more thoughts on home from the vaults

may 6th:

well i grew up in chicago
and around the southern parts of
this great lake. but am i FROM here?

my lens on truth was the lens
of hyde park racial tension
of bare muscley oaks in winter
of freezing, thawing, boiling
of mourning dove and big skies
of friendly neighbors whom you don't love
of folks makin their life for their family

but is this as removeable, as workable
as the capitalistic/patriarchal/white supremacist/sexist
world&structures that i grew up in? those were also the lenses i was raised in and am livin it and i don't have to be attached just because theyre what i know.
...and that's it. what/where do i really know? no where. my body knows and loves many places, seasons, sensations. i don't know this land.

so should i decide to move to wisconsin, it could/should be out of desire to learn here,
not to "live where I'm from"
yes, similar weather patterns to my youth, similar trees.
but those were the only things i paid attention to.

live in a place that calls to you.
calls to you where you are at.

i can walk barefoot, i can

hi friends, hi sneezing cat.

i have been spending a lot of time in my house, it is quiet quiet here. i awake to the sounds of quiet voices and coffee grinding and when i get up i can play loud music and dance around half-naked and there is no one home, or so i think--cats wandering around doing their cat business, books lying luxuriating waiting to be read, worlds and jars of beans sitting quiet.

i am not sure what i am doing here sometimes,

sometimes i am not sure

i watch the sun slink around

the moon's fingernails grow

last night i saw a dance show about love by hand2mouth

it was called "something's got ahold of my heart"

it had four parts--greatest hits, stories, dance, concert.

i did not see my kinds of love there.

there were lots of old songs, lots of dissonance and interruption,

people dancing to adele on their headphones while old love songs blared loudly

straining in opposite directions with their arms clasped around each other

very few kinds of unmediated moments.

i thought, i could do this or something i'd like better.

i'm not sure on days like today if it's still winter, it is so sunny and warmish outside. am i in california?! i'm pretty sure not

cause things aren't free

most things

except for bike rides

and because over and over i find myself surrounded by people

mumbling about fermentation and their sourdough culture and soaking grains

and their gardens and occupy

and buying eco-friendly cleaning products

and their cool co-op whatever

and their new diet where they're not eating any of the bad stuff

geez

portland

i have been in clownface more often than not.

sometimes it is a mask, sometimes it is to say

"yes i am here and i have interiority and you can feel strange sitting by me"

at new seasons the cashier giggled and averted her eyes

i imagined that it was because i am jesus christ

yesterday when i was in bed

masturbating

i imagined i was huge huge huge, sitting atop buildings

someone was getting me off with a wrecking ball

bouncing off my clit

i was talking to my mom yesterday about polyamory and said something like "i return often to something you said when we were kids--like 'why does it hurt you for that person to have that [crayon, experience, new toy, etc.]? it doesn't hurt you.' she laughed and said, 'eliot, people and hearts are different than boxes of crayons!'" but then she got it too. she is a good carrier of reminders to not be so hard on myself.

i want a break from taking a break

i am ready to work really fuckin hard

stop having my heart and mind be the source of all of my hardnesssss

i want to get my hands dirty

feel things growing slowly

stories that run with blood and hair

water the only thing that stagnates

here's a little piece of crap i wrote on a piece of paper when i was in a car a couple weeks ago.............
driving through Santa Barbara oh my gosh
so much yucky California
whiteness sunshiney pueblos palms,
the sunshine here poisons,
it rots, spoils the heart
with entitlement
and self-satisfaction
fermenting

I'm not bitter,
I'm pissed.
that all these motherfucking white people
look at this land and see paradise--
sun, salt, surf, tanlines, SUVs,
colonial walks,

This state, and all it promises,
a sick joke,
only made more disturbing
by its reality
---------------------------=============+++-

back in oregon now and indeed my California Cough is gone... plagued me for weeks.!
im here in portland feeling as uninspired the likes of which i have not felt in months,
wtf? why am i here?
i am bleeding,
bleeding as of last night,
i find that my emotional template during these weeks (these irregular, when are you where are you i need you blood when when, weeks) shifts to joylessness
ugh
i dont even know what i stand on
i have not danced because it is winter, because people like to dance at night and i like to sleep with the sun
that is my excuse
this life does not work,
the life of living in a kitchen and listening to music, dancing singing,
getting on the computer to look for homes,
and getting sad
nope nope nope
when i see wy'east (mt hood)
or the moon moon
look at me from over there i say
hey
what?
oh
fuck





can i please be grounded enough to speak to this person from my gut
to be here with my heart
and say hi

and can i also be crazy fucked up enough
to glue feathers to my ass
strap on my heels
and burrow into the soil?

