Friday, December 9, 2011

My One Thing -- Most Wanted.

I am here, and I am packing for a trip to Eugene to visit my girlfriend. I will be spending a many-hours-long drive in a truck with the mother of the woman I am going to visit. This sounds both less and more awkward than it actually is. At the moment, I have no idea when I will be coming home, and I have not told this to my roommate.

I am here, and I am packing, and as I am making a pile of things that will and will not go into the pack that I am taking with me, I find that it is no contest that the deck of cards that my ex boyfriend gave me will be going along.

Why?

Because if I take one good thing away from that soured romance, it will have been this deck of cards. I love these cards and I will be damned if a little thing like where they came from will spoil them.

Each card has a dark, 'moody', strange, unsettling, obtuse, fractured, inverse, unwound image superimposed over an artificial background, with a few lines of poetry, unrelated to any of the others in the deck, written in a smudgy typewriter font across the card. These cards are dark and murky. These cards have images of film slides, negatives, photographs, x-rays (one of a tulip), statuary, birds, and dark things.

My favourite card is the five of clubs. A black ink handprint is superimposed over murky green-gray-brown background, and while lettering splashes across the palm.

this yin for vivisection, 

      for a mother-may-I, 
      hayseed seance

These cards make me feel things that I like to feel. They make me feel full, but hollow. They make me feel secret, and, probably most of all, in control.

I will admit, the card showing a pressed tulip backlit through a floodlamp (trust me, it's way better than it sounds) is my second-favourite. It is the three of spades, and mostly a yellow cream colour.


         preparing for the act:

on a bed
        of soft threats,

and a pillow of sorrow.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

I Warned You About the Music Part, Yes?

This is just me gushing about music and genre and spewing some lyrics and why I like them. Nothing really academic here, so don't worry/look elsewhere. 

Oh Man. Oh Man, I am really liking this singer I've just been introduced to via Pandora while cleaning my room. And, in particular, I am liking this one certain song. I think it may be one my my new favourite songs, due to its everything.

Okay. Okay. What the hell do I mean by that? Okay. Let's start this out right. This is the song:

The Artist is Jesca Hoop, and the song that I am getting a Music Boner(tm) off of is called Tulip.

I guess I have to go back in time to ten or eleven years ago. I was going through puberty, and had only recently learned to read (Have I gone into that yet? I may have to explain that at some point.), and I had begun to hone a fascination with death that it is probably worrying that I kept hidden so well. My mother turned me on to Irish music and the folk-rock bands of the seventies, Fairport Convention in particular, and our library only had Liege & Lief, so really on the folk-rock at that point it was a pretty limited enlightenment, but I digress. That particular album contained the two (sort of three, though I did not realize it until much later) songs which cemented the core of my musical lust.

I present to you, by Fairport Convention, Featuring Sandy Denny on lead vocals, on the album Liege & Lief, Tam Lin:


And, Matty Groves:



Listening to these, we get strong, rhythmic melodies, kickin' electric whathaveyou, a gorgeous female lead singing in a driving rhyme, and, Oh, the story in the words.


I fucking love folk-rock murder ballads. It's just one of those things. This form of story and the sound of the music worked their way into my mind at a tender young age (Mother, in all seriousness, thank you so much), and refused to leave. These combined with a childhood spent watching Willow and it's not hard to see how my tastes progressed into what they are today. I'll give you a hint: Yes, I still love Evanescence, and will aggressively defend my rights to do so.

But I want to rant at you about this song. So.

Fast Forward, it's this last Sunday night, and I am cleaning my room, and have tailored a pretty nice station. It is everything my tastes have evolved into. It is dark and electrified and Celtic-inspired, Norwegian Goth bands, Steampunk bands, all the lovely things that make me think of incense and bird skeletons on stands, black drapes and skulls and dried roses and tophats. Luscious and morbid without being depressing and decaying. Less slit wrists, more absinthe and velvet and silver. Not so snowy as Evanescence, and slightly more gritty, a touch of grime and coal to provide atmosphere.

