimaginable ways. I was left floating and distant unsure of the body, mind and perhaps even soul I was in. I turned to cooking, books, theatre and admittedly some drug use. I've had to learn who I am in a world that will always see me in a way that I am not. I've become comfortable with myself, I see my beauty and fault and I can accept it all.

I have been forced to grow up even more in my last few months, I had to get myself together enough to write, direct and complete a thesis. A feat that at many points I thought we beyond me. I considered leaving school, leaving life or simply disappearing to the mountians without a word to start over as a new person. I found the world manageable through antidepressants and mood stabilizers and eventually learned how to stand on my own feet again without prescription and non-prescription drugs. I want to give back to this world now with art, history, dance and all the positive emotions I can muster and maintain.

I have refoucused, graduated from college and found a job in this down turned economy. I live in the Appalachian mountians on the East Coast drinking in the smells of both city and pine trees when I ride my bike. I am starting to make friends outside of Iowa yet keep my close group of confidants who have become my new family.

I will not be deleting this blog or any of it's content as it is part of me as much as I am part of it, but I will be starting two new blogs. The first will be for my art, theatre and other visual aspects of my life. The second will be for my essay, thoughts, language lessons and even book reviews. We all have trials in life yet we have to learn how to live through them and become stronger, each day I have become the person I am and each day I learn something the builds upon those lessons.

I am happy to be here, happy to share, happy to learn and happy to listen.

Blog One: My Art Blog

I've been spending the past few weeks, and specifically the last few days trying to express myself clearly. Because this has become such a huge preoccupation of mine, I fail to find anything worth blogging about. I've almost become more attached to my thoughts, and in that more introverted in dialogue.

Today I am writing because I solidified a friendship that pulls at my poetic strings.

Also because I want to do a little shameless self promoting.
I have a radio show on Wednesday's at 11pm
It's called Writers on Whiskey, where in one of my close friends and I drink a little whiskey and read you bedtime stories. It's going to be epic.

Our first show is tomorrow, check it here if you want to listen.

Doughnut Tears

Yesterday, evening my body was finally able to release a lot of the stress and tension it has been holding inside for too long. I cried. I cried for many things, for joy and pain and change. Interestingly enough the tear were not brought on by another traumatic event, or by hurting. They instead were caused by the thought of doughnuts. Most people do not know the level of love I have for doughnuts in my life, there are many stories that can be told about doughnuts and pastries and how I've lived with them over time. Yet the delicious fatty dough has not passed my pallet in more time that I am happy to admit. This is because they are filled with things that make me very sick.

Yesterday, Micheal decided that my allergy should not be tied directly into my health food habits, therefore he is making me doughnuts and crab ragoons. The thought of doughnuts sparked the different types of fillings and glazes, consuming my mind with fried sugary goodness. I began talking about the types I like and the different combination I go for, becoming more and more emotional in the process until my eyes were full of tears and I was sobbing in Michael's arms.

Somehow Doughnuts healed me, and allowed me to experience emotions that I was hiding far under the surface. I was able to process a lot that has been going on around me and let go of the things that needed to go.

I can not wait to bite into one of these doughnuts over the weekend.

Bread

it's what I do

numeric social order

Numbers have a consciousness that includes themselves and the number than comes directly before them. Even still that number which comes directly before any other given number only exists, because it allows for the next number in the series to exists. Numbers do not care what comes after them. A number does not understand that the number which comes after it, is looking towards it in order to understand it's own existence. Number care a great deal about the sum of their parts. This is because, in order for a number to exists outside of it's line in secession it must be created through operations of mathematics. Numbers are therefore encouraged to understand what makes them, although they are limited by laws and orders, dictating how they are to be formed.

I like a number allow myself to be encouraged.
I like a number are curious and selfish and even lonely.
I like a number care a great deal about the sum of my parts.

therefore, I am a number.

DEUTSCHLAND FUSSBALL

Let the colors speak for themselves.
Scwartz, Rot, Gold

Germany vs Australia

are you ready?

Glasses of Water

What does it mean to be living in the moment? I am not fully convinced this is the healtiest or happiest way to live. I've been trying to block out or control the amount of things I think about that are outside of my present environment or experience. Yet, this only allows the nostalgia and emotions to build up around those things. Thus, when I do inevitably think about them I am filled with more grief and sentiment than I am necessarily willing to fell.

Yet, our inability to control emotions is part of the beauty and nature of them.