it's always sunny in the east bay

yuppie coffeedrinkers laugh
and down the street "the cutest kids in the bay" go to the church of religious science to walk the labyrinth and munch raw vegan maple cookies
and three blocks away is the hot mess haus--a hot mess of punk-hippy-homesteader-crafty-zinester-plantloving-injeramaking-radical-searching souls...
seems like everything here is either a few blocks or a few minutes away (nonprofit bike co-ops free paint free produce free people infoshops bookstores fancy haus sugarplum mansion pink purple blue haus the jam factory strong roots garden healthy hearts garden sliding scale farmstands phat beets farmers market in a school parking lot grove schafter park's basketball court)
and rosalyn stopped by with her shopping cart this morning and gave kevin a plant and some bagels. ron came by last night and asked for another veggie dog cause it blew his mind. and ahmed gave us a free beer for a plateful of bbq food!
not much more exactly except an abundance of small beautiful details--what a world (! / ?! / ???) i have fallen into here, of possibilities for living creatively, loudly, quietly. and maybe life is easier in the sun, and maybe that's okay? and still this morning it was hard to get out of bed, hard to get out of the haus--not for any good reasons except black mold on the back of my neck and the toilet's exploding and all those other small pleasures.
ah well...it's always sunny in the east bay.

Further Experiments in Living

Here at The Warren things work a little differently than I have become accustomed to. Here following is account of a new systems, mores, and design statements.

Today we have our first house meeting and we decide:

- meetings will be held biweekly instead of weekly
- check-ins remain intact!
- each meeting will be led by a different person (both the agenda and scheduling - which pleases me greatly and hopefully everyone will feel equally responsible for meetings)
- we won't have chore rotation but we will have a point person (on a rotating basis) to cover basic groceries, hoping that people can be fairly responsible for general upkeep
- one person is in charge of the bills

I make banana bread! But it's super dense because I use baking powder instead of soda. Oops.

I miss: cunts on the walls and a general collect-all-keep-all-find-it-all beautiful style, dance parties, a belief in home made remedies, a love of cleaning products that aren't meant to kill everything.

But -

It's nice and cozy and keeps me on my toes. I have to explain myself sometimes and that can be good for a body. The light tickles every corner of the house and there is always a slight smell of crisp leaves floating at the edges of things. And we still smoke cigarettes on the porch and talk about our days. People sing as they stir pots on the stove and we steal other people's internet (oops). Risto and I make fools of ourselves often and lustily. I am getting used to what seems upfront and on the outside and on the surface and in the pictures on the walls a slight boug factor. I like to think of us as secret agents out in the world, looking and acting normative, but sweetly, quietly thinking/talking/being radical slyly spreading our ways with mere suggestive and example.

It's different. We're different. That's funny but quite alright.

at the madison infoshop

so geez i guess ive been in madison for three-and-a-half weeks now and haven't written anything on this here blog.
in the begnning i collected little sentences/snippets in my mind to share with you all: "i live in a home without keys" "both of the toilet flushers are sticky" "i have a carpet in my bedroom" "i don't want to assume that i can just absorb clint's friendships by association" "i have a door i have a door i have a door what do i do with this thing"

anyway but now that sort of amazement of the difference of mundanities is fading. except for every time clint says "bag" i still can't believe the wisconsin accent exists. (you should have heard my reaction to "snaggletooth"! he seriously said "snaeggle tooth" wow so cool!). my muscles have grown accustomed to the 3-block long hill i climb every day to get to school. I'm used to how still and beautiful my house looks with the white day light streaming through the red curtains and the hundreds of hankies hanging from the ceiling. the garden keeps on growing. flowers turn to squash turn to dinner. this house is so beautiful you guys. i can't wait for some of you to see it. (whoever comes, that is)

so my madison legs are growing you see. i dont feel as rootless, as vulnerable. the people i meet/have met are interesting/ed, friendly, supportive.