And then, as I stand at my dresser, which is tall enough to come up to my breast, resting my arms level on the top, where I had placed my computer for the cleaning, and Tulip comes on, with a steady base beat and this amazing electric guitar, and I cannot help but move.

The next thing I know, a woman has begun singing, pulsing, in an accent that I not only cannot place, but almost cannot hear through. (I am still not sure what is going on with her accent. She is from California.) But it didn't matter. I had to dance, to move my body. By the time the song was over I had danced myself into a trance which culminated in a four-hour long high that was probably superior to anything I've experienced before. My roommate described me as acting as though I were quite stoned on really, really good weed. I found, halfway through, while doing laundry, that my internal compass was telling me I was in Surry. Needless to say, I am not in fact in Surry (and I don't think I've ever been to Surry, for that matter).

So I looked up the song. I got it up on YouTube and have been listening to pretty much nothing but this woman since then.

And this song, this song that I am dancing myself dizzy over, that I really really want to learn how to sing and probably record myself singing, it turns out that this song is a murder ballad, which, as many who know me will attest, I have been doing the same thing to for years and years.

For the purposes of this, I don't feel like talking about the music. I want to talk about the story, right now. I am really in love with the guitar piece because I think it's awesome that I wouldn't get bored learning it, but that's for another post.

Our story is that of a man who uses a single tulip bulb as bride price for a young woman. Ada, his young bride, agrees to marry him, but declares that she is in love with another man, who is "waiting where the dove nests", which in the context of this song means that he is dead. The two are married in any case, our narrator again paying for everything he will need to keep a wife, up to and including just flat out saying that he's paying her to stay with him. All the while, our narrator calls Ada his true love, while her true love is gone. Our narrator attempts to bribe Ada with a bouquet of (what else) tulips, and she pulls away and drops the flowers on the floor. He eventually drowns her (by the hair), which she embraces because it means she gets to be with her true love: Dead.

Why do I love these stories? Gods know. I just know that that sort of thing? That's the sort of thing that makes me like a song. It's really, really interesting, and unique, and takes a fascinating turn on an old subject.

And now that that's out of the way, I'm going to bed. But you should listen to that song.

Monday, November 21, 2011

An Insomnia-induced confession of sorts.

Warning: This post will be uncomfortable to read. Mom, if you're reading this, stop right now, and go read This Instead. In fact, the rest of you (all both of you) should go read that instead, as well. This post will contain discussions of my period, of abuse, of bullying, and of insomnia.

I am sitting here, holed up in my cosy bed, having gotten back up for the fourth time tonight. The clock has just turned over, it's now six in the morning. I haven't gotten a single wink of sleep, and I really, really wanted to. I am sitting here, shivering, wishing I had enough money to turn on the heat, but the truth is, I don't have enough money to buy a six-dollar box of tampons. I am on the rag, on my Quarterly Bad One, and of course, of course, I cannot find either of my Diva Cups anywhere. Which means, rather than getting to push some clean, sanitary silicon up my cooch as usual, and then forget that it's there for twelve hours, I am here, with an old t-shirt rolled up and stuffed down my skivvies.

Because I can't afford tampons right now. I have been given a job, contingent on drug test and background check (neither of which is a problem), but right now, I can't afford the gas to get to the lab to get the drug test.

But that's not what I'm going to talk about. That's just the context of why this is being posted tonight. I am pissed off, bloated, oozing blood, so tired I'm freezing cold, and have been reading too much HuffPo.

Now. Let's begin again.

For those of you reading this who don't know already, I'm really big. In just about every sense of the word. I'm 5'9", 260 lbs, shop in the Big and Tall section, and have a personality that can be seen from space.

And I've been picked on about just that, and everything else about me, all my life. It is telling, to me, that I just chose to use the phrase "picked on". There are other words for what I've gone through. Harsher words. Buzzwords, if you will.

I've been bullied. I've been abused, in every way possible. I have been taken advantage of at every turn, and now, I am angry.

Come to think of it, I have always been angry.