In the wake of 'When We Were Orphans' (a good book)

There is a certain number of things I have marked as impossible in my life. Currently I muse about the impossibility of reading all of the "good" books in the world. Regardless of the tastes embedded in the term "good" I firstly do not read all of the languages of the world, which significantly decreases my available literature even those in translation. Secondly, books that are deemed "good" in a highly praised way are constantly being produced. Thus, one can never fully have a grasp on the concept and breadth of good books to begin with.

Love is Contagious

During finals week, my campus we torn by grief and depression and stress and fear and hurt. As a community we were broken and hurting. I was racked, and confused and hurting in my own way and decided to start a paper crane making project. It ended up being a lot more successful than I ever imagined, totaling 1132 cranes by Wednesday night.

I needed something to keep myself together, and the cranes gave me a puropose and a reason to be somewhere. Keeping me from being along or dwelling by myself. I am very thankful for everyone who participated and needed the cranes in their own way.


The photo was taken when we put all the cranes on a table to give away. 500 more cranes were gifted to the project on Thursday morning and over the summer I am going to sting the cranes so that they can hang in the windows of the Stonewall Resource Center (our queer hub).

The Reason I Feel This Way

Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.

anger is defined as a strong feeing of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.

rage is defined as violent, uncontrollable anger.


My anger is raging and yet I am filled with frightening alarm and panic when I think about campus and stepping foot onto it. This fear is deep inside of me, rooted into a place that I can not touch.

The story: This weekend death threats when up around my campus geared towards faggots and queers. Someone carved into a bathroom door hateful and frightening words that resonate through the community and shake the ties that are already infuriated and unsteady. Our campus is dividing, and hurting in a whole new series of ways, and for once I feel out of control and helpless. I can sit in a room and feel safe reclaiming small spaces at a time. I do not believe that I will reclaim all of the spaces though. We can take action, but I am ever fully aware of retaliation and the ability for counter actions to occur.

Many small things have lead up to this last weekend, and the one before it causing the breakdown of safety and trust. 76 women we targeted last weekend in acts of misogyny, a term I am not trowing around lightly. These women were hurt by men in their lives and communities that they thought they knew and trusted. In some cases their own girlfriends where the butt of the jokes. I am not pinning the acts on one person, or even on a group of people instead I want to focus on the internal mindset and pack mentality that continuously leads to this sort of violence. I do not believe the men actually meant harm onto the women, but the blatant lack of disrespect in something we can not hide from or brush under the rug. I think there is a lot more sequestered than many of us are willing to admit.

So, here goes. I am an angry, fearful, ashamed, out-and-loud, queer, trans person who currently holds fear and internal bias against many white straight men at the college and in my life. The bias has always been with me, with out my consent or my desire to have it. I hate to admit it, but my inclination is deep within me and comes from years of hate and threat from my small community growing up. It comes from the fear I felt in gym class after coming out in high school. It comes from the peer pressure that accompanied me leaving the cheerleading squad, and the deep resentment I still feel inside of me because of this. I was fearful in my community as a junior high and high school stunted, but I lived with that fear and addressed it and became a gay role model in my conservative high school setting. I've tried to move on through the horrible things that happened to me, through the hate and fear I felt in that environment and more importantly away from my classification of straight males as the enemy. It has been hard, and I admit I don't even know or assume the acts against queers this weekend were carried out by an individual who identifies as straight or male, but when I move through the community it is these individuals who I perceive as more of a threat to me personally. These are the words and thoughts that I hide in my darkness, that I attempt to not act upon or through. I think we may all have something hiding in the dark that we react to on a cellular level and that can not washed away too easily.


At Grinnell, I am expected still to fulfill that role, but now I am expected to have a level head and control my fear and anger in a just and responsible manner. I am expected to discuss with members of my community who I fear the most, my emotions and my hesitations and my hopes for moving forward. And the fear and resentment is deep inside of me, mostly untapped until something like this weekend's events happen. Then it manifests itself though shortening of breath when I enter or exit certain spaces. It manifests through the isolation I feel in large groups, and the paranoia I have when walking, especially aline. My mouth gets dry, my heart races and my mind goes numb filling only with the voices and images of my past that strike fear into my heart, mind and body. It is physically and mentally debilitating, yet it is internal and personal and almost impossible to detect unless you are living inside of me.

The members of the community who are affected by this the most, the victims are always looked to for the driving force. Action can firstly not be taken without their consent and secondly often involves their own initiative and motivation. The members devastated are the first t react and many are asked or expected to become the face and the drive, even if some remain anonymous we do not expect the strongest and the most ready to step forward and react.

In a way that is what I am doing here, I am reacting and letting my voice be heard. Even through the pain and fear I have to continue to live and react and thrive.