z:"guys, i really don't know about this kichadi, i think i fucked up. i think it's gonna be boring."
c:"you're doin it, you're doin it. at least you fucked up authoritatively and with confidence."
clint's comment made me realize i would never have done that until recently (past 2 months or so..."since india" i guess.) I am appreciated for what I bring to the home... no-knead bread, sweet oatmeal, banana bread, silly cartoons, the butt game (& "up your butt"), an appreciation of sphincters in general, dancing and singing, and a desire to live in the public communal space.
the roost enriches and supports the faux op, and i know when i return to chicago the faux op will nourish me there. i've introduced many roostisms: certain faces (maybe you know the one in particular to which i refer-- teeth out, nom nom), certain reports (fake chastising and self-deprecation). oh and BAO!
baos here at the faux op sound slightly different-- a little more like a dog's song. more at the front of the mouth. i find myself baoing much more here than in hyde park, though it's been less and less this past week. my first weeks here i couldn't stop. it was a home-noise. it made me feel comfortable & expressive when riding my bike, walking into and around the house...
===================
hours later, at home, i'm trying to finish up this post. i had so much more to write about, where did it all go? i am rolling and smoking cigarettes here, so that's a newish thing.

oh yes yes, the rain is coming, i hear it coming down. i live on a busy street, i hear the cars rolling by. i hear the folky acousticy music noah is playing downstairs in the lab where he grows mushrooms. oh rain.
i have been sleeping in the front room here. I don't like walking into my room at night and lying on my big empty mattress and closing the door (well, the door stays open). i dont like the sanctioning of space as mine. most of the time. it makes masturbating a lot easier than in the roost (wow. that was complicated, or at least obnoxious.)
though i have decorated the walls with little pieces of nice paper, reminding me of people and places. it all seems too quaint, too discreet.

so i sleep in the front room on a futon, usually after staying up too late talking and reading watership down with clint. a detrimental habit for both of us, as we wake up around 7:30 and make oatmeal and coffee and talk some more.
and then i go to hindi class. hours of sitting down in a grey room in a grey building with tiny 1-foot wide windows, talking about india. weird. but i have made some buddies there and like the social atmosphere very much.
it's time for me to write 10 sentences using the past-participle-adjectival construction ("the came-from-school boys"), and then drink some tea/tinctures and fall asleep.
I look forward to welcoming those of you who are in chicago into my home soon. july 16th to be exact. if you are hesitant to take a break from chicago, or feel busy... just give madison a chance. we can go biking to an old-growth campsite and look at STARS (so many stars) and stencil, garden, make food, bike around, go swimming, go to a local microbrew's beer tasting (every friday 4 to 7 at star liquors), etc etc. lots of fun lovely people await just 150 miles north!
love
-zee

home? homes?

baoooo,
hello all. so, about my life, location, etc.....
i don't exactly have a home. i mean, i suppose i have a lot of homes, if i'm feeling positive about the whole situation. which i am, mostly.
i'm at one of those homes now. it is a small, white two-story house in Maryland sitting on a corner across from a long driveway ending at a much, much bigger white two-story house (if you can really call it a house...it seems more than just a house) that is also a home. and then, across a pond from the big house, there is a medium-sized white two-story house where i grew up that really is only sort of a home now. so obviously, it's complicated. and i haven't even started on virginia, or michigan, or chicago (baooooo!). i don't have one stable home exactly, but there are lots of places that sometimes feel like home where i can sometimes go and sometimes expect to be welcomed by family or something similar. complicated.
i start with this complicated explanation to give fellow squids some sense of where i am now both geographically and in my head. i don't really know what else to say except that i wish you were all here with me, so that you could experience this beautiful, complicated, humid place i often call home. so that you could smell the honeysuckle in the night air, swim in the dark, run through the grass, drink minty things, wear sundresses (well, again, complicated), and play with small rat- like dogs. i'm having a wonderful time. such a wonderful time that i've lost track of time. i thought yesterday was today, and was looking everywhere for leli, who was probably happily enjoying saturday somewhere in wisconsin. now it is actually sunday, which is pretty exciting, because i get to have another day of sleeping in and eating too much for breakfast. wow. what luck.
anyway, hope you all are well. i'll be in touch. sorry not to share anything more interesting in my first blog post. it's been a long time since i've written much. too much lingerie in my life, too little grammar. i need to go back to school. oh well, important to mix it up. and the UofC never could have taught me how to walk in six inch heels....but anyway....back to the honeysuckles,
lots of love,
A.

how far does the analogy between body and house extend?