I am not a naturally mean-spirited person. I am That Kid. The one who looks terrifying, who the littler kids will hide behind for safety. But not because I would beat up the aggressors. Instead, I would, and still do, simply put myself between the people who need me and the people -- and things -- that would hurt them, and refuse to move. And if violence was threatened, I would simply refuse to let it happen. I am the Gentle Giant, if you will. And I am filled with a quiet, steady, deep rage at the fact that I need to be this way.

There's a reason for this. I have worked hard to get this way. I have worked hard to develop my own personality, and I refuse to let it be silent.

Imagine, if you will, a tiny, willow-thin child in a white eyelet dress with a crown of purple flowers twined in a shock of white-blonde hair. You are now imagining me at age eight. I have photographic proof, somewhere. I was the smallest, weakest, slowest, youngest, and meekest of all five children in a five mile radius of my house. And I was homeschooled, which I'm sure didn't help. I had no real outside contact, just these few kids in my neighbourhood who were... well... rednecks.

I distinctly remember my greatest tormentor singing "Why are you gay" to the tune of "YMCA", and feeling the distinct need to hide the fact that he was spot on. I was gay, in all the right ways.

But I wasn't about to tell them that.

The thing is? It only got worse. I escaped the physical, mental, and sexual abuse of my neighbourhood only to burst into the social abuse of a homeschool outreach centre filled with cute, prefect little Christian children. When I finally did get into contact with the outside world, I had suddenly sprung from being a tiny child to being a hulking, slightly overweight Tween with a stutter and a mumbling problem who was too poor to afford descent clothes and therefore went to school in a terrible windbreaker and the same jeans for a year, going pantsless on laundry day. I though horizontal stripes were my friend, and that shoving my quickly growing, quickly darkening hair under a beret could make up for not having been able to find a hairbrush in a week. I was trying and failing to be conventionally pretty and girly, outnumbered and outclassed by girls who to this day are a good six inches smaller and hundred and fifty pounds lighter. I earned the nicknames "Medusa" for my stringy, greening hair (chlorinated pools right before gym are a bitch), and "Godzilla" for my size and the fact that I was still clumsy and all elbows and knees. Well, I'm actually still all elbows and knees, I just learned how to keep them closer to my body so I can conceal them better.

And make no mistake, those names hurt. I had become too big to physically hurt, but Big Kids have Fragile Feelings. And here I was, still reeling from puberty and a year of so of unremitting agony as my bones all tore themselves apart and added a foot to my height, realizing that I was growing these huge floppy meatsacks where I wanted the defined muscles that the older boys at this school had. I wanted to become myself, and was stuck being someone else's idea of myself. I wanted to play with Pokemon cards and wear swim trunks and date the pretty girl with the mile of red hair. I got to talk about boys. Period. Couple the trials of being a giant, pagan, adolescent tranny in a school where 295 out of 300 students were radically fundamentalist Christian with the crippling headaches I began getting not long after puberty, and I had a recipe for suicide.

I can remember four distinct instances in which I very nearly just inhaled in swim class, stopped only by the knowledge that I was being taught by a lifeguard, and it would only hurt, not actually be effective. I can also remember walking to school over a suspension bridge over the Spokane river, and very nearly just hopping over the edge once or twice rather than go to school.

Oh fuck am I glad that I didn't do any of that. That I just sort of stuck it out and hoped it would all get better soon.

And it did.

If the given value of 'soon' is 'in college'. Well, that's not quite true. I must say this here, and give credit where credit is due. I started highschool, got a few good teachers, and, just as important, if not more, I got real friends. People who were interested in what I had to say, and who understood that I was not, actually, quite as scary as I looked. They have made me what I am today. Zo-Zo, Meip, Graciekins, I'm talking about you lot. I'm talking about the people who insisted I read my stories to them, who dragged me to summer camp, who I can still speak a secret language of small meeping sounds with.

Because eventually, I got to a place where I got too big in personality -- and, more importantly, in spirit -- to be threatened by the people who once terrified me.

Yeah, it still hurts when somebody picks on me.

But now? I can just walk away, and take everyone else with me. I'm a big enough man to be able to stand between the bullies of the world and that little towheaded kid. Yeah, the Little Changeling is still in there, looking out through a giant body he doesn't quite know how to operate, but he knows now what he didn't know back then: Those people who picked on him, who hurt him, who stole from him and used him? They're not all that are out there. There are other people like me: People with hearts too big to let other people get hurt. People who will stand up for the Little Changelings of the the world. I had to have someone to stand up for before I could realize that I was worth standing up for, too, and that I could stand up for myself just as well as for others.

And Godzilla is fed up to here with all this fuckery.

To close, I will turn to song, and cite Les Miserables:

Little people know  
When little people fight  
We may look easy pickings  
But we've got some bite 
So never kick a dog  
Because he's just a pup  
We'll fight like twenty armies 
And we won't give up  
So you'd better run for cover  
When the pup grows up! 

And this pup grew up. 

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

New phone, new abilities...

With great power comes great responsibly. We all know that song and dance. I have a new phone, a smartphone, with which I can now take over the world. I can do such things as keep up to date with when my bus comes, what I'be spent today, and whether any of my job prospects have emailed back yet (one has). However, I can also goof off, write blog posts, and play Alchemy (fuck you Angry Birds). Right now, I'm waiting for my bus outside of the store, trying to decide if it would be more energy efficient to go home first and come back out for the rest of my errands. I think it is... As the bus arrives to shuttle me to the mall, I cannot help but think that I should get my rat food and powdered sugar home before going after cake de praying stuff... My rats would certainly appreciate it...

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Needles. I are insane...

I have a needle phobia. I think it stems from Novocaine at the doctor's office. Therefore, my shitty teeth are directly responsible for my needle phobia.

Okay. So I have one. What do I do about this phobia? Do I work hard to avoid needles as much as possible? Do I avoid giving blood and getting tests done? Do I fail at sewing?

No.

I learn how to sew. I sew through my fingers at age fifteen. I keep sewing anyway. I take up needle-felting (which often involves stabbing myself repeatedly in the hand when I slip). I embroider. I give blood whenever I can. I become a fucking tattoo artist. I'm soon going to get my ears re-pierced.

In other words, I do everything I can to put myself in close proximity to needles at every opportunity. Well, other than doing drugs or becoming diabetic. Or both. Though, at some point in the future, I will become dependant on a biweekly injection to remain sane and in the shape I want. But that's at least a year out...

Meanwhile, I'm needle-felting a set of dreadlocks for an event tomorrow.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Well, this is it. Am Adult.

I have just attended the last day of my final class of my baccalaureate. On Friday, I go to my last evaluation conference. Next Friday, at one in the afternoon, I Walk. Years and years of constant schooling, and it has culminated in this: A Bachelor's of Art with a focus in Ethnomusicology.

Yesterday, I went out and bought myself a pair of Adult Pants. Charcoal Gray khakis (yeah, I know that's a contradiction in colour theorem. That's what it said on the label.). I got a "reward shirt" that fits the size I want to be. That goal, also, is not an outrageous one.

I fixed my bicycle.

Right now, I am waiting for my phone to charge so I can go to the bank and settle my father's account without missing a possible call from a lady about a house I'm attempting to rent in Olympia. Tonight, after I get home, I'll be cleaning up and packing my stuff. I want to have it all packed up by monday.

Friday, I go to Seattle to take part in a photo-shoot. The next day I go to Renton to talk to a woman about a pair of baby rats.

I can cook a steak, and make carrot slaw, and have the recipe for brownies memorized. I can buy my own tequila, and enjoy it responsibly. I can write a fantastic essay within a month of my father's death. I can, in fact, if not rise out of grief, then work around it and get my research done and not let myself fall into a pity party.

Sitting next to me on the couch are the Washington State driver's manual, a list of trans-competent therapists in Olympia, and an offer for a credit card.

Am Adult.

Am responsible.

Am looking for a job, signing up for temp agencies, and going to be starting blues-dancing every week when I've settled into the hopefully new house. I'm thinking about placing a personal ad for a dance partner.