"For the spirit dies not; the soul is in the body, and without a soul it cannot live. The body, when the soul forsakes it, is not. For the body is the house of the soul; and the soul the house of the spirit." - justin martyr, 150-160a.d.

"This body is not a home but an inn, and that only briefly." -seneca

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body." -c.s. lewis

"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
These rebel powers that thee array;
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?"
- from sonnet 146 - shakespeare

"The body never lies." -martha graham

i like my house clean and my body dirty
i wander in and out of my house and stay firmly (mostly) in my body
my house is open to almost all, my body is...mine. sometimes yours if i say so.
i want a house with no walls and a body with strong fibers and
don't want my skin to be too thick but these days i'm careful about hyperstimulation cause i've sensitized myself carefully.
i want my house to be safe always and locked at night, and my body to be safe and capable of trusting itself to unsafeness, unlocking itself, trusting to someone else's control, able to be bruised and scratched and used and then to recover with aching grace.
i want my body to be well and i know my house will always have tensions and small problems. neither is a machine.
i want my house covered in art, life, stuff, my body to reflect my life but not to be as readable as what's on my bookshelf and my walls...i want my body to be able to feel naked and my house to never be too empty.
i want both to be built with care, fed with goodness, capable of housing many or few
i want to sometimes let the house of my body be quiet and still
i want fur on the couch but not in my cunt
i don't want couchsurfers in my body's spaces, but i want to be open to casual engagements
i want everyone who comes through to mark my house, for the smells to always change
but i want my body to be my smells, never too estranged from my own influence and control,
i want to push my senses' boundaries, open my hips as i stretch, walk and feel my legs stretching and walls bowing (bäoing?) and dissolving so that i can
communicate with my body and not just my words...
with spirit, across walls and bodies, and not just with words...
i exceed my body's dead boundedness and my body cannot be contained by my house.

"Every [person] is the builder of a temple, called [their] body, to the god [they] worship, after a style purely [their] own, nor can [they] get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones." - thoreau

my body in my house,
my house in my body,
maybe i'll get a bäohaus tattoo for our upcoming bodymod day.

"Don’t lie. You know you like to view but not to buy. I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first. And that is the stubbornness in me: I do not want to be someone’s little home." -j.winterson, in "gut symmetries"

my favorite part of spring is jumping.

snippets of the bäohaus now available on the interwebz! share with friends, family, and remember the state of our house from faraway.

in other news,
today was my first day of school. (sounds of my life)
it was dumb and also interesting--"global warming" and "environmental history of the earth."
in the semcoop today i stood at the counter talking to dana and seeing hannah and someone said, do you have any books to buy?
i put down the book i'd accidentally picked up
and replied, "no, i have a lot of books. probably if i could take all the words they contain and scramble them up enough, i'd have all the books here. so i don't think i need any more."

this past weekorso has been like crawling through a brightly-lit tunnel,
keeping my peripheral vision open and my blinders put away,
this refrain of not-getting-back-to-something-old, i'm doing-this-a-new-way,
and neonomads and buddies and
sometimes searching searching for lost objects in a house that is an organized, sparkling disaster zone.
(i mean disaster in a good way, like "catastrophes" like ice dams opening up and creating the channeled scablands. like close calls that make you realize how much you stand to lose. like catastrophic departures that put enough distance between you&you that the missing starts to hurt and then watching your love grow as independence flourishes and autonomy learns to coexist with codependence like gabe and vlad asleep with their paws wrapped around each others' disastrously furry bodies.)

today this happened to me:
i was walking by the sem co-op, on the phone with z, and boarded over the curb and almost went sprawling. dana was walking by and paused-laughed and i yelled "oh shit." ten feet later, i heard,
"you just cursed in front of a church!"
me: uh...(looking around for a church and all i see is the sem co-op but okay)...oops.
he: want to be friends?
me: sure. what's your name?
he: here. (offers me the piece of paper he's holding) do you have an email address?
me: yes...but can we be friends without email?
he: just read it. all my info is there.
me: okay. what's your name?
he: just read it.
me: i'm eliot.
he: bye!