Am sitting on my crappy dorm couch, terrified and sobbing.

Is there a way to become an adult without losing Happy and Silly?

If there isn't, then goddamnit, I'm going to make there be. Or, you know, not become adult.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Okay. Calming down.

I took some 5HTP ("Converts to Serotonin, which converts to Melatonin..."), took about 800mg of ibuprofen, made myself a quart of tea (which, for some reason, tastes like Jager), sat down with my mother, worked out my questionnaire, and sent it off to the people I've already got hooked in. I then sent off my Request-To-Interview to three more people. I'll be finding more people later today. For now, however, I'm going to go into town with mom. Get her a new coffee maker, try to find tiny corks for my tiny bottles, get some eggs, and some food stuffs. Get propane before we run out.

I am good. I am getting back on track. I can do this.

Here. This is a list of things I would very dearly like right now.

In no particular order, because right now order is meaningless and this is partially just me bitching.
  • I would like not to have gotten into an argument with my mother yesterday about whether or not verbs belonged in a certain part of my father's obituary. 
    • Verbs are necessary everywhere.
  • I would like some melatonin, please. 
    • This insomnia shit sucks. 
      • On that note, I would very much like it if it were in fact today instead of yesterday, according to my somatic clock. 
  • I would like a steak. 
    • Rare. 
      • With a baked potato. 
        • And balsamic-caramelized onions. 
  • I would like to not be allergic to every-fucking-thing. 
    • Would pasta without corn in it be too much to ask? 
      • They make a delicious brown-rice pasta that tastes and acts just like semolina...
        • I can't find it in Spokane, though.
  • I would like to not be here, where my mental state is rocketed back to that of a five year old girl and I am unable to do anything productive. 
  • I would like to have the confidence to actually contact the people I need to for my project. 
    • This is directly related to the above point. 
  • I would like a ticket back to Olympia, so that I might be able to get some of my planned work done.
  • I would like internet that functioned properly.
  • I would like to have a bed that wasn't only mildly softer than the hardwood floor. 
  • I would like for everything not to be itchy. 
  • I would like to get my brain to function. 
  • I would like to stop spelling "function" as "funtion". 
  • I would like to be coherent right now. 

Friday, April 1, 2011

Rain Frustration.

So, as you might have noticed by now, there's supposed to be an element of biking to this blog. Why hasn't there been? One simple reason: I live in Olympia. Where, in case you didn't know, it rains. All the damn time.

For the last week or so, not only has there been rain, there's been radioactive rain. To be fair, you get more radiation from a dental x-ray than the amount of radioactive fallout on any of the given days thusfar, but having had to go out in it every day has been... well, like seven or eight dental x-rays. And it's been giving me headaches.

This is not the point, though. The point is that I'm blind without my glasses, and glasses plus rain plus biking equals no. And, because I live in Olympia, where it rains all the damn time, that means I can't untie my bike and go for a ride. I've had her stuck down in the bike shelter all winter long, tires rotting off, inner tubes going limp, waiting.

So yesterday it was a clear, beautiful day. Leslie and I needed to go grocery shopping, and ended up running into a friend of ours who ended up ferrying us around in her car in exchange for a couple pounds of meat and a soda and an ice-cream sandwich. (on that note, I've successfully found Safe ice-cream sandies. More on that some other time.) The point is that I didn't get to take my bike out for a spin when it was clear and warm.

And today, it's raining. Again. Just like it was for a week. The paths are flooding, the sky is gray, and I will probably end this day cold and damp. Because just when I thought that the sky might let up enough so that I could put new tires on my bike and go for a spin... the sky started leaking again.

Uuuugh. I feel so incredibly fat and out of shape right now. I haven't been able to get any exercise all winter, because it's been so rainy and cold and hellish and I've been... swamped... in homework. And now, the weather is taunting me.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

A touchy subject?

I cannot help but think that in embracing my Flagrant Tranny-ness, I have somehow revoked my Vagina Card.

Don't get my wrong. I happen to be a man who loves his cunt. It's just that I don't seem to be able talk about things like feminism or male privilege without wondering if someone out there thinks that I am attempting to take advantage of that very privilege.

I read something today which made claims that Transwomen attempting to use Woman-only facilities are guilty of taking advantage of male privilege.

This... bothered me. As a Transman, I routinely find myself outside of any and all privilege. I am not considered "female", therefore I can't get away with the Most Common Superpower. I'm not quite male, so I really, really can't get away with Male Privilege.

So. Now, away with the polite language. If you're sensitive, (and if you're sensitive, why are you reading this in the first place?) stop now.

WHAT THE FLYING FUCK? WHY DO PEOPLE ASSUME THAT ANYONE WITH THE PREFIX OF "TRANS" CAN GET AWAY WITH ANY, ANY, ANY SORT OF PRIVILEGE? It is not uncommon for my sister to get screamed at about being a man in the woman's bathroom. I don't even bother going into the men's room, because I just don't pass. At all. And I don't feel like getting hurt because some asshole doesn't think I should be there.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The Philad-- Ooops, sorry, The Spokane.

Some time between 1987 and 1993, David Ives wrote a play entitled "The Philadelphia", about an anomalous bit of reality in which everything that can go wrong, will. You need to get to work on time? You bus will be cancelled. You want a cup of water? A simple sandwich (that is, in fact, on the menu, and might even be the special of where you're eating)? "Oh, we don't serve that here..." This is what a Philadelphia is. It is the state of never getting what you want.

But what if it's not quite that bad? What if the state you're in is one of only being half-fail? What if you get what you want... sort of.

Say, you go to Starbucks. You've been craving, for one insane reason or another one of those horrible iced blended coffee monstrosities that I lived on over the summer after oral surgery. You really, really want something frozen and blended and covered in caramel syrup. You order your Venti Caramel Frappichino, fork over five or six bucks, and wait. And what comes is...

Well, it is coffee. There is caramel syrup on it. But the barista has somehow heard "Frappichino" as "Machiado". So what you get is a strong coffee with a head of foam half again as tall as the coffee itself that's hot enough to burn your mouth off. So instead of a nice cold frozen thing covered in whipped cream and enough caramel syrup to give a small country diabetes, you get a hot and unsatisfactory mess of foam and sit bitterly in the corner trying to simultaneously enjoy what you did not order, avoid the strange looks coming from a girl you quickly realize is your professor's daughter, and read your book, all the while thinking that this would have been better had the barista screwed up completely. True story, there.

Or, say, you've been nearly late for class for a week, get sick and miss a day or two, and then, when you finally don't feel like shit, the one day you make it to class on time, dragging yourself out of bed by the hair of your toes and slithering into your clothing before trekking across the athletic field in the beginnings of a snowstorm, you find that class has been pushed back a half hour, and starts at ten rather than nine-thirty, and you realize that you could be in bed right now, staving off the cold and illness.

Your parents, knowing that you like those freaky milk-chocolate oranges, go out and get you three of them. In dark chocolate. When, for all practical purposes, dark chocolate should only be used for mint, and mint alone, and under any other circumstance is so strong it actually hurts. But you have to thank them and eat them anyway because, while it wasn't what you wanted, it's chocolate, and it has orange in it, so you like it, right?

It's a book, it's fantasy! You like fantasy books! Read the fantasy book I bought for you!

Thankfully, to be fair, my mother has never bought me a Gor book.

It's half-right. It's almost what you wanted. But it's just wrong enough to be crushingly disappointing. 

I've had these every once in a while. Most recently, last week. This, I'm afraid, is the source of that long rant about coffee up there.

So. It's not exactly a Philadelphia. So what is it?

In honor of my hometown (Ad Slogan: Near Nature, Near Perfect. It's not.) I've begun calling this sort of thing a "Spokane". It's almost what you want. But really, it's not what you want at all. As for the town itself, it's a nice looking, moderately sized town with a relatively low overall crime rate and a pretty view.