friendship is complicated these days,
complicated like the scablands and globalization and kissing,
a crumpled-typed note addressed to "nice ones,"
pink soup.
complicated like dreams i'm not sure i want to share in case they come true
photographs that i'm not in because i remember the feeling of a body behind a camera
and check-ins and sometimes honesty that hurts
like face wash that stings and you know it's doing something
(unless it turns out it's bleach and acne is not as bad as corroded flesh)
and anyway, what is that makes one shiny?
in the end, no one wants to be alone but we're so good at being lonely.
as soon as i say, "i don't know you," we are something to each other and
i have been taking pleasure in the weaving and woving and wivening of threads and stories,
delighting in the doing-being-becoming-brilliance of my buddies
because if i am enlightening myself, it is because i am surrounded by sources of light.
and in these days which are waxing and waning by the hour,
my hunger for artifacts is checked by a growing taste for kombucha
or if those things aren't causal,
they're correlated by event C, the walls and floors and bruises and glittery eyebrows and earfuls of facepaint and long breakfasts and cowboy coffee
and these bits of being here and also not-here. mostly here.

my bike is sad today, but i am not.

oh and,
skillshare/potluck/d.i.y.seder at the bäo tonight! if you weren't invited and are on this blog, you're invited
now.

screaming in the tunnel under the metra is a beautiful thing

it is so good to be home.
last night, z shared a thought, something like
relationships are getting comfortable in the routine of someone else's patterns.
(this idea extracted from her actual words, which are alonso's words revoiced: "and perhaps you never know anyone as much as you know the rhythms you fall into when you're around them.")
stambam said, yeah, like comfort.

i love missing things,
leaving in order to return
("the return makes the leaving less nervewracking")

but also, when i would sit by the river and make necklaces or paint gourds or think or cry, i wondered whether i was missing being comfortable (rhythms of synchrony), or people (sparks of connection), or a culture of bäo (in which i am something which elsewhere it becomes hard to sustain)...
i concluded that my feelings of saudade were all and none of these things,
and one night over caipirinhas and candlelight az and i articulated our wonder and pleasure at what the bäohaus has become for us (in part)--
(i speak for myself now, my voice inspired by others,)--
a place where we've allowed and pushed ourselves open,
to transform each other, ourselves, allowed ourselves to be(come) transformed,
and celebrated (and respected--maybe respect is not so far from celebration?) community, togetherness, and the benefits reaped from breaking down walls and norms,
and seeking seeking finding building autonomy from codependence, independence and self-reliance through safe-sane-consensual-communicative relationships,
an alternative (to) education (born in the midst of a sometimes-suffocating academia),
(and of course a refrain of
fostering playfulness,
opposing racism, sexism, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, structures and institutions which keep people so bound up that they can't see their ropes and our teeth become too dull to chew-spit-talk a way out,
making music, art of all kinds, encouraging self-expression,
care)

these things, i think, are awesome.
and we (i, i think we) marveled at how these things have also inspired-empowered-educated us, and perhaps other bäos, to build-create-question-challenge elsewhere (or perhaps this is what brought us together--it's hard to say exactly.)

anyway,
it's good to be back here,
but it's not the place i left, exactly, not just slipping back into rhythms of comfort
(although good hugs are good and knowing how the stove works is a nice perk and having a bed that doesn't get rained on...is different)
i think there's something about returning to this space
that makes me want to rip my skin off,
spit on my best friends,
apply and translate and stay awake late and get up early,
bomb the world and rebuild it (using principles of anarchist permaculture this time)
and learning learning listening listening changing always.
to me, the bäo is not static. not closed. never the same. never dead. somehow still home.

for a long time i defined home as a place to return to,
but it's funny to find my definition shifting--
realizing that i've taken the bäo with me, and that it's spread like seeds
created like a collage, modeled on junkheaps, collectives, birdsnests, and sidewalks.

thanks for a fab potluck last night...i'm thrilled in this moment and looking forward to taking chicago (the world?) by glitterheatdirtstorm, again and again and again.

(and i would love to hear your words-thoughts-images,
in life or internet,
about what this house is, has been, could be for you,
since these walls have been built, lived in, pierced, and patched together by all of you.)

"um guys i have a bit of a family announcement or something"

(four little bears, sitting at a table around the remains of beans and rice,
pan-latin-american-style,
and one little bear speaks up, something like)
so, you know what transgender means? i'm that.

(this is a prelude to a conversation loosely recorded in squidink and
carved-out moments of precarity,
proximity to trembling
which is proximity to tears of liminal confusion)

my dad said,
"yes, sexuality is really something that pervades everyday life
like i read this article in the new york times"
(yes! he's read something! he's gotten the nyt's view on the matter!)
"about this female soldier
who told her commanding chief that she was gay
and he asked, why do you have to say anything?
and she said, well, it's something that comes up all the time
people are always talking about what they did on the weekend
how they went out with their spouse or if not
their girlfriend
or boyfriend or
whatever
and she just couldn't say anything,
she had to either lie or stay silent,
and she just couldn't do it anymore.
it was like,
if you had to take off your wedding ring
and pretend all the time."
(a good point, this, about silence,
despite the fact that i'm not in the army
and i'm not talking about being gay. still, a good point. thanks, new york times.)

so i said,
yeah,
i wish i had come out as gay in a more graceful way.
(my mom said, yeah really.)
and i think gender is like that too,
maybe even more so,
like every time i have to choose a bathroom
or every time i go shopping
or whenever someone says "oh, you guys," "you girls,"
(do i need more examples or do they get it?
how sensitive is the average to these divisions, these separations?)
even though we live in a society where men and women are pretty equal,
you know, like,
that division is always made,
men and women are treated differently,
and it's always she or he.

my mom said,
"why didn't you tell me this earlier?
i asked you if you were feeling more male or female"
(about why i like wearing shorts like the rio boys)
um...i don't know, things change.
"but i asked you. three weeks ago. why didn't you give me a straight answer?"
(like she was asking why i hadn't warned them? or why i don't give straight answers?
i hate straight answers.
i think all answers should have nice bends.
it makes for much better conversation.
and much more room to slide around in your answer later,
when it's a different day and suddenly,
you find yourself a little different. three weeks is, in the life of a bat, a long time.)

my mom's eyes (red) didn't match her tone (angry),
"look, alison,"
(i haven't been alison since i was 7)
"i know you think of yourself as a boy,
but i don't think you are.
i mean, you're not a boy.
i know."
(because she stripped me down and gave me birdbaths when i was 3?
i liked birdbaths. better than baths. better than showers.
i didn't realize they would come back to bite me.)
"so how can i call you he?
you're not a he.
how can i call you eliot?
no one will know who i'm talking about."

"it's like me asking you to call me sally,
when you've called me mom for twenty-two years
(um, i'm 21)
and it's not my name, it doesn't even have
anything to do with my name."
my sister stepped in,
"uh,"
(thank you thank you thank you i see your eyes are red and mine are too i don't trust my voice right now thank you thank you)
"i think that's pretty different.
eliot's talking about"
(the only time tonight i've heard my newname, my eliotname)
"their identity, and i think we should respect that."
(thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for making me feel not alone in this moment, "there is a simple comfort in not being alone"...thank you thank you)

i talked a lot about
how much we all talk about gender
and yet how people respond so differently to trans people and their trans kids,
and just to let you know, m&d,
i have this awesome community in chicago
where i am supported and loved
and i know lots of genderfuckers and trans kids
and their parents have responded in all different kinds of ways,
some are really close to their parents
and some left their parents' houses
or were kicked out,
and those different models have helped me to figure out where i stand.
and i hope you can be supportive,
and i'm here telling you this because i want to be open
and honest
and i think you might support me
and regardless, this is important to me.
being honest, being myself.
(whatever that is, may become, may desire.)

(the big issue was)
"what about my mother's birthday?
it would be inappropriate for you to get up
in front of all these people
and make this announcement about your being 'transgender'"
(or whatever it is, the words are still being worked out--as much for me as you, i wanted to say,
but sometimes it's best to keep things kind of simple,
get out the basics,
my ambiguity has delayed this conversation a long time)
"i mean,
i don't go to work
and talk about my sexuality
or my intimate, well, sexual details
or whatever
i talk about physics!"
(mmyeah. different.)
setting the record straight--
(for once, this facile division between
sexuality
gender
becomes useful.)
and yet,
you talk about your wife,
your kids, your family,
and your gender--everyone recognizes you as a man
(is this the first time i've called my dad a man to his face? strange feeling)
everyone knows you're a man
and every time we describe someone
(you have two female students and one male, two indian and one chinese, my mother had a meeting with a woman today, we are all in all one son one daughter and one me)
the first thing we say is whether they are
male
or
female.

later,
my sister hugged me.
"i'm glad you said that."
i said,
i almost didn't.
(i almost thought it wasn't necessary,
that somehow the hints would add up and that would be enough,
casual mentions and back three years ago when i got my first pair of h&m boys jeans
and they were the best best best clothes i ever had and i wore them until they became holes.)
thanks for your support,
and then i texted some squids,
and the lovetentacles felt better than the cigarette
which felt better than the cold air
which was better than the inside
where words drift through
"it's so weird the thought that we'll have to psdsdsdsdssssptsdtt"
"i just don't know what to think about bsssspspbssddsdf"
"what are we going to do about fieieieeeiffsdspspssssssssspsdfff"

then my mom (sally?) helped me put lettuce, coriander, beet seeds in bags
and my dad and i talked about what is reasonable and what is respectful
and what is selfish
and what is not selfish
and of course (we're liberal) we all have to agree on everything,
a hint of opposition
is reconciled as a misinterpretation
until we're all saying the same thing
("i'm transgender." "me too!")
or something more like,
respect
love
life goes on,
same but different,
this one is an intentional change, an articulated change,
unlike many.

my brother said,
"oh yeah,
i know what transgender is."
where did you find out?
"around."
i mean, there are lots of ways to find out...friends, books, porn, the dictionary, wikipedia, a movie, mom and dad...around...
"around.
everyone knows."
(duh)
so yeah, i'm that.
"ah okay."
but you know, i just wanted you to know.
i feel like we've been bros for a long time.
"yeah."
okay.
well.
goodnight.
"good night."
i love you.
"yeah. you too."



ready to come home,
again.

fuck europe

for eating all of my money. fucking a.

this is an unimaginative post, it's just me sharing links. then i'll get off the screen and go to the barn.

Saturday evening in Pune someone bombed the German Bakery. Now the count is 9 dead, 60 injured. I wonder if the U of C will do a program there next year.. it's a funny city. I don't know why anyone would target the Pune German Bakery over any of the other ones in the country. Maybe proximity to the Osho Ashram? (AKA the Sex Ashram, it's an expensive place to go and very popular with western tourists. and they hang out at the german bakery a lot. it's a good place to meet creeps and drink kombucha and watermelon juice (mmmm), eat green hummus and really really good coffee-chocolate cake). I guess Headley (one of the main guys involved in planning the 26/11 attacks in Bombay last year) visited the Osho last year, scoped it out. so maybe... well anyway. this happened. feels weird.

completely unrelated to that
I've been listening to the radio because the CD player in my parents car is still broken from when justin, alonso and I went to Maine last december. 1) it's all gaga 2) if it's not gaga, it's me trying to figure out what magic is contained in the refrains of these three songs
Replay by Iyaz

Whatcha Say by Jason Derulo

Let's Hear it for New York by Jay Z and Alicia Keys

there's something in these refrains that makes me feel something. it comes from outside of me and i feel good or strong, or like driving faster, or like singing loudly and bouncing up and down. also present in the Kaskade Remix of Break the Ice by Britney (~50 seconds in). this sort of feeling I think is unique to pop. it feels contrived, dirty, manufactured. it's like the assholes who made that song "Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night" knew they were gonna make it big.

i think it's that aaj kal (these days) I'm supersensitive to media. I feel like I'm overloading, I'm hyperstimulated. my mind's been whirling a mile a minute, even now when I'm alone with my dog in the house. I can't be quiet except when I went to the Quaker meeting house on sunday. i'm so excited and confused to be back and but i haven't yet given myself any responsibilities that come with home. whirr whirr whirring with activity and a low balance on my bank account. waahfladjklfa ca

but while we're on the topic of youtube,
check out Julia's Bad Romance video (julia is mine and justin's friend. she lives in Mass and made this video for something at her school. &she won!)

oh also wayyyyy to much gaga. i'm taking a break for a while. probably until j comes back. (a week)

hark, it is the dawning of the

brrrrr i c symphonic collusions on all sides
reminds of a waterfall in a nether world
rush & shush & rush & shush
suddenly BLAM! KERPLAM! (just kidding).

at the dinner table i am an elitist
[and? so? i've traveled galaxies, fought wars, raised monuments - i've lived for so long my beginnings are lost to memory - i love myself and i love you - so yes, i am a lelitist]

at the gay club i am a spectacle
[and what about the 35 year old lumberjack wearing a thong and tight leather pants pulled down under the thong, grinding on a metal bar - why are all the middle-aged guys watching chris and i? why did we bother with 21+ night?]

at night, wrapped in sweaty limbs, believe it or not, i am a star -
[i didn't see it coming - they and they and they didn't see it coming - but in the end, everybody is coming]

but only in pittsburgh.