Until you realize that, living about 42 feet from my school (a K-12 Homeschool Outreach centre) is a man convicted of first degree rape of a child. And he's just the nearest one. Within a three mile radius, there are upwards of fifty convicted sex offenders. And the gods only know how many other various criminals. Yes, we have a relatively low crime rate, because all the criminals from all over that side of the state come to Spokane to serve their sentences and go to trial. Meanwhile living in the area around the courthouse. You can live there, and avoid them, really, but there's really nothing to do there. When people ask me what there is to do in Spokane, my most common answer is "Leave".

It is this way in which the town can almost be what you want, almost be a place to raise a family in, almost have entertaining places in it, that makes it the perfect location for this mini-dimension of not quite getting what you want.

With that, I leave you, for now.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Binder Bender....


Yeah, I kinda feel like that right now.

My binder, which is a couple of years old, is nearly fallen apart. Therefore, I ordered a few new ones from Underworks (because Underworks is what works the best, apparently.) I mentioned this yesterday over Sushi with the Bois and Gyrls from downstairs, and Cal, wonderful, wonderful Cal, offered to let me borrow one of his binders until mine come in.

This has to be one of the most comfortable things I've worn in a long time. For the first time in I'm not sure how long, my back doesn't hurt. Not only that, but I look right. For the first time. Wow.

I'm currently working out a way to keep the binder from rolling up. Cal uses military shirt stays, which extend all the way down to the feet (he's letting me use a pair of those, too) but I feel like there has to be a better way. Hrm.... *contemplates different ways to do it*

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Perfect, as always.

Today, I woke up with a half hour to get dressed, prepped, and to class. I almost didn't make it on time.

And in the rush to get out the door, I couldn't find my hat (which was sitting on the table in plain sight. I are hasing vision, really...). This wouldn't be a big deal, except that I showered late, and therefore slept on wet hair. Therefore, I stumbled into class, sat down, and informed my friends "I don't want to know what it's doing." I was informed that it looked like the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. I subsequently attempted to get it to look a little less like massive destruction.

Today, in class, we watched a video. I had seen it before. That didn't change how much I love it. And then, since we are studying Ireland and our teacher is big on kinetic learning, we sat down and drew celtic knotwork. Really, really simple knotwork. I and one of my friends were pointed out as resource people for this drawing, since we'd both done it before. I had to keep qualifying myself to my classmates. "I've been drawing since I was three. I'm not especially talented, I just have nineteen years of practice." After that, we all got taught to dance a jig step. During this, several of my classmates latched onto me as a guide for what to do. We were moving and I was grinning and giggling a little, and it felt good to get up and move and be jumping from side to side and making loud noises on the floor. I didn't really realize that I was encouraging and guiding my classmates until, with my back turned, I heard someone say "I'm just watching what Rori's feet do." Some time during the dancing, the teacher informed me that I was "Perfect, of course."

I was... pretty taken aback. I didn't feel like I was doing it perfect. I didn't feel like I was good enough to be followed. I felt like I was a lumbering bull with jiggling fatty bits and clumsy steps and clunky boots and shin-splints and bouncing hair. But I had done it before. The steps had stuck with me. The rhythms were something that had been engrained into me since childhood (Thanks, mom!), and I felt confident enough in my own skin to get up there in the middle of class and help the other students learn to dance.

Come to think of it, this year has been the best I've felt in my body since I was very small. Yes, I'm on the heavy side. Yes, I have these strange jiggly bits hanging off the front of me (even with a chest binder. They're huge. They jiggle.). Yes, I'm tall and gawky and more likely to fall flat on my face than successfully get off the bus or god forbid dance. But I am feeling good in my own skin. I am beginning to be able to see what I look like in a mirror.

I think it was Zoie who said it, years ago. "Sure, you're kinda average as a girl, but DAMN do you make a hot guy." As a girl, the best I could be described as is "Plain". But as a boy, not only do I look better, but I FEEL better, which I'm sure contributes. Sure, I'm jiggly and have hair like an Axolotl when I wear a hat, and like a mushroom cloud when I don't, but that's okay, because I think Axolotl(s?) are adorable, and mushroom clouds are a sure sign of great and terrible destruction, which, as anyone who knows me will tell you, is sure to follow once I step into a room. And I can draw. I can draw because I've been drawing for nineteen years. There are things I'm not good at. I'm not good at the guitar. I'm not good at running, and I can't do a cartwheel.


I'm not perfect. But I'm working on it. All it takes is practice. "Practice makes perfect", right? I'll get back to you on that in nineteen years.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Who says I personify everything I own...? >.>

This is my Tophat, Ozwald. Ozzy is an effeminate gay brit with a penchant for raspberry flavoured chocolate. His "Clothing" (The bits of flash all over him) are constantly changing, but he loves bright shiny things. This photo was taken summer of 2009, about three months after he was given to me.

Meredith is my Ukulele, a Makai Tenor, and I haven't gotten to know her enough yet, except to know that she's a lower-class island girl who works in a colonial household around 1880, and loves to wear a Trumpet Flower in her hair.

Rozalynd is my Violin. She's the second Violin I've had, after Andromeda, who now belongs at Leslie and will soon be given a new name. Rozie is a Proper English Lady who is really a wild Irish girl pulling a con on the English Aristocracy. She's in the middle of a wild love affair with her Sikh bodyguard Jassa Singh, who happens to be---

My guitar. He is strong, cryptic, and silent until you get him singing. Like Meredith, I don't know much about him yet, mostly because I'm not that practised on him yet.

Tess (Short for Tesora Tesla Jones) is my Tattoo machine. She's a 25-year-old artist from San Francisco in the mid-seventies, who took her grandmother's diamond earrings and put one of them through her bottom lip. She gave the other to her girlfriend, with whom she lives.

.... Like I said, I don't personify EVERYTHING, I mean it's not like my Bike (Her name is Kitten)... Er, bad example... Or my piggy bank Thomas... Erm... My Stuffed octopus Kefka... Uh... My sewing machine Eatsneedles... My iPod Aiwë or my computer Sam... Well my boots don't have a name and personality! ....Yet...

Saturday, January 8, 2011

New Boots - Why I Am Not A Good Son.

My grandfather is to this day my hero. He was a navigator in a bomber in WWII, and broke his neck bailing out his plane when it was shot down. He landed behind enemy lines, and spent -- if I am remembering this right -- 18 months in a POW camp, trying to dig his way out and smuggling the sand outside in his pantlegs.

Now, I have a long and glorious history of being the only child/grandchild/etc. interested in the things that my family has to pass down. As the only child interested in hearing his stories, I was given a wealth of knowledge and fascinating adventure stories. I was told about smuggling sand out of the camp. I was told about shaving chocolate bars into wormy porridge to make it easier to eat, and how the prisoners ended up stronger and healthier than the guards, who were given porridge without worms, and therefore without protein. I was told all sorts of things.

I'm not sure if this hero worship is what contributed to the child of a pair of hippies ending up sitting in a coffee shop in a Marine field jacket and Israeli combat boots  writing a comic about sky pirates and the british airship navy. However, it has been remarked that I was born for Military Chic. And I know that this pisses off my parents to no end.

My mother sat down in front of the troop trains and protested at ports. My father can be seen flashing a peace sign in his highschool graduation photo. I myself am an anti-military, hardcore pacifist.

And yet I love to look the part of the tired nam vet. I look considerably better in olive drab and russet brown than I do in tie-dye, and my favourite bag is a medic satchel. I am tall and have shoulders that would fit better on someone six inches taller. I hate looking like a hippie. I do not fit in the aesthetic that they have cultivated. Long hair doesn't really look right at this point, tie-dye just makes me look like I got caught in a holi celebration, ripped clothing looks... awkward... and sandals... just no.

But about the boots.

I have been searching for the prefect boots for years. I think I finally found them. Black, nine-eyelets, shined so bright you can practically see your reflection in it, and I love them. Among other things, they complete my look. Beyond that, they're waterproof, warm, full of traction, and make me feel like my grandfather is smiling at me.

At some point, I think I have to make a comic out of my grandfather's stories, if I can delve back to when I was eight and remember